I spoke of Bob Jones University the other day. Well, it turns out that Bob Jones III is retiring as President of the fundamentalist school at the end of the school year. Here's the story:
GREENVILLE, SC – January 20, 2005 . . . Dr. Bob Jones III will retire as president of Bob Jones University at the annual commencement exercises May 7, 2005, Bob Jones University announced today. The Board of Trustees has elected Rev. Stephen Jones, Vice President for Administration and Chief Administrative Oversight Officer, to succeed his father as president.
Dr. Jones has been elected Chancellor of the University and will continue as Chairman of the Board.
During Dr. Jones' 34-year tenure as president, the University saw its largest advances in academic programs and expansion of campus facilities and extended its outreach around the globe, today drawing students from all 50 states and 46 countries.
Stephen Jones will be the fourth president in the 78-year history of the University. He earned a B.A. in Public Speaking from BJU in 1992, a Master of Divinity in 1996, and in May will earn a Ph.D. in Liberal Arts Studies with concentrations in business, education, and organizational communication. Mr. Jones was a member of the University faculty for five years, teaching Speech Communication and Pulpit Speech, and also served as Dormitory Supervisor and Assistant to the President. He assumed his current executive position of Vice President for Administration in 2001.
"The opportunity to step into the role occupied by my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather is overwhelming," said Jones. "The faculty and staff that the Lord has assembled here are unmatched in their abilities, dedication, and love for our students. I can't imagine a greater joy than serving side by side with them in this new role and being involved in the lives of the world's most wonderful student body. I am eager for the days that lie ahead for Bob Jones University and believe that the Lord has wonderful things in store for us as we remain faithful to His Word."
Friday, January 21, 2005
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Four years ago, I was diagnosed with Supraventricular Tachycardia. I had a catheter ablation to solve the problem but last night I was rushed to the ER via paramedic with heart rates of 160 bpm. I have been experiencing some serious issues with my heart. Not sure what is going to happen at this point, but I am going to see a cardiologist soon.
Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) is a general term describing any rapid heart rate originating above the ventricles, or lower chambers of the heart. SVT is an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm. Specific types of SVT include atrial fibrillation, AV nodal re-entrant tachycardia, and Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.
SVT generally begins and ends quickly. Many people experience short periods of SVT and have no symptoms. However, SVT becomes a problem when it occurs frequently or lasts for long periods of time and produces symptoms. Common symptoms associated with SVT include palpitations, light headedness, and chest pain. SVT may also cause confusion or loss of consciousness.
Treatment of SVT is aimed at correcting the cause of the arrhythmia or controlling the rapid heart rates. SVT can occur because of poor oxygen flow to the heart muscle, lung disease, electrolyte imbalances, high levels of certain medications in your body, abnormalities of the heart's electrical conduction system, or structural abnormalities of the heart.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) is a general term describing any rapid heart rate originating above the ventricles, or lower chambers of the heart. SVT is an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm. Specific types of SVT include atrial fibrillation, AV nodal re-entrant tachycardia, and Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.
SVT generally begins and ends quickly. Many people experience short periods of SVT and have no symptoms. However, SVT becomes a problem when it occurs frequently or lasts for long periods of time and produces symptoms. Common symptoms associated with SVT include palpitations, light headedness, and chest pain. SVT may also cause confusion or loss of consciousness.
Treatment of SVT is aimed at correcting the cause of the arrhythmia or controlling the rapid heart rates. SVT can occur because of poor oxygen flow to the heart muscle, lung disease, electrolyte imbalances, high levels of certain medications in your body, abnormalities of the heart's electrical conduction system, or structural abnormalities of the heart.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Interracial Marriage: Celebrating and Serving Diversity in Christ
January 19, 2005 — Fresh Words Edition
By John Piper
Permanent Link
Colossians 3:11
“Here [in the church] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave,free; but Christ is all, and in all.”
Building on Sunday’s sermon, Racial Harmony and Racial Intermarriage (1-16-05), there are a few more things I think I should say. First, let’s put the foundation in place again: It seems clear to me that God wills ethnic diversity in the world and in the church. He ordained that there be races, and, in the end of the age, he plans that there will be “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9). The fact that this diversity is so early and so durable tells us that God delights in the way his glory is refracted in different ethnic groups and cultures.
The fact that these ethnic differences are all rooted in one original set of parents, Adam and Eve, warns us not to exalt the value of one group over another, nor to demean one group under another. We are first human, in the image of God, and that should be more important and more decisive for our relationships than our differences are. Our common origin in Adam, and in the image of God, warns against using diversity as a means of boasting or belittling. Differences are good and important, but secondary to our simply being human in the image of God.
What about intermarriage then? Does it contradict the diversity God wills? Some speak of intermarriage as the dilution of God-willed differences. Some speak of the offspring of interracial marriage as “half-breeds” and a “mongrel race.” I cannot bring myself to believe that the mingling of racial traits in the children of interracial marriages is a “diluting” of the diversity God wills. The “races” have never been pure or well-defined. The human lines that flowed from the sons of Noah (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) have flowed into far more diversity than three ethnic types of human beings. Just one example: Genesis 10:6, “The sons of Ham [are] Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.” The ethnic and “racial” differences between Canaanites and Cushites and Egyptians were significant. In other words, “race” is a fluid concept with no clear boundaries. God seems to delight not just in three but in thousands of variations of human beings.
Moreover, the offspring of inter-ethnic marriages add to the diversity of the human race rather than diluting it. The scope of the world’s peoples is so huge that there is no serious possibility that intermarriage will reduce diversity of peoples. In fact, there is more likelihood that new ethnic types will emerge rather than that all will become the same—let alone “mongrel.” As Canaanites (Arabs) and Cushites (black Africans) emerged from one line (Ham, Genesis 10:6), at what point did intermarriage within this line become destructive to God’s ordained diversity? It appears that God willed that the so-called three “races” should diversify increasingly rather than be preserved in purity. after the flood, God set in motion a process of increasing diversification of ethnicities (cf. Genesis 10:5). He is not concerned with limiting diversity to a few peoples. He plans multiplication of increasing numbers of peoples.
Not only does interracial marriage multiply diversity under God’s providence, it also instigates peace within diversity. Yes, there are exceptions—a white father may never speak to his black son-in-law. But another wonderful possibility exists. Indeed it comes to pass over and over in interracial marriages. A once-bigoted group of relatives is forced to see as a person the “outsider” who just married their “insider.” The newcomer into the family is not just a race any more. He or she is a person. Over time the suspicions and prejudices and hostilities die away, and something beautiful is born—reconciliation and respect and harmony, spreading out beyond the marriage in ways no one thought possible. The once angry father now views all his ethnic colleagues at work differently.
Finally, I would draw attention once more to Christ, the Son of God, at the center of all this diversity in the church. Paul makes Christ the issue in the harmonious diversity that he celebrates. “Here [in the church] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). We are not interested in diversity for diversity’s sake. We are not interested in being popular or politically correct. We are interested in moving toward the visible experience of Colossians 3:11.
That means moving toward a more visible display of Christ being our all and Christ being manifestly in all. When Christ is our all, and when Christ is in all, ethnic differences change from being barriers to become blessings. Even “barbarians” and the most distant of them, “Scythians,” are in the new “race”—the church. The head of this race is no longer Adam, but the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), Jesus Christ. God aims that in this new “race” of humans all ethnic groups in the world will be included (Matthew 24:14). Inter-ethnic marriage in this new humanity is one manifestation and one means of Christ being all in all.
Moving toward heaven with you,
Pastor John
January 19, 2005 — Fresh Words Edition
By John Piper
Permanent Link
Colossians 3:11
“Here [in the church] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave,free; but Christ is all, and in all.”
Building on Sunday’s sermon, Racial Harmony and Racial Intermarriage
The fact that these ethnic differences are all rooted in one original set of parents, Adam and Eve, warns us not to exalt the value of one group over another, nor to demean one group under another. We are first human, in the image of God, and that should be more important and more decisive for our relationships than our differences are. Our common origin in Adam, and in the image of God, warns against using diversity as a means of boasting or belittling. Differences are good and important, but secondary to our simply being human in the image of God.
What about intermarriage then? Does it contradict the diversity God wills? Some speak of intermarriage as the dilution of God-willed differences. Some speak of the offspring of interracial marriage as “half-breeds” and a “mongrel race.” I cannot bring myself to believe that the mingling of racial traits in the children of interracial marriages is a “diluting” of the diversity God wills. The “races” have never been pure or well-defined. The human lines that flowed from the sons of Noah (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) have flowed into far more diversity than three ethnic types of human beings. Just one example: Genesis 10:6, “The sons of Ham [are] Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.” The ethnic and “racial” differences between Canaanites and Cushites and Egyptians were significant. In other words, “race” is a fluid concept with no clear boundaries. God seems to delight not just in three but in thousands of variations of human beings.
Moreover, the offspring of inter-ethnic marriages add to the diversity of the human race rather than diluting it. The scope of the world’s peoples is so huge that there is no serious possibility that intermarriage will reduce diversity of peoples. In fact, there is more likelihood that new ethnic types will emerge rather than that all will become the same—let alone “mongrel.” As Canaanites (Arabs) and Cushites (black Africans) emerged from one line (Ham, Genesis 10:6), at what point did intermarriage within this line become destructive to God’s ordained diversity? It appears that God willed that the so-called three “races” should diversify increasingly rather than be preserved in purity. after the flood, God set in motion a process of increasing diversification of ethnicities (cf. Genesis 10:5). He is not concerned with limiting diversity to a few peoples. He plans multiplication of increasing numbers of peoples.
Not only does interracial marriage multiply diversity under God’s providence, it also instigates peace within diversity. Yes, there are exceptions—a white father may never speak to his black son-in-law. But another wonderful possibility exists. Indeed it comes to pass over and over in interracial marriages. A once-bigoted group of relatives is forced to see as a person the “outsider” who just married their “insider.” The newcomer into the family is not just a race any more. He or she is a person. Over time the suspicions and prejudices and hostilities die away, and something beautiful is born—reconciliation and respect and harmony, spreading out beyond the marriage in ways no one thought possible. The once angry father now views all his ethnic colleagues at work differently.
Finally, I would draw attention once more to Christ, the Son of God, at the center of all this diversity in the church. Paul makes Christ the issue in the harmonious diversity that he celebrates. “Here [in the church] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). We are not interested in diversity for diversity’s sake. We are not interested in being popular or politically correct. We are interested in moving toward the visible experience of Colossians 3:11.
That means moving toward a more visible display of Christ being our all and Christ being manifestly in all. When Christ is our all, and when Christ is in all, ethnic differences change from being barriers to become blessings. Even “barbarians” and the most distant of them, “Scythians,” are in the new “race”—the church. The head of this race is no longer Adam, but the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), Jesus Christ. God aims that in this new “race” of humans all ethnic groups in the world will be included (Matthew 24:14). Inter-ethnic marriage in this new humanity is one manifestation and one means of Christ being all in all.
Moving toward heaven with you,
Pastor John
The New Civil War
Christians must be driven by the common good, not by any ideology.
By Charles Colson with Anne Morse | posted 01/19/2005 9:00 a.m.
Among sophisticates on Manhattan's Upper East Side and in Georgetown salons, President Bush's victory last November brought much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of (fashionable) garments. Disgruntled "blue" voters threatened to move overseas to escape the "jihadists" and "mullahs" now running—and ruining—America.
In a column entitled "Two Nations Under God," The New York Times's Thomas Friedman said he woke up the morning after the election "deeply troubled" because "they [Bush and company] favor a whole different kind of America from me." Amen, echoed Tina Brown in The Washington Post: "New Yorkers don't want to live in a republic of fear."
As these liberal laments demonstrate, what we witnessed in this election is a continuing deepening of hostilities between "red" and "blue" states—Retros and Metros. Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb described this phenomenon as two cultures existing within one nation. She believes these two can coexist peacefully; I wonder. Americans are engaged in a civil war carried on by other means; as with the first Civil War, fundamental issues divide us.
How did we get into this mess? Some suggest it started when secular forces pressed their views on abortion and gay rights in court. In part, that's so. But I think we must look deeper. We dug the hole that became a cultural Grand Canyon when we abandoned belief in a moral truth that is knowable.
People who reject transcendent authority can no longer persuade one another through rational arguments; everything is reduced to personal opinion. Debates about ideas thus degenerate into power struggles; we're left with no moral standard by which to measure the common good. For that matter, how can there be a "common good" without an objective standard of truth?
The death of moral truth has fractured America into two warring camps, with each side's preferences hardening into an ideology. And ideology is the enemy of revealed truth. It's also the enemy of classical conservatism, which depends, as Russell Kirk wrote, upon tradition and the accumulated wisdom of the past; ideology, on the other hand, is a human scheme for how the world ought to be formed. Whether on the Left or the Right, ideologies are utopian—the dangerous idea that we can construct the perfect society.
This is why politics has become so ugly today. When I first worked on Capitol Hill in the 1950s, there was camaraderie among politicians. Democrats dropped into our office to chat with us. People on both sides of the aisle met in the local lounge for drinks after work. Of course, we had disagreements. But when it came to questions like how we were going to take care of the poor, our differences were over degree and means. Everybody shared common ideas about what made a good society.
Not anymore. Today, ideologies are irreconcilable. Along with lower taxes, religious conservatives argue for moral order, respect for tradition, protection of life and religious expression. Many secularists, by contrast, dismiss the idea that the government should enforce any moral good. Indeed, they want government to protect individuals from having any such standards imposed on them: radical libertarianism.
This is at the heart of the culture war—why the "reds" and "blues" are locked in mortal combat. It's a struggle for ultimate power. This is why we're seeing such hysterical rhetoric from the Left, which fears it's losing its power—and power is all that matters. The Right is just as bad. Some leaders say that since we're now in power, we get to impose our will on everyone else—an attitude repugnant to democratic governance.
What's the solution?
First, "red" Christians must reach out to "blue" Christians and vice versa. Ideology must not divide believers. Second, Christians are not seeking political power, so we're not out to "destroy" perceived political enemies. Nor do we line up for the victor's spoils, as if we were just one more special-interest group. Instead, we need to graciously contend (and demonstrate) that Christian truth is good for the right ordering of our lives, individually and collectively, and manifest our commitment to the common good by doing the things Christians do best: creating strong families, restoring relationships, helping the poor, working for human rights.
Christians are in a unique position to bring common grace to a deeply divided nation and offer something more than brief periods of peace between outbreaks of mortal combat every election cycle. In rejecting ideology and putting the common good first, we offer hope to America's warring factions.
