The Dangerous Faith

Other than while acting in the service of governments, real Christians don’t generally use guns, knives or bombs on our fellow men. We’re not looking to conquer the world by force of arms. Instead, we seek to persuade men and women of the truth of what we believe.

In theory, persuasion is a fairly inoffensive process compared to, say, armed invasion. Still, some people respond to the Christian faith with outright hostility. Others are more laid back, a subject we touched on in a post a few days ago.

But as Immanuel Can notes in the comments, our dealings with mellow agnostics are just as much “warfare” as when we engage with hostiles, and may be perceived as threatening even when the message is graciously and lovingly delivered.

Does the Bible Need a Disclaimer?

Perhaps a little something like this?

The following ultra-litigation-conscious, politically correct disclaimer comes from the first page of a current reprint of G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man on my bookshelf:

“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race have changed before allowing them to read this classic work.”

I had to laugh out loud at the naivete of anyone worried about modern children reading Chesterton. The publishers are, regrettably, quite safe from legal repercussions on that front.

The Persecution Complex

Rachel Held Evans, what would I do without you?

The redoubtable (and frequently doubtable) Ms Evans would like believers to stop feeling sorry for ourselves, and to stop feeding Christian paranoia about looming government persecution. Further, we ought to do it “for the sake of the gospel”.

(That “for the sake of the gospel” is delivered with all the sincerity of the progressive’s “It’s for the CHILDREN!”, I suspect, but let’s let Rachel carry on.)

Don’t Bury the Lede

In newspaperese, a “lede” (or sometimes “lead”) is the introductory section of a news item. Its purpose is to entice the reader to continue on, enjoying the rest of the story.

Thus to “bury” a lede is to begin a story with details of secondary importance while postponing more essential information.

There’s a video up on the YouTube website that was posted back in May. It shows camera phone footage of a middle-aged, nerdy-looking evangelical doing some street preaching on the campus of Arizona State University. He is holding a sign that appears to read something like “Warning: Homosexuals, etc. will burn in hell”. The preacher is abruptly assaulted by a crazed student who, along with many profanities, shrieks out, “You call yourselves Christians!”

The particular evangelistic technique that provokes this outburst is what I call “burying the lede”. Among other things.

What Do We Do About the “Live and Let Live” Crowd?

There are people who just plain don’t want to hear it.

The message of the gospel, that is. They think they know what you’re going to say, they’ve heard it all before, and they’ll thank you not to start.

Some of them are outright hostile. They’ve looked around, read a few things, talked to a few people, and they are as satisfied as it’s possible to be (until facing imminent death, when all theories about existence meet their acid test) that they have an answer for life and meaning that does not include Jesus Christ. Any attempt to persuade them to change their mind is exceedingly unwelcome.

So be it. The few brave souls among us willing to intellectually debate them are welcome to do so.

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I don’t know enough about the Intelligent Design movement to recommend this site unreservedly. I’ve seen ID regularly and virulently thrashed in the scientific community; seen its proponents and exponents referred to as “IDiots” and worse.

Still, Denyse O’Leary’s recent article on horizontal gene transfer at Evolution News is not some easily-discredited Christian science fantasy. It is backed by secular science (including MIT) and well worth a glance for anyone interested in the subject of origins.

Basically, it gives Darwin’s evolutionary mechanism a pretty hard time.

Too Hot to Handle: How We Live and What We Believe

The most recent version of this post is available here.

A Fulfillment That Isn’t

God doesn’t always work exactly the same way.

Now he is consistent. He does not change his nature from one day to the next. His character is immutable. But he is also endlessly creative, as the world around us and the cosmos well demonstrate.

So when we study the Old Testament prophets we should not be surprised to find that the Lord uses consistent, repeated themes throughout history. It is in his nature. We should also not be surprised at the occasional unexpected and creative twist. That also has ample precedent.

Would You Sign This?

Oh, sorry. I mean one of these here:

MEMBERSHIP COMMITMENT

I couldn’t.

Sign, or you’re not a “member”. Even if you do sign, that’s only Step 1. There’s a “Procedure for Membership” to which each candidate for “membership” (as this church defines it) must submit themselves, including having their name posted at church or placed in the church bulletin for two weeks, after which “those who remain as candidates will be welcomed into membership”.

Those who don’t make it presumably remain outside the camp.

