letters to my Jehovah's Witness cousin

Last Thanksgiving I visited my uncle's family and got into an argument over theology. They're Jehovah's Witnesses, and I'm a conservative Lutheran Christian.

The conversation began with me asking them why they feel it's wrong to celebrate Thanksgiving. I told them my kids had asked, and I didn't know the answer. I roughly know why they object to Christmas. But Thanksgiving strikes me as completely unobjectionable. I'm sure atheists don't like it. But what in the the world could someone claiming to love God find offensive about it?

Anyway, my intention wasn't to attack their beliefs. I just wanted to understand their thought process. Theology interests me. And the JW's have some unique theological perspectives.

With the conversation in full swing, I asked them about some of their other unorthodox teachings and practices. Being the kind of thinker I am, I probed further when an answer they provided seemed weak or in need of clarification.

One thing led to another, and they began to take offense at my questioning.

At one point my cousin challenged me. "You're putting us on the defensive, insisting that we lay out why we believe what we do. What about you? You haven't said anything tonight to defend your beliefs. Why do you believe in the Trinity, or believe Jesus is God? Why should I believe that? Why do you think Lutheranism is right and we're wrong?"

I told him I hadn't come prepared to make such a case, but that those were fair questions, and that I'd be open to answering him.

Over the past few months I've been doing just that, sending my cousin e-mails as ideas have come to mind. Mostly these ideas have been prompted by Scripture passages I've heard read at church.

So far I haven't heard anything back from him. So who knows how he's receiving them.

Basically I'm trying to do what I've heard Greg Koukl describe as putting pebbles in my cousin's shoe. Where it exists, I want to help him experience some discomfort in seeing a disconnect between JW teaching and the Bible. (And I was up-front with him about that.) He's going to have to take what I present to him, consider its merit, and mull it over.

I've created a new blog to record the letters, called "Letters to my Jehovah's Witness Cousin." I think what I've been sending my cousin is worthy of a larger audience. At the very least, I'd like to capture it for my own future reference. And perhaps others will find it useful.

Note: Readers may find it beneficial to to read it in reverse order to follow its flow.

the marriage in the Fireproof movie isn't

I saw the movie Fireproof a few months back and wasn't as impressed as the greater Christian community seems to be. Although I know it set out to do the opposite, I think it leaves the audience with a distorted view of the nature of marriage.

People I've talked to are inspired by the movie, expecting the main characters to stay married. But to me, it's not at all clear that their relationship going forward won't still be built upon a foundation of sand.

I have no beefs with the husband. He admirably stepped up to the plate and worked on issues in his life and in his marriage.

But we see his wife leave when (and because) her husband's behavior resides on the "worse" side of the "for better or for worse" ledger, and return when his behavior improves. The wife's transformation, if you want to call it that, comes across to me as merely a response to being loved and pursued. Perhaps she actually responded to her husband's change by repenting of her unfaithfulness and her embrace of a worldly, conditional view of marriage (as her husband did). But we aren't shown that.

That detail, I would argue, is pivotal. It is the difference between pursuing happiness and pursuing what's right. Those that place happiness over doing what's right are not likely going to stay married. "For better or for worse" becomes "as long as things are going well." And I have yet to hear of a marriage that hasn't had periods of "worse."

Regarding where we leave the couple at the end of the film: What is going to happen when their second honeymoon phase is over? The movie seems to imply that becoming a Christian means the honeymoon won't end. But that simply isn't true.

There is no substitute for willfully keeping one's vows in spite of the temptation to do otherwise. In the husband's case, we see that Christ empowered him to do that. We don't see that in his wife.

Jesus as energy drink!

I recently visited a LCMS Lutheran church where the pastor proudly showed the following video:

Welcome to Our Church

What do you make of it?

There are good points, to be sure. But what I notice is that there's no Savior. Jesus is an ill-defined icon. And the church's historic message of salvation from hell is one this church is proud to say it considers unimportant.

Welcome, my friends, to the era of "Jesus as energy drink!"

is logic the opposite of faith?

I was in a class recently at my church. The fellow teaching the class said he believes Scripture teaches that Jesus was sacrificed "from the foundation of the world." Revelation 13:8 states, "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship [the beast], whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb [Jesus] slain from the foundation of the world."

"So," he concluded, "this is really interesting. In Old Testament times, Jesus had already been sacrificed, even though He had not yet been sacrificed!"

Although I have a lot of respect for this teacher, I think he misinterpreted the passage.

The New American Standard Bible translates the verse: "...everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain." Revelation 17:8 reads almost identically, but omits the part about the Lamb: "...whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world..."

I think the phrase "from the foundation of the world" was meant to refer to when the names were written, not when the Lamb was slain. And Scripture teaches elsewhere that Jesus died only once: "For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all" (Romans 6:10), and "Christ also suffered once for sins" (1 Peter 3:18). So I think the correct interpretation is pretty obvious.


After the class I shared my skepticism over the teacher's interpretation with a friend from the class. One point I made was that we can rule out the teacher's interpretation simply because it is internally contradictory. It would have been logically impossible for Jesus to have been both "already sacrificed" and "not yet sacrificed" at the same time; it would have violated the law of non-contradiction.

The law of non-contradiction states that something cannot both "be" and "not be" in the same respect and at the same time. Things that contradict cannot both be true.

My friend had a hard time with that.

Two weeks later, after further consideration, this same friend suggested that I was placing my trust in logic and "secular philosophy" rather than "receiving the Word of God in faith." He felt the breach of logic was something I should be open to since "God's ways are not our ways" (which I think is a misapplication of this statement in Isaiah 55:8). My friend went as far as to question my Christianity.

