Is That All There Is?

I was 12, I think. A neighbour and I, along with his younger sister and her friend, were trying to recreate the magic of Abba in his parents’ bedroom with a cassette recorder and whatever current songs we could sing along to.

Somehow we stumbled on to a recording of Peggy Lee’s 1969 hit “Is That All There Is?”

I’m going to let Wikipedia explain why, not yet in high school and having not really even started living yet, I found the song spectacularly depressing:

“The lyrics of this song are written from the point of view of a person who is disillusioned with events in life that are supposedly unique experiences. The singer tells of witnessing her family’s house on fire when she was a little girl, seeing the circus, and falling in love for the first time. After each recital she expresses her disappointment in the experience. She suggests that we ‘break out the booze and have a ball — if that’s all there is ...’ ”

Too Hot / Inbox (... or Help! Help!)

In case it isn’t immediately evident, we’re looking for thought-provoking subjects to bat around on Too Hot to Handle every Friday. We’re also very interested in your feedback on any and all of our posts, in the event you’ve never commented (many thanks to those who do).

So if you’re out there thinking, we’re listening. And if you’ve never commented or emailed us, Immanuel Can, Bernie and I would love to hear your questions.

Testimony in the Twilight Zone

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Inbox: Subordination in Eternity Past

Forgive the “eternity past” reference in the title, please. Eternity is eternity. Calling it “past” or “future” is an accommodation to a linear existence taking place within time, at least so far as our senses permit us to determine, a state of being that seems highly unlikely to accurately describe that which characterizes God.

Tertius is causing trouble again. I’m paraphrasing here, but he’s asking, in connection with this post: 

“Can you show from Scripture whether the roles within the Godhead (specifically the submission of the Son to the Father evident during his life on earth and subsequent glorification) were characteristic of the relationship between Father and Son in [eternity past, as we have agreed to refer to it, for the sake of distinguishing it from the eternity we have to look forward to].”

When faced with a theological dilemma of this weight, I know where to turn for help. My mother tosses her hat in the ring:

“How about, ‘Then I said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book”.’ ”

Exam Return

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Appearance and Reality

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Inbox: Renewing Them to Repentance

A reader commenting on Hebrews 6 provides me with sufficient topical cover to link to a pair of earlier posts on the subject of eternal security.

The italics below are mine. JR has the following thoughts to add:

“[Hebrews 6] continues in the same vein as the previous chapters. Just as the Israelites who came out of Egypt came right to the edge of the promised land but didn’t enter because of unbelief, causing the Lord to seal them in their decision even though many of them lived for decades longer, so too these Hebrews had come to the edge of Christianity and were being warned that the Lord would seal their rejection — there’s a point at which unbelief is so insulting that the Lord seals a person in it even though they’re still alive. Also, this isn’t a danger that people face today. The Hebrews were being warned that since they had had an exceptional testimony of signs and wonders (something which isn’t present today), a choice to go back would be unforgivable.”

Then he adds three observations I haven’t read elsewhere:

Only One Son

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Too Hot to Handle: The Christian View of Premarital Sex [Part 2]

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Too Hot to Handle: The Christian View of Premarital Sex [Part 1]

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The Worst Advertisement

This is not an uncommon statement, sadly:

“As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.”

— George Orwell

I don’t know if expressing it in this form originated with Orwell, but the sentiment has, I’m sure, been around as long as there have been Christians. Why? Because there are always among us the immature, the untaught, the uncommitted, and those whose professions of faith are false for one reason or another. There will be until the Lord returns.

Small consolation that those who express the sentiment compare it to the insincerity, incompetence or general undesirability they observe in the adherents of other philosophies.

What Makes a Marriage a Marriage?

The answer may surprise you.

It’s not the ring, the dress or the ceremony. It’s not the preacher, the church or the gathered friends and family. It’s not government sanction or the filling out of the correct legal forms. It’s not the taking of vows or the proclamation of banns.

We do all that stuff, and there are sound reasons not to discard most of these customs. One is foolish to spurn the accrued wisdom of generations simply for the sake of novelty. And there is value in the blessing and support of family and friends. There is strength in community. As Immanuel Can pointed out recently, marriage is hard and we need all the incentives we can gather, especially in this individualistic age, to remind us to take it seriously.

But not one of these trappings is essential.

Wedded Blitz

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The Violence Inherent in the System

Increasingly, we are being told that it is no longer acceptable to discuss things that are plainly taught in the Bible. To dare to subject the ears of the delicate flowers among our family, friends, neighbours and peers to the word of God — not to mention those who might come across our views on the internet or elsewhere — is to engage in an act of abuse.

The current generation of post-secondary students accepts this as inarguable dogma:

“... if the popular Christian notion of abstinence is wrong, we have been mentally and emotionally abusing quite literally millions of people.”