Be Careful What You Wish For

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When Analogies Fail

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Quote of the Day (7)

Idolatry is fundamentally the worship of self.

When we think of the ancients grovelling before groves and altars, we may be inclined to envision them as essentially religious people with errant theology. That is easier to do when we picture pagans with no knowledge of the true God beyond that which they might intuit from nature and the cosmos.

But then how do we explain the nation of Israel after the exodus?

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For a regular newsletter, this is grim stuff, no getting around it. It’s not light Sunday afternoon reading before tea.

Which, given the subject matter, is probably what we should expect.

Professing Christians throughout Asia and the Middle East are dying for their faith daily and the Gatestone Institute has the details, if you want them. Many, perhaps most, are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Too Hot to Handle: Globalism and Censorship

The most recent version of this post is available here.

“I Looked for a Man …”

The Bible is filled with the stories of people who we would fairly call ‘servants of God’ — men and women who did great things at pivotal moments and who are forever enshrined in both the Old and New Testaments as examples and stalwarts.

Biblically-undocumented servants fill the annals of secular history too — people who gave their lives in the pursuit of God’s work; men like George Mueller or Jim Elliot come to mind. But there are thousands of others who bore the title ‘servant of God’ with distinction by changing the course of nations and standing for God at needful times.

Then there are those of us who are Christians today and aspire to be worthy of the grand title ‘servant of God’ in our generations.

The Truth Is Out There

We live at what is arguably the most privileged moment in human history with respect to the revelation of God. Nobody seeking knowledge of the Creator and his will for mankind has ever had more to work with than we do.

It is tempting to pity those who lived before the earliest recorded books of scripture. What did those poor savages really intuit about God? Without clear direction, wandering around in a fog of unknowing, what were their chances of avoiding the natural negative consequences of their actions during this lifetime? And as far as heaven is concerned, without revelation it’s difficult to make a case that man before the Law (or even under it) could think of eternal life as much more than pipe dream.

If we didn’t know better, I suppose we might assume God was unfair to them.

The Rest is Detail

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The Time of Their Visitation

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Colorblindness, Privilege and Inspiration

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When the Holy Spirit is Silent

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Indirect Evidence for Inspiration

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Too Hot to Handle: Nonsense That Remains Nonsense

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Go Big, Then Go Home

Frank Schaeffer’s latest book is called “Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace”.

The “find peace” part is more than a little ironic. Since turning his back on Christianity in the late ’80s, Shaeffer has written 17 books (including a few bestselling novels) to go with the five he wrote while still claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ. He’s penned novels, gone Hollywood, directed occult horror films and comedies, has been a Republican and a Democrat, has endorsed John McCain and Barack Obama, has gone by “Francis”, “Frank” and “Franky”, has been pro-life and pro-choice and today cannot decide from one moment to the next whether he believes in God or not.

With all these ricochets and u-turns in his track record, it’s at least faintly possible Frank Schaeffer is not the most qualified man in the western world to advise others on how to find peace.

Quote of the Day (6)

“The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love,” said the psalmist.

It may be argued that in a fallen creation the “steadfast love” of God that fills the earth is easier to recognize at some moments than at others. But contrast that with a materialistic universe, where genuine love is absent by definition.

Someone got Catholic novelist John C. Wright going on the subject of the atheistic vs. the theistic worldview and their respective implications, in particular for the possibility of love as opposed to mere sentimentalism.

Do You Want to Go Out?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The Immature Christian

I don’t know a lot about modern Judaism, orthodox or otherwise. But I was intrigued by this opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post. Of all the things that might tick Jews off about Christians, the one that particularly sticks in the craw of writer Bat-Zion Susskind-Sacks is that we’re ... well ... immature.

Now let’s face it, almost nobody in this century or the last much likes the idea of a religion that claims a monopoly on truth. But the one completely untenable, utterly illogical position to be taken is that all religions are therefore simultaneously true, or even contain substantial truth. The Law of Non-Contradiction declares that contradictory statements cannot be true in the same sense at the same time, and contradictory statements about the nature of God are no exception. Some ideas about God, the universe and morality are simply more accurate (and therefore more truthful) than others.

On the Third Day

Generally speaking, I don’t find fulfilled Bible prophecy a particularly useful tool in evangelism.

