Who is the Weaker Brother?

We all know Christians who get offended at just about anything: observing Christmas, reading Harry Potter, owning a deck of cards, instrumental music in church, the “wrong” hymnbooks … you name it, some believer will invariably have something bad to say about it, especially if you are the one doing it.

A pseudonymous writer on Christianity.StackExchange.com asks how to handle such situations in a post called “The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother”. To be fair, he had just given up a much-loved pastime out of respect for a self-professed “weaker brother”, and was probably in a bit of a snit.

Anonymous Asks (206)

“Are Christians obligated to attend every meeting of the local church?”

The way you instinctively feel about this question will likely depend on the type of church you attend. Christians in a declining work that is still trying to run all the programs it did when the meetings were better attended often put pressure on one another to get more involved and to fill the empty shoes of the departed with any fresh body they can draft into service. On the other hand, a highly organized institutional church may be paying people to fill those roles, with the result that Christians can easily come and go from church as they please without feeling that their presence at any particular meeting makes much difference to anyone else.

Of course, the more important question is What does the Lord think?

Faith in Action

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” says someone who doubts the truth of what he has been told.

That statement is absurd. He should know there is no need to believe anything once it is seen. The fact that “one day faith will give way to sight” does not mean faith is inferior to sight; each faculty has a time and opportunity to show its worth. The time for faith is today, the time for sight is tomorrow.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (36)

We are continuing to examine the way the New Testament writers make use of Hosea’s prophecy. Not all NT uses can properly be called fulfilments of Hosea — some are merely allusions or references — but those which are fulfilments may be broken down this way, with all due credit to David Gooding:

1. Fulfilment as the fulfilling of predictions
2. Fulfilment as the final, higher expression of basic principles
3. Christ’s fulfilment of the Law
4. The Christian’s fulfilment of the Law

NT writers may use the word “fulfil” in any of these four senses.

Too Hot to Handle: Collision Impending

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

Germans in Stuttgart staged a protest rally last weekend over “family values”. At least 4,500 people took to the streets to protest new school curriculum that puts special emphasis on “sexual diversity and sexual minorities”.

What’s interesting about the German situation is that against the wishes of many Germans the Merkel government is importing unprecedented numbers of Muslims into its school system while simultaneously pushing an increasingly liberal social agenda, also against the wishes of a not-insignificant number of its citizens.

Tom: I bring this up, Immanuel Can, because our own Canadian government is on precisely the same trajectory and the U.S. is not far behind. It seems to me spectacularly ill-conceived social policy to pit one set of values against another. The cultural collision, when it comes, promises to be loud and destructive.

What are they thinking, IC?

A Change Is Gonna Come

Umm ... not effective?

So sang Sam Cooke.

I guess he’d know. He was writing his soulful anthems back in the ’50s and early ’60s in places like Mississippi and Chicago — not the easiest places for a young person of his particular shade of skin to be. But things were changing then, and in retrospect, those who didn’t know they were changing and who thought they could keep things the way they were forever were just spitting into the wind.

Yes, change is gonna come. And you can’t change that. You’ve just got to be ready and react smartly when it does.

Do You Love the Lord?

Well, do you? It’s a hugely important question. It merits serious thought.

Love for God is fundamental. Jesus taught that the first and greatest commandment in the Law of Moses was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. So then, God claims the right to rule my thoughts, to control how I define and express my self, and to direct my understanding. Allowing him to exercise his rightful domain unimpeded is the first and greatest expression of love toward God.

This truth was fundamental to a right understanding of the Law, and it is fundamental to Christianity. All true goodness follows from it.

Flyover Country: 2 John

What we think of Christ is the most important thing about us.

Our relationship with God depends on thinking rightly about his Son, who came into the world at the Father’s behest to save sinners. Heaven’s gate is forever closed to those who do not come to love the Lord Jesus. Moreover, true Christian fellowship is impossible for us to maintain with anyone who does not think accurate, biblical thoughts about the Savior of the world, just as the apostles and writers of the New Testament taught.

Anonymous Asks (205)

“Does Satan have to get God’s permission to attack Christians?”

You know how this goes: “I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. Which do you want first?”

Good News and Bad News

Let’s go with the good. God certainly offers a significant level of protection to those who serve him. Satan complained that God had “put a hedge” around Job and his household, preventing Satan from changing Job’s circumstances or revoking the blessings God had given him. Likewise, the Lord Jesus informed Peter that Satan had demanded to sift the disciples like wheat. That sure sounds like an attack to me … but an attack Satan could not have initiated unilaterally.

