The Dating Scene

It’s the eighth shortest book in the Bible and the second shortest in the Old Testament — only 1,131 words in English in two brief chapters.

But Haggai is full of dates. Almost a quarter of its 38 verses are given over to specifying times right to the very day. The book’s five prophecies to four different individuals or groups are each arranged around these dates.

Even readers unconvinced of the inspiration of scripture are unlikely to see such an obvious pattern as accidental or merely a writing tic. They will generally concede the author must be trying to make a point.

It might be worth a few hundred words to try to work out what the point may be.

Mining the Minors: Amos (33)

Prophetic language in scripture is always more difficult to interpret from a distance.

This uncertainty is especially common when figurative language — a regular feature of the prophetic word — is in play. When a prophecy is fulfilled in a generation or less, its original audience has little difficulty unpacking a nicely turned figure of speech and applying it to their own situation. On the other hand, a 2,700 year distance from the events about which the prophet has spoken or written severely limits the modern reader’s ability to dogmatize about specifics.

The historical record just isn’t that comprehensive, and the culture and language barriers to understanding the text as its original readers understood it increase with every passing generation.

Too Hot to Handle: Where the Grass is Greener

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

If there’s a single more common inter-generational issue in churches today, I can’t think of it right now:

“My kids want to go to that church down the road …”

Hoo boy.

Tom: I bet that church down the road has a worship team, Immanuel Can.

How Depraved Can We Be?

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”.

Faith and Courage

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Was the Lord’s prayer for Simon answered in the affirmative? I believe it was. From the events described by Luke later in the chapter you might not think so, but there is a difference between a failure of faith and a failure of courage, no? And certainly Jesus appears fully confident of Peter’s speedy restoration, not only with respect to his fellowship with the risen Lord, but with respect to his ongoing responsibility to shepherd others.

It is not “if you turn again”, but when. The Lord himself had seen to it.

Language and Thought Complexity

When not writing up the results of his research for publication, anthropologist Christopher Hallpike lived among the mountain tribes of Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea for a period of ten years studying every facet of two very different primitive cultures. His latest anthology, Ship of Fools, includes a fascinating chapter entitled “So all languages aren’t equally complex after all”, in which he thoroughly debunks the conventional wisdom about the relative complexity of languages, namely the uniformitarian belief that All Languages are Equally Complex (ALEC).

ALEC is a relatively modern invention popularized by linguists like Noam Chomsky and evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker, wholly ideological rather than a product of actual boots-on-the-ground research. It is the undemonstrated and undemonstratable conviction that “There are no simple or primitive cultures: all cultures are equally complex and equally modern.” Or again, “People think the same thoughts, no matter what kind of grammatical system they use.”

Anonymous Asks (162)

“Are angels God’s sons?”

The Old Testament contains five occurrences of the phrase “sons of God”; three in Job and two in Genesis. All five appear to me to be referring to angels. The New Testament gives us a further six mentions. Every one of these six refers to redeemed members of the human race.

That requires a little more explanation, but hey, that’s why we do this. Let’s go back to front, since the question is about angelic sons.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (17)

“Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.”

New believers seeking to understand scripture for themselves with the aid of Google and/or an online concordance may be forgiven for throwing up their hands in despair when they encounter verses like this one. There are at least three major schools of thought about Luke 17:33, and multiple variations within each.

Nevertheless, even in passages like this where there are genuine questions about what exactly the Lord was telling his disciples, some interpretations remain more logical, careful and likely than others.

Mining the Minors: Amos (32)

Religious people do some very strange and inconsistent things. Some observe holidays to which they have no attachment in the name of a God in whom they don’t believe. Others appear to have an on/off switch that gets toggled to “off” every time they leave the church building Sunday around noon and head back to the rest of their weekly routine.

Apparently things were no different 2,700 years ago. Religious people were engaged in strange and inconsistent practices, and God sent the prophet Amos to Israel to point this out.

Too Hot to Handle: The Weight of Tradition

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

Years ago I would regularly come across stories of how this theologian or that one came out of Catholicism and now calls himself an evangelical Christian. More recently I notice some going the other way. Among the reasons usually given for embracing Rome is an emphasis on church history and tradition that doesn’t exist in the same way in Protestant gatherings. Roman Catholicism is thought to have “roots” that go back to the early church.

To seekers of this sort, the value of a church experience is measured by whether their faith community is convincingly in touch with its own past.

Dismembering the Church

My church recently had a “membership” drive. The goal was to get people to sign up to the church roll, then stand up in front of the congregation and proclaim their membership through what they called a “church covenant”.

I’ve been in my local church for 12 years. I didn’t sign. I won’t.

