Summer Reading Wish List

We know you're busy, but our heart is for you to make this summer a summer of growing and learning. One of the primary ways this happens is by reading. Read fiction, read non-fiction, read books that give you a greater perspective of your life. The following one or two posts are some of the books I am looking forward to reading this summer. My hope is that one or two will be a book you want to pick up and spend some time in!

Through His Eyes: God’s Perspective on
Women in the Bible, by Jerram Barrs
With so much conversation within the Church on women’s roles—both in the church and within a family--Jerram Barrs’ newest book, Through His Eyes, answers the question “What does God think about women, and how does he treat them?” Barrs says, “Right from the beginning in Genesis chapter one, God declares that He has made us, male and female, in His image; so He has given all of us this marvelous dignity of being crowned with the glory and honor of being made as small, physical, finite reflections of who He is in His infinite majesty.” He presents a biblical theology of how God views and treats women in the Bible.

I’m excited to read this for many reasons: 1. I’d like a better foundation on how God relates to women, despite what our culture may say, 2. Jerram Barrs consistently writes books that are biblically based and filled with truth, and 3. I’d like to examine my own heart and my own preconceived views that I’ve developed somewhere along the line concerning the roles of women.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

Simon Wells says that “imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real-life.” I would agree. We have so much to learn from fiction books—they make reality into something tangible, they paint a picture of something abstract more vividly than anything else could. This is one book that I’ve almost finished reading and I will be sad to put down with finality.

Gilead is a meditation on how even the simplest things and simplest people can be touched by an incredible grace and wonder. Regret, forgiveness, grace, resentment, jealousy, love, faith, and fear are all woven so tightly into this novel. The pace requires readers to put themselves in the shoes of John Ames, a preacher in his seventies who is nearing the end of his life. This book is his thoughts, journals, and letters to his seven year old son, and the expression of love is incredible.

A Quest for More, by Paul David Tripp

Authentic “kingdom-living” is emphasized in this book rather than a set of principles and step by step instructions. I’ve started this one, too, and have been really impressed and convicted thus far. Tripp shows us what we are living for: our own life and our own kingdom. And he compares that to the incredible life that were made to live, the one that we were created for. Why do we long for something more? Why do we know that this is not all there is? There is something more, Tripp says, and we need to see it. We need to see the bigger kingdom that Christ teaches about, because this is where we were meant to be.

This book is a heart check for anyone. It is opening my eyes to the focus I place on my own life. If you’ve been to summer Bible study at the Artisan the past few weeks, this is the book that Ryan has been emphasizing during his talks. I recommend it for a bigger view of your own life. Tripp writes, "In a fallen world there is a powerful pressure to constrict your life to the shape and size of your life. There is a compelling tendency to forget who you are and what you were made for. There is a tendency to be short-sighted, myopic, and easily distracted. There is a tendency to settle for less when you have been created for more. There is something expansive, glorious, and eternal that is meant to give direction to everything you do. And when you lose sight of it, you have effectively denied your own humanity."

Review Corner: The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling

After I finished the Lord of the Rings series for the first time as a child I remember putting the final book down and being filled with a poignant sadness because it was over. It was a sadness that was sharp and sweet because it was filled with so much hope. Frodo and the fellowship had won the day and it seemed like everything bad might just "come un-true," but the pain they experienced on the journey left them all scarred in some way and in the end the only place they could turn for solace was in the Grey Havens, to the "far green country and to a swift sunrise."

It was a complicated emotion for a child to feel. In some way or another I've been chasing that feeling ever since.

All my favorite pieces of art capture that sad hope. I take it as a sign that I am not at home in this world and as a promise that this journey that seems like lost wandering is truly a homecoming. I take it as my truest religious sense, which art helps me to awaken. Awake, I am able to look out at the world and see the tragedy of its bondage and long for it too to experience it's promised awakening.

Finishing Harry Potter recently I could not stop thinking about that same sadness. J. K. Rowling has created a story as powerful and original as Tolkien's, awakening the same longings in me for justice and truth, and promising their inevitable fulfillment. It may seem "childish" to react so deeply to a children's book, but, if so, it says more about the world of adults than it does of the world of children.

Each book in the Harry Potter series is a story in and of itself, but each of them contributes to the larger story going on in the whole series, which culminates in the seventh book. If you have not read it yet, let me say that the culmination does not disappoint. Rowling satisfactorily answers the questions she raises, and as you turn the last page of the book you find that you were being prepared for the moment from the very first page of the first book. It all holds together in the most wonderful way like few stories I have read.

Rowling has received much criticism for her books, much of it, I am sorry to say, coming from the Christian community. The stories concern magic and wizards and some have accused Rowling of writing the occult into her books. (Jerram Barrs addresses this concern and more in part one and two of his lectures: Harry Potter and the Triumph of Sacrifical Love. I recommend them.)

It is an important question, because it calls into question the moral value of reading these stories. The first answer one might give is to point out is that while these stories involve magic and wizardry the stories are also happening in a moral world. Evil is shown as being really evil, with disgusting consequences. Rowling makes you love the people you are supposed to love in a moral universe. Harry Potter and his friends are children any parent would want their kids to grow up and be like. They love each other dearly, and, while they are not perfect, the series is full of instances of the reconciliation, redemption, and forgiveness that true community draws out of us. The magic in the Harry Potter series is portrayed as being a tool like any other, neutral in itself. Its goodness or badness depends on the person who uses it.

