Facebook Theology

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In the past, theology was relegated almost exclusively to the realm of academia.

Men of means (and only men), who could afford an education, devoted themselves to rigorous academic study of the faith. Their insights shaped everything that everyone in the church believed, from the Pope all the way down to the common, illiterate farmer.

Like that farmer, your average person in those days could neither read nor write. Even if you put a Bible in front of them, they wouldn’t be able to read it. So, almost everyone relied on these learned men to tell them what they needed to believe and do in order to be a Christian.

Then came that pesky guy named Luther and his Reformation buddies, who thought that everyone should be able to read the Bible for themselves.\

Crazy liberal.

With that radical shift in the history of the church, theology came to the masses. After the advent of the Reformation, and so long as they could read, people everywhere could read the Bible for themselves and begin to do their own theological reflection

Which is a great thing.

But as Uncle Ben once told a young Peter Parker, “with great power, comes great responsibility”.

And I think that is where we as the church have dropped the ball.

When theology was confined to the realm of academia it was a highly structured thing, guided by tradition, reason, and, above all, scripture. Certainly, there was much in the theology department that needed rethinking, but in the 500 years since the Reformation, our theology, generally speaking, has become reckless.

We are guided today more by our gut feelings than any sort of structure, tradition, reason, or even scripture. And “why not?”, we cry. We are created in the image of God! How could our God given emotions lead us astray?

Perhaps because we suffer from a fallen, sinful nature that seeks to put ourselves in the place of God?

But I digress.

There is no arena in which is theology has become more reckless, unstructured, and not thought out than the world of social media. And in that world, Facebook reigns supreme as the wild, wild west of theology.

Facebook theology (as I like to call it since neither “Facebook/Twitter theology” nor “social media theology” have quite the same ring to them), in my experience, can be broken down into a few basic approaches, all of which attempt to do the impossible: sum up complex theological/social/ethical issues in a quick one-liner.

Simply put, Facebook theology is theology without thinking.

Now, I’m sure there are more ways to practice Facebook theology, but these are the ones I have observed.

1. The false dichotomy - This one can be best summed up in the viral video “Why I love Jesus, but hate religion.” There may be several different issues at play in a particular issue, but we’re too lazy (or naive) to deal with them. So, we break everything down into 2 opposing camps. Choose our camp, you get to go to heaven, choose the other and you’re going to hell. Like it or not, few things in life are as black and white as we want them to be.

2. The witty one liner – I must confess. I am often guilty of this one. After all, nothing makes an opposing position look more ridiculous than sarcasm. However, continually tossing out lines like “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” or ” Jesus had two dads and he turned out fine” don’t exactly help the conversation and in the end, can end up making us look more ridiculous than the opponents we’re trying to embarrass.

3. It sounds nice, so it must be true- This particular tenet predates Facebook by a long shot. But being people guided more by our gut than our brains, this particular theological approach can be particularly effective. Ironically, though, this tenet may be one of the most destructive. If someone posts that their loved one was just killed in a car accident, telling them that “it was all part of God’s will” is pretty much the worst comment imaginable. Just like hell, the road to being hurtful is often paved with good intentions.

4. Rip a verse out of the Bible – Is there any more powerful weapon in our theological arsenal than quoting out of context Bible verses? We can literally make them say anything we want. Which, of course, makes them perfect for Facebook. Just got a new car? Post a verse about God’s blessings. Mad at a co-worker? There’s some great verses about vengeance against enemies. Or maybe you just want to destroy your opponents with a single theological grenade. You can have your pick from any number of verses in the Bible that, by themselves, will instantaneously (at least in your own eyes) annihilate your opponent’s theological, political, or ethical position. That’s not to say you shouldn’t post Bible verses on Facebook, but can we agree to at least not do so in attempt to prove a point or right a perceived wrong?

5. The song lyric – This one is really a bookend to “it sounds nice, so it must be true.” That’s not to say that there’s not some great theology in the church’s hymnody. There is. But when you post “You are the famous one, famous one. Great it your name in all the earth,” I’m not sure if you’re talking about Jesus or Brad Pitt.

