True and False Guilt

There are two kinds of guilt which require two very different approaches to resolve.   I’ll take the easy one first.

True guilt involves a real, specific offense against God or one’s neighbor.   It is where we violate the clear, enduring, outside-of-us standard of right and wrong–a law which God also implanted on everyone’s heart.  The source of this inner code of conscience, which every society enshrines in human laws to one degree or another, is found in the eternal, absolutely good character of God Himself.    Whether we acknowledge it or not, this kind of guilt is objective and deserved.

True guilt is healthy.  It is what we feel when we commit an act, a word, an attitude, a thought that violates this standard.   The violation can be something bad that we’ve done.  It can be something good we failed to do.    But whatever it is, it offends God and/or our neighbor in some way.    It requires a sense of violated justice to be satisfied.   It requires the violated peace of the community to be restored and healed.

True guilt is a gift.   Strange as it may sound, guilt motivates us to redress a wrong, confess our sin, seek forgiveness, and restore our relationships with God and our neighbor.   It drives us towards a remedy.  It reminds us of our great need for Christ to die on the cross for our sins, and how much it cost Him to bear our great guilt there.  It teaches us to say, “I was wrong–I wounded you–please forgive me” in our personal relationships.    It is the precursor to repentance, sought-and-found forgiveness, and a fresh start.

When we give up justifying our sins, and confess our sin to God, we end up being a once-again justified sinner and feel once more the joy of full forgiveness.    True guilt is therefore always resolvable through confession, forgiveness, and restitution.

False guilt, on the other hand, is vague and unspecific.    We just feel bad for no reason.   We believe we are bad even when we do well.  With nothing specific to address, with no resolution or restitution we can make, it just lingers and cripples our soul.    It poisons every joy.    Most people learn this in addicted, shaming, sick families where their parents needed to be right all the time so the kids therefore had to be wrong all the time.  Nothing was ever good enough.   Even when they were right they were wrong.

False guilt is toxic.   It has nothing to do with God.   It is about us condemning ourselves for failing ourselves.    So we self-shame and self-punish ourselves.   It involves a tyrannical conscience that cannot accept God’s forgiveness and which grants no mercy.   This inner tyrant throws out the cross of Christ and demands we satisfy its insatiable demands.   It usurps God’s place and requires even more than God Himself!

False guilt is a curse.   It blocks what is good and deepens us in what is bad.   We feel trapped and jailed, and resort to forbidden pleasures to protest the straight-jacket wrapped around us.   False guilt therefore leads to a multiplying of true guilt.    If I feel bad, I might as well act bad.   If I feel rejected by God, I might as well deserve it.

In the end, we totally numb our conscience to escape it’s impossible-to-please demands and begin to give ourselves permission to indulge every kind of wickedness imaginable.

The resolution of false guilt is therefore harder.    We drag this inner, self-absorbed, shaming tyrant-of-a-conscience kicking and screaming to God, confess any known wrongs, and require it to hear God’s judicial pronouncement over us:  forgiven, clean, and righteous in Jesus Christ!

When the tyrant spurns God’s higher verdict, we enforce the Supreme Court ruling and insist that this lower court comply with heaven’s verdict until it backs down and releases us unconditionally.    It can be quiet a bloody battle!

In other words, the solution involves pleading the blood sacrifice of Christ against all of our offenses.  It involves standing on some very specific promises of God to forgive sinners.  It is based on the fact that  Jesus Christ has already been punished for everything we’ve done, are doing now, and ever will do.  And therefore God is completely and forever satisfied with His offering for us.  So we, and our conscience, can be satisfied, too.

Instead of giving ground to the tyrant, we refuse to back down or concede this contested point.    And when we stand firm fifty times, the tyrant begins to be tamed and its screams die down.   And when we stand our ground on God’ s promise five-hundred times, we begin to feel deep within like a truly forgiven sinner.    And when we’ve stood firm on our justified status five-thousand times, the tyrant will have become a whimpering shadow and we will then be able to help others in their battle with false guilt.