There is so much to be said about the parallels the themes of the books have with the Christian worldview. They show that evil falls back on itself and bears its own judgment within it. Rowling has written a complex understanding of idolatry into her stories. In the seventh book, Harry comes across a verse of the Bible scrawled into a tombstone which puts voice to one of the books themes. The verse says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." The verse is like a key to understanding each characters motivations, just as it is in life. The series mirrors the Biblical worldview in that it plays out in a world that has gone terribly wrong, and the drama is the work of putting it to rights again. There is a climax and good wins, however, there are also echoes of a deeper hope beyond death, as another Bible verse on a tombstone suggests, "the last enemy to be destroyed is death."

Finally, you cannot talk about the parallels between Harry Potter and the Biblical worldview without talking about what the books say about the triumph of sacrificial love. In each book Harry sacrifices himself to stop evil from happening to his friends. In this he is a true hero, and, at the end of the series, we find that this is exactly why he is able to overcome. He has as deeper magic than all Voldemort's might, which Voldemort does not know about. It is the magic of love, and the series portrays the truth of Christ's words when he said, "greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I am reminded of what another great english writer, C. S. Lewis, said to a young boy who was worried that he loved Aslan, Lewis's mythical lion in the Narnia series, more than he loved Jesus. Lewis told the boy that his love for Aslan was the same thing as his love for Jesus, that Aslan could help him love Jesus better. The Harry Potter series makes me love Jesus more and draws me to worship God because of his gifts to writers like Rowling and for seeing the Great Drama played out in miniature on the page.

I recommend the books to you and to your children. I will certainly read them to mine.

5 Books I Read in 2008

At the beginning of the year I posted on "5 Books I Want to Read in 2008", and I've wanted to do a short review on them since the new year. Finally, in April, I am getting around to it. I think it is worth doing, if a bit late. The books were very good and I recommend them all (the 4 out of 5 that I read... oops).

1. The Reason for God by Tim Keller
This book has been called a modern day Mere Christianity and, for my money, it lives up to the title. I was so impressed with Keller's sensitivity to the culture we are living in and his ability to give clear, winsome answers to some of the toughest questions the Christian worldview faces today. The book grew out of Keller's experience as a pastor in New York City, and it bears traces of its pastoral origins throughout. The first part of the book tackles questions like "How can one religion be right and others wrong?" How could a loving God send people to Hell?" "Can the Bible be trusted?" The second half of the book is a more general apology for the Christian religion. This is book is intelligent, but you don't have to be an academic to read it. It presents the truthfulness of the Christian worldview, but there is not an person in my life who does not believe that I would not be comfortable giving a copy of The Reason for God. For more from Tim Keller check out Steve Mccoy's Keller page.

2. Vintage Jesus by Mark Driscoll
Well, I didn't actually get around to reading this one. Sorry Mark... I have read Driscoll before and heard him in sermons and recommend him highly. He is a breath of fresh air if you want straight talk and can take a little sharp humor. For more from Driscoll type his name into itunes and podcast his weekly sermons and Mars Hill Church.

3. Searching for a Better God by Wade Bradshaw
Another of Bradshaw's books, By Demonstration: God, came at a time in my life when I was just begining to ask the questions Bradshaw was answering. The book was incredibly helpful, so I was excited to hear that he was writing another. Searching for a Better God is an expansion on an idea that he hinted at in By Demonstration: God. Bradshaw says that in the time Christianity arrived in the world the old gods were falling. They were flawed and fallen and essentially no different than corrupt humans, except they had more power. The people longed for a higher moral purity, something that was free of the pettiness of the greek and roman gods. They saw this in Christianity. Now, however, we are living in a time when the tables have turned. These days the culture looks at Christianity and believes itself to be more moral that the Christian God. God is seen to be judgmental, angry, wrathful, petty, and unfair and our culture is searching for a better God. Bradshaw analyzes our cultural climate and tries to renew the beauties of the real God in the minds of his readers. Like Keller, he takes on the culture's most difficult questions and points, not to a better God, but a better understanding of the God of the Bible.

4. Being Human by Ranald Macaulay and Jerram Barrs
Being Human is a comprehensive book about so many things it is difficult to write a short review of it. The book is thoughtful and challenging. One of the primary goals of the book, as the title would suggest, is to answer the question: what does it mean to be human? Macaulay and Barrs' say that that answer it fundamentally tied to the amazing fact that we are made in God's image. Being human is simply living out the image of God in our daily lives. From there they scatter, talking about misconceptions the church has about what it means to be human, and presenting a positive vision for taking their ideas and actually living them out. Read this book if you want to learn foundational things that shape the way you see everything else.

5. The Heart of Prayer by Jerram Barrs
The beauty of this book is Barrs' humility and sincerity. The book is abotu prayer, but it is not a how-to guide. You won't find any formulas here to increase the power of your prayers. Instead you will find yourself being drawn to think of God's care for you as a creation he has made and loves. If that is true then your prayers, short or long, eloquent or simply a desperate cry, will be heard. Barrs does offer practical thoughts and stories, however. The things I most valued about this book is Barrs' posture. It not written from an expert to the inept, but as a fellow human, who continuously struggles in prayer, but who has found great solace in God's care. For more from Jerram Barrs, go to Covenant Seminary's webpage.

