I am reliably informed that in the days of my youth, when I was apparently even more attractive, a sweet young thing from church had a serious crush on me.
The day I got married, or so I hear, she mourned in tears — at the loss of ‘what might have been’, I suppose.
I am supposing because I don’t know. To the best of my recollection, over a period of almost two years, the girl had never said more than ten words to me, nor I to her.
Do you find that odd? I sure do.
There’s an odd and rather bleak passage in Job in which he compares human beings to trees. “A man dies and is laid low,” says the beleaguered believer, but “there is hope for a tree.”
Why? “Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant.”
Pouring water on a headstone does not generally produce similar results.
“The fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”
The book is Revelation, and before us is the marriage supper of the Lamb. The Bride is a certain subset of God’s people (we shall not revisit that discussion in detail here), and others among God’s redeemed are present to celebrate. The Bride has clothed herself with “fine linen, bright and pure”.
It’s the most uplifting picture in several chapters of what is, at times, a very dark book, and it is the great hope of the Church.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
If there’s a single more common inter-generational issue in churches today, I can’t think of it right now:
“My kids want to go to that church down the road …”
Hoo boy.
Tom: I bet that church down the road has a worship team, Immanuel Can.
Immanuel Can: It could be. They could also have a big youth group, a modern music program, and maybe a nice gym too. Or maybe not. I’m not sure those things are always the determining factor, but sometimes maybe they are. Should we care either way?
“Where two or three are gathered …”
I’ve heard this little phrase quoted for years in churches all over the place. I’ve almost never heard it quoted correctly, meaning in its context and referring to the situations to which it actually applies.
When I’ve heard it quoted, almost invariably it is used to suggest that any local gathering of the church, no matter how small, is important enough to the Lord that he will, in some spiritual way, be present and involved with that situation. And really, I can’t say that isn’t true. But I can say for sure that that isn’t what this particular verse was given us to teach us.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Years ago I would regularly come across stories of how this theologian or that one came out of Catholicism and now calls himself an evangelical Christian. More recently I notice some going the other way. Among the reasons usually given for embracing Rome is an emphasis on church history and tradition that doesn’t exist in the same way in Protestant gatherings. Roman Catholicism is thought to have “roots” that go back to the early church.
To seekers of this sort, the value of a church experience is measured by whether their faith community is convincingly in touch with its own past.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
It’s been years since I paid a great deal of
attention to the charismatic movement, but David de Bruyn’s
post on The
Pentecostalization of Christian Worship at ReligiousAffections.org is a
real
Tom: Mr. de Bruyn’s thesis is fairly simple: the current patterns of worship in the charismatic movement are not leading Christians within it anywhere good. Worse, these practices are catching on throughout the evangelical world. I’ve experienced them myself in my early twenties, but never really stopped to analyze the significant differences between the way charismatics engage in “worship”, and the historic patterns of worship across many other Christian traditions. Far more importantly, the charismatic approach differs radically from the patterns of worship we observe in the scriptures.
What did you think of the post, IC?
Immanuel Can: So many things … where shall we start?
“It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
Trudy Smith of the Huffington Post asks, “Was Jesus racist?” Her answer, of course, is yes.
That’s hardly surprising. The HuffPost is the online poster-rag for the New American Left. In their exceedingly well-defined and ideologically-pristine PC world, even the Son of God takes the knee before the official progressive racial narrative.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Once again, Christianity Today has the sort of article everybody who serves the Lord Jesus and loves the Body of Christ should be reading and thinking about. I don’t agree with everything they have to say by a long shot, but they regularly provide a starting point for serious discussion of major evangelical issues. Kudos to them for that.
Tom: In this particular piece they’re talking about missions and what makes that whole thing tick. Immanuel Can, did you find anything CT had to say interesting?
Immanuel Can: Oh, plenty. This is something I know a fair bit about.
A while back I pointed out that the apostles use the word “gospel” in slightly different ways at different times, emphasizing certain aspects of what we might consider an acceptable presentation of the good news and omitting others entirely.
