Building a 'NISE' Society

The National Initiative for Service Excellence is a very noble idea. We can train people and expose them to the best motivational speakers on the planet. We can repeat a million and one customer-centric slogans, until we turn blue in the face. They will not be carried out though, until we learn to love our neighbour as ourselves. We cannot learn to love our neighbours, until we learn to love God. And, it is only in loving God that we will obey Him. The quest to build a ‘NISE’ society, begins with the relationship between man and God. We can spend tons of money on training and campaigns and still be subjected to poor service, simply because at the end of the day…we do not love our neighbours as ourselves. If we did, we would treat them accordingly. Think about this: If someone does not care one iota about obeying their Creator, who gives them life, what makes you think they will treat you any better? It is common sense really: No genuine respect for God, no genuine respect for fellow man.

The Greatest Sin

With all of the furore over issues of sexual morality, one would think this area is the one with the worst vices. However, most Christian teachers would tell you that the utmost evil, is Pride. Other vices comes from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But Pride does not come from our animal nature, it is purely spiritual and consequently far more subtle and deadly.

Pride is the chief cause of misery since the world began. It always means enmity: not only between man and man, but enmity to God. With God, you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. As long as your are proud you cannot know God. The proud are always looking down on things and people. As long as you are looking down, you cannot see that which is above you.

The Bible has much to say about pride, none of it good. For example take Proverbs 16:5, “Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.” Luckily, we have a test where Pride is concerned. You can have no greater confirmation of Pride, that to think that you are humble enough. Be careful, lest this spiritual cancer find its way into your heart.

Out of Context

Anyone can make the Bible say whatever they want it to say. We see this practice in debates and discussions all the time. Someone lifts a verse out of its context and makes it seem as though the Bible and God are anything but good and Holy. Whenever someone quotes you a Bible verse that seems contrary to the goodness of God or seems to contradict another part of the Bible, read the paragraph in its entirety, never read just the verse. Read what comes before the verse and what comes after it. The numbers in front of verses are some what illusory. They might lead you to think that the verses stand alone in their meaning. The numbers were added hundreds of years later and are not in the original manuscripts. So ignore the numbers, in order to get the big picture. This works because of one of the basic rules of communication. Meaning always flows from the top down, not the other way around. The key to the meaning of any Bible quotation comes from the paragraph, not just the individual words. You also have to consider: Who was speaking? Who was being addressed? What was the cultural and historical context within which the verse was given? What idea is being developed?

A Bible verse lifted from the Scriptures which does not convey the message of the text lacks Biblical authority even when the quote comes right out of the Bible. Only when you are properly informed by God's Word, in its context, can you be transformed by it.

On philosophy, reason and faith

Consider Tertullian’s rhetorical question, ‘What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?’. In other words, what does faith (Jerusalem of Jesus) has to do with reason (the Athens of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle). In contemporary western thought, belief in God is considered irrational and infantile, primarily for two reasons: lack of evidence and evidence contrary to God’s nature (usually stated as ‘What sort of God would allow...’). The roots of this objection can be traced to the Enlightenment period. During the Enlightenment, all beliefs were demanded to be subjected to the searching of criticism and reason. If a belief could not survive the scrutiny of reason, it was dismissed as irrational. As Kant put it, “Dare to use your reason.” This objection is not offered as a disproof of the existence of God, indeed one cannot disprove God, for God is Truth. It however argues that, even if God were to exist, it would not be reasonable to believe in God. According to such objections the rational belief in God hinges on the success of theistic arguments. This view is held by the majority of modern western thinkers. So you may ask: Why does this view require the support of evidence or argument?

This is because the evidentialist objection is rooted in a theory of knowledge known as Classical Foundationalism. Classical Foundationalists take a pyramid, or a house, as metaphors for their conception of knowledge or rationality. A secure house or pyramid must have secure foundations sufficient to carry the weight of the subsequent floors properly attached to that foundation. They argue that a belief in God is neither self-evident or evident to the senses. Therefore, such a belief is irrational. Very few philosophical positions, and this is a major understatement, enjoy the kind of evidential support that Classical Foundationalism demands of belief in God, yet most of these demands are treated as rational. This raises another question: Why is belief in God held to a higher evidential standard than other philosophical beliefs?

In a view called reformed epistemology, some modern thinkers have argued that belief in God does not require the support of evidence or argument in order for it to be rational. There is a limit to the things that human beings can prove. If we were required to prove everything there would be an infinite regress of provings. Belief in God is more like the belief in a person than the belief in a scientific hypothesis. If belief in God is more like belief in other persons than belief in atoms, then the trust that is appropriate to persons will be appropriate to God. Beliefs are therefore innocent until proven guilty, rather than guilty until proven innocent, as the classical foundationalists believe. This is an example of the Augustinian view of faith and reason: fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding.

The one place where term philosophy appears in the New Testament (Colossians 2:8), the best advice is given for all humanity, at all times: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” There is a philosophy which rightly exercises our reasoning faculties; a study of the works of God, which leads us to the knowledge of God, and confirms our faith in him. But there is a philosophy which is vain and deceitful; and while it pleases men’s fancies, hinders their faith. Unfortunately, western civilization is dominated by, and paying dearly for the domination of, the vain and deceitful kind.

Social Morality

There has been a lot of talk about morality recently. In the various discussions however, certain people only want to look at the part of morality dealing with relations between man and man. I’m sure we have all quoted, ‘Do unto others…’, at one time or the other. The other two parts of morality are often swept under the carpet and if they are introduced, the jeers begin. The other two parts of morality are the relations between the things inside each man and the relations between man and the power that made him. When issues involving the relations between man and the power that made him surface, the disagreements become more serious. Some people even make very silly statements implying that one should not drag religion into such discussions. The very attempt if you think about it, is absurd (but I do concede that such statements have great rhetorical force). The philosopher of science Michael Polanyi has shown that no truth is arrived at without the scientist assuming (or having faith) in a particular worldview. Knowledge about anything (including morality), is always held by someone as a commitment. So the faith component whether revealed implicitly or explicitly, is always present. There is no getting away from it. There is no such thing as discussing moral issues without ‘dragging religion into it’. Moral knowledge does not exist in a vacuum, it is held by people with commitments to one worldview or another. Those who preach separation of Church and State are indulging in fantasy. Be kind to these people and pray for them, but whatever you do, don’t take them seriously.