Page 597 – Christianity Today (2024)

During last year’s 500th anniversary of the Reformation, many asked: Is it finally over? The loudest “no” came from some of the Protestants closest to Rome.

In December, national evangelical alliances in Italy, Spain, and Malta charged the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) with “moving away from its historic position” of holding the line against Catholic and liberal Protestant theology. They worried about a purported statement of “greater oneness” between the WEA, the Vatican, and the World Council of Churches (WCC).

“These are serious charges, but they bear no resemblance to what [we are] actually doing,” replied the WEA, which represents 600 million evangelicals across 129 national alliances and 150 member organizations. It explained that the dissident groups “conflated two reports from two different meetings.”

But it recognized their concerns. “Beneath this specific misunderstanding lies a deep-seated, ongoing concern about the WEA’s intra-faith relations,” the WEA stated. The southern European alliances “fear that too close a rapprochement and collaboration with the Catholic Church could undermine our ability to articulate the historic evangelical faith in an uncompromised way.”

That’s not an unusual fear for people who watch their leaders engage in such talks, said Brett Salkeld, ecumenical officer for a Catholic archdiocese in Canada and a participant in various Catholic–evangelical dialogues. “We imagine the people having discussions are papering over our differences and selling the farm.”

This gets tricky when ecumenism is done at a global level. Evangelicals in Spain, Italy, and Malta have faced years of Catholic persecution and are acutely aware of the differences between the two traditions. In turn, Catholics in Latin America—where evangelicalism is growing rapidly—worry about compromise with the “sheep stealers.”

Ecumenism is often seen as “the least common denominator, watered down, compromised kind of practice,” Salkeld said. “People don’t realize ecumenists are strongly committed to their own traditions.” Ecumenism done right is a precise expression of views, followed by careful challenge, that allows Catholics and Protestants “to get even better at articulating their positions,” he said. The point is understanding rather than compromise, and the result is a revelation of areas—marriage and family, social justice, abortion—where the sides can work together on common goals.

“We are not in the business of compromise,” said Salkeld. “We are in the business of discerning the truth.”

Bishop Efraim Tendero, secretary general of the WEA, said almost exactly the same thing: “We want collaboration without compromise.”

He’s worked with the Vatican on issues of climate change, human trafficking, and the spiritual engagement of young people. His top two priorities right now: religious freedom and Bible literacy and engagement.

Tendero himself is from the Philippines, a majority-Catholic country where Protestant-Catholic relations were tense for decades but greatly improved after Vatican II. “People are afraid that when we relate to the Catholic Church, we become subservient to them … or that we give up our evangelical distinctives in order to cooperate,” he said. “But when we first know who we are—our identity and our distinctives—then we have no problem interacting … because we know where we stand.”

The trouble, then, is communicating to those who aren’t in the closed-door meetings. “We need to strengthen our own internal communications,” Tendero said. “Lack of understanding and clarity on what’s happening [can] cause confusion and apprehension.”

Even that might not be enough. Unlike Catholics, evangelicals don’t have an organized hierarchy or a single spokesperson. Tendero doesn’t come to the table with the same authority as Pope Francis. Rome can issue definitive statements from the top down; Protestants must work from the bottom up.

“I believe in ecumenical discussion, but am increasingly unsure whether we can do it at a macro level,” said Chris Castaldo, author of The Unfinished Reformation and a host of Catholic-evangelical consultations for the WEA, Lausanne, and US Catholic bishops.

“The problem is statements that begin, ‘We affirm,’ ” as ecumenical documents often do, he said. Evangelicals “can’t say that because there is no ‘we.’ ”

Better language might be: “In dialogue, this team made up of evangelicals has recognized . . .” or “We realize the way this is appropriate and applied by various churches will differ depending on context,” he said.

“Saying much more than that is difficult, given this fundamental difficulty of who we are as evangelicals,” said Castaldo, himself a Catholic convert to evangelicalism who wrote a guide, Talking with Catholics About the Gospel. Catholic unity is based on institutions—specifically, a papal office passed down since Peter; evangelicals are united around Peter’s confession—that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

“That’s the disconnect,” he said. “Evangelical identity is rooted in a certain message that is aimed at the way in which sinful people are saved. The Catholic church is a very complex ecclesial institution that speaks with legal authority in this world according to canon law.”

It’s the same problem evangelicals have in the public square: Who are the people labeled evangelicals?

“It’s really hard to speak with one voice,” Castaldo said. He would like a new model of ecumenical engagement, with fewer statements that begin “we affirm,” more observations, and more ideas of how they could play out locally.

“We affirm” is “very much the Catholic understanding of continuous incarnation and hierarchy. There’s a real authority vested in those at the top,” he said. “Current documents reflect the Catholic theology—those assumptions.”

But if the parties approach each other from a more evangelical posture—that of servant leadership—then documents could look more like helpful advice on how to cultivate a relationship with a nearby priest or how to start a food pantry with a local parish.

Tendero is well aware of the differences of position. “Evangelicals don’t have the hierarchical structure,” he said. “But that doesn’t reflect weakness on our part because we have the consistent biblical position of the Reformers.”

He sees immense value in dialogue, starting in his country. “Several decades ago, evangelicals were being persecuted by the Catholic Church,” he said. “But after the Second Vatican Council, we have seen a kind of openness.” Today, the Bible Society in the Philippines is one-third Catholic, one-third evangelical, and one-third mainline.

His guide is James 1:19, being “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.”

“Many times we attack and comment and represent our perspectives without taking time to listen,” he said, “and that is also true in intra- as well as inter-confessional relationships.

“We need to listen to one another more before we speak. Many times we speak as if we have two mouths and listen as if we have only one ear.”

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra is a contributor to Christianity Today.

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Today Willow Creek Community Church (WCCC) and the Willow Creek Association (WCA) announced who will lead the promised investigation of the numerous allegations against Bill Hybels that led to the early retirement of the founding pastor and the resignation of his heirs and elders.

The new Willow Creek Independent Advisory Group (IAG) is co-chaired by Jo Anne Lyon, general superintendent emerita and current ambassador of The Wesleyan Church, and Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The other two members are Margaret Diddams, provost of Wheaton College and a professor of psychology, and Gary Walter, past president of the Evangelical Covenant Church in Chicago, Illinois.

Their task:

1. “Consider allegations related to Bill Hybels as founder and pastor of the church and founder and spokesperson of the association”
2. “Review organizational culture of the church and association”
3. “Make recommendations to the church and association for future actions”

Members for the group were nominated by evangelical leaders outside of both the church and the association, which jointly stated:

The IAG will work autonomously. WCCC and WCA have pledged their full cooperation, but neither will be represented on the IAG nor party to the group’s work except for providing information as requested.

The advisory group “has decided to decline press inquiries and interviews while they complete their review and develop their recommendations.” Its members “hope to complete their work in early 2019.”

“Fascinating,” tweeted Greg Jao, senior assistant to the president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. “The 4-member review team for this non-denominational church includes 2 former denomination heads & a university office [sic]. Might denominations & institutions offer more experience w/accountability & good process than independent churches?”

Willow has also posted an FAQ that explains, among other matters, that the church is not paying Hybels’s legal fees, faces no lawsuits, and has made no financial cuts yet. It notes:

“Why are we having an investigation into the women’s stories?”

We want to pursue truth however we can, and we specifically want to make things right with the women and the others who have been hurt. Ultimately, we want to lay the foundation for a new and better Willow that honors God in all dimensions, whatever that looks like.

Funding the investigation is an anonymous donor “not connected to Bill, Willow Creek, or those who made allegations in order to avoid bias,” stated Willow. “The donor will have no influence or involvement in the investigation, and the funds will be deposited by the donor into an account maintained by a third-party organization.”

“We acknowledge that rebuilding trust takes time,” stated the church, “and our heart is to take many steps to demonstrate an openness and desire for transparency.”

One of Hybels’s heirs, Steve Carter, explained to Religion News Service today why he quit last month. (He’s even written a book about it, releasing in November.)

CT’s Quick to Listen podcast assessed why the Hybels saga isn’t just another pastor sex scandal, while CT editor in chief Mark Galli editorialized on how true loyalty can heal the historic congregation.

In recent months, churches have been rocked by high-profile accusations of sexual misconduct among clergy.

While the Catholic church’s continued abuse scandal has dominated the headlines, Protestant churches have also seen high profile pastors accused of sexual misconduct.

More accusations are likely to come—from congregations big and small.

One in 8 Protestant senior pastors say a church staff member has sexually harassed a member of the congregation at some point in the church’s history. One in 6 pastors say a staff member has been harassed in a church setting.

Two-thirds of pastors say domestic or sexual violence occurs in the lives of people in their congregation. And many pastors believe the #MeToo movement has made their churches more aware of how common sexual and domestic violence are.

More pastors say they are addressing these issues from the pulpit. Still, half say they lack training in how to address sexual and domestic violence.

Those are among the findings of a new study on pastors’ views on #MeToo and sexual and domestic violence in churches from Nashville-based LifeWay Research. The study, sponsored by IMA World Health and Sojourners, is a follow up to a 2014 survey.

Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research, says the #MeToo movement—and more public discussion of sexual and domestic violence—seems to have gotten pastors’ attention.