G. K. Chesterton

If you have never read any G. K. Chesterton I recommend two books: Orthodoxy, and St. Francis of Assisi. Chesterton writes incredible insights into the life. He takes a while to get there sometimes, but when he does it is worth the journey. Here is an excerpt from St. Francis of Assisi which is as good an example as any of why I love him and he is worth reading:

"If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging
head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of
dependence. There is a Latin and literal connection; for the very word
dependence only means hanging. It would make vivid the Scriptural text
which says that God has hung the world upon nothing. If St. Francis had
seen, in one of his strange dreams, the town of Assisi upside down, it need
not have differed in a single detainl from itself except in being entirely
the other way round. But the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye
the large masonry of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers
and its high citadel would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment
it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and
more in peril...St Francis might love his little town as much as before, or
more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered even in being
increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every
bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a new and divine light
of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being merely proud of his
strong city because it could not be moved, he would be thankful to God
Almighty that it had not been dropped; he would be thankful to God for not
dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling
stars. Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified
head-downwards.:

Then later:
"He who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has
seen the truth; we might almost say the cold truth. He who has seen the
vision of his city upside down has seen it the right way up."

Things I Will Read Forever (3)

Here is an excerpt from Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis. It is the chapter called The Great Sin, and it is about pride. Every time I read this I get a fresh view of what pride, or "spiritual cancer" as he calls it, is and how far the cancer is advancing in my own soul. It is a great analysis of something no one is free of, and points toward a way free of it.
Again, I have highlighted sections for discussion/thought.

Now I come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking about is pride, or self-conceit: and the virtue opposite it, in Christian morals, is called humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, that I warned you that the center of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now we have come to the center. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison. It was through Pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

If Christians are right, it is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people, and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see things that are above you.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say that they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how he approves of them and thinks them for better than ordinary people. That is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to him and get out of it a pound’s worth of pride towards their fellow men. I suppose it was one of those people Christ was thinking about when he said that some would preach about him and cast out devils in his name, only to be told at the end of the world that he had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good – above all, that we are better than someone else – I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

It is a terrible thing that the worst of all vices can smuggle itself into the very center of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly.

Before leaving this subject I must guard against some possible misconceptions:

1.) Pleasure in being praised is not pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says, “Well done,” are please and ought to be. For here the pleasure likes not in what you are but in the fact that you have please someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, “I have pleased him; all is well,” to thinking, “What a fine person I must be to have done it.” The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom. That is why vanity, though it is the sort of pride which shows most on the surface, is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration, too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented to want them to look at you. You are, in fact, still human. The real black, diabolical pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you. Of course, it is very right, and often our duty, not to care what people think of us, if we do so far the right reason, namely, because we care incomparably more what God thinks. But the proud man has a different reason for not caring. He says, “Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? And even if their opinions were of value, am I the sort of man to blush with pleasure at a compliment like some chit of a girl at her first dance? No, I am an integrated, adult personality. All I have done has been done to satisfy my own ideals – or my artistic conscience – or the traditions of my family – or, in a word, because I Am That Kind of Chap. If the mob like it, let them. They’re nothing to me.” In this way real thoroughgoing pride may act as a check on vanity.

2.) We may say in English that a man is “proud” of his son, or his father, or his school, or regiment, and it may be asked whether “pride” in this sense is a sin. I think it depends on what, exactly, we mean by “proud of.” Very often, in such sentences, the phrase “is proud of” means “has a warm-hearted admiration for.” Such an admiration is, of course, very far from being a sin. But it might, perhaps, mean that the person in question gives himself airs on the ground of his distinguished father, or because he belongs to a famous regiment. This would, clearly, be a fault, but even then, it would be better than being proud simply of himself. To love an admire anything outside of yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin, though we shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.

3.) We must not think pride is something God forbids because he is offended at it, or that humility is something he demands as due to his own dignity – as if God himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about his dignity. The point is, he wants you to know him; he wants to give you himself. And he and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with him you will, in fact, be humble – delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which as made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible; trying to take of a lot of silly, ugly, fancy dress in which we gave all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are. I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself; if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy dress off – getting rid of the false self, with all its “look at me” and “aren’t I a good boy?” and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.

4.) Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays; he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

Things I will Read Forever (2)

For the second post in the series I chose the first chapter of Dietrech Bonhoeffer's book "Life Together." I first read this section when my notion of Christian community was exactly what Bonhoeffer says it must not be, and I hated it. I thought he was wrong. Since then I have come to realize that he is not. This is a long excerpt - I just couldn't cut out so many things - but it is still abridged. I have highlighted sections for discussion or that just seem particularly poignant to me. Print it out and take some time to read it. Every time I do by the end of the section I am saying to myself "Why haven't I read this sooner" and promising myself that I will read it over and over forever.

Life Together. Dietrech Bonhoeffer
Community
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell together in unity.” (Ps 133:1) In the following we shall consider a number of directions and precepts that the Scriptures provide us for our life together under the Word. It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.

Between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only be a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing. The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer. The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God.

If it is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift very day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of the Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.

Through and in Jesus Christ
Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ. What does this mean? It means, first, that a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ. It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means, third, that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.

First, the Christian is the man who no longer seeks his salvation, his deliverance, his justification in himself but in Jesus Christ alone. He knows that God’s word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God’s word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all. The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God’s claims and God’s justification. He lives wholly by God’s word pronounced upon him, whether that word declares him guilty of innocent.

Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what the man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely in the beginning, as though in the course of time something were added to our community; it remains so for all the future and to all eternity. I have community with others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ. The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ do we have one another, wholly, for all eternity.

That dismisses once and for all every clamorous desire for something more. One who wants more that what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires in the Christian brotherhood. Just at this point Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at its root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood. In Christian brotherhood everything depends upon its being right from the beginning, first, that Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality. Second, that Christian brotherhood is not a spiritual, but a psychic reality.

Not an Ideal, but a Divine Reality
Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a god of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered , permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community an must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more that the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of the his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what he has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily. And ins not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of his grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one word and deed which really binds us together – the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

When a person because alienated from a Christian community in which he has been places and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament. Let him pray God for an understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he might not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God.

Christian community is like the Christian’s sanctification. It is a gift from God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.

A Spiritual not a Human Reality
Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ, it is a spiritual and not a psychic reality. The basis of all spiritual reality is the clear, manifest word of God in Jesus Christ. The basis of all human reality is the dark, turbid urges and desires of the human mind. Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person. Human love desires the other person, his company, his answering love, but it does not serve him. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving. There are two marks, both of which are one and the same thing, that manifest the difference between spiritual and human love: Human love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that has become false for the sake of genuine fellowship, and human love cannot love an enemy, that is, one who seriously and stubbornly resists it. Both spring from the same source: human love is by its very nature desire – desire for human community. Where it can no longer expect its desire to be fulfilled, there it stops short – namely, in the face of an enemy. There it turns into hatred, contempt, and calumny.

Right here is the point where spiritual love begins. This is why human love becomes personal hatred when it encounters genuine spiritual love, which does not desire but serves. Human love makes itself an end in itself. It nurses and cultivates an ideal. Jesus Christ stands between the lover and the others he loves. I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my human desires – all this may rather be hatred and an insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ. What love is, only Christ tell in his word. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is. There for, spiritual love is bound solely to the word of Jesus Christ. Where Christ bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of love, I will maintain it. Where his truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love’s sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love. Because spiritual love does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother. It originates neither in the brother nor in the enemy but in Christ and his word.

I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for who Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to he Christ’s; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes. Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. It take the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ; the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men. Human love breeds hothouse flower; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow healthily in accord with God’s good will in the rain and storm and sunshine of God’s outdoors.

There is probably no Christian to whom God has not give n the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them. We are bound by faith, not by experience.

Should Discerning Christians Throw Out The Shack?

Denis Haack recently received this question on his facebook page and wrote a response to it on his blog A Glass Darkly. If you have not heard of The Shack you are in a diminishing number of people, I think. Haack offers some good thoughts on discernment in general. We wrote a review of The Shack itself, check it out for more discernment resources.

An excerpt from Haack's response:

Question: "The people from my church who love the book, when asked about its flaws, say they are rampant and if you read it analytically then you will probably throw it away, but that one shouldn't analyze it; one should simply read it for the great story it is."

Answer: "The process of discernment allows us to engage a book more fully. The purpose is not to throw out books that are flawed, but to more deeply appreciate what is true and beautiful while more deeply understanding how what is less true or untrue can be made so attractive and plausible... One of the ways we have found to teach discernment skills to Christians is to lead discussions on something (a book or short story or film) in which they will be certain to find things with which to disagree. But then mention in your invitation and begin the discussion by saying the goal is not just to address the book or film, but to also deepen our skill in being discerning (rather than being reactionary). So, we will answer the discernment questions in order—no exceptions. Begin with “What is said?” (emphasizing that objectivity is required, so much so that no opinion of ours is even hinted at, and if the author was present they would say our answer to this question is correct and fair). Then ask, “With what do we agree?” and after that, “What is made attractive?” Only when those things are fully explored, can anyone address, “What might we challenge?” (and then do so in the form of creative questions we might address to a friend, Christian or non-Christian, in order to keep a winsome conversation going)."

Things I Will Read Forever (1)

Over the next few weeks I am going to be posting abridged versions of some of the essays, chapters, and sermons that have most shaped my faith, which I have read many times over the years and continue to be challenged by every time I do.

The first is a sermon preached by Francis Schaeffer called "The Lord's Work in the Lord's Way." You can find this sermon in its entirety in the collection, "No Little People." I have highlighted points for discussion:

The Lord's Work in the Lord's Way
"Because the world is hard, confronting it without God’s power is an overwhelming prospect. But tongues of fire are not to be had simply for the asking. The New Testament teaches that certain conditions must exist. In short, they come down to this: we must do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. There is no source of power for God’s people – for preaching or teaching or anything else – except Christ himself. Apart from Christ, anything which seems to be spiritual power is actually the power of the flesh.
Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is not a matter of being saved and then simply working hard. After Jesus ascended his disciples waited quietly in prayer for the coming of His Spirit. Their first motion was not toward activism – Christ has risen, now let us be busy. Though they looked at the world with Christ’s compassion, they obeyed His clear command to wait before they witnessed. If we who are Christians and therefore indwelt by the Spirit are to reach to our generation with tongues of fire, we also must have something more than activism which men can easily duplicate. We must know something of the power of the Holy Spirit.
Recognizing Our Need
How do we receive something of the power of the Holy Spirit? A person cannot be a Christian without first recognizing his need for Christ. And as Christians, we too must comprehend something of our need for spiritual power. If we think we can operate on our own, if we do not comprehend the need for a power beyond our own, we will never get started. If we think the power of our own cleverness is enough, we will be at a standstill.
Teaching about the Holy Spirit and His indwelling must never be a solely theological concept. Having the proper concept – that we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit when we are saved – we must press on, so that the Spirit’s indwelling can bring forth results in our lives. If we want tongues of fire, our first step is not only to stand by, complacently thinking the right theological thoughts. We must have a genuine feeling of need.
Furthermore, this feeling need is not to be once and for all. A Christian can never say, “I knew the power of the Holy Spirit yesterday, so today I can be at rest.” It is one of the existential realities of the Christian life to stand before God consciously recognizing our need.
The Central Problem
The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor ever the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus that surrounds us. All these are dangers but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.
Taking the Lowest Place
Seeking the highest place is in direct contradiction to the teaching of the Lord. Christ instructed his disciples, “But when thou art bidden [to a wedding feast], go and sit down in the lowest room.” (Luke 14:10) If we are going to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way we must take Jesus’ teaching seriously: He does not want us to press on to the greatest place unless He Himself makes it impossible to do otherwise. Taking the lower place in practical way (thus reflecting the mentality of Christ who humbled Himself even to death on a cross) should be a Christian’s choice.
To the extent we want power we are in the flesh and the Holy Spirit has no part in us. Christ put a towel around Himself and washed his disciples feet. Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is not some exotic thing; it is having and practicing the mentality which Christ commands.
Trusting God’s Methods
Is it not amazing: though we know the power of the Holy Spirit can be ours, we still ape the world’s wisdom, trust its forms of publicity, its noise, and imitate its ways of manipulating men! If we try to influence the world by using its methods, we are doing the Lord’s work in the flesh. If we put activity, even good activity, at the center rather than trusting God, then there may be the power of the world, but we will lack the power of the Holy Spirit.
The key question is this: as we work for God in this fallen world, what are we trusting in? To trust in particular methods is to copy the world and to remove ourselves from the tremendous methods promise that we have something different – the power of the Holy Spirit rather than the power of human technique
Under the leadership of Moses and Joshua, the Jews marched when the ark marched and they stood still when the ark stoof still. They did not rush ahead if God did not order the ark to be moved. Somethies they stayed in one place for long periods. We Christians, individually and corporately, must learn to wait like this. Tongues of fire are not for us if we are so busy doing the clever thing that we never wait quietly to find out whether the ark of the Lord has gone ahead or stayed.
The Battle In The Heavenlies
The real battle is not fought by Christians just against forces in this world, whether theological, cultural, or moral. The real battle is in the heavenlies. The scripture, therefore, insists that we cannot win our portion of the engagement with earthly weapons. There is nothing in this list [Paul’s writing about the armor of God in Ephesians 6:10-18] that the world accepts as a way of working, but there are no other ways to fight the spiritual battle. Imagine the Devil or a demon entering your room right now. You have a sword at your side; so when you see him you rush at him and stab him. But the sword passes straight through and doesn’t faze him! The most awesome modern weapon you could think of could not destroy him. Whenever we do the Lord’s work in the flesh, our strokes “pass right through” because we do not battle earthly forces; the battle is spiritual and requires spiritual weapons.
Besides, if we fight the world with copies of its own weapons we will fail, because the Devil will honor these with his own, but our Lord will not honor these with us, for that does not give Him the glory. They may bring some results – activism does have its results – but they will not be the ones the Lord wants. Our hands will be empty of honor from God because he will not be getting the glory. We must not try to serve the Lord with our own kind of humanism and egoism.
In this war if Christians win a battle by using worldly means, they have really lost. On the other hand, when we seem to lose a battle while waiting on God, in reality we have won. The world may mistakenly say, “They have lost.” But if God’s people seem to be beaten in a specific battle, not because of sin or lack of commitment or lack of prayer or lack of paying a price, but because they have waited on God and refused to resort to the flesh, then they have won.
Getting Things Done
Let us not think that waiting on the Lord will mean getting less done. The truth is that by doing the Lord's work in the Lord’s way we will accomplish more, not less. You need not fear that if you wait for God’s Spirit you will not get as much done as if you charge ahead in the flesh. After all, who can do the most, you or the God of Heaven and Earth?
Nor should we think that our role will be passive. The moving of the Holy Spirit should not be contrasted with either proper self-fulfillment or tiredness. To the contrary, both the Scriptures and the history of the Church teach that if the Holy Spirit is working, the whole man will be involved and there will be much cost to the Christian. The more the Holy Spirit works, the more Christians will be used in battle, and the more they are used, the more there will be personal cost and tiredness. It is quite the opposite of what we might first think. People often cry out for the work of the Holy Spirit and yet forget that when the Holy Spirit works, there is always tremendous cost to the people of God – weariness and tears and battles.
Practicing the Biblical Position
As I see it, the Christian life must be comprised of three concentric circles, each of which must be kept in its proper place. In the outer circle must be the correct theological position, true biblical orthodoxy and the purity of the visible church. This is first, but if that is all there is, it is just one more seedbed for spiritual pride. In the second circle must be good intellectual training and comprehension of our own generation. But having only this leads to intellectualism and again provides a seedbed for pride. In the inner circle must be the humble heart – the love of God, the devotional attitude toward god. There must be the daily practice of the reality of the God whom we know is there. These three circles must be properly established, emphasized and related to each other. At the center must be kept a living relationship to the God we know exists. When each of these circles is established in its proper place, there will be tongues of fire and the power of the Holy Spirit."