Copyright © 2005 Christianity
Christians must be driven by the common good, not by any ideology.
By Charles Colson with Anne Morse | posted 01/19/2005 9:00 a.m.
Among sophisticates on Manhattan's Upper East Side and in Georgetown salons, President Bush's victory last November brought much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of (fashionable) garments. Disgruntled "blue" voters threatened to move overseas to escape the "jihadists" and "mullahs" now running—and ruining—America.
In a column entitled "Two Nations Under God," The New York Times's Thomas Friedman said he woke up the morning after the election "deeply troubled" because "they [Bush and company] favor a whole different kind of America from me." Amen, echoed Tina Brown in The Washington Post: "New Yorkers don't want to live in a republic of fear."
As these liberal laments demonstrate, what we witnessed in this election is a continuing deepening of hostilities between "red" and "blue" states—Retros and Metros. Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb described this phenomenon as two cultures existing within one nation. She believes these two can coexist peacefully; I wonder. Americans are engaged in a civil war carried on by other means; as with the first Civil War, fundamental issues divide us.
How did we get into this mess? Some suggest it started when secular forces pressed their views on abortion and gay rights in court. In part, that's so. But I think we must look deeper. We dug the hole that became a cultural Grand Canyon when we abandoned belief in a moral truth that is knowable.
People who reject transcendent authority can no longer persuade one another through rational arguments; everything is reduced to personal opinion. Debates about ideas thus degenerate into power struggles; we're left with no moral standard by which to measure the common good. For that matter, how can there be a "common good" without an objective standard of truth?
The death of moral truth has fractured America into two warring camps, with each side's preferences hardening into an ideology. And ideology is the enemy of revealed truth. It's also the enemy of classical conservatism, which depends, as Russell Kirk wrote, upon tradition and the accumulated wisdom of the past; ideology, on the other hand, is a human scheme for how the world ought to be formed. Whether on the Left or the Right, ideologies are utopian—the dangerous idea that we can construct the perfect society.
This is why politics has become so ugly today. When I first worked on Capitol Hill in the 1950s, there was camaraderie among politicians. Democrats dropped into our office to chat with us. People on both sides of the aisle met in the local lounge for drinks after work. Of course, we had disagreements. But when it came to questions like how we were going to take care of the poor, our differences were over degree and means. Everybody shared common ideas about what made a good society.
Not anymore. Today, ideologies are irreconcilable. Along with lower taxes, religious conservatives argue for moral order, respect for tradition, protection of life and religious expression. Many secularists, by contrast, dismiss the idea that the government should enforce any moral good. Indeed, they want government to protect individuals from having any such standards imposed on them: radical libertarianism.
This is at the heart of the culture war—why the "reds" and "blues" are locked in mortal combat. It's a struggle for ultimate power. This is why we're seeing such hysterical rhetoric from the Left, which fears it's losing its power—and power is all that matters. The Right is just as bad. Some leaders say that since we're now in power, we get to impose our will on everyone else—an attitude repugnant to democratic governance.
What's the solution?
First, "red" Christians must reach out to "blue" Christians and vice versa. Ideology must not divide believers. Second, Christians are not seeking political power, so we're not out to "destroy" perceived political enemies. Nor do we line up for the victor's spoils, as if we were just one more special-interest group. Instead, we need to graciously contend (and demonstrate) that Christian truth is good for the right ordering of our lives, individually and collectively, and manifest our commitment to the common good by doing the things Christians do best: creating strong families, restoring relationships, helping the poor, working for human rights.
Christians are in a unique position to bring common grace to a deeply divided nation and offer something more than brief periods of peace between outbreaks of mortal combat every election cycle. In rejecting ideology and putting the common good first, we offer hope to America's warring factions.
Copyright © 2005 Christianity
Taking the T.U.L.I.P. Out of the GardenRelating Calvinism to "the complexities of contemporary life."Reviewed by Nathan Bierma posted 01/18/2005 9:00 a.m.
Calvinism in theLas Vegas Airport:Making Connectionsin Today's WorldBy Richard J. MouwZondervan, 143 pp.; $14.99
Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport: Making Connections in Today's WorldBy Richard J. MouwZondervan143 pp.; $$14.99
My Las Vegas Airport moment came four years ago in Chicago's South Loop neighborhood. I was interviewing a source at his office as an intern at a weekly newspaper. He casually inquired where I was a student. When he said he hadn't heard of Calvin College, I seized on the moment to testify. I explained that Calvin was a place where people believe that faith isn't just a matter of your inner spiritual feelings, but a view of the whole creation as the place where God is present and powerful. The man nodded.
"That sounds a lot like my daughter's beliefs," he said. "She's a Unitarian."
Had we been on the phone, that would have been the point where I put down the receiver and buried my head in my hands.
At these and other moments, I've been reminded of a memorable line from ex-Calvinist Paul Schrader's movie Hardcore, which I watched in a film class (I promise) at, fittingly enough, Calvin College. There's a scene where George C. Scott, playing a stodgy West Michigan Calvinist named (as approximately half the West Michigan population is) Van-something, befriends a prostitute named Niki in order to investigate the whereabouts of his prodigal daughter.
At one point, Niki asks about his church. In one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen on film, Scott's character proceeds to explain the T.U.L.I.P. model of John Calvin's doctrine to this prostitute, right there in the middle of the Las Vegas airport. She doesn't get it. Scott says, "Well, I admit it's a little confusing when you look at it from the outside. You have to try to look at it from the inside."
I grew up on the inside—raised in West Michigan by parents of Dutch heritage, in the Christian Reformed denomination Schrader so heartily ridiculed. In fact, one of the scenes of Grand Rapids in the opening montage of Schrader's movie is a shot of Neland Avenue church, the church in which I was raised. And so Scott's comment hit close to home. Was the Calvinism I was raised with only an inheritance from my tribe? Was it only a reality to me because I had always "looked at it from the inside"? And what would I have said if I were in Scott's shoes?
So imagine my delight when I picked up a book from one of my favorite authors, Fuller Seminary president (and Books & Culture editorial board member) Richard Mouw, entitled Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport. "This is a book for people who want to see how it is possible to draw on the strengths of Calvinism as they make their way through the complexities of contemporary life," he begins. Although the book is inevitably about doctrine, Mouw says he is "more interested here in questions about Calvinist character and mood. I want to focus here on how to be a Calvinist in the twenty-first century." So did I.
Mouw starts by summing up TULIP (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistable grace, and Perseverance of the saints.) As he does, Mouw counters what may be the most common complaint about Calvinism—a complaint I often make myself. The complaint is that Calvin's God is a salvation Scrooge, reluctantly doling out redemption to an elect few rather than lavishing his grace on all of humanity. This paints God as miserly, cruel, and arbitrary. Take the L, for example—limited atonement. This means that God's salvation is limited to those who are predestined to be saved. In my experience, Calvinists who confidently endorse this point—or even endorse it at all—are rare.
Mouw affirms these misgivings, to the point of stating that it's not fully clear whether Christ died for "all," for "the elect," or whether "all" means "all of the elect" or "elect" means "all." Different passages of Scripture support different interpretations. Mouw doesn't arrive at his inconclusive conclusion casually; he does so only after working his way through Owen Thomas' 300-plus-page book The Atonement Controversy in Welsh Theological Debate, 1707-1841. I think the 99 percent of us who have not read that work should defer to Mouw's summation that this is one of the mysteries that ultimately lies beyond human comprehension.
But before he leaves it at that, Mouw makes a compelling case for the L of TULIP. "Limited atonement" is a negative term; Mouw's positive term for the concept is "mission accomplished." Christ successfully saved everyone for whom he died. If you believe salvation is offered to all but only some accept it, then in some ways you are calling God a failure. God is only able to save those who allow him to do so; he fails, despite his ambitions, to redeem the rest. When you look at it this way, denying the L of TULIP can be just as uncomfortable as accepting it. But saying "mission accomplished" (should we make it "TUMIP"?) instead of "limited atonement" affirms God's sovereignty: everyone he died for goes to heaven. No one he died for goes to hell.
In fact, God's sovereignty, Mouw makes clear, is the main idea of TULIP as a whole. The purpose of TULIP is not to make God seem stingy; it is to affirm God's rule over all of creation, and to place humans in proper relation to him. "Indeed," Mouw writes in conclusion, if Calvinists "are ever faced with a choice between a theological formulation that diminishes God's sovereignty and one that would diminish human freedom, we'll go with sovereignty." We do not wish to "detract in any way from the sovereign rule of God" or "give the impression that God is limited by our human choices."
Still, Mouw says that TULIP is best used late—if at all—in conversations about Calvinism with non-Calvinists. In his chapter called "Jake's Mistake," Mouw returns to George C. Scott's character Jake Van Dorn in Hardcore, and notes how uncaring it was to throw TULIP at Niki, instead of inquiring about her own fears and sorrows and speaking of Christ's love for her. "She did not need a theology lesson," Mouw says. "She needed a God who spoke to her in soft and tender tones." And so, Mouw says, Scott should have started with Heidelberg One: "What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong, body and soul, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ." TULIP, Mouw says, should only come in "farther down the line … as a 'looking back' framework."
I imagined what Schrader would think if he saw this book. Leave it to a former Calvin College professor to take a little gag in a movie and launch into a whole book about theology! But I love the way Mouw says, I get the joke, and it's a valid one, but let's put it to good use. In fact, Mouw is the one person I would introduce to Schrader as the polar opposite of George C. Scott's character. Where Scott is hasty, harsh, and uncontemplative about his Calvinism, Mouw is careful, gentle, and deeply thoughtful about how doctrine is an expression of faith instead of the other way around. Mouw is also brutally—but helpfully—honest about the failings of his Dutch Calvinist tradition.
The point of Mouw's book is to say that Calvinism "travels well." TULIP does not—as I feared growing up—require certain academic and ethnic fertilizer in order to bloom. And so I made a point of reading his book in non-Calvinist locations—in a Starbucks in downtown Chicago, and on an Amtrak train. On the train, the man across from me saw the title and asked about it. Turns out he was a Zen Buddhist, and we launched into a cordial conversation about the similarities and differences between Buddhism and Calvinism. It was just a conversation, but it was a far more productive encounter than Jake had in the Las Vegas Airport.
Nathan Bierma is Books & Culture's editorial assistant. He writes the weekly B&C weblog; he also writes the weekly "On Language" column for the Chicago Tribune.
Calvinism in theLas Vegas Airport:Making Connectionsin Today's WorldBy Richard J. MouwZondervan, 143 pp.; $14.99
Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport: Making Connections in Today's WorldBy Richard J. MouwZondervan143 pp.; $$14.99
My Las Vegas Airport moment came four years ago in Chicago's South Loop neighborhood. I was interviewing a source at his office as an intern at a weekly newspaper. He casually inquired where I was a student. When he said he hadn't heard of Calvin College, I seized on the moment to testify. I explained that Calvin was a place where people believe that faith isn't just a matter of your inner spiritual feelings, but a view of the whole creation as the place where God is present and powerful. The man nodded.
"That sounds a lot like my daughter's beliefs," he said. "She's a Unitarian."
Had we been on the phone, that would have been the point where I put down the receiver and buried my head in my hands.
At these and other moments, I've been reminded of a memorable line from ex-Calvinist Paul Schrader's movie Hardcore, which I watched in a film class (I promise) at, fittingly enough, Calvin College. There's a scene where George C. Scott, playing a stodgy West Michigan Calvinist named (as approximately half the West Michigan population is) Van-something, befriends a prostitute named Niki in order to investigate the whereabouts of his prodigal daughter.
At one point, Niki asks about his church. In one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen on film, Scott's character proceeds to explain the T.U.L.I.P. model of John Calvin's doctrine to this prostitute, right there in the middle of the Las Vegas airport. She doesn't get it. Scott says, "Well, I admit it's a little confusing when you look at it from the outside. You have to try to look at it from the inside."
I grew up on the inside—raised in West Michigan by parents of Dutch heritage, in the Christian Reformed denomination Schrader so heartily ridiculed. In fact, one of the scenes of Grand Rapids in the opening montage of Schrader's movie is a shot of Neland Avenue church, the church in which I was raised. And so Scott's comment hit close to home. Was the Calvinism I was raised with only an inheritance from my tribe? Was it only a reality to me because I had always "looked at it from the inside"? And what would I have said if I were in Scott's shoes?
So imagine my delight when I picked up a book from one of my favorite authors, Fuller Seminary president (and Books & Culture editorial board member) Richard Mouw, entitled Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport. "This is a book for people who want to see how it is possible to draw on the strengths of Calvinism as they make their way through the complexities of contemporary life," he begins. Although the book is inevitably about doctrine, Mouw says he is "more interested here in questions about Calvinist character and mood. I want to focus here on how to be a Calvinist in the twenty-first century." So did I.
Mouw starts by summing up TULIP (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistable grace, and Perseverance of the saints.) As he does, Mouw counters what may be the most common complaint about Calvinism—a complaint I often make myself. The complaint is that Calvin's God is a salvation Scrooge, reluctantly doling out redemption to an elect few rather than lavishing his grace on all of humanity. This paints God as miserly, cruel, and arbitrary. Take the L, for example—limited atonement. This means that God's salvation is limited to those who are predestined to be saved. In my experience, Calvinists who confidently endorse this point—or even endorse it at all—are rare.
Mouw affirms these misgivings, to the point of stating that it's not fully clear whether Christ died for "all," for "the elect," or whether "all" means "all of the elect" or "elect" means "all." Different passages of Scripture support different interpretations. Mouw doesn't arrive at his inconclusive conclusion casually; he does so only after working his way through Owen Thomas' 300-plus-page book The Atonement Controversy in Welsh Theological Debate, 1707-1841. I think the 99 percent of us who have not read that work should defer to Mouw's summation that this is one of the mysteries that ultimately lies beyond human comprehension.
But before he leaves it at that, Mouw makes a compelling case for the L of TULIP. "Limited atonement" is a negative term; Mouw's positive term for the concept is "mission accomplished." Christ successfully saved everyone for whom he died. If you believe salvation is offered to all but only some accept it, then in some ways you are calling God a failure. God is only able to save those who allow him to do so; he fails, despite his ambitions, to redeem the rest. When you look at it this way, denying the L of TULIP can be just as uncomfortable as accepting it. But saying "mission accomplished" (should we make it "TUMIP"?) instead of "limited atonement" affirms God's sovereignty: everyone he died for goes to heaven. No one he died for goes to hell.
