tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-144524232024-03-14T00:27:02.038-04:001st CorynthiansCory HartmanAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.comBlogger297125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-38978388313533922222017-06-20T19:24:00.000-04:002017-06-20T19:24:44.050-04:00Join Me at coryhartman.comIn the words of VeggieTales, "the future is now . . . (the present is past)."<br />
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I am pleased to announce a new website, <a href="http://coryhartman.com/">coryhartman.com</a>.<br />
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The website will be the new home of this blog, and I'm making a fresh commitment to write on the subjects you've come here to read in the past. The website also features resources designed to help thinkers and churches.<br />
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So keep in touch with me at <a href="http://coryhartman.com/">coryhartman.com</a>. See you there!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-68233876249606426652017-05-09T10:15:00.000-04:002017-05-09T10:15:03.136-04:00A Culture Is Shaped by the Shape of Its StoriesWhen we think of what is or is not an appropriate story for a book or film—whether from the perspective of age-appropriacy or of political correctness or of whatever—we naturally focus on the content of the story: is there sex or violence or bad language or sexism or racism, and so on. And that's well and good.<br />
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But we tend not to focus on the shape of the story, and that is a mistake. In the end the shape may be considerably more important than the content, because <b>a culture is shaped by the shape of its stories.</b><br />
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Most of a culture's stories—certainly the most memorable and influential ones—tend to reflect the macrostory that people in that culture believe about their culture or the whole human race.<br />
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David Bebbington provides a helpful introduction to these macrostories in his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Patterns-History-Christian-Perspective-Historical/dp/1573831530/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1494278101&sr=8-5&keywords=david+bebbington" target="_blank"><i>Patterns in History: A Christian Perspective on Historical Thought</i></a>. According to Bebbington, in the ancient world—regardless of which civilization you are looking at—if that civilization thought at all about history it described it as a circular pattern. In other words, a cycle recurs over and over again, whether from the reign of one monarch to another or a cycle spanning many thousands of years. The only variation to be found is the semi-circular pattern, which describes a past golden age from which we are steadily and inexorably descending, never again to return to the good times.<br />
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But contrary to any natural explanation or expectation, one tiny, mostly unimpressive ancient people began using a story shape that had never been seen before, and it would change the world. That people was Israel, and the story shape looks like a checkmark—a "V" with the right prong higher than the left.<br />
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The Israelite people described the overarching story of humanity as begun in goodness, fallen into wretchedness, and ultimately redeemed to a greater goodness than before. This was not a cycle that was bound to repeat but a line with a beginning, middle, and end.<br />
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Every story the Israelites told and remembered and retold followed this pattern. Some stories just described the way down, others just the way up, but many described the whole checkmark. <br />
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The pattern is repeated large and small. On the large scale, for example, was the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the patriarchs guided by God in the land of Canaan—then miserably enslaved in Egypt—then redeemed to possess the land promised to their ancestors. On the small scale, on the other hand, was Ruth, a happily married young wife—then bereaved, impoverished, and a stranger in a strange land—then married to an eminent, kind, and good husband as the great-grandmother of a great king. It happens over and over and over again.<br />
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Then some Jews saw the story play out before their eyes yet again. Jesus, the previously unknown Son of God, left heaven to be born as a man, to suffer to the extreme of death on a cross, and to rise again in a glorious body, exalted over every name and power. They recognized Jesus' story as the linchpin of the macrostory of the human race and the only means by which people can attain to the happy ending.<br />
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One part of the enormous historical importance of Christianity is that by it the Jewish story-shape was delivered to the rest of the world to which it was entirely foreign. Paul the Apostle presented this novel teaching to the city council of Athens in <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=acts%2017:16-34&passage=acts%2017:16-34" target="_blank">Acts 17</a>, and "when they heard about the resurrection from the dead, some began to scoff" (v. 32). Some of their mockery may have stemmed from beliefs about the body and its value (or lack thereof), but some of their disdain had to do with story-shape. The Stoics believed in a circular story of the universe, the Epicureans a semicircular one, but here Paul described a checkmark, which was "foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Cor. 1:23). But some on the council believed.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/www.geeksundergrace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/marshill2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.geeksundergrace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/marshill2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Raphael, <i>Paul Preaching at the Areopagus</i> (1515)</td></tr>
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In fact, many in the ancient world believed: they were consumed by it as straw by flame despite the alienness of the story-shape. This goes to show that nothing is impossible for God, because a culture's story-shape is extremely resilient.<br />
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You already know this, because you recognize the shape I've described, don't you, whether you are religious or not? The checkmark shape is the shape of almost every resonant mass-culture story of our civilization.<br />
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A century ago critic William Dean Howells reportedly quipped that "what the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending." Americans did not invent that story-shape, and it did not affect us first—we inherited it from Europe. But it has been infused in us more deeply than perhaps in any other culture in the world. I chalk that up to the peerless influence that biblical Christianity has had in shaping the culture of this nation from its settlement and perhaps also that our birth narrative—the Revolution—can be told according to the checkmark shape fairly comfortably (and has been countless times).<br />
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Yet there has often been—especially over the last century—great dissatisfaction with the checkmark shape among the intelligentsia, and they have offered various substitutes for it. Sometimes Progress—a half-checkmark, redemption without a fall—has held the most appeal. Other times it's been a return to the circle or the semicircle. Still others have proposed a discordant starburst or tangle of conflicting lines going in multiple directions at once, or perhaps most radically a flat line with no shape at all.<br />
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In any case, to the literati the checkmark shape automatically smells of sentimentality (which I happen to think misunderstands what sentimentality is). If you want to be taken seriously, you had better not tell a story with that shape.<br />
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A case in point is Dara Horn's scintillating novel, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Perplexed-Novel-Dara-Horn/dp/0393348881" target="_blank"><i>A Guide for the Perplexed</i></a>. Horn ingeniously retells the biblical story of Joseph, setting it in modern times. She also masterfully weaves into the backstory an episode from the life of eleventh-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides and the nineteenth-century recovery of a vast trove of ancient and medieval Jewish documents called the Cairo Geniza.<br />
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Horn's tale brilliantly combines pulse-pounding suspense, grippingly rich characters, philosophical depth, and delicious historical detail. It also completely screws up the Joseph story in the last few pages.<br />
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First, the ending is not higher than the beginning, in my opinion—the would-be checkmark resembles a "V." But that is forgivable.<br />
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What is not forgivable is that on the very last page of the book Horn indicates that the trials of her "Joseph" and "Judah" figures are about to be recapitulated in "Joseph's" two children. The story is not over; peace has not been made; the next generation is destined to repeat the previous generation's sins.<br />
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Horn replaced the checkmark of the Joseph story with a circle. In the end, hers is a thoroughly un-Jewish—or at least unbiblical—telling of a biblical story despite all else that it has going for it. But it makes her work eligible to be regarded as Serious Fiction in our culture.<br />
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If the Devil could get his way, every checkmark-shaped story would be banished from our culture, because every time we hear and enjoy a checkmark-shaped story, it trains us to find the Christian gospel credible.<br />
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Once again, the Holy Spirit is plenty powerful enough to convince people of the gospel whatever their culture's predominant story-shape is. He did it in the first few centuries of this era, and he's doing it around the world right now. Yet I still believe that wherever the checkmark shape is reflected, no matter the substance of the story, there is a deep witness to and preparation for the gospel of the cross and the kingdom. It subtly disposes people to believe.<br />
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For this reason, any artfully-told checkmark-shaped story in a book, graphic novel, film, or video game is worthy of appreciation, and the making of such is worthy of support.<br />
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<i>( . . . pivoting to advertisement . . . )</i></div>
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Here's an opportunity to support just such an artistic project. <i>Silverdome</i> is a film about a former USFL quarterback battling depression who squats in the ruins of his old stadium, the Pontiac Silverdome, where with the help of his wife he seeks redemption and hope.<br />
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It is going to be a beautiful picture, but it needs funding to push it across the finish line. So go to the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/94694419/silverdome-post-production/description" target="_blank">Kickstarter page</a> (where there's some awesome memorabilia available, by the way), make a contribution, and share it with your friends—especially with former athletes you know who miss playing the game they love.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="268" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/200054009?byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-90468696183506776032016-11-29T09:08:00.000-05:002016-11-29T09:08:51.024-05:00Objections to Bible-thumpers: "The Bible Endorses Evil Things"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"The Bible says that polygamy is okay, but you say it's wrong. The Bible says that slavery is good—do you think we should enslave people? The Bible commands genocide too. No one—not even you—agrees with everything that the Bible says is <i>right</i>, so how can you insist on what it says is <i>wrong</i>?"<br />
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Does the Bible have no credibility because of evil behavior that it endorses?<br />
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I believe that very few people who think it through would answer "yes" to that question, because the people who are the most critical of what the Bible says draw their critiques from other stuff that the Bible says.<br />
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For example, some people blast away at the Bible for being misogynistic and enshrining the patriarchy (fancy ways of saying, "It hates women"). But the basis of that critique is the premise that people in power ought to yield power willingly to those who do not have it on the basis of a common humanity. Whence comes that principle? <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=matt%2020:25-28;%20gal%203:26-28;%20phil%202:3-11&passage=matt%2020:25-28;%20gal%203:26-28;%20phil%202:3-11" target="_blank">The Bible</a>, of course. (It is not for nothing that feminism emerged out of once-Christianized places; in other civilizations it grows as a transplant.)<br />
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So the Bible has at least <i>some</i> credibility, because it promotes some things we think are good. On some issues, in fact, it contains the <i>only</i> ancient material that promotes what we think is good. Nevertheless, there remains this terrible discomfort over bad stuff that the Bible (apparently) tells people to do. That inclines people to believe that it is up to us wise moderns to sort out what is legit and not legit in the Bible's teaching.<br />
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But there is a problem here: people who make that claim often don't know what the Bible says themselves—they haven't actually read it but are just going on what other people have told them about it. And even those who have seen for themselves what the Bible says are often careless about what <i>exactly </i>it says, what it does <i>not</i> say, how it says what it says, and why.<br />
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Here are two principles to operate by when you find what looks like an endorsement of bad behavior in the Bible.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Principle #1 – Commands matter more than allowances </span> </h2>
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Very often, when people say, "The Bible says we should do _____________," the Bible is merely describing a practice, not commending it. And sometimes when the Bible does contain some law about a bad practice, it is still not commending it. Rather, it is providing guidelines and limitations to ameliorate the bad thing going on in a society for the time being.<br />
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The clearest example of this phenomenon is divorce:<br />
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Then some Pharisees came [to Jesus], and to test him they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her" [<a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=deut%2024:1-2&passage=deut%2024:1-2" target="_blank">Deut. 24:1</a>]. But Jesus said to them, "He wrote this commandment for you because of your hard hearts. But from the beginning of creation [God] made them male and female [<a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=gen%201:26-27&passage=gen%201:26-27" target="_blank">Gen. 1:27</a>]. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will become one flesh [<a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=gen%202:18-25&passage=gen%202:18-25" target="_blank">Gen. 2:24</a>]. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate" [Mark 10:2-9]. </blockquote>
Jesus and the Pharisees are debating what is right and wrong behavior according to the Law, as observant Jews have been doing for two and a half millennia. Jesus asserts that the "commandment" God gave through Moses about divorce was only to manage the destructiveness of an undesirable, sinful situation ("your hard hearts"). In other words, divorce was allowed but was not truly commanded. The true command—the original intention of God, to be adhered to by all who would please him—is <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=mark%2010:10-12;%20matt%2019:9&passage=mark%2010:10-12;%20matt%2019:9" target="_blank">not to divorce at all</a>, except possibly in cases of sexual infidelity.<br />
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<a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-about-polygamy.html" target="_blank">Polygamy</a> is a similar example. God's intention for humans at creation excludes polygamy for the same reason that it excludes divorce. Yet God allowed that situation to exist for a while without prohibiting it. Nevertheless, every polygamous family described in the Bible is wracked with strife, the natural result of departing from God's desire.<br />
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Slavery, though a more complex issue, follows a similar pattern. Only in rare and specific historical circumstances (which we will examine below) did God command people in the Bible to enslave other people. Otherwise, God (through Moses and the apostles) regulated slavery as a given in the societies and economies that his people lived in. In Israel he laid down law that gave <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=ex%2020:8-11;%2021:2-11,%2020-21,%2026-27;%2023:10-12;%20lev%2025:39-55;%20deut%2015:12-18;%2023:15&passage=ex%2020:8-11;%2021:2-11,%2020-21,%2026-27;%2023:10-12;%20lev%2025:39-55;%20deut%2015:12-18;%2023:15" target="_blank">considerable rights and protections for most slaves</a>, especially in comparison with neighboring nations. In the church scattered in the Roman Empire he gave instructions about <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/gal%203:28;%20eph%206:9;%20col%203:11;%204:1;%20phm%201:8-21" target="_blank">masters' treatment of and attitude toward their slaves</a>. In both cases, God's commands, though not abolishing slavery, went a long way toward humanizing it if they were obeyed.<br />
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This "humanizing" is a very important point, because slavery is undergirded by the idea that a slave is something like a domesticated animal, occupying a place between a full human and an inanimate tool. Any requirement that the slave be treated as a fellow human being attacks the institution at its foundation. When Paul instructed Philemon to treat his runaway slave, Onesimus, as a "brother" because both were in Christ, he may as well have abolished slavery itself. If Philemon as a Christian desired the salvation of all people, including his slaves, and if he were to treat those slaves as full-blooded family members, then the accouterments of slavery, followed by its obligations and then its very structure, would wither away in his household and in all Christian households who lived according to the same principles.<br />
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This is in accordance with God's desire to see slavery abolished, a theme that runs through the Bible. The foundational narrative of Israel was the story of God setting a slave people free, redeeming them to be his own servants. This remained the hope spoken by the prophets while Israel was stuck in a sort of national slavery to foreign powers as tributaries and as captives. In the New Testament, Jesus reaffirmed this hope for Israel, and he and the apostles added a layer of meaning to liberation: namely, salvation is pictured as liberation from slavery to one's own guilt, one's propensity to sin, and the death stemming from both.<br />
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So it is important to distinguish between what the Bible commands and what it allows and regulates, and looking at God's overarching intentions expressed in creation and new creation (redemption) helps us to distinguish between commands and allowances. That sets up the second principle . . .<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Principle #2 – Reasons matter more than commands</span></h2>
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When viewing an endorsement of any behavior in the Bible, good or (apparently) bad, it is important to understand as well as possible why that command is there. This has been an implicit theme throughout this series of posts, but it is especially important when looking at commands that appear to us to be immoral.<br />
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Sometimes the reasons God issues a command reveal that the command is specific to one situation, which must be considered on its own terms. The prime example of this is genocide.<br />
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For starters, let's get clear exactly what we're talking about. Some people have the impression that ancient Israelites committed genocide willy-nilly and that, according to the Bible, God commanded all of it. This is not so. Israel fought many wars over eight hundred years, but God only commanded genocide in situations that pertained to Israel's travel to and possession of the land God promised to Israel's ancestor Abraham. Moreover, even in those situations the massacre was not always total. In a few cases, everyone died. Other times girls, or all women and children, were left alive, and these were enslaved.<br />
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Incidentally, massacre and enslavement were standard procedure when a resistant city fell to a besieger in the ancient world. Nevertheless, this is a terrible, dreadful thing, and I do not mean to minimize it. Yet it is important that we look at the reasons. Why did God command the extermination of certain peoples root and branch?<br />
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The first reason is that <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=deut%209:4-6&passage=deut%209:4-6" target="_blank">they deserved it</a>. Before you tune this out, hear me out. People who lived in Canaan (modern Israel/Palestine) were well known for their atrocious customs, including burning babies alive as sacrifices to their gods. These were not gentle, harmless people.<br />
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Nevertheless, <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=rom%201:32-2:8&passage=rom%201:32-2:8" target="_blank">you and I deserve the same fate</a>. The just punishment for any sin of any sort is death. God does not owe us a single moment of life; to the contrary, every breath he allows us is pure mercy as he patiently gives us time to turn from our wicked ways. The real mystery isn't why God decreed the extermination of the Canaanites but why he hasn't yet executed the same judgment on us all.<br />
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The second reason for the genocide God commanded is that he knew what would happen to Israel if the Israelites did not eliminate those cultures. He repeatedly warned that if they lived peaceably among the Canaanites together in the same land <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/bible.php?search=deut%207&book=deut&chapter=7" target="_blank">they would adopt reprehensible Canaanite practices</a>, especially worshiping something other than him—which, to repeat, is the big sin that all of us commit one way or another. In fact, Israel did not completely annihilate the Canaanites, and what God warned is exactly what happened with <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=deut%2028:14-68&passage=deut%2028:14-68" target="_blank">horrific consequences for Israel</a>. <br />
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Third, God's command to Israel is a critical admonition to us, although, <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2010/01/keeping-law-within.html">as I wrote previously</a> about the Law of Moses in general, we apply these directions to the inward parts of our lives, not to our physical circumstances. Israel was God's physical kingdom, but believers in Christ are citizens of an invisible (for now) and spiritual kingdom. Israel had physical adversaries, but believers in Christ have spiritual adversaries—namely, <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=eph%206:10-12&passage=eph%206:10-12" target="_blank">the devil</a> and <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=col%203:5-11&passage=col%203:5-11" target="_blank">the evil embedded in our corrupt selves</a>. But just as Israelites were to take no prisoners of the enemies that could lead them astray, so we are to take no prisoners and make no peace with the influences toward evil in our selves, our surroundings that we can control, and Satan. As John Owen wrote three and a half centuries ago, "Be killing sin, or it will be killing you."<br />
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It is noteworthy that God did not command Israel to annihilate its other pagan neighbors even when they fought with Israel. Instead, Israel was to be rigorously pure in its own space in order to lead its wayward neighbors to the truth for their own good. Likewise, our ruthless battle is against impurity within our own selves so that the people around us, even if they hate us, might be led to truth and life.<br />
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Therefore, even though God commanded genocide only in a narrowly specific situation, his reasons for that command are universally applicable.<br />
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Sometimes, however, with other issues, reasons given in the Bible reveal that a command is for all places and times.<br />
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Let's take what Paul the Apostle says about homosexual behavior, for example. In <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=rom%201:18-32&passage=rom%201:18-32" target="_blank">Romans 1:18-32</a>, Paul argues that God repaid humans' universal inclination toward idolatry of one kind or another—despite evidence from nature that he is the Creator—by "giving them over" to foolish thinking, which they consider wise, and wicked behavior, which they justify to themselves. Paul cites homosexuality as the prime example of this degradation.<br />
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Some people today want to maintain respect for the Bible as God's Word and at the same time go with society's beliefs about homosexuality. They point out that male homosexual affairs in ancient Greece and Rome were usually what we would call pedophilia—an adult man with an adolescent boy. This, they claim, is a very different thing than two loving, committed male adults today.<br />
