Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Christianity and Insanity

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    A couple of days ago downtown I passed a church sign, and in the changeable portion of the sign it read: Revival! | Thursday Night | 7 pm.

    Now that’s a common enough sign on churches these days. Many churches have a tradition of an annual revival. At the same time each year an outside speaker is scheduled, and there are revival services. This sequence of events is the annual “revival,” and one supposes that following these services, the church is “revived.”

    Of course, also by tradition, when the scheduled time for next year’s revival comes around, the church will again be in need of revival. And so it goes.

    This is a pattern in the church. We take a moment of special blessing from God, and we build a building, create a schedule, appoint a committee, and make it into a series of traditional activities we can place on the church calendar. And then we keep doing the same thing irrespective of results.

    We’re like Peter on the mount of transfiguration. We see the vision, and then we want to put up a shelter and make the place of blessing a place to camp. Unfortunately, unlike Peter, we seem to miss the moment when Jesus tells us to move on.

    If insanity is to be defined as doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results, then Christianity seems to have fallen into insanity.

    It’s not that I’m opposed to organization, structure, or even tradition. But tradition is only of value when we learn from it, not when we repeat it blindly. If I read the Bible correctly, one of the strongest traditions is that we’re called to keep moving, not to set up camp.

    The worship service can mark the grave of worship in the church. The revival meeting can mark the grave of spiritual growth and life. Somehow we need to learn to prayerfully and openly meet each new challenge rather than simply repeating the things we’ve done before.

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  • Someone Else Thinks Seminaries are in Trouble

    … but his solution is very different from mine. I think the idea that the current concept of a university will survive is a pipe dream. The cost is going to force education to change. Face to face education will be needed, but the form is going to change.  (HT: John Meunier.)

  • The Art of Not Waging War

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    As we become involved in the conflict in Lybia, I’ve been reflecting on the American strategy–or lack thereof–in foreign policy. To the extent that we have such a strategy it appears to be big on expenses on low on good results.

    I’m not a pacifist, and I certainly won’t object to seeing Gaddafi out of power. There’s plenty of reasons why he should go. The question in my mind is how we decide where to take military action, and what goals we set.

    It’s very difficult to attain victory in a war when the goals are either not well-defined, or difficult to measure, or impossible to attain. The latter is usually the case with goals that are assigned to the military but which the military is ill-equipped to accomplish, such as nation building.

    Our politics, and the lack of strategy in our international policy, tend to create situations in which our military will be tied up for long periods of time without any real hope of actual success.

    For some reason some people think no-fly zones or sanctions are more humane means of accomplishing the mission than actual war. I disagree. If there is a reason to intervene militarily, that intervention should be aimed at well-defined goals, and the means should be sufficient to accomplish those goals quickly. Any other course of action is actually less humane–it simply kills more people and extends the misery for long periods of time.

    If we cannot find the moral justification to take decisive action, let me suggest that we take no action at all.

    As I was thinking about this, I watched a show on the History Channel about Sun Tzu, and when the show was over I chose to take a run through The Art of War. It’s not a large book. Here are a couple of notes I underlined today:

    There is no instance of a country having benefitted from prolonged warfare (2:6).

    It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on (2:7).

    In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns (2:19). 

    Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting (3:2).

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  • Chosen?

    I like this take on the word chosen.

  • Clayboy on Bell and Hell

    He makes some random observations.

  • Herold Weiss on Genesis 2:4b – 4:26

    Herold Weiss is continuing his series on the doctrine of creation in the Bible with a discussion of sources and how this passage might enlighten our understanding. The entire series has been extremely interesting and has generated some serious (and some not so serious) discussion.

    (Note: I am publisher of Herold Weiss’s new book Finding My Way in Christianity: Recollections of a Journey.)

  • On Risk – Quote of the Day

    From Allan Bevere:

    … no human being is entitled to a risk free existence.

    The entire article is worth a read.

  • Evolution and Continuous Upward Progress

    This is a recreated vector image in SVG. The o...
    Image via Wikipedia-Perhaps not so much with this upward progress

    Peter Kirk has written a post titled The Gospel is not incompatible with theistic evolution, in which he responds to an article by Dr. David Shackelford. Peter’s response covers most of the ground.

    I wanted to add something here, however, regarding “continuous upward progress,” which Dr. Shackelford, as quoted by Peter, says is “demanded” by most “versions of evolution.” I’m in the dark about what he means by “versions,” unless he’s referring to popular conceptions, and especially social evolution.

    For example, an evolutionary view of the early Christian church would have the church “progressing” toward greater order and organization, thus the pastoral epistles must be later than other writings because they refer to such greater organization. On the other hand, if the progress is not so steady, nor unidirectional. I’m no church historian, but I’ve often wondered if the progress toward greater structure was not faster amongst those coming from Judaism with synagogue traditions than for Gentile Christians. All this begs the question of what is “progress” and more particular what is “upward progress.”

    But the biological theory of evolution teaches no such thing. Though there is, I believe, a general trend toward greater variety, simply because there are more creatures to be varied, even that trend is not inevitable, and one can question whether a trend toward greater variety would be “upward progress” in general.

    The tendency of biological evolution is toward suitability for some ecological niche (stated loosely–I’m no biologist), and depending on how you look at it, the tendency could be distinctly downward, for example, when a population of fish living in a cave lose their eyesight. The tendency can be terminal when a population fails to adapt to environmental changes.

    For certain periods of time and using certain defintions of “upward” (people who use this term usually mean upward as leading toward us humans), you will find “upward progress” in evolution, but there is nothing about the theory, nor is there general evidence in the record, to suggest that evolution demands upward progress.

     

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  • Quote of the Day

    From Brian McLaren: “We are suffering the consequences of our idolatry. Our motto ‘In God We Trust’ is printed right on the front of the God in which we trust.”

  • Observing Lent

    Despite this, I’m observing Lent.