Applying the Golden Rule
Faith and Philosophy
| December 19, 2007
| Tim
Even as a somewhat lackluster (purported) follower-of-Jesus, I'm a huge supporter of "the golden rule", which actually harkens back to older Hebrew scripture. The "golden rule" states that you should treat other people the way you would want to be treated, if you found yourself in their situation.
The Masochist Objection
One important principle about this maxim can be discovered by considering a criticism: the so-called "masochist objection": What if a masochist applied the golden rule and started inflicting pain on others, because he or she found it pleasurable? Indeed, as Philosophy Chair Joel Marks observes: "I am pointing out that the objection runs deeper than that. Logically speaking, the Rule offers no general guidance regarding right and wrong behavior whatever."
Taken entirely out of context, with no other moral assumptions, that's true. If a pre-colonial Hindu woman believed that Sutee (the burning of widows) was a widow's highest calling, she might conceivably advocate burning a Christian widow to death against her will -- in accordance with the golden rule. Marks further notes that to answer this objection, we might presume a human nature, with certain intrinsic desires, but then notes that the rule would still break down with people who lacks those desires.
The first part of the principle I'm trying to tease out here is this: that the Golden Rule is an adjunct to a set of non-relativistic teachings, and has to be applied in that context.
God didn't hand down the Golden Rule in a moral vacuum. The teaching was first given to the world through the Jews, in the form of "love your neighbor as yourself", in a moral context in which God was actively explaining what the word "love" meant and didn't mean. (And it didn't include torture for sexual pleasure.) Later, Jesus taught it again, this time in a more active form ("do unto others") -- not to a group of pagans or atheists who reject the accompanying theistic framework, but to a group of his would-be followers, Jews who believed in the existence of a transcendent, absolute moral right and wrong which makes an ultimate difference.
Further, in the same Christian context, there is the belief in a "healthy" human nature -- that people, when functioning correctly, have and perceive a common set of moral rules written deeply upon their soul; a "conscience."
In this context, which I think most people believe to some extent, the masochist objection is easily answered: Deep down, the masochist doesn't really want to be truly damaged; the kind of pain he desires is always less than the total pleasure being produced. And THAT "higher" rule could easily be applied by the masochist, and would not result in his hurting other people, because even a masochist understands that most people do not respond as he does.
(This reveals that "if you were in their place" is an important consideration to the rule -- you can't do for other what would work in YOUR situation, but if you found yourself in theirs.)
Stepping back even further, we might postulate that the masochist is missing, perhaps, a deeper kind of sexual and personal intimacy which is being denied by his or her re-enacting of an earlier received abuse. If the masochist could see this, perhaps she or he wouldn't want to be encouraged in even their own habits.
So, again the rule is meant to be applied in a situation where a person has sufficient moral and circumstantial knowledge to make it work.
So is the real world such a place? I believe so. As I pointed out above, I believe even the most twisted masochist deep down understands that he should not, for example, inflict his predilections upon a child -- often, we seem to be learning, he himself had such things done to him in the past, and knows full well it wasn't a pleasant experience.
And further, the golden rule is accompanied by enough other instructions to help those who might be unclear on any detail. Part of wanting to do what is right for others involves being willing to seek out new information, and possibly overturn one's old views. A person who is willing to do what is good for others is also a person who is willing to learn what is good for others.
The Purpose of the Rule
I don't know if I can assert the golden rule will give a perfect result in all circumstances. (Where humans are involved, error is not absent, of course.) But I don't think it has to, nor do I think we need to approach it with an all-or-nothing view, as some do.
For one, I believe that people generally have enough information that observing such a rule would produce, on the whole, much more good that evil. Even if we completely discount my answer to the masochist objection, and presume it fails in that case, there are, statistically, many fewer masochists than non-masochists -- so even then, it would still work far more often than it failed.
But its critics also don't seem to realize that if we discount the golden rule something else will take its place, and, if so that we also need to consider the moral impact of that substitute. (Which is, typically, do what makes me happy, and forget the others.)
Second: The main point of the rule's existence, I believe, is not to give a perfect answer in every possible time (just the best one we can arrive at, given what we know), but rather to drive into our psyches a fundamental truth -- that the "I" that I am is as objectively morally important* as the "I" that other people are. That you are worth no more or no less than I am, and that we should do our social and relational calculations in a way which, all other things being equal, we give ourselves no more nor less importance than any other human being.
