Too Hot to Handle: Where Did We Go Wrong?

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

We’ve run a couple of posts recently about Christian Nationalism and its appeal to young men, especially those raised on the supersessionist aspect of Reformed Theology.

Tom: I see two different problems cropping up, but I believe they are both coming from a common source. On the dispensational side, I see young men disillusioned with their denominations because they feel like the staid routine their older brothers in Christ have established gives them no outlet for their youthful energies and the desire to effect change, and may inspire them to look for something more real and relevant. On the Reformed side, I see older men panicking over the particular ways the energies of their young men are manifesting themselves. They wanted activism and now they’ve got it. They just don’t like the shape it’s taking.

IC, without getting into a lot of detail about Christian Nationalism, with its accusations of antisemitism and so on — because we have done that elsewhere — I’d like to talk a bit about the package we are offering young men when they come to church, and whether it’s deficient in any way. In short, is the problem them, or is the problem us?

Immanuel Can: Or is the problem with our society? I think it is.

Just Church (9)

Chapter 3: The “Nice” Lady

“… and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh, it is a very nice word, indeed! — it does for everything.”

(Henry Tilney, in Jane Austen’s novel,
Northanger Abbey, 1817)

The word “nice” is tricky. Like so many of our English words, it has had some different shades of meaning, which have switched as time passed. The quotation with which this chapter starts relates to this: through her character, Jane Austen is making fun of the different ways that single word can be taken.

In its present use, it most often means the sort of thing you probably thought of when I first talked about the nice lady — pleasant, friendly, kind, and so on. It will probably come as a real surprise to most people that when the word “nice” was originally coined, it meant “ignorant”.

The Language of the Debate (12)

An international team of university researchers has concluded that people who curse more are less likely to lie and may possess greater integrity than their politer peers.

Sure. Of course. Christians will buy that one hook, line and sinker, right? Didn’t think so.

What fascinates me about the study is not its rather pedestrian conclusions, which are all too predictable given the initial assumptions of psychologist Gilad Feldman and his team. Garbage in, garbage out. No, it’s really their preconceived ideas about the meaning of honesty that ought to cause Christians to stop and think. Why? Because apparently the word no longer means what it once did.

Ugh. Not again.

Three Metaphors

The book of Acts ends with Paul’s first Roman imprisonment, from which he was eventually released and which was a comparative walk in the park.

Acts is the final historical book of the New Testament, so we must infer anything further about Paul’s life and ministry from his later letters. Without an independent witness to Paul’s travels, trials and tribulations, we only know what went on by reading between the lines of the apostle’s subsequent correspondence with local churches, friends and associates.

Everything we know about the circumstances of his second imprisonment comes from 2 Timothy.

Anonymous Asks (336)

“Should Christians from different denominations date or marry?”

As with so many questions, the answer very much depends on your personal situation. Why do you attend the church you currently attend? Obviously, the most desirable answer is “Out of conviction about the interpretations of scripture taught there.”

But that’s not always why people are where they are, is it?

Inbox: Christ and Learning

“What about the questions Jesus asked as a boy (Lk 2:46). Did He know the answers or did He learn?”

There is no application of the word “learn” in Luke 2:46. Luke simply says that Jesus Christ was listening to the teachers and asking them questions. There’s no reason to suppose he was asking those questions because of any lack in his own knowledge, rather than the sort of rhetorical and didactic questioning in which he would later so frequently engage with his disciples or with the Pharisees. He would call on their judgment in order to set the stage for deeper thinking on a subject they had so far understood only superficially.

There is but one passage in all of scripture that employs the word “learn” in reference to Christ’s life: Hebrews 5:8.

119: Lamedh

The Lamedh [ל] is the twelfth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the symbol of learning. It begins the second half of the alphabet and the second half of Psalm 119, thus putting learning at the heart of the human experience, and spiritual learning most central of all.

One of the most important lessons we can ever learn is to worship appropriately.

Too Hot to Handle: Tik-Talkin’

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

Something strange has come up recently on YouTube and TikTok. There’s this spate of home-made videos — short ones — that present the following scenario: usually it begins with a girl who claims to have a boy who is her “best friend”. Some saccharine pop tune plays, and then words appear on screen to the effect that she’s secretly infatuated with him and, allegedly, he doesn’t know. So then, the girl invents some pretext for getting close to him, and suddenly kisses him … and whatever happens happens. Either he seems to respond, or he doesn’t. Then the video ends.

Immanuel Can: There’ve got to be thousands of these things. Sometimes it’s a boy who’s made them, but most of the time, a girl. But always the camera — and the viewers — are the third ‘person’ in the equation, of course. Let’s start with the obvious. Do you think it would be okay for young Christian women to try emulating this trend?

Tom: Oh please.

Just Church (8)

And so we arrive at the present moment.

We've been talking about history — about that old nonsense created by Karl Marx, and then picked up in the middle of the last century by a group of rabid ideologues now known as “The Frankfurt School”. But what’s all this got to do with us? Why should we care? Didn’t all that end with the Berlin Wall? Whom do we, in the West, ever meet who preens himself as a Marxist? So why bother ourselves with dead men and dead beliefs?