Never is this more evident that in the third of Peter’s four references to the gospel found in his first epistle. His use of the word, and the context around it, open up what may be described as a theological can of worms.
Or perhaps later commentators on 1 Peter opened that can all by themselves.
The facts are these: about 57 A.D., give or take, the apostle Paul traveled to Jerusalem, where he was arrested something less than seven days after his arrival. Initially at least, he was (falsely or mistakenly) accused by the Jewish religious authorities of profaning the temple. Later he was also accused of disturbing the peace, a charge more likely to be taken seriously by the Romans than any merely religious disagreement between members of a subject people group. His Roman custodians took him first to Caesarea and finally to Rome when he made an appeal to have his case heard by Caesar himself. He was imprisoned there for approximately two years.
Contrary to what I thought as a teen and young adult, Paul did not die in Rome. Not that time at least. I had my chronology muddled for years. In any case, even if martyrdom was not the result, we can reasonably conclude these four-plus years in Roman custody were not exactly fun and games.
And they were entirely voluntary.
“God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”
Based on his personal experience, Peter could have finished this sentence any number of impressive ways. He could have said, “God made him appear to us ... who saw with our own eyes the rolled-back stone and the empty tomb,” or “... who witnessed him perform miracles,” or “... who were shown the marks of his crucifixion in his hands and his side,” or even “... who saw him taken bodily into heaven and heard the testimony of angels about it.”
Instead, he talks about sharing food with the risen Christ: “God made him appear to us who ate and drank with him.”
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
What constitutes “hate speech”? A fairly standard definition goes something like this: “Speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation.”
Tom: Now, personally I’d consider even that arguable, not least because the word “attacks” is nebulous, which leaves hate speech to be defined by the party claiming injury (a bad idea), not to mention it takes for granted that “sexual orientation” is a valid concept even though science has not yet demonstrated it is anything more than a personal preference.
Two verses about possible futures:
“What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”
“Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my days.’ ”
Right. Now let me describe for you an increasingly familiar scenario.
It’s Sunday morning, 11 a.m. The coffee is piping hot in its urn, a few handfuls of plain Dare cookies are laid out in a basket with napkins, and the would-be worshipers are chatting in twos and threes in the chapel basement. I count ten. Number eleven is the speaker.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Faith alone. Scripture alone. 2017 marked the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s historic declaration of these biblical truths — truths fundamental to Protestantism and, more importantly, to a clear and consistent understanding of what God has spoken to mankind in his word.
Tom: This piece ran in Christianity Today earlier this year, Immanuel Can, in which Sarah Zylstra argues (based on the findings of a Pew Research poll) that many of the estimated 560 million Protestants around the world today no longer believe justification with God depends on faith alone or that scripture is the only final authority for Christian faith and practice. They are nominally Protestant, but leaning Catholic.
If true, that would seem a little discouraging.
Some people live in active denial of the trends around them, oblivious to the spirit of the age and to all intimations of God’s coming wrath. They are dull by choice.
For example, the Lord Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Sadducees for failing to correctly interpret the “signs of the times”. They were skilled at predicting the weather and ordering their workdays accordingly, but blind to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy all around them. More evidence would not be given to them because they willfully ignored the signs they had already seen.
This is not that.
Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to sinning: Eve’s and Achan’s.
At Jericho, Achan saw treasure forbidden by the word of God, lusted after it, took it and hid it away, buried in the earth inside his tent. But I can assure you it would not have stayed there. Achan had never stopped to work out any sort of strategy by which he might benefit from his sin. That was just plain stupid.
At least the Eve Method — wicked, shortsighted and ultimately destructive as it was — had the advantage of being intellectually coherent.
What does biblical leadership look like?
The answer in many quarters these days is “servanthood”. The term “servant leadership” is said to have been coined by Robert Greenleaf in a 1970 essay, allegedly after reading a story by Hermann Hesse. Greenleaf’s concept has since been promoted by numerous evangelicals, including John Piper and the Acts 29 network of churches, of which ubiquitous YouTube presence Matt Chandler is president.