Grace in the Wilderness

It is essential to our well being that how we think about ourselves and our circumstances (our philosophy) be governed by what we know about God from scripture (our theology). This is especially true when we are experiencing physical pain, mental distress or unwanted and unexplained trials over an extended period.

If our theology does not take charge, we find ourselves in a state of guilt or self-pity. Neither helps.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (35)

I candidly admit to struggling with Hosea 12: the historical references to Jacob and Moses; the back-and-forth between these and the condemnation of the nation’s present conduct; the choice of timing for what appears to be a defense of the prophetic office … let’s just say I need to think and pray about it a fair bit more before I start writing about it.

In the interest of putting chapter 12 off as long as possible, I’m going to do what I promised several months back and devote at least one post to the New Testament uses of Hosea’s prophetic word. Some of these are direct quotations; others are references and allusions.

I trust you will all put this down to cleverness rather than cowardice.

Too Hot to Handle: Where Do You Get Your News?

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

Millennials are among the most flat-out gullible people I have ever encountered. For the most part, they wouldn’t know truth if it smacked them upside the head. Their manipulators and peers circulate fiction as fact on social media 24/7. They mistrust everyone except those they should.

Older folks still watch the six o’ clock news and have newspaper subscriptions. They grew up with media reputed to be fairly trustworthy in an age when the illusion could be reasonably sustained that there existed such a thing as journalistic ethics. Many of these are our fellow believers, people of goodwill for whom the habit of giving others the benefit of the doubt is well ingrained.

The Change Is Gonna Do Us Good

Where is Kodak these days? Remember that company? It used to have its name on most of the cameras and film that you saw around. Kodak was an empire, an institution. Now where is it?

And how about Blockbuster Video? Seen any of those stores around lately? They used to be on every corner.

Laura Ashley clothing? Napster music service?

Revisiting Lot’s Wife

“But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.”

Wow. That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?

As a child, I certainly did. That image stuck in my head: righteous family fleeing from a condemned city, scrambling frantically for the shelter of the little town of Zoar, as instructed by angels. Then sulfur and fire begin falling from heaven.

And … poof! The wife takes one fleeting glance over her shoulder and gets incinerated.

Was God looking to make a point or something? As a believing youngster, I found it more than a little scary. And it raised very practical and personal questions, like “Is this sort of instant, inescapable judgment the type of thing I can expect from God if I slip up?”

Maybe, but a few of my assumptions as a child appear to have been a little off.

On the Great Reversal

I’m going to keep this post fairly discreet for reasons which will hopefully never become apparent. Search engines and algorithms are imperfect, but rarely miss the obvious.

And perhaps the radical left pro-death crowd is generating a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing in the wake of the Great Reversal of June 24. Perhaps not. Time will tell. But some of the threats against supporters of life currently circulating on social media are truly unhinged. They reveal some very dangerous thinking, and it is in the human heart that wickedness, murder and all manner of evils always begin.

Anonymous Asks (204)

“Is the person Paul describes in Romans 7:14-25 saved?”

The passage referred to in Romans 7 is the one in which the apostle Paul begins by saying, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” and ends by posing (and answering) the question “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

I cannot see how this person can be anything but a believer.

Promoting Fellowship

“Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name.”

Over four hundred years later the risen Christ asked two of his followers, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other?” It is a question we sometimes need to ask ourselves.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (34)

The wrath of God is an established fact of scripture, the Holy Spirit making reference to it in excess of 300 times. But we should not think of God’s wrath as merely emotional, as if it comes and goes depending on his mood. Rather, the wrath of God “abides” or “remains” on sinners who refuse to take God’s provided way of escape. God’s anger never abates, never lifts and never loses its intensity unless it is met with the appropriate response.

After all, he is not a man that he should change his mind.

Too Hot to Handle: Objectively Bad

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

Here we are, Immanuel Can. It’s 2016, and our old pal Rachel Held Evans is once again raising spiritual issues of importance.

I had not realized that she and husband Dan are expecting a baby, but it does explain why her blog output is down to about one post a month. And if my recollection of raising children remains unimpeded by creeping senility, her writing output is likely to remain at an all-time low for the indefinite future, assuming it does not tail off altogether.

Minding Our Own Business

Our church just got a flow chart. It’s our very first.