How’s the battle with false guilt going in your life?

Primitive Religion

The Punishment-Reward worldview is deeply embedded in all of us.   As children, when we pleased our parents we were rewarded, and when we were naughty we were punished.    In movies with a classic ending, the good guys win and the bad guys are destroyed.   In the Old Testament, when Israel was obedient it went well for them, and when they forsook the Lord and followed the idols, terrible troubles and judgments happened.

Obey and be blessed; disobey and be cursed.    Then we take one step further:  if life is going well for me and I am prospering and enjoying peace and comfort, I MUST be doing something right.   I AM right! And if life is not going well for me and I am suffering and losing money and failing, then I MUST have done something wrong.  I AM wrong!   As Jesus’ disciples put it, “Who sinned–this man or his parents–that he should have been born blind?”

If we are in a community that shares in the reward-punishment world view, our job is to congratulate the prospering that God is on their side, and remind the suffering that something is wrong with them and there must be some sin in their life to cause this.   Suffering is their fault, in other words.    And if we are suffering, we wrack our brains trying to find out where we went wrong or why God has suddenly turned against us.   No wonder people loathe and fear this “reward-punishment” type of god who isn’t God!

Sound familiar?   It should because this is the view of God and life and religion that Job and his three friends shared.   The righteous are blessed and shielded from harm; the wicked are cursed and experience every kind of trouble.    Job suffered.   Therefore Job is unrighteous and he needs to fess up.   And it infuriated Job because he hadn’t done anything wrong according to the standards of the time.    He felt betrayed by God, as one who had gotten the opposite of what was owed him by his Deity in light of his own exemplary behavior.    God therefore owed him an explanation.

But the problem wasn’t God.   It was this simplistic, primitive religious system that could not explain two realities:   trials and testings of the righteous; and blessings and grace for the wicked.    Job’s friends didn’t mean to be so terribly cruel, but their system had no other answer but to blame the victim for his troubles and insist he must has sinned to merit them.

Where do we find primitive religion among Christians in the USA?   Obviously, in health and wealth circles.   If you give such and such amount, God will bless you a hundred fold.    If we weren’t healed, it was because you didn’t have faith.  If you are spiritual, you will enjoy perfect health and be wealthy.  And if you are sick and/or poor, you obviously aren’t spiritual enough.  Terribly cruel and terribly manipulative, don’t you think?

Among more conservative believers, I hear it put like, “If you obey, you will be blessed.”    So we tithe.  Or we give a certain percentage to missions.   Or we volunteer in many ministries.   And, based on these merits, God is expected to bless us and take care of all our problems.    And if He isn’t, we must work harder so we can be blessed more.    A cruel treadmill, isn’t it?

And, what is worse, if we Evangelicals don’t get the expected blessings or get the opposite–undeserved suffering–God has let us down and therefore we are ENTITLED to find our blessings outside of God in the world of sinful pleasures and whatever we can grab for ourselves.    I’ve worked hard–I deserve it becomes our bottom line.

Now there is indeed a blessing from walking closely with Christ, an intimacy that is there regardless of our circumstances.    But if we ever think He owes us a blessing, or that we have done our part and so He must keep His end of the bargain, we are not practicing biblical Christianity but unbiblical, primitive folk religion that has no room for suffering saints or graced sinners.

Mature, biblical religion understands that we all start off as wicked people who are mightily blessed when we deserved nothing but God’s curses.   God confers on us the unearned status of righteousness, and as the grace-righteoused, he tells us we will suffer in this life just like Jesus did–even when we’ve done rightly and especially when we’ve done rightly.   And we will see other people, people just like we used to be, who will be blessed mightily even though they are so wicked–while we ourselves are suffering and especially when we ourselves are suffering.

