The Internet Monk Archives

Saturday Brunch, August 31, 2019

Hello, friends, and welcome to the Labor Day weekend! Quick question: If money or likely success were not issues, what job would you love to have?

That’s a good way to start off our Labor Day edition of the brunch. We’ll be asking a few more job/career related questions as we go along. It’s a good way for our regular commentators to get to know each other better; It’s also a good chance for some of you lurkers (you know who you are) to join in

When and how did Labor Day begin? It’s complicated. One versions of the story is set in September 1882 with the Knights of Labor, the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations at the time. The Knights in New York City held a public parade featuring various labor organizations on September 5 — with the aid of the fledgling Central Labor Union (CLU) of New York. Subsequently, CLU Secretary Matthew Maguire proposed that a national Labor Day holiday be held on the first Monday of each September to mark this successful public demonstration.

In another version, Labor Day in September was proposed by Peter J. McGuire, a vice president of the American Federation of Labor. In spring 1882, McGuire reportedly proposed a “general holiday for the laboring classes” to the CLU, which would begin with a street parade of organized labor solidarity and end with a picnic fundraiser for local unions. McGuire suggested the first Monday in September as an ideal date for Labor Day because the weather is great at that time of year, and it falls in between July 4th and Thanksgiving. Oregon became the first U.S. state to make it an official public holiday. Twenty-nine other states had joined by the time the federal government declared in a federal holiday in 1894.

What are your plans for the weekend? Here’s a handy chart to see how most people are spending it.

What are the most and least stressful jobs? CareerCast evaluated 11 stress factors including travel required, industry growth potential and hazardous conditions — like putting your life at risk. Here is the list they came up with:

The 10 most stressful jobs and their median salaries:

Enlisted military personnel of three or four years: $26,802
Firefighter: $49,080
Airline pilot: $111,930
Police officer: $62,960
Broadcaster: $62,960
Event coordinator: $48,290
News Reporter: $39,370
Public relations executive: $111,280
Senior corporate executive: $104,700
Taxi driver: $24,880

The 10 least stressful jobs and their median salaries:

Diagnostic medical sonographer: $71,410
Compliance officer: $67,870
Hair stylist $25,850
Audiologist: $75,920
University professor: $76,000
Medical records technician: $67,870
Jeweler: $37,960
Operations research analyst: $81,390
Pharmacy technician: $31,750
Massage therapist: $39,990

Any surprises to you? What was the most stressful job you have ever had?

Chief executives at the US’s top companies took home $17.2m in pay last year – 278 times the salary of their average worker.

Between 1978 and 2018, the average pay of the bosses of the US’s largest 350 companies has grown by 1,007.5%, adjusted for inflation, according to the Economics Policy Institute’s latest survey.

The increase far outstripped the typical worker’s salary growth, at 11.9%, adjusted for inflation.

George Whitefield was in the news this week. The great evangelist died 1770 at age 55 in the parsonage of the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He was buried soon thereafter beneath the pulpit. In London, a funeral service was held for him at which John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and a contemporary of Whitefield’s, preached.

Yet according to Whitefield’s great-great-niece, Vicki Kenderline, an American, the famed preacher wanted to be buried in England next to his wife and she claims that the historic church is ignoring his wish. In a Tuesday interview with the Sunday Times (UK), Kenderdine said that soon after he died the church where he had preached his final sermons quickly buried him.

“It is my wish to go to Newburyport and finally collect my Uncle George’s body and fly him back to Gloucester, England, so he may rest in peace alongside his wife and only child . . . in the church he first preached in and attended as a child in school.”

Thus far, the church has shown no indication of releasing his remains to his ancestors, telling the outlet that Whitefield’s dying wish was to be buried in the church crypt and that they have no authority to grant an exhumation.

Question: What was your favorite job?

Some headlines from the Babylon Bee:

Nation’s Chick-Fil-A Employees Begin Marching Around Popeyes Restaurants Blowing Trumpets

Millions Of Unbelievers Flock To Atheist Paradise Of North Korea

Trump Announces He Was Born Of A Virgin And Will Bring Balance To The Force

Witty Church Sign Sparks Revival

Here’s the copy on that last one:

DELPHI, IN—A strikingly clever pun on the marquee of Beacon Baptist Ministries has reportedly sparked revival in the town of Delphi, Indiana.

“I’ve never talked to God in my life,” claimed area resident Darrell Jones, “but when I saw that ‘Son screen prevents sin burn,’ I pulled right over, dropped to my knees, and begged God for forgiveness. Right there on the side of the road I gave my life to Jesus Christ.”

“Later on, Brother Dwayne told me that’s called ‘sending God a knee-mail,’” he added.

Brother Dwayne Baker, who has managed the church sign for years, told reporters that he knew it was just a matter of time before massive revival broke out. “When I first started, I thought ‘1 cross + 3 nails = 4given’ would do the trick. I was young and naïve. ‘Boaz was a Ruthless man before he got married’ was popular with the congregation, but wasn’t helpful as an outreach tool. Then a couple years back, when I posted ‘What’s missing from Ch__ch? U R,’ we preemptively bought honey baked ham for 700. The folks here just weren’t ready—we’re still eating that ham at my house.”

“But this week we finally nailed it.”

Jeffrey Shaw was a staunch atheist before chatter around town caused him to check the church sign out for himself. “I thought Christians were bigoted hatemongers worshiping a cosmic child abuser. But when I saw that marquee, I saw the light. Literally—thousands of headlights up and down the road. All of Delphi came out. And there was Brother Dwayne, shouting, ‘How will you spend eternity? Smoking or non-smoking?’ I’m a new man. I’ll never be the same.”

For Brother Dwayne, “God gets all the glory. It’ll be tough to squeeze all of Delphi into Beacon Baptist on Sundays. I’m just glad the church is prayer-conditioned.”

Do you enjoy a harmless prank?

Have you heard of Disney’s new theme park, Galaxy’s Edge? In the rush to make everything in the park look and feel like you’re on a planet in the Star Wars universe, their “Imagineers” had to come up with a way to make it look like Coca-Cola’s corporate reach had extended beyond our own galaxy (which it will, in due time). But, in retrospect, it probably wasn’t a great idea to make the novelty Star Wars Coke bottle look like a grenade.

By the way, hope you enjoy your $5 sugar water grenade in the park, because you can’t take it on the plane. The TSA, when asked about the bottles, responded, “Replica and inert explosives aren’t allowed in either carry-on or checked bags.”

Question: What is one mainstream job you would NEVER do?

Massive Study Finds No Single Genetic Cause of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior. That’s the headline from Scientific American, reporting on a new study published in Science. Subtitle: Analysis of half a million people suggests genetics may have a limited contribution to sexual orientation. You can read the Science article here.