In fact, God's sovereignty, Mouw makes clear, is the main idea of TULIP as a whole. The purpose of TULIP is not to make God seem stingy; it is to affirm God's rule over all of creation, and to place humans in proper relation to him. "Indeed," Mouw writes in conclusion, if Calvinists "are ever faced with a choice between a theological formulation that diminishes God's sovereignty and one that would diminish human freedom, we'll go with sovereignty." We do not wish to "detract in any way from the sovereign rule of God" or "give the impression that God is limited by our human choices."
Still, Mouw says that TULIP is best used late—if at all—in conversations about Calvinism with non-Calvinists. In his chapter called "Jake's Mistake," Mouw returns to George C. Scott's character Jake Van Dorn in Hardcore, and notes how uncaring it was to throw TULIP at Niki, instead of inquiring about her own fears and sorrows and speaking of Christ's love for her. "She did not need a theology lesson," Mouw says. "She needed a God who spoke to her in soft and tender tones." And so, Mouw says, Scott should have started with Heidelberg One: "What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong, body and soul, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ." TULIP, Mouw says, should only come in "farther down the line … as a 'looking back' framework."
I imagined what Schrader would think if he saw this book. Leave it to a former Calvin College professor to take a little gag in a movie and launch into a whole book about theology! But I love the way Mouw says, I get the joke, and it's a valid one, but let's put it to good use. In fact, Mouw is the one person I would introduce to Schrader as the polar opposite of George C. Scott's character. Where Scott is hasty, harsh, and uncontemplative about his Calvinism, Mouw is careful, gentle, and deeply thoughtful about how doctrine is an expression of faith instead of the other way around. Mouw is also brutally—but helpfully—honest about the failings of his Dutch Calvinist tradition.
The point of Mouw's book is to say that Calvinism "travels well." TULIP does not—as I feared growing up—require certain academic and ethnic fertilizer in order to bloom. And so I made a point of reading his book in non-Calvinist locations—in a Starbucks in downtown Chicago, and on an Amtrak train. On the train, the man across from me saw the title and asked about it. Turns out he was a Zen Buddhist, and we launched into a cordial conversation about the similarities and differences between Buddhism and Calvinism. It was just a conversation, but it was a far more productive encounter than Jake had in the Las Vegas Airport.
Nathan Bierma is Books & Culture's editorial assistant. He writes the weekly B&C weblog; he also writes the weekly "On Language" column for the Chicago Tribune.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
As a adolescent growing up in North Carolina, I attended Tabernacle Christian School in Hickory, North Carolina ( www.tabernaclehickory.org ) . In my high school years, I sat in one particular teacher's class and listened to him tell "nigger" jokes. He was a graduate, as was most of the teachers at that school, from the infamous Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina ( www.bju.edu ) , the flagship school of fundamentalism. The history of fundamentalism and its ban on interracial marriage is no secret. I had to witness, first-hand, the atrocities committed in Jesus name by teachers of schools who defined themselves as "independent, fundamental, Bible-believing." That's why I was very pleased to receive in my email a text copy of a sermon preached by John Piper regarding this very subject. Here it is below:
Racial Harmony and Interracial Marriage
January 16, 2005 — Sermons Edition
By John Piper
Permanent Link
Deuteronomy 7:3-4 & Colossians 3:9-11
My aim today is to argue from Scripture and experience that interracial marriage is not only permitted by God but is a positive good in our day. That is, it is not just to be tolerated, but celebrated. This is extremely controversial since it is opposed by people from all sides.
Interracial marriage was against the law in 16 states in 1967 when the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Decision struck down those laws. That is very fresh historically. I was a senior in college. Laws reflect deep convictions, and convictions don’t usually change when laws do.
Opposition to Interracial Marriage
The first website that came up on my Google search for Martin Luther King and interracial marriage was the website of the Ku Klux Klan which still has this anachronistic quote today: “Interracial marriage is a violation of God’s Law and a communist ploy to weaken America.”
Many African Americans believe interracial marriage erodes the solidarity of the African American community. Lawrence Otis Graham wrote that “interracial marriage undermines [African Americans’] ability to introduce our children to black role models who accept their racial identity with pride.”
Some conservative whites oppose interracial marriage for a different reason. Syndicated columnist H. Millard wrote:
. . . we are seeing the death of the American and his replacement with a non-European type who now has enough mass in our society to pervert European-American ways. . . . White people . . . are going to have to struggle mightily to survive the Neo-Melting Pot and avoid being part of the one-size-fits-all human model. Call it what it is: Genocide and extinction of the white genotype.
One letter I received from a white Christian man went like this:
As individuals, they are precious souls for whom Christ died and whom we are to love and seek to win. As a race, however, they are unique and different and have their own culture. . . . I would never marry a black. Why? Because I believe God made the races, separated them and set the bounds of their habitation, Deuteronomy 32:8; Acts 17:26. He made them uniquely different and intended that these distinctions remain. God never intended the human race to become a mixed or mongrel race. So, while I am strongly opposed to segregation I favor separation that the uniqueness with which God made them is maintained.
Piper’s Personal Experience
To these opposing views I would add my own experience. I was a southern teenage racist (by almost any definition), and, since I am a sinner still, I do not doubt that elements of it remain in me, to my dismay. For these lingering attitudes and actions I repent. Racism is a very difficult reality to define. The Bethlehem staff have been working on it for months. We are presently most closely committed to the definition given last summer at the Presbyterian Church in America annual meeting: “Racism is an explicit or implicit belief or practice that qualitatively distinguishes or values one race over other races.” That is what I mean when I say I was a racist growing up in Greenville, South Carolina. My attitudes and actions were demeaning and disrespectful toward non-whites. And right at the heart of those attitudes was opposition to interracial marriage.
My mother, who washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, “Shut up!” to my sister, would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially. She was under God the seed of my salvation in more ways than one. When our church voted not to admit blacks in 1963, when I was 17, my mother ushered the black guests at my sister’s wedding right into the main sanctuary herself because the ushers wouldn’t do it. I was on my way to redemption.
In 1967 Noël and I attended the Urbana Missions Conference. I was a senior at Wheaton. There we heard Warren Webster, former missionary to Pakistan, answer a student’s question: What if your daughter falls in love with a Pakistani while you’re on the mission field and wants to marry him? With great forcefulness he said: “The Bible would say, Better a Christian Pakistani than a godless white American!” The impact on us was profound.
Four years later I wrote a paper for Lewis Smedes in an ethics class at seminary called “The Ethics of Interracial Marriage.” For me that was a biblical settling of the matter, and I have not gone back from what I saw there. The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages. And there are circumstances which together with biblical principles make interracial marriage in many cases a positive good.
Now I am a pastor at Bethlehem. One quick walk through the pictorial directory that came out last year gives me a rough count of 203 non-Anglos pictured in the book. I am sure I missed some. And I am sure the definition of Anglo is so vague someone will be bothered that I even tried to count. But the point is this: Dozens and dozens of them are children and teenagers and single young men and women. This means very simply that we as a church need a clear place to stand on interracial marriage. Church is the most natural and proper place to find a spouse. And they will find each other across racial lines.
That is what I would like to give. First, we will make four textual observations and then some concluding implications for our experience.
1. All Races Have One Ancestor in the Image of God, and All Humans Are in God’s Image
The Bible portrays the human race as coming from one pair of human ancestors who were created in God’s image unlike all the animals and that this image of God is passed on to all humans. Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Again in Genesis 5:1-3, “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Manwhen they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image.” In other words, the magnificent image of God goes on from generation to generation.
Then Paul makes the sweeping statement in Acts 17:26, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.” In other words, Adam, who was created in God’s image, is the father of all human beings in all ethnic groups. Therefore all of them are dignified above the animals in this absolutely unique and glorious way: humans are crated in the image of God. With all the beautiful, God-designed ethnic and cultural diversity in the world, that truth is paramount. That truth is decisive in setting priorities for how we respect and relate to each other.
2. The Bible Forbids Intermarriage Between Unbeliever and Believer, But Not Between Races
The Bible forbids intermarriage between believer and unbeliever but not between members of different ethnic groups. 1 Corinthians 7:39, “A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” “Whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” One biblical restriction on the man she marries: he must be in the Lord. He must be a believer in Jesus Christ.
This was the main point of the Old Testament warnings about marrying those among the pagan nations. The point was not to protect racial purity. The point was to protect religious purity. For example, Deuteronomy 7:3-4:
You shall not intermarry with [the nations]; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you.
The issue is not color mixing, or customs mixing, or clan identity. The issue is: will there be one common allegiance to the true God in this marriage or will there be divided affections? The prohibition in God’s word is not against interracial marriage, but against marriage between the true Israel, the church (from every people, tribe, and nation) and those who are not part of the true Israel, the church. That is, the Bible prohibits marriage between those who believe in Christ (the Messiah) and those who don’t (see 2 Corinthians 6:14).
This is exactly what we would expect if the great ground of our identity is not our ethnic differences but our common humanity in the image of God and especially our new humanity in Christ. That leads to the third biblical observation.
3. In Christ Our Oneness Is Profound and Transforms Racial and Social Differences from Barriers to Blessings
In Christ ethnic and social differences cease to be obstacles to deep, personal, intimate fellowship. Colossians 3:9-11, “You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave,free; but Christ is all, and in all.”
This does not mean that every minority culture gets swallowed up by the majority culture in the name of unity. God does not obliterate all ethnic and cultural differences in Christ. He redeems them and refines them and enriches them in the togetherness of his kingdom. The final image of heaven is “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 7:9; 5:9). God values the differences that reflect more fully his glory in man.
The point of Colossians 3:11 is not that cultural, ethnic, and racial differences have no significance; they do. The point is that that they are no barrier to profound, personal, intimate fellowship. Singing alto is different from singing bass. It’s a significant difference. But that difference is no barrier to being in the choir. It’s an asset.
When Christ is all and in all, differences take an important but subordinate place to fellowship—and, I will argue, marriage.
4. Criticizing One Interracial Marriage Was Severely Disciplined by God
The fourth observation is that Moses, a Jew, apparently married a black African and was approved by God. Numbers 12:1, “ Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.” Cushite means a woman from Cush, a region south of Ethiopia, and known for their black skin. We know this because of Jeremiah 13:23, “Can the Ethiopian [the very same Hebrew word translated “Cushite” in Numbers 12:1] change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” So attention is drawn to the difference of the skin of the Cushite people.
J. Daniel Hays writes in his book, From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), that Cush “is used regularly to refer to the area south of Egypt, and above the cataracts on the Nile, where a Black African civilization flourished for over two thousand years. Thus it is quite clear that Moses marries a Black African woman” (p. 71).
What is most significant about this context is that God does not get angry at Moses; he gets angry at Miriam for criticizing Moses. The criticism has to do with Moses’s marriage and Moses’s authority. The most explicit statement relates to the marriage: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.” Then consider this possibility. In God’s anger at Miriam, Moses’s sister, God says in effect, “You like being light-skinned Miriam? I’ll make you light-skinned.” Numbers 12:10: “When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous,like snow.”
God says not a critical word against Moses for marrying a black, Cushite woman. But when Miriam criticizes God’s chosen leader for this marriage God strikes her skin with white leprosy. If you ever thought black was a biblical symbol for uncleanness, be careful; a worse white uncleanness could come upon you.
Those are my four biblical observations.1) All races have one ancestor in the image of God and all humans are in God’s image. 2) The Bible forbids intermarriage between unbeliever and believer, but not between races. 3) In Christ our oneness is profound and transforms racial and social differences from barriers to blessings. 4) Criticizing one interracial marriage was severely disciplined by God.
Closing Implications
Now some closing implications for our experience.
Opposition to interracial marriage is one of the deepest roots of racial distance, disrespect, and hostility. Show me one place in the world where interracial or interethnic marriage is frowned upon and yet the two groups still have equal respect and honor and opportunity. I don’t think it exists. It won’t happen. Why? Because the supposed specter of interracial marriage demands that barrier after barrier must be put up to keep young people from knowing each other and falling in love. They can’t fellowship in church youth groups. They can’t go to the same schools. They can’t belong to the same clubs. They can live in the same neighborhoods. Everybody knows deep down what is at stake here. Intermarriage is at stake.
And as long as we disapprove of it, we will be pushing our children, and therefore ourselves, away from each other. The effect of that is not harmony, not respect, and not equality of opportunity. Where racial intermarriage is disapproved, the culture with money and power will always dominate and always oppress. They will see to it that those who will not make desirable spouses stay in their place and do not have access to what they have access to. If your kids don’t make desirable spouses, you don’t make desirable neighbors.
And here is a great and sad irony. The very situation of separation and suspicion and distrust and dislike that is brought about (among other things) by the fear of intermarriage, is used to justify the opposition to intermarriage. “It will make life hard for the couple and hard for the kids (they’ll be called half-breeds).” Catch 22. It’s like the army being defeated because there aren’t enough troops, and the troops won’t sign up because the army’s being defeated. Oppose interracial marriage, and you will help create a situation of racial disrespect. And then, since there is a situation of disrespect, it will be prudent to oppose interracial marriage.
Here is where Christ makes the difference. Christ does not call us to a prudent life, but to a God-centered, Christ-exalting, justice-advancing, counter-cultural, risk-taking life of love and courage. Will it be harder to be married to another race, and will it be harder for the kids? Maybe. Maybe not. But since when is that the way a Christian thinks? Life is hard. And the more you love the harder it gets.
It’s hard to take a child to the mission field. The risks are huge. It’s hard to take a child and move into a mixed neighborhood where he may be teased or ridiculed. It’s hard to help a child be a Christian in a secular world where his beliefs are mocked. It’s hard to bring children up with standards: “you will not dress like that, and you will not be out that late.” It’s hard to raise children when dad or mom dies or divorces. And that’s a real risk in any marriage. Whoever said that marrying and having children was to be trouble free? It’s one of the hardest things in the world. It just happens to be right and rewarding.
Christians are people who move toward need and truth and justice, not toward comfort and security. Life is hard. But God is good. And Christ is strong to help.
There is so much more to say about the challenges and blessings of interracial marriage. But we are out of time. I hope to write more. Suffice it say now by way of practical conclusion: at Bethlehem we will not underestimate the challenges of interracial marriage or transracial adoption (they go closely together). We will celebrate the beauty, and we will embrace the burden. Both will be good for us and good for the world and good for the glory of God.
Racial Harmony and Interracial Marriage
January 16, 2005 — Sermons Edition
By John Piper
Permanent Link
Deuteronomy 7:3-4 & Colossians 3:9-11
My aim today is to argue from Scripture and experience that interracial marriage is not only permitted by God but is a positive good in our day. That is, it is not just to be tolerated, but celebrated. This is extremely controversial since it is opposed by people from all sides.
