Kandice's foot after the accident 

Kandice's face after the accident 

Roy Moore: 'We Have No Morality Without an Acknowledgment of God'
As the Supreme Court decides how to rule after hearing arguments over the Ten Commandments, the former chief justice of Alabama's highest court says removing government religious monuments are like getting a ticket for driving 50 mph in a 55 zone.
posted 03/07/2005 09:30 a.m.

After being removed from his post as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to remove a six-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments, Roy Moore has taken his fight across the country. He says not only are monuments of the Ten Commandments constitutional, but some acknowledgment of God is necessary for the survival of the constitution. CT online assistant editor Rob Moll spoke with Moore the day after the Supreme Court heard arguments over two Ten Commandment cases, in Texas and Kentucky.
You had representatives attending the oral arguments on Wednesday. Do you have any initial thoughts about the case?
Both of the defendants in these cases, defending the Ten Commandments, are doing so with secular humanism, with our own history, arguing that the Ten Commandments are not relevant today. It's in a museum setting. It's the smallest of the monuments. They make every effort to distance themselves from God, and that is the danger that people do not realize. I hope people will wake up to this.
What we've got to watch here is not what they do, but what they say. If they leave the Ten Commandments or if they take the Ten Commandments and they base their ruling on secular humanism, that is a devastating precedent. It's basically saying you can do something as long as you don't profess it, as long as you don't believe it. That is the danger.
The Court refused my case because we said the monument acknowledges the sovereign God, which is permissible under the First Amendment. They then take these two cases that are argued on the basis of a denial of God's sovereignty, that it's a matter of history. The people that are arguing that position think they're doing right, but I would submit to you that it's a very wrong thing to do because you're bowing down to government.
That is the argument in other cases, that as long as the Ten Commandments or "under God" doesn't mean anything religious, then it's permissible.
One of the most offensive arguments that I've found was in one of the briefs said that any reasonable observer would recognize that this monument is in the town where Madalyn Murray O'Hair lived. During all that controversy, it was a hotbed of litigation, and it was never contested. That argument says that because the prime atheist in our country didn't protest, it should be okay. And that's terrible.
Because so many Christians make historical arguments for the Ten Commandments or other monuments, it may seem strange to hear you say that the government must acknowledge God. What is the legal basis for your argument?
It's the very purpose of the First Amendment. It's what we have the First Amendment for. That is still the right we have, to acknowledge God. It protected us from federal government interference. And that's exactly what's happening. The federal courts are saying we cannot acknowledge God. But they have no jurisdiction. It's the fundamental organic law of our country. God. God's law was the basis which entitles us to have a Constitution and a country.
The court is not even interpreting the First Amendment properly, despite the fact that they have no jurisdiction. When they do have jurisdiction they rule by their feelings, not by law. To properly interpret a law you have to interpret the words in the statute or constitutional amendment. That is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," being the first part of the First Amendment. The courts are not even trying to do that. They're ignoring the words of the statute and ruling by their own feelings and predilections with meaningless tests that have no relationship to law—the coercion test, the endorsement test, and the historical analysis test.
To make that clear, I use an example. Say you were stopped for speeding and given a ticket and go to court in a municipality, and the judge said, "I'm going to have to put you in jail for six months and fine you $5,000." You say, "Why?" "You were speeding." You say, "Judge, I was going 50 miles per hour, the speed limit was 55."
He would stop you and say, "Wait a minute, we can't address the definition of speeding or what speeding is. From the reasonable observer standing on the corner, they said you were going faster than the other cars. It would be endorsing speeding if we allowed this to occur."
You would say, "Judge, I was going 50 and the speed limit is 55."
He says, "No we can't define the speed limit. And furthermore you coerced other drivers to pull over because they weren't going as fast as you."
You say, "That's not speeding. We've got to look at what the speed limit was."
Finally, if he said, "Well because you were going 50 and we've historically allowed people to go 50, we're going to overlook it."
We'll that's allowing you to do something you have every right to do. The speed limit was 55; you were going 50.
So you see what they're doing is ruling by paths that have no relationship when they don't define the words. That's the clearest example I can use to tell you what's happening with the Supreme Court. If you read their opinions, they sound so eloquent, so lofty, but they're meaningless. They're not related to law. The word religion was defined by the United States Supreme Court and by others as the duties which we owe to the Creator and the manner of discharging it, i.e. it recognized God and it recognized higher laws.
