Job reveals to us the extreme limits of natural reason. Nothing revealed in the first two chapters of Job could be discovered by natural reason. Angels and demons are both immaterial beings, and the setting of the dispute between Almighty God and Satan is in Heaven. Trying to figure out what's happeniong in Heaven right now is impossible, unless God from His side of the divide chooses to tell us. We don't even know what's happening in Paris, France right now, let alone what's happening in Heaven. Without the hidden information that is revealed by God in that prologue, there is no hope that any of the disputants in the storyline could ever reason out why the events of chapters 1-2 happened. That's why they are so off the mark throughout their long, winding debates. It's as if the soliloquies, by being counterpointed to the light of the prologue, were written for comic effect, as if to highlight for the reader that none of these men knew what they were talking about. They go on and on and on, and in the last chapter we find out that they were all just blathering.
However, the first two chapters also reveal the perfect clarity of special revelation. The prose of Job 1-2 is inspired, but really quite uninspiring as far as literary style goes. There are no mystical codes used, no hazy, ambiguous, "Oracle of Delphi" mutterings. Just a prosaic storyline -- this happened, then this happened, then this. If anyone says they don't understand Job 1-2, it's because there's something about its content that they dislike. It's not because there's anything "divinely incomprehensible" about it. God, who created language, knows perfectly well how to talk to men, whom He also created. People who say that the Bible can't be clearly understood have either never read the Bible, or they are rebelling against God and thus trying to untether themselves from the Scripture.
Satan actually insulted God by accusing Job. Satan as much as said that God had bought Job's worship. That Job, by being a owrshiper-for-hire, indirectly indicted God as being a God-Who-Needs-To-Hire-Worshipers. The trials of Job were as much to vindicate the honor and glory of God's name, as they were to vindicate Job of Satan's malign slander against him. God acts as if the central conflict in the story is about Him, not about Job and his pain. As if God is the center, purpose, and fianl rationale of all existence. And, of course, it was, and He is. He is the star of the program, and all of us are just extras.
The book never bothers to explain the whys and wherefores of the deaths of Job's offspring. It merely says that they were all killed by the tornado. There are stories in this world that God never intended to tell. We, in our arrogance, assume that if we don't know a person's story, that therefore there wasn't a story. But that is foolish. God being God, that means there was a story, and a rationale, for each of Job's individual children. God knew their names, and what happened to them was part of His plan for them. The story of Job, from chapter 3 on, is told pretty much from Job's point of view, at least until the end when God shows up in Person. But that doesn't mean that God didn't hold each of those offspring in the palm of His hand, know them by name from the womb, and, need it be said, sent His Son to die for their sins thousands of years later. The fact that we don't know why they all had to die doesn't mean there are no reasons why they had to die right then and there in that exact way. The moment Adam brought death into the world by his sin, God manages our death-days just as much as He ordains our birthdays. And He seems to feel no obligation to explain Himself. As Lucy says to Peter in Prince Caspian, maybe Aslan feels that we need to explain ourselves to him, and not at all the other way around.
Traditional wisdom takes a lot of hard knocks in Job. By the end of the book, the old, gray wise heads are exposed as a trio of gibbering fools, and they're the ones God is angry at. And young Elihu, whom tradition would say should be the know-nothing, turns out to come the nearest to the truth, and God expresses no disatisfaction toward him. God doesn't even call on Job to intercede in prayer for Elihu. Wisdom comes from God, not from age. Paul in the letter to the Romans called God "God only wise". This gives God the exclusive franchise on wisdom, and He doles it out to whomever He wishes. There's no fool like an old fool.
It's quite the peculiar book, Job is.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Gay Marriage Destructive To Society
By Frank Turek, at Townhall.com:
Why not legalize same-sex marriage? Who could it possibly hurt? Children and the rest of society. That’s the conclusion of David Blankenhorn, who is anything but an anti-gay “bigot.” He is a life-long, pro-gay, liberal democrat who disagrees with the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexual behavior. Despite this, Blankenhorn makes a powerful case against Same-Sex marriage in his book, The Future of Marriage.
He writes, “Across history and cultures . . . marriage’s single most fundamental idea is that every child needs a mother and a father. Changing marriage to accommodate same-sex couples would nullify this principle in culture and in law.”
How so?
The law is a great teacher, and same sex marriage will teach future generations that marriage is not about children but about coupling. When marriage becomes nothing more than coupling, fewer people will get married to have children.
So what?
People will still have children, of course, but many more of them out-of wedlock. That’s a disaster for everyone. Children will be hurt because illegitimate parents (there are no illegitimate children) often never form a family, and those that “shack up” break up at a rate two to three times that of married parents. Society will be hurt because illegitimacy starts a chain of negative effects that fall like dominoes—illegitimacy leads to poverty, crime, and higher welfare costs which lead to bigger government, higher taxes, and a slower economy.
Are these just the hysterical cries of an alarmist? No. We can see the connection between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy in Scandinavian countries. Norway, for example, has had de-facto same-sex marriage since the early nineties. In Nordland, the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly “gay” rainbow flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared—more than 80 percent of women giving birth for the first time, and nearly 70 percent of all children, are born out of wedlock! Across all of Norway, illegitimacy rose from 39 percent to 50 percent in the first decade of same-sex marriage.
Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes, “When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.” He asserts that “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.”
But it’s not just Norway. Blankenhorn reports this same trend in other countries. International surveys show that same-sex marriage and the erosion of traditional marriage tend to go together. Traditional marriage is weakest and illegitimacy strongest wherever same-sex marriage is legal.
You might say, “Correlation doesn’t always indicate causation!” Yes, but often it does. Is there any doubt that liberalizing marriage laws impacts society for the worse? You need look no further than the last 40 years of no-fault divorce laws in the United States (family disintegration destroys lives and now costs tax payers $112 billion per year!).
No-fault divorce laws began in one state, California, and then spread to rest of the country. Those liberalized divorce laws helped change our attitudes and behaviors about the permanence of marriage. There’s no question that liberalized marriage laws will help change our attitudes and behaviors about the purpose of marriage. The law is a great teacher, and if same-sex marriage advocates have their way, children will be expelled from the lesson on marriage.
This leads Blankenhorn to assert, “One can believe in same-sex marriage. One can believe that every child deserves a mother and a father. One cannot believe both.”
Blankenhorn is amazed how indifferent homosexual activists are about the negative effects of same-sex marriage on children. Many of them, he documents, say that marriage isn’t about children.
Well, if marriage isn’t about children, what institution is about children? And if we’re going to redefine marriage into mere coupling, then why should the state endorse same-sex marriage at all?
Contrary to what homosexual activists assume, the state doesn’t endorse marriage because people have feelings for one another. The state endorses marriage primarily because of what marriage does for children and in turn society. Society gets no benefit by redefining marriage to include homosexual relationships, only harm as the connection to illegitimacy shows. But the very future of children and a civilized society depends on stable marriages between men and women. That’s why, regardless of what you think about homosexuality, the two types of relationships should never be legally equated.
That conclusion has nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with what’s best for children and society. Just ask pro-gay, liberal democrat David Blankenhorn.
Why not legalize same-sex marriage? Who could it possibly hurt? Children and the rest of society. That’s the conclusion of David Blankenhorn, who is anything but an anti-gay “bigot.” He is a life-long, pro-gay, liberal democrat who disagrees with the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexual behavior. Despite this, Blankenhorn makes a powerful case against Same-Sex marriage in his book, The Future of Marriage.
He writes, “Across history and cultures . . . marriage’s single most fundamental idea is that every child needs a mother and a father. Changing marriage to accommodate same-sex couples would nullify this principle in culture and in law.”
How so?
The law is a great teacher, and same sex marriage will teach future generations that marriage is not about children but about coupling. When marriage becomes nothing more than coupling, fewer people will get married to have children.
So what?
People will still have children, of course, but many more of them out-of wedlock. That’s a disaster for everyone. Children will be hurt because illegitimate parents (there are no illegitimate children) often never form a family, and those that “shack up” break up at a rate two to three times that of married parents. Society will be hurt because illegitimacy starts a chain of negative effects that fall like dominoes—illegitimacy leads to poverty, crime, and higher welfare costs which lead to bigger government, higher taxes, and a slower economy.
Are these just the hysterical cries of an alarmist? No. We can see the connection between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy in Scandinavian countries. Norway, for example, has had de-facto same-sex marriage since the early nineties. In Nordland, the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly “gay” rainbow flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared—more than 80 percent of women giving birth for the first time, and nearly 70 percent of all children, are born out of wedlock! Across all of Norway, illegitimacy rose from 39 percent to 50 percent in the first decade of same-sex marriage.
Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes, “When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.” He asserts that “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.”
But it’s not just Norway. Blankenhorn reports this same trend in other countries. International surveys show that same-sex marriage and the erosion of traditional marriage tend to go together. Traditional marriage is weakest and illegitimacy strongest wherever same-sex marriage is legal.