At one level, who can argue? “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
Pretty unambiguous, really.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Christianity Today has an interesting piece on Benny Hinn’s nephew Costi, who no longer preaches the prosperity gospel like the rest of his family.
Tom: Costi’s description of the financial benefits of preaching the gospel and performing “healings” is a bit jarring, especially for those who’ve grown up in the family of a full-time Bible teacher. I don’t recall the 10,000 square foot mansions, the Benzes, the exotic vacations or the summer homes.
What do you think, IC? Was my dad doing something wrong?
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Wow. Christians going to court with one another.
You’d think this issue would be put to bed speedily by even the most cursory glance at Matthew 5:25-26 or 1 Corinthians 6:1-8. But no, believers are keeping their lawyers on speed-dial in significant numbers. It used to be the primary reason was child abuse, but last year it was something new: property rights.
Tom: Here I thought we’d all be meeting in cell groups in homes sooner than later as a result of lawfare trial balloons from the transgender, feminist or gay lobbies. But no, this is even stranger: we’re doing it to ourselves, Immanuel Can; not just as individuals, but whole congregations. And most of it involves issues related to church buildings.
The Old Testament is full of hints, winks and nudges. Or so it seems to me.
For example, I cannot read Abraham’s words to Isaac, “God will provide for himself the lamb,” without marveling at the subtlety of the wording. It works as a double entendre in either Hebrew or English. Was Abraham a straight man or a prophet? I can’t tell you, but I love that line. From thousands of years down the road we look back and say, “He certainly did.”
That’s not a comment on our cleverness, of course.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Everybody’s looking for greater certainty these days it seems, even Christians. Our own Immanuel Can has written at length about how the resurgence of Calvinism is evidence of it, and I’ve recently done some reflecting on how Christians often speak about the “call of God” to bolster their confidence in what in most cases are just their own decisions.
Tom: This, though, might take the cake, IC. A new and rapidly-growing charismatic movement mostly off the radar of other Protestants. Independent Network Charismatics (or “INC Christians”) find their certainty in alleged “prophetic” voices and the pronouncements of “super-apostles”.
It’s big-bucks too. Christianity Today notes that the Asuza Now conference in the LA Coliseum drew 50,000 people in the rain, and almost nobody knew about it outside the INC movement.
How’d you like to have the apostles and prophets back, IC?
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Christianity Today reports that about one in six Christians now refer to themselves as “nondenominational”, which is about double the number who did so as recently as the turn of the century.
Tom: Gallup says:
“Increasingly, Christian Americans … prefer to either identify themselves simply as Christians or attend the increasing number of nondenominational churches that have no formal allegiance to a broader religious structure.”
What do you think about that, IC? It’s not all good news, is it?
Immanuel Can: No, probably not. Some of it is.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
On his blog, Karl Vaters considers new strategies for church planting and concludes the body of Christ might well function as effectively or even more effectively with 50 smaller churches than a single megachurch.
Tom: Interesting post, IC. He says a lot of things I agree with that not too many other evangelical pastors are saying, and also makes a few statements I find a little naïve or maybe misinformed. First off, it sounds as if he believes megachurches are planted like regular churches, and grow more or less naturally to their colossal size.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Lyman Stone is a Lutheran believer who likes math. So he has built, in his words, “a complete annual dataset for every religious group in America as far back as I could get data”. That turns out to be 1925. If you want to know how your favorite denomination is doing demographically these days, especially compared to how it has done historically, Stone might well be the most informed guy on the block.
George Barna would be proud. Maybe. Assuming he doesn’t mind the competition.
Tom: You’ve mentioned before that you’re not a big stats guy, IC. What is it you don’t like about parsing data?
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
What could inspire a pleasant, thoroughly secularized gay man to trumpet the virtue of belief on YouTube?
Well, in this case, it’s a new Pew Research study which reveals that a staggering 56.3% of white, liberal women age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition at some point. That’s a mind-blowing number.
