Screwtape

Justin Taylor has found that John Cleese's reading of The Screwtape Letters, once available on cassette, but not yet on CD, can be downloaded from Audible.com for $10.49. That is a bargain - Cleese is the perfect reader for Screwtape's letters to his nephew, Junior Tempter Wormwood.

In the very first letter, Screwtape advises that Wormwood should emphasize jargon, not logic, as he attempts to prevent the conversion of his "patient" to Christianity:

...Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous - that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it "real life" and don't let him ask what he means by "real".

If you've never read it, then listen to it in this great recording or read The Screwtape Lettersthe old fashioned way for about the same cost.

Between Two Worlds: John Cleese Reading Screwtape Letters

"If...he really died for me"

This morning the Wall Street Journal printed an account by Robert Costa of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's conversion to Christianity:

"I did not have an overnight epiphany like so many people do," said Mr. Jindal, calling his conversion a "very intellectual-based journey," where he studied countless religious texts. "Given my background and personality, that was an important part of the process." But, he notes, "I don't think you can 'read' yourself into faith. I had gotten to the point where I knew what history had to say about this person named Jesus and what he had done on Earth. . . . I think at some point you have to take a leap of faith."

As a teenager, Mr. Jindal said he sought out chaplains at nearby Louisiana State University as he grasped for a religious identity to call his own. During a youth group's Easter season musical production in 1987 at LSU's campus chapel, a black-and-white video of the Passion played during intermission. "I don't know why I was struck so hard at that moment," said Mr. Jindal. "There was nothing fascinating about this particular video. . . . But watching this depiction of an actor playing Jesus on the cross, it just hit me, harder than I'd ever been hit before," he said. "If that was really the son of God, and he really died for me, then I felt compelled to get on my knees and worship him."

"It was liberating," said Mr. Jindal about his moment. "Up until that point, my prayer life was like a child talking to Santa Claus - making deals with God saying 'I'll be good, but this is what I want in return.'" Soon after, Mr. Jindal began to pray and fervently read the Bible, principally parables in the New Testament. "It was like the words were jumping out of the page. It was literally as if it had been written just for me," he said. [more]

Rebel With a Cause: Bobby Jindal's Spiritual Journey - WSJ.com

"The echo of a tune we have not heard"

In Christianity Today, an excerpt from Mere Christians: Inspiring Stories of Encounters with C. S. Lewis: Philip Yancey's description of how Lewis's books influenced him and his writing. A portion from "Found in Space":

I first encountered C. S. Lewis through his space trilogy. Though perhaps not his best work, it had an undermining effect on me. He made the supernatural so believable that I could not help wondering, What if it's really true? What if there is a God and an afterlife and what if supernatural forces really are operating behind the scenes on this planet and in my life? ....

Alone of modern authors, Lewis taught me to anticipate heaven: "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea."

Lewis saw the world as a place worth saving. Unlike the monastics of the Middle Ages and the legalists of modern times, he saw no need to withdraw and deny all pleasures. He loved a stiff drink, a puff on the pipe, a gathering of friends, a Wagnerian opera, a hike in the fields of Oxford. The pleasures in life are indeed good, just not good enough; they are "only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

I found in Lewis that rare and precarious balance of embracing the world while not idolizing it. For all its defects, this planet bears marks of the original design, traces of Beauty and Joy that both recall and anticipate the Creator's intent. .... [more]

Found in Space | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

The Reason for God

World Magazine chooses its "Book of the Year":

WORLD's Book of the Year is Tim Keller's The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Dutton, 2008).

Keller is the gifted pastor of an ecclesiastical semi-miracle, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. Few thought that young urban professionals would flock to a biblically orthodox church but Keller's flock now numbers over 5,000, and his church has birthed many others throughout the New York metropolitan area and around the world.

The Reason for God boldly takes aim at smug self-righteousness: "It is possible to avoid Jesus as Savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them." As Keller explains, "Both religion (in which you build your identity on your moral achievements) and irreligion (in which you build your identity on some other secular pursuit or relationships) are, ultimately, spiritually identical courses to take. Both are 'sin.'"[more]

Get the book - and read it.

