Is Christianity just another coping mechanism?

Psychologists study coping as the human response to stress. Stress can come in the form of discouragement, discomfort, depression, despair, disillusionment, dissatisfaction, or any other "D " word that represents disequilibrium.  



Studies show that the main three coping responses are fight, flight or tend. Some think males are more likely to fight or flight and females to tend or befriend.

More recent studies focus on emotion regulation, which is the process of dealing with negative emotions of in one of two ways. The most common and most destructive way to keep from acting on negative feelings of stress is to suppress the felt emotion. This in essence buries the emotion deep inside the person, only to emerge sometimes later in unsuspected forms of outburst or withdrawal. 

What psychologists have found that is the healthiest and most effective way to deal with situations causing stress is to reappraise. This involves thinking about the situation in different ways so that the negative felt emotion does not continue to occur. Some call this seeing a problem as an opportunity or the power of positive thinking.

Here's where my question comes in. As I listen to preaching and go to Bible studies, invariably the topic is dealing with the struggles of life. The Bible is quoted providing God's character and promises. These are true, but they seem to be presented more in light of reappraisal, or some human scheme to think differently about the situation. While this can be helpful, how does the world see Christianity as anything but another form of coping.

For instance, I have really appreciated the preaching I have been receiving recently at a new church we are attending. The pastor has been quite thorough and on target with his messages of the Gospel. Today he preached on the Beatitude, "blessed are the meek." This is a verse I was just thinking about as I blogged on Spot a day or so ago.

http://profoncall.blogspot.com/2016/02/understanding-how-we-are-bred.html

The pastor said the word "meek" is not about being "weak." To that I agree. He then says that meek really means "strength under control" and proceeds to explain the 3 ways we can control our thoughts to feel less discouraged about the situation we are in. I am thinking, "how is this different from the human practice of reappraisal?" He made me uneasy and seemed to feed right into my concern about this question, "Is Christianity just another coping mechanism?"

What did he miss? Why is Christianity not just another way to cope with stress? Here's why. The word "meek" does mean the strength of control, but whose control? The word was used in its original form to explain a domesticated animal or pet. It means having our thoughts and emotions completely under the control of the master. Spot is under Gail's control. He does not provide the capability and desire to control himself to meet her expectations. He is not doganly (instead of humanly)capable, rather he submits his will to her. This is what trained pets do. Spot submits his will, not reappraise his situations. He is totally sold out to Gail as his master. he thinks she is everything. Now occasionally his nature takes over and he disobeys Gail. I suspect that is what happens to us too.

However, the Christian life is one where our power comes from submission not vice versa. Plus, submission comes from adoration and thanksgiving, not duty and obligation. That is, what is different? This is what makes the life of a Christian full of joy, like Spot, regardless of the situation.  

While the difference in reappraisal and submission may seem subtle, it is profound and life changing. While repentance does mean reappraisal or change the mind. The change is that we are trusting our master, which reduces our stress, and not our own ability to handle our stress. I am sad the pastor failed to take the congregation across that bridge into glory. It was the right direction, just not far enough.

We need to always be ready to ponder the message of the Gospel and whether what we receive takes us across that bridge, beyond human endeavor ....     

Common Grace

"the rain falls on the just and the unjust." You may have heard this statement before and maybe even read it many times. BUT, have you really pondered it?

I have blogged recently about justice and how our culture has hijacked it's meaning and in doing so we have lost a very important ageless truth. Justice is the immutable law governing all of creation that we get what we deserve, and by deserve I mean in reference to what we have done. "We reap what we sow." However, our culture has redefined "deserve" to mean rights to benefits that society owes everyone, such as an education, food, and health care.

There are political and economic consequences to society that relate to this warped view of "deserve." This is very prevalent in our public discourse in this political season (which never ends btw). However, there is a much greater risk to missing the point of justice than our economics and public policy.

When we grasp that justice is an ageless truth and that we get what we deserve, what then do we do with those things we receive we don't deserve? This pic is of the stars and galaxies. We get to see them and wonder about them and we did nothing to have that privilege. What about the care we received as a small child? With some exceptions, most small children are given what they need by their parents just because they are the parents and love their children. the children did nothing to deserve it.

There are so many more examples of what is bestowed on us when we did nothing to get it, like the ocean and mountain views, rain for the crops, sunshine for a picnic, and so forth. How do we reconcile these gifts in a world where justice is required? By redefining justice for our own personal benefit, we miss the most amazing reality possible. We lose the awe and wonder of what is given to us, free and clear of any obligation.

The free gifts bestowed on everyone that has ever and will live without doing anything to deserve it is called common grace, unmerited favor. Without the true sense and awareness of being subjected to the laws of justice, we can never appreciate common grace.

When we cannot grasp the magnitude and awesomeness of common grace, we cannot receive the Saving Grace.

