Trite but True

It stands to reason that the intellect of youth and the intellect of age are different. The human brain is an organ of the body that, like the arms, lungs, and legs, is stronger in one’s younger years. It is funny and sad at the same time to see a 45 or 50-year-old man trying to play basketball full court with the younger guys. And although the current world chess champion, Viswanathan Anand, is 40 years old, he, too, is considered past his prime. The highest rated chess player in the world, based on tournament results, is Magnus Carlsen, and Magnus is only 19. A professional chess player in his forties is much like a professional baseball player or a professional golfer in his forties: He may still play very well on a given day, but his overall performance is slowly in decline.

Are we surprised that many if not most of the world-changing discoveries in science and mathematics were made by young people? Einstein was 26 when he published his paper on the special theory of relativity. Isaac Newton was 22 when his discovery of the generalized binomial theorem led to the creation of calculus. In poetry, the same often holds true. John Keats composed his “Ode to a Grecian Urn” and “Ode to Autumn” before turning 24. Arthur Rimbaud wrote “Le Bateau ivre” at 17. Jesus, another great poet, died at 33. I sometimes wonder what his thinking would have been had he lived another 33 years.

José Raúl Capablanca, the world champion of chess in the second and third decades of the twentieth century, wrote an interesting description of himself for The New York Times in 1927 (when he was soon to be 39 years old). He compares himself as an older player to himself as a young challenger in 1911. Using the royal “we,” he writes: “At San Sebastian in 1911, our first international encounter, we did not have much confidence of carrying the chief prize, but we had plenty of ambition . . . . Today we have plenty of confidence . . . but most of our ambition is gone. Then we were practically ignorant of our opponents’ qualities, but we had a tremendous capacity for work. Today we know our opponents thoroughly, but alas! our capacity for work is not the same. Then we were very nervous and upset. Today we are cool and collected and nothing short of an earthquake can ruffle us. We have more experience but less power.” Capablanca lost his title that year to a younger man and never regained it.

Most of us older folk can relate to what Capablanca said about himself. His analysis becomes only more germane as one moves into the forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies. We perceive that the raw intelligence of youth (the power) has been replaced by the crystallized intelligence of age (the experience). What are the characteristics of crystallized intelligence and how is it, in some ways perhaps, complementary to the raw intelligence of youth?

I believe crystallized intelligence presents at least three qualities: self-knowledge, perspective, and clarity.

• Self-knowledge: The older we become, the more self-aware we generally become. We come to know who we really are, what our strengths and weaknesses truly are. We are less likely to deceive ourselves with flights of fancy. As we grow older, we become more curious about our grandparents, our parents, and the family tree in general. The senior intellect is more retrospective, more interested in making sense of the life it has lived and the self it has experienced.

• Perspective: Cumulative thought and experience teaches us that intelligence and wisdom often do not cohabitate. The older mind tends to be more realistic and wary. It has learned that beauty and character do not always inhabit the same package, that de-accumulation may triumph over accumulation, and that many things represent a waste of both time and money. As the poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) once wrote:

When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange--my youth.

• Clarity: The term “crystallized” suggests hard yet clear. The older mind, while not as agile or quick, has a sharper sense of what it knows and doesn’t know. It may not be as powerful, but it is more settled. It often prefers non-fiction to fiction, and finds that passages of text (in, say, the Bible or the Declaration of Independence or a novel) deemed obscure in youth take on new meaning with age. Stendhal famously said that one could not fully appreciate his novel, La Chartreuse de Parme, until one had passed 40.

The reason baseball managers, basketball coaches, and head football coaches are rarely in their thirties is because the coach, while no longer able to perform spectacularly the sport he coaches, has nevertheless the insight, perspective, and perspicuity to tell young players how best to achieve excellence in the sport. In that sense, age can say, “Do as I say, even if I personally cannot do it myself.” No doubt, some young players resent this, but in time, as we know, they will come to appreciate its validity.

Crystallized should not imply fossilized. Older minds, to be sure, must keep on taking in information, keep on processing experience, and keep on refining ideas. The old and the young must work in tandem for society to be at its best. A church, for example, without at least three generations among its membership, remains incomplete and lacking. “Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait” (If youth but knew, if age but could) is a French proverb that still holds true. In short, age with its perspective and clarity can be of great service to youth with its power and acuity.