Some Christians disagree, of course. If it works for you, that’s great. Carry on. But it must be admitted that many of the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in the life of Christ are a little on the obscure side. That is to say, when you look at them in their original context, it is not immediately apparent that they speak of Messiah.

We’re only sure of it because the Holy Spirit plainly states it to be so in the New Testament.

A Change Is Gonna Come

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: My Favourite Atheist

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

Pat Condell*

Tom: My favourite atheist is a cranky Irish comedian named Pat Condell. He’s fearlessly pro-Israel, anti-Islam … and, sadly, more than a little ignorant about what the gospels actually say.

Here’s a sample of what he thinks about Jesus, for instance:

“I don’t reject Jesus, I reject religion … the early church capitalized on [supernatural nonsense about Jesus] and exploited it enthusiastically because they needed Jesus to be a god so that they could use him to generate fear — which, of course, is the only level they know how to operate on — and also so that they could claim supernatural authority through him, which is the best kind of authority to have when you’re bluffing. As a mere man, Jesus was almost useless to them. All he could offer were words of compassion and wisdom, and what earthly good would they be to the men who run the church?”

Faith, Identity and Growing Up Christian

Nobody should have to be a pastor’s kid. And nobody should ever be called a PK.

If that sounds a little cranky, be advised there are Christians reviewing Barnabas Piper’s book “The Pastor’s Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity” on Amazon who agree with me. Because that’s got to carry some weight, right?

My disdain for the “PK” (pastor’s kid, preacher’s kid) and “MK” (missionary’s kid) abbreviations goes way, way back to the days in which I was two of the three. I’m not sure I could tell you why I disliked them so much; to the best of my recollection nobody ever used either designation to describe me. I don’t recall hearing them from my Christian friends. In fact I suspect I only ever encountered PKs and MKs in the magazine rack next to our couch in publications like Christianity Today or in those hokey teen novels in Christian bookstores.

Living Under the Blade

The most current version of this post is available here.

Christian Escapism and a Time of Trouble Such As Never Has Been

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Leadership: It’s a Dog’s Life

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Help! They Changed My Bible!

Bible translations have a way of changing over time, and it can make some Christians quite frantic.

Textual criticism is a discipline about which many believers know very little. The average regular churchgoer can probably tell you that the Bible was written primarily in Greek and Hebrew, not English (and the average reasonably intelligent person might simply assume it), but beyond that basic piece of information, how our Bibles came to us is not all that widely understood.

Given the quality of history courses in the average high school since 1970, fewer still know that when we speak of “the originals”, they are not sitting in some airless, climate-controlled museum display case. Would they be shocked to discover such manuscripts no longer exist and have not existed for centuries? Probably not, with a few seconds consideration.

But no, they don’t exist so far as we know. Some people are fine with that idea.

Crazy Uncle

Normally, I’d leave something like this alone. It is, after all, the Huffington Post, and anything they have to say on the subject of Christianity is almost guaranteed to be dismissive, frivolous and poorly informed.

But hey, it provides a useful lead-in to something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

In an article entitled “3 Reasons Why Apostle Paul Is the Crazy Uncle No One Wants to Talk About”, Pete Enns argues that “Paul’s handling of his Bible makes him look like the crazy uncle you make excuses for or avoid entirely”.

Too Hot to Handle: Let’s Make Sure They Hate Us Enough

A more current version of this post is available here.

Vain Salvation

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Too Much for Sunday School

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“My Church Believes …”

What does your church believe?

“Oh, you mean like a creed, or a statement of faith?”

Not really. I’m thinking more generally. A statement of faith usually attempts to be concise, whether it’s eleven paragraphs or seven pages. It may cover only basic theology or it may go into detail about home life and personal conduct. But it cannot possibly include everything the New Testament teaches. It cannot tell you all that a church really believes, though it may set off spiritual alarm bells by what it does or does not contain.

Doing It the Hard Way

The Wailing Wall: Last vestige of Herod’s temple

How much does the church matter to the Lord?

When we look at the condition of most local churches today and compare them to Christ’s original intention as laid out in the epistles and patterned for us by believers in the first century, we might well wonder why the Lord continues to bother with the church at all.

Most of us do not really understand why we’re here and what we’re supposed to be doing. Great numbers of professing Christians atrophy in the pews, putting in an hour or two a week listening to a lecture and going home to a largely secular existence into which God is only allowed to intrude when things have gone disastrously wrong.