You might say, “Correlation doesn’t always indicate causation!” Yes, but often it does. Is there any doubt that liberalizing marriage laws impacts society for the worse? You need look no further than the last 40 years of no-fault divorce laws in the United States (family disintegration destroys lives and now costs tax payers $112 billion per year!).
No-fault divorce laws began in one state, California, and then spread to rest of the country. Those liberalized divorce laws helped change our attitudes and behaviors about the permanence of marriage. There’s no question that liberalized marriage laws will help change our attitudes and behaviors about the purpose of marriage. The law is a great teacher, and if same-sex marriage advocates have their way, children will be expelled from the lesson on marriage.
This leads Blankenhorn to assert, “One can believe in same-sex marriage. One can believe that every child deserves a mother and a father. One cannot believe both.”
Blankenhorn is amazed how indifferent homosexual activists are about the negative effects of same-sex marriage on children. Many of them, he documents, say that marriage isn’t about children.
Well, if marriage isn’t about children, what institution is about children? And if we’re going to redefine marriage into mere coupling, then why should the state endorse same-sex marriage at all?
Contrary to what homosexual activists assume, the state doesn’t endorse marriage because people have feelings for one another. The state endorses marriage primarily because of what marriage does for children and in turn society. Society gets no benefit by redefining marriage to include homosexual relationships, only harm as the connection to illegitimacy shows. But the very future of children and a civilized society depends on stable marriages between men and women. That’s why, regardless of what you think about homosexuality, the two types of relationships should never be legally equated.
That conclusion has nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with what’s best for children and society. Just ask pro-gay, liberal democrat David Blankenhorn.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Three Marks of A Mature Church
In Romans chapter 15, Paul, in a single verse, names three characteristics of a mature church. They are goodness, knowledge, and admonition of one another.
Goodness is defined by God, not by us. The Greek word there is a variation of agathetein, meaning "virtue" or "beneficence." Qualities of goodness include love for our enemies (according to Christ, in his sermon on the mount in Mt. 5), responsiveness to God's Word 9according to Christ's parable of the good soil in Mt. 13), and generosity to the poor (exemplified by Tabitha, whom we meet in the book of Acts).
Knowledge and goodness are linked together. It isn't possible to become a good person without the knowledge of the Bible. God alone is good, Jesus said to the rich young ruler. None of us are. So we have to know God, in order for His goodness to transmit to and through us. That can only happen through faith. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). This is why it's so addled to exalt moral goodness over Bible knowledge, as religious liberals always do. Without Bible knowledge there would be no true moral goodness, since we would not be in union with the Godhead by faith.
Lastly, the mature church admonishes each other. It's always very easy to drift off the mark. When I look down at my cell phone while I'm driving, it's often the case that I have allowed the moving car to drift to the left or the right. We have often been saved from possible wrecks by my wife or son when they yelled, "Dad! Watch out!" Admonition is one Christian saying to another Christian, "Hey! Watch out!"
But by what authority does one Christian admonish another? It must be the Bible, otherwise it's just meddling. In some cases, what some call mutual accountability can even be cultlike, in the sense of people being brought into a constant state of anxiety that somebody somewhere is going to jump on them. Arrogance is when one person tries to force their will onto another illegitimately; overreaching when God says, "Stop, desist." This is the value of the commandments of Scripture. Knowing them also means, by reflex, that we know what they are not.
Church is meant to be a team effort, with everyone helping everyone else along. It is healthy and godly for a congregation to reach this level of maturity, and this is the goal of the pastoral effort. A sound pastor doesn't want the whole place hanging slavishly on him, like a bundle of pots and pans hanging from a single peg in the wall. The Roman church surely had leaders, elders, and pastors. But their goal would have been for the people to be good people who knew their Bibles, and who watched out for one another in the spiritual trials of life.
Goodness is defined by God, not by us. The Greek word there is a variation of agathetein, meaning "virtue" or "beneficence." Qualities of goodness include love for our enemies (according to Christ, in his sermon on the mount in Mt. 5), responsiveness to God's Word 9according to Christ's parable of the good soil in Mt. 13), and generosity to the poor (exemplified by Tabitha, whom we meet in the book of Acts).
Knowledge and goodness are linked together. It isn't possible to become a good person without the knowledge of the Bible. God alone is good, Jesus said to the rich young ruler. None of us are. So we have to know God, in order for His goodness to transmit to and through us. That can only happen through faith. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). This is why it's so addled to exalt moral goodness over Bible knowledge, as religious liberals always do. Without Bible knowledge there would be no true moral goodness, since we would not be in union with the Godhead by faith.
Lastly, the mature church admonishes each other. It's always very easy to drift off the mark. When I look down at my cell phone while I'm driving, it's often the case that I have allowed the moving car to drift to the left or the right. We have often been saved from possible wrecks by my wife or son when they yelled, "Dad! Watch out!" Admonition is one Christian saying to another Christian, "Hey! Watch out!"
But by what authority does one Christian admonish another? It must be the Bible, otherwise it's just meddling. In some cases, what some call mutual accountability can even be cultlike, in the sense of people being brought into a constant state of anxiety that somebody somewhere is going to jump on them. Arrogance is when one person tries to force their will onto another illegitimately; overreaching when God says, "Stop, desist." This is the value of the commandments of Scripture. Knowing them also means, by reflex, that we know what they are not.
Church is meant to be a team effort, with everyone helping everyone else along. It is healthy and godly for a congregation to reach this level of maturity, and this is the goal of the pastoral effort. A sound pastor doesn't want the whole place hanging slavishly on him, like a bundle of pots and pans hanging from a single peg in the wall. The Roman church surely had leaders, elders, and pastors. But their goal would have been for the people to be good people who knew their Bibles, and who watched out for one another in the spiritual trials of life.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Jesus Is Lord -- Over Good Times And Bad
I heard this morning about the tragic death of the Chapman's little girl Maria, who was accidentally struck by the family SUV yesterday around 5 P.M. Maria died of her injuries. Stephen Curtis Chapman is a very well known and well regarded Christian contemporary musician.
I felt sickened and saddened by the news. As I drove the kids to school, we listened to the local Christian radio station. The DJ, David Pierce, expressed condolences to the Chapman family, and played recordings of various listeners phoning in to express similar feelings. Later, in an unrelated story, Pierce told a news story about a pair of pilots who started running out of gas while in mid-flight. Praying like mad to Jesus to save them, they safely landed next to a billboard that read: "Jesus Is Lord."
But I immediately thought, what about the Chapmans? Was Jesus Lord yesterday at 5 P.M. as well? If we say "yes" to the pilot story, we are forced by honesty and logic to say "yes" to the Chapman scenario as well.
I can't answer all the questions that get asked in a scenario like that. Why did Maria Chapman die, while those two pilots lived? Why couldn't they all have lived? Why didn't all of them die? They could have done either, if Jesus is Lord (meaning, Jesus = God).
If we say that there are some things God can't do, then it isn't God we're talking about anymore. A non-omnipotent God isn't God.
I think we have to turn to the actual Person and teachings of that Jesus, because a simple slogan like "Jesus is Lord" can create as many questions as it answers. If I, as a pastor, had to counsel in that situation, I feel i would need to say...
...that Jesus, being a human being just like all of us His brothers, knows what it feels like to die. So we're not talking about a giant, mechanical, clicking Eye In The Sky God that doesn't sympathize with our pain.
...This question has been hurled at Jesus before, in His own lifetime. Jesus hung back from returning to Bethany, and let His friend Lazarus die, rather than hurrying back to his side to heal him. He let His apostles die martyr deaths. But since Christ has an unshaken faith in everlasting life, He doesn't feel the utter, black, demonic despair that we're tempted to feel. He feels sorrow; He did weep at Lazarus' grave, even knowing the miracle that He was about to perform. Jesus hates death. It is His enemy. He is Life. But, in the face of death, He still has hope, stronger than the grief of loss, and His hope sees beyond the grave. Jesus' resurrection is the reason we can hope. It's the reason He had hope.
...Christ said that it is not the will of His Father in heaven that any of these little ones perish. Of course, God alone knows when a young person crosses that inner psychological line between sins of ignorance (which still required the redeeming blood of Christ on the cross for their forgiveness), and outright, willful, Romans 1:18-25 rebellion against God Almighty. But I believe Christ clearly taught the gracious salvation of infants and young children. The whole Chapman family, including Maria, will be reunited in glory.
We do not grieve like those who have no hope. But in the meantime, it will be hard -- especially for them, but even for us who only hear the accident -- not to ask the Lord Jesus "Why?" I hope and pray that Maria's brother, who was driving the SUV and struck her, will have the faith to accept the forgiveness God has promised to give.
I felt sickened and saddened by the news. As I drove the kids to school, we listened to the local Christian radio station. The DJ, David Pierce, expressed condolences to the Chapman family, and played recordings of various listeners phoning in to express similar feelings. Later, in an unrelated story, Pierce told a news story about a pair of pilots who started running out of gas while in mid-flight. Praying like mad to Jesus to save them, they safely landed next to a billboard that read: "Jesus Is Lord."