(* And of course you can't appeal to notions such as objective importance of people without simultaneously implying a God.)
Circular Reasoning
Such attacks on the golden rule ("See? It might fail here!") are usually waged as part of a larger effort to undermine a general Judeo-Christian worldview.
As such, it's an example of what I call the "fallacy of deconstruction." We show a car doesn't work by pulling out the engine. Hey, it doesn't seem to have any source of fuel! Having thus shown the engine is faulty, we then proceed to yank out the gas tank, pointing out it has no engine in and of itself, and thus no way of moving the car forward. We conclude: This vehicle can't possibly move!
Is that absurd? Yes, of course, but critics of Judeo-Christian ethics and beliefs frequently do the same thing: they point out that one assumption won't stand without the other, and the other won't stand without the first, so both must be useless or wrong. In this case, we begin with atheistic assumptions (there is no universal right and wrong and no meaningful conscience) and then seem to disprove theistic ones (the golden rule is thus unhelpful), resulting, finally, in our desired atheistic implications. Very circular, and thus very irrational.
But hey, it makes us feel good when we want to be selfish, doesn't it?
But in reality, everyone behaves as if there are some universal standards of right and wrong -- even those who claim otherwise. And everyone -- even masochists and other sociopaths -- knows how to act in their perceived long-term best interest. So rhetorical frameworks which imply otherwise are not simply straw men (negating the larger context in which the golden rule is taught), but also at odds with the real world around us.
The Fallacy of Composition
The converse error is the fallacy of composition, where we say if something is true of the parts, it must also be true of the aggregate.
Taking a line from the John Kerry candidacy handbook ("Everyone hates us, and things will be magically better when I'm in power!"), Mike Huckabee recently opined:
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said at a campaign stop today that America has to work to re-establish relationships with other countries.
Huckabee, the new front-runner in Iowa seeking the Republican nomination for president, said if he were to be elected president, there would be a “real sense of cooperation.”
“I would like us to restore relationships and rebuild the kind of positive attitudes people have historically had toward our nation and do that by showing the kind of respect that other nations would want and deserve,” he said.
Huckabee did not elaborate on how he would do that....
Huckabee also said that nations deserve the same kind of treatment that individuals do. “You treat others the way you’d like to be treated,” he said. “That’s to me the fundamental issue that has to be re-established in our dealings with other countries.”
Well, yes and no. When Huckabee says "country", he actually means "government", since you can't negotiate directly with the whole populace.
If a country is similar to ours, in the sense being free and democratic, then that rule can (sometimes) make sense, because we can presume their government represents the intentions of a majority its citizens.
But exceptions abound: Assad doesn't represent the will of the Syrian people, and Kim Jong Il can't be presumed to represent the will of the North Koreans, as no-one has ever allowed them to vote, and they're generally powerless to get rid of such leaders. It's a profound mistake to treat such people with the same credibility as a democratically elected official. The application of the golden rule to such rulers runs counter to the application to the individuals within.
Imagine that you were a citizen of North Korea. Many people you know have disappeared into prison camps, and you're starving to death, gnawing on bark to survive. Would you want someone else to violently overthrow your government and replace it with pretty much anything else? I sure would, and I suspect many North Koreans would as well.
Huckabee's principle, on the other hand -- treat governments as if they were individuals -- tells us the opposite. Since we wouldn't like our government overthrown, the North Koreans must be equally happy with theirs. But our moral duty is not to make all existing governments feel good, and make sure their wishes have as much credibility as ours, but rather to do what is best for the most individual people -- first in our nation, and then in the world.
The General Assembly of the United Nations is an immoral institution precisely for this reason: when it takes a vote, many of people allegedly "representing" nations there are actually doing the opposite, since they speak and act on behalf of tyrannical regimes which allow few freedoms, and no genuine elections. Yet we treat the output of such processes as if it were the same as our Senate or Congress, if not having an even greater authority.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Summary
So my point is that the golden rule isn't meant to be taken out of context, and judged in a morally relativistically framework. Indeed, the argument is incoherent, because there's no fixed meaning attached to the notion of "good" it implies. Instead, it was taught as the lesser half of a two-part maxim:
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:36-40)
Without some notion of absolute right and wrong ("God"), and some presumed interest in finding out and doing what's right, the golden rule cannot possibly make any sense. It is a rule meant to be taken in that context, among those people with those assumptions. Treating it otherwise is about as sensible as trying to graft a car engine onto a tree to see how it "works".
