God's Gonna Cut You Down

I'm culturally impoverished...I had never heard this before!  Johnny Cash singing his "God's Gonna Cut You Down."  Not too many songs out there about the judgment of God--but here is one.  This person also did a nice job with the video.

Philippians 3.18 Picture

I went to lunch today with my 7 year old daughter.  We were drawing with the crayons that came with her children's menu (we were a bit limited with the color selection!).  I've been studying Philippians 3.17ff for my upcoming sermon so I drew a picture of v. 18:

For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.

Mormonism 101 Resources from Alpha and Omega Ministries

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries has put together a series of posts that helpfully give one a proper understanding of Mormonism.  For those looking for a good reference for understanding the nature of the Godhead according to Mormonism be sure to check this out.

Preaching and the Perseverance of the Saints

John Piper in his small but profound book The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Baker, 1990) has some moving thoughts about the relationship between the preached word and the perseverance of the saints.

Gravity and earnestness in preaching is appropriate not only (as we have seen) because preaching is God's instrument for the weighty business of saving sinners and reviving his church, but also because it is God's instrument for preserving the saints.  Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:10, "I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which in Christ Jesus goes with eternal glory."  Labor on behalf of the elect, therefore, is not icing on the cake of their eternal security.  It is God's appointed means of keeping them secure.  Eternal security is a community project (Heb. 3:12-13) and preaching is part of God's securing power.  He calls effectually by the Word and he keeps effectually by the Word.

We can say that eternal security is certain for the Christian, yet avoid a mechanical view that drains the blood-earnestness right out of the weekly ministry of preaching to the saints. Biblically God uses the earnest application of the means of grace to hold his people secure; one of those means is the preaching of God's Word.  Heaven and hell are at stake every Sunday morning not merely because unbelievers might be present, but also because our people are saved "IF they continue in the faith" (Col. 1:23).  Paul connects the steadfastness of faith with the preaching of the Word of God in the gospel (Rom. 10:17).  (pp. 58-59)

These thoughts take me to another portion of Piper's book:

How utterly dependent we are on the Holy Spirit in the work of preaching!  All genuine preaching is rooted in a feeling of desperation.  You wake up on Sunday morning and you can smell the smoke of hell on one side and feel the crisp breezes of heaven on the other.  You go to your study and look down at your pitiful manuscript, and you kneel down and cry, "God, this is so weak!  Who do I think I am?  What audacity to think that in three hours my words will be the odor of death to death and the fragrance of life to life (2 Cor. 2:16).  My God, who is sufficient for these things?"  (pp. 37-38) 

J. Gresham Machen on Public Education

I was skimming through J. Gresham Machen's classic and ever-revelant Christianity and Liberalism (1923) and came across these words:

A public-school system, in itself, is indeed of enormous benefit to the race.  But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools.  A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised.  Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.  Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them then to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.  Such tyranny, supported as it is by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword permitted thought at least to be free.  (pp 13-14)

Climate Change and Biomedical Modification

There is a great article over at First Things entitled "Tiny, Happy People" by C. Ben Mitchell which outlines the proposal by some to engage the whole issue of climate change by genetically modifying people to have lifestyles that promote a better ecosystem.  The article is interacting with the viewpoint of three ethicists who recently published their perspective in Ethics, Policy and the Environment.  Here is sampling from the First Things article:

Here is the argument offered by Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache. Climate change is the result of human corruption of the environment—so-called anthropogenic causes. Climate change affects food production, access to water, health, and the environment. Since, in their view, millions could suffer from the consequences of climate change something radical must be done. Recycling, tax-incentives, and large-scale manipulation of the environment are, according to the authors, either too negligible or too grand to be effective. Geoengineering, in particular, is disadvantageous because “in many cases, we lack the necessary scientific knowledge to devise and implement geoengineering without significant risk to ourselves and to future generations” (p. 4). So, in one breathtaking leap, the authors argue that we ought to consider “biomedical modification of humans to make them better at mitigating climate change.”

To be fair, they do offer a caveat: “Our central aim [in the paper] is to show that human engineering deserves consideration alongside other solutions in the debate about how to solve the problem of climate change. Also, as we envisage it, human engineering would be a voluntary activity—possibly supported by incentives such as tax breaks or sponsored health care—rather than a coerced, mandatory activity.” 

