Blogging Foucades

I’m making some changes on my blog and in my blogging life. I want to be a bit more systematic in the future, a bit more structured. For the time being some behind-the-scenes work is being done. I’ll be back on with gusto soon. My blogging efforts could be explained by the French Ecrivain in 1885:

Cette fourniture [d’idées] aux autres se fait chez [other bloggers] journellement, régulièrement, à la méridionale; chez moi, au contraire, c’est par sursauts, par foucades, à la suite d’une indignation de l’âme; et quand ça sort, chez moi, ça débonde encore plus que chez [other bloggers]. ~ Goncourt

The Average Person and the “Inside God”

The Average Person

The average person today lives in an atomistic, ahistorical, individualistic, hyper-reductionistic, narcissistic bubble in which he not only manifests marked ignorance of a larger reality beyond his immediate awareness, but erupts with hostility toward the suggestion that his personal and localized narrative is only an infinitesimally small part of a grander, larger, and unavoidably all-comprehensive metanarrative to which his narrative necessarily complies. (from my private venting on paper awhile ago)

The Inside God

We put all our eggs, so to speak, in the basket of God’s nearness, his relatedness, and we lose everything related to his otherness and transcendence. This yields a God who is familiar, safe, accommodating, but also very small. This is the “god” who is accessed through the self, who showers us with therapeutic benefits, ad whom we intuitively hear “speaking” in this or that event of life. . . This spirituality has all the marks of the postmodern disposition upon it. It is deeply subjective, nonmoral in its understanding, highly individualistic, completely relativistic, and insistently therapeutic. It has seized on some truths about the nearness of God, but it has done so on its own terms and in its own way. These truths then become perverted and misused and, in the absence of the balancing truths about God’s otherness, quite damaging.~ David Wells.

There is an “inside God,” yes, says David Wells. But what postmoderns have forgotten is that He is also the “outside God.”

The Year of the Black Man: When We Really Need Black Leaders

The arrival of Barack Obama to the American scene has been one of the most exciting things that has happened in American politics in my adult life. I am fascinated by what is currently taking place in our country and as on-pins-and-needles as the rest of American society to see how this will all play out. I fully sympathize with the black community that celebrates the first viable black presidential candidate in American history.

But celebration and confusion mingle. The matter of ethnicity is huge in the minds of many people, but many blacks who are rejoicing in Obama’s victories are agonizing over what they will do in the privacy of the polling booth. While they love his victories for their symbolic value and healing powers on a community that has suffered for years under the oppression of white dominance, they are loath to sacrifice their individual convictions (political or biblical) on the altar of ethnic triumph.

It is a hard, hard place for the black American. And it is not only conservative blacks that wrestle with this. Even liberal blacks are wrestling with this conflict of very powerful interests that struggle for dominance within their souls. The need for good leadership and clear-headed thinking has never been greater. And the leaders should be black.

This is the year of the black man.

This nation is still deeply divided on race, but the potential for healing is as near as it has ever been. My own personal belief is that it might be men, black men, that lead our nation both nationally and in the Church of Jesus Christ to the Promised Land of reconciliation.

And God is raising them up.

These are men that are learning what Clarence Thomas learned many years ago:

The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic — yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn’t buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but did that mean we had to think alike?(My Grandfather’s Son; A Memoirp. 62)

Two key points in that clip; one for blacks and one for whites.

1. “Of course we had all experienced racism in on way or another.” We who are white need to grasp this. We need to read the rejection letters from Christian colleges and seminaries written to blacks who are still living. The pain is still there. We need to enter into the pain of those who were rejected from Christian institutions merely for the color of their skin. We ought to absorb the writings of men and women who have experienced a completely different America. This is important: We need to realize that all black people in America have experienced racism. All.

I will write much more about this later, but suffice it to say that I believe true Gospel ministry must be incarnational. We must put ourselves in the experience of others to fully effectuate reconciliation. We need to learn to feel with them.

2. “. . .but did that mean we had to think alike?” The black community must realize that the best way to unshackle themselves from the psychological and spiritual bondage of oppression is to become independent. And this is important: They must realize that they are never completely free until they are liberated enough to be independent not only from whites, but from each other. The Christian black leader realizes that he is not Christ’s servant if he pleases men, no matter what color their skin is.

