Watching in Wonder.

Did you see Obama's acceptance speech?

As I was watching it, I have to say that I was doing so in wonder. No, not the wonderous stupor all the throngs of followers seem to be in which allows them to abandon reason and project their hopes on a hopelessly empty slate, fooling themselves all the while that this mere man and his party are capable of real change and leading the United States into blissful deliverance.

No, not that kind of wonder.

Neither am I awash with glowing adulations for the (mostly) impotent Republican party which - afflicted with the same money sated disease as the Democrats - has wasted opportunity to govern effectively and do real good in a world that sorely needs it. Of course, that would hinge heavily on any good coming from men who are primarily interested in themselves in epistemological and theological terms.

No, I was wondering, "How much longer can it really last?" As the tension increases from two poles which offer little in real substance overall and are awash in their own egos and the praises of fringe elements that express irrational and untenable worldviews to the detriment of the Human species more and more heat is sure to be produced.

I am reminded of the sobering words of a British subject, Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay written to a Jeffersonian Democrat in 1857. It reads thus:

Holly Lodge, Kensington,
London, May 23d, 1857.

Dear Sir,

… I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both. In Europe, where the population is dense, the effect of such institutions would be almost instantaneous. What happened lately in France is an example. In 1848 a pure democracy was established there. During a short time there was reason to expect a general spoliation, a national bankruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness. Such a system would, in twenty years, have made France as poor and barbarous as the France of the Carlovingians. Happily, the danger was averted; and now there is a despotism, a silent tribune, an enslaved press. Liberty is gone, but civilization has been saved. I have not the smallest doubt that if we had a purely democratic government here the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilization would perish; or order and prosperity would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish. You may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils. I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion. Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World, and, while that is the case, the Jefferson politics may continue to exist without causing any fatal calamity. But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million, while another can not get a full meal. In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes a little rioting. But it matters little. For here the sufferers are not the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class, numerous indeed, but select; of an educated class; of a class which is, and knows itself to be, deeply interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order. Accordingly, the malcontents are firmly yet gently restrained. The bad time is got over without robbing the wealthy to relieve the indigent. The springs of national prosperity soon begin to flow again: work is plentiful, wages rise, and all is tranquillity and cheerfulness. I have seen England pass three or four times through such critical seasons as I have described. Through such seasons the United States will have to pass in the course of the next century, if not of this. How will you pass through them? I heartily wish you a good deliverance. But my reason and my wishes are at war, and I can not help foreboding the worst. It is quite plain that your Government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the Government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy. The day will come when, in the State of New York, a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a Legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a Legislature will be chosen? On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why any body should be permitted to drink Champagne and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-man who hears his children cry for more bread? I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will act like people who should in a year of scarcity devour all the seed-corn, and thus make the next a year not of scarcity, but of absolute famine. There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth; with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions. …

I have the honor to be, dear sir, your faithful servant,
T. B. MACAULAY

H. S. Randall, Esq., etc., etc., etc.

Fun with Embeds

Those of you who know me will instantly see the appropriateness of having a streaming weather radar on my blog. Let's see how this works.

Short thought of the Day: Desires and Pursuits

I am actually going to post consistently for two days in a row. Anyway, I'm in the middle of a discussion with someone online on a forum I frequent concerning whether or not consuming marijuana would be sinful if it were still legal. In short, my answer was yes, and in establishing that answer there was all this technicality about what the Scriptures consider "drunkeness" and his rebuts - but it occurs to me that while obedience is certainly part and parcel to the Christian experience, ("If you love me, you will keep my commandments." Jn 14:15) it strikes me that what might be said of Christianity is that it is (or should be) marked as much, if not more, by our desires and pursuits as our denials and "do-not's." We have a nasty tendency to become either legalist or antinomian, and neither gets at the heart of what a life lived unto God should really concern. Oh, in either camp we might get some of the individual points right, but we miss the beautiful whole. Anyway, I'll keep this short, but read this text from Ephesians 5 and pay attention to what Paul commends as much as what he condemns. See how that hits you.

Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And
walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering
and sacrifice to God. 3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or
covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let
there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of
place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this,
that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an
idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one
deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes
upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not become partners with them; 8
for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as
children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and
right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no
part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is
shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when
anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that
becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from
the dead, and Christ will shine on you." 15 Look carefully then how you
walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the
days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of
the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be
filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20
giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for
Christ.

Hiatus and Hebrew

So it's no secret that I'm not the best when it comes to constantly keeping my blog updated. I confess, I don't really make time to sit down and write out my thoughts for the world to see in this format. There's not a lot of interaction on here, and I prefer mediums like forums which are better for discussion than my own little corner of monologue. Goodness knows I don't need any more time to monologue.

Anyway, the latest news is that I've just finished my Elementary Hebrew class in 6 weeks. After hundreds of vocabulary words, lots of formerly alien rules of grammar and almost mathematic like practice of construction and word breakdown, I've surprisingly really enjoyed it all and am excited to get into direct translation of Jonah, which will be on the docket for the coming semester. Not much else going on, really. We joined a new church plant nearby, and have really been enjoying it - even if it is a bit rough around the edges some days. Too much polish has never been something I enjoyed in a church setting anyway.

God in the Box?

I'll say this at the outset, that what you are about to read may very well convince you I am one of those oh-so-awful fundamentalists everyone likes to deride and to cajole in the safety of those who already think like you. You may be tempted to react as you normally would, down to the nearest banal "christian" cliche that has replaced reason, the veracity of doctrine, and irreplaceable role of truth in the mind of the typical American Evangelical. You may be tempted to cast aside this as a another mere stone-throwing from the glass house of that aforementioned "camp."

Despite this initial inclination, I am going to ask you to take what is often your own advice to those that challenge you on what you are clinging to and to really read. And why is it that I plead? Because the Church is Christ's... and I dearly love, labor, and possibly fight for that which is He loves. If you are His, then despite your internal reactions and desires to remain unprovoked I plead with you to hear what I am about to say.

These past few years I have become increasingly aware of just how much trouble we're in, and God help us, I don't think it's as simple as a lot of those I would typically agree with would say it is. It's been a slow, crock-pot-like process where contents have been added and reduced until what we currently have looks, tastes, and smells very different than what we began with. What is this trouble that I speak of? Well, its beyond me at this point to arrive at some pithy name for it, but I can pick out some things in this recipe that are definitely affecting the taste... and let me say that, from the outset, the taste is beginning to concern me.

There are those who believe that what the Church needs more than anything now is to be relevant. Brothers and sisters, those are empty words. It's how we go about being relevant that makes or breaks us, and it is in this I believe we are charting a course towards a dark and rocky lee-shore. A lot of phrases are thrown around in this debate, a lot of things are said that are, in my view, far from any recognizable truth and close to compromise with a world who is, at it's most basic level, in opposition to the glory of Christ and is by nature hostile to God.

One of these phrases that is tossed around is that some want to keep "God in the box." Look at this quote from a very popular Christian book called "The Shack" which I have recently been encountering frequently:

“In seminary he [The main character, "Mack"] had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice has been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while the educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just a book” (65-66).

There it is. You'll also find it used in some variation by someone trying to defend against anyone who takes a more careful, discerning and analytical approach to reading than those who chiefly long for sentimentality, experience, and frankly the infection of postmodern thought into the Christian worldview. Is the charge sometimes warranted, sure. But usually it isn't, and this quote from The Shack is a pristine example of how it is used as a sloppy ad-hominem attack against the caricature (read: straw-man) of many Godly, Christ centered people who typically have the audacity to assert that God's already set the grounds He wants us to perceive Him, meditate upon, and worship Him under. In a word, someone said "No, you shouldn't go there" and it seems that same Sin that was present in the Garden finds fertile soil today.

