Feb 09 2010

Evaporating faith?

Category: church,religion,theologyharmonicminer @ 9:08 am

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.


Feb 06 2010

The Left at Christian Universities, part 17: The intolerant lovers of “tolerance”

Category: higher education,society,theologyharmonicminer @ 9:15 am

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.


Jan 07 2010

Forcing Virginia to recognize “gay marriage” in Vermont?

Category: judges,justice,left,marriage,religion,society,theologyharmonicminer @ 9:22 am

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.


Dec 24 2009

Dodging the rocks

Category: science,space,theologyharmonicminer @ 9:26 am

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


Dec 21 2009

Misusing Scripture #2

Category: church,religion,theologyharmonicminer @ 9:31 am

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 next post in this series is here.


Dec 19 2009

Misusing Scripture #1

Category: church,religion,theologyharmonicminer @ 10:19 am

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.

The next post in this series is here.


Dec 11 2009

Is the Reformation over? Not quite yet…

Category: church,religion,theologyharmonicminer @ 10:08 am

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.


Nov 19 2009

The Left at Christian Universities, Part 14: Does the secular Left believe its faith more firmly than the Christian academy believes its own?

Category: higher education,left,religion,theologyharmonicminer @ 10:16 am

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.


Oct 04 2009

Louder is better?!?

Category: church,music,theologyharmonicminer @ 11:26 am

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.


Sep 22 2009

Evangelical Catholics?

Category: religion,theologyharmonicminer @ 9:24 am

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.


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