It will challenge our primitive understanding of reward and punishment, and require us to let go of the neat and tidy worldview that eliminates personal suffering and offers no grace to others.    In other words, we lose all control and God owes us nothing.  There is no system we can work to guarantee blessedness and prevent all suffering.   God now has all the cards–blessing whoever He wants to bless and giving everyone whatever He wants to give or not give.

Primitive religion keeps all the cards in our hands.    Grace religion places them all in God’s hands and humbly accepts the mystery of undeserved suffering and undeserved blessing.    To which religion do you belong?

The Power of Fathering

Father’s Day is maybe yesterday’s news, but fatherhood is every day’s news and every body’s issue.

There’s an old Gypsy Proverb, “You have to dig deep to bury your father.”   Like it or not, our fathers leave a large footprint in our lives–for good or for ill.    Many of us carry “father wounds” which are not so much a cry against our own earthly father but a heart cry for a father, for the positive blessing only a grace-giving, boundary-setting, guidance-providing father can give us.

I noticed growing up that boys who had strong fathers were vertebrates–they had an inner solidness that gave them confidence and security.   Their fathers gave them the gift of involved, healthy male leadership by their example.  And their fathers said, “No” and instilled in them a healthy respect for authority…if you get my drift.   Father strength was caught and mysteriously transferred from father to son.

I, on the other hand, felt like a jellyfish.   Lacking inner security as a boy, I  tried too hard to fit in with the other boys.   Lacking a strong sense of fatherly approval, I craved the approval of the secure and solid men around me.  But I didn’t find what I was looking for:   a strong emotional bond with a father.

My dad had other strengths–doing father-son activities together, buying me many resources, supporting my hobbies and pursuits, instilling in me a strong work ethic, and providing for his family.    Knowing what I know now about my dad and his own dad, he bettered on the damaged inheritance he received. But the father wound to his heart crippled his ability to connect to mine.  Hence, jellyfishism in me.

Girls who had a strong father didn’t always need to have a boyfriend to feel complete.   In fact, they didn’t need us guys at all.   Which made them fascinating and well worth pursuing.   I know.   I married a woman like that.

The girls who threw themselves at guys, who weren’t complete without a boyfriend, who were desperate for male attention and who exhibited themselves to gain it, might be popular.    But they weren’t respected.  And they found themselves used and discarded.   Sadly, they never really found what they were looking for:   a heart connection to a strong, present, accepting, celebrating his daughter kind of father.

So the question of the day is:   how does one get it when you never got it growing up?     And the answer of the day is:   we have another Father.   A Father who longs to have a heart connection to all of us.   A Father who gave up what was most precious to Him to rescue us from peril.   A Father with outstretched arms.  A Father full of compassion.  A Father who stands on the hill, looking off in the distance, waiting for us to come home to Him whenever we stray.

He’s also a Father of unlimited strength, who provides for His own.    A Father who gives good gifts and who sets good boundaries.     A Father who disciplines us in love when we’re ornery and hurt others and won’t listen.   A Father who knows how to let us fail and learn from our mistakes.

He is our Father in heaven.    And Jesus says, “He who has seen Me, has seen the Father.”    All that is beautiful and good and kind and wise and active in Jesus’ life is a reflection of His Father, too.

The key is to cry out for our Heavenly Father.    To admit we need Him to father us in areas where we were not fathered or mal-fathered.   To invite Him into the Grand Canyon-sized hole in our hearts.   To see Him as good.  To trust Him with our selves.   To appeal to Him for compassion and mercy.   To not try to hide anything from Him, but to bring even our worst issues and faults and misdeeds to Him for cleansing and forgiveness.   To let Him speak to us from His Word on these very specific issues–with a pre-commitment to follow His guidance.

And if we do this again and again, we will learn at a deep emotional level that we truly have a good Father.   We will gain that heart connection to Him and the hole will be filled.    A backbone will begin to form, and we won’t be so insecure and nervous.

