Timeless Faith

Rob Bell: Universalist or Annihilationist?

2011-05-03T23:03:00.000-05:00

I was watching a recent discussion on the Unbelievable radio program with host Justin Brierley that involved Rob Bell, author of the recent book Love Wins, and Christian blogger, Adrian Warnock. you can watch it as well at the Unbelievable site:

http://www.premier.tv/lovewins/

On a side issue, Rob Bell may not simply be a unorthodox with regard to the doctrine of hell. He may also be a pluralist. (Starting at 2:50)

Rob: This book is part of an ongoing discussion. It’s not the last word. I never thought it was and I assume nobody else thinks it’s the last word. So, I’m taking part of the ongoing discussion and it’s okay. The other opinions and perspectives are beautiful, good, wonderful.

But on to the universalism question:

When asked if he was a Universalist according a specific (but poorly worded) definition he responds (Starting at 7:36):

Justin: But is it fair to say you do believe in a universalism in the sense of that everyone will ultimately freely choose to be won over by the love of God?

Rob: I don’t know. Do you?

Adrian’s response to that was this:

Adrian: Well, it’s interesting because I don’t think Jesus did because Jesus talks about hell and He talks about fire that won’t go out, torment that’s unending. And certainly in your book you say that no one can resist God’s pursuit forever because God’s love will eventually melt the hardest hearts.

Rob doesn’t deny that he wrote that in his book. And there came a time in the discussion where the definition of universalism was investigated and Rob disagreed with the key option to universalism, that God condemns people for infinite time. Justin asked a listener question at 42:52 and sparked a portion of the discussion that ended with this admission:

Justin: And another person asks – this is more directed at you, Adrian, and your view of hell. “If we believe God is justice, how can a finite human being with a finite ability to reason come to earn infinite punishment? Surely justice demands that the time fits the crime. How can you believe in eternal conscious torment?” I mean, obviously a lot of people struggle with this and you’ve mentioned already another option, Rob, which isn’t really featured in your book, but annihilationism: this idea that people…

Rob: Yeah. There’s a section on the book, a sort of ex-human, post-human, formerly-human – that’s one of the sort-of – that the way people…

Justin: Sure. Are you more comfortable with that than the eternal conscious torment view? I mean, it really seems to me like you rule that out as being even considered. You know, that view is totally out of kilter with the idea of God’s love.

Rob: Well, it just raises questions. So like when I’m asking Adrian – those are legitimate, honest, straightforward – tell me more when you say that.

Justin: But tell me an answer to the question…

Rob: W-w-wait!

Justin: What do you think is the answer to that question?

Rob: Well, when he says, like in the questioner who says a finite being in a finite segment of time receives infinite punishment that has to be sort of kept up and maintained by God, that says something about the nature of God. So, let’s say a seventeen-year-old rejects Christ, dies, and seventeen million years from now, if you want to say that (that’s some obviously over-the-top language, right?), God is still punishing that person. Is God like that? And I think it’s a totally legitimate question.

Adrian: Do you think God is like that, Rob?

Rob: No! I don’t think God is like that.

And I love Justin’s response to this:

Justin: So, I’m taking from that answer that you definitely do not believe in an eternal kind of torment. I mean, I can’t draw any other conclusion that you don’t believe that.

And I think most reasonable people would arrive at that conclusion as well. If God doesn’t condemn people forever, then all will either be saved or annihilated. And when the question came to annihilationism, Rob dodged it and landed squarely back in the Universalist camp by denying that God punishes people forever.

And if one should argue that Perhaps Rob Bell is just an annihilationist because he never denied that, then we have another problem on our hands.

Husbands, Are Your Prayers Hindered? Do You Understand Your Wives?

2011-03-06T23:24:00.001-05:00

I have heard this numerous times among men. With a chuckle of knowing resignation one may tell another what his wife does that doesn’t make sense to him. “There’s just no understanding women,” they might say.

Is this right?

In a larger passage about being subject to each other, Peter writes:

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3:7 ESV)

Peter admonishes Christian husbands to understand their wives and live in accordance with that understanding. Not only is it possible for a husband to understand his wife, it is commanded. Husband, you study cars, sports statistics, politics, or whatever else you are interested in. Yet you refuse to study your wife to know her better? Study her like your life depended on it.

The effect is that the wife of a Christian husband will be honored. Perhaps you don’t want to honor your wife. Why did you marry her if you didn’t want to honor her? You show yourself to be a fool for an honored wife will glorify her husband. (1 Cor 11:17)

Ultimately, however, the result of not doing this is that the husband’s prayers will be hindered. I said study her like your life depended on it. If you’re prayers are your connection with the One who gives you life, then your life indeed depends on understanding your wife and living like it.

Christian husband, an amazing way to fulfill this is to pray for your wife. You should be doing this anyway, but I know that many do not. I have seen miracles happen in marriages where husbands pray for their wives. The next miracle could be for you.

The Difference Between a Decree and a Cause

2011-02-16T22:55:00.000-05:00

Greg Koukl on The Stand to Reason blog is bold to post ideas in Christian philosophy that are not yet fully developed. But such a thing is necessary for allowing the idea to be processed in the community of Christians at large. He recently started a discussion on the difference between God issuing a decree and acting as a cause. That language might not immediately seem pertinent. But there is the tension that we see in scripture where God is absolutely sovereign and where He seems to cause sin as a result. Go here to watch his video blog and read some of the comments:

http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2011/02/decree-vs-cause-video.html

My slightly edited response:

God, as a causer, is not an agent of cause. "Agent" implies that the causer was himself caused by something else. God's causing is in this way different than His creation, as discreet subdivided iterations of existence, being internally consistent agents of cause. That is, God has eternally established what will happen by decree and has created underlying rules for all of creation to follow as temporal causal agents.

Men, as volitional systems of causal agents, have intent. Where this intent agrees with God's ethical will, then there is no sin. Where this intent does not agree with God's ethical will, there is sin. The will of man is hardly monolithic. Every decision a man makes consists of a cocktail of intents - some good, some bad. If God causes anything to happen in the action of any man in the fallen world, that man will be guilty of sin.

God's intent, conversely, is always pure. God is not guilty where His goodness causes actions that arise out of the evil intents of men.

Men are sinners already and God has not alienated Himself from men any further than they are by causing actions that for men are sinful because of their intents. And their intents are not the most fundamental level of their sin. Evil intents arise out of the status of men being separated from God. We are born in a separated world and are likewise separated from God from birth. Even when we are given the Holy Spirit, we must endure the wiles of this separated world. Being given the Holy Spirit allows us to be separated FOR God (Holy) in this age rather than being separated FROM God in this age.

From Babel to the Bible

2011-01-21T00:13:00.003-05:00

I always ask the question, “Did God know that most people in the world would not have the original languages of the Bible readily available to them?” And every question that starts with “Did God know…” is answered in the affirmative.

I listened to this talk by Jason DeRouchie given at Bethlehem College and Semenary (ht: Justin Taylor). He gave 7 arguments for the need for understanding the Biblical Languages:

Using the biblical languages exalts Jesus and affirms God’s wisdom in giving us his Word in a book.
Using the biblical languages enables us to observe more accurately and thoroughly, understand more clearly, evaluate more fairly, and interpret more confidently the inspired details of the biblical text.
Using the biblical languages allows us to use more efficiently and evaluate more fairly the best secondary tools for biblical interpretation.
Using the biblical languages fosters a depth of character, commitment, conviction, and satisfaction in life and ministry that results in a validated witness in the world.
Using the biblical languages provides a warranted boldness, a sustained freshness, and a more articulated, sure, and helpful witness to the Truth in preaching and teaching.
Using the biblical languages equips us to defend the Gospel and to hold others accountable more confidently.
Using the biblical languages helps preserve the purity of the Gospel and a joyful glorifying of God by his Church into the next generation.

There are many hindrances to the availability of the Biblical languages. Some I can think of:

While we have had the Bible in one form or another throughout and since its writing, we have only within the past century found enough evidence in the ancient manuscripts to be reasonably sure what was precisely written in the original languages. So they have not been readily available throughout most of history.
The printing press has only been available for a few hundred years now. Most people throughout history have not even had a Bible in any language readily available to them.
There are hundreds of people groups who even today barely have the Bible translated into their language, much less have the education available to them to delve into the original languages themselves.
A significant number of people don’t have the intellectual capacity to learn and understand the original languages. Many are barely literate in their own language.
Of the people who have some education in the original languages, the vast majority don’t think in those languages.
God confused language at Babel for a reason.

Regarding number 5: Scientific American has a short article touching on some research that is being done in the link between language and thought. The language that a person typically uses governs his thought. The example in the article was a 5-year-old Australian aborigine girl who could easily point the way north where a lecture hall of accomplished academicians could not. It reminded me of my mom’s side of the family. Always, they refer to things by their compass directions: “the south bedroom,” “the west field,” “Go to the end of the road and turn north on Kessler Road.” I can’t talk to my wife this way or she would get lost. For her, directions are relative: “the bedroom to the right of the bathroom,” “turn left on Museum Road.” Mastering language means being able to follow the linguistic logic of the references over and against those that one is accustomed to.

Regarding number 6: I’ll deal with this one shortly because it’s in the title. I wanted to make a reference here so you don’t think I just made a provocative statement without talking about it.

What can we make of the fact that A) Studying the Biblical languages is essential and B) The vast majority of Christians are not going to have the spiritual luxury of doing so? I mean, if this were the case then we revert back to dependence on priests for our understanding. We should close our Bibles and not even try to read them because we’ll never quite get it right.

And we indeed need to get it right. Our salvation is at stake if we don’t follow the true gospel. God’s glory is at stake if we don’t get our understanding of Him correct. Judging by the disputes and disagreements between Christians, it is more normal that we disagree on many things than if we agree.

What are we to do? I go back to my original question: “Did God know that most people in the world would not have the original languages of the Bible readily available to them?” We could also ask, “Did God not know that nearly all of the people who profess to follow Him wouldn’t get their theology straight?” So, if we assume that He knows these things we can further ask if He takes this all into account?

This is where we discuss things like the perspicuity of scripture (how clear it is), what is necessary to understand for salvation, and how understandable different things of scripture are. Some factors I see:

Some passages of scripture are more understandable than others no matter what language you use.
Some topics are more understandable than others.
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is necessary for proper understanding.
Some understanding depends on wisdom aside from intelligence.
Some understanding requires great intelligence or education.
Individual levels of understanding depend on personal experiences.
The understandability of some things of scripture depends heavily on cultural influences.
The understandability of most things of scripture depends on our level of spiritual discernment.
God causes a lack of understanding for His perfect purpose.

This is hardly an exhaustive list. But it is these last points that are key to tying Babel with God’s revelation of Himself in scripture and walking away with an assurance that we can know enough well enough.

God caused language to be confused in Babel and then proceeded to reveal Himself through prophets and inspired scripture.

In Babel, the goal of mankind was the exaltation of Man over God and the self-sufficiency of Man. God confused the language of Man so that His revelation to Man would be clear to Man when it came. In other words, Man could not rely on himself for knowledge of God, but had to rely on God to reveal Himself.

We still do. That’s the bridge between Babel and the revelation God gives us in the Bible. Inasmuch as we approach knowledge of God on our own accord, we lack understanding. Inasmuch as we approach knowledge of God by the light and wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we have understanding. Those who lack understanding don’t understand how those who have understanding got it, and they often disparage those who have understanding as though they cannot have understanding. Those who lack understanding typically cannot believe that there is some understanding that they do not possess.

Here is another list (I seem to be into lists today) of how God works with us to understand His revelation:

Obtaining an understanding of scripture is part of our being made perfect as we are sanctified, set aside, for His glory. (Romans 15:14-21)
We are told, clearly enough, to study scripture. The implication is that we can know something from it. (Ephesians 5:17; 1 Timothy 4:13)
We are told that scripture is a sufficient revelation for us. (Romans 15:4; 2 Timothy 3:16)
We are told how to deal with each other in grace as we differ in our understanding. This indicates that God knows that we are going to have slightly differing understandings for a time although we are all brothers and sisters in the faith. (1 Corinthians 8)
God deals with us graciously in our lack of understanding. (Romans 7:15-25; Philippians 4:7)
Although we often get things wrong and disagree, the revelation of God is not open to interpretation. (2 Peter 1:20)
God gives us understanding. (1 John 5:20; 2 Timothy 2:7; 1 Corinthians 2:12; Romans 1:19)
God takes understanding away. (John 12: 39,40; Romans 1:29; 11:25)
It is our desire to understand and our trust in God rather than our own intellectual machinations that give us true understanding. (Hebrews 11:3)
Understanding is not the ultimate goal. (1 Corinthians 13:12; John 5:39-40)

So, seek understanding. Study the Bible. Struggle to get it right. Learn the original languages if you can, but do not despair if you cannot. Understanding comes from God. Trust Him and seek Him above all, and deal graciously with others when you disagree.

Do Egalitarians Really Think Women Are Special?

2011-01-18T23:13:00.002-05:00

A poll was taken by Dane Ortlund who writes the blog, Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology, among several prominent theologians and posted the results on his blog. Most of the comments in the meta have been helpful. (Many have been anti-Christian trolls, and sometimes particularly vulgar. I haven’t checked to see how many of these have been deleted.) But one or two comments have been made by egalitarians pointing out that none of the theologians polled were women.

Some are not aware of what egalitarians and complementarians are much less the theological differences between them. I’ll not go into detail here. Dave Miller is writing a series on this where he lays out the arguments of both sides. I’ll only define them quickly and give you my stand on them.

Complementarians believe that God created men and women with equal human value and likewise have equal value under grace. However, God also created them differently to fill different roles, and this distinction is part of His revelation to us.

Egalitarians believe that men and women are created equal in every way and that there are no ministerial distinctions between them mandated or even suggested by scripture. They believe that any place in scripture that seems to indicate a difference is only because the culture at the time either clouded the mind of the writer or made it necessary to assent to aspects of the culture and has nothing to do with cultures that have no such distinction.

I’m a complementarian. Given clear hermeneutical guidelines, there is no other conclusion. To go the route of egalitarianism requires formulating a hermeneutic around a desire to reach that conclusion. Therefore, the conclusion for egalitarians precedes the argument. That’s eisegesis, not exegesis, and the stuff of poor theology at best and heresy at worst.

So egalitarians have commented in the meta of Dane’s blog wondering where the female theologians are. This is part of the issue with communication and argumentation between people of different presuppositions. In short, the tendency is to frame differences in the presuppositions as though they are an incongruence in your opponent’s position by evaluating their position as though they are subject to your sensibilities. Good polemicists with truth on their side know how to avoid this.

That aside, the one thing that is evident if you evaluate an egalitarian as an egalitarian is that if men and women are assumed to be the same, there is no reason to deliberately seek the viewpoints of both as though you would get a usefully diverse answer.

Only the complementarian view assigns women a special place distinct from that of men. In this case, however, theology is the same whether a woman or a man does it.

As Iron Sharpens Iron: A Test

2011-01-08T23:56:00.003-05:00

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17 ESV)

This verse is, rightly I think, interpreted as a general wisdom that people need the input of each other to hone our hearts and minds in the pursuit of spiritual growth in God. I like the way Matthew Henry wrote it in his commentary:

"One man is nobody; nor will poring upon a book in a corner accomplish a man as the reading and studying of men will. Wise and profitable discourse sharpens men's wits; and those that have ever so much knowledge may by conference have something added to them."

Perhaps the writer of Hebrews had this sort of thing in mind when he wrote:

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24-25 ESV)

The ESV Study Bible comments on this verse:

"The third and final exhortation in vv. 22–25 calls for serious thinking about other Christians with a purpose to stir up (or “provoke”) them in their love and service (good works). Christian perseverance is thus also a community endeavor."

As Christians, we need other Christians in order to grow in godly wisdom. We need the mental correction of others to keep us from going astray. We need to seek and submit to each other’s correction.

As a Christian, I need interaction with other people. As one with a penchant for thinking outside the box and as one who loves truth above my desire to understand it, and yearn to grow in ministry, I earnestly desire the meaningful interaction of my fellow Christians. My hope has always been to develop the relationships with other Christians necessary for provoking them to grow in their Christian walk as well as receiving the same. I enjoy building others up in Christ as much as anything.

But I need to be built up as well. I blog in order to organize my thoughts. As a non-linear thinker I need to be able to make my thoughts linear in order to communicate them. As one gifted with a certain brand of intelligence, I’m prone to eccentricity. Therefore, it’s necessary to have meaningful feedback if I want to use this gift to edify people.

I’m already aware that few people read my blog articles. It’s extremely rare to receive any feedback from them. I have to consider that there are a few people who may read but never comment. Therefore, I have this request. If you regularly read what I write please leave a comment and let me know how what I write helps you or if I need to pursue some other activity that would be more fruitful. And I want to encourage you that doing so would be exceptionally meaningful. The response I get from this will let me know how important my thought life and spiritual growth is to other people.

To all who respond: thank you in advance.

What Happens When We Are Saved?

2011-01-08T17:34:00.005-05:00

From the latest article written by Dan Barnes at SBC Voices:

"Have you ever noticed how many ideas in the Christian faith seem more hypothetical than concrete? Things like “fall into the arms of grace” or “just give it to God”. What do those look like really? Are they things that have meat to them, or are they just things we say and have no idea what they really mean? How do you fall into grace, or give something in-material to a spiritual being? There are lots of things that we say are hard to define and pin down, but I think it’s symptomatic of a larger issue. We have tried for two thousand years to define Salvation, but I am not sure we are any closer. Something so foundational to the Christian doctrine, but we can’t agree on what it looks like, how we get it and how we know we have it.

"I want to pose some questions today, things to think about. I am sure for every question there are hundreds of opinions, so here is a chance to share yours. What is Salvation? Pin it down, are we talking substitution atonement, penal substitution, ransom theory? Is the nature of salvation illumination, restoration, satisfaction, victory, justification, something else entirely or a combination?

"What happens when we are saved? Does it happen in a split second, or does it happen over time? Is it a one time thing, or does it reoccur? Are we saved once and for all time, or does it happen daily? I have heard, seen or read theories off all and more, different ideas. I have seen verses thrown at verses and arguments made for every side, when and how does it happen?"

My Response:

This is one thing I appreciate about Reformed theology. “What happens WHEN we are saved?” It’s a poor question because our life is eternal, not temporal.

Eternally, we are saved from Death: our separation from God. This salvation is accomplished by the incarnation of the Son of God who justifies His people through submission to Death even as He has power over Death.

Things eternal are worked out temporally. Our separation from God is temporally represented in our sin and the death of our bodies. It is just that our sin is paid for by death. It is for justice that Christ came as a man, Jesus of Nazareth, who, being God Himself, had no sin and gave His physical life for all sin. His people, being reconciled to God yet living in a world of sin are blessed with His constant presence in the person of the Holy Spirit. So even as His people are eternally justified by this, His people are also each temporally sanctified by the Holy Spirit to grow in the spiritual knowledge of God. That is, God reveals Himself to us temporally not by mere facts but also by our desire for Him. This makes the revelation of God through His inspired scriptures meaningful to us. As such, at some point all those who are alive by the Holy Spirit will realize at once a belief in the facts of Christ, but also a trust in His temporal work on the cross as He demonstrated His submission to death in the justification of our sins. The progression of our growth in this faith throughout our temporal life is called sanctification.

The language we use is typically not this precise, and it doesn’t need to be. Godly wisdom unto saving faith is not contingent on our ability to understand. A baby understands little, but trusts much. Therefore, it isn’t necessary to always express the gospel in difficult language. It is only necessary to speak enough truth at first for faith to resonate in the lives of people who have the Holy Spirit. After saving faith is identified, then more truth and understanding should be taught over time in agreement with the temporal work of the Holy Spirit in continued sanctification in the lives of each of His people.

As for a Baptist distinction, there really should be none. There is only one way we are saved despite our best opinions. It is our incorrect opinions where Truth is absolute that divide us in soteriology. The good news is that our salvation is worked out in the lives of believers not by any opinion or by our flawed understanding, but our mere and genuine trust in God.

The Blessing of Having Weaknesses

2011-01-01T15:55:00.002-05:00

It is a wise brother who knows when to correct a sin and when to cover a weakness.

We are all sinners. That means that we are all losers. We are saved not by our fortitude, intrepidity, strength, honor, or cunning. As sinners, we have no strength. Since God is all-mighty, any strength we have was given by Him.

Moral instruction prior to salvation does nothing but let us know what failures we are. If we are led to believe that we can do good things without God, then the message of salvation is moot because the focus is on what we can do.

Moral instruction after salvation has as its purpose the joy of imitating the holiness of our Father through the sacrificial work of Christ. But until the resurrection, our works are still tainted. It is blessing to be corrected by one so humble as to recognize the difficulties in their own struggle with sin.

Too often Christians confuse correction with condemnation. Sometimes this plays out as someone who condemns a brother out of their own self-righteousness. Sometimes, a brother who sins misinterprets the loving correction of that sin as condemnation. Paul never advocates the condemnation of a brother. Even when church discipline is required for sin, the purpose for putting someone out of fellowship is eventual reconciliation – never outright condemnation.

But sometimes Christians confuse weakness as sin. Sin is no mere weakness, but death. But there is weakness without sin. This weakness is actually a blessing from God. But it takes wisdom to know this. First, let’s investigate strengths and weakness by dispelling some misconceptions foisted on us by our culture.

The common idea is to be strong in ourselves and discount the weaknesses of others. We need to be able to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps,” “make our own way in life,” “pull our own weight,” etc. We are told not to show any sign of weakness. Men certainly pay attention to this because we all know women are attracted to “strong men” who can “hold their own.” But women like to be strong too, especially to dispel the notion that women are the weaker sex.

“Show no fear.” Don’t be a Loser.” “Come out on top.” “Fight to win.”

Phrases like these sum up the sociological expectations of this world. Winning is everything. Being the one with power is always best. Everyone has an opinion, but whoever can get other people to buy into their opinion or manipulate people to act on their opinion is worthy of leadership. People who are confident in themselves can cause others to have confidence in them as well. These people are the winners in this world.

Parenthetically, there is a trend to water down success by rewarding losers for simply participating. This may be an effort to stifle the greedy complaints of losers for not having anything for themselves since the winners took everything for themselves. It’s true that we need to be responsible and contribute where we can. Hard work is good. Appropriate rest is also good. But we know that our individual gifts are given by God, and He does not give gifts equally. There’s a reason for this.

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:4-5 ESV)

Every brick in a wall has at least one weakness: no brick is large enough to be the whole wall. Bricks in a wall are not separated by their strength because determining the strength of a brick requires breaking the brick, which takes its strength from it. So, all bricks are capable of bearing the weight of the wall in the lower courses, not alone but as a team. The bricks in the upper courses are capable of bearing the same weight at the lower courses, but they are not used as such.

Some bricks must indeed be broken in order to be used. They have only half the strength they were created with, but their special purpose is to complete the wall at the edges with a finished line so the house can be properly sealed against the elements.

Bricks are stacked so that they interlock. Interlocking helps to hold the wall up by tying one stack of bricks into adjoining bricks. If the bricks are not interlocked, the mortar will split between columns of bricks and the columns fall independently. Why would one column fall and another one not, or one fall one way and another fall another way? Because bricks are not perfect. A single column of bricks may have a tendency to buckle in the middle or fall from some point at the bottom. The taller the stack, the more evident the imperfections of the bottom-most bricks. Interlocking bricks allow neighboring bricks to cover each other’s weaknesses.

But bricks are not the only things that go into the construction of a wall. There is mortar that joins the bricks together. There is rebar that can be used to strengthen the wall. There are metal plates or wooden frames that can be used to include openings for windows and doors. For large buildings, there is a special sealing substance that is used between wall sections to compensate for expansion and contraction.

And so the brick wall is not called a wall of one brick, but that the brick is Christ. He is the cornerstone on which the construction of the whole building is determined. But we are individual bricks. Alone, we are utterly weak. Together, as Christians, we are strong. We are strong, not because we condemn each other’s weaknesses; not because we stand around and complain about each other’s weaknesses and wait on each other to fix our own weaknesses so that we can get on with the business of being the Body of Christ. We are strong when we first recognize our strengths and weaknesses and as a result use our strengths to cover each other’s weaknesses.

