Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • This Headline Says It All

    Tithing Hits Record Low; Churches Spend More to Make Congregants Happy.

    While I don’t believe tithing is a command binding on Christians, my problem is not that it would demand too much, but rather that it demands too little, does so in the wrong way, and for the wrong reasons. But that’s another topic.

    And I can’t resist noting that the word “tithing” used to refer to giving 10%, not 2.38%, though I know the word has changed meaning. Still, if you’re going to call it a biblical command, it might be better to stick with the biblical meaning, or a close approximation.

     

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  • To the IRD: Democracy is Biblical?

    Mark Tooley of the Institute for Religion and Democracy thinks that religious leaders should not be supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement:

    “Religious activists who have aligned with the Wall Street Occupation should model mature Christian discernment, not echo angry resentments that dream of a secular utopia.”

    That quote is highlighted at the top of the IRD statement titled IRD Challenges Religious Left over Support for Wall Street Occupation (HT: Christian Post).

    Now I have reservations about religious leaders becoming tightly connected to a particular political movement. I think it is way too easy to let our commitment to the kingdom of God be hijacked by various political agendas.

    But that’s not IRD’s point. They believe that the agenda of these leaders in the religious left is, in itself, not biblical. Their own statement says, “The Institute on Religion & Democracy works to reaffirm the church’s biblical and historical teachings, strengthen and reform its role in public life, protect religious freedom, and renew democracy at home and abroad.” In fact, if you look over your web site, it becomes apparent they have their own political agenda, for example on the death penalty, in which Mark Tooley again suggests that only those supporting the death penalty are presenting “careful reasoning rooted in Christian tradition . . . ”

    If one believes Mark Tooley, those who show “mature Christian discernment” apparently must support democracy, but oppose big government, and particularly redistribution of income. Now while I am leary myself of schemes to redistribute income, I do not make the assumption that my own political position is the only Christian one. I believe that God calls us to care for the poor and unfortunate; he has not told us in scripture the precise method to use.

    And please tell me just where it is that the Bible supports democracy. I have heard this over and over, yet I don’t see any case where democracy in any form recognizably similar to modern democracy, was practiced or advocated. Might it be the best way to run a country in which one may live as a Christian? I would imagine so. I like it myself. But the Bible doesn’t make that the one and only Christian option.

     

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  • Minutemen – Follow the Oil Tour

    Get your own signed copy of Nick May’s new book Minutemen during his “Follow the Oil” tour.

     

  • O’Reilly vs Dawkins and Mocking God

    The video below is a short exchange between Richard Dawkins and Bill O’Reilly. I’ve come to expect nonsense from O’Reilly, and I have a fairly low opinion of what Dawkins writes regarding theology, while considering his science writing second to none.

    Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

    What caught my attention here was the accusation that Dawkins is mocking God. More and more, I see this accusation used against anyone who doesn’t accept someone’s religious beliefs and has the audacity to challenge them. I’ve expressed a certain disdain for what Dawkins writes about theology, but I believe he has the right to say that.

    Is what he says “mocking God”? Well, he’s an atheist. He doesn’t believe in God. What exactly do you expect him to say?

    Thus I can be regarded as blaspheming Islam because I don’t believe that Mohammed was a prophet. In turn, a Christian might think a Muslim was blaspheming Jesus because he doesn’t believe Jesus is divine. If you believe something isn’t true, well, you believe it isn’t true!

    Dawkins is bound to think the core story of Christianity is myth (understood in the derogatory sense), because he doesn’t believe it’s true, either as history, or as a good, effective myth (seen in the more positive sense). I may disagree. I may dislike what he has to say. I may even think his language is intemperate from time to time, but that fact still remains.

    But expressing it in a children’s book? Again, I have the right to produce a children’s book based on my theological beliefs, entwining them in the story. Is this not also acceptable when done by someone else with different beliefs?

    Just because faith is involved shouldn’t mean that it’s unacceptable for each person to express their point of view, and defend it, even vigorously.

  • Battle over Inspiration or Interpretation

    There’s an interesting article by Mark Galli on the Christianity Today web site, titled A New Bible Battle. Galli refers to the “old” battle, and Lindsell’s book. That battle was over inerrancy. But this new battle has to do with reading the Bible in what Galli calls “sub-biblical” ways, for example, as a self-help manual.

    In my book When People Speak for God, I emphasized the importance of including interpretation when we talk about the reliability of the Bible. My point there is that describing how reliable a measuring instrument is would be pointless if nobody could read the reliable results. Thus when people get such varied results from reading the Bible, what is the point of speaking, in isolation, of the Bible’s reliability?

    Of course those who speak in this way normally do include the additional caveat, “interpreted correctly.” But too often that caveat is simply dropped in, and the methods of interpretation don’t, in fact, handle what the text actually contains. Figuring out what is a “sub-biblical” method of reading the Bible will take a robust idea of inspiration from the earliest oral tradition to the latest printed text.

    But getting us away from “self-help” readings is a good step or two in the right direction.

  • Discipleship Not About Numbers

    … so says Dan Dick. All I can say is I agree. Go read!

  • An Amazingly Bad Article on THE MESSAGE

    Well, not really so amazing. I’ve seen many like it, and it comes from the Worldview Weekend folks who have been spending their time being extraordinarily critical of other conservative Christian organizations.

    The article is titled BRIEF (AND BY NO MEANS EXHAUSTIVE) SUMMARY OF PASSAGES CONTAINED WITHIN “THE MESSAGE” BY EUGENE PETERSON WHICH DIRECTLY COMPROMISE FUNDAMENTAL TENETS OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY. Well, at least we know the headline wasn’t brief.

