Great little exercise

Justin Taylor has a great little post to help us how to think through arguments presented in the public square.  I highly recommend going to this post and doing the little exercise recommended.

Learning to love God with our minds...a good path 

Milk many cows...preaching and plagarism

There is an article running over at the Wall Street Journal about the practice of pastors preaching other people's sermons, buying them for a few bucks off of the internet.  This is becoming more and more common today.

There are two edges to this problem.  One is genuine plagiarism, taking another's ideas to be your own.  The other is a natural passing on of teaching - every teacher resembles his master and will no doubt garner phrases, language, and concepts from learning under them.

I think anyone who does teach or preach reads books, articles, sermons, commentaries, etc.  As I once heard Greg Laurie say: We all milk many cows, but make your own butter.  I know if I hear something really good taught somewhere (over coffee, in a home, in church, at a Bible study, on tv, radio, internet, etc) I will at times file the idea mentally and then adapt and use it in appropriate messages.  Every Christian teacher, every person that teaches, is not bringing something completely original to the table.  After all, if we are only teaching our own original ideas, we are not doing our jobs.  We are called to preach the gospel (Galatians 1) and the faith once for all entrusted to the saints (Jude 3) so complete originality in ideas can be disastrous.

Personally, I know of no Christian who teaches who does not multiply the teaching which was given to him.  He does not have footnotes along the way and in every teaching conversation and setting.  Does a pastor who has read 10 John Piper books and uses the phrase or a paraphrase of "the supremacy of God in all things" need to cite Dr. Piper every time he uses the phrase in a Bible study or in other teaching settings?  I think this can get a bit overbearing if we are not careful. 

Yet this article describes a very different phenomenon.  Pastor's going online and buying a sermon for 10 bucks and then preaching it as their own.  This to me has a myriad of problems.  

• It short-circuits a process that God does in the life of the preacher - a pastor who is not wrestling with the text, with God, and with how to bring this to his own people is not experiencing the sermon before bringing it to others. This is a great loss to the pastor's own life.

• It makes preaching a show - we see this is the case. Let the good communicator do the work for you...after all, excellence is what matters.

• It makes men lazy and releases them from some good pressure. I know I pray hard when I know that I have to bring God's word before others. God, help me! should be the cry, not "O Great, Ed Young Jr. has a good one up this week!"

• It deceives the people of God and makes the moment of the sermon somewhat of a farce.
  

• It emasculates the man of God. The pastor says to himself - I cannot preach, I need to have one of those other guys do it for me. How can this man be a prophet to bring the Word to a people? He admits that he has nothing to say.
  

• I think the philosophy of ministry behind this is the same one that drives people to put up video screens across the nation of a "top notch communicator" instead of training and sending men to teach the Bible. We can sell out quickly to the polish and presentation of men as the primary means of teaching the church. We do not think the Word has any power. I am all for excellent preaching; I work to develop my own craft, but belittling the ministry of the Word by making it dependent on the minister's "creativity" shows we have moved quite a distance in our view of preaching.
  

• Additionally, some of the "creative preachers" out there selling sermons for big cash may commit a different sort of whoring than the one who is preaching them.
  

I am sure that many people are going to draw the line in different places on this, but we must draw a line.  I know I have influences on my life and preaching. Many published authors as well as my own pastors over the years from whom I have learned so much. I hope I am the better for it.  I also footnote every sermon I put together along with a bibliography. This is probably excessive, but I am a book geek and like to do it. Plus, I enjoy using my sweet EndNote software :)

I want to be influenced by others teaching in a deep way, many times it becomes part of who you are...but I always want to make my own butter in the secret places with God.

Your Thoughts?  Here is the WSJ Link again in case you missed it above.

(HT - Justin Taylor and Tim Challies) 

Borat...

Borat is the top movie in a America right now. But some Romanians claim they have been exploited and mocked for the sake of a buck.  This is sad.

See this AP story: BREITBART.COM - Now Romanians Say 'Borat' Misled Them

Daddy's girls - Stand for your Princesses!

I just finished reading a great review for a new book by Meg Meeker entitled Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know (Hardcover, Regnery Publishing).  In short the review encourages men, well, to be men.  Not passive, girly men, but men for the sake of their daughters. 

For one, I have two little girls, ages 5 and almost 3. I love those little girls with all my heart and want them to know, see, observe what a man is and what a knucklehead boy is.  I pray they see me love their mother passionately, walk with conviction, have both the tender hand of grace, and the firm hand of discipline.  More than anything, I want them to see my life and not think my prayers and exhortations of them towards our heavenly father are groundless.  Even writing these words humbles me to no end.

Basically the review communicates the reality that Dad's are essential to their little girls destiny.  A few interesting excerpts.

Reality on the ground: 

Simply put, children need their fathers as well as their mothers. This may sound like common sense, but it’s common sense that’s increasingly ignored. Today, more than one-third of American children are born out of wedlock. More than half of teenagers live in homes without married biological parents. Reversing this trend is critical to our society’s long-term health. Policymakers have taken notice, as they grapple with proposals and initiatives aimed at encouraging men to become more actively involved in their children’s lives.

On the need for our daughters to see manhood and masculinity:

Dr. Meeker’s advice to fathers is both reassuring and challenging. She urges men to spend time with their daughters, to listen intently to them, and to realize that they will set their daughters’ expectations for future relationships with men. It’s up to dad to show his daughter what a responsible, humble, courageous, and good man really is. 

Perhaps most encouraging, there is a great exhortation on men being, strong, courageous, men who lead, not just males who are hanging around like extra family furniture.

Dr. Meeker emphasizes that dads don’t have to give up being men to nurture their daughters — in fact, their maleness is their strength:

Most of you out there are good men as well, but you are good men who have been derided by a culture that does not care for you, that, in terms of the family, has ridiculed your authority, denied your importance, and tried to fill you with confusion about your role. But I can tell you that fathers change lives… You are natural leaders, and your family looks to you for qualities that only fathers have. You were made a man for a reason, and your daughter is looking to you for guidance than she cannot get from her mother.

I'll close with some great advice for parents.  Some I personally took to heart:

Many parents make the mistake of trying to stay in the background. Parents fear being too controlling or overprotective. We don’t want to embarrass our daughters… Every model for Playboy is someone’s daughter. Don’t let it be yours. Protect her beautiful body as only you can. She may hate it in the short term, but when she is an adult she will thank you. … Stay in the battle.

Yes indeed, men, battle for your girls.  Make them Daddy's girls, stand for your princesses.  Pray for each other and strengthen one another to this end.  Those little ones are precious gems to our Heavenly Father, let us model his love, strength, and sacrificial servant-leadership in our homes.

UNC Football Developments

 

Good news for the UNC Football Program. When I was in school we were good at both football and basketball...then Mack Brown went to Texas. With Butch Davis hired - the future may look a bit brighter for the baby blue gridiron boys.

I was on staff with Athletes in Action at Virginia Tech when Davis brought the Miami Hurricanes out of a period of probation and back to national prominence.  Maybe he can help the 1-9 Tar Heels.  I'll have to get used to cheering for coach Davis after years of cheering against him as a Hokie!

Priorities...

For those of you in pastoral ministry (and those considering it) I highly recommend the following pdf from CJ Mahaney.  It is a chapter from a forthcoming book, Preaching the Cross. In fact, any Christian will benefit from the read...

