Hope Among the Graves

A few days ago my wife and I and our daughter Rachel made one of our occasional visits to the grave of our daughter, Cynthia, Rachel’s biological mother who died of Huntington’s Disease in 2010.  She’s buried in a peaceful, ordinary county cemetery in Spring Arbor, MI, and we make the 15-minute trip there four or five times a year to trim the grass and flowers around her grave.  Our most recent trip was on a beautiful, sunny fall day, when it was just pleasant to be out.  We sat there at the grave after we had trimmed around it and thought about how Cynthia’s life had enriched us, in spite of her disability.  The same is true of Rachel, who also has Huntington’s Disease, the genetically transmitted disease of which her mother died.  Just the week before, we were made aware of how a comment Rachel made in our small group at church had an effect none of us had anticipated.

One member of our group was lamenting about some really intense difficulties he had gone through, and Rachel remarked something to the effect that we could be confident that it was all going to be all right, because we are on our way to heaven.  The leader of our group made no particular comment at the time, but the next week he and his wife went for a vacation and he had time to ponder his own busy life, and he remembered Rachel’s word of encouragement and was uplifted by it.  He told us about this experience when we met again the next week.  Rachel said her remark came out of a kind of vision that God had given her, and that was not the first time that she had had a word from the Lord to share.  We were all blessed by the word of the Lord coming through her.

Just as Rachel and her mother before her have been a blessing in spite of their disability, so it seemed to me, there in the grave yard, that there was hope represented in that seemingly unlikely place, and the next day the following poem came to me.

Visiting Cynthia’s Grave

I want to be among the graves

When Jesus comes to claim His own;

To see the spirits rise,

Unbound from Adam’s dust,

The resurrection of the just

Erupting at trumpet’s call,

Unshrouded and clothed anew

With Christ-like form

To meet Him in the air.

Passing fair to wear

Eternal robes of immortality!

Oh, what a congregation then,

When all the Lord’s elect,

Both those awaiting in the dust

And those not yet beneath the earth

Triumphant rise

To meet Him in the skies,

Forever freed from Adam’s curse!

                     Elton D. Higgs

                     (Sept. 8, 2020)

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Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.

Dean for a Year: Twilight Musing Autobiography (Part 22)

Toward the end of my sabbatical year in England, I received a spate of phone calls from back home at UM-Dearborn.  The first was from Dennis Papazian, chair of the Division of Arts, Sciences, & Letters, whom I had served as his associate chair.  He informed me that a cabal of faculty were at work seeking to prevent him from continuing in his position as head of the unit for a year while a search was conducted for a Dean of the College of Arts, Sciences and Letters (CASL).  The renaming of the position from Division Chair to Dean, would be part of the reorganization of the academic units through a new set of bylaws, a kind of constitution for the governance of the campus.  Dennis was pleading with me not to accept a coming offer to take the post of Acting Dean for the next academic year.  The second call came from two colleagues who were leading the “rebellion” against Dennis, urging me to accept the offer when it came from the Chancellor.  They described the alleged offenses of Dennis as Chair and described the wide support they had found (generated?) for deposing Dennis and appointing me.  The third call came from the Chancellor, who detailed the generous terms of the appointment and said he was acting on a petition for my appointment from a number of faculty in liberal arts.

All of this was very heady stuff for a still young mid-grade faculty member.  Laquita and I talked it over, and I called the Chancellor back and accepted.  We flew back home with mixed delight and apprehension for the task that lay ahead.  With just about everybody except Dennis Papazian, I was the golden-haired boy (though I didn’t have much hair of any color left by that time), and I’m afraid I didn’t approach the job with any great humility.  As soon as I could after I arrived back at campus, I went to see the Provost (chief academic officer) of the campus, Eugene Arden, who was a mentor and advocate for me throughout the rest of his years at UM-D.  His administrative assistant, Elnora Ford, greeted me warmly, and I was announced and ushered into the Provost’s office for my first interview with him.  He was a New York Jew who had the brash and often acerbic wit that one associates with New Yorkers.  He could be very gentle and helpful toward those he thought deserved it, but bitingly dismissive of those he thought were being dishonest or manipulative.  (Later, he described a group of dissident faculty members who called themselves the “Committee of Concerned Faculty,“ as the “Committee of Disturbed Faculty.”)  He warned me of the politics that had been the source of my being appointed, and he assigned me an associate dean from the Social Sciences Dept. to “balance the ticket,” so to speak.

Dennis Papazian very much wanted to talk to me, so I went to his office on the first day or two after I returned.  He complained bitterly of how he had been treated and blamed primarily Claude Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, two of my colleagues in English and, in the future, my next-door neighbors.  He said they spearheaded the campaign to depose him, and that the power they showed did not bode well for the future.  On that matter, he proved to be right, as I would discover to my great distress.  But for the moment, he was primarily wanting to convey his feeling that, after having been trained by him to do administrative work and being his close associate, I turned on him and was willing to accept the Acting Dean appointment without any regard to loyalty that I owed him.  In my naivete, I had not even thought about that aspect of the offer, especially since I rather agreed with his critics that he was a wheeler-dealer who sometimes cut corners ethically.  Unfortunately, my relationship with Dennis remained strained for many years after that.

I went to get settled into my office in the extemporized quarters for CASL administration, one of several “temporary” modular units (actually some of them stayed around for 10 to 15 years).  The Dean’s office was located in the corner of Module 8, which also housed the College secretaries and associate administrators, including the administrative secretary, Fern Ledford, and the financial assistant, Joe Rath.  Don Proctor, my associate dean, also had an office there.  Since he was also chairman of the Social Sciences Dept., his Module 8 office was secondary.  Fern Ledford kept my calendar and took my calls, so I worked quite closely with her; and Joe Rath made sure that I was aware of the state of College accounts and knew of any inappropriate expenditures.

As Dean, I chaired the Administrative Council (department chairs) and the Executive Committee (elected representatives from each department responsible for setting academic policy for the College).  We met on a regular basis so that we would be mutually informed of what was going on in the departments and could make decisions appropriate to each body.  There had been much tension during the past year among these groups because of the movement to oust Dennis Papazian from his position, so my first job was to assure my colleagues that I would deal openly, transparently, and honestly with them, to the best of my ability.  In the discussion of starting the search for a permanent dean, I had to make the decision of whether I would be a candidate.  I declined to do so, lest my candidacy taint my ability to carry out disinterestedly my job as Acting Dean.  Although I made the decision from good motives, as things turned out, I think the College might have been better off had I elected to run, since the man who was appointed, Kim Bruhn, was not a happy choice and was replaced after only one term.

I think that in general people wanted me to succeed in restoring some harmony to College administration.  I was able during the year to convince people that I wanted to deal with them straightforwardly.  Early in my year’s tenure, I was able to carry out a deal with the Natural Science Dept. to purchase a key piece of equipment that they needed by implementing a creative way of financing the transaction and getting it approved by the Provost.  That was an indication that I was broadly supportive of all departments, not just Humanities, and that I was sympathetic to the special (and expensive) equipment needs of the sciences.  I also established a good working relationship with the other Colleges and the academic support units, such as Admissions, Registration and Records, and staff members in the Chancellor’s office.

I learned a lot that year that laid the foundation for further administrative duties, but I never held the top spot again.  At the end of the year the Provost asked me to stay on as Associate Dean of the College to provide continuity and to be able to use my administrative talents to help the College to function smoothly.  UM-D was still growing at the time, and CASL needed to be guided to absorb that growth without sacrificing either good order or quality of programs.  The next installment will cover my two years as Associate Dean.

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Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.

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Moral Apologetics and Biography, Part I

When I was in graduate school, a very good teacher of mine once suggested that I “purge the personal” from my work. It was generally good advice, which I tried to follow, and I was appreciative of his insight. It is indeed often best to do so as we strive to write about a topic objectively and dispassionately. But when it comes to moral apologetics, it is not always easy or even possible for me and others to do so at a distance, and sometimes it does well for us to consider some of the reasons why.

So in series of short posts I intend to discuss moral apologetics and various ways in which it has reverberated in my life and the lives of others. This is important, I suspect, for several reasons, one of which is this. In order for something like morality to be taken as importantly evidential in a person’s life, something about morality must seem especially striking. Unlike a geometric proof that need not engage one’s affective or imaginative sides (though for some it may), the moral argument, to have purchase in a person’s life, likely requires a requisite prior experience of goodness. Likewise with an aesthetic apologetic, requiring enough prior experience of beauty. Goodness and Beauty are quite analogous in this way, which makes a great deal of sense if anything in the vicinity of Plato’s view is right that they are practically flip sides of the same coin. Both of these “Transcendentals” are deeply experiential realities.[1]

The anecdotes in this post, then, are designed to illuminate an aspect of moral apologetics that logically and often chronologically precedes close examination of a formal moral argument. These are the sorts of experiences that prepare the ground, as it were, make fertile the soil of our hearts and minds to hear the argument and feel its force. Perhaps the reason why some remain largely unmoved by the moral argument is that they lack the requisite experience of goodness, and as a result the argument lacks purchase for them. In the same way some raised without a loving father in their life have a harder time believing in a loving Heavenly Father—while, interestingly, some with missing or unloving parents naturally gravitate to a loving God like a ravenous man to a delicious meal.

Acknowledging the contours of our personal stories is not the same as reducing questions of evidence to psychology. It’s rather simply to apprehend how various aspects of our past have helped shape us, sometimes giving us eyes with which to discern what’s there, and sometimes serving as blinders or obstructions impeding our vision. Just as good intellectual habits make more likely our acquisition of truth, and a rule of reason is a bad one that prevents us from discerning truth and evidence that are really there, likewise our formative experiences can either help or hinder our quest for reality.

In my own life story, three episodes in particular stand out as shaping my vocation as a natural theologian and moral apologist. One is that I was a child of the holiness tradition. To this day I can still smell the sawdust trails of camp meetings from my earliest years. We often attended more than one camp meeting a year, and any summer season I now experience bereft of a visit to camp meeting strikes me as emaciated somehow. A few years ago Marybeth and I wrote a history of a camp meeting in Michigan I attended for many years, and it started like this:

Eaton Rapids Camp Meeting has touched my life profoundly. One of my earliest memories, in fact, was looking high into the air at the windows near the top of the tabernacle. It was after an evening service, if my faint memory serves, and I must have been herded back to the main auditorium after the youth service was done. People were milling about and darting in various directions. I still recall seeing some tables set up with various advertisements (likely from Bible schools and the like) at the back of the tabernacle, and the outstanding impression I experienced at that age was the sheer enormity of the structure. It was simple but elegant—it seemed well-nigh ornate to me—with doors propped up all around its perimeter. Its capacious wooden canopy was enough to mesmerize my imagination for quite some time. I am guessing I was around five or six years of age. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was smack dab in the center of a vintage piece of classic Americana. This was camp meeting, in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, and it was, to my best guess, 1971 or 1972.[2]      

Camp meeting shaped my soul. I had been taught many of the same things in church, of course, but camp meeting was like church on steroids, and it drove home a great many lessons. God is love, for example—essentially, perfectly love—and God desires the very best for each of us. He loves us enough to send Jesus to die for us. God does not merely want us to believe in him, or treat him like a miracle dispenser to bail us out of trouble. He want us to know him, find our vocation in him, and love him. God’s grace is sufficient for us, and enough both to forgive for our committed sins, and deliver us from our condition of sinfulness.

Longtime Asbury College president Dennis Kinlaw once wrote that even our good deeds, done for Christ and in his strength, can be tinged with self-centered self-interest that permeates the depths of our psyches and defiles even our best. “This raises the question of a clean heart and of an undivided heart full of the love of God…. That is why the experience of a clean heart and of a perfect love for God is often described as ‘a second work of grace.’ The identification of this need in the believer’s life and the provision in Christ for a pure heart is the special mission of the camp meeting.”[3] 

When Kinlaw was in his nineties, Marybeth and I went to visit him in Wilmore and were able to pummel him with questions for a few hours. Still sharp as a tack, he regaled us with stories as college president, presiding over the famous 1970 revival at Asbury, pastor, professor, administrator, camp meeting preacher. He was an eminently impressive person, just brilliant, but something about him struck me as particularly interesting. He didn’t point to his tenure as college president as central to his identity, nor his PhD in Old Testament from Brandeis, but to an experience he had as a thirteen year old boy at Indian Springs Camp Meeting in Georgia. In the twilight of his life, with the benefit of all the hindsight afforded a 90-year-old man, he pointed to those altar experiences he had as a boy, when he met God in person—under the preaching of another longtime Asbury college president, its founder Henry Morrison, no less—as what was at the heart of who he was. More than anything else from his experiences, that was what he saw as defining him.

My next post will discuss a second feature of my childhood that softened my heart and opened my mind to the moral argument.

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With his co-author, Jerry Walls, Dr. Baggett authored Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. The book won Christianity Today’s 2012 apologetics book of the year of the award. He published a sequel with Walls that critiques naturalistic ethics, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning. A third book in the series, The Moral Argument: A History, chronicles the history of moral arguments for God’s existence. Dr. Baggett has also co-edited a collection of essays exploring the philosophy of C.S. Lewis, and edited the third debate between Gary Habermas and Antony Flew on the resurrection of Jesus. Dr. Baggett currently is a professor at Houston Baptist University.

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[1] Readers are strongly encouraged to listen to David Horner’s remarkable talk “Too Good Not to be True,” accessible here: https://www.moralapologetics.com/wordpress/video-too-good-not-to-be-true-the-shape-of-moral-apologetics-david-horner.

[2] David & Marybeth Baggett, At the Bend of the River Grand (Wilmore, KY: Emeth Press, 2016), xi.

[3] Ibid., 265.

The Withered Hand

Here recently, emotions come on me like an Imperial Star Destroyer out of lightspeed.  I’m good one minute, and the next I need to sit down and deal with the lump in my throat.  No warning, no spinning thoughts, no sleepless nights, no nothing.  Boom.  The Empire is there to destroy me.

Until COVID hit, everything seemed to be going swimmingly. Job was going alright, the kids are growing, my wife still likes me.  From a stage-of-life standpoint, I had challenges that I needed to face, but those challenges gave me hope and energy.

Then, well, COVID. 

I’m an introvert, so spending days upon days by myself is what I like to call pretty neat-o. I teach English, so I basically read and write for a living.  I love teaching, but I’m usually pretty exhausted by the end of a class or two. And I’m even one of those very annoying people who got even more accomplished without the constant distractions and, well, people. During COVID, I got stuff done. Good stuff.  Stuff I deeply believe that God wanted me to do and was pleased with me for.

So, why was I miserable? 

Well, as I write this, I have no idea. I’m a rather positive person, so being miserable is new.  I’m not one to sing “Everything is Awesome” wherever I go, but I might hum it under my breath.  I can usually see an opening, a light.  In my world, things are rarely ever hopeless.

As my emotional pit deepened, I tried everything to understand and deal with the incredibly strong, powerful emotions I was feeling: I took walks, I sat on my deck, I worked, I hung with family, I tried to control them with schedules I came up with, I presented them with my over-the-top expectations for their behavior, I did it all. . .