Drug to boost women’s sex drive? The US Food and Drug Administration approved a drug to return sexual desire to some women with low libido, the agency said Friday.The drug, bremelanotide, sold under the brand name Vyleesi by AMAG Pharmaceuticals, is an injection to be taken before sex. It’s intended to treat women who are premenopausal and have a lack of interest in sex. It will be available in September, and the company has not yet determined pricing or reimbursement information, according to AMAG spokeswoman Sarah Connors. Experts say the diagnosis is the most common type of sexual dysfunction among women, estimated to affect between 8% to 10% of women.

Can we refreeze glaciers, or even the arctic? Each summer, residents of the Swiss Alps make their way through the mountains to the edge of the famous Rhône Glacier. There, fleecy white blankets in hand, they cover up the ice. They’re trying to reflect the sun and prevent the glacier from melting.

Similar protective coverings are used on other glaciers, as well, in places like Italy and Germany — and scientists have begun to propose higher-tech solutions for the future. One research group from Utrecht University hopes to save Switzerland’s Morteratsch Glacier by blowing reflective artificial snow across its surface.

Scientists are now beginning to consider ways to refreeze the waters of the arctic. Here is one of the top proposals:

Well, that’s it for this week. Let’s end with some images of Labor Days past.

Labor Day, New York’s Union Square, 1882.

Buffalo, New York, 1900. “Labor Day parade crowd, Main Street.”

Labor Day parade float with rows of girls wearing white dresses and men wearing military uniforms, riding down Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, September 5, 1904.

United Mine Workers of America Labor Day float, 1908.

A sight-seeing bus filled with members of Woman’s Auxiliary Typographical Union circa 1909.

Could not find date for this photo, but too good not to include

A 1934 Labor Day parade in Gastonia, North Carolina, composed of ten-thousand labor strikers.

Units of the American Federation of Labor marching in the Labor Day Parade, Detroit 1938

A large float being driven through the Labor Day Parade, Detroit 1938

Potato race for children at Labor Day celebration, Ridgway, Colorado, 1940

Ford workers carrying flag and banners in the Labor Day parade in Detroit, 1942

Labor Day Parade Hot Dog Float circa 1950-60 – Issaquah, WA

John F. Kennedy in Flint, Michigan on Labor Day, 1960

Labor Day Parade, , New York City, late 1960’s

Labor Day weekend brings the annual Garfield County Fair Parade in Rifle, Colorado, September 1973

Children participate in the 2011 Louisville Fall Festival ‘Magic in the Air’ during the Labor Day weekend.

Labor Day picnic Monday at Cook Park in Colonie, NY

The annual Labor Day picnic took place today at Hawkeye Downs in Cedar Rapids, 2018

2018 Dragon Con Parade on Labor Day Weekend, Atlanta, 2018

Greatest Songs of My Lifetime: Special Friday Edition

Stan Rogers, 1982 Edmonton Folk Festival. Photo by Brian at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Greatest Songs of My Lifetime: Special Friday Edition
The Greatest Folk Singer You’ve Never Heard Of

It’s a special Friday edition of “Greatest Songs of My Lifetime,” which we began during last Saturday’s Brunch. Pastor Dan will be hosting tomorrow’s weekly feast, so I thought I’d move the “Greatest Songs” piece to today.

My life has been blessed with wonderful music from singer-songwriters and musical artists who hail from Canada. People like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, the Guess Who, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn, Anne Murray, the Rankin Family, and many others, cut a significant swath through the soundtrack of my life.

But perhaps the finest singer-songwriter Canada ever produced is little known outside of folk circles. He died young, at age 33, in a tragic airplane fire in 1983, just when he seemed on the verge of breaking through to a wider audience.

His name was Stan Rogers, and his songs sprang organically out of the waters, the land, and the hearts of the people who inhabited the place he called home. One of his tunes, Northwest Passage, has come to be called Canada’s unofficial national anthem. The song compares the journeys of those who cut their way through icy waters to find a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with his own life’s journey: “tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage.”

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One thing I love about folk music is its ability to tell stories of ordinary people and to honor them. Rogers had a gift for vividly portraying the mundane lives and yet fundamental beauty of common people, like the hard-working farmer in his song, “Field Behind the Plow”.

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My favorite Stan Rogers song is a rousing anthem of determination and hope in the face of adversity. It became a Rogers concert favorite, and you will see why. The Mary Ellen Carter tells the story of a ship that sank and a crew that lost their jobs because the owners decided to take the insurance money rather than raise and reclaim their boat. With vigor, Rogers narrates how ordinary people, working together, can stand up to the “smiling bastards” who fleece them and retain their dignity and hope.

Surely the meek will rise again and inherit the earth.

And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again

Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broken and life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Then like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!

The first Europeans weren’t who you might think

The first Europeans weren’t who you might think:

Genetic tests of ancient settlers’ remains show that Europe is a melting pot of bloodlines from Africa, the Middle East, and today’s Russia.

The following story appeared in the August 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine. From the opening two paragraphs:

The idea that there were once “pure” populations of ancestral Europeans, there since the days of woolly mammoths, has inspired ideologues since well before the Nazis. It has long nourished white racism, and in recent years it has stoked fears about the impact of immigrants: fears that have threatened to rip apart the European Union and roiled politics in the United States.

Now scientists are delivering new answers to the question of who Europeans really are and where they came from. Their findings suggest that the continent has been a melting pot since the Ice Age. Europeans living today, in whatever country, are a varying mix of ancient bloodlines hailing from Africa, the Middle East, and the Russian steppe.

Technical advances in DNA sequencing has now allowed the tests to be conducted for around $500. And, as the article says: “The result has been an explosion of new information that is transforming archaeology. In 2018 alone, the genomes of more than a thousand prehistoric humans were determined, mostly from bones dug up years ago and preserved in museums and archaeological labs. In the process any notion of European genetic purity has been swept away on a tide of powdered bone.”

It now appears that three major waves of migration have shaped the genomic and archeologic history of Europe. The first wave were hunter-gathers that migrated out of Africa 45,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene period. The next wave were Neolithic farmers (ca 9500-4000 B.C.) from the Anatolian plains who brought wheat, sheep, cattle—and their own DNA—to most of Europe by 4000 B.C. The last wave were the Yamnaya (ca 3300-2200 B.C.) from the Russian steppes who brought mastery of horses and wagons and introduced a new mobile lifestyle to Europe.

It has been known now for over 30 years that, based on the DNA evidence, all people outside Africa are descended from ancestors who left that continent more than 60,000 years ago. About 45,000 years ago, those first modern humans ventured into Europe, having made their way up through the Middle East. The DNA of those people suggests they had dark skin and perhaps light eyes. These first Europeans lived as hunters and gatherers in small, nomadic bands. They followed the rivers, edging along the Danube from its mouth on the Black Sea deep into western and central Europe. Their DNA indicates they mixed with the Neanderthals—who, within 5,000 years, were gone. Today about 2 percent of a typical European’s genome consists of Neanderthal DNA. A typical African has none.