What my friend doesn't realize is that one can't argue anything, spiritual or otherwise, without using logic. In fact, (not coincidentally), his correction of me itself relied upon logic: (a) Christians must interpret Scripture in a certain manner, (b) I don't interpret Scripture in that manner, therefore (c) I must not be a Christian. If (a) and (b) are true, then (c) must also be true. We know this because the law of non-contradiction is universally reliable.

You see, the reliableness of the law of non-contradiction is the very thing which allows us to determine whether or not something is true: we compare it to things we already know to be true. If it contradicts or is inconsistent, we reject it.

One can label this "secular philosophy" all he wants. But in reality, it's just figuring things out. Its opposite is not faith. Its opposite is haphazard thinking, irrationality, incoherence, foolishness, absurdity, ridiculousness, fallacious, nonsense, falsehood.

Theologians sometimes say we "use Scripture to interpret Scripture." This is another way of saying we rule out interpretations of passages that contradict interpretations of other passages we already have good reason to believe are correct. We do this because we do not believe the Word of God contains contradictions -- contradictions being, by their nature, inconsistent with the character of God (which is another application of logic, and an affirmation that we understand God to be rational).


Suppose the law of non-contradiction was not always reliable. And suppose someone directed me to worship a hamburger, claiming a hamburger was actually God. I'd be in a tough position. I'd have no way to evaluate the truthfulness of his claim. Normally I would consider the attributes of God and the attributes of a hamburger, recognize them to be different, and conclude that, because they are not identical, a hamburger is not God. But if the law of non-contradiction were not universally reliable, and something could indeed be its opposite, I would have no way of ruling out going to McDonald's for Sunday worship!

And without confidence in the law of non-contradiction, how can anyone trust God's promises? How can we even grasp what it is God is promising? When we decipher the meanings of sentences, we favor interpretations that are consistent with the meanings of words. We reject interpretations that contradict, or are not consistent with, the meanings of words. Without logic, all of that is out the window. So understanding a promise becomes impossible, let alone believing and trusting it!


What I was doing in that class at my church was nothing more than using common sense to reject an incoherent interpretation of Scripture. I don't think logic is a threat to Scripture. On the contrary, I think logic protects Scripture from multiple abuses.

a significant flaw in Jehovah's Witness theology

I have an uncle and aunt and cousins who are Jehovah's Witnesses. I visited them recently and we got to talking about their beliefs. Not expecting to hit on something particularly profound, I told them how I have difficulty with their prohibition on government involvement (such as voting) -- that I think government involvement is a virtue. Interestingly, I found out I hit upon a fatal flaw in their worldview.

They explained to me that JWs believe the fundamental sin in the Garden of Eden was man rejecting God's governance, and that earthly governments are, by nature, the embodiment of a rejection of God's theocratic rule. They believe that at the end of time, God will destroy all government and establish His own government once and for all. They believe that our current time on earth primarily serves the purpose of proving to the heavenly hosts that man cannot successfully rule himself. So, to them, participating in government is to side with the enemy and contribute to the effort to prove God wrong. They get a lot of this from the admonition to be "in the world, but not of it." All of this, they believe, is the central theme of Scripture.

Before this came to light, I shared with them Romans 13:1-7:

"Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor." (emphasis mine)

What I said to them was, it seems bizarre to me that a church body would forbid its members from participating in something the Apostle Paul refers to as a "ministry."

We discussed the issue at some length, but in the end they warned me not to base my beliefs on an idea found only one place in the Bible. (In reality, I think the rest of Scripture harmonizes quite comfortably with this passage. Consider all the men of God in the Old Testament who worked in government. And consider that nowhere in Scripture is there a command against government participation. And I can see no necessity to interpret "of the world" as meaning government involvement any more than I can see "of the world" needing to mean something like commerce -- something the JW's have no issue with. We know from its usage in Scripture that the term "of the world," or "worldliness," refers to the sinfulness the world is entangled in. We are told to be "in the world," but not tied up in sin.)

"Hmmm. Are you saying that this passage of Scripture is inaccurate and its teaching can’t be relied upon? Does its message differ from the Watchtower's?”

What I find particularly interesting is, I have never heard this used as a challenge to JW theology. I think it hits upon a significant vulnerability. There is no way I can buy the idea that the Apostle Paul would have written the above passage had he believed government, as an institution, was fundamentally an embodiment of rebellion against God.

Amazing Grace movie

I went a saw the Amazing Grace last night, a movie based on the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce. A devout Christian and Member of Parliament, Wiberforce brought an end to the slave trade in the British Empire. I highly recommend it! It is engaging, touching, and documents the life a true hero.

About the characters (from the movie's website):

Elected to the House of Commons at the age of 21, Wilberforce, over the course of two decades, took on the English establishment and persuaded those in power to end the inhumane trade of slavery.

John Newton, a former slave trader and composer of the hymn Amazing Grace, was a confidante of Wilberforce who inspired him to pursue a life of service to humanity.

William Pitt the Younger, England's youngest ever Prime Minister at the age of 24, encouraged his friend Wilberforce to take up the fight to outlaw slavery and supported him in his struggles in Parliament.

Barbara Spooner, a beautiful and headstrong young woman, shared Wilberforce's passion for reform and became his wife after a whirlwind courtship.

Olaudah Equiano, born in Africa, was sent as a slave to the Colonies, but bought his freedom and made his home in London, where he wrote a best-selling account of his life and became a leading figure in the fight to end the slavery of his fellow countrymen.

Bible studies or paraphrase studies?

The popularity of paraphrases of the Bible has struck me as a negative development in Christendom. When I say paraphrase, I mean the reworking of Biblical texts, (rather than merely translating them from one language to another), and then marketing the reworking as "a Bible." Often times in the process, the length of the text is increased to make it more descriptive or colorful for the reader. (Rick Warren's best seller The Purpose-Driven Life makes extensive use of quotes from various paraphrases.)