Review of "The Shack"

Here is a review of the incredibly popular book "The Shack" written by two of the staff at the Crossing. The book is a wonderful book to read/discuss... with great ideas/themes as well as things that Christians should be discerning about.


For the pdf, click here:
The Shack Reviewed

110 Greatest Books

A list of the best books ever written according to Telegraph.co.uk.

Categories are:
Books that changed the world
Childrens books
Classics
History
Biography
Poetry
Fiction

The Heart of Prayer, by Jerram Barrs

I picked up Jerram Barrs' new book at the L'Abri conference called The Heart of Prayer and wanted to write a little bit about it. It intrigued me for a couple of reasons: 1. It's Jerram, so of course it's going to be good! 2. Prayer is something that I feel like I continually fall short in, and for reasons that I don't always know. When I'm honest with myself, I can see that this is an enormous weakness in my life. I for sure can stand to learn more about prayer--I want to do something about this sense of "poverty in my prayer life."

Jerram writes in such a way that isn't condemning, but is still voicing truth in every sentence. He continually shows Jesus' teaching and examples for us in a way that is so encouraging, and he provides questions at the end of each chapter for reflection.

Some of my favorite passages so far:

"Prayer is not a performance in which we are trying to prove something to God about our depth of theological understanding or our skills of eloquence. Nor is prayer a performance in which we seek to impress our fellow believers about these things. And prayer is certainly not a performance in which we are to appraise and applaud ourselves for theological acumen or verbal gymnastics. Prayer is talking to God; prayer is not about trying to feel better about ourselves" (18).

"The truth is that the New Testament teaches us that we are called to walk by faith now rather than by sight, and so we must be content with not always, or with only rarely, or maybe even not at all, having intense experiences of the Lord's presence (22).

"Prayer is our response to God, the God who graciously invites us to come to him with our thanksgiving and requests. He is never indebted to us; we are always indebted to him. We cannot manipulate him into a position where we can make him answer us--no matter how much time, how much emotional energy, how much spiritual fervor, or how much frequency of prayer we offer to him. We are always beggars who are completely dependent on his generous kindness to us. We are not those who can bargain with him on the basis of our perceived spiritual power or faithfulness" (22-23).

"We should remember that the Lord wants us to be specific, for it is only as we face up to the practical reality of our failing to love God and to love our neighbor that we begin to see the seriousness of our sins" (34).

"When we start praying for people, we must begin to stop hating them!" (35)

"If we actually succeed in observing the disciplines, and so increase the time, frequency, and passion of our prayers, there is the danger of spiritual pride. We easily begin to believe that we know God better, that our relationship with him is becoming deeper, and perhaps even that he loves us more because we are doing well at our devotions" (60).

"Or if, on the other hand, we find ourselves failing at the disciplines, we become miserable. We become confused and depressed about the poor state of our devotional lives. We are tempted to believe that God loves us less because of our weak prayer lives" (61).

"He is eager to hear us tell him that we are full of gladness and joy because of the beauty of spring, because of the glory of a fall day, or because of the splendor of a night sky. He wants praise to burst out in our prayers and songs to overflow from our hearts (prayers and songs that no one hears but him) because we are so pleased to be loved and forgiven by him. He wants us to be so full of wonder and delight that we pray secretly without the knowledge of others in our household. He wants us to pray when we are in bed lying awake, when we are washing the dishes, when we are in the yard weeding the flowers, when we are driving our cars, when we are working around the house" (70).

5 Books I Want to Read in 2008

The Reason for God: Tim Keller
Coming out Feb 2008

"I've been working for some time on a book for the ordinary (which means very sharp) spiritually skeptical New Yorker. Ever since I got to New York nearly two decades ago I've wished I had a volume to give people that not only answered objections to Christianity (what has been called 'apologetics') but also positively presented the basics of the gospel in an accessible yet substantial way... Today

there are deep disagreements over how we know things and how certain we can be about anything. Most of the older books presenting Christianity now are only persuasive and even comprehensible to a very narrow range of people. All this means that there is a great need for new literature that speaks to our time and says, "Christianity makes sense." -Tim Keller


Vintage Jesus: Mark Driscoll
Coming out March 2008

In Vintage Jesus, one of America's most influential young pastors teams up with a seasoned theologian to lead you on a hilarious theological journey chasing Jesus through Scripture and pop culture. The authors provide timeless answers to twelve timely questions about the most important man who has ever lived. Each chapter concludes with answers to common questions about each subject.

Searching for a Better God: Wade Bradshaw
Coming out in March 2008

"The questions about God that used to center around his existence are now aimed at his morality the God who permits

diseases and natural disasters that kill innocent people; the God that allows brutal dictators to rule

with an iron fist. At best this God is aloof and uncaring; at worst he is primitive and cruel. Many of the contemporary generation have concluded, through what is called common sense theology, that we are actually morally superior to God and he is less than inadequate... Wade Bradshaw shows us that the caricatures many have drawn of God are not accurate and God, as described in the Bible, is misunderstood. Ideas about God that at first consideration seem unethical are precisely how we need God to be. He gives us ways to talk to those who doubt Gods character. By thoroughly explaining and examining this contemporary, common sense theology, Bradshaw brings us back to confident hope in God, the perfect and moral God of the Bible." Quoted from Amazon.com