Now that's worth some pondering .....  

Understanding how we are bred

My wife is a dog person, I am not. BUT, i have watched her with Spot, her Jack Russell. Spot is a well trained dog. He doesn't jump on the furniture. He doesn't bark unnecessarily. He goes outside always to do his business. He is a smart dog that knows exactly what is expected of him.
Spot loves to go on walks. When the lease goes on, he is ready to go. He sniffs and pees, pees and sniffs, RELENTLESSLY. However, as long as he is on the lease, he always moves or stops on command.



We live in the mountains in a relatively quiet neighborhood, with woods and open spaces. Occasionally, my wife is feeling confident about Spot's behavior and she lets him off the lease. Most of the time Spot keeps just sniffing and wandering around like he loves to do. BUT, eventually Spot detects a moving critter. like a squirrel. Then he is off for the chase. My wife is screaming for him to stop but he relentlessly pursues the chase. 

 Spot was bred to chase. In most situations he behaves as he was trained to act. However, eventually he does what he was made to do. He loves to chase. Built into Spot is a natural identity (he has the nature of a Jack Russell dog) and a personal identity (he has his own personality).

Spot's social identity is that he is Gail's dog. He lives in a specific neighborhood with other dogs that are his friends. He has patterns of behavior at the dog park when all the community's dogs gather each afternoon to socialize.

Like Spot, we each have all three identities. We have our human nature and all that goes with it. We have a personal identity that makes us unique. AND, we have a social identity formed by our communities, such as family, work place, local and national cultures.

Like Spot, most often our social identity constrains our personal and natural identity. It works OK for us because it offers us many benefits when we conform to demands of our social settings. BUT, sometimes we must let go, be who we are and meant to be. We must "chase that which runs". Human behavior, choices we must make. Often we can control our choices, but sometimes our personal and natural identity takes over. Maybe that is not always a bad thing. 

Knowing how we are bred and being free enough to live it out may actually be a good thing. Sometimes it is not even a choice, but instinct.

Just something to ponder ....

Social Justice: the king of fraud

I know this title tests your resolve. You are now saying, "what is this crazy man talking about now?" How can Social Justice be the king of fraud? Everyone is in favor of Social Justice. It's the king of virtue,not fraud. I must be as "politically incorrect" as one can be. So bear with me and let me make my case. BTW, I am not the only one who has reached this conclusion.

Here's the summary point:
Social justice divides people, not unify them. Social justice produces a contest for who's the judge.

Let me focus this blog on what is social justice? what is fraud? and why is social justice a fraud perpetuated on society? First of all, fraud is easy to discuss. Fraud is basically a legal term used to refer to intentional deception for personal gain. I do not advocate that every proponent of social justice is intentionally defrauding others. Yet, if you participate in  a ponzi scheme, you are in some way guilty of fraud, although you are unknowingly perpetuating the fraud.

Social Justice is a much more complex topic. I have blogged about justice before, but it has been quite a few years.

 If you google "social justice", you'll get something like this from the premier authority, Wikipedia: "Social justice is the fair and just relation between the individual and society." As usual, this definition is problematic. Justice is technically not fairness, but a special form of fairness. Justice and Fairness are not isomorphic (excuse me, isomorphic means "exactly the same or identical in every way"). Justice is an obsession of human nature.

Justice is a scale, the balance between what people receive relative to what they do. Justice usually refers to getting what one deserves, either a reward for good or punishment for bad. However, the judgment of what is just is highly subjective.

There are other forms of fairness besides justice. One is equality, one is need and one is generosity. When everyone gets the same or when everyone gets what they need or when someone gives from their own abundance, then we often say that "this is fair." Since people choose among the the various forms of fairness to determine if something is "right" (another word for fair"), then fairness is subjective in many ways.

So far, we have seen that fairness is complex and subjective and justice is technically just one form of fairness. What is it that society wants when it advocates "social justice"?  First, the notion of social justice is relatively new throughout all of history. It was ushered in by the Renaissance and Reformation some 500 years ago. Social justice is simply code for human rights.

The current cultural notion of justice abandons the single idea of reciprocity (we get what we deserve) and rewrites the notion of "deserve" from one's performance to include equality, needs, and generosity. Equality has been hijacked to mean "sameness." Needs are subject to individual preference. Generosity is what others think people who have more than they do should do to be fair. The question of one's rights or what someone deserves cannot be answered by one voice of society. Justice requires a judge. Thus, one of the benefits of power is to control what happens in society for the "sake of social justice." The one with power becomes the judge.

One critic of social justice put it this way, "since the program of social justice inevitably involves claims for government provision of goods, paid for through the efforts of others, the term actually refers to an intention to use force to acquire one's desires. Not to earn desirable goods by rational thought and action, production and voluntary exchange, but to go in there and forcibly take goods from those who can supply them!" Or, in other words, social justice is a redistribution of goods based on who can become the judge.