“Pastors are starting to talk about issues like sexual harassment and domestic abuse more than in the past,” McConnell said. “They don’t always know how to respond—but fewer see them as taboo subjects.”

Most aware of #MeToo

For the study, LifeWay Research conducted a phone survey of 1,000 Protestant senior pastors earlier this year—then compared the results to a similar survey in 2014.

Researchers also asked additional questions specifically about the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements.

Eighty-five percent of pastors in the survey say they have heard of the #MeToo movement. Fewer pastors (16%) have heard of the #ChurchToo movement, which focused specifically on sexual harassment and abuse in the church. Eighty-four percent have not heard of #ChurchToo.

Three-quarters of pastors (76%) say they know someone who has been sexually harassed. Mainline pastors (82%) are more likely to say they know someone who has been harassed than evangelical pastors (71%).

Twelve percent of Protestant pastors say someone on church staff has sexually harassed a congregation member at some point in the church’s life. Eighty-five percent say no staff member has been found to have done so. Three percent don’t know. Pentecostal (94%) and Baptist (89%) pastors are more likely to say there has been no harassment found. Christian/Church of Christ (79%) and Presbyterian/Reformed (79%) pastors are less likely.

Sixteen percent say a staff member has experienced sexual harassment in a church setting. Eighty-two percent say that has not happened. Two percent don’t know. Mainline pastors (22%) are more likely to say a staff member has been harassed than evangelical pastors (11%).

Eighty percent of pastors say their church has a policy for sexual harassment allegations against staff. Nineteen percent say they don’t have a policy. Two percent don’t know.

A few pastors have firsthand knowledge of abuse. One in 5 pastors say they personally have experienced domestic or sexual violence. Four out of five say they have not.

#MeToo Leads to Action, Confusion

The #MeToo movement has prompted some pastors to action. It also appears to have led to some confusion among pastors and their congregations.

Forty-one percent of Protestant senior pastors who have heard of #MeToo say they are more inclined to preach about sexual and domestic violence in response to the movement. Forty-eight percent say they are inclined to speak about the issues about the same amount as they had in the past. Twelve percent say they are less inclined to speak as a result of #MeToo.

Methodist (57%) and Presbyterian/Reformed (52%) pastors are more likely to say they will preach more about sexual and domestic violence. Fewer Lutheran (37%), Church of Christ/Christian (36%), Baptist (30%) and Pentecostal (24%) pastors say they are now more inclined to preach on those topics.

Forty percent of those who have heard of #MeToo say they understand issues of sexual and domestic violence better because of the movement. Twenty-one percent say their understanding of the issues has not changed. Thirty-nine percent say they now have more questions.

Congregation members also have questions, according to pastors.

A third of pastors (32%) who have heard of #MeToo say their congregation is more confused about sexual and domestic violence. Sixty-two percent say their congregation has more empathy for victims. Fifty-eight percent say their congregation is more aware of how common sexual and domestic violence is.

A few (14%) say their congregation has become callous toward the issue.

Among other findings about pastors who have heard of #MeToo:

• 49 percent of mainline pastors are inclined to preach more about domestic and sexual violence.

• 32 percent of evangelical pastors are inclined to preach more about domestic and sexual violence.

• 48 percent of mainline pastors say they understand more.

• 32 percent of evangelical pastors say they understand more.

• 70 percent of mainline pastors say their churches have become more empathetic.

• 57 percent of evangelical pastors say their churches have become more empathetic.

• 44 percent of Christian/Church of Christ ministers say their churches have more confusion.

• 27 percent of Methodist pastors say their churches have more confusion.

• 18 percent of Baptist pastors say their churches are callous.

• 10 percent of Presbyterian/Reformed pastors say their churches are callous.

“We are encouraged that more and more pastors are speaking out and seeking training to make their churches safer sanctuaries for survivors of violence, but the results also show that we—as a Christian community—still fall short,” said Sojourners President and Founder Jim Wallis.

“If we believe that how we treat the most vulnerable is how we treat Christ, we must be in deep solidarity with the women and men who experience domestic or sexual abuse at some point in their lives,” Wallis said. “If we believe we are all created in the image of God, we cannot tolerate that only half of pastors feel prepared to respond to domestic and sexual violence situations.”

Domestic abuse less taboo

For the study, LifeWay Research asked Protestant pastors a series of detailed questions about how they handle the topics of sexual and domestic abuse.

Three-quarters (77%) say they speak about domestic violence at least once a year. That includes 26 percent who speak about it once a year and 51 percent who speak about it more than once a year.

By contrast, only 34 percent of Protestant senior pastors spoke about domestic violence more than once a year in a similar study in 2014.

Many pastors (75%) who address sexual or domestic violence at least once a year or more say they do so because they have seen the impact of such violence firsthand. Eighty-seven percent say sexual or domestic violence is an issue in their community. Ninety-six percent know of resources to help victims.

Only 1 in 5 (18%) say they address domestic or sexual violence because it is an issue in their congregation. Almost half (46%) speak about it because they have been trained in domestic violence issues.

Almost half (46%) of pastors who don’t address sexual or domestic violence say it is not an issue in their congregation. Twenty-nine percent say other topics are more important. Nineteen percent say they don’t know the issue well enough. Nineteen percent also say it is not an issue in their community. Sixteen percent say it is not appropriate to address domestic or sexual violence publicly.

“Despite the widespread public conversation, 1 in 5 pastors don’t feel compelled to address domestic or sexual violence,” McConnell said.

Action steps

LifeWay Research found that pastors often take action when they learn about cases of domestic and sexual violence.

Pastors believe victims need help from outside of their families when abuse occurs in the home. Eighty percent say in cases of domestic or sexual violence that occur in the home—including physical violence, child abuse, or marital rape—outside intervention is needed. Nine percent say such violence should be resolved primarily within the family. Eleven percent don’t know.

In cases of domestic violence, 82 percent of Protestant senior pastors say they would counsel a victim to seek support from a domestic abuse expert. Eight percent say they would tell a victim to try and improve the relationship with their spouse. Ten percent don’t know what they would counsel a victim to do.

Sixty-four percent of pastors agree that sexual or domestic violence occurs in the lives of people in their congregation—including 24 percent who strongly agree. Thirty percent disagree—including 13 percent who strongly disagree. Sixty-two percent say their church has taken action against domestic or sexual abuse at least once a year.

Ninety-six percent of pastors say they have a responsibility to ask church members about possible abuse if they see signs of domestic or sexual violence. Three percent disagree.

When responding to a case of domestic or sexual violence, 81 percent of pastors say they have provided a referral to an agency that assists victims. Seventy percent have provided marriage or couple’s counseling. Forty-six percent provided counseling for the abuser. Forty percent did a safety risk assessment for the victim.

Despite their willingness to help, many pastors still feel ill-prepared according to the study.

Only about half (55%) of pastors say they are familiar or very familiar with domestic violence resources in their community. And half say they don’t have sufficient training to address sexual or domestic abuse.

“Pastors want to care for victims of domestic and sexual violence,” McConnell said. “And they are often called to care for victims. But they don’t always know what to do.”

And some of the ways they respond can cause more harm than good according to experts, said McConnell.

Domestic violence experts, for example, say providing safety for victims should come first. Yet, less than half of pastors have done an assessment. And many pastors provide couples counseling in response to violence, something experts say can put victims at risk, said McConnell.

“We know caring faith communities respond to need. But in responding to abuse and harassment, we have much work left to do,” said Rick Santos, president and CEO of IMA World Health. “Our next generation of faith leaders need to be prepared to preach about prevention from the pulpit, create a safe space within their churches and lend their voices to the movement for lasting change in our society.”

Methodology:

The phone survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors was conducted June 19-July 2, 2018. The study was sponsored by IMA World Health and Sojourners. The calling list was a stratified random sample, drawn from a list of all Protestant churches. Quotas were used for church size. Each interview was conducted with the senior pastor, minister or priest of the church called. Responses were weighted by region to more accurately reflect the population. The completed sample is 1,000 surveys. The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.2 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

Comparisons are made to a phone survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors conducted by LifeWay Research May 7-31, 2014 using the same methodology.

LifeWay Research is a Nashville-based, evangelical research firm that specializes in surveys about faith in culture and matters that affect churches.

For many parents, the advent of the school year brings with it a familiar and difficult dynamic: cycles of interruptions. As mothers, in particular, we learn to be flexible with our plans and structure our days to bend to our kids’ needs. Nonetheless, as Michelle Radford notes in her recent CT interview, the unique challenge of parenting often precipitates a crisis of identity for many women.

When my two kids—born 14 months apart—were young, I felt as if I’d never get ahead in my career because I was too busy changing diapers, waking up in the middle of the night to feed my children, or running to the store for a bottle of baby Motrin. I struggled with the incessant interruptions and spent much of my time relinquishing well-made plans.

Now, however, as my children move into their teens, I’m beginning to recognize that, in those early years, God was teaching me to be openhanded with my hopes in order to serve others. What I thought hindered me from real ministry was, in fact, God’s tool instructing me to be present to the immediate needs around me, and what felt like falling behind in my career was just the character formation that Christ had been looking for. In sum, those early days of parenthood were teaching me to listen to the voice of Jesus.

