Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Grace and Choices

    “Grace gives us choices,” says Pastor Tom Sims in a blog entry entitled Paradoxical People.

    Good point. Tom is talking particularly about our ability to be ourselves