That is the blessing of God in the weaknesses He gives us. Where the world suggests that we be individually strong and take advantage of other people’s weaknesses for self gain, God builds his people up by nominal strengths and weaknesses so that He is glorified in His strength. He rewards us for participating, not for being individually successful. For we participate in the victory that He has already won.

But the message for us is not that we seek to reward each other, but that we seek to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses so that we can use our strengths to cover the strengths of others. It requires that we are not too proud to accept the help of another to cover the weaknesses we each have with the strengths of others. Likewise, we must recognize the unreasonable expectations we place on others and deal with each other in love and patience rather than anger and frustration – for that is sin.

Christmas Is for Those Who Hate It Most

2010-12-21T00:49:00.002-05:00

Matt B. Redmond has written what I consider a significant article by the same title I named this article. I encourage you to go read it.

The reason I say it's a significant is because of the reason for Christmas. I know we say that Jesus is the reason for the season. This is true. It's a bit more thoughtful to point to the gospel and recognize that the incarnation of Christ is central to the gospel. But Christ Himself said that "[He] came not to call the righteous but sinners" (Mark 2:7). It is the righteous who seem to know best the meaning of Christmas.

But we all know that the Holiday season is a time of great sorrow for many. They aren't sorrowful because of the celebration of the coming of Christ. They are sorrowful because particular needs are made poignant by the excess of commercial celebration that fails to assuage the ills of this world. These people have no particular love for the season of Christmas. Yet it is precisely for these people that Christ came.

From Matt Redmond's article, a list of people for whom Christ came:

Jesus’ first recorded worshipers were not of the beautiful class. They were poor, ugly shepherds, beat down by life and labor. They had been looked down on over many a nose.

Jesus came for those who look in the mirror and see ugliness.
Jesus came for daughters whose fathers never told them they were beautiful.
Christmas is for those who go to “wing night” alone.
Christmas is for those whose lives have been wrecked by cancer, and the thought of another Christmas seems like an impossible dream.
Christmas is for those who would be nothing but lonely if not for social media.
Christmas is for those whose marriages have careened against the retaining wall and are threatening to flip over the edge.
Christmas is for the son whose father keeps giving him hunting gear when he wants art materials.
Christmas is for smokers who cannot quit even in the face of a death sentence.
Christmas is for prostitutes, adulterers, and porn stars who long for love in every wrong place.
Christmas is for college students who are sitting in the midst of the family and already cannot wait to get out for another drink.
Christmas is for those who traffic in failed dreams.
Christmas is for those who have squandered the family name and fortune—they want “home” but cannot imagine a gracious reception.
Christmas is for parents watching their children’s marriage fall into disarray.

We celebrate with gifts, and such bear the mark of Christmas in that Christ is the greatest gift. However, Christmas gifts with no message of the coming of Christ are given in vain. Give a gift of hope this season to someone who really needs it - someone who may not be particularly comfortable to be around because of their lowly state. But it is for such as these that Christ came.

...and read the whole article.

HT: Justin Taylor

Thanksgiving in the New Testament

2010-11-25T11:09:00.001-05:00

Giving thanks is a Biblical concept. But what does the Bible tell us about giving thanks? How should we give thanks? Why should we give thanks? To whom should we give thanks? For what reason should we give thanks? What benefit do we receive for giving thanks? What circumstances surround giving thanks?

I wondered precisely what the Bible teaches about giving thanks. It was a bit to look back at the Old Testament for a single blog article, but I looked at all the references in the New Testament. Most of them are here, and most of them are found in Paul’s writings. There are several references to people giving thanks to Jesus or Jesus giving thanks for meals. But one meal in particular was interesting: the Last Supper:

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:27-28 ESV)

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19 ESV)

The ordinances (sacraments, to non-Baptists) are the ordained practices that symbolically bridge soteriology and ecclesiology. Paul seems to agree with this as he links thanksgiving with salvation. It’s not that thanksgiving produces salvation but salvation produces thanksgiving.

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57 ESV)

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (Colossians 1:11-12 ESV)

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7 ESV)

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 4:15 ESV)

Paul often gives thanks for people, usually because of What God is doing for them and in them, particularly with regard to the gospel:

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:17-18 ESV)

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:4-8 ESV)

But thanks be to God, who put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care I have for you. (2 Corinthians 8:16 ESV)

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 ESV)

For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith? (1 Thessalonians 3:9-10 ESV)

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. (2 Thessalonians 1:3 ESV)

But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. (2 Thessalonians 2:13 ESV)

Paul even once gives thanks publicly to a couple instead of to God, although I imagine that he also gave thanks to God for them.

Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. (Romans 16:3-4 ESV)

Paul also commands Christians to give thanks typically combining the command with prayer and corporate worship:

You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. (2 Corinthians 1:11 ESV)

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:18-21 ESV)

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17 ESV)

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. (Colossians 4:2 ESV)

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. (1 Timothy 2:1-2 ESV)

And Paul says this is the will of God:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 ESV)

What happens when people don’t give thanks? Paul contrasts giving thanksgiving with several things:

If you know who God is and do not give thanks to Him, your thinking becomes futile:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:21 ESV)

The answer for an evil tongue is to give thanks to God. The two are not compatible:

Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. (Ephesians 5:4 ESV)

Anxiety should be answered with prayer and thanksgiving, requesting help to assuage your anxieties from God.

do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6 ESV)

There are many instructive passages that don’t fit in these categories:

Thanksgiving to God for our salvation is part of our identification as His children. Although we sin, we can give thanks to God for His grace:

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:24-25 ESV)

The following passages seem to say that as long as we give thanks to God for something He will bless our use of it. While they certainly speak of Christian freedom, the passages in the previous section should be enough to indicate that simply giving thanks for sin does not justify sin.

The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. (Romans 14:6 ESV)

If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? (1 Corinthians 10:30 ESV)

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Timothy 4:4-5 ESV)

Some of the passages that make reference to thanksgiving don’t entirely fit into the categories I’ve mentioned so far. These require some special comment, for each has some special information to add to thanksgiving:

At least in some contexts, giving thanks is encouraged to be public. The reason is that giving thanks to God builds others up.

Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. (1 Corinthians 14:16-17 ESV)

This passage is interesting in that in our salvation, God has not removed us from this world but leaves us here to fulfill the Great Commission. While this is a world of pain, the task of proclaiming God is a matter for thanksgiving.

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. (2 Corinthians 2:14 ESV)

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians contains a promise that God will supply His people what they need in order to accomplish His purposes in them. First, the provision of the gift of proclaiming God will produce thanksgiving in us. Second, others will glorify God on account of us. Third, others will pray for us. Fourth, this gift results in many thanks because it is so great that it is inexpressible.

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission flowing from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! (2 Corinthians 9:10-15 ESV)

While most of the thanksgiving passages are in Paul’s writings, John offers some thanksgiving in Revelation. This is one of two passages I found and contains an expression of praise that calls for thanksgiving to God.

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7:12 ESV)

Are You Overextended in Ministry? Then Train Your Replacement

2010-11-17T23:25:00.001-05:00

It's too common for ministers to become overextended. Too many horror stories of pastor's families going without their father have been repeated over the years by countless family members. There's a reason that the term "Preacher's Kid" has a stigma to it.

Additionally, there's a reason that there is abundant council to ministers who "burn out". Some even suffer various emotional a physical breakdowns. How often do you see your pastor obligatorily attending every event in the church or even feeling the need to lead every event in the church? Do you have events so large at your church that some staff members or other ministers stay up to all hours at the church, even for weeks before the event, in preparation?

This pattern doesn't just go for pastors or other staff members. Most churches can identify perhaps 20% of their congregation who do perhaps 80% of the volunteer work in the church. When someone is identified as an achiever of sorts, they are asked to do the work. It's easy to seek out those who are known to accomplish a lot of work in order to enlist their efforts in the newest endeavors. These people too often burn out as well. The all-too-common counsel for them is that they need to learn to say "no".

Some people have trouble saying "no" because they believe that the work won't get done if they don't do it themselves. The problem with this is that it indicates a deep-seated distrust of other people. Often this trust is not unfounded. That is, there have been times when they enlisted the help of someone else who failed them. So they gave up trusting other people. These super-ministers have all the experience to best accomplish the task because they have learned from their failures and know how it's supposed to be done so that there is no failure. The problem is that they don't see any success beyond anyone else's failure.

If you do the ministry of ten people, then you have taken the responsibility to minister away from nine other Christians. Is it not a better ministry to disciple others to do the excess minstry you have on your plate?

And in order to do this, you have to allow others the opportunity to fail so that they learn the same way you did.

Art and the Revelation of God

2010-11-16T21:12:00.001-05:00

To commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the King James Bible next year, Crossway has commissioned artist Makoto Fujimura to illustrate The Four Holy Gospels, what they call an “illuminated book of the four Gospels.” The video below is a good introduction to this.

Fujimura - 4 Holy Gospels from Crossway on Vimeo.

I’m an artist. I’m not a prolific painter although I can do that, but my medium is music. I love to paint the air with textures of tones and colors of harmony and rhythm. This is beyond the pale of simple melody and orchestration, but a bit on the abstract: imagine the sort of improvisation you might find in jazz applied to the Romantic music of Mussorgsky or Dvorak with some Vangelis thrown in.

Everyone loves to express themselves. Most people express themselves best verbally. Some people express themselves best in nonverbal ways. I can speak well if I’m somewhat scripted, but go off-script and I have trouble saying what needs to be said. Many artists are like this.

Traditional art uses images and symbols that exist already in social discourse in order to convey meaning. It’s not unlike verbal idioms. More contemporary art uses common images to establish new symbols. A view from the inside of a crashing wave can be like a tunnel that gives a sense of confinement and anticipation. An overgrown flower in a pot conveys the absurdity of pretense.

Modern art that has no sociological foundation is almost pointless except that it might convey some raw emotion. Reds might indicate fiery things. Greens might indicate serene things. Generally, modern art combines raw aesthetics with communication on this level. The interesting thing about Makoto Fujimura’s art is that it is rooted in a traditional Japanese style. If you aren’t familiar with Japanese art, then you might miss the traditional aspects of his symbolism that lend greater meaning to the blobs and lines of various colors that seem to comprise his art.

I had a discussion with a man last week, I’ll call him Ned, who was upset with a knowledgeable Bible teacher, who I’ll call Jonas. There was some aspect of theology that Ned didn’t get and asked Jonas about it. He said that the Jonas, as good a Bible teacher as he was, danced around the issue claiming to understand it. I asked what the answer was precisely that the Bible teacher gave. Ned obviously couldn’t repeat word for word what was said, but he was able to convey the general gist of Jonas’ comments. Then he asked me why Jonas just couldn’t admit that he didn’t understand.

From what Ned told me I was able to deduce that Jonas actually gave a good answer and truly understood the issue. What Jonas didn’t understand is that Ned was unable to understand the theological concept at all. And what Ned didn’t understand is that Jonas actually understood and knew what he was talking about.

Human beings in general have a problem with thinking that other people should be able to understand what we understand. Many of us even think that others should know what we know even though they haven’t particularly been exposed to the information. My fellow students at the Bible College I attended were aghast that I had never heard of Steve Green, the well-known contemporary Christian musician before.

Different people understand different things better than other people. One person may understand how to manages workers better than someone who understands resource management better than the first person. So they might function well as a team where the second person plans the work and the first person motivates everyone to do the work. They have a problem, however, if one of them thinks that their area of expertise gives them the edge in dismissing the work of the other. Someone who is good at motivating people to do things, for example, might think that they don’t need to heed the warnings of the other who might suggest applying the workload in a more efficient manner. Or the one who is good at planning resources might balk when the other guy tries to tell him that the people just can’t work a certain way.

But for some reason most people too often get upset when others apprehend the world differently than they do. People get angry when others don’t have the wherewithal to accommodate their sensibilities. I pulled up to a stop sign at an intersection in town once where I needed to turn left. The view to observe oncoming traffic from both directions was obscured by the landscape so I inched forward until I could see. Another man turning left onto the road I was coming from was upset at my position because he had to turn more sharply than he otherwise would have to in order to turn onto the road. He stopped in the middle of the intersection blocking my way, got out of his car, and proceeded to cuss me out for being too far forward. He didn’t understand that that was the only position where the traffic could be safely viewed.

So we too often get upset when others don’t understand what we understand. We also get upset when we think others pretend to understand things that we don’t understand where they actually do understand. We like to think that if we don’t understand something, it can’t be understood. So Ned asked me angrily, “Why can’t Jonas just admit that there are just some things we can’t understand?” So I was left to explain to Ned what I explained just now so that he wouldn’t despise his brother over it.

There are some things that are difficult to convey because very few people can understand them. Sometimes art becomes the means for expressing what would otherwise be inexpressible. A few times in the video, the transcendent nature of art is mentioned. As for having any particular meaning, this is artsy gobbledygook. But it speaks of a general sense of this matter of attempting to express the inexpressible. But this is in some way troubling in the description of Crossway’s The Four Holy Gospels as being “illuminated”. Art usually conveys a general sense of some idea but rarely, if ever, conveys any particular concept. If anything, the words of scripture illuminate the art, rather than the art illuminating scripture.

But the biggest danger of art is the focus on self. Look at the video from about the 5:00 mark. The lady narrating expresses what is most troubling about the art community by about 5:11. The purpose for all that Fujimura does, as she lists it, is to reveal himself; to say, “this is who I am.” The problem that most Christians have with art in this sense is that if the Bible reveals anything about us, even as individuals, it’s that we are not worthy to be revealed except as sinners in need of God. As such, the Bible is here to reveal God in His beauty and glory, not man.

Of all artists, the greatest is God. Even in it’s fallen state, this world as created by God is intensely beautiful. For those who have the Holy Spirit all of creation reveals the Creator. The great literary work that He created is upheld by His creation and formed of the history of his people. While all of creation reveals the Creator, it is the words of scripture that illumine Him to us that we might know to Whom all this creation of His points. Therefore, art that glorifies God never illumines, it points.

We worship God with the artistry of music. But music is merely an art. Music never illumines, it points. I’ve never been in a worship service or known a piece of music that fully reveals God. There are some words of worship, encouragement, or instruction in the lyrics, where there are lyrics, but never a complete revelation. I know songs and hymns with the nuts and bolts of the gospel, but that is the closest I have seen to a complete revelation.

So it is that we can worship with art, but only if we seek to point to the revelation of God. One man talked about artists feeling restricted by Christianity. Look at the video again starting at about 2:45. The man talks about a sense of spirituality among artists, but that they felt confined by Christianity. If the goal of the artist is to use art to draw people away from God, then they will feel confined by Christianity. If their goal is to point the way to God, then they will not feel confined; in fact they will feel freer than they would otherwise.

And it is not art that transcends, but God who transcends. Only when art is fixed on the Great Artist, and our minds are fixed on He who is all-knowing and all-wise, can we truly communicate through the many means given to us.

Atheism and the Problem of Sin

2010-11-15T23:35:00.000-05:00

Atheists are interesting. First, they argue against the existence of God based on the problem of evil. God can’t exist, they say, because God wouldn’t allow evil to exist in the world. Second, they argue that although it seems there must be some sort of natural law of morality, there is no absolute standard of good and evil. So, on the one hand they say that God doesn’t exist because evil exists and on the other hand they say that evil doesn’t exist because God doesn’t exist.

What is further interesting is that lack of intellectual development beyond this. Some atheists recognize the conflict to some degree and try to rectify it by a weak appeal to some natural law of morality. This only results in a relative morality that still fails to address the universal question.

Evil in the world creates a paradox that confuses our thinking on every issue since evil lies in the intents of men. Any attempt to construct a true philosophy is frustrated by this. As a result, we have need to debate and wrestle not merely over issues of behavior and relationship, but over concepts and ideas. This fact alone should be a clue that things are not as they ought to be. But if intellectual conflicts are normal, then they should be expected in our theology. However, atheists point to theological paradoxes as though they are unique to theology when theology alone answers the presence of the paradoxes. So atheists pursue the resolution of the paradoxes of atheistic philosophies and fail to consider any resolution of theological paradoxes proposed by theists.

Inconveniences

2010-11-15T23:24:00.003-05:00

The recent cruise liner incident reminds me of stories of the way many people historically came to the United States, some with great desire to come here, some quite against their will, but all with varying degrees of what we would consider bad travel conditions. Many immigrants from Europe coming to Ellis Island were on ships living in each other’s vomit and raw sewage. Slaves from Africa had it the worst being packed in like they were mere cargo with no thought to their hygienic needs. Many didn’t survive the voyage and some were thrown overboard alive for various reasons.

Just a thought – do you get angry and complain because of some minor inconvenience? We have gone from being people who can tolerate the poorest of conditions and even great injustice to come to America to a people who can’t seem to tolerate the smallest inconveniences like waiting a few minutes for a table in a restaurant, cleaning up after a young child, cleaning toilets at a spiritual retreat, watching someone not do something your way and letting them do it their way because they are still getting the job done… the list could on.

Mentoring the Next Generation of Christian Leaders

2010-11-14T20:15:00.003-05:00

This is the eighth and last post of a series on Godly Leadership.

In my last article I talked about people who have the lower gifts although all must desire the higher gifts. But what happens when one desires the higher gifts and might have the potential to have those gifts?

Discipleship is part of the great commission. Discipleship is not simply giving people theological information. Discipleship involves teaching people how to apply the scriptures. But it goes even beyond that. One can have all the knowledge and experience to apply truth, but not have the desire for God. Discipleship focuses on imparting that desire and how to fuel the desire with knowledge and application of the scriptural truths.

As I discussed in the last article, everyone in the Body of Christ has gifts given by the Spirit to minister within the Body. While each is to be a leader in his or her own right with regard to the gifts each has been given, there must be some leadership to help them plug in where they are needed in the Body. I have had highly trained, well-gifted, full-time ministers tell me that they wished they had some of my gifts. Yet none has yet to call on these gifts from me. If they see a need for my gifts in the Body of Christ, they should ask me to use the gifts I have in the way that they would use them if they had them. We should envy no one their gifts, but call on those people who have the gifts we need to help us as we minister in the Body of Christ. Call this “mentorship on the go”. It’s the ministry we give to each other on momentary basis by helping each other to grow in ministry by seeking the gifts in each other that God has provided for our fellowship.

John Piper addressed this briefly. Look at this video. Starting at about the 3:00 mark, he discusses something that we don’t generally think about:

What I see too often follows this pattern. Someone has a gift and has the desire to use that gift but doesn’t have an outlet that is apparent for use of that gift. There is no opportunity. These people are typically frustrated in ministry and can become defeated. So when they express their defeatedness, the typical response is to acknowledge that the person has a gift to use. This is not helpful because that’s the source of their defeat. They are unable to use their gift.

Piper talked specifically about prayer, but it applies to all aspects of the use of any gift. For example, one may say, “I don’t think I’m good enough to teach.” This really means, “I think I can teach and I have learned much that I desire to share with others, but I don’t get the idea that I’m really needed among a sea of other teachers, or other people don’t really seem to want to learn anything from me.” A typical response may be, “You are a very intelligent man. I wish I could understand things as well as you do.” The intent may be to encourage, but it still doesn’t change the fact that that person is unable to use his gift. In fact acknowledging a gift that is not being used in this way as such is almost like saying, “I want to have your gift to use it for myself, but I don’t want you to use your gift to minister to me.”

Therefore, not mentoring can be an issue of pride for many leaders. Some leaders may feel threatened by others in their congregation who want to grow in ministry. Some leaders may simply not have the time. But at some point the idea of taking on too much ministry can be a matter of pride. This is where a minister thinks that he is the only one capable of doing all that needs to be done instead of building up others, mentoring them, to do join in the work, and trusting God even in the differences in their gifts to accomplish His purposes through different people.

In any case, with regard to using the particular gifts we have been given, or developing especially the greater gifts, mentors are necessary. It is my firm belief that Christian leaders need to mentor the next generation of Christian leaders. Perhaps this is where the wisdom comes that allows people to know how to make particular decisions or determine particular direction with only general principles. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never had anyone mentor me after this fashion, but I highly suspect that this is true.

Jesus mentored the twelve. Paul was mentored by Ananias and the disciples in Damascus. Paul mentored Timothy. Paul instructed Timothy to mentor others in his church (2 Tim 2:2). Mentoring is a Biblical pattern and I suggest it is vital to a church to raise up new generations of Christian leadership through intentional mentoring.

And with that ends this series on godly leadership.

Don’t Waste Your Mediocrity

2010-11-12T23:40:00.004-05:00

This is Part seven of a series on Godly Leadership.

You may be wondering what a teaching on mediocrity has to do in a set of teaching on leadership. While it’s true that there are mediocre leaders, one would wonder why all such teaching wouldn’t be geared toward making leaders great. While we should want leaders to be great, and we should want to be great leaders, we should understand that most of us will never be great leaders no matter how mature we become in the faith. Maturity in the faith and great leadership abilities are not synonymous.

Look at 1 Corinthians 12. Throughout the text we see that different people have been gifted for different things. Some have gifts that appear more honorable than others (1 Cor 12:21ff). For a reason not all the gifts are the same, or of the same honor or strength. God intends the Body to have equity, but we all know that that’s not the way it pans out. Imagine the most worthless person in your congregation. There is the person who has the medical condition or bad attitude and can’t seemingly contribute positively. Now think of the leader in your church you admire the most. God intends for you to care for each of these the same (1 Cor 12:25). But you don’t, do you? None of us does like we should. And yet here is Paul’s clear teaching on it that we conveniently ignore.

Does God know that we ignore this? Yes. In fact He had Paul acknowledge that our perceptions are skewed (1 Cor: 12:23). The point is that we each have gifts, but some are greater than others. Paul also mentioned this in verse 31:

But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. (1 Corinthians 12:31 ESV)

Notice what we are to do here in this verse. We are to desire the higher gifts. The higher gifts, like prophecy, edify the church more than the lower gifts, like speaking in tongues. But will all be gifted with prophecy? Decidedly not. So here we see that the Bible tells us to do something that will never come to fruition: all of us are to desire something that most of us will never receive. I don’t know if it’s more depressing to do this or to realize that most Christians don’t do this.

If you really do this, then what must you think when you won’t ever have the higher gifts that you are commanded to desire? You know that you can’t not desire it. You know that even though you may never have the gifts that you desire, you are supposed to be cared for as though you did, for the lower gift that you have is Biblically just as important. You also know by experience that you will not be considered by people who possess higher gifts to be as important as they are. Those who have more humility may give some lip service to your ostensible importance, but you also know that they likely don’t know what it’s like to not have a higher gift. And when it comes to honoring people, you know that you can do nothing that anyone considers particularly important. It can hurt.

And it doesn’t apply only to when you have no skills. You can have many skills, but no opportunities. I have a pretty broad skill set. However, there’s little opportunity to use most of my skills and virtually no opportunity to use some of my more exotic skills because ministry strategies tend to mainstream the more abundant gifts. As I hinted in my last article, God has not provided for me to use many of my gifts. Therefore, I am relegated to mediocrity in the use of my gifts. I function as one with lower gifts.

But it’s this mediocrity on which I focus. God can do anything and he can use me greatly in the future. All I have are the likelihoods to plan on and it’s likely that I will take untapped skills to the grave. When I see people who are either not able to use the gifts that God has given them or have not been encouraged to grow in their ministry I ache for them. I see in them the potential to serve God in a mighty way and I wish I could help them somehow to grow in this.

What I notice is that people who are mediocre will either tend to seem overly content, not desiring the greater gifts, or will desire the greater gifts. For those who tend to be content the message they are given is to get up and do something. But that doesn’t address their over-contentment. For those who desire the greater gifts, the message is most often platitudes that are meant to encourage them to try.

What I don’t see as a message to these is a call to desire the higher gifts. But I do see a low value placed on those who have lower gifts. That is, they receive no honor for their seemingly unimportant gifts but rather are implicitly expected to honor those who have higher gifts. The message should be that while we may desire the higher gifts, it is important that people have lesser gifts, and those people are indeed important to the Body of Christ.

Next lesson: Mentoring the Next Generation of Christian Leaders

Theological Tension on Ministerial Leadership

2010-11-11T00:27:00.004-05:00

This is Part six of a series on Godly Leadership.

I love Theological Tension. Theological Tension is when the Bible teaches two things which appear to contradict one another. The reason I love it is because God uses it to focus our thoughts on what is important and to give us a guide to change our thinking. Examples of Theological Tension, particularly for Westerners, includes questions like the following:

“How can God be sovereign and still create man with free will?”

