General Stark's War

By Mark Steyn
The New York Sun

in amongst the autopilot hooey the Stark raving madman did use an interesting expression: "the war on children".

One assumes he means some illegal Republican Party "war on children". On Thursday Nancy Pelosi, as is the fashion, used the phrase "the children" like some twitchy verbal tic, a kind of Democrat Tourette's syndrome: "This is a discussion about America's children… We could establish ourselves as the children's Congress… Come forward on behalf of the children... I tried to do that when I was sworn in as Speaker surrounded by children. It was a spontaneous moment, but it was one that was clear in its message: we are gaveling this House to order on behalf of the children…"

Etc. So what is the best thing America could do "for the children"? Well, it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a system of unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. Most of us understand, for example, that Social Security needs to be "fixed" – or we'll have to raise taxes, or the retirement age, or cut benefits, etc. But, just to get the entitlements debate in perspective, projected public pensions liabilities are expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 per cent of GDP in the US; in Greece, the equivalent figure is 25 per cent – that's not a matter of raising taxes or tweaking retirement age; that's total societal collapse.

So what? shrug the voters. Not my problem. I paid my taxes, I want my benefits. In France, President Sarkozy is proposing a very modest step – that those who retire before the age of 65 should not receive free health care – and the French are up in arms about it. He's being angrily denounced by 53-year old retirees, a demographic hitherto unknown to functioning societies. You spend your first 25 years being educated, you work for two or three decades, and then you spend a third of a century living off a lavish pension with the state picking up every healthcare expense. No society can make that math add up. And so in a democratic system today's electors vote to keep the government gravy coming and leave it to tomorrow for "the children" to worry about. That's the real "war on children" – and every time you add a new entitlement to the budget you make it less and less likely they'll win it.

...

I'm in favor of tax credits for child healthcare, and Health Savings Accounts for adults, and any other reform that emphasizes the citizen's responsibility to himself and his dependants. But middle-class entitlement creep would be wrong even if was affordable, even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover it every month: it turns free-born citizens into enervated wards of the nanny state. As Gerald Ford liked to say when trying to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn't big enough to get you to give any of it back. As I point out in my book, nothing makes a citizen more selfish than socially equitable communitarianism: once a fellow's enjoying the fruits of Euro-style entitlements, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest; he's got his, and who cares if it's going to bankrupt the state a generation hence?

That's the real "war on children": in Europe, it's killing their future. Don't make the same mistake here. (more)

Race: One Nation, Indivisible

By Ward Connerly
Hoover Digest

Too often the race dialogue centers on what “;white America” must do, totally neglecting the role of black people.
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Why did the voters of Washington ignore the advice of politically correct big corporations, politicians, the media, and race advocates, who hid behind the moral fig leaves of “diversity” and “inclusion,” and end the system of preferences and de facto quotas that has come to define affirmative action?

Preferences based on race and ethnicity diminish the value of the individual in ways too numerous to mention.

The answer is simple. There is a deeply rooted culture of equality in America that transcends political correctness, partisanship, and ideology. We can trace this culture back to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

This culture of equality was underscored by Abraham Lincoln: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” When Martin Luther King Jr. led the nation through the tumultuous civil rights era, beginning with the public bus boycott in Montgomery in 1955, he invoked that culture of equality in calling on America to “live out the true meaning of your creed.” The principle of equality has been embraced by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike, from Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan.

The debate about affirmative action preferences is fundamentally about the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship. It is about whether we will have a system of government and a social system in which we see each other as equals. Although often lost in the rhetorical clamor about its benefits, race-based affirmative action as a concept is, at its core, a challenge to the relationship between individuals and their government. It is a direct threat to the culture of equality that defines the character of the nation.

Those who support affirmative action programs contend that such programs are necessary to provide equal opportunity for women and minorities. The argument is routinely advanced that without affirmative action women and minorities will be subject to the vagaries of the “good old boys network” and will be denied the opportunity of full participation in American life. But when you strip away all the rhetoric about “leveling the playing field” and “building diversity,” preferential policies reduce themselves to two essential questions.

First, are white males entitled to the same assertion of civil rights and equal treatment under the law as women and minorities? Second, how much longer is the nation going to maintain policies that presume that American-born black people are mentally inferior and incapable of competing head-to-head with other people, except in athletics and entertainment? We cannot resolve the issue of race in America without coming to terms with these two questions. And we certainly cannot reconcile the conflicts about affirmative action preferences without answering these questions. More than anything else, however, the debate about race-based preferences has focused the nation’s attention on the politics of race.

...

American society was conceived and has been nurtured through the years as a society of individuals. At the center of our society is the concept that we are all a minority of one. Obviously, policies that herd the American people into groups, or political enclaves, are in direct conflict with the spirit of individualism that characterizes the nation. The phrase “people of color” has come to describe the way in which race and ethnicity are being politicized in America. Implicit in this phrase is the coalescing of minorities into a coalition or political caucus, which, together with white women, constitutes a power base of sufficient magnitude to preserve race- and gender-based preferences and to achieve other political benefits for the coalition.

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When Thomas Jefferson and the other founders laid out this adventure, they gave their new nation a moral blueprint to make the adventure a success. The centerpiece of that blueprint is our system of moral principles. Moral principles do not change with the seasons. That is precisely why the founders proclaimed that certain truths are “self-evident” and “endowed by our Creator.” They are not meant to change or to be bargained away. Our inalienable rights are the centerpiece of that moral system, and the principle of equality is central to our system of rights.

But what can the average citizen expect from such a morality-based society? The citizens of America present and future had (and have) a right to know what benefits would obtain from an adherence to fundamental moral principles. The founders did not disappoint. They envisioned a more perfect union with freedom, liberty, justice, and equality for all Americans.

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So equality is directly linked to our freedoms and to our system of liberty and justice for all. Giving someone a preference, lower academic requirements, contract set-asides, or employment quotas betrays that system. Preferences based on race and ethnicity diminish the value of the individual in ways too numerous to mention and have consequences far beyond their effects on the nation’s character and the harm that they do to those who are not the beneficiaries of such policies. Preferences unwittingly damage the perceived beneficiaries more than one can ever imagine, despite the denials of preference advocates. This occurs in two principal ways.

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We must end the preferences that differentiate on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender. Only by doing that can we rededicate our nation to the principle of equality.

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The second effect is equally as consequential: preferences create their own “glass ceiling.” I don’t know why the defenders of such policies fail to acknowledge or admit the enormous effect that such policies have on the attitudes of others. Does it ever occur to them that the reason black people and other “minorities” are not considered for more upper management positions, even in corporations that pound their chests about “celebrating diversity,” is that such corporations still consider “minorities” to be inferior and noncompetitive for higher positions? Giving people who are classified in a certain group a “leg up” stems from the view that those individuals have limited capacity and cannot succeed without someone else’s generosity. Simply put, affirmative action marginalizes its beneficiaries. (more)

The Magic Prayer

By Greg Koukl
Stand to Reason

For some Christians, the "sinner's prayer" has taken on an almost superstitious quality. If we can just get our friends or loved ones to repeat the words, they're in. Merely reciting the prayer, however, is no guarantee without these three assurances of salvation.

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It goes something like this: "Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. I believe that you died for my sins so I could be forgiven. I receive you as my Lord and savior. Thank you for coming into my life. Amen."
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On occasion, though, I've noticed an almost superstitious disposition towards the sinners prayer. Frequently when I ask if a particular person is a Christian, the response I hear is, "Well, they prayed the prayer." It's as if the words were magic, and if we can just get someone to recite them we've accomplished our goal.
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The focus of evangelism should never be praying the prayer, but following Jesus. When we emphasize deciding for Christ instead of living for Him, we often get spiritual miscarriages instead of spiritual births. Our sense of safety can't come from simply saying a magic prayer. How, then, do we know if we belong to Christ?
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Our confidence in the security we have as Christians comes from three sources. First, we have the objective promises of Scripture. The apostle John's guarantee is characteristic, "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life."[1]

This concept is so foundational its repeated many times in the New Testament:

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3:36 "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."

John 5:24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."

John 6:40 "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."

Rom. 10:9 "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved."

Our second source of confidence in our salvation is entirely subjective. Christians have an ineffable awareness that they belong to God. This comes from the witness of the Holy Spirit to our inner man.

Paul's teaching on this is well known: "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Abba! Father!' The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God."[2]

...