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Setting aside the issue of how many male homosexual liaisons today happen between two loving, committed, exclusive, lifelong partners (it is a minority), Paul and other biblical authors never condemn homosexual behavior for being pedophilia or for being promiscuous. Paul condemns it because it comes from a flat denial of the God who created human beings <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/verse.php?search=gen%201:27&book=gen&chapter=1&verse=27" target="_blank">in his image, male and female</a>. He condemns it because human beings flipped the script and made their god-concepts in <i>human</i> image, and that inversion is reflected in their perversion. Reasons matter more than commands, and these reasons apply no matter how, where, or when homosexuality is practiced. Besides, ancient lesbianism was not pedophilia, but Paul denounces it too.<br />
<br />
In response, some readers note all the bad behaviors Paul attributes to these homosexual idolaters: "every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice . . . envy, murder, strife, deceit, hostility," and so forth (v. 29). They say, "Hey, if I knew a gay person who was like that, I'd call him an evil person too! But the Bible isn't judging a gay person who is good; it's only judging a gay person (or any person) like those people."<br />
<br />
To this I say, quite right: the Bible <i>is</i> only judging people like that, gay and straight alike. But all people <i>are </i>like that, so all deserve to be judged. Paul continues, "Therefore you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge someone else. For on whatever grounds you judge another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge practice the same things" (2:1). "There is no one righteous, not even one. . . . All have turned away, together they have become worthless. . . . There is no fear of God before their eyes. . . . No one is declared righteous before him by the works of the law" (3:10, 12, 18, 20).<br />
<br />
Exemption from judgment only comes by receiving the merciful grace of God offered in Jesus Christ, a grace that "trains us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. . . . He gave himself for us to set us free from every kind of lawlessness and to purify for himself a people who are truly his, who are eager to do good" (Tit. 2:12, 14).<br />
<br />
The Bible does not call homosexual behavior a bad thing because it is associated with other behaviors any more than it calls stealing wrong because it is associated with lying or murder wrong because it is associated with pride. Reasons matter more than commands, and the reason the Bible gives is that homosexual behavior denies and defaces God's image in humanity, male and female. His grace does not bid us to get clean in all parts of our lives except our sexuality but rather to act holiness out in all aspects of our being.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-31254123728084630502016-11-04T08:03:00.000-04:002016-11-04T08:03:21.433-04:00Objections to Bible-thumpers: "Science, Yo"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Some
people believe that we have to treat the Bible skeptically on certain
matters because the people who wrote it knew less about the world than
we do. They did not have modern science, so in many cases they did not
know what they were making pronouncements about. This (people assume)
includes scientific understandings of gender and sexuality, for example. So unless we
want to return to the level of science and technology of the Iron Age,
we should dismiss what the Bible teaches on such topics.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, this assumption not only misunderstands the Bible, it also misunderstands science. <br />
<br />
It
is true that some of biblical authors' understanding of the world was inaccurate. For
example, they sometimes called lightning "fire from heaven," not knowing that fire
is composed of gas in a process of combustion whereas lightning is
composed of plasma in an electrostatic discharge.<br />
<br />
Yet
their inaccuracies about nature appear mostly in poetry, and to this day
we continue to put scientific inaccuracies in poetry for the sake of
artistry. Moreover, what the biblical authors <i>assumed</i> about the physical world is not the same as what they <i>taught</i> in their writings (more on this distinction in the next post). The Bible <i>teaches</i>
little to nothing either scientifically correct or incorrect. By and
large, what the Bible teaches is not in the realm of science (as we
commonly use the term) at all.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Science tells us "what," not "so what" </span></h2>
<br />
In science, <i>why?</i> means <i>how?</i> In other words, the answer to <i>why?</i> is an explanation of the physical influences, mechanisms, and processes that produced the thing we are looking at.<br />
<br />
In science, <i>why?</i> does not mean <i>for what purpose?</i> The answer to <i>why?</i>
does not involve a goal or standard or ideal that a phenomenon is
intended to conform to. Or if it does—as in the science of animal
behavior—it is not an ultimate explanation. For example, the explanation
for a squirrel gathering acorns may be that the squirrel intends to
amass a food supply to survive the winter, but the ultimate explanation
is that natural selection has produced an animal with an instinct to do
so.<br />
<br />
Science is good at telling us what is (and sometimes what was) in the physical realm but tells us nothing about what ought to be. It can tell us <i>what</i>, but it cannot tell us <i>so what</i>. Our stubborn ideas that reality <i>should</i> be a certain way come from another source than science.<br />
<br />
Let's
return to the examples of gender and sexuality. Great effort has been
exerted to find a scientific explanation for gender dysphoria and
fluidity and for homosexuality. To date, little has been found, and what
has been found tends to be overstated by partisans. But even if it were
found to be scientifically unassailable that gender dysphoric,
genderfluid, and homosexual people were biologically determined to think
and desire as they do, it would prove exactly nothing about how they
ought to be.<br />
<br />
To the contrary, it would actually prove
the Bible's point. The Bible maintains that all people are fundamentally
flawed; in our very nature we do not fit what moral beings ought to be,
what humans once were, and what humans will be again. <br />
<br />
One
might retort that a moral standard that a person is incapable of ever
reaching is unreasonable and unfair. But that assertion is not grounded
in science either. Any claim about the way things ought to be, including
what the <i>ought</i> ought to be, is beyond science.<br />
<br />
So if science, no matter how far it advances, can never tell us what ought to be, how can we know it? How can we know whose <i>ought</i> is right?<br />
<br />
The <i>ought</i>
must be outside this world, because it is the standard that we are
comparing this world to. If only we had some way of breaking out of the
world to get it, or for the standard to break into this world to show itself to us.<br />
<br />
Christians assert that this is exactly what has happened. This is, in part, what the Bible is—the verbal breaking of the <i>ought</i> into the <i>is</i>, into the human world that no longer conforms to the <i>ought</i> but retains a persistent memory of how it once did and might again.<br />
<br />
Whether Christians are right or wrong about the Bible, dismissing what it or anyone else says about what <i>ought to be</i> because of what science says <i>is</i> is a logical error. If you have a problem with the Bible's <i>ought</i>, it's because it contradicts some other <i>ought</i>—your own, not science's.<br />
<br />
So where does your <i>ought</i> come from? How do you know it is closer to the real <i>ought</i> than is the <i>ought</i> expressed in the parts of the Bible you don't like? Why should anyone believe your <i>ought</i>? Why should you believe it yourself?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-55482508682787119632016-11-01T07:59:00.000-04:002016-11-01T07:59:46.383-04:00Objections to Bible-thumpers: "That Was a Different Culture"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
"Of course I believe the Bible. I agree that it's inspired by God. But it was written to people in a totally different culture. They didn't have to deal with all the things we have to deal with in our culture. God was speaking to them according to what they could understand and according to what their needs were in their place and day. And truthfully, elements of their culture that were no good leaked into the Bible too. We need to apply the Bible to our culture today, and that means ignoring the parts of it that are outmoded and inappropriate to our world."<br />
<br />
I've heard variations of this before, and I bet you have too, or you've said it yourself. It is a common rebuttal to a Christian who asserts that the Bible says that something is right or wrong.<br />
<br />
There is real truth to this statement, but it contains muddled thinking too. The key is the word <i>culture</i>. What is culture, and what is the nature of cultural differences? How does God's communication to one culture have any meaning or significance for a different culture? How do we figure out what crosses the cultural divide and how?<br />
<br />
The basic principle is . . .<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Cultures change; people don't</span></h2>
<br />
What is <i>culture</i>? <br />
<br />
Animals
have a strong attachment to a natural habitat, often with great
specificity, and a robust array of instincts that direct their behavior
to thrive in that habitat. Humans, on the other hand, have very little
attachment to a specific natural habitat and a weak set of instincts for
us to survive anywhere.<br />
<br />
We compensate with our great
intelligence—and our thumbs—which allows us to convert the natural world
into habitats where we can flourish. However, our intelligence also
increases what we require to flourish above what animals require; we
need, for example, "meaning," which an ant colony does not require for
its well-being.<br />
<br />
A human group's construction of a world to inhabit inside the natural world is what we call <i>culture</i>.
Culture exists in physical artifacts and shelters, social organization,
laws of possession, beliefs, ways of doing things, and ways of
communicating within the group, including language and other symbols.<br />
<br />
Cultures
define meaning for the humans in them. Also, cultures vary from place
to place, people to people, and generation to generation. Therefore,
certain acts or symbols in one culture convey no meaning or a very
different meaning—even an opposite meaning—in another culture.
(Consider, for example, how greeting someone with a kiss means something
different in different cultures.)<br />
<br />
This has a considerable impact on moral teaching. A
given moral standard in a culture, which people in that culture may
assume to be universal, is sometimes actually the outworking of a
universal moral principle in the "language" of that culture. Take, for
example, "women must not wear X" because it communicates Y, or "men must
not X" because it exhibits Y—Y is the universal; X is how it may be
violated in that culture.<br />
<br />
It is to be assumed (for
reasons I will not supply here) that moral standards in the Bible
exemplify universal moral principles that the Creator intends to tell
us. But for a given biblical standard, we must examine what that standard
communicated <i>in that culture</i> and then consider whether it would communicate the same thing in our culture or not, and if not, to translate it to ours.<br />
<br />
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Fortunately, the Bible gives us much help, because it was not written in one culture but in several. There are significant differences among the cultures of the patriarchs, of Israel in
the wilderness, of Israel during the monarchy/-ies, of exiled Jews, of
Jews rebuilding in Palestine, of Palestinian Jews under the Roman
imperium, of diaspora Jews in the Roman Empire, and of ordinary
Greek-speakers in the empire's cosmopolitan cities.<br />
<br />
So
the Bible itself is a multicultural collection of books. A careful
comparison of book with book, culture with culture, generation with
generation often reveals important clues about which biblical
standards of conduct vary by culture and which do not.<br />
<br />
Many
do not vary at all, because, though cultures vary, people don't. I am
not talking about comparing one individual with another, of course, but
considering humans as humans. When one studies the Bible carefully,
aware of the cultural gap between people described in the text and
ourselves, one isn't struck by how different they were from us but how
astonishingly similar.<br />
<br />
Take Genesis, for example, most
of which is written about a family of wealthy nomadic herders in the
Middle East in the early second millennium <span style="font-size: small;">B.C.</span>
The customs, inheritance patterns, family structures, economy,
political environment, technology, taboos, and religion depicted in that
book are alien to us in the twenty-first-century West. But with a
little understanding of those differences, the reader is shocked by how
vividly realistic its depiction of a dysfunctional family is. It is
disturbingly familiar. One gets the sense that human beings really
haven't changed in four thousand years.<br />
<br />
And one would be right. Human beings <i>haven't</i>
changed in the core of our humanity. Our makeup of desires, needs,
sensitivities, immoralities, and indignations are virtually the same at
all times and all places. Of course they vary somewhat from person to
person, place to place, and time to time; some are more or less
emphasized or intensified in one place than in others. But these
differences are slight compared to the remarkable sameness.<br />
<br />
So how do we apply the principle "cultures change, but people don't" when we seek to apply the Bible's teaching to our situation? Here are some examples.<br />
<br />
When we read Paul's instruction about <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=1%20cor%2011:2-16&passage=1%20cor%2011:2-16" target="_blank">head-coverings in Christian worship</a>, we have reasonable confidence that whatever he is talking
about—for the passage contains numerous puzzles—it has to do with what
certain clothing communicated within that culture, in part because there
is no real analog to that teaching anywhere else in Scripture.<br />
<br />
Similarly,
when we read instructions about <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=deut%2021:15-17&passage=deut%2021:15-17" target="_blank">the inheritance rights of the firstborn in Moses' law</a>, we can be confident that it meant something within the
social and economic structure of that culture, because God commanded <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=gen%2021:9-13&passage=gen%2021:9-13" target="_blank">Abraham</a> to handle inheritance in a different way earlier, and the
apostles did not impose that law in the urban Greco-Roman cultural and
economic system later.<br />
<br />
But when we read what the Bible
teaches about sexuality, we are dealing with something entirely
different. We are dealing with something in the core of human nature
that persists with remarkable similarity across cultures and ages.
Humans flourish sexually (or at least prevent damage) according to the same recipe wherever and
whenever they live. Conversely, there is no unfaithfulness, excess, or
perversion happening in our time that has not appeared here and there—in
some cases everywhere—for thousands of years. And that is why it is
unsurprising that the bulk of sexual teaching in the Bible appears, or
else is assumed, in writings set in various cultures throughout the
corpus.<br />
<br />
The notion that the basics of human sexuality
have remained the same might seem incredible. After all, even in the
lifetimes of many people living today there has been an immense shift in
how our own culture views sexuality.<br />
<br />
I am not saying
that cultures do not have widely varying views about what constitutes
healthy and moral sexuality. I am saying that healthy and moral
sexuality itself does not change. In other words, cultures can get it
wrong, some in different ways than others, some more than others.<br />
<br />
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<br />
This
is a critical piece of the "times have changed because cultures change"
argument that is usually overlooked: the assumption that any given
culture is immune from criticism. We have trouble being consistent with
this assumption, of course—wife-beating was (is?) part of the culture in
Afghanistan under the Taliban, apartheid was part of the culture of
South Africa, watching men kill each other for entertainment was part of
the culture of ancient Rome, and we condemn them all. But we naively
assume that our own culture and most others (which we don't know very
well) are by nature exempt from rebuke.<br />
<br />
For a reader of
the Bible, this assumption just does not do, because the Bible
criticizes cultures on every page. It criticizes what they believe, do,
make, love, and despise. No biblical book affirms any culture
absolutely, including the culture in which it was written, and scarcely
any does so implicitly.<br />
<br />
Cultures, like the individuals
that compose them, are incorrigibly corrupted by sin. So to say that the
Bible's prohibitions of a behavior are irrelevant to us today simply
because we live in a different culture is totally missing the point. The
Bible judges every culture that contradicts God's law—that is, every culture, period—including the
cultures in which it was written, and including our own.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-46550765244628760132016-10-26T09:19:00.000-04:002016-10-27T09:21:28.634-04:00Objections to Bible-thumpers: "Times Have Changed"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Why do Christians rudely declare that other people's behavior is wrong because the Bible says so when Christians don't obey it themselves? For example, many Christians say that it is wrong for a man to have sex with a man or a woman with a woman because <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=lev%2018:22;%2020:13;%20rom%201:26-27;%201%20cor%206:9-10&passage=lev%2018:22;%2020:13;%20rom%201:26-27;%201%20cor%206:9-10" target="_blank">the Bible says so</a>. But those same Christians <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=lev%2011:7-8&passage=lev%2011:7-8" target="_blank">eat pork</a> and <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/verse.php?search=lev%2019:19&book=lev&chapter=19&verse=19" target="_blank">wear cotton-polyester blend shirts</a>; they <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/verse.php?book=Lev&chapter=19&verse=27" target="_blank">trim their beards</a> and <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=num%2015:37-41&passage=num%2015:37-41" target="_blank">don't have tassels</a> dangling from the hem of their coats.<br />
<br />
It sure looks like Christians pick and choose from the Bible what is wrong and what is not. And on what basis? It must be hatred, many think: "This behavior is wrong" must mean, "I hate you who are disposed to do it."<br />
<br />
Some Christians take this criticism to heart. They look at rules in the Bible that Christians don't follow and wonder why.<br />
<br />
It must be, they think, because times have changed.<br />
<br />
The Bible may be inspired by God, they think, but it was
written to a different culture. Maybe whenever we see something in the
Bible that contradicts what makes sense to us today, it doesn't apply to
us because it was just for their culture, not ours.<br />
<br />
Or maybe the Bible has a lot of outmoded human ideas of right and wrong intermingled with God's truth. Maybe the Bible is not totally reliable, so we have to use our reason to purify it by ignoring the bad ideas and elevating the good ones. (See <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2016/10/dont-claim-different-interpretation-if.html" target="">previous post</a>.) After all, it goes without saying that we know better than people who lived long ago; I mean, come on—we have electric cars and smartphones and cat memes and stuff.<br />
<br />
So if times have changed, they reason, maybe that applies to hot-button issues like sexuality and gender too. People in the past didn't see the contradiction between their godly principles of love and justice and their harsh rules. We can see their hypocrisy clearly, so we should avoid moral guidelines based on ignorance and hate. If what the Bible says keeps up with the times, we obey it, and if not, we don't.<br />
<br />
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<br />
I say that Christians who claim that times have changed are exactly right. That is precisely why we strictly obey some biblical commands but not others (or so it appears). <br />
<br />
The problem is that they badly misidentify what exactly has changed over time, which makes all the difference in the world.<br />
<br />
In this post and the two that follow are three principles about what has changed, what hasn't, and why it matters.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Jesus Christ is the big change </span></h2>
<br />
Two thousand years ago, when the Son of God became human, was crucified, was raised to life, sat down at the right side of the God the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit to those who claimed that he is Lord, the times changed. I mean this in the most radical sense: a new time, a new era, the age of the royal government of God on this planet, began at that point. Ever since, the old age has been fighting a desperate, losing battle to hang on. We live in the overlap between the new age's beginning and the old age's end.<br />
<br />
The significance of this cannot possibly be overstated. This is far and away the biggest reason that Christians handle the Bible as they do.<br />
<br />
To summarize what <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2010/01/keeping-law-within.html">I've explained elsewhere</a>, Jesus' teaching radically relocated ethics from the outward, visible realm of the body's actions to the inward, invisible realm of the mind's thoughts, which go public in the mouth's words.<br />
<br />
That shift hugely intensified some moral rules—for example, with sexuality. Now it's not enough not to have sex with someone's wife; now <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=matt%205:27-28&passage=matt%205:27-28" target="_blank">you mustn't even imagine it</a>. This powerfully reinforces the old rule against adultery, because if you refuse even to think about it, you certainly aren't going to do it.<br />
<br />
The shift made other rules irrelevant for physical behavior—for example, with food. What does it mean not to ingest unclean matter <i>in the mind</i>? It means to <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=mark%207:14-23&passage=mark%207:14-23" target="_blank">drive out unclean thoughts</a>. If that is what true cleanness is, then what you ingest in the body is irrelevant. Rather, all food is clean because <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=1%20tim%204:1-5&passage=1%20tim%204:1-5" target="_blank">all was created by God</a>.<br />
<br />
Israel's laws constituted a centuries-long training in how holy God is, what it means to be a holy (set-apart) people belonging to him, and how humans are hopelessly unfaithful to that standard no matter how much help they get. But now the reality, which all the training was meant to set up, <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=gal%203:23-4:7;%20col%202:16-17&passage=gal%203:23-4:7;%20col%202:16-17" target="_blank">is here</a>.<br />
<br />
Jesus' death made Jesus' teaching real, because it replaced the stipulations of God's old covenant with his people with <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=heb%207:26-8:13&passage=heb%207:26-8:13" target="_blank">a new one</a>. Jesus' ascension made Jesus' teaching livable, because it allowed him to put his Holy Spirit in and on people to make them holy on the inside, which no food, clothes, or circumcision had been able to reach.<br />
<br />
This is the big change. This is why, only a few years after Jesus' ascension, his apostles, who were born-and-bred observant Jews, began <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=acts%2011:1-18;%20gal%202:11-16&passage=acts%2011:1-18;%20gal%202:11-16" target="_blank">ignoring food laws and eating with non-Jewish Jesus-followers</a>. It wasn't because the Bible's food laws were old-fashioned—just about every Jew in the world was keeping kosher at that time; it was totally current. It was because the times had changed in Jesus, the Messiah.<br />
<br />
Devout Christians don't actually ignore what the Bible says about food and clothing and such; rather, we apply those standards of holiness to our hearts and minds. We don't apply them to our bodies only because of Jesus Christ, not because we happen to live in the twenty-first century. If it were not for what Jesus did, we would live as ultra-Orthodox Jews today.<br />
<br />
But surely <i>something</i> else has changed, right? What about how different our culture is from the culture of the people in the Bible? What about their outmoded, pre-scientific understanding of the world?<br />
<br />
We'll tackle those issues in the next two posts.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-29501589162150904372016-10-14T09:27:00.000-04:002016-10-27T09:24:25.858-04:00Objections to Bible-thumpers: "I Have a Different Interpretation"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
ME: This Bible passage says ______________. That means we should(n't) _______________.<br />
<br />
HIM/HER: That's one interpretation. I have a different interpretation.<br />
<br />
ME: What's your interpretation?<br />
<br />
HIM/HER: [Something completely contrary to what the passage says; OR . . . ] I don't know; I just know that I have a different interpretation.<br />
<br />
ME: ???<br />
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There's a good bit of innocent confusion out there over what "interpretation" is. Some of the confusion is not so innocent: many people with a Christian self-concept wave it as a magic wand over a part of the Bible they don't like so that its meaning might disappear.<br />
<br />
Here are four principles about interpreting the Bible that might clear up confusion and prevent you from being embarrassed when you use the term "interpretation."<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">1. The Bible is language, not art.</span></h2>
<br />
The principal function of language is communication—sending a meaningful message from a sender to a recipient. Art—whether employing language, visual forms, sound, or some combination—also functioned as a form of communication often in early times and even into modernity. (For example, an artist makes a statue of a king in a city. A viewer says, "This city is ruled by that king.")<br />
