Consider the Polar Bear

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Consider the polar bear.

Really it is quite impossible not to do so, since environmental evangelism is all about us. That this is so is one of the best things about contemporary culture. As a Tolkien-nerd, I have always favored the Ents over Saruman.

Traditionalists and liberals may disagree about how to do it, but we agree that being green is good. Phillip Johnson, the Berkeley law professor and gadfly, once noted that the best thing about community radicalism is that it had preserved Berkeley untouched in a 1950′s time warp.

While the means were regrettable, some of the ends were magnificent. Every year my family celebrates the Fourth of July in the all American city of Berkeley with buildings that the Cleavers would recognize and sidewalk hippies the Partridge Family would adore.

It is the West Coast version of Williamsburg.

Traditional Christians know that God’s creation is good and is designed with great wisdom. Fallen men and women hesitate over great changes to Creation. Our first rule as stewards of that Creation, given our vanity, is to first do no harm.

Better to save a tree and lose a strip mall, then quickly to cut down the work of centuries without counting the cost and have our grandchildren regret it.

So both traditional Christians and the rest of America have reason to consider the polar bear.

The Christian conservationist and the secular environmentalist agree that the polar bear is worth considering. While lilies of the field and the polar bears of the ice floe are worth less than a man, beauty of the field and might of the bear is surely worth more than any given gross of plastic parts.

And that agreement should give the secularist pause when he becomes too critical of the Christian God. It is a complex cosmos and God has many cares in it. God considers the lilies, the fields, the bears, and the ice flows. He must balance the needs of each against the greater good.

At the same time, God has made humankind the crown of His creation by giving to men and woman a free will. This further complicates the calculus of the goods of bears, lilies, fields, free will, and men.

Humankind has not even come close to deciding how to do this calculus, but secularists are quick to judge God for any perceived shortcoming. And yet if people concede all these competing goods, we must first know what a better world would look like if we would judge God.

How can we know that this is not the best of all possible worlds when we do not yet have a good idea of what such a world would look like?

How many polar bears does this planet need to be good? How much freedom do men need?

We value polar bears and ice fields to some extent over gadgets and strip malls, but have no real knowledge of the extent we should value them. How then can we judge the justice of God? What is the basis of comparison?

If God stopped a particular hurricane at great cost to the ecosphere, what cost would be too high for the secular environmentalist? When environmentalists are willing to ban DDT, and allow the spread of disease bearing misquotes, the same person must not too hastily judge a God balancing many environments and many goods.

The calculations are further complicated by the cosmos not being the way God made it. Humans put grit in the mechanism which complicates everything. We refuse to listen to caution and build cities where prudence would suggest we should not and then fail to take basic precautions to protect human life in those cities.

When Pompeii is destroyed by yet another volcano, will men blame God? What if volcanoes are needed to keep Italy the way it must be to support its fragile ecosystem? Why have we built a new city there and provided the people in it no adequate means to escape the volcano everyone knows will erupt?

God, and not just Al Gore, considers the polar bears, though God may value Gore more than bears. When I read the work of modern scientists studying the complexities and fragility of even one ecosystem, I recognize how hard it would be for me to see God’s actions in any particular detail of environmental history.

I can see God’s goodness overall in Creation, but the devil has room to roam in the details, cracks created by our sin. To paraphrase Saint Augustine, we can see Providence in the existence of polar bears, but strain to see it in any given day of their, or our, lives.

So consider the polar bears.

On White Collar, Covert Affairs, and the Trivial

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Two Shows We Try to Watch as a Family

Monk is gone.

The most reliable family entertainment to appear on television disappeared last year. Occasionally (ahem!) even our family likes to watch television and when we do we wish to watch it together. Tony Shaloub knew how to keep a diverse Reynolds room engaged in a series.

He was a rare and blessed actor and producer.

At some point, the members of the culture without an Arab Christian heritage or working for Pixar decided a “General Audience” (G-rating) meant a show so stupid only a five year old could live through it. Those doubting this never sat through the Piglet Movie. Compare it to the original Disney classic, or better the books read aloud, and think what this says about the estimate of your intelligence and attention span on the part of the respective studios.

Apparently in our culture the choices are childish or gross . . . as my priest, of blessed memory, discovered when he tried to get cable. The fellow putting it in suggested he get some “adult” channels. When Father said he was a pastor, the cable guy suggested the Disney channel. That might be alright, but the Disney channel gave up on Walt’s vision of family entertainment a long time ago to pander to tweens.

Zack and Cody did not have parts written to entertain us all.

The USA Network was the home of Monk and so we have been trying out two new shows there. The first is White Collar and the second is Covert Affairs. Both shows feel like they were written by the same people with White Collar being designed as the male fantasy with a good looking guy as the lead (think Bond meets Oceans 11) and Covert Affairs empowering a woman with the type of woman networks think is good looking. My grandmother would have worried that the poor soul was starving.

Both shows are entertaining, though neither show has the mix of humor and mystery that made Monk special for most of its run. The writing at the end of Monk relied too much on formulas, but both of the new shows embrace formulaic writing from the beginning in an obvious way.