Failure to Choose is a Choice Too

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Fulfilling or Destroying

A couple of days ago I posted some thoughts on the place of the Law of Moses in the life of the Christian.

Most Christians who have read Romans or Galatians understand that we are not under law but under grace. However, because the teaching of the Lord Jesus is traditionally bundled with our New Testament, some believers have difficulty recognizing that things like the Sermon on the Mount are really addressed to people living under and seeking to obey the rules of the Old Covenant.

Confusion on this subject leads to inconsistent interpretation and maybe even inconsistent living. It’s worth a careful and prayerful look.

Too Hot to Handle: Diluting the Faith

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Progressive Revelation and Paradigm Shifts

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Authentic Me

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Forgive or Die

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Dispensing With Dispensations

If you are the average, practical Christian just looking to apply practical Christian principles practically to your life, feel free to tune out here.

This post will not help you much.

If, on the other hand, you are keen on understanding the whys and wherefores in scripture, being able to make distinctions in the way God has behaved towards mankind throughout history has helped me tremendously, and has made a lot of things clear that would otherwise be terribly foggy. I’ll give you a very real-life example of that tomorrow.

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William Lane Craig has one of the better-reasoned takes I have come across on the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that has redefined marriage.

Like Roe v. Wade, this is a seismic event for the U.S. and the consequences for Christians who seek to follow scripture will be significant. Craig’s analysis and advice to believers is eminently more sensible than David Brooks’ column in last week’s New York Times, which may as well have been entitled “Resistance is Futile”. (My thoughts on Brooks’ advice may be found here.)

Enemy Territory

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Too Hot to Handle: American Laodicea

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Ezekiel and the Future of Palestine

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It Ain’t Personal

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Culture War and Surrender

Someone recently recommended this David Brooks column in the New York Times as the “correct true Christian response” to the ongoing culture war.

For those unfamiliar with the name, Wikipedia refers to Brooks as a “non-observant” Jew and “conservative political and cultural commentator” — in other words, not exactly a leading spokesman for the Christian faith. Having read his op-eds on occasion, I was pretty sure what I’d be in for.

Still, my morbid curiosity won out, as it often does. Brooks starts with the obvious: the decline of Christianity in the United States, the decreasing percentage of the electorate made up of evangelical voters, millennial disinterest in institutional religion, etc., etc.

Short version: “Christians, you’re losing”.

You Worship WHAT?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Media and the Gospel

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A Hill to Die On

Lately I have begun to suspect that the notorious “mark of the beast” is not a literal number 666 tattooed on one’s forehead or hand, but rather an ideology.

Kidding, of course. I know full well that the social justice grievance mongers currently monopolizing the media with their view of the ideal society are not the fulfillment of New Testament prophecy.

You know the prophecy I mean. It’s made its way into popular culture.

Too Hot to Handle: Spirit and Truth

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The Change Is Gonna Do Us Good

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Binary Thinking

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Inbox: Cultural Shenanigans

The role of women in the church is one of those topics that I’ve spent little time examining in this forum for various personal reasons.

But you may remember that despite my general enthusiasm expressed a few weeks back for Frank Viola’s “reimagination” of the church in all its various aspects, I found myself unable to get on board with all his views in the area of church authority and decision-making, and also expressed concerns about what I suspected might be Viola’s view of the role of women in the church (though in the pages of Reimagining Church, he never quite spells it out).

Other than that, I love much of what he has to say.

“I Have a Right ...”

This generation is all about its rights. And indeed, the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms sets out a bunch of them: the right to vote, the right to life, liberty and security of the person, the right to legal counsel, the right to an interpreter, the right to equal treatment before and under the law and so on — as did the Canadian Bill of Rights before it.

People seem to love making these things official.

Minding Our Own Business

The most current version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Unsanctioned “Churches”

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

I just came across a blog entry by a Christian fellow named Danny Eason. 

Danny had this silly idea of inviting a bunch of random (I believe his own description is “ragamuffin”) believers into his home for “Coffee and Jesus”. He describes their get-togethers like this:

“... fellowship, studying the Word (we’re walking through Ephesians), corporate confession and prayer, and worship through song. The time together is incredibly relaxed with no official format.”

That and, oh yeah, “Breaking of Bread”.

Tom: Well, Immanuel Can, maybe you can tell me: How can we put a stop to this sort of thing? I mean, it hasn’t been approved!