I still felt miserable.

When I was growing up, there was a very common song that we sang, with this lyric: “Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before.”  Without offering any commentary on the song, I will say that, here recently, this has certainly NOT been my experience.  Some days with Jesus are better, but some days aren’t.  I was taught that the promise of salvation and the hope of eternity was enough for any rough day I might encounter.  But here I was, during a time of tremendous grief and stress (worldwide grief and stress, mind you) being crippled emotionally.  Seriously, I should have been doing great, but every day seemed tougher than the day before.  And I believe Jesus was with me on this.

So, I went to the elders at my church (I’m one of them), and I told them how I was feeling and that I needed professional counseling. I wouldn’t say they knew it was coming, but none of them seemed surprised, either.  They’d seen me, over the previous handful of years, survive a couple strokes and then talk about the changes that ensued: my job, my marriage, the kids, the works.  To this point, I had done whatever I thought was wise so I could heal.  We bring everything to our meeting: confessions of sin, frustrations over jobs, parenting challenges, even finances.  Nothing, really, is off the table. 

They listened and prayed that God would help me in this.

Then, just like my quick-appearing emotions, it came to me.  The miracle where Jesus healed the man with the withered hand. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke each has an account of this particular miracle. Jesus was at the synagogue on the Sabbath. Jesus asks the man to show everyone his hand. I asked myself: everyone knew about this guy’s hand, right?  He’d been seen at the synagogue, probably more than once. This guy probably wasn’t there by accident, and I’m guessing he was a regular fixture there. The context is clear, too: Jesus asked the man to show his withered hand so that everyone could see what he was about to do. 

Yet, I wonder: was there a small part of that bit of theater meant for the man? To be sure, the rest of the scene deals with the reactions of the religious folks and the crowd.  But Jesus ignores all of them to make that request. I imagine Jesus looking at the man, and everyone else kind of disappearing for that moment: “stretch out your hand.” Did the man do it immediately? Did his hand shake? Did he have a queasy nervousness before he did it?

This man had lived his life with this withered hand, and I’m sure he’d lived his life around it, too.  There wasn’t a blue-collar/white collar divide. He couldn’t pick up a desk job because he couldn’t work a manual labor trade.  Everything was a manual labor trade, and he had to get on with life if he was ever going to live.  He had to cope.  Nothing was going to change.

I think, in some way, Jesus was showing that this man was going to be healed, but he also required the man to show his withered hand to show everyone else that he needed healing. He wasn’t ok. The man’s life was as bent as his hand, and he needed to look at it again, so Jesus could do something about it.  Too often, I live my life that way: working around and over the places in my life where I must simply face the fact that I need healing. 

Being overly optimistic while ignoring the difficulties of a particular situation is a guide  for living a half-life or no life at all.  In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins interviews Admiral Jim Stockdale, where they discuss Stockdale’s torture while he lived as a POW in the concentration camp dubbed “The Hanoi Hilton” in Vietnam.  During the interview, Stockdale described the personal discipline it took to survive such a brutal—and long lasting—lifestyle.  His description for what it takes to succeed has taken on the name “The Stockdale Paradox”:  “You must never confuse the faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.”

It’s strange to say it, but I believe one key weakness that I’ve been living around is that I’m too positive.  I haven’t looked at the difficulty in my life, as easy as my life seems to be, in comparison to, say, Jim Stockdale’s torture.  That’s why I’m not making that comparison.  I’m actually comparing myself to the men who, according to Stockdale, didn’t make it.

I’ve been looking at everything in the world, due to COVID (sickness, death, anger, financial ruin, frustration, arrogance, all of it), and I find myself quickly imagining how things would be when all of this is over. That, friends, is deadly. In fact, Stockdale claims that the people who died quickest in the Hanoi Hilton were the ones who were the most optimistic—they imagined getting out by Christmas, then by Easter, July 4, and so on.  According to Admiral Stockdale, they died of a broken heart.

But my approach to my own pain, is not just a symptom of humanity, it’s very much a symptom of the brand of Christianity I find myself in, the brand of Christianity that is quick to paper over pain and hardship in favor of a “God is in control!” statement or a “He’s coming back soon” encouragement or even an “I see God working” prophecy.  In his book Recapturing the Wonder, Mike Cosper describes this brand of the Christian life: “Many pastors and writers paint a picture of the Christian life that is much more akin to a Thomas Kinkaid painting: everything bathed in amber light, flowers blooming even in the snow, everything peaceful and picturesque.”

In contrast to that picture, Jesus demands to see what’s broken or hurting or not working anymore.  As my wife says, “you have to reveal it before you can heal it.”

But Jesus himself, at different times in his life, asked for evidence of the pain that people around him suffered.  He knew about that pain, so it must have been for the benefit of the person who needed to be delivered.  Of course, even as he asks to see the withered parts of our lives, Jesus personifies the reality that we will prevail.

My Thrilling First Sabbatical Leave Abroad (2) (Part 21)

Our trip into Scotland was a good launch to the year for us. It paved the way for us to take subsequent family trips and for touring around with guests from the U.S. We hosted our friends Wendell and Joyce Bean and their daughter, Melanie, who was about Liann’s age, and with them, we rented a van and visited the Cotswolds, Wales, and northwest England. It was in Chester that we discovered one morning that in the confusion of our departure we had left behind our little Cynthia at the B&B. We quickly corrected our mistake, and Cynthia was quite calm when we arrived, having been plied with cookies by the proprietress while she waited. Crossing the English Channel by ferry, we hit the high spots in Paris and Amsterdam, as well as visiting Cologne and its magnificent cathedral. Unfortunately, our most vivid memory of the visit to Cologne was an incident where Joyce got locked into a toilet booth because she didn’t have the correct coin for paying the attendant. The woman was quite insistent that Joyce would not be released until she paid properly! Finally, someone came in and resolved the matter, and Joyce was released.

We also had the pleasure of being visited by Sel and Helen Sutterfield, who were “uncle” and “aunt” to our children, who were quite comfortable with them and readily engaged in conversation with them. One morning Helen came down for breakfast in one of her usual tasteful ensembles, and Liann told her,”Aunt Helen, you look very “smaht” this morning,” using both an English term of description and its British pronunciation. With the Sutterfields we concentrated on points of interest in London and the south of England, including notable sites in Essex, such as the great house of Audley End and the ancient log church in Greensted.

One of the Essex sites that touched our hearts was the old church of St. Peter’s-on-the-Wall, at Bradwell-on-Sea. It was out in a lonely field on the North Sea and had been restored and re-consecrated, after being used many years as a barn. Built in 654 by St. Cedd, early evangelist to the East Saxons, it was impressive, even in its austerity. Praying there, we felt the power of the centuries of prayers that had been offered there. It was constructed of materials remaining from a Roman fort on that site. In contrast nearby was a WWII concrete bunker, one of many that had been built for coastal defense. At the other end of the spectrum was the famous Canterbury Cathedral, ecclesiastical home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the clerical head of the Church of England. The beauty and glory of the ancient cathedrals never ceased to amaze us. It is also the destination of the group of pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer’s medieval poem, The Canterbury Tales, making it especially meaningful to me as a teacher of literature. The town walls still stand, forming part of the walls around the Cathedral Close, the private grounds belonging to the Cathedral.

Back in Upminster, we settled into our routine. The girls were quickly oriented to their school. It was only a short distance away from our house, and they went back and forth on their own, even coming home for lunch. They did well academically, and Cynthia, being only four when she started, got a head start from where she would have been in the U. S. The headmistress, Mrs. Pullam, was a traditional British school administrator and believed in developing character in her students, as well as intellectual skills. The boys wore short pants all the year around, whatever the weather. When one of the mothers asked Mrs. Pullam about their abbreviated garments in very cold weather, she replied, “It toughens them up!” One of our early memories of Cynthia’s marching to the beat of her own drum arose from her being late coming home from school one day. We went looking for her, and we found her poring over a trail of ants on the sidewalk. She was always interested in bugs, and she saw no reason that she should not just follow where her curiosity led.

Laquita spent a lot of time that year reading books, including a good deal of the local history of Upminster and the Borough of Havering, which was the political and geographical area of which Upminster was a part. We went on walks to see sights she identified through her reading, such as the old Cranham parish church associated with James Oglethorpe, principal founder of the State of Georgia. Right in the center of Upminister was the old parish church of St. Lawrence’s, known for its “high church” liturgy. Because of its use of incense and the ringing of a bell with the Eucharist, Evangelicals laughingly referred to them as “smells and bells.” We visited both the grounds and the inside of the church and found the usual reflections of distinguished parishioners of the past who were buried there. The most prosperous of the members were able to set brass images of themselves and their families into the floor of the church to mark where they were buried. One of Laquita’s interests during the year was doing brass rubbings that were made by stretching a strong sheet of black or white paper over a brass gravestone and rubbing a special wax, called a “heel ball,” across the paper to create an image of it. We have a number of these framed on our house walls, and she gave several of them to people as special gifts. It was fairly easy to gain access to the brasses back then, but it has become increasingly difficult to get permission for this activity, and most churches now charge for it. Laquita and I took several excursions by bus to visit small, very old parish churches that had brasses she wanted to rub.

The customs of daily living in those days still reflected “old England,” since it took the country many years to recover from the privations of World War II. Shopping for food was a challenge, since refrigerators were small and it was necessary to go down to the row of shops serving the community every day or two. One would go to the butcher for meat, to the greengrocer for fresh fruits and vegetables, to the chemist (pharmacist, drug store) for medicines and sundry items, and to the small grocer for other food items. There was also a hardware store, a shoe shop, and a laundromat, which we visited regularly. The shopper was to bring her own shopping cart or bags to hold all the items. One had to go into the town of Upminster to find a grocery of any size, and nothing like our modern supermarkets. By the time we returned there to live again in 1980, refrigerators were bigger and supermarkets had begun to spring up. Milk was delivered to most homes every morning, so that was a help. One day early in our stay, Laquita heard a horse-drawn cart coming down the street with a man ringing his bell and shouting something, so she went out to meet him with 50 pence in hand and asked for a cabbage, thinking he was selling vegetables. He replied, “Oh, no luv, Oi’m the rag and bone man,” meaning he collected junk to sell. No doubt he had a chuckle about that strange American woman.

Across from the shops was the local bank, Nat West, or National Westminster. Tellers generally knew their customers, nearly all of whom lived in the neighborhood. We opened an account, and before long we were visited by the bank manager, Mr. Chambers, a man of 60 or so who was part of the country club set and later in the year treated me to lunch in the exclusive country club dining room. I was of course a complete neophyte in the financial customs and had to learn to write checks and deposit slips in the British manner. The tellers were amused at my accent and my lack of common knowledge about British customs. We have maintained our Nat West account all these years, but, alas, the Cranham Branch closed a number of years ago, and our relationship with the downtown Upminster Branch was never as personal as the one in Cranham.

Every so often we would catch bus number 248 in Cranham and go to downtown Upminister to shop for groceries and other items. The “anchor store” for Upminster was Roomes’ Department Store, which was very large and occupied two buildings across the street from each other. Among the other shops we liked was a little bookstore called Swan’s. It was delightfully cluttered and had a wide variety of books, new and used. One of the most lasting of our purchases there were children’s story tapes that we listened to with our children for two generations. Rachel still has some of them. We also bought travel books there and maps. Number 248 could also take us to Romford, the old Essex market town. Market day there brought hundreds of farmers, clothes merchants, craft and jewelry sellers, fast food stalls, and other people hawking all sorts of wares. It was a marvelous sight and we usually brought home something useful or interesting.

When we could arrange for after-school care for the children, Laquita and I spent days in London, especially in the traditional financial district called the City, or the “Square Mile,” with its ancient Roman walls and beautiful churches built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The best-known structures in the City, of course, are the Tower of London and St. Paul’s Cathedral, the crown of Wren churches. It was delightful to be there in the winter time, since there were few tourists and one could walk even in the British Museum without crowds. We were not much into shopping, but we did go to the famous Harrod’s Department Store, with its amazing artistic display of fish and confections. Toward the end of our stay, we went to a big china shop in London called Lawley’s and bought a set of Royal Doulton china in the Valley Green pattern. It has been our special set of dishes for guests and family festive occasions. We had it shipped, and it was an exciting final touch to our trip when the china arrived at our house a few weeks after we got home. What a year it was!

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Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.

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The Paradox of Preservation

Accustomed to the tumultuous turquoise of the Pacific, the static, dusty-emerald undulation of Yosemite’s slopes, floors, and ridges transfixed me. Traversing 2,500 miles of open ocean every time I left my home of Honolulu, Hawaii gave me a sense for vast spaces. But in Yosemite I, a land mammal, found an untamed vastness where I could do more than dabble around the edges; I could enter. Fueled by light, cool air, exertion that would have been toilsome between the Tropics flowed easily. Wind and vistas, not exhaustion, stole my breath as I followed a trail from the canyon rim to the valley floor.

Enjoyment of Nature

Yosemite National Park comprises 761,747.50 acres of the 50,543,372.74 acres devoted to National Parks in the United States.[1] These parks reflect the value judgement that preserving land from human habitation is worthwhile. While National Parks existed before 1916, the 1916 act establishing the National Park Service enshrines in law the rationale behind their existence:

To conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.[2]

John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and chief advocate for preserving Yosemite, placed a similar emphasis on the capacity of wilderness to bring abiding joy to humans. Against proposals to dam a portion of the Yosemite protected area, he wrote, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”[3] At first blush, both the founding documents of the National Park Service and Muir’s statement imply that protecting land from human habitation is important because doing so enables a different, more refined human use—enjoyment. 

Beneath this superficial human-centeredness, however, lies a deeper value judgement. The splendor of glaciers and granite, of foliage and fiery sunsets, brings joy to humans precisely because nature is good; joy is the emotional consequence of experiencing nature’s goodness. Enjoyment of nature can be human-centered even as friendship can be me-centered. But both enjoyment of nature and enjoyment of a friend can stem from recognizing and reveling in the goodness of the other. The non-human world brings health and cheer at least partly because it is not a world of our own making; its value enjoins preservation.

Enjoyment of Nature and the Paradox of Preservation

The U.S. National Parks reflect the value judgement that preserving human enjoyment of nature is worth significant national resources. To the 318,211,833 people who enjoyed these parks in 2018, U.S. National Parks also made an assertion; they asserted that nature is good and thus worthy of preservation.[4] But the manner of this assertion, enjoyment of nature, is paradoxical. Nature is good apart from us, but we recognize this goodness only in relationship with it. To hear nature’s proclamation of its value, we must enter it. And by that act, we render it less natural—by entering the non-human world, we render it part of the human world. By venturing into a world that is not of our own making, we make it, if only marginally, a world we have made.