WORLD Magazine | Today's News, Christian Views

Believe

Andrew Camenga, the executive for the Seventh Day Baptist Board of Christian Education, has been playing with Wordle. He entered the Seventh Day Baptist Statement of Belief and his result can be found here. The most prominent word by far is "believe" [which does not indicate any affinity with a particular Presidential candidate] because each section begins with "we believe." I decided to enter the same words, play around with the format, and see what came up. My result is on the right and at Wordle. Click on the image for a larger version.

"Wordle," Wordle says, "is a toy"...

for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Sayers on Hell

John Piper quotes Dorothy L. Sayers on Hell

There seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the “cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell,” or “the childish and grotesque mediaeval imagery of physical fire and worms.” ...

But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of hell is not “mediaeval”: it is Christ’s. It is not a device of “mediaeval priestcraft” for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from “mediaeval superstition,” but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it.... It confronts us in the oldest and least “edited” of the gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realizes, until one reads the Evangelists through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ. [Dorothy L. Sayers, A Matter of Eternity]

Pinnock and Sayers on Hell :: Desiring God

Hell

Perhaps because I was a teacher, I enjoy presentations that can get past the "watchful dragons" of skepticism. I think Tim Keller does this. His recent book, The Reason for God, is a wonderful example and I eagerly anticipate reading anything else he writes.

Tim Keller on The Importance of Hell:

In 2003 a research group discovered 64% of Americans expect to go to heaven when they die, but less than 1% think they might go to hell. Not only are there plenty of people today who don't believe in the Bible's teaching on everlasting punishment, even those who do find it an unreal and a remote concept. ....

In this short essay Keller elaborates on four reasons the doctrine matters:

1. It is important because Jesus taught about it more than all other Biblical authors put together.
2. It is important because it shows how infinitely dependent we are on God for everything.
3. It is important because it unveils the seriousness and danger of living life for yourself.
4. The doctrine of hell is important because it is the only way to know how much Jesus loved us and how much he did for us.
   

In point 2 Keller asks "What is hell, then?" and answers:

It is God actively giving us up to what we have freely chosen - to go our own way, be our own "the master of our fate, the captain of our soul," to get away from him and his control. It is God banishing us to regions we have desperately tried to get into all our lives. J.I.Packer writes: "Scripture sees hell as self-chosen . . . [H]ell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever, worshipping him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves." (J.I.Packer, Concise Theology p.262-263.) If the thing you most want is to worship God in the beauty of his holiness, then that is what you will get (Ps 96:9-13.) If the thing you most want is to be your own master, then the holiness of God will become an agony, and the presence of God a terror you will flee forever (Rev 6:16; cf. Is 6:1-6.)

And later:

I believe one of the reasons the Bible tells us about hell is so it can act like 'smelling salts' about the true danger and seriousness of even minor sins. However, I've found that only stressing the symbols of hell (fire and darkness) in preaching rather than going into what the symbols refer to (eternal, spiritual decomposition) actually prevents modern people from finding hell a deterrent. Some years ago I remember a man who said that talk about the fires of hell simply didn't scare him, it seemed too far-fetched, even silly. So I read him lines from C.S. Lewis:

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others . . . but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

To my surprise he got very quiet and said, "Now that scares me to death." He almost immediately began to see that hell was a) perfectly fair and just, and b) something that he realized he might be headed for if he didn't change. If we really want skeptics and non-believers to be properly frightened by hell, we cannot simply repeat over and over that 'hell is a place of fire.' We must go deeper into the realities that the Biblical images represent. When we do so, we will find that even secular people can be affected.

He concludes:

The doctrine of hell is crucial - without it we can't understand our complete dependence on God, the character and danger of even the smallest sins, and the true scope of the costly love of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is possible to stress the doctrine of hell in unwise ways. Many, for fear of doctrinal compromise, want to put all the emphasis on God's active judgment, and none on the self-chosen character of hell. Ironically, as we have seen, this unBiblical imbalance often makes it less of a deterrent to non-believers rather than more of one. And some can preach hell in such a way that people reform their lives only out of a self-interested fear of avoiding consequences, not out of love and loyalty to the one who embraced and experienced hell in our place. The distinction between those two motives is all-important. The first creates a moralist, the second a born-again believer.

We must come to grips with the fact that Jesus said more about hell than Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, John, Peter put together. Before we dismiss this, we have to realize we are saying to Jesus, the pre-eminent teacher of love and grace in history, "I am less barbaric than you, Jesus - I am more compassionate and wiser than you." Surely that should give us pause! Indeed, upon reflection, it is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so astounding.