We won’t have to be our own father anymore.  So much unspoken pressure will fall off of us.    We won’t have to prostitute ourselves to gain some earthly male’s approval, because we already enjoy His unconditional approval.    Out of solidness and fullness, new and healthier relationships with others will happen.   And then we’ll have something solid and good to share with our spouse, our children, and the circle of people who can depend upon us for the Father’s grace.

Whether you were ill-fathered or well-fathered or non-fathered, I invite you to experience Fatherly grace through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Iran and Freedom

Seeing hundreds of thousands of people standing up to a tyrannical government uplifts all of us.    It resonates with our God-given love of freedom implanted in all our hearts.

Whether it was the students in Tienanmen Square, or the German people taking sledge hammers to the Berlin Wall, or the street dancing in Soweto when Nelson Mandela was released, or the citizens of Timosora, Romania who lit candles and chanted, “God is alive!” in the face of a secret police army, such images do not easily leave our minds.   It’s what we are beginning to see in Iran right now.

So when is a tyranny doomed?   When does such a government fall?    As I pondered the question, I came up with this answer:    When enough citizens are willing to die, and their willingness to die outweighs the tyranny’s willingness/ability to kill, then that government collapses.   As long as a government’s violence cows and scatters the assembled masses and people choose to save themselves, then that tyranny remains in place.

By this standard, events in Iran look promising.   At first the secret police and vigilante militias had the upper hand.  But by day two, with hundreds of thousands protesting, they sat off to the sidelines–stunned. Even one of their urban bases was overrun, which is why 7 people died.    The ruling Mullahs are trying to do what the Eastern European communists did–make concessions, diffuse the anger, and, above all, convince people to go home.   If threats don’t work, use bribes and make promises that won’t ever be kept.

In Eastern Europe, the concessions of the authorities only whetted the appetite of the repressed masses for freedom.   The protests got even bigger and soon the police and army saw which way the wind was blowing and joined the people.   In less than a week, these hated tyrannies fell.     Even wholesale concessions could not save them.

There is a spiritual parallel to this contest between the power of killing and the power of dying.    The power of Christ was released to us only when He chose to die in obedience to the Father at his enemy’s hands, instead of saving his own skin and making peace with the Pharisaic system.

And because they killed Him and released the power of dying, He arose and the number of His followers grew exponentially.   So the religious authorities responded with extreme violence. And the Church’s willingness to stand fast and even die thwarted their efforts to stamp out the movement.   Their power to kill was trumped again by the power of dying.

In Romania under communism, a secret police Colonel knocked on the door of Pastor Joseph Tson and announced, “Tomorrow we are going to kill you!”   The meek pastor responded, “Your greatest power is killing.   My greatest power is dying.   If you kill me, then every one who listens to my tapes will know that I died for what I believed.   They will listen that much harder and respond that much more, fulfilling my life’s work.   So I am very ready to die!”  The man returned the next day and said, “We are not going to kill you and release your greatest power!”

When there is no longer any threat tyrants can use to intimidate us into betraying what we know to be true, when there is no bribe they can give us to buy our disloyalty or denial, then and only then are we free.    Their power over us is broken.   We neither fear them nor do we need anything from them.  They cannot take away anything from us, nor can they add anything to us.

And so I wish the Iranian people well!   Not only freedom from government oppression.   But freedom from the tyranny of sin as well.    And both only happen because dying turns killing into victory.

Kudos to “UP”

It’s not often that I like a movie as much as I did with UP, Pixar’s latest animated masterpiece.    It marvelously blends exciting action and touching lessons.   But there was something more at work than simple excellence.  The story!  A story that affirms something written deeply on all of our hearts.

The main character is a nerdy boy, who meets an equally quirky but outgoing girl.  Then it traces their growing relationship through the decades until they are an elderly married couple.  They had a dream of taking an adventure to South America, but unforeseen expenses keep getting in the way.   They hoped to have children, but lost both the child and the ability have children.

So they choose to make the most of life together and then she dies and he is left alone.   The adventure stops.   And, in the pain of his loss, the old man we know as Mr. Danielson, becomes isolated, selfish, irascible, and willful.  Yet, because the story gave us a real taste of what he lost, we hold him in sympathy when he is at his worst.