But I immediately thought, what about the Chapmans? Was Jesus Lord yesterday at 5 P.M. as well? If we say "yes" to the pilot story, we are forced by honesty and logic to say "yes" to the Chapman scenario as well.
I can't answer all the questions that get asked in a scenario like that. Why did Maria Chapman die, while those two pilots lived? Why couldn't they all have lived? Why didn't all of them die? They could have done either, if Jesus is Lord (meaning, Jesus = God).
If we say that there are some things God can't do, then it isn't God we're talking about anymore. A non-omnipotent God isn't God.
I think we have to turn to the actual Person and teachings of that Jesus, because a simple slogan like "Jesus is Lord" can create as many questions as it answers. If I, as a pastor, had to counsel in that situation, I feel i would need to say...
...that Jesus, being a human being just like all of us His brothers, knows what it feels like to die. So we're not talking about a giant, mechanical, clicking Eye In The Sky God that doesn't sympathize with our pain.
...This question has been hurled at Jesus before, in His own lifetime. Jesus hung back from returning to Bethany, and let His friend Lazarus die, rather than hurrying back to his side to heal him. He let His apostles die martyr deaths. But since Christ has an unshaken faith in everlasting life, He doesn't feel the utter, black, demonic despair that we're tempted to feel. He feels sorrow; He did weep at Lazarus' grave, even knowing the miracle that He was about to perform. Jesus hates death. It is His enemy. He is Life. But, in the face of death, He still has hope, stronger than the grief of loss, and His hope sees beyond the grave. Jesus' resurrection is the reason we can hope. It's the reason He had hope.
...Christ said that it is not the will of His Father in heaven that any of these little ones perish. Of course, God alone knows when a young person crosses that inner psychological line between sins of ignorance (which still required the redeeming blood of Christ on the cross for their forgiveness), and outright, willful, Romans 1:18-25 rebellion against God Almighty. But I believe Christ clearly taught the gracious salvation of infants and young children. The whole Chapman family, including Maria, will be reunited in glory.
We do not grieve like those who have no hope. But in the meantime, it will be hard -- especially for them, but even for us who only hear the accident -- not to ask the Lord Jesus "Why?" I hope and pray that Maria's brother, who was driving the SUV and struck her, will have the faith to accept the forgiveness God has promised to give.
I Can Understand Why The Mormon Church Is Growing
In their quest for perfection, and spiritual exaltation to a celestial realm, many Mormons strive to live moral, upright, and downright cheerful lives. Of course there are groups like the Texas polygamists still around, and Mormonism would probably revert back to that if the government let them. That is who they used to be, back when Joseph Smith was deceiving gullible people about Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. But contemporary Mormonism works hard to live by the Boy Scout and Girl Scout code.
That's a better advertisement for their church than all the tracts in the world. I watched the American Idol finale last night, and two of the most attractive contestants were the two Mormons, Brooke White and David Archuleta (I think Archuleta is Mormon, since he comes from Murray, Utah; though I could be mistaken. I'll check more on that later).
In a day and age where evangelical young people are in a rush to be just as rebellious, potty-mouthed, brainless, and sexually slack as everyone else around them -- all done (hypocritically) in the name of cultural relevance -- dedicated Mormons attract people because they're not rebellious, potty-mouthed, brainless, or sexually slack. Is a lot of it an act? Undoubtedly, and I say that because Christ gave warnings about Pharisee religion that tries to wash the dirty cup of the soul from the outside working in. And I imagine there are plenty of Mormon people who can't keep up with the strain of Mormon rigor. I believe that's what the movie Napoleon Dynamite was really about. A lot of people don't realize that the town where Napoleon lived was supposed to be a Mormon town, and the film has a protest theme in it -- the misfits deserve respect, even if they don't fit into the "perfect" Mormon mold typified by Summer Wheatly and her jock boyfriend.
Anyway, just as people are looking for some bright star in the dark night sky of postmodern America, we have many, many evangelical youth ministries striving hard to be as low, coarse, empty-headed, and trivial as they can possibly be. Meanwhile, the Mighty Mormon god-and-goddess wannabes march merrily on, being courteous, friendly, honest, thrifty, brave, square, and obeying the law of the pack, and converting many people over to their bizarre religion.
That's a better advertisement for their church than all the tracts in the world. I watched the American Idol finale last night, and two of the most attractive contestants were the two Mormons, Brooke White and David Archuleta (I think Archuleta is Mormon, since he comes from Murray, Utah; though I could be mistaken. I'll check more on that later).
In a day and age where evangelical young people are in a rush to be just as rebellious, potty-mouthed, brainless, and sexually slack as everyone else around them -- all done (hypocritically) in the name of cultural relevance -- dedicated Mormons attract people because they're not rebellious, potty-mouthed, brainless, or sexually slack. Is a lot of it an act? Undoubtedly, and I say that because Christ gave warnings about Pharisee religion that tries to wash the dirty cup of the soul from the outside working in. And I imagine there are plenty of Mormon people who can't keep up with the strain of Mormon rigor. I believe that's what the movie Napoleon Dynamite was really about. A lot of people don't realize that the town where Napoleon lived was supposed to be a Mormon town, and the film has a protest theme in it -- the misfits deserve respect, even if they don't fit into the "perfect" Mormon mold typified by Summer Wheatly and her jock boyfriend.
Anyway, just as people are looking for some bright star in the dark night sky of postmodern America, we have many, many evangelical youth ministries striving hard to be as low, coarse, empty-headed, and trivial as they can possibly be. Meanwhile, the Mighty Mormon god-and-goddess wannabes march merrily on, being courteous, friendly, honest, thrifty, brave, square, and obeying the law of the pack, and converting many people over to their bizarre religion.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Mixed Nuts
Messiah Complex
People who aren't anchored down in the Scripture are prone to worship leaders, and leaders will develop Messiah complexes about themselves. If we listen to Scripture, we know that only God is King, and He alone rules. He alone is glorious; He alone has all the answers. It's our own rampant stupidity that puts men and women up on pedestals and worships them. Conservatives are a little less prone to messiah complexes than liberals, because conservatives mistrust government power as a matter of principle anyway. Liberals think that history is evolving somewhere, and that society can "progress" (even though their definitions of where we ought to be progressing toward are usually anti-God and anti-Christian, and their prescriptions for progress are actually forms of regress). As a result, hard-left liberals see their political leaders as avatars of the Force. But Christians see things clearly. For instance, Barack Obama is no agent of positive change. He's just another vainglorious sinner, a lawyer rather than someone who actually knows how the world works, and a lawyer who believes in Black Liberation Theology at that.
When Churches Close
I'm sorry to hear about the very recent closing of an Evangelical Free Church. People pour their hearts and souls into pioneering a church, and many forces come against you, and it's heartbreaking when that happens. I wonder if sometimes good churches close for the most mundane reasons. An evangelical church recently closed in our region of the country because it never really "caught on" in the community. But you wonder why that was so. Then they got two bad pastors right in a row. Bam, bam, it was too much for the congregation to survive. Another church closes because, honestly, there really is a church on every corner. It's like opening a new burger restaurant in a town where there already are 500 burger restaurants. That's what I mean by "mundane" reasons. Unless you're dazzingly different, what's the attraction? Why is your existence compelling and needed? I recently finished an autobiography of Dr. Don Carson's dad, who was a church planter in Francophone Qeuebec for many years. He struggled and struggled. But Quebec in the 1940s and 1950s was absolutely dominated by a smothering, oppressive Roman Catholicism. And Dr. Carson believes that his father was better suited, in terms of temperament and gifts, to be on-staff under the leadership of a pulpit pastor. How many good men have a vision for a church in their community, but their talents don't quite match their passion? Anyway, I know it's a sad thing when a good church has to close. But maybe the fruitful people there will go elsewhere and hopefully nourish the new places where they worship. The seed goes on, even if a particular greenhouse closes.
The Presidential Election
Barack Obama is planning to run against John McCain. John McCain is going to try and run against Obama and against the Republican Party, at the same time.
American Idol
I watched Americvan Idol Tuesday night, and decided that the song The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack is one of the most beautiful pop love songs ever written.
David Cook really does look like he has a hairy black octopus on his head.
Paula's been unusually cogent this last few weeks.
I loved the shot of Simon Cowell staring, mouth hanging agape, at whatever that was that Fantasia sang last night.
Is it my imagination, or is Ryan Seacrest's mouth the only part of his face that moves while he's hosting this show? It's like his mouth is a detached entity from the rest of his head.