While the popularity of paraphrases strikes me as negative, it doesn't strike me as surprising. I've read these paraphrases, and I can understand people deriving insight, and enjoyment, from reading them. But here's my concern:

What are we saying about the adequacy of Scripture if we (or scholars) act as God's editor? What are we saying when we substitute the inspired text with a text we find "more insightful"? Did God fail to get it right the first time?

In a way, these paraphrases are Biblical commentaries in disguise. Commentaries are fine for what they are. But when they're substituted for the actual text of Scripture, my concern is that Christians will file away what they read in them as being God's word. These commentaries don't claim to have the authority of Scripture, yet, in usage, such authority is certainly implied. (And what if the commentator gets it wrong?)

So are there any legitimate uses for biblical paraphrases? I think so.

Open along side a translation of Scripture, I can see a paraphrase serving as a legitimate study tool. Optimally, it could help illuminate the actual meaning of a Biblical texts. Sometimes I know I've lost the understanding and appreciation of particular passages due to over-exposure, in which case, a paraphrase has the potential of helping me "rediscover" these passages with fresh eyes.

We just need to make sure we don't jettison the actual Bible from our Bible studies.

"judge not"

Below is something my pastor wrote last week for a study of Matthew we're doing. This was for chapter 7. I thought it was worth sharing.

Judge Not. For generations the most famous Bible passage was Jesus' beautiful summary of the Gospel in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave Hi only begotten Son, so that whoever believed in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The last few decades have seen a shift, and now perhaps the most famous passage is Jesus' warning about judgment in 7:1: “Judge not, that you not be judged.” This text is wrongly used as the banner text for lawlessness (called “tolerance”): no one has the right to say anything negative about anyone else's thoughts or words or deeds. There is no judging because there is nothing wrong, nothing bad, nothing evil; the standard of good and right is simply what I want or what I feel like. This is the law of tolerance, we are to tolerate each other's actions, live and let live. But tolerance is not merely passive, we are also supposed to embrace all the nuttiness and flat out wickedness of others. To 'tolerate' gay marriage is to approve of it, anything less is homophobic. To 'tolerate' Islam is to approve it, speak well of it, not be critical, “Judge not!” The only act that is considered 'sinful' is being intolerant.

So we often hear the criticism that the Lord's Church is “judgmental” because it is slavishly bound to the conviction that there is a right and a wrong way to believe, think, speak and live. According to the law of tolerance, if we want to keep the Lord's command and “Judge not,” then we need to jettison the Ten Commandments as a norm for good behavior, in fact, we need to jettison all norms for behavior and life, and tolerate everyone's free choices. It this what Jesus is teaching?

Perhaps the best way to begin an answer is to consider Jesus' own actions. He is, after all, the supreme example of obedience to the Father. His life is, therefore, the perfect picture of what it means to “Judge not.” (This is to be understood absolutely. One of the reasons that we can go about not judging is because we know that the Lord Jesus will do the judging Himself. We can leave it is His hand.) But still the question remains, was Jesus tolerant? We need only think of a few examples to say, “No.” Consider the overturning of the money-changers table, or the “woes” to the Pharisees, or the “Go and sell all you have” to the rich young ruler, or even His teaching in the sermon on the Mount. Does this sound tolerant, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven... If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off... When you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites... No one can serve two masters... Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye... Beware of false prophets... Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven...” Are these examples of tolerance? Indeed the very idea of a last judgment is anathema to the creed of tolerance.

What begins to emerge, then, is the need to have a better understanding of “not judging.” If “being tolerant” is not the opposite of “not judging,” what is the opposite? The answer Jesus has already given: forgiveness. “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” [6:14] Whereas tolerance tries to get around the law by ignoring the law, in the kingdom of heaven the law is triumphed over by the Gospel. “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” [James 2:13] So the law stands (not one jot or tittle is passing away), but the law doesn't have the only word or the last word. “Not judging” means that the Lord's word of life and salvation and the forgiveness of all sins has been heard by us, and then cannot but be spoken by us to our neighbor. We know that the exceeding righteousness and the perfection of the Father has been given to us in spite of our unworthiness; that the Father has withheld, for Christ's sake, the judgment that we deserved because of our sin; that God's affections and actions toward us are full of love and compassion and mercy and forgiveness, and therefore, as His children, our affections and actions towards our neighbors ought to look the same.

On the other hand, if our attitude toward our neighbors reflects a harshness and criticalness and an unwillingness to help, that same measure of judgment will be turned onto us by our heavenly Father. “For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” [7:2] We should not be poking around, looking for our neighbor's flaws, speck hunting, trying to 'help' them by showing them their sinfulness and unworthiness. Jesus uses the parable of the plank and the speck to explain. It is the height of foolishness for a man with a plank or a beam stuck in his eye to attempt to help his neighbor dig a speck out of his own eye. This is like the man who goes, uninvited, to help his neighbor fix a leak in the faucet while his own basement is flooding. “Tend to your own unrighteousness first,” Jesus is saying. “Judge yourself, and then you will find reason for mercy and compassion.” All of our judging is to be tempered with mercy.

This also helps make sense of all the passages in the Scriptures that command us to make judgments. For example:

St John 7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

1 Corinthians 5:11-13 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. (12) For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? (13) But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.

1 John 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. We see this teaching of Jesus reflected in the apostles. (See also Romans 2:1; 1 Corinthians 4:5; James 2:8-13)

Romans 14:10-13 But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. (11) For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. (12) So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. (13) Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.

James 4:11-12 Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. (12) There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

unconditional love?

Today Dennis Prager is questioning where the idea came that unconditional love is a desirable quality in people. It's an interesting question. I suppose it depends on how you define unconditional love. But in its strictest sense, it seems to me that even God does not exhibit unconditional love. The Bible describes God as hating some people. And I doubt He loves Satan.