— Student, to Jerry Walls

Richard Dawkins makes it explicit. You’re not only being repressed, you’re being outright damaged:

“But if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by parents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe, utterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell ... it is entirely plausible that words could have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds.”

— Richard Dawkins

New, Improved, Advanced ... You Need One

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Judenhass and Armageddon

In an article entitled “A Rare Point of Agreement”, journalist Mark Steyn points out that “ethnic Europeans and excitable young Muslims” only agree on one thing: that “all the current troubles of the world are because of … Israel”.

In fact, anti-Semitism is the only thing around which not only Europe but most countries of the world are currently able to unite. Steyn quotes Brendan O’Neill, who wonders:

“Why are Western liberals always more offended by Israeli militarism than by any other kind of militarism? It’s extraordinary.”

O’Neill continues by noting that:

“Anyone possessed of a critical faculty must at some point have wondered why there’s such a double standard in relation to Israeli militarism, why missiles fired by the Jewish State are apparently more worthy of condemnation than missiles fired by Washington, London, Paris, the Turks, Assad, or just about anyone else on Earth.”

It’s not only extraordinary; I’d contend it’s miraculous.

Who Reads Anymore?

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Who’s That Prophecy For Anyway?

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One More Time: Christians and Reincarnation

Reincarnation — the belief that after a person dies he is reborn in some other form — has been part of man’s beliefs since ancient times. In recent years its popularity has surged with the advent of the New Age movement and the associated renewal of interest in Eastern philosophies and religions. 

The idea behind reincarnation is that the more experience one has in life, the more pure and enlightened one becomes. A mere seventy-odd years is not enough time to attain perfection. Therefore a person’s soul must go through the cycle of life, death and rebirth — known as the “Wheel of Being” — until he or she has reached enlightenment and perfection, and is prepared to meet and/or become part of God. 

Anxiety and Slumber

“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.”

(Psalm 127:1,2)

There is an aspect of life that will always remain outside of our control no matter how clever we are, no matter how well we plan, no matter how much experience we have.

Circumstances have a way of making idiots out of very smart people.

Too Hot to Handle: The Role of a Senior Pastor

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Lies, Myths and Misinformation: Christianity Causes Wars

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The Naked Pastor and the Danger of Gratuitous Novelty

David Hayward, the self-styled “Graffiti Artist on the Walls of Religion”, is promoting his new book, The Liberation of Sophia (available on Amazon, naturally, for a mere $26.99, and if you think I’m going to link to that for him, you have another think coming). Sophia is a book of 59 cartoons with associated poetry and prose that … well, you can read his description of the work because I’m not sure I can do it justice:

“He began drawing images of a young woman in all kinds of situations. He recognized early on that these drawings weren’t just random pictures, but were the articulation of his interior life’s journey through spiritual, emotional, intellectual and social transition. He realized that Sophia was him!”

David Hayward calls himself the Naked Pastor (when he’s not “Sophia”, I suppose). I haven’t yet discovered why, but since the name is eminently Google-able and mildly transgressive, we can probably guess: Marketing 101. And it works. He’s the number 6 most-visited “Christian” blog this week, and climbing.

But the Naked Pastor has a thing about the Bible’s sheep metaphors.

He really, REALLY hates them.

Islam 100, Post-Christianity 0

We all know how deals with the devil usually wind up.

Lord Scott, a former UK Supreme Court judge, has a far-from-original way to combat ‘Islamophobia’: it’s called unilateral prostration. During a debate on how relationships between the Muslim community and other religious groups in the UK might be improved, he suggested the following:

“I do just wonder that if an improvement is needed between the faith groups, one way of promoting that might be to encourage interfaith marriages.”

If you find the concept of “interfaith marriages” with Islam as one of the parties less than entirely plausible, you’ve probably been paying attention. Here’s how it worked out in Lord Scott’s family:

“Of my two sons one has become a Muslim and of my two daughters one of those has become a Muslim, and I have 12 lovely grandchildren, seven of whom are little Muslims.”

Umm ... call me a nit-picker, but that’s not “interfaith marriage”. That’s wholesale capitulation. I believe the technical term is “conversion”.

And it’s all one way.

Lies, Myths and Misinformation: Smart People Are Atheists

Are more intelligent people atheists? Bill Maher certainly thinks so:

“We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking ... I think religion is a neurological disorder ... I am just embarrassed that it has been taken over by people like evangelicals, by people who do not believe in science and rationality.”

So does Richard Dawkins, unsurprisingly:

“By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.” 

And of course the atheists network calls itself “the Brights”, presumably in contrast to those who are not.

So this is intriguing.

Who’s Running This Place Anyway?