Tom: The report also indicates conservatives of both sexes were only half as likely (16.3% vs. 33.6% and 27.3% vs. 56.3%) to be diagnosed with mental health issues as their liberal counterparts in the same age group, which understandably prompted Dave Rubin to start talking about the value of having a fixed set of beliefs.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Fox News reports that the Baltimore Book Festival has dropped Rachel Dolezal’s invitation to participate in the festival this year after receiving too much negative public feedback.
You may remember Ms Dolezal from a flurry of media scrutiny in 2015 when it was revealed that the leader of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wasn’t really a person of color after all, but was in reality a little blonde in blackface.
Tom: IC, I don’t understand. Society says it’s not only okay but morally imperative for me to self-identify as a woman if that’s how I feel about myself, even if I have been born biologically male. It will defend my right to call myself any made-up gender I like, even to the point of stripping you of your right to disagree with me about it in the public space.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University (“CRC”) has released yet another study on the beliefs and values of the American public. We have commented on and critiqued a few of these polls before in this forum with respect to their findings, and our concerns about possible shortcomings in the methods employed by the data gatherers.
Tom: I don’t really want to get into all that again, IC. But there is a word that came up in their first press release concerning this new batch of data that interested me greatly, because I believe it’s a pretty accurate way to describe the general direction of the evolution of public thought over the last century or more.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
France is getting ‘woke’, or at least so says the New York Times. Young people on the other side of the Atlantic from an entirely different cultural background and with an entirely different history than their counterparts in the U.S. are mobilizing, protesting and even rioting over the treatment of blacks, over gender issues, over colonialism — you name it, they’re up in arms about it. What’s interesting is that, as French president Emmanuel Macron puts it, all this fuss and bother is “entirely imported”. It is the product of American universities and American media.
“… the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”
“So this is Christmas, and what have you done?”
So sing the children in John Lennon’s wretched ditty. I really don’t know why he bothered himself about Christmas when he also wanted to “imagine there’s no heaven”. But each to his own. I’m sure he’s thought better of that since.
At Christmas time, I can’t imagine a more dismal question. Another year over, Lennon accuses, and you haven’t done anything. The poor are still starving, the world is still at war. When are you going to get off your haunches and be worth something?
Ah, there’s nothing like Christmas pudding and the sounds of self-flagellation to improve the seasonal mood.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Recently asked on an Internet philosophy site:
“If God is everywhere, why do Christians have congregations?”
We Christians may think the question a bit clueless, but to someone who doesn’t know the first thing about the Church or about God’s purposes in establishing it, it’s not unreasonable to consider.
Tom: Immanuel Can, the man has a point. God IS everywhere. You and I can call on him anytime from anywhere, and we’re awfully grateful for it. So why exactly do we get together?
Immanuel Can: In a word, relationship.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Immanuel Can: Tom, a week ago we did a post called “Virginity as Social Construct”. But I’m wondering if there aren’t perhaps a lot of Christians who have heard somebody in school or in the media say that this or that thing is “a construct”, and maybe wondered what that actually means. Does everybody know?
Tom: Good question.
IC: It’s become a very important word lately, so maybe we should talk a bit about where it comes from, what it means, and perhaps why Christians should be especially alert when somebody claims that something is “a construct”. Should we spend some time on that?
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Christians who frequent the major social media sites are finding it difficult to miss the sudden and precipitous increase in closed accounts, shadowbannings and deplatformings of Christian, conservative and even centrist voices. When so many are being abruptly silenced, it is not unreasonable to wonder which opinions are still acceptable in the public square.
Wonder no more. A mother of five girls is using her TikTok account to try to put an end to the “social construct” of virginity, which she claims is “designed by men to control women’s bodies and ultimately make women feel bad about themselves”. [Caution: coarse language in link.] She says she is raising her daughters to believe there is no such thing as virginity.
Well, not in her home at any rate.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Last week we discussed the “new normal” — that almost 70% of divorces are now initiated by unhappy wives — and suggested a number of possible reasons for a phenomenon that is growing not just in the world but in our churches: young women brought up in Christian homes, most or all of whom have made professions of faith, seem increasingly able to walk away not just from their husbands but from their families, often to raise the children of their new partner.
