Nut cases who get it right

I heard the author of this book (new release this week) interviewed on a radio program a few days ago. He is a died-in-the-wool proponent of the views of Ayn Rand. It's frustrating that I agree with over fifty per cent of what he says (including everything he says about the free market and education), but he still comes off as a nut case.

Last week a lot of Christians got bent out of shape because of the Muslim reaction to the movie about Mohammed. From what I can tell, it probably had a good bit of truth in it, but it was poorly produced, and its spokespersons came off like nut cases.

We live in an age of sound bites and images, and careful reflection on complex ideas is getter rarer all the time. It doesn't help any of us when right ideas are espoused by nut cases. Those whom God has gifted to be able to communciate well should take the lead in expositing Biblical thinking on current issues. I recommend BreakPoint with Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet. 

Pervasive banality

As much as those of us who are nerds-in-training might like to

believe that there could be academics as innocent of popular icons and values as Dr. Sheldon Cooper and Dr. Temperance Brennan, it is, in fact, the utter unbelievability of their remoteness which gives charm to these characters. Pop culture rules, even in the halls of ivy. Banality has conquered America. Our diplomats are being murdered, Washington does not respond, and everyone is watching the finals of "America's Got Talent."

Radical Faith: Trusting Public Schools

John Taylor Gatto, former New York City and New York State Teacher of the Year: “Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers who you know nothing about, and having those strangers work on your child’s mind?”

Is anybody paying attention?

Anyone paying attention to the current political ads by our current president must see the obvious parallels between his diatribes against the wealthy and the key Marxist supposition that life is all about class warfare. I have never seen anyone in my entire life state such openly blatant Marxism. And no one is wearing sackcloth and ashes. I don't get it. And I am far from wealthy.

Going back home, but not to my eternal home

This week I will return to my roots, briefly. I have never been ashamed of being from the South, but I no longer identify deeply with its culture.  Linda and I vainly attempted to introduce our children to grits, cornbread, and turnip greens, but their comfort food will always be Mexican. 

Nevertheless, it will be good to spend time with my brother and some old friends from college and the church I grew up in.  

What does this have to do with worldview?  It's easy to forget that this world is not our home. When we take the commands of God seriously, then we can appreciate the labors our ancestors poured into making the places we call home prettier, more habitable, more prosperous, and more convenient.  When I go back to the South, the passage of time gives me a perspective on the changes - mostly for the better; some, not so much. 

Some of the photos on this page show the things Marietta can be proud of: aesthetic, historical, and cultural. But whenever a Mariettan needs to be humbled, just remind him or her that the only thing most people outside of the Atlanta area know about Marietta is that it's home of the Big Chicken.  

The point is that we ought to fulfill God's dominion mandate by improving the places in which we live. But worship of the labors of our hands or a piece of geography is still idolatry, and this world is ultimately not our home... 

Knowing the real deal - when we see it

I have mentioned in a previous blog that I am a regular subscriber to Breakpoint, and always find their commentaries stimulating. Since the passing of Chuck Colson, Eric Metaxas has become the primary contributor, and I found one of his posts this week particularly intriguing.  Here it is, in part:

Here’s a particularly egregious case [of Christian curmudgeoning] in point: the recent campaign to remove a great movie, The Blind Side, from the shelves of LifeWay Christian stores. Remember, The Blind Side was denounced as Christian propaganda by many liberal critics.

It explicitly depicts an affluent white Christian family devoting itself to helping an impoverished black kid because it’s the Christian thing to do.

The film’s offense, according to a Florida pastor who started the campaign to have LifeWay stores pull the DVD, is that the movie contains “explicit profanity, God's name in vain, and racial slurs.” It doesn’t seem to matter that the objectionable language is used to depict the palpably unpleasant world from which the young black man, Michael, was rescued by his adoptive family.

What seems to matter to this pastor is that if we “tolerate” the presence of this movie in Christian bookstores, our children and grandchildren will “embrace” this kind of behavior. I’m not making this up – this is the exact reason given by the pastor. And frankly, I think it’s insane. I saw the movie myself. I even let my 12-year-old daughter see it. That’s because it is a great film and I recommend it highly.

But sadly, LifeWay caved in and removed the “offensive” discs from their shelves.

For outsiders looking in, the moral of the story is that “there is no pleasing Christians. They always seem to be looking for something to be mad about.”