Now, why would you say you're lack-luster? You seem to help flavor the earth even through your blog.*
However, your point about atheistic and relativistic arguments is quite right.
What I truly appreciated, however is your critique of Huckabee's quote, which is what many people miss in the discussion of intervention and sovereignty. If we start treating non-representative, or better, yet tyrannical governments as sovereign, doesn't it also help remove the legitimacy of our own government. It's existence as the 'mandate of the people' no longer becomes important, but what is more important is preserving it's 'sovereign' nature intact. (i.e. Government exists for governments sake, not the peoples.)
--
* Humorous footnote: I just about wrote "salt the earth" in thinking about Jesus' term...
Now, why would you say you're lack-luster?
Because a person isn't judged only or even mostly by their apparent public stance, or intellectual abilities, but rather by their private, hidden obedience. (There are many famous "believers" who will be nothing, and many obscure people who will be at the top of things.) And, knowing me pretty darned well, I know how good I am in those areas -- and it's nothing to write home about.
But thanks nonetheless for your kind encouragement!
What I truly appreciated, however is your critique of Huckabee's quote...
That was what set this whole thing into motion, at a sleepless 4AM yesterday morning. Christianity has pervaded our culture, but mostly, it seems, in distorted forms. A fake kind of "mercy" is used to prevent justice (which is actually a necessary precondition to mercy), a fake kind of "love" is used to promote harmful, unloving policies, etc.
If we start treating non-representative, or better, yet tyrannical governments as sovereign, doesn't it also help remove the legitimacy of our own government...
I agree entirely. A bit like crying "rape" every time a man looks at cleavage diminishes the moral horror of real rape. If you treat all governments as equally good, then there's no benefit to a democratic Republic, is there?
Government exists for governments sake, not the peoples...
Beautifully put. But that's how people around us are being conditioned to think.* Including, quite clearly, Huckabee.
(* Indeed, in some cases, worse: When you listen to Democrats talk about taxes, you hear tax breaks or cuts treated as some sort of public theft. The government "subsidizes" churches, for example, by not taxing their donations. (Never mind that those donations already have been taxed. They just want them taxed yet again.) In short, the people exist for the government.)
Great comments again Tim. I immediately wanted to see the "Love your God with all your heart, soul, mind..." to make the golden rule complete.
To divide the commandment even further, what does it mean to love God with all of one's soul? I haven't read much about this, but I would guess that loving our creator with all of our soul is that 'faith' element that is seperate from our mental and the emotional element.
As to governments and the golden rule: that latin word "non-sequitor" jumps to mind. Romans 13 tells us that we are subject to the governing authorities, but I would also add that governing bodies can act like "police" in a sense to protect humanity from other governing authorities.
Huckabee has had a few head scratching sound bites lately, like the comments about Mitt and Mormonism. Of course, with the media's track record of taking a sentence out of context, what possible hope do we have a really getting a clear picture of the former governor from Arkansas? =)
Did you see the article from American Thinker yet?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/the_huckabee_hustle.html
Don
Don! Pleasant to hear from you again!
To divide the commandment even further, what does it mean to love God with all of one's soul? I haven't read much about this, but I would guess that loving our creator with all of our soul is that 'faith' element that is seperate from our mental and the emotional element.
Quite frankly, I'm just as mystified as you are about the distinction, and would register the same guess as you give, there.
But, though I'm not an expert on Hebrew, I *did* stay at a Holi... heh. Sorry. I *do* have access to crosswalk.com, NAS translation with Strong's cross-ref links. That version uses the word "strength" in the last position. "Heart" is a word also meaning "inner man" or "understanding", and "soul" also seems close, meaning "inner being", but can also refer to appetites and emotions. So, slight redundancy aside, I guess that means we should love God with all our minds, our spirit, our intentions, and our physical strength.
Wow, do I come up short.
Did you see the article from American Thinker yet?
Great article -- very informative. An another (ab)use of the golden rule: Using it to justify not doing anything about illegal immigration. (The author responds: "My response? Huck, if I were in another country illegally, I would fully expect its citizens to demand I go home.")
