harmonicminer

Christianity and McLarenism: a review of McLaren’s new book by Kevin DeYoung

Brian McLaren’s latest book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith, is two steps forward in terms of clarity and ten steps backward in terms of orthodoxy. A New Kind of Christianity, more than any previous McLaren project, provides a forceful account of what the emergent leader believes and why.

I think McLaren has strayed quite far from anything recognizable as “historic Christianity”… a fact of which McLaren seems quite proud.
Continue reading “McLaren’s “new” ideas?”

A Response to Christians Losing Their Faith

As many of you know, I have written much about the epidemic of people losing their faith. It is not only a concern, but an obsession of mine. Because of this, I engage with quite a few people on the issue. I often feel as if I serve as a last chance stop for many who are in their darkest hour, heading out the door of Christianity.

Thus begins a very thoughtful article with many useful links, which is worth reading completely, and saving, for that dark day when you realize your own faith has waned.

Many people suffer through periods where they question everything they ever believed.  This includes people who have done great things in service to the Kingdom (whether or not they are recognized as such by the world or the church).  Some of the greatest saints of history have had to endure this, and some have been in this state for years, or decades.

I think one of the most difficult aspects of this may be that it is difficult to be open with other Christians about it.   It’s easier to hide and pretend than to put up with the people who try to argue you out of it, or don’t take it seriously, or just tell you to pray about it.

Nevertheless, I think it’s crucial for Christians in this position to find someone with whom they can share the entire thing.  The person with whom they share needs to be someone they respect and trust, someone who has a decent background in scripture and apologetics, though professional training isn’t required.

I think the very worst aspect of this for the suffering Christian may be the crushing sense of being alone, of being unable to share it with someone.

I think that means that we should probably be talking a bit more about the fact that this DOES happen, and is not evidence that the sufferer is a bad person, a failed Christian, or whatever. 

We should bear one another’s burdens.  And we should not create a church-culture where expressing doubts, even very deep ones, is not acceptable.

The previous post in this series is here.

This post is less about the Left AT Christian Universities than it is about the pressures of the Left ON Christian Universities, although the latter is mostly made possible by the presence of the former.  That is, the Left outside of Christian Universities will only be able to pressure them into making concessions with the help of Leftists inside those institutions who encourage leaders to succumb to the pressure.

Blacklisting a Christian University Much more at the link.

According to the Langley Advance, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the Canadian version of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), has issued a report stating that Christian universities fail to provide faculty members with academic freedom. Specifically the report places Trinity Western University in British Columbia on its list of universities and colleges that have a faith or ideological test as a condition of employment.

There are also professional academic organizations in the USA that are considering taking the position that universities may not require any particular beliefs or lifestyle commitments on the part of employees or job applicants.   This is especially humorous since there are all kinds of “unofficial litmus tests” that virtually any faculty member must accept in order to be hired in the modern university.   Those tests are defended with positively religious fervor, though they are not religious in nature.  Far from it.

Try to get in a job in a university these days if you say in the job interview that you don’t think “diversity” should be a higher value for the university than simply getting the most competent faculty and best prepared students it can get.

It would be wise not to volunteer in the job interview that you think anthropogenic global warming is an enormous scam.

If you happen to think that the Iraq war was a proper use of American military power, it would be wise not to say so until you have tenure.

Do you think that God created human beings in a special act of creation (whether you are an “old earth” creationist, a “young earth” creationist, an “intelligent design” proponent, etc.)?  Just don’t bring it up, and sidestep any questions that may touch on it.

Do you think Sarah Palin would have been better for the USA than Barrack Obama?  Unless you desire to be laughed at as you exit your unsuccessful job interview, don’t let on.

Do you think economic growth and the spread of capitalism is a better aid program for the third world than permanent entitlements in the form of foreign aid?  Better not say so.

Do you think that God’s Word in scripture means pretty much what it says, and that historical understandings of its theological and moral content are correct?  Learn to beat the quasi-polygraph on this one, since, obviously, only bigots and haters believe this.

There are pieties to which all must make obeisance in the world of academia, and they are pretty much the exact reverse of the positions just stated.  Sadly, these same pieties may be defended by all too many in Christian universities as well, and defended more vigorously, at times, than the bedrock commitments one would have thought more central to their mission.