Thanks to Alex Chediak for the reference.

The Importance of Hell - redeemer.com

No other way

In another report about the Pew survey I referred to below, Fox News reports that:

America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life — even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise.

The findings, revealed Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths.

Among the more startling numbers in the survey, conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: 57 percent of evangelical church attenders said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching.

In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

"The survey shows religion in America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only three inches deep," said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist of religion. ....

If by "their religion," the evangelical attenders mean their own denomination or church, the view expressed is defensible - they are merely saying that there are other Christian traditions that remain within orthodoxy. But if they mean something broader than that....

Rick Moore at HolyCoast, quotes the only person whose opinion matters and then suggests why believers may be ill-informed about their own faith:

Although he wasn't surveyed by Pew, someone else had an opinion on the subject of how to find eternal life:

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. [John 14:6, KJV]

Even in The Message, the most watered down paraphrase Bible out there the text still seems pretty clear:

Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. [John 14:6, The Message]

I think you can probably chalk up the confusion demonstrated in the Pew poll to the wishy-washy feel-good preaching that has taken over many of our evangelical churches. Everyone is trying so hard to be "relevant" and "topical" that their teaching has become pretty useless. Various seminar-tested church models build churches with lots of people, but don't build people with lots of actual spiritual knowledge.

Update: Get Religion weighs in on what question "evangelical attenders" may have thought they were answering. First, the question that Pew asked, and then the concern:

[IF RESPONDENT HAS A RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION, ASK:] Now, as I read a pair of statements, tell me whether the FIRST statement or the SECOND statement comes closer to your own views even if neither is exactly right. First/next: My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life, OR: many religions can lead to eternal life.

I am being a bit picky here, but I suspect that if you asked a lot of people that Pew Forum question today, they would think of the great world religions. But many Christians would think more narrowly than that. Not all. Not many, perhaps. But some. What is your religion? I’m a Baptist, a Nazarene, an Episcopalian, a Catholic. Can people outside of your religion be saved? Of course. This is not the same thing, for many, as saying that they believe that salvation is found outside faith in Jesus Christ. There are others who might have a “dual covenant” view of Judaism, but not apply that belief to Islam, Hinduism, Wicca, Buddhism, etc.

Other Christians may believe that, somehow, all people will — in this life or the next — face some kind of spiritual decision about Jesus being “the way, the truth and the life.” But if you asked them if that means that only Christians will “be saved,” they will say that only God can know that. It is highly unlikely that they will say that the Bible is wrong or that centuries of Christian teaching are wrong. Yet it is unlikely that all of them — even Billy Graham — will be strictly dogmatic about what THEY know about eternity. How do they answer this Pew question?

FOXNews.com - Americans: My Faith Isn't the Only Way to Heaven - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News, HolyCoast.com: 3,000 Miles Wide and 3 Inches Deep, Pew views: Questions about Oprah America » GetReligion

"Irrationalist on the big questions"

Michael Novak is interviewed by First Things about his new book, No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers. It would seem to complement the kind of argument for the faith Tim Keller makes in Reason for God. Novak on why atheism seemed inadequate:

At times in my life I have been driven toward atheism, wanted to become an atheist. Was left in the dark about God, felt nothing, nada. But none of the various sorts of atheism I encountered (and these were many) seemed intellectually satisfying. All felt—to me, at least—like dodges. Any line of questioning that brought pressure on atheism was simply defined out of existence or at least treated as irrelevant. For example, the question “Why is there something, not nothing?” was ruled out as a question that cannot be answered by science, therefore meaningless. That is much too easy. And so with other questions.

Many of the books responding to the new atheists emerge from evangelical or other traditions that root their belief in feelings, sentiments, or experiences of conversion. I have never found this approach helpful in my own case. I want to go as far as reason will take me. This is the principal difference between my book and others. I seek a reasoned path, a way rooted in reason—a path through the very structure and constitution and methods of human understanding.

To my mind, our understanding of God emerges from our questions about our own understanding.

It certainly seems like our conscience comes from a light over which we are not master, a light greater than ourselves, which often faults our own behavior down to its roots far below the surface of our rationalizations. It certainly seems as if the questioning of our own long-held assumptions, and the relentless probing of our comfortable beliefs about ourselves, comes from somewhere within ourselves—but greater than ourselves and not subject to our own self-deceptions. Thinkers since Plato have discerned this, quite rightly—you can test it in your own experience.