The Chapter is entitled The Pastor's Priorities.

(HT - Tim Challies)

Social Justice and Activism: How Does the World Change?

Social Justice and Activism: How Does the World Change?
Complete Version of the Paper in one file (PDF) 

by Reid S. Monaghan 

Introduction

If you look out upon our world for long enough you will quickly realize that it is a bit perplexing. On one hand, the world is filled with great good. Love of family and friends, the beauty of the created universe, the joy of children, a good story,lives changing, and people working together to help one another remind us that there is something good going on here. Yet on the other hand, one need only be awake just a bit to see that we live in a very broken world. Various injustices are perpetrating by one person towards another, wars split nations, tribes and families. Disease and poverty abound and we all will soon die. The majority of human beings, throughout all time find life at once worth living, yet filled with problems and pain. If you talk to anyone: black, white, democrat, republican, atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, indie rocker or hip hopper; all will tell you that the world needs to change. Of course everyone has their own path to the perfect world in their opinion, but then you can’t get people to agree. We realize something needs to be done, but collectively we are at a loss of just what we should do. In a world where injustice is everywhere and whole communities wracked by disease and poverty, people in parts of Western Culture wrestle with how we should respond in while living in the midst of all our comforts, conveniences and excesses. In this short paper I want to look at a few things. First, we’ll survey the biblical mandate in the Scriptures to care about the poor, the outcast, and the oppressed. I will do this by making a brief comment about the vocabulary I am using and how I am using it. I will then do a quick survey of the biblical teaching on the issues. Next I will look at the historical situation of evangelical churches in America related to issues of social justice and ministries of mercy. Finally, I will wrestle a bit with how we might move forward and actually make a difference in communities in need.

How and Why I am using the term “poor”

Before we begin lets quickly clarify a term. In our culture there are a plethora of words which are thrown around in relation to folks that have, for one reason or another, fallen on hard times. People are called “at risk,” “disadvantaged,” “economically challenged,” “underprivileged,” “the have nots,” and the list could go on. In this paper I will most often use the term “poor” for the sake of clarity. By this I mean those at the lower end of the economic spectrum of society; people who struggle or are unable to obtain basic life needs. I want to say up front that people are poor for various reasons. Some are in hard times due to constraints external to themselves; oppression, injustice, sin done against them by others. Some are destitute due to the consequences of their poor choices. In our discussion we are not focusing so much on the causes of brokenness and poverty in the world but rather what should our response be? In some sense the problem of poverty will never be completed removed, indeed, Jesus said “the poor will always be with you.” Yet God does not call people to be passive when needs are all around us. Rather he calls us to love, to engage, to serve, to help others. We should help lead them to trust Jesus and follow him as a disciple. Whether well feed or hungry, whether in poverty or plenty, whether they caused their own problems or it was brought upon them, we are called to serve. So as we begin we must look first at what the Scripture teaches in regards to the poor.

The Biblical Mandate

To provide a real answer the question “What does the Scripture teach about the poor” would be far beyond the scope of this discussion. So it will suffice to say that we will only touch the very tip of the teaching of the Bible on the matter. But let it be certain; the Scriptures are full with a declaration of God’s compassion for the broken; both the spiritually poor and those without earthly means. So what follows is a sample of the teaching of both Old and New testaments on the issue.

Old Testament

In the stipulations and regulations that God gave to the people of Israel for their life as a community, the Lord “built-in” caring for others in the community. The examples are many. First, God set up the practice of gleaning to influence the agricultural practice of the people. Gleaning was the intentional practice of not harvesting the corners of the fields so that the poor could freely access food from these resources (See Leviticus 23:22, Deuteronomy 24:21, Ruth 2). It was a financial resource set apart from the whole for the specific purpose of providing for the poor of the community. Additionally, God set up a year which was known as the year of Jubilee for his people to observe. Every 50 years many things would happen. Land would be returned to its original ancestral owners and those who had been moved by poverty to sell themselves into indentured service (a form of slavery to pay off debts) were to be set free. Although much more can be said, the Jubilee year was about debt relief and restoration.

The picture which emerges in the Old Testament is that the community was to serve the widow, the fatherless, and care for the foreigner/sojourner among them. To ignore this was a great injustice before the eyes of God and the people. In fact, God does something strange in the book of Proverbs; he self-identifies with the poor. Proverbs 14:31 says, “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” How people treat the poor in some way demonstrates their disdain or honor for God. Additionally, God tells Israel that their religion, even when done according to the law of God, smelled bad to him if they were living unjust lives and oppressing others. The prophet Isaiah says some striking things to religious people. I’ll quote just two.

12 “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? 13 Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. 14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. 15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. 18 “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Isaiah 1:12-20 ESV

6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. 11 And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. Isaiah 58:6-12 ESV

The reality of what Isaiah is teaching is shocking. God can hate the religion of his own people when their hearts are wicked and far from him. How is the condition evidenced in the lives of the people? They don’t give a rip about the poor, about justice, about the fatherless, and the widow. They are consumed with themselves and not with the Lord and his ways. He has shown you O’ Man what the Lord requires, to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God; so teaches the prophet Micah.

This is sometimes difficult for us to understand as the Hebrew view of justice is different than the one we understand as Americans. The American view of justice is a person getting their individual rights and having them protected. This will allow the individual opportunity to prosper and do well by her merits, unencumbered by systems which are racist, evil, and discriminatory which are set against her. This of course is not a bad thing, but the biblical version of justice includes our duty to actively care for one another in community. Proverbs 3:27, 28 teach us something of this view: Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, “Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it”—when you have it with you. The Hebrew view of justice had to do with the good of the community, not simply the rights of the individual. This is the view of the Old Testament – the people of God had a duty to the poor among them and those who would be sojourners in their lands. Yet what does the New Testament teach? What about Jesus? We’ll quickly survey just a few passages.

The New Testament

Jesus, when he began his public ministry, read a passage from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” This has spiritual implications, but it cannot be simply made to refer only to spiritual poverty, captivity and oppression. Jesus spent much time with the poor, the people on the margins of society. He himself was a homeless guy as he said to one would be follower: Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Luke 9:58) and he was one about whom the Bible says became poor for our sake in order to make us rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Perhaps the clearest teaching from our Lord on the matter is again a self-identification with the poor by Jesus himself. Matthew 25 teaches us that what we do for the poor, the prisoner, the sick, we do to him. The context of the passage is very interesting as Jesus is teaching that our faith is genuine when it causes us to live for the good of others. I want to ask you to do something; grab a Bible and read Matthew 25:31-46 and then stop to pray. Meditate for a few moments on what is provoked in your soul. I think we would make a mistake if we thought “I need to help people so I’ll be saved and among the sheep.” The point he is making is that those who have been saved by Jesus, by the grace of God, as a gift, received through faith in Christ will actually live their faith out in these ways.