This paradox is present in nearly all preservationist ecological endeavors, not just the National Park system. Preservationist ecological endeavors are motivated by experience of nature, but they require withdrawal from nature. They demand, often in moral terms, that humans make a double movement, both towards nature in ecological enjoyment, study, and intervention and away from nature by restraining our presence in it.

It seems that this dual movement of humans towards and away from nature requires a framework in which humans are both part of and distinct from the rest of nature. For human enjoyment, study, and mere presence in nature to be legitimate, this presence must not be unnatural; it must not be inherently corrupting. But to justify the moral mandate that humans exercise restraint in interactions with nature, preservationist ecological endeavors require that humans are not just another part of nature—if humans ought not to thoughtlessly decimate miles of rainforest, but Army Ants are under no similar obligation, then there must be some distinction between humans and ants. If preservation is, as is widely recognized, good (and perhaps even morally obligatory), there must be some way to both uphold and adjudicate between these paradoxical principles of human unity with and distinctness from nature.

Naturalism and the Paradox of Preservation

Naturalism, for instance, can uphold each of these principles. Historically speaking, evolutionary naturalism suggests that there is unity between humans and the rest of nature because we all have the same ancestors; all that separates us from other animals is a few genetic mutations. In contrast, an emphasis on present empirical observation of humans’ seeming intellectual uniqueness suggests a large divide between humans and other animals. Thus, naturalism provides some justification for each of the paradox-producing principles that are assumed in preservationist ecological endeavors.

But naturalism does not seem to provide a way of navigating this paradox. Naturalism must do more than simply state that humans are both a part of and distinct from nature; it must explain how these two seemingly contradictory truths can be integrated. While naturalism can account for either human unity with nature or human distinctness from nature, it provides no non-arbitrary way of integrating these two principles, no grounds for discerning when we should move towards nature per our unity with it and when we should move away from nature per our distinctness from it. It takes something more than naturalism to account for what we know about our relationship with nature.

Christianity and the Paradox of Preservation

Christian Theism seems to provide this something more. Whether they are interpreted evolutionarily or not, the first few chapters of the Christian Bible teach that humans are both part of nature and distinct from the rest nature. Humans are part of nature in that they, just like the rest of nature, are created by God, from whom they derive their identity and value. God designed humans and the rest of his creation to harmoniously cohabit the Earth. But these same chapters also teach that humans are distinct from nature in two ways, one positive and one negative.

Positively, humans are the only part of the world that is said to be created “in the image of God.” This means that humans are not just another part of creation, which helps explain the fact that humans have ecological moral obligations, while ants do not. Negatively, these chapters recount that, while God created humans to live in harmony with God and the rest of God’s creation, humans rejected right relationship with God. By doing this, humans corrupted themselves and their relationship with all of God’s creations. Human presence in nature introduces an unnatural, corrupting element because we have, within ourselves, an unnatural, corrupted element.

Thus, Christianity, like naturalism, upholds the paradoxical principles of human unity with and distinctness from nature. But it also goes beyond naturalism by providing a principle for navigating this paradox. Christianity says that humans should engage with nature in all of the ways that are in accord with God’s design for our presence in it and withdraw from nature when our corruption would corrupt God’s design. Admittedly, the specifications of God’s design are much debated among Christians. But this does not minimize the fact that, because Christianity appeals to a God who is beyond both the human and natural realms, it has a basis for defining these two realms and describing how they should interact.

National parks and other preservationist ecological efforts stem from one of our era’s great moments of moral clarity. But these efforts rely on a paradox that naturalism can at best uphold, not navigate. By both upholding and navigating this paradox, Christianity provides a better accounting for our known ecological moral obligations.

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[1] National Park Service, Land Resources Division. 2019. “Summary of Acreage.” September 30, 2019. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/lwcf/upload/NPS-Acreage-9-30-2019.pdf.

[2] “The Organic Act.” 1994. In America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents, edited by Larry Dislaver. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/anps/index.htm.

[3] Muir, John. 1908. “The Hetch Hetchy Valley.” Sierra Club Bulletin VI, no. 4 (January): 211-220. https://vault.sierraclub.org/ca/hetchhetchy/hetch_hetchy_muir_scb_1908.html.

[4] National Park Service. n.d. “Frequently Asked Questions.” Accessed January 16, 2020. https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/faqs.htm.

My Dear Apologist: Please, Be Patient.

Sadly, patient reflection and careful nuance are rare in an age where mobile devices are ubiquitous and social media platforms make it possible to broadcast every moment in real time. Never have so many been able to say so little of substance with so much immediacy. We are awash in a sea of memes, gifs, emojis, sound bites, and two to three worded answers smugly put forth in response to questions that fill books and libraries and have been asked for generations across cultures. Ours is the realm of blind consumers of the “digital now” where the one-eyed social media influencer with the latest quip and clever mantra is king. This is the context in which contemporary apologists are called to give the reason for the hope that is in them.[1] In this context it is the patient apologist, the one who is deliberate and thorough in her holy vocation, she is the one the Lord will use in a lasting way. So, I say to you, my dear apologist: please, be patient.

We must remember that the gospel we are called to reasonably present with passion and genuine concern can be made to appear ugly when its messengers—those who are called as ambassadors of the One whose character is marked by gentleness and longsuffering—become impatient. Urgency is one thing, and an important one to be sure; but impatience is different from urgency. Impatience blinds us to the value of the journey we make with our interlocutors, leaving us to think that all that matters is making a point about this or that issue and coming out on top in the argument. Impatience wants to win the argument, while patient urgency serves the argument in helping win the person.

Or, and this is what may be the most insidious side of impatience when it comes to apologetics, we can become impatient with ourselves and decide it is just too difficult to be an apologist. The voice of this type of impatience says to us, “Look at how hard this is. Learning how to think, to argue with logic and persuasion, to represent the claims of the Bible reasonably and charitably—this is best left to others. If you were truly called to this, it would be easier for you; it would come more quickly. Best to leave this business of apologetics to others. You’re just not suited for it, after all.” This type of impatience hopes to silence the apologetic voice God has given you, eventually leaving you with only a few truncated one-line apologetic answers that do little good. Or, worse, leading you to hastily pass along the scattered thoughts of immature apologists who may exhibit a caustic tone amplified by their own strident impatience and failure to yet grasp the sacred gravitas of the apologetic endeavor. The end result is a dialogue that reduces to diatribe, an opportunity that becomes an affront, a relationship with a seeker that ends before it has a chance to begin.

Whichever type of impatience you see in yourself, and maybe it’s both, I hope you will take the time to carefully internalize what I have come to learn as the Top Ten Helps for the Impatient Apologist. (I hasten to add that these are known by me precisely because I have been known to struggle with my own demons of impatience, and I speak from first-hand experience concerning the failures wrought in my own apologetic endeavors.)

Top Ten Helps for the Impatient Apologist

1.       Take the time and effort to learn the nuance of your arguments, both yours and your opponent’s. Nothing of substance in the apologetic realm is learned without time and effort. Commit to the process. Be patient.

2.       Write out your thoughts in full sentences, paragraphs, pages, and invite critique and dialogue from trusted advisors before you share them to a larger audience. Hone your skills. Be patient.

3.       Do not respond to a critic or enquirer too quickly, or without reflection. Your goal is not to save face or look smarter than someone else, but to manifest the longsuffering, persuasive love of God. Allow time. Be patient.

4.       Invest in the conversation, and do not give in to the temptation to put forth shallow or simplistic answers that may appear to win the momentary battle of words but will likely lose the war of influence. Truth matters. Be patient.

5.       Apologetics is a journey, not a moment. Yes, there will be important moments, but play the long game and cultivate the habit of seeing beyond the current moment to the eternal one. Urgency is not impatience. Be patient.

6.       Your audience as an apologist is, in the final analysis, the Lord. He loves you, and he is patient with your development as a defender of the good news. See him in the face of the other. Be patient.

7.       Do not give the enemy a voice in your head, in your heart. He wants you hurried, careless, easily offended, and unfocused. Silence him with patience. Be patient.

8.       Use social media judiciously and with careful reflection when it comes to apologetic engagement. Remember that what you post reflects you and your Lord. Do not be afraid to use social media, but do not misuse it. Be patient.

9.       If you use another apologist’s work, make sure you know what it says and what it means. Take the time to be taught by others. We are in this together. Be patient.

10.   When faced with the choice of speaking the truth impatiently now or speaking the truth in patient love later, always choose love. Now is not always best, and later is not always last. Be patient.

Friends, the struggle with impatience is one that takes…well…patience. It is worth the struggle, and our efforts as apologists only improve when put forth with longsuffering and patience. The urgency of the gospel and the need to passionately reason with others demands our careful patience. The church, and the world, need patient apologists.

I say to you again, my dear apologist: please, be patient.

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T. J. is an assistant editor for MoralApologetics.com and oversees the church and pastor development arm of the Center for Moral Apologetics. A southern Illinois native, T. J. has been in pastoral ministry since 1984, currently serving as senior minister of First Christian Church, West Frankfort, IL, where he resides with his wife, Amy, and their five children. A retired Army National Guard chaplain, he is the author of several books and articles on preaching, counseling, evangelism, apologetics, philosophy, and pastoral ministry. He earned the PhD in Leadership and DMin in Pastoral Counseling from Carolina University; the MA in Apologetics from Luther Rice College and Seminary; the MA in Philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary; the MAR in Church Ministries, MDiv in Chaplaincy, and ThM in Theology from Liberty University; the BA in Political Science from Southern Illinois University; and is finishing his dissertation at North-West University for the PhD in Theology, and at Carolina University for his PhD in Biblical Studies. 

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[1] 1 Pet. 3:15.

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My Thrilling First Sabbatical Leave Abroad (1) (Part 20)

In August of 1972, my family (my wife and I and two little girls, 4 and 5 years old) took off on our first transatlantic flight, bound for England to spend a year in academic research and travel.  We were still young and adventurous enough to launch out into a new world with only the barest of ideas about how to manage it.  We had been put in touch with a faculty member at King’s College in London, Prof. Ronald Waldron, a published scholar in Middle English language and literature.  Having reserved a room in a small bed and breakfast hotel in London next to Paddington Station (the Ty-Mellon it was called), we stayed there a week while we searched in the classified newspaper ads for a place to live.  However, having been cautioned not to go to bed immediately on arrival, we took some time to orient ourselves to the city through a tourist bus ride that pointed out all the major sites of interest.  Having been up for 18 hours or so, we went to bed around 8 p.m. London time and slept well.  Very soon after we arrived, we phoned Professor Waldron (with whom we were quickly on a first name basis), and he invited us for tea at his house (a light supper, not just something to drink).   He gave us instructions on how to get to a train station near his home in Essex, where he met us with his car and drove us to his home.  It was a delightful experience with Ron and his wife Mary and their three children.  We became good friends, and whenever we went back to England for subsequent sabbaticals or just visits, we always tried to spend some time with them.  Mary died several years ago, but we are still in touch with Ron.

We finally settled on a house for rent in a “bedroom suburb” of London called Upminster, about a 45-minute train trip from central London, or, as it was often identified, the last stop on the District Line of the London Underground system.  I’m sure God engineered that place for us, since it set us up to find a church in that community and to make some long-lasting friendships that have enriched our lives even to this day.  At that point, Laquita and I still wanted to maintain our relationship to the Churches of Christ, but the only one at all accessible to us (we had no car that year) was a small church in central London.  We tried going there several Sundays, but public transportation was unreliable on Sundays, which were often used by the railway system to make repairs.  Consequently, we started searching in the Upminster community for a church we could walk to.  We tried attending a nearby Baptist church, thinking it would be closer to our traditional ties, but that didn’t click for us, so we visited the local Anglican church, and we were warmly welcomed there and decided to continue with them.  The church was called St. Luke’s in Cranham, which was the name of the old village that been incorporated into the larger town of Upminister.  On our first or second visit we were invited home to Sunday lunch with a young couple named Terry and Val Thorpe, and that was the beginning of one of those rich friendships that have lasted to this day.

We soon realized that this congregation was not in the mainstream of the Church of England, but was part of a minority of conservative evangelicals within the C. of E.  The Vicar at the time was John Simon, who had been converted by evangelical preaching in the business area of London and had dropped his banking career to become a clergyman.  He brought to St. Luke’s an informal style of worship, often leading the singing with his accordion rather than the organ, reflecting the evangelical move away from adherence exclusively to the formal (and often lifeless) Anglican liturgy.  How interesting that God brought us into fellowship with a conservative congregation that was to enrich us for many years to come

Our neighbors on Helford Way were warm and welcoming.  The Stiff family next door were agents for our landlord, a sea captain working out of Beirut, Lebanon.  Roy and Elsie had us for tea on the day we looked at the house and for meals several times after that.  The neighbors on the other side of us were also hospitable, an older couple, John and Martha Morris and their teen-age son, Peter, who was deaf.  Martha was a Scotswoman who had met and married John when they were in their 30s.  They were both great talkers and regaled us with stories of their WW II experiences.  The Stiffs also had teen-age children, two daughters, who did some baby-sitting for us. They were greatly amused by our girls’ pronunciation of “bear,” with the American “r,” in contrast to the English “bayah.”  Helford Way was a cul-de-sac, so it didn’t have a lot of traffic, and it was a safe place for Liann and Cynthia to play.  We were within easy walking distance of the primary school (or “infant school,” as the English called it) that they attended.  Liann was a first grader, and Cynthia was in kindergarten.  They enjoyed attending there, and they soon picked up perfect English accents, of which we became aware one day when Liann asked us for a drink of “wotah.”

Soon after moving into our house, we launched out to take a road trip to Scotland, since September is usually still good weather for touring.  We were rather bold in deciding to drive and stay at bed and breakfast (B&B) places rather than taking a guided tour of some sort.  Learning to drive on the “wrong” side of the road took some major adjustment, but apart from a fender-bender accident on one of their roundabouts (traffic circles) at the beginning, we did all right, and when we went back in subsequent years, we thought nothing about driving ourselves around on English roads.  Doing so gave us a great deal more flexibility, and before the year was out, we were able to drive even in downtown London.  Laquita arranged in advance the B&Bs we stayed at, often in the country.  These enabled us to meet British people as we ate breakfast together and sometimes sat together in the parlor in the evenings.

Some of the roads, especially in the mountains, were quite narrow and a bit scary.  I did most of the driving, and Laquita was rather white-knuckled as she looked over the edge down into the valley.  Moreover, not all of these roads had railings!  However, driving on these country roads supplied some spectacular views.  At one point in the highlands of Scotland we pulled off to the side and looked out over a mist-covered lake (or “loch”) and heard a bagpiper playing on the other side.  It was beautiful, but a bit eerie, too, as the sound at that distance had a kind of ghostly echo.  We also visited cities in Scotland, most memorably Edinburgh and Stirling, both of which had famous Castles.  One evening we questioned an old man at a B&B where we were staying as to the location of Loch Ness, which we knew to be nearby.  He took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed, saying, “The Loch-ch-ch (the ch sound seemed drawn out forever) is doon that wey.”  We did make it to Loch Ness, but no monster sightings.