So mine is a book about reason’s path to God. Whether at this task reason succeeds—or fails.

The thing that makes me most curious: Why do you find atheism unsatisfying? Take the typical atheism of a university professor or of the literary world. Why doesn’t it grab you?

To me it seems a contradiction to insist that all things flow from blind chance and then to go on calling oneself a rationalist. Irrationalist on the big questions, rationalist on the things amenable to science, and something like “emotivist” on matters of practical choice and ethics. In the perennial inquiries of the human race, this mix doesn’t add up.

I can understand why atheists invent a heroic image for themselves—Bertrand Russell’s Prometheus, or Dylan Thomas’ raging against the night, or Sisyphus, or even Milton’s Lucifer refusing to “serve.” But all this seems to be striking a literary prose to cover up the emptiness of meaning in human life. .... [more]

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » No One Sees God

Theistic atheists?

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Pew survey has found that:

Americans overwhelmingly believe in God and consider religion an important part of their lives, even as many shun weekly worship services, according to a national survey released today that also found great diversity in religious beliefs and practices.

Ninety-two percent of those interviewed for the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey said they believe in the existence of God or a universal spirit, and 58% said they pray privately every day. ....

In the same survey, though, we learn that even among atheists, 21% believe in God [see below] and 6% believe in a personal God. It would seem that many atheists are as shaky in their self-identification as are many of those who identify themselves as Christians.

92% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit, Pew survey finds - Los Angeles Times, Hot Air » Blog Archive » New Pew survey: 21% of atheists believe in God

"All Christians believe all this...."

Reading the interview referred to in the last post sent me back to The Reason for God. Keller spends the first half of his book raising doubt about the usual objections to Christianity - asking the skeptics to be skeptical about what they take for granted. The second half is called "The Reasons for Faith." In between, in what he calls an intermission, he defines what he means by "Christianity." Here is part of what he says:

From the outside the various Christian churches and traditions can look extremely different, almost like distinct religions. This is partially because the public worship services look so different. It is also because…Christianity is the faith that is most spread across the cultures and regions of the world. Therefore it has assumed an enormous number of different cultural forms. Another reason that Christians look so different from one another is the great theological rifts that have occurred over the centuries. The first great division was between the eastern Greek and western Roman church in the eleventh century. Today these are known as the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The second great schism was within the Western church, between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

All Christians who take truth and doctrine seriously will agree that these differences between churches are highly significant. They make a major difference in how one's faith is held and practiced. Nevertheless, all Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians assent together to the great creeds of the first thousand years of church history, such as the Apostle's, Nicene, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds. In these creeds the fundamental Christian view of reality is laid out. There is the classical expression of the Christian understanding of God as three-in-one. Belief in the Trinity creates a profoundly different view of the world from that of polytheists, non Trinitarian monotheists, and atheists, as I will show in Chapter 13. There is also a strong statement of the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ in these creeds. Christians, therefore, do not look upon Jesus as one more teacher or prophet, but as Savior of the world. These teachings make Christians far more like than unlike one another.

What is Christianity? For our purposes, I'll define Christianity as the body of believers who assent to these great ecumenical creeds. They believe that the triune God created the world, that humanity has fallen into sin and evil, that God has returned to rescue us in Jesus Christ, that in his death and resurrection Jesus accomplished our salvation for us so we can be received by grace, that he established the church, his people, as the vehicle through which he continues his mission of rescue, reconciliation, and salvation, and that at the end of time Jesus will return to renew the heavens and the earth, removing all evil, injustice, sin, and death from the world.

All Christians believe all this—but no Christians believe just this. As soon as you ask "How does the church act as vehicle for Jesus's work in the world?" and "How does Jesus's death accomplish our salvation?" and "How are we received by grace?" Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians will give you different answers. Despite the claims of many to be such, there are no truly "generic" nondenominational Christians. Everyone has to answer these "how" questions in order to live a Christian life, and those answers immediately put you into one tradition and denomination or another. ….

This is very much like C.S. Lewis's "mere Christianity" or what most of us would call "orthodoxy." The doctrinal differences that divide us into separate denominations are important [or, at least, many of them are], but their importance is in addition to - not instead of - what make us all Christians, and separates us from those who hold other creeds.