However, being a father, I can say that it seems that I have unconditional love for my children. Although, maybe there is a condition: that they be my offspring. And since that's a condition that is inseverable, the love always remains. And in a sense, it's the same way for us as God's adopted children. Well, maybe not. We still have the freedom and reject God and thereby face his rejection.

the Trinity: one + one + one = one?

Last month contained the day in the church year called Trinity Sunday. My pastor included these statements in his sermon that day:

First, what is the teaching of the Trinity? There is one God in three persons. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but there are not three gods but one God. We worship the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity. Who can understand this? One + one + one = one. This is incomprehensible. God has not given us minds to comprehend this; only hearts to believe it and mouths to confess it. (Pastor Byran Wolfmueller)

I really like my pastor and learn a lot from him, but I don't like the way he characterized this. One + one + one is not incomprehensible because our minds are lacking. It is incomprehensible because it is logically impossible. Not even God can understand something that is logically impossible.

Comprehension means to take in the meaning, nature, or importance of something -- to grasp it. If something is incomprehensible, its meaning, nature, or importance are not knowable. So one has to wonder, if the content of the teaching of the Trinity is incomprehensible, does the "teaching" really teach us anything? Incomprehensible words, by definition, bring us no closer to understanding the nature of something than we had prior to hearing them.

If someone told me that, all things being equal, three objects weighed one pound each, but together also only weighed one pound, he would be telling me something inconsistent with logic and the concept of weight. While one can say that to believe such a thing would require "faith," I would question whether such faith was really a belief in something, or merely a rejection of logic and mathematics. If I had to do something that required an accurate perception of the weight characteristics of these objects, I would have to ignore at least one of three things: (1) I would have to ignore the knowledge that their quantity was three and that they each weighed one pound, or (2) I would have to ignore the knowledge that in total they weighed one pound, or (3) I would have to ignore mathematics. If I ignored none of these, and claimed "faith" in all of them, I would be no closer to grasping the nature of the objects than I was before, because these pieces of knowledge are inconsistent. Such "faith" would be merely an exercise in justifying belief in things absurd. (And once you open that Pandora's Box, the distinction between knowledge and ignorance evaporates.)

The doctrine of the Trinity uses the concept of quantity, and uses numbers as a means of qualifying quantity. If the numbers used violate the most rudimentary concepts of mathematics, then they must not be numbers as we understand numbers. And if someone talks to me about such numbers, they might as well refer to them using nonsense words, because I don't have any idea what they are. Using numeric terminology will only send me down the (apparently wrong) path of trying to integrate them into what I already know about numbers.

Now lest you think I'm arguing against the doctrine of the Trinity, I'm not. I'm merely arguing against this type of characterization of it.

I read a thought provoking book by RC Sproul a while back called Not a Chance. It contains the following passage on the topic of the Trinity which I found quite helpful:

Christianity rests on two profoundly important and profoundly difficult paradoxes that remain mysteries: the Trinity and the Incarnation. Classically, the Trinity was defined in these terms:

God is one in essence
and
three in person.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard or seen this formulation described as a "contradiction." Why is it called a contradiction? We are accustomed to thinking in terms of "One person equals one essence." This equation may be a convenient one, but it's not a rationally necessary one. The Trinity is indeed unusual and mysterious, but it is not inherently or analytically irrational.

If the formulation for the Trinity asserted that God is one in essence and three in essence or that he is three in person and one in person, we would be engaging in the nonsense of contradiction. Something cannot be one in A and three in A at the same time and in the same relationship. That's a contradiction.

The classical formulation of the Trinity is that God is one in one thing (one in A, essence) and three in a different thing (three in B, persona). The Church Fathers were careful not to formulate the nature of God in contradictory terms. . .

The formula is not meant to say that essence and person are the same things. Essence refers to the being of God, while person is used here as subsistence within being. Essence is primary and persona is secondary. Essence is the similarity, while persona is the dissimilarity in the nature of God. He is unified in one essence, but diversified in three persona.

the da vinci dud

From this and other reviews of The Da Vinci Code, it sounds as if the book got the movie it deserved.

true gnosticism is not much of a da vinci code ally

In researching the Gnostic gospels, I came across gnosis.org, a web site (I think) run by this a guy in Hollywood, Stephan Hoeller, "the sole American bishop consecrated by the Duc de Palatine, mysterious bearer of the English Gnostic Transmission." The site links to an interesting story about Hoeller in LA Weekly. Reading it, I can again see why early Christians rejected Gnostism. It's a completely different religion!

What is ironic is, I can't imagine most critics of Christianity out there who celebrate that the The Da Vinci Code is uncovering some suppressed truth that kills Christianity's credibility would have any comfort whatsoever with the far-fetched, unfounded religious claims of the Gnostics. It strikes me as a classic case of, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

But true Gnostics may not be as much of a friend as they'd like. From the article:

Since Bishop Hoeller is a bona fide scholar of the lore alluded to by the now stupendously rich Mr. Brown, the question must be posed: Was it some sort of tantric sex thing between J.C. and M.M. [Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene]?

"Although I'm delighted by the interest in Gnosticism it's stirred up," Hoeller says, "and by its part in restoring Mary Magdalene to her place at the side of Jesus, I must confess that my regard for The Da Vinci Code is considerably less than for The Matrix. For one thing, [Da Vinci Code author] Mr. Brown seems to have an agenda. He appears to be deliberately courting certain "interest groups," among them conspiracy buffs, enthusiastic but badly informed Goddess worshippers and almost anyone who harbors a grudge against the Christian faith. And though the Gnostic Gospels do identify the Magdalene as having a unique spiritual kinship with Jesus, there's no suggestion that the relationship was sexual, much less that it produced offspring. This is a canard derived almost wholly from an earlier piece of sensationalistic pseudo-history called Holy Blood, Holy Grail."

