Homelanders

Andrew Klavan wanted to write a series of books of the sort he would have enjoyed when young. His intended audience was boys between 12 and 16, but he has found a much wider one, including me. The second of four books in "The Homelanders" series has just been published and I am already within a few pages of the end. They have much the same appeal as the Thirty Nine Steps or North by Northwest: a hero who is being pursued by everyone, alone and thrown back on his own resources. The books are suspenseful and exciting.

Klavan was interviewed by John Miller at NRO. The interview is here. Toward the end he explained part of his motive:

[W]e've allowed our kids...to forget that...there's a reason we believe in liberty. There's a reason we believe in small government. There's a reason we believe in checks and balances, and a reason too that we believe in faith...And these things can be taught again...but we're gonna have to do it. It's not gonna just happen.

He is doing a part of that with these books. The first in the series was The Last Thing I Remember. The one just out is The Long Way Home. The books constitute a continuing story so they should be read in order.

A former [retired] high school social studies teacher, I was particularly interested in Klavan's account [in the second book, pp. 47-48] of his protagonist, Charlie West's, classroom disagreement with a teacher:

.... This was another thing that always annoyed me about Mr. Sherman. When you argued with him, he didn't exactly use facts and logic. He just tried to make fun of you and change the subject and tangle you up with words so you looked bad or the class laughed at you and you got flustered and couldn't make your point. And another thing that annoyed me was that a lot of times it worked.

I glanced around at the rest of the students. They were all laughing at Mr. Sherman's zombie routine. Even Rick Donnelly, one of my best friends, was laughing over at his desk near the window. I knew Rick agreed with me about Mr. Sherman. He thought this was a great country and even wanted to go into politics when he grew up. But he was the kind of guy who never argued with teachers, who was always trying to please them and say what they wanted to hear so he would get good grades. Maybe that's how you get to be a politician.

"So what part of the Declaration don't you agree with?" I asked Mr. Sherman.

Sherman stopped waving his arms around. He smiled. "Ah, my zombielike friend, that's exactly the wrong question. The question is: What part of it can you prove to be true? Prove that we're created equal. We don't look equal to me."

"That's not what it means. It means that we're created with equal rights:"

"Prove it, Charlie. You can't. It's just something Americans have come to believe, that's all. Other people believe other things. You can't even prove that we were created, that we have a Creator in the first place. It's just something you were told and so you believe it. Go on, Zombie Guy—prove it."

I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn't think what to say. I didn't know exactly how you would prove something like that. Sherman made the class laugh at me again by opening his mouth and making stuttering sounds to imitate my confusion: "Uh, uh, uh!"

Then the bell rang. That was the end of class. ....

The books are published by Thomas Nelson, a Christian publishing house, and Charlie West is a believably portrayed Christian. Klavan has written thrillers for adults which might not be ideal for adolescents but these books are safe for just about anyone — and a good, compulsive, quick read too.

Update [2/9]: Another excerpt from The Long Way Home, this one illustrating how well Klavan writes action.

Andrew Klavan on The Long Way Home

"The echo of the tune we have not heard"

John Piper begins his explanation of the importance of C.S. Lewis by describing various ways he thinks Lewis's theology inadequate. Some evangelicals consider such problems sufficient reason to dismiss Lewis entirely. Piper doesn't, and explains why in "Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul," [listen here]:

.... The answer lies in the way that the experience of Joy and the defense of Truth come together in Lewis’s life and writings. The way Lewis deals with these two things—Joy and Truth—is so radically different from Liberal theology and emergent postmodern slipperiness that he is simply in another world—a world where I am totally at home, and where I find both my heart and my mind awakened and made more alive and perceptive and responsive and earnest and hopeful and amazed and passionate for the glory of God every time I turn to C. S. Lewis. It’s this combination of experiencing the stab of God-shaped joy and defending objective, absolute Truth, because of the absolute Reality of God, that sets Lewis apart as unparalleled in the modern world. To my knowledge, there is simply no one else who puts these two things together the way Lewis does. [....]

Piper explains exactly how important Lewis's presentation of these two themes have been to his understanding. With respect to "Joy," part of what Piper writes (I've omitted Piper's footnotes):

The experience of this Joy is the most important theme of his life. He says so. It gives unity to everything else. He said of this experience, “In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else.” Very seldom does a writer tell us what he believes is the central theme of his life. Lewis does tell us. Everything in his life gains its deepest meaning from its connection with this.

Here’s the closest thing that Lewis gives to a definition of this Joy: It is the experience “of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” This is why he chose the word Joy rather than “desire” or “longing” or “Sehnsucht” when writing his autobiography—because those words failed to convey the desirability of the longing itself.

I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that any one who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is the kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.

Or again he says, “Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” So on the one hand, Joy has this dimension of “inconsolable longing,” aching, yearning for something you don’t have. But on the other hand, the longing and aching and yearning is itself pleasurable. It is in itself not just a wanting to have but a having.

True, it was desire, not possession. But then what I had felt on the walk had also been desire, and only possession in so far as that kind of desire is itself desirable, is the fullest possession we can know on earth; or rather, because the very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There, to have is to want to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be stabbed again, was itself again such a stabbing.

Alan Jacobs is right to say, “Nothing was closer to the core of his being than this experience.” And perhaps what sealed its significance for Lewis is that it brought him to Christ. He was an atheist in his twenties, but relentlessly God was pursuing him through the experience of “inconsolable longing.” And he was finding that the writers who awakened it most often were Christian writers. (....)

Lewis looked back on all his experiences of Joy differently now. Now he knew why the desire was inconsolable, and yet pleasant. It was a desire for God. It was evidence that he was made for God.

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of the tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

All his life, he said, “an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of [my] consciousness.” “The sweetest thing of all my life has been the longing . . . to find the place where all the beauty came from.” But when Lewis was born again to see the glory of God in Christ, he never said again that he didn’t know where the beauty came from. Now he knew where all the joy was pointing. On the last page of his autobiography, he explained the difference in his experience of Joy now and before.

I believe...that the old stab, the old bittersweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any time of my life whatever. But I now know that the experience, considered as a state of my own mind, had never had the kind of importance I once gave it. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the site of the signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, ‘Look!’ The whole party gathers around and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. ‘We would be at Jerusalem.’

So Lewis stopped turning Joy into an idol when he found, by grace, that it was “a pointer to something other and outer,” namely to God. Clyde Kilby gave the highest estimation of this theme in Lewis:

[For Lewis Joy is] a desire which no natural happiness can ever satisfy, the lifelong pointer toward heaven . . . which gave us such delight and yet are the meager signs of the true rapture He has in heaven for redeemed souls. . . . The culmination of Sehnsucht [Longing, Joy] in the rhapsodic joy of heaven is, for me at least the strongest single element in Lewis. In one way or other it hovers over nearly every one of his books and suggests to me that Lewis’s apocalyptic vision is perhaps more real than that of anyone since St. John on Patmos.

There is much more, including discussion of Lewis on objective Truth, "chronological snobbery," and so on.

Update [2/5]: Desiring God has put video of Piper's address online:

Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul :: Desiring God Christian Resource Library

"Wandering vaguely: quite of her own accord"

When I was six one of my gifts was When We Were Very Young. That was my introduction to A.A. Milne. Pooh doesn't appear in the book [although Christopher Robin does]. The book is a collection of Milne's poems. The illustrator was Ernest H. Shepard, who did the drawings for all of Milne's children's books [and for my favorite edition of The Wind in the Willows]. I much prefer Shepard's work to the Disneyfied versions. This, like most good children's books, is best read aloud. The best children's books are just as much fun to read when you're grown — all the more so when shared with a child. My favorite of the poems, then as now, is "Disobedience" about the refusal of a mother to take excellent advice about the dangers of going alone to the end of town.

James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree Took great Care of his Mother, Though he was only three. James James Said to his Mother, "Mother," he said, said he; "You must never go down to the end of the town, if you don't go down with me."	James James Morrison Morrison (Commonly known as Jim) Told his Other relations Not to go blaming him. James James Said to his Mother, "Mother," he said, said he: "You must never go down to the end of the town without consulting me."
James James Morrison's Mother Put on a golden gown. James James Morrison's Mother Drove to the end of the town. James James Morrison's Mother Said to herself, said she: "I can get right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea."	James James Morrison's mother Hasn't been heard of since. King John said he was sorry, So did the Queen and Prince. King John (Somebody told me) Said to a man he knew: If people go down to the end of the town, well, what can anyone do?"
King John Put up a notice, "LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED! JAMES JAMES MORRISON'S MOTHER SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID. LAST SEEN WANDERING VAGUELY: QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD, SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN TO THE END OF THE TOWN - FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!"	(Now then, very softly) J.J. M.M. W.G.Du P. Took great C/0 his M***** Though he was only 3. J.J. said to his M***** "M*****," he said, said he: "You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town- if-you-don't-go-down-with-ME!"

Human nature and ordered liberty

Russell Kirk [1918-1994] devoted himself to explaining the true meaning of conservatism at a time when to most people it just meant political opposition to FDR's New Deal. When, while in college, I read his The Conservative Mind it was my introduction to the history of Anglo/American conservative thought. He led me to Burke and many others — and I also read everything of Kirk's I could find. The Russell Kirk Center has placed online his essay, "Ten Conservative Principles." He begins by reminding us that conservatism is an attitude rather than an ideology and that consequently "the conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects." His lists of conservative principles developed over time. The ten points in this one were his final effort — from 1993. I've excerpted from three of them. The entire essay is found here.

First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.

This word order signifies harmony. There are two aspects or types of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth. [....]

Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability. Human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults, the conservatives know. Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created. Because of human restlessness, mankind would grow rebellious under any utopian domination, and would break out once more in violent discontent—or else expire of boredom. To seek for utopia is to end in disaster, the conservative says: we are not made for perfect things. All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk. By proper attention to prudent reform, we may preserve and improve this tolerable order. [....]

Ninth, the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. Politically speaking, power is the ability to do as one likes, regardless of the wills of one’s fellows. A state in which an individual or a small group are able to dominate the wills of their fellows without check is a despotism, whether it is called monarchical or aristocratic or democratic. When every person claims to be a power unto himself, then society falls into anarchy. Anarchy never lasts long, being intolerable for everyone, and contrary to the ineluctable fact that some persons are more strong and more clever than their neighbors. To anarchy there succeeds tyranny or oligarchy, in which power is monopolized by a very few. [....] [the essay]

The Kirk Center - Ten Conservative Principles by Russell Kirk

"Never knowing where we're going, We can never go astray."

I have a couple of Kingsley Amis books in my library. Bradley Vasoli's review of Conversations with Kingsley Amis motivated me to get down one that Amis edited, which, I was pleased to discover, included a C.S. Lewis effort:

Evolutionary Hymn

LEAD us, Evolution, lead us Up the future's endless stair; Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us. For stagnation is despair: Groping, guessing, yet progressing, Lead us nobody knows where.	Ask not if it's god or devil, Brethren, lest your words imply Static norms of good and evil (As in Plato) throned on high; Such scholastic, inelastic, Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Wrong or justice in the present, Joy or sorrow, what are they While there's always jam to-morrow, While we tread the onward way? Never knowing where we're going, We can never go astray.	Far too long have sages vainly Glossed great Nature's simple text; He who runs can read it plainly, 'Goodness = what comes next.' By evolving, Life is solving All the questions we perplexed.
To whatever variation Our posterity may turn Hairy, squashy, or crustacean, Bulbous-eyed or square of stern, Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless, Towards that unknown god we yearn.	On then! Value means survival— Value. If our progeny Spreads and spawns and licks each rival, That will prove its deity — (Far from pleasant, by our present Standards, though it well may be).

The new Amis book is a collection of interviews. One gets the impression that he is more easily enjoyed and admired from a distance, but that may be more typical than not with literary figures. Amis began his political engagement on the Left but moved right as he got older. Vasoli writes "He blasted conservatism in his youth, leftism afterward. The man truly knew his targets." By the time I discovered him he was saying things I found quite congenial:

The real thrill of protest, he explains, amounts to this: “You’re embattled, surrounded by people who feel as you do, and surrounded by girls, and it’s a way of being brave without any real fear of the consequences.”

Sadly, Amis considered himself impervious to faith:

.... Asked in one of the discussions if he is a Christian, he responded, “No. I wish I were. That would be fine. But I’ve never had any faith. I can’t remember such a thing. It’s a weakness, a limitation. Which doesn’t mean to say that all people with faith are better off than all people without it, more worthy somehow. But still, it’s a grave thing to be deprived of.”

Amis Speaks - Bradley Vasoli - National Review Online

"Don't make everything about 'Jesus'"

Kevin DeYoung publishes a "rant" [his term] this morning about those Christians who seem to want to avoid being known as "Christians." [I may do the same some day about people who seem to think "gospel" is the opposite of "religion."] And then he gets to "Jesus":

...[W]e should also be careful that we don’t make everything about “Jesus.” (Wait a second, did he just say that?!) Let me explain. I love Jesus. I love to pray to Jesus. I love to say the name “Jesus” in my sermons, a lot. I talk about following Jesus, worshiping Jesus, believing in Jesus, and having a big, glorious Jesus. No apologies necessary for saying “Jesus.” But then one time an older member of our congregation asked why I didn’t say “Christ” more often. I had never really thought about it before. I guess “Jesus” just packs a little more punch, has a little more edge, sounds a little fresher than Christ or Lord or the Son of God.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with referencing “Jesus.” The gospels do it a whole bunch. But we must not forget—and we must help our younger listeners remember—that we are not merely followers of a man named Jesus. We worship the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are disciples of this man Jesus, but this man is also our Savior and God. He is, after all, more than a carpenter.

Following Jesus is a movement. Believing in Christ is a faith. .... [more]

Ain’t No Shame – Kevin DeYoung

N.T. Wright on Hell

Via Out of Ur, N.T. Wright on Hell:

Ur Video: NT Wright on Hell | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders

"Half a God is not God at all"

I have a friend who came to orthodox Christian belief via Unitarianism. Someone once said that God is unscrupulous — He will use just about anything to bring us to Himself. Tim Keller recently decided he ought to read The Shack, did so, acknowledges it as a "noble effort," and and tells us that he has "heard many reports of semi-believers and non-believers claiming that this book gave them an answer to their biggest objections to faith in God." Nevertheless, Keller has some objections:

.... Anyone who is strongly influenced by the imaginative world of The Shack will be totally unprepared for the far more multi-dimensional and complex God that you actually meet when you read the Bible. In the prophets the reader will find a God who is constantly condemning and vowing judgment on his enemies, while the Persons of the Triune-God of The Shack repeatedly deny that sin is any offense to them. The reader of Psalm 119 is filled with delight at God’s statutes, decrees, and laws, yet the God of The Shack insists that he doesn’t give us any rules or even have any expectations of human beings. All he wants is relationship. The reader of the lives of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Isaiah will learn that the holiness of God makes his immediate presence dangerous or fatal to us. Someone may counter (as Young seems to do, on p.192) that because of Jesus, God is now only a God of love, making all talk of holiness, wrath, and law obsolete. But when John, one of Jesus’ closest friends, long after the crucifixion sees the risen Christ in person on the isle of Patmos, John ‘fell at his feet as dead.’ (Rev.1:17.) The Shack effectively deconstructs the holiness and transcendence of God. It is simply not there. In its place is unconditional love, period. The God of The Shack has none of the balance and complexity of the Biblical God. Half a God is not God at all.

There is another modern text that sought to convey the character of God through story. It also tried to ‘embody’ the Biblical doctrine of God in an imaginative way that conveyed the heart of the Biblical message. That story contained a Christ-figure named Aslan. Unlike the author of The Shack, however, C.S. Lewis was always at pains to maintain the Biblical tension between the divine love and his overwhelming holiness and splendor. In the introduction to his book The Problem of Pain, Lewis cited the example from the children’s text The Wind in the Willows where two characters, Rat and Mole, approach divinity.

“Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. “Afraid? of Him? O, never, never. And yet — and yet — O Mole, I am afraid.”

Lewis sought to get this across at many places through his Narnia tales. One of the most memorable is the description of Aslan.

“Safe?…Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

That’s better. (more)

The Shack – Impressions – The Gospel Coalition Blog

You know what I'm saying?

Via Paul McCain at Evangel:


Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

"Not a bad public, that."

Something I was asked to write for this month's Sabbath Recorder:

In the film of Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, a young friend asks Thomas More for a place at Court. More tells Richard Rich that he won’t give him what he wants but that he may have another position for him:

Rich: What post?
More: At the new school.
Rich: A teacher! [….]
More: Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher. Perhaps a great one.
Rich: lf I was, who would know it?
More: You! Your pupils. Your friends. God. Not a bad public, that.

One of the great affirmations of the Protestant Reformation was the “priesthood of all believers” and along with that the realization that the idea of vocation applied to all believers, not just those ordained to holy orders. Our lives can’t be compartmentalized. Our work — how we earn our living — is in service to God, just as every other aspect of life. Whether we gain wide acclaim is irrelevant. What matters is whether we are faithful. Who will know? “God. Not a bad public, that.”

I didn’t come to that realization right away. For as long as I can remember I had planned to be a teacher, but because it was something I thought I could do well that would provide me with a living, not as a calling. In fact I became a public school teacher rather by default because I feared the kind of debt I would incur by continuing in graduate school. In 1970 I put out my credentials [teachers were in short supply then] and was contacted by a principal in Madison. I taught in that school district — secondary history and political science — for thirty-five years.

I was a mediocre teacher when I started, making serious mistakes — especially in disciplining students — but I learned from my mistakes and eventually achieved a certain competence. I learned very little of value in the education courses I was required to take. Teaching is as much an art as a skill and perfecting the art is largely a matter of trial and error. Each teacher needs to discover the style that works for him or her. I always told my student teachers to commit to at least four or five years before deciding they couldn’t do it.

What makes a good public school teacher? You need to like kids and love your subject matter. Most students will do just about anything a teacher asks if they believe the teacher cares about them, knows what he is talking about and teaches it well. That means knowing your subject thoroughly, and that means reading a lot. The easiest way to earn the contempt of adolescents is to pretend to know more than you do. The best teachers are those who can convey what is most important clearly and interestingly — and that is almost impossible if you are always operating at or close to the limit of your knowledge. Otherwise what makes a good teacher is what makes any good person: integrity, the willingness to admit error, intolerance of cruelty, a sense of proportion and good humor, meeting your commitments and obligations punctually, “doing unto others…,” etc.

These days, in the public schools, there is much less opportunity for Christian teachers to talk freely about our faith than was true even a few decades ago. Nevertheless, I found, at least in high school, that if the subject came up naturally as part of the curriculum or in student initiated discussion, it was possible if the subject was approached descriptively, if disagreement could be freely expressed, and nobody felt pressured. The most important witness a Christian teacher can make in a classroom, though, is behavior consistent with belief. For high school students there is no greater sin an adult can commit than seeming to be hypocritical.

“Be a teacher.” It is an honorable profession. And your Sabbaths will almost always be free.

When I started blogging at "One Eternal Day" I made it a practice to link each month to the magazine published by my denomination, The Sabbath Recorder. Since it can be easily found elsewhere, I've decided instead to place a permanent link in the sidebar. Some one of my friends will no doubt observe [quite fairly] that I waited to do this until an issue was published in which something I wrote appeared. Many of the articles in this issue, like mine, are about the choice of a career.

Who is the true Christian?

Richard Dawkins thinks Pat Robertson has been unfairly attacked by Christians who don't understand the implications of the faith we profess. Christopher Hitchens has no quarrel with religious believers who really don't believe in much.

Ross Douthat writing today about "Fundamentalists and the Atheists Who Love Them":

...Dawkins’ “defense” of Robertson, against the “milquetoast” Christians who rushed to disavow the televangelist’s suggestion that the Haitian earthquake victims were being singled out for divine punishment, offers an interesting illustration of militant atheism’s symbiotic relationship with religious fundamentalism. Here’s the new atheist:

Loathsome as Robertson’s views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonized theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable “mystery”, or who “see God” in the help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti, or (most nauseating of all) who claim to see God “suffering on the cross” in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson who is the true Christian here. [....]

The piece continues in this vein for some time. Dawkins is quite right, of course, that Christianity lays a heavy emphasis on sin, atonement, and (yes) the possibility of damnation. But whether this means that Christians are obliged to interpret the disasters that befall human beings in this life as God’s punishment for specific sins is another question entirely. Let’s consult one of Christianity’s leading authorities on the matter (the emphases are mine):

I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father who is in Heaven. For He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:44-45)

Or again:

There were present at that season some who told Him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

And Jesus answering said unto them, “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, nay; but unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Or those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all other men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, nay; but unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:1-5) [....]

There’s a heavy stress on sin and the possibility of ultimate punishment here, obviously. (Plenty for Richard Dawkins to find obnoxious, in other words.) But Jesus also lays a heavy emphasis on the idea that we shouldn’t interpret the vicissitudes of this life as God’s way of picking winners and losers, or of punishing particularly egregious sinners. Until the harvest, the wheat and tares all grow together, the rain falls on the just and unjust alike, and those who survive natural disasters are as liable to judgment as those who perish in them. .... [more]

Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO linked to this interview with Christopher Hitchens, another of the "new atheists." The interviewer was a Unitarian minister who doesn't appear to know the difference between orthodoxy and fundamentalism:

The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Let me go someplace else. When I was in seminary I was particularly drawn to the work of theologian Paul Tillich. He shocked people by describing the traditional God—as you might as a matter of fact—as, “an invincible tyrant.” For Tillich, God is “the ground of being.” It’s his response to, say, Freud’s belief that religion is mere wish fulfillment and comes from the humans’ fear of death. What do you think of Tillich’s concept of God?”

I would classify that under the heading of “statements that have no meaning—at all.” Christianity, remember, is really founded by St. Paul, not by Jesus. Paul says, very clearly, that if it is not true that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then we the Christians are of all people the most unhappy. If none of that’s true, and you seem to say it isn’t, I have no quarrel with you. .... [more]

Fundamentalists and the Atheists Who Love Them - Ross Douthat Blog - NYTimes.com, Portland Monthly Magazine / Arts & Entertainment / Books & Talks / Detail

Even unto old age

In the course of answering a young person who wants to get a tattoo over the objection of his parents, Russell Moore tells us just what we owe our parents:

.... The command to honor father and mother never ends. It is part of the holy will of God, and is applicable to every person, regardless of age. When you’re ninety, you’ll still have an obligation to honor your parents, even if only in memory and in speech. The way one honors one’s parents changes, though, throughout the span of life. Jesus lived this life before you. His honoring of his father Joseph and his blessed mother Mary was of obedience in all things in childhood (Luke 2:51), of listening to pleas for help in adulthood (John 2:1-5), and of caring for weakness at the end of life (John 19:26-27). All of this was an honoring of father and mother. .... [more]

Moore to the Point by Russell D. Moore

The rehabilitation of US Grant

When I took classes in US history the conventional wisdom was that, although he may have been a great military leader, US Grant was a complete failure as President deserving to be considered one of the worst. That evaluation is changing according to Sean Wilentz's review of U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, by Joan Waugh. He summarizes his evaluation of Grant here:

.... A superb modern general who, with Lincoln, finally unleashed the force required to crush the slaveholders’ rebellion, Grant went on, as president, to press vigorously for the reunification of the severed nation, but on the terms of the victorious North and not of the defeated South. Given all that he was up against—not simply from Confederates and Southern white terrorists but, as president, from high-minded factional opponents and schismatics from his own Republican Party—it is quite remarkable that Grant sustained his commitment to the freedmen for as long and as hard as he did. The evidence clearly shows that he created the most auspicious record on racial equality and civil rights of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson. He also formulated some remarkably humane and advanced ideas on subjects ranging from federal Indian policy to public education. Given the limitations imposed on executive power by the Constitution, it is all the more remarkable that he acted as boldly as he did. .... [more]

The Return Of Ulysses | The New Republic

Rebuke

From Out of Ur:

I fear I have altogether too many of those days.

Ur Cartoon: Rebuke Someone | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders

Baptists and creeds

Kevin Butler gives us a quotation from an address by Neville Callam of the Baptist World Alliance, in which he uses Trinitarianism to explain the relationships of Christians [and particularly Baptists] to one another:

When 3,000 Baptists from 26 countries gathered in London in 1905 for the inaugural congress of the Baptist World Alliance, they performed one corporate act of worship that was meant to affirm what those who gathered believed — and what they wished to communicate to fellow Christians around the world — about themselves. They stood together and repeated the words of the Apostles’ Creed — a creed structured on the conviction of faith in the Trinitarian nature of God.

Relating is part of God’s nature. When the Father acts, the Son is acting and the Holy Spirit too. When the Son acts, the Father is acting and also the Spirit. When the Spirit acts, the Father and the Son are also at work. Any successful attempt to characterize the relations in the Trinity must necessarily reflect the love that binds Father, Son and Spirit in a relationship that is indivisible.

If the church is the body of Christ, then, we cannot escape the responsibility to reflect the characteristic of the inner life of God. We are a people who belong to each other, who are called to live in love with each other and who have an obligation to enter into partnership with each other. .... [more]

In 1905, apparently, the Apostles Creed was acceptable to a diverse body of Baptists. The Nicene Creed, if it had been recited, might have made the point more clearly.

Seventh Day Baptist - SDB Exec Blog

"Provoke not your children to anger..."

I have never been a parent — although I was once a child. I do recall both paddlings [the paddle was kept on top of the refrigerator - hiding it didn't work] and "time-outs" when I was young — don't recall just when they ended, but it was well before adolescence. I doubt that was what warped my personality. Mollie Hemingway writes about a recent study of spanking in "Spare the Spanking, Spoil the Report Card?":

...[A]t some point in the past century, child-rearing books began discouraging spanking and encouraging such new proverbs as "let's all take a 'timeout' so that our anger might melt away, leading to fruitful conversation, peace and harmony in the home."

Some parents have taken the advice to such an extreme that they're hesitant to impose any consequences at all on their children. ....

Those parents who still use physical discipline keep it on the down-low. That's not just because spanking is no longer politically correct but because some lawmakers are attempting to ban even the most benign swat. .... Antispanking advocates say that physical discipline isn't just immoral but also detrimental to a child's long-term adjustment.

Yet a new study by Calvin College's Marjorie Gunnoe found no evidence to support the claim. In fact, it found that those adolescents who were spanked as young children actually ended up having a sunnier outlook and were better students than those who were never spanked.

Compared with those who had never experienced physical discipline, those who endured parental swats between the ages of 2 and 6 were much more likely to report positive academic records and optimism about their future. Even those who received their last spanking between the ages of 7 and 11 reported that they volunteered more, compared with those who had never been spanked. In fact, the never-spanked group never scored the best on any of the 11 behavioral variables analyzed. ....

.... The group that had the worst overall social adjustment was made up of children who were spanked into their teenage years. .... [more]

I wonder whether the alternatives to a whack on the behind — haranguing, yelling, sarcasm, negative character evaluations, guilt-inducing, and, of course, permissiveness — don't have much worse effect on a child than a simple spanking by a loving parent ever could.

Spare the Spanking, Spoil the Report Card? - WSJ.com

What can be learned from Lutherans?

Rev. Paul T. McCain has two posts at Evangel about two things that I very much suspect the Lutherans get right and that the rest of us should consider. They both rest on the Scriptures. The first is theological, concerning the ever vexing issue of predestination:

The other day, my son asked me, “Dad, why are some people saved, and others are not.” I said, “Aha! You are taking Latin, so tell me what this means. You are asking about the crux theologorum.” He thought for a moment and said, “The cross of theologians?” “Correct you are, sir,” I said, “What you are asking is the old question that has proven the downfall of many theologians through the ages, ‘Why some, not others?’ ” And from there we proceeded into an interesting conversation about a feature of Lutheranism that makes both Calvinists “God predestines some to hell, others to heaven”, on the one hand, and Arminians “I have chosen to follow Jesus!” folks, on the other, frustrated with us. Lutheranism, as does Sacred Scripture, simply does not answer the question why some are saved, and not others. ....

Some answer this question by pointing to man’s “free will”–only those are saved who “choose” to be saved. Lutherans reject this answer as unscriptural because according to the Bible even man’s will is “dead” and powerless to “choose” God and his grace in Christ. We are saved not because we “choose” to be saved but because the Holy Spirit works faith in our heart through the Gospel (even faith is a gift!). Others answer this question by pointing to God’s sovereign will: God himself predestines from eternity some to be saved and others to be damned. Lutherans reject this answer as unscriptural because according to the Bible God sincerely desires all to be saved and has predestined no one to damnation.

So how do Lutherans answer this question? The answer is that Lutherans do not try to answer it, because (we believe) the Bible itself does not provide an answer to this question that is comprehensible to human reason. Lutherans affirm, with Scripture, that whoever is saved is saved by God’s grace alone, a grace so sure that it excludes all human “action” and “choice” but rather rests on the foundation of God’s action in Christ and his “choice” (predestination) from before the beginning of time. Lutherans also affirm, with Scripture, that those who are damned are damned not by God’s “choice” but on account of their own human sin and rebellion and unbelief. From a human perspective, there is no “rational” or “logical” way to put these two truths together. Lutherans believe and confess them not because they are “rational” and “logical,” but because this is what we find taught in Scripture. .... (more)

The second entry that interested me is about worship, specifically use of The Church Year as the framework for worship:

The Christian Church Year is such a blessing. Many people who are new to the Lutheran Church, or other liturgical churches, coming from general evangelical Protestantism, are unfamiliar with the ancient custom of observing a series of festivals, also known as “feasts,” and unique times throughout the year, known as “seasons.” in what is known as the “liturgical year.” While the basic structure and words of the core components of the liturgy do not change from Sunday to Sunday, there are changes in other texts, particularly the various readings from Holy Scripture appointed for every Sunday and festival day, that give the various times in the Church Year their unique emphases and nuances. ....

.... Some people think that having a rigid order of every-Sunday readings is too restricting. I must respectfully, but strongly, disagree. I’ve noticed, so often, in congregations that do not follow the Church Year and the appointed readings that there sets in an impoverishment of teaching, it is easy to miss the major events of Christ’s life and the chief doctrines of God’s Word when there is not a thorough presentation of the Scriptures main stories and teachings, as is made possible through the Church Year and its appointed readings. .... (more)

Why are some saved, and not others? » Evangel | A First Things Blog, The Church’s Calendar » Evangel | A First Things Blog

$1.64 million an hour

According to Christianity Today:

Starting on the day after the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, major American charities have received donations at the average rate of $1.64 million per hour.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy yesterday released a report indicating donations of $355 million for the period Jan. 13 through Jan. 21. Do the math and it works out to an average of $1.64 million per hour.

Keep in mind these donations are independent of the US government support and this report excludes international donations. Among Christian groups on the COP list, Catholic Relief Services and World Vision were top recipients, with $19 million and $15 million in gifts, pledges, and cash respectively.

The need is great. Keep it up.

World Vision
Red Cross
Salvation Army
SDB United Relief Fund, SDB Center, PO Box 1678, Janesville WI 53547.

US donations to Haiti average $1.64 million per hour | Liveblog | Christianity Today

January 22, 1973

Today is the anniversary of one of the most shameful decisions of the Supreme Court. From Ed Whelan at NRO:

1973—For the second time in American history, the Supreme Court denies American citizens the authority to protect the basic rights of an entire class of human beings. In Roe v. Wade—the Dred Scott ruling of our age—Justice Blackmun’s majority opinion feigns not to “resolve the [purportedly] difficult question of when life begins,” but in fact rules illegitimate any legislative determination that unborn human beings are deserving of legal protection from abortion. Roe and Doe v. Bolton (decided the same day) impose on all Americans a radical regime of essentially unrestricted abortion throughout pregnancy, all the way (under the predominant reading of Doe) until birth.

In 1973 there were those who believed a Court decision would settle what was, at the time, a growing political battle. They were wrong.

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—January 22 - Ed Whelan - Bench Memos on National Review Online

Religious freedom

In countries where Christian communities have existed since the time of the Apostles—even for centuries under the rule of Islam—Christians are being persecuted and driven out today. There are those who worry about intolerance in the West while ignoring those places where it actually exists. The necessity for tolerance seemingly applies only to those who believe in it. From "The War Against the Infidels" by Clifford D. May at NRO:

.... In Nigeria this week, Muslim youths set fire to a church, killing more than two dozen Christian worshipers. In Egypt, Coptic Christians have been suffering increased persecution including, this month, a drive-by shooting outside a church in which seven people were murdered. In Pakistan, Christian churches were bombed over Christmas. In Turkey, authorities have been closing Christian churches, monasteries, and schools, and seizing Christian properties. Recently, churches in Malaysia have been attacked, too, provoked by this grievance: Christians inside the churches were referring to God as “Allah.” How dare infidels use the same name for the Almighty as do Muslims!

In response to all this, Western journalists, academics, diplomats, and politicians mainly avert their eyes and hold their tongues. They pretend there are no stories to be written, no social pathologies to be documented, no actions to be taken. They focus instead on Switzerland’s vote against minarets and anything Israel might be doing to prevent terrorists from claiming additional victims.

Many Muslims, no doubt, disapprove of the persecution of non-Muslims. But in most Muslim-majority countries, any Muslim openly opposing the Islamists and their projects risks being branded an apostate. And under the Islamist interpretation of Sharia, Islamic law, apostates deserve death.

Not so long ago, the Broader Middle East was a diverse region. Lebanon had a Christian majority for centuries but that ended around 1990 — the result of years of civil war among the country’s religious and ethnic communities. The Christian population of Turkey has diminished substantially in recent years. Islamists have driven Christians out of Bethlehem and other parts of the West Bank; almost all Christians have fled Gaza since Hamas’s takeover. .... [more]

Jewish communities have long existed in these same places and are subjected to the same persecution.

The War Against the Infidels by Clifford D. May on National Review Online