The black man has more than one interest. He is as complex as every other human being in the world, and his challenge in America 2008 is much more complex than most of us realize. Therefore he has not only the interest of ethnic triumph over adversity, but the interests of his own personal convictions before God and family. What is a person to do when righteous interests conflict? And they are both righteous.

One black man that is wrestling with this legitimate conflict of interests (one that sees a much-longed-for, legitimate, symbolic triumph over oppression in the ascendance of a black man to the highest office of the land on the one hand and personal political, moral, and spiritual convictions on the other hand) is Thabiti Anyabwile; and he is transparently working out this conflict of cherished and righteous interests on his blog under the eye of his Christian brothers and sisters.

Thabiti Anyabwile says he’s a “delivered racist.” He passionately loves the Gospel of God, holds a conservative theology, and writes some of the most balanced analyses of Barack Obama that you will find anywhere.

As a black man he is unabashedly happy to see a person of his own ethnicity rise to such prominence. “To put it bluntly,” he says, “in my opinion, this is the most important presidential election of my lifetime. I feel it” (emphasis his). What a glorious feeling! I truly rejoice with him.

But Thabiti is also a Christian. As a Christian, he writes, “I am pro-life. Not because it’s the litmus test for the “evangelical” or “conservative” agenda, but because it’s the agenda of the Sovereign God who created us, gives life and eternal life, conquers death, and seeks a godly offspring to fill the earth with His glory (Mal. 2:15). To my knowledge, I’ve never voted pro-choice and I don’t have any plans to. Whatever is written in the post is in no way to be mistaken for softness or indifference to Sen. Obama’s position on the matter” (source)

These are trying times. The most important election in his lifetime and likely not to cast his vote for the pro-choice candidate. Here is one man who, if he stays true to his conviction, will not vote for the candidate that excites him the most. His non-vote will probably be with tears.

As I’ve written before, I am a delivered racist. I know how racism works in its black and white varieties. What most of us have not yet recognized is that racism is only possible where “race” is admitted. The difference between holding to a view that “race” exists and being a “racist” is a matter of degree, not kind. Most of us just haven’t gone as far as Wright or Farrakhan or Duke or Thurmond. But in holding onto the unbiblical and unreal notion of race, we have everything we need in our depraved hearts to get there.

Thabiti thinks our problem is that we are human. Because we are human our hearts long for healing and restitution of the pain and damage our humanness has caused. Because we are human we know the incredible symbolic value of a successful bid for the presidency of the United States of America by a black man; not just blacks, but many of us whites feel the importance of this as well. Because we are human that bid is mixed with conflicted interests.

The black man still weeps. And I weep with him.

This is the year of the Black Man. Now more than ever we need leaders. Black leaders.

Changing Missiologies and What Must Not Change

I don’t know if this is a blogging exclusive, but it might be the only place in the blogosphere where you can get this very recent paper by Dr. David Hesselgrave on the changing missiology of Donald A. MacGavran, John R.W. Stott, Carl F. H. Henry, and Ralph D. Winter. Ralph Winter is a personal friend of David Hesselgrave, but Hesselgrave takes exception to some of Ralph Winter’s recent changes. The paper was read at the Midwest Regional Meeting of the Evangelical Missiological Society held at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, April 19, 2008 and I received permission from Dr. Hesselgrave to publish it here. This twenty page paper presented just a couple weeks ago opens this way:

I bear good news and bad news. The good news is that modern science has finally caught up with Scripture. It has shown that, as one advances in age, that part of the brain often associated with wisdom—dealing with conflict and ambiguity, setting priorities and making choices—excels. Younger brains excel when it comes to creativity and inventiveness, the accumulation of knowledge, and the execution of plans. [Healy 2007, 66]. Also good news is the fact that I am dealing with four aging and brilliant brains in this monograph. But there is bad news as well. The bad news has to do with the fact that possessors of the four aging brains considered here changed their minds as they grew older. So they are not now in agreement with what they believed at an earlier stage in their development. More importantly they are not always in agreement with each other. So all who are younger and those of us who are older but less astute still have some hard choices to make!

David Hesselgrave is one aging brain that hasn’t changed. He’s an octogenarian that is fighting for the faith, and I find this very inspiring.