Who’s Afraid of Science?

[Originally presented February 1, 2014]

I often refer to Wikipedia, that unassailable bastion of compiled wisdom, not because I believe it to be particularly accurate, but because it provides as good an understanding of how people currently use language as can possibly be obtained. A Wikipedia definition is the gold standard for lowest common denominator human knowledge. So while it may not represent what everyone down through human history understood by the term “science”, let’s give their definition a browse:

“Science (from Latin scientia, meaning ‘knowledge’) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”

Sounds reasonable, no? So let’s get some things clear here:

Vessels of Another Sort

[Originally presented February 1, 2015]

Stephen Fry alleges that of all languages English “has the largest vocabulary … by a long, long, long, long way”. The language columnist of The Economist disagrees, or at least provides sound reasons why Fry may not be correct.

Regardless, there are only so many available words in any given language, and sometimes a writer of scripture elects to use similar language to describe vastly different spiritual scenarios.

In such instances, studies that depend on exhaustive investigation of the etymology of similar words are less useful than those that explore the context of each usage.

In short, dictionaries will not help anywhere near as much as meditation.

The Limits of Toleration

[Originally presented February 14, 2014]

“When He entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him while He was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?’ ”

“And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ ”

We live in a society that enshrines “tolerance” as its highest virtue. At least, it thinks it does.

But it’s a weird conception of tolerance. Modern “tolerance” has less to do with allowing people the right to free choice, and more to do with pretending that you actually approve of and admire all their choices — whatever they may be. You’re never to contradict anyone, tell them they’re wrong or that what they’re doing is bad; no matter what, you’re to smile and pretend it’s all sunshine and roses.

But this change is quite recent.

Debunking Heavenly Mythology II: Saint Peter and the Pearly Gates

[Originally presented March 25, 2014]

In a previous post I spent a few hundred keystrokes on the things of heaven, trying to point out how very ill-equipped the best of us is to fully comprehend them, even with the aid of the imagery of Scripture, since “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”.

But our inability to fully apprehend everything about heavenly things is not a license to manufacture any old view of heaven wholesale. The only reliable source of knowledge about things outside current human experience is the word of God itself.

How Depraved Can We Be?

[Originally presented April 24, 2014]

That’s a good question.

Our society is clearly messed up. It can be sick enough to think that promiscuity is normal, debauchery is freedom, and that homosexuality is love. It can be twisted enough to call killing the elderly “dignity” and butchering infants in utero “choice”. Morally, things look pretty bad.

That’s what the dictionary definition of “depraved” is. It means “very morally bad”.

Opting Out

It seems to me there are more than a few Christians out there looking for God to give them a personal pass on many of the hard things entailed in being a true follower of Christ.

I’m not looking down on this crowd from any position of superiority: I’m one of them through and through. But a careful reading of the New Testament explains to us why it should not be so. The Christian life was never intended to be a cakewalk. In fact, the Lord Jesus plainly told his followers to have peace in the face of the reality that in the world we will have tribulation.

Then, having set what seems to us an intolerable standard of self-abnegation and perfection of character, he immediately met and vastly exceeded it. Having told us the world was our enemy, he went right out and overcame it.

There was no “pass” to be had for the Son of Man.    

Too Hot to Handle: Atheists in Foxholes

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Dear Preacher: On Calvinism and Pride

Dear Preacher Bob:

[Originally presented March 26, 2014]

This isn’t a complaint, just a reflection. My point is not to object, but rather to expand the range of possible answers to a question you raised a couple of weeks back. Would you bear with me while I do that?

You gave a message on the subject “The Sovereignty of God”. I agree that this is an essential topic and for the most part, I found myself rejoicing in your take on it.

Yet I must confess that there was a moment or two in which I found myself hesitant — moments when the language you chose seemed to take the teaching about God’s sovereignty in the direction of what is called in theology “Neo-Calvinism”, and which philosophers call “Hard Determinism” — namely, the view that human freedom is an illusion, and all events are preset by God before they happen. And thus having merged “sovereignty” more-or-less with the interpretation of Neo-Calvinism, you then concluded with the following …

You said, “As far as I can see, the only reason for not believing in it is pride”.

The purpose of this letter is simply to suggest some different ways of seeing things.