All of us—mothers, fathers, pastors, teachers, and everyone else—are part of God’s ministry of interrupted plans, his kingdom of “on-the-way.” We see this in Scripture.

Much of the Jesus’ ministry happened on the way to something else. In Mark 6, Jesus finds out that his cousin, John the Baptist, has been beheaded. The apostles gather around to pass on the terrible news. Jesus then tells them that they need to come away and rest a while. However, the crowds catch wind of where they’re going and follow them. When Jesus sees them, he hits the pause button on his plan and takes a detour. The crowds are like sheep without a shepherd, and he cares too much to ignore them. Five loaves and a few fish later, everyone has their fill, and Jesus continues on with his original plan. He goes up to the mountain to pray.

Luke, too, tells a story of interruption. While Jesus is on his way to the home of a synagogue leader, Jairus, to help his dying daughter, a woman in the crowd reaches out in faith to touch him. Jesus feels the power go out from him and stops. “Who touched me?” he asks (Luke 8:45). The woman emerges from the crowd, trembling, and tells him her story. She has been bleeding for 12 years and no one can help her. Jesus listens, names her faith, and blesses her with peace as she goes on her way.

Meanwhile, Jairus’s daughter dies. They send messengers to tell Jesus not to bother coming after all. It’s too late. It seems that, had Jesus not stopped to meet that woman, Jairus’s daughter might have lived. However, as Luke records the story, Jesus continues on to Jairus’s house and raises the child from the dead. “He took her by the hand and said, ‘My child, get up!’ Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up” (Luke 8:54).

Story after story in the gospels demonstrates that Jesus was willing to change his plans to meet the needs of the moment—to feed the hungry, to heal the sick and the blind, and to befriend the lonely.

As a believer, I’m still learning to emulate Christ’s example. Sometimes I fail to hear the Spirit’s call to interruption, and sometimes I pay heed.

Back in June before school got out for the summer, I was driving home from work—determined to get a few things done at the house before my kids got off the bus—when I noticed a young woman in flannel pajamas on the side of the road. She clung to a tall metal light post and held a cardboard sign requesting help in big red ink. The girl, not more than 20 years old, shook with uncontrollable sobs of a kind I rarely see. As I glanced in my rearview mirror while passing her, I saw the agonizing look on her face and decided to throw my to-do list to the wind.

After I pulled over in a nearby parking lot, I persuaded her to sit down on some restaurant steps to catch her breath while I ducked into the café for napkins. After I sat beside her, she shared her story: She was having an unexpected panic attack. She lived in a tent nearby and was scared. I told her about some of the panic attacks I’ve had. I told her about my life, what I’d done that day, and how I was planting a garden. While I talked, her breathing calmed down. She wiped the dusty tearstains off her glasses and bit her bottom lip.

When I saw first saw her on the side of the road, my mother’s heart demanded that I stop. It was the same mother’s heart that used to wake at night to feed my babies, the heart that had to cancel plans with friends because of a sick child, the heart that used to wonder if I’d ever get to do “real” ministry again. But in that moment of coming alongside the homeless girl, I was reminded again that ministry happens in the small, quotidian moments and that God’s kingdom occurs “on-the-way.”

“We want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing and even ecstasy,” writes Kathleen Norris in The Quotidian Mysteries, “but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are, not where we wish we were. We must look for blessings to come from unlikely places, out of Galilee, as it were, and not in spectacular events, such as the coming of a comet.”

As we learn to “start where we are,” as Norris says, the more we notice and heed the quiet promptings of God’s Spirit. We serve the One who was always willing to stop and take a detour for the one person who needed help.

Tina Osterhouse lives with her husband and two children on Lake Joy in Carnation, Washington. She writes on faith, culture, and hope at tinaosterhouse.com. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter at @TinaOsterhouse.

I remember having a discussion around faith matters years ago with an intelligent person. I met him at an event I was attending with a few friends. On one particular evening, we all decided to have dinner together. Just from the incidental conversations we had before this meal, I knew that he and I did not see eye to eye on many issues.

After the meal finished, the three others got up to use the restroom while he and I sat talking across the table. We entered into a contentious theological issue, and it soon felt as though someone had turned up the temperature in the room. His face became red, and I am sure mine was too.

Eventually he looked at me and said, “Oh I understand now. You are a foundationalist!” If I weren’t so caught up in the emotion of the conversation at the time, I would have asked him what a foundationalist is.

He quickly moved on to his next accusation, clothed in the form of a question: “Tell me, where did you study?” When I mentioned the two universities at which I had done post-graduate education, he dropped his case against me. In hindsight, I am convinced that he was looking to categorize me, but he couldn’t do it because the universities I mentioned simply would not fit the anticipated boxes to be ticked.

As I think back to that intense conversation, I wonder how I could have navigated that situation better and how the Christian faith might inform my frame of mind.

Many of us have been in conversations like this in which we stop listening to the person with whom we are speaking. Lyell Asher, English professor at Lewis and Clark College, proposes a meaningful antidote to this challenge in his American Scholar article. He makes the point that instead of listening for what others might say, we need to recover the art of listening to others. If you have ever been on the receiving end of the listening for conversation, you know what this feels like.

When we simply listen for what another person is saying, we reduce that person down to a stereotype that we already have in our mind. This kind of listening is not really listening. It is merely argument formulation masquerading as listening.

When we listen to others, it is as if the posture and disposition of the conversation becomes open-handed. Listening to another person implicitly says, “I want to learn from you even if I don’t agree with you.” As Christians who are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, this strikes me as exactly the sort of thing we are called to do.

Recovering the Art of Critical Thinking

After watching a certain protest in the news recently, I could not help but think that this listening dynamic or lack thereof is contributing profoundly to the great disconnect and anger in many of the cultural conversations today. Just think of the many protests we hear of on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

Regardless of who is right and who is wrong in each particular case, much of the disillusionment and confusion stems from our inability to understand each other. In politics, higher education, and increasingly in sport, the “us versus them” mentality haunts us. Issues that might have once been talked about are simply no-go areas in classrooms, locker rooms, and restaurants. The issues are complex, no doubt, but I wonder if one step in the right direction through this volatile terrain might be recovering the art of critical thinking?

In the foreword for Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death, there are two portraits of the future painted for the reader. One comes from George Orwell’s 1984 and the other is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The author outlines Orwell’s and Huxley’s views of the future and how they both shared concerns with how the truth would be handled.

As he looked into the future, Orwell feared that truth would be concealed from us. Huxley’s concern was that the truth would be “drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” Postman’s book, penned in 1985, sides with Huxley’s view of the future, and as I read it, I could not help but feel that we have arrived in the moment foretold by Huxley.

Day after day in our 24/7, always-on news cycle, we are bombarded with images, stories, and statements that show the outworking of what Huxley feared. Truth, it seems, is drowning in a sea of irrelevance. Huxley believed truth would be lost in a sea of irrelevance through the deluge of information we would be inundated with. The important would get buried in a sea of irrelevant news.

Indeed, this is a real challenge for us today. But I wonder if the problem lies more in our disposition to simply not listen and learn from others. Yes, truth is being lost in a sea of irrelevance, like Huxley predicted, but the bombardment of information is not the only culprit for this trend. I think a greater problem is that we do not really want to think and listen to others.

Social critic Os Guinness tells the story of a person who studied under Francis Schaeffer. On one particular evening in a French bar room, the student was having a drink with a skeptic. The skeptic asked this Schaeffer protégé many questions about faith. To every question came a response that was nearly word for word from Francis Schaeffer. Finally there came a point in the conversation in which the skeptic, who had actually read much of Schaeffer’s writing, looked at the Christian and said, “Excuse me, but do you write with a Schaeffer pen too?”

The skeptic’s point was that while he was asking genuine questions he was receiving stock answers being trotted out mechanically. Each question was greeted by a ready-made response. They might have been good answers in another context, but they did not seem to grapple with the questions being asked by that particular questioner. True and genuine thinking was not taking place

I confess I am guilty of the same categorization that my friend placed upon me in that heated exchange I wrote about earlier. I have been in conversations with others and have tried to figure out where to place the other person. The problem with this approach (aside from being disrespectful and ignoring a person’s dignity) is that listening for fails to acknowledge the real complexity of what makes up a person’s opinion and line of argument.

More importantly, simply listening for what a person is going to say models an extremely reductionistic view of the human person. It is as if we are saying that our conversational partner can be reduced to a mere set of lists, categories, and sound bites. But are we as human beings not more complex and more sophisticated than that? Is it not the art and discipline of listening—truly listening—that gives our conversations dignity, worth, and civility?

Listening Is Hard Work

Perhaps one of the reasons many of us find it difficult to listen in conversations is because genuine listening takes more work and critical thought. Worryingly, I am convinced that we have become skilled in learning what to think, but not as strong in learning how to think. We are good at clinging to content and conversations that substantiate what we believe and what works within our view of the world. But as soon as we encounter a contradictory opinion to ours, no matter how intelligent it is, we have difficulty engaging it. The tendency is to move away or to tune it out.

Instead of listening to the other person who is sharing an opposing thought to ours, our default setting is to place them into a category that we can comprehend—a category that will keep our own views and convictions intact.