We complain about the calumnies and caricatures of Christians on the big screen; and then, when an Academy Award-winning film shows us at our very best, we complain that scenes depicting harsh, inner-city reality are too true to life!

We are, in effect, making our participation contingent on all our possible objections being met beforehand. Since there are many people who would be happy if we stayed within our cultural and religious ghettos, it’s difficult to imagine how we Christians can hope to be taken seriously in cultural discussions and debates with this kind of an approach.

Concerns about the language in the film also miss the larger point: what made the Tuohys — the family depicted in the film — such great Christian exemplars wasn’t their non-use of profanity; it was their willingness to reach out and embrace someone in need.

If we Christians can’t get this, then maybe we really should refrain from commenting on culture in the first place.

For more on this subject of Christians in the arts and culture, visit BreakPoint.org.

The People I was Writing about Yesterday

So I stumbled across an ad for a new line of clothing bearing this logo. The slug on their web page read "We are not ashamed. We are not afraid." This, of course implies that shame and fear may exist, constructs which are patently impossible in a mechanistic universe controlled by Darwinian selection. Most meaningless of all is their logo, left, which draws on all kinds of deistic history, symbolism, and imagery. It calls to mind what Doug Wilson always says about the thinking of atheists:

Two things atheists believe:

1. There is no God.
2. We hate Him!

In regard to the abundant revelation of God - natural, special, historical, etc. - one can't help picturing a child with his hands over his ears, yelling at the top of his lungs, "I'm not listening!  I'm not listening!  I'm not listening!"

Equipping ourselves - Messianic prophecies

It is emotionally very difficult for some Christians to accept our minority status in today's culture. The demeanor of the unbelieving world around us ranges from aggressive and willful indifference to unmasked hatred of God. So inured are we to this rejection of God's revelation, that we are apt to fall prey to the baseless presuppositions and cynical attitudes of the society we live in.

In The Silver Chair, Jill and Eustace had a real and unmistakeable face-to-face encounter with Aslan himself, and yet, when faced with hardships in fulfilling the task He had set for them (rescuing the trapped Prince Rilian), they still succombed to the "real world" thinking of those around them - worrying about shelter, hot baths, and food. 

Aslan had thoughtfully provided the antidote for this in advance: repeating the "signs" which were to guide their mission. Any reader who has enjoyed this story can remember the frustration one feels when they gradually cease repeating the signs. "The signs!" one wants to scream. "How could you forget?"      

But we are a forgetful people, which is part of the reason for the Sabbath - a cycle that forces us out of the survival rat race and back into contemplation of the eternal. I ran across a site today which reminded me of our tremendous need to "repeat the signs."  With skeptics being interviewed on talk shows and podcasts who question the very historicity of Jesus Himself, it is easy to forget how dramatically God prepared the earth for the arrival of His Son. 

You can go here to enjoy a list of over one hundred specific prohecies of the Messiah from the Old Testament  which were clearly fulfilled in Christ.  These are the kind of signs we should be repeating to ourselves daily as we dwell in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. The Holy Scriptures have been provided for us for just such a purpose as this - and because we are forgetful.

Remember: 

It isn't that we lack historical evidence.

It isn't because there is evil in the world ("How could there be a God!?")

It isn't because the Bible contradicts itself (when clearly taught).

It isn't because it produces bad fruit.

It isn't because "all so-called Christians are hypocrites."

It isn't because it doesn't make sense.

It isn't because of any of these things that people do not follow Christ. It's because we live in a fallen world, which is at enmity with God. We must live faithfully, stick to the mission, repeat the signs, and trust God for the outcome.  Faint not!

A Prayer for our Nation

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favour and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

from The Book of Common Prayer, 1928

Readying for the Holy Spirit

I have never been a big fan of Eugene Peterson's The Message, although one of my sons is somewhat fond of it. I recently learned that my friend Cole Palmer's father was Peterson's roommate at Seattle Pacific University at some point in history. When my friend Dave Rhodes was giving away books as he downsized his life in order to be able to travel around the country in his RV, I claimed a bunch of them for our nascent church library. One of them, Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, was one title I was pretty sure I was not interested in enough to read.