The only question remaining is if Christian universities are going to capitulate to the very real pressures that come along with seeking respectability in the eyes of the secular academic world.   When Christian universities do succumb, it isn’t really the pressures from outside that make it happen….  it’s the pressure from inside.

The scary thing is that those applying that pressure will be quoting scripture as they do it.

The next post in this series is here.

Christian Mother Fails to Transfer Daughter to Former Lesbian Partner by Deadline

A Christian woman in Virginia who was ordered to turn over her daughter to her former lesbian partner in Vermont did not do so by the set deadline, a lawyer for the second woman reported.Lisa Miller had been ordered by a judge in Vermont to turn over her daughter, Isabella, to Janet Jenkins by 1 p.m. Friday, but has not shown up, Sarah Star, Jenkins’s lawyer, told the New York Times.

Officer Tawny Wright, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman, meanwhile, said the Jenkins family had called the police and that a detective is investigating.

For the time being, the case remains a civil matter, Wright added.

Last week, Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen, who awarded custody of Isabella to Jenkins on Nov. 20, noted that Miller appeared to have “disappeared with the minor child” and ceased communication with her attorneys.

For the past five years, Miller and Jenkins have been engaged in a custody battle over Isabella, who was conceived when the two women were living together in Virginia. Miller, a born-again Christian, had renounced her homosexuality just a few years after entering into a civil union with Jenkins in Vermont in 2000. Jenkins, on the other hand, is today still an active lesbian and has expressed disapproval in raising Isabella in a Christian home.

More at the link.

It’s about the welfare of the child, which I think is very clear in this case.

The observation has been made recently that Life in the inner galaxy would be bombarded by comets

WE’RE lucky Earth resides in the Milky Way’s suburbs. Intense comet bombardment near the galaxy’s centre may make it tough for life to gain a foothold there.

Earth and the other planets of our solar system suffer occasional impacts when comets are disturbed from their orbits around the sun by the gravity of nearby stars and gas clouds.

The effect is stronger closer to the galaxy’s centre, where stars and gas clouds are more tightly packed. More than twice as many comets are shaken loose to potentially hit planets at half our distance to the centre, according to simulations by Marco Masi of the University of Padua, Italy, and his colleagues

People who study such things are telling us that the Earth is at the just-right distance from the galactic center, at the just-right distance from the Sun, with a just-right moon that creates tides, more critical for life than was once understood. The moon also helps keep the Earth at its just-right axial tilt so that we have seasons, which are sometimes annoying, but also critical for advanced life.

These facts are just the tip of the iceberg about the exceedingly rare “just-rightness” of our world for advanced life, and also the “just-rightness” of our world for intelligent life (that would be us) to be able to learn about the universe by observation.

Some people think this is a huge accident.

I don’t.

You can read more about this in these two books:

Rare Earth

The Priveleged Planet

The previous post in this series is here.

Matthew 18 has these verses:

¹⁵“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. ¹⁶But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ¹⁷If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

These verses seem to be about the appropriate response when someone sins against you in some more or less personal way.

Leaders in churches or para-church organizations should be cautious about suggesting this passage as the correct guidance for people who disagree with some aspect of their leadership or policies.  There are two reasons for this:

1)  The passage isn’t about disagreement with the decisions and policies of the leadership of a church or para-church organization.   It’s about personal transgressions.  That might be the case if a person in leadership does or says something inappropriate with regard to an individual, engages in some obviously immoral behavior, etc.  It is not the case when the criticism is about the policies or decisions of a person in leadership.

2)  If a leader inappropriately invokes this passage when some criticism is made, it is a double edged sword.  Yes, it might convince someone to approach the leader first with their complaint.  But there is a rapid escalation in the passage.   Leaders who attempt to defend themselves with Matthew 18:15 risk that someone will read a couple of verses farther, and decide that it’s time to air matters in public after a single solo conversation and a single “group” conversation.

So, what scriptures DO apply when criticism of policies or decisions of leaders are involved?  It’s not so simple.   But there is a discussion of it here.  Generally, if you don’t like the policies or decisions of a leader, you’re limited to working through the normal political process of your institution or church, unless you believe the policies or decisions amount to false teaching, or support for false teaching done by others.  In that case, you have quite a bit of scripture reading to do, and commentaries to read, before you do much about it.

