White Rose Review

Evolution and Infanticide--The Deep Connection

2012-03-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

Infanticide is back in the news. Of course, the trendy new oxymoron for this practice is "after-birth abortion." It is important to see the philosophical presuppositions that lie underneath the ethics that allow for infanticide. Back in 1983 philosopher Peter Singer published an article "Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life? in Pediatrics (July, 1983) in which he speaks of the erosion of the "sanctity-of-life view." His words are almost 30 years old and they have set the course for a certain trajectory of bioethical thinking. Here is a portion of his essay that lays out his philosophical understanding:

Whatever the future holds, it is likely to prove impossible to restore in full the sanctity-of-life view. The philosophical foundations of this view have been knocked asunder. We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God, singled out from all other animals, and alone possessing an immortal soul. Our better understanding of our own nature has bridged the gulf that was once thought to lie between ourselves and other species, so why should we believe that the mere fact that a being is a member of the species Homo Sapiens endows it life with some unique, almost infinite value?

Singer clearly sees the connection between the belief in creation in God's image and the sanctity of life. He furthers argues that since we now know that this has been "knocked asunder" because there is no morally significant gap between us as humans and other species. All of this must be predicated upon a foundation of naturalistic evolutionism. Consider the words of Douglas Futuyma:

Perhaps most importantly, if the world and its creatures developed purely by material, physical forces, it could not have been designed and has no purpose or goal...Some shrink from the conclusion that the human species was not designed, has no purpose, and is the product of mere material mechanisms--but this seems to be the message of evolution. Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (Pantheon, 1983), pp. 12-13

Naturalistic evolutionism militates against design, teleology, and purpose. All that is left is the material world that can be acted upon by the forces of physics, chemistry, and biology. Under such a materialistic conception the very notion of "human nature" becomes problematic. J. P. Moreland, in his critical discussion of naturalistic versions of evolutionary psychology writes:

[T]here most likely is no such thing as human nature understood as the essentialist claim that there is some range of properties that all and only humans share and that grounds their membership in the natural kind "being human." Darwin's theory of evolution has made belief in, for instance, human substances with human natures, though logically possible, nevertheless, quite implausible.

Moreland goes on to quote evolutionary philosopher David Hull:

The implications of moving species from the metaphysical category that can appropriately be characterized in terms of 'natures' to a category for which such characterizations are inappropriate are extensive and fundamental. If species evolve in anything like the way that Darwin thought they did, then they cannot possibly have the sort of natures that traditional philosophers claimed they did. If species in general lack natures, then so does Homo Sapiens as a biological species. If Homo Sapiens lacks a nature, then no reference to biology can be made to support one's claim about 'human nature.' Perhaps all people are 'persons,' share the same 'personhood,' etc., but such claims must be explicated and defended with no reference to biology. Because so many moral, ethical, and political theories depend on some notion or other of human nature, Darwin's theory brought into question all these theories. The implications are not entailments. One can always dissociate 'Homo Sapiens' from 'human being,' but the result is a much less plausible position. J. P. Moreland "Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Psychology as Research Programs: A Comparison of Their Most Plausible Specifications" in Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue, edited by Robert B. Stewart (Fortress, 2007), pp. 129-130.

It is such ideas that underly the disjunction between being a member of the class Homo Sapiens (being a "human being") and the concept of "personhood." A recent article discussing infanticide is dependent upon precisely this disjunction. The authors of this article simply state the disjunction in the following manner:

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a 'person' in the sense of 'subject of a moral right to life.' Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva "After-birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?" Journal of Medical Ethics (2012), p. 2.

This disjunction between "human life" and "human personhood" is sometimes difficult to understand for those new to the discussion. It is important to see the deep underlying connection between evolutionary theory and the disappearance of human value. Once evolutionary presuppositions are held then the ontological status of the human being changes. Evolutionary assumptions allow only for naturalistic materialism. The human being is a creature of matter only. There are no immaterial aspects (i.e., spirit, soul, or substantive mind) only matter which is continually evolving. Furthermore, the underlying matter which makes up the human constitution is simply the same material base (albeit reconfigured) that the rest of the animal kingdom participates in. "Personhood" is, then, not a function of being created in the image of God. Rather, it is becomes an arbitrary set point defined by what other humans deem appropriate. In the current intellectual climate "functionalist" categories become the deciding factor for what determines "personhood." The authors above arguing for the moral acceptability of infanticide offer their definition of "personhood" with following words:

We take 'person' to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her. (Ibid.)

Without this ability then there is no "personhood." Without "personhood" then the interests of these "potential persons" is morally nil. Without the grounding of "personhood" in the transcendent Creator who made us then there is no hinderance to treating people less than animals. Coming back to Peter Singer, he writes in the above mentioned Pediatrics article:

Once the religious mumbo-jumbo surrounding the term "human" has been stripped away, we may continue to see normal members of our species as possessing greater capacities or rationality, self-consciousness, communication, and so on, than members of any other species; but we will not regard as sacrosanct the life of each and every member of our species, no matter how limited its capacity for intelligent or even conscious life may be. If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication, and anything else that can be plausibly be considered morally significant. Only the fact that the defective infant is a member of the species Homo Sapiens leads it to be treated differently from the dog or pig. Species membership alone, however, is not morally relevant. Humans who bestow superior value on the lives of all human beings, solely because they are members of own species, are judging along the lines strikingly similar to those used by white racists who bestow superior value on the lives of other whites, merely because they are members of their own race.

In denying the reality of the living God as our Creator we have simultaneously diminished humanity. If mankind is nothing more than the resultant by-product of matter, time, and chance--an ever evolving conglomeration of matter burped up in a sea of chance--then there can be no transcendent value. Without God we do not bear the image of God. And, as Singer rightly reasons, without the image of God there is no sanctity of life.

"After-Birth Abortion" Article Continues to Cause Uproar

2012-03-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Alberto Giubilini and Fransceca Minerva recently published an article "After-birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?" which has caused quite a fire storm of protest. I wrote about the issue HERE. Now the authors of the controversial article have released an open letter attempting to clarify their intentions. They begin with the following words:

"When we decided to write this article about after-birth abortion we had no idea that our paper would raise such a heated debate.
“Why not? You should have known!” people keep on repeating everywhere on the web. The answer is very simple: the article was supposed to be read by other fellow bioethicists who were already familiar with this topic and our arguments. Indeed, as Professor Savulescu explains in his editorial, this debate has been going on for 40 years.
We started from the definition of person introduced by Michael Tooley in 1975 and we tried to draw the logical conclusions deriving from this premise. It was meant to be a pure exercise of logic: if X, then Y."

According to Giubilini and Minerva their paper was to be an exercise in logic and not a call for policy action enacted by legal statute. Wesley J. Smith has written a response their "open letter" that is brilliant. Part of what he says accurately puts their words in perspective.

"But that is precisely why it was important that the public sit up and take notice. Bioethics is no mere debating society in which participants debate the propriety of infanticide today and oppose it tomorrow. Rather, the field is — and has been since its inception — about changing the values and public policies of society. As USC bioethics professor Alexander M. Capron once noted, “Bioethical analysis has been linked to action.” Bioethics historian Albert R. Jonsen has called bioethics a “social movement.” None other than Daniel Callahan, one of the movement’s founding fathers, wrote that “the emergence ideologically of a form of bioethics that dovetailed nicely with the reigning political liberalism of the educated classes in America” accounted for much of the movement’s influence and clout.
Bioethicists haven’t discoursed about infanticide for 40 years because they enjoy exploring novel concepts, but rather, because it isn’t easy to convince people — not even bioethicists — that killing babies is acceptable. Giubilini and Minerva pretend they are not part of that process of persuasion:
[W]e never meant to suggest that after-birth abortion should become legal. This was not made clear enough in the paper. Laws are not just about rational ethical arguments, because there are many practical, emotional, social aspects that are relevant in policy making (such as respecting the plurality of ethical views, people’s emotional reactions. etc.). But we are not policy makers, we are philosophers, and we deal with concepts, not with legal policy.
But gaining the philosophical high ground is precisely how radical bioethical ideas have historically been implemented. Here is the pattern: In the 1960s, the propriety of abortion was actively promoted in professional journals, leading directly to the great denouement of Roe v. Wade. Similarly, in the 1970s, bioethicists argued that it should be acceptable to withdraw feeding tubes from people with severe brain damage, an idea that was once beyond the pale. After a general bioethical consensus toward that end was achieved, the “concept” soon became public policy. Now, people who are unconscious and minimally conscious are dehydrated to death in all 50 states as a matter of medical routine."

Giubilini and Minerva seem blissfully ignorant and totally shocked at the public outcry of their ideas. They wanted to serenely debate the merits of infanticide in an ivory tower (why they put their thoughts on the "world wide web" is a question to ponder) with other academics--"perhaps a spot of Earl Grey to enhance the ambience as we discuss killing newborn babies!" The old adage is profoundly true: Ideas have consequences. Killing whole segments of humanity is not an abstraction. This has been done in our past. Can you imagine an article written in 1935 which raised the logic of exterminating the Jewish race and then attempted to justify this by speaking of it merely as an exercise in logic? It is a good thing that there was and is an outcry against the idea of infanticide. It shows that although our cultural moral compass may be defective it is not completely destroyed.

Tattoos and the Christian

2012-03-05T11:08:00.001-07:00

Our men's study recently looked at Lorne Zelyck's article "Under the Needle: An Ethical Evaluation of Tattoos and Body Piercings." Originally the article appeared in the Christian Research Journal vol. 28, number 6 (2005) but can be accessed HERE. I'm hopeful of engaging this issue here in some blog posts but until then here are a few items...

1. Here is an article on a Lenten tattoos. Inking for Jesus.

2. Christian philosopher Timothy Dalrymple has a very insightful article entitled "The Flesh Made Word" which looks at the current evangelical youth craze of putting Bible verses or phrases on one's body. Here are some of his comments:

More common in general is the practice of tattooing Chinese characters, and more common in Christian circles is the practice of tattooing Bible verses or biblical or theological phrases. This is especially interesting in the light of the theology of the LOGOS and the incarnation. In the incarnation, the LOGOS, the eternal Word, became flesh. The LOGOS transcended the world and its changefulness, representing the eternal truth and the power by which all things were called into Creation. But when a Christian tattoos a Bible verse or a faith-phrase upon her body, she makes her body into a text. She reverses the incarnation of Christ; in her de-incarnation she is making the body, what is prone to messiness and effluvia and decay, into a true and eternal Word. They are turning themselves into the Bible, or a part thereof.
There’s something laudable in this: stating that these truths are the ultimate and unchanging truths of who I am. Yet I also wonder if they represent a running away from our carnality, a running away from the things that Christ affirmed in the incarnation. I wonder too whether tattoos like these — and all tattoos — might sometimes work like frosting upon a store window — presenting a surface that seeks not to externalize but to conceal what lies within. Does the person who stamps “God’s Son” upon his skin really believe it?

3. HERE is a story about a racist "skin head" who had his tattoos removed when he changed his heart.

"If the World Hates You..."

2012-03-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

John 14-16 is a continual feast for the soul. John 15.18-19 stood out today...

If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.

There is an enmity and antithesis with the world. So often I can be lulled into thinking that living for Christ means everything is going to be nice and everybody is going to appreciate that and respond with kindness. Jesus here talks of a hatred that can and does come from the world. This is a hatred because of Christ. Our allegiance to Jesus brings us into a realm of those who hate that allegiance. Jesus points us to his own experience. He knows the hatred of the world. Its hatred put him to death. This we know and this knowledge should wake us up to the fact that we too as his followers can expect the same treatment. As the antithesis in our culture becomes more pronounced and explicit we can expect to see more and more overt hatred for the things of Christ and those who claim him as their Lord and Savior. As the vestiges of Christendom (or what Francis Schaeffer called the "Christian consensus") are dismantled in our country there will be less and less resistance to impede direct hatred for Christ and his people. The words of our Lord may take on renewed significance for us in such a context.

40 Days for Life Update--148 Babies Saved!

2012-03-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

It is day 13 of the current 40 Days for Life campaign. Here is a selection from the daily update.

Happy Monday!

OK, many people dread Mondays. But if you follow these
updates, you know Mondays always bring wonderful news
to start the week.

Thus far during this 40 Days for Life campaign, we know
of at least ...

... 148 babies spared from abortion!

Praise God!

Here are a few of the stories, starting with a save at
one of the most hostile abortion centers in America.

-------------------------------------------------------
RENO, NEVADA
-------------------------------------------------------

One of the volunteers in Reno headed to the 40 Days for
Life vigil -- just barely remembering to bring her
"I regret my abortion" sign.

"I was praying specifically that God would stir a heart
within the building," she said. There were plenty of
distractions. This is the abortion center that blasts
foul music over an outdoor sound system, and posts
"anti-protester" signs on the fence around the property.

She soon noticed an SUV pulling out of the driveway
with a young couple in the front seat. The woman,
sitting in the passenger’s seat, was in tears.

The young man driving stopped and rolled down his
window. "She didn't do it," he said. He told the
volunteer, "She saw your sign -- and didn't want to
do it."

"They were both so grateful that we were there praying
and sharing our personal hurt," she said. "I'm so
grateful that God can make beauty from ashes." And,
she said, grateful that two first-time vigil
participants got to experience God's saving power
through prayer.

-------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON, DC
-------------------------------------------------------

One of the prayer volunteers at the 40 Days for Life
vigil in Washington watched as a young couple walked
into Planned Parenthood. He quickly tried to say a
few words as the door was closing.

The young woman seemed interested in what the volunteer
was saying, and she glanced back at him -- through
Planned Parenthood's glass front doors -- several
times. But then they disappeared inside.

"A couple of hours later, they came out," he said.
The young woman "told me she changed her mind about
having an abortion and will keep her baby."

A Planned Parenthood escort tried to discourage the
couple from talking to him, but finally gave up when
it was obvious the young man and woman wanted to take
his pro-life information.

-------------------------------------------------------
AUSTIN, TEXAS
-------------------------------------------------------

Patricia, an Austin prayer volunteer, met a young
couple who were seeking an abortion. They told her they
really did not want the abortion, but due to their
financial situation they felt they had no other choice.

Patricia was able to share information about positive
community resources. The couple found one of the
recommended heath care providers and made an appointment
right away. They were determined that if there was an
alternative, they were going to find it.

The couple also picked out a pregnancy resource center
and said they would go there immediately after their
appointment at the healthcare clinic. They thanked
Patricia and drove out of the parking lot.

They chose life!

Union with Christ

2012-03-01T17:10:00.001-07:00

Years ago I read most of John Murray's little book Redemption: Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans, 1955)--most, but not all. It is a great book that I have often gone back to in teaching in order to refresh myself with aspects of salvation. In one of those weird twists of life I had never finished the book and so I never read chapter 9 entitled "Union with Christ"--that is, until last week. WOW! Murray is not known for flowery prose but his unpacking of this truth was simply awesome. Here are few lines that moved me:

Nothing is more central or basic than union and communion with Christ. (p. 161)

Apart from union with Christ we cannot view past, present, or future with anything but dismay and Christless dread. By union with Christ the whole complexion of time and eternity is changed and the people of God may rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. (p. 165)

The life of faith is the life of love, and the life of love is the life of fellowship, or mystic communion with him who ever lives to make intercession for his people and who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. It is fellowship with him who has an inexhaustible reservoir of sympathy with his people's temptations, afflictions, and infirmities because he was tempted in all points like as they are, yet without sin. The life of true faith cannot be that of cold metallic assent. It must have the passion and warmth of love and communion because communion with God is the crown and apex of true religion. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3).

Union with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation. (p. 170)

There is no truth, therefore, more suited to impart confidence and strength, comfort and joy in the Lord than this one of union with Christ. (p. 171).

"After-birth Abortion": Political Correct Infanticide

2012-02-29T11:23:00.001-07:00

A recent Journal of Medical Ethics article takes up the task of defending infanticide. The article is entitled "After-birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?" and is written by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. Infanticide--the killing of newborn babies--is usually not spoken of in such a cavalier and detached manner but our authors simply reason that whatever reasons justify the taking of the life of the fetus will also serve as appropriate reasons to take the life of even healthy newborn babies. Here are their words from the conclusion of the article:

If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn. (p. 3)

Our authors don't desire to speak of "infanticide" but, instead, coin the phrase "after-birth abortion"--a phrase they freely grant is an oxymoron.

In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice "after-birth abortion", rather than "infanticide", to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which "abortions" in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. (p. 2)

Of utmost importance and what makes the whole argument work for Guibilini and Minerva is the crucial distinction they make between being a "human being" and "personhood." They freely grant that both the fetus and the newborn child are "human beings" but this does not, in and of itself, grant a right to life. The right to life is only granted to "persons." Here is how they state their case:

The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, neither is a "person" in the sense of "subject of a moral right to life". We take "person" to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her. This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. (p. 2)

Notice that according to this reasoning "many non-human animals" are "persons" but a healthy newborn child is not a "person." Thus the "personified" animal has a "right to life" but the healthy newborn does not. All of this is pushed forward under the banner of a functionalist criteria of "personhood." Personhood is a function of being able to "form an aim" that the individual wishes to accomplish. There must be capability "of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her." Because the newborn child cannot do this they are not "persons" in any moral sense. They are only "potential persons."

In light of this when the rights of real persons (mother, fathers, families) are compromised or impinged upon in any manner then the "potential person" is allowed to be dispensed with since they have no moral value. Notice the value placed upon the "potential person" newborn in this sentence:

Indeed, however weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest amounts to zero. (p. 3)

As I read that line I was reminded of the haunting title and cover of the book edited by James Hensley The Zero People (Servant, 1983):

Some slopes are slippery; especially those greased with philosophical distortion. This is not the first time that infanticide has been brought up as a realistic and defendable option. What is disturbing is that this is how the change comes--more and more voices are put forward in a "defense" of what is morally indefensible. Soon the moral intuitions of our time are dulled and changed. Francis Schaeffer and C. Evert Koop in their work Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Revell, 1979) state:

There is a "thinkable" and an "unthinkable" in every era. One era is quite certain intellectually and emotionally about what is acceptable. Yet another era decides that these "certainties" are unacceptable and puts another set of values into practice. On a humanistic base, people drift along from generation to generation, and the morally unthinkable becomes the thinkable as the years move on. (p. 16)

Later they write:

Times of monstrous inhumanity do not come about all at once; they are slipped into gradually. Often those who use certain emotional phrases or high-sounding moral tones about "freedom of the individual" and appeal to "rights" do not even know what they are starting. The see only some isolated condition they want to accomplish, but have not considered soberly the overall direction in which things are moving. At some later point they want to go backwards. But then it is too late. Mankind's selfishness and greed can be counted on to widen every breach, exploiting each to the fullest for selfish purposes. (p. 110)

May God have mercy upon us.

Today Outside a Planned Parenthood Clinic

2012-02-27T10:27:00.001-07:00

This morning I went to the local Planned Parenthood clinic to stand and pray for 30 minutes as part of the local 40 Days for Life campaign. I went with my wife and one of my sons. There were a few others there as well. Here are a few reflections:

1. The morning was amazingly beautiful--gorgeous blue sky with just a few hints of white, wispy clouds. The temperature was cool and comfortable. As I stood there thinking of this the words of Jesus came into focus--"for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good" (Matthew 5.45). Even in the midst of the evil that we commit our Creator God is kind even to his enemies. My first thought was about those "inside" the building but I knew from personal experience the evil is in my heart too. God is kind and compassionate. If he were not we would all be consumed. The sun, clouds, and beauty of the moment gave me cause to rejoice in God's kindness and also keep petitioning for those ensnared by the lies of the evil one.

