Thoughts on the Sociology of Religion

I have a student taking a sociology of religion course right now, and she asked me for some advice on how to integrate what she’s learning in class with her faith.

I thought this might be of interest to more students than just her, so here’s what I had to say (slightly modified from the email):

We need to meet face-to-face to talk this through, but I have some initial thoughts for you:

1) Many times we confuse description with explanation. To explain how something works is not to explain why it is. Clearly everything must work some way, and so interesting descriptions of everything ought to abound — I should be able to describe thinking, love, humor, and gravity. But that does not mean that I have understood the things I am describing interesting aspects of. For instance, I can describe the physics of golf in great detail, and then another scholar can come along and describe the rules of golf in great detail, and then a third scholar can come along and describe the history of golf in great detail. All of these descriptions may be accurate, but none of these descriptions will explain why I play golf. And none will capture what it feels like to play golf. And likely none of them, if written for a scholarly audience, will be of the slightest use to golfers desiring to hone their craft. Remember that there is a sociology of marriage, but should you become married one day you will discover that there is a level of reality that the sociological descriptions never adequately communicated.

2) If you assume there is no God at the beginning of your analysis then your analysis will not persuade me that there is no God, for how could it conclude anything else? It reminds me of a story Francis Collins told us last year: “A marine biologist casts a net into the lowest part of the ocean, brings up the catch, and analyzes it. He makes an amazing discovery: there is no creature at the bottom of the sea less than two inches in diameter! The problem, of course, is that his net has two inch holes. It is incapable of discovering anything smaller than its mesh.” In the same way, a methodology that rules out the supernatural from the beginning will never discover evidence of the supernatural. This should not be surprising at all.

3) There are some faith-friendly sociologists out there. Three worth
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sea of love dvd , Bradley Wright, and Christian Smith. Read some of their writings, particularly Stark’s. You can find him in the library. Maybe even email one of them and explain that you’re an undergrad and you have some questions about how to relate sociology to your faith (do not be offended if they do not reply — they are busy people). Also, check out some of the books at http://www.heartsandmindsbooks.com/vocation/sociology/

Hope that’s useful to some of you. Much of it applies to the social sciences in general. lamictal orange starter watch barbie mermaidia online making waves divx movie online

How Can There Be Only One Way?

I was recently thinking about 1st Timothy 2:5–6: “For there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all, revealing God’s purpose at his appointed time.” (New English Translation)

These verses highlight the aspect of Christianity that bothers Westerners most: its exclusivity. The notion that Jesus is the only way to God vexes many people.

This morning a thought occurred to me: almost everyone who believes in God believes that there’s only one way. Most people just don’t realize it.

For most people I know, their “one way” is being nice. Unless you are nice/good/sincere/altruistic/empathetic/enlightened/adjective-of-choice enough, you fail.

The way of niceness is no less limiting than the way of faith in Christ: it excludes people just as surely and it is far more arbitrary.

This is counterintuitive to some people, so allow me to explain.

It is exclusive in that some people just aren’t nice enough. More on that later.

It is arbitrary in that the devil is in the details. How do you know if you’ve been nice enough? And what constitutes the right kind of niceness, anyway? After all, there’s no real reason to suppose that an infinitely smart Being would measure niceness in the way that makes the most sense to you.

The Christian principle of exclusivity makes more sense, for it flows from the simple belief that Jesus is God in the flesh.

Thinking about this for a second should make the reasoning clear.

If you believe that Jesus is God, then to say you can come to God apart from Jesus is as nonsensical as saying you can go to Los Angeles without going to California.

In other words, all that Christians are insisting is that you can’t come to God without coming to God. This hardly seems controversial. You may reject the premises of the argument (that God exists or that Jesus is God), but granted those two the belief can’t be categorized as extreme or bizarre. It’s just consistent.

The real problem most people seem to have isn’t that Christianity is exclusive. Their real problem is that Christianity appears to be unfairly exclusive. This is most often expressed as follows, “What about those who have never heard of Christ? How can God exclude them simply because they haven’t heard of Jesus?”