People who aren't anchored down in the Scripture are prone to worship leaders, and leaders will develop Messiah complexes about themselves. If we listen to Scripture, we know that only God is King, and He alone rules. He alone is glorious; He alone has all the answers. It's our own rampant stupidity that puts men and women up on pedestals and worships them. Conservatives are a little less prone to messiah complexes than liberals, because conservatives mistrust government power as a matter of principle anyway. Liberals think that history is evolving somewhere, and that society can "progress" (even though their definitions of where we ought to be progressing toward are usually anti-God and anti-Christian, and their prescriptions for progress are actually forms of regress). As a result, hard-left liberals see their political leaders as avatars of the Force. But Christians see things clearly. For instance, Barack Obama is no agent of positive change. He's just another vainglorious sinner, a lawyer rather than someone who actually knows how the world works, and a lawyer who believes in Black Liberation Theology at that.
When Churches Close
I'm sorry to hear about the very recent closing of an Evangelical Free Church. People pour their hearts and souls into pioneering a church, and many forces come against you, and it's heartbreaking when that happens. I wonder if sometimes good churches close for the most mundane reasons. An evangelical church recently closed in our region of the country because it never really "caught on" in the community. But you wonder why that was so. Then they got two bad pastors right in a row. Bam, bam, it was too much for the congregation to survive. Another church closes because, honestly, there really is a church on every corner. It's like opening a new burger restaurant in a town where there already are 500 burger restaurants. That's what I mean by "mundane" reasons. Unless you're dazzingly different, what's the attraction? Why is your existence compelling and needed? I recently finished an autobiography of Dr. Don Carson's dad, who was a church planter in Francophone Qeuebec for many years. He struggled and struggled. But Quebec in the 1940s and 1950s was absolutely dominated by a smothering, oppressive Roman Catholicism. And Dr. Carson believes that his father was better suited, in terms of temperament and gifts, to be on-staff under the leadership of a pulpit pastor. How many good men have a vision for a church in their community, but their talents don't quite match their passion? Anyway, I know it's a sad thing when a good church has to close. But maybe the fruitful people there will go elsewhere and hopefully nourish the new places where they worship. The seed goes on, even if a particular greenhouse closes.
The Presidential Election
Barack Obama is planning to run against John McCain. John McCain is going to try and run against Obama and against the Republican Party, at the same time.
American Idol
I watched Americvan Idol Tuesday night, and decided that the song The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack is one of the most beautiful pop love songs ever written.
David Cook really does look like he has a hairy black octopus on his head.
Paula's been unusually cogent this last few weeks.
I loved the shot of Simon Cowell staring, mouth hanging agape, at whatever that was that Fantasia sang last night.
Is it my imagination, or is Ryan Seacrest's mouth the only part of his face that moves while he's hosting this show? It's like his mouth is a detached entity from the rest of his head.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Why Postmodernism Drives Me Crazy
Why does postmodernism drive me crazy? Why are consistent postmodernists impossible to converse with?
It's like trying to nail jello to a wall. How can you have a real conversation with anyone who believes that their words can mean whatever they want them to mean, from any moment from one to the next? We call those people "politicians".
Conversations like that are like talking to Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland, who told Alice that words meant whatever he wanted them to mean. Or, if I should refer to normal rules of logic -- and I don't mean high level, quasi-algebraic formulae of logic. I just mean what most people call normal common sense, or perhaps just narrow it down further to wanting to avoid common fallacies, Well, if you do that then suddenly you're a "rationalist." or a "modernist" (or "insane", an 'idiot", or other kinds of ignorant name-calling) The people who righteously decry name-calling are often the first ones to call names, or at least as bad as the other side.
Well, suppose I am a rationalist or a modernist? Rationalists and modernists can be right! If someone else speaks gibberish, then it's still gibberish, regardless of who identifies it as gibberish -- whether the person is a Communist, a captialist, a whatever, it doesn't matter what they are or who they are. Gibberish is still gibberish. If modernism helps somebody recognize nonsense, then two cheers for modernism. We need a lot less nonsense in our world, and if modernism is a flawed broom that sweeps a lot of it away, then at least it does some good. I don't want to go back to the days where people thought that meat grew maggots.
In the real world, people who knowingly juggle around the meanings of words in mind-flight, or who deliberately use vague terminology in order to avoid detection, should be considered dishonest. We already loathe this practice when we see it in salesmen, and it's infamous in cultists and politicians. We hate it when it's done to us, so we ought not do it to anybody else. Word-shiftiness is no better when applied to matters of religion and philosophy, no matter how earnest you claim to be. Disagree with me if you will, but don't play Dylanesque mind-games with me. It's an insult. You can't have a sincere conversation with somebody who changes the rules of the game while the ball is in the air, just because they can't stand losing.
I don't care about how bad modernism is, or whether or not certain conservative churches are failures. If I ask the question, "Can the Bible be known?", I don't want to hear a preachy sermon about the arrogance of the French Enlightenment, hymns to uncertainty, or a list of all the stupid things that Fundamentalist Baptists say or do. At this stage of the game, I regard that sort of comeback as an evasive maneuver. Cults do this sort of thing whenever you bring up a subject they'd just as soon avoid. They change the subject! It's dishonest. Somebody chattering back social-gospel talking points is no better than somebody else yattering on about how great the Left Behind series is.
Labels are good things. Here is where the hypocrisy of leftists sticks out like a big red nose. I've never read any people more bigoted, knee-jerk, slanderous, and smeary against anyone who disagrees with them more than leftists. They drip with snide condescension, and mock conservatives with glee. And yet they bray like donkeys in protest if you use a categorizing word for them. Such hypocrisy; such dishonesty.
People use categories for good reasons, guys. Scientists, for example. Thank the Lord for all our "modernist" scientists, whose "modernism" invented the cure for polio, create new, life-saving medications each year, find new ways to grow more and better food for the hungry people of the world, and who build our roads and bridges. The very same cultural anthropologists that we like to read -- that we sometimes even cite in praise of postmodernstic condemnations of society -- use classifications and categorizations all the time.
It is impossible to make any sense of knowledge apart from the practice of comparison, contrast, and classification. We have texonomies in biology; we have some sort of taxonomies or classifications in nuclear physics, I would assume. We have taxonimies in everything. There are also taxonomies in the history of ideas. Capitalism and Marxism are opposites. Marxism is a sub-category of Socialism. What postmoderns deride as "coercive labeling" is used by everyone, everywhere,a ll the time, in every discipline. So the complaining about it is senseless. It's like complaining that the local supermarket puts labels on cans to tell you if one can contains beans and the other can contains Spaghettios.
No one is as snowflakily unique as leftist emergents sound like they want to believe they are. You can be classified. You can be categorized. You are not unique. Only God is unique.
If someone's ideas are vague and incoherent, so that they can't explain them clearly, but if they're honest so that this vagueness isn't just a dodge in order to slip past people's radar, then isn't all that vagueness and incoherency a fault? Clarity of expression is a virtue. Vagueness doesn't reflect the Cosmic Reality of the Unknowability of Stuff. It just means that you are a poor thinker.
Jesus Christ and His Bible saved me from a head filled with swirling, meaningless, narcissistic, 1970s-era postmodernist fog. I react to postmodernism the way Martin Luther reacted to Roman Catholicism. Postmodernism is my "Tetzel."
Wrapping ourselves in mental and verbal postmodern fog is bad. It's nothing to be proud of. Postmodernism cripples or destroys people's abilities to have conversations! As a result, postmodernism increases frustration, rage, and (ultimately) fosters verbal and even physical violence. Because, if rationality is a sham, and knowledge is unknowable, then the only other option to settle the peace is the biggest gun. That's all postmodernism leaves you with: violence.
If knowledge is unattainable, then communication is impossible, and nothing is left after that but some sort of force, which is horrible.
It's like trying to nail jello to a wall. How can you have a real conversation with anyone who believes that their words can mean whatever they want them to mean, from any moment from one to the next? We call those people "politicians".
Conversations like that are like talking to Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland, who told Alice that words meant whatever he wanted them to mean. Or, if I should refer to normal rules of logic -- and I don't mean high level, quasi-algebraic formulae of logic. I just mean what most people call normal common sense, or perhaps just narrow it down further to wanting to avoid common fallacies, Well, if you do that then suddenly you're a "rationalist." or a "modernist" (or "insane", an 'idiot", or other kinds of ignorant name-calling) The people who righteously decry name-calling are often the first ones to call names, or at least as bad as the other side.
Well, suppose I am a rationalist or a modernist? Rationalists and modernists can be right! If someone else speaks gibberish, then it's still gibberish, regardless of who identifies it as gibberish -- whether the person is a Communist, a captialist, a whatever, it doesn't matter what they are or who they are. Gibberish is still gibberish. If modernism helps somebody recognize nonsense, then two cheers for modernism. We need a lot less nonsense in our world, and if modernism is a flawed broom that sweeps a lot of it away, then at least it does some good. I don't want to go back to the days where people thought that meat grew maggots.
