Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Todd Bentley’s Marriage

    I had thought about writing something on this, but I think this post says most of what I would say, only better.

    Especially considering that there has been no marital infidelity reported, and folks have been upfront in with this, it doesn’t seem to me to provide any new basis to judge Bentley’s ministry. I still object to the same set of things, hold judgment on the same set, and tentatively approve of the same things.

    Marital unfaithfulness, as I have said about politicians and ministers before, is a valid consideration in determining someone’s integrity. But a person’s sin, before or after, does not, in my view, invalidate ministry. I’ve known of pastors who have fallen into serious transgressions. It often damages the fruit of the ministry they have done, but it doesn’t invalidate it.

    In this case, it should be noted, we’re looking at a couple working through difficulties in their marriage. We have not yet seen–and should not predict–divorce or other negative outcomes. It is unfortunate that, because of the level of publicity involved in his ministry, Todd Bentley and his wife have to deal with this with extraordinary publicity. That makes things harder.

    Whatever the outcome, however, we judge the ministry, teachings, and fruit by, well, the ministry, teachings, and fruit, and not by whether the minister is a greater sinner than the rest of us. That latter one is a judgment we have no right to make.

  • How Incarnational?

    Well, it seems to be my day for linking, which is not surprising. (For those who wonder why I’ve been blogging less, though I think I’m still blogging quite a lot, it’s because I have to file a form 990EZ for a non-profit with which I’m involved. It is really not that complex, but I’m a bit accounting challenged.)

    I’ve been following The Crowded Handbasket nearly since it’s inception, but this is the first time I’ve linked. There’s a rather good article there asking the question just how incarnational you are. Since I make a point of using the word “incarnational” regarding just about everything, I thought I should look and answer the question.

    As for my own position, I would have to use a descending graph line from points 3 to 5. I’m definitely “in” at 3, and then less and less so as I go. My own phrasing is that God was uniquely present in Jesus of Nazareth, not that God cannot manifest himself in any other way, but that he did so in a special way in that case. I also accept the “fully involved” term. Otherwise I’m a bit less exclusive than is defined by #5.

    Perhaps that will make for some discussion!

  • John Hobbins on TUCC

    When I wrote much earlier about Jeremiah Wright, I tried just a little bit to put it in context of the African American church as I’ve experienced it. That effort was weakened by the fact that I’ve never attended TUCC, and thus anyone could say I was reflecting a very different experience based on those black churches I have attended. I spent my teen years in Guyana, South America, and was the only white person in my youth group, but was TUCC similar?

    Well, John Hobbins of the Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog has attended there, and he manages to say many of the things I felt, but for which I never found the right words.

    I strongly commend his posts Unity Day at Barack Obama’s Church of Origin: What the MSM will never tell you and Unity Day at Trinity UCC in Chicago.

    (Update: John has now added another post.)

    I have a high regard for Dr. John Hobbins based on reading his blog regularly, and I strongly commend both of these articles to you to read and consider.

  • Forgiving or Excusing

    I’ve noticed in recent discussions both online and offline that there seems to be some fuzziness about the difference between these two concepts. I think that perhaps our human tendency is to either excuse or condemn.

    By “excusing” I mean either minimizing a transgression or perhaps even claiming it’s not a transgression at all. When we fail to find an excuse, then we condemn. It’s hard to both regard an action as truly wrong and damaging, and yet to forgive. It’s hard to forgive when someone does not regard their actions as truly wrong.

    I would argue, however, that there is a part of forgiveness that we should embrace even when the perpetrator of the action is not repentant. We need to give up our own resentment and rage that make us do irrational things in response to wrongs. That doesn’t mean we need to excuse the person or let them by with the action; merely that we need to bring ourselves to the point where we can respond rationally.

    Politicians tend to give non-apologies, or, in the terms I’m using in this post, they try to excuse their actions. Their hope is not that we will think they did something terribly wrong, are sorry for it, and that we should forgive. Their hope is that we will decide they weren’t so very wrong after all.

    Many of us actually like it to work that way, because it is easier to condemn or minimize than it is to forgive. A pastor who fails us, yet acknowledges guilt and asks for forgiveness, has still hurt us. But there can and should be an opportunity for forgiveness and redemption. Forgiveness doesn’t eliminate consequences. Often there is a rush to restoration, especially with very famous people. But for many others, who may have as much potential even though they lack the fame, there is no rush. There may, in fact, be no plan for redemption at all.

    I would suggest that we need to be very careful to hold people accountable, to acknowledge the true nature of transgressions, yet where there is repentance, we need to be ready to forgive and restore under appropriate circumstances. It’s much harder than either condemning or excusing, but it’s the way of grace.

  • Living Biblically

    I could have told him this wouldn’t work:

    On the other hand, it appears to me that he learned a number of lessons that Christians would do well to learn, such as the fact that we all pick and choose.  The question is really whether our criteria for choosing are appropriate.

  • Photo and Haiku at Quiet Paths

    Every so often Christine’s photos and/or Haiku are so good that I just have to call your attention to them. Stairways is great.

  • Two Good Things from Church

    My pastor (First United Methodist Church, Pensacola) today caught my attention in a special way two different times.  The first was when he announced the reading for his sermon.  We had already read the gospel lesson, and the Psalm was included in the call to worship.

    He then said that we needed to take the opportunity more often to read extended pieces of scripture, after which he read all of Genesis 37.  I really enjoyed hearing that entire chapter read.  He built a good sermon on it as well, dealing with living our lives according to some narrative.  As Christians, he said, we should be living our lives according to the narrative of scripture.  That is, of course, much too great of an oversimplification (redundancy-r-us!), but it gets the basic idea.