1. Use emotionally-charged words.

Example: Barack Obama is an ultra-liberal who is leading the country toward socialism.

Remedy: Translate the other person’s speech into emotionally neutral words before considering the soundness of the argument itself.

2. Label an opponent in an attempt to discredit him or her. This is also known as “poisoning the well.”

Example: Barack Hussein Obama is nothing but a closet Muslim.

Remedy: Point out that discrediting an opponent is not a valid form of argument because it merely distracts attention from the real issue or issues under discussion.

3. Make statements in which “all” is stated or implied but “some” is true.

Example: Democrats are for bigger and bigger government.

Remedy: Put the word “all” into your opponent’s statement and show it is false. All Democrats are not in favor of bigger government.

4. Prove one’s point by selected instances.

Example: Barack Obama is an extremist because he attended a church whose preacher made outrageous statements.

Remedy: Point out the fact that one instance taken out of context does not offer conclusive proof.

5. Extend an opponent’s proposition by contradiction or by misrepresentation of it.

Example: You Democrats think you can cure every social ill by throwing money at it.

Remedy: Restate the more moderate position that you are defending.

6. Defend one’s position by the use of a formulaic phrase that sounds true but is not.

Example: "Well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire." "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."

Remedy: Analyze the formulaic phrase and demonstrate its unsoundness or irrelevance.

7. Divert the conversation to another question, a side issue, or make some irrelevant (yet often controversial) objection. This fallacy is often called a “red herring.”

Example: That’s the kind of argument Communists used to make, and look where it got them.

Remedy: Refuse to be diverted from the real issue. Restate the real question under discussion.

8. Prove something with a logically invalid argument, such as the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Example: Barack Obama gets elected and the stock market tanks. That shows he is bad news for American business.

Remedy: Ask the opponent to explain more clearly the connection between the statement and the proof. Might there be another reason the stock market went down?

9. Recommend a position because it is the mean between two extremes.

Example: John McCain is the best candidate because he is neither as liberal as Barack Obama nor as conservative as George W. Bush.

Remedy: Deny the usefulness of compromise as a method for discovering the truth. All candidates can be shown to be the mean between two extremes of one kind or another.

10. Use a syllogism with an undistributed middle term, often in the form of guilt by association.

Example: All liberals are citizens. All Democrats are citizens. Therefore, all Democrats are liberals.

Remedy: Make a diagram to show that the argument is unsound because the middle term (common to both the major and minor premise) is not universal, that is, not all citizens are either liberals or Democrats.

11. “Beg the question” by proposing a conclusion based on a premise that has not been proved. “Begging the question” is assuming the truth of something yet to be proven.

Example: Republicans must be smarter than Democrats because they have more money.

Remedy: Show that this begs the question by assuming that intelligence is directly related to the size of one’s bank account. Try to focus in on what the fundamental question is.

12. Argue in a circle (aka using "circular reasoning").

Example: If you want to help small business, vote Republican. Republicans are the party that supports business. Therefore, you must vote Republican candidates in order to support small business.

Remedy: Arguing in a circle is a longer form of begging the question, involving more than one step. Show that the point in question, in this case, that Republicans are the only pro-business party, has been assumed but not proven. Consequently, the conclusion is not necessarily valid.

13. Suggest something is true merely by repeatedly affirming it.

Example: Democrats are tax and spend liberals who have no respect for fiscal responsibility.

Remedy: Point out that just saying something repeatedly, loudly, or even eloquently doesn’t necessarily make it so.

14. Appeal to some admired or famous person as if he or she were an authority on the question when that really is not the case.

Example: Chuck Norris endorsed Mike Huckabee for president.

Remedy: Show that it is an appeal to an unsuitable authority, someone who is implied to be an authority on the question but who, in reality, is not.

15. Attempt to sound authoritative by using technical jargon (or sometimes pseudo-technical).

Example: Your account is safe on this website. It is protected by end-to-end 128 bit encryption.