When we find it hard to understand opposing views and we enter into a mode of thought that seeks to place the opposing opinion in a category, are we not implying that we do not desire the truth? Yes, our views and convictions might survive the conversation, but the end result is that the truth, at least our desire for it, has drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Recently I was speaking to a group of senior high students who were about to head off to college. During the question and answer time of my session, one particular student expressly disagreed with a point I made in my talk. The room slowly became quiet. Many students turned their heads to the ground. As it became my turn to respond, there was pin-drop silence. The roaming microphone was then taken away from the questioner and I began my response.

I thanked the questioner for his question and comments. I then asked if we could bring back the roaming microphone so that he and I could continue the conversation. I expanded on the points I made in my talk that he called into question, and we had a meaningful dialogue. After the session ended, one colleague came to me and said, “I missed some of your talk, but I loved the way in which you gave the microphone to the person who asked the most controversial question.”

Truthfully, I would not have made that observation on my own. But in hearing my colleague’s feedback, it reminded me that one of the most significant ways we can navigate tough conversations is to ensure that each person in the conversation is heard.

Christianity Speaks to the Challenge

So what might Christianity have to say to these challenges? As I look at the way the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul interacted with others, I find two practical ways their interaction with others can shape how we think about conversations.

1. Be open and willing to engage with those with whom we do not agree.

There are many stories of Jesus in which we see him embodying this attitude. Even when others come to trick him, he still listens to and interacts with them. When the Pharisees and Herodians come to trap Jesus in Matthew 22:15–22, they ask him whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. Jesus responds by asking for a coin, and he then asks them whose image is on that coin. They acknowledge that Caesar’s image is on the coin. Jesus famously says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (ESV).

Matthew’s gospel continues: “When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.” We are not sure if these exact people ever engaged with Jesus again. But just by his willingness and courage to engage with those with whom he disagreed, a meaningful conversation was had.

Commentators often make special note of the question that Jesus asked this politically charged and theologically fierce group. He asked them a question about image. In the ancient world, images denoted authority and accountability. An inscription or a sculpture of a ruler often signified their ruling over a particular area.

When Jesus asks this question to the Pharisees and Herodians, they immediately know the answer because they understand the power linked to Caesar’s image. Yet, as significant as that question was, what is even more striking is that Jesus was willing to have a conversation with people who had opposing views to his.

There is so much to be gleaned from Jesus’ conversational care and thought, but we would do exceedingly well to simply practice and live out his generous willingness to engage with others who did not share in his teaching.

2. Read and understand what others are reading.

In Acts 17:22–34 we read of Paul’s interaction with the Athenians. Paul is explaining and defending the Christian God to a mixed group that included Stoics and Epicureans. Just by doing a bit of study of this story, we soon realize that Paul refers to and cites poetry that had powerfully shaped the religious belief of his audience. His method of evangelism reflects a disposition that wanted to understand the people to whom he was ministering. He was interested in how they thought. He had much to say, but he wanted to show them that he understood them.

There are so many points to draw from this one rich passage of Scripture, but we should not miss the fact that Paul’s citing of poets tells us that he had read the poet’s! He had read what his conversation partners had read. In our moment in which we have become severely groupish in what we read, what we listen to, and who we spend time with, we would do well to take notes from Paul’s speech in Acts 17.

This does not mean we should immerse ourselves in literature contrary to the Christian faith. It simply means that our reading and learning should indicate a desire to learn from others outside our faith conviction. Paul’s method of evangelism at the Areopagus can provide a guiding light to us on this front.

These are only two points, but if we are serious about wanting to listen and learn from others in our radically misunderstanding time, the Christian faith shows us that a meaningful start begins with a willingness to enter into the hard conversations. No one did this more beautifully than Christ. Paul shows us that reading and engaging what our friends have been shaped by could provide real and practical help to our understanding them, not to mention making our witness of Christ more appealing.

We live in a time in which listening, learning, and understanding each other seems beyond our reach. Yet, Christianity brings encouraging news to us here. May God give us the courage, the care, and the clarity to rise above the challenge of misunderstanding others and do so in his name.

Nathan Betts is an apologist with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). He speaks frequently across the US and Canada. His focus areas include the interface of faith and culture, digital technology and belief, and youth apologetics. Follow him on Twitter @NathanGBetts.

If I could, I would give this review a flashing, neon title. I would aim on it a bright and roving spotlight. I would print it up like a recruitment poster, pointing finger and all, because I WANT YOU, yes you, to read this book.

You’re not that interested in art? Poetry isn’t really your thing? Your stack of books to read is already too high? Make those apologies, and I will only press my point harder. It is precisely because there are too many voices calling for our attention—too many books on our bedside tables, too many apps fired up on our screens—that we, as people of faith, should tune our ears to silence. Poets, in particular, help us do exactly that. Only when the “pandemonium of blab—ceases,” Christian Wiman writes, can we “hear—and what some of us hear … is a still, small voice.”

Poetry depends on silence. It depends on the word not written, the pause of line break or comma, the white space on the page. If you are intrigued by the silence that poems can open up in and around words when those words are placed with artful precision and concision, you could dive right in to the quiet rhythms of T. S. Eliot’s quartets, Seamus Heaney’s metaphors, or Mary Oliver’s epiphanies. I suggest beginning with He Held Radical Light, the latest offering from Wiman, a poet, editor, and, most recently, divinity school professor.

Pressing into the Silence

He Held Radical Light is a book-length essay woven of spiritual memoir, literary criticism, and lyric poetry. It demonstrates with intelligence, honesty, and humor how vital poetry can be for any exploration of faith, an argument the subtitle (“The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art”) makes succinctly, as if it, too, were a kind of poem. This is not a book about art and faith, as if one or the other could be peeled away and considered singly. Instead, this book suggests that the field of imagination is one of the most significant places where the divine and the mortal can meet. If that is true, who among us would refuse to travel there merely because we have always found poetry “difficult” or life has become “too busy” for the poetry we once loved?

Wiman is worth listening to because he is himself an accomplished poet and, thanks in part to a decade at the helm of Poetry magazine, he is intimately acquainted with the lives and the works of so many of the best poets of the last century. With Wiman as our guide, we witness his highly personal, sometimes surprising encounters with poets—among them Heaney and Oliver—and what those encounters reveal about the relationship between the life (and faith) of the artist and the art itself. We are also shown how Wiman reads poems, thus becoming more perceptive readers ourselves without any heavy-handed lessons in “how to read a poem.”

But Wiman is also worth listening to because he is a dying poet and a dying man. He is dying in the sense that we are, each of us, dying, but his dying has more urgency and more pain: In 2005, on his 39th birthday, Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable form of blood cancer. Since then, as he has recounted in his earlier memoir, My Bright Abyss, he has undergone hospitalizations, chemotherapies, and even a bone marrow transplant. While neither of his unconventional memoirs offers much medical detail, they offer enough to understand that a poet who can feel his own cells wreaking havoc is a poet for whom the reality of death is more real than it is for most of us.

Why does this matter? It matters because, as Wiman writes, “Resurrection is a fiction and a distraction to anyone who refuses to face the reality of death.” I claimed this book could tune our ears to silence, but I might have said it could tune our ears to what Wiman calls the “final silence” of death. I’m sure you understand why I buried this analogy beneath five full paragraphs. Who among us is eager to confront the prospect of our own demise? The answer to this question goes far in explaining our collective addiction to the “pandemonium of blab.”

But for the faithful seeker willing to press into the silence, or for the one who has had silence pressed upon his or her self by diagnosis or despair, Wiman is a relatable artist-guide. The memoir elements of this book, peppered with honest self-deprecation and confession, insure that Wiman is no poet on a pedestal. He is too human for that, too mortal as well, and he has accepted the painful truth that even his poems are mortal. He recounts the “galactic chill” he felt in his soul when, at the age of 38, he heard his friend and our 14th poet laureate, Donald Hall, casually mention, “I was thirty-eight when I realized not a word I wrote was going to last.” This book asks us to consider that not only will our bodies die but so will much (perhaps all?) of the work of our hands. If poets go on writing, if we go on working and creating, then it must be for some other reason than securing some portion of immortality.

An epigraph from Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez introduces the notion of the poet as spiritual guide on page one: “The world does not need to come from a god. For better or worse, the world is here. But it does need to go to one (where is he?), and that is why the poet exists.” In our day, religion and science both seem fixated on origins. Wiman’s book implies that this fixation is a distraction from a much more pertinent and personal question: Where am I headed? Wiman claims, “One either lives toward God or not.” He gives that simple statement the power of poetic refrain by repeating it twice in one prose paragraph.

Poetry Is Not Enough

Some readers might find Wiman’s definition of faith too simplistic. Those for whom faith has more content might bristle when Wiman, referring to speculation about the poet Wallace Stevens and a deathbed conversion to Catholicism, writes, “I yawn just pondering it.” For Wiman, the “creative faith” of a poem like “The Planet on the Table” is “enough,” though he is careful to add that the poem is enough “because it enacts and acknowledges its own insufficiency.” For Wiman, the weakness or failure of poetry can become a “lens” with the potential to reveal an ultimate spiritual truth and a final spiritual reality that the poem can only ever suggest in glimmering moments that collude with eternity but never encompass, explain, or define it.