In the real world, people who knowingly juggle around the meanings of words in mind-flight, or who deliberately use vague terminology in order to avoid detection, should be considered dishonest. We already loathe this practice when we see it in salesmen, and it's infamous in cultists and politicians. We hate it when it's done to us, so we ought not do it to anybody else. Word-shiftiness is no better when applied to matters of religion and philosophy, no matter how earnest you claim to be. Disagree with me if you will, but don't play Dylanesque mind-games with me. It's an insult. You can't have a sincere conversation with somebody who changes the rules of the game while the ball is in the air, just because they can't stand losing.
I don't care about how bad modernism is, or whether or not certain conservative churches are failures. If I ask the question, "Can the Bible be known?", I don't want to hear a preachy sermon about the arrogance of the French Enlightenment, hymns to uncertainty, or a list of all the stupid things that Fundamentalist Baptists say or do. At this stage of the game, I regard that sort of comeback as an evasive maneuver. Cults do this sort of thing whenever you bring up a subject they'd just as soon avoid. They change the subject! It's dishonest. Somebody chattering back social-gospel talking points is no better than somebody else yattering on about how great the Left Behind series is.
Labels are good things. Here is where the hypocrisy of leftists sticks out like a big red nose. I've never read any people more bigoted, knee-jerk, slanderous, and smeary against anyone who disagrees with them more than leftists. They drip with snide condescension, and mock conservatives with glee. And yet they bray like donkeys in protest if you use a categorizing word for them. Such hypocrisy; such dishonesty.
People use categories for good reasons, guys. Scientists, for example. Thank the Lord for all our "modernist" scientists, whose "modernism" invented the cure for polio, create new, life-saving medications each year, find new ways to grow more and better food for the hungry people of the world, and who build our roads and bridges. The very same cultural anthropologists that we like to read -- that we sometimes even cite in praise of postmodernstic condemnations of society -- use classifications and categorizations all the time.
It is impossible to make any sense of knowledge apart from the practice of comparison, contrast, and classification. We have texonomies in biology; we have some sort of taxonomies or classifications in nuclear physics, I would assume. We have taxonimies in everything. There are also taxonomies in the history of ideas. Capitalism and Marxism are opposites. Marxism is a sub-category of Socialism. What postmoderns deride as "coercive labeling" is used by everyone, everywhere,a ll the time, in every discipline. So the complaining about it is senseless. It's like complaining that the local supermarket puts labels on cans to tell you if one can contains beans and the other can contains Spaghettios.
No one is as snowflakily unique as leftist emergents sound like they want to believe they are. You can be classified. You can be categorized. You are not unique. Only God is unique.
If someone's ideas are vague and incoherent, so that they can't explain them clearly, but if they're honest so that this vagueness isn't just a dodge in order to slip past people's radar, then isn't all that vagueness and incoherency a fault? Clarity of expression is a virtue. Vagueness doesn't reflect the Cosmic Reality of the Unknowability of Stuff. It just means that you are a poor thinker.
Jesus Christ and His Bible saved me from a head filled with swirling, meaningless, narcissistic, 1970s-era postmodernist fog. I react to postmodernism the way Martin Luther reacted to Roman Catholicism. Postmodernism is my "Tetzel."
Wrapping ourselves in mental and verbal postmodern fog is bad. It's nothing to be proud of. Postmodernism cripples or destroys people's abilities to have conversations! As a result, postmodernism increases frustration, rage, and (ultimately) fosters verbal and even physical violence. Because, if rationality is a sham, and knowledge is unknowable, then the only other option to settle the peace is the biggest gun. That's all postmodernism leaves you with: violence.
If knowledge is unattainable, then communication is impossible, and nothing is left after that but some sort of force, which is horrible.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
What Is Certainty?
What does it mean to be certain of something? Is it possible for a Christian to achieve certainty about various teachings in the Bible? Roget's II Thesaurus gives these words as synonyms for certainty:
Synonyms for "certainty": assurance, assuredness, certitude, confidence, conviction, positiveness, surety.
It should be understood from sources like Roget's that "assurance" and "certainty" are synonyms. It isn't possible, using standard English, to be "assured" but not "certain". That is a commonplace fallacy called a distinction with no difference. That's like saying you want to order a plate of italian noodles but not pasta, or that you don't want marinara sauce but you do want red sauce (thank you, Yakko, for that illustration!).
It is not true that "certainty" is a synonym for "divine omniscience." I have heard it said that we can't be certain of anything because only God has absolute certainty of everything. Certainty (or its synonyms) is never used that way in the Scripture, and no dictionary or thesaurus defines certainty as omniscience. The only way you could claim that Christians can't achieve certainty is by investing the word "certainty" with an esoteric, private definition.
Even people who deny the possibility of certainty reject their own denial every day, in so many ways. For example, is Dr. David Mills of Cedarville University's philosophy department ever uncertain that he is Dr. David Mills of Cedarville University's philosophy department? Of course not. He never doubts this. He is certain of it, and for good reasons. We wouldn't expect him to be filled with uncertainty about his own identity.
And yet Dr. Mills is a man who, in an on-line rebuttal to D.A. Carson's Staley Lectures regarding the Emergent Church movement, and in other documents, denies the possibility of certainty regarding the Bible -- even though the Bible is a frozen form and so is endlessly examinable, while many of the incidentals of the person David Mills are mutable. For example, the earlier statement would no longer be true if he stopped working for Cedarville and went to work for Taylor University instead. [This document is available on the Werb; just Google "David Mills rebuts Carson's Staley Lecture", or words to that effect]. Dr. Mills denies the possibility of certainty on the presupposition that by claiming certainty you are claiming omniscience. Consequently, he accuses anyone who claims certainty of anything as arrogant and that such a claim is "Luciferian". But since his definition is wrong, and that isn't what certainty means by any normal use of the word, the chief cog in the wheels of the viewpoint breaks down.
Faith, confidence, assurance, certainty -- these words all mean the same thing: the absence of doubt. Absence of doubt toward Him and His Word is God's standard of righteousness. To fall short of certainty/faith, is to sin. This is because the Bible isn't written in a secret, magic code. God as Maker of the human race created the average human mind's learning powers, and His common grace has sustained their baisc powers in spite of the noetic effects of sin. That is why humanity is without excuse (Romans 1:18ff). The same God who created the human mind also inspired the writings of the Bible, and the two (mind and Bible) are coordinated to each other so that we can achieve certainty about Bible content by the diligent use of the means granted us by our Creator.
Synonyms for "certainty": assurance, assuredness, certitude, confidence, conviction, positiveness, surety.
It should be understood from sources like Roget's that "assurance" and "certainty" are synonyms. It isn't possible, using standard English, to be "assured" but not "certain". That is a commonplace fallacy called a distinction with no difference. That's like saying you want to order a plate of italian noodles but not pasta, or that you don't want marinara sauce but you do want red sauce (thank you, Yakko, for that illustration!).
It is not true that "certainty" is a synonym for "divine omniscience." I have heard it said that we can't be certain of anything because only God has absolute certainty of everything. Certainty (or its synonyms) is never used that way in the Scripture, and no dictionary or thesaurus defines certainty as omniscience. The only way you could claim that Christians can't achieve certainty is by investing the word "certainty" with an esoteric, private definition.
Even people who deny the possibility of certainty reject their own denial every day, in so many ways. For example, is Dr. David Mills of Cedarville University's philosophy department ever uncertain that he is Dr. David Mills of Cedarville University's philosophy department? Of course not. He never doubts this. He is certain of it, and for good reasons. We wouldn't expect him to be filled with uncertainty about his own identity.
And yet Dr. Mills is a man who, in an on-line rebuttal to D.A. Carson's Staley Lectures regarding the Emergent Church movement, and in other documents, denies the possibility of certainty regarding the Bible -- even though the Bible is a frozen form and so is endlessly examinable, while many of the incidentals of the person David Mills are mutable. For example, the earlier statement would no longer be true if he stopped working for Cedarville and went to work for Taylor University instead. [This document is available on the Werb; just Google "David Mills rebuts Carson's Staley Lecture", or words to that effect]. Dr. Mills denies the possibility of certainty on the presupposition that by claiming certainty you are claiming omniscience. Consequently, he accuses anyone who claims certainty of anything as arrogant and that such a claim is "Luciferian". But since his definition is wrong, and that isn't what certainty means by any normal use of the word, the chief cog in the wheels of the viewpoint breaks down.
Faith, confidence, assurance, certainty -- these words all mean the same thing: the absence of doubt. Absence of doubt toward Him and His Word is God's standard of righteousness. To fall short of certainty/faith, is to sin. This is because the Bible isn't written in a secret, magic code. God as Maker of the human race created the average human mind's learning powers, and His common grace has sustained their baisc powers in spite of the noetic effects of sin. That is why humanity is without excuse (Romans 1:18ff). The same God who created the human mind also inspired the writings of the Bible, and the two (mind and Bible) are coordinated to each other so that we can achieve certainty about Bible content by the diligent use of the means granted us by our Creator.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Jesus' Opinion of Doubt
What should be our opinion of doubt?