The Changing of the Guards by David Hesselgrave

Serpent-Sensitive Worship

Directly lifted from Ben Wright’s Blog, Paleoevangelical

Ben Comments:

Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at Southern Seminary, tends toward the provocative. Never have I seen him more so than in this commentary that expresses revulsion at Willow Creek giving its platform to Brian McLaren:

When McLaren questions the existence of hell and the hope of the Second Coming, he is not a “new kind of Christian.” Such things are neither new nor Christian. They are instead a repetition of the voice of a snake in a long-ago Garden: “Has God said?” and “You shall not surely die.” It is tragic that one of the world’s most renowned evangelical churches would highlight this kind of Serpent-sensitive worship.

Maturing Downward: Christians in Vanity Fair

Remember: the soon-to-be billion dollar actress of the Hannah Montana character is Christian. (I wrote about her only a few weeks ago in a post entitled A Dad Ponders the Hannah Montana Cult.) And so are her parents. This week Miley Ray Cyrus is in the news for a semi-nude portrait of her that is making the front cover of Vanity Fair.At first the word from the fifteen-year-old was that she had no idea the portrait was that provocative. Then the photographer rebutted saying that both she and her parents approved of all the shots. The parents are now saying they had already left the scene when the controversial pose was struck.

Whatever.

I am actually among the not-so-offended crowd, but I have nothing to be offended by. I haven’t let my daughter idolize the poor girl. And I don’t mean poor girl sarcastically. The child is, in my mind, the victim of parents who have decided to live in Bunyan’s Vanity Fair. How ironic that the first major flap of their multi-millionaire child would be about their child’s portrait on a magazine that shares the name of Bunyan’s metaphor for the world.

Poor Miley Ray Cyrus. She was quoted in Christianity Today not so long ago for saying that everything that she does is for Jesus. Everything. I wonder if that includes being on the front cover for Vanity Fair.

She is just a child. One shouldn’t be too harsh on her. But what about her parents? Are they going to write a book on parenting just as Lynn Spears, mother of Britney has done? It’s been delayed. Even for Christians in Vanity Fair it seems a bit odd to publish a book on parenting when one daughter is flinging her life away to booze and drugs and the other is pregnant at sixteen. But the delay is only indefinite. I’m sure parents everywhere are eager to get some tips. Thomas Nelson once again provides great reading for Christians in Vanity Fair.

Now, I personally think the flap was a bit over the top. It’s all about money. Disney is upset, of course. Disney thinks Vanity Fair manipulated a fifteen year old child. Disney may sense that the media’s shark-like frenzy about this story is more motivated by the base human pleasure of seeing people topple; in this case, not just Disney’s money-making machine, but an popular icon with “clean.” The Christian Cyrus family should be encouraged that they have support from Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie thinks that Disney is making her apologize. And Rosie is probably right. (Rosie also thinks that the pictures are beautiful. And, well, if you know Rosie, that is creepy.) But Rosie may be right to imply that Disney is manipulating an apology out of the child.

Vanity Fair (Bunyan’s and the Mag) both mature its victims downward. And Miley Cyrus is a victim. Her parents have built a home right on main street Vanity Fair and now they’re scratching their heads wondering how in the world it ever happened that as soon as they walked away from the photo-shoot their daughter got tricked into a semi-nude pose. John Bunyan wrote of French Row, and British Row, and Italian Row when he described the streets of Vanity Fair. He didn’t know anything about Hollywood Row. That’s where the Cyrus family lives.

But at some point tough questions have to be asked. If Bunyan is right that every pilgrim on his way to the Celestial City has to pass through Vanity Fair, is he not also right that true pilgrims are easily identifiable?

Now these pilgrims, as I said, must needs go through this fair. Well, so they did: but, behold, even as they entered into the fair, all the people in the fair were moved, and the town itself as it were in a hubbub about them; and that for several reasons: for—

First, The pilgrims were clothed with such kind of raiment as was diverse from the raiment of any that traded in that fair. The people, therefore, of the fair, made a great gazing upon them: some said they were fools, some they were bedlams, and some they are outlandish men.

Secondly, And as they wondered at their apparel, so they did likewise at their speech; for few could understand what they said; they naturally spoke the language of Canaan, but they that kept the fair were the men of this world; so that, from one end of the fair to the other, they seemed barbarians each to the other.

