Shaken for Good

John 2:13-17

Pat was reading some information about the state of the church in the UK and came across a phrase neither one of us could recall hearing.  The material mentioned the churched, believers who are part of some church community, and the unchurched, men and women who have never had an association with the church at all.  We use both terms here in the States.  But this material also mentioned the dechurched.  Who are the dechurched?  The dechurched are those believers who are no longer part of any church.  They have a commitment to Christianity but they are not part of any Christian community.  There are many dechurched in the UK (one study suggests the figure may involve an amazing 30% of the population). [1]

How many of these Christians who believe but don’t belong are here in our country?  It’s hard to say but since I know few churches where attendance figures approach parity with membership figures, I’d say the number was pretty high.

The dechurched have a variety of reasons for leaving church but most can be summed up by saying the churches they knew had somehow forgotten its purpose, had begun to behave in ways that betrayed rather than honored her Lord.

With that in mind, let’s look at this story.

Jesus was Jewish and observed the schedule of holidays and feasts.  Luke says he attended Passover as a young child.  In fact, Jews from Galilee appear to have been particularly faithful about attending Passover.  He had probably made the trip many times before.  Almost certainly, what he was about to see he had seen before, but this visit was different. 
During this visit he would openly respond to what was before him.   You see, the time was right for action.

What did Jesus see?  John tells us, in the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.

These merchants had every legal right to be doing what they were doing.   In many ways, what they were doing provided a useful service.  Many pilgrims came to Passover from long distances.  It would be difficult for them to bring an animal to be sacrificed.  Making animals available to them resolved the problem.  Then, too, every Jewish male above the age of nineteen was required to pay an annual temple tax.  Since coinage from other nations varied in value, the authorities insisted that the tax be paid in coinage known to be pure.  Again, the money-changers performed a useful service.

So, why did Jesus respond the way he did?  Remember, “… he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.   To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"

This behavior suggests someone who is livid.  There’s no other word for it, Jesus was angry.  Some have wondered how one man could have created so much havoc.  To begin with, it doesn’t take much to spook cattle or sheep—a single man with a makeshift whip could have easily sent them bellowing and bleating into the streets.  And while everyone was distracted by the retreating animals, he could quickly begin to turn over the tables of the money changers.

Notice, by the way, how Jesus handles those selling doves.  He tells them to take their cages and get out. Cattle and sheep chased out of the Temple easily could be recaptured, doves could not be.  Jesus was not being wantonly destructive.

Again, why was he so angry? 

First, even though those who exchanged money or sold the cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices performed a useful service, they and begun to exploit the people.

Money-changers were allowed to charge high fees for their services.  Their customers might pay from 12 to 30 percent to get their money changed.

When we think of the Jewish sacrificial system we usually think of the cattle and sheep involved.  They were often used in the national sacrifices and, sometime, by people making personal sacrifices.  But, in the Law of Moses, God made provision for the poorest of people—they could sacrifice doves. Jerusalem was an expensive place to visit in the first place.  Fruit sold in Jerusalem cost about six times as much as it would have in the countryside.  According to Larry Richards, a dove sold in the temple cost 100 times as much as it would have in the country.  Prices for the cattle and sheep may have been just as exploitive.

Jesus cared about those being ripped-off because they were pious.  This is why, Jesus—either on this occasion or a later one—would complain that the temple had become a “den of thieves.” 

There was a second reason Jesus was angry, one which John emphasizes.  Jesus was angry because the very purpose of the Temple was being subverted.  Rather than being a place of reverent worship it had become just an ornate market-stall.  Pilgrims would go to prayer worried that they might not have enough money to get back home or angry that they had been gouged.  Those same pilgrims might go home thinking about the corruption of Jerusalem’s religious leaders rather than about God’s deliverance of Israel at the first Passover.  They might think this even though the majority of priests and Pharisees were by no means involved in this kind of corruption.

During this season of mission emphasis we need to recall that there was one more reason why Jesus was so very angry.  In Mark’s account of the temple cleansing, Jesus says, “Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers." Mark 11:17 (ESV) 

The most likely place for this ruckus to have been happening was the so-called Court of the Gentiles.  This was where non-Jews could come to worship.  In fact, if non-Jews wanted to worship at the temple, this was the only place they could come.  So, as they worshiped they smelled cattle and sheep, heard the sounds of coins being dropped into the money-changers coffers.

