Too Hot to Handle: To Debate or Not to Debate

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

Kristin Howerton thinks evangelicals need to rethink our response to the gay marriage issue. “Is the debate over gay marriage what we want to be known for?” she asks:

“Do these squabbles speak love? Does the loud and passionate protestation about same-sex marriage draw others to Christ?”

Tom: Good questions, Immanuel Can. Is there any easy answer? Or is this a debate where both sides may have legitimate concerns?

Inbox: Have I Got a Deal for You

Alison writes:

“Something [has] been bothering me for a really long time. Everybody says, ‘Read the book of Job for comfort, blah blah blah’, but look at Job 1:8.

‘Have you considered my servant Job?’ The speaker is God.

OMG did you get that?!?! It was YHVH who pointed Job out to the Adversary in the first place! He might as well have said, ‘Sic him, Satan!’ ”

[Throws hands in the air and wonders what it’s all about anyway]

That’s a big question, Alison. And though your wording may jar some readers, I think that at the end of the day, it’s actually quite a fair one.

The Claims of Christ and the Issue of the Week

A single line from Doug Wilson’s most recent fake letter to a Jewish man grappling with the Christian faith leapt off the screen at me this morning. It was this: “Jesus did not rise from the dead because Sandi is beautiful, and He did not remain in the grave to keep your parents from having to grieve.”

That’s not going to make a whole lot of sense to you if you haven’t read the post. It doesn’t really need to. Doug’s point was that people have all kinds of personal issues, problems, conflicts, needs and desires that Jesus Christ can address and satisfy. But Christians are unwise to present him to the world as merely a “fix” for their personal issue of the week, month or even lifetime.

That’s not first and foremost who he is or why we preach the gospel.

Privilege and Responsibility

“Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”

The situation is as follows, and you have probably seen it many times. I have.

A married man comes to faith in Christ. His wife is not quite there yet in her thinking, and she may never be. How should that new believer look at his existing domestic arrangements? What does the Bible have to say about that?

The situation could just as easily be reversed, and often is. I have seen more wives than husbands saved first over the years. Perhaps women are easier to engage in conversation.

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“Is it wrong to be pessimistic?”

The New Testament epistles have much to say about Christian joy. Paul mentions it six times in each of 2 Corinthians and Philippians, and five times in 1 Thessalonians. Our joy is one of the ways the world know we are different. Peter, John, Jude, the writer to the Hebrews and even grumpy old James mention joy too. By my count, that’s every NT letter. Joy should characterize the Christian life.

Of course, joy is not mere optimism. It’s far more than that.

The Eternal Perspective

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

I think it’s fair to say God rarely gets a fair shake from any but his own.

If any being in all the cosmos has ever been so second-guessed, given zero benefit of the doubt, or had the worst of all possible motives attributed to him, it is the Creator and Sustainer of our universe. Some of the more vicious attacks on God’s character are merely laughable when closely analyzed. We easily dismiss them as ignorant blathering.

Other critiques feel like they might have more substance. The Christian attempting a defense for his faith finds himself with a difficult task.

Somebody Else’s Mail (1)

Reading somebody else’s mail can be a profitable exercise. We can learn much about the Lord and his ways from truths he has not directly shared with us, just as I can learn a great deal about my natural father’s character by reading his letters to my brother or sister. We can take very personal lessons from things that happened to people from wildly different cultural backgrounds in distant times and places. After all, God is the same God. He never changes his character.

That is not true of his tactics and strategies. Those may vary quite a bit.

Too Hot to Handle: Getting Relevant

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

I heard that most young people drop out of church today, either for a short or indefinite time, around age 18-19. I was concerned: after all, if we lose the next generation, what’s going to happen to the church? But then I found this glossy new resource, and it’s really helping me to understand what today’s young adults are going to find relevant by way of spiritual stuff. I’m sharing it with you, Tom, because I know you’ve got young-adult children of your own.

Just in time, eh?

Tom: Uh, thanks, IC, I think. Why is it that some Christians seem to think that being “relevant” actually means “pandering” or “condescending”?

What About the Witches?

The most extraordinary thought occurred to me today.

I’ve been debating with atheists online again …

Yeah, don’t ask.

Anyway, one of the funny things they do is to call up the alleged records of theist “atrocities”, which of course they then want to attribute to all Christians. Apparently, we’re responsible for everything from the Crusades and Inquisitions to the Holocaust and (according to atheist popularizer Bill Maher) “all the wars”.

If this lack of any historical or theological awareness were not funny enough, a favorite canard of theirs actually involves the Salem Witch Trials.

A Theology of AI

I was texting a Christian friend yesterday. The poor guy is stuck in the middle of a disagreement with the CRA (Canada’s IRS) over his assessment for a previous year. Everybody he talks to at the tax office tells him a different story about what he owes and why.

Having a little inside knowledge about the way bureaucracies operate, I could assure him this will continue to be the case, and to suggest that he keep talking until he finds an auditor who agrees with him. Enough calls and polite appeals, and there’s a good chance one eventually will. I see it happening all the time. People have a tendency to give up too easily when they are in the right.

The big illusion about both tax law and every other kind of law is that putting instructions in writing with exacting precision leads to greater certainty and a single, predictable outcome. In fact, the more we multiply words, the more interpretations proliferate.

The Giant Reset Button

Baruch Davidson notes that the Jubilee year is not observed or commemorated in modern Israel.

Before the Assyrian conquest of the northern portion of the divided kingdom in the sixth century BC, Davidson says, the Jubilee was regularly celebrated. But a dispute over the interpretation of the words “all who live on it” in Leviticus 25:10 has led many Jews to conclude that the festive year of freedom may only be celebrated when all twelve tribes are living in the Promised Land. So until the return of the ten “lost” tribes, the Jubilee is on hold.

That may not seem a big deal today. It would have been a huge deal to an Israelite in the years before the Assyrian captivity.

Anonymous Asks (401)

“Why is finding true love so difficult?”

The list of possible answers to this question is lengthy, so I won’t pretend to get to them all. Perhaps we can start with some of the features of our society that work against us when we are in the process of trying to pair up for life.

First on that list is an affliction sometimes called “oneitis”.

Just Stop It

My brother was joking the other day that he might someday preach a message entitled “Ten Things a Bible Teacher Should Never Say from the Platform”. I trust he’s compiling his list as I write. I hope one day he’ll tell me the other nine.

In any case, we both agreed heartily about this one: “I’m not speaking to you, I’m speaking to myself.”

No. No, no, no. Please, no.

Boasting Against the Branches

“God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”

Dear readers, if you will indulge me, let me tell you a parable just a very little bit like the one Nathan told David. I trust you may not have cause to be as stricken as David was when the prophet’s point went home into his soul, but if you need it, you need it, just like David did.

If you are not “the man”, all the better, not just for you but for us all.