Thirdly, But that which did not a little amuse the merchandisers was, that these pilgrims set very light by all their wares; they cared not so much as to look upon them; and if they called upon them to buy, they would put their fingers in their ears, and cry, Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity, and look upwards, signifying that their trade and traffic was in heaven.

By posing for Vanity Fair the mag one wonders if the Christian Cyrus family is like the Bunyan Christians. They don’t seem to “set lightly by all [the] wares” of Vanity Fair and Hollywood Row. And their child gets played; by Disney, Vanity Fair the mag, and, worst of all, Bunyan’s Vanity Fair.

One more reason why I don’t want my daughter flocking after child stars. I don’t want to contribute to the ruin of the child star.

Hannah Montana is maturing. If she stays in (or on) Vanity Fair she’ll mature downward. That’s what Vanity Fair does to everybody.

Liberal Scholars are so Johnny-Come-Lately

I am alway amused by the “cutting edge” of liberal scholars and/or contemporary emerging church type scholars. If a person reads a little more than the average American homo sapien he will see that the top scholars of today are really johnny-come-lately in their discoveries.

Here’s a classic example: Compare something that N.T. Wright has said with a statement by the great theologian B.B. Warfield.

N.T. Wright: For my part, I believe it was a great gain in the 1950s and 1960s that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were recognized as theologians, not mere chroniclers.

Just take that statement at face value and ignore the Jesus Seminar issues and the implicit higher criticism. The average person reading Wright would assume that everyone prior to the 1950s and 1960s had either the classic liberal perspective of the synoptics or a stereotypical uncritical fundamentalist belief that viewed the Gospels as an inspired collection of stories about Jesus.

But here is B.B. Warfield (d. 1921): The incidents which the narrators record, again, are not recorded with a biographical intent, and are not selected for their biographical significance, or ordered so as to present a biographical result: in the case of each Evangelist they serve a particular purpose which may employ biographical details, but is not itself a biographical end. In other words, the Gospels are not formal biographies, but biographical arguments - a circumstance which does not affect the historicity of the incidents they select for record, but does affect the selection and ordering of these incidents.

Warfield was defending the inspiration of the Gospel against the attacks of the higher critics who simplistically mocked Bible believers who insisted the synoptic gospels were inspired even though there were apparent inconsistencies and differing arrangement of the events. Warfield simply responded with something that Wright thinks was discovered in the 1950s and 1960s: The Evangelists were theologians making theological arguments biographically.

But one wonders if N.T. Wright would be willing to admit that a fundamentalist like B.B. Warfield was so brillliant.

I think this illustrates Augustine’s famous dictum: Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

Doctors, Lawyers, Pastors: They’re Much Alike

Doctors, lawyers, pastors; they’re very much alike.

Silly Letters Pastors Get

Chastened Modernism

A chastened modernism and a “soft” postmodernism might actually discover that they are saying rather similar things. A chastened or modest modernism pursues the truth but recognizes how much we humans do not know, how often we change our minds, and some of the factors that go into our claims to knowledge. A chastened postmodernism heartily recognizes that we cannot avoid seeing things from a certain perspective (we are all perspectivalists, even if perspectivalists can be divided into those who admit it and those who don’t) but acknowledges that there is a reality out there that we human beings can know, even if we cannot know it exhaustively or perfectly, but only from our own perspective. We tend to sidle up to the truth, to approach it asymptotically — but it remains self-refuting to claim to know truly that we cannot know the truth. To set such a modest modernism and such a chastened postmodernism side-by-side is to see how much alike they are. They merely put emphases in different places. ~ D.A. Carson in Christ & Culture Revisited, p. 90.

The T4G Cross

Does anybody know if there is a story behind the T4G cross? Does anybody want to guess? Did anyone notice the design?

Cheap Knowledge

This is really good news. The Teaching Company is having a 70% OFF sale until midnight, April 24th. I don’t think you have to be a subscriber (as I am). I’d thought I’d share the good news.

If my budget allows, I want to purchase this course. I read a whole bunch about mathematics last year, but I still wrestle internally with the course title “The Joy of Mathematics.” There is still a part of me that thinks that is a bit oxymoronic.

I am a fallen creature.