I was initially quite warm towards Huckabee, but I think people are getting wise to his true nature. Bob Novak writes of Huckabee's apparent need for approval by certain "elites":
Scarborough and Huckabee clashed during the Baptist wars. Fighting to drive the liberals from the temple, Scarborough was badly defeated for president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas while Huckabee embraced the liberal church establishment to become president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
Judge Pressler, who led the Southern Baptist conservative resurgence in the late '70s, agreed with Scarborough about Huckabee's orientation and went a different route in presidential politics. When Huckabee on Nov. 9 announced the Southern Baptist leaders supporting him, Pressler was not on the list; on Dec. 7, Pressler endorsed Thompson. Pressler is known to be concerned that Huckabee plays to the establishment and would be subservient to the State Department and the New York Times.
On Oct. 26, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal quoted Pressler as saying: "I know of no conservative he appointed while he headed the Arkansas Baptist Convention." The next week, during their California encounter, Huckabee confirmed reports from people who know him that his good-natured facade conceals thin-skinned irritability. The candidate jumped Pressler with bitter complaints.
To be fair to Huckabee, I don't think you can divine from his statement that he intends to follow this political golden rule with nations like North Korea and Syria. Part of understanding the golden rule in the context of a larger and more complex moral system is that it isn't always about being kind of caring to others.
Say a thief has broken into your house. Do you treat him as you would a neighbor who has come to your door asking to borrow some sugar? Of course not, you defend yourself, your family, and your home in any way that you can. If we're looking to apply the golden rule on a more broad, international scale, then you have to consider that each country is different. France, Great Britian, Poland, Taiwan, and many other nations would be the metaphorical neighbor, while nations like N. Korea, Iran, Syria, ect., are much more like the thief who is trying to break into your house.
Anonymous:
To be fair to Huckabee, I don't think you can divine from his statement that he intends to follow this political golden rule with nations like North Korea and Syria.
I agree. (Though frankly, I don't expect him to do very well in such situations anyway.) I simply picked those examples to show most clearly the fallacy of treating governments as if they were individuals.
Part of understanding the golden rule in the context of a larger and more complex moral system is that it isn't always about being kind of [and?] caring to others... Say a thief has broken into your house. Do you treat him as you would a neighbor who has come to your door asking to borrow some sugar? Of course not, you defend yourself, your family
Thank you for bringing this up. There was a point I wanted to work into the article, but couldn't find a way to do it without disrupting the flow. You've touched on it.
So: I disagree. The "larger and more complex moral system" IS about being kind to others, though it may not always look like it. And the golden rule thus isn't being abrogated by some larger rule.
By defending yourself from the thief, you ARE being kind to him. That may not be your intent, certainly, but if you believe in God, then you believe the thief is getting himself into trouble with God (even if the law never stops him) by robbing people. Your attempt to defend yourself may scare him enough to help him seek more gainful employment, and may make him repent of his behavior. Much more likely than in the other scenario, where he isn't confronted.
In the same vein, the serial killer might quite enjoy his murderous rampage. But if he's racking up some kind of eternal punishment from God with each new corpse, we actually do him a favor, also (not just his future victims) by stopping him sooner rather than later.
If you told me (in some hypothetical way that I'd completely trust and believe you) I was going to lose my mind and start killing people next week, I'd want you to stop me before I started. So we're very much obeying the golden rule when we restrain such people. It's not that the golden rule doesn't apply then: it still does. But, as I wrote above, you have to have a larger perspective, one provided by the other teachings.
If we're looking to apply the golden rule on a more broad, international scale, then you have to consider that each country is different...
I believe I wrote: "If a country is similar to ours, in the sense being free and democratic, then that rule can (sometimes) make sense..." So I feel I acknowledged such distinctions.
But even then -- and I want to be clear here -- sometimes not. Governments aren't individuals any more than corporations are individuals. What's good for a government -- even a democratically-elected one, sometimes -- isn't always what's good for its subjects. North Korea is an extreme example, but it's true even in milder, democratically-elected cases.
Consider Germany and Kyoto. We want other nations to ratify our favored policies, right? So, given "do unto others", shouldn't we then ratify theirs also? And Germany certainly fits into your "neighbor" category, right?
Schroeder tried extremely hard to get the US to ratify Kyoto. I have no doubt it would have been better for his government if we had done so, and he was seen as the leader in Europe who brought the US "into the fold." He might have survived the elections if so.
But governments aren't individuals. When one "dies", the people live on. What's best for them isn't always what's best for their people. Germans seem to be doing better under Merkel. And Kyoto was a massive failure -- the US was right to oppose it. Besides being bad for businesses (and thus citizens) it hasn't even reduced greenhouse emissions. From 2000 to 2004, US greenhouse emissions grew by 1.2% -- where the Kyoto-loving EU25 grew by twice as much -- by 2.4%!
