Friends,

Since no one else is posting today, I thought perhaps I would share a quote with you that is most interesting. Jacques Ellul’s book The Subversion of Christianity is making a strong case for how the church has not properly engaged culture but has, rather, baptized pagan practices, called them Sacred, and continued on without nary another word. In other words, the church has really failed to engage the real heart of the matter which is spiritual. This quote is from his chapter titled Moralism. In this chapter he is arguing that Christians have substituted a bland moralism for the Gospel revelation of Christ (”The perversion, then, was that of making the gospel into law in order to respond to the challenge offered to revelation by the successive outbursts of immorality and ethical disorder.”, 89) I cannot tell you how important this chapter is, and I wish I could type the entire chapter in for you to read. I can’t say I’m on board with all he says, but I am on board with this quote. Here he is, using the example of ‘anti-feminism’ in the church, to make his case that the church has used poor substitutes in its syncretism of the culture. Consider:

I do not deny that government must make laws or that we need police and the courts. I am simply saying that this is a makeshift that enables us to dam up the evil but that never solves anything. What happened was that Christians and the church adopted this attitude and took this course. All evangelical teaching is against it. What one might have expected of Christians and the church is that they would have replaced false love with the true love that comes from God, that they would have substituted the agape that serves for the eros of the Greeks, that they would have put the spirit of service in place of the spirit of domination, that they would have rejected punctilious legalism in favor of an open and supple human relationship, that they would have boosted the personal in place of the social, that they would have exalted personal appreciation in place of valid rules, that they would have looked on the heart rather than external conduct, that they would have checked sexual disorder by the triumph of true love between men and women, that they would have maintained everywhere a living flexibility in place of the rigidity of order; in short, that even at the cost of unavoidable sacrifices and sufferings they would have embodied and maintained feminine values in the bosom of this kind of society…In itself the gospel is good news; it is grace, joy, freedom, and love; in human relationships it means flexibility, finesse, concern for the little, the protection of the weak, and openness. Its transformation into a morality of duty and judgment, provoked by the immorality of surrounding society, and regarded as the only possible result and response–this is what led to the exclusion of women from their place and vocation, their rejection from circles of responsibility. Men were the ones who carried out this operation, who tried to protect the group in this way, as though they were threatened by violent military aggression.” (92-93)

There’s more to it than meets the eye and, to be sure, some terminology should be better defined. Still, at face value I think we can see that from Ellul’s point of view, we have made a poor substitution. So I ask you this question: Is he right? Should more, as in better, have been expected of the church? How have we failed? How can this problem be fixed? Are we the ones to do it?

Soli Deo Gloria!

Tags: Jacques Ellul, moralism, Subversion of Christianity

Friends,

Some recent comments on one of the threads got me to thinking about…oh…life…faith…what Christ thinks of us…and why His opinion matters far more than, perhaps to the exclusion of, anyone else. This morning I heard this song again for the first time and the lyrics really spoke to me. Enjoy.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Tags: church, faith, Switchfoot

At the end of the NFL season last year a few people asked if we could put together a fantasy football league for this year. So we’ve done it. One thing though, you’ll see the name of the league is Neutral Ground so keep the smack talk fantasy football related, even if someone writes something that really irritates you.

Go to:
Yahoo’s fantasy football page and sign in with your yahoo ID (sign up for one if you need to).
League id: ID# is 398786
Password: jesus

Also, if all the slots fill up and you want to play leave a comment here to that effect and if there’s enough for another league I’ll open up a second one.

Friends,

In light of all the sadness of today, what with Joe M announcing his resignation from CRN.info (I hear he has been tapped to write an intro for Rick Frueh’s forthcoming book), I thought it might be appropriate to learn about an important American tradition. My hope, in posting this video, is that we will learn something valuable about the nature of Christianity.

So, what does ‘noodling’ teach us about Christianity? Most likely nothing, but this is not to say there are no hidden secrets in noodling that might inspire a book. And it was fun, even for a minute, to distract all of you from the important work of being angry with one another. Here’s to friendship! My hope is that someday all of us can go noodling together and enjoy one another’s company. Isn’t that what noodling is really about? Friendship?