“How can we pray to God and ask Him things so as to influence God when God is immutable (unchangeable)?”

Too often debates over these questions end up focusing on what is not important. When we finally figure out what we really do know versus what God is silent on and figure out what is truly important, then the Theological Tension disappears. There is no contradiction, for example, between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will.
Any perceived contradiction in scripture is due to our flawed thinking.

Given that, I find some Theological Tension in considering the Bible’s teaching on Leadership. This means that my thinking is flawed. I just haven’t figured out how yet. To be sure, it’s not a direct teaching found in the Bible, but in the storehouse of general Biblical principles that could be applied to leadership. The apparent contradiction is the absence of teaching on how to make particular decisions based on general principles.

Let me give a few examples:

We know that we must preach. Proclamation of the truth is how the truth is propagated, according to Paul. Jesus did it. Peter did it. Paul did it. Paul instructed the churches to do it. How does any preacher know what to preach at any given time? Unless he has a direct word from God, how can he be certain that he is preaching particularly what God really wants him to preach? How can he be certain that God even wants him in the pulpit?

Someone may answer: “God didn’t give us particulars because He wants us to use our minds.”

Me: “But on what basis are you certain that your mind is generating an accurate conclusion toward the discernment of a particular?”

Someone: “That’s the freedom we have in Christ.”

Me: “What verse is that?”

Someone: “There’s not a verse. It’s just that as long as we don’t go against what actually is in the Bible, we’re free to use the gift that God has given us to choose what we think might benefit the congregation.”

Me: “Granted that what you say sounds reasonable. But since it’s not given in scripture how can you be so certain of yourself?”

Someone: “Didn’t I read where you successfully chaired an Evangelism Committee? Tell me how you knew to start the outreaches that you did.”

Me: “It was a shot in the dark. Seriously. I had no confidence that anything positive would come of it or that I was doing the right thing. How can I pretend to have some certitude about something particular that I cannot know is particularly right from scripture?”

Someone: “Well, you just have to trust the Holy Spirit.”

Me: “How does that work toward a particular decision without some direct information from Him like Paul got when he went to Macedonia?”

Someone: “He directs your desires. As long as that desire doesn’t contradict scripture, then you should be fine.”

Me: ”Should?”

Someone: “You know what I mean. So is there anything that you really want to do to serve God?”

Me: “Whatever He wants me to do. I’m available.”
[Back to square one!]

This is how most of my imaginary debates go in this area. It always ends with a general desire to do in particular whatever God wants me to do. Once again, I know that my thinking is flawed in there somewhere.

To be honest, there have been many particular things that I have desired to do. For example, a great outreach ministry would be to take eight gifted vocalists capable of striking up a variety of Christian a cappella music (sans instruments), performing short skits, giving their testimonies, and presenting the gospel. They would be able to walk into a neighborhood or park, start singing, draw a crowd, proclaim the gospel, counsel any who profess Christ, and leave without any permits or set-up time. I have had countless ideas like this one. However, they all require getting other people involved. No one I’ve ever told of this idea is particularly interested. So I must conclude that either my ideas are not of God or I’m going about it all wrong.

Consider this: if it is of God, He will provide what I need to accomplish it. Do I need a mentor to teach me how to accomplish this? God has not provided one. Do I need other people who are interested? God has not provided them. Do I just need to come up with the idea and let others who can lead take it and run with it? I’d gladly do that, but God has not provided those either. Do I need some other way of thinking? God has not provided that yet.

So, If God does not provide what is needed to accomplish what I want to do in His name then I must conclude that God does not want me to do this thing.

So, I’m still back to square one on this… except for one point: This thinking agrees nicely with something I noticed in 1 Corinthians 12. But that’s my next article: Don’t Waste Your Mediocrity

Leadership and Submission

2010-11-09T17:58:00.002-05:00

This is Part five of a series on Godly Leadership.

Understanding that (1) Leaders are not perfect and (2) Leaders are assigned by the authority of God, we must be in submission to God’s leaders – to a reasonable extent.

We have a problem in the Western Church. We are fixated on what has been called the three B’s of the Western Church. These are:

Budgets

Buildings

Butts in the pews.

We tend to place way too much importance on these things. They give us a false sense of importance. Indeed, in the Southern Baptist Convention, we tend to elect presidents on factors similar to these three B’s. Whoever has the biggest is considered prime for inclusion in the running.

Budgets: God has blessed with money, so what can we spend it on to make ourselves look like we are doing the right things for God?

Buildings: New building projects give us something to sell to congregations, and potential members, and make us look like we have a growing church.

Butts in the pews: One reason too many churches don’t do church discipline is because we vie to have churches filled with people. Too many churches are content to allow non-Christians on the rolls for this reason. They may not think of it in this way, but having lax membership qualifications invariably lets in more people who do not have true faith in God.

The thing is that these things are looked at in the Western culture as being vitally important to a church fellowship. I served on the church council in the last church I was in. (It is roughly equivalent to the deacon board of most Baptist churches.) The Finance Committee had more members on it than the Social Ministry and Evangelism Committees combined. Sadly, the congregation in general couldn’t tell the difference between evangelism and social ministry. I was selected to chair the Evangelism Committee and met with the one other person who showed up for the initial meeting of my chairmanship. By the end of my chairmanship, I had several people involved in evangelistic outreaches. I had created the church’s first welcome center, small as it was, with brochures for visitors, and created a regular fellowship time where people could learn of evangelistic outreaches to get involved with. After I left, it all but disintegrated. More important to people were the three B’s. Today, due to this fixation as well as some problems with that particular denomination, the church is all but dead. There are virtually no more youth or even young adults.

I was a leader in that church for a short time, but most of the other leaders were there long before me and many are still there leading a dead church. In their prime, those leaders were the wealthiest in the church. They assumed that the budget they created with their large contributions gave them the right to claim leadership over all things in the church. They set aside hundreds of thousands for improving the pipe organ, renovating the Fellowship Hall and Kitchen, renovating the old Scout Hut into a new meeting room. The most of a budget that I could muster from them for the Evangelism Committee was about fifteen hundred dollars one year.

I suspect that it is a similar case for many dead or dying churches.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33 ESV)

What things will be added? According to the context, material things will be added. Don’t be fooled, however. Some may be tempted to say that our final goal is the material things.

But I’ve already said that I’m not goal oriented. The process is to seek the Kingdom of God and not worry about material things. That’s what’s important here. The passage acknowledges that we need material things. But their proper place is secondary to the process of seeking the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is permanent. Material things are perishable as are most of our considerations regarding Budgets, Buildings and Butts in the pews.

So what are we to do when our leaders lead us to consider the three B’s first? As long as they remain faithful to God, submit to them.

Now it can be argued that pursuing the three B’s is not being faithful to God. Humbly submit your concerns to the leadership and follow their lead. They have been placed in authority over you as all imperfect leaders are. But where they lead you to go against the important things of God, you must be first obedient to God. This is the primary reason I’m not at my former church anymore.

So, understanding that leaders aren’t perfect, but that their authority comes from God, and we are called to be in submission to the authorities that govern us, willingly submit to them and do not try to usurp their authority.

Trying to usurp authority engenders distrust. Submitting to authority engenders trust and your leaders will be more inclined to lend you their ear and consider your plea to a more faithful leadership.

Next article: Theological Tension on Ministerial Leadership

Leadership and Authority

2010-11-08T20:04:00.002-05:00

This is Part four of a series on Godly Leadership.

In the last article I pointed out how our motives are flawed. Even the best of us suffer, to some degree, the struggle of desiring our purposes where they do not match God’s. Even when we follow God’s purpose toward the decision to make some action, that action is still polluted with sinful motives (Romans 7:15ff).

Every sin has at its root the desire to usurp the authority of God. This often plays out in the covering of expenditures. Wealth to the wealthy is not generally an end in itself, but the means to gain power. In every way, we like to have some measure of freedom to do what we want, especially where we might influence others.

Now, this influence is handy when it comes to organizing a fellowship of believers. As long as there is considerable humility behind influence, then any sinful desire to control other people can be nullified. Manipulation becomes encouragement with a couple of factors: One is transparency in leadership. The other is willing submission to a leader. Manipulation builds distrust and resentment as one person tears down another. Encouragement builds trust and fellowship as leaders build up the people who follow them in faith to God. But the tools of manipulation and encouragement are the same.

Therefore, leaders may be both manipulative and encouraging at the same time.

There is a difference between manipulation and encouragement as I use those terms here. Manipulation is when a leader seeks to influence people to some degree against their will otherwise. This grows out of a lack of trust in that others won’t do what the leader wants them to do. Therefore, manipulation uses various psychological and sociological tools in order to control the information available to people so that they will make the decisions to act according to your purposes. Governments all over the world do this. Even here in the United States, the popular media controls the information it dispenses according to its particular political bent. The ever mysterious mentalists use subliminal cues to manipulate people for entertaining effect. Criminal interrogators use similar techniques for manipulating suspects to willingly give up information they may have. Children who do not receive the emotional care they need often end up manipulating in an effort to get the attention they need. Militant atheists often accuse religious leaders of using religious trappings and truth claims to manipulate their followers. Manipulation can be overt or insidiously deceptive.

When we often think of encouragement, we might think of nice things we say to someone to positively nudge them in a helpful direction, whether to boost their self esteem or make them think about some area of work or ministry that they should think about doing more of. The definition of encouragement I use here is a little broader than this. Even this level of encouragement is a bit of transparent manipulation. Everything we say to someone else changes them a little bit. If a leader appears to be confident and clear in the direction he gives followers, then they are encouraged to follow him. So encouragement may mean giving hard directions with a certain confident demeanor that might put some followers off initially. But if the bulk of people follow gladly, then malcontented followers will generally learn to do the same for a time.

But it’s this matter of confidence that I have issues with. As someone who is not gifted with natural leadership abilities, I imagine that people might tell me (and some have) that I need to have more confidence. My issue with confidence is what confidence actually is. The word has its root in Latin and comes to us through French influences: “con fide” literally means “with faith”. To pursue confidence, one must define the object of our confidence. If we place confidence in ourselves, then we have entered a most un-Christianlike place. To have confidence in myself is to assume a power that belongs to God. Rather, our confidence must be in God.

Too often, I’ve noticed that the confidence that many leaders exhibit is a false confidence in the weight of their own opinion. I’ve seen salesmen make promises they didn’t know if they could actually keep and make them with such apparent certitude that they were believable enough to make a sale. I’ve also noticed that this is useful for accomplishing goals.

If I fail in leadership, it’s that I know how uncertain things really are and I’m simply too honest to pretend otherwise. I have all confidence in the promises of God, but I know that my motives are never fully pure. I also know that the motives of people I depend on are never fully pure. So I can’t confidently make promises I can’t keep. I can’t be cock sure that my opinions are right.

Additionally, I know how to manipulate people. I also have a strong distaste for it. If I fail in leadership, it’s because I intentionally err on the side of not manipulating enough. I know that I can push proverbial buttons and pull emotional strings and make things happen. I choose not to do so. If God wants me to lead, He will send followers motivated by the Holy Spirit or an appointment to lead by someone in authority. (And I would silently question their wisdom in asking me to lead anything.)

But I am on rare occasion asked to lead. And when the time comes, I generally lead well because I have no authority other than what is given to me. I have heard others talk about how they are “take charge” kind of people. That begs the question: From whom do they take it? There are certainly times when no one is in charge. However, sometimes people “take charge” when someone else is already in charge. In a Christian setting, I believe this to be a violation of Paul’s admonition to be in subjection to governing authorities (Romans 13:1). God has already placed someone in charge and judging them to be weak in leadership is judging God’s appointment of them. God is the One from Whom comes the authority to lead.

And that is the tie that binds the rambling nature of this article together: God perfectly appoints imperfect leaders to accomplish His purposes.

Next article: Leadership and Submission

The Role of the Holy Spirit – Desiring God

2010-11-07T21:32:00.003-05:00

This is Part three of a series on Godly Leadership.

[7] For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. [8] Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. [9] You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:7-9 ESV)

[14] For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. [15] For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:14-15 ESV)

Studying Romans 8 we learn much about our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Aside from what I discussed in the last article, here we can see that those who do not have the Holy Spirit are hostile toward God. Those who have the Holy Spirit have a desire for the things of God as His children.

On the surface this looks like a simple teaching. I’ve pointed it out and you may say, “Yeah. I knew that. No biggie. What’s next?” But we need to dwell on this a little bit.

Do you know anyone who makes decisions with fleshly motives? We must understand that our motives are never completely pure as long as we live in this world of sin and death (Romans 8:10). If our motives were pure, then we would not need the Holy Spirit to guide us and intercede for us when we don’t know how to pray (Romans 8:26). People who don’t have the Holy Spirit may desire to do good things, but any reason they have for this necessarily excludes any desire for God. That’s the best case scenario. But people who have the Holy Spirit will have a transcendent desire for God and be duly motivated by a joy for satisfying Him although they may occasionally fail at pursuing this desire.

In the last article I pointed out a discrepancy between Christians knowing from the Holy Spirit that the Bible is accurate and sufficient and it being difficult for Christians to discern between the activity of the Holy Spirit and their own flawed desires and emotions. The balance lies in the weakness of our motives.

First, we might understand that the canon of scripture is certain. However, none of us fully appreciates the magnitude of God’s communication to us through His written accounts in the canon of scripture. It is a matter of doubt that some who claim to be Christian do not believe that the very source of our information about Christ, the Bible, is very certain.

Roman Catholics, for example, are one such group. While I have no doubt that there are Christians in their number, I doubt that there are many. Why? Because they hold the source of their faith in question as authoritatively lesser than those who are in position over them. While we need to be subject to our governing authorities, they cannot controvert that which secures their authority without bringing their authority into question. They place sinful men over what God has established as His authoritative word. That’s a minor example. Sadly, there are more that are far worse.

Second, the reason we as Christians have difficulty discerning the difference between the Holy Spirit and last night’s lasagna (as it affects our bowels enough to give way to a visceral spiritualism) is, first, because our motives are mixed and, second, because the Bible doesn’t indicate how precisely God will communicate to us directly.

God has directly communicated with me twice in my life. He didn’t controvert any of His word and His messages were to me. I don’t often mention them because what He told me was not intended to edify the Church and His words are not generally fruitful for anything but self-promotion. But I mention it here because I knew beyond any doubt that God was speaking directly to me. Before, I might have thought that God would want to use me as a prophet or something and want me to tell people something in general. Looking back, such thoughts were motivated in part by a desire to be known as a great man of God. Now, I realize how foolish I am and I’m careful to make any pronouncements from God’s word with the fear that I might get it wrong and lead someone astray and also to qualify uncertain musings as those of my own that might be wrong.

Therefore, I’m wary of any who claim to have some word from the Lord that is not taken from scripture. I know how impure motives can generate false prophecy.

What I mostly want to take from this is that the Holy Spirit gives us the great motive which is a desire for God and to see His glory truly revealed, but that we will still harbor self-serving motives that will interfere with making wise decisions in leadership.

Next article: Leadership and Authority

The Role of the Holy Spirit – Cessationism vs. Continuationism

2010-11-06T22:33:00.004-05:00

This is Part two of a series on Godly Leadership.

I have often been counseled to “walk in the power of the Holy Spirit”. This is good counsel in general, but it needs much in the way of clarification. And sadly, the clarification either doesn’t come or is very, very vague.

A very encouraging passage is from Paul’s letter to the Romans:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11 ESV)

While this particular verse seems to only be talking soteriologically (about our salvation) the passage that it comes from is also ministerial. In other words, it doesn’t merely say that we are alive because the Holy Spirit has made us alive, but that we have a meaningful life because of the work of the Holy Spirit. Of note:
We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9). We are led by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14). The Holy Spirit is not simply a general spirit of goodness that we have in our hearts as I have heard some say, but He is the Spirit of God separate from our spirit (Romans 8:16). The walk of our life is not merely characterized by, but is centrally a matter of co-suffering with Christ (Romans 8:17) and that we are not immune from the groaning of all creation as we wait for the hope of the return of Christ which brings the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23). The Holy Spirit helps us in this weakness (Romans 8:26). All things happen according to the will of God and work together for good (vv 27, 28) because we are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:29, 30). So is all this merely soteriological? Go back up to verse 5 (Romans 8:5) to see that we “live according to the Spirit”. Then go to 1 Corinthians 11 and see how the Holy Spirit provides for our ministry as a Body.

The question remains as to how we perceive the particulars of the leading of the Holy Spirit. This is the heart of Christian epistemology. Two schools of thought define the spectrum among conservative Christians: Cessationism and Continuationism. I’m not sold completely on either school of thought for various reasons. I’ll make some observations and summarize each one.

First, we already know, as I have pointed out, that as believers we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and have His guidance. The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth (John 16:13). How the Holy Spirit does this is what is in question:

Cessationism is the belief that the miraculous acts performed by virtue of the Holy Spirit have ceased. The money verse for this belief is:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16 ESV)

The understanding is that no more scripture is being written, therefore there is no more need for signs and wonders to mark extra-biblical authority. Many cessationists do not deny that miracles can still happen, but that no act or special message from God outside the Bible can be reliably attributed to God through the Holy Spirit.

There are indeed false prophets who claim to speak on God’s behalf. There are people who “feel led” to do certain things and attribute these feelings to the Holy Spirit. However, there is no way for others to determine if such a feeling was given by God or last night’s lasagna. In fact, too many people seem to think that a flutter in your gizzard means that God is telling you something. Some, in hopes that God is giving them the gift of prophecy, claim certain things as prophetic that are clearly not.

But does this discount such things? Could there be a difference between a prophetic word that should be scripture and a prophetic word that God does not intend to be scripture?

Continuationists, in this vein, believe that miracles have not ceased. Not only that, that we are given divine gifts as such to mark, not scripture as such, but the fellowship of the Body of Christ. The money passage for this view is 1 Corinthians 12 (or even Acts 2 for Pentecostals in particular). In this verse, we learn that some have been given the gift of tongues and others have been given the gift of prophecy. While cessationists claim that these should only be interpreted in a merely natural sense (preachers and translators), continuationists understand Spiritual gifts as anything but natural.

Setting these aside for the moment, let’s look at the facts.

Given the history of the Bible and the unanimous acceptance of the canon of scripture by the early churches even before the Council of Nicea demonstrated such agreement, we must understand that the canon is closed. That is to say that we have a known standard by which we can judge things to be true.

This standard is confirmed in the lives of true believers by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit gives us gifts to use in the context of other believers for the proclamation of the truth of Christ.

The Holy Spirit is, by definition, supernatural.

It is too often difficult for most Christians to discern the difference between the activity of the Holy Spirit and our own flawed desires and emotions.

Given #2 and #5, we may have a problem as individuals, especially where it comes to leadership. I plan to address this problem in the following articles.

Next article: The Role of the Holy Spirit – Desiring God

Being a Godly Follower

2010-11-05T21:22:00.002-05:00

This is Part one of a series on Godly Leadership.

Much is made of godly leadership. Often this is because many pastors, Bible teachers and other ministers are gifted in leadership and teach what they know.

The concept is that each of us has some set of spiritual gifts and abilities to offer and we are to be leaders in our use of them for the edification of the Body of Christ. Generally, some mention of marks of a good leader is given including spiritual marks as well as marks of a natural leader. For example, one Christian leadership course gives the following information:

Natural qualities of a leader:

A spirit of initiative

Willingness to take risks

Sense of responsibility

Desired qualities of a leader:

Personal authenticity

Generosity

Personal accountability for actions

Given that a Christian leader combines natural qualities of a leader with Christian virtues, the Christian virtues that contribute to Christian leadership are:

A living faith

Hope

Love

Humility

This is a good list. However, while all spiritually mature Christians should exhibit these types of qualities, not always will that mean that they will make great decisions or that others will be inclined to trust their decisions. As such, not every Christian is gifted with good leadership abilities. I count myself as one who is not gifted with leadership. I don’t seem to have the ability to pull volunteers together in cooperation toward the achievement of some goal. Partially that’s because I’m process oriented, not goal oriented. That is, goals are nice, but I’m always asking what happens after the goal is achieved. My focus is on planning for continuity rather than ending the game. My fellow Westerners appreciate goal oriented leadership rather than process oriented leadership. Therefore, I cannot be used to lead them because they will not follow.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. (1 Corinthians 9:24 ESV)

This passage would seem to indicate that being goal oriented is scriptural. However, the context is that Paul is talking about the purpose for his actions, not actually accomplishing the end of any particular race or goal.

It may be argued that even a process must be broken up into smaller goals that need to be accomplished. However, this fails to miss the full import of the process. The goal in the process is never to accomplish a series of smaller goals. The goal in the process is to continue after a certain manner. Smaller goals are never that which is to be particularly accomplished but they are merely benchmarks along the way.

The endless accomplishment of goals is to be focused on performance. The continuity of purpose is to live in submission to the One who gives purpose.

I have often heard it said that in order to be a good leader one must also be a good follower. I must add to this that we must all strive to be good followers, but that leadership must not be our goal. I say that as a process oriented person. The good process is to live in submission to God. Even Christ lived among us and lives today in submission to the Father. How much more should we be in submission to Him? If we happen to be raised up as a leader, then we will have the heart of Christ in leadership and will exalt Him as our supreme leader, the King of the Kingdom of Heaven of which we are citizens.

Leaders do not think of themselves first. They think of God first. When Moses was confronted by sin against God at Mt. Sinai, he struck the Israelites with a just punishment and thousands died. When Moses himself faced attack by his brother, Aaron, and sister, Miriam, he did nothing in his own defense. God came and defended Moses outside of any action Moses took. When God was slandered by the Philistine giant, Goliath, David took up sling and stone and stood boldly in His defense. When king Saul, God’s anointed, was disrespected David struck those who did so with death. When David was personally attacked by Saul and by his son, Absalom, David fled raising no hand against them. Paul judged Christians with due harshness who blatantly sinned against God. But he suffered severe physical abuse for preaching the gospel without seeking retribution for his suffering. This is the testimony of leadership in the pages of scripture.

Next article: The Role of the Holy Spirit – Cessationism vs. Continuationism

Godly Leadership Series - Introduction

2010-11-04T23:49:00.015-05:00

I’m not naturally gifted in leadership. For all my gifts, leadership is not one of them. Nevertheless, as one called to be the leader of my family, I have found it necessary to study godly leadership so I can do the best I can for them in the name of Christ.

This has not been an easy endeavor.

First, I was in the Marines and naturally promoted into the ranks of non-commissioned officers. As such I was effective as a leader when men had to do what I told them. I didn’t have to convince them except that typically when they saw that my directions yielded results, they had no problems following. That was a matter of demonstrating substance. Now, as a civilian, I typically must elicit the cooperation of others since there is no disciplined mandate for them to follow me. Too often I’m challenged by potential followers on the basis of preference rather than substance. Most people think preference is important. There’s always more than one way to accomplish something and when I have had the opportunity to lead, I’ve been doubted when I leave matters of preference up to others while I dictate matters of substance. At work, I have the privilege of determining the substance of a schedule while my boss implements it. So my part of the plant leadership is one of substance while my boss handles it by matters of preference (often dictated to him from corporate leadership).

Second, there are still some things that frustrate my understanding in the area of leadership and there has been spillover of this frustration into other areas of ministry. Particularly, doing ministry involves some measure of leadership in the utilization of gifts that one has been given.
This struggle involves some insights that might be helpful in the way that we encourage each other in ministry. The next several posts are a series that investigates Christian leadership and the way that we go about making decisions that honor and glorify our Lord.

The assumptions that I make in this series are that potential leaders are already Christians, that they are relatively mature in their faith, and that they are generally conservative in their theology (high view of scripture).

The links here can be used as an index:

Being a Godly Follower

The Role of the Holy Spirit – Cessationism vs. Continuationism

The Role of the Holy Spirit – Desiring God

Leadership and Authority

Leadership and Submission

Theological Tension on Ministerial Leadership

Don’t Waste Your Mediocrity

Mentoring the next Generation of Christian Leaders

Humility, Criticism, and the Body of Christ

2010-10-11T20:24:00.001-05:00

Humility can be tricky. Check out this video of Mark Driscoll talking about his own humility.

Rules for being humble:

1) Confess that you aren’t.
2) Give insights from the experiences that have caused you to become more humble.

At least that what I’ve ever seen those do who are praised by others for being humble.

