Drought

By Chaplain Mike

We haven’t had a good day of rain where I live for over two months.

Our lawns are past turning brown. Now they are brittle, straw-like. Weeds provide the only green at ground level. They proliferate. Hardy, demonically so, they thrive where all that is desirable dies from thirst.

Farmers are cleaning up their fields earlier this year. The combines throw corn dust into the air and it wafts down the road, into town, and into our nostrils. I drive my car through the car wash, and by the time I’m down the street, it’s covered again by a thin blanket of fine earth and debris. The atmosphere is so thick with nature’s own pollution that we are perpetually clearing our throats, coughing, blowing our noses, and sleeping fitfully at night for lack of breath.

The sun is a cruel friend, playing some sick practical joke on us. He kills with feigned kindness, extending warmth with one hand and thirst with the other. Low and brilliant in the sky, he illuminates the autumn leaves, and we admire their spectacular beauty. But we are lulled into forgetting that this is, in reality, a funeral home elegance, a ceremonial dressing-up before gray winter skies swallow up all color. The whole world is dying of thirst.

Israel spent forty years wandering in a desert wilderness. I can’t imagine. How parched can one get?

O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water. (Ps 63:1, NLT)

Lethargy must be overcome in these circumstances. It would be so easy to stay inside, breathe only conditioned air, savor a cold drink, and shut out the dry, dusty world. Some, for health reasons, must do so. For others like me, however, it is a day long fight against the noontime demon. Day after day.

In the words of those great theologians, the Temptations, I wish it would rain.

Luther’s First Hymn

By Chaplain Mike

Today in worship we sang one of Martin Luther’s hymns, and I was impressed. So faithful to the Gospel, as one would expect. So warm in devotion, it might have come from the pen of Charles Wesley.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote of Luther and his hymns:

Luther did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as by his translation of the Bible. In Germany the hymns are known by heart by every peasant; they advise, they argue from the hymns, and every soul in the church praises God like a Christian, with words which are natural and yet sacred to his mind.

Continue reading “Luther’s First Hymn”

From “Kyrie” to “Eucharist”

By Chaplain Mike

Sunday’s Gospel
• Luke 17:11-19

Early in the traditional worship service of the church, the congregation says, chants, or sings the Kyrie: “Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy.” The climax of the service occurs when God’s people celebrate the Eucharist, partaking of the body and blood of Christ. At the beginning of worship, we take our position before God as people in need of his mercy and grace. At the high point of worship, having heard the Word of the Gospel, we receive his saving grace with thanksgiving.

This movement from humble petition to grateful participation in the life of Christ is portrayed in the Gospel lesson for this Sunday.

Continue reading “From “Kyrie” to “Eucharist””

iMonk Classic: Niki Made Her Choice and, Apparently, So Did We

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
Originally posted Oct 4, 2009

A year ago, this Michael Spencer piece really got people talking.

FIRST: Read “Evangelicals and Science” at Tim Stafford’s blog.

SECOND: Niki is fictionalized, but not much. I am hoping this post will make one point: the Gospel combined with anything- a view of science, political opinions, convictions on gender, etc.- becomes a non-Gospel. Let the Gospel be what Paul describes in I Cor 15!

Her name is Niki. (Not her real name.) She’s a Japanese student who lived with an American family for a year and attended a Christian school. She took a year of Bible. She attended worship and heard lots of preaching. The Gospel was explained to her many times. She was well liked and sociable.

A very smart girl. A great student, much advanced over the average American student. She made A’s in everything, including Bible.

She left America after graduation and went back to Japan.

She came to America an atheist and she returned to Japan an atheist, and very aware that she had rejected Christianity.Continue reading “iMonk Classic: Niki Made Her Choice and, Apparently, So Did We”

Saturday Ramblings 10.9.10

The baseball playoffs have begun, the leaves and acorns are falling, pumpkins are being sold at on every corner. That must mean it’s time for Saturday Ramblings.

The baseball playoffs are in full swing (yes, pun intended) with the Cincinnati Reds and some other teams competing for a trip to the World Series. Michael Spencer and I spent a good amount of our conversations talking about the Reds. Now I suspect he is pulling strings to help the Reds in their first trip to the postseason in 15 years. Well, I did suspect that until Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Filthies threw a no-hitter on Wednesday. I still say the Reds will win this series in five.

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 10.9.10”

Evangelicalism’s “New Day”?

By Chaplain Mike

Over at Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight muses on the meaning of Al Mohler getting a cover story in Christianity Today.

For Scot, this marks a significant shift in evangelicalism. It shows that some of the most prominent and powerful leaders in what is called evangelicalism today are trying to bend it back toward a form of fundamentalism.

The evangelicalism that emerged in the mid-20th century (“neo-evangelicalism”) self-consciously separated itself from fundamentalism, rejected radical separatism and embraced a more profound engagement with the world, and practiced a greater tolerance for theological diversity in their cooperative relationships with fellow Christians.

