The One With A Beard

Longing for a New Movement

2011-11-19T10:35:00.000-08:00

I’m dreaming of a different movement – different from the Occupy movement, that blames institutions, corporations and government and ignores the way individuals and consumers played a role in shaping the way our country is today; and different from the Tea Party movement, that says, “I work hard, plan wisely, and balance my budget. If everyone else, including the government, took responsibility and planned ahead like I do, everything would be fine.”

This movement would not blame the wealthy 1% for our problems, assuming that because they have more, they have taken it from others. Nor would it blame the poor, disabled and elderly who receive government benefits and pay little – if any – taxes into the system. It would neither deny that institutions exhibit irresponsibility, greed and depravity on a large scale, nor deny that individuals cause problems for themselves through irresponsibility, greed, and depravity on a small scale.

This movement would not deny that location, upbringing, and the situation one is born into significantly affect their economic well-being throughout life. Nor will it deny that it takes a lot of careful, diligent and strategic effort and planning on someone’s part to take advantage of those opportunities and acquire or maintain privilege, wealth or security.

The movement I dream of would consist of people who believe that they have a serious responsibility to steward their resources, work diligently and strategically, and plan for the future. Its members would have a fierce conviction that they ought to speak prophetically and courageously against the depravity and irresponsibility of the institutions of society, with a constant awareness of the potential for the disadvantaged to be exploited.

This movement would embody a deep compassion and desire for justice and mercy to be administered wisely. The people who make up this movement would have a deep conviction that they must work hard, live responsibly, plan wisely and take full advantage of the opportunities given them so that they can leverage all their resources with overwhelming generosity for the advantage of others. They would have a deep-seated desire to open the door to the opportunities they enjoy to others.

The members of this movement would long to see individual empowerment and a sense of responsibility go viral. And the responsibility would not be that of each person for himself and his own, but the responsibility of each person to exercise his or her gifts and abilities for the good of all those around them. This movement would have a vision that sees beyond redistribution of wealth to redistribution of wisdom and opportunity; a vision that sees beyond hand-outs and allotments to empowerment, investment and lives of constant teaching and mentorship.

Instead of saying “You should have done what I did” or “The people in charge need to do something about this,” this movement would say “Because Christ is in charge, I ought to do something.” The tragedy is not that the government does too little or too much; the problem is not that people are too foolish and lazy and wasteful. The tragedy is that the people of God do too little of living, teaching and modeling justice, generosity and true worship, and do too much of living shortsightedly and selfishly.

Anyone up for starting a movement?

An Open Letter to the Homosexual Community

2011-08-10T21:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Friend,

I want to start by apologizing for the tone that too often dominates the comments of Christians regarding homosexuality. For anyone to feel that he or she is more deserving of God’s grace and approval because that person is heterosexual, not homosexual, is a wrong attitude. It is wrong because acts of greed, lying, gossip, arrogance, heterosexual adultery and premarital sex, and many other acts that people (including Christians) commit are horrible. They are expressions of our brokenness and need for forgiveness. A follower of Jesus should recognize that the essence of the message of the Christian faith is that we are all able to receive grace and forgiveness even though we are all guilty and broken.

I think we are all broken and incomplete, and every person is searching for the thing that will bring the wholeness and satisfaction their heart craves. This longing is what leads us down many different paths: we are pursuing things that seem as though they will fill that emptiness, and make us feel like we are accepted, significant, and complete. People pursue wealth, luxury, fun, relationships, accomplishments, sex, and other things to find that satisfaction. At the moment when you were filled with a desire for a romantic and/or sexual relationship with someone of the same sex, you were seeking something to satisfy that longing for wholeness. It’s understandable that you would cling fiercely to something that provided some relief, if only partial or temporary, to the brokenness of the human condition that leaves us with such emptiness.

But, dear friend, I am guessing that you also feel moments of shame. Even if you proudly march for your rights, enthusiastically claim that you have found true happiness, and defiantly stare down those who would criticize your lifestyle, in a transparent moment, you would admit that shame and guilt cloud your thinking at times. And worst of all, the emptiness inside remains.

In the midst of this struggle, extra confusion is present because your culture is feeding you a lie. You are told to accept that your identity - the essence of who you are - is in your sexual behavior. But your identity is not in your activity; it is grounded in something much deeper. You are a human - made in the image of God - and he longs to fill that emptiness in a way that no other relationship and no behavior ever could.

I don’t know whose business it is to say whether or not gays have the right to marry in a secular nation. I know that we could argue about whether homosexuality is a result of a choice or a genome until were so sick of arguing we want to punch ourselves in the face. I can refer to the scripture, an you can refer to recent studies, and we’ll probably both end up sticking with our assumptions. But I’m pretty confident that, if the good news of God’s filling and all-satisfying love takes root in your heart, I won’t have to argue you into any change. The Holy Spirit would fill you with a desire to please the Lord, and guide you through the appropriate changes, however difficult they may be.

Until then, please be willing to keep listening. And please forgive us when our attitudes are too smug and self-righteous, when we show our ignorance of who you really are and what you really think, and when we fail to answer the important questions because we are too preoccupied with trying to prove ourselves right.

Sincerely,

A Caring Christian

A Semi-Patriotic Prayer

2011-07-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

This should have been posted on July 4th. The thoughts were formulating as early as Memorial Day. On every national holiday, I hear prayers of Thanksgiving for our freedom and the bleesings we have. It is not often that I hear repentance over the wrongs we have committed. I believe that God has blessed and used our country in some special ways. I also believe that he has done it in spite of our wrongs, not because of our righteousness. Here’s my attempt at providing balance in a proposed prayer for a church service on a national holiday.

Dear Sovereign God, who rules over all nations, as citizens of the United States today,

We thank you, Father, for how you have allowed our nation to forge the way in freedom of worship, being a leader in breaking the previously long-standing pattern in Western culture of wars between rival Christian movements.

Forgive us, Lord, for the many years of history where black Americans were restricted and excluded from worshipping freely alongside others.

Forgive us, Lord, for how we have fearfully questioned, attacked and persecuted others because their differing beliefs scared us.

We thank you, Father, for the tremendous economic prosperity that has blessed our land for so long.

Forgive us, Lord, for how we have used so much of that wealth to feed our greed and consumerism and at many times remained ambivalent toward the needs of the world around us.

Forgive us, Lord, for claiming that you had given us a “manifest destiny” to acquire land which became ours by military might and aggression, and built wealth and resources by shedding the blood of Native Americans and those of other nations.

Thank you, Father, for the many Americans who have been generous and servant-minded leaders in fighting poverty and serving in global missions, using wisely the wealth you gave them.

Forgive us, Lord, for how we have toppled leaders and manipulated the fate of entire nations for the sake of protecting our economic and political interests.

Thank you, Father, for how America has become a place where people of all races have many opportunities before them.

Forgive us, Lord, for pushing Native Americans onto reservations and setting them on a course toward generational poverty.

Forgive us, Lord, for the many years where we as a nation pushed black Americans to the margins of society, scorned them, and deprived them of opportunities through unjust oppression.

Thank you, Lord, that we have a voice in government affairs and freedom to express our views and ideas.

Forgive us, Lord, for condoning the murder of millions who never got to use their voices, because their lives were taken before they were born.

Forgive us, Lord, for how the founding of our nation included an act of vandalism aboard a British ship and a rebellion against the governing authorities (which the Bible tells us you established) because of our citizen’s outrage over paying taxes (which the Bible tells us to pay).

Thank you, Father, that your blessings are so much greater than we deserve.

The Great Disappointment: 1844 and 2011

2011-05-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

Here I sit at my computer, the day before May 21, 2011. May 21, for most people, will just be a normal Saturday. For a number of others, not all of whom are strangers to me, there is a much greater expectation for tomorrow. As the followers of Harold Camping have boldly and publicly been communicating, they expect judgment day to come on May 21

This prediction has received much ridicule from the secular media, and received gentle (and not-so-gentle) critiques from Christian leaders – some making a joke of it, others humbly explaining that there’s no biblical reason to believe this.

But it shouldn’t really be a surprise that Camping is teaching this, or that people are staking their plans, money and faith on his teachings. It’s happened plenty of times before. The most prominent example in U.S. Christianity was William Miller, who claimed to have discovered the date of Christ’s return in the 1820’s. Miller was a self-educated farmer from New York – he had not been influenced by academia or being a prominent part of an institutional church leadership structure. He was an average American, reading the Bible for himself, and coming to a conclusion that seemed very clear to him: Christ would return in 1843. In the 1830’s, he began to share this message with others, and by the early 1840’s gained a large audience for his message throughout the U.S. Roughly a million people attended camp meetings to hear him speak, and the movement caught the attention of the nation. His book, Evidence from Scripture of the Second Coming of Christ, About the Year 1843, was published in 1836. Thousands believed his “biblical” insight that Jesus would return “sometime between March 21^st, 1843 and March 21^st ,1844,” (based on the Jewish calendar) l . They forsook their previous religious beliefs (i.e., left their churches) to follow Miller’s teachings, and the popular call that grew to “Come out of Babylon!” (Babylon, in their scheme, being the Protestant church.) Working class people eagerly anticipated the end of their struggle to earn a living. Many sold their possessions. Millerites dressed in white robes and went up on hills to await Christ’s arrival at any moment.

The spring of 1844 brought the first disappointment. The predicted time frame had passed, and the “virgins awaiting the bridegroom” were still waiting. Then the leadership of the movement focused in on an “autumnal cleansing” and fixated on the date October 22, 1844. True believers, who would be saved, were those who had left their churches and put their firm belief in this date. All others would be excluded and judged by Christ. Anyone who tempered their statement of belief with an “if” was not considered a true believer.

The results on October 22? The “spring disappointment” was followed by the “great disappointment.” The world went on, as if it were an ordinary day. In 1845, William Miller, disillusioned, left the Adventist movement that had been the vehicle for his message. He died, blind, of old age on his farm in Low Hampton, New York.

Miller was perhaps the most prominent American, but not the only church leader to make such a prediction. In the year 65, Hilary of Poiters announced the end of the world. In 1179, John of Toledo predicted 1186 as the end, based on the alignment of planets. Jehovah’s Witnesses used a mathematical calculation to predict the beginning of the war of Armageddon in 1914. When this prediction did not work out, the Watchtower society subsequently predicted 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994. A fellow Christian writer, observing the Family Radio campaign, reminisced on his personal experience with the predictive pamphlet buy a NASA engineer titled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. The commonality of all these predictions? They were all wrong. EVERY time a Christian leader has set a date for the second coming of Christ, it was wrong. They have claimed biblical, prophetic and divine authority, yet the failure of their predictions has proven that they lack such authority.

But in many cases, the teachers have not recanted. They have made excuses, then regrouped and set a new date, marshaling their remaining followers, as the Millerite movement did in the spring of 1844. As for Harold Camping? He seems to know how to accomplish this. In 1994, he predicted the end of the world. It didn’t happen. Yet he still remains convinced of his own authority, unwilling to heed anyone’s interpretation of Scripture besides his.

If you are a follower of Harold Camping, believing his teaching to be biblical, please hold him accountable to his words by not following his teaching any longer when this prediction fails. The parallels with William Miller are astonishing. Many who object to Camping do not do so because they reject the authority of Scripture, as Camping claims, but because they recognize that his interpretive methods have failed over and over, and they are guided by human arrogance, not the Holy Spirit. Those of us who continue to attend Christian churches do so because we believe the biblical teaching that the church, despite it’s weaknesses and failings, is the bride of Christ, not the sin-ruled world system represented by Babylon in the apocalyptic Scriptures.

Please, please, be willing to humbly repent and seek Christ in the aftermath. Do not be deluded by Camping’s silver-tongued explanations of what happened. Hold him to his own words. And be willing to seek truth on May 22 and after. He is not the first to deceive. You are not the first to be deceived. There is freedom in repentance, but bondage in prideful determination to follow falsehood. Choose repentance from false teaching.

Sometimes Growth Requires a Little Less Work

2011-05-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

I tried to avoid it. I desperately did not want to go there. I dreaded this frustrating stage of life. But it seems it was unavoidable. I have seen multiple friends of mine graduate from academic programs and enter the next phase of life, and the phase looked pretty similar for each of them. It was not the hoped-for and often expected transition of launching from a degree straight into a satisfying career or exciting ministry field. No, there is no simple mechanical process where you plug your degree into one part of a machine and watch the path to fulfillment and success come rolling out of the other side. On the contrary, it seems pretty standard to have a post-graduation lull.

I observed this lull phase in people’s lives while still working on my master’s degree. It usually involves either looking for a job (with little success) or working a job that does not really tap into your ability and potential (or degree qualifications). It often involves spending time with the family you grew up with or investing in a new marriage. This is a phase that lacks the excitement of the dreams discussed in your college dorm late at night, calls into question the ideas about the future that inspired you through the challenging and wearying bevy of academic assignments, and challenges the expectations built by watching the careers and ministries of the role models that inspired you. It’s a time of waiting, knowing that you have prepared to use your abilities in an influential, effective and satisfying way, but not knowing when the opportunity to do so will open up. It’s a sharp Bible-college grad working for the in-laws’ family business. It’s a gifted and driven business finance honors student waiting tables at Olive Garden. It’s a trained urban missionary caring for a dying grandmother in rural Ohio. It’s a a gifted seminary grad who’s Ph.D. material, painting houses.

I was going to outsmart this season of life. A year ahead of graduation, I started making plans. I was going to launch straight into my dream of serving the poor in Africa, and I wanted to leave the month after I graduated. No time in the doldrums for me! Then the Lord brought a welcome interruption to my plans, and I decided that I was more excited to marry her than to go rushing off to Africa on my own. And following the advice of experienced missionaries, we agreed that making a cross cultural move before our one year anniversary would compound the challenge of both adjustments, so we should stay put for the first year.

I didn’t think this would require me to experience the post-graduation lull, however. Immediately after we got back from our honeymoon, I launched into teaching a class at a bible college nearby, while still working in an academic program for at-risk youth. There was lots of activity, lots of productivity, and things were proceeding according to my normal, busy expectation. Then the bible class ended, and it was my final class for the academic year. Two weeks later I was informed that I couldn’t keep my education job any longer, because I had to be enrolled as a student to qualify for employment. Shortly afterward, we decided it was time to change churches, and we were in an in-between phase of local church involvement as we sought the best fit for us. What was I to do with my time? My version of the lull had settled onto me.

My lull has been far from inactive – it’s included working part-time in two different tutoring programs, training for a half-marathon, taking a Perspectives course, and cooking lots of dinners for my wife (seasoned with garlic, onions, cilantro, and lots of love). But by comparison with other phases of my life, it’s been a lull, and it has taught me deeply important lessons. It’s been difficult to pay bills pay bills each month and notice the big difference in my wife’s income compared to mine. I’ve often consoled myself in the past that I was making investments in ministry, which had far greater value than the dollar amounts on a paycheck. But some of my previous ministry opportunities have been absent for a time (i.e., because of the church transition), and my direction in ministry is shifting, though I’m still watching to see exactly how it shapes up.

I was forced to look inside and ask myself: when I don’t have a list of accomplishments at the end of the week, or a great ministry story to tell, or a respectable dollar amount on a pay stub, or ample recognition for my activity and service, where do I place my confidence? Where do I ground my identity? If I only feel I can relate to God well when I am doing and accomplishing a lot to serve him, then I have not rightly understood grace. I serve because of grace. I discover who he is and how he works through service, yes, but my identity is not in what I do, or in what I accomplish. I have been challenged to preach the gospel to myself again and again, remembering that my value, my identity, the inspiration and strength for all that I may accomplish, is in Jesus Christ. When I am tempted to self-pity because I think my circumstances should be different, I must remember that being part of Christ’s body, having been purchased with his blood, is enough. His joy is enough. His grace is enough. His peace is enough. When I am thoroughly broken of my need to accomplish things for my own sake, my own pride, my own sense of self-worth, then I can serve with sincere gospel motives. When I am able to trust the one who sovereignly and wisely guides my circumstances without protesting, complaining, and arguing as if I know better, then I am ready to accept his plan for my life. Someday I will be called to praise him in the storm. For now, I will sing to him in the lull.

Father, let your Holy Spirit dwell in me that I may reflect the image of your Son with joy, peace and trust as you work out what’s next.

“We think in terms of apostolic journeys. God dares to put his greatest ambassadors in chains.”
- Watchman Nee

Sunday School: Re-purposing A Habit of the American Church

2011-01-27T19:42:00.000-08:00

Every Sunday, across the nation, a group of adults dutifully shuffle in to rooms in church buildings at the appointed time on a Sunday morning, arriving for “Sunday School.” In my church experience, the group has been the same crowd of people from week to week at the given church – a crowd that has attended dutifully for years, professed Christian faith for years, and heard lessons from a succession of pastors and lay-leaders for years. Some weeks I ask myself the irreverent question: is there really any point to this? Are we doing it to keep a routine and perpetuate a program only? Do we accomplish anything more than affirming people who know the right answers for knowing the right answers? I have asked this when the teacher was me, and when it was someone else. This feeling has bothered me at different churches in different traditions and in different cities. It is not a critique of any individual’s ability as a teacher, but of the habituated patterns and the educational context. This irreverent question brought me to do some reading about the origins of Sunday school, and I think in that story lies a challenge for churches today.

The Sunday school movement began, the story goes, in England during the Industrial Age. Christian people of the time saw children who lived the kind of lives described by Charles Dickens through the young street children in his stories. The people of the church at the time showed one of the distinct characteristics of God's people: they were motivated by compassion and a longing for justice. As these Christians witnessed children roaming the streets struggling to survive poverty by whatever means possible or being forced at a young age into long work days in grimy, back-breaking factory labor, they longed to help them to a better life. Various people began Sunday Schools to meet this social need. At these schools, poor children gained basic literacy skills that would allow them to advance to more financially stable lives, as well as becoming biblically literate and hearing the gospel. By joining a concern for social justice with a burden to share the gospel, young lives were impacted deeply. These schools began with a few motivated and compassionate people in cities in England and spread quickly through the British Isles and to America, largely thanks to the publicity of Robert Raikes, a newspaper owner who started a Sunday School and published articles about the movement.

Movements have a tendency, unless cared for very carefully, to begin with great vitality and purpose and gradually lose momentum as they degenerate into lifeless routines and habits. When I slip into Sunday School now, I feel little to no connection with the vital origins of the Sunday School movement.

But I have had experiences that carried the spirit of the compassionate evangelists and teachers who began Sunday Schools. (One example of this can be found here.) Although our culture now offers free education for all, a talk with the administrators, teachers and parents at many schools in America uncovers a great need for academic support for students from elementary up to high school levels. This need is especially pronounced in low-income areas, where family structures are generally weak, and families cannot afford private tutoring for students. A number of non-profit organizations are seeking to meet this need with after-school programs which depend on volunteers and community partnerships. I have seen firsthand how the direct student interaction necessary to this type of program leads to opportunities to speak about the love of Christ to students searching for meaning. A church could run such a program, including an optional activity and snack time at the end with a Bible lesson included.

What would happen if churches repurposed the volunteers, funds and time invested in Sunday School as it has been for the past couple decades to create after-school programs that look like “Sunday School” as it began? How would this affect the culture of churches – the member’s thinking about the purpose of programs (and the purpose of the church), their awareness of the needs around them, their sense of compassion for the needy, their attentiveness to creative opportunities to work with passion to reach the lost? How would it affect the perception of the church in the community around it? How many lives of students and parents would be touched by efforts to meet a real need and share Christ in the process?

We would need a new name for a different day of the week. We would need church leaders determined to change the paradigm of how ministry programs despite the potential objections of church members comfortable with routine. But we could recapture the compassionate, evangelistic drive that began Sunday School.

Breaking the Seal: Creating openings in your life to engage the unchurched

2011-01-19T18:57:00.000-08:00

A significant problem facing the American evangelical church culture is the fact that the lives of solid Christians in our churches are, in large part, sealed off from the lives of unchurched people around us. (This problem seems to be even more pronounced in churches with a fundamentalist background) Thankfully, most members of our churches are blessed to have an entire immediate family who are Christians. It’s a beautiful thing to share faith and values with your family. This usually means that the family has spent their lives attending church together, thus developing a strong network of friendships that grow and deepen over years – another wonderful thing. The challenge that comes with these blessings is that they create the first two layers that have the potential to seal off the Christian community from the members of the community around them. Add 1 or 2 more of the potential layers – a Christian workplace, a Christian school, an additional parachurch bible study or other activity – and the Christian community successfully creates a virtually hermetic seal, closing itself off from the world with multiple layers of protection.

While this is a satisfactory arrangement if the main goals are fact-centered Christian education or producing conformity to certain behaviors, it misses an important part of Christian identity. The God who rules the Christian community is a triune God who exemplifies the sending and going identity of the church: the Father sent his Son; the Son went into the world, setting aside his glory and humbly taking on the form of those to whom he was sent; the Spirit is sent to empower Christ’s follower to go, proclaim the gospel and make disciples. For Christians to sit comfortably inside the seal of multiple layers of Christian subculture and familiar relationships, they must ignore this part of their identity in Christ. This type of separation narrows the focus of our obedience to the command to “Love your neighbor” from a sensitivity to the many lost, needy and hurting people around us to an awareness primarily of those who have been in our lives for a long time, share our beliefs, and have given or will later give something to us – i.e., a kind of love that many lost people exercise toward their families and life-long friends.

