Reformed Musings

Republicans should spare us 2012

2011-05-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I am what many folks would consider conservative. I did not vote for Obama in 2008 and was more or less pleased with the results of the 2010 midterm elections. It is from this perspective that I offer a plea of sanity to the Republican party.

The current Republican field of known or talked about presidential candidates is perhaps the weakest I've ever seen from either party since Walter Mondale in 1984. There are the usual entertaining but afterthought candidates like Cain and Paul who command an enthusiastic 5% of the electorate. And then there are establishment candidates like Gingrich, Romney, and Pawlenty, all of whom have problems and none of whom have demonstrated an ability to unify the party or build momentum for a serious challenge to Obama. Others like Huckabee have wisely stayed out, knowing they can't win. Palin and Bachmann, if they have any sense at all, will do the same.

Even all the recent pep talk surrounding Daniels is illustrative of how uncompetitive the Republicans are. Daniels only attracted decent interest because the present field is so abysmal. If Republicans had a good electable candidate who was generating any enthusiasm at all, Daniels would be an afterthought. The fact that he was recently anointed as a potential savior in certain Republican circles prior to staying out speaks volumes about how terrible the field is.

Put simply, the Republicans have virtually no chance of winning in 2012. None of the current candidates can beat Obama or even seriously threaten him. And this is despite the fact that Obama has weaknesses and vulnerabilities that the press and Hollywood won't be able to completely disguise despite what is certain to be their best efforts to do so. Romney and Pawlenty have both been unofficially running for president for 2 years now. To be at it this long and have so little voter enthusiasm to show for it really oughta tell them something. I suppose both Giuliani and Christie could provide needed gravitas and enthusiasm, but both have significant problems as well, and Christie has repeatedly said 'no way' to getting in. Many Republicans have been pining away for Paul Ryan to get in. But Ryan, as a true believer-type, is absolutely right in saying that his ability to make the most impact is right where he is, in a safe congressional district that won't punish him for sincerely trying to address titanic problems that most politicians are too scared to touch. He'd be a fool to get into the presidential game right now, and my bet is he's smart enough to know it.

The 2012 math simply doesn't work for the Republicans. Obama isn't riding high, but he's in better shape than he was a year ago, which means the ground that was so fertile for Republicans last year is a bit less hospitable now. The ground is likely to be even less hospitable next year as a result of Republicans in Congress embracing (needed) spending cuts that voters often like in theory, but dislike in real life. The Republican presidential candidate will likely be facing an electorate that is far less enthusiastic about the budget slashing message in 2012 than they were in 2010, and facing a big enthusiasm gap at the base level. Not saying this is right or wrong; just saying it is. When we throw in the "fact" that the Republican candidate will be a lightweight in comparison to the battle-scarred but press-propped-up Obama, I leave it to somebody who's either a whole lot smarter or a whole lot more delusional than me to figure out how a Republican is giving a presidential victory speech on election night.

If such calculus is correct, the best thing Republicans can do is spare the country (and themselves) a costly and mostly meaningless campaign season. They're not going to win. Their victory was in 2010. The 'Republican wave' has come and mostly gone. Forget about 2012.

Obama's Right

2011-05-05T06:07:00.000-07:00

The bin Laden photos shouldn't be released. No matter how gruesome or not gruesome the photos are, images of a dead bin Laden would offend not only committed radicals, but would also likely inflame the passions of some who are not currently radicalized. This would not only be a threat to American troops, it could also unintentionally provide a resurgence of energy and new blood into a terrorist movement that has been rendered increasingly ineffective over the last 10 years. This is in nobody's interest.

The idea that the photos should be released as a way of providing proof of death is also a pretty faulty argument. I understand the view of folks like Krauthammer that conspiracy theories and hair-brained intrigue are not the sole property of the idiot fringe like the birthers on the Right or the truthers on the Left, but are in fact an integral part of mainstream thought and discourse on 'the Arab street'. Therefore, so the theory goes, releasing the photos would provide the kind of evidence that would dampen a potential conspiracy frenzy in the Arab world. I politely dissent.

Government policy, both foreign and domestic, has to accommodate and even at times 'condescend' to the level of the masses. But such accommodation needs to have reasonable limits. Government policy that accommodates and is even dictated by mass stupidity is dangerous, because it jeopardizes national interests, does nothing to elevate the discourse or national conversation, and in fact, concedes ground to the point where the inmates can start running the asylum.

Look, doubts about bin Laden's death aren't fueled by a lack of proof; they're fueled by a lack of thinking. When the United States openly tells the entire world that bin Laden is dead, that claim instantly becomes the easiest claim in the world to debunk if it isn't true. All bin Laden would have to do is record a video or audio that says, "Hey, I know the United States is telling the world that I was killed in a raid on April 30/May 1 2011 at a compound in Abbottabad Pakistan by Navy Seals. Well, this claim is obviously a lie, since I'm still here." This kind of verifiable statement is what Hitler gave in the aftermath of the Stauffenberg plot to assassinate him in 1944, and it's what any high profile person would do to set the record straight, 'reassure' his loyalists, and not allow a lie to demoralize his movement/forces. When the US makes a claim like this, the burden of proof is just as much on bin Laden to disprove the claim as it is on the US to provide reasonable evidence of the claim's veracity. If anyone doubts this, they might want to consult the religious leaders in Palestine in the 1st century, since all they had to do to stamp out Christianity forever was produce the corpse of Christ. As Jack Nicholson said in The Departed, "If you coulda, you woulda."

The bottom line is that we don't need potentially inflammatory photos to be evidentially satisfied that bin Laden is dead. bin Laden's silence since the episode is the most compelling proof of all. There's no accounting for stupidity, and US policy shouldn't be writing a blank check to such stupidity, particularly when lives could be lost and evil movements rejuvenated by doing so.

The Death of bin Laden

2011-05-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

Kudos are warranted for Mr Obama and the complex nexus of defense and intelligence teams for punctuating the finality of a 10 year odyssey to hold the first major mass murderer of the 21st century to account for his crimes. Mr Obama in particular deserves credit. 10 years is a long time to be hunting after someone. Memories fade, priorities change, and even important things can be overcome by other events, making them less important. Mr Obama should be commended for staying the course and seeing this mission all the way through, and by all accounts so far, doing it in a determined responsible way. Obama has invited legitimate criticism of his foreign policy during his first 2 years with what many (including me at times) have seen as unsteady, unsure, compromised and even ineffective diplomacy. Many have legitimately wondered if Obama has the stomach for a serious foreign policy that takes the negative realities of the world seriously, while also seriously capitalizing on generational opportunities such as the Arab Spring phenomenon. Obama's willingness to head an effort to dispose of bin Laden tells us (or me at least) that Obama can indeed temporarily abandon an almost obsessively paralytic search for gray when something really is black or white. Bravo.

Amidst the celebrations in DC and NYC, one should be reminded that certain things do indeed overcome human fickleness. Newscasters across the board seemed genuinely surprised by the outpouring of joy bin Laden's death evoked. People do indeed still remember how terrible bin Laden's crimes were. And even though I personally find it a bit paradoxical to 'celebrate' someone being shot dead and literally thrown over the side of a ship, my conscience is soothed by the almost certain reality that bin Laden never would have allowed himself to be captured alive, making his death the only way for justice and reasonable closure to be realized in this life. His death is a reminder that no matter how idealistically positive some of us may want to view the world, the stain of sin is still with us and must be reckoned with for any responsible view of the world to win the day.

Communion

2011-04-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

This past Maundy Thursday, I had the privilege of assisting the senior pastor of my church in serving communion to the flock. While most of the time communion is served in the more usual fashion of taking serving trays up the aisles so that the people can partake from their seats, in our church, we generally do the 'intinction' method each Maundy Thursday. In this method, people get out of their seats and form a line to come to the front to receive the elements from one person who holds the bread loaf, and another person who holds the cup for the people to dip their bread in. I held the cup.

While I don't have any problem, theologically or otherwise, in bringing the table to the people (in effect) by having the elements passed pew to pew, I do think there's something to be said for having the people come to the table as well. I know this is commonplace in the Roman Catholic tradition, but it is a more seldom occurrence in the Protestant services I have attended over the years. Perhaps because it is not the common way of doing it, the intinction approach is something I find quite moving for a number of reasons.

In my role of serving the elements, the privilege of serving the people actually becomes a bit more real for me in the intinction method. I'm physically closer to them, I converse individually with each of them, and some of them converse with me. It seems far more intimate, personal, relational, and (for me at least) meaningful than the practice of passing the elements down the pew.

I also think that it's often more meaningful for the flock too. The intimate relational aspect of having the pastor quietly say something affirming and hopeful directly to you, and often referring to you by name, seems to make what we're doing more real and understandable. It seems to give more gravitas to the moment, where deep seriousness, deep joy, and deep thanks all come together and are internalized by the one who partakes. By making communion feel less like an assembly line operation and more like a real relational celebration seems to personalize its significance for people. There were a number of folks quietly weeping for joy as they took communion on Maundy Thursday, and I rarely see that when we do communion the usual way. True, some of that was likely the result of the whole service and Holy Week. But clearly, communion was a critical part that a number of folks clearly found quite moving to them.

I also must confess that from my vantage point as server, it is a very moving sight to me to see people voluntarily get up out of their seats and form a processional line to come to the front to partake in the elements. No doubt, people have any number of motivations for doing this. But I have always seen it as a powerful visual of people publicly expressing their need for God's grace, without saying a thing. As I assisted in serving the people, I was overcome with this feeling that all of us were collectively bonded together expressing a deep need for grace and were so thankful that we had found it in Christ. It felt very much like a 'family' meal.

I certainly understand that for many churches, including ours, the intinction method isn't very practical as the normal mode of serving communion. And I also realize that if it were to become the normal mode, it might well become rote and lose the significance it currently seems to conjure in our fellowship. But in the Christian life, we say a lot of things and do a lot of things, without having such things be impactful either on the world or within ourselves. So when those brief moments come along when there appears to be a genuine collective movement of faith towards the One who deserves complete, total, and absolute allegiance, I find myself wanting to see so much more of it in myself and in the flock I associate with. During communion last Thursday, I felt the kind of transformative power that made me believe that this flock really can change the world when the Spirit is moving in our midst. That's a feeling that's tough to top.

Anti-Semitism on the Left

2010-10-01T09:30:00.001-07:00

The following is the text of a post I made on Politico regarding an interview CNN's Rick Sanchez gave on Pete Dominick's radio show. In this interview, responding to criticism of his work by Jewish political comedian Jon Stewart, Sanchez said the following:

I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

Two things here are disturbing and unfortunate. First, I'm not sure to whom Sanchez refers when he says there's a cultural meme out there which implies that American Jews are an oppressed minority. While some people may indeed hold to this view, I hardly think it's a view that's in the main bloodstream of America. The concern is that he's making up a meme that doesn't really exist as a strawman against which to vent. Dangerous stuff. Second, he makes a wildly presumptuous leap in saying that 'everybody' who runs CNN is like Stewart (meaning they are Jewish), and for good measure, so are most folks at other media outlets. How exactly does he know this? It's true that Larry King, Jon Klein, Campbell Brown, John King, Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer among others currently or formerly at CNN are Jewish either by birth or conversion. But Anderson Cooper is not Jewish, nor is Jack Cafferty, Sanjay Gupta, Soledad O'Brien, Jim Walton, and who knows how many others. Sanchez's statement is both inaccurate as a factual matter, and feeds into a classic anti-semitic stereotype that Jews control the media.

In response to Sanchez's outburst, I posted the following at Politico:

Look, I dissent from my conservative brethren who think CNN offers no value to the media discussion. I watch CNN, and I take most of their on-air people seriously, with discernment and with a few notable exceptions. I don't have it in for CNN. It's from that perspective that I too have had great difficulty understanding the catapulting of Rick Sanchez. He's just not that good of a reporter, analyst, and host. But this latest unhinging is revealing and once again tells us something very important that is seriously ignored or overlooked. The latent anti-Jewish sentiment to which Sanchez seems to ascribe is all too fearfully common among elements of the political, cultural, and religious left. I mentioned to Gwen Ifill over 10 years ago that anti-semitism on the left is far and away the most underreported political story of our time. Ifill didn't seem to believe that anti-semitism existed to any systemic degree on the left. Such continued the ignoring of the phenomenon. Since then, a formidable body of evidence has accrued from the statements and declarations of politicians (McKinney, Moran, etc), media people (Sanchez, Thomas, etc), liberal religious denominations (PCUSA, etc), and academics (Mearsheimer, Walt, etc) that make it harder and harder to dismiss the growing concern that anti-semitic sentiment is gaining ground among the left. If this phenomenon was far and away the most underreported political story 10 years ago, it's continued non-reporting today borders on an outright scandal.

The examples I cite above are just a sampling. And in the case of the PCUSA, the anti-semitic sentiment of sectors of that denomination, and especially its leadership, has been expressed many times, through many proclamations and statements, and have been well documented by Christian and Jewish groups alike. I am quite distressed that too much of the media dismisses the concern of a systematic rise of anti-semitism on the left by saying it's not real, or downplays it by saying the various (but increasing) instances of anti-semitic utterances on the left are the isolated and unrelated thoughts of a few. I wish that were true. But the evidence demonstrably suggests otherwise. None of this is to say that anti-semitism doesn't exist on the Right as well. It does. It's repulsive and potentially lethal regardless of where it comes from. But the continued willful ignorance of the press corps to soberly investigate this phenomenon on the left in terms of who subscribes to it, what views prop it up, and how pervasive it is (or isn't) is an unacceptable omission that speaks to the media's own biases and/or blind spots.

Did we 'Recover' this Summer?

2010-09-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

Someone really needs to be fired over at the White House. Back in June, the White House confidently announced that the summer of 2010 would be the 'Summer of Economic Recovery'. Posts on the White House blog back in June said this summer was 'sure' to be a season of recovery. VP Joe Biden, citing an anticipated spike in work projects spurred by last year's stimulus, confidently declared that the recovery act is working and that a positive ripple effect would extend throughout the economy during the summer months.

As we now approach Labor Day weekend and the end of summer, will anyone look back at the summer of 2010 and describe it as the sure-thing 'Summer of Recovery' it was billed as? In June, the unemployment rate stood at 9.5%. Today, it is 9.6%. The most recent GDP measure is at a near flat 1.6%. At a time when college graduates were entering the workforce in droves, private sector job creation between June-August totaled a meager 235,000. Overall job numbers actually dropped in total by 200K during the summer.

None of this is to discount the fact that the economy is thankfully no longer in freefall the way it was back in 2008/2009. But anything beyond that is speculation. Yes, things could've been worse had there been no change in political philosophy and policy, but they also could've been better (would corporate reticence to hire be nearly as high had the healthcare law not been passed?). In my view, the down-home reality is that the stimulus barely pulled the economy out of official recession, and doesn't have much staying power upon which a bonafide recovery can be built. Economic growth estimates based upon stimulus-incited activity were and are irresponsibly too rosy, which is why the federal budget deficit data, as bad as it is, may actually understate just how underwater the country is. And it's why the declaration that summer 2010 would be a 'Summer of Recovery' should be cause for the person at the White House who thought it up to be canned, so that they can see firsthand just how ridiculous the slogan turned out to be.

I did not vote for Barack Obama. I was never under any illusion that I would agree with most of what he intended to do. I never bought into the 'Change we can Believe in' stuff. But I also never thought Obama would be in danger of being just as clueless as his predecessor when it came to reading the pulse of the nation and tailoring his message accordingly.

One of the great failures of the Bush presidency was that he didn't realize how irrelevant he had become while he was still in office. For at least the last 3+ years of his presidency, Mr Bush talked as if he believed people were listening. What he didn't seem to realize was that the country, by and large, had turned away from him because they were angry at his policies and incensed by messaging that seemed completely out of step with reality. Mr Bush was talking to an empty room, believing it was full. This greatly contributed to his considerable ineffectiveness during most of his 2nd term. Put simply, he was no longer regarded as an in-tune trustworthy and competent leader who people looked to for reassurance and inspiration in unsteady times. His lips were moving, but he had lost his voice.

It is hard to believe that someone as supposedly savvy and 'in touch' as Obama wouldn't learn from the very mistakes of his predecessor that helped create the tsunami that swept him into office. Like Bush's messaging about Iraq, then Katrina, and eventually about the economy, Obama's 'summer of recovery' messaging has become a punch line, rather than a euphoric chorus line. The slogan bears virtually no resemblance to the current on the ground experience of the nation. The nation doesn't feel it's in recovery. Anxiety about long-term economic malaise remains high. Concerns that things could get worse before they get better are increasing. To the extent they can, individuals, families, and companies are saving/hording rather than spending, indicating deep fear that firewall nest eggs are more needed than goods and services. And yet, in the midst of all this, the White House spent 3 months telling us that we were in a 'summer of recovery'.

If the White House really believes this, it indicates a deep disconnect with and even denial of present circumstances and attitudes. If the White House trotted out this slogan in an effort to get people to believe it and feel better, it indicates a deep disconnect with the toll the recession has taken on the national psyche. Most of all, it indicates that like Mr Bush, Mr Obama wrongly believes that soothing words from politicians will magically overcome deep fear and skepticism brought about by real life hardships that diverge considerably from elevated but very distant oratory. And this indicates that like Mr Bush, Mr Obama does not yet possess the eyesight to see that more and more seats in the auditorium are empty when he begins speaking. If Mr Obama doesn't get his vision checked soon, he risks falling into a trap that has ensnared so many - not properly understanding the practical limits of idealistic rhetoric (1J 3.18).

Repaired Link

2010-08-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

It appears that IIIM recently did a redesign on its website, with the result that the 'My Published Papers so Far' link to their site had gone bad. I've now updated the link to get back to the database of papers that have been published in RPM. Interested readers might be interested to note that during the redesign, a new paper of mine was published, titled "The Gospel of John and the Issue of Canon". In this paper, I address the issue of the 'nature' of canon and interact with the views of Kysar.

Hebrews 6

2010-06-02T11:59:00.000-07:00

For good reasons, debates surrounding the meaning of Hebrews 6 have centered on whether a saved Christian can lose his salvation (the Arminian position), or whether those who display perseverance demonstrate that they are truly and irrevocably saved in comparison with those who don't and aren't (the Reformed position). There are respectable and thoughtful evangelicals on both sides of this question, though as someone who holds a Reformed outlook, I side with the latter position and wrote a brief exegetical paper to that effect during my time at seminary.

More unfortunate has been the rather perverse abuse of Hebrews 6.1-3 by liberal scholars and clergy who have turned this passage upside down in using it as a biblically mandated club to embrace all manner of heterodoxy and belittle those who won't join them. Susan Andrews once used this passage to accuse conservative African clergy of being spiritually immature because they wouldn't forsake Christian orthodoxy. Andrews was widely condemned for abusing this passage of Scripture to advance a rather despicable form of spiritual colonialism, but her sentiment is not an isolated one in mainline liberal circles. John Shelby Spong, John Chane, and even some of Brian McLaren's sentiments have affinities or even outright acceptance of this line of thought in criticizing those who refuse to become unhinged from the fundamentals of the faith. To say the least, Andrews's take on Hebrews 6 is a gross misreading of the passage. To equate spiritual maturity with that most immature of attitudes, arrogantly rebelling and going one's own way, is the kind of non-sequitur that responsible biblical interpretation should be chiefly interested in stopping.

But in the midst of these various controversies, a valuable and sobering teaching from Hebrews 6 often goes unnoticed. When the writer of Hebrews tells his original audience (and us) to become more spiritually mature in vv1-3, and then discusses the dangerous repercussions that often ensue in vv4-8 when maturity doesn't happen, he is telling us something very important. The writer is making an astute observation that those who get a taste of Christ, who have exposure to his teachings, who see the Spirit at work in the midst of the assembly, but walk away in the end, often become the hardest to reclaim.

In recent times, when one thinks of Christianity's fiercest critics, one finds a fairly consistent thread. Many of them, to varying degrees, were exposed to Christ either by being brought up in the church or having some familial or even ministry connection to a group of Christians. This is true of Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Madelyn Murray O'Hair was baptized in the Presbyterian church. Richard Dawkins was raised in the Church of England. Charles Templeton was an influential evangelist partner of Billy Graham. Marilyn Manson, back when he was Brian Warner, was raised Baptist. These are just a few of the countless numbers that could be mentioned of folks who had the kind of exposure to Christ that Hebrews 6 discusses who not only turned away, but became vehement critics of that from which they have turned away. It is a most sobering thought that the next generation of the most hardened form of anti-Christian sentiment will likely consist mostly of members who are in our churches today.

So what are we to do? We are to earnestly do what Hebrews tells us to do; increase in spiritual maturity. Contra the liberal take on this instruction, to increase in spiritual maturity does not mean breaking free from the 'elementary teachings about Christ'. To the contrary, to increase in spiritual maturity means to ever more fully live out and apply the elementary teachings to every aspect of our lives, public and private. In mathematics, to move beyond addition and subtraction and into the realm of multiplication and division doesn't mean abandoning the fundamentals of addition and subtraction. It means understanding that all mathematics are based on certain fundamentals, which connects those 'easy' and 'elementary' fundamentals to ever more complex problems. This is true in music, art, genetics, chemistry, and accounting. And it's true in the Christian life. As recent events in many spheres of culture have made clear, to discard or forget the fundamentals is to become unhinged. This is not the road to maturity.

Hebrews 6 should encourage us. It tells us that we are not on our own with no teaching to help us in wrestling with complex and even excruciating issues. Whether we're talking about tough issues in the civic sphere such as immigration, energy policy, the use of military force, and abortion, or whether we're talking about tough personal issues like addiction, temptation, suffering, marriage and divorce, or the proper use of money, God has not left us in the desert to fend for ourselves. To the contrary, he has given us his Word and his Spirit to guide us into all truth (Jn 14.17, 15.26, 16.13). And as Hebrews 6 teaches, the elementary teachings about Christ are applicable far beyond elementary issues, and it commands us to faithfully and comprehensively live this out.

Letter on Unbelieving Ministers

2010-04-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Recently, the Layman had an article on ministers currently serving in various denominations who either aren't sure they affirm the basic tenets of the Christian faith, or who outright deny such tenets but are allowed to continue their 'ministry' without church discipline or accountability. The article, which draws upon a study conducted by the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, cites various motivations behind why such ministers continue to vocationally identify themselves with Christianity without being personally Christian (paycheck, nice community, advocating for a non-supernatural, non-miraculous Christianity, etc).

The following is a Letter I wrote to the Layman in response:

The Layman’s recent article on clergy who deny basic tenets of the historic Christian faith was on my mind as I attended Easter service this past Sunday. As we recited the Apostle’s Creed, sang triumphant songs of Christ’s resurrection and victory, prayed to this living God of power, and heard passage after passage in Scripture proclaim the reality of Christ’s resurrection and why it matters, I was saddened at the thought that clergy and perhaps whole churches have abandoned this great faith in favor of the world’s unfounded skepticism. At times during the Easter service, I wondered how I would feel if I knew my pastors didn’t believe what they were preaching, or if the singers didn’t really believe what they were singing, or if those on my right and left in the pews looked upon the empty cross at the front of our sanctuary and didn’t really believe that Christ is risen. I was filled with a mixture of sadness and anger at the hopeless sham and false worship such skepticism would render any church service, and especially an Easter service.

For clergy to uncritically adopt the criticism of the world ironically betrays a lack of critical thinking ability. For clergy to keep such a perspective to themselves and not indoctrinate their congregations with it may sound noble, but it is both self-delusional and self-defeating, since it perpetuates a basic dishonesty that is at root, a corrosive issue of ethics as well as an issue of belief. For clergy to openly preach such skepticism to their people in the attempt to “wise them up” is hardly the sophisticated outlook they seem to think it is, but is instead merely a replacement of one set of faith beliefs with another more precarious set of faith beliefs, made all the more precarious by the oft-heard but delusional boast that skepticism isn’t rooted in a set of faith assumptions. There is no easier or more anti-intellectual road to take than the road of broad skepticism and cynicism. This is why monuments generally aren’t erected to celebrate the achievements of cynics; because their contributions are few.

I choose the road of belief, and am thankful to be part of a faith community that has chosen the same through the work of the Spirit to build His church. I am proud to stand with Paul in affirming the physical resurrection of Christ. And because of this, I am overjoyed that in contrast to the skeptic, my faith is not useless, the preaching I hear is not in vain, I am not a false witness, and I am not to be pitied above all men because I am not still dead in my sins. Praise to be the one true God who has made this possible, and pity to those clergy who have rejected this God and are either living a lie or openly propagating a hoax to their great shame.

Unfortunately, many ministers are all too comfortable embracing modern reinventions of historic orthodoxy that allow them to be their own kingmakers, while still being able to look themselves in the mirror and claim to be Christian. But the phenomenon described above is different. There is retreat, and then there is out and out denial. Neither are good; both are perilous. But denial entails a certain brazenness that's frankly a bit hard to fathom in terms of how it is allowed to take place openly with no denominational insistence for even the most minimal level of conformity to what has been true 'from the beginning' (1J 2.7-24; 2J 5-6). It's a reminder that too many liberal Christians genuinely believe that Christianity is almost entirely about getting people to 'do good' (whatever that means) without having to really believe the basic facts of the Christian story of creation, fall, and redemption as articulated in Scripture. Trying to make God's Kingdom come to earth as it is in heaven is great and necessary. But don't we think such a goal is just a little problematic and compromised when we're not sure there's a heaven, we're unclear about the nature of God's Kingdom, we're uncomfortable with Jesus being the King of this Kingdom, and we're questioning whether God the Father really exists? Just wondering...

Caps vs. Montreal

2010-04-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

As the Caps and Habs prepare to do battle in the NHL postseason for the first time ever, it's worth reflecting on the often unnoticed intertwined sports history between the two cities:

1) Even by expansion team standards, the 1974 Washington Capitals were atrocious. The squad won only 8 games, and that was without playing the Habs, who were the dominant dynastic team in hockey at that time. From the mid 1970s into the early 1980s, the tilts between the Habs and Caps were one sided, with Montreal winning nearly every contest. During that stretch, the Habs won three contests by a combined score of 33-2.

2) In light of #1, it is most ironic that in many ways, the Caps have the Habs to thank for finally turning the corner and becoming a legitimately competitive squad. In 1982, the Caps and Habs were involved in a 6 player trade that resulted in Doug Jarvis and Rod Langway coming to DC. This trade put the Caps on solid footing that would last for most of the next decade. The Caps made the playoffs for the first time in their history that season. And beginning with this season, the 'rivalry' between the Caps and Habs began to level out and was no longer one sided.

3) In more recent times, the Washington Nationals MLB team was the team that was formerly the Montreal Expos.

The Montreal Canadiens are NHL royalty. Their 24 Stanley Cups are rivaled only by the 27 World Series championships held by the New York Yankees. The Habs have always been the only game in town in Montreal, which was the main reason why the Expos ended up in DC. Montreal is a hockey town through and through.

The Caps, by contrast, reside in a football town through and through. Every sports team in DC plays second fiddle or worse to the Redskins. Even with the Caps selling out every game this year while amassing the best record in hockey, they were a sideshow just last week to the Donovan McNabb trade. Offseason Redskins news still trumps any news about the best team in hockey on the eve of their playoff run.

Most every prediction I've seen about this playoff series has the Caps winning in 4 or 5. I think the series will be closer than that. The Caps players know how tough it will be to win a game in Montreal. And if the Caps don't stay out of the penalty box, they are unlikely to neutralize the Hab power play which could make the difference in a series filled with close games. The Habs will provide a good test of whether this year's Caps squad is the juggernaut people like me hope they are. I do think the Caps will win the series, but I'm guessing it will take at least 6 games to do it.

Republicans are Overplaying their Hand

2010-03-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Both political parties, it seems, can't resist giving in to their worst tendencies, no matter how high the price, and no matter how often the price has to be paid. For the last year or so, Dems have been acting as if Barack Obama's election and strong Dem majorities in Congress signaled a fundamental desire by the country to move in an ideologically leftward direction. Armed with this presupposition, they wrongly replaced the nation's priorities with their own, and have conducted business as usual, much like Republicans did in the prior decade. The result (so far) has been defeat after defeat in off-year and special elections, abysmally low approval ratings for Congress, and a precipitous decline in support even for Obama, whom the press in particular still treats with something approaching the slain-in-the-spirit euphoria they developed during the campaign. But with the healthcare bill now signed by Obama, Republicans are in danger of overplaying their hand, just as the Dems overplayed theirs.

1) Republicans made a tactical mistake in demonizing a bill that while seriously flawed, isn't exactly demonic. From allegations of socialism, to death panels, to bureaucrats inserting themselves into people's medical decisions, Republicans have successfully whipped up a frenzy of opposition to the bill. To hear some of the speeches and comments given by Republicans in the last month, one might be tempted to think the world would come to an end if the bill was passed. Well, now that it has passed, the sun still rose in the east, armageddon doesn't appear to have arrived, and the collapse of modern civilization doesn't seem imminent. Independent voters who have been very sympathetic to Republican concerns over cost and deficits (and rightfully so, no matter what CBO says) may withdraw their current enthusiasm for Republicans if Republicans continue to say the sky is falling, when it's not. Republican opposition to the bill, in order to be politically viable, has to be credible. Republicans are in danger of losing their credibility by embracing hysterical doomsdayism. The political damage on this front may already be done.

2) Related to item 1, Republicans are in danger of allying themselves too closely with the Tea Party movement (TPM). TPM has no doubt tapped into intense frustration with and distrust of government. Given the completely demoralized spirit of the Republican establishment in the wake of the 2008 election, it was very tempting to get in on any energy or momentum that any right-of-center group was giving off. But either on the left or the right, there is always a danger in getting too cozy with mouth foamers. TPM, like comparable outfits on the left, has just enough discipline to be dangerous, but not enough to kick out the kooks that can often gain substantial power in decentralized movements that practically invite interlopers to hijack the movement. While TPM has attracted some high profile Republican backers, its ability to sway elections and votes on the Hill has been unimpressive thus far. And if recent reports of racially and sexually tinged epithets directed at lawmakers and others are even half true, it is clear that an element exists within TPM that no responsible Republican should be allied with. The TPM has developed a credibility and public relations problem that they need to soberly address if they intend to remain viable long term. Republicans should politely distance themselves from them and let TPM sort out its own mess.

3) Now that the bill has passed, Republicans, I fear, are in great danger of repeating the Dem mistake of the last year by overobsessing about healthcare. For the last year, Dems have embraced healthcare as their almost exclusive priority. As a result, they are now in serious political trouble with midterm elections coming up. The focus all along should've been on jobs, the economy, and deficit reduction. If Republicans, either in Congress or at the state level, continue to pummel the healthcare bill by clogging up the Senate for weeks or months with procedural stall tactics, or clog the courts with legal challenges to the bill, it will be they, not the Dems, who will be accused of not pivoting to jobs. It won't matter that Dems clogged up the nation's business for a year trying to get a highly contentious bill passed. Now that it has passed, Dems will strongly pivot to jobs. If Republicans don't follow suit, it will be the Dems, in hypocritical irony, who will accuse Republicans of being distracted and not focusing on the nation's business. To the extent that Republicans spend an inordinate amount of time either trying to relegislate or relitigate the bill is the extent to which their current political advantage will erode.

I was opposed to the bill that passed. I was offended by the corrupt deals and the corrupt procedure that got it passed. I think it's a complete pipedream that any president or congress of either party will ever cut Medicare by a half trillion dollars in order to help pay for this new entitlement. The CBO scoring as it relates to the bill's impact on the deficit is only as good as the political will to follow through on what the bill requires in terms of spending cuts and revenue sources. If the will isn't there, and it isn't, the CBO score is meaningless and is actually a bit deceptive since it implies that something is paid for that isn't. In the end, this bill will be paid for by more and even broader tax increases and/or piling it onto the already unpaid deficit. But in the end, my side lost. The bill is now law. We need to move on. If Republicans don't do this, they'll squander an opportunity to truly become competitive again on a national level.

Jimmy Carter Deja Vu?

2010-03-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama is going through a rough stretch as POTUS. Nearly every high profile election that has occurred in the last year has been played in Obama territory, but has been won by the opposition party, sometimes in rout fashion. Then there is the manner in which the Obama agenda has been stalled. Yes, it's certainly true that Republicans on Capitol Hill have marched in lockstep opposition to most of Obama's agenda. And yes, as a Republican myself, I am less than fully supportive of what Republicans are doing. While I think most of their opposition to Obama's agenda is on the merits, there is little doubt in my mind that a political calculation has also been made that puts short-term political gain ahead of the need to constructively address critically important issues.

But with all that said, in the end, it is the Democrats themselves who have become the 'monkey in the wrench' of Obama's plans. Consider:

1) Healthcare - the disunity of the Dems over the last year on healthcare is well documented, and continues to this day. With a 70+ majority in the House, and an 18 seat majority in the Senate, the Dems have had enormous difficulty getting their own members (not to mention the public at large) on board with their plans. The bill they had to pass in the Senate in order to get 60 Dem votes is a bill that by all accounts can't get 216 Dem votes in the House, despite the Dems having over 250 votes in the House. This is not a case of Republicans thwarting healthcare. It's a case of Dems not being able to agree amongst themselves about the way forward on healthcare.

2) 'Jobs Bill' - the latest on this is that the House, with their 250+ Dem members, isn't able to pass a very modest 'jobs bill' that emerged out of the Senate. As with healthcare, a sizeable number of Dems are balking at the Senate's bill and want changes that the Senate Dems might not be able to stomach. The ping-pong of inaction continues.

3) Environmental regulation - when Obama decided to do an end-around Congress and give EPA regulatory authority over clean air guidelines last year, there was some brief dustup that appeared to have subsided. But now, a core group of Dems in both the Senate and House are joining Republicans in cosponsoring legislation that would defang the EPA on this issue. Again, it is Dems who are voicing opposition to the Obama agenda, and are prepared to vote that way.

Often lost in the various post-mortems done on Jimmy Carter's presidency was the almost constant dysfunction that existed between the WH and the Dem controlled Congress. Among other things, the Carter presidency became known as a period in which Dems controlled everything, but couldn't agree on anything. Four years is a long time for a condition like this to exist. It would be wise for Obama and the Dems in Congress to realize the degree to which this narrative is taking hold among the electorate.

Loving our Neighbors as Ourselves

2010-02-09T05:40:00.000-08:00

Northern Virginia has been clobbered by a series of severe snowstorms this winter, with another biggie fixin' to hit later today and tomorrow. Last weekend's storm, nonaffectionally dubbed Snowmaggedon, has significantly paralyzed the region. In the neighborhood I live in, plows did not arrive until yesterday afternoon, making travel virtually impossible for anyone without a stout 4WD vehicle. Thankfully, we haven't suffered the way others have. We haven't lost power, nobody's roof has collapsed (yet). But still, it's been a very trying time for everyone.

In the midst of this, I have seen the imago Dei on public display. Neighbors have been helping other neighbors in many ways. Some neighbors of mine helped me shovel out my driveway on Sunday, and let me borrow their 4WD to make an urgent grocery run yesterday before the plows arrived. I have helped several neighbors dig out their cars and driveways and have made offers to go grocery shopping for those who remain socked in.

