“Doing theology” often implies that we understand God better than the apostles or their disciples, and Jesus would really have benefited from a background in textual criticism. But has everything orthodox already been taught? Continue reading “Is theology arrogance?”
Is theology arrogance?
Revival is normal
If we want revival, the first requirement is to admit that we need revival. That we need more than we have now. Watchman Nee called it the Normal Christian Life. Revival is when people who have been experiencing the average Christian life or the typical Christian life begin to experience the normal Christian life. Continue reading “Revival is normal”
The Process of Justifying Yourself
“Especially among Christians in positions of wealth and power, the idea of reading the Gospels and keeping Jesus’ commandments as stated therein has been replaced by a curious process of logic. According to this process, people first declare themselves to be followers of Christ, and then they assume that whatever they say or do merits the adjective ‘Christian’”
― Wendell Berry, Blessed are the Peacemakers: Christ’s Teachings of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness, via Relevant Magazine.
Ruins or foundation?
The whole matter of finding the true foundation is made all the more difficult because these defiant weeds which have sprung upon it are called the true foundation by many; they, pulling to themselves the growth on top of the house ruins, declare, “This is the foundation and the way, all should follow it.” And with many of them we see that their new foundation sinks into soft ground, the floor settling at different levels. This shows the difficulty of finding the true foundation…
— Peter Chelčický, The Net of Faith, 1440-1443
Wanting the Word, not what it gives
Sink down into the eternal Word and rest there, and not in any manifestation that proceeds from the Word, for it is the Word of the Lord that shall endure forever…
This eternal Word was before any manifestation. It is the Word the builders rejected that has become the head of the corner.
Reason not with flesh and blood, nor with the voice of the Serpent, for if you do, you will darken the council of God in yourselves, but in the power of the Lord shut him [the Serpent] out… Stand still and see the salvation of God, which is in the Light of his Covenant that will stretch forth the hand of his power, as he did to Peter when he feared the proud waves would prevail over him.
Cease thy mourning, thou weeping babe that mourns in secret for manifestations of thy beloved . . . for I can testify unto thee by experience, whosoever thou art in that state, that he is bringing thee nearer to him. That was but milk ith which he fed thee whilst thou wast weak. But now he will feed thee with the Word from whence that milk proceedeth. Live at home with Jacob, which is to retire daily into thy mind. Though the gadding, hunting Esau persecutes thee for it, thou shalt receive the blessing. . . . Oh the glorious day of the Lord God hasteth to be revealed to those who are kept faithful in his Word.
— Sarah Jones (17th century, England):
A thermometer does not improve your comfort
Changing your church’s spiritual temperature to match the world outside doesn’t make visitors any more comfortable than changing your church’s thermostat to match the weather outside.
“The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”
— Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Do you like what God is doing?
God, in these days, is uncovering the mask of all creatures and stripping them naked. . . . He is annihilating creatures and bringing them to spiritual death. He is laying low mountains . . . even to a loss and silence, confusion and darkness, so that now their light is darkness, their wisdom folly, their life death . . . and now they are made to wait in silence as I was also made to do.
— R. Wilkinson (17th century, England):
Love is like a fire.
The one that loves God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength would rather die than continue, even for a little while, in senseless or unprofitable thought. He would rather be silent than bring dishonor to God’s name through words and works of no value… Love like this brings about what God wants done, and makes faith alive. The one that puts it to practice is born of God.
Blasphemy on Sunday morning
“The misuse of meaningful songs, or even only a lack of understanding and feeling in singing them communally, has a devastating effect. When we sing them in real community with the Holy Spirit, we sense something of innermost holiness. Such songs should be sung only at very special moments, only at times of God-given experiences. To suggest songs that were once written in the Spirit, with the idea of producing an atmosphere that does not exist, to sing ‘God is present with us!’ when no one feels that God really is present, to dare to sing ‘Lord of all, to Thee we bow’ when there is no real honoring of God’s greatness in the atmosphere of the meeting is a misuse that borders on the sin against the Holy Spirit.”