There is an appropriate and reasonable kind of skepticism, that God commands us to apply to anyone who calls themselves a spokesman for Him. We should doubt, and test, all so-called prophetic spirits, because there are many false spirits gone forth into the world. We are never required by God to blindly, uncriticially accept what other people say in his name. The early Christian congregations were empowered to test everything they heard (1 Thessalonians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 14:29). Incautious gullibility is a bad thing.
But doubt toward God and Christ, once He has supplied sufficient proof that it is indeed He speaking, is never acceptable. Jesus Christ never treated doubt toward Himself as a benign stepping-stone along a man's healthful spiritual journey. To speak of doubt in this way is the same as blowing off Jesus Christ, since to praise doubt is to reject Christ's opinion on the topic.
Jesus condemned doubt with His every breath. We do not have even one case where Jesus said anything good, or even neutral, about doubt. We cannot speak positively of doubt, and still claim to either believe that Jesus told the truth, or that the New Testament is a true record of Jesus' teachings.
Matthew 14:31 -- Jesus criticized Peter for doubting Him, as Peter looked around him upon the stormy waves of the Galilee. In fact, Peter's doubt of Christ nearly killed him. It resulted in his plunging straight down into the foaming waves. Peter would have drowned as a result of his doubt toward Christ, if Christ hadn't seized him by the arm and yanked him back up again. Christ expected Peter's faith to override his natural understanding of how the physics of water usually works, and censured Peter for failing at this.
Matthew 17:20, 21:21, Mark 11:22 -- Doubt toward God and Christ results in the inability to accomplish wonders in the world through Jesus' name. Since faith as tiny as a single mustard tree seed is sufficient to move a mountain, then we correctly infer that the absence of that faith leaves the mountains in place, unmoved. As james says in the book of James, chapter 1, let not the doubting man think that he will receive anything from the Lord.
Luke 11:20 -- Christ said that His miracles of exorcism were sufficient to prove that the kingdom of God had come upon the Jews through Him. There should have been no doubt that He was the Messiah. In other words, Christ censured them for lacking certainty about His identity. He had supplied more than enough proof of who He was. Christ called them "fools" (Luke 24:25). This passage also obliterates the God-cursed notion that certainty about God is impossible for men to attain. Jesus Christ was so sure that His miracles clearly established who He was, that He held the Pharisees accountable for their continuing unbelief. Doubt at that point is not an intellectual problem at all, but a deliberate, blameable rebellion of the person's will due to his pride.
Matthew 13:58 -- Christ was unable to work many mighty miracles in His hometown, due to their doubt. Doubt toward Christ caused many sick people to remain sick, and many demon-possessed people to remain demon-possessed. I doubt the parents of the demon-afflicted, and the gravely ill of Nazareth, would praise the value of their doubts toward Christ now. Their doubts kept them sick, and some of them likely died from their doubt. I imagine there were women in Nazareth who became widows, men who became widowers, and children who lost father or mother, because of doubt.
Mark 9:24 -- The father of the demon-afflicted child recognized that his double-minded unbelief toward Christ was a grave problem, and begged Christ to help him be rid of it. This desperate man begged Christ for help in overcoming his inner plague of doubts. No postmodern swooning over the glories of doubt for this loving parent. No, this father regarded his doubts the way an Amazonian rain-forest hunter regards the python that's wrapped around him, trying to kill him.
Mark 16:14 -- Christ sharply criticized the disciples for their unbelief regarding His promised resurrection. Christ treated their doubt as a severe moral fault. The disciples were without excuse, and their doubts were due to their dullheadedness and spiritual stupidity. One of the first things Jesus did after He rose from the dead was call the disciples on the road to Emmaus "fools" (Luke 24:25). The man who doubts the Word of God does so because he is a fool.
Luke 16:27-31 -- Unbelief sent the rich man to the burning Hell. Father Abraham warned the rich fool that if his still-living brothers didn't believe Moses and the prophets, they would not believe the warnings of a resurrected man either. God gave us the prophets so that we could know with certainty that Jesus is the Christ, the only-begotten Son of the living God. You cannot deny the perspecuity of the Bible and still claim to be a believer in the Resurrected Man.
Essential to faith is the foundational principle that the Bible is understandable, since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). To deny the clarity of the Bible -- that is, to make saving faith epistemologically impossible, and at the same time assert that doubt toward Christ is the only reasonable stance toward the Bible possible -- is not a "useful re-examination of one's childhood faith, so as to establish it's personal reality." It is not a pathway to maturity.
When John the Baptist doubted Jesus' identity, we take pity on him because of the terrible situation John was in (Luke 7:18-19). Christ's reply bolstered John's faith, by pointing to the practical evidence of the blind seeing, the crippled walking, the leprous cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dead being raised, and the lowest members of Jewish society hearing the good news of God's salvation (Luke 7:22-23). Christ treated these miracles as more than sufficient for a man to believe. Christ did not tell John that his uncertainty was natural, or an expression of humility, or to embrace it. Jesus treated John's doubt as an enemy of John's soul, and provided the information John needed to erase it.
"Whatever is not of faith is sin" -- Romans 14:23.
There is an appropriate and reasonable kind of skepticism, that God commands us to apply to anyone who calls themselves a spokesman for Him. We should doubt, and test, all so-called prophetic spirits, because there are many false spirits gone forth into the world. We are never required by God to blindly, uncriticially accept what other people say in his name. The early Christian congregations were empowered to test everything they heard (1 Thessalonians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 14:29). Incautious gullibility is a bad thing.
But doubt toward God and Christ, once He has supplied sufficient proof that it is indeed He speaking, is never acceptable. Jesus Christ never treated doubt toward Himself as a benign stepping-stone along a man's healthful spiritual journey. To speak of doubt in this way is the same as blowing off Jesus Christ, since to praise doubt is to reject Christ's opinion on the topic.
Jesus condemned doubt with His every breath. We do not have even one case where Jesus said anything good, or even neutral, about doubt. We cannot speak positively of doubt, and still claim to either believe that Jesus told the truth, or that the New Testament is a true record of Jesus' teachings.
Matthew 14:31 -- Jesus criticized Peter for doubting Him, as Peter looked around him upon the stormy waves of the Galilee. In fact, Peter's doubt of Christ nearly killed him. It resulted in his plunging straight down into the foaming waves. Peter would have drowned as a result of his doubt toward Christ, if Christ hadn't seized him by the arm and yanked him back up again. Christ expected Peter's faith to override his natural understanding of how the physics of water usually works, and censured Peter for failing at this.
Matthew 17:20, 21:21, Mark 11:22 -- Doubt toward God and Christ results in the inability to accomplish wonders in the world through Jesus' name. Since faith as tiny as a single mustard tree seed is sufficient to move a mountain, then we correctly infer that the absence of that faith leaves the mountains in place, unmoved. As james says in the book of James, chapter 1, let not the doubting man think that he will receive anything from the Lord.
Luke 11:20 -- Christ said that His miracles of exorcism were sufficient to prove that the kingdom of God had come upon the Jews through Him. There should have been no doubt that He was the Messiah. In other words, Christ censured them for lacking certainty about His identity. He had supplied more than enough proof of who He was. Christ called them "fools" (Luke 24:25). This passage also obliterates the God-cursed notion that certainty about God is impossible for men to attain. Jesus Christ was so sure that His miracles clearly established who He was, that He held the Pharisees accountable for their continuing unbelief. Doubt at that point is not an intellectual problem at all, but a deliberate, blameable rebellion of the person's will due to his pride.
Matthew 13:58 -- Christ was unable to work many mighty miracles in His hometown, due to their doubt. Doubt toward Christ caused many sick people to remain sick, and many demon-possessed people to remain demon-possessed. I doubt the parents of the demon-afflicted, and the gravely ill of Nazareth, would praise the value of their doubts toward Christ now. Their doubts kept them sick, and some of them likely died from their doubt. I imagine there were women in Nazareth who became widows, men who became widowers, and children who lost father or mother, because of doubt.
Mark 9:24 -- The father of the demon-afflicted child recognized that his double-minded unbelief toward Christ was a grave problem, and begged Christ to help him be rid of it. This desperate man begged Christ for help in overcoming his inner plague of doubts. No postmodern swooning over the glories of doubt for this loving parent. No, this father regarded his doubts the way an Amazonian rain-forest hunter regards the python that's wrapped around him, trying to kill him.
Mark 16:14 -- Christ sharply criticized the disciples for their unbelief regarding His promised resurrection. Christ treated their doubt as a severe moral fault. The disciples were without excuse, and their doubts were due to their dullheadedness and spiritual stupidity. One of the first things Jesus did after He rose from the dead was call the disciples on the road to Emmaus "fools" (Luke 24:25). The man who doubts the Word of God does so because he is a fool.