Congratulate us. We have a new hierarchy, with the elders and lead pastor pegged in at the apex, then a sort of “Christmas tree” pattern downwards, with levels for “administrative pastors” and “pastors of family life and missions” and then various lay designates like Sunday School supervisors and teen ministry functionaries below them. (The congregation itself didn’t make it onto the diagram, but I think we’re assumed to be down there somewhere.)

And … oh yes … Someone Else is missing. I just can’t think of who he is.

Sleeping on the Job

Socially, there are conservatives and liberals.

Geopolitically, there are globalists and nationalists.

Philosophically, there are uniformitarians and catastrophists.

The vast majority of us find our way into one or more of these camps by default.

Semi-Random Musings (26)

Unless you come from a megachurch background where the primary influence on your Sunday praise fodder is the Hillsong catalog, you are probably familiar with the name Isaac Watts (1674-1748), lyricist of several absolutely wonderful old hymns. The three I know best are “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” and “Jesus Shall Reign”.

Many of Watts’ hymns paraphrase psalms.

Anonymous Asks (203)

“Why does the Bible use so many different words to describe sin?”

John Walvoord writes that there are thirty-three different Greek words translated as some version of “sin” in the New Testament. I won’t try to rehash his study, but it should be fairly obvious from the sheer number of ways the writers of scripture describe it that sin is a big subject.

Properly understanding sin demands we look at it from multiple angles.

Goodness or Godhood

The following post is an edited version of a flyer created in 2016 for the author’s neighbors. He went to be with his Lord and Savior January 20, 2020, which is “far better”.

“Good” is a word often carelessly used in conversation.

Three examples: “People who work for the government earn a good wage”, or “The weather should be good tomorrow”, or you ask a friend, “How are you?” and he replies, “I’m good.”

That last one is too much for anyone to say of themselves. We have “all sinned and come short of the glory of God”. At best we are not absolutely good, though we may have done some relatively good things that we hope our neighbors appreciate.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (33)

One of the more ironic features of God’s judgment is that he sometimes gives men and women precisely what they are asking for, and it turns out to be not at all what they had in mind.

Israel craved meat and complained against God, so God gave them meat until it came out their nostrils and became loathsome to them.

Israel craved idols, so God gave them idols that were deaf, dumb and useless at protecting them.

Too Hot to Handle: Immasculate Conception

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

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

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

Fatal Friends: Dawkins and Calvin

Hey, look — John Calvin and Richard Dawkins are riding on the same bus!

To be fair, I think neither is likely to be very happy the other has come along for the ride. They’re probably sitting at opposite ends, looking away from each other, and maybe pretending to read an outdated copy of The Times. But they’re riding to the same station.

Foreign Gods in the Least Likely Moments

“He said, ‘Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.’ ”

Quick question for avid readers of the Old Testament: without clicking or mousing-over the link above, who said these words?

If you guessed Moses, you’re wrong.

Minimizing the Damage

Most elders, pastors and church leaders would agree that formulating an appropriate corporate response to the purported pandemic has been among the most difficult and divisive issues they have ever had dropped in their laps. No matter which way they went, some Christians were going to disagree with official church policy. A non-trivial number of congregants have parted ways with their brothers and sisters over it, and some are still mulling their options.

The question for church leadership is how to minimize the damage.

Anonymous Asks (202)

“How could a good God drown babies in the Flood?”

Many terrible things happen to babies in this world: war, starvation, disease, domestic violence and abortion, just to mention a few. People often ask why God would allow men and women to do such things to one another. It’s an oversimplification, but the usual Christian answer is something like “free will”. People make choices, and choices have consequences. Take away choice, and you remove every opportunity for evil to occur. You also remove all possibility of voluntary good.

Today’s question bypasses altogether the things God allows and singles out a historical event for which the Bible assigns God direct responsibility. That’s more interesting, I think, and maybe less easy to answer.

Still, let’s take a crack at it.

Lord, Teach Us to Pray (2)

If applied, the pattern the Lord gave his disciples in answer to the request “Teach us to pray” would breathe life into those times when two believers come together to pray, and to group situations when a local fellowship or church gathers for that purpose. The “Our” in “Our Father” slams the door on anything petty, personal or partisan.

We should be asking together that God’s will be done, not something based on sectarian interest, personal preference or private concern only.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (32)

Why are the prophets so obscure at times?