— Eberhard Arnold, God’s Revolution: Justice, Community, and the Coming Kingdom
False conversion
Baptists usually believe in eternal security or persistence of the saints. That is, once you are saved, you’re always saved. Yet a Baptist prison chaplain says that he finds the same percentage of Baptists in jail as out of jail. Same percentage of Methodists, same percentage of Catholics.
So what’s the problem? A Baptist preacher once said, “We’ve spent too many years telling people they can never lose what they never had.”
Continue reading “False conversion”
You paid too much for your salvation
If your grace is cheap, who paid for it? And how much did they pay? Everything that Jesus offers, he paid for with his life. If your salvation is cheap and ineffective, maybe you didn’t get it from him.
Getting used to the taste of sea water
Surely the reason we don’t think we need an expensive savior is because we don’t think we are in any danger. We have gotten used to floors that are constantly wet, water seeping through cracks in the walls, bulkheads bowing inward, strange rumblings below deck, and the taste of sea water. We can’t admit our need because it would cost us too much to fix it. Because the alternative is inconceivable. Or uncomfortable.
Cheap grace is like cheap termite control
To me, cheap grace doesn’t mean that it didn’t cost much, so much as it isn’t worth much. Still, sometimes there is a connection. The price of a car repair, or a surgical operation, is affected by how deep into the inner workings the professional will have to go. If you don’t believe you have a deep problem, or if you believe it’s already been fixed, you won’t pay the price needed to fix it. If your problem is termites and you won’t fix it, eventually you won’t have a house. If your problem is spiritual, you can patch over the holes, keep the telltale sawdust swept away, and ignore the swarms each spring. But in the end you’ll have no place to seek refuge from reality.
Redemption and lift, reconsidered
After reading my post Redemption and lift,
Tim McIntosh asked:
Has there ever been any empirical evidence that “redemption and lift” is a reality? There are many examples of poor sectors of countries that have had genuine revivals but no lift. The redemption and lift philosophy has been used to reject the idea of getting involved in holistic ministry.
Then what a bad use of the redemption and lift philosophy: to say that salvation has economic implications so we shouldn’t encourage them. That is, to paraphrase William Carey‘s critics, “If God wants to improve crop yields or reduce child abuse, he will do it without your help or ours.” If the Gospel affects the whole person, what kind of ministry is there besides holistic?
It turns out that in Donald McGavran’s Understanding Church Growth, one of the main points which he made in his chapter “Halting Due to Redemption and Lift” was negative, not positive: when poor people respond to the witness of the Gospel, they often want to leave the neighborhood, which leaves the neighborhood without their witness to the Gospel.
So I’m applying the term differently than McGavran did. However, you’re applying the term differently than I did. Notice that the examples I gave were on a personal/family level. When one man has more disposable income because he stops drinking, that doesn’t mean his whole community has more disposable income. However, if enough people stop drinking, some bars will go out of business, which affects the whole community. That happened in the 1905 Welsh Revival, documented by J. Edwin Orr.
Just a thought: you referred to “sectors of countries” but do the words “sector” or “country” (in our sense of those words) even appear in the New Testament mandates? The Gospel can transform sectors and countries, but it does that by transforming individuals, households, and people groups: all words which do appear in the New Testament mandates.
However, in the same way that lift can be promoted by redemption, lift can be thwarted by lack of redemption. If a “holistic ministry” focuses on fighting alcoholism among people who enjoy being drunk, that ministry is going to have some problems.
A million good atheists in New York City?
CNN reports that a coalition of non-religious organizations is running a atheist ad campaign in New York city subways, “designed to raise awareness about people who don’t believe in a god.”
The advertisements ask the question, written simply over an image of a blue sky with wispy white clouds: “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?”
The ads are actually misleading. That 2008 survey cited by the sponsors, American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population, didn’t ask people if they were good. The word “good” doesn’t even appear in the report. It just asked about religious affiliation. True, the 15% who said they had no religious affiliation weren’t saying they were Christians who hadn’t found a good church, but they weren’t saying they were atheists either. Only 7% said they were atheists.