<br />
But in the nineteenth century and later, art became more and more detached from communication—that is, the message became independent of both the sender and the recipient. Instead, in the eyes of many artists and audiences, "art for art's sake" took on an existence of its own. The artist did not intend to send a message, and the viewer did not try to parse out what the artist was "saying." Rather, both the maker and the viewer reacted to the artwork as if it were a found object with no context. That included artworks whose material was language—plays, novels, and the like.<br />
<br />
Thus, "what it means <i>to me</i>" became one and the same with "what it means." By this principle, there are as many valid interpretations as
there are interpreters, and no one—including the artist—can claim that theirs is closer to the
"right" one than anyone else's. Though that interpretive principle is extremely radical, it persists widely in a softer, popular form that shows some interest in what the artist was trying to express but still makes the viewer's response to it the determinative interpretation.<br />
<br />
I am out of my depth evaluating whether that is a good principle of interpreting art. But I can claim confidently that the Bible is not art in that sense.<br />
<br />
For one thing, the Bible was written centuries before the concept of art for art's sake—in fact, it was probably written before the concept of art itself. The Bible was not written to be art. It is not art whose substance is language. The Bible is language whose construction is artful.<br />
<br />
This makes all the difference in the world. If the Bible is language, then its function is to communicate. In any given book of the Bible, there is a sender (or senders) and a recipient (or recipients), and the text is the message (or messages) that goes from the one to the other.<br />
<br />
Biblical interpretation, then, is for C to identify what A said to B. Interpretation—sound interpretation—is not about what C thinks or feels or anything about C's life. Interpretation is about taking ourselves as far off center stage as we can—hard for postmodern humans, but try it for a change—and looking at the message as a dynamic, relational bridge from one person to another, neither of whom is you. Therefore . . .<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">2. The Bible was written <i>for</i> us, not <i>to</i> us. </span></h2>
<br />
Interpretation requires knowing as much as you can about the author, the audience, the relationship between the two, and where and when they lived. Much of that can be gleaned from the message (the text) itself, while the rest can be gleaned from other texts, archaeology, and so on.<br />
<br />
Once again, it is critical that before you read the Bible as a message to you, you read it as a message to someone else, because in fact it was not written to you but to them. It's not about you!<br />
<br />
However, even though the Bible was not written <i>to</i> us living in the twenty-first century, it was written <i>for</i> us—and that "for" is a big deal.<br />
<br />
First, the Bible contains the gospel, the "good news," which is the thread of God's activity through time to save for himself a people "from every tribe, language, people, and nation" (Rev. 5:9). The Bible reveals the gospel and gives critical examples of how this gospel was communicated to various specific hearers, but its purpose is to show all individuals at all times that this gospel is for them: we too can opt in to the people of God by committing ourselves to the gospel as truth.<br />
<br />
The classic statement of this is the part in the Gospel of John, an account of the life of Jesus, that reads, "Now Jesus performed many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are recorded that you [the reader] may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:30-31).<br />
<br />
Second, if you have become part of God's people by faith in the gospel, then the Bible, which tells the story of that people, is now your family heritage. It tells you who your spiritual ancestors are. It tells you the identity, standards, values, code of conduct, and mission of the family you now belong to—what it means to be a genuine part of that family.<br />
<br />
Third, the Bible has an author behind its authors, namely the Holy Spirit. In a uniquely comprehensive and fully saturated way, the Bible is the word of God. If you have committed yourself to the gospel, then the Spirit of God who guided the authors of the Bible letter by letter—sometimes openly, sometimes silently—is the same Spirit in you.<br />
<br />
The Holy Spirit, therefore, is the living, personal bridge between the Bible and yourself. Sometimes he turns the message that was written to someone else into a message directly to you. When he does it, you know it. But he never does so in a way that contradicts what he said in the Scriptures to the original recipients.<br />
<br />
So if we know that the Bible wasn't written <i>to </i>us, but it is written <i>for</i> us, how do we read what it said to other people so that it has any bearing on our lives?<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">3. The Bible is to be interpreted first, applied second.</span></h2>
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<br />
These are two distinct steps. It is critical that we take both, and it is critical that we do interpretation before we do application.<br />
<br />
When the average person says, "I have a different interpretation," they usually mean, "The change required in my life or viewpoint implied by this Scripture is not reasonable or palatable to me." They merge interpretation and application into one step and thereby screw up both.<br />
<br />
Once again, interpretation means identifying what the author(s) were communicating to the recipient(s). Neither of them is yourself, so leave yourself out of it.<br />
<br />
For example, let's interpret Jesus' teaching, "It was said, 'Whoever divorces his wife must give her a legal document.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery" (Matt. 5:31-32).<br />
<br />
A full-bore, robust interpretation requires us to read the source of what Jesus quoted ("Whoever divorces his wife . . . "). We need to get whatever information we can about how the quoted source served as a basis for action by Palestinian Jews in Jesus' time. We need to investigate the significance of Jesus saying, "It was said . . . but I say to you." We need to uncover what Jesus' society understood to count as "immorality." We need to explore why Jesus speaks about a husband divorcing his wife or marrying a divorced woman and not vice versa. We need to compare what Jesus says here to other remarks Jesus makes about divorce to get a fuller picture of his thoughts. Finally, we need to explore the whole book to discern as well as we can why the writer, who had lots of material to choose from, thought this was worth including in his account of Jesus' life.<br />
<br />
At the end of all this investigation, we can sum it up starting like this: "<i>Matthew</i> recorded that <i>Jesus</i> instructed <i>a large group of first-century Palestinian Jews, including a smaller group of his disciples</i> not to _______________ because _______________." <i>That</i> is an interpretation.<br />
<br />
The average person does not have the resources or training to produce an interpretation this thorough, but that doesn't mean you can't do legitimate interpretation yourself. As long as you take care to set yourself aside, observe the text, take into account as much of its context as you know, and phrase your findings in terms of what the original author(s) were attempting to communicate to the original recipient(s), you are doing genuine interpretation. Every reader—even you!—can do this and must do this.<br />
<br />
Application is comparing our life and viewpoint with the interpreted text to discern what in ourselves must change for us to fit in with the people of God. The details of this are infinitely complex, but the basics are very simple:<br />
<ul>
<li>If the interpreted text asserts a truth, believe it.</li>
<li>If the interpreted text gives an instruction, obey it.</li>
<li>If the interpreted text models a good example, imitate it. </li>
</ul>
That's application. You'll note that it all rests on a sound interpretation of the text—you need to know exactly what truth is being asserted (and what is not) or what instruction is being given (and what is not) or what good example is being modeled (and what is not).<br />
<br />
Also, there is one critical exception to the rule: do not believe or obey or imitate it—at least not in a straightforward way—if there has been a radical change in conditions between the time of the text and yourself. I will define "radical change" in the next post. (Expect to be surprised.) But I will talk about one particular change now.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">4. Interpretation doesn't correct the Bible; it corrects you.</span></h2>
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<br />
There is no denying that certain beliefs and practices of Christians have changed over time despite that Christians have based their thinking and behavior on the same Bible and used the Bible to justify them.<br />
<br />
Examples that jump quickest to mind compare Christians in the nineteenth century with those in the twenty-first. A popular one is slavery (which I'll talk more about in the post after next). Another example we could bring up is Sabbath-keeping; American Christians today do a vast array of activities on Sundays, almost all of which were considered sinful by Christians in an earlier time when done on the Lord's Day. Appropriate women's dress (both in cut and in material) is yet another example.<br />
<br />
People quickly assume that changes like these stem from different interpretations of Scripture. This may be true, yet it may not be: these may be changes in <i>application</i> while the interpretations remain the same. Once again, people are prone to confuse the two.<br />
<br />
But people make other questionable assumptions as well. They assume that a change in interpretation constitutes progress. But it may just as well constitute regress. How can you be confident that the prevailing interpretation of the Bible today is better than the interpretation two hundred years ago? What if it is worse?<br />
<br />
Progress assumes an objective standard of truth, goodness, or beauty that an imperfect thing gets closer to over time. Without a standard there is no progress, only change. So what is the objective standard that a new interpretation of Scripture is closer to or farther from?<br />
<br />
It can't be collective opinion (i.e., "Everybody knows that . . . "), because collective opinion changes—it is a moving target, not an objective standard. If collective opinion were the standard there would be no progress, because every generation's interpretation is equally close to that generation's collective opinion.<br />
<br />
Some people, sensing the problem, make another assumption—that changes in people's interpretations of the Bible are the Bible's fault, not people's fault. The Bible itself is flawed and self-contradictory, or at best it is a mirror of the thoughts and feelings of both the writers and the readers, not a message from a transcendent source. Or if it is from a transcendent source somehow, people's propensity to take what they want from it according to their own point of view is stronger than whatever the source may have wanted to communicate.<br />
<br />
None of these assumptions are proven; they are merely asserted or kept hidden. In general, they are attempts to flee from the ultimate source of the Scriptures, God.<br />
<br />
God's Word is the objective standard of its own interpretation. It is perfect, because God is perfect. Humans are not perfect, a truth that we tend to admit when it excuses us and deny the rest of the time.<br />
<br />
A change in interpretation only constitutes progress when it drives us deeper <i>into</i> what the Bible says, in total and in detail, not away from it. Most so-called "progressive" interpretations of the Bible today are actually regressive—they take us further from light and truth by downgrading the validity of portions of the Bible that offend the spirit of the age.<br />
<br />
I have hope that the interpretations and applications of the true church, the invisible fellowship of those newly born of God, are on the whole progressing in accuracy over time. But even for that group it is probably a roller coaster—sometimes better, sometimes worse, or better on this topic but worse on that one.<br />
<br />
An interpretation of the Bible that claims that the Bible itself has the problem—that its well-meaning but mistaken writers did the best they could but said some inaccurate things about God and people—is a misinterpretation. It is not an interpretation but a correction, and it is correcting the wrong thing. We are the ones with the problem; we are the ones who need correcting by it, not the other way around.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-59780745031104122882016-10-08T16:35:00.000-04:002016-10-08T16:35:29.586-04:00Who ISN'T an Evangelical?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I recently saw <a href="https://www.change.org/p/donald-trump-a-declaration-by-american-evangelicals-concerning-donald-trump" target="_blank">a petition denouncing Donald Trump</a> that was written by a group of evangelical leaders. The motivation of the quasi-big-shots who signed was to distinguish themselves from an undifferentiated mass of evangelical leaders that (they claim) the media portrays as Trump supporters.<br />
<br />
I agreed with every word of their criticism of Trump's candidacy, and I didn't sign the declaration only because in this polarized environment it is likely to be construed as support for Clinton. <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-christian-case-for-neither-three.html" target="_blank">(I've come out against both.)</a><br />
<br />
But one problem I had with the petition was the signers themselves. A number of them are much too—ahem—<i>generous</i> to themselves when they claim to be evangelicals.<br />
<br />
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Some signers used to be evangelicals once but now are post-evangelicals or crypto-liberals. Some others may never have been evangelicals at all.<br />
<br />
Of course, this begs the question, "What is an evangelical?"<br />
<br />
Historian David Bebbington developed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism#Characteristics" target="_blank">an influential four-trait model</a> to answer the question. Other historians have put forth their own lists of characteristics, convictions, or values.<br />
<br />
But a complementary way of defining something, in addition to saying what it is, is to say what it isn't. From the beginning, like any movement that makes waves, evangelicals were as remarkable for what they were against as for what they were for. What evangelicals in Germany, Britain, Ireland, and British North America rejected in their first hundred years or so (ca. 1730-1860) still helps us to sort out who is and who isn't an evangelical today.<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">1. Early evangelicals were anti-scholastic.</span></h2>
I don't mean <i>anti-school</i> or against education—far from it. I'm talking about a fine-grained and inflexible dogmatic theology as the standard of orthodoxy. Such standards were propagated by the University of Wittenberg (Lutheran) at the beginning of the period and Princeton Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) at the end.<br />
<br />
Evangelicals were not necessarily anti-confessional or anti-creedal, but they challenged the tacit assumption that assenting to a detailed, orthodox confession was evidence of saving faith. Rather, saving faith was the disposition of the heart toward total reliance on Jesus Christ and his cross to be made right with God, evidenced by an "inner witness of the Spirit" and a holy life of benevolent love.<br />
<br />
In general, evangelicals held firmly to the doctrinal distinctives of their disparate traditions. But they insisted that those differences did not justify a lack of cooperation among regenerate believers with different convictions.<br />
<br />
Many extreme evangelicals—especially later, among the lower class, and on the American frontier—rejected doctrinal formulas of any sort. But all believed that they were insufficient as evidence of true faith and had to be subordinate to the religion of the heart.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">2. Early evangelicals were anti-revisionist.</span></h2>
It is misleading to say they were anti-liberal, anti-modern, anti-Enlightenment, anti-intellectual, or anti-scientific. Many deftly integrated liberal ideals, modern philosophy, and scientific methodology into their belief systems.<br />
<br />
But evangelicals stood against the eagerness in the Enlightenment (and in Romanticism after it) to simplify religion by removing or delegitimizing whatever offended the spirit of the age (which was presumptuously dubbed “reason” or “common sense”).<br />
<br />
Evangelicals were inclined (often unconsciously) to use modern methods to find truth in Scripture they had not noticed before, but they refused to declare Scriptural phenomena and teachings fabulous, ingenuine, backward, or irrelevant in the name of reason.<br />
<br />
Many extreme evangelicals rejected ivory-tower critical methodology, but all believed that it was insufficient to lead to truth and must be subordinate to the Bible as received.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">3. Early evangelicals were anti-formalist.</span></h2>
They were not necessarily anti-liturgical, and they were even less likely to be anti-sacramentalist; indeed, revivalistic campmeetings started out as holy communion festivals.<br />
<br />
However, a Protestant counterrevolution against both evangelicals and theological liberals in the nineteenth century—especially among Anglicans/Episcopalians but also among Lutherans and Reformed—identified sacraments and traditional liturgical forms as the means of saving grace.<br />
<br />
By contrast, evangelicals expected God to work conversion through the individual's engagement with the Bible or in the new liturgical forms of the rural campmeeting and urban "protracted meeting." They demanded that a person testify to receiving grace through one of those channels before admitting them to sacraments. Likewise, evangelicals in traditions that baptized infants considered baptism a hopeful promise, not a saving power.<br />
<br />
Many extreme evangelicals rejected anything that smacked of liturgical tradition, but all believed that liturgical, sacramental, and devotional forms were insufficient to bring life and were subordinate to the free movement of the Holy Spirit.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Who <i>isn't</i> an evangelical?</span></h2>
I am not like one of the aforementioned "extreme evangelicals." I often like to explore the area close to the line of confessionalism, modernism, and sacramentalism. Even when I don't get near the line, I find kinship with those who do.<br />
<br />
But there is a line, and to be on the other side of that line is not to be an evangelical.<br />
<br />
So let me break it down for you:<br />
<br />
If you contend that ecclesiastically correct or aesthetically rich worship, devotion, or sacrament—ancient or postmodern—is what connects a person to God, you are not an evangelical.<br />
<br />
If you contend that biblical teaching that offends modern sensibilities about sexuality, inclusivity, or the nature of truth needs to be overhauled, relativized, or explained away, you are not an evangelical.<br />
<br />
And finally, if you contend that adherence to a thorough, precise, orthodox doctrinal confession is what makes an evangelical, you are not an evangelical.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-33740348798822872242016-09-29T21:53:00.000-04:002016-09-29T21:53:04.167-04:00A Christian Case for Neither: Three Reasons Not to Vote for Clinton or Trump<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unless something very surprising changes my mind, I will cast a protest vote for President of the United States. I mean a vote intended not to elect anyone but instead to send a message, with others, that active participants in our democracy are hungry for something better than today's options. (At present I am leaning toward writing someone in.) <br />
<br />
I came to this conclusion because I imagined that if I cast a vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton and woke up Wednesday morning to find that the person I voted for won, I would feel sick. I can't bear the thought of contributing to either of them becoming President.<br />
<br />
I am sympathetic to the "lesser of two evils" argument, but I don't see a lesser evil outcome in this choice—or if there is a lesser evil, the evil is still too high.<br />
<br />
Here are three reasons to vote for neither candidate, addressed especially, but not exclusively, to my fellow evangelical Christians. Two are reasons that voting for Clinton or Trump is a bad thing; one is a reason that voting for neither is a good thing.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Reason #1 – Clinton and Trump are excessively immoral. </span></h2>
<br />
"Excessively immoral" implies that there is a certain acceptable level of immorality. When it comes to electing someone to office, there is. All humans are sinners; all are immoral; all are, apart from the mercy offered in Jesus Christ, subject to God's stern, inflexible condemnation of evil. "There is no one righteous, not even one" (Rom. 3:10). If we were only to elect officials without immorality, there would be no one to elect.<br />
<br />
For this very reason, let me say at the outset that I feel sincere pity for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. If you watched the <i>Frontline</i> episode "The Choice 2016," I hope you feel pity for them also. (It's being re-aired over the next week or so if you missed it.) Our new President, whoever he or she will be, is a sad, empty, bitter person.<br />
<br />
Moreover, if I didn't have the relative moral advantages of my upbringing, not to mention the grace of God in Christ, I don't for a moment believe that I would be any better a human being than Clinton or Trump. I do not wish to judge them, because I too deserve judgment.<br />
<br />
That said, the essence of choosing a president is to make a judgment, an evaluation. And both candidates fail.<br />
<br />
The big, overriding reason is that, I am convinced, there is literally no lie Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will not tell in order to save their own skin. They have no compunction about deceit whatsoever. I'm not sure they know anymore when they're committing it.<br />
<br />
Lying is a common sin and should not automatically disqualify someone from office. "For we all stumble in many ways. If someone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect individual" (Jas. 3:2). However, though I don't know exactly where the fine line falls between lying and chronic, habitual, compulsive, pathological lying, I believe strongly that Trump and Clinton are on the wrong side of that line.<br />
<br />
For Trump it's about looking out for Number One, and it's about saying whatever needs to be said at any moment to maximize the attention he draws to himself. For Clinton it's about the ends justifying the means—that is, in order for us all to reach utopia, she must have power; therefore, whatever gains or maintains power is a price worth paying. She does not have the utterly accidental relationship to the truth that Trump has, but she compensates by surrounding herself with people who instinctively deceive on her behalf to keep her machine running.<br />
<br />
Both have been practicing deceit for decades, as has been well chronicled. If you're wondering whether this is worth overlooking, remember that Jesus said that whenever the devil "lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44 NIV). If you vote for Clinton or Trump, you are voting for a president who speaks fluent Satanese.<br />
<br />
Beyond lying, Trump flaunts his immorality in almost every way imaginable, from his brutal sexual trophy-winning to his brazen greed to his titanic narcissism. "God opposes the proud" (Jas. 4:6) is relentlessly repeated and demonstrated in Scripture (see, e.g., <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/bible.php?search=dan%204&book=dan&chapter=4" target="_blank">Dan. 4</a>). Do we really want God to oppose our president and thus our nation? Do we think we can win that tilt?<br />
<br />
When Clinton's husband was in power, we evangelicals insisted that character was essential to holding elective office and that Bill Clinton was not morally qualified to be president. We were absolutely right. Shame, shame on any one of us who changes their tune now.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Reason #2 – Clinton and Trump are committed to unconscionable policies.</span></h2>
<br />
Almost every political candidate supports a few policies that we think are bad, maybe even immoral. Yet we vote for them anyway, reasoning that this person supports fewer bad policies than their opponent.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, certain issue positions are dealbreakers: they are so unjust that even one of them is enough to make the candidate unacceptable. I maintain that both Clinton and Trump are fatally contaminated by their policy commitments.<br />
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Hillary Clinton's poison pill is abortion. Abortion is not a secondary issue for Clinton; it's not as though she maintains a pro-choice position because that's what the rest of her tribe is doing. Clinton is a dyed-in-the-wool acolyte of '60s/'70s-era feminism, which maintained that one essential feature of women's equality with men is for women to be able to have sex without consequences as men do. This is diametrically opposed to the Christian position that equality of the sexes means that men as well as women must be held responsible for the baby they make and that, whether a baby is conceived or not, there is no such thing as sex without consequences.<br />
<br />
The baseline of individual freedom indeed includes the right to manage one's own body without interference, and this belongs inalienably to women as well as to men. But we routinely give the state power to interfere when what one person does to her body affects the welfare of someone else's body. We have the right to poison our bodies with alcohol if we choose, but we do not have the right to drive a car while we're doing it, no matter how good a driver we believe we are or how empty we believe the roads to be.<br />
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An unborn baby, even a one-celled embryo, is a distinct human life by any biological standard, carrying a unique, human genetic code. She is dependent on another human for basic survival, but so is a newborn. She is unable to reason and choose, but so is a late-stage Alzheimer's patient—in fact, the fetus is a more serious situation, because her days of reasoning and choosing on this earth are still ahead of her.<br />
