Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Walking To New Orleans

    Well, not quite. I’ll be driving.

    My stepson John Webb is a pitcher for the Iowa Cubs (Chicago Cubs AAA team in the Pacific Coast League) who are in New Orleans for a series against the New Orleans Zephyrs. Last night the Cubs beat the Zephyrs and John put in two good innings in relief. I hope we’ll see him in relief Sunday night or at the day game on Monday when we’ll be at the park watching.

    We’ll leave after church Sunday morning and return late Monday evening. I don’t know what blogging will take place during that time, if any. I will, however, be doing some today. 🙂

  • The Gospel of Masculinity

    Over the last few years we have seen a number of movements in Christianity to involve more men in the church and in spiritual activities. I welcome this trend, because spirituality has too long been the province of only a small percentage of men. This is not because I think that women need men to keep them straight in church. Rather, it’s because men need spiritual food as well. The church is enriched by the involvement of a great variety of people.

    The problem that I see, which was emphasized by Mark Driscoll’s recent video (link to my post about it), is that we reshape the gospel to fit the people instead of the people to fit the gospel. I don’t mean that the gospel is for only one type of people, but the gospel does (or should) change people in substantial ways.

    To some, however, there seems to be a new Jesus. Replacing “gentle Jesus meek and mild” is the Jesus who would own several guns, go hunting and fishing, be a sports fan if not an active participant, drive a pickup truck, and always have control of the TV remote. This is the Jesus who wouldn’t let anyone push him around, whose solution to crime is to go catch them and put them in jail or hang them. Some folks sound like Jesus likes people who don’t share these characteristics less. Men, such as myself, who don’t need to have the remote in their hands and don’t own a gun aren’t taking leadership and aren’t masculine enough. Their wives won’t really love them, and God despises their lukewarm attitudes because they are not clearly and obviously in command of their home.

    Now some good, very masculine men may be offended by that last paragraph, but you see I think the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” is also a dangerous caricature. For some years we’ve had in many churches the sort of Jesus who can’t stand the hunters and fisherman, who has a special section of heaven roped off for the folks who drive pickup trucks so they won’t get in the way of the truly spiritual folks who drive subcompacts, and probably doesn’t like cops because they arrest people instead of converting them.

    OK, now I’ve offended another group. My point is simply that Jesus is there to take you from where you are, and to lead you to be a better person, no matter what your personality. Christianity is not about making you into some sort of caricature of the personality someone thinks is most “Christian.” It’s about taking a variety of people and making them better able to serve their fellow human beings.

    There are folks who serve one another who are quite fond of guns. One pastor I know is a retired sheriff’s deputy. He’s a good shot and a wonderful Christian man at the same time. Another man I know personally is gay, and spends his life well beyond what we’d normally call “duty” in service for others. I know a dentist who has led numerous mission trips and has a special ministry to children when he leads teams in service. He also has a substantial supply of guns (I’ve handled and discussed most of them with him myself), likes to shoot, drives a pickup truck, and could be mistaken for a ruffian if you didn’t know him. My father, on the other hand, is an MD who was a missionary all his life, and served World War II in a conscientious objector’s camp in Canada because he refused to bear arms.

    All of these people were and/or are servants of God and followers of Jesus. There isn’t one stamp for it. A gospel of masculinity is not a good replacement for a gospel of femininity or any other specialized gospel we invent. What we need is a gospel that includes all those God is calling. God will make use of our diverse gifts and personalities and smooth the rough edges where necessary.

  • Moderate Christian Blogroll Requirements

    I’m assuming that very few people subscribe to or read the main Moderate Christian Blogroll blog yet, so I’m going to link to my latest post there from here as a reminder. I started posting blogroll related items there because I like to keep this blog focused on opinion on religion and society type issues.

    In any case, I have posted something on the requirements for the Moderate Christian Blogroll. If you’re on the blogroll, please check that post out. The requirements for the blogroll are pretty simple, and not terribly demanding, but they do need some attention.

  • H. R. 1592

    I’ve posted on this one before, but over the last few days my e-mail inbox has been bombarded by notices telling me that my freedom of speech is about to be destroyed. Amanda at Imago Dei has an excellent post responding to this as well, and that reminded me to say a few more words. I could not find anything in the text of the bill that dealt with freedom of speech, but the logic apparently is that a pastor might preach a sermon against homosexuality, and a member of the congregation might then commit a crime against someone who is homosexual. Thus pastors could get put in jail over this.

    It seems to me, however, that absent any particular change to the law, such a charge would have to pass current tests for incitement, and frankly, I don’t think a pastor should be exempt from the standard charges of incitement. Let’s change the scenario around just a bit and suppose that the sermon is preached by the pastor of a small “cult.” (You supply whatever definition of “cult” you desire.) The pastor says that other Christians are as good as murderers because they are sending people straight to hell by presenting an untrue message, and that killing them would be justified. Following that service, a member of the congregation goes out and kills one or more conservative (but not true enough) Christians.

