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Thanksgiving, a Pop Song by the Police, and Your Mind: Worldview in Microcosm

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“When the world is running down/You make the best of what’s still around.” That’s the refrain in a pop song from a very popular band, The Police. That line reveals a lot about the theology and worldview expressed in the tune of the same name. This week, many Americans will celebratthe Thanksgiving. What Americans believe about God will be evidenced in what we do/don’t do this week. Will we pray or not? Will we express thankfulness? To whom? To ourselves? To our predecessors? To our nation? Our military? Why? These questions go to the heart of the matter. If we are thankful, does that thankfulness not assume there is someone to whom to be thankful? It personalizes the act of thanksgiving. Ought we to be thankful to someone? How you answer that question reveals much. Ought implies a moral imperative. It is a way of saying, there is a right standard, a way man ought to follow. But we’re in a day when many will gather together and be at a loss as to whom they should thank. In other words, they’re cut off from the author of life (God), the only One to whom we ought to be supremely grateful.

Antithesis. Literally, the term means “against/opposed to another argument/idea.” Does that sound too sophisticated of a term? I hope not. It’s simple. In informal language, it’s the other side of the coin. It’s a way of saying this vs. that. This way, not that way. God or Satan. Good vs. evil. Justice vs. injustice. Truth vs. lies.

Antithesis is a mark of thinking. Thinking conceptually is predicated upon one’s thinking via antithesis. In other words, the person who cannot make distinctions cannot properly be said to be thinking conceptually. Here’s the upshot: either we’re in a theistic world (where God is sovereign Creator and we’re His creatures) or we’re not. It’s one or the other. Either we are to thank the God who is, who has spoken, who upholds all things by His sovereign power, or we are cosmic accidents who cannot even begin to explain why things exist, why we’re here, why morality is not an illusion, or how nothing gave rise to everything, all the while undirected.

What does that have to do with Thanksgiving? A lot. Ever had this experience? A family gathers in the kitchen or dining room, and someone is called on to offer a prayer of thanksgiving. But do we think about that? Whom are we thanking? It does not make sense to thank randomness/chaos/nothingness. Are our talents our own? Is our strength our own? Is our wealth our own? Our health? Are we in control of seedtime and harvest? Did we control the gifts of our children?

This is just where we need to understand antithesis. If we do not come to terms with the concept of giving thanks, we are eschewing intellectual courage and honesty. This morning, I listened to a fine sermon by my pastor from Psalm 16. It was about, among other things, how believers recognize that we have no ultimate good apart from God. David wrote, “Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the LORD, “Your are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” (Psalm 16:1-2, ESV). David recognized that he was to thank God. Why? Because God is the author of life; God is the fount of blessing. In short, life without God is unthinkable. This is the perfect example of why it’s crucial for us to think via antithesis. Either God or an idol. God or Baal/idolatry. Theism or atheism. Pushed logically, how can the atheist justify being thankful, if he/she believes he came into being accidentally, cannot explain purpose, meaning, or origins? Why ought the atheist be thankful if there’s no one to thank?

Was Sting right? If the world is running down, should we just try to make the best of what’s still around? That’s pretty sad. What would it take for you to consider that the reason the world is running down is because we live this side of Genesis 3? What if this world is running down because we are moral rebels from God, trying to cover our sin? What if the world is running down because the whole creation is groaning from shaking its fist in the face of the God who loves the creation enough to take on flesh and come for all who will repent and believe upon Jesus?

The antithesis is this: either God is, and we ought to honor Him as such or we’re on our own, and the jig is up. Either God has spoken through creation, through Scripture, through conscience, through design, and through Christ and His resurrection, or He hasn’t.

The apogee of this antithesis finds many illustrations in literature, but perhaps none is more familiar than Macbeth’s lines: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more. It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing” (5.5.25-28).

Is life (is your life) a tapestry woven by God or a tale told by an idiot? This is why thinking antithetically is crucial. Let us think with honesty, with logical consistency, with humility, but let us think and then act with conviction. And, yes, Happy Thanksgiving.

His Speck but My Log

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Some books should be read once; some books should be read and recommended; some books should be read and purchased for others who will read them. Lastly, some books should be read, purchased for others, and read again for our own benefit. This is my third time reading through I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. The title is appropriate and summative. The authors ask rimgreseaders to examine their own assumptions in their search for truth. I’ve read scores of books on Christian apologetics, but what I appreciate about this book is its forthrightness and accessibility for lay persons. I use it as a gift for others whom I believe will actually read it.

What demands more faith—to believe that an intelligent, uncaused, personal being (God) created everything, or to believe that nothing gave rise accidentally to everything? If God exists, then origins, identity, meaning, morality and destiny are explainable. If atheism is true (where God’s non-existence is assumed as an absolute) then origins, identity, meaning, morality and destiny are unexplainable rationally; they become subjective and preferential. Stick with me as I tell a personal story from just a couple of years ago.

During a military deployment a couple of years ago in Afghanistan, I developed a friendship with another officer within our battalion. We both had been English majors as undergraduates and we talked often of our favorite books, writers, and ideas. He’d grown up in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts as a nominal Roman Catholic but said he was now agnostic. He said he’d read the Bible through but could not bring himself to believe in the exclusivity of Jesus as God incarnate. He’d come to reject Christianity. Why? He said that he’d seen too many sins (his word) in the Roman Catholic circles in which he was reared. Even in his forties, he was still wounded by them. In short, he said he was disappointed. Therefore, he said, Christianity could not be true.

Are you following his reasoning? Because he’d seen sinful behavior of those claiming to be Christians, he rejected the Christian faith. May I say this kindly but clearly? That’s very poor reasoning. None of us is righteous. None of us is good. We’re all sinners. The first three chapters of Romans explain this with unmistakable clarity. Because hypocrites exist, Christianity is false? That’s hardly sound reasoning. Jesus excoriated hypocrites: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell, you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice” (Mt 23:2-3 ESV).

Over and over again, Jesus pronounced judgment upon hypocrites. In Matthew 23 alone, Jesus pronounced “woes” and judgments repeatedly upon fakers. Why? Because they (scribes, Pharisees, etc.) were charlatans, they were fakes. They brought reproach upon God’s name for pretending to be lovers and followers of God, yet living ungodly: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Mt 23:23a).

Were that insufficient, Jesus turns the screws tighter still: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Mt 23:25-26).

Any righteousness is internal before it’s external. Because our hearts are evil, self-absorbed, and factories of idols, we need new hearts. And that is what Christ provides. He did not come for the righteous but for sinners. Conviction over one’s own sin, not scoffing at others’ hypocrisy, is evidence of a teachable spirit. Trying to use others’ hypocrisy is a tactic of distracting oneself from addressing our own personal sin. We reveal ourselves to be just like the Pharisees Jesus excoriated. We want to appear righteous but we know that we’re guilty sinners.

My friend was right to loathe the hypocrisy of the hypocrites he witnessed. But he (and I) would do well to loathe the hypocrisy in ourselves more than we lament it in others. We’ll not answer for others’ sin; our own is more than enough to battle.

I bought my friend a copy of Geisler and Turek’s book two years ago. He promised me he would read it. I don’t know if he has. I’m now reading it through for the third time. I don’t say that to boast, but out of love for a friend, who sees the specks in others’ eyes with clarity. May God use this helpful book to help him see himself as well as he sees others. When we begin to see ourselves as the sinners we are, we see what amazing grace is extended to all who will humble themselves before the cross of Christ.