Both shows rely on the “lost love” story arc to tie together the shows from each season though most episodes contain a complete story for the week as well. Think: set up story, climax of story, conclude story, and reveal something about the series story arc.

That is it.

Formulaic television can work. When you want to rest mentally, the old Perry Mason is a great friend. Full of solid acting and some decent stories, there are rarely any surprises. Perry will win, he will not marry Della, and Paul will not get (or hardly ever get) the last word.

Covert Affairs is burdened; however, with a leading lady one dimensional enough in her acting that she makes Raymond Burr look positively emotional. A fun family game is to count her three (and there are only three) facial expressions: smirk, wounded, “sultry” . . . though sultry may only count as a combination of wounded and smirk.

On the other hand, the blinded vet is one of the more interesting characters to appear on television. He is hard to predict and shows strong range. It is easy to see him taking over the series as the Spock in the cast. The women of the house assure me that this would be no bad thing from their perspective. Also enjoyable is the married couple that works in the CIA and the dynamics of their relationship, though she always wears an evening dress to work.

Be warned: everyone not married on the show thinks sex before marriage is part of the courtship process. The shacking before packing hasn’t made anyone on the show happy and it may be the way most folk in this generation now act, but that doesn’t make it right.

Covert Affairs gets one more season to develop wit, encourage the women on the show to eat, develop a story line that is less predictable, or it will not be worth anybody’s time.

White Collar is a different, if predictable, story. It features a “white collar criminal” with Bond looks who has gone sort of straight and works for the FBI. His FBI handler and his wife are the most attractive married couple on television. They make being married romantic and she looks like an actual woman!

On this show too non-married people shack before packing and acting on your sexual orientation is the way things are. That is fertile ground for conversation in our household. I think it generally good for my (almost grown) kids to see that people who make wrong choices are not obviously “bad” and are often attractive and “good” folks.

One can accept the way some people are without condoning their actions.

The plots of White Collar are more intricate than those on Covert Affairs, have taken more risks with the series arc, and there is more genuine humor. The character chemistry is better, though the show has been on the air longer giving the actors time to develop rapport.

It is more “adult” than Monk, which in our culture means less virtuous. It isn’t obvious from the show that crime does not pay. The main character still seems willing to reap many of the wages of his sin . . . and none of them are death. He is manipulative, but an endearing part of the long line of “lovable rogues”in fiction that made Cagney and Harrison Ford stars.

It is worth a look, though it does raise an interesting question: what is the value of trivial television?

Why Bother?

There is always something better to do than watch Perry Mason or White Collar. My IPod could read the Divine Comedy aloud. There are concerts to attend and Southern California to explore. Better still I could kiss my wife. I could help the poor. Heavens, I could read my Bible and pray.

And we should do all those things, but sometimes we are not fit for the better or best. Plato deserves attention that my weary mind cannot give him and my prayers would be vain repetition if I approached God in certain attitudes. They are not bad attitudes, but they are attitudes unfit for the sublime.

In a homely mood, there must be homely activities. Great saints and sages may be able to live in an exalted state at all times, but history shows great saints and sinners are hard companions and are rare. Since I am neither a great saint nor a sage, I can at least be a gentle companion.

It is better to discuss Plato than to watch Gilligan’s Island, but sometimes I am not my best. I am fit only for the company of Gilligan. We are the men and woman God has made us to be and we do not live in Paradise quite yet. So there is a place for the lesser loves and the lesser pleasures, if only because we are less than what we could be.

Beyond this hard fact there are four good reasons to watch trivial television, read trivial books, or play some trivial board game.

First, there is rest that only comes to me when my mind is just engaged enough not to “churn,” but not so engaged that it cannot fall into a happy almost-slumber. This is a bad way to live, but it is a good way to rest. It is not sleep, which is also necessary, but it is restful.

To live in a fog is a bad thing, but to wonder about in it can be fun! This is no guilty pleasure, because there is not guilt in it, if we are exercising our minds, our hearts, and our bodies in our daily life. Living in a fog is only proper in Holmes’ London, but visiting is fine.

Second, much that is trivial acts as a good window into the rest of the culture. Much as I might wish it, most of what I enjoy is not universally consumed. My favorite book of the last week was a Dr. Thorndyke mystery and my favorite activity was listening to a lecture. These pursuits are not widely shared in American culture.

If I want to love my neighbor, I need to broaden my experiences enough to include some of them in my play. Sports helps . . . my love for the Packers has broadened my friendships considerably, though it has alienated me from folks from Chicago.

This was no great loss.

Of course, unlike the “greats” there is no duty to read or view any given piece of pop cultural ephemera. You should read John Locke if you are an American voter, but you don’t have to watch American Idol. Why? Because in another decade, if this essay is still read, most of the pop culture references in it will require an Internet search, but Locke will still be ruling our lives from his writings.

He is a constantly grave matter, but White Collar is less lively the week after an episode is aired.

