On Monday, Chaplain Mike ranted on three topics—which is very good for a Monday. Normally I can’t work up to three until Wednesday or Thursday. But the Chaplain knows his stuff, and he worked right up to three good ones. Unfortunately, most of the comments were centered around Francis Chan wanting the elderly to stop acting their age, and never got to my favorite of the three: the “chokehold” Christian bookstores have on our Western Christian culture.
Chaplain Mike referenced an excellent post by Rachel Held Evans on her blog. Rachel talked of taboos in Christian publishing—mentions of alcohol, pre-marital sex, profanities, and using medical vocabulary such as vagina—and how this creates an artificial, safe world Christian readers like to inhabit. I know this from many sides of the fence, having been an author, an editor, and a bookstore employee. Christian readers want to be kept twenty miles from the nearest sin, and expect the characters in their books to be as close to perfect human beings as possible. Anything less and—gasp!—sin is at the reader’s doorstep.
I won’t repeat what Rachel so clearly and aptly has already enunciated in her essay. Instead, I want to talk about one specific author I think epitomizes Christian publishing today. This author is proficient in his writing, turning out books on a frequent and regular basis. His name is Gilderoy Lockhart.
What? Of course you’ve heard of him. Some of his bestsellers include Break With A Banshee, Holiday With A Hag, Voyages With Vampires and Wanderings With Werewolves. Still unfamiliar to you? Lockhart is featured prominently in a book that most Christian stores wouldn’t stock on a dare: Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets.
Note from CM: Earlier this week I found this brilliant satirical piece by Jon Henry that exposes the kind of thinking that gets Christians in trouble with regard to Bible interpretation.
Is it “biblical” to believe that the moon emits its own light? Read the following, and come to your own conclusion.
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ALREADY COMPROMISED: Moon Edition by Jon Henry
Bible believers must defend the truth that the moon emanates its own light. Contrary to the revelation of the Bible, modern science wants people to believe that the moon does not have the ability to generate light. Instead, they want us to believe that the moon merely reflects the light of the sun.
Not only is it ridiculous to believe that a rock could reflect the light of a sun millions of miles away, but it’s also unbiblical!
It is important to note the teaching that is consistent across the whole of the Bible.
Evidence from the Creation Account. The creation account of Genesis 1:16-18 clearly indicates that the moon is a light all of its own. Verse 16 calls the moon the “lesser” of “the two great lights.” The verb “to light” (lehāʼîr) in verse 17 literally means that the moon itself gives light – there is no way out of this meaning! While its light is less than that of the sun (until Isaiah 30:26 is fulfilled!), the moon is a “light” in its own right, independent of the sun.
Teaching throughout the Old Testament. According to Job 31:26, the moon has its own splendor. The moon can be darkened independently of the sun (Ecclesiastes 12:2; Isaiah 24:23; Ezekiel 32:7; Joel 2:10; Joel 3:15). Note that the light of the moon is “its light” (Isaiah 13:10; Ezekiel 32:7), not “the light of the sun, which the moon reflects.” One day, the Lord promises to eradicate night time by making the moon shine as brightly as the sun currently does (Isaiah 30:26). At some time subsequent to this, the Lord will altogether eradicate the need for the moon to shine its light (Isaiah 60:19-20; cf. Revelation 21:23).
Jesus Taught That the Moon Gave Its Own Light. Jesus obviously believed that the light of the moon is “its light” (Matthew 24:29; Mark 13:24). This truth is driven home by the original Greek, because “its light” is a translation of the Greek words phengos autēs, literally, “The light of it/her.” The word autēs is in the feminine case, and cannot modify the word for sun, which is a masculine word (ho hēlios). Rather, it modifies the word for moon, which is also a feminine case (hē selēnē). This clearly points to the reality that the light of the moon is literally “its own light.” Jesus could not have been more clear in his belief that the sun has one source of light that will be darkened one day, and that the moon has its own source of light that will be extinguished.
In spite of Jesus’ beliefs, “science” has taught us from a young age that the moon does not radiate light. Thus, we are forced to choose between Jesus and modern science – who will you choose to believe?
Note from CM: My friend Dan is not only a caring pastor, but also a profound thinker. I encourage us all to exercise our minds a bit today by considering what he has to say about this traditional Christian doctrine. This is part one on the subject. Check out Dan’s blog HERE.
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The Meaning and Value of Creation Ex Nihilo by Daniel Jepsen
The heretic creates the theologian, they say. That is, it is the error of the heresy which forces the church to refine its doctrine more exactly, and this is why much doctrine uses the language of negation. But, far from simply the negative (but needed) role of guarding truth from error, a careful understanding of God’s revelation to us gives also a deeper understanding of the beauty of God and his plan.
Such is the case with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The phrase is based on the Latin and means creation out of nothing: that God used no pre-existing material of any kind when He created the heavens and the earth. Creation ex nihilo is in one sense the very definition of a negatively stated doctrine, yet its full meaning, when understood, gives life and wisdom.
To understand this, we must first trace the development of the doctrine. This doctrine arose as a response to two almost opposite errors: dualism and monism. Let us examine each in turn.
Dualism is the idea that the present universe consists of two primary forces. Professor Langdon Gilkey writes:
The most common conception of creation in the Hellenistic world in which the Christians found themselves can roughly be called the “dualistic” view. This view has had a long and distinguished history in religious and philosophical thought. In mythological form, it appears in almost all the creation myths of the Near East, India, and the Far East, where a God or order subdues some monster or principle of chaos. It reappeared in the dramatic Orphic cosmologies, then was purified into the familiar Platonic picture of creation in the “Timaeus”, and thence provided the groundwork for Aristotle’s cosmology. In Christian times it formed the philosophical basis for most of the “Gnostic” systems with which Christianity carried on a life and death struggle until orthodox thought had successfully formulated its own, antidualistic view of creation.
This viewpoint has one great consistency and one great ambiguity. The great consistency is the belief in the eternality of matter. The great ambiguity is how to describe the person or power that shapes matter into what we call the universe. For some ancient religions, the shaper was a deity of some kind, who “subdued” chaos (often personified as a monster, or the sea, or a sea-monster) and from this “matter” created the world. The more philosophically inclined ancients (especially the Greeks) viewed reality as matter being joined to form, much as a carpenter would create by taking the matter of wood and shaping it into the idea or form of a chair. For them, dualism is more of a philosophy of creation (matter and form coming together) than a religious view of creation (a god subdued the resistant matter by forming it). Plato rather ingeniously combined these two elements. He pictures a Demiurge (a primordial craftsman, not God) who shaped the world out of chaos while gazing at the eternal ideas (or forms) above him, much like a sculptor would gaze at his model (seated either before him or in his mind) as he shaped the recalcitrant marble.
However the details are conceived, reality is conceived of dualistically, because there are two eternal and primary principles in the universe. In other words, individual things (and the world itself) are made out of matter by someone or something imposing form on that matter.
We’ve been having quite a discussion since I posted Francis Chan’s video about “Aging Biblically” yesterday and said that I found it worthy of a rant. Though what he had to say about aging Christians was bad enough, I was more concerned about the entireapproach to the Christian life that his words and attitude reflected.
I called it world-denying, dualistic, pietistic, and totally bereft of the Gospel.
When Chan says, “Respectfully, I don’t meet a lot of elderly who live like they are about to see Jesus, and saying goodbye to the things of this world,……and risking more than ever, and some of you are buying stuff like you are going to enjoy it…and saving stuff…my life has been about letting go, letting go, letting go…” his words may carry some truth regarding the dangers of materialism, but they go beyond that. He comes perilously close to denying the existential value of material “stuff” — period. As if God didn’t make that “stuff,” didn’t mean for us to have it, enjoy it, savor it. The only logical end point for this approach, as I said in the comments, is the monastery. That kind of “letting go, letting go, letting go” lifestyle, in my mind, is perfectly legitimate for some, who are called to a cloistered vocation, though I can’t picture any good monk or nun being as frantic about it as Chan sounds.
However, for Chan, the stakes are black and white for every Christ-follower. This is reflected in Crazy Love, where the contrast he draws is between “lukewarm” or “totally obsessed.” Really. It’s one or the other. Unless a person is (and these are his words) — obsessed, consumed with Christ, fixated on Jesus, risk-taking, radical, wholly surrendered — that person may not even be (likely is not) a Christian. “As I see it, a lukewarm Christian is an oxymoron; there’s no such thing. To put it plainly, churchgoers who are ‘lukewarm’ are not Christians. We will not see them in heaven.”
This is the essence of the kind of “discipleship” people like Francis Chan tell us is necessary: “Do you understand that it’s impossible to please God in any way other than wholehearted surrender?”
Well, and I thought trusting Jesus and what he did was enough.
As I write these words on Sunday night, I don’t have the energy or concentration to put together a coherent rant. (It’s been another one of those “hit the wall” weeks.) So, instead, let me bring to your attention some of the crazy stuff I noticed this week that I would rant about if I could.
You, on the other hand, are free to rant away.
1. Francis Chan and “Wretched Urgency” discipleship. Can you say world-denying, dualistic, pietistic, and totally bereft of the Gospel? What altar call revivalism using 40 verses of “Just As I Am” was to “Wretched Urgency” evangelism, Chan and the company of “radical” evangelicals are to discipleship. And he manages to diss an entire generation in the process.
(Oh yeah, and there’s that word “Biblical” again.)
2. “Christian” bookstores: OF the world but not IN it. Rachel Held Evans nails her theses on the door of Lifeway and the Christian bookstore and publishing industry in light of the “Blind Side” controversy. Read her devastating piece: “Christian bookstores and their chokehold on the industry”.
Rachel’s right: “Christians are not called to create a subculture untouched by the beauty and ugliness of this world. No, Christians are called to speak the truth, even when it is uncomfortable….especially when it is uncomfortable.”
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3. Busy-ness is not OF the devil. It IS the devil. I believe it was John Wesley who said that, one of the most energetic and productive people in history. However, he lived in a slower era, when a great deal of “living” everyday was simply about staying alive. In contrast, Tim Kreider has written incisively about the obscenity of busy-ness in modern life in his NY Times piece, “The ‘Busy’ Trap.”
Keeper sentence: “The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it.”
Keeper insight: “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.”
May the Road Rise Up to Meet You A Sermon on Psalm 121
Please turn with me to PSALM 121. This is known as “The Traveler’s Psalm.” It describes a liturgy that took place when pilgrims would depart from their villages to travel up to Jerusalem for the annual feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.
I remember being introduced to a simple departure ritual when Gail and I were dating. During our college years, we would sometimes visit her family at their home in Vermont. After a long weekend there, when we would get ready to head back to school, the family would all gather in a prayer circle in the driveway, hold hands, and Gail’s father would pray for God’s protection and help on our trip back to Pennsylvania. I felt blest and encouraged by those prayers as we climbed in the car and took off to make our long journey.
Another ritual of departing that is special in my memory took place when Gail and I used to go on mission trips, especially our first trips to India back in the late 1990’s. In those days, family and friends were able to go down the concourse to the gate with travelers. After we checked all our luggage, a huge hoard of people from our families and churches would make our way down to the gate. There would be much conversation, picture-taking, and hugging. We were leaving four young children behind, and so we spent a lot of time sharing last minute reminders and instructions. Then, as the time drew near, we’d gather in a large group near our plane and one of the pastors would lead in prayer, asking for God’s help and favor on our journey and work. He prayed for our health, for uneventful travel, for safety, for effectiveness in our ministry and unity on our team. He prayed for our families and those we were leaving behind. Pretty soon, we gave our final hugs and made our way down the passageway to the plane to begin our journey.
I imagine we all have memories like that — memories of bittersweet departures when you said goodbye to loved ones, and a new journey was undertaken. Some of you, like me, may have moved many times over the years, relocating to a new house or community. I can still remember the tears in my grandfather’s eyes as we drove away from my dad’s hometown to live in the Chicago suburbs. I recall my own tears when my family moved from Chicago a few years later to the east coast just before my senior year in high school. We have lived in Indiana for twenty years now, and I can see it in my mind as clearly as if it were today when we left our friends’ home on a bitter, below zero January morning and made our way south down I-65 to our new life and ministry.
Now Gail and I are in that season when we are sending our children out into the world to establish their own lives. I recall how hard it was to see the road through misty eyes when I drove away after dropping our first daughter off at college. That same bittersweet sense of joy and longing came again to us last summer when we moved our second daughter and her family to northern Indiana. As each of our children breaks the apron strings and enters the world of adulthood, there is a departing which we mourn even as we welcome the joys that come with a new stage of life.
Sometimes the pain of departing proves to be too much. One of our sweetest hymns, “Blest Be the Tie that Binds Our Hearts in Christian Love,” was written by a pastor named John Fawcett. In 1776, he went to serve a small, poor Baptist congregation in northern England. His salary was meager, and his family grew. After several years, he received a call to a large and influential church in London. When the day for their departure arrived, the sad parishioners of that humble little church gathered around the family and their wagons. Mrs. Fawcett, the pastor’s wife, finally broke down and said, “John, I cannot bear to leave. I don’t know how I can go.” The saddened pastor replied, “I don’t either.” Soon they unpacked the wagons and decided they would stay. In the wake of that experience, he wrote his famous hymn:
Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above. Before our Father’s throne we pour our ardent prayers; Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares.
The pain of departing was too much for them. They decided that, instead of embarking on a new journey, they would continue their journey of ministry with the people of that little church.
We make all kinds of journeys in our lives. Some are brief and inconsequential, others represent major changes of direction that lead us down long and winding roads of discovery, opportunity, and difficulty. This psalm teaches us that, at the beginning of every new journey we have a chance to remind ourselves of the One who watches over us on every road we travel through in this life.
Classic iMonk Post by Michael Spencer From July 2009
Earlier in the day, Blue Raja and I had a discussion at the Boar’s Head Tavern about an earlier post where I quoted a Semi-Pelagian IM commenter. It’s discouraging to read that the atonement “opened the door” for us to now live a life worthy of the Kingdom of God. As I usually do, I expressed my despair at these kinds of “living to please God” systems of salvation and the blatant dishonesty they encourage and despair they induce.
So here was one of my replies.
The Gospel was never good news for me until Luther helped me see that life could continue to be tragic. I never worry about abundant life doing more than the occasional appearance in the present. I’m content with Christ in the shadowlands if he guarantees to raise me from the dead and bring me home.
This keeps coming back to me from readers who say it’s hit home with them, and where can they find more.
Before I talk about finding more of that, let me assure you that I responded to the Lutheran altar call a very long time ago.
In 1987, I was living in Louavul, going to seminary and working at a church just off campus. One J-term- a one week, intensive summer session, I believe- I was taking “Theology of Martin Luther” from the new church history guy, Dr. Timothy George.
I’ve had very, very few mystical experiences in my life, but during one lecture in that class, heaven opened up to me like never before or since. I was transported. The personal, existential dimension of the incarnation as it applies to my salvation fell on me like a gigantic wave.
To say the least, I became a Luther reader, which led me, unfortunately, to be susceptible to 16 years of Calvinism. The reason for that was simple: I didn’t know any Lutherans. The few I met wouldn’t talk to me. It was a crucial error. If I had developed relationships with Lutherans, I could have found the Lutheran reformation. Instead, the Calvinistic resurgence in Baptist life found me (Al Martin variety) and led me to some good things (Founder’s, Spurgeon) and a lot of wasted time and self-effort disguised as doing everything “to the Glory of God.”
Thank God for Steve Brown, The White Horse Inn and Michael Horton, Calvinists who stayed on more than friendly terms with the Lutheran reformation and knew how to communicate its heart.
It was Luther’s approach to his own humanity that saved me. Literally. Luther led me out of the “victorious Christian life” swamp. He simplified the Gospel. He stayed earthy and didn’t play the goofy spiritual games that evangelicalism was so prone to adore. The center was Christ and the Gospel was for sinners.
[In the interests of fairness, I should also say that in 1980, I had visited an LCMS church and was turned away at the altar abruptly, without explanation. That was my own ignorance, of course, and my own church at the time practiced closed communion. But the experience gave me a bad taste that has never entirely gone away.]
Good Saturday morning, iMonks! Here’s hoping if you have been in the dark that you have power restored. If not, then how are you reading this? The storms from this last week left a lot of debris in the yard of the iMonastery, so we invite you to grab a rake and help us to clean up what we can only call Saturday Ramblings.
The storms that rampaged across the Midwest might have been welcome in Colorado to help douse the wildfires that destroyed nearly 350 homes in the Colorado Springs area. One thing we don’t need is someone trying to tie some spiritual significance to these natural disasters. This articleis, on the whole, well-balanced in this area, especially from Charisma magazine.
Steve Strang, publisher of Charisma, wants your help to make a movie about the community of Sanford, Florida in the wake of the Travor Martin case. I don’t doubt there are some great things happening in that town as this case progresses, but is there really a need to make it into a movie? Your thoughts?
The other big news of the week comes from Switzerland with the believed discovery of the Higgs boson, or “God particle.” Here is a good overview article on the discovery, and another with a little more depth. Oh, and here is Ken Ham’s Answers In Genesis explanation of why this doesn’t matter, and how not to be confused by God’s name being used in this hypothesis. Ah, how did we ever get along without Ken Ham?
For the past two years, I have had a remarkable unexpected privilege — serving as the lead writer on Internet Monk.
It came as pure gift to me out of the suffering of another, our brother Michael Spencer. He was an insightful and original thinker, a pioneer in the Christian blogosphere, a pilgrim who graciously shared his life and perspectives in written words that we discuss to this day.
I have long wanted to write, but have had no idea how to get started, what to write about and how to go about doing it. Michael conferred a great gift on me when he asked me to help carry on the Internet Monk blog. He opened the door to one form of the writing life for me.
I would love to write more, as would many of our writers here on IM — as would many of you, our readers who have your own blogs and other venues of writing. I would love to develop this craft, get immersed more in this writing life.
Today, let’s have a discussion about writing. I invite those of you who, in one way or another, put down words in writing to express yourselves to lead our discussion in this final Open Forum.
Contribute as you like. Tell us about your blog, your book, your poetry. Give us samples. Talk to us about what writing means to you and how you go about it. Who are your favorite authors and writers, and what have you learned from them?
I believe every Christian is involved in the Missio Dei, God’s mission to make his “kingdom come,” his “will be done on earth as it is in heaven” through Christ.
Some people, however, have sensed a special call to take up vocations directly involved in mission activity.
Like Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13, they and their faith communities have heard the voice of the Spirit saying, “Set apart ____________ for the work to which I have called them.” The apostolic church seemed to have an understanding that there was a complementary partnership between local congregations and mission teams in fulfilling God’s mission.
Perhaps the mission workers we are asking to share with us at IM today have left their homelands and moved to foreign fields to evangelize, plant churches, do medical work, encourage development, provide education, serve the poor through works of mercy, or provide support services for others who are doing such things.
Perhaps they are involved in their own lands in focused parachurch ministries — inner city missions, youth work, campus ministry, outreach to other groups that need a gospel witness or Christian assistance.
Some provide ministry to fellow Christians and churches through counseling, camps, retreats, literature and media, etc.
Some of these groups are well-known, many, many are not.
Today, I’d like for us to hear from those who are serving in vocational ministries that complement and extend the work of the local church throughout the world.
Mission workers, sound off!
Tell us about your calling, your work, your setting, and anything else that will help us understand and appreciate what God is doing through those called to vocational mission, as well as some of the unique challenges and opportunities you face.
On Monday, Chaplain Mike ranted on three topics—which is very good for a Monday. Normally I can’t work up to three until Wednesday or Thursday. But the Chaplain knows his stuff, and he worked right up to three good ones. Unfortunately, most of the comments were centered around Francis Chan wanting the elderly to stop acting their age, and never got to my favorite of the three: the “chokehold” Christian bookstores have on our Western Christian culture.
Classic iMonk Post
The Internet Monk Archives 