Interracial marriage was against the law in 16 states in 1967 when the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Decision struck down those laws. That is very fresh historically. I was a senior in college. Laws reflect deep convictions, and convictions don’t usually change when laws do.
Opposition to Interracial Marriage
The first website that came up on my Google search for Martin Luther King and interracial marriage was the website of the Ku Klux Klan which still has this anachronistic quote today: “Interracial marriage is a violation of God’s Law and a communist ploy to weaken America.”
Many African Americans believe interracial marriage erodes the solidarity of the African American community. Lawrence Otis Graham wrote that “interracial marriage undermines [African Americans’] ability to introduce our children to black role models who accept their racial identity with pride.”
Some conservative whites oppose interracial marriage for a different reason. Syndicated columnist H. Millard wrote:
. . . we are seeing the death of the American and his replacement with a non-European type who now has enough mass in our society to pervert European-American ways. . . . White people . . . are going to have to struggle mightily to survive the Neo-Melting Pot and avoid being part of the one-size-fits-all human model. Call it what it is: Genocide and extinction of the white genotype.
One letter I received from a white Christian man went like this:
As individuals, they are precious souls for whom Christ died and whom we are to love and seek to win. As a race, however, they are unique and different and have their own culture. . . . I would never marry a black. Why? Because I believe God made the races, separated them and set the bounds of their habitation, Deuteronomy 32:8; Acts 17:26. He made them uniquely different and intended that these distinctions remain. God never intended the human race to become a mixed or mongrel race. So, while I am strongly opposed to segregation I favor separation that the uniqueness with which God made them is maintained.
Piper’s Personal Experience
To these opposing views I would add my own experience. I was a southern teenage racist (by almost any definition), and, since I am a sinner still, I do not doubt that elements of it remain in me, to my dismay. For these lingering attitudes and actions I repent. Racism is a very difficult reality to define. The Bethlehem staff have been working on it for months. We are presently most closely committed to the definition given last summer at the Presbyterian Church in America annual meeting: “Racism is an explicit or implicit belief or practice that qualitatively distinguishes or values one race over other races.” That is what I mean when I say I was a racist growing up in Greenville, South Carolina. My attitudes and actions were demeaning and disrespectful toward non-whites. And right at the heart of those attitudes was opposition to interracial marriage.
My mother, who washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, “Shut up!” to my sister, would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially. She was under God the seed of my salvation in more ways than one. When our church voted not to admit blacks in 1963, when I was 17, my mother ushered the black guests at my sister’s wedding right into the main sanctuary herself because the ushers wouldn’t do it. I was on my way to redemption.
In 1967 Noël and I attended the Urbana Missions Conference. I was a senior at Wheaton. There we heard Warren Webster, former missionary to Pakistan, answer a student’s question: What if your daughter falls in love with a Pakistani while you’re on the mission field and wants to marry him? With great forcefulness he said: “The Bible would say, Better a Christian Pakistani than a godless white American!” The impact on us was profound.
Four years later I wrote a paper for Lewis Smedes in an ethics class at seminary called “The Ethics of Interracial Marriage.” For me that was a biblical settling of the matter, and I have not gone back from what I saw there. The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages. And there are circumstances which together with biblical principles make interracial marriage in many cases a positive good.
Now I am a pastor at Bethlehem. One quick walk through the pictorial directory that came out last year gives me a rough count of 203 non-Anglos pictured in the book. I am sure I missed some. And I am sure the definition of Anglo is so vague someone will be bothered that I even tried to count. But the point is this: Dozens and dozens of them are children and teenagers and single young men and women. This means very simply that we as a church need a clear place to stand on interracial marriage. Church is the most natural and proper place to find a spouse. And they will find each other across racial lines.
That is what I would like to give. First, we will make four textual observations and then some concluding implications for our experience.
1. All Races Have One Ancestor in the Image of God, and All Humans Are in God’s Image
The Bible portrays the human race as coming from one pair of human ancestors who were created in God’s image unlike all the animals and that this image of God is passed on to all humans. Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Again in Genesis 5:1-3, “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Manwhen they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image.” In other words, the magnificent image of God goes on from generation to generation.
Then Paul makes the sweeping statement in Acts 17:26, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.” In other words, Adam, who was created in God’s image, is the father of all human beings in all ethnic groups. Therefore all of them are dignified above the animals in this absolutely unique and glorious way: humans are crated in the image of God. With all the beautiful, God-designed ethnic and cultural diversity in the world, that truth is paramount. That truth is decisive in setting priorities for how we respect and relate to each other.
2. The Bible Forbids Intermarriage Between Unbeliever and Believer, But Not Between Races
The Bible forbids intermarriage between believer and unbeliever but not between members of different ethnic groups. 1 Corinthians 7:39, “A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” “Whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” One biblical restriction on the man she marries: he must be in the Lord. He must be a believer in Jesus Christ.
This was the main point of the Old Testament warnings about marrying those among the pagan nations. The point was not to protect racial purity. The point was to protect religious purity. For example, Deuteronomy 7:3-4:
You shall not intermarry with [the nations]; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you.
The issue is not color mixing, or customs mixing, or clan identity. The issue is: will there be one common allegiance to the true God in this marriage or will there be divided affections? The prohibition in God’s word is not against interracial marriage, but against marriage between the true Israel, the church (from every people, tribe, and nation) and those who are not part of the true Israel, the church. That is, the Bible prohibits marriage between those who believe in Christ (the Messiah) and those who don’t (see 2 Corinthians 6:14).
This is exactly what we would expect if the great ground of our identity is not our ethnic differences but our common humanity in the image of God and especially our new humanity in Christ. That leads to the third biblical observation.
3. In Christ Our Oneness Is Profound and Transforms Racial and Social Differences from Barriers to Blessings
In Christ ethnic and social differences cease to be obstacles to deep, personal, intimate fellowship. Colossians 3:9-11, “You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave,free; but Christ is all, and in all.”
This does not mean that every minority culture gets swallowed up by the majority culture in the name of unity. God does not obliterate all ethnic and cultural differences in Christ. He redeems them and refines them and enriches them in the togetherness of his kingdom. The final image of heaven is “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 7:9; 5:9). God values the differences that reflect more fully his glory in man.
The point of Colossians 3:11 is not that cultural, ethnic, and racial differences have no significance; they do. The point is that that they are no barrier to profound, personal, intimate fellowship. Singing alto is different from singing bass. It’s a significant difference. But that difference is no barrier to being in the choir. It’s an asset.
When Christ is all and in all, differences take an important but subordinate place to fellowship—and, I will argue, marriage.
4. Criticizing One Interracial Marriage Was Severely Disciplined by God
The fourth observation is that Moses, a Jew, apparently married a black African and was approved by God. Numbers 12:1, “ Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.” Cushite means a woman from Cush, a region south of Ethiopia, and known for their black skin. We know this because of Jeremiah 13:23, “Can the Ethiopian [the very same Hebrew word translated “Cushite” in Numbers 12:1] change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” So attention is drawn to the difference of the skin of the Cushite people.
J. Daniel Hays writes in his book, From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), that Cush “is used regularly to refer to the area south of Egypt, and above the cataracts on the Nile, where a Black African civilization flourished for over two thousand years. Thus it is quite clear that Moses marries a Black African woman” (p. 71).
What is most significant about this context is that God does not get angry at Moses; he gets angry at Miriam for criticizing Moses. The criticism has to do with Moses’s marriage and Moses’s authority. The most explicit statement relates to the marriage: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.” Then consider this possibility. In God’s anger at Miriam, Moses’s sister, God says in effect, “You like being light-skinned Miriam? I’ll make you light-skinned.” Numbers 12:10: “When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous,like snow.”
God says not a critical word against Moses for marrying a black, Cushite woman. But when Miriam criticizes God’s chosen leader for this marriage God strikes her skin with white leprosy. If you ever thought black was a biblical symbol for uncleanness, be careful; a worse white uncleanness could come upon you.
Those are my four biblical observations.1) All races have one ancestor in the image of God and all humans are in God’s image. 2) The Bible forbids intermarriage between unbeliever and believer, but not between races. 3) In Christ our oneness is profound and transforms racial and social differences from barriers to blessings. 4) Criticizing one interracial marriage was severely disciplined by God.
Closing Implications
Now some closing implications for our experience.
Opposition to interracial marriage is one of the deepest roots of racial distance, disrespect, and hostility. Show me one place in the world where interracial or interethnic marriage is frowned upon and yet the two groups still have equal respect and honor and opportunity. I don’t think it exists. It won’t happen. Why? Because the supposed specter of interracial marriage demands that barrier after barrier must be put up to keep young people from knowing each other and falling in love. They can’t fellowship in church youth groups. They can’t go to the same schools. They can’t belong to the same clubs. They can live in the same neighborhoods. Everybody knows deep down what is at stake here. Intermarriage is at stake.
And as long as we disapprove of it, we will be pushing our children, and therefore ourselves, away from each other. The effect of that is not harmony, not respect, and not equality of opportunity. Where racial intermarriage is disapproved, the culture with money and power will always dominate and always oppress. They will see to it that those who will not make desirable spouses stay in their place and do not have access to what they have access to. If your kids don’t make desirable spouses, you don’t make desirable neighbors.
And here is a great and sad irony. The very situation of separation and suspicion and distrust and dislike that is brought about (among other things) by the fear of intermarriage, is used to justify the opposition to intermarriage. “It will make life hard for the couple and hard for the kids (they’ll be called half-breeds).” Catch 22. It’s like the army being defeated because there aren’t enough troops, and the troops won’t sign up because the army’s being defeated. Oppose interracial marriage, and you will help create a situation of racial disrespect. And then, since there is a situation of disrespect, it will be prudent to oppose interracial marriage.
Here is where Christ makes the difference. Christ does not call us to a prudent life, but to a God-centered, Christ-exalting, justice-advancing, counter-cultural, risk-taking life of love and courage. Will it be harder to be married to another race, and will it be harder for the kids? Maybe. Maybe not. But since when is that the way a Christian thinks? Life is hard. And the more you love the harder it gets.
It’s hard to take a child to the mission field. The risks are huge. It’s hard to take a child and move into a mixed neighborhood where he may be teased or ridiculed. It’s hard to help a child be a Christian in a secular world where his beliefs are mocked. It’s hard to bring children up with standards: “you will not dress like that, and you will not be out that late.” It’s hard to raise children when dad or mom dies or divorces. And that’s a real risk in any marriage. Whoever said that marrying and having children was to be trouble free? It’s one of the hardest things in the world. It just happens to be right and rewarding.
Christians are people who move toward need and truth and justice, not toward comfort and security. Life is hard. But God is good. And Christ is strong to help.
There is so much more to say about the challenges and blessings of interracial marriage. But we are out of time. I hope to write more. Suffice it say now by way of practical conclusion: at Bethlehem we will not underestimate the challenges of interracial marriage or transracial adoption (they go closely together). We will celebrate the beauty, and we will embrace the burden. Both will be good for us and good for the world and good for the glory of God.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
God and the tsunami: Theology in the headlines
By R. ALBERT MOHLER JR.Crosswalk.com
Published January 13, 2005
The tragedy unfolding in the Indian Ocean demands the world’s attention—and calls for a clear Christian response. In the aftermath of the disaster, some religious leaders suggested that God was simply unable to prevent the tsunamis that destroyed so many lives. Some secularists jumped on the opportunity to argue that the tragedy was further proof that God does not exist. Others simply blamed the earthquake and tidal waves on fate or claimed that God had sent the destruction as punishment for the victims’ sins.
How are we to deal with this? What approach will affirm the full measure of Christian truth while taking the disaster into honest account?
First, a faithful Christian response must affirm the true character and power of God. The Bible leaves no room for doubting either the omnipotence or the benevolence of God. The God of the Bible is not a passive bystander, nor a deistic Creator who has withdrawn from His creation and is simply watching it unfold. Just as creation itself was a trinitarian event, so also the triune God reigns over His creation. There is not one atom or molecule in the entire cosmos that is not under the sovereign rule of God. As the Christian tradition has always affirmed, God’s active lordship over the universe is the sole explanation for why the cosmos even holds together.
At the center of this universe is the fundamental fact of the supremacy of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul argued in Colossians 1:15-17, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Jesus Christ is the explanatory principle of the universe, and any effort to understand the creation apart from its Creator can lead only to confusion.
Liberal theology attempts to solve this problem by cutting God down to size and removing Him from the equation. Having established a truce with the naturalistic worldview, liberal theology simply accommodates itself to the secular temptation by denying God’s active and sovereign rule. In other words, God’s goodness is affirmed while His greatness is denied. Process theology does this by putting God within the created order, struggling along with His creation toward maturity. At the popular level, this theological approach was turned into a bestseller several years ago by Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. The rabbi simply asserted that God is doing the best He can under the circumstances. He would like to prevent tragedies like cancer, hurricanes, and earthquakes from happening—He is simply unable to do so.
This is not the God who revealed Himself in the Bible. God’s omnipotence is clearly revealed and unconditionally asserted. At the same time, God’s goodness is equally affirmed. Christians must point to these conjoined truths as the very basis for our confidence that life is worth living and that God is ultimately in control of the universe.
Second, we must avoid attempting to explain what God has not explained. In the end, the Christian knows that all suffering—indeed every experience of life—is meaningful. We understand that God is revealing Himself in every moment of our existence. We also know that all suffering is ultimately caused by sin. That’s about as politically incorrect an assertion as we can now imagine—but it is profoundly true. Even so, we must be very careful in how we present this truth. In the Gospel of John [John 9:1-7] Jesus and His disciples were confronted with a man blind from birth. His disciples, posing the conventional question of their day, asked Jesus: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus responded that it was neither the sin of this man nor the sin of his parents that explained his blindness; rather, “It was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” In other words, Jesus boldly explained that this man was born blind so that in the miracle Jesus was about to perform, his restored sight would be evidence of the dawning of the Kingdom and of the glory of God.
Armed with this knowledge, we must be very circumspect in assigning blame for natural evil. Were the people of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India more sinful than all others? Did God send this tsunami because of the paganisms so prevalent in Southeast Asia? Martin Kettle posed an interesting observation: “Certainly the giant waves generated by the quake made no attempt to differentiate between the religions of those whom it made its victims. Hindus were swept away in India, Muslims were carried off in Indonesia, Buddhists in Thailand. Visiting Christians and Jews received no special treatment either.”