When we got back to Upminster, we settled into a routine of taking the kids to school, attending to household and business chores, and getting me settled in as a “visiting scholar” at the University of London, King’s College, where Ron Waldron was a professor.  Those credentials formed the basis for me to be registered at the British Museum, where I wanted to do some research in medieval studies, and more specifically, I wanted to be able to work in the famous British Library.  Ron helped me get registered in and oriented to all of the places where a scholar in Middle English might want to spend some time, including the Senate House Library, which served all of the colleges of the University of London,  and especially the manuscript reading room of the British Library.  In addition, he introduced me to several of his colleagues in the King’s College English Department, including the Head of Department.  Again, they were all very warm and welcoming. 

I felt quite privileged to be allowed into the manuscript room at the British Library, which housed many original and unique ancient manuscripts.  People could use only pencils to take notes, and I had to order any specific manuscript by its catalogue number.  That meant that I had to know exactly what I wanted to see—no browsing on the shelves!  I was given a numbered place at a table, and the manuscripts I had ordered were delivered to me at that spot.  I had two kinds of research I was doing that year.  First, I wanted to see unpublished manuscripts relating to the literary figure Piers the Plowman, from which one of the dream-works I analyzed in my doctoral dissertation took its name.  Secondly, Ron Waldron arranged for me to be assigned the examination and description of a section of documents in the British Library to be included in the Index of Middle English Prose, a major project to catalogue all of the M.E. prose manuscripts as yet unpublished.  I needed to get some instruction in paleography (reading documents hand-written in early styles), so I audited some of the classes offered to users of University of London libraries, aided by textbooks in paleography.

I met often with Ron for lunch, sometimes in his office, sometimes in a pub, for chats about our work and about English life in academe and the nature of English society and culture.  We formed a close personal friendship that year, and I owed him much for getting me established in my research.

More next time about our travel and excursion experiences during that year.

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Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.

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My Dear Apologist: Please, Be Kind.

Sometimes, apologetics can be a nasty business. Discussions devolve. Words frustrate. People become entrenched long before the evidence warrants even a tentative conclusion. Pathways of engagement are marked by incivility, arrogance, and meanness. As I said, sometimes, apologetics can be a nasty business.

Don’t believe me? Take ten minutes and peruse social media feeds and look for what I describe. Oh, it’s there. Many times, the nastiness comes from the unbelievers in the conversation, lashing out in disagreement with the apologist’s claims. Their words are often along these lines…

Resurrection? Yeah, right. Don’t be ridiculous.

You have no evidence for your so called “god.” Don’t be so naïve, so simple, so stupid.

The Bible is a joke, a fable, a concoction of misogynistic power mongers bent on controlling the masses.

Frankly, such responses from unbelievers should not surprise us, nor should they deter us. Further, while there may be many mean-spirited interlocutors whose dismissive invectives make dialogue difficult if not impossible, there are also those who genuinely want to discuss the substantive issues. Not every unbeliever is animated by shallow sound bites and cliched tropes. Many are kind and, dare I say, sympathetic to the apologist’s calling and concern for others. Besides, even when an unbeliever is difficult to engage, should that be such a surprise to us? Apologetics is, after all, carried out amid the unseen realm of spiritual warfare. Shouldn’t we expect difficulty from unbelievers…and from the powers of darkness that often motivate unbelief? I think so. I expect unbelievers to act like unbelievers, and I’m delighted when they are kind, but not put off when they aren’t. Such are the hazards of this calling.

What I’m concerned with is the believers I observe. Those who, for whatever reasons, have decided that it’s okay to become snarky and curt with their interlocutors. They’ve concluded that there is nothing wrong with a dismissive remark or a cutting ad hominem, so long as the point is made in favor of the winning side. It seems they thrive on the grit and terseness of one-line zingers directed to their opponent. Here are some examples that I have actually heard from apologists—from Christians—and these are the mild ones…

Only an idiot would fail to see the evidence for the resurrection. Only an idiot!

Your refusal to accept the evidence is simply a matter of your spiritual rebellion. You have no logical basis for rejecting what I say. You’re just a rebel with unclear thoughts…and you are intellectually lazy!

The fact that you reject the Bible is more about your total ignorance of history than anything else. It doesn’t take much ability to see that your claims about difficulties in the Bible are simply misguided and foolish. Your argument is hardly even an argument!

I suspect the idea of someone talking like this perplexes most of you, and you just cannot imagine ever taking such an approach. However, perhaps you don’t think such words are problematic at all, and maybe you agree with those who use them and similar ones to challenge their opponents in the battle of ideas. You may wonder, “But what about Jesus? Didn’t he use strong words with his opponents? After all, calling the Pharisees a ‘brood of vipers’[1] is not exactly soft pedaling, is it?”

Well, I grant you that Jesus spoke directly to the heart of his opponents, and his words were clear and forceful. He did not dance around the issues when it came to confronting the corrupt religious leaders of his day, and there may be an example in Jesus’ approach for us to follow. Yet, and this is an important qualifier, Jesus’ mission was unique, his abilities divine, his knowledge perfect, and his judgment always correct. And, lest we forget, he did rebuke his disciples upon the occasion of their wanting to call down fire in an Elijah-like manner and destroy an inhospitable Samaritan village, reminding his overzealous followers that he “did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”[2]

Seems to me that Jesus was more concerned to be careful with the unbelieving and doubting than to silence their opposition and “put them in their proper place.” His motive was more about love than anything else, and even his challenge to the religious leaders was animated by a desire for their conversion. Did he not weep, crying out “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together…but you were not willing!”?[3] Did he not petition his Father to “forgive them, for they do not know what they do”?[4] Was it not to the Jews first that he sent the gospel messengers on the Day of Pentecost, beseeching them through Peter to “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins”?[5]

It is kindness, dear apologist, kindness that is needed in our cultural moment. What our interlocutors need is not the sting of our truth devoid of love, but our kindness. Do they also need our clear thinking? Of course. Our rational and impassioned argumentation? Certainly. But now is not the time for impatient and caustic words. Now is the time for kindness. What is most called for in this moment is a convincing position delivered with gentleness and tact, intentionally expressing the goodness of God through kindness in our demeanor, our tactics, and our words. Kindness is countercultural, and it is what the world needs from us now as ever.

Surely, Paul’s insight is one for all of us, especially those who are wont to a sharpness of tongue in apologetic dialogue: “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.”[6] Kindness is the language of God’s love, and I am absolutely certain that none of us will ever stand before God and regret giving our reasons for the hope that is within us in a kind and charitable manner.

Again, I say to you: My dear apologist, please, be kind.

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T. J. is an assistant editor for MoralApologetics.com and oversees the church and pastor development arm of the Center for Moral Apologetics. A southern Illinois native, T. J. has been in pastoral ministry since 1984, currently serving as senior minister of First Christian Church, West Frankfort, IL, where he resides with his wife, Amy, and their five children. A retired Army National Guard chaplain, he is the author of several books and articles on preaching, counseling, evangelism, apologetics, philosophy, and pastoral ministry. He earned the PhD in Leadership and DMin in Pastoral Counseling from Carolina University; the MA in Apologetics from Luther Rice College and Seminary; the MA in Philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary; the MAR in Church Ministries, MDiv in Chaplaincy, and ThM in Theology from Liberty University; the BA in Political Science from Southern Illinois University; and is finishing his dissertation at North-West University for the PhD in Theology, and at Carolina University for his PhD in Biblical Studies. 

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[1] Matt 12:34 NKJV

[2] Luke 9:56 NKJV

[3] Matt. 23:37 NKJV

[4] Luke 23:34 NKJV

[5] Acts 2:38 NKJV

[6] Rom. 2:4 ESV

4 Popular Objections to Theistic Ethics

I’ve had the opportunity to teach ethics and philosophy as an online adjunct for about five years now. During that time, I’ve noticed that students often express similar concerns about the moral argument specifically and theistic ethics in general. Here are the four most popular objections to theistic ethics I’ve encountered and a brief reply.

1.     People can be good without God. Theistic ethics says that people need God to be moral, but there are many good atheists. So, theistic ethics must be incomplete or incorrect.

First, it will help to settle what is meant by “good” atheist in this context. Most of the time, when we say Ms. Smith is a good person, we just mean it in a relative sense. Relative to other people, Ms. Smith is a good person. She is kind to others, she donates to charity, she is generous, and so on.

This objection usually comes from a misunderstanding of the implications of one of the premises of the deductive moral argument. That argument goes like this:

1.     If objective moral values and duties exist, then God exists.

2.     There are objective moral values and duties.

3.     Therefore, God exists.

A correct implication of (1) would be that morality requires God and, therefore, one needs God to be good. God must exist for there to be morality at all. However, (1) does not imply that atheists cannot be good, moral people. All that (1) implies is a view about moral ontology, and not a view about what it takes to be a moral person. Nothing in the moral argument suggests that an atheist cannot be a moral person. An atheist is someone who disbelieves in God. Disbelief of this sort does not make it impossible to be a good person. God can be the ground of morality and atheists can be good people. These are not contradictory statements.

Some may think that while the moral argument doesn’t say that one must believe in God to be good, the Bible nonetheless does. So, if one is committed to a theistic ethical theory that affirms the teaching of the Bible, then she is, at the end of the day, saying one must believe in God to be good. However, I am not convinced that is what the Bible teaches. A key verse in this debate comes from Romans 3:10 “…there is none righteous, not even one.” Often, the verse is interpreted to mean that, apart from salvation in Christ, there are no good people. However, “righteousness” here has a specific, forensic or legal meaning.[1] A better gloss might be “no one is justified, not even one.” In this case, at least, the Bible has in view something different than what me mean by “good person.”

Some may think that the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity stipulates that atheists cannot be good people. But this is not always the case. According to one theological dictionary, 

Total depravity refers to the extent and comprehensiveness of the effects of sin on all humans such that all are unable to do anything to obtain salvation. Total depravity, therefore, does not mean that humans are thoroughly sinful but rather that they are totally incapable of saving themselves.[2]

Total depravity only says no one can earn that forensic status of righteousness.

So, neither the moral argument nor the bible implies that an atheist cannot be a good person or do good things.  

2.     Theistic ethics is too narrow. Not everyone agrees that God exists, so not everyone could have moral knowledge. We need an ethical theory that’s accessible to all.  

This might be the most common of these four objections and it leverages an important concern: the availability of moral knowledge.  As a preliminary reply, we can point out that this sort of critique would work for any ethical theory. We could argue against the utilitarian: Well, not everyone believes that the good is identical to utility (or pleasure), so not everyone could have moral knowledge. Or against the Kantian: Well, not everyone agrees with the categorical imperative, so not everyone could have moral knowledge. The objector might say that in both those cases, one gains moral knowledge through common sense or introspection. These modes of investigation are available to all people, while access to divine commands are not.

There are three vital points to make in response. First, if some ethical theory implies that moral knowledge will be inaccessible, that does not entail it is false. It may be a problem for that ethical theory, but problems can be addressed. Plato’s ethical theory is a good example of this. Morality is grounded in the Forms, but from our present position and with our current abilities, we cannot access the realm of the Forms. Thus, Plato proposes some alternative means through which such knowledge can be attained, including his ambitious doctrine of pre-existence. Possibly, Plato’s ethical theory is correct and moral knowledge just is hard to come by.

Second, most versions of theistic ethics, despite the impression of many, say that moral knowledge is widely accessible, and by means like common sense and introspection. Clearly, this is the case with theistic natural law theories, but it is also the case for divine command theory, which is usually the target of this sort of objection. If we consider the sort of divine command theory offered by David Baggett and Jerry Walls in Good God, we can see how this is so. They say that God’s commands are not arbitrary, but flow from his nature. God’s nature, in their view, is identical to the good. Therefore, one can infer, purely based on reason and her implicit knowledge of the good, what is right and wrong in many cases and, thus, what God has likely commanded. For example, given these things, one should easily see that it is wrong to murder, even if she doesn’t know that God has prohibited murder. In this way, someone has access to much of moral knowledge without access to special revelation; a point consistent with the teaching of Romans 1.

Third, from the Christian perspective, God has revealed himself dramatically and publicly in the person of Jesus Christ and there is sufficient evidence of this (ably demonstrated by scholars like Gary Habermas and Michael Licona). That some people find the evidence unconvincing does not imply that evidence is, in fact, insufficient. If the Christian perspective is correct, then God has provided direct, sufficient, and accessible evidence for his moral authority and the authenticity of his commands through Jesus and his resurrection.

3.     The meaning of the Bible is unknowable. No one really knows that the Bible teaches. It’s all open to interpretation and we don’t know what it originally said anyway.

When I run across this objection, students often give one of two motivations for their view. First, they often say something like this: “The Bible has been copied so many times! All we have is a translation of a copy of translation. It’s been copied and translated so many times, who knows what it really said at the start!” This concern represents a widely held misunderstanding of the origin of our modern Bibles. Our modern Bibles are not copied from other translations; they are copied from the original languages. Some pieces of these texts even date to the second century for the New Testament and the seventh century B.C. for the Old Testament. The source texts for the modern Bible are early and they are in abundance. Through careful study, textual critics of the New Testament conclude that what we have now accurately represents over 99% of the original manuscripts. So, we know with a high degree of confidence what the books and letters of the Bible actually said.

The other motivation seems to come from a general skepticism about the clarity of the Bible. Certainly, there are unique interpretive challenges when it comes to the Bible. It was written in another time, place, and culture. Some passages remain deeply debated and mysterious. However, much of the Bible can be understood on its face, in a straightforward way. This is true in the case of the Bible’s central ethical teaching, presented by Jesus himself: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). This command in particular does not seem especially hard to understand or interpret. On many central ethical issues, the Bible is perspicuous. But even in those cases where the Bible presents readers with an interpretive challenge, one can still often discern the correct meaning with careful, methodical hermeneutics. Therefore, we do know what the Bible originally said, and we can know what it originally meant.

4.     The Bible is unenlightened. The Bible is full of bronze age ethics that we know are immoral now. Theistic ethics needs to be discarded in favor a more modern ethical theory that fits with a modern perspective.

My aim here is not to respond to all of the specific ethical issues in the Bible, but I will offer a general reply in two directions. First, in defense of the Bible, it is very likely that for many of the difficult passages, we are simply misreading them. The Bible can often be read and understood at face value, but not always. Not infrequently, our modern assumptions distort our reading and understanding of the Bible. A possible example of this comes in the Conquest of Canaan narratives. In the ancient world contemporary to the Conquest, it was common to exaggerate one’s victory over the enemy. Language of total destruction of cities, including its citizens, was often used, when it is clear from the surrounding context that such cities were not utterly destroyed. One example of such a text comes from Joshua 10:40:

Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded.

Paul Copan notes of passages like this:

Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia BC. The language is typically exaggerated and full of bravado, depicting total devastation. The knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized this as hyperbole; the accounts weren’t understood to be literally true.[3]

It may be that similar interpretative issues exist for all the ethically difficult passages in the Bible. However, that is unlikely to be the case.