Tom: We talked about the Internet and the work environment, IC, and the family-associated problems of over-protection and legalism.
But let’s leave the family for a moment.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Men have always done it mid-life — some men, anyway, though thankfully Christian men did it somewhat more rarely.
We met the “right” waitress, secretary, serving wench or married woman bathing on a rooftop and bailed on our wives and families. We did it to find happiness (or at least firmer skin or, for a time at least, a cheerier disposition). We did it to demonstrate we were still virile and desirable. Or we did it for some other perfectly scrutable male reason that we wholeheartedly believed was unique to our own experience.
Tom: It took them a while to catch up, Immanuel Can, but thanks to feminism’s influence, women are doing it too, and they’re doing it with a vengeance. Almost 70% of divorces are now initiated by unhappy wives.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tom: You sent me a horrible parody of a contemporary evangelical church service, IC. You’ve got to know I couldn’t leave that alone. I’m still brushing my teeth to get the taste out of my mouth.
But when they’re snarking the modern eleven o’clock church meeting on YouTube, and especially when it looks horribly familiar to most of your audience, you’ve almost got to concede we evangelicals are done like dinner. And it appears we cooked ourselves.
Does this travesty seem familiar to you?
Immanuel Can: You seem more shocked about it than I. There’s a reason why the piece is funny so many people; it’s recognition. The jokes reflect the current reality of many, many evangelical-type churches.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Immanuel Can: Ordinarily I let you throw out the first pitch, Tom, but let me hurl the first fastball today. The wind-up’s a bit long, but I think it’s worth it for the amount of heat we stand to generate.
Tom: Deal.
IC: Psychologist Paul Vitz (a Catholic) has a book, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism (2013), and in it he says some very provocative things. In context, he’s been writing about how atheism and the experience of bad, abusive, weak and absentee male parenting (fatherhood) are psychologically correlated. He turns to considering the reasons why men and women tend to experience the effects of ill-fathering in a somewhat different way.
I’m beginning to think the ninth commandment is more important than I ever realized.
Traditionally, it reads, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” (KJV), or more colloquially, “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”
“Okay,” I said to myself when I first read it, “that makes sense. In court, telling a lie about someone or something can get an innocent person into serious legal trouble. And to do that would be malicious. Fair enough.”
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Rachel Held Evans, who is post-evangelical herself, documents dissatisfaction among those she calls “defenders of the marginalized” in U.S. evangelical churches. In some quarters, it appears, the fact that so many of their fellow pew-occupiers voted for Donald Trump is not going down well.
Brandi Miller tweets, “I drafted my divorce papers with evangelicalism a long time ago. Tonight I serve them.” Glennon Melton asks, “Does a Love Warrior Go? YES. If that’s what her deepest wisdom tells her to do.”
Tom: What do you think, Immanuel Can? Imagine your fellow churchgoers voted for an immoral, bigoted incompetent with no regard for the dignity of women, as Rachel so delicately puts it. Something worth leaving your church over?
This morning a new video appeared on YouTube.
To my surprise, it had arch-atheist Bill Maher in admiring conversation with Dr. Jordan Peterson, the pro-Christian conservative.
This is Bill Maher, who personally coined the insult “religulous” to describe all religions. But here he was, literally stumbling over himself to give a platform to someone who claims that understanding religion, and particularly Christianity, is vital to the survival and future well being of Western culture.
Amazing.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tertius drew my attention to this three-year-old blog post written by a self-described “twenty-something Christ follower” who says he is same-sex attracted.
That makes him a member of a small but disproportionately influential group. Infogalactic has this survey of the various attempts made to measure the demographics of sexual orientation. The numbers are all over the place, but nowhere do they exceed 5% of the population.
I like to fish.
