Riffs: 05:11:07: What You Can Turn Into, Thanks To Your “Internet Pulpit.”

logo.gifThe one reason I would ever quit blogging is what you can turn into on this medium. Case in point, in his own words, courtesy of Verum Serum, Ken Silva tells you about himself and his “ministry.”

It’s not my job to write about Ken Silva. Ken and his writing “recommend” themselves, and those who specialize in discernment can discern whether Silva is a voice who ought to be linked and approved as dependable.

What I want to write about, however, are the typical seductions and delusions that proliferate among Christian bloggers. (And since I detest posts about blogging, consider this a bit of repentance in print.)Continue reading “Riffs: 05:11:07: What You Can Turn Into, Thanks To Your “Internet Pulpit.””

Riffs: 5:09:07: Apologetics and the Naming of Evil

0060833009t.jpgRavi Zacharias writes an outstanding response to the Virginia Tech killings, and uses the moral necessity of “naming” evil as a powerful apologetic.

Much of what Ravi is saying struck me when I wrote this piece on the abuse and murder of a child several years ago: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The response of the New Age minister doing the funeral left me feeling sick, because she didn’t have any way to “name” what was truly evil.

Os Guinness mounts a similar argument in his book The Long Journey Home and devotes an entire book to the question of evil in Unspeakable. Guinness has long stated that the failure to comes to terms with evil is a major weakness of the contemporary postmodern worldview and persuasive apologetic strength of Christianity.Continue reading “Riffs: 5:09:07: Apologetics and the Naming of Evil”

Thoughts on Beckwith

classicconv.gifMaybe you ought to read “The River is Deep, The River is Wide: How I Made My Peace With the Roman Catholic Church” before you waste all that time trying to figure out what I believe. Then you can get right down to blogging about the fact that I’m going to hell.

The blogosphere has been abuzz with posts and discussion regarding the “reversion” of well-known evangelical scholar Dr. Francis Beckwith to membership in the Roman Catholic Church. Because Beckwith was one of the most respected evangelical scholars cited in many culture war issues, and because he was serving as President of the high profile but doctrinally amorphous Evangelical Theological Society, many evangelicals have spoken up in terms that betray more than a bit of unusual emotion. Clearly, this loss of an evangelical champion has touched a nerve. The loss of Beckwith as an evangelical continues a trend that began with John Henry Newman and continues with Richard Neuhaus, Scott Hahn and Peter Kreeft.

Instead of an essay, let me share a few somewhat random thoughts…Continue reading “Thoughts on Beckwith”

John 3:16 and the Importance of the Old Testament

john3_16.gifMy adult Bible study is starting an Old Testament survey for the summer months in preparation for studying I Kings this fall. I did this little exercise with them this morning. I guess it’s kind of original with me. I’ve never seen anyone else do it. Consider it all yours for the glory of God.

Why should we study the Old Testament? You know all the usual reasons. Let me illustrate the importance of the Old Testament with a well known New Testament text that can’t be understood or interpreted correctly without the Old Testament:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 ESV)

We can’t understand John 3:16 without the Old Testament. That may strike you as odd, but it’s very true. Think of the crucial concepts at the heart of this verse, and each one of them depends on the Old Testament for meaning.

1) What GOD are we talking about in John 3:16? Any God that the reader or hearer wants to imagine? The idea of God we all carry around in our head that basically approves us as we are? The distorted ideas of God in the culture or other religions?

The God of John 3:16 is the God of the Old Testament. A particular God, with a particular character and attributes. A God with a particular way of relating to this world. The God revealed in Jesus is the God of the Old Testament.

God is persistent in the Old Testament that he is not any God or like all ideas of God. He is the one, true, only God. No other God’s compete with him in any way. Many Old Testament passages warn those who worship other gods that they are fools playing with the ultimate fire.

2) What is the WORLD that God loves? The Old Testament tells us that it is the world that God created in Genesis 1-2; the world that rebelled against God in Adam and Eve’s fall; the world that rejected God’s mercy in Cain; the world God judged through the flood in Genesis 11. It’s the world from which he calls a people, a world of peoples who will be blessed in Abraham and his descendants.

This world isn’t planet earth, but it is the world that occupies planet earth. Only in the Old Testament do we see this world clearly enough to understand God’s great love and how it unfolds in Jesus.

3) What is God’s LOVE? In fact, the Old Testament word for God’s love, hesed, introduces us to God’s covenant love for his people, the way he has chosen to relate to and rescue this world.

Love is one of the most mis-defined and misunderstood words in all of human language. In the Old Testament, God’s love for the world he has created is set alongside God’s just and holy character. We see that God’s love goes back to creation, but that this love must deal with the sin that separates God and his world.