We are in absolutely no position to argue that there is no link between human sin and this awful tragedy. The Bible makes clear that God sometimes does respond to specific sin with cataclysmic natural disaster. Just ask the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nevertheless, in the Bible’s book most centrally concerned with the issue of suffering, it is Job’s friends, who tried to offer detailed theological explanations, who end up looking foolish—and worse. Job himself was censured by God for “darkened counsel by words without knowledge.” In the end, Job is vindicated by God’s grace and mercy, and Job can only respond, “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know .... I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Job’s humility should serve as a model for our own.
As the Apostle Paul reminds us, the judgments of God are unsearchable and unfathomable [Romans 11:33]. Unless God reveals the purpose of His acts and the working of His will among us, we would do well to affirm His sovereignty and goodness, while holding back from placing blame on human agents for disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes.
At the same time, the Bible is clear that sin is the fundamental explanation for these awful disasters. Not sin that is immediately traceable to one individual or another, or even to a specific culture, but the sin that is so clearly indicted in the biblical account of the Fall. According to Genesis 3, Adam’s sin had cosmic implications and effects. The effects of sin are evident all around us, most clearly in the undeniable fact of death. This is why the redemptive work of God in Christ points to a new heaven and a new earth as coming realities. As Paul explains, “We know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” In Revelation 21, we are told of a new heaven and a new earth and of a day when God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of the redeemed, “and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
Third, Christians must respond with the love of Christ and the power of the Gospel. Jesus is our great example in responding to such crises. When confronted with the man born blind, Jesus healed the man and showed the glory of God. In response to the death of Lazarus, Jesus brought life out of death, even as He had mourned with Lazarus’ sisters.
While Christians are not empowered to perform similar miracles, we are called to be agents of Christ’s love and mercy. Following our Lord’s example, we must first mourn with those who mourn. The unspeakable grief and incalculable suffering experienced by literally millions of persons in Southeast Asia should prompt every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ to fervent prayer, concern, generosity, and sympathy.
Relief efforts are now under way, and Christians should be at the forefront of this response. Churches, denominations, and Christian agencies are sending support in the form of food, medical care, reconstruction programs, and other forms of humanitarian assistance. In offering concrete help and assistance, Christians are doing nothing less than following the express command and example of Jesus Christ.
Beyond this, Christians must seize this opportunity to confront this awful disaster with the life-changing power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christians are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked in the name of Christ. This is a powerful testimony, but acts of compassion must be accompanied by words of conviction. Our answer to this reality of unspeakable tragedy must be witness to the gospel of unfathomable power—the power to bring life out of death.
Furthermore, we must indeed point to this disaster as only a hint of the cataclysm that is yet to come—the holy judgment of God. On that day, the tidal waves of December 26, 2004, will be understood to have been one of the warnings all humanity should have heeded.
This is no time for Christian equivocation or cowardice. In the face of tragedy and suffering on this scale, we must answer with the full measure of Christian conviction and the undiluted truth of Christianity. In this life, we are not given all the answers to the questions we might pose, but God has given us all that we need to know in order to understand our peril and His provision for us in Christ.
So, let us weep with those who weep, pray for those who suffer, give and go in missions of mercy, and bear bold witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not only in Southeast Asia, but right here at home.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
By R. ALBERT MOHLER JR.Crosswalk.com
Published January 13, 2005
The tragedy unfolding in the Indian Ocean demands the world’s attention—and calls for a clear Christian response. In the aftermath of the disaster, some religious leaders suggested that God was simply unable to prevent the tsunamis that destroyed so many lives. Some secularists jumped on the opportunity to argue that the tragedy was further proof that God does not exist. Others simply blamed the earthquake and tidal waves on fate or claimed that God had sent the destruction as punishment for the victims’ sins.
How are we to deal with this? What approach will affirm the full measure of Christian truth while taking the disaster into honest account?
First, a faithful Christian response must affirm the true character and power of God. The Bible leaves no room for doubting either the omnipotence or the benevolence of God. The God of the Bible is not a passive bystander, nor a deistic Creator who has withdrawn from His creation and is simply watching it unfold. Just as creation itself was a trinitarian event, so also the triune God reigns over His creation. There is not one atom or molecule in the entire cosmos that is not under the sovereign rule of God. As the Christian tradition has always affirmed, God’s active lordship over the universe is the sole explanation for why the cosmos even holds together.
At the center of this universe is the fundamental fact of the supremacy of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul argued in Colossians 1:15-17, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Jesus Christ is the explanatory principle of the universe, and any effort to understand the creation apart from its Creator can lead only to confusion.
Liberal theology attempts to solve this problem by cutting God down to size and removing Him from the equation. Having established a truce with the naturalistic worldview, liberal theology simply accommodates itself to the secular temptation by denying God’s active and sovereign rule. In other words, God’s goodness is affirmed while His greatness is denied. Process theology does this by putting God within the created order, struggling along with His creation toward maturity. At the popular level, this theological approach was turned into a bestseller several years ago by Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. The rabbi simply asserted that God is doing the best He can under the circumstances. He would like to prevent tragedies like cancer, hurricanes, and earthquakes from happening—He is simply unable to do so.
This is not the God who revealed Himself in the Bible. God’s omnipotence is clearly revealed and unconditionally asserted. At the same time, God’s goodness is equally affirmed. Christians must point to these conjoined truths as the very basis for our confidence that life is worth living and that God is ultimately in control of the universe.
Second, we must avoid attempting to explain what God has not explained. In the end, the Christian knows that all suffering—indeed every experience of life—is meaningful. We understand that God is revealing Himself in every moment of our existence. We also know that all suffering is ultimately caused by sin. That’s about as politically incorrect an assertion as we can now imagine—but it is profoundly true. Even so, we must be very careful in how we present this truth. In the Gospel of John [John 9:1-7] Jesus and His disciples were confronted with a man blind from birth. His disciples, posing the conventional question of their day, asked Jesus: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus responded that it was neither the sin of this man nor the sin of his parents that explained his blindness; rather, “It was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” In other words, Jesus boldly explained that this man was born blind so that in the miracle Jesus was about to perform, his restored sight would be evidence of the dawning of the Kingdom and of the glory of God.
Armed with this knowledge, we must be very circumspect in assigning blame for natural evil. Were the people of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India more sinful than all others? Did God send this tsunami because of the paganisms so prevalent in Southeast Asia? Martin Kettle posed an interesting observation: “Certainly the giant waves generated by the quake made no attempt to differentiate between the religions of those whom it made its victims. Hindus were swept away in India, Muslims were carried off in Indonesia, Buddhists in Thailand. Visiting Christians and Jews received no special treatment either.”
We are in absolutely no position to argue that there is no link between human sin and this awful tragedy. The Bible makes clear that God sometimes does respond to specific sin with cataclysmic natural disaster. Just ask the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nevertheless, in the Bible’s book most centrally concerned with the issue of suffering, it is Job’s friends, who tried to offer detailed theological explanations, who end up looking foolish—and worse. Job himself was censured by God for “darkened counsel by words without knowledge.” In the end, Job is vindicated by God’s grace and mercy, and Job can only respond, “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know .... I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Job’s humility should serve as a model for our own.
As the Apostle Paul reminds us, the judgments of God are unsearchable and unfathomable [Romans 11:33]. Unless God reveals the purpose of His acts and the working of His will among us, we would do well to affirm His sovereignty and goodness, while holding back from placing blame on human agents for disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes.
At the same time, the Bible is clear that sin is the fundamental explanation for these awful disasters. Not sin that is immediately traceable to one individual or another, or even to a specific culture, but the sin that is so clearly indicted in the biblical account of the Fall. According to Genesis 3, Adam’s sin had cosmic implications and effects. The effects of sin are evident all around us, most clearly in the undeniable fact of death. This is why the redemptive work of God in Christ points to a new heaven and a new earth as coming realities. As Paul explains, “We know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” In Revelation 21, we are told of a new heaven and a new earth and of a day when God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of the redeemed, “and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
Third, Christians must respond with the love of Christ and the power of the Gospel. Jesus is our great example in responding to such crises. When confronted with the man born blind, Jesus healed the man and showed the glory of God. In response to the death of Lazarus, Jesus brought life out of death, even as He had mourned with Lazarus’ sisters.
While Christians are not empowered to perform similar miracles, we are called to be agents of Christ’s love and mercy. Following our Lord’s example, we must first mourn with those who mourn. The unspeakable grief and incalculable suffering experienced by literally millions of persons in Southeast Asia should prompt every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ to fervent prayer, concern, generosity, and sympathy.
Relief efforts are now under way, and Christians should be at the forefront of this response. Churches, denominations, and Christian agencies are sending support in the form of food, medical care, reconstruction programs, and other forms of humanitarian assistance. In offering concrete help and assistance, Christians are doing nothing less than following the express command and example of Jesus Christ.
Beyond this, Christians must seize this opportunity to confront this awful disaster with the life-changing power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christians are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked in the name of Christ. This is a powerful testimony, but acts of compassion must be accompanied by words of conviction. Our answer to this reality of unspeakable tragedy must be witness to the gospel of unfathomable power—the power to bring life out of death.
Furthermore, we must indeed point to this disaster as only a hint of the cataclysm that is yet to come—the holy judgment of God. On that day, the tidal waves of December 26, 2004, will be understood to have been one of the warnings all humanity should have heeded.
This is no time for Christian equivocation or cowardice. In the face of tragedy and suffering on this scale, we must answer with the full measure of Christian conviction and the undiluted truth of Christianity. In this life, we are not given all the answers to the questions we might pose, but God has given us all that we need to know in order to understand our peril and His provision for us in Christ.
So, let us weep with those who weep, pray for those who suffer, give and go in missions of mercy, and bear bold witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not only in Southeast Asia, but right here at home.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Here is a post I just posted in the new Yahoo group I just started called "The Reformed Coffeeshop" which you can check out at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thereformedcoffeeshop/
A few years ago, my wife and I were forced to leave a youth ministry
inside a church that we were members of due to doctrinal
differences. We subsequently left the church. Shortly thereafter,
I experienced a lack of trust with the church. I felt like Tom
Cruise's character, Maverick, in the movie Top Gun after he lost his
best friend and copilot. I had a great unwillingness to engage.
Throughout my time at that church, which was semi-Pelagian in its
view of Scripture, I grew spiritually as I studied reformed
theology. It took almost a year for us to find a new church, and
when we did, it was not reformed, but rather more seeker-sensitive
in its approach to the church. At the time, I was happy that I was
at least free to express my theological views in the church, but my
busy schedule with school held be back from getting as involved as
I'd like. I began to feel uncomfortable at church, not because they
were doing something wrong or sinful, but that uncomfortableness you
get when God is preparing change in your life. My wife soon
confessed to me that she was not growing spiritually in the church.
I made the decision for us to look for another church.
One of my young employees at work invited me to his church. As soon
as we walked in the doors, there was a great feeling of comfort,
like the comfort of coming home after a long trip. We have been
attending this church now for about a month and really enjoy it.
Although it would bill itself as nondenominational, it is more
Baptist that embraces the spiritual gifts. Such a strange mix for
such a theological mutt as myself seems to be what the doctor
ordered, Dr. God that is.
Going through such a difficult season of being without a church has
helped me realize just how important a church is and has brought to
life, in particular, the Pauline passages that talk about the body
of Christ and its members. What follows is an interesting article I
found on Christianity Today's website about church. I hope you
enjoy.
Dave M.
The Church—Why Bother?
There is no healthy relationship with Jesus without a relationship
to the church.
by Tim Stafford posted 01/06/2005 9:00 a.m.
The Barna Research Group reports that in the United States about 10
million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians have not been to
church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter.
(Barna defines "born-again" as those who say they have made a
personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important today,
and believe they will "go to heaven because I have confessed my sins
and have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.")
Nearly all born-agains say their spiritual life is very important,
but for 10 million of them, spiritual life has nothing to do with
church.
About a third of Americans are unchurched, according to Barna's
national data. Approximately 23 million of those—35 percent of the
unchurched—claim they have made a personal commitment to Jesus
Christ that is still important in their lives today.
I can easily put a face on that number. I think of Duncan (not his
real name), a guy I got to know through coaching kids' basketball.
When Duncan found out I was a Christian, he quietly let me know he
was one too.
"Julie and I met the Lord through a Bible study," he said. At the
time, he and Julie attended a Lutheran church. He stopped going when
they got divorced. I was invited to the service when he got
remarried, to Rene, in a lovely outdoor ceremony. I don't think the
Lutherans quite connected with Rene, though. It's been years since
the two of them have attended church.
Is Duncan a Christian? He thinks he is. He would even say that faith
is important to him. But like 23 million other Americans, faith
doesn't necessarily involve church.
Duncan is not a new phenomenon. We have always had people who kept
their distance from the church, even though they professed faith. We
have never, however, had them in such astonishing numbers. They
represent a significant trend, one that almost defines U.S.
religion.
I would call it Gnostic faith. For them the spirit is completely
separated from the body. They think your spirit can be with Jesus
Christ while your body goes its own way.
Not Funny to Luther
A joke: A man is rescued after 20 years on a desert island. His
rescuer is astonished to find that the castaway has built several
imposing structures.
"Wow!" the rescuer says. "What's that beautiful stone building
overlooking the bay?"
"That is my home," the castaway says.
"And what about that building over there, with the spires?"
"That," the castaway says, "is my church."
"But wait!" the rescuer says. "That building over there, with the
bell tower. What is that?"
"That is the church I used to belong to."
The joke expresses a certain spirit of U.S. church life. We
build 'em, and we quit 'em. Somebody will leave a church even if he
is the only member.
Until Martin Luther, the church was the immovable center of gravity.
The church had authority over individual Christians: to accept them
as they approached the church, to baptize them, teach them, and
provide them the means of grace.
In the third century, Cyprian, a North African bishop, wrote about a
doctrinally orthodox but schismatic bishop named Novatian. "We are
not interested in what he teaches, since he teaches outside the
Church. Whatever and whatsoever kind of man he is, he is not a
Christian who is not in Christ's Church. … He cannot have God for
his Father who has not the Church for his mother."
Cyprian's view—summed up in the slogan "No salvation outside the
church"—gathered strength in subsequent centuries as the church
countered heresies and divisions. It became the universal standard.
You were either inside the Catholic Church, Christ's body—or outside
of Christ.
Luther never intended to move that center of gravity. He wanted to
purify the church, not defy its authority. Nevertheless, his
protests led to schism. Lutheranism was followed by Calvinism, and
Anabaptists were not far behind. Methodists and Baptists appeared.
Once people started judging for themselves, it was hard to put an
end to it. The next thing you know we had 20,000 denominations
worldwide—and counting.