Though Wiman does not often invoke the names Jesus or Christ, and then only to push against the highly familiar ways most American Christians use those names, he is absolutely concerned with the content of faith. Too many of the poets he reads, admires, and shares with us in this book have a faith in the art itself that Wiman finds completely inadequate. “Art is not enough,” he writes, and again, “poetry is not enough” because “at some point you need a universally redemptive activity. You need grace that has nothing to do with your own efforts.” Poetry matters, not because it saves, but because it can help us perceive the ultimate reality of a saving grace that lies not above, beneath, or even beyond the experience of death, but somehow within it.

If we as Christian believers already feel ourselves well acquainted with this amazing grace, does the art of poetry have less to offer us? On this question, Wiman speaks persuasively not only as a dying man but as a living one. Since his diagnosis, he has married, become a father, found faith, written more poems, and grieved the deaths of poets, young and old, whom he admired and whom he called friend. He has known the “tangle of pain and praise.” He has experienced the dying that leads to life.

A poem by A. R. Ammons suggests that life is found in God but God is found in death, and Wiman hears in it echoes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”), and in Bonhoeffer he hears echoes of Jesus himself (“Whoever would save his life will lose it …”). You and I have read Christ’s words in our Bibles countless times, we have heard them spoken in our churches Sunday after Sunday, yet in their familiarity they risk becoming only one more sound in the general noise of our distracted lives. Heaney, as Wiman reminds us, once claimed that poetry “set[s] the darkness echoing.” The paradox of poetry becomes the paradox of Christianity: In death, we receive the Word of life. Having read He Held Radical Light, my ears are freshly tuned to hear and to respond to Christ’s liberating, devastating invitation.

Christie Purifoy lives with her husband and four children in a farmhouse in Southeastern Pennsylvania. She is the author of Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons (Revell) and the forthcoming Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace (Zondervan).

I watched the CAT scan images appear on the screen, one by one. The baby’s head was mostly empty. There were only thin slivers of brain—a bit of brain tissue at the base of the skull, and a thin rim around the edges. The rest was water.

Her parents had feared this. We had seen it on the prenatal ultrasound; the CAT scan, hours after birth, was much more accurate. Katie looked like a normal newborn, but she had little chance at a normal life. She had a fraternal-twin sister in the incubator next to her. But Katie only had a third of the brain that her sister had. I explained all of this to her family, trying to keep alive a flicker of hope for their daughter.

I cared for Katie as she grew up. At every stage of Katie’s life so far, she has excelled. She sat and talked and walked earlier than her sister. She’s made the honor roll. She will soon graduate high school.

I’ve had other patients whose brains fell far short of their minds. Maria had only two-thirds of a brain. She needed a couple of operations to drain fluid, but she thrives. She just finished her master’s degree in English literature, and is a published musician. Jesse was born with a head shaped like a football and half-full of water – doctors told his mother to let him die at birth. She disobeyed. He is a normal happy middle-schooler, loves sports, and wears his hair long.

Some people with deficient brains are profoundly handicapped. But not all are. I’ve treated and cared for scores of kids who grow up with brains that are deficient but minds that thrive. How is this possible? Neuroscience, and Thomas Aquinas, point to the answer.

Is the Mind Mechanical?

As a medical student, I fell in love with the brain. It’s a daunting organ: an ensemble of cells and axons and nuclei and lobes tucked and folded in exotic shapes. I had to learn what it looks like when it’s sliced through by CAT scans, and then what it looks like when I slice through it. My fascination with neuroanatomy was metaphysical: this was where our thoughts and decisions came from, this was a roadmap of the human self, and I was learning to read it as I read a book. It was the truth about us, I thought.

But I was wrong. Katie made me face my misunderstanding. She was a whole person. The child in my office was not mapped in any meaningful way to the scan of her brain or the diagram in my neuroanatomy textbook. The roadmap got it wrong.

How does the mind relate to the brain? This question is central to my professional life. I thought I had it answered. Yet a century of research and 30 years of my own neurosurgical practice have challenged everything I thought I knew.

The view assumed by those who taught me is that the mind is wholly a product of the brain, which is itself understood as something like a machine. Francis Crick, a neuroscientist and the Nobel laureate who was the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, wrote that “a person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them.”

This mechanical philosophy is the result of two steps. It began with Rene Descartes, who argued that the mind and the brain were separate substances, immaterial and material. Somehow (how, neither Descartes nor anyone else can say) the mind is linked to the brain— it’s the ghost in the machine.

But as Francis Bacon’s approach to understanding the world gained ascendency during the scientific Enlightenment, it became fashionable to limit inquiry about the world to physical substances: to study the machine and ignore the ghost. Matter was tractable, and we studied it to obsession. The ghost was ignored, and then denied. This was what the logic of materialism demanded.

The materialist insists that we are slaves of our neurons, without genuine free will. Materialism comes in different flavors, each having passed into and then out of favor over the past century, as their insufficiency became apparent. Behaviorists asserted that the mind, if it exists at all, is irrelevant. All that matters is what is observable—input and output. Yet behaviorism is in eclipse, because it’s difficult to deny the relevance of the mind to neuroscience.

Identity theory, replacing behaviorism, held that the mind just is the brain. Thoughts and sensations are exactly the same thing as brain tissue and neurotransmitters, understood differently. The pain you feel in your finger is identical to the nerve impulses in your arm and in your brain. But, of course, that’s not really true. Pain hurts and nerve impulses are electrical and chemical. They’re not even similar. Identity theorists struggled with uncooperative reality for a generation, then gave up.

Computer functionalism came next: the brain is hardware and mind is software. But this too has problems. Nineteenth-century German philosopher Franz Brentano pointed out that the one thing that absolutely distinguishes thoughts from matter is that thoughts are always about something, and matter is never about anything. This aboutness is the hallmark of the mind. Every thought has a meaning. No material thing has meaning.

Computation is the mapping of an input to an output according to an algorithm, irrespective of meaning. Computation has no aboutness; it is the antithesis of thought.

Neuroscience and Metaphysics

Remarkably, neuroscience tells us three things about the mind: the mind is metaphysically simple, the intellect and will are immaterial, and free will is real.

In the middle of the twentieth century, neurosurgeons discovered that they could treat a certain kind of epilepsy by severing a large bundle of brain fibers, called the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Following these operations, each hemisphere worked independently. But what happened to the mind of a person with his or her brain split in half?

The neuroscientist Roger Sperry studied scores of split-brain patients. He found, surprisingly, that in ordinary life the patients showed little effect. Each patient was still one person. The intellect and will—the capacity to have abstract thought and to choose—remained unified. Only by meticulous testing could Sperry find any differences: their perceptions were altered by the surgery. Sensations—elicited by touch or vision—could be presented to one hemisphere of the brain, and not be experienced in the other hemisphere. Speech production is associated with the left hemisphere of the brain; patients could not name an object presented to the right hemisphere (via the left visual field). Yet they could point to the object with their left hand (which is controlled by the right hemisphere). The most remarkable result of Sperry’s Nobel Prize­–winning work was that the person’s intellect and will—what we might call the soul—remained undivided.

The brain can be cut in half, but the intellect and will cannot. The intellect and will are metaphysically simple.

One of the neurosurgeons who pioneered the corpus callosotomy for epilepsy patients was Wilder Penfield, who worked in Montreal in the middle of the twentieth century. Penfield studied the brains and minds of epileptic patients in a remarkably direct way, in the course of treating them. He operated on people who were awake. The brain itself feels no pain, and local anesthetics numb the scalp and skull enough to permit painless brain surgery. Penfield asked them to do and think things while he was observing and temporarily stimulating or impairing regions of their brains. Two things astonished him.

First, he noticed something about seizures. He could cause seizures by stimulating the brain. A patient would jerk his arm, or feel tingling, or see flashes of light, or even have memories. But what he could never do was cause an intellectual seizure: the patient would never reason when his brain was stimulated. The patient never contemplated mercy or bemoaned injustice or calculated second derivatives in response to brain stimulation. If the brain wholly gives rise to the mind, why are there no intellectual seizures?

Second, Penfield noted that patients always knew that the movement or sensation elicited by brain stimulation was done to them, but not bythem. When Penfield stimulated the arm area of the brain, patients always said, “You made my arm move” and never said, “I moved my arm.” Patients always retained a correct awareness of agency. There was a part of the patient—the will—that Penfield could not reach with his electrode.

Penfield began his career as a materialist. He finished his career as an emphatic dualist. He insisted that there is an aspect of the self—the intellect and the will—that is not the brain, and that cannot be elicited by stimulation of the brain.

Some of the most fascinating research on consciousness was done by Penfield’s contemporary Benjamin Libet at the University of California, San Francisco. Libet asked: What happens in the brain when we think? How are electrical signals in the brain related to our thoughts? He was particularly interested in the timing of brain waves and thoughts. Did a brain wave happen at the same moment as the thought, or before, or after?

It was a difficult question to answer. It wasn’t hard to measure electrical changes in the brain: that could be done routinely by electrodes on the scalp, and Libet enlisted neurosurgeons to allow him to record signals deep in the brain while patients were awake. The challenge Libet faced was to accurately measure the time interval between the signals and the thoughts. But the signals last only a few milliseconds, and how can you time a thought with that kind of accuracy?