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How Not To Be Forgiven

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Forgiveness is the great equalizer. In extending Christian forgiveness, we acknowledge our own ongoing sins and failures and accept back those who have sinned against us in the knowledge that we, too, will fail them tomorrow and will go on failing them until the Lord returns.

Forgiveness makes every person my equal and everyone my brother or sister in the only sense that equality can ever be attained on earth and in the only sense that, from a human perspective, really matters.

But some people will not be forgiven.

Assumptions and Loaded Conversations

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Why Can’t God Just Let Us Alone?

A good friend’s struggle with her child has taught me a little bit about theology.

If that sounds odd, let me explain. This particular friend has only one child, a girl, born late in her life when it is statistically considerably more difficult for a woman to conceive and carry to term. It was exceedingly important for her to have children; she and her husband tried many times over more than a decade to conceive, to very little effect. On the rare occasions of success, she always lost the baby early into and sometimes even well into the pregnancy.

So far this is the story of many women, sadly.

Can A Loving God Send People to Hell?

Hell is a terrible place. It is described as an everlasting fire which was created for the punishment of the devil and his angels. Christ told the story of how one man in hell was in such torment that he begged for just one drop of water to cool his tongue. Some want to know how, if God is love, he could send people to eternal judgement ‘just because’ they did not put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

The problem is that we do not realize the seriousness of sin.

The Snare Is Broken

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Calling a Spade a Spade

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Repent or Perish

Most people understand (or intuit) as they read a Bible that its chapter and verse divisions are a choice made by translators or copyists. They may be good choices or bad ones, but they are not part of the revelation of God. They are not ‘inspired’ in the sense the word itself is.

Usually they are pretty decent. However, I probably would’ve broken up the Lord’s speech in Luke 12 and 13 a little differently.

Just saying.

Baptism and Freedom

So, after three posts on the subject of baptism and a look at the striking contrast between the works-based ritualism of Catholicism and the freedom characteristic of faith in Christ, we come at long last to the point of the exercise.

We have established that the act of being baptized in water does not secure the believer’s eternal destiny. It is not a required component of salvation. It does not admit one to the church, either the ‘church universal’ or any local gathering.

It is, instead, a reminder, a testimony, an act of obedience, and a means of identification with Christ himself. It is merely a symbolic act, not the spiritual reality it represents.

So then, what exactly is this greater ‘spiritual reality’ I keep talking about?

‘Sola Fide’: Can It Be Enough Just To Believe?

Many denominations and sects teach that putting faith in Christ is not enough to save.

They claim that in order to gain or to keep one’s salvation it is necessary to try and keep at least part of the Old Testament Law. 

So what does Scripture say?

Since the beginning man’s pride has driven him to try and please God by his own efforts. The Bible says that man must cease wanting to boast of his own righteousness and recognize that he can do nothing to merit God’s favor: salvation is by God’s grace alone.

Is Your Faith Boring You?

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I See Dead People

I saw one today, in fact. Propped in a coffin, fully and expertly made up and ready for viewing. She had passed away in her nineties and, while she certainly looked ‘peaceful’, as we say, no amount of makeup could disguise the ravages of nine decades.

And no amount of makeup could conceal that she was dead.

Dead people don’t look like living people. They don’t even look like the wax sculptures in Madame Tussaud’s. In life, there is always motion: the twitch of an eyebrow or the corner of a mouth; the alertness of the gaze, or the finger drumming absently on a tabletop. The person in cardiac arrest in the emergency room is thrumming with life by comparison. Even the most naturally calm person cannot for a second imitate the profound absence of vigor of a body in which the blood has stopped flowing, the synapses have stopped firing and every natural process that maintains life has irrevocably and eternally shut down.

Especially a week after the fact. They just look over, done, kaput. The End.

Except it isn’t.

If You Don’t Know, Just Say So

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Does Baptism Save?

So, really, DOES baptism save you?

Along with many others, Dwight Longenecker, the ex-evangelical Catholic priest referenced in a previous post, teaches that it is a critical component of salvation:

“In addition to believing and confessing with our lips, we need to be baptized. At the beginning of Romans 6, St. Paul actually explains how we share in the death and new life of Christ: It is through baptism.

The beginning of Romans 6 he says, ‘Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.’ ”

On this basis, Catholics teach that faith is not enough for salvation; the ritual of water baptism is a must.

But are they right?

The Mental Scrapbook

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The Symbol Is Not the Point

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How Much Does It Have To Hurt?

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Wikipedia vs. Baptism

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An Islamic Court Finally Gets Something Right

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The Missing Ingredient

What is understanding? Here’s what they think at Harvard:

“In a phrase, understanding is the ability to think and act flexibly with what one knows.”