Consider three important steps in the transition.
1. In America's God, historian Mark Noll shows that colonial
ministers by and large supported the American Revolution, and with
it the republican political creed—opposition to inherited authority
and confidence in commonsense philosophy over tradition. ("We hold
these truths to be self-evident.")
This political philosophy has shaped American theology, Noll says.
Creeds and tradition became suspect, and commonsense reasoning—a man
and his Bible without deference to experts—could settle any
question.
As denominations sprouted up, they each argued that they had the
best understanding of the gospel, implicitly appealing to the
individual Christian to join them. Soon, the poles of power had
reversed. Once the individual hoped for acceptance by the church.
Now the church hoped for acceptance by the individual.
Funny thing is, many of those denominations today complain that
people aren't loyal to the church. Fuller Seminary president Richard
Mouw mentioned a Christian Reformed Church publication
criticizing "consumer religion." Yet the CRC, he pointed out, began
with a group of Reformed ministers who attracted people from other
parishes with their strict Calvinist orthodoxy. Mouw says, "It's
pretty odd for people in the CRC to say, 'We don't want people
shopping around.'"
2. The post-WWII generation saw an explosion of parachurch groups
like InterVarsity, Youth for Christ, and Campus Crusade. Many young
believers experienced their deepest fellowship, nurture, and mission
in organizations that said openly that they were not churches. Tod
Bolsinger, author of It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian, recalls
his days as a youth evangelist.
"I can remember saying to kids, 'There's no church to join, there's
nothing to commit to, this is only about a relationship with Jesus.'
Paul wouldn't preach that message. And the early church didn't."
3. Seeker-sensitive churches took up parachurch methodology and
applied it to church itself. A good church was judged, in part, by
whether it appealed to the tastes of those who did not belong to it.
I admire the evangelistic spirit behind this. It has attracted many
people into a church building who would probably not otherwise
attend. But I think it has exaggerated a sense that the church must
adapt to the general public, not the other way around. And thus many
unchurched people feel justified in believing that they are fine,
that it is the churches that have failed.
If 23 million Americans who claim Jesus as their Savior have no
discernible church connection, they are joined by many more who
attend church (between 40 percent and 50 percent of Americans do in
a given week, according to Barna) but sit loose in their commitment.
A good sermon, a moving worship experience, a helpful recovery group—
these they look at to find "a good church."
When they become dissatisfied, they move on. Their salvation, they
believe, is between them and God. The church is only one possible
resource.
The Bono Effect
In February 2003, Christianity Today featured Bono, lead singer for
the rock group U2, and his campaign for the church to become more
involved in the fight against AIDS. Bono emerged as a star example
of the unchurched Christian.
Having once been involved in a loosely structured Irish fellowship,
Bono now seldom goes to church. He does pray. He likes to say grace
at meals. He has a favorite Bible translation. But he doesn't want
to be pinned down.
"I just go where the life is, you know? Where I feel the Holy
Spirit," Bono told Christianity Today's reporter, Cathleen
Falsani. "If it's in the back of a Roman Catholic cathedral, in the
quietness and the incense, which suggest the mystery of God, of
God's presence, or in the bright lights of the revival tent, I just
go where I find life. I don't see denomination. I generally think
religion gets in the way of God."
In an editorial, "Bono's Thin Ecclesiology," CT appreciated Bono's
thirst for social justice, yet criticized his lack of churchly
commitment. Bono had voiced sharp criticisms of the church,
suggesting it was in danger of irrelevance if it failed to act on
AIDS. Wrote CT, "Any person can stand outside the church and
critique its obedience to the gospel. Part of God's call on a
Christian's life is to walk inside and die to self by relating to
other human beings, both in their fallenness and in their redeemed
glory."
Letters to the editor fiercely defended Bono. One pointed out that
U2 travels with a chaplain—isn't that equivalent to church? Another
suggested that Bono avoided church out of respect for other
Christians, since his fame would disrupt worship. A reader
complained that white evangelical churches were to blame for Bono's
alienation, since they have become more Republican than Christian.
Another reader whose lifelong illness kept her from church wrote, "I
do not believe not attending a regular church service … takes away a
person's beliefs, Christianity, or their salvation … . I have faith
that Jesus Christ is more fair than that."
All good points, as far as they go, except that Bono is not too sick
to attend church, could find an unpoliticized church if he tried,
and doesn't mention respect for worshipers as a reason for staying
away.
Clearly, Bono has chosen to keep his distance from the church, or at
least to stay in the shallow margins of the pond, where he can dash
for the shore at need.
He has plenty of company.
Wounded by the Church
I don't want to be hard on Bono and other unchurched Christians.
Churches are not always nice places. Some of the church fathers
used "No salvation outside the church" to stifle dissent and
maintain a monopoly on power. Even today a demand for church
commitment can be the basis for abusing people, using fear and
conformity to rule.
A significant minority of Christians feel wounded by the church,
perhaps by abuse that anyone would recognize, perhaps by abuse so
subtle others can't see it [see "The Church's Walking Wounded,"
March 2003]. Some find any institution difficult—they're habitual
loners. My friend Duncan is like that—an engineer who relates better
to machines than to people. His divorce left him groping for
handholds in church.
Philip Yancey's Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church
credits a diverse list of figures—from G.K. Chesterton to Martin
Luther King Jr.—with keeping his faith alive. Since all but one,
Mahatma Gandhi, are Christians, and the vast majority are loyal
church members, one might ask, "So the church enabled your faith to
survive the church?"
But Yancey's problem was not with the church defined as the sum
total of Christians. He struggled with what he experienced in actual
congregations. He needed another set of Christians to help him
redefine his faith, enabling it to survive the church so that he
could re-engage the church.
We do not need to condemn those alienated from the institutional
church, but to help them reconsider. By keeping away from church
commitments, they miss out on life essential.
What's missing
The hard questions come next: Just what do they miss?
They need not lack the Word of God. The Bible is available through
Barnes & Noble, and will undoubtedly continue to be published at a
profit even if all the Christians get raptured away. Radio and TV
offer excellent Bible teaching. So do books and magazines.
Fellowship? The internet offers chat rooms and Bible study groups.
Friends have told me their internet prayer support group reaches
more depth and is more dependable than anything they encounter in
the flesh.
Worship? Some people find that music CDs provide what they need.
Others find great inspiration watching Robert Schuller's Hour of
Power. Anyway, if you need a worship fix you can slip into any big
church and leave without bothering a soul.
Granted, you need a church to get baptized and to receive Communion.
Let's admit, though, that in many churches the sacraments are a
devalued commodity. The same for church discipline, only more so. If
you expect church to provide the bracing rule that purifies souls,
forget it in most places.
All that admitted, there still remain overwhelmingly strong reasons
for believing that committed participation in a local congregation
is essential to becoming what God wants us to be.
The sacraments or ordinances are not optional. They may not make
sense to 21st-century sensibilities—but so much the more reason to
pay attention to them. The sacraments are not a human tradition.
They began with Jesus himself. He himself was baptized, saying it
was proper "to fulfill all righteousness" (Matt. 3:15).
Offering bread and wine, he told his disciples, "Take and eat; this
is my body" (26:26). Churches may have devalued the sacraments, but
they still offer them. Nobody else does. How can you follow Jesus
and then … not follow him?
We need the regular rhythm of public worship, which began with the
disciples' gathering on the first day of the week. D.G. Hart,
referring to the Reformed liturgical tradition, says, "Being
reassured weekly that your sins are forgiven is a great comfort." He
suggests that anything less is too trivial to sustain us through the
great crises of life.
Business has found that the teleconference is no substitute for the
face-to-face meeting. Neither does singing along to a CD replace
singing in a choir of fellow worshipers. Whether we listen or pray
or sing, nothing substitutes for human presence in the public
performance of worship. The lively, physical reality of others
touches our nature as body-persons.
The author of Hebrews had something like this in mind when he
wrote, "And let us consider how we may spur one another one toward
love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together are some
are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another" (Heb.
10:24-25). Encouragement needs a face; it needs a body.
The church is the body of Christ, the tangible representation of
Jesus' life on earth. As the apostle Paul wrote to the quarreling
Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:21), "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I
don't need you!'" You could sum up his message this way: "If you
miss connecting to the body of Christ, you miss Christ."
Paul allows no vague representation of the church as the sum of all
Christians. The body analogy expresses Paul's belief that Christ is
available on earth in tangible form. These various gifts come in
human packages. To be "in Christ" we cannot stand off distant from
this body. We absolutely must serve other Christians—parts of his
body—in a continuous relationship. A body part detached from other
parts is clearly useless, and soon dead. It cannot experience
Christ, the head of the body.
We offer perilous advice when we urge people to "find Christ"
anywhere but in a local congregation. Can you imagine Paul arriving
in a city, finding the local congregation not to his taste and
simply staying away? For Paul, a Christian without his church is as
unthinkable as a human being with no relatives. A person may quarrel
with his kin, but he cannot leave them—they are his own flesh and
blood. So it is with the church. And furthermore, they are Jesus'
flesh and blood.
People need people. God's people need God's people in order to know
God. Life in Christ is a corporate affair. All God's promises were
made to God's people—plural. All the New Testament epistles address
Christians in churches. The Bible simply does not know of the
existence of an individual, isolated Christian.
Disappointment with Church
Yet it often happens that people go to church and get disappointed.
Sometimes the crisis seems petty—"The people weren't friendly"—and
sometimes horrific—"The pastor was sleeping with the organist."
Failing to find happiness, they move on, sometimes to another church
and sometimes to no church. Looking to find Christ, they meet
disappointment. The effort looks like a complete failure.
But this is a perspective Paul strongly contradicts in 2
Corinthians. He had been through a horrific, unnamed experience in
Asia—one bad enough to take him to the edge of death. Meanwhile he
is almost equally distressed by turmoil in the Corinth church.
Everything seems to go wrong. Yet Paul urgently explains that the
resurrection power of Jesus is experienced only in "death"—little
deaths and big deaths.
In our troubles, we experience God actually comforting us (1:4).
When we are weak and broken, the treasure we carry grows more
apparent (4:7). "For we who are alive are always being given over to
death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our
mortal body" (4:11).
Furthermore, sorrow brings repentance. The Corinthians felt sorrow
because of friction with Paul. Yet Paul sees it producing much good
in their lives. "See what this godly sorrow has produced in you:
what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what
indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness
to see justice done" (7:11).
2 Corinthians completely repudiates the American doctrine of the
pursuit of happiness. Instead Paul teaches as Jesus did: The way to
find your life is to lose it. The way to experience the life of
Jesus is to experience human weakness. You can, of course,
experience human weakness anywhere. When you experience it in
church, however, you are close to Christ himself—his resurrection
power showing in his own body.
A Mundane Story
A friend of mine (I'll call her Lillian) joined an ordinary church.
She felt comfortable there because the people were friendly. It was
a good fit for her and her family. Except for the pastor.
The pastor was not a bad man—in fact, he was a good man—but Lillian
realized that he held back the church. Early in his ministry he had
experienced an ugly split in a church he led. The incident had
marked him. At bottom he was afraid. He had to keep control, he
thought—and so he stifled any initiative. He feared putting himself
on the point, so he operated by manipulation.
A consistent pattern showed itself: a new lay leader would appear,
would optimistically rally the church toward new ministry, and then
eventually—worn out by the pastor's style of indirection and
manipulation—would quit the church and go elsewhere.
Whenever Lillian's out-of-town friends came to visit, they were
struck by the church's attractiveness. "We learned to hate what we
called the p word," Lillian says. "People were always telling us how
much potential the church showed."
Lillian sometimes thought that if the pastor had been a bad man, had
acted in an obviously sinful way, they might have gotten rid of him.
As it was, she realized he would never leave. He had at least a
decade before retirement. That began to seem like a life sentence.
She realized how bad her attitude had become when one Sunday the
pastor said he had an important personal announcement to make. She
sat up straight. Her heart began to beat hard, and her face flushed.
Was he going to announce that he was leaving for another church? She
could hardly breathe.
"The wonderful news I have to share with you," the pastor said with
unfeigned excitement, "is that thanks to the generosity of this
congregation I have a new carpet in my office."
Lillian wanted to cry.
But Lillian does not leave churches, unless it is for a much better
reason than frustration with a pastor's leadership style. She
stayed. She worked. She found places where she could make a
difference. And she suffered. She felt deeply the gap between what
her church should be and what it actually was. It took, indeed,
almost 20 long years before the pastor finally sank into retirement.
Looking back now, many years later still, Lillian finds that she
cannot think a negative thought about those years and her choice to
stay. It was like having a baby, she thinks. However difficult, she
would not trade the experience or the result. Something died in her,
but something also came to life. That something was Christ.
Somehow long-suffering is appropriate to a place and a people who
worship Jesus. "How could we experience him in his death," Lillian
wants to know, "if we could not tolerate some little deaths
ourselves?"
What We Must Preach
The church is the body of Christ, and it carries his wounds. To know
Christ is to share in the fellowship of his sufferings—even if the
suffering comes at the hands of the sinners who sit in the pews or
preach from the pulpit.
How can we communicate this to unchurched Christians? The only way I
know is to preach it. We need to tell them, even if it goes against
the grain of our culture. We need to tell them, even if talking so
frankly goes against our philosophy of outreach.
If people commit themselves to the church, they will undoubtedly
suffer. The church will fail them and frustrate them, because it is
a human institution. Yet it will also bless them, even as it fails.
A living, breathing congregation is the only place to live in a
healthy relationship to God. That is because it is the only place on
earth where Jesus has chosen to dwell. How can you enjoy the
benefits of Christ if you detach yourself from the living Christ?
Tim Stafford is a CT senior writer.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thereformedcoffeeshop/
A few years ago, my wife and I were forced to leave a youth ministry
inside a church that we were members of due to doctrinal
differences. We subsequently left the church. Shortly thereafter,
I experienced a lack of trust with the church. I felt like Tom
Cruise's character, Maverick, in the movie Top Gun after he lost his
best friend and copilot. I had a great unwillingness to engage.
Throughout my time at that church, which was semi-Pelagian in its
view of Scripture, I grew spiritually as I studied reformed
theology. It took almost a year for us to find a new church, and
when we did, it was not reformed, but rather more seeker-sensitive
in its approach to the church. At the time, I was happy that I was
at least free to express my theological views in the church, but my
busy schedule with school held be back from getting as involved as
I'd like. I began to feel uncomfortable at church, not because they
were doing something wrong or sinful, but that uncomfortableness you
get when God is preparing change in your life. My wife soon
confessed to me that she was not growing spiritually in the church.