There are actually some very reasonable answers to those questions. Here’s one, here’s another

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, and here’s yet a third. There are more where those came from — if this question distresses you then dig into it. You won’t agree with everything you read. I certainly don’t agree with every argument in three articles I linked. Figure out what you believe for yourself.

But here’s the important thing to realize: the same problem confronts the niceness standard. What about those born in the wrong time or the wrong place? Some of your ancestors owned slaves in accordance with the customs of their culture (this is true regardless of your ethnicity) — did they fail a test they didn’t know they were taking?

Some of them likely burned cats to death for fun. Do they fail the niceness test merely because they were born in the wrong time or in the wrong place?

For that matter, what of you? Who knows which of our actions our grandchildren will deem immoral? Perhaps you have been born in the wrong time and place to achieve a reasonable standard of niceness.

You might object that we should judge people relative to the standards of their own culture, so we don’t need to worry about what standards our grandchildren will hold us up against. Perhaps. Believing that would require you to stop judging dictatorships, sweatshops, modern-day slave trafficking, and racism in other cultures. Also, you will need to let the Church off the hook for things like the Crusades and the Inquisition. This is just one the problems that emerges from the notion that moral standards are completely relative to culture or personality. There are several detailed critiques available: here’s one

, here’s another, and here is a third (that last one is a pdf written by Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope).

So if your main beef with Christianity is that it’s exclusive, examine your own beliefs carefully. You might be surprised to discover just how exclusionary they turn out to be.

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I Am Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, and once again I am reminded of all that I have to be grateful for.

God loves me. I have a wonderful family (both by birth and by marriage). I have a faithful team of supporters who partner with me in ministry. I have the coolest calling in the world. I have fabulous students in my ministry. I live in America in the 21st century — one of the greatest, freest, and most prosperous cultures of all time. I live in California, which is as awesome as the rest of you think it is. And, and, and, and…

Today is Thanksgiving, and so such a list springs easily to mind. It reminds me that I am to be thankful every day. Many passages command us to be grateful. Among them are Ephesians 5:19–20, Colossians 2:7, Colossians 3:15–16, and 1 Thessalonians 5:18. They’re wonderful passages and worth memorizing.

But my favorite passage on gratitude is from Deuteronomy 8:17–18:

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…

It is God who gives us the ability. Not just the ability to produce wealth, but also the ability to make jokes, to find love, to enjoy a sunset, to get good grades, to run quickly, to leap in puddles, and to sleep soundly at night.

Every day is filled with occasions for gratitude, but we almost always let them pass unremarked.

This Thanksgiving, take to heart the ever-quotable G. K. Chesterton:

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

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Expecting An Email From Me? Check Your Spam Folder.

If you haven’t heard from me and you’ve been expecting to, I apologize. For some reason a lot of my very normal emails (particularly to students) have been labeled as spam. Here’s an example of an email that gets labeled as spam:

Student’s email to me: “Glen, can I get a ride to church on Sunday?”
My reply to the student: “Sure, I’ll pick you up at 10am. See you then!”

Result — automatically deleted as SPAM! The poor girl thought I was ignoring her and almost biked to church before we got it straightened out.

I had a student send me a copy of one of the unfortunate emails, and digging through the headers I found this entry from Stanford’s spam filter:

X-Spam: Probability=82%, Report='URI_CLASS_ABS_DOMAIN 8

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from within movie , BODY_SIZE_6000_6999 0, WEBMAIL_SOURCE 0, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ 0, __CD 0, __CP_URI_IN_BODY 0, __CT 0, __CTE 0, __CT_TEXT_PLAIN 0, __FRAUD_419_BODY_WEBMAIL 0, __FRAUD_419_WEBMAIL 0, __FRAUD_419_WEBMAIL_FROM 0, __FROM_GMAIL 0, __HAS_MSGID 0, __HELO_GMAIL 0, __MIME_TEXT_ONLY 0, __MIME_VERSION 0, __PHISH_SPEAR_HTTP_RECEIVED 0, __PHISH_SPEAR_STRUCTURE_1 0, __RDNS_GMAIL 0, __SANE_MSGID 0, __URI_CLASS_ANY 0′

I’ve googled for URI_CLASS_ABS_DOMAIN, but I haven’t been able to figure out what it means. I’m sending my emails from gmail, so I don’t think there’s any weirdness there. Something about the content of my email seems fishy to the spam filter. My best guess is that it’s my footer (which I intend to disable as a test), but any insight is appreciated.