The most startling claim, of course, is that New York City has a million good people, period. I mean, I think the Chasidic Jews only estimate a dozen or two really good people worldwide. Maybe good people are naturally attracted to New York City. Still, if I were you, I would keep alert on the subway, and lock my car.
But the ads ask a good question, even if they begin with an inaccurate statement. That is, they ask, “Are you good?” I suspect that, if they think about it, that question will make a lot of New Yorkers a little uncomfortable. I know it did that for me. And if the answer is no, there are organizations in New York City that can help. But I don’t think they’re atheist organizations.
The message of “The Matrix”
There are no limits, there are no rules, anything can happen – if you’re in the Matrix.
Of course, if you’re in the Matrix, nothing is really happening.
Worship your rulers
“Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.”
– G.K. Chesterton, Christendom in Dublin, 1933
What is a swinger?
“The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.”
– G.K. Chesterton, “The New House” Alarms and Discursions
Everything is cheaper now.
“Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.”
– G.K. Chesterton, Commonwealth, 1933
Racing to the red light
“The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.”
– G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 5/29/26
The cowardice of idealism
“Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.”
– G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World, 1910
Making the world old
“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision; instead we are always changing the vision.”
– G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908
Desperate optimists
“The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.”
– G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to The Defendant
Criticize yourself
“What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.”
– G.K. Chesterton, Sidelights on New London and Newer New York
Extreme repentance
The adjective extreme has become popular in recent years. People are proud of being extreme. They engage in extreme sports, listen to extreme music, and watch “Extreme Makeover.” Church youth groups even called themselves “Generation X-Treme,” which gives you an idea of how long the word has been popular in popular culture, since the oldest examples of Generation X are now over 40.
Impartiality or ignorance?
“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.”
– G.K. Chesterton, The Speaker, 12/15/00
Excusable disobedience
How many times have you heard a Christian say, “Well, I really shouldn’t, but…” We often say this about dessert. I’ve been thinking about a former church, whose members sometimes said this about dessert. Even though they never said it about the Bible, when I look back, I get the sense that if we just couldn’t manage to obey the Bible right now, that would have been okay in our church. Really, if we felt we wanted to do something, nothing could have constrained us. We said we wanted to obey God in everything, and prided ourselves in that. But we could leave our wives if we felt the Spirit prompting us. A few of us did.
Porn creep
Wikipedia says that porn creep is about sexually explicit content entering American pop culture. It was outrageous forty years ago, but we must not complain about it now, because we might sound prudish.
It reminds me of the common arguments for why society should allow anything that was banned until now, such as homosexuals or women in combat. The common argument is not that our society would be better and happier if we didn’t ban it. The common argument is that it’s been going on for a long time. For example, historians will tell you that some women and some homosexuals have served in early American battles. Pornography has been around for thousands of years, holding an important place in many dead civilizations.
By that reasoning, everything will creep. Everything will become acceptable, given enough time.
I don’t accept that reasoning. Time can’t turn wrong into right.
God would never make you uncomfortable.
Today’s heresy is related to my theory of proportional discipleship, that no Christian’s devotion to God should be more than one standard deviation above society in general. Today’s heresy suggests that God is bound by a similar rule. He will never say anything or ask you to do anything that’s more than one standard deviation outside your comfort zone. Your comfort zone is sacred and God will never violate it. Continue reading “God would never make you uncomfortable.”
Exhilaration
“The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.”
– G.K. Chesterton, A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901
Defenseless Christians
Anabaptist is a name invented by the enemies of the Anabaptists. One of the names they used for themselves was “defenseless Christians.”
One of my goals is to be a defenseless Christian. All of society and most of the church spends much of its time defending itself. When we’re attacked, that’s our natural response. But I want God to be my only defense.
Unfortunately, I spend much of my time defending myself as well. But, I mean, I probably have to. What if God doesn’t come through for me? When I really need him. he might turn out to be sick or busy. Or maybe not.