    I’m not a lawyer, but as I understand it there would be certain things that the pastor would have to have said to make his speech incitement. Certainly it would be considered incitement had he specified a target by name and pointed to a member of the church with the suggestion that the specific member should go kill the specific target. I don’t know precisely where the boundary lines are, but they already exist.

    Now I have some questions about the value of bringing in federal support, and in providing specific aid in cases of a specific motivation, but those issues are technical and should be discussed technically, not as an all-out assault on freedom of religion.

    For more information:

  • Christian Carnival CLXX

    . . . has been posted at Brain Cramps for God. It has a nice theme, lots of good information and many interesting posts.

  • Christian Carnival CLXX

    . . . has been posted at Brain Cramps for God. It has a nice theme, lots of good information and many interesting posts, including my very own post from this blog, Look at New Perspectives on Paul.

  • Information on FV (Federal Vision)

    I found the this post on the Federal Vision (FV) because the author tracked back to a post on my Threads blog that is related to my Look at New Perspectives on Paul entry. It’s not my intent to discuss the FV and the relationship of the Westminster Confession to the new perspectives on Paul, nor do I plan to debate the doctrinal issues of the PCA directly. But I suspect that most readers of this blog are not PCA and might want to know what those things are since I referenced them.

    Having provided these links, my plan is to blog about materials I read on NPP strictly from the point of view of their accuracy. Are the new perspectives giving us a better idea of what Paul meant or not? I won’t be trying to fit those ideas into a particular doctrinal perspective. I do have one, of course. I don’t deny having biases and preconceptions. I’ll do my best, however, to set them aside.

  • Praying, Being Heard, and Not Getting It

    7Who, in the days of his flesh, offered entreaties and petitions to the one who was able to save him from death with loud cries and tears, and he was heard because of his piety. 8Even though he was a son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered, 9and being made whole he became a means of eternal salvation to all those who obey him, 10since he was designated by God as a priest according to the priestly order of Melchizedek. — Hebrews 5:7-10

    I’m writing this on the national day of prayer. A “national” day of prayer makes me wonder just what we’re praying for and how. But it reminded me of a question I hear frequently: “Why should anyone pray if they’re not going to get what they pray for?” That question starts with a false premise. It assumes that you won’t. But since I believe that quite often you will not get what you pray for, I should give it consideration.

    In Hebrews 5:7-10, we have the statement that Jesus prayed. He prayed to “the one who was able to save him from death.” I presume such a prayer might have, and did, occur many times during his ministry, but likely this reference is primarily to his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” He also placed that prayer under subjection to God’s will. Now if the text stopped in the middle of verse seven, we might imagine that the prayer of Jesus was not heard because he didn’t get what he was asking for.

    But the text explicitly says that Jesus was heard. And there is what’s hard for us to get hold of. Praying is not about getting stuff. Praying is about our communion with God. That’s why all these scientific tests about prayer and healing largely miss the mark. They’re interesting, but the can’t test prayer because prayer is not a means of getting things.

    What if the prayer of Jesus was counted in a scientific test? It would certainly go into the “failed” column. He didn’t get what he asked for. And yet he was heard, and what actually happened was better–in the end–than what he had requested. It happens that way because there’s a lot more knowledge on God’s end of the prayer than on mine.

    So a national day of prayer invites me to commune with God, and that is the only purpose I have to have. If I have communed with God, my prayer worked. The amazing thing is that I often would rather have God do it my way. I’m in touch with infinite power and infinite knowledge, but what I ask is that God use his infinite power to make things work the way I–oh so incredibly finite–want them to.

    One of the most blessed characteristics of this universe is that God doesn’t always answer our prayers in the way that we would prefer.

    Jesus was the great example of this. One thing was refused him–escape from the cross. Through that one refusal, a refusal he invited by saying “not my will but yours,” our salvation was secured.

    Aren’t you thankful that God doesn’t do things your way?

  • Penscola AUSCS and ACLU Reps on Kenneth Lamb’s Show

    This is of local interest along the Florida-Alabama gulf coast.

    Kennneth E. Lamb is hosting of “Your Turn” program from 4 til 6PM on Thursday 3 May 2007. Bill Caplinger of AU and Susan Watson of ACLU local chapters will be guesting. I know both of these folks, and they should be worth hearing. I won’t be able to get to hear the show myself due to conflicts.

    The show is on 1330AM WEBY.

    Personally I don’t like Kenneth Lamb’s show all that much, but Bill and Susan should be able to make their voices heard. (Come to think of it, I just don’t like talk radio. It’s a personal prejudice.)