Through shared struggle and a shared sense of community and purpose, I have been privileged to know my neighbors better and to appreciate them on a whole new level. And while the struggle isn't over yet, and may in fact get worse before it gets better if the latest forecasts are to be believed, I can honestly say that in net, I am glad for the struggle. To know and appreciate my neighbors this way has been an enormous blessing that will outlast this winter. It's been my failing that I haven't gotten to know them better before now. But maybe this harsh winter has been God's way of getting me more in line with Mark 12. And in the end, I don't think I would trade that for a no sweat winter that didn't challenge all of us to sacrifice for each other in such a way that lasting durable relationships get formed.

Leave Tiger Woods Alone

2009-11-30T10:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Tiger Woods got into a rather odd accident in the wee morning hours after Thanksgiving. There was apparently some property damage, and Woods was briefly taken to a hospital to be checked out. But the media fallout ever since would have us believe that Woods's accident and subsequent reticence to make a flashy public statement is the most important thing to have taken place since, well, the last most overblown important thing, whatever that was.

Look, I understand the public's fascination with Woods, and I understand why people, media and regular folk alike, would want a full blow by blow of what happened, how it happened, and the circumstances that surrounded what happened early Friday morning. But wanting to know is a very different thing from having a right to know. Folks in the public eye are just like the rest of us, in that they are entitled not to disclose aspects of their lives to the public so long as such disclosure refusals don't involve not cooperating with law enforcement and things of that nature.

Press people so often seem to believe that the public's 'right to know' somehow trumps the individual's right to not be an open book. In the case of Tiger, it has been argued by some in the press that because Tiger works so hard at crafting a public image that allows him to make millions in endorsements and product merchandising, he therefore can't turn around now and go mute. The obvious implication being that people in the public eye who 'work the system' to their advantage forfeit the right to later keep things out of the public eye. This is crazy.

Nobody, not the press, not the public, has a right to know the circumstances surrounding Tiger's accident. If the event was such that Woods isn't even required to talk to law enforcement, then why exactly is he required to talk to anyone? The answer, of course, is that he isn't required to cooperate with the press on anything at all. And that's what the press folks don't like. As with many sports and entertainment celebrities, the press seems to believe these public figures are obligated to cooperate with them. Sorry, but in this country, individuals are the ones who decide whether to disclose things about themselves to the public, and they get to decide how to do it, when to do it, and to whom or through whom to do it. The public's insatiable appetite for gossip and juicy circumstances is not a substitute for an authentic 'right to know'. Leave Tiger alone.

Hitching our Wagon to Flickering Stars

2009-11-13T12:37:00.001-08:00

Christians are as susceptible as anyone to becoming starstruck and becoming part of the celebrity worship culture. When I was at seminary, a wise professor once said (in the context of putting certain theologians on pedestals) that we should make sure to remember that our heroes are very human. By this, he meant that besides Jesus, even the greatest among us are decidedly imperfect, and our level of allegiance to them should always keep this in mind, lest we worship false idols who devastate us in the end with their imperfections. This is very sage advice, and one the church at large really needs to adopt.

Evangelicals, for several good reasons, feel a bit under siege today. The inroads we thought we were making in gaining respectability in our culture have been met with increasingly shrill opposition that has resonated. This has made us far more willing to exalt any allies in the culture we feel we might have, and go to the mat for them. Two prominent examples come to mind, and in both cases, evangelical allegiance to them has, to some degree, blown up in our faces.

Example #1: Mel Gibson
In the months leading up to the release of his Passion of the Christ movie, Gibson actively courted prominent evangelicals to build Christian support for the movie. In a movie industry in which Christianity and Jesus himself were routinely belittled, distorted, ridiculed, and raged against, Gibson's depiction of Jesus was considered refreshing in its seriousness and even reverence. Evangelical leaders praised Gibson, stood by him as he endured criticism from Jewish groups and others, and urged Christians to flood the box office in support of the movie. The result was seismic - huge box office receipts that made Gibson rich and stabilized his production company, and evangelicals feeling like they had made a resounding statement to a Hollywood machine that at best dismisses them and at worst disdains them. Everyone was happy.

There was only one problem. Gibson was never one of us. This is not a statement about Gibson's personal faith, but rather his questionable brand of Catholicism mixed in with his own track record in the entertainment industry. Gibson's questionable attitudes about Jews were largely ignored. And responsible evangelical critiques of his Passion movie were in short supply, even though the movie minimized the resurrection and provided an imbalanced understanding of the crucifixion (substitutionary atonement is rarely even hinted at in the movie). Because we had found a supposed ally, we were willing to overlook quite a bit as part of defending him to the hilt. It wasn't difficult to see what would happen next.

In the years since the Passion movie was released, Gibson was arrested for driving drunk, during which he uttered a slew of anti-semitic epithets. More recently, Gibson stepped out on his wife and family and has fathered a child with another woman and seems quite happy about it all. Few responsible evangelicals would consider him an ally of their values today. Yet, the total and complete support Gibson enjoyed from evangelicals (despite some obvious warning signs) has resulted in the credibility of evangelicals being tarnished. We had embraced the celebrity culture and made ourselves a hero, and we're now paying a price for our short-sightedness.

Example #2: Carrie Prejean
When Ms. Prejean was forced to go public with her stance against gay marriage at the Miss America pageant, much of the culture vilified her. But many evangelicals rushed to her defense and praised her profusely. She instantly became a hot commodity on the evangelical speaking circuit and on conservative media outlets. She hired an agent/spokesperson. She was young, pretty, and photogenic. It was inevitable that she would become an evangelical celebrity. But again, her elevation to evangelical superstar was done despite some warning signs that should have given evangelicals pause.

Her highly contentious relationship with pageant officials was a harbinger of things to come. Over the last year, numerous revelations have surfaced about her own conduct - some of it smelling quite opportunistic and diva-ish. Lawsuits were filed and settled with pageant officials, a book deal was inked to cash in on her notoriety, and very recently, the release of a rather salacious video has forced Prejean to make Clintonian distinctions about all matters sexual. She has donned the martyred victim hat in her book and in interviews, the most recent of which was an erratic display on Larry King which has now been followed by several cancelled book tour events. Whatever fortitude Prejean displayed in her stance on gay marriage has now been overshadowed and undermined by both prior and subsequent wobbly conduct. It was there to be seen, but in our rush to find friends anywhere we can, we overlooked (and continue to overlook) way too much. Evangelicals at large are now being lumped in with Prejean. We're paying the price yet again for embracing and even fueling the cult of the celebrity.

Evangelicals are hardly the only ones who embrace celebrity idolatry. We aren't even the worst offenders; not by a long shot. But what makes us different is that we're supposed to know better. We, who believe that the world in its present form is passing away (1C 7.31) and are instructed to set our hearts and minds on things above (Col 3.1-2) should know better than to embrace the world's pursuits, employ the world's methods, and seek the world's approval. But I fear that even though the evangelical subculture is somewhat unique and separate from mainstream culture, it embodies too much of the world's values to prop it up. Hitching our wagons to flickering stars is one obvious example of our capitulation.

Bob McDonnell and the Washington Post

2009-11-04T14:24:00.001-08:00

What follows is adapted from a post I made at the Post's website today regarding 'Winners and Losers' from the just completed election cycle:

Among the losers, we should count the Washington Post for its highly problematic coverage of the Virginia governor's race:

1) The editorial board's endorsement of Democrat Creigh Deeds was no surprise, but the partisan and selectively one-sided nature of it indicated a lack of seriousness in appraising the campaign.

2) The Post's polling approach lacked credibility, and it showed. Not only were the Post's polls consistently wrong in lowballing the margin between Republican Bob McDonnell and Deeds (the Post's polls put the margin between 9-11 points), the Post actively poo-pooed other polls that had a far more accurate grasp of the true margin of separation (many other polls had the margin between 14-18 points). McDonnell won by 17-18 points. A 7-8 point margin of error makes the Post's polling methodology unreliable, and yet the Post was labeling the accurate polls as such. Can you say 'credibility gap'?

3) Related to #2, the Post seemed to take a 90 degree turn during the campaign in covering other poll results. In the beginning, the Post went on record saying they would not publicize other polls that they (the Post) had problems with in terms of methodology. After getting skewered over this highly subjective and arbitrary decision, the Post reversed course in the last month and was giving some limited airplay to other polls (which turned out to be more accurate than the Post's own polls). This indicated the lack of a reliable compass in guiding what the newsroom (not the editorial staff) thought was newsworthy. The Post's late stream course correction was the right decision, but it highlights how completely wrong their original position was as a matter of journalistic integrity. This kind of fumbling, bumbling, and stumbling is what hurt Deeds's credibility. It hurts the Post's as well.

4) The Post's metro section made a serious investment in pushing liberal concerns in its reporting. Beyond the Post's infamous obsession with McDonnell's thesis, the metro staff (again, I'm not talking about the editorial board) repeatedly approached the economic and transportation plans of the candidates from the perspective that higher taxes were the only real solution. First, one wonders if these people have looked at the economic condition in Maryland (high taxes, high unemployment, a population exodus to states with lower tax burdens) as part of formulating their own worldview. Second, it is a bit disingenuous for the beat staff to regularly trot out the line that a high wall of separation exists between the editorial board and the metro staff, as if this org chart somehow gets the metro staff off the hook for bringing their own biases to their coverage. It doesn't. It never has, it never will. Just because the metro staff at the Post might take umbrage at this suggestion doesn't make it false, at all. More likely it highlights the objectivity and non-agenda self-delusion that's so common in the press corps.

Nobody I know expected the Post's editorial board to give McDonnell a fair shake, and that's fair enough. While regretable, it's at least consistent and offers few surprises. But the conduct of the metro staff in this campaign has been noticed by many outside the beltway. After years of the Post taking tangible steps to improve its image as a news outlet that shows at least some concern about being fair with diverse viewpoints, I fear that its performance this time around will undo a good bit of that among those who are not partisan Democrats.

In a follow-up editorial today, the editorial board expressed its hope that McDonnell will prove them wrong on all the areas in which they took issue with him. Well, many of us are quite entitled to petition the Post for the same thing. If I were to write an editorial to the Post, I would urge them to seriously listen to the many well deserved criticisms they have received about their conduct in this campaign. Their performance has been disappointing as a matter of journalism. The Post needs to be more intentional about promoting viewpoint diversity in their own ranks to help ensure that future campaigns are covered with a level of respect for differing views that comes with having a staff of differing views. I fear that absent this, the Post will continue to fundamentally misunderstand non-liberal thought and those who adhere to it, and that this misunderstanding will continue to taint their coverage and invite deserved repudiation.

A Blog Post that made me Weep

2009-09-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

I don't normally link to specific blog posts written by others. But after neglecting Reggie Kidd's blog for far too long, I noticed a post written back in December of last year that is more than worthy of sharing. Please take a look:

http://reggiekidd.com/RK/2008/12/22/the-gospel-according-to-house-a-christmas-meditation-part-one/

Even though it was one of Reggie's Christmas meditations, the post has a decidedly year-round message. It is this kind of thoughtful interaction with culture that we should be seeing much more of in Christian circles, rather than blind acceptance or vitriolic hostility.

Defending the Gospel of John Scripts Now Available

2009-09-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Last week, I began teaching a new self-developed curriculum entitled 'Defending the Gospel of John'. The first 9 lesson scripts are now available online at my church's website. A link to the scripts can be found on the Links section of this blog. We had over 30 folks attend Week 1 last week, which is a very good start.

The course addresses a number of accusations that have been made against the Gospel of John, including the following:

1) The GJ strongly incorporates Gnostic ideas, terms, and categories.
2) The Apostle John did not write a single word of the GJ.
3) The GJ is historically unreliable and totally dissimilar from the Synoptics.
4) The GJ is a sectarian document written by a sectarian community.
5) The GJ is anti-semitic.
6) The GJ is anti-pluralistic.

The course touches on biblical exegesis, church history, theology, ethics, and other disciplines. I invite all interested readers to pull up the scripts and peruse. And, of course, anyone who would like to attend the course at Faith Church is very invited to come. I'd love the chance to meet you.

Many thanx to Faith Church for making these scripts available online.

Justice - 'Manson Family' Style

2009-09-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

With the recent news that former Manson Family devotee Lynette Fromme was released from prison while terminally ill Susan Atkin's latest parole request was denied, I am once again confronted by the ultimate inadequacy of human justice. In saying this, let me be clear about two things:

1) I am not necessarily questioning the wisdom of either decision.
2) Scripture seems clear to me that God established human governing authorities to maintain general social welfare (Rom 12-13). This includes the administration of justice.

Squeaky Fromme, so far as we know, never killed anyone. She was in prison for waving a gun at President Gerald Ford, and her sentence was later lengthened as a result of a brief prison escape in the late 1980s. Atkins, on the other hand, admits to brutally killing Sharon Tate and her unborn child. By normal standards of American justice, her ultimate sentence of life without parole is rather mainstream.

But human justice is not always nice and neat. Atkins, along with other Manson Family members sentenced to life in prison (not including Manson himself), have been model prisoners according to many prison administrators. Their 'good works' in prison have now spanned decades. While not an ironclad argument, a case can be made that these folks have largely been 'rehabilitated'. While the issue of rehabilitation doesn't necessarily override the 'punishment should fit the crime' motto of justice, it is a complicating factor to neat and clean justice. It is further complicated by the release of Fromme.

In my uneducated view, if there is one Manson Family member who continues to have the potential of being dangerous (again, not including Manson himself), it is Fromme. Unlike the other Manson Family members in prison, Fromme has never disassociated herself from Manson. To the contrary, she strongly suggested that the reason behind her attempt to escape from prison in the late 1980s was to visit Manson. In addition, unlike the other Manson Family inmates, Fromme has not been a model prisoner. She has had scrapes with other inmates, and was actually transferred to another prison as a result of attacking another prisoner. Lastly, she has never expressed remorse either about the Manson Family's activities or her own actions that landed her in prison.

From one point of view, 'justice' has been upheld, in that the non-murderer is eventually freed, while the murderers are not. But from another point of view, 'justice' has been decidedly mixed, in that the dangerous and unrepentant person goes free, while the rehabilitated and remorseful people remain jailed. Again, I'm not necessarily questioning the wisdom behind either decision, or the legal process and sentencing guidelines that got us here. But it does make me long for the day when, as Revelation 15.4 says, all nations will worship God, because his righteous acts have been revealed. The 'just' God of Deuteronomy 32 is just that; just. Human justice will always be imperfect, and it will often be messy. Divine justice is the only ultimate remedy, and the imperfections of human justice make me long for it all the more.

Sotomayor Should be Confirmed

2009-08-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

The Senate is expected to confirm Judge Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court later today. I believe this is the right decision.

I say this not because I agree with Sotomayor's rulings or legal philosophy. I have reservations about both. Republicans are right that an 'empathy' standard is a dangerous one, because it converts preferential identity politics into a legal posture. Justice, even in principle, would no longer be blind, and even in principle, litigants would not be operating on a level playing field. If judges and justices were to embrace such a standard, chaos, followed by Nietzchean will to power, would define justice in America. Why? Because individual empathies inevitably conflict with each other. My empathies may be different than yours. Who gets to decide which empathies become ensconced in jurisprudence? Are such empathies routinely up for debate and significant change over time, and if so, how would citizens, governments, and businesses ever be able to know they are on solid legal ground when making decisions that might impact anyone else? In such a scenario, justice would be governed by fluid preferred empathies at any moment in time, and freedom and even the ability to govern would be thoroughly compromised through judicial enforcement of ever changing and ever conflicting empathies. At that point, the judiciary itself would lose its function, because its role would overlap completely with the political role of the executive and legislative branches. Put simply, we don't need the judiciary to prefer certain policies, groups, or worldviews over others - we have politicians to do that. We need the judiciary to be a check against the inevitable abuses that result from such politics, rather than a judiciary that signs on to such a practice and becomes duplicative and redundant as a result.

Having said all of that, I nonetheless think Sotomayor should be confirmed.

First, elections have consequences. Barack Obama is the president, he won the election fair and square, and he won by a sufficient enough margin to legitimately claim a mandate for his outlook on governance, including his criteria for judges. It doesn't matter that when he was a senator, he did not embrace the same standard in voting against qualified nominees of the previous administration. If one thinks this standard is right when we like the nominee, it doesn't become wrong when we're less enthused about a nominee.

Second, Sotomayor is clearly qualified. Her legal credentials are strong, and she's obviously not a minor league judge. It doesn't matter that when he was a senator, Obama voted against nominees who were also clearly qualified and had impeccable legal credentials. This standard should be a fixed standard that applies regardless of the nominee.

Third, Sotomayor is more or less in the legal mainstream. This is very dicey. During the Bush years, people like Chuck Schumer routinely threw around the term 'mainstream' in judging the fitness of nominees, as if there was some universal agreement about what 'mainstream' meant. Schumer's idea of 'mainstream' is very different from mine, and often varied depending on the day. This resulted in a completely subjective, arbitrary, and politicized standard that became THE standard upon which nominees were judged. It was a farce from start to finish, and it was a farce that then Senator Obama willingly engaged in. But in the case of Sotomayor, it is not easy to build a strong evidential case that she's a legal loon. Very few of her decisions have been reversed (the New Haven case being a glaring exception). While this doesn't guarantee a mainstream outlook, on the surface at least, it probably does imply a certain mainstream.

Fourth, the 'empathy' thing is very concerning, but not a showstopper given Sotomayor's record. Let's be clear that the 'empathy' standard is Obama's. During her hearings, Sotomayor thankfully seemed to reject such a standard, repeatedly. And with the possible exception of the New Haven case, there is little in the record to indicate that in contradiction to her Senate testimony, Sotomayor has in fact embraced empathy as a legal philosophy that influences or even dictates her legal decisions. Even if one considers the New Haven case, which I agree with Republicans was a terrible decision that was rightly reversed by the Supreme Court, it is not clear that Sotomayor took the 'empathy' route in signing on to the bad decision. The decision itself was a summary decision where the court didn't offer a rationale for its decision. So there's nothing in writing to indicate why Sotomayor and the other judges decided the way they did. During her testimony, Sotomayor cited precedent as the legal basis for the decision, not empathy or preferential group politics. One can either believe her explanation or not. Frankly, I don't know. Her out of court statements regarding identity wisdom may in fact be what she believes (though she rejected this in her testimony), and if so, this is unfortunate. But I simply fail to see enough compelling evidence that such a standard has been front and center in the judge's legal thinking.

Fifth and finally, someone's disagreements with a judge's decisions should not automatically provoke a nay vote. There isn't a single judge in America who I would completely agree with. Does that mean that if I was a senator, I would vote 'no' every time I disagree with someone? That simply can't be the basis upon which to shape the judiciary. The judiciary needs to be loyal to the law, not to me. I understand that loyalty to the law is a variable thing since there are many understandings of what that means. But in the case of Sotomayor, her Senate testimony made her loyalty to the law clear, and her legal history doesn't deviate from this enough for me to vote nay.

I respect those who see this differently and believe she shouldn't be confirmed. I share many of the concerns of those who oppose her confirmation. But in the end, I can't and won't adopt many of the specious 'standards' adopted by Democrats in opposing Republican nominated judges. Sotomayor should be confirmed.

Bush and Obama - Iraq and GM

2009-06-21T10:03:00.001-07:00

I've been a bit struck lately with some similarities in the American polled attitudes about Iraq during the late Bush years, and the GM bailout now in the early Obama years. While the two are not totally symmetrical, it's getting harder and harder to keep them apart. Consider:

1) The amount of money being thrown at both never seems to come to an end. Nobody seems to have a good handle on how much the taxpayers will have to spend in order for both efforts to ultimately prove 'successful'. Certainly in the case of Iraq, it was legitimate to ask whether the decision to invade and its fallout was well thought through or not, especially given what appeared to be a complete inability to correctly forecast the extent of our commitment in personnel, expense and time. It appears many people are now asking the same question about the decision to bail out GM.

2) The poll numbers are trending somewhat consistently on both issues. The public, while not unanimous, initially supported the Iraq war, at least in plurality. That support held up for a while, but began to tank in Bush's second term, despite some legitimate successes on the ground in Bush's last year in office. Similarly, while not unanimous, a plurality of the public seemed to initially favor a government bailout of GM. In theory, this support was based on the idea that it was very important to the health of the nation that the US auto industry, and all the jobs associated with it, survive. But this support now seems to be flagging, as more money is spent keeping GM afloat despite significant job losses resulting from dealership closings, factory suspensions, and discontinuation of known brands like Pontiac.

3) The rationales offered by the proponents of both issues is eerily similar. When the going got tough in Iraq, Bush and his supporters said we needed to stay the course and that now that we were in there, we needed to finish the job. Iraq war proponents have consistently said that they want to get out of Iraq as soon as Iraq can stand on its own. Yet, all attempts at a timetable were heavily resisted by the former administration. The same thing is happening now with GM. I heard Debbie Stabenow, a senator from Michigan with an obvious interest in saving GM, tell exactly the same story about government intervention in GM that Bush was giving on government intervention in Iraq. She told a sycophantic interviewer on MSNBC that she didn't want the government running GM any longer than necessary, but that government involvement is nonetheless necessary for the forseeable future until GM gets its mess straightened out. She talked about the downside of getting out of GM too quickly (sound familiar? - this is her version of the 'premature withdrawal' argument of the Bush people on Iraq). And like the Iraq war proponents, she heavily downplayed the financial cost to the taxpayer of the decision to bail out GM.

As I said at the beginning, I am not suggesting that these two things are exactly the same, or that their respective support and opposition are based on exactly the same reasons. But there are some curious similarities at work here, and one wonders if the Obama people can see the irony of adopting a number of Bush stump speech justifications on Iraq in defense of their decisions about GM.

New Article Published by 3Mil

2009-06-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

Back in May, I submitted an article to ThirdMill titled "Did the Author of the Fourth Gospel Intend to Write History?" The editor of 3Mil's online magazine has graciously agreed to publish the article, and it is now available online. For those interested in reading it, follow the 'My Published Papers So Far' link on the right side of this blog page.

In this article, I interact with the common scholarly contention of the last 40 years that the FG is more or less an allegory about a late 1st century community of believers, rather than a historical narrative about the historical Jesus. I attempt to introduce the issue of literary genre into this discussion, and to pull from a diverse pool of data (topography, historiography, etc) to assess whether this view holds water on the evidence. I argue that it doesn't.

George Tiller, Abortion, and the Imago Dei

2009-06-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

I am pro-life. I think George Tiller's medical practice of aborting viable babies in the third trimester was unconscionable. And I think his assassination is equally unconscionable.

This is a difficult issue for me. Tiller wasn't just someone who performed late-term abortions. He was an all-out advocate for such a practice - a culture warrior in his own right. Prior to his killing, Tiller had suffered other physical harm, legal challenges, protests, and harassment. None of this deterred Tiller from continuing his terrible practice. Clearly, Tiller was a man who was completely committed to doing what he was doing. A lot like his killer, I suspect. Which is why I can equally condemn the actions of both of them.

I agree with those who say that the country's gradual shift toward a more pro-life posture has nothing to do with violent acts like this. It has everything to do with the compelling peaceful arguments that have been made by those of us who see God's image in every person, including the unborn. Scientific advances that increasingly demonstrate the viability of pre-born life, coupled with many post-1973 individuals rightly seeing themselves as 'survivors' of a sanitized and sanctioned practice of death, have gradually reshaped the ethos of the abortion issue in far more effective ways than judges, politicians, and laws have done. Tiller's killing may or may not stem this tide. But it clearly violated the basic principles that have given rise to this tide.

Tragedies like this killing always highlight a brutal dynamic of humanity when left unchecked. Everybody has 'reasons' why they do what they do. Nothing that has ever been said or done is purely 'thoughtless' in the sense of having no reasons behind them. Judging the propriety of words and deeds isn't about determining whether there were 'reasons' behind them. No. Parents have 'reasons' for cursing at their children. Children have 'reasons' for throwing their food at the table. Madoff had 'reasons' for ruining the lives of so many. Having a 'reason' for doing something doesn't make it right.

The propriety of our conduct is about whether our reasons are good or not. But this leaves us in another dilemma. How exactly are we to determine whether our reasoning is good? In my view, an ethic of word and deed that is not based, either explicitly or implicitly, on the doctrine of imago Dei is one that leaves us in chaos. It is the Christian doctrine of humanity made in God's image that gives us common cause, mutual respect, a real ability to bridge differences, and most importantly, a fundamental dignity that cannot be revoked by any man or woman. The practice of abortion, and the killing of abortionists, are both rooted in a denial of imago Dei. Both practices, in the end, embrace the antithesis of imago Dei, for they betray the belief that one person gets to decide whether another person has intrinsic value or not - or in the case of abortion, one person gets to decide whether another person is really a person or not.

The breakdown of the imago Dei ethic doesn't just show up on the issue of abortion. I'm convinced it is the primary reason why America is disintegrating into all-out individualism and factionalism. The isolation, mistrust, and even hatred it has spawned is, in my view, irreversible absent a return to the only ethic that ascribes permanent value to humanity as a whole. All of us, especially those of us who are Christians and claim to embrace biblical ethics, need to take a hard look in the mirror. If we really believed in the imago Dei, would we really be treating others the way we are? Considering that Tiller was apparently a churchgoer, his abdication of imago Dei is only an acutely grotesque example of less newsworthy but far more common abdications that many of us, including me, silently exhibit in our attitudes and 'reasons' for treating people the way we do.

The danger of an increasingly post-Christian America isn't just about the waning influence of the Gospel, Jesus, and the need for salvation in our current zeitgeist. It is also about a deterioration in the ethic that binds us together and instills mutual respect and responsibility to each other as fellow image-bearers. The loss of this ethic results in the basis for Tiller's grisly practice, as well as his grisly execution. One would hope that both would cause us all to take a step back and do some serious assessing of where we are and where we're headed. But civilization has paved over over an abundance of such moments throughout time without barely missing a beat. The dangers of this are numerous, obvious, and imminent.

Let's Go Caps

2009-04-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

As a long-suffering Washington Caps fan who has watched countless good Caps teams go down in flames early in the playoffs, last night's tough victory over the Rangers was more exuberant relief than anything else. As a fan who still rues the day the NHL realigned the divisions and took the Caps out of the old Patrick Division, beating an old Patrick Division foe was especially gratifying. Caps fans like me who learned to love hockey by watching intense divisional encounters with the Rangers, Islanders, Flyers, and Penguins have had great trouble replacing these rivalries with the Canes, Thrashers, Bolts, and Panthers in intensity. But come playoff time, seasoned Caps fans are allowed to have the rivalry juices flow again when we tend to meet our more traditional rivals. Last year, it was the hated Flyers. This time, it was the Rangers. But unlike last year, this year we move on.

Next comes the Pens. The Pens are to the Caps what Spurrier's Florida was to Georgia and Tennessee, what Michael Jordan was to Cleveland, and what Babe Ruth was to the Red Sox. Namely, not just a competitor, but a tormentor. In 7 playoff series between the Caps and Pens, the Pens have won 6. Moreover, it's not just that the overall outcome in the series has been lopsided, it's also the manner in which each individual series was lost that continues to bewitch the Caps fan base. In many of the 6 series losses, the Caps outplayed the Pens early in the series, only to have the Pens find their composure, unnerve the Caps, and pull it out in the end. There was no question that the Pens mystique got into the heads of the Caps players, organization and fan base.

But now, a new slate of players from both sides is poised to renew the rivalry. To what extent have they embraced the history of the rivalry? They would probably say it's old news and irrelevant, and maybe it is. But for this Caps fan, heartache isn't easily forgotten, particularly when it's been inflicted by the same tormentor over and over again. On paper, the two teams are about even. But I fear that in reality, the matchup is as lopsided as this rivalry's playoff history. I hope I'm wrong; I desperately hope I'm wrong. But I think the Pens win in 5.

Good Friday, 2009

2009-04-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

It can be argued quite well that Good Friday is the singlemost revolting day on the Christian calendar, certainly for non-Christians, and even for some within the church. For it is on this day that Christians ponder the awful death of Christ on the cross. Holy days like Easter and Christmas are much more high profile than Good Friday, and certainly arouse their share of opposition. But in the end, Christian observance of the birth and resurrection of Christ tend to be dismissed rather than derided by those who have a problem with Christianity. Good Friday is different.

The redemptive significance of the crucifixion of Christ has been derided as the 'gospel of gore' for some time. More recently, it has been popular to attack the notion that the Father's judgment against sin was satisfied through the substitutionary atonement of Christ as a form of 'divine child abuse'. What kind of Father would allow his Son to be brutalized, and what kind of Father would turn his wrath against sin against his own Son who committed no sin? How can Christians possibly 'celebrate' such a disgraceful thing?

While such objections to the atoning death of Christ are potent and clearly resonate, they distort not only the nature of God, but the nature of Christ as well. In John 10.18, Jesus makes it clear that he is voluntary giving his life for his sheep. He makes clear that nobody takes his life, and nobody has the standing to do so. He is the one who has the authority not only to lay down his life of his own accord, but to take up his life again. Because the Father (Acts 2.32), the Son (Jn 10) and the Spirit (Rom 8.10-11) are all said to be involved in Christ's resurrection (not to mention the creation of the universe and the salvation of the world), we know the three members of the Trinity were unified in the divine purpose of the story of redemption, including the crucifixion.

Jesus is not an unwilling participant; he is not an unwitting victim here. His suffering and death was not necessitated by a bloodthirsty Father who became a follower of Marquis de Sade before de Sade was born. As John 10.11 makes clear, the salvation of sinful humanity was the purpose behind the awful crucifixion. The horror of Christ's death highlights the horror of the sin that required such a remedy. As the wrenching hymn of Johann Heermann says,

Who was the guilty who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee:
I crucified thee.

This is what is really so offensive about the crucifixion - our sin put Christ on the cross. When another hymn asks, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?", I am compelled to answer, "Yes I was. My sin put him on the cross."

But why was the crucifixion necessary? Wasn't there some other way to address the sin problem? No. As 1 Peter 3.18 makes clear, Christ died for sins once for all; the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. Without the substitution for sin that Christ became, terms like 'righteous' and 'unrighteous' lose all meaning. Far from being the gospel of gore, the crucifixion is part of the gospel of intercession, where a righteous God intercedes for the unrighteous who are dead in their sins, and dies on their behalf so that they might have life. 'Divine child abuse' would be seeing masses of humans made in God's image who are without hope of redemption, and doing nothing about it. Christ's willing sacrifice to make me a child of God despite my sins that made his sacrifice necessary is the kind of extraordinary and unprecedented love that never ceases to make me weep in both anguish and joy on Good Friday.

Preaching on Barley

2009-03-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

A good preacher can find at least one good sermon on the significance of barley in the Bible. In point of fact, any sermon focused on the feeding of the 5,000 would be deficient if the barley angle wasn't explored.

It is clear from both Scripture and agronomy that barley bread is a lesser bread than other kinds of bread, particularly wheat bread. Barley has a lower gluten content, a low extraction rate, is less tasty and more indigestible. Barley was the grain of choice in arid regions in Bible days, because it is less sensitive to soil salinity and demands less water than wheat. Put simply, barley was the poor man's bread, because while heartier and less tasty than wheat, barley grain grew better on less desirable lands (ie: lands that the poor would work) and required fewer natural resources (ie: water) to grow. Barley was the grain used to feed the animals (1K 4.28).

2 Kings 7 makes it clear that barley meal was worth only half as much as wheat (2K 7.1,16,18), with Rev 6.6 also considering wheat to be of greater value than barley. When God is pronouncing judgment on false prophets who gave false reassurances to the people in Ezk 13, the depth of the prophets's betrayal is understood all the more when God highlights how the prophets profaned God 'for a few handfuls of barley' (13.19). This is a stinging indictment. The false prophets haven't forsaken fidelity to God in pursuit of gold or other worldly riches, but for the least valuable kind of grain. They sold out God for nothing, which makes God's impending judgment all the more righteous.

The barley motif gets especially interesting when we arrive at the Gospel of John, and its account of the feeding of the 5,000 in John 6. Of the four Gospels, only John specifies the type of bread loaves used at the feeding. You guessed it - barley (6.9). By making a point to tell his audience that barley bread was used to feed the masses, John is telling us something about the crowd. These people, by and large, were poor. Barley is what they grew, and it's what they ate.

But just as importantly, John is also telling us at least two things about Jesus. First, John's version of the feeding of the 5,000 most closely parallels Elisha's feeding of the 100 in 2K 4. In the initial Elisha miracle, barley is again the bread that is miraculously multiplied to feed the multitude (4.42). The feeding of the 5,000 is unquestionably patterned off this OT miracle. John's very deliberate barley notation would have cemented the link between this miracle and the Elisha miracle with his audience. The Gospel of John goes to great lengths to demonstrate the uniqueness of Jesus by showing that Jesus did things nobody else had done before. But what often goes unnoticed is that John also stresses the uniqueness of Jesus by showing that Jesus did things other people did as well, but is doing them on a completely different and unheard of scale. This would have made just as big an impression on his audience.

Second, when Jesus multiplies the bread, he doesn't turn barley into wheat, a la turning water into wine. He multiplies the barley. We know this because v15 indicates that the type of bread left over from the feeding was barley. What this tells us is that Jesus' miracles aren't always about rags to riches. No sermon on the feeding of the 5,000 by a Prosperity Gospel preacher will flush out the significance of the barley, because it's a black eye for the Prosperity Gospel. It is significant that one of the very few miracles recorded in all four Gospels is a miracle in which the poor man's bread is served to everyone, including those who stay loyal to Christ amidst opposition. There is no hint here of the 'special stuff for special faith' formula of Prosperity theology. Instead, the formula crashes on the hearty density of the barley.

While barley was considered an inferior grain in Bible days, it can serve as a superior preaching topic today.

A Nation of 'Cowards'?

2009-02-23T09:02:00.001-08:00

So says Eric Holder, our current Attorney General, in regards to the nation's ability to converse constructively on issues of race. Predictably, due both to his prominence and the language he chose to employ, his comments have once again kicked up the dust on the well worn racial playing field of America. My issue is not with Holder per se, but with some of his defenders, particularly Michael Eric Dyson. More on that in a minute.

Understand that I come to this issue as someone who many would consider a conservative, but who takes somewhat unorthodox positions on issues of race. For example, I favor affirmative action, not as a form of payback or compensation for past sins, but because I sadly believe it continues to be necessary to help provide legitimate earned opportunity for those who face present-day racism. It is disproportionately difficult for African Americans to get access to credit and capital. The extreme difficulty in gaining clear title to property greatly inhibits many African Americans from owning their own homes, making improvements to properties, and improving the condition of neighborhoods. 'Urban education' is something mostly learned outside the classroom, since what passes for education inside the classroom is often not very educational. These are real disadvantages with real consequences, and thoughtful solutions that transcend political or public relation notoriety is urgently needed from folks on both the left and right.

So from this perspective, let me say that Holder may be more right than he thinks, and certainly far too correct for folks like Dyson to be praising him for what he said. Yes, we are a nation of cowards on race. Race, not Social Security, is the third rail not just in American politics, but in American culture too. The election of Barack Obama may (temporarily) lower the voltage, but the third rail still exists and can still deliver a painful and even fatal shock to those who touch it. Enter Michael Dyson.