The epistles of the New Testament also lay out things relating to our relationship to the poor. First, the church should always be a body which is a mixture of people from various socioeconomic classes, not simply a place for people of certain social class and standing. I say the church “should” be such a place, because this is not always the case. Yet as we look at some of the New Testament exhortations, we find they assume that our lives will be around each other; rich and poor and everything in between:

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Ephesians 4:28 ESV

Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs…17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. 1 Timothy 6:6-10; 17-19 ESV

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. 26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:22-27 ESV

Though this survey is necessarily brief and incomplete, I do hope more than anything that we see that it simply isn’t an option for us to ignore the problems of our world. The call of God demands us not to simply seek our own consumer and creature comforts in this life, but to get our lives involved with one another. In light of the teaching of Scripture, we just have to give a rip about our world. With all our sin, with all the problems, with the brokenness, with the injustice, we must be willing to seek change – first in our own hearts, and then how we choose to live. But why are many churches doing little to nothing for issues associated with the poor? Well, we all inherit, for good or ill, a certain history, and the churches in an American context have a history. Let’s peel back that curtain a bit.

Historical Situation of Evangelical Churches

The Christian people from their earliest days have always shown a deep concern for the poor. In fact, it was the compassion of the early church for the broken, the outcast and the poor which made its message all the more compelling. The church was birthed into a world which was ruled with the power and glory that was Rome. This was a culture in which “humility” was seen as a weakness. In this culture the weak and poor of society were seen as a burden to be dispensed with. In this world, the early Christians followed the Scriptures teaching to care for “the least of the these” and reached out and helped the hurting which society had left behind. In their book Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett make the remarkable observation about the early church within the Roman Empire: There is no doubt the Christian charity exercised a powerful pull on converts and that Christian dedication to the poor, ill, disabled, imprisoned, elderly, widowed and exploited was notable from the outset. Early bishops, for example, were expected to eat one meal a day with the poor. In the larger cities, the church founded orphanages and the forerunners of hospitals. As the Roman Empire spiraled into chaos, the church expanded its philanthropic role until it was virtually the sole recourse of the poor. “St Gregory is said to have taken his responsibilities so seriously,” recounts Christopher Dawson, “that when a single poor man was found dead of hunger in Rom, he abstained from saying Mass as though he were guilty of his death.”1

In our own context one cannot miss that many of the top humanitarian charities were founded by openly religious people, almost all of them Christian. The United Way, The Red Cross movement, The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, Shriner’s Hospitals for Children and Good Will Industries, just to name a few, were all founded by religious people. Yet today you see many Christian believers almost completely disengaged from service with the poor. Many churches, apart from an occasional service project at the holidays are completely missing from the issues of poverty in our communities. How did this situation arise?

The history of the 20th century has much to bear on the reason evangelicals disengaged from social issues and concerns. During the late 19th century certain ideological movements and intellectual moves caused great turmoil in the Christian world. First, theological movements from Europe were leading the Christian world to critically examine the teaching of the Bible in light of modernistic and scientific assumptions. Many theologians began to a project to “demythologize the faith” and by doing so called into question central doctrines of the faith. This movement greatly affected the seminaries and divinity schools of America as well. Some institutions of learning and their associated denominations began to discard Christian orthodoxy for a new modernized faith which lacked much of the original biblical content. Additionally, theories of Darwinian natural selection and descent with modification gave the secular worldview a creation myth which could explain the existence of complex life apart from a Creator. These moves in the sciences and in biblical studies greatly divided the church. A liberal wing emerged which discarded major Christian doctrines including the virgin birth, the sinless life of Jesus, the truthfulness of Scripture, the death and resurrection of Jesus for our sins, and the necessity of faith in him for salvation. What was left and this modernistic upgrade of the faith? Social concerns. Christianity, for these people, was simply an ethical system which called people to be good, seek justice, and try to make the world a better place. Gone were sin, salvation, the need for Jesus, heaven, hell, and the mission of the gospel. On the other side of things was a consortium of Christians who articulated their stand for what they called “The Fundamentals” of the faith. Christianity was not about a “social gospel” for this group, it was about “the gospel” which was in the New Testament. These people became known as the Fundamentalists (a word that today is used to mean religious wing nut or wack job) meaning that they stood for the fundamentals of Christianity. The fallout of this Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy was substantial. The mainline seminaries and institutions proceeded with a social gospel message, while the fundamentalists withdrew from the mainline denominations and institutions to form their own. The Bible believing fundamentalists repudiated the “social gospel” and set the church on a trajectory away from social concerns towards a concern only for souls. This rejection of the social gospel along, with the rise of premillennial views of the end of the world2, made saving sinners paramount and social concerns almost taboo. To this day, many evangelicals stand in this inherited tradition of being suspect of social concerns at the expense of the gospel.3 There are many, many exceptions to this and we stand in a time where a passion to serve the poor is again igniting among evangelicals, but all too often we still live in this polarized world. Let me illustrate with two stories…two stories which are incomplete views of the “Christian Life.”

Two Incomplete Stories

Brian grew up in a church which would be categorized in the evangelical protestant tradition. He was taught the Bible, believed in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus for sinners like him. He believed in a God who would forgive all who accepted Jesus’ sacrifice on their behalf thereby making them free and forgiven by God. Brian graduated high school, then college, and then off to seminary in the Northeast in hopes of becoming a pastor. During this time he realized that Jesus talked a lot about caring for the poor. Additionally, he did not like the idea that people needed to have faith in Christ in order to be forgiven by God. There are many ways to god he thought. He thought everyone is just good on their own…when they fail, God would overlook it and just forgive everybody. He thought the Bible was a bit foolish in light of modern scientific knowledge and decided he would just believe the parts of it which seemed right to him. As such he abandoned the cross as God’s judgment of sin and the means to forgive sinners and emptied the gospel of all New Testament meaning. He boiled down Jesus’ message to a simple statement: Do good for society, care about the poor, plead the causes of the oppressed. What Brian has done is a tragedy, he has essentially denied the Christian faith into oblivion until what remains is but a social program which tells people to “be good.” No one is saved from sin, death and hell; the gospel has been emptied of its power and the cross has been marginalized. He is living a very incomplete story.

The second story is equally incomplete and tragic in its own way.

Susan grew up in an upper middle class family attending an evangelical protestant church in the suburbs. She embraced Jesus at a young age, but didn’t really understand it all until she began to struggle with an eating disorder in college. During this time she began to party and did some things she deeply regretted. At this point a campus minister’s wife introduced here to Jesus; someone she thought she met as a six year old. She realized that God wasn’t just asking her to be good, but rather in ourselves we were not good. She knew she needed forgiveness and grace from God and that this could not be earned by just being a good girl on Thursday nights. At this point in her life, she bowed a knee to the living Jesus and was saved by Him. She was very thankful, got involved in Bible study, and graduated with a degree in nursing. She married a doctor who grew up in church and loved Jesus and would turn out to be a good Daddy. They support campus ministry, attend church, live in an upper class gated community, have their children in the finest schools, they vote the right way and are generally nice people. Yet, she currently knows nobody who is not a Christian, she never associates with lower class people, and feels no need to do either. While her story may not be as tragic as Brian’s (or is it?) she is living an incomplete story with Jesus.

My guess is that you may feel I am being unfair to Susan and you probably think Brian has lost something precious. Or perhaps you feel the other way about things, but I hope you hear my point.