Some people put the greatest emphasis on this subjective element, but the Scripture emphasizes it the least. The reason is, I think, because it's the most unreliable. It's possible to have tremendous inner tranquillity even when in extreme danger. Conversely, even the sturdiest spiritual warrior experiences periods of dryness, emptiness, and doubt.[4]

The third and most telling evidence of salvation is a holy life of persevering faith. John says bluntly, "The one who says, 'I have come to know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar."[5]

Paul tells Timothy, "Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you."[6] He later warns, "If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us."[7]

...

This is why the teaching of James is so important. Paul's instruction on justification by faith alone is so radical it can be mistaken for license, a charge he defends against in Romans 6:1-2. There's no such confusion with James, though. To paraphrase James 2:26, "The human body without the breath of life is nothing but a corpse. The same is true for anyone who says he has faith, but doesn't back it up with a changed life."

...

What makes a person sure his fire insurance is in force? If all he can say is "I prayed the prayer," he's in trouble. If he's not actively following Jesus, I can give little assurance. People grow at different speeds, but there must be evidence of a life being transformed at some level.

If you want to lead someone to Christ, forget the magic prayer. There's no precedence for it in the Bible, anyway. In the New Testament, baptism served the function of marking the entry of a person into the Body of Christ.

Rather, enjoin the one who is spiritually hungry to satisfy his appetite day by day by following the Savior. Give him some guidelines on how to do that. Tell him about prayer, fellowship, and Bible study. Instruct him in forgiveness, regeneration, and justification.

Don't let him forget, though, being born again is the beginning, not the end. (more)

What God Has Joined

By David Instone-Brewer
Christianity Today

What does the Bible really teach about divorce?
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The New Testament presents a problem in understanding both what the text says about divorce and its pastoral implications. Jesus appears to say that divorce is allowed only if adultery has occurred: "Whoever divorces a wife, except for sexual indecency, and remarries, commits adultery" (Matt. 19:9). However, this has been interpreted in many different ways. Most say that Jesus allows divorce only for adultery. But some argue that Jesus originally didn't allow even that. Only in Matthew does he offer an out from marriage: "except for sexual indecency." Beyond what Jesus says, Paul also allows divorce. He permits it for abandonment by a nonbeliever (1 Cor. 7:12-15). Many theologians add this as a second ground for divorce.
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One of my most dramatic findings concerns a question the Pharisees asked Jesus: "Is it lawful to divorce a wife for any cause?" (Matt. 19:3). This question reminded me that a few decades before Jesus, some rabbis (the Hillelites) had invented a new form of divorce called the "any cause" divorce. By the time of Jesus, this "any cause" divorce had become so popular that almost no one relied on the literal Old Testament grounds for divorce.

The "any cause" divorce was invented from a single word in Deuteronomy 24:1. Moses allowed divorce for "a cause of immorality," or, more literally, "a thing of nakedness." Most Jews recognized that this unusual phrase was talking about adultery. But the Hillelite rabbis wondered why Moses had added the word "thing" or "cause" when he only needed to use the word "immorality." They decided this extra word implied another ground for divorce—divorce for "a cause." They argued that anything, including a burnt meal or wrinkles not there when you married your wife, could be a cause! The text, they said, taught that divorce was allowed both for adultery and for "any cause."

...

When Jesus answered with a resounding no, he wasn't condemning "divorce for any cause," but rather the newly invented "any cause" divorce. Jesus agreed firmly with the second group that the phrase didn't mean divorce was allowable for "immorality" and for "any cause," but that Deutermonomy 24:1 referred to no type of divorce "except immorality."

This was a shocking statement for the crowd and for the disciples. It meant they couldn't get a divorce whenever they wanted it—there had to be a lawful cause. It also meant that virtually every divorced man or women was not really divorced, because most of them had "any cause" divorces. Luke and Matthew summarized the whole debate in one sentence: Any divorced person who remarried was committing adultery (Matt. 5:32; Luke 16:18), because they were still married. The fact that they said "any divorced person" instead of "virtually all divorced people" is typical Jewish hyperbole—like Mark saying that "everyone" in Jerusalem came to be baptized by John (Mark 1:5). It may not be obvious to us, but their first readers understood clearly what they meant.

Within a few decades, however, no one understood these terms any more. Language often changes quickly (as I found out when my children first heard the Flintstones sing about "a gay old time"). The early church, and even Jewish rabbis, forgot what the "any cause" divorce was, because soon after the days of Jesus, it became the only type of divorce on offer. It was simply called divorce. This meant that when Jesus condemned "divorce for 'any cause,' " later generations thought he meant "divorce for any cause."

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Although the church forgot the other cause for divorce, every Jew in Jesus' day knew about Exodus 21:10-11, which allowed divorce for neglect. Before rabbis introduced the "any cause" divorce, this was probably the most common type. Exodus says that everyone, even a slave wife, had three rights within marriage—the rights to food, clothing, and love. If these were neglected, the wronged spouse had the right to seek freedom from that marriage. Even women could, and did, get divorces for neglect—though the man still had to write out the divorce certificate. Rabbis said he had to do it voluntarily, so if he resisted, the courts had him beaten till he volunteered!

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Divorce for neglect included divorce for abuse, because this was extreme neglect. There was no question about that end of the spectrum of neglect, but what about the other end? What about abandonment, which was merely a kind of passive neglect? This was an uncertain matter, so Paul deals with it. He says to all believers that they may not abandon their partners, and if they have done so, they should return (1 Cor. 7:10-11). In the case of someone who is abandoned by an unbeliever—someone who won't obey the command to return—he says that the abandoned person is "no longer bound."

...

Putting all this together gives us a clear and consistent set of rules for divorce and remarriage. Divorce is only allowed for a limited number of grounds that are found in the Old Testament and affirmed in the New Testament:

• Adultery (in Deuteronomy 24:1, affirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19)
• Emotional and physical neglect (in Exodus 21:10-11, affirmed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 7)
• Abandonment and abuse (included in neglect, as affirmed in 1 Corinthians 7)

Jewish couples listed these biblical grounds for divorce in their marriage vows. We reiterate them as love, honor, and keep and be faithful to each other. When these vows were broken, it threatened to break up the marriage. As in any broken contract, the wronged party had the right to say, "I forgive you; let's carry on," or, "I can't go on, because this marriage is broken." (more)

A Christian Manifesto

By Francis Schaeffer
Boundless Webzine

Twenty-five years ago, the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer gave a message at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was called A Christian Manifesto and it was based on a book he had published the year before with Crossway. While people familiar with the Communist Manifesto might cringe at the use of that word, Dr. Schaeffer intended it to be rallying cry in response to a less familiar, but equally destructive, declaration called The Humanist Manifesto that emerged in 1973.
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Christians, in the last 80 years or so, have only been seeing things as bits and pieces which have gradually begun to trouble them and others, instead of understanding that they are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one; things such as overpermissiveness, pornography, the problem of the public schools, the breakdown of the family, abortion, infanticide (the killing of newborn babies), increased emphasis upon the euthanasia of the old and many, many other things....
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So, Humanism is the absolute certain result, if we choose this other final reality and say that is what it is. You must realize that when we speak of man being the measure of all things under the Humanist label, the first thing is that man has only knowledge from himself. That he, being finite, limited, very faulty in his observation of many things, yet nevertheless, has no possible source of knowledge except what man, beginning from himself, can find out from his own observation. Specifically, in this view, there is no place for any knowledge from God.
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It should be noticed that this new dominant world view is a view which is exactly opposite from that of the founding fathers of this country. Now, not all the founding fathers were individually, personally, Christians. That certainly is true. But, nevertheless, they founded the country on the base that there is a God who is the Creator (now I come to the next central phrase) who gave the inalienable rights.