Those who were dissatisfied with their pagan religion or impressed with the high moral teachings of Judaism, would have felt repulsed by their experiences in Judaism’s most sacred site.

Jesus' passionate behavior reminded his disciples of a verse from Psalm 69:9 which spoke of the psalmist's zeal or concern for God's house:  “His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me."  There would be other times when Jesus' words and actions would recall important Scriptures.  In Psalm 69 the psalmist claims to so share God's concern that God's enemies were his enemies as well.  Did Jesus’ behavior suggest he believed those who sanctioned this extortion in the name of religion had actually become God’s enemies?

Jews believed the Messiah would come to the temple and purge it of corruption.  Did the observers that day wonder if this Jesus could be that Messiah?[2]

I’m not going to deal with the debate over took place between Jesus and the Jewish leaders who challenged him.  I’ll just say it reflects John’s tendency to remind us that we know the end of the story from the beginning.  John, again looking ahead, remarks that the resurrection served to confirm the faith of the believers. 

What does this story say to us?

Years later John would begin The Book of Revelation with a series of letters to the churches of Asia Minor.  These letters contained the special message of the Risen Lord of the Church to these congregations.  His words included some commendation but often he focuses on what was wrong with the churches.  And what was wrong was the fact that most of these churches had forgotten what it meant to be a church.

This story from John’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus, the Risen Lord of the Church, has the right to shake things up in his churches.

Jesus, the Risen Lord of the Church, has the right to shake things up when we forget to respond to God with reverence.

We Baptists must sometimes confuse our children.  Every Baptist who’s been one very long has heard some Sunday school teacher or a preacher say something like this, “This building is not the church, we are the church.  This is just where the church meets.”  At the same time, almost every Baptist child has probably heard someone say something like this, “Don’t act that way, this is God’s House.”

At the same time, some churches have transformed the “sanctuary” into something like a multipurpose room.  I recall seeing one in a large church on the southside;  there were signs that people could gather there to worship, to pray, to hear God’s Word preached yet, we could look on the carpeted floor and see it had been striped for hopscotch and other games.  There’s nothing wrong with that but we’d all agree that something was amiss if, during prayer time on a Sunday morning, some of the young people in that church should produce a basketball and begin lay-up drills.

It would be out of place.  We would never tolerate such irreverence.  Yet, we are just as irreverent when we disregard God’s Word because it makes us uncomfortable or unpopular.  We are just as irreverent when we treat God as if He were a kind of cosmic Grandparent whose great purpose is to make us happy by granting all our material wishes.  We are just as irreverent when we treat people who are yearning to encounter God as if they don’t matter because their background or demeanor is different than our own.  It is just as irreverent when we make worship a tasteless experience rather than one filled with joy.

Jesus, the Risen Lord of the Church, has the right to shake things up when we lose perspective or forget our reason for being.

Ultimately, that’s what had happened in the temple.  Those charged with responsibility as religious leaders had forgotten its reason for being was worship.  Some even allowed pride in the magnificent structure to replace pride in the God that structure was to honor.  At the same time, because of the failure of their leaders to pass on the vision, the Jewish people had forgotten that they were to become a channel through which God would bless the entire world. 

We may not bring cattle or sheep into our buildings to sell but we show we’ve forgotten our reason for being in other ways.

We’ve forgotten when we are indifferent to “outsiders” seeking God.  We’ve forgotten when we so treasure our emotional and spiritual comfort that we resist any change in the way things are done, even if some of those changes might mean others would find God. 

We’ve forgotten when the church is no longer a place where the broken may find healing and the loveless may find love but, instead, find condemnation and censure.

We’ve forgotten when we fail to follow our Lord’s example and become people who shake things up.  Christians ought to make a difference in the world.  This failure to have a practical impact on the world is one reason many of our young people are dechurched.

Conclusion

Those who complained about some scattered sheep and some overturned tables couldn’t imagine how Jesus would ultimately shake things up.  John hints here and elsewhere what that shake-up would be.  In time the temple and all it represented would no longer be needed.  It would be superseded by the church, the living Temple of God.