Remedy: Modestly ask the speaker to explain in plain English what the jargon means. Explore the argument for flaws. For example, risks to Internet security are not limited to the lines of communication.

16. Use leading questions to draw out damaging admissions.

Example: When did you stop beating your wife?

Remedy: Refuse to be trapped by leading questions whose very wording assumes a mistake or fault.

17. Appeal to a “recognized” authority.

Example: Warren Buffett endorsed Barack Obama.

Remedy: Consider whether the person reputed to have authority had a sound reason for making the assertion attributed to him.

18. State a doubtful proposition in such a way that it fits with the thought habits or the prejudices of the hearer.

Example: A person with a name like “Barack Hussein Obama” ought to be the president of Kenya rather than the president of the United States.

Remedy: Show that the proposition is irrelevant to the real subject under discussion.

19. Suggest false alternatives.

Example: In his heart of hearts, is Barack Obama really a socialist or a capitalist?

Remedy: Show that the choice is not either/or.

20. Attempt to discredit an opponent by ridicule.

Example: If Barack Obama can’t even bowl decently, how can he lead the free world?

Remedy: Show there is no connection between the two statements that supposedly relate to each other.

21. Argue that something is true because it has not been proven false or false because it has yet to be proven true. This is making an appeal to ignorance.

Example: The State of Hawaii will not send me a copy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Therefore, Obama does not have an American birth certificate and is not qualified to be president.

Remedy: Show that just because someone has not personally seen an object does not mean it doesn’t exist. Explore what would be adequate proof of a proposition’s truth or falsehood.

22. Play upon the ambiguity of a word (or someone’s ignorance of its true meaning) to make an argument appear sound when it actually is not.

Example: Barack Obama is in favor of legitimizing the marriage of homosexuals because he is himself a homo sapiens.

Remedy: Document the true meaning of the word (such as “homo sapiens”) and show that it has nothing to do with the matter in question.

23. Create a “straw man” by offering a weak or ridiculous analogy to your opponent’s argument and then refuting it, thereby “refuting” your opponent’s argument as well.

Example: Socialized medicine often leads to rationing heath care, and rationing heath care will ultimately result in death panels that decide who should live and who should die. We don’t want a system that encourages the formation of death panels.

Remedy: Show that the “straw man” (here the “death-panel” system of health care) is a ridiculous misrepresentation of the matter under consideration. No one is proposing a plan that would allow the formation of death panels. The “death-panel” model is a straw man that is easy to dismiss, but it is not relevant to the argument because it is not the model being proposed.

This list was inspired by Robert H. Thouless, How to Think Straight: The Technique of Applying Logic Instead of Emotion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944): 171-179. Obviously, the examples are modern and may not be the best. If you know of unfair arguments I have overlooked or if you can come up with sharper examples, please comment.

What characteristic most distinguishes Christianity from other world religions? Someone has suggested it is “grace”—the idea that one is saved solely by the unmerited sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross and not by any form of human merit or action.

Now “salvation” is largely a Judeo-Christian term, but the basic concept of getting right with God and being rewarded with eternal bliss has its counterparts in other religions as well. Muslims yearn for paradise; Buddhists seek enlightenment; Hindus desire to merge with the Absolute Soul and escape from the cycle of reincarnation.

The question, of course, is how does one attain ultimate bliss either before or after death? Is it a free gift with no strings attached or is it earned in some form or fashion? Most religions maintain you have to do something, even if, as some Christians say, it is as basic as just believing in Jesus as the Messiah and trusting in his atoning sacrifice.

Hindus have to seek the knowledge that helps overcome bad karma with good karma. Buddhists must look within themselves to conquer desire and acquire a true perception of reality. Muslims must uphold, insofar as possible, the five pillars of Islam to please Allah. Jews must attain the holiness of character and action that God requires. But in every religion, at least to some extent, it is the benevolent nature of deity or reality that allows such a path to bliss even to exist.

So, in the broadest sense, all religions have some notion of a universal benevolence one might term grace. But in the narrower sense, most religions teach that blissful outcomes are the result of human efforts rather than of a purely divine initiative. Christianity teaches that salvation is a divine gift whose only attached string is that the gift must be accepted.