Peter tells us they did not always understand how and when the the words they received from God would be realized. And if the men who spoke these words had to labor to put the pieces together, we should not be surprised if we have to do the same with prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled today. That’s one reason.

Too Hot to Handle: Faith and the Fatherless

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

Single motherhood is the new “normal”.

Government programs of various kinds have made possible a generation (or more) of children, many of whom know no father but the state. The Washington Post reports that by age eighteen fully half of children today will have lived some period with a single mother.

And increasingly, evangelicals are being called upon to aid, abet and even validate single motherhood.

Tom: IC, are there predictable consequences to growing up fatherless?

I Want to Die

I was baptized young.

Not so young that I did not know what I was doing. After all, I believe in believer baptism only … just like the scriptures tell us.

I was around ten, I think. I asked for it to happen. No one pushed me. And at that time, I had a ten-year-old’s faith, and a ten-year-old’s understanding. Nothing wrong with that … it’s just not where I am today.

It’s Official ...

It’s easy as pie to find information about the number of women sitting as members of the 44th Canadian Parliament, especially those who ran as candidates for the victorious Liberal Party. Depending on the website you browse, commentators are either delighted so many of the fairer sex were elected last September or outraged that more women were not. So far as I know, the question that so perplexed US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during her hearings (“Can you define the word ‘woman’?”) has not been raised to any of these ladies, let alone have they been asked to nail down their preferred gender identity.

We Canadians may have bought into the Social Justice program hook, line and sinker, but the websites that celebrate or lament the sexes of our MPs are still running a little behind.

When Normal Rules Don’t Apply

Was Adolf Hitler a Christian? And if so, how would we know?

One starting point would be to look at the things he said. Quotes like these employ language sufficiently “Christian” to inspire opportunistic atheists to say that he was, and even to assign Christians responsibility for the Holocaust:

“Overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.”

(from Mein Kampf)

“Let us fall down upon our knees and beg the Almighty to grant us the strength to prevail in the struggle for freedom and the future and the honor and the peace of our Volk, so help us God!”

(from a 1936 speech)

The horrified Christian responds, “No true Christian would ever order the deaths of millions!”

Anonymous Asks (201)

“What do sheep symbolize in the Bible?”

The Bible is full of symbols and pictures intended to help us understand the spiritual realities they depict. But as a young man getting serious about studying scripture for the first time, one of the things I had to learn about Bible imagery is that there is rarely a single, consistent interpretation for any figure or picture.

In one sense all of scripture is the product of a single author in the person of the Holy Spirit of God. Because of this, we might expect perfect consistency between image and intended meaning from Genesis to Revelation. But that would be failing to take into account the way inspiration worked.

Lord, Teach Us to Pray (1)

In seeking to interpret the answer given by the Lord Jesus to this request, we should remember he spoke to his disciples in the light of where they stood and what they could grasp at the time. It was before his suffering, resurrection and ascension to heaven, with all the privileges that resulted from those events. Those making this request had an earthly kingdom in view, but we can learn so much of practical value from the pattern he laid down for them.

Christians know themselves to be already included in the kingdom of God with their citizenship in heaven, but still may learn from this prayer.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (31)

If you want to communicate truth effectively, you have to do it at the level of your audience. The Lord Jesus understood this and used imagery all the time. He told stories to which people could relate. Even if they often didn’t fully understand the subtleties of his parables, they sometimes got the broader message.

Even his most hardened critics knew when they were being targeted.

Too Hot to Handle: Stomaching Veganism

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

How, now?

Increasingly, studies like this one point to the strong possibility that a strictly vegan diet might actually be the healthiest for human beings, and that even consuming a small amount of meat in our diet is sufficient to increase our chances of diabetes, among other things.

These studies may well be accurate (though, as with all assertions of the scientific community these days, I tend to reserve judgment until we see all the consequences of a purely vegan diet in a representative sample of the human population over a generation or two). But for the sake of argument, let’s give these studies the benefit of the doubt and assume they represent truth and not simply another scientific boondoggle.

Tom: So, the obvious question ...

Star Trek, Salvation and Sermons

Back in the early 1990s, The Humanist magazine interviewed the famous producer Gene Roddenberry, creator of the TV show Star Trek. The first series had been off the air for years and was long into syndication. Roddenberry was in the process of cranking out its eagerly-awaited sequel, Star Trek: The Next Generation — soon to prove yet another great hit.

The interviewer got the famous producer chatting about the relationship between the show and his own secular humanist beliefs.