My concern today is that far too many of us live out a faith that is only part of the biblical portrait. On one side, some Christians rightly take seriously and hold firm to the part of our faith which is about seeing souls saved, people coming to faith in Christ, and the gospel being preached to all nations. We should take this part very seriously as we look at our calling before God. Yet others rightly take seriously the biblical call to do justice for the poor and the oppressed, address the sting of inequality, and work for the overall good of the community. The problem I see is that both sides of the same biblical coin get separated in many of our lives. Some never think of issues of mercy and justice, while others have completely abandoned the biblical gospel which teaches Jesus died to save sinners. God has given us the gospel to preach and it must be contended for and shared with others. Jesus Christ died to save sinners – this is our message. Yet those whom God saves, he puts on mission. This mission involves us sharing this gospel with others and doing justice and expressing ministries of mercy in this world. In fact, these two things, preaching and serving, actually reinforce each other. The gospel heard, is validated by the gospel demonstrated. The gospel demonstrated is understood by what is preached and heard. Jesus is our model here and we dare not miss it. Jesus demonstrated his love for us by dying for us (See Romans 5:1-8), he didn’t just tell us about it. Yet he also didn’t just die and keep the reason he was crucified a big secret. He preached good news to us all, while serving and sacrificing for us all. We have no better model.

One final illustration is in order. I want to mention a passage often left out in these discussions. The apostle Paul, in writing the epistle to the church in Galatia (the book of Galatians), gives us one of the most beautiful articulations of the gospel in Scripture. In this book we learn that we are saved by the work of Jesus on the cross, we are justified by our faith in him alone, and not by the good works we perform. The gospel of the New Testament is NOT “do good things and God will accept you.” Rather, it is that we are sinners, and Christ died for us to make us righteous and bring us back into relationship with God. Yet, Paul writes something in this letter which is equally profound. His statement communicates to us what Christian believers should be eager to do in our communities for those around us. Speaking of his interaction with the apostles James, Peter and John in Jerusalem, Paul recounts the following:

Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. 2 I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. Galatians 2:1-10 ESV

Here we see the two parts of our mission married in the mind of the apostle. Preaching the good news to all people, so that they might be saved from sin, death, wrath and hell AND remembering the poor, something we ought to be eager to do. So we desire to have both of our hands extended and not just one. We desire neither amputation of the preaching of the gospel nor the cutting off of concerns of justice and service to the poor. We do not seek easy solutions, we do not desire to walk in the naivety that a few “service projects” here and there change the world. We also do not see our hope in giving hand outs to others, but rather walking together with them to see lives transformed. People changed by Jesus: rich, poor, and everything in between. So now we continue to ask of the Lord a few questions: “Father, how does the world change?” and “What, Father, shall we do?” Very important questions indeed.

How does the world change?

In looking at our lives and response to God’s call to love our neighbors, even the ones who are not like us racially, economically, or culturally, we want to respond in humility and obedience. Yet before just “doing something” it is good to ask “what to do?” I sometimes lay awake at night asking God this sort of question…just how the world changes. Most of the time a few things come to mind: 1) One life at a time, saved and transformed by the gospel! 2) Through governments and systems changing 3) Through the powers of business, media and the monetary power brokers of the world. All solutions to poverty and helping people usually live in one of these categories or combinations of each. Yet which is the way? I think my answer today is that all three are important. I just want to say, YES! We need to preach the gospel and pray Jesus transforms individual lives, we need to seek justice in our government, laws, and cultural institutions, and we need an army of compassionate individuals working together for the good of all. A simple graphic may be helpful:

 

Communities are most effectively transformed by transformed people who are within them. Outside assistance, help, encouragement, and resources, is important, but unless leaders love and serve among the people real change will be difficult to see. We need to see people working together, just systems and institutions, the church preaching the gospel, non profits providing services, the private sector providing resources, and expertise to on the ground helping leaders within communities. Finally, when we think of our involvement with the poor as Christians, as the church, I want us to think about a few things. These are principles which I see as guides more than anything. But I think as we live these in our lives, we will walk a good path together.

• We should pursue efforts which are personal and embodied. The best way to serve others is by showing up and being there with them. While writing checks, sending items, buying bracelets etc. are good things to do, but being with people is the best way to serve. Even when we think about where to send our money, it is best to partner with organizations that have a presence on the ground with the people. Relocation into communities of need is a very effective way to help a people; many will be called to relocate in order to serve. This is the path that Jesus took with humanity – he came from the Father, to the earth, to walk among us and serve.
• Being humble, servant learners. Showing up to “solve other people’s problems for them” is a bit arrogant and can be perceived as very paternalistic and offensive. When we desire to serve we should be humble, seek to help things which are lead by community leadership, and to learn from others. God has made the world so that the rich need the poor as much as the poor need the rich. Many times it is not the well off who are better off. Many times those who in the eyes of the world “have nothing” may possess everything in the eyes of God. Additionally, serving across economic barriers involves us connecting across racial and cultural barriers. This is a great gift which God gives to all involved. We many times live in ignorance and misunderstanding simply because we never spend time together. We should be humble cultural learners and not cultural supremacists thinking “our way” is the best way.
• Service should be regular and committed. If we are to serve with people, we need to be in relationship with them. It is not a good strategy to show up once a year to serve at the local mission on Thanksgiving. It is a nice hat tip and may make someone feel good about going, but regular involvement from committed people is what really brings change. Non profits and helping ministries always decry the shortage of committed volunteers who want to give their life to others. Be regular and stay committed.
• Service should be holistic and gospel centered. The whole person should be served and ministered to. We do not want to just preach to people, we also want to meet basic needs. We do not want to just meet needs; we want people to know Jesus and the salvation he brings. It concerns me deeply that many Christians who are socially minded today, find it a reasonable path to bury their faith, conceal the gospel, and not see it as part of transforming communities. This is tragic. The unique thing we bring to the table in community development is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who changes lives. Should we pursue holistic ministry serving the whole person’s needs? Yes! But we should pursue gospel-centered holistic ministry.
• Service should be done together in community and through cooperation. One person doing something is great; an army of people doing good things together is better. We want to serve together, cooperate with others, organize for greater impact in the community, and help in ways that local leadership deems necessary. Too often people from a wealthy area think they know what others need in another area of town. Many times they have no freakin clue what they are talking about and offer to help in ways which honestly are not helpful. By following local leadership in cooperation and partnership we can avoid some of the blunders which may be made.
• Finally, service should persist over time. Inversion does not do “service projects” as if we do something once and we are done. We do things which are event oriented for the sake of ongoing relationships to be forged over time. Many times what changes the world are committed women and who men persist in the same direction without wavering over spans of time. Really embracing each other means commitment; the world does not change over night. As the Scriptures encourage us: And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)

I pray this paper continues the conversation we are having with each other, with God, and with our neighbors in the city. May we ever be conscious of the great love Jesus showed for us on the cross, sacrificing himself for our sake, his Fathers glory and our joy. May we live like our great God and Savior by being willing to sacrifice, to suffer, to give time, talent, and treasure for our neighbors in need. May our lives be upside down so that we reject self-centered, self-obsessed, risk-free, and boring lives. Instead, may we give ourselves to the mission of Jesus, who came to seek and save that which was lost, may we share his gospel with our mouths and live it out in a broken world with our hands and feet.