"Believe it because it's true."

Christianity Today interviews Tim Keller, author of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, which has reached the New York Times non-fiction, best-seller list. I've been reading it and like it a lot. CT says "Many readers are saying that the book provides satisfying answers to the questions that churched and unchurched people commonly raise about Christianity." Two exchanges from the interview:

You reject marketing apologetics like, "Christianity is better than the alternatives, so choose Christianity." Why?

Marketing is about felt needs. You find the need and then you say Christianity will meet that need. You have to adapt to people's questions. And if people are asking a question, you want to show how Jesus is the answer. But at a certain point, you have to go past their question to the other things that Christianity says. Otherwise you're just scratching where they itch. So marketing is showing how Christianity meets the need, and I think the gospel is showing how Christianity is the truth.

C. S. Lewis says somewhere not to believe in Christianity because it's relevant or exciting or personally satisfying. Believe it because it's true. And if it's true, it eventually will be relevant, exciting, and personally satisfying. But there will be many times when it's not relevant, exciting, and personally satisfying. To be a Christian is going to be very, very hard. So unless you come to it simply because it's really the truth, you really won't live the Christian life, and you won't get to the excitement and to the relevance and all that other stuff. ....

Many Christians say that the rationality of Christians' faith is not the obstacle for unbelievers; they reject Christianity because of what they see as bad behavior and toxic attitudes.

There are always three reasons people believe or disbelieve: the intellectual, the personal, and the social.

It's typical of postmodern people to say belief is all cultural, conditioned by your community.

Perhaps there was a day in which Christians thought that you evangelized largely through intellectual argument, but now I hear people saying, "No, it's all personal. If you're going to win people to Christ you just have to be authentic. You have to just reach out to them personally. You can't do the rational." In other words, Christians are saying the rational isn't part of evangelism. The fact is, people are rational. They do have questions. You have to answer those questions.

Don't get the impression that I think that the rational aspect takes you all the way there. But there's too much emphasis on just the personal now.

Maybe you know I'm a 57-year-old man. You'd say, "Of course you'd say that." But I'm knee deep in 20-somethings. So it's not like I don't know how people are today. [more]

Thanks to The Christian Mind for the reference.

Tim Keller Reasons with America | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

If I should die...

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
And if I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

That was the prayer I learned to say when I was a child. This version of the prayer dates back at least to the 18th century. Wikipedia quotes two more modern versions as replacing the last two lines with:

When in the morning light I wake,
Teach me the path of love to take.

and

Guard me Jesus through the night,
And wake me with the morning light.

John Mark Reynolds comments that "Contemporary Christians worry that the story of the crucifixion may be too intense for children. Death is uncomfortable to our consumer driven and decadent popular culture. There is nothing we can buy on late night television to cure it. It is the end of our choices and our pleasures. It cannot be defeated...."

Talking about death is considered morbid. We are insulated from death in ways unknown to people in any other time in history and in most of the rest of the world today. And yet it is as unavoidable for us as it has always been for everyone else. Reynolds goes on to write:

The end is coming. This makes me sad of course. I am quite happy and have no desire to die, but die I must. It is more certain that taxes. After that?

After that best reason, divine Revelation, and experience says that after that comes the judgment. The universe has not been nice to humankind, but just. The universe is not fair, but fiercely good. The other side is not going to be Disneyland with fully effective safety devices, but full of goodness, truth, and beauty.

That means full of awe and terrible with splendor.

And I have mucked up and muddled through far too often to trust in my own good works or have confidence that my soul is, in itself, ready for such unadulterated joy. My wiring for pleasure is too little and the current of goodness too great for any such easy hopes.

My hope is in God. I really might die before I wake. These few paragraphs may post after I am no longer around to edit it. I hope not, but I do not know. This much I know:

The small and safe little world of secularism which pretends that this life is all there is cannot be for me.

Would that I could believe that this were true!

Would that death were sleep . . . but perchance we dream . . . and what dreams may come! Instead what evidence we have suggests that this life is not the end, but the beginning of a bigger reality. There is no reason to think our experience of this reality is not (as Plato would say) more intense than that one in which we find ourselves now. Our little fences and moral compromises would be blown away like prim fences in a cyclone of goodness.

Best to have learned to be one with that powerful coming wind.