"According to which," I interject, "the bloodline of Jesus produced the French monarchy . . ."

"Yes, well . . . the Merovingian dynasty."

"And your opinion of the Holy Blood theory?"

"Flapdoodle."

the gnostic gospels

It's insightful to read the actual text of the Gnostic gospels. What's striking is, they aren't very large, they don't read anything like the Biblical gospels, they don't say very much, and they sometimes don't made a whole lot of sense. It's obvious why they never gained legitimacy with the early Christians.

The books may be interesting from a historical perspective. But it escapes me why anyone would consider them a threat to the Biblical accounts. If readers of the The Da Vinci Code would actually take a few minutes and read the Gnostic books, the far fetched claims about them would certainly have a lot harder time gaining traction.

Here's a particularly goofy quote from the Gospel of Thomas:

Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."

Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."

Some of the more talked about Gnostic gospels:

The Gospel of Judas
The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Philip

The books the early Christians considered scripture (and are actually in the Bible):

The Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Luke
The Gospel of John

the da vinci code cracks

Stand to Reason has a very good article explaining what junk history is contained in The Da Vinci Code. It doesn't take much knowledge to realize how outright false the work is. It's disturbing that something like The Da Vinci Code can gain any footing whatsoever. I'm really disappointed Tom Hanks is doing the film. It seems like any movie he stars in anymore is nothing less than outstanding. What a disservice to his audience. He should have done his homework.

mysticism within the Christian community

Here's a critique I wrote a while back on a book by a popular Christian author and retreat speaker, Ken Gire. It's a good example of a guy teaching mysticism within the Christian community.

What's wrong with Ken Gire's book Windows of the Soul?

my wife has been having an affair

I found out over Christmas that my wife has been having an affair since before we separated. That explains a lot as to why she has had no desire to work things out. The pain I feel from the deception, the infidelity, and the kind of future I face, goes beyond words. I never imagined a thing like this could happen to us.

Here's an article that explains what happened in our marriage: The Walkaway Wife Syndrome. The only difference is that my wife admits she was never the "relationship caretaker."

Hopefully I'll be getting the blog going again soon after the divorce is final, which looks like March of 2006. Please pray for my family. At this point, I'm still seeking reconciliation.

--------------------------------
Here's an update as of May 9, 2006: We went to court in March and experienced a mistrial. The judge announced his anticipated verdict before we had hardly begun and told us we'd be wasting our money to go on. It was really awful. We'll be returning in August. My confidence in our legal system is very low at this point. That judge cost us about $10,000 in legal fees that day.

recommended books for marriage trouble

Here's another post that's off topic.

As alluded to below, my life this summer has been tied up with trying to revive my marriage without my wife's participation. I have been reading a lot of books. Some have been better than others. If you know anyone whose marriage is having trouble, (or if you want to prevent such a thing), here are some books I would definitely recommend:

Whoops! I Forgot My Wife

The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce

How One of You Can Bring the Two of You Together

Divorce Busting

The Case Against Divorce

When Love Dies

marriage = cohabitation with insurance benefits?

This is off topic. It has something to do with what I'm facing in my own personal life.

Yesterday my wife filed for legal separation. In the state in which I live, that means all the property is divided, child custody is determined, financial interests severed, etc. -- everything a divorce is, just without the name.

This was very unexpected.

Evidently my wife has been feeling beat up by me emotionally for a long, long time but has just been absorbing it. And I haven't given the complaints she has expressed the gravity they deserve. I found out in early May that she's profoundly dissatisfied with our marriage.

That wasn't good news to me. I welcomed the opportunity to get things healthy and seek counseling or something. But, surprisingly to me, she wasn't interested.

Basically, she's so distanced herself from me emotionally that she's come to believe that she will never again have feelings for me. And now that I've forced her to contemplate the situation by requesting we get help, she says she no longer wants to "live a lie" -- pretending to be happily married when really she isn't. My solution is to get the relationship healthy. Hers is to leave. At least that's how she's leaning right now. One of the real struggles I'm having is convincing her that things can get better.

For my own part, I'm deeply repentant and have entered into long term counseling to work on issues on my side. And I still have a little hope because she did file for separation rather than divorce (which she just as easily could have done). But I'm just devastated, because I really love her, and I really meant "for better or worse" for the rest of my life. And the thought of my kids growing up in a broken home is just horrifying to me. I never imagined this could happen. Especially so quickly. Especially without us both fighting desperately to save the marriage.

Not surprisingly, I've been researching divorce lately. In doing so, I came across a powerful argument by Maggie Gallagher in First Things as to the damage no fault divorce laws have brought on our culture. It describes very well the cause of my own deep feelings of betrayal. It underlines how our current laws not only do not affirm the sanctity of marriage, but in failing to do so, they make marriage potentially a cruel institution. I can certainly relate.

article link

Here are the highlights:

The right to leave ASAP is judged so compelling that it overwhelms the right to make (and be held responsible for) our commitments. For twenty-five years we have talked and written and legislated about no-fault divorce as if it represented an increase in personal choice. As the letters I received from divorcees suggest, this is a simplification and a falsification of our experience with no-fault divorce. For in most cases, divorce is not a mutual act, but the choice of one partner alone. "We might expect that both partners would be ready to end the relationship by the time one leaves," note family scholars Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. and Andrew J. Cherlin in their book Divided Family. "But the data suggest otherwise. Four out of five marriages ended unilaterally."

No-fault divorce does not expand everyone's personal choice. It empowers the spouse who wishes to leave, and leaves the spouse who is being left helpless, overwhelmed, and weak. The spouse who chooses divorce has a liberating sense of mastery, which psychologists have identified as one of the key components of personal happiness. He or she is breaking free, embracing change, which, with its psychic echoes of the exhilarating original adolescent break from the family, can dramatically boost self-esteem.