Of course it’s always easier to be humble when you are popular or wildly successful. (Although it’s not unlike a rich man who says he really doesn’t need money.) And unless you have a platform for humility you are the primary target for teaching on humility. (That’s like taking a rich man to teach a poor man how to better manage what he doesn’t have.) That said, you can’t teach humility without a platform and you can’t come off as authoritative on humility without appearing a bit hypocritical.

One the other hand, here’s our Great Example: Jesus was humble. Jesus was also authoritative. He criticized the Pharisees strongly to their face. Would that earn him Mr. Congeniality by today’s standards? Not really. But here’s the King of Creation dining with sinners and dying for their sin:

As it is, I can’t say that I’m particularly humble. I desire to be. I’m often disturbed by many compliments. However, I’m generally particularly pleased by myself way too often. The more I think about it, the more of a paradox living in a sinful world makes it. I’d go batty if I focused on it all the time. I think some measure of recognition of our inability to be humble on our own is appropriate, but focusing too much is a sign of great pride. The balance is that instead of feeling constant shame over our lack of humility, we must recognize the joy of forgiveness given to us by God and focus our attention of him instead. If anything, that’s our source of true humility. Jesus isn’t simply our Great Example, he’s our source.
On criticism and humility:

I don’t recall ever coming out in criticism of Mark Driscoll. I heard he cussed from the pulpit once and I would consider that unwise. I have been particularly cautious with his teaching as a result. Consider that my first open criticism of him. Generally, I think his teaching has been good. I don’t particularly agree with him on his use of the multi-site method of church planting. He doesn’t think of preaching as particularly relational. In other words, he considers it to be a one-way avenue of information. I strongly disagree. The pastor should address the information to the congregation he has been called to shepherd. Even Christ tailored his messages according to the needs of those who were listening. But most of Mark’s teaching is okay anyway. It is at least designed to instruct a group of people he largely doesn’t know.

But Mark brings up a good point in this video with regard to critics. Critics are necessary to hone us. There are critics who criticize without regard to our growth and critics who criticize based on their friendship to us. In this, Mark is a blessed man.
To adapt John Piper: Don’t waste your critics.

I wish I had more critics. I especially wish I had more people who gave me constructive criticism out of their friendship with me. I love and need encouragement in a significant way. But a greater encouragement is that someone sees enough potential in someone to want to help that person improve. They must point out flaws in order to do so. That’s what I hunger for in criticism.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. (Proverbs 27:6)
Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you. (Proverbs 9:8)

If a person is not loved enough to be criticized constructively by a friend, then he is left to self-criticize. This result in a bit of false humility. There fore, humility is a function of the Body of Christ. We must learn to give and take good criticism. I approached a minister a couple of weeks ago for nothing more than to see if he had a battery and he exclaimed jokingly, “Uh oh, what am I in trouble for now.” I replied, “If you’re in the ministry, you stay in trouble.” In a sense, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. If you do anything meaningful at all you won’t be able to please everyone. Criticism means that you are doing something right. It could also mean that there is an area in which you can grow.

So do not fail to criticize your brother or sister in love where appropriate. Do not deny such critics their place in God’s plan for your ministry. But welcome their words as those that may cleanse your work and make you humble so that God will receive the glory in all things.

Trusting God’s Revelation

2010-07-26T23:30:00.003-05:00

Steve Hayes at Triablogue wrote a great article recently where he makes an observation about miracles and applies it to some arguments against the “apparent age” theory of the creation of the universe.

“Take the case of Jesus healing the man born blind (John 9). The blind man had some congenital defect which left him blind all his life.

“When Jesus restores his sight, this doesn’t merely affect the future. It also, or so it seems to me, erases any physical trace of his past affliction. An ophthalmologist, examining the man after Jesus cured him, would be unable to detect the fact that this man ever had that particular birth defect. So it doesn’t merely change the present. It also changes the evidence of the past.”

He correctly notes that this isn’t an argument for Young Earth Creationism (YEC) per se:

“Critics object to mature creation (or “apparent age”) on the grounds that this would implicate God in a web of deception. Deceptive appearances.”

And, “I don’t cite this as a positive argument for YEC. I merely cite this to question a facile objection to YEC.”

To be sure, many good YEC-ists make the same argument. Ken Ham wrote as much and his Answers in Genesis organization holds the same position.

I have two observations to make regarding this matter. One is that Steve Hayes observation regarding miracles implies an understanding of Creation that has not been much investigated and the second is that this understanding of Creation is helpful in drawing our attention to a reason God may have for making things appear other than what they are.

Many Christians have not thought in depth about the nature of creation given that God is eternal and creation is not. It’s not too difficult to get the idea from Genesis 1 that God created everything and then left it to go on as it will without his interacting much with it.

God is here represented by the large red dot. His act of creation is represented by the red arrow. The large blue dot is creation. And subsequent blue dots are the progression of creation from event to event on into the future with the blue arrows representing causal relationships.

The problem is that other scripture revelas that God didn’t simply create once and from that point on allow natural cause and effect takes its logical course. Even if he did, God, being omniscient, would know what would happen given the details that he created initially. So he could easily fix the details to cause what he wanted to happen. But we know that God not only created “In the beginning” but he sustains his creation (Heb 1:3) and creates constantly (Psalm 139:13) and provides for his creation (Job 38:41). I suggest that Genesis 1 was given to us as a pattern to follow. God didn’t need a whole week to create. He could have created all things instantly. But not only did God create all things, he also created all causal relationships:

I present this as a more accurate understanding of God’s creation.

As a parenthetical, I often vilify existentialism as a false worldview. I do this because it speaks directly against God’s creation of this world. For a picture of existentialism, imagine each blue dot with a blue arrow going to a cloud of red dots. That’s existentialism. It’s the idea that the things of this world control the things of the spiritual which is backwards and opens up the door for the denial of absolute truth that pervades popular philosophy. Back to the discussion:

Steve Hayes observes that a miracle “doesn’t merely change the present. It also changes the evidence of the past.” In the terms that I am employing here, a miracle interrupts the causal relationship between events and replaces the history we remember with a history that never happened, and apparent history. The history that never happened was indeed created by God although it has no real place in time and space.

The green causal chain is the new one created by God. As it is, there is no “replacing” of a real time line with a new one since God creates even the causal relationships. It is a miracle precisely because he creates an event that is uncaused by anything in this world.

This is the point at which the argument can be made that God doesn’t deceive. I would agree that this is a very valid argument. God doesn’t deceive. In fact, he is clear in scripture that something miraculous has happened. But I suggest that God is up to something else.

We might expect unbelievers to pursue naturalistic causes to explain miraculous accounts. But here we have even creationists arguing that what the Bible indicates is a divinely caused event, when viewed naturalistically, would be a deception of God.

As one who has studied physics in some depth, I have long thought it strange that beginning of the universe cosmologies often fell short in calculating the effects of special relativity on the universe at large in the early stages. To be sure it has been considered to some degree, but temporal passage tends to get evened out on a macroscopic scale where extreme forces don’t warrant. That is to say that scientists talk about the universe aging relatively uniformly where there is reason to think it hasn’t. As far as YEC cosmology goes, Dr. D. Russell Humphreys has taken gone the direction I’ve always wondered about and provided a viable YEC cosmology, involving a “white hole” that produced the rest of the universe at a greatly accelerated rate compared to that of the earth, that aptly explains the history in starlight.

But as I have explained, while his cosmology requires an economy of the miraculous, it is largely dependent on natural physics. That is, in order to avoid calling the history already present in the light arriving to earth of the deep universe a practice in deception by God he has resorted to mostly natural explanation.

My final observation is to ask the question: If God tells us what he did and we observe something different using naturalistic assumptions, why do we think God is deceiving us? Rather, is it not an opportunity to trust what God has said regardless of whether he created the universe using a white hole or not? So I contend that perhaps it is possible that he has created a history that hasn’t happened in the natural course of our powers of observation. He has indeed created the stars as signs. Interestingly, the miracles Christ performed on earth were done to provide signs of his authority according to scripture (John 2:23; Acts 2:22,43).

The Relevance of Presuppositions

2010-07-17T11:18:00.001-05:00

Presuppositional considerations are relevant epistemologically. That we know anything begs the question of how we know it. So if we start there, it is empirically that we discover presuppositional options. We therefore weigh these options and from them use the one that best fits our desires - our visceral presuppositions. If we desire something to be true, we go with whatever presupposition results in that conclusion. The only exception is if our primary desire is to honestly know the Truth. This desire is given only by God and always results in the conclusion that God as revealed in Christian scriptures is the only true God.

HT: Triablogue

The Relationship Between Science and Christianity

2010-07-15T23:24:00.001-05:00

From an ongoing discussion on the Pyromaniacs blog noting Biologos' disregard for the authority of scripture, Blogger 'one busy mom' posted a comment outlining an apt metaphor for the difference between science and the revelation of God through scripture. I have also included my first comment.

Blogger one busy mom said...

Phil: excellent post!

Jordan:
You seem to be having trouble reconciling science and faith, and although I'm the theological lightwieght here, I'm going to dive in with some suggestions. I too love science. I grew up with science. My late father was a very highly esteemed scientist in his field both in the US and abroad.

Here are some tidbits I've gleened:

We only know a small percentage of the facts that can be known & some of what we think we know we've actually misinterpretted.

Let's compare this to a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. We'll generously say we know 10% of all that can be known - so we randomly pull out 100 pieces from the box. Now, since some of what we think we know is not correctly interpretted - take 15 of those 100 pieces and replace them with random pieces from other puzzles.

Now, do your best to arrange those pieces without ever looking at the picture on the puzzle box. Then extrapolate and try to recreate the original picture. Chances are the results will be interesting, well thought out, and appear correct...but chances are even better that it won't look much like the actual picture.

As Christians, we have a huge advantage - we have the box with the picture on it: the Bible. So we can look at the current arrangement of puzzle pieces and say "nah - this part here or that over there just doesn't work".

We shouldn't get upset or defensive just because the pieces don't match the picture. Seriously, without the picture what would the odds be of it ever matching? Nor should we be so foolish as to throw out the picture cuz it didn't match the current arrangement of the pieces! (As BioLogos appears to be willing to do) Instead, we should get really excited when the pieces and the picture differ- that's where discoveries are waiting to be made!

Once, when looking over some of my dad's many patents, I asked him how he knew where to look to make new discoveries. He said that was really "the million dollar question" for any scientist, but the best place to start was where there were discrepancies - where things didn't add up.

God says to prove Him, and see if He's true. He will never be found to be a liar. As believers, we need to trust that He meant what He said, take His Word literally, and have the courage to rearrange the puzzle pieces to fit the picture - not vice versa. Because of the nature of some of the areas of discrepency, I'm firmly convinced some of the most dramatic discoveries have yet to be made: but they won't be made by those who already believe they have the answers.

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Blogger Jim Pemberton said...

one busy mom: very cogent metaphor, apt and true.

And I agree with with the following comments explaining the foundational nature of Biblical truth. It's what is often misunderstood, overlooked, or intentionally skewed in these discussions.

Mike correctly pointed to the definition of science as being rather vague and oft unaddressed for clarity. To be sure, inasmuch as we think about who God is we may be generally classified as theologians. Likewise, inasmuch as we observe the observable world around us and make predictable assumptions based on the consistent properties that we see we can all be generally classified as scientists.

However, there is are classifications of theologians and ministers who are defined as those who are particularly studied and interact with communities of other such theologians and ministers. Likewise, there are classifications of scientists and engineers who are particularly studied and interact with communities of other scientists and engineers.

It's the distinctions between schools of presuppositional thought that are often at the heart of disagreement or even discredit between communities of scientists. So if we talk about what science is "valid" we get a different answer based on what community we use as our basis for scientific thinking. As it is, the naturalists happen to have the upper hand in popularity by virtue of their proliferation on the staffs of many schools and universities. So non-naturalistic science tends to be dismissed by most scientists as invalid, not because it's not science, but because it's not naturalistic.

BioLogos seems to have bought the naturalistic party line and are using it's presuppositions for defining what science is "valid". But orthodox Christian presuppositions are decidedly not naturalistic. Therefore science that uses the same presuppositions as orthodox Christianity looks different than naturalistic science. Naturalistic science cannot be reconciled with Christian orthodoxy. But there is a science that is integral to Christian orthodoxy.

The Perfect Church is Not Perfect

2010-07-14T01:32:00.003-05:00

Looking for the perfect church? It doesn't exist for two reasons: First is because churches are made of people who are at best still undergoing sanctification. That is, we have been saved from the penalty of our sin, but we are still in the process of learning how to live like it in a world that remains fallen.

But the second reason is similar to the first: Sanctification provides the rest of the world with a practical view of the nature of God. It's one thing to say that we are graciously forgiven. It's another thing to handle ongoing sin as though we are graciously forgiven.

We may be called to glorify God individually in how we handle our sin, but it's a mistake in light of original sin to think of sin as being a purely individual phenomenon. More importantly than how the individual handles sin is how a church body handles sin.

Therefore, if you are looking for the perfect church, look for how a church handles sin and submit yourself to the church that will help to purify you in a practical way - not because the church is perfect, but because the people therein have been through their own struggles with sin and have submitted to the same pattern of corporately ministered mortification of that sin.

Stay away from any church that makes you feel good about yourself and ignores your sin. That provides the temptation to worship the church rather than Christ. Submit rather to churches that demonstrate humility in overcoming struggles with sin with honesty, repentance, grace and reconciliation.

HT: Resurgence

Finding Comfort in the Will of God

2010-07-12T23:46:00.001-05:00

I was involved in a discussion the other day regarding the will of God and what comforts us in times of great trial, specifically the loss of a loved one. The other side of the discussion consisted of a vague notion that God wouldn't allow bad things to happen. I can't state an incoherent argument coherently except to say that the reason it is incoherent is because it is essentially visceral and not scripturally based.

I pointed out that God is sovereign, all of us deserve to die and that unless Christ returns in a premillennial fashion we will all die, physically that is. So the truth is that there is nothing wrong with the observation that God causes us all to die one way or the other. He is right to do so and it is his will.

In response, I was told that people who were suffering loss shouldn't be told that the death of their loved one was the will of God. Additionally, it was pointed out, such a discourse to someone who was suffering loss could be driven away from God if they thought that God caused their loved one to be taken from them.

I'm sure my reply was not fully understood at the time, but I responded with our desire for the true God as our source of comfort. To elaborate:

First, we are all sinners who deserve death. Therefore, no means of the death of sinners is intrinsically evil. For example, a tornado that kills sinful people is not a bad thing. Or a murderer killing sinful people is not a bad thing. It is evil to murder, but that a sinner was murdered is not evil. The distinction is important to understand. God, who has no sin, is not a murderer for killing sinful people in cold blood. That we are horrified by the death of sinners should not inform our thinking on the nature of death as a result of sin. Otherwise, we fail to understand the nature of sin and our dire need for a savior.

Second, our desire is to be for God. It's not that we can try to desire God and succeed, for the very act of trying is founded on the desire we already have. Therefore, the desire is always first. But if we desire God then we would desire his will, whatever it is.

Now it is true that there are many who desire God according some misconception they have about God, but this is a desire for a false God because it is based on the notion of a god who does not exist. That is, that if our concept of God is not according to his revelation of himself to us then we have construed a false god in which to place our faith.

It may be that there are aspects of God that have not been revealed to us or that we have not come to a full understanding of God as we continue to learn about him. However, inasmuch as the gospel of Christ is central to his revelation to us, as long as we get the core of the gospel right, then we understand the essentials about who God is and the rest we ponder and refine throughout our lives as we grow in faith.

But with regard to the gospel, if we do not apprehend the depth of our sinfulness and God's sovereignty as creator, then we cannot understand the gospel of Christ. (There are other things to know in order to understand the gospel, but these two are key to this discussion.) If we think in any way that we are intrinsically worth saving, then we have to think that God has relinquished some aspects of his sovereignty in creation to us or we will think God blameworthy of the deaths of good people everywhere.

However, if we know the depths of our sinfulness, then we know that any desire we have for God comes from God himself and we rejoice in his sovereignty. For such who know this, it is comforting to know that the death of a loved one is the will of God. We may weep sorrowfully if we knew they they rejected God and we will see them no longer. On the other hand, if we saw the fruit of the Spirit in their lives, namely faith in God and the atoning work of Christ, then we can weep for joy in knowing that they have gone on before us and we are parted only for a short time.

For one who doesn't know the gospel as such there is no comfort except a false hope in a lie. For those who know it truly such as have fully placed their trust in Christ the only comfort is in the will of God; and as we display that comfort, God is most glorified.

The Meekness of Moses

2010-07-10T20:06:00.002-05:00

Moses considered himself "meek" (Numbers 12:3) and in the same context God called him "faithful" (Numbers 12:7). What does "meek" and "faithful" look like from the account of Miriam and Aaron's detraction against Moses in Numbers 12?

This was the same Moses who had become content to keep sheep in the land of Midian but had been called by God to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt to Canaan and to give them the law. This was the same Moses who came down out of the mountain, tablets in hand, only to find the Israelite worshiping a golden calf; and he ground the calf to bits and made the Israelites drink it; and he had three thousand of the Hebrews killed for it. Does this sound like a meek man?

In Numbers 11 Moses had just petitioned God to have some of the people help him bear their burdens and God had granted his request as one that was reasonable. After this, Moses' older siblings, Miriam and Aaron, apparently find fault with Moses for marrying a woman of a different people. However, their complaint ends up being an attack on Moses for having a power over the people that they don't have. Their real issue was their own desire for power. Consider that Aaron was already chief over all the priests and had stood with Moses before Pharaoh through the plagues. Aaron was no insignificant man. Yet his sinful flesh desired more for himself.

When Miriam and Aaron came out against Moses, we read nowhere that Moses spoke one word in his defense. Except that Moses had this account written, he doesn't stick up for himself. Instead, God calls Miriam and Aaron to task and defends his calling of Moses. He punishes them, Miriam in particular with leprosy. But Aaron repents and Moses pleas for her healing.

So Moses is faithful to defend God even by the edge of the sword. But he is meek in that he does not defend himself. Christ did this also who defended his disciples against the false teachings of the Pharisees but did not defend himself against the charges brought against him. If he did anything he fled as though on the lam until the appointed time to be delivered into their hands. Paul was also faithful to defend the young churches under his discipleship against false teachers but did not defend himself when attacked. The only time Paul sought a defense was through an appeal to Caesar to defend him as a citizen of Rome by birth. But he did not defend himself. He made the occasional reference to his calling as one of the apostles, not to defend his calling however but to establish his teaching about God.

So we must have a heart of boldness in faithfully ministering God's truth, especially in the gospel, but a heart of meekness in relying on God for defense against detractors.

Christian Polemics and Desiring God

2010-07-09T19:12:00.000-05:00

The problem with Christian theological polemics is that it leaves the impression that the end of the pursuit of Christian truth is to be right about what we believe. While it is good to be right, and we need to be right about certain key things, it’s not always necessary to be right. Or from another angle: many people pursue truth so they can satisfy their itch to master the knowledge of God rather than to know God in such a way as to be satisfied with him. It’s better to ignorantly be wrong about some things and still desire the glory of God than to knowledgeably be right about these things and stop short of God’s glory in a desire for mere knowledge. And if you desire God, then you will want to improve your understanding of him.

Gone and Back Again

2010-07-09T00:01:00.004-05:00

I'm back from an absence of a few months while I accomplished some tasks. Among them:

1. Editing the video for last year's Christmas program at my church:

2. Recording and editing a few tracks for a CD with Jessi Shannon. This was a quick turn-around project, but it still took considerable time and effort for three engineers to put together in a couple of months.

3. Preparing materials for a trip to India where we held a pastor's conference and women's conference, and took the gospel door-to-door as well as presented it in an open-air format. i may yet post some photos.

Despite not writing during this time I have not thought less. I have slowly worked through Van Til and am still working on reading Bahnsen. I may publish my final broad analysis of presuppositional apologetics as presented by these two. Many of the things I have thought I have boiled down to pithy quotes and posted as Facebook status updates. But I also have a couple of more recent considerations that I have written and will post in short order.

So, to myself, welcome back.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Index

2010-03-08T01:03:00.001-05:00

Come here for links to all the photos of the Festival of Tables, March 2010, at Western Avenue Baptist Church.

Introduction and server photos

Table 1: Denise Hatcher

Table 2: Alysia Oliver

Table 3: Heather Cannon - Cheryl Wenzel

Table 4: Glenda Cook

Table 5: Edith Bumgarner

Table 6: Cheryl Brown

Table 7: Leslie Nantz

Table 8: Amanda Brown

Table 9: Melissa Collins

Table 10: Robin Gilleland

Table 11: Ashley Oliver

Table 12: Lois Pemberton

Table 13: JoAnn Morrison

Table 14: Bekah Seals

Table 15: Angie Burgess

Table 16: Ashlee Harrison

Table 17: Ann Veach

Table 18: Claire Consalvo

Table 19: Ashton Consalvo

Table 20: Brittany Friend

Table 21 Terri Paterson

Table 22: Anita Daily

Table 23: Marion Marcy

Table 24: Meredith Collins

Table 25: Caroline Haughton

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 25

2010-03-08T00:59:00.001-05:00

Caroline Haughton put together this fabulous seashell theme.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 24

2010-03-08T00:56:00.001-05:00

Meredith Collins presented this spring theme that features a decorative birdbath with floating candles.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 23

2010-03-08T00:51:00.001-05:00

Marion Marcy's blue theme. I took one with the candles lighted, but it's embarrassingly blurry.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 22

2010-03-08T00:46:00.001-05:00

I was only able to snap this one photo of Anita Daily's elegant theme.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 21

2010-03-08T00:42:00.001-05:00

This snowy table was presented by Terri Paterson.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 20

2010-03-08T00:35:00.001-05:00

Brittany Friend put together this elaborate Hollywood theme. Some motion was achieved with lights that simply wasn't captured with my stills.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 19

2010-03-08T00:32:00.001-05:00

Ashton Consalvo put together this Valentine's table.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 18

2010-03-08T00:29:00.001-05:00

Another coffee table was presented by Claire Consalvo. Although some people have the same theme it is interesting to see how differently the tables can be decorated.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 17

2010-03-08T00:26:00.001-05:00

Ann Veach is an Ohio State fan. Can you Tell?

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 16

2010-03-08T00:14:00.000-05:00

Ashlee Harrison loves yellow. She did this fantastic yellow garden theme featuring flowers and butterflies. The butterflies are suspended between the balloons and the table with thin fishing line. The white balloons look like fluffy clouds.

A tip using the dyed moss: it smells bad coming out of the package. Airing it out eliminates the odor.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 15

2010-03-08T00:05:00.001-05:00

Our minister of outreach has a motorcycle ministry called "Toolin' in Town". His wife, Angie, put together this table with the motorcycle theme.

Something I missed in these photos was the motorcycle balloon floating above the table, but you can see it in the general photo I took. You can see it there floating across the room.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 14

2010-03-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

Bekah Seals came to us from New Orleans. This intriguing theme is based on the Fleur De Lis.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 13

2010-03-07T23:46:00.001-05:00

This elegant theme was brought by JoAnn Morrison. This is how you make black plates look good.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 12

2010-03-07T23:31:00.000-05:00

This was my... er, my wife's table. This resurrection theme features a flower cross covered with daisies and a red rose on either side in the center. The hill is made by vines and a hanging plant set down with its weave of runners creating a hill effect. The tomb was sculpted with clay and painted by my kids. A simple small LED flashlight hidden my tissue casts light from the interior. My daughter provided some appropriate animals from her Littlest Pet Shop collection. The chair covers were made from pillow cases.

My daughter came up with the idea of putting a lion and lamb from her LPS collection together by the tomb.