We must understand something very thoroughly. If society — if the state gives the rights, it can take them away — they're not inalienable. If the states give the rights, they can change them and manipulate them. But this was not the view of the founding fathers of this country. They believed, although not all of them were individual Christians, that there was a Creator and that this Creator gave the inalienable rights — this upon which our country was founded and which has given us the freedoms which we still have — even the freedoms which are being used now to destroy the freedoms.
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So what we find is that the abortion case should not have been a surprise because it boiled up out of, quite naturally, (I would use the word again) mathematically, this other world view. In this case, human life has no distinct value whatsoever, and we find this Supreme Court in one ruling overthrew the abortion laws of all 50 states, and they made this form of killing human life (because that's what it is) the law. The law declared that this form of killing human life was to be accepted, and for many people, because they had no set ethic, when the Supreme Court said that it was legal, in the intervening years, it has become ethical.
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We, who are Christians, and others who love liberty, should be acting in our day as the founding fathers acted in their day. Those who founded this country believed that they were facing tyranny. All you have to do is read their writings. That's why the war was fought. That's why this country was founded. They believed that God never, never, never wanted people to be under tyrannical governments. They did it not as a pragmatic or economic thing, though that was involved too, I guess, but for principle. They were against tyranny, and if the founding fathers stood against tyranny, we ought to recognize, in this year 1982, if they were back here and one of them was standing right here, he would say the same thing — what you are facing is tyranny. The very kind of tyranny we fought, he would say, in order that we might escape.
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Now I want to say something with great force, right here. What I have been talking about, whether you know it or not, is true spirituality. This is true spirituality. Spirituality, after you are a Christian and have accepted Christ as your Savior, means that Christ is the Lord of ALL your life — not just your religious life, and if you make a dichotomy in these things, you are denying your Lord His proper place. I don't care how many butterflies you have in your stomach, you are poor spiritually. True spirituality means that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord of all of life, and except for the things that He has specifically told us in the Bible are sinful and we've set them aside — all of life is spiritual and all of life is equally spiritual. That includes (as our forefathers did) standing for these things of freedom and standing for these things of human life and all these other matters that are so crucial, if indeed, this living God does exist as we know that He does exist. (more)

Bush's Bait and Switch Theology: Religious Liberty and the Monotheistic Fallacy

By Joe Carter
The Evangelical Outpost

The President's attempt to promote a monotheistic ecumenism among the world's religions is noble but misguided. Neither Muslims nor Christians (or as I hope to show, Jews) believe that we "pray to the same God."
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1. {If P then Q} If you believe that Jesus is the begotten son of God, then you do not believe in the one true God (See Note 1: Qu'ran (Sura 112))
2. {P} Christians believe that Jesus is the begotten son of God. (See Note 2: John 3:16)
3. {Q} Christians do not believe in the one true God.

Note 1: Qu'ran (Sura 112) -- "Say: He is God, The One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, Nor is He begotten; And there is none Like unto Him."

Note 2: John 3:16 (KJV) -- "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

...

But the most that can be inferred by that conclusion is that Muslims do not believe Christians and Muslims worship the same God. A slightly more complex argument is needed to prove that Christians (at least those Christians, like evangelicals, who believe the Bible is authoritative) also should not subscribe to this view:

1. P -- The Gospels of Matthews and John make accurate claims about what Jesus said.
2. Q -- Everything Jesus said was true.
3. R -- Jesus said that he is the begotten son of God. {John 3:16, 1, 2}
4. S -- Jesus said that you can know the Father, if and only if you know him first. {John 8:19, Matt. 11:27 1, 2}*
5. T --> U -- If you deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God then you do not know Jesus. {Modus Ponens, 1, 2, 3}
6. U --> V -- If you do not know Jesus then you do not know the Father. {Modus Ponens, 4}
7. T --> V If you deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God then you do not know the Father. {Hypothetical syllogism, 5, 6}
8. W -- Muslims deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God. (Qu'ran (Sura 112) -- "Say: He is God, The One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, Nor is He begotten; And there is none Like unto Him.")
9. T & W -- You deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God and Muslims deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God. {Conjunction, 5, 8}
10. W --> V -- If Muslims deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God then Muslims do not know the Father. {Simplification, Modus Ponens, 7, 9}

If this argument is valid then it proves that Christians and Muslims do not pray and worship the "same" God. The problem is that agreeing with #6 implies that Jewish believers--at least since the time of Christ--also do not worship the "same" God.
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One of the basic axiomatic truths of Christianity is that God is Triune. While this is a difficult doctrine that no one fully comprehends, all orthodox Christians agree that Jesus is not merely a 'part' or 'attribute' of God but is one of the three persons and that all are God and all are one. A Christian cannot speak of 'God' without including both Christ and the Holy Spirit.

We also should not claim that, though Jews have an incomplete knowledge of God, they worship the "same" God as Christians. For it is not that Jews are unaware of Jesus; it is that they reject him. They believe it is blasphemous to claim that Christ is the same person as God. Christians, if we are consistent with our belief in the triune Godhead, will say that it is blasphemous to claim that that Jesus is not God.

To do otherwise is to either deny the validity of our belief in Christ or dismiss the Jewish belief that he is not divine. In essence we are claiming either that Jews are ignorant concerning the person they claim to worship or that it is possible to worship God and exclude Christ. In my opinion, both of these options are unacceptable.

Most Jews (and Muslims) are aware of the person of Jesus Christ, aware of the claims made about him in the New Testament, and have concluded that the claim concerning his deity are false. While I disagree with their conclusion, I trust that they have justified reasons, at least in their own minds, for why they reject him as Lord. We do all believers a disservice, when like President Bush, we resort to a "bait and switch" theology-- claiming that we all worship the same God and yet adding an element on which the other religions find abhorrent.

Religious liberty is a divinely permitted freedom. As Christians it is our duty to speak the truth in love and to deal maturely with genuine disagreements. The ideal of religious tolerance is not to agree to the lowest common beliefs but rather to show respect due to fellow humans made in the image of God. By glossing over our theology with a layer of politically correct ecumenical agreement we are being 'intolerant' of both Islam and Judaism. (more)

G.K. Chesterton and the Use of the Imagination

By Dale Ahlquist
Dappled Things

The purpose of the imagination is to make us more like God. Sounds like something a serpent might say. But it’s not. That really is the purpose of the imagination. To make us more like God. After all, our imagination is a gift from God. It is perhaps one of the greatest gifts God has given us. It not only separates us from the beasts, it allows us to create new worlds of our own. Our imagination gives us a kind of omnipotence. There is almost nothing that we cannot do within the infinity of our minds. The Creator has made us in His own image. That is, he has made us creators. Our creativity is re-creation. And yes, it is recreation as well. It is restorative and rejuvenating. It is a pleasure. It is peace. It is a gift that we have abused, but perhaps even worse, it is a gift we have left unused.

One of the people who understood this better than anyone was the great English writer, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). A genius who was a master of many genres, from poetry to fiction to social and literary criticism, Chesterton was a key influence on the some of the 20th century’s most imaginative writers, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. While Chesterton has always had fans, the world has largely forgotten this large writer. But as a new generation rediscovers his works, his importance is beginning to be appreciated. In fact, the incredibly quotable Chesterton only seems to improve with each passing year.

Chesterton says that imagination is perhaps the mightiest of the pleasures of man. But what is the use of these images that we make inside our heads? Throughout his prolific writings, Chesterton provides many marvelous answers to this question.

Our first use of imagination, chronologically, that is, comes in the nursery. The four walls within which we find ourselves as children, seem to be filled with endless worlds of adventure. Fairy tales serve an important role in our imagination. Left to ourselves, our imagination can go astray, even very early on. The fairy tales are the first way we are put on the right track. As Chesterton says:

Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give a child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Chesterton says that imagination is the most essential element in education, and it is the most important product of education. If we learn to use our imaginations, it gives us a certain freedom and self-sufficiency and contentment. “The man who can make up stories about the next-door neighbour will be less-dependent on the next day’s newspaper.” People who neglect their powers of imagination become both passive and restless. They rely on something else to entertain them, something else to occupy their minds. They are unable to do it themselves. Chesterton says that a society that pays others to dance for them is in a state of decadence. Soon we are paying others to think for us.

Perhaps the most important use of imagination is that it keeps us from going insane. Chesterton says the madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. What he has lost is that human variable that is the creative imagination. The poet, says Chesterton, simply tries to get his head into the heavens, while the logician tries to get the heavens into his head. It is his head that splits.

Along the same lines, Chesterton claims that logic is not a productive tool. It is merely a weapon of defense. We can argue with our opponents using logic and we can certainly defend the truth with it, but we need more than logic to complete our philosophy and our faith. Chesterton says that we have to be like Nehemiah, the Old Testament hero who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. Each of his workers had a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. The sword was the weapon of defense. The trowel was the creative tool. “The imagination, the constructive quality, is the trowel, and argument is the sword.”

So, just as we cannot lose our imagination, neither can we lose our reason. Reason and Imagination must go together. Our mental and spiritual health depends on keeping this balance. We must have an imaginative use of reason, and reasonable use of imagination. Without reason, the imagination merely runs wild and goes to weeds. Chesterton says, “Imagination is a thing of clear images, and the more a thing becomes vague the less imaginative it is. Similarly, the more a thing becomes wild and lawless the less imaginative it is.”