In other words, understanding is putting information into action, applying what we have learned in a practical way to our lives.

So did something go wrong with the 2008 presidential election? Because everybody agrees President Obama is a pretty smart guy. Surely he had lots of “information” to put into action.

‘Leftist Utopia’ and the End

In a blog post aptly entitled “I’m Sorry, But Your Utopia is Just a Little Creepy”, David Thompson assembles a series of rather ominous quotes and links on the modern family.

First, from Anthony Daniels (or ‘Theodore Dalrymple’ if you prefer), doctor and psychiatrist, on observations arising out of his practice in England:

“In the course of my duties, I would often go to patients’ homes. Everyone lived in households with a shifting cast of members, rather than in families. If there was an adult male resident, he was generally a bird of passage with a residence of his own somewhere else. He came and went as his fancy took him. To ask a child who his father was had become an almost indelicate question. Sometimes the child would reply, “Do you mean my father at the moment?” Others would simply shake their heads, being unwilling to talk about the monster who had begot them and whom they wished at all costs to forget.”

Political Correctness, the Slave Metaphor and New Testament Truth

Mary C. Curtis at the Washington Post is not a fan of politicians invoking the “slave” metaphor to get attention:

“There are many ways to make a coherent, urgent political point without recalling the rope and the whip, the rapes and murders. Slavery, part of our shared American history, is not just a word … To use past anguish as present-day metaphor trivializes evil and shows disrespect to those who endured.”

But, to be fair, hyperbole is a pretty common device.

The Greatest Love of All

Pride is a terrible thing.

I give full credit to translators of the Bible and don’t assume for a second that I know better than the least of them. But I have noticed that if translators come to their job with a predisposition to see a particular thing in a passage, as in every area of life, that’s what is seen.

Slavery in the Old Testament [Part 2]

Since the accusation has been made that God endorses slavery, I began in yesterday’s post to examine the subject of slavery in Israel to ask whether God, in fact, endorsed it at all. Let’s continue with a second relevant principle to bear in mind.

Two Principles Worth Considering (continued)

As established yesterday, the fact that God tells his people to obey laws in general does not mean they are good laws or that he approves of them.

But this case is different. The objection may well be raised that the Mosaic Law is not like ‘laws in general’ in that it came directly from God, and said exactly what he wanted it to say.

However, even the Law of Moses did not perfectly represent God’s will, preference or desire for his people. This may initially sound a bit heretical, but God was not ‘ok’ with some parts of Israel’s Law, especially when they were slavishly and literally followed rather than used as a guideline to discern a higher, more loving intent. Those who merely followed the letter of the Law doing the minimum possible would inevitably fall short of God’s real purpose.

Principle #2: The Law did not represent God’s perfect will.

The Law in its written form (the ‘letter’) represented whatever diluted version of God’s will that his people might reasonably and generously be expected to follow, given that they were a mixture of believers and unbelievers characterized by stubbornness, selfishness and rebellion from Day 1. And even so, Joshua told the Israelites who promised to obey the law that they wouldn’t be able to keep it.

Slavery in the Old Testament [Part 1]

The following quotes are lifted from another blog commentary. Like many comments that appear after blog posts with a sizable audience, they are completely unrelated to the actual topic under discussion. Possibly to their credit, neither the moderator nor any other commenter took the bait these two were dangling.

I, on the other hand, have great difficulty resisting a baited hook, so here goes:

“I have always wanted a slave and from what I can read in MY bible that is totally ok with God right?”

— Emily

“Hi Emily, You see God only let them keep slaves then, because at the time that was how economies worked. There was simply no other way for God to help Israel prosper, they needed to be just the same as the surrounding nations.”

— Minion68

(It ought to be mentioned, in case it is not evident, that the second comment is pure sarcasm, as Minion’s other comments relating to the same post make exceedingly clear.)

From their tone, I get the feeling that both commenters have already made up their minds.

Living Large

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Missing Links

The other day in a piece entitled “Top 10 Ways To Argue Like A Christian”, I mentioned that my ten choices were far from exhaustive. So far from exhaustive that I thought of another one almost immediately but, you know, ten is such a nice round number.

But another important facet of presenting an argument, while not specifically Christian, is just all-around good form and decent, respectful behavior. It relates particularly to internet discussions and arguments, but has application any time we take on a published assertion of fact or point of view.

So, mind if I add an eleventh?

Everything Louder Than Everything Else

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Top 10 Ways To Argue Like A Christian

The internet is full of people arguing.

Yes, I know, the sun also rises in the east. Humans breathe air. Tell me something slightly less obvious.