Being divorced, however (as the popularity of the movie The First Wives' Club attests) reinforces exactly the opposite sense of life. Being divorced does not feel like an act of personal courage, or transform you into the hero of your own life story, because being divorced is not an act. It is something that happens to you, over which, thanks to no-fault divorce legislation, you have no say at all.

The spouse who leaves learns that love dies. The spouse who is left learns that love betrays and that the courts and society side with the betrayers. In court, your marriage commitment means nothing. The only rule is: Whoever wants out, wins. By gutting the marital contract, no-fault divorce has transformed what it means to get married. The state will no longer enforce permanent legal commitments to a spouse. Formally, at least, no-fault divorce thus demotes marriage from a binding relation into something best described as cohabitation with insurance benefits.

Rather than transferring to the couple the right to decide when a divorce is justified, no-fault laws transferred that right to the individual. No-fault is thus something of a misnomer; a more accurate term would be unilateral divorce on demand.

What the current no-fault debate revolves around is the question: Is marriage less than a legal contract between two people? Is the marriage contract enforceable, and if so how? When we marry, are we making a binding commitment or a fully revokable one (if "revokable commitment" is not an oxymoron)? If the latter, what is the difference, morally and legally, between getting married and living together? Why have a legal institution dedicated to making a public promise the law considers too burdensome to enforce?

These are on top of the intrinsic cruelty of divorce itself; of saying to the one person one promised to love forever, I’m not going to care for you any more. Constance Ahrons' 1994 book The Good Divorce is a decidedly optimistic account of middle-class divorced couples. Yet she found that just 12 percent of divorced parents are able to create friendly, low-conflict relationships after divorce. Fifty percent of middle-class divorced couples engage in bitter, open conflict as "angry associates," or worse, "fiery foes." Five years afterwards, most of these angry divorced remain mired in hostility. Nearly a third of friendly divorces degenerate into open, angry conflict.

These statistics are matched by what Judith Wallerstein found in her (nonrandom) sample of mostly middle-class couples: Ten years after the divorce, fully half the women were still very angry at their ex-spouse.

Where once we seriously fretted over the possibility of breaking up marriages, today we are far more concerned about the dangers of discouraging divorce.

No-fault divorce laws may account for somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of the increase in divorce that took place in the seventies.

In other words, while there are many social and economic factors conspiring to weaken our marriages, no-fault divorce laws have pushed us over the edge from being a society in which the majority of marriages succeed to one in which (according to demographers' estimates) a majority of new marriages will fail. When divorce is made quicker and nonjudgmental, more marriages fail. And the story about marriage contained in the law---of marriage as a temporary bond sustained by mutual emotion alone---is becoming the dominant story we tell about marriage in America, eclipsing older narratives about stubborn faith and commitment, "till death do us part."

No-fault divorce is thus both a cause and a symptom of our current marriage crisis. When the law treats divorce as a unilateral right of one partner, culture can hardly take seriously the moral claims of marriage.

How will we know when America has begun to rebuild a culture of marriage? When the terror of a divorce delayed pales in our minds in comparison to the horror of seeing an innocent spouse dumped---then and only then will Americans have escaped the divorce culture we now inhabit.

blog is out of order

I am going to put the blog on hold for a while. I have some issues to address in my life that are a higher priority right now.

emergent delusion

I just read what seems to me like a good analysis of McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy, characterizing it as "a religion of perpetual doubt" and tying it in with Francis Schaeffer's teaching on what he termed "the line of despair." I haven't read A Generous Orthodoxy, but I am certainly on the same page as the author of this critique in regard to the nature of truth and such, so my guess is my take would be similar to his.

Emergent Delusion - A Critique of Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy
PDF version

God gave government for one reason: justice

I got a thank you letter from Stand to Reason today, a ministry I support monthly. The letter partly ties in with the principles I was discussing in my Steve Camp posts:

If the recent cultural clash over the fate of Terri Schiavo teaches us anything, it's that there is a difference between law and power on the one hand, and morality on the other. God gave government for one reason: justice, "for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right" (1 Peter 2:13-14). From God's perspective, then, law stand upon the necessary foundation of morality. The power entrusted to governments through law should be wielded to secure justice, not individual self-interest. This runs counter to the popular canard that morality can never be legislated. Morality is the only thing that can be legislated. Law not based on morality is despotism and tyranny.

What happens, then, when laws meant to secure justice are no longer moored to a moral foundation? What happens when morality turns out to be nothing in particular? What happens to law when morals dissolve into relativism? Not only is relativism a challenge to culture, it's a challenge to Christianity.

Please read May's Solid Ground carefully. It will give you the tools necessary to understand the moral underpinnings of law so that you can make sense both of justice and the cross of Jesus Christ.

punting to mystery

I thought this was great the other day. It's from Primitive thoughts of a Christian philosopher (or at least a modest philosopher -- I think he's very good).

Punting to mystery

I'm bothered by how often Christians punt to "mystery" when they can't resolve a contradiction in their own worldview. They do it so often, it's tempting to think "mystery" is just a synonym for "contradiction."

If there is a contradiction in our own worldview, then let's just be honest and say our worldview is false. If we have good reason to think that some apparent contradiction has a resolution that we just don't know about, then we should say what that reason is. Only then are we justified in calling it a mystery.

If we punt to "mystery" every time somebody brings up a contradiction we can't solve, then we are in no position to criticize other worldviews just because they contain contradictions. If punting to mystery is a legitimate way for us to avoid solving a difficulty in our own worldview, then what are we going to say to others who punt to mystery when they can't answer our arguments against their worldview? Let's be consistent and hold our own worldview to the same standards of logic we hold other worldviews to.

His follow up entry, The mystery of the incarnation is also worth reading.

