On the need to avoid an unhealthy codependence on God
I find it ironic that so many conservatives who deplore extended dependence on government welfare (because it destroys the soul) embrace non-ending handouts “from heaven.”
In his 2005 article in The National Review, “Welfare Reform Part II,” Stephen Moore wrote that it was time to start chopping welfare programs again. Moore was not content with the cuts made as part of the 1996 Welfare Reform. It was time to make deeper cuts. In Moore’s opinion, there are deep psychological reasons for kicking people off welfare. These have to do with the alleged fact that extended receipt of welfare assistance destroys human capacity for self initiative. Here are Moore’s own words:
Welfare Reform Part II, if properly implemented, will save money and for those in need restore the dignity of a purposeful life. It will also be consistent with the original intention of aid to the poor, which was to be a temporary safety net for those out of work and out of luck.
Back in 1935 the founder of the modern welfare state warned: “Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” The speaker was Franklin Roosevelt. What a tragedy that seven decades later Uncle Sam is still undermining the human spirit with this destructive narcotic.
Moore’s article reminded me of the relationship that many Christians claim to have with their God. You can constantly hear it in their prayers. They ask for new cars, houses, spouses and better jobs. They don’t stop at material things. They ask for their God to give them courage, patience, wisdom and fortitude. See here and here, for example. The prayers often take the following tone (warning: this is my own semi-cynical paraphrasing):
Oh God, I am nothing. Please take pity on me and give me A, B and C. And tomorrow, please give me D, E and F. I want you to do my thinking for me. Please keep telling me what to do so that I don’t have to do any of that work. Give me strength, mercy, wisdom, patience. Give me give me give me. Someday. please let me into heaven and let me sit on your lap and let me be forever dependent on the things that you will give to me up there.
In short, for many people, God has assumed the role of the Welfare State. It’s a one-way street, where those who pray repeatedly ask their God to satisfy their own needs and wants.
To the extent that Stephen Moore is correct in his analysis of welfare dependence, conservative Christians should be wary of the effect of their own conceptualization of God.
How about this as an alternative, a healthier approach to God? Assume that you were given a great gift by being allowed to be born. This initial gift gave you “dignity of a purposeful life.” Assume that God’s gift of life to you was a “temporary safety net,” but it is now time for you to stop asking for help. It is time for you to pick yourself up and fend for yourself materially, intellectually and emotionally. It is time for you to wean yourself of God-The-Welfare-Administrator.
To do otherwise is to become dependent upon your God as “a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
Mike C Said : Martin, my apologies.
Mike: Apologies accepted, but only if you will accept my apology for putting into your mouth words you did not say.
Peace.
You said something earlier that has had me thinking all week.
Mike C Said: I also agree with Vicki that his [Erich's] caricature of Christian beliefs seems based on one extremist segment of Christianity.
I started off along the lines of, If you are a Christian then you probably believe some combination of the following:
In the time of our ancestors, a man with no biological father was born to a virgin mother. This fatherless man called out to a friend of his who had been dead for so long his body stank, and the dead man came back to life. During his short life the fatherless man performed many other inexplicable acts, he made the lame walk and the blind see, fed five thousand people with three loaves and five fishes, and many others. When the fatherless man died - to save all the people on Earth - he came back to life after being buried for three days. Forty days later he went up to the top of a hill and disappeared bodily into the sky. His virgin mother never died, but was herself “assumed” bodily into heaven.
If you talk to yourself, out loud or in your head, the fatherless man and his “father” who is himself, can hear you, understand you, and will sometimes make your wishes come true. He can simultaneously do this for all the other people in the world whether they believe in him or not. If you do something good or something bad the same fatherless man will know, even if no one else does, and you may be rewarded or punished for your acts even after your death.
I was then going to go on and ask whether any rational person could consider that to be anything other than a caricature of a human being. How could that possibly form the belief system of a rational, scientific, critical thinking human?
But then I realised that the objection to that line of thought is that rationality and critical thinking are not universally agreed as being the “right” way to go about our lives. What is it that says that living our lives according to the precepts of science is necessarily an advance over, say, pre-Industrial revolution thought?
Meet Sarah. She is 35 years-old, married with two children. She has a nice house, a car, a job, she doesn’t smoke but does like the odd glass of wine. She is a Christian and has tried to bring her children up to believe, though she fears she may be failing.
At seven one morning Sarah is woken by an electric alarm clock beside her bed. Though she has hardly anything on, when she gets out of bed it is comfortably warm in her bedroom, thanks to the central heating. She goes into the bathroom and brushes her teeth, using a plastic toothbrush with nylon bristles… and I’m sure you get the idea. There is no aspect of Sarah’s life so trivial that science has no influence on it at all. Everything, from her personal grooming products to her pre-packaged food, from her mobile phone to the electric lights in her house, the gadgets in her kitchen, the car she drives to work, the clothes she wears yeah even the electric organ in her church on Sunday. All of these things are evidence that whether she acknowledges it or not Sarah has accepted Science into her life and embraced it even closer than she embraces God.
Closer? Well, I’m sure Sarah would blush if she thought God was watching her have sex at night, but when she takes the contraceptive pill or asks her husband to wear a condom she brings science into her bedroom, willingly.
Sarah has a closer and more intimate relationship with science than she ever will have with God, and all she has to do to acknowledge that is to open her eyes and see.
Science has made all these things possible. It has even made possible the computer on which you are reading this thread. And I personally find that a wholly satisfying explanation for why science deserves to be at the centre of our lives, and for why it is the scientific method, and logical, critial thinking that should drive our search for the eternal truths.
But you know what Mike C, at that point I realised that you just would not agree with me. To you, and to all your fellow believers it is God who made the mobile phone possible and the man who invented it was simply an instrument of God. And you find that a wholly satisfying explanation and see no reason to invoke belief in the mysticism and magic of science. And you never will.