2. Yesterday was Sunday and I was able to be part of God's people in the gathered service. I led in prayer, preaching and the sacrament of the Lord's Table. It was good. Being outside on the street praying brought other thoughts. It is good to take the faith to the streets. I can grow comfortable with a certain kind of mental scenery in which the language of the faith becomes associated with certain times and places. Standing on a street and praying for actual women going into the front door of Planned Parenthood awakes me to the realities of God's presence here on the sidewalk and enveloping the building I stand before. My faith is stretched in helpful ways as I actively pray for the interaction of the spiritual (God's presence and activity) to interface and change the very palpable physical in front of me (the existence of this Planned Parenthood, the abortion center workers, and the people walking in the front doors).

3. 40 Days for Life is a distinctively Christian response to the evil of abortion. It focuses on prayer. There a few women who stand outside on the edge of the property speaking last words of grace and hope to those women about to enter in the doors. This morning I saw a young hispanic woman get out of her car near the front door. One of the women began to beckon to her so she should share with her some information. I closed my eyes and began to very specifically pray that she would stop and listen--that she would heed the words. I prayed for just a couple of concentrated minutes in this way. When I opened my eyes the young woman had crossed the parking lot and was engaged in a conversation with a few ladies from 40 Days for Life. She spent a good 5-10 minutes talking with them. I was encouraged to keep praying! I've stopped trying to "figure out" the mechanisms of prayer. I know my tendency is to "explain away" answers to prayer or get hung up trying to assess in some sort of quantifiable manner "how much" my prayers contributed. Here I just thanked God for answered prayer and was encouraged to keep praying for others. I think that is good enough--at least it was this morning.

4. At one point I randomly opened my Bible and turned to John 16.1-3.

These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. These things they will do because they have not known the Father or me.

Repeatedly throughout this section of John (chapters 14-16) Jesus stops and says "why" he is saying the things he says. I have usually focused on such passages as John 15.11: "These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full" or John 16.33: "These things I have spoken to you, so that in me you may have peace." Joy and peace--Jesus' words are spoken to bring about these good qualities. As I looked again at John 16.1 I saw something more today. Jesus is preparing us for opposition. He tells us about it and speaks specific words about it so that when it comes we will not surprised "as though some strange thing were happening" (1 Peter 4.12). Jesus gives us these words so we won't stumble. I realized (again? more?) that this battle for life and against deception will come, at times, with a cost. We experienced very little opposition today. My son tells me he was given the one figured salute a few times and a few choice words were thrown his way--but that's about it in terms of "persecution." Even so, I was glad to have my son there and experience this. In this small way he too takes his place with those who stand for God's truth in the face of opposition. I pray that he and I will both continue to stand for Jesus even if the cost to do so becomes more pronounced.

I am hopefully of spending more time in prayer on the street in front of this Planned Parenthood facility. What God is doing (both in me and in the world) is exciting and I want to see more of his glory manifest in the magnification of the name of his Son, Jesus. That our God would allow us, invite us to be part of his kingdom and kingdom activity is truly gracious.

Canadian Law--Homeschoolers Can't Teach Homosexuality is Wrong

2012-02-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

Recent developments in Canada continue to push the legitimazation of homosexuality and the suppression of those who dissent. Over at Life Site News they report on a new law effecting homeschool families. Here are a few pieces of their article:

EDMONTON, Alberta, February 23, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Under Alberta’s new Education Act, homeschoolers and faith-based schools will not be permitted to teach that homosexual acts are sinful as part of their academic program, says the spokesperson for Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk.

“Whatever the nature of schooling – homeschool, private school, Catholic school – we do not tolerate disrespect for differences,” Donna McColl, Lukaszuk’s assistant director of communications, told LifeSiteNews on Wednesday evening.

“You can affirm the family’s ideology in your family life, you just can’t do it as part of your educational study and instruction,” she added.

Reacting to the remarks, Paul Faris of the Home School Legal Defence Association said the Ministry of Education is “clearly signaling that they are in fact planning to violate the private conversations families have in their own homes.” ...

Section 16 of the new legislation restates the current School Act’s requirement that schools “reflect the diverse nature” of Alberta in their curriculum, but it adds that they must also “honour and respect” the controversial Alberta Human Rights Act that has been used to target Christians with traditional beliefs on homosexuality. ‘School’ is defined to include homeschoolers and private schools in addition to publicly funded school boards. ...

According to McColl, Christian homeschooling families can continue to impart Biblical teachings on homosexuality in their homes, “as long as it’s not part of their academic program of studies and instructional materials.”

“What they want to do about their ideology elsewhere, that’s their family business. But a fundamental nature of our society is to respect diversity,” she added.

Pressed about what the precise distinction is between homeschoolers’ instruction and their family life, McColl said the question involved “real nuances” and she would have to get back with specifics.

But in a second interview Wednesday evening, McColl said the government “won’t speculate” about particular examples, and explained that she had not yet gotten a “straight answer” on what exactly constitutes “disrespect.” She did say that families “can’t be hatemongering, if you will.”

Francis Schaeffer on Comprehensive Salvation

2012-02-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

Ephesians begins in such a majestic manner with 1.3-14. We are given rich and glorious things in Christ. All the blessings of the heavenly realms (1.3) are mediated through Christ Jesus (1.3-14). All of human history is moving toward God's great goal of "the summing up of all things in Christ" (1.10). It's important to keep this in mind for it keeps us from pushing small versions of the gospel. God's global gospel designs encompass the renewal of all things in the created order. In particular, forces arrayed against God and his kingdom either are brought into renewed relationship with him or brought under Christ's kingly subjection (see 1.20 for Christ's ruling over the "powers"). In Christ or under Christ--but it will be Christ at the center reigning forever!

So Christ's salvation has cosmic implications and applications, but what does that have to do with us now? Our living in Christ, both individually and corporately, is to be a manifestation of Christ's kingly reality put on display before the world (and the heavenlies! see 3.10). Francis Schaeffer in his book True Spirituality has an appendix entitled 'The Dust of Life." In this short piece Schaeffer outlines the depth of the fall and the majesty of God's redemption. In speaking of the fall into sin he speaks of the various kinds of separation that have been wrought by the fall.

1. Man's separation from God; his alienation from his Creator due to sin.

2. Man's separation from himself. Think of sickness and ultimately death (the separation of the body from our spiritual portion of being). But also think of mental illness. Schaeffer says it this way:

But also in the present we are each one separated from ourselves psychologically. Each of us is to some extent "schizophrenic." There are degrees, but this present psychological separation is true of each of us.

3. Man's separation from others. Think of Adam and Eve hiding themselves from each other. Think, also, of institutionalized racism and the horrors of genocide.

4. Man's separation from nature. The created realm groans under the weight of the fall of man (Romans 8.19-22) and feels the effects of the curse (Genesis 3.17-19).

Schaeffer's point is that every one of these separations will be overturned by Christ's comprehensive gospel of the kingdom. Listen to Schaeffer's wonderful words from "The Dust of Life."

[W]ith this biblical understanding of an enlarged comprehension of salvation, our calling is enlarged. It is our calling now (looking to the living, resurrected Christ moment by moment, for our strength and understanding) to as far as possible help to heal all the abnormalities at the present time. At the present time (as far as possible), we are to bring life instead of death into people's relationship with God through their acceptance of Christ as Savior, and then they and we increasingly to practice this relationship at each present moment. To (as far as possible) bring life instead of death in this abnormal world into the ongoing physical dying that each person is caught in from the day of his or her birth. To (as far as possible) help each person to be less separated from himself or herself, psychologically. To do all we can to heal the separation of Man from nature and nature from nature. Our calling now is to be as wide (though now partial) as the restoration of that day when the last enemy, death, will be totally destroyed, and all the other abnormalities will be totally healed.

As Christ's people we work, in the power of the Holy Spirit, for these kingdom objectives. The final victory comes at the consumation but this does not negate our role or efforts now to manifest the reality of Christ's kingdom across the full range of human affairs.

Our God is majestic and his gospel is big! Let us pray big prayers for the extension of the reign of Christ in our time!

"An Open Letter to Praise Bands" by James K. A. Smith

2012-02-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

There are some good comments directed to those who help lead worship in praise bands over at fors clavigera. James K. A. Smith is a philosophy professor at Calvin College. He is not seeking to be overly critical but to help--see the full post for details. Here is a sampling:

1. If we, the congregation, can't hear ourselves, it's not worship. Christian worship is not a concert. In a concert (a particular "form of performance"), we often expect to be overwhelmed by sound, particularly in certain styles of music. In a concert, we come to expect that weird sort of sensory deprivation that happens from sensory overload, when the pounding of the bass on our chest and the wash of music over the crowd leaves us with the rush of a certain aural vertigo. And there's nothing wrong with concerts! It's just that Christian worship is not a concert. Christian worship is a collective, communal, congregational practice--and the gathered sound and harmony of a congregation singing as one is integral to the practice of worship. It is a way of "performing" the reality that, in Christ, we are one body. But that requires that we actually be able to hear ourselves, and hear our sisters and brothers singing alongside us. When the amped sound of the praise band overwhelms congregational voices, we can't hear ourselves sing--so we lose that communal aspect of the congregation and are encouraged to effectively become "private," passive worshipers.

2. If we, the congregation, can't sing along, it's not worship. In other forms of musical performance, musicians and bands will want to improvise and "be creative," offering new renditions and exhibiting their virtuosity with all sorts of different trills and pauses and improvisations on the received tune. Again, that can be a delightful aspect of a concert, but in Christian worship it just means that we, the congregation, can't sing along. And so your virtuosity gives rise to our passivity; your creativity simply encourages our silence. And whileyou may be worshiping with your creativity, the same creativity actually shuts down congregational song.

3. If you, the praise band, are the center of attention, it's not worship. I know it's generally not your fault that we've put you at the front of the church. And I know you want to modelworship for us to imitate. But because we've encouraged you to basically import forms of performance from the concert venue into the sanctuary, we might not realize that we've also unwittingly encouraged a sense that you are the center of attention. And when your performance becomes a display of your virtuosity--even with the best of intentions--it's difficult to counter the temptation to make the praise band the focus of our attention. When the praise band goes into long riffs that you might intend as "offerings to God," we the congregation become utterly passive, and because we've adopted habits of relating to music from the Grammys and the concert venue, we unwittingly make you the center of attention. I wonder if there might be some intentional reflection on placement (to the side? leading from behind?) and performance that might help us counter these habits we bring with us to worship.

Atheism Humor

2012-02-17T09:24:00.000-07:00

Here is picture that was posted on Triablogue:

Word of Faith vs Cessationism--Who's Closer to Jesus?

2012-02-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

There is a thought provoking article over at Scot McKnight's blog. It's by a guest writer named "T" and he is using McKnight's book The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Zondervan, 2011) to engage in a thought experiment. Here is a portion of what "T" wrote:

It was in the context of having read Scot’s book and letting these ideas ruminate, tearing down structures in my mind and building new ones, that I read a post by Roger Olson asking if the word-faith movement within extreme Pentecostalism presented ‘another gospel.’ Let me add right now that I disagree with word-faith (and ‘prosperity gospel’) teaching wholeheartedly. In the interests of space, my naked disavowal will have to suffice. But as I read the post that was rightfully denouncing extreme word-faith and prosperity gospel teachings, I couldn’t help but wonder, If the gospels are the gospel, does extreme cessationism present a “gospel” that is farther from “the gospels” than word-faith Pentecostalism?

As I thought about this, I thought of several things. Initially (as a born and raised Biblicist evangelical!) I thought in terms of express scriptural support for word-faith on one extreme and for extreme cessationism on the other. On that score, word-faith has a clear advantage over cessationism. Even if it has to be selective in its NT areas of focus, it can at least point to clear, express NT teachings, not only to support the general idea that God does miracles through his people, but also the extreme word-faith teachings (Mark 9:23, James 5:15, Matthew 17:19-21). Again, while I think other portions of the NT make it clear that these verses must be nuanced to avoid taking them without any qualification, they are more expressly supportive of word-faith teachings than most of us would like. But my next line of thought wasn’t rooted in my Biblicist leanings and prima-scriptura goals, but in Scot’s thesis. Namely, if the gospels are the gospels, they proclaim a Jesus that not only heals as the bread and butter of his work, but also

- Authorizes/commands others who represent him to heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead,

- Commends the faith of those who believe in his authority and/or willingness to heal (Centurian, Canaanite woman),

- Challenges and/or criticizes the faith of his disciples when they don’t have the faith to believe that THEY can cast out demons in his name,

- Predicts that anyone who believes will also do what he has been doing (John 14:12; Mark 16:17),

- Sends out apostles after his resurrection who found churches who then, in fact, also do miracles and signs and wonders in Christ’s name (Galatians 3:5, I Cor. 12-14, James 5:13-18).

Considering all this and more with “the gospels are the gospel” ringing in my head, I began to lose articulable reasons to answer this question in the negative: “Do word-faith Pentecostals proclaim a Jesus, a gospel, more like the Jesus presented in the gospels than cessationists do?”

David Wells on God's Holiness

2012-02-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

That God is dangerous in his holiness should not be dismissed as if it were a primitive idea, beyond which we have now evolved. It is, in fact, a reality toward which we are all moving, for in the end God's holiness will prove to be the final line of resistance to all that is wrong, all that is evil in the world. The day is coming when truth will be placed forever on the throne, and error forever on the scaffold. (p. 142)

So it is when we succeed in cloaking the holiness of God, in focusing on his love to the exclusion of his wrath, we unsettle the whole moral universe. We create a God who may be patient, kindly, and compassionate but who is without the will to resist what is wrong, without the will to judge it, and without the power to destroy it. Such a God lacks the moral earnestness to attract our attention, let alone inspire our belief or warrant our worship. Such a God is not the God of the Bible, is the not the God of Jesus Christ....When holiness slips from sight, so, too, does the centrality of Christ. (p. 143)

Without the holiness of God, sin has no meaning and grace has no point, for it is God's holiness that gives to the one its definition and to the other its greatness. (p. 144)

God is holy and we place ourselves in great peril if we seek to render him a plaything of our piety, an ornamental decoration on the religious life, a product to answer our inward dissatisfactions. God offers himself on his own terms or not at all. (p. 145)

From: David Wells God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Eerdmans, 1994)

"Are Souls Gendered?" by Steve Hays

2012-02-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

Steve Hays over at Triablogue has an interesting article on whether souls are gendered. Here is his brief discussion. It is speculative but within the bounds of Scriptural constraints.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2012
Are souls gendered?

This is a question that a commenter over at Randal Rauser’s blog asked. (“Does Christian theology hold that the soul has gender?”). Of course, the answer is somewhat speculative.

i) Some folks might think the question is inherently nonsensical. Surely gender is a property of embodied agents. Only bodies can have primary and secondary sexual characteristics.

But we need to distinguish between gender as an abstract property and its concrete exemplifications. For instance, every man is male, but every male isn’t a man. Maleness is more general than manhood, while masculinity is more general than maleness. Same thing with femininity.

ii) There are different ways to model the mind/body problem. Different versions of monism and dualism. For discussion purposes, I’ll take interactionist dualism as my operating model.

iii) The question of whether souls have gender raises the nature/nurture debate. It’s really two questions with two possible answers:

a) Does the soul have innate gender?

b) Does the soul have acquired gender?

Apropos (a), I don’t know that we’re in a position to tell one way or the other.

Assuming that (a) is true, there’s not much more to be said. But if (b) is true, then that generates other permutations:

iv) Take a comparison. I’m psychologically American. That’s acquired rather than innate. I could have been born to the same parents, but in a different country (if they were living abroad).

I’m psychologically American because I was raised by American parents, and I grew up in America, around American relatives, neighbors, and classmates. Because I’ve been immersed in American culture (both media and society) from as early as I can remember. So I’ve been conditioned to be psychologically American.

Moreover, that conditioning is irreversible at this stage. It’s part of my formative years. To a great extent, personal identity is bound up with memory. Remembered experience.

v) In principle, gender could be conditioned by physical experience. Say a soul is united to the body of a human male from conception to death from old age. His experience of the world is filtered through a physical medium. Specifically, male embodiment. That’s how he perceives the world, interacts with the world, remembers the world. That informs and thereby forms his psychological makeup to some degree.

vi) When he dies, he leaves his body behind, but not the lasting effect of his physical conditioning.

vii) But suppose he dies in the womb and goes straight to heaven? Then what? There are two possibilities:

viii) The soul of the baby remains in a state of psychological stasis until the resurrection of the just, at which time it’s united with the body of a baby, and naturally matures. Perhaps the discarnate baby has little sense of time’s passage during the intermediate state. It’s happy, but there’s no character development. No acquisition of knowledge.

ix) That’s one possibility. Here’s another: the discarnate baby enjoys a simulated physical existence. Like dreams or virtual reality. The discarnate baby undergoes a simulated lifecycle–infancy, boyhood (or girlhood), adolescence, adulthood (manhood or womanhood, as the case may be).
Labels: Afterlife, Dualism, Hays

Intelligent Design: 50 Peer-Reviewed Articles

2012-02-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

There is an article over at the Center for Science and Culture listing 50 peer-reviewed journal articles in defense of some aspect of Intelligent Design theory. One that I was especially interested in is the following:

A.C. McIntosh, “Evidence of design in bird feathers and avian respiration,”International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, Vol. 4(2):154–169 (2009).

In this peer-reviewed paper, Leeds University professor Andy McIntosh argues that two systems vital to bird flight -- feathers and the avian respiratory system -- exhibit “irreducible complexity.” The paper describes these systems using the exact sort of definitions that Michael Behe uses to describe irreducible complexity:
[F]unctional systems, in order to operate as working machines, must have all the required parts in place in order to be effective. If one part is missing, then the whole system is useless. The inference of design is the most natural step when presented with evidence such as in this paper, that is evidence concerning avian feathers and respiration.
Regarding the structure of feathers, he argues that they require many features to be present in order to properly function and allow flight:
[I]t is not sufficient to simply have barbules to appear from the barbs but that opposing barbules must have opposite characteristics -- that is, hooks on one side of the barb and ridges on the other so that adjacent barbs become attached by hooked barbules from one barb attaching themselves to ridged barbules from the next barb (Fig. 4). It may well be that as Yu et al. [18] suggested, a critical protein is indeed present in such living systems (birds) which have feathers in order to form feather branching, but that does not solve the arrangement issue concerning left-handed and right-handed barbules. It is that vital network of barbules which is necessarily a function of the encoded information (software) in the genes. Functional information is vital to such systems.
He further notes that many evolutionary authors “look for evidence that true feathers developed first in small non-flying dinosaurs before the advent of flight, possibly as a means of increasing insulation for the warm-blooded species that were emerging.” However, he finds that when it comes to fossil evidence for the evolution of feathers, “None of the fossil evidence shows any evidence of such transitions.”