We deeply need a network of people around us who offer stability in faith, depth of relationship and encouragement to continue living the Christian life daily. And we need to encourage one another to reflect the sending and going character of the Christian life by peeling away a layer or two to make an opening in the seal. By intentionally seeking common space and shared activities with people around us who desperately need to be reconciled to God, we make ourselves available to build relationships, express love, proclaim the gospel, and reflect the attitude Christ showed in the incarnation.

Peeling away a layer can be tough: it often comes with a sense of separation and a bit of guilt over a relationship or activity that had to be phased out of life. Contact with non-believers who don’t play by the rules of Christian behavior frequently produces a painful, raw rub. But these pains rarely match up to the magnitude of change Christ experienced in taking on human form - nor the pain he experienced in being rejected, flogged and crucified by the people he was offering his love.

Living a sealed-off life calls to mind the question of Soren Kierkegaard: “How can one be Christian when he lives in Christendom?” That is, if there is no challenge in living Christian morals because your morals are constantly reaffirmed by everyone you interact with, are you exercising faith, or simply conforming socially? While Kierkegaard arrives at conclusions I disagree with, he raises poignant questions about the motivations for our actions. If we believe the gospel, we believe it has a transformative effect on people, and can give power to shine as light in the midst of darkness, to stand upright when those around bow to the threats and seductions of the world’s influence. A faith that yields transformation and that stands steadfast in the face of opposition shines brightly to the glory of God. The perpetuation of a subculture produces an interesting sociological phenomenon. Which of these results are we looking to produce?

And Looking to the Future...

2010-04-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

My final (I think) description of how the characteristics of American culture affect American evangelicalism.

Future-oriented

American culture characteristically sets the near future as the focus of thinking and effort. Individuals choose their actions, and their actions today are important because of how they will affect that individual and his or her environment in the foreseeable future. If the goal of action is focused on the future event of glorification and new creation, this view can be readily incorporated with the Christian mindset of sacrifice and suffering that accepts them as worthwhile in light of the future glory that will result (Rom. 8:18). On the negative side, future-orientation makes it easy to forget to be grateful for God's past and present blessings. American Christians face the danger of living for an imagined future and neglecting the treasures and opportunities of the present.

A future-oriented society values things that are new and change that anticipates the needs of the future. This allows changes for the better to occur more easily and quickly than in past-oriented cultures. Conversion to Christ can occur much more smoothly, without the same level of struggle against the patterns of previous generations. If the conversion shows evidence of changing the near future for the better, than the patterns of the past can quickly be tossed aside. If one generation of the American church exhibits faulty thinking, the next generation is ripe for a message of change within the highly-self-critical, continually-contextualizing mindset of evangelicalism. While some Christian movements are barely catching up with one wave of trends, other voices are calling for a new barrage of changes to keep with the fast-moving culture around (and within) the church. This does not bring all good changes, however: some valuable and useful practices are also brushed aside in the forward press for new forms of contextualization.

One corollary of future-oriented thinking is a glorification of youth. “Reaching the next generation” and touching the lives of youth “because they are our future” are commonly used phrases within the American church. Leaders are frequently favored because of their youth and energy - sometimes so much that the more important qualities of proven Christian character and wisdom are examined less rigorously. Christian organizations readily accept the mindset that, if they are to continue to thrive, they must cater to the desires of a youthful target audience or constituency. Thus members of the church who have lived long and faithful lives of Christian service may be marginalized or forgotten because of the cultural perception that they have outlived their usefulness and have little value for the future. In the rush to rescue the “orphans” and build them into future leaders, the “widows" may be neglected (James 1:27), even though this evaluation of age and worth is not warranted by a biblical theology of the church.

Give me options! (Or at least let me think I have them)

2010-04-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

The Power to Decide

While many cultures have social or communal ways of making decisions for an individual, American culture places the locus of decision squarely on the individual most affected by the decision. In the overwhelming majority of situations, a person has the final say in determining his or her actions and situations. Others give advice and information to aid in the process, but Americans adamantly desire - even demand - to make their own, individual decisions (or at least feel as if they are doing so). This makes it a natural and logical appeal to call a person to choose Christ instead of continuing in sin, unbelief or false religion. The New Testament’s portrayal of sin, faith and judgment as individual choice and consequence communicates readily to this culture. When a person is convinced of the guilt of sin, the choice to accept forgiveness is a logical next step. The American assumption which Stewart and Bennett label the “implied agent” (61-66) - the idea that every occurrence is connected to an agent that caused it - also makes it easy for judgment to be viewed as actions that result in personal guilt which deserves punishment.

The belief that actions should be controlled through highly personalized (and frequently self-centered) decision gives fertile ground for several problems in thinking about how people are related to God. One constant threat is worry about the future: an individual who is constantly causing things by every decision and action will surely be tempted to defy Christ’s teaching in Matthew 6:25-34 and worry about the outcomes. Thinking in terms of a "right" to choose can easily set a trajectory toward a false sense of being in control. The God of the Bible calls for unconditional trust and acknowledgement of his sovereignty, and an overweening tendency to proclaim cultural catch phrases like, “It’s my life” (as per Bon Jovi), “I Did It My Way” (Sinatra), or “I do whatever I feel like, gosh!” (Napoleon Dynamite) leaves an American Christian in a prideful and rebellious independence that is incompatible with a Christian worldview.

Busy, busy busy...

2010-04-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

As a note on method: while evangelicals - and especially fundamentalists - have had a tendency to talk about culture only when it affects our Christianity negatively. If our cultural assumptions fall in line with Biblical priorities, we don't talk about the effects of culture; we just pat ourselves on the back with pride over how great we are as the church. Thus, we fail to notice the aspects of our culture that are helpful, and begin to think of culture as the problem instead of as a neutral medium. In these posts, I make an effort to balance positives and negatives of cultural characteristics. When something we believe is part of American culture that obviously doesn't mean it's right - but it doesn't mean it's wrong, either.

Task-oriented

The culture of the U.S. emphasizes accomplishments, work, numbers, and results. Americans value doing, and the more factual evidence we have that the action is yielding observable results, the better we feel about the actions. This results in a high value on activism and productivity. An effective evangelist, in this mindset, is one who can count a high number of people who made decisions for Christ. A pastor expects that if he does his job well, his church will grow in numbers. These expectations are met in some cases and are not entirely off-base, but quantitative measures alone do not adequately evaluate the qualitative progress that should be part of church life. Faithfulness, growth in character, building relationships, listening and observing are often not valued as highly as activities like running programs, staging events, and speaking to crowds, because the results of the former actions are less tangible.

This task-oriented view combines with America’s distinctive pragmatism to have a variety of effects. The focus on efficiency results in high output in terms of buildings, book and media output, and large-scale activities. It also results at times in viewing relationships as important primarily for the work that gets done as a result. I have found myself dramatically varying the amount of time I spend with people in my Christian community based on what we are working on together more than any other factor. We unite and put effort into our relationships because doing so is important to accomplishing a particular task. Networking and partnering with other churches and organizations views relationships as the key to greater effectiveness and results. According to doctrine, it is our union in the body of Christ that causes us to love, care for, and learn about each other. In reality, increased productivity often drives the connections we make.

Task-oriented pragmatism seems connected to a frequent lack of emphasis on aesthetics among evangelicals. Stewart and Bennett observe that “Americans focus on operational procedures rather than perceptions of the situation” (30), while other cultures spend more time talking about observations and descriptions of the people, places and situations involved. The American mindset assesses what resources and processes are most efficient for producing the greatest numerical results by communicating the facts of the gospel to the greatest possible number of people in the manner that yields the most public (i.e., recordable and countable) confessions of faith. Pouring time and resources into fine arts, architecture, and décor is usually valued only to the extent that it makes these activities effective, not for the sake of ideals like expressing truth and beauty in imaginative ways or reflecting the creative nature of God.

Pragmatism can easily lead to neglect of intellectual and historical foundations for Christianity as well. Being driven for numerical results and having an affinity for constant activity sometimes make time spent thinking, studying, and reflecting seem like a waste. While there are a number of evangelical groups that are exceptions, large swaths of American Christianity are colored with an anti-intellectual hue. As Charles Malik says, “Evangelicals are in a hurry to preach the gospel,...but ‘they have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure in conversation with the greatest minds and souls of the past, and thereby ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking.’” (Pearcey, 282) Undervaluing intellectual life in exchange for getting faster results raises questions about the true nature of the results. If church is done in a way that is disconnected from the lessons (both good and bad) of 2000 years of church history, is it really as close to the ideal as we would like to think? Are we not arrogant to think that we can interpret Scripture from a modern or postmodern American viewpoint without ever comparing it with the insights of the many good thinkers who have examined Scripture through the centuries? These are questions we must continually ask when tempted to follow the cultural impulse toward simply pushing ahead, running the risk in doing so of producing a great number of Christians with shallow knowledge and little sense of connection to a larger body.

1. Pearcey, Nancy. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004.

2. Stewart and Bennett. American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Rev. Ed. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1991.

American Culture and Christianity: More Stuff don't Make You More Better

2010-04-01T12:56:00.000-07:00

One characteristic prevalent in American culture, and sometimes invisible to us, that affects how we view our faith is...

Materialism

America has supported, since the early days of its settlement by Europeans, a wealthy culture with a stable government and economic liberties, where hard work and good morals are much more likely to yield financial prosperity than in many nations. The culture places a high value on possessions, wealth, income and the comforts they give as evidences of success and status. The unprecedented economic mobility available in America provides opportunities that would be unthinkable in more static or stratified societies. The prosperity of our country presents an incredible opportunity to use our vast resources in worshipful Christian generosity. Sadly, the statistics show that professing Christians in the U.S. are far more likely to acquire more possessions and comforts than to give a significant percentage of their wealth. We are easily misled by the idea that more money and possessions make life better, so that we miss out on the blessing of choosing contentment and joy.

Our efforts to help the poor frequently are built on the assumption that money, possessions and technology ought to be bundled together in a package with the gospel. This mindset needs critique, however, as it reflects the cultural assumptions that increase in personal wealth is always a sign of progress. Introducing wealth in the wrong manner (e.g., along with consumerism) can be dangerous and destructive to relationships and attitudes emphasized in aChristian worldview that are already present in another culture. (As illustrated in this article) Linking economic prosperity to proper relationship with God can be supported by careful proof-texting, but does not line up with a well-rounded Biblical theology. Yet this link is easily taken for granted by affluent (by global comparison, if not by their own standards) American Christians. We ought to be thoughtful about how to share wealth with those in need and still affirm the relationships and attitudes that are emphasized in a Christian worldview rather than unwittingly conveying consumerist attitudes.

All of the material world was declared good as God created it, which allows us to accept the pleasure, goodness and beauty we find on earth as gifts of God. Because fallen man will abuse pleasures that were intended for good, self-control and discipline are distinctive parts of the Christian lifestyle. A worldview that condemns pleasure or views material things as inherently bad does not line up with the story of creation and its exposition throughout Scripture. Exalting pleasure as an end in itself fails to bring satisfaction, however, and sets a person on an idolatrous course, giving more value to stuff than to God. Where no clear guidelines are given, we must ask questions such as the following: Am I enjoying this as an act of worship to God, or am I allowing it to distract me from God? Am I enjoying this in a way that brings me closer to other believers and maintains an effective witness to the world around me? Each pleasure, each material blessing, each comfort that we receive should be accepted with gratitude as a gift from God, and offered in worship back to God, submitted to use for his glory and the service of others.

When prosperity comes to a Christian, it presents an opportunity to use our resources in worshipful generosity. As American believers, we must fight the cultural pressure to acquire more possessions and comforts rather than to sacrificially give a significant percentage of wealth. The blessing of choosing contentment and joy is important to the Christian way of life, regardless of one’s level of wealth.

Cultural Effects: The Right to Believe

2010-03-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

Another characteristic of American culture, and how it affects our Christianity.

Individual Freedom of Conscience

American culture tends to think of religious experience as personal, private and largely emotional, while public, professional, and intellectual life are something separate from faith. This is part of the “separation of church and state” that, on the good side, allows for religious pluralism within the United States, so that forced conversions or persecution of members of other faiths is generally not part of the national history of the U.S. (the Mormons may object to this generalization). Christianity is allowed to develop a lifestyle and worldview among its members apart from the mandates of the government (though this lifestyle clearly has not occurred apart from the cultural influence of political theory and events).

This cultural characteristic is positive in a huge way: in the majority of human experience, religion has been taken as a legitimate cause for internal repression or outward aggression by rulers and their armies, occasionally out of misguided conviction, but more often, it seems, as a pretext for greed and power. The consistent call through the Old and New Testament to worship God from the heart, not merely with outward conformity, makes forced conversions unproductive, if not counterproductive, to shaping true followers of Christ.

The weakness that this tolerance can cause is accepting that their individual choice has no implications for public living, but only affects what a person does, as it were, “on his (or her) own time.” The basic Christian act of evangelism is attacked by some as improper, at least "in a professional setting." The frustrating and easily misdirected task of applying Christian principles to political action keeps believers swinging between alternating extremes of overemphasizing the political activism allowed in the American system and retreating from the governmental sector with the conclusion that faith belongs only in the private and social realm, and cannot be effectively applied in the political process.

A Christian view on freedom of conscience allows for dialogue, recognizes evangelism as distinctive to the Christian life, and acknowledges that God is the one who ultimately brings people to faith - state mandates or forced conversions will not bring about genuine belief by all who profess faith because it is necessary or advantageous. It allows the gospel to affect every area of our life - private, professional, public - without accepting the secular definition of tolerance that requires all to set aside a belief in truth and accept the dogma of relativism. As people in a fallen world, as citizens in a diverse nation, we allow those in false religion and unbelief to worship as they choose. As Christians, we work hard to persuade them of the truth with loving concern, recognizing that the right to believe whatever one chooses does not mean that whatever one chooses to believe is right.

The Influence of (American) Culture Upon a Christian's Worldview

2010-03-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

There will be more posts on this topic coming, looking at various distinctive elements of American culture, and how they affect our way of doing church and living our faith - some good, some bad.

The extent to which our culture shapes our perception of what it means to be a Christian can be quite surprising, and even unnerving. Yet discovering how culture influences our view of reality is highly valuable, as it is a step toward discovering the blind spots in our worldview. By understanding the distinctive elements of an American approach to life, we are in a better situation to evaluate whether the assumptions we identify contradict distinctively Christian thinking, and bring our lives into closer conformity with God's pattern, allowing for the beauty of cultural variety while accepting the universal claims God makes on his image-bearers. One of the distinctive elements of American culture is...

Individualism

The extreme concept of individual identity and right to self-determination dominates American culture. This sense of independence and personal rights distinguishes our culture from others, bringing positive and negative results. The stamp of the image of God on humanity gives value to every person, and a culture that affirms the dignity inherent in being a human individual fits with a Christian worldview. However, when a healthy concept of individuality progresses to become individualism, problems can occur. The effects of individualism on American Christianity are legion, and a few significant effects are discussed here.

The idea of a right to choose one’s own religion coupled with the desire to determine one’s own destiny has led evangelicals to incorporate Jeffersonian ideals into church structure. Nancy Pearcey observes that, during the Second Great Awakening, “The priesthood of all believers was taken to mean religion of the people, by the people, for the people” (275). This meant the rejection of traditional and hierarchical church structures as authoritative. Just as the nation rejected traditional forms for the “rule of law,” where a document (at least in principle) set the parameters for law, so evangelicals seek to go directly to the text of Scripture, individually determine its meaning, express a personal view, and vote or otherwise influence practice accordingly.

The result is congregational rule and a very loose view of membership: it is an at-will agreement for mutual benefit - result. Spiritual life is viewed as viable apart from a community: “In many churches, the individual alone with his Bible is regarded as the core of the Christian life” (Pearcey, 293). A church is thus viewed as the sum of its members, who are all basically equal. This implies that leaders can be removed easily if the people are unhappy with them - they are not entrenched with nearly the same firmness of authority as in traditional church structures, but are allowed to lead by the consent of the majority of the members.

A celebrity mindset has taken the place of the hierarchical structures rejected by most of American Christianity, so that celebrity status does more to determine the widespread influence of a church leader. This allows individuals to decide whether they like a leader or not based on charisma, dramatic ability, public image, and oratory, then freely make a choice whether or not to follow that leader’s influence. The choice can be reversed, and this kind of "following" does not usually mean incurring any obligation or membership commitment as part of an institution. This fits with the analysis of cultural anthropologists Stewart and Bennett that “Personal relations among Americans are adapted to gaining emotional benefits from social interaction while preserving independence and avoiding obligations” (89). Church affiliations are evaluated according to how well the church environment suits the individual, and are all too often treated with very little commitment to be involved and committed to life within that Christian community.

1. Pearcey, Nancy. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity. Wheaton:

Crossway Books, 2004.

2. Stewart and Bennett. American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural

Perspective. Rev. Ed. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1991.

What is spiritual growth?

2010-03-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

I've contemplated over the past few years what exactly it means to grow spiritually. How should I evaluate progress in my Christian walk? At one point I evaluated my spiritual condition by whether I felt close to God and could sense his presence. But some times in life he feels very distant, yet I am growing in producing the fruits of salvation that the Bible speaks of: Christ-like character, perseverance in faith, and a worshipful attitude towards God (sometimes felt with awe and ecstasy, and sometimes acted on even though I can't feel it). Here are some words I put down pondering spiritual growth as change (conformity to Christ's image), steadfastness (remaining faithful even when life's circumstances harangue me with difficulty and doubt), and what Jonathan Edwards would call "Religious Affection" - a sense of wonder and joy over who God is and delight in learning his ways and serving him. Even if the artistry of the composition doesn't impress you, you can give me feedback on the ideas.

GROWTH

From the moment I first

Was touched by grace

My deepest desire

To grow, to grow

In moments of business

Dry spirit and lack

My vision is blurred

What is it to grow?

To be touched by love

By the Spirit conformed

To Christ's pure traits

To change, to change

To stay on the course

Enduring with strength

When all fall away

To remain, to remain

To relish the sight

Of his glory and grace

Delight in his wonder

To be amazed, amazed

When character changes

When faith stays the same

When hearts overflow

To grow, to grow

Christian Compassion and Condoms (part 2)

2010-01-23T15:25:00.000-08:00

Rest your fears, my friends: I will not be part of demonstrations and petitions calling for condom distribution and safe sex education as part of international aid programs (nor advocating expanding these within the North American education/health care system, for that matter). But neither will I be a loud voice opposing these activities. If unregenerate people want to teach unregenerate people how to avoid contracting and infecting others with a deadly disease, is it really worthwhile to try to stop them? Sounds like a good way to waste my time feeling important for taking a “moral stand” while a field fertile with opportunities to share the gospel while fighting this crisis goes uncultivated.

What is worth advocating for on this issue so that the people of God can influence public policy in a way that aids the spread of the gospel? We should support abstinence education, which is quite easy to do by pragmatic reason: diseases are spread every day through people having pre- or extramarital sex, protected and unprotected (condoms don’t work 100% of the time); the crowd of people who were infected as a result of choosing not to have sex outside of marriage is…well, non-existent. However, there are some who have been infected because of condoms failing. If abstinence was the favored method of prevention among public officials, Christian development groups would be much more likely to obtain public funds for their work, allowing them to do more as they offer Christian truth along with the loving laws of a loving God.

Supporting treatment for those already infected and treatment for expectant mothers (which greatly reduces the chance of the virus being transmitted to their children) provides funding for medical care that can be obtained and used by Christian organizations as an expression of God’s mercy. And God’s mercy is not limited to those who are innocent victims.

In the process of teaching prevention, then, the Christian has the opportunity to explain God’s expectations for human behavior, and show how they are clearly given in love - in this case, to keep people from harm, sickness and death. In the process of showing mercy on those suffering the consequences of sinful behavior, the Christian can show how God’s care and mercy continue for a time in the face of humankind’s tragic rebellion that brings them to face the devastating consequences of choosing a path that diverges from God’s will. Christianity can affect politics in a very good way on this issue, by putting a structure in place that is friendly to Christian compassion and pragmatically effective in reducing infections and treating effects.* And please, let’s be defined by what we are for, not by what we’re against.

Thankfully, in the community where the pastor was so ready to let AIDS victims die for their sins, the church is now active in responding with compassion to the crisis around them through the ministry of World Relief. And this organization’s work has received a considerable amount of funding through matching funds and grants from US and international aid money.

*And already has, if you look into what happened from 2001-2008 in this area of U.S. foreign policy.

Christian Compassion and Condoms

2010-01-17T23:00:00.000-08:00

While we are, appropriately, riveted to the current devastation in Haiti, this post relates to a humanitarian issue that has been, and will continue to be, of huge significance worldwide, and especially on the continent of Africa. It provides one “test issue” for working out thoughts on how politics and evangelism relate. And, hopefully, it reminds us that there is more to this question than just the favorite North American issues…

“Let them die!” the African pastor thundered from his pulpit. He was speaking of those living with AIDS in the village around them. “They are receiving God’s punishment for their actions,” he asserted, and so the church ought not to intervene to help any of their neighbors suffering the effects of AIDS.