Hope?

There is none in our certain death or in the mere fact of an afterlife. (No exit! What a dreadful thought!) There is hope only in the greater fact of a good God.

This I do know. If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee Lord my soul to take.

If I Should Die Before I Wake . . . | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow

"Blowin' in the wind"

From RightWingBob, a Catholic priest, Robert Barron, comments on two Dylan songs, arguing that all of Dylan's music is permeated with scriptural allusions. He makes a good argument and you get to hear some Dylan, too:

RightWingBob.com » Sunday note

Beliefs have consequences

If you believe you should, often you will:

A new study shows that people of faith in America have a huge heart in terms of giving to Third World countries - and the study cites a surprising dollar figure.

Carol Adelman of the Hudson Institute cites the information in a study done with Notre Dame University. "We didn't realize it would be as large as it was, and we came out with a number of $8.8 billion worth of goods and services that churches are giving overseas to developing countries," she points out.

That figure represents nearly 40 percent of the foreign aid provided by the United States to the same region - and the money from churches is apparently doing a lot of good, says Adelman. ....

According to Adelman, U.S. foreign aid to those same countries is $23.5 billion.

Religious Americans are generous (OneNewsNow.com)

"Is it easy to love God?"

From Timothy Keller's The Reason for God [pp. 47-50]:

One of the principles of love—either love for a friend or romantic love—is that you have to lose independence to attain greater intimacy. If you want the "freedoms" of love—the fulfillment, security, sense of worth that it brings—you must limit your freedom in many ways. You cannot enter a deep relationship and still make unilateral decisions or allow your friend or lover no say in how you live your life. To experience the joy and freedom of love, you must give up your personal autonomy. The French novelist Francoise Sagan expressed this well in an interview in Le Monde. She expressed that she was satisfied with the way she had lived her life and had no regrets:

Interviewer: Then you have had the freedom you wanted?
Sagan: Yes ... I was obviously less free when I was in love with someone. . . . But one's not in love all the time. Apart from that . . . I'm free.

Sagan is right. A love relationship limits your personal options. Again we are confronted with the complexity of the concept of "freedom." Human beings are most free and alive in relationships of love. We only become ourselves in love, and yet healthy love relationships involve mutual, unselfish service, a mutual loss of independence. C. S. Lewis put it eloquently:

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.

Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us.

For a love relationship to be healthy there must be a mutual loss of independence. It can't be just one way. Both sides must say to the other, "I will adjust to you. I will change for you. I'll serve you even though it means a sacrifice for me." If only one party does all the sacrificing and giving, and the other does all the ordering and taking, the relationship will be exploitative and will oppress and distort the lives of both people.

At first sight, then, a relationship with God seems inherently dehumanizing. Surely it will have to be "one way," God's way. God, the divine being, has all the power. I must adjust to God—there is no way that God could adjust to and serve me.

While this may be true in other forms of religion and belief in God, it is not true in Christianity. In the most radical way, God has adjusted to us—in his incarnation and atonement. In Jesus Christ he became a limited human being, vulnerable to suffering and death. On the cross, he submitted to our condition—as sinners—and died in our place to forgive us. In the most profound way, God has said to us, in Christ, "I will adjust to you. I will change for you. I'll serve you though it means a sacrifice for me." If he has done this for us, we can and should say the same to God and others. St. Paul writes, "the love of Christ constrains us" (2 Corinthians 5:14).

A friend of C. S. Lewis's was once asked, "Is it easy to love God?" and he replied, "It is easy to those who do it." That is not as paradoxical as it sounds. When you fall deeply in love, you want to please the beloved. You don't wait for the person to ask you to do something for her. You eagerly research and learn every little thing that brings her pleasure. Then you get it for her, even if it costs you money or great inconvenience. "Your wish is my command," you feel—and it doesn't feel oppressive at all. From the outside, bemused friends may think, "She's leading him around by the nose," but from the inside it feels like heaven.

For a Christian, it's the same with Jesus. The love of Christ constrains. Once you realize how Jesus changed for you and gave himself for you, you aren't afraid of giving up your freedom and therefore finding your freedom in him.