Being Human: Jerram Barrs

The theme of this book is that understanding the nature of spiritual experience is the key to restoring our true humanness. For the writers of Scripture, to be human is to be in the image of God. Taking this as their organizing principle, Ranald Macaulay and Jerram Barrs discuss the nature of spiritual experience. As the pursuit of true spirituality takes us away from sinfulness, it moves us closer to what God intended us to be. When we are truly spiritual, we are fully human -- like Jesus Christ, the God-Man. Macauley and Barrs begin by underscoring that the process of sanctification -- of becoming more holy, more like God -- should be seen as a "life-affirming" activity. They then contrast the Biblical framework for understanding the Christian life with two alternatives: the materialistic view and the Platonic view. In doing so, they counter much of the false teaching about spirituality that has become so popular today -- both inside and outside of Christian circles." -Quoted from Amazon.com



Heart of Prayer: What Jesus Teaches Us
By: Jerram Barrs
Coming out in Feb 2008

Jerram Barrs writes about prayer in a book coming out this month and takes a look at Jesus's prayers and his teaching on how to pray. Watch for it on Amazon.com

John Dominic Crossan's Jesus (and the birth of Moses)

Maybe some of you have read John Dominic Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. (I know that it's a textbook for at least one of the religion courses at Mizzou.) Even if you haven't read it, you may have heard of Crossan, who is an influential member (and founder) of the Jesus Seminar. Crossan, in this book and others, presents quite a few challenging claims—challenging, at least, for the average evangelical who considers the Bible to be largely reliable. Since some of you will likely encounter this book in one context or another, I thought it might be helpful to explore some of its more controversial claims.

My methodology is simple: I will read through the book (I haven't read it before, so we'll be learning together on this one), making note of and discussing any claim that seems particularly challenging or controversial. First I'll look at the implications of each claim: I'll try to figure out what it would mean if it were true. Then I'll look at Crossan's argument for each claim.

No questions? Good. Let's get started.

The first claim I'll deal with comes not from the story of Jesus, but from the story of Moses. Here's an extended quotation (from pages 10 & 11), with the key claim in italics:

Matthew, like Luke, is equally interested in connecting Jesus' birth with the ancient traditions of his people's sacred writings. But instead of imagining infertile couples and miraculous conceptions, he focuses exclusively on the infancy of Moses. The background story presumes both the basic narrative from Exodus 1–2 and the popular expansions of it current in the first century of the common era. In the biblical version, Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, attempted to exterminate the Israelites resident in his land by commanding, in Exodus 1:22, "Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live." Moses happens to be born at this time and is saved only because his mother hides him after birth and eventually leaves him in a basket near the riverbank, where he is saved by Pharaoh's own daughter. Eventually, of course, he will deliver his own people from lethal danger in Egypt and lead them to their Promised Land. Anyone who reads that story can easily see two problems with its narrative coherence. First, why did Moses just happen to be born at that wrong time? Second, why did the Israelites continue having children if their newborn sons were doomed? Both those questions are answered as the Mosaic infancy was retold in expanded popular accounts.

So the claim here is that the story of Moses is not a coherent narrative. The implication of this claim, at least as I see it, is that the story of Moses, as told in Exodus 1–2, is probably not true. In other words, if Crossan is right about the lack of narrative coherence in the story of Moses, then Moses' birth probably didn't happen the way Exodus says it did. Hence, anybody who wants to affirm the accuracy of the biblical narrative should take a closer look at Crossan's claim. Does he give us good reason to think that the story of Moses is not narratively coherent?

In answering this question, we should first ask ourselves what it takes for something to have narrative coherence. To be honest, I'm not sure—perhaps those with more storytelling experience can help me out. But narrative coherence does seem to require, at a minimum, that none of the events recorded contradict each other. So a story in which Moses' mother left him in a basket near the riverbank and, at the same time, left him on Pharaoh's doorstep would not be coherent. Nobody can leave somebody in two places at once, so at least part of this story would have to be false.

Anyway, none of the events in Moses' birth narrative contradict each other, so it's not incoherent in that way. Instead, Crossan says that there are two questions which the narrative leaves unanswered. The first question is this: why did Moses just happen to be born at the wrong time? But this question isn't a very good indicator of narrative incoherence, because the same question could be asked no matter when Moses was born. In fact, it could be asked of anyone who has ever been born at any fortunate (or unfortunate) time in history. So this question can't by itself threaten narrative coherence, unless we're willing to challenge the birth timing of practically every important historical figure.

What about the second question? In this question, Crossan asks why the Israelites continued having children if they knew that their newborn sons were doomed. At least three answers come to mind.

1. The Israelites might have felt that they could hide their sons from Pharaoh and his henchmen, and were willing to make the effort to do so. This is supported by the fact that, earlier in Exodus 1, the midwives were reluctant to follow Pharaoh's orders to kill the Israelites' infant sons.
   
2. Given that the Israelites didn't exactly have access to modern methods of contraception and sex selection (you know, the centrifuge thing), they most certainly didn't have foolproof control over whether or not to have children, much less whether or not to have male children.
   
3. Moses' mother might have already been pregnant when Pharaoh decided to exterminate the Israelites' sons.

I don't know what the right course of action is when you find out that someone is intent on killing all of your sons; but it seems to me that a reasonable one would be to go ahead and have children, hope that they're girls, and try to figure something out if they're not. If Moses' parents took this strategy (or if Moses' mother was already pregnant), then it's fairly easy to explain why he was born despite the threat to his life.