Second, it would be rather strange if the moral vision of the Bible comfortably fit our own. That some parts of the Bible cause us discomfort suggests that the Bible is not a mirror for our own views or some pliable clay to be shaped to our own liking. Rather, it suggests that in the Bible we encounter a moral perspective that is not our own. It belongs to someone else, even if we have adopted it in some measure.

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote this:

Divine "goodness" differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning.

Lewis argues that our moral knowledge is not exactly correct. Our knowledge of the good is not univocal, but analogical. It’s off by some margin of error.

If morality is objective, this is what we should expect. If morality was made in our image, a mere human convention, then moral truth should cause us no discomfort or distress. But if morality comes from without and not within, then so long as our moral vision is imperfect, there will be some incongruence between what is actually the case and what we merely believe to be the case. That’s exactly the experience we have when reading the Bible. Significantly, though, this dissonance runs in multiple directions. The wrath of God on display in the Bible may make us shudder, but the Bible also teaches that we should love our enemies, that we should give without withholding to the poor and destitute, that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. This incredible calling sounds its own discordant note in our modern, Western minds. The horizons of our moral vision are widened by the Bible. An effect that should come as no surprise if in it we find an ethic from someone else.

[1] Moo, D. J. (1996). The Epistle to the Romans (p. 203). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Here’s a fuller comment from Moo on this passage (including Romans 3:12):

10b–12 The quotations begin with a series of phrases taken from Ps. 14:1–3 (LXX 13:1–3) (Ps. 53:1–3 is almost identical). As is the case with most of the quotations in this series, Paul’s wording agrees closely with the LXX.28 But there is one important difference: where the Psalms text has “there is no one who does good,” Paul has “there is no one who is righteous.” Granted the importance of the language of “righteousness” in this part of Romans (cf. 3:4, 5, 8, 19, 20), the word is almost certainly Paul’s own editorial change.29 It will thus carry with it Paul’s specifically forensic nuance (cf. 1:17). What he means is that there is not a single person who, apart from God’s justifying grace, can stand as “right” before God. This meaning is not far from David’s intention in the Psalm, as he unfolds the myriad dimensions of human folly.

Here is what Kruse says in the Pillar commentary on Romans:

Paul’s purpose in listing these quotations is to say that as a people Jews are no better than Gentiles. Paul would certainly know of the many righteous persons spoken of in the OT, not least Abraham, to whom he refers in the next chapter (4:1–25). However, it must be said that such ‘righteous’ persons are not the morally flawless, but those who have responded with repentance to the goodness of God. Not one of them would have been declared righteous by God because of their peerless behavior. Thus Paul’s conclusion that follows in the next verse stands.

Still, some Calvinists, like R.C. Sproul, seem to understand total depravity and the thrust of Romans 3:10-12 to be teaching that only Christians can do good things. Sproul says this in his commentary on this passage:

Is Paul saying here that unless a person is a believer in Christ, he will not ever do a good deed? That is precisely what it means. It may seem outrageous, but nobody ever does a single thing that is good, we are so corrupt that our sin infects even the best of our deeds.

However, even in this very strong view of the implications of the passage, Sproul clarifies that Paul here is using “good” in a technical sense. A good deed consists in right and action and right motivation. Only Christians can have the right sort of motivation, pleasing God, so only Christians can do what is good. But if Paul has this technical sense of “good” in mind, that does nothing to undermine the idea that atheists or other non-Christians can do “good” things in the everyday sense of that word.

Sproul makes the dubious claim that actions are either motivated by selfishness or a desire to please God. It seems obvious from human experience that many actions are motivated by a sincere concern for others, without explicit reference to God (that this is appropriate is perhaps evidenced by the fact that Jesus says that there are two commands that sum up the law: Love of God and love of neighbor. cf. Matt 22:40). Further, even if my actions are motivated by a concern for my own interests, that does not entail that they are not good actions. If we suppose, for the sake of the argument, that Bill Gates, an atheist, works on eradicating malaria because it brings him satisfaction, the fact that he is the sort of person that finds satisfaction in curing malaria rather than spreading it is an obviously good moral quality. So, it seems to me, that Sproul’s binary understanding of moral motivation should be rejected.

[2] Grenz, S., Guretzki, D., & Nordling, C. F. (1999). In Pocket dictionary of theological terms (p. 37). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[3] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God, vol. 1 (Baker Books, 2011), 171.

Campus Expansion and Sabbatical Plans (Part 19)

The first freshman class was admitted to UM-Dearborn in the fall of 1971, twelve years after the establishment of the campus in 1959 as a junior and senior (or “upper-division”) college.  It signaled radical changes In the campus, from a new general education curriculum, to new faculty to teach the new courses, to provision of new physical facilities to house the expanded class offerings.  There had to be expanded and new administrative structures, too, and, as I commented before, that opened fresh opportunities for me. 

My place in the Division of Literature, Science, and the Arts was made official by my being designated as Administrative Assistant to the Chairman of LS&A.  I had heavy responsibility in revising the Campus Catalogue to include descriptions of the new courses and general education requirements being instituted.  I also continued to be the coordinator of student advising and handler of academic petitions from students requesting recognition of transfer courses or an exception to the academic rules.

 I was still working under Dennis Papazian, and that occasioned some tensions as I tried to follow his directions, but also to deal straightforwardly and honestly with those with whom my work brought me into contact.  I remember one time when Dennis asked me to put together some statistics and to present them to the Division Executive Committee.  The purpose was to further some objective of Dennis’s in the allocation of resources.  Some of the Discipline Chairs smelled the hidden agenda, and I had to share the attack that accused both of us with playing fast and loose with the data.   Nevertheless, I generally got along with people and managed to stay fairly free of political maneuvering.

It was during this period that the term of the Humanities Discipline Chair, Sidney Warschausky, ended and the Discipline had to select a new Chair.  The two declared candidates were both close friends, Myron Simon, who had helped Laquita and me get a place to live when we first came, and Larry Berkove.  Again, I was naïve in not realizing that Myron was very emotionally invested in winning the position, and I made my decision based on Larry’s campaigning harder than Myron.  In reality, Myron felt that his services were undervalued, and he was so crushed at not winning that within a year he accepted another position at one of the University of California campuses.  I regret to this day not voting for Myron.

I was scheduled to take my first sabbatical leave in the academic year 1972-73, and I was persuaded, primarily by my colleague in English, Larry Berkove, to take the entire year at half pay, rather than only one term at full pay.  Moreover, Laquita and I decided to make it a really special adventure by spending the year in England, where I would do research and we would travel.  That was a life-transforming experience for the whole family, and toward the end of it came a call that also changed the course of my academic career.  While we were planning for this sabbatical, the campus was engaged in revising its Bylaws, resulting in the creation of a new administrative structure, with more conventional academic units and sub-units.  The Divisions of Liberal Arts, Engineering, and Business Administration were to become Colleges, each headed by a Dean, with Departments, each headed by a Chairperson.  This new structure was to begin with the fall term of 1973, and these changes set the stage for a dramatic transatlantic call from the Chancellor of UM-Dearborn, Pat Goodall, inviting me to serve as Acting Dean of LS&A when I returned from my sabbatical.  More of this development, and of our year abroad in the next chapter.

Before I end this chapter, I need to describe another big change that took place during this period in our church life.   Dr. Joseph Jones decided somewhere around 1967-68 to accept an offer to become Dean of Michigan Christian College, located in the town of Rochester, MI about 40 miles north of Detroit.  This move left the pulpit of the Northwest Church of Christ vacant, and it coincided with the return from Finland of a missionary supported by the congregation, Eddie Dunn.  Eddie was asked to become the congregation’s preaching minister, and he accepted.  Laquita and I had already become friends with Eddie and his wife Carole through meeting with them when they were on furlough and through Laquita’s correspondence with them.  The relationship deepened when he became the preacher.  Only six weeks after he assumed the position, he testified that he had had a special experience of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, resulting in his being empowered “speak in tongues,” which is one of the New Testament’s gifts of the Spirit.  The elders of the church and some members of the church found this disturbing and unacceptable, and Eddie was asked to resign.  He did so, but this abrupt change left him without any means of support.  We felt his dismissal was unjustified and unfeeling, but the position of Churches of Christ at that time was that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit ceased with the death of the last Apostle, and that any claim that they were still possible was false doctrine.  Several other people in the congregation wanted to know more about Eddie’s experience, and a group of us began meeting each week in private homes.  When the elders found out about these meetings, they accused the group of trying to foment division in the church.  The result of their opposition was to cause the group to cease going to services at the church and to identify as a “house church.”  I resigned my position as a deacon, and thus our ties with the Northwest Church of Christ were severed.  We visited around to find a new congregation to identify with, but at the time we went on sabbatical, we had not made a decision on where to settle.

Consequently, when we left for our sabbatical year in England, we were no longer identified with the church fellowship in which we had grown up, and the way was opened for us to make a connection with the church we attended in England, St. Luke’s Anglican Church, a conservative congregation that supplied us with friends and experiences that helped us redefine ourselves as Christians.

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Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.

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More from this series

My Dear Apologist: Please, Be Yourself.

I sense there is a strong temptation among fellow apologists to try to be like someone else in their efforts to present the truth claims of the Christian faith. Rather than following King David’s example of refusing Saul’s armor in the fight against Goliath and choosing instead to use the simple sling and smooth stones he knew so well, an apologist may try to parrot this or that popular speaker or author. In doing so, they risk losing something that the world needs more than an imitation of someone else; they risk losing their unique voice in the apologetic arena.

I have been there, and I understand the temptation.

I originally thought, going back nearly four decades, that my goal should be to memorize and imitate the then-current apologetic arguments and style of successful apologists like Josh McDowell, Paul Little, or Norman Geisler. I even went through a time when I attempted to become the redivivus of C. S. Lewis, Pascal, and Anselm. To be sure, all these men are capable and effective apologists, certainly worthy of emulation in many, many areas. Yet, my mistake was to try to recreate what they did and who they were, and that is impossible. God called them to a specific task at a specific time, and my calling was not the same. I cannot be anyone other than me. So,  after several poor attempts at being someone else, I decided that the best I could be was me…just me.

It was about the same time that a wise pastor shared something with me that I took to heart and have never forgotten. I was preparing a series of sermons for a revival campaign, and, in the course of discussions with the host pastor, I explained that I was considering using a number of outlines I found in an evangelistic preaching book as the basis for my sermons. The pastor looked at me for a moment, then spoke with clarity and a bit of forcefulness these words, “It’s fine to look at another man’s work and learn from it, but never forget that God has something to say through you, and he wants you to say it in your way, not someone else’s.” And just like that, my heart was pierced, and my mind was opened. I learned that day that God gave me a voice, and he wanted—expected—that I would use it and not try to use some other voice and pass it off as my own.

Here is how I have taken that counsel to heart as an apologist, and what I hope you will learn from my journey in coming to be myself.

1.      It is fine and good to learn from other apologists, to study their arguments, to internalize their methods. The goal, however, is not to parrot or repeat them; the goal is to learn from them and integrate that learning into your own message. And when you are following the path of another apologist, be up front and open about it. Do not plagiarize a person.

2.      Remember that the people you are privileged to serve and encounter in your apologetics context are likely in one of two categories. They either do not know who you are trying to imitate and will think it odd that you are not simply being yourself with them, or they do know who you are trying to imitate and will realize you are not the same as the apologists you copy (and this last group may feel you are being a bit shady by not being yourself).

3.      None of us are as good as all of us when it comes to apologetics, so find your niche in the apologetics arena and serve there. Be you in the place where God has called you, and let the others be who they are where God has called them. God will not ask you to give an account for another person’s calling, but he will ask you about yours.

Again, I say to you: my dear apologist, please, be yourself. The world needs you.

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T. J. is an assistant editor for MoralApologetics.com and oversees the church and pastor development arm of the Center for Moral Apologetics. A southern Illinois native, T. J. has been in pastoral ministry since 1984, currently serving as senior minister of First Christian Church, West Frankfort, IL, where he resides with his wife, Amy, and their five children. A retired Army National Guard chaplain, he is the author of several books and articles on preaching, counseling, evangelism, apologetics, philosophy, and pastoral ministry. He earned the PhD in Leadership and DMin in Pastoral Counseling from Carolina University; the MA in Apologetics from Luther Rice College and Seminary; the MA in Philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary; the MAR in Church Ministries, MDiv in Chaplaincy, and ThM in Theology from Liberty University; the BA in Political Science from Southern Illinois University; and is finishing his dissertation at North-West University for the PhD in Theology, and at Carolina University for his PhD in Biblical Studies. 

Socrates and Jesus on Allegiances

You have probably heard the saying, “Great minds think alike.” I think there is more truth to the claim that we might imagine. The ancient philosopher Socrates had a conversation with Plato’s eldest brother Glaucon about transcendent truths known as Forms. Forms are metaphysical truths that exist independently of personal opinions and the physical world. His conversation with Glaucon is recorded in Plato’s book The Republic. Socrates explains Forms and the importance of pursuing them in his Allegory of the Cave (Republic 514a-517a).

The Allegory tells the story of a group of men held captive since their youth. They are held in a cave and tied down so that the only thing they can see is the shadows cast on the cave’s wall by their captors playing in front of a fire. This life is the only life these men know. All their knowledge of the world stems from the shadow puppets cast for their entertainment pleasure. But, Socrates inquires, what if one of the captives was released and allowed to see the world outside of the cave? The light from the sun would hurt his eyes. His mind would have trouble comprehending the beauty of the exterior world that is so new to him. The birds, the sky, the animals of the field, and the beauty of flowers and trees would overwhelm his imagination. Socrates further questions Glaucon by asking, what if the man wanted to free his brothers in the cave? What if he were to return to tell of the wondrous things that he had seen? Would his brothers not think him to be a madman and eventually kill him? Socrates holds that this is the response of individuals living only with a mindset on the Particulars (the physical attributes of the world) to those who observe the beauty of the Forms (the unseen realm).

Jesus told a parable somewhat comparable to Socrates’s called the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen or the Parable of the Bad Tenants in Matthew 21:33-46; Mark 12:1-12; and Luke 20:9-19. The parable is about a group of tenant farmers who gave a portion of their harvest to the owner for payment for the use of the landowner’s property. The harvest was part of their rental agreement. Rather than paying the agreed harvest, the wicked tenant farmers beat and killed the servants sent by the landowner to acquire payment. Last of all, they killed the son thinking that they would steal his inheritance. Finally, the landowner came after the tenant farmers and destroyed those wicked men. While the two parables differ substantially, they hold three common truth claims.

The Reality of the Unseen Realm. Both Socrates and Jesus point to the reality of the unseen realm. The unseen realm of Forms is clearly in view in the Allegory of the Cave. However, the same is in view in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. The landowner represents God who is unseen in the parable. At God’s command, the servants and son are sent, and the wicked tenants are punished. The reality of God’s existence at least to some degree verifies unseen transcendent truths. This is not to say that Jesus defends the Platonic Forms, but it does draw a similarity between the two stories, although the philosophical implications cannot be pressed too far. Both stories show that there is more to the world than just the physical reality one sees.