Okay. The internet is full of Christians arguing. Some of us do it well. Some do it really, really badly. And the thing is, Christians shouldn’t argue like unbelievers. When you know the Lord Jesus, you have access to a weapon nobody but a believer can wield: the word of God, which is:

“… living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

There isn’t a more effective weapon forged, assembled or built in a lab in the history of the human race.

When God Says No

As a parent, I try to be fair and generous with my children, but just the same, there are times when I say no to their requests. And not just the kind of requests that are foolish, extravagant, or ultimately harmful — sometimes I find myself saying no even when what they’re asking of me is harmless or even potentially beneficial to them, just because I’m too tired or don’t have the money or simply don't feel like it.

But God is not like that.

The Trinity (and other Committees)

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How to Fight a Smear Campaign

In social circles we call it gossip. In the courts it’s slander or libel, depending on the media used. In political circles it’s referred to as mudslinging or swift-boating. On the web it often manifests as cyber-bullying.

Whatever; it’s a good old-fashioned smear campaign.

Use of the technique can be traced back several millennia at least, and may be as old as mankind. The motivations behind smear campaigns differ but you can bet that, more often than not, there’s more than just mean spirits or the sheer fun of maligning someone in play.

Most of the time, somebody wants something. The smear campaign is a means to an end.

So how do you fight one? Good question.

Literal and Figurative

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Follow the Evidence

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Clinging to Dust

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Christianity is a Crutch

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The New New Atheism

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Two Kinds of Hard Hearts

“And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.” (Mark 6:52)

I’m thinking about all the times I’ve failed to respond to something in the word of God that should’ve been obvious to me.

See, I don’t believe every reference to a “hard heart” in Scripture means precisely the same thing.

The pharaoh of Egypt in the book of Exodus had a hard heart. He wanted to keep Israel in slavery, and was prepared to continue doing so no matter what miracles he saw. He was a man who put political expediency and ill-gotten profit ahead of justice, fear of God or even his own five senses.

That’s one kind of hardness.

Christianity Incorporated

A thought from the apostle Paul:

“But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”

(2 Corinthians 11:3, NASB)

I just happened across a National Post article from a few years back that serves as a superb illustration of the sort of complications (“complications” being the polar opposite of the “simplicity” Paul refers to) that arise when Christians become corporatists.

In an article called “Breaking the Jews for Jesus code”, Post writer Joseph Brean takes every opportunity to poke holes in the credibility of Jews for Jesus, an evangelical group that is a participant in a five-year long Ontario Superior Court legal “saga”.

What a pile of unfortunate muck. Nothing is ‘simple’ about this story.

John Calvin, Context and Kingdom Parables: “Others Are Deprived of This Grace”

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Blue Bloods and Bloodlines

“Family is the most important thing in the world.” (Princess Diana)
“Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.” (Lilo and Stitch)

Whether it’s the personal opinion of a famous celebrity or the theme of a Disney movie, society is not about to run out of bon mots about family anytime soon.

I picked a couple of comparatively moderate ones, the sentiment dialed back to 3 or 4 on the goo meter. If you are in any doubt just how saccharine and cloying such expressions can be, try finding a Hallmark birthday card that accurately reflects your thoughts about spouse, child, parent or sibling. You’ll catch on quickly.

But I read this morning that just 26% of those between age 18 and 33 are married. The current generation is building families approximately only two-thirds as quickly as the generation before them, and at roughly only half the rate of the generation before that.

Atheism and Logic

I’ve read numerous books on the subject of whether the Christian faith is “reasonable”.  Most of these were consumed as a young adult, when the question seemed more urgent and I was considerably less equipped to argue it.

While some books were better than others and all made some valid points (most if not all of which are now lost in the sands of time), I do not recall many staking out the intellectual Christian position as aggressively as John C. Wright does in his latest “Wright Perspective” column.

By aggressive, I don’t mean nasty or mean-spirited. But, Lewis and Chesterton aside, the more modern books seemed primarily concerned with mounting a satisfactory intellectual defence of Christianity from accusations of unreasonability, illogic and incoherence. They were, if not on the ropes sucking air, perhaps a little over-occupied with avoiding the knockout punch.

Wright, on the other hand, comes out swinging and keeps moving forward.

All The Time You Need To Get Saved

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Bible Study 11 — Context [Part 5]

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Did Jesus Really Ever Claim to be God?

“Jesus was a good moral teacher. Sure, he had a special relationship with God and thought he was doing God’s work, but he never claimed to actually BE God. The idea that Jesus is God is something his disciples made up after his death”.

This statement or variations on it are very common. [It’s made by this particular Muslim, for one — Ed.] 

It is also erroneous.

If we are willing to sit down and examine the gospels, we will discover that on numerous occasions and in many ways Jesus claimed to be God.