In this story, recounted in an update from World Relief, the AIDS crisis was dramatically oversimplified. While many sufferers have made sinful choices that brought their condition as a consequence, myriad others suffer from HIV/AIDS and its affects because of someone else’s decisions. On the African continent, many women have been infected after their husbands contracted the disease from a prostitute while traveling - a faithful, monogamous woman could suffer because of her husband’s infidelity. Thousands of orphans are without their parents because of the virus, and other children received the virus from their parents at birth. How can these people be left to suffer without care or relief as a consequence of sin when the particular sin that caused the disease was not their own? Thankfully, it seems evangelicals are largely in agreement on this topic, as Christian groups around the world are taking action to respond with compassion to the AIDS crisis in many ways in many places. Non-religious governmental and humanitarian groups agree and are also working hard on tackling the problems of treatment and preventing on a large scale. And in prevention is where political views diverge, because of a difference in ethics based on Christian teaching.

Abstinence education is near and dear to the heart of evangelicals at home and abroad, since keeping sex within the bounds of monogamous marriage is God’s prescription for sexuality, and since abstinence outside of marriage is hands-down the most effective way to prevent the spread of STD’s, including AIDS (not to mention the difficulties that come with having a child outside of marriage). This is a clear example of how following God’s teachings keeps people from problems and suffering that come as consequences of sin. If every government and NGO made a policy of promoting abstinence apart from marriage as part of their education and health programs, and the people of the nation responded to this teaching in their behavior, the spread of HIV and other diseases would be dramatically slowed.

This all lines up for a Christian who takes the presupposition that keeping God’s law is best for individuals and for society, because there are always consequences to breaking it, whether short-term or long-term. Until we are reminded that we have t consider not only God’s ideal forms for society, but also the sad reality that people react to God’s law with the stubborn rebelliousness of the sin nature. Christian sexual ethics stand out in the world largely because it is so difficult to keep control over one’s sexual desires and behave in line with God’s law, and the greatest aid available to do so is the Holy Spirit. So if we are trying to shape public policy on this issue, should we expect that we can best protect the innocent by expecting unregenerate people to live up to the standard of self-control that comes from walking by the Holy Spirit? Is this too idealistic for the “real world” (as one of my coworkers has complained), so that it will only lead to more infections as people remain ignorant about how the virus is really transmitted, and buy into superstitions about how to avoid or cure the disease, but don‘t actually change their behavior? If distributing condoms keeps an unregenerate husband from contracting the disease from a prostitute and infecting his wife who has become a Christian, which could have, in turn, left their children orphaned, is this such a bad thing?

More to come...

Outside the Bubble

2009-12-26T23:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we feel as if we are walking through life alone - as if everyone else has their sense of belonging and connectedness, and we have been shut out and forgotten. This seems to happen to everyone at some point in their journey. But sometimes an individual reacts to this in a way that, in the end, perhaps without realizing it, keeps that person isolated because of his or her own actions and decisions. I may come to realize that I am no longer being shut out, but rather I am shutting myself out.

Outside the Bubble

I watched the world
And everyone
Was in a bubble of glass
And I was on the outside

They smiled
They laughed
They embraced
They belonged

My face darkened
Hands pressed to glass
Why this separation?
Why this alienation?

My loneliness aches
The world's neglect stings
Why am I outside?
Why does no one care?

Someone's here
She's tapping on the glass
She wants me to come
out of my bubble.

A Parable in First Person

2009-11-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

Please be advised before reading: this is not a journal entry in which I am seeking praise or pity, but a parable.

I desired to show the love of Christ to the poor and needy - to preach the gospel to the poor and bind up the brokenhearted. So I set myself to this task with commitment and resolve. I began giving, serving, teaching, sharing, spending time, and appealing to others to do the same.

Because of the generosity of the Father in giving his Son, I wanted to give generously, so that the world would see his goodness. Because of the unconditional love of God, I wanted to love others unconditionally - especially those who had so little love in their lives. Because God had poured out so many blessings on my life, I wanted to bless others. Because Jesus came in the form of a servant, I wanted to serve others. So I gave, I loved, I blessed, I served.

And the goal was accomplished! And the people I gave things to thanked me. And the people I loved gave me affection in return. And many around me declared that I was a blessing to others. And many applauded my servant’s heart. And my goal was accomplished, and I felt satisfaction, and I praised God.

Again, I desired to share God’s love with the poor and needy - to live out the gospel among the last, the lost and the least. I began giving, serving, teaching, sharing, spending time, and appealing to others to do the same.

Because of the sacrifice the Father made in giving his Son, I wanted to give sacrificially so that the world would see his goodness. Because of the unconditional love of God, I wanted to love others with abandon - especially those who are hard to love. Because God had poured out so many blessings on my life, I wanted to be a blessing to others. Because Jesus poured himself out as a servant, I wanted to pour myself out in service to others. So I sacrificed, I loved, I was gracious, I served.

And the goal was accomplished! These characteristics of God, at the heart of his requirements for mankind, were displayed in my life. But the people I gave things to did not thank me. And the people I showed affection to were cold in return. And no one ever told me I was a blessing. And many toilsome months of service went by in obscurity, without praise or applause. And my goal was accomplished - the lost and needy were served in the name of Christ. But I felt no satisfaction, and I complained about ungrateful people, and I bitterly sought for a different place to serve.

Christ and Culture in Paradox (returning to the Christians and Politics series)

2009-11-21T18:45:00.000-08:00

Thinking Christianly has so many ethical implications. From the content of our conversations, to our business and employment, to our relationship decisions and sexual behavior, to our personal financial decisions, on to our family lives and so many other things; accepting the gospel as truth and Christ as the ruler of our lives requires us to examine our behavior in light of good theology. And some would say that the body of Christ must also work to bring godly behavior in society around them. Surely if we are in relationship with non-believers around us, our regenerate behavior will influence them to some extent (and if they become believers, to a much greater extent). But does this extend to political advocacy for Christian morals? Well, let me think about it…(and a teacher I know says, “Show your metacognition,” so I will.)

I think this issue is a subset of the larger issue of how Christianity relates to culture. I worked my way through the classic book Christ and Culture (by Richard Niehbur) last year, and as he described and critiqued the ways that the church has related to culture throughout history, three of the approaches he described were “Christ against culture,” “Christ redeems culture,” and “Christ and culture in paradox.” The non-engagement idea I critiqued in my last post would fall under Christ against culture, arguing that the culture of politics is hopelessly corrupt, so Christians should condemn that corruption and avoid being part of its activities and institutions. The second view, Christ as redeemer of culture, seems to be an incredibly popular view right now Many groups are striving to be a part of the activities of culture and infuse them with gospel significance, guided by Christian principles, so that our culture is transformed to reflect what God values and souls are saved. People in this camp love to talk about the “cultural mandate” and say things about being on mission “to the culture.”

While this approach certainly bears a lot of good fruit in spreading the gospel by engaging the culture instead of retreating from it, there’s something that bugs me about it. While it is clearly stated that we are on mission to share the gospel, make disciples, teach those disciples God’s ways, and baptize, we are not told explicitly to bring the culture to salvation. So why make it a “mandate” or “mission”? We must know culture so that we can effectively communicate the gospel to the people in it. And in a sense we are always creating culture by our activities - and especially enculturating people into Christian community, where we are guided by Christian distinctives (with a bunch of non-distinctive thrown in because they are just part of everyday life). But I fear elevating cultural influence to the same level as gospel witness. Doesn’t this make it easier to go down the path of viewing culture-shapers in art, music, literature, government, entertainment, etc as special, more valuable trophies of conversion? Doesn’t this make it more natural to think that by promoting moral values that agree with Christianity we are doing something equal to guiding people to forgiveness through the cross, regeneration through the Holy Spirit, and eternal salvation?

So reading and reflection led me to think that “Christ and culture in paradox” fit more accurately with my understanding of Scripture. In this view, we are constantly living with the (healthy) tension of being citizens of the heavenly kingdom and dwelling on the sin-scarred earth. Believers have a faith in the “not yet” kingdom of Christ so powerful that it tangibly affects the “already” (living under the spiritual rule of Christ in a fallen world). Christians live in the world, and cannot live without affecting and being affected by culture. But making national cultures into Christian cultures would be a silly endeavor, because cultural transformation will not be made complete until the “not yet” of Christ’s coming reign, and our progress in Christianization could be undone at any moment. Our cultural impact is a sign of the right living to come. Kingdom ethics and divine justice will be established, and the world knows this because Christians exemplify and proclaim this good news, sometimes with the approval of their culture-at-large, and sometimes to a resentful and downright nasty response. In this view culture is acknowledged without being demonized or glorified, and cultural influence fits into the paradox of using finite life on a decaying planet to point toward never-ending life on a restored planet when heaven comes to earth.

With this mental superstructure in place, we can now construct the office of Christianity and politics. While many thinkers throughout history have conceptualized Christendom, I think that the label should be “Christianity and evangelism.” With the assumption that evangelism means proclaiming and living the implications of the good news of God’s salvation and coming reign through Jesus Christ, we ought to assess any political involvement that will be performed under the label “Christian” or “evangelical” in terms of how it will relate to our evangelism. If we are convinced that our action will give us more and better opportunities to share the full message of God’s revelation in a loving and truthful way, then we can vote, advocate, and campaign with no hesitations. This does not mean that there should be no opposition or protest to the policies - sometimes doing what is best for society does not make its members happy. We just need to make sure our actions are making the church a more effective witness in the world, not simply promoting empty moralism or cultural values that are not distinctively Christian (e.g., low taxes and small government, prohibition of alcohol, the right to bear arms)

We ought to ask ourselves: when we oppose gay marriage, or we oppose giving out condoms, are we helping our gospel witness by working for a societal structure where sin is called sin? Or are these actions perceived as hateful or lacking compassion, and simply making sinners more stubborn and hardened because we are trying to force them to live in a godly manner before they have been regenerated and transformed by the gospel?

More must be said…but on another day.

A Beautiful Rage…An Epic Fury…A Loving Wrath

2009-11-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

God’s wrath is often something we would like to sweep under the rug and ignore: it can be a bit awkward to talk about in a culture that values tolerance and niceness (or at least claims to). But as I have been thinking about anger recently for a research paper and some good in-depth conversations with smart friends, I discovered a way of looking at God’s anger that is, well, kind of beautiful. Read on.

Feelings of anger are part of the common human experience, and psychologists and counselors commonly define anger as an emotional response to threats. With this view, it’s not hard to conclude that anger is based on human finitude. Developing a Christian view on anger requires making the critical decision between identifying anger as an emotion that is tied to the limitations of being human, or as an emotion exercised by God and thus made for a good purpose in spite of the negative effects it often yields in the hearts of sin-corrupted humanity. When considering the anger of Christ portrayed in the gospels, Andrew D. Lester, in an interesting article called Toward a New Understanding of Anger in the Christian Experience, asks, “Did Jesus sin by being angry?” And he responds, “No, it was part of his humanness.” Thus Christ could express this human trait appropriately, congruent with his identity as God. But Lester never acknowledges it as an emotion characteristic of the Creator himself.

But what about the references to Father being angry? Are these merely human language to describe a God who in reality lives in a stoic and detached existence? And if anger is an emotional response to threat, what could possibly threaten God to make him angry? Lester observes in another part of his article that “We extend our selfhood into other people, such as parents, spouses, children, heroes, and friends” Anger can be just as easily aroused in a person by threats to people, institutions, or things that person has become attached to or invested in. And seriously, folks, if a bully punched a kid in the nose, took his lunch money and gave him a wedgie and the kid’s parents stood there watching, but never got angry, what would you think of the parents? Would the kid still believe his parents loved him? We can debate the best actions to respond with, but the emotion of anger in this situation shows loving concern.

I will go a step further than Lester, then, and say that anger in God is his appropriate response to sin. Sin threatens humanity, his creation, and especially the people he has chosen and redeemed out of humanity. He views these people as connected to him, an extension of himself, and so his wrath boils against sin. When unrepentant and unregenerate people act against the people of God, his anger is justly aroused, to the point that he has determined a punishment of eternal death against those who unrepentantly continue to pose a threat to the good order of Creation.

And you know what? This means that becoming angry may be one of the most touching and profound things that God does for us. He has invested himself into the people he has created and redeemed. And he cares so much about our well-being and our destiny that, even though he is not put in any danger when we are threatened, he gets angry because it threatens us! God becomes legitimately angry when the people or things that he has created, claimed and redeemed for himself are threatened - and sin is the greatest threat that can come against any of these things. By showing us a God who gets angry, the Bible shows us a God who cares.

Afraid of the Dark (and the Light)

2009-11-04T23:08:00.000-08:00

A Prayer I penned recently:

I am so afraid of my weakness

Afraid that in some moment

Blinded by lust

Gripped by a craving to be noticed

Threatened with truth’s consequences

Squeezed toward conformity

Allured by the fleeting

Seduced by comfort

Fancying that I deceive God

I will deceive myself

Neglect the carefully nurtured shoots of

transformation

Trampling them in clumsy haste

And be destroyed by my sin

I am so afraid of my strength

Which comes through brokenness

Dying to myself to find his life

Surrendering security for hope

Trusting a God known to wound

Forsaking recognition for obscurity

Neglecting comfort for compassion

Clearing out my dearest idols

My appetites will scream with longing

Subordinated to loving worship

My ego will scowl indignantly

Bruised, crushed, nailed to the cross

But I will be satisfied with the life of the Divine

Non-involvement: a spiritual-sounding cop-out?

2009-10-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, let’s all get this off our chests, since it’s at the heart of this conversation. Whether you need to scream it; or heave a sigh; or close your eyes, whisper silently and cross yourself - just say: “I’m upset and embarrassed by how some American Christian leaders are acting, and I’m upset that our faith has been over politicized.” If you decide to throw in a few profanities to truly express your feelings, I'll leave that to your personal convictions. Let your emotions flow; let your anger dissipate. Feel better? I do. Okay, now let’s have a conversation. I have already expressed my main objections to the idea of a “Christian America,” but I need to fill out my thoughts on the opposite side of the spectrum: anti-political Christianity.

In reaction to the objectionable behavior of political activists who have represented Christianity in a distasteful way (or, in some cases, simply the objectionable caricatures created by the pop-culture comedians who influence our thinking more than we’d like to admit), it seems very popular to say that Christians have no business being in politics. Certainly the kingdom of God is not now a political kingdom, and our primary focus is on building the church. But the kingdom of God will be political one day: the world will be ruled by Christ in a way that will establish truly good laws, rather than the laws we must settle for today that take into account the sinful flaws and depravity of both the ruled and the rulers. Blanket statements like “politics are corrupt by nature” must always be given with a qualification, because there is One who will wield political power with perfect justice and integrity (and apparently have glorified human beings as his appointed officials - Matt. 19:27-29; 2 Tim. 2:12) Neither can we trust our great enlightenment aphorism “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Power is not the thing that corrupts. Positions of power just give greater and more public opportunities to people who were already corrupt from birth. And again, there is one who will wield power without corruption one day. When Young writes in The Shack that authority is only something necessary because of sin, he misses out on the way proper authority and righteous rule are commended in Biblical theology. Politics is not the problem; government is not inherently wicked. Sin is the problem, and it screws with government and politics endlessly.

But in identifying the problem more accurately, we still haven’t answered whether politics can be meaningfully engaged in while we wait for the part of the kingdom that has not yet come. Some would say that Jesus’ model was one of non-engagement. An acquaintance of mine did an interesting post on this recently. I recommend the post (unless you consider yourself a fundamentalist - then reading his blog will make you very angry), but I disagree with his conclusion. I don’t think that this is an area where Jesus was modeling a practice for us. Jesus lived in a political situation where any Jewish messiah-like figure had a couple of basic choices: question Roman authority and get squashed by the greatest military force on the planet at that time, or avoid confrontation and political agitation and be allowed to accomplish the rest of your goals in life. (In Jesus’ case, he managed to infuriate the Jews by avoiding confrontation with the Romans, and get killed by the Romans anyway - but he did so after he had accomplished all that he wanted to prior to that, and in order that he could accomplish victory over death, an enemy who had ruled much longer than the Romans.) Jesus did not punch a ballot in November. And I’m pretty sure that, if he had, it would not have been included in the inspired text of the New Testament, because the message of the New Testament only deals with politics incidentally, when it affects salvation, the formation of the church, and the promise of Christ's second coming. The quotes from Philip Yancey that appear on Musings of an Evangelical Mind remind us that Christianity is not essentially about political influence - but the premise is that we can determine based on what the text does not tell us about what Jesus did not do what we ought to do, when we live in an entirely different societal structure. By the same logic, we could exhort people to not pursue higher education, buy homes or invest in stocks and bonds. And none of these things are essential to a good and godly life - but we have no reason to urge people to throw them aside as useless. Doing so would not be following the example of Christ in a New Testament sense, but just being culturally quirky.

I think that each generation and each culture must work out for themselves how the truths of salvation and membership in the people of God and the impact that these things have on our behaviors play out more specifically in our unique situations. We are called to accept the same gospel, imitate the same characteristics of Christ, and obey the same central moral commands of God as at all times in church history. But it will be fleshed out a little differently for us than for Jesus and the twelve, or for Paul and the early Greek churches. This is not to say by any means that we reject their authority, but that we live out the same theology in a different situation, and thus it will look different, whether we try to make it that way or not. And since we have no command to avoid politics altogether, our concern is to engage issues appropriately, as part of our mission, without making political action an idol.

I welcome your critiques on these ideas, especially since a couple of readers seem to be in this camp. And from here I can start filling out a positive framework of what I think should shape our views. But who wants to read posts so long that they make your fingers tired from scrolling down the screen? This is enough for today.

A few questions about Christianity and politics (Multiple choice)

2009-10-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

Choose the best answer:

Those who promote marriage amendments to prevent gay marriage from becoming legal are:

A. Upholding a biblical view of family and society

B. Fostering hatred and intolerance

C. Denying the rights of individuals in a free nation

D. Saving their nation by fighting the decline of morals

Governments and humanitarian groups who distribute condoms in areas with high AIDS infection rates are:

A. Saving lives by reducing infection rates

B. Promoting immorality by encouraging sex outside of marriage

C. Acknowledging sinfulness while attempting to protect the innocent (like AIDS orphans and faithful spouses married to unfaithful spouses)

D. Undermining God’s pattern for society by protecting people from the consequences of their actions.

Christians who advocate implementing Christian morals in legislation are:

A. Completely missing the point, because Christianity is just about loving God and people, not about politics.

B. Preparing the way for the proclamation of the gospel by helping society to view sin as something that is wrong, not just a personal preference.

C. Hindering the proclamation of the gospel by trying to force right behavior on people who have not been regenerated and made capable of holiness.

D. Expressing love for the world by doing what is best for society, because the world functions best when people follow God’s principles for life.

I'm growing weary of what seem to me overly simplistic statements about Christianity and politics. One unsatisfying statement is that we must make our nation a Christian nation. This seems to me like it would undo all the progress Western culture has made to get to the separation of church and state and freedom of conscience in religious matters, thus restoring the problem of any corrupt, unjust or murderous action by the government being viewed as the action of Christianity.

Another unsatisfying conclusion is that we just have to love God and love people, and not worry about politics, because Christianity isn't about politics. But this places us in the position of having the right to vote (something that wasn't a part of the New Testament church's political situation), but having to believe that our Christianity has nothing to say about which boxes we will check on the ballot. This buys into the idea that religion is only something that gives meaning, significance and identity, but not something that can be applied to reality. But can something really be true if it isn't workable in life and applicable to the real world?

I will have more thoughts coming on my blog, but I have to start with the questions before I can, well, raise more questions and make them more complicated. (What, did you think I have the answers? Heck, no!)

Keeping an ear on the liberals

2009-10-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

A couple of decades ago, a revolutionary shift happened in Biblical scholarship in North America that ushered in a different and better way of studying the Bible. The concept was simple, yet profound: read the Bible as if it were literature written by real human authors, who used literary devices and conventions to communicate their ideas. This idea shifted the focus of liberal OT studies away from picking apart the text by trying to identify which sections came from which supposed source documents (the “documentary hypothesis”). And it shifted conservative studies away from reading every statement in the text as a literal statement about reality, a proof text for a doctrine, or a rule that can “plug and play” in a church covenant or Christian school student handbook. This shift caused students of Scripture to look more carefully at what figurative language was communicating and how the genre (or category) or literature affected the meaning.

Who were the thinkers that brought about this positive paradigmatic change? The two names you hear the most in connection with this shift are Robert Alter and Meir Steinberg. Who are they? Liberal scholars. If you read Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative, you will find that he does not accept the inspiration and authority of scripture, yet gives some important insights into the author’s intended meaning. What these men, as non-believers, wrote and taught helped us, as believers, better approach and understand the text that God uses to shape our lives. This is one instance that shows why its important to keep an ear on the liberals - to check in every now and then and see what they are saying. Sometimes they can point out things that we cannot see about ourselves. Kind of like the time you walked around with a piece of spinach sticking to your front teeth, and didn’t look in a mirror for hours, then somebody pointed out that it was stuck there - no, not there…a little further over…still there…okay, now you got it.