Legalism is, in a way, the Christian counterpart to the teaching of most world religions that human action and initiative is essential. Legalism, like grace, has both a broad and narrow sense. Broadly speaking, it is the idea that one can please God only by adhering scrupulously to a law or a code of conduct. Narrowly speaking, legalism is the process of thinking like a lawyer and trying to define precisely every word and intent of that law code.

To give one simple example, a Christian legalist would see the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:32 to constitute a Christian law about divorce: “Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Defining the meaning of each word in this law would then be necessary in order to obey the law perfectly. The paramount question becomes, “Is there a legal loophole that might justify divorce and remarriage for a good Christian?” If not, is there any way around this law of divorce—say, a generous policy regarding annulments?

The foundation of legalism is the belief that salvation depends on keeping the law, a human activity. The forgiveness found in Jesus (or, for Jews, in connection with Yom Kippur) goes only so far. If you continue to break the law of God, the sacrifice of Jesus will eventually lose its efficacy and forgiveness leading to salvation will become impossible. As Hebrews 10:26 says, “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.”

The tension between grace and legalism is strong in Christianity. Even Paul recognized it in the first century (Romans 6:1-4) by alluding to those who thought that grace (free pardon in Christ) might be a license to sin all the more. This tension is usually resolved by saying that good behavior is a grateful response to grace, not a way of earning salvation. As Thomas Erskine said, "Religion is grace; ethics is gratitude."

But this does not solve the tipping point issue: At what point does repeated bad behavior nullify grace? Even more to the point, exactly what kind of bad behavior will bring about a Christian’s damnation? Some Christians say, “Once saved by grace, always saved by grace.” Others are not so sure. They think the Bible teaches there are many things you can do to lose your salvation (e.g., Hebrews 3:12; 6:4-6; 1 Timothy 4:1-3; 1 Corinthians 9:27).

A more subtle form of legalism is patternism. Patternism is the assumption that there is in the New Testament a detailed blueprint for the conduct of Christianity. Patternism becomes a variant of legalism when the perceived blueprint becomes a law in and of itself, and lawyers must argue over every detail of the pattern.

For example, in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, the writer lists the qualities one should look for in bishops (overseers) and deacons (servants) of the church. In 1 Timothy 3:1, Paul says an overseer should be “the husband of one wife.” According to patternism, this quality is a qualification that must be carefully defined. Obviously, the qualification requires an overseer to be married. But does it mean an overseer can never have been divorced (one and only one wife)? Does it mean an overseer cannot be a widower (one living wife)? Does it mean an overseer can never remarry if his first wife dies (one wife forever)?

Patternism taken to the extreme sees most everything mentioned in the New Testament (or even not mentioned) as a potential law whose infraction might send a person to hell. According to this thinking, divorcing a mate for any reason other than proven adultery is a grievous sin. But so is having a church kitchen, since kitchens are not mentioned in the New Testament. So is having multiple communion cups, since scripture says Jesus took “the cup.”

The list of prohibited things can be quite long, and one violation is just as damning as the next since God expects complete obedience. The lawyers of the church must constantly argue over what is binding and not binding, which practices unmentioned in the New Testament are mere aids to legal activities and which are illegal additions to the scriptural pattern.

For centuries, Christians have had to navigate between the extremes of legalism and license. Legalism often casts doubt on the hope of salvation because you never know if have lived just right. Patternism adds to the number of “laws” that must be followed and leads to even more bickering and division over how those laws must be obeyed. License, ironically, is just an egocentric form of legalistic thinking. License says, “If there is no law preventing it, I can do whatever I want.” The focus is still on outward constraint or absence of constraint rather than upon an inward directive to find and do what is truly right.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!” Despite how human beings distort it, religion is ultimately about magnanimity rather than pettiness. In Hinduism and Buddhism, everyone is eventually saved, thanks to the fact that reincarnation gives you a billion or more tries to get it right. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam give you only one lifetime, but they assure you God really wants you to be saved—if you will only give Him a little cooperation.