If you’re a leader of a church or para-church organization, the more restrictive advice of the epistles is a better source for ways you can manage such criticism than Matthew 18.

The use and misuse of scripture has been on my mind lately.

It is very popular, when someone wants to blunt someone else’s criticism, to quote Jesus saying, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”  (Matthew 7:1)

This is often said to deflect a valid criticism of someone’s behavior, perspectives, attitudes, etc.  The problem, of course, is that it’s usually a ridiculous application of the saying.

The next verse says this:  “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “

The clear implication is that judging is not mere evaluation.  It is, instead, taking action to impose a penalty of some kind, a penalty you have no right to impose.

The New Testament is full of injunctions to be discerning, and it is full of instruction about what to do regarding the failures and sin of others.  Clearly, these instructions imply that evaluation will be done, and that evaluation will be based on known standards.

It would be “judging” if you thought that you were personally empowered to enforce a penalty upon someone else based on your evaluation.  It is not “judging” to observe that someone is not behaving according to biblical standards, though of course some discretion is required in terms of what you do or say about that observation.  That’s exactly what the Biblical instructions are for.

Start a tally.  The next 100 times you hear someone quote Matthew 7:1, ask yourself if they are simply trying to avoid any evaluation of their behavior, attitude or perspectives.

I’m guessing that’s the case about 95% of the time.

Or more.

First a protestant, then a catholic, on what divides us, and what unites us. There are still some issues to be resolved.  Much more at each link.

The Reformation in a Nutshell

There used to be a time when your loyalty to the Protestant cause was judged by how much you hated Catholics. But today, with all the ecumenical dialogue, the Manhattan statements, the ECT council, and the postmodern virtue of tolerance, people are much more willing to let water under the bridge. “Maybe we overreacted” is the thought of many.

To the Catholics, Protestants are no longer anathema (which is pretty bad), but are “separated brethren” (which is not so bad).

Times are changing. But have the issues changed?

Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture

It is my pleasure to be able to write on a subject where we as Catholics share so much common ground with our Reformed brothers, and even with most Evangelicals. In fact, it is no small thing that we agree upon foundational truths contra mundum in a time when even many Christians deny them.

This article intends to show that, though Protestants agree with the Catholic Church on the basic truths about Scripture and its authority, the Reformed view of Scripture errs in three respects: in its assumption about the canon of Scripture, in its view of the authority of Scripture, and in its view of the role of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church. These errors are harmful to the faith, and the truth proclaimed by the Catholic Church about its Sacred books is the perfect corrective. I will begin this examination of the authority of Sacred Scripture with our points of agreement.

There is cause for hope in eventual Christian unity, I think.   We have a ways to go, however.  And the eventual rapprochement will necessarily involve both sides giving up something non-essential, for the sake of the essentials.

The previous post in this series is here.

There is very little here with which to disagree, so I present in its entirety this post at BLOG and MABLOG

Carl Henry once said, “If evangelicals lose the battle for the mind of contemporary man it will be in their own colleges.” That’s the kind of prophetic and semi-inscrutable statement that we could use a lot more of, and which unfortunately, we don’t hear a very much any more. Since Henry wrote those words, the tide of the battle to which he referred has generally gone against us, and it was grim in his time. There are some hopeful signs here and there, but by and large, the Christian establishment for higher education has presented to a disintegrating world mere echoes of that disintegration, instead of a robust alternative to it. The academic fads that tear through the secular halls of learning stroll through our halls of learning. The virulent forms of unbelief that plague the postmodern mind commend themselves (always in milder forms) to us. We have come to believe that Christian counterculture consists of driving down the road to perdition at a slower rate of speed. But slow damnation is not the biblical alternative. The higher education of evangelicalism resembles the unfortunate politician that Winston Churchill once compared to a seat cushion — he always bore the impress of the last person who sat on him.

Henry again. “My guess would be that on balance the secular universities more effectively communicate humanism than many of our religious colleges succeed in communicating biblical theism.” They catechize their own more effectively than we do. They train their next generation in the tenets of their faith more rigorously than we do.