If your desire is to have God out of a box, and that "box" is what the special revelation in Scripture says to us about Him, upon what authority do you now assert that you can know anything about Him at all? How do you know it is Him you're now all snuggly with, and not a god of your own making? How does one go about testing every spirit when they have just denied the "key" to the test.

One philosophical conclusion is that you are relying entirely upon a experiential claim for truth. It is "real" and "right" because it made you feel a certain way, which you have presupposed as being good. It made you feel better about something; closer to something. One can't really rebut that claim, but if you are not willing to entertain the idea that what that something is may not be right. Experience alone cannot be your guide to anywhere except to an empty, shallow, and inarticulate kind of Western spiritualism which neither has the power to save, to set free, or to ultimately fill you full of knowledge. We have other religions that testify to this. Of the passionate Jews, Paul says:

"Brothers,my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. - Romans 10:1-4

Belief here, (as in other places which space and time prevent me from mentioning) is tied not to desire, to impression, to feeling, or to zeal, but to knowledge. People are saved by what they come to believe according to what they know, not what they presume to establish themselves. Now, I'll couch that with a big caveat. What we call "knowledge" is not always so. These days, we like to divide it up by saying "head knowledge vs. heart knowledge." That, biblically defined, is false knowledge. Paul is speaking of real knowledge, that which can be known from what has been revealed in Christ and according to the Scriptures.

I submit to you, that there is an agenda at play here. You begin to see it in the modernists/liberals that were confronted by J. Gresham Machen in the early 1900's. You see it in the liberals who set out to erode the reliability and inspiration of the Bible. You see it in the rhetoric of the Open Theists. You see it in the Emergent church movement. You see it in a lot of people who love sentimentality and react violently against anything that threatens that sense of entitlement that proclaims "I know better" based upon nothing more than what they feel.

This "unboxed God" that some are so intent on saying is best, is a god whom is denied his very own voice for the sake of our pitiful opinions. It is a god you cannot really know anything about, or be certain of. An unboxed God is a God whom has said nothing, preferring rather to let us decide on our own. And how do we decide anything? By what we desire; by what we feel fulfills us or benefits us most? How often do you, professing Christian, know what is best for you? Who are you, oh pot, to assert that kind of place in its own making? Once again the death we bought into in the garden shows its head again: "Do not eat" is answered by "Do not tell me what to eat!" That which is given to us as a grace, as a means to surely know and experience God is wrongly called legalism, irrelevant, unloving, and in effect false.

The attack is often made "Do you really think we've got God figured out?!?!" The presumption here is that anyone who asserts he has an idea, regardless of where that idea comes from, is the arrogant one. The "unboxed God" can't be described or elaborated upon in the least detail. He is "mysterious" and "big, but he is also empty and fickle." It's a significant reason why, upon the whole, the Church in North America is in the sorry state it is in. It's why we often waver in seasons you have called "roller coaster" and captured in oh-so-many songs. It's why we come up with extra-biblical contrivances like "back-slidden" and God being "distant." Because so many of us have, at our most fundamental, presuppositional level denied one of the main graces given us to know Him. We have, in our serch for relevantcy, called things like doctrine and theology unimportant if not villifying them altogether. We've got it in our heads that the way to really know God is to do so with experience alone. All that theology and doctrine is just stuff for the intelligentsia and the nasty legalists who want to tell everyone that they're wrong.

If you sent me a picture or description of some kind, and I chose rather to prefer you to appear as something other than who you are, would you ever reasonably say that I knew you or was getting closer to you by my redefinition of who you are according to your own self description? Say you were a blonde, early 30's, with one child and you lived in Oklahoma. You say you like ice cream, musicals, 80's music and reading mysteries. Oh... but I don't like musicals or mysteries, 80's music or ice cream and, well... I prefer to think of you as a lover of classical, of tofu, of horror movies and ethnic non-fiction. While we're at it, I rather prefer to imagine you as a redhead, hip, single and not from a boring place like OK. Maybe you're from Seattle, or Miami, or DC. Nice and metropolitan - cultured and relevant - and not from some rural middle American town. Have I not redefined you by meddling with your specifics? Am I now appealing to who you really are? or who I want you to be? Is any deep relationship possible when I am set to redefine what you have presented to me as who you are? Would I know you if I saw you? Could I describe you accurately to others, so that they would know you?