Dyson is the prototypical academic celebrity. He's well spoken, his oratory is impassioned and inspiring, and he makes an effort to be cutting edge. But, I'm afraid, Dyson is the exact kind of 'coward' on race who needs to take a good look in the mirror. In praising Holder, Dyson argues that we need to move beyond our racial cocoons and get on with the business of unity. This is a wonderful sentiment, and breathtaking in light of Dyson's unfortunate rhetoric in perpetuating what has become one of the most debilitating crutches preventing candor on race discussions in America. That crutch being to shut down talking about 'unkind truth' by labeling all such discussion as 'racist' or, in the case of Dyson's view of Bill Cosby, indicative of someone who's 'lost his mind'. I don't totally agree with Bill Cosby's much trumpeted diagnosis of black poverty. But Cosby's thoughts were ironically a lot like Dyson's in technique - provocative, designed to stimulate uncomfortable discussion, and an attempt to move us away from our familiar places on the stage in order to have a real discussion.

In both newspaper columns and in a full-length book, Dyson not so subtely accused Cosby of being an Uncle Tom when Cosby dared to suggest that the plight of many African Americans cannot be reduced simply to racism. Repeatedly, Dyson accused Cosby of giving in to conservative talking points and appealing to dangerous stereotypes. Put simply, Cosby was selling out. To his credit, Dyson did at least interact somewhat with the substance of what Cosby was saying, though his interaction was too often heavy on disdain and light on alternatives that strayed even a little bit from 'liberal talking points' that have been tried and tested, and found wanting. But by doing so, he did more than many of his brethren in the academy who engage in exactly the kind of personal stereotyping devoid of engagement with ideas that Dyson thinks Cosby did. But his unwillingness to more thoughtfully engage Cosby and choosing to resort to the exact tactics that wholly dissuade honest discussion of race makes Dyson among the least honest brokers to advance a constructive discussion on race. It strikes me as quite sad that Dyson seems to lack the level of self-awareness to realize that such an approach is, well, cowardly. Shutting down legitimate debate and discussion with polarized and charged accusations that are only applicable because he says they are is cowardly, not constructive. That Dyson has a rather unrepentant history of doing this makes his approval of Holder all the more astonishing. He simply fails to realize that when it comes to race, there are cowards on all sides, including his, including him.

I say all this as someone who cautiously agrees with Dyson some of the time. I don't think Dyson is wholly wrong. But my issue is not with the social and political positions he takes. My issue is with his tactics and his very selective employment of them. This, frankly, is what all of us need to move beyond. That one of the foremost authorities on race in America can't seem to do that tells us all we need to know about the difficulty of moving the racial discussion forward and closing the racial divide among us.

Defending the Gospel of John

2009-02-16T06:21:00.000-08:00

I am currently putting together a self-developed curriculum related to subject that I hope will be completed in time to teach it in the fall as part of my church's adult Sunday school course offerings. It was through the Johannine writings that my interest in hospitality as both an academic and ministry pursuit was born. So this corpus has long been of particular fondness to me.

This course is designed to equip those who consider the Fourth Gospel to be normatively authoritative to defend it against a rather wide swath of serious accusations. Among the topics the curriculum will cover:

1) Does the Fourth Gospel teach or give aid and comfort to Gnosticism?
2) Was St. John the author of the Fourth Gospel?
3) Is the Fourth Gospel historically reliable?
4) Is the Fourth Gospel anti-semitic?
5) Is the Fourth Gospel anti-pluralistic?
6) Is the Fourth Gospel sectarian and/or cultic?
7) Is the Fourth Gospel morally bankrupt?

Each of these general accusatory categories enjoy bases of support in the Academy, the clergy, and lay Christians and non-Christians alike. Therefore, the curriculum will interact with the views of many critical scholars such as Brown, Culpepper, Kysar, Segovia, Malina, O'Grady and Casey. It will also address some questionable assumptions made by evangelical scholars as well. We will touch on matters of exegesis, hermeneutics, theology, philosophy, church history, and linguistics. For each accusation discussed, we will also ask the 'So What?' question, which will attempt to flush out the implications should such accusations go unchecked and win the day.

Right now, I envision the course being comprised of 12 lessons, of which I have essentially completed three and am close to finishing a fourth. Because the curriculum is still in a fairly formative stage, suggestions are welcome. If anyone thinks some accusation or concern should be addressed that doesn't fall under the general categories mentioned above, please let me know. I would be happy to try and incorporate it into the curriculum.

Koinonia Foundation

2009-01-29T13:22:00.000-08:00

I have been encouraged by the Chairman and others to join the Board of Directors for the Koinonia Foundation. This foundation is an inter-denominational Christian agency that offers services, counseling, and referrals to the needy in a 5 zip code area of Northern Virginia, and has been doing so for over 40 years. Koinonia has a food pantry, a clothing closet, and offers limited financial assistance for things like rent, utilities, and prescription drugs. They also do special outreaches each year that include Thanksgiving and Christmas meals, food drives, and Christmas presents to needy children.

More recently, Koinonia has attempted to integrate a more well-rounded approach to serving the poor. In addition to focusingy on the kinds of tangible assistance mentioned above, they have begun to integrate equally essential intangibles such as financial and employment counseling that equips the poor with skills to help break free from ingrained dependency on social services to get by. They also Christian witness and community for those who desire it

Like many other charitable and ministry organizations these days, Koinonia faces significant budget challenges, as well as serious spatial challenges (their present facility is far too small to be able to offer the expansive outreach Koinonia believes it is called to, and which the community would no doubt benefit from). Those who have served in the trenches of mercy ministry far more than I have know all too well the almost constant difficulties and challenges that come with the territory of doing ministry along the breaking point of desperation and hopelessness in the lives of those created in God's image. The work is tough, and can be heartbreaking. But like many others who toil in this particular vineyard, Koinonia is doing good work and offering hope to those who most need it.

The Koinonia facility is located on Franconia Rd, just east of Franconia Elementary behind the parking lot of Franconia Methodist Church.

To those who live in this geographic area and are in need, please visit Koinonia. There's no shame in seeking assistance, and the volunteers at Koinonia are helpful, compassionate, and friendly.

To anyone regardless of geography who is not in need and is in a position to give, Koinonia could certainly use your support, both prayerful and financial. There are many very good ministries and organizations that one can donate their time and treasure as they feel led. Koinonia is not special in this regard. But it is a most worthy organization for those who feel led to partner with them in serving the poor. Might I ask anyone who reads this blog to prayerfully consider exploring how God might be leading you as you read this post.

I encourage everyone to visit Koinonia online to find out more about what the Foundation is doing, how they're doing it, what the community's needs are, and how you can either avail yourself of their services, or contribute to their work.

http://www.thekoinoniafoundation.org

Thanx!

Jesus - Life-Changing or Life-Enhancing?

2009-01-05T09:25:00.000-08:00

A fellow Elder in my church passed along a comment made by the current Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, which is worth reflection:

The scandal of the church is that the Christ-event is no longer life-changing; it has become life-enhancing. We've lost the power and joy that make real disciples and we've become consumers of religion and not disciples of Jesus Christ.

Now obviously, the issue of life-changing and life-enhancing is not necessarily an either/or proposition. But the manner in which Sentamu frames the issue is nonetheless instructive, because of the way in which he seems to define 'life-enhancing' in consumerist terms.

Like Sentamu, I fear that a considerable number of Western Christians view Jesus and religion through a consumerist lens. I don't think it's entirely intentional. I just think that very few of us have a level of self-awareness that seriously reckons with the degree to which our entire outlook on life is often framed by consumerism, including our religious attitudes and beliefs. To the extent that anyone, Christian or non-Christian, approaches the Person of Christ and asks, "What's in it for me?", that person is a consumer who views Jesus as a commodity. Their evaluation of Jesus is then a question of whether (and how much) Jesus is enhancing or will enhance one's life. And when this happens, Jesus is a utility to be assessed similarly to how we might assess a job change with a pay raise, or the pros and cons of putting an addition on our house. The problem is that while pay raises and home remodelings might enhance our lives, they rarely change our lives. And that's because in the end, they lack the power to effect life change.

In many ways, the basic problem is that the question, "What's in it for me?" is a completely reasonable question for anyone to ask about almost anything in our consumerist culture. And this question isn't completely illegitimate when it comes to matters of religion either. If it was, the Bible likely wouldn't contain the many promises and assurances that it does in order for people to know the truth about this Jesus person and what it means to follow him. When describing the marks (and costs) of discipleship, Jesus didn't withhold information because he thought it was illegitimate for people to want to know what they were getting into in following him and his teachings. It's when this question is reduced to a purely utilitarian assessment of the worth of Jesus, as defined by the consumer and measured in consumerist categories, that Jesus stops being the life-changing Savior of the Scriptures and becomes a glorified COTS item to be tried on in the dressing room and bought off the shelf. And like most everything else that can be purchased in a big box store, this kind of Jesus will at best enhance one's life, but won't change it, no matter what kind of marketing slogan is employed to convince the consumer that such a purchase will change their life forever.

When asking myself whether the Jesus I follow and worship is the life-changing Jesus of the Scriptures or is merely a life-enhancing Jesus of my own consumerist making, I always try to ask myself a basic question. Instead of asking, "What's in it for me?", I ask myself, "What are the beliefs, attitudes, and practices that I now hold dear and actively live out that were unthinkable to me before the 'Christ-event'?" Or conversely, "What were the beliefs, attitudes, and practices I used to hold dear and live out that I can no longer uphold in good conscience since the 'Christ-event'?" The extent to which I can answer these questions with specifics rather than vagueries or even an "I don't know" is the degree to which I can say with some confidence that the 'Christ-event' has indeed been life-changing, rather than merely being something akin to a spiritual pay raise.

This assessment is not something to be asked and answered once, and then scratched off the list. It is something to be examined constantly, precisely because the consumerism that surrounds us and inevitably affects us is neither neutral nor passive. It doesn't take a day off. Yet, I fear that Western Christianity, both evangelical and liberal, has, in its desire to make Christianity palatable to culture, adopted consumerism and commodification in ways that are critically unstable and are unlikely to survive long-term. Such a practice may have worked in a society where people were doing well and had the luxury of consuming at will, or at least operated with that mentality. But our current economic crisis is already stripping the luster off of this way of life, so that people are beginning to rediscover that clothes, cars, money, shopping, and keeping up with the Joneses isn't life-changing (or even all that life-enhancing). This crisis will, at least temporarily, provoke folks to return to more basic themes of what makes a life truly meaningful, and does my life count for anything. These are the kinds of questions Christians want people to be asking, and these are the people the church needs to be reaching. But it won't be able to do it by offering a life-enhancing consumerist Jesus rather than the life-changing God-Man Jesus.

Government Corruption

2008-12-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

As we have once again learned in recent years, Illinois, New Jersey and Louisiana tend to run neck and neck in winning the prize for Most Corrupt State Politics. At the moment, Illinois has taken a small lead over the two states. But obviously, political corruption is not confined to these states, or to state government. My own perception is that we truly have an epidemic of corruption, where 'public service' has been redefined as 'self-service'. This new definition has become increasingly mainstream. Nobody is shocked by political scandal anymore, because if it's not the norm in actual practice, it is the norm in public perception.

Total depravity doesn't break along gender or economic lines, and it doesn't break along political lines either. A 'culture of corruption' based in large measure on cynicism is part and parcel of a cynical culture that's in decline. One cannot promise to 'clean up corruption' without also promising to clean up the society that breeds corruption and looks the other way because "that's just the way things are". Freedom without form is every bit as deadly as form without freedom. To attempt to live without limits in a world filled with limits, many of them good, is to give corruption the exact footing it needs to prosper.

Human laws, as necessary as they are, are not the answer. Since the passage of campaign finance reform, which was ostensibly an attempt to clean up government, political corruption of every sort only seems to have increased. Gun laws don't always prevent the wrong people from getting guns. Traffic laws certainly don't stop people from driving drunk or driving dangerously. And certainly in the mainline, folks can hardly argue that church laws have unified the faithful under some utopian polity, or in the case of the church at large, have prevented episodes of the systematic abuse of children. While human laws certainly take the human heart into account, they will never cure the heart's core disease that necessitates the need for laws. Only Christ can do that.

Corruption is allowed to prosper when the only real remedy for corruption is marginalized or discounted. As America continues its drift away from Christ and into post-Christian entropy, we may find that our scandalous times of today will look tame by what's coming.

A Rotary Club Prayer

2008-11-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

Such is the term I often use to describe ultra-generic prayers that are deliberately non-specific when it comes to whom the prayer is addressed, and what the content of the prayer is. Don't get me wrong, such prayers, while inadequate, are not necessarily out of order in more secular gatherings. While I might hope for something more theologically robust, I'm not sure I should expect or demand such a thing, given the setting.

But Rotary Club prayers become a real problem when they are uttered by professing Christians in a supposedly Christian setting. And when a denomination puts out a prayer on its website that is so watered down that it could have been written and/or uttered even by a borderline agnostic, something's wrong with that picture. I give you the Thanksgiving prayer for 2008, as developed by the PCUSA.

In this prayer, God is mentioned only once, as 'Provider God'. Jesus is not mentioned a single time, either as an addressee, or as a topic of content. In a prayer that purports to give thanks, the PCUSA prayer utterly fails to mention the single-most thing all Christians should be most thankful for - the Incarnation, death, resurrection, and certain return of their Savior. Instead, the PCUSA prayer thanks God for earthly things like friends, family, and church unity (the last item being a depressing joke, given the severe in-fighting that has plagued the PCUSA for decades now). Now again, don't get me wrong. We should indeed give thanks to God for such horizontal blessings, and many others that the PCUSA prayer didn't mention. But are horizontal earthly blessings really the only thing we should be thankful for as Christians? Does a prayer of thanksgiving that doesn't mention or even allude to Jesus in any way still qualify as uniquely Christian in content and even address? Without Jesus, through which all things hold together (Col 1) and work together for good for his own (Rom 8), why should we give thanks at all? Doesn't being thankful for horizontal blessings presuppose and mandate thankfulness of vertical blessings too if one is a follower of Christ? Apparently not, according to the PCUSA.

I will give the PCUSA the benefit of the doubt and conclude that their omission of Christ as the principal and necessary object of the Christian's thanks is just a very poor yet towering oversight, rather than a calculated theological omission. I'm not sure they deserve such a benefit of the doubt, but I will extend it anyway. But it is one more unpleasant reminder of how easily we can all develop tin ears and massive blindspots that severly hamper our eyes and ears to be focused on Christ at all times, and especially when it comes to gratitude for blessings received. When a denomination that is outwardly Christian can't muster a distinctly Christian prayer on its own website, the reasons why it failed to do so start not to matter. I'm not against the Rotary Club, but the church is not the Rotary Club and shouldn't be auditioning for the role.

My Unsolicited Advice for President Obama

2008-11-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

President-Elect Obama,

I congratulate you on this historic triumph. Your election to the highest office in the land has already been marked as an indelible moment in time, and rightly so. While America's original sin of slavery and racism has not been totally defeated by the vote yesterday, your election does indeed represent a kind of social progress that may enable the entire country to dialogue more constructively on matters that touch on race. This alone carries with it great potential for lasting progress.

I did not vote for you. I generally reject most traditional tenets of political (and theological) liberalism. As I examined your record, I saw too little hard evidence of the kind of post-partisanship your campaign has promised the country. I also saw too much of the old style of politics that your campaign claimed to move beyond. As such, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of celebrating your historic achievement while having to soberly distance myself from the euphoria it has spawned.

Nonetheless, as an American, as a conservative, and most of all as a Christian, I can promise you certain things. First, I pray that you will be a successful president. I would like nothing more than to be able to vote for you 4 years from now as a result of your first-term performance. Second, I promise to give you a sincere chance to fulfill the promises you've made to us, and not automatically question your sincerity or your motives when I disagree with you. Third, like every president before you, I pray for your safety and for your family's safety.

In exchange for these promises, allow me to offer you some advice. The biggest mistake that all recent presidents have made to varying degrees is that they forgot their election night victory speech the day after Inauguration Day. Every president of recent times has pledged to bring the country together, to cut down on the partisanship, to work with the other side to do the people's business, and be a president for all Americans. You hit on similar themes in your victory speech last night. But one reason why the country has grown increasingly polarized and bitter is that many people, rightly or wrongly, feel that their president has no real interest in seriously listening to them. For over 20 years now (and perhaps longer), supporters of the candidate who lost the election have not felt like their voices have been represented or considered when major policy proposals and directions are decided. It is much easier to feel animous toward someone whom you don't feel is taking you seriously enough to sincerely listen to your concerns. Recent presidents have learned the hard way that this creates enemies en masse, and it's not pleasant for them or good for the country. Don't make the mistake of shutting out the nearly 60 million people who cared enough to go to the polls and not vote for you.

We have all seen what the rancor of the Clinton and Bush years have done to the fabric of the country and the effectiveness of government to do the nation's business. Simply saying that we are a United States doesn't make it so, and it will not be so if the current tendency of presidents to resist constructive healing action despite their pledges to govern otherwise continues. The biggest threat facing the nation is not from external enemies, but internal strife and suspicion of each other. While the wound of slavery and racism has been alleviated somewhat by your victory, the more recent wound of ideological bitterness and the harmful wackiness that routinely results from it is still very much with us. You have your work cut out for you in trying to improve this threat. Presidents of both parties that have come before you have failed to make things better, and have actually made things worse. The best way to begin to reverse this trend is to make a sustained effort, both public and private, to not just listen to the other side, but make allowance for their views when they do not fundamentally compromise yours.

It's not your job to bring people together who don't want to come together. The Bush years are a depressing testament to this. But at some point, the cycle has to stop, and a truly new direction needs to be undertaken. And while I obviously have some doubts about your ability to do this after examining your record, I will give you the benefit of the doubt now. Not everyone who voted against you will, anymore than the legions that voted against Bush in 2000 or 2004 were ever really prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt either. But my prayer is that enough people will, and that this willingness will be met with a similar willingness by you to seriously engage them. If you do this, your presidency will be successful not just because of its historic significance, but because it will have represented a turning away from the precipice of factionalism to begin a renewed struggle for a truly common national purpose that might heal what's been painfully broken in recent decades. Learn from the mistakes of your predecessors.

I wish you well.

Human Kings

2008-11-04T05:57:00.000-08:00

On this Election Day in America, it is wise to remember that human kings, while appointed and used by God for his ends, do not save. To put the kind of hope in them that should be reserved only for God is one of the oldest and most persistent sins in Scripture.

One immediately thinks of the people's desire to have Saul rule over them. While the need for a king and the establishment of the monarchy was always part of the plan of God (see Deut 17), the people's selection of Saul in defiance of the warnings of God (1S 8) was an act of disobedience that bore bad fruit. But there are other examples as well. When Pekah of Israel chose to ally himself with King Rezin of Aram to attack Judah (Is. 7), believing that such an alliance was more advantageous than being allied with God the true King, God emphatically predicted and carried out their destruction and exile. And of course, when the people, looking for a nationalistic king to end Roman dominance over Palestine, tried to make Jesus this kind of king (Jn 6), Jesus literally headed for the hills because it was clear that the people didn't understand the kind of king he really was and the kind of kingdom he was ushering in.

Christians are not forbidden from being politically active and being engaged in matters of state. But there is always a danger that such freedom can be abused (or misdirected). Christians are often tempted to become consumed by matters of secular politics and sometimes wrap their faith in political issues, political parties, or particular politicians. Their passion for politics can exceed their passion for Christ, because they wrongly think the two are not only entirely inseparable, but are on an essentially equal plane. Too few politically active Christians (either liberal or conservative) seem to take the time to ask whether their Christianity is framing their politics, or whether their politics is framing their Christianity. Most probably know that the former is the right answer for a Christian. But in my experience, most are really operating in the latter. Too many conservative Christians were too loyal to George W Bush because they felt he was 'one of them'. Too many liberal Christians today are entirely too ga-ga over Barack Obama because they believe he epitomizes their over-realized eschatology of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth primarily through human means. It's one thing for secular press people to feel something akin to a religious experience when they're present at an Obamamania rally and immediately go into worship mode along with everyone else there. It's another thing for Christians to do this, because they really oughta know better.

In both cases, the error of placing too much faith and bestowing too much loyalty on human kings, and the consequences it has wrought, continue to plague us. And btw, this phenomenon all on its own should puncture the balloon of over-realized eschatology, since it's clear we haven't advanced very much when we so effortlessly repeat the same mistakes over and over again. As Paul's letters to Corinth aptly demonstrate, Christians who think they've arrived when in fact they're not even close to arriving can be a pretty dangerous bunch. Paul's attempts to cure the Corinthians of their over-realized eschatology should be required reading for every Christian who's preferred candidate has just won the presidency. Conservatives should have read it in 2000 and 2004, and liberals will need to read and reread it now. Conversely, Paul's letter to the Galatians should be required reading for every Christian who's preferred candidate lost an election. Here, Paul's attempts to cure the Galatian church of its under-realized eschatology can be helpful in maintaining perspective in the face of disappointment.

Christians of all stripes need to reremember who their true King is and put their hope and loyalty in him, and not flawed politicians of flawed parties who's political platforms contain policy positions that run counter to a Christian worldview. If we refuse to get our loyalties straight, not only will we be disappointed in the end, we will also delay rather than speed up the Kingdom of God coming in full power in our midst (2P 3.12).

The Cost of Christianity

2008-10-28T12:47:00.000-07:00

In most church circles, the notion that America is now 'post-Christian' has become rote. Churches and denominations of all stripes have spent well over a decade contemplating this sea change and, with varying degrees of panic, have tried to adjust themselves to be effective in this new environment. Some of this is legitimate, some of it isn't. And while a great deal of ink (and sweat) have been spilled over the here and now of this phenomenon, I have found that most of this effort lacks the kind of longer view that puts immediate circumstances into some context.

Too many folks who are caught up in analyzing this phenomenon and trying to function in it have, in my view, actually minimized the challenge before us. It would be nice if all we had to worry about was the kind of preaching styles, church decor/architecture, worship music, and aesthetic moods that will work as enticing carrots in our present situation. It wouldn't even be so bad if the extent of our problems were taking a hard look at our philosophy of ministry or swallowing hard and becoming technologically cutting edge to reach the next 'generation'. Oh if only the challenge could be met by things like this!

But no. I'm afraid the challenge is much greater. While all of the above things are legitimate to discuss and contemplate, we have to realize that such conversations are the kinds of conversations we have the luxury of having in our present environment. There seems to be an assumption that the present environment has some staying power, so that addressing these kinds of issues will result in some kind of enduring success. Therein lies the problem.

We may be living in an increasingly post-Christian America. But today, one can still be a comfortable Christian where the faith we subscribe to doesn't really cost us that much. America may be post-Christian, but as a whole, it is not yet anti-Christian, at least not expressively or legally. Now as some of my previous posts make clear, this is not universally true. Evangelicals in particular routinely pay a price in the Academy if they insist on holding firm to a number of traditional beliefs. And anyone who spends any amount of time perusing the 'On Faith' community at washingtonpost.com will quickly get a healthy dose of anti-Christian fervor. So there are exceptions to the general rule, and such exceptions should not be minimized, because they are precursors of what's coming.

The challenge facing the church in post-Christian America is still very much at the minor league level right now. But it seems to me that America is slowly moving in the direction of not just being post-Christian, but of exhibiting hostility toward Christians and Christianity. And if this is right, we have much more to worry about than debating whether it's okay to have sermon (excuse me, 'message') time in a coffee house or bookstore setting. Instead, if the church is truly forward-looking and forward-thinking, it needs to be asking much tougher and more basic questions right now, rather than ducking them with euphemistic slogans that avoid the real issues facing us. Questions such as:

1) How many people in my church would fall away from the church and perhaps the faith altogether if society started making them pay a painful price for their religious affiliation?

2) If people in our church were forced to choose between their religious affiliation and being respected pillars in their community and jobsite and the comfortable perks that come with it, which would they choose?

3) Where do the ultimate loyalties of our people lie, and how tested is that loyalty?

Just to be clear, I'm not an 'end times nut', and I don't believe America is literally going to hell. This post is not rooted in any political overtones. But I do think America, for a variety of reasons, has begun exhibiting Christianity fatigue and is very much in the mood to move on, not unlike Europe in the wake of the medieval religious wars that plagued the continent. And if this diagnosis turns out to be fairly correct in 50 years, church leaders need to be thinking now about the kind of faith that will weather the type of storms that seriously challenge a person's faith and ultimate loyalties.

I would submit that only a vibrant, robust, and firm belief in the person of Christ and his holy salvific work will engender the kind of loyalty that will stare down far more potent opposition than anything we're grappling with today. Churches and denominations that are currently fudging on things like the authority of Scripture, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, his demands for holy living, and his exclusivity in salvation need to seriously reckon with whether this kind of lineup is going to command lasting loyalty that will withstand not just indifference, but hostility. Are people really going to pay much of a price to stay loyal to a Christianity that doesn't teach that Christ alone saves, or that Scripture is uniquely inspired, or that our good works matter only because God sovereignly rules and are in accord with his (not ours) ideas of holiness and righteousness? In other words, how exactly does a Christianity without doctrinal, ethical, or practical boundaries and limits distinguish itself enough from a culture that likewise wants no boundaries that folks will be willing to pay a price to proclaim themselves as Christians?

Sooner or later, most loyalties are tested. And when they are, we discover what our deepest commitments really are. And if we are not cultivating a rigorous Kingdom Christianity of both radical grace and radical righteousness that engenders deep and abiding love and submissive accountability to our King, there is serious cause to wonder whether a Christianity that waters down both really deserves much loyalty from anyone. I suppose that one way to get around all this is to hope that America never reaches the point where it starts exacting a painful price from those who choose to stay loyal to Christ. And part of me hopes for the same thing. After all, I would rather my Christianity not cost me the kinds of worldly things I enjoy. But after some contemplation, I have reached the tentative conclusion that this kind of a hope might well be a false hope, and is something to be believed at one's own risk. The stakes are much higher for church leaders who have whole flocks to think about. Such leaders, more than the rest of us, have to squarely face the loyalty test too. Are they going to risk ticking people off in their pews and presbyteries and start preaching and practicing a truly prophetic Christianity that resembles the church-militant of Matthew 16 and openly and thoroughly repent for failing to do so before now? Or will they continue to avoid paying a price and continue preaching a feather-on-the-wind Christianity because they think that will give them a hearing in the supposedly tolerant and open-minded culture, all the while watching their churches die because the culture has better things to do?

Hospitality and Angels

2008-10-25T10:03:00.001-07:00

It's quite simple, really. One cannot embrace or practice authentic Christian hospitality if one has heartburn about angels. The Genesis 18 account of the visitation of Abraham by three angelic strangers became the paradigmatic hospitality ethic in Jewish culture, and this ethic is upheld and reinforced by Hebrews 13.2 which draws from this very episode. Hospitality in the Bible is like everything else in the Bible, in that it is a topic that assumes the existence of the supernatural and its involvement in the natural world and its creatures.

For evangelicals who take their Bible seriously, this linking of hospitality to the angelic realm does not present a problem. While we must be careful to distinguish between the biblical presentation of angels vs. many contemporary New Ageish views of the angelic, Scripture is absolutely clear about their existence and periodic visitations. Again, for evangelicals, this shouldn't present a problem.

But for those who feel compelled to desupernaturalize the Bible and the Christian faith more generally, the linking of hospitality to the supernatural creates a problem. This problem is especially relevant given that 'hospitality' has become something of a flavor of the month notion in more liberal circles of the church. But the problem is that at least in the 20th century, it was also the more liberal circles of the church who were most inclined to downplay or explain away the supernaturalism of Scripture to try and make the faith more palatable to scientistic worldviews. My point is that these two strains, embracing 'hospitality' while shunning the supernatural, are altogether incompatible if one is aiming for Christian hospitality. If the angelic and supernatural realm are marginalized, then by definition, one cannot be committed to Christian hospitality that bears any resemblance to how the hospitality theme is presented cover to cover in Scripture. Those who claim to embrace 'hospitality' must also embrace the supernatural with equal fervor, lest they culturalize both.

I suppose this may sound somewhat absolutist, and I suppose that because I'm an evangelical, such a position can be written off by non-evangelicals by considering the source. But the problem is that even Karl Barth recognized this basic irresolvable dynamic in his Church Dogmatics. After spending some time assessing recent (for him) trends in theological liberalism regarding angels, Barth says this:

The consensus of all these modern dogmaticians, both among themselves and with their master Schleiermacher, is overwhelming...These modern thinkers are not prepared to take angels seriously. It does not give them the slightest joy to think of them. They are plainly rather peevish and impatient at having to handle the subject. And if we are told in Hebrews 13.2 not to be neglectful of hospitality, since some have entertained angels unawares, these theologians are almost anxiously concerned to refuse the angels a lodging in their dogmatics, and think that...they should warn others against extending hospitality to them. III.3.415

Hospitality and the supernatural - you can't have one without the other.

I'm Back

2008-10-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

I know that in the blogosphere, 2 months offline is like 2,000 years of hibernation, in that people lose interest and move on to other (and better) things to read. But if anyone is still checking in, I want you to know that I'm back.

I've been out of commission for these past couple months because my wife and I have been overseas completing our adoption of a little girl. We were in Pavlodar Kazakhstan and adopted our first child, Katelynn Virginia Foster. We returned to the States this past Friday and are still trying to get oriented (Pavlodar is 10 hours ahead of where we live in America). We are very happy new parents who are learning the back and forth of our new normal.

I hope to begin writing again soon. Despite the much greater personal demands on my time, I still think reading and writing will provide the needed stimulation and respite that will keep the heart pumping. So thanks for persevering with us. It's good to be back.

Marginalizing the Perspective of Faith

2008-08-25T02:29:00.000-07:00

With Bill Maher's latest infant tantrum on religion ready to hit theatres on the heels of the published Hitchens and Dawkins rants of the last few years, it is worth taking some time to interact with this perspective, albeit by engaging the views of folks more intelligent than Maher and company.

The view that religionists and religion hold far too much sway in the public square is recent, but not new. The acrimony and disdain expressed by the likes of Maher and Hitchens is only an amped-up version of a more embedded point of view that has negatively impacted evangelicals in particular for decades. One manifestation of this viewpoint concerns the reception of a faith-based perspective in academic research and teaching.

In a recent article on SBL's website, Michael Fox of the University of Wisconsin argues that faith-based perspectives are illegitimate when it comes to academic scholarship - even biblical and theological scholarship. He suggests that "faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship, whether the object of study is the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or Homer. Faith-based study is a different realm of intellectual activity that can dip into Bible scholarship for its own purposes, but cannot contribute to it." Fox believes that a faith-based perspective, by definition, cannot contribute anything positive to academic research and cannot be considered 'scholarship' in any way. For Fox, "the best thing for Bible appreciation is [a] secular, academic, religiously-neutral hermeneutic." In order for biblical scholarship to be 'scholarship', one must be secular and bring no religious persuasion to bear on his/her work. This position mirrors the viewpoint of Jacque Berlinerblau, who teaches at Georgetown and has his own prominent blog at washingtonpost.com. It is not difficult to see that such an orientation de facto marginalizes faith-based perspectives and seeks to drive them out of the academy's work. This is a sanitized and cultured version of Maher and Hitchens.

But importantly, Fox does not follow the mouth-foamers in discrediting faith perspectives as altogether illegitimate. Fox is clear that "faith-based study of the Bible certainly has its place—in synagogues, churches, and religious schools, where the Bible (and whatever other religious material one gives allegiance to) serves as a normative basis of moral inspiration or spiritual guidance." Fox declares that faith-based study is profitable within very tightly confined (and controlled) spheres. But Fox reiterates that while "this kind of study is certainly important...it is not scholarship." Put simply, Fox is telling religionists to keep their religion in church and don't bring it into the academy, because it is illegitimate to do so.

This article is most revealing and should serve as a painful reminder that liberal intolerance is as entrenched as ever in certain quarters. Fox's article is breathtaking in its naivete on a whole host of levels that it is frankly a bit depressing that someone like this sits on a comfy perch at a respected state university.

First, it is amusing that folks like Fox who proclaim to be interested in moving the academic ball forward by censoring faith-based perspectives out of academic existence are themselves irretrievably stuck in an 18th century Kantian dialectical thought framework. Fox's view that faith has a place only in a very restricted realm that needs to be walled off from everything else is classic Kantian noumenal/phenomenal dialectic. For Kant, faith and reason were not only opposed to each other, they had to be in order for each to be real. Fox's view of the relationship between faith and scholarship thoroughly reflects this mode of thought. But while Kant felt it necessary to protect faith from reason because he thought reason would destroy faith if allowed, Fox apparently believes that 'scholarship' needs to be protected from faith in order for true scholarship to survive. Such a dialectical view on the relationship between faith and reason is horribly outdated and represents a step or three backwards rather than anything forward-looking.

Second, Fox's advocacy of a secular religiously-neutral hermeneutic is incredibly naive, not to mention arrogant. If Fox really believes there is such a thing as a religiously-neutral hermeneutic, he should also start believing in the Easter Bunny, since both are equally mythical. Nobody approaches the biblical text as a neutral blank slate. Again, to argue for such a thing is to step backward in time even further than Kant to embrace Locke. If Fox believes that 'scholarship' today can only be recovered by resurrecting Enlightenment dictates, he should just say so. The problem, of course, is that such a position might be 'secular', but it is hardly 'religiously neutral'. Fox is first in line to fail his own litmus test, and in doing so, demonstrates that the idea of a religiously-neutral hermeneutic is nothing more than a hollow fiction. The fact that such a fiction is the only valid approach to 'scholarship' doesn't inspire confidence that such 'scholarship' will ever stumble onto anything true or real. It's the equivalent of basing the study of rabbits on Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Lastly, why exactly does Fox believe that a religiously-neutral hermeneutic is so absolutely correct that all other perspectives need to be muzzled and kicked out of the academy? On what basis does Fox reach such a position, and what evidence or argumentation does he marshal to persuade others of the correctness of this view? Answer - none. Fox wimps out on the question by employing an ad hominem in dismissing respect for multiple perspectives in scholarship as 'sophistry', but failing to tell us why. Basically, what Fox is trying to do in this article is completely discount faith-based perspectives in the academy without telling us why they should be discounted, and advocating a singular absolutist and fictional perspective without telling us why such a perspective should gain a monopoly over academic pursuits. This is the definition not only of arrogance and hubris, but also fear. In being unwilling to offer a serious argument for marginalizing all other perspectives but his, one wonders if being unwilling is rooted in being incapable.

Fox is pulling a classic Nietzchean power-play at the expense of people of faith. The fact that he and Berlinerblau hold prominent posts at prominent universities is sufficient to demonstrate that evangelicals continue to overcome a stacked deck in pursuing academic truth. The fact that such an article was published online by the preeminent biblical academic society in the Western world is downright bewildering. There's no way that SBL would publish a similarly dim article by an evangelical, and rightly so. This should make us all question why Fox was given a green light, and what that says about SBL.

Signing Off for a While

2008-08-08T19:03:00.001-07:00

I will be out of the country for a while starting tomorrow. While it's possible that I may be able to blog while overseas, there's a good chance I won't. Hope to be back around the end of October. Take care.