The Supreme Court doesn't want to recognize the definition. So as they did in my case in Alabama, they ignore it and say it's impossible to define. Their basic mistake is to assume that government gives you freedom of conscience, when our Supreme Court in 1931 recognized that freedom came from obedience to the will of God. They just lost those concepts.
As you said, those arguing to keep the Ten Commandments are not arguing that government should acknowledge God. You are the only one making that claim. What chance is there that the Supreme Court would recognize that right?
All I can say is it's our responsibility to offer the truth. It's plain, simple fact that the law is the law. It hasn't changed. The acknowledgement of God is basic to our society, to our law, and to our morality. Christianity is in a prime position to wake them up. I can't do it alone, and Christians need to be awakened to what's going on in our country. If we continue to let this happen, what will happen is a complete departure from our constitutional form of government. The basis of our morality is being destroyed. We have no morality without an acknowledgment of God.
Would you prefer the Supreme Court reject the Ten Commandments rather than allow them for only historical reasons?
I think the First Amendment of the United States Constitution doesn't prohibit displays acknowledging God, any acknowledgment of God, whether by state or federal official. My preference would be the United States Supreme Court dismiss the case and say they don't have jurisdiction. The First Amendment tells us to keep out of it. But if you ask how they could rule, I'd say, if they're going to leave the Commandments, they better recognize that nothing prohibits such conduct. But they don't have jurisdiction to rule.
 

When Gratitude Gets Complicated
Thoughts on Saying Thank You at Bethlehem and Desiring God
March 2, 2005 — Fresh Words Edition
By John Piper
Permanent Link
When you are in a position of receiving great blessing from many people, expressing gratitude can get complicated. This is our position both at Bethlehem and at Desiring God.
These ministries are sustained by the grace of God through the gifts of people. At Bethlehem this is entirely the case: we depend on God to cause his people to give $6,000,000 this year. We have no other source of income. At Desiring God, we are a not-for-profit ministry that does sell things and use the income to sustain the ministry. But our low prices, and our “whatever you can afford” policy, and our making web, audio, and radio available without cost, means that we depend on God to cause people to give hundreds of thousands of dollars without which the ministry could not do what it does.
God is merciful to do this. He keeps his promises: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Thousands of people give to support Bethlehem and Desiring God. Those of us who lead are deeply thankful. We believe it is fitting to say so. The heart that does not feel thankful and does not feel like saying thank you is hardened by pride. The humble heart is amazed at God’s grace and people’s generosity. The humble heart loves to say thank you.
So we who lead are in a position of loving to say thank you to thousands of people. The situation at Bethlehem and Desiring God are significantly different in this regard. At Bethlehem we are a covenant community and becoming a member of this church involves making a covenant to give. “We engage to contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, the relief of the poor and the spread of the Gospel through all nations.” Therefore we do not ask for money from anyone outside, but only appeal to the members to support the work of Bethlehem.
Not only that, the leaders of the church do not know how much any member gives. One person, Paul Johnson, the financial secretary, knows that. If a member does not give, Paul should share that with the elders and it would move the elders, in love and patience, to ask why. But the elders do not know what people give. Therefore our expressions of gratitude are broad and general rather than personal and specific. We say repeatedly from the pulpit and other ways, Thank you, Thank you, to God and to our people. I say it again here: Thank you for cheerfully yielding to God’s leading in sustaining this ministry.
At Desiring God things are different. This ministry is not a church and has no covenant membership to support the work. It is governed by a board that is appointed by and accountable to the elders of Bethlehem. So it is under the authority of the church. But it has a measure of ministry independence that sets it apart from the way the church itself functions. Therefore Desiring God depends on gifts from people all over the world.
We do not ask for money on the radio. The reason for this is that we do not view the radio audience as a community of Christian supporters (though some of it is). We view it as the world in general. Our bent therefore is to give not get—to offer not ask. The radio is emphatically not a fund raising device. It is a means of spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. Once we have a personal contact from someone, and there is some evidence of interest and common cause, we feel free to ask them privately (usually by mail) for their help.
Then comes the unique challenge of how to thank them. We can say thank you on the radio, and we do in careful terms. But that is delicate because oh, how easy it is to slide into using words of thanks as a subtle way of asking for money. But thousands of our donors at Desiring God do not hear the radio program. If we are going to thank them, we must do so through the mail.
