A God Who suffers with us

Christianity in its theological variety is growing rapidly in Africa. Unfortunately, one of the fastest growing varieties is the "health and wealth" prosperity gospel that John Piper so forcefully denounced as a false gospel here. Today Benedict XVI, on his way to Cameroon, responded to a question about that kind of "gospel."

We, unlike some of them, do not announce a Gospel of prosperity, but Christian realism. We do not announce miracles, as some do, but the sobriety of Christian life. We are convinced that all this sobriety and realism which announce a God Who became man (therefore a profoundly human God - a God Who also suffers with us) gives meaning to our own suffering. .... The announcement of prosperity, of miraculous healing, etc., may do good in the short term, but we soon see that life is difficult, that a human God, a God Who suffers with us, is more convincing, truer, and offers greater help for life.

He, of course, does not deny that God does miracles. But a "prosperity gospel" is just as materialistic and earthbound as any secular utopian panacea. The gospel is much more than that.

Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: Benedict XVI answers questions on way to Cameroon

Family, community, vocation, and faith.

What is it that causes a person to decide that his life was worth living? And what happens to a culture when its people don't look beyond self-interest—narrowly understood—for that sense of purpose? Charles Murray, in "The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism", thinks Europe demonstrates the answer and that we, led by our elites, are following the same path.

.... I start from this premise: A human life can have transcendent meaning, with transcendence defined either by one of the world’s great religions or one of the world’s great secular philosophies. If transcendence is too big a word, let me put it another way: I suspect that almost all of you agree that the phrase “a life well-lived” has meaning. That’s the phrase I’ll use from now on.

And since happiness is a word that gets thrown around too casually, the phrase I’ll use from now on is “deep satisfactions.” I’m talking about the kinds of things that we look back upon when we reach old age and let us decide that we can be proud of who we have been and what we have done. Or not.

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

There aren’t many activities in life that can satisfy those three requirements. Having been a good parent? That qualifies. A good marriage? That qualifies. Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours? That qualifies. And having been really good at something—good at something that drew the most from your abilities? That qualifies. Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith. Two clarifications: “Community” can embrace people who are scattered geographically. “Vocation” can include avocations or causes.

It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four institutions, nor do I array them in a hierarchy. I merely assert that these four are all there are. The stuff of life—the elemental events surrounding birth, death, raising children, fulfilling one’s personal potential, dealing with adversity, intimate relationships—coping with life as it exists around us in all its richness—occurs within those four institutions.

Does the European-style social welfare state weaken these institutions? Murray [along with others] argues that it does. The loss of meaning and purpose in life has literally dispiriting consequences.

...Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality. Let me emphasize “spreading.” I’m not talking about all Europeans, by any means. That mentality goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.

If that’s the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that’s the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble—and, after all, what good are they, really? If that’s the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that’s the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion that says otherwise?

The same self-absorption in whiling away life as pleasantly as possible explains why Europe has become a continent that no longer celebrates greatness. When life is a matter of whiling away the time, the concept of greatness is irritating and threatening. What explains Europe’s military impotence? I am surely simplifying, but this has to be part of it: If the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, what can be worth dying for?

I stand in awe of Europe’s past. Which makes Europe’s present all the more dispiriting. And should make its present something that concentrates our minds wonderfully, for every element of the Europe Syndrome is infiltrating American life as well.

We are seeing that infiltration appear most obviously among those who are most openly attached to the European model—namely, America’s social democrats, heavily represented in university faculties and the most fashionable neighborhoods of our great cities. We know from databases such as the General Social Survey that among those who self-identify as liberal or extremely liberal, secularism is close to European levels. Birth rates are close to European levels. Charitable giving is close to European levels. There is every reason to believe that when Americans embrace the European model, they begin to behave like Europeans. ....

If we are not to go the way of the Europeans, we need to attend to those aspects of American culture that made us different.

...Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a famous book describing the nature of that more fundamental exceptionalism back in the 1830s. He found American life characterized by two apparently conflicting themes. The first was the passion with which Americans pursued their individual interests, and made no bones about it—that’s what America was all about, they kept telling Tocqueville. But at the same time, Tocqueville kept coming up against this phenomenal American passion for forming associations to deal with every conceivable problem, voluntarily taking up public affairs, and tending to the needs of their communities. How could this be? Because, Americans told Tocqueville, there’s no conflict. “In the United States,” Tocqueville writes, “hardly anybody talks of the beauty of virtue…. They do not deny that every man may follow his own interest; but they endeavor to prove that it is the interest of every man to be virtuous.” And then he concludes, “I shall not here enter into the reasons they allege…. Suffice it to say, they have convinced their fellow countrymen.”