Proportional repentance
A corollary of the common heresy of proportional atonement is the heresy of proportional repentance. That says that you only have to repent of the bad things about you. But there are many good things about you. You don’t have to repent of them.
Continue reading “Proportional repentance”
Making stupidity popular
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
– G. K. Chesterton
Are you holier than God?
Why do we allow deliberate mistranslations of the word of God simply because we are too delicate and pure to read it?
When Isaiah says our human righteousness is like “filthy rags,” he wasn’t talking about anything you get when you change the oil in your car.
When Paul said that he counted his previous righteousness as “loss,” he wasn’t talking about anything you’ll find in the lost and found.
God has been relocated
“Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.”
— Erica Jong, from How To Save Your Own Life
Where to find truth
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
– G. K. Chesterton
Pornography: the new minstrel show
Pornography, if it’s defended, is defended in the name of freedom of expression. The creators of pornography, it is argued, are making an artistic statement. Okay, few defenders of pornography are willing to call it art. But they claim that pornographic performers are proud of their bodies, free from sexual hang-ups, and eager to share their worldview with the rest of us.
That makes pornography the direct counterpart of the 19th century minstrel show. Both pornography and minstrelsy depict an idealized world that doesn’t really exist. And both involve the exploitation of the people they are supposed to be depicting.
Continue reading “Pornography: the new minstrel show”
Draw the line
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
– G. K. Chesterton
Preparing to relocate?
“If you are a Christian, no earthly city is yours.”
Run to the light.
“God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.”
In the hard times, God gives oatmeal
A missionary became seriously ill one month before she was to return home for her furlough. On top of it all, the monthly check from her home church didn’t arrive, so she had no money for food or medicine. All she had in her apartment was a 50-pound sack of oatmeal. So for thirty days, that was all she ate.
And as she ate her oatmeal every day for a month, she cried out to God. “Lord, here I’ve been serving you faithfully on the mission field for years, and you said you would supply all my needs. Why have you allowed this to happen to me? Why didn’t you send me any money? Why didn’t you give me real food? Even the poorest people in this city eat meat and vegetables. Is this how you treat your servants?”
Continue reading “In the hard times, God gives oatmeal”
Don’t win friends and influence people
“Is it not excessively ridiculous to seek the good opinion of those whom you would never wish to be like?”
The Greeting Card Theory of Biblical Authorship
To understand a passage in the Bible, you need to understand who it was written to and what it’s used for. So of course, many verses in the Bible should be understand as greeting card messages.
That means the Bible is: Continue reading “The Greeting Card Theory of Biblical Authorship”
Was Jesus mad?
“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'”
– Anthony the Great
The Purple Haze Theory of Biblical Authorship
One of the most common heresies about the Bible is that it was written by people who weren’t as aware as us or as smart as us. For example, some have taught that the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus was originated by people who didn’t know where babies come from. C.S. Lewis points out that all adults know where babies come from. Continue reading “The Purple Haze Theory of Biblical Authorship”
Stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular behind
We look down on entertainers and promoters who have sold their souls for success. But the forces they yielded to are pressing on our souls too.
American institutions such as the free enterprise system and representative democracy were not established by people who trusted other people. They were founded by people who didn’t. That’s the point. People will not naturally seek what’s best for society. They will naturally seek what’s best for them.
Continue reading “Stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular behind”
Why won’t God heal atheists?
Courtesy of the New York Times, I ran across an atheist propaganda website, Why Does God Hate Amputees?. Basically, the author, Marshall Brain, argues that because God doesn’t act like atheists want him to, God can’t exist. Because he’s smarter than God and knows better. A funny response to his teachings can be found at Why Does God Hate Deputies?
Marshall Brain also challenges Christian leaders to read 30 embarrassing Bible verses on national television. Of course, they’re hand-picked by the atheist and they’re out of context.
So, in the spirit of good fun and fair play, here are some sentences from that atheist website, hand-picked by me and out of context:
The Bible is the book that contains the Ten Commandments, the revelation that Jesus is our resurrected savior and the story of our creation. This is God’s holy word to his children.
God seems to be interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.