A song of ascents. Of David.

 1 How good and pleasant it is
       when brothers live together in unity!

 2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
       running down on the beard,
       running down on Aaron’s beard,
       down upon the collar of his robes.

 3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
       were falling on Mount Zion.
       For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
       even life forevermore.

Soli Deo Gloria!

PS–This post is dedicated to merry who constantly reminds us all that ‘an anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up.’ (Pr 12:25)

Tags: Devotional, encouragement, friendship, noodling, Psalm 133

My wife and I attended the midnight show of The Dark Knight, several weeks ago, and I have to say that Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker still has me a bit perturbed. In discussing the movie with my Christian friends, we’ve all recognized how this particular movie villain seems to be much more malevolent and inherently scary than most others – even apart from Ledger’s eerie performance.

In discussing the movie with my non-Christian friends, I have found a particular opening that not only brings religion into the discussion, but has opened up follow-up conversation, as well.

Chaos and Order

In Genesis 1, we read:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

In Hebrew, the phrase tohu u’vohu is sometimes translated “formless and empty”, and this is its only appearance in the Bible. Before everything was created by God, the earth was chaos – formless and empty. In the picture painted in Genesis, this chaos – this formlessness and emptiness was contained within the deep (theum, which is literally translated “abyss”). In fact, the Hebrew word for the abyss (theum) comes from the Hebrew root for chaos (theu).

Chaos is the absence of everything, a vacuum. In scientific terms, chaos is to God as cold is to heat. There is no such thing as “cold” – “cold” is just the absence of heat. In the same way, there is no such thing as chaos – chaos is the absence of God.

And so it was that God created order from the chaos – He created everything from nothing. (To the ancient Jews, the seas represented the abyss – chaos – which was why so few would venture out onto the sea, and why so many superstitions were part of it.)

In the Beginning

In the Hebrew mind, the opposite of God is not Satan. To view it as such is an outgrowth of Babylonian dualism. In fact, though, to the Hebrew mind, the opposite of God is chaos. In the poetry of Genesis 1, we see the overarching theme of God’s creation, as ‘deep calls out to deep’, where God first creates and separates from nothing on days 1-3:

Day 1: Light and Darkness
Day 2: Sky and Water
Day 3: Water, Land and Vegetation

Then, in days 4-6, God brings forth creation from creation, paralleling Days 1-3:

Day 4: Sun, Moon and Stars
Day 5: Fish and Birds
Day 6: Animals and Man

And then, on the seventh day, God rests, and hands the tasks of creating from creation from creation to mankind – to be fruitful and multiply and to continue to bring order to creation.

And so, in the Hebrew mind, God created from nothing, filling the chaos with order. He then further creates from His creation – further eradicating chaos. Finally, he gives man the job of working and bringing order to all that He created – fully eliminating the chaos.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I’ve been involved with Ken Silva in a matter that I wanted to address privately. Ken decided to go public with that situation, which is his prerogative and right. I want to respect that. Here is the situation as I understand it:

1. I contacted Ken to discuss the issue of him presenting me as a Christian Agnostic. I have evidence that is provable where Ken’s claim’s have provable damages to me. I did mention lawyers in attempt to show Ken that I have a case of provable libel
2. Ken rebuffed my attempts to talk to him.
3. I called and emailed Chris Rosebrough of Extreme Theology to see if he would feel comfortable moderating a Three Way Call between Ken and I. As of the writing of this post I have not heard from Ken or Chris.
4. Ingrid and Ken posted about how I was attempting to distract Ken from the work God has called him to be a part of.
5. I called Ingrid and expressed my frustration with her and especially with Ken because I was attempting to handle this situation Biblically and being frustrated at every turn. Ingrid did not seem comfortable moderating a three way conversation between Ken and I.
6. I asked Ken again for contact information to his board and to his local association. My thinking was that I might have to initiate some form of church discipline
7. Ken ignored me
8. Someone from Ken’s board contacted me. We talked and I presented the situation as I understand it.
9. He offered to contact Ken and see if Ken would talk in a three way with us.
10. Ken refused.
11. All of the activity that has happened on the “Team Politics” post has transpired.
12. I contacted Ken’s former DOM and discovered that Ken’s church is no longer considered part of that association.

