Looking For The Jesus Connection: How did Jesus Fight the "Culture War?"

jesusbyz.jpgInformation about Justice Sunday at Highview Baptist Chruch can be found at the Lexington Herald Leader. Baptist Press is covering the same story, with a Q&A as well. And for irony’s sake, this story is on the same page. More recent coverage is here. :-/

I’m pretty good at seeing connections. I took the Graduate Record Examination twice, and I remember questions like this:

“Dog is to peanut butter, as cat is to _______________.”
a. Apple butter b. Martha Stewart c. The International Space Station.

I won’t tell you what the answer is, but I got it right.

So when confronted with what Jesus has to do with a Democratic filibuster of Republican judicial nominees, you may struggle with the connection. But the Internet Monk is here to help you. It goes something like this:

Jesus is Lord. He teaches us to live by Biblical values. Christians, i.e. “people of faith,” want to apply those Biblical values to public life, especially here in America where we have the right to do so. Judges affect our public lives by their many rulings on important issues, especially issues related to life and marriage. Republicans have nominated judges that are people of faith, and their rulings won’t go against what people of faith know is right and good. But the Democrats are against people of faith, and are using filibusters and other tactics to stop those Republican nominated judges from being approved. They are not just stalling the process; they are actively disqualifying these judges over issues of religious faith, and that’s wrong. Therefore, Jesus is for Republican judges being approved, and Jesus is against the Democratic filibuster against people of faith.
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The iMonk and Calvinism Q&A

calvin.jpgQ: Are you a Calvinist?

A. I prefer to not be called a Calvinist. There might be certain situations where I would answer to that term, but it would be rare.

Q. Why are you no longer a Calvinist?

A. As long as I have been a Calvinist, I’ve had to explain what the term meant when I used it. For example, Evangelical Presbyterians, Reformed Baptists, PCUSAers, OPCers and PCAers are all Calvinists with similar views on some kind of monergism. But when you move just a few inches off this common ground, chaos ensues.

Calvinism is like a big apartment house where a lot of families live. Some of the families are people I identify with. Some of the families are people I want nothing to do with. After almost 14 years, I think I need to find another place to live. I am not disassociating from everyone in the house or everything they believe, I just need my own place. Some of the nut cases won’t let me have any peace and quiet.
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The Best Show On Television: Echoes of The Fall and Glimpses of Grace in "House, M.D."

housemd.jpgIt’s major confession time. I have a TV habit. I think it started with the X-Files, which Denise and I started watching every week about the middle of its run. We watched and loved Millennium, and a short-lived series called Brimstone. We’ve always had at least one regular series we try to catch each week for a “cheap date at home.”

Now, however, things are seriously out of hand. We’re religiously loyal to all three CSI‘s, plus Without a Trace and Cold Case. All CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer productions; all shows where good police officers solve mysteries and crimes with a mixture of skillful discovery of evidence, science and hard work. All programs with flawed, but earnestly well-intentioned, characters. Every show has just enough mixture of the personal and the professional to keep us involved with the human side of each character. As a teacher, I have my junior english students create characters, and I’ve got a few good ones running around in my head waiting for a story or a novel to let them live. I give Bruckheimer high marks for his characters. They are fascinating, believably human and rarely dull.
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In the Classroom: Three Stories, Othello and A Christian Approach To Literature

othello.jpgIn my AP English IV class, one of my most difficult tasks is teaching students how to read, think and analyze literature as Christians. There are several reasons for the resistance. Laziness. A feeling that the classics are irrelevant. Senioritis. (A very real disease) And one that concerns me most of all: the belief that classical, secular literature is inappropriate for Christians in the first place.

I do an extensive introduction to Shakespeare in my class, usually taking most of a week to do a biography and introductory lectures. Today, Shakespeare scholars have reached an impressive consensus on many aspects of Shakespeare’s life, though the inmost personal world of the man himself is available to us only in his public work, particularly “The Sonnets.” When I concluded the introduction, my most outspoken Christian student said, “Shakespeare is a scumbag!” Her conclusion was based on the evidence that Shakespeare had been an absentee husband (though an excellent provider) who had certainly committed adultery with the “dark lady” of the Sonnets. She also heard my case that Shakespeare’s work was profoundly affected by the experience of being a member of an “underground” Catholic family in the age of the Elizabethan police state. She added “Catholicism” to “adulterer,” and made the judgment that Shakespeare’s work was anti-Christian, profane and titillating.

How can I bring students like this to an appreciation of Shakespeare? Particularly, a Christian appreciation? How can I relate Shakespeare to a life lived in commitment to Jesus Christ?

Here’s something like my class lecture today, as we attempted to use Othello as an example of a Christian approach to literature.
Continue reading “In the Classroom: Three Stories, Othello and A Christian Approach To Literature”

Christian Humanism: Beginnings

feet.jpgWhen it comes to ultimate reality and our humanity, there are really very few options.

If there is no God, there is no such thing as the “human” in the classically Judeo-Christian sense. There is an existential human, thrown into existence and forced to determine his own identity by choices that are, ultimately, absurd. There is the pagan human, a struggler against forces that he cannot understand or control, but can only hope to religiously placate or nobly ignore. In this contemporary time, the human is a category in the pages of science, an observation in the notebook of the psychologist, yet these disciplines do not give us our humanity, but increasingly take it from us. They tell us we are dancing to our DNA while being no more than one species among millions briefly occupying a warm rock in a third-rate solar system in a second-rate galaxy in a universe that doesn’t care.