The Dark Knight - A Review

2008-08-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

At the outset, let me say that The Dark Knight (DK) is the best movie I’ve seen in years. It goes beyond the perfunctory displays of cartoonish violence, loud explosions and human indestructibility that characterize the big-budget summer movie phenomenon. DK confronts its audience with vexing issues and difficult questions without offering easy escape answers. Given its titanic success at the box office, Christians should realize that DK has not only conjured the imagination of the public, it reflects it. It used to be that philosophers would ask the questions that people were asking, and that theologians would provide the answers to those questions. No more. Today, our entertainment culture is asking the questions on people’s minds. Christians who want to understand the culture around them would be wise to see DK. DK, despite its almost oppressive darkness, offers us a fabulous opportunity to dialogue with our neighbors, coworkers, and schoolmates – most of whom will go see this movie and ponder it.

Some believe DK is a morality play. Others have suggested that the Batman character is something of a Christ-figure. Still others see current political overtones in the movie. All of these observations (and more) may be legitimate, which further amplifies the multi-layered richness of the film. DK bluntly communicates a worldview in which heroes are not as heroic as we think, and that villains are usually not crazy even when their actions are beyond the pale. The film relentlessly grapples with the question of whether the societal rules and limits that define ‘good’ behavior are adequate (or even ‘good’) when confronted with an adversary or a situation where the rules don’t apply. And repeatedly, the film shows two ‘good’ characters (Batman and the ‘White Knight’ District Attorney) becoming increasingly flawed and breaking society’s acceptable code of conduct in the pursuit of very imperfect justice. The Joker, who fancies himself an agent of anarchy, largely succeeds in getting ‘good’ people to turn their backs on the very characteristics that made them good just by scaring them with seeming randomness rather than predictability. But importantly, he doesn’t completely succeed in this.

A few observations:

1) The Joker is a mesmerizing character. His main aim appears to be to break down the illusion of ‘good’. The traditional institutions of ‘good’ in this film – the police, the legal system, Batman himself, are all shown to be corrupted to varying degrees, and willing to sacrifice their principles when necessary. Even Lucius Fox, the CEO of Bruce Wayne’s company played by Morgan Freeman, succumbs to utilizing a surveillance tool that he believes is so wrong that he’s willing to resign from the company simply because the tool exists. But this severe moral objection doesn’t stop him from using it. This kind of normalcy is not ‘good’, and the Joker correctly observes that in the end, ‘good’ is an illusion if this is how we’re defining it. The Joker believes that once this illusion is broken down, people will inevitably join him and turn to anarchy.

2) The notion of order and chaos is thoughtfully explored in the film. The Joker wants to overthrow the corrupt established order and introduce uncorrupted anarchy. But The Joker is not a true anarchist. The Joker is also corrupted, in that he is something-akin to The Father of Lies in this film. He protests that he simply acts and doesn’t plan. But that’s not true. His introduction of anarchy into Gotham is very deliberate, very calculated, and well-thought out – planned. The Joker wants to usher in mayhem, but a very ordered mayhem with a controller pulling the strings to orchestrate the mayhem not for mayhem’s sake, but to ‘send a message’. The fact that The Joker routinely incorporates moral overtones into his motives betrays that he is not an anarchist at all. The battle between Batman and The Joker is not a battle between order and chaos. It is a battle between two different visions of order and two competing understandings of morality. The fact that it is Batman that compromises his principles more than The Joker is a provocative statement by the film which forces the audience to ask which worldview is more pure and durable.

3) The notion of The Joker as The Father of Lies really resonated with me. The Joker offers multiple contradictory stories in explaining his scars. He routinely deceives Batman, the authorities, and even his own partners in crime throughout the film, often with deadly consequences. The Joker is masterful in taking a grain of truth, a grain of plausibility, and twisting/distorting it into a believable lie. All of this should sound very familiar to Christians, since it mirrors the Bible’s presentation of Satan. This dynamic is especially true when The Joker turns Gotham’s ‘White Knight’ District Attorney into ‘Harvey Two-Face’ who actually adopts a purer form of anarchy than The Joker in his all-out embrace of ‘chance’. Most compelling of all is the simple fact that The Joker is always ‘masked’ in the film. The notion that embracing anarchy is the most honest form of existence is betrayed frame by frame by the fact that this agent of anarchy won’t take off his mask while insisting that everyone else, especially Batman, take off theirs. It is The Joker’s ultimate lie, but like many of Satan’s lies, I wonder how many moviegoers will be perceptive enough to recognize it for the lie it is.

4) The issue of myth is a huge theme of the movie, which culminates at the end of the film with the attempted myth-building of both the White Knight and the Dark Knight. This is a huge issue, and one that Christians need to confront. In the movie, the notion that cops are good is shown to be a myth, because they are very corrupt. The notion that Batman is a pure and moral superhero is shown to be a myth, because Batman is not always ‘good’ in this movie. The theme culminates in the film’s treatment of ‘White Knight’ District Attorney Harvey Dent. Batman/Bruce Wayne is desperate to have Dent take over the mantle of moral crusader cleaning up Gotham, and willingly contributes to furthering Dent’s ‘White Knight’ mystique by holding a lavish fundraiser on his behalf. But after tragedy strikes, The Joker succeeds in turning the White Knight into a two-faced monster. Now, instead of taking on corruption by using the ‘good’ mechanisms of law enforcement and the legal system, Dent goes underground and resorts to vigilante justice, where he makes decisions about whether people live or die on the amoral basis of an ‘unbiased, unprejudiced’, uncorrupted coin toss. After Dent is killed, Batman and Commissioner Gordon (the one honest cop in Gotham) agree that the public can never know about Harvey Two-Face, because to know that the city’s White Knight has done horrific things would be too much for the city to overcome. Gordon proceeds to posthumously further the White Knight myth for the benefit of a scared public that needs to believe in something good, and ‘to have their faith rewarded’. As Christians, we must be extremely careful in distinguishing between myth and truth. Our faith isn’t based on myth, but on revealed truth. Contrary to the faith of Gotham, our faith is not misplaced. But we need to realize that our culture largely thinks we are like the people of Gotham, in that we too have placed our faith in myths. In our discussions with other people about DK, we need to be intentional in making this distinction.

5) In the end, The Joker does not succeed in bringing anarchy to the city. He does not succeed in bringing the city down to his level. The Joker’s last great ‘social experiment’ results in both ‘good’ people and ‘bad’ people choosing not to destroy themselves, with the ‘bad’ people being the first to make that decision. It is noteworthy that the intimidating leader of the ‘bad’ people is briefly shown to be a vulnerable man of prayer. It is here that DK gives us a glimpse of hope. It can be argued that DK is telling us that the best and most effective way to overcome evil is not by adopting evil’s methods and trying to use them for good, but by rejecting those methods completely and finding the true source of ‘good’ – God. In contrast, in the film, Batman gradually begins to use ‘evil’ methods in trying to stop The Joker. He is attempting to use these methods sparingly and in a measured way, presumably because he hopes that this will fundamentally keep him dissimilar from The Joker. The film seems to argue that such an approach is perilous and unlikely to succeed. A prevailing undercurrent of the movie is the belief that Batman’s efforts to clean up the city have resulted in the creation of the ultra-violent Joker. The Joker himself tells Batman, “You complete me.” The audience is left to wrestle with whether this is true, and if it is, what it means for us when struggling with contemporary questions of what kind of methods are acceptable in combating evil, and when are they acceptable. The movie’s seeming endorsement of a true view of ‘good’ that rejects violent methods in favor of meek ones is strongly biblical. It also serves as a healthy warning for those of us who embrace the Reformed notion of engaging the culture in order to transform the culture. DK may or may not be in sync with this idea, but regardless, we should always remember that our engagement with culture cannot be an embrace of culture without becoming corrupted by the culture. In our engagement with culture, we have to be very sure of our footing and foundation. Engaging the culture without this footing will indeed result in transformation. But it will not be the culture that is transformed, but us, and not in a good way. DK serves as a good reality check here.

6) But while DK gives us this glimpse of hope, it gives us no guarantees that such hope will triumph in the end. After being confronted with such a stark display of the ability of humanity to be ‘good’, The Joker refuses to admit defeat. He suggests to Batman that such a display is just another example of human fickleness, and that such courage is unlikely to repeat itself once The Joker truly demoralizes their spirits. The Joker is clearly intent on seeing this all the way through, and is not deterred by one noble event in a sea of corruption and violence. Again, the film strongly suggests a biblical outlook here. ‘Good’ is not defined just by individual acts of virtue, but by perseverance in the face of sustained attack. Like Satan, The Joker isn’t going to give up easily, and intends to wreak havoc on Gotham for as long as it takes. This is a haunting vision of the very real spiritual battle that we as Christians are up against. Anyone who wants a graphic picture of the reality of spiritual warfare should see DK. It will do you good to be confronted with it in order to be reminded of how terrible and relentless our adversary is. The Joker and Satan are the same, in that both ‘want to watch the world burn’. But unlike DK, we know who comes out ahead in the end. We know the victory is ours, because Christ has already won. This is the hope that we need to sing to the world, because it is a hope that people are looking for. DK correctly deduces that while the public wants to believe in ‘good’ and wants to have hope, they’re unsure if such hope is well founded and whether it can be placed in anything real. The movie is very prophetic in accurately surmising the present mood of our culture. It is here that Christians can persuasively bring a biblical perspective to the issue.

Sorry for the long post.

The UU Shooting

2008-07-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

A shooting at a liberal church by a gunman who hates liberals and gays. Now that's a headline, and it's hardly surprising that the press suddenly got interested in attacks on houses of worship today.

Hate is not always a bad thing, contrary to popular opinion. I, for example, hate that something like this happened. My hope is that something like this never happens again, though given the depth of human sin, I think it's a false hope.

I have no idea of the background of the gunman. I don't know if he claims to be a Christian or not. I do know that someone who does something like this, regardless of what they claim, is not obedient to Christ in doing such a thing.

Many people would likely consider me to be a 'conservative Christian'. And it is for this reason that I feel compelled to make myself clear - this shooting is not merely a tragedy, but an act of egregious sin. It should serve as a reminder to my theologically conservative brethren that no amount of disagreement with liberal theology, no matter how legitimate, warrants something like this. It is a reminder that conservative preachers and religious leaders need to be careful not only in what they say, but in what they stress. An overemphasis on homosexuality in a church's vision and preaching is unhealthy, imbalanced, and potentially dangerous. The evangelical church should welcome homosexuals and not treat them as outcasts. To offer welcome does not mean we compromise clear biblical teachings on the subject of homosexuality or accommodate our faith to a culture that wants no boundaries. But it does mean that we incorporate our theology of welcome into the real life of the church. The overwhelming majority of faithful Christians and their preachers understand this, but that's not what will be emphasized in the press coverage or the blogosphere.

This shooting highlights the depths of human sin. It is awful and should be unilaterally condemned. And conservative Christians who hold to a robust view of sin and 'hate' sin for the evil that it is should be condemning this shooting the loudest.

Cafferty Follow-up

2008-07-22T06:41:00.000-07:00

I debated whether to blog on this, because I don't want it to seem like I'm obsessed with dissecting Cafferty and bringing him down to size. Frankly, I don't think he's important enough to warrant such a watchdog, and I know I'm not important enough to be said watchdog. But there was a fascinating exchange on CNN yesterday involving Cafferty that's worth comment.

Wolf Blitzer was talking to Cafferty and two other commentators about the NY Times decision not to publish a McCain opinion piece on Iraq. My interest here is not the bias of the NY Times in asking McCain to answer a loaded question on Iraq that was filled with liberal presuppositions as a condition for publication. What matters here is that the CNN conversation eventually morphed beyond the imbalance of the NY Times and into the realm of more generalized imbalance of the political media coverage overall. It is here that Cafferty did something very interesting.

Blitzer asked Cafferty whether Obama has gotten more and better media coverage than McCain. Now usually, when a press person fields a question of whether the press has been imbalanced in its coverage and has favored one candidate/party/viewpoint over another, the standard knee-jerk reflex is to deny that any such imbalance exists. This is part of why discussions on media bias tend not to get very far, because there is a basic debate about whether the bias in fact exists at all (by saying that this debate exists, I am not suggesting that the debate itself is legitimate - it's not). But Cafferty strayed from this basic talking point in responding to Blitzer.

Instead of denying that Obama has gotten more and better coverage, Cafferty DEFENDED the imbalance, thereby tacitly acknowledging that the imbalance is in fact real and measurable. For those of us who have listened to countless denials of media imbalance by media people who have a vested interest in foisting such delusions upon themselves and their audience, Cafferty's movement away from this was striking. For Cafferty, the issue of whether there has or has not been media imbalance in their coverage appears to be a settled question and no longer an issue for debate. No doubt, many (including me) would argue that Cafferty's admission of imbalance merely acknowledges the obvious. But the press isn't exactly known for such honesty in assessing its own performance. So even though Cafferty's tacit admission of imbalance is self-evident, it is nonetheless notable.

Cafferty went on to defend the media's imbalanced treatment of the candidates by arguing that in a variety of ways, Obama is fundamentally a 'better story' than McCain. In particular, Obama's 'charisma' was cited as one major characteristic that distinguishes him from McCain and makes him a 'better story'.

While Cafferty deserves to be commended in a limited way for breaking with the flat-earth mentality of his colleagues who continue to insist that the press is a balanced and objective lot, it needs to be pointed out that his efforts to defend the media's imbalance are very problematic. In tacitly acknowledging that Obama has gotten better coverage because he's the 'better story', Cafferty is justifying media imbalance with an imbalanced subjective (not objective) value judgment. Cafferty is justifying subjective coverage with subjective presuppositions without bothering to ask whether such subjective judgments are legitimate or universally shared. Put simply, it is not a stable and reliable standard upon which to erect or justify a cradle-to-grave approach to political news coverage. It's subjectivity heaped on subjectivity. When Cafferty cites Obama's 'charisma' as one reason to fawn over his every word and speech, Cafferty fails to ask the tough question of how much of Obama's 'charisma' is about Obama, versus how much of it has been created by a fawning press operating with the same kind of subjective predispositions that Cafferty himself is operating with.

In saying all this, I am not denying that Obama has significant appeal in the country. There is no question that many people are head-over-heels about him, and this can be seen in the record voter turnout during the primaries, as well as at his staged political rallies. The press's inability to contain itself in its own enthusiasm of Obama is, in a limited respect, a somewhat legitimate portrayal of the larger Obamamania phenomenon, though it's unfortunate that the press has so nakedly joined the bandwagon. But Cafferty's attempt to defend the media's imbalance and argue that such imbalance has journalistic legitimacy continues an unfortunate pattern of late. Readers of my blog will be reminded of my take on CNN's Barbara Starr arguing that bad news in Iraq is more newsworthy than good news in attempting to justify imbalanced coverage. The press, it seems, is beginning to change its spin from denial of imbalance, to defense of imbalance. By no longer disputing the reality of such imbalance, some members of the press have begun to take one small step towards honesty with themselves and the public. But by continuing to subjectively spin their performance in order to justify it, they continue to avoid asking themselves the tough questions that would challenge the status quo and begin to renew a measure of public confidence in the trustworthiness of the American press.

Cafferty on McCain

2008-07-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

Jack Cafferty is one of the dimmer political commentators on cable. His daily 'Cafferty File' segments are selective not only in the topics they cover, but also in the perspective that's used to frame those topics. That he's on the air at the same time the latest CNN self-delusional moniker 'No Bias, No Bull' is at the bottom of the screen to describe the network's political coverage is especially rich, since Cafferty personifies the opposite of both.

Yesterday, Cafferty went Terrible-2s even for him. In a speech yesterday, John McCain suggested that Barack Obama's Iraq strategy was premature because Obama hasn't yet had substantive talks with military commanders and diplomats in the field. McCain argued that developing a sound strategy requires engagement with those who will in a hands-on way carry out the strategy. He said that talking with the implementers of strategy needs to come before developing a hardened strategy in order for that strategy to be informed by the facts and realities on the ground.

This segment of McCain's speech was played by CNN, and then Wolf Blitzer cut to Cafferty. Cafferty then proceeded to go on a diatribe, proclaiming that McCain's position was absurd. Cafferty said that it is silly for McCain to suggest that nobody is allowed to have any opinions about Iraq unless they've first talked to Petraeus and Crocker. Sounds great right? Wrong.

First, it is hardly surprising that Cafferty said what he said. Cafferty himself has never visited Iraq or talked with anyone on the ground about what's really going on. Yet, he has plenty of opinions about the war. Of course he thinks it's ridiculous that nobody is allowed any opinions about Iraq unless they've talked to the folks on the ground, because he is one of those people (and it shows). Cafferty's diatribe was more about self-justification than anything else.

Second, Cafferty completely distorted what McCain said. McCain did not say people weren't entitled to opinions or ideas about Iraq if they've never set foot in Iraq. That's a blowhard distortion by Cafferty. What McCain did say is that someone who plans to be commander-in-chief might want to talk to those he is commanding before strongly committing to a strategy that may or may not reflect realities on the ground. This isn't about having or not having opinions about Iraq. It's about properly exercising one's duties as commander-in-chief - duties which are extremely weighty and consequential.

For either Cafferty or Obama to suggest that a president with a non-military background should unilaterally impose a military strategy without first consulting his military commanders is the exact kind of authoritarian top-down gung-ho policy that both of them never cease accusing the current president of employing to the detriment of the country. The irony is delicious; the wisdom is sorely lacking.

Talks on Prayer Now Available

2008-07-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

This past spring, the church I attend allowed me to lead a small group of around 15-20 people through a study of Richard Pratt's book, Pray With Your Eyes Open. This entailed me delivering about a 20 minute 'talk' each week that discussed the chapters in Pratt's book that were covered for each week.

The good folks at my church have now made the transcripts of those talks available on their website. I have created a link on the right side of this blog page called 'My Talks on Prayer' that will take those interested directly to the consolidated transcript.

A fair amount of what I discussed in the weekly talks merely summarized what Richard says in the book. But I did tailor the material somewhat, and I added a good bit of my own stuff.

Those interested in a good popular-level read on prayer should get Richard's book. It's neither the first nor the last word on prayer, and like many things, if one really wants to know what good prayer looks like, one should consult Scripture, since it is filled with the prayers of God's people. But Richard's book is a good supplement, and hopefully my talk transcripts will be of peripheral value as well. Enjoy.

Kurtz on Tony Snow

2008-07-14T09:07:00.001-07:00

I like Howard Kurtz of Washington Post and CNN fame, even when I disagree with him. Unlike many of his colleagues, he often explores in various ways the one great sacred cow of journalism that is not supposed to be messed with - bias in the press. Kurtz has courageously bucked media orthodoxy in proclaiming a number of obvious truths, such as the press being in love with Obama and not really trying to hide it that much, and the dangerous amalgamation at NBC of supposedly objective reporters with the left-wing mouth foamers of MSNBC. But Kurtz also takes on more conservative media such as Fox News and properly disects the spin out of Bill O'Reilly's No Spin schtick. In my view, Kurtz does not give press people a free pass, and that is refreshing considering the degree to which the press operates as if it is above and beyond the kind of accountability that they regularly (and unevenly) try to apply to the people they cover.

But in today's Post, Kurtz suggests that the recently deceased Tony Snow "went too far in challenging reporters' motives..." during his time as WH press secretary. I would respectfully disagree with Kurtz. If in saying this, Kurtz is referring to the now famous standoff between Snow and NBC's David Gregory, in which Snow accused Gregory of being a Democratic partisan and then later apologizing, fair enough. But because Kurtz's statement wasn't qualified by something like "sometimes" or "occasionally", it reads as if Kurtz thought Snow's practice of challenging the motives of the WH press corps was routinely excessive. I strongly disagree.

In treating as fair game the perspectives that WH reporters personally (and therefore professionally) operated with and brought into the WH briefing room, Snow was confronting reporters with a much needed reality check (that, naturally, didn't take). The idea that journalism of any kind is an unbiased, objective enterprise is the kind of fiction that is less plausible than a literal reading of most children's fairy tales. Such a view, I believe, is informed at root by a fundamentally and seriously erroneous understanding of the human condition. While few are bold enough to suggest that their personal perspectives are devoid of bias and presupposition, a traditional mainstay of mainline journalism is that such perspectives can be marginalized or put safely away in a locker when a journalist performs his job as a supposedly objective reporter. While journalism thought has modified this cardinal virtue somewhat to allow for the reality that personal perspectives inescapably creep into one's vocational approach, the view persists that such perspectives can still be marginalized to the point where they become immaterial in how a reporter does her job. Such naive objectivism is a fantasy that deserves and needs to be confronted and exposed for the fiction that it is. Tony Snow attempted to do just that.

As I have previously suggested on multiple occasions, the biases, presuppositions, and basic first-order principles that people operate with - what Polanyi calls 'tacit' or 'personal' knowledge rather than scientifically proven knowledge, inevitably shapes how one sees the world and one's place in the world. 'Personal knowledge' can't be walled off from life or turned on and off at the switch. Humanity simply doesn't work that way. This can't help but considerably influence our approach to life's pursuits, including our vocational pursuits. When it comes to journalism, such perspectives inevitably shape the kinds of questions a reporter does and doesn't ask, the kinds of stories they do or don't pursue, the kinds of issues they do or don't consider newsworthy, and whether the tenor of a story is positive or negative. In the case of the WH press corps, where it has been repeatedly documented that the pool of WH reporters votes Democratic by 9 to 1, it is simply ridiculous to think that such ideological groupthink isn't a factor in how the news out of the White House gets reported night after night. And while the journalism profession can continue to blame the decline in their perceived trustworthiness on other factors just like pastors in mainline denominations blame their declining membership on everything except their slip from theological orthodoxy, the reality is that the press's unwillingness to thoughtfully address the issue of bias is crippling their effectiveness.

Tony Snow was willing to take on this sacred cow. It is little surprise that press folks didn't like it much. Circling the wagons and being defensive is always a more natural reaction than serious reflection, especially when the criticism comes from an 'outsider' like a conservative thinker. But the longer the press continues to operate with a faulty understanding of humanity and defends their allegiance to it with knee-jerk defensiveness, the sooner their profession will be beyond redemption with the public.

Jesus is a Liberal(?), Part Deux

2008-07-08T15:12:00.001-07:00

From the previous blog entry, we see that Schweitzer cut through the crap and succinctly punctured theological liberalism's vaunted quest for the historical Jesus. Instead of arriving at some objective historical Jesus, scholar after scholar was arriving at a mythical Jesus that placated their own perspectives. If one was a liberal, he would find a liberal Jesus. If one was conservative, one would find a conservative Jesus. If one was a feminist, she would find a feminist Jesus. Marxists found a Marxist Jesus. Hippies found a hippy Jesus. Capitalists found a capitalist Jesus. And on and on it went, and still goes today. Today's liberationists find a liberation Jesus. Ardent flag-waving patriots find a pro-American Jesus. Nothing has changed, and it's depressing that so many haven't learned a thing in the 100 years since Schweitzer. Such is the result when a lack of intellectual curiosity is joined by hubris.

So is 'Jesus a liberal'? Hopefully we've learned the folly of such proclamations. However, while trying to translate Jesus into a contemporary socio-political philosophy is not facile, it's not a fruitless exercise either if the Bible is allowed to stand as truthful.

Part of the problem in all this is arriving at accurate definitions of terms like 'liberal'. If, for example, we define 'liberal' as a philosophy that preaches freedom without form, and liberty without law, then there's no way Jesus is a liberal. Jesus fulfilled the law rather than abolished it (Mt 5.17). And while Jesus has provided freedom, he has done so within the specific form of being adopted as sons into the family of God through faith (Jn 8).

If instead we define 'liberal' as a philosophy of universal acceptance and tolerance, then again the Jesus of the Bible does not fit the bill. Jesus accepted and tolerated much in his day, but he drew red hot lines of distinction between people and harshly condemned many. As Hauerwas has stated well, Christianity, following the lead of its Head, is not about acceptance but transformation under a common confession of Jesus as Lord.

In saying the above, I am not suggesting that Jesus is 'conservative'. If we were to define 'conservative' as a philosophy of change-resistance, then there's no way Jesus is a conservative. His entire life on earth changed everything - for the better.

Regarding contemporary political issues, it is again difficult to know where Jesus would stand. It is abundantly clear that Jesus cared for the poor and commanded his followers to do the same. But does this mean that Jesus would therefore commend the detached warehoused solutions of the state to address poverty? That's far less clear. It is also clear that Jesus spoke out against violence (Lk 11; Mt 26.52), but the consummation of the Kingdom as described in Revelation makes a thoroughgoing anti-violence political position a bit complicated for a Christian. Regarding an issue like immigration, I have argued in my hospitality course that the Bible commends both openness and boundaries and threads the needle between the more 'liberal' view of blanket amnesty and the more 'conservative' view of criminalization.

The bottom line is that Jesus does not neatly fit into any human political category. That's part of why we know Jesus is God and not just another human that can be pigeonholed. Jesus challenges every political orthodoxy. That means that members of God's family, regardless of their political leanings, have to overlook and excuse a lot of unbiblical politics as part of justifying their political affiliation as a Christian. Neither the incessant whining of the Left nor the smug indifference of the Right accurately reflects the person and ministry of Jesus. This is part of why neither political party can claim Jesus as one of their own with intellectual integrity, and it's also why politicized pulpits are damaging the Kingdom of God by virtue of severely truncating the Gospel. Liberals and conservatives alike, and especially those in pulpits, need to reckon with this with full understanding of the consequences of not doing so (James 3.1).

Jesus is a Liberal...

2008-07-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

So says a bumper sticker on a random car I saw on my way to work recently. I never tire of watching people try to slot Jesus into some contemporary political or ideological category. Beyond the impossibility of naively trying to transpose today's rather unstable understandings of 'liberal' or 'conservative' onto the social world of 1st century Palestine a la Dibelius, there is also the matter of the discredited mentality behind such attempts, and the lack of intellectual awareness that often fuels it.

Beginning with Reimarus at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and extending through Bultmann and the Jesus Seminar in the 20th century, one of the great projects of theological liberalism (yes, 'theological liberalism' is an accepted technical term to refer to a once dominant strain of biblical scholarship) has been the search or quest for the historical Jesus. Inherent in this pursuit was the belief that there is a disconnect between the real Jesus of history and the more ecclesio-mythical Jesus of faith that is given to us in the Bible and upon which the faith of the church rests. For 200 years, various strains of theological liberalism attempted to find the real Jesus. Some, like Strauss, claimed the Gospel accounts were complete myth. Others, like Harnack and Ritschl, believed there were kernels of truth to be found amidst the husk of the Bible that could tell us something truthful about the real Jesus.

Then Schweitzer came along and devastated the entire project of the quest for the historical Jesus that had become a mainstay of theological liberalism. In his The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Schweitzer systematically argued that the real mythmaking was being undertaken by liberal scholars. In their pursuit of the historical Jesus, Schweitzer argued that scholars had constructed totally unhistorical Jesuses to fit their own prejudices. Therefore, such scholars never really returned to the historical Jesus, but came up with a Jesus that looked a lot like who they saw in the mirror every morning. It was a devastating critique.

Unfortunately, not only did Schweitzer himself not heed his own critique of the historical Jesus project, his critique continues to be quite valid today 100 years later. From Reimarus's 'four question' criteria for determining supposed historicity to the rigged authenticity criteria of the Jesus Seminar, the fool's errand of trying to reconstruct a historical Jesus by applying methodological doubt to the very documents that purport to tell us about the historical Jesus continues. The fact that these same proponents conveniently exempt subjecting the employment of methodological doubt to methodological doubt reveals rather sadly the half-baked intellectual basis upon which such quests are undertaken.

How is this brief synopsis of the failure of theological liberalism regarding the quest for the historical Jesus relevant today? Consult my next blog entry.

The Deck of Life is Always Shifting

2008-06-20T08:37:00.001-07:00

One of Richard Pratt's favorite sayings is that "because the deck of life is always shifting, balance can be nothing more than momentary synchronicity." What he means by this is to imagine yourself on a boat in the open seas with the waves shifting the deck to and fro. In order to maintain one's equilibrium in an environment like this is to have one's weight in sync with the movement of the boat moment by moment. Simply maintaining some preexisting posture and never adjusting it is to guarantee a loss of footing which will leave you at the mercy of the to and fro of the waves.

While it can be argued that Richard's view gives too much deference to situational impacts on our posture, there is a good bit of anecdotal evidence to commend the truth of this view. For example, such a view is certainly true in politics. In Virginia, Republican George Allen was sailing towards reelection until a series of acts on his part that turned out to monumental blunders. Ten years ago perhaps, the mistakes he made in 2006 wouldn't have been mistakes and wouldn't have caused a problem. But Allen demonstrated that he had lost touch with how much the deck of life had shifted on him, and he lost his footing. The same has proven to be true in this year's presidential campaign. Bill Clinton, a figure anointed by a once smitten press as one of the great pure politicians of our time, contributed, perhaps considerably, to Hillary Clinton's nomination defeat by committing blunder after blunder. Once considered the 'first black president' because of the way he connected with African Americans back in the 1990s, the Clinton of 2008 lost his velvet touch and was accused of racial insensitivity more than once. Even Bill Clinton hasn't come to terms even now with the degree to which the deck of life shifted on him, and he lost his footing by failing to adjust.

Richard's view is certainly applicable to the field of theology, and it is in this context that he has voiced such a view. Simply put, if one wants to maintain a theological orthodoxy that has the kind of equilibrium to stay upright no matter how big the waves are that hit it, one cannot be oblivious to the deck shifts that threaten balance. If one chooses to stubbornly maintain a preexisting posture as a badge of honor against cultural creep, one is likely to lose balance and fall out of orthodoxy just as surely as he would have if he had gotten out of the boat and adopted surfboard liberalism that depends entirely on the waves to dictate direction.

Orthodoxy is both fixed and non-fixed. Core orthodoxy is true and doesn't change. But just because something is true doesn't mean there isn't room to understand this truth better. Those who lose theological balance are those who have trouble reckoning with this, and believe that not only is the truth of the physical resurrection of Christ fixed, but that its application and relevance are also fixed so that no additional orthodox-oriented exploration is necessary. This is erroneous, because it discards the reality that the deck of life is always shifting. When Paul says that for the sake of the gospel, he has become all things to all men so that by all means possible some might be saved (1C 9), he is acknowledging that while Jesus Christ is the fixed point upon which the Christian life rests, the Christian life itself is not fixed and must adjust for the sake of the fixed gospel. The early church understood this, because if they didn't, Acts 15 would read very differently, and the church itself might look very different.

Just to be clear, I am not advocating a situationally-dominated Christianity that adopts the CULTURAL (not biblical) orthodoxy of change for the sake of change, or change on the altar of brute pragmatism. As I've mentioned in other posts, the emergent church movement, while containing some good theoretical and even practical views, has in too many ways become a rather blanket concession to the secular spirit of our age rather than a return to some purer form of Christianity unleashed from the chains of modernism. Christianity shouldn't be in bed with either modernism or postmodernism, because both, while containing elements of truth, are ultimately hostile to the gospel. So in no way am I inverting the Reformed view of Christ transforming culture into a view of Culture transforming christ. Such a thing would require me to get off the deck entirely and jump into the open water, and while many in the mainline denominations in particular have done just that, it is not what we should do.

On the other hand, one will indeed have difficulty speaking effectively to our present environment in the West using extrabiblical categories imported from generations ago. Again, this doesn't mean that we should follow the liberals in discarding the Spirit-guided wisdom of our theological tradition throughout the ages. I am on record in saying that any individual, pastor, church, or denomination that scuttles its historical theological tradition is well on their way to departing from orthodoxy. Ignoring or 'reimagining' one's confessional tradition is an act that usually corresponds with a similar departure from Scriptural authority. But of course, the abandonment of external authority in favor of individual self-determination is often precisely the point - and the goal. The only problem is that such a view is foreign to orthodox Christianity. But none of this changes the fact that those of us who choose to plant ourselves on the deck (or more biblically, the Rock), are not immune from the cultural influences that threaten the balance that's needed to remain upright and rooted.

The challenge of the church today is not to rethink what it believes, or even to rethink how it thinks or goes about being the church in the emergent church sense. The challenge for the church is to know what it believes, know it's historical community and tradition, and know the environment it's operating in. The church cannot be slavish either to historical OR CONTEMPORARY methods of understanding itself or the world. It must employ both openness and boundaries on issues of belief and practice, and this is impossible if we've lost our sense of orientation by putting ourselves at the mercy of the waves either by not adjusting and falling down, or by abandoning ship altogether.

Just because a church building has a cross on it doesn't automatically mean that Christianity is being taught and lived there. Just because somebody routinely has Jesus on their lips doesn't automatically mean that their Jesus is the real Jesus. And just because someone announces that they are Reformed in their theology doesn't automatically mean they understand Reformed theology and are well conversant with their theological and confessional heritage. While the American church is preoccupied with its own version of 'keeping up with the Joneses' by chasing after the cultural winds, the church is in very serious danger of losing its unique identity as the body of Christ. Why? Because it's often the case that those who chase after the wind are those who are decidedly unclear about their own identity. But Scripture has an enormous amount to say about our true identity as Christians, and how that identity informs the way we live and interact with others. Maintaining this identity requires the kind of balance that keeps us upright as the deck of life continually shifts.

Church Newsletter Article

2008-05-30T06:22:00.001-07:00

Recently, I was asked to write an article for my church's monthly newsletter that would touch on the issue of evangelism. The following is the article I prepared that appears in our June newsletter. It is titled 'Evangelism and Hospitality', and contains some excerpts from my recently completed hospitality course:

When I was at seminary, I befriended a college student from Korea who was here in America studying at a nearby college. During one of our lunches, he said something to me I've never forgotten. There were a large number of international students at his college, and periodically, these students would get together and compare notes on their experience in America. Virtually all of them had a common regret. They bemoaned the fact that they had spent years in America studying at college, and yet during that time, almost none of them had been invited into an American home to fellowship with an American family. They truly felt like strangers in a strange land, and their perception was that Americans were superficially nice but mostly inhospitable.

Many lifelong Americans can probably resonate with this sentiment too, including many churchgoers. What makes it worse is that no serious discussion of the New Testament's presentation of the spread of the Gospel can ignore the issue of hospitality. As just one example, the book of Acts is an extended historical account of the growth of Christ's church, and episode after episode shows hospitality as integral to this evangelistic growth. From the visitation of the Holy Spirit at the house of Cornelius in Acts 10 to the island-wide healing of disease on Malta in Acts 28 while Paul was staying at the home of a prominent local leader, it is clear that hospitality enabled the transmission of the Gospel in the early church. Nothing has changed. Is our own loss of understanding and practicing hospitality as a means to spread the Gospel a reason behind the Gospel not spreading in our culture the way it did in Acts? Are we even asking this question?

The Christian life, including evangelism, can be seen through the complementary grids of Incarnation and Hospitality. Following the example of Jesus, Incarnation is the act of entering into the world of others to better understand them and minister to them with the Gospel. Hospitality is the act of inviting others into our world for the same reasons. I have found that while there are exceptions, many people relish the opportunity to learn about our faith and our God when both are modeled for them through hospitality in the home and church.

May we be a church that vibrantly recovers Paul’s simple command to ‘practice hospitality’ (Rom 12.13). I am convinced that doing so will change our surrounding community by revitalizing the spread of the Gospel in our midst.