To construct a flower cross: make a cross from wood boards and wrap with chicken wire with enough space between the wire and the boards for flower stems. You can order daisies from your local florist by the bundle of several stems of several flowers each. If you have flowers in bloom naturally, you can bring azalea sprigs, dogwood, rhododendron, bradford pears, etc from all over. Don't steal the flowers from the highway. It's probably against the law in your area.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 11

2010-03-07T23:26:00.000-05:00

Ashley Oliver presented a Wizard of Oz theme featuring collectibles from the movie. Her family moved here from Kansas, hence the license plate. It was well-cleaned and quite appropriate for the Oz theme.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 10

2010-03-07T23:21:00.000-05:00

This Easter theme was put together by Robin Gilleland. Those are pink Easter eggs in the water under the flowers.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 9

2010-03-07T23:20:00.001-05:00

Melissa Collins had a crystal theme of sorts. The crystals may have only been glass, but I love the use of the crystals with the black iron.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 8

2010-03-07T23:06:00.000-05:00

Amanda Brown had a missions table with some knick-knacks from India. the decorative globe was cool. I got one of those elephants with the elephant on the inside when I was in India. That's Brittany Hatcher, whose mom did the breast cancer table, Helping Amanda tie those scarves and beads to the chair covers.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 7

2010-03-07T23:01:00.000-05:00

Leslie Nantz had one of the coffee themes. I don't know if this was simply put up late or if I just missed it with the first go-around, but this is the only photo I seem to have of the table. I thought the matching green aprons for all of her guests was cute.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 6

2010-03-07T22:57:00.000-05:00

Cheryl Brown had this creative picnic theme.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 5

2010-03-07T22:55:00.001-05:00

Edith Bumgarner put together this clever table with decorative birdhouses. Her party favors were birdhouses hung from the back of each chair.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 4

2010-03-07T22:50:00.001-05:00

Glenda Cook brought some of the flavor of autumn back with her table.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 3

2010-03-07T22:44:00.000-05:00

Heather Cannon and Cheryl Wenzel had this resurrection theme. Most of the flowers were handmade from tissue paper.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 2

2010-03-07T22:33:00.000-05:00

Alysia Oliver's table featured figurines of a healthy family life.

Festival of Tables, March 2010, Table 1

2010-03-07T22:28:00.000-05:00

Table 1 by Denise Hatcher was a breast cancer theme. Note the napkins folded in the shape of ribbons. Also, the table features photos of local women affected by cancer.

2010-03-07T22:15:00.001-05:00

I know I've been dormant recently. I've had plenty to write, but not the time to write it all. The short of it is that I've gotten a new computer and the latest version of Adobe Premiere Pro and have been editing some videos. I'll post the 2009 Christmas concert when I get done with it. The rest aren't appropriate for the general blog format and have their place in more specific ministerial presentations.

Additionally, I've been busy with things at work with a new expansion. In this horrible economy, we're actually growing.

But I've come back to post some photos from the latest Festival of Tables at church. FoT seems to be the most viewed material on this site for some reason, so I might as well feed the hungry eyes.

It's been a year and a half since the last FoT, I suppose because of a change of leadership. the good news is that younger people are getting into it. Several years ago it was populated mostly by older ladies. However, we had several tables this year done by teens and a host of teen boys - young men they are - who served as waiters. We kidded with them that they joined up to meet their future wives.

I can't say I got great photos this time because I was in a hurry and some tables were completed so late that I was surprised I got any photos of their tables at all. The format I'll follow this year is to do one post for each table and then end with a summary post providing a thumbnail and a link to the post for that table.

To start off, here are a few photos of my fellow servers:

This guy with the camera is my compadre, Tony Consalvo. If you ever see the Christmas videos I do, he's the guy behind the cameras.

Some of these may end up on Facebook.

Here are some of these younger guys I was talking about.

This is just a quick general room shot while everyone looks around at the tables before the dinner starts.

After the ladies were done eating and the speaker started, the servers went to eat. So while I was eating I was asked to go relieve the sound man so he could do a sound check in the Worship Center. The lady that provided special music for the FoT was also leading worship the next day. Next to the sound booth was the little cutie in this photo.

Humbly Differing With Authorities over “World” and “Water”

2010-01-03T17:33:00.001-05:00

My Bible study sometimes takes the form of intense study of a particular passage as I seek to better understand it. To this end I have been studying John 3 for several months now as I read it over and over, study, and map out the flow of thought of the account as well as any theological arguments being made while taking into account every context: The cultural context of the human author and the immediate audience, the intent of God in his revelation of himself in the given passage to the audience of all men knowing that they come from cultures different than the one of the intended audience, the internal context of the passage such as the context of the immediate flow of thought as well as the larger flow of thought. All this is with the mind that God may allow and plan for a misunderstanding among cultures for a period of time. For example, we see the preservation of the scriptures even through the period of syncretism of the Roman Catholic Church that lasted centuries before the Reformation.

The reason I bring the RCC up is that the Reformation was a return to soteriological orthodoxy. The RCC soteriology is a direct affront to clear Pauline theology. However, they provided the source of theological authority for a long time. The authority was simply wrong.

On the other hand, there is no small amount of mistaken theology even among Protestants. There are plenty of resources available to help discern the true meaning of the scriptures. The reason people don’t get it right is the presence of sin in general, but which is often cloaked in good intentions. In other words, people have cultural and philosophical sensibilities that the literal culture of the Bible offends. It is important to study it diligently and to refer often to those who have studied much with a heart for the glory of God lest we fall into theological error, the center of our theological considerations drifting according to our desires rather than remaining fixed on a love of the Truth of God even as we submit to him.

So then, by what manner did the Reformers of old deny the theological authority of the Roman Catholic Church? And by what manner do we challenge any point of theology of orthodox Protestants today? We know that there are central matters than must not be compromised, for this provides that which defines Christian orthodoxy. But we also know that there are matters most debatable that are not central to the Christian faith or necessary for establishing our relationship in the atonement with Jesus Christ. It is in this matter that I make my observation on John 3:5, and indeed why I began studying this chapter this past summer.

On the streets of London as people passed by to whom we ministered, my wife in prayer for them became aware of a possible meaning for “world” in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world…” The classical debate between Calvinism and Arminianism involves the word “world” here translated from the Greek “cosmos”. Cosmos is a general term and can take on different meanings depending on its context. It’s rather a mistake to base any theology on such a word. Arminians claim that it means absolutely every individual person. Calvinists claim it doesn’t mean every individual, but merely every people group. Arminians claim John 3:16 as the irrefutable source of their soteriology. Therefore, they mean that there is no other way to define “cosmos”. Calvinists, in response, say that we must look elsewhere in scripture to understand what “cosmos” means and find a meaning for the scope of the word in response to Arminians. Since the Reformation, theologians have interpreted this word depending on their orientation with either Calvinism or Arminianism not thinking that there may be some other import.

Well, when my wife saw the people to whom we were ministering, she saw a challenge in the verse. “For God so loved the ‘world’ that he gave…” She saw the people to whom we were ministering as the ‘world’ and was challenged to love them as God does: even as he gave his son and he was sent, so we were sent to minister in some sacrificial way. And so the meaning actually fits pretty well with Christ’s line of reasoning to Nicodemus. Of all the orthodox Biblical commentators I find, not one of them save an obscure reference or two in one even comes close to understanding the use of the word ‘cosmos’ in this context. The logic is simple: Christ came from God, as Nicodemus rightly observed, into this world. He thought he came only to teach. But he couldn’t accept his teaching, for his teaching was that of the Messiah and that his purpose to save the world from sin demanded their faith. In this context, the ‘world’ is the place of sinful men that God loves and where he sent his Son. There is no other meaning indicated by the context and I contend that it is a disservice to the scriptural text to import other meaning in an attempt to validate one theology or another.

Now, back up several verses; Verse 5. What does it mean to be “born of water”? Let me go through my process with you.

I read this verse. Then I read the surrounding verses. I read all of chapter three, even down to where it was talking about Jesus and John both baptizing. However, the context Jesus set up is that there are two births: “Unless one is born again [first one birth then another] one cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus doesn’t understand this so Jesus restates another way “…unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” and elaborates, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” My first thought is that “water” is one birth and “Spirit” is another birth. If “Spirit” in verse 5 is “Spirit” in verse 6 then “water” in verse 5 is “flesh” in verse 6. How can this be? The best explanation is that he was referring to the water of physical human birth.

However, most of the commentators I read say that “water” means baptism. Apparently this goes back to the debate over whether baptism saves people or not. Those who believe it does say that “water” cannot be interpreted any other way and that it means that you have to be baptized in order to be saved. In response, those who say that baptism is merely a symbol argue that it is representative of our salvific relationship with God.

So I consider this. There are three options: either the phrase “water and Spirit” are dichotomous, synonymous, or additive. If dichotomous, then they are different things that either represent opposites or two halves of a whole. If synonymous, then they are the same thing – period. If additive, then they are basically the same thing except on different levels.

Those who interpret this as water baptism required for salvation either interpret this dichotomously or synonymously. If dichotomously, they say that one must be baptized and also the Spirit must fill them. If synonymously, they say that water baptism causes the Spirit to fill the person.

Those who interpret this as water baptism symbolic of salvation interpret this as almost exclusively additive. However, the additive is backwards. We submit to water baptism because the Holy Spirit has indwelt us. The problem is that you would have to understand that we must be baptized in order to be saved. Most Protestant commentators I’ve read don’t address this. I have seen an interpretation that went into rather subjective symbolism in order to get around this problem. The symbolism he portrayed was okay, but he didn’t get it from this text.

And that’s the biggest problem with importing water baptism into this verse. Sure, later in the chapter we read about Jesus and John baptizing. But it doesn’t fit the flow of Jesus’ response to Nicodemus. Well, I consider that perhaps Jesus isn’t restating the dichotomy and expounding on it in verse 6. Perhaps he is only talking about water being some symbol for the Spirit. Perhaps Jesus was referring to the ministry he was involved with in baptizing people (even though he really didn’t do the baptizing – his disciples did). But I don’t see how it comports with everything else he says to Nicodemus. To be sure, the baptism of John the Baptist was a call for Jews to repent and return to the core of their faith: the coming of the promised Messiah. Baptism was what the only thing non-Jews had to do that Jews didn’t already do in order to be Jews. Jews were born Jews. Non-Jews were not. In order to become Jews by faith, non-Jews had to (and still have to today) become circumcised (if men), offer a sacrifice (a finger-prick today because they don’t have the temple), and be baptized. The baptism is as though they are being born a Jew since Jews are Jews by birth. If Jesus is referring to baptism, then he is therefore referring to the water of birth. In this case, it would be both dichotomous and figuratively synonymous.

To be sure, verse 5 and verse 6 each have different information that gives us clues and I haven’t gone into every detail. For example, I have to ask if it is coherent to say that one must have a physical birth as well as a spiritual birth. And how does this comport with Jesus saying “we speak of what we know”?

So I humbly submit that all the great orthodox Protestant theologians of our time that I can find who made commentary on this passage may not be entirely correct, or may need significant refinement, in their apparent agreement on this passage. As it is, perhaps my hermeneutical approach is in error. It’s a good thing this isn’t a terrifically important theological matter among us Protestants.

As such, I submit my contemplations to all of my fellow Protestants for your consideration. If you have a good argument that refutes my thinking, please make it.

Bearing the Forgiveness of God

2009-12-13T01:54:00.001-05:00

Timmy Brister brought up a great question about the place of forgiveness.

Do we forgive unconditionally?:

"Sin/Offense –> Forgiveness –>Repentance –> Reconciliation (Unconditional)"

Or do we forgive conditionally?:

"Sin/Offense –> Repentance –> Forgiveness –> Reconciliation (Conditional)"

He gave arguments for both and asked his readers for observations. Here's mine:

"Clarifying what entails forgiveness is key and the role both the human forgiver plays as well as the role that God plays in the life of the sinner. When I first started skimming through this article to determine if I should read more deeply, I thought you were talking about the forgiveness of God. When I realized that you were talking about human forgiveness, then I had to ask myself the question, “What’s the difference?”

"That is to say that true forgiveness comes from God. Inasmuch as we practice the pattern of forgiveness, we imitate God, but we cannot forgive as Christ forgave. Only Christ can pay for sin. That means that when we extend forgiveness to the unrepentant, we bring the gospel to bear on the situation. Our conscience in the matter is cleansed at that time and the rest must be according to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

"However, God can extend forgiveness himself when we have not and one can repent when no human forgiveness has been extended. At this moment it becomes incumbent on the one who has not extended forgiveness to do so lest they become the sinner and repentance can bring this about.

"At this, the two scenarios you offer break down because the true forgiveness from God logically precedes the sin. If we practice God’s forgiveness, then we must anticipate sin and be prepared to extend forgiveness where no sin has occurred yet. This is especially true for the Christian because we have already been forgiven. And if we don’t live like this, then we endanger our assurance."

Forgiveness is not a matter of whether is it conditional or not. It's a matter of whether we are prepared to live out the gospel of grace in the form of forgiveness to sinners who need Christ.

Discipling Your Children

2009-12-09T23:10:00.000-05:00

Dr. Voddie Baucham, jr, is the pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. Outside of pasturing a church, his emphasis is cultural apologetics and the development of the Christian family in general. On his blog, he’s been answering select questions from readers. This recent article of his addresses the matter of family discipleship. He offers his own personal development in this area as encouragement that it can be done even with older children.

Are you a Christian with children? Are you discipling them yourself? Feel inadequate to the task? Then you must learn – and you must take your children along on your journey to grow in the knowledge of God and his wisdom.

And where children have started late, they may begin to realize their own sin. I’ve written about “cookie-jar Christians” before. My kids are cookie-jar Christians. John Piper wrote a recent article about the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.

With regard to discipling children who obey at a younger age, I offered a two-pronged approach in the comments:

First, when we read the Bible at home and discuss what it means, we have a method where we use simple hermeneutical principles to look for 1) what we learn about God, 2) what we can be thankful to God for, 3) what we must confess to God, and 4) what we need to pray for (and do). The confession is designed to help make them more sensitive to their own sin so that they have a sense of their own depravity before God despite a relative lack of obvious sins of commission.

The second thing is to involve them in ministry, typically evangelistic, to others who are deep in sin, not so that they can develop a sense of superiority, but because godly ministry requires love. I want my kids to learn to love people who are otherwise looked down upon by much of Christian society. In this way, they can identify through the object of love with the bearing of the sins of others in love and ministry after the pattern of Christ who bore our sins on the cross.

May you herewith be encouraged to disciple your children.

Christian Apologetics – The Necessity of Christ

2009-11-07T23:52:00.000-05:00

Why was Christ necessary? The question might seem simple enough. Most Protestants might answer that we couldn’t save ourselves from our sins so he had to come to save us. The Romanist view differs in that Christ had to come to pay part and we had to pay part. Less-thoughtful Protestants and Catholics don’t have a clue why he was necessary. Really, it's the truth. Thoughtful Protestants might give a more refined view along the lines of Systematic Theology and penal substitution.

Van Til’s section on Christology starting on page 46 would seem to place him squarely in the Systematic Theology camp. This isn’t bad. He even integrates it with theological anthropology seamlessly within the context of presuppositional apologetics. That is to say that he points to Christ as Prophet, Priest and King where willful man assumes the role of prophet, priest and king for himself.

But one wonders presuppositionally whether the necessity of Christ is primarily due to man’s sin. In other words, was Van Til an infralapsarian? For the supralapsarian, God’s elect was part of the design of his creation. The infralapsarian holds that God’s election was made after the fall and therefore was not part of the original design of history.

So then if God’s election was infralapsarian, then Christ was necessary primarily for salvation. If God’s election was supralapsarian, then Christ’s work of salvation for the elect is necessary primarily as a revelation of God. That’s not to say that it wasn’t important for the salvation of the elect, for the necessity of Christ as a full revelation of the Father must entail the central point of his visible work – and indeed be the central revelation. Christ came to save the elect by design of all creation as the pinnacle of the revelation of the Creator.

For the record, I’m supralapsarian. Perhaps I’ll get into what the gospel of Christ reveals to us about God in some later article. The fact that Van Til doesn’t go into this here doesn’t really say anything about his -lapsarian views, but this is all about what I get out of reading Van Til rather than being a full exposé of what Van Til wrote here.

Depressive Realism – Undone By Truth

2009-11-07T19:03:00.001-05:00

Isaiah was brought into the presence of the Lord. He issued his first prophecy against himself: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the a King, the Lord of hosts!” (Is. 6:5 ESV)

The King James translates it “Woe is me! For I am undone…”

So what kind of awful revelation is this that someone would be “lost” or “undone”? In Revelation 1:17, John describes himself as falling at his feet as though dead. God tells Moses in Exodus 33:20 that no man can see him and live.

Surely a true vision of the Almighty is a great revelation of him, an infusion of the knowledge of truth so tremendous that one is overcome with one’s own guilt, even to the point of death. There’s a reason God feeds truth to us slowly through the process of sanctification.

I recently heard of an interesting psychological proposition called Depressive Realism (DR). It’s contested, but research so far suggests that mildly depressed individuals have a higher sense of reality than optimistic people. The scope of the research is limited by equating the cynicism of depression with pessimism, or by ignoring pessimism altogether. I’m going to explain the research thus far by refining this understanding.

This fallen world is difficult. It’s dirty, hard and deadly. But we have the industrial intellect to make it more comfortable. We don’t have to dig with our hands. We don’t have to walk for miles to get where we need to. We have machines. At the end of the day, we’re not sleeping on a hard mat on the floor. We can kick back in out recliner and watch TV for a while. We don’t need to cook all day every day just to survive. We have instant food. Pop a pizza in the oven or a meal in the microwave oven. Then we can climb up on a mountain of foam and air and snuggle under thick covers to keep warm from our cold air conditioner.

But the fallen world is spiritually difficult. While we have medications to make the pain go away, we must still face reality. And the reality is that people are sinners. This means that everyone has a nature that works to keep us estranged from our Creator. Not only that but this nature works to keep us estranged from each other. We are even internally estranged from ourselves bearing psychological conflicts that we hardly understand.

But we have coping mechanisms that help us to not be completely undone. Pessimism is the act of weighing the negative heavily so that expectations are unreasonably low. This has the effect of making the world make sense and relieving internal conflicts. Expecting that other people are not to be trusted serves to justify treating them with friendly contempt. The fact that nothing anyone can do will please the pessimist allows the pessimist to blame others unreasonably. This is generally detrimental to the other person, but the pessimist doesn’t care. They happily go on their way having stirred up the trouble they figured was there to begin with.

The optimist, on the other hand, unreasonably expects great things of the world. They work hard to bring about healing and reconciliation that they would expect to see. They dive into constructive activities expecting great things and are pleased to have positive results that they can point to. They tend to ignore and avoid people and things they don’t understand because these things challenge their optimism. They like to deal with little pains that can be helped, but run from the big pains for which there appears to be no solution.

But reality is full of great pains. There is always the potential for great things to happen, but this is to be tempered with the fact that nothing in this world is perfect. No one loves perfectly. Nothing good happens without a struggle. There may be positive benefits from great difficulties, but we may not ever know what they are. In this way, the one who pursues a true understanding of the world may over time become depressed. We have a need for human contact. We have a need to feel useful. However, human contact is imperfect, and often exceptionally so. For most of us, the world wouldn’t notice if we were never here. We’re not important. We really don’t have much control over our lives.

Those who realize things like this can become mildly depressed. Unless tempered with positive experiences of quality fellowship, mild depression can yield a distortion of reality that becomes more severe over time. This distortion of reality is a falsely-weighted set of observations where the few positive experiences are all but ignored and the bulk of negative experiences are dwelt upon. Thus is the downward spiral of depressive conditioning.

So optimism, pessimism and severe depression all involve a denial of reality and true reality tends toward mild depression. Optimism and pessimism are otherwise healthy coping mechanisms while severe depression is the result of a lack of these coping mechanisms where good experiences are not normative.

We need, at the onset of any activity, some sense that the activity will likely turn out well either because we believe factors are positive or because we believe that things can turn out okay in spite of the belief that factors are negative. It doesn’t help to have the correct observation that whether factors are positive or factors are negative, we have little to no control over factors and therefore little to no control over the outcome. We are unimportant and people could care less because they are otherwise deluded.

In my previous post, I asked where the line was between initiative and presumptuousness. To some degree, initiative requires irrational presumption that is either optimistic or pessimistic. Depressive realism cannot yield initiative for there is no opportunity for which we know the outcome aside from what God has specifically revealed to us.

In this vein Isaiah, Paul, Moses, David, Mary and Joseph, Peter, John and many others took their cues from specific revelation. The problem is that we don't seem to have these revelations these days. So does that mean that we shouldn't do anything? Of course not. We have a clear command to disciple the nations. The specifics will be taken care of according to the gifts and faith that God has provided. I know plenty of people who "feel led" to do something or "step out in faith" and their works are greatly used. I also know plenty of people who"feel led" to do something or "step out in faith" and fall flat on their face in failure. However, all things work together for good, no matter what delusions God afflicts us with.

It may be that science will determine that depressive realism is a false proposition. But I doubt it.

What's the Line Between Initiative and Presumptuousness?

2009-11-03T00:32:00.000-05:00

No one has perfect motives.

All Christians are called to some function within the Body of Christ for which we are told we must take initiative.

Many initiate things that are contrary to their calling. This is presumptuous.

If we are to take the seat of least honor so that we are called to a seat of greater honor (Luke 14) and not think more highly of ourselves than we ought (Romans 12:3) then that presumes that we can think to highly of ourselves.

Do some not say that we would have a burning in our heart for our calling? That seems rather visceral.

So then, what's the line between initiative and presumptuousness?

I dare someone to answer (and I doubt anyone will).

There are two tracks of reason: Either: (1) we must have accountability from godly friends; or (2) God accounts for our presumptuousness;

...or both.

I heard a message recently that encouraged each Christian to have in their lives at any given time a "Paul" (mentor), a "Barnabus" (peer), and a "Timothy" (apprentice). What if a Christian lacks all three and lacks the capacity to obtain them? Doesn't God know we have this need and would provide? What if he goes for a long time without providing?

Well, if he doesn't provide then he doesn't require.

Therefore, either you are presumptuous as you bumble around trying to figure out what God wants you to do and trying a little bit of everything or you just have to sit back and never take the initiative on anything. That doesn't sound right, but there is no other conclusion.\

So I ask again:

What's the line between initiative and presumptuousness?

Christian Apologetics – Sin and Free Will

2009-10-28T17:29:00.001-05:00

Van Til uses a term here that is explicitly descriptive rather than using the more nebulous term “free will”. He uses it in the section The Fall of Man on page 42. In this section, he investigates the substance of the fall. In other words, he addresses the question: in what manner was man disobedient to God at the moment of the fall? His answer:

“Man made for himself a false idea of knowledge, the ideal of absolute inderivative comprehension. This he could never have done if he had continued to recognize that he was a creature. It is totally inconsistent with the idea of creatureliness that man should strive for comprehensive knowledge; if it could be attained, it would wipe God out of existence; man would then be God. And, as we shall see later, because man sought this unattainable ideal, he brought upon himself no end of woe.”

The term I mentioned above as found in this quote is “absolute inderivative comprehension.” For will is founded on knowledge. Will is only free where knowledge is complete. The footnotes provided by editor William Edgar on this term reads thus:

“In Van Til’s terminology, ‘comprehensive knowledge’ means exhaustive knowledge. ‘Absolute’ and ‘inderivative’ mean autonomous, without recognition of creaturely dependence upon the Creator”

The way that I have quickly described it in debating Reformed theology is that there is nothing we know outside of God’s created order. God, being the Creator, has knowledge outside his created order. The word “inderivative” here means that knowledge that is outside of the created order. This is knowledge that is required for us to make decisions autonomously. As it is, even the knowledge we have is not exhaustive of everything IN the created order. While we can claim to make somewhat informed decisions, we cannot claim fully informed decisions.

Talk like this could lead to a huge debate where those Christian brothers and sisters who hold to a non-reformed theology would think that I’m questioning their salvation for believing that they have free will over God’s sovereignty. I assure you that’s not the case. There is a difference between the academic proposition of libertarian free will and the functional rebellion of exerting what doesn’t exist. In other words, many who believe that they can make decisions using knowledge God didn’t give them aren’t necessarily practicing it to their spiritual death by doing so. Rather, the unconscious illusion of libertarian free will results in the sin of conscious desires that counter God’s clear commands. This in turn results in behavioral disobedience. But one can easily consciously hold the illusion of libertarian free will to be true and yet be submissive to God in intentional practice.

So then, the sin of the fall being the illusion of libertarian free will, or “absolute inderivative comprehension”, foremost establishes presuppositional error. This is why Presuppositional Apologetics is historically aligned with Reformed Theology.