Was was bad for Germany's government ("Germany") in 2002 turns out to have been quite good for the world, not to mention German citizens. (Schroeder has since shown his true colors by becoming a lavishly-paid consultant for Gazprom, an extension of the Putin empire.) The golden rule doesn't apply because what's good for or wanted by an abstraction (a government) isn't always what's desired by or best for the bulk of the real people beneath.
It is the real people who are important to God (and thus, should be to us also) not abstractions which purport to represent them. If we focus on doing what governments will like (which seems to have been Huckabee's main problem -- their not liking us sufficiently) we can be tempted into embracing policies which violate the golden rule as applied to real people.
I don't at all deny your point that some nations are more like neighbors and some are more like thieves. But the problem is that "neighbor" is a human being, and the government, even of, say Canada, is not. What's in one's interest is not always in the other's. Bad models lead to bad policy, and my point here is that treating abstractions as humans can become a bad model.
No offense intended, and with all due respect.
Tim,
Not to swerve off topic a little, but I'd like to reverse the discussion about the golden rule and governments to this: Does or will God judge nations in addition to individuals?
Here's why I bring this up; it is clear that many 'Christian traditions' of our nation are slipping away from us, but will the result be that God withholds future blessings? References in the OT when God wipes out entire nations only occurs when no righteous man can be found, and after calls for repentance are ignored. I think the examples seen in the Bible point to individual responses to God, not collective ones.
Further, does God reward individual behavior in this life? I don't mean to say there are not consequences in our lives for decisions we make, but whether the picture of a “carrot on a stick” with regard to our pursuit of holiness is a valid model for Christian behavior? Certainly, it's a popular notion within the Health/Wealth Gospel, but I don't follow that philosophy. The common expression "God bless you" is assumed to mean "may God benefit you in some materialistic, healthy, and/or spiritual way" seems to reinforce this picture of God rewarding the faithful.
Separating God's grace from our feeble attempts at living holy lives seems to be side stepped a little in the topic of applying the golden rule. ;)
Thanks for your time and effort at keeping your blog filled with interesting topics. May your Christmas be merry, and your New Year happy!
Don
Don! Merry Christmas to you too!
Does or will God judge nations in addition to individuals?
My guess would a qualified "yes". Forgive me if my answer is a bit extensive.
First, as you say, God is depicted as talking about "judging the nations" in the Old Testament.
For example, at the time of the Exodus, God is depicted as being angry at the nations in the region of what is now Israel for doing wicked things (such as burning their children alive as sacrifices to idols). So God wipes them out, and warns the Jews that he'll judge them the in the same way if they do the same things.
But I'll point out that this doesn't mean that God is angry at every individual within the nation: and is judging them personally. Imagine a child perishes because of a war or famine brought about by a nation's misbehavior. Is God angry at that child? No, not necessarily: the individual's judgment and disposition with God might be entirely different from their nation's.
By analogy, there were good people in Germany who hated what Hitler was doing, and who would not cooperate with him. Some hid Jews, etc. (There was even a German evangelical general who secretly undermined Hitler's war effort.) During the war, there were terrible things happening in Germany, times of terrible suffering, and more afterwards. Even the good objectors would have suffered (and many died) during those times.
If we imagine the decimation of Germany cities was a "judgment" from God (I'm not claiming to know, but just imagine for a moment it was), then we certainly wouldn't also say he hated every German or would have punished them in the afterlife. His judgment upon the nation is one thing, his judgment upon the individual is another.
Germany certainly sinned collectively -- wouldn't you agree? So it would also seem (continuing with our assumption for argument's sake) that they would also have been judged collectively. (And in fact, some of the righteous suffered even more, like Corrie Ten Boom's sister Bessie who died in the concentration camps.)
The second thing I'd point out that God seems to wait quite a long while before doling out many of these more cataclysmic "judgments". For example, God waited for many generations for the nations in the region of Israel to become evil enough to drive out. For many generations they lived in relative prosperity and ease in a rather luxurious land.
Likewise, God waits many, many generations before finally hauling the Jews out of Israel into Babylon (under Nebuchadnezzar) to cure them of their idolatry. And a few more before punishing the Babylonians for going too far in that affair.
We're only told of the Jews (with whom God was working) having somewhat shorter cycles, where a famine or invasion would represent God's judgment, which would lead them to turn to him again and then solve the problem in a short-term time frame.
