The 1,600 Year Conspiracy

We made him up.

Or so goes the story. By “him” I mean Jesus Christ. By “we” I mean human beings with an agenda.

On the surface it’s not a bad thesis. After all, you can’t rigorously prove biblical inspiration. Oh, you can make the claim, and you can demonstrate from the text that the apostles, prophets and Jesus himself claimed it too. You can make the case that inspiration is a reasonable and logical inference, and you can argue it from the sorts of behaviors these supposedly sacred words produce in the lives of those who obey them.

But can you demonstrate with 100% scientific certainty that the text of our Bibles is really God speaking? No.

And if it isn’t? Well, then ... we made him up.

On the Mount (13)

Divorce in Western societies is epidemic; that much we know.

Statistics vary and are interpreted variously, but we can probably agree without too much debate that the number of divorces both in the world and throughout our churches is way, way too high; in 2014, 0.32% of the total U.S. population got divorced.

Surprisingly, that is trending downward. It was 0.4% annually at the dawn of the new millennium.

Out at the Margins

Drew Brown has a post up at assemblyHUB on the subject of outreach to people who call themselves LGBTQ or some variation thereof. (In the interest of greater inclusion, the acronym keeps changing faster than anyone can keep up, including those who use it to describe themselves. Even the HUB can’t seem to type it the same way twice.)

Sexually transgressive lifestyles are the subject of numerous online debates between believers at the moment, but most are about whether churches should accept individuals who engage in deviant practices as active members. Pragmatic considerations about how Christians can carry the gospel to people living life out at the margins rarely come up.

When they do, they seem to veer to one extreme or another.

Too Hot to Handle: Church of the Revolving Door

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The Next [De]Generation

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Clerks and Dossiers

“Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary!”

That Psalm 74 is a doozy, and it doesn’t easily resonate when we try to apply it to church life in 2017 in our (comparatively) easy-going Western world. The Asaphian contemplation of Zion in ruins appeals to me poetically and dramatically, but in our day the “sanctuary” (assuming any of us would recognize a sanctuary if we saw one) is not burning, and the enemies of God have not recently taken their axes to the dwelling place of his holy Name.

Well, not visibly anyway.

Better Than Good

It’s all too easy to slip into legalistic thinking.

I don’t mean that I’m likely to find myself imposing an archaic, rigid moral framework on others — there’s not much danger of that sort of legalism. But I tend to default to a very binary view of the will of God. Black and white. On and off. Good and evil. Avoid the bad stuff and you’ve had a good day. And I’m probably not alone in that.

I didn’t get up this morning hoping, praying and planning to express Christ to others in the very best possible way. I should’ve, but I didn’t.

True Diversity

We’re all about diversity these days. Multiculturalism and immigration policies in North America are bringing us into contact with different cultures, backgrounds and assumptions that were not on the radar of our parents and grandparents unless they were world travelers.

Paul notes that in the body of Christ, diversity in the type, use and context of spiritual gift is both acceptable, anticipated and actively empowered by God:

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.”

So in our roles and service in the church, Christians are indeed diverse. But in other ways, don’t all believers have to be more or less the same?

On the Mount (12)

The question came right out of the blue.

It was entirely ingenuous, I think. There was nothing calculating about the teenage girl who asked it. I don’t think she was looking for a pass on any particular sin of her own; she was just curious how God works.

I was discussing a portion of the Sermon on the Mount in Sunday School — the part where the Lord says, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” I wasn’t trying to be especially relevant or anything, but you know teenagers.

So she says, “But if you’re already guilty before God just from looking, why wouldn’t you just go ahead and act on it then?”

Good question.

A Late New Year’s Thought

I’ve always been kind of a non-conformist. Can’t post a New Year’s thought on New Year’s. Almost didn’t post one at all. You may have noticed IC usually writes almost all the seasonal posts here. If something’s expected, I have real difficulty delivering.