Here is where it gets more complicated. Should we send the same thank you letter to the person who gives $5 as the person who gives $5,000? That is, should larger donors get special attention? Should they get, perhaps, a note from Jon Bloom the Executive Director? A note from me? A phone call?
Here is where we presently stand. When Jesus saw the rich putting money in the temple box and then saw a poor widow put in her two coins, he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them” (Luke 21:3). Does that mean that the $5 gift from the poor person should get greater attention from us than the $5,000 gift from the wealthy person, because the sacrifice was greater? Yes, if we know that is the case. But we are not Jesus. We do not know the circumstances of our givers, except in unusual cases.
There are three crucial factors that would create more thanks and more attention if we knew them: 1) the level of sacrifice that a gift represents; 2) the measure of good will in the heart; 3) the degree of trust that a person has in the ministry. None of these can be measured by the amount of the gift. A very large gift may not represent as much sacrifice, good will, or trust as a small gift. We simply cannot know the hearts of our donors.
Does this mean that there should be no special response to very large gifts? There is one factor that we can measure that differentiates a small from a large gift: the ministry expansion potential made possible by the gift. To put it more simply, larger gifts enable us to do more things. This is true no matter what the heart condition of the donor is. We believe that humble leaders should feel a special overflow of joyful gratitude in response to these larger ministry possibilities. And we believe that this special overflow should be expressed in special ways. It would seem strange to us if our hearts leaped up to God because we could now preach the gospel on five new radio stations, but we did not speak a special word to the donor who made it possible with a $50,000 gift.
Please pray for us. You can see the challenges to be biblical and humble and grateful. God sees the sacrifices behind the $5 gifts. Pray that our letters of thanks for them be full of heartfelt love and gratitude. And pray that we never, never schmooze with the rich.
In need of your prayers,
Pastor John
 

Global Suspense
The trick of faith is to believe in advance what will only make sense in reverse.
by Philip Yancey | posted 03/01/2005 09:30 a.m.

Going through a stack of old Time magazines recently, I was astonished at how different the world looks now compared to 30 years ago. Back then Time was running cover stories on "The Coming Ice Age"; now we hear about global warming and devastating tsunamis. World maps showed a large red stain of communism spreading across Indochina and Africa. Economists predicted the end of American dominance and a new global parity among the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and Europe. Of all continents, Africa offered the brightest prospects for growth.
A more recent magazine, from August 2001, reported breathlessly on the latest developments in the mysterious disappearance of a House intern and her affair with a California congressman. I searched in vain for the words al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Somehow, it seems in retrospect, prognosticators missed all the defining political events in my lifetime, including the war on terrorism and the end of the cold war. As I went through the stack of magazines, I tried to remember how it felt at the time, when I truly feared the prospect of nuclear war, when Saddam Hussein was a U.S. ally, and Lebanon was the most dangerous place in the Middle East.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman once explained that in writing history she tried to avoid "flash-forwards." When a historian writes about the Civil War, for example, he or she should resist the temptation to include "Of course we all know who won" asides. From the early months of the war right through until Gettysburg, it looked as if the South might prevail. Tuchman tried to avoid flashing forward to a later, all-seeing point of view; she sought instead to recreate history for the reader, conveying a sense that "you are there."
Right now, regarding issues like the war in Iraq, the ascendancy of China, nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, we truly are "there," unable to predict how history will turn out. Thirty years from now some researcher may pore over a stack of contemporary Time magazines with similar bemusement.
As I reflected on our poor record at predicting the future, it struck me that the Bible often centers on the act of waiting. Abraham waiting for just one child. The Israelites waiting four centuries for deliverance, and Moses waiting four decades for the call to lead them, then four more decades for a Promised Land he would not attain. David waiting in caves for his promised coronation. Prophets waiting for the fulfillment of their own strange predictions. Mary and Joseph, Anna, Simeon, Elizabeth, and Zechariah waiting like most Jews for a Messiah. The disciples waiting impatiently for Jesus to act like the power-Messiah they longed for. (Even cousin John flagged: "Are you the one, or must we wait for another?")
