Church Voices

A few days ago I felt like reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to my 4 year old duaghter.  I figured we would read a chapter or two every night.  My wife was in the room as well and so it ended up being the whole family listening to the story (not that the youngest two knew what was going on).  Last night as I was waiting for everybody to get in the room so that I could continue reading, I realized how enjoyable reading to my family is.  This surprised me, especially since I read to my children quite a lot.  But there is something special about reading a longer story to the entire family (I suppose it also helps that it is a classic children’s story).

If you’ve never done it, try it.  Turn the TV, computer, and game systems off and grab a book for the whole family to enjoy together.

Cincinnati Christian University (formerly Cincinnati Bible College & Seminary) seems to be having a very difficult time lately.  In addition to their public relations problems, I know of at least a few students and former employees who became bitter about their time there.   But it’s not all bad.

Some of my most cherished relationships from my time at CBC are from those who challenged me and sometimes even argued against me.  Thanks to Tim Reed, co-student those many years ago and author on this blog, for not writing me off as a fundamentalist.  Thanks to Dr. Jon Weatherly for the insane intellectual stimulation and wry humor (I wish I had you for more classes, but then I would have had to do more work.)  Thanks to Dan Dyke for the deeply philisophical and yet somehow mostly meaningless (for all practical purposes) conversations.  Thanks to Jamie Smith for pushing us to think beyond our own little world (so that we didn’t all turn out to be fundamentalists).  Thanks to Johnny Pressley for showing us all how ignorant we really were.

Good friends, great teachers.

At the stroke of midnight a group of 12 men gather.  They have gathered to made decisions on policy and doctrine for the entire protestant world. 

Tall man: Alright, I call to order this super secret meeting of the real ultimate Christians.  What’s first on the agenda?

Fat man: The gays.  We need to decide what to do about the gays.

Tall man: Right, right.  Ok people what say you on the issue of the gays.

Skinny man: The Bible is clear they are sinners.

Short man: Absolutely, the Old Testament and New Testament are both clear on the issue.  Sinners.

Tall man: Alright, good, glad we got that cleared up.  Can I have a motion to adjourn?

Man: There’s more to it than that.

Bearded man: What are you talking about?  The scriptures are clear.

Man: They are clear.  But we’ve left off so much more.  How should we minister to homosexuals?  Don’t we need some sort of apology and repentance for our actions towards them?  How should Christians expect the government to act on issues directly related to this? 

Bald man: You’ve clearly abandoned the Bible.

Slight man: You’re not kidding he has.  He’s abandoned the clear mandates of scripture.

Tall man: You can bet we’ll have you removed from your position over this.

Man: I’m not denying homosexuality is sinful, but there’s so much more to this than that.

Fat man: You have lost the way, and are a wolf in sheep’s clothes. 

Pale man: You’ve called good evil, and evil good.

Tall man: You’d better believe this won’t go unpunished.  This meeting is adjourned.  You’ll be hearing from us.

Man: But… I… we didn’t even decide how to live with …. how to treat…. they’re our neighbors…  and… what about those within our churches… and… but…

And….. scene!

Christian apologetics isn’t about arguing that other people are wrong (although it is true that it is intrinsic to apologetics that somebody is wrong).  No, Christian apologetics  is about answering the deep questions of life.  Many times it requires a defense of the answer and sometimes a refutation of another worldview’s answer, but ultimately it is about the answer.  Tim Reed’s recent post points out the dangers and consequences of our faith being defined by our opposition to the answers of others instead of our answers being defined by our faith. 

But apologetics is more than just about having an answer to the deep questions.  James Emery White in his book A Mind for God puts it this way,

As Thomas Oden has observed, the fact of the resurrection may be maintained in the church, but there is often little interest or communication regarding the significance of the resurrection.  Jesus was raised from the dead.  So what?  The Bible is true.  So what?  You can have a personal relationship with God.  So what?

This is what the Christian mind must understand in order to challnenge the world’s mind to consider.  If we cannot rise to this task, we will have lost our place in the most critical of conversations–indeed, the only conversation that matters.

There is a reason for our answers, a goal.  We enter into the conversation seeking life transformation.  This is what Christian apologetics is about, and this is what we are all called to participate in.

This post by John Armstrong, if true, is a bit depressing and a major weakness of American evangelicals. The post in a nutshell:

…suffice it to say—older evangelicalism thrives on opposition. It is the child of fundamentalism and fundamentalism has to have a liberal enemy in order to create new momentum for ministry (sic). There is always one new person to find who denies inerrancy, or who advocates a socially liberal cause. This requires the faithful leader to launch a new barrage of attacks. And when the attacks are launched few care about the truth of what a person said or meant before the attack started. The war must be won.

This is troubling for a number of reasons.

First, it demonstrates a mindset that can never build the kindgom of God. The mindset of a people who are on the look out for internal threats and are focused on ferreting out the alien other within their midst are a people who are not looking out beyond themselves at the places were the kingdom of God has yet to be established in significant ways. The most this mindset can hope to achieve is the status quo.