Regarding the avian respiratory system, McIntosh contends that a functional transition from a purported reptilian respiratory system to the avian design would lead to non-functional intermediate stages. He quotes John Ruben stating, “The earliest stages in the derivation of the avian abdominal air sac system from a diaphragm-ventilating ancestor would have necessitated selection for a diaphragmatic hernia in taxa transitional between theropods and birds. Such a debilitating condition would have immediately compromised the entire pulmonary ventilatory apparatus and seems unlikely to have been of any selective advantage.” With such unique constraints in mind, McIntosh argues that “even if one does take the fossil evidence as the record of development, the evidence is in fact much more consistent with an ab initio design position -- that the breathing mechanism of birds is in fact the product of intelligent design.”

McIntosh’s paper argues that science must remain at least open to the possibility of detecting design in nature, since “to deny the possibility of the involvement of external intelligence is effectively an assumption in the religious category.” Since feathers and the avian respiratory system exhibit irreducible complexity, he expressly argues that science must consider the design hypothesis:
As examples of irreducible complexity, they show that natural systems have intricate machinery which does not arise in a “bottom up” approach, whereby some natural selective method of gaining small-scale changes could give the intermediary creature some advantage. This will not work since, first, there is no advantage unless all the parts of the new machine are available together and, second, in the case of the avian lung the intermediary creature would not be able to breathe, and there is little selective advantage if the creature is no longer alive. As stated in the introduction, the possibility of an intelligent cause is both a valid scientific assumption, and borne out by the evidence itself.

The design aspects of bird feathers and the lung design were first brought to my attention years ago in Michael Denton's book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Adler & Adler, 1985). In discussing the bird lung design in relation to all other vertebrate lungs Denton writes:

"Just how such an utterly different respiratory system could have evolved gradually from the standard vertebrate design is fantastically difficult to envisage, especially bearing in mind that the maintenance of respiratory function is absolutely vital to the life of an organism to the extent that the slightest malfunction leads to death within minutes." (pp. 211-212)

Denton went on to conclude:

"The avian lung and the feather bring us very close to answering Darwin's challenge:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

"In addition to the feather and the avian lung there are many other unique features in the biology of birds, in the design of the heart and cardiovascular system, in the gastrointestinal system and in the possession of a variety of other relatively minor adaptations, such as, for example, the unique sound producing organ, the syrinx, which similarly defy plausible explanations in gradualistic terms. Altogether it adds up to an enormous conceptual difficulty in envisaging how a reptile could have been gradually converted into a bird." (p. 213)

The "watchmaker" is not "blind!" Those scientists committed to wearing the googles of naturalism are the ones with the questionable vision. Jesus told us to look at the birds of the air (Matthew 6.26) to see something of the Father's goodness. It appears that we can also look inside the birds of the air and see His intelligent design.

"Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus" and Responses

2012-02-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

A family member sent me this video which I now know has gone "virial"--over 17 million views. He asked what I thought. I've put my comments that I sent to him below the video. The original video has spawned a number of responses. The two listed below are interesting. The first response is from a Muslim. Then there follows a Christian apologetic response to the Muslim video. For those interested...

A few thoughts I wrote to my family member:

1. First, I liked his focus on Jesus and grace. This is central.

2. He seems to be speaking out of his past hurt with legalism ("religion") and this seems to color everything he says. We all speak out of our past in the sense of being influenced by it but here the guy seems to go lopsided--see below.

3. He sets up the dichotomy between Jesus and Religion. The way he defines religion is a problem. Hey, who wouldn't hate what he says is "religion." He uses the old definition: religion is man's attempt to get to God. If that's his definition then I'm against that too. But why think that is THE definition of religion? What happens is that people put Jesus on one side and "religion" on the other. And then under religion they put things like "church". He seemed to do that at a few points even though he had his "clarifications" mid-way through. Jesus established the church, its rituals (baptism and communion) and its leadership. If you love Jesus you have to love the church--even though Jesus is perfect and his wife (the church) isn't.

4. I get nervous about the the dichotomy of "doing" vs "done" (the way he ends the video). If we're talking about justification--how a person is declared righteous before a holy God-then he is correct. The work of Christ alone received by faith alone is the key here. But the Christian life also includes the life of faith (sanctification) which should be one of faithfulness and Jesus very clearly speaks to this (see Matthew 5-7) with lots of things to "do."

Here is the Muslim response:

And here is the Christian apologetic response which was sponsored by Alpha and Omega Ministries:

Also, Alpha and Omega had an article responding to the false claims in the Muslim video. That can be found HERE.

Incarnating the Text of Philippians

2012-01-31T19:22:00.000-07:00

This post is not about the incarnation of the Son of God as found in Philippians 2.5-8. Rather is about incarnating the realities of the teaching of Philippians 1.12-13. It is about how the words and concepts found here in Philippians chapter one are being manifested today. Here is the text:

Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else

Paul is so devoted to Christ and the magnification of his name that he evaluates all of his circumstances in light of how they promote the progress of the gospel. This same devotion has its counterparts today. We received our monthly issue of The Voice of the Martyrs (Feb. 2012) and on page 9 there is an article entitled "New Fruit in China." This brief article speaks about Chinese pastor Zhang Rongliang. He has spent more than a fourth of his life in prison as he has been imprisoned five times for a total of 19 years. Here are some key selections from the article that show that the Pauline devotion is still active.

Pastor Zhang was released from his latest imprisonment on Aug. 31, 2011, after more than seven years in prison. He endured torture and hard labor, all the while suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure. He was not permitted to have a Bible, and he was so ill that he had to be carried from place to place by two men. He didn't think he would leave prison alive.

His wife and two sons worried about him constantly, and many VOM readers wrote letters to Pastor Zhang through www.prisonalert.com.

"I am happy that you and others tried to arrange for my release, but in one way, I am happy that you failed," he told a VOM worker shortly after his release. "You almost made a big mistake. If you had been successful, there would be no church in that prison today."

Even while ill, Pastor Zhang was planting a church in prison. "God called me to preach to the prisoners," he said. During Pastor Zhang's seven-year imprisonment, almost all of the 5,000 prisoners had an opportunity to hear the gospel. He was able to reach many men he would never have interacted with outside prison.

So like Paul--joyful in the progress of the gospel regardless of the circumstances. Within the persecuted church the Spirit of Jesus Christ is still active and powerful in ways my mind (and life!) scarcely comprehend.

Esther and the Hiddenness of God

2012-01-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

I've been reading about the "hiddenness of God" recently as well as teaching an Old Testament survey course for high school students. In my preparations for going over Esther I was interacting with the fact that the Lord is not mentioned in the book of Esther. I was very moved by the following words from Barry Webb in his little book Five Festal Garments: Christian Reflections on The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther (IVP, 2000).

How does the “absence” of God colour the theme of deliverance in the book of Esther and contribute to its distinctive theology? One thing it does is to set Esther off sharply from some deliverance narratives, such as the exodus from Egypt or the exploits of the judges, align it closely with others, such as the stories of Joseph and Ruth. What these point to only partially, however, Esther carries to its logical conclusion. God is present even when he is most absent; when there are no miracles, dreams or visions, no charismatic leaders, no prophets to interpret what is happening, and not even any explicit God-talk. And he is present as deliverer. Those whom he saved by signs and wonders at the exodus he continues to save through his hidden, providential control of their history. His people are never simply at the mercy of blind fate or of malign powers, whether human or supernatural. (pp. 124-125)

God is there--not always as I think he should be or want him to be--but always there. He is active even when silent. He is preserving and guiding even when not seen. His silence need to be a sign of disinterest or abandonment. He is good and even his silences teach us.

Envious Preachers: Attacking Driscoll...and Spurgeon

2012-01-29T17:23:00.001-07:00

I'm preaching through Philippians at the moment--still in chapter one. Philippians 1.12-18 mentions those who are preaching Christ now that Paul is in prison. There is a group who is doing this from less than "pure motives" (v. 17). Verses 15-17 describes the situation in this manner:

Some to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.

I've often wondered how these selfish preachers were reasoning--how is it that they thought they might cause distress to Paul in his imprisonment? D. A. Carson in his little book Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians (Baker, 1996) describes the selfish preachers this way:

"The preachers to whom Paul makes reference here are a different sort. They propound the true gospel, but sometimes do so from the strangest mix of motives. In this case, the people Paul has in mind are those that must be understood to lie behind verse 12. They think that Paul has done damage to the Christian cause by getting himself arrested. Probably they magnify their own ministry by putting Paul down. We can imagine their pompous reflections: 'It really is sad that so great a man as Paul has frittered away his gospel opportunities simply because he is so inflexible. After all, I and many others manage to remain at large and preach the gospel. One must assume that Paul has a deep character flaw that puts him in the path of trouble. My ministry is being blessed, while he languishes in prison.' Thus, the more they speak, the more their own ways are justified and the more Paul is made to look foolish." (p. 25)

It is helpful to distinguish Paul's perspective on these preachers and the preachers' perspective on themselves. These preachers did not see themselves as envious and selfish. I bet they thought they were "wise and discerning." Paul's analysis goes to the heart and he challenges their motives. Their actions and words (which Paul had undoubtedly been told of) were enough to manifest their mixed intentions.

Such "selfish ambition" among the people of God still happens--that's probably not a "newsflash" to anybody! I've often wondered if some (much?) of the criticism that Mark Driscoll draws is not motivated by at least a modicum of envy. Of course the man and his ministry is imperfect. He is a public minister reaching a national audience so his mistakes are broadcast far and wide when they happen. Of course he is not beyond criticism and disagreement is not necessarily bad or motivated by selfish ambition. Even with all of the qualifications I still wonder if there is not a sense of envy that is mixed in amongst some of his detractors. Some of the comments I've seen in the comments sections of blogs go way beyond theological or pastoral analysis and border on down right hateful. It is the lot of faithful servants of Jesus who are given a place of prominence in the public square to draw fire upon themselves and their ministries. I was reminded of this when thinking of Charles Spurgeon. The newspapers of his time did not hesitate to "run him down" as evidenced by this piece from The Sheffield and Rotherdam Independent (April 28, 1855):

"Just now, the great lion, star, meteor, or whatever else he may be called, of the Baptists, is the Rev. M. (sic) Spurgeon, minister of Park Street Chapel, Southwark. He has created a perfect furor in the religious world. Every Sunday, crowds throng to Exter Hall--where for some weeks past he has been preaching during the enlargement of his own chapel--as to some dramatic entertainment. The huge hall is crowded to overflowing, morning and evening, with an excited auditory, whose good fortune in obtaining admission is often envied by the hundreds outside who throng the closed doors. For a parallel to such popularity, we must go to Dr. Chalmers, Edward Irving, or the earlier days of James Parsons. But I will not dishonor such men by comparison with the Exter Hall religious demagogue. They preached the gospel with all the fervour of earnest natures. Mr. Spurgeon preaches himself. He is nothing unless he is an actor--unless exhibiting that matchless impudence which is his great characteristic, indulging in coarse familiarity with holy things, declaiming in a ranting and colloquial style, strutting up and down the platform as though he were at the Surrey Theatre, and boasting of his own intimacy with Heaven with nauseating frequency. His fluency, self-possession, oratorical tricks, and daring utterances, seem to fascinate his less-thoughtful hearers, who love excitement more than devotion.... I have glanced at one or two of Mr. Spurgeon's published sermons, and turned away in disgust from the coarse sentiments, the scholastical expressions, and clap-trap style I have discovered. It would seem that the poor young man's brain is turned by the notoriety he has acquired and the incense offered at his shrine. From the very pulpit he boasts of the crowds that flock to listen to his rodomontade....This is but a mild picture of the great religious lion of the metropolis."

The article then ends this way:

"He is a nine days' wonder--a comet that has suddenly shot across the religious atmosphere. He has gone up like a rocket, and ere long will come down like a stick. The most melancholy consideration in the case is the diseased craving for excitement which this running after Mr. Spurgeon by the 'religious world' indicates. I would charitably conclude that the greater part of the multitude that weekly crowd to his theatrical exhibitions consists of people who are not in the habit of frequenting a place of worship." Quoted in C. H. Spurgeon Authobiography: Volume One--The Early Years (Banner of Truth, 1962) pp. 321-322

As I read that description of Spurgeon some of the very language used to attack him is now used today to attack Mark Driscoll--"impudence", "indulging in coarse familiarity with holy things", "a ranting and colloquial style, strutting up and down the platform." Spurgeon popularized a new style of preaching that was profoundly effective. Iain Murray describes Spurgeon in these words:

"It was an impudent thing in the eyes of the religious world for a young upstart to popularize a new style of preaching. But that is, in fact, what Spurgeon did, and in doing so he proved he possessed a self-confidence and an originality of no common order. He scorned a dignified, impersonal presentation of the gospel and spoke to his hearers as though he was seizing them personally by the hand and talking to them in the street." The Forgotten Spurgeon (Banner of Truth, 1966) pp. 30-31

History has judged Spurgeon much differently than the newspaper quoted above. (Even that newspaper, after Spurgeon's death, referred to him as "this noble Puritan preacher and saintly Chrisian"!) How will history judge Driscoll? We will have to wait and see. He has started off in a similar manner to Spurgeon--may God's grace give him as fruitful and glorious ministry all the way to the end.

Teenagers and Pornography

2012-01-26T13:34:00.001-07:00

Some sobering statistics on teens and pornography. Parents need to be vigilant to train and teach with a view toward purity.

A Fundamental Problem with Panentheism

2012-01-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

James Anderson has a short but insightful article entitled Why I Am Not a Panentheist. Anderson defines the panentheistic position this way:

Panentheism comes from the Greek words for ‘all’, ‘in’, and ‘God’ — literally, “all-in-God-ism”. On this view, God is neither fully distinct from the universe (as in classical theism) nor identical with the universe (as in pantheism). Instead, the universe exists ‘in’ or ‘within’ God. The prepositions ‘in’ and ‘within’ are obviously not meant in a spatial sense (as in “Bob is in the kitchen”). Rather, they’re meant to capture the idea of ontological containment. God pervades and encompasses the universe in such an intimate fashion that there is an overlap or intersection between the being of God and the being of the universe. While God is more than the universe, there is no clear ontological distinction between God and the universe (which includes us, of course)

He then provides this nifty graphic:

Anderson goes on to detail out a fundamental problem with panentheism. As he says, it's a simple argument but not simplistic. Anderson writes:

Despite these practical benefits, however, it seems to me that panentheism has a fundamental metaphysical flaw. According to biblical theism, God created the universe out of nothing and is ontologically distinct from it. There is a clean Creator-creation distinction. Moreover, God is not merely good (as though God were being judged by some external standard of goodness) but is goodness itself. God is the Absolute Good, the ultimate standard by which any other good is judged to be good. God is the norm and the universe is the normed (i.e., that which is subject to and judged by the norm). To use the classical categories, God is the Good, the True, and the Beautiful — originally, perfectly, and normatively. The universe is merely good (in part), true (in part), and beautiful (in part).
For the panentheist, however, matters must be very different indeed. Since the universe is in God, insofar as there is good in the universe there must be good in God. So far, so good — so to speak. But by the very same token, insofar as there isevil in the universe there must be evil in God. If the universe is a mixture of good and evil (which I take to be an obvious truth) then God must also be a mixture of good and evil, on the supposition that God contains the universe. Whatever pollutes the universe unavoidably pollutes God, on account of the ontological overlap between God and the universe.
It follows that God cannot be the Absolute Good. If the panentheist takes seriously the reality of evil, he ought to conclude that God is not pure goodness. But then God can’t be the ultimate standard of goodness. So who or what is? The answer must be: nothing. For that standard would have to be independent of God, yet the panentheist maintains that everything is in God (“all-in-God”). In short, the root problem with panentheism is that it conflates the norm and thenormed. Consequently, the very distinction between good and evil is obliterated. When there is no Absolute Good, there is no good at all — and therefore no evil.
Some may consider this line of argument simplistic. I grant that it’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s simplistic. The strongest philosophical arguments are often the simplest to state and to grasp. (Think of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum or Aristotle’s argument for the law of non-contradiction.) The basic logic of my argument is straightforward. Either the universe is ontologically distinct from God or it’s not. If it’s not, the problem raised above immediately arises.
This isn’t just a debate over abstract metaphysics; it has significant religious consequences. A radically different ontology inevitably leads to a radically different soteriology. According to the Bible, we have all fallen short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23). As a result, we rightly stand under God’s judgment and must seek atonement and forgiveness. On the panentheist view, however, God’s gloryhas fallen short. (Short of what? we might ask.) How then could God stand in judgment over us? If there’s a problem with me, there’s a problem with God. We’re all in this together! So let’s all work together to overcome evil — you, me, and God — even if it’s not entirely clear what target we’re all supposed to be shooting for. (Then again, perhaps it’s simpler to bite the bullet and deny the ultimate reality of good and evil. No good, no evil — no problem!)
A lot more could be said, of course, but this will do for now. To summarize: one reason I’m a biblical theist rather than a panentheist is because I believe that there is an Absolute Good, that there is a real distinction between good and evil, and that there is real evil in the world.

Christianity Against Slavery

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

It didn't start with William Wilberforce. As far back as Augustine the church has sought to free those caught in slavery. I saw this over at Euangelion where Michael Bird quotes a piece from Augustine's Letter to Alypius (#10, ca 428 AD):

Even the examples of this outrage that I have personally encountered are too many for me to list, if I wished to do so. Let me give you just one example, and you can estimate from it the total extent of their activity throughout Africa and along its coasts. About four months before I wrote this letter, a crowd of people collected from different regions, but particularly from Numidia, were brought here by Galatian merchants to be transported from the shores of Hippo (It is only, or at least mainly, the Galatians who are so eager to engage in this form of commerce). However, a faithful Christian was at hand, who was aware of our practice of performing acts of mercy in such cases; and he brought the news to the church. Immediately, about 120 people were set free by us (though I was absent at the time), some from the ship which they had to board, others from a place where they had been hidden before being put on board. We discovered that barely five or six of these had been sold by their parents. On hearing about the misfortunes that had led the rest of them to the Galatians, via their abductors and kidnappers, hardly one of us could restrain their tears.

Bird goes on to ask, "So what did you do after church last Sunday?"

A Bad Argument Against Infant Baptism

2012-01-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

In his book People of the Spirit: Exploring Luke's View of the Church Graham Twelftree has a small section on infant baptism. He mentions that in the household baptisms of Acts "we have found do direct evidence to help decide whether or not he would have thought this included baptizing babies" (p. 100). This is fairly standard baptistic argumentation--no infants explicitly mentioned. Twelftree goes beyond this, though, when he tries to use an "indirect approach" to draw his baptistic conclusions. Part of his argument is as follows:

To begin with, it is probable Luke held the long-standing view, widely shared across the Hellenistic world, that children were marginal to society and did not 'count' so that he would not have taken them in to consideration even when describing a 'complete' (holos, Acts 18:8) household. (p. 100)

In a footnote Twelftree references Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca, and Josephus to substantiate his claim. What I find to be a glaring omission is the one person Luke may have been most ready to orient his views around--Jesus! Yes, Luke was in a culture where children didn't "count" but he served a counter-culture Lord. This is demonstrated by looking at Luke's own writings in Luke-Acts.