The Neolithic, the final division of the Stone Age, began about 12,000 years ago when the first developments of farming appeared in the Near East. By about 9,000 years ago, the Neolithic revolution, as it’s called, spread north through Anatolia (the fertile plains of modern Turkey) and into southeastern Europe. By about 6,000 years ago, there were farmers and herders all across Europe. According to the article, “…those Neolithic farmers mostly had light skin and dark eyes—the opposite of many of the hunter-gatherers with whom they now lived side by side. ‘They looked different, spoke different languages … had different diets,’ says Hartwick College archaeologist David Anthony. ‘For the most part, they stayed separate.’”

About 5,400 years ago, thriving Neolithic settlements shrank or disappeared altogether. Archaeologists are still puzzled as to why, there were no signs of major warfare. After a 500-year gap, the population seemed to grow again, but something was very different. In southeastern Europe, the villages and egalitarian cemeteries of the Neolithic were replaced by imposing grave mounds covering lone adult men. Farther north, from Russia to the Rhine, a new culture sprang up, called Corded Ware after its pottery, which was decorated by pressing string into wet clay.

When researchers first analyzed the DNA from some of these graves, they expected the Corded Ware folk would be closely related to Neolithic farmers. Instead, their DNA contained distinctive genes that were new to Europe at the time—but are detectable now in just about every modern European population. Many Corded Ware people turned out to be more closely related to Native Americans than to Neolithic European farmers.

On what are now the steppes of southern Russia and eastern Ukraine, a group of nomads called the Yamnaya, some of the first people in the world to ride horses, had mastered the wheel and were building wagons and following herds of cattle across the grasslands. They built few permanent settlements. By 2800 B.C, archaeological excavations show, the Yamnaya had begun moving west, probably looking for greener pastures. The genetic evidence shows that many Corded Ware people were, to a large extent, their descendants. Like those Corded Ware skeletons, the Yamnaya shared distant kinship with Native Americans—whose ancestors hailed from farther east, in Siberia. Within a few centuries, other people with a significant amount of Yamnaya DNA had spread as far as the British Isles. DNA evidence also showed the Yamnaya carried a form of Yersinia pestis—the plague microbe that killed roughly half of all Europeans in the 14th century. Unlike that flea-borne Black Death, this early variant had to be passed from person to person. Some scientists now think that Plague epidemics cleared the way for the Yamnaya expansion.

A theory, proposed a century ago by a German scholar named Gustaf Kossinna, held that the proto-Indo-Europeans were an ancient race of north Germans—the people who made Corded Ware pots and axes. Kossinna thought that the ethnicity of people in the past—their biological identity, in effect—could be deduced from the stuff they left behind. The north German tribe of proto-Indo-Europeans, Kossinna argued, had moved outward and dominated an area that stretched most of the way to Moscow. Nazi propagandists later used that as an intellectual justification for the modern Aryan “master race” to invade Eastern Europe.

Partly as a result, for decades after World War II the whole idea that ancient cultural shifts might be explained by migrations fell into ill repute in some archaeological circles. Even today it makes some archaeologists uncomfortable when geneticists draw bold arrows across maps of Europe. The article concludes:

Yet ancient DNA, which provides direct information about the biology of ancient humans, has become a strong argument against Kossinna’s theory. First, in documenting the spread of the Yamnaya and their descendants deeper and deeper into Europe at just the right time, the DNA evidence supports the favored theory among linguists: that proto-Indo-Europeans migrated into Europe from the Russian steppe, not the other way around. Second, together with archaeology it amounts to a rejection of Kossinna’s claim that some kind of pure race exists in Europe, one that can be identified from its cultural artifacts.

All Europeans today are a mix. The genetic recipe for a typical European would be roughly equal parts Yamnaya and Anatolian farmer, with a much smaller dollop of African hunter-gatherer. But the average conceals large regional variations: more “eastern cowboy” genes in Scandinavia, more farmer ones in Spain and Italy, and significant chunks of hunter-gatherer DNA in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.

“To me, the new results from DNA are undermining the nationalist paradigm that we have always lived here and not mixed with other people,” Gothenburg’s Kristiansen says. “There’s no such thing as a Dane or a Swede or a German.” Instead, “we’re all Russians, all Africans.”

Well, one thing is for sure – we are all migrants. Groups of people migrating from somewhere to somewhere else has characterized humans since the very earliest times, essentially from the beginning. That is not to say that migration is good or bad. It depends on the perspective of the group. To Native Americans (who themselves migrated from Siberia) the perspective of migration from the European countries was decidedly mostly bad. The other thing this article highlights is how deeply embedded tribalism is in our human history. Those moral impulses that Chaplain Mike posted about last Wednesday are also deeply embedded in our DNA.

As CM asked last week, what do we, as committed Christ-followers, do about such impulses? The DNA evidence continues to mount; there is one race – the human race. In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus is asked the question, “Who is my neighbor”, and answers with the parable of the Good Samaritan. The answer to “Who is my neighbor” includes the “other”, Jesus said, i.e. even our enemies. Matthew 5:43-45 says

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

Consider this quote from Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence:

Love of enemies has, for our time, become the litmus test of authentic Christian faith. Commitment to justice, liberation, or the overthrow of oppression is not enough, for all too often the means used have brought in their wake new injustices and oppressions. Love of enemies is the recognition that the enemy, too, is a child of God. The enemy too believes [they are] in the right, and fears us because we represent a threat against [their] values, lifestyle, or affluence. When we demonize our enemies, calling them names and identifying them with absolute evil, we deny that they have that of God within them that makes transformation possible. Instead, we play God. We write them out of the Book of Life. We conclude that our enemy has drifted beyond the redemptive hand of God. . . .

It is our very inability to love our enemies that throws us into the arms of grace.

Let’s Discuss: Some IM Statements about Culture

Let’s Discuss: Some IM Statements about Culture

Here are some thoughts about Christians and their relationships with the culture(s) around them, especially here in the U.S. We eagerly await your responses and discussion.

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Does the gospel change the way you look at the people the culture war tells you to fear and dislike?

• MS – 2009

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We will never get this right. We can’t really understand what our culture is any more than a fish can understand what water is. We can only pray to have our eyes opened, study a far wider world than we experience, and stop thinking our way of doing things is the only way.

So the challenge becomes humility and discernment. I have to know what it is I don’t know, see differences I didn’t even know could exist. I have to be wise about what in my culture is truly Christian, merely neutral, or demonic. I have to learn from people of other backgrounds, both Christian and non-Christian, and see what aspect of God shines through them. I have to consider which unthinking, deeply held beliefs are in fact leading me farther from God and my true nature, even if they seem to me to be the only obvious way. My religion will be cultural, but may that culture be more and more the culture of the Kingdom of God.

• DZ, from a 2010 post – Religion and Culture

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We are seemingly obsessed with protecting ourselves and others (especially others) from sin in any art form. You do know that the rating system we use for movies today was developed by Father Daniel Lord, a Jesuit priest, who based it firmly on Catholic theology. This was an attempt to keep movies “safe” for families as well as promote religion. The promotion of religion has gone by the wayside for the most part, but we still cling to the safety factor, setting limits on the rating level our kids can watch. We feel better about ourselves when we keep our kids from seeing things that might make them think about sin.

The same goes for books, music and visual art, like paintings we allow in our homes. We expect them to present to us a “safe” view of life, one where if sin is committed, it is punished swiftly. Where crime does not pay. Where we think only on nice things. Where the sun always shines, birds always sing in tune, and life is always wrapped in a neat red ribbon. We demand that our artists conform to this vision of safety. They cannot explore issues of life like sexuality or doubt about faith, because that might make the consumer of the art uncomfortable or, heaven forbid, lead them to sin themselves.

And as you might imagine, safe art is no art at all. For art to reach into one’s soul, it must address four issues:

Who are we?
What makes us unique—what is our purpose in life?
What has gone wrong?
How can we get back?

• JD, from a 2010 post – Selling Jesus By the Pound

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Culture war Christianity is as wrong-headed and off-center on the left as it is on the right. Working for “justice” can be as much an exercise of works-righteousness and self-righteousness as any promulgation of rules enforcing traditional moral frameworks. Groups like this, which develop their own constituencies, strategies, and rhetoric can be as unloving, aggressive, and even militaristic as any group touting “traditional values.”

The agenda of a church and denomination should be Christ. When Jesus is removed from the center, it becomes a free-for-all. And it doesn’t matter whether you replace Jesus with “family values” or “justice.” No matter which side of the debate you’re on, you’re missing the point.

• CM, from a 2018 post – Culture War Christianity…from the Left

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So now I’m going to make someone really mad, but I don’t care: While you are allowed to have your convictions on the morality of human conduct, you are to keep your nose out of your neighbor’s business. What your neighbor is doing may be immoral, but it’s not your problem and it’s not your responsibility. “Love your neighbor as yourself” does not have fine print giving you permission to be a moral policeman in the bedrooms of people whose choices about sex differ from yours and mine.

…I don’t have to accept or endorse anything to be his friend, neighbor or fellow human being. I don’t have to oppose everything a homosexual does in life to say I believe the Bible is clear on this subject. But what he does, in his life, and how he lives before God is not my business. I respect his right to live before God and his own conscience. I am not (normally) called to violate the sanctity of another person’s moral competency, especially if their behavior is outside of my immediate family and children, and isn’t illegal.

• MS, from a 2006 post – The Nosey Evangelical Neighborhood

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I think that the practice of “vulnerability” as personal transparency may have gone to seed. Just take one flip around the TV channels and you can see that. What are all of these confessional talk shows, reality shows, and religious testimonial programs if not examples of “letting it all hang out” to an extreme? And don’t even get me started on social media! I could find more than enough examples on one screen shot from Facebook or Twitter to make my points. The information age has led in many cases to “TMI.” “No secrets” has become “no limits” on the personal information some will share.

Is it possible we no longer know how to value virtues like privacy, modesty, or restraint?

• CM, from a 2013 post – Virtue and the Limits of Vulnerability

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Whether we understand it or not, the Civil War has shaped each and every one of us who is an American. I am still learning to appreciate this as I grow older and reflect upon my own sheltered life. I am particularly moved when I consider the state of racial relationships in our country. Though measurable progress has been made, we have far to go.

As a privileged white man in America, I take so much for granted and far too often ignore the ongoing plight of those whose lives have continued to be difficult and discouraging since our greatest national conflict. And yet the circumstances have been all around me, crying out, every day of my life. My youth was salted with television news accounts of the Civil Rights movement, my heart stirred by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream. Members of my family were part of the “white flight” from Chicago’s city neighborhoods to the suburbs, as the descendants of slaves whose families had traveled north in the Great Migrations moved in.

I now live in the city where Bobby Kennedy calmed the crowds after Dr. King’s assassination, a city that ironically once housed the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan, whose mission was to stir up racial hatred and violence. I visit her neighborhoods in my work; neighborhoods that remain largely segregated by race and class. I still wince when I have to speak of “the black church” after attending a service in the city for one of my patients of African-American heritage. Why not simply “the church”?

Returning to my small town residence south of the city, I drive past homes where Confederate flags still fly, where people of color remain few and far between, and where prejudice still speaks, albeit in quieter tones. Even in recent years, a few schools in our region have been penalized for overt demonstrations of racism at sporting events. You won’t find African-Americans in the local congregation where I worship, I’m ashamed to say. For the most part, black is black and white is white, and we maintain our distance.

Biblically, tolerance of this state of affairs is unacceptable.

• CM, from a 2011 post – 150 Years Ago, Today

Fr. Freeman: What kind of community fosters virtue in its members?

Father Stephen Freeman is doing a timely series of posts on “virtue” at his blog, Glory to God for All Things. In one piece, “A Crisis of Virtue — The Good that We Need,” he reflects upon lessons from C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, the early church, and experiences in his own family to remind us of the importance of being the right kind of person, of having character, of having faith in the depths. Theological sophistication cannot measure this, he says, but virtue can.

One point Fr. Freeman makes in his post is often forgotten by religious separatists. The topic of virtue was one area of agreement between the early Christians and Greco-Roman culture. Even in pagan settings, there was an understanding of good character and the graces of life.

I stress this when teaching the epistle to the Philippians. In Phil. 4:8, we read:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Most students of Philippians understand that Paul is not setting forth a distinctively Christian list of virtues here. Instead, he is urges these Christians congregations to focus their attention upon the virtues that even their neighbors recognize as being healthy and positive. To a church that was beginning to show the stresses of un-virtuous behavior and attitudes in their relationships, Paul encouraged them to learn from their pagan neighbors! Sometimes they shame those claiming to follow Jesus.

In Philippians, Paul not only lists character qualities, but, more importantly, he sets before the Philippians examples of the kind of self-sacrificing, loving lifestyle he is urging.

In chapter 1, he writes of his own desire to forgo even death and departing to be with Christ if it will help the Philippians in their faith. He writes in chapter 2 of Timothy, his closest co-worker, and the eagerness he has to serve them. And he points them, significantly, to one of their own, Epaphroditus, who had left Philippi to travel to Paul in prison, to serve him and help him in his dismal circumstances. Epaphroditus came close to death, Paul says, to minister to him. Most of all, Paul includes the great “kenosis” hymn of Phil. 2:1-11, which points to Jesus, the One who left heaven’s glory and went to the depths of death and shame that we might have life.

If you want to encourage virtue, it is not enough to speak philosophically and didactically about it, to give lists and exercises and programs. You must tell the right kind of stories. Following Paul’s example, this is what Fr. Freeman does in his post, ending with this good word:

What kind of community fosters virtue in its members? First and foremost, I think, it is a community that tells good stories of good men and good women. It is the task of the Church both to tell and to become the good story. The Church is the sacrament of virtue and that place where every virtue finds its true home. Character and virtue ask questions that have very little to do with success. The greatest failures of Christianity in the modern world have not been failures to “succeed.” They have been failures of character, when “success” and worldly concerns have overwhelmed doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason.

Monday with Michael Spencer: Evangelical Anxiety about Culture

Note from CM: Here is a prescient look at evangelicals and their fear of culture from 2007, from a series of posts Michael did called, “Evangelical Anxieties.” What in the world would he say about where we are now?

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Monday with Michael Spencer
Evangelical Anxiety about Culture

Christians always live in a culture. Sometimes that culture has been, in some way, a “Christian” culture. In most instances, Christians have existed in cultures that did not appreciate or endorse their worldview.

Determining how to live in culture, and to what extent that culture will influence us, has always been a challenge for Christians. Our “connectedness” to culture, however, is often not a matter of our decision to participate or belong. Because we live “in” culture, the condition of culture affects us whether we agree with that culture or oppose it. It is the water we swim in and the air we breath, and there is little that can be done about its presence unless we are willing to choose radical separation.

God’s word to his people has varied in regard to this challenge. In some circumstances, God has told his people to be separate to the point of suffering. In other cases, God’s people were told to settle down, buy houses, marry and do business; to seek their welfare in the culture where they found themselves. Christians are not always sure whether to refuse to eat the king’s food or to seek a seat at his table.

Some cultures have allowed God’s people to exist in peace with little interference, while other cultures have sought to persecute and kill believers. This kind of threat has, in many ways, been easier for believers to navigate because the hostility to the values and welfare of God’s people has been clear. In other kinds of cultural experiences, the extent of the “threat” to Christians from culture has been less easy to understand or anticipate.

Christians in American culture would appear to be in a friendly environment, but that isn’t what you will hear if you pay attention. Evangelicals in America today are awash in the rhetoric of persecution. If a person with no familiarity with America or Christians were to listen to much Christian media or wander through evangelical congregations, they would get the distinct impression that many Christians believe they are under assault, persecuted and constantly ostracized for their faith.

Fear of “secular humanism,” the “homosexual agenda,” and government “control” of religion is plentiful in evangelicalism. If one knows the right radio networks and programs to listen to, the paranoia runs very deep.

This isn’t a new situation. In the twentieth century, evangelicals felt themselves under assault in the Scopes trial, under assault by the influence of cold war communism, under assault by aggressive atheists and under assault by their fellow Americans who resist adopting the evangelical version of “American values.” In a nation of churches with unprecedented evangelical influence and political clout, the rhetoric of persecution and threat is everywhere.

Part of the reason for this is the difficulty Christians in America have in coming to terms with their privileged history in this country. To Christians of other times and places, contemporary America looks like an evangelical empire. Even Roman Catholicism in America is increasingly influenced by evangelicalism. But to American evangelicals, America seems like a place where secularists and anti-Christians are being given unprecedented power to limit Christian belief and impose their vision of culture on the children of Christians. This is because the culture is changing in reference to our past, a cultural past that is mythologically presented as an idealized Christian country until the 1960’s. This is ridiculous, but it is the widely believed view.

Evangelicals see three aspects of culture that frighten them:

1) An overall cultural decline, particularly in areas of family, community, entertainment and institutional life that were traditionally very deeply influenced by Christian belief.

For example, evangelicals are largely in a fearful retreat and abandonment of the public school system in America. As recently as my experience in the early 70s, most Christians were in public schools and many would choose careers in public school careers. Today, alternatives in private Christian schools and by those who homeschool are increasingly the norm.

Evangelicals feel that public schools have become unsafe, hostile, politicized and far inferior in quality. There is nothing on which the average evangelical feels more strongly than the threat that exists in culture to their own children.

2) The increasing tolerance and diversity in America that give cultural influence to non-Christian religions, atheism, homosexuality and militant secularism.

Few Christians are out and out racists or bigots, but there is a reason that most evangelical churches, schools and institutions reflect a narrow sample of race and a narrower diversity of views. Evangelicals are determined that what they think happened in the mainline churches — cultural accommodation followed by apostasy — will not happen to them, but the visible result looks exclusive, white, and middle-class.

Contemporary evangelicalism finds it very easy to turn the culture and the culture-shapers into the enemies of the faith, and the rhetoric of the “culture war” is dominating evangelicalism at every level, This increasingly makes evangelism and missional church life difficult for many evangelicals.

In fact, I’m amazed at how many Christians seem to believe that arguing and lobbying about social and cultural issues is “evangelism” and “a good witness.” In many ways, it appears that some popular theological movements today find part of their appeal in a despair over culture and a kind of hopelessness about the future of culture.

Christians are the primary buyers of the literature and media of apocalyptic fear. The Left Behind video game portrays the kind of future scenario that many American evangelicals find inevitable: fighting unbelievers in order to survive. The “What Would Jesus Do?” question seems to be far less important than, “What will we do when the culture turns on us?”

3) The prevailing power of culture to shape thinking, values and character.

Evangelicals have been trying to shelter themselves from worldly culture and its particular temptations for most of their history. The worst whippin’ I ever got from my dad happened after telling him I’d played cards in church. Anxieties over movies, books, television, celebrities and, now, the internet, have always been part of evangelicalism. We are convinced that the world will draw us in, take away our faith, and turn us into drunks and criminals if we don’t fight.

Of course, in this kind of atmosphere, fear-mongering and fear motivating is common. For example, most recently critics of Christians in public schools have brought forward statistical proof that Christian teenagers in public schools are highly likely to abandon their faith. Ironically, most of the Christian parents reading and heeding those studies are products of public schools.

Are the studies wrong? My career in youth ministry tells me they are outrageously wrong, but I understand why such studies are gaining influence: they tell evangelicals that their fears are reasonable.

I want to close this post with one observation and two suggestions.

The observation is that younger evangelicals are getting over this, and that fact is causing even more anxiety in some quarters. A generation of missional leaders are doing church in a very different way, seeing culture as something to be used, understood and taken over for the sake of Christ. This is risky business, and not everyone is doing it equally well.

Some evangelicals have capitulated to the worst aspects of culture, while others are demonstrating Biblical wisdom and incarnational humility in navigating culture. I’m praying these missionaries to western culture are fabulously successful, and we see a turnaround from fear to Biblical engagement and discernment.

My first suggestion is that evangelicals find ways to take the posture of servants, rather than victims, within culture. We are paying a price for the culture war rhetoric that has been embraced by the church. Many of our fellow Americans are convinced that we are a militant movement with the goal of political domination. They hear us speaking of them as the enemy. We need to reverse this, and confess that God has put us here to be witnesses and servants in any way that promotes the gospel.

The second suggestion is that we take another look at culture and realize it is not identical with all the negative connotations of “world.” Ed Stetzer has reminded us that culture is the house our neighbors live in, and the rhetoric of burning down a house rarely accomplishes very much. A stronger belief in common grace, a more consistent look for common ground, and a frequent celebration of our common humanity could all be helpful in living as strangers, but not enemies, with those in our surrounding culture.

