In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
We had a good time with this last week, so Immanuel Can and I have agreed to revisit our growing list of commonly misinterpreted Bible verses and discuss three more examples.
Tom: How about this one?
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
How do you read that, IC?
Immanuel Can: I think the first question has to be “two or three whats”, or “two or three of whom”?
Her voice on the end of the phone was shaky. Clearly she was very, very upset about something. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell me what. Her words came out in a kind of extended groan that seemed to swell up from inside the depths of her heart, but could only leak past her lips. Something very bad had happened.
As our conversation continued, I gently drew more details out of her broken responses, and it became clearer. Not only she, but all her friends and her church, had been betrayed. A leader in their circle, much loved and widely admired, had turned the corner of a disastrous course. The first of the news had just broken; and she had called me less to tell me than to seek some kind of soothing for her aching soul.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
We’ve done maybe seventy of these exchanges now on various subjects, Immanuel Can. But what we’ve never done is a post on commonly misunderstood scriptures. Everybody does those. I’m feeling left out.
So why don’t we just do it like the Lord Jesus did with the lawyer and ask the questions, “What is written? How do you read it?” That’s a pretty solid precedent to work from.
Tom: I’ll start. Let me lob you a softball here, IC.
Andrew sat back and stirred his tea. “What kind of church are you in?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “I was in a conservative evangelical group, but it seems perhaps I’ve been kind of bumped out.”
“What do you mean?”
“We were in one kind of church, but we had to leave; now we’re sort of in-between, looking for what the Lord would have us do.”
“I will tell you why you left.” His voice was even and certain. He leaned forward. “It was because of … that man.”
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Christianity Today notes a new trend in “worship”: electronic dance music. As writer Jeff Neely puts it, “layers of computer-programmed electronic backing tracks, quarter-note bass thumps, and cycles of musical ‘builds’ and ‘drops’, much of it set to a tempo around 130 beats per minute.”
*headdesk*
Tom: That’s my sister’s response, Immanuel Can, and I think it’s entirely apropos. Some things are beyond the pale. But perhaps we can use it as a jumping-on point to discuss the role of enthusiasm in worship, what sort of place the arts might have or not have in the context of local church gatherings, and so on.
That work for you?
Immanuel Can: Certainly.
A man and a woman are going to bed. It’s been a long day — work has been vexing, the children have been demanding, calls and emails have piled up, and best efforts at getting it all done have failed. Irritations have built up; and at times, the couple has actually been a bit snappish.
The husband is middle-aged, and somewhat dumpy and slightly graying. His earlier grumpy mood has subsided only into a plodding weariness as he gets ready to turn in. He’s left his slippers askew in the corner again, and hung his trousers over the chair instead of putting them in the closet.
The wife turns to her husband and says, “I love you.”
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
English philosophy professor James Tartaglia has
Somehow we are supposed to find this encouraging.
Tom: Canada’s CBC Radio recently gave Tartaglia and his Australian co-author Tracy Llanera the opportunity to air their views on its Ideas program. You can find a summary of that here.
IC, how on earth does one come to the conclusion that widespread belief in a meaningless existence “poses no significant problems or threats”?
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I’m seeing more and more of those “self-checkout” units at the local stores. They always creep me out a bit. There just seems to be something really weird about the idea of walking up to a mechanical box, shuffling around my own transaction, and then leaving, going out of a store without passing by a person.
I feel as if I owe somebody some kind of explanation, like “Here’s my purchase, and here’s my money, and they match up; so don’t call the cops.” And then this person is supposed to give me the nod, like, “Okay, you’re alright this time; but when you come back, we’ll need to see each other again.”
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tom: I have a confession for you, IC. I was a terrible kid in Sunday School. I made everybody’s lives miserable, from the guy tasked with leading the singing to my individual Sunday School teachers. I really didn’t like it much.
The odd thing is that I had nothing against church particularly, or the Bible. I even
believed it was true. But I was a total
How about you?
Immanuel Can: Yep. Dead with boredom, and ready to make trouble.
“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”
— English Common Law
Oath of Testimony
The fight outside a club was broken up by police; but a man was stabbed. Inspector Thomas has been assigned to find the assailant.