Christian Apologetics - The Presuppositional Nature of Evangelism

2009-10-21T03:15:00.000-05:00

In my understanding of presuppositional apologetics so far, one of the lynchpin tactics is to challenge the presuppositions of the non-Christian and demonstrate first that they are borrowed from Christian presuppositions and second that without Christian presuppositions their conclusions cannot stand.

This applies particularly well to morality and Van Til discusses it briefly in the section on ethics. From page 37:

“There is no alternative to the Christian view of the will of God as ultimate but the idea of man’s moral consciousness itself as being ultimate… It is therefore the business of Christian apologetics to challenge the non-Christian view of morality and to show that unless the will of God be taken as ultimate, there is no meaning to moral distinctions.”

On a fundamental level, this is what happens in true evangelism. The non-Christian will always detect that he is internally conflicted with regard to his own state of morality. There will be some agreement that some “natural law” exists from which to derive moral judgments. However, it is a matter of submitting to the truth that any morality so held as true has been transgressed by the one holding it true. The conflict comes from self-justification for such transgressions. Why self-justify if man is his own moral arbiter?

So the evangelist presents the gospel as our need for salvation in the justification of Christ on the cross. Only the gospel of grace so places morality ultimately on the nature of God’s will. True submission to this truth and trust in God’s grace requires the recognition of God as the natural creator and arbiter of morality.

Therefore, evangelism is the highest practice of presuppositional apologetics and such draws its strength directly from the gospel of grace.

And I bet you thought that all this Christian philosophy and apologetical musing was merely academic.

Christian Apologetics - Logic of God

2009-10-17T13:41:00.001-05:00

I was glad to read this from Van Til (page 33):

“Romanism assumes that God and man stand in exactly the same sort of relation to the law of contradiction. To think and know truly, it is assumed, both must think in accordance with that law as an abstract from the nature of either. …Hence man’s dealings in the realm of truth are not ultimately with God but with an abstraction that stands above God, with Truth as such.”

He goes into detail with regards to the implications of this for various theological, apologetical and philosophical thinking. I’ve written about this before.

In short, God’s logic is not altogether other than our own capacity for reason. However, his logic is transcendently foundational to our capacity to reason. To sum up what I’ve written, we temporal creatures require the law of contradiction (aka bivalent logic) to reason. That is, we need conceptual contrast to perceive, apprehend and cognitively process an idea. God, however, being eternal, has the law of identity as central to his nature. That means that there can be nothing eternal against which to compare God.

This is why existentialism and its philosophical kin are not viable philosophical systems and why we must move from the error of projecting bivalent logic onto our understanding of God’s knowledge. We must approach an understanding of God’s nature using bivalent logic because that’s the tool that God gave us to use, but God himself is beyond that logic in his sovereign thinking. And as simple as this truth seems, it appears that most people miss it altogether. It’s nice to see that Van Til recognizes it and handles it appropriately.

Christian Apologetics - Revelation in the Trinity

2009-10-13T21:34:00.001-05:00

In the first chapter of Christian Apologetics, Van Til outlines the basics of Christian theological studies from a Reformed perspective. Being Reformed soteriologically, I agree with him. As such I agree with his orthodox understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. The only reason I mention this is to discuss an item or two that Van Til doesn’t discuss.

One item is a hermeneutical issue. I wrote an article on this recently where I pointed out the flaw in a principle of hermeneutics used by many preachers. That is that the more something is mentioned, the more important it is. Well, since the doctrine of the Trinity is never explicitly mentioned, then by this principle we must conclude that the doctrine of the Trinity must not be very important. Either that or the hermeneutic principle is flawed.

The fact that the doctrine is integral to the nature of God and foundational in the biblical authors’ thinking, albeit not explicitly handled as a whole, indicates that this is a substantial doctrine, with regard to the revelation of God in particular. That is to say that a fundamental aspect of the deity of Christ is the visible representation of God. The primary work of the Holy Spirit is the life-giving revelation of Truth.

In this, the doctrine of the Trinity is important to apologetical thinking. No matter what method we use or purpose we have for the defense of our faith, we must consider the person of Christ and his work among us as the centermost evidence and the Holy Spirit and his work in us as the centermost presupposition, both bearing the vision of the Father and the fulfillment of his will.

Oh that I could leave off right there with that jewel of an observation. However, I have one more:

The thing that bothers me most about the doctrine of the Trinity, which isn’t that big of a deal, is the lack of analogy in the created world. Every aspect of creation bears some analogy to the nature of God in one way or another. This is the only part of God’s nature that apparently lacks a true analogy in what we know of the universe. The closest one I can think of is in quantum mechanics where extreme temporal displacement gives emitted subatomic entities both the nature of a particle as well as the nature of a wave. Both natures contain the same substance and are manifest in a single temporal frame of reference either nature at any given moment. Well, there are only two natures here that I know of.

Yet this isn’t a perfect analogy as such. So there goes my theory that every aspect of God is represented analogously in creation. How much more of God is there that we know nothing of? I can’t wait to find out!

But inasmuch as the analogies of God as evidence of his hand are infused in every aspect of creation, so we are given a wealth of evidence to present alongside any otherwise good presuppositional line of argumentation.

Christian Apologetics – The Existence of God

2009-10-11T13:15:00.000-05:00

I discussed briefly in my first article the existence of God. Van Til put forth in his discussion of Systematic Theology that Theology seeks to answer two fundamental questions. First, does God exist? And second, what sort of God is he?

Now it would seem that Van Til is following the existentialist trap here. However he goes on to state that we must first know what sort of God he is before we can meaningfully discuss whether he exists or not. This is a great statement and is an indication to the purposeful approach Van Til presents here.

There is further evidence that he has considered the difference between the logical presuppositions and the epistemological or pedagogical presuppositions. In his discussion of the knowledge of God on page 26 he observes the historic debate between Lutherans and Calvinists whether "one should reason" from experience of God back to the nature of God or start with the nature of God and derive the Christian experience.

Regardless, God is eternal and we are temporal. I've written about this before. The essence of God goes far beyond merely a description of what kind of God he is. It's certainly true that we cannot discuss the existence of God without agreeing on the nature of God. However, an understanding of the nature of God can only be discussed among us in temporal terms.

In this vein, Van Til discusses whether God’s knowledge is analytical or synthetical. (These are two categories from Bloom’s Taxonomy. To analyze is to take a unified concept and break it apart into sub-categorical observations. To synthesize is to take observations as premises and conclude a unified concept.) Largely, the use of either word is merely semantic because the meaning is a matter of perspective. God is absolute and our understanding of him is not. God’s essence is absolute and absolutely unified. To understand him temporally, we must analyze God. To approach an eternal understanding of him, we must take what we know observationally and synthesize an understanding of his unified character.

Parenthetically, by the use of the term "unified concept" I don't mean to imply that God is in some way impersonal. Rather, I mean that God's eternal essence does not subsist as a multiplex of distinct items of knowledge but as a single concept that consists of the unification of all the qualities we can attribute to God. So I also use the phrase "unified character." Van Til uses the expression "a single internal act of intuition" on page 27 to indicate the same thing and spends much of his discourse on theology up to this point expounding on this. I would say that while he uses different words to say it, Van Til is explicit enough about this and we agree in general.

The philosophical lie that has permeated the thinking of fallen creation is that existence is preeminent. That is to say that the manifest analysis of God is preeminent and the synthesis of a unified understanding is subjective. To be sure, we fall short of a true understanding because our synthesis will be flawed until such a time as our knowledge is made whole. But to presuppose that the unified concept of God is not preeminent because our synthesis to know him is flawed is fallacious.

Rather, the unified concept of God is preeminent to his existence and our attempt to understand him is merely tertiary. The subsequent charge that it’s circular reasoning is therefore flawed. The primary human knowledge of God is organic in such a way as a baby knows its mother. Only as we mature do we learn more of God as the child learns more of his mother as he grows up. There may be more on this later, but I'll stop there because the text doesn't warrant a discussion of it yet.

Christian Apologetics – Van Til’s Categorization

2009-10-09T22:45:00.000-05:00

Intelligence is the capacity to understand and evaluate categories of information and recategorize it meaningfully. That’s my definition and I suggest it’s a more helpful definition than the one in the dictionary for thinking epistemologically. That is, we categorize information because we have a general level of intelligence as human beings.

Take M and M’s for example. You can categorize them in two groups: Plain or With Nuts. Now that might be helpful with regard to a taste preference, but perhaps you find it more helpful to categorize them by color. You can have perhaps yellow, blue, green, orange, brown and red. Well, if you need both sets of categorizations you can sort them two-dimensionally where each color would also have a Plain or With Nuts subcategory. But the Mars company has a need to create an ongoing category list that we are unfamiliar with. They categorize by lot number. This is practical from a manufacturing standpoint but most of us never think of that categorization.

I gave a system of categorization of theological thought in my first article in this series. The system of categorization I typically employ helps establish relationships of logical dependency between categories. This is useful for presuppositional thinking.

Van Til, in the first chapter under the heading “Theological Encyclopedia”, gives a different system for the categorization of theological thought. His system seems to be based on the departments in a seminary and are subsequently more pedagogical in the relationships between them. His army analogy is helpful for understanding how these different categories work together. His system may be more practical than mine for actually formulating a debate tactic and the purposes he gives seem to be limited to this area of practicality. I wonder how he will use his system in a discourse of presuppositional apologetics.

As it is, his system uses the following categories:

1. Biblical department: Old Testament
2. Biblical department: New Testament

Both of these, he observes gives “a defense as well as a positive statement of the truth.”

3. The Apologetic deparment

Here he observes that apologetics cannot be left solely to the Apologetic department, but the Biblical departments must also give their defense because “the specific truths of Christianity must be defended once they are stated.”

4. Systematic Theology (he stops using the word “department” here for some reason)

This categorizes the rest of the departments into an “organic whole”

5. Church History

This gives us insight into how the “preaching of the Word has fared throughout the centuries.” I observe that this is one area that’s not explicitly covered in my categorization scheme. This is precisely because I hold church history pretty low in my estimation of Christian theology. It’s helpful for hermeneutical consideration as well as for understanding some arguments of challengers to the faith, but too many have gotten too much too wrong too often in the history of the Church. Well, that’s helpful for determining what not to do, but too often the temptation is to overreact into similar error. For example, overreaction to the effects of hierarchical apostasy often generates small-group legalism or unbalanced teaching like snake-handling or utter separatism, such as unchecked by ecclesiological accountability.

Do any of you have a system of categorization of theological thought?

Schrödinger's Other Cat

2009-10-08T00:46:00.000-05:00

I stole this photo from anth0nyc. (If you want to see some of the most interesting photography on the Internet, check out his site.)

And...

If you know something of theoretical quantum physics - or own a cat, you'll get the humor of this.

The theory is that there's only one cat.

Christian Apologetics - The Purpose Informs the Method

2009-10-06T22:33:00.000-05:00

I’m reading Christian Apologetics by Cornelius Van Til Edited by William Edgar, the Second Edition.

I hadn’t planned on commenting on the introduction by William Edgar, but I suppose I will. This paragraph from pages 4 and 5 caught my attention. Referring to Van Til Edgar writes:

“What he did not hold is that apologetic arguments in themselves could drive someone from skepticism to faith. Not only is our reasoning often faulty, because it is self-interested and sinful (the “noetic effects” of sin), but if God is transcendent, no argument could hope to substantiate him that does not include his authority and compelling power to begin with... For Van Til… there could never be isolated self-evident arguments or brute facts, because everything comes in a framework. That is why he calls his approach the “indirect method.” One cannot go directly to the facts, as thought they were self-evident. First one must recognize the foundation and go on from there.”

In this statement, there seems to be some indication that Van Til understood that formulating a method of apologetic argumentation required an understanding of purpose. There is a point at which human psychology must be taken into consideration when thinking epistemologically toward communicating understanding. That is to say that the absorption of information requires ideal psychological conditions, both internally and externally. The one communicating has some control over the external environment and means of communication.

There are internal factors that simply cannot be persuaded. What’s missing in this quote is mention of the fact that the Holy Spirit is the key to Christian enlightenment. No communicator of the gospel, or its defense, can control the spiritual state of a person. On some fundamental level the facts can be presented, arguments made, but it is a person’s desire for truth above self-justification that will make the message palatable, and this desire can only be given by God.

Edgar mentions “facts” here. Van Til it seems has a very specific definition of “facts” he uses. I may get into this more in the first chapter, but he essentially links “facts” with empirical discovery. I draw a bone of contention here in that people often start young in the faith as mere experientialists in that they experience God personally as well as through the normalization of fellowship with other Christians. Their faith is bolstered by teaching them the foundational things and giving them greater support for the certainty of the gospel to sustain them during times of experiential drought. This is what I observe, but this isn’t what Edgar seems to be saying Van Til holds. So I’ll be looking for what Van Til says about this in the main part of the book.

Christian Apologetics

2009-10-03T22:01:00.001-05:00

Apologetics is the intellectual activity of giving a defense of one's faith. Peter writes that we should be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you“. I've written before on the role of apologetics as logically foundational to understanding and applying the Bible.

Apologetics is logically foundational to the principles of hermeneutics by which we can glean truth from the scriptures and apply the Bible. So the role of apologetics is intrinsically presuppositional. But on what level?

I've also written that we do not come to faith because we first understand apologetics, but rather that God gives us spiritual life by which we see the truth experientially and come to faith. Only afterward do we delve into the true rationality of scripture.

So apologetics is presuppositional rationally. With regard to faith, I agree with Christ when he told Nicodemus that we speak what we know. I married my wife not knowing the whole apologetic of her life. I could say that I knew her and had an intimate relationship with her. However, I didn't know everything, did I? I've learned much more about what makes her tick since we've been married. I could give an account of my love for her in the early days, but it is nothing compared to the account of love that I could give for her now. Our identities are intertwined and learning more about her formative influences only establishes our relationship more firmly.

Is the account of love that I could give for my wife in the early days any less of an apologetic than the account I can give now? Hardly, for I would have no apologetic now were it not for the early days and there would be no early days were it not for that first apologetic.

Likewise with God.

I read scholars who discuss apologetics, but fail to evaluate an apologetic with regard to its formative purposes or usefulness. Therefore, I must conclude that true apologetics can't happen in an intellectual vacuum. Once they are sealed against any personal context, they cease to be apologetical.

So, I come up with a remedial understanding of apologetics which involve the Types or Methods of Apologetics and the Purposes for Apologetics, to whit:

Types or Methods of Apologetics

Types or Methods of Apologetics refer to the logical approach to doing apologetics, whether for developing a system of preliminary thought or developing a dialectical interchange for whatever purpose. These types include Classical Apologetics, Evidential Apologetics, Presuppositional Apologetics, Theological apologetics and Spiritual Apologetics.

Classical Apologetics – This involves considerations regarding the “proofs for the existence of God” that have been around now for centuries. It includes such as the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments. This type of apologetics is very philosophical. Typically no wise debater building a case for God builds his line of argumentation solely on the basis of classical apologetics. For Christians, we must also demonstrate the veracity of Christian theology. God appealed to what we would today consider classical apologetics when he told Moses to tell the people, “I AM that I AM. Tell the people I AM sent you.”

Evidential Apologetics – Based on the classical teleological argument for God (argument from design), this takes empirical observations about the world around us and uses them logically to evaluate theological statements. This is most often used to test the veracity of the Bible and the hermeneutical principles used to understand the bible as well as to demonstrate the usefulness of theistic presuppositions in scientific analysis over and against those of naturalism. God used evidential apologetics throughout the Bible where he lists the things he's done in order to encourage people to faith.

Presuppositional Apologetics – It's invaluable to understand that the other two types of apologetics are irrelevant without holding Christian presuppositions true. In fact, no other set of philosophical presuppositions are intrinsically coherent for no other reason than they aren't true. Only the truth is ultimately coherent. Therefore, the method of presuppositional apologetics often involves demonstrating the incoherence of false presuppositions. The method of presuppositional apologetics differs in the Biblical accounts. The typical presuppositional method in the Bible is to use elements of the presupposition of the intended audience that are true to build other true presuppositions on rather than to immediately tear down their false presuppositions. John does this in the first chapter of his gospel when he appeals to the philosophical debate of his day regarding the nature of the logos of God. Paul does this when he goes to Athens in his sermon on Mars Hill. Additionally, Paul uses the same methodology when he writes to churches understanding that people in the process of sanctification do not have fully formed sets of Christian presuppositions.

Theological Apologetics – I've included the category of Theological Apologetics where people of different religions or even different schools of thought within a religion debate particular points of theology without particular mention of regard to any other type or method of apologetics. This can cause problems where debaters miss the meaning of their opponents' discourses when they fail to realize different presuppositional positions. It often produces debate that is haphazard and unfulfilling. In this case, any good fruit that is borne is done so due to the grace of God and of no particular merit to the debaters. However, there is enough fruitful debate and as such God must be glorified that he continues to work in his people to build them and to edify them despite our silly squabblings. Paul and other NT writers often engage in theological discourse, following Christ's example, where they make good reference to the Old Testament writings. There is the common presupposition that they are true.

Spiritual Apologetics – Christ often used an uncanny wisdom to address spiritual shortcomings in the people who came to him with questions. His typical discourse makes appeals to truths that we know by spiritual revelation outside of observational evidences or intellectual presuppositions. The one intended to receive wisdom may or may not be the one he addressed, but it seems he always intended to impact the observing audience. The result is to force a decision based on a known truth exposed as having been suppressed in the presuppositional complex of the individual listener.

Purposes of Apologetics

So we can begin to see that there are different purposes for apologetics. Some of the purposes of apologetics are Academic, Evangelistic and Sanctifying. I could add a fourth category called “Theological”, but Theological Apologetics tends to have multiple purposes and some methodologies and typological characteristics that are unique from other types and methods, so the category properly belongs in the Types or Methods section.

Academic Purpose – The comment I often hear regarding the deeper things of scripture is, “Of what spiritual good is it really?” On the surface, the argument is pragmatic. For a God who is extravagant in his creative prowess and provision, how can we boil necessary truth down to only that which is immediately useful? It's a silly argument. The challenge is made by opponents to Christianity that Christianity rationally breaks down at a certain point. Academic apologetics is necessary to demonstrate that Christianity is indeed rational. In fact, nothing is rational outside of the Creator of reason and any reason used to dispute Christianity is using reason borrowed from the Creator himself. It is a matter of desiring God enough to want to know more about him that Christians pursue apologetics for no other reason.

Evangelistic Purpose – The fulfillment of the Great Commission consists of more than simply speaking the gospel. Christ admonishes us to make disciples. The evangelistic process starts before conversion where information regarding the gospel message is offered and some apologetic method is used. Where the one being evangelized is made alive by the Holy Spirit the truth is made certain to them and they realize their salvation in Christ. This is the role of apologetics in evangelism.

Sanctifying Purpose – Believers are often challenged with feelings of doubt. Knowing intellectually that our God is true sustains us in the times where we are challenged. God allows these times for the reason of building us up in his strength. Also, if we were to know everything about God and about our depravity, we would be undone and the message of grace would be thwarted. So as our sins are mortified our knowledge and understanding of God is increased. Each drives the other and works together to make us more holy like sinking cold air and rising hot air drive each other to generate a twister.

There are a couple of other areas I'd like to comment on briefly: The Nature of Truth and the Existence of God.

Nature of Truth

Facts are true, but facts themselves do not comprise Truth itself. Truth is absolute because God is absolute and Truth is the nature of God. Truth is the foundation for facts. While we handle facts with such as logic or reason, Truth is essentially the will of God. Therefore, for us there is no Truth without submission to God's will.

Existence of God

I've been listening to a debate from 1985 between Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen and Dr. Gordon S. Stein about the existence of God. The biggest issue I have with such a debate is that it presupposes that the existence of God is foundational to God. Remember the philosophy of existentialism, that existence precedes essence or substance? It's at least erroneous if not entirely backwards. I challenge that essence or substance precedes existence. The debate I've heard so far has been fairly well waged, but the premise of the debate falls on the same bad ground that grows such philosophical weeds as naturalism and postmodernism.

Studying Cornelius Van Til's Apologetics

I heard about this larger debate between scholars of Reformed Presuppositional Apologetics as to whether God is comprehensible to us or not. The players are Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark – and their students apparently. I was initially interested in this because of an old debate I had with a guy who insisted that the Christian faith is blind. The fact that he was a fellow church member alarmed me and I insisted that although the scripture said we walk by faith and not by sight, our faith was a matter of spiritual sight and we don't truly follow God without his revelation to us. I learned that there was more to this debate than that and have endeavored to dig deeper. So, I have a few books and this debate to listen to.

I had thought to post a summary after having read these books and perhaps a few others. However, having read the first chapter, I see much to comment on as I go along. So, perhaps this will be the start of a series. Given my track record with series, I can't promise I'll finish. But I don't have a whole lot going on right now, so it seems like a worthy endeavor.

Thus, I have produced this post summarizing my thinking on Apologetics. I have written this exclusively from my own thinking without reference to any other source (except the scripture quote) so you can see what is in my mind to begin with. This is the presuppositional ground that I start with as I read. I may change my mind on what I have written, but if you have a desire to follow this journey with me, then hang on for as long as I post about this and we'll see where this leads.

Just Another Poor Hermeneutical Principle

2009-09-30T23:25:00.000-05:00

I love good preaching and teaching of the scriptures. I get off on people expounding about the truth. I can only imagine that the feeling is what enthusiasts of spectator sports experience when watching a good game. Likewise, I want to yell at the players during the game when they drop the ball or at the ref for making a bad call.

One such time is when poor hermeneutical principles are employed. They seem forgivable when the preacher/teacher manages to score despite playing badly, but I cringe realizing that it was a fluke. Poor hermeneutics do not typically generate tenable teaching.

One such bad hermeneutical principle I have heard could be stated as such that the more a topic is mentioned in the Bible, the more important it is. To be sure, I can’t seem to find a reference to this in formal hermeneutical teaching anywhere, but I hear otherwise good preachers appealing to this principle all the time. I won’t name names, but a classic one is “1/3 of the Bible is nothing but prophecy. Therefore, it must be important to God.” Now, prophecy might be important but it’s not because of how much of the Bible could be considered prophecy. An argument could be made that the whole Bible is prophetic. To be sure, if this principle is applied consistently, then we must conclude that the doctrine of the trinity is irrelevant and the virgin birth is relatively unimportant. And the gifts of the Spirit were mentioned only once, but there is a whole book dedicated to the Levitical law! Haw many times are all those sacrifices repeated? I lose track when I’m reading through.

Rather, my desire is for preachers and teachers to make arguments for significance based on the reasonable certainty of a doctrine and its place in supporting the focus of scripture on the overall message of the gospel.

Straightening Nails

2009-09-13T21:49:00.000-05:00

We renovated the bathroom a few years ago and reused the old crown molding, filling in old nail holes and repainting it. I don’t know what it is with the old molding, but it’s been a great place for mold to grow. We’ve scrubbed and scrubbed and re-painted and re-painted, but the mold keeps growing. So today I took the moldy molding off and am putting up some new molding made of some kind of fibrous vinyl or other polymer. Silly me for re-using old things.

Well, I’m still re-using old things. The nails that held up the molding before we renovated the bathroom were straightened and reused to put the molding back up. Yesterday, I reused those same nails a third time to hang the new molding. I get paid a decent salary to do my job. I know about how much I’m worth an hour and it hardly seems worth spending the time carefully straightening these old nails carefully with a hammer, the back of one piece of the old molding and occasionally the end of the concrete porch, when I have a difficult twist in the nail to get out.

But there is more value that the mere cost of new nails. It was a beautiful day out, relatively quiet in my neck of the woods. Somewhere in the distance a church chimed a couple of hymns. And time goes back to when this was a more agrarian culture. More nails were straightened in those days and reused. More planks of wood were carefully removed from old construction and reused in new construction. The very oak timbers that make up my front porch came out of an old barn that was torn down years ago. I have connected with a meaning that God presents to us.

I consider that when Noah built the ark, he didn't go down to the local Home Depot and purchase the lumber, nails and newest power tools. Rather, I imagine that he had to locate many of the materials himself. He had to see to the construction of his own tools. Such thing were not in abundance at the time. He may have already had some tools, but tools wear out and must be repaired or new ones fabricated. He had a whole ship to build, a zoo to collect, and only a handful of people to help him. It took a lot of time to accomplish his assigned task.