That ought to be a warning to every Christian and every church. 

If the Southern Baptist Convention does not focus itself on carrying out God’s purpose in the world, God will find a denomination that will.

If American Christians do not take seriously the call to be salt and light, God will find Christians somewhere who will.

If our church will not embrace the call to do intentional evangelism, to produce appealing disciples, to apply the Christian world-view to every area of life, God will find a church that will—even if that church is smaller and less gifted than our own.

The study of the dechurched in the UK revealed there is little hope of bringing them back into the church.  Some 82% said it was unlikely they would ever return to church.

I’m not ready to be that pessimistic.  I maintain the hope they may return to a thoroughly shaken church.  So, I hope we are willing to pray, “Lord, shake us when we need shaken.”

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[1]  These statistics are based on a 2007 Tearfund report on church attendance in the U.K.  According to the report, “it’s not Christ but the Church, that most Christians in the UK reject.”  Another report suggests that young evangelicals are leaving the churches at a rate faster than new converts are joining those churches.

[2] John is the only gospel writer who speaks of Jesus cleansing the temple at the beginning of his ministry.  The other writers place the action during Passion Week.  There seems to be four possible solutions:

   1.  John has it all wrong; the cleansing took place at the end of Jesus' ministry.

   2.  The Synoptic writers have it all wrong; the cleansing took place at the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

   3.  John knew the event took place at the end of Jesus' ministry but placed it at the beginning for purposes of his own.

    4.  Jesus cleansed the temple twice.  Anyone who has ever tried to persuade any organization—even a church—to change deep rooted habits and behavior knows it often takes more than one attempt.

    Conservative commentators seem pretty evenly divided on the issue.  I appreciate the complexity of the problem but I think there are good reasons for believing Jesus cleansed the temple twice.  It shouldn’t make much difference to how we treat the story.

Thanks for the Good News

This message was preached 20 November but was not posted until today since I have been unable to access the blog. 

Mark 1:14-15

After John had been put in prison, Jesus went to Galilee and preached the Good News from God.
“The right time has come,” he said, “and the Kingdom of God is near! Turn away from your sins and believe the Good News!”

Listen to this statement that I’ve edited  for length and clarity..

[The day of his birth] is a day which we may justly count as equivalent to the beginning of everything—inasmuch as it has restored the shape of everything that was failing and turning into misfortune, and has given a new look to the Universe at a time when it would gladly have welcomed destruction….  [We honor him because he was filled with virtue] for doing the work of a benefactor  among men and [so was], as it were, a savior for us and those who come after us, to make war to cease and to create order everywhere, [his birthday] was the beginning for the world of the glad tidings that have come to men through him….”

In that passage, the word translated “glad tidings” was euangelion, the Greek word that we translate as “gospel.”  The words I read are from a proclamation made by Paulus Fabius Maximus, the proconsul of the province of Asia in about the year 9 B.C.  The proconsul was celebrating the birthday of Caesar Augustus. 

Before I mention another proclamation of good news made only a couple years later, let me talk a bit more about this word euangelion. 

While this is a religious use of the term “gospel,” the word is not exclusively religious.  It is a term that refers to any kind of good news, really good news.  The Greeks might have described the introduction of the iPad2 as good news, but it wouldn’t have been euangelion unless they were two for $49.99. 

Seriously, euangelion (gospel) was life-changing news.  Things wouldn’t be the same after this news broke.  It might be news of a great victory or news of some personal event in an individual’s life.

While that’s the Greek use of the term, a similar idea was present in the Old Testament as the psalmist celebrated God’s victories over his enemies and the prophets celebrated the new era brought by God . 

Listen to Isaiah describe the news of Yahweh’s reign.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

No wonder Jesus becomes the embodiment of the gospel, the good news.   Because Jesus is the focus of this good news it has no boundaries, national, ethnic, social, or otherwise.

A couple months ago we marked the tenth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001.  The attacks of 9/11 were history making news.  But were they good news?

Before you answer, remember the videos coming out within just a couple days of the attacks?  They showed images of people dancing in the streets at the news of the destruction of the World Trade Center and the damage to the Pentagon.  These same people were praising God at the reports of nearly 3,000 deaths in the attacks.  Obviously, for those people the news of the attacks was good news. 