On many levels, I read the the Old Testament as being a spiritual metaphor for how God operates now. When God made a covenant with the Jews, it was for physical prosperity, not eternal life. If they'd remember to do X, Y, and Z, he promised them their crops would grow and their neighbors wouldn't dominate them. When they did the wrong thing, they'd be physically cast away (as an entire nation) from his presence and their intended home.
So what was true of the physical is now true of the spiritual. When we obey, we do spiritually well and are rewarded in heaven, not on earth. If we never repent of our sins, we will be spiritually cast away from His presence, and our intended eternal home with Him. Where he once judged or led his people externally, as a nation, he can now lead us internally as individuals. Where once his people traveled to a visible temple building, now we can worship him everywhere. (John 4:21)
So after that wind-up, it probably sounds like I think God doesn't and won't judge the nations anymore. No, I just think both levels now apply. Nations and individual people are both judged, but differently. There are all sorts of bits in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Joel about the nations being judged, prophecies which haven't, to the best of my knowledge, been fulfilled yet.
Likewise, God is angry at the city/state (same thing back then) "Babylon" in the Revelation to John, and is asking his people to leave her so they won't share her sins or the punishment which will come down on her -- but "she" was doing fine for a fairly long time. ("In her heart she boasts, 'I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.'" She surely had some reason for that optimism.) So there's another future judgment of some nation or people-group. (Their crime, by the way, was slaughtering people who followed God -- so this wasn't some minor mistake on their part.)
And if you do a word search on "judge" and "nation", you'll see many prophecies of God acting as a sort of arbiter of international policy, helping the nations straighten out their disputes in some far(?)-future messianic era.
So the gist is this: I think God still does and will judge nations, but I don't buy into the Pat-Robertson-y sort of interpretation, where God punishes this or that city with some relatively minor disaster (where only a few old and otherwise average people die) because of some recent gay-rights convention or something.
(And even if God does still enact some of these smaller-scale kinds of judgments, I still don't buy that PR has any special insight into them, given his dismal track record. But one would think such a prophecy would be more useful in advance, when there was still time to repent, not after the fact, eh?)
It seems God's usual M.O. (modus operandi -- way of operating) for the major judgments is to wait for things to get really bad before he steps in. He lets us fully convict ourselves of our own awfulness before he steps in and sets things right, so there's no question about our badness and his goodness.
Here's why I bring this up; it is clear that many 'Christian traditions' of our nation are slipping away from us, but will the result be that God withholds future blessings?
I hate to say it, but I presently suspect the answer is far worse than you're thinking.
My current personal pet theory -- for which I claim no (zero, zip, nada, buyer beware!) special revelation -- is that we'll eventually get so bad that we'll basically be wiped out as a major world power. Not right away, though (I'm not talking 10 years here) -- perhaps kids or grandkids. I'd love to be wrong about that, of course, being quite patriotic.
Not yet: as I said, God lets things go. And who knows, perhaps we'll turn around and things will be fine for another hundred years or so. But it's not looking like it, given certain social, spiritual and technological trends.
And hey, maybe I'm totally wrong. As I said, it's just theory, so this is nothing more than some amusing speculation on my part at this point. (But the eerie thing is that I've held this model for 15 years or so, and it seems to be holding up and filling out a little too well for my comfort.)
We're doing great today because we're living in the afterglow of many moral acts and technological boons brought by our forebears. But freedom can't be maintained indefinitely in the absence of the idea of a God -- without whom words like "good" and "alienable rights" cannot continue to be honored by the masses.
Further, does God reward individual behavior in this life?
Yes, absolutely. And no, not at all.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Yes, in the sense that if we follow him faithfully, there are certain physical results we have been promised -- including being lied about, equated with the devil (Matt 10:25), being hated (10:22), having close relatives turn against us (10:35), etc.
People who think in terms of money as being the main reward don't really understand the gospel yet. Money (or, sometimes, its absence) is more of a test. God isn't quite that shallow: he has immeasurable wealth; what he wants is hearts, not people obsessed with driving a BMW. So we agree here.
I *DO* believe that God wants "prosperity" for each believer. But how many miserable and/or shall rich and/or famous people can you name? If we think of "prosperity", beyond a certain minimal level, as mostly being fancier stuff, we're missing the entire boat.