The right use of imagination then is to be lawful, not lawless. To be obedient, not disobedient. To use our creativity for worshipping the Creator, not for defying him. Worship is an act of awe. Artists who have detached themselves from a religious grounding, don’t fly but merely float away. Their creativity has no reference point. They try to be original. They try to be different. They try to shock. But endless shock merely makes us senseless. We have lost our true appreciation of surprise because we have the purpose of creativity precisely backwards. “The function of imagination,” says Chesterton, “is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders.”

Art, like love, is not for ourselves alone. It is first for God, and then for our neighbor. The greatest art helps lift our neighbors to God, even our neighbors who have not been born yet. It is not a passing thrill, but an inspiration for the ages.

“The trumpet of imagination,” says Chesterton, “like the trumpet of the Resurrection, calls the dead out of their graves.”

Helpers Meet?

A Symposium on Dating, Courtship & Marriage

That Could Be Arranged by S. M. Hutchens
Not-So-Blind Date by Jocelyn Mathewes
Three’s No Crowd by Kevin Offner
Father Knows Maybe Not by James Hitchcock
(more)

What ever happened to sin?

By Michael S. Horton, Ph.D.
Westminster Writings

God will expose all of the secrets of our hearts on the last day. However, where Osteen seems to think that God’s judgment of our heart (like his record-keeping) is good news, Scripture treats it as the worst possible report, since “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer 17:9). Jesus added, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Mt 15:11). My heart has conceived and committed sins that my hands have never carried out. Far from being a relatively unspoiled beach of sanctity, the heart is the citadel from which our mutiny against God and neighbor is launched. Even when I have done the right thing as far as other people are concerned, if my sincerity were weighed, it would actually count against my righteousness. So to think that our trial before God’s all-knowing justice can somehow turn in our favor by examination of our heart or the record of our life is a dangerous mistake. I keep thinking of St. Anselm’s great line to those who thought that Christ’s death was not a vicarious substitution: “You have not yet considered how great is your sin is.” Osteen’s outlook may resonate with Americans steeped in a sentimentalized version of the Pelagian heresy of self-salvation. But it is not Christianity.
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Osteen’s view of sin, ironically, is actually quite similar to the “hellfire and brimstone” preaching of a prior generation. To be sure, you’ll never hear him threatening, “You’ll go to hell if you dance. Don’t smoke, or you will incur God’s judgment.” Heaven and hell are not exactly your major themes when the message is all about “your best life now.” But his message is still very much about moral therapy: changing your lifestyle to receive God’s favor. It’s not heaven in the hereafter, but happiness here and now: but it is still up to you to make it happen.
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The second move in this trivialization of sin is to reduce it to actions rather than a condition. If I can stop committing sin x, then it is at least logically possible that I can stop committing sin y, and so on, until I am at least avoiding all known sins. If, however, sin is first of all a condition and only secondarily actions, then no matter how many sins I “conquer,” I’m still sinful! No matter what advances I think I’ve made, according to God, “There is no one righteous, no not even one; no one who understands; no one who seeks for God” (Rom 3:10-11, quoting Psalm 14:1-3; 53:1-3). “Our righteousness”—never mind our sins!—“is like filthy rags” (Is 64:6). So now we can no longer rest confidently in our own behaviors, standards, Judeo-Christian ethics, virtues, discipleship, deeds of love and kindness, and pious spirituality. We can no longer divide the world neatly into “decent” and “disgusting.” We must take our place with the prostitutes and publicans rather than with the Pharisees in order to enter the kingdom of God.

Wouldn’t Osteen’s message have a lot in common with what I’ve just said? In tone, perhaps. However, instead of considering us Christians as just as disqualified from heaven on our own merits as publicans and prostitutes, his message assumes that deep down, we are all—including publicans and prostitutes—pretty good people who could just be a little better. Ironically, he shares with his “hellfire and brimstone” forebears an assumption that sin is not an all-encompassing condition from which we cannot free ourselves, but particular actions that we can overcome through good instructions. And he too has his own lists. He may include some of the older taboos, but the main “sins” are failing to put God’s principles for success into practice.
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Again we meet the swinging pendulum: recoiling from the decidedly “un-fun” legalism of his youth, Osteen rebounds into the arms of antinomianism (no law). No wonder he does not speak of sins (much less the sinful condition that renders us all—even believers—“sinners”), since there is apparently no divinely given “set of rules” that might identify such an offense. The standard is not righteousness, but fun; not holiness before God, but happiness before oneself.

It is not obvious that Christ—at least his incarnation, obedient life, atoning death, and justifying and life-giving resurrection—is necessary at all in Osteen’s scheme. “But you have rules, don’t you?”, King pressed, to which Osteen replied, “We do have rules. But the main rule is to honor God with your life. To live a life of integrity. Not be selfish. You know, help others. But that’s really the essence of the Christian faith.” Notice how Osteen’s happy, fun-filled Christian life without rules suddenly becomes the most demanding religion possible. He is certainly correct when he says that God commands a life of integrity and helping others, not being selfish. In fact, Jesus excoriated the Pharisees for substituting their own petty laws for God’s commands, which actually served some good purpose for our neighbors. However, this is precisely what the Law prescribes. Jesus said that “the whole law” is summarized in one sentence: “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37). Osteen apparently thinks that this is easier than following “a set of rules.” In truth, as the rich young ruler learned, it is not. I may keep from literally killing my neighbor, but if I have not sacrificed everything for my neighbor’s good, I have not really loved him or her. Osteen thinks that loving our neighbor is easier than “a lot of rules,” but Jesus showed us that it’s the other way around. One may be sexually pure to one’s friends, but God knows whether adultery has been committed in one’s heart.
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At first glance, this sounds humble—and perhaps, compared to some of the moralistic and self-righteous jeremiads of yesteryear that threatened God’s judgment for drinking a glass of wine or going to a movie, it is. However, the answer to bad law-preaching is good law-preaching, not its elimination. The proper preaching of the law—God’s holiness, righteousness, glory, and justice—will not create an “us” versus “them” self-righteousness, but will expose the best works, done from the best motives of the best among us as “filthy rags” before God’s searching judgment. Bad law-preaching levels some of us; Osteen’s omission of the law levels none of us; biblical preaching of the law levels all of us.
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The Bad News Is Far Worse
The bad news is far worse than that we are not experiencing health, wealth, and happiness now. It is that we are actually dying and nothing can reverse this fact. It gets worse. Death is just a symptom. We will all have a different “cause of death” listed on the medical certificate. However, death itself is the result of a condition we all share: “The wages of sin is death…” (Rom 6:23); “The sting of death is sin, and the power of death is the law” (1 Cor 15:56). Notice that it is not sins (particular actions), but sin (a condition), that requires our death. Even now, we are falling apart on our way toward death—even if we are having our best life now.

The Good News is Far Better
The good news is far greater than finding a way to mask our symptoms. In both of those passages just cited, it is the counter-point to the bad news: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:23). “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:56-57). The victory here promised is far greater than relief from stress, sadness, loneliness, disappointment, and even illness leading to death. It is the victory over everlasting death through the resurrection on the last day, as we share in Christ’s victory over the grave: “When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’” (1 Cor 15:54-55). Christ did not deal with symptoms; he went right to the source: the curse that his law justly imposes as the penalty for our participation in Adam’s sin. As the first Adam brought death, the Last Adam brought eternal life (1 Cor 15:20-24).

Far greater than living longer, enjoying ourselves and our circumstances, is the unfathomable richness of our life together with God, reconciled even while we were enemies, made alive even while we were spiritually dead, brought near even while we were strangers, and adopted as co-heirs of the entire estate even while we were hostile to the things of God. Even now we begin to enjoy a foretaste of this feast, as those for whom “there is therefore no condemnation” (Rom 8:1). Through faith in Christ, we have the assurance that the last judgment has already been determined in our favor despite our sinfulness even as Christians. In the midst of our suffering, pain, and even death, we can confidently cling to the promise that Paul quotes from Isaiah 64:4, namely that which “‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’” (1 Cor 2:9). Where the gospel has salvation from the guilt and tyranny of sin now and from the presence and effects of sin in the future, Osteen’s very American message has the gospel as salvation from the symptoms of sin now without any clear proclamation of the far greater liberation from God’s wrath.

Because he does not face the bad news, Osteen does not really have any good news. To paraphrase Jesus’ description of his generation in Luke 7:31-35, Osteen’s message teaches us to sing neither the Blues nor the triumphant anthem. It’s more like a steady, droning, upbeat hum that we hear on the elevator or at the mall, keeping everything light and undisturbing.