But life intervenes in the form of an Adventure Scout who is a stowaway when Mr. Danielson escapes his problems in a balloon-and-wind powered home.    After landing in South America, these two meet a lost, picked-on dog who needs a master.   They also meet a rare, multicolored bird being hunted by a trophy collecting explorer.    All these characters are thrust upon an unwilling Mr. Danielson.   He resents their intrusions and interruptions.    He wishes they would all go away and get out of his way.    Then they do.

An epiphany happens and Mr. Danielson finally lets go of his old dream and helps others achieve their dreams.  He saves the rare bird captured by the villain, adopts that homeless dog in need of  a master, and becomes the father that trying-too-hard-to-please boy never had.   Mr. Danielson stops waiting to die, and starts living again by helping others reach their dreams.  We cheer!

We have, in short, a parable of old age as either a lonely time of self-absorbed brooding in bitterness over past loses, or as a rich time of investing a whole lifetime’s value in others.     Mr. Danielson’s real journey is from the former to the latter.    Like all good stories, this story makes us all want to do the same, to step outside of our selves and grace others.    Because God Himself is this way, He has written this grump-to-grace story on all of our hearts and placed an invitation there.

How easy it is to be “stuck”, to wallow in self-pity and forget the world around us!   And to withhold the good we could do for others, because a good we never wanted to lose was taken from us.   We end up miserable and make everyone else around us miserable, too.  All because we forgot that bringing joy to others is the highest joy there is.

Jesus said, “He who keeps his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for My sake will find it.”    If there was ever a parable for a sick culture of relentless self-fulfillment and resulting misery, UP is it.    And grace is it.

Complaining and Contentment

Mark Twain once said in jest, “Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”     His joke is funny because nobody can do anything about it.   Complaining about things we cannot change is all too human, and yet it shows we need a change of perspective.

Just who are we complaining to?   Just who do we expect to receive our complaints?    In other words, who gives the weather?  Who controls events? Who places us in a family and who puts leaders into office?   Who runs this place, anyway?

Implied in our incessant complaining about the management of the universe is a criticism of the Person who runs it.  And an insinuation that we could do a better job of running it ourselves than He can!   All complaining is, at bottom, a complaint about God made in the presence of God by someone who thinks the could be a better god.

We complainers think we know best, and that everyone and everything owes us an explanation for deviating from our exalted expectations.    So we have the right to complain.

Disappointed expectations of events and other people are dead give-aways that we have a control problem.    Do we actually expect a fallen world to be orderly and always beneficial?   Do we actually expect sinful people to be naturally good?   Do we think the universe revolves around us and what we want?  Are we crazy?

Selfishness is natural.   Greed is status quo.   Lust and war and cruelty fill the pages of human history.    It is only the self-deluded who pretend otherwise.   Just look into your own heart, and see the swirling cesspool of anger, envying, resentments, lusts, accusations, foul thoughts, etc.    We can’t even live up to our own standards, let alone God’s perfect ones.

Yet here is born the seeds of contentment, and even the basis of profound gratitude.    If sin and selfishness and evil is the default setting of the human heart, if chaos and tragedy and woe is the default setting of a fallen world, then…..

Anything good that actually happens is a miracle.   Any kindness.  Any mercy.  Any getting along.   Any decent parenting.   Any right choices. Any good times.   Any kind people.  Any happy memories.   Any competent government and any good decision-making by any organization–private or public.   Anything that turns our right, or better than hoped.   Anytime it rains somewhere in the world and crops are watered.   Anytime the sun shines on any poor soul.

Instead of expecting everything to be always good and right, and complaining all the time because it never is, how about the opposite?    Let’s be surprised and celebrate any good–however small.  After all, any good that happens shouldn’t have happened.    We unworthies were graced once again.