Libet began by choosing a very simple thought: the decision to press a button. He modified an oscilloscope so that a dot circled the screen once each second, and when the subject decided to push the button, he or she noted the location of the dot at the time of the decision. Libet measured the timing of the decision and the timing of the brain waves of many volunteers with accuracy in the tens of milliseconds. Consistently he found that the conscious decision to push the button was preceded by about half a second by a brain wave, which he called the readiness potential. Then a half-second later the subject became aware of his decision. It appeared at first that the subjects were not free; their brains made the decision to move and they followed it.

But Libet looked deeper. He asked his subjects to veto their decision immediately after they made it—to not push the button. Again, the readiness potential appeared a half-second before conscious awareness of the decision to push the button, but Libet found that the veto—he called it “free won’t”—had no brain wave corresponding to it.

The brain, then, has activity that corresponds to a pre-conscious urge to do something. But we are free to veto or accept this urge. The motives are material. The veto, and implicitly the acceptance, is an immaterial act of the will.

Libet noted the correspondence between his experiments and the traditional religious understanding of human beings. We are, he said, beset by a sea of inclinations, corresponding to material activity in our brains, which we have the free choice to reject or accept. It is hard not to read this in more familiar terms: we are tempted by sin, yet we are free to choose.

The approach to understanding the world and ourselves that was replaced by materialism was that of classical metaphysics. This tradition’s most notable investigator and teacher was Saint Thomas Aquinas. Following Aristotle, Aquinas wrote that the human soul has distinct kinds of abilities. Vegetative powers, shared by plants and animals, serve growth, nourishment, and metabolism. Sensitive powers, shared with animals, include perception, passions, and locomotion. The vegetative and sensitive powers are material abilities of the brain.

Yet human beings have two powers of the soul that are not material—intellect and will. These transcend matter. They are the means by which we reason, and by which we choose based on reason. We are composites of matter and spirit. We have spiritual souls.

Aquinas would not be surprised by the results of these researchers’ investigations.

What’s at Stake

Philosopher Roger Scruton has written that contemporary neuroscience is “a vast collection of answers with no memory of the questions.” Materialism has limited the kinds of questions that we’re allowed to ask, but neuroscience, pursued without a materialist bias, points towards the reality that we are chimeras: material beings with immaterial souls.

How would our lives or our society be different if we found that our mind was merely the product of our material brain and that our every decision was determined, with no free will?

The cornerstone of totalitarianism, according to Hannah Arendt, is the denial of free will. Under the visions of Communism and Nazism, we are mere instruments of historical forces, not individual free agents who can choose good or evil.

Without free will, we cannot be guilty in an individual sense. But we also cannot be innocent. Neither the Jews under Hitler nor Kulak farmers under Stalin were killed because they were individually at fault. Their guilt was assigned to them according to their type, and accordingly they were exterminated to hasten a natural process, whether the purification of the race or the dictatorship of the proletariat.

By contrast, the classical understanding of human nature is that we are free beings not subject to determinism. This understanding is the indispensable basis for human liberty and dignity. It is indispensable, too, for simply making sense of the world around us: among other things, for making sense of Katie.

I see her in my office each year. She is thriving: headstrong and bright. Her mother is exasperated, and, after seventeen years, still surprised. So am I.

There is much about the brain and the mind that I don’t understand. But neuroscience tells a consistent story. There is a part of Katie’s mind that is not her brain. She is more than that. She can reason and she can choose. There is a part of her that is immaterial—the part that Sperry couldn’t split, that Penfield couldn’t reach, and that Libet couldn’t find with his electrodes. There is a part of Katie that didn’t show up on those CAT scans when she was born.

Katie, like you and me, has a soul.

Michael Egnor, MD, is a neurosurgeon and professor of neurological surgery and pediatrics at Stony Brook University.

From Plough Quarterly No. 17: The Soul of Medicine (Summer 2018) Copyright © 2018 by Plough Publishing House. Reposted with permission.

Know thyself. This phrase is inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, which was built in the 4th century B.C. It’s most commonly attributed to Socrates (470–399 B.C.), who often referred to this Delphic aphorism in his teachings. Suffice it to say, this phrase has a long history.

Without knowing its origins, however, one might mistake it for the anthem of our own day. Our society is infused with self: self-discovery, self-help, selfies. Knowing thyself seems to be the root of our daily existence. Yet, for all our self-reflection, few of us would claim success in knowing the depths of our own hearts and souls. If anything, the quest has made us aware of all we don’t know, thereby intensifying our desire to unlock the mysteries within.

The desire to know ourselves is what prompts us, for example, to take those online pop-culture quizzes. We long to know which movie or TV character we most resemble or which Mamma Mia! character would be our BFF. Do you know which Hogwarts house you would be sorted into? Or which iconic ’90s music video you are? We click through the questions, despite doubting the scientific accuracy of the results—perhaps this is the missing knowledge that will finally give us a defining sense of self.

The Quest for the Perfect Personality

Interest in personality testing actually began long before these quizzes. There’s a history here too—not as far back as Socrates, of course, but one full of mystery nonetheless. One test in particular, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), is the subject of a new book by Merve Emre, an associate professor of English at Oxford University. Titled The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing, the book traces the development of the Myers-Briggs test, assessing its impact on our culture and examining both the praise and criticism it has garnered.

Why all the fuss about a single personality quiz? As Emre explains, the Myers-Briggs is a lucrative $500 million industry and an influential field of study spanning “twenty-six countries and more than two dozen languages.” The reach of this particular test is unlike any other. Despite its prominent place in personality-profile history—or, perhaps, because of it—the Myers-Briggs receives plenty of scorn for how it was created and developed. And revealing that backstory is where Emre’s book shines.

The Personality Brokers takes us to the beginning, before Myers-Briggs was an assessment tool, and introduces us to its creators: Katherine Cook Briggs (1875–1968) and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers (1897–1980). Development began when Katherine sought to “conduct daily trials in living that would shape the outer and inner worlds of the people she loved best” by making “her home into a laboratory of personality research.” Katherine was a home scientist; her family, the experimental subjects. Over the course of Isabel’s childhood, Katherine took notes and tested theories in her quest to mold Isabel into the picture-perfect child. The results were positive and obvious to all.

Eventually, Katherine opened her home to neighbors and acquaintances who wanted to learn these successful parenting techniques for rearing their own children. Key to parenting success, according to Katherine, was understanding the child’s personality type; the questionnaire she developed was the precursor to the personality test now used by countless corporations, government entities, and universities.

Much transpired between that first home survey and today’s Myers-Briggs. The details unfold novel-like from one chapter to the next in The Personality Brokers. Besides the creators, we meet various influencers (Carl Jung, Edward Hay, Donald MacKinnon, Mary McCaulley, and others) and early adopters (like the US government, Educational Testing Service, and the University of California, Berkeley).

Emre takes readers along for the wild ride as the Myers-Briggs evolves from infancy to youth to maturity—no easy road. From the start, the test had as many fierce critics as champions. The main critique lodged against it was that the questions and results were pieced together over several decades by two people with no formal training in psychoanalysis. In addition, results were often inconsistent for test subjects over time. All things considered, it’s truly a marvel the Myers-Briggs survived its pilgrimage to become such a commonplace assessment tool.

A Diagnosis, not a Cure

The first time I took the Myers-Briggs, I was in my early 20s, and I was completely unaware of the history or the controversy. I approached the “test” with enthusiasm, carefully marking my answer sheet as I processed my responses to questions about my preferences for social situations, hobbies, work environment, and the like. The questions are “forced-choice,” so respondents select one of two answers—which means you are sometimes choosing an answer that is close enough but not exactly right. This bothered me, as I feared settling for an answer would skew the results. This too is a common critique of Myers-Briggs, one that Isabel Myers justified using the Jungian theory of “enantiodromia,” what Erme describes as “a ‘going over to the opposite’ in which one of the preferences a person did not express [in the first test] ascended to a ‘much more honored place’ in the psyche” by the second test. Myers believed the test assisted its subjects in self-discovery, revealing deeper truths with every pass.

The test provides subjects with a type (one of 16) based on results from four key categories:

Are you outwardly or inwardly focused? (Extraversion or Introversion)

How do you prefer to take in information? (Sensing or Intuition)

How do you prefer to make decisions? (Thinking or Feeling)

How do you prefer to live your outer life? (Judging or Perceiving)

My first results were more affirmation than surprise. While I was not shocked with my INFP type, what was surprising was how meaningful it was to read about my type and how INFPs function in the world. For example, I didn’t realize that making decisions in the moment was something common to Perceiving types but utterly stressful to Judging types. And it now made sense why my dreamy, overly detailed way of speaking (Intuitive type) didn’t click well with some people (Sensing types).

Socrates was right—understanding myself was key to better living. Being aware of specific ways people are wired has helped me show grace for others (and sometimes even for myself). It’s hard to love your neighbor as yourself when your neighbor acts in very different, often confusing or downright annoying ways. The 16 Myers-Briggs personality types have given us a place to start in relating well to others. In this sense, Emre is correct to observe that the Myers-Briggs has given us “a shared ethos of self-contemplation, an inward gaze that many people once looked to religious institutions and religious authorities to provide.”