In his book, The Soul of Christianity (2005: xvi), Houston Smith writes that Christians “don’t even bother to ask if life is meaningful. They take for granted that it is.” It occurs to me that the meaningfulness of life is only one of many presuppositions that inform the biblical text. Human civilization was already thousands of years old when the Bible was written, and the Bible’s presuppositions reflect the accumulated wisdom of these millennia of human experience.

Of course, something presumed usually remains unstated since it is thought to be commonly known and agreed upon. The policy that “things that go without saying go even better with saying” is often neglected both in the Bible and today. As a result, modern readers unaware of biblical presuppositions sometimes misunderstand the Bible because they think its silence on a certain matters means that its writers hadn’t considered the question seriously, or that they were indifferent to the issue, or that they were non-prescriptive, thereby leaving posterity the freedom to do as it wished because “the authority of the Bible does not address this subject.”

A signal example of this tendency appeared in an article by Lisa Miller in Newsweek magazine (December 15, 2008: 28) where she writes, “While the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman.” We might think her implication is that since the Bible does not explicitly define marriage, we moderns have its blessing to define marriage as we wish. But it is perhaps more accurate to say she is implying that religious people who accept the Bible as a rule-book for life have no authoritative grounds on which to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Lisa Miller’s article either willfully or unwittingly misses the point that the Bible presumes adherence to an ancient code by which sexual relationships were carefully delineated (cf. Leviticus 18). The common-sense definition of marriage as between a man and a woman is assumed as self-evident in the Bible, and only sexual aberrations are discussed at any length. Miller tacitly concedes as much when she goes on to say, “The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it’s impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours” (30), which is to say, “Even if the Bible did define marriage explicitly, it wouldn’t make any difference to me. I’m just messing with you.”

Here are a few other biblical presuppositions that I find interesting and important:

1. Comprehensibility: The Bible assumes people can understand what is written in its pages. It does not see itself as a book of riddles or as hopelessly inconsistent and confusing or as impossible to understand except by the most thoroughly educated. The Bible is addressed to the common man.

2. Mental Health: The Bible presumes its readers are mentally healthy. This is what validates the golden rule, for example. “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12) makes sense only if people in general are not sadomasochistic. It presumes you are mentally healthy, want the best for yourself, and therefore know what would be a good way to treat others.

3. Common Sense: In addition to presuming that marriage is between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation, pleasure, and intimacy (and sometimes for economic or political reasons), the Bible does not specifically condemn abortion because it assumes that abortion is an absurd notion. In the ancient world, children constituted your family’s workforce and your social security insurance, not to mention your posterity. It was only logical to have as many children as you could feed.

4. Human Decency: The Bible believes (without ever saying it) that people can recognize human decency when they see it. It also assumes that leaders have a God-given obligation to be decent to those whom they lead because leaders on earth, to a certain degree, stand in the place of God and play God with the lives of others.

5. The Possibility of Transformation: The Bible assumes that people can change permanently for the better. Paul, after giving a laundry list of bad guys, tells the Corinthian Christians this: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). The endless exhortations found throughout the Bible presume people can actually change if they so desire.

I find that many of these biblical assumptions constitute the bedrock of what we call Western (and American) Civilization. If you assume the world is incomprehensible, you have no motivation to do science and discover how it works. If you assume people are psychologically unreliable, you cannot form community. If you assume people are inclined to act wickedly, there is no expectation of altruism or mutual aid. If you think people cannot change and that they are fated to remain whatever they are, you have no encouragement for making the world better. Finally, if you do not believe in God, there is no reason to believe life is ultimately meaningful.

Thousands of years of human experience tell us that certain positive presuppositions have fueled human progress—and they basically have been passed down to us in the Bible.

The portrait the New Testament paints of Jesus is complex, even paradoxical at times. Jesus in the four gospels can be both harsh and gentle, this-worldly and other-worldly, plain-spoken and cryptic, practical and idealistic, all-embracing and exclusivist.

What is interesting about this portrait is that the contradictory elements of Jesus’ ministry and teaching can be handled in various ways: 1) They can be accepted and reconciled, as Christianity traditionally has done; 2) They can be questioned and deconstructed, as many speculative critics have done, and 3) They can be selectively highlighted or ignored, as commentators with a particular agenda have done. In short, the outwardly simple yet actually complicated portrait of Jesus in the New Testament is quite evocative and lends itself to multiple interpretations by a host of theological spin doctors.