The Advocates Proclaiming the Truths of the Unseen Realm. In both stories, the authors hold that servants of the unseen truths are often ridiculed and abused. This is true of the freedman in Socrates’s Allegory of the Cave and the servants and son in Jesus’s Parable of the Wicked Tenants. It is also fascinating to consider that both Socrates and Jesus were executed by the authorities because of their teachings. Jesus’s execution was far more torturous and viler. Nonetheless, both Jesus and Socrates asked questions. As one professor pointed out to me, it can sometimes be dangerous to ask too many questions.

The Choice Between God and the World. Socrates, like Jesus, was likely a monotheist living in a polytheistic world, a henotheist at the very least. By his own admonition, Socrates claims to have encountered the one true God. Regardless of the case, Socrates challenges his readers to make a choice to either live in a world of shadows by only looking to the physical world, or to step out of the cave and experience the transcendent, metaphysical truths of the divine. In like manner, Jesus noted that it was impossible to serve both God and the world (Matt. 6:24), a point that Paul addresses in Colossians 3:23-24. For whom are you working? What are you seeking? Everyone must make a choice. A non-choice is a choice. Whatever masters your heart, masters your life.

Amid the uncertainties of life, we all must ask ourselves where our allegiances lie. If you decide to work for the world, then know that it is of no profit to gain the whole world and lose your soul (Matt. 16:26). If you are only living for the here and now, then you are missing out on a larger portion of reality. Reality is like an iceberg. The part we see is minuscule compared to the realm we cannot see. If you choose to serve God, your life will not necessarily become easier. In some ways, it may become more difficult. But you will find that your life holds greater purpose and value if you do.

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About the Author

Brian G. Chilton is the founder of BellatorChristi.com, the host of The Bellator Christi Podcast, and the author of the Layman’s Manual on Christian Apologetics. He received his Master of Divinity in Theology from Liberty University (with high distinction); his Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Gardner-Webb University (with honors); and received certification in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Brian is enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University and is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Brian has been in the ministry for nearly 20 years and serves as the Senior Pastor of Westfield Baptist Church in northwestern North Carolina.

https://www.amazon.com/Laymans-Manual-Christian-Apologetics-Essentials/dp/1532697104

© 2020. BellatorChristi.com.

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Moral Apologetics 101: Ethical Theory and Moral Realism

Editor’s note: In this series, we introduce the basics of building a moral argument. In this first installment, we explore the concept of ethical theory and two main positions on ethical theory: moral realism and anti-realism.

Some people think the earth is flat and they have a theory about that; that is, they have a justification or explanation for why it is rational to think that the earth is flat. This theory might involve nefarious and shadowy figures working in the dark corners of power to fake the moon landings, among other things, but there is a theory that (attempts) to explain why the earth is flat.

The same is true for other claims. Us round-earthers have a theory about why it’s rational to believe the earth is sphere shaped. Maybe the theory is a simple as this: “That the earth is round has been the consistent testimony of people in a position to know for over 2000 years and that sort of testimony is trustworthy.” The sense of theory here is broader and looser than its use in a scientific context, where theory has a narrower meaning.

Our theories extend beyond these, roughly, scientific concerns about the shape of the earth. We have theories about mundane things as well. For example, I might have a theory about why my wife is angry. Likely, she is angry because I forgot to take out the trash, though I promised I would. I have a belief and I have reasons for my belief. We can call those reasons collectively my “theory” about why my wife is angry. Now, that theory could be right or wrong. It could be partly right and partly wrong. But it is my explanation for why my wife is angry.

When we think about “theory” this way, it seems fair to say that any time we assert that something is the case (that is, we take the attitude “What I am saying is true or correct”), then we have reasons for that view. We have a theory about why we are right.

Even though this is a simple idea, there’s an important objection to consider. Sometimes, we have not reflected on why we think something is true or correct. We do not have internal, cognitive (thoughtful/meaningful) reasons for some of our beliefs. Sometimes, we simply inherit a view from our culture or our parents or some other source. If one asks a sixth grader, “Why do you think the earth is sphere shaped?” she might not have a ready explanation for why she thinks that is the case. She simply “absorbed” the view of her culture or her parents. We might say this an “external” cause of belief. It’s not a belief that is held because of investigation or introspection, but because one was caused to believe by something external to one’s self. (Significantly, an externally caused belief can be correct and rational to hold. Our sixth grade would certainly be correct that the earth is a sphere, for example). 

So, one may find herself believing that certain things are true, like the earth is a sphere or that a spouse is angry, and she either has reasons for those views that internal to herself (they are her reasons) or they are external (she was caused to believe something). Or, to put it in other words, whenever we believe that something is so, we have a theory about that something that is either held on the basis of introspection and reflection or it is given to us by our surroundings (culture/parents/friends). We have considered theories and given theories.

This is a general point, true in all aspects of life, but it’s also true when it comes to ethical theory. We all have moral or ethical beliefs that we take to be correct or true. For example, we might consider the following statements:

Stealing is always wrong.

The government should pay for healthcare.

Sometimes, it is ok to tell a lie.

People have a right to defend themselves.

It is always wrong to torture children for fun.

The best sort of life requires good friends.

It is your duty to vote.

Claims about what one ought to do, what one should do or should not do, claims about what sort of life is worthwhile and whether people have essential rights, these are often moral claims.[1] Likely, most would have a certain attitude of affirm or deny to each of these moral claims. For example, someone might take the attitude toward the proposition “stealing is always wrong,” that this moral claim is false; one might disbelieve that it is always wrong to steal.  Perhaps, thinks this person, it is right to steal if it is the only way to feed one’s family.

These reasons for a moral belief, whether they come from within oneself or from their surroundings, are an “ethical theory.”

If one believes that at least some moral claims are true, then she thinks there are “moral facts” and she is a “moral realist.”

A moral fact is a true proposition that makes some morally relevant claim.

A moral realist is a person who thinks that there are at least some moral facts.

A moral anti-realist is a person who denies that there are any moral facts.

Sometimes people are tempted to say that there are no moral facts because of “grey areas.” We’ve all heard the term “moral grey area” before. A moral “grey area” occurs when there is not  an obviously right or wrong answer to a moral question. Some moral claims are more obvious than others and, in some cases, we might not have a specific attitude toward a moral claim. For example, if I ask whether it’s morally right that the government provide healthcare, someone could say that he sees good reasons for both sides and that he’s not sure whether it is a moral obligation or not. However, if one is not sure, that does not imply that there’s no fact of the matter about whether the government should provide healthcare. It could be there is a fact of the matter, but some simply cannot discern what that fact is very easily.

However, it may be that there is no fact of the matter about whether the government should provide healthcare. If that were the case, that would not imply that there are not “deeper” moral facts about the rights of individuals, the obligations for communities to care for those who need assistance, and so on. It is important to see that the moral realist claims only that there are some moral facts and not there is a fact about every moral issue.

When asked to give an example of a moral fact, moral realists want to give what they consider to be the most obvious, least controversial example. One oft used example is this: “It is always wrong to torture children for fun.” If anything is a moral fact, this would have to be a moral fact. If one agrees that it is really, actually true that “It is always wrong to torture children for fun,” then one is a moral realist.

Some moral philosophers deny that there are such things as moral facts. They are “anti-realists” about morality and their view is called “anti-realism.” According to this view, no moral claims are correct. All moral claims may be false or even meaningless. An anti-realist might say that proposition, “it is always wrong to torture children for fun” has nothing that makes it true; no moral proposition does. Perhaps moral claims are simply statements about one’s own feelings. In that case, if one asserts that “It is always wrong to torture children for fun,” she can only really mean that she dislikes child torture or that it makes her feel bad. Asserting it is wrong like saying, “Boo! Child torture Boo!”  Anti-realists may also say that moral claims are merely conventional statements that have only a provisional meaning based on custom, tradition, or habit.

Therefore, with respect to moral judgments, we can see that there are two camps: realist and anti-realist. The realist says that there are at least some moral facts, moral claims are cognitive (they have meaning and they are intelligible) and the anti-realist denies that there any moral facts. There’s nothing to ground moral truths, in this view, or, perhaps, moral claims are non-cognitive expressions of emotion or preference.  

As we can see, in terms of ethical theory, there are deep disagreements and the natural question, at this point, would be why. What motivates these fundamentally different views about ethical truth?

In general, moral realism is considered the “default” position and so, often, moral anti-realists are saddled with the burden of proof. According to an informal survey of philosophers (PhilPapers Survey), most agree that moral realism is the correct view while about 30% argue that anti-realism is correct. Geoff Sayre-McCord, a philosopher teaching at the University of North Carolina, claims that “moral realism can fairly claim to have common sense and initial appearances on its side.”

The reason that Sayre-McCord might say that moral realism has this advantage is that most of us simply find ourselves believing in moral realism and we find ourselves having a high degree of confidence in these beliefs. It seems obvious to most people that there are at least some moral facts. A simple argument for moral realism might go like this: “I am surer that it is wrong to torture children for fun than I could be of any argument against this belief.”

This might not seem like a very good argument for moral realism, and perhaps it is not. Although, this sort of reply is a widely employed reply to other kinds of skepticism.  For example, suppose that Joe looks at a tree outside the window. For Joe, this means he has the experience of looking out the window at a tree. For Joe, it seems there is a tree out there. In walks Jim. Jim just finished watching The Matrix and now Jim thinks that the external world is an illusion created by very sophisticated robots. Jim sees Joe looking at the tree and says, “There’s no tree out there, Joe. Wake up!”

What might Joe’s response be? Joe could develop a number of replies to this distressing assertion, but it also seems warranted for Joe to reply like this: “Jim, I am more sure that there is a tree out there than any harebrained argument you might give! I see the tree; it’s right there!”  For many, the truth of moral facts are impressed on the mind in a way analogous to the way the “tree out there” is impressed on Joe’s mind. It is a basic fact of experience and, therefore, one is rationally warranted in believing there are trees out the window as well as that there are moral facts.

Still, one might have good reasons for thinking there actually is not a tree out there and so that basic belief in “the tree out there” might lose its warrant. What if Joe had evidence that he actually did live in a simulation?

Anti-realists have two main strategies in defense of their view. First, anti-realists often argue that there is dis-confirming evidence of the existence of moral facts. In our analogy, they would offer Joe some evidence that undermines Joe’s belief in the tree out there. It’s important to see that anti-realists don’t need to show that there are no moral facts; he could simply show that we are not justified in believing there are any moral facts.

One of the most popular ways to argue this point flows from what is called “the diversity thesis.” The diversity thesis is the observation that there is widespread moral disagreement in the world. People disagree about what is moral, and they disagree frequently and substantially. That this is so is obvious from human experience (and is admitted readily by moral realists), but it may be that sometimes the depth of moral disagreements is exaggerated. Nevertheless, some anti-realists think this is an important piece of evidence. They might use this piece of evidence like this: If there were moral facts, then we would expect that people would mostly agree on these facts. However, people disagree on virtually any candidate for a moral fact. Therefore, the level of moral agreement is inconsistent with there being moral facts. Likely, then, there are no moral facts (or, at least, moral facts are indiscernible).

The diversity thesis is the observation that there is widespread moral disagreement in the world.

Anti-realists might also build a more positive case. They might begin by assuming a materialist perspective, or a sufficiently similar view. Materialism is the view that only material things exist, things like space, energy, and matter. For there to be moral facts, there must be something to make these facts true; there must be a moral “truth-maker.”  But there is no obvious way that facts about material things can ground moral facts. What sort of truth about atoms and energy could ground something as strange and exotic as morality? Moral facts, if such things exist, would seem to be facts about something qualitatively different than merely material things. Of course, that is not to say that all materialists are anti-realists. A good many are moral realists. Many materialists who are not, though, would argue there just is no real connection between the real (material) world and our moral assertions.

Realists might also develop a positive case. One common assumption among moral realists is that there are moral facts and there is something that makes these moral facts true. There is a reason or ground for moral facts. Earlier, I suggested that people are entitled to belief in some moral facts on the basis of a certain kind of impression on the mind, like someone is entitled to believe “there is a tree out there” when things align in such way that he has a certain kind of impression that “there is a tree out there.” But moral realists can go beyond appealing to moral experience (which many consider sufficient grounds). One might argue first for something that could ground moral facts and then that this thing actually does ground moral facts. Perhaps the most obvious and popular way to do this would be to argue that God exists. God would be the sort of thing that could ground moral facts, since he is the “greatest conceivable being,” or that is how God is thought of in the Western philosophical tradition. So, if God exists, it is natural to think that moral facts also obtain.

There are other ways to argue for a ground of moral facts, though. One might argue that some sort of realm of abstract objects is needed to make sense out of language and to solve the problem of the one and the many. If there is some non-material realm which gives sense and meaning to our concepts, perhaps this realm could also ground the sense and meaning of moral claims. Why think that claims about abstract ideas like triangles and mathematics are fundamentally different sorts of claims than moral ones? Perhaps, like Plato thought, the Good exists and has the power to determine the truth or falsity of moral claims.

What we see from these examples of positive cases is that different views about what is ultimately real or the ultimate nature of the world make a difference in how moral claims are justified (if they are justified) and they may, as we will see later in term, make a difference in what is considered moral in the first place.

To sum up: We have seen that people make moral claims and that when a moral claim is made, it assumes something about the world. If a person thinks that her moral claims are true, then she assumes some form of moral realism. This is how most people think about their moral claims; they think they are true. However, some people doubt that moral claims are true or that they can be known to be true. These are moral anti-realists.

[1]One can distinguish between a moral should/ought and a merely teleological should/ought. If I want to achieve X, then I should do Y which results in X.  If I want to be a better bowler, then I should invest bowling lessons. This is a merely teleological use of should/ought. 

God is Light

The concept of light and dark, and their contrast, are found throughout the pages of Scripture. From the opening verses of Genesis, one finds God speaking light into the void of darkness (Gen. 1:3). Over time, God manifested himself to humanity often using light and fire to indicate his presence. God is often identified with light. Isaiah writes, “The Lord will be your everlasting light, and our God will be your glory” (Isa. 60:19). The psalmist notes, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear” (Ps. 27:1). God is robed with light (Ps. 104:2) and light dwells with him (Dan. 2:22). John, more explicitly, notes, “God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him” (1 John 1:5). While God is light, his presence is not restricted from knowing dark areas. The psalmist pines, “Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night shines like the day; darkness and light are alike to you” (Ps. 139:12). Thus, God’s light and his insight penetrates and overcomes even the darkest of areas.

Jesus picks up on this theme and teaches two profound truths. First, he holds that he is light, saying, “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). As such, Jesus shows that he embodies God’s revelation and his goodness. Second, Jesus also instructs his followers, noting, “You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matt. 5:14). The disciples were to be evangelists sharing the gospel and spreading the love of God to the world. I used to think that believers are mere reflections of the light of God, much as the moon reflects the light of the sun. While I still think there is some merit to the claim, an understanding of the Spirit’s work in our lives illustrates the idea that the light shines from the inworking of the Spirit in our lives. As such, we are like torches that flame the light of God in the areas where God places us. More on that to come.