The Soundbite Reverend

2008-04-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

I have no doubt that in the past several days and certainly over the last month, there have been entirely too many blog posts centered on Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Up to this point, I have deliberately not commented on Wright's political views or rhetorical style, and this post will not comment on these things either. I will leave that to others who are more invested in such things, both pro and con, than I. But Wright's recent appearance at the National Press Club is worthy of comment. During this appearance and in other recently previous comments, Wright has asked that his sermons and views be taken in context, and he has lamented what he believes is the reduction of his views to soundbites. He has further argued that he speaks not as a politician, but as a pastor, and his comments need to be understood thusly. Fair enough. It is my intention in this post to examine some of Wright's biblical and theological assertions made at the National Press Club. I will look at 3 of Wright's assertions.

1) As part of advancing what he believes is a theology of liberation, Wright asserted that there was 'not one word written in the Bible between Genesis and Revelations that was not written under one of six different kinds of oppression...' This is false as a basic matter of theological history. Regardless of whether one believes that Moses was the primary author of the first five books of the Bible, there is wide consensus that much of the Torah was written during the Israelites's encampment at Sinai. This was not a time of earthly oppression from the Egyptians, since the Egyptians had already been defeated. Contrary to what Wright suggests, the Bible is not a cover to cover account of human persecution at the hands of humans, and it wasn't written in totality in the midst of persecution. That's simply false. What's more, no responsible reading of Scripture can make human persecution the chief concern of God's redemptive or liberating activity. Wright is correct that Scripture is indeed concerned about unjust persecution and portrays God reversing such persecution. But that does not justify the overriding hermeneutic of oppression and liberation that he is forcing onto the text and forcing it to fit. In doing this, the man who dislikes being 'soundbited' is soundbiting Scripture.

2) In answering a question about whether Islam is 'a way' to salvation, Wright cited John 10.16, where Jesus says 'I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen'. Wright seemed to be implying that Jesus is here acknowledging that there are other ways to salvation other than the way that directly expresses faith in Christ as the Son of God. In doing this, Wright is soundbiting Scripture and ripping a passage out of context (again, quite ironic given his complaint about he feels he has been treated). In vv1-5 of chapter 10, the sheep pen clearly represents Judaism, since it is a thematic continuation of the ramifications of chapter 9. So from the sheep pen of Judaism, chapter 10 says that Jesus calls his own sheep from this fold, and they respond to his voice. So when Jesus says in v16 that he has other sheep that are not of this sheep pen, he is clearly referring to Gentiles. The consummation of this theme is in John 11.51-52, which describes Jesus dying for the scattered children of God, making them one. John 10 has nothing to do with comparative religion; it is about the express expansion of the Kingdom of God to Gentile believers in Christ. Readers of John 10 should note the emphasis on the sheep's response to Jesus' voice. The exclusivity of Christ in salvation is clearly being taught here, along with the inclusivity of Jew and Gentile in the Kingdom of God. For Wright to ignore the context of John 10.16 and use it to imply the non-exclusivity of Christ in salvation (in direct contradiction to the context of the verse) is to soundbite the Bible.

3) In supporting his contention that America has invited terrorism onto itself as a result of engaging in its own terrorist activities, Wright quotes Gal 6.7, "Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." Once again, Wright ignores the context of this verse. Galatians is a rhetorical letter written by Paul to address the infiltration of false doctrine and belief. The church is going astray, there are opponents of Paul influencing the congregation to reject the breakdown of Jew/Gentile distinction, and Paul is writing here to get the church back on track. After listing the acts of the sinful nature at the end of chapter 5, chapter 6 transitions into a discourse on gentleness and restoration if possible when handling trespasses. Verse 7 is dealing with the reality that God is not fooled by outward expressions of righteousness, because he knows whether someone is acting out of the flesh (the old self) or the Spirit (the new flesh). This context is clear from v8. The sowing and reaping of v7 is not a Christian version of karma, as Wright suggests. Instead, it is a wise warning to those who sow from the flesh rather than the Spirit. God won't be mocked by such things, because he sees through such things. By ignoring this context and using v7 to advance a secular political cause-and-effect argument is to soundbite the Bible.

Rev. Wright's tenuous hold on Scriptural context is most unfortunate, because it discredits all that he says. This is unfortunate because Wright is not wrong about everything. He is right in suggesting that 'different doesn't mean deficient'. He is right when he says that caucasian Christians have much to learn and gain from the African American religious experience in America. In my view, an increased sensitivity to the issues and experiences that greatly concern many African Americans would help prevent the kind of radicalized liberation theology that Cone and Wright advocate.

But Wright's soundbiting of Scripture is inexcusable in light of his complaint that he himself has been wrongly soundbited. Now let me be clear, the practice of cherrypicking Bible verses completely out of context is not unique to liberal pulpits - it happens in conservative pulpits too. They are equally inexcusable, and offensive to me as a Christian. It both saddens and maddens me that such reckless theology has gained a hearing in supposedly respectable American seminaries and pulpits. It's bad to reduce a human being to soundbites. But it's much worse to do the same thing to the Word of God, no matter who does it.

Just because someone is young and has a fresh face...

2008-04-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

doesn't make his approach new or 'post-partisan'. I am, of course, talking about Barack Obama.

In the interests of full disclosure, let me say that while I'm not a party-line guy, I usually vote Republican. And while I have no beef with Obama personally, it's not surprising that given my political orientation, I haven't warmed up to Obama the politician. For the last year, I have watched the groupthink media engage in mosh-pit orgies over Obama much the same way they lusted after JFK and RFK. I have watched young people who are allegedly yearning for 'a different kind of politics and a different kind of politician' fill stadiums and jubilantly express their allegiance to Obama. I wish I could be among the 'change we can believe in' believers. But the facts simply don't allow me to do that.

Obama is new, in that he is a new figure on the scene. He doesn't come from old money, or from a royal political family. By any measure, his is a successful story. As Americans, we can rejoice at his success, and be proud of him as an individual for achieving what he has. But beyond the soaring oratory and inspiring story, there is little reason to believe he is a different kind of politician.

Like most other politicians who have run for president recently, Obama has taken on some regretably old school characteristics. Like previous candidates both Democrat and Republican, Obama has largely shielded himself from lengthy interaction with the press in order to maintain tight image and message control. This is quite ironic considering how nakedly obvious the press has been in their affection for him. Like previous candidates both Democrat and Republican, Obama largely plays in front of pre-selected sympathetic audiences that deliberately don't hint of the political and ideological diversity that he and his boosters claim he transcends. Like previous candidates both Democrat and Republican, Obama has had to try and explain or justify unsavory voluntary associations (both past and present) with crooks and other incendiary (to use a charitable word) figures. None of this is 'post-partisan', and none of it is indicative of a new kind of campaign or a new kind of candidate.

But it doesn't stop there. What's most unsettling about the 'post-partisan' narrative surrounding Obama is that his voting record and issue platform are both decidedly partisan. Obama has virtually no record of spearheading bipartisan legislation in his legislative career. Saying that I want to bring people together is not the same thing as actually doing it while in political office. The former is easy, and requires no elbow grease. The latter actually demonstrates one's commitment to it. And on this, Obama fails. One doesn't have to shout and yell in order to be partisan. One simply has to uphold the party line nearly unanimously, as Obama has done, and fail to sign on to the few bipartisan initiatives remaining in Washington.

Again, I don't have it in for Obama, though it may seem like I do. My issue actually isn't with Obama himself. If one wants to be a party-line liberal because that's where one's convictions lie, that's fair enough. What's not fair, or honest, is to be such a person while claiming you're something else. And it's also not honest to portray oneself as a different kind of candidate while actively engaging in many of the same unfortunate tactics and strategies that he says he transcends. This is not the audacity of hope - it's just audacity.

In the end, Obama is a fresh face who is largely absent of fresh ideas and is increasingly not diverging from the status quo to run a fresh kind of campaign. That doesn't make him any worse than either Clinton or McCain. But it doesn't make him better either, and this is where ga-ga perception needs to better align with sober reality.

Bravo to Daryn Kagan

2008-04-14T09:38:00.001-07:00

I've known for some time that former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan was working on a new media project emphasizing positives in the world. I hope this project is successful and provides a wake-up call to much of the rest of the American and international press.

Among other things, Kagan believes the American press by and large focuses on the negative in their news coverage. Current CNN Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr recently argued that death and difficulty in Iraq are more 'newsworthy' than peace and progress. She made this comment when questioned about why the press hasn't covered successes in Iraq with the same zeal that they've covered failures. She didn't dispute that news coverage of the successes in Iraq was far more muted than the reporting of the debacles. To the contrary, she justified the slant by saying that negative events are more newsworthy than positive events. Starr's attitude is regretably typical, and is widespread in newsrooms that produce the daily and even hourly news we see on air and in print. Enter Daryn Kagan.

Kagan is correctly trying to offer some balance to the media obsession with the negative. Kagan intends to focus on the positive, and showing 'the possible' to offset the refraining groan of the impossible that feeds most media outlets. Kagan correctly believes that most media outlets do not cover matters of faith and spirituality well, and she also knows that positive news stories are often perceived as fluff and not 'hard news' by the mainline media monopoly. Her new media project provides a needed corrective.

For a number of years now, I have argued that the American media woefully underrepresents viewpoints and perspectives that deviate from accepted journalistic norms. The issue of jadedness is a classic example. At best, an inquisitive questioner might get a journalist or columnist to admit that he/she is a bit jaded as a personal matter. But these jaded journalists rarely if ever admit that their jadedness impacts their job or influences the way in which they present a story to the public. And herein lies the problem. Such a view is either completely arrogant or completely self-delusional - or both. Human beings are not machines, where our biases, predispositions, and worldviews can be shut off at the switch when we go about our daily lives, including our vocational lives. The worldview and perspective that a journalist personally operates with will inevitably influence their approach to a story, the kinds of questions they ask (and don't ask), and the kinds of stories they consider 'newsworthy' (or 'unnewsworthy'). Positive and inspirational news stories are considered 'soft' not because they are soft, but because journalists for the most part are bringing their personal jaded perspectives to bear on the job they do.

That they are either unaware or flippant about how their default settings shape the news reveals the core problem in American journalism - the inability for journalists to be straight with themselves, which inevitably compromises their ability to be straight with the public. The press is out of touch with the American experience primarily because they are out of touch with the human experience. Occasionally, someone comes along who momentarily breaks through the cynicism and jadedness (Obama and JFK come to mind). When this happens, the press momentarily rediscovers its idealism and lurches almost completely into worship mode. But this isn't any more balanced than their jadedness, and it shows. The recent SNL skit resonated because even though it was a parody, it hit on something real and obvious - obvious to everyone but press people.

Daryn Kagan is offering a more systematic corrective that will hopefully bring positive stories (and a more positive perspective) back into the stream of media orthodoxy. It's a shame that such a glaring hole exists in our present news coverage, and that the supposedly objective media can't come to grips with how the existence of this gap exposes the rank subjectivity of their enterprise. But I hope that Kagan's initiative will start a substantive conversation within media circles about the deficiencies that exist and how the personal groupthink perspectives of these circles reinforce the deficiencies. Bravo to Kagan for charting a different yet much needed course.

The Redeeming of the Church

2008-04-02T09:22:00.001-07:00

Even the ever colorful Ted Turner finally seems to be coming around. It was recently announced that Turner is partnering with various denominations (both liberal and evangelical) to throw significant resources into the fight against malaria. Turner, who once declared that Christianity was a religion for losers, now says that religion is a 'bright spot' in the world that 'has a very good reputation for being able to mobilize resources.'

It is a sad reality that God's church too often brings disrepute to His name. Financial and sexual scandals are too common. Faulty theology is rampant. Empire-building in the church is thoroughly worldly. Idolatry is acceptable and even encouraged. Evangelicals divide over secondary matters and lose sight of the Great Commission. Liberals foolishly try to remake the church without bothering to address their faulty theology of church and Kingdom. The pride and self-delusion that underlie these trends go undealt with. With this kind of record, I have no trouble understanding why many oscillate between believing that the church is irrelevantly out of touch vs. believing that the church is foolish and dangerous. If this was the end of the story, I'd probably join them at least 5 days out of the week.

But some years ago, I came to understand something that even Ted Turner now seems to have some grasp of. Despite the church's chronic infidelity to its Owner and Master, the church often redeems itself (through the guidance of the Spirit) in times of tragedy and hardship. I've seen this firsthand many times, in efforts both big and small. I saw it when I was in New Orleans after Katrina. The evangelical church ran laps around everybody else, including the government, in its response to the devastation. The response was quick, comprehensive, and committed. It was the same thing in South Florida after Hurricane Andrew. It was the same thing after the tsunami disaster in Asia, and after the earthquake disaster in Turkey. In times of major disaster and despair, a heavily splintered church comes together to coordinate a response that puts everyone else to shame, and gets the attention even of someone like Ted Turner.

I've also seen this dynamic at work in smaller ways. My congregation is enduring a rough spell at the moment. Illness, disease, and death have come to visit several families in our congregation in recent months. Family and friends of ours who don't attend our church have also been stricken. My church has become a house of prayer in ways it wasn't before. We have stepped up to the plate with meals, visitation, and helping people with transportation and chores. If there had been a congregational vote last December about whether we as a church would have wanted to endure the season we are enduring, I doubt such a motion would have passed. Nobody wants to endure hardship and disaster, because they are the byproducts of universal sin. But I dare say that the redemption of the church through heartache and disaster provides me comfort that God is in control of the disasters, and that the church is still under his tutelage and is still being purified. The result has been that our church has not only grown closer together, we are also gradually developing a greater passion for outreach to a world that is filled with suffering.

My dream for our congregation is that we would be known in the community as a church that knows what it believes and doesn't need to substitute inventive techniques in place of core principles, and is a church that radically lives out what it believes and tirelessly welcomes the world to join us. It is my hope that the redeeming of our church through the purification of suffering will transform our congregation into one that speaks and acts prophetically to a world that needs to see orthopraxis as much as it needs to hear orthodoxy. Like so many times before, it is my hope that this season of suffering will be the church's finest hour. The ability of Ted Turner to see this on a bigger scale should give us hope that our neighbors will be able to see it in our community, in us.

Maundy Thursday and the Lord's Supper

2008-03-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

Holy Thursday is a high holy day on the Christian calendar. Maundy Thursday traditionally acknowledges and celebrates the institution of the Lord's Supper by Jesus at the Last Supper, just prior to his trial and crucifixion. Therefore, it is appropriate at this time of year to reflect on the significance of the Lord's Supper in our lives today.

The following is adapted from Lesson 6 of my recently completed Hospitality course:

First and most obviously, the Lord's Supper is the LORD's supper. It is a meal that is given by Christ the Host to us as his guests. In the Lord's Supper, Christ, in an act of extraordinary hospitality, is hosting a meal in which he as the host invites us to his table to spiritually feed on him. By partaking in this meal, we are participating in God's hospitality to us. Because to partake in the Lord's Supper requires the proclamation that God is Lord of our lives and that we belong to him through his death (1C 11.26), partaking in God's meal makes us willing participants in God's redemptive work in us individually and corporately. God gathers us together, and feeds us together as the Body of Christ. The Lord's Supper is a manifestation of God's present-day hospitality to us.

Second, The Lord's Supper is thoroughly subversive. In the early church, the concept of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of some religious leader was easily misconstrued and distorted, and became cause for outside persecution. The Lord's Supper was often cited as a practice of depraved cultish immorality, and became one reason behind the Roman persecution of the church. Times have changed, but not as much as we might think. Today, the Lord's Supper directly attacks the notion of individual autonomy and adequacy that is a mainstay of our political and consumerist society. In the Lord's Supper, we are being asked to give up trying to earn our way into God's favor through our own individual efforts, including making up our own spiritual rules as if we were the Host and the Lord's Table was really our table. To partake in the Lord's Supper is to find rest in the opposite – that it is through Christ's work that we have found favor with God. Participating in God's hospitality through regular observance of the Lord's Supper is to joyfully and tearfully acknowledge that we are his ever-needy guests in need of the grace and eternal life that we are entirely unable to manufacture on our own. I would suggest there are precious few confessions that are more subversive in our culture (and in the church) than this.

Third, the Lord's Supper raises very difficult questions about the intersection between hospitality and discipline. One might think that hospitality and discipline would be opposed to one another. But actually, hospitality depends on discipline. The Lord's Supper is a perfect example. It takes discipline to gather together as a body at God's table to partake in his meal. Protestants in particular are acutely guilty of lacking this kind of discipline, and as Christians, we need to seriously ponder what this lack of discipline has done to our own perspective on hospitality and doctrinal fidelity. Does it sound sensible that God's people would neglect receiving the hospitality of their Savior through the Lord's Supper and consider it optional or even non-essential? No! It sounds crazy because it is crazy. To neglect the Lord's Supper is to reflect a lack of discipline that results in a lack of receiving hospitality, and probably results in a less-than-vigorous extension of hospitality to others. It also manifests a wider lack of discipline that has wide implications on all areas of life. In our society, essentials have become optionals in matters of vocation, marriage, family, doctrine, etc. Neglect of the Lord's Supper may not directly cause this wider drifting, but it's very consistent with it. How many of us are seriously exploring whether our attitudes (and the church's attitude) about the Lord's Supper are culturally conditioned rather than biblically conditioned? The idea that the church's observance of one of the great sacraments of the Christian religion has become significantly tenderized by cultural attitudes, and that we have become so baptized by cultural individualism that we are too 'comfortably numb' to even explore the issue (much less challenge it) is no immaterial matter.

Good Friday is a sober reflection on the atoning sacrifice of Christ. But Maundy Thursday is also a time for sober reflection. It is a time to seriously consider the grace, mercy, and hospitality of the Lord's Supper, and to examine our reception of it as God's guests. The implications are wide and deep, but I fear the church is largely existing on the surface here.

Ministry Stuff Goin' On

2008-03-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

Wanted to provide the latest periodic installment of ministry happenings:

1) My Hospitality course at the church came to an end yesterday, March 9. It was a good course, and it was great to have such a dedicated group of folks attending week after week. In the last few weeks in particular, the number of attendees hovered around 25 people. They were all a great blessing to me. As mentioned in a previous post, my scripts for all 10 lessons are available through a link on the right side of this blog page.

2) There's a possibility that I could be invited to teach the Hospitality course at another church. This would be a wonderful opportunity and I'm hoping it works out. Prayers are appreciated.

3) The Discipleship Explored course that we've been hosting in our home for 8 weeks concluded a week ago. As with the hospitality course, we've had a very dedicated group of around 20 people attending each week. Many of these folks were also involved in the Christianity Explored class that was the precursor to Discipleship Explored that was held last year. By God's grace, through the 7 month timeframe of CE and DE, nobody peeled off and our numbers actually grew a bit during DE. It is such a privilege to have this group of people in our home for food, fellowship, and good study.

4) Now that DE is done, we are fixin' to start a new home-based class that will begin April 7. This class will be a chapter by chapter study of Richard Pratt's book, Pray with Your Eyes Open. Pratt, of course, was a seminary prof of mine at RTS, and I had to read this book as part of one of the classes I took with him. Incredibly, everyone who attended DE has signed up for this new course, and we expect that more people will join us as well. I will be giving some of the group talks and will likely facilitate one of the small group discussions.

5) The church is also very interested in starting a new Christianity Explored course to coincide with Easter. The details of this are still being worked out, and I'm not sure what role I will play in it, if any. But it's possible that this course might also be held at our home on a different night of the week than the Pratt course. We'll have to see.

If anyone who reads this blog and resides in the DC/Northern Virginia area is interested in attending items 4 and 5 above, you are most invited to come join us. I'd love the privilege of meeting you and getting to know you.

Alright, I'll Play

2008-03-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Glaser, the 'Backwoods Presbyterian', recently included me on a list of 6 people to list "Six unimportant facts/quirks/habits about myself". As my family will attest, I am a walking quirk, so to identify six specific quirks is sorta like identifying one drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean. On the plus side, it means I have lots of material to draw from:

1) I have more or less eaten the same lunch everyday for nearly 20 years - turkey sandwich on white bread with cheese (usually swiss) and mayonnaise. I've always considered it a little bit of Thanksgiving every day of the year.

2) My wife tells me I do great animal noises. My cow, horse, rooster, and ostrich imitations are always big hits.

3) In 1982, I won the sixth grade spelling bee at my elementary school, and I also went to the Virginia state finals in the 100 yard dash. 1982 was a very good year.

4) I do a very good Godfather imitation and intend to use it extensively with any and all potential 'gentleman callers' of my (hopefully) soon-to-be adopted daughter. I have already rehearsed what my opening line will be to all young men who walk into my home to go on a date with my daughter. In my Marlon Brando voice, I will calmly say with a straight face, "Yes it's true, I'm a Christian. But I also think that torture is completely justified in certain circumstances, such as if my daughter doesn't get home safely, or if the curfew is violated, or if she's struck by a bolt of lightning." I intend to have a baseball bat in plain view during this friendly conversation.

5) As a lifelong Virginian, I fly the state flag of the Commonwealth on the outside of my home. I also make a mean Peanut Soup, which is something of a rite of passage in the Virginia Gentleman department.

6) I tend to be a pretty impatient guy. That's not a big deal. What's odd is that I also greatly enjoy working very big jigsaw puzzles that take months to finish. An odd combination.

I guess the rules of this little internet game require me to pick 6 additional people to provide a similar list. Mercifully, I have instead decided that the chain will die with me. All potential bloggers I could have picked can express their thanks by writing me a check for whatever (enormously huge) amount God leads you to give :)

"Status Is Everything"...

2008-03-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

So says The Bank, the new nightclub at the Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas. Amazingly, The Bank, most likely without knowing it, is quite right in this assessment.

He/she who confesses Jesus Christ as Lord has been given a new status, and from the human perspective, this new status is indeed everything. Christians who were once strangers and aliens (Eph 2) are now heirs of the promise. Christians have been adopted into God's family and are now part of the community of the forgiven. Our citizenship is now in heaven (Php 3.20) and we are now children of light. Status really is everything.

The rub, of course, is in how one defines status. The Bellagio's version is based on earthly measures that don't stand the test of time. Money, beauty, glitz, power, fashion sense, and popularity are all measures and discriminators of status. They help separate the 'in-crowd' from those who are on the outside looking in. This is true whether it's the Bellagio, the upper East Side vs the upper West Side, or Saturday night rodeo vs Rodeo Drive. Sadly, such ideas of status have found their way into the church too. The collective new status of Christians surely must trump such earthly definitions of status. But does it really? One has cause to wonder.

Those who question the sovereignty and providence of God should take care to notice The Bank. Even in a place like Las Vegas, God is able to take a pathetically triumphant slogan of superficiality and illuminate truth to those who wish to see it. Status really is everything. It's odd indeed that The Bellagio would be the place to rediscover this truth, but then again, God often works in unexpected ways.

A good preacher has some very good material to work with here.

The Pew Study and Designer Religion

2008-03-03T09:36:00.000-08:00

The recent Pew Forum study titled, "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" has received a surprising amount of attention not only among religious types, but even in the dinosaur media that normally ignores such things. The major 'finding' of the study that's gotten the most attention is the increasing fickleness of the American public regarding their religious affiliation. A high percentage of Americans have adopted a different religious affiliation (including religious disaffiliation and just 'unaffiliated') from the affiliation of their youth. The implication is that denominational loyalty is in decline, and that designer and consumeristic religion is on the rise. Such findings are not exactly surprising. What is surprising is that they are not exactly accurate.

Designer Religion does not explain the plight of the mainline denominations, and it doesn't offer a way out of their predicament simply by 'rethinking what it means to be the church'. Mainline Christianity is already a designer religion, and has been during its four decade decline. If Americans were only interested in designer religion in some amorphous sense, the mainline would be doing just fine, because that's what it offers people. Evangelicalism is also a designer religion. Yet, they're doing much better.

The bottom line is that the church, liberal and conservative, emphasizes certain things to the demotion of other things. Idols exist in both camps. The church is not very out of touch at all with the individualism of the country. Like individuals, churches are picking and choosing what to teach, how to teach it, and how to live it. The worst thing church leaders can conclude from the Pew Study is that they need resemble the culture more than they already do, and that that would magically solve the church's identity crisis. A 'new way of being the church' that merely accelerates its appeasement to cultural designerism is exactly the wrong thing to do. It will result not only in more and more Americans becoming 'unaffiliated', but the church itself will become unaffiliated too, no matter what brand name is on the church bulletin. It's a formula for getting lost and confused, and offering nothing to the world that it's not already intimately familiar with, even though it wishes it wasn't. There's nothing 'new' about this approach; there's nothing about it that's innovative or forward-looking. It's nothing more than trying to repair the same roof on the same house.

My take on the Pew Study is very different. I think it's likely that the rise of 'unaffiliated' Americans is the result of people not wanting to be locked into a brand name (a particular religious affiliation) that more and more people equate with a truncated spirituality (ie: a designer spirituality). Conventional wisdom is that religious 'consumers' want designer spirituality, but established religious denominations aren't giving it to them, and that this is why denominations are in trouble. This isn't entirely false, but it's not really accurate either. An increasing number of evangelicals and mainliners alike want their spirituality expanded beyond the picking and choosing approach of the church. It's well documented that more and more evangelicals are looking for biblically faithful approaches to poverty, climate change, and global justice. Yes, this is designer religion, but it's a much broader form of it. Likewise, a number of liberal religious folks I know talk about how they want the mainline to move beyond its scripted talking points and mushy theology to embrace something more concrete and more broad.

The problem with institutional religion is that it's not appreciating the desires of many people for a broader and more comprehensive vision of spirituality and religion that touches all aspects of life. There is no religious affiliation that is currently known for offering such a thing. Presbyterians are known as closed off intellectuals who have sacrificed childlike faith on the altar of worldly sophistication and respectability. Evangelicals are knowns as gay haters. The mainline is known for its fights and in believing that not being too sure of anything is a virtue. Is it any wonder why more and more people would rather be 'unaffiliated'? The church will begin broadly succeeding again not when it goes farther down the road of embracing unaffiliated designer religion, but when it does the opposite and presents a robust faith that is comprehensive and all encompassing. This is truly the 'new way of being the church'. But it requires a robust Jesus, a robust theology, a robust commitment to prayer, a robust view of Kingdom, a robust doctrine of Scripture, a robust attitude of godly engagement with the world, and a robust belief in the Rock of our salvation that grounds everything else. This is the kind of 'generous orthodoxy' that will make people proud to be affiliated again, not McLaren's version that simply wants to inconsistently join the culture's spiritual agnosticism and treat it as a badge of honor.

Hospitality Lessons Complete

2008-03-01T08:12:00.000-08:00

Just an FYI for anyone who's interested - all of lessons for my Hospitality course are now complete and posted on my church's website. There is a link on the right side of the blog page that will take you there. There are 10 lessons in total, and we will actually finish the course on March 9.

It's been a privilege to teach the course, and we've had a good turnout for it, with a core group of around 16 people that occasionally swells to over 20.

It's possible that I might approach some denomination people to explore whether this course material is worthy of denominational publication. We'll see.

Anyway, enjoy!

The Dangers of Wormism

2008-02-11T06:50:00.000-08:00

Reformed Theology emphasizes certain theological truths that are sometimes less emphasized in other theological traditions. One of those truths is what is commonly known as the 'total depravity' of man. The idear here is that through the Fall, the entire human constitution (physical, emotional, spiritual) became corrupted by sin. The 'total' in 'total depravity' does not mean that everything about us is completely depraved. Instead, the 'total' refers to the totality of the human constitution being negatively corrupted by sin. There is no part of the human condition that is immune from the ravages of sin. Our physical bodies grow weak and eventually die. I was at a healing service last night, and the frailty of the body is an ever-present reminder of the potency of universal sin. Our emotional lives are subject to sadness, grief, and inner turmoil. Our spiritual lives are often marked by deep conflict, confusion, doubt, and weariness. All of this is the result of the entrance of sin into the world at the Fall. And because this is our state, everything we think and do is tainted to some degree by our sin. Our reasoning, behaviors, and actions are all greatly influenced by our sinful condition.

As an adherent of Reformed Theology, I believe the devastating effects of the Fall comprise perhaps the most documented empirical case for the truth of total depravity that anyone can ask for. And yet, in affirming this truth, we must be on guard against the tendency to become imbalanced in our stressings, and lurch into what is known as 'wormism', which is the reduction of humans to worms and little more.

Classic confessional Calvinism stresses both the depravity and dignity of humanity. An overstress on depravity to the neglect of dignity is not historic Calvinism - it's what Richard Pratt calls the 'neo-Calvinism' of 20th century Reformed thinking that was an imbalanced response to the destructive utopian modernism of the time. Every historic Reformed confession and catechism emphasizes the Scriptural truth that humans have been uniquely created in the image of God. In doing this, God grants humanity a tremendous and unique dignity that the Fall did not eradicate. It is true that the Fall greatly perverts and distorts the image of God beyond repair absent divine intervention. But the image of God is not lost, because it is ingrained in the human constitution. To lose it is to cease being human.

To forfeit the Imago Dei theology of Scripture by keeping it backstage while human depravity gets all the spotlight is a real danger that Reformed people in particular are often susceptible to embracing. Why is this dangerous?

1) When human dignity gets lost in the shuffle of human depravity, we lose something precious about the character of God. Our ontological connection with Christ is through his perfect humanity. It is because Jesus was perfectly human that he could legitimately be our sacrificial substitute on the Cross. If humans have lost their dignity and are only depraved, why exactly would Jesus need to be fully man, and why exactly should we feel good about God rescuing non-dignified agents of depravity? The salvation of humanity through Christ is an act of God redeeming a creation that he once declared 'very good'. There is an intrinsic dignity that God has bestowed on us as an act of grace, so that his salvation is also an act of grace that not only redeems hopeless sinners, but also redeems God's sovereign decision to create in the first place by gloriously repairing the shattered image of God in us. He is redeeming his own image. When we understand that, we better understand why God is so passionate and covenantally committed to this end, and makes us appreciate his grace, love and power even more.

2) When human dignity is lost, we lose our basis to affirm the irrevocable dignity of human life. It is the Imago Dei that gives us foundation for practicing an ethic of life, mutual respect, compassion, and love. If ontological dignity is lost, the praxis of dignity will be greatly lessened. This is a direct violation of the totality of the Pauline corpus, which urges us to value and love one another, and to put the needs of others ahead of our own. Paul's theology of Christian brotherhood makes no sense if it is not undergirded by the Imago Dei. It is because God has given us dignity through creating us in his image that Christians argue that human dignity cannot be defined or taken away by humans or their secular governments. Human beings are not their own kingmakers - they do not grant ontological dignity to each other. And because of this, humans have no standing to eradicate such dignity. This is a basic issue of ethics, and the Christian ethic takes a very serious hit if Christians themselves deny or downplay the intrinsic dignity of humanity that God has bestowed on us. Wormism is a serious threat to Christian ethics, because it warps what authentic humanity looks like in ways that inevitably redefine ethics in a negative way.

3) Overemphasizing depravity often leads to legalism. When depravity is constantly preached and 'teached', a serious perceptual imbalance can result. An unremitting diet of wormism can result in people and churches distrusting each other and their motives, and being fearful that people are primed and ready at every single moment to fall into grievous sin. What is the usual remedy to assuage this concern? Often, it is legalistic fence-building that is designed to keep us on the straight and narrow and prevent us from wandering off into sin. On the surface, this doesn't sound entirely bad. That has always been the allure of legalism - it is often rooted in good intentions, and when fed by a steady stream of wormism, it doesn't take long to start believing that legalism is actually necessary for the spiritual health of the church. The problem is that this is not the Gospel. The Gospel of Christ is a gospel of grace in which the law of God is written on the hearts of humanity (which is itself part of why humans possess inherent dignity as a result of being made in God's image). Even a cursory reading of Paul's corpus (ironically, a favorite of Reformed folks) quickly reveals Paul's emphatic rejection of legalism as a method of preserving holiness.

It is sometimes alleged that Reformed people who believe the Doctrines of Grace are often the least gracious people one can meet. I don't know if this is true. In my experience, people from every theological and atheological tradition tend to be more or less equal in their lack of grace. The reason Reformed folks stand out is because it is they who most fervently talk about and emphasize grace. It is the worst kind of irony that one can find in some Reformed circles the contradictory realities of grace and legalism coexisting side by side. It is what can happen when the dignity of humanity is thrown under the bus of depravity. Again, as a Reformed person, I understand why the depravity of humanity must be emphasized. The perennially attractive idear of achieving holiness and rightness with God through man-made righteousness is an affront to the person and work of Christ and is often the result of possessing an inadequate view of the comprehensive nature of sin. But if this is the extent of our theological anthropology, we have done the very thing Calvin himself tells us not to do - we have despised our own flesh and brought discredit to the image of God by impugning his creative handiwork. It is an imbalanced theology, and it's not Calvinism.

Finally!

2008-02-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

After years of bogus excuses and anonymous poison pills, the NFL Hall of Fame selection committee has finally relented to the obvious - Art Monk belongs in the Hall of Fame. It is hard to believe that a committee made up of sportswriters who supposedly know the NFL well enough to judge who the NFL's elite players have been would have been so completely derelict in their responsibilities these last 8 years when it came to Monk. I have made the case for Monk in previous blogs, and it's been a slam dunk case for 8 years - not because I can make a good case, but because Monk was a superior player who made his own case. The selection committee's decision today to grant Monk HOF status doesn't somehow legitimize his accomplishments. No sir. Today's decision merely begins the process of restoring the credibility of a committee that had lost a great deal of it with most of the NFL public.

Ark Monk is in the NFL Hall of Fame. It's about time. I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Art Monk, the deserving candidate. And I offer congratulations to the selection committee for finally seeing the light.

The God/Human Struggle of Blade Runner

2008-01-29T08:33:00.000-08:00

My wife and I recently saw both 'Atonement' and 'There Will Be Blood' at the movies. These 2 flicks have been widely acclaimed in critical circles and are gobbling up all sorts of nominations and awards. Yet, my wife and I were decidedly underwhelmed by both. Such disappointment with what's passing for 'great' filmmaking these days incited a desire to go back and watch a movie (recently altered/improved by Director Ridley Scott) that truly was great, 'Blade Runner'. Most of the spirited debate surrounding this movie over the last 25 years has centered on whether the Harrison Ford character of Deckard is or isn't a replicant (Scott's 2007 Final Cut seems to lean toward the affirmative, although in my view, it remains a tantalizingly open question). But an equally interesting (and not unrelated) current in the movie concerns the nature of humanity and its relationship to God. I would suggest that Blade Runner offers us a provocative mixture of Judeo-Christian and Nietzschean influences which offer much food for thought.

I apologize in advance for those not particularly indoctrinated in the Blade Runner storyline, characters, or terms. This post might sound like it's in code. But similar to my take on the use of language in the Fourth Gospel, I would encourage readers to use this post as an impetus to see the movie and become familiar with it. It'll be worth your time.