When the perp fled, the crowd scattered, but four witnesses remain: a bouncer, the girlfriend, the bar manager and a local cabbie. Inspector Thomas knows procedure; that each must be interviewed separately in order to get a complete picture.
Schindler’s List was a very successful 1990s movie about a German businessman and member of the Nazi party who saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish refugees during WWII. While the screenplay certainly received the Hollywood treatment and has been criticized for a taking a variety of storytelling liberties, one of which was being overly sentimental, the story upon which it is based is said to be substantially true.
So there is a real-world precedent for the scenario I am about to lay out for you.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Jonathan Merritt contributes to The Atlantic and has been named one of “30 young influencers reshaping Christian leadership” by Outreach Magazine. All good so far, provided you don’t mind your “Christian leadership” flavored with a big honkin’ tablespoon of social justice.
Tom: He also just called Doug Wilson an “unhinged racist”, and Doug has sensibly called foul right here in one of the funniest posts I’ve read in a long time.
IC, these accusations of “racism” are getting so common today as to be almost meaningless.
Immanuel Can: Yes, along with the words, “sexist”, “homophobic” and “Islamophobic”, they comprise today’s “Four Horsemen of the Horse Manure”.
“In a post-Christian society, all faithful people begin to look a little Amish.”
— Ken Myers, host of Mars Hill Audio
Nice quote, Ken. Love the way you put that.
He’s got a point, though. In the ongoing moral and cultural decline of modern society, there must surely come a point at which the difference between how Christians live and how their neighbors live becomes too great to escape notice any longer.
And then, in a sense, we will all be “Amish”. I mean those who actually care to be Christians will be.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Canada’s former Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland once noted that Russia had a chance to get on the “right side of history” and help negotiate a political end to the reign of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad. Former president Obama loved the expression, and Bill Clinton used it more than 20 times in his speeches. Writer Ben Yagoda says the phrase — whether it’s “right side” or “wrong side” — has been in use for over a century.
Tom: I can vaguely understand what a Christian might intend by the use of the expression, Immanuel Can. But what on earth does “the right side of history” mean in a post-religious, thoroughly secular context?
On September 9, 1939, The Telegraph reported that a woman from London, England named Frances Fripps was accidentally struck by a local bus. Taken to Middlesex hospital, Miss Fripps awoke to find someone bending over her bed. To her utter astonishment, she recognized her visitor as none other than the Queen of England, there for a surprise tour of the hospital.
“They told me I had been trying to knock down a bus,” gasped Miss Fripps, “and now I find you here, your Majesty. What a day!”
What a day indeed.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
David B. is a regular reader/commenter here. A few weeks back he (politely) asked Immanuel Can, “Why do you choose to fellowship in a church where you clearly disagree with how they operate?”
IC responded, “Maybe I’ll do a post on that …”
Tom: Maybe that time is now, IC, not least because I feel like it might be a useful topic for a number of our readers who have found themselves in similar positions.
As you suggested to David in your response, churches do not suddenly become heretical overnight. It’s my experience that almost anything can be smuggled into a local church provided it is done incrementally.
“Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him and struck him down at Ibleam and put him to death and reigned in his place …”
“Then Menahem the son of Gadi came up from Tirzah and came to Samaria, and he struck down Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria and put him to death and reigned in his place …”
“Pekah the son of Remaliah, his captain, conspired against him with fifty men of the people of Gilead, and struck him down in Samaria, in the citadel of the king's house with Argob and Arieh; he put him to death and reigned in his place …”
“Then Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah and struck him down and put him to death and reigned in his place …”
Ah, the kings of Israel. Their history is very much like that of all the idolatrous nations around them. Somebody gets the kingship, then somebody else murders him and takes over. And each one is as bad as the last.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” as Roger Daltrey famously intoned.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
In principle, I’m not keen on leaving churches. It happens too often and too easily. But sometimes, there just isn’t any choice.
When Gretta Vosper became the pastor of a West Hill United Church in Toronto, Canada in 1997, she was not yet out of the closet about her atheism, a little bonus she didn’t disclose from the pulpit until 2001. Amazingly, quite a few congregants hung on until 2008 when Vosper did away with the Lord’s Prayer, at which point 2/3 of the flock made for the exits.