Obama did not invent social justice, but he is an iconic advocate of using its deception for gaining personal power. He is not alone. I hear social justice as the calling card of the church, especially works oriented faiths such as Catholics, Nazarenes, Wesleyans, and even mainstream reformed denominations. The fraud od social justice finds its way into every form of society who needs to use its deception for its own purposes.

Basically, Social Justice has become the primary agency in which man aspires to be God. As far as I know, there is no claim man can make to absolute truth except the Bible. Science and Philosophy have arguably denounced absolute truth. Therefore, social justice for many people is man's permission to apply relative truth for personal gain, even if the gain is to satisfy guilt or obtain virtue by works. Fairness is the king of relativism, which is the main weapon culture uses to fraud or deceive by forcing the desires of those in power on others.

If you think I am crazy, consider this. The Founding Fathers created the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect individuals in society from the federal government seeking the power to determine who deserves what. They foresaw that people would seek power over others in the name of justice. For the past 150 years this is what has happened. Social justice has been the fraud by which some individuals have sought power to control what people do.

For those who accept God as the source of absolute truth, what does God say about Justice? First, He says we are created in His image. In this sense we are created equal, but we are not equal in ability, personality, socio-economic advantage, etc. While theologians don't exactly agree on what "in His image" means, most agree it deals more with being His representative, placing our identity into His original intent.

What about rights and what we deserve? What does God say about that? Well, I hate to bring the bad news, He says we deserve Hell and we have no rights. Jesus says that if someone in authority asks us to go one mile, which they can rightfully do, then go 2 miles, which they have no right to ask us to do. In other words, the Kingdom of God is not about rights in this world. Jesus' legal rights were violated over 40 times on his last day on earth. He could have fixed that if that was His purpose. As we said, the US Bill of Rights is not God's description of what we deserve. They are simply a reaction by the founding fathers to the historical experience of man's sovereignty and government abuse. They were established to protect individuals from the power of the government to be the absolute judge. We have no inalienable rights granted to us by God. All we have is what He decides to supply us. We are pilgrims and sojourners.

But there is Good News, we should not fear because He willfully desires to give us all He has. Even Jesus says He didn't come this time to judge right and wrong, but to provide a pathway home.

This is called Grace. God, through our faith in the redemptive work of the Cross, offers to us the provisions and privileges of the Heavenlies. From receiving this Grace, we then willfully serve. We give generously because we recognize its not ours in the first place. We are not the agents of justice. God is the perfect balance of Justice and Love, not us. Christians are caught up in the fraud of Social Justice when they believe they must get into the struggle for power to judge what people deserve.


We are created to be light, agents of Grace, and we perpetuate fraud when we are deceived to claim our role as the judge.

Evidence not seen: the view beneath worldview

Your worldview is the way you make sense of reality. Your worldview determines for you what is right and wrong. At the heart of right and wrong is what is truth. So at the core of your worldview is whether you believe truth is absolute or relative. While truth is perceived fact, absolute truth is independent of perspective. Relative truth would be fact as determined by the individual or situation.

For instance, most people would view gravity as an absolute truth. If you jump off of a building, you will fall to the ground at a speed based on your body weight. 

The issue with worldview usually comes with moral or spiritual truths. Facts where the evidence is not seen or observed by human senses and scientific experiments. One such area of truth deals with life and death. Most societies either instinctively or through some religious conviction accept the truth that humans should not willingly take the life of another human. This seems to be an absolute truth until society identifies acceptable exceptions, like capital punishment, war, self defense, euthanasia, and even abortion.  

There will be some purists who say truth is absolute and killing is never justified, no matter the situation. However, most societies have justified "killing" for practical reasons in situations where other absolute truths, such as justice, can or must be applied. When there are situations that justifiably alter an "absolute truth", then the door is open for many people to claim truth is relative. This is where worldview becomes complex and divisive. When absolute truth seems to have situations where the truth does not apply, conflicts arise over what is right and what is wrong because exceptions give rise to subjective views from different members of society. The argument for relativism seems to be made stronger. When evidence for truth is not physically seen, then core assumptions influence each individual's position on truth. Core assumptions might be called the view beneath worldview.

I have a friend who is a smart guy and generally economically savvy with his own money. He made the statement that socialism is probably necessary to some point, but not good when taken to an extreme. I was curious so i asked him why he thought this was true? His response, "everyone deserves some basic amount of education, health care, food and housing, etc." His core assumption that "everyone deserves something" was normal for him until I asked him, "why does anyone deserve anything? This means that someone else is forced to provide it to them." He thought a minute and said, "I don't know." Here was a core assumption based on instinctive sense of justice and beyond his awareness, from which all other views of truth about public policy and economics flowed. Seeing that his core assumption was not true changed his understanding on many views of truth in more obvious areas of life.