This illuminates a third value of trivial things. There is almost no better window into the way most folks thought at the time it was made. My children and I love to read magazines from the 1890’s because it balances our image of that time. If your image of the 1970’s is all drawn from present stereotypes, go watch Adam Twelve.

One recent speaker at Torrey challenged us to watch Green Berets and The Graduate and realize they are the product of the same period. Watch both and you learn something about the last fifty years of history and the nature of the folk who now interpret it to you.

Finally, the trivial engages one part of self and allows other parts to shine. Playing Risk is no great pursuit in itself, but it allows a social setting where fellowship can take place. Playing the card game “hearts” was one of the great learning times of Bible College, though “hearts” should never appear in any curriculum. While we were dealing the cards, we talked about everything and somehow achieved an honesty that would have escaped us if we had nothing to do but sit and talk.

“Let’s talk” shuts many of us up, but “let’s play cards” opens up many a mouth.

Trivial television does the same thing in my family. By this I don’t mean the dreaded, “What is the philosophy behind this show?” question forced on a room by a well-meaning parent who spoils the fun. I mean the organic, often random talk that a show can inspire. In our house, this might include sartorial, soteriological, and spiritual insights. Sometimes we simply laugh at shows like Sponge Bob.

We don’t have to do anything but share a wholesome laugh to make the time well spent.

Being What We Are and Enjoying It

This could be summed up with the practical advice: Don’t ever sin, but don’t try to be more than you are.

Youth groups are constantly telling my student to try to live out the “mountain top” experience they had at camp. This is nonsense. Mountaintop experiences are precious, but they are not work-a-day ready. Students can give an intensity of attention to hard intellectual work at a camp like Wheatstone Academy and experience the deeper things of God as a result.

This intensity and commitment would be out of place in the rest of life. Camp, or the mountaintop, is no less real than the work-a-day world, but it is no more real. It is a time and place, but not every time and place.

The same principle applies to marriage. The expectation that we can have a constant honeymoon is a form of greed and a failure of love. When we marry, we marry the whole person as they are on a Monday as well as the way they are on holiday.

Holidays are good times, often the best times, but they are not the entire substance of life.

So my family will continue our trivial pursuits and hope that your family finds your own. If you are looking for a suggestion, you might try watching White Collar together.

On Letting Go

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Some sins are easy to start doing, but hard to quit. Gluttony is like this. The more I eat, the less satisfied I am, but the harder it is to eat properly. The first three weeks of a diet are so difficult that quitting “cheating” is easier than continuing.

Even when the weight is lost, my immoderation toward food may not have changed. My self-denial might seem real given my weight, but still food is my master. I have not made real progress if I do not eat, but think always about eating. Food must return to its proper place.

This is much harder than not eating, but if I don’t change this way I will soon give up and go back to my old habits. Worse would be to never give up, but spend a life miserably longing for my false god of food while restraining myself by not eating. I would sell my birthright for cheesecake, but then not eat the treat.

This simple observation came to mind when reading Dante’s Inferno. This profound book has many deep lessons for me, but on this reading I came to a simple one. People cannot always let go of desires, even when those desires no longer make them happy.

At the bottom of Hell, there are those who feel rage against those who have harmed them. The rage is understandable, but the quest for vengeance continues long past any good. Torturing the torturer does not help the victim, but binds him.

Justice to the one who tortures others is good, but allowing bitterness and hatred to consume a man is not good. Why? Bringing justice to sinners does a man good, but trying to find vengeance will harm. It is an indulgence that begins to enslave.

Non-Christian friends often worry about the duration of Hell. Shouldn’t God let people go if they are sorry? Let’s assume this is true for moment. Nothing about human experience makes me hopeful that giving up on vice is easy in this life, let alone in the life to come. Habituation in vice eventually makes a sin part of the essence of a man.

If I will not use the grace of God to find freedom now, how will I do it in timeless eternity? If I clung to my gluttony through the moment of death, what greater shock exists that would shake me apart from this folly? I see no reason to think that the mere passage of time is likely to make a fool wiser.

Dante says the occupants of Hell have “lost the good of the intellect.” They can think, but they no longer can act on their thoughts, the very definition of repentance. Most of us have known folk who reach this point in this world, so why would we doubt that for some the problem would continue in the world to come?

This sins a needful warning chill through me. My “little vices” and the sins I so easily condone in my life are not so little if they become petty lords that keep me from proclaiming Jesus as my true Lord.

There will be no slaves in Paradise, because Paradise is a place fit only for freemen and freewomen.

An even greater cause for repentance is in the knowledge that at times all of us aid others to continue in their vice, if it is vice that our community does not find offensive. We tolerate slavery in our neighbor, if the master is one that does not offend us. We are only selective abolitionists railing against masters whose rudeness disturbs our comforts.

If it is true that most men will choose foul masters, woe to me if I introduce any man to such rulers. Another reason to seek true liberty is that this example will help others and will prevent my being Pander to the prey of demons.

Our very sins become confused with good things and make us long what we should not want.