First, consider how Luke begins his gospel--with children! Chapter one begins with the earliest life of John the Baptist. He is to be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb (1.15). This focus on the Holy Spirit is a particular Lukan emphasis in his writings. Add to this that only Luke, out of the gospel writers, narrates this event of John's birth. Of course, we have the moving interest in Jesus' conception and birth in Luke 1 and 2. Luke is the only writer to mention Jesus growing up (2.40) and his time at the Temple (2.41-52). Luke also narrates the healing of a twelve year old girl by Jesus (8.42, 54-56). Children are also mentioned in Acts 21.5 as part of the people (church) that was bidding Paul farewell.

Most amazing in this regard is Luke 9.46-48:

An argument started among them as to which of them might be the greatest. But Jesus, knowing what they were thinking in their heart, took a child and stood him by his side, and said to them, "Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me; for the one who is least among all of you, this is the one who is great."

Sure sounds like Jesus is subverting the common culture understanding of greatness and children. New Testament commentator Joel Green writes on this passage:

Taking a child, perhaps even the child he had just restored to health, he places the child in a position of honor at his side, then makes a pronouncement that undermines everything that the Roman world would have taken for granted regarding questions of status and social relations. "To welcome" people would be to extend to them the honor of hospitality, to regard them as guests (cf. 7:44-46), but one would only welcome a social equal or one whose honor was above one's own. Children, whose place of social residence was defined at the bottom of the ladder of esteem, might be called upon to perform acts of hospitality (e.g., washing the feet of a guest), but normally they would not themselves be the recipients of honorable behavior. Jesus thus turns the social pyramid upside down, undermining the very conventions that led the disciples to deliberate over relative greatness within the company of disciples and, indeed, that had led the disciples away from any proper understanding of Jesus' status. The Gospel of Luke (NICNT), pp. 392-392.

Many other instances of Jesus overturning the social conventions of his day could be enumerated but the point should be obvious. We ought not to assume that Luke simply shared his cultural assumptions about children when he narrates the behavior of his Lord who overturns those cultural assumptions. Infant baptism is not thus proved. But what is shown is the fact that Twelftree's argument listed above is simply without any foundation whatsoever.

Chuck Norris Bible

2012-01-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

Christianity and Buddhism Humor

2012-01-04T09:19:00.001-07:00

Jack Bauer Evangelism

2011-12-23T22:42:00.000-07:00

The Nativity According to Stephen King

2011-12-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

You gotta go and see this one...

Michael Bird has the provocative title My Christmas Sermon: The Nativity According to Stephen King.

Good stuff.

Spanking and the Book of Proverbs

2011-12-23T11:12:00.002-07:00

Paul Wegner is a professor of Old Testament at Phoenix Seminary. He has written an excellent essay on the use of discipline in the book of Proverbs--"Discipline in the Book of Proverbs: 'To Spank or Not to Spank'" Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48/4 (Dec. 2005). He looks at the full context of Proverbs to see its use of discipline. Along the way, as the title of the article suggests, he looks at the issue of spanking in its biblical contexts as well as within the current psychological literature. Wegner summarizes the Proverbial wisdom in this way:

In reality the book of Proverbs, when taken as a whole, encourages its readers to use multiple levels of discipline ranging from pointing out improper behavior to the use of corporal punishment. In fact, the Hebrew word musar, commonly translated as "discipline" in the OT, has a wide range of meanings that suggests various levels of discipline, including on one end of the spectrum "teaching or instruction" (Prov 1:2, 3, 7; 4:13), then progress- ing to "exhortation or warning" (Ezek 5:15; Job 20:3), and climaxing with "discipline or chastening" (Prov 13:24; 22:15; 23:13). To draw from only a few Proverbs (e.g. Prov 13:24 or 23:13-14) would be to miss the complexity and range of discipline discussed in the book. The book of Proverbs provides a full range of discipline so that even extreme behaviors can be adequately handled. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines discipline as "[t]raining that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character of a person." The implication is that this is an ongoing responsibility of parent- hood, from infancy to at least late teens, but it does not mean that the same disciplinary techniques will be used throughout this process or that spanking will be the supreme disciplinary technique. (pp. 719-720)

Wegner goes on to outline in some detail at least eight levels of discipline as found in the book of Proverbs. These levels begin with the encouraging of proper behavior and instructing about the nature and consequences of bad behavior. So often the focus in on spanking alone--either to defend its use or to speak against it. Wegner's survey is much fuller and places corporal, non-abusive punishment (i.e., "spanking") in its proper context. The book of Proverbs is about wisdom--learning to live life in the fear of God along with its practical applications. So much of the proverbial wisdom is contextual. It is learning to live in the texture of God's world with all its manifest and wonderful variety. The proverbial sayings are not cookie-cutters. They are general wisdom that need to be applied. This idea of context is even seen by some in the psychological community today. A striking example is research psychologist Diana Baumrind at the University of California-Berkley's Institute of Human Development. In an address at the 2004 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco she said:

We found no evidence for unique detrimental effects of normative physical punishment.... I am not an advocate of spanking, but a blanket injunction against its use is not warranted by the evidence. It is reliance on physical punishment, not whether or not it is used at all, that is associated with harm to the child.

Dr. Baumrind went on to conclude:

Studies of verbal punishment yielded similar results, in that researchers found correlations just as high, and sometimes higher, for total verbal punishment and harm to the child, as for total physical punishment and harm... What really matters... is the child rearing context. When parents are loving and firm and communicate well with the child [a pattern Baumrind call authoritative] the children are exceptionally competent and well adjusted, whether or not their parents spanked them as preschoolers. (quoted in Wegner, p. 731)

Now Baumrind's conclusions will not be new to any wise parent--of course it's the context that matters! But it is nice to be able to throw around such "psychological insight" from someone even remotely associated with Berkley--for those for whom such things are needed.

Christians and Occupy Wall Street

2011-12-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

A good article on Occupy Wall Street is Jordan J. Ballor's How Christians Ought to "Occupy" Wall Street (and All Streets). Here are a few select quotations:

It is true of course that the Christian gospel has inherently social implications, and that in some cases direct political action and social activism are entailed, at least for individual Christians working out of their own convictions, if not always for the institutional church itself. It makes sense, then, that the consciences of some Christians are deeply pricked by the message emanating from the Occupy movement and have wholeheartedly thrown their lot in with the cause of the so-called "99 percent." This is in part why religious activists like Jim Wallis and Shane Claiborne have positively engaged the Occupy movement.
But involvement in and support of the Occupy protests do not represent a normative way for Christians of all convictions to engage the world. We are not all called to identify ourselves with the rebelliousness of the perpetually outraged. In identifying the institutions of the church with these protest movements ecclesial leaders risk overlooking the most important occupiers: those Christians who occupy the pews every Sunday morning and pursue various occupations throughout the week. The range of cultural engagement by Christians is therefore coextensive with the panoply of morally legitimate activities in the world. This has been true from the church's earliest beginnings.

Later he writes:

What this means is that there are Christians who already occupy Wall Street every day in their occupations as businessmen and women, bankers and investors, traders and executives, secretaries and receptionists, janitors and security guards. The church's responsibility to these "occupiers" is to provide them with the moral and spiritual formation necessary to be faithful followers of Christ every day in their productive service to others.

And then the article ends with this:

Christians therefore must occupy the world in their occupations, doing all their work as Christians, whatever it is, "whether in word or deed," as the Apostle Paul instructs, "in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col. 3:17 NIV). In this way the church finds its most significant and transformative cultural engagement through its affirmation of the daily work of Christians who already occupy Wall Street (and all streets).

Christmas as the Triumph of Christ Over Paganism

2011-12-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

I had thought of writing about Christmas and its "pagan" origins but then Michael Bird went and said what I think so well. He has written December 25 Means the Triumph of Christianity Over Paganism. Here are Bird's thoughts:

Yes, we’ve all heard the JW, Free Presbyterian, and Puritan arguments that the 25th of December was originally a pagan festival to celebrate the birth of the sun god Sol Invictus, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, “the birthday of the unconquered sun,” therefore, Christians should not celebrate Christmas because it is a pagan holiday. There might be some truth to this. The 12th century Syrian bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi wrote: “It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day.” Yet I would point out that historians actually question which came first, the Christian festival of Christmas, or the pagan festival to Invictus, both were celebrated on Dec 25, but who did it first is not clear. The truth is that the selection of Dec 25 for Christmas could have been taken over from any number of winter solstice festivals.
But let’s grant a Christmas vs. Sol Invictus competition vying for people’s religious attention in the third and fourth centuries of the Roman Empire. What does it mean? Well, you might notice two things. First, some of the third century emperors like Aurelian and Decian who persecuted Christians were devoted to Sol Invictus. Decian wanted to unify the Empire around the worship of Sol Invictus, and thus sought to purify the Empire of Christians. Second, note also the forthright desire of some European intellectuals to return western civilization back to a pagan pluralism as if paganism will lead to a more open minded and tolerant society (see Alain de Benoist’s On Being a Pagan). Bad news for Decian – his empire is gone and Jesus not Solus Invictus is celebrated on Dec 25. Bad news for neo-pagans like de Benoist, as long as “Hark the Herald Angels” and “O Holy Night” are songs people hear, sing, and enjoy at Christmas, they don’t stand a chance in hell.
Christmas means that the unconquerable god of the Romans just got conquered. A pagan Roman holiday just got stuffed with more Christianity than a December Turkey stuffed with spiced bread crumbs. Dawkins can issue a secular intifada against Christianity all he likes, but we got the best holiday, the best music, and the best message – joy to the world and peace on earth. So Christmas ain’t going away any time soon.
Tertullian wrote: “We [Christians] are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace, senate, and forum. We have left you only your temples” (Apology 37). To that I would, add: “Oh, FYI, we just stole your holiday and crowned Jesus as King of kings on top of a city with seven hills, sitting on a big bad ass throne using Jupiter, Sol Victus, and Caesar as a foot rest. Hope that’s okay, if not, too flipping bad.”
Christmas means that Jesus has defeated the powers, the pagan gods that military rulers used to bring their peoples into subjection, to oppress all dissent, and to bring misery upon the masses of men and women. Christmas means that the tyranny of paganism – its pantheon, politics, and power – have been broken by a Jewish man who died on a Roman cross. Christmas means that the power for peace does not come from a Roman legion, but is heard in the anthem of a legion of angels singing praises to the infant Jesus. Christmas means that the pagan kings who, “To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace” have been robbed and plundered of the one thing which gave them power: fear. Christmas means freedom from the worship of the state so that we might enter into the state of worship of the one true God and his Son. Christmas means the greatest social reversal since Cinderella because, as Mary sang, ”He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly (Luke 1:52 NRSV)” (shh, don’t tel the Tea Party, St. Mary might be launching a class war on the rich!). Christmas means God has entered into the lowliness of the human estate in order to raise humanity up to the ceiling of heaven. Christmas means that what stands between heaven and earth is not a plethora of gods with the sexual ethics of Charlie Sheen and the behavior of an undisciplined toddler with superpowers, but the man Jesus Christ who came, lived, and died to reconcile humanity to God. Christmas means the victory of God over the inhumanity and irreligion of paganism. So I say, bake that ham, roast that turkey, pour forth the wine, sing and make merry, cause Jesus just kicked the Roman gods and all the evil that they stood for in the testiculus - why not celebrate it!

Merry Christmas!

Change in American Culture

2011-12-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about high lighting when reading a book is that a few years later you can pull that book of the shelf and see the main points of importance. I pulled off my shelf J. Daryl Charles' Between Pacificism and Jihad: Just War and Christian Tradition (IVP, 2005) and came across these thoughts:

Most contemporary observers, and not a few Christians, assume that American Society--and, for the moment permit to write as an American--could never become "totalized" and oppressive. After all, we convince ourselves, democratic government has built-in checks and balances. What is more, we have never known the dark side of statist rule and oppression that have visited other societies. While these balances do potentially retard the speed with which a society degenerates, they are foremost procedural and do not affect the moral foundations of a people. When a whole people--and everything in that culture--is full of putrefaction and moral rot, it is only a question of time as to when the system collapses and a "new elite" must step in to fill the power vacuum that has resulted.

But my interest here is not to engage in apocalyptic gloom. The point to be made is this: there is a qualitative difference between legality and morality. Laws will inevitably be a reflection of the values of a particular society. This is why Christians--religious conservatives especially, at least in the American context--need to be saved from the folly of trying to change laws and enact legislation without simultaneously seeking to change the way people think. The laws of the land will follow the engine of values and principles that a people hold dear. If a people's highest values are self-interest and autonomy, its laws will become utilitarian. If a society has a low regard for the value of human life (whether at the beginning or the end of the life spectrum), then its laws will reflect that view of human personhood.

The attempt to change culture by merely changing its laws is at best cosmetic. Our priority is to change the hearts and minds of people. This is slow, arduous work. That is why evangelism proper (in the narrow use of the term), while important, is only a small part of what Pope John Paul II has called "evangelization" of culture. That is, we must begin t reseed culture from the ground up, as it were, training and educating our own in terms of broader Christian worldview thinking so we are prepared to impart values to broader culture. If we resist or ignore long-term efforts to educate and penetrate culture by changing the way people think, no amount of "godly legislation"--or evangelism, for that matter--will ever be able to change culture at the root. It will be the equivalent of pouring Roses Lime Juice on cancer. (p. 139)

Is Britain a Christian Nation?

2011-12-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

Over at Powerline there is an article entitled "Is Britain a Christian Nation?" They quote the prime minister as stating the Britain is a Christian nation.

Britain is a Christian nation and should not be afraid of standing up for Christian values to help counter the country’s “moral collapse”, Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday.
In a rare foray into religion by a British premier, Cameron said “live and let live” had too often become “do what you please” in Britain.
The “passive tolerance” of immoral behaviour had helped fuel the August riots, excess in the banking industry and home-grown Islamist terror, he said.
“We are a Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so,” Cameron said at an event in Oxford, southern England, to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.
“The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today. Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend.
The alternative of moral neutrality should not be an option.”

The problem is that the actions of the people is continuing to trend contrary to this "Christian" nation status. Later in the article Cameron is quoted as saying:

Cameron described himself as a committed but only “vaguely practising” member of the Church of England, who was “full of doubts” about big theological issues.

It seems as though Cameron wants the fruit of Christianity--its moral base--but not the full throttled belief system that undergirds that morality. It reminds me of Israel at various times in the Old Testament when they wanted the fruit of the covenant but not with heart-felt devotion to the Lord.

Christopher Hitchens Has Died

2011-12-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens has died. His battle with cancer is over. His battle with God is over. Hitchens has been called a "public intellectual" and he spent the last years of his life engaged in an all out broadside against God and belief in him. He was energetic in this unbelief and he gloried in it. Here is a sample:

But I should not conceal the fact that I am not so much an atheist as an anti-theist. I am, in other words, not one of those unbelievers who wishes that they had faith, or that they could believe. I am, rather, someone who is delighted that there is absolutely no persuasive evidence for the existence of any of mankind's many thousands of past and present deities. Is Christianity Good for the World, p. 12

Pastor Douglas Wilson had opportunity to not only debate Christopher Hitchens but also spend time with him on a book/debate tour. Pastor Wilson had written a fine reflection on Christopher Hitchens in light of his death. It can be found HERE.

Domestic Violence--New Study and Resources

2011-12-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports on a recently released study on sexual abuse in the U.S.

An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought.

Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.

The full report mentioned by The New York Times can be found HERE.

Back in October 2010 I preached a sermon entitled "Domestic Violence and the Church". It can be accessed HERE (under the date of 10/10/2010). This was my attempt to speak to this issue that is so often left unspoken about in the Evangelical church.

A number of resources I used for my sermon came from Dr. Steven Tracy. He is a professor at Phoenix Seminary and one of the founders of Mending the Soul ministry. A few of the specific essays that I used are:

"Domestic Violence in the Church and Redemptive Suffering in 1 Peter" Calvin Theological Journal 2006

"Patriarchy and Domestic Violence: Challenging Common Misconceptions" JETS 50/3 (Sept 2007)

"What Does 'Submit in Everything' Really Mean? The Nature and Scope of Martial Submission" Trinity Journal 29 (2008)

The "Scientific" Shepherd

2011-12-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

A little Christmas humor...

"Baal is Dead!"--Meditations on the Clouds

2011-12-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

In the midst of my preparations for preaching on Habakkuk chapter three I read an essay by David Toshio Tsumura entitled "Ugaritic Poetry in Habakkuk 3" (Tyndale Bulletin 40.1, 1989, pp. 24-48). Amongst many biblical scholars it is common place to hold that Habakkuk chapter three was influenced by Ugaritic poetry. For example, F. F. Bruce in his commentary on Habakkuk 3.8 states the following:

Yahweh's campaign against the enemies of his people is depicted in terms reminiscent of the conflict with chaos in Semitic mythology--Marduk's victory over Ti'amat (the subterranean deep) in the Babylonian Genesis, for example, or Baal's victory over Yam (the unruly sea) in Ugaritic lore. The Minor Prophets: An Exegetical and Expository Commentary edited by Thomas E. McComiskey (Baker, 2009), p. 886

Tsumura's article challenges this consensus of literary connection Habakkuk 3 and Ugaritic mythology. In his article Tsumura discusses and quotes various Ugaritic myths including discussion of Baal as "rider of the clouds"--a common designation for Baal in Ugaritic texts. Along with reading this article I also read some of the Enuma elish--sometimes called The Chaldean Account of Genesis. This depicts the god Marduk slaying Tiamat and then slicing her up to create heaven and earth. I read all this to get a handle on something of the Babylonian mindset as well as to see if this would help me understand Habakkuk chapter three better.

So with all these thoughts floating in mind I stopped studying to go for lunch at my favorite pizza place down the street. The sky was full of majestic clouds creating a somewhat overcast day. As I turned into the parking lot and while looking at the clouds (yet still managing to drive in a safe manner!) I thought of Baal's epithet--"rider of the clouds." My very next thought was, "Baal is dead and you, O God have killed him." This brought a smile to my face. Baal is dead. He is a spent force. There are no devotees to this ancient Babylonian god. He is studied for historical interest only. The true and living God--the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--he is alive and active today. It is he who of whom Nahum speaks when he says:

In whirlwind and storm is his way, and the clouds are the dust beneath his feet. (1.3)

This living God has made war against the false gods in the past (Exodus 12.12; Numbers 33.4; 2 Samuel 7.23) and these gods are no more. He will continue to make war against the false gods of our time. He will not give his glory to another!

I am Yahweh, that is my name; I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to graven images...The LORD will go forth like a warrior, he will arouse his zeal like a man of war. He will utter a shout, yes, he will raise a war cry. He will prevail against his enemies. Isaiah 42. 8, 13

What to Teach in Student Ministry

2011-12-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

A recent post about what to teach in student ministries had a number of insightful thoughts. I think the suggestions work whether one has a traditional youth ministry or if one is looking primarily to the family to do the teaching. Here are the first two points:

(1) I believe that Christology should be at the center of our teaching.
All of us around the table that day would affirm the need to present the Gospel regularly in and through our teaching. But this simply means that the plan of salvation is presented regularly. That students “know” how to be saved. But that’s not really what I mean by having Jesus at the center. I believe you can give the plan of salvation regularly, and not have Jesus at the center of your teaching. What I mean is that Jesus, pure and simple, should be presented constantly. Our teaching should be saturated with Jesus. We should be telling stories about Jesus. We should be talking about Jesus teachings. We should be presenting Jesus’ character. We should be discussing Jesus’ death and resurrection. We should be teaching about this second-coming to judge. Christology should be the center and serve as the central criterion for all our teaching. I don’t think we can teach too much of Jesus. Some might protest and say that students will become bored if all we discuss is Jesus. I think that has more to do with the how than the what.