God’s power often can be quite dramatic.
Jesus is actually in our midst and God answers our prayers.
God is ready and willing to answer your prayers no matter how big or small.
“Dear God, almighty, all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe, we pray to you to cure every case of cancer on this planet tonight.”
When a person says, “ask anything in my name, and I will do it,” what does he mean? Presumably, Jesus means that if you ask for anything, he will do it. What else could he possibly mean…?
If you are having a problem with unproductive behaviors, what you need to do is either educate or rehabilitate yourself. You would do that by talking with a counselor or seeing a therapist.
That is about as clear as mud, isn’t it?
Every biologist will tell you with certainty that all of life is a chemical reaction.
God has never taken over all the TV and radio stations and broadcast a message to mankind.
Every Christian should jump at the chance to spread God’s word on national television.
If God is real and if God inspired the Bible, then we should worship God as the Bible demands. We should certainly post the Ten Commandments in our courthouses and shopping centers, put “In God We Trust” on the money and pray in our schools. We should focus our society on God and his infallible Word because our everlasting souls hang in the balance.
What to do about a sinful world
“We neither have authority granted us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice.”
Keith Drury, humility, and Aspergers
I’ve decided my antisocial clumsiness is due to subclinical undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome. Nothing can be my fault. No, I’m not serious. Not about Asperger’s. Not about my blamelessness.
I wish I was. It would explains why I don’t pay enough attention when people engage me in conversation, including other bloggers. Maybe it’s humility, but I don’t think so. Because I was very interested when I read Leaving Munster (finally) and noticed favorable comments about my post on Islam and Christianity.
One comment said, “it was a real crackerjack. i saw it coming and loved every nanosecond. it reminded me of a keith drury post.”
Okay, so let’s take a look at some Keith Drury posts. A Wesleyan writer, backpacker, and professor with a historically Mennonite beard. Do you like? I do.
Lay down your burden.
“It is not death therefore that is burdensome, but the fear of death.”
– St. Ambrose
World of Farmcraft
Announcing the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game for Amish, Mennonites, and other historic peace churches:
Don’t you see the chains?
“I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.”
– Harriet Tubman
Too busy to be conservative
I’m too busy following Jesus to spend much time being politically conservative. There is a difference between the two goals.
Feel free to have an opinion, even a strong opinion, about immigration and illegal aliens. But don’t call your opinion Christian if it’s not in the Bible. Leviticus, in fact, talks quite a bit about aliens. You could look there.
Don’t call your opinion about war Christian if it’s not in the Bible. Yes, many people in the past have called their war Christian, most famously the Crusaders. The Crusaders don’t count. They weren’t prophets or apostles. They weren’t inspired.
Some people believe the Kingdom of God can be advanced by killing Muslims. Some people believe it can’t. Accept it as a difference of opinion. Accept it as a difference in strategy.
The saying used to be, “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” The saying among many conservatives is now, “What’s good for America is good for Jesus.”
The Jewish Right
Why do they call it the Christian Right when so many of its best spokespeople are Jewish? Syndicated columnist Don Feder, talk show host Dennis Prager, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, film critic Michael Medved, pornography researcher Judith Reisman: all these find common cause with conservative evangelicals.
And how about intellectuals Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, or talk show host Laura Schlessinger, or journalist Charles Krauthammer? Other influential heroes of the Christian Right are Jewish converts: former abortionist and now pro-life advocate Bernard Nathanson and World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky.
And there’s another category of Jewish leaders that the Christian Right has been willing to follow: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Lewis Libby, and Elliott Abrams. Several of them have not been convicted of any crimes, something which cannot be said for certain Christian ministers.
The moral is that right doesn’t always mean Christian. And perhaps, that Right doesn’t always mean right.
Do as you like.
“Love God, and do as you like, say the free spirits. Yes; but as long as you like anything contrary to God’s will, you do not love Him.”
Who steals books on ethics?
Philosophy professor Eric Schwitzgebel has been studying whether ethicists behave more ethically than other people. So far, his research suggests that books on ethics are more likely to get stolen from the library. Mindhacks summarizes some of his theories.