But God didn't reuse humanity. Rather, he promised to destroy humanity and start back over with Noah and his family. He fulfilled this promise. He promised to not do it again. With the birth of the Church and the gospel of grace, we can see that he has fulfilled this promise as well. And he never faltered on his promise to "crush the head of the serpent", that is to conquer death, which he promised at the fall.

But utterly destroying everything is not a typical pattern of God's. He did save a still-sinful remnant. Moses perhaps realized this when God threatenend to destroy all the Israelites and start over with Moses. God knew he wasn't actually going to do it. Moses pleaded for the Israelites on the honor of God's glory, making no excuses for the Isrealites and God reused his wayward people according to his plan.

So there I stood for some time hammering bent nails using the back of a piece of the old molding and occasionally the edge of the concrete porch when I came across a particularly twisted nail.

We are sinners - bent and twisted like used nails. We can make an economic choice to throw the old out and purchase new ones, but God is extravagant, giving value to twisted nails by spending the time to straighten them out. This involves the forming power of the hammer on each nail and a stone to sharpen them somewhat with the understanding that a slightly dulled nail still penetrates the material, but doesn't split it.

But if we think that God redeems all things, let's not forget the molding. We worked with the old molding to cleanse it and purify it from the mold, but the mold had gotten into the wood and no matter how we scrubbed and painted, the mold would resurface. We could make the molding look good for a time, but the mold was too deep to remove. The new molding is now in and it looks great. There is no mold. It is pure. The old molding is on the pile in the back of the garden to burn. It seems only in it's destruction by fire will it be purified.

Note the floor of the porch. There are some rust stains where some metal chairs have been and some imperfections in the concrete. But it is still happily used. Kids still ride their scooters across it and we still hold get-togethers on the porch. A couple of weeks ago some passengers on a church bus that ran out of fuel in front of our house were able to rest on this porch. Likewise, the nails, now straightened, still bear some imperfections, but I am capable of hammering them in. the hammer has some rust and some pits, but it is still capable of hammering in some nails. Likewise, all imperfections do not compromise our ability to serve God. Rather, he is most clearly seen in our weaknesses, not that we exalt our weaknesses, but rather that we bear some shame for them and yet are seen to have the power of the Master. He is therefore exalted. No one came into the bathroom when I had hung the new molding and marvel at the fine nails I reused. Rather, they comment on my handiwork. "It looks good, Jim. Much better than that old moldy molding." Likewise, God is exalted when others see him in our humility.

Are you a bent and twisted nail? Are you being subjected to the blows of the Master's hammer that he might straighten you and make you useful? Do you dwell in his house as a part of his magnificant handiwork? I pray that you are not taken to the fire.

John 3:16 - What Does It Mean? - Really

2009-09-07T14:50:00.001-05:00

In the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism, John 3:16 is often tossed out by Arminians as sure evidence for two things: that the atonement isn’t limited and that free will is libertarian. Both issues revolve around a misunderstanding over the intended meaning of the passage. So here’s the passage in as close to a semi-transliterated Greek as I can find:

houtos gar agapaoen ho theos ton cosmon hoste ton huion autou* ton monogene didomen hina pas ho pisteuon eis auton me apollutai alla eco zoen aionion

Here’s a word-for-word translation without correcting for syntax and usage:

In this way / even / loved / this / God / his / world / that / his / son / himself* / his / only / gave over / in order that / any / that / trust / on / him / not / will die / but / have / life / eternal.

*In Byzantine but not Alexandrian texts. Could have been a copy error or an attempted usage update.

Here is the passage translated literally correcting for syntax and usage.

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

Regarding free will in this passage, Arminians claim that “whoever believes” (pas ho pisteuon) indicates that anyone can believe. This is based on the flawed notion that Calvinists believe that the elect are saved whether they believe in Christ or not and the equally flawed interpretation that “whoever” means that “everyone has the ability to” believe. Calvinists point out that a better translation of “pas ho pisteuon” is “the one believing”.

While a good point, it really doesn’t address the misconceptions of Arminians. The real debate here is cosmological, or whether God is absolutely the first cause or not. In other words, do the ones believing believe because they have been made alive to believe or not? This passage doesn’t address that issue. So it is sophomoric to read an answer to the cosmological debate in this passage.

Regarding the extent of the atonement, Arminians point to the word “world” (cosmon or cosmos) and say that this refers to absolutely everyone in the world. The fact that Arminians bring it up, even to the extent of naming an Arminian conference after John 3:16, means that they believe that this all-inclusinve meaning is explicit in the passage. Calvinists typically address this by observing that “world” refers to each ethnos, or “people group”, but not every person. Sometimes, Calvinists will correctly point out that the understanding of this meaning in the context of the debate must be understood through the study of other passages.

The problem is that the debate has been allowed to color our thinking on this verse. Another factor is the evangelistic flavor of the verse and its use in recent church history as such, especially in English-speaking Sunday School classrooms. The verse has not been well-treated as such. The meaning as passed on by many can be summed up as such:

“God loved everyone in the whole world so much [hold your hands up about chest-level, open up your hands, turn your palms out, and move your hands in circles to indicate the largeness of this statement] that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever will believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

The meaning of the verse is distorted by a lack of understanding of the translation as well as a failure to take into account the context of the passage.

I’ve already addressed the “whosoever will” misconception. The word “will” doesn’t exist, even as part of an English future tense of the verb “to believe”.

I haven’t mentioned the word “so”. I cringe when I hear well-intentioned Sunday School teachers explain how this means that God loves us all a whole lot. The word “houtos” doesn’t indicate quantity. It indicates quality. The meaning is lost in modern English. Today, when showing someone how to do something we say, “Do it like this.” Once upon a time a demonstrative explanation would be accompanied by the phrase, “Do it like so.” The English word “so” originally meant “in this way”. It was an expression of manner or quality. Today when we use the word we often say things like, “That is so cool!” Here it’s an expression of magnitude or quantity. Usage has changed the typical meaning in modern American English and the difference has significant impact on our ability to understand this verse.

But I want to primarily discuss the term “cosmon” or “world”, because I have a possible “aha” insight. Actually it’s my wife’s insight. She’s not well versed in the Calvinist-Arminian debate, but I think God may have revealed something to her recently.

We were distributing Bibles on the streets of a large European city recently to a challenging people group. Part of the work is that team members will take turns praying while the rest are distributing. It was Lois’ turn to pray and as she prayed for the people passing by, she was impressed with John 3:16 and the meaning of word “world” applied to those sinners as such as God loves. The people passing by were these people. The “world” meant the “pattern of fallen creation” (my words).

When she shared this with me, two passages came to mind. One was Paul’s comment in Romans 5:8 “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (ESV)

But the other was in John’s gospel itself. In chapter 15 John writes of Jesus discourse from the “I am the true vine” statement regarding the relationship of love between the Father and those who abide in him. All along he uses the Greek word “agape or “agapao” to indicate this love and defines it somewhat in verse 13 of chapter 15: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (ESV)

But Jesus, as a matter of contrast, brings up the love of the “world”. John uses a different word, “phileo” to indicate the love of the world. A side point is that the disciples are not of the world, but that the world is a general terms for the pattern of God’s fallen creation.

So I thought about this and wondered if “world” in John 3:16 might truly mean this. One problem I thought of is that if the disciples were not of the world and the same meaning is to be applied to John 3:16, then we are left wondering if God loves the world or the disciples. However, it actually makes sense. John 3 doesn’t negate the fact that God loves the disciples in john 15 since they came out of the world. The kind of love that the world is capable of is limited to a selfish affection, but God only loves with a perfect love. John 15 doesn’t negate John 3 if the meaning of “world” is the same.

But I have to consider that “world” as “the pattern of fallen creation” is a general term and has nothing at all to do with the scope of particular applications of love. I needed to investigate the context of John 3:16 to see if I was on the right track, or if my thinking was in vain on this point.

In John 3:1-21, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus who came to Jesus to discuss his teaching. Here’s the passage from the ESV:

1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

The logic of the passage goes like this: Nicodemus visited Jesus at night so he could talk privately. He either didn’t want to be seen, or he didn’t want any distractions, or both. Nicodemus started with a statement that the Pharisees recognized that Jesus came from God because of the signs that he worked and that his teachings were likewise from God. This statement of Nicodemus’ characterizes the whole of Jesus’ response.

Jesus draws a dichotomy between the Kingdom of God (spirit) and the earth or world (flesh). He did this because Nicodemus recognized that Jesus came from God to the earth. Jesus was reinforcing his authority. The issue with the Pharisees was not that they didn’t believe Jesus was from God. They were full of sin and couldn’t understand the message. Jesus explained that he used earthly messages to elucidate spiritual truth, but Nicodemus and the Pharisees couldn’t even get past the earthly message to understand the spiritual truth. Only those who have been born of the spirit can understand and the Pharisees had not been born of the spirit.

Jesus then explains, in this vein, that they can at least recognize him because inasmuch as he bears the light of truth, the light reveals those who live in darkness. They can recognize that Jesus is of God because he reveals their sin, and it is to their condemnation. (So it was that Nicodemus came to visit Christ.)

In verse 16, the word “for” (gar) links this verse to the logic of the passage as an intermediate thought. It is at least partially based on previous statements and supports subsequent passages. “For God so loved the world” is a statement intended to continue the discourse on the dichotomy. “…sent his only Son” brings Jesus into it and is his explicit claim as the Messiah since the discourse is about Jesus coming to from God in Nicodemus’ statement. “…whoever believes in him” is contingent on being spiritually born again and while from and in the world, now belonging in the Kingdom of God.

Christ includes these believers as his disciples in the works that they do in the name of God that they will light to the darkness. He said in verse 11 “we speak” and later in verse 21, “whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

So this is the logic of which John 3:16 is a part. It is meant to explain to Nicodemus why he could understand that Jesus came from God, but couldn’t accept or understand his message - and also why others could understand enough to bear the message themselves. The word “world” is pretty clearly indicative of the dichotomy that Jesus uses and not particularly indicative of the scope of the atomement.

Is there something of a spiritual nature that you desire to understand and cannot?
Do you consider yourself "born again" "of the spirit" "of the light" but are not shining in the darkness?
Perhaps you think you have the light but are just annoying rather than recognized as having the light of God.
Are you submitting to and trusting God in all matters and coming to the light yourself?

When Division is Necessary - The ELCA Approves of Sin

2009-09-03T00:59:00.000-05:00

First, let me say that my parents and in-laws are all members of an ELCA church and I have many friends in the ELCA. What I'm about to write may seem harsh and I want it understood that I write this in all love and concern first for brothers and sisters in Christ who are in the ELCA as well as the witness of Christ that is severely jeopardized by recent actions in the ELCA.

Second, I want to disclose that I was once a member of an ELCA church myself and still find occasion to serve the Lord by filling in as a leader of worship at my former church. This issue is one reason I left. There are other reasons I left, such as the fact that I'm credobaptistic rather than paedobaptistic, but they aren't relevant here.

Third, I want to state that I have had homosexual roommates in the Marines and in College and got along well with them. I have no hatred for homosexuals, but I'm bound by the clear teaching of scriptures according to a hermeneutic that is certain in its ability to apprehend the meaning of the bulk of scripture.

Relevant articles and resources can be found on the Internet regarding what the ELCA has done:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/augustweb-only/133.41.0.html?start=2
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/130591/
http://www.thelutheran.org/blog/index.cfm?page_id=Breaking%20News&blog_id=1319
http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/belief-blog/2009/aug/19/the-lutherans-and-the-tornado/?feat=home_blogs
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gtibIsQjU1z-o7OWqKZkEbcUA5sgD9A6A8001
http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1965_the_tornado_the_lutherans_and_homosexuality/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQmTSG2ceC0
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/faith/53738512.html
http://www.lutheranforum.org/sexuality/the-dissenters-speak/
http://www.goodsoil.org/statementadopted.html
http://www.lutherancore.org/menu_call_pages/newsrel081909.shtml
http://wordalone.org/nr/newsrel081909.shtml
http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Communication-Services/News/Releases.aspx#&&a=4232
http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements-in-Process/JTF-Human-Sexuality.aspx

The last link contains a link to the ELCA's statement in PDF file format that I'll give you here. I'll be addressing the primary arguments and presuppositions that the ELCA puts forth:

http://www.elca.org/~/media/Files/Who%20We%20Are/Office%20of%20the%20Secretary/Assembly/CWA%202009%20Revised%20Social%20Statement%20HSGT%20FINAL.pdf

This wasn’t the only release from the ELCA. The ELCA news service released this article August 21:

http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Communication-Services/News/Releases.aspx#&&a=4253

This last is an approval to ordain practicing homosexuals as Lutheran pastors. The basis for this action is found in the statement on human sexuality, so I'll address some of the flawed logic I read there.

Below are a few things I noticed as I read the statement. I categorized them as presuppositions, arguments, and dodges. There is one stated purpose. Presuppositions are unsupported assertions or supported facts. Arguments are syllogistic in nature and suggest conclusions. Dodges are statements that either serve as red-herring arguments or whiny suggestions of explanations as to why things aren’t answered very well.

Presupposition: Only three of the five solas are mentioned as having bearing. Sola scriptura is not mentioned here. I’ll go into this in more detail later. pg 2
Presupposition: Christian familial relationships must engender trust and safety. Much of the document mentions this. The suggestion is that some traditional families are bad and some non-traditional [read: homosexual] families are good. This begs the question without actually making any argument that homosexuality should not be discounted on the pragmatic basis of the establishment of familial relationships. Most of the document is spent reiterating this as though it were the strongest argument for homosexuality. Much was not in the document regarding what the Bible has to say about human sexuality.
Argument: Moral equivocation between homosexuality and eating meat sacrificed to idols. I’ll go into this in more detail later. pg 11 (Argument actually buried in the footnote.)
Presupposition: Conscience is preeminent in morality. Romans 2:15-16 was used to make this statement. No mention as to why the Holy Spirit would give different people different convictions of conscience. Hint: He doesn’t. Differences in conviction are a result of sin. pg 11
Presupposition: Question is begged that stated intent is adequate to determine intent in matters of discerning the conscience of others. This follows from the previous presupposition. pg 11
Argument: World is complex therefore traditional dogma is inadequate. The word "complex" mentioned often without explanation of how complexity necessarily results in throwing out significant portions of scripture.
Dodge: The statement includes details irrelevant for the purpose of obscuring or making more palatable the intent of the statement. Such statements as social responsibilities and of the church, government policies the church supports, and what the church apparently does find wrong with regard to sexual activity, are iterated. What they don’t mention is by what hermeneutic they arrive at the reason some matters of sexual deviancy are not to be tolerated while another, homosexuality, is.
Argument: We are free from the bondage of sin (apparently recognizing that homosexuality is a sin) and can respond in love (somehow justifying sinful behavior that has the appearance of love) - in the conclusion on page 19
Dodge: No specific questions answered because it's too complex. Observation of issue’s “complexity” made more than once throughout the document.
Stated Purpose: But that everyone is encouraged to find their own answers. - also in the conclusion on page 19

The three-of-five solas issue was striking to me. The five solas are five doctrines that emerged as a result of the Reformation.

Sola scriptura – By the “scriptures alone” is God authoritatively revealed to us today. While truth is revealed through the Holy Spirit as well, he never controverts the message that he inspired and in a world of lies wrought by sin, the Bible is the only means by which we can discern what is indeed a true revelation of the Spirit.
Sola fide – By “faith alone” do we receive the declaration of justification by God, not by works. This means that we trust the work of God rather than our own works for salvation.
Sola gratia – Where faith is our trust in God for salvation, “grace alone” is the God’s gift of salvation to us based on his unmerited favor; not that we do anything to earn salvation.
Sola Christus – If we can do nothing to earn God’s favor, then salvation is entirely the work of “Christ alone” on the cross.
Soli Deo gloria – “The glory of God alone” Given that God is the creator, that he has created us, that the work that we have accomplished is to sin against him, and that the work that he has accomplished is to save us from our sin, the only reason for him to save us is that he desires to glorify himself.

I had the chance to hear a Lutheran pastor deliver an impassioned message regarding this action. He explicitly mentioned “sola scriptura”, referred to the account of Martin Luther making his stand on the scriptures and proceeded to remark that there were some passages that the pro-homosexual movement just couldn’t get around.

I observe that they have made attempts to deal with these passages. The problem is that in order to justify homosexuality, one must twist hermeneutical principles to the extent that the Bible largely becomes unreadable if you follow the principles consistently. Theology, like any “-ology” as a rational study, is an academic tool that can either be used well for elucidation or poorly for obfuscation. If we are to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit, then we must recognize that the gift of the Spirit is to love the truth of God beyond our own justification such that we would rather accept the condemnation we deserve than tolerate the propagation of lies against the character of God. (Yet, with the gift of the Spirit comes faith that God fulfills his promise of salvation to us.) But if our purpose is to justify ourselves before God, not relying on God but on our own desires, then we are not justified and rather condemned. Our handling of the truth of scripture therefore becomes one of distortion where we would rather propagate lies against God for this purpose.

The five solas are not equal in foundation, but rather the first, “sola scriptura,” is foundational to discerning the middle three and the fifth one, “soli Deo gloria,” transcends all of them as both Spiritually foundational to and logically discerned from the other four. For this reason, I believe the first and fifth were not mentioned in the statement.

The three solas that were mentioned were not used to elucidate soteriology, but to obfuscate for the purposes of justifying a sinful practice that the scriptures clearly indicate is an abomination to God. In fact, the whole statement is ostensibly the result of a theological study of the Bible regarding human sexuality in general as commissioned by the synod in 2001. In eight years, they failed to mention much of what the Bible says about human sexuality and rather focus specifically on matters arguing for the acceptance of homosexuality within the denomination. As a basis for this, the statement completely ignores the clear commands in the Bible and rather misuses select portions of the scripture to produce subjective arguments for the inclusion of homosexuality to those who read the Bible and understand a prohibition against sexual sin of all kinds, explicitly including homosexuality.

One reason is clear why they did this, and I’ve heard too many pastors sound equally as unclear. The fear is that a denominational rift will occur and the denomination will break apart over some irreconcilable difference. While I want to be careful to condemn no one out of hand, I have to consider that many who have pushed for and supported such issues as this are unregenerate. It’s foolish to think that everyone a church body allows to join the church is a genuine Christian. There are many who profess Christ falsely who have no faith. There are even some who seek membership with churches for the purpose of destroying those churches. If the truth causes a split, then the split is necessary. The truth should never be compromised in an attempt to preserve unity, for there is no true unity outside of the truth. Such an ostensible unity as exists that is founded on untruth will fail.

Some of the arguments are not even biblically based. They are simply assertions made that may bear some element of truth, but have been made to appeal to readers unaccustomed to thinking critically and exegetically. Since much of the preaching and teaching in the ELCA is not exegetical, it is relatively easy to make fallacious arguments that most of the people will be unable to see the error in.

Many of the bullet points above fall into this category.

However, there’s an argument made in the statement that is more telling than any other. This is one area of unintended clarity, I’m sure. Namely, buried in the large body of footnotes on page 11 is the following statement:

“The Apostle Paul testifies to conscience as the unconditional moral responsibility of the individual before God (Romans 2:15–16). In the face of different conclusions about what constitutes responsible action, the concept of ‘the conscience’ becomes pivotal.”

“When the clear word of God’s saving action by grace through faith is at stake, Christian conscience becomes as adamant as Paul, who opposed those who insisted upon circumcision. (Galatians 1:8). In the same way Luther announced at his trial for heresy, “Unless I am persuaded by the testimony of Scripture and by clear reason . . . I am conquered by the Scripture passages I have adduced and my conscience is captive to the words of God. I neither can nor desire to recant anything, when to do so against conscience would be neither safe nor wholesome” (WA 7: 838; Luther’s Works 32:112). However, when the question is about morality or church practice, the Pauline and Lutheran witness is less adamant and believes we may be called to respect the bound conscience of the neighbor. That is, if salvation is not at stake in a particular question, Christians are free to give priority to the neighbor’s well-being and will protect the conscience of the neighbor who may well view the same question in such a way as to affect faith itself. For example, Paul was confident that Christian freedom meant the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not at stake in questions of meat sacrificed to idols or the rituals of holy days (Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8:10–14; and 10:23–30). Yet he insisted that, if a brother or sister did not understand this freedom and saw eating this meat as idolatry to a pagan god, the Christian was obligated to “walk in love” by eating just vegetables for the neighbor’s sake (Romans 14:17–20)!

“This social statement draws upon this rich understanding of the role of conscience and calls upon this church, when in disagreement concerning matters around which salvation is not at stake, including human sexuality, to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), honor the conscience and seek the well-being of the neighbor.”

Don’t miss the first alarming suggestion that “the clear word of God’s saving action by grace through faith is at stake.” The suggestion without saying it is that if we don’t accept homosexuality because of the good conscience of homosexuals who profess to be Christian, then the message of the reformed gospel is at stake.

But beyond that, homosexuality is clearly equivocated morally with eating meat sacrificed to idols. The problem is that eating meat sacrificed to idols is not intrinsically wrong, being prohibited nowhere in scripture. The issue was that it could cause people once caught in the sin of worshipping the god of that idol could be burdened to return to the worship of a false god or would be unnecessarily distracted from sanctification by the temptation to legalistic condemnation.

As an aside, I’ve wondered how it was that Paul, in his absence, managed to discriminate between those who were spiritually weak and those who were spiritually strong when his letter was read. Nowhere in there is it said for the pastor of the church to only read it to those who were truly mature in the faith. Surely he didn’t want the spiritually weak to have some paranoia that some people were actually eating meat sacrificed to idols behind their backs and only pretending to be righteous while in their presence. No, but I suspect that Paul intended for everyone to hear the message and each wonder if he was as spiritually strong as he thought he was.

But to equate homosexuality with meat sacrificed to idols in this argument is for the ELCA to tacitly, but clearly, declare homosexuality not sinful. What they are saying is that homosexuals need to keep mum about their homosexuality if they are confronted with those of weak faith who cannot accept homosexuality as not a sin. Even if the synod seeks to convey the message that all church members ought to be gracious toward one another, it’s a false grace that ignores real sin. I don’t call what happened at the cross in any way representative of God forgetting or ignoring our sin, and that was the pattern of grace for us to follow. Rather, sin was confronted head-on in a most sacrificial way.

I explained it to my kids the other night. We’ve been plodding through Luke and made it to 12:49-53. They were astonished that Christ would cause them to be set against anyone in our family, so I explained what happened in the ELCA recently, especially since it affects all of their grandparents.

I read to them the passages concerning homosexuality in the Bible and explained what homosexuality was in terms that they could apprehend without going into “the talk” since that wasn’t my focus. I asked whether the Bible says it’s a good thing or a bad thing for two men or two women to get married. They were incredulous that I had to ask. “Of course the Bible says it’s wrong” they agreed. I told them that they had more godly wisdom than some older men with lots of letters after their names who were in charge of the ELCA.

Then I explained that not everyone who is a member of a church is saved. They agreed. I pointed out that Paul talks about the Church as the Body of Christ. I asked that if part of the body is alive and part of the body is dead, will the body live for long? It’s like if one whole leg was dead and was rotting and had worms eating it, how do you save the part of the body that is alive? “You have to cut it off,” the replied. So if someone in a family is spiritually alive (saved) and someone else is spiritually dead (unbelieving), will there not be division in the family? Christ has come not to bring peace, but division. They understood.

I also went back to an older lesson and reminded the kids of the meaning of “holy” – that is “set apart”. As Christians, we are not of this world. If Christ, who is God, brought division, then is it not a good thing for the purposes of demonstrating the distinction between the gospel of grace and the world of works? So we can give thanks when the message is clearly seen in the division made between the Kingdom of Heaven and the pattern of this world.

Now, Christ did come to bring that peace that passes all understanding, but this is in the face of certain suffering when the truth comes to bear against the lies of the world. When the decision-makers in a denomination trade necessary division for the obfuscation of the truth in the hopes that unity will prevail in the denomination, especially if such results in the condoning of sin, then the denomination has died to the God they are supposed to honor and who demands their lives.

To God alone be the glory.
Soli Deo Gloria.

What Kind of Marriage Advice have You Heard?

2009-08-24T22:45:00.000-05:00

I love my wife and I love finding ways to serve her as a husband ought. So I like to read material that has particular insight in this area. There are sundry articles entitled things like "Ten Things Your Husband Wants You To Know" or "What Your Wife "Really Needs From Her Husband". There are books by Christian and secular authors with all kinds of good or okay teaching and advice.

