The Internet Monk Archives

Saturday Ramblings — September 13, 2014 — Quotes from the Week

“It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point,” [Frank Culbertson] wrote. “The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche.”

• “The Story of the Only American Not on Earth on September 11th”

At the time of the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, three people were not on Earth: Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Tyurin and Vladimir Dezhurov, and American Frank Culbertson, making Culbertson the only American not on Earth during the crisis. At about the time of the collapse of the second World Trade Center tower, Culbertson took video from a window on the International Space Station.

• • •

And here is this week’s word from President Obama about the U.S. plan to deal with terrorist threats we face today in Syria and Iraq, 13 years after 9/11:

“Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.

“. . . Now, it will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIL. And any time we take military action, there are risks involved – especially to the servicemen and women who carry out these missions. But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years. And it is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to international order.”

• President Obama, speech on Sept. 10, 2014

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings — September 13, 2014 — Quotes from the Week”

I Have a Bias

I have read quite a bit about bias recently. Lifeway Research responded to a charge that they were biased. My facebook feed told me of the bias against Obama. This post is not about either of those two articles (so let’s not go there in the comments) but it did get me thinking about my own writing and how I response to issues that arise. To put it frankly:

I have a bias.

This blog has a bias too. We describe ourselves as being “post-evangelical”. That might be best described as being “post-evangelicalism” for we all have a heart for the good news of Jesus Christ, and desire a “Jesus shaped spirituality.”

We get accused of being biased all the time. Some of it founded, but much of it not. Invariably when we/I report something negative we are accused here or elsewhere of being anti-___________ (evangelical/christian/church/faith). If we don’t agree with someone’s version of creationism, we are said to be denying that God is creator. If we don’t agree with the way that someone interprets their bible, we are told that we don’t believe the bible. When I wrote about the relative IQs of Christians and non-Christians I was accused of not being a Christian. If we expect that the evangelical church will decline, we are accused of wishing it to be so.

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Follow-Up: Answers from Andrew Perriman

NOTE FROM CM: Andrew Perriman was kind enough to send some responses to our post outlining his NT interpretation last week and the comments in the discussion. Because they came later than the first discussion, I thought I would post them today as a means of continuing the conversation.

• • •

NATE:
I don’t know- I don’t think rejecting Constantine and imperial Christendom as a legitimate expression of the Kingdom of God is retreating into a theological abstraction. It has caused some to do that, yes. But anywhere the church is, there is God in Christ reigning. It does not require the empire to be Christian, nor does a rejection of Christian empire mean God’s reign must be non-historical.

The answer to his final question is, it seems, bound up in this. If we did not assume Christianity’s expression in Constantine’s empire as legitimate in the first place, than we probably wouldn’t have to ask the question. The answer is clear, to any who belong to the people of God, whether they exert legitimate political influence or not: God reigns on earth as in heaven, and we, in our obedience, are the expression of that reign . . . wherever, whenever, and under whatever conditions. We shall inherit the earth as his co-heirs. But the assumption of political power by the church is not what is meant by that. That just betrays a confusion between the Church and Christ himself, and reckons authority incorrectly.

Unless we can find a Christian political structure that actually, in its authority and practice and expansion of its faith, REALLY looks and smells like Jesus. It’s possible, I suppose. I’m not holding my breath though.

ANDREW:
Nate, it seems to me that the “anywhere the church is, there is God in Christ reigning” argument is itself a consequence of the eventual breakdown of Christendom—or of the rise of modernity. It’s essentially an a-historical argument; it denies the relevance of historical developments; and it is anachronistic to read it back into the ancient period. It could not have been said for Old Testament Israel. In the Old Testament context the kingdom of God is not where Israel is. It is where and when God acts to judge his people, save his people, defeat his enemies, rescue his reputation, and so on. My argument is that the New Testament presupposes just this historically shaped notion of the kingdom of God, in which case I think we have to take seriously the fact that the conversion of the empire meant the ending of persecution (a crucial part of the kingdom vision), the confession of Christ as Lord by the nations, the defeat of the gods of the nations, all to the glory of the God of Israel. These outcomes, it seems to me, are all intrinsic to New Testament apocalyptic expectation.

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Hard-Ass Leadership?

I will resist the temptation to make this a mere rant today. Although everything within me wants to simply mock and shred the article to which I will respond, in this case I don’t think it would be the best approach.

I say this because the subject is not just a matter of Christian silliness, some act in the evangelical circus that is so tacky or tasteless that I can simply dismiss it and move on. No, this goes right to the heart of the American imagination. It reflects deeply held ideas of authority, leadership, masculinity, success, maturity, strength and vitality. As the article shows, there are many who buy into the ethos the author presents, even in the church. In fact, as you will see, some even try to justify it with an appeal to biblical examples.

Simply put, the attitude is, using Leo Durocher’s famous dictum, “Nice guys finish last.”

The corollary? To be a successful leader, you have to be one tough, no-nonsense hard-ass.

The post in question, at Mere Orthodoxy, is Keith Miller’s piece, “The Mark Driscoll School of Leadership.”

I will not comment on the first portion of the post, in which Miller voices his doubts about Driscoll’s detractors and whether the charges against him really bear the weight his critics say they do. That’s another blog post — but not here, not now.

What tied my stomach in knots was what Miller went on to say, comparing Driscoll’s “leadership” with some of the icons in American leadership culture.

First, he quotes accounts about Steve Jobs and uses them to describe the way Driscoll exercised “leadership” at Mars Hill Church:

Before he was deposed, Driscoll had a reputation internally for acting like a tyrant. He regularly belittled people, swore at them, and pressured them until they reached their breaking point. In the pursuit of greatness he cast aside politeness and empathy. His verbal abuse never stopped. From one reported about a half-hour “public humiliation” Driscoll doled out on his staff:

“Can anyone tell me what this initiative was supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued, “So why the f–k doesn’t it do that?”

“You’ve tarnished Mars Hill’s reputation,” he told them. “You should hate each other for having let each other down.”

One journalist describes Driscolls’ rough treatment of underlings:

He would praise and inspire them, often in very creative ways, but he would also resort to intimidating, goading, berating, belittling, and even humiliating them… When he was Bad Mark, he didn’t seem to care about the severe damage he caused to egos or emotions… suddenly and unexpectedly, he would look at something they were working on say that it “sucked,” it was “shit.”

The surprising turn in this article is what Miller goes on to do with this. He justifies it. He affirms comparisons of Driscoll’s behavior with other leaders who’ve acted badly. He even baptizes this kind of behavior as Christian leadership in the style of Paul the apostle. It’s more than OK to be a hard-ass leader. It’s biblical!

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It’s the Culture.

In our fixation upon the trickling down of culture from the beliefs in our minds we have frequently failed to appreciate the ways in which our thinking bubbles up from the world of our bodies, via our imaginations.

• Alastair Roberts

• • •

What I’m going to talk about today is true of most every tradition. But our focus is on the world of evangelicalism in this post.

When we moved to a Chicago suburb in 1983 so I could attend seminary, we spent a couple of months looking for a church to call home. I’ll never forget the feeling I had when we walked into Waukegan Bible Church and attended a service there. It was right. We would fit there. Something in the very atmosphere of the sanctuary communicated compatibility. It smelled right! The decorative elements of the building, the way the people behaved, the way the service was conducted, the music, the teaching, the way people related — all of it reminded us of the kinds of churches we had been involved in during Bible college and the congregation we had served before moving. Before I ever read a statement of faith, before I ever learned of the church’s doctrine or practices, we were “in.” We slipped into that church like fish dropped into a fishbowl and swam in those waters for nine years until we relocated again.

In previous posts about how to define evangelicalism and post-evangelicalism, I have tried to be careful to make clear that what we are talking about is not simply a set of beliefs, but an entire culture. Many of us who were, to one degree or another, comfortable in evangelicalism, are no longer comfortable. And it’s not just a matter of changing our minds.

Serious evangelical spokespersons and teachers try to emphasize the movement’s worldview, its doctrines — in short, its truth. Bebbington’s fourfold model has often been cited: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism, as a basic skeleton upon which the various evangelical churches, missions, and schools form their bodies. And despite that skeleton, those bodies do indeed come with a variety of shapes and sizes and features. Southern Baptists are not Nazarenes, and the Church of God folks around me here in the Midwest don’t look at all like evangelical Presbyterians. Furthermore, just because you attend a non-denominational church doesn’t mean the specific cultural characteristics of your group match the culture of the other non-denom down the street.

Continue reading “It’s the Culture.”

Creation Is a Many-Splendored Thing (3): Genesis 2:4-3:24

If you’re wondering why I’m not using any Hubble telescope images for today’s creation post, it is because in The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder, William P. Brown calls the Bible’s second creation story, “The Drama of Dirt.” The transcendent, cosmic perspective of Genesis 1 changes when you turn the page and begin to read chapter 2. We’ll continue to learn from Brown’s insights as we consider this narrative, adding to them our own observations and remarks.

Creation comes crashing down to Earth in Genesis 2:4b-3:24. God exchanges the royal decree for a garden spade. The God from on high becomes the God on the ground, a down-and-dirty deity. Known as the Yahwist account (J) for its prominent use of the divine name YHWH, this second creation story is altogether different in tone, content, and scope from the first. Compared to the lofty liturgical cadences of its canonical predecessor, this account reads more a Greek tragedy. Methodical progression gives way to narrative bumps and twists. While the Priestly account teeters on the edge of abstraction, the Yahwist story, with its focus on the family, revels in messy drama, the drama of dirt. (p. 79)

Brown specifies some of the big differences in this account from the one in Genesis 1:

It follows a different literary pattern: four scenes, each containing parallel elements, in contrast to the seven-day scheme of chapter 1.
God’s actions are presented as more improvisational, rather than meticulously executed.
Each scene depicts a deficiency, followed by God’s response. Instead of everything being “good” as in Gen. 1, God here responds to the “not good.”
God is therefore not just an Actor, as in Gen. 1, but One who reacts to variables in creation.

SCENE ONE: Genesis 2:4-17
Brown suggests that both Genesis creation accounts begin with a situation of lack, though the “darkness” and “deep” of chapter 1 are now portrayed in dry and barren terms. [John Sailhamer disputes this interpretation, suggesting that “no rain” and “no one to work the soil” anticipate later situations.] The human, who is created first in this account and not at the end of the creative process, is seen, not in the likeness of God but in the imago terrae, the image of earth. His name, “Adam” is a play on the word “ground” (adamah). The earthling is made from the earth, the groundling from the ground. God places him in a lush garden, but this is no Paradise of pure leisure, for God gives the human work to do there. Yet the human is not a mere slave of the gods as in Babylonian accounts. A coworker with God, he tends the garden God himself planted as a priestly steward of God’s property. The ’ādām is free but is not, however, autonomous, for God forbids him to eat of “the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.”

Continue reading “Creation Is a Many-Splendored Thing (3): Genesis 2:4-3:24”

Lisa Dye: Fellowship of the Book

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life…

• Joseph Addison

• • •

A few nights ago I sat reading a book by Thomas Merton. It was The Ascent to Truth to be exact. Suddenly, I came across a passage that made me weep. The reaction seemed strange for its immediacy and its pure sense of intimacy. I cried, not out of sadness, but out of satisfaction.

Merton had articulated a thought so perfectly that I felt in communion with him, with his words, with the Word from which it was born, with his God and mine and with all who had entered into the truth he expressed. It was a fellowship of sorts that I am sure you have felt from time to time. It was a fellowship arising between the pages of a book, making a quick passage through brain synapses and leading into the realm of the Spirit.

These brief moments make us feel taken up into something so much bigger than ourselves and paint a tiny picture, however incomplete, of the fellowship that God desires in bringing his kingdom here … of reuniting heaven with earth, sons and daughters with their Father and brothers and sisters with the whole family of God. He gives us these flashes of light in sunrises and sunsets, in paintings and poetry, in art and architecture, in birth moments and death moments, in suffering and rejoicing, in a look or a touch and in a million different ways.

Personally, I marvel at this. To me, it is a miracle that inanimate things like letters in words, words on pages or pages in books can enliven the most interior part of us. It especially mystifies me that it doesn’t seem to matter how long ago they were written or that the writer is no longer living. Words and paper and people and ink are among many means by which God communicates truth. Although I hunger for truth, I am grateful too that he expresses himself bit by bit. Were we to stand in the full light of his truth without the protections of our dulled human senses and perceptions, we would probably die … at least, I think I would. Yet, given as it is, gently, for our sakes, truth is a unifier and vessel in which we go together because it arises out of our eternal and infinite God. It isn’t just a facet of him or a character quality; it is his essence, not to be separated from his whole essence. When we enter into truth, we enter into him.

Continue reading “Lisa Dye: Fellowship of the Book”

Sunday Formation Talk: Liturgical Prayer

Seven times a day I praise you
for your righteous ordinances.

• Psalm 119:164

Sacred reading, manual work, and liturgical prayer constitute the threefold footing of our daily life.

• Fr. Charles Cummings

• • •

On this Lord’s Day, we continue our consideration of teachings from Fr. Charles Cummings’ book, Monastic Practices. We are exploring what the practices of those who follow cloistered vocations might have to teach people in ordinary callings, so that Christ might be formed more fully in us for our daily lives.

Today, we will be discussing the second of the three foundational daily practices of the monastic life: Liturgical Prayer. Of this practice, Fr. Cummings writes:

In liturgical prayer, as in sacred reading, we encounter the word of God. Our concern is to go from the written or spoken word of God to a living encounter with the Word that is God. (p. 24)

In a monastery like Gethsemani Abbey, where I have had the privilege of taking retreats, there is a daily schedule when the community comes together for prayer. Here is the daily schedule:

3:15am Vigils
5:45am Lauds
6:15am Eucharist
7:30am Terce
12:15pm Sext
2:15pm None
5:30pm Vespers
7:00pm Rosary
7:30pm Compline

In each of these gatherings, the brethren chant the psalms, sing hymns, hear readings from other Scriptures, and respond with words from their particular liturgy. In his book, Fr. Cummings notes that these habitual times of prayer shape the day and infuse Christ’s presence into what is done at other times.

Liturgical prayer should be seen in continuity with all our daily activities, not as something separate from the rest of our day or as a sacred moment stolen from profane time and unconnected with the practical business of living. As we come together to pray and worship we bring with us the concerns we carry throughout the day and we lay them before the Lord of blessing. Liturgical prayer is a center around which our other preoccupations are grouped like concentric rings, so that they are all influenced and blessed by that central core-activity where we encounter the living Christ, to whom nothing is to be preferred. (p. 25)

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Saturday Ramblings: Sentences Edition — September 6, 2014

Today, each entry in Saturday Ramblings shall consist of a single sentence.

I have no idea why.

I also have no idea why anyone would expect Victoria Osteen to say anything that wasn’t silly and theologically unsound.

You know the dog only did this so they could call him the pyromaniac pooch.

I was not a big Joan Rivers fan but she was funny, especially when mocking herself like this: “I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.”

Speaking of silliness, Matthew Paul Turner reviews a movie that claims to prove the Holy Ghost is real by saying the Spirit told its director and his friends to visit Salt Lake City, Monaco, a Korn concert, and Varanasi, India so they could record his powerful presence in their experiences in those places.

On the other side, atheists and skeptics are marking the death of Victor Stenger, who wrote a book arguing that God is a failed hypothesis, that “scientific observations actually point to his nonexistence.”

The always thoughtful David Brooks writes about why recent videos showing ISIS beheading people are so revolting to us, grounding his point in the common teaching of the Abrahamic faiths that human beings are both body and spirit and that “the human body is a transcendent temple . . . worthy of respect.”

Funny-Best-Sayings-Life-Humorous-Hilarious-Quote-32 At the outset of the American football season, one life-long football fan has written a “reluctant manifesto” full of “obnoxious opinions,” with the thesis that “our allegiance to football legitimizes and even fosters within us a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia.”

At the outset of the American football season, one life-long football fan has written “an elegiac account” recounting his appreciation for football and the life lessons it teaches, calling it “a gift to American culture.”

Finally, definitive proof emerged this week that Pope Francis is indeed Catholic, when the pontiff tweeted, “The Christian who does not feel that the Virgin Mary is his or her mother is an orphan.”

By the way, the “Christian news” source of the last article actually has a tab linking to a page called “Apostasy.”

Last year it was Israel, this year a plague of locusts is overwhelming Madagascar.

At 85 feet long and 65 tons, the newly discovered dinosaur Dreadnoughtus schrani was not even yet full-grown!

Here is a story both serious and uplifting, containing this wondrous and marvelous sentence: “Fr. Themi Adams [a Greek Orthodox priest] was once a member of Australian rock group, The Flies, and once shared the stage with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, but after a dramatic conversion, became a missionary to West Africa, and is now facing the greatest challenge of his life – Ebola — which is sweeping his adopted country and causing panic, death and destruction.”

I enjoyed these fresh insights on the parable of the Prodigal Son.

A Palestinian Christian family that has long promoted non-violence in the West Bank, saying, “Nobody can force us to hate,” and “We refuse to be enemies,” is contending with the Israeli military and settler groups in an attempt to hold on to the land they have owned for 98 years.

The Russians recently sent a team of geckos (geckonauts!) into space to, uh, get to know each other (in the biblical sense), but they apparently didn’t hit it off, and it has now been discovered that the Russian scientist responsible for providing music for the trip forgot to put any Barry White songs on their iPods.

Four of the nine pastors at Mars Hill Church who recently urged Mark Driscoll to step down have now resigned, the latest being worship leader Dustin Kensrue, who cited an “unhealthy, fear-driven, self-protective leadership culture at MH.”

BBC asks, “Is religion an impediment to humour, and is it more acceptable to make fun of Christianity than other faiths?”

As we approach the two-year anniversary of his imprisonment, Secretary of State John Kerry called for the release of Pastor Saeed Abedini and other Americans being held by Iran.

Jesus still weeps.

IM Book Review: What I Learned from Cancer

What I Learned from Cancer
By Dennis Maione
Prompters to Life / Winnipeg (September 19, 2014)

• • •

I very much doubt that the author of “What I Learned from Cancer”, Dennis Maione, remembers this, but we shared a house for six weeks. It was actually Dennis’ roommate Bazyl that I met first. In September of 1990 I was newly married and had just moved half way across Canada to go attend Seminary in Regina, Saskatchewan. The house that we were going to rent wasn’t available, so we moved in with friends in an upstairs apartment. The morning after our move it was a beautiful fall day and so we decided to have breakfast out on the back patio. I glanced over at the downstairs window and had quite a start when I saw Bazyl standing there staring at me. When he stuck out his tongue at me, I jumped with surprise. You see, what I thought was a stuffed toy dragon was in fact a five foot long iguana! Dennis, as I learned from this book, had purchased Bazyl as a consolation for a cancelled Sting concert some years earlier.

I soon learned that Bazyl was not the most interesting inhabitant of the household, that honor had to go to Dennis. Personality wise he was charismatic, brash, and intelligent. What stood out to me the most (besides his flowing mane) was the fact that he was the one who would be asking the difficult questions and would not settle for the pat answers. When diagnosed with cancer for the first time just a year after we met, it would be these characteristics that would help Dennis avoid a much worse outcome.

The first half of the book is Dennis’ story. It is a rather poignant tale of his two battles with cancer fifteen years apart. For such a difficult subject it is an engrossing story. Dennis is articulate and honest. Some Doctors failed him and Dennis does not hold back the criticism. Others were wonderful and Dennis is effusive. A friend once commented to me that he didn’t want to be known as a Christian musician, but rather a Musician who was a christian. I get the same sense from Dennis’ book, he writes in a way that in meaningful to all, but strands of his faith are woven throughout. The importance of community comes through again and again.

The second part of the book is a series of essays on lessons learned from Cancer. Along with the essay on community, I was also struck by “A Tale of Two Doctors:A Message
to Health Care Providers.”

Treat me as an intelligent person and engage me with respect as I struggle with the choices that you put before me.
An oncologist told me that I needed chemotherapy. When I replied, not with the expected gratitude and compliance, but with earnest, respectful questions arising out of documents and peer-reviewed articles (from the New England Journal of Medicine among others, no less), along with a request to be heard and have my questions engaged, I was met with, “Not clinically relevant,” and “What is the point?” When I asked where the centres of excellence were for my disease, he did not know. When I found one next door in Ontario, he dismissed their research. He told me that if I started chemo and then stopped, I would not be able to start again, presumably a tactic designed to convince me his was the best route to take. After all, he was the
expert.

The third section of the book is an imagined series of conversations between Dennis and a Doctor which lays out in layman’s terms an introduction to the topic of cancer. It gets into the genetics of Dennis’ cancer in terms that even I could understand! For those Canadian’s among us, this third sections reminded me of the best seller “The Wealthy Barber”, with the topic of course being cancer rather than investing.

Cancer can take many forms. For Michael Spencer, the founder of Internet Monk, it was six agonizing months followed by his death. For my Father-in-law it was three pain free months before he quietly slipped away. For Dennis is was two major surgeries and a life of uncertainty. While the book is finished, Dennis’ story is not yet over. We read in the book that Dennis discovered that he is genetically predisposed to cancer and may contract it again. This cancer gene been passed on to one of his three children.

“What I Learned from Cancer” is not a “What to Expect When You Are Expecting” kind of book. It is however a honest and well written accounting of the fears and struggles that one goes through when faced with a diagnosis like cancer, along with some valuable lessons that are widely applicable. I would recommend this book to anyone who has a friend or loved one who is going through a significant illness or who is facing a difficult diagnosis. Quite frankly it is a book that every oncologist should read.

Dennis has provided us with a sample of the book and is generously offering Internet Monk readers a 25% discount by ordering and using the code AdvIM.