Now, I will issue the same challenge to Ken again. What of this do you refute or say is inaccurate?

Really though, what matters is what I have learned from this? Here it is.

1. I believe I have followed all mandates in the Bible in contacting Ken and attempting to handle this issue as best I can. I believe the Bible now calls me to treat him as an outsider. Interestingly enough there is no mandate in the Bible about not taking an outsider to court. (I’m not doing that but…)
2. I have learned that Ken’s reputation in his town is not good.
3. I have been sinned against and despite all of Ken’s proclamations about caring about Scripture and the perspicuity of it, he has refused to engage in this matter in a Biblical manner.
4. Ken has been mean and nasty and does not represent the Christ of the Scriptures at all.
5. In my opinion, Ken does not hold himself accountable to his board in any manner. Why else would he refuse to give me contact information?
6. None of 1-5 matter all that much.
7. I am leaving CRN.info. The bottom line is that I believe Ken and his friends to be the bottom feeders. I know that’s not all that charitable which is why I’m leaving. I don’t have time to engage a man who hides. I don’t have time engage drive by commenters. I enjoy commenting here and may continue to do so, but at the end of the day I do not believe Ken, Mike R, and John Chisam and the rest are worth my time. They are divisive, angry people who do not show the light they claim to have. If they’re writing is reflective of they believe to be Chistianity, we have fundamentally different views of Scripture
8. I am too busy to worry about modern day Pharisees.

So, let the vulture attacks begin about what I said wrong here.

So long, farewell, I’ll see you (some of you) in the sky….

Houston, we have a problem. But I’ll attack you if you try to fix it.

Mr. Silva recently published a link on CRN to this article. Now, there are those who have legitimate beef with the purpose-driven movement. These arguments usually talk about a lack of strong doctrine, a focus on methods over theology and pastors that have gone off the edge with the PDL campaign. These people would usually not call Rick Warren or his program apostate, semi-pelagian or man centered, but they would pass on the PDL for legit reasons for their church community.

Then there are those who have jumped on the anti-Purpose Driven band wagon and have abandoned logic in their arguments. Sandy Simpson has created a chart to help people figure out if their church is Warren Driven or Bible Driven. She automatically shows her bias with the title, as if they were in contrast.

I really don’t have much to say about the article. Here are some quotes — you decide for yourself.

Warren Driven
Is your church participating in Rick Warren’s “P.E.A.C.E. Plan” to “solve” the world problems of “Spiritual Lostness, Lack of Godly Leaders, Poverty, Disease, and Lack of
Education.”

Bible Driven
Does your church recognize that “The poor you will always have with you” (Matt. 6:11) and that making boasts (James 3:5) like Warren makes proves that he does not understand what the Bible teaches on these things?

Hmmm… does Ms. Simpson truly believe that the scriptures say we should not care for the poor, or share about what God is doing around the world with believers caring for the orphans and widows based off of these two verses? She doesn’t sound too bible-driven to me.

Warren Driven
Does your church believe, with Warren, that “Today, most local churches are sidelined and uninvolved when it comes to missions. The message from most mission and parachurch organizations to the local church is essentially “Pray, pay, and get out of the way.”

Bible Driven
Has your church continued to do its own mission work in its local area and support mission groups and efforts in other areas of the world? Does your church believe that most bible-believeing Christ-centered churches are NOT “sidelined” and “uninvolved” in mission work?

Um, are they not saying the same thing? Rick Warren is frustraited with churches have passed off their responsibility to do mission work in its local area and have an active part in global evangelism? Also, Warren did not say that Bible-believing, Christ-centered churches are bing sidelined. He said most church are. Oops, looks like Ms. Simpson may be more Purpose Driven than she thinks.