Tom: I’m not sure precisely where the line is, but I’d have difficulty faulting anyone who leaves a church with an atheist pastor, IC. From your experience, what are the ingredients that go into making for a “time to go” decision?
“If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
Most of the time I enjoy writing these posts.
Sometimes, not so much.
Like today.
Today, I feel the truth of what I heard a preacher say once: “When you point your finger at somebody else, there’s always three pointing back at you.” Or, as the scriptures would put it, “Not many of you should become teachers ... for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tom: Quick quiz, IC: How many different local churches have you been part of? I’m not counting churches you’ve visited, but just those you would have considered “my church” for a period of time; churches in which it would have been notable to others if you weren’t there.
Immanuel Can: Um … rather more than most people, I suspect. I’ve been regarded, for some time, as a regular attendee of … I make it 14. I might be missing one or two. My youth and early adult years were marked by a lot of moving around, so it wasn’t a product of unhappiness in most cases. How about you?
So … what if atheists took themselves seriously?
So seriously, as a matter of fact, that they actually tried to live out the rational implications of their own rejection of all possibility of God or gods? What then?
As I said in yesterday’s post, getting answers to this question turned out to be more difficult than it might initially appear.
Persuading atheists to speak about what follows from the rejection of God was very hard. Not only did they generally refuse to press forward logically, but they often reacted with bitter, visceral hatred at any prompting to do so, making further conversation difficult.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Everybody’s favorite political football Bristol Palin has written a column on the subject of the Guinness Beer Company and its Christian origins.
Tom: This is not the first time I’ve come across this story, Immanuel Can. In another generation, a Christian brewer turns out to have been the voice of moderation and societal self control. But in some evangelical circles today, Arthur Guinness would be taken to task for corrupting the faithful. I mean, he sold alcohol for a living!
Is there a less cartoonish and more biblical position to be taken on the subject of alcohol consumption, IC?
I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking with atheists.
You might wonder why. You might say, “People have to be open to the voice of God, or they hear nothing at all. ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear,’ said the Lord. A man whose ears are already shut gets nothing — and, if we follow the Lord’s example — should get nothing, for he does not unite his hearing with any measure of faith. And without faith, it is impossible to please God.”
Even secular common sense accepts this. “A man convinced against his will remains an unbeliever still,” goes the axiom.
So why bother to talk to people whose minds are already made up? A fair question.
In 1931, an excavator named Claude Schaeffer on a dig in Ras Shamra, Syria came across three clay tablets in the ruins of a house belonging to a high priest of the god Baal that have come to be referred to as the Krt Epic or the The Epic of Kret. (Without any vowels in the original languages, it’s hard to be consistent in the transliteration of some ancient Eastern names.)
If you were to cherry-pick a few couplets from the Krt tablets you might observe that they bear a passing similarity to the language of the Psalms.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Gospel Coalition is an evangelical colossus, with close to 8,000 affiliated congregations across the U.S., 65 million annual website pageviews, regular live events, a full slate of in-house blogs and other media promoting its theological checklist.
Tom: But one very slightly unsettling feature of TGC’s ministry, Immanuel Can, is that they seem to have little interest in engaging in the exchange of ideas, as this Jonathan Merritt article very effectively documents.
You’re quite familiar with TGC. What do they stand for?
Today I want to do a short follow-up from last week’s post, which was about bad songs that conservative evangelical congregations are singing these days.
My particular concern in that one was the really atrocious doctrine of the Holy Spirit that they seem to be teaching in song. I pointed out some of the raw falsehoods that are being sung passionately by those of us who really ought to know better: and I said that the victims of our error include all untaught believers and our own children, as well as the Spirit of God himself, concerning whom these songs promote raw falsehoods.
I ended with a passionate plea for us to stop.
And I really hope somebody is listening.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Matthew, Mark and Luke all make reference to a sin that will, in Matthew’s words “not be forgiven”. Mark calls it an “eternal sin”.
The reference has been a source of distress down through the centuries to Christians who fear they may have committed it and be irreversibly destined for perdition.