If Osteen were a herald, ambassador, and messenger of the gospel, he would humbly yet confidently proclaim the message that we have been given, rather than deciding for himself what kind of ministry for which he wants to be remembered. An ambassador is sent with the word of his superior. However, Osteen sees himself “more as a coach, as a motivator to help [people] experience the life God has for us.” Not only does Osteen’s commitment to his own message and ministry fail to serve the interests of God’s kingdom; they fall far short of truly serving his hearers. If he loves the people to whom he speaks, he will give them the truth about their situation before God and the good news of God’s grace in Christ.

Of course, it is a lot easier to say, “…I don’t have it in my heart to condemn people,” when you are asked if Jesus is the only way of salvation. It makes us look good. We can be the “nice guy” in a culture that prizes being nice. But being nice isn’t always loving. A doctor who can’t bring himself or herself to inform you of your cancer in time to receive a possible cure is actually selfish. We trust such informed people to tell us the truth regardless of the personal anxiety or unpleasantness of the news.
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When God finishes telling us the bad news, it is not just the non-Christians or “backsliders” who feel its sting, but the most pious believers who recognize that their “righteousness” is actually “dung” compared to the righteousness that God requires and the righteousness that Christ fulfilled (Phil 3).

But God also tells the truth about the good news. No doctor can actually assume your cancer, suffer its terrible results, and assure your resurrection by his own victory over death. But God has done this! As God incarnate, Christ fulfilled his own law in our place, bore its judgments against us on the cross, and was raised the third day for our justification (Rom 4:25). “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). True love is exhibited in God’s act of reconciling sinners to himself by doing what he commanded us to do, bearing the judgment that we deserved for not having done it, and clothing us in the perfect righteousness of the incarnate Son. Salvation is therefore a free gift for us, though it cost God dearly. “Nice” seems trivial in comparison to God’s love and mercy.

Osteen is certainly correct when he says that we cannot assume God’s role in the last judgment. We cannot condemn anyone. Nevertheless, we have no choice—if we are faithful witnesses—other than to announce the condemnation that rests on all who have not turned from their own claims to righteousness, decency, sincerity, and piety to embrace the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. It is not our condemnation, but our clear warning of God’s just condemnation of all who are outside of Christ, that the Lord of the church mandates. Osteen’s message is softer, but it is not kinder. He thinks that people who show signs of integrity and a willingness to change are candidates for God’s blessings. He does not believe that God justifies the wicked, but that he says, “You’re not too bad” to those who do their best.
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It is this sense of God’s majesty, holiness, and righteousness—his distance from us as our judge and king—that is totally absent in Osteen’s message. God is our buddy who exists for our happiness, not we for his glory. At the end of the day, Osteen’s “good news” is the worst possible news. God’s blessing on my life depend on my honoring God with my life, living a life of integrity, and not being selfish. Not only does Osteen affirm this; he adds, “But that’s really the essence of the Christian faith.” If so, what makes Christianity any different from other religions? Is the essence of the Christian faith my life, righteousness, integrity, and helping others or Christ’s? We meet here Paul’s absolute contrast between “the righteousness that is by the works of the law” and “the righteousness that is by faith in Christ.” There is no more damning criticism that one can offer of Osteen’s message than that it takes the former route, albeit in a more upbeat, pleasant, and cheerful tone. (more)

What is Reasonable Faith?

By Dr. William Lane Craig
Reasonable Faith

What makes a faith reasonable and who decides which faith is or isn’t reasonable? (more)

Human Rights and Justice in an Age of Terror

By Keith Pavlischek
Christianity Today

War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, although I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

When a religious scheme is shattered it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also, and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they are isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful … .(G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)
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In March 2007 a small group of evangelical academic theologians and activists released An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror, a document that was subsequently published in The Review of Faith and International Affairs, along with a commentary by David Gushee, the lead drafter. What follows is my own effort—as an evangelical, a political philosopher, and a recently retired intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps with a long history of both scholarly and personal interest in these matters—to engage the issues they have raised. I hope that this response will give rise to further discussion and clarification of these vitally important matters, and help provide guidance for evangelicals who wish to speak coherently and responsibly on these and similar issues of public concern.
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This is no minor point between those of us who would defend the classic just war tradition against the pacifist and quasi-pacifist signatories to the Declaration. To illustrate my point that there is something profound at stake here, let me call attention to an illuminating passage from The Wine-Dark Sea, the sixteenth volume of Patrick O'Brian's masterful twenty-volume series of historical novels set in the Napoleonic period in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Captain Jack Aubrey, captain of the British ship Surprise, has taken captive the American privateer, Franklin. The sailing-master of the Franklin had been killed in the battle, but the owner of the ship, the Frenchman Jean Dutourd, survived. O'Brian's description is priceless:

Dutourd, a man of passionate enthusiasms, had like many others at the time fallen in love with the idea of a terrestrial Paradise to be founded in a perfect climate, where there should be perfect equality as well as justice, and plenty without excessive labour, trade, or the use of money, a true democracy, a more cheerful Sparta; and unlike most others he was rich enough to carry his theories into something like practice, acquiring this American-built privateer, manning her with prospective settlers and a certain number of seamen, most of the people being French Canadians or men from Louisiana, and sailing her to Moahu, an island well south of Hawaii, where with the help of a northern chief and his own powers of persuasion, he hoped to found his colony. (28)

Stephen Maturin, surgeon, natural philosopher, intelligence officer, and Captain Aubrey's closest friend, had met Dutourd before. Maturin, who holds decidedly more republican sympathies than his Tory captain, thought Dutourd, despite seeming to be benevolent enough, "to have been misled first by that mumping villain Rousseau and also by his passionate belief in his own system, based as it was on a hatred of poverty, war and injustice, but also on the assumption that men were naturally and equally good, needing only a firm, friendly hand to set them on the right path, the path to the realization of their full potentialities." (p. 32)

Upon the capture of his vessel, the prisoner Dutourd was brought to Captain Aubrey's quarters to formally consummate the surrender:

Doutourd's most recent sailing-master had been an exact, an orderly person as well as a tout skipper and an excellent seaman, and Doutourd handed over a complete set [of official papers] wrapped in sailcloth.
Jack looked through them with satisfaction; then frowned and looked though the parcels again. 'But where is your commission, or letter of marque?'
'I have no commission or letter of marque, sir,' replied Dutourd, shaking his head and smiling a bit. 'I am only a private citizen, not a naval officer. My soul purpose was to found a colony for the benefit of mankind.'
'No commission, either American of French?'
'No, no. It never occurred to me to solicit one. Is it looked upon as a necessary formality?'
'Very much so."
'I remember having received a letter from the Minister of Marine wishing me every happiness on my voyage; perhaps that would answer?'
'I am afraid not, sir. Your happiness has included the taking of several prizes, I collect?'
'Why, yes, sir. You will not think me impertinent if I observe that our countries, alas, are in a state of war.'
'So I understand. But wars are conducted according to certain forms. They are not wild riots in which anyone may join and seize whatever he can overpower; and I fear that if you can produce nothing better than the recollection of a letter wishing you every happiness you must be hanged as a pirate.'
'I am concerned to hear it … .'

Absent a commission or a letter of marque from a recognized member of the community of nations, the Franklin and the private citizen Dutourd were no more authorized to take "prizes" (attacking ships on the high seas) than were mere criminals (pirates) who did it for private gain. Indeed, they were in a moral sense worse than pirates seeking private gain, for they undermined the authority (in terms of the jus ad bellum the criteria of right authority) by which war could be waged. By doing so, the otherwise benevolent Dutourd was assaulting the laws and customs of war and undermining the just war tradition's insistence that "wars are conducted according to certain forms" and are not "wild riots" which anyone can join.

Captain Aubrey captures the proper Christian sensibilities in the matter in contrast to the rights-bearing, egalitarian, war-hating, poverty-hating Dutourd. Nobody familiar with O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin canon will mistake Jack Aubrey as a model of Christian piety. But he was formed in a Christian culture (in his case an Anglican one) that understood quite well that civilization, even in times of war, rests on certain forms and behaviors. That letter of marque distinguished what was owed to honorable combatants and what was not owed to proto-terrorists like Dutourd.