The exceptionalism has not been a figment of anyone’s imagination, and it has been wonderful. But it isn’t something in the water that has made us that way. It comes from the cultural capital generated by the system that the Founders laid down, a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with each other. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we love about Americans can go away. In some circles, they are going away. .... [more]

Murray says much more in an important argument. Read it all.

The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

A nation of cynics?

click on the image to enlarge

"Americans Losing Their Faith in Faith ... And Everything Else":

The longstanding project called the General Social Survey, which has polled Americans about their feelings on a variety of political and social issues for more than 35 years, just recently came out with their preliminary 2008 data. ....

One of my favorite sets of questions on the GSS is one that asks Americans about their degree of confidence in various social institutions....

The only major institution to have gained a statistically significant about of trust since 2000 is the military, which is now the most trusted major institution in the country. ....

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Americans Losing Their Faith in Faith ... And Everything Else

Seventh Day Baptist historian, Don Sanford

Don Sanford's most recent book is about the church he belonged to and in which I grew up: A History of the Milton Seventh Day Baptist Church. Amazon's description:

The Milton Seventh Day Baptist Church was founded in 1840, two years after the first settlement in Milton, and eight years before Wisconsin achieved statehood. The influence of this church and its founders is still felt by the community nearly 170 years later. Local landmarks like the Milton House Museum and the buildings that once housed Milton College are testament to the long, rich history of the SDBs. Long-time SDB historian Don Sanford leads the reader on a journey from the Milton church's humble beginnings to periods of rapid growth, through a traumatic division and a devastating fire, and a renewed external focus of reaching out into the community. Through it all, church members have maintained an unshakable faith and purpose. A History of the Milton Seventh Day Baptist Church is the most comprehensive study yet of the people and events that have helped shape the community of Milton, Wisconsin.

Don's death last week deprives us of a great deal, not least of which is the historical research and writing he would have done.

Amazon.com: A History of the Milton Seventh Day Baptist Church: Don Sanford: Books

Baptist origins

This year will mark the 400th anniversary of Baptists. Nathan Finn offers four main theories of Baptist origins [the full post summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of each].

.... One view, which we might call the spontaneous origins view, claims that at least two groups of English dissenters in 17th century England and Amsterdam were reading their Bibles and came to the conviction that the Bible teaches the baptism of professing believers either by pouring or immersion (eventually just by immersion). We now call those dissenters Baptists. ....

The second view argues for Baptists’ apostolic origins. This view has often been called “Landmarkism” since the mid-19th century, though belief in the apostolic origin of Baptists predates the formal Landmark movement. Proponents of this view argue that there have always been Baptist (or baptistic) churches. ....

A third option, which is currently enjoying something of a revival in many circles, is often called the Anabaptist kinship view. This view argues for historical continuity between certain Continental Anabaptists and the English Baptists. ....

The fourth option, which is presently the dominant understanding among historians, argues for English Separatist origins. This view claims that Baptists are not radical reformers like Anabaptists, but are actually one type of dissenter among many in 17th century England; specifically, the non-sprinkling kind. Baptists are seen as third generation Protestants that happen to share some ecclesiological convictions with some Anabaptists.

In his next post Finn argues for what he calls a "convergent view" of Baptist origins.

The earliest Baptists were first and foremost English Separatists who came to baptistic convictions. As good Protestants, they came to these convictions through their reading of Scripture. We should rightly emphasize the English Separatist roots of the Baptist movement and not downplay the role that the Bible played in shaping Baptist convictions.

But the earliest Baptists were aware that they were not the first baptistic Christians since the New Testament era. .... Baptists knew that they were not taking a historically novel step in arguing for religious liberty, believer’s churches, and credobaptism.

Even more importantly, Baptists recognized that the Continental Anabaptists had recently rejected infant baptism, mixed membership, and state churches. .... It seems very unlikely that the Anabaptists had no influence on the earliest Baptists.