When the secular great ones assemble in their magnificent banquets, and a faithful believer comes into their hall, his presence will generally take one of two forms. Either he will attend as John the Baptist did, with his head on a platter, or he will attend as Daniel did, in order to translate the words of judgment that were written on the walls by a celestial hand. But we show up with all the confidence of a leper in a rented tux two sizes too large.

This is all very general, so let me mention a few specific areas where Christian higher education has lost its bearings and consequently its way. Our institutions (generally) do not exhibit biblical faith and fidelity on matters of: human sexuality that reflects God’s image, male and female; the doctrine of biblical creation; the meaning of history and the glory of Christendom; the serious idolatry of Enlightenment categories; the risible idolatries of postmodern rejection of Enlightenment categories; and the foundational need for Christian colleges to be free of financial entanglements with the secular state. For starters.

In short, Christian higher education no longer believes that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. Having begun with Carl Henry, let me conclude with another of his most trenchant observations.

“The intellectual decision most urgently facing humanity in our time is whether to acknowledge or disown Jesus Christ as the hope of the world and whether Christian values are to be the arbiter of human civilization in the present instead of only in the final judgment of men and nations.”

And so let me propose a little thought experiment. Suppose that glorious statement above were to be presented to the board of trustees of every Christian seminary, college and university in North America, as well as to every faculty senate, and suppose it were presented for a straight up or down vote. How would the vote go? How would the truth fare? Exactly, and therein lies our problem. And the only way out is repentance.

So, now I am prepared to answer the question posed in the title of this post, “Does the secular Left believe its faith more firmly than the Christian academy believes its own?”

The answer? It depends on what you mean by the notion of “the faith of the Christian academy.”

And therein lies the problem, since, it seems, no one is quite sure these days.  And sadly, with all of that, there seem to be all too many matters of essentially complete agreement between the Christian academy and the secular Left at secular institutions.  Those matters of agreement seem to be far more determinedly defended by Christian academics than the things that make them distinctively Christian.  We can talk about whether Jesus’ message and life were more about personal salvation or corporate lifestyle and social justice, but woe to anyone who questions the underpinnings of anyone’s secularly defined disciplinary methodology, or the theory of knowledge that underlays it.  After all, some things are just too important to trifle with.

Did Jesus rise from the dead?  It depends on what you mean by “rise from the dead.”    If Jesus rose from the dead, does that matter to us today?  It depends on what you mean by “matter.”  Or maybe “today.”  Or “us.”  Or even “Jesus.”

But in some quarters, “diversity” and multiculturalism are without doubt absolutely required perspectives, more or less without nuance, for all good Christians who are listening to the Holy Spirit.

Whatever the Holy Spirit may actually be, I mean.  And whatever you mean by “Christian.”

H/T:  Melody

The next post in this series is here.

The following is a prime example of taking a phrase in scripture and making too much of it… while also suggesting that God is impressed with the volume of our music

You are familiar with the exhortation that music in worship is summoned to be skilful music (Ps. 33:3). We are not permitted to just throw anything together and call it good. But skill is not the only characteristic we are told to cultivate. “Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise” (Ps. 33:3).

There is a temptation when churches pursue excellence in music, and that is the temptation of becoming music snobs. And when that happens, a party spirit sets in and we start feeling superior to those who praise God with three chords maximum. But holding on to what we know about musical excellence, what do these brothers and sisters do that is better than how we do it? Well, frequently, contemporary worship music is louder than what we do. This is a clear and identifiable superiority. The Bible says that we are to worship God with shouts, with cymbals, with percussion, with noise. This is as much a biblical standard as that of playing skillfully—all the earth is to make a loud noise and rejoice (Ps. 98: 4); the cymbals are to be loud (Ps. 150:5); those who trust in God are to shout for joy (Ps. 5: 11); God ascends with a shout (Ps. 47:5).

God does not just want quality in music; He wants quantity. And to take pride in the quality if it is mumbled is just as wrong headed as to take pride in the noise apart from excellence in execution. We don’t get to pick and choose, and lord it over those who pick and choose a different deficiency. Adulterers on Mondays and Wednesdays do not get to feel superior to adulterers who sin on Tuesdays and Fridays.

