Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases

    The Christian Post has a portion of an interview with John Piper in response to the question:

    Why was it right for God to slaughter women and children in the Old Testament? How can that ever be right?

    And the first sentence of his answer is the title of this post.

    I can hardly tell you how many ways this bothers me. I say that just in order to get on the nerves of the folks who like to quote Paul “Who are you, o man, to answer back to God?” (Romans 9:20). I’m just this human who, like many people in the Bible, including prophets, isn’t satisfied with leaving all the questions unanswered, even when I know I’ll hardly get started on finding the answers. It’s interesting how certain Christians quote Paul in Romans 9, while others are more likely to quote Habakkuk or one of the Psalms where people question God quite a lot.

    Unless you add that God will never “please” to do something wrong, Piper’s statement makes nonsense of any idea of right and wrong. It is not meaningful to say that God is good or God is loving, both statements found in the Bible, and then to suggest that no matter how unloving or ungood an action of God may appear, it’s really OK because God willed it, or “pleased” to do it. But if mass slaughter isn’t wrong, what is wrong?

    Thus the first half of Piper’s answer is, in effect, a non-answer. It states simply that whatever God does–and I’m fairly certain that for him, whatever is alleged in scripture that God does is something God actually does–that is acceptable. And for many people this seems to be adequate.

    In one way I don’t mind that. I too believe God does what is right (ignoring, for now, the question of whether it’s right because God does it or God does it because it’s right), and if he doesn’t do what’s right, there’s nothing I can do about it in any case.

    But in this case we’re bringing different arguments in scripture together.  The Bible says both that God has commanded the death of many, many people, or has killed them himself, and also that God is good and that God is love. Put up against what I might think about God, perhaps Piper’s answer has a point. Put alongside the Bible’s indications of how God cares about humanity, I think it fails completely.

    It’s beyond a simple blog post such as this to give my own response, but I will point to a book I publish, by my former teacher Dr. Alden Thompson, Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?. Alden takes quite a conservative approach to scripture and yet takes both of these items, the stories of God’s destructive acts, and the assertions of God’s love, care, and goodness. Piper, on the other hand, empties any assertion of God’s love and goodness of any meaning.

    Piper regards the question of God’s commands to kill as more difficult than that of God killing directly, but I think with this he makes an even more dangerous error:

    With Joshua there was a political, ethnic dimension, God was immediate king, and he uses this people as his instrument to accomplish his judgment in the world at that time. And God, it says, let the sins of the Amorites accumulate for 400 years so that they would be full (Genesis 15:16), and then sends his own people in as instruments of judgment.

    From this I would conclude that being ruled closely by God would make atrocities committed right, and very likely more common. This is consistent with the first part of Piper’s answer. I must concede to Calvinists this: They are philosophically consistent. I just don’t believe that consistency is a very good indicator that a philosophy reflects actuality.

    On the contrary, I believe that we must either find some better reason why these stories occur in the Old Testament, or we must seriously back off of any pretension that “God is good” or “God is love” has any meaning at all.

    We regularly argue that it must be that all the Canaanites deserved to die. A Calvinist will certainly note that we all deserve to die. Yet what is the basis for this? Were they more wicked than others? Pointed out the 400 years, as Piper does, suggests that. But I don’t think the evidence would support such a claim. What effort was made to bring them to God? What reason might there be to suggest that Israel could not have brought the Canaanites to repentance through proclamation?

    This latter is not, in fact, what I would suggest as a solution. But I do think it points out the difficult with Piper’s solution.

    As I have time, I do intend to address this topic some more. Even the smallest portion of an answer requires many threads brought together.

  • On Joel Watts on Inspiration

    I put a note on the web site for my book When People Speak for God.

  • Beware the Cult of the Speaker

    Dave Black warns us today against the cult of the speaker. (With permission I’ve extracted the relevant portion as a post at JesusParadigm.com since Dave’s blog doesn’t allow linking to a specific post.)

    Considering what we’ve heard recently about megachurches creating satellite campuses that receive the message from the senior pastor on the main campus via video. It’s not my intent here to point to any particular speaker as an example of being a celebrity preacher or of participating the cult of the speaker. Those of us without the temptation of multi-site ministry or television opportunities can be just as much tempted to pride, arrogance, or any of the myriad of other temptations that come with celebrity.

    Dave’s post brought to my mind a concern I’ve had with many churches. I was a member of one church that had somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the average Sunday attendance in the lay speaker program. That’s a wonderful thing. But how often did any of these lay speakers speak? Not very frequently.

    Now as we were constantly reminded in lay speaking classes, preaching on Sunday is not the only place in which we could serve. But in the same way I would remind pastors that preaching on Sunday is not the only way they can serve their congregations.

    This was brought forcefully to mind a few years back when I invited a pastor to speak at a conference. He eventually had to back out because an emergency came up that kept him out of his pulpit for one week. He told me that he had a covenant with the congregation to be in the pulpit 50 out of 52 Sundays.

    While I commend that pastor for being faithful to his word and for putting his beliefs into practice, I don’t think having “the pastor” or “the senior pastor” speak every Sunday is necessarily a good thing. It’s possible that other people in the congregation have something valid to contribute as well. But much more importantly, if we don’t learn to speak about the gospel in church, where will we learn?

    If we want lay speakers (speaking “Methodist”) to learn how to speak, where could it be better to do this than at their home congregation? I know there are concerns about the quality of the preaching and the theological/doctrinal accuracy of the message. But one of the things a pastor could do would be to spend the time he or she might spend in sermon preparation helping a lay speaker prepare a sermon.