I’m very fortunate. In the town where I live, a river runs nearby. It starts above the town, and it meanders its way through, coming out at the far end and continuing for some distance. I live in the upstream end, very near the river. In a few moments I can be out fishing on any summer’s day; and the fishing is pretty good. The river’s clean, flowing and healthy.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Autumn 2016 edition of City Journal is home to a lengthy but remarkably even-handed piece entitled “The Real War on Science”, in which author John Tierney points out that it’s actually Progressives rather than right-wingers who are holding science back.
Tierney reveals that academia has become what he calls a “monoculture”, much like the media, that is in danger of losing public trust because so many scientists insist on mixing politics with their jobs.
Tom: We’ve documented this trend here a number of times, Immanuel Can. [Way too many times to link to, in fact; click “science” in the topic sidebar on our main page to view all our articles on the subject.]
My friend WiC has been after me for some time to publish a list of the things Christians have achieved for modern, Western society and for the world in general. I think he has the idea that it would be handy for many of us to have easy access to such a list. And I have stalled as long as I can. Lest he wear me out with his insistent asking, I am now capitulating to his request. I trust his conviction that many of you will find it helpful will prove true.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
According to Shane Morris of The Federalist, a LifeWay Research survey of 3,000 people found that significant numbers of Americans who identify as Christian actually embrace ancient heresies.
Tom: The survey results confirm my own prejudices, Immanuel Can. I’ve been reading for years that upwards of 80% of Americans claim to be Christian, and I’ve never been able to buy it. You can’t convince me Roe v. Wade has been law for the last forty-plus years because of 20% of the U.S. population.
Do you find the general public level of knowledge about Christianity surprising?
Ah, liberal Christians.
How they do let their Maginations run wild sometimes.
You’ll see what I mean in a minute.
First, a little history ...
The Maginot Line was a massive French fortification that ran 943 miles between the Alps and the English Channel. The brainchild of Minister of War André Maginot, it was designed to repel attacks from Germany. The horrors of the trench warfare in the first “War to End All Wars” had persuaded the French of the need for better national defenses. The Maginot Line had everything going for it: super thick concrete, steel-wedge gun turrets that were impervious to bombardment, large, air-conditioned living areas for troops, supply storehouses, its own railway …
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Larry Taunton has a link up to this Washington Post story about divorce and its effects on the next generation. The Public Religion Research Institute says children of divorced parents are significantly (12%) more likely to become non-religious adults.
Tom: You’ve taught thousands of teens in your thirty-ish years in the education system, IC. What do you think: does that sound plausible?
Immanuel Can: Absolutely. I believe I’ve seen it in the changes in behavior of the average student, but more tellingly, in their personal reporting of their feelings and attitudes.
Tom: In your experience, how would that show itself?
So I was supervising some young Christians, along with at least one unbeliever. They were viewing an apologetics video. It was one that had been professionally produced — you know, the kind that had enough money put into it to reasonably approximate Hollywood or TED Talk production values. Their local church had made it available, off that Christian video-streaming service that some churches seem to like.
The topic was “Why Does God Allow Suffering and Tragedy?”
What a great topic, I thought. Whether you’re a Christian or an unbeliever, that’s got to be something you’ve asked yourself, because you don’t live long in this world without running into some kind of suffering. If you’re fortunate, it’s small; but it’s astonishing how huge the things some children face can be.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Not all religions acknowledge coming judgment, but Christianity does.
Tom: As we discussed last week, Immanuel Can, the Bible teaches there is both a general judgment of sinners and a separate, distinct judgment of Christians. That division was not clearly traced in our Old Testaments, and most Jews know next to nothing of it.
But it’s there in our New Testaments, and getting rid of it involves ripping out whole pages of Paul’s epistles.
Immanuel Can: Lay it out for us, Tom: what’s the difference?
“Chaaaaarge!”
A half-dozen knights leap over a hill to attack a rabbit.
Unexpectedly, the little white bunny turns and attacks the knights, killing some and wounding others.
“Run away! Run away!”
Scattering shields and armaments, the terrified knights clamber back over the hillock, and duck in shame.
* * * * *
It’s a famous scene called “The Killer Rabbit” from the 1975 comedy feature film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’m reminded of it every time I converse with a Calvinist.