(2) I believe that we should not just teach Jesus haphazardly or selectively.
We should teach our students a Gospel. They should know at least one Gospel story inside and out – and if possible more. Not a truncated, externally pieced together set of ideas about Jesus. But actually an authorized story of Jesus, one of the Four Gospels. Students should know the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Or at least one or two of them by the end of their Student Ministry years. I believe students think they know a lot about Jesus and the gospel. But truth be told, they don’t know intimately a New Testament Gospel. I deal with College students all the time who grew up in youth ministries who know fragments, but have not been taught a whole Jesus. How much do we teach Jesus? How much do we teach the Gospel – again this is not a reference to the plan of salvation.
Here’s a suggestion: Each segment of the SM takes a Gospel and its their job to instill that Gospel into the students. I would suggest this plan:
Middle School : Mark
High School : John
College : Luke or Matthew

The full post can be found HERE.

Letter from Former Planned Parenthood Employees

2011-12-12T14:34:00.000-07:00

A group of former Planned Parenthood employees has written to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for the Energy and Commerce Committee. In their letter they state of their willingness to testify regarding illegalities they have knowledge of regarding Planned Parenthood's use of public funds and abortion. A portion of the letter reads as follows:

"It is a matter of public record that the affiliates of PPFA and its national headquarters receive roughly $1 million per day in federal-state support, for a total of $1 billion or more in any three-year period. This alone would merit close government attention as to whether or not these funds are being spent appropriately and, specifically, in keeping with the federal law which stipulates that none of these funds should be made available to a program in which abortion is used as a means of family planning. We can state categorically, from personal experience, that abortion is indeed deployed as a means of family planning according to the mission of the organization for which we once worked."

One of the signers is Abby Johnson who is the author of Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line.

To see a copy of the letter go HERE.

For a news story regarding these events go HERE.

Jesus in Habakkuk (Part 1)

2011-12-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

I finished up a sermon series on Habakkuk yesterday. One of my goals in preaching through this Old Testament prophet was to see Christ Jesus in the book. I stressed that the name of Jesus is not in the book--not in Hebrew or in any sort of "Bible Code!" So the challenge was to relate the content of Habakkuk to Christ Jesus without forcing themes or arbitrarily just switching topics ("Now I'm going to speak about Jesus.") without any connection in the text itself. I won't claim to have a great job at this but it was a conscious thought as I prepped and preached. In this series of blog posts I will articulate some of the connections I brought out in the preaching series.

One of the first things to do in coming to an Old Testament book is to check for any explicit quotations of that book in the New Testament. This is important because these quotations in their New Testament contexts form the basis for understanding how the New Testament authors saw Jesus Christ in the Scriptures and how they understood the previous revelation to be speaking to their time in light of the coming of the Messiah.

Habakkuk 1.5 is the first such passage that is picked up in the New Testament. It reads:

Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days--you would not believe if you were told.

These are the Lord's first words in response to the cries of Habakkuk in his painful confusion and questioning as to why God is not responding to the evil in the midst of Judah (1.2-4). God's response is to begin speaking of the judgment that is to come upon Judah at the hands of the Chaldeans (1.6). Verse five is an arresting declaration of God's sovereign judgment about to begin. Context is important here because I've seen this verse used as the theme verse for a mission's conference year's ago. The organizers of the conference saw the language of "nations" and how God was doing something "astonishing" and, presto--theme verse for world missions! Not a good use of Scripture. The context is God's just judgment upon his own people for their willful rebellion against his law and the subsequent violence that ensues. (Note: the language of "violence" is used seven times--1.2, 3, 9; 2.8, 12, 17--as well as related words such as "destruction" and "strife")

The apostle Paul quotes Habakkuk 1.5 in his sermon at Pisidian Antioch found in Acts 13.16-41. Acts 13 is a significant chapter. It deals with the beginnings of Paul's first missionary journey. It gives us Luke's recitation of Paul's first sermon to the Jewish synagogue. It also serves as the transition point of Paul's moving to the Gentiles as the Jewish community of Pisidian Antioch rejects the message of Messiah Jesus (Acts 13.44-47).

Paul's sermon in Acts 13 begins by setting the covenantal context with particular focus on the Davidic promises (the parallels with Peter's first sermon in Acts are noteworthy even including the use of the same prooftext--Psalm 16). Paul speaks of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is through this one who has been raised from the dead that forgiveness of sins in offered:

Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses. (Acts 13.38-39)

It is at this point, in the conclusion, that Paul urges a response by the use of Habakkuk 1.5.

Therefore, take heed, so that the thing spoken of in the Prophets may not come upon you: "Behold, you scoffers, and marvel, and perish; for I am accomplishing a work in your days, a work which you will never believe, though someone should describe it to you."

That is how Paul ends the sermon. It is meant to be an exhortative prod that moves his hearers to belief in Jesus. The failure to heed this message of the risen Messiah will bring judgment--a judgment like what the Prophets spoke about in the time of Judah's rebellion against the word of the Lord.

Where is Jesus in Habakkuk? The threat of divine judgment administered in a striking and sovereign manner cannot be dismissed as "just for them" way back in history. God's surprising ways include a crucified and risen Messiah. Judgment will be a reality for all those who do not heed this message of the risen Jesus and find their refuge in him (Psalm 2.12). But for those who heed this message the threat of judgment is no more: "Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him" (Romans 5.9).

Rookie of the Year Award

2011-12-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

Just a little bit of fatherly bragging today...

My son Thaddeus swam for Greenway High School this past season and he received his Varsity letter while just a Freshman. Also he was selected "Rookie of the Year."

Here is a great shot of him swimming the butterfly.

Islam in Britain

2011-12-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

This is from Patriots Newswire.

A Christian worker in Britain has filed a lawsuit after losing her job when she exposed a campaign of systematic harassment by fundamentalist Muslims.
In a landmark legal case, Nohad Halawi, a former employee at London’s Heathrow Airport, is suing her former employer for unfair dismissal, claiming that Christian staff members, including her, were discriminated against because of their religious beliefs.
Halawi’s case is being supported by the Christian Legal Centre (CLC), an organization that provides legal support for Christians in the United Kingdom. CLC says the case raises important legal issues, and also questions over whether Muslims and Christians are treated differently by employers.
Halawi, who immigrated to Britain from Lebanon in 1977, told the London Telegraph “that she was told that she would go to Hell for her religion, that Jews were responsible for the September 11th terror attacks, and that a friend was reduced to tears having been bullied for wearing a cross.”
Halawi worked at the airport for 13 years as a saleswoman at World Duty Free, where she sold perfumes. Halawi was dismissed in July, following complaints by five Muslims that she was being “anti-Islamic.”
Halawi says her problems with the Muslims began after she defended a Christian friend who worked with her at the same store, and who was being harassed by the Muslims for wearing a necklace with a cross.
Matters got worse after Halawi described a Muslim staff member as an “allawhi,” or “man of God” in Arabic. Another worker, however, who overheard the remark, thought she said “Alawi,” his branch of Islam. The misunderstanding led to a heated argument, after which Hawali was suspended and then fired.
Halawi says she persistently complained to management that she was being subjected to personal religious abuse and harassment from Muslim staff, some of whom went so far as to mock her about “shitty Jesus,” according to the CLC. She says a group of “extremist” Muslims were the perpetrators, and that other employees are now worried that their jobs could be at risk if the Muslim group turns on them.
“One man brought in the Koran to work and insisted I read it and another brought in Islamic leaflets and handed them out to other employees,” Halawi told the London Telegraph. “They said that 9/11 served the Americans right and that they hated the West, but that they had come here because they want to convert people to Islam…This is supposed to be a Christian country, but the law seems to be on the side of the Muslims,” Halawi said.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, director of the CLC, said in a statement that Halawi’s case is the most serious she has pursued, and that “it raises huge issues.”
“First there is the level of Islamic fundamentalism prevalent at our main point of entry to the UK. Secondly, there are very real issues of religious discrimination, which it would appear those in authority are turning a blind eye to, using the current loopholes in employment law as an excuse,” Williams said.
The Halawi case comes amid concerns that Christianity is being marginalized in Britain at the same time that Islam is spreading rapidly and Muslims are becoming more assertive.
British MP David Simpson, for example, has warned that Christianity is seen to be fair game for criticism and abuse while Islam receives special protection in the United Kingdom.
During a debate in the House of Commons in May 2011 about the treatment of Christians around the world, Simpson said: “In the United Kingdom, the policy seems to be that people can do whatever they like against Christianity – criticize it or blaspheme the name of Christ – as long as they do not insult Islam.”

For more of this article see HERE.

Trent Franks and New Pro-Life Legislation

2011-12-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

This comes from Patriot Newswire:

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., an outspoken pro-life advocate, is preparing to do battle again on Capitol Hill.

On Tuesday, he’ll chair a House hearing in support of his latest legislative effort, the Prenatal NonDiscrimination Act (PreNDA). The measure would ban abortions done on the basis of gender or race.

“It would simply say that you cannot discriminate against the unborn by subjecting them to an abortion based on their race or sex,” Franks says.

He points to a finding by the Guttmacher Institute: “…the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women.” Franks also believes that sex-selection abortions are on the rise in the U.S. and notes a Zogby International poll that found 86 percent of those surveyed believed gender-based abortion choices should be illegal.

Pro-choice advocates say PreNDA is an “anti-choice” measure. Nancy Northup, President of Center for Reproductive Rights, calls it a “trumped up bill for a trumped up problem,” and says it’s a ridiculous waste of congressional resources at a time when the U.S. economy is faltering.

“This bill is a cynical and offensive attempt to evoke race and sex discrimination when actually it’s about taking women’s rights away,” said Northup.

PreNDA contains both civil penalties and jail time for those who violate the ban, but not the women who seek or obtain abortions. Franks says he believes women who find themselves with an unintended pregnancy are “victims” who need help in the midst of a crisis, not punishment.

However, those who perform abortions done solely for sex- or race-selection purposes could face fines and up to five years in prison.

"Like a Warrior...Like a Woman"

2011-12-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

In preaching through Habakkuk 3.8-15 I spoke of how God is a warrior coming to do battle against the house of evil (Hab 3.13) and on behalf of his people. I began by quoting Exodus 15.3 in which Israel sings that "Yahweh is a warrior, Yahweh is his name." They sing this after their deliverance from Egypt through the Red Sea. God is a warrior who comes for the deliverance (salvation) of his people.

This morning I came across more "warrior" language but also something else. Isaiah 42.13-14 reads:

The LORD will go forth like a warrior, he will arouse his zeal like a man of war. He will utter a shout, yes, he will raise a war cry. He will prevail against his enemies.

I have kept silent for a long time, I have kept still and restrained myself. Now like a woman in labor I will groan, I will both gasp and pant.

Here is a wonderful multiplication of images which is startling. God is like a warrior raising a war cry against his enemies. He is also like a woman panting in labor for the deliverance of his people. Both images are captured in the same context. Now I reject all notions of calling God "our Mother." This is a trend for some. I was reminded of the words of Mark Driscoll when he states his concerns regarding this growing trend among some in the "emergent" church.

I am particularly concerned, however, with some growing trends among some people...the rejection of biblical names for God, such as Father, which is essentially apologizing before the unbelieving world for the prayer life of the flamboyantly heterosexual Jesus, who uttered the horrendously politically incorrect "Our Father" without ever having the decency to apologize for being a misogynist patriarchal meanie." Confessions of a Reformission Rev (p. 22)

So our God is Father. And yet he uses this profoundly and uniquely feminine image of a woman in labor to communicate his grace. Regarding this image E. J. Young writes:

A strong figure introduces the second line and is placed first for emphasis. As the travailing woman shrieks in pain, so will God also do, for, as Calvin justly remarks, it is only by such figures of speech that God's ardent love toward us can be expressed. The implication is that it has been difficult for God to hold His peace when He beheld wicked men forming a kingdom with the express purpose of destroying His own kingdom and bringing His purposes to naught. His own loved ones were the objects of the enemies' wrath, and yet God must constrain Himself. Yet He longs to deliver His own, and now shrieks aloud, as though unable to endure longer. The time for action has arrived. The Book of Isaiah (vol. 3), p. 129

These images of the warrior and the laboring woman are powerful communications of the character and action of our God in his sovereign quest for salvation and deliverance.

One final thought: any doctrinal formulation of impassibility must make its peace with theses images without muting them or gutting them of their force. D. A. Carson has short but insightful discussion of this issue in his little book The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God:

It is no answer to espouse a form of impassibility that denies that God has an emotional life and that insists that all of the biblical evidence to the contrary is nothing more than anthropopathism. The price is too heavy. You may then rest in God's sovereignty, but you can no longer rejoice in his love. You may rejoice only in a linguistic expression that is an accommodation of some reality of which we cannot conceive, couched in the anthropopathism of love. Give me a break. Paul did not pray that his readers might be able to grasp the height and depth and length and breadth of an anthropopathism and know this anthropopathism that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:14-21). (pp. 58-59)

God is like a warrior roused to do battle for his beloved. God is like a woman crying out in labor that now is the time of deliverance. Praise God for his revelation of his heart of grace!

Francis Schaeffer on Ecology

2011-11-29T17:01:00.001-07:00

In 1970 Francis Schaeffer published Pollution and the Death of Man in which he attempted to construct a Christian approach to the arena of ecology. Much of what Schaeffer wrote over forty years ago is still relevant today. Part of the genius of Schaeffer was his ability to see his time with an understanding of where the current ideas were going.

Pollution and the Death of Man contains two appendices of historical interest. The first is "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" by Lynn White, Jr. which appeared in Science magazine (March, 1967). The second is "Why Worry About Nature?" by Richard Means which appeared in Saturday Review (Dec. 2, 1967). These essays were important in the late 1960's and Schaeffer accurately grasped their significance. These articles articulated the importance of how world views shape our understanding of ecology. Later in the early 1980's when Schaeffer was re-editing this book for inclusion in his Complete Works he would add these words:

In ecology in the 1980's there is not much writing or discussion on the basic philosophies underlying the consideration of ecology. This is parallel to the lack of philosophic pornography, philosophic drug taking, philosophic films, etc. However, in ecology, as in these other areas, the thought-forms of the 1980's were laid in the earlier period of the 1960's. At that time there was much serious consideration, writing, discussion and expression concerning the world-views underlying all these areas. (Complete Works--vol. 5, p. 5)

What Schaeffer saw in the writings of the 1960's was a move toward pantheism in the ecological movement's philosophical writings. Schaeffer predicted that this call to embrace pantheism would become more pronounced.

There was a conference in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, called "The Conference on Environment and Population." There was a light-show presenting the modern problems of ecology. Then the proposition was made that the answer must be in the direction of pantheism. We are going to hear more of this. Pantheism will be pressed as the only answer to ecological problems and will be one more influence in the West's becoming increasingly Eastern in its thinking. (p. 13)

Schaeffer shows himself prescient with these thoughts. Confirmation of this comes from an article by George Sessions in 1987. Sessions' article is entitled "The Deep Ecology Movement: A Review" (Environmental Review, vol. 11, no. 2) and, as the title suggests, he covers the history of the ecology movement. Sessions mentions the importance of Lynn White, Jr's article that was reprinted in Schaeffer's book.

Lynn White, Jr., brought the anthropocentrism issue into dramatic focus as the basis for the environmental debate. White argued in a 1967 article that orthodox anthropocentric Christianity must assume a large share of the responsibility for the environmental crisis as a result of desacralizing nature and producing a world view (metaphysics) that sees humans as separate from and superior to nature. (p. 106)

White's 1967 essay reached a large audience as Sessions points out:

White's essay reached a wider audience when it was republished in the "Sierra Club Bulletin" and discussed approvingly in Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb. Along with other deep ecology classics of the 1960's, White's article was reprinted in several anthologies. (p. 106)

Sessions also recognizes the increasing interest in pantheistic ideas as forming the philosophical base of the ecological movement. Sessions documents the many and varied theorists in the realm of philosophic ecology writing in the 1960's and '70's. Over and over again these theorists are seen looking for philosophical inspiration in variants of pantheism--or, as Peter Jones would say, "one-ism." Here is a sampling of the thinkers Sessions covers in his essay:

Raymond Dasmann, who wrote influential books from a broad social perspective, was advocating a move to the "future primitive" and "ecosystem people" ways of life by the 1970s. According to John Milton, a self-professed Zen Buddhist, Zen taught that "there is really no distinction between the organism and the environment." And Frank Egler proposed a new world view called Human Ecosystem Science: "I look to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism...as the womb from which a humanitarian-oriented Human Ecosystem Science may yet arise."

Paul Shepard's essay, "Ecology and Man," was another landmark in the critique of Western anthropocentrism. Influenced by the Zen Buddhist views of Alan Watts, Shepard discussed the different metaphysics resulting from an ecological perception. (p. 107)

Sessions documents how some of these thinkers were influenced by Western versions of pantheism found in Spinoza and Alfred North Whitehead.

The Spinoza scholar, Stuart Hampshire, later faulted contemporary Western ethical theory for its anthropocentrism. That is, states of mind (feeling, consciousness) are considered to be the only intrinsic good; the rest of nature is valued only to the extent to which it contributes to essentially human states of consciousness. Modern ethics, Hampshire thought, belittled and diminished humans and also involved a kind of arrogance in the face of nature--"an arrogance that is intelligible only if the doctrine is seen as a residue of the Christian account of this species' peculiar relation to the Creator."...Hampshire proposed instead a more cosmic Spinozistic world view in which ecologically destructive acts would be prohibited by exceptionless norms. (p. 110)

It is to his credit that Francis Schaeffer was reading and attending to these currents of thought in his day. He accurately saw the underpinnings of the ecology movement that was developing in his day. He clearly saw the clash of underlying world views and sought to speak to this dynamic. His writing is still relevant for us today. These same world view tensions roil beneath the surface in debates about environmental philosophy and policy.

Another Abortion Facility Closes!

2011-11-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

The 40 Days for Life campaign continues to see results! Here is a recent posting from their website:

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my cell phone rang with the exciting news from Brian Gibson (head of Pro-Life Action Ministries and Minneapolis/St. Paul 40 Days for Life campaign leader) that Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota was closing down its abortion facility!

This closure follows SEVEN 40 Days for Life campaigns held in the right-of-way outside the hospital, publicly exposing their deadly side business.

In news stories over the weekend, hospital officials admitted that abortions at their facility had declined by 40% over the past few years and that abortion was no longer economically viable.

Praise God for answered prayers, and congratulations to all the Twin Cities groups and individuals whose efforts over the years contributed to this victory.

This makes the 19th abortion facility to close following a 40 Days for Life campaign outside its doors!

Habakkuk and God's Concern for the Environment

2011-11-28T19:08:00.002-07:00

Habakkuk presents the living God as bring judgment upon the Babylonians. In particular, chapter 2 presents five "woes" against this oppressor of God's people. This five statements are instructive because they show us what kinds of things bring forth God's judgment. They reveal what moves God--what he is concerned about. One interesting item mentioned is found in v. 17:

For the violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, and the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them, because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the town and all its inhabitants.