In Dante, the lover Francesca has what she wants: her beloved, though it does her no good. If Hell was opened and she could leave, she would not go, because to go would be to “lose” her lover. She would have to be sorry for her adultery and sorry is the one thing she will not be.

Romance is good, but the goodness mixed with sin can glue us to the sin. When men will destroy careers for folly in this life why think they will not continue in their folly when only endurance is needed to continue as fools? The very pain that we cause through our sins often binds us more tightly to it.

After having suffered so much, and caused so much suffering, how can we admit that we were wrong, dreadful and wicked? The pains of Hell are more intense and the loss much greater, but if we habituate ourselves to the “joys” of the false martyr, they will only increase our desire for sin.

Eternal hell is necessary if only one soul would choose this way. It is easier to imagine billions choosing to cling to pride for all eternity, than that no man would do so. In our day, we even have an admiration for those who fight the unbeatable foe God. It may be utterly stupid, we think, but it is a hell of a thing.

Exactly.

It goes even deeper than letting go of things sinful in themselves. I must also let go of things good in themselves, lest I corrupt them by improper use. There was a time for me to be a honeymoon husband, but that time is past. I must let go of the first year of marriage, if I am to enjoy the twenty-fifth. The old goods can be a check to the enjoyment of the new goods.

Many of us may find ourselves in Hell for refusing to let go of the goods of this life. We demand Christmas in summer and long for summer fun in the winter.

God help me let go of all that stands between me and real Beauty, Truth, and the Good. God help me to desire happiness enough to let go of mere pleasure.

The Shack — The Missing Art of Evangelical Discernment

By Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

The publishing world sees very few books reach blockbuster status, but William Paul Young’s The Shack has now exceeded even that. The book, originally self-published by Young and two friends, has now sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into over thirty languages. It is now one of the best-selling paperback books of all time, and its readers are enthusiastic.

According to Young, the book was originally written for his own children. In essence, it can be described as a narrative theodicy — an attempt to answer the question of evil and the character of God by means of a story. In this story, the main character is grieving the brutal kidnapping and murder of his seven-year-old daughter when he receives what turns out to be a summons from God to meet him in the very shack where the man’s daughter had been murdered.

In the shack, “Mack” meets the divine Trinity as “Papa,” an African-American woman; Jesus, a Jewish carpenter; and “Sarayu,” an Asian woman who is revealed to be the Holy Spirit. The book is mainly a series of dialogues between Mack, Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu. Those conversations reveal God to be very different than the God of the Bible. “Papa” is absolutely non-judgmental, and seems most determined to affirm that all humanity is already redeemed.

The theology of The Shack is not incidental to the story. Indeed, at most points the narrative seems mainly to serve as a structure for the dialogues. And the dialogues reveal a theology that is unconventional at best, and undoubtedly heretical in certain respects.

While the literary device of an unconventional “trinity” of divine persons is itself sub-biblical and dangerous, the theological explanations are worse. “Papa” tells Mack of the time when the three persons of the Trinity “spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God.” Nowhere in the Bible is the Father or the Spirit described as taking on human existence. The Christology of the book is likewise confused. “Papa” tells Mack that, though Jesus is fully God, “he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being.” When Jesus healed the blind, “He did so only as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.”

While there is ample theological confusion to unpack there, suffice it to say that the Christian church has struggled for centuries to come to a faithful understanding of the Trinity in order to avoid just this kind of confusion — understanding that the Christian faith is itself at stake.

Jesus tells Mack that he is “the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu.” Not the only way, but merely the best way.

In another chapter, “Papa” corrects Mack’s theology by asserting, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.” Without doubt, God’s joy is in the atonement accomplished by the Son. Nevertheless, the Bible consistently reveals God to be the holy and righteous Judge, who will indeed punish sinners. The idea that sin is merely “its own punishment” fits the Eastern concept of karma, but not the Christian Gospel.

The relationship of the Father to the Son, revealed in a text like John 17, is rejected in favor of an absolute equality of authority among the persons of the Trinity. “Papa” explains that “we have no concept of final authority among us, only unity.” In one of the most bizarre paragraphs of the book, Jesus tells Mack: “Papa is as much submitted to me as I am to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.”

The theorized submission of the Trinity to a human being — or to all human beings — is a theological innovation of the most extreme and dangerous sort. The essence of idolatry is self-worship, and this notion of the Trinity submitted (in any sense) to humanity is inescapably idolatrous.

The most controversial aspects of The Shack’s message have revolved around questions of universalism, universal redemption, and ultimate reconciliation. Jesus tells Mack: “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions.” Jesus adds, “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, my Beloved.”

Mack then asks the obvious question — do all roads lead to Christ? Jesus responds, “Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”

Given the context, it is impossible not to draw essentially universalistic or inclusivistic conclusions about Young’s meaning. “Papa” chides Mack that he is now reconciled to the whole world. Mack retorts, “The whole world? You mean those who believe in you, right?” “Papa” responds, “The whole world, Mack.”