Luke 16:27-31 -- Unbelief sent the rich man to the burning Hell. Father Abraham warned the rich fool that if his still-living brothers didn't believe Moses and the prophets, they would not believe the warnings of a resurrected man either. God gave us the prophets so that we could know with certainty that Jesus is the Christ, the only-begotten Son of the living God. You cannot deny the perspecuity of the Bible and still claim to be a believer in the Resurrected Man.
Essential to faith is the foundational principle that the Bible is understandable, since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). To deny the clarity of the Bible -- that is, to make saving faith epistemologically impossible, and at the same time assert that doubt toward Christ is the only reasonable stance toward the Bible possible -- is not a "useful re-examination of one's childhood faith, so as to establish it's personal reality." It is not a pathway to maturity.
When John the Baptist doubted Jesus' identity, we take pity on him because of the terrible situation John was in (Luke 7:18-19). Christ's reply bolstered John's faith, by pointing to the practical evidence of the blind seeing, the crippled walking, the leprous cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dead being raised, and the lowest members of Jewish society hearing the good news of God's salvation (Luke 7:22-23). Christ treated these miracles as more than sufficient for a man to believe. Christ did not tell John that his uncertainty was natural, or an expression of humility, or to embrace it. Jesus treated John's doubt as an enemy of John's soul, and provided the information John needed to erase it.
"Whatever is not of faith is sin" -- Romans 14:23.
John D. Caputo's "The Weakness of God"
I recently read the lengthy Introduction to religious-philosophy teacher John Caputo's The Weakness of God. I appreciate the meatiness of the Introduction, since it laid out the fundamentals of where Caputo was going. But I had to return it to the Georgetown College library; I have too many other, more pressing responsibilities than to read the entirety of this particular book right at the moment. I will make these comments, however:
Caputo renounces God as a "blasphemy", in his foreword, when he excoriates the teaching that God is sovereign over disaster as well as blessing. He makes it explicit that he rejects any such concept of God. The rest of the book, judging by his introduction, appears to be a radical deconstruction of the word "God". The Bible makes it clear God has foreordained everything that comes to pass (Ephesians 1:11), including ra (the Hebrew word translated into "disaster"). Caputo unapologetically repudiates the God who revealed Himself to Job in the latter chapters of Job's story. The theme of the book is that there is no strong God, and that any sort of "strong" theology -- a theology that affirms God's sovereignty. omnipotence, and omniscience -- is wrong.
Caputo illustrates well how liberal religious philosophers have no anchor tying them to anything real. The simplest rebuttal to Caputo's atheistic philosophizing would be to issue him a two-word challenge: Prove It. I have no obligation to agree with anything Caputo writes, whether against the orthodox truth about God or in favor of his proposed substitute ("the event", he calls it). So prove it. Just jabbering on and on and on and on, assertion after assertion, may create a gale force wind of steamy hot air, but it means nothing to me. Prove. It.
Captuo, like all postmodern philosophers, destroys his own credibility when he denies any close ties between words, and the reality that those words signify. Caputo, essentially, denies the existence of the referent. He goes to great length to claim (with no proof, and on the basis of an endless stream of godlike pronouncements issued by Himself, John D. Caputo), that the word "God" is not co-terminous with the reality he claims (prooflessly) that it claims to represent -- The Event. But this same break with reality applies to every wordCaputo writes. Caputo in principle denies any sufficient harmony between reality and his own typed words on the printed page for Caputo to either be understood or taken seriously. His few quotes from atheist French philosppher Derrida illustrated to me why so many other philosophers regard Derrida as either a word juggler fooling around with empty-headed, Zenlike wordplay, or a philosophical charlatan not to be taken seriously by serious thinkers.
Anyone who denies the knowability of truth is a gullible fool at best, and needs to be rescued, or a deceptive hypocrite at worst, and needs to be rebuked. Why do you suppose I believe that?
As Caputo breathlessly strives to define what he means by "event" (it isn't God, it's more like a deification of Chaos), he degenerates into gibberish. Caputo slanders the apostle Paul by claiming to be taking up for Paul's alleged belief in a god of weakness, twisting Paul's words about the weakness of God being stronger than the strength of men, from 1 Corinthians. Yet he also admits to read Paul through the lens of Jacques Derrida -- which means he wasn't actually reading Paul, he was molesting the writings of Paul into service to his own existential jackanapery.
And yet page after page of this "event" gibberish goes on, wherein Caputo affirms double negatives, denies his own assertions, and asserts his own denials, is all written using traditional grammar, and is even set out in a numbered list! Dilettantes and apostates might swoon over this sort of thing, but normal people with no ax to grind against God would read this and say, "This writer is either kidding, or he's just plain nuts."
John D. Caputo hates and rejects God, by his own words. His book is a bizarre example of Romans 1:18 and following. Caputo doesn't want to bow down to God, and hates God's sovereignty. So he has invented his own "god" -- some abstracted force he calls "the event" that defies definition. because it is a no-thing. Primitive jungle people build the booga-booga god, in the shape of a snake or a bird, and dance naked around it. John Caputo is a philosophy professor, so he build a god named "event", and dances his published words all around it.
Caputo renounces God as a "blasphemy", in his foreword, when he excoriates the teaching that God is sovereign over disaster as well as blessing. He makes it explicit that he rejects any such concept of God. The rest of the book, judging by his introduction, appears to be a radical deconstruction of the word "God". The Bible makes it clear God has foreordained everything that comes to pass (Ephesians 1:11), including ra (the Hebrew word translated into "disaster"). Caputo unapologetically repudiates the God who revealed Himself to Job in the latter chapters of Job's story. The theme of the book is that there is no strong God, and that any sort of "strong" theology -- a theology that affirms God's sovereignty. omnipotence, and omniscience -- is wrong.
Caputo illustrates well how liberal religious philosophers have no anchor tying them to anything real. The simplest rebuttal to Caputo's atheistic philosophizing would be to issue him a two-word challenge: Prove It. I have no obligation to agree with anything Caputo writes, whether against the orthodox truth about God or in favor of his proposed substitute ("the event", he calls it). So prove it. Just jabbering on and on and on and on, assertion after assertion, may create a gale force wind of steamy hot air, but it means nothing to me. Prove. It.
Captuo, like all postmodern philosophers, destroys his own credibility when he denies any close ties between words, and the reality that those words signify. Caputo, essentially, denies the existence of the referent. He goes to great length to claim (with no proof, and on the basis of an endless stream of godlike pronouncements issued by Himself, John D. Caputo), that the word "God" is not co-terminous with the reality he claims (prooflessly) that it claims to represent -- The Event. But this same break with reality applies to every word
Anyone who denies the knowability of truth is a gullible fool at best, and needs to be rescued, or a deceptive hypocrite at worst, and needs to be rebuked. Why do you suppose I believe that?
As Caputo breathlessly strives to define what he means by "event" (it isn't God, it's more like a deification of Chaos), he degenerates into gibberish. Caputo slanders the apostle Paul by claiming to be taking up for Paul's alleged belief in a god of weakness, twisting Paul's words about the weakness of God being stronger than the strength of men, from 1 Corinthians. Yet he also admits to read Paul through the lens of Jacques Derrida -- which means he wasn't actually reading Paul, he was molesting the writings of Paul into service to his own existential jackanapery.
And yet page after page of this "event" gibberish goes on, wherein Caputo affirms double negatives, denies his own assertions, and asserts his own denials, is all written using traditional grammar, and is even set out in a numbered list! Dilettantes and apostates might swoon over this sort of thing, but normal people with no ax to grind against God would read this and say, "This writer is either kidding, or he's just plain nuts."
John D. Caputo hates and rejects God, by his own words. His book is a bizarre example of Romans 1:18 and following. Caputo doesn't want to bow down to God, and hates God's sovereignty. So he has invented his own "god" -- some abstracted force he calls "the event" that defies definition. because it is a no-thing. Primitive jungle people build the booga-booga god, in the shape of a snake or a bird, and dance naked around it. John Caputo is a philosophy professor, so he build a god named "event", and dances his published words all around it.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Public Speaking About Public Speakers
A fellow blogger has been recently re-evaluating an old post he wrote about a contropversial talk show host, who was terminated from his job. Apparently there are people in the church world with a low opinion of this fellow (who also served in churches), people who claim to have had repeated bad interactions with him, and want others to watch out for Mr. So-and-So.
Should a blogger write about this sort of thing? I think discussion about whatever happens in the public arena is a fair thing. Public writings are fair game. Public speeches (such as my on-line sermons) are fair game. Lawsuits are public information; once that thing gets filed, it's in the public domain.
If someone wanted to criticize one of my on-line sermons, or react against one of my posts here, I don't think I have a right to complain, as long as I'm quoted accurately and not defamed. But I don't think that writing posts in which we use private opinions (even if they're shared from credible people and would turn out to very likely be true if we investigated personally) to help other people protect the American church world from Bad Pastor Mr. So-and-So would be such a good idea. There might be times to do it, but you would need to use a lot of "if"s and "maybe"s and "perhaps." Otherwise it turns into a book review of a book you haven't read; like John Derbyshire's recent National Review rant against Expelled, a movie he knows is an attack on all of Western civilization!....but has never actually seen.