So clap your hands, all you peoples, shout unto God with a voice of triumph.

OK, gimme a break here.  Equating the importance of musical taste to the choice of day to commit adultery is so far over the top that it would be an understatement to call it hyperbole.

But louder is better? More Godly?

NIV renders Psalm 33:3 this way:

“Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.”

A better approach to this is to acknowledge that part of playing skillfully is to play softly when required… and that, in context, “shouting for joy” in musical performance most likely means playing or singing it like you mean it, and not just going through the motions. Playing and singing like it matters. Like you’re doing something important, not merely reciting musically by rote, but being personally, completely involved in what you’re doing, namely worshipping God with music.

But simple, sheer volume? So, if one Marshall stack represents salvation, does a double stack represent sanctification?

I don’t see any amps in this picture.

If you have a short attention span, or are easily bored, don’t bother to click the link below, but if you’re interested in hearing two brilliant people discuss the “state of play” between evangelicals and Catholics, you will find this discussion between Francis Beckwith and Timothy George to be completely fascinating.

It has become common for Muslim apologists, responding to the criticism that Muslims don’t condemn terrorism, to quote this imam or that, saying something that seems like a criticism.  Most of us in the west have little ability to determine the worth of these “criticisms.”  Is this something being said one way to the west, when the media are listening, and another way to the Muslim audience?  Is it a carefully worded “sympathy for the families of the dead” or is it a full-throated condemnation of the terrorist act as unIslamic and immoral, without equivocation or ambivalence?  After all, we give sympathy to the families of justly executed murderers.  Such sympathy hardly constitutes condemnation of the judge, the jury, the law or the executioners.

Another response is to say that the west is just as morally ambivalent about its own failings.  This article compares Muslim reluctance to condemn clear moral failure on the part of other Muslims to the tendency by modern Americans (including in the North) to whitewash the Confederate role in the Civil War, to call great generals of the South “heroes,” etc., when in fact they were fighting for a “state’s right” to protect the chattel ownership of human beings.  Of course, that war ended 145 years ago… there was less tendency in the North to be ambivalent about it at the time.  And this highlights another tendency of Muslim apologists, to point at western history, because there isn’t much they can point to now that compares to bombing African embassies, 9/11, the London Tube bombings, the Spanish train bombings,  the incredible carnage wrought in Iraq by Al Qaeda, the BATH killers, the Shia killers, the Indonesian Islamist killers, the Pakistani killers in Mumbai, etc., etc., etc., ad endless nauseam.

Occasionally something like this appears: Indian Muslims under pressure in Mumbai aftermath

“We strongly believe terrorists have no religion and they do not deserve a burial,” said Maulana Zaheer Abbas Rizvi of the All India Shia Personal Law Board, a body for framing Muslim laws.

This is good, but it’s in the same league as the pastor of a large church in Oklahoma condemning Timothy McVeigh, with perhaps tepid support from his denomination, but not much from a national umbrella church organization like the National Council of Churches or the National Association of Evangelicals, let alone wider Christendom.   The Shia are a distinct minority in India at about 10% of the approximately 100 million Muslims.

It’s tempting to put all Muslim denunciations of terrorism in the same category, but it’s a mistake.  It is not unusual for (especially) moderate Muslims to denounce the murder of other Muslims by Islamists.   How many of those same people say anything about rocketing Israeli civilians?

Even CAIR “denounces” terrorism, all the while it supports it via the Holy Land Foundation’s funneling of cash to Hamas.  Denunciations of terrorism, lacking specifics of who did what to whom, are cheap.  Ask CAIR to condemn a specific jihadi’s murder of innocents and all you usually get is, “We condemn all terrorism.”  And that’s code for, “We’re not going to name names.  And Israel is a terrorist nation.”   A ringing moral condemnation does not begin with, “Yes, but…”