The answers to those questions are clear. No. And anyone that really knew you would protest your redefinition. They would protest, because it is the only sensible thing to do. It is the right thing to do. Now imagine that knowing you was a matter of life now, and of life later after death.

Who is the one wielding arrogance? The one who appeals to what we do know about you or the one who, for his own desire, finds it appropriate to re-define who you are according to his preferences? Who is the competent one? The one who holds a picture and has the audacity to claim you're not right about a few, perhaps important, details? Or the one who shifts off the picture, preferring creative ways to describe you for whatever agenda they might have?

Arrogance. That's what this "you want God in a box, or a book." business is. It's not humility. It's not creativity. It's changing the answers on the test. It's going off script. It's changing the picture, the resume, the self-description of Father, Son, and Spirit. It is silencing Him because you don't like being told what to think, you don't like the picture, or you'd rather experience something else.

Arrogance. That's what this attacking anyone who asks you to test what you are reading, listening to, or loving is. Some people may be adults, but we are all sinners. The way that seems right to us ends in death. We are not our own, and it is not the picture we like that we're supposed to be conformed into, but that of Christ's. Well, guess what. Having an image defines you, at least to some extent. It puts limits on you. It lets people know who you are versus who you are not. To deny this is arrogance. To assert that we, sinners that we are, have suddenly arrived upon a better way to speak about God than God Himself, through prophets, Jesus, or apostles, is not refreshing or relevant - it's denial and departure.

Humility is when you subject yourself, your ideas, and your person to something else that is greater than you. Rather than proclaim your worth, your entitlement and your relevance, you trust and are are triumphed over by truth despite your own inclinations and ideas. You are a champion for it, that Greater thing. Humility is when you value yourself less and value God more. It;s not about what you feel, but what He says. It's not about your impressions, limited as the necessarily are, but His knowledge. It is not "knowing less" or "affirming less." It is not a triumph of experience over knowledge; of mystery over certainty. Those things are asinine postmodern fabrications.

Read what you want, but seek your own way and desires at your own peril. Perhaps it may benefit you, perhaps it will be your undoing. Are you beyond deception? But if you do so while chastising, casting denials and slandering those whose concern is for Truth and the Picture We Do Have, you are denying the very means God has given you to really know Him. And for what? Feeling warm and close to a contrary and mysterious God you have refused to listen to when He has certainly spoken? Or is it that you sort of deny that He's spoken there at all, and how you really know Him is by what you feel in your gut? Think about that next time you start throwing out one of those cliche's and asserting your rights. What rights do you have, what do you really know anyway apart from that which you have been told?

If you want to discuss individual interpretations on difficult topics, there's room for that, certainly. But it had better be about something real and not just what you think and feel. You had better know what you're talking about, at least when it comes to who God is and who He is not. Maybe that puts me in the camp of "intelligentsia" or "mean Calvinists" or "legalists" or whatever. But I am accountable for what I know, and so are you. There are lives at stake, after all.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. - Philippians 3:17-21

If it's about being in certain "camps." I know who I am going with, and it isn't going to be where my feelings and own ideas usually lead me.

Emergents in Their Own Words.

Recently events have thrust me into places where the influence of the Emergent Church Movement (ECM) have a lot of sway. Unto that end, I've decided to start collecting interviews and products of respective ECM "leaders." Lest anyone truly believe I am a mere "fundamentalist," which is surely the word you will be called at some point when you criticise the trends, theology, or teaching of a lot of these individuals, let me say at the outset that I am not happy with the "status quo" of North American "christianity." I'm not. There is a lot wrong, and if you cannot say that much, at least, then I question your powers of observation and perhaps your credibility.