The Media Dumbs Down

“The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?” (from a Maclean’s article entitled “America Dumbs Down”, by Jonathon Gatehouse)

I don’t subscribe to Maclean’s magazine, but car trouble last week left me stuck at the mechanic with a styrofoam cup of bad coffee in hand and, well, there wasn’t much else on offer. I read a bunch of articles but the Gatehouse piece stuck out like a sore thumb.

His thesis, in short: Americans are stupid. Gatehouse’s proof?

·         42% of Americans  are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution;

·         51% are skeptical that a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago started it all;

·         36% doubt the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years;

·         47% are less than perfectly confident that child vaccines are safe;

·         only 33% are highly confident that global warming is “man made”.

(Also, Gatehouse is offended that more Americans didn’t uncritically embrace Obamacare and had to have it rammed down their throats, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Then he warms to his theme: “Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive.”

Really? Does Skepticism = Stupidity, in every instance?

Failure to Launch

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Quite Contrary: Scripture and Mariolotry

I’m all for consistency. Consistency is a great thing. I imagine it’s comforting to view one’s faith as part of a grand ecclesiastical tradition going back a couple thousand years. I suspect it’s reassuring to be able to trace its leadership all the way back to Christ’s disciples. And if there’s strength in numbers, how intimidating is a religious tradition that goes by the name “universal”?

In any accusation against Roman Catholicism, the nagging question How can this many people over this many years be wrong? seems an implicit rebuttal. And even if the concept of infallibility is considered a bit much to ascribe to any human institution, its historical dominance and sheer, massive scale suggest that something in the order of “extremely likely to be correct” must surely apply.

In comparison with Protestant factionalism, Catholicism boasts an enviable appearance of solidarity. However, there are numerous and visible cracks in the facade. For every unifying and stirring address from the Pope there are thousands of practical departures from monolithic consistency at the local, practical level — far away from Vatican City, where most Catholics actually live. After all, before 1870, belief in papal infallibility was not a defined requirement of Catholic faith. And in a 20-year old survey of 15-25 year olds, 81% Catholic, taken over a four-year period, only 36% affirmed that the Pope has the authority to speak with infallibility.

So, cracks in the facade. There are many more. Still, it may seem a little brazen to suggest that so many wise men with so much accrued learning over so many centuries could be so wrong about so much. At least, it would be brazen if the revelation of God began and ended with Romanism.

But it didn’t.

There Is No ‘Plan B’

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God’s Sovereignty vs. Suffering

There is very little more disorienting and disturbing than a sudden change of circumstances for the worse. Even those who have studied and enjoyed the word of God for years can be knocked off their pins by tragedy.

I remember reading C.S. Lewis’ book A Grief Observed as a very young believer and thinking that for a mature Christian, he sure didn’t seem to handle loss very well.

Yeah, right.

A few years went by. A few things went wrong. I discovered what real pain feels like.

Mysticism and Salvation

I am about as far from a mystic as anyone I’ve ever met.

I lack the sort of conversion story other believers often point to; the type of testimony that includes phrases like “I asked God …” and “I felt a strange sense of peace come over me”; the type of experience that leads you to write a date in the front of your Bible and remember it the rest of your life. All I have is a vague recollection of an emotional moment as a child on a front porch somewhere and the dawning realization that Jesus died for me, but memory is malleable and inaccurate more often than not.

So, like I do with everything else, I check boxes: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord” [check], and “believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead” [check], “you will be saved” [check and double-check]. 

That’s the word of God, and it gives me more confidence than the recollection of any experience or feeling.

Immanuel Can sums it up perfectly in this recent post: “So how can we know? The Father loves the Son. Surprisingly, this is the essential answer we have been looking for.”

No experience can be more reassuring than that. So, mysticism, yeah … not really my thing.

Present Perfect

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God’s Sovereignty vs. Hardened Hearts

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Irrationalization: Call No Man Father

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Eden: Take This Job and Love It

We’ve been considering some of the things we can see about the character of God as they appear for us in a pre-sin moment in Eden. Eden uniquely provides an unhindered look into the relationship God wants between Himself and His creation.

First, we considered that God is shown in Eden to be primarily a God of unfettered fellowship; that He desired to share knowledge of Himself with humanity and that humanity was unashamed in the full presence of their Creator.

Second, we considered that God revealed Himself in the first moments of time to be a God who loves to bless and wants to be known as a rewarder of those who seek Him.

The third thing of note then is this. Adam and Eve had something you and I crave: They had worthwhile work.

Rather foolishly, when I have been having a tough day on the job and finding my efforts unsuccessful, I have wistfully said to someone who was listening — and ideally there wasn’t anybody listening — “Well, you know, work is a curse”.

But I was wrong then and you’d be wrong to think it now. Work isn’t a curse.