So regarding Muslim denunciations of bad behavior by Muslims, some discernment is required.  Yes, you can find the occasional scholar or Imam who denounces it (though it often lacks those specifics).  But is it a scholar who is important in the Muslim world, or merely one who is popular with western elites as a “moderate spokesperson”?  It is well documented that many Muslim spokespeople say one thing in English to western media, and something else entirely to their own people, in their own language.  When a “Christian” murders an abortionist (which happens about once every ten years in the USA), virtually EVERY Christian leader speaks out against it instantly, in practical terms, including very conservative anti-abortion activists, both Protestant and Catholic.  You don’t need to look for “moderate Christians,” or “Christian scholars,” or something.  The Jerry Falwells, James Dobsons, Bishop Chaputs, the Popes, Pat Robertsons, Christian leaders of every stripe, Christian academics, the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, virtually every pro-life group and conservative talk-show host will condemn in unison the murder of the abortionist “in the name of Christ.”  And this is the response to only ONE person’s murder “in the name of Christ,” about every ten years.

Is it possible to contend that there is anything even remotely close to this in the Muslim world?  Instead, we see people dancing in the street at the murder of thousands.  We see a “compassionately released” terrorist, reponsible for the deaths of hundreds, greeted as a conquering hero by national leaders and clerics (most recently in Lybia, but it’s a common pattern, isn’t it?).   Imagine if Timothy McVeigh had driven his diesel-laced fertilizer truck up to the Al-Hussein Mosque in Cairo, instead of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and said God told him to do it.  When the Egyptians released him on “compassionate parole” in 30 years (you’re laughing hysterically, right?), do you think his return would be celebrated by the President of the USA, national religious leaders, an adoring press, and public acclaim?

One “out” that is sometimes taken is to say that there is “no recognized single leader” in Islam.  But there isn’t in Christianity, either.  If you consulted with the Pope, the Archibishop of Canterbury, the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, maybe some worldwide Protestant denominations and a few national Orthodox churches, and they all agreed, you could reasonably say “Christianity has spoken.”  And they all condemn the murder of abortionists, even though most are pro-life (with the notable exception of the National Council of Churches organizations, of course, which mostly represent dying denominations).

As I understand it, there are four “schools” of Islamic jurisprudence in Sunni Islam, and two in Shia Islam.  Those schools have well-known leaders, perhaps two or three important ones in each case.  It would be most persuasive if THOSE leaders spoke in unison that the murder of non-Muslims by jihadis is immoral and unIslamic.  But people in the west don’t listen clearly.  Some of these guys have “expressed sympathy” for the families of the killed on 9/11.   That is not the same thing as a ringing condemnation of the acts of the terrorists, and the public assurance to their own people, in their own people’s native languages, that the acts were sin, were unIslamic, would have been condemned by Muhammed, and did not earn the perpetrators a place in paradise.  Has THAT happened?  Or should we accept the PR statements of “moderates” who know that they’re talking to the western media in English or French?  Does Islam even teach that it is a sin to lie to non-Muslims for the sake of protecting the reputation of Islam?   Google “Al-taqiyya.”  (Qur’an 3:28: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers. If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them”.  This verse has been used, it seems, to justify lying to infidels in the defense of Islam.)

Let’s be really clear.  Imagine that 20 “Christians” hijacked four airliners filled with people from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Iran, and flew them into, say,

1) the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca at full occupancy,

2) the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina during the hadj, and maybe

3) the Haghia Sophia in Istanbul during Friday prayers, along with aiming one at

4) the palace of the Saudi family in Riyadh.

The entire Christian world would rise up in breathless horror.  Can you imagine the SCOPE of the reaction, the revulsion, the utter shame, and the rejection by the Christian world that this had anything to do with Christ or Christianity?  Can you imagine the thousands of recriminations that Christians would direct at each other, the self-examination, the zillions of study sessions to reinforce traditional Christian teaching on murder that would result in churches, christian schools and colleges, etc.?

Would we be willing to settle for a nice statement from the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dayton and an obscure professor of “Christian studies” somewhere that “we’re sorry for the victims’ families”?  Would we immediately put out PR statements hoping that this wouldn’t lead to “Christophobia” and “hate crimes” against innocent Christians?  Would we have to look for cherry picked Christian spokesmen to say “moderate” sounding things to the media?  And let’s be clear:  would Christians in ANY Muslim plurality nation be anywhere near as safe as Muslims have been in the USA after 9/11?