I recently deleted a commbox comment I made, in which I had taken a sarcastic tone. The president of a Christian college was quoted in a newspaper interview that a recent termination of one of their professors (a story which made it into the secular media, as well as at least one professional educational journal) had nothing to do with theology. Assuming the quotation of the president was accurate, and it's possible that it was not accurate, I called that statement a lie. If "lying" includes leaving out information to make a particular action seem as if it was only about "X" when in reality it was about X, Y, and Z, then it was a lie. Maybe there are nicer words I could have used.
I do think that scenario differs from communicating only some of what of true about a situation, or even choosing not to communicate anything at all. For instance, to tell someone that a mutual friend changed churches because they like the music better at the other church, but not pass along that the mutual friend also got turned down by the girl he asked to the prom and as a result felt so humiliated that he couldn't stand coming to church with her anymore...well, as long as the part about liking the other church's music better is right, then I don't think you've done something wrong. We don't have an obligation to publicly spill everything we know, especially embarassing information. There is some line between foolish honesty and being discreet. You're not being "dishonest" by refraining from blabbing everything you know, especially when you have to do so in some official capacity.
Anyway, that college president could have said, and should have said, something like, "Though this incident does have a theological context to it, the college isn't making a statement against Dr. So-and-So's theological beliefs. This had to do with our rules of collegiality", or words to that effect. Of course, it is still publicly known that the college nullified the teacher's tenure, reneged on their promise of employment to him for the coming year even though they knew he was critical of something, terminated him on the basis of accusations made by [allegedly] secret accusers whom he was never permitted by them to face, have thrown much of their faculty into an uproar over the threatened validity of all their teaching contracts, allegedly hid what was going on from the visiting regional accreditation team, and ignored the recommendation of their own Grievance Committee. All of this is now in the public domain, and as such is fair game for commenters pro or con. However, because I re-evaluated and disapproved of my tone, I deleted the commbox comment anyway.
I think the rules for commenting on contemporary situations are:
1. Is the information to which you are responding available in the public domain? For instance, a book reviewer is not obligated to phone up an author prior to reviewing a book. If a false teacher like Brian McLaren is willing to walk out into the public square and write a book, or give a speech, he can't complain about Christian reviewers criticizing it. But blogging about how my wife and I may or may not raise our children is not fair game. Even celebrities have some legal rights to privacy.
2. Is the situation/event/communication relayed accurately? For example, if it should ever come out that the City News or the Professional Chronicle mangled, truncated, or corrupted that college president's quote, and he did in fact say something like what I described, then I would know right away that no lying, deception, or "spin" took place, and I would say so.
3. It's important to distinguish between proof, hearsay, and smears. A couple of years ago, an anonymous blogger named (falsely) "Frank Vance" tried to destroy Ligonier Ministries with all sorts of accusations against its then-president Tim Dick. As I recall, nothing Vance said wrote against Ligonier was ever proven by him/her. He/she wrote a brilliantly-woven web of innuendos, outcries, laments, and finger-pointing calls for repentance. It didn't help Ligonier that, supposedly, Ligonier has a terrible reputation for how badly it has treated its workers over the years. It didn't help that Ligonier executives (R.C. Sproul and others) live in opulent, multi-million-dollar South Florida mansions. It didn't help that Ligonier seemed like a family business, wholly owned and operated by various Sproul relatives. But none of that proved that Ligonier "stole" a certain publishing ministry from a certain particular man, which was the vicious claim "Vance" made at the time. In fact, the man whose cause "Vance" claimed to be championing went onto Challies.com, denounced "Vance", and denied the truthfulness of all of "Vance"'s accusations. That pretty much drove a stake through "Frank Vance"'s black heart; but it should never have heated up to the level it did in the first place.
4. Similarly, posting personal information in order to cause harm is reprehensible. Even if I knew the address or phone number of that college president, I would not post it. I assume that could even be actionable, legally, in some way. Even if not, to communicate it with the hope that some sort of harassment would occur would still grossly unethical.
Should a blogger write about this sort of thing? I think discussion about whatever happens in the public arena is a fair thing. Public writings are fair game. Public speeches (such as my on-line sermons) are fair game. Lawsuits are public information; once that thing gets filed, it's in the public domain.
If someone wanted to criticize one of my on-line sermons, or react against one of my posts here, I don't think I have a right to complain, as long as I'm quoted accurately and not defamed. But I don't think that writing posts in which we use private opinions (even if they're shared from credible people and would turn out to very likely be true if we investigated personally) to help other people protect the American church world from Bad Pastor Mr. So-and-So would be such a good idea. There might be times to do it, but you would need to use a lot of "if"s and "maybe"s and "perhaps." Otherwise it turns into a book review of a book you haven't read; like John Derbyshire's recent National Review rant against Expelled, a movie he knows is an attack on all of Western civilization!....but has never actually seen.
I recently deleted a commbox comment I made, in which I had taken a sarcastic tone. The president of a Christian college was quoted in a newspaper interview that a recent termination of one of their professors (a story which made it into the secular media, as well as at least one professional educational journal) had nothing to do with theology. Assuming the quotation of the president was accurate, and it's possible that it was not accurate, I called that statement a lie. If "lying" includes leaving out information to make a particular action seem as if it was only about "X" when in reality it was about X, Y, and Z, then it was a lie. Maybe there are nicer words I could have used.
I do think that scenario differs from communicating only some of what of true about a situation, or even choosing not to communicate anything at all. For instance, to tell someone that a mutual friend changed churches because they like the music better at the other church, but not pass along that the mutual friend also got turned down by the girl he asked to the prom and as a result felt so humiliated that he couldn't stand coming to church with her anymore...well, as long as the part about liking the other church's music better is right, then I don't think you've done something wrong. We don't have an obligation to publicly spill everything we know, especially embarassing information. There is some line between foolish honesty and being discreet. You're not being "dishonest" by refraining from blabbing everything you know, especially when you have to do so in some official capacity.
Anyway, that college president could have said, and should have said, something like, "Though this incident does have a theological context to it, the college isn't making a statement against Dr. So-and-So's theological beliefs. This had to do with our rules of collegiality", or words to that effect. Of course, it is still publicly known that the college nullified the teacher's tenure, reneged on their promise of employment to him for the coming year even though they knew he was critical of something, terminated him on the basis of accusations made by [allegedly] secret accusers whom he was never permitted by them to face, have thrown much of their faculty into an uproar over the threatened validity of all their teaching contracts, allegedly hid what was going on from the visiting regional accreditation team, and ignored the recommendation of their own Grievance Committee. All of this is now in the public domain, and as such is fair game for commenters pro or con. However, because I re-evaluated and disapproved of my tone, I deleted the commbox comment anyway.
I think the rules for commenting on contemporary situations are:
1. Is the information to which you are responding available in the public domain? For instance, a book reviewer is not obligated to phone up an author prior to reviewing a book. If a false teacher like Brian McLaren is willing to walk out into the public square and write a book, or give a speech, he can't complain about Christian reviewers criticizing it. But blogging about how my wife and I may or may not raise our children is not fair game. Even celebrities have some legal rights to privacy.
2. Is the situation/event/communication relayed accurately? For example, if it should ever come out that the City News or the Professional Chronicle mangled, truncated, or corrupted that college president's quote, and he did in fact say something like what I described, then I would know right away that no lying, deception, or "spin" took place, and I would say so.
3. It's important to distinguish between proof, hearsay, and smears. A couple of years ago, an anonymous blogger named (falsely) "Frank Vance" tried to destroy Ligonier Ministries with all sorts of accusations against its then-president Tim Dick. As I recall, nothing Vance said wrote against Ligonier was ever proven by him/her. He/she wrote a brilliantly-woven web of innuendos, outcries, laments, and finger-pointing calls for repentance. It didn't help Ligonier that, supposedly, Ligonier has a terrible reputation for how badly it has treated its workers over the years. It didn't help that Ligonier executives (R.C. Sproul and others) live in opulent, multi-million-dollar South Florida mansions. It didn't help that Ligonier seemed like a family business, wholly owned and operated by various Sproul relatives. But none of that proved that Ligonier "stole" a certain publishing ministry from a certain particular man, which was the vicious claim "Vance" made at the time. In fact, the man whose cause "Vance" claimed to be championing went onto Challies.com, denounced "Vance", and denied the truthfulness of all of "Vance"'s accusations. That pretty much drove a stake through "Frank Vance"'s black heart; but it should never have heated up to the level it did in the first place.
4. Similarly, posting personal information in order to cause harm is reprehensible. Even if I knew the address or phone number of that college president, I would not post it. I assume that could even be actionable, legally, in some way. Even if not, to communicate it with the hope that some sort of harassment would occur would still grossly unethical.
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