Magination Run Wild

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Do you have difficulty with the concept of hell? Or, even if you are personally okay with the idea, would you have difficulty defending the reasonableness and fairness of eternal damnation to the unsaved?

Tim Barnett at Stand to Reason has written an interesting and thoughtful post on the subject called “Hell: A Solution, Not a Problem” in which he points out that the existence of hell solves two problems: the problem of evil, and the problem of our existential longing for justice. I’m glad he took the time. It’s worth a read if only to prompt our own reflections on the subject and to consider how we too might make such a case.

Burning Sons

God commanded Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering on a mountain in Moriah. Most of us know the story very well.

And yet over the generations since the account was written down, readers continue to express outrage and doubt, both about the character of a God who would make such a demand, and especially about the character of any man who would comply with it. Even Søren Kierkegaard had great difficulty with the passage, referring to the act as an “ethical rupture”. More recently, James Goodman writes, “Could there be better evidence that God is a tyrant, Abraham a sycophant and Isaac an utterly abused child?”

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“Do Christians need a marriage license?”

Kurt Russell is 70. Goldie Hawn is 75. While working on a movie together in 1983, the two actors spontaneously spent the night in a hotel room (details thankfully not disclosed) and have gone on to live under the same roof — by all accounts faithfully — for the last 37 years, producing two children over their years together. Both were previously married, but their current very deliberate non-marriage has outlasted both their original “legitimate” unions combined, has soundly beaten the U.S. average marriage duration by almost 30 years, and seems to have made them both a good deal happier than any previous relationship. Neither Kurt nor Goldie expresses any desire to legalize the successful partnership they currently enjoy.

As a Christian, would you want to publicly critique that? I sure don’t, not with the limited information I have about it.

Strangers and Sojourners

Abraham was a sojourner, as were Isaac, Jacob and their children. Moses too was a sojourner. They acknowledged themselves to be “strangers and exiles”, and thus their history provides a useful and familiar illustration of the relationship of believers to the world in which we live. Jesus said of his disciples, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” The apostle Paul wrote that “our citizenship is in heaven” rather than in any earthly nation. The Hebrews were urged to “go to him [Jesus] outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured”.

That’s one side of the story. There is another.

Mining the Minors: Amos (5)

Evil takes various forms, as does God’s judgment.

For example, Paul tells Timothy, “The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.” There are obvious sins and there are secret sins. Many of these await judgment in a future “day of wrath”, as Paul tells the Romans. The self-seeking and disobedient will indeed receive their due, not always during their lifetimes but upon being resurrected to judgment at the end of the age.

Too Hot to Handle: The Wrong Set of Chromosomes

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

Bill C-16 amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. It also amends the Canadian Criminal Code to protect any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression against “hate propaganda” and to increase sentences accordingly against those who violate it.

Tom: The bill was rammed through Parliament with little discussion, no public consultation and no recorded vote. Thank you, Justin Trudeau! Last I heard it’s before the Canadian Senate for final approval. If the bill becomes law, people who say they’re transgender become a specially protected class of citizens in Canada.

How do you feel about that, Immanuel Can?

A Profound Apology

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Foreigners and Citizens

The Law of Moses has much to say about how the people of God were to treat foreigners.

Though there is some overlap in the Hebrew terminology, context makes it clear foreigners were of two very different types. There was: (1) the person of foreign origin who resided among the people of God, often referred to as a sojourner; and (2) the true foreigner, whose place of residence was elsewhere.

The latter term is sometimes translated “alien” or “stranger”.

Responsive Law

Much is made of the fact that Christians are not obligated to keep the Law of Moses, and those who have come to understand the freedom believers experience in Christ are immensely grateful that the unbearable burden of compliance with its innumerable regulations has not been placed on us as a condition of salvation.

That said, disconnecting from the concept of law altogether, as certain modern evangelical preachers encourage us to do, is an impossible task.

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“Do I have to believe the Bible is inerrant to be saved?”

I believe the Bible is the product of men who “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”; that all scripture (as the Christians of the first century understood the word “scripture”) is breathed out by God and is not only profitable but fully sufficient to equip those who seek God for everything he will ever require of them. I believe the scripture cannot be broken. Its own writers claim repeatedly that God was speaking through them and that what they wrote and said was trustworthy.