So what have I heard from the liberals lately? Some insightful criticism about conservative Christianity and American nationalism, and how they are far too closely connected. As I plod my way through portions of Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for God, a history of fundamentalism in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, I’ve shaken my head and furrowed my brow several times over her statements about how religious ideas are not meant to be applied in any workable way to reality, but are important only in the personal quest for purpose and significance in life. What a wonder that kind of religion would be: to give us meaning from something which has no meaning for events in the real world. Like having confidence in confidence alone. But that’s another topic for another day. The insight Ms. Armstrong gave me is in the characteristics of fundamentalism, namely that fundamentalist movements are based on looking back to some “golden age” in the history of their religion and idealizing that age. The vision they build of that age becomes the goal for which they strive, the better world which has been lost and needs to be restored.

The early leaders of the fundamentalist movement in American Christianity seemed much more focused on the New Testament era as their ideal age. They wanted to get back to the Bible, to preserve doctrinal truth when it was under such severe attack, and to build strong churches that had a distinctive faith based on revelation, not a group that accommodated the culture in every respect and conformed their idea of Jesus to every idea of enlightenment modernists. These people made dramatic moves and took bold, difficult and admirable stands for truth by separating from institutions that claimed to be Christian, but did not uphold many of the basic elements of Christian belief.

But by the time the fragmented fundamentalist movement had recovered and gained momentum, they launched back into the mainstream with a different mythos - when Robertson, Falwell, Lindsey, Lahaye and others urged conservative Christians into the public arena, they called them to take back their nation. The Christian education systems they had developed taught believers U.S. history as a story of Christian people and Christian ideals building a Christian republic. By exerting their influence, evangelicals could restore the traditional values of their nation. The golden age had shifted forward by roughly 1700 years. No longer was the movement about getting back to the New Testament church; now it was about getting back to Christian America.

As I move about on the west coast, I most frequently hear about this kind of thinking when people are describing it to complain about what’s wrong with Christianity. Sometimes people talk about this problem to explain why they are not Baptist (apparently assuming Baptists to be a monolithic denomination co-founded by Jerry Falwell and a KJV-only preacher, who now direct their empire from the grave, commanding their drones to condemn people who drink alcohol and write legislation intended to cause global warming to destroy the world). After awhile, I start to wonder whether it’s a caricature of days gone by, whether there are really people who still act this way. But then I remember that just a few short years ago I sat in convocation at Liberty University the day after Bush’s re-election, listening to the loudest cheering I had ever heard there. (well, I guess there was the time the president of Chik-Fil-A came and announced he was giving us all coupons for a free chicken sandwich. That got pretty loud.) I got the distinct impression that some of my fellow students had asked George W. Bush into their hearts to save them. Dr. Falwell, a man I immensely respect for his strengths, showed one of his faults at this moment. He gave the glowing approbation that the election results were proof that evangelicalism was growing - that we were “getting people saved, baptized, and into the voting booth.” I can’t count how many times guest speakers admonished the student body that the only way we could save our country from being destroyed by God’s judgment for its moral behavior was to go out and evangelize and get involved in the political process. Is saving the greatness of America our highest end? Is Christianity simply the best way to get to the glorious days of “back when” - when people knew their neighbors, worked hard, and (supposedly) didn’t smoke, drink, or cuss in front of women? Is the command of Christ in the great commission not enough reason to evangelize, that we must throw American hegemony and prosperity into the mix? Is compassion for the lost such a weak incentive for doing the work of the church that we must add the dream of getting prayer back in schools and the ten commandments posted in courtrooms?

Please don’t miss my point. The point of this post is not about George W. Bush or Jerry Falwell; it’s not about quirky cultural rules or rage against my alma mater (I have more good memories than bad from LU). It’s not about making an opposite and equally wrong reaction by identifying with the political left and their vision of America instead (as some in my generation have been eager to do). It’s about remembering the mission and identity of the church, and placing those things high above political power, national pride, patriotism, or moralist visions of society.

Last week, I heard a lecture from a liberal who had something to say about this. John Dominic Crossan pointed out that Christianity survived the fall of the Roman Empire because it was not dependent on an empire for its identity. He declared, “If Christianity in America only supports the American empire, then it will go down with the American empire.” If Crossan’s vision of Christian belief survives, it will not survive because of its truth, but in spite of its error - I strongly disagree with how he defines Christianity. But his comment about conservative Christianity is right on. Let’s remember our identity.

I wonder as I wander...

2009-09-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

Ahh, the wanderings of Summer. I walked the streets of Portland and Vancouver, BC this Summer, taking in the sights, watching the people, observing culture. Of course, this was in addition to the more regular visits to the nearer cultural (or maybe counter-cultural is a better description)centers of Seattle and Olympia, plus a random visit to the Midwest, reconnecting for a few days with my small town church roots. And I wondered as a I wandered about the future of Christianity in North America.

First, the urban environments promptd me to note that, as the culture at large in the U.S. has shifted over the past decades to an urban focus, Christianity has gradually followed suit. Think about the cultural perceptions: there was a time when TV shows like The Waltons and The Andy Griffith show presented us with the small-town environment that was thought of as typical, classic American life. But when the mainstream TV shows became focused on people living in apartment complexes in downtown (fill in a city name here), the cultural shift was becoming more evident. I think of Seinfeld, Friends and King of Queens as examples, but I acknowledge that I'm about ten years behind and I don't know half of what truly hip people are watching on hulu these days. But in visiting cities, I have seen where urban revitalization projects have brought fine downtown living in cities across the continent. And in each city officals are proud to point out the success of their redevelopment projects (as they busily work to shuffle the poor and transient populations to different fringe areas that will be out of the eyeline of visitors and upscale residents).

Christians have caught onto the fever, it seems: community transformation and reaching the urban poor have become trendy ways to do ministry - although, if we really follow the demographics, it may be that white, suburban Christians who have become missionaries to impoverished urban areas may simply be taking the place of black, urban churches that were fixtures in those neighborhoods for years, and gradually saw the next generation of members gain wealth and move away from the poverty and crime that their parents struggled to help them overcome. So this shift may involve trading places more than adding urban numbers.

Churches are not focused only on the urban poor, but also are trying to crack what has been a tough nut: the urban, educated, professional and artistic crowds. Pastors like Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller, in Seattle and New York, respectively, have developed a bold new image of the intellectual, culturally aware preacher at the head of a church that appeals to university students, creative minds, culturally diverse audiences, and the kind of crowd that takes for granted the idea of getting a master's degree. The modernist takeover of universities, public education systems, governement and the arts sent Christians reeling at one time, pulling back to develop their own Christian institutions. But now in cities where many neighborhoods are reputed to have more dogs than evangelicals, a fresh energy has arisen to move eagerly into these environments and give an intelligent presentation of Christianity, working in the face of the hubris of a skeptical elite.

Does this attitude seems to me to reflect an acceptance of the idea that Christianity is quickly losing cultural dominance? Skepticism and vitriolic rejection of any role for Christian beliefs and ideals in the public square are not new attitudes. But if you look at what Barna and books like Unchristian are finding in their research, this outlook seems to be gaining popular momentum, . Perhaps some are adapting to the idea that building Christian institutions for education, entertainment, and every area of life may not be as possible in the changing climate, but hanging on to the call of the church to speak and live the gospel, no matter how dark the environment is essential. But the overall numbers of evangelicals have not actually had a significant decline in the American population at large, only in younger age brackets. If this trend continues, then the dramatic changes will take place.

But these changes may appear more dramatic because of a different concept of how the church should affect culture. TO use a metaphor, its as if one generation gathered all their wood together and built a big bonfire, bright enough to be seen from a distance. Some accepted the invitation to join the party; I grew up in the fire's warmth myself. Others outside the church simply complained about the noise the group around the campfire makes, and stayed as far away as they could. The bonfire crowd gives ideas like, "If Christians would all have six or seven kids and raise them right, and if Christians would move their kids out of the secularist education system, the public system as it is would crumble, and we could take back America." Building Christian education institutions, a Christian music industry, Christian publishing houses and political action committees were very important - there must be rival institutions for the liberal, secular edifices.

But I see a number of people who have decided to instead take their flame and carry it, even if it is only a small, flickering candle, into a very dark place, delighting in the contrast of light with darkness, even while enduring the chill of the climate around them. The candle crowd says, "If only we would step into the broader culture, be a part of public institutions and organizations, and pair active witness with work for the good of those around us, we can see lives transformed in even the darkest of situations." This crowd wants to have their kids in public schools so that their voice is heard in the education system, to see Christians influencing both political parties from within, and to be Christian in their neighborhoods and homes, without having Christian activity confined to brick and mortar structures or have their work categorized, labelled and marketed as Christian. Christianity will show from a genuinely changed life without the labels, and it's not expressed in knowing the right phrases and niceties of organizational culture, but in simple and sincere love in a hateful world.

So will the demographic trends play out to make us a "post-Christian" society? I can only hear so many alarmist appeals before I start to wonder whether it's rhetoric rather reality. How many other times have people sounded the alarm? Perhaps people in my age bracket are absent because they are walking away from their faith and imbibing skepticism. Or perhaps they just envision Christianity very differently, and so aren't on the radar of what have been the institutions of Christianity in our culture. There's probably a lot of both.

But if we do truly become post-Christian, I think that could bring about some good things in the life of the church. Here are a few things I would love to see from a marginalized church in our country:

- More efficient Christian institutions: more money invested in people who speak and live out the gospel and make disciples, rather than self-help books to use Jesus to make us feel better and clean entertainment for Christians to passively consume.

- More sacrificial giving, as we stop relying on a lot of people dropping $5.00 in the plate ever Sunday, and have to really think about what we can give up to keep the important Christian works alive.

- More expressions of Christian faith that say why we believe what we do and how we hold to it in the face of the pressures and criticisms of the world. Feeling good about amen-ing cultural assumptions and blindly affirming catch-phrases without having any clue what they mean probably doesn't change many lives.

- More awareness of historical and cross cultural communities of faith, as we are willing to look to other sources and gain a broader perspective on our own faith. Urban settings foster multicultural exposure, and minority status makes us more willing to look outside ourselves for answers.

- More focus on essentials beliefs and behaviors of the faith - the things that distinguish us from the world - rather than traditional American culture packaged in religous language.

- More emphasis on faith through good works that shows the world Christianity brings something good in people. Rather than measuring devotion by attendance and knowledge alone, calling people to play a meaningful part in something worthwhile, so that they have a commitment worth considering.. If all we are asking people to do is show up, what reason do they have for showing up?

I am speaking in broad generalizations about things I have seen in cultural Christianity, and don't intend my words to be harmful to the many people who are already working hard to bring these changes about in their churches and ministries. I am drawing conclusions from what I have seen of various slices of Christianity, knowing that others have seen some very different things. I want to hear your perspectives in the comments or in response blogs. But here you have the musings of this Impoverished Sage, wondering about what's next as I wander through life.

Relativism lurks on the street corners.

2009-09-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

I used to work a street corner in downtown Tacoma a couple years ago. One night I got slapped in the face on what was an otherwise peaceful evening. To quickly clarify, my job on the street corner was to valet-park cars for a 4-star restaurant. And the slap was a metaphorical slap, delivered in the form of relativistic philosophy.

What exactly was the slap, you ask? Well, let me explain. You see, valets tend to have a lot of time standing around at work, and I got into an interesting conversation with the lady I worked alongside that particular night. She had been part of an evangelical church at one time, she informed me, but she stopped going because the leaders at the church kept telling her that her interpretations of the Bible were wrong, and they acted like they had the right interpretation figured out. For example, this lady was a vegetarian, and had been her whole life, because she didn’t want animals to die on her account. So when she read the ten commandments and saw, “Thou shalt not kill,” she took that to apply to all living creatures, not just humans. She was insulted that the teachers at her church would be so close-minded as to say her interpretation was wrong, when the teachers’ views were just their own interpretations anyway.

As a seminary student who had already completed two classes with Dr. Willsey, the Yoda of hermeneutics in the Pacific Northwest, I felt pretty prepared to give a good explanation to her. I pointed out that in other parts of Moses’ writings, we see that all animals were created by God’s spoken word, but humans were fashioned specially in God’s image. After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah that permitted humans to eat animals as food, but warned that anyone who killed another person would be killed by another person. In addition, the people of Israel were expressly instructed to kill some animals as sacrifices in other parts of the Law. While this doesn’t say that being vegetarian is necessarily bad, the command not to kill can’t accurately be applied to animals as well as humans. After I finished my careful exposition, my coworker looked at me, smiled sweetly, and said, “That’s just your interpretation.”

I was dumbfounded. Thankfully, a customer called for us to get a car at that moment, so my lack of words wasn’t as noticeable. I went home that night turning the conversation over in my mind, with my figurative cheek figuratively smarting. I knew something was seriously wrong with what she had said, but I didn’t know how to answer without making dogmatic assertions that just further proved her point. I’ve done a little thinking and discussing since then on how to answer the great postmodern skeptic’s catch-all phrase, “That’s just your interpretation.”

I realized that some fundamental flaws are associated with this statement. First, “interpretation” is used in such a way that the word “misinterpretation” would become extinct if we all followed this definition. Doesn’t it seem that, if anyone knew what an author meant by what they said, the most likely person would be the author? So if we find other statements from the author that help us to understand the statement in question, an interpretation that takes these into account should be given more weight. Claiming to have a more accurate interpretation may get me labeled as arrogant, because I am ruling out other people’s interpretations. But if we rule out the author’s explanation of his or her own meaning in favor of our own interpretations, isn’t that arrogant as well? Try this simple test: interrupt your best friend or significant other when they are talking, tell them that you know what they mean and explain an idea in your head that’s loosely related, but very different. Then, if they try to explain themselves further, rudely ignore them by saying that you rinterpretation is right for you and they can’t tell you it’s wrong. Interpreting when an author is not present to speak up and clarify is obviously more difficult, but let’s give merit to what they have said in writing, not completely ignore it and pretend that won’t affect our understanding of their message.

I’m not arguing for absolute certainty, I’m just saying there’s a limit to the range of interpretations that are valid. In many cases we don’t know for certain which interpretation is completely accurate, but we do know that some are definitely better than others. Take a math equation for an example. You can take the same numbers and arrange them in a lot of different ways, performing different operations on them. As long as we agree on the values of numbers and follow rules like the order of operations, we can get to an answer in a variety of different ways.

(4)2+7=15
4(2)+7=15
2(4)+7=15

But if a math student misunderstood a problem and changed the symbols around, they could use the same numbers to get to a very different answer.

2(4+7)=22
2(7)+4=18
2+4(7)=30
42+7=49
24+7=31

“Checking our math” on interpretations is a good thing. In a variety of interpretations, each person can help spot the others’ “miscalculations” or misappropriated symbols. But, please, if someone tells you 2(4)=24, don’t just smile and tell them that they are entitled to their opinion. That’s the kind of stuff that will make computers, airplanes, and financial markets crash. Put the interpretation together how you want within the range of merit and validity, but don’t be so arrogant as to defy reality when someone points out the problems with your approach.

Am I too late? Perhaps postmodernism is too far past for this to be relevant. The fact that we can label and describe a way of thinking may well mean that it has past its prime, at least in academic trends (even if the label is rather non-descriptive). Even though the evangelical world is still enthralled with the terms and it makes us feel cutting edge to add “post-“ to the beginning of our cultural descriptors, we may see ths issues pass off the scene just as we’re developing some really good answers for them. But the ideas will still have impact on people for years to come, whether through acceptance or reaction.

Using logic and words to refute the claim that logic and words are meaningless may seem like an exercise in futility. A truly consistent relativist would reject it. But the reality is, there aren’t truly consistent relativists. Skepticism of knowledge and meaning is limited to a couple of categories – literature and religion - and most people who use our phrase in question are just repeating something they heard, and haven’t really thought through its implications. For example, try questioning whether evolutionary theory or global warming science are credible, and see how relativistic your skeptic becomes. In reality we have to make decisions about how we will behave and function, and when we make most of those decisions, we don’t do it with the mindset that any path is as good as any other, but we weigh how the options will affect our circumstances, finances, emotions, future, etc. While none of us can predict or control the future, yet we look for a warranted belief that the course of action we are choosing will have desirable outcomes. And this is what we are looking for in evaluating interpretations of a text. We want to eliminate misinterpretations as invalid, not even giving them the dignity of the title “interpretation” or placing them within the range of validity. And we want to look at the warrants of the other interpretations, knowing full well that there may be a couple with virtually equal levels of warrant, which we can never decide between with certainty. But that doesn’t mean they’re equal to all others.

Do we have the proper interpretation of Scripture locked in a dogmatic box? No. But do we have grammatical, literary, historical and cultural evidence that places our interpretations within a range of validity? I certainly hope so. If there are no warrants, be like Hus, Wycliffe, or Luther and question authority. If there aren’t, quit locking up your own mind without any warrant.

Scribal Errors, Christian Doctrine, and the Preservation of Scripture

2009-08-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, I advertised it and I'm finally going to deliver. How can we have confidence that the Bible we have is the one that accurately portrays Jesus and really gives us the words he wanted us to hear? How can we defend the idea that the Bible we have today is actually authoritative and reliable, when so many intelligent people claim that its contents and the doctrines of Christianity were merely manipulated and controlled by the politics and money of a melded church and empire?
This is where the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture is important. No, I'm not talking about what you heard a Textus-Receptus worshipping, KJV-only dogmatist endorse, that time when you went to church hoping to be edified and left church really freaked out. I'm talking about the idea that a sovereign God who was willing to reveal himself through a written account of his workings would ensure that the message of that written work would be preserved well enough that readers through the ages could understand what God wanted them to know from it. As evangelicals, we approach the Bible with the assumption that God wanted to reveal himself so that we could know him, that he wanted to reveal his method of salvation so that we could be freed from sin and condemnation, reconciled with him and regenerated. And in our view of God as sovereign Lord of the universe, it seems ridiculous to think that a few scheming ecclesiastics and politicians could foil the plans of the Divine Master by editing and rewriting the Bible.
Makes perfect sense, right? Yet people inside and outside the church are being tormented with doubt as they hear the ideas in the dramatic, well-marketed presentations of Bart Ehrman, Marcus Borg and others following the prevailing winds of academic skepticism. So I propose, first of all, that we bring textual criticism out of the closet. Just explain openly and honestly that there are differences in the text and that the story of the woman caught in adultery and the longer ending of Mark probably aren't original, so that people know the church isn't trying to hide these things. It can easily shock people to hear that those two bigger, more familiar chunks of Scripture are contested. But what essential doctrines do they affect? To question the resurrection, you still have to do a lot of work to undermine the other gospel accounts. And the many other textual variants? Well, there is some interpretive significance for those texts, depending on which view of the variants you take. But do the essential doctrines of orthodoxy change based on variants? Nah. When one variant reads "Jesus Christ" and the other "Jesus," we're not dealing with earth shattering issues. Does the salutation of the letter we call Ephesians actually address the church in Ephesus, or was it a more general, circular letter with a blank in the text? Make your decision for interpretive purposes, but don't tell me that should make me stop believing that Jesus saves. With most of the variants, you just have to look at what the alternate readings are and it's plain to even the dullest knife in the drawer that they don't involve foundational issues.
So in reality, the fact that we have so many variations in copying details, yet uniformity on the texts our core doctrines are based on shows stronger reliability, not weaker. The message was transmitted by errant scribes, but the big ideas remain intact. I know that the story of the woman caught in adultery is a powerful and memorable anecdote, but let's prepare people to hear about the dubious nature of its inclusion in the text so that a skeptic's shock and awe campaign doesn't leave them confused and overwhelmed.
Now there is this pesky issue about the other gospels, the media-hyped "new" gospels that give the accounts rejected by the early church councils when they identified the canon of the New Testament. I think the simplest way to deal with these is to actually read from them. Then you run into stories about Jesus as a boy killing other kids who tattled on him or made fun of him, or the aphorism at the end of the gospel of Thomas that says a woman cannot be saved unless she becomes a man, or the account of a passerby just after the birth of Jesus stepping into the cave to verify that Mary was still virgo intacto after giving birth to the miracle child. A friend of mine read sections aloud to the teenagers at his church, and they responded by laughing at the contents of the other "gospels," not walking away from their faith because they were thrown into doubt. The historical details and time/place markers found in the canonical gospels show that they have a very different nature than the other writings.
Not only is their nature different, but the number of manuscripts and their nearness to the historical events is remarkable in comparison with other texts that are considered to be reliable. Daniel Wallace, in a really great journal article that I highly recommend (Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, March 2009, ), points out that "We have more than 1,000 times as many copies of the New Testament as we do of almost any Greco-Roman author. And the earliest of those copies comes within decades of the completion of the NT, while the average Greco-Roman author's surviving MSS do not show up for half a millenium." (p. 88) Yet how often do people question whether Livy wrote his works of history, and asking how we know it's what he meant to say, not an alteration that certain Romans produced to make their culture look better in history? It's when we're talking about divine revelation that this skepticism grows so much stronger and more caustic.
There's so much more involved with these arguments, but I'm writing a blog post, not a book. I think we ought to have thought about these issues because it seems likely that we and those we teach will encounter them in coffee-shop and over-the-fence conversations. And I guess this hunch is made more certain by the fact that it came up in one of my coffee-shop conversations today...