The footer, in case you’re curious, is an innocuous

Glen Davis: http://glenandpaula.com/
Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship @ Stanford University: http://xastanford.org/

Bottom line: if you expected an email from me and you haven’t seen it, check your spam folder. A happy surprise might be waiting for you.

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Jesus Wants Friends Not Fans

I was chatting with De Wen (a student in our ministry) yesterday and he made a comment that really resonated with me: “God wants friends, not fans.”

A lot of us settle for being fans. I often settle for being a fan. But there’s so much more available — like Abraham, we can be friends with God (Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23). As he did to the disciples, Jesus yearns to say to us, “I no longer call you servants but friends” (John 15:15).

But the temptation to be a mere fan is strong. In Jimmy Tate’s memorable phrase, we substitute praise for prayer. We allow the life of the church to displace our own spiritual journey and we live vicariously through the pastor’s insights or the worship leader’s zeal. Like a dutiful fan, we turn out for the game (Sunday morning) and cheer at all the appropriate places. But we don’t call the coach after the game to congratulate him or shoot the breeze. We don’t invite him over for a victory bbq. That’s the stuff a friend would do.

We’re just fans, so we go home and talk about how great the game was.

And we miss out on something wonderful.

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Sermon Templates

One of the best books I’ve read in the last few years has been Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It’s chock-full of well-researched goodness. One of the most intriguing studies they cite is The Fundamental Templates of Quality Ads. If you read the article (or just the summary in Made to Stick), you learn that if you make an ad using one of a handful of templates, it will be much better (and perceived to be more creative) than if you put a group of people in a room and tell them to be as creative as they can.

Ever since I stumbled upon that study, I’ve been thinking about how it applies to sermons. There are lots of ways to structure sermons, but only a few seem to work really well.

As a result, I’ve compiled a list of sermon templates. When I’m preaching, I try to think through these templates to see if one naturally matches my subject, and I use as that the framework that I build the message around.

Template #1: Classic Expository Preaching
Simply use the outline/plot of the text as your preaching outline. This template is transcendent when done well, and painful when done poorly. It’s probably the most common template out there.

Template #2: Practical

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In Acts 2 Peter structures his sermon around the answers to three questions.

  1. What?
  2. So what?
  3. Now what?

Template #3: How To
One of the simplest ways to structure a message:

  1. Tell them why.
  2. Show them how.

Template #4: Solve The Problem (Andy Stanley)

  1. Create Attention: “here’s a problem that needs to be resolved
  2. Integrate Scripture: “fortunately, we’re not the first ones to wrestle with this”
  3. Clarify The Significance: “here’s why this answer matters”
  4. Apply The Concept: “and here’s how to make it work in real life”

Template #5: Pronouns (Andy Stanley)

  1. Me (Orientation): Introduce yourself to the audience and to your personal experience of the problem you’re talking about.
  2. We (Identification): Show how the audience has the same (or a sufficiently similar) problem.
  3. God (Illumination): Tell them what the Bible says about how to respond to this problem.
  4. You (Application): Call for a personal response
  5. We (Inspiration): Explain how things would be change if we all responded in obedience.

Template #6: Life Change (Rick Warren)

  1. Establish a need
  2. Give personal examples
  3. Present a plan
  4. Offer hope
  5. Call for commitment

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Template #7: The Story With a Punch (Inductive)

  1. Tell an engaging, carefully-chosen story (usually funny).
  2. Bring the surprise punchline from the Bible.

Template #8: The Question & Answer Outline (Thomas Aquinas)

  1. Make a bold claim (or ask a tough question and give an answer)
  2. Anticipate the objections raised by your claim/answer
  3. Answer the objections
  4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 as long as necessary to establish your original claim.

I hope these serve you well. I should hasten to add that these aren’t based on research — they’re the byproduct of observation and of what I learned at a few conferences. In other words, you can take what the article said about advertisements to the bank. You should only take my advice to the lemonade stand.