Put together, all this implies something very close to the doctrine of reconciliation proposed by Karl Barth. And, even as Young’s collaborator Wayne Jacobson has lamented the “self-appointed doctrine police” who have charged the book with teaching ultimate reconciliation, he acknowledges that the first editions of the manuscript were unduly influenced by Young’s “partiality at the time” to ultimate reconciliation — the belief that the cross and resurrection of Christ accomplished then and there a unilateral reconciliation of all sinners (and even all creation) to God.

James B. DeYoung of Western Theological Seminary, a New Testament scholar who has known William Young for years, documents Young’s embrace of a form of “Christian universalism.” The Shack, he concludes, “rests on the foundation of universal reconciliation.”

Even as Wayne Jacobson and others complain of those who identify heresy within The Shack, the fact is that the Christian church has explicitly identified these teachings as just that — heresy. The obvious question is this: How is it that so many evangelical Christians seem to be drawn not only to this story, but to the theology presented in the narrative — a theology at so many points in conflict with evangelical convictions?

Evangelical observers have not been alone in asking this question. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Timothy Beal of Case Western University argues that the popularity of The Shack suggests that evangelicals might be shifting their theology. He cites the “nonbiblical metaphorical models of God” in the book, as well as its “nonhierarchical” model of the Trinity and, most importantly, “its theology of universal salvation.”

Beal asserts that none of this theology is part of “mainstream evangelical theology,” then explains: “In fact, all three are rooted in liberal and radical academic theological discourse from the 1970s and 80s — work that has profoundly influenced contemporary feminist and liberation theology but, until now, had very little impact on the theological imaginations of nonacademics, especially within the religious mainstream.”

He then asks: “What are these progressive theological ideas doing in this evangelical pulp-fiction phenomenon?” He answers: “Unbeknownst to most of us, they have been present on the liberal margins of evangelical thought for decades.” Now, he explains, The Shack has introduced and popularized these liberal concepts even among mainstream evangelicals.

Timothy Beal cannot be dismissed as a conservative “heresy-hunter.” He is thrilled that these “progressive theological ideas” are now “trickling into popular culture by way of The Shack.”

Similarly, writing at Books & Culture, Katherine Jeffrey concludes that The Shack “offers a postmodern, post-biblical theodicy.” While her main concern is the book’s place “in a Christian literary landscape,” she cannot avoid dealing with its theological message.

In evaluating the book, it must be kept in mind that The Shack is a work of fiction. But it is also a sustained theological argument, and this simply cannot be denied. Any number of notable novels and works of literature have contained aberrant theology, and even heresy. The crucial question is whether the aberrant doctrines are features of the story or the message of the work. When it comes to The Shack, the really troubling fact is that so many readers are drawn to the theological message of the book, and fail to see how it conflicts with the Bible at so many crucial points.

All this reveals a disastrous failure of evangelical discernment. It is hard not to conclude that theological discernment is now a lost art among American evangelicals — and this loss can only lead to theological catastrophe.

The answer is not to ban The Shack or yank it out of the hands of readers. We need not fear books — we must be ready to answer them. We desperately need a theological recovery that can only come from practicing biblical discernment. This will require us to identify the doctrinal dangers of The Shack, to be sure. But our real task is to reacquaint evangelicals with the Bible’s teachings on these very questions and to foster a doctrinal rearmament of Christian believers.

The Shack is a wake-up call for evangelical Christianity. An assessment like that offered by Timothy Beal is telling. The popularity of this book among evangelicals can only be explained by a lack of basic theological knowledge among us — a failure even to understand the Gospel of Christ. The tragedy that evangelicals have lost the art of biblical discernment must be traced to a disastrous loss of biblical knowledge. Discernment cannot survive without doctrine.

On Yoga: A Call for a Christian Imagination

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

A brick may be used in a pagan temple, but then reverently placed in a Christian church. A cave may be used as a stable, but then turned into the birthplace of God. No metaphysical system is safe from plundering by Christianity, because Christianity is afraid of no good idea, object, or word.

The system in which a great work of art is trapped may be corrupt, but we can reinterpret that work and so redeem it for Christ.

Is this process dangerous? Of course, because there is always the danger of being corrupted by the object of redemption before it can be reimagined. What is more dangerous is the cowardice that would leave any good, true, and beautiful thing to the Evil One. We must reclaim everything for King Jesus.

All religions that have lasted for a very long time will contain valuable insights and great ideas. These wise ideas will be deeply embedded in demonic wickedness and vice, but a Christian that engages their culture must work to redeem what is good and not leave it to empower and attract others to evil.

A culture that takes a beautiful mountain and names it for their pagan god does not thereby force us to blow up the mountain. We need to reinterpret the mountain for the people in a way that enfolds their history and insights into the broader story of Christendom.

Christ’s Kingdom makes no colonies, it redeems nations. The nationals of every land reimagine their God given insights to make them part of the Christian story.

We must acknowledge that many good things come to mankind through the common image and grace of God in each human being. Christians of all stripes would never want to hide the truth that some great idea or good thing came from another faith. That is the false path of those Muslims who take Christian churches, turn them into mosques, and then bury the earlier Christian history as if it did not exist.

