recommended Emergent Church lectures

Today I listened to three lectures on line by D.A. Carson, author of a new book called Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, which I plan to order tonight. The lectures were very good. The first two are posted at Apologetics.com. The third one, someone sent to me. I don't know if it's posted anywhere but here.

The three lectures are here:
DA Carson: What is the Emergent Church - Pt. 1, Dec. '04
DA Carson: The Emergent Church: Its Weaknesses - Pt. 2, Dec. '04
DA Carson: Final Lecture (title unknown) - Pt. 3, Dec. '04

Steve Camp rebuttal

I hesitate to discuss this because I don't want to provide additional publicity for former CCM artist Steve Camp's recent essay against Justice Sunday. However, I've seen it mentioned on a couple of other blogs, so I guess it's out there.

Justice Sunday is an effort by Christian leaders to challenge people from various religious backgrounds to put pressure on the U.S. Congress to vote up or down on President Bush's judicial appointments, as the Constitution requires of them. This voting is something the Senate has done faithfully throughout our nation's history, until this current body of Democrats decided to lay their bodies in the road because they want the courts stacked with judges who make up law themselves rather than rule on the law given us by the Legislative and Executive branches, our representatives.

At it's crux, Camp's objection is that in this effort, Protestants are allying themselves with Catholics and other sects who teach false doctrine. He thinks our ability to work together on a political cause in spite of our theological differences represents an abandonment of "the Great Commission" (evangelism). He also claims this is a move of postmodernism within the church.

This is really misguided thinking.

For one thing, this has nothing to do with Postmodernism. (Read Francis Schaeffer, as equally against postmodern thinking as he was in favor of social action.)

Secondly, justice is really important to God, and it's appropriate and right that it be really important to us, too. If that sounds like a weird thing to say, read the prophets.

"Woe to you, scribes and parish's, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others." - Jesus (Matthew 23:23)

Ironically, one of Steve Camp's albums was entitled JUSTICE.

We know from Scripture that governments are delegated authority from God to execute justice. Paul goes as far as to call the governing authorities "ministers of God." Government is God's institution. It is perfectly appropriate that Christians be involved in the process -- especially in governments "of the people." (In fact, if you aren't involved politically in the United States, you're really neglecting one of the ministries God has given you.)

But don't be confused. The ministry of governance is not the ministry of evangelism. They are not interchangeable, and one cannot substitute for the other. And contrary to popular belief, "the Great Commission" has never been the Christian's only commission. Jesus said, "teach them to obey all that I have commanded you." That implies there are other commands beyond just the command to evangelize.

Evangelism, contrary to what many Christians claim, is clearly not the solution on issues of justice. Evangelists don't incarcerate people. They don't protect the rights of citizens, or bear the sword to punish criminal acts. That's the ministry of government.

Also, when the government starts viewing good as evil and evil as good, it's not doing what God commissioned it to do. At that point, it is especially important that Christians step up to the plate and be "salt and light" in the situation. (If we refuse to, who do we suppose is going to?)

Be discerning! Don't lose sight of the big picture. We're trying to put pressure on the Senate to do what's right regarding justice. We're not pushing for a state church. We're not combining into a monolithic religion. We're not saying we agree with everyone on matters of faith. We're not abandoning the ministry of evangelism.

But what we are saying is, when it comes to something like abortion, if you're against judges stripping away all rights from a class of human beings based on age and location, we, as followers of Christ, will work with you on that, even if we think you're all wet doctrinally. And we'll do so with clear consciences. Such an action represents no lack of faithfulness to the Gospel on our part. It's a good work. (For Pete's sake, if we were forbidden from endeavors with people who are doctrinally wrong, most of us would have to quit our jobs!)

If we get just one more activist justice on the Supreme Court who doesn't limit himself to the meaning of the words of our Constitution and laws, prepare for a cultural earthquake from which we may never recover.

What Dobson and company are doing, in my estimation, is very God-honoring.

If you haven't done so already, call your Senators (phone numbers), regardless of their stated position, and tell them that you want them to adhere to our Constitution and have an up or down vote on all judicial nominees, as the Senate has always done.

a strong argument for the existence of God

While apologetics isn't the subject matter of this blog, I will probably throw it in from time to time.

I really liked a few recent posts on the Primitive thoughts of a Christian philosopher blog which present an argument for the existence of God which goes like this:

1. If there is no God, then there are no objective moral values.
2. There are objective moral values.
3. Therefore, there is a God.

My first exposure to this argument was in C. S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. This argument played a big role in bringing me from being an agnostic after college to a theist.

The posts from the blog:
What is truth?
Are moral realists delusional?
Does anything really matter?
The moral argument for the existence of God

feeding the sheep or amusing the goats?

I found this Charles Spurgeon essay on the Emergent No blog. I don't agree with Spurgeon on everything concerning entertainment. (In another of his pieces Emergent No posted, he sounds like he was a "don't go to the theater" type, which I'm not.) However, I do think he raises some good points for consideration.

How prominent a role, if any, should entertainment take in the local church? (I grew up in a Lutheran tradition that disallowed clapping in church in order to avoid granting praise to anyone other than the Lord. "We've come a long way, baby!") All things being equal, I'm all for contemporary Christian music and such. But I think its presence in the place of worship can be abused.

For instance, I've attended Saddleback's Christmas concerts, and they really come across as big Hollywood productions, complete with snow machines, professional singers brought in from around the country, and very little in the way of an oral Christian message. And in all fairness, I suspect that that was the intent -- to create a comfortable environment for visitors. Is that okay? It might be. But there was also blatant self-aggrandizement by some of the key performers, which is one of the dangers one might fear could come with the adoption of such a mode of operation.

Based on this essay, I'm sure Spurgeon would have disapproved.

"Feeding the Sheep Or Amusing the Goats?"

by Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

An evil resides in the professed camp of the Lord so gross in its impudence that the most shortsighted can hardly fail to notice it. During the past few years it has developed at an abnormal rate evil for evil. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump ferments. The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. From speaking out as the Puritans did, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses.

My first contention is that providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the Church. If it is a Christian work why did not Christ speak of it? "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." That is clear enough. So it would have been if He has added, "and provide amusement for those who do not relish the gospel." No such words, however, are to be found. It did not seem to occur to Him. Then again, "He gave some apostles, some prophets, some pastors and teachers, for the work of the ministry." Where do entertainers come in? The Holy Spirit is silent concerning them. Were the prophets persecuted because they amused the people or because they refused? The concert has no martyr roll.

Again, providing amusement is in direct antagonism to the teaching and life of Christ and all His apostles. What was the attitude of the Church to the world? "Ye are the salt," not sugar candy-something the world will spite out, not swallow. Short and sharp was the utterance, "Let the dead bury their dead." He was in awful earnestness!

Had Christ introduced more of the bright and pleasant elements into His mission, He would have been more popular when they went back, because of the searching nature of His teaching. I do not hear Him say, "Run after these people, Peter, and tell them we will have a different style of service tomorrow, something short and attractive with little preaching. We will have a pleasant evening for the people. Tell them they will be sure to enjoy it. Be quick, Peter, we must get the people somehow!" Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them. In vain will the Epistles be searched to find any trace of the gospel amusement. Their message is, "Come out, keep out, keep clean out!" Anything approaching fooling is conspicuous by its absence. They had boundless confidence in the gospel and employed no other weapon. After Peter and John were locked up for preaching, the Church had a prayer meeting, but they did not pray, "Lord grant Thy servants that by a wise and discriminating use of innocent recreation we may show these people how happy we are." If they ceased not for preaching Christ, they had not time for arranging entertainments. Scattered by persecution, they went everywhere preaching the gospel. They "turned the world upside down." That is the difference! Lord, clear the Church of all the rot and rubbish the devil has imposed on her and bring us back to apostolic methods.

Lastly, the mission of amusement fails to affect the end desired. It works havoc among young converts. Let the careless and scoffers, who thank God because the Church met them halfway, speak and testify. Let the heavy-laden who found peace through the concert not keep silent! Let the drunkard to whom the dramatic entertainment has been God's link in the chain of their conversion, stand up! There are none to answer. The mission of amusement produces no converts. The need of the hour for today's ministry is believing scholarship joined with earnest spirituality, the one springing from the other as fruit from the root. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt, that it sets men on fire.

I have reservations about the last paragraph, because I've met Christians who've come to faith via shallow evangelistic approaches. But, even so, I don't think that justifies this stuff.

there's a difference between descriptive and prescriptive

There's another point to be made regarding my Bible As Silly Putty posts. In the first post, I discussed a teacher at my church who took a historical account and drew from it a principle for behavior that wasn't contained in the text itself. Specifically, the teacher said that Christians should try to get themselves involved in ministries that are in line with their passions. This he derived from the Biblical account of some Israelites working on rebuilding sections of Jerusalem's wall near their homes.