Add to the mix the milieu in which the earliest Baptists found themselves: a century in which England was filled with various forms of political radicalism, ecclesiastical reform movements, theological innovation, and a multiplicity of sects. These movements interacted with each other and at times even cross-pollinated each other, resulting in what historian Christopher Hill calls “a world turned upside down.” This was certainly true of the Baptists, where even the line between Calvinists and Arminians were not neatly drawn until after the English Civil War, though that is another discussion for another day.

Toward a Convergent View of Baptist Origins, Part 1 « Between The Times, Toward a Convergent View of Baptist Origins, Part 2 « Between The Times

"Be Nice. Work Hard. Go to College"

The current City Journal has a fascinating review of Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America, about an apparently very successful charter school movement known as KIPP. The reviewer, Charles Upton Sahm, describes this approach to education as a "revolutionary new education model." It strikes me — a thirty-five year veteran of the public schools — as a rediscovery of the obvious. But there are a great many educators — including many of those who educate the educators — who have been ignoring the obvious for a long time. Many of the things in this new/old approach should be done in every classroom, whether or not in a charter school. I've highlighted some of the "ought to be obvious" in the excerpt below.

From one Houston teacher, Harriet Ball, they learned the importance of classroom management—the need to maintain order while keeping the classroom vibrant, enjoyable, and full of energy. From Rafe Esquith, an award-winning instructor in Los Angeles, they discovered the merits of extended class time and a rigorous, content-rich curriculum that holds low-income and minority students to high academic standards. Levin and Feinberg immediately appropriated one of Ball’s secrets: the use of mnemonic chants that, as Mathews puts it, “firmly attach essential rules of grammar and mathematics to the brains of nine-year-olds.” They used the chants to great effect, getting kids to commit important facts to memory in the same way they memorize lyrics from the latest hip-hop song. (Education-school professors frown on such devices as “rote memorization.” But today, all KIPP fifth-graders can recite their multiplication tables by heart—a skill that eludes 80 percent of their peers nationwide, according to a recent study.)

Levin and Feinberg did add a few twists of their own. They implemented a broken-windows-style discipline policy, believing that leaving any misbehavior unaddressed would increase the likelihood of further misbehavior and distract from lessons. They stayed after school to work with struggling pupils, assigned mountains of homework, and encouraged students to call them at home if they needed help with their assignments. Perhaps their most important step, however, was reaching out to parents. .... [more]

I had to learn most of these by trial and error. It wasn't until I got bounced down to middle school for several semesters that I learned kids that age actually enjoy knowing facts. I became convinced that the primary reason memorization isn't used much for that age group [and perhaps for those younger] is not because it doesn't work, but because teachers themselves find it boring.

Why KIPP Schools Work by Charles Upton Sahm, City Journal 13 March 2009

Calvinism is back?

Time identifies some trends in "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now." Such prognostications often have a very short shelf-life. Interestingly, number 3 on the list is "The New Calvinism." From the article [I added the links]:

If you really want to follow the development of conservative Christianity, track its musical hits. In the early 1900s you might have heard "The Old Rugged Cross," a celebration of the atonement. By the 1980s you could have shared the Jesus-is-my-buddy intimacy of "Shine, Jesus, Shine." And today, more and more top songs feature a God who is very big, while we are...well, hark the David Crowder Band: "I am full of earth/ You are heaven's worth/ I am stained with dirt/ Prone to depravity."....

Calvinism, cousin to the Reformation's other pillar, Lutheranism, is a bit less dour than its critics claim: it offers a rock-steady deity who orchestrates absolutely everything, including illness (or home foreclosure!), by a logic we may not understand but don't have to second-guess. Our satisfaction — and our purpose — is fulfilled simply by "glorifying" him. In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards invested Calvinism with a rapturous near mysticism. Yet it was soon overtaken in the U.S. by movements like Methodism that were more impressed with human will. Calvinist-descended liberal bodies like the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) discovered other emphases, while Evangelicalism's loss of appetite for rigid doctrine — and the triumph of that friendly, fuzzy Jesus — seemed to relegate hard-core Reformed preaching (Reformed operates as a loose synonym for Calvinist) to a few crotchety Southern churches.

No more. Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links. .... [more]

Driscoll comments on the article here and here and here. "While the article inaccurately painted God as essentially the author of evil, the fact that Reformed theology has gotten so big that it merits this kind of attention is nothing short of shocking." Time, of course, is far less important than it once was, nevertheless....

3. The New Calvinism - 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now - TIME

How "Progressive" are you?