And would even the most conservative Bible Belt town in the South have a spontaneous dance of joy in the public square over the murder of those godless infidels, by right-thinking American boys with scout knives who hijacked airliners full of unbelievers?

I am waiting for an Islamic cleric in a prominent position in one of those six schools of Islamic jurisprudence to say that the killers of 9/11 are most likely in Hell, and belong there under Islamic teaching, as do those who are now emulating them.

And the notion that all six schools’ major representatives will make such a statement?  I suspect the Lord will return first.

The previous post in this series is here.

IN a book review of Heaven’s Touch by James B. Kaler - the reviewer reports this point made in the book:

The real surprise of the past few decades must be the vulnerability of the Earth to truly cosmic events – not only supernovae, whose “killing zones” may extend within 30 light years of us, but also gamma ray bursters whose emissions, beamed like death rays, could scour life from planets 6000 light years away. I have a soft spot for magnetars, ultra-dense neutron stars with the strongest magnetic fields in the universe, and Kaler covers these in detail. In 1998, the eruption of one such star 20,000 light years away generated X-rays so powerful that anyone in Earth orbit would have had the equivalent of a dental X-ray. Six years later, the Earth was irradiated by a magnetar outburst 100 times more powerful.

The reviewer is referring to the fact that cosmologists and astrophysicists have begun wondering, of late, just why we’re still here.  They are beginning to understand that the universe is indeed a very dangerous place, and it seems less and less likely that life can begin on a planet and continue to grow and develop for nearly 4 billion years without simply being destroyed by stellar events in nearby star systems…  “nearby” meaning 6,000 light years or so.  Call it 36,000,000,000,000,000 miles or so.  Within that range certain kinds of supernovae, gamma ray bursts, and more exotic things have the capacity to threaten whatever life may exist.

Even a standard, every day supernova may be dangerous within a hundred light years or so, depending on the size of the supernova.  There may be three to five supernovae per century in Milky Way size galaxies.  Estimates vary, but that’s a typical current guess.  Modern astronomy hasn’t existed long enough to develop a baseline through direct observation of any single galaxy, but by observing 100 comparable galaxies for 10 years, astronomers can develop estimates that might be equivalent to watching one galaxy for 1000 years.  So if in that period, observers see 30 supernovae, they can guess that 3 per century might be a reasonable estimate.  But it’s early times yet.  We’ll know a lot more in the coming decades.

A few minutes with a calculator will suggest that there have been maybe 100 million supernovae in the Milky Way galaxy since there was life on Earth.  The galaxy is “only” about 100,000 light years in diameter.   Supernovae will certainly be more common where stars are more densely packed.  Even so, is it so unlikely that one of those supernovae could easily have exploded near enough to Earth to kill its lifeforms?  Maybe more than once?

4 billion years is a LONG time.  Remember when Carl Sagan soothed us with the naturalist fable about “billions and billions of years” and “primordial soup” as an explanation for life’s origin?  Of course, now we know that was just a comforting materialistic bedtime story so children would go to sleep knowing that they really were just statistical accidents in space-time, and dream nice dreams about quarks and DNA.  Now we know there was no “primordial soup.”   We know that life appeared on Earth almost immediately from the moment earth’s temperature dropped below something like the interior of a jet engine.

And now the shoe is on the other foot.  Instead of the huge length of time being an argument for the accidental, spontaneous origin of life in some kind of improbable tango dance of amino acids, that enormous timespan is getting very difficult to explain as even being possible for life to have continued without destruction by nearby stellar events.  Supernovae are rare.  But, as Carl Sagan would say, when you have billions and billions of years, anything can happen… and usually does.  So why hasn’t it happened to Earth?

Here’s a current candidate for the job of terrestrial hitman.  This sort of thing is probably very rare.  But in 4 billion years, how rare does something have to be to happen now and then?

Just as important as the question of how life arose in a geological eyeblink after the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment is this:  why hasn’t life on Earth been wiped out, over and over, in the 3.9 billion years since it began?

Maybe Someone is looking out for us?

Remember to say “thank You” during your bedtime prayers tonight.  I know I will.

The next post in this series is here.