However, I believe that even the status quo may be beyond the grasp of this mindset because it requires a constant diet of enemies to attack. This means that as time goes on and dragon after dragon is slain eventually new dragons will have to be made, and these new dragons are made by narrowing the definition of evangelical so as to find new groups and individuals to attack. This chips away at the number and talent pool of evangelicals, and if this pattern is followed faithfully enough eventually there’s about 30 true believers left all with a median age of 87.

Of course, this very practical critique doesn’t even begin to touch on the violence done to the gospel itself. In order to create new enemies to banish you have to add to what binds evangelicals together: the gospel. In this particular case that means things like political positions have been added to faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. John Armstrong cites the first call for removal of a particular national figure was over global warming. Jerry Falwell went so far as to preach a sermon on February 25th 2007 entitled “The Myth of Global Warming”. A better question than “what do you believe about global warming” would be “why are you talking about global warming when you should be worshiping God”. There’s a sort of dark irony around the fact that ultimately these additions to the gospel in the name of doctrinal purity will eventually lead to the loss of the gospel as it drowns among these smaller, temporal issues that have been puffed up and elevated.

This mindset also creates an unhealthy fixation on what national figures have to say, that results in the parsing of every syllable uttered by people we’ve never met or impact us in the slightest. Churches, at their core, are local entities serving particular communities. Of course a local church disciplining one of its own with the aim of restoration and done with the love of Christ isn’t going to fire up the troops or get donations pouring in, even if it is the Biblical model of dealing with these sorts of issues. However, the very non-Biblical model of taking aim at a national target with fiery rhetoric meant to destroy and banish in order to fire up the troops and to get those check books to open up a bit is the tactic we see employed far more often. Ultimately, this tactic also destroys the role of the local church, and gives power to individuals whose only qualification is a large platform and who answers to no one. They have everything to gain by acting recklessly and everything to lose by acting with restraint and dignity, and so the unofficial leaders of American Christianity become loudmouths whose goal is to gin up donations by dividing the body of Christ. If that description sounds a bit like racial hucksters who divide the United States at every opportunity… well that’s probably not an inaccurate parallel.

I am extremely grateful for other churches, including other denominations with whom I disagree theologically, because they are witnessing to, connecting with, and growing people that my church would never reach.

Today I had an interesting conversation with a faculty member of the college I attend. She knows about my interest in philosophy, so asks, “Why don’t you come up with a philosophy of happiness? Philosophy seems so depressing. Is there a philosophy of happiness?” One imagines that all she thinks philosophy amounts to is the 20th century existentialism of Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus. So I say, “Oh, there is! It’s Christianity. It’s called the Good News, right? But of course I didn’t come up with that!” “Oh well that doesn’t work for old people,” she said. She continued, “But what about Buddhism? Why can’t we find fulfillment in Buddhism?” I told her that’s even worse because the goal of Buddhism is to transcend all desires, including happiness! So she agreed that that won’t do. But it remains unclear to me why Christianity won’t.

As I reflected on our brief conversation, it occurred to me that Christianity is the only worldview that can really make happiness, in the rich sense of “finding fulfillment,” possible. All others amount to filling a vessel full of holes. In Islam, there is no assurance of salvation. There’s only the capricious judgments of Allah. Who can bear the weight of the burden of karma in Hinduism? Sometimes I think we forget that Christianity is really, really good news.

Luke 2:10-11
But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.

I visited a member of our church in the hospital this evening.  He’d had back surgery this morning and I had gone to the hospital for a few minutes to visit with his family while my premie son was at the doctors’ office.  The wife told me that I didn’t need to make a special trip later just to visit and she repeated herself when I visited this evening.  Now I know that they understand my family situation and that they wouldn’t think twice about me not showing up tonight, or tomorrow for that matter.  But as it turns out, I can’t go tomorrow and so I decided to go visit tonight.  I admit that I visited that couple in the hospital tonight because it is a part of my job.  That’s not the only reason, but for the past six years it has been the driving reason. 

It occurred to me this evening as I was coming home that I was doing no less than a family member would do.  For that matter, I was probably doing no more than a person’s in-laws would do.  And yet the Church is supposed to be a family.  So what would it look like if Christians actually thought of each other as family?

I think we’d certainly spend time with each other at the hospital.  We might even go out of our way to do it.

At some point prognostication from Christians concerning economic doom and gloom makes it difficult to believe that they believe things like “Our father in heaven…. give us this day our daily bread”.

I was supposed to have published an articled entitled “Cthulianity” today but I got busy and it didn’t happen. So to the few who that promise was made I bring you via twitter Fake Pastor Mark [Driscoll].

Its funny cause its about 3/4 true. A sampling:

Only fought 5 guys on the way home after service last night. Then baptized them

Good thing people are getting saved in Seattle. Plan B to equal out the dogs-to-christians ratio was not as pleasant.