Warren Driven
Does your church “Statement of Faith”, like that of Saddleback, simply state regarding the Trinity that “God is bigger and better and closer than we can imagine”? (Note: Saddleback has since added another doctrinal statement to their site stating an orthodox view of the Trinity. This does not negate the fact that the above “dumb-downed” statement about God is basically useless, and in fact could be very misleading to people who already have a false concept of God.)

Bible Driven
Does your church doctrinal statement contain the concept that God is One God eternally existing in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

for the record, the complete “dumbed-down statement” from Saddleback’s section called Bible Q&A is as follows

The Bible teaches very clearly that there is one God not two or three or seven. It also teaches clearly that the Father is God and that Jesus is God and also that the Holy Spirit is God. The fact that there is only one God and yet three separate persons are called God leads us to the truth of the “Trinity” of God. This means that God is one in being, and he exists in three persons. That’s why Jesus can talk to the Father and be sent by the Father and yet they are still one. This is a difficult truth to grasp. I tell people that it’s one of the truths about God that reminds us that he is bigger than we are.

I’ll let you decide on the agenda here. It’s unfortunate that some have to go to this level to prove a point.

Since we are exegeting the recent post at SOL and their most recent display of tearing down the fellowship of Christ’s blood, I’ll join in with another observation.

As an introductory aside the author (presumably Ingrid Schlueter since no byline is given) makes this comment: “You can forward past the out of tune guitar and singer…” This statement betrays the condescending and judgmental attitude of the author. If the thesis of the post was, say… “We should honor God by singing in tune…” then an out-of-tune guitar and singer would be a relevant comment. But that was not the point.

The only conclusion we can come to is that the author was not satisfied with just condemning what is perceived as an inappropriate method of delivering God’s Word (can anyone say “Let’s all focus on the externals”?) – Nay, she had to mock a fellow believer in Christ as he worshipped.

It’s one thing if Schlueter dislikes the style of another part of the Body… it’s a shame when she fails to look past stylistically determined differences and judges them based on an external criteria of her own preferences and culture… it’s just plain immature and a sin when she mocks and insults a brother in Christ, a fellow believer who is worshipping her (and his) God through her (and his) Savior – all because she feels his abilities are not up to her standards.

P. S. I thought the song sounded fine, guess that shows far I have fallen from our Lord as well…

UPDATE: Ingrid has said the criticism of the guitar player was a joke, so I’ll take her at her word (charitable reading).

So I was working at the church this afternoon and 3 of our members were taking care of the lawn when one of them (an Elder) came in jabbering about something.  He was upset about an exchange that had just transpired between him and the next door neighbor to the church.  The neighbor had asked about a property marker (flagged wood stick) that was nowhere to be found and got upset with the Elder.  The Elder apologized and came inside to vent.  We spent a few minutes talking about the entire issue which was of no fault of ours and about how this thing and that thing should have been done by the neighbor or the survey company.

After thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided to go over and talk with our neighbor (It’s farm land that was deeded over to a daughter to build a house on.  The gentleman actually lived a few miles away.).  I introduced myself and apologized for the missing marker expecting him to still be irate over the issue.  His first response was to apologize for how he treated the Elder and for making a big deal out of something that wasn’t that big of a deal.  We proceeded to chat and I found out that he was having a bad day.  (In addition to his bad day, most men I know, including myself, get easily agitated when they are working hard on a project trying to get it done.)  I invited him and his grandsons (they were working on cleaning up the property) into the church for some refreshments.

The church members and myself completely wasted all the time spent talking about the issue.  Not only that, but the more we talked about it, the more we saw how right we were and how wrong the neighbor was.  All we needed to do was to be kind and gracious, even if we were in the right.  You see, being a Christian isn’t about being in the right, being a Christian is about being willing to give up your rights for somebody in need.  And chances are, everybody you come into contact with has a need.

Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

By the way, we do a lot with youth, and I’ve already got our new neighbor kids in the building and they haven’t even moved in yet.

Tags: forgiveness, grace, kindness, love, neighbor