6. The “look how smart I am” book quote – Congratulations. You can read. Welcome to the educated elite. Now, once again, I have been guilty of practicing this tenet of Facebook theology as well. However, when we decide to quote people can we first 1)make sure they actually said it, 2)make sure they are actually saying what we think they’re saying, and 3)make sure we actually know what they’re talking about before we post the quote?

7. Something patriotic – Nothing gets a global church more fired up for unity than telling everyone you know that “America is God’s chosen nation!” Of course, things get even more fun when we find quotes from the founding fathers which happen to mention God and which, not so coincidentally, support the position of our particular political party. I’m sure that Jesus loves Americans, but he loves the rest of the world too. So can we please stop using patriotism as a litmus test for the faith?

8. Utter nonsense that’s so unintelligible that it must be a deep thought – This might be one of my favorite tenets. Apparently, most of us fashion ourselves as philosophers, which can be rather entertaining when you come across a status like “God’s essence marinates in our inner being, transcending us into beings of holy light who breath out love as we…” Wait, what? If you absolutely must use your Facebook status to wax poetically about your faith, please do yourself a favor and keep it simple.

Some of these tactics, of course, are less harmful than others. (Although, I often wish that being tacky was listed as the 11th commandment.)

However, social media, while a wonderful tool, has the ability to spread bad theology at an alarming rate. Bad ideas and speculative claims that otherwise might have been ignored, can quickly go viral with the click of a mouse doing untold damage, not just to the church and her theology, but to real, living, breathing people.

As the church which claims to be the Body of Christ, we are responsible for sharing the truth of the gospel with the world. This isn’t a responsibility we should take lightly, nor is it one we should allow to be hijacked by our own gut feelings and emotions.

Sharing our thoughts and ideas about the faith online isn’t a bad thing. However, we must take caution and remember that if we are serious about the issues we claim to be so passionate about, then we must honor them by not reducing their, often times, immense complexity down to a one liner solution.

The tough questions of our day deserve honest and thoughtful answers, answers which won’t be found in a simple Facebook status.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hun
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The Real Reasons People Believe in God

Believers' Reasons for Religion, Theism

By Austin Cline, About.com Guide

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Some religious theists think it is appropriate to presume to inform atheists about why they really don't believe in any gods rather than simply listen to atheists in order to learn something. Perhaps atheists should instruct theists why they actually believe in gods. Theists offer all sorts of reasons for why they believe in a god but the only respectable reason is one which, if proven false, would at the very least cause them to seriously reconsider their belief and perhaps drop it entirely. I've never seen a religious theist do this, perhaps because the reasons below are more true than they would like to admit.

1. Indoctrination into Religion

Is it coincidence that people tend to stay with whatever religion they were raised in, and this religion tends to be whatever religion is dominant in the community/nation where they live? If people were genuinely convinced by the arguments which apologists offered, shouldn't the distribution of religions around the globe be a bit more even? The high and consistent degree of religious concentrations suggests that people believe their religion because that's the one they were indoctrinated into and which is consistently reinforced around them. People acquire a religion before critical thinking skills and that religion is promoted without most people noticing. That's really not a very good reason to believe that a religion is true, is it?

2. Indoctrination into Anti-Atheist Bigotry

If you keep being told that people who don't believe in your god are evil, immoral, and a threat to the stable social order, then you would never dream of dropping your theistic religion. Who wants to be immoral or simply regarded by the rest of society as immoral? This is very much what atheists face, especially in America, and it's hard not to see the constant indoctrination into anti-atheist bigotry as a reason why people stick to their religions. Children learn in public schools that America is a nation for people who believe in God and this message is reinforced throughout their lives by preachers, politicians, and community leaders of all sorts.

3. Peer & Family Pressure

Religion can be enormously important to families and communities, creating a tremendous amount of pressure to conform to religious expectations. People who step outside those expectations are not simply choosing a different way of life, but can in fact be perceived as rejecting one of the most important bonds which keep a family or community together. Even if this is never communicated in so many words, people do learn that certain ideas, ideologies, and practices should be treated as vital to communal bonds and should therefore not be questioned. The role of peer pressure and familial pressure in maintaining at least a veneer of religiosity for many people cannot be denied.