I made the decision for us to look for another church.
One of my young employees at work invited me to his church. As soon
as we walked in the doors, there was a great feeling of comfort,
like the comfort of coming home after a long trip. We have been
attending this church now for about a month and really enjoy it.
Although it would bill itself as nondenominational, it is more
Baptist that embraces the spiritual gifts. Such a strange mix for
such a theological mutt as myself seems to be what the doctor
ordered, Dr. God that is.
Going through such a difficult season of being without a church has
helped me realize just how important a church is and has brought to
life, in particular, the Pauline passages that talk about the body
of Christ and its members. What follows is an interesting article I
found on Christianity Today's website about church. I hope you
enjoy.
Dave M.
The Church—Why Bother?
There is no healthy relationship with Jesus without a relationship
to the church.
by Tim Stafford posted 01/06/2005 9:00 a.m.
The Barna Research Group reports that in the United States about 10
million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians have not been to
church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter.
(Barna defines "born-again" as those who say they have made a
personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important today,
and believe they will "go to heaven because I have confessed my sins
and have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.")
Nearly all born-agains say their spiritual life is very important,
but for 10 million of them, spiritual life has nothing to do with
church.
About a third of Americans are unchurched, according to Barna's
national data. Approximately 23 million of those—35 percent of the
unchurched—claim they have made a personal commitment to Jesus
Christ that is still important in their lives today.
I can easily put a face on that number. I think of Duncan (not his
real name), a guy I got to know through coaching kids' basketball.
When Duncan found out I was a Christian, he quietly let me know he
was one too.
"Julie and I met the Lord through a Bible study," he said. At the
time, he and Julie attended a Lutheran church. He stopped going when
they got divorced. I was invited to the service when he got
remarried, to Rene, in a lovely outdoor ceremony. I don't think the
Lutherans quite connected with Rene, though. It's been years since
the two of them have attended church.
Is Duncan a Christian? He thinks he is. He would even say that faith
is important to him. But like 23 million other Americans, faith
doesn't necessarily involve church.
Duncan is not a new phenomenon. We have always had people who kept
their distance from the church, even though they professed faith. We
have never, however, had them in such astonishing numbers. They
represent a significant trend, one that almost defines U.S.
religion.
I would call it Gnostic faith. For them the spirit is completely
separated from the body. They think your spirit can be with Jesus
Christ while your body goes its own way.
Not Funny to Luther
A joke: A man is rescued after 20 years on a desert island. His
rescuer is astonished to find that the castaway has built several
imposing structures.
"Wow!" the rescuer says. "What's that beautiful stone building
overlooking the bay?"
"That is my home," the castaway says.
"And what about that building over there, with the spires?"
"That," the castaway says, "is my church."
"But wait!" the rescuer says. "That building over there, with the
bell tower. What is that?"
"That is the church I used to belong to."
The joke expresses a certain spirit of U.S. church life. We
build 'em, and we quit 'em. Somebody will leave a church even if he
is the only member.
Until Martin Luther, the church was the immovable center of gravity.
The church had authority over individual Christians: to accept them
as they approached the church, to baptize them, teach them, and
provide them the means of grace.
In the third century, Cyprian, a North African bishop, wrote about a
doctrinally orthodox but schismatic bishop named Novatian. "We are
not interested in what he teaches, since he teaches outside the
Church. Whatever and whatsoever kind of man he is, he is not a
Christian who is not in Christ's Church. … He cannot have God for
his Father who has not the Church for his mother."
Cyprian's view—summed up in the slogan "No salvation outside the
church"—gathered strength in subsequent centuries as the church
countered heresies and divisions. It became the universal standard.
You were either inside the Catholic Church, Christ's body—or outside
of Christ.
Luther never intended to move that center of gravity. He wanted to
purify the church, not defy its authority. Nevertheless, his
protests led to schism. Lutheranism was followed by Calvinism, and
Anabaptists were not far behind. Methodists and Baptists appeared.
Once people started judging for themselves, it was hard to put an
end to it. The next thing you know we had 20,000 denominations
worldwide—and counting.
Consider three important steps in the transition.
1. In America's God, historian Mark Noll shows that colonial
ministers by and large supported the American Revolution, and with
it the republican political creed—opposition to inherited authority
and confidence in commonsense philosophy over tradition. ("We hold
these truths to be self-evident.")
This political philosophy has shaped American theology, Noll says.
Creeds and tradition became suspect, and commonsense reasoning—a man
and his Bible without deference to experts—could settle any
question.
As denominations sprouted up, they each argued that they had the
best understanding of the gospel, implicitly appealing to the
individual Christian to join them. Soon, the poles of power had
reversed. Once the individual hoped for acceptance by the church.
Now the church hoped for acceptance by the individual.
Funny thing is, many of those denominations today complain that
people aren't loyal to the church. Fuller Seminary president Richard
Mouw mentioned a Christian Reformed Church publication
criticizing "consumer religion." Yet the CRC, he pointed out, began
with a group of Reformed ministers who attracted people from other
parishes with their strict Calvinist orthodoxy. Mouw says, "It's
pretty odd for people in the CRC to say, 'We don't want people
shopping around.'"
2. The post-WWII generation saw an explosion of parachurch groups
like InterVarsity, Youth for Christ, and Campus Crusade. Many young
believers experienced their deepest fellowship, nurture, and mission
in organizations that said openly that they were not churches. Tod
Bolsinger, author of It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian, recalls
his days as a youth evangelist.
"I can remember saying to kids, 'There's no church to join, there's
nothing to commit to, this is only about a relationship with Jesus.'
Paul wouldn't preach that message. And the early church didn't."
3. Seeker-sensitive churches took up parachurch methodology and
applied it to church itself. A good church was judged, in part, by
whether it appealed to the tastes of those who did not belong to it.
I admire the evangelistic spirit behind this. It has attracted many
people into a church building who would probably not otherwise
attend. But I think it has exaggerated a sense that the church must
adapt to the general public, not the other way around. And thus many
unchurched people feel justified in believing that they are fine,
that it is the churches that have failed.
If 23 million Americans who claim Jesus as their Savior have no
discernible church connection, they are joined by many more who
attend church (between 40 percent and 50 percent of Americans do in
a given week, according to Barna) but sit loose in their commitment.
A good sermon, a moving worship experience, a helpful recovery group—
these they look at to find "a good church."
When they become dissatisfied, they move on. Their salvation, they
believe, is between them and God. The church is only one possible
resource.
The Bono Effect
In February 2003, Christianity Today featured Bono, lead singer for
the rock group U2, and his campaign for the church to become more
involved in the fight against AIDS. Bono emerged as a star example
of the unchurched Christian.
Having once been involved in a loosely structured Irish fellowship,
Bono now seldom goes to church. He does pray. He likes to say grace
at meals. He has a favorite Bible translation. But he doesn't want
to be pinned down.
"I just go where the life is, you know? Where I feel the Holy
Spirit," Bono told Christianity Today's reporter, Cathleen
Falsani. "If it's in the back of a Roman Catholic cathedral, in the
quietness and the incense, which suggest the mystery of God, of
God's presence, or in the bright lights of the revival tent, I just
go where I find life. I don't see denomination. I generally think
religion gets in the way of God."
In an editorial, "Bono's Thin Ecclesiology," CT appreciated Bono's
thirst for social justice, yet criticized his lack of churchly
commitment. Bono had voiced sharp criticisms of the church,
suggesting it was in danger of irrelevance if it failed to act on
AIDS. Wrote CT, "Any person can stand outside the church and
critique its obedience to the gospel. Part of God's call on a
Christian's life is to walk inside and die to self by relating to
other human beings, both in their fallenness and in their redeemed
glory."
Letters to the editor fiercely defended Bono. One pointed out that
U2 travels with a chaplain—isn't that equivalent to church? Another
suggested that Bono avoided church out of respect for other
Christians, since his fame would disrupt worship. A reader
complained that white evangelical churches were to blame for Bono's
alienation, since they have become more Republican than Christian.
Another reader whose lifelong illness kept her from church wrote, "I
do not believe not attending a regular church service … takes away a
person's beliefs, Christianity, or their salvation … . I have faith
that Jesus Christ is more fair than that."
All good points, as far as they go, except that Bono is not too sick
to attend church, could find an unpoliticized church if he tried,
and doesn't mention respect for worshipers as a reason for staying
away.
Clearly, Bono has chosen to keep his distance from the church, or at
least to stay in the shallow margins of the pond, where he can dash
for the shore at need.
He has plenty of company.
Wounded by the Church
I don't want to be hard on Bono and other unchurched Christians.
Churches are not always nice places. Some of the church fathers
used "No salvation outside the church" to stifle dissent and
maintain a monopoly on power. Even today a demand for church
commitment can be the basis for abusing people, using fear and
conformity to rule.
A significant minority of Christians feel wounded by the church,
perhaps by abuse that anyone would recognize, perhaps by abuse so
subtle others can't see it [see "The Church's Walking Wounded,"
March 2003]. Some find any institution difficult—they're habitual
loners. My friend Duncan is like that—an engineer who relates better
to machines than to people. His divorce left him groping for
handholds in church.
Philip Yancey's Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church
credits a diverse list of figures—from G.K. Chesterton to Martin
Luther King Jr.—with keeping his faith alive. Since all but one,
Mahatma Gandhi, are Christians, and the vast majority are loyal
church members, one might ask, "So the church enabled your faith to
survive the church?"
But Yancey's problem was not with the church defined as the sum
total of Christians. He struggled with what he experienced in actual
congregations. He needed another set of Christians to help him
redefine his faith, enabling it to survive the church so that he
could re-engage the church.
We do not need to condemn those alienated from the institutional
church, but to help them reconsider. By keeping away from church
commitments, they miss out on life essential.
What's missing
The hard questions come next: Just what do they miss?
They need not lack the Word of God. The Bible is available through
Barnes & Noble, and will undoubtedly continue to be published at a
profit even if all the Christians get raptured away. Radio and TV
offer excellent Bible teaching. So do books and magazines.
Fellowship? The internet offers chat rooms and Bible study groups.
Friends have told me their internet prayer support group reaches
more depth and is more dependable than anything they encounter in
the flesh.
Worship? Some people find that music CDs provide what they need.
Others find great inspiration watching Robert Schuller's Hour of
Power. Anyway, if you need a worship fix you can slip into any big
church and leave without bothering a soul.
Granted, you need a church to get baptized and to receive Communion.
Let's admit, though, that in many churches the sacraments are a
devalued commodity. The same for church discipline, only more so. If
you expect church to provide the bracing rule that purifies souls,
forget it in most places.
All that admitted, there still remain overwhelmingly strong reasons
for believing that committed participation in a local congregation
is essential to becoming what God wants us to be.
The sacraments or ordinances are not optional. They may not make
sense to 21st-century sensibilities—but so much the more reason to
pay attention to them. The sacraments are not a human tradition.
They began with Jesus himself. He himself was baptized, saying it
was proper "to fulfill all righteousness" (Matt. 3:15).
Offering bread and wine, he told his disciples, "Take and eat; this
is my body" (26:26). Churches may have devalued the sacraments, but
they still offer them. Nobody else does. How can you follow Jesus
and then … not follow him?
We need the regular rhythm of public worship, which began with the
disciples' gathering on the first day of the week. D.G. Hart,
referring to the Reformed liturgical tradition, says, "Being
reassured weekly that your sins are forgiven is a great comfort." He
suggests that anything less is too trivial to sustain us through the
great crises of life.
Business has found that the teleconference is no substitute for the
face-to-face meeting. Neither does singing along to a CD replace
singing in a choir of fellow worshipers. Whether we listen or pray
or sing, nothing substitutes for human presence in the public
performance of worship. The lively, physical reality of others
touches our nature as body-persons.
The author of Hebrews had something like this in mind when he
wrote, "And let us consider how we may spur one another one toward
love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together are some
are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another" (Heb.
10:24-25). Encouragement needs a face; it needs a body.
The church is the body of Christ, the tangible representation of
Jesus' life on earth. As the apostle Paul wrote to the quarreling
Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:21), "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I
don't need you!'" You could sum up his message this way: "If you
miss connecting to the body of Christ, you miss Christ."
Paul allows no vague representation of the church as the sum of all
Christians. The body analogy expresses Paul's belief that Christ is
available on earth in tangible form. These various gifts come in
human packages. To be "in Christ" we cannot stand off distant from
this body. We absolutely must serve other Christians—parts of his
body—in a continuous relationship. A body part detached from other
parts is clearly useless, and soon dead. It cannot experience
Christ, the head of the body.
We offer perilous advice when we urge people to "find Christ"
anywhere but in a local congregation. Can you imagine Paul arriving
in a city, finding the local congregation not to his taste and
simply staying away? For Paul, a Christian without his church is as
unthinkable as a human being with no relatives. A person may quarrel
with his kin, but he cannot leave them—they are his own flesh and
blood. So it is with the church. And furthermore, they are Jesus'
flesh and blood.
People need people. God's people need God's people in order to know
God. Life in Christ is a corporate affair. All God's promises were
made to God's people—plural. All the New Testament epistles address
Christians in churches. The Bible simply does not know of the
existence of an individual, isolated Christian.
Disappointment with Church
Yet it often happens that people go to church and get disappointed.
Sometimes the crisis seems petty—"The people weren't friendly"—and
sometimes horrific—"The pastor was sleeping with the organist."
Failing to find happiness, they move on, sometimes to another church
and sometimes to no church. Looking to find Christ, they meet
disappointment. The effort looks like a complete failure.
But this is a perspective Paul strongly contradicts in 2
Corinthians. He had been through a horrific, unnamed experience in
Asia—one bad enough to take him to the edge of death. Meanwhile he
is almost equally distressed by turmoil in the Corinth church.
Everything seems to go wrong. Yet Paul urgently explains that the
resurrection power of Jesus is experienced only in "death"—little
deaths and big deaths.
In our troubles, we experience God actually comforting us (1:4).
When we are weak and broken, the treasure we carry grows more
apparent (4:7). "For we who are alive are always being given over to
death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our
mortal body" (4:11).
Furthermore, sorrow brings repentance. The Corinthians felt sorrow
because of friction with Paul. Yet Paul sees it producing much good
in their lives. "See what this godly sorrow has produced in you:
what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what
indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness
to see justice done" (7:11).
2 Corinthians completely repudiates the American doctrine of the
pursuit of happiness. Instead Paul teaches as Jesus did: The way to
find your life is to lose it. The way to experience the life of
Jesus is to experience human weakness. You can, of course,
experience human weakness anywhere. When you experience it in
church, however, you are close to Christ himself—his resurrection
power showing in his own body.