Of Gourds, Barley and Building Small Houses

I hate to waste food. I also like a dash of pasta sauce in my morning omelette.

So last week when I noticed a little yellow spot of mold floating in my open jar of pasta sauce, I thought I could probably just spoon out the bit that was starting to turn and then make good use of the rest of the jar. I didn’t want to miss that little extra zip of flavor I’m used to.

Hoo boy. Not my brightest move.

Mining the Minors: Amos (4)

As discussed briefly in our introductory post, as divine judgments go, the judgment of nations prophesied in the first few chapters of the book of Amos is a little unusual.

In the mid-eighth century BC, the eight nations targeted by the prophet occupied approximately 50,000 square kilometers of contiguous geographic territory east of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the middle of modern-day Syria down through Lebanon and Israel to a few dozen kilometres north of the current Egyptian border and, on the far side of the Dead Sea, well into Jordan.

National judgments are fairly common in the Old Testament; simultaneous mass-judgments of multiple nations less so.

Too Hot to Handle: Woman Overboard

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Attack of the Killer Reason

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Vain Salvation

These days, when we read that we are to “love our enemies”, many Christians in the West find ourselves thinking long and hard to find anyone in our lives to whom that word genuinely applies. We are just a bit short in the enemy department ... or at least that’s my personal experience.

There are notable exceptions, but the sorts of foes modern Christians encounter are more along the lines of surly relatives, ungrateful children or fellow employees with a tendency to step on others to get ahead. And I suppose not too many of us are overly disappointed with that arrangement.

Seeing and Being Seen

The first chapter of John is all about seeing and being seen.

We begin with a God who cannot be seen with the human eye or fully understood with the human brain — no man has ever done it — and a God who has allowed himself to be seen in all his grace, truth and moral glory.

Then John sees Jesus coming toward him. His first spiritual impulse is to ensure others see him too. “Behold,” he cries. “Behold, the Lamb of God.”

See!

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“What are the names of the devil?”

The writers of scripture refer to mankind’s most virulent and determined enemy by a number of names and titles and with many different images. Some of these started as mere descriptions and evolved into proper names, while others originally referred to lesser spiritual beings and came to be used as euphemisms for the devil himself. In some cases it is debatable whether they are really intended to be used as proper names at all.

This list is not exhaustive, but I have tried to include the most common ones and to group similar names and concepts together.

Too Much for Sunday School

I can recall nearly every chapter of Daniel from my childhood. Many kids who grew up in Christian homes can (or could; our current generation may not be so well versed).

This shouldn’t surprise us. Many stories from Daniel make fantastic Sunday School material, and I mean literally fantastic — there are miracles to be found throughout the book: the golden image and the fiery furnace; Nebuchadnezzar’s dream; the king’s humbling at the hand of God; the writing on the wall; the den of lions; the prophetic visions of coming kingdoms depicted as beasts (kingdoms we actually studied in history class, so I knew this was no fairy tale); and so on.

And the stories are not just fascinating; they make significant moral points: stand for what you believe in; don’t be proud; don’t blaspheme; trust in God; the heavens rule.

Of course the book sticks in our memories. Why wouldn’t it?

Mining the Minors: Amos (3)

There’s a lot of talk today — and maybe this is the case in every generation — about the evils of generations past and how they affect the present, conferring “privilege” on some and disadvantaging others.

Much of this talk is nonsense, nothing but hunger for political power masquerading as a quest for justice. Moreover, the outrage directed at the alleged beneficiaries of multi-generational injustices is very selective. For example, we are not allowed to excoriate the practitioners of modern-day Islam for 9/11, but it is perfectly fine to blame the economic and social disadvantages of today’s American black community on the current generation of whites, including many whose ancestors did not even cross the Atlantic until years after the abolition of slavery. Equal weights and measures, and all that.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding the abuses of the concept in the present day, there remains some biblical validity to the idea of cumulative multi-generational sin that brings the judgment of God to bear on a single, unfortunate generation.