  • Doctrine and Reality – The Need for Balance

    In a recent post Dave Warnock looks through the preface by John Piper to Pierced for Our Trangressions, and quotes the following:

    This is how I feel today about teachers of Christ’s people who deny and even belittle precious, life-saving, biblical truth.When a person says that God’s ‘punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed’ would be as evil as child abuse, I am angered and grieved. For if God did not punish his Son in my place, I am not saved from my greatest peril, the wrath of God.

    (The whole post by Dave is worthwhile reading, but this post is just a tangent from that.)

    The more I read about this the more I realize that I will be reading this book eventually. But right now I’m not trying to review the book, or even directly to argue with John Piper. He has written and said much that I value, and also much with which I disagree. Often I even value the disagreement more than the agreement.

    But I want to respond to this point of doctrine. It is clear from scripture that good teaching is a good thing. In other words, it does matter what we teach. At the same time it’s very easy to make our doctrine, especially detailed doctrinal issues into something that stands instead of God. If Christ did not die for me, I am still in my sins, but if I fail to understand in a detailed way just why Christ died for me and how the atonement was accomplished, that does not diminish the fact that Christ died for me.

    This is where I am troubled by the teaching about Penal Substituionary Atonement (PSA). It is not that I think the teaching in and of itself is wrong, it is that it seems to be taking the place of the reality in some people’s theology. PSA is a metaphor, a limited human expression of the meaning of the atonement. As with most metaphors, it conveys some of the meaning of the atonement, but it can easily obscure other parts of that meaning.

    But in conversation with many advocates of PSA I can’t simply affirm my acceptance of PSA as a single metaphor among many for the atonement. I am asked to affirm that PSA is the central meaning of the cross, essentially making it the reality, rather than a metaphor. That I will not do, because I believe that is not worthy of the cross. That reduces the cross to a sense of human retribution and punishment, and reduces God to a human judge. It does not adequately express the trinitarian view of God himself becoming one of us and dying for our sins. It does not adequately express the depth and breadth of God’s love and forgiveness. Seeing it in that light, for me–and I reemphasize for me–it would be idolatry to put a lesser thing in place of the reality that is God, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).

    There is no language to adequately express the incarnation and atonement. No matter how well we express it, we run up against the difficulty of describing and encompassing infinite God with finite human expressions. Our doctrines on this and every other topic will always contain some taint of the traditions of men.

    For that reason, we need to allow our doctrines and our perceptions to constantly come up against the scriptural presentation and against our experience of God’s presence. This is true whether those doctrines be modern, liberal, post-modern, conservative, or any other label we might put on them. It is true even if we believe our doctrines are scriptural.

    I read a report by a committee in the PCA, examining the New Perspective on Paul and another movement to see if they are in accord with the Westminster Standards. In explaining how they do this, and also elevate scripture above the standards, they wrote the following tortured paragraph:

    In addition, we are a confessional church. The PCA has affirmed that “the Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly, together with the formularies of government, discipline, and worship are accepted by the Presbyterian Church in America as standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture in relation to both faith and practice” (BCO 29-1; cf. 21-5.2; 26-1; 39-3). The church has historically understood that this claim does not elevate the Standards over Scripture itself; and yet, our Constitution does recognize the Standards as our “standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture.” Because this is the case, the main focus of our study will be to determine whether the views of the NPP and AAT/FV are in conformity with our Westminster Standards.

    It’s not my intention here to criticize the PCA any more than specifically John Piper. The question I have is whether you can say that a certain set of standards is not elevated above scripture, and at the same time make the assumption that those standards define what scripture says. The NPP scholars believe they have found good, new interpretations of Paul, and they think their interpretations are closer to Paul’s intention than were earlier studies. Would not the correct question be this: Are these new interpretations more accurate? If you ask instead whether those interpretations are in accordance with the standards, does that not place the standards in the superior position?

    I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist, and the writings of Ellen G. White were frequently placed in that position. In seminary I began to forcefully reject the claim that Ellen White was not above scripture, and yet when I went to interpret scripture, what Ellen White said was supposed to be definitive. If the Bible was superior, then I could test Ellen White by scripture, not the scripture by her.

    I feel the same way about doctrinal statements and confessions. Confessions are good for denominational unity, but if I am ever studying a proposed new interpretation my question will not be whether it is consistent with a particular confession, but whether it is more accurate. The confession can be adjusted.

    I think that all metaphors and all doctrines (as a subcategory of metaphor) need to be subject to revision at any time. Many have been and will be reaffirmed over and over, but the examination is still good. I think God will be grieved if we don’t allow his presence to shatter our limited understandings.