This reference to Lebanon is evocative. In the Old Testament Lebanon is known for its natural beauty and environmental artifacts. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery states some basic facts about Lebanon:

Lebanon is a region made up of two mountain chains, the coast fringing Mount Lebanon range and the lesser easterly Anti-Lebanon range, separated by the Bekaa Valley. The biblical references are probably only to Mount Lebanon itself. Here elevated heights, which reach up to ten thousand feet, give Lebanon majesty and glory (Is 35:2; 60:13) and reputation as being the "utmost heights" (2 King 19:23 NIV). The elevation is responsible for a heavy rainfall, which falls on the height in winter as snow. In places, the snow lasts all year (Jer 18:14). The high precipitation and the slow melting snows, coupled with porous aquifers (Ezek 31:3-4, 7), ensure year-round fertility (Ps 104:16).

Chief among the wonders of Lebanon were its cedar trees. These are majestic in beauty and size as they can reach a height of about 80-100 feet (A.C. Myers in The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, [Eerdmans, 1987], p. 197). These "cedars of Lebanon"are mentioned some seventy times in the Old Testament in a variety of settings. It is for these trees that Lebanon is most famous. Solomon made the cedars of Lebanon a subject of empirical study (1 Kings 4.33) and used these trees in the construction of the Temple (1 Kings 5.10). Psalm 104.16 speaks of these cedars of Lebanon as "trees of the Lord" and in Ezekiel 31.8 the trees of Eden are said to be jealous of the cedars of Lebanon. These trees speak of strength for in Psalm 29.5 when the psalmist wishes to highlight the power of God he speaks of him "breaking in pieces the cedars of Lebanon." Their renown for beauty in sight and smell makes them useful as metaphors in the erotic poetry of the Song of Solomon (4.11; 5.15).

In all likelihood the reference in Habakkuk 2.17 to the "violence done to Lebanon"refers to the Babylonian destruction to this region. F. F. Bruce explains that this phraseology "is best explained as the plundering of the forests of Lebanon of their cedar wood to further the conqueror's building projects" (The Minor Prophets: An Exegetical and Expository Commentary edited by Thomas Edward McComiskey [Baker, 1992, 2009], p. 871). This mention of Lebanon and, most likely, its trees in a judgment oracle shows us God's concern for his creation. This is further strengthened by the mention in this oracle of "the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them." Here God's concern for the animals of the region is manifested. This is in accordance with what is found elsewhere in Scripture as Proverbs 12.10 demonstrates: "A righteous man has regard for the life of his animal." O. Palmer Robertson also draws attention to another example of God's interest and notice of animals in a prophetic context:

The gentle downturn of the last phrase of the book of Jonah has memorialized forever the compassions of the Lord for the entirety of his creation. Should not Jonah have compassion on Nineveh, a city with numerous people, "and also much cattle" (Jon. 4:11)? God takes note when his lowliest creatures are terrified by the brutalities of insensitive human beings. He hears the groanings of his entire creation, and will see that the whole created universe joins in the final redemption of mankind (Rom. 8:19-21). (The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah [NICOT], [Eerdmans, 1990], p. 205)

In light of this reference to Lebanon and its beasts, Old Testament commentator Ralph L. Smith asks, "Is there an ecological message in this verse for us?" (Micah-Malachi [Word Biblical Commentary], [Word, 1984], p. 111). This would seem to be the case. God expresses his displeasure not only over the violence to people and cities but also to trees and beasts. Needless and wanton destruction is not acceptable to God.

Perhaps the words of Francis Schaeffer best begin to capture what our attitude should be. In his book Pollution and the Death of Man Schaeffer is attempting to lay out a theologically driven argument for care of creation. He writes:

As a Christian I say, “Who am I?” Am I only the hydrogen atom, the energy particle extended? No, I am made in the image of God. I know who I am. Yet, on the other hand, when I turn around and face nature, I face something that is like myself. I, too, am created, just as the animal and the plant and the atom are created. (p. 30)

Therefore, intellectually and psychologically, I look at these animals, plants, and machines[1], and as I face them I understand something of the attitude I should have toward them. I begin to think differently about life. Nature begins to look different. I am separated from it, yet related to it.

Notice the phrase “intellectually and psychologically.” This is a very important distinction. I can say, “Yes, the tree is a creature like myself.” But that is not all that is involved. There ought to be a psychological insight, too. Psychologically I ought to “feel” a relationship to the tree as my fellow-creature. It is not simply that we ought to feel a relationship intellectually to the tree, and then turn this into just another argument for apologetics, but that we should realize, and train people in our churches to realize, that on the side of creation and on the side of God’s infinity and our finiteness we really are one with the tree![2] (p. 31)

Christians, of all people, should not be the destroyers. We should treat nature with an overwhelming respect. We may cut down a tree to build a house, or to make a fire to keep the family warm. But we should not cut down the tree just to cut down the tree. We may, if necessary, bark the cork tree in order to have the use of the bark. But what we should not do is to bark the tree simply for the sake of doing so, and let it dry and stand there a dead skeleton in the wind. To do so is not to treat the tree with integrity. We have the right to rid our houses of ants; but what we have not the right to do is to forget to honor the ant as God made it, in its rightful place in nature. When we meet the ant on the sidewalk, we step over him. He is a creature, like ourselves; not made in the image of God, but equal with man as far as creation is concerned. The ant and the man are both creatures. (p. 43) (The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer--vol. 5 [Crossway, 1982])

The God of creation cares for his creation. He has uniquely crowned humanity with glory and honor (Psalm 8) but this doesn't deny God's concern for all the other parts of his creation.

[1] Schaeffer means here “mechanical functions” we share in common with animals. He writes: “For example, we have a common lung system with dogs and cats. This is not surprising. Both man and these other creatures have been created by God to fit a common environment. There is a common relationship in these mechanical functions, which relates man downward. There are machine functions to man.” (p. 31)
[2] Schaeffer is very clear to deny any notions of “pantheism”: “Let us emphasize—this is not pantheistic;…” (p. 34)

Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party Pictures

2011-11-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Interesting set of images from over at Ricochet.

40 Days for Life--Fall 2011 Results

2011-11-25T10:00:00.001-07:00

The results are in the for the 40 Days for Life fall campaign that went from September 28 until November 6. Here are some of the numbers:

301 locations across North America and around the world had a 40 Days campaign.

135,000+ participants.

4000+ churches involved.

732 confirmed lives saved.

8 abortion workers quit.

One encouraging story came out of Stormlake, IA. Sue Thayer worked for Planned Parenthood in Stormlake for 17 years as the manager of the facility. This year she was outside the building leading the 40 Days for Life campaign in front of her former employer!

The numbers for 40 Days for Life since its beginnings in 2007 are truly amazing for an organization only four years old:

1,663 individual campaigns.

422 cities across all 50 states and 13 countries.

500,000+ participants.

14,000+ churches involved.

61 abortion workers quit.

18 abortion facilities closed.

5,045 confirmed lives saved.

This is truly an amazing work. It is centered in prayer and I believe that is why the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is blessing this endeavor. The church is fighting this evil with its head, heart, hands, and from our knees. The next cycle of 40 Days for Life starts February 22, 2012.

Fight Like Jael!

2011-11-25T08:04:00.002-07:00

We recently went over the book of Judges in a Bible class I'm teaching. I wish I would have had this T-shirt to show the young ladies! It can be found HERE.

Occupy Wall Street and Woodstock

2011-11-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

Over at Powerline Steven Hayward has an interesting article comparing Occupy Wall Street to Woodstock. He quotes Time magazine from 1969 regarding Woodstock and the language is strangely familiar to that being bandied about today.

So let’s revisit the original for a moment, and note the media propensity for glorifying whatever self-assertion reckless youth decides to throw up at the moment. Back in 1969, Time magazine chirped that Woodstock

may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological events of the age. . . [T]he revolution it preaches, implicitly or explicitly, is essentially moral; it is the proclamation of a new set of values. . . With a surprising ease and a cool sense of authority, the children of plenty have voiced an intention to live by a different ethical standard than their parents accepted. The pleasure principle has been elevated over the Puritan ethic of work. To do one’s own thing is a greater duty than to be a useful citizen. Personal freedom in the midst of squalor is more liberating than social conformity with the trappings of wealth. Now that youth takes abundance for granted, it can afford to reject materialism.

Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing event of significance but I can't help but think that those involved and some of those watching may be claiming more for the experience than is warranted. There is always the desire for quick and easy social transformation and those in the midst of the energy of the moment in OWS may confuse their emotional experiences for real and lasting social change.

The University Atmosphere

2011-11-21T13:37:00.001-07:00

Over twenty years ago Eta Linnemann wrote an amazing little book entitled Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology (Baker, 1990). Linnemann had been trained in the German university tradition and took her degrees for New Testament scholarship. She studied under such critical theologians as Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Fuchs. After having a profound conversion experience she renounced her prior presuppositions. There are a number of fascinating thoughts in her book but I picked the following quotation because it is relevant to the American university scene and highlights the need to navigate the university intellectual currents carefully.

Every student who entrusts himself to the university must accept the yoke of the atheistic intellectual starting point as an inescapable necessity. This is a yoke which bends the bearer cruelly, and which is placed on the student apart from conscious choice, by means of the completion of the course of study in a major field--a field dominated by the atheistic starting point. Even Christians who attend the university come under this yoke. They are permitted, to be sure, to have their faith in their private lives by those around them who may view that faith favorably, or derisively, or perhaps even share its convictions. But they are forbidden to retain the living God and his Son Jesus Christ in their academic thinking, or to grant him any material function therein. So they retain Jesus in their feelings, but they deny him daily in their thinking, because this thinking follows atheistic, anti-Christian principles." (p. 33)

There is a desperate need for the establishment of the life of the mind--especially for those going off to colleges and universities. They need to understand this underlying clash of ideas. More importantly, they need to know how the university system with its methodological naturalism will be the atmosphere in which they will be pursuing their labors and skill set. Without an understanding of this dynamic people will simply breathe in the noxious fumes of methodological naturalism without realizing it until too late.

More on Boys Wrestling Girls--A Gentleman Refuses to Wrestle

2011-11-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

Last year during the Iowa High School State wrestling championship a young man, Joel Northrup, refused to wrestle a young lady and in so doing he forfeited a chance at the state title. The story can be HERE. The article begins this way:

DES MOINES, Iowa -- After a standout season in which he went 35-4, Joel Northrup had every reason to dream of winning an Iowa wrestling championship this year, but he gave it all up before his first state tournament match Thursday.
Northrup, a home-schooled sophomore who competes for Linn-Mar High School, said his religious beliefs wouldn't allow him to wrestle Cassy Herkelman, a pony-tailed freshman from Cedar Falls who is one of the first two girls to qualify for the tournament in its 85-year history.
Northrup issued a statement through his school expressing his "tremendous" respect for what Herkelman and Ottumwa sophomore Megan Black achieved this season, but he said didn't feel he had a choice.
“
As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most other high school sports in Iowa.
”-- Joel Northrup
"Wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times," Northrup said in a statement released by his high school. "As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most other high school sports in Iowa."

Charismatic Gifts in Church History

2011-11-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

Parchment and Pen is still engaged in their series "Why I Am/Not Charismatic." Sam Storms has an essay speaking to the issue of the spiritual gifts in church history (HERE) which I think is nicely done. I've also been engaging the discussion in the comments section.

Teaching the Bible at the Universities

2011-11-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

A recent article speaks to the issue of the need to have the Bible taught at universities. Since so much of Western civilization has been profoundly influenced and shaped by the Bible it would seem almost self-evident that the Bible should be read and studied by those seeking to understand our culture. Here a few selections from the article.

Unfortunately, even teaching Western civilization, of which the Bible is an important part, is in decline as a component of a liberal education. By Western civilization I mean the cultures derived from Europe, including, among other aspects, their ethical values, worldviews, political and economic institutions, and customs.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) recently reported that out of a group of 75 U.S. public universities (the top 62 from U.S. News and World Report in 2009 plus thirteen others, to ensure representation from all fifty states) only one school, the University of South Carolina, retained a Western history survey course requirement. Thirty of the schools surveyed by NAS did not even offer such a survey course. The UNC Department of History offers a two-course sequence of Western civilization survey courses, yet neither is required, even for history majors. Ironically, history majors are in fact required to take at least one course in non-Western history.

And then there is this:

To understand and evaluate our historical narrative and how religion fits into it, students need to encounter the primary texts—including the Bible. They need the ability to draw on foundational texts in the same way that later authors did, many of whom are significant in their own right and are studied in those few remaining Western survey courses.

Most students in a Western history course are only exposed to Paul and Jesus through secondary sources. This is an ironic and unfortunate relegation of two figures who, independent of their status in Christianity as Apostle and Savior, are on every credible list of the ten most influential people in world history.

A quick glance at the course reader for UNC History 151, Western History to 1650, reveals that students will leave the course having read such important religious authors as Josephus, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, but not a single page from the Bible. With all due respect to Xenophon, Thucydides, and other less notable Greek historians included in the course, given the constraints of one semester surely students would be better served reading great works of Western religion.

Pro-Life Article in Weekly Standard

2011-11-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

There is an amazing article by Fred Barnes in the current Weekly Standard (HERE) that documents the gains of the pro-life movement. Barnes notes the profound changes and advances in the pro-life movement:

That the pro-life movement is bigger is a given. It’s also younger, increasingly entrepreneurial, more strategic in its thinking, better organized, tougher in dealing with allies and enemies alike, almost wildly ambitious, and more relentless than ever.
All that is dwarfed by an even bigger change. Pro-lifers have captured the high moral ground, chiefly thanks to advances in the quality of sonograms. Once fuzzy, sonograms now provide a high-resolution picture of the unborn child in the womb. Fetuses have become babies.

Even the pro-abortion side is recognizing the changes. Barnes sees them as "worn out":

The language gymnastics and euphemisms reflect the forlorn condition of the pro-choice flock. They’re worn out. Many are in despair. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, toldNewsweek of her anguish as she watched last year’s March on Washington. “I just thought, my gosh, they are so young,” she said. “There are so many of them, and they are so young.” Today, zeal and confidence and perseverance in the abortion battle are all on the antiabortion side. “There are more pro-lifers now, and they’re more determined,” says Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.

The entire article is well worth reading and is profoundly encouraging.

Habakkuk: God's Sovereignty and Human Responsibility

2011-11-13T22:12:00.000-07:00

It is often pointed out by those in the Reformed tradition that God's comprehensive sovereignty is taught side-by-side with a strong sense of human responsibility. The writers of Scripture do not try to play off these concepts against each other. They affirm both realities without compromising either one. Classic texts appealed to are Acts 2.23; Acts 4.27-28; and Isaiah 10.5-7, 15. In Habakkuk this dynamic is manifest.

Habakkuk 1.5-6 the Lord speaks:

Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days--you would not believe if you were told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous people who march throughout the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs.

Here we see God's sovereignty active in raising up the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans (Babylonians) are a wicked nation and yet God is the active agent in raising them up to discipline his people (Judah). This matches up with the realities found in Isaiah 10 listed above. God raises up this nation and yet a few verses later this nation is held responsible.

Habakkuk 1.11 speaks to the Chaldeans' responsibility in very direct language:

Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on. But they will be held guilty, they whose strength is their god.

The twin themes of God's sovereignty and human responsibility are set side-by-side in this context without compromising either reality.

Occupy Wall Street and Planned Parenthood

2011-11-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

Over at Life News they have an article showing that a Florida Planned Parenthood has joined the Occupy movement. Life News goes on to compare and contrast the abuses of the Occupy movement with the lack thereof in the recent 40 Days of Life campaigns that recently happened all over the nation.

Occupy Wall Street--Supporter List

2011-11-13T16:18:00.001-07:00

I came across this list of supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement. They provide documentation and from what I've checked out they seem to have done their work at linking the documentation. After reading this list, ask yourself, if even 1-2 of these supporter organizations had been affiliated with the Tea Party movement what would have been the outcry?

David Brooks (Again!) on Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-11T19:37:00.001-07:00

More good stuff from David Brooks on Occupy Wall Street. In his piece, The Great Restoration, Brooks focuses on the Americans who are not protesting but who are, nonetheless, seeking to "restore the moral norms that undergird our economic system." He mentions three such norms that are undergoing overhaul.

The first norm is that you shouldn't spend more than you take in. After an explosion of debt over the past few decades, Americans are now reacting strongly against the debt culture.

Second, Americans are trying to re-establish the link between effort and reward. This was the link that was severed on Wall Street, where so many made so much for work that served no productive purpose. This was the link that was frayed by the bailouts, when people who broke the rules still got rewarded.

The third norm is that loyalty matters. A few years ago there was a celebration of Free Agent Nation. But now most people, even most young people, would rather work long-term for one company than move around in search of freedom and opportunity.

There is more good stuff in Brook's essay...take a look!

David Brooks on Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

David Brooks has an interesting piece on real radical and lasting economic change--and it's not the Occupy Wall Street movement. His essay The Milquetoast Radicals is worth reading. Here is one quotation that is reasonable but the ideas are overlooked by the mass of those protesting.

If there is a core theme to the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is that the virtuous 99 percent of society is being cheated by the richest and greediest 1 percent.
This is a theme that allows the people in the 99 percent to think very highly of themselves. All their problems are caused by the nefarious elite.
Unfortunately, almost no problem can be productively conceived in this way. A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization. They will have nothing to say about the way Americans have overconsumed and overborrowed. These are problems that implicate a much broader swath of society than the top 1 percent.

Brooks ends his piece with these well-chosen words:

Don't be fooled by the cliches of protest movements past. The most radical people today are the ones that the look the most boring. It's not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It's about changing behavior from top to bottom. Let's occupy ourselves.

Not a Democracy--a Republic!

2011-11-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Gary DeMar has a good post (HERE) on the nature of democracy and why it may not be what the Occupy Wall Street crowd thinks it is (or maybe they do know what it is but don't care). DeMar begins his essay this way:

“We Are What Democracy Looks Like!” is a popular slogan and sign used by the Occupiers. If mob rule is the definition of democracy, then they are right. The thing of it is, America is not a democracy. Sure, there are democratic elements in our system of government, but Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution of the United States “guarantee[s] to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government,” not a democracy. One reason these young people may not be aware of these facts is that they may never had a course on the Constitution.

He goes on to quote the following notable Americans as to their thoughts on "democracy":

John Winthrop (1588–1649), first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared direct democracy to be “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.”[1]

John Cotton (1584–1652), seventeenth-century Puritan minister in Massachusetts, wrote in 1636: “Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed?”[2]

James Madison (1751–1836), recognized as the “father of the Constitution,” wrote that democracies are “spectacles of turbulence and contention.” Pure democracies are “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property. . . . In general [they] have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”[3]

John Adams, the second president of the United States, stated that “the voice of the people is ‘sometimes the voice of Mahomet, of Caesar, of Catiline, the Pope, and the Devil.’”[4] (*All footnotes available at original article)

Occupy Wall Street--Satirical but True

2011-11-11T10:00:00.003-07:00

There is some funny stuff out there about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Stephen Colbert did a two part video that is hilarious. It can actually be found on the official Occupy Wall Street web page HERE.

Also, below there is picture I came across over at Triablogue that is great--take a look!