I've read enough of these that I have a categorization system for the advice and teachings I find. I have four categories, or echelons, of increasing insight. The first echelon comprises behavioral advice. The second echelon comprises emotional insight. The third echelon comprises instruction in worldly wisdom. The forth echelon consists of insight into spiritual wisdom. Interestingly, each one is predicated on the conditions of the echelons above it such that one must be spiritually wise in order to adequately evaluate worldly wisdom, a couple must be steeped in wisdom to meet each other's emotional needs, and a couple must practice meeting emotional needs in order to produce ideal behaviors.

The behavioral advice of the first echelon generally consists of the typical admonition to only have sex with whomever you are married to and be nice to each other. For many people this is the only echelon with which they are concerned, and even still they struggle with it. It's not enough to simply be told not to commit adultery. It's not enough to be told to be nice to each other, even though particular ways of doing this are iterated. So the commercial comes on the radio and you hear people telling how they have made their marriages better and I hear people say things like, "I talked to my wife on the phone from work and listened to her. She likes it when I listen."

The fact is that we each go through periods of bad behaviors. Ok, cheating on your spouse may be a deal breaker for most, but spouses may get grumpy or snap at each other. A fellow I know is married to a woman who is manic-depressive. Most of their married life is spent at odds with each other as a result. But the trust he has for her extends to the point of understanding that she doesn't really want to be the way she is. And her trust in him is an understanding that life with her is difficult and he sometimes gets upset as a result.

As for not cheating on your spouse or not being abusive, the only way to have self-control is to be spiritually wise. It's part of the gift of the Spirit. You won't want to do what's right if you aren't motivated by the Spirit. Otherwise, you are only motivated by the desire not to lose your spouse and that only lasts as long as you really want your spouse around.

The emotional insight of the second echelon usually contains therapeutic information with heavy doses of the author's personal experience as examples. Emotional insights focus on spouses being more sensitive to each other's emotional needs resulting in specific behaviors. For example, typical insights are for husbands to help their wives out around the house and listen to them without offering solutions because that's what women need. Wives are admonished to try to have more sex with their husbands and act like they admire them because that's what men need.

The insights here are typically not biblically found, but where there are biblical references, they are often contrived. I hate when I read otherwise good therapeutic insights from Christian counselors with attempts to back it up with biblical references that would be recognized as poor hermeneutics by any decent theologian. For example, Ephesians 5 doesn't instruct a wife to love her husband. This doesn't mean that she shouldn't love her husband and there's nothing in the text from which to reasonably extrapolate anything supporting the observation that most men are wired to yearn for the respect of their wives. Now it's good to observe that most men have some motivation in a marriage to be respected by their wives, but no Christian teacher should use a passage from the Bible just because he thinks he needs to find one to support an empirical observation. Sheesh.

Between the third and fourth echelons, I draw a distinction between worldly wisdom and spiritual wisdom. This is an important distinction, but without clarification, it may be lost on many people. Worldly wisdom is the wisdom of experience and practicality. It's the realm of common sense and is limited in its scope to the immediately observable. Worldly wisdom is not intrinsically bad, but not intrinsically good either. Worldly wisdom is passed along in humor where mixed motives serve to neutralize any impact of informing the attitudes of listeners. As such, these nuggets of "wisdom" can be apprehended by people with both good intentions and bad intentions.

This worldly wisdom of the third echelon can range in depth. On the lower end, a husband may make a comment dismissing his buddies when wife calls him by saying, "I better get this, the boss is calling." In the middle are such cute sayings like the old couple when asked if their marriage is "fifty-fifty" by smiling coyly and saying "seventy-thirty". You don't usually get much of an explanation as to what they mean by that. But on the upper end, you may get a serious author who seeks to enlighten couples that their "differences are meant to compliment each other." That they each have strengths and weaknesses and where one is weak, the strengths of the other exist to cover for them. No mention is generally made of the reasonable supposition that both may be strong or weak in some of the same areas. Nevertheless, it can be a fruitful teaching if the couple takes it and earnestly tries to work together as team as such, trusting each other's strengths and handling each other's weaknesses with grace.

The fourth echelon is lost on most people and most authors never truly address it. The reason is that they presume that if you read their book or article, that you already have some desire to work on your marriage and therefore already love your spouse on some level. They are content to leave it at that. But such is only a prelude to spiritual wisdom. Good marriages are predicated on Truth, but Truth is more than mere facts.

The cornerstone of all truth is the gospel itself and Christ himself is the Truth. This is why in Ephesians 5 Paul links marriage first and all human relationships to the gospel of Christ in his submission to meeting our need for salvation by his submission to death. The unity of the trinity is the submission of each person of the trinity to each other in such perfect unity as to demonstrate their absolute union: He is indeed one God and this is the love of God. Our created purpose is to demonstrate this love in communion with him as well as with our temporal relationships with each other.

This is my spiritual wisdom with regard to my wife, that I see her as God sees her. Christ gave himself for her while she was yet a sinner and the Holy Spirit now lives in her sanctifying her daily. It is therefore my purpose to cooperate with God with regard to the sanctification of my wife, building her up as a child of God and not tearing her down. Whether she returns the favor or not has no bearing on my submission to her spiritual needs, except that learning to similarly submit to my needs is a part of her sanctification, not that she should find frustration and discontentment in submitting to my needs, but that she should find fulfillment and satisfaction in it. This is spiritual wisdom.

Looking back, therefore, I could never have married a perfect woman. It's not that there really are such people who are perfect, but rather that too many people either unrepentantly believe that they need no forgiveness for anything or that they are caught up in the trappings of always appearing to be perfect. For perfection is to be complete, needing nothing. If I find fulfillment and satisfaction in meeting my wife's spiritual needs, then what use would a perfect woman have with me and how could a perfect woman give me any fulfillment? Likewise, my submission to my wife's needs also entails being able to be transparent with my own needs to her and vice versa.

Are you married? Do you consider yourself integral to your spouse's sanctification?

Are you single? Don't presume that you will find fulfillment in a perfect spouse, for we don't gain perfection aside from the cross of Christ.

The Perfect Microsoft Windows

2009-06-27T20:32:00.000-05:00

While in India, several of the Indian Kewaunee associates used the notebooks above. It's hard to miss the logo here. I figure Microsoft finally came up with the perfect version of it's Windows platform. This version will never crash. It has word-processing, drawing capabilities, and even spreadsheet capabilities to name a few. Take this baby to the library and you have access to much of what you can find on the Internet.

Math functions are pretty extreme too. Not only can you do the simple stuff like adding and subtracting, but algebra, trig and geometry are a breeze. But this thing can also handle advanced calculus as well as handle the most advanced scientific data.

As for it's physical requirements: It's affordable. It's fully mobile and doesn't require a power connection or have batteries that go dead or go bad. No upgrades are required. Boot up time is incredibly fast. Merely open it and it's ready to go. When the memory is full, simply buy another one at the same low rate. Best of all, it's impervious to all viruses and the operating system never has to be reloaded. No costly maintenance or installations are required.

The only accouterments sold seperately that you will need to purchase are writing implements: any pens, pencils, etc., according to your needs.

And what about specialty programs? You can paste photos on any page or document therein. You can scrapbook to your hearts desire. You can produce documents in any format with any font you desire without having to learn any complex menu commands or go through difficult to search help files. You can do drafting without expensive CAD programs. You may question whether you can listen to your favorite music. Just hum. Any tune is possible while you use this version of Windows.

Perhaps the only drawback is there are no means for watching videos. Sorry, you have to turn on the TV for that or go to the movies. You can do video editing with the capability to edit individual frames, however. Just produce each frame on a different page and flip through them. You'll be amazed. You can speed up the action, slow it down, pause it, etc., all without coming close to crashing the system.

You may wonder about social networking. It's incredible! You can visit your friends or call them on the phone and exchange notes, photos, memories and current status in person!!

Well, that's it. Microsoft has outdone themselves this time.

Busy Summer

2009-06-24T23:50:00.000-05:00

For those few of you who read me at all, I apologize for being away. I'm in the middle of a rather busy summer. My work sent me to India with a team whose goal it was to start operations at a new manufacturing plant. The good news is that this plant will be serving Asian and Middle Eastern markets. The units built there are not for US import. My company has a commitment to serve the North American market with our US-based plants. While some of our larger competition has sought to move North American operations out of the US to capitalize on lower labor, we have been able to keep costs down, improve quality and take care of our associates.

So anyway, the trip to India was good. I even got to visit a local pastor who has a solid strategy for planting churches in the Bangalore area. I have many photos. Here are a few:

Here's the team, minus Keith Smith who is taking the photo. Keith is the VP of manufacturing. I've know him since he was a lowly manufacturing engineer. The rest of us, from left to right:

- Jack Muncy in the blue shirt - maintenance expert.
- I'm in the burgundy shirt - I developed the Excel-based MRP system we're starting the new plant on and understand how to establish a flow of information in a manufacturing operation that is meaningful for every area of planning, scheduling, tracking and decision-making.
- Jimmy Scardo in the red shirt is our resident product designer and understands the design of the new hybrid line we're starting the INdia plant on.
- Boyce Henderson in the white shirt is a long-time leader in our weld department. We couldn't have accomplished our task without him.
- Ed Adkins is in the plain tan shirt - he is the manager of manufacturing engineering in our metal plant and a general expert in CNC machinery of all kinds.
- Kevin Carroll in the tan Timberland shirt is our press brake master craftsman.

And here's Keith and I.

This is the old plant. Actually it's not as bad as all this. This is a storage area that was added to the front of the plant. They only did assembly before this and outsourced the fabrication of components. But sales are exploding and we needed to get them in a better facility. So we decided to bring all fabrication in-house with this step.

This is the new plant. The front isn't paved yet and there's still some work to be done even yet. Nevertheless, we got the operation up and running in two weeks.

They also put us up in a VERY nice hotel. Here's my room:

Every day they had a different way they'd arrange the pillows.

Here's my desk in the hotel room. On the left and right were a fridge and fully stocked snack pantry and bar. Yes, that's a top-line high-def flat-panel TV. And the DVD player took my region 1 DVDs! We had wired and wi-fi Internet access - not that we had a lot of time there at the hotel to be surfin the web.

Apparently, Indians don't have too much of a problem using the toilet in front of other people. I thought that the idea of a glass bathroom was novel. (It was kind of cool to be able to watch the TV from the bathroom.) However, when we got to the plant, saw that the bathroom doors had windows, and that there was no men's and women's bathrooms... and that the urinals were out in plain view ...well, the glass bathroom at the hotel didn't seem so odd.

Here's one of the toilets at the plant. I'm sure the Indians think western toilets are as odd as we think theirs are.

Here I am in one of my first training sessions with the Indians. Note the really old computer. They got us a new one a few days into it.

Once they got the idea, I had them take over. The two guys standing are Human Resources people. They are making sure we have enough to drink. Saju, the head of the finance department is sitting next to me. He's a Christian from an area in India that is predominantly Christian and traces their tradition back to the apostle Thomas who they say brought the gospel to them back in the first century. Mahesh is the head of purchasing. He's the one you can't see pointing at the monitor with his bottle of water. Ragavendra is the manufacturing supervisor and is sitting at the keyboard.

Once I had them trained on setting up bills of material, we had to quickly build a database so I could show them how to run an order. However, the database necessary for casework can be extensive and I needed to create thousands of records. So I sent them away and programmed some tools to make the job much quicker. I had the bulk of the base items entered in two days and was able to create bills for the finished items for our first customer order.

For a hint of some of the next post of India photos, this is the view from the hall window of the hotel. These are not out buildings. These are homes. These are working-class people. There is absolutely no hope for them to improve their lot in Indian culture. The contrast between our lives and theirs is stark.

From Frankfurt, Germany

2009-06-07T00:55:00.001-05:00

I haven't posted in a short bit because I've been busy with travel plans and family lately. Right now I'm in Frankfurt, Germany en route to Bangalore, India and I've had time to type a couple of posts, so now I'm posting them. I'm on a rather expensive Verizon card at the moment and I don't want to squander bytes posting several posts (Kim, this is why I'm not accessing your site at the moment - I'll wait until India to come over and say hi.), so I'll include them in this one post. One deals with our capacity to think we know what's best for God and the other deals with the balance of authoritarianism.

Are We Experts of the Universe?

En route to India, we had a mechanical problem with the plane. It started with a couple of buttons, one in the cockpit and one in the cabin, which needed fixed or replaced. This was a short but manageable delay. As we taxied out to the runway, one of the brakes overheated. We taxied back toward the terminal to have it repaired, normally a one hour delay. They jacked up the plane with us aboard and proceeded to change the brake. While the plane was jacked up, the weight of the plane with people aboard was taken into consideration causing a hazard if any of us were to leave the plane. However, in the process a storm came up and a few lightning strikes sent the maintenance crew into safety. Also, while they had the wheel apart, they realized that something was probably worse with the wheel. It could be made fit to use for a short while, but it had the same problem a few times recently and a mechanical problem was causing undue wear and friction on the brake. It was deemed unsafe to be put back into long-term international service and was to be sent immediately to Philadelphia for a higher-echelon maintenance routine to be performed. We would be transported to Philadelphia with the plane, fed, and transported on to Frankfurt with significant delay. We had been confined to the plane no less than 8 hours, 6 of which was spent on the tarmac in Charlotte.

Needless to say, most of the passengers were upset. Some yelled at the poor stewardesses. Some cursed the pilot. Many had unkind words to say about the “they” who make decisions in the U.S. Airlines command structure. Most of the comments were such like “’They’ should have done this,” or, “’They’ should have done that.” A guy from CNN who sat behind me passed around a sheet to get e-mails of everyone who wanted to be part of a mass-complaint. I was astonished at the level of expertise my fellow passengers exhibited. So many of them were apparently more intelligent or knowledgeable of the logistics and regulations necessary for international flight travel than the people actually trained and experienced in and hired to do the job.

I seriously doubt that the uncomfortable and inconvenienced passengers really have more of a clue than the people who run the airlines.

Likewise, I doubt that we have more of a clue than God does how to run the universe.

However, do we not too often berate our Lord because we think we know who He really is or should be and how he should handle certain situations? We think we have the answers and too often dismiss the answers that God gives us. We may even think that God’s grace and the death of his Son on the cross is inadequate for our salvation. One does not get on a plane without the understanding that there will be delays or even that there is the risk of death. We are told in the Bible to expect suffering in this world. Why are we surprised when it actually happens? Why do we doubt God when what he says actually happens?

It has been said that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. I shared a plane with a host of passengers insistent on cursing the darkness. I made it a point to express my appreciation to the stewardesses as we disembarked in Philadelphia. In these days of civil unrest here in the United States, I hear many who curse the darkness. Is it not better to find where God is working and join him there rejoicing that he is still in control and has instead planned on using the situation to his glory? When trials come, do we despair and curse the darkness out of anger because we are inconvenienced with the threat of death. It is better rather to glory in the true God who created all things and has a plan. I made it to India enriched by the new experiences given by virtue of a seriously delayed flight. God is good.

A Case for Balanced Authoritarianism in Government

En route to India I was entertaining myself with some math puzzles. As I considered the symbols representing different quantities of numbers, I asked myself where these symbols come from. Why must we use these symbols? Why can we not use other symbols? Perhaps I want to use the same symbols, but assign different quantities to them. Perhaps I want to develop a new set of symbols for base 17 and only use that when balancing my checkbook. I mean why not? We have rights in this country and I should have the right to use whatever symbology I so desire. I mean, what makes what the math teachers teach us the “correct” way. I think it’s perhaps some academic totalitarianism.

The same thing could be said of the English teachers. Who is to say that I should only use English, or what English is? I mean, hasn’t English itself changed and is still changing? So what they are teaching us is only temporary information anyway. Go to downtown New York and see if the English you learned helps you any.

Yup, definitely academic totalitarianism. They have no right to restrict us by placing all these rules of language on us. In fact I think I want to communicate by using my own language. J.R.R. Tolkien made up his own language – or few – so why can’t I? And why couldn’t I use it if I want? I mean, if you don’t have a clue what I’m saying or how much I’m spending, that’s your problem, right?

But let’s stick to one of these – language, for example. Professors of English teach us rules of English that were observed from usage. What happens is that usage changes and professors of English resist that change in the classroom. New patterns of usage replace the old and those who are educated in the old patterns of usage are considered more intelligent. Indeed, they are better educated and new patterns of usage are developed by those less educated. (So, as an aside, today’s linguistic education often consists of the knowledge of yesterday’s uneducated masses.)

I think it’s interesting that liberals who tout personal liberties also seek greater government control. I also think it’s interesting that conservatives who tout personal responsibility often do so by appealing to a higher moral law. The difference is that liberals think government itself defines morality as the final arbiter thereof much the same way that academia resists changes to language while following the changes in patterns of past usage. That’s why I’m conservative. I believe that while there may be different ways of expressing government legitimately, there is no authority on earth that was not given by God. (Yes, work through that double negative.)

That’s also why I’m not libertarian. We need a common frame of reference for civil cooperation. Just as using the same mathematical constructs are necessary for balancing our budgets and bank accounts, and using the same linguistic constructs is necessary for effective communication, so a common code of civil conduct is necessary for sociological stability. Because we are sinners, human government is necessary to arbitrate this conduct, ideally according to the standards of morality passed on by the revelation of God.

But it has rarely been so that a government has been explicitly Christian, and never has any perfectly governed according to God’s moral law. We should not be surprised. This is a sinful world and governments are stocked with sinful people. If legislators and rulers make decrees according to cultural sensibilities, then we must understand that the educated that resist the changes of language are likewise not perfectly educated for not one of us knows everything. And if those who are uneducated are those who provide the usage for tomorrows professors to teach, then it is sinners in need of a law who provide the cultural means by which tomorrow’s laws are written.

You may ask why I say “cultural” here. Just as US law was based on British common law, it is cultural norms that give us the familial accountability on which civil accountability is based. So it is through the culture that sinners are not completely given over to debauchery short of civil law. Therefore, it is not that the law will always be degraded, but that in reaction to laws that follow poor cultural standards, better cultural standards will develop.

Therefore, it is this tension between cultural development and the paradoxical resistance\following of civil legislation that provides the energy for the swing of the pendulum of civil morality.
(That said, it must be noted, that whether the pendulum is on one side or another, the gospel must be preached. If the times are good, the temptation (and often the pattern) is for the gospel to give way to mere morality where churches become little more than clubs of rule-followers.)

So, there is a place for authoritarianism in government; not that the government is ever the final arbiter, but that God gives us a means for civil order that often follows, and gives testimony to, the general revelation of His righteousness ingrained in every soul.

One Important Difference Between the Spirit and the Intellect

2009-05-20T15:25:00.000-05:00

As much as I have made practical epistemological observations, I have not much delved into Biblical anthropology. Many very good theologians conclude that the human construct consists of two parts: body and spirit. They define the spirit loosely as anything bearing no physical presence. Given that the Bible mentions that humans also have a soul, or mind, then such would fall within this definition.

I consider that any word used in the Bible by one author may not perfectly comport with another author. I would also observe that typically many words carry multiple meanings even when used by the same author. The word translated "spirit" from the Greek texts is "pneuma", also translated by such words as "breath" or "air". It's the root word of modern English words such as pneumatic. It is representative of our source of life. Inasmuch as we might say "he breathed his last", we would associate breath with physical life. But even ancient people recognized an aspect of our life that is substantial rather than merely existential from which our life comes.

The word translated "soul" in the same Greek texts is the word "psyche". It's the word we use in modern English to refer to our mind and is the root word for such as psychiatry or psychology. It likewise refers to the essence of our existence, particularly manifested in the machinations of our thoughts.

The similarity between the two words results in statements in the Bible where the two appear to be used interchangeably. I don't like this argument as a hermeneutical principle. As an example, I could say, "That ball is red." I could say, "That ball is round." Then I could argue that "red" and "round" means the same thing because they are used interchangeably. This is why I'm wary of this hermeneutical argument.

I observe that Paul uses the two words side by side in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 in stating the human construct:

"Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

I also observe that he possibly uses them in 1 Corinthians 15:45 as a distinction between Adam and Christ:

"Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit."

(The word translated "being" here in the ESV is the word "psyche".)

Finally, Paul indicates in Hebrews 4:12 that there is a division between them while indicating a very close link between them:

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

Given this, I tend to separate them in my understanding but I understand how they can be nearly synonymous. So, while I lean toward trichotomism I'm not dogmatically against dichotomism.

That said, I want to draw a distinction between the two for the purposes of drawing out the difference between theology pursued for cognitive ends and theology apprehended for spiritual ends, for there is fruit in this.

It is good to contemplate the things of God whether these thoughts are simple or complex. My children from a young age asked questions about God that came to their mind. The simplest among us are capable of thinking about God. Our considerations attain greater complexity and sophistication with greater intellect and education.

Between revelation and depraved perceptions we hold all kinds of true and false beliefs about our Creator but it is good to struggle with the knowledge of God. This is why we debate one another over theology and why we must address any blindness we have with regard to the sin of our hearts. But the sin of our hearts is a spiritual matter that affects our cogitations.

Spiritual gifts are abilities that we are given according to the provision of God to build the Church in the name of Christ and edify it. But the fruit of the Spirit is a set of attitudes that are evident in the faithful:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5: 19-24)

Thinking about theology and debating it, while it is a good pursuit, involves the handling of information - the use of the mind. We may have many reasons for pursuing theology. A good reason for pursuing theology is because we love God and desire to know him better. A bad reason for pursuing theology is to justify our sin before God and before men who hold the revelation of God as a high standard for discerning sin. Whether one reason or another is in play is a spiritual matter. So, the activity of our mind is driven by the activity of our spirit.

But I observe those who argue as though they were competing for truth rather than love. While I would say that there is no love without truth and the truth is true whether there is love or not, I would also observe that we cannot understand the truth unless we have love. Therefore, when contending for the truth against unbelievers or those who are weak in the faith, it is imperative that the goal be to draw out spiritual fruit first understanding that not all knowledge is fruitful for this.

As it is, revelation is given to us in the scriptures not for the purpose not of arriving at a perfect understanding of the truth, for we cannot know it perfectly in this sinful world. The purpose of God's revelation to us in the scriptures is to inform our capacity to bear spiritual fruit. Therefore, it can be said that while we apprehend the truth with a spiritual desire to do so, we also gain the spiritual desire to do so by the revelation of God through both the scriptures as well as the Holy Spirit.

I'd like to offer an example of how we are to be informed spiritually by the information from the scriptures we apprehend with our minds and often debate.

One common debate in western culture since the reformation has been with regard to reformed theology. The United States was founded on the hinge of western sociological thought using the Romantic considerations of personal freedom, the Christian considerations of personal responsibility and in reaction to the tyrannical tendencies of the European monarchies that take these personal freedoms and responsibilities away. The problem in western thought is that we have taken the concept of civil freedom and responsibility, infused them into popular philosophies, and allowed them to influence our theological sensibilities.

As a result, theology among western Protestants has become increasingly Arminian-ish. Considering this, the recent resurgence of reformed theology among Southern Baptists has been met with much resistance. The debate often becomes passionate. While I suspect most are motivated by a desire to uphold what they believe is the truth, what has suffered is the way the elements of the debate ought to inform our spiritual fruit-bearing.

I've made this observation before and it's a logical conundrum. However, our attitudes need not follow principles of logic. Is there anything good that should not be attributed to God? Therefore if we do anything good, including come to faith in Christ, then should we not give all the glory to God? Can we say that God does any evil? I know some become angry with God and would claim that he has done some wrong to them, but we should not say that any evil comes from God for he only does good things. Therefore, if we sin, who are we to blame but ourselves? So if we do good, we attribute it to God and if we do evil we assume the blame ourselves.

If we give God the glory for the good we do, then if we follow the strictures of logic, we should likewise blame him for the evil we do. If we assume responsibility for the evil we do, then if we follow the strictures of logic, we must also take credit for the good that we do. However, to follow the strictures of logic as such is to fail to bear the fruit of the Spirit. We do evil against God either way and distort the truth with a false sense of logic by justifying ourselves.

But there actually is no illogic to have the paradox in our attitudes where we credit God for good and assume the blame for evil; for truth, while not illogical, transcends logic. Logic is merely inadequate to fully encompass the truth. So understand as much as you can of God with your mind, but approach him with the fruits of the Spirit.