    I’m not going to run the article point by point. Rather, I’m interested in the general approach.

    One common way of comparing Bible versions is to take a set of one’s favorite proof texts and determine whether one can still support one’s favorite doctrines using the translation in question. I want to distinguish this from the quite legitimate comparison of renderings for their quality. Orthodox doctrine is not created on the basis of a few lines of scripture and doesn’t fall based on one or two mistranslations. If it did, it would already have fallen.

    I can’t find any translations on my shelves, including my favorites, that don’t have one rendering or another that I’d prefer were different. In many cases, I can get quite passionate about how a particular rendering is bad, and my preferred rendering is good. I consider such discussions entirely appropriate.

    But in evaluating a translation, one needs to look at a number of things, including:

    1. The goals of the translation
    2. The method of translation employed
    3. A wide variety of texts, not just a few proof texts

    In this analysis all of these items are ignored. Yes, the author says he could find many more issues, and doubtless he could. I found quite a number in my own reading of The Message, and personally I don’t like it all that much. At the same time, I’ve also found some exceptional renderings that are well worth reading.

    More importantly, if a reader is using sound methods of biblical interpretation, one will still find orthodox doctrine in The Message. One may find certain texts don’t sound like what one expected in doctrinal terms, but in some cases, Peterson’s rendering is well justified.

    The approach taken by Justin Peters in the referenced article is simply a failure. While I would not recommend using The Message as your sole Bible for study (I really wouldn’t recommend making any English translation exclusive), it can be a valuable tool in improving understanding. It is especially useful for reading large portions of scripture for an overview and for its cultural translation of the text.

    Authors get their one idea of what a translation should be, and what information should be conveyed, and if they don’t find that, they think the translation is very bad. The fact is that all translations fail to convey part of the original, and do convey other parts. Which part is most important? Let the reader decide! This reader decides on variety.

     

  • Minutemen

    icon
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    (As of 10/2/11, B&N is offering
    Minutemen for $8.76, 32% off
    the cover price)

    Nick May is coming out with his second book, Minutemen. (His previous title is Megabelt from Energion Publications.)

    This book is not at all like Megabelt. It’s the story of four young men whose relationships haven’t worked out (or are deteriorating) and the decisions they make as things spiral out of control more and more. There’s no obvious solution to the ever increasing problems. But the one thing you can expect in this book is that unexpected–and positively weird–things will happen.

    Nick claims no moral to the story, but I can make several of them, and perhaps that’s the point of not having an intentional moral proposed (and made obvious) by the author–one can make up one’s own.

    This is coming from the brand new Eucatastrophe Press.

  • Hired Staff Won’t Solve Church Problems

    Yesterday I posted one of my short stories over on my Jevlir blog. For those who don’t read that blog (its readership is quite low), I wanted to write a couple of notes here.

    Many churches think they’ll find the solution to the problem of declining membership or financial problems by hiring just the right staff. But in most churches, the problems are much deeper than who is on the staff. In most declinining churches, I would suggest there is a need to change the church culture. You can’t hire a “Minister of Evangelism” and expect that to make the church grow. A “stewardship consultant” is only going to be able to go as far as the church’s commitment will take it.

    The solution to declining membership, in my view, is discipleship. If you can’t get the church to commit to being disciples in all ways, then no number of paid staff is going to solve your problem. In order to change the culture of the church, you may have to lose even more members. Let the folks who don’t want to be disciples and who don’t want to be ministers (every member should be!) move on.

    I don’t mean by this to sit in judgment on their discipleship. What I mean is to allow the self selection. If the church determines to be Christ in their community and to take this commitment seriously, then those who don’t want to go along will get annoyed and leave. Too frequently, our response to this is, “Oh no! We’re losing more members!” So we keep the problem alive by sacrificing discipleship to numbers.

    I don’t have a problem with church staff when the purpose of that staff is to facilitate the ministry of the members. But in an overwhelming number of cases, the paid staff is expected to do the ministry, and the stewardship problem is to get the members to cough up enough money to pay the staff to do the things that they, the members, should be doing themselves.

    The gospel fulfilled in discipleship is the only answer … not more paid staff to replace the ministry of the whole body.

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  • The Dominionism Debate Continues

    Joel Watts and Peter Kirk are at it about dominionism, and now a book I publish, The Politics of Witness, is getting a place in the debate.

    I have a couple of problems with the title “dominionist.” First, in response to Joel, I think it is important to make distinctions between different viewpoints, even when we see some relations. Similarity is not the same as equality. I object when the right wing calls President Obama a socialist, because I think that blurs the distinction between his mixed approach to the economy and that of a real socialist. I also object when someone who thinks more Christians in office would be a good thing is equated to R.J. Rushdoony. I’ve read the latter; the two ideas are different.

    Second, my problem with the label “dominionist” is simply that I don’t see a reasonably defined movement that should all be painted (tarred?) with the same brush. It seems to me that the label is covering more people than deserve it, at a minimum.

    I’m going to write a bit more in a few days as I write one of my posts reflecting on publishing a new book, this time on The Politics of Witness. I am not favorable to the idea that we need to get more Christians in office. Personally, my voting is religiously neutral. There are many Christians for whom I would never vote. There are atheists for whom I would. I am never favorably impressed when a candidate puts his or her “born again” status front and center. I’ll explain why this is my position in that future post.

     

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