2009-07-15T16:54:00.000-07:00

I've given a few youth talks recently where I emphasized that living for the glory of God is the most satisfying way to possibly live. I worked to convince teenagers of the fact I've tried to shape my life decisions around: there is no way of doing life that brings greater joy than surrendering completely to Christ so much that we are willing to give up anything for his sake. Around the same time I was giving these messages, I found myself in the midst of a few days ruled by weariness and a complaining attitude. I reflected on the sad humor of going through a day scheduled like this:
7:25 Worry over my morning cup of Ethiopian Yirgachaffe whether I am really making progress in my ministry
9:45 Complain to a friend about not being able to afford the next thing I need because I make so little money and pay seminary tuition
10:15 Wonder on my morning walk whether I'll ever overcome the "horrible suffering" for Christ called singleness
12:00 Brood over my reheated rice and beans about whether I'll ever figure out just what specific kind of ministry I'm called to, what country I should move to next, and what school I should go to for my next degree
12:45 Pretend to read theology while I make a mental list of all the things I wish were better about my life.
3:45 Stand in front of 20 teenagers and tell them that a life changed by the gospel and lived for the glory of God brings the greatest joy, no matter how circumstances look and no matter what other people say.

And on an honest day, this follows:
5:00 Drift across American Lake in my kayak asking myself whether I really believe what I just taught. If I do, then I will serve for the joy of blessing my savior, not boasting about results; I will be grateful for the advantages of my present situation while praying and looking forward to the joys that would come with a future change; I would relish the opportunity to serve Christ where I am, right now, and be awed by the fact that my simple, everyday actions have eternal significance; I would be grateful for any sacrifice - comparatively small or great, real or perceived - that was made out of love for our coming King.

Life is simpler when I live what I believe.

There is no way more satisfying than living every day for the glory of God.

Defending the authority of the Word

2009-06-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

As I grew up in a homeschool family, educated by faithful, conservative Christian parents, my learning included a lot of education in Creation science. Teaching in this vein is enthusiastically received by many who have been and are being equipped to respond to the intellectual challenges of our post-Darwin world. When scientists with degrees put together observations to craft sound arguments for a worldview that falls in line with the Genesis account, we find new courage to face an establishment of scientific scholars and professional educators who adamantly insist that evolutionary theory answers the question of human origins and treat anyone who dares to bring up other options as ignorant obscurantists. I am grateful for those who have worked hard to show that the Bible and science are not irreconcilable.
At the peak of the modernist assault on Christianity, fundamentalists had to respond to the great assertion that "science has proven the Bible wrong."(And even those of us who cringe at that term and quickly substitute terms like "evangelical" that have less negative stereotypes attached would have been proud to call ourselves fundamentalists in that day.)Marshaling the scientific evidence for a created world rather than an evolved world to show that it's not quite so ridiculous as scientific scholars and scholars of higher criticism would have you think. I heard enough good lectures during my formation as a thinker that it's pretty natural to my mind to take Genesis 1 at face value and accept the days as literal days. I'm glad we can have confidence that in accepting the Bible we are not throwing all intelligence out the window. I prefer reasoned faith to blind faith. (Sorry, Kierkegaard)I hope that we have come far enough that we can now hear sermons from texts about the glory of God's creation that focus on the text and what it conveys about God's power and majesty. The text of Genesis is not meant to be a springboard into a lecture on creation science, and the figurative language of poetry about nature is meant to paint pictures on the canvas of your mind, not describe scientific realities.
Even as many struggle to break the stalemate in the battle to allow teachers in public education (at any level) to question evolutionary theory, new challenges to the authority of scripture come up. The most popular objection in my experience has been that the Bible we have "isn't really what was written. How do we know what's been changed from the original?" So wonderful...just when Christian (and non-Christian) thinkers are putting together some really good arguments against evolution so that I can hold to inerrancy and not be viewed as complete ignoramus because I accept the Creation account, the objection changes to something that does a complete end-run around that issue. My neatly-wrapped package of ideas - the original documents of Scripture were inerrant, and plenty of credible scientists are fine with its account - has been unwrapped and the contents tossed aside as unconvincing and uninteresting. In this case, why does it matter that the autographs were innerant? Nobody has any idea what they actually said, because surely the text was corrupted and changed and selectively edited since then.
The generational thinking that caused the questions to change is fascinating to watch. Modernity said, "Progress, new ideas, and new research have the answers." So when Darwin's new research came out, this gave a clear basis for rejecting the Biblical account. The truly intelligent people went with the new, scientific answers. The Bible simply wasn't new enough to keep up with intellectualism.
When perspectivalism shook up some of the tenets of modernism, along with it came a craving for that which is authentic, pure, and back to the original. Now the Bible isn't quite old enough to be accepted. A.D. 367? Athanasius, you're a cool guy, but you lived a little too long after Jesus, Peter and Paul to really be able to say what their teachings were like. Then you get hundreds of years of medievial catholicism holding responsibility to preserve the text. What could have happened then? If I don't eat all that processed food because it's full of preservatives, covered with high fructose corn syrup, and touched up with synthetic dye instead of locally-grown, organic real food, why would I take anything less than the very parchment on which Luke scrawled his historical accounts as real, authentic, from-the-source revelation? Tell me about autographs being inerrant all you want...blah blah blah...how do you know all the other gospels written weren't the actual authentic ones?
Okay, I've written enough to raise this question. More thoughts to come...

Be hearers of the Word, and not readers only

2009-05-31T19:46:00.000-07:00

I sat in the shade on a campground in Northern California last summer, talking about the Christian life with a fellow counselor. He told me some of the story of his spiritual growth, describing how establishing regular Bible reading habits had greatly strengthened his spiritual life. He said that he had come the conclusion that this was essential to spiritual growth, and even though he had heard people downplay its importance and shrug it off as legalism, he didn't see "how anyone could grow spiritually without consistent, daily Bible reading." I had a brief, existential struggle before I replied. Do I point out how silly that statement seems in historical perspective, when this idea had obviously impacted this young man's life in a dramatic and heartfelt way? After my few seconds of internal angst, I think the reply I gave was something like, "You know, personal Bible reading has had a powerful effect on my spiritual growth as well; it's such an amazing privilege to have considering that through hundreds of years of church history, the majority of believers didn't have a copy of God's Word in their own language." I hoped that this communicated support for the habits that had shaped him, while at the same time gently pointing out that even illiterate people and those who have lived in times and places where it was not practically possible for them to have and read their own copy of the Bible did manage to grow spiritually somehow.

This launched me into reflection on how I think of "consuming" and interacting with the content of Scripture as an American Evangelical - and what other ways I could effectively experience the the inspired literature that reveals God's person, plan and principles.

My profs have more than once pointed out that when the letters of the New Testament were sent to their original recipients, they would have been read aloud to the church, not photocopied and passed out to everyone, or put up on a screen. (Both Xerox and Power Point would have been anachronisms at that point and for a long time afterward.) This was also how the majority of Jews would have taken in the OT writing: hearing them read aloud by a Rabbi. Owning a scroll would be way to expensive. Thus there may be some things in the way the letters were written that come across better in hearing the letter rather than looking at it on a page. I decided to explore this in a Sunday evening service at my church. So I practiced reading Ecclesiastes, then read it aloud from my trusty old NIV to the group that had gathered that night. Then I opened it up for questions and comments. It turned out to be quite an enjoyable and edifying experience. A visitor's questions led to a discussion of the gospel, and of God's love and grace, even towards those who wandered away. Not really where you plan to go when you open up to Ecclesiastes, but sometimes good conversations begin in a very roundabout way. And we read the Word in community, with the collected insights and reflections of our local church community. This seems to me a step better than consuming a book with only my personal thoughts and reactions to the content.

A couple weeks ago my pastor mentioned that he had made arrangements with a Bible media group to get audio cd's of the Bible in MP3 format, intended for people to put on their ipods or other media players. Wycliffe has been putting these files on solar-powered or hand-cranked players to take the words of Scripture to a lot of places it's never been before in our world. In our context, this group reasons that a lot of people say they don't read their Bibles because either A)They "don't have the time" or B)They don't like to read. So why not take away these excuses? Surely, you say, someone who is truly spiritually interested doesn't need things dumbed down and made more user-friendly and convenient to make them willing to take in Scripture content. But wait...what if now they're going to hear the Word, in a way a bit more akin to the original audience, rather than read it like most post-Gutenberg Christians. Okay, we miss out on the community aspect here; you can't win 'em all. But I'm excited to offer this to sixth-graders I know who are painfully slow in their reading, but show spiritual interest and just may listen.

The invention of the printing press and the spread of literacy did so much good for Christianity. When people can check the pronouncements of the church for correspondence with the teachings of Scripture, we really seem to get a lot closer to who God wants the people of God to be than when power over doctrine is solely in the hands of tradition and an educated elite. Thank God for movable type, and how it has shaped the movement of Christianity that has shaped me. And thank God for digital sound files (And even for the people who listened to the Bible on cassette tapes back in the ancient days of the '80's and '90's): may they increase our understanding and appreciation of Scripture and democratize Biblical knowledge for coming generations around the world. I'll be watching the mailbox at the church, waiting for those cd's to get here....

Why I secretly like the smell of cigarette smoke.

2009-05-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

This is not very logical: I'm blogging. It is a swirling blend of experiences that involve faith, evangelism, and cigarette smoke. I make no apologies for the lack of cohesive argument. This is my blog - take it or leave it.

Respectable church people who have grown up in Christian homes don't smoke cigarettes. Neither do the elites of our culture who are convinced that they live superior, healthy, socially and environmentally responsible lives.

The times in my life when I am around smokers are generally the times when I have befriended someone who lives in a setting that's anything but Christian. When they come to church or to hang out with other Christians, they are a bit self-conscious about taking their smoke breaks. But when I visit with them and just hang out while they smoke, they tend to be pretty frank about life. This allows me to be frank about how Christ can make a difference in their lives.

The basic idea is this: if I'm around Christians all the time, I don't smell cigarette smoke that much. But when I connect with the lost and spend meaningful time with them, I frequently end up inhaling some carcinogens. You could say it's an occupational hazard of evangelism.

It puzzled me a bit when I attended a baptism service once where the presiding pastor asked for members of the congregation to give testimony about how they had seen the lives of the couple change. They had become Christians several months before, and been undergoing discipleship in the church. Several people mentioned excitedly the fact that both of the new Christians had stopped smoking. I felt awkward that this was being focused on as the fruit of their salvation. I inwardly squirmed, wishing I knew more about their lives so that I could mention some behavior actually mentioned in the Bible that had changed. Finally someone commended them for the love expressed in their family, and I felt a little better. But it seemed to me like an adventure in incidentalism (the degenerated form of the former glory of Fundamentalism.

Smoking seems to me a very foolish choice. Why kill yourself slowly and cause breathing problems? My Grandpa's slow death from lung cancer was not fun to watch. But shouldn't our focus be a little stronger on things like sexual immorality, anger issues, drunkenness, and other Biblical sins? When I have repeatedly heard people outside the church mention smoking as the sin they most need to change in their lives, I scratch my head and wonder whether this is their own assumption or one the church has communicated...

I once visited with a man who, after his release from prison, was gaining a new level of interest in spiritual things. He was between cigarettes at this point, so we were inside my house with only a faint trace of the smell. He told me a few nights before he hadn't been able to sleep, so he got up, poured a glass of wine ("just a small one"), and read 1 Peter. "Man, Nate," he exclaimed, "that book is some good s***!" Not quite the way I would have said it, but we read through the book again that night and he kept asking me to explain things to him, getting more and more excited. Then he said, "Let's go outside, I need to smoke." So the conversation moved. Somehow I felt like I was on the frontlines of ministry for life change at that moment. I'm not sure that his life changed as much as I wished. But cigarette smoke whispers to me of that moment, when this dear man was aware, if only briefly, of the power and grace of God that was available to him.

Respectable Christians don't smoke cigarettes. That's probably a good thing. But maybe sometimes they should smell like cigarette smoke.

In Romans 15:20-21, Paul says that his ambition is to preach the gospel "not where Christ has already been named,...but as it is written,
Those who have never been told of him will see,
And those who have never heard will understand."

I'm miles away from unreached people groups in the true sense of the word: cultures that have no gospel witness or knowledge of God's special revelation. But the fact is we all pass within miles, yards, or feet of people who run in entirely non-Christian circles: little sub-cultures of unreached people who need Jesus' love so much. I think of my friend Mike, who signs about the love of God to deaf teens who have no other Christian witness in their lives. I think of Kevin Klas talking after an ultimate frisbee game with the hippie college students he played with. I think of Austin and Heather knocking on their neighbors doors with homemade food in hand. I think of the middle schooler whose dad warns him not to bring home Campus Life flyers and takes him to native american spiritual ceremonies instead. People right under our noses.

Be careful, guys: when someone smokes next to you, it's like you smoking half a cigarette because of the secondhand smoke. But I think it's worth the risk. In some cases, it's the smell of effectiveness.

I secretly like it...

2009-05-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

Pet peeves about theology textbooks/commentaries:

1. Untranslated German.

Just because I know Greek or Hebrew, that doesn't mean I also know German.

2. Endnotes instead of footnotes.

Why are you making me flip so many pages? If it's worth noting, it's worth noting at the relevant place in the book, not hundreds of pages away.

3. Transliteration instead of Greek or Hebrew letters.

If I know the language, transliteration is an unnecessary nuisance. If I don't know it, does it really add to my understanding to say the sounds that the word makes?

4. Transliterations and Greek or Hebrew letters.

The above, plus this objection: If I know the language, why do I want to read the word three times?

Can anybody identify with these? Do you want to add to the list?

The Problem with Bible Verses

2009-05-10T20:57:00.000-07:00

Bible reading has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The funny thing is, it’s hard for me to imagine a Bible without chapter and verse numbers marked into it. Why is this funny? Because these divisions were only added in the 1500’s. Think about it: for about 75 percent of church history (not to mention a few thousand years of Israelite dealings with the Old Testament before that), people didn’t look up Bible verses.
Bible study is made so much easier by having numbers to communicate exactly where in the text you are referring to. In fact, it seems that it makes reading portions in community much easier, since it helps everyone get on the same page (metaphorically speaking, since invariably people will have different editions, translations and study Bibles that make the page number that contains the text different). But I think there are some potential hazards to the way it makes us think about the Bible. Avoiding hazards begins by becoming aware of them, so here I go:
Dividing the text into verses makes it easier for us to think of the Bible as a bunch of little pieces to be pulled out and used independently. Thus we get athlete’s devotionals and business motivation seminars claiming that Philippians 4:13 gives the power to win championships and build Fortune 500 companies, when actually, if we read carefully around it, we find an example not of accomplishing great changes in our circumstances that bring money and fame, but of having joy and contentment in any situation. But in light of the current economic situation, we wouldn’t want to do away with this mindset, because then the companies that sell verse-a-day calendars would go out of business and jobs would be lost, and those people would have to be reeducated for green-collar industries... I’m still waiting for the Bible verse Demotivators calendar to come out, with verses like James 4:9 on every page. Somebody should make one, with big pictures of hilariously tragic incidents: I’d buy it and give it to Dr. Vreeland to put in his office.
Lest we think that the problems that comes with picking out individual verses occur only among the lowly common-folk (tongue-in-cheek) of Christianity, let’s talk about systematic theology for a moment. My peers in the Donald Miller-Rob Bell-Brian McClaren generation seem to love throwing mud at the whole idea of doing systematics. And they have some very good criticisms. Sometimes theologians take neat logical systems and nicely organized charts, pick some verses that fit into them, publish it as truth, and hold tenaciously to it as the truth. The verses are selected apart from their context, obscuring tension, paradox and uncertainty. And using professional words doesn’t make this any better than the verse-a-day calendars.
But can we please remember that systematics being done poorly sometimes doesn’t mean systematics should be done away with? Systematic theology allows us to ask the questions our culture is asking, and seek what light the Bible sheds on these topics. It is part of the process of contextualization. The thing I like least about systematic theology is how much work it takes to do it right. Grappling with the author’s intent in a passage’s meaning, developing a Biblical theology of that author’s writings, then looking for how those teachings fit consistently into a framework that helps us live our lives well and make sense of the world around us is a lot of work. But if we never go through the whole process, do we have anything more than just some interesting literature and sermons intended for audiences that lived centuries ago. And without thinking about coherency, we can teach exactly opposite things that make our worldview unintelligible and unlivable. (Not paradoxes, but contradictions)
I don’t want to only go as far as detailed exegetical analysis and never think about how the message of the Word transforms my life. And I don’t want to look at the Bible based on a system of ideas that only sees the pieces of it affirm the way I already view the world. But I want careful interpretation of each text that takes into account how the message of that text contributes to a cohesive view of life. I want a Biblically-derived system that teaches me how to approach my life and look at the world.
I need to read the Bible, not just verses.

In Defense of Academics

2009-04-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

There is a purpose for academics. To my seminary friends, this may seem like a self-evident statement, but I have encountered many people in my life, from east coast to west coast, who speak with contempt of how academics is so impractical, how theology is just a bunch of big words and useless knowledge, how anyone can read and understand the Bible and doesn’t need an educated elite to interpret it for them. There is a degree of truth to this: the beauty of the gospel is that the essential message is wonderfully accessible. It was not merely a message for an intellectual elite. To think that academics and clergy sit as arbiters over the meaning and application of the Biblical text and define its meaning would send us back to the Dark Ages (and I mean that more literally than you may think). To say that Scripture is entirely inaccessible without going through a certain curriculum to achieve a special status is a huge problem.
At the same time, the revelation was given to us in a process involving historical records, literary creations, and in a language and culture foreign to and distant from ours. And the beautiful thing about Christian scholarship since the days of reformation is that it has been mostly done with the goal of making Scripture more accessible. Those who reject the need for scholars to help them understand their Bible forget that the fact they can hold a Bible in their hands and read it in their own language is the result of the work of, well, scholars - people who were willing to “waste their time” parsing verbs and learning vocabulary and grammar and doing linguistic research. And all we have to show for it is that millions of people around the world can read the words of God’s revelation for themselves. This is no small accomplishment.
Here are a few observations that I think deal with some of the real problems that can come up in Biblical/theological scholarship – problems based on improper use of education, not the education itself:
1. Academics done right does not pursue impractical questions: it makes a very thorough and assiduous effort to more accurately answer practical questions.
2. Big words make the work easier for those who immerse themselves in the conversation, because they allow us to be more efficient in our conversations. They should not be used to express snobbery and make conversations esoteric. They help us process and define issues so we can get to the end product: understandable theology, in audience-appropriate language, that helps us all live better Christian lives.
3. Most Christian scholars really want to help others with their knowledge. If you hate studying, especially studying languages, literature and history, be glad for people who are nerdy enough to like it, and be humble enough to let them help you.
4. God uses work and study as the means to help us know how to love and serve him better. Just as it is foolish to think that since God is the one who provides for our needs, we don’t need to do any useful work, so it is foolish to think that we can know a God who reveals so much about himself through a written document without ever having to put effort into learning.
My apologies to the middle-schoolers I unintentionally confuse with my vocabulary on a weekly basis – I just forget. And my humble repentance for the times I have let my pride rear its ugly head and used knowledge to build my self up instead of building others up. But please, don’t let those mistakes damage learning. Support your local Christian scholars – they’re working make God’s word more accessible, not less.

Did the "good old days" ever really happen?