Those who used to be called "Liberals" now pretty much avoid the term. Instead, they are "Progressives" — although of a sort with whom Teddy Roosevelt probably wouldn't have identified. If "Fighting Bob" LaFollette were alive today, he might find them compatible. The Center for American Progress offers an "Interactive Quiz: How Progressive Are You?" My score was rather low — even though I have always been in favor of progress. [Friends and acquaintances will not be shocked.]Take it and see where you fall.

Interactive Quiz: How Progressive Are You?

Don Sanford, RIP

Don Sanford, pastor, teacher, historian, and friend, died last night. One of his daughters writes: Don "... finally has a sound mind and a whole, healed body. He entered glory last night at about 11pm. May write more later but for now, I am exhausted in every way possible but very grateful physical death isn't the end!" Please pray for the family.

After serving in several Seventh Day Baptist pastorates, Don came back to Milton College to work in the library. Later he taught public school history, and, finally, went to work for the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society as curator and historian. He authored several books including the most recent comprehensive history of the denomination, A Choosing People: The History of Seventh Day Baptists, now out of print but soon to be republished. Don had a regular column in the Sabbath Recorder. He had a retentive memory, was curious, knowledgeable, and always willing to share what he had discovered. He joined the ranks of those few who have made a genuine contribution to recording the history of Seventh Day Baptists.

Don was a good and supportive friend. He was always willing to encourage, to talk and to listen and, sometimes, to correct. When I recently worked on reorganizing the Historical Society Museum, Don was appreciative and helpful with suggestions and especially with locating exhibits. He was a good guy and I will miss him.

Update, 3/15: Nick Kersten of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society posted the following at SDB Exec:

Rev. Don A. Sanford, former pastor and long-time Historian for the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society passed from this life late Friday after a brief illness. He was 83. Rev. Sanford studied at Milton College, Alfred School of Theology and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, earning degrees from each. He served Seventh Day Baptist churches at Independence and Andover, NY (1950-1954), at New Auburn, WI (1954-1959), and at White Cloud, MI (1959-1967) along with serving as interim pastor in several Baptist, Methodist and Congregational churches throughout his life. After leaving White Cloud, Rev. Sanford had a second career in education, working at public and private schools in Southern Wisconsin for nearly 20 years, including a time as A/V librarian at Milton College. After retiring from teaching in 1987, Rev. Sanford became Historian of the SDB Historical Society, a post he held until the end of 2004, when he was honored as Historian emeritus. During his life, Rev. Sanford had a prolific writing ministry, including 15 years of editing the Helping Hand, a bible study and devotional book published quarterly for SDB’s, a monthly column in the Sabbath Recorder called “Pearls from the Past,” and several books including: A Choosing People, Conscience Taken Captive, A Free People In Search of a Free Land, Greater Than Its Parts, and the Newport Seventh Day Baptist Trilogy. In addition to this substantial body of work, Rev. Sanford also contributed to several Baptist anthologies and presented research frequently in the larger Baptist history community. After a long and fruitful life, Pastor Don has joined the “great cloud of witnesses” he spent so many years teaching us about. Services in honor of his life are planned for this coming week in his home church in Milton, WI.

SDB Exec: Rev. Don A. Sanford Goes Home to be with the Lord

Rumpole's creator

Christopher Hitchens appreciates the creator of Horace Rumpole in Vanity Fair. John Mortimer died last January. Those of us who knew of him primarily through the Rumpole stories will always be grateful for them and for the pleasure they provided. Hitchens:

...[I]t is given to very few people to create one imperishable fictional person, and then to see that very person take on life and flesh as if animated by Pygmalion. In the name and figure of Horace Rumpole, old rogue and old hero of the Old Bailey, as impersonated—no, incarnated—by Leo McKern, we have someone for the ages, someone who will be available at need to our inner eye and ear every time it is demonstrated once again that “the law is a ass.”

Mortimer's politics were libertarian:

Emphatically not a conservative.... His libertarian instincts were as natural to him as breathing: he took up cigar smoking only when the government tried to ban the habit in public places, and I have a clear memory of him standing on the Thames Embankment among a huge demonstrating crowd of red-faced country Conservatives, whom he normally despised, blinking owlishly in the sun and upholding the right of rural folk to pursue foxes on horseback without being shadowed by blue-uniformed policemen.