The point I want to add is that there's a difference between descriptive accounts and prescriptive accounts. When we see descriptions of things in the Bible, it doesn't necessarily mean they're things we must copy, or would even be wise to copy. Descriptions are different from commands, even in the Bible. This is all part of reading things in context.

the Bible as silly putty (part 2)

Another example from this same church was when the pastor was teaching about the Wedding at Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine, near the start of Jesus' ministry (John 2:1-11). This pastor asked his students, "Jesus transformed the water in six clay jars into wine [actually, the account says the jars were stone]. What was the significance of the number six?"

Of course, no one knew the answer because there is no significance. At least none revealed in the text. But he went on:

"Well, there's a few clues. Some scholars believe that, at this point in Jesus' ministry, He had only called six of the twelve disciples. So that corresponds. Now the text says these jars were made of clay [actually, stone]. What's the significance of that? Well, what did God create man out of? Genesis tells us, the dust of the ground. Clay, as we know, is a material also made from the dust of the ground. Is it all starting to come together for you?? The six jars were symbolic of the disciples, and just as the water was transformed into wine, so the disciples were about to go through a spiritual transformation themselves!"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. But of a class of about 70 adults, no one objected.

I don't deny that the infused meaning is benign enough, but this pastor was modeling for his students a terribly flawed way of interpreting Scripture! There is nothing in the passage that hints of any sort of allegory. And for the sake of argument, let's suppose he's right about the symbolism -- and say Jesus shared that very information with His disciples later on in the day -- nevertheless, God did not choose to reveal those details to us in the text. So what are we doing here, reading God's mind??

I looked on the Internet to see if I could find someone who shared this interpretation of the Cana account. I didn't find anyone. However, I did find three other symbolic interpretations, all three just as disconnected from the text as my pastor's interpretation. (Which just goes to show how completely without a rudder you are when you navigate into such waters.)

Later that week I met with the pastor in private to share my concern with him. He actually took offense and accused me of nit picking.

One thing that really bothers me here is that, the Bible is a really big book. And there's a lot in there to learn from. We don't need to be making things up in order to learn from it. (And we're not learning from the Bible anyway if we're making things up.) In the Cana account, it ends with, "This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him." This is the significance of the passage. Jesus was revealing something about Himself, that we can learn also.

The concept of inspiration is that God uses the words of Scripture to convey information and ideas. Not that these words are supposed to be the starting point for imaginative speculation inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit communicates through the meaning of the words. So the first goal of Bible study is to accurately understand what the words mean -- the information and ideas they convey. That is how the Holy Spirit speaks to us.

Last week I ordered a DVD from Netflix, the mail-based movie rental place. The DVD never arrived, so I reported it lost, and they sent me another copy. (This is true.) Today it arrived, but the disc has a big crack in it.

Now, given that information, and only that information, what can you conclude? That Netflix has bad service? (That hasn't been my experience.) That someone is sabotaging their operation? That God doesn't want me to watch this particular movie, and that this is a sign? That I'm under a curse this week for something I did? Any of these interpretations are worthless speculation, bordering on superstition. We don't have adequate information to draw these conclusions.

Yet I regularly see Christians taking the liberty to come up with interpretations for Biblical passages that aren't supported by the information and ideas contained in the meanings of the words God chose to inspire. (In doing so, aren't they implying God left important things out?) We don't consider this practice valid in normal life situations. Why do we do it with God's word?

Maybe "the Bible as silly putty" isn't the best analogy. Maybe a Ouija board would be better -- but instead of channeling spirits, people think they're channeling the Holy Spirit.

[Note: I think Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason may have been inspired by this post. His September/October 2005 edition of Solid Ground is titled: Silly Putty Bible]

not wisdom, evasiveness

I got an e-mail from a friend a couple days after Terri Schiavo's death. It included this comment:

My pastor said in church this morning, that with the events of this past week, his only answer to other people about how he feels is that he loves Jesus with his whole heart, and Jesus is the only one who knows the whole story. Pretty good words of wisdom in this whole horrendous family matter. Hopefully Terri is now sealed in His arms.

Now I wasn't there, so I don't know if something got lost in the translation. But pretty good words of wisdom?? Not if they were as relayed here.