Soli Deo Gloria
Reid S. Monaghan

For Further Reading, Ideas, etc. I highly recommend the following two books:

With Justice for All by John M. Perkins
God’s Neighborhood, by Scott Roley and James Elliot – this book chronicles racial reconciliation and community development efforts which are taking place right here in Franklin, TN.

Notes

1 Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002) 8.

2 This is the view that says the Anti-Christ is coming tomorrow most likely from Eastern Europe, Russia, or the Middle East. You know the guy with the bar code scanner which causes people to freak out all the time about the mark of the beast and the end of the world coming in 1988. This theology can cause some people to “hunker down and wait for the rapture”, buy can goods, stock up on gold and shot guns and hide out from the world. Why build culture, serve the poor, work for justice when the earth will be ignited in a fireball tomorrow? Not all premillennial theology has this effect, in fact I still personally hold a flavor of premillennialism, but unfortunately it has had this effect on some.

3 See the discussion in Robert Lewis, The Church of Irresistible Influence (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001) 208-210. Lewis lists five factors of what historian Timothy L. Smith has termed “the Great Reversal,” the disengagement of evangelicals from social concerns. 1) The evangelical reaction against theological liberalism 2)The division of the gospel into “social” an “spiritual” categories 3)Evangelicals disillusionment with earthly life after World War I 4) The spread of premillennialism 5) The spread of evangelical Christianity among the upper and middle classes who equated it, more and more, with their own personal well-being.

What to do when you come home from Iraq?

Yes, you can throw a party and blow your own buttocks up...yes, America did come from the good people over there in England.

Here is the story on MSNBC: Briton hurt after lighting firecracker in buttocks

The Logic of Gender in New York

New York City is moving to change the way we "define" gender. Instead of seeing people as males or females-New York is seeking to be cutting edge in allowing people to define their own gender, not based on their genetics and plumbing, but on preference.   Here is a little bit from the article New York Plans to Make Gender Personal Choice from the New York Times.

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery.

Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent.

So this is beyond the "normal" sex change operation, to "become" the other sex idea...Now, just by saying "I'm a girl" a man can now act, live, and be legally recognized as a woman in New York City.  This is no less than insanity.  That a culture would sanction such ideas and all the attendant social realities is indicative of the times we live. Think about how parents would be defined, think about how adoptions, "gay" marriage, etc. would be construed.  Gay marriage debates become moot.  Just say you are a woman and marry the dude - done, easy, nice run around of all laws, constitutional articles etc.  How do you set up public restrooms?  Maybe we should just go all the way Europe and remove gendered restrooms all together.  And yes, I know there are movements for that...along with an idea to have a "third" restroom for the "trans" among us.

Many in NY and some mentioned in the article are rejoicing at the news.  One example is cited from an attorney who works for the NY Transgender Rights Org. Here is a direct quote from the article:

Joann Prinzivalli, 52, a lawyer for the New York Transgender Rights Organization, a man who has lived as a woman since 2000, without surgery, said the changes amount to progress, a move away from American culture’s misguided fixation on genitals as the basis for one’s gender identity.

“It’s based on an arbitrary distinction that says there are two and only two sexes,” she said. “In reality the diversity of nature is such that there are more than just two, and people who seem to belong to one of the designated sexes may really belong to the other.”

Is male and female an "arbitrary" distinction?  How do we think the God who made us male and female perceives such movements in the realm of men? (and women and man-women and woman-men)  No mind you I am not naive and I am aware of the instances of of sexual ambiguity at birth due to genetic problems, etc.  But should we take such rare abnormalities as normative examples and proceed to the denial of gender.  I take Mr/Mrs/??? Prinzivalli's last sentence to be non-sense in the clearest sense of the word.  Logically speaking, I simply have no idea what he/she/??? is talking about. 

Let me quote for you what the new enlightened atheists call one of "the bronze age myths" 

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

When reading this along side Mr/Mrs/??? Prinzalli's quote, I simply say - the old school has it right.  I love that bronze age truth.

Challies on the Haggard deal

This is worth the time to take to read...

Link: The Scandal 

I think this guy is a real Ninja...

This is just crazy stuff:

One Bible - Many Books...

One Bible, Many Books
A Brief Meditation on the Christian Canon

Full Version of the Paper in one file (pdf)

Introduction 

Followers of Jesus have always been a people of the Book. The written word of God has shaped the life, teaching and identity of Christian people from the time of Jesus onward. This was simply an extension of the long history of the people of God walking under the direction of the law, the prophets, and the writings of the Jewish Scriptures. Yet a question can arise at many points in a Christian’s journey. Why do we use these books as the authoritative Word of God and not other ancient writings which were prevalent in days past? The question may come from intellectual curiosity about the history of the Bible. It may come about as one learns the deep and rich history of the Christian church. Or as it came most forcefully in my own life, it may come through the interaction with a serious Roman Catholic believer who has different books in his Bible. This brings us directly to the question of the Christian Canon of Scripture – the accepted 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. This paper will be a short treatment of the history of the Bible and which books have and have not been considered authoritative and inspired by God. We will do this by first looking at a definition for the term canon. We will then look briefly at the history of both the Old Testament and New Testament canon. Next we will look at a few controversies surrounding certain Old and New Testament books before closing with a comment on the relationship of the church to the canon of Scripture.

The Word Canon

The Word canon simply means “measuring stick or rule.” The term has been used by the church to describe what counts as a measure or standard for the faith. Simply stated we use the term canon to describe the accepted list of books which have been included in our Bibles. The canon of the Bible actually can be considered in two parts as both the Old and New Testament canons were separately agreed upon in the history of the church. We’ll look briefly at the history of each in turn.

A Brief History of Our Canon

The Old Testament Canon

The Protestant Old Testament consists of 39 books of various types of literature chronicling the creation of the world, human being’s fall into sin, and God’s pursuit of a people for himself–the people who came to be known as Israel. These books consist of various genres ranging from historical narrative, prophetic writing, poetry, proverb and other wisdom literature and even apocalyptic portions. The Jewish people had divided the Hebrew Bible into the Law, the Prophets, and The Writings which contained the books we recognize as the Old Testament. Although the chronology and precise dating is not clear, we do know this was accepted in the Jewish community much before the time of Christ.1 Additionally, there was a Greek translation of the Old Testament in use by people throughout the Roman Empire. This translation, known as the Septuagint (or LXX)2 was used by the early church and contained additional writings to the Hebrew canon which have come to be known as the apocrypha.3 The additional writings were Greek works and were never acknowledged as part of the Hebrew Old Testament. The Jewish community after the fall of the temple in 70 AD confirmed this tradition, never accepting the apocrypha, the additional Greek works as canonical. Although there would be controversy in the future about these additional books, the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible stood solidly confirmed by both Jewish and Christian communities as early as the 1st century AD.