Sadly, although possessed of an unsentimental and realistic opinion of human nature, Mortimer failed to discern any purpose in existence:

Mortimer was obsessed by the brevity and ephemerality of life and art, naming one of his books of memoirs after Lord Byron’s regretful view that the human span was like “the summer of a dormouse,” and maintaining that “the shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.” Taking a fatalistic view that was at odds with his ostensibly cheery humanism, he used to say that “if you look in playgrounds, you see the little judge and the little burglar and the little murderer and the little banker.” He tried and failed to derive consolation from religion, and once had the following exchange with Cardinal Basil Hume: Hume pontificated to him that, were there to be no God, human life would be absurd. “Well, exactly” was Mortimer’s rejoinder.

Exactly, indeed.

Mortimer Rests His Case | vanityfair.com

Law or grace?

Ray Ortlund on "How to read the Bible":

.... There are two ways to read the Bible. We can read it as law or as promise.

If we read the Bible as law, we will find on every page what God is telling us we should do. Even the promises will be conditioned by demand. But if we read the Bible as promise, we will find on every page what God is telling us he will do. Even the commands are conditioned by provision.

In Galatians 3 Paul explains which hermeneutic is the correct one. "This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise" (Galatians 3:17-18).

So, if we want to know whether we should read the Bible through the lens of law or promise, demand or provision, burden or gift, command or grace, we can just start reading on page one and see which comes first. And in fact, promise comes first, in God's word to Abram in Genesis 12. Then the law is added later, in Exodus 20. The category "promise" establishes the larger, wraparound framework for everything else added in along the way.

The deepest message of the Bible is the promises of God through grace. The Bible presents itself to us this way. The laws and commands and examples and warnings are all there. We must revere them. But they do not provide the hermeneutic with which we make sense of the whole. We can and should understand them as qualified by God's gracious promise in Christ.

Christ is deeper still: How to read the Bible

Anti-science?

The distinction between stem-cell research and embryonic stem-cell research is central to the debate over President Obama's recent reversal of government policy. Opposition to the latter is not opposition to the use of stem-cells generally. Scott Klusendorf responds to questions about embryonic stem-cell research. Excerpts:

2. Why is stem cell research focused, at least in part, on embryos?

Human embryos have an abundant supply of stem cells which scientists are eager to harvest in hopes of treating Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other illnesses. The practice of securing these early cells is known as embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). The problem is that you must destroy the embryo to secure its stem cells.

3. Does that mean Christians should oppose all stem cell research?

Absolutely not. Pro-life advocates agree that we should save lives. We also support funding stem-cell research. But, we’re opposed to one kind of stem-cell research that requires destroying defenseless human embryos so that other humans may (allegedly) benefit. That’s immoral.

4. The President and others have stated that embryonic stem cell research is morally complex. Do you agree?

Despite claims to the contrary, ESCR is not morally complicated. It comes down to just one question: Is the embryo a member of the human family? If so, killing it to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. It treats the embryonic human being as a commodity we trade to enhance our own well being. If, however, the embryos in question are not human, why not put them in the crosshairs of scientists? Unfortunately, that is precisely the question President Obama ignored when he signed an executive order designating federal funds for destructive embryo research. ....

6. President Obama said that ideology should not interfere with science. What do you make of that claim?

Well, the claim that ideology should not get in the way of science is itself an ideological claim, and a highly controversial one at that. I found this the most troubling part of his speech. If he is correct that scientific progress trumps morality, one can hardly condemn Hitler for grisly medical experiments on Jews. Nor can one criticize the Tuskegee experiments of the 1940s in which black men suffering from syphilis were promised treatment, only to have it denied so scientists could study the disease. Pro-life advocates are not anti-science. We are not anti-cures. We just insist that scientific progress must be tied to moral truth. [more]

Crossway.blog » Scott Klusendorf on Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Grateful response

A priest on "Proclaiming The Good News":

It is a paradox, but one easily verified, that preaching morality will never motivate people to be good. It will discourage them. It will inevitably bore them. It may even drive them to despair, because of the suggestion, implied if not stated, that if they are not good God will not love and bless them. But the proclamation of the gospel, the good news of what God has done, is doing, and will continue to do for hearers and preacher alike, will motivate people to love God and neighbor as nothing else can. ....