It may be this shift that raises suspicions among so many people of faith. Should God’s people rely on tools developed outside of the faith to speak to our human condition? Is it possible for a tool designed by flawed humans to speak truth? Like all man-made constructs, there are flaws and blind spots in the Myers-Briggs. Some Christians believe personality profiling to be nearly evil and call true believers to shun such things. Others call for a tempered approach: Take what’s good, discard the rest, and beware how much power you give your type.

Such is the caution Alistair Roberts issues in an article at Mere Orthodoxy:

We are tempted to treat our personality type as justification and explanation for our behaviour, rather than discerning appropriate forms of behaviour and desire from their relation to fitting objective ends. We should observe the measure of circularity that can be present here: in using our personality types as justification for our patterns of behaviour we can forget that our personality typing was derived in large measure from those same patterns.

Learning our type, in essence, is equivalent to gazing into a mirror for the soul. The Myers-Briggs highlights patterns and tendencies, but it doesn’t have the power to help us correct the weak parts of who we are. It hands us a diagnosis, not a cure. Knowing yourself—knowing your type—isn’t enough, because the knowledge isn’t enough to set us free. We are still a people in need of a Savior, no matter which four letters the Myers-Briggs test assigns us.

Erin Straza is managing editor of Christ and Pop Culture and host of the Persuasion podcast. She is the author of Comfort Detox: Finding Freedom from Habits That Bind You (InterVarsity Press).

Nina Strehl / Unsplash

I find myself scratching my head as to why so many evangelical Christians committed to social justice are reacting so strongly to the recent statement on social justice.

In part it may be due to matters of style and tone; the statement, for example, is a list of bold affirmations and denials. This is not in tune with our times. While we are wont to make definitive and sweeping pronouncements on social or political matters, we’re hesitant to talk like this with when it comes to things transcendent (more on this below).

As in any statement, there is much I would want to change or tweak, but statements like this do raise fundamental concerns that deserve careful thought.

The Temptations of Social Justice

For example, I think this statement grasps some of the principal temptations of those who are called into the social justice arena. Every ministry of emphasis has its peculiar temptations (e.g., journalists are subject to cynicism among other sins), and we are wise to be aware of them—if for no other reason than to ensure that our social justice ministries remain vibrant.

One social justice temptation, for example, is to let the world determine our social justice agenda and rationale. This is how the statement, now signed by almost 7,000 people, puts it:

WE AFFIRM that God’s law, as summarized in the ten commandments, more succinctly summarized in the two great commandments, and manifested in Jesus Christ, is the only standard of unchanging righteousness. Violation of that law is what constitutes sin.

WE DENY that any obligation that does not arise from God’s commandments can be legitimately imposed on Christians as a prescription for righteous living. We further deny the legitimacy of any charge of sin or call to repentance that does not arise from a violation of God’s commandments.

Of course, evangelicals have different interpretations about how far to extend those Ten Commandments, but I would think we’d all agree that the Jim Crow era violated both the commandments against bearing false witness as well as murder.

But sometimes enthusiasts for social justice push too far. The statement puts it like this:

WE DENY that true justice can be culturally defined or that standards of justice that are merely socially constructed can be imposed with the same authority as those that are derived from Scripture. We further deny that Christians can live justly in the world under any principles other than the biblical standard of righteousness. Relativism, socially-constructed standards of truth or morality, and notions of virtue and vice that are constantly in flux cannot result in authentic justice.

On a more mundane level, this temptation looks like this: You don’t have to go to many social justice gatherings to conclude that if you are not actively involved in this justice issue or that, you are contributing to the injustice: “He who is not fighting racism is implicitly supporting racist policies” and so forth. It’s dramatic rhetoric, to be sure, but in fact, there is no way any of us can be deeply involved in every social justice effort; we are finite beings, and it is not a sin to be finite. We have to pick our causes, and follow the calling of God on our lives.

The devil’s final temptation of Christ was to offer him political power.

The temptations abound, like they do in every ministry: There are some Christians (white, black, Asian, and Hispanic) who are more anxious about their racial or ethnic identity than they are their identity in Christ. There are some Christians who have let feminism or Marxism or deconstructionism or race theory shape their ideas more than the Bible. There are some Christians whose anger at injustice has little righteousness in it, instead driven by hate of a political leader or group. There are some Christians (left and right) who are so anxious about gaining political power to enact their social agenda that they compromise some important Christian values.

Any devout Christian who is deeply committed to social justice knows these temptations firsthand, and the honest among them acknowledge that they have not always resisted these temptations, especially the last. They never forget that the devil’s final temptation of Christ was to offer him political power.

Learning from History

Another critic, pastor John MacArthur, has expressed similar concerns, especially about evangelical engagement in justice issues. I often disagree with MacArthur, but I think his pastoral instincts should be taken into account when he said (in a blog from August):

Evangelicalism’s newfound obsession with the notion of “social justice” is a significant shift—and I’m convinced it’s a shift that is moving many people (including some key evangelical leaders) off message, and onto a trajectory that many other movements and denominations have taken before, always with spiritually disastrous results.

He’s not the first to note this trajectory. We witnessed this in the last century in mainline Protestant Christianity, whose social justice concern in the 1950s and 1960s was admirable in so many ways. But slowly the mainline become nothing more than the Democratic Party at prayer. Typical were the millennium goals established by the Episcopal Church in 2007. The goals were:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Achieve universal primary education Promote gender equality and empower women Reduce child mortality Improve maternal health Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases Ensure environmental sustainability, and Create global partnership for development with a focus on debt, aid, and trade.

Nothing wrong with the goals as such, but they were the exact same Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2000. It speaks volumes that a Christian church could not imagine how to talk or prioritize its social justice agenda without simply copying those of a secular institution. One would have thought Matthew 28—taking the gospel to the four corners of the world—might have played some part in its goals for the millennium.

In this regard, evangelicals have a long history of following the culture. When hunger became an international issue in the late 20th century, that’s when evangelicals began talking about it. We didn’t focus much on race until after Ferguson and the rise of Black Lives Matter. We didn’t spend much energy on sexual abuse in church until the #metoo movement. To be clear, these are all worthy causes. But it does give one pause to realize that our gospel doesn’t seem to help us fashion a social justice agenda that is unique to our faith.

We evangelical Christians would be naïve to deny that we are not subject to the same forces that have so compromised the Christian integrity of the mainline. This does not mean that evangelical social justice will inevitably abandon the gospel. Hardly. There are many examples of social justice advocates who remain deeply committed to Christ and the gospel—I think of many leaders in the black church in particular. But social activists more than most are wise to note how the transcendent dimension of social justice can get marginalized.

The Immanent Frame

Anyone involved in social justice ministries is subject to the loss of the transcendent. As Charles Taylor so effectively argued in A Secular Age, we live today in a time that is defined by what he calls “the immanent frame.” At the risk of oversimplifying, this means living as if this world is all there is. This world is reality; the world beyond it is a matter of personal opinion or speculation. In other ages, the world beyond this—the supernatural, the spiritual, the transcendent—was simply assumed and was clearly believed to be the most real.

This is one reason many Christians are more confident making definitive pronouncements about social concerns (the “immanent") and hesitate to speak boldly about theological concerns (the transcendent). We live in an era dominated by the immanent framing of things, and it takes concerted effort to remember that, as important and vital as our world is, it is but a shadow of the reality beyond us and the reality we will enjoy in the kingdom of heaven.

Evangelism is the greatest work of social justice.

Social justice activism by its very nature lives day to day within the immanent frame. It is concerned about the horizontal: how states and institutions treat people and how people treat one another. The Christian might be initially motivated by uniquely Christian ideals to engage in social justice efforts, as well she should, but as history shows, it doesn’t take much before the immanent frame starts to frame everything.

So what exactly is the transcendent dimension of social justice for the evangelical Christian? This is something we’ve been arguing about as a movement for some decades. But I would put it this way: The ultimate goal of social justice is the same as the ultimate goal of all our activity for Jesus—whether that be encouraging Bible reading and prayer, loving our next door neighbor, practicing business as mission, or a hundred other things—that all might come to know and love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. If our social justice doesn’t have this end in view, I believe we will soon become nothing but the Democratic or Republican parties at prayer.

It is right and good, for example, that we seek to alleviate extreme poverty. As an act of neighbor love, we want to do what we can—from simple charity to social reform—to help the poor. If we help the poor rise out of poverty and into the middle class, we have done a wonderful thing. But if that’s all we do, we will be guilty of committing the greatest injustice of all.

For reasons we cannot fathom, God has shown us the mystery of faith: that Christ had died for the forgiveness of sins, that we might become reconciled to God and enjoy him forever with others in a kingdom of love and joy. There is no greater blessing than to know and love God, who is the Desire of all desires, who is the Ultimate Fulfillment of all we long for. We have heard that message and have believed.

Now we constitute, if you will, a privileged spiritual class. It’s not something we take credit for. In being born again, we have been born into a special, elect people—a spiritual aristocracy, who enjoy unimaginable spiritual riches.