Now what about the rest of us, those of us who watched in horror as the towers collapsed?  Some say most Americans know someone who knows someone who knew someone who worked at the towers.  You might doubt that,  but consider this Mary Boyle’s son Tim works for a company that had offices in the center, occasionally he worked there himself.   A few months after the attacks, Tim told me how draining it was attending all the memorial services for friends and co-workers.  For people like tim and most of us, the attacks were hardly good news.  

What may be good news for some may be bad news for others.  The gospel is good news for everyone.

Next week we enter the Advent season.  We’ll hear about the angels’ visit to the shepherds.  We’ll hear about their proclamation to those frightened men.  Remember their words of comfort to the shepherds.

They were terrified,
but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people.

The angel used a verb form of euangelion.  The good news the angels brought was world-changing news.   The good news they brought wasn’t good news for just one nation or people, it wasn’t good news only for the west, it was good news for the entire world. 

Tim Keller points out that the center of Christianity long ago moved from the Middle East where the religion was born.  This makes it unlike almost any other world religion.  Most world religions have their greatest strength in the region where they originated.  Not Christianity.  In fact, Christianity’s center of activity is always moving.  It’s center has been in the west for a few centuries but it seems to be moving to the global south.  The good news of Christ is good news for everyone.

Of course, when you first hear the gospel you might think it’s bad news.  After all, it declares us all to be sinners, all worthy of God’s wrath, all with nothing to commend us to God.

And that’s hard to do.  We so much want to be able to say God sees good in us, that we’re really  pretty decent and only need a little help to be worthy of heaven.  We picture ourselves standing in line for a ticket to some beautiful place like Hawaii and we find we’re a little short, maybe just a dollar or two.  You fear you’ll never board that plane but then a wealthy stranger hands you a couple dollars and tells you to enjoy the trip.

That’s not way the gospel works.  The gospel tells us our pockets are empty.  Worse than that, if we somehow managed to slip into that paradise we’d ruin it. 

But think of this.  When we really hear the gospel, we realize that are really liberating.  The gospel sets us free from the frustration of fruitlessly trying to earn our place in heaven, sets us free from the fear of knowing we’ve never done enough, sets us free from self-centered good works, that turn our good deeds into self-serving efforts to win God’s favor.

The good news is that when we accept the gospel’s terms, God provides everything we need.

The good news is that when we admit we are sinners, God provides forgiveness.

The good news is that when we admit we are broken, God provides healing.

The good news is that when we admit we are vile, God provides cleansing.

The good news is that when we admit we are weak, God provides strength.

The good news is that when we admit we are lost, God provides direction.

The good news is that when we admit we are aimless, God provides purpose.

This is why the gospel is such good news.  But what are we supposed to do with this good news?

First, we need to make it our own.

Mark tells us that Jesus’ ministry began with a call for people to embrace the gospel.  He puts it this way, “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “’he time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel.’”

We make the gospel our own, we order our lives in light of the gospel by repenting and believing its message.

It might seem that Jesus is talking about two steps we need to take in response to the gospel.  Late, preachers like Paul, will simply call those who wish to become Christians to “Believe.” Has he  pared away some of what Jesus said?  No.

The truth is, if we truly repent, we will inevitably come to believe.  If we truly believe, we will inevitably come to repent.  To repent means we have a profound change of mind, we think in a new way about God and about ourselves—this new way of thinking is so profound that our very behavior is changed.  At the same time, when we embrace this new way of thinking, we will come to see the beauty of the gospel and believe it. 

If we believe what the gospel tells us about God and our need, we will repent, we will turn our lives around because of what the gospel tells us.

In any case, it’s clear that making the gospel our own becomes a daily task for we must always struggle against the tendency to think we must somehow supplement what Christ has done for us.  Making the gospel our own calls for daily believing and daily repenting.

Second, we need to help others make the gospel their own.

From the beginning of the church’s history Christians have believed the gospel was such good news that it couldn’t be kept to themselves.  Following Christ’s great commission, the church went forward to carry the gospel beyond the homeland of Jesus.

Consider these highlights from the first three-hundred years of the church’s history.  You’ll note I’m omitting missionary activity listed in the Bible.