The preacher who presents the moral law as the standard we must meet before God will love and bless us betrays the gospel. God’s law is a description of our grateful response to the unmerited and unconditional love which the Lord showers upon us—not because we are good enough, but because he is so good that he wants to share his love with us, despite our unworthiness. There is a place for exhortation in the pulpit. But it belongs at the end, when the overwhelming message of God’s unmerited love and goodness has prepared the hearers’ hearts and minds to respond to his love through grateful obedience and worshipful self-sacrifice. [more]

Sometimes a rebuke is needed and obedience is important. But the motive is more important: obedience is a response to His love, not a way of earning it.

We love because he first loved us. .... And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:19, 21, ESV)

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15, ESV)

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Proclaiming The Good News

Strip-mining humanity

William Saletan—who supports embryonic stem-cell research—has noticed a paradox:

.... Proponents of embryo research are insisting that because we're in a life-and-death struggle—in this case, a scientific struggle—anyone who impedes that struggle by renouncing effective tools is irrational and irresponsible. The war on disease is like the war on terror: Either you're with science, or you're against it. ....

You don't have to equate embryos with full-grown human beings—I don't—to appreciate the danger of exploiting them. Embryos are the beginnings of people. They're not parts of people. They're the whole thing, in very early form. Harvesting them, whether for research or medicine, is different from harvesting other kinds of cells. It's the difference between using an object and using a subject. How long can we grow this subject before dismembering it to get useful cells? How far should we strip-mine humanity in order to save it?

If you have trouble taking this question seriously—if you think it's just the hypersensitivity of fetus-lovers—try shifting the context from stem cells to torture. There, the question is: How much ruthless violence should we use to defeat ruthless violence? The paradox and the dilemma are easy to recognize. Creating and destroying embryos to save lives presents a similar, though not equal, dilemma. ....

Of course it is now increasingly evident that embryo destruction isn't required for anything at all. It is pointless and no "lesser evil" justification works. This kind of "ruthless violence" cannot be justified. It is just simply evil. Ryan T. Anderson, in "Perpetuating a Needless Stem-Cell War":

.... In 2007, when the great breakthrough of induced pluripotent stem cell technology was announced, both of the scientists behind the new technique explained the moral concerns that drove their research. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka told the New York Times: "When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters. I thought, we can't keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way." At the same time, Dr. James Thomson, the original discoverer of embryonic stem cells, told the Times: "If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough. I thought long and hard about whether I would do it." He went on to add that because of this latest technique, "a decade from now, this will be just a funny historical footnote."

Yet this footnote becomes less funny as life-and-death decisions are made for political purposes despite the existence of sound scientific alternatives to human embryo-destructive research. After seven years and two campaigns of the Democrats attacking the Republicans over President Bush's stem-cell policy, Obama evidently thought he had to make good on his promise to promote and fund embryo-destructive research, even if it is now scientifically superfluous. And superfluous is exactly what the past year and a half of stem-cell breakthroughs have made it. ....

Of course, the stem-cell debates have never been about science. As Joseph Bottum and I argued in the November issue of First Things, the furor over stem cells was fueled by numerous factors: patients' desperation in the face of illness and their hope for cures; the belief that biology can now do anything; the reluctance of scientists to accept any limits (particularly moral limits) on their research; the impact of big money from biotech stocks, patents, and federal funding; the willingness of America's elite class to use every means possible to discredit religion in general; and the need to protect the unlimited abortion license by accepting no protections of unborn human life. The most recent technological breakthroughs, sadly, change none of these facts. But they should.

Thanks to Nathaniel Peters for the reference [and the title].

You just won the stem-cell war. Don't lose your soul. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine, Perpetuating a Needless Stem-Cell War

Orthodoxy means boundaries

At his consistently interesting blog, Kevin DeYoung expresses his frustration with the use of a couple of words that have become jargon. The first is "dialogue":

.... The plea is always for more talking. But do we ever call an end to the meeting of the minds and simply make up our minds? Do we ever declare, ala Martin Luther, “Here we stand”? Are there any issues so clear and so important that to spend time in dialogue would not be a sign of patient discernment but of cowardly equivocation? Does there come a time when the need to rest on the side of truth means we resign ourselves to the fact that there are going to be “winners” and “losers”? When do we swallow hard and admit that it’s fruitless to dialogue for the sake of unity when both sides don’t agree on anything except the most nebulous, ambivalent, watered-down expressions of Christianity?

I think the Apostle Paul would be truly exasperated by our endless conversation. No doubt, he was willing to continue teaching and “dialoguing” with people who wanted to know more about Jesus. But for deserters and false teachers, he had little patience. He called them out by name–Alexander, Hymenaeus, Philetus, Demas, Phygellus, Hermogenes–and warned his fledgling flocks, “Be on your guard against them.” So much for dialogue.