Tom: Personally, Immanuel Can, I’ve always thought the unpardonable sin was lazy exegesis, but I haven’t got much scripture to back me up there.
Immanuel Can: Lazy exegesis? Bad, yes, but probably pardonable if you repent. Now, being a Pittsburgh Steelers fan … that’s a whole different category: expect perdition.
The congregation I was in last weekend was singing this new song:
“Holy Spirit, come invade us now
We are your church
We need your power …”
Eh?
These people believe the Spirit of God is outside of believers, and has to be called on to “invade”? They think the church of God does not actually have the Spirit of God already?
Surely not! But why were they singing such nonsense?
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The website GodIsImaginary is an interesting study.
As you might guess from the title, it’s the work of evangelical atheists attempting to lure gullible Christians into the spiritual equivalent of a Venus flytrap. The bait is a little bit of flattery: “I’m going to assume you are an educated Christian”, “You are a smart person. You know how the world works, and you know how to think critically.”
It’s quite a clever move actually. For once, they’ve dialed back the mockery and abuse atheists can rarely resist in the interest of catching more flies with honey.
I was talking to a close friend last week. He’s serving as an elder in a local congregation of believers. A man of their gathering has raised an issue; he feels very strongly that certain forms of worship are simply out of court for Christians. But the form he most particularly dislikes is one that scripture never even really talks about one way or the other. In fact, if I told you what it was, you’d likely be very surprised; it’s something that Christians have done routinely for a long time now.
My pal was struggling with how to handle this guy.
The objector is pretty strong on his beliefs, and he’s not at all happy that the elders are not jumping to his side instantly. But my friend is more thoughtful and scriptural in his convictions; and I think he senses that the objection is more a matter of personal preference than of principle.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
I promised quite a while back now that we’d talk about this subject some Friday in the future, and there’s no time like the present.
Tom: IC, we opened a can of worms on the subject of authority and just how the Christian ought to respond to it. That’s not something evangelicals have had to worry about too much in the West for many years, but it’s a topic that’s becoming increasingly relevant as governments begin to encroach on the freedoms we currently enjoy in the interest of a “just society”.
So how about it? Got any grenades to lob on this subject?
“I know exactly how you feel.”
How many times have your heard that line, or a line like it, when you were expressing some personal sorrow or woe to another?
And was there ever a doubt in your mind that when the person said it to you, they were wrong?
They had never been you. They had not faced your situation. If they meant well, they were imagining themselves in your place, maybe; more likely, they were transferring some experience of their own and placing it upon you, pushing your real experiences aside in favor of remembering their own. They were feeling empathetic with themselves, not with you.
And in some cases, they were not meaning well at all.
There are still a few wonderful things in this increasingly weird world. A good number of them are covered in fur, and occasionally wool.
You do not find many pets in the Bible. Life thousands of years ago was generally harder, and people were poorer, hungrier and more pragmatic. Most verses that mention animals have to do with wildlife and livestock, not domesticated creatures living indoors.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Telegraph reports an Italian court has ordered a divorced father to pay child support for his
Tom: I bring this up, Immanuel Can, because this is not an isolated case. Most parents have not been nailed for child support, but many all over the world have their adult sons and daughters living in their homes well into their thirties and beyond.
The phenomenon has a name in Italy. They call it bamboccioni, which essentially means
“chubby children”. You had what I thought was a better idea, IC. How about
Churches today need leaders — badly. And biblically speaking, that means they need elders.
“Elder” doesn’t necessarily mean ancient but it does mean spiritually mature, so some age and experience are required, of course.
Unfortunately, spiritually mature people are in short supply these days. I fear that the majority of my generation, the currently middle-aged, didn’t spend much of their youth reading the Bible or seeking spiritual growth opportunities. Consequently, those now in the best age group to be selected as elders to lead the churches are not quite up to the task.
But churches still need leadership.
“The Bible gives clear, direct guidance on many topics of morality, but not on birth control. Thus, any inferences from the Bible are opinions and not Biblical evidence.”
Where the subject of the morality of birth control is concerned, this quote from the Christian Bible Reference Site is probably as good a place as any to start.