Again, God initially needed the Jews to understand these truths physically, so he gave them a bunch of verses about how to behave in return for visible, physical rewards. That was how we, as the world, started to understand these principles. Those were training wheels.
(And you'll hear the prosperity-gospel sorts quote the training wheel verses, not understanding their point, or that they were meant for God's VISIBLE nation, not his invisible one.)
But Jesus's whole ministerial focus was to move our eyes and hearts off those more shallow rewards and refocus them on the bigger stuff in eternity, in heaven. It isn't so much that those who want wealth are wrong in their motives, it's that their wrong in their valuations. They're settling much too cheaply.
Imagine a bunch of kids were playing with colorful magazine cut-outs and fifty and hundred dollar bills. They kids are ignoring the bills because they're mostly just green, whereas the clippings are all kinds of different colors with prettier-looking people on them. An adult would be aghast: "They don't understand how valuable those little green rectangles are!"
Well, it's a bit like that, only the funny-money is the stuff we're passing around. It's worth something, true, but only if we use it right. It's not an end to itself, and there are a lot of sacrifices (like the widow who gave up just two copper coins -- her last two) which don't look big in our eyes, but are huge in God's eyes.
So our problem is that we don't think enough about these things in the economic terms of heaven.
Jesus never said: "Aw shucks, don't care about your personal best interest." What he said was to invest in a way that only God could repay. When we buy a luxury car, we reward ourselves. (In fact, that's what the TV ads tell us: how much we "deserve" it.) But when we forgo the luxury car, and buy something a bit more economical, and plow the difference secretly into helping a poor person, only God knows. And Jesus taught that God will reward such things. (And, boy, oh boy, does God give good interest rates!)
I *do* think there are some who are supposed to start businesses and do well (and good!) with them. I've met a number of such people. And you can't take Jesus's words about giving up wealth, or investing in people seriously outside a context where people are working in some way, and have some potential "treasure" (e.g. income) to put one place or another. And I don't think God wants us to do a bad job, or end up putting a ton of effort to things which don't "prosper" in some way. (Though "prosper" could just involve helping one co-worker find God, for example.)
But that's a far cry from the "magic" formulas many of the Health-Wealth teach, which reduce God to a genie in a bottle whose prime concern is our shallow greed and physical vanity.
And "No, not at all" in the sense that God still makes the rain fall on the good and bad, and the sun shine on both as well. The parable of the wheat and weeds (Matt 13) is that both and good grow together, seemingly identically, until the "harvest time" when they get separated out.
But I do believe there are exceptions -- where justice is done in specific cases. (I've seen quite a few.) But overall, this is a pretty unjust place, and good people are cut down too early in life (often by evil, evil people), while mean old geezers die in their sleep in their Park Avenue penthouses or Havana mansions with their trophy wives or mistresses next to them in bed, amidst their accumulated opulence. (Which will do them no good five minutes after their soul has left their body.)
The common expression "God bless you" is assumed to mean "may God benefit you in some materialistic, healthy, and/or spiritual way" seems to reinforce this picture of God rewarding the faithful.
Is it?
I tend to say or think it out of an overflow of well-wishes for the person in question. If they don't know God, I wish dearly for them they would. (And if I could know in advance they wouldn't be interested, I'd want God to do something nice for them anyway.) If they do, I picture them being happy and contented, with love and no fear.
Imagine somebody walked up to you on the street and handed you a ten dollar bill, out of no-where, and said: "God bless you!" How happy would you be compared with the way you feel when you cash your much-larger paycheck? My guess would be that the smaller gift would actually leave you with a longer-term "warm fuzzy" feeling. That -- that feeling r kind of experience -- is what I tend to think of when I use the phrase.
Perhaps others mean something else.
God bless you. ;-)
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Now, why would you say you're lack-luster? You seem to help flavor the earth even through your blog.*
However, your point about atheistic and relativistic arguments is quite right.
What I truly appreciated, however is your critique of Huckabee's quote, which is what many people miss in the discussion of intervention and sovereignty. If we start treating non-representative, or better, yet tyrannical governments as sovereign, doesn't it also help remove the legitimacy of our own government. It's existence as the 'mandate of the people' no longer becomes important, but what is more important is preserving it's 'sovereign' nature intact. (i.e. Government exists for governments sake, not the peoples.)
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* Humorous footnote: I just about wrote "salt the earth" in thinking about Jesus' term...
Posted by: Michael Zappe on December 19, 2007 06:44 PM