What does it mean to say that “God is light?” Obviously, with the emphasis of divine light that has already been noted in Scripture, God’s light must hold some weighty meaning. Concerning the light of God, three things can be said of God’s light.

God’s Light is Revelatory. First, God’s light reveals the truth. God exposes things as they truly are. On the one hand, God’s light reveals the truth about reality. The psalmist notes that God’s truthful direction is a “lamp for my feet and a light on my path” (Ps. 119:105). As such, God provides wise instruction on how to handle life’s most difficult circumstances. In addition, the Spirit of God, or the “Spirit of truth” (John 14:17), sheds his light on the believer by guiding them into the truth (John 16:12-14).

On the other hand, the light of God reveals wrong behaviors by exposing sin. The Spirit also is known to shedding divine light onto individuals by convicting the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11). Jesus said that it was for this reason that those who loved evil abhorred the light of God, for they feared that their deeds would be exposed (John 3:20). Ironically, the light of God will eventually expose every deed anyhow, regardless of whether one tries to hide their misdeeds or not.

God’s Light is Relational. God’s light often refers to divine holiness. Worded another way, God’s light reveals that he is the absolute good. As previously noted, this was part of John’s teaching concerning the light of God in his first letter. God’s holiness is viewed by Paul to be an “unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16). The unapproachability of God was overcome by the work of Christ on the cross by making people righteous so that they can boldly approach the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16). Because of the work of Christ, people can now shine the light of God in a world of darkness.

God’s Light is Rousing. By rousing, I do not infer the idea of a crowd enamored by a well-performed theatrical play. Rather, the term refers here to the giving of life. The symbol of light often referred to life in contrast to sorrow, adversity, or death (Ellis, NBD, 690). To see God’s light was to live (Job 3:16; Ps. 49:19). To walk in God’s light is to walk in the “light of life” (Ps. 56:24; Job 33:30). Light to the eyes is considered the gift of physical life that God grants to all (Prov. 29:13). As such, it is unsurprising that God’s presence is shown to be an effervescent, radiant light (Rev. 1:9-20; 4:1-11).

The concept of God’s light did not stem from Hellenistic thought but was deeply rooted in Judaism. Such is evidenced in the usages of light in the OT and the Qumran texts (e.g., War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness). Could it be that some sages of philosophy (i.e., Socrates and Plato) and the writers of the inspired Word both caught a glimpse of God’s transcendent light? Even if such is true, the full revelation of God would be found in his Word.

Nonetheless, I come now to the application of the article. I am sure you have heard the song This Little Light of Mine. The lyrics read, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” God often places us in dark situations and circumstances so that our light will shine brighter. Our world is becoming a dark place to reside. Not only do we have a pandemic, but we also have national uprisings and cities in complete turmoil. Why has God decided to place us in this time and place? While there have certainly been darker times in world history, God has placed us in such a time as this to allow our lights to shine for God’s glory. Things may not be easy for a while. However, the light of God filling us and guiding us will truly be a “lamp unto our feet and a light unto our paths” (Ps. 119:105).

No matter what you may face today, this week, this month, or the remainder of this year; decide today that you will let the light of God shine through your life. Don’t be overcome by the darkness of the world, but rather overcome the darkness with the light of God’s glory. Then, we can all sing together, “Won’t let Satan blow it out, I’m gonna let it shine. Won’t let Satan blow it out, I’m gonna let it shine. Won’t let Satan blow it out, I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!”

Ellis, E. E. “Light,” New Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. R. W. Wood, et. al. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1996.

About the Author

Brian G. Chilton is the founder of BellatorChristi.com, the host of The Bellator Christi Podcast, and the author of the Layman’s Manual on Christian Apologetics. He received his Master of Divinity in Theology from Liberty University (with high distinction); his Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Gardner-Webb University (with honors); and received certification in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Brian is enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University and is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Brian has been in the ministry for nearly 20 years and serves as the Senior Pastor of Westfield Baptist Church in northwestern North Carolina.

https://www.amazon.com/Laymans-Manual-Christian-Apologetics-Essentials/dp/1532697104

© 2020. BellatorChristi.com.

Growing Our Family and Our Cultural Outlook In Dearborn and Detroit (Part 18)

As I structured and refined my courses at UM-Dearborn and prepared for campus expansion, Laquita and I were expanding our family and becoming involved with race relations and inner-city ministry as well.  Our acquaintance with Bob and Nancy was cultivated anew with our move to Dearborn.  When we were with them socially, they introduced us to some of their Black friends, whom we then invited to our house for a meal.  I don’t remember their full names, but one was a physician named Tony. It was summertime when he and his wife came to dinner, and his arrival must have attracted the attention of our all-white neighbors.  He had a flashy convertible that was not thoroughly muffled.  No one said anything to us, but some of them probably kept an eye on the activities of that socially liberal professor who lived in the flat on the corner. That was the first time Laquita and I had been socially with Black people, and it was an education for us.   

In addition, we learned of the primarily Black Conant Gardens Church of Christ in Detroit that had a ministry in the inner city.   This work eventually morphed into a child care and community support center called The House of the Carpenter, modeled after a similar program in Boston, MA.  This work in Detroit was overseen by a white minister employed by the Conant Gardens Church, Maurice Haynes and his wife Clare.  We became very good friends with them and they taught us much about the workings of the inner city.  Laquita and I volunteered to help staff the HOC and went downtown once or twice a week to visit and help out as we could.  I became a member of the Board of Directors and became a part of a group of four men who regularly met with a group of boys from the neighborhood, playing games with them and trying to model healthy male behavior to them. 

With all of that going on, as well as my heavy involvement with my faculty job, we still proceeded with our plan to build a family, and we pursued the adoption of another child, this time saying that we would consider one with a handicap, a decision that turned out to radically change our lives.  We were informed by the adoption agency that a child was available who had been difficult to place because her maternal grandmother had Huntington’s Disease (or HD), and therefore the baby was 25% at risk to inherit the disease, since it was genetically transmitted.  Were the mother of the baby later to develop the disease, the child would then be 50% at risk.  We knew nothing about the disease, but what we read about it in our research was scary, because it involved not only physical disablement, but mental impairment as well.  Nevertheless, after praying about it and asking friends to do so as well, we were left with a strong conviction that God wanted us to accept this challenge.  So in late 1967, we took into our home our second little girl, Cynthia Lynette, aged 9 months.

It was not until 13 years later that we learned Cynthia’s biological mother had developed HD; that meant that the odds were significantly increased that Cynthia had the mutated gene that caused the disease to be manifest.  But there were significant problems with Cynthia in those early months that were quite unrelated to her being at risk for HD.  She had already bonded with her foster mother, and therefore Laquita had a very difficult time establishing a maternal relationship with her.  After a few weeks, Cynthia began to respond more to me than to Laquita, and that was deeply hurtful to Laquita, since she was the one spending the most time with her.  Adding to the difficulties was my heavy involvement with and commitments to being a church deacon, a member of the Board at HOC, mentoring the group of boys from that neighborhood, and doing my job at the University.  All of this engendered the worst conflict between me and Laquita that we have ever experienced.  The bottom line was that I needed to spend more time at home.

One episode during this period has become a favorite with our children—funny now, not so funny at the time.  One Wednesday night during the winter I had attended Bible class at church with Rachel, while Laquita stayed at home with Cynthia, who was sick.  This was the first season of the original Star Trek TV program, which aired on Wednesday nights, and I was hooked on it.  This particular night I came in a couple of minutes before 8 p.m., which was the scheduled time for the program.  Eagerly anticipating watching the program, I rushed in and threw my coat, hat and gloves on a chair, dumped Rachel with her winter boots and coat and hat still on, and rushed in to turn on the TV.  I must have at least said hi to Laquita, but she had been all day with two little girls, one of them sick, and was ready for some relief; watching Star Trek was not on her agenda.  A few minutes after I had settled down to watch, a glove came flying into the room.  She asserts that she was not throwing the glove at me, but the fact is, it came into the room with some force behind it.  Startled and puzzled, I switched off the TV and went in to her to examine the situation more closely, which she was more than happy to help me do.  She was finally able to get through to me the impression made by my coming in with hardly a greeting and making a beeline for the TV, evidently expecting her to take care of hanging up both my and Rachel’s winter gear.  I don’t remember any more details of the incident that night, but it resulted in my reassessing my priorities and being at least slightly more available at home.

At the beginning of my second year at UM-D, we were offered the chance to live in one of three cottages which were down the road from Fair Lane, the former mansion of Henry Ford and part of the land donated by the Ford Foundation for the building of the Dearborn Campus.  It was a deal not to be passed up, since the house was right on the campus and the rent was reasonable.  The three cottages were originally built to accommodate three of the Ford family’s major employees, the butler, the gardener, and the chauffeur.  During our stay, the other two cottages were occupied by the Dean of Engineering, Robert Cairns, and the Head Librarian, Edward Wall.  The Cairns family were replaced by a Chinese professor of management and his family, Yumin Chou.  We were good friends with both families, and the Wall and Chou children were close playmates with our two girls.  We stayed there for seven years, including a sabbatical year in which we sublet the house and came back to it for one more year.  It was great to have a 3 or 4 minute walk to my campus office.

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Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.)

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More from this series…

Editor's Recommendation: Telling a Better Story by Josh Chatraw

Telling a Better Story: How to Talk About God in a Skeptical Age

By Chatraw, Josh

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The Pre-Expansion Years at UM-Dearborn, 1965-1971 (Part 17)

After a few months of settling into our new home in Dearborn, we turned our attention to what we had determined would be a priority as we began my working career: we applied to receive an adoptive child.  Having gone through fertility tests back in Pittsburgh, and being told that I had a low probability of fathering a child, we agreed that we did not want to remain childless and would adopt as soon as it was practicable.  We decided to proceed with the Childrens’ Aid Society in Detroit.  In those days a lot of babies were still being given up for adoption, and it was fairly easy to become adoptive parents.  Accordingly, in the spring of 1966 we were called to come see a baby girl, only six weeks old.  We saw her and immediately agreed that this was the one for us, and within a short time the necessary approvals were signed and we brought her home with us.  We of course had much to learn, but an empty place in our lives had been filled, and we rejoiced in nurturing a new life and seeing the rapid development from delicate, completely dependent infant into a little girl with her own personality.  Laquita, especially, threw herself into motherhood, and, as one of the elders at our church commented, she blossomed and glowed.  Little Liann Kathleen was walking by nine months old, and it was startling to see this tiny little girl toddling around like an animated doll.

Meanwhile, back at the campus, I was going through another kind of growth phase, as I plunged into a completely new set of literature and language courses, not only in the medieval era which was my specialty, but in linguistics and comprehensive Surveys of British Literature.   The total student population was only about 600 when I first arrived, so classes were small, ranging from fewer than ten to maybe 15-20.  Since there were so few faculty and the administrative structure was still developing, faculty members were called on to perform duties that later became the responsibility of professional administrative staff, such as advising students and keeping academic records.  We were even called on to go out recruiting with the director of admissions and registration at the campus, so it’s not surprising that I became the advisor and academic record keeper for the English Discipline, a job that quickly grew into my being in charge of academic petitions for the whole of Literature, Science, and the Arts.  This job led to my being recruited later by the Chairman of LS&A to coordinate the building of a curriculum to accommodate freshmen and sophomores when the U. of M. Regents decided to expand UM-Dearborn into a four-year campus.  The first freshmen did not come until the fall of 1971, but the decision was made in 1969, and the campus had two years to prepare for implementing the expansion.

When I first came to the campus, a professor of political science named John Dempsey was Chairman of LS&A.  Sometime toward the end of my first year there, he stepped down to run for a state political office, and a chemistry professor named David Emerson became Acting Division Chairman.  Through some political maneuvering that I later became aware of, an ambitious professor of Russian named Dennis Papazian became Division Chair.  Dennis saw in me some promise of usefulness as an assistant administrator, and he asked me to be his chief assistant in constructing the new freshman-sophomore curriculum in liberal arts.  Of course, the specific content of courses in each discipline was determined by the faculty in each area of study, but an overall structure was needed to define the combination of general education and disciplinary courses required for the bachelor’s degrees (bachelor of arts and bachelor of science).  Dennis set me the task of looking through academic catalogues at other institutions to see what their requirements were.  I supplied him with my research results, and we worked together to formulate academic requirement proposals to the governing faculty of the Division and the Executive Committee of the campus.  In addition to preparing the academic program, the campus also had to provide new laboratory facilities and classroom spaces.

To facilitate the keeping of academic records, we relied increasingly on use of the mainframe computer on the Ann Arbor campus, and I was initiated into this technical world by a chemistry professor who had a special interest in computers, Alan Emery.  He taught me how to use punch cards to enter and maintain academic records, and so early in my academic career I was exposed to the practical basics of computer use, though I was not taught the arcane languages of computer programming.  I remember carrying packs of punch cards over to the card reader managed by Al Emery, and he would try to convince me of the potential of computer usage.  He eventually was recruited to work with the center for computer operations in Ann Arbor, and our campus was deprived of the creator of its computer operations.  UM-Dearborn eventually formed an Office of Computer Operations of its own.

Dennis Papazian took me under his wing as a protégé in administrative operations.  He saw me (accurately) as innocent of the subtleties of academic politics, in which he delighted.  One day, only half-jokingly, he told me that his objective was to “corrupt” me, so that I would be disabused of my naïve view of the world and be able to function realistically in a world defined by the exercise of power.  I resisted this relativistic Machiavellian approach, but I was still useful to him in seeing to details of his office that required accuracy and efficiency.  This was the beginning of a relationship with him that was troublesome for many years to come.  I imagine he regretted training me well enough that I was eventually chosen to replace him.  But more of that later.

I made some decisions during this period that turned out to be more significant than I thought at the time.  One arose from receiving an offer from a Dutch press to publish my doctoral dissertation, but with a sizeable subsidy as a part of the deal.   Moreover, the intent was apparently to publish the dissertation as it was, without editorial review.  It therefore looked to me like merely a solicitation from a vanity press that would not be taken seriously by my colleagues as a peer-reviewed publication, so I turned them down.  However, I learned later that about the same time a dissertation that covered some of the same areas treated by mine was published by this press and that the publication contributed to the author’s professional advancement.

Two other decisions sprang from recruitment offers.  Back when I was about to fly to UM-Dearborn for my on-campus interview, I was approached by my alma mater, Abilene Christian College, to come back there, and I turned them down because I thought going back would cut off my opportunities to test my mettle in a broader professional community.  The second offer was a year or two later and was from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, California, an institution associated with the Church of Christ, the denomination I had grown up in and still adhered to.  At the time Pepperdine was in the process of building a new campus in the suburbs of Los Angeles and moving its home base out of the inner city and into its posh new campus.  I was flattered by their taking the initiative and trying to recruit me, but I was troubled by their move, as it seemed to me, to flee their original neighborhood for a more comfortable setting.  And so, in my idealism, I turned them down.  In the two cases of recruitment, our lives would have been completely different had I accepted either offer.