I read a good book by R.C. Sproul a while back called Not a Chance. He had a good section in it on the difference between mysteries and contradictions. I don't recall the details, but I'll look it up and write on it at another time. (I did. See here.)

The fill-in pastor at the church I attend is a retired pastor, and he's great. But he does make this error of telling people that things are "a mystery" and "a contradiction," and that some things in the faith "aren't logical," but we still know they're true "by faith." It's just terrible, because some people listening (besides me) are going to recognize the fallacy of that, and think that, to be a Christian, you have to put reason (proper thinking) aside.

God weighs in on the topic of justice

In the book of Isaiah, God says, "Let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me."

This idea isn't one that would strike most Christians as unusual. But it might surprise them what God wants them to understand about Himself:

But let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 9:24)

The part about kindness and righteousness rings familiar. But isn't it interesting that sandwiched in between them is the idea that God exercises justice? And it's justice, not specifically in His heavenly kingdom, but here on earth. God says He delights in this.

These days in America's churches, God's justice doesn't come up a lot in conversation. It doesn't come up a lot in teaching. In fact, I bet if a poll were taken, justice wouldn't make it in the top 40 of popular Christian topics. Yet, in this passage at least, God placed it in His top three. (When was the last time you saw a Christian book on the topic?)

I once visited a Reformed church where the pastor was doing a sermon series on God's attributes. I asked him if he was going to cover justice, and he gave me a puzzled look. "I don't think so. . . Boy, that would be a tough one."

About the only time I hear the topic of justice come up in Christian circles is when the Gospel is presented and it's explained why Christ had to die for us. And it's almost like "just-ness" is God's single negative, preventing Him from accepting us just as we are.

If our understanding of justice stopped there, it wouldn't surprise me if even Christians had a discomfort with this attribute which God says He loves, delights in, and thinks we should boast in the knowledge of.

Let's consider some strong words from Jesus in Matthew 23:

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, `If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!

"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?"

"How will you escape being condemned to hell?" Not the kind of rhetorical question one wants to hear coming from the mouth of God's Son! It goes without saying that we would do well to avoid what the Pharisees were guilty of.

But what often goes unnoticed is that, it's not just sins of commission that Jesus was angry about. There are also sins of omission, or neglect. Jesus calls these sins "the more important matters of the law." What may be surprising to some, (and most certainly missed by most), is that the first of these is justice.


I sometimes wonder if for many Christians, the idea of sin is the breaking of a law, or a rule -- that a person becomes guilty of breaking the rule, needs forgiveness, and that's the extent of sin's significance.

For me, it might not have been until I really gained an accurate assessment of what abortion is that I began to understand that a culture where injustice runs amok not only represents broken rules, personal guilt, and the need for forgiveness, but also carcasses of children in trash dumpsters. The victims are tangible. And suddenly justice doesn't seem so out of place in between kindness and righteousness.

When I hear some Christians belittle attempts by other Christians to facilitate the restoration of justice in our land, characterizing their attempts as "strong arming politicians to create legislation that moralizes our land" (link), I have to wonder if maybe they've never gotten past the idea of sin as merely broken rules. When you see the victims, I think you begin to understand God's passion for justice. And arguments like Steve Camp's begin to sound a lot like the men who objected to Jesus healing on the Sabbath. "And how shameful for them to hold a political rally with prostitutes and tax collectors! . . . I mean, Catholics."

I've assembled a page of Bible passages that relate in some way to the topic of justice and responding to injustice. I hope you'll take a few minutes to read them and contemplate the content and intensity of God's sensibilities on the topic. And consider what sort of response we should have to injustice.

"The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, He was appalled that there was no one to intervene." (Isaiah 59:15-16)

Q&A on Steve Camp discussion

These are answers to a comment on the last post. I'm happy to have the opportunity to clarify my points.

Q: If Isaiah is to the community of God to clean house in the community of God, then what application does that have for a secular government? It has tons for the Church within the Church, but where do you see God telling Israel to clean someone else's "house."

A: Since when is America someone else's house? That sounds a little bit like the excuse given in Proverbs 24:11-12:

Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, "But we knew nothing about this," does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who guards your life know it? Will He not repay each person according to what he has done?

In other words, God is not fooled. If we knew about it but did nothing, God knows. I don't think He's going to want to hear, "Well, it was someone else's house."

This is not a crusade for sanctification via legislation. (Don't get sucked into media spin... or even Steve Camp's spin, where he talks of a so-called attempt to "moralize our land.") This is caring about the welfare of our communities and caring that justice is done. Translated: People are being abused by those in power. God cares about it, and we should, too.

As far as the issue of secular government verses Israel, here's a thought: The book of Isaiah, as well as the other OT prophets, tell us how God views injustice in a nation. I have no reason to believe God’s character has changed in that respect.

Do we suppose God will give America, or any other nation, a pass because they have disclaimed association with Him? Wasn't Nineveh in line for judgment? Snubbing their noses at God never got Israel off the hook. In reality, Israel was frequently not any more faithful to God than contemporary America.

Q: I'm not sure why you think consistency in the doctrine of sovereignty means we don't do anything?

A: I don't. But I do think consistency to Steve Camp's argument means we don't do anything.

I believe God is sovereign. But I don't claim to know His sovereign will -- none of us do. Steve Camp says the Supreme Court does what God wants, but for that matter, so does Dobson. Where does that get us? It doesn't tell us anything about whether the political activism in question is right or wrong.

Q: That sounds more like fatalism than Biblical sovereignty where we are commanded to obey and love God by doing (but we are not commanded to alter the history as God has decided it).

A: I agree. How is Steve Camp's argument not fatalism? If I understand him right, he basically says, vote, write letters, participate a little, and then pray. God will take care of the rest, and we can be happy with that.