It seems to me that Jesus has basically four faces in the New Testament: Jesus as Humanitarian, Jesus as Savior, Jesus as Lord, and Jesus as Judge. Gentle Jesus falls into the first two categories whereas as tough Jesus characterizes the last two. The emphasis you choose to put on the various categories will determine not only your attitude toward Jesus but your view of Christianity’s ultimate meaning as well.

Jesus as Humanitarian

In Acts 10:38, Peter is credited with summarizing Jesus’ ministry as follows: “He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” This is Jesus the do-gooder—a person who feeds the hungry, heals the sick, causes the blind to see, and even raises the dead.

This Jesus is a humanitarian not only because of his good deeds but because of his irenic spirit. He counsels us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to forgive others endlessly. This Jesus cares about the poor and downtrodden. He is kind and compassionate. He calls for deep introspection and says that mercy should triumph over justice by reason of the fact that all of us have failings. “Let him who is without sin . . . be the first to throw a stone” (John 8:7). He challenges us to do unto others as we would do unto him (Matthew 25:31-46).

This is the sweet Jesus who can say, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

Among those who favor Jesus the Humanitarian are Thomas Jefferson, Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and, more recently, John Howard Yoder.

Jesus as Savior

Jesus describes his own ministry as “to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10). He said this to and about Zacchaeus, a wealthy man, so he was clearly referring to the spiritually lost rather than the socio-economically lost. Matthew 9:11-13 refers to “tax collectors and sinners” as the people Jesus came to heal of their spiritual infirmities.

A humanitarian might spin this by saying that Jesus is only figuratively “saving” those who exploit the poor by convicting them of their greed and inhumanity, thereby putting them back on the humanitarian highway. But in the total context of the New Testament, something more seems to be at stake. The name “Jesus” means “God is salvation,” and the angel in Matthew’s gospel says to Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Likewise, Peter says in Acts 5:31, “God exalted [Jesus] as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” To forgive sins in the generic sense used here and elsewhere means far more than simply to prick someone’s conscience or call someone to a higher standard.

The apostle Paul, a contemporary of Jesus, gives the most eloquent descriptions of Jesus as Savior. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Or again, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). The other writers of the New Testament uniformly agree with Paul as well as with John the Baptizer who is reported to have said, upon first seeing Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

Saving people from their sins is a positive characteristic, even if it carries more religious and metaphysical baggage than pure altruism. But Jesus as Savior, although comforting, can be arbitrary. It is this Jesus who proclaims, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Among those who stress Jesus as Savior are Billy Graham, Pope Benedict XVI, and basically the entire Christian establishment.

Jesus as Lord

While you might admire Jesus as a model humanitarian or appreciate his self-sacrifice on behalf of your sins, it is quite another thing to make him your Lord and Master. Yet, tough Jesus demands first place in the lives of his followers. He says quite plainly, “”If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father or mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciples” (Luke 14:26). Shortly afterward, he continues, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).

The shocking force of these words has led to the distinction between clergy and laity in the Catholic Church. The priests, nuns, and monks who pledge to sacrifice their worldly possessions, ambitions, personal pride, and sexual relationships epitomize a commitment to make Jesus the sole ruler of their lives. The Catholic clergy basically is charged with modeling “literal” Christianity and bearing the load for the less-committed laity (although even the clergy is seldom required to renounce everything).

Of course, the New Testament does not make any clear distinction between clergy and laity. It calls all Christians to submit strictly to the teachings of Jesus. As Peter said at Pentecost, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). Paul says similarly, “For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Romans 14:9). In other words, Jesus is the Lord of every living Christian.

What exactly the lordship of Jesus means for the average Christian remains somewhat unclear. Traditionally, it means leading an increasingly holy and blameless life, making a concerted effort not to bring the name of Christ into disrepute. For missionaries, it means giving up the comforts of the United States for the sake of taking Jesus’ message to foreign lands. For Christian activists within and without the USA, it means making the personal sacrifices necessary to challenge the system and bring about a greater measure of justice in the world.