Still we wait. The nuclear threat from the U.S.S.R. has faded, along with the U.S.S.R. itself, but now we worry about "dirty bomb" attacks from terrorists. We no longer fear glaciers, except as they melt. A massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean proved a lot more damaging to Southeast Asia than did the SARS virus. How will all these crises turn out? Still trapped in the "now," we simply do not know.
Jesus' final words at the end of Revelation are "I am coming soon," followed by an urgent, echoing prayer, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." That prayer remains unanswered in an era of history perilously suspended between his first appearance, as a baby in a manger, and his second, as the one with blazing eyes described in one of Revelation's many flash-forwards.
In the last days, said Peter, some will scoff at the prospects: "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." Peter himself believed that "the end of all things is near." After two millennia of waiting, scoffers rule the day.
In a German prison camp in World War II, unbeknownst to the guards, the Americans built a makeshift radio. One day news came that the German high command had surrendered, ending the war—a fact that, because of a communications breakdown, the German guards did not yet know. As word spread, a loud celebration broke out.
For three days, the prisoners were hardly recognizable. They sang, waved at guards, laughed at the German shepherd dogs, and shared jokes over meals. On the fourth day, they awoke to find that all the Germans had fled, leaving the gates unlocked. The time of waiting had come to an end.
And here is the question I ask myself: As we Christians face contemporary crises, why do we respond with such fear and anxiety? Why don't we, like the Allied prisoners, act on the Good News we say we believe? What is faith, after all, but believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse?
 

Weblog: 'This Crowd Uses Gays as the Enemy'
Plus: Ga. abortion bill changed, Ron Sider's State of the Union on poverty, Christian manuscripts found in pharaoh's tomb, and other stories from online sources around the world.
Compiled by Ted Olsen | posted 02/22/2005 10:45 a.m.

On secret tapes, candidate Bush talks about James Dobson, the Christian Coalition, and how he keeps his ego in check
The White House's immediate reaction to Doug Wead 's release of secretly taped conversations with George W. Bush is to label Wead a Judas. "These were casual conversations with someone whom the President considered, or believed to be, a friend," is the repeated line from White House spokesman Ken Lisaius.
That's the buzz on Wead from journalists, too
"There is no kind way of saying that this is anything but a betrayal," says the Rocky Mountain News in an editorial.
The Dallas Morning News agrees. "Wead … pretended to be the future President's friend—Mr. Bush's pet name for him was 'Weadie'—while surreptitiously taping the unguarded Mr. Bush hoping for … what, exactly?" the paper asks in an editorial. "To cash in if Mr. Bush became President? It sure looks that way: Mr. Wead has a new book to promote. The tapes tell us little new about the character of the President, but they speak volumes about the character of Doug Wead. He's a former Pentecostal minister, so surely he was taught that it profits a man nothing to sell his soul, even to gain the world. Alas for poor Weadie, who settled for the front-page of the [New York] Times!"
Even David D. Kirkpatrick's New York Times article keeps returning to the idea that Wead—how to put it?—doesn't share Bush's high values on loyalty. One such clue: "A White House adviser to the first President Bush, Mr. Wead said in an interview in The Washington Post in 1990 that Andrew H. Card Jr., then deputy chief of staff, told him to leave the administration 'sooner rather than later' after he sent conservatives a letter faulting the White House for inviting gay activists to an event."
But while Wead gets accused of "hypocrisy" (The Dallas Morning News's word), Bush comes off as honest and anything but a hypocrite. One wonders if the White House isn't quietly cackling about Sunday's front page news.
With little variation, the newspapers say that the tapes reveal little about the President except that he's pretty much the same guy publicly that he is privately.
"If this is a window into his soul, it's not such a bad view," says Newsday columnist James P. Pinkerton .
A Los Angeles Times editorial finds plenty to complain about, noting that Bush has abandoned what he calls "my shtick, which is, 'Look, we have all made mistakes.'"
'That's a true statement'
But if there is news here, it's that the conspiracy theorists were dead wrong in supposing that a) Bush isn't really an evangelical and doesn't believe all that religious stuff, but just uses it for his own political ends, and/or that b) Bush is a tool of the Religious Right and is the puppet of "theocrats."
In fact, the tapes reveal a strong personal spirituality on Bush's part along with ambivalence toward religious political groups.
When Wead warned Bush, "Power corrupts," Bush countered, "I have got a great wife. And I read the Bible daily. The Bible is pretty good about keeping your ego in check."