<br />
Pro-choice advocates often shoot back with the <i>ad hominem</i> accusation that pro-lifers only care about babies in the womb and don't care about the wretched conditions they are born into. I haven't found that to be true, but even if every pro-lifer is an obnoxious hypocrite it does nothing to blunt the pro-life logic. Imagine if the Nazis had justified their killing of Jews by accusing the British and the Americans of mistreating Jews who were alive. Would that defense hold? Your criticism of my hypocrisy does not excuse you—it's possible that we're both complicit in evil.<br />
<br />
Speaking of <i>ad hominems</i>, you can find many millions of intelligent, well-adjusted, independent-thinking women who make the same case, so don't use my maleness as an excuse to ignore it. You might also look into the many men (doctors, etc.) who profit from abortions, not to mention the millions more who demand it of their wives, girlfriends, and daughters and domineer them into aborting their children—precisely the opposite of the liberation of women that abortion is supposed to facilitate.<br />
<br />
Despite that many abortions are requested by women who can raise a child, the specter of the awful situations into which some children are born becomes ammunition for keeping abortion "safe [for one person] and legal." The assumption is that one of us has the authority to determine whether it is "worth it" if someone else lives or not. It is comfortable to think we can handle that authority responsibly as long as there is no human with lethal power over us looking at our lives and mulling over the same thing.<br />
<br />
I am not categorically opposed to voting for a pro-choice candidate under any circumstances (though the stupendously disproportionate power of the President on this issue makes it difficult to ignore for that particular office). A groundswell of pro-life popular opinion could change the office-holder's mind. This is not so far-fetched—consider how rapidly Barack Obama "changed his mind" on same-sex marriage—and the further we get from the 1970s, the more the cultural momentum is swinging to the pro-life side.<br />
<br />
But Hillary Clinton will never change her mind on abortion, even though she is liable to change her mind on literally every other issue if that's what it takes to stay in power. Unless a supernatural miracle occurs, she will insist on the free extermination of the unborn forever.<br />
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When I consider the policies of Donald Trump, things get fuzzier, because he has very little in the way of "policies" in a conventional sense. Instead, he has gut impulses and blunt statements. Yet those alone are morally inexcusable.<br />
<br />
Trump wants to cut the tax rate for corporations and for the highest earners from 35 percent to 15 percent. I am willing to entertain the argument that corporate income is unfairly taxed twice—once when earned by the corporation itself and then again when it is distributed to its shareholders. But that's not the argument Trump makes. He boldly asserts that allowing extraordinarily wealthy people to get extraordinarily wealthier will create so many good-paying jobs that all of the rest of us will do much better and abound with gratitude.<br />
<br />
This is ludicrous. Even more ludicrous is the notion that the nation will grow so wealthy that tax revenues will easily pay for government expenditures, which Trump has no interest in cutting, because that would make him unpopular. Things get even more absurd when you consider that Trump would spend lavishly to make the military even more "the best" and "the greatest." The result can only be financial cataclysm (which we're already steaming into without Trump) that will rock the global economy that America undergirds and result in unimagined suffering and chaos.<br />
<br />
This will probably come to pass after Trump is dead and won't have to deal with it personally. Meanwhile, it is hard not to conclude that his main goal is simply to get as personally rich as he possibly can, regardless of the irrecoverable hits taken by the little people who supported him when it all crashes—which, by the way, has been his stance toward all of his investors for his entire career.<br />
<br />
Secondly, Trump's attitude toward immigrants is morally indefensible. It's also wildly disconnected from the facts about immigrants—why they're here, what they do, what they're like, even how many are here and whether they're coming or going. In any case, <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2010/06/immigration-and-bible-3.html" target="_blank">as I've written previously</a>, the attitude toward immigrants that Trump embodies is immoral and unbiblical and would set our nation up even higher for God's judgment.<br />
<br />
Thirdly, Trump has a thin-skinned, personally combative nature that our nation hasn't had in the White House since Andrew Jackson. Jackson was not the president of a global superpower, and he did not have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire Earth. His rivals didn't either.<br />
<br />
Richard Nixon is the only other president to compare to Jackson or Trump, but fortunately Nixon listened to Henry Kissinger. Trump listens to no one.<br />
<br />
I do not know what exactly Trump would do other than "be tough" as President. "Being tough" in his fights with banks or his ex-wives haven't resulted in much more than tabloid fodder. Yet his long-practiced habit of relentless, overboard vindictiveness could result in the deaths of millions as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States.<br />
<br />
I am not a pacifist, and I believe that a government's show or exercise of lethal force is sometimes necessary to deter or neutralize threats to people's lives in this sinful world. But even when necessary it entails immense costs that Trump cannot conceive of, because he has never really paid any cost in his life that he is willing to admit.<br />
<br />
Not only does Trump "speak evil words [and] use deceptive speech"; he also does not "strive for peace and promote it" (Ps. 34:13-14). <br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Reason #3 – A protest vote liberates us from the lies we want to believe.</span></h2>
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This election is a marvelous opportunity for American evangelicals, maybe a once-in-a-lifetime grace. We should thank God from the bottom of our hearts for his mercy. The 2016 election is God's gracious, loving discipline to set his children free from our worldly folly about power and our own importance.<br />
<br />
Every election we say the right words about how God is in control and sets up and deposes authorities at his will. We profess that the world will deteriorate in sin and will only be overcome by the return of Christ. We then proceed to think, speak, and act as if exactly the opposite were true. This year is the perfect moment to start walking our talk.<br />
<br />
Don't hear me saying that it doesn't matter what choices we make at the polls and that we shouldn't care. Instead hear me saying that this is the perfect chance to downgrade our power in our own eyes and exalt God's in order to recover the proper tension between our responsibility and his sovereignty.<br />
<br />
For more than a generation we have been sold a steady diet of falsehoods about power, righteousness, and America, especially by our own leaders (somewhat less so today). This is too big a topic to cover adequately here (and I am not qualified to do so), but a few points can outline it.<br />
<br />
We believe that a spiritual awakening of many ordinary people will result in social change. We are right to turn our attention down the social ladder, but we are wrong about the results we expect, because elites have much more sway over long-lasting change than the masses, even in a democracy.<br />
<br />
Ironically, we also believe that people with much worldly power produce social change, so we hope some of us will become powerful. But real power, the power of influence and attraction, isn't seized; it is mysteriously bestowed by others—in fact, by the very people that God does not want us to impress, because he wants us to impress him instead.<br />
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We believe that social change is something that powerful people engineer. But while they have a lot to do with it, social change more often engineers them, and when they do engineer it, it usually has unexpected and unintended repercussions.<br />
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We believe that we born-again Christians can be trusted with power, including the power to elect, because we have been changed. But our renewal is far from complete, and in fact nobody can be trusted with the least power in the least thing. Nevertheless, all of us down to the crying baby have some power, and we do have to sort out who is less untrustworthy with more of it than the rest of us. Yet we are to do so with the assumption that the sinner we empower will disappoint us.<br />
<br />
We believe that if the nation were made to conform to our ideal, everything would be great for everyone. But we have great difficulty distinguishing which parts of our ideal come from objective, universal goodness and which parts come from our time- and place-bound cultural, regional, and class assumptions. We hate it when other cultures, regions, and classes impose their ideals on us, and we tend to retaliate in kind by imposing ours on them.<br />
<br />
We believe that if the other side succeeds in imposing their ideal on us, we have lost. We will indeed have lost some precious things, because culture is precious. But culture—not to mention wealth and earthly comfort—is much more short-lived than we immortals are. The more pressure they put on us to sacrifice what really is eternal, the more of it we gain just by withstanding the pressure.<br />
<br />
We believe that any false move could plunge our country into God's judgment. But we limit the possible false moves to a few hobbyhorse sins and ignore the vast number of ways our nation can and does sin in thought, word, and deed. In fact, we are being propelled further toward judgment all the time, yet that is not all bad. To the extent judgment chastens us, it's good. And if judgment is the opening bars of the Last Judgment, it is our deliverance.<br />
<br />
Finally—though this is the least important point—we believe that without a party organ through which to
speak,
we have no influence on our nation. But white evangelicals' clinging to
the Republican Party and black Christians' clinging to the Democratic
Party have done nothing but make both groups of believers predictable, irrelevant, and
exploited. This election is the perfect opportunity for evangelicals to
declare our independence from the electoral process itself. If we
demonstrate we don't need it, it will start needing us. We can make
ourselves into a swing vote for 2020 and beyond, beholden to no one and not easily
satisfied.<br />
<br />
The political powers-that-be—including in our own tribe—have an interest in keeping us locked in these myths so that we continue to propel their ambitions. This election is the perfect chance to let go and be free. A "vote for neither" is a statement of <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=gal%201:3-5;%20phil%203:20-21&passage=gal%201:3-5;%20phil%203:20-21" target="_blank">our liberation from "this present evil age" as citizens of the age to come</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-49939080875824731622016-08-05T07:35:00.001-04:002016-08-05T07:35:45.828-04:00I'm Sorry: I've Invited You to Church for the Wrong Reasons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Dear people-I-have-wanted-to-come-to-my-church (and especially to those who actually come),[1 (see footnotes below)]<br />
<br />
I am sorry. I have misrepresented to you the reasons for you to come to church. My only defense is that I didn't know what I was doing, because I misrepresented the reasons to myself too. I ask forgiveness for not representing the truth accurately, as some of you rely on me to do.<br />
<br />
When I have invited you to church—and more often when I have encouraged a straggling, semi-regular attender to appear again—I have done so for your well-being. This is a major error.<br />
<br />
It is a subtle error, to be sure. Because in fact, I have a good, God-honoring motive. Wanting another's well-being is of the essence of love, and God wants us to love each other.<br />
<br />
It also happens to be true that coming to worship is good for your well-being. I have given you various reasons for this:<br />
<ul>
<li>"In [God's] presence is fullness of joy; in [his] right hand there are pleasures forever" (Ps. 16:11 NASB).</li>
<li>It is a refuge and encouragement to faithful Christians who spend all week pressured and marginalized in an ungodly world.</li>
<li>Christian couples who frequently attend worship <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2011-03-14-divorce-christians_N.htm" target="_blank">have lower divorce rates than those who don't</a>.[2]</li>
</ul>
I have sincerely wanted you to reap all these benefits and many more.<br />
<br />
My concern for you has become even more acute because of a shift that's happened nationwide during my nearly nine years as pastor of First Baptist Church of Hollidaysburg: <a href="http://careynieuwhof.com/2013/04/7-ways-to-respond-as-people-attend-church-less-often/" target="_blank">people who attend church are attending less often</a>.<br />
<br />
Even just a generation ago, "regular church attendance" meant about 46 or more weeks a year, and the off weeks were mostly due to sickness. Today, three or four appearances every two months is the baseline of "regular" in people's minds, even among people who think (and self-report) that they attend weekly.[3]<br />
<br />
So I've been earnestly desiring your well-being while the frequency of your attendance (indiscriminately lumping you all together) has been dropping. And I remain certain that coming to worship every week is good for you. I've been appealing to you on that basis, not only if you are a non-attender and your welfare is our only common ground but also if you are a member of my church who claims Jesus Christ as Lord.<br />
<br />
But I've been wrong. Your well-being is not the principal reason for you to come to church, even if it does help you—especially if you have already received God's forgiveness.<br />
<br />
The reason to worship in church is because God wants it, and God deserves to get what he wants.<br />
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The principal reason to come to church is not your benefit, but his.<br />
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If you come, you will benefit, because God has so arranged the universe that what is best for him is <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=rom%208:28-30&passage=rom%208:28-30" target="_blank">best for everyone who loves him</a>, in the end. He wants this for us more than we will ever know. But we only receive the benefit reliably when it isn't our main motive—when our goal is his benefit instead.<br />
<br />
In the Book of Revelation, heaven is depicted as a continuous stream of praise by a gathered throng of all manner of spiritual beings, humans included. One of the words they say most is "worthy": "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power" (Rev. 4:11); "Worthy is the lamb who was killed [i.e., Jesus, the Son of God] to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and praise!" (5:12).<br />
<br />
"Worthy" means, "you're worth it; you deserve it." And "you deserve it" means "we owe it to you." We owe the Triune God worship, praise, glory, and honor.<br />
<br />
What's so special about God that we owe him worship? He "created all things"—including us—"and because of [his] will they existed and were created," and because Jesus was "killed, and at the cost of [his] own blood [he has] purchased for God persons from every tribe, language, people, and nation" (5:9).<br />
<br />
The reason to come to church is because God is more important than you, he wants you to worship him there, and you owe it to him because you owe him your life.<br />
<br />
This may be difficult for you to accept.<br />
<br />
For one thing, you may not believe that God cares whether multiple people sing and say congratulatory things to him in the same place at the same time. This is because your mind is shaped by the assumptions of your culture more than by God's perspective and wishes as revealed in the Bible. (Mine are too, by the way—<a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/verse.php?search=rom%2012:2&book=rom&chapter=12&verse=2" target="_blank">this doesn't come naturally to any of us</a>.)<br />
<br />
You may think, "Why is God so vain that he needs people telling him how great he is all the time?" Answer: <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=acts%2017:24-25&passage=acts%2017:24-25" target="_blank">he doesn't need anything</a>. He simply wants you to treat him the same way you treat everything else you value: you open your mouth and say how great it is, quivering with excitement, whether it's a sunset or a smartphone or a slapshot or a sister you are proud of.<br />
<br />
You may think, "Why can't I do that by myself?" You should indeed do that by yourself—<a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=ps%2063:5-6&passage=ps%2063:5-6" target="_blank">on your bed</a>, <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=luke%205:15-16&passage=luke%205:15-16" target="_blank">in the wilderness</a>, <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=ps%2042:1-3&passage=ps%2042:1-3" target="_blank">in the company of unbelievers</a>, wherever. Good for you for doing it.<br />
<br />
But that doesn't erase what the Bible says about doing it together. Go to <a href="http://lumina.bible.org/">lumina.bible.org</a> and type <i>"let us" book:Psalms</i> in the search bar. Don't just scan the results; click on the verse references to read in context. Then read Revelation, <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?passage=rev%204-5;%207:9-17;%2011:15-19;%2014:1-5;%2015;%2019:1-10" target="_blank">especially these sections</a>. Do you get the picture of what brings God glory?<br />
<br />
It may also be hard for you to accept that you owe God worship in church because my approach has made it harder for you to believe it.<br />
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I have fallen into the trap of wanting you in church for your well-being
because I've also wanted you in church for my well-being.<br />
<br />
I feel a weighty responsibility to ensure the well-being of the institution that I serve. It is entrusted to me to shepherd it well, so I work hard to nurture its life and health and growth. I want you to be in church because I am too often afraid and embarrassed of failing.<br />
<br />
Right or wrong, I find a great deal of my life's meaning and value in my work, which I can even more easily justify since it is "kingdom" work (i.e., work toward explicitly godly ends). I too often want you to be in church so that I know that I am worth something.<br />
<br />
So, like the stereotypical car salesman, I think about what I need to do or say—or what I can persuade leaders, members, and other attenders to do or say—to get you and your family and your friends into church this Sunday.<br />
<br />
I'm doing it for you, and I'm doing it for me. And I'm doing it for God in that I've always believed that God wants us to be there. But I have not been doing it because God deserves our best even though we don't deserve his.<br />
<br />
So let's start over, you and I. Let's get on the right track. Let's repent. Let's confess our sin. Let's ask for forgiveness. Then let's "produce fruit that proves [our] repentance" (Luke 3:8).<br />
<br />
Our obedience to God when we know what he wants <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=john%2014:15,%2021,%2023-24&passage=john%2014:15,%2021,%2023-24" target="_blank">is the measure of our love for God</a>. It's that simple. And whoever's wishes you put ahead of God's is the person you love more than him.<br />
<br />
Consider this when you look at your bedside clock on Saturday night and again on Sunday morning. Who are you disappointing—including yourself—if you get up and get dressed?<br />
<br />
Consider this when you're making plans for Saturday night or for the whole weekend or for half the weekends of the year. Who are you disappointing if you say "no, I'm staying home"?<br />
<br />
Consider this when you're registering your kids for activities. Who are you disappointing if you say "no" or "not that day" or "no more than once a month"?<br />
<br />
Consider this when you're applying for a job. Who are you disappointing if you say "no" or "don't schedule me for then"?[4]<br />
<br />
Whoever you don't want to disappoint is the person you love—or more likely, fear—more than God. Are they worth it?[5]<br />
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In my own repentance, I'm trying to make amends by telling you what I should have told you all along. But I was afraid of disappointing you. I was afraid that you would think I was a mean, judgmental Pharisee, and then you'd <i>never</i> come to my church. I loved, or rather feared, you more than God. And by loving you, I hurt you.<br />
<br />
There's a song we like to sing whose chorus says, "I'm coming back to the heart of worship, and . . . it's all about you, Jesus. I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it. . . ." The song is about confusing slick music with worship, so I often think it doesn't apply to me. But my misaligned motives bring me under its judgment.<br />
<br />
Let's indeed come back to the heart of worship. It really is all about him. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Come, let us return to the L<span style="font-size: small;">ORD</span>. <br />For He has torn us, but He will heal us; <br />He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.<br />He will revive us after two days;<br />He will raise us up on the third day,<br />That we may live before Him. <br />So let us know, let us press on to know the L<span style="font-size: small;">ORD</span>. <br />His going forth is as certain as the dawn; <br />And He will come to us like the rain, <br />Like the spring rain watering the earth. [Hos. 6:1-3 NASB]</i></blockquote>
<hr />
<span style="font-size: small;">[1] As this is an open letter to a broad set of recipients, I trust my readers have the discernment to recognize that not every single remark in it applies to every single reader. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">[2] Whether one factor causes the other or whether another factor causes both is an open question.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">[3] To my knowledge, evidence of this trend so far is anecdotal and hasn't been formally studied and precisely quantified, but the testimony is widespread enough that there seems to be something happening here. And it correlates with <a href="http://www.millennialevangelical.com/majority-of-american-christians-do-not-find-bible-reading-and-church-attendance-essential/" target="_blank">American Christians' beliefs about whether church attendance is "essential."</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">[4] I know that some people work on Sunday out of desperation to provide
for their needs. I know that some people work a periodic Sunday
rotation because they serve people who need care 24/7. Those are
different matters entirely. I'm talking about choosing a regular Sunday
job because you want to live on more rather than on less or because you
like it or because you want to climb the ladder or because you want your boss's favor.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">[5] If your question is, "What about the person who is too sick to come?" or "What about the person who is too disabled to leave their home?" or "What about the person who is the sole caregiver of a severely sick or disabled person?" I have two questions in reply. First, are you that person? Second, do you sincerely believe that I am referring to that sort of person in what I am saying?</span>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-77912868690772778502016-06-03T09:10:00.000-04:002016-06-03T09:10:04.347-04:00Self-Expression, Freedom, the Supreme Good . . . and Bathrooms<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
So, apparently we're at a point in our civilization that one of our most important controversies has to do with where people use the bathroom. This alone should dismantle the myth of human progress.<br />
<br />
Though I jest, I readily admit that there are issues of major importance in the transgender/public bathroom debate, notably the weighty questions, (1)<i> what is a human as a sexual being?</i>, (2) <i>is a human being sharply divided between mind and body?</i> (3) <i>if there is a conflict between one's mind and one's body, which "wins" in moral reasoning?</i>,<i> </i>(4) <i>what is the proper balance between the concerns of the one and the concerns of the many?</i>,<i> </i>and, (5)<i> in what circumstances and to what extent ought the government to adjudicate the balance between the concerns of the one and those of the many?</i><br />
<br />
As for question (1), I gave <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBwwNq_7BIJWocjsyRkn8bhMeMZ7J1x00" target="_blank">an entire series of talks</a> on it (and if you want to jump to the part about transgender, that's <a href="https://youtu.be/048jzJh-P8U?t=36m46s" target="_blank">here</a>). But today I want to focus on question (4).<br />
<br />
Our civilization is now so radically individualistic—and pampered—that people assume that "freedom" means that I can express who and what I think I am to the utmost, and everyone around me not only has to allow me to do it, but they also have to congratulate what it is I've expressed about myself. At least they must signal no disagreement whatsoever. If anyone says, "Dude, your self-expression is lame" or "abnormal" or (the horror) "wrong"—or if a community or organization says, "Express away, but we're not altering our custom or standards to fit your expression"—that's considered a violation of freedom. Sometimes it's even considered hatred.<br />
<br />
My gut response to this state of affairs is that our entire civilization has regressed to adolescence; our obsession with being young forever has so gotten the better of us that the bulk of adults in our society have never grown up. But on further reflection, I admit that this strident individualistic demand on the surrounding world is not totally new or crazy. Indeed, in a certain vein I agree with it and share it myself.<br />
<br />
One of the good and perhaps unique fruits of Western civilization is the conviction that there are certain things about an individual that are so sacred that society must go to the utmost lengths to avoid violating them. Historically, the chief among these—though it took a very long time to emerge—has been freedom of religion.<br />