Set in the year 2019 (which is unfortunate; 2020 would have been better given the almost constant drumbeat of eyes and eyesight throughout the movie), we are told that the Tyrell Corporation has specialized in creating 'replicants' of humans for purposes of off-world exploration and other dangerous missions/tasks. Importantly, their motto is 'More human than human', and the rest of the movie very skillfully analyzes the implications of this both from the standpoint of replicant and human (Deckard's vague status on the spectrum only adds to the depth of these issues). These replicants have the ability to feel and express emotion, and in a major advance, the latest models have been implanted with memories so that it is no longer easy for either humans or the replicants themselves to know that they are replicants. This, of course, is one implication of the movie - if a being has emotions and memories, how unhuman are they?

At the beginning of the film, the audience is treated to a panaromic scene of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters. I would suggest that in many ways, the building resembles a great Temple. When Deckard visits Tyrell, the man who created the Tyrell Corporation, one immediately gets the sense that Tyrell is a Nietzchean godlike figure. He is frail, emotionally detached and distant, his vision is weak, yet he nonetheless has the power to 'control the weather' (when Deckard says it's too bright in his office, Tyrell effortlessly dims the impact of the sun), and to create 'life' in creating the replicants. Tyrell is a flawed puppetmaster in the Nietzchean mold.

The replicants created by Tyrell have the ability to feel and express emotion. But these emotions are very immature and unpredictable, and problems have resulted. As a result of this, replicants are built to have only a 4 year life span so that they are automatically 'retired' (terminated) before their emotions spin completely out of control, and they are not allowed on Earth once becoming operational. The problem is that 4 replicants have escaped from an off-world colony and are roaming the streets of a decaying Los Angeles. The leader and most advanced of these replicants is Roy, played by Rutger Hauer. As it turns out, as he nears his automatic retirement, Roy has come back to Earth primarily to speak with Tyrell about extending his life span. This sets the stage for the dramatic interplay between Roy and Tyrell at the corporation's headquarters - an interplay between religion and Nietzchean anti-religion.

With the aid of a high-level Tyrell employee named JF Sebastian, Roy penetrates the Tyrell Temple and gets on the elevator to go up and see Tyrell. Similar to the curtain layer in the OT Temple/tabernacle, the elevator initially only goes so far up the building. Tyrell lives in the top of the building, and no one is allowed in without his say-so. This is a clear allusion to the Holy of Holys in the OT tabernacle/Temple where the Ark of the Covenant and God's Spirit resided. Sebastian and Tyrell have been engaged in a long-distance chess match. With Sebastian and Roy in the stopped elevator and Tyrell on speaker, Sebastian (following Roy's instructions) delivers what he believes is a decisive move that results in checkmate (again, we see that Tyrell is flawed). The amusely impressed Tyrell invites Sebastian up for a talk, unaware that Roy is with him. The elevator then moves up to the Holy of Holys where the confrontation takes place.

Once inside this holy of holys, Nietzche's flawed god meets Nietzche's Uberman, Roy. The exchange between them is filled with biblical imagery. Tyrell proudly refers to Roy as the prodigal son who has returned home, while Roy, in an almost devotional tone, refers to Tyrell as 'Father' and considers Tyrell to be 'his maker'. Having met his maker, Roy pleads for a longer life. Even though Roy is a replicant, the pursuit of immortality is 'more human than human'. Tyrell says that nothing can be done about Roy's lifespan; that it was fixed during the creation process and cannot be changed. Roy proposes various ideas for how it could be done. Tyrell, being the godlike figure in the story, has already investigated and tried them all, and tells Roy that none of them work. Tyrell is confirming Roy's death sentence here. Roy then confesses that he has done 'questionable things', which is a clear confession of sin where Roy is coming to his god to find forgiveness. Instead of offering forgiveness, Tyrell excuses Roy's indiscretions by pointing out the 'great things' Roy has done.

What happens next is classic Nietzche. Roy realizes that 'his maker' is actually a flawed, immoral, distant and ultimately impotent god who has ingrained his created beings with irreparably fatal flaws. Roy then proceeds to kill Tyrell as both an act of anguish and liberation. The classic Nietzchean line of anguished triumph, "God is dead, and we have killed him", is displayed for us in this powerful scene. For Nietzche, and for Blade Runner, man stands in judgment over God, and he is right to do so because this god is no god at all, but simply a flawed puppetmaster condemning his creatures to death while living above it all. To lash out and refuse to be a puppet any longer is the most human thing we can do in this paradigm.

In the end, Roy becomes a poignant figure who saves Deckard's life before giving up his own life. Roy's death scene at the end of the movie (which is again filled with religious imagery) is one of the most moving scenes I've ever seen, and is at once haunting, tragic, beautiful, and convicting. Roy becomes something of a christ figure in the end. It is not incidental that Ridley Scott considers himself to be a very deliberate agnostic. Scott has said elsewhere that in his mind, being a Doubting Thomas enables one to ask the best and toughest questions, which is something atheism and fundamentalism are incapable of doing because they are too certain and absolute about their beliefs.

In respectful response, I would say that in framing the spectrum this way, Scott himself is being entirely too absolute and is avoiding being confronted by tough questions that hit too close to home for him. Blade Runner reflects this with its co-mingling of diametrically opposed worldviews. In the end, Scott's presentation of God is a convenient one that justifies a certain stance on humanity's grasp and pursuit of the infinite that leaves us in an ethical and ontological mess. While such conclusions are considered marks of sophisticated avante-garde thinking, this isn't automatically so. Scott's god in Blade Runner is a god that ironically doesn't ask tough questions; it only makes arrogant decisions. It should be no surprise that humans who ideally do more of the former than the latter would rebel against this god. But by stacking the deck this way, Scott conveniently avoids addressing the much harder question of whether humanity's relationship to God really looks like this, and what happens if it doesn't. After all, one might say that Scott's vision of God lacks thoughtful probing and is a rather arrogant endeavor in its own right. It has often been said that if Deckard is in fact a replicant, he is the very thing he is hunting down. One might say the same about Scott and Tyrell.

Denominational Loyalty

2008-01-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

It is considered a cutting-edge observation these days to remark on how church-goers seem to have less and less denominational loyalty than previous generations. Within traditional denominational structures, this phenomenon is lamented by many liberals and conservatives alike. Among non-denominational structures, the phenomenon is celebrated by many liberals and conservatives alike. The laments often focus on how something precious is being lost, while the celebrations often center on what is being gained. In my view, it all misses the point.

Let's be clear about a few things shall we:

1) Liberals in mainline denominations long ago forfeited the right to lament eroding denominational loyalty. By so watering down their theological emphases in favor of blob theology, what exactly do they think people are supposed to be loyal to - an instititution that has chosen to sacrifice its distinctives on the altar of blobbish tolerance? When Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Baptists start swapping clergy, buildings, programs, and find their identity/inspiration for ministry in parachurch institutions and even the UN, what exactly do the lamenters of eroding denominational loyalty think is going to happen? Such denominational labels become devoid of theological meaning and become little more than descriptors of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. While it's natural for members of that hierarchy to lament a loss of loyalty, one truly has to be slow on the uptake not to understand why it's happening and are not able to see it coming.

2) But denominational conservatives don't have much right to complain either. While seemingly counterintuitive, conservatives have often been at the forefront of advancing an individualistic brand of Christianity to a me-first culture that sucks it right up. For denominational conservatives who have fought and broken free from compromised denominational leadership, it is quite understandable why the Christianity they offer would be focused on the lives and convictions of individuals, and would be wary of ecclesiastical structures that they know from experience can corrupt and compromise the Gospel. But just as with the blob theology of the liberals that loses shape, texture, and meaning, the conservative gospel of personal salvation and personal responsibility to the near exclusion of communal factors renders an emphasis on larger ecclesiastical loyalty irrelevant and even a non sequiter. It rings hollow for churches to talk about Christianity almost exclusively in terms of individual salvation and then lament the logical consequence of individualistic Christianity - me-first fragmentation.

3) Those who celebrate a loss of denominational loyalty also miss the point. It is fashionable to say that being loyal to Christ should supersede being loyal to a denomination, and this is true of course. But it's not always true if it is meant in mutually exclusive terms. Traditionally, denominations were born out of streams of theological emphases that have hundreds and even thousands of years of helpful tradition and theology that helps anchor us in today's faddish theological times. Those who celebrate a loss of denominational loyalty are often dangerously close to advocating the severing of the Christian's 2,000 year strong historical theological tradition. And this, my friends, is theological suicide. If we believe that the church is God's house on earth (Eph 2), and that the Holy Spirit has preserved and guided his church in understanding Christ, ourselves, and the world through the responsible interpretation of the Scriptures, to minimize this tradition and its importance to us today is to minimize the Body of Christ itself and the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in shepherding this Body. And it also lends itself to arrogance by suggesting that we don't need tradition to keep us loyal to Christ, because we know better. Those who think this way don't know better, and are usually the ones most in need of the theological grounding that faithful denominational traditions offer us.

In America, we have passed the point where denominational loyalty will be in vogue. As children of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the 1960s, Watergate, and ecclesiastical scandals of all varieties, we 'passed go' on denominational loyalty a long time ago. We distrust institutions, we believe they are corrupt and out of touch, and we feel that we only have ourselves to rely on to protect our interests. This has been the American way since King George, and the church has too often gone along rather than challenge the tide. For liberals in the church, this translates into absurd attempts to dissolve theologically-based institutions for unbiblical reasons while also trying to maintain and strengthen hollowed-out administrative institutions for equally unbiblical reasons, and the results are in. For conservatives in the church, this translates into the fool's errand of taking the reins and trying to guide in one direction millions of individualistic Christians who are flying around in every possible direction. And the church only has itself to blame, because it has knuckled under to the culture in an effort to be relevant. Being loyal to Christ doesn't mean we bend the knee to the denomination. But it doesn't mean spitting at the denomination either.

Love and Discernment

2008-01-15T13:49:00.000-08:00

In Philippians 1, Paul does something very dynamic, even though it often goes overlooked. In v9, he prays that the Philippians will experience increasingly abundant love through knowledge and depth of insight. In v10, Paul explains why he wants to see this growth - so that the Philippians will be able to discern what is best and be pure and blameless before God.

Often times, we have a tough time bringing love and knowledge together. We are prone to see knowledge primarily as an intellectual thing, while seeing love primarily as an emotional thing. The result is often that we have trouble marrying the two, so that what we believe doesn't translate into how we feel and act. But Paul's description of the human constitution doesn't break down along these popular lines. For Paul, the relationship between the head and the heart is not a mutually exclusive one, as if both exist in separate containers. To the contrary, Paul links the two at a very basic level, and in doing so, offers a vision of humanity that sharply differs not only from the pagan dualistic thought of his day, but also the tendency in our day to compartmentalize the human constitution. Love is informed by knowledge, and knowledge is informed by love. Put them together, we arrive at the kind of discernment that results in the kind of perspective that yields good godly decisions.

There is little doubt that in our world, making godly decisions, or even knowing how to properly analyze a thorny situation, is a difficult yet regular experience. Paul is very helpful to us here in Philippians, particularly as it relates to what love looks like in difficult relationships.

For example, how should we handle working for an unethical boss? How should we handle a difficult spouse? What should our response be to a hurtful sibling? Scripture gives us the virtue of perseverance, but also dramatically gives cases where separation is necessary. How are we to know which posture is correct at any point in time in any given relationship? The Bible is not a cookbook with point by point instructions on how to deal with the myriad of difficult situations we can find ourselves in. What does love look like in cases like this? It is here that Paul helps us.

Many of us operate with certain default settings, and this certainly holds true in regards to our response to difficult people. For some, the immediate response to a toxic relationship is to cut it off and remove one self from the situation. For others, the response is to stick it out at all costs, because of fear of making waves, rocking the boat, and creating tension and friction. These responses are not confined to individuals. The church at large also tends to adopt such postures, with some regularly ringing the bell of separation, while others insist on 'togetherness' at all cost.

As we've said, both postures can be biblically supported in a vacuum, but it is precisely because Scripture supports both postures that we should be wary of adopting either posture as some kind of universal rule of the cosmos. For Paul, in order to discern what is best in difficult situations, love and knowledge must both be part of the equation, with both mutually informing the other. Paul tells us that in part, what abounding love looks like in tough spots is influenced by the degree to which our love is growing through knowledge. Rightly loving difficult people in difficult situations requires discernment that is informed by knowledge. Heart and mind working together to rightly inform the will.

It is through godly discernment that we determine how long to persevere with some person or situation. Discernment helps us avoid erring in one of two directions. It is possible for people to err in separating too quickly from a situation, and also to err in persevering too long in a situation. It is godly discernment informed by knowledge that guides what love looks like in these situations. Most separations in the home and church are sinful, but not all are. For those who are struggling with where to draw the line and how much to commit, Paul offers us some sage counsel. Do not trust your feelings to the exclusion of knowledge - that's not discernment. Don't compartmentalize or marginalize the faculties you possess in formulating solid responses to difficult spots. It only makes sense that difficult situations that tax our whole being should be met with a godly response that takes the faculties of the whole being into account. By linking love and knowledge, Paul gives us a realistic, sensible, and biblical rationale to engage all of ourselves in the difficult task of successfully making godly decisions in a fallen world. The health of ourselves and the health of the church warrant following Paul's grid.

Hospitality Lectures Online

2008-01-10T13:06:00.001-08:00

I've mentioned in previous blog entries that starting in January 2008, I would be teaching an adult Sunday school course at my church on Christian hospitality. The course will be between 10-12 weeks, and I will have a lecture script for each week. These lessons are now available online. Interested readers can follow the 'My Hospitality Course' link on the right side of the blog page. At the time of this blog post, I've only completed the first 4 lectures, so other lectures will be incorporated into the overall pdf document that the blog links to. The handouts I give to the attendees each week are the lecture scripts in outline form.

The church I attend has been very gracious in not only allowing me to teach the course, but to make the lectures available online. Last Sunday was our first class, and we had a good turnout. I am very excited about the material, and not only teaching it to others, but learning from them as well.

The Situation in Kenya and Uganda

2008-01-02T08:05:00.000-08:00

For the past several days, a Ugandan reverend in the Anglican Church and his wife have been staying with us. We rang in the New Year together, toured Washington DC together, and introduced them to several of our friends, some of whom are taking a direct missionary/ministry interest in Uganda. Their time with us was a high point of our year, even though 2008 is only a day old. I knew them from my days at seminary. We started out in summer Greek together (talk about a bonding experience!), and during the course of the 3 years I was there, we became very close. As much as anyone I know, these two wonderful people from Uganda represent the real deal when it comes to Christian conviction, joy, and vibrancy.

But as wonderful as our time together has been these last few days, it was saddened by the recent news coming out of central Africa. The situation in Kenya is clearly deteriorating. The recent presidential election was very close, and there have been many accusations from both sides of vote rigging and election corruption. This has resulted in tribal violence that has turned ugly. It has been widely reported that 50 people and perhaps more who were seeking sanctuary from the violence in a church outside Nairobi were burned alive and killed. What has not been widely reported is that Uganda is also being impacted by what is happening in Kenya. Most of Uganda's national petroleum supply comes through Kenya, and this supply has been severely cut off due to the tribal violence in Kenya. In addition, Kenyan refugees are already fleeing west towards Uganda and will probably enter Uganda in great numbers if peace and order are not quickly restored in Kenya.

My Ugandan friend told me that what is happening in Kenya right now resembles the beginnings of the Rwandan genocide in the 90s, in that the tribal dynamic is very similar. Things in Kenya have clearly not deteriorated to that point yet, but it is possible that it might get that bad. The mere possibility of another Rwanda should be getting all of us on our knees.

The church needs to be in fervent prayer for Kenya and Uganda. Only God can overcome long-standing tribal grudges and frustrations with peace and reconciliation. The Rwandan genocide educated the world about how lethal these kinds of conflicts can be, and how quickly madness can consume an entire country. The stakes in Kenya are very high, and things are very critical at the moment. We need to pray that God will intervene before the situation gets completely out of control and chaos is allowed to reign. We need to pray that the church, as God's prophetic voice, will reiterate the basic Christian belief that all people are made in the image of God, and will insist that people be treated with the dignity that such a status requires.

Hail to the Skins!

2007-12-30T17:04:00.000-08:00

A long suffering DC sports fan is very happy tonight! Onward to Seattle! Go Skins! The city you represent is very proud of you.

An Expression of Thanks

2007-12-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

It snowed here yesterday and last night. The usual traffic paralysis set in, and it took me nearly 2 hours to go 9 miles to work yesterday morning. Such circumstances are rarely conducive to feeling thankful for much of anything. But as I saw snow crews working the streets late into the night, I was once again reminded of the many everyday people who do the heavy lifting that allow white collar folks like me to do what I do. So today I give thanks to:

1) Firefighters who save homes, protect forests, and risk their lives each time they go out.

2) Snow removal crews who keep crazy hours during snow season to keep roads clear not only so that people can get to work, but also so that people can get to hospitals, airports, and vulnerable loved ones. Imagine the chaos of the pre-snow grocery store rush multiplied by 6 or 7, and that's what we would have if snow crews weren't doing their job.

3) Power company employees, who likewise keep crazy hours in the aftermath of violent storms that knock out power on a wide scale. Particularly in winter, when having to sleep in a house without power on a bitterly cold night can be life threatening, crews who subject themselves to the cold so that we might have warmth often become the most important people on earth.

4) Cleaning crews, who clean offices, homes, and high-rises. The bathrooms we use are useable because of them. Office building lobbys are safe from people slipping on water and salt because of them. Children who get their hands and mouths into everything aren't constantly sick in part because of the job cleaning crews do. Try living in a place that is dirty, scummy, and clearly not sanitary to get a sense of what life would be like without these people.

5) Our military, especially those stationed overseas. Regardless of how one feels about war in general or any war in particular, we should all be able to appreciate the immense sacrifice that comes from being separated from home and family for long periods of time doing difficult duty. Military personnel who don't get to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with their families, who have to miss the birth of their child, or are unable to be present during a family crisis at home pay an enormous price in wearing the uniform and going wherever their commander tells them to go.

6) Taxi and tow truck drivers, who get us from place to place when we are separated from our normal modes of transportation. Believe me, there is no greater sight when you're sitting at an airport at 3am than an available taxi cab. And there is no greater sight when you are stranded somewhere than a tow truck that can assist you.

7) School bus drivers, who put up with an unbelievable amount of crap everyday in order to get kids to school. Think about it - driving a bus as the only adult with 30-50 often unruly kids behind you to get them to school safely where they might learn the kind of skills they need to have a bright future. Is that worthy of thanks? You betcha.

8) Postal workers, who deliver the mail. Some of the most important things we ever experience are directly linked to the mail. College acceptance letters, wedding invitations, baby announcements, and assorted other vital paperwork all bring our postal worker into the loop of our lives. Even in our day of internet banking and online e-cards, it is still the case that the mail is critically important in our day to day lives.

This is my 'thinking out loud' list, though I'm sure it's very incomplete. It's also worth remembering that many folks who perform these jobs are working class folks and immigrants who don't live nearly as well off as most of us do. Though my thanks to them is very inadequate, I offer it to them in high gratitude for all they do.

What other folks are worthy of thanks that work thankless jobs?

The Early Church as Conspiracy

2007-12-04T15:11:00.000-08:00

Before we leave the topic of conspiracy alone for a while, it's worth taking some time to see one particular way the postmodern metanarrative of conspiracy has invaded the field of biblical scholarship.

Traditionally, it was thought that in the early church, heresy arose out of a milieu of theological orthodoxy, such that orthodoxy was fairly established and quantifiable against various strands of heresy. Then Walter Bauer came along at the turn of the 20th century and argued that the early church dynamic was actually reversed from the traditional understanding. Bauer argued (almost exclusively from historical theory) that in fact, heresy predated orthodoxy in the early church, and that what we now know as Christian orthodoxy was something that was developed as a political power play to defeat and drive out the dissenters. Bauer's thesis has been enormously influential up to the present day. It was based on Bauer's rubric that Harnack could argue that the Christian canon as we know it today was not something that was largely agreed upon by the early church very early on, but was a later response of desperation to the threat of Marcion, the great heretic of the early church (notice how heresy precedes orthodoxy in this theory). And even though Bauer's theory has been systematically discredited in numerous articles and book contributions over the years, and even though Harnack's theory of canon development has also been eroded by more solid patristic and manuscript investigation, the average Christian can still go to any Barnes & Noble and find books that see the early church through various strains of conspiracy.

Whether it's Dan Brown, Elaine Pagels, or Bart Ehrman, a conspiratorial picture of the early church has become the accepted paradigm of interpretation in many quarters. While their pet theories and emphases differ (Ehrman has actually been quite vociferous in his objection to Brown's work), they all share some overriding convictions about the supposedly sinister nature of the early church. Key to all of them is the idea that at the beginning of the Christian movement, there was a tolerance of considerable diversity of belief on basic doctrinal questions that was subsequently muzzled by an institutional hierarchy bent on coercively enforcing doctrinal conformance with what was in their best interests politically and ecclesiastically. From reading these authors, one gets the vision of a once free and tolerant exchange of good-willed people being eradicated by an ominous ecclesiastical force seeking to consolidate its power and gain total control over the emerging Christian movement by defeating all potential threats. Put simply, Christian orthodoxy is the byproduct of a conspiracy. What each of these authors advocate, among other things, is that orthodoxy is only one legitimate form of Christianity, and we owe it to ourselves to rediscover and fully appreciate the other (more) legitimate forms that were suppressed by the early church through a conspiracy. For all three authors, one way to do this is to reopen the canon and not only add other 'early' writings that were supposedly wrongly suppressed, but also remove certain writings currently in the canon that are either supposedly corrupted or too situational to be anything other than dangerous when considered canonical. A conspiracy metanarrative can take us a long way if we accept its presuppositions. But should we?

As folks like Bock have pointed out, it is quite depressing that modern scholars like Pagels and Ehrman continue to feed from the thoroughly discredited trough of Bauer to get to their own starting points. Part of why Bauer's theory, and all subsequent theories that are built on his work, don't hold water is that they are almost entirely speculative and carry precious little in the way of hard evidence to back them up. Bauer built his theory on historical abstractions that have been proven to be wrong more than once. Brown, Pagels, and Ehrman have all uncritically capitulated to the spirit of the age and imported it back onto the 1st century rather than doing any hard testing of the legitimacy of such an approach. And most important of all, the conspiracy rubric doesn't pass the test of Scripture:

Acts 2.42 - the early Christians devoted themselves to "the apostles teachings".

1 Cor 15 - Paul says he's passing on the heart of gospel teaching that he himself received, presumably from the apostles since he mentions several of them by name.

Jude 4 talks about the need to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.

2 Tim 1 - Paul urges Timothy to hold fast to the "pattern of sound teaching" that Paul had imparted to him.

1 John 2.24 - what the audience has "heard from the beginning" is to remain in them.

1 John 3.11/2 John 1.5-6 - the command to love one another has been in force "from the beginning".

This is just a sampling of texts that strongly imply if not declare outright that there was a body of teaching in place very early on that was commonly agreed upon in relative unity. Even Peter, whose relationship with Paul was once strained (Gal 2) regarded Paul's writings as "Scripture" (2 Peter 3). While it is clear that the early church was plagued with a variety of doctrinal challenges, we do not find a collegial "let's all get along and affirm each other's beliefs even though we can't agree on much" attitude that Pagels and Ehrman insist was the early church social grid prior to some grand (though conveniently undocumented) ecclesiastical crackdown. In Paul's first canonical letter, he doesn't treat the Judaizers as sincere Christians who have an equally legitimate expression of the faith. To the contrary, he regards them as propagating a different religion (Gal 1.7) that has bewitched the church (3.1), and that they should emasculate themselves as a result (5.12). The apostles drew very clear and sometimes very public distinctions between orthodoxy and its varied competitors. Such distinctions were not first introduced through some later elaborate institutional bulwark that sought to crack down on the kind of doctrinal diversity that had previously been allowable.

The NT presents to us a doctrinal core that was understood very early on, and honestly portrays the struggles to uphold it. Pagels and Ehrman, in attempting to blame a big bad amorphous ecclesial magisterium caricature for the orthodoxy they don't like, have simply masked the fact that their real problem is with the apostles themselves as well as with Jesus who likewise drew sharp distinctions between himself and other supposedly faithful religious expressions of his day. They have imported a disdain for exclusivity and well defined normative truth into their analysis and have created an early church conspiracy backed up more by banal quotes like "History is written by the winners" than by actual research into the patristic and early Mediterranean encyclopedia.

This is how the postmodern metanarrative of conspiracy is put to work in religious studies today. As Christians, we have to be mindful of how scholars of all stripes import their metanarratives and worldview imperatives onto the biblical text and surrounding 1st century social world and force it to fit. Put simply, we are well advised to be skeptical of the modern skeptic and align ourselves with Jude in contending for the faith once delivered to the saints.

Conspiracy Theories - PoMo's Metanarrative Impulse

2007-11-29T08:32:00.000-08:00

Don't let anyone convince you that postmodernism ushered in the end of metanarratives. PoMo writers and analysts can claim all day long that postmodernism rejects overarching metanarrative notions of understanding reality in favor of radical individualistic understandings of life. But that doesn't really make it so. It has sometimes been said that PoMo is really just a logical extension of the modernism it supposedly rejects, and I happen to think there's a lot to this. The postmodern obsession with 'conspiracy' eloquently demonstrates both its commonality and divergence from modernism.

Conspiracy theories are often attempts to explain and organize random data points under a common (and usually sinister) larger umbrella reality. People on both the right and left adopt a conspiracy mentality with equal gusto. The 9/11 conspiracy theory, the JFK conspiracy theory, the one world government conspiracy theory, and the vast right-wing conspiracy are all examples of what postmodern metanarratives look like. These alleged conspiracies and other theories like them are all attempts to construct some larger explanatory story that tries to bring all or some portion of reality together. Seemingly isolated events and realities are not isolated at all once the conspiracy mindset is employed, but are part of a much larger interconnected reality - ie: a metanarrative. Lest anyone think that such conspiracy theories are the exception rather than the rule, one should take a few minutes to consult the internet. A conspiracy grid is the mindset of our day. In the arena of politics, many supporters of Republican (really Libertarian) candidate Ron Paul are absolutely convinced that there is a conspiracy among the media to squelch his campaign. This sounds eerily familiar to what supporters of Democrat Howard Dean were saying during the 2004 election cycle as his campaign was going down in flames. The intent is the same in both cases - there must be some grand larger (and darkly sinister) reason why things aren't going the way we think they should.

I'm not saying that culture has embraced the conspiracy mentality solely for the purpose of finding explanatory comfort in metanarrative. But I do think it's one reason behind the conspiracy craze. Metanarratives soothe many human tendencies that are shaped by the whims of the age. During the modernistic period, the great optimism that was bestowed on human nature and the ability of humans to eventually figure out all reality resulted in very optimistic metanarratives that exalted universal reason, science, and epistemic exploration by exalting the human. The major change between modernism and postmodernism is not that metanarratives are no longer useful, but that they are useful in a different way. With PoMo's often depressing appraisal of the human condition, metanarrative conspiracy theories are dark, sinister, and often justify human fear of power consolidation rather than exalting the pursuit of grand global ideals and goals.

Let me hasten to add that PoMo, despite its rampant cynicism and skepticism regarding human motives, ironically does exalt (in a rather twisted way) human beings more than modernism did. Why? Because the individualistic stress of PoMo actually bestows greater faith in the individual to construct his own reality than modernism ever did. PoMo's extremist pursuit of epistemic individual power (the power of the individual to define reality for themselves) is constantly at odds with its fear of power accumulation and consolidation, and it's a dilemma that PoMo has never been able to overcome. But the incessant urge toward the conspiracy mindset demonstrates (to me at least) that even PoMo's hyper-stress on individual reality has not quenched the desire, even of the negative version in our PoMo age, of trying (or needing) to see reality as a larger interconnected whole, rather than random, non-purposeful, unrelated pieces that happen to chaotically coexist. This is a very delicate tension, but actually makes some sense. So often, conspiracy theories are employed to try to explain larger reality by opining about how a few extremely powerful elites are supposedly pulling the global strings to define reality for the rest of us. Such theories are then used as justifications for our fear of others wrongly invading our own reality and compromising our own turf (this kind of thinking has certainly come to dominate certain theological systems of thought as well). This then reinforces PoMo's prime directive of non-interference in individual self-determination, including the supposed right of the individual to create his own little reality without outside coercion or consideration. Far from being eliminated, conspiracy, the PoMo metanarrative of choice, becomes a tool by which individual resistance to outside authority is cultivated and nurtured. The optimistic modernism age had positive metanarratives as virtuous goals for society to shoot for. The pessimistic postmodern age has negative metanarratives to act as warnings of what we should be fighting against. In both cases, metanarratives mirror the spirit of the age and reinforce it. To the extent that the Christian metanarrative has lost its fire, metanarratives like conspiracy fill the void that's left behind.

The challenge of the Church today is not to convince people of the value of and need for metanarratives. The supposedly anti-metanarrative PoMo generation is operating with its own metanarratives just like every age before it. The challenge is to offer better and more solid metanarratives to a culture that I believe has grown tired of the "it's true for you but not for me" wasteland we find ourselves in. The challenge is not to make the concept of metanarrative acceptable again; it's to make the Christian metanarrative the one that beats out all other cultural competitors. To undo the sinister conspiracy theory mindset in favor of the Colossians 1 metanarrative is heavy lifting to be sure. But that's our task, and we can succeed once we better understand what the true lay of the land is.

Some Personal Stuff

2007-11-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

Every now and again, I do a post like this to keep interested readers informed of what's up in my neck of the boonies. A few things:

1) The adoption process is proceeding. All our paperwork has been submitted and is currently being translated over in Kazakhstan. Once the translation process is complete, the documents will (oddly) be delivered to the Kazakh government via their consulate in NYC. No, I don't understand, but that's the deal. The good news is that we've been told by our agency that we might get an invitation to travel to Kazakhstan as early as next February. We'll see if this actually pans out, but every indication we've gotten is that the adoption might happen sooner rather than later. We're obviously very excited and are trying to keep things in balance if it turns out that more snares are in the offing.

2) The Christianity Explored course that we've been hosting since September recently concluded. I'm pleased with the way it went. We reliably had around 15-17 people in our home each week, and best of all, nobody peeled off even though it was a 10 week class. My hope is that this class might provide a good foundation for subsequent rollouts and give us some momentum for evangelism as we head into the new year. We are hosting a Christmas dinner party on Saturday 12/15 for the group members, and we've invited some other folks as well. Any readers who wish to come to the party are very welcome. I relish the opportunity to meet new people, so don't be bashful if you wanna come.

3) Starting in January, I will be teaching a Sunday school course at our church titled "Christian Hospitality - A Way of Life". I still have to prepare most of my lesson plans, and I'm starting to stress about it (tick tock, tick tock). But I'm really looking forward to it. As I say in the introductory lesson plan, "Martha Stewart didn't invent hospitality, and perhaps more heretically, she hasn't perfected it either." Christian hospitality has become my main ministry and academic interest dating back to my last year at seminary, and I'm really looking forward to this upcoming class where I will have the opportunity to continue deepening my understanding of hospitality along with the other folks who might attend. Again, if anyone is interested in attending the course who resides here locally but doesn't attend Faith Church, please get in touch with me to find out more. If the course goes well and people respond positively to the material, I may try and submit my course lessons to 3Mil for publication, or at least try to make them available on the church's website for others to peruse.

It is a busy but exciting time.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

This week, most Americans will 'give thanks' as an act of civic custom. And while the initial act of giving thanks over 2 centuries ago had the divine as its object, today, many who give thanks simply feel thankful without directing their thanks to anything, or any One, in particular. Thanksgiving is the great American holiday precisely because it is a holiday that can be celebrated by everyone in any way one chooses. It can be religious or secular, selfless or selfish, and even accommodates carnivores and vegetarians alike these days. Thanksgiving, while ostensibly being about good communal times with family and friends, has largely given way to being the pinnacle of pluralism and individualistic preference. There is nothing more American than being able to express generic thanks without any point of reference for our thanks to which one has to commit.

As a good American, I celebrate Thanksgiving and enjoy it immensely. Why? Because as a good Christian, I give thanks to the God of all blessings. I give thanks to God the way David does in 1 Chronicles 16. Psalms 100, 107, 118 and 136 are all psalms of thanks to the God of every good and great thing. Repeatedly in the Gospels, Jesus himself gives thanks to God for loaves of bread and fishes, acknowledging that even seemingly ordinary and common provisions for sustaining life emanate from a loving God who makes unceasing provision for his creation. Paul continues this practice in Acts 27.35 & 1 Cor 11.24. Conversely, Paul cites a lack of thanks to God as a characteristic of those who are foolish and depraved (Rom 1.21). Put simply, Paul says we should thank God for absolutely everything (Eph 5.20, Col 3.17).

Properly 'giving thanks', therefore, has two basic properties. First, it is directed to the One who ultimately deserves it because he provides all the reasons and gifts that legitimize our desire to give thanks. Second, giving thanks is not something we do one day out of the year. God does not limit his grace and provision to one day a year. Therefore, we should not hold back our gratitude and thankfulness to the one day of the year that our culture has decided we should collectively give thanks. We should be thanking God daily, hourly, waking minute by waking minute. How else are we supposed to truly thank God for everything? To make this aspect of Thanksgiving a daily event is to commit ourselves to ever deepening our appreciation for God and going further in bringing glory to him than we will ever do otherwise.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Trust

2007-11-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

We have a problem in the church today, even the evangelical church. It is a problem of trust.

It is well known that as children of the Enlightenment, it has become our nature to question, doubt, and distrust authority. There is no doubt that such distrust has entered the field of theology with full force. In particular, the Bible has been the most obvious and sustained target of distrust, with scholars, pastors, and laypeople alike all openly casting doubt on the authority and trustworthiness of the Bible. Distrust of the Bible has moved along the scholarly waves, where modernistic naturalism gave way to manuscript evidence, which gave way to textual criticism, which has now largely given way to postmodern critical concepts of canon and/or interpretive agnosticism a la McLaren. And with each wave has come an encyclopedia of (usually) conservative responses that question the trustworthiness of the latest scholarly fancy in view.

From a conservative theological vantage point, evangelicals today have formidable scholarly tools at their disposal to reject efforts to discredit the Bible, or to seriously truncate its applicability and relevance. Along with that, evangelicals are in an increasingly strong position to defend their belief in the trustworthiness of the Bible with intellectual integrity. This is a very good thing, and represents a considerable advance in evangelical scholarship over where we were 30-40 years ago. But along with this has come a problem that needs to be addressed.

While questions about the trustworthiness of the Bible will always be with us, we cannot, while rightfully trying to defend Scripture's trustworthiness, ignore an arguably bigger 'trust' question. Increasingly, the trust issue in Christianity is not centered on the Bible, but on God. For many people, the question is not "Is the Bible trustworthy?", it's "Is God trustworthy?" I would submit that the latter question is the more important and enduring question of the two.

Scripture repeatedly declares God to be trustworthy. I'm not crazy about the whole 'life verse' concept, but if I had a life verse, it would be Nahum 1.7 - "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who TRUST in him." So it's true that one way to demonstrate that God is trustworthy is to demonstrate that the Bible that says God is trustworthy is also trustworthy. Once that is demonstrated, we often think it's a simple matter of saying, "Look, the Bible says God can be trusted, so that's how we know God can be trusted." And while on one level this is certainly true and deserves to be pointed out at length, it is also true that simply reading words about God has the danger of depersonalizing the reality of God's presence and reliability in not only our lives, but in the lives of those who struggle with the trust issue. In the end, I think it's clear that we need to do more than trust the Bible.