Bush was willing to meet with evangelical leaders privately, but was wary of public rallies with them. Kirkpatrick reports, "When he thought his aides had agreed to such a meeting, Mr. Bush complained to Karl Rove, his political strategist, 'What the hell is this about?'"
Once he did meet with the leaders, Bush kept to the basics: "As you said, there are some code words. There are some proper ways to say things, and some improper ways. … I am going to say that I've accepted Christ into my life. And that's a true statement."
Apparently one Christian leader that had some doubts—or at least was perceived to have doubts—about how much Bush believed those code words was Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, whom Bush went to visit in September 1998. Kirkpatrick reports:
"He said he would like to meet me, you know, he had heard some nice things, you know, well, 'I don't know if he is a true believer' kind of attitude," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush said he intended to reassure Dr. Dobson of his opposition to abortion. Mr. Bush said he was concerned about rumors that Dr. Dobson had been telling others that the "Bushes weren't going to be involved in abortion," meaning that the Bush family preferred to avoid the issue rather than fight over it.
"I just don't believe I said that. Why would I have said that?" Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead with annoyance.
By the end of the primary, Mr. Bush alluded to Dr. Dobson's strong views on abortion again, apparently ruling out potential vice presidents including Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Gen. Colin L. Powell, who favored abortion rights. Picking any of them could turn conservative Christians away from the ticket, Mr. Bush said.
"They are not going to like it anyway, boy," Mr. Bush said. "Dobson made it clear."
If Bush still perceives Dobson as an unsatisfiable perennial critic, it may explain why a Bush aide recently told Time , "We respect him greatly, but [Dobson's] political influence is not everything people might think." (So far, there's no response from Focus .)
While Bush suggested that he was willing to fight on abortion, he seemed awfully reluctant on homosexuality:
"I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.
But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"
Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."
"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays."
Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged not to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: "No, what I said was, I wouldn't fire gays."
As early as 1998, however, Mr. Bush had already identified one gay-rights issue where he found common ground with conservative Christians: same-sex marriage. "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead.
The New York Daily News doesn't get it:
The disclosures could weaken support for Bush with his conservative base — and crack his renowned aura of predictability and discipline.
"It ought to be damaging," said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio. "It's hypocritical to say one thing now but to have said other things … in the past."
A senior Democratic operative added, "Put aside the admission of drug use, his comments about gays are certainly not going to energize his base."
Really? Being against gay marriage and "special rights," but insisting, "I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner" sounds straight down the middle of the evangelical world to Weblog. Criticizing the Christian Coalition for "using gays as the enemy"? Preach it, brother, and we'll turn the pages. The only people who are going to be upset with these comments are those whom Bush might say, "They are not going to like it anyway, boy."
 

Not a Tame Lion
An engaging theologian questions the Jesus of modern scholars.
Reviewed by Jeremy Lott | posted 02/15/2005 09:15 a.m.

FAMILIAR STRANGER:An Introduction toJesus of Nazareth Michael J. McClymond, William B. Eerdmans, 224 pp.; $16
For the last few years I've threatened to write a book titled The Jesus I'll Never Know. It would be a response to the tendency in the wider world of U.S. Christianity to personalize the Son of Man—and tame him in the process.
As the vulgar Eric Cartman character of the South Park cartoon memorably put it, Christian tunes often sound like love songs that swap in "Jesus" for "baby." Likewise, in the M. Night Shyamalan movie Wide Awake, Rosie O'Donnell played the role of Sister Terry, a baseball-cap-wearing nun who assigned her young students chapters in the workbook Jesus Is My Buddy as homework.
The point of my book would be that the closer we get to the Gospels, the more we realize that these four witnesses to Jesus' life and ministry intentionally placed some distance between the reader and the wonder-working preacher from Nazareth. Of Jesus' childhood we know little. We get a quick peek at him as a young man, going at it with scribes in the Temple (foreshadowing the fireworks to come); then we see him fully grown, being baptized by John, proclaiming the kingdom of God, teaching, healing, casting out evil spirits, calming stormy waters, and hurtling himself toward his own demise by refusing to make nice with Jerusalem or Rome.
But we don't really "see" Jesus. For some reason—possibly the Jewish prohibition of idolatry—the Gospel writers forgo almost all physical description of him. Whether Jesus towered over the crowd like Saul or could see eye-to-eye with Zacchaeus we know not. And so we guess: The history of Christian iconography attests to the thousands of attempts to give physical expression to this mystery.