The Jesus of yesterday and today and forever

The excerpts below are from another review of Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, this one by another who, in many ways fits the pattern, but nevertheless doesn't belong to the "emerging church." Kristen Scharold at First Things from "The Emerging Church and Its Critics":

.... I, like DeYoung and Kluck, should be an emergent Christian. In my more presumptuous moods, I call myself a writer, and I’m a fan of Dave Eggers. I grew up in an evangelical church. I live in a part of Brooklyn whose edges are rougher than the hipster paradise of Williamsburg. I love to listen to bands, which if named, will instantly lose their indie appeal. I drink lattes. I hate easy answers. I enjoy deep conversations. So shouldn’t I be craving a new kind of Christianity that will undo my traditional evangelical upbringing while satisfying my newfound love for diversity, social justice, and, of course, soul searching?

Not at all. Despite my hipster leanings and stale Christian pedigree, I am not emergent, if emergence is defined by its theology instead of just its ethos. And after reading this book, I am even more grateful that I never jumped onto the emergent bandwagon. I am not the only young Christian who appreciates many aspects of postmodern culture but who also yearns for the absolute conviction that DeYoung and Kluck present.

“Some of us long for teaching that has authority, ethics rooted in dogma, and something unique in this world of banal diversity,” DeYoung writes. “We long for Jesus—not a shapeless, formless good-hearted ethical teacher Jesus, but the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus of the church, the Jesus of faith, the Jesus of two millennia of Christian witness with all of its unchanging and edgy doctrinal propositions.”

This Jesus is the Jesus of traditional doctrine, the Jesus of yesterday and today and forever. He is not a Jesus who will go out of style along with skinny jeans, tight cowboy shirts, and aviator sunglasses.

Throughout the book, the authors make the case that the emergent church is simply a fad. In fact, the emergent church seems to be going down the same accommodationist path as the mainline, bourgeois, modern churches that they are reacting against. And, like the baby boomer’s megachurches, the emergent church is sweating to make the gospel entertaining and comfortable to their generation. “The mainline church bent over backward to accommodate modernism, and its members have budget crunches and shrinking churches to show for it. Will the emerging church go down the same nondoctrinal path as the mainline church relative to postmodernism?” DeYoung asks. In an attempt to “reimagine” the gospel, emergent teachers have merely repackaged the modern, seeker-sensitive approach. ....

In the end, the authors of Why We’re Not Emergent are not making a case for a new kind of Christianity. They are not trying lure emergent Christians into their fold with a hipper take on things. They are simply trying to replace the errors of the emergent church—which is, nonetheless, making important contributions to evangelicalism—with scripturally sound theology.

And it should not be so counterintuitive that young evangelicals such as myself prefer theology rooted in tradition to a spirituality waffling in relativism. We want a story with a climax so profound that it leaves us worshiping God, not reducing him to fit into our cultural paradigm. And if that story comes with a Guinness and some Coldplay, great. If not, no big deal. [the review]

Thanks to Mark Olson for the reference.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » The Emerging Church and Its Critics

What is truth?

Sam Storms begins a five-part review of Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, a book I've recommended before. Storms likes the book - a lot - as I did.

Obviously Evangelicalism has had and continues to have problems of definition and witness [see below], but this doesn't seem like much of an answer. The emerging emergent church seems like the current version of the "seeker-sensitive" church, but for this generation rather than the baby-boomers, except that it combines that inclination with old-fashioned liberal theology.

Brian McClaren - one of the guys most identified with the emerging/emergent whatever - doesn't help much with his inability to actually answer this question:

Q: On the theology behind the emerging church, you reject the idea that there's an absolute truth. So what boundaries are there on theology that churches are teaching? Can any church just call itself an emerging church?

A: Obviously that's a challenge. The flip side of that question is look at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops covering up for molesting priests. And evangelicals, for all their claims of orthodoxy, can be barbaric to gay people and can blindly support a rush to war in Iraq and can be, as we speak, fomenting for war with Iran. ... Obviously, I have a lot of critics and they often say, 'You're wanting to water down the Gospel to accommodate to post-modernity.' I say, 'No, I really don't want to do that. But what I do want to do is acknowledge first the ways we've already watered down the Gospel to accommodate modernity.' ... I think the naivete of some of those critics is that they're starting with a pure pristine understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we're all in danger of screwing up.

And what exactly are the boundaries? Is there truth?

Enjoying God Ministries > A Review Of Why Were Not Emergent By Two Guys Who Should Be Part One, Q&A: How 'emerging church' movement could change U.S. religious landscape

"Why did God let James die?"