Like the materially wealthy, we are called to help those who are spiritually impoverished so they might believe and then enjoy these spiritual riches. And the way we do that is not complicated:

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ ” (Rom. 10:14–15).

To put it starkly: If we fail to share the greatest riches we enjoy, if we keep this great news to ourselves, we are no better than the materially privileged who refuse to share their goods and work to alleviate poverty. We are, in short, practicing a type of injustice.

To not put too fine a point on it: Evangelism is our greatest work of social justice.

Be Quick to Listen

As noted above, we’ve been debating the exact relationship between the gospel and politics, between evangelism and social efforts, for many decades now. The fact that we continue to debate suggests that there are no easy solutions for how to integrate them. Every solution is fraught with temptation, to be sure.

But precisely because this issue is complex, we are wise to listen to brothers and sisters who come at things differently, even when their criticisms are pointed—especially if they ground their arguments in Scripture and the evangelical tradition of interpreting Scripture. If we want evangelical social justice ministries to remain effective and vibrant for decades to come, we are wise to be alert to issues that can inadvertently undermine our love for others in the public square.

Mark Galli is editor in chief of Christianity Today.

You could see the vent-stacks from the road, their turret-like, rounded-metal covers just visible above a massive mound of dirt and grass behind the house. In front of those turrets, planted on the top of the mound and painted white, was a 15-foot-tall wooden cross. Strange.

The house itself was strange, too. The three-stall garage was on the left, parallel to the road. Then there was a section that looked like a normal front entrance to any home. Perpendicular to that section, however, and jutting out straight toward the road, was something that looked like one of those small strip motels you see sometimes in rural towns. The only thing missing was a neon “vacancy” sign. And there they were, behind the little strip-motel wing of the house: those turrets. On top and in front of it all stood that cross, bolted to the ground with heavy metal cables.

Guy had built this complex with his own hands, just an eighth-of-a-mile from the church, one year before I moved into the parsonage. Though this all happened nearly 20 years ago, Guy and his particular view of Christian life have often crossed my mind. Especially lately.

Because most striking of all is that underneath those turrets and that cross, buried in the mound, Guy had built a bomb shelter. The door into it was on the house side of the mound.

Guy and his wife did not attend our church. Well, he did try it a few times, but I will admit, he found me lacking as a preacher. In his view, I didn’t have enough grit. I didn’t display enough serious displeasure with the moral slack of America. (True enough, I suppose). Guy was blessed with wealth, and I could tell—from his own words, and sometimes from his deeds—he was a committed tither.

I don’t remember how or why, but there came a day when Guy came over and sat down on the front porch of the parsonage with a sheaf of papers. He skittered off the rubber bands and unrolled maps of the continental US. He pointed to the cities he believed were major nuclear targets, and then he showed me the wavy, dotted lines that depicted the projected fallout patterns from mushroom clouds. Then his finger landed on our region of the world, and sure enough, according to Guy’s projections, our country road would get way less nuclear fallout raining down upon it than almost anywhere else. And that was one of the reasons Guy had decided to build his complex and its bomb shelter right there in our neighborhood.

I guess it made sense. Our neighborhood was rural. The half-mile stretch from the corner of our church to the corner where Guy’s houses were built contained a total of five homes and the township graveyard. Our road was asphalt, but the intersecting roads were all gravel. Nobody would waste a bomb on us.

When Guy suggested that I too should build a shelter, I have to admit, the idea found some receptivity in my increasingly discomforted heart.

More skittering, and Guy rolled open another sheaf of maps, these displaying another array of concentric, wavy lines. These were sea-level maps, and sure enough, the three-mile radius where we lived was the very highest elevation in our whole state. Who knew? So, Guy said, when the world’s ice melted and the flood waters came, they would not reach us. This too is why he built his shelter here. Guy’s survival was meticulously planned.

I’m not sure what storm was threatening in the early 1990s, but I guess it was pretty bad because other people, too, had survival-defense on their minds. Another Christian man I knew quietly revealed to me that he had dug holes on his property and shrink-wrapped and buried major weaponry and ammo so that “When all hell comes down, we’ll be ready.” Guy, however, had taken that approach to a new level when he dug a very big hole and hired cement trucks to pour the walls of a shelter into it.

Guy told me all about those walls—their thicknesses and the overall dimensions of the shelter—on another summer day as he once again he sat on my front porch steps. He un-banded a third set of papers: the blueprint-layout of the shelter. With his finger he stabbed the page from room to room—the one that contained the treadmill for generating electricity, the food-storage room, and the little bedroom. He told me what the door was made of and what its hinges were like and what kind of the force the door could withstand.

A Bolted Door

That blueprint deeply affected me, as did Guy’s view of life. Whatever may have been going on in the world at the time, I was struggling with my own sense of foreboding and fear. My kids were little, and it seemed like deep things in the world were unraveling. When Guy suggested that I too should build a shelter and that he would consult with me on how to do it, well, I have to admit, the idea found some receptivity in my increasingly discomforted heart.

Some form of biblical interpretation was the basis for Guy’s vision. That extension of the house—the one that looked like a motel—had six little rooms in it. According to Guy, when the glaciers melted and the waters rose, he could house family members there. (In the meantime, Guy told me, if ever I encountered someone destitute and in need, he would work out a financial arrangement with the deacons of our church so we could pay for those people to stay in that wing of the house—a generous thought.) Between the house-motel and the bomb shelter, Guy’s compound was a 20th-century Noah’s Ark. It all felt somewhat Old Testament, kind of like Israel withstanding the nations.

In the end, three things kept me from building a bomb shelter of my own. The first was money, because the amount required to do such a thing was prohibitive. The second was that the house I lived in was owned by the church, and I was pretty sure the board would not be thrilled with those little turrets sticking up behind the youth basketball courts. The third reason was my wife, Alicia, who said, “If the world gets that bad—I mean, if that’s what we have to be—I don’t want to live that way.”

She said this in response to my report of Guy’s accounting of how bad this would get. “The worst part,” he said, “will be when people start pouring hot tar down your vent pipes to try to smoke you out … you know, to try to force you to open the door so they can get in.”

I want my life to be a safe place for any panicked sinners who confront me.

That door, bolted shut, was a pretty good image of Guy’s approach to other people. For example, in a community where, in the winter, everybody’s fields were wide open for avid snowmobilers, Guy instead erected large stones as boundary markers to make his property lines clear. Trespassers were not allowed. One night, some idiot snowmobiled through there anyway, and he claims Guy shot bullets over his head. It was just a rumor, but everybody believed it because, honestly, it fit what we knew of Guy.

It fit him also that one day, when our church was gathering food for a local pantry, Guy came in with boxes of canned vegetables and beans. Like I told you, he was generous. So I thanked him for his gifts. He just shrugged and said, “Yep—well, anyway, I had to rotate my stock.” Even Guy’s gifts to the poor flowed from his concept of self-preservation.

For or Against My Neighbors?

That philosophy of life is tempting to me. I still wonder, especially these days, about burying my guns and amassing a stash of ammo—you know, to be ready for evil powers overrunning us or crazed people breaking in. I remember seeing a film clip of a white supremacist after Charlottesville, with his guns displayed on his bed and a smile on his face, saying, “A lot more people are gonna die before this is done.” And I thought, That dude wants to start another civil war. So maybe I should keep a cache of some sort. As the Rolling Stones wrote, hell on earth does sometimes seem “just a shot away.”

With mad bulls galloping through the nations, and through our own, self-preservation is all the rage. But Guy’s vision—if I drink it in and absorb it—doesn’t have anything to do with our armed forces or police or the Second Amendment. No, at its base, Guy’s vision pits me and my cross against my neighbors. When comes destruction, I dig up my hidden guns, beat my panicked neighbors back, and fend for myself. Then I make a mad dash into the fortress I built, slam the door, and listen to my neighbors bang on it while my family and I hunker down with our spoons, hunched over peeled-open cans of beans with our blood-shot eyes nervously darting from side to side. Me and my cross against my neighbor. Even if it kills them.

It’s tough for me to find Jesus in that worldview.

I find myself hoping and praying that my life can be different. More than ever, I want to be truly for my neighbors and with them. In a day of trouble, or maybe just on any given day, I want to be a door that opens to people instead of closing against them. Like the wild disciple in Gethsemane, chastened by the Lord for brandishing a weapon, I feel chastened too. I want to preach the cross and to somehow live out its calling as that which puts hostility to death. I want my life to be a safe place for any panicked sinners who confront me. Even if they kill me.

This is, of course, easy to say as I sit here ever-so-peacefully tapping on my computer. Still, I am prayerfully aiming my heart that way.

Eventually, Guy moved to another town. I walked over to say goodbye as he drove away. He waved dismissively and hit the gas. I have no idea if, for the placement of his new home, he had researched flood-plain levels. A year later, I moved to a new place, too. I live in a bigger town which, if not an actual target, is surely more susceptible to fallout patterns.

If you drive through my old neighborhood, you will notice that the new owner took down the cross. But you can still see the mound and those little turrets—a stark reminder of our need for shelter and the conflicting views of representing Christ in a world of fear and danger.

Keith Mannes is pastor of East Saugatuck Christian Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan.

To hear the perspective of a Christian prepper, read this article from Andrea Palpant Dilley.