One of many the things that I appreciate about Michael J. McClymond's new introduction to scholarly approaches to the life of Christ, Familiar Stranger, is that the theologian from Saint Louis University respects this distance. McClymond scorns scholarly attempts to intuit Jesus' feelings and motives. And yet he wields modern Bible scholarship as an effective tool to goad us closer to the truth.
The buildup is methodical but effective. In the opening chapters, McClymond gives people a rough overview of the current scholarship of the issues surrounding Jesus' life and ministry. He starts with the broader religious and political culture and, as the book progresses, narrows to Jesus' mission and message. When he weighs into scholarly controversies, he has a way of being reasonable. Given his careful approach—his reluctance to put Christ on the couch, if you will—it should hardly surprise that Jesus-Seminar-type arguments do not make out well.
McClymond seems to realize that Jesus' message is a little easier to get at than his portrait, but not by much. He spoke in parables, and the context for making sense out of them is not always obvious. Even his closest confidants either didn't know or didn't fully believe that he was God's "only begotten Son" until after the Easter event.
In his post-resurrection appearances, Jesus is very much alive but at the same time different. Physically, he's not a ghost, but he's not what we would normally describe as human. He has holes in his hands and side and seems to have need of food, but normal constraints like, oh, walls or gravity, no longer apply. Attitudinally, he seems more impatient, more driven, more aloof than the prophet who would not let his audience go away hungry, and who insisted that the little children be allowed access to him. He appears driven to complete his mission and go home.
Overviews of Jesus scholarship are hardly new. McClymond notes the most famous author in this genre was Albert Schweitzer, the German physician who wrote The Quest of the Historical Jesus. It was a depth charge of a book whose impact still reverberates among Jesus scholars. The physician ridiculed attempts to reconstruct Jesus as an enlightened liberal and forcefully pressed the case that these academics often view Jesus through the narrow lenses of their own concerns.
If scholars thought there was no such thing as divine intervention, Schweitzer argued, then Jesus was just one smart cookie who was misunderstood. If a professor had a strict religious upbringing that he was trying to live down, then Jesus was some kind of ancient hippie, and all that fire-and-brimstone stuff was a product of the conflict between the religious authorities and the early church.
Jesus the Magician
No one would accuse Schweitzer of fashioning a mirror-image Jesus with his failed apocalyptic prophet of doom. Nor have all modern scholars projected themselves onto Jesus. But they have looked at the same data, with some supplemental material thrown in, and come up with different reconstructions: from Jesus the Torah-observant rabbi to Jesus the magician to Jesus the cynical, wisdom-spouting sage. As McClymond deftly puts it, "The scholars' reconstructions are balanced as delicately as an artist's mobile: touch one piece and all the rest tremble in their places."
McClymond is a theologian and not a text critic or a language scholar, so he is inclined to pull strands of information together, rather than apart. He challenges the sometimes narrow field of biblical studies by insisting that the distinctions that seem so important for conference papers and journal articles are not significant for helping most Christians to understand the life and message of Jesus of Nazareth.
Yes, Jesus was a teacher of Jewish wisdom, the author says, but he also warned that the end would come, and many would be caught unawares. He was kind, but he was also "a totalitarian," insisting that he was the one true path to God the Father.
In contrast to what McClymond calls the "family values Jesus" of modern evangelicalism, the author issues some "hard sayings" of his own in the final chapter. The two most stinging are "Jesus sided with the poor"—which might call for some family sacrifices—and "Jesus was a home wrecker" (recall his warning that following him would bring division). McClymond's own all-too-brief portrayal of Jesus is what the kids in Narnia would have called "not a tame lion."
To make their cases for a kinder, gentler Jesus, modern scholars must exclude large chunks of Jesus' teachings. McClymond argues that most proposals to exclude whole classes of Jesus' statements simply won't work. He gives two reasons. First, we don't know enough about the composition histories of the Gospels to do this with any degree of confidence. Second, it reeks of cherry-picking.
If the reader decides to look for a certain predetermined Jesus and to exclude all contrary evidence, McClymond says, then she will find what she's looking for—but probably miss the guy who changed the world, and overcame it.
Jeremy Lott is the foreign-press critic for GetReligion.org .