Better is the acknowledgment of what a thing was and then a joyful description of what it now is.

For example, in the United States of America the art of some city landscapes was often built on materialist or secular assumptions and ignored the needs of human beings. It needs imaginative redemption and artistic reconceptualization.

Such an appropriation of the best of the cityscape cannot be syncretistic, but must condemn the greed and the materialism that sent money makers soaring over cathedral domes. This can be done, however, without tearing down a single beautiful building or covering up their sordid histories. Just as the Narnia stories redeemed the image of Bacchus for generations of children, so better Christian story tellers can redeem the best of the skyscrapers in our cities.

As the King’s College develops in the bosom of the Empire State Building it will perform this deeply Christian task.

As this dangerous work is done, we must listen to the prophets who will warn us of the danger of adopting the evil systems along with the singular ideas and works that we intend to redeem. One such faithful prophet is Al Mohler. The traditional Church must admire his courage in restoring a lost seminary and in reclaiming much that the world was appropriating from us.

Recently, Mohler wrote a courageous post condemning the importation of Yoga into the church. If a blog post was to be judged by its enemies, then Mohler is on the side of the angels. Some people who care nothing for the Bible, doctrine, or even Christian tradition have been livid. They are angry because they measure the worth of an idea only by whether it immediately helps them.

Yoga has done them some good, so it must be all good. This is fallacious, however. A system may be deeply evil, but still make trains run on time or improve education for serfs. Many of Mohler’s critics are wrong, and he is right to warn us: historic Yoga, as practiced for centuries, cannot be brought in totality into a Christian life.

But this does not mean that many insights of Yoga and all that is good in it, and there is some good, cannot be appropriated by the Church.

Mohler lacks imagination in this regard. The man who imagined that Southern could be returned to traditional Christianity should find faithful men and women who can appropriate what is good, true, and beautiful in Yoga and turn it to Christ. It was Christ who gave men of old the insight to do good through Yoga and devils that corrupted that insight into a false religion.

Can Southern purge the evil and bring out the good in Yoga? It is exactly what Christians did with the very notion of the academy when we created the modern university out of what was best of the philosophical academies.

This is normal Christian behavior, as a thought experiment would show.

If Mohler took over a town built by the Bolsheviks, he would not tear down the school buildings just because Stalin built them. He would not dishonor the blood of the enslaved who built those works with their blood by failing to keep them, redeem them, and turn them to their true purpose.

Mohler would never ignore the good done in those buildings, even while utterly damning the system that built them. The schools were not the problem, communism was. He would take those schools and turn them to good works.

In the same way, Christians can and should take the insights of Yoga and turn them to good.

Mohler’s essential argument against Yoga seems to come to three main points: Yoga involves internal meditation, Yoga conflates the spiritual and the physical, and Yoga necessarily implies a non-Christian view of sexuality.

No Christian can oppose meditation per se. We are taught to meditate on the name of Jesus, the Word of God, and His precious inerrant Words in Sacred Scriptures. It is true that no Christian could meditate on meaningless phrases or the names of pagan gods, but meditation itself is not the problem.

It is not hard to find a long Christian tradition of helpful spiritual formation through meditation.

Second, Mohler is no gnostic. He knows that bowing the knee in an attitude of prayer puts the physical symbolically in line with the spiritual in our culture.

Every culture develops physical acts that bring the outer into conformity with the inner reality. Kneeling may be a sign of adoration to Zeus in one place and time, but the problem is not the kneeling, rather with the demon to which men are kneeling. So the positions of Yoga, which are just physical positions after all, need reinterpretation by men and women steeped in the culture that created them, but also deeply Christian.

We need no superficial work, but a reimagining that is true to the original insights of the creators of Yoga while also true to Sacred Scriptures. This work has not been done, so Mohler is right to express prophetic concern about members of the Church who lightly sprinkle the Yoga imagination, but do not baptize it.

To give just one example, if Yoga implies a sub-Christian view of sexuality, then it is bad for a person and ultimately for a culture. Yet Yoga has also helped men and women with sexual dysfunction as well. Can Christians find a way to reinforce the good insight of the basic wholesomeness of sexuality without allowing base and depraved ideas to infect it?

Surely we can.

The genius that could work to reclaim the Baptist convention can also reclaim what is good, true, and beautiful about Yoga. Justin Martyr was right when with confidence he could claim anything worthwhile for Jesus, because those good things came from Jesus at the start. No logos without the Logos.

Most of the online opponents of Mohler would throw holy water on Yoga and bring it into the Church. This light and careless attitude is destructive to the Faith. It is bound to lead to syncretism and the destruction of the Church. That is the path of the Episcopal Church in the United States and it is best labeled “Ichabod.”

But shunning Yoga is not the best idea for Christian academics. Instead, with pastoral oversight, we must find what the Logos initially said to the wise, which demons turned to folly in the unregenerate sages.

As for me and my house, against all attacks, we will serve the Lord God. If an idol must be destroyed, we will get an axe, but we will also save what can be saved and appropriate what can be redeemed.