Sunday with Walter Brueggemann: The holiness of the baptized community

View of a River with Rowing Boats, Van Gogh

Sunday with Walter Brueggemann
The holiness of the baptized community

The holiness of the church does not consist in true doctrine that everyone accepts. It does not consist in true morality that everyone embraces. We know of course that the church has often specialized in doctrine and morality. But the truth is that the holiness of the baptized community consists in the habits of generosity, grace in speaking, and tenderhearted forgiveness. Imagine such an agenda for the church: generosity, grace, forgiveness. These are the marks of baptism, these are the marks of Jesus, these are the shapes of our new life in Christ. The truth of the church, dramatized in baptism, is that our life is so safe that we can trust ourselves in the world. And when we do that, the world will see our holiness, our righteousness, our life in God. That is who we are. That’s us! And we are not like them, because our life in generosity, grace, and forgiveness is in the image of God. By our life, God is honored and the world is healed. That’s us!

•

The baptismal conversation is not dishonest about our hurt, does not deceive about our failure, does not deny about the violence all around of which we are apart. The baptismal conversation does, however, place in the midst of hurt, failure, and violence this other word which has been spoken over us, spoken before us, spoken against us, spoken on our behalf. This other word is hesed, God’s steadfast love which overruns our hurt, outdistances our failure, supersedes our violence, outflanks our sin. In the end, because that other word is true, our words are changed. Our words are now serious speech, ready in hope and confidence for a new obedience. Baptism is a decision to stop the mindless preoccupation of the world and focus on how the world will be, when recast in fidelity.

• A Gospel of Hope, pp. 148-149

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: August 24, 2019

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: August 24, 2019

Greetings from Fort Wayne, Indiana, where I am with my young grandson for a weekend of soccer games. The weather is supposed to be ideal — highs in the 70s, with bright blue sunny skies. Last night my other grandson’s team had their first game of the high school football season, winning 27-17 (I’m sorry I had to miss it). So, fall sports have begun, even though it’s hard for me to fathom saying that before Labor Day.

Fort Wayne is the second largest city in the state, behind Indianapolis. It traces its beginnings back to the Revolutionary War, when a series of forts was built in the region. It became a trading post, then a village that boomed after completion of the Wabash and Erie Canal and the coming of the railroad. Fort Wayne grew into a manufacturing hub and remains a center for the nation’s defense industry.

Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge. Photo by tquist24 at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Fort Wayne is where our fellow iMonker David Cornwell goes to church, and we plan to spend a bit of time together this weekend.

Replica of Abe Lincoln’s cabin, Foster Park, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Photo by David Cornwell at Flickr

But most of the time, I’ll be trying to capture a few more shots like this…

…and cheering for my grandson.

• • •

The Amazon is on fire…

Smoke billows during a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil, on Wednesday. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

Along with a series of remarkable photos, NPR gives this succinct report:

A view of the devastation caused by a fire during the dry season in Brasilia, Brazil, on Wednesday. (Adriano Machado/Reuters)

International concern is growing over the rapidly spreading fires that are destroying large swaths of the Amazon rainforest.

The fires were most likely started by farmers clearing land, but have spiraled out of control. In just the past month, about 36,000 fires have ignited — nearly as many as in all of 2018, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. Overall, there have been 74,155 fires so far this year — mostly in the Amazon — an increase of about 80% compared to last year.

World leaders are starting to sound the alarm.

“Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest – the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen – is on fire,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote in a tweet Thursday.

Calling it an international crisis, he urged asked those attending the G-7 Summit this weekend — hosted by France — to put the fires at the top of the agenda.

Meanwhile, the country’s leaders appear to be fiddling while the rainforest burns. Brazil’s President Balsonaro, a right-wing nationalist, advanced a conspiracy theory, blaming NGO’s for intentionally setting the fires to get attention. Bolsonaro has angrily played down the fires as a “domestic Brazilian issue” and an annual phenomenon, while accusing Macron of a colonialist mindset in raising alarms. Finland has called upon the EU to consider banning Brazilian beef imports as a way of holding Balsonaro and his policies to account.

• • •

Tinker, tailor, missionary, spy…

I might just have to get this one. A fascinating review at Christianity Today looks at Matthew Avery Sutton’s book, Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War.

Many of America’s first spies were missionaries or came from missionary backgrounds. Often enough, they were the only Americans who had lived abroad—not just among locals but as locals. While other American spies learned about the world through books and couldn’t really grasp its full range of quirks and complexities—“like tourists who put ketchup on their tacos,” as Sutton puts it—missionaries spoke several languages and knew the subtle differences between local dialects. They understood local cultures and faiths from the ground up and knew intuitively how to navigate between them. They knew, in short, “how to totally immerse themselves in alien societies.” But they always identified first and foremost as Christians and as Americans, and when they were called to serve the nation, they did not hesitate to do so.

…Being a missionary spy was fraught with moral and spiritual tension. The missionary aspires to the highest morality, while the spy deliberately blurs the lines between right and wrong; the missionary preaches a gospel of love and kindness, but the spy must lie, cheat, and steal in order to complete the mission. “It is an open question,” Eddy later observed with some regret, “whether an operator in OSS or CIA can ever again become a wholly honorable man.” Sutton’s title, Double Crossed, is a clever play on words that reveals these tensions between the methods of God and those of Caesar.

• • •

And, more on the “Billy Graham Rule”…

From the Charlotte Observer…

Manuel Torres, 51, is a devout Southern Baptist who sometimes serves as a deacon at East Sanford Baptist Church in Sanford, North Carolina. Up until 2017, he was also a deputy in Lee County.

Torres said he was fired from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office after declining to train a new female hire alone — a violation of his Christian beliefs under the so-called Billy Graham rule. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in North Carolina federal court, the former deputy is now seeking more than $300,000 in damages for religious discrimination.

“Torres holds the strong and sincere religious belief that the Holy Bible prohibits him, as a married man, from being alone for extended periods with a female who is not his wife,” the suit states.

The order to train a female deputy would reportedly require him to “spend significant periods of time alone in his patrol car with the female officer trainee,” the lawsuit said.

“The job duty of training female deputies, in such a manner, violates (Torres’) religious beliefs against being alone for periods of time with female(s) who is/are not his wife and leaving the appearance of sinful conduct on his part,” the suit states.

Torres said he asked for a religious accommodation that would exempt him from the training in July 2017, according to the lawsuit, but he said his sergeant ultimately denied the request.

After Torres reportedly brought his concerns to higher-ups in the department, he said in the complaint, the sergeant retaliated by allegedly failing to respond to a call for backup “in an unsafe area in which Torres had to tase two fighting suspects, and a gun was present on the scene.”

In early September 2017, one of Torres’ superior officers also reportedly “expressed his anger” at the repeated requests for religious accommodation.

Less than a week later, Torres said he was fired without explanation.

• • •

How do you respond to these statements?