<br />
What most people today do not understand about freedom of religion is that religion is not primarily an identity marker or a means of self-expression. The confusion is natural, because in the Express Yourself Era, your favorite topping on a hamburger is marketed as an identity marker and means of self-expression. And without a doubt, there is an element of this that goes on in religion. People don't put "Jesus fish" on the backs of their cars for nothing; they do it to register to the world who they are. (Ironically, people with "COEXIST" bumper stickers are doing the same thing.)<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, when religion degenerates into being mainly an identity marker for this tribe or that, then the situation is ripe for ugly, pointless power struggles and even bloodshed (e.g., Northern Ireland in the twentieth century). But over the first fifty years of the American republic, the critical mass that coalesced around religious freedom didn't view religion as an identity marker. They did not see religion primarily as the way to be <i>me</i> or even as the way to be <i>us</i> but as the way to be(come) <i>good</i>.<br />
<br />
Some optimistically believed that if everyone tried to be good in the best way they knew how, even if their different ways clashed, the aggregate result would be a good country, and therefore a stable and prosperous one. But even those who were not so optimistic maintained that the individual's quest to be good was so superlatively important that it must never be restrained. Above all, an individual must never be coerced into doing something he or she believes to be morally bad. Therefore, the rest of society needed to bow down to that—it needed to accommodate itself to the needs of the individual who was trying to be good, even if the person was widely believed to be off the mark and if accommodating them was somewhat annoying to everyone else.<br />
<br />
An assumption behind freedom of religion was that the most important relationship that an individual was negotiating was not their relationship with their society or even their relationship with themselves but rather their relationship with their omnipotent Creator and Judge. The individual was not trying to conform to a socially or individually constructed, subjective truth, which was temporary, but rather to the objective truth, which is eternal.<br />
<br />
Advocates of freedom of religion also assumed the immortality of the soul. If this life is all there is, then whatever makes for the greatest comfort (however defined) in this life would seem to be of greatest importance (though it still leaves open whether the greatest good<i></i> is the greatest comfort for the individual or for the many). But if the human self survives eternally in some form, and if that self's activity during its present biological lifespan decisively influences its comfort over an infinitely longer term on an infinitely greater scale, then individuals ought to be free to ensure their eternal well-being amid the discomforts of the present life, and nothing should stand in their way.<br />
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It is evident that the beliefs that once undergirded freedom of religion have largely been lost in our culture except among a strong and resilient minority. People may believe in a Creator, but they do not believe that the Creator is a Judge. They do not believe that that Creator is or determines truth, and thus "truth" is slang for "what seems 'right' to me or to us right now." Whether or not people believe in the immortality of the soul, people do not believe that there is a determining link between activity in this life and well-being in the hereafter. They certainly do not function that way; even many who pay lip-service to traditional religious beliefs function as if comfort in this life is the supreme good. And even if there is some connection between this life and eternity, fortunately the bar to be hurdled to reach everlasting blessedness is extremely low so that everyone or nearly everyone steps across it without trying to.<br />
<br />
It was once believed that <i>being good</i> and <i>doing good</i> resulted in <i>feeling good</i>, though perhaps not until after death. Today, <i>feeling good</i> is considered to be <i>being good</i> in and of itself. Going after that feeling is what we mean by <i>doing good</i>, and the way to advance in that quest is self-expression.<br />
<br />
It used to be that the most sacred thing about a person, which no institution should ever violate, was their attempt to live according to what their Maker said was morally right, as best as they understood it. Today the most sacred thing about a person, which no institution should ever violate, is their attempt to live according to what they, their own maker, believe to yield maximum comfort in their own skin at the present moment.<br />
<br />
In sum, our civilization treats <i>present comfort being me</i> the way it used to treat <i>eternal comfort being good</i>. Therefore, a rule that sorts persons into segregated bathroom facilities based on genitalia is not only less than ideal because of the genuine difficulty it raises for some with gender dysphoria or certain intersex conditions. It is, rather, an immoral violation of the most sacred thing about a person, their self-concept, the expression of which is the chief route to painlessness <i>now</i>, which is the supreme good.<br />
<br />
Regardless of bathroom management practicalities—and setting aside the acutely real problem of the suffering of gender-dysphoric and intersex people—I believe that the assumptions underlying our culture's elevation of individual expression are bogus. Its practical atheism, materialism, and subjectivism wilt before the God I've come to know.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-46297907802396687762016-03-07T11:49:00.000-05:002016-03-07T11:49:51.006-05:00How Decline Happens<span style="font-size: normal;">In the early tenth century <span style="font-size: small;">B.C.(E.)</span>, David expanded the nation of Israel into an empire with subject kingdoms spread across the Levant. His son Solomon did not extend Israel's reach militarily or politically, but he greatly increased its economic leverage and cultural prestige, which made Israel still more dominant—a Near Eastern superpower in the making.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: normal;">Then in a span of about five years—from ca. 931 to ca. 925—Solomon's son Rehoboam presided over the contraction of the dominion of the House of David from a Levantine empire to a tiny (though wealthy) tributary of Egypt. The Davidic monarch went from emperor to client-king almost overnight.</span><br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Karnak_Tempel_19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Karnak_Tempel_19.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Conquest list of Pharaoh Shoshenq I (Shishak) (credit Olaf Tausch)</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-size: normal;">You can read about how this happened in 1 Kings 11:1-12:24; 14:21-31 and 2 Chronicles 10-12. Here are some lessons derived from it about how and why decline from supremacy happens. Apply to your church, organization, or nation as they pertain:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-size: normal;">Decline begins while things are greater than ever—especially as to quantifiable measurables—but cracks in the edifice are beginning to show.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-size: normal;">Decline follows unresolved (possibly smothered) internal strife over the stresses put on people to resource greatness.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-size: normal;">Related strife comes from the inequitable sharing of the benefits of greatness—i.e., the concentration of privileges and resources in the tightening circle of those connected to power, into which others cannot break. (Note: Those in the circle are typically oblivious that there even is a circle and even more so about the arbitrariness of their privileges.)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-size: normal;">Decline also follows compromise of the reason (purpose) that brought about greatness—the uniqueness, the mission—so that greatness becomes the end unto itself and does not serve anything outside itself.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-size: normal;">Greatness brought about by God for his long-range purpose is forfeited when people cease to be humble and obedient and in awe of God alone. </span></span></li>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-56183855234107904412016-02-12T14:21:00.000-05:002016-02-12T14:21:30.238-05:00Why Was Jesus Killed? 149 Reasons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Rembrandt van Rijn, <i>Raising of the Cross</i> (1633)</span> </div>
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I looked in the New Testament to get answers about why Jesus was killed. I thought I'd find a few. I found a lot.<br />
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Granted, among the reasons for Jesus' death listed below, there is much overlap. But the list still shows the startling complexity of why Jesus was executed in Jerusalem, nearly all New Testament authors' keen interest in the subject, and their stubbornly repetitious insistence on substitutionary atonement (notwithstanding many other important, complementary reasons).<br />
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Please note: Whenever "we"/"us"/"our" is used below, in context it nearly always refers to people who have placed their trust in Jesus and his death as the source of their salvation.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Why was Jesus killed? </b></span></div>
<br />
<i>Matthew</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Matt. 2:2-3, 13—he was born the king of the Jews</li>
<li>Matt. 10:21-28—the Pharisees believed he was the devil incarnate</li>
<li>Matt. 12:14—he demolished the Pharisees’ criticism of his Sabbath activity with irrefutable reasoning from Scripture and assertion of his own authority</li>
<li>Matt. 16:21-23—it was God’s plan</li>
<li>Matt. 17:12—the authorities did not recognize him</li>
<li>Matt. 20:28—he gave his life as a ransom for many</li>
<li>Matt. 21:45-46; 22:15—he publicly alleged that the chief priests and Pharisees rejected God, and the people held him to be a prophet</li>
<li>Matt. 26:14-16—Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve disciples, betrayed him</li>
<li>Matt. 26:28—his blood sealed a covenant and was poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins</li>
<li>Matt. 26:39—his Father wanted it</li>
<li>Matt. 26:54—it fulfilled the Scriptures</li>
<li>Matt. 26:59-66—the chief priests and the Council seized on Jesus’ quotation of Ps. 110:1 and Dan. 7:13 as the crime of blasphemy</li>
<li>Matt. 27:18—the chief priests and elders envied him</li>
<li>Matt. 27:20—the chief priests and elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas’ release instead of Jesus’</li>
<li>Matt. 27:24—Pilate wanted to prevent a riot</li>
<li>Matt. 27:37—he was claimed to be the king of the Jews</li>
<li>Matt. 27:46—he was forsaken by God like David was (Ps. 22:1)</li>
</ul>
<i>Mark</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Mark 3:6—the Pharisees/scribes believed him to blaspheme by forgiving sins on his own authority and to eat and drink in unholy ways, and he healed on the Sabbath</li>
<li>Mark 8:31-33—it was God’s plan</li>
<li>Mark 10:45—he gave his life as a ransom for many</li>
<li>Mark 11:18—he accused the chief priests and scribes of turning the temple into a robbers’ den, and the crowd was amazed at his teaching</li>
<li>Mark 12:12—he claimed to be the son of God (the Messiah) whom the chief priests, scribes, and elders rejected</li>
<li>Mark 14:10-11—Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve disciples, betrayed him</li>
<li>Mark 14:24—his blood sealed a covenant and was poured out for many</li>
<li>Mark 14:36—his Father wanted it</li>
<li>Mark 13:49—it fulfilled the Scriptures</li>
<li>Mark 14:61-64—Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah and quotation of Ps. 110:1 and Dan. 7:13 were construed by the chief priests and the Council as blasphemy</li>
<li>Mark 15:10—the chief priests envied him</li>
<li>Mark 15:15—Pilate wished to satisfy the crowd, which had been incited by the chief priests, by releasing the insurrectionist and murderer Barabbas instead of Jesus</li>
<li>Mark 15:26—he was claimed to be the king of the Jews</li>
<li>Mark 15:34—he was forsaken by God like David was (Ps. 22:1)</li>
</ul>
<i>Luke</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Luke 2:34-35—he was appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel and for a sign to be opposed</li>
<li>Luke 4:22-30—no prophet is welcome in his home town</li>
<li>Luke 6:11—he ignored and exploded the scribes and Pharisees' purity standards</li>
<li>Luke 11:53-54—he blasted the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy</li>
<li>Luke 18:31-33—the prophets foretold it</li>
<li>Luke 19:47-48; 20:19, 26—he denounced the authorities in Jerusalem, and the people loved it</li>
<li>Luke 22:3-6—Satan entered Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve disciples, and led him to betray Jesus</li>
<li>Luke 22:20—his blood sealed a new covenant</li>
<li>Luke 22:37—he was counted among the criminals in order to fulfill Scripture (Isa. 53:12)</li>
<li>Luke 22:42—his Father wanted it</li>
<li>Luke 22:53—the people who wanted to seize him were granted the moment to do it and the power of darkness to execute it</li>
<li>Luke 22:70-71—the Council seized on his noncommittal response to their question as self-incrimination</li>
<li>Luke 23:24—Pilate conceded to the crowd’s demand that insurrectionist and murderer Barabbas be released instead of Jesus</li>
<li>Luke 23:34—his killers did not know what they were doing</li>
<li>Luke 23:38—he was claimed to be the king of the Jews</li>
<li>Luke 23:46—he committed his spirit to his Father’s hands, like David did (Ps. 31:5)</li>
<li>Luke 24:25-27, 46—Moses and the prophets said that the Messiah had to suffer what he suffered</li>
</ul>
<i>John</i><br />
<ul>
<li>John 1:29—he was God’s offering to himself to take away the sin of the world</li>
<li>John 5:16-18—he enraged the Jewish authorities by healing on the Sabbath and calling God his own Father, thus claiming to be equal with God</li>
<li>John 7:7, 19—he asserted that people did not obey God’s law and that their deeds were evil</li>
<li>John 7:25-26, 30-32, 44-52—the chief priests and Pharisees in Jerusalem did not recognize that he was the Messiah and disbelieved his claim to be sent from God</li>
<li>John 8:20—he alleged that the Pharisees did not know God, his Father</li>
<li>John 8:37, 40, 44—his true message did not find a place in the authorities because, like their father the devil, they hated the truth and wanted to murder those who tell it</li>
<li>John 8:59—he claimed to be eternal God</li>
<li>John 10:10, 15-18—he laid down his life of his own accord so that his “sheep” would have life according to his Father’s command</li>
<li>John 10:30-39—he enraged the Jewish authorities by claiming to be one God with the Father</li>
<li>John 11:48-53—the chief priests and Pharisees were afraid that if everyone believed in him, the Romans would depose them and annihilate the Jews as a nation, but that if Jesus died then diaspora Jews would return to Judea</li>
<li>John 12:32-33—he intended to draw all people to himself</li>
<li>John 15:13—he laid down his life for his friends, his disciples</li>
<li>John 15:18-20—the world hated him</li>
<li>John 15:21-24—the world did not know the Father and hated him too</li>
<li>John 15:25—the cries of David in the Psalms about being hated without a cause had to be fulfilled</li>
<li>John 16:2-3—his killers thought they were doing a service to God</li>
<li>John 18:11—his Father wanted it</li>
<li>John 18:33-34; 19:19-21—he was accused by the chief priests of pretending to be the king of the Jews</li>
<li>John 18:40—the chief priests demanded that Barabbas, a robber, be released instead of Jesus</li>
<li>John 19:7—he violated the Law of Moses by making himself out to be the Son of God (more than just the Messiah)</li>
<li>John 19:10-11—Pilate was given authority over Jesus by God</li>
<li>John 19:12—Pilate protected himself from the chief priests’ allegation that he was disloyal to Caesar</li>
<li>John 19:14-16—Pilate used him as a way to wrest a confession of allegiance to Caesar from the chief priests</li>
<li>John 19:19-22—Pilate was sending a message to the Jews that Rome would crush anyone who claimed to be their king</li>
</ul>
<i>Acts</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Acts 2:23—God knew it and planned it in advance</li>
<li>Acts 3:13-14—the people of Jerusalem disowned him in Pilate’s presence in exchange for a murderer when Pilate wanted to release him</li>
<li>Acts 3:17—both the rulers and the people acted in ignorance</li>
<li>Acts 3:18—God announced it beforehand by the prophets</li>
<li>Acts 4:28—God’s hand and purpose predestined it</li>
<li>Acts 7:51—the Council was stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, resisting the Holy Spirit just like their fathers</li>
<li>Acts 7:53—the Council received the Law of Moses as ordained by angels but did not keep it</li>
<li>Acts 7:32-35—he fulfilled Isaiah 53:7-8</li>
<li>Acts 13:27—the residents and rulers of Jerusalem did not recognize him or the prophecies written about him that are read every Sabbath, which they fulfilled by condemning him</li>
<li>Acts 26:22-23—Moses and the prophets said that the Messiah had to be subjected to suffering</li>
</ul>
<i>Romans</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Rom. 3:25—God displayed him as a propitiation that justified God’s merciful disregard of sins committed up to that point and God’s acquittal of those linked to Jesus through faith</li>
<li>Rom. 4:25—he was delivered up because of our crimes</li>
<li>Rom. 5:6-9—God demonstrated his love for us helpless, ungodly sinners by acquitting us and saving us from his wrath through Jesus’ blood</li>
<li>Rom. 5:10—it reconciled us to God while we were God’s enemies</li>
<li>Rom. 5:19—it was an act of obedience that designated many to be righteous</li>
<li>Rom. 6:6—our old self with its sin-corrupted body was crucified with him so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin</li>
<li>Rom. 6:7, 11—by baptism into Jesus’ death, we are dead to sin and held innocent of it</li>
<li>Rom. 7:4-11—through it we died to and thus were released from the Law that exacerbates our guilt by illuminating it and exciting our rebelliousness</li>
<li>Rom. 8:3-4—God did what the Law could not do: condemn sin in the likeness of sin-degraded humanity without condemning us, so that the requirement of the Law could be met in us</li>
<li>Rom. 14:9—it made Jesus Lord even over those who have died</li>
</ul>
<i>1 Corinthians</i><br />
<ul>
<li>1 Cor. 1:18-25—God wisely planned to expose worldly wisdom’s inadequacy for finding God by using the foolishness of the cross to save those who believe it</li>
<li>1 Cor. 2:7-8—none of the rulers of this age understood the secret truth of God’s wise, predestined plan</li>
<li>1 Cor. 5:7—he is our sacrificed Passover lamb whose blood protects us from the deadly wrath of God</li>
<li>1 Cor. 11:25—his blood sealed the new covenant</li>
<li>1 Cor. 15:3—he died for our sins, in accord with what the Hebrew Scriptures said</li>
</ul>
<i>2 Corinthians</i><br />
<ul>
<li>2 Cor. 5:21—God made him to embody sin in our place, even though he knew no sin, so that by him we would embody God’s righteousness</li>
<li>2 Cor. 13:4—he was weak</li>
</ul>
<i>Galatians</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Gal. 1:4—he gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, as God the Father wanted</li>
<li>Gal. 2:21—it was the necessary means for us to gain righteousness by God’s grace, because the Law does not deliver it</li>
<li>Gal. 3:13-14—he redeemed us from the curse embedded in the Law by embodying that curse on our behalf, so that Gentiles might receive the blessing given to Abraham and Jews and Gentiles might receive the promised Holy Spirit</li>
<li>Gal. 6:14—his cross makes his followers despised and as good as dead in the world’s eyes but also makes the world despised and dead to them</li>
</ul>
<i>Ephesians</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Eph. 1:7—it redeemed us and made possible the forgiveness of our crimes according to God’s rich grace</li>
<li>Eph. 2:13-16—it made made peace between Jews and Gentiles, uniting them in one body, by annulling the commandments of the Law that divided them, and it reconciled them to God as one</li>
<li>Eph. 5:26-32—he intended to make his church holy and clean in order to present it to himself as his wife, glorious and flawless, with whom he will become one</li>
</ul>
<i>Philippians</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Phil. 2:8—he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death</li>
</ul>
<i>Colossians</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Col. 2:19-20—it was God’s desire to make peace between himself and all things through the blood of Jesus’ cross</li>
<li>Col. 2:22—it reconciled us with God in order to present us holy, blameless, and beyond reproach before himself (provided we continue in the faith)</li>
<li>Col. 2:11-12—we are buried with him through baptism, which is Jesus’ means to remove our sin-corrupted bodies from us as a non-physical circumcision</li>
<li>Col. 2:14—in his crucifixion our unmet obligations were crucified too</li>
<li>Col. 2:20—it enabled us to die with him with respect to the elementary principles of the world</li>
</ul>
<i>1 Thessalonians</i><br />
<ul>
<li>1 Thess. 4:14—it enabled those who die through him to rise as he did</li>
</ul>
<i>1 Timothy</i><br />
<ul>
<li>1 Tim. 2:6—he gave himself as a ransom for us all, which was a timely testimony</li>
</ul>
<i>2 Timothy</i><br />
<ul>
<li>2 Tim. 2:11—if we die with him, we will also live with him</li>
</ul>
<i>Titus</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Tit. 2:14—he gave himself for us in order to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession that is zealous for good deeds</li>
</ul>
<i>Hebrews</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Heb. 2:9—he tasted death on behalf of everyone</li>
<li>Heb. 2:10; 5:9—it made him complete as the inaugurator of our eternal salvation</li>
<li>Heb. 2:14-15—by it he incapacitated the devil, who had the power of death, and delivered us who were enslaved through fear of death all our lives</li>
<li>Heb. 2:17; 5:1—it conformed him to his human brothers and sisters in all ways so that he could propitiate God for our sins as our high priest</li>
<li>Heb. 2:18; 5:2—it enabled him to help gently those who are tested at the point of death, because he was also</li>
<li>Heb. 5:8—it taught him obedience</li>
<li>Heb. 7:27—he offered up a once-for-all sacrifice to God when he offered up himself</li>
<li>Heb. 9:12—his blood enabled him to enter the heavenly holy place as high priest once for all because it obtained eternal redemption</li>
<li>Heb. 9:13-14; 10:10; 13:12—it was an unblemished offering that Jesus gave to God through the eternal Spirit that cleanses the consciences of defiled people from dead activities to serve the living God as holy people</li>
<li>Heb. 9:15-16—it redeemed the crimes committed under the first covenant and is the means by which Jesus mediated a new covenant, so that those who have been called to participate in it may obtain the promise of an eternal inheritance</li>
<li>Heb. 9:22—it made forgiveness possible</li>
<li>Heb. 9:23—it cleansed the accoutrements of the heavenly holy place to inaugurate their use</li>
<li>Heb. 9:28—he bore the sins of many</li>
<li>Heb. 10:10-18—by it he obtained single, complete, eternal, final forgiveness for all those who have been designated as holy by his death</li>
<li>Heb. 10:19-22—it gives us confidence to draw near to God in the heavenly holy place even now with a clean conscience</li>
<li>Heb. 12:2—he was motivated by the joyous prospect of ascension</li>
<li>Heb. 13:20—it enabled God to raise him from the dead</li>
</ul>
<i>1 Peter</i><br />
<ul>
<li>1 Pet. 1:2—it cleanses us and ties us to God in a covenant</li>
<li>1 Pet. 1:11—it was predicted by the Spirit of the Messiah through the prophets</li>
<li>1 Pet. 1:18-19—it redeemed us (Gentiles) from the futile way of life handed down to us by our forefathers</li>
<li>1 Pet. 2:21—his suffering for us left us an example to follow in our own unjust suffering</li>
<li>1 Pet. 2:24—he carried our sins in his body so that we might die with respect to sin and live with respect to righteousness</li>
<li>1 Pet. 2:24—by his wounds we were healed</li>
<li>1 Pet. 3:18—he died for the sins of the unjust in order to bring us to God</li>
</ul>
<i>1 John</i><br />
<ul>
<li>1 John 1:7—his blood cleanses us from all sin</li>
<li>1 John 2:2—he himself is the propitiation for our sins and those of the whole world</li>
<li>1 John 3:16—he showed us what love is by laying down his life for us</li>
<li>1 John 4:10—God loved us and sent his own Son to be the propitiation for our sins</li>
</ul>
<i>Revelation</i><br />
<ul>
<li>Rev. 1:5—he released us from our sins by his blood</li>
<li>Rev. 5:9—it made him worthy to unleash judgment on the evil world</li>
<li>Rev. 5:9—it bought people from every tribe, language, people, and nation for God</li>
<li>Rev. 7:14—it purifies those who endure the great tribulation</li>
<li>Rev. 12:11—it enables us to overcome the devil when we testify about Jesus</li>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-36681678768682073102015-12-02T08:58:00.000-05:002015-12-02T08:58:10.786-05:00Success<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The English word "success" is interesting because of its dual meaning. A "success" is an object—a great achievement (or the acclaim it gets). A "success" is also a subject—a person who achieves something great.<br />
<br />
What follows is not completely thought out and validated, but consider how success applies to a person who is in Christ.<br />
<br />
In the flesh (temporarily) and in the view of the world, I am partly a success—that is, a successful person—and partly a failure. Almost everyone is; some are more one than the other depending on the standards by which the world is measuring.<br />
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In the flesh (temporarily) and in the view of God, I am not a success at all; I am an utter failure. Sin is failure, and I am full of sin.<br />
<br />
In the Spirit (eternally) and in the view of God, I am a complete success, but <i>objectively, not subjectively</i>. Subjectively, I am neither success nor failure—I have achieved nothing, and I have committed no sin. Objectively, however, I am a success: I am <i>Christ's</i> success. My salvation, sanctification, and glorification are his accomplishment, his triumph. I am his trophy.<br />
<br />
I am going to experiment with thinking about myself according to the Spirit, neither a success nor a failure myself, but as Christ's success.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-91078657472118216262015-12-01T10:35:00.001-05:002015-12-01T10:35:49.159-05:00Miracles Happen Suddenly, and They Take a Long Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
In the famous miracle story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, it is easy to miss the details about where the water came from before Jesus transformed it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washing, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus told the servants, "Fill the water jars with water." So they filled them to the very top [John 2:6-7].</i></blockquote>
Six jars at twenty to thirty gallons apiece is 120 to 180 gallons total capacity. Do not overlook that they were <i>unfilled</i> and may have been completely empty, and the servants filled them to the brim.<br />
<br />
To fill the water jars, the servants needed to draw water—a lot of it—from a well. Let's say they used a three-gallon bucket or two. If so, they may have lowered, drawn, and poured as many as sixty times to fulfill Jesus' request.<br />
<br />
That did not happen all at once. There was a fairly lengthy amount of standing around and ongoing embarrassment for the groom and the headwaiter who did not know that Jesus and the servants were doing anything about it. Jesus changed the water to wine in an instant, but significant preparation was required before that happened.<br />
<br />
This makes sense. This was the first miraculous sign Jesus performed, and he did it <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/verse.php?book=Luk&chapter=3&verse=23" target="_blank">at about the age of thirty</a>. To get to that point he needed to survive the diseases that probably claimed the lives of about 40% of the people born in Palestine the year he was born before they reached that age. (Of course, God would make sure that Jesus would survive that long, but the people around him did not know that.)<br />
<br />
Jesus' conception itself was miraculous, of course, but centuries of prophecy passed before it came about. "But when the <i>fullness</i> of the time came, God sent forth His Son" (Gal. 4:4 NASB).<br />
<br />
This pattern happens aplenty in the Bible. The water jars remind me of <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=1%20kings%2018:16-46&passage=1%20kings%2018:16-46" target="_blank">Elijah's confrontation of the prophets of Baal</a>. Elijah waited for most of the day while Baal's prophets failed to get their god to strike their sacrifice with lightning ("fire from heaven"). Then Elijah had to build a big altar out of found stone, then dig a ditch around it, then get firewood to put on top of it, then kill a bull and heave it on top of it. Then he had people fill four water jars—and since they were in the middle of a roughly two-year drought, they may have had to walk down seven hundred feet to the Mediterranean Sea to get that much water and then up again to bring it back—and pour the water on top of the altar. Then he made them do it two more times. Then he prayed. Then God incinerated the whole thing.<br />
<br />
After this, Elijah prayed for the drought to end—seven times. (Unless you have prayed for the same thing in front of someone else seven times in a row, you do not know how uncomfortable this is.) Then a tiny cloud appeared on the horizon, and then a bit after that the downpour fell.<br />
<br />
Miracles happen suddenly, but miracles take a long time.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-87537362814815415452015-11-20T14:07:00.000-05:002015-11-20T14:07:27.527-05:00All Truth Is Relative<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<i>Americus:</i> That's true for you, but it isn't true for me.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> I'm sorry—what did you say?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> I said, "That's true for you, but it isn't true for me."<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> How could something be true for you but not be true for me? I mean, you are sitting at a table at Joe's, and I am sitting at the same table at Joe's. That's true for us both. If I said, "I am not sitting at Table 7 at Joe's at thus-and-such address," I would be wrong.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Well, maybe you would be wrong and maybe you wouldn't. Maybe the word "table" means something different to you than it does to me. But in any event, I wouldn't judge you as wrong if you said that you weren't sitting at Table 7. From your perspective, that might be true, and who am I to judge?<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Just to be clear, I'm not talking about you judging <i>me</i> or me judging <i>you</i>. I'm talking about judging whether a statement that I make or that you make is true or false.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Whatever. If that's a distinction you want to make, fine. But again, that's true for you, not for me. That's your perspective, not mine.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> What does my perspective have to do with it?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Everything is a matter of perspective. You see what you see based on where you are; you know what you know based on your view of things. No one else sees exactly what you see with exactly the same eyes from exactly the same angle with exactly the same experience backlog and exactly the same way and terms of categorizing and defining and making sense of what you see. It is totally individual, totally unique to you. And mine is totally unique to me. So how I could I possibly pass judgment on what you see? I can never see it <i>as you</i>. The only reasonable thing is for me to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is, in fact, true for you, just as what I see is, in fact, true for me.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Well, whether that's the only reasonable thing or not, I'm not sure. But you can't really mean that you can't see the same things as I see. Look at that car out there. Now, if I got up, and you moved over to my seat in the booth and sat down where I sat, and you looked at that car, wouldn't we both agree that there is a car there? Wouldn't we both see the same car?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> We might, or we might not. What you mean by "car" I might not describe as a car. I might describe it as an automobile.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> But those are the same thing!<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Are they? Maybe they are the same to you, but they might not be the same to me. Who can say?<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> <i>The Oxford English Dictionary</i>, US Edition?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> That's collective opinion, but it does not describe what <i>I</i> see and the words <i>I</i> use. But I'm just messing with you. To tell you the truth, yes, I would agree that that is a car, and it is there out the window. But it is just coincidence that you and I think the same thing. I'm not saying that we can never agree about anything or that our perspectives never align. That would be ridiculous. What I'm saying is that just because multiple individuals' perspectives happen to align and agree, that does not mean that there is One True Perspective. All truth is relative.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> What's that now? All truth is relative?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Yes. I mean that whatever you perceive to be true is based on where you are standing, so to speak. And there are as many truths as places to stand. So for example, if I'm standing on one side of a river and looking at the river, I would say, "The river is flowing from left to right." And if you are on the opposite side of the river, you would say, "The river is flowing from right to left." These statements are contradictory, right? But we know that they are both true, because it depends on where you are standing. Everything is like this.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Everything? I don't deny that some things are like that. But even in your example, we share a common definition of "right," "left," "flowing," and "river." Those things are absolutes by which we sort out how our different truths, so to speak, are relative.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Are they really absolute? Aren't they just conventional? You and I happen to agree on the meanings of "right," "left," "flowing," and "river." But that is coincidence. What if we did not? What if we didn't agree on the meaning of the words or spoke completely different languages? We would still both be true, or at least we should still each presume that the other is true and not pass judgment. Everything is equally valid so long as it conforms to one's own authentic point of view.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Okay, but by your own assertion, that statement you just made—"Everything is equally valid so long as it conforms to one's own authentic point of view"—is only true <i>for you</i>. You can't assert it on me or reject my assertion that some things are valid for everyone.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Now you're getting it.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> …<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Seriously, you're getting it. My belief that every belief is true provided it corresponds to one's own perspective is true for me. Your belief that some beliefs are true if they correspond to a universal absolute is true for you.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> But if I believed that my belief in a universal absolute is only true for me, then that contradicts my belief in a universal absolute.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Yes, that is true for you too.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> <i>(sigh)</i> Okay, you win.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> It's not about me winning. You didn't lose.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Well, however you want to say it, what I mean is that I acknowledge that what you see to be true for you is true for you, and what I see to be true is true for me. Whether you meant to or not, you convinced me. Far be it from me to assert a universal truth and impose my own perspective on you.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> That's remarkably gracious of you. I don't think I've ever seen someone think this sort of thing through and be so willing to change their mind.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> That's kind of you to say. But it's really a tribute to you making your point so well. But I want to ask you something else. Are you a gambling man?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Am I a gambling man? Not much. Every once in a while I go to the casino with friends and play a little blackjack, but it's not a big thing to me.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Well I am a gambling man.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Really? You? That surprises me; I would not have guessed.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> It's true. Now, to be honest, I never gamble with money in a straightforward, gaming way. I've never put down money in a casino; I've never bet on sporting events or anything like that.<i> </i>But I take big risks based on my guesses about the future. My whole life is a big gamble.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> I see what you mean. I never thought of it that way.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Well today I want to do something that's out of the ordinary for me. I want to make a wager with you. The wager is about whether at some point tomorrow you will sit in this very booth at this very Denny's.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Which side are you going to take?<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> That's up to you. If you bet that you will sit here sometime tomorrow, I'll bet you won't, and vice versa.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> You know, I could be clever and two days from now claim that it was true for me that I came in here and sat down whether I believe that I actually did it or not.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> I hoped you would mention that. I'll actually spot you that. I will allow you to be the judge, from your perspective, of whether you sit here tomorrow or not. In fact, I'll rephrase the bet. My bet is that you will (or won't, depending on which side you choose) sit down at this table tomorrow <i>from your perspective</i>. And if you tell me the following day that it was true for you that you did or didn't sit down here, I'll take your word for it and pay my bet. Deal?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> That's a really risky bet on your part! You're going to bet against what I say I'm going to do, which is risky enough, and then you're leaving it entirely to me to judge whether I did it?<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> You got it. So which side are you taking?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> …<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> I'm serious! You can trust me.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Okay. I'll bet you that I will not come and sit at this booth tomorrow.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> All right. I'll bet you that you will sit at this booth tomorrow, and that that will be true for you whether or not it is true for me. Twenty dollars?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Fine. Twenty dollars.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Excellent. Let's shake on it. Now, why did you bet that you will <i>not</i> sit here tomorrow?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Well, I could give you all sorts of reasons. I could say that it is easier for me not to come here than to come here; I would have to be intentional about coming here, but if I go about my usual routine for tomorrow then I will not. I could tell you that I hate going to the same restaurant two days in a row and never do it. I could tell you that I don't even particularly care for this restaurant and would never choose it myself and am only here because you asked me to come. And all of those things would be true. But I actually have an even bigger reason in this case, because tonight I am driving to Baltimore to stay in a hotel there to take a flight to Europe early the next morning, so I won't be anywhere near here all day tomorrow.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Wow. When you lay out all the evidence for what is going to be true for you tomorrow, it makes my side of the bet look pretty bad! So I guess it's safe to say that even if you are scrupulously honest in two days, and what you tell me is true for you is honestly what you know from your perspective, there is almost no possible way that you are going to tell me that you sat in this booth anytime tomorrow.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> It looks that way to me.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Me too. So then, I want to redeem myself by making another bet.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Oh my God, are you kidding me? What is this?<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Hear me out. I bet you that at some point in the future, it will be true for you, from your perspective, that you will be standing before Jesus, the Son of God, to be judged by him for the deeds you've done and whether you accepted his forgiveness in this life.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> What?<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> You heard me. I'm betting that at some point in the future you will be judged by Jesus. And everybody else who has ever lived will too, but that's not the focus of my bet. My bet is about you.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Come on, man. I already told you that what you believe about God and Jesus and sin and judgment and stuff is true for you but it's not true for me.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Oh, I know; I totally agree. I don't presume at all to make what is true for me true for you. I know it isn't true for you <i>today</i>. That's not my bet. I'm betting that it <i>will</i> be true for you at some point in the future. I'm saying that at some point in the future, you yourself, as an individual, from your own perspective, will believe it to be true of yourself that you are being judged by Jesus the Messiah for your present life. That's my bet.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Look, even if I agreed to that bet, it's a bet that I can never collect on. "At some point in the future"? If I ever claim to win, you'll just say, "It hasn't happened yet."<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> That's true, but look at the other side—if I win, I won't be able to collect, because you'll have nothing to pay me, and I won't be able to do anything with anything you gave me anyway. But I'll make it easier on you. We'll make this bet inheritable by our descendants so that they are obligated. And I'll put a limit of, I don't know, a hundred thousand years. And I'll tie your judgment to universal judgment. So if in a hundred thousand years universal judgment by Jesus Christ has not occurred, my descendant will pay your descendant whatever we agree on today, if that makes any sense then.<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> I still think it's a stupid bet.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Well, I think you're right, though maybe not for the same reason. So let's just make it an imaginary bet then, not one we're actually going to make. Let's pretend that we could actually collect from each other at some point. Would you take that bet? Would you bet that it will never be true from your perspective that you will be judged by Jesus?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> I don't know. I don't know how what is going to be true for me in the future.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Hold on now. Don't be so quick to doubt yourself. You were very certain a few minutes ago that it will not be true for you tomorrow that you will sit in this booth. How could you be so sure about what will be true for you tomorrow but you have no idea what will be true for you at some other point in the future?<br />
<br />
<i>Americus:</i> Because I have good reason to believe what my life is going to look like tomorrow. I have good reason to know what I'm going to be doing then.<br />
<br />
<i>Socrates:</i> Exactly. <i>You have good reasons</i> for betting on what will be true for you tomorrow. And I have good reasons for betting on what will be true for<i> </i>you at some other point in the future. This isn't about what is true for me. It's about what is true for you. I think that what will be true for you in the future, from <i>your perspective</i>, is not the same as what is true for you today, and I think I know what your perspective will be at that future point. Want to hear the reasons?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-87239384382445967652015-11-19T09:55:00.000-05:002015-11-19T09:56:40.972-05:00Three Striking Thoughts…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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…from one Bible sentence I forgot: "With flaming fire he will mete out punishment on those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus" (2 Thessalonians 1:8).<br />
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<br />
(1) This is very blunt about final judgment with eternal consequences commonly (though somewhat imprecisely) known as "hell." Multiple speakers in the Bible, especially Jesus, are blunt about this. In my preaching I do not talk about this often enough not-in-code.<br />
<br />
Some say that presenting the gospel as "turn or burn" is insensitive to and therefore ineffective in our culture. They make a good point. But on the other hand, our culture's abhorrence of the idea is exactly the reason people need to hear it. If it is true, then it is highly important, and people are unlikely to stumble onto this truth by accident.<br />
<br />
(2) Yesterday I walked through part of my town praying for the people who live in the houses and apartments I was passing and for their status as the last judgment. I'm sure most of them believe in God. They don't know that <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/verse.php?book=Jam&chapter=2&verse=19" target="_blank">the devil does too</a> but it's not helping him much.<br />
<br />
Paul says that people "who do not <i>know</i> God" are in danger. That might be a useful element in a conversation about spiritual things. "I believe in the President of the United States in the sense that I believe that there is such a person. But I don't know him. Even if I studied and learned a ton about him, I still wouldn't know him. Do you think it's possible to actually <i>know</i> God?"<br />
<br />
(3) In those homes I passed, I also suspect that most of them believe "the gospel of our Lord Jesus." In my town there's better than 50% odds that if I asked a random person, "Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died and rose again, that your badness can be forgiven and that you can have eternal life because of him?", that person would agree.<br />
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But not nearly as many people in those homes <i>obey</i> the gospel. They do not live differently because they believe those principles than if they did not. This is another valuable element in a spiritual conversation: "If we don't <i>obey</i> the message about Jesus, we are still in danger."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-84714727162203124712015-09-07T12:57:00.002-04:002015-09-07T12:57:26.631-04:00The Only Repeatable Event from HistoryWhy learn history? Why does it matter? The adage that whoever is ignorant of history is doomed to repeat it—ignoring at present what precisely the statement means and whether it is true—implies at the very least that historical knowledge is worth acquiring as a necessary ingredient for shaping our future into a desirable outcome. Why should we have any confidence that historical knowledge can (indeed, must) help us to do this?<br /><br />The proverb cited above assumes the negative: the situation in the past was bad because of what people did; if we learn what they did, we may choose to do otherwise; if we do otherwise, we will not end up in the same bad situation that they did. Maybe, maybe not. But I would like to look at a positive rendition of the same principle. Let’s assume that the situation in the past was good because of what people did; if we learn what they did, we may choose to do it too; if we do, then we will end up in the same good situation that they did.<br /><br />Take for example your friend who says to you, “I went to Joe’s Restaurant, and boy, was it ever good!” You think, “I’d like a dining experience that makes me as happy as my friend is. If I do what my friend did, I’ll get what he has.” So you ask him questions—when are they open? where are they located? and so forth. And you take his advice: you do what he tells you to do.<br /><br />Seems reasonable, right? We do it all the time, every day, every time we take anyone’s advice to do anything.<br /><br />This might, in principle, apply to historical knowledge about situations of greater impact on comfort or pain, for more people than the individual, with wisdom gathered from longer ago and further afield, than the case of your friend who went to Joe’s. However, when we try to apply it we run into some problems.<br /><br />First, is there any experience in the past that we truly want to repeat? We can find features of almost any place, time, and culture that we would like to experience in our near future. But in those same situations there are invariably features that we do not at all wish to experience. But can the features we desire exist apart from the whole complex of the situation of that place, time, and culture? To use an analogy, can we take one gene out of the whole strand and splice it into the present for the desired outcome without the undesirable parts of the strand and without harmful side effects? Maybe we can, maybe we can’t; maybe with some things but not with others. But it seems dubious.<br /><br />Second, even those conditions in the past that we think we want, would we actually like them once we had them? Maybe, maybe not. In the case of the friend who went to Joe’s Restaurant, he might have very different tastes from us. We might go to Joe’s and have the same experience objectively but experience it very differently subjectively if we don’t like the same foods that our friend does. And what if we don’t have the same experience? What if service is inconsistent? What if our friend is prone to exaggerate?<br /><br />On the other hand, the better we know our friend, the more we could trust him. We might have experience that shows that we do like the same things that he likes and that he does not exaggerate. But how do we do the same character vetting, so to speak, with people who lived in the past? How do we know that we would like what they thought was good? And that leads to still another problem—very often, probably most of the time, people in the past (like people in the present) did not focus on what was so good about their situation but what was bad. We might look back and say that they had it pretty good in one respect, but they generally do not testify to it being so good. What if our hopes are too high?<br /><br />Third, how do we know how to get what they had? Assuming that people who experienced our desired situation in the past were conscious of it and did enjoy it, did they have a prescription for how to arrive at it? Did it come about by their effort or the effort of previous generations? Or did they sort of fall into it by dumb luck? And even if they did have a prescription that they would give us if they could, how much faith do we have that they are correct? For example, a group in the past might say that they were so prosperous because of their faithfulness to tradition, but is that really the reason for their prosperity? Another group might say their prosperity came because of their devotion to individual liberty, but is that so? In other words, can we trust that people living in any given time know enough about how they got where they were to be able to give an account of its causes?<br /><br />Fourth, if we knew the causes if past success, if we believed the prescription of the ancients, could we possibly replicate it? The causes may have been—probably were—complex and/or enormous. To use an analogy, we might know that strong winds cause big waves, but that does not mean we can move the air.<br /><br />So there is much reason for skepticism—or at least some major hurdles to overcome—in order to restore what we like from the past. But there is one past situation, and probably only one, in which this hope is fulfilled: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.<br /><br />This is not because Jesus’ resurrection gets a special pass to evade the rules that apply to all other past situations. To the contrary, it is because the event of his resurrection is uniquely competent to pass all the tests.<br /><br />First, do we want to repeat Jesus’ resurrection? I certainly do. There is no complaint here about wanting one aspect of it and not another. It is not as though I want my body to be raised but my mind to be elsewhere or vice versa. It is not as though I want to be raised from the dead but with a different sort of body than he had or suited to different purposes. The totality of eternal life—not just perpetual living, but a qualitatively different life that extends perpetually—is plenty appealing to me. I want what he’s having, and don’t change a thing.<br /><br />Second, would I actually like it once I had it? This is the trust issue—can I trust that what Jesus found desirable and what his followers who knew him and saw him raised found desirable is what I too would desire? It is possible that I might be deceived, yes. But I do not think so. I cannot imagine how a self that is impervious to death, weakness, pain, and attack, that is radiantly glorious and exudes peace and joy, could have any downside—or at least any downside comparable to the downside of life as we know it. In other words, if I got it, I might not care for it, but it seems well worth the risk.<br /><br />Moreover, Jesus himself seems to be a trustworthy individual. His life and his death reveal a sharp contrast between himself and the humans around him. He seems, quite simply, to be a much better person, perhaps immeasurably so, than any other human in his world or in mine. If I can trust some people around me to however limited a degree, I ought to be able to trust Jesus too.<br /><br />Third, do I know how to get what he has? Again, the answer is yes. Jesus taught extensively, and his followers who spent the most time with him did too, about how to achieve the eternal life that he gained. Did they know what they were talking about? This is where the magnitude and the uniqueness of the desirable condition that Jesus exhibits play critical roles. If Jesus truly did rise from the dead this way, to which so many witnesses attest, then he achieved something that is absolutely unequalled. There is nothing to compare it to. That strongly suggests that there is nothing to compare him to. Where did the power come from to raise him from the dead? He says it was his Father, God. It certainly came from somewhere. No one else has an alternative explanation. If there was an alternative explanation, that would be one thing, but without that alternative it seems wise to trust the one person who experienced it and to do what he says.<br /><br />Fourth, can I do what he says? Indeed I can, because Jesus’ prescription is limited only in part by large historical trends affecting masses of humans. For the most part, it just applies to me. Yes, I need to hear the story and the prescription, and that is outside my control. But once I do hear, then it is up to me what I do with it, and no external forces can violate or interrupt that (though they may be affirming or hostile toward it). And his prescription is astonishingly doable. He simply wants me to renounce my life—the thing I want to exchange anyway—and trust him that he will get me what he has that I want if I want him to. Every other instruction that he gives is simply the most rudimentary actings-out of what it is like to have the thing that I say that I want in the first place.<br /><br />Is it possible for any person from any time, place, and culture to reach back and have access to that life of Jesus? Can the outcome be produced in our future wherever we find ourselves? It can indeed, because Jesus not only rose from the dead but ascended into heaven, as itself was observed by human witnesses and explained by angelic ones (who in turn can be trusted, because their announcements about Jesus’ resurrection were proven valid by the human witnesses later). By ascending into heaven, the life that Jesus has that I desire is located beyond the vicissitudes of change in this world. He took that human life into a realm that cannot be violated and that is equally accessible to all places and times. Furthermore, he said that that realm is coming here to replace this one in some form—all of this world, all places, times, and cultures.<br /><br />The resurrection of Jesus is the one truly and uniquely replicatable event, the one historical situation that we may desire with confidence, being sure that our choices in the present may reproduce it for ourselves.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-89652160984600055152015-07-14T17:41:00.000-04:002015-07-14T17:41:53.973-04:00How God Wants You to Complain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Nobody likes whiners. Most of the time, in most of the ways that people whine, God doesn't like them either. There are multiple examples in the biblical Book of Numbers where God's patience after decades of providing for the needs of his people, the Israelites, is finally exhausted. Their repeated complaining provokes him to kill some of them off now and again to drive home the message that their ingratitude is a very bad idea. In fact, it's <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=1%20cor%2010:5-11&passage=1%20cor%2010:5-11" target="_blank">a heinous sin</a>.<br />
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So it is surprising that in some parts of the Bible God welcomes and even encourages complaining to him. One example is Psalm 89. It's pretty remarkable that God's Spirit moved a man to take him to task in a pungently accusatory way.<br />
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The psalm does not start out that way, however. In fact, it begins with praise with a special (and crucial) focus on God's faithfulness:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I will sing continually about the LORD’s faithful deeds; <br />to future generations I will proclaim your faithfulness [v. 1]. </i></blockquote>
Then the psalmist further tips off where he's going to go with this psalm by quoting God as saying, <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I have made a covenant with my chosen one; <br />I have made a promise on oath to David, my servant: <br />'I will give you an eternal dynasty <br />and establish your throne throughout future generations' " [vv. 3-4].</i></blockquote>
<i> </i>Then the psalmist swings back to extended, magnificent, picturesque praise:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>O LORD, sovereign God! <br />Who is strong like you, O LORD?<br />Your faithfulness surrounds you. . . .<br />Equity and justice are the foundation of your throne.<br />Loyal love and faithfulness characterize your rule [vv. 8, 14].</i></blockquote>
Having thoroughly established his profound regard for God's faithfulness, the psalmist poetically retells the story told in <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/bible.php?search=2%20sam%207&book=2%20sam&chapter=7" target="_blank">2 Samuel 7</a> (and 1 Chronicles 17) of how God made an everlasting promise to support, defend, and prosper King David and all his royal offspring. In the psalmist's words, God said,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I will always extend my loyal love to him,<br />and my covenant with him is secure.<br />I will give him an eternal dynasty,<br />and make his throne as enduring as the skies above" [vv. 28–29].</i></blockquote>
What if David's descendants act wickedly and prove themselves unworthy of this promise? God asserts that this contingency may have short-term negative consequences, but it in no way nullifies his promise—he will, on the whole, make David's line succeed no matter what they do:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I will punish their rebellion by beating them with a club,<br />their sin by inflicting them with bruises.<br />But I will not remove my loyal love from him,<br />nor be unfaithful to my promise.<br />I will not break my covenant<br />or go back on what I promised" [vv. 32–34].</i></blockquote>
Then suddenly the psalmist grinds the gears. The psalm shrieks,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But you have spurned and rejected him;<br />you are angry with your chosen king.<br />You have repudiated your covenant with your servant;<br />you have thrown his crown to the ground [vv. 38–39].</i></blockquote>
He's just getting started. The psalmist says "you have [done]" or "you are" thirteen times. He is accusing God of blatantly violating his agreement. The disasters that have struck Israel are not random occurrences or the sole fault of surrounding nations. These are God's fault.<br />
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This is the substance of a "covenant lawsuit," as modern scholars call the ancient phenomenon. When things go bad in Israel, other biblical laments express contrition, acknowledging that God justly brings calamity because Israel has sinfully violated its covenant with God. That is because the covenant between God and Israel made through the mediation of Moses entailed voluminous responsibilities on Israel that the people did not keep.<br />
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But the covenant God made to David and his line is different. In that covenant David had no obligations. God took on all the obligations. So despite the sin of Israel and even the sin of David's descendants who reigned wickedly on his throne, the psalmist has no compunction about laying all the blame at God's feet. God never gave himself a way out of keeping his promise. In fact, he specifically detailed his expectation that David's sons would act badly. His promise is entirely independent of that fact. Therefore, in the eyes of the psalmist, God has failed in his duties.<br />
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This psalm may be written after the return from exile—which demonstrated that Israel <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=isa%2040:1-5&passage=isa%2040:1-5" target="_blank">was forgiven for its sins</a>—but with the Davidic monarchy still unrestored. In any case, it is startling that God would inspire a man to write an infallible accusation against God's faithfulness!<br />
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Or is it? The psalmist went on at length about how faithful God is. And that may be the indicator of a godly complaint.<br />
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When the Israelites of the exodus generation complained it came from a position of doubt. They doubted whether God was able to help them. They doubted whether God wanted to help them. They doubted whether God would keep his promises even while God was in the very act of making good on those promises.<br />
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The author of Psalm 89 is exactly the opposite. He complains from a position of faith. He believes wholeheartedly that God is faithful. He believes that God made a promise to David. His complaint presumes that God is acting in contradiction to his words and in contradiction with his very nature. Far from denying God's word, the psalmist calls God back to it. <i>This is who you are, God!</i> he says. <i>This is what you said! But the present circumstances don't line up!</i><br />
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This is the complaint that God welcomes. It's griping and moaning over the fact that circumstances do not square with God's character and his revelation about himself and his intentions.<i> </i>God delights in us indignantly badgering him to get with his own program. It shows that we believe that he and his program are for real—that messed-up circumstances need to turn upside down while God simply needs to be who he is.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-29786800858579250972015-06-19T10:10:00.000-04:002015-06-19T10:10:54.724-04:00"How Long, O Lord?": Grieving for the Martyrs of Emanuel AME Church<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It is becoming apparent that the massacre of nine members of Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, SC during their Bible study <a href="http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/white-suspect-confesses-to-deadly-attack-on-black-us-church-cnn/ar-AAbMfvy" target="_blank">was a hate crime</a>. The disturbed (at best), evil (at worst) murderer explicitly intended to <a href="http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/charleston-shooting-suspect-dylann-roof-wanted-to-ignite-civil-war/ar-AAbOWk8" target="_blank">ignite a race war</a> that he was convinced blacks would lose, resulting in apartheid or (one must suppose) their extermination from American soil.<br />
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Reports indicate that the gunman, Dylann Roof, shot up the members of the Bible study because they were black. No evidence has been publicized that he killed them because they were Christians.<br />
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Nevertheless, their fellow Christians of all colors and ethnicities have good reason for viewing the fallen as martyrs for Jesus Christ.<br />
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The word <i>martyr</i> comes from the Greek word for "witness." It acquired a technical meaning in the ancient church for those who died for their faith, because when threatened with death they publicly bore witness that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead and was a Lord superior to Caesar. They chose their confession over their lives.<br />
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The existence and history of the Black Church in America is suffused with believers great and small who followed Jesus Christ at great personal risk.<br />
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Some slave preachers learned to read so they could learn and preach the Bible even when it was illegal and would have resulted in horrific punishment.<br />
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Slaves and freedpeople formed their own churches outside of white control (like Emanuel) so they could be free to worship God with abandon and proclaim the whole message of the Bible—including parts that their masters wanted them to avoid, like the exodus of Israel from slavery.<br />
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During Reconstruction, churches formed the social engine of black uplift and the institutional home of former slaves who demanded equality with whites. A century before the Civil Rights Movement, churches successfully taught their members to combine faith in their dignity as God's image-bearers with peaceableness. Black Christians extended astounding forgiveness toward the whites who oppressed them as slaves and continued (often viciously) to resist their claim to full humanity with its civil and social implications.<br />
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The core of the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century consisted of black Christians who concluded that to approve of white supremacy tacitly by accommodating it was to bow the knee to a racist idol. They peacefully chose to stop cooperating with that demonic system in order to live as citizens of the kingdom of God.<br />
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The members of Emanuel A.M.E. Church were slain while reading God's word. Whether the murder thought about it or not, there was a certain odd fitness to his act. Satan hates justice and the equality of the human family and true freedom, and all of those principles are contained in the word of God and arise from the word of God.<br />
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Even the large number of religiously apathetic people today who support such principles are the unwitting heirs of a centuries-long liberal heritage with roots in Christianity. Much of that heritage and many of its adherents have rejected Christianity, but not the members of Emanuel.<br />
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They know that justice, equality, and freedom belong to the kingdom of God and are found in Christ. They know that the Bible is more subversive of oppression and more supportive of justice than any other literature. They know that Christ is King and that their voices will never be silenced.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Now when the Lamb opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been violently killed because of the word of God and because of the testimony they had given. They cried out with a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Master, holy and true, before you judge those who live on the earth and avenge our blood?” Each of them was given a long white robe and they were told to rest for a little longer, until the full number was reached of both their fellow servants and their brothers who were going to be killed just as they had been [Rev. 6:9–11].</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, <br /><br />“The salvation and the power <br />and the kingdom of our God, <br />and the ruling authority of his Christ, have now come, <br />because the accuser of our brothers and sisters, <br />the one who accuses them day and night before our God, <br />has been thrown down. <br />But they overcame him <br />by the blood of the Lamb <br />and by the word of their testimony, <br />and they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die” [Rev. 12:10–11]</i>.</blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-79049551781627574612015-05-20T13:04:00.000-04:002015-05-20T13:04:50.788-04:00The Few Things God Is Looking For . . . and Why Occupation Probably Isn't One of ThemA few months ago I finished a doctoral thesis on a man named Mansfield French. In the nineteenth century, mostly in Ohio, New York, and South Carolina, French was an educator who founded and served institutions of higher learning; a pastor and traveling revivalistic evangelist; a leading magazine publisher in what is called the Holiness Movement; and an abolitionist who ministered among former slaves as a missionary supervisor, army chaplain, and Freedmen's Bureau officer, lobbied the federal government on their behalf, and ran for U.S. Senate. I called French "a model of multivocational ministry," and I examined what enabled him to engage in such a diverse array of activities over a single ministry career.<br />
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Because of this study, vocation has been on mind a good deal in the past year. There are a good many people, including a good many Christians, who think nothing of the meaning and implications of what they do for work. I should note that this neglect is not always bad—it is much better to be godly at work and never think about what you're doing than it is to think much about vocation but not actually to be godly. But for some of us, Christian and otherwise, we just can't help thinking about it. The question, "What am I supposed to be doing?" is an itch that does not go away (unless we can confidently answer, "What I'm doing right now," as some of us can at times), so we keep trying to scratch it.<br />
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This restlessness also is not always bad, in particular if it drives us to listen to God and get to know him with persistence, patience, and humility. But it is worthwhile to keep this vocational question in proper perspective.<br />
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For some of us, the question of "What am I supposed to be doing?" (or "How much?" or "Where and with whom?") can loom over us with what seems like epic significance. We might be very afraid of making the wrong choice (of occupation, workplace, college major, etc.) that will doom us to frustration, failure, and/or meaninglessness. Or we might continually be roiled within where we are currently planted, unsure if we are missing out on what we are supposed to do or instead frustrated at the closed doors in the direction that we think we are supposed to go. We think that if we are not set right then we will get to the end of our life having wasted it uselessly with nothing to show for it.<br />
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That right there is the problem hidden under the surface of our yearning to do the right work, even if that yearning is mostly genuine, mostly composed of love for God and people and not of lust for self. The stakes seem enormously high because of our faithlessness. Deep down, we do not really believe in the age to come. Like any worldly person (most consistently a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism" target="_blank">physicalist</a>) we believe that this life is all there is: we really only have one shot at it.<br />
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If we are truly Christians, however, we know that this is not all there is. While most Christians (would that it be all of them) recognize that what we do in this life is terribly important because of its ramifications for the world to come, not only for ourselves but for all those around us, we still must be careful not to blow certain details out of proportion. For some of us, occupation may be one of those details.<br />
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I understand this by means of my one and only experience as an athletic coach, when I coached my son's teeball team of four- and five-year-olds. I did not stop coaching because it was a bad experience—far from it. In fact, it taught me a valuable lesson: God is really not expecting much from us.<br />
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When I say that God is not expecting much, I do not mean that God has low standards. I mean that he has very high standards about only a very small number of very basic things. Other than those few things, I don't believe that he is terribly concerned.<br />
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Coaching four- and five-year-olds in teeball requires one to teach extremely rudimentary things, because, by and large, they know NOTHING. A number of my players literally could not throw a ball, period. That's not to mention knowing how to catch a ball and how to swing a bat (and how and where to stand when swinging a bat). And then the rules of the game itself and what to do in what situation in the middle of play (for example, after you hit the ball, RUN—no, THAT WAY)—that was as obscure as quantum mechanics to these kids.<br />
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So imagine yourself in your first-ever coaching experience, and you're with a group of four- and five-year-olds, and you're beginning to figure out what you've gotten yourself into. What are you looking for? What do you want from these kids?<br />
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Only a few simple things. Will they do what I say? Will they do it when I say it? Will they have a good attitude when they aren't allowed to do what they want to do? When told to do something they can't do, will they try? Will they learn?<br />
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Notice that athletic talent is not on this list. At this point, at this level, it does not matter. At this level, no one is keeping score. There are no wins and losses. (Who would watch it if there were?) Also, these kids are small—they are going to grow a great deal before they are really playing at a high level, and we cannot tell now who will be a good athlete then.<br />
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Consider further that the things that you tell the kids to do and how they respond in that first practice have no bearing on what position any of these kids will be playing when they are eighteen or twenty or twenty-five, if they are still playing at all. Moreover, these kids do not even know what baseball is, not really. Even if you told them, "When you're in varsity, you'll be a shortstop," they would have no idea what that means. (They might ask, "What's 'varsity'?")<br />
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Now imagine that on this teeball team, the first practice is actually a tryout. At the end of practice, there will be a cut—some will continue on to play baseball for many, many years, while others will never play again. Now you are beginning to grasp what this life is in comparison to the world to come.<br />
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This entire life that we live in these bodies, however many years that we have, is no more than the first teeball practice of a group of four- and five-year-olds. It is the beginning of a series of practices and games that lead eventually to a major-league-caliber season that never ends. All God has been looking for for these thousands of years of human existence is who really wants to play. I can only come up with five simple questions that he is asking, five things that he is looking for in people:<br />
<ul>
<li>Do they recognize me?</li>
<li>Do they want me?</li>
<li>Do they love what I love and hate what I hate?</li>
<li>Do they trust me?</li>
<li>Will they do what I say?</li>
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Each of these questions is profound and the manifestations of them in our lives are enormously complex. I do not mean to offer a reductionistic, half-inch-deep view of religion. I merely assert that at root, these things are the few that God wants from people. Anything and everything else, any other command or instruction, derives from them.<br />
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Notice that what we do for a living is not on the list. Not directly, anyway—it can be strongly affected by loving what God loves and hating what God hates and even by doing what he says. My point, however, is that if God has us spend this whole practice throwing a ball against a wall, it does not mean that we will be a pitcher in the major leagues. We might end up a designated hitter instead (except that in eternity there will only be the National League, so forget I said that).<br />
<br />
If you are privileged to look back on your life one trillion years from now, your profession today, no matter how important for God's kingdom even, will not be what you see. You will be serving then in a vocation that is absolutely incomprehensible to you right now, and far more important as well. All you will see is what God is looking at today: can he coach you?<br />
<br />
I should also point out that the default answer to each of God's questions for each person on earth is "No." Fortunately, God is not satisfied with that answer, so he intervenes to alter people's dispositions so that the answer might be "Yes." Are you altered? If you want to be, it may already be happening. <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/bible.php?search=2%20peter%201&book=2%20peter&chapter=1">Make sure.</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-89238802771602694692015-05-08T08:36:00.001-04:002015-05-08T08:36:48.000-04:00Contrasting Approaches to Reading the BibleI have observed two basic approaches that people take to reading the
Bible. And the more learned and scholarly the people are who read it,
the more pronounced these two approaches appear and the higher the
contrast between them.<br />
<br />
One approach is like a
prospector searching for gold nuggets amid a welter of silt and rock.
The reader sifts through the material, discarding the impurities,
accretions, and distracting substances to find the comparatively few
precious elements in the texts.<br />
<br />
The other approach
assumes that the entire thing is pure gold. The problem is that the
reader is visually impaired and handling the material in a dim room.
Therefore the gold is sometimes hard to see—the luster of much of it is
not bright, and sometimes it does not look like gold at all, but the
reader believes that it still is.<br />
<br />
In the first approach
the defect is in the material handled. In the second the defect is in
the handler and the environment (the world) in which it is handled.<br />
<br />
In the first approach, the reader critiques the word and alters it. In the second the word critiques the reader and alters her.<br />
<br />
One
might posit that both are possible, that one could approach the
biblical texts as imperfect things read by imperfect people in imperfect
situations. In that case the critique and alteration goes both ways.<br />
<br />
That
is logically possible, but in practice I believe it to be rare if it
ever happens at all. At least one reason for this is that human beings
powerfully oppose being altered deeply. (Even the most flexible and
adaptable of people, for example, oppose any attempt to make them
inflexible and nonadaptable on certain matters.) Therefore, when the
text demands something tough—a major behavioral sacrifice, or an even
more imposing relinquishment of one belief or opinion for another—the
option of identifying that text as impure (textually obscure, culturally
bound, politically motivated, from an unreliable source,
self-contradictory, etc.) is too alluring. The path of least resistance
is impossible to resist.<br />
<br />
I take the second approach
instead. The reasons for this are complex, and I do not intend to get
into them here. But you can find part of them in <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.ca/2010/09/why-i-believe-rational.html" target="_blank">this old post</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-47831238790236839342015-03-22T17:16:00.000-04:002015-03-22T17:16:47.595-04:00Leave It to SatanLast month a bill called the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act emerged out of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee with unanimous support from Republicans and Democrats. The bill would bolster law enforcers' tools against perpetrators of human trafficking—the horrendous, outrageous modern-day slavery that majors on child labor and prostitution—and create a fund to help those rescued.<br />
<br />
Two weeks ago, however, as debate on the Senate floor was about to begin with the bill assured of easy passage, some Democrats challenged a provision in the bill that prohibited money from the fund to be used to pay for abortions for five years. This language, known as the Hyde Amendment, has been included in a variety of laws passed by Congress for the last four decades (and, according to some, has loopholes wide enough to drive a truck through).<br />
<br />
In previous legislation, however, the prohibition runs on a one-year renewable term, but in the current bill the term is five years. This expansion was enough to send Democrats to the barricades, accusing Republicans of surreptitiously sneaking the language in, despite that the wording had been in the bill from the very beginning. With Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women whipping the Democratic caucus into shape, forty-three senators voted successfully to block the bill from coming to the floor for a vote, effectively killing it unless Republicans removed the abortion-related language.<br />
<br />
We are at a point in history where no Democrat on the national level is allowed to depart from pro-choice orthodoxy (just as no Republican is allowed to raise taxes) if they don't want to be exiled by the party to electoral Siberia. But for many Democrats, their antipathy toward the Hyde Amendment comes from deeply held principle.<br />
<br />
Take California Sen. Diane Feinstein, for instance. She grieves over vivid memories of the sentencing of women who went to abortion doctors or even mutilated themselves before abortion became legal because they believed they had no other recourse. Feinstein, like many a 1970s-era feminist (and others of later vintage), generalizes the plight of those women to half the human race. "It is our reproductive system. In a sense this has been a battle for our identity," she said in debate. "There are many of us who believe this is one small step for womankind."<br />
<br />
Republicans immediately went on the defensive, believing that to give in to the Democrats' demand would grant a victory to the most radical of pro-choice partisans. Many refused to remove the Hyde Amendment on pro-life principle; seemingly all refused on the grounds that it would give the Democrats an easy victory. Accustomed to hardball, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced that the confirmation of Attorney General appointee Loretta Lynch, which has already been languishing for months, will not receive a vote until the trafficking bill passes—in the far-fetched hope, presumably, that President Obama will therefore intervene to change Senate Democrats' minds.<br />
<br />
Isn't this just like Satan. All senators oppose the oppression of slaves, so he exploits the fact that half hate the oppression of women and half hate the oppression of the unborn, with the result that all of them—women, the unborn, and most of all slaves—remain just as oppressed as they were in the first place. One can only imagine how the Evil One gets off on this stuff.<br />
<br />
For the record, I believe that Senator Feinstein is sincere. I believe that I might even learn something from her about sexist oppression. I also believe, however, that her reasoning is morally grotesque. I fail to see how it safeguards women's reproductive systems to annihilate girls' reproductive systems (and the rest of their bodies) before they are born. I fail to see how an oppressed woman becomes liberated by oppressing the person inside her. And I fail to see how a woman (or a man, for that matter) achieves her identity by winning the power to have sex without having children. In the case of women who are forced by wicked men to have sex by blunt or subtle pressure (like sex in exchange for food), there is indeed a screaming need for liberating justice, but abortion does not accomplish it. If anything, abortion compounds the oppression.<br />
<br />
That does not mean, however, that the GOP ought to fight Feinstein and the Democrats tooth and nail. Their fear that it gives the pro-choice lobby a victory that will make it even harder to roll back the slaughter of innocents is legitimate, but it plays right into the Devil's hands. There will not be less injustice in the world because Senate Republicans refuse to strike the Hyde Amendment. There will only be more—more women and children sold into slavery and violated in every imaginable and unimaginable way.<br />
<br />
I think if you're a Republican senator in this situation, you vote for an amendment to remove the abortion language from the bill even while you publicly excoriate the Dems for having to do it. And I think if you're a Democratic senator, you vote for the bill as is and start looking for work for when your term ends (or try to make lots of friends by bringing home lots of pork).<br />
<br />
You do it not because you like it and not because you can't think of plenty of reasons why it's a bad idea. You do it because you recognize a ploy of the Father of Lies when you see it and you refuse to let him win.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-44234807532239539242015-01-02T17:37:00.000-05:002015-01-02T17:37:01.587-05:00GreatnessFirst, I'm back. I have written very little on <i>1st Corynthians</i> for several months, because my writing capacity has been maxed out on a doctor of ministry thesis that blew way beyond what it is supposed to be. You can learn more about that project in <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2012/05/evangelism-social-action-and-guy-named.html">a prior post</a> (which does not perfectly describe either my subject or the project as it turned out, but it comes close), and I am sure that I will talk about it here at some future point(s). Meanwhile, two hundred thousand words later, I am trying to find myself again, and apparently that includes finding this blog.<br />
<br />
I have never known how many readers I have had, but periodically I have been humbly gratified to get positive feedback from someone. If I have been useful to regular readers, please accept my sincere apology for the silence, if there's anyone still out there. We'll see how much I put out in 2015.<br />
<br />
Enough of that. During my desperate struggle to finish my thesis I put off many things large and small. One of the small ones was deciding what to do with a free six-month subscription to <i>Christianity Today</i>. Now, many people (I assume or at least hope) read <i>CT</i> to get out of it . . . well, whatever good things they get out of it. I don't really know, because historically the main thing that I get out of it is a prodigious catalog of successful American evangelicals whose abiding flaw is that none of them is myself.<br />
<br />
I don't suppose—no, I do, I just feel guilty for supposing—that the magazine exists to define a list of important people by making them subjects of articles and interviews, quoted sources, and bylines. To me, however, <i>CT</i> (and a lot of other things) becomes what my beloved friend <a href="http://www.tedkluck.com/" target="_blank">Ted Kluck</a> calls "ego porn"—perfect artifices that excite covetous lust, fantasies not to be realized in one's own life. One masturbates to it by posting something in the comment feed that everyone will love or by tweeting to one of the important people hoping for a response. Like masturbation, it doesn't "work," and even when it does, there is no substance and no afterglow, only an empty hunger for more.<br />
<br />
Not that I know from experience or anything.<br />
<br />
I got to thinking about greatness today, specifically about where I would wish to be great if I could. I remembered something about becoming great in the kingdom of heaven, so I decided to check into that again.<br />
<br />
Jesus said in Matthew 5:19 that "anyone who breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others
to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever
obeys them and teaches others to do so will be called great in the
kingdom of heaven." So if I really want to be great, my ambition must be to do everything the Bible says as Jesus and his apostles frame it for "<a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?search=gal%206:12-16&passage=gal%206:12-16" target="_blank">the Israel of God</a>" and to teach others to do the same. Interesting.<br />
<br />
Later in Matthew (11:11-12) Jesus talks about John the Immerser and calls him at least as great as anyone else "born of women"—pretty impressive, since the greatest person in that category is Jesus himself. But then Jesus points out (as I translate it) that John is so great "although the one who is inferior in Heaven's government is greater than he is."<br />
<br />
This isn't a remark about John being the best of the Old Covenant, but the least participant in the New Covenant is better than he is, although many have interpreted it this way. Rather, it is a sad observation that as lofty as John is in God's government, people who are of no importance in the coming age appear to be superior to him in today's ranking system. That is why, Jesus goes on, "the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and forceful people lay hold of it." <i>People</i> are the kingdom, and those in so-called high places forcibly took away the kingdom when they threw John in prison and led Jesus to the cross and persecute our brothers and sisters around the world today.<br />
<br />
Point? Human beings are horrible judges of greatness. This disturbs me about American evangelicalism. (Note that by the modifier "American" I am referring to a sociocultural entity, not the abstract beliefs and values that this group shares in common with other groups.)<br />
<br />
The evangelical subculture's proximity to the center of cultural power in my country has fluctuated over the centuries. Evangelicals have never quite dominated (although in the 1840s and '50s they came close), and therefore big shots in the evangelical subculture have rarely been big-time in the wider culture. According to what Jesus says about greatness, that's quite all right.<br />
<br />
But, people being people, it comes naturally to us on the periphery of cultural influence to form an alternate, ingrown pecking order centered on basically the same things that the world values—power, reach, comeliness, charisma, and close acquaintance with others who have them—instead of obedience. That's not to say that the people whom we consider important are not obedient—I hope and (want to) assume that they are. It's just that their obedience is not why we consider them important.<br />
<br />
The overwhelming ease with which humans do this comes home to me in Jesus' third remark about greatness in Matthew. "At that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?'
He called a child, had him stand among them, <a href="http://classic.net.bible.org/verse.php?book=Mat&chapter=18&verse=3" name="3"><span class="vref"></span></a>and said, 'I tell you the truth, unless you turn around and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven! Whoever then humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven' " (18:1-4). The phrase "turn around" is actually passive—you <i>are</i> turned around, or as the NASB renders it, "converted." You have to be turned into a little child even to enter the kingdom of heaven, much less to become great.<br />
<br />
I automatically think of my youngest child, a four-year-old, when I read this. Don't misunderstand: he is not a moral role model. He can be willful, destructive, and violent. But in one area he is perfect: he is utterly unpretentious. He is totally unaware of who the greatest is and he never thinks about it, and he certainly does not wish to be the greatest himself.<br />
<br />
And that is where I am stuck, because I am acutely aware of greatness and have oodles of ambition to be the greatest. Jesus tells me that if I want to slake my thirst for greatness, I must be so altered that I am unconscious of greatness. And then, when greatness is foreign to my psyche, when I don't care or even much notice, then I will become great in the one valuation that matters, that of the kingdom of heaven.<br />
<br />
I haven't decided yet whether to get <i>Christianity Today</i> (and I don't want advice about it, by the way). But I know that if I was like a little child it would be an easier decision to make, since it would be neither a trap nor a training. It might just be a great magazine, and I might just be great.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-14302775085673774412014-09-08T07:00:00.000-04:002014-09-08T07:00:08.563-04:00Gun Control: A Conversation with a Friend (5)<div class="tr_bq">
<i>This series of posts is a conversation about gun control between
me and an American friend living in Canada. Today's, the last one, comes from my friend Jeremy. The <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2014/08/gun-control-conversation-with-friend-1.html">first</a>, <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2014/08/gun-control-conversation-with-friend-2.html">second</a>, <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2014/08/gun-control-conversation-with-friend-3.html">third</a>, and <a href="http://coryhartman.blogspot.com/2014/09/gun-control-conversation-with-friend-4.html">fourth</a> posts are here.</i></div>
<br />
<hr />
<br />
Thanks, Cory. <br />
<br />One of the things that troubles me so much about the proliferation of guns is that even people that you might ordinarily consider the "good" guys have bad days, or more likely moments of bad judgment. Just a couple examples from Florida recently: the former cop in the movie theater who killed the young father sitting front if him for texting<i> . . . </i>during the previews. Here was a guy who had trained and practiced for his entire career who had a serious lapse in judgment. And, unlike a lapse if judgment when you're playing baseball, when guns are involved there is a loss of human life. The other case was the guy at the gas station who confronted some kids about their music, thought he saw something, and unloaded a weapon into the car. No gun was found in the car, but more people were dead. I think it's just too great a responsibility to expect people to make life-and-death decisions in a split second depending on if they "feel threatened." In the home is a different matter: except if someone believes in Santa, I can't think of a good reason that someone would be trying to break into another person's house. The idea of keeping the military in check is one that doesn't really resonate with me (maybe I need to watch <i>Red Dawn</i>). I always assumed that if the military really felt like it, they possess weapons so far beyond what the average person can acquire that resistance would be an exercise in futility. A friend of mine who is at Penn State worked on some naval projects a few years back and told me that if I knew what the military had, I would be freaked out. If it ever got to that point, I think we'd all be up the proverbial creek. <br />
<br />One last thing: we do have a real life example of a one-time gun-owning society that went cold turkey. Australia severely restricted gun ownership and require everyone to register their guns after what I think was a school shooting in the 90's. The only result has been that Aussie kids don't have to practice lockdown drills. I know that would never fly here, but I wonder if the death toll will ever change people's minds. <br />
<br />JerAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.com0