I have a friend who is a chaplain for the local sheriff’s department.    We’ll call him Fred (not his real name).  He is a former Navy man, and he also served many years as police officer, I think mostly as a Deputy Sheriff, though I’m not entirely certain.  He’s a middle aged guy now, retired after some hard years of service, but on call when there is a need.  As you may expect, these things come in waves.  He may go a few weeks without a particular issue that requires his services..  and then an officer may be severely injured or killed on the job, or some young man commits suicide and the department calls my friend to be with the family, or a toddler falls in a pool and is in a permanent coma, or simply dies, or…..  you get the idea.

There are several aspects of this that come to mind.

It’s fairly common for a certain segment of Christendom to portray Jesus as being sort of an extra-spiritual community organizer who took care of the poor while sharing profound narratives with subtle meanings about the responsibilities of the rich and privileged.  People who are so inclined tend to downplay the aspects of His teaching that involved life after death, salvation of the soul, eternal destination, and so on.  But whether or not Jesus was an ancient socialist just doesn’t enter into the picture when you’re trying to minister to people in extremis.  They are struggling with the single most important issue of life, namely the certain death we all face.

What do you say to someone who is suddenly, shockingly bereaved, or so injured that life will never be the same?  Pastors deal with people dying all the time…  but, thankfully, there is usually some warning, some opportunity, however inadequate, to prepare for the inevitable.  But Fred has to walk into a context where the entire family is stunned, in shock, perhaps blaming God for the entire situation, and somehow he has to bring the peace and love of God with him.  I’m sure that sometimes all he can do is just be there with them, and share in their suffering.  Jesus wept.

And I expect that, sometimes, when people in great pain are asking where God is right now, it may only be later that they realize that He sent an emissary to them, in the form of a chaplain who didn’t have to be there, but felt sent by God.

Consider the task.  Some people in these situations will be believers, and the job is to comfort them, and reinforce their faith that God is God.  Others will be complete agnostics, perhaps only now confronting the bedrock issues of life and death, and this can be an opportunity to show, without preaching directly at them, that there is another reality worthy of their attention.  There may be people who are “nominally” Christian, but haven’t taken it at all seriously…. and oddly, these may be inclined to blame themselves, thinking if they’d been “better Christians” maybe it all wouldn’t have happened.  And on the other side of it, these “nominally Christian” folks may be the ones most likely to blame God for it all.

So what kind of person can DO this work?  To start with, you must be steady as a rock.  You have to be able to confront great pain, and not melt away, which means this work can mostly only be done by those who have suffered plenty already.  You have to be enormously grounded yourself.  And you have to know that no one is really prepared for this work, and so your only recourse is to trust God to speak and show His love through you.

It takes a lot of courage.  I have the feeling that, tough guy that I know him to be, Fred sometimes goes home and simply mourns for the loss and pain that people must endure.

And God prepares him for the next call.

UPDATE:  I happen to be in the hospital at this update, for what will probably not be a major matter, though it has caused some discomfort.   My friend “Fred” just came to visit with another friend from church.  After he left, another friend from church called, and asked how Fred was doing.  I asked what she meant, and she told me that Fred had just spent 30 minutes doing CPR on an accident victim he’d come across on the highway, in a remote area where services were slow to arrive.  The man had probably been dead before Fred started…  but Fred just did what needed to be done until emergency services arrived.  Typically, he didn’t mention it to me when he visited me.

No, no, no, I meant the OTHER Rev. J. Wright, Rev. Joe Wright, who prayed this prayer to open a session of the Kansas legislature in 1996. Wrongly attributed in a circulating email to Billy Graham, this appears to have been borrowed from a 1995 Kentucky Prayer Breakfast, where it was prayed by Bob Russell.

Heavenly Father,
We come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance.
We know your Word says, “Woe to those who call evil good,” but that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.
We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism.
We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism.
We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem.
We have abused power and called it political savvy.
We have coveted our neighbors’ possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great state.
Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will.
I ask it in the name of your son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

It would, of course, be lovely to hope that such a prayer might ever have been prayed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, not just Rev. Joe Wright.

What’s sad is that this is not a partisan prayer.  Some of the items in it might easily be applied to the Right as well as the Left.  But in it’s Kansas legislature appearance, it was Democrats who got up and walked out.

Alas.