Too Hot to Handle: Religious Freedom, Limited

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

The Independent reports that Belgium’s Walloon region is the latest territory to ban kosher and halal meats. Denmark, Switzerland and New Zealand all got there first, in each case turning a deaf ear to the protests of Jewish and Islamic minorities.

Tom: That’s fine with me. We’ve already established in the U.S. and Canada that there are reasonable limits on religious freedoms, though these have been applied more frequently (and certainly more visibly) against Christians than against religious minorities recently.

Relativism: Facts, Foolishness and Faith

“Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote — Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ ”

In my last post, I talked about relativism. I pointed out that there are two kinds — epistemic relativism and moral relativism — and that they need separate treatment, because they deal with very different issues. Then I started with epistemic relativism, the doubting of the existence of any facts, and showed how it is completely irrational.

Too Hot to Handle: The Unfair Advantage of a Loving Family

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

Yes, Leftism is just plain goofy.

Philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse are deeply concerned about the nuclear family.

What happens, worries Swift, when loving your child makes for an uneven playing field for those without equally devoted parents?

The difference between the solution you or I might propose and the one the political Left proposes is that Adam and Harry would prefer to bring us all down to the lowest common denominator rather than aspire to anything inherently more desirable.

Tolerance and Relativism

“What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.”

So wrote Sir Francis Bacon, the father of the scientific method. The man was not just a scientist, but a devout Christian as well. For him, the two were of a piece — truth in scientific inquiry was a road to knowledge of the Creator. So he wrote as much theology as science, and he stands as but one evidence of the long interaction between Christianity and scientific advancement.

In his 1601 essay “Of Truth”, he pointed out the embarrassing relativism of Pilate’s attitude. Pontius Pilate was standing next to the very One who could tell him definitively any truth he wished to know. He could have asked how planetary motion worked. He could have asked about the origins of life. He could have asked the meaning of our existence. And obviously, he could have asked what God required of him personally. He could have had forgiveness. He could have had salvation. He could have had life. And yet he walked away. And so he is remembered as one of history’s great fools.

Louder Than Words

“Words, words, words,” says Hamlet.

He’s not enthused. And rightly so. Sometimes there are just too many words.

The Bible says, “God is in heaven, and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few.” It’s talking about prayer, of course, but the point carries more generally: even the smartest of us is pretty limited in knowledge. The Lord can use as many words as he wants, and every one of them will be right; but when we human beings talk too much, we make mistakes. Sometimes, we even roll right into sin.

So we’re encouraged to be careful, talk only about what we know, use our words precisely, and not to multiply them without due attention to what we’re really doing. After all, teachers receive a more serious condemnation if they do a bad job.

Depression, Grief, Melancholy and Guilt

Granny says she’s depressed.

Okay, she’s not my granny, and she’s probably not actually depressed either. There’s a chance she is, but in all likelihood she’s grieving, not depressed.

There is a difference.

You see, her husband of many decades went to be with the Lord earlier this year. Her ongoing grief is natural and appropriate; in fact, if at this stage she were said to be feeling fine and spending her time internet shopping for a new partner, the gossips among us would be even more troubled.

But I point this out because where sadness is concerned, our thinking is very muddled these days.

A Mark on the Forehead

Three rather obvious lessons from a fairly obscure passage of scripture.

Ezekiel the prophet is sitting at home with a group of Judah’s elders around him when he has one of those very intense visionary experiences that seemed to characterize his relationship with the God of Israel. Some prophets heard voices and others dreamed, but Ezekiel saw overwhelming heavenly splendor — in the middle of his own living room, one assumes.

Too Hot to Handle: Forgive Us, But …

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

In Islam, the word tawbah refers to the process of asking Allah for forgiveness. The ritual is comprised of three stages:

• Recognizing your sins and mistakes;
• Feeling ashamed to having violated Allah’s trust;
• Making a promise to never repeat the mistake.

Western culture, on the other hand, has largely dispensed with the practice of seeking forgiveness, not least because a public confession of wrongdoing may create liability issues. So you get bafflegab like, “I regret if anyone was offended by ...” instead of a sincere apology.

Tom: Immanuel Can, can you recall the last time someone unsaved asked you to forgive them?

Scales and Panes

I was chatting with a young man yesterday.

He considers himself a Christian. And maybe he is. I hope he is. But he’s certainly confused about something very basic to salvation; and maybe it will surprise you what it is.

He doesn’t really understand sin.

Now, understanding what it is we are saved from is pretty necessary to salvation, so I’m concerned. I want him to have a correct grasp of how sin relates to the holiness of God. And I’m troubled that his teachers have not taught him this.

So I’m going to try to do a short explanation for you. And I’m going to start with this question:

How bad is sin?

Too Hot to Handle: Church of the Revolving Door

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

Almost all in-groups, public or private, have some form of disciplinary process in place. At work, if you engage in behavior the company defines as “harassment”, you will generally find yourself in front of a supervisor and a Human Resources rep, either to be written up or dismissed. The NFL regularly suspends players who don’t comply with its codes. Even Twitter will freeze your account for expressing what it considers to be inappropriate political views. All of this is standard procedure.

Tom: If you read a fair bit of recent online commentary, you might be forgiven for thinking that contemporary evangelical churches are the only institutions in existence that have no self-policing mechanisms in place.

The Butler Did It

When John Milton, the famous 17th century poet and eventual author of the epic Paradise Lost realized in mid-life that he was going totally blind, he felt a rising sense of panic. How could a wordsmith be of any value, to God or anyone else, when he had not even the use of his own two eyes?

When the great night finally descended, he was reduced to dependency and darkness. And understandably, he agonized over why the Lord would allow such a thing. He recorded his struggles in a short poem — perhaps his most-quoted piece of work.

“When I consider how my light is spent …” he began. With half a life left to give, what point would there be in him losing the one great talent he had? It would remain, he worried, “lodg’d within me useless”, and yet his “soul [was] more bent to serve therewith [his] Maker”. How could he give an account to the Lord if he could no longer serve, and in fact, could no longer even see?

Too Hot to Handle: How I Didn’t Meet Your Mother

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

Rod Dreher says nobody meets their spouses at church anymore.

Catholic, Protestant, whatever: some Christian folks are making the case you’ll have better luck finding a spouse in a bar or restaurant, through friends or online than you are going to have finding a man or woman in your own local church worth partnering up with for life. And Dreher agrees.

That’s quite a claim, IC. Where did you meet your wife?

Immanuel Can: At church, first. But we didn’t get interested in each other until we started working together, serving the Lord at a university. My experience may or may not be indicative, though.

As Perfect as Me

“Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

A few years ago, I remember hearing about an evangelist who claimed he’d managed to conquer sin absolutely, and eliminate it from his life. In fact, he said he hadn’t committed one in twelve years.

His wife, apparently, backed him up on that.

Now, if you’re a woman that has lived with a man for any period of time longer than fifteen minutes, you probably suspect the wife has gotten into the cooking sherry. It’s just not reality. Sinless perfection just isn’t possible on this earth. And if you meet someone who says he’s achieved it, he probably needs to take a second look — if at nothing else, at the sin of pride.

But I don’t need to tell you that. You know from your own experience. As I do, from mine.

Too Hot to Handle: The “Divinity” of Christ

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

Our friend Michael Gungor is at it again, doubling down on his statement to the effect that “Genesis is a poem if I’ve ever seen one.”

Which would be fine, as mere opinions go, but now he’s brought Jesus Christ into it:

“Even if he was wrong, even if he did believe that Noah was a historical person, or Adam was a historical person, and ended up being wrong, I don’t understand how that even would deny the divinity of Christ. The point is it wouldn’t freak me out if he was wrong about it, in his human side.”

Tom: Let’s just catch us up here.

Untwisting God’s Words

Tertius once told me about something that happened to him many years ago, when he was a young Christian. He had started to study the Bible with a friend who had a particular mainline church denominational background.

One day he received an angry letter from his friend’s priest, who was upset about the idea that two lay people were attempting to read and understand the word of God without his “professional” help.

“No prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation,” declared the priest, quoting part of 2 Peter 1:20. From this, he expected Tertius to see that it was just wrong for a person not approved and trained by church authorities to dare to read and understand for himself.

Too Hot to Handle: Picking and Choosing

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

Hmm, this smells like clickbait … or deliberate provocation.

An Amy Julia Becker blog post from early 2015 suggests Christians should scale back our New Year’s resolutions and quit trying to read the Bible cover to cover.

Tom: Mrs. Becker wonders about the helpfulness of reading the Bible in its entirety and practically brags about not having read Nahum “in ages”. You can almost feel the calculated poke in the eye to Christians committed to getting through the whole Bible annually as she adds, “Perhaps you’ll join me.”

Thanks but no thanks.

Getting Reading Right

So I got talking with a guy the other day.

Those of you who know me know I’ve made my career among secular people. Philosophy being my thing, I’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of different sorts of people — many very far from Christian. But in this case, I was talking to a youngish Christian who had been pulled sideways by reading too much of the Unitarians and various Gnostic sects before getting his grounding in scripture. He’s got shaken about the general reliability of scripture, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and a variety of other issues, and he’s working his way through them.

I asked him what he thought was the touchstone of truth. He’d already expressed doubts about large sections of scripture, so I wanted to know what he was relying on to show him what was reliable and what wasn’t.

Sentiment Without Content

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.

Root and Shoot

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.

Say Yes to the Dress

“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.

Too Hot to Handle: Where the Grass is Greener

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.

The Church Down the Road

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?

Two or Three Mistakes

“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.

Too Hot to Handle: The Weight of Tradition

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.

Too Hot to Handle: Golden Calf 2.0

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 eye-opener.

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?

Wagging the Dog

“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.

Too Hot to Handle: What Gives?

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.

Spirits in Prison

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.

Facts and Conjectures

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.

They Ate and Drank with Him

“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.”

Too Hot to Handle: Witnessing as Hate Speech

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.

My Church is on Life Support

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.

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.

Too Hot to Handle: Nominally Protestant, Leaning Catholic

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.

Inadequate Remedies

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.

Achan and Eve

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.

The Leaders and the Led

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.

Too Hot to Handle: Witchcraft Using Christian Language

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?

Too Hot to Handle: See You in Court, Brother

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 Building Blocks of Reality

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.

Too Hot to Handle: ‘Apostles’ and ‘Prophets’

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?

Too Hot to Handle: Bad Reasons to be Nondenominational

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.

Too Hot to Handle: Rightsizing the Church

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.

Too Hot to Handle: Religion by the Numbers

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?

Too Hot to Handle: Going Crazy

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.

Too Hot to Handle: Alt-Personhood

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.

Too Hot to Handle: That Sync-ing Feeling

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.

Too Hot to Handle: Spreading the Infection

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.

To One and All, A Mary Christmas

“… 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.

Too Hot to Handle: Let’s Get Together

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.

Too Hot to Handle: The ‘Construct’ Argument

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?

Too Hot to Handle: Virginity as Social Construct

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.