This house is afraid of nothing that is good, true, and beautiful. It is easy to imagine Yoga dying, because Christianity has enfolded all that is good in Yoga within the embrace of its true home. May some Indian genius do this very task.

On Hell or: is Plato There?

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Americans are much less sure of the existence of Hell than of Heaven. Hopefully this is because they have had such glimpses of the Divine that Hell seem fuzzy to them. There seems, however, some chance that it is because they have become too nice to believe anyone is in Hell.

In chatting with regular folk, not the sort that teach at colleges, often one only need mention Hitler to convince them that someone must be in Hell. Do we really want to ruin Paradise by potentially having Adolph (and Eva!) as neighbors?

This argument might be effective, but it is not an argument Christians can use. Called to love even our enemies, we know somebody is in Hell, but really shouldn’t root for any particular person to be there. With the exception of Judas, Christians don’t know that anybody is there for sure. It is none of our business and given the nature of Hell there is something inappropriate for wishing for a specific man to go there.

If this is so, then why do Christians believe in Hell?

First, God told us Hell exists and He is in a position to know. You might not want a place to exist, for example Cleveland, but you might be reliably informed it does exist. God told us Hell exists in the Bible and that some humans will be thrown into it, so we accept this as a given.

Second, wicked actions deserve punishment. Hell exists to punish sin that has not been forgiven. Justice demands that if you want the benefits of freedom, you should be willing to pay the price. We have been warned that certain deeds are wicked and are happy to enjoy what pleasures come with them, so we shouldn’t complain too hard when the bill comes due.

Some argue that it is unjust that the pleasures of sin are so short and the wages so long, but this seems a mistake. Sin is a bad deal, but God has done all He could to warn us against making such a deal. God insists on treating us as if our decisions mattered and of course if He did not do so, then people would complain about this!

If we don’t wish eternal torment, we need merely avoid doing the things that will lead to eternal torment.

Given the way humans are, though, we seem very apt to sin . . . to do one of the things that deserve punishment. Is it fair that sin is so easy to commit? It is certainly not fair, but it is the result of our inherited nature. We are not born as a blank-slate; all of us inherit traits or tendencies from our parents. One such trait is settling for what we want instead of what we should want. We settle for passion when we could have true love.

Even a small crime warps the soul of a man further and no warped thing can enter into the Kingdom of God. God is not willing to ruin the perfection and joy of Heaven by ignoring our self-created stench.

This is tough, but that is the way it is. This is why God cannot merely “forget about” our sins. We are broken and we would go on being broken if He did nothing about it. He simply could smite us and start over again, but He loves us and would save all He can of the good work He made in the beginning.

We must be “born again” . . . which will include the “legal” acquittal for our sins, but also will result in the Word of God coming inside us and changing us. The best analogy to the process is being “born again” so that we can start over with a new parent (God) and a new family (God’s church).

God suffered in order to make a way for man to enter this relationship. God came and became fully human; He did not just put on a skin suit like Zeus or the pagan gods. He lived out a perfect life, but then allowed us to kill Him. The God-man could die as a man, but God-man could not stay dead. He came back to life and created a new set of possibilities.

Men and women are separated from God by their actions and their heritage. God will forgive their actions and give them a new spiritual heritage.

When younger, I worried often about those who never got a chance to experience this new relationship. Wisdom finally taught me that I did not know any such people exist. The hypothetical “person who never heard in x” (insert the distant land of your choice for “x”) is a speculative proposition. Name one. Who is that person? What ideas did they hear? What was revealed to them in their dreams? What happens to a man or woman at the moment of their death? I don’t know for sure, but for all I do know all are given a chance to see clearly and to choose wisely.

Given the charity of God, there is no reason to assume that any man is not given a choice. They cannot hear without a preacher, but if those of us who know the truth fail them, there is no reason God cannot preach His own sermon or allow His holy angels to do so.

What of those who lived before the coming of the Christ?

Christians believe that the dead before Christ confronted Christ when He died and the faith of some saved them. This was certainly true of Abraham. What of those not under God’s covenant with Abraham? What of the noble pagans like Plato?

There the mind of the Church has been divided. Scripture says nothing for certain, but there are two big ideas to keep in mind. First, God desires that nobody should perish eternally. Second, some people will perish eternally and those people will perish in punishment for their sins and because they are unfit for Heaven.

Plato cannot go to Heaven simply because he was better than most. Paradise is not gained on a curve. The joys of Heaven are too awesome for us if we have not been changed. The beauty of Heaven would burn us as surely as the fires of Hell, and be unfitting on top of it, if we remained the little souls that dabble in the “pleasures” of sin in this life.

Could Plato have been born again before the coming of Christ?

Justin Martyr put Plato in Heaven, because Plato loved the Word and lived before the Incarnation. He walked in all the light he had been given. Dante put Plato in Hell, because Plato had never been changed from the inside through baptism. If a man is not born again, then he is not fit for Paradise.

Who is right?