Francis Schaeffer Quotations

2011-11-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

The only way to reach our young people is no longer to call on them to maintain the status quo. Instead we must teach them to be revolutionary, as Jesus was revolutionary against both Sadducees and Pharisees. In this biblical sense we must be revolutionary. If we are going to say anything meaningful to our generation, whether for individual conversion or for cultural transformation in which Christ is Lord of all, we must build upon the understanding that the generation in which we live is plastic. "Plastic" is a good word here, for plastic is synthetic and it also has no natural grain or form. The church has failed to speak anything like the way God would have had it speak. It largely acted as though the Christian base could be removed, and it would make no practical difference to society, culture or its own young people. The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century (Complete Works, vol. 4, p. 24)

Suppose we awoke tomorrow morning and we opened our Bibles and found two things had been taken out, not as the liberals would take them out, but really out. Suppose God had taken them out. The first item missing was the real empowering of the Holy Spirit, and the second item the reality of prayer. Consequently, following the dictates of Scripture, we would begin to live on the basis of this new Bible in which there was nothing about the power of the Holy Spirit and nothing about the power of prayer. Let me ask you something: what difference would there be from the way we acted yesterday? Do we really believe God is there? If we do, we live differently. The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century (Complete Works, vol. 4, p. 40)

What men find ugly is what they see in Christians who hold to the orthodox doctrine that men are lost, but show no signs of compassion. This is what is ugly. This is what causes men in our generation to be turned off by evangelicalism....

If we are Christians and do not have upon us the calling to respond to the lostness of the lost and a compassion for those of our kind for this life and eternity, our orthodoxy is ugly. And it is ugly in the presence of anybody who's an honest person. And more than that, orthodoxy without compassion is ugly to God. Death in the City (Complete Works, vol. 4, pp. 285, 286)

Occupy Phoenix--The Editorial They Didn't Publish (Yet)

2011-11-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

I've been reading and re-reading in the work of Francis Schaeffer. I've been impressed with how his ministry to the counter-culture of the 1960's is needed today. As I watch and listen to the Occupy Wall Street crowd there seem to be parallels to the kind of mentality that Schaeffer ministered to in his life and writings. Toward that end I thought I might try to engage the thinking of the Occupy crowd. The Occupy Phoenix website had a call for editorials so I sent one in today. I was looking to challenge the thinking regarding the nature of "justice." There is a great deal of talk about justice but very little attempt to define it. I wrote the following editorial quickly and kept it within their word count so it is not as developed as it could be. It was meant to be the beginning of a discussion and not the last word. Since they didn't publish it...I figured I would publish it here!
____________________________________________

Justice Now! Justice…What?

The struggle for justice continues. In such times it is helpful to remember those who have gone before so as to enflame our desires and educate our minds. There are ancient words spoken against an unjust people that are relevant for our time. Speaking of the oppressors it was said:

            Their justice and authority originate with themselves.

Here was a people of “justice” but it was anything but just. Their conceptions of justice had their foundation and origination from themselves. They recognized no greater law than themselves. For these the adage was apt: might makes right.

But if such is the case with the unjust, what of those who seek justice? Can they also affirm the same principle of autonomous justice and hope to avoid the traps and pitfalls of tyrannical injustice? Is justice arbitrary? If we want to argue that the 1% is not the determiner of justice then we must as assuredly say that the 99% is not the determiner of justice either. Justice must be transcendent or else it bogs down into complete relativism—and relativism is no philosophy upon which to build a renewed society and culture.

Consider that if justice is not transcendent—above human origination—then the current quest for “justice” will eventually be co-opted in favor of forces of injustice. If the origination of justice is human then either its locus of authority is the individual or the group. If it is centered in the individual then each person becomes a law unto herself with the consequence that everyone else is an autonomous law unto themselves. This is moral anarchy. If justice is centered in the group—what the collective dictates—then the issue of relativism is still looms large. What justifies the group’s definition of justice? Groups can and do go astray. To even grant this presupposes a standard by which the group/state/government/collective can be assessed and found wanting. If justice is not transcendent then we are left with either anarchy or tyranny. If we would avoid these unjust scenarios then we must recognize that justice is transcendent. In the words of Martin Luther King:

“The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. (from "Rediscovering Lost Values")”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Protesting for the cause of justice engages the body in a cause of action. No less important, however, is the engagement of the mind. The call to action must be sounded upon clear principles and these principles must be anchored in something more than human origin. Failure to ground the protest for justice in the transcendent will yield simply one more form of human tyranny.

                                                              --St. Francis

Habakkuk: The Foundations of Justice

2011-11-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

They are dreaded and feared; their justice and authority originate with themselves. Habakkuk 1.7

They whose strength is their god. Habakkuk 1.11

These phrases are used to describe the Babylonians who are to be raised up by God (1.6) in order to judge Judah. In these words we have an apt understanding of autonomy and idolatry. The refusal to recognize any law above oneself is to make oneself the locus of law--to have "justice and authority originate with themselves." When this is the case "strength" becomes the standard of right and wrong. Or, to use the famous phrase, "might makes right."

When the locus of justice is the individual anarchy is the result. Each individual is a law unto oneself and is in potential conflict with every other individualized law order. When the locus of justice is centered in a group such as the State then totalitarianism is the result. The State takes on the character of deity in that it recognizes no law above itself. Rousas Rushdoony accurately speaks to this issue:

Behind every system of law there is a god. To find the god in any system, locate the source of law in that system. If the source of law is the individual, then the individual is the god of that system. If the source of law is the people, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, then these things are the gods of those systems. If our source of law is a court, then the court is our god. If there is no higher law beyond man, then man is his own god, or else his creatures, the institutions he has made, have become his gods. When you choose your authority, you choose your god, and where you look for your law, there is your god. Law and Liberty (Thoburn Press, 1971), p. 33

Boys Wrestling Girls

2011-11-01T16:44:00.000-07:00

John Piper has a great article on boys wrestling girls in competition. What I love about Pastor Piper is that he is able to put into words a biblically informed argument that makes sense. We all know something is wrong with the idea of boys competitively wrestling girls. Some may try to ease the queasy feeling but it's still there nonetheless. Piper's article can be found HERE.

Good Article on "Occupy Wall Street"

2011-10-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to understand what the occupiers of Wall Street are struggling for and what they seek. Even their own websites and statements are not very helpful. A recent blog post by Joel McDurmon over at American Vision is well-worth reading. McDurmon is fair and judicious in his analysis. A few quotations to whet the appetite...

Steve Wynn’s alleged “big rant” against Occupy Wall Street actually contains a balanced insight into the movement:
That group is quite diverse. . . . There are people in there that think that government should give them more just because they are alive. There are people who are opposing government spending. There are people there that are opposing bailouts.
This is more honest than, for example, Ann Coulter’s dismissal of the whole as a parasitic “Flea Party”—though it does have that element in it pretty thick. Her article is certainly not without a good point, and in her latest essay on the topic she exposes a real problem: ideologically-driven ignorance and hypocrisy. There are a lot of simply uninformed people in the movement who have a good idea of corporate corruption and undue influence—yet these people are unequipped (thanks largely to their government education) to express their ideas by anything but the misguided attack on “capitalism” and “greed,” and a call for socialistic remedies. It’s the informed liberals who know better and are trying to leverage this ignorance are the real enemies here. Wynn catches this, too: “But if it’s a politician that does it, or a union leader, then it represents something much more pernicious. It represents a deliberate misleading of the public.” I think it is uncritical of Coulter to ignore this distinction between the mere dupes and the real creeps.

Then there is this on greed and envy...

Yes, of course there is greed, and it can have genuinely negative results in business. But it is nowhere near a socially destructive as its wicked sister Envy. And Envy is what I really see in many of the protesters out there—especially the ones trying to leverage government socialism to “tax the rich” and take for themselves. It is nothing less than envy that says, “This person has more than me, I don’t have as much as I want, therefore I should take from them and give to me. And when I can’t have what I want, I will lash out and destroy.” Thus the calls for violent revolution and the defecating on police cars, etc., which are just glimpses of Envy-bred violence. When Envy grips a political system, it destroys and enslaves societies.

McDurmon looks at how the Occupy movement started and how it has developed. Its beginning was not all bad but it quickly moved to folly.

This is closer to what I first heard the movement had originated as. It was not a mere whine over corporate wealth, but about corporate corruption. It was a group of kids really ticked, and righteously so, because big bank representatives used scare tactics and threats of martial law to frighten Congress into passing bailouts—bailouts to save the banks which had simply done terrible business, should have been closed and led by the nose through bankruptcy court, but instead were deemed “too big to fail.” It was a bailout for absolute failures and frauds. And as soon as the bailout money came in, these same jokers paid themselves tens of millions of dollars in bonuses for having done such great business.

Of course they had. They conned the public out of hundreds of billions. That’s what they always have done; and they did it one more time. Why not pay themselves a handsome bonus for a job well done, once again? It’s business as usual.
If OWS would merely focus on this across the board, and drop the socialistic stuff, it would gain the support of the liberty movement and probably a lot more; and the true causes of the problems—the corrupt corporations, the lobbies, the corrupt politicians, and the Federal Reserve counterfeiters—would shake in their boots. But the message has been corrupted because it was begun by leftists, joined mostly by leftists, and can think of nothing but a leftist answer. Thus, one group amongst them that is trying to create a list of demands has arrived as something like a $1.5 Trillion New Deal package where 25 million people go to work directly for the government. Are you kidding? And how fast did you want to become like Greece? So quickly does liberalism turn justice into envy and all is lost.

Revival in Boston--Who Knew?

2011-10-20T12:17:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting post over at Timothy Tennant's blog regarding the growth of the church in the Boston area. He writes:

Prior to my coming to Asbury I lived in the Boston area. Boston is the home of a major spiritual awakening. More people have come to Christ in Boston in the last three decades than during the Great Awakening, but it has largely gone unnoticed, because it is occurring primarily among African, Chinese, Korean, and Hispanic peoples. There are over 50 different African congregations in Boston and, indeed, on any given Sunday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, more people worship Christ in a language other than English than in English. It has been called the “quiet revival.”

Jesus is growing his church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!

Pro-Life Apologetics Course

2011-10-17T14:26:00.002-07:00

For those wanting good teaching on pro-life issues check out the free resource Advanced Pro-life Apologetics Course. This is available from Life Training Institute Blog and can be found HERE.

Be sure to check out the resource for a short but powerful presentation of pro-life reasoning.
"How to Defend Your Pro-life Views in Five Minutes or Less"

D. A. Carson on "This Present Evil Age"

2011-10-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

In a recent book, These Last Days: A Christian View of History, edited by Richard D. Phillips and Gabriel N. E. Fluhrer (P&R, 2011), there is an essay by D. A. Carson entitled "This Present Evil Age." Carson discusses Revelation chapter 12 and how it is that we overcome the enemy's rage. In particular, Revelation 12.11 states:

And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.

Carson has some excellent meditative thoughts on this text. In the process of developing these thoughts he speaks of the central importance of the gospel. He writes:

I have been teaching for more decades now than I can count, and if I have learned anything from all of this teaching, it is this: my students don't learn everything I teach them; what they learn is what I'm excited about. So within the church of the living God, we must become excited about the gospel. That's how we pass on our heritage. If, instead, the gospel increasingly becomes for us that which we assume, then we will, of course, assent to the correct creedal statement. But, at this point, the gospel is not what really captures us. Rather, it is a particular form of worship, or a particular style of counseling, or a particular view of culture, or a particular technique in preaching, or--fill in the blank. Then, ultimately, our students make that their center, and the generation after us loses the gospel. As soon as you get to the place where the gospel is that which is nearly assumed, you are only a generation and half from death.

Again, the centrality of the gospel of Christ's cross must reign supreme--in our thinking and our affections.

For those interested, Carson's essay is available HERE

40 Days of Life Update

2011-10-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

The pro-life organization 40 Days for Life is operating right now in over 300 cities and 122 babies have been reported as being spared abortion. The 40 Days campaign is about the power of prayer being unleashed on behalf of the unborn, mothers, fathers, and even abortion center staff. I received an update for day 14 that was simply amazing and wanted to share the story here.

——————————————————-
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
——————————————————-
A visibly upset young woman and her mother had just walked out of the abortion center where the 40 Days for Life vigil is going on – and walked right up to one of the prayer volunteers.

She had been advised to have an abortion because she had difficulties in her life.
After a short discussion, the two women seemed interested in the offer of a free ultrasound at a local pregnancy care center. But there were two challenges.
First of all, it was 8:30 in the morning – and the pregnancy center wouldn’t open til 9:00.

The volunteers decided to take the young woman and her mom to breakfast; that would help them settle down a bit, and it would let them wait until the doors were open at the pregnancy center.

The second challenge seemed a bit more formidable. While an ultrasound MACHINE was available, there might not be an ultrasound TECHNICIAN available.
So they all went to the pregnancy center to wait – and pray.

Within the hour, another couple arrived at the abortion center. They had been told to abort their baby because of possible disabilities.

They had doubts about going through with it – so they, too, were offered a free ultrasound.

“Can you get us that ultrasound right now?” the couple asked.

About the same time, yet another couple arrived for an appointment. They had significant financial challenges – and they, too, had been encouraged to abort. “And yes,” said the volunteer, “couple number three also wanted a free ultrasound.”

Meanwhile, back at the pregnancy center, a car had entered the parking lot. None of the volunteers recognized the car. A woman got out. They didn’t recognize her, either.

She walked over and introduced herself. “I’m an ultrasound tech and I have nothing to do today,” she said. “Do you know of anyone that could use my skills?”
“Seriously!” said the volunteer. “Just like that!”

Three young women saw ultrasound images of their babies that day. And despite all the reasons each had been encouraged to abort – they each chose life for their children.

Each of these mothers has a long road ahead and many challenges to overcome. But they’ve taken a wonderful first step. Please keep them in your prayers, and ask Christ to guide them on their way.

“Before I knew the difficulties of this day, God had planned for our needs to be met,” said the 40 Days for Life vigil participant. “Three couples who had planned on ending their babies’ lives today are still pregnant tonight. Praise God!”

She added that the overwhelming feeling “is one of both personal humility and awe for our God who did so much today. What a blessing! We praise and honor the Creator tonight. He has done marvelous things!”

How Christians View Each Other

2011-09-29T15:06:00.001-07:00

I saw this over at Parchment and Pen--thought it was humorous (and a little too true!)

Victory Over Death--Jesus Wins Again!

2011-09-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

I came across this today. It was powerful and moving. A boy with cancer, alone in the hospital is brought into a Christian family by adoption. He comes to Jesus and fights the rest of his short life with faith and joy. The second video is Pastor John Piper's sermon about young Victor's life and faith. (If you watch the first video be sure to have some tissue nearby.)

Pastor Piper wrote this about Victor:

It was one of the great privileges of my life to speak the word of God at the memorial service for 14-year-old Victor Manuel Watters on September 11, 2011. Sober, painful, and joyful — that’s how I would describe this unexpected way to mark 9/11.

Victor died of cancer — Ewing’s Sarcoma. At the age of nine he was in the hospital alone. His birth family was unable to care for him. Mike and Deb Watters were often on the same unit because of a similar cancer in their daughter. To make a spectacular story of grace short, they adopted Victor, cared for him, led him to Jesus, and surrounded him with overflowing love as he died on September 7, 2011.

An Abortion Clinic Worker's "Ah-Ha" Moment and the Tactics of Resistance

2011-09-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

There is a post from back in July over at Live Action in which Jewels Green describes her moment of clarity which moved her from pro-choice to pro-life. The post is well worth reading. Toward the end of her piece she writes the following:

All of this played out against the backdrop of a very different public view of the pro-life movement. Gone were the days of outright intimidation and harassment; replaced by a peaceful, prayerful presence outside the clinic doors peopled by compassionate souls ready and willing to assist pregnant mothers in practical, useful, and lasting ways. Only by continuing to offer truth, solace, hope, help, and love to the troubled and misguided can we ever hope to end abortion. Only by continuing to speak the truth about the horror and brutality of abortion can we hope to change minds. One heart, one soul, one mother, one child at a time.

I was reminded of an article by Marvin Olasky in World magazine (Jan. 17, 2009) entitled "Pivot Point." In this article Olasky traces out the shift of focus in the pro-life movement that happened from 1989-1992. Prior to this the tactics and language of the pro-life movement was more confrontational with Operation Rescue being the most vocal and aggressive of the pro-life organizations. Olasky writes:

Frustation had grown as eight years of the Reagan administration had not led to Roe v. Wade's reversal or reduced the annual toll in dead children. With legislative and judicial approaches bogged down, some pro-lifers blocked entrances to abortion businesses as part of Operation Rescue. Others thrust bloody photos of dead unborn babies in front of passerby. (p. 47)

Because of this many associated pro-lifers with the shootings of abortionists and "blockades" of abortion businesses. A Gallup poll during this time showed that Americans were 45 percent more likely to regard pro-lifers as violent than to see pro-abortion people in the same way. It is helpful to remember that the pro-abortion side was much more aggressive at this time. Not only was abortion a "right" is was something good; something to be proud of and glory in for those who had the "procedure." Frank Schaeffer in his book Crazy for God reminds us of what it was like:

Leading up to Roe, abortion had been pitched as a sad but inevitable solution to rare and agonizing dilemmas, like pregnancy resulting from rape and incest. But in the context of the post-Roe firestorm, pro-choice people seemed to also be defending abortion not only as a way to end a pregnancy but as an in-your-face triumphant political statement. They even seemed to be goading anyone who had doubts about Roe v. Wade. For instance, in the mid-1970's, the Washington DC chapter of the ACLU auctioned off free abortions at a fundraising raffle held at a dance, and they made sure their action was publicized. (p. 292)

Both pro-life and pro-abortion camps were belligerent and their mutual antipathy fed off each other.

But in 1989 a series of meetings were begun by leaders of various pro-life organizations. They invited in a number of counselors to direct the "messaging" of the pro-life message. Out of this effort there emerged a new direction. Olasky writes:

A consensus to "love them both"--troubled moms and at-risk unborns--also emerged. (Guy) Condon of Americans United for Life played an important role in that movement, arguing in 1991 that "our sloganeering, demeanor and symbols make us appear to be against women, against individual freedom, against the democratic process if it leads to policies that defy traditional religious principles, and even against one another, if the other doesn't hold precisely the same view we do."

He proposed a pro-life pivot: Since much of the public perceived pro-life advocates as "violent, fighting for special interests, against something instead of for something," he wanted the pro-life movement to "personalize the unborn, personalize women as victims, present women as pro-women and pro-life advocates, present pro-lifers as compassionate and reasonable." (p. 49)

This has had tremendous results. This is a battle for hearts and minds--the soul of America. Once the attitude seemingly was to get the legislative and judicial victories at the national level. This could be done but without a corresponding change in the mindset of Americans this would be short-lived. The focus on tactics of local victories that chip away at the foundations of Roe are working. More importantly, as the Christian community has chosen to engage in the works of service and prayer the Lord has blessed. Olasky quotes an article from Time magazine which states that the,

quiet campaign for women's hearts and minds, conducted in thousands of crisis pregnancy centers around the country, on billboards, phone banks and websites, is having an effect. (p. 49)

The numbers for abortion in America are still horrifically high (about 1.2 million every year) but there has been decrease down from a high of 1.6 million two decades ago. There is still a long way to go but may God in his mercy grant his church to live, love, and pray in such a way that the evil of abortion on demand is done away with for good.