I wonder if books on ethical relativism are stolen more often than books on Biblical ethics. I hope so.
Theatrical illusion in the service of reality
The email appeared to be Christian spam, advertising a book and no personal greeting, but why did it come to me? I looked over the website it referred to, and then I could see why.
For thirty years Paul Kuritz was a respected (and atheistic) theater professor. Then, faced with personal crises and divine interventions, he found himself praying that God wouldn’t make him a born-again evangelical Christian. God did anyway, and Kuritz wrote more about his new perspective in the Porpoise Diving Life.
I wouldn’t agree with everything in the book The Fiery Serpent, which I haven’t read. For example, the email refers to the supposedly “undeniable truth: that Christian filmmaking and theatre… are having global impact on our world today.” I’ve already summarized my disappointing first-hand experience with imaginative conversions and Christian theater here. There really is a difference between drama and real life. You might also wonder how he can use Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Kazan’s On the Waterfront as examples in a book on Christian film and theater. But Kuritz is no wooly-minded, starry-eyed artiste. He doesn’t baptize the status-quo so much as he is calling for it to change. And he is calling for filmmakers and theater people to change.
Spreading the gospel of Jesus and American pharmaceuticals
Though American Christians may not believe that our culture is inspired, we often act like it. Some missionaries have actually helped reduce belief in the supernatural by teaching their Western worldview in contradiction to the Biblical worldview: “You don’t need to pray much about that, because we can give you a pill.”
I like what one village chieftain said when a Westerner explained that disease was not caused by evil spirits, but by germs that enter the body. He smiled and replied, “Okay, then what makes the germs enter the body?”
On a related note, some Bible teachers explain the Levitical test for an unfaithful wife by theorizing that a guilty person might be more likely to get sick.
In a real sense, the villagers had it right even before the missionaries arrived. Sickness is caused by spirits.
The Christian jihad
Most American Christians wouldn’t say they support the war in Iraq as a means of defending Christian beliefs. But certainly one of their main justifications for the war is to defend American beliefs. The Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition claimed exactly the same moral basis for their work that the Qu’ran claims for jihad (holy war) – to make our homeland safe for our faith. Now, I am not implying any other similarity between the Christian Right and Muslim jihadists. I realize that the Christian Right has not yet produced suicide bombers. But they are fighting for privileges that Jesus and Paul never had.
Not all Muslims and Christians are similar
My recent satire on the similarities between some Muslims and Christians seems to have been misunderstood. I’ve taken four graduate courses on the relationship between Islam and Christianity, and spent hundreds of hours talking with members of both religions. But I’m still learning how to write clearly.
No, I wasn’t saying that all Christians and Muslims have destructive beliefs and attitudes in common. Just many of them. More about that tomorrow.
Well, are you satisfied?
“He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor, his life for love, knowing that contentment is the shadow not the light. The great yearning that sweeps eternity is a yearning to praise, a yearning to serve. And when the waves of that yearning swell in our souls all the barriers are pushed aside: the crust of callousness, the hysteria of vanity, the orgies of arrogance.”
– Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone
Sin will keep you from this book.
It’s a mistake to think that people choose their beliefs because of reason or revelation. Most people choose their beliefs for their own comfort.
B.F. Skinner remembers that his grandmother taught him about hell by showing him the glowing coals in the stove. He didn’t want to believe in a God like that, so he didn’t.
Mel White, who used to ghost-write for Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, is now a pro-homosexual activist. But according to his memoirs, the first step to his new career was not a renewed study of the Bible. It was his first sexual experience with a man, condoned by a Christian counselor. After that, somehow his beliefs seemed to change.
Other “Fundamentalists Anonymous”-type memoirs have a similar plot. Girl gets saved, girl joins evangelistic ministry, girl loses virginity, girl loses her faith. It was no crisis of faith, but a crisis of conscience. And faith lost.