The End of Evangelism

[Originally presented March 10, 2015]

There is general fear being widely expressed among evangelicals today that we are not reaching people the way we used to. Certainly the numbers of people in the modern West who are becoming Christians seems to be slumping, and a lot of us are a bit nervous about the trend.

Is the Age of Evangelism Ending?

According to Bible.org, one problem is that the professional clergy people and leaders are not stepping up, and that church ministries and programs are not going out to reach people. Meanwhile, The Evangelism Institute has found that while 85% of evangelical churches have a pro-evangelism statement in their constitution, less than 5% of the people are actually involved in doing something with it. All these worriers are agreed that Christians do still have a message worth getting out to the world, but for some reason we’re just not getting it out. So while this may not yet be the end of the church, it’s starting to look like it’s the end times for outreach, for evangelism, for the gospel.

Repent or Perish

[Originally presented July 12, 2014]

Most people understand (or intuit) as they read a Bible that its chapter and verse divisions are choices 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.

Scientific Materialism and the Good Wife

[Originally presented April 15, 2014]

Popular culture is an ocean of leftist muck, propaganda and uncritical thinking.

Still, there are rare occasions when you run across something so thought-provoking and strikingly out of place in its lucidity that you just can’t believe it’s actually on TV.

It is sadly common these days to leave entirely unexamined the real life implications of one’s philosophical and religious beliefs, or the lack thereof.

There are about 100 comments that come to mind about the following scene, but maybe I’ll just let it speak for itself.

Courtroom drama from The Good Wife:

Alicia: When we left off, Professor, you said you believed in right and wrong, and that it was wrong to hurt people. Professor?

Promiscuous Freedom and Enslavement

“… promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption …”

[Originally presented April 11, 2014]

Imagine yourself sitting in the center row of a darkened theatre, in an evening performance of a show entitled Cabaret. Tonight’s offering is a musical, and yet it is a musical unlike most others. It’s almost entirely devoid of the kind of cheerfulness that is usually associated with that particular genre, focusing as it does on the excesses of the Weimar Republic in the days just before the outbreak of World War II. Such humor as the play has is heavily ironic, filled with innuendo, and ultimately black.

As you may recall, the government of the Weimar Republic was a notorious failure. Beset by massively complex political challenges, splintered by factions, weighed down with incompetence and undermined by corruption, the Weimar administration dragged Germany through a period of widespread economic, social and political debasement. This debasement was felt on many levels, from the heads of state all the way down to the social conditions and private lives of the citizens. Cabaret revels in some of the more unsavoury aspects of this society, which became truly sick with sin. Using the metaphor of the infamous cabaret shows of the ’30s, the play follows one society’s decline into unrestrained individualism, indulgence and debauchery.

In the two hours in which you have been in the theatre you have been dragged through the bowels of German interbellum night-life.

Inbox: Dawkins and Calvin Go to Hell

Or not. Tertius writes:

“Our Lord spoke three parables in Luke 15. They form His three-pronged answer to the criticism, ‘this man receiveth sinners and eats with them’ found at the end of the previous chapter. Jesus protests that anything lost (a sheep, a coin, or a son) evokes grief but the finding of them calls for celebration. I have heard subpoints of teaching made from the illustration of the two sons which miss that emphasis and I remember a discussion as to whether the prodigal was a lost sinner or a backslidden Christian!”

Tom Takes a Breather

You’re currently reading our 568th consecutive daily blog post since December 2013.

Whew! That’s a lot of writing. Too much, some might say. We’ve done a little recycling of older material now and again when surprised by life, but by my count that only represents a little over 3% of our output.

I’m going to take a couple of weeks to recharge the batteries and work on a few pieces without an immediate deadline looming. We’ll hope to have new posts for you next Saturday and Sunday (the regular Too Hot to Handle exchange between me and Immanuel Can moves to Saturday instead of Friday for two weeks only).

That’s so we can use our next ten weekdays to count down ...

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Fatal Friends: Dawkins and Calvin

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Too Hot to Handle: Snakes, Mistakes and Better Takes

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Quote of the Day (5)

Last week, Tertius and I discussed the first chapter of Romans, comparing its language to statements about faith in Hebrews. Specifically, we were interested in how much about God may be known from nature, and how that knowledge is different from what may be known by faith.

Paul says in Romans, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”

Tertius and I agree that “eternal power and divine nature” takes in quite a bit.