And the second word is "inclusion":

Considering the church’s spotted past in excluding people for the wrong reasons–too poor, too black, too awkward–inclusion can sound awfully good. And it is, when by “inclusion” we mean something like “welcome.” The church, of all places, should be an inviting haven for any sinner-come-lately and any socio-category that treasures Jesus in faith and repentance, or is simply looking for spiritual guidance.

So what’s the problem? The problem is one of boundaries. I am convinced that most of our wrangling in churches and denominations is over where to put up fences. What are the boundaries for fellowship? Membership? Leadership? What does one have to believe, say, or do in order to be counted as one of us? Where inclusionists have gone wrong is in removing theological and ethical boundaries that are essential in defining what it means to be Christian. ....

It should be commonsense when you stop and think about it. What is the great humanitarian feat in having all kinds of people join some inclusive institution, when the institution itself has no boundaries to define what it means to be a member? It’s kind of silly to speak of joining a group that doesn’t stand for anything and doesn’t turn anyone away. What, then, have you really joined? [read it all here]

The appropriate boundaries are defined by Christian orthodoxy and orthodoxy is defined by "the faith once delivered to the saints" [Jude 3]. Today DeYoung reviews Darrell Bock’s The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities:

One of the main tenets of Bock’s argument is that Christianity, from the beginning, was defined by orthodoxy. That is, there was such a thing as Christianity before there were Christianities.

Bock takes the reader on a tour of early Christianity and demonstrates that there was a broad consensus in four areas–the view of God, the view of Jesus, the nature of salvation, and Jesus’ work–that defined traditionalist Christianity. “I believe our tour has shown enough unanimity of belief in these four topics among the traditionalists,” writes Bock, “that, for them, these ideas were the core of Christianity.” [more]

DeYoung includes Bock's summary of what that set of core beliefs were [and are].

DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed: All Aboard the Jargon Express!, DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed: Christianity or Christianities?

Smaller numbers = better quality?

There has been much in the news over the last few days about a survey revealing that fewer Americans identify themselves as Christians and that increasing numbers self-identify as atheists or as non-religious. The Wisconsin State Journal reports on the local numbers:

Wisconsin's population is becoming less Christian and more secular like the rest of the country, although the state has seen a sharp drop in Catholics not mirrored nationally.

Seventy-six percent of the state population identifies as Christian, down from 91 percent in 1990, according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey. The percentage of Wisconsin residents who claim no religion jumped from 6 percent in 1990 to 15 percent last year.

While the percentage of the U.S. population identifying as Catholic remained relatively stable, the denomination’s share of the state population dropped from 39 percent in 1990 to 29 percent last year. ....

Dennis Doyle, a Catholic theologian at the University of Dayton in Ohio, said he is not that alarmed by the decline in Catholic numbers in Wisconsin and some other states.

"The current pope is associated with a position that smaller numbers may mean better quality," Doyle said. "Some people who may have self-identified as Catholic 10 years ago but who were not practicing Catholics may now be identifying in another way."

In every state, the percentage of people with no religion grew. The category includes atheists (no God), agnostics (unknowable or unsure) and those who indicate no religious identity.

"That is music to our ears," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, where membership has more than doubled in four years to 13,600. "It does look like our nation is following in the path of Europe by becoming more secular." [more]

I'm not sure that "smaller numbers...mean better quality" but as nominal Christians fall away the Church may become increasingly what it ought to be — a body of believers.

WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL

Oh, give thanks to the Lord

Gene Edward Veith has been doing a series of posts on Luther's Small Catechism. Today he asks why the mealtime table prayers Luther specifies aren't more commonly used. It's a very good question. They are very good prayers.

PRAYER BEFORE EATING
The eyes of all wait upon You, O Lord, and You give them their food in due season; You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Lord God, heavenly Father, bless us and these Your gifts which we receive from Your bountiful goodness, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

PRAYER AFTER EATING
Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for His mercy endures forever.

We thank You, Lord God, heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, for all Your benefits, You who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.

Notice that the old practice was to pray TWICE at a meal. Before you start eating (the blessing) AND after you finish eating (giving thanks).