Well, because sometimes things don’t quite die. Bad ideas have a horrible way of persisting, and even of being resurrected in new forms. This happened with Marxism, which has now reappeared under the cloak of humanist, racial, environmental and sexual-equality concerns, in what we now know as the “Social Justice” movement. So our subject today is this final switcheroo, when the old dogmas of Marxism got converted into their current form, and managed to seize so much of the public agenda, and even to make serious inroads among professing Christians.

Top 10 Posts of 2024

Our most popular posts of last year dealt with relationships (or the absence thereof), the visions of Zechariah, the importance of thought flow in expository preaching, and the practical implications of Reformed theology. If that seems a mixed bag to you, welcome to ComingUntrue, where we try to come up with a little something for everyone … or possibly you just get stuck with whatever random subject is rattling around in our heads on any given day.

Without further ado, let’s count ’em down!

Inbox: The Questions of Young Jesus

My Christmas present this year from an old friend and mentor was not quite a lump of coal in my stocking, more like a hot potato bouncing from palm to palm to avoid getting singed. He responded to last week’s Anonymous Asks post (subtitled “If Jesus was/is omniscient, why did he ask questions?”) with this query: “What about the questions He asked as a boy (Lk 2:46). Did He know the answers or did He learn?”

I believe the correct theological rejoinder is “Aaargh!”

Anonymous Asks (335)

“What does leaven symbolize in the Bible?”

Lots of things, none of them good. Let me try to make that case.

Symbols can be tricky things. Where our Bible interprets a symbol, we generally have no difficulty at all, but there are also times when the meaning of a symbol is open to question because the Holy Spirit has not told us plainly, “This signifies that.” Leaven was unacceptable to God in some contexts and acceptable in others. We will need to find an explanation for that.

The Old Testament uses leaven as an illustration. The New Testament unpacks its meaning.

First Things First

An illustration, and I’ll try to keep it as brief and clear as possible.

In the process of editing IC’s Christmas Day post this year, I came across one of those inconvenient translation variants that scripture affirms as legitimate despite what seems to be a significant change in meaning. Matthew 4:16 has the apostle quoting the prophet Isaiah concerning the “great light” that dawned on Galilee when our Lord settled in Capernaum for a time.

119: Kaph

If you are going to find Christ in Psalm 119, today’s eleventh “stanza” of the psalm is by far the best place for it. For a consistent prophetic portrayal of the sinless, suffering servant, these eight lines have no parallel in the psalm, which makes our reading a perfect fit for the tail end of the Christmas season, as we move from the contemplation of our Lord’s birth to considering his purpose in coming into the world. By non-coincidence, the letter Kaph [כ], which begins every line, has a dual meaning to Hebrew scholars: “form” and “crown”.

No, I’m really not making this stuff up.

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.

Just Church (7)

When we left off last week, we were talking about the roots of the Social Justice movement. We traced things back to a philosopher named Hegel, who passed on some basic ideas to another guy, Karl Marx. Marx might well be the most evil character in all of history, judging by the number of people dispossessed, starved, tortured and killed as result of his ideology. (Let nobody tell you that ideas do not have consequences.)

But Marx died way back in 1883, and went to his own consequences. So we might well wonder why we would be thinking about him now. How did some old atheist guy with a bad idea end up causing problems for the Church a century and a half or so after he was dead? Good question. It deserves an answer. So here we go.

Darkness, and Great Light

“The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great Light, and those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a Light dawned.”

If there is any such thing as a universal symbol, it just might be light.

In every place and culture all around the world, everybody instinctively associates light with things like truth and insight and joy. Whether it’s our Christmas, or the Hanukkah of Judaism, or Chinese New Year, or some other “festival of light”, it always seems to point to the same sorts of experience: that of being able to see, whereas before, one could not. Is not the celebrated historical period of the secular skeptics called “The Enlightenment”? Even the irreligious are drawn to this symbolism.

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.

Anonymous Asks (334)

“If Jesus was/is omniscient, why did he ask questions?”

Good question. You can find several lists online of the questions Jesus asked in the gospels. Curious Bible students have dug up at least 300, minus a few repetitions from overlapping accounts. No single explanation accounts for them all, but one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that Jesus never asked a question to which he didn’t already know the answer.

His Own

“He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.”

“Having loved his own … he loved them to the end.”

If you really wanted to irritate a well-read Christian audience, you could probably preach a sermon that started by quoting both these verses from the gospel of John. Then you could delve into the Greek, noting that the same word [idios] is used for “his own” by the same author in the same book. Finally, you could finish with a flurry by pontificating about how the Lord Jesus loved “to the uttermost” the people who rejected him.

You could. I’m not saying it’s a good idea. You’d have a lineup of sixty people waiting to tell you that using the same Greek word doesn’t mean they are precisely the same people. The latter group is a subset of the first.