I just don’t much like marching in lockstep or following the crowd. If I find myself surrounded on my way from Point A to Point B, my first question is “Where are we going and why are we going there?” My second question is “Who’s leading us?” by which I really mean, “Does this person have even the foggiest notion what he’s doing?”

That wariness is a product of having followed a bunch of people who, well … didn’t.

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

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Infinite Improbability and the Multiverse Hypothesis

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Looking Past the Millennium

The so-called “Lord’s Prayer”, prayed by millions over centuries, includes the request that “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

That line is taken as mere aspiration by many and blithely ignored by many more. Lately it doesn’t get recited much in public at all. But the kingdom is coming, and it’s coming here. One wonders exactly how that will go over.

The millennial kingdom of Jesus Christ is a “must”, as G.B. Fyfe puts it.

God’s Great Data Repository

Humanity’s drive to preserve itself is acute and perpetual.

How does the next generation come to know who we are and what we have learned? Our wisdom, our knowledge — our very selves, if that were possible — need to be passed on. In doing so, it is thought, we give our own lives meaning. On their way to the grave, even hardened materialists appeal to the notion that they will somehow “live on” in the memories of those with whom they interact. That hope is illusory: human memory degrades with astounding rapidity.

The invention of electronic data storage appeared to provide a solution.

Children in the Marketplace

As Rachel Held Evans is always telling us, Christians in the West have it real good. And for once, she’s not completely wrong.

When we compare our current situation to that of believers in Muslim-majority countries today, or to that of the apostles or Old Testament prophets, or to saints throughout the last two millennia who have been persecuted and even martyred for confessing the name of Christ, there’s not a whole lot for us to complain about.

Still, even if it most often takes the form of generalized online carping rather than direct personal attacks, Christians in North America do encounter hostility now and again. Such occasions provide good opportunities to assess exactly what it is to which the unsaved are reacting so negatively.

On the Mount (11)

After questioning the Lord Jesus, the high priest stood up before the Jewish council and asked, “What is your decision?” Mark’s gospel tells us, “they all condemned him to be guilty [enochos] of death.”

That same Greek word, usually translated “guilty” or “liable”, appears four times in the Sermon on the Mount. It is legal terminology. The Sanhedrin had no problem delivering its verdict, but it lacked sufficient clout to carry out its sentence without Rome’s ratification.

In the kingdom of heaven, however, there are no such inconvenient limitations.

Just As I Am

Aubrey Sitterson just lost his job.

Until earlier this month, Sitterson penned the long-running comic book GI Joe, a war series based on Hasbro’s successful toy franchise. The book was canceled after its publisher determined projected sales wouldn’t cover Hasbro’s licensing fees. The series has been bleeding red ink ever since Sitterson began making drastic changes to a number of beloved characters in the name of inclusivity, re-imagining whites as people of color and, if the PJ Media report is correct, even one bulked-up male soldier as an overweight lesbian.

For a property primarily marketed to men and boys, that last one’s an interesting choice, but apparently not one that Hasbro, his publisher or (more importantly) Sitterson’s readers were prepared to support.

Too Hot to Handle: Terms of Engagement

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Two Swords

Consider this passage in Luke’s gospel for a moment:

“And he said to them, ‘When I sent you out with no moneybag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?’ They said, ‘Nothing.’ He said to them, ‘But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: “And he was numbered with the transgressors.” For what is written about me has its fulfillment.’ And they said, ‘Look, Lord, here are two swords.’ And he said to them, ‘It is enough.’ ”

Two swords. Hmm. A call for a more militant Christendom, maybe?

On the Mount (10)

“It was said ...”

So begins our next distinct section of the Sermon on the Mount, and since it’s a lengthy one, I won’t reproduce it here in its entirety but simply link to the relevant “paragraphs” or “subsections” for convenience.

I’m going to need to make a few general comments about this section before diving into its subsections individually, because they have so much in common.

There are six of these, a number which in scripture makes me go “Hmm ...”