Let me be clear. I believe the Bible is trustworthy, that we should trust it, and that we make a serious mistake if we don't (1Cor 10). But I do think there can be a difference between trusting the Bible and trusting God, and that we need to be careful not to substitute a trust in the Bible for trusting God with our steps. This is where I think the evangelical church needs to improve its preaching and teaching. We have spent so much time and effort (rightfully) in defending the trustworthiness of the Bible that we have spent far less time flushing out a deep robust theology of God's own trustworthiness. And yet, this latter concern is tons more prominent in the pages of Scripture itself than the former concern.

Many books of the Bible both directly and indirectly touch on the issue of God's trustworthiness (entire sections of the Psalms are almost obsessed with this theme). This is not a new question. And often times in the Bible, the remedy for doubts, while including remembrances of God's covenantal and written promises, also involves the aspects of prayer and remembrance of very personal blessings and felt assurances given by God to refresh the hopes of the saints. Just as in Bible days, those of us today who are seeking to demonstrate God's trustworthiness (or to come to know it for the first time) must expand their sphere of trust to include things other than the Bible that nonetheless complement the Bible. A question about God's trustworthiness is an intimately personal and relational question - perhaps the most intimate question that can be asked. We have to understand that responding to such an intensely relational question exclusively by pointing to words on a page will often not be entirely adequate any more than it was for the people in the Bible. To trust God involves more than trusting the Bible. It doesn't exclude trust in the Bible, but it includes other things as well. We know this is true. It's the reason why we can trust every word the Bible says, and still be hesitant to do what it says because we don't trust God the same way we trust the Bible.

If all we do is trust the Bible, and equate this with trusting God and end our striving with trust right there, our trust in God will not set us on fire for the Gospel. We cannot simply say that we trust God just because we trust the Bible, and think that ends the issue. It doesn't, because if it did, the Christian life wouldn't be as much of a struggle of trust as it often is. The evangelical church must continue stressing the trustworthiness of the Bible. But in doing so, we must return to an even greater emphasis on the trustworthiness of God not only in ensuring the trustworthiness of the Bible, but also to stress the intensely personal applicability that a real relational trust brings about. A trust in God and a trust in Scripture cannot be fully separated, as if you can truly and authentically have one without the other. But they are distinct and should not be equated. We are in personal relationship with God. It is God to whom we have appealed for forgiveness. It is God who saves. Ultimately, it is in God where our trust must be, and while this trust includes a trust in the Bible, it is not exclusively that. The sooner we make these kinds of distinctions, the sooner the evangelical church will be able to more fully model the joy and peace of trust to a culture that has been ravaged by the chaos of distrust and desperately wants something better.

I Love the Rain

2007-10-26T17:21:00.001-07:00

I know many people don't like it when it rains, and that there are some folks who get the blues when it's rainy. But I've always loved the rain.

I think it would be very interesting for someone to do an in-depth study on the Bible's 'Theology of Water'. Of course, the chances are good that someone has done such a study and has published something on it, and I'm just not aware of it. But as with many things, my surface level impression is that Scripture's theology of water is rather robust. There are a number of times when water is expressive of divine wrath and judgment. The Genesis flood obviously comes to mind, but there are also a number of psalms (Ps. 42 as one example) where water seems to be portrayed as an ominous force. On the other hand, water is also expressive of abundant life and blessing. The great final vision of Rev 22 of the waters flowing out from the new temple providing abundant life is the most obvious example.

In my lifetime, I've personally seen both sides of this coin. I've seen terrible droughts and have watched the beauty of creation literally dry up and die from a lack of water. On the other hand, I've also seen the destructive power of water; especially when I went into the New Orleans flood zone on a missions trip shortly after Katrina.

So I know that water has the power to be destructive and harmful. Yet, I still love the rain. To me, rain is the great giver of life to virtually all living things on this planet. When we're in the midst of drought, as we have been for most of this year, I find myself getting very sad watching plant life die, and the landscape turn brown and dusty. It's always a sober reminder that life is fragile, and that self-sufficiency might sound good, but doesn't really work over the long haul.

I love to watch the rain. For me, it's one of those very simple pleasures that brings joy to my life. Rain relaxes me and ironically makes me feel pleasurably small. When I watch the rain, I feel like I'm watching life itself. The earth and everything in it is being nourished and fed, and there are times when I totally get lost in the moment of seeing God's creation and ecosystem at work right in front of me. After a long day of working hard on supposedly important vocational concerns, I discover my smallness when I sit on the porch in the evening and watch the rain. I always consider it an enormous privilege that God has allowed me to glimpse his divine stewardship over his creation, and this never fails to evoke rejoicing over God's goodness in making constant and regular provision for his creation.

As Colossians 1 says, all of creation was created by God and for God, and it is through God the Son that all things hold together. While much of what God does to sustain his creation is invisible and goes unnoticed, the rain of life is the most captivating way I see the truth of Colossians 1.

I love the rain, and I love the God who makes the rain even more.

The Thirst for Identity in an Impersonal World

2007-10-18T07:54:00.001-07:00

Recently, Lesley Stahl did a segment on 60 Minutes that addressed the latest identity craze - finding one's ultimate country/tribe/clan of origin through DNA analysis and comparison. Stahl interviewed a woman who had undergone such analysis. Initially, it appeared there was a definite DNA match, and that the woman could trace her origin back to Senegal (I believe, I can't quite remember now). Upon learning this, the woman was euphoric, believing that a whole new doorway had been definitively opened for her to better understand her identity. Almost immediately, she felt a sense of belonging and better understanding her place in the world. With this information, it seemed like the possibilities were endless in terms of researching her origins, reconstructing family history over many generations, and feeling connected with a whole community both past and present. The woman seemed to take this is as a watershed event in her life.

But perhaps unfortunately, Stahl wasn't done. Stahl then proceeded to provide this woman with other DNA analyses that pointed in different directions regarding identity and origins. One analysis indicated that her DNA pointed to the Ivory Coast as the place of origin. Another analysis said Ghana. It quickly became apparent that DNA origin mapping was not an exact science, and the woman was clearly a bit distraught that DNA analysis seemed unable to help with definitively giving her some sense of identity.

I took away a number of observations from watching this piece. First, these DNA mapping companies are very smart and will make a mint doing what they do. They are smart enough to realize that there is a potentially enormous market of people, particularly in the West, who would jump at the chance to learn more about where they came from. But why is this? Why does there seem to be such a powerful urge to answer questions of origin? This leads to my second observation.

Western society is increasingly losing touch with the personal and with the grounding of community. We live in a virtual world, where the virtual is largely replacing the real, and where beauty is literally being bulldozed for the sake of functionality. One only need reflect on the Springfield Mixing Bowl for a few minutes to see how the impersonal functionality of brute pragmatism has largely torn away the community fabric that once existed here. Functional relevance has come to dictate identity rather than the other way around. And people in increasing numbers likewise feel bulldozed and uprooted from community grounding, and this makes them hunger for a sense of belonging and identity.

In the church, pragmatism and functionality (for the sake of 'relevance') have become the accepted idols that are embraced. Pragmatic functionality might look different from church to church, but it's all the same in philosophy. Whether we're talking about the slicked-up corporate-style megachurch experience, or the equally calculated emerging church fad, identity and community are largely contrived and technique-driven, and mostly shallow. Churches have largely embraced the secular model of allowing their identity to be defined by relevance, so that 'relevance' (usually defined on the culture's terms) sets the agenda for the church and defines its identity. But of course, it's not difficult to see that this kind of identity is not much of an identity at all, because it's not grounded in anything perennial. In the end, the church itself looks just as rudderless and uprooted as the impersonal culture that drives so many people to hunger for something deeper.

This is largely why people are looking elsewhere to gain some sense of place, identity, and belonging. What churches, particularly liberal ones, don't understand is that most people need and want something more than flippant acceptance. They want a vibrant community with roots and origins - and challenging and conforming responsibilities. By definition, a community is some group that while containing differences, is nonetheless bound by unique and commonly agreed upon traits that are traceable back to previous generations. But when a church swears off its own heritage, abandons its theological tradition, and puts all the focus on present relevance and defining their future by what the culture might value next, there's no grounding; there's no tangible identity; there's no lasting sense of belonging; responsibilities are ethereal; there's no origin to commune with that roots the community. This means that the whole idea of identity in community loses its robust characteristics (identity), and becomes a fleeting (uprooted) enterprise marked by chasing (functionality) after the wind (impersonal).

If the church truly wants to be 'relevant', it needs to stop letting 'relevance' define its identity. A great paradox of the church that has often borne true is that the harder the church tries to be culturally relevant, the less effective it is in being culturally relevant. The church needs to know who she is in Christ. She needs to understand her own identity robustly, in community with its theological tradition past and present. In our day of having our sense of belonging uprooted by impersonal functionality, there is little the church can offer that would be more attractive than having its own robust sense of belonging define its relevance to a culture that has no sense of belonging. But doing this requires the church to ditch the arrogance that thinks it knows better than previous generations. The church must once again get in touch with its own origins and letting its identity be influenced thusly, rather than being totally obsessed with the here and now of doing church, and all the faddish flavors of the month that go with it. Churches that do the latter are only offering inconclusive DNA analyses to those who are hungering for something deeper and personal. The thought that the church would keep people from finding true humanity and identity in Christ because it's lost its own identity by letting cultural fads set its agenda ought to be scaring the dickens out of every pastor in every church. The fact that few seem to be concerned at all is very telling, and explains much.

Barth's View of Sin

2007-10-12T15:24:00.001-07:00

At the outset, let me loudly proclaim the refrain of Sherry MacKenzie: "I'm not a Barthian; I'm not a Barthian; I'm not a Barthian!" But let me also say that along with Dr. MacKenzie, I don't think Barth had horns or a pointy tail either. And while I must part company with Barth on a number of serious things, there are ways in which Barth can be helpful. That doesn't mean we should follow Barth wholeheartedly, but it does mean we should listen with discernment in the anticipation that we might learn some things of value from him.

One area where this is the case regards Barth's view of sin. Again, I'm not suggesting that our view of sin should align in totality with Barth. To the contrary, sin is a very complicated topic with many facets and many layers. Barth's view is one take on sin that while not capturing sin in its totality, is nonetheless a thoughtful perspective that is due our consideration.

Barth thinks about sin in ways that most of us don't. Barth develops his doctrine of sin around the concepts of 'pride' and 'sloth'. Like everything, Barth sees sin through lens of Christ. For Barth, sin is everything Christ is not. So from this vantage point, Barth appeals to the great christological hymn of Philippians 2 as the basis for understanding sin as being the opposite of Christ. In Phil. 2, Christ is depicted as emptying and humbling himself and being diligently obedient to the point of death. For Barth, Christ is, among other things, humble and diligent. So for Barth, a good way to think about sin is in opposite concepts from what Christ is shown to be. Instead of humble, sin is defined by pride. Instead of diligence, sin is defined by sloth. Pride is the opposition to the humble condescending movement of Christ out of the heavenly realms and into a world of darkness taking on human flesh. Sloth is the refusal to awaken to the new found freedom we may now possess of being truly and actively human through the fellowship of Christ. Christ shows us a new way of being human (the way of love and obedience) and creates a new fellowship with humanity. For Barth, sloth is the failure to embrace this new way of life.

For Barth, sloth is easier to hide than pride, but it's no less sinister. Sloth is inattentiveness toward our responsibilities, and our highest responsibility as humans is to wake up and listen to God. The book of Hebrews in particular tends to see unbelief in the form of laziness. For Barth, if we really understand what sloth is, we will see that it is the indifference of hate. It's not just that we aren't paying attention out of tolerant indifference. It's that we're ignoring God out of hate because we don't want to be illuminated by God or conformed to him. As one example, the sinful failures of omission highlighted in the Good Samaritan parable resemble Barth's idea of sloth. When sin is defined this way, all of us are incredibly guilty. Proverbs 26.12-16 bring pride and sloth together. People are lazy because they are prideful. People have erected a whole worldview that is counter to God so that they don't have to do what God says, or so they think.

There is much more to be said about sin than what Barth says. If we follow Barth completely, there is the danger of minimizing other aspects of sin, such as unbelief, idolatry, and misery. But Barth's view of sin can be quite helpful when seen as one vantage point of sin. The idea of sin as pride and sloth collaborating to stand in total opposition to the person and work of Christ is thought provoking and worthy of serious reflection. Barth has given us a way of understanding sin that should deepen the understanding we already have, and provides fodder for fruitful examination not only of ourselves, but the world around us. Such a pursuit should inevitably lead to a deepening understanding of the greatness of Christ for conquering it all, and bringing his followers into the same victory in God's good time.

Football Stadiums - America's New Houses of Worship

2007-10-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

How many of you have seen drawings or paintings depicting a time in which a church building was at the center of a town's life? Over the years, I've seen many paintings depicting townspeople converging from all directions upon a church. Whenever I see a painting like this, my interpretation is that the artist is giving us a vision of a church being at the center of the community's life not only geographically, but socially and spiritually as well. It is the place where the whole town comes together to worship in one voice as a faithful community. For some artists, such depictions are not only nostalgic looks at the past (although one wonders how accurate such scenes are), but are also hopeful visions of the future as well.

But in our day, when it comes to discerning what the real centers of worship are in our towns, churches have largely been replaced. Instead of the town embarking on a faithful weekly pilgrimage to a church, the faithful weekly pilgrimage of today is to a very different destination - the football stadium. Whether it be high school, college, or professional, football stadiums are the places to go if one is looking for America's passionate houses of worship today.

This past Sunday after church, I went to FedEx Field to watch my Washington Redskins play host to the Detroit Lions. Along with 90,000 other people, I had a great time as the Skins dominated the game. But for those 4 hours, it was clear to me that I was in a house of worship. People were passionate. People wore jerseys announcing their allegiance to some particular hero on the field. People flocked to the stadium by the thousands from every direction for as far as the eye could see. People cheered with one voice. There was even a marching (praise) band leading the worship after every Redskins score. Instead of people worshipping in community inside a church building, people gathered in the stadium parking lots to experience community tailgating style. People were excited. They were very happy to be there. And the fervency of their loyalty to the Redskins could very fairly be described as a form of worship. FedEx Field has become the great cathedral of Washington DC where the entire town gathers on Sundays to go to worship. And I was among the faithful.

I'm obviously not suggesting that football is bad, and that Christians should swear off football. But I do think we should be paying attention not only to our own attitudes about football, but also to what football has become in our society - and what it has largely replaced. Human beings are built for worship. God made us that way. But as with all things, human beings have largely corrupted this instinct (Romans 1), so that their worship is often misplaced and misdirected. America's Sunday worship ritual in stadiums around the country is an eloquently sad reminder of how far worship has strayed from its proper object. And it is also a sad reminder of how the energy and unbridled passion of real worship that we find in our football cathedrals is largely absent from the Christian cathedrals in our towns. Secular doxology often outdoes true doxology in its passion and praise. And this tells us that something is very wrong.

A Sober Scare

2007-10-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, Reggie Kidd was clobbered by a drunk driver who ran through a red light going 65 mph. On the right side of my blog page, there is a link to Reggie's homepage, and he has put up a picture of the now totaled car he was in when he got hit.

Reggie teaches NT at RTS-Orlando. I had the great privilege of being his teaching assistant during my last semester at seminary, in addition to taking a number of classes with him as part of the MDiv program. In addition to being a formidable scholar (his work on the Pastoral Epistles is first rate), he also has a great talent and passion for music and worship. His recent book With One Voice is a very thoughtful and irenic treatment of worship written for a wide audience. Put simply, while Reggie is not a "big-name" scholar, he is every bit as much of a gift to the church as a Frame or Carson.

Reggie has made a critical impression on my Christian walk. If someone has done their homework, he/she knows that Reggie is on the ball as a Christian thinker. He's one of those guys who you know knows a lot more than you ever will. Yet, when you meet him, he immediately impresses with his humility and gentle spirit. Reggie is not afraid to speak his mind at times, and to say some provocative things that sometimes need to be said. But he's not in the business of pulling power-plays on people, and given his pedigree, that's an extraordinary characteristic. During my time with him, I found him to be very patient and kind. He solicited my opinions, and even more impressively, he respected them even though the distance in maturity and intelligence between him and I was far as east is from west. Many others who have had the privilege of knowing Reggie would probably offer similar testimonies.

It was, therefore, unnerving when I learned that Reggie was on the receiving end of a brutal wreck. As I learned during my time at RTS, seminary is not the place to go if one is seeking a respite from the tragedies of the real world. To the contrary, there was not a single semester when I was there that the seminary community wasn't galvanized by at least one crisis or tragedy that had intruded. What I came to learn was that as hard and difficult as it was, things like Reggie's scare actually deepened our ability to live out RTS's mission of having "A Mind for Truth. A Heart for God."

I am thrilled that Reggie is on the mend. I am thankful that God mercifully protected Reggie and allowed him to walk away from a wreck that could have been fatal. I am pleased that God obviously thinks that his church continues to need Reggie at this point in her history. For my part, fewer things are more obvious than that.

Biblical Balance

2007-10-03T12:04:00.001-07:00

Christianity is a very tough faith to live. One of the reasons this is so is because Scripture stresses realities that seem intractably at odds with each other. The God of the Bible is a God of love. But he is also a God of wrath and judgment. Human beings are depicted is both depraved and dignified. God is portrayed as supremely sovereign over all things big and small, yet, the choices and decisions of human beings are real and seem to matter a great deal. What are we to do with such polarities, and can a proper balance be struck that can inform how we live? The answer is 'yes', but perhaps not in the way we might think.

It is very tempting to look at the love of God and the judgment of God and try to find balance by watering both realities down and settling on what I call a 'mushy middle'. This mushy middle is possible because both concepts have been sufficiently defanged to the point where the polarity that once prevailed no longer exists. By watering down both concepts, we hope to be able to forge some reconciliation between them and achieve balance. But this is not biblical balance at all.

Biblical balance is a much harder notion than the idea of achieving balance through domesticating robust concepts. Biblical balance involves radically stressing both polarities, and living in the tension that this creates. Put simply, finding balance is the much harder exercise of allowing the robust nature of each polarity to juxtapose and augment the other. As I blogged about this past Easter, the crucifixion in particular is wondrous and excrutiating all at once precisely because so many seemingly polar opposites intersect at the Cross - good and evil, love and judgment, mercy and justice, belief and unbelief, etc. The challenge not only of the Cross but all of Christian living is taking Scripture's emphasis on the polar realities seriously and not watering them down where Scripture does not.

This concept of Biblical balance is extremely difficult. We must understand that it's much more comfortable and easy for us to water down or deemphasize certain realities so that we can arrive at an approach to life and doctrine that is clean and neat and doesn't challenge us in any ongoing way. Take any example you want, and we'll see that this is true. The perennial divine sovereignty vs human responsibility debate is a classic example. Rather than radically stressing both realities and living in the tension that this creates, most of us tend to exalt one in part by watering down the other. Neo-Calvinists who so stress the sovereignty of God too often arrive at a paper-thin doctrine of human responsibility. Likewise, those who insist that authentic human responsibility is only possible if human choices are free from interference too often arrive at a paper-thin doctrine of divine sovereignty. This is not biblical balance - it's a cheap way out of being radically challenged by the WHOLE counsel of God. And I would argue that a great majority of the church today is taking this easy way out on a whole host of critical issues. Is it any wonder that we often have trouble seeing Kingdom power in our midst?

Human beings are not only creatures of habit, they also seem to long for a certain simplicity. Now let me be clear, as one who has read many commentaries and theological treatises over the years, I don't contend that people's elaborate attempts to sacrifice certain realities for the sake of exalting other realities is simple. But I do contend that it is a far simpler and more comfortable road to take than to be faithful to the whole counsel of God and affirm all of what it says with the same vigor that it itself does. People don't like living in the tension. It's inherently uncomfortable, it is often unnerving, and it's not nearly as self-affirming as the watered down approach in making us think we pretty much have a grasp of Christianity, what it teaches, and what it demands.

I'm not saying there aren't aspects of Christianity that are simple - there are, that's part of the beauty of it. But I am asking whether the quest for a comfortable simplicity is really the highest goal we should be shooting for? To me, a vigorous pursuit of the truth is the highest goal, and I have discovered that truth is sometimes very complex and decidedly beyond our ability to easily grasp. A quest for simplicity will inevitably compromise our quest for truth, and for those of us who claim to be faithful to all the Bible teaches, this is simply not an option. As difficult as it is, we have to be willing to be challenged by ALL of what Scripture teaches, and not appoint ourselves as arbiters of what can and cannot be watered down when it comes to handling God's Word. We have to be willing to stress what Scripture stresses, even if the result is that we have to live in the tension that comes with not totally understanding how Scripture's polarities meld together. It's better to do this and stay faithful to Scriptural teachings and achieve biblical balance, than to compromise the inspired words of God in order to avoid being challenged by them and risk upsetting doctrinal schemes that don't insist on hard veridical examination.

Religion, Violence, and The Godfather Saga

2007-09-28T05:58:00.000-07:00

It is well known that images of religion and violence are intertwined throughout key moments of The Godfather saga. At the end of the first movie, Michael Corleone attends a baptism as godfather while his orders to commit the unprecedented murders of top mafia bosses systematically takes place. This theme intensifies somewhat in the second movie, as the young Vito Corleone kills Don Fanucci in early 20th century New York at the same time a prominent priest is administering an outdoor Mass and benediction during the Madonna procession. At the end of the movie, Fredo Corleone is reciting the Hail Mary on a small boat when he is shot in the back of the head on the orders of his brother Michael. The interweaving of religion and violence comes to full fruition in the third and final movie. Again, during a Madonna procession in New York, there is a shootout in which Joey Zasa is killed by Santino Corleone's illegitimate son Vincent. At the end of the movie, as the Corleone family watches Michael's son perform the lead role in Cavalieria Rusticaha (an opera filled with Christian imagery), an assassin (disguised as a priest) quietly kills a number of people and ultimately kills Michael's beloved daughter on the steps of the concert hall. In addition, on the orders of Vincent, a corrupt archbishop is murdered inside the Vatican itself.

This interweaving of religion and violence in all 3 movies has been fodder for a variety of interpretations about what the director, Francis Ford Coppola, is trying to tell us. Is he suggesting that religion and violence go hand in hand? Is he trying to contrast the goodness of religion with the evil of violence? I suspect there are numerous legitimate interpretations of this theme. In the remaining part of this post, allow me to give you my interpretation, and then comment on why this whole issue might have applicability beyond a coffeehouse debate.

I don't think Coppola is suggesting that religion directly causes violence with premeditation, or even that religion is indifferent to violence. Instead, what he may be trying to say is that the outward expressions of a compromised religion are ultimately ineffective in stopping violence. Consider the following:

1) If Coppola was using these movies as a vehicle to condemn religion generally, the Cardinal Lumberto character in the final movie doesn't make much sense. Cardinal Lumberto is clearly portrayed as a 'true priest', a good man, someone who is not corrupt, and genuinely cares about the physical and spiritual well being of people as evidenced during Michael Corleone's confession to him. When Lumberto becomes Pope, the corrupt elements in the Vatican quickly see him as a threat, rather than someone they can manipulate or even someone who will just look the other way and not rock the boat. Predictably, violence comes to visit Lumberto precisely because he provides no comfort for those who are corrupt and violent.

2) In addition, Tom Hagen's son, who maintains a cordial personal relationship with Michael Corleone, heads off to Rome to enter the priesthood. When Michael's new consigliere tells the son to keep him apprised of the Vatican's affairs from the inside, Michael nixes the idea on the grounds that Hagen's son has 'the true faith'. It is actually quite startling that a man as completely morally compromised as Michael Corleone still has the ability to discern purity from corruption. I think this says something about Coppola's view of religion as well.

3) At the beginning of the second movie when the boy Vito is smuggled out of Sicily for his own protection, the older people who are protecting him seem to be faithfully religious, saying that they are praying for Vito's safety. These people are not just superficially praying for Vito, they are risking their own lives in aiding his escape.

So Coppola is giving the impression that he believes authentic, faithful, heartfelt religion is still a force for good in the world. But of course, these hints are juxtaposed by clear indicators that religion has also compromised itself and has been corrupted as a result. Consider this:

1) The Corleone family has their own family priest. This priest officiated at the baptism in NY at the end of the first movie, and then officiates again at Anthony's first communion in Lake Tahoe years later at the beginning of the second movie. While the priest seems like a nice guy, he can't be oblivious to who he has chosen to associate with. Given that the Corleones have a long history of buying influence, it is a reasonable deduction that the priest has been compensated in some earthly way for uniquely providing his services to a mob family. And of course, the outward trappings of baptism and communion do nothing to change the violent nature of the family.

2) Most obviously in the third movie, the archbishop is thoroughly corrupt and is heavily involved in a scheme to defraud Michael Corleone out of $600M. At the beginning of the third movie, Michael is presented with a prestigious medal from the Catholic Church in recognition of his 'charity work'. Michael's 'Vito Corleone Foundation' is ostensibly devoted to helping poor children in Sicily, but in reality, it is primarily devoted to bribing church officials, most notably the archbishop, to grease the skids for Michael's planned takeover of a major European business conglomerate that the Church has a major stake in. As Michael's bitter ex-wife Kay later observes, this is a disgusting ceremony because she knows Michael is trying to buy respectability and the Church is more than willing to partner in this unholy effort if it means they'll be richer for it.

3) In a number of places in the second movie, priests are friendly with known mob bosses. This is true of Fanucci and of the young Vito in Sicily. Again, priests are depicted as being entirely too cozy with prominent crime figures they must know are heavily involved in brutality.

4) In the third movie, the assassin, who is disguised as a priest, easily blends in with other priests who are attending the opera. While these other priests do not know he is an assassin, it is still a bit unnerving that an assassin with a well known reputation can so easily blend in among priests. We get the impression that the priests are oblivious to the monster that's in their midst, and lack any level of discernment and interest in getting to know this man who has suddenly latched onto them in order to get into the opera house and go on a killing spree.

So it seems to me that Coppola, while certainly not anti-religious, is still giving us a very difficult but sage message. Coppola seems to think that while there is a true and good religion, and that this religion does have its faithful followers, it is the exception rather than the rule. And because the majority of religion has chosen to be cozy with corrupting agents who commit violence, it has largely lost the ability to effectively combat corruption and violence. Again, it's not that religion causes violence or is indifferent to it. It's that religion can't stop violence because it is impotent to do so because of its compromise with evil men. Particularly with the first movie's baptism, and the murder of Fanucci in the second movie, we have this impression of religious ceremonies blissfully taking place while violence occurs all around it, with religion being powerless to stop it. It's as if religion is largely out of touch with what's going on all around it because it itself is too compromised to see how ineffective it is. In Coppola's world, violence wins because the 'true faith' has become entirely too rare and has been largely replaced by a compromised cultural, ritualistic, and/or civic religion that has lost its good power due to its unholy accommodations.

This message is obviously relevant for us today. Whether it's violence, corruption, sexuality, or peacemaking, we have to ask the hard question of whether the church has lost the ability to prophetically speak to these areas because of its own less than savory practices and associations. As one example, how is the church supposed to prophetically speak against the hookup culture among young adults when the church itself has adopted superficial approaches to relationship and community? As I've blogged about previously, the question of how cozy or not cozy the church should be with the world around it has been a thorny issue from the beginning. Within the context of a mafia drama, Coppola warns us of the danger of accommodating culture in order to gain earthly relevancy or influence. While few of us are providing comfort to mob bosses, we need to ask who and what we are aiding and comforting, and why. A failure to thoughtfully examine this question and courageously act on what the Spirit shows us will result in the kind of largely impotent religion that Coppola painfully presents.

"Truth Before Friendship"

2007-09-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog has gained traction in Reformed circles since the days of Machen. It is meant to connote an unwavering commitment to truth, even when it hurts. This sentiment is alive and well today. The "Split P's" phenomenon of dividing (both formally and informally) over almost anything has become a standard characteristic of American Presbyterianism in particular, and the Reformed movement generally. John Frame has often said that the conservative Reformed movement in America has too often been filled by what he calls "Machen's Warrior Children". By this, he is referring to the spiritual descendents of Machen who took Machen's battles against liberal theology and turned that mentality toward fellow conservatives. The result has been faction after faction among people who consider themselves Reformed and evangelicals.

So am I saying that the "truth before friendship" mentality should be done away with because it is the enemy of unity? No. Scripture is clear that there are regretable instances in which we must defend the truth even if the cost is breaking fellowship (1 Cor 11, 2 John 10, etc). Clearly, the truth can't be sacrificed on the altar of maintaining a false unity that's not based on normative standards of belief. The current state of the mainline denominations sadly demonstrate that using constantly shifting abstract human ideas about what constitutes unity as the basis for trying to build a lasting tangible unity is a fool's errand. But does that mean that "friendship" and fellowship are commodities that are as expendable as toothbrushes? No.

Perennial issues like the role of women in formal vocational ministry, the 'worship wars', and the millennial debate have more recently been joined by other divisive issues such as the NPP and 'subscription' debates in Reformed circles. And let's be clear - the "warrior children" of Machen are on both sides of each one of these issues. Different faithful Christians will come down differently on all of these issues, and determining where lines of division need to be drawn is something that must be constantly reevaluated. But Scripture is not silent on the principles and values that need to be employed in our dealings with other Christians, and these principles have been dangerously compromised by the "truth before friendship" mentality in ways that I increasingly believe are unfaithful to the whole counsel of God.

Among the biblical principles we need to operate with in handling potentially divisive issues:

1) Gentleness. Scripture regularly cites 'gentleness' as a virtue and something we should cultivate (2Cor 10.1, Gal 5.23, Php 4.5, Col 3.12, 1Ti 6.11, 1P 3.15, 1Th 2.7, 2T 2.24, Tit 3.2, Jas 3.17). Gentleness is not an afterthought in the NT, but is something that multiple NT authors implored the early church to emphasize.

2) Avoiding a contentious spirit. Again, Scripture regularly instructs us to beware of harboring an itch to fight and create dissension (Prov 13:10, 18:6, 26:21, Hab 1:3, 1 Cor 1:11, 11:16, Tit 3:9, Jas 4.2). 1Tim 6.4 is particularly vivid in describing how a yearning for quarreling negatively impacts the correct ascertaining of truth. While few of us are eager to admit that we enjoy and even seek out conflict because we like to argue and debate, the fact is, way too many of us are guilty of it and just aren't honest enough to admit it and deal with it.

3) Guarding our tongues. James in particular strongly denounces division through words (1.19, 1.26, 2.12, 3.5-8, 4.1, 4.11, 5.6). But as Acts 20.32 says, the word of grace given to us by Christ can build up the church in sanctification.

4) Be peace-loving. Everybody wants peace, but nobody wants to do what's necessary to obtain it. But the fact remains, Mt 5.9 and James 3 commend peacemakers because they are an extension of the Prince of Peace.

Again, none of this is intended to minimize the absolute necessity of loving truth and being committed to the truth that Christ died for. There are indeed times when divisions are unfortunately necessary when truth is being heavily compromised or tossed aside altogether and replaced with cultural categories of acceptability. What we have to avoid is a deminimus view of truth that narrows truth to a few preferred theological propositions and correct definitions of technical terms, while failing to see that truth also encompasses practical behavior and ethics toward others (3 John). Eph 4.15 says that we need to 'speak the truth in love'. As Frame has said, "We must not speak the truth without thinking of the effect of our formulations on our fellow Christians, even our opponents." This, I fear, has gotten lost in our desire to be right and in the faulty pursuit of a negative theology of sanctification. As increasing numbers of respected Reformed voices have openly begun airing great concerns about the way we're treating each other, those of us who credit Machen with helping us to solidify our Reformed categories need to stick up for him now. Machen deserves a better legacy than having his "warrior children" rip the church to shreds.

From 'United We Stand' to 'United We Stood'

2007-09-11T06:46:00.000-07:00

It has now been 6 years to the day since the United States was attacked. Buildings fell, people died. In the wake of the most contentious presidential election in recent memory, it was thought that the events of 9/11 would spur a renewed unity, a renewed sense of shared purpose and struggle, and a return to civility in our land. It did not.

I admit that it is very hard to keep the cynic in me at bay on a day like this. It is very easy to join the often angry laments coming from both sides of the spectrum about how and why we've arrived at the place we find ourselves today. And while what follows is certainly influenced by the cynic in me, I hope that this is not a cynical post for two reasons. First, those who are in harm's way to protect me deserve better from me than smug cynicism. Second, cynicism is not a virtue and should not be nurtured as if it were some mark of sophistication. It's not.

With all that said, I have three points to make, the first two of which are not particularly inspiring.

It was often said in the days after 9/11 that '9/11 changed everything'. As my wife sometimes reminds me, I was disagreeing with this sentiment almost from the get-go. I didn't believe that 9/11 had changed everything, and I had serious reservations that in the long-term, 9/11 would change much of anything fundamentally. I took no pride in feeling this way; I just thought it would prove to be true in the end. Six years gone, this is indeed the conclusion I have arrived at as we sit here today. Today, instead of saying that '9/11 changed everything', people are now asking whether 9/11 has been or should be forgotten. While the instinctive answer is to say 'no, we shouldn't forget', I fear that at the basic levels of our societal grid, most of us have already forgotten.

The lasting legacy, the lasting impact, of 9/11 has been its potency in amping up pre-existing attitudes. There was an already existing urge to go after 'enemies', and 9/11 provided justification for it. There was an already existing attitude that America is largely to blame for much of the world's problems, and 9/11 provided cover for that too. 9/11 proved the reality of God's judgment to some people who were already inclined to believe it, while proving to others that there's no way God exists when that's what they were otherwise inclined to believe anyway. As best I can tell, very few people actually moved across these kinds of aisles as a result of 9/11. Most people opted to interpret 9/11 in such a way as to stay put with where they already were on the spectrum, and just get more dug in. For most of us, we individually processed 9/11 through particular pre-existing lenses we were all already wearing.

The result is that 9/11 changed almost nothing at the root - we all just found ways of using the tragedy to strengthen the belief systems we were all already operating with on 9/10. The only thing that's changed is that many of us feel even stronger about what we were already believing. No doubt, many of us were shaken up, and I'm sure there were some people who fundamentally thought certain things on 9/10 and changed their minds as a result of 9/11. But such a phenomenon has been very rare in my experience, and I have lived and worked 10 miles from the Pentagon. One would think that if a broad-based change in outlook could be found, it would've been here. But no such thing ever happened.

One practical manifestation of the above is the second point I'd like to touch on. It is now commonplace in the media and in much of the culture to see the continued divisiveness that defines our nation, and put the primary blame on the current Administration. There are many columns and stories in the press that dream about the fictional legacy of 9/11 that could have been, if only someone else had been president. Underlying these dreams is the basic assumption that 9/11 would have indeed brought the nation together if just about anyone else had been president. This sentiment, echoed today by Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, is deeply flawed.