In thinking about how they should respond to moral challenges such as torture in an age of terror, or in an age of Islamic-style Dutourds gone mad, if you will, American evangelical academic theologians and activists must come to grips with the proper moral and political distinctions that Christians have struggled with throughout the ages. Just so, the framers of the Declaration might have reflected on the distinction that came to Captain Aubrey quite naturally, that whatever non-state terrorists are owed, they don't deserve the same "rights" as honorable warriors captured on the field of battle, and from there seek to explain just what is and is not owed to them. But those distinctions seem to have eluded them. (more)

Retaking Mars Hill

By Russell D. Moore
Touchstone Magazine

Offering one answer to this confusion, many contemporary Christians often speak of the need to “engage” popular culture. What they most often mean by this is that they seek to speak in a language people shaped by popular culture can understand or that they want to “redeem” popular culture for the glory of Christ.

In my world, the world of American Evangelicalism, at least two groups have clear ways to do this. One group wants to imitate pop culture but Christianize it. Another group wants to find ways in which that culture itself presents the gospel. Both want to use pop culture to reach the wider culture, and both find their justification in Paul’s talk on that first-century Athenian hilltop described in Acts 17.

And they are right to try: If Christians are going to speak to people, Christians as well as others, who have been deeply formed by popular culture (as we must) without losing our souls, we’re going to have to decipher how to relate Mars Hill to Rolling Stone.
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Adapting current cultural forms for use as Christians is not, in itself, a bad idea. In fact, in many ways it is unavoidable. If our pulpits are successful in persuading Christians that Jesus is to be the central focus of the believer’s life, we should not be surprised but joyful when young Christians gifted to be hip-hop artists rap about Jesus rather than about pimps and firearms.

Still, there is a danger in a kind of co-option of popular culture for Christian use that does not discern the limits of the evangelistic and apologetic potential of such a strategy. This is especially true when the impetus behind so much of it is not ecclesial or missionary but commercial.
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In this model, one seeks to know pop culture, not in order to imitate it, but first to enjoy it as an aspect of common grace, and second to share a common cultural dialect with unbelievers. You don’t fight a “culture war” with Hollywood, you seek to redeem Hollywood instead, by finding the aspects of contemporary music and film that are consonant with biblical truth. Christians are to highlight these commonalities, and downplay thedivergences.

Again, there is much that is commendable here. These Christians recognize that insights about God, man, and redemption cannot be found simply in the piety of believers. Even at the end of the Scripture story, at the New Jerusalem, the Apostle John tells us that “the glory and the honor of the nations” will be brought into the City, a glory that surely includes expressions of human culture—perhaps even popular culture. Moreover, these Evangelicals wish to avoid a “Christian ghetto” in which Christians are unable to speak the same basic cultural discourse as the people to whom they are called to bring Christ.

The pitfalls with this approach also include a commercial Christian industry that by its very nature, perhaps unintentionally, militates against wisdom, discernment, and balance. As with the “Off Brand” market, money is involved here, too. It’s just subtler. The younger, cooler wave of Evangelicals would never fall for a Christian version of the Backstreet Boys, much less the crass evangelistic showmanship of the last generation’s Petra or Carman musical acts. Instead they consume anti-consumerist Evangelical acts, such as Derek Webb.
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Christians seeking to “engage popular culture” point to the Apostle Paul’s speech before the Areopagus, in which he cited the lyrics of pagan poets and the architecture of pagan temples. Christians, they argue, should follow Paul and use popular culture to “build a bridge” with its consumers, finding in popular works a “common ground” through which we can attract their interest and later communicate the gospel.
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But is this what Paul is doing on Mars Hill? The answer is no . The Apostle might say, “God forbid.” Often those pointing to Acts 17 wish to begin with Paul’s address itself, which starts in verse 22. But we must look first at how Paul found himself on the Hill in the first place. He was summoned there because of a controversy he evoked among the populace “because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18).

Paul did not start speaking in Athens with a “common ground” idea of a generic god, and then reason along to Jesus. He started with the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, proclaiming among the Gentile philosophers exactly what he had proclaimed among the Jewish rabbis: that God had raised him from the dead. Where Paul starts is also where he ends: with the guarantee that God will bring about judgment found in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (17:31).
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He points to the altar of the unknown god to demonstrate that the Athenians themselves acknowledge ignorance. How can you pontificate about the nature of the divine, he is asking, when even you tell me that there’s something important out there you admit you don’t know?

Paul does not find in the poets some form of “redemptive analogy” he can use among a people who don’t acknowledge the authority of Scripture. He uses them to demonstrate that Athenian philosophy and culture are self-contradictory.

How can you claim that these temples house the gods, he asks, when even your own culture-mavens say the divine can’t be housed in edifices made with hands? The poets lead him not to finding “common ground” with his hearers but to calling them to repentance on the basis of a scripturally revealed storyline of humanity (17:26–27,30–31).
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Paul’s discourse on the Areopagus is strikingly different from many Christians’ attempts to be relevant to popular culture. He points to the Athenians’ culture not so much to bring out what they know as what they deny.

Paul systematically unhinges key facets of Hellenic thought: the multiplicity of gods, their representation by images, their dwelling in temples, Greek racial superiority, the distance of the gods from humanity. He boldly challenges the Greeks’ tribal pride in being “sprung from the soil of their native Attica” (in the words of the New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce) by pointing to the common ancestry of humanity from “one man,” with God determining the “bounds of their habitation” and “removing all imagined justification for the belief that Greeks were innately superior to barbarians.”

Moreover, the very nature of Paul’s message was an affront to the ideological underpinnings of Athenian culture. He constantly returns to the resurrection of the body. Nothing was more alien to Epicurean and Stoic thought, both of which sought to combat the fear of death by separating the prison of the body that dies from the spirit that survives. How different is Paul’s view of death and resurrection from that of, for instance, the Stoic philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius, who in his Meditations compared death with birth from the womb, “when your soul will emerge from its compartment,” the body.
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Contemporary attempts at engaging popular culture are partly right. We cannot ignore it. It affects life in twenty-first-century America far more than high culture, far more, even, than the middle-brow culture of Broadway and PBS.
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The Bible speaks of culture being “redeemed” eschatologically; cultural artifacts seem to be in view as the “glory of the nations” brought into the New Jerusalem in the new creation (Rev. 21:24–26). We shouldn’t demand personal regeneration for artists before we can enjoy their work—whether that artist is Mozart or George Jones.

Christians should ask why culture resonates with the Superman mythology of a hero from beyond the stars who rescues humanity from itself. We should ask why country-music singer Toby Keith sings about the unity-in-diversity he longs for in his song “I Love This Bar.”

We should ask why, as the City Journal’s Harry Stein points out, trashy talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show always end with a “moral lesson for the day,” despite the fact that the rest of the broadcast has dismissed the very idea of moral absolutes. Why do gangster-rap hip-hop artists sing so much about their rage against an absent father?

We can see in pop culture what we can see also in the ideologies of Marx, Freud, Darwin, and others, even “New Atheists” like Dawkins and Hitchens: the longing for a story that makes sense of the world. In literature, films, and ballads, we can see a flash of what we know to be true—that man does not live by bread alone, or by orgasm alone, or by self-image alone. We are created to find ourselves in a storyline that begins and ends in Christ—even while, as sinners, we kick against the reality of that story.

The Christian analysis of popular culture always proceeds with a knowledge that there is enmity between the idolatries of man and the kingdom of Christ, that we are most tempted to evade Christ by looking to the works of our own hands (Is. 2:8), even, or maybe especially, when these works are culturally effective.

This means we must contrast gospels: the gospel of Jesus is always combated by other gospels—today by one that is often embedded in music, film, and visual art. And these messages are heard by our people in our pews. The people in our congregations are shaped by pop culture, a culture fueled by the advertising industry and a politically active artist guild.
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To contrast the “abundant life” of Christ with the “abundant life” offered by the spirit of the age, we must understand something of what Mammon is hawking.
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We must bring attentive consciences to bear even on (or especially upon) the most subtle pop-culture influences. How do Everybody Loves Raymond reruns, with a scolding, yelling wife and a cringing husband seeking permission to play golf, affect the way people in our churches view marriage? How does MTV’s Pimp My Ride affect the way our teenagers and young adults read the Sermon on the Mount? How do animated Disney films such as The Little Mermaid shape the way children—and adults—hear the command to honor father and mother?

Do we really believe that suspending disbelief long enough to see Morgan Freeman as God in the film Evan Almighty—heavily marketed to Evangelical

Christians—will not affect the way we read the prophet’s vision of the Holy One in Isaiah 6?

This is not being a scold; it is being a shepherd. The shepherd must look at the world in which his sheep live and warn them of its dangers, especially the most subtle ones. But he has an even greater duty. Let us go back to Paul in Athens.