Our desires may not conform to God's purposes. "Death comes to us all" says Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons: to us, to our loved ones, to everyone. It is usually unwelcome. Jon Bloom at Desiring God writes about "The Night the Angel Didn't Come":

Luke says it so quickly, so matter-of-factly: “[Herod] killed James the brother of John with the sword” (Acts 12:2). In the flow of the story this little phrase sets the stage for Peter’s dramatic prison rescue by the angel. So that’s what we remember. When Peter later wrote, “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials” (2 Peter 2:9), this is the sort of rescue that easily comes to mind.

But the night that James sat in prison the angel didn’t come. I’m sure he prayed for an angel. He knew God could send one if he wanted to. An angel had already rescued him and the other disciples once before, in chapter 5. But this night there was no bright light, no chains falling off, no sleeping guards. Just desperate prayers and fitful dozing—if he slept at all.

In the morning James was still in jail when the dreaded voice of the captain of the guard shouted, “Bring out the prisoner!” There was an anxiety-filled, prayerful walk to the place of execution. There was a pronouncement of guilt. Possibly there was an offer of pardon in exchange for recanting, followed by a refusal. There was a raised sword. There was a wince of fearful anticipation. No deliverance.

Or was there?

Jesus allowed the sword to fall on James as intentionally as he opened Peter’s prison door. So the death of James is as crucial for us to remember as the rescue of Peter. Why did God let James die?

This question is relevant because at some point most of us will find ourselves facing death, pleading for deliverance, and not receiving what we think we are asking for. And it points to a difficult lesson that all of Jesus’ disciples must learn: Jesus often has different priorities than we do. What may feel desperately urgent to us may not be urgent to him—at least not in the same way. ....

James was not being neglected by Jesus. He was in fact the first of the Twelve to experience what Jesus prayed for in John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me from the foundation of the world.” Peter’s deliverance from prison was remarkable. But he lived to die another day. [more]

The Night the Angel Didn’t Come :: Desiring God

"She still loves the stories"

No cross, no Bible, no incarnation, no resurrection, although those may be nice metaphors for something or other. How terrible it is when those charged with "the faith once delivered" don't believe it themselves. From Canada's National Post:

There is a Bible on a pedestal in Gretta Vosper's West Hill United Church in Toronto. She would prefer it did not have a special place, she said, because it is just a book among other books. In a similar way, the cross that is high above the altar has no special meaning, but there are a few older congregants for whom the Bible and the cross are still nice symbols so there they remain.

Though an ordained minister, she does not like the title of reverend. It is one of those symbols that hold the church back from breaking into the future - to a time "when the label Christian won't even exist" and the Church will be freed of the burdens of the past. To balance out those symbols of the past inside West Hill, there is a giant, non-religious rainbow tapestry just behind the altar and multi-coloured streamers hang from the ceiling.

"The central story of Christianity will fade away," she explained. "The story about Jesus as the symbol of everything that Christianity is will fade away." ....

Ms. Vosper does not believe in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and the sacrament of baptism. Nor does she believe in the creeds, the presence of Christ in communion or that Jesus was the Son of God.

In With or Without God, her book that was formally launched this week, she writes that Jesus was a "Middle Eastern peasant with a few charismatic gifts and a great posthumous marketing team."

The Bible is used in her services, but it gets rewritten to be more contemporary and speak to more people. Even the Lord's Prayer - also known as the Our Father - does not make the cut because it creates an image of a God who intervenes in human existence. And then there is the "Father" part that is not inclusive language and carries with it the notion of an overbearing tyrant who condemns people to hell. ....

Ms. Vosper did not change her views over time but said she felt the same way when she took her divinity degree at Queen's University in 1990. She said when the creed was mentioned, which contains those declarations of faith that acknowledge basic Christian tenants, it was uncomfortable. "I fled when I had to read the creed," she said.

For all of this, she still feels rooted in the church. She still loves the stories, metaphors though they may be. And she still measures her life against the meaning of those metaphors. ....[more]

The fact that she was ordained is mind-boggling, but since the head of her denomination doesn't think she should be condemned and himself believes that the term "Christian" should be "phased out," perhaps it isn't so surprising after all.

Thanks to Mark Steyn at NRO for calling attention to this story.

Christianity without Christ