So, the ECM, upon the whole, asks several good questions. But questions are not enough, and it is perhaps in that statement that I deviate heavily from many "emergents." The truth is, that it is in the answers to those questions that the entire matter is resolved. It is in the answers to those questions that our churches are revitilized and made relevant. It is in the truth that men are made free, not in the mere reveling in doubts, deconstructions, and dissolutions of core doctrines.

So let's begin with what I am starting to refer to as the "hall of fame." I love these, because they are in a format that one cannot claim that I have removed context. I'm not going to comment on them at this time. Just let them speak in their own words.

First, Doug Pagitt.
Part 1.

Part 2


Next, Brian McLaren. A lot comes out of this guy, so this certainly isn't exhaustive. But in his own words, do you buy what he's sellin'?


A snippit of Rob Bell's NOOMA Videos (Dust), critiqued pretty adequately.

The Possibility of Pain

Wedding planning just officially hit DefCon 2. Alarms are starting to sound, obligations are starting to be named, stresses are starting to surmount and tears are starting to fall – at least on Jennifer’s side. I hear that is expected to happen, but it often boggles my mind as to what small daily event may trigger it. There I go thinking male again… it’s not an event, it’s “everything.” Someday I will learn.
Things are not really any different than they were a week ago aside from that – at least the situation isn’t really any different. We’ve both been able to express our grief, frustration, what-have-you a little more succinctly. Emotionally, for me at least the place in life I now find myself seems as though it has begun to coalesce. At least, that is, until something else happens.
We have been learning a lot about grace though. Hard lessons, and hard fought for, but of a purity, rarity, and clarity like few you find dwelling in the sun on the surface. Recently I have been caught up in the parable of the wicked servant, stuck on how much I have been given – even in a season that looks like it might just take away (or at least severely threaten) so much. I worked out about how much the servant owed his Master. It’s around 12 billion dollars, give or take or, in more literal terms, about 160,000 years of a servant’s one denarius’s a day wages. There really aren’t enough lifetimes to live to make yourself square with the house, and you really should consider every chip and card you’re given a blessing. A debt has been paid on my behalf, a wrath and penalty absorbed I could never have brokered for myself. This is the lesson Jennifer and I are now learning in small measures every day; every day we’re reminded that we’re not entitled to even that day being worked out for the better, even though most do.
The possibility of pain is a strange teacher. It warns us of the Hell we’re owed, and the grace we’re given and it can be such an efficient method of delivering its message. Now I see how much I take advantage, how much I assumed had been granted to me. Now, there’s fewer and fewer times I look at Jennifer and am not thankful, and there’s more and more times I notice it when I’m thankless.
The servant didn’t get it. He didn’t even seem to acknowledge his unbelievable debt being removed from being his responsibility. He wasn’t changed by it. He went right on, demanding what he was owed from someone that was indebted to him. He even choked the poor soul. I get it, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t acknowledge just how close I am to that man some days. Things are too busy. Too many people want too much of you, from you, and with you. That’s where that lovely aforementioned teacher comes back in. A prick here or there and you’re right back in slow-motion, sucking the wound it just gave you to remind you to cherish what you have- learning the lessons you should have been learning all along. It is no longer a wonder to me why God ordains suffering to enliven the saints, and my case isn’t anything by comparison to some tales I know, yet. It certainly isn’t finished yet by any means.
I could lose my mom. In my family, that’d be like losing gravity next time you stepped outside. At the very least we’re going to get front row seats to pain’s display of many lesions on behalf of the one Who says He’s doing it for our better and to make us more like Him. So many things could go wrong, and you’ve no guarantee from one moment to the next that they won’t. Yet, in our situation, neither one of us would dare say that we don’t feel held. Such is the beautiful subtlety of grace in the hands of a master surgeon – cutting away what would destroy us and piecing us together when we would otherwise be simply broken.