Then there’s an bonus section every Christian can take to heart:  Have you been forgiven of all your sins?   Are you clean and born again and going to heaven?   Has Christ died for you, and then been raised for you, too?   Did you deserve any of this?   What more could God give up to save your everlasting life?   Hasn’t He already gone far out of His way and done far more than enough to help you?  Do you really have any right to complain?

The old hymn writer put it well, “Count your blessings, name them one by one”.    The Bible gets it right when it commands us, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks–for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Go ahead–freak people out–stop complaining and start thanking God instead. They’ll wonder what happened to you.  And they might catch on.

Self-Reliance for Grace Reliance

Given the choice, most of us will choose the familiar over the unfamiliar, the sure thing that’s worked in the past over the untried thing.   We trust in what we can see, and in what we can do, and what we already know.

But this short-circuits the grace of God in our lives.   Grace requires entrusting ourselves into the care of Another.   Grace requires uncomfortable vulnerability.   Grace involves letting go, relinquishing control, and being found naked in our sins so we can be loved there.    And who likes doing that?

Hedging our bets, splitting our confidence between what Christ has done for us, and what we do for ourselves, is so easy to do.  It protects me from vulnerability.  Because Christ is beyond my control, and because depending on Someone outside of me for continual, undeserved handouts is humbling, it’s natural for us to revert to self-trust.

And the minute my confidence is in what I can do for me, the pressure begins.  My focus is withdrawn from the Lord, and is now on how well I am performing.   Are my efforts good enough?    Have I been a good boy today?   Am I doing better than most other people?   Have I made the cut?   Have I done too many wrong things?    Is there something left unchecked on God’s list?

And with pressure comes anxiety, and with anxiety comes the need to control, and the need to control requires the whole universe to follow my plan.   But it never does.  And the alternative–chaos and loss of control–is frightening.

So I turn to props and idols and addictions to relieve the pressure and increase my elevation (get high).     Then I realize what I just did and feel ashamed.    Then I punish myself and cry out for guilt relief and vow to do better and do a little better but have to do still better and so I do it all over again.  And again.  And again.     Self-trust inevitably leads to enslavement.

But when I forsake confidence in my own performance, when I abandon myself to God’s love, when I look out and away from myself to Christ and see Him bearing all my sins and bestowing all of His righteousness and power on me as a loving gift, I am free.   His love is a rock of security.  His performance level is perfect and unchanging.   God is infinitely satisfied with Him, and now with me as well.

Freed from all the performance requirements of religion, and abandoning the hopeless quest to do them all well enough to gain acceptance, I can focus on my Rescuer and on receiving the love He has especially for me as an unworthy, performance failure.   I begin to love Him back and want to do something in return to say “Thank You!”.   Out of this excess love I gain the love needed to spend on other people, and the life of God begins to flow out of me towards others.

I wish those who are disenchanted with religion, with fakers and sanctimonious showmanship, with pressure and condemnation and hypocrisy, would dare to cast themselves on God’s grace and be healed of their distrustful, suspicious ways.    That they would experience what I did:  an outpouring of love so unexpected and undeserved it would melt their heart and secure their will.

Fragile and Vulnerable

Two events this week have reminded me that 1) this life is full of unforeseen dangers, 2) we are terribly fragile, 3) therefore we are all vulnerable.

I was enjoying a Miss Marple mystery book on Saturday morning when a woman we had never met came up to our front door, wearing a grave face.   I opened the door and she said she’d seen a cat’s body in the road, had pulled it over to the side, and wondered if it was ours.    I accompanied her and, to my sorrow, identified the corpse of our family’s favorite cat–Kate.

While my wife and girls cried in their rooms, Matt and I dug a hole in the ground behind the shop and gently laid Kate’s body there.    The night before–a bright and vibrant animal.   The next morning–a lifeless, stiff shell.    How hazardous life is, and how fragile and powerless we all are.    The Bible puts it, “your life is like a vapor”.    How sadly true!