    Then what about the substantial number of members of any church who are neither called nor equipped to present a sermon? There are many varieties of sharing, including testimonies. We have this kind of thing in the church from time to time, but why is it so rare?

    I recall testimonies about the ministries of the church given over a period of four weeks. These were excellent. They gave me a better idea of what certain church ministries were accomplishing. It was great to hear from the people involved.

    Recently we had a youth Sunday. We have one of those a year. Why is it just once a year? The young man who brought the message did an excellent job. I could stand to hear him more often.

    We have many members who feel very inadequate to talk about their faith. Does not the example set by the Sunday service suggest that it requires a trained professional to present the Christian message? Does that example not encourage people to think that what they need to refer their friends and acquaintances to the pastor if they are to have a conversation about faith?

    At my home church (First UMC, Pensacola), we are blessed with an excellent pastoral staff. I very much appreciate their ministry in preaching. But I wonder just how much that ministry might be expanded if more time were spent training members of the congregation to share in everything from a one minute testimony to a full sermon.

    We often wonder why people tend to become pew sitters rather than becoming active. But isn’t the example of Sunday morning a suggestion that this is precisely the proper role for the “ordinary” church member? I think it’s worth considering.

     

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  • Biblical vs. Unbiblical

    Morgan Guyton has a very strong (and, in my view, entirely justified) reaction to the abuse of the term “biblical.”

    … In how many other “Bible” churches out there has “Biblical” become a code-word for an ideological platform that serves a purpose completely foreign to God’s mission but cherry-picks verses out of the Biblical text to justify itself?

    Good question! (Of course, his question follows an example.)

    Nonetheless I want to sound another warning: Let’s watch out about the abuse of the word “unbiblical” as well.

    Declaring something unbiblical also requires a view on what the Bible does and does not require, but instead of declaring a particular view in bounds, it declares it out of bounds. It can be abused in the same way. The word “biblical” is a positive adjective which tends to lead people to accept a statement, even if it has no biblical warrant. “Unbiblical” is a negative adjective (in most churches) which tends to make people reject an idea, even without biblical warrant.

    So am I saying one can never use the adjective “biblical?” No. What I am suggesting is that many of us use it, and its opposite, too much. We use it as a sort of shorthand for “you ought to believe this” (or not), rather than as a statement backed by the appropriate study and research.

    Instead, I suggest that we skip the adjective and do the work. If you provide a sound backing from the Bible, appropriately interpreted, for what you say, others can apply the adjective “biblical” to it. If not, well, not so much!

  • February 1 Christian Carnival Posted

    … at All Things New. Thanks to Deb for hosting!

  • On Choice, Coverage, and Contraception

    I’ve been watching this story for a few days. For those who haven’t been keeping up with the news, the Obama administration is proposing rules that would require all employers to provide coverage for contraception in their health care plans. Catholics are in an uproar over this. The White House has responded (HT: Unsettled Christianity). The first line of the response indicates that “all employers” is not correct, by the way!

    I have little sympathy for the Catholic view on contraception. I don’t mean this as generally anti-catholic. There are plenty of specific doctrines for which I have little sympathy. But at the same time, it is their conscience involved. I knew this type of issue would come up when health care reform law was passed. Despite its great length, most of the detail work was left to regulators to fill in. This is one of the dirty secrets of legislation–how frequently congress passes outlines of laws and not complete laws, and then agencies have to fill in the details.

    For me, conscience should prevail on this issue. I realize this involves places where Catholic agencies are hiring people of other faiths, but that should be a factor in one’s choice of employer, just as other benefits and conditions are. It’s an imperfect world, but I tend to come down on the side of freedom of conscience.

    On the other hand, if you read the White House statement, and if what they are saying is correct, much of the uproar over this issue is, in my view, overdone. The government is overstepping its bounds in my view, but less so than was believed. Nonetheless, I am opposed to this regulation.

  • Seventh-Day Adventist vs Methodist on Family Guy

    As an ex-SDA who is now Methodist, I just have to share this video:

     

    Now my experience amongst Methodists is that most will just shrug their shoulders about worship on Saturday. They get a little more tense about soul sleep.

    I have encountered a few Methodists who are like the one in the video, generally those who really have no idea what SDAs believe.

    On the other hand, I’ve gotten some very interesting reactions from SDAs who discover I’m ex-SDA and now Methodist. At one meeting where I had brought one of our Energion authors who is SDA, I was cornered by someone at the book table afterward who said he simply couldn’t understand how one could ever have doctrinal disagreements with the SDA church. Take it from me—it’s really quite easty! It’s only fair to point out that our hosts at that church were embarrassed and apologized to me for his behavior, though I actually didn’t mind.

     

    (HT: Spectrum)

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  • February Biblioblog Carnival Posted

    … at Cheese Wearing Theology.

  • On Externalities and Libertarianism

    I’ve often wanted to write something about externalities, but I’ve never gotten the time. Specifically, I’m interested in how these relate to regulations and in turn to economic freedom.

    I lean libertarian, and many people  who know that are surprised that I’m not always opposed to environmental regulations. Why is that?

    Well, Ed Brayton has written an excellent summary, and all I can say is I couldn’t agree more.

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  • Factors that Make a Difference in Education

    Scot McKnight cites a study that shows many of the things we might think would make a difference in education don’t, and a number of others do.

    I was actually unsurprised by this. The actual study is behind a pay wall, so I don’t know if they covered it, but another indicator of success in school is parental involvement.