4. Fear of Death

Many religious theists try to argue atheists into believing in a god through the fear of what will happen after dying — either going to hell or simply ceasing to exist. This arguably reveals something very important about the believers themselves: they, too, must fear death as the cessation of existence and believe not because there are any good reasons to think there is an afterlife, but rather out of wishful thinking. People don't want to think that physical death is the end of all experiences, emotions, and thoughts so they insist on believing that somehow their "mind" will continue to exist without any physical brain in an eternity of sustained bliss — or even will be reincarnated in a new form.

5. Wishful Thinking

The wish that physical death isn't the end of life probably isn't the only example of wishful thinking behind religious and theistic belief. There are a number of other ways in which people profess beliefs that appear to be more about what they wish were true than what they can support through good evidence and logic. Many Christians, for example, seem to wish quite strongly that there exists a place of eternal punishment awaiting all those who dare to deny them political and cultural dominion in America. Many conservative believers from many religions seem to wish that there is a god which wants them to exercise unchecked power over women and minorities.

6. Fear of Freedom & Responsibility

One of the most disturbing aspects of many people's religious beliefs is the manner in which these beliefs make it possible for believers to avoid taking personal responsibility for what's going on. They don't have to be responsible for ensuring that justice is done because God will provide that. They don't have to be responsible for solving environmental problems because God will do that. They don't have to be responsible for developing strong moral rules because God has done that. They don't have to be responsible for developing sound arguments in defense of their positions because God has done that. Believers deny their own freedom because freedom means responsibility and responsibility means that if we fail, no one will rescue us.

7. Lack of Basic Skills in Logic & Reasoning

Most people don't learn nearly as much about logic, reason, and constructing sound arguments as they should. Even so, the quality of arguments typically offered by believers as justification for their religious and theistic beliefs are remarkable for just how atrocious they are. If only one basic logical fallacy is committed, it can be considered an achievement. Given how important believers claim the existence of their god and truth of their religion are, you'd think that they would invest a lot of effort into constructing the best possible arguments and finding the best possible evidence. Instead, they invest a lot of effort into constructing circular rationalizations and finding anything that sounds even remotely plausible.

Related Articles:

• Why Not Believe? Reasons Why Atheists Don't Believe in Gods
• Gods & Theists Behave Immorally: How Can Moral Gods Behave Immorally? Why B...
• Too Many Gods, Too Many Religions: All Can't Be True, But All Can Be Fa...
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My 5 Dilemmas of Christian Religious Beliefs

My Five Dilemmas of Christian Religious Beliefs

by Godwin Johnson

I discovered this forum (ex-christian.net) a while ago and have enjoyed reading the many stories shared on this site. I have a not so different story. I was an Evangelical-Pentecostal Christian for 25 years or so. My inexorable move towards unbelief was about a decade or so in the making. It all began with a serious determination to study and better understand this faith I had dedicated myself to and was spending an inordinate amount of time and emotional, psychological and financial resources to. While I am still working on a much longer story to share, I want to summarize what it basically came down to for me; the situation is captured in what I call the FIVE PROBLEMS:

1. The Problem with the Bible

Increasingly, it is hard for me to believe that the Bible in its entirety is the inspired Word of God. It takes extremely contorted arguments to try and reconcile the dozens, even hundreds of contradictions. Many of the statements are not only historically false, but ethically abhorrent. That the Bible is not meant to be fully understood by the mind but believed by the heart is a cop out for a book that purportedly comes from a perfect God. It is far more likely it is the work of man. No one who has studied the origin, development and translation of the Bible could possibly deny it is the work of man. Saying God was working through human agency is too convenient and did not result in a perfect book from a perfect God.

2. The Problem with Science

More and more, science and religion (Christianity) do not agree on the fundamentals. For many things, both cannot simply be true. It takes extremely contorted arguments to try and reconcile them. Anyone who thinks or believes otherwise neither knows the Bible nor science well enough, or perhaps simply disingenuous in their approach to both.