Ellipses… Make Me Nervous

Chris Tilling helpfully points out download little giant movie

that ellipses can mangle meaning. Consider:

“As for yourself, you shall … come back here … smoking … pot”
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Ellipses can clarify as well as mislead, of course. But an abundance of them makes me nervous. Always ask yourself, “What’s hiding behind those three little dots?”

Adventures at 320 Below

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Freshmen have arrived on campus this week, and we’ve had a blast meeting them. Our strategy isn’t super-sophisticated — we just set up a table on White Plaza and beckon students over to chat with us. We also give them free stuff (like popcorn and these really cool eco-friendly shopping bags).

The photo on the right is me and a couple of our hardworking students.

But there’s been an unexpectedly cool development. The table next to us has been for the Stanford Educational Studies Program free easter egg adventure the (they’re trying to recruit some freshmen to teach high school students stuff) and is manned by one of our students, Ben. Ben works with really cold stuff — about as close to absolute zero as humanity has been able to get (millikelvins, if you’re curious). So something like liquid nitrogen is like hot chocolate to him — it’s at a mere 320 Fahrenheit below zero. I know 320 below sounds cold, but most of the universe is much, much colder than that — just not the part that we inhabit.

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in front of people. It’s very eye-catching. Massive amounts of fog are generated. And the resulting ice cream is yummy.

Anyway, the drink for my lunch had gotten warm, so I asked Ben if we could use some liquid nitrogen to cool it off. It worked like a charm. Plus it was fun to do. Extremely fun.

That morning I had already been thinking that I had one of the best jobs in the world. And then I get to play with liquid nitrogen. While doing my job. Campus ministry rocks.

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Settling In To Our New Digs

Boxes, boxes, and more boxes. Oh, and a U-Haul truck with yet more boxes.Some of our faithful movers take a well-deserved break.We just moved from our old apartment to a house elsewhere in Menlo Park. So far we love it! The kids are especially jazzed about the yard and the ensuing prospects for outdoor play.

A big thank you to those who helped us move!

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Highlights from the move:

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  • Noticing that a disproportionate number of students decided to wear their Chi Alpha shirts for the move. My heuristic was to wear a shirt I didn’t care about… which makes me wonder how our students really feel about our shirts. 😉
  • Happy Donuts for breakfast. Yum. Bonus: watching Ben get a sugar rush.
  • Hearing my name used as a virtual curse word when people realized how many boxes of books they would have to carry. They love the erudite sermons, they just hate the way I prepare for them. 🙂
  • Backing a U‑Haul into my narrow driveway. Yikes!
  • Chris getting scratched by a rose bush and me (for once) having the right line at the right time, “He doesn’t need a band-aid — he needs a Y chromosome.”
  • New York Pizza for lunch. Two King Kongs and a Large. Excellent.
  • Having our internet activated on the day we moved in. Sweet!
  • Our new neighbor dropping off brownies. How very kind.
  • Having our super-studly moving crew stay to help us assemble and lay out furniture. Way above and beyond the call of duty. THANK YOU!
  • Costco Hot Dogs for supper. Those dogs are delicious. And huge.
  • Double bonus: watching Ben cuddle up after a hard day’s work and drift into la-la land.

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Reaching College Students

My seminary’s alumni magazine, Rapport

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It came out pretty well — although I did notice one mistake (which is probably my fault, not theirs). One sentence reads, “But for each nation that missionaries go to, there are hundreds of thousands of students from that nation currently studying in America.” Clearly that should be written more along the lines of, “But for each nation that missionaries go to, there are usually hundreds OR thousands of students from that nation studying in America.”

The other articles in that issue are also about college ministry, including three by former students of mine:

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I’m proud of them — they’re doing great things in God’s service. It was a privilege to play a small role in preparing them for ministry.

Joe, of course, played an even larger role in their lives than I did. One more testimony of his impact.

Joe — we miss you.

And to everyone who’s wondering if I’ll be at the funeral tomorrow, I’m sad to report that I won’t be. Just wasn’t able to work it out. I’ll be there in spirit.