·         30 - Pentecost and birth of the Christian church

·         42 - Mark reportedly goes to Egypt to preach.

·         52 - Apostle Thomas reportedly arrives in India and founds church that subsequently becomes Indian Orthodox Church (and its various descendants).   This tradition is at least 1400 years old.

·         66 -Thaddeus establishes the Christian church of Armenia

·         100 - First Christians are reported in Monaco, Algeria, and Sri Lanka

·         174 - First Christians reported in Austria

·         197 - Tertullian writes that Christianity had penetrated all ranks of society in North Africa

·         200 - First Christians are reported in Switzerland and Belgium

·         206 - Abgar, King of Edessa, embraces the Christian faith

·         208 - Tertullian writes that Christ has followers on the far side of the Roman wall in Britain where Roman legions have not yet penetrated

·         250 - Denis (or Denys or Dionysius) is sent from Rome along with six other missionaries to establish the church in Paris

·         300 - First Christians reported in Greater Khorasan (a region including Afghanistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan); an estimated 10% of the world's population is now Christian; the Bible is available in 10 different languages

What sent these Christians forward was not arrogance but love, love for God and love for the those who did not know Christ.  It’s a love we need, a love we remind ourselves to act on each year at this time.

I often heard my parents tell a story when I grew up, especially when we had just learned that a relative or friend had been diagnosed with cancer.  The story looked back to the 1920s when they lived in central Missouri.  They told of how men and women would come from all over the Ozarks to see a doctor in their little.  It seems this doctor had a reputation for knowing how to cure cancer.  At that time and for years to come, a cancer diagnosis was a death sentence.

My parents talked of how the doctor never left their town and never told anyone his secret.  When I asked why, my parents told me that other doctors laughed at the healer there in the Ozarks and so he refused to share his secret.  So, pride kept him from sharing life-saving news.  Fear of ridicule made him keep the good news to himself.

It happens with the good news of the gospel as well.  We allow pride, fear, and a desire to be liked to keep us from sharing the life-changing news.  

As we think about missions, it’s an ideal time to ask if we really believe the gospel is good news.  If we do, shouldn’t we share it with a world that needs to hear it?

Wouldn’t we do that if we were really thankful for the good news?

Identity Theft

Our worldview is obviously shaped by our understanding of God; it is also shaped by our understanding of who we are.

Psalm 8

I want to talk about identity theft.  Now, when I mention identity theft you may think of that kind of crime that is so much a part of our computer age.  Somehow an unscrupulous person gets hold of some crucial number, such as your social security number, and assumes your identity.  This person then buys things in your name, opens credit card accounts, rents cars, all the while ruining your hard-won credit rating.  Of course, since our newborns are assigned social security numbers before they go home from the hospital, some clever thieves steal the identities of our children or grandchildren.  As a result, one day you discover your six-year-old grandson has run up quite a tab at a casino in New Jersey.

Of course, even if you’re not directly a victim of this kind of identity theft, you’re still impacted.  We have to be on guard against eavesdropping shoppers when we check out at the department store, make sure we have an effective firewall on our computer, and find ourselves wishing we had invested in a company making shredders.  So, let me encourage you to be careful this season.

I say that because I am going to talk about another identity theft, one that began well before the computer age.  This kind of identity theft may even be more insidious than the better known form.  The first kind of identity theft reaches into our bank accounts, the second reaches into our souls—all the while the thieves are denying the existence of our souls.

Phillip Johnson describes how the theft took place in what he describes as “the grand story” that permeates our culture.  It is the fact that this story is so pervasive that makes it tough to be a Christian in our culture.  The story, as Johnson tells it, has a familiar ring.

In the beginning were the particles and the impersonal laws of physics.

And the particles somehow became complex living stuff;

And the stuff imagined God;

But then discovered evolution.

It wasn’t long before we discovered our identity had been stolen.

But maybe I should stop to make an important distinction.  “Evolution,” as Johnson uses the term, is Darwinism.  Evolution is the term describing the process by which simple forms become more complex.  Charles Darwin imposed his thinking on the process that other writers had already described.  Darwin contribution was to say the process was unguided.  If there was a ruling principle behind evolution it was natural selection or what is sometimes called “survival of the fittest.” 