The suggestion that we ought to modify the human species as a means of mitigating climate change is at once both naive and hubristic. If they think modifying the environment may be difficult, successfully modifying the extraordinarily intricate balance of human homeostasis is a pipedream at best. Here is what they think might be desirable.

First, humans might be altered to be meat aversive. All one would have to do is stimulate the immune system so as to “induce mild intolerance (akin, e.g., to milk intolerance)” to meat. Or, since the “human ecological footprints are partly correlated to our size,” we can just make humans smaller! “Reducing the average US height by 15 cm would mean a mass reduction of 23% for men and 25% for women, with a corresponding reduction of metabolic rate (15%/18%), since less tissue means lower nutrients and energy needs.” One way to produce these tiny people would be through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, say the authors. Just select the embryos for transfer to a woman’s womb that have the genes for compactness; toss the embryos will tall genes. Smaller humans could also be produced through hormone therapy and reduction of birth-weight. 

Second, the number of humans could be modified through cognitive enhancement. Why cognitive enhancement? Because apparently only stupid people have more than two children per family. “There seems to be a link,” the authors maintain, “between cognition itself and lower birth-rates.” Since two children per family is lower than the replacement rate (of roughly 2.1 per family in industrialized countries), population would decline. 

Third, pharmacological enhancements could increase altruism and empathy. The result: generous and happy people through chemistry. Modifying altruism and empathy “by human engineering could be promising.” Testosterone, by the way, “appears to decrease aspects of empathy,” according to the authors. So, to follow their logic, since testosterone prepares both males and female for reproduction, reducing its levels in every human body would both reduce the number of people on the earth and, at the same time, make them more compliant. 

Why undertake the re-engineering of the human species? Because, say the authors, “human engineering is potentially less risky than geoengineering. Second, human engineering could make behavior and market solutions more likely to succeed.” In other words, we would be far more likely to create tiny, happy people than we would be to modify the environment or create incentives that would encourage environmental stewardship. 

The First Things article goes on to discuss the ethical implications of all this.  Be sure to read this article.

To see the actual article by these three bio-ethicists see here: Human Engineering and Climate Change.

"Holy Yoga"--Exercise or Exorcise?

Last night the local CBS affiliate (channel 5 KPHO) ran a story called Christians Debate 'Holy Yoga'.  There were comments by Mark Driscoll in which he stated his concerns about practicing yoga:

It is absolute paganism.  We do not go into ourselves, we go out to Jesus.

Later Driscoll is quoted as saying:

Some of you think, "Well, I'll just go to yoga and say, 'Jesus.'  Well, that is trying to treat the name of Jesus like a magic formula that you sprinkle over the demonic.

The story also quoted Brooke Boon who is the founder of "Holy Yoga" and the author of Holy Yoga (Faith Words, 2007).  She is quoted as saying:

We pray as the Bible tell us to, we speak truth, we listen to Christian music, we are connecting to one another, so there is nothing wrong inherently with the practice of 'Holy Yoga' being a Christian experience.  Either God is sovereign over all things in all directions for all eternity like he says he is, and we believe that or he's not.  And if he is, then includes yoga.

This is a big topic that has been given sound bites for a quick news story.  Thankfully there has been a thorough Christian analysis of yoga and its alleged "Holy" offshoots.  Elliot Miller has been associated with the Christian Research Institute for over 30 years and in 2008 published a three-part series entitled "The Yoga Boom: A Call for Christian Discernment" which appeared in the Christian Research Journal (vol. 31, nos. 2, 3, 4).  The articles are available on-line and should be considered "required" reading for anyone seeking to look at this topic.  Miller's analysis yields a perspective much closer to Driscoll's than the alternative.  Miller specifically engages the claims of Brooke Boon and finds them to be lacking.  Links to the articles are below.

Part 1: Yoga in its original Eastern context

Part 2: Yoga in its contemporary Western context

Part 3: Toward a comprehensive Christian response

Should one want even more information see The Dangers of Yoga website for more materials--including testimonials of those who have come out of yoga background into life in Christ.