3. The Problem with Religious Plurality and Eternal Damnation in Hell

Over 70% of the world's population right now are not Christians and are unlikely to ever be. It is hard to believe that all these billions will go straight to hell when it is really not their fault that they never heard the Gospel. And which Gospel is another issue. There is little agreement in Christendom on some of the fundamentals. The entire premise of missions is that those who have not heard are doomed to eternal damnation. It never occurs to anyone that millions lived before and after Jesus Christ who never heard the Gospel. There are dozens of convoluted arguments about how God in his omniscience and omnipotence will resolve this dilemma, but the inescapable consequence of not hearing the Gospel is fully described in the New Testament and gives the impetus to reach the unreached before they perish. Christian missionary work has gone on for millennia and most of the world is not convinced. True Evangelicals as you know do not consider over 80% of Christians as real believers and believe only those who are "born again" will go to Heaven. Even heaven is a concept lacking in the Old Testament scriptures and a unique invention of the New Testament. That humans will suffer untold torment for eternity (forever and ever and ever… is not only absurd, but sick and twisted). It seems all religion including Christianity not only are man-made, but man-propagated and helps together by natural human forces in human societies with no real supernatural influences. In fact I believe natural explanations for everything in life is all there is.

4. The Problem with Evil and Suffering

I know of all or most of the classical Christian and religious arguments to justify the presence of both moral and physical evil in the World. Honesty requires me to admit that these arguments do not cut it well at all. God if he exists cannot be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent in all of these. Indeed there are theologians who believe the same thing. That evil is the result of human free will is only a small part of the problem, and that it works out a larger purpose in the will of God is another cop out. It seems these explanations are designed to protect God’s reputation, and is followed with explanation that all evil will be conquered someday as comfort to humans. Believers who do not understand this dilemma have never grappled with this problem or do not understand it.

5. The Problem with Prayer

This is the most personal of the problems because prayer does not work as religionists of all persuasions proclaim. After being a born again Evangelical Christian for 26 years until my lapse into agnostic-atheism, I know that most "answers" to prayers are wishful thinking or at best coincidences. All answered prayers are plausible, and there is no evidence of answer to prayer for a truly “impossible” problem such as amputees re-growing limbs, destroyed optic nerves restored, cancer cured, hysterectomized women giving births, or paraplegic and quadriplegics walking again. I have thought through this very carefully over a very long time and found that not a single "answer" to prayer I know lacked a natural explanation. And when a truly supernatural move was required to made a difference, it was nowhere to be found and all the blame as always came back to humans who were either too ignorant, too proud, too sinful to get the prayer answered, did not pray the right way or just too blind to see that God answered it in another way. It seems in 100% of the cases with unanswered prayer, the problem was man and not God. In reality there is no such thing as answered prayer by a benevolent deity.

Religion no doubt plays an important role in the lives of humans and is not going anywhere. That one religion is superior to another is just plain nonsense. Every religion thinks it is superior to another, although a few do not proselytize and have a live and let live mentality. The most proselytizing religions of Christianity and Islam which believes in converting others have also precipitated the most atrocious acts in human history. If you do not believe it, go to Wikipedia and do a tour of histories of Christianity and Islam. Proponents and supporters say those acts do not truly reflect the teachings of these religions, which is of course nonsense. The vast majority of believers in these religions do not really know what their religions teach, and simply hold to them by cultural affinity or family upbringing.

It seems I have become a skeptic and perhaps now doomed to eternal damnation. The problem with that is we have no proof whatsoever that there is such a thing as surviving this earth when we die. Life it seems makes far more sense when we believe the reality of human experience rather than the wishful thinking of what religion expects it or assumes it to be. For various reasons I cannot go into, I am going to stealthily keep my new views and lack of belief from most of my friends and associates, especially from close family who knew me as a very strong Christian for decades. It will be equivalent of an emotional and incredulous earthquake for many who know me if they find out that I have become a skeptic. There will come a time to come out clean, but not at this time.

Christians Believe in Bible Verses That Aren't in the Bible

Christians Believe in Bible Verses That Aren't in the Bible

By Austin Cline, About.com Guide
July 19, 2011
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It's hard to take seriously Christian claims about the importance of the Bible to their lives and religion when they have so little knowledge about it. I'm not just talking about the history of how it developed and how it's been used. I'm talking about the fact that so many Christians believe that things which aren't in the Bible are actual Bible verses.