Well, there is more you can do. Dobson and others do more. I do more. Would anyone dare make a parallel argument regarding Christian missions? "We have lots of missionaries. No need to do any more. Now it's up to God. His will will be sovereignly done anyway."

As for altering history as God has decided it, if God has decided it, then we can't alter it, can we? If we influence a change, then I guess God wanted a change to be made. The thing is, often times faithful people are the means God uses to work in this world. The fact that God is ultimately in charge is no justification for inactivity.

Q: These two work together, not against each other, but once again, this is in-house. I don't judge an unbelieving homosexual, but one who claimed to be a Christian I would, so that is the difference.

A: Yes, I agree with you. But the issue being discussed relates to civil judges. It's their job before God, and the public, to judge. They aren't supposed to let any kind of criminal off the hook, Christian or otherwise. So this particular discussion isn't "in house," in my mind.

Remember what Justice Sunday was about: getting judges that follow the law. That's not radical. That's not disrespectful of anybody. That's not a cause Christians need to be ashamed of. And that's not an exclusively Christian cause. (In fact, part of Steve Camp's concern is that it's not only Christians that are backing this.)

Q: Let me ask you this. How does the Biblical distinctions between the kingdom(s) of the world and the Kingdom of God fit into this?

A: I don't know that it does. If anything, it's a distinction between different realms of God's creative order.

The government is one of God's institution, like the church and the family. The Bible calls the ruling magistrates "ministers." Their realm of responsibility is civil and criminal law. They can be negligent in that responsibility as much as any of us can be negligent in any of our responsibilities. A father can be a blessing to his family, or he can be a curse. A pastor can faithfully relay what God has said, or he can deceive. Why should we think it doesn't please God for Christians to be wholeheartedly involved in all three of these institutions? (Let's see, what men of God were ministers in government service? David, Joseph, Daniel, Moses, Joshua, Solomon...)

In my post tomorrow, I will list a number of Bible passages that have led me to the conclusion that justice is really important in God's economy. A lot of it is from the Old Testament. But remember, the OT was "the Bible" of the early church. We can learn a lot from it.

my exchange with Steve Camp

I sent a comment to former CCM artist Steve Camp on his website, and he actually e-mailed me to ask me to explain myself. (Very cool!) (Also see the entry on this blog: My Rebuttal to Steve Camp.)

Mr. Camp and I have been going back and forth a little, and his latest response referred me to an essay he's written entitled, "God Directs the Heart of the King." I'd encourage you to read it, and then consider my response to him:

Steve,

In regard to your points, I see a number of problems with the reasoning in your "God Directs the Heart of the King" article:

Now I'm going to do what Francis Schaeffer called "taking the roof off." Applying your logic with consistency, there is no reason for us to vote or doing any of the other things you encourage us to do. For no matter what the election outcome, God will direct things.

In fact, since we also know from Scripture that God determines the times and places in which we shall all live, it also follows that there is no reason for us to try and save another person's life, including the guy mugged in the Good Samaritan parable -- for it is God who determines when we shall all die. And why feed the hungry? They will die when God wants them to. And why criticize the Pope, for "there is no authority except from God"? God gives leaders in the church certain authority. The Pope is corrupt [Camp and I are Protestants], sure, but he's got authority. And he's no more corrupt than emperor Nero. God could remove the Pope if he wanted to. It's not our place to intervene.

Let me offer a position I think is a little more Biblically balanced: Authority is delegated by God. There is a responsibility that comes with that. The one in authority is not authorized to go against the will of the one granting that authority -- in this case, God. He is obligated to be a faithful steward with the authority he has been given. (Think of the parable of the talents.)

Let's take an example: I am the head of my household. I have been granted certain authority over my wife and my children. That does not mean I am authorized to be evil in the execution of that and go against God's revealed will. The same is true of a pastor or a king.

God's will is not that authorities be wicked. For instance, it was not God's will that certain Jewish leaders command the early Christians to refrain from preaching the Gospel as is recorded in the book of Acts. (Would it be God's will that the Great Commission be both obeyed and disobeyed?) Because these leaders were violating God's will, the Christians were free to disobey them and "obey God rather than man."

Steve, I know you know this (Isaiah 1), because I've heard you sing it. But consider the parts in bold that you didn't sing:

"So when you spread out your hands in prayer,
I will hide My eyes from you;
Yes, even though you multiply prayers,
I will not listen
Your hands are covered with blood.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight
Cease to do evil,
Learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Reprove the ruthless,
Defend the orphan,
Plead for the widow.
...
Your rulers are rebels
And companions of thieves;
Everyone loves a bribe
And chases after rewards
They do not defend the orphan,
Nor does the widow's plea come before them."

Does it sound to you like these judges and rulers were doing God's will? Does it sound to you like these people could, as you say, "rest in the truth that God is sovereign"? By no means! God was telling them, You have no excuse! Clean house, or I will clean it for you!

This is the mandate by which something like Justice Sunday occurs. Steve, these are commands from God. We are commanded to reprove the ruthless. How exactly does one do that in our particular society without becoming a political activist? And how does one do it without, as you predict, "alienating the very ones we long to reach with the gospel"?

It seems to me, Jesus did not particularly worry about alienating people. Nevertheless, "those that had ears" heard Him. That is a truth we can "rest in," as you say. Those who God has called will come. We don't have to worry that obedience to God's commands will prevent people from receiving the Gospel. The fruit of the kingdom is not fertilized with the blood of the innocent.

Like I said in my blog, the Great Commission is not our only commission. It looks to me like you are encouraging us to neglect one of the "weightier matters of the law," namely, justice.

In this country, we probably have more influence than the population of any nation in history, in that we have a government that derives its authority "from the consent of the governed." To whom much has been given, much is expected. It's not like we don't have a say. I see you as asking us to do something akin to burying our talents in the sand.

I applaud our Christian leaders for leading! You should, too.

Mike

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]