Your core assumptions are critical to your life's choices for two reasons. One is that all of your streams of consciousness on economics, work, government, family, education and religion flow from your core assumptions. Second, you probably do not even know what your core assumptions are because they exist beneath your normal levels of awareness.

That's why pondering the view beneath your worldview is fascinating and essential....

"Self": serve, deny or eradicate?

Without a doubt the biggest cultural movement in the Western world, if not the whole world, is for people to find themselves - you must get in touch with "true self". "You must love yourself before you can love anyone else."

I have blogged about the problems with "self journey" previously, but the knee-jerk reaction to this journey of bias and deception can be just as problematic. People who desire to be more spiritual and pious flock to the other extreme noting the Biblical call to "deny self". Like most journeys fueled by sincerity and passion, the message is not always well understood.



Two points before I make my feeble attempt, (1) I don't have all the answers but I ponder it a lot and (2) this is not really new.

Let me make a simple reference to the second point first. The issue with "self" focus is as old as humanity itself. While cultures may have been more collectivist throughout history, there are references to people choosing to get their own way from the beginning of recorded history. Regardless of emphasis on the community over an obsession with the individual, it is clear we all are "fearfully and wonderfully made." We are individuals and can't get over it.

Now for point number one. My pondering is all I have to offer.

The notion of salvation suggests that each person has some keen interest in the destiny of their own soul. Death and eternal life is a personal experience. Society we live in and heaven or hell on the other side of this life do have a collection of people, but we can only experience it through "self".

 Have you ever wondered if the desire for salvation is self-serving? 
It is a personal ambition is it not?

How is the Christian life, even if it is one of service, not serving self at its foremost core benefit? Even when John Wesley was living the most self-deprived existence, he was trying to accomplish something for him-SELF, become a Holy self. Historically monks try to remove all creature comforts from life but they can't get away from "self".

Paul says be transformed, become a new creation. he does not say become NO creation or "be gone with self". Jesus says deny self, but He says it within context of not losing your soul, not going away.

So what do these three words mean?

serve - to act as a minister of, to work for
deny - to refrain from or abstain
eradicate - to destroy thoroughly

The soul has needs, such as purpose, joy, freedom, hope, love and belonging. Life, in the moment and forever, is not serving, denying or eradicating these needs. They are what they are. Our soul is what it is. Its the created intent of God.

Serving self is when we believe we can generate what is necessary to satisfy these needs. Denying self is abstaining from getting these needs met through self's own efforts, and eradicate is to destroy the nature of the flesh that instinctively seeks exchange with circumstances around us to get our needs met.

God gave us self, but He also bestows on us everything we need for self's abundant and virtuous life. Faith in the redemptive work of Jesus gives us the heart to serve, and everything we need for our soul so that we do not have to spend our attention and self resources on getting our own needs met.

Walking in the Spirit is a self that fearlessly and boldly moves out with no anxiety, guilt, or oppression because we need nothing but what God has already provided.

Self is created for good, just not for the purpose of being its own advocate and "self-sufficient" ....

The BIGGER stage

Too often we make sense of life without moving beyond a preoccupation with self. Pride keeps us locked in the room of self deception, and we see things through a warped understanding. We lift up our soul to what is false. We would do well to locate ourselves on a BIGGER stage, see ourselves in a community far wider than our immediate needs and networks. Where does your imagination take you? Where do your needs take you?

This BIGGER stage is called history.

For thousands of years we find that God has judged nations and people. We don't like to see God as judge because it doesn't play well into our self-serving illusion that the world was created for our glory.

From the time Esau sold Jacob his birthright, there have been rivals to God's glory. There have been periods when God's rivals get the upper hand on God's people, such as the Edomites did with Israel. Each time God brings total desolation to anything that opposes His glory. History shows that people trust in the treasures, the wisdom, the allies, and the fortresses that they collect and hold dear through the pride that they did this through their own efforts.

The BIGGER stage of history reveals two consistent truths about the pride that deceives those seeking their own glory. First, all of these benefits ultimately betray those who think that what they have gives them a personal advantage over God's purposes. Second, these are gifts from God that are possessed by a proud heart.

This perspective is especially salient to our nation today. We are in political disarray. God's people have held dear to our country as a blessing from God. We have many advantages in our Constitution, our economics, and our freedoms. We must be careful that we not be deceived, that we not see these benefits pridefully as our advantage and remember that God does what He does for His glory.

Finding our true self outside the BIGGER stage is a flattering allegiance to bias and deception!

The BIGGER stage of history constantly reveals to us that God judges and desolates not to harm us, but to love us into Grace and out of deception.

Just a passing thought I wanted to ponder ....