God's Pursuit of Justice--Through Us!

2011-09-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

Gary A. Haugen has written a book that is a combination of theological insight, moving stories, and creative solutions regarding the issue of injustice in the world. Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World (IVP, 1999) is well worth reading on this issue. One poignant section deals with how God brings justice to those who need it.

"If God seeks justice for the oppressed, how exactly does he do that? If, as Psalm 10 says, Gods helps the fatherless, defends the oppressed, 'breaks the arm' of evil people and calls them to account for their wickedness--how does he do this?...

"A fair question. Do we have an answer? I think we do, and it has everything to do with you and me.

"Unless the work of seeking justice is a category of endeavor that is completely different from every other activity on earth that is important to God, the answer to the how question has something to do with what God's people do or don't do. If you think about it, two truths apply to everything that God wants accomplished on earth: (1) he could accomplish it on his own through supernatural power; but instead, (2) he chooses for the most part to limit himself to accomplishing that which he can achieve through the obedience of his people." (pp. 96-97)

So even as we cry out for justice we should also be praying and searching to see in what manner we might be the answer to that cry for justice.

Presuppositions in Biblical Studies

2011-09-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

I was looking up some information about the book of Daniel today in An Introduction to the Old Testament by Raymond B. Dillard and Tremper Longman III (Zondervan, 1994). The book of Daniel has a number of controversies that swirl around it. Some of these are due to the presuppositions brought to the text. Those with a naturalistic world view simply cannot countenance any notion of predictive prophecy. This comes out very clearly in the quotation that Dillard and Longman provide regarding Daniel chapter 8 from commentator W. S. Towner who did the commentary on Daniel for the Interpretation series. Towner writes:

We need to assume that the vision as a whole is a prophecy after the fact. Why? Because human beings are unable accurately to predict future events centuries in advance and to say that Daniel could do so, even on the basis of a symbolic revelation vouchsafed to him by God and interpreted by an angel, is to fly in the face of the certainties of human nature. So what we have here is in fact not a road map of the future laid down in the sixth century B.C. but an interpretation of the events of the author's own time, 167-164 B.C. ...

So called "human certainties" trump a basis of divine intervention. But this is only true if the absence of God is a "human certainty." This is not argued for but merely asserted without the slightest regard for proving that point. I have no doubt Towner is competent in Hebrew and linguistic analysis but philosophically he is wildly off-mark in his question-begging assertions. What often happens in the disciplines of Old and New Testament studies is that such philosophical nonsense is assumed (and sometimes spouted!) and this is to be merely accepted as "scholarship." Rarely is there even any attempted justification for the world view that undergirds such positions.

Acts 10 and the Objective and Subjective Elements

2011-09-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

I've been following the on-going discussion over at Parchment and Pen regarding "Why I Am/Not Charismatic." In the process I've been posting a few comments on the various threads. One of the threads concerned the issue of subjectivity in receiving contemporary revelations. I posted the following in regards to Acts 10:

Regarding dreams and subjectivity…I’ve been impressed by looking at Acts 10 and seeing the interplay between revelatory moments, rational thought, and providential events. Peter is engaged in set prayers (v 9) and falls “into a trance” (v 10). He has a revelatory experience of the sheet coming down with unclean animals. This revelatory event does not bring with it an inherent sense of clarity because “Peter was greatly perplexed in mind as to what the vision which he had seen might be” (v 17). This perplexity causes Peter to “reflect on the vision” (v 19) obviously engaging rational powers. In the midst of this reflection the Holy Spirit “speaks” to Peter about three men looking for him (v 19-20). Simultaneous with this the three men from Cornelius are at the front gate. This is the providential element and it is memorable to Peter because when he recounts the story in Acts 11 he mentions that it was “at that moment three men appeared” (Acts 11.11). When Peter finally comes to Cornelius’ house he says the following: “God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean” (v 28). This conclusion is a result of a complex of factors including a revelatory vision, the direct speech of the Holy Spirit, rational thought processes and providential events. Putting these all together Peter comes to his conclusion. The vision by itself did not yield this clarity. It was one factor. I see no reason why it might not be the same today. So even if one wants to say that a vision or dream is not clear or that it is open to subjectivity this is no different than the NT times. We look to all the potential factors to draw conclusions.

I would like to develop these thoughts in the future and speak to some of the potential applications for today but for now I figured I would just post these "seed thoughts."

More on Michele Bachmann

2011-08-12T22:31:00.001-07:00

The recent piece by Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker has drawn forth a response by Nancy Pearcey (whom Lizza mentioned in his article). Pearcey's piece is HERE. Pearcey shows how the crucial issue with Bachmann is that of "worldview." Interesting response worth reading.

1 Corinthians 14.24-25 and Charles Spurgeon

2011-08-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

In a recent sermon I looked at 1 Corinthians 14.24-25 for some basic principles for the worship service. I didn't deal in detail with tongues or prophecy specifically but rather with principles of application for our worship service. Added to this there is an on-going dialogue over at Parchment and Pen entitled "Why I Am/Not A Charismatic." Amid the comments there was some discussion of Mark Driscoll's remarks that he has, at times, been granted knowledge of someone's past in order to minister to them. This seemed to be in accord with 1 Corinthians 14.24-25. There was some concern that this smacked of "mysticism"--a negatively loaded word by those using it! I brought up the example of Charles Spurgeon as another example of a minister receiving direct, non-discursive knowledge about the details of someone's life for the sake of ministry. The following excerpt is from Charles Spurgeon's autobiography.

There were many instances of remarkable conversions at the Music Hall; one especially was so singular that I have often related it as a proof that God sometimes guides His servants to say what they would themselves never have thought of uttering, in order that He may bless the hearer for whom the message is personally intended. While preaching in the hall, on one occasion, I deliberately pointed to a man in the midst of the crowd, and said, "There is a man sitting there, who is a shoemaker; he keeps his shop open on Sundays, it was open last Sabbath morning, he took ninepence, and there was fourpence profit out of it; his soul is sold to Satan for fourpence!" A city missionary, when going his rounds, met with this man, and seeing that he was reading one of my sermons, he asked the question, "Do you know Mr. Spurgeon?" "Yes," replied the man, "I have every reason to know him, I have been to hear him; and under his preaching, by God's grace I have become a new creature in Christ Jesus. Shall I tell you how it happened? I went to the Music Hall, and took my seat in the middle of the place; Mr Spurgeon looked at me as if he knew me, and in his sermon he pointed to me, and told the congregation that I was a shoemaker, and that I kept my shop open on Sundays; and I did, sir. I should not have minded that, but he also said that I took ninepence the Sunday before, and that there was fourpence profit out of it. I did take ninepence that day, and fourpence was just the profit, but how he should know that, I could not tell. Then it struck me that it was God who had spoken to my soul through him, so I shut up my shop the next Sunday. At first, I was afraid to go again to hear him, lest he should tell the people more about me, but afterwards I went, and the Lord met with me, and saved my soul."

Then Spurgeon adds this comment immediately following the above:

I could tell as many as a dozen similiar cases in which I pointed at somebody in the hall without having the slightest knowledge of the person, or any idea that what I said was right, except that I believed I was moved by the Spirit to say it; and so striking has been my description, that the persons have gone away, and said to their friends, "Come, see a man that told all things that ever I did; beyond a doubt, he must have been sent of God to my soul, or else he could not have described me so exactly." C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography (Volume 1: The Early Years), Banner of Truth, 1962, pp. 531-532.

The parallels to what is described in 1 Corinthians 14.24-25 are amazing. Without any claim to perfection, Spurgeon is recognized as a powerful Calvinistic preacher of God's word and a reliable source that is not prone to exaggeration. It is difficult, for me at least, to refrain from seeing a prophetic manifestation in the incidents described by Spurgeon above.

Michele Bachmann in The New Yorker

2011-08-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

The recent issue of The New Yorker (August 15, 2011) has an article by Ryan Lizza entitled "Leap of Faith." This is a lengthy article about Michele Bachmann and the influences on her thought and life. What is interesting is to see the number of individuals that have been influential in evangelical circles over the past 40 years and how they have shaped Bachmann. The article mentions all the following: Francis Schaeffer (How Should We Then Live), Nancy Pearcey (Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity), John Eidsmoe (Christianity and the Constitution), David Noebel (Understanding the Times), and Steve Wilkins' biography of Robert E. Lee. The article's author finds all of this disturbing--too Christian, too right-wing, etc. Whatever else one may think of Mrs. Bachmann and her political skills she certainly has had training in a biblical worldview. The article is worth looking at--HERE.

The Hiddenness of God

2011-08-08T14:02:00.002-07:00

A few men and I have been reading and discussing Klaus Issler's book Wasting Time with God: A Christian Spirituality of Friendship with God (IVP, 2001). I am enjoying the book and it is challenging in that Issler, at times, comes from a slightly different theological perspective. Issler writes from a non-Reformed perspective on the will and his language tends to reflect this. The challenge is to read in a sympathetic manner without unnecessarily throwing out good ideas due to the fact that they are communicated in a manner not congenial to my theological perspective.

As an example, we read chapter five--"Commitment: Seeking the God Who Hides"--in which Issler discusses the concept of the "hiddenness of God."

Can Christians admit that, in a sense, God is hidden now, that God has not fully revealed himself this side of heaven? Hiddenness is not a word usually associated with God, for God is known as the one who reveals himself. But does he at the same time also intentionally conceal himself? Upon consideration, most would agree that God is not fully revealed now in this world. If God revealed more of himself, perhaps believers would never ignore his trademark. For example, maybe he could make a rainbow shine every morning to start the day, and end the day with a heavenly choir singing his praises to accompanying the sunset. God could do much more, but he does not. Apparently God now conceals some of his glory--to hide himself to some extent--so that, among other purposes served, believers may be able to pursue a genuine and deeper relationship with him. (pp. 125-126)

So God "hides" himself to create the space for us to seek him.

Thus, God graciously cloaks his greatness for believers so he will not overwhelm us or coerce our loyalty. Such divine hiddenness provides sufficient room--a measure of "relational space"--for believers to respond to God's initiatives of love. If we wish, we may remain at a surface level of acquaintance with God, or we can pursue a deeper friendship. Obedience to divine commandments is important to God, but God desires much more: the development of an ongoing and mutually willing relationship of love between God and each one of his children. (p. 127)

Granted, there are ways of understanding this kind of statement that is at odds with a Reformed understanding of the human will and divine sovereignty. But is this necessarily the case? Is there a way to affirm this concept? The best way to do this is ask, "Is there a biblical category that might make sense of this?" I think there is. The Bible recognizes a concept of "feigned obedience" or "pretended obedience" as indicated by the following scriptures.

Foreigners pretend obedience to me; as soon as they hear, they obey me. (2 Samuel 22.45; also Psalm 18.44 where it is repeated)

Say to God, "How awesome are your works! Because of the greatness of your power your enemies will give feigned obedience to you. (Psalm 66:3)

Those who hate the Lord would pretend obedience to him, and their time of punishment would be forever. (Psalm 81.15)

The scriptures provide us with a psychologically sophisticated account of the depth of the human heart and its devotion. It is able to probe the depths of the intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4.12). Our God desires full-hearted devotion and not merely lip-service of half-hearted devotion (Isaiah 29.13; Mark 7.6).

There is a way to construe Issler's remarks that do not need to buy in to all of his assumptions about the human will. His comments can be seen to be consistent with certain scriptural categories as seen above. Once this is done Issler's remarks can be profoundly shaping for us. God does seem to hide himself in the ways Issler describes but he does this to create "a measure of 'relational space'--for believers to respond to God's initiatives of love." This makes sense. It certainly seems like an obvious truth that some Christians know God "better" than others. I speak here of not just intellectual cognition of the propositions of God character and ways--although this is very important. Rather, there are some Christians whose relationship with God is deeper and more profound at an existential level. This is in large measure due to their tenacious seeking of the living God and his allowing them to find them (2 Chronicles 15.2, 4, 15). This relentless seeking of the living God by his children is pursued in faith and empowered by grace. Yet it is, nonetheless, a true seeking and true finding. There is the individual's self-consciously chosen paths of seeking and hungering for God's presence. And this is the kind of seeking the Father desires.

You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. (Jer. 29.13)

With the above in mind, Issler's comments can be informative and encouraging for our pursuit of God.

God does not force his full presence on us; rather he partially hides himself to encourage a genuine response of friendship. It is as if God walks a precarious tightrope of giving enough clues about himself so that we could know he desires a deeper relationship, but not enough to overwhelm us or coerce us toward him. God maintains a delicate tension between self-revelation and being hidden in order to assure that believers respond to his initiatives and pursue a relationship willingly. Ultimately God will fully live in our midst and show us his face (Rev 22:5). But now, God's invisibility poses a problem: it is easy for us to become distracted from seeking God.

Issler then adds,

Believers must not mis-interpret God's intentions. The relational distance he offers never indicates any indifference toward us. (p. 128)

So we can approach the hiddenness of God with hope. Sometimes the hiddenness is itself a summons to him; a summons to experience more of him. It is a goad God gives to us to seek him for he knows that as we draw near to him, he will draw near to us (James 4.8).

Honest and Safe Places of Refuge for the Journey of Faith

2011-07-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

I recently read In Search of a Confident Faith: Overcoming Barriers to Trusting in God by J. P. Moreland and Klaus Issler (IVP, 2008). In the first chapter they speak about "What Faith Is...and What It Isn't." They tease out the differences between unbelief ("a willful and sinful setting of oneself against a biblical teaching") and doubt ("an intellectual, emotional or psychological hindrance to a more secure confidence in some teaching or in God himself--I believe something but just have doubts"). Moreland and Issler address the need of being able to deal with doubt--both intellectual and emotional--in realistic ways. In the process they state these words which I found profoundly moving and challenging (both at an individual level as well as at a church level):

Thus, we now have a stifling, stagnating situation in the evangelical community: People do not feel safe in expressing doubt or lack of belief about some doctrinal point—even the question of whether they actually believe in God. The result is that people hide what they actually believe from others, and even from themselves, all the while continuing to use faith-talk to avoid being socially ostracized in their local fellowship. Because we do not fully understand assensus (and fiducia; see below), we have unintentionally created a situation in which people do not know how to distinguish what they believe from what they say they believe. Thus, they substitute community jargon for authentic trust. To effectively address this situation, we must create safe, honest, nondefensive fellowships in which people are given permission to be on a faith journey, with all the warts, messiness and setbacks that are part of such a journey. We must also address general and specific intellectual doubts, provide insights about the affective, emotional hindrances to growth in confidence in God, and become more intentional about bearing credible witnesses to each other regarding answers to prayer and other supernatural experiences that strengthen faith. (p. 22)

"They substitute community jargon for authentic trust"--powerfully true! This happens in the church and it happens in families of believers. We need to be aware of this dynamic. "Fighting the good fight of faith" (1 Timothy 6.12) deserves so much more than "community jargon."

J. P. Moreland on Theistic Evolution

2011-07-25T22:06:00.001-07:00

J. P. Moreland, in his recent book The Kingdom Triangle (Zondervan, 2007) makes the following observation that is helpful in the current discussions regarding theistic evolution:

Theistic evolution is intellectual pacifism that lulls people to sleep while the barbarians are at the gates. In my experience, theistic evolutionists are usually trying to create a safe truce with science so Christians can be left alone to practice their privatized religion while retaining the respect of the dominant intellectual culture....While there are exceptions, many theistic evolutionists simply fail to provide a convincing response to the question of why one should adopt a theological layer of explanation for the origin and development of life in the first place. Given scientism, theistic evolution greases the skids toward placing nonscientific claims in a privatized, make-believe realm in which their factual, cognitive status is undermined. (p. 46)

Excellent Article on the Historicity of Adam

2011-07-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

Dr. Ardel Caneday (Professor of New Testament Studies and Biblical Theology at Northwestern College) has written an excellent article on the historicity of Adam. "The Language of God and Adam's Genesis & Historicity in Paul's Gospel" appears in The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15.1 (2011). A number of aspects of Caneday's discussion make this well-worth reading. A few items of note:

1. Caneday interacts extensively with the Biologos view of theistic evolution. In particular the views of Peter Enns are fully engaged with as he is one of the main theological proponents that Biologos utilizes in combining theistic evolution and a "revised" reading of Genesis. Caneday argues that Biologos in fact deconstructs Adam to fit evolution. Along the way Enns and the folks at the Biologos have to argue against the historicity of Adam and Eve. Furthermore they have to separate death from an historical Adam all the while claiming to uphold the authority of Scripture. The argument is that Paul is mistaken about the historicity of Adam but that this is okay since God has "accommodated" himself to the "categories available to human beings at that time."

2. Regarding the issue of "accommodation" Caneday brings out the fact that there are at least two versions of accommodation in the history of the church--one that is historically situated in the early church and the Reformers; the other standing in agreement with Faustus Socinus and Hugo Grotius. The first recognizes that accommodation applies to all of Scripture because God the Creator must accommodate himself to the creature in all of his revelation. The latter conception applies to views that see God accommodating himself to errors of the biblical time period. Caneday demonstrates that these two views of accommodation ought not to be conflated and that the Biologos/Enns view of accommodation is out of accord with the historical view of Augustine and Calvin--even while claiming them for support.

3. Caneday is an exegete of the finest caliber but he also understands theology. Caneday utilizes the thought of Cornelius Van Til in a careful and helpful manner in his theological evaluation of Biologos and Enns. I have often wondered why the thought of Van Til has not been used more in the arena of Old and New Testament studies. Caneday effectively utilizes the resources in Van Til's apologetic to evaluate the current denial of the historicity of Adam.

4. Caneday has a discussion of the relationship between Acts 17 with Paul and Athens and the current deniers of Adam's historicity. Caneday writes:

These ancients responded with more consistent logic to Paul's sermon than to evolutionists in the church today. For, if Biologos evolutionists insist that Paul begins his proclamation of the gospel with a myth from Genesis, the one man formed directly by God, why do they believe Paul when he culminates his preaching of the gospel with the one man God raised from the dead? After all, what Paul claims concerning the beginnings, which they cannot test scientifically by direct observation or experience, the nonetheless reject because they suppose that their present focused study delineates laws by which they can deduce how the present emerged from the past. Yet, what Paul claims concerning resurrection from the dead, which they also cannot access to assess scientifically by direct observation and experience, they nonetheless do not reject. (p. 36)

5. Caneday is especially good when he speaks to the issue of "literal" vs. "symbolic" readings of Genesis. He faults all sides for a "false polarity." Caneday argues:

Lost in this debate is the fact that both appelations--"literal interpretation" and "symbolic interpretation"--are, at best, misnomers, but even worse, they pose a false polarity. This antithesis entails the tendency to suppose, speciously, that things portrayed in the creation-fall narrative cannot be simultaneously corporeal and symbolic. People often proceed on the incorrect assumption that if narrative features bear representational significance, those features should be understood not as actually existing but simply as literary devices. If held consistently, this flawed polarity would render nearly all in Scripture, certainly the Old Testament given its typological or foreshadowing nature, little more than literary symbolism without real existence. (p. 37)

Caneday develops this thought fully in this essay and it is here Caneday makes a real advance in argumentation for those who affirm the traditional historicity of Adam.

Caneday's essay is not easy reading--it requires work to follow his arguments and nuances--but it is well worth reading.