Among those who have emphasized Jesus as Lord are Saint Francis of Assisi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, and, more recently, Shane Claiborne (see Jesus for President, 2008).

Jesus as Judge

While Jesus is famous for saying “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matthew 7:1), he himself is commonly portrayed in the New Testament as the supreme judge of all humanity. Speaking of himself, Jesus says, “For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done” (Matthew 16:27).

This theme of Jesus presiding over the Day of Judgment appears often in the New Testament (Acts 10:42; 2 Timothy 4:1; 1 Peter 4:5). The apostle Paul says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Elsewhere, Paul’s language becomes even more vivid as he describes “the Lord Jesus. . . revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). Revelation 2:23 has Jesus saying, “I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve.”

Theoretically, those who accept Jesus as Savior and Lord have nothing to fear from Jesus as Judge. Nevertheless, the question of who will actually be among the saved and who among the damned remains an open (if commonly avoided in polite conversation) question. Tough Jesus is no fool. He knows who has been faithful to his teaching and who has not. And he will judge.

Among those who have presented Jesus as Judge are Jonathan Edwards, Ray Comfort, and many a street preacher.

So What?

The four faces of Jesus explain much of what passes for “Christian” behavior. Those who hold up Jesus as Judge are sometimes tempted to play the role of his executioner—all the while forgetting the admonitions of Jesus the Humanitarian to be humble peacemakers. Those who model Jesus the Humanitarian appear tempted to believe they can create heaven on earth. In my view, their reluctance to acknowledge the essential sinfulness of humanity and the impossibility of a perfect (or even semi-perfect) world makes their efforts quixotic. In the final analysis, people need a savior more than a social worker. People must change from the inside before they can hope to change their outward condition.

Those who play at religion without accepting Jesus as Lord tend to practice a domesticated Christianity whose significance hardly rises above that of the Kiwanis Club. Their un-Christ-like behavior leads to accusations of hypocrisy and ultimately gives Christianity a bad name. On the other hand, those who renounce everything to serve God and others are dismissed as radicals pushing a model impossible for everyone to follow. Even to accept Jesus just as Savior lays one open to the accusation of seeking “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by” without giving a hoot about what happens in the here and now.

So where does the golden Christian mean lie? Is it really feasible to be the kind of disciple Jesus called his followers to be? This tension between the demands of Jesus and the realities of living is what gives Jesus his eternal edginess and what makes him both appealing and enigmatic to generation after generation. In its youthful idealism, each generation thinks it can somehow solve the problem of how to bring peace on earth, goodwill to men.

When I was a teenager, I read the gospels carefully and wrestled with their implementation. I registered for the draft as a conscientious objector. I tried to live a simple, non-materialistic life. I agonized over whether it was wise to give panhandlers the change in my pocket since Jesus had said, “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42). I memorized the Sermon on the Mount. I tried to live a pure life and abstained from alcohol, drugs, pornography, and sex before marriage. I contemplated how, with my talents, I could best serve the cause of Christ.

Over the years, however, I have concluded that despite all I have tried to do or be, I am still a most unworthy servant who falls far short of the ideals Jesus set. I am still selfish, to a noticeable degree, with my time, money, and talents. I have yet to give it all away to others in need (see Matthew 19:21). I still get angry at those who do me or others wrong, even if I do not retaliate. I forgive only in part. I still invite my friends to dinner instead of lame, halt, and blind (see Luke 14:13-14). I do good, but I do it moderately. I am critical of the sins of others and wish they would be as responsible as I am (see Luke 18:9-14).

As an inveterate sinner in heart if not always in deed, I am aware of my need for the grace of God, the continual pardon of my sins and shortcomings. While I try not to abuse the grace of God, I feel completely lost without it (and often even with it because I fall so short of Jesus’ standards). As Christians, we walk a tightrope between self-righteousness and self-loathing. Ultimately, in despair of measuring up, we throw ourselves upon the mercy of God.

In an earlier post, I gave my philosophy of life. I still have no better answers for how to live. In my mind, I see the four faces of Jesus, some smiling at me in kindness, some sad with disapproval. The greatness of the Bible, in my opinion, is that it forces us all not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought but to think soberly “according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3).