God’s Sovereignty vs. the Evil That Men Do

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Eden: Beginning of the Family Line

We’ve touched on the fact that God’s character is more clearly seen in the Eden story in Genesis than anywhere else in the Bible with the exception of Calvary. In Genesis 1, we read that God created male and female. Immediately following, we ask this: what is the very first thing they experience that Scripture records immediately following?

It’s there in the first line of verse 28. He blessed them. God blessed them.

The initial experience mankind had of the creator God was that He is and was by nature foremost to be known as a God who blesses. The highest priority he had for us, there in moment one, was blessing — and for us to come to know Him as a blesser.

The New Testament puts the same priority on it: “He who comes to God must believe that he is” — that makes good sense — “and that he is a rewarder” — that he is a blesser — “of those who seek Him”.

God wants to be known as a blesser, and here he blesses man and woman first.

In what way did He bless them? It’s manifold, of course — the blessing of life, the blessing of companionship with each other and fellowship with Him, the blessing of the surrounding beauty of creation and so on and so forth. But it’s interesting also to note not what all the implied blessings of Eden were but rather what the first expressed blessing of Eden was. The first recorded blessing is … what?

Children.

Saints and Ain’ts

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God’s Sovereignty vs. the Idiocy of Man

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Mean Girls and Mean Theology

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Two Men and You

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Islam, Christianity and Secularism

Interesting things on TV these days.

If you missed it, which I certainly did, in this YouTube clip from last Friday’s show, Bill Maher — surprisingly, for such a notorious secularist — connects the actions of Boko Haram (the Nigerian schoolgirl abductors, for anyone not watching the news) to Islam “at large”, stating plainly that “It’s not just a few bad apples”, much to the consternation of fellow leftist Ariana Huffington, who begs to differ.

Matt Welch, Editor-in-Chief of Reason Magazine agrees with Maher (with a considerable number of qualifications): “Islam is providing a disproportionate share of radical nutbags killing people right now.”

Baratunde Thurston, CEO of Cultivated Wit and author of How To Be Black, dislikes Maher’s assessment and disagrees with Welch’s about the “disproportionate share”: “I don’t think Islam has any monopoly on darkness and nutbags and crazy rhetoric and violence.”

Maher replies: “It’s not a monopoly, but it’s the Titanic hitting the iceberg compared to Whitney Houston dying in her bathtub.”

Ouch.

Hooray for the Hypocrites

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Do Christians Hate Jews?

Many Jews today feel that, because of historical atrocities committed against their people by the so-called “Christian” church, all Christians are Jew-haters. Unfortunately, not only many nominal Christians but even some real believers harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, and this only confirms the suspicion in Jewish minds.

But does the New Testament allow Christians to be prejudiced in this way?

Definitely not.

Feeding the Dogs [Part 2]

Do you ever feel like God isn’t listening? That’s what this woman had to deal with:

“Jesus … withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 15:21-24)

In my previous post, I wondered how the Lord’s delay in responding to the woman’s need — or even acknowledging her — was consistent with his character, and how it served the purposes of God.

I wondered: If the Lord responds to the woman immediately and grants her request, what’s the difference? What exactly is lost?

So I tried to point out yesterday that we lose an important lesson about the priority of the Father’s will.

But we lose a couple of other things, I think.

Feeding the Dogs [Part 1]

Picture yourself in a situation of dire need. Say you’re in a private clinic with a sick child, a child that has been ailing badly for weeks and months. In this scenario, there is no Obamacare, no National Health, no social insurance program, and you are without resources, which is why you’ve waited so long to come to a doctor. You can’t pay, and you know it. Hospitals are for the rich.

So you cared for your child yourself as best you could. You tried home remedies. You bought what drugs you could afford. You called on any of your neighbours who knew a little bit about medicine, but nothing could be done. You have exhausted every possibility you could think of. Nothing worked.

So even though you know you can’t pay, you go to the clinic. You sit in the waiting room and watch as other parents leave with healthy children and smiles on their faces. You know that whatever this doctor is doing, it works. You see him down the hallway, treating other patients, but no matter how you beg the receptionist, she keeps looking past you and calling out “Next!” to the rich people behind you in line.

Finally, you step out of line and right up to the kind-looking doctor. Against all your natural instincts, with no dignity left in the world, you begin to beg.

He looks at you with concern and compassion in his eyes and says … nothing. Nothing at all. Not a syllable.

How would you feel? What do you do next?