So there are fairly easy ways to answer Crossan's questions. I'm not suggesting that these easy answers are the right answers, but the fact that answers are so readily available should indicate that unanswered questions, by themselves, aren't sufficient to undermine the coherency of the birth narrative of Moses. This point seems to hold in general as well: the fact that some narrative raises questions isn't by itself enough to show that that narrative has coherence problems.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments, especially if you think that I'm misconstruing Crossan or reading him uncharitably. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next installment ...

Predestination in Perelandra

I read C. S. Lewis's Perelandra for the first time this summer, and enjoyed it immensely. Among the many quotable passages, I found the following particularly interesting (I won't provide any context so as not to be accused of spoiling anything for those who haven't read it):

The thing still seemed impossible. But gradually something happened to him which had happened to him only twice before in his life. It had happened once while he was trying to make up his mind to do a very dangerous job in the last war. It had happened again while he was screwing his resolution to go and see a certain man in London and make to him an excessively embarrassing confession which justice demanded. In both cases the thing had seemed a sheer impossibility: he had not thought but known that, being what he was, he was psychologically incapable of doing it; and then, without any apparent movement of the will, as objective and unemotional as the reading on a dial, there had arisen before him, with perfect certitude, the knowledge "about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible." The same thing happened now. His fear, his shame, his love, all his arguments, were not altered in the least. The thing was neither more nor less dreadful than it had been before. The only difference was that he knew—almost as a historical proposition—that it was going to be done. He might beg, weep, or rebel—might curse or adore—sing like a martyr or blaspheme like a devil. It made not the slightest difference. The thing was going to be done. There was going to arrive, in the course of time, a moment at which he would have done it. The future act stood there, fixed and unaltered as if he had already performed it. It was a mere irrelevant detail that it happened to occupy the position we call future instead of that which we call past. The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say that he had [been] delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom. Ransom could not, for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on this subject.

First, this is a great answer to someone who has concerns about predestination, right? "Don't worry—predestination and freedom are identical!"

Seriously, though, this passage raises some interesting questions (the first two more closely related than the third):

1. Is there any sense in which predestination and freedom are identical? (Or at least not in conflict?)
   
2. If they are identical (or merely compatible), how often do they coexist? Only in certain situations, like Ransom's above? In every situation, whether we realize it or not?
3. If you go with option #2 in the passage above ("he had been delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom"), does that shed any light on the sinless state that Jesus was (and is) supposed to have maintained, or that we at some point are supposed to reach?

Discuss amongst yourselves. Or, better yet, post a comment!

The Slander of J.K. Rowling

With great shame and sadness, I have witnessed the church's reactions to the Harry Potter books over the last several years. This isn't so much a blog to defend the Harry Potter books- although I have read them all and will read the seventh one after it comes out tomorrow night. The Bible clearly calls witchcraft a sin- particularly looking to a supernatural power to control the circumstances of life for your benefit rather than looking to God. This is the story of I Samuel 28. The question is can stories that exist in a world where people use magical powers be edifying and appropriate for Christians. First, let me ask for consistency. If it's the use of magic that makes the Harry Potter books bad, then Disney movies, fairy tales, the Lord of the Rings, and the Chronicles of Narnia must also be regarded in like manner. The reality is all of these stories exist in worlds where we realize people have certain powers given to them that we don't have. We don't feel encouraged to try to seek out the wardrobe to find Narnia, nor to build orbs that will allow us to see as far as our wills will allow us, or to summon fairy godmothers. What these situations do is illuminate how people use the power they are given. Also, in the Harry Potter stories, the magic is taking place in an alternate universe that coincides with our own real world- much in the way that occurs in The Chronicles of Narnia. I don't want to go more into the biblical view of magic, imagination, and stories. Because in the attacks on JK Rowling, the author of the series, by Christians, they have not focused here. Instead, they have participated in the spread of lies to attack her character. In an article in the satirical, fictional, comedic paper, The Onion, they report how the Harry Potter books have increased the enrollment into satanism and quote several kids who are inspired by the characters of the story and demean Jesus Christ. Then, they even quote JK Rowling as even saying that she wants to lead people away from Jesus. This is all very satirical. The problem is that Christians have taken those quotes and spread them as real. There are websites that post them as if they are true. One sight claimed that the initials of JK stand for Jesus Killer. I have heard people tell them that they heard that Rowling's intentions were to have evil and darkness triumph in the end of series. On the eve of the seventh book coming out, I would be shocked if that were the case. This has been what has embarrassed and made me ashamed for the church. Nowhere is a Christian allowed to spread lies and slander about anyone in the Bible. Ephesians 4:31 says, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you." Christians are called to point out things they disagree with, and to point out and warn against dangerous ideas that are in our culture, but never is a Christian allowed to show disrespect towards another human being or to communicate in an unloving way with someone. In an age of increasing celebrity tabloidism when we feel free to comment on the lives of assorted movie and music stars, it's easy to de-personalize celebrities- to treat them as if they are not someone's daughter, someone's mother, much less a being created in the image of God. Our human sinfulness always wants to make ourselves superior to other people. It's easy to do that with celebrities by assuming the worst about them and cutting them down with our friends. Shame on us. We must always speak about people, even celebrities, as if they were in the room with us- in a way that expresses love and concern for them as a person. Let us all be quick to listen and slow to speak- even about people we might disagree substantially with.