Which has made me realise that endlessly debating these things is not going to get either one of us anywhere. There is no common ground upon which we can begin to agree. I can not accept that there is a kindly, invisible man in the sky watching over me, and you cannot understand how the world could possibly be arranged any other way. In which case, could someone please tell me, what is the point of these debates?
What is the point of the debates?
To keep junk science away from real science.
http://www.thealmanack.com/
http://www.almanac.com/
To reduce future suffering. Of course this involves predicting the future, so your guess is almost as good as mine…
My guess is that a rationally anchored humanity will fare better than a religiously anchored humanity. This also includes other living beings, as evidenced by the web of life.
Martin, in your little scenario, you are confusing Science with technology and economic development. Technical training, expertise, and even innovation are not incompatible with religious belief. Look at the background and education of many of the 9/11 bombers. A lot of engineers and software professionals in the US are born-agains (and half of the ones who aren’t are into medieval fantasy games.)
The US is the most religious of the developed nations, but I’d be willing to bet that we’re still close to the top in technological innovation. On the other hand, Russia has been able to train some top-notch scientists in the past couple centuries, but that has not resulted in a generally high standard of living there.
Not trying to make any point here other than that civilization is more complicated than you seem to think.
Vicki,
I do not believe that I am confusing Science with technology at all; I am making the point that technology depends on Science. You can not simultaneously own a mobile phone and deny the Science that explains how it works. You cannot embrace light bulbs, central heating, refrigerators and cars and at the same time reject Science because the technology depends on the Science.
This point was made to demonstrate that Scientific thinking is necessarily an advance over what I called pre-Industrial Revolution thought. I used this expression because I think of the Industrial Revolution as being the point (or era) in history when Science began to impinge upon our consciousness in ways that even poorly educated people can see in their own lives.
It might not be obvious to the unitiated that the design of the Sofia Hagia in Constantinople depends directly upon the mathematics of Archimedes, but the construction of ingenious machines for automating construction processes and the introduction of gas lighting in the home are things that everyone can acknowledge.
Accepting these technological innovations as Science and not just the work of god is, however, another step.
note of caution: this post completely disregards previous posts and responds only to the original blog. (sorry. didn’t want to commit to reading it all…)
] and have no apologies for this.
second note of caution: I am limited by the English language and thus I refer to God as He quite often. I am well aware of the implication of its usage, but my God knows that I by no means am making Him finite. In other languages there are gender neutral third person pronouns that don’t reduce God to an objectified ‘It’. I do take it for granted that my God is a Person [perhaps Three in One?
cautioning over. i humbly issue a response. (you may tear into me at will.)
Why does ‘dependent’ carry such negative connotations these days? http://www.healthydependency.com/whatis.html
As quoted from the above site, “HEALTHY DEPENDENCY means blending intimacy and autonomy, and feeling good–not guilty–about asking for help when you need it. It’s a way of reaching to others that actually lets you grow stronger, and connect more deeply with people around you.”
The goal in soliciting a Sovereign, Worthy God would be knowing Him more deeply (intimacy) and then acting on that knowledge of Him (well-informed autonomy). At best, dependence on a worthy God binds His sovereignty with the responsibility of man. We should not be ashamed in asking for guidance and help, but we should be steadfast in walking in the truths gained from intimacy with Him. What truths? Self-less, God-full ones. In intimacy with One so worthy, you find yourself humbled, realizing that your best efforts are His worse and your most noble desires (say, ending war) are His most base. With the realization you find yourself dependent, yes. But not to seek your own ends (as shown in so vile a picture as receiving treats from some great white-bearded guy reminiscent of Santa Claus once you’re in heaven), rather His. You find yourself unable to even attempt such a feat, and your dependency increases such that you are dependent on Him even to offer what is owed to so great a God: adoration, love and appreciation. And knowing yourself to be devoid of the necessary tools to offer such praise to One so above yourself you are lead to ask for patience, fortitude, mercy, grace, etc.
To be frank, we are all dependent on something, whether it is indeed welfare (thought I am hardly conservative and have a mother who used the welfare system at some point to get herself back on her feet), or others’ approval, or our own haughty sense of righteousness or perspective. I have such dependencies. The dependency on God which you seem to claim comes second nature to most (conservatives? or more general?) and hypocritically so is an enduring struggle for myself. I confess, I am struggling to order my life such that it is truly dependent upon God. Unlike a narcotic which deteriorates, corrodes, dulls and makes useless the mind, my Magnificent Addiction (if it may be deemed appropriate to call it such) is ever widening and deepening and humbling my mind as I stand in awe. All I can do is show my appreciation.
I hope my comment is well-recieved and seen as all it is: a tribute to my Worthy Sovereign, rather than a showy attempt to have you ‘look-at-me, look-at-me’.
Thanks for this entry though. I think it is important to point out the dangers of hypocritical thinking. (I have to confess I think in this situation it is misapplied. Comparing governmental aide with the Ezer Kenegdo.) However, I have to agree that spiritual arrogance is the flaw of many of my brothers and sisters in Christ, who rightly conserve the truths of God, but who unjustly bind their fists tight when it comes to sharing the wealth with those who have less (no matter the reason), forgetting that we receive that we might give freely and cheerfully. In truth it is difficult to mix faith and politics at all, but I prefer conservative ethics and liberal economics.
At this point, I’m just rambling…so I’ll cut myself short. lol.
You’ve most certainly caught my attention Erich. Perhaps I will continue listening to what you have to say.
Yours because of Him,
anonymous
“There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with solemn exclamation, “I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.” No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God….”
J.I. Packer, Knowing God