A charitable man roots for Justin, but a thoughtful man suspects that Dante is correct. Why?

It is faith and an appeal for mercy that will save us, but Plato may be too sure that his works will be enough. In Republic he accepts that there must be punishment for evil, and even eternal punishment for some badly broken souls, but he does not think his soul is that badly broken.

We are badly defaced, monstrous, according to Plato, but he hopes the dialectic might save us from doom. Sadly, there is not time enough and even following the Word as closely as possible cannot fix the rot. It goes too deeply.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the end of the Republic indicates that Plato knows this. He appeals to religion and myth in the end and might (if one reading of the text is followed) combine a hope in God with the dialectic. If so, then Plato may have seen what needs to been seen: we need mercy and not just good works.

In any case, Plato is where he is and my worry about him may be a false one. It might distract me from working out my own sanctification with fear and trembling. Plato will stand before the judgment seat of Christ, but so will I. I can do nothing for Plato, but I must realize that my problems, my sin, goes so deep that I can do nothing that matters for me.

I fear Hell. I fear separation from all that is good, true, and beautiful. I fear the end of the dialectic in the static narcissism that is the fate of the damned. I would not lose the good of the intellect for the glories of this present age.

I must daily pray: Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Pluralism?

By Gregory Koukl
Stand to Reason

One of us must be wrong, at bare minimum. Maybe we both are. But one thing that we can never say is that we're both right.

I want to continue to pursue this concept of pluralism. Triggered by a comment made last week: "They may not believe in Jesus, but they love God and serve God with all of their hearts. They love God. You love God. How can you say one is wrong and the other is right?"

This kind of comment is so common and, on the surface, so reasonable, that to question it immediately brands you as some kind of religious fanatic, someone so blinded by his narrow-minded convictions that he has no tolerance for other's beliefs.

Now here is the hitch in the new pluralism. Tolerance used to mean that everyone has a right to their beliefs. It doesn't mean that anymore, because all of these Christians who are considered intolerant still believe, as far as I can tell, that everyone has a legitimate right to his own beliefs.

No, the new pluralism demands that you must not say that anyone else's belief is inferior or, worse yet, flatly mistaken. To say someone is wrong is to be intolerant, to be close-minded and provincial, to be extreme and is impossible to reason with.

How can I say one person's view is wrong and the other is right? Very easily. Precisely because reason and rationality demand it. Here's what I mean.

I'm praying to God who is Jesus. They're praying to God who isn't Jesus. God can't be Jesus and not be Jesus at the same time. therefore, we both can't be praying to, loving, or worshipping God. One of us must be wrong, at bare minimum. Maybe we both are. But one thing that we can never say is that we're both right, that we're both worshipping God.

This underscores the irrationality of this kind of pluralism, an irrationality that is based, I think, on an errant understanding of what it means for something to be true.

To many, the concept of truth is deep, esoteric and indefinable. Let me give you a definition in one syllables. It's from Aristotle, I think. If you say "It is," and it is, or "It is not," and it is not, then you speak truth. If you say "It is," and it is not, or "It is not," and it is, then you don't speak truth. This is called correspondence, in other words, a thing is true if and only if it actually corresponds to what is really there. Truth, therefore is not determined by opinion or belief. Believing something to be so doesn't make it so. It is not true merely to me. It might be true to me and still entirely false.

By the way, in saying this I am making what I'd consider a critical distinction between fantasy and reality. When someone starts talking about what God is to them, they're talking about their fantasy. I'm not really interested in fantasy; I want to know what truly is.

This is so fundamental it should go completely without saying, but nowadays our thinking is so befuddled and cock-eyed about fundamental issues that people can merely voice their beliefs and think it ends the discussion. If believing something makes it true, then there's nothing more to talk about. And persistence in the issue violates pluralism because you're implying that your view is better than someone else's.

But because another's beliefs may differ doesn't need to mean that discussion is at a standstill. Beliefs may be equally valid in that they are consciously held by sincere people, but they can't be equally true if they are contrary beliefs.

How do we get past the impasse? How do we determine whose view is the right one/ The same way men and women of sound mind and judgment have done for thousands of years: with reason and revelation.

If everyone's opinion was equally true, there would be no point to the art of persuasion. I'd have no place in the marketplace of ideas trying to reason with people, if all beliefs were equally true, and neither would you. There would be no meaningful discourse to have on issues. We'd all just state our opinions and beliefs, nod, smile, and then go home, none the wiser.

The reason that we discuss, debate, banter about is that some beliefs are better than others, in other words they're more worthy of belief, they are more sensible, they are more sound, more credible, more noble, more moral, more right, more true.

Therefore, those with bad beliefs (that is, unsound beliefs) are not merely different, they are wrong; and we should not be squeamish about that kind of language.

Friends, I'm not trying to persuade you of a particular religious point of view; I'm trying to get you to think of ultimate issues and ultimate questions in a particular way .

Why is this important? If a person is persuaded that belief doesn't make something true, then maybe he will employ himself in finding out what is true , not merely in waste time fabricating opinion.

At least, that's the way I see it.