"Jesus is the only one who knows the whole story" is true with everything in life, so what is that but an evasive comment? A much more helpful response would have been to discuss some of the ethical issues involved and what the Bible has to say about the value of our lives, the value of the disabled, our obligation to honor our parents (in reference to Terri's husband's lack of honor for Terri's parents), the immorality of suicide, the fact that God is the one who really owns our lives, how legislators, judges and spouses are not above the law given by their Creator, etc. This could have been a great opportunity to provide instruction, but instead it sounds like this pastor skirted the issue, couching it in talk of "loving Jesus." But of course, part of loving Jesus means seeing His presence in the needy among us -- people such as Terri Shiavo (Matt. 25:40).

the Bible as silly putty (part 1)

One thing I've noticed in recent years is how many people read into the Bible things it doesn't say, thinking they're obtaining a "deeper meaning" from it. I'm sure most of it is done with good intentions, but nevertheless, it's a practice that treats the Bible's meaning as something we can be creative with, molding it into new shapes, so to speak.

I used to go to a church where the leadership felt at liberty to interpret historical accounts in the Bible as parables. As an example, I was in a Sunday school class taught by one of the elders that covered the historical account of Nehemiah directing the reconstruction of the wall around Jerusalem. The Biblical text describes some of the volunteers doing work on the sections of the wall near their homes.

So our teacher asked the class, "What's the significance of this?"

He got blank stares, and I said, "What do you mean?"

He replied, "What's the significance of Nehemiah assigning tasks to people close to their homes?"

I said, "Well, the text doesn't say, but I imagine it could have been for convenience."

He said, "Well, I think it's deeper than that."

He went on to explain that, in his reasoning, a person would be more passionate about working on the wall if it were close to his home because that part of the wall would be providing him direct protection.

Now, that’s a possible explanation, but it’s really speculation; the passage doesn’t contain that information.

But the teacher went on. He concluded that this passage teaches the principle that, in a church body, we should get people involved in ministries they "have a passion for."

Now, in and of itself, that might actually be a good principle. (It might not be, as well. You could imagine a strong case being made that ministry should be aimed toward areas of actual need more so than what could actually amount to nothing more than a narcissistic pursuit of one's personal passions.)

But regardless, this teaching of personal passions and ministry opportunities does not follow from this particular Bible passage. This teacher was reading something into the passage that simply wasn't there, as if the story were akin to one of Aesop's Fables or one of Jesus' parables. If the literary context was figurative writing, that might have been appropriate. But this is a historical account.

I asked the teacher about this after class, and he defended his interpretive method by saying that, since he believes all Scripture is given to us by God, each part of it must contain material we can apply to our lives. It was unthinkable to him that God would include any detail in a passage if there weren't some nugget of wisdom we could extract from it. (I would ague, historical accounts provide valuable context information for other writings, as well as serve to preserve Israel's history. Not every bit of the Bible is suited, nor intended, to be "devotional "material.)

But this, in my evaluation, really displays a low view of Scripture.

Here’s a guy who says, if he can't find a "deep" meaning in a part of the Bible, he just uses the text as a springboard for a meaning he makes up himself. In a very real sense, by adding meaning to the text, he's actually adding to Scripture. Yet he says he does this because he has the Holy Spirit working within him. Never mind the fact that this is not the kind of work Scripture says the Holy Spirit does.

The episode really concerned me. By his example, this elder was teaching the people in his church a faulty way of interpreting Scripture. The implication was that the mature Christian should embrace speculative teachings as if they are inspired, Biblical truth. In fact, one could even argue the message being sent was that speculative teachings are actually superior to the direct meaning of Biblical texts because, as was stated, they contain "deeper" meanings (presumably, as opposed to shallow meanings).

It seems to me, if this sort of "interpretation" were indeed the work of the Holy Spirit, one might wonder why we need the text of Scripture at all. Why can’t we just pick up any old writing and have the Holy Spirit read into it some "deeper meaning" for us that He wants to convey? If "the deeper meanings" aren’t contained in the actual meanings of the Biblical words, why even keep the Biblical words? Just listen to the Holy Spirit!

As I'll cover in a future post, this is actually where some contemporary Christian teachers (within otherwise orthodox circles!) have gone with this thinking.

[to be continued]

[Note: I think Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason may have been inspired by this post. His September/October 2005 edition of Solid Ground is titled: Silly Putty Bible]