But eventually it worked it way to the top of the box, and when I was recently stranded somewhere without anything else to read, I thumbed through it. Petersons' style, overall, is a little too informal for me, and is reminiscent of many of the twentieth century "stream-of-consciousness" writers like Faulkner. Not only is Peterson informal, he is somewhat mystical. Like most Reformed folk, I mistrust the subjectivity of mysticism. But in his chapter on how Jesus prepared the disciples for the coming of the Holy Spirit, there were some jewels. Here, for example: 

"The conversation is rambling and unsystematic. This is not what we ordinarily think of as good teaching. But Jesus is not making things clear, smoothing out ambiguities; he is making them vivid, pulsing. What the conversation does is immerse us in the presence of another, the presence of Jesus readying us for the Spirit. We are soon listening more to who he is than what he says; we are drawn into this seamless web of relational attentiveness, leaving and sending, sensing within ourselves the pervasive, soul-permeating continuity between the absent Jesus and the present Spirit.

And there is also this about the conversation. It is exceedingly spare in imperatives. Jesus is not telling us how to practice spiritual formation, 'how to do it' - he is telling how it is done. Spiritual formation is primarily what the Spirit does, forming the resurrection life of Christ in us. There is not a whole lot we can do here any more than we can create the cosmos (that was the work of the Spirit in creation), any more than we can outfit Jesus for salvation (that was the work of the Spirit at Jesus' baptism). But there is a great deal that the Spirit can do - the resurrection community is the Spirit's work. What we can do, need to do, is be there - accept the leaving and the loss of the physically reassuring touch and companionship. Be there to accept what is sent by the Father in Jeus' Name. Be there, receptive and obedient.  Be there praying, 'Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1:38)." 

Pulling Weeds with Scott Brown

Continuing on the theme of ranting in favor of little-appreciated causes, here is one on which lots of well-meaning brethren disagree with me:  age segregation in the church. It's destroying children and young people by giving parents incentives to abdicate as spiritual leaders. The statistics are in, and children raised in these paradigms are not sticking with the faith when they are out on their own. And yet we keep doing the same things (that already didn't work) over and over.

"The church is not the playground for our creative imaginations. Scripture calls us to be faithful to the means which God has appointed, having onfidence that God both ordained the means and controls the ends. In Leviticus 10:1-3, we are faced with the fact that God strikes men dead for offering profane fire 'which he had not commanded them.' God did not say, 'I told you not to do that.' He said in effect, 'I did not tell you to do that.' Consider how many things the church is doing today that God did not tell it to do. Does that bother us?"  

                                                                                      Scott Brown, A Weed in the Church

The side of the argument we never hear

For a number of years I have subscribed to Acts and Facts, a publication of the Institute for Creation Research. Each issue is flush with fascinating articles about the studies and discoveries of this excellent institute.  Contrary to the sterotypes of pro-evolutionists, these are not a bunch of quacks who are trying to bend truth to fit the Bible. They are real scientists with real credentials. However, the bias the scholarly, where politically correct and published academics vote to support each other's research while scoffing at everyone else's, has caused these brave scientists to be portrayed ludicrously.

The current issue, which arrived yesterday describes the following interesting projects now underway:

• Recent advancments in the field of radiometric dating have demonstrated that the rate of decay of certain isotopes was much faster in the past. This explains why many radiometric age estimates of certain rocks are vastly inflated from the true age. It also means that radiometric dating cannot be used legitimately as an argument against the biblical timescale.
• Advancements in technology have provided much more data about the universe than we currently have theories to explain. Dr. Jason Lisle, who is working on the Anisotropic Synchrony Convention cosmological model, says it's as though "the universe were screaming for a creation-based interpretation of the new data."
• Dr. Jake Hebert is using fossil data to address questions such as "Why did people live so long before the Flood?" and "What do we really know about extinct organisms?"
• Dr. Jeff Tomkins has demonstrated that he DNA of humans is more different than the 97 to 99 per cent similarity to that of apes which is often touted by evolutionists. 
• The notion of "natural selection" is being challenged by Dr. Randy Guliuzza, who has uncovered genetic data which suggests that organisms respond to their circumstances as though they were designed to do so by an intelligence.

These are but a few of the current projects underway by these diligent scientists. Since the controlling establishment will never acknowledge their studies, it is good to inform ourselves of these questions and discoveries in order to counter the smugness of a world which hates God and wishes it could prove He doesn't exist. 

Eroding freedom of religion

Here is a link to my latest.  This is a difficult subject for me to write about, and my editor has promised to back off on this for a while.  I am weary about so much attention being focused on one particular behavior, when so many sins are rampant in our society. Amerca needs to repent, but what prophet doesn't know that?  Father, have mercy!

