Church Voices

If we don’t do what we are taught in scripture, does it have any value for our lives?  What does it take for us to love our neighbors?

Being in the middle of a high impact natural disaster (I live in a small town on the Mississippi river that will flood most of the buildins on Main St. by next week), I’ve been thinking a lot about questions like the above.  After the second day of sandbagging, I finally had to quit early and so I got some time to finally watch Rambo (the new one) which we’ve had from Netflix for days.  I was surprised at how intensely the film dealt with similar issues and questions I have been thinking on. 

I was surprised to very quickly learn that this Rambo wasn’t really about John Rambo, is about the suffering of the people of Burma.  Stalone often likes to say something meaningful in his films, and for this one he found out about the awful situation (pre-natural disaster, so you can imagine how much worse it is now) of the Burmese under the rule of the military.  Of course, there’s lots of gory action, but I’d still recommend any adult to see it, partly because the gore is not out of place.  In fact, you’ll find some tame pictures on the sites listed below that provide the evidence for the brutatlity visualized for you in Rambo. 

The most convicting part of the film was the dedication to action of the Christians in the film.  One thing that gets me, both locally for our flood, and globally for situations like Burma, is how churches and christians can sit around and do nothing yet people who do not know the grace of God through Jesus Christ do everything from helping to fill sandbags to save a few homes to struggling for the lives of people half a world away.

Father, forgive us for walking on the other side of the street pretending not to see the need of our neighbor.  Create in us a heart of compassion.  Use us in your work to transform us into little Christs.

Watch the movie if you haven’t seen it yet.  In the mean time, check out these websites:

www.uscampaignforburma.org

www.freeburmarangers.org

I found this pasted into an old Bible of mine I opened up this week:

Over and above particular prophecies, the New Testament sees in Jesus Christ the climax and comprehensive fulfillment of the entire Old Testament. It is not simply in a few scattered texts that the ancient witness to Christ is to be discovered; the Old Testament in its entirety testifies to the truth…”
- Carl Henry, God Revelation and Authority, Vol. III, pg. 135

Tim Challies opines:

If we are not spending time immersing ourselves in Scripture and are not obeying what we have learned, we should not expect God to answer our prayers.

Travis Prinzi answers:

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best copy of the Scriptures and the prayer mat and send him into the chapel. I can’t hear him, and I refuse to pay attention to him, because he’s been sinning too much, and I’m not going to answer prayers of someone who has not been doing his duty.’ …

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard the sound of his brother turning the pages of the family Bible. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ’Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has commanded him to go pray and study the Scriptures.’ And the older brother said, ‘Good. I’ve been saying for years that father shouldn’t listen to sinners until they start doing their duty like me.’”That entire mentality is built on the idea that we are received back to God by grace, but after that, we need to start behaving like the older brother in order to get God to listen to us. We become better than the prodigal, and God begins listening to us and answering our prayers. Sorry. Every single time I come to the Father, I’m the prodigal.

I quote Relient K:

I’m giving up on doing this alone now
Cause I’ve failed and I’m ready to be shown how
He’s told me the way and I’m trying to get there
And this life sentence that I’m serving
I admit that I’m every bit deserving
But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair

Many Christians are turned off by apologetics, philosophy, and things of that sort because “evidence leaves no room for faith.” For example, in his popular commentary of 2 Corinthians, N. T. Wright says

“People tell us we’re stupid to go on believing [things by faith]: where is the evidence, they ask? But if everything was obvious, or at least could be proved in some way, where would faith be? We must beware of any suggestion that the Christian faith gives us the kind of ‘certainty’ that people often crave. If I have that kind of certainty, I no longer need to trust God.” (Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians [WJK, 2004], p. 57)

What is especially odd about this is the apologetic value characteristic of Wright’s work. For example, at the end of his massive defense of the historical reliability of the resurrection narratives, Wright himself states that the empty tomb and appearances have an historical probability which is so high as to be “virtually certain,” like the death of Augustus in A.D. 14 or the fall of the Jerusalem in A.D. 70. (The Resurrection of the Son of God [Fortress Press, 2003], p. 710)

Then there are those Christians who, enthusiastic about what apologetics and philosophy can show, smugly assert “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”, or that “even atheists accept things on faith.” I want to suggest both attitudes misrepresent what Biblical faith is.

Faith, in the Biblical sense, is actively placing your trust in what you have reason to believe is true. But don’t stop there. This act is essentially a response to the Holy Spirit, which in turn confers an attitude of confidence, assurance, and, I would say, certainty of what John Edward’s called “the great things of the Gospel.” The problem with both positions above is that they exclude the Spirit’s role in faith by assuming it is only a matter of evidence. Hence, Peter’s exhortation to all those who bore witness to the Spirit’s presence at Pentecost (Acts 2.36):

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified”

“Jesus did not die at the hands of muggers, rapists, or thugs. He fell into the well-scrubbed hands of deeply religious people, society’s most respected members.” -Brennan Manning

The most important issue weighing into who gets my vote in presidential elections is that of abortion. Let me just say on the onset that the legality of abortion is logically posterior the morality of abortion. Only after abortion is shown morally justified or unjustified should its legal status be determined. Furthermore, deciding the morality of abortion is fundamentally a matter of philosophical debate, not scientific (even though scientific considerations factor heavily into one’s philosophical position).

The key issue in the abortion debate is, of course, the status of the unborn; more specifically, the personhood of the fetus. Articulating and defending adequate criteria for personhood is the task of the philosopher. Indeed, the entire concept of personhood is philosophical. No scientific evidence could establish personhood per se. What scientific evidence that is relevant to the abortion debate, however, is contemporary biomedical evidence of human characteristics sufficient for personhood (brain-wave activity, complete genetic blueprint, etc).