Many Christians are willing to accept evolution, they cannot accept Darwin.  Whether those Christians are right in saying God might have used evolution to create the world is for books and journal articles to debate.  For now, I’m just clarifying terms.

The problem is that so many evolutionists are also Darwinists.  As a consequence, they freely admit—sometimes after a cocktail or two—that humankind was something of an accident; that we humans have no purpose. 

Darwin was probably an atheist who, for the sake of his believing wife, claimed to be an agnostic.  But many of his most vocal followers were outspoken atheists who took his ideas to their natural conclusion.  These would include Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Hitler, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kinsey.    These are among the most prominent of the identity thieves who have been at work.

As a result of their work, many of us only know the identity that has replaced our original.  We might put our new identity this way: 

Humans are members of a species of mammalian bipeds, closely related to but not descended from the great apes; though not physically impressive, humans have a highly developed brain with intelligence higher even than that of the dolphins, though not possessing the marine mammal’s charm and placid nature.   Humans have evolved with certain unusual traits.  For example, unlike almost every other species, humans generally have an aversion to cannibalism.   Even more unusual, many humans are convinced they are the favored creation of a Supreme Being who exists outside the bounds of the universe; fortunately, education has prompted many humans to abandon this notion.                             

In fact, since the identity thieves have been so effective I might need to remind you of what they have stolen. After all, they have been so effective you might not know the old answer to the question, Who am I?

If we could haul out our original identity papers, what would they say?

They would we are the special creation of God, created with the singular distinction of reflecting a semblance of our Creator, which semblance, though marred by sin, continues to impart value and purpose to the human race.

What does the psalmist say?  He says we were created “a little lower than the angels.”  The term “lower than the angels” can be translated as “a little lower than God.” The phrase could also be translated “a little lower than the angles for now.”  That suggests there may be a greater day coming.  In any case, David points to human beings possessing “honor and majesty.”  Humankind, in the words of the older theologians, is the crown of God’s creation.

Drawn from the biblical materials, the implications of the Christian view of humankind are many and touch on a variety of pertinent issues.

While acknowledging that Humankind has a kinship with the animals, the Christian world-view insists that we humans are distinct from the animals.

To speak of the "human animal" is offensive to some, yet we have an undeniable kinship with animals.  Like them we must breath oxygen, drink water, eat food.  Cardiologists warn us about eating too much pork yet, until more recent developments, a valve from a pig's heart could be used to replace a faulty valve in an ailing human heart. The Christian world-view acknowledges our kinship with the animals but insists that we are more than mammalian bipeds.

After every step of Creation, God pronounced the product "good".  Only after the creation of humankind did He say it was "very good".  Eric Sauer named his study of humanity, The King of the Earth.  He was underscoring the Bible's teaching that the Man and the Woman were given superintendence over the Creation.  No other creature was given that commission. The AV's "subdue" doesn't do justice to what God intended Adam and Eve to do.  They were being given a stewardship over creation.   Adam and Eve were invited to enjoy, not exploit the creation.  Though the Creation was perfect, somehow the work of Humankind could enrich it.

While acknowledging Humankind's uniqueness, the Christian World-view recognizes our dependence upon God.

Like all of Creation, we are dependent upon God for our existence; beyond that, we are dependent upon God for meaning and purpose in life.

It is this truth that prompted Augustine to say "there is a God-shaped vacuum in every man..."

Much of Humankind's spiritual history may be written as the story of our quest to be independent of the Creator.  It is a story bound to end in folly and failure.

Consider this: every one of those thinkers I mentioned earlier-- Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Hitler, Mead, and Kinsey—were rabid atheists.  Every one of them gleefully led the way to abandoning the old story of who we are.  Marx believed religion was a tool of oppression, Nietzsche believed God was dead (meaning the very idea of God no longer had meaning), Freud believed God was a illusion created my men who both loved and wanted to kill their fathers, and Hitler was willing to sound like a Christian when it suited him but he hated Christianity with its sympathy for the weak.

We might imagine such thinkers as the masterminds behind the theft of our identity, masterminds who have used countless minions teaching on campuses, writing novels, making movies, and singing songs.  They have been so effective we scarcely noticed the theft had taken place.  But if we check carefully we will discover it has.

Those who have stolen our identity have erased our distinction and denied our purpose.