Some are paraphrases that are similar to actual Bible verses, which is an easy error to make. Some don't have anything to do with the Bible at all -- and in some cases contradict actual Bible verses. But people still believe them. Why? Because they are statements which reinforce what people already believe and they are all too happy to accept biblical authority for what they want to believe.

Here are some popular statements that people think can be found in Bible, but which aren't really there:

"God works in mysterious ways."

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness." ...

"God helps those who help themselves."

"Spare the rod, spoil the child."

And there is this often-cited paraphrase: Satan tempted Eve to eat the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden.

Source: CNN

It would be bad enough if this were just limited to "the average Christian in the street," but it's also true to people who study the Bible and should know better:

"In my college religion classes, I sometimes quote 2 Hesitations 4:3 ('There are no internal combustion engines in heaven')," [Steve Bouma-Prediger, a religion professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan] says. "I wait to see if anyone realizes that there is no such book in the Bible and therefore no such verse.

"Only a few catch on."

Most people don't recognize that favored sayings and ideas don't really come from the Bible because they want to believe that they come from the Bible. The authority of the Bible is such that this belief reinforces for them the truth and validity of whatever idea is being expressed.

Belief that something is in the Bible provides a comforting assurance that what they believe also happens to be what God wants and, moreover, side-steps any possible debate over the matter. If it comes from the Bible then it's God's Will and if it's God's Will then there's no legitimate basis for disputing it, disagreeing with it, or rejecting it. Adopting this position is a lot easier than actually having to develop your own arguments in defense of an idea.

"Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book," says Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who once had to persuade a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University that the saying "this dog won't hunt" doesn't appear in the Book of Proverbs.

"They have memorized parts of texts that they can string together to prove the biblical basis for whatever it is they believe in," he says, "but they ignore the vast majority of the text."

Honestly, if you believe that something like "this dog won't hunt" appears anywhere in the Bible and actually use that belief in defense of the saying, then I think your right to ever use the Bible in defense of anything at all has been irrevocably lost. Actually, I think a lot more about you, too, but I won't go into that...

The worst and perhaps most significant example of attributing to the Bible something that doesn't appear there is the popular saying "God helps those who helps themselves." Not only does it not appear in the Bible, but it's arguably contrary to some things which do appear in the Bible -- at least in some of the ways this saying can be used.

The passage is popular in part because it is a reflection of cherished American values: individual liberty and self-reliance, says Sidnie White Crawford, a religious studies scholar at the University of Nebraska.

Yet that passage contradicts the biblical definition of goodness: defining one's worth by what one does for others, like the poor and the outcast, Crawford says.

Crawford cites a scripture from Leviticus that tells people that when they harvest the land, they should leave some "for the poor and the alien" (Leviticus 19:9-10), and another passage from Deuteronomy that declares that people should not be "tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor."

"We often infect the Bible with our own values and morals, not asking what the Bible's values and morals really are," Crawford says.

This is a useful piece of evidence of the degree to which religion in America is uniquely "American" -- infused with American culture, history, politics, economics, and assumptions. American Christianity is recognizably Christian, but it is also quite distinct from Christianity everywhere else because of the extent to which American assumptions have infused it.

This isn't unique to America, of course. At every place and time throughout Christianity's history, it's absorbed elements of the surrounding culture -- politics, art, economics, etc. Some of it is retained and passed down to future forms of Christianity; some of it is dropped and forgotten. It's precisely Christianity's ability to adapt to local conditions that has helped it spread so much. A more rigid system would not convert so many people and cultures.

I think Crawford is mistaken to say that these are cases of local cultures "infecting" the Bible or Christianity. After all, the Bible was itself created out of local cultures at particular times and places. The Catholic Church even recognizes the fact that the New Testament was produced by and for early Christian communities and thus not every element is necessarily something that binds every future community of believers.

So some people are simply in denial of the fact that their religion and religious beliefs are shaped as much by their own cultural, political, and economic beliefs as by scripture and tradition. Others are in denial of the fact that this not only always happens, but was in fact instrumental in the creation of those scriptures and traditions. They are all in denial of the fact that religion is a product of human culture, politics, and economics, and so we shouldn't expect to find anything else.