I can’t follow Christ and also succeed at being nice.

Your paper brain and your Kindle brain aren’t the same thing…

…and this may affect how you read the Bible

[Google] has issued new community guidelines, saying, “disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news” doesn’t “build community,” and employees should, therefore, “avoid conversations that are disruptive to the workplace or otherwise violate Google’s workplace policies.”

In practice, meritocracy now excludes everyone outside of a narrow elite.

• • •

Greatest songs of my lifetime…

Each Saturday from now on, I’d like to contribute a section devoted to songs that I consider among the finest that have been written and performed during my lifetime. This will cover songs from the 1960s to today. I hope you will enjoy these sound bites from the soundtrack of my life.

On today’s edition of greatest songs, I’d like to remind us of Jimmy Webb’s three “city” songs that he wrote and then released in collaboration with Glen Campbell:

By the Time I Get to Phoenix (Campbell’s version released in 1967)
Wichita Lineman (released 1968)
Galveston (released 1969)

This is as fine a song cycle as you’ll ever find. May you find joy in listening to them today.

•

Conversation is Difficult — Let’s Do Better

Conversation is Difficult — Let’s Do Better

In his book Disagreeing Virtuously, Olli-Pekka Vainio names three specific virtues that keep communities in conversation even when they disagree: open-mindedness, humility, and courage.

• C. Christopher Smith. How the Body of Christ Talks

• • •

I’ve been getting more criticism lately about the moderation of our comment threads here at Internet Monk. This pops up occasionally, but it seems like it has been more frequent in recent days.

But in reality, it’s been like this from the start. Here are some excerpts from a post I wrote just a couple of months after Michael died, back in 2010.

Wow.

We’ve had quite a week so far here at Internet Monk. The comments have been pouring in faster than I can follow them, and I’ve had to go back and clean up several messes where people spilled venom or knocked down a wall trying to create a new corridor for the conversation.

If your comment was deleted in one of these discussions, it may have happened for one of several reasons:

You were denying someone’s salvation.

You were being just plain mean. Rude. Impolite. OK, a jackass.

You posted a comment so extensive it broke the record for longest essay on iMonk.

You got off the subject.

You got caught up in a discussion that was off the subject.

You got caught up in a little game of “You vs. Me” and forgot there’s a whole community involved in this discussion.

You gave off the attitude that everyone else involved in the discussion was unworthy of your attention, so you shouted what to you seems obvious, rolled your eyes at being seen in the company of such ignoramuses, and stormed out again. (see #2)

I thought I’d throw out a few reminders today to help us as we listen and talk with one another.

ONE: Internet Monk is a conversation, not a church.
Some of you seem exasperated that we are not upholding a particular confession of faith here. We’re not calling certain commenters heretics. We’re allowing the “liberals” to have a voice. Gasp, even non-Christians are allowed to make points.

Friend, this is not a church. I am not your pastor. We have not entered into a covenant here. This is a conversation. Yes, we come from a distinctly Christian point of view. Yes, we talk about the Bible and theology and church and missions and following Jesus. I hope people are edified and helped. There is definitely a ministry aspect to this blog.

But it’s also a conversation blog, and a conversation is an open proposition. All are welcome. Yes, those who enter the discussion should be aware that making and defending arguments can be a rough and tumble business. But they should also expect respect. No matter what their views, they are human beings, made in God’s image, people for whom Christ died, and our neighbors.

Let’s all learn the fine art of conversation.

TWO: Internet Monk is a blog, not a free speech forum
Some of you think we’re being unfair when we edit or delete your comment or speak in a way that you think is inconsistent. I’m going to be brutally honest — what matters in the final analysis is what we who moderate the blog think about whether or not a comment is appropriate, not you.

Michael Spencer once wrote:

I do not have any commitment to absolute free speech on my blog. I have worked hard for the success I have in this medium, and I do not share it or allow others to denigrate or manipulate it. You may participate, but I do not sponsor wars, slander, threats or pointless arguments.

I’m not a perfect moderator, so if you want to accuse me of being hypocritical or inconsistent, I already agree with you and it doesn’t matter. You won’t win the comment war.

If you insist on getting your point of view heard, and are frustrated here, you are free to start your own blog. It’s easy to do, and that would give you complete freedom to set your own rules. Here, we have ours, and they’re clearly defined.

To read about us and how we operate, go the FAQ/RULES page.

THREE: Internet Monk is a trust, not my bright idea.
Even though you are hearing my voice as the main writer on this blog, I write (and solicit the contributions of others) as one entrusted with a legacy, not as one starting from scratch. That means I have a responsibility to keep the material at iMonk at a high level, and also to maintain a certain continuity with the voice and emphases of its founder, Michael Spencer, as well as to chronicle my own journey and perspectives.

Michael’s writing is why I and hundreds of thousands of you were attracted to this blog in the first place. Not only because he shared his own life with such vulnerability and grace, but also because he was willing to pick some fights, make a few enemies, and point out regularly that many of the “emperors” we are all enamored with have no clothes.

Sacred cows make great barbecue, and we’re gonna keep the cook fires burning. You are not going to like everything you read on Internet Monk. If you do, we’re not doing our job. In fact, those of us who write on IM don’t agree with each other on everything. How boring would that be?

Conclusion
So, please, stay in the conversation here at Internet Monk, and invite others to join us. We promise to do our best to keep it fresh, stimulating, thoughtful, and sometimes disturbing.

We are always open to constructive criticism and suggestions. You can contact Chaplain Mike by email through the link at the top of the page.

•

In general, I have always been a more lax moderator than Michael Spencer was. The main reason is simple. Michael worked at a Christian boarding school and had opportunities throughout the day to devote time to keeping up with what was happening on the site. I work full time out in the community, am on call 2-4 nights each week, have a different family situation, and therefore have much less freedom to carefully follow along with the conversation on Internet Monk.

I have also overseen the transition of this blog to a more conversation-oriented blog, with a wider berth given to the kinds of comments that might well have been deleted or even gotten commenters banned in the past. For the most part, except for off-topic material, I will only delete comments if I think they are way out of line or represent a condemning spirit, an unwillingness to engage honestly or fairly with others, or attacks that come from downright meanness.

And I definitely have my weaknesses as a moderator. In particular, I have not been as good at something I probably should work on — making sure that certain voices do not dominate the conversation or persist in trying to have the last word.

In days to come, I am going to do my best to pay more careful attention and engage more to keep conversations on topic and civil.

It is my hope that each of you who wants to participate here at Internet Monk will also take a little time to think about how you can make this conversation more vital and helpful to everyone.

The old rule applies in conversation: “Measure twice, cut once.”

Or as Eugene Peterson’s rendering of James puts it: “Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger.”