What pop-culture-engaging Christians need to understand most from Acts 17 is the Athenians’ response. Luke tells us that what arrests the attention of the Athenians is not the so-called bridges Paul builds by citing Athenian cultural products. What pricks their attention at the end is what pricked their attention at the start: Jesus and the resurrection: “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, ‘We will hear you again about this’” (Acts 17:32).
Knowing Andy Griffith episodes or Coldplay lyrics might be important avenues for talking about kingdom matters, but let’s not kid ourselves. We connect with sinners in the same way Christians always have: by telling an awfully freakish-sounding story about a man who was dead, and isn’t anymore, but whom we’ll all meet face-to-face in judgment.
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Knowing Andy Griffith episodes or Coldplay lyrics might be important avenues for talking about kingdom matters, but let’s not kid ourselves. We connect with sinners in the same way Christians always have: by telling an awfully freakish-sounding story about a man who was dead, and isn’t anymore, but whom we’ll all meet face-to-face in judgment.
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Too many attempts at reconciling Christianity and pop culture, it seems to me, have to do with being seen as “relevant” by the culture on its own terms. We will never be able to do that. Pop culture is a rolling stone, and it waits for no band of Christians seeking to imitate it or exegete it.

Yes, we must learn to listen to what our culture is saying. We must remember to listen beneath the cool to the fear of a people who know that Judgment Day is coming; it’s written in their hearts (Rom. 2:15–16). We must remember to listen beneath the cynicism to men and women who experience longings that can only be fulfilled in the reign of a Galilean Carpenter-King.
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Christians must make sense of pop culture by judging it in terms of the story we embrace. When that happens, we’ll find ourselves back on Mars Hill. But let’s make sure we’re there because we are, as Paul was, preaching Jesus and the resurrection, not because we’ve started a new business making “unknown god” action figures. We probably won’t be considered “cool” to the culture—whether or not we’re able to sell music downloads to Christians. (more)

God Doesn't Give Autographs

By Gregory Koukl
Stand To Reason

why didn't God allow us to have the autographs, the originals? I guess I need to back up here a moment and talk about inspiration because this whole question that I want to approach here is grounded in the idea of inspiration. It's really important that you understand precisely what we mean when we say that God inspired the Scripture. Let's just take the claim at face value right now. I won't defend the notion; that's a different issue. What it means is that God worked in a supernatural way such that those who were actually doing the writing wrote down precisely what God wanted them to write. He was moving through a human individual.
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The point is, when we say it's inspired we mean that whatever the words were that were written down, these were the precise words that God wanted to have written down. God worked powerfully through those people such that their words were God's words and God's words were their words. That's why we call the Scripture the Word of God, even though they may be the words of Peter or Paul or John or the Prophets. They are still the word of God because God was working in a concursive way. He was writing together with them, in a sense. We call this operation inspiration.

What we mean by this, for example in the case of the New Testament, is that these are the particular words in the Greek language that most precisely reflect the meanings that God wanted to convey. Notice I used two terms there: words and meanings. In others words, the very words are the out-breathing of God. Technically they are not inspired; they are expired. I don't mean they are dead. They are theopneustus , "the breathing of God." "God-breathed" is what that means, literally. So now we have the words flowing from the pens of Peter and Paul and Moses and the Prophets that are the particular words that God chose to express His thoughts to us, but we don't have in our possession the inspired original words. No problem. That's actually a good thing.
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God has chosen a particular set of tokens in words recorded in the Scriptures that can be communicated equally to everyone. Therefore everybody has the same shot at the truth.

How does all this relate to the issue of Scripture and the original documents? There's a couple of conclusions we can draw. First is that the only way we can really communicate meaning is by using some kind of token of it--in this case, words. It can be a spoken word or a written word or sign language or some kind of token which communicates meaning. This is why it is so critical that it is not the meanings only that are inspired in Scripture but the tokens themselves, the writings, the words. If you lose the tokens, if you can't count on the tokens, then we don't have access to the meanings either. Another way of putting it is, how can you get inspired meanings without inspired words? Yet there are some people who hold that it is not the words that are inspired. The words can be fallible, but it's the meanings that are the things that really count. But how do you get one without the other? You've got to have some fixed point from which to depart. You've got to have the words--the tokens--which are a point of public access to the meanings. All of us can see the same word there. In this case, the fixed point is the words in the original manuscripts in the Greek, and God has given those things as a fixed point, particular tokens so that we can work with those tokens to get at the meaning. That's what we do when we do biblical interpretation.

Another advantage is that meanings themselves aren't reproducible. Only tokens are reproducible. So it makes sense that we have a Bible that is given to us in tokens. That is, written words which allow us to reproduce the tokens so that the meaning carried with the tokens can be transferred as well. Some people ask, Why doesn't God just speak to me? Why doesn't He just show himself to me? In a way He has. He has spoken. But to avoid showing Himself to every single person in some kind of special and unique fashion that may be confusing or misleading, God has chosen a particular set of tokens in words recorded in the Scriptures that can be communicated equally to everyone. Therefore everybody has the same shot at the truth. They have this shot through a fixed medium of the particular words that God has chosen. You can see how helpful this makes things, can't you? It deals decisively with the problem of each person having to interpret his own individual subjective revelation that is not tied to something objective like a text--words.
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how do you guard against it being changed or tampered with or corrupted by someone? It's one thing not to have any record at all and then everyone's in the dark. It's another thing altogether to have a spurious record, a faulty record giving commands from God that are not from God at all. That's worse.

Well, the way God handled that is to solve both problems by allowing the original to be destroyed. How does that solve the problem? He made sure there were thousands and then millions of copies. So many copies that they could not all be destroyed.

That's why I don't get it when some claim that the early church took out all the references from the Bible about reincarnation. Some claim that the Council of Nicea took out all the references to reincarnation, that it was originally in the Bible. First of all, how would anybody know that if it was taken a millennium and a half ago? How would you even know that it used to be there and now it's not there any more? Would you find eraser marks or something?

Then there's another problem. How is the church going to gather up the thousands of manuscripts that are being circulated all over the Mediterranean--actually there were tens of thousands; only thousands have survived--and expunge every reference in the Bible to reincarnation? Well, they can't do it when there are thousands of copies, but if there was only one they could. They could take it out and they could rewrite it. They could pretend that what they changed was really the original. That is, I think, one of the reasons God has allowed such a thing. If you had only the original, that could be done. But when you have thousands of copies it can't be done.

The Scriptures become dispersed abroad to all peoples in an objective form so that everyone gets the same thing in a way that protects the document from ever being forged or falsified. That can be done because even the original represents meaning through words as tokens and the tokens can be copied. They can be reproduced such that the copy of the token is the same as the original token. Just like the three words table on the board. They are the same as each other. So if we have a copy using the exact same tokens as the autograph, we essentially have the autograph. The same tokens convey the same meanings that are behind them.

In one sense, the original tokens are gone, the autograph is gone. But if we demonstrate that our present copies are accurate copies then it's fair to say that in regards to the tokens we have millions of originals all over the world. By golly, that's a pretty good system. (more)

The Left Celebrate Powwows

By Enoch Arya

In response to this article that appears in Politico.com, I'd like to pose this question: Should anyone be surprised by the fact that liberals like meetings? If that which is considered to be the highest level of morality is consensus, then meetings would be the tactical means to achieve it. This is the reason why Pres. Clinton cared so much about opinion polls and seemed to have based his decisions on their results. This is the same reason why Sen. John Kerry flip-flopped during his presidential campaign. It is an evidence of the group-think mentality of the Left. People who are intent on accomplishing things and being productive have a tendency to dislike meetings. Conversely, liberals embrace group-think mentality. Is it a surprise to anyone that this is how Sen. Pelosi prefers to run the Democratic Caucus?

Bigger & Heavier

By Enoch Arya

After reading this article at the Edmunds.com blog, I can't help but think that a large (pun intended) part of the reason automobiles get bigger and heavier is because their occupants are getting bigger and heavier, especially in developed countries, such as the US. Consequently, this mandates that additional safety be built into vehicles to safeguard against collision with ever bigger and heavier vehicles and against roll-over tendencies of bigger and heavier vehicles with bigger and heavier occupants/drivers whose driving skills and reaction times are inversely proportional to their belly size. These safety equipment include things, such as bigger and heavier steel braces around the doors, bigger and heavier crumple zones in the front and rear of the vehicles, multiple airbags for each occupant, driving nannies, such as dynamic stability control and traction control, all of which increase the size and weight of vehicles. Of course, with all of these additional size and weight, which impacts driving dynamics negatively, the vehicles will need more robust brakes, wheels, tires, and suspension components that are bigger and heavier, which once again contribute to the vehicles being, you guessed it, bigger and heavier.