And regarding such evidence, let me just say that no rational, sane person can now deny its overwhelming verdict. In the words of the world-famous French geneticist Jerome LeJeune, “to accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion.” Embryonic and genetic research has conclusively demonstrated human characteristics sufficient for personhood are present as early as the moment of conception itself. To say, therefore, that “the human fetus is not a human person until the morning that the mother goes into labor,” as the high court ruled in South Korea last year, is complete scientific poppycock. As one author put it, such an understanding “…is so biologically ignorant that I would call it medieval, except that would be to insult the medievals!” Rather than insult the medievals, therefore, I’ll just call such an understanding premodern, outmoded, and archaic.

In light of such evidence, the law desperately needs to be amended. The inconsistency is simply mind-boggling: In the one courtroom you have the fetus denounced as human yet, in another, you have a man convicted of double-homicide for murdering his pregnant wife. In one hospital room you have doctors vigorously trying to save a five-month old preemie yet, in another, you have them heartlessly aborting a nine-month old, full-term baby. You have someone vote to end the War in Iraq because of the number of U.S. deaths (3700 and climbing) yet, flip his ballot over and vote for abortion (number of abortions in the in U.S. since Iraq War began: 6,286,671 and climbing).

Check out some of these statistics. They’ll blow your mind.

The more we seek happiness, the more our search ends in depression. The more we pursue freedom, the more enslaved we become by our pursuit. The more we hunger for power, the more we starve by serving its limitlessness. The more pleasure we chase the more pain it engenders.

The common woes of life all result from a misguided pursuit for their respective virtues. This is because the virtues of life are necessarily byproducts of fulfillment of a deeper kind. Seeking the virtues for themselves is to put the cart before the horse. Their richest enjoyment is always incidental.

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else…. and all these things will be added to you.
Matt 6.33

“Teacher, of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and most important commandment.’
Matt 22.36-38

Paradoxically, our greatest earthly desires are only satisfiable when we no longer desire them.

Dan Goldfinch hit me with a book meme.

The rules are very straightforward and go as follows: 1. Grab the nearest book (that is at least 123 pages long).
2. Open to p. 123.
3. Go down to the 5th sentence.
4. Type in the following 3 sentences.
5. Tag five people.

This is from 1,000 Places To See Before You Die, by Patricia Schultz:

One of France’s most enchanting country hotels lies on 200-acre working ranch in the heart of the intriguing region known as the Camargue, along France’s southern coast. A microcosm of the area’s wild, rugged scenery, the ranch is both a government-protected bird sanctuary (known for its flock of pink flamingos) and the final frontier for the gardians, some of the last cowboys in Europe. you can ride out on one of the 300 snow-white Camargue horses, or help the herders gather the stocky black Camargue bulls, which are raised for races.

I’m supposed to tag five other people with this thing, but I think I’ll just hit up Christian Penrod and Chad McIntosh.

A 1980 Gallup Poll on religion concluded that

…we are having a revival of feelings but not of the knowledge of God. The church today is guided more by feelings than by convictions. We value enthusiasm more than informed commitment.

One of my favorite questions to ask Christians is “if you could summarize the message of the entire Old Testament in a sentence or two, how would you do it?” You’d be surprised by how…ludicrous some of the answers I’ve heard people give are. It makes me worry that there are a vast many Christians who have never even read the Gospels, for in them Jesus answers essentially that very question. Similarly, go up to your average congregant and ask definitions and explanations for the theological terms and concepts with which they wax eloquent, such as grace, mercy, atonement, justification, Trinity, repentance, incarnation, and most of all, faith. The inarticulate gibberish you’ll likely hear makes it seem like the 400 years of thinking the Church Fathers put into them were all for naught.

Christians treat God’s will as though it were some giant mystery or puzzle. I think there are a number of problems with this view, theological and Biblical. Most confusion about the issue of God’s will I think is due to conflating the following two questions:

(1) What is God’s will?
(2) What is God’s will for my life?

Consider the latter. It is by framing the question of God’s will only in the context of (2) it becomes shrouded in mystery. One problem with seeing God’s will thusly, for all practical purposes, is that it aids us precious little in life. Even if we think we’ve ‘figured out’ a part of God’s will for us, such wouldn’t seem to get us any closer to answering the larger question “what is God’s will for my life.” This is because you have no way of knowing how and if this smaller part even fits into the larger picture—and if you say you do, then you no longer treat God’s will as puzzling or mysterious. Knowledge of God’s will becomes arbitrary at best, more than likely resembling your own will than His. The only difference between the two is a false pretense of prostration.

Moreover, ask yourself “why would God make his will for your life puzzling and mysterious?” If he is really serious about us living accordingly, do you really think he would give it to us in the form of an enigma? If so, could we really be blamed for falling short? That’d be like entering a game without being told the rules only to be disqualified and ejected for reasons unknown to you. In short, the problem with (2) is its narcissism. Once we put the emphasis where it belongs (God) the question of God’s will is pretty straightforward:

For this is God’s will, your sanctification…
1 Thes 4.3ff

Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Rom 12.1-2

God’s will is not some fated course of events. God’s will for your life is the same for everyone’s life: personal sanctification. Holiness. All the rest—what college you go to, who you marry, what pair of socks you wear—I am inclined to say God doesn’t give a crap. This presents the following paradox: The more in accord you are with God’s will, the freer you become in your own will. This is, I think, the gist of Colossians 3.23: “Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men.”