On Self-Control in the Modern World

An article in The Times of India back in April of this year confirmed a trend in the current generation of young adults moving into the workforce, something I’d noticed earlier but not really been able to nail down. What opened my eyes was a few months of contract work last year in which I found myself training and working alongside teens and twenty-somethings for the first time since the early nineties.

I was astounded by their utter lack of self-discipline, like no group of employees I’d ever seen before.

Somebody Else’s Mail (30)

Jacob Gerber refers to Psalm 14:1 as “one of the most important texts in the Old Testament that informs the Christian doctrine of Total Depravity”.

“Total Depravity” is indeed a doctrine Christians hold, but not all Christians mean the same thing when they use the term. TD is the first point of five-point Calvinism, also called TULIP. Many Christians, myself included, understand it to mean that the fall of man affected every part of him — intellect, will, emotions and biology — the total human package.

The natural person is born into this world morally damaged and separated from God in every possible dimension. Sin taints everything about us.

Too Hot to Handle: Outspoken Faith or Poor Judgment?

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

You may not have heard of him, but Kelvin Cochran was Fire Chief in Atlanta up until last week when he was terminated by the mayor. He was also a Christian. You can read about it here if you’re interested.

There is some disagreement as to precisely why he was fired, but the bottom line is that if he had not published a book entitled Who Told You That You Were Naked?, in which he expressed his understanding of the biblical view of homosexuality, he would still be employed.

Tom: Immanuel Can, former Fire Chief Cochran is not the first and won’t be the last Christian to lose his job as a consequence — whether it’s a remote or a direct consequence — of taking the Bible seriously and saying so publicly. We are both Christians with opinions who still work for a living. What’s your take on this developing trend?

Living Under the Blade

Damocles, R. Westall, 1812

The ancient writer Cicero has an anecdote about a man named Damocles, a boot-licking courtier to the ancient despot Dionysius II. Damocles foolishly thought he’d like to see what it was really like to be a king, and so the king granted his wish.

Damocles quickly settled himself into Dionysius’ luxurious couch and began to enjoy the pleasures of rule — being fanned, having serving maids feed him, issuing commands, and so on. But in order to make the experience truly authentic, Dionysius gave one further order: that above Damocles’ head a shining sword would be suspended by a single horse-hair, so that he might be ever conscious that at any moment it might fall and carve the presumptuous pseudo-king in half.

Of course, Damocles soon begged the king to be allowed to return to his former position.

On the Spirit of Fear

Apart from Romans 13:1, for my money the most frequently cited Bible verse during the COVID years was 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” Christians who quoted it were usually trying to encourage one another not to overreact to the media propaganda campaign that had so many around us in an absolutely irrational state.

As with so many verses evangelicals quote out of context, they were applying this one to a subject we can safely say never occurred to its author. Paul was not writing about fear of the early 2020s pandemic or any other.

The Commentariat Speaks (39)

Mental Health America says 80% of Americans experience emotional abuse and that 84% of women and 75% of men report having a “toxic friend” at some point. Toxic people, they tell us, are manipulative, self-centered, relentlessly negative, judgmental and passive aggressive. Worst of all, toxic people make us feel bad about ourselves.

Their solution? Eliminate the toxic influence. Cut them off, say sayonara, so long, adios.

Anonymous Asks (430)

“Are all false teachers equally culpable?”

The apostle Paul makes an interesting comment in his second letter to Timothy. He writes, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” This is in harmony with his teaching in Romans about the debased mind. If you want to know what going from bad to worse looks like, Romans 1 is the place to find it.

For those who haven’t read it, a debased mind is what you get when God has basically given up on you.

Snowmobiling on Thin Ice

“Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”

One of my friends grew up in a small, northern town with a stepfather whose job description included transporting the dead to the local funeral home. Supper-time conversations during the cold winter months frequently concerned which neighbor, acquaintance or school chum he had just delivered to the mortician. An alarming number of the deceased were fished out of the local lake.

Morbid, yes. But the point is that, like faith, the utility of confidence depends entirely on its object. If the ice is too thin, it won’t hold a snowmobile no matter how skilled and experienced its rider may be. Likewise with confidence misplaced.

Somebody Else’s Mail (29)

David Brainerd is a little worked up, asking, “Can anyone defend Paul’s misuse of scripture in Romans 3?”

He’s referring to verses 10 through 18, in which Paul strings together a lengthy series of Old Testament quotes in order to demonstrate that both Jews and Greeks alike are under sin.

Mr. Brainerd’s beef is that in their original contexts, none of these verses prove what Paul says they prove. Is he right?

Too Hot to Handle: Immasculate Conception

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Last week we discussed the problems faced by children who grow up without fathers. If it were just an issue within society, that’s one thing, but evangelicals are increasingly being called upon to aid, abet and even validate single motherhood in the church.

Tom: I’ve just referenced three cases (and there are many more like them) where so-called Christians are looking to justify these sorts of choices and normalize them in Christian circles.

Faith’s Got Legs

It’s been a good winter for walking.

There’s hardly been any ice on the sidewalks, for one thing. For another, you could go out in February and march about in a thin jacket.

My little terrier has been ecstatic, actually. He loves a good walk. Dogs need a couple every day; and unlike in other winters, there have been plenty of smells around for him to get into. He stops everywhere, and he finds everything delightful. My dog trainer would never approve, but I can’t resist indulging him a little bit, and so our peregrinations contain frequent pauses to let him sniff about. Sometimes I actually think we walk his nose more than we walk my legs. But who could begrudge him a winter like this?

That You May Know

The occasions on which God may be said to hide himself are rare indeed. Decades and even centuries of great provocation usually precede such events. Ordinarily speaking, we have a God who wants men to know and understand him. He makes gracious and even extravagant efforts to reveal himself to us.

Human beings sometimes want to be known because we are proud, self-absorbed, eager to make a name for ourselves or to experience the worldly benefits of fame. God, on the other hand, reveals himself because knowing and understanding him is both the source of the greatest possible blessings a created being can ever experience and the best possible brake on all the evils men tend to inflict on one another. He does it for us, not for himself.

We might say God wants us to know him in order to save us from ourselves.

Like the Most High: A Cautionary Tale

“I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

Isaiah 14 starts with a taunt for the king of Babylon. That’s what the prophet plainly tells us at the beginning of the chapter. Israel was shortly to go into exile and Judah destined to join them, but Isaiah promises that in good time God will once again restore the nation to their land. By the time Israel finds rest, Isaiah says, both Assyria’s and Babylon’s days in the sun will be over, their empires long past. He assures his countrymen, “You will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon.”

Anonymous Asks (429)

“What is a ‘remnant’ in the Bible?”

A clear and authoritative answer to this question is a very good thing to have in mind when reading the Psalms and Prophets. Scripture uses the word and its cognates over 100 times in different contexts.

As the writers of the Bible use it, any remnant is simply an amount left over after some event, a remainder or residue.