Debunking Heavenly Mythology VIII: Captain Kirk Was Wrong

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”

— John Milton, Paradise Lost

I know, I know, it’s Satan’s famous line from Milton, but the first time I heard it, it was delivered by William Shatner’s Captain Kirk in the original 1967 Star Trek episode Space Seed. In my frequently-inaccurate childhood memory the line belongs to Ricardo Montalban’s villainous character Khan, but thanks to YouTube, I stand corrected: Montalban doesn’t ever actually get to say it. Rather, with unusual subtlety for the genre, Khan, offered the choice between a comfy prison or the challenge of taming a wild planet, asks Kirk, “Have you ever read Milton?” Kirk, being a renaissance man, replies “I understand”.

Thankfully for my fascinated pre-teen self (and most of the audience, I’d suspect), Kirk later explains the significance of the reference to his engineer Scotty (who, despite spectacular feats of speed-engineering, is apparently not a renaissance man).

And really, it’s Shatner, so who better to deliver the line?

But that line stuck in my head. I thought it was really cool, and defiant, and independent, and all those things the TV screenwriters thought it was supposed to evoke (hey, I was probably twelve, okay?). Anyway, it worked.

But whether you choose to attribute the line to Kirk, Khan, Milton or Satan himself, it’s still wrong: Nobody reigns in hell.

Stumbling Blocks and Scandals

Two quotes today.

First, for those who have never heard of him (which is probably most people), Justin Currie is a grumpy, unusually perceptive Scottish writer of pop songs. The first quote is a lyric that has been stuck in my head for a month, largely because of its sadness — and because in it he correctly assumes that we bear responsibility for the impact we have on one another’s lives, something that is increasingly uncommon in our individualistic society.

Conversion vs. Coercion

A little while back I watched a TV mother’s horror at the dawning realization that her Christian daughter regularly prayed for her. It was an interesting moment and I thought it seemed like a pretty authentic reaction; something I’d seen once or twice myself.

I mean, what reaction should we really expect from people to the fact that we are praying for their salvation, hoping for their conversion and actively working toward that transformation when the opportunity arises … or vice versa?

Sometimes the fact that we take the issue that seriously can come as a bit of a shock.

Selwyn Duke at American Thinker has a good piece on the subject:

“I’m a man who takes his faith very seriously; I believe it is the Truth and that God should be at the center of one’s life. I also know a man who is Jewish and believes just the same. He is orthodox, praying at the appointed times every day — regardless of the situation — and abiding by every one of the 613 Judaic laws that pertain to his life. He is a very saintly, gentle man. And he also has expressed that his faith — not mine, needless to say — is the true one. Now, if I found out that he had prayed for my conversion to what he considers a superior faith, should I be offended? 
       In fact, neither his perspective nor such a desire would bother me a whit. While this may strike a Richard Dawkins type as strange, understand my position vis-à-vis his attitude: I’d expect nothing less.”

To me, this sort of response seems entirely rational.

Debunking Heavenly Mythology VII: I Won’t Enjoy Heaven If So-and-So Isn’t There

There is a something about the generosity of spirit in this frequently-heard and more-frequently-unheard trope that I would hate to disparage.

After all, no less a friend of God than Moses once voiced something similar when God expressed a desire to wipe out Israel in the desert and “make a great nation” from the descendants of Moses. Some people might have been flattered at the compliment. Moses didn’t see it that way. He said to the Lord:

“Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin — but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” (Exodus 32:31-32)

He said, in effect, “If they’re going to be subject to your judgment, God, let me be subject to it with them”.

Generous, absolutely. Smart, maybe not so much. Not, perhaps, entire clear on what he was potentially letting himself in for. But we understand the sentiment, surely. I’ve felt like that about some people. Maybe you have too.

Fortunately for Moses, the Lord did not take him up on his offer.

Milking It

I'm a bit conflicted about re-using material at all (you know, the manna that "bred worms and stank"), but it seems to me that there are one or two posts from a time before we had a significant regular readership that might be worth drawing attention to (if and when our regular contributors run out of gas, which is bound to happen from time to time).

I'm going to stick the "Recycling" label in front of anything I re-post from our first couple of months so that anybody who was around to read them the first time knows to take a pass.

Your Father Who Is In Secret

It takes courage to stand up and pray in public if you’re shy by nature, but only a little more than must be mustered to spill your guts on Facebook or Twitter. And judging by the number of people doing that, it must feel pretty good. If you’re the type of person who by nature loves to be the centre of attention, it doesn’t take any courage at all to pray in public. It’s like swimming to a duck.

It certainly doesn’t require faith.

It doesn’t take faith to attend church meetings or to put money in an offering box. These things may be done for right reasons or wrong reasons. Church, or even giving, can be a habit, a social event, a way of feeling good about oneself, a duty or an obligation imposed by family. Such acts are done visibly and because of that, there are other possible benefits than rewards of a spiritual kind.

They don’t require faith

Finally! An Elected Official We Can Believe In

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What Sort of Heart?

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Miracles and Compassion

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