If there is a God, then our humanity stands in reference to God. If it is the God of pantheism, we are God every bit as much as anything else is God. Humanity is a meaningless concept. If it is the God of Deism, we can only look for his fingerprints on the project and hope to derive some significance for our existence from that distant being. So far, the message isn’t promising for our humanity or our future. If it is the God of eastern spirituality, our humanity is one level among many, a place we pass through from one existence to another, and posessing no special significance and, ultimately, illusory.
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I'm Not Like You: An Apologia to My Readers (Calvinists especially)

cowboy.jpgMy Calvinistic and Reformed friends. If we are still on speaking terms, I need to say something to you.

I am not like you. That’s not an attitude of condescension, it’s just a fact that I need to bring to the front of our relationship. You are writing me letters and notes about N.T. Wright, my views on inerrancy, my coziness with Catholicism. Your concern is appreciated, but now it’s time to stop it. We need to accept that we are different, and we are not on the same page in this journey.

I’m not like most of you because my dad was divorced, and the legalism in my church destroyed his willingness to fellowship and worship with other Christians. In our church, divorced people were castigated weekly as the worst of sinners. Dad stayed home in shame. He was a man of prayer and the Bible, but he only heard me preach five times in his life because the church we attended had both his ex-wife and my mother as members. I’ll never forget what it felt like when it dawned on me that my father wasn’t enjoying the forgiving welcome of Jesus, but was living in the condemnation of legalism. He loved God, but only at the end of his life did he hear the preaching of the cross that assured him his sins were forgiven- all of them.

This changed me in ways I can’t explain, but I can put it this way. When Jesus said of Lazurus, “Loose him and let him go,” I think he was talking about my dad. Other Christians didn’t hear that word, but I did, and it makes me who I am.

I’m not like you because I believe much of contemporary Christianity has nothing to do with the public ministry of Jesus or the reality of his Kingdom. I don’t see five finely honed points of reformed theology in Jesus’ acceptance of sinners in the Gospels. I don’t see the divisive rejection of people in Jesus’ ministry, but I see it on every corner in evangelicalism. Jesus ministry is the Kingdom of God made actual in the here and now. I see a new Israel being created around Jesus himself. I see the covenant love of God for his people extended to the last, lost, least, little and dead. Jesus’ denunciation of the religious establishment doesn’t seem to register with the religious crowd today who are every bit as outraged as the Prodigal’s older brother when it comes to joining the party being thrown for the son who’d been received home again.
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The River is Deep; The River is Wide: How I Made My Peace With The Roman Catholic Church

river.jpg
NOTE: This piece is similar to an essay on Catholicism I wrote two years ago, but the differences are significant. Read them both. There has been some evolution in the meantime. My apologies to the Catholic bashers who will get upset at this piece. Maybe you shouldn’t read it.

I was born in 1956, so when I was in elementary school, I dimly remember the image of “good” Pope John XXIII appearing on the television, and the image of Paul VI is impressed in my mind from many pictures throughout my high school and college years. In those days, I couldn’t have told you what a Pope was or what Catholics believed, because I was still submerged in a world where the one thing my family and peers could always say to justify themselves as better than others was “We aren’t Catholic.”

My education regarding Catholicism ran something like this: Catholics aren’t saved, and if you marry a Catholic girl the priest will take your babies. Catholics worship Mary, not Jesus. They pray to dead people and worship statues. They baptize babies and speak in Latin. Anyone who used to be a Catholic and is now a Christian will tell you that Catholicism is a big racket to make money. They drink and play Bingo, then go to confession and expect everything to be alright. The Pope is dedicated to taking over the world and destroying all non-Catholics. They call church mass. Their schools make their kids dress up every day. They have to eat fish on Friday. Read this Chick comic book and it will explain everything, but stay away from Catholics yourself.

Further down the road, I picked up more substantial doctrinal differences than this caricature, but the preceding paragraph always furnished the bright, flashing background of what I knew of Catholicism, as it does for many of my friends and readers today.
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Priceless BHT Comment

BHT Fellow Judson posted: “I just received a recorded phone call from my pastor inviting me to attend Easter Sunday.”

Lurker Eric replied with this gem:

“Press 1 if you will be attending the Traditional Easter Sunrise Service to be held in the (insert local Jr. College stadium here).” “Press 2 if you will be attending the 8:30 Traditional/Contemporary Easter Cantata Service to be held in the main auditorium/gymnasium.” “Pres 3 if you will be attending the 10:00 Contemporary/Revelant Passion Interpretation in the Holy Grounds Coffee shop. Seating is limited, please reserve soon.” “Press 4 if you will be bringing a friend to the 10:30 Resurrection Sunday Pageant. If you’re friend is not a Christian but is sensitive to the christian lifestyle/worldview, please leave their name and address so the Seeker Strike Team can visit them next Tuesday.” “Press 9 to hear these selections again or Press ‘O’ for the operator…Thank you for calling Valley Central Fellowship and Worship Center…” Eric the Lurker from Redding

Looney Tunes: The Whacked Out, Whipped Up, Wholly Scary Theology of the Praise and Worship Movement

super.jpgIn our journey back through the IM archives, we must deal with the Monk’s contradictory attitude towards contemporary Praise and Worship music. Does he hate it? If so, why does he have a warehouse of the stuff at the house? Why is he listening to it, even as he types?

The answer, my faithful readers, lies within. Here is a survey of the theology you hear between the songs every Sunday. You’ve winced, but you’ve gotten used to it. Time to sober up. Join me in the basement, and bring an extra candle and a hanky.

Continue Reading: “Looney Tunes: Praise and Worship Theology is Goofy”