The New Testament

As the early Christian movement progressed forward in gospel mission, many writings began to circulate in the newly established churches.  One of the chief concerns of the apostles and the leaders of the church was to keep false teaching about Jesus and the gospel from leading the people astray.  From the early days of the church the apostles had circulated gospels containing accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus.  As time went on other sects began to circulate false gospels which incorrectly represented and speculated on Christ and his teaching.  Additionally, pseudoanonymous epistles also began to get around causing questions and confusion in the churches.  We know about these works because they are mentioned by name in the writings of church Fathers such as Eusebius of Caesarea and Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon.  The leadership of the church, already using the inspired writings of the New Testament, found it necessary to clearly identify these false writings by recognizing the true inspired works.   The motivation was not to invent “orthodoxy” by giving status to certain books and discarding others; the motivation was pastoral – to clearly identify the false teaching and rule them out for use by the churches.  The process was deliberate and it proceeded over time.   These false gospels and epistles were not in anyway “lost,” they were discarded intentionally.  More will be said on the process of identifying these books below, but let me just say what the process was not.  It was not a bunch of guys sitting in a back room smoking stogies and playing go fish with ancient epistles and gospels.   "I like this one for my agenda; I don’t like that one" was not the process which was engaged.  No, this was a concerted effort, led by the Spirit of God, whereby the books which were inspired by God were identified and the list clarified for the church.  One thing is certain; the church has been univocal on the canon of the New Testament with Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Christians in perfect agreement on the 27 books of the New Testament.  Though many partial lists have survived from the ancient world, we find the completed list in its current form in an ancient Easter letter from Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, which is dated to 367 AD.  There has been no change in the New Testament canon from this time forward.

Controversies and Questions

Though the canon has been established for some time, there have been controversies surrounding it in church history which have been revisited over the course of time. We’ll look quickly at the one main issue surrounding the canon of Old Testament and then make short comment about some issues with the New Testament.

The Apocrypha and the Canon of the Old Testament

Around 382 AD, the early church scholar Jerome (345 – 420) was asked to produce a new Latin translation of the Bible. When he began his work on the Old Testament, he realized that such a translation required a Hebrew original and not the Greek Septuagint and its apocrypha. He clearly identified the Hebrew Old Testament to alone be Scripture setting aside the apocryphal writings as useful “for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church.4 Jerome, however, was not the lone voice on these matters in the 4th century as another looming figure was also to weigh in. This person is well known to us today as the great Latin theologian St. Augustine. Augustine’s view was that since the inspired authors of the New Testament actually quote directly from the Septuagint, that it too must have been inspired by God.5 Augustine’s position was that the Septuagint and the additional books along with it were inspired.6 However, he overlooked one important matter; the New Testament writers never quoted any of the apocryphal books from the LXX, they only quoted the canonical Old Testament. Unfortunately, Augustine prevailed upon Jerome to translate the extra books along with the Latin translation, known as the Vulgate. Ironically, Augustine’s apocrypha differed from the list of apocryphal books found in the LXX and included the following writings: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, additions to Esther and Daniel, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. This canon of the Old Testament was confirmed by the church in council at Hippo (393AD) and Carthage (397AD and 419AD) and his version of the apocryphal books are found in the Roman Catholic Bible today.

During the Protestant Reformation the reformers revisited this issue and sided with the opinion of the early church and that of Jerome.The reformers also reasoned that the Bible of Jesus and the apostles was comprised of the accepted canonical books of the Hebrew Old Testament which did not include the apocrypha.  The Jewish community still does not accept these other books to this day.   This along with the chronologically and factual problems in many of these works caused them to reject these works as Scripture. Much like Jerome, Martin Luther in his German translation of the Bible, included the apocrypha as useful for reading but not equal with inspired Holy Scripture. At the council of Trent in 1546, the Catholic Church responded by stating the following:

If anyone does not accept all these books in their entirety, with all their parts, as they are being read in the Catholic Church and are contained in the ancient Latin Vulgate edition, as sacred and canonical and knowingly and deliberately rejects the above mentioned traditions, let him be anathema

With such condemnation stated clearly, Catholics and Protestants remain divided on this issue of the apocrypha to this day.

Before closing this section on controversy it is important to mention one more issue related to the New Testament. There are also many other gospels going under names like: Peter, Thomas, Judas written after the New Testament period. These along with many other false epistles were rejected by the early church in order to weed out false teaching. With the univocal voice of all Christians on the 27 New Testament books there is no debate on which books actually belong in the canon. There can simply be no lost books from the Bible. However, in recent times some scholars have shown much interest in “other books” from the first four centuries of Christianity.7 Some of these gospels have been discovered recently by archaeology8 and are very interesting studies in antiquity but they are not and were not ever part of the canon.These so called “lost gospels” have been the subject of much speculation and the object of the imagination of many popular fictional works with perhaps the most popular being Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code novel. As these discussions are beyond the scope of this paper, for those interested I’ll refer you to other works in the footnotes.9

The Recognition of Canon – Did the Church Give the World the Bible or Did She Recognize God’s Word?

There is a great difference of opinion between the Protestant view of the canon and that of the Roman Catholic view. This is not relegated to the division about the apocryphal writings which still continue. There is an even more important discussion to be had. Catholics make the claim that the church gave us the Bible in that she collected and ruled the writings to be authoritative Scripture. Catholics claim that the church gave us the canon rather than merely recognizing what God had already done. The following list, modified slightly from that of Norman Geisler, summarizes the different views well.

The Authority Relationship between Church and Canon10

Catholic View 

• The church is determiner of the canon.
  
• The church is mother of the canon.
  
• The church is magistrate of the canon.
  
• The church is regulator of the canon.
  
• The church is judge of the canon.
  
• The church is master of the canon.
  

Protestant View

• The church is discoverer of the canon. 
  
• The church is child of the canon.
• The church is minister of the canon. 
  
• The church is recognizer of the canon.
• The church is witness of the canon. 
  
• The church is servant of the canon. 
  

Both Protestants and Catholics agree on one very important fact which I believe solves the disagreement. Both believe that the canon is inspired by God. If this is so, then the church did not confer authority upon the books, the books themselves already possessed authority on the basis of their author. As the Word of God, the Scriptures carry his authority and thereby stand above the church, not judged by the church. Again, Geisler and Nix summarize this well:

So canonicity is determined by God, not by the people of God. The simple answer to the question “Why are there only these books in the Bible?” is that God inspired only these and no more. If God had given more books through more prophets, then there would be a larger canon. But, because propheticity determines canonicity, only the prophetic books can be canonical.11

One final note on the recognition of Canon is appropriate. Many times a summary of the principles used to discuss the canonical status of a book are given. Though the church did not have a simple list before to check off books, they were guided by certain principles which shed light on the process. The following is a helpful summary of these principles:

• Was the book written by or contain the voice of a prophet or apostle of God? The basic question was whether a book was prophetic or apostolic.  Propheticity determined canonicity. 
  
• Was the writer confirmed by acts of God? A miracle is an act of God to confirm the word of God given through a prophet of God to the people of God.
  
• Does the message tell the truth about God? That is, does the book tell the truth about God and his world as known from previous revelations?
  
• Did it come with the power of God? Another test for canonicity is a book’s power to edify and equip believers.
  
• Was it accepted by the people of God? A prophet of God was confirmed by an act of God (miracle) and was recognized as a spokesman by the people who received the message. Thus, the seal of canonicity depended on whether the book was accepted by the people.12
  

The leaders of the early church were in the position to know the truth about the writings which circulated purporting to revelation from God. They were in the position to recognize false teaching from true. In their calling in pastoral leadership, these men faithfully cast aside heretical books and maintained that which was inspired by God for his church.