2009-04-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

We are people of the text. Christianity is a religion shaped by the written and preserved canon of Scripture, and belief in Scripture's authority provides parameters for orthodox belief. For evangelicalism in western culture, the democratization of Bible reading after the advent of the printing press and the growth in literacy of the masses through broader education efforts has brought us to view individual reading of Scripture as a critical practice. We hear this in the emphatic appeals from leaders and teachers to be faithful in having a personal "quiet time."
As we read, we relive the stories of the faith of past saints, and we sense the vibrant power of the messages of the prophets in the Old Testament and the letters of the apostles in the New Testament as they spoke to their faith communities. The natural and appropriate response is to want to relive these experiences, to see the powerful acts of God in our own time and experience the passionate joy of a relationship with God in our own faith communities. Those who expose themselves to the accounts of the heroes of church history will often experience the same feelings of wonder at God's past works and a desire to live out these same kinds of experiences in our own lives. May this passion burn in our hearts and spur us on to good deeds, deepened fellowship, active evangelism, and warm piety towards God!
But let us remember something. From the times of the earliest faith accounts until now, no matter how carefully and eagerly we search, we will not find a perfect age of church history. The fact is, there is no ideal age of the church. Generations of church leaders have thought and worked carefully to devise the ideal way to practice "real New Testament church life," only to have the next generation point out the faults and inadequacies in their methods and put forth new ideas on what perfect church life looks like.
Whether it be the New Testament church, the reformation, the Patristic age, or the modern age, we cannot find a time period that gives us a faultless example of Christianity. If we look throughout the world today, this search is frustrated again; persecuted churches in hostile settings can be idealized for their tenacious faith, but with more scrutiny their faults appear (sometimes in the form of serious doctrinal problems). Churches freshly emerging in new places tend to repeat mistakes from early church history in other places rather than giving a fresh, clean and pure form of Christianity, as may be imagined. In prosperous and peaceful areas of the world with the advantage of developed Biblical, historical, and theological study can use these resources to carefully define accurate doctrine only to find that the response to this highly accurate and developed teaching is apathy, as the distraction of wealth and comfort makes radical faith an entirely uninteresting concept.
In the content of the New Testament, there is sobering reality that the glowing descriptions of the early community of believers is quickly followed by descriptions of various controversies and problems, and that many of the letters were written to give correction and rebuke to erring churches with rebellious members. In the earlier fascination of protestantism to imitate the reformation ideals we do not find perfection. In the liberal attempts to make Christianity into modernism with a Jesus label pasted on top, ideal Christian practice remains far out of reach. In the recent postmodern fascination with the early church fathers and the spiritual disciplines and contemplative practices of the middle ages, there will again, despite the benefits of imitating the positive practices of these eras, be glaring faults as their weaknesses also carry over. The next generation will passionately decry these faults and seek a new example to follow.
So am I merely spouting off a pessimistic monologue to weigh you down with hopelessness? No, because in spite of these faults God's redemptive power still triumphs. I raise the issue to make an appeal that we approach Christian thought and practice with the recognition that we can't get back to the "good old days" when the church was pure and ideal, because there were no such days. Instead, let's seek to learn from the strengths of the New Testament church, and every subsequent age, as well as from each period's failures. Our standard in every age remains the principles, patterns and ethics taught by Scripture. If we seek fervently to live these out in our age, fleshing them out in continuity with the essential beliefs of all church history, but with a unique incarnation in our own context. In this way we can avoid high-minded condemnation of others who do not practice "Biblical Christianity" as we do and instead humbly allow their approaches to instruct us as we seek to do the best we can with the time we have and pray that God will redeem even our own faults and blind spots in the way only the sovereign and gracious God over the people of God in every age can. The question is not "how do we get back to how things were when the church was the way it ought to be?" but "How do we learn from what was in an effort to get closer to what ought to be?"

A Parable of Christian Family

2009-03-27T18:10:00.001-07:00

Please give me feedback on content and style: this is the first time putting this self-crafted parable in print, and I want to know how you understand it to know if I'm communicating my point well. Thank you to my beloved readers - that faithful and afflicted few.

A certain couple, who were married and monogamous and committed to each other for life decided while their kids were young that they would homeschool them in order to protect them from the influences of the world and the secular mindset in the public school system. The parents meticulously guarded the entertainment choices of their 5 children so that they would not be exposed to bad language, objectionable content, or kids who had bad attitudes towards their parents. The family regularly attended church on Sunday morning so that they could all hear the teaching of the Bible as their family sat together. They did not object when the pastor preached about evangelism and reaching the lost and hurting people of the world; they sometimes even complimented him on these sermons. The kids were part of children’s or youth events at the church for a time, but then their parents became uncomfortable with having them exposed to the non-Christian kids who would come to various outreach events. The family was also part of community outreach events organized for the whole church for a time, but after awhile they decided that it would be better for them to spend time as a family rather than letting church life break up their schedule of activities designed to promote family closeness. Even during days they spent at home, however, the family found that they had to watch closely how much time their kids spent with the kids next door. One time the father overheard the neighbor boy say a bad word in front of his kids. He couldn’t really blame the kid – from what he had heard from the other neighbors, his parent’s marriage was in a lot of trouble and this made the boy’s life difficult. But he didn’t want his kids to be dragged down by the kind of language this boy used. Eventually the family was able to afford a house further out of town, where they could have more privacy for their family and an environment for their children undisturbed by worldliness. This made for a longer commute to church, but they didn’t mind too much. They had cut back on involvement enough by now for the sake of their family that they were grateful for the peaceful distance.
A second man and woman, who attended the same church, thought that the first family was just plain weird because they homeschooled and were so isolationist. This had made their kids awkward and unsocialized, the mother declared, happily observing how her kids spent a lot of time with friends from school and from the church youth group. As the kids grew older, they spent more and more time with these friends because they were always seeking ways to avoid being at home. Whenever too many family members were home at once, there was always a fight going on. Whether it was between husband and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, or among the kids, these disputes made them choose different activities as much as possible. The parents made sure that their kids all attended church Sunday mornings, and most of the youth activities as well. Since they didn’t have many spiritual conversations as family, they needed to get them around people who would help them be good Christians as much as possible. But this would work better if it were people closer to their age influencing them. Just because the parents were on church committees and served as ushers and brought food to every potluck didn’t mean they were qualified to teach their kids about spiritual things. They were doing their duty as a Christian family by giving money to support the youth programs that helped their kids, getting everyone to church regularly, and by just trying to be a Christian family who kept in contact with the world, because the world needs Christians to be in it. What’s that phrase? “Be in the world but not all the way in it”…right? Yeah, that must be it.
A single mother attended this church with her three kids. The oldest had been born when the mother was seventeen, shortly after she had become a Christian through a campus ministry at her school. The other two kids were from her marriage a couple years later to a man who assured her he was a committed Christian in their online conversations. Within the first couple of years, he became less interested in spiritual things and more interested in being a tyrannical and abusive father and husband. Eventually, the marriage ended in divorce. The mother’s faith had given her strength through this difficulty, and she was committed to her relationship with Christ and the church. Many times she wondered, though, whether she was really pleasing God as much as the people seated around her at church whose marriages had lasted for decades. But since she couldn’t change the past, she just focused on cultivating a love for the Lord in her kids. They spent a lot of time serving together at church events and outreach activities, then laughing and talking together afterwards with the friends from church who came home with them to visit after the events. Usually as they were hosting others from the church, the group would grow as neighbors stopped in, knowing that this home was always inviting and full of love. Several of these neighbors became steadily more interested in Jesus Christ as they heard this family and their friends talking in such a sincere way about their faith. A couple of them became followers of Jesus, and began spending even more time as part of the life of this single mother’s family. There was something about these four people that was so real; they had faults, just like others, but the love there family expressed to each other and those around them was so, well,…it just had to be because they were Christian. Normal families don’t act like that.
Now I ask you, which one of these is the best example of Christian family?

A pause for meditation.

2009-03-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

I would like to say I'll get up a "real" blog post during finals week. But, let's face it, it's finals week. I have been studying and meditating on James recently, and it made me appreciate the themes of this prayer I ran across in Valley of Vision. Here it is (with slight revision and redaction) for your edification:

True Religion

Lord God Almighty,
I ask not to be enrolled amongst the earthly great and rich,
But to be numbered with the spiritually blessed.
Make it my present, supreme, persevering concern
To obtain those blessings which are
spiritual in nature
eternal in their continuance
satisfying in their possession
Preserve me from a false estimate of the whole or a part of my character;
May I pay regard to my principles as well as my conduct,
my motives as well as my actions.
Help me never to mistake the excitement of my passions
for the renewing of the Holy Spirit,
never to judge my religion by occasional impressions and
impulses, but by my constant and prevailing disposition.
Give me a large abundance of the supply of wisdom,
that I may be prepared for every duty,
love you in all my mercies,
submit to you in every trial,
trust you when walking in darkness,
have peace in you amidst life’s changes.
Lord, I believe; help my unbelief and uncertainties.

A feminist in any other setting

2009-03-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

As we draw to a close the discussion of gender issues, I want to step back and take a look at this issue in a global context. Our studies of New Testament culture have shown us a world with inequitable and often oppressive patriarchalism. Some elements of second-temple Judaism gave husbands power to divorce their husbands at a whim, and the Jewish society generally excluded women from significant roles in education, economics and certainly from religion or government. Greco-Roman culture allowed men full authority over all in their household, so that they even had the right to expose their infants so that they would die, and mothers could not stop this action. Women slaves (and men, for that matter) could be sexually exploited by the man who owned them with no recourse. Aristocratic women, however, would be strongly punished if they were unfaithful in the same way, because they were threatening the purity of their husbands’ line of descendants. Greek and Roman philosophers gave various restrictive rulings regarding women like that they should not speak in public or be educated. Into two restrictive patriarchal settings Jesus and Paul spoke and acted in a way that allowed women to play a significant part in their ministries. Thus the New Testament account of Christ’s ministry and the development of the church is sprinkled with the names of women who were prominent and influential in the work of spreading the gospel. Jesus shocks his disciples by speaking with a Samaritan woman. Jesus interacts in a compassionate way towards ritually unclean women who were prostitutes or had “bleeding” issues, ignoring cultural stigma and prejudice to lovingly respond to their needs. Paul greets many women by name in his letters, commending them for their ministries to the saints. They were believers in women’s rights, in spite of the fact that they never caused any dramatic social upheaval to change up the structure (or held any bra-burning events).

It seems that the element of Western culture that incorporated the Christian view of the value of each individual life, as that idea developed over time, has resulted in women in Europe and North America enjoying a higher level of self-determination, right to self-expression, and material prosperity than women have at any other time in history. The battles being fought now for women’s rights in our context are no longer over injustice, but over unfairness.

I find the fact that American women with the same amount of responsibility often get paid less than men annoying, because it’s unfair. It should be addressed. However, I find the fact that women in many developing and under-developed nations get treated like property and abused as sexual objects appalling, because it is unjust.

Rape is a daily, terrifying reality in war-torn regions of Africa such as Darfur and Congo. Many women deal with physical pain and emotional fear because of this. Women struggle to feed their families throughout rural Ethiopia and Kenya, often sacrificing their own food to feed their children and husbands. Meanwhile governments ignore investments in agricultural improvements and play political games that make foreign aid more difficult to receive. A steady flow of heart-wrenching stories come out of Southeast Asia regarding women and girls trapped in sex-slavery. The recent brutal murder in New York city of Muslim wife by a husband seeking to defend his honor reminds us of the repressive reality found in many Muslim nations.

There is a great chasm between the reality of Ne-Yo’s Miss Independent, the woman is free to own a home, pay her bills, and manage her prosperity, and the reality of Delirious’ Mothers of the Night (from the "Kingdom of Comfort" album) who have found no other option but to sell their bodies to feed their children.

I pray that battles for fairness never cause us to forget about battles against injustice. God has made men and women in his image, and he loves them dearly. Let us stand up for the rights of all.

Quotable (part 2)

2009-02-21T20:41:00.000-08:00

Dr. Vreeland has been a great source for witticisms and colorful commentary in every class I've taken with him. Here are a few I liked:

The creative, pessimistic, and humorous:
“Remember the difference between [Ezra] and Nehemiah: Ezra pulls out his own beard, while Nehemiah pulls out theirs.”

“I can spend the rest of my life sitting on my ever-widening, rapidly-passing-through-middle-age rear end without ever ‘lifting a finger to help with the burden’”

“Before sticking foot in mouth, it is best to untie shoelaces.”

“Why are you trying to unscrew the inscrutable?”

“For every silver lining there’s a dark cloud.”

“You’re having a fine dinner with fine china and somebody barfs on your plate: that’s an abomination.”

“My first trip to Israel, I didn’t know an Aleph from a swastika.”

“On thing about adopting a foxhole mentality is the bullets go over your head and not through it.”

“The glass is neither half full nor half empty – it’s shattered on the floor.”

“It’s like taking a shower in a raincoat: not much is accomplished.”

And the profound:

“God is interested in what he does with me more than what he does through me (I think).”

“If bad stuff happens to me, I deserve worse.”

“In God’s wisdom he takes isolationist, individualist people and sentences them to community.”

“It may be that your life is to serve as a warning to others.”

Quotable (part 1)

2009-02-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's week seven of the quarter at NBS, and something I've learned about dealing with the pressure of seminary is that it's good to stop and laugh. So here are some quotes I ran across as I reviewed theology notes for an assignment the other day. These are the kinds of things that don't get into the actual body of the notes, they just come out in verbal form and I scribble them down because they're classic: either for humor or profundity. The source for part 1 of this series is Dr. Willsey. Here are some of my favorites - if you have more, please post them in the comments.

On the humorous side of the dial:

“We need a few good heretics around to keep us thinking.”

“If we keep improving on what we’re doing, someday we’ll get to the point of simple ignorance rather than profound ignorance.”

“Think of theology as a sport in which there are no timeouts and no end to the game.”

On understanding the topic of God’s plan: “If you ever feel satisfied, there’s something wrong with you.”

“That’s why I don’t write: I don’t want my contradictions to be in print.”

“I will defend my ‘am-ness’ all day long.”

On the question of why God created angels: “Maybe God just enjoys having a lot of beings around that don’t ask a lot of questions.”

Sometimes these things aren't planned, they just come out in passing, like here: “Last night I was looking up the word ‘homonculus’…”

Oh, yeah, I think about that word all the time...

And a few more that tend toward profundity:

“Once you’ve made a wise decision, don’t ever look back. There’s always some reason you can wish you’d made a different choice.”

“When I am thankful, I agree with God that the way things are is the way they ought to be.”

“People get really excited about miracles and forget that every breath they take is an act of God’s providence and deserves thanks.”

“The best way to get rid of an enemy is to turn them into a friend.”

Thanks for the laughs and the wisdom, J-dub.

In celebration of Single's Awareness Day

2009-02-15T21:17:00.000-08:00

In the style of the mosaic generation, I'm going to start with a topic here and swirl off to a related topic that is not necessarily in sequence, but is loosely related by the associations in my own mind.

In an insightful CT article last summer on gender issues, on of the contributors pointed out that the complementarian camp has a tendency to emphasize strongly that a woman's primary role is in the home, as a wife and mother. This doesn't seem like a problematic statement to someone familiar with traditional western culture, until you start to think about possible situations. What about the mother whose children have grown and left home? What about the widow? What about the young, single woman who is yet to be married? Is a woman in one of these situations somehow "out of place" in the kingdom of God because she is not attached to a man? This is clearly not the case. Although marriage certainly gets good press in the New Testament, so does singleness. Women who make investing in their family and home life their top priority should be commended. After all, we have in our culture many more examples of success in a variety of career fields than we have examples of strong, healthy families that nurture children until they become adults who are mature disciples of Christ. But if accepting male headship in the home and the church means that women are not recognized for accomplishments other than being homemakers and volunteering for nursery duty, we have a seriously flawed view of what this means and are regressing from much positive progress western culture has made in the past century. Let us acknowledge and affirm in our thinking and from the pulpit the tremendous contributions that women make in all sectors of society, including, but not limited to the home. Complementarianism that packages a cultural limitation on women's roles in society together with the theologically-supported idea of submission does a disservice to the church and society. Accepting the timeless principles from Paul's writings does not mean railing against mothers who have careers, women who take leadership roles in churches and communities, or who - heaven forbid! - send their children to public school instead of teaching them at home. It simply means setting guidelines that expect male leadership in the top leadership spot in a church assembly and loving headship in the home.

This brings me to my loosely associated topic: how does the evangelical emphasis (found even more so within the subcategory of fundamentalism)on "family values" affect the culture of our churches? In many cases, churches have emphasized being "family churches" and thus been a tremendous boon to families in their community who desired to live out their marriages and raises children in a way that pleases God. Props to these churches for making a difference on a family-by-family, grassroots level! (This is in addition to the political activism on family issues promulgated by many of these churches.) Families need support, encouragement, Biblical teaching and wisdom from Godly mentors and examples to be strong and healthy. I pray that a growing number of godly families develop in our country. But are there any side-effects to this emphasis? Is it in any way related to the fact that single people ages 18-30 are largely absent from our churches? (Since yesterday was February 14 and we observed Single's Awareness Day, this seems an appropriate time for the topic). Is it possible that the unmarried, the divorced, the single parents, the teenagers from broken families, etc., who visit our churches looking for a place to belong as part of a faith community are alienated by the "family values" emphasis? Are we in some cases so enamored with this issue that we forget to broaden applications of teaching and the structure of programs and events to include the listeners who don't have a "properly-arranged" nuclear family?

I do not raise these questions to say that we should in any way relax our stance in support of the biblical view of marriage, divorce, and parental responsibility just because so many in our culture are failing to match it, so that we don't make them feel bad. No, stand strong on these issues. I just have a couple suggestions.

To church leaders: Please be thoughtful to structure the church so that events, small groups, etc. provide a place for singles and "non-traditional families" to interact and be included. Please don't spend weeks and weeks talking about only marriage and family issues. Give us some other messages and applications, too. Teachers and preachers, you could even mention the positive opportunities coming with singleness that Jesus and Paul point out (more than just to say why they aren't an argument against marriage). Challenge singles to develop a vision for how they can use their situation to God's glory.

To church members: Please be hospitable to those who come in to your church alone. Invite them to be part of things, and make them feel welcome and included. Just because you are completely comfortable sitting in your regular pew with your family doesn't mean everyone feels at home as soon as they walk in the door. The young and single are gladly welcomed and freely accepted at bars and parties. They long for a place where they feel like they belong; church should provide it.

To the young and single: Don't abandon your church just because there aren't many people who are like you there. Interaction across generations is good for you. Your church needs you to pour your efforts into it, and to reach out to others in your age group and connect them to church life. And please, don't look for your friends in da club.

Perhaps I am just venting the collective frustrations of me and my friends who are young, single and evangelical. Perhaps we're just self-conscious and self-centered. Or perhaps there's something to this. Give me your thoughts, my friends.

I want to come back at you with some thoughts on what exactly it means to be a Christian family. But this is long-winded enough for today...

Why I'm a Default Complementarian

2009-02-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

I want to be a complementarian, because I don't like the idea of having to do a lot of explaining about why the words of Scripture don't really mean what they seem to mean at first glance. I don't want to tell people that what was believed in the New Testament church and has been held to throughout centuries of church history is not actually right because we are so much better at reading Scripture now, and so much smarter than those who came before us in the realm of anthropology. This seems quite arrogant.

I want to be an egalitarian, because my culture has taught me that every person has the right to be whatever they want to be, and I don't want to have to tell a woman that she can't have a certain job, or have to explain to a progressive-minded non-believer why I still hold to ideas from the Dark Ages.

Bringing up the idea that Scritural commands are "culture-bound" raises so many questions in my mind when related to these gender-issues texts. When I look at the instructions regarding marriage relationships in Ephesians, I do not see a lot of language referring to specific, situational problems, but to the Christian walk in general, as part of God's chosen people, the church, believers who have been saved by God’s grace. He compares both the love of a husband for his wife and the submission of a wife to her husband with the relationship between Christ and the church. Is this culture-bound instruction? What about children obeying their parents (the next verse)? Is that still relevant for our culture? When culture changes so that it is no longer common practice for the church to submit to Christ, should we stop doing that as well?

In 1 Timothy 2, when he speaks about church authority, Paul says that a woman should not have authority over a man because of two things: man was created first, and woman sinned first. This also seems to me like a principle he is drawing from Scripture, not merely an expression of culture.

If these are only situational, then Paul sure plays fast and loose with theological reasoning, throwing it around heavy-handedly to support these situational practices. If we have to move this far away from what seems to be the straightforward meaning of the text, where does our exegetical foundation go?

Some speak of our present, "enlightened" views as being part of the trajectory of the incipient principles of the New Testament. But just how good are we at perceiving and charting this trajectory without having Western/North American culture's concept of progress in society color our thinking? Equality in value does not logically imply uniformity in roles - unless you live in the affirmative-action climate we live in today.

However, I don't know what to do with "women must be silent in the church" if I hold to "I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man." I'm more comfortable with the one than the other. It also bothers me that Paul calls for head-coverings in Corinthians "because of the angels," since I don't really think that the angels have changed much in the past 2000 years. With all due respect to the Mennonites back in the state of my origin (Ohio), I'm not keen on the idea of telling a sister in my assembly she needs to put a hat on.

Despite these doubts, I'll tag myself a "default complementarian." I think I'd rather fall in line with the consensus of church history and the force of the imperatives supported by theological reasoning in the texts. I'll affirm that men and women are created with equal value and status - in God's image - but that we have different roles.

In response to Austin's posts:
In Genesis, you have a right to understand the text this way, but you better have more support coming than just a narrative passage which can be used pretty effectively on the egalitarian side as well.
As I read the second post, I allude to Dr. Vreeland and say that you are making an inference as big as the Grand Canyon, but if you want to build a theology on it, knock yourself out. The Law, large parts of the narrative, and many of Jesus' teachings assume an agricultural economy. Should we all be farmers because this is a more Biblical way to live?

In response to Richey:
I agree with your objections to the Galatians text, the descriptive and ambiguous references to women's ministry roles, and subordination within the Trinity as bases for egalitarianism. Thank you for saving me from having to explain them in my post.

Oh, brother, it's my neighbor again.

2009-02-01T20:23:00.000-08:00

To bring to a conclusion the thoughts begun by the last two posts (And next post I'll move on to the topic Austin loves so much):

I find it a struggle to love my neighbor as much as I love mankind. "This makes no sense," you say. "Isn't your neighbor a part of mankind?" Yes, but I quickly forget this. And it's kind of easy to justify. Surely I can't take time to hassle with this one person who's asking for a favor for the umpteenth time this week, because I have many important things to do as part of my great and noble work to save mankind. I feel great compassion for the person I see in a photo-op picture and hear a touching story about, and I love to think of myself as a sympathetic person because I care so much about that person. But when I have to deal with a person's needs directly, I have to deal also with that person's faults.