John Bunyan wrote that the tempter often spoke to him, ‘”What, will you preach this? This condemns yourself; of this your own soul is guilty; wherefore preach not of this at all, or if you do, yet so mince it as to make way for your own escape; lest, instead of awakening others, you lay that guilt upon your own soul that you will never get from under.” But, I thank the Lord, I have been kept from consenting to these so horrid suggestions, and have rather, as Samson, bowed myself with all my might to condemn sin and transgression wherever I found it; yea, though therein also I did bring guilt upon my own conscience. Let me die, thought I, with the Philistines, Judg. 16: 30, rather than deal corruptly with the blessed word of God.’
Do you dare?
“Only those who have dared to let go can dare to reenter.”
Back to nature
Jolly Blogger makes several good points in his comments about Silent Spring, a book which helped to launch the environmental movement.
- Believers should care more about the natural world than unbelievers do, because we know the one who made it
- We should care about the natural world, not because it’s purer and superior to us, but because it’s fallen like us.
Outdated button
On a whim, I added a button to my sidebar. I have no right to – I was too young to have participated in Freedom Summer or the Freedom Rides. But I hope that I would have stood beside them if I could have. I’ve written about these people and their fruit before. I keep thinking that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was a kind of movement that we don’t see today.
- They were hopeful.
- They were peaceful.
- They sought to love their enemies.
- They did not love their lives unto death.
We don’t see that in churches much today either.
Islam and Christianity
Many of them cling to presuppositions such as these:
- They believe that God approves of waging war to defend their beliefs.
- Though their faith has spread throughout the world, they believe that one culture is divinely inspired.
- They see God’s will as unalterably predestined.
- They oppose theological interpretations that disagree with the established commentaries.
And so do many Muslims.
Utmost importance
“God is of no importance unless He is of utmost importance.”
There is no god but God
Missionaries to Muslims (few though they be) sometimes argue over whether “Allah” is different from God. However…
- “Allah” comes from the same Semitic root words as “elohim,” “El Elyon,” and “El Shaddai.”
- Even before Muhammed came along, Arabic Christians (and they were not few) called God “Allah. They still do. I’ve heard them do it myself.
- The Qu’ran says, “We believe in what has been sent down to us and in that which was sent down to you; our God and your God is One; and we are submitted to him”. Surah 29.46
- To Muslims, “Allah” means the Creator of the universe. There is only one of those.
The problem is that Muslims talk about God in ways that we disagree with. But so do other Christians.
The root of all knowledge?
“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.”
Sung’s Razor
Let’s call him Titus Sung. When I met him, he was a young student who had already spent a year in prison in his native China because of his Christian witness. Yet his face showed peace and joy that is rare among American Christians.
I’ve thought much about Titus’s background. Why was his faith stronger and more effective than almost anybody I’ve ever met in church? Did he attend a better Bible college? Had he seen better Christian videos? Listened to more anointed cassettes? Owned better worship CDs? Attended more conferences? Sat under a more gifted singles minister?
It caused me to formulate a principle I’ll call “Sung’s Razor,” a subset of Occam’s Razor.
Means of sanctification should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
That is, if the Chinese Church doesn’t need it to be like Jesus, why do you need it? If it doesn’t make the Chinese Church more like Jesus, is it possible that it doesn’t make us more like Jesus?
As William of Occam is supposed to have said, “It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less.”
Endless youth group
The typical American youth ministry of the baby boom generation resembled an animal feeder (or maybe an animal trap). It was attractive as long as the bait didn’t run out. It was assumed that youth wouldn’t follow God without bribery, and even then, that they wouldn’t follow God very far. In a youth-obsessed, youth-glorifying society, the youth ministry was a holding tank for large children, with the vague hope that they would grow up someday, probably, inexplicably. But not now.
The lesson of recent history, however, have shown that baby boomers do not necessarily grow up. They may become politicians or even parents, but that doesn’t mean they become disciples. After being taught to live for themselves, to give God his fair share, and to keep the rest, they continue to follow the teachings of their youth. The church has become an endless youth group.
Plague-proofing your city
“If the good Lord sent the ten plagues of Egypt on New York City, I don’t think New York would even notice.”