Conclusion

I pray this associates you with some of the issues surrounding the Canon of Scripture. God in his providence has given us a standard for our faith – the sixty-six books of the Bible. The Old Testament, the Bible of Jesus and the apostles, and the New Testament, the four gospels and the teaching of the apostles, have been preserved for us and recognized by the churches throughout time. In the Bible we receive the revelation of God and his will for the world, as such this book is the greatest treasure given to the churches. It contains the content of the faith once for all entrusted to the saints. This word is to be preached, studied, meditated on, believed, and lived out in our families and churches today.

Notes 

1 See Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, Rev. and expanded. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1996, c1986), 255.
2 The term Septuagint means “translation of the seventy” referring to a story in the ancient world relating to the origins of the translation. Although not regarded as authentic there is a story that 70 translators worked separately on the translation and miracously arrived at the same manuscript without collaboration.
3 Books in the LXX: 1 Esdras, Judith Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Ben Sirach, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Prayer of Manasseh, additions to the book of Daniel, Bel and the Dragon The Song of the Three Children, and 1 and 2 Maccabees (a history of Jewish revolts in the second century B.C)
4 Philip Schaff, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Second Series Vol. VI, Jerome: Letters and Select Works. (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, 1997), 492.
5 Ibid, St. Augustine's City of God and Christian Doctrine. (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, 1997), 387.
6 Ibid – See Chapter 43 - Of the Authority of the Septuagint Translation, Which, Saving the Honor of the Hebrew Original, is to Be Preferred to All Translations.
7 Two examples would be Elaine Pagels – Beyond Belief – The Lost Gospel of Thomas and Bart Ehrman’s Lost Scriptures
8 Many of these were found as part of the Nag Hammadi Library discovered in Egypt 1945 – for more on this find see http://www.nag-hammadi.com/
9 For a treatment of these books See Darryl Bock’s recent The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville: Nelson, 2006). On the Da Vinci Code see the list of resources available at: http://www.powerofchange.org/blog/2006/04/the_da_vinci_code_1.html
10 Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker reference library (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999), 80.
11 Geisler and Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, 219.
12 This is a shortened version adapted from of Geisler’s entry Bible, Canonicity of in The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker reference library (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999).

Good Counsel

With yet another scandalized church leader in the news, I think we are afforded an opportunity to reflect upon our own lives. I have found Mark Driscoll's and John Piper's exhortations to be both strong and helpful in thinking about such things.   

When doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, nurses, janitors, stock brokers sin...the repercussions for families, lives, and homes are severe.  Yet the scope of people affected by a ministers failure extend even more broadly into many lives.  

Years ago a pastor friend of mine game me a little quote about ministry: Your sins will affect people differently, there is a greater hypocrisy in them.  Pastors are just men, no more, no less.  But their calling is one that requires a particular vigilance and prayer. 

Read the links above yet then take courage and walk forward in his mission...

Quotations...

A few quotes I ran across today which I wanted to share: 

Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but, through you, I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment and offering forgiveness. I turn from my sin and receive you as Savior. Amen.

- Timothy Keller

Observed Duties maintain our credit but secret duties maintain our life

Flavels Touchstone of Sincerity, Works Vol V, p 520. - quoted in Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections, Banner of Truth Edition (Carlisle:PA, Banner of Truth Trust, 2001) 65.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

G.K. Chesterton, "What's Wrong with the World?” (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1910. Reprinted, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 37.

The Nature of the New Atheism

In the coming weeks I will be trickling out (without a production schedule) a blog series I am calling The Nature of the New Atheism - There has been a bit of a buzz in the media as of late about certain thinkers and leaders many are calling the New Atheism (See Wired Magazine Article - The Crusade Against Religion). 

Recently I have finished a book featuring the thoughts of Bad Religion front man Greg Gaffin, read some of the recent articles on the net and ordered another book by the atheist crusader Sam Harris.  I was thinking of reviewing books, engaging the articles, etc. but then had a bit of a different idea this morning.  What I propose I do is to cover some of the main ideological thrusts from the contemporary (really not all that new) atheistic front in our culture highlighting the books/works of various thinkers along the journey.

So in brief, here is my proposed outline with a brief abstract for each of the five stops on the path.  These entries I hope will be written well, but they will not be research papers handling all the breadth and depth of each topic.  My prayer is that they would serve as food for thought and dialog for us in these important times.

1. Naturalism as the overarching meta-narrative - the atheistic worldview has philosophical naturalism as its foundational story.  The view holds that our world is a closed system of cause and effect with nothing existing "outside" of nature and therefore nothing acting upon the world.  No gods, devils, angels, demons, non material human souls, universal ethical truths existing at all.  This is the story from which they spin both their rhetoric and scholarship.
2. Man de-centralizing man - For millennia human beings have thought that they inhabited a special and unique space in the cosmos.  Man, as it were, sat upon a throne at the top of the chain of being, a crowned creature in a world of matter, energy, things living and without life.  The atheistic project has sought to take man off of this throne and remove his crown.  Human beings are but a fortunate convergence of time + matter + chance - a combination which has deceived us into thinking we were special, that we had souls, that consciousness was spiritual, even made in the imago dei.
3. The primacy of the brain and “evolutionary wiring” - With the advent of neuroscience and the continued creation of computational devices which mimic "thinking" (think...your computer) much is being said today which reduces all consciousness to the function of specialized matter, localized inside your skull.  Ethics, language, sin, and religion are now matters of localized brain function brought into play by the work of evolution.  Over the years we were fashioned into "meat machines" whose brains foster all these illusions upon us.  Morality, God, that you are a soul not just a body etc. are just projections of human brains.  This area goes sci-fi really quickly - so we'll have some fun with this one.
4. The Fear of Religion and Anti-Religious crusading - With our world embattled by Islamic terrorism, the secularist is now setting aside his postmodern tolerance (well, only a few loud ones are) to rant against the evils of religion.  Not simply the religion which blows up one's self in the name of Allah, but ALL religions of every stripe.  They are outmoded evolutionary hang-ups that we need to grow out of and become enlightened naturalists who will bring utopia to the earth...or at least get us colonizing space before we blow ourselves to smithereens. 
5. Why Atheism is not the major boogy man it once was - Really, atheism is not the big bad enemy it was in the 19th century Europe and America.  There are new enemies now at the gates of belief.  It remains a formidable element of thought in our culture which we must engage (ie - why I am even writing this) but there are other views which I believe hold more challenge in the future of Christian Orthodoxy. I will discuss the challenges facing atheism and the new boogies in the final post.
   

Now, I just pray I can complete this sucker before Thomas Reid turns 1 in August of 2007.  Seriously, I hope I can crank these out over the next month or so.  Pray for me will you - I promise I have too much to do than try and write this stuff - but what do you do with an idea that grips tightly onto your soul...

Should be fun. 

Why you should use Firefox 2.0

Much talk in the tech world has been of the release of IE 7 and Firefox 2.0.  The two giants of the browser world just were updated and released in the past few weeks. I have IE7 on my home computer and will say that it is a great leap forward for the Mikeysoft crew.  I could use it now if Firefox 2.0 didn't have such a cool new feature that really ain't new.  What is this indispensable feature? Inline spell checking for forms.  ALL bloggers will greatly appreciate this. 