Over and over the Old Testament illustrates God’s faith, covenant-making love. We see it in story after story and example after example. The love of God is all over the Old Testament. To say that God’s love is a New Testament reality is a great myth. It’s in the Old Testament that we see God’s merciful, promise-keeping, patient, suffering, sacrificial love introduced and illustrated.

4) What does it mean to BELIEVE? Here is another word that is so mis-defined that we can’t leave it up to the hearer to interpret. “Believing” is the response of Abraham to God’s promise in Abraham 15:6. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

Adam and Eve refused to believe, trust and value God as worth believing and obeying. As God saves people in the Old Testament, it is always because they have believed. Enoch. Noah. Abraham. To believe is to trust enough, to consider God worth enough, to depend on him in life and obedience.

In fact, in John 3, Jesus himself uses the Old Testament story of the bronze serpent to illustrate what happens when we believe in the one lifted up to bear the curse for his people.

5) What does PERISH mean? God is a holy God. His character cannot overlook sin forever. Perish is the separation from God that comes to sinners whose sin is not removed. Over and over we see this happening in the Old Testament, as sinners perish because of their sin. The Bible tells us that God was patient with sinners in the Old Testament, and he is merciful with amazing grace in the New Testament. The frightening descriptions of gehenna and the lake of fire in the New Testament are taking the Old Testament stories of judgement in Genesis 11 and 14 and showing them in manifestations that would shake the world in times to come.

The Old Testament law reminds us that those who are not forgiven perish. The severity of God’s justice can’t be compromised, but in Jesus Christ justice, love and mercy meet perfectly.

6) Who is the SON? According the Genesis 22, Abraham obeyed God by taking his son, his “only” son to the mountain of sacrifice. This is an awful scene if it is not preparation for John 3:16. In the light of the Gospel, it is preparation for God’s incarnational gift of himself in his son, Jesus.

But there is more. In Psalm 2, the word “son” is used of the anointed King. The Old Testament tells us that God’s anointed king is his beloved, his “son.” That son will rule in Zion, and will rule all nations. In the story of David and his descendants, the Old Testament tells us the story of Israel and Judah’s many kings, all teaching us that the true anointed King is still on the way. When he comes, he will be the king over every king, the sovereign over all sovereigns.

The word “son” is a royal word, not an incarnational word, in the Old Testament, but in Jesus we meet the son who is King, Lord, God with us.

You see, without the Old Testament, the most familiar verse in the New Testament loses its rich meaning, and becomes whatever we want it to be. Our study of the Old Testament is crucial for understanding the glory of the New Testament gospel.

Dinner With The Kids: Thoughts on Successful Parenting

news_041105_01_large.jpgUPDATE: My wife, Denise, has added a post on how talking played a major role in turning out great kid.

The two most important determining factors in raising well-adjusted children are if they have religious training and if the family eats dinner together. -From the Touchstone Magazine website

The greatest compliment Denise and I receive is how well our children have turned out. Noel and Clay are amazing young adults and we have more grateful joy in them than we do in anything we’ve done or accomplished.

Often, we are asked to write down “how” we raised such great kids. I’m sure we both answer that request the same way: “God did it!” Whatever we (and others) did right, God gave the grace and providence that made our kids what they are. We continue to see the work of God in their lives, even as adults who are living their own lives and making their own choices. From DNA to sparing us particular kinds of problems to the kinds of people that surround us in our community to the on-going work of the Holy Spirit, the “God” part of parenting is far, far beyond any choices we made as parents.Continue reading “Dinner With The Kids: Thoughts on Successful Parenting”

Review: Static by Ron Martoia

staticcover160.jpgBooks that translate the insights of N.T. Wright into the language of non-scholars are proliferating. Ron Martoia’s Static joins that conversation with one of the most readable books you’ll find on the intersection of recent New Testament backgrounds, the meaning of key Biblical concepts and the missional, evangelistic ministry of Christians in a world where fewer and fewer westerners are listening to the claims of Christianity at all.

For someone not aware that there is a serious conversation going on about how to “re-lexicon” and “re-vocalize” the Christian vocabulary, Martoia may sound like heresy 101. For those who know that the work of Wright and other contemporary scholars is exposing the weaknesses in contemporary popular understandings of key Biblical concepts, Martoia won’t be saying a lot new, but he says it very well. In fact, as a beginning book for a person ready to move into some fairly radical examinations of the way we describe Christianity, Static is excellent.Continue reading “Review: Static by Ron Martoia”