It’s not because my fellow Christians do not know I’m one of them; they do. And I trust it’s not because I’m passive, uncommitted or uninvolved with church life. I’m in there serving, and I doubt there’s anyone in my congregation who couldn’t tell you that. (If there is, that will be corrected the next time they give me the pulpit, which they do fairly frequently.) And it’s not because they have found I am caught up in some particular sin or wickedness. No one has accused me of that — though I’d admit to being your garden variety hypocrite, in the sense that I continually fall short of the level of holiness God deserves from me. But no one so far has called me “hard hearted” or accused me of some crime.

Strange Applications (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Compound Interest)

The subject of money is a controversial one among believers, not because the Bible is unclear about the dangers of loving mammon or misusing it, but because applying the principles we find in scripture to each personal situation is an individual responsibility worked out, well ... individually.

This being the case, we find a variety of approaches to finances among believers. I’ve tried a bunch of them. Let me tell you a story ... but first, we’d better start with the basics. What do the scriptures say? Let’s get that straight.

Blogger Becomes Blocker

I read an awful lot online. I still probably invest significantly more time with physical books than in frequenting websites, but the weekly averages spent on each activity are a lot closer these days than five years ago, and getting closer still. Books are better for long-term perspectives on the world around us. The internet has the advantage of being current, and of telling us what other people like us (and not like us) are thinking and doing.

My book collection (not my ebooks, sadly) has this advantage over digital text, online or in other forms: Amazon and/or other interested parties cannot make it disappear. Even when they try really, really hard.

Anonymous Asks (161)

“What does ‘walking in the Spirit’ involve, and what do I do when I don’t feel like it?”

Walking by the Spirit is mentioned explicitly in two NT verses, Galatians 5:16 and Romans 8:4:

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”

“... in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

The first is a command, the second is merely descriptive; it tells us what constitutes a normal state of being for Christians, that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God”.

Ten Things About Death For Which I Am Grateful

I had the inestimable privilege of being asked to preach the gospel at a pair of relatively recent memorial services for Christian friends and family members.

Our regular readers will have probably figured out by now that gospel preaching is not exactly my forte; I am not an evangelist either by gift or disposition. All the same, when you have people you love in the audience who don’t know the Lord, you take every opportunity he hands you, and I took these.

We had a great time. Seems odd to put it that way, but it’s true.

Mining the Minors: Amos (31)

In the New Testament, fruit is used to symbolize the inevitable consequences of human choice. The outcome of any set of actions reflects favorably or unfavorably on the person who engages in them. As the Lord put it, “Each tree is known by its own fruit.” You do not find figs growing on thorn bushes or grapes among brambles.

The production of fruit is usually a positive thing, but fruit may be either good or bad. In Matthew’s gospel, the Lord tells his disciples false prophets may be recognized by the fruit they produce, which is diseased rather than healthy.

In Amos too, the image of fruit has to do with outcomes.

Too Hot to Handle: Golden Calf 2.0

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

It’s been years since I paid a great deal of attention to the charismatic movement, but David de Bruyn’s post on The Pentecostalization of Christian Worship at ReligiousAffections.org is a real eye-opener.

Tom: Mr. de Bruyn’s thesis is fairly simple: the current patterns of worship in the charismatic movement are not leading Christians within it anywhere good. Worse, these practices are catching on throughout the evangelical world. I’ve experienced them myself in my early twenties, but never really stopped to analyze the significant differences between the way charismatics engage in “worship”, and the historic patterns of worship across many other Christian traditions. Far more importantly, the charismatic approach differs radically from the patterns of worship we observe in the scriptures.

What did you think of the post, IC?

Immanuel Can: So many things … where shall we start?

Neo-Calvinism: Rotten TULIPs

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.”

I’m a no-point Calvinist.

I used to think I was a “three-pointer”, but that was only because I didn’t really understand what Calvinists actually thought their points meant. Now that I do see it, I’m a no-point Calvinist … as in “the neo-Calvinists have no point”.

State o’ the Blog 2021

It’s been almost two years since I did one of these “status” posts. Oops.

On some fronts a great deal has happened. I entered my seventh decade, for one, which helps explain why so many much-loved friends and family members have left us in the last two years, temporarily at least, and are now enjoying the presence of the Lord (to date, none due to COVID). My children seem to be at completely different stages of life than they were two years ago. That is reason to rejoice in nearly every respect. Atmospherically and functionally, my workplace is a completely different beast than it was two years ago. That is both good and bad for the company, but it is certainly fun for me.

Semi-Random Musings (23)

I have seen the future of the church. It is non-institutional, non-sectarian, untraditional, discreet, highly portable and deadly serious. These are all good things.

That’s my conclusion after a week away up north with a group of 11 Christians of varied backgrounds, denominations and convictions from all over our province. What drew us together was a pair of mutual friends and our love of Christ, not any particular theological compatibility or shared history.

Here is my concern, and it’s a big one: in our movement toward what sure looks like the inevitable next phase of church life in North America, we are in danger of leaving our leadership behind.