A Mundane Story
A friend of mine (I'll call her Lillian) joined an ordinary church.
She felt comfortable there because the people were friendly. It was
a good fit for her and her family. Except for the pastor.
The pastor was not a bad man—in fact, he was a good man—but Lillian
realized that he held back the church. Early in his ministry he had
experienced an ugly split in a church he led. The incident had
marked him. At bottom he was afraid. He had to keep control, he
thought—and so he stifled any initiative. He feared putting himself
on the point, so he operated by manipulation.
A consistent pattern showed itself: a new lay leader would appear,
would optimistically rally the church toward new ministry, and then
eventually—worn out by the pastor's style of indirection and
manipulation—would quit the church and go elsewhere.
Whenever Lillian's out-of-town friends came to visit, they were
struck by the church's attractiveness. "We learned to hate what we
called the p word," Lillian says. "People were always telling us how
much potential the church showed."
Lillian sometimes thought that if the pastor had been a bad man, had
acted in an obviously sinful way, they might have gotten rid of him.
As it was, she realized he would never leave. He had at least a
decade before retirement. That began to seem like a life sentence.
She realized how bad her attitude had become when one Sunday the
pastor said he had an important personal announcement to make. She
sat up straight. Her heart began to beat hard, and her face flushed.
Was he going to announce that he was leaving for another church? She
could hardly breathe.
"The wonderful news I have to share with you," the pastor said with
unfeigned excitement, "is that thanks to the generosity of this
congregation I have a new carpet in my office."
Lillian wanted to cry.
But Lillian does not leave churches, unless it is for a much better
reason than frustration with a pastor's leadership style. She
stayed. She worked. She found places where she could make a
difference. And she suffered. She felt deeply the gap between what
her church should be and what it actually was. It took, indeed,
almost 20 long years before the pastor finally sank into retirement.
Looking back now, many years later still, Lillian finds that she
cannot think a negative thought about those years and her choice to
stay. It was like having a baby, she thinks. However difficult, she
would not trade the experience or the result. Something died in her,
but something also came to life. That something was Christ.
Somehow long-suffering is appropriate to a place and a people who
worship Jesus. "How could we experience him in his death," Lillian
wants to know, "if we could not tolerate some little deaths
ourselves?"
What We Must Preach
The church is the body of Christ, and it carries his wounds. To know
Christ is to share in the fellowship of his sufferings—even if the
suffering comes at the hands of the sinners who sit in the pews or
preach from the pulpit.
How can we communicate this to unchurched Christians? The only way I
know is to preach it. We need to tell them, even if it goes against
the grain of our culture. We need to tell them, even if talking so
frankly goes against our philosophy of outreach.
If people commit themselves to the church, they will undoubtedly
suffer. The church will fail them and frustrate them, because it is
a human institution. Yet it will also bless them, even as it fails.
A living, breathing congregation is the only place to live in a
healthy relationship to God. That is because it is the only place on
earth where Jesus has chosen to dwell. How can you enjoy the
benefits of Christ if you detach yourself from the living Christ?
Tim Stafford is a CT senior writer.
Many of you know that my wife suffers from Ulcerative Colitis. I just found out about some exciting legislation that President Bush signed at the end of November. Here is the news story:
PRESIDENT BUSH SIGNS HISTORIC LEGISLATION ON INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE INTO LAW
Posted on Tuesday, November 30,2004.
Today, President George W. Bush signed into law the first piece of legislation focused on Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are chronic disorders of the gastrointestinal tract which afflict approximately 1 million Americans (100,000 or 10% of whom are children under the age of 18). IBD can cause severe diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, and rectal bleeding. Complications include; arthritis, osteoporosis, anemia, liver disease, and colon cancer. IBD represents a major cause of morbidity from digestive illness, and although it is not fatal, IBD is often devastating.
The legislation signed by the President today is entitled the "Research Review Act" and requires the following:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to report to Congress by May 1, 2005 on the status of its inflammatory bowel disease epidemiology study. The goal of this landmark study is to gain a better understanding of the true prevalence of the disease in the U.S., and the unique demographic characteristics of the IBD patient population. This information will yield invaluable clues regarding the role that environmental and genetic factors play in the development of the disease.
The Government Accountability Office to submit a report to Congress on the coverage standards of Medicare and Medicaid for therapies that IBD patients need to maintain their health (i.e., ostomy supplies, parenteral nutrition, enteral nutrition, medically necessary food products, and FDA approved therapies for Crohn's and ulcerative colitis). The study will take into consideration the appropriate outpatient or home health care settings. This report will help identify gaps in Medicare/Medicaid coverage that impact the health and quality of life for IBD patients, and empower the IBD community to pursue appropriate changes in reimbursement policy.
The Government Accountability Office to report to Congress on the challenges IBD patients encounter when applying for Social Security Disability coverage, including recommendations for improving the application process for IBD patients. The information yielded from this study will enable the IBD community to work with Congress and the Social Security Administration to pursue improvements in disability coverage for patients.
During the 108th Congress, the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America and its National IBD Advocacy Network, which represents patients, families, and friends nationwide, dedicated themselves to advancing legislation on IBD. The three provisions on IBD enacted as part of the "Research Review Act" today were taken directly from legislation entitled the "Inflammatory Bowel Disease Act." Working in partnership with the members of Congress who introduced the "IBD Act", CCFA helped secure 184 co-sponsors for the bill in the House, and 37 co-sponsors in the Senate. The tremendous bipartisan support for this legislation in the House and Senate contributed greatly to the passage and enactment of the "Research Review Act."
CCFA expresses its deep appreciation to President Bush and the following members of Congress who championed the cause of IBD patients on Capitol Hill; Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Congresswoman Sue Kelly (R-NY), Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), Congressman Michael Bilirakis (R-FL), Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
CCFA encourages all members of the IBD community to thank their representatives and senators for supporting passage of the Research Review Act. For information regarding Congress, please visit the Congressional Web site (thomas.loc.gov)
PRESIDENT BUSH SIGNS HISTORIC LEGISLATION ON INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE INTO LAW
Posted on Tuesday, November 30,2004.
Today, President George W. Bush signed into law the first piece of legislation focused on Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are chronic disorders of the gastrointestinal tract which afflict approximately 1 million Americans (100,000 or 10% of whom are children under the age of 18). IBD can cause severe diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, and rectal bleeding. Complications include; arthritis, osteoporosis, anemia, liver disease, and colon cancer. IBD represents a major cause of morbidity from digestive illness, and although it is not fatal, IBD is often devastating.
The legislation signed by the President today is entitled the "Research Review Act" and requires the following:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to report to Congress by May 1, 2005 on the status of its inflammatory bowel disease epidemiology study. The goal of this landmark study is to gain a better understanding of the true prevalence of the disease in the U.S., and the unique demographic characteristics of the IBD patient population. This information will yield invaluable clues regarding the role that environmental and genetic factors play in the development of the disease.
The Government Accountability Office to submit a report to Congress on the coverage standards of Medicare and Medicaid for therapies that IBD patients need to maintain their health (i.e., ostomy supplies, parenteral nutrition, enteral nutrition, medically necessary food products, and FDA approved therapies for Crohn's and ulcerative colitis). The study will take into consideration the appropriate outpatient or home health care settings. This report will help identify gaps in Medicare/Medicaid coverage that impact the health and quality of life for IBD patients, and empower the IBD community to pursue appropriate changes in reimbursement policy.
The Government Accountability Office to report to Congress on the challenges IBD patients encounter when applying for Social Security Disability coverage, including recommendations for improving the application process for IBD patients. The information yielded from this study will enable the IBD community to work with Congress and the Social Security Administration to pursue improvements in disability coverage for patients.
During the 108th Congress, the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America and its National IBD Advocacy Network, which represents patients, families, and friends nationwide, dedicated themselves to advancing legislation on IBD. The three provisions on IBD enacted as part of the "Research Review Act" today were taken directly from legislation entitled the "Inflammatory Bowel Disease Act." Working in partnership with the members of Congress who introduced the "IBD Act", CCFA helped secure 184 co-sponsors for the bill in the House, and 37 co-sponsors in the Senate. The tremendous bipartisan support for this legislation in the House and Senate contributed greatly to the passage and enactment of the "Research Review Act."
CCFA expresses its deep appreciation to President Bush and the following members of Congress who championed the cause of IBD patients on Capitol Hill; Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Congresswoman Sue Kelly (R-NY), Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), Congressman Michael Bilirakis (R-FL), Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
CCFA encourages all members of the IBD community to thank their representatives and senators for supporting passage of the Research Review Act. For information regarding Congress, please visit the Congressional Web site (thomas.loc.gov)
Friday, January 07, 2005
Tsunami and Repentance
January 5, 2005 — Fresh Words Edition
By John Piper
From pulpits to news programs, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, the message of the tsunami was missed. It is a double grief when lives are lost and lessons are not learned. Every deadly calamity is a merciful call from God for the living to repent. “Weep with those who weep,” the Bible says. Yes, but let us also weep for our own rebellion against the living God. Lesson one: weep for the dead. Lesson two: weep for yourselves.
Every deadly calamity is a merciful call from God for the living to repent. That was Jesus’ stunning statement to those who brought him news of calamity. The tower of Siloam had fallen, and 18 people were crushed. What about this, Jesus? they asked. He answered, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4-5).
The point of every deadly calamity is this: Repent. Let our hearts be broken that God means so little to us. Grieve that he is a whipping boy to be blamed for pain, but not praised for pleasure. Lament that he makes headlines only when man mocks his power, but no headlines for ten thousand days of wrath withheld. Let us rend our hearts that we love life more than we love Jesus Christ. Let us cast ourselves on the mercy of our Maker. He offers it through the death and resurrection of his Son.
This is the point of all pleasure and all pain. Pleasure says: “God is like this, only better; don’t make an idol out of me. I only point.” Pain says: “What sin deserves is like this, only worse; don’t take offense at me. I am a merciful warning.”
But the topless sunbathers amid the tsunami aftermath in Phuket, Thailand did not get the message. Neither did the man who barely escaped the mighty wave with the help of a jungle gym and palm-leaf roof. He concluded, “I am left with an immense respect for the power of nature.” He missed it. The point is: reverence for the Creator, not respect for creation.
Writing in the New York Times, David Brooks rightly scorns the celebration of nature’s might: “When Thoreau [celebrates] savage wildness of nature, he sounds, this week, like a boy who has seen a war movie and thinks he has experienced the glory of combat.” But Brooks sees no message in the calamity: “This is a moment to feel deeply bad, for the dead and for those of us who have no explanation.”
David Hart, writing in the Wall Street Journal, goes beyond Brooks and pronounces: “No Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God’s inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God’s good ends.”
These responses are foreseen in Scripture: “I killed your young men with the sword . . . yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord” (Amos 4:10). “They cursedthe name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory” (Revelation 16:9).
Contrary to Hart’s pronouncement, the Christian Scriptures do indeed license us to speak of God’s “inscrutable counsels” and how he works in all things for mysterious good ends. To call this banal and blasphemous is like a bird calling the wind under its wing wicked.
Jesus said that the minutest event in nature is under the control of God. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29). He said this to give hope to those who would be killed for his name.
He himself stood on the sea and stopped the waves with a single word (Mark 4:39). Even if Nature or Satan unleashed the deadly tidal wave, one word from Jesus would have stopped it. He did not speak it. This means there is design in this suffering. And all his designs are wise and just and good.
One of his designs is my repentance. Therefore I will not put God on trial. That is my place. And only because of Christ will the waves that one day carry me away bring me safely to his side. Come. Repentance is good place to be.
January 5, 2005 — Fresh Words Edition
By John Piper
From pulpits to news programs, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, the message of the tsunami was missed. It is a double grief when lives are lost and lessons are not learned. Every deadly calamity is a merciful call from God for the living to repent. “Weep with those who weep,” the Bible says. Yes, but let us also weep for our own rebellion against the living God. Lesson one: weep for the dead. Lesson two: weep for yourselves.
Every deadly calamity is a merciful call from God for the living to repent. That was Jesus’ stunning statement to those who brought him news of calamity. The tower of Siloam had fallen, and 18 people were crushed. What about this, Jesus? they asked. He answered, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4-5).
The point of every deadly calamity is this: Repent. Let our hearts be broken that God means so little to us. Grieve that he is a whipping boy to be blamed for pain, but not praised for pleasure. Lament that he makes headlines only when man mocks his power, but no headlines for ten thousand days of wrath withheld. Let us rend our hearts that we love life more than we love Jesus Christ. Let us cast ourselves on the mercy of our Maker. He offers it through the death and resurrection of his Son.
This is the point of all pleasure and all pain. Pleasure says: “God is like this, only better; don’t make an idol out of me. I only point.” Pain says: “What sin deserves is like this, only worse; don’t take offense at me. I am a merciful warning.”
But the topless sunbathers amid the tsunami aftermath in Phuket, Thailand did not get the message. Neither did the man who barely escaped the mighty wave with the help of a jungle gym and palm-leaf roof. He concluded, “I am left with an immense respect for the power of nature.” He missed it. The point is: reverence for the Creator, not respect for creation.
Writing in the New York Times, David Brooks rightly scorns the celebration of nature’s might: “When Thoreau [celebrates] savage wildness of nature, he sounds, this week, like a boy who has seen a war movie and thinks he has experienced the glory of combat.” But Brooks sees no message in the calamity: “This is a moment to feel deeply bad, for the dead and for those of us who have no explanation.”
David Hart, writing in the Wall Street Journal, goes beyond Brooks and pronounces: “No Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God’s inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God’s good ends.”
These responses are foreseen in Scripture: “I killed your young men with the sword . . . yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord” (Amos 4:10). “They cursedthe name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory” (Revelation 16:9).
Contrary to Hart’s pronouncement, the Christian Scriptures do indeed license us to speak of God’s “inscrutable counsels” and how he works in all things for mysterious good ends. To call this banal and blasphemous is like a bird calling the wind under its wing wicked.
Jesus said that the minutest event in nature is under the control of God. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29). He said this to give hope to those who would be killed for his name.
He himself stood on the sea and stopped the waves with a single word (Mark 4:39). Even if Nature or Satan unleashed the deadly tidal wave, one word from Jesus would have stopped it. He did not speak it. This means there is design in this suffering. And all his designs are wise and just and good.
One of his designs is my repentance. Therefore I will not put God on trial. That is my place. And only because of Christ will the waves that one day carry me away bring me safely to his side. Come. Repentance is good place to be.
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