Between Boredom and Bedlam

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The Power of Two

How do we make decisions in the church? What is the teaching of the New Testament?

In his book Reimagining Church, Frank Viola contends that the normal method of making major decisions in the church is by consensus, not just of leadership but of every believer in a local church. (You can find my review here.)

He uses the council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 as his sole scriptural evidence.

Reimagining Decision-Making

How does your church go about making decisions?

Perhaps you don’t actually know. In very large churches, the process of deciding what is going to be done may be quite opaque to those who meet there. Where there is a very distinct hierarchy in place, perhaps decisions are made unilaterally, or maybe they are initiated by a ‘head pastor’ or equivalent and signed off on by a board or council of elders. Then again, maybe they are arrived at by discussion among elders and presented fait accompli to the congregation. Or perhaps opinions are solicited and discussed, and a decision is later made with the promise that “all voices have been heard and all opinions considered”.

Maybe there are lots of ugly politics involved that nobody really wants to talk about. I don’t know your church, so I won’t presume.

Reimagining Church

I wouldn’t normally be the type to start writing a positive review before completely finishing a book, but I’ve been enjoying Frank Viola’s Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity immensely.

Viola is not merely a theorist. In 1988, he left what he calls “institutional Christianity” and began meeting in “organic churches”.

Organic churches are not the latest vegan trend. They are local gatherings mapped to what we read in the New Testament. They seek to practice Christianity as it was practiced in the first century, minus any details that were merely a product of the culture(s) in which the early church grew and thrived. The result is a church that, at least on paper, seems both relevant and authentically “New Testament” in ways I’ve never seen before.

What Sort of Heart?

This quote has stuck with me over the past couple of weeks, maybe because it is not just those who would like the Bible to teach universal salvation that see this type of thinking as the ultimate expression of moral goodness:

“What sort of a heart could approve of eternal death for some? The doctrine of Universal Salvation teaches that all will have eternal life, including Satan and the demons. And that one day, all will have the same nature as God. What sort of a heart could not approve of Universal Salvation, eternal life for all?”

It boils down to this: anyone who wouldn’t grant eternal bliss, joy, happiness and God-likeness to Satan, Hitler, Stalin and every liar and murderer in human history that hates and rejects the Son of God is, well ... insufficiently morally developed.

Too Hot to Handle: Hmm … What Should I Wear to Church Today?

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Keeping It Relevant

Is this old enough for you?

In a previous post, I set out the evidence from scripture that elders ought to be, well ... older.

Bit of a disappointment, I know. It is the nature of our society to obsess over youth: to make a big deal of energy, enthusiasm and an absence of wrinkles.

That’s actually a pretty modern quirk. Societies all over the world used to have great respect for the wisdom that comes with age, even though such sagacity was rarely accompanied by a six-pack or a pretty face.

No more. We’re so happy to see young people contribute in our churches that even if what they offer is mediocre and half-hearted, we’re pole-vaulting over each other with joy and pronouncing them the next big thing.

Almost always to their detriment, and ours.

Get the Message

“I am the Lord.”

That’s Ezekiel summed up in four words.

God has a point he wishes to make, and we are wise to hear it in a day when most recognize no final authority beyond their own opinions, prejudices and desires.

The phrase “they will know” (or “you will know”) that “I am the Lord” occurs 72 times in Ezekiel. Only 11 of its first 39 chapters don’t have it. It’s the bottom line to every declaration God makes to his people through the prophet. It’s a message we need to internalize at the very core of our beings. Until that happens, we do not really understand our place in the universe.

Without it, our assessment of reality is warped and disproportionate. We think it’s all about us.

The Sound of Salesmen

The above line comes from a couplet in a Rush song called “Spirit of Radio”, one of the few classic rock tunes I could stomach during my post-punk phase. Neil Peart’s lyric goes like this:

“For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall;

Concert hall echoes with the sound of salesmen.”

It’s actually a rather ironic subversion of Paul Simon’s words in “Sound of Silence”, but that is neither here nor there. Peart once said, “The Spirit of Radio was actually written as a tribute to all that was good about radio, celebrating my appreciation of magical moments I’d had since childhood, of hearing ‘the right song at the right time.’ ” What Peart didn’t say is that it’s a wistful tribute: it ends in his disappointment with the ubiquity of commercialism.

I had a “Spirit of Radio” moment in church the other night.