The Bankrupt Christian

I find the answers on the GotQuestions website to be biblical and well-thought through — most of the time.

This one was a rare exception. It’s not that the writer is categorically wrong in his take on the question of Christians declaring bankruptcy, but I do think there are aspects of the issue he fails to consider.

Short version: his answer to “Should a Christian declare bankruptcy?” is a hard “No.” I’m going to suggest a better answer is “Maybe.”

Hear me out.

No Longer Live

“He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

Did you know that living for yourself is a sin?

It seems a little harsh when we think of it that way. We think of sins as major patterns of observably evil behavior, and the word of God even leads us in that direction: “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

These are not oopsies, slips, errors or one-off sins. We can forgive those in ourselves easily enough. No, Paul is talking about ongoing patterns of behavior that become more important to people than obedience to Christ. These are the things that keep men and women out of heaven.

Anonymous Asks (200)

“Should Christians respect borders?”

Borders are neither essentially good nor bad: they simply tell us where one state’s authority ends and the next one’s begins. In principle at least, borders are morally neutral.

In fact, God himself was behind the original borders between the nations. As Moses put it, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples.” This is a reference to the fallout from the judgment at the tower of Babel, when the Lord dispersed mankind over the face of the earth.

In Service of Self

Self-centered = pre-occupied with one’s own well being and comfort.

What is the difference between being a selfish person and being a self-centered one? If you think about it, a person may give of his wealth freely, and see himself (and be regarded by others) as generous and unselfish. Yet for all his lavish giving to worthy causes, the real reason for his beneficence can be self-centered, motivated more by how others will see him than by the needs of those helped by his charity — his own image rather than the impoverished condition of the needy.

Big corporations often engage in this kind of duplicity on a grand scale; it is a “virtuous” way to keep name and products before the public.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (30)

Hoshea the son of Elah was the last non-Davidic king of Israel. Its next king will rule a reunited kingdom from Jerusalem, not Samaria, and he will most assuredly be from the tribe of Judah. A repentant and restored Israel will not mind, we are assured.

Hosea’s prophecy of the fall of the northern kingdom in 722 BC bookends the latter portion of the chapter (verse 7 to the end). It starts with Samaria’s king perishing “like a twig” (ESV) and concludes with the words “At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off.”

A sobering thought. The phrase “cut off” means to be destroyed.

Too Hot to Handle: The Words are Immaterial

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

Tom: Clint Bryan at Christianity Today has a post up about something called the Hillsong Church. I’ve heard the name and vaguely associate it with religious music and the “worship team”-style presentation, but I know very little about the Hillsong phenomenon, and I don’t think I could hum even a single one of what Mr. Bryan says are very hummable tunes. If you tell me that’s a not-very-subtle indication I’m not exactly at the nexus of mainstream evangelicalism, IC, I suppose I’ll have to take the rebuke with grace, but I thought maybe we could talk about Mr. Bryan’s article since it touches on a subject you’ve written about a fair bit.

Immanuel Can: Yep, okay. Where do you want to start, Tom?

Straight Talk

Some years ago, Dr. Gordon Marino, the ethicist, wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education called “Before Teaching Ethics, Stop Kidding Yourself”.

In this article, Marino complained of the cottage industry of posers and pseudo-experts we have today who dispense advice to us about how we ought to conduct our moral lives. Ethics, he argued, are not so much a matter of specialized knowledge as of ordinary people doing what they already knew to do.

Not That Difficult

“Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

There are actually two different Greek terms translated into English here with the phrase “men who practice homosexuality”. The first is malakos and the second is arsenokoitai. In recent years repeated attempts have been made to redefine the meanings of these words in order to explain away what the apostle Paul is saying in the clearest possible terms.

Short version: the allegation is that Paul is condemning abusive, coercive or recreational sexual relations between men, but not loving, faithful same-sex relationships.

Intentions and Outcomes

Back in March and April of this year, Immanuel Can and I had a two-part discussion of the validity of Tim Keller’s accusations of systemic racism in evangelical support for Christian workers. You can find those posts here and here.

But in working through the issues raised by Mr. Keller, what struck me most forcibly was the apparent ease with which an otherwise-discerning Christian accepts “equity” (as the social justice crowd defines it) as a valid metric for assessing race- and culture-related issues.

I’ve been giving that a little more thought. Because Mr. Keller is not the only one in the evangelical community assuming “systemic” injustices can be uncovered by examining statistics.