Consider this assessment written by one of the most influential men of the 20th century, a man who early in his life abandoned any meaningful belief in God.

I have found little that is “good” about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

Sigmund Freud wrote those words in a letter to a friend in 1918.  Freud would redefine the way many understood human beings, suggesting that we are to be defined in terms of our sexual drives.

Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said, "Six million Jews died in concentration camps but six billion boiler chickens will die here in slaughterhouses."  That startling comparison between the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust and the slaughter of chickens for food is unnerving.  How could she make such a comparison?  She has abandoned the notion that there is a difference between humans and animals.

As long ago as 1938, journalist Walter Lippmann recognized the danger of the naturalistic view of humanity, the view which says we are the product of impersonal forces of nature and not the purposeful act of the Creator.

            The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

This brings us to another result of the theft of our identity.

Those who have stolen our identity have left us with a morality that is tentative and purely utilitarian.

Not everyone who participated in the theft was a moral degenerate, but they may have succeeded in living above the implications of their morality.  Yet some of these identity thieves rewrote the book on morality.  Mead and Kinsey were key examples.

Margaret Mead and Alfred Kinsey probably share the honors of being in the vanguard of the sexual revolution.  Both seemed to embrace the notion that whatever is done, sexually, is normal and ought to be allowed.  While our culture may have resisted Kinsey’s endorsement of bestiality, it has certainly heard Mead’s approval of adolescent experimentation.

Whenever you hear someone say “If it feels good, do it,” you are hearing the echo of one of these identity thieves.

Of course, no society can live without some kind of ethical standard; even it’s simply one they have agreed upon by common consent.  Such a standard will keep order at least until the common consent changes. 

Daniel Calahan offers what he calls “minimalist ethics.”  Stripped of religious trappings and any suggestion of our obligation to any Divine Being, this ethic simply says, “One may act in any way one chooses so far as one does not do harm to others.”  At one level this probably sounds appealing.  After all we are freedom-loving people and this is certainly a liberating viewpoint.  But this economy-model ethic has some problems.

 Certainly any such ethic begs the question:  Why should I restrict my freedom simply because my behavior might harm another?  What if I envision myself to be more intelligent, more gifted, more significant than the person who might be hurt by my behavior?   If Marie and her husband have one child they are raising while my wife and I have three children we’re raising, why shouldn’t I steal Marie’s idea and claim it as my own so I will get the promotion and the raise?

When the standard isn’t really fixed, I can always rationalize exceptions to its demands.  Couldn’t Jack the Ripper have argued, “These prostitutes are doomed to a life of poverty and misery, they will almost certainly contract some dreaded disease that will make their final days a time of pain and suffering; by dispatching them with my blade am I not acting benevolently toward them?”

Couldn’t Hitler have argued that the survival of the Aryan race was so essential to the future of civilization that the elimination of “inferior” races was excusable?  Wait. That’s what he did argue.

Couldn’t we argue that this ethic rests on possessing the freedom to “act in any way one chooses” and thus those without that freedom are so severely handicapped the benevolent course would be to remove them?  Indeed, since those who don’t possess such freedom are likely to impinge upon the liberty of those who do, wouldn’t eliminating them prevent their harming others by this impingement?  Of course, wouldn’t this call for policies allowing us to eliminate such limited persons before they are born or after they have become too sick or old to live truly free lives?  Wait.  No, that’s just being paranoid.

Those who have stolen our identity have closed the door on hope beyond the grave.

I recently saw a television story in which a dying woman asked that her ashes might be used as fertilizer for a newly planted tree.  That way, she would live on in the tree.

The identity thieves have brought us to this place.  The grave or the crematory is the end.  In the strange post-theft world, we have a complicated attitude toward death.  On the one hand, our culture fights against death; on the other hand we declare death to be a friend, a “natural” part of life. 

Bertrand Russell, mathematician, philosopher, writer, and atheist summed up the logical conclusion of those who conspire to steal our identity. 

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego shall survive.  I am not young, and I love life.  But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation.  Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.  Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world.[1]

I could probably say more about the impact of the great identity theft.  Instead, I want to say something about what would happen if our proper identity were restored.