For instance, I currently use Movable Type with Ajaxify which gives me a WYSIWYG interface for my blog entries (with round trip into the HTML code for when I need/want that).  Now with Firefox 2.0 I get inline spell checking in the entries by default, just from the browser. When misspelled words are recognized (real-time as you type), they are immediately underlined with the familiar red squiggle...If you right click on the underlined words, you will get a list of spelling suggestions in the pop-up menu.

This feature alone is such an aid to blogging that Firefox 2.0 is staying my default browser.  

Get it today.  It is free...

Should I buy this book?

My decision is not usually this complicated…but I thought this graphic was funny.  A friend sent it to me; I’m not sure where he gleaned this little masterpiece. I lean towards the old quote by Erasmus as well -“When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”

 

(HT - Brad Tunnell) 

The Bifurcation of Knowledge - where all begins and ends

In the life of my children we are but beginning to lay a foundation in their education.  Thomas is 3 months old so we just talk to him a lot, using full sentences and not baby talk.  Kylene is 2 1/2 so we read to hear a lot, tell her stories which inflame the imagination and are working dialogically on basic questions about life and God.  Kayla is 5 we are working on language skills, basic math, good reasoning skills (logic) but most importantly theology.  More than anything I want Kayla to know where all knowledge and learning begin and end. 

It is a great shame today that education is unhinged from its fountain.  Truth taught about language and math without it bolted to the one reality in which all things hold together.  With my kids, I want a few things:

• I want them to be humble in all their learning
• I want them to love truth and the process of learning
• I want them to understand that they have been given minds to honor and glorify Father, Son and Holy Spirit and serve humanity

So with Kayla we are using a phrase, derived from Biblical truth, to posture her in life for learning: The Bifurcation of Knowledge

Deuteronomy 29:29 - The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Knowing this passage of Scripture gives us great humility - I am finite, I do not know and cannot know all that God knows.  Yet it also gives great hope that knowledge is possible, it is attainable, skepticism is unwarranted and learning not a nihilistic spinning of the brain. Humility and awe for God and learning - this is the goal.

In teaching Kayla I give him the ridiculous big word bifurcation - which means divided in two.  That knowledge itself exists in two categories.  So I ask her a series of questions after quoting Deuteronomy:

• Question: Kayla what is the bifurcation of knowledge?
• Answer: There are secret things and there are revealed things!
  

• Question: What can we know?
• Answer: The revealed things! (Daddy's qualification - we know only a partial amount of the revealed things...but we can continue to learn)
  

• Question: What does God know?
• Answer: The secret AND the revealed things (Daddy's qualification - God knows all things exhaustively and completely)
  

Summary statement: All theology, indeed all knowledge begins with revelation. That a gracious and good God reveals knowledge to us - therefore, there is truth, therefore, we can know, therefore, learning is a glorious way to worship God. This takes us directly to the Christian doctrine of revelation. God IS and God reveals.  His revelation comes to us generally in nature, conscience, design in general, design in us (see J. Budzizewski's What We Can't Not Know: A Guide) and specially - in the person of Jesus Christ who is the fullest revelation of God and in the Bible, the very Word of God which teaches us about God and his decrees.  The Scriptures being the norming norm for our knowledge of God and the primary guide for philosophical conclusions and our scientific and inductive investigations. 

It is my prayer that my kids have knowledge and God very connected...but this is the very difficult task of education...and it takes time.  I need to make more time to dialog, learn, laugh and worship with my kids.  Pray for us Fathers - that we would teach our children.

Do you U2?

What do you think of the U2 Eucharist? See the link and respond below: USA Today - U2 Eucharist

U2 Eurcharist

What do you think of the U2 Eucharist?

Um, didn't he say "Do this in remembrance of ME" Bono makes me think of Jesus I'm cool, just use wine at the table God, please don't destroy the Episcopalians

Current Results

Let judgment begin with the people of God...

Kairos Journal has a little article reporting on the research of sociologist Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center at Boston University.

If you are a subscriber to Kairos Journal, the link to the article is here.  If you are a pastor, person in ministry, etc. You need to subscribe today. Here is the article:

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Prominent Sociologist Reports: Christians Do Not Live Like They Say They Believe

Sometimes Christians can “tune out” the criticisms of unbelievers simply because they are non-Christians. It is a dangerous habit to develop. Very often those outside the Christian community can offer a fresh criticism that the Church needs to hear. Take sociologist Alan Wolfe for example. He serves as the Director of the Boisi Center at Boston University and is a self-described agnostic. Wolfe has spent several years now studying the beliefs of evangelical churches to see if they truly live their lives in ways consistent with what they believe. His method of finding this out was deceptively simple. He went out across America and visited specifically evangelical churches. His observations are put forth with disturbing clarity in The Transformation of American Religion.

Wolfe addresses whether or not evangelicals pose any sort of threat to secularism. His conclusions can be paraphrased in the following way:

Dear fellow secular Americans, I know that you are concerned about the “Religious Right” and their influence in America. You are worried that they possess too much power, and that if they are successful, they will make America into some kind of neo-theocratic state in which religious beliefs stymie the advance of personal moral freedoms in areas such as abortion, religious pluralism, and the normalization of homosexuality in the culture. But fear not, for on the basis of my studies, I have found that while evangelicals claim to believe in absolute truth and an authoritative Bible which governs all of life, they do not live like they say they believe. They say they believe the Bible is the Word of God, but somehow, strangely, the Bible always says what satisfies their personal psychological and emotional needs. They say they worship an awesome God, but their deity is not one to be feared, because He is pretty much nonjudgmental, always quick to point out your good qualities, and will take whatever He can get in terms of your commitment to Him. He’s “God lite”—not the imposing deity before whom Israel trembled at the foot of Mt. Sinai, but the sort of deity who is always there to give you fresh supplies of upbeat daily therapy. And as for God’s people, well, they are really just like everyone else—no more holy or righteous than the rest of us. Put them in the crucible of character, and they’ll fold like a cheap suit. In sum, democracy is safe from religious zealots, because such people don’t really exist in large numbers. So relax, evangelical Christianity in America is as safe as milk.

Here’s how Alan Wolfe describes his project’s conclusions in his own words:

In every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture–and American culture has triumphed. Whether or not the faithful ever were a people apart, they are so no longer; . . . Talk of hell, damnation, and even sin has been replaced by a nonjudgmental language of understanding and empathy. . . . far from living in a world elsewhere, the faithful in the United States are remarkably like everyone else.1

Despite what one might think, Wolfe is torn, and even wistful, about the results he uncovered. He writes: “[W]atching sermons reduced to PowerPoint presentations or listening to one easily forgettable praise song after another makes one long for an evangelical willing to stand up, Luther-like, and proclaim his opposition to the latest survey of evangelical taste.”2 So anxious is evangelicalism to “copy the culture of hotel chains and popular music that it loses what religious distinctiveness it once had.”3

What Wolfe describes is a massive credibility gap for professing Christians. From what he has seen so far, nothing yet has convinced him that what is happening in the evangelical churches is anything particularly authentic. Of course, Wolfe has not visited every church in America. But one wonders how long it would take for him to uncover the kind of countercultural churches which he originally set out to find.

Footnotes :
1 Alan Wolfe, The Transformation of American Religion (New York: The Free Press, 2003), 3.
2 Ibid., 256.
3 Ibid., 256-257.