What’s with the common table prayer? — Cranach: The Blog of Veith

Baptizing the imagination

Will Vaus, at his very interesting site, C. S. Lewis & Narnia etc., has republished an interview he gave to Kelli Conners, who is on the staff of Parnassus, Taylor University's journal of literature and the arts. Today the question was about "smuggling" Christian ideas into fiction. I think that mischaracterizes what Lewis and other good Christian authors actually do—at least insofar as it seems to suggest that they are intentional smugglers. It might be more accurate to say that their fictions inevitably arise out of they way they perceive reality. The point, though, is that such books are more likely to be read by many non-Christians than are apologetics. The question and the answer:

Kelli Conners: Since we're talking about fiction, Lewis talked about "smuggling" Christian ideas into fiction. Do you think that approach can be as effective a tool for your ministry as non-fiction?

Will Vaus: Perhaps more effective. Lewis foresaw the coming of postmodernism. He saw it in his students at Oxford in the forties. He foresaw that there was coming a time when people wouldn't have patience to follow a rational argument for Christianity. Compare today: even many people who aren't postmoderns don't have patience to sit down and read the first section of Mere Christianity. It's pretty amazing to think that, in 1941, this series went out over BBC radio. The story is told of a publican (a bartender) who, when Lewis's program came on the air, turned up the volume on the radio and told everyone at the bar to "be quiet and listen to this bloke; he has some good things to say!" We can't even conceive of something like that happening today on a popular level. But back then, it worked. Lewis foresaw that there was going to come a time when people would not have the interest level or the patience to work their way through a rational argument. He also knew that the way to reach the masses was through story; and that is what he felt came more naturally to him anyway—storytelling.

Thus Lewis wrote the Narnia stories and his greatest novel, Till We Have Faces. Those books, although they work at a subliminal level, maybe do more for the cause of evangelism than Lewis's straightforward apologetics.

I was talking with someone today about the documentary, The Dreamer of Narnia, that is on the extended edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe DVD. It's a wonderful documentary, and it is done in a very entertaining fashion. In it they filmed English children in Oxford sitting on the steps near the Bodleian Library reading bits of the Narnia stories. The documentary relates each of the Narnias to Lewis's life. It was fun for me watching each of those children read from the Narnia books. And it got me thinking: "Who are these children they have reading?" Some of them probably came from a very secular background; they might not even know what they are getting into their minds; but they love it. And, as Lewis says, it is "baptizing their imaginations". Who knows where God will take that? You have to be patient to invest your life in that sort of storytelling because you can't always see the immediate results.

When I was teaching, I often saw high school kids from my classes reading the Narnia books and sometimes a book from the Space Trilogy. Most of them were not Christians and, if I engaged them in conversation about the books, the enjoyment they expressed had no relationship to anything theological. But they did enjoy them. Who knows what the ultimate result may be. But the books wouldn't have been read in the first place if they had been Christian propaganda.

C. S. Lewis & Narnia etc.

Hearing is believing

Introducing an article about the legal status of Christian prayer in the public square, Stephen Webb notes that secularists seem to have an almost magical belief in the power of Jesus's name:

No other name has ever had such power for both believers and deniers alike. Simply saying that name in public is enough to traumatize secularists possessed by the conviction that they have the right not to be exposed to religion. Some secularists have come around to tolerating the occasional public benediction or blessing, as long as it is generically addressed, but many still draw the line at the concluding phrase of a Christian prayer that typically begins, “In the name of. . .” It is almost as if secularists instinctively realize that hearing is believing. They just don’t want to take that risk.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » The Terrible, Traumatic, and Intolerable Name of Jesus Christ

Worship music for the head and the heart

Using Chris Tomlin as an example, John Stackhouse argues that we need much better lyrics in contemporary worship songs:

.... We are the most educated Christians in history, and yet our lyrics are considerably stupider than our much less educated Christian forebears—the people who sang lyrics by Fanny Crosby or Charles Wesley or Isaac Watts.

And please note that I didn’t say our lyrics are “simpler.” Simple can be good. Simple can be beautiful. I’m not arguing with simple. ....

This is serious business, friends, and I don’t apologize for ranting. For we spend the days after we’ve gone to church humming and recalling the words from the songs we’ve sung a lot more often than we recall the words of the Scripture that was read, the liturgy that was recited, or the sermon that was preached. Let’s do all we can, then, to make sure our heads and hearts are full of something good. [more]

The post elicited much comment.

Chris Tomlin’s Worship Songs: We Have Got to Do Better « Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog