Capturing the Low Ground: Wade Bradshaw

An article by Wade Bradshaw on what apologetics looks like in present-day culture. I appreciate reading Bradshaw because he has a trait that seems to be common with people who have spent a long time at L'abri, they have they finger on the pulse of contemporary culture, the questions that people are really asking, and how to apply the Bible's answer to them.

Here is an example from the article:

"Until fairly recently, in culture, we shared something, whether you were Christian or not, and that was the belief that the church occupied the high moral ground, and that its task was to call people out of the mire of sin. If you were a non-Christian you just were not interested in the offer (being called out of the mire of sin) but you knew that if you were interested in being good and learning about God and being more like Him, you would go to church. The church said, 'Come to us. We are the ones who know God's moral will. We occupy the high moral ground.' Most everybody understood it.

Today, nothing could be further from the truth. The understanding of our culture increasingly is that the Christian God is seen as primitive, old-fashioned and immoral. The terrible thing is that non-Christians will say that to you but, increasingly, as I speak to Christians who are going to church, they have this nagging sense that they may be in agreement with them - that God is primitive, immoral and old-fashioned. In other words, that the church no longer occupies the moral high ground. We have a very offensive message. The gospel has always been offensive but this is in a new way. Can you see that as you are talking, or your church is talking, to the culture this explains a lot of bizarre conversations you may have had. It is as if I was talking about something, and I was trying to call them up to what is clearly good and true and right and they kept acting like I was trying to call them down to something. How did that happen? Can you see if the church does not understand this dynamic, that we are proclaiming these people to be sinners in need of reconciliation with the real God and they are thinking, whether clearly or not, 'if there were a God why would I go to yours? Because I already consider myself morally superior to your God.'"

The Right Destinations by the Right Paths

There are many ways to arrive at the destinations Christianity calls people to arrive at. Not all of these ways are equal.

To give an example of what I mean by that think of what it means to trust God in times of suffering. Imagine two people who are both going through suffering. Both people say they want to “trust God” in their suffering. The first person trusts God out of duty, because that is “what a Christian is supposed to do,” as if the evil here were pain/fear/doubt itself. As if the answer of Christianity to suffering was simply to push all of those things aside as if they did not exist, and the better able a person is to do that the more spiritual he or she is. With these motivations trusting God becomes a bitter pill which is swallowed because it must be. Contrast that with the person whose trust in God is not built on a foundation of duty, but built on the foundation of faith in the character of God. Belief that God is good…belief that the things which happen to us be they happy or sad are not random events out of the control of God but are things which are still under his rule… belief that although we may not have all the answers and explanations to why we are suffering, we are still able to trust God because who he has revealed himself to be is trustworthy and good. The second person is truly believing, truly trusting. When suffering comes the scaffolding which propped up the first person’s trust will crumble because that person made a groundless leap to the destination of trusting God – they took a less than true, full path to the place of trust. Whereas when suffering comes in the second person’s life, far from crumbling, the beliefs which are the foundation of the trust will stand, because they are closer to the reality of God’s truth and that person came to the place of trust by a more true, full path.

Trusting God in pain is not what I really want to talk about. I only wanted to take the time to explain what I am trying to say with a concrete example. The point is this: both people in the example came to the same place (trusting God) but came to it by vastly different paths. One path was rooted in less than it should be, thus, it contained dangers and pitfalls in the areas where it failed. The other path was rooted in a more full, complete, correct understanding, and did not share those pitfalls because it did not fail. In other words, arriving at the destination in itself is not enough, but we must arrive there by true paths.

Change itself is not enough (perhaps in some cases it is for the short term, but the short term is often not ultimately what is most important). The question of how people change must not be neglected. It is not no-holds-barred as if the main concern was with people’s outward actions and the goal is to produce those outward actions by any means necessary. The outward actions are important, I don’t mean to minimize that, but let those outward actions be produced in peoples lives because they have come to believe the truth more, because they have taken a path to arrive there which is consistent God’s character and his revelation.

These thoughts were driven home to me when I came across the same idea in two separate books. Both authors wrote about the fact that being a Christian is about more than simply believing the right doctrine, but a Christian is someone who really lives as Christ did, and is becoming more and more like him. In their books they talked about their proposed paths to the desired destination of a greater reality in Christians lives. I trusted one of the authors and the other I did not. I think that along one path there are pitfalls and blind spots and dangers, whereas the other is founded on a more solid, true, consistent, safe, foundation. Same goal. Two paths to arrive at that goal. With the first author I felt I could not allow myself to agree with although I desperately want to arrive at the place he was trying to move me into… all I could hear were alarm bells ringing from things I thought he had left behind or did not care about. And with the second author those alarm bells were silent and I felt that this would be a safe thing to take to heart, a safe path to step forward on.

Feature: Covenant Worldwide

Covenant Seminary in St. Louis has put a wealth of resources from their classes online for the public to read/study/listen to. I want to point out a few places on their website (CovenantSeminary.edu) where those resources can be found.

1. Resource Search page: You can search their immense database for everything from guest lecturers to come to the seminary to conferences to articles that have been published in their magazine. You can search by Topic, Scripture, or speaker, which makes finding exactly what you are looking for easy. Interested in Postmodernism? Talks on the Book of Revelation? Sermons and lectures by Jerram Barrs? It's all there.

2. Faculty Favorites page: Here they have given a list of the favorite articles and sermons of each Professor.

3. Covenant Worldwide: This is perhaps the most exciting feature of the website. The seminary has recorded entire classes and made them available to podcast. It is like you are sitting in the class listening to every word the professor said. They also make the notes available and the text of the lectures on pdf. Check out the list of classes. The classes online include: Church History,
Apologetics and Outreach, or Biblical Theology, etc.

Feature: Covenant Worldwide

Covenant Seminary in St. Louis has put a wealth of resources from their classes online for the public to read/study/listen to. I want to point out two places on their website (CovenantSeminary.edu) where those resources can be found.

1. Resource Search page: You can search their immense database for everything from guest lecturers to come to the seminary to conferences to articles that have been published in their magazine. You can search by Topic, Scripture, or speaker, which makes finding exactly what you are looking for easy. Interested in Postmodernism? Talks on the book of Revelation? Sermons and lectures by Jerram Barrs?

2. Faculty Favorites page: Here they have given a list of the favorite articles and sermons of each Professor.

3. Covenant Worldwide: This is perhaps the most exciting feature of the website. The seminary has recorded entire classes and made them available to podcast. It is like you are sitting in the class listening to every word the professor said. They also make the notes available and the text of the lectures on pdf. Check out the list of classes. There is everything from Church History,

Being a Theologian

I was talking with a friend this week about theology; not about any aspect of theology, but about the importance of theology itself. The conversation began with me telling a story about a time in my life when my idea of theology changed from stuffy intellectuals sitting in a room of dusty books and using words that no one else knew to the very place where the rubber meets the road in everyday christian life (or anyone's life for that matter). Without going into the details of the story, skip ahead to some of the morals I took from that time in my life:

Sometime last year I was in a class and the guy up front asked for any theologians in the room to raise their hands. Of course no one raised their hands. I didn't think it was a fair question and started thinking about what exactly a theologian was. It seems like there are at least three ways to think of it. 1. A theologian is someone who has plumbed the depths of every mystery and whose knowledge is much more vast than yours... in fact, any day now they will probably figure out the last answer (and probably not tell you)(if they did you probably wouldn't understand anyway). 2. Another possibility is that a theologian is anyone with any picture of God at all. 3. Or perhaps a theologian is simply someone who wrestles with trying to understand themselves, God, the universe... someone who doesn't have it all ironed out and never will, but struggles for the answers anyway because they believe the process itself is one that is good for the soul.

These three definitions stuck with me and I mulled them over in my head and came to a some conclusions about them. The first was that if definition #1 is true then we should quit the whole business of theology, but I don't think it is. No one has all the answers. Everyone is somewhere along the way and they will always be. Definition #2 I like better because it is true. I realized that I already am a theologian in this sense and that everyone is, even if they would never use the word theologian on themselves. Everyone has some understanding of God and it is already severely affecting their lives. I didn't realize this for a long time, but now I think it is true. I agree with A. W. Tozer, who said "what a person thinks about God is the most important thing about them." He is saying that a persons theology is the most important thing about them. But the definition I like the best is #3. I like it because it is humble, an association which the word theologian could use more of. If I must be one of them I want to be #3. I want to wrestle with the things of God. Yes, I know the God is not a finite being like me and thus at times understanding him will simply be beyond me, but I want to engage in the struggle anyway. Why? Because if my theology is really the most important thing about me then I want to stop at nothing to make it like Christ's theology, that I might live a life like Christ's too.

I remember having several conversations with people in the past couple of years when the topic would turn on to one of the more tricky, messy aspects of theology and someone in the room would jump in and say something like "Hey, can't we all just love Jesus?" thinking that they were closing the topic and doing the group a favor. I can understand why a person would want to say that and I know there are many times when it is exactly the appropriate comment, but I have reservations about it too. It is a good thing to say because in a sense we CAN just love Jesus.... after all, there won't be a quiz on predestination at the gates of heaven. But at the same time I can see how that might not be the most helpful thing to say. I say that because implicit in that statement is the idea that all this doesn't really matter anyway... but I think that it matters very much. Why? There are dangers out there. Think of it like a glacier. When a glacier moves downhill giant crevasses - cracks in the ice that can be hundreds of meters deep - open up and sometimes when the glacier flows over a level surface again all of the crevasses don't close completely. Then it snows and theses deep pits in the surafce of the glacier are covered beneath a foot or two of snow and disappear until you step on one. What does this have to do with theology? Saying "can't we all just love Jesus" can be kind of like standing on the edge of the glacier and looking out over it and seeing only a level, unbroken field of snow and believing that because no danger readily shows itself no danger exists. All the while traps lurk beneath the surface, invisible until stepped on. That's the thing... from the edge theology looks like you can take it or leave it, then you go out walking through the Christian life and fall into a crevasse and all of a sudden theology looks like what it always really was... a matter of life and death.

Another reservation I have with "can't we all love Jesus" is that it really does affect your life. Theology isn't just for seminary students and professors, it is for fathers, mothers, kids, artists, lovers, preachers, friends, etc. In any walk of life or stage in the game, as ones theology takes in more of the Truth ones life will reflect more of the Truth. A quick example: I always used to nod my head when ever anyone said anything about God being in control, but I didn't really pause to think how in control is he really? and what does it mean either way? Then I started thinking about it and searching the Bible for its answer to that question and talking to people about it. I still nod my head when people speak of God being in control, but now I mean more by it... that truth sank further into my heart as it worked further into my head. The funny thing I noticed is that as I learned more about what God's sovereignty really means I found that my life could not remain the same. I could no longer pray the same way or do almost anything else the same. My changing notion of God's sovereignty changed the way I worry, the way I love, the way I speak to people, the way I deal with suffering, the way I date, the way I hope, the way I read the Bible, and probably a hundred more things I am not observant enough to see. Tozer was right. The way we think about God is the most important thing about us. I suppose if there is a moral it is that when the questions find us - like Jacob in the desert - we wrestle with them as honestly as we are able, and when an opportunity to find them first shows itself we take it.

Global Mind: Mountains Beyond Mountains

On a trip back from Iowa today I listened to an excellent book called Mountains Beyond Mountains: the Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, by Tracy Kidder. The book chronicles the life of the Paul Farmer and his remarkable achievements in advancing global health. Kidder followed Farmer for years in his travels all over the world and the result is a book that tells the story of one of the world's great men. Farmers story left me with the feeling of being impacted, and the suspicion that I would continue to learn as I milled the book over in my head and wrestled with the questions it raises. If recommend the book if you are at all interested in making a sick world well or if you are at all tired of feeling comfortable in your comfort.

Here are some quotes from the book. Thanks to Riches for Good, where I found the quotations.

In his mind, he was fighting all poverty all the time, an endeavor full of difficulties and inevitable failures. For him, the reward was inward clarity, and the price perpetual anger or, at best, discomfort with the world... (210)

[Many people] think all the world's problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves. We don't believe that. There's a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It's what separates us from roaches. (Paul Farmer, 40)

I think there's a point where you realize the world has just been revealed to you...It's sort of, Oh no, things will never be quite the same again. (Ophelia Dahl, 74)

If people could be kept from dying unnecessarily, then one had to act. (102)

Lives of service depend on lives of support. He'd gotten help from many people. (108)

Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world. (Margaret Mead, 164)

The problem is, if I don't work this hard, someone will die who doesn't have to. That sounds megalomaniacal. I wouldn't have said that to you before I'd taken you to Haiti and you had seen that it was manifestly true. (Paul Farmer, 191)

I imagine that many people would like to construct a life like Farmer's, to wake up knowing what they ought to do and feeling that they were doing it. But I can't think that many would willingly take on the difficulties, giving up their comforts and time with family. (213)

It should be enough to humbly serve the poor. (Paul Farmer, 256)

That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people. (Paul Farmer, 295)

Keller's Six Defeaters

The following is the text of the end of a sermon given by Tim Keller at Covenant Seminary. You can download the rest of the sermon here. The topic of the sermon is preaching and this section deals with how to talk with people about our culture's six biggest objections to Christianity. I have found it very helpful and think it's worth reading or listening to.

"Every culture has a set of defeater beliefs. A defeater is “Belief A” that if true then “Belief B” can’t be true. For example, if it is really true that there can’t be just one true religion, then I don’t really have to listen to Christianity. In a culture in which people hold a defeater belief, when you try to talk to them about Christianity their eyes glaze over and they stop listening. Every culture has a different set of defeater beliefs. For example in America one of the defeater beliefs is there can’t just be one true religion, or that all religions are equally valid. This is a kind of common sense thing now in our culture, but if you go over to the Middle East that’s not a defeater belief at all. Go there and say “There can’t just be one true religion” they will all look at you and say “Why not?” In the Middle East the defeater is that Christianity can’t be true because so many Americans believe it. When you see this you immediately begin to realize that your objections to Christianity are culturally relative.
Now, what are these objections?

I did a survey two years ago of young 20-somethings who had just come out of Yale, asking them their biggest objections to Christianity. Many of them worked in the city, had never been Christians, were raised secular, many of them were Jewish, many of them were lapsed Catholics or mainline Protestants. We distilled it down to six objections and here they are:
1. The Other Religions: There cannot just be one true religion.
2. Evil and suffering: This is going to continue to be a problem for people because we live in a consumer society where we think we should have designer lives. There has never been a bigger group of crybabies then Americans. We are so set on the idea that “I have rights to a happy life” that the question of why God allows the things to happen that he does will increasingly be a problem for people.
3. The Sacredness of Choice: One of the things that came out in my survey was that many young people not only feel that it is important to have personal choice, they believe that if I obey the ten commandments simply because I am told I have to then I am just a zombie and a robot. You are not a human being unless you decide what is right or wrong. There is the belief that unless it is my choice what is right or wrong I am not an authentic person and therefore any institutionalized religion is by definition ruled out.
4. The Record of Christians: The injustice and the genocides and the corruption that the church or Christians have been involved in throughout history.
5. The Problem of Anger: In spite of the fact that we live in a culture where anger is more affirmed than in any culture that has ever been (we demand to have our rights and needs, and to be outraged and angered is considered a great sign of authentic personhood) the idea of a God being angry is absolutely problematic for people, particularly the Cross. I would say that my biggest question I get from non-Christians is “If God wants to forgive me why can’t He just forgive me” and “Any God who has to have blood in order to forgive me I don’t want any part of.”
6. Untrustworthiness of the Bible: This is the idea that the Bible is socially regressive. If we follow the Bible we will never get away from social oppression and the putting down of other races. The Bible is seen as promoting holy war and genocide. It is seen as promoting the subjugation of women and the subjugation of homosexuals and so on.

Now what you have got to do is find ways of undermining these six all the time. You have got to help people understand just how to deal with those six or they will never talk to their non-Christian friends because they will throw these up and they will not know what to say. Let me give some ideas about each one.

1. No other religions: Basically the way you have to talk and preach about this objection is you have to point out that western inclusivism is really covert exclusivism. You hear people something like this, “No one should insist their view of God is better than all the rest” or “Every religion is equally valid” But that can only be true if there is no God or there is a God who is an impersonal force and who doesn’t care what your doctrinal beliefs about him are. That is a very particular view of God and you are basing your entire life on it, and you are asking me to change my view of God to your view of God. That is the very thing you just told me I am not allowed to do to you. That is absolutely inconsistent. What looks like inclusivism is basically a covert exclusivism. What you’ve actually done is to say that all religions are equally valid is itself assuming a particular view of God (which is a leap of faith) and you are insisting that everybody out there must believe your view of God or else they will be unenlightened. William Willamon says this, “To say that all religions are equally valid is itself a very white, western view based on the Europeans enlightenment’s idea of knowledge and values…” Why should this view be privileged over everybody elses?
Of all the objections that are out there it is by far the weakest. It makes no sense at all. There is a place in one of Alvin Plantinga’s essays where someone comes up to him and says, “If you were born in Madagascar you wouldn’t even be a Christian” and he said, “That’s probably right. Are you telling me that therefore Christianity can’t be true? If you were born in Madagascar you wouldn’t be a religious relativist. Does that mean what you are saying isn’t true?” There is no intellectual integrity to the idea that all religions are equally true.
2. Evil and suffering: Here is a brief response to the idea: If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world then you have to have at the very same moment a God who is great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue which you do not know. You can’t have it both ways. If you are talking to a non-suffering person who just thrown the problem of suffering at you that is probably the best answer, provided you unpack it a little bit. If you are talking to a suffering person that would be very cruel. Here is what you have to say: Eastern religions say that suffering is an illusion, other western religions say that God is up there and he has his reasons but only Christianity has a God who has himself come into the world of suffering. If God himself has suffered then he must have reasons for allowing it to continue that aren’t a matter of remoteness and distance. If God has himself experienced suffering then he can be with in you in the suffering. You just have to say that Christianity has better resources for believing that God is involved and cares about our suffering than any other worldview. In the secular worldview who cares about suffering? The strong eat the weak and it doesn’t matter. If you are morally outraged by it, so what? If you go to every other religion the view of suffering is less poignant and immediate than the idea that God would come and get involved in this worlds suffering. You should always talk about evil and suffering in terms of the Cross.
3. The sacredness of choice, or the ethical straightjacket: For those who say “I have got to make this decision for myself” or “Nobody can tell me what is right or wrong for me” You basically have to do two things. First ask if is there anybody anywhere in the world doing something that you think is wrong whether they believe it or not? Well, yes, of course, those people over there murdering those other people. Oh you are saying they are wrong even though in their heart of heart they think it is ok? In other words you do believe there is a moral standard above us that we are being held accountable to? What happens, then, to your sacredness of choice? What you really want is choice for you and not for everybody else. That is just not fair. The other thing to point out is something very important to say, that everybody has to live for something. Whatever you are living for is your master and lord and therefore you are not free. This is a Becky Pippert quote from out of the salt shaker, she says, “If you live for people’s approval then you are enslaved to what they think of you. If you live for power you are enslaved to power. If you live for your own independence then you are enslaved to you independence and you can’t commit to anybody, but what you need to realize is that none of you belong to yourselves.” What ever you live for is your master, and here is the advantage of Jesus Christ, he is the only lord and master who if you get him will fulfill you and if you fail him he has died on the cross for you. Human power can’t do that, your job can’t do that, romance and love can’t do that, the boys at school can’t do that.
4. The record of Christians: I have to tell you that all I ever try to go for on this one is a tie. I’ll give you my trump card on this. When people say what about all the injustices Christians have done, if you start to say well look at all the good we have done (ex. The abolition of slavery in the British Empire and William Wilberforce), well then they can come back with all these other evil things Christians have done. Here is what I suggest doing: when Martin Luther King Jr. confronted injustice in the white Christian church in the south what did he say? Let’s loosen our Christianity? Let’s get rid of our Christianity? Did he say that the reason that injustice is wrong is that everybody should be free to say what is right or wrong for him or her? No. He used the Bible’s provision for self-critique and called them to truer, firmer, deeper Christians. He says that the solution for the bad record of Christians is not to get rid of Christianty but to be true to it, to be true to the gospel to be true to what the Bible really teaches.
5. The Angry God: On the cross God does not demand our blood but he offers his own. That is the answer. Here is the best way I try to explain why the cross was necessary when people say to me “Why can’t God just forgive.” If somebody has really wronged you you can’t just forgive either. Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t just forgive. You can either pay back or you can forgive, but forgiveness is painful. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The forgiveness of real wrongs is always a form of suffering.” To not pay back when you want to, to not cut them down when you want to, to not think nasty thoughts when you want to hurts. You can pay them back and then evil wins, or you can forgive them in which case there is suffering. And on the cross all you see is a cosmic example of what happens in our hearts even for us little flawed human beings. God had to suffer in order to forgive us. On the cross he is not demanding our blood he is giving his own and anyone who is really forgiven understands that. Jesus had to die. God had to suffer in some way to forgive us.
6. The unreliable Bible: When people say things like “We now know that the Bible is socially regressive” here is my best answer. I say what do you mean “we now”? You mean in the year 2004 we’ve hit the ultimate year? 60 years from now we will all look back and say “back in 2004 we had it just right and ever since then it has been downhill”? Do you realize that your grandchildren are going to be incredibly upset by many things you think everybody knows? Do you want to miss out in the gospel and the possibility of eternal life with God on the basis of some problems you have with parts of the Bible that are going to be obsolete? Be very careful! Don’t let that happen. Did you ever see the original Stepford Wives movie? It was about men who wanted wives who never talked back to them. So they had their wives killed and then they created these robots and the robots always said “yes dear” and never talked back. There are advantages to that, but you can't have a personal relationship with a robot. If you have a God who can never contradict you… If you look through the Bible and say “This part I like, but this part is no good. This part is ok but this part we can’t believe anymore” how will you ever have a God that you haven’t created yourself? How will God ever be able to say something to you that totally offends your cultural sensibilities? If you get rid of the parts of the Bible you don’t like, you have absolutely no way to have a personal relationship with God. You have a Stepford God. The only possibility of being sure you haven’t created a God in your own image is to take the word of God as it lay and let it come after you.

Mission to Suburbia

For those who don't live in the city, but still want to think about how to be salt and light in the place that God has them this article by Todd Hiestand might be a helpful resource. The word Missional is becoming a hot-topic nowadays, and Hiestand lays out a good Biblical basis for why this is something that the church today should be about.

Here is an excerpt:

"We have a monumental challenge if we are going to contextualize the gospel and live as missional communities of faith throughout suburban America. We cannot flee. We cannot get out of here. This is where we live. This is where God has called us. And this “God-forsaken place” that we have been called to desperately needs the Church to stand up and be the Church. We need to be a Church that truly exists for the sake of others. We need a Church that gives up luxury so that others may have necessity. We need a Church that rejects the lone ranger mentality and lives in sacrificial and compassionate community. We need a Church that views money as a resource of God’s Kingdom and not an object to be consumed. We need a Church that trusts the Spirit and takes risks for the sake of the Gospel. We need a Church that comes together to care for the poor in their backyards as well as those in the city."

KJOY or NPR?

I’ve been driving a lot lately, as part of my job, and I’ve had a lot of time to sample the local radio stations. One station, with the call letters KJOY* is, as you might expect, a Christian station. Like most radio stations, they sing their jingle about once every 3 minutes or so. (An aside—for some reason, those jingle are apparently an international industry standard. The Barcelona radio stations sing their call letters to the same tune, with the same voices. It’s spooky.) But KJOY always accompanies its call letters with the phrase, “positive and uplifting KJOY! Programming that's safe and encouraging for the whole family!”

Every time I hear that phrase, I cringe. On one hand, I can see the value of having a place on the dial that believers can go to listen to teaching and the Word during the week, and I do understand the attraction that a “safe” station could have for parents. But there's something about the phrase, and the mentality it suggests, that bothers me.

I tune into the Christian station and hear platitudes and “uplifting” sermonettes. I turn to NPR, and I hear some of the best thinkers in the nation wrestling with the most difficult, most pressing issues of our day. As believers, shouldn't we be wrestling alongside the rest of our country? Shouldn't we add our Spirit-led voices to these difficult debates? It's not that there's no value in what is being said on the Christian stations, but the “safe programming” often seems to me like a retreat from the issues that the world is thinking about.

Where are the Jeremiahs and Isaiahs, the prophets who called the people of God to account for the actions of their country and problems of their countrymen?

The rest of the nation is wrestling through the tough issues of a broken world, and every time I switch back to “KJOY,” I can't help but think that we have locked ourselves away in a “positive and uplifting” closet on the Titanic while the grownups try to figure out what to do with the sinking boat. We don't stone the prophets these days, but we're certainly not going to give them any airspace.

*not the actual call letters--my purpose is not so much to point a finger at one specific station, but at a type of station, and the mindset behind it.

Feature: Ransom Fellowship

Dennis and Margie Haack have together created a ministry that is dedicated to encouraging those who want to know more about what it means to be a Christian in the everyday life of the 21st century that they call Ransom Fellowship. They have put a wealth of wonderful articles online all centering around questions about how to thoughtfully engage with the issues of our day from a Christian framework.

Here it is in their own words:
"Now we don’t kid ourselves. On our website, we’re not offering the whole meal deal. But we hope when you stop by, we can give you a little lunch, a bite to eat that encourages you on your way. We’re especially hoping that when it comes to thinking about what it means to live in these times, stumbling around in the culture of music, movies and real life, that we can be a source for helping people think about what’s going on out there. As people of faith ourselves, we’d like to challenge you to see broken bits of beauty showing up here and there on a dark road. Sometimes you have to be alert to see it, like one of Cormack MacCarthy’s distant campfires in the black night. Other times it just glares in your face like Over The Rhine’s Trumpet Child."

Check out these articles as a place to get started:
1. Loving Believers Who Are Simply Wrong
2.Choosing Our Spirituality

If you like those email info@ransomfellowship.org and ask for a copy of Critique, their monthly magazine to be sent to your home and they will send it. Free of charge.

Letter about Kenya

A few days ago the Crossing's blog, Every Square Inch, posted this letter and I thought it was worth passing along. My thanks to Cami Wheeler, who wrote what follows:

Kenya urgently needs restoration of peace and order as tribal violence sweeps the nation in the wake of last week’s highly contested presidential election. Food and water are scarce in areas blocked off by the violence.

This crisis is of particular concern for The Crossing. For over three years, we have been building ministry partnerships in Kenya , including New City Fellowship-Nairobi, where we provide direct support to Erick and his four orphaned siblings; Pistis School in Nairobi, which is full of kids from all over Africa and beyond; and Pamoja Orphanage in Meru and Racefield School in Mwingi, both of which feed, educate and care for destitute children. So far, we have had no direct contact with these partners. But we have heard through mission friends that the members of New City Fellowship and the children at Pistis School are safe, though quite fearful. Pamoja Orphanage and Racefield School are in rural areas that for now are mostly stable. However, Erick and his siblings are stranded in Western Kenya, one of the worst areas of inter-tribal violence. Erick, a Luo, has repeatedly risked himself to feed and care for his Kikuyu neighbors who are the targets of ethnic hatred. He is doing all he can to live out the love of Christ by helping his neighbors survive.

Our friends in Kenya ask that we plead for God to humble the hearts of their political leaders, as well as for an end to the violence and threat of civil war. Pray also for protection of the innocent, perseverance of the faithful, and that God’s mercy and grace would be poured out, making his glory known. Pray especially for those who are suffering greatly, including those who are elderly, displaced, physically unwell, or have lost a family member. Finally, pray for God to open our eyes and tenderize our hearts, allowing us to respond with humility, compassion, and generosity.

The following summary provides more background information and the links below are included for you to access further news:

Leaders in Africa and The West urge peace, a return to order, and diplomatic solutions while each side accuses the other of promoting violence and tribal hatred. Charges of election fraud and inciting genocide are being hurled between the incumbent President, Mwai Kibaki, and the opposition presidential candidate, Raila Odinga, following the Kenyan presidential election held Dec. 27, 2007. Rioting has raged across the nation, particularly in Nairobi’s impoverished slums, the Coast, and Western Kenya, all strongholds of Odinga support. While the world looks on, police in riot gear turn back angry mobs with water cannons and teargas, men cut each other down with machetes, and hooligans loot and burn slums, shops and churches. The official death toll, now over 300, is said to fall far short of the actual numbers. Many fear escalation to the sort of genocide and civil war seen in Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Congo, and other African states in recent decades. Those who can are leaving, those who can’t cower in their homes or are crowding into churches and other places of refuge hoping for protection and peace.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/default.stm
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/16ED2681-04F1-4E20-987D-441249318394.htm

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 11)

For those who've kept up this far and want to hear a little bit more about postmodern Christianity and one of its present day incarnations, the Emergent Church, I recommend lectures from two people.

1. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle, gave a talk about the Emergent church at the convergent conference. In the Q&A he said that he had been planning on giving an entirely different talk coming into the conference, but after a talk with some of the people in the seminary he switched to this one. He also said that this was a talk he had been waiting several years to give because he felt he could not give it with the proper tone (without getting angry and saying things that he'll regret) until now. Whatever your stance on the Emergent church Driscoll's words have to be heard. He is an insider in both the worlds of Evangelical Christianity and the Emergent church, and he has a very interesting story, which he relates in this talk. Listen.

2. Darrin Patrick, pastor of The Journey in St. Louis, gave a series of lectures on the Emergent church at Covenant Seminary this fall which act as a companion to the Driscoll talk. Patrick gives a comprehensive analysis of the history of the Emergent church as well as his thoughts on its strengths and weaknesses. To listen to the lectures click here then search for "Emergent" under the topic category.

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 10)

In the last post we looked at the Bible’s challenge to those who would hold both timeless truth and ministry methods in closed hands, allowing neither to change in the name of relevancy. This post is about the Bible’s challenge to the approach which opens both hands and allows both the way the message is communicated AND the content of the Christian message to change. It is done in the name of relevancy – running from the error of the two closed hands, isolation of the church, but it doing so it commits the opposite error.
The first question to ask when both hands are opened is: who gets to determine what truths stay and what truths go? The answer is the culture. When both hands are opened relevancy is raised to the highest priority and the gospel is effectively anchored to the culture. If this happens, then the culture calls the tune of the gospel a wolf has entered wearing sheep’s clothing.
The danger is this: the gospel is now a thing that must be adapted to fit the hearers, and the ever-shifting culture sits over the Bible as judge and becomes the final authority in determining what truths remain and which must be discarded. Is there something in the Bible that the culture doesn’t understand, approve of, find helpful or progressive? It can go. Does the idea of a just and holy God who has wrath toward sin offend the culture’s sensibilities? Then portray a Jesus who is nothing but love and who shares the culture’s understanding of tolerance and acceptance and moral relativity. Does what the Bible has to say about controversial issues such as gender, sexuality, and marriage seem archaic and backward? Then preach about other things and omit the God’s words on that part of the human condition. Has the culture learned a distrust of absolute truth and authority? Then reduce the Bible to “a member of the congregation” whose voice must be heard just the same as any other voice in the congregation.
It’s not hard to spot the things that would be the first to go. Postmodernism is not unique in this, every culture humans have ever created has no shortage of areas where the Bible’s truths will rub against the grain of its preferences. But why should those preferences be given the power to determine what things the Bible teaches are retained? We can look at other cultures across the history of the world and do not find it difficult to spot things we judge to be blind spots or backward thinking. We modern people look down on the gladiatorial contests of the Romans or the propriety of Elizabethan England, and feel that we have advanced beyond such things. There are as many examples of this as there are cultures in the history of the world. If we would deny any culture in history has ever had a perfect understanding of truth, why give our own that credit? Why entrust the gospel to our postmodern sensibilities? Human culture is fickle and fallen and will fail if given such a precious task as the final stewardship of the gospel. Because of this if the hand which should grip the timeless truths of the gospel is opened and the culture is given the authority over it then the seeds of error have been sown into the church.
This truth is that we become more like what we orbit around. Opening both hands sets Christianity on a course to be conformed to the culture. In that case it will cease to be Christianity at all, but will just become “paganism in Christian language.” Yes, Christianity is, in a sense, changeable, but it is also possible to change the gospel until the gospel is lost. The approach of closing both hands errs in that it produces a church that isolates itself from the world so the world doesn’t get to see the gospel. Opening both hands ends in the exact same destination; it only takes a different path to get there. This sets Christianity on a course of assimilation. The values of the culture so influence and infiltrate the church that Christianity begins to preach only those things the culture already approves. Either way the world still doesn’t get to see the gospel
The ironic thing is that it is the very impulse of compassion, to give the world a message it can understand, which tempts the church to open the second hand. But the charge before the church is not only to be understandable. The second half must not be lost: to preach the gospel. It is not compassion which enters the hurt, broken places of this world, but fails to call them to the only place there is healing. It is not love that gives the world a message it understands, but that message does not help it to understand what God has done for it in Christ. Nor is it faithfulness to be unclear where the Bible is clear, and to seek not to wound where the gospel calls us to make wounds in love. In failing to do so the church might not anger men, but it will betray God.