But Mohler lives out and preaches a different evangelical story: the evangelical world and America are falling apart at the moral seams, and only a commitment to the old-fashioned story can sew those seams back together and save evangelicalism and America.

McKnight laments this development:

This new story of evangelicalism is sad for people like me who have always believed Evangelicalism was a Big Tent coalition of those committed to the basics of the gospel but more than willing to tolerate differences on all kinds of levels.

Evangelicalism for many of us has been a generous evangelicalism. As I said above the numbers are on the side of the older Big Tent coalition, but there is a major, major problem: the old guard coalition is not composed of fighters. They’ve only known peace and cooperation. What is perhaps the secret here is that many of us became evangelicals to escape fundamentalism.  For us, there’s no turning back, which means we may find ourselves disenfranchised from evangelicalism.

Today’s scene is not what it was. It’s a new era. When Al Mohler is on the cover of CT, when he represents the shrewd and powerful takeover of a former liberal-to-moderate seminary, when he has publicly claimed any form of evolution is inconsistent with the gospel, and when he is seen as the voice of American evangelicalism, a new world stands before the American evangelical. It’s actually an old world.

The question is Who will speak for the Big Tent coalition? Count me in.

The iMonk mic is open. I encourage you to go over to Jesus Creed and read Scot McKnight’s reflections. Then, if you would like to discuss his observations with the iMonk community, come on back and join in.

I would like to know: What say you?

Rethinking the Text: Genesis 6

By Chaplain Mike

Today I am following up on Jeff’s “Difficult Scriptures” post from last week on the first part of Genesis 6.

Though this text has a long history of interpretation with much imaginative speculation, I have come to the conclusion that the passage is relatively straightforward, and has been misunderstood primarily because of the way it has been read in relation to its context.

As John Sailhamer has noted in The Pentateuch as Narrative, most of the interpretations arise out of viewing this passage as introducing the story of the Flood. In our modern Bibles, this is even easier to do because of where the chapter division has been inserted. The assumption that this introduces the Flood story leads to a further assumption that verses 1-4 somehow explain the causes of the universal wickedness in verses 5-8.

I think these are both false assumptions.Continue reading “Rethinking the Text: Genesis 6”

The New Battle for the Bible, part 1

By Guest Blogger Daniel Jepsen

Coming of age in a fundamentalist church in the 70’s left one feeling a little like a Titanic passenger who’s made it onto the life boat: Yes, it’s kind of cold and cramped in here, and no, we don’t know here we’re going, but at least it’s not down.  Not smug, just relieved, we looked forward to being air-lifted by the rapture.

In the meantime, all sorts of fun could be had in the lifeboat if you knew the games.
The favorite (besides skirmishes with other life boats) was to discern (not judge) the fruits (not the lifestyles) of our fellow passengers.  Standard criteria included the biggies, such as hair length (for men) hem length (for women) and whether they had to look up Amazing Grace and Just as I am or knew all the verses from heart.

My favorite criterion was simpler:  What kind of Bible did they carry? Not the translation, mind you.  You would no more bring in a Bible written after 1611 into our church than you would carry a copy of The Satanic Verses into a mosque.   No, we looked at the type of King James Bible.  If the person clutched a pew bible or plain, standard issue KJV, you could be sure they were a newbie or a slacker.  If they lugged a Thompson Chain-reference, you labeled them studious and serious.  A Scofield indicated true piety, because the Pastor used it.  For most all of us, these were the only real choices. Of course you also had a huge choice of binding (“leather or bonded leather, sir?”) and of colors (“And will that be black, burgundy, or dark blue?”)

My, the times have changed.  Continue reading “The New Battle for the Bible, part 1”

Quotes

“On the whole I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

(Annie Dillard, Teaching A Stone To Talk)

“Jesus seems to ask, ‘Haven’t I just gotten through saying that I myself, the Messiah, am going to be the biggest outsider and loser of all? Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped being scandalized by what you consider my lack of messianic respectability and just listen to me for a change?'”

(Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables Of Grace)

Continue reading “Quotes”

Al Mohler Is Right. Now What?

By Chaplain Mike

Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, icon of the conservative and Calvinistic resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, and public voice of the Christian right in America’s culture war, is not someone with whom I normally identify.

However, this time I think he got it exactly right.

In Mohler’s article, “Divorce—The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience,” he lays bare one of the most obvious and egregious examples of Christian hypocrisy in the last forty to fifty years. Commenting on studies by political science professor Mark A. Smith, Mohler concludes:

Evangelical Christians are gravely concerned about the family, and this is good and necessary. But our credibility on the issue of marriage is significantly discounted by our acceptance of divorce. To our shame, the culture war is not the only place that an honest confrontation with the divorce culture is missing.

Divorce is now the scandal of the evangelical conscience. (emphasis mine)

Continue reading “Al Mohler Is Right. Now What?”