The question it raises in my mind may be framed different ways. One way: Are direct commands from God our only real source of unambiguous moral guidance? Another way: Do inferences drawn from established biblical principles really constitute such an ephemeral and debatable source of spiritual direction that God may as well have given us nothing at all to go on?
In short, what exactly constitutes legitimate biblical evidence?
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?
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.
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”?
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.
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.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
This is an interesting take. The Independent brings us the story of Joseph Atwill, who has written a book entitled Caesar’s Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus.
Atwill says Christianity is actually a “system of mind control” developed by the Romans to “produce slaves that believe God actually decreed their slavery”.
Tom: Who knew, Immanuel Can? Our whole faith is nothing more than the product of a first century propaganda campaign. Fortunately someone finally figured that out for us. Or not.
“The unexamined life,” said Socrates, “is not worth living.”
Well, he didn’t actually use those precise words, but that’s
how it’s been quoted since — in books, on coffee mugs and
How seriously ought we to take that? True, he’s called the Father of Philosophy, and he was notoriously smart. But the guy wore bedsheets, and died a long while ago. How seriously can you take a guy dressed in bedsheets?
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The term “postmodern” is not actually all that modern. John Watkins Chapman used it in the 1880s in relation to art criticism. Umberto Eco has said that postmodernism is less a style or a period than an “attitude”.
The attitude comes out clearly in what is produced by postmodernists in their various fields: postmodern graphic design disdains traditional conventions such as legibility; postmodern music rejects beauty and sometimes structure; postmodern philosophers reject the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity. You get the general idea.
Tom: Immanuel Can, help me nail it down: what is postmodernism?
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
We’ve talked a lot about Calvinism here over the past two years. We have not talked very much about Open Theism, also referred to as Dynamic Omniscience, which might be said to be Calvinism’s very near-opposite.
By the time the Evangelical Theological Society adopted the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy in 2006, their decade-long internal debate over Dynamic Omniscience had pretty much petered out. ETS president Tom Schreiner says that for the ETS at least, the debate has “simmered down”.
And yet today the Global Christian Center still lists what it calls the “Open Theism Controversy” among its nine most important issues facing the evangelical church.
Tom: This particular idea about God is clearly not going away. In a nutshell, Immanuel Can, what is Open Theism?
“The medium is the message”, said the great philosopher of mass media, Marshall McLuhan.
It’s his most oft-quoted line, since it’s so often true. When you have a message to send, you’ve got to be very careful about the form (i.e. the “method” or “medium”) in which you’re sending it, or the message itself can become horribly distorted.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
In a poem entitled “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”, Robert Browning wrote these words:
“That way
Over the mountain, which who stands upon
Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;
While, if he views it from the waste itself,
Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,
Not vague, mistakeable! what’s a break or two
Seen from the unbroken desert either side?
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)
What if the breaks themselves should prove at last
The most consummate of contrivances
To train a man’s eye, teach him what is faith?”
Tom: Wow, I can relate. Immanuel Can, are Christians supposed to admit we ever have moments when we struggle with doubt?
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tom: Immanuel Can is sending me bad things again. And I’m not entirely sure how to respond. This time it’s Moody Publishers’ “Post Sunday”, in which Moody extols one of its new releases. This one is a Hannah Anderson special in which the author holds forth on the “lameness” of the church. Okay, I can’t stop there: the church is lame (according to Hannah) because she has crippled herself. In the words of Ms Anderson, we have failed to equip “Bible women” because we “don’t have a vision for how God could use them for His glory.”
Help me out here: what are “Bible women”?
True story: When I was in my early university career, I was friends with a girl whose father taught history there. One of his students exhibited a most peculiar propensity in his essays; and that is, that no matter what question he was asked, he always answered, “God did it.”
What caused the Napoleonic Wars?
“God did.”
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
In this article in The Atlantic, Larry Taunton tells the story of Phil, a young atheist whose reasons for his unbelief sound surprisingly unlike those of the New Atheists.
To me they sound uncomfortably close to home.
Phil had been president of his Methodist church youth group, and loved the Bible studies led by Jim, their youth leader. Jim didn’t dodge the tough chapters or questions. He couldn’t answer every question, but he made the Bible come alive for Phil.