    Early in the message he also paused for a moment to tell the congregation that he had profound pity on those who do not read the Bible regularly.  I also pity those Christians who have no regular program of Bible reading and study.

  • Edwards: Is Marital Fidelity Strictly Personal?

    I have posted before on the sex scandals involving Larry Craig and David Vitter. Now with the admission of infidelity by John Edwards, we have yet another sex scandal.

    One response, as is often the case with marital infidelity, is to claim that this is strictly a personal issue, one between him and his wife. And the spouse is certainly the primary person who is wronged. If John Edwards (or David Vitter or Larry Craig before him) were private individuals, their deeds would be a private matter to be settled privately. (One must note that unlike Edwards, so far as I know, both Craig and Vitter violated laws, while Edwards violated only his marriage vows.)

    But Edwards is a public person, who has sought public office multiple times. He does not claim that marriage vows are temporary or optional. In public he portrays a family man. I don’t think infidelity in that case is strictly personal. Whether or not one fulfills one’s vows is of paramount importance in judging integrity.

    I have certain standards for sexual morality. I claim to be moderate, am regularly called liberal, but my personal standards are rather old fashioned. I believe in marital faithfulness. I don’t believe in pre-marital sex. If I violate those standards it should (and doubtless would) have an impact on the way people regard me as a Christian teacher and leader in my church.

    But both in and outside of the church we seem to have accepted a curiously bipolar attitude toward sexual sins. On the one hand we are scandalized and yell and scream about them a great deal. On the other, we excuse them in practice. I can find few people in churches, for example, who will say they believe that premarital or extramarital sex is OK, but when it is practiced, the consequences are quite limited unless the person is a very public figure.

    It seems as thought we know it’s wrong, but we also know that we are weak, and think “there but for the grace of God go I.” This is similar to early problems in dealing with drunk driving. Police, judges, and juries so often knew that they were guilty of the same thing from time to time, and were aware that they might just as well have been the defendant, so they went easy on what was regarded as a human weakness. Mothers Against Drunk Driving waged quite a campaign to make driving under the influence a truly shameful deed before it was treated as seriously as it deserved. (You’ll still find some cases where good old boys let one another off on this one.)

    Marital infidelity, of course, doesn’t kill as many people as does driving under the influence. But when one gets married, one does make a commitment, and normally that commitment is for life. If you can make a commitment “until death do us part” and then casually violate it, it says something about your integrity. When you cover it up, it not only says something about your integrity, I believe it is morally corrosive. You become practiced at lying.

    I believe that a willingness to ignore one covenant, that of marriage, is a significant factor in deciding whether the person in question will be faithful to another covenant, for example, the oath of office. Will the person who swore to be faithful to his wife, and then strayed while covering it up regard the oath to “uphold and defend the constitution of the United States” any more seriously?

    In an atmosphere where lies and half-truths are so common, it may seem very odd to make a big deal out of this one particular issue. But I would suggest that if we drop out of the search for integrity simply because so many people have failed to provide it, we will continue to enable our politicians to become less and less honest with us.

    I do not believe marital fidelity is strictly personal when it is committed by a person seeking the trust of others. Violation of a lifetime vow is a very bad indicator of personal integrity.

    PS: I commend the mainstream media for waiting for confirmation on this one. I rarely find them commendable, but they did much better than average here.

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.

  • Redistribution: Wealth and Responsibility

    I blogged a couple of days ago about redistribution of wealth, and then I read this post at Pursuing Holiness that discusses responsibility.

    Putting the two together it occurred to me that both are cases of redistribution–one of responsibility and the other of money.

    In censorship, we take the responsibility for choosing away from the individual and we give it to someone else, thus reducing their choices. They don’t have the opportunity to do the wrong thing, or at least the thing we have defined as wrong, and they have one less choice.

    We don’t have little green pieces of paper marked in “responsibilities,” but the change occurs just the same.

    The two are very directly connected. Consider medical payments, for example. When more of my medical bills are paid for by someone else, I have less choices regarding my care, and even how I care for myself. I recall when I was in the Air Force, I had to work with the flight surgeons on my health. I couldn’t just say, “No, I’m not going to do that” when given orders by the doctor.

    We don’t move that directly in the civilian world, but we do already see the signs in our handling of smoking. People who don’t smoke ask a very valid question. Why should we pay more for health care in order to support the bad habit of people who do? The answer? Reduce or eliminate their ability to make that bad choice.

    If I were less concerned about individual freedom or responsibility, that one would go over well for me. I don’t smoke, and I never have. But wait a second! I’m overweight. No matter how much I may want to criticize smokers for risking their health, I have done the same thing in a different way. (I’m finally working diligently on this, by the way, nearly 20 years after I left the service and started to let myself slip, but that doesn’t change the basic point.)

    When we talk about those over-the-top politicians who want to restrict what McDonalds should sell, we need to remember the basic arguments that are used to restrict smoking. They’re going to apply.

    I’m not advocating a complete elimination of government payment. In fact, I’m pretty sure we’re going to end up with near universal health care in this country, and as a result we’re going to face interference with our lifestyles. I still think we need to look that way, hopefully with a multiple payer system rather than a single payer government program, and do so soon, since the longer we wait the more radical the solution is going to be. The basic reason is that, however much we pay lip service to individual responsibility, we ultimately don’t want to let people bleed to death for want of health care.

    But we need to look very carefully at what we’re giving away and what we’re getting. Count the cost. Despite political promises, none of this stuff comes without a cost.

  • Christian Carnival CCXXXVI Posted

    . . . at Brain Cramps for God.  Lots of food for thought.  Oh for more reading time!