Two days ago an Airbus Jet carrying 262 people disappeared over the Atlantic off the coast of Brazil–carrying everyone to the bottom of the sea.   One moment–a planeload full of vibrant people flying high.     The next moment–vanished and resting at the bottom of the sea.    And no human power can ever bring them back.

It seems to me we have two choices:  to pretend we are invulnerable, or admit we are quite vulnerable.    To hold onto the illusion of control, or to relinquish that illusion and accept how small, fragile, and powerless we really are.

I have no panaceas or bromides to offer.   I can only repeat what John Bunyan said, “Until we face the grave and what lies beyond it, we are not yet ready for life on this side of the grave.”

Until our ego has been deflated, until our grandiosity has been shrunk down to size, until we are brought low to the point where we admit we are powerless and relinquish our feeble attempts to run the universe, we are not ready for God.  We are too busy competing with Him to find Him.

The fragile, vulnerable way may not be the popular way to live, but it is the only honest way to live.

George Tiller and His Killer

The murder of late term abortionist Dr. George Tiller yesterday saddened me. And outraged me as well.   Here, in the name of defending the unborn, a man is killed by a self-appointed avenger supposedly defending their rights.   Killed in cold blood in a church in front of his wife.    And the man doing it told himself it was justified, it was the only way to stop him, etc.

The biggest moral question confronting our society is not “Is abortion right or wrong?”  It is the question, “Do the ends justify the means?”   Utilitarianism, in other words.    Both the left and the right denounce the mercenary means of the other side.   But the entire political spectrum– left, middle, and right– resorts to justifying wicked means for noble ends.    Including Dr. Tiller’s murderer, and those who would exploit his murder to silence the entire pro-life movement through guilt by association.

I am disgusted by utilitarianism.   And there seem to be no compelling voices raised against it in our culture.   Utilitarianism is now the accepted moral norm.  You’re a weirdo if you don’t accept it.  Or if you object in principle to it.  Or if you won’t go along with it as a nice person should.

If killing one abortionist can save thousands of unborn, is it justified?   If torturing a terrorist can save hundreds of lives, is it justified?  If engaging in preemptive war can eliminate one regime’s ability to use weapons of mass destruction, is it OK?   If harvesting embryos can prevent diseases, is it not only permissible but actually immoral to oppose it?  If guaranteeing consequence-free sex and sexual liberation of women can be brought about, is abortion as “the birth control of last resort” justified?

And we in the church are just as guilty.    If getting my way in a church conflict is the result, will I resort to gossip and rumor to bring it about?   If having a less painful life will result, will I divorce my mate for someone younger or more “compatible” even though we are both Christians?    If getting wealthier is the result, will I engage in questionable business practices and/or deceive people even though I am a Christian businessperson?

By all these measures, the Evangelical church has, by our behavior, clearly shown that we, too, are utilitarians.    We suspend our moral principles at will to gain desired outcomes.    For example, many Christian young adults are pro-abstinence until marriage, until they are are in a serious dating relationship and get physical.      Or we believe in peaceful protests, until they don’t “work”.   Etc.  Etc.  Etc.

The man who murdered Dr. Tiller didn’t help the pro-life movement–he greatly harmed it by muddying the waters and tarnishing us with the brush of utilitarianism.    If, when all is said and done, the ends justify the means, why NOT kill millions of unborn babies?   Or millions of Jews?   Or hundreds of thousands of Tutsi?

The end result is the debate is no longer about “life is inherently sacred and people are a noble end in and of themselves”.   It is now which group, abortionist or unborn, deserves to die for “the greatest good”, and which side can reach a political majority to impose their version of the greatest good on the other side who stands in their way.

Tribalism, in other words.   Instead of shared consensus of the essential, inviolable worth of every human being, it’s every man for himself and every group for itself.   It’s whatever political/moral group can reach a majority, and impose their utopia on the minority, until the minority has no recourse within the law to resist it.   Then the tribal war will begin.

Under utilitarianism, our future is not modern Sweden.   It is Rwanda.