Fisher unfortunately parrots the general media sentiment that the current administration is primarily to blame for the fact that we are still a divided nation. But last I checked, George Bush is incapable of bringing people together who don't want to come together. I'm not saying that Bush is blameless; he's not. I think Bush himself succumbed to what I said above, in that he allowed his pre-existing tendencies to be ratcheted up by 9/11, with the result that he embraced the 'wartime president' motif irresponsibly. But only the most self-absorbed and delusional among us can truly believe that there was any real chance that 9/11 would magically wipe away the very deep divides in this country that both sides are hell-bent on maintaining. Pick any leader you want and put them in charge at the time of 9/11 - today's landscape still wouldn't look much different. The country isn't gonna rally around anyone for any significant amount of time for any significant reason. We just like to fight our ideological battles way too much to do such a thing.

In the end, sentiments like Fisher's are a complete abdication of individual responsibility in failing to own up to the part each one of us has played in why 'United We Stand' so quickly became 'United We Stood'. Blaming Bush is the cause celebre of our day, and it's certainly not without foundation. But it's also a very lazy cop-out to justify our own rancorous stances and boorish public dialogue, both of which pre-date the 2000 election. America has become a great paradox of embracing at the same time the contradictory notions of individual responsibility and scapegoating. This is what happens when large segments of the country become very hardened in their established positions. They lecture the hardened folks in the other camp to take some responsibility, while refusing to see how their own hardened stance has equally contributed to the problem. Again, 9/11 has amped pre-existing attitudes, and the divided house we're living in is the lasting legacy.

But thankfully, there is a glimmer of hope. While giving blood, and donating time and treasure were natural responses in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, any real realignment of priorities is something that is proven over the longer term. While many of us lament the sparse change that seems to have resulted from 9/11, there have been inspiring glimmers of something better. Six years later, it is still fairly routine for churches to pray for the victims of 9/11 and to provide tangible support to those left behind in the form of monetary aid and faithful community embrace. Six years later, there are still many grassroots efforts to support the troops with cards, care baskets, and reassimilation to civilian life. People continue to open their homes to families who have a soldier currently serving in a hot spot overseas. Tears are still shed over what happened on 9/11. None of this gets any airplay in the press, but it's there, and it's real. The kind of commitment it takes to maintain these good works is far more laborious than being committed to sniping and whining, and it's far more virtuous too. If we are going to take comfort in humanity as made in the image of God, it is here where we must look to find a redeeming legacy of 9/11.

To Resign or Not To Resign

2007-09-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

For purposes of this post, I will assume that most readers know the background concerning Larry Craig's political trouble. This past weekend, he held a press conference in his home state of Idaho to announce that he would shortly resign from public office and relinquish his Senate seat as a result of a firestorm that erupted over a disputed arrest and subsequent guilty plea in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. Yesterday, it was widely reported that Craig is now having second thoughts about this decision, and may not resign after all. In my view, Craig should stick with his first decision.

I don't know what happened in that bathroom, and frankly, I don't care that much. It's the classic he said-he said kind of thing The whole incident rests upon signals, inferences, and subtle suggestions that are subject to a great deal of interpretation and potential misunderstanding. My position about Craig's resignation is not based on either his or the officer's take on the incident. It's also not based on Craig's guilty plea. It's not entirely clear what motivated Craig to plead guilty. Maybe it's because he was guilty, but Craig now says he shouldn't have pled guilty and intends to fight the plea in court. So again, who knows.

My position about Craig is actually pretty simple. The issue is that right now, he can't be an effective voice for the people he represents. At the very least, he is a distraction (to put it nicely) rather than an advocate, and that's not what his constituents voted for. It's not fair to them to put his interests above theirs by wasting everyone's time trying to save a political career that he himself jeopardized. If he wants to try and dig out of the hole he dug for himself, he should do it on his own time. When he's a US Senator, his time is the people's time. This is my position whenever a member of Congress runs for president as well. It's perfectly legitimate for Senators to run for president - but as former Senators, not sitting Senators. John Edwards did the right thing in 2004 by resigning his Senate seat when he ran for president. People who vote for politicians deserve their full attention. When politicians get distracted either by political scandals they created or by aspirations of higher office and all the campaigning and traveling that goes with it, constituents get cheated of effective representation. While one can (rightly) argue that the current necessity of massive fundraising as an extensive requirement of the job already compromises the ability of politicians to effectively represent their citizens, cases like Craig are particularly egregious.

This is not about what did or didn't happen in an airport bathroom. It's about putting the good of the voters ahead of a desperate campaign to hold onto a political title. If Craig wants to clear his name, I wish him all the best. But he should step down and do it as a private citizen, and allow the people of Idaho to have a Senator who is focused on representing them.

Latest CiC Post

2007-09-06T06:36:00.001-07:00

I posted on the CiC blog this morning. The post offers some links and reflections on what has become an obvious reality - the balance of power in the Christian church has largely shifted from the West to the Global South...

http://conversationsincalvinism.blogspot.com/2007/09/follow-up-to-previous-post.html

Richard Jewell and the Church

2007-08-30T09:48:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, Richard Jewell passed away at age 44. Jewell, as many might remember, was the private security guard during the 1996 Olympics at Atlanta who discovered a pipebomb in Olympic Park and was instrumental in getting hundreds of people cleared away before the powerful bomb went off. Initially hailed as a hero, he soon became a target of an FBI who believed that he actually planted the bomb in order to gain positive attention from 'saving' people because he wanted to be a hero. Many media outlets nakedly ran with this theory for the next 2 months, conducting a 'trial by media' in which they combed through Jewell's entire life to try and find parallels to match him up with the FBI's profile of the bomber. Eventually, it was determined that Jewell had nothing to do with planting the bomb, and that Eric Rudolph was the actual culprit. As it turned out, Jewell really was a hero. But his life was largely ruined by the excesses of the Feds eager to make an arrest, and a press eager to milk a story.

The case of Richard Jewell is an intriguing and depressing object lesson on so many levels. One can reasonably ask if either law enforcement or the press learned anything from their respectively fantastic failures in this case. The Duke lacrosse case is one recent example that doesn't inspire confidence that any serious due diligence was done by either camp in the 10 years after Richard Jewell. One might argue that both the Jewell case and the Duke case are aberrations. Perhaps that's true. But this leads to an additional object lesson for the church that I'd like to briefly focus on.

Those of us who are Christians need to understand that many segments of our culture are deeply suspicious of us and the church. Their suspicion is not altogether different from the kinds of suspicions many of us have about the government and the press. Many of us, me included, cite the Richard Jewell case as part of a larger argument to justify our often deep distrust of the government and the press. For me, the Jewell case is frightening because it shows just how destructive power can be when it is wielded with the kind of arrogance and elitism that comes when people think the rules can be swept aside for any reason as long as a 'greater goal' is served. This kind of mentality provides all the justification that is often needed for governments and media to destroy people without remorse. And because I see no evidence that such arrogance has been curbed in any way, I, and many others, are rightly concerned that absolutely anybody might become the next Richard Jewell. This is where skepticism leads to suspicion, and where suspicion leads to fear.

It is, therefore, a difficult pill to swallow when I ponder the reality that many people in our society look upon the church with very similar lenses. Like the government and the press, the church definitely has its share of depressing public episodes of failure upon which reasonable people can make the same kind of inferences about us that many make about the press and the government. As Christians, we are too often in the uncomfortable position of having to argue that the church's failures are aberrations and don't accurately reflect the overwhelming amount of good that is done by the church in the name of Christ its head. But if people are going to justify their suspicion of the government and the press primarily by pointing to cases like Richard Jewell, are we really in a position to say that the church's failures are qualitatively different? Can we really argue that Richard Jewell justifies an overarching suspicion of the press, while also saying that Jim Bakker and Ted Haggard don't justify an overarching suspicion of the church? While Christians like me can theologically make the case all day long that the church is fundamentally different from secular institutions, that doesn't hold much water with those who are not inclined to accept my theological presuppositions even for the sake of argument. So what is the church to do?

Most obviously, the church has to be in the business of constant, routine, and soul-searching reform to ever more closely align ourselves with Scripture. The church's failures represent a lack of reform because they represent a willingness to tolerate sin so as not to rock the boat. This is a sure-fire recipe for failure and public humiliation at some point. Unlike the government and the press, which has always resisted authentic reform, a church that truly embraces reform will indeed be able to make an argument even on secular grounds that it is different and should not be greeted with immediate suspicion by its neighbors.

But in addition, we have to handle the church's failures with integrity. That means being upfront about our mistakes, and making a practice of true repentance. This will enable us to truly be able to say that the church's failures are more isolated than systemic. Unlike the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which has fought Richard Jewell's libel suit for the last decade after slandering him over and over again in 1996, the church simply can't afford to be this defensive and brazen in not taking responsibility. Self-serving justifications almost always backfire, and the loss of reputation that results is very difficult to regain. We have to realize that just as many of us don't believe anything the NY Times says because of Jayson Blair, a lot of people don't believe anything we say because we coddle people like Benny Hinn and John Shelby Spong rather than doing the difficult work of breaking fellowship with those who bring disrepute to the name of the Savior. We have to admit our mistakes, and learn from them by choosing our friends more carefully.

We the church have a lot of work to do. If you are a Christian who thinks the government and/or the press can be very dangerous, be reminded that many people think of the church that way too. Not all doubts and suspicions are well founded or virtuous. But we've given people reasons to distrust us. Our response should not be to pretend this isn't the case and go on as if nothing happened, as both the government and the press did in the aftermath of Richard Jewell. To the contrary, we need to own up to our stuff and not just apologize, but go to school and learn. If we really do this, we won't have nearly as hard a time convincing secular folks that even though we're not perfect, we are different - in a good way.

Upcoming Events

2007-08-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

The following is a short list of events that are coming up that I wanted to broadcast. For anyone who reads this blog who might be interested in coming to any of the below events, please email me at nottaemail@yahoo.com for locations, directions, or if you just wanna discuss the nature of the events. I'd love to hear from you...

1) Helen and I are having our much planned HouseKewling this coming Sunday (9/2) from 1pm-5. As Helen is fond of saying, it's way too hot to have a houseWARMING, so we're doing a houseKEWLING instead, although hot food will be served. We moved into the neighborhood back in June, and we've had the pleasure of meeting a few of our neighbors. But we've invited the whole neighborhood, plus a bunch of other folks we know. We don't know how many people will come, but hopefully we'll get a good turnout.

2) Beginning September 11, we will be hosting our church's rollout of Christianity Explored. For 10 weeks every Tuesday night (except for Thanksgiving week), a group of anyone who wants to come will gather together for a time of fellowship, an evening meal, and a topical though expository walk through Mark's Gospel. By the end of the 10 weeks, we will have gone through the total of the Gospel of Mark, and will have touched on 3 main themes - Who was Jesus, Why did he come, and What does he ask of his followers. The course is intended to provide a relaxed and safe environment for people who have questions and doubts about the Christian faith to come and speak freely without being jumped on. In the process, our hope is that we might learn about them and love them wholeheartedly, and that they might learn about us and our faith and be encouraged to continue exploring and ultimately accepting the Gospel message in God's good time.

3) Beginning in early January of 2008, I will be teaching an 11-12 week Adult Sunday School course at my church on the all-encompassing nature of Christian Hospitality. This is not a course on how to make a better pot roast for our guests (although, if anyone happens to be teaching such a course, please let me know cuz I'll sign up!). This is a course designed to set forth a biblical view of hospitality (Scripture has tons to say about it), as well as discuss how vitally important the practice of hospitality was (and still is) in the life of the church and its witness to the world. Once we've laid the foundation of Christian hospitality, we will then spend the last half of the course discussing how Christian hospitality does (and can) impact some key street-level contemporary issues like worship, evangelism, issues of race, outreach to immigrants and the youth culture, etc. My hope is that hospitality, when biblically understood, will empower us with a whole life perspective that rejuvenates our passion for God's Kingdom and its cosmic renovation of all aspects of creation. My hope is that those of us who attend the course will come away with a richer and deeper understanding of their own role in the Kingdom, and be prepared to graciously extend hospitality to strangers and neighbors in ways that bring enormous credibility to the cause of Christ.

Again, I would encourage anyone who is interested in learning more about any of the above to email me. I'd love to talk with you.

Doubt and Mother Teresa

2007-08-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

Shocking. Extraordinary. Startling.

Those are some of the words used by Katie Couric, Time Magazine, and other media outlets in describing the content of previously private letters written by Mother Teresa over several decades that have now been made public. In these letters, we find a woman who is arguably the most admired figure of the last 100 years express torment over her own spiritual condition. Coinciding with what she believed was a divine calling to leave a fairly comfortable life to minister to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, Teresa began to speak of her walk with Christ using terms like 'dryness', 'torture', 'darkness', 'emptiness', 'silence', and 'loneliness'. Over the last half of her life as she outwardly became a beacon of compassion, hope, and sacrifice in a cynical world, she privately lamented what she perceived was an overriding lack of Christ's presence in her life. This affected her prayers, believing that her upward words to God often returned to her as if they were knives to the point where she spoke of no longer praying. She believed herself to be a hypocrite whose outward smiles were a deceptive mask. She lamented a loss of zeal, a tremendous emptiness, a loss of love, and a teetering faith. On a couple of occasions, she seems to flirt with the possibility that God may not exist at all.

Interpretations of these writings already run the gamut. Atheists like Chris Hitchens confidently proclaim that these writings prove that even the most outwardly devout constantly fight against what he believes is the obvious reality that all of religion is merely a human fabrication and nothing more. Teresa's more intimate interpreters believe these letters demonstrate tremendous courageousness and heroism that only comes from faith. The truth is while some opinions are certainly more informed than others, nobody exhaustively knows Teresa's struggles, what brought them on, and whether Teresa ever came to a place of spiritual rest prior to her death.

When I read some of what Teresa said in these letters, I feel like I'm reading a Psalm of Lament out of the Old Testament. More than once, the Bible itself records the excruciating laments of God's own people bemoaning how distant God seems to be, how terrible life is when God doesn't seem to be there, and how hopeless things seem to be when God seems to allow the chaos and despair of the world to overtake us. Most Christians throughout history have affirmed without apology that suffering and even doubt are often tools of purification that move us closer to God often without us realizing it when we're in the moment, or in Teresa's case, the last half of her life. If one holds a high view of Scriptural inspiration (ie: that the words of Scripture are divinely inspired), one must conclude that God is not scared of having even his most famous, loyal, and devoted followers express full-throated laments about their relationship with him for all the world to see. For those of us who hold a 'high' view of sin, the sufferings of the saints align with the sufferings of Christ because that's how awful sin is. Sin takes a great toll, and sometimes the toll is greatest on those who love God the most. Teresa, as much as any person in recent memory, was excrucatingly intimate with the devastating results of sin. Poverty, hunger, disease, disaster, and death are all the results of sin, and Teresa understood this as much as anyone. Similar to the agony that befell Wilberforce as a result of his intimacy with the slave trade and his advocacy to end it, Teresa also appeared to endure unending agony over the plight of everyone around her and the indifference of most of the world to the crises they embodied. That's enough to make anyone ponder the most basic and difficult questions of life and faith.

One issue that comes out of this is quite disturbing. If someone as devoted to God as Mother Teresa struggled with doubt and spiritual uncertainty for decades, how can any of us lesser people possibly be spiritually sure of anything? While quoting extensively from the Johannine literature tells us that we can indeed be sure of certain spiritual realities, and while this possibly should be enough to settle the question, the fact is, it often doesn't. This normative authority is essential, but it's not the only perspective that weighs in on the question of credibility and belief. If we don't believe or feel something in our hearts, it often doesn't matter how many times John 3.16 is repeated - we still won't be able to own it as our own and embrace it in belief. Having confidence in spiritual realities is at once both simple and complicated, and we will likely search in vain to fully understand why Teresa had the doubts she did.

If we're honest, many of us as Christians will likewise confess that we have had periods of doubt in our walk with Christ as well. I certainly have. But in the end, to say that none of us can be sure just because someone like Teresa may not have always been sure is fallacious reasoning. It's like saying that because a great philosopher like Berkeley wasn't sure if objects actually existed, neither can we (he believed we could only know if an object can be perceived by the human mind, not that we can actually know that it exists). If God didn't want the world to know that his people struggle with doubt, the Christian Bible would weigh a lot less. That doesn't mean that God is okay with us living in constant doubt and constantly questioning his existence or power - he's not okay with that. But Scripture does seem to leave a place where doubt, to some degree, is something that God uses for good purposes for those who still pursue after him even in the midst of doubt. Teresa's life of good works and worldwide inspiration are certainly consistent with this. And in this respect, I agree with her chief postulator that these letters demonstrate not only human heroism, but the sovereign work of God in assigning the strongest of his people with the often gruesome task of curbing the most naked scourges of sin in front of a watching world. Doubt motivates us either to seek after God all the more, or to run away from him all the more. It is indeed a tool of refinement.

Postmodernism and the Church

2007-08-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

The following is partly an extract of an email conversation I had with a pastor at my church regarding postmodernism (PoMo) and homiletics. As will be seen, I'm among those who believe we have already entered into what some have called 'postpostmodernism'.

I think the culture has begun moving beyond PoMo in many ways. PoMo's radical emphasis on individual story and truth has begun to run its course. While the unassailability of individual experience remains dominant and is something that we must preach to prophetically, there is a real hunger in the culture to embrace something transcendent. People have done the 'it's true for you but not for me' thing, and the result has been complete factionalism that has left people lonely, isolated, and without any sense of larger belonging - and they don't like it. People are beginning to see what radical individualism is doing to us as a society, and the all-out factionalism we are seeing in our politics, discourse, and even our own families is scaring us. We sense that something very basic has changed for the worse, and people are ripe to latch onto something better, such as a sense of community working towards a shared purpose that is real and substantive rather than merely superficial cheerleading.

This is where Biblical preaching and teaching can really strike at the heart of a very real cultural hunger and gain real traction in ways we couldn't achieve 20 years ago. That's what Keller has done in NYC, and it's what Hoburg is trying to do in downtown DC. These preachers have reintroduced metanarrative to folks who have gotten bored and disillusioned with their own narrative, and people are listening and responding. Our job as preachers and lay teachers is to help steer this hunger for the transcendent squarely toward Jesus Christ and demonstrate that Christ alone satisfies this hunger and redeems it for eternity.

Having a hunger for the transcendent is an improvement over the death of truth movement that banished any overarching explanatory narratives in favor of individualized truth, individualized meaning/purpose, and individualized responsibilities. But longing for the transcendent is not sufficient on its own. Scripture is replete with object lessons of how an unfocused and misdirected hunger for transcendence results in false and misdirected worship of gods that do not satisfy our hunger or deliver what they promise, and leave us no better off. Christian preachers and teachers can rejoice that increasing numbers of people are willing to give transcendent metanarratives a hearing once again. But we can't be satisfied with this. The yearning for transcendent significance and purpose must be directed to the lone object who can fulfill and redeem it.

This requires courageous yet humble, patient, and compassionate preaching and discipleship. Part of the reason why the American church has mostly failed to reap the harvest from society's increasing misgivings about PoMo is that too many of our preachers and lay teachers lack at least one of these characteristics. To embody all of these characteristics is a tall order indeed, and probably not realistic. But what ought to be realistic is for our preachers and teachers to be cognizant of the environment they're in, and what they personally need to do to maximize the cause of Christ in the sphere God has placed them in. To be loyal to God means being consistent with the fruits of the Spirit, and also being consistent about repenting when we fail. The two 'R's of Reform and Revival will never happen without the third 'R' - Repentance. Anyone who wants to know how to get the PoMo generation to stand up and take notice will make a point of getting themselves very familiar with the practice of repentance. After all, it's no accident that 'Repent' is included in the first recorded words out of Jesus' mouth in Mark's gospel.

In a society that is becoming ever more fearful that our common cultural fabric and purpose is unraveling, the church is uniquely positioned to speak prophetically to the masses about the comprehensive nature of Christ's Kingdom and its cosmically transformative power. As one of my preaching professors was fond of saying, "That'll preach!"

ECUSA Rescinds Its Own Mafia Tactics

2007-08-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

For the moment at least, the Diocese of Virginia and the national ECUSA organization have backed off their shakedown tactic of targeting unpaid church volunteers for civil litigation as part of their attempts to gain legal control over church property occupied by 11 breakaway congregations in Virginia. In a preliminary hearing last week, these volunteer laypeople were no longer considered 'defendants' by ECUSA.

As I had blogged about not too long ago, such tactics represented a naked departure from anything remotely related to Christian ethics. Instead, it seemed clear to me that targeting laypeople in civil court was a form of intimidation that was of the same order (albeit more culturally correct) as the way mob bosses, their capos and their soldiers do business. I don't know the reason why the ECUSA regime retreated on this. My hope is that they were shamed into it. Why? Because an organization that 'has no shame' is an organization that is often beyond the reach of reason - the very thing ECUSA claims to cherish. By momentarily backing away from such non-Christian folly, perhaps ECUSA has momentarily rediscovered the purpose behind having Christian crosses on their churches.

Hospitality Article Published by 3Mil

2007-08-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

As I noted on the CiC blog earlier today, I submitted an article for publication to ThirdMill back in June titled, "Hospitality: The Apostle John, Jacques Derrida and Us". This article has now been published in their online magazine, Reformed Perspectives. Interested parties can access the article either by going to http://www.thirdmill.org and pulling up their weekly online magazine, or they can follow the 'My Published Papers so far' link on the right side of this blog page.

Enjoy.

Adoption Update

2007-08-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

Things are proceeding positively on the adoption front. We have settled on Kazakhstan as the country, and our home study has been approved by our adoption agency. Next comes our dossier to Kazakhstan, which we are hoping to complete in September. Our agency program coordinator has indicated that we could conceivably be traveling to Kazakhstan as early as next March, though that's probably optimistic. There are still a lot of significant steps to go through before the adoption is completed. But we're definitely moving in the right direction and feel better about things on this front than we have in a while.

Kazakhstan is a very interesting country with an interesting history. Islam is the majority religion in the country, but many Muslims in Kazakhstan are fairly nominal in their religious observance. One result is that the Christian church is growing in Kazakhstan. It's not growing like wildfire as it is in places like India and China, but the church in Kazakhstan, while still small, is absolutely crucial given its strategic importance. I had the pleasure of spending some time with a Kazakh church elder who was visiting in the US last month. He is an absolute delight, and he reports that wonderful things are happening in Kazakhstan. The country is fairly tolerant when it comes to religious freedom, though some would probably disagree. He reports that a person can reliably find at least one Christian church (and usually several churches) in virtually every city in the country. Perhaps most importantly, his church considers itself to be something of a beachhead to conduct missionary activity in other Muslim countries. His church has sent missionaries to Iran and Turkey in particular and because of their ancestry, they are given a hearing in these places in contrast to Caucasian Christians. The Holy Spirit is on the move in this part of the world, and it is very exciting for us to have some connection with this movement.

Continued prayers are appreciated not only for a successful adoption for us, but also for God's continued blessings on his church in Kazakhstan.

Some Perspective on the Impact of NWAC

2007-07-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

While I am an all-too-typical Presbyterian in some ways, I am decidedly atypical in being mostly disinterested in, and even dismayed by, matters of polity. I'm no expert in polity, and proudly so. This puts me decidedly out of the mainstream of many active Presbyterians who, from my vantage point, are borderline obsessive about polity issues to the point where little of anything substantive gets accomplished. I offer this background as something of a disclaimer the reader should consider in evaluating the below.

The New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC) is a loosely affiliated group of conservative congregations in the mainline PCUSA denomination. Depending on who's doing the counting, the number of congregations 'affiliated' with NWAC is around 150. Recently, NWAC held a convocation at which they petitioned my denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) to establish a non-geographic New Wineskins presbytery that would be designed to 'receive' NWAC churches who feel called to leave the PCUSA over theological issues. At its recent General Assembly, the EPC approved this plan, along with some other polity infrastructure mechanisms, in order to facilitate the receiving of NWAC churches that are interested in exploring or joining the EPC. So much for the background...

Ever since the EPC General Assembly, the assessment of the impact of the above has varied greatly depending on who one consults. The PCUSA regime has largely ignored these events and pretty clearly seems to be trying to downplay the importance of these things. On the other hand, folks in the EPC, along with conservative publications like the Layman, are trumpeting these events as incredibly significant. These folks talk of a fundamental realignment taking place, and characterize the movement of about two dozen churches out of the PCUSA in the last year as an 'exodus'. Who is to be believed?

Well, I think some perspective is in order. It is in the best interests of the PCUSA leadership to downplay these events and minimize the impact upon the denomination and its work. It is also in the best interests of the EPC and other sympathetic voices to loudly proclaim these events dramatize the impact. So right off the bat, neither side's spin on these events is particularly surprising, given their respective vested interests. But there is more to it than that.

From the perspective of the PCUSA, it's not hard to see why they wouldn't be very inclined to see the movement of 25 churches out of their denomination as a big huge event. The PCUSA is currently a denomination of over 11,000 churches. 25 churches is hardly an 'exodus', which Webster defines as a 'mass migration'. 25 churches out of 11,000 is no exodus. Even if certain reports are true that as many as 40 other churches might leave PCUSA in the next year, the total number of congregations bolting the PCUSA because of theological strife would still be only one half of one percent of the congregational total of the denomination. If this is a 'realignment', it ain't much of one.

So does this mean that the PCUSA's muted reaction to the NWAC movement is appropriate and that the EPC/Layman rhetoric is overblown? Not exactly. First, the EPC is a much smaller denomination than the PCUSA. An influx of 25-50 churches within a two year period is indeed a big deal from the perspective of the EPC. It has been suggested that by the time the polity stuff works itself out, the EPC might be close to double the size it was before all this began. That's a big deal, and the EPC is correct to consider it a big deal from their vantage point. In addition, it is pretty well known that a number of the NWAC churches that have left or are contemplating leaving the PCUSA are quite large. I think it's fair to say that while the NWAC numbers are small in terms of the number of congregations, many of these congregations wield more power and influence than what might be supposed because a number of them are/were flagship churches in the PCUSA. Kirk of the Hills, Signal Mountain, Montreat, Memorial, and others are all influential churches with large memberships running from 500-2,000 people. Given the presbyterian government structure of both the PCUSA and the EPC, it is inaccurate to suggest that the movement of these kinds of churches don't have a considerable impact, particularly at the presbytery level. Earlier this year, the PCUSA held a highly publicized conference on the viability of presbyteries given the ever shrinking financial resources they have to work with due to membership decline, dedicated giving, and congregational flight. This conference was held before the EPC General Assembly.

In the end, I think the truth is somewhere in between the respective spins of both sides. In my view, words like 'exodus' and 'realignment' are inappropriate to employ in measuring the impact of NWAC. We're not talking about a flood of congregation departures from the PCUSA, but a drip. But likewise, it is quite disingenuous for the PCUSA to pretend like these developments are not newsworthy and don't have broader harmful implications to a denomination that is already reeling from organic membership decline and distrust of their leadership at the pew level. Interested observers would be wise to consider the source when considering the viewpoints being expressed about the impact of NWAC.

A Stretch in the Klink - Is it the Latest 'In-Thing' to Do?

2007-07-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

It started with Martha Stewart. More recently, there was Paris Hilton. Now it appears that both Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie stand a pretty good chance of doing celebrity time in prison. What's going on here?

It's becoming common knowledge that making at least one trip to 'rehab' is the fashionable thing to do. The recent craze of celebrities taking a seemingly revolving door approach to rehab has gotten so worrisome that some in the soft sciences are growing concerned about the impression this is leaving on the larger populace when it comes to the viability and effectiveness of rehab programs. Britney Spears's recent saga of being in and out of rehab so concerns psychologists like Harris Stratyner that he says folks like Spears are "making a mockery of rehabs...In some ways it's starting to make rehabs look like a joke." He's right. A quick perusal of the blogosphere will reveal how cynical most people have gotten about celebrity rehab, and it's hard to believe that this cynicism doesn't extend to larger negative perceptions about rehab globally. Folks like Stratyner are correctly concerned that the celebrity tendency to treat rehab as 'the [cool] thing to do' rather than as a necessary step to take to get one's life back on track harms the viability of rehab as a whole in our culture. Stratyner is ahead of the game in identifying a dynamic that threatens to corrode the cultural credibility of a critical element of the societal safety net. In doing this, he is well ahead of the legal profession, the media, the elite universities, and even the church in understanding how tenuous cultural credibility can be, and how difficult it is to get it back once it's been lost.

But one has to now wonder whether it's no longer enough to join the club of those who have done stints in rehab. Celebrities now seem to be climbing over each other in amping up their behavior to the point where they'll have to do time in the klink. A cynical view might conclude that doing short stretches in the klink is now the 'in-thing' to do. And even if this isn't the actual attitude of the celebrities who seem determined to do the kind of stuff that lands normal people in prison, it's ominous to think how younger people who idolize these celebrities in a celebrity culture might be viewing all this. Do they think it's now cool to go off the grid enough that they might end up wearing orange jumpsuits for a while just like their idols are? It's common knowledge that 'street cred' is imperative to be a player in the hip-hop world today, and there is plenty to suggest that this mentality has found its way into the culture with devastating results if even half of Bill Cosby's rantings have some foundation in reality. Do we think it will somehow be different among the entranced followers of Hilton, Spears, Lohan, Richie, et al? I mean, Nicole Richie recently showed up at some Hollywood premiere wearing a stylish outfit consisting entirely of vertical black and white stripes. Is this a coincidence, or is it confirmation that even the fashion industry is now building cutting-edge clothing lines around jail attire themes to further enhance and legitimize the 'bad girl' image?

The church in particular had better not assume that its teens and college students are seeing all this for what it is - sad. We would be wise to assume the opposite - that there are probably teens in our midst who are instead thinking of the possibilities in ways that might become dangerous and destructive. The onslaught of the celebrity culture is not something to fool around with, and the church would be wise to get out ahead of this latest trend before it becomes a trend in their own church.

James, Paul, Justification, and Luther

2007-07-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that the church has wrestled enormously with the issue of 'justification' in James and Paul. Whereas Paul seems clear that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law (Gal. 2 & 3; Rom. 3.28, 5.1; Acts 13.39), James seems equally clear that justification involves works as well as faith (James 2.14-26). This issue has been so significant that many theologians have felt obligated to take sides and either interpret one through the prism of the other, or flat out elevate the teachings of one and demote the teachings of the other. Martin Luther unfortunately took the latter approach. Luther famously referred to the epistle of James as an 'epistle of straw' because he believed that not only did it not present the Gospel, but actually contradicted it by allegedly contradicting Paul's teaching on justification. I would humbly submit that Luther was in error for a number of reasons. While the below is hardly a comprehensive examination of the perennial problem of James vs Paul on justification, the following is at least a start:

1) James and Paul are addressing different problems. While Paul (particularly in Galatians) is fighting against a return to lawkeeping and circumcision as salvifically additive to faith, the problem James is addressing is a glib faith that gives scant evidence of supernatural transformation through good works. James likely wrote his epistle before Paul's writings, so he was not attempting to forge some synthesis with Pauline theology (I would argue that a synthesis of James and Paul comes later in 2 Peter). Because the timing and respective contexts are different, one cannot simply put forth a surface level comparison and assume continuity between the authors' respective purposes in order to arrive at a conclusion of conflict or contradiction between the two.

2) What is often missed in this debate is the fact that James does indeed stress monergistic grace in his epistle (1.18-21). In addition, he certainly seems to regard faith as the assumed foundation of the Christian life. In 2.1, faith is assumed, with no mention of works. So James is hardly opposed to the Pauline emphasis of faith alone and God's primary and initiatory activity in salvation.

3) What is also often missed is the significance of the Jerusalem Council reported in Acts 15. Here, 15.1 makes clear that the notion of salvation through works was an issue very early on in the church and prompted the Council meeting. Beginning in 15.13, it is none other than James who makes a speech siding with Paul, Barnabas and Peter against the circumcision party.

4) So what then of James 2? Because of both #2 and #3 above, it is unlikely that James believes in justification through works in a salvific sense. It would run afoul of what he's already said in the epistle, not to mention his actions at the Jerusalem Council. For Paul, 'justification' is a technical term to describe God's activity of declaring someone righteous through faith, which then proves to be the basis of a person's salvation. This makes sense in light of the Judaizing errors he is combatting. Because the Judaizers believed in meritorious works leading to salvation (sorry NP people, you still haven't made your case to the contrary), Paul is emphasizing God's sovereignty in salvation and the primacy of faith alone. But for James, he is confronting a very different problem of glib faith with no accompanying transformation. So when James uses 'justification', he's not using it as a technical salvific term the way Paul does, but as a way of stressing the necessity of good works as a manifestation of authentic and salvific faith. James is using justification to stress the mark of a true Christian - good works that are the inevitable result of a changed life that comes with authentic saving faith.

I would argue that Paul and James are succinctly synthesized in Eph 2.9 - we are not saved by works, but we are saved for works.

ECUSA - More about The Sopranos than the Bible

2007-07-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

With word that ECUSA and the Diocese of Virginia are now seeking to include volunteer laypeople in its lawsuit against 11 breakaway Anglican churches, we have truly reached a point where mafia-inspired tactics are now the acceptable norm in mainline circles. Granted, seeking to sue everyone under the sun is not exactly the same as Tony Soprano executing an informant or Paulie Walnuts capping somebody who didn't pay up. ECUSA, with its embrace of the UN Charter, would have a difficult time being this brazen in its intimidation and enforcement tactics. So instead, they've taken this mob mentality and employed more sophisticated means of shaking people down - they've threatened lawsuits. Intimidating people through legal action is the clean, high-tech way of bringing the mafia into the church, and turning the church into a robed mafia.

I am admittedly making some harsh accusations here. I don't mean to imply that ECUSA has no right to fight for the church property that is at issue here. For all I know, ECUSA may have a legitimate case for gaining the property. But that is a dispute between ECUSA and the individual (or collective) rectors and paid vestry of the congregation who, with the flock's approval, have led the flock out of ECUSA.

But the idea that ECUSA would see fit to target volunteer laypeople in these churches for civil litigation doesn't merely ignore 1 Corinthians 6, it actively militates against it. Paul's excursus on lawsuits among believers in 1C 6 comes within a larger section devoted to discussing immorality in the church. It is clear from 1C 6.9 that Paul had not abandoned the topic of immorality in discussing lawsuits between Christians. To the contrary, it seems clear that Paul considered the reality of Christians going to secular authorities to resolve legal disputes among themselves to be characteristic of great corruption in the church. In fact, it's not a stretch at all to suggest that these kind of lawsuits were simply one manifestation of the same problem Paul discusses in chapter 5 - a weak doctrine of the church. How ironic it is that ECUSA, a 'high-churchy' denomination if ever there was one, is the denomination most exhibiting a weak doctrine of the church by scuttling Scriptural teaching in favor of Soprano-style tactics of intimidation. Of course, maybe it's not ironic at all, but simply very telling. Whatever it is, it's hard to see how any of this speaks well of ECUSA's moral and ecclesiastical compass. One only hopes that PCUSA will not demonstrate itself to be as far gone as ECUSA in the coming months as the fruit of the New Wineskins movement starts to take tangible shape.

Latest CiC Post

2007-07-16T10:40:00.001-07:00

I posted at CiC today on the passing of Harold O.J. Brown...

http://conversationsincalvinism.blogspot.com/2007/07/passing-of-joe-brown.html