Considering that the family sizes in most developed countries are getting ever smaller, which would lead an observer to conclude logically that the need for larger vehicles would decrease, perhaps in an inverse proportionality to the belly size of the family members, it's becoming apparent how ridiculously decadent people/automobile consumers are in the developed countries. This is not to mention that as an implication of vehicles being bigger and heavier is that collisions are getting more serious and damages/losses heavier, which in turn send insurance and healthcare bills skyrocketing, not to mention the vehicle prices themselves. Additionally, vehicle designers and safety experts, not to mention government regulators, will spend an increasing amount of time and effort pondering the solutions to and accomodating the effects of the vehicle occupants' increasing belly size as opposed to coming up with progressive inventions that make life and vehicles truly better.

Thank you decadent BIG and HEAVY folks for making this a reality.

Writers Cramped

By Donald T. Williams
Touchstone Magazine

My fellow Evangelicals publish reams upon reams of prose. What we have not tended to write is anything recognized as having literary value by the literary world. What makes this failure remarkable is that our Protestant forebears include a number of people who did: Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, George Herbert, John Milton, and John Bunyan, to mention a few.

Equally remarkable is the host of near contemporary conservative Christians—sometimes quite evangelical and even evangelistic, though not “Evangelicals”—who were also important writers. G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor are all recognized as important literary figures even by people who do not share their Christian commitment.

Where is the contemporary American Evangelical who can make such a claim?
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A True Worldview

First, O’Connor found a true worldview, encapsulated in dogma, which constituted a lens that brings human nature and human significance into piercing clarity. “Dogma,” she said, “is an instrument for penetratingreality. . . . It is one of the functions of the Church to transmit the prophetic vision that is good for all time, and when the novelist has this as a part of his own vision, he has a powerful extension of sight.”

O’Connor understood that good writers do not simply parrot these insights; they must take this doctrinal understanding and apply it to the concrete realities of human life. “Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.”

When we do not understand this distinction, Christian fiction becomes mere religious propaganda. “The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality.” Doctrine is a light to see human experience by, not a formula to be dressed up in a fictional disguise.

Though O’Connor did not put it this way, the biblical worldview gives us several truths relevant to the writer of fiction or poetry. It teaches us that everything in creation is significant, pregnant with meaning, because it all came from and relates back to the eternal Logos. It teaches us to see life as a drama of redemption in which human choices matter, and to see all of life, not just religious conversion, in those terms.

And it teaches us the value not only of God’s creation but also of our own creativity, for we were made in the image of the Creator. As J. R. R. Tolkien put it in his seminal essay “On Faerie Stories,” “We make still by the law in which we’re made."
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Purposeful Art

The second form of nurture O’Connor felt she had received from the Catholic Church was a definition of art that affirmed a spiritual purpose, indeed, a vocation, for the artist distinct from that of the propagandist. She quotes Thomas Aquinas as saying that art “is wholly concerned with the good of that which is made.” And she adds,

We are not content to stay within our limitations and make something that is simply a good in and by itself. Now we want to make something that will have some utilitarian value. Yet what is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God.

This is a telling comment. That which reflects God may have an evangelistic effect. But if evangelism must be the primary purpose of everything we write, then a lot of God’s character will remain unreflected—which will,ironically, not help the cause of evangelism. Also, the emphasis on “the good of that which is made” puts theology on record as affirming the value—indeed, the necessity—of the hard work and craftsmanship required for good writing.
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So it is not surprising that, with no such emphasis coming from its leaders, the popular Evangelical subculture seems even more addicted to pragmatism in itsapproach, as a brief trip through the “Christian bookstore” will show. Fiction can only be justified if it has an overt evangelistic purpose; works of visual art must have a Scripture verse tacked under them.

Perhaps when our theologians become concerned with the good of the thing made, some of our people will, too.

Fictional Mystery

The third form of nourishment O’Connor acknowledged as a gift from the Catholic Church was a sense of mystery. Good fiction ultimately probes the mysteries of life: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What is the Good?

“It is the business of fiction to embody mystery through manners,” she wrote. Therefore, “the type of mind that can understand good fiction is . . . the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery."
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This cannot be unrelated to the fact that we as a community can seem too much like the generation O’Connor described, “that has been made to feel that the aim of learning is to eliminate mystery.” Our services, like our fiction, are justified by their efficiency in achieving pragmatic goals. Our sermons are full of practical, easy steps to spiritual victory, a better marriage, or financial success; our music is designed to express comfortable emotions; everything is aimed at maximizing the body count at the altar call.
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Our failure to encourage our people to apply doctrine to the realities of life; our failure to include in our theology the whole counsel of the God who called Bezalel and Oholiab and gifted them as artists; and our pragmatism, an uncritical reflection of American culture rather than a biblical mandate, with our mystery-impoverished worship tradition are all simple failures to be what we claim to be, faithful to Scripture. They could be changed without threatening any of the doctrinal emphases that we think we have been right about. (more)

Why Do the Heathen Rage?

By Anthony Sacramone
First Things

Was there no better answer McGrath could have offered Dawkins, other than that the world is what it is, like it or not, but we mustn’t blame a God who, having assumed human flesh, suffered too? (God is made to seem like a cardiologist who, rather than operate on a patient with serious heart disease, induces in himself a heart attack so he can at least empathize if not cure.)
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What McGrath seemed hesitant to assert was God’s sovereignty. Between the theological statement “God is Good” and the sentimental statement “God is good” most definitely lies a world of pain. Shifting tectonic plates come as no surprise to God, who may very well choose to allow thousands to perish, just as he may choose to steady one child teetering on the precipice of disaster. And it has nothing to do with the kid’s being “lucky” (which explains nothing anyway) or particularly deserving (as opposed to all those spoiled brats and ungrateful adults who got theirs?).

But doesn’t that then make God little more than a despot, a sovereign being who simply wills arbitrarily and without cause or justification because, well, he’s God and we’re not, and therefore not conditioned by outside forces or answerable to anyone or anything?

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven,” Jesus tells his disciples (Luke 10:18). The end of Evil and its attendant evils is a foregone conclusion, a closed case. Natural disasters and the machinations of wicked men have been finally arrested—at the cross. But Jesus’ declaration of victory is an eschatological statement—made even before the cross had been planted in Calvary’s soil. We finite creatures are caught in the molasses of time and must endure the death throes of all that is contrary to God’s final purposes as if in slow motion. And so it is important to remember that Jesus is speaking to the seventy-two sent to preach and teach in his name. The victory of Jesus must still be published to all the world because it is a victory that is not immediately discernible except through the eyes of faith.

Which is to say that there’s the “already” of salvation history—He is risen—and the “not yet.” And the “not yet” entails suffering in this passing age—suffering that is often unjust and seemingly pointless, but in the hands of a sovereign and Good God a tool to conform his children to the image of his Only Begotten, the true purpose of their predestination. (So as not to be misunderstood, because suffering falls within the permissive will of God, and can even be used by him for ultimately good ends, is no excuse for complacency; the alleviation of pain, done in the name of Jesus, is, like preaching and teaching, a heralding of the kingdom and a diffusion of hope.)

Now, a sovereign God does not displace secondary causes in Christians’ thinking about how the world works. Shifting tectonic plates do give rise to earthquakes and tsunamis. But Christians also believe God continues to intervene in the affairs of his creatures and does so to remind them that the world and its horrors are not beyond his purview, and that the saved child and the answered prayer is a foretaste of the age to come, in which every tear shall be wiped away and the body will no longer be an occasion of sin or pain.

But a foretaste only. Which is why sometimes only one child is saved. And why only Lazarus is raised from the dead. They are signs of the “already,” while the rest endure the “not yet.” Hints, whispers, and still small voices until the full number of the Elect have come into the Kingdom and the very last fundamentalist Darwinian has raged.
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But a world in which children are deliberately kept from being taught the faith of their parents is one programmed for another kind of indoctrination—a materialist one. Those “protected” children will still thirst for meaning—a deeper meaning than even great achievements in this world can provide. And that thirst may find itself slaked in forms of religion that remain unable and unwilling to enter such rational champions as Alister McGrath into the lists of academic debate.

Dawkins may deplore such an eventuality, but he cannot stop it without finally embracing a totalitarian society that controls “thought” in the very way he deplores. (more)