I spent my first years at UM-Dearborn happily, enjoying my colleagues and the students and the opportunity to get involved in minor administrative duties.  I had come at what turned out to be an ideal time for the exercise of my particular skills.  Since I was not a great research scholar in my academic field, my administrative contributions were my strong suit when I came up for promotion, and though I managed to produce a few published papers in my first five years, that would not have been sufficient to secure my promotion to associate professor with tenure.  At another, more traditional institution, I might not have made the cut.  As it was, I achieved tenure and was able to serve the campus for 36 years, with several kinds of temporary administrative appointments along the way. 

I began my career there when the campus was poised for a crucial development in its history.  During the mid and late 60s, the campus did not fulfill the hopes of its founders, that is, that many students would decide to transfer from area community colleges and that the campus, focused on the internship programs in engineering and business, would capture the attention of industrial metropolitan Detroit and that the campus would enjoy success like that of General Motors Institute.  Unfortunately, the large numbers of students did not come, and UM-Dearborn in 1969 still had an enrollment of only some eight or nine hundred students.  The campus was faced with the alternatives of either folding or expanding.  Happily for me, it expanded, and I was there on the ground floor.

The next installment will deal with the huge effects of the expansion of the campus to four years and my involvement in that process.

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Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.)

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More from this series:

Arrival at UM-Dearborn, Summer 1965 (Part 16)

After I signed my first-year contract with the University of Michigan-Dearborn (or rather the U. of M., Dearborn Center at the time), I was offered the chance to teach a summer course, and I gladly accepted, since the pay was quite good for summer teaching.  The term was for August and September, and the class was small, so it was a good way for me to be introduced to the curriculum and to become acquainted with the campus and my colleagues before the beginning of the fall term in early October.   The campus was on quarters of three months each at the time, but with the beginning of the next term in January of 1966, the campus went to trimesters of four months each.

We stayed our first few days with Bob and Nancy Mossman, with whom we had formed a close friendship back at Pitt.  They lived in an apartment in Taylor, not far from Dearborn.  Nancy gave us the grand tour of the City of Dearborn in her brand-new Ford Mustang convertible, which was then new on the market, at the beginning of a long period of popularity.  We were received at the Dearborn Campus by Prof. Myron Simon, who encouraged us to live in Dearborn, since many of the faculty chose to live in Ann Arbor, a matter which galled Myron because that made it difficult to schedule faculty meetings.  We were amenable to his direction, since we had no reason to live in Ann Arbor and make the long commute of 35 miles each way.  We found a flat in an attractive neighborhood in East Dearborn, owned by an elderly Polish couple, who lived on the ground floor of the house.  They rather adopted us and were continually offering food and advice.  Mr. Lelek’s wife could speak only a few words of English, but she was very warm toward us.  The apartment was unfurnished, so we had to go buy some basic, mostly used furniture.  Myron lived with his family not far away, so he and I often rode together to the campus.

I had three colleagues in English, all of whom were Jewish.  We joked about my being the token Gentile, but we were all good friends.  In fact, they would sometimes consult me on literary references to the New Testament, with which they were not very familiar.  Sydney Warschausky, was a specialist in 20th century English literature,  Myron Simon was also in modern literature and English education, and Larry Berkove was in American literature.  English was part of the Discipline of Humanities in the Division of Literature, Science, and the Arts, one of three academic Divisions of the campus, along with Engineering and Business Administration.  The Discipline of Humanities also housed faculty members in philosophy, linguistics, art history, and foreign language.  The other Disciplines (administrative units) in the Division of Literature, Science, and the Arts were Science and Mathematics, Education, and Social and Behavioral Science.

The campus was very small when I joined the faculty, and we were all housed in the same building, se there was a pleasant intermingling of faculty from all disciplines; we often ate our sack lunches together in the faculty lunchroom—humanities, science, engineering, and business faculty cross-pollinated each other.  There was a Faculty Women’s Club that also got us together socially, fostering our cross-disciplinary comeradery. Unfortunately, as the campus grew and we added young faculty who were more wedded to the disciplines they were trained in, we separated physically and psychologically.  Nevertheless, the seeds of interdisciplinary objectives did bear significant, if short-lived fruit in the form of a Core Curriculum when we expanded to a four-year program and the creation of a Division of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Once again, we established some rich and long-lasting friendships in those first years: Roger Verhey in mathematics and his wife Norma, David Emerson in chemistry and his wife Shirley, Emmanuel Hertzler (biology) and his wife Myrtle, Sydney Warschausky and Larry Berkove in English and their wives Lorraine and Gail, respectively.  Roger and I became prayer partners, meeting in our offices for lunch.  He was my closest friend and chief support among the faculty.  The Emersons and we were socially active with each other because they, like us, lived in Dearborn.  Larry Berkove was single during our first years at UM-Dearborn Campus, and we often had him to meals at our house.  When he met and married Gail, we were among the first to know about the engagement, and we were invited  to their Jewish wedding in Chicago.  When their children began to be born, we were invited to the bris (circumcision) of their first son.

As has been the case wherever we have lived, we had another close circle of friends in the church we attended, in this case the Northwest Church of Christ in Detroit, not far from where we lived in Dearborn.  Our closest friends there were the minister and his wife, Dr. Joseph and Geneva Jones.  Joe had come to the minister’s job from Oklahoma Christian College, where he was a dean.  Being very interested in Christian higher education, he quickly established a connection with Michigan Christian College in Rochester, MI, and taught classes there.  At the same time he was pursuing degrees in counseling and doing a significant amount of counseling for the church.  He and I became fast friends and often had lunch together to talk about theology and life in general.  The Joneses and we were often in each other’s homes.  We were also taken under the wings of some older couples whose hospitality and companionship we greatly enjoyed.

As soon as we had settled into our home and my job, we began to explore the possibility of adopting a child.  We registered with the Children’s Aid Society in Detroit, and by the end of my first academic year at UM-Dearborn, we had taken into our home a six-week old baby girl, whom we named Liann Kathleen.  She is still a beautiful daughter and a great support in our old age.

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Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.)

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More from this series:

The Morality of Mystery

In the digital age of mass information and social media, the cultural values of openness, sharing one’s truth, expressing one’s feelings, and sticking up for oneself have begun to drown out other important values that keep these supposed virtues in check.  Patience, reflection, nuance, restraint, and the like are scarce, but perhaps none are rarer than mystery and/or discretion. After reconsidering discretion in the framework of the Christian worldview, this article will argue that mystery is not always a problem in need of solving, but a much-needed biblical and theological virtue characteristic of and encouraged by the ultimate good (God himself). As mystery, rightly understood, is morally good, employing it in today’s world of total transparency will go a long way in flattening the curve of caustic commentary that is currently inhibiting human flourishing.

The God of Mystery

            Christian theism has long celebrated God as a personal being who has revealed himself by means of the world he created (Rom 1:18-20), the Scriptures he breathed (2 Tim 3:16-17), and in the Word made flesh (Jn 1:1-4; Col 1:15). Hebrews 1:1-2 highlights these methods of revelation when it says “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” Though the fallout of Spinoza’s radical transcendentalizing, Newton’s deistic cosmological dualism, and Kant’s disjunction between the noumenal and phenomenal has recently called into question God’s ability to speak and even then in a way that human beings could intelligibly discern, an even more recent resurgence in trinitarian theology and developments in speech act theory has provided Christians newfound confidence in divine revelation via robust theological and philosophical considerations.[1] That said, one of the things that has been divinely revealed is that God has not disclosed everything (not even close). This does not betray incompleteness or insufficiency on his part, but a character choice he has made in keeping with his goodness.

For instance, mysteries permeate scripture. Often mysteries are introduced by God through confusing visions and solved in prophecies (Dan 2:18, 19, 27, 28, 29, 30, 47; 4:9; Rev 1:20; 17:7). In other cases, important theological quandaries previously left unexplained are elucidated (Rom 16:25; 1 Cor 15:51; Eph 1:9; 3:3, 4, 9; 5:32; 6:19; Col 1:26, 27; 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:16). While God is free to solve mysteries as he wills and, on some occasions, desires his solutions to be shared (Rom 11:25; Col. 4:3), often explanations are reserved for a select group and not disclosed to everyone (Mt 13:11; Mk 4:11; Lk 8:10). Still, some mysteries are left unsolved (Eccl 7:24; Dan 12:4; Rev 10:4).

Running complementary to the theme of mystery is the motif of concealment.  One of the first actions taken by God on behalf of humanity following their creation involved the production of garments to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve following the fall in the Garden of Eden—‘’the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them” (Gen 3:21). These concealing coverings are no small matter. Earlier in the narrative, immediately upon eating the forbidden fruit, the text reads, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were asked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings” (Gen 3:7). Something about the sin of this first couple (a sin which came after being tempted to be like God and involved eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil) rendered them unable to cope with the juxtaposition of how God created them and the surrounding world they broke. This sent them hiding and clamoring for relief in crudely fabricated rags. Out of his abundant grace, God provided Adam and Eve with an upgraded wardrobe that covered their nudity and, more importantly, their shame, allowing them some measure of respite from their debilitating preoccupation with their naked bodies. By keeping certain things hidden, mankind was able, at least in part, to live with the knowledge they had illegitimately obtained. Here, concealment and subsequent mystery proves to be a good graciously offered by God.

Later, the God-Man is shown concealing himself and leaving certain statements or actions unexplained. For example, after Jesus performed many miracles and foreshadowed his death, Luke 9:45 states, “But they did not understand this statement, and it was concealed from them so that they would not perceive it; and they were afraid to ask Him about this statement.” In one episode of his ministry, immediately upon confirming that he was the Messiah, Jesus instructed his disciples not to tell anyone (Mt 16:20; Mk 8:29-30; Lk 9:20-21). Sometimes Jesus asks those who received a word/miracle from him not to share it with others (Mt 8:1-4; Mk 1:40-44; Lk 5:12-15). There are even examples of Jesus concealing himself entirely (Lk 4:30; 24:13-35; Jn 5:13). The accounts of his life are also incomplete, leaving much a mystery. John’s remarks at the end of his gospel are telling—“And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25). Though possible motivations behind these examples and interpretations of their meaning run the gamut, one thing is for certain: Christ did not endorse unchecked transparency and at times chose to remain, in part, hidden.[2] His discretion is utilized in many different settings for the purpose of accomplishing the will of the Father in the divinely prescribed way and time.[3]

            Pervasive mystery and concealment in the scriptures by both the Father and the Son are not just activities in which God engages, but are indicative of who God is (at least in part). As John reveals, “No one has seen God [that is, the Father] at any time…” (Jn 1:18). This is probably because, as God tells Moses, “no man can see Me and live!” (Exod. 33:20). This is why Job concludes, “Were He to pass by me, I would not see Him; were He to move past me, I would not perceive Him” (Job 9:11)[4] and why John declares “No one has seen God [the Father] at any time…;” (1 John 4:12). After all, is not God [the Father] “spirit”?[5] are not his ways higher than our own?[6] Again, while God certainly discloses himself in the world, his word, and the Word made flesh, there is still much about him that remains a mystery. If God is the ultimate good,[7] then even this personal attribute ought to be considered a moral value when appropriately understood and applied.

The Virtue of Mystery

            Thankfully, not only does the Christian worldview offer an explanation for the moral value of mystery as rooted in God himself, it is also equipped with instructions on how to appropriately endorse discretion in the world. Such applications are found in (though certainly not limited to) the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Proverbs 12:16 suggests that the wise are those who keep quick reactions to offence to themselves (“a fool’s anger is known at once, but a prudent man conceals dishonor”).  Proverbs 12:23 teaches that it is actually prudent to conceal knowledge and not overshare (“A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims folly”). According to Proverbs 17:9, this aforementioned principle is especially important concerning the transgressions of others (“He who conceals a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates intimate friends”). These helpful maxims (and many others) are compliant with the character and nature of God[8] who is himself mysterious and has chosen to withhold certain things from his creation. He offers this advice so that moral beings can enjoy the kinds of interpersonal relationships that contribute to flourishing which, in and of itself, is good.

Unfortunately, the world is happily exercising the inverse of these virtues and suffering as a result. At no other time in history has it been easier or rendered more efficient to communicate with large numbers of people and share what is on one’s mind. While this may prove good in some ways, it is exceedingly bad/wrong when this ability transgresses the God-given principles of discretion outlined above. The immediacy with which people react to the latest polarizing post, the unchecked openness with which people share everything they are thinking and feeling, the expediency with which people betray a confidence, and the gleeful alacrity with which people expose/share the failures of an interlocutor or presumed enemy is staggering. These proclivities run contrary to the character and will of God who himself enjoys mystery, is himself mysterious, and encourages people to keep certain things to themselves. Unchecked transparency, unnuanced reporting, uninhibited sharing is ungodly and has contributed to a multiplicity of moral ills brought on by increased polarization, anxiety, shame, bullying, etc. Many would do well to put the garments God has provided back on by reconsidering and applying the virtue of mystery. Like Adam and Eve, we continue to prove that we are unable to adequately cope with the broken world around us without adorning the protective coverings of concealment that God has graciously provided, in our case, in his word.  

Neil Armstrong once said, “mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.” Perhaps what the world needs is not more information or more commentary. Perhaps it needs more mystery. After all, God, the ultimate good, both encourages it, endorses is, and is, at least in part, mysterious. Therefore, according to the Christian worldview, to exercise discretion is to follow his example and that is a good thing both for oneself and others.

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Jeffrey Dickson, PhD studied Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University where he now serves as an adjunct professor of Bible and theology. Dr. Dickson is also the senior pastor of Crystal Spring Baptist Church in Roanoke VA where he lives with his wife Brianna and their children.

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[1] For a compelling discussion of this modern affront to classical theism see John Morrison, Has God Said? Scripture, The Word of God, and the Crisis of Theological Authority (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2006), 7-110. See also Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There Meaning in This Text? The Bible, The Reader and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998).

[2] Consider other examples of God remaining hidden/mysterious: 1) his glory was hidden behind the veil in the Holy of Holies of the Old Testament, 2) He often proves reticent in seasons of discipline or judgement (especially in the intertestamental period), 3) Jesus’ ascension and the sending an invisible helper following his resurrection, 4) Jesus’ choice to speak in cryptic parables requiring his own interpretation.

[3] One example of this is in John 8:59 where Jesus disappears to escape a premature death by stoning. Given that it was not his appointed time this concealment allowed Jesus to continue following God’s will in the way set before him.

[4] See also Job 23:8-9.

[5] See Jn 4:24.

[6] See Isa 55:8-9.

[7] This article assumes the goodness of the Christian God and is not prepared to make a case for this. That said, for such a case, see Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) and David Baggett and Jerry Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[8] “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings” (Prov 25:2).