Legal Gladiators

A few years back there was a movie called Legal Eagles which made heroes out of young lawyers who, frankly, were basically in it for the money, and tangentially supported mostly liberal causes. In contrast, there are a group of select young men and women who receive fellowships from the Alliance Defense Fund as Blackstone Fellows who learn to defend fundamental American freedoms. Fortunately, the ADF is discriminating in their admission to this group, so only about a hundred out of each yearly group of over 800 applicants are admitted.

I first became aware of this program a few weeks ago through a conferfence sponsored by Center for Arizona Policy. I had a table representing Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, and the table representing ADF was right across the aisle in the exhibit hall. During lulls in the traffic, we chatted. The ADF representative was familiar with Arizona's tax credit law, and very supportive. I was fascinated to learn about the Blackstone Fellows, and very encouraged that ADF is investing in young gladiators who will go into the arena for truth and freedom.

I was reminded of the Blackstone Fellows as I listened to Hugh Hewitt last night on the way home. It turns out he is a big supporter as well, and interviewed one of the directors of the fellowship on his program. I endorse their efforts and encourage you to learn more about what they do here.

Wildcats are #1!

This afternoon I welcomed back my friend Joe Wambach from a long vacation up at Lake Powell, and brought him up to date on U of AZ's march through the College World Series this past week. It turns out he once interviewed U of A baseball coach Andy Lopez on behalf of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and learned thereby that Lopez is a God-fearing man with a passion for Christ.

While there are always those who want to point out how many jerks there are running lose who claim to be Christians, nobody ever mistakes the real deal when they see it. Before knowing that Lopez explicitly confesses to be a Christ-follower, most U of A sports fans, even as I, have discerned that this is a man of unique moral fiber and character-inspiring leadership. When I told my son Ethan about the conversation I had with Joe, his response regarding Lopez's faith was, "I'm not surprised at all."

The Bible says that at the final judgment, angels will sort the wheat from the tares, and we will see many of those loud-mouthed "Christ-claiming" jerks exposed for what they really are. But few would be surprised to hear the Master say to Andy Lopez, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"  Thank God for men like him.

Contra Mundam

It's happened!  I've found someone as crazy as I am!  Click here and watch "The World is Trespassing" or any of his other fine videos!

It's the last sentence that intrigues me...

"Before the church can hope to win over the surrounding society, it must first win over its own youth. Young people do not just need rules, they need reasons. It's time for the church to regroup, rethink, and recast its strategy for social and political engagement.
Christians must learn to engage the secular worldviews that drive the public debate. They must learn to articulate a worldview rationale for biblical morality. And more importantly, they must back up their message with authentic living before a watching world."

Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo

Text exchange with Tom Massa

                                                                                            

TM: "I've been rereading The Chronicles of Narnia.  I think my favorite part out of all seven is in The Horse and His Boy, Chapter 11.  It's the scene wherein Aslan finally reveals himself to Shasta."                                                        

TA:  "'I was the cat.  I was there all along.' Classic!"                

TM:  "I'm not going to lie:  it brings me close to tears every time.  There is a lion who walks beside me through fire and flood..."                                                                                

TA:  "Amen."

thinking a lot about the disciplines lately...

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.

The classical disciplines of the spiritual life call us to move beyond surface living into the depths. The invite us to explore the inner caverns of the spirtual realm. They urge us to be the answer to a hollow world...

Psalm 42:7 reads 'Deep calls to deep.'  Perhaps somewhere in the subterranean chambers of your life you have heard the call to deeper, fuller living. You have become weary of frothy experiences and shallow teaching.  Every now and then you have caught glimpses, hints of something more than you have known. Inwardly you long to launch out into the deep."

-Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline

On the identity of marriage....

Here is my latest on Presidential Prayer Team. It got the usual mixed response, but more quantity than usual (it is a hot-button topic right now) and, what is more important to me, some signs appear of long-term residual effects from those who habitually read the PPT site.

One reader sees it as Republican Party propaganda and will not read it any more. I actually see this as progress - if someone can't see how careful we are to couch our arguments in biblical rather than political terms, then he/she is better off not wasting their time and ours. Several self-identified African-Americans are admitting to the unbiblical positions of our sitting President. And fewer irrational statements are being made, per capita.

Seed-sowing. We all do it somewhere. It's slow and arduous, but results will come. As the Caterpillar said to Alice, "Keep your temper!"