While the Enlightenment era was in full swing, the president of Princeton, John Witherspoon, told his students to differentiate between two types of emotions: "'particular' affections for local places and specific people, and the clearly superior 'calm and goodwill to all.'" (See Lauren F. Winner in Books and Culture from Sept/Oct 2008). To be a cosmopolitan who acts for society, for mankind, for the common good, is a noble thing. We do well to remember, however, not only the cosmopolitan ideal but concrete acts of love for "local" people right around us.
"God so loved the world that he sent his only son," and when that son arrived he loved specific people who came to him with their problems and issues, and who caused inconveniences to his schedule.

The essence of what I want to say is stated much better by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, so I'll let his words close out the post. This is an idea, a reminder of how to appropriately resond to the problems that come from having sin in the world, that I probably need for myself more than anyone else reading this.

A character in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV said:

"I love humanity,[...]but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular, that is, separately, as single individuals. In my dreams[...]I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion[...]and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together[...]I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity."

And one more zinger from Dostoevsky's great character Father Zosima:

"Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth."

I Have a Dream (And sometimes that's my biggest problem).

2009-01-24T17:00:00.000-08:00

Father, my dreams are too big.
I want to accomplish impressive goals and build big programs
I want to spread my reputation and make news
I want to accumulate honors and accrue benefits

I want to hand over vast sums to the treasurers of your kingdom
But you want me to think smaller.
You want me to do the simple acts of love required at each moment
To lay down my life one moment at a time for the few people I know
To pass out the last few coins in my pocket each day

Father, my dreams are too small.
I want to accomplish transitory things,
Which will be undone only years from now
I want to receive empty words of praise and flattery,
Which will be forgotten by their speakers tomorrow
I want to receive all my rewards now, tangibly,
Which reduces my supposed belief to no faith at all.
But you want me to think bigger.
You want to take the small ripples of love that spread from my life and push them
until they swell into waves that crash on the shore of Your everlasting kingdom.
You want me to trust defiantly in the Giver of hope
in the face of the stifling darkness of the world that overwhelms the unregenerate.
You want me to help fund the greatest movement in history,
As you make a dollar out of my fifteen cents.

Lord, help me to think smaller. And bigger.

Am I my neighbor's keeper?

2009-01-19T16:49:00.000-08:00

It doesn't take long after sin enters the world for its effects to show. After Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden, Cain is overtaken with jealousy towards his brother, Abel. Cain allows sin to master him, despite God's explicit warning, and he murders Abel. When God asks Cain where Abel is, Cain's famous response is, "Am I my brother's keeper?" But perhaps being your "brother's keeper" is critical to living in a way that fits with how God wants society to look. Christ affirms that the second-greatest (or is it second, greatest?) command is to "love your neighbor as yourself," and gives a broad definition of "neighbor" in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Not only are we our brothers' keepers, but we are also responsible to be neighbors to many others who cross our paths.

Plantinga points out that there are two ways of sinning towards our neighbors in two chapters labelled "Attack" and "Flight." The attack side seems prominent in James 2:8-13

8If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well. 9But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. 11For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. 13For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

It's not too difficult to see that active partiality, adultery, murder, as well as other actions like gossip, lies and slander and the expression of attitudes like envy, jealousy and bitterness SCREW THINGS UP. To please God, we must not do these things.
But many people use the fact that they don't do these things to argue that they are good people, who are far enough away from the evil end of the scale that God must be pleased with them, and surely couldn't be angry. Is there something more to loving your neighbor? Plantinga explains in the next chapter how "Flight" disrupts shalom. When we are apathetic, or when we intentionally avoid or ignore situations where people are suffering from the consequences of sin, we're still in violation of the great command to love our neighbors. James hits on this concept as well on the next section of the papyrus:

14What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

What does this mean for me and my neighbors? Does it mean that I should interrupt a peaceful evening walk on my day off to go see why those kids in the park are yelling and waving sticks at each other? Does it mean that when a teenager is breaking a glass bottle on the steps of the elementary school I should stop her and bring a broom so she can clean it up? Does it mean I can't just shake my head and condemn society because so many fathers neglect their kids, but I should take the time to be a male role model to a single mother's son? Does it mean I can't just bemoan how parents don't care about their kids education, so the kids fail, but I should take the time to ask a kid how school is going, volunteer to do tutoring, and take them out for ice cream when they get a good report card? Please give me more examples in your comments, my insightful readers. What do we complain about and do nothing about when it comes to the welfare of our neighbors?

Chattering in the blogosphere...

2009-01-14T15:59:00.000-08:00

Everybody in my little world decided to read the Shack last month, and Richey and Austin devoted some blog space to it. I'm going to withhold comment because I haven't gotten past the foreword yet. And if I end up never getting around to reading it, I'll just label them liberal, new-age heretics for reading such an evil book, and then I'll feel self-righteous and pious instead of just feeling like a slow reader who can't keep up with the pace of others more intelligent than I.

But I thought chapter two of Richey's book was pretty hard-hitting. It really reminded me of James 5:1-6, with its condemnation of living in luxury while the righteous suffer. Richey's scene also makes us recognize that some of our supposed cultural superiority may well be propped up by peace and prosperity, so that if these crutches were taken away many who shake their heads at atrocities now would quickly sink to the same level of savagery. The amount of wealth and free time that we have been given by the socio-economic forces of history is amazing, and provides a tremendous opportunity. If we squander it on selfish pleasures and neglect compassion, these seemingly small and harmless sins condemn us. Thanks, Matt, for creative and thought-provoking content.

Now how about certainty of salvation? I really appreciated Richey's emphasis on God as the source of salvation. Faith and the gospel are the means he has established, and they bring us to God, the one "who is coming to be glorified in his saints, and marveled at among all who have believed" (1 Thess 1:10). I'd agree that we can have a warranted confidence, but probably won't be without doubt and certainly won't have empirical certainty. This doesn't mean we ought to question with every wrong action whether we have just failed to persevere. But it does mean that we ought to expect believers to show in the sum of their lives enduring fruits of regeneration. When someone starts down that path, then falls away, as it seems occurred with Bob Dylan in Richey's case study, what was the cause? Did God give them grace to express the fruit of the Spirit for a time, then withdraw it? Were they working out of the strength of their flesh and only appeared to have genuine fruits of godliness? Hmmm...

Disturbing the Peace

2009-01-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

Whoa, I just realized that it's been awhile since I posted - probably long enough that 50 Cent could've produced two or three albums in the same amount of time.
I really liked reading Plantinga's Not the Way It's Supposed to Be for Dr. Jacobson's class. (Am I allowed to say that I enjoyed a book on sin?) There were a couple concepts in there that I wanted to bring up for more discussion. So here goes the first...
When Plantinga talks about the characteristics of sin, he devotes a section to talking about sin as actions that disturb "Shalom," that is, activities that disrupt the way God intends for things to work. If all people were to follow God's prescription for society, then the Hebrew concept of shalom would be realized, and people would live together in peace, security and well-being. However, when we defy God’s pattern for life, we disrupt shalom. Harm to others and society is characteristic of sin. Murder, slander, adultery, and stealing are clear examples of how this works, because their destructive effects on others are easily seen. These sins are against other people, because it harms them with its immediate, secondary and tertiary effects, and it is against God because it defies his instructions for life’s patterns. God created things the way they’re supposed to be; sin wrecked and continues to wreck things so that they’re not the way they’re supposed to be.

As we answer the questions of the segments of our culture who are very concerned with healing the world and want to know whether Christianity has anything to offer in this regard, I think this is an important concept to point out. Sinful actions cause suffering, injustice, oppression, emotional and physical pain – we could even argue environmental pollution, if we view short-sighted material gain as the cause. (Debatable, I know.) While we may not see how all commands/prohibitions fit into this paradigm, there is a general pattern that the things the Bible tells us to do usually improve the conditions in our sphere of influence, while the things the Bible tells us not to do tend to make conditions worse.

This generalizing causes me to think that this principle could be a good guide in matters of conscience. If something is not expressly spoken of in Scripture and I have to make a decision whether or not to do it, it is wise to ask the question “How will this affect shalom in my world? Will it add to or disturb the peace and well-being of those around me?”

With this concept in mind, we can see clearly that speaking truthfully about sin and exhorting people to stop sinning is an important and effective way of changing the world for the better. Although evangelicals take much criticism for their intolerance and close mindedness because of the sins they condemn, the reality is that pointing out the destructive power of sin is the first and most critical step towards building a better world. Sin disrupts shalom. Winking at sin means winking at the source of society’s problems.

Touched by Faith

2008-12-23T22:13:00.000-08:00

While Christmas is a time for many of rejoicing and basking in the love of their family, for others it is a very difficult time because of illnesses that cause them or a loved one to suffer. The following is a poem composed by a 17-year-old, Cedric Bond, whose mother is dealing with thyroid cancer this Christmas. He composed it the night before his mother went in for surgery. Although I have not met Cedric, I was touched by the faith he expresses in the face of difficulty and doubt. I decided to share this with all of you, dedicated to those who are facing similar difficulties this holiday season.

How frail is man, so quickly to forget
The mercies shower'd upon us all.
Though danger now approaches ever near,
Won't I, once free, Thy mercy ne'r recall?

Here now just as that fearful day is come,
I kneel and lift my plea up heavenward.
But why should You look favorably here,
When once she's healed, I will deny you heard?

Though fearful now, I fret away the night;
If healed, I'll think, "It never threatened much,"
And make these heartfelt prayers I lift to You
But sincere mock'ries of Thy healing touch.

O Lord, what psalm might make You hear my prayer,
"Protect and keep in you my mother dear"?
And by the temp'ring power of Thy word,
What verse will make my willful heart sincere?

If by my body's strength I could succeed,
Or by a day of fast Thy mercy see,
But these have not the surety I desire.
True answers rest alone with faith in Thee.

I do not ask for any sign, O Lord--
Not in the deep nor in the utmost height.
Just for Your matchless grace to rescue us,
And ever keep us children of your light.

O Holy Father, let Thy will be done,
And let us brace ourselves whate'r the cost,
To know that You possess the pow'r to save,
But still, if not, our faith will ne'r be lost.

For the love of Murph, what is the "Christmas spirit" anyway?

2008-12-17T15:10:00.000-08:00

Isn't it amazing how many "real meanings of Christmas" there are? You could get dozens of Christmas movies that are centered around discovering the true meaning of the season, and hear lots of songs on the radio about what the season is all about. But I would venture to say that we get ourselves pretty off-base on most of them. So why should I put out one more opinion in a blog post? Because I want to get it. The significance of this day that the Roman government set as tradition for western culture centuries ago surely isn't in the consumer-culture emphasis on buying stuff, stuff and more stuff for your family, friends, coworkers and cats. But lots of people recognize that - you don't have to be Christian to aspire to associate something more than covetousness with a holiday that brings us bright decorations, festive music, rich foods and celebrations with people we love. But for many the joy of the season and the festive feelings and happiness seem to be the substance (based on the Christmas music played in most business establishments anyway). But feeling without basis doesn't quite do it for me. Was Dickens right? Is it all about remembering the welfare of your fellow man and bringing joy to the poor? Well, I just saw A Christmas Carol performed live, and while I admire his concern for the plight of the poor and the blind misery of the rich and stingy, I think he's just seeing the shadow of the real meaning.
If this holiday is to commemorate the events of the nativity story, then we must catch the significance of Luke's account of Christ's birth among the humble and the poor, to a (probably) teenage mother who is caught off guard by her pregnancy, and the proclamation to lowly sheep farmers of his birth. His parents can only afford the poor person's sacrifice of two birds when they take him for his circumcision at the temple. But this is the glorious God who created all and possesses all. The glorious God stepped into his creation to express humble love.
The Christmas spirit, then, for believers, ought to be humble love. Isn't Philippians 2 a great Christmas passage, then? We celebrate the birth of Christ, the God-man, as a human baby. He enters into his creation, into a world where he will be surrounded by the corruption of sin which he hates, and voluntary takes human form to express his love.
When we remember the poor and needy at Christmas, as per Dickens' literary exhortation, we are not in the Christmas spirit if we do it for the sake of holiday sentimentality, but only if we do it to imitate the "Christmas spirit" of humble love.
The wonder of the incarnation, of what it means and how exactly it works can only be understood in part. How could he be fully God and fully man, without confusion or separation of the natures? It blows my mind! But he came in a very simple and practical way to incarnate God's love for the world. I really want to catch the Christmas spirit by humbly loving others. I really want to be a physical representation to my world that reflects the physical manifestation of God's love to the world. I really want to come with my metaphorical sheep on my metaphorical shoulders (i.e., out of my humble position with so little to offer people, and nothing to give God unless he gives it to me first) and look with adoration and amazement on the one who brings peace with God and makes possible the ongoing presence of God in our hearts through the Spirit. Let's catch the Christmas spirit by following the Spirit of Jesus, and, if Austin can accept this word, being spiritual.

“Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things and there is nothing else like it.”

Father Zosima in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

Being spiritual...and being postmodern

2008-12-12T19:41:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the recent inactivity - finals week kept me kinda busy, but I know a lot of you reading were in the same boat. I want to include a little more on the "spiritual" conversation that Austin started. I was reading some Jonathan Edwards this summer and ran across his definition. The quote is from an updated version of his work (kind of the Message:Remix version of Edwards, or maybe the CEV), so you don't get the fun of wading through complicated sentence structures and archaic language like you normally would with Edwards. Sorry to disappoint. In "Religious Affections" (as edited by James R. Houston) he said:
"In the New Testament, persons or things are termed spiritual in relation to the Spirit of God. 'Spirit' is the word that is used to signify the third person in the Trinity. It is therefore substantive of what the Scriptures mean by spiritual...Thus, it is only in relationship to the Spirit of God and His influences that persons and things are called spiritual."

So I guess that we can look to fruit of the Spirit (in character) and expression of the gifts of the Spirit (in service) as well as the desire for and application of spiritual truth as things involved in growing spiritually. In speaking to those outside the church, this will need to be clearly defined, though. They may just as easily think you're going to Yelm to consult a medium or learning to connect with the environment when you talk about being spiritual.

Concerning postmodernism: I love how just saying this word makes us as evangelicals feel like we're relevant. I keep watching the youth culture of our country to see whether they are going to continue to progress in postmodern thinking or react against it. Probably just when the church learns to speak effectively to postmodernism, we'll realize that it's past and a new trend has taken it's place. But this is job security for Christian thinkers, eh?

But right now we have a culture using this system as a grid for interpreting reality. Or so they claim. In fact, I think the skepticism and subjectivity is applied to morals, religion and literature, but not to decisions of everyday life. If you want to see a postmodern thinker abandon his or her commitment to skepticism, try questioning evolutionary theory or the science that indicates global warming is in danger of wrecking the world and is man-caused. These things, which are based on extrapolations of data from the present into the past or future, don't seem to be questioned much in the secular, postmodern academic climate. To live everyday life requires making a large number of assumptions that show people operate not with a mindset of absolute uncertainty, but have a range of possibilities that they accept as plausible, and others they write off as ridiculous.
We ought to be advocates to the postmodern world of a range of plausible options for reality that allows us to eliminate others as implausible. There must be room for interpretive differences when we approach Scripture and religious matters in general, but within a certain range. There is room for warranted confidence, even if their isn't for objective certainty.
I'm not really responding to Austin's post above, but giving other thoughts on the topic, since he brought it up. If we take the good elements he mentioned in our approach to theology and combine them with an apologetic stance that refuse to deny the possibility of knowing God as revealed, not as we make him up according to our perspectives, and of being able to accept God's authority on moral matters, although we can't be very certain based on our own sin-tainted reasoning, then we are in good stead.
Historic orthodox Christianity is based on historical facts communicated in literary form, however, and we can't allow our theology to be divorced from facts, and thus we must be able to note our interpretive presuppositions so that we will not be ruled by them, but not allow the fact that people have presuppositions take away our right to claim warranted and reasoned belief that cannot be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, but is certain enough to live our lives by.

Obsessions with obscurity

2008-11-30T21:04:00.000-08:00

I think I have a strange obsession with obscure Bible characters. The one I’ve focused on this week is Ebed-Melech. If you don’t remember who he is or where in the Bible to read about him, my point is proven when I say that he’s an Ethiopian in Jeremiah 38. I taught on that passage this weekend, realizing that I couldn’t count on much common knowledge about the story from the audience. Ebed-Melech (literally “servant of the king” for you non-Hebraists) is obviously not his real name, but apparently the author thinks his actions, his office and his ethnicity are more important to note than his real name. As I look through my past lessons and sermons, I see a couple of other characters in those passages who have a similar profile. The widow Elijah stayed with in the land of Sidon in 1 Kings 16. The Canaanite woman who calls out after Jesus in Matthew 15:21-28. All of these have in common that they are not identified by name, but by ethnicity and some other characteristic. And I think these characters, and others I’m sure I will stumble across as minor characters in the metanarrative, teach us some significant things.
They are all part of the overarching story of God’s relationship with the Jewish people, but none of them are Jews. Yet they all show faith and are rewarded by God for their faith. These are reminders, before the book of Romans spells it all out for us, that God’s people are recognized not by ethnicity or circumcision but by faith, no matter what their ancestry. This is something to be very grateful for as gentiles. Our people received revelation later than the privileged Jews, and we ought to remember and give thanks for God’s willingness to extend salvation beyond his chosen nation and graft us into his people. If it’s notable when non-Jews demonstrate faith, then we should view it as notable when we non-Jews receive salvation, and give thanks for it.
These examples are part of a recurring pattern in Scripture of faith appearing in unlikely people and places. When it comes to assurance of salvation, these are a reminder that those who seem to have things going for them because they are associated with religion are not always the ones who show faith in the Lord. I think we ought to be careful in quickly assuring people of salvation based on words they said or on their associations with lots of other believers. When people doubt salvation, it ought to be an impetus to examine their actions and motives to determine whether the fruit of the gospel of grace is in their lives. I doubt anyone would have picked Ebed-Melech over the Jewish officials as most likely to be saved from death before the circumstances played out. I doubt anyone would have picked the Canaanite woman to receive special favor from God incarnate while the Pharisees received criticism instead, but her desperate pleas from sincere faith surprise us. Let us point people to fruits of conversion for assurance, not formulaic prayers and secure social connections with church people.
If these characters play a part and their names are never remembered, I guess they are a lot like most of us. How many people who play roles that are great in the kingdom of God will never be remembered by name in future generations? Yet our acts done in faith and worship will have a lasting effect. If no one can remember my name, will my acts of faith be worth remembering? Do I have the humility to accept being a nameless player in the drama of God’s redemptive action in the world?

The Dialogues of Nato (proving Matt Richey's statement about corniness)

2008-11-30T20:43:00.000-08:00

I appreciate Austin Surls' question about spirituality - and I am incredibly annoyed by it at the same time, because it's so hard to clarify its definition. It seems, however, that "spiritual growth" as we use the term means growing in taking the good things God has put into our regenerated spirits and expressing them in very practical physical and emotional ways. There is also a certain tension involved in remembering that our spirits will last forever while our bodies and physical surroundings are destined to end before we receive new bodies and are placed on a new earth. Perhaps being spiritual means acting with our current physical bodies in htis temporary and broken physical world in light of the things that will be remembered, valued and rewarded when our spirits are brought into the newly perfected physical reality that is part of our future hope. Suggestions, postulations and thoughts...am I responding well to the question?
Matt Richey's question about God's love and hell also gives me some confusion. I like the worship song about the depth and breadth of God's love, but is it accurate when it says that God's love reaches to "the lowest hell"? It's easy to see how hell demonstrates God's justice, holiness and glory, but...oh, snap, I'm just repeating Matt's question. I have other questions on how "sheol," "gehenna" and "hades" are related, and how theology developed from the OT focus on the land and military judgment as the consequence of sin to the church's focus on the eternal state and helfire - it seems to be assumed by Jesus' culture, while it's not mentioned much in the OT.

The Mystery of a God Who Allows Mysteries

2008-11-20T21:27:00.000-08:00

The God of the Bible is mysterious, and this is a wonderful thing. I have been both puzzled and awed so many times as I consider the way he works. The problem of evil has been presented by both Christian and non-Christian thinkers in every generation. God knew that people would wonder how such great evil can exist when the world was created by a good God. Why didn't he spell out for us more clearly his reasons for the way He orders things? Surely He is in the right, if only we could understand. But when Job questioned God about the sufferings he endured, God never really spelled out to him why he allowed those things to happen. Instead, the Lord reminded Job of the greatness, majesty and wisdom He possesses that transcends what every other being possesses. Job saw that he, as a mere man, was in no place to question God, and God saw that as a fitting conclusion. In Ecclesiastes similar questions come up about futility, injustice and suffering. Again, there is no clear answer to the questions given, but rather the wise teacher writing the book calls his readers to respond by enjoying the good things God has given in life and recognizing that God is in control of the mysterious things, even if we don't understand what's going on. There are some answers to this question in Scripture that give partial explanations, but no single, great answer that removes all doubt.
We've just finished discussions on election and predestination in Dr. Jacobson's Soteriology class this quarter. I've been struck by how the Bible says explicitly in several places that God has chosen to save the elect and that he is the one who ensures this process happens, but yet I haven't talked to anyone who felt like they were forced to be saved. I know many people who believe in irresistible grace, but none of them feel they have been dragged into salvation against their will, kicking and screaming. Through some inscrutable and delectable method, God causes or persuades those he desires to save to desire salvation. He doesn't explain why he passes by some, and he doesn't tip His hand as to precisely who every person he intends to save is, or exactly how he intends to save them. God doesn't offer any defense or explanation as to why he would pass by some and allow them to face judgment while he saves others who don't deserve it. We are simply told that He has chosen some "to the praise of His glorious grace." (Eph. 1:6)
The thing that amazes me is that our omniscient God leaves these questions hanging and allows foolish and blind human beings to rage against him, calling him cruel and unjust. And for a time, He has endured (and continues to endure) their anger, rebellion and slander against Him. He even graciously overlooks some serious complaining and grumbling from His own children, as I keep rediscovering when I recognize yet again that my attitude has turned sour and ungrateful. It's tremendous to observe that our God is so powerful, so mysterious, and so patient with our limitations and confusion. Why does He leave these questions hanging? Why does He settle for ambiguity, when He could clear things up pretty easily if He wanted to, and silence a lot of criticisms and complaints? I am left scratching my head, a bit confused, and once again I find my jaw beginning to drop as I ponder that He has acted wisely and mysteriously, to the praise of His great glory.