God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey, Chapter 13 – What Difference Does It Make, Anyway

God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey,

Chapter 13 – What Difference Does It Make, Anyway

We now come to the end of our review of God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey. Today is Chapter 13 – What Difference Does It Make, Anyway. Beliefs have consequences. Jon says, “When beliefs involve such a core doctrine of Christianity as creation, they cannot fail to affect the life of the believer – and on the larger scale, of the church – profoundly”. Jon asserts that it makes a huge difference whether one believes the “traditional view” that the natural creation is fallen and corrupted or whether, as he has argued in the book, it retains the same “goodness” that was accorded it by God in the beginning. What you do not love, you will not value. If God values not only “Nature” as an abstract concept, but each creature, to the extent that “not one sparrow is forgotten by God” (Luke 12:6) then there is a mismatch of values if we love them any less.

Jon says the first thing to be restored when the idea of fallenness is seen as unbiblical fiction the sheer sense of joy in natural things. He quotes Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) who saw that the creation stemmed from God’s insatiable desire to spread his love beyond himself into everything he made. Traherne said:

Till you see that the world is yours, you cannot weigh the greatness of sin, nor the misery of your fall, nor prize your redeemer’s love. One would think these should be motives sufficient to stir us up to the contemplation of God’s works, wherein all the riches of His Kingdom will appear. For the greatness of sin proceedeth from the greatness of His love whom we have offended, from the greatness of those obligations which were laid upon us, from the great blessedness and glory of the estate wherein we were placed, none of which can be seen, till Truth is seen, a great part of which is, that the World is ours. So that indeed the knowledge of this is the very real light, wherein all mysteries are evidenced to us. (Traherne, Centuries, p. 80)

Thanksgiving for creation. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Jon says God cannot work for good in all things unless he works in all things (“all things” in the passage being applied to everything in all creation). And if he is, indeed, working in all things created, they are his servants for our good, and worth of thanksgiving. The basic Christian prayer of thanksgiving, then, depends on belief in the goodness of God’s creation, or suffers the death of a thousand qualification.

Prayer within creation. Since thanksgiving requires the creation to be fully obedient to God’s purpose for it, then the very same applies to prayer on similar grounds. Jon says:

“If nature is in revolt against God, is it going to be any more submissive to him because we pray to him? If we pray for the bane of disease to be turned into the blessing of health, are we (in fact) asking God to pit his strength to oppose his own creature (the bacteria or whatever), or are we asking him to command his servants to spare us? If we cry out in distress from a ship foundering in a storm, are we whistling in the wind because storms are “just a natural phenomenon”? It is only the truth of God’s continued sovereignty within his universe that makes the discipline (and joy) of prayer that Jesus practiced and taught worthwhile, or even rational. What did Jesus teach about God in creation when he commanded us to pray “Give us this day our daily bread”?

Worship on behalf of creation. One sign of the continuing goodness of creation is its own participation in the worship of God:

The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all. 20. Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. 21. Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will. 22. Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, my soul. Psalm 103:19-22

In itself the irrational creation is, metaphor apart, only capable of giving God praise by being what it is. That in itself, given that Scripture in many places says it does praise him, is firm evidence against its fallenness.

Relating science to creation. Jon says, “…the biblical belief that creation is both good and subject to God dethrones the still-common Enlightenment principle that the universe is a closed causal system, in which God cannot act and, by implication, on which only science has the final say concerning physical truth… Secondly it is claimed that God would be cheating the freedom and dignity of his own creation by ‘breaking its laws’… Thirdly, some people complain that were God to be actively involved, he would be deceiving scientists in their pursuit of predictable natural causes and laws.” Jon summarizes:

In summary, to recognize that science is just one useful source of provisional truth, rather than the arbiter of truth, even in the physical and material realm, is a necessary corrective for our scientistic age, and this is greatly encouraged by the knowledge that creation is not only good, but God’s servant for governing the world. This in no way denies any scientific evidence, though it may involve being skeptical about certain scientific theories in their metaphysical aspect – for one of the achievements of philosophy of science is the understanding that theories are the products of cultures and their largely unevidenced worldviews.

Care over creation. Some of us can very well remember when any talk of creation care in conservative and dispensational evangelical circles was frowned upon as “environmentalism” and associated with “liberalism” and a general state of unbelief that Jesus would return at any moment and rapture the RTCs away. “Environmentalism” was seen as a liberal plot or wedge to spread the big-government gospel of earth-worship and secular humanism… blah… blah… blah. You know the drill if you came from that sub-culture, and if you don’t know the drill… count yourself fortunate.

It does seem that attitude is changing and a more realistic idea of “stewardship” of God’s creation does seem to be spreading among evangelicals, or was until the retrenchment of Trumpism. Hopefully, that retrenchment will be short-lived. Jon says:

Care for creation, then is part of Christian mission – given the truth of Genesis 1:28, it is actually the original part of that mission. Fortunately this work has attracted the support of leading scientists as well as theologians and church leaders, which at the very least is a testimony to society that this is God’s world and that his people recognize it. It goes without saying that one is much more likely to wish to preserve what one loves because it is God’s good handiwork, than it one views it as irretrievably corrupted by evil.

But there is more to it than that, because the Christian hope engendered by the resurrection of Christ is the renewal of all things in heaven and earth, not their complete replacement and, still less, a mass evacuation from earth to heaven prior to its annihilation.

Creation and resurrection. Jon notes that it was due to Gnostic dualism that infected Christianity in the second century, that matter is corrupt versus pure spirit, which led to the idea that our “souls” leave our bodies at death to “go to heaven”. He says the unique Jewish concept of resurrection arose in the context of the equally distinctive biblical belief in the goodness of God’s material creation.

Jesus’ resurrection endorsed this view as he was the “firstfruits” or deposit on the eventual complete renewal of the original physical creation. That what was naturally empowered (psuchikos) would at the coming of Christ be swallowed up by the “spiritually empowered (pneumatikos). But the very promise of that transformation affirmed that it had been “very good” from the beginning. The resurrection confirms God’s love for, and approval of, the human body.

Conclusion. Jon concludes:

I will just add a word of personal testimony. In the time since I began to suspect that what I had assumed about creation’s corruption all my life was mistaken, I’ve begun to see the world with new eyes. When I look out of my study window, I find I can admire the beauty of what I see without a subconscious “Yes but…” imposing itself on the view. I can love the freedom of a soaring buzzard without thinking, “Yes but it’s spoiled by the evil suffering that sustains it”. I can rejoice in a gorgeous metallic red and blue parasitic Chrysis was on the patio and leave its lifestyle in God’s wise hands, rather than accept uncritically Darwin’s jaundiced assessment. If I pick up an ammonite from the beach, or read about a newly discovered function for DNA, I find that what I see and experience leads me, in a new way, into expressing worship on the creation’s behalf; a role for which I myself was created. The more of nature I appreciate, the more of it I may bring into the sacred space of God’s temple of creation. Practically, I will be more its steward and less its exploiter. Finally, I will rejoice as much to see it new, yet familiar face, come the transformation of the end of the age, as I shall at the sight of my own face in the mirror.

That, in a very real sense, is to return to Eden, and to extend its borders.