If our proper identity were restored we would discover that there is a fundamental unity in humankind.  Darwin believed there were inferior races that would eventually disappear, the document attesting to our proper identity tells us that there is a solidarity to humankind, for as Paul said of God as the Creator who gave us our identity, "From one man [Adam] He made every nation of mankind to live all over the earth."

I could say a good deal but let me focus on just one point.

If our identity were restored we would discover we that we human beings reflect the image of God.

The foundation for this assertion is found in the Bible's insistence that Humankind was "created in the image of God", a statement made of no other creature.   On two occasions in the opening chapters of Genesis we are told that God created Humankind in his image. 

 GE 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth,* and over all the creatures that move along the ground."  GE 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

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 GE 9:6 "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.

The term "likeness" is equivalent in meaning to "image" and is used in the following verses:    GE 5:1 When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God and James 3:9 where [James tells us it is wrong to curse] men, who have been made in God's likeness.

Christians have debated the exact meaning of "image of God" and have not yet reached a firm consensus other than to generally deny it refers to any physical likeness. (This is why orthodox Christians object to the Mormon view of God possessing a physical body.)

  Rather, they have said it refers to spiritual characteristics which somehow "mirror" some of God's characteristics.  As a result the "image of God" is thought to refer to some combination of our intellectual, moral, spiritual, and volitional qualities.

Complicating the search for a precise meaning is the fact of the Fall.  Humankind is not what God intended it to be.  Though most Christian thinkers concede that the image is marred because of sin, they nevertheless insist that Humankind still bears the image of God.

Possessing the image of God means we Human Beings were created as privileged creatures.  The Westminster Shorter Catechism asserts "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."

There's a strangeness to the notion of enjoying God forever.  We don't think of "enjoying God", we think of fearing God, of obeying God, but not enjoying him.

The identity thieves tell us, "Man's chief end is to outgrow God and deny him forever."

Surely all Creation brings glory to God, but we humans have the privilege to actively participating in glorifying God.  We have the privilege of enjoying him.

Possessing the image of God means we Human Beings were created as spiritual beings.

The man and the woman were created with the capacity to have rich and wondrous fellowship with the Creator.   The language of the Creation story suggests that they could walk and talk with God freely and without hesitation.  Only after the Fall was there a barrier between the Creature and the Creator.

Despite the best efforts of the identity thieves, most of our fellow humans still possess a consciousness of some Higher Power and a yearning to have a relationship with that Power.  As Augustine observed, "Our heart is restless until it finds rest in you, O Lord."

The myriad religions of the world are a token of that spiritual nature questing for God.  The venerable Southern Baptist theologian W. T. Conner goes as far as to suggest that even those who deny the existence of God tend to "personify Humanity, or Nature, or the Universe."  Look at the writings of many of the identity thieves and you'll find Nature capitalized.

We are spiritual beings and our restored identity speaks to that part of our make-up.     It tells us we were created with a special freedom.                

We have the freedom to know and respond to our Creator, to have a fulfilling relationship with the One who gave us our identity. At the same time, we have the freedom to deny and reject the Creator’s love.  The identity thieves have told us that is the way to fulfillment.  But, again, thieves are not known for their honesty.           

CONCLUSION

We humans still bear the image of God, still possess a God-imparted value and worth, yet that image is distorted and marred.  Because of this, we’re susceptible to identity thieves.

How can we make ourselves a little less susceptible?

--Ask serious questions about the shoddy thinking of the identity thieves.  Statements like “Only that which can be tested in a laboratory is real,” can’t be tested in a laboratory—it’s a faith statement.

--Ask serious questions about the scarcity of evidence for the thieves’ claims.  Where is the evidence that we have no souls, that the universe just happened?  Where is the evidence for Sagan’s famous claim “the cosmos is all there is?”

--Ask serious questions about the motives of the thieves.  Did the best-known identity thieves have a special interest in denying the existence of God and the claims of morality, especially sexual morality?  

In the end, only one man was never confused about Who he was, Jesus Christ.  When we trust him, we can begin become who God intended us to be.  We can recover our stolen identity.

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[1]  Linda Edwards, A Brief Guide to Beliefs:  Ideas, Theologies, Mysteries, and Movements, Louisville:  Westminster-John Knox Press, 2001, p. 509.