– From a Garrison Keillor sketch
Fly? Me? Who says I can fly?
Instead of showing the earthbound world that, through God, they can fly, the Church prefers to show that the world that the Church, like the world, can walk.
And so that’s as far as we ever get. The Church proves that it’s like the world. The world nods, yawns, and believes us. But the world doesn’t believe God. The Church doesn’t ever show them God.
The Josiah Generation
A generation is coming that will not follow the faith of their fathers. They will go beyond the faith of their fathers. Like King Josiah, they will look at the promise of God’s Word and the state of typical religion, and they will choose to follow God’s Word. They will strive to make God’s Word alive in their world. They will not seek to entertain themselves in their minds, but will entertain God in their homes and hearts. They will not compromise. They will not leave God’s work undone.
Calvin for Apostle
Many modern “New Testament” churches claim that “they only go by the Word of God,” that their authority is the New Testament. Except, for the actual New Testament church, their authority was Jesus. The New Testament hadn’t been written yet. Continue reading “Calvin for Apostle”
You can’t believe what you don’t know
Certainly, you can believe what you don’t understand. But you can’t believe what you don’t know. You can’t believe what people tell you you should believe. You can’t make yourself believe by studying what you should believe. No one can pressure you to believe. No one can embarrass you into believing. You can’t conform or out-orthodox or out-fox yourself into believing.
Continue reading “You can’t believe what you don’t know”
Jesus would be horrified.
Much is made in churches of the “good news” of the gospels. Less is said of the gospel’s bad news, which is that Jesus would have been horrified by just about every “Christian” government the world has ever seen. He would be horrified by our government and its works, and it would be horrified by him.
– Wendell Berry, Christianity and The Survival of Creation
What Would Jesus Build?
Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that the Son of Man had no place to lay his head. If Jesus was a carpenter, a contractor, what kind of church building would he create?
Maybe a white wooden church with a steeple, so that religious people would feel comfortable.
Maybe a large modern brick edifice, so that powerful people would feel comfortable.
Maybe a sprawling metal building, so that the budget committee would feel comfortable.
After all, we all know how important it was for Jesus to make people feel powerful, or religious, or frugal.
Or comfortable.
The Hidden Gospel of Indices
Forget about the secret and lost gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Judas. If 1st century Christians thought they were God-inspired, they would have made more than one copy of them, no? (Thousands of early copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been preserved, in spite of official persecution from church and state).
No, there is another gospel, a different gospel with a greater appeal to conservative American Christians – and it’s even included in many editions of the Bible. Continue reading “The Hidden Gospel of Indices”
Ugly is the new beautiful
Amidst the call for artistic excellence in worship, we can easily reach standards that Jesus didn’t bother to strive for. Fellow Anabaptist blogger Graham pointed me toward Celtic blogger Carolyn and her composition The Ugly Song.
What would Jesus listen to?
What Would Jesus Listen To?
Not to miss any opportunity to squeeze Jesus Christ into the mold of American popular culture, let’s produce yet another intimate film of his life – and accompany each scene with a song from Christian radio. I’m sure we could make them all fit somehow.
Which scene in Jesus’s life would be enhanced by Christian hip hop? When was Jesus the most rebellious?
Which scene would be typified by gospel elevator music? When was Jesus the most passive?
Which scene should be accompanied by sweeping choral music? When was Jesus the most proud?
Okay, maybe this won’t work after all.
Pentecostal pacifism
“From the very beginning the movement has been characterized by Quaker principles. The laws of the Kingdom, laid down by our elder brother, Jesus Christ in His Sermon on the Mount, have been unqualifiedly adopted, consequently the movement has found itself opposed to the spilling of the blood of any man, or of offering resistance to any aggression. Every branch of the movement, whether in the United States, Canada, Great Britain or Germany, has held to this principle.”
— Stanley Frodsham, General Secretary of the Assemblies of God, 1917
Quoted in Historical and Theological Origins of Assemblies of God Pacifism by Paul Alexander