Responses to the blogging community

2008-11-15T14:37:00.000-08:00

Another full post is in the works, but here's a little bit of material in the meantime: I appreciated my brother Matt Richey's post on a fuller pro-life position. It's so good to always seek out the areas where our thinking systems are inconsistent. War creates opportunities for human wickedness and cruelty to express itself, and is certainly not desirable. I see again and again just how quick our video-saturated culture is to laugh at violence, or to be intrigued with that which ought to be appalling, and not to feel any remorse because it's "only" a video or movie.

Venti Americano raises a good question about the term religion. Somehow we have to distinguish genuine practice of a relationship with God through faith from the many things that bring shame and scandal to the term "religion." I'm not convinced that we can honestly reject the term, because evangelicalism fits one definition of religion. But we must make a distinction when we explain our faith between true religion, which includes relationship with God and transformed living, and that which is hypocritical and uses the labels and structures of religion for harmful ends.

If you are one of the weirdos like me who has one foot in the Baptist church and one in the world that adores hip-hop, you'll get a good laugh out of the video my good friend Brad posted. Maybe we should get this choir to perform for NBS chapel.

In line with my earlier posts about the purpose of Christians engaging in seeking to help the poor and better the world, I want to share a poem I ran across last week that has encouraged and inspired me. (Please forgive the hints of sacramentalism - there is still much to be learned from it).

A Future Not Our Own

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
It is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny
fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No programme accomplishes the
church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives
includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that will one day grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing
that they hold future promise
We lay foundations that will need
further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond
our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
And there is a sense of liberation in
realizing that
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a
step along the way
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and
do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
But that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw
(often attributed to the late Archbishop Oscar Romero)

Reading the news with whoever-the-author-of-Hebrews-was

2008-11-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

People killed. Homes burned. Refugees gathering in camps, fearful for their lives and wondering where they’ll be safe, or if they’ll ever be able to return and rebuild their homes. You can find a story like this during any given week coming out of some part of the world. But this particular story has even more interest and concern on our part – the attacks are specifically targeted against Christians. Believer’s homes and church buildings are being burned, and the militants have even made attacks on the refugee camps set up by the Indian government. The numbers as of October 25^th showed 38 dead and 30,000 homeless. Who is attacking these believers and why? Hindu hardliners in the Northeast Indian provinces of Orissa, Bihar, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh have unleashed violence on the Christians there, and have continued even after a government force was deployed to attempt to stop the attacks. Tim Sullivan of the Associated Press cites Hindu leaders who claim that there has been a “cultural invasion” by Christian missionaries in the area. Sullivan explains that their primary complaint is with regard to government jobs that are reserved for underprivileged groups, especially the Dalit caste (sometimes referred to as “untouchables”) and tribal peoples. The tribal groups have mostly remained Hindu, but an increasing number of Dalits have become Christian. The Hindus hold that their Christianity should disqualify them for the jobs, but they have gotten positions anyway. Christian groups in the area have been active in providing education and medical care for Dalits, who have been repressed for centuries by the caste system, and this has surely had an impact on the number of converts. The Hindus, however, accuse the Christians of bribing the poor to convert.

The reference to a culture war is sobering. I am reminded of the blessing that the culture war we talk about waging as American Christians does not result in actual violence and deaths. God has been good to us in our country by granting us peace between religious groups. The Indian Christian groups (many of the “missionaries” referenced are from other regions of India, not from the Western world) are fighting a culture of systematic religious, economic and political repression of Dalits with the compassion and desire for justice that characterizes the people of God. And they are facing a physically violent war.

The author of Hebrews exhorts his readers to “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” We ought to respond by praying sincerely for our brothers and sisters who are being mistreated.

Christian leaders in the region are showing admirable courage and faith in the face of persecution. Juria Bardhan, Gospel for Asia's state leader in Orissa, said about the situation, "We know the Lord is in control. Many of our pastors have said, 'Even if they kill us, no problem. This will cause thousands to come to Christ,' " For others, the situation is not so certain. Sullivan’s AP article concludes with his conversation he had with a Christian who had been threatened and commanded to convert repeatedly by armed Hindus:

"What can we do?" asked Digal, the man dangling his baby. "They are trying to force us to become Hindu."

So will he convert?

"I don't know," he said, staring down at the ground. "I haven't decided yet."

Let’s pray for strength and faithfulness for our brothers and sisters, for peace to come to the region, and for their persecutors to see the love of God in them and come to belief. Let’s also praise God that he is at work in a place like Orissa, which used to be 2% Christian and is now 28%.

Reading the news with Isaiah

2008-10-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

"Is this not the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard...

...if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light arise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.
~Isaiah 58:6-8, 10

Here is a favorite Biblical theme of my generation: the burden of God that structural injustice be done away with, and personal compassion for the poor and oppressed take its place. When followers of God play a part in making these things happen, we are effective in providing glimpses of the happily-ever-after. As Americans, we are blessed with a political structure concerned with the rights of each person and so are not always exposed directly to structural injustice. We have much freedom to exercise personal compassion in a capitalist system. And believers in Christ have responded and are responding to poverty and oppression in ways that reflect the love and concern of a compassionate God. Among the untouchable castes in India, in the dark world of sex trafficing in the U.S. and abroad, and in the midst of the AIDS crisis that grips whole regions of the world.
An issue that has gotten big press in the past year has been the world food crisis, as people in places like Haiti and Ethiopia have become unable to get basic food staples due to rising food prices worldwide combined with regional crop failures or political turmoil. The oil and food prices that caused Americans the inconveniences of having to take shorter vacations, eat out less, and maybe buy fewer ipods caused men to go down to one meal a day and women and children to even less in many parts of the world. Direct giving to one of the dozens of Christian organizations working on these problems should be an automatic response for believers blessed with affluence. Even if it seems that there's nothing to spare in our own tightened budgets, we could do something as simple as eating rice for a week (like many of our brothers and sisters do on a regular basis) and appropriating the rest of our normally budgeted grocery money to help churches in underdeveloped countries feed their poor.
But what about structures and policies that exacerbate the problem? In an election year, how do we look for policies that help the global poor? There is a strong consensus among international agencies that agricultural subsidies in the Western world hurt farmers and consumers in developing countries. The most prominent example of this recently has been ethanol subsidies. Because the U.S. chose to subsidize corn crops for ethanol, grain prices became linked with fuel prices, and as fuel prices went up, so did food prices. For the sake of U.S. energy independence and dubious claims of environmental benefit, we enacted policies that hurt the poor.
As President Bush pushed for increased levels of food aid in response to the crisis, another little problem arises: U.S. laws require that any food aid sent overseas be U.S.-grown crops. This means the food-aid dollars don't go nearly as far because of transportation costs. Bush asked for a portion of the food aid to be in cash, but congress did not approve this.
Add this to the agricultural subsidies that the U.S. and Western European nations have been giving for years that raise food prices andmake it harder for farmers in developing countries to export cash crops to the Western world, and we have something that requires a thoughtful response on our part. Has our nationalism gotten in the way of our concern for the poor? Are we sacrificing the emaciated bodies of starving children on the altar of fuel independence and "stopping climate change"? Are we tilting the economic playing field in favor of American farmers at the cost of pricing the worldwide poor out of the market for the necessities of daily life? I hesitate to recommend specific policies beause politics and economics are so complicated and interrelated, but this is one that seems pretty clear. Humans, created in God's image, are a higher concern than national security (if you're a political conservative) or the potentialities of global climate change (if you're a political liberal). Nationalistic economic selfishness must give way to structures that do not make life more difficult for the poor. Where do your candidates stand on subsidies?

Reading the news with the Apostle Paul

2008-10-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

It's a crisis. The economy of the U.S. and the world is in "crisis," "meltdown," or whatever other term garners the most political attention and sells news media. While government officials and economists debate the best way to "solve the problem," I have a few reflections on how to think Christianly about what is happening. First, the whole situation gives us a grave reminder of the greed and discontentment that drives and controls sinful human beings. As Al Mohler cited in his blog back on October 3rd,the debt of American households in 2006 was 100% of the gross domestic product. We have been one of the wealthiest nations in the world for years, enjoying luxuries far, far above what the majority of the world enjoys. Close to 3 billion people worldwide live on $2 a day or less, but we as a culture have decided that our incredibly lavish standard of living is not enough if we live within our means. No, we deserve much more, and deserve it now. We would do well to remember and to remind each other that "there is great gain in godliness with contentment." (1 Tim. 6:6) While we still have our wealth, let's use it to "be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share (1 Tim. 6:18)," not to rush headlong off the cliff of reckless borrowing to get more and more things with no lasting value. This seems like such a basic and trite idea for those of us who have been in the church for awhile, but is obviously one that is easy to forget. If contentment, discipline and generosity came easy to human beings, there wouldn't be a financial "meltdown" to solve. And as the economy takes a downward turn, possibly for a long time, this is an even more critical time to give generously and sacrificially. As we guard against risks and tighten our belts, let's nonetheless be willing to follow the example of the Macedonian church and allow our "test" to overflow in generosity. (2 Cor. 8:1-2) To be honest and personal, as one living below the poverty line and not owning stock or a home, I'm kind of liking the drop in gasoline prices thanks to the downturn...

Snapshots of the happily ever after

2008-10-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

Here’s a thought I’ve found very inspiring as I’ve pondered the significance of seeking to help the poor, to make peace in relationships, and to do one’s dead-level best to help people out of situations that they don’t seem to want to help themselves out of. These thoughts are born out of a very practical desire: the desire to believe that my efforts are worth something in God’s eyes, even though it seems like every time one person is genuinely helped three others take a turn for the worse. Revelation 21:3-4 describes the wonderful situation of the New Jerusalem this way: “‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”
I’m afraid that too often the mindset is that this day will be great, but until then “The poor will always be with us,” so why try to tackle problems like poverty and oppression, when we have a much greater work to do in preaching the gospel? Preaching the message of the gospel is indeed the greatest call we have as Christians. And I think the current trends in evangelicalism are making our gospel no longer too small, but too big. Political activism and social programs are no substitute for life-changing spiritual truth. But if we are going to preach the hope of a coming day when the Lord Jesus will make all things perfect, then we as his followers must seek to show the world (and ourselves) glimpses of what this kingdom will be like in our own spheres of influence. In spite of our personal sins, in spite of the collected effects of all the sins in our society that distort our perception of what it means to be human and to live in community, the Holy Spirit indwelling us as believers provides the clearest picture of this future new creation that’s available during our brief chapter in the great metanarrative. Our descriptions of Jesus, the great king, and his perfect kingdom become so much more convincing when our Christian communities, as they are imbedded in their local human communities, provide sweet foretastes of what Christ’s society will be like.
The key element that can quickly be forgotten when we get excited about social engagement is that the glory of Jesus Christ must be at the center of it all. When this happens, the premillenialist has encouragement regardless of whether the effects of his or her ministry are perceived as lasting by the public. If I devote my life to aiding the poor in the slums of a city in a developing nation, the trailer parks of rural America, or a ghetto near you, there will most likely still be poor people there when I die. (If not, it’s because the city did a redevelopment project and pushed the poor people into a different neighborhood or a different city.) No matter how excited an idealistic 25-year-old can get about the money she gave or helped raise to feed the starving children in some region of Africa, the sad reality is that there will still be starving children in some region of Africa when her great-great-grandchildren are idealistic 25-year olds. The key element in these projects is that along the way snapshots of the justice, peace and love that will be evident in the final kingdom appear before the eyes of people living in a world where some days all they see is evil. If we educate, feed, and clothe the masses because we have the same kind of compassion UNICEF has, nothing happens that affects eternity. But if we give sacrificially, lovingly and compassionately and point to the coming blessings of Jesus Christ and his kingdom, then our works are pebbles tossed into a dark and polluted pond that have ripple effects that carry past the edges of that pond and into eternity.

You will not be in heaven forever and why this matters

2008-10-07T03:52:00.000-07:00

Just as way of introduction, I am Matt Richey, a friend, brother, and fellow seminarian of Nate Duriga's. He asked me to contribute a post to his blog and here we are. It is fitting that this follows Nate's first blog as it deals with many of the same subjects and issues. If you wish to read and provide feedback in my blog as well that would make me happy, whether you know me or not: http://faithforgedindoubt.blogspot.com/ I look forward to interacting with you and Nate in our conversations.

When you read my title, depending upon who you are and what is your theological background, you might have immediately branded me a heretic, became panicky, or were instantly bored with old and irrelevant theology. All three reactions are wrong and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

If you reacted by assuming that I was a heretic, mistaken, unbiblical, or confused, you may have misunderstood the teachings of Scripture on the eternal state. The Bible does not teach that we will spend eternity in heaven. Our hope instead is based in our future bodily resurrection, made possible by the bodily resurrection of Jesus (I Corinthians 15). Romans reminds us the we look forward to 'the redemption of our body'. So we are raised bodily- I guess I knew that- but what does that have to do with heaven? Just like we are not headed for an eternity away from the body, neither are we headed for an eternity away from God's physical creation, the earth. We, and the earth, are looking forward to the day when the flawed will again become perfect, as God created it to be. As we look to the day when we will no longer sin, age, or die, so we look forward to the day when the earth will be without the curse, recreated back in line with God's original assessment: good. Romans 8, Isaiah 65, and Revelation 21 make it clear that there will come a day when God's physical creation will be freed from the effects of sin and God will create a new heavens and a new earth. It is here where we will dwell for eternity and rule with Christ, not in the celestial realm lounging on a cloud with our harps and halos.
If you began panicking at the thought of not spending eternity in heaven, don't! This is a good thing not a bad thing. This does not mean that we will away from God's presence, God's presence will be more obvious and enjoyable than ever before. Revelation 21:3 declares that, "...the tabernacle of God is among men and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them." This magnificent passage continues with the well known and often quoted verse, "and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." This is not a description of heaven, as we so often assume, but of life on the new earth! The new earth will be beautiful beyond description and unmatched by any place we have ever experienced. Try and imagine life without death, pain, and evil. Attempt to describe a place without the effects of sin and the curse. We have no idea what this means because we are so used to living with these things. They've become what we think of as normal, yet this was not what God intended to be normative. What will life be like there? Something like life was supposed to be here before Adam and/or Eve (whomever you prefer to blame) messed it all up, only better. No longer will sin rear its ugly head or Satan entice us to rebel against our Maker. We will have pure and unhindered fellowship with the Father, Son, and Spirit.
The third reaction is a common reaction to theological truths, but it is perhaps the most wrongheaded of all. We are tempted (myself included) to think that theology doesn't matter or that it has no relevancy to our daily lives. Perhaps this is partly the fault of theologians and pastors whose approach to theology makes it seem so, but if this is you, you're wrong. As a professor of mine says, you always live your theology, whether you are aware of it or not. Here are several reasons I think it is important that we understand our 'earthly eternity':

If we think and speak of our eternity as merely a heavenly one, we may believe, or at least communicate to others, that our destiny is merely spiritual and not physical. We may be tempted to believe that the physical does not matter because 'it's all going to burn anyway'. The physical is important to God. God created us as physical beings in a physical world with physical realities. How we handle our bodies and our world matters.
We should not view or accept sin and death and pain as normal but as a perversion of God's creation. All creation groans because of the effects of sin and death; we ought to groan with it.
All creation eagerly awaits the redemption of the physical, so also we ought to live in anticipation of not only a new earth, but a new us. I Corinthians 15 again: "Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory?O death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." But doesn't this reinforce the idea that our physical bodies are of no importance in the here and now? Doesn't the belief that there will be a new heavens and earth support the idea that the heavens and earth we have now matters little? No more than the belief in that our justification and the forgiveness of our sins allows us to live however we want. We recognize that the way that God intended life and the way that God created the world is how it should be and what is best. Someone who lives life fleeing God's intended purpose for her will not be satisfied in her pursuits. They will all be vain and empty. A life lived as God intended and designed will come the nearest to true satisfaction in fulfilling one's purpose in this life.
Living with eternity in mind ought to remind us that how God created us and the earth to be originally and how it and we will be in eternity is best also in the present. We ought to take care of this earth because God originally set us as caretakers over it. We ought to take care of our physical bodies because God created us as physical beings and our bodies are good and gifts from our Father. We ought to treat them as such. This does not that we become narcissists who worship ourselves for our own beauty nor pagans who worship the creation of the Creator; but that we are thankful, appreciative, and good stewards of God's gifts and entrusted responsibility.
The last reason is similar to the second: We ought never to forget that we are not fighting a losing battle. As a premillenialist, I may be tempted with or accused of the 'its all going to pot' mentality, but this is wrongheaded thinking. God will redeem the physical. Our efforts on this earth will not end in defeat. Creation will once again be beautiful as God's original design was beautiful. Our primary mission on this earth is to 'make disciples'. This will have lasting value, not only in our temporary holding place (heaven), but upon our eternal dwelling, the new earth. We need not work with a defeatist attitude but with the realization that one day, creation will worship her creator without the effects of sin's intrusion. The work we do in this life on this earth will reverberate in the next life and upon the new earth. We are not fighting a losing battle, only a very long battle with only apparent defeats along the way.

I wish to close this with Paul's exhortation from the last verse of I Corinthians 15:

"Therefore, my brothers (and sisters), be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord."

Why heavenly minded Christians care about earthly realities (even premillenialists!)

2008-10-01T15:06:00.001-07:00

There seems to be a common perception that Christians in my faith community’s confessional stream – those who take a premillenial view of eschatology – only care about getting people saved out of the world, and not taking any action to make their world better. I have seen many, however, who are highly active in helping the poor, seeking to create or transform culture, and even caring for the environment. I think that premillenialists have some good reasons for being involved in these activities. While we do in fact look to heavenly realities as of greatest importance, we ought to work hard to prove false the accusations of being useless on earth. There are some good and coherent reasons why dispensational premillenialists should do this, and I want to discuss some of them in this and forthcoming posts.
We clean our houses even though we know that they will get dirty again. We mow our lawns, even though we know that the grass will grow again. One day that house will become old and dilapidated, and it will be torn down. Perhaps one day that lawn will be overgrown with weeds or seized by the EPA because it is home to a certain kind of potato bug that has become an endangered species. However, we don’t throw up our hands and say, “If that’s how this is going to end, I’m not going to put any effort into making it better now.” But why do we continue to care for it? Because most of us enjoy living in clean, attractive, and somewhat orderly places. Because the condition of our living spaces reflects on our character as individuals and our level of responsibility. And because we want to honor the preferences and expectations of our families and communities.
As believers, our care for society ought to represent the character of Someone much greater than we are. We are members of a community that will last much longer than the few years of our earthly lives. When we stand up against injustice to the poor, give generously to their needs, and invest in their lives to give them the skills and resources to overcome poverty, we do so because we want to reflect the character of Christ. Meeting their temporal needs shows them the reality of love and compassion of Jesus. If, despite our best efforts, those we help never rise out of poverty, our efforts were a success because we demonstrated the love of Christ to the observing world. Our care for society as believers, and especially a compassionate concern for the poor, reflects the character of God to the watching world. If we are never successful in eliminating all poverty (and we never will be in a fallen world), we are still successful if we are consistently showing the character of Christ by concern for the welfare of our communities, culture, and environment. Christian social action should display to the world the character of Christ.

Entering the blogosphere

2008-10-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

The title Impoverished Sage reflects the concepts in Proverbs 2-4, where Solomon emphatically exhorts his son to get wisdom and understanding, because they are far more valuable than silver, gold or jewels. As my life story unfolds, I keep moving further away from financial abundance or security, but uncovering wisdom in God’s Word, in my experiences, in history, in the examples of the Godly men and women who are my seniors, and in the words of my brothers and sisters in the Lord who speak openly and sincerely about what God is doing in their lives. Thus far I’ve managed to achieve the Impoverished part of the title, and I hold out hope that one day I’ll have the wisdom of a Sage. Even if it takes great sacrifice to get there, I believe it will be worthwhile.
As learning occurs more effectively in community, much of what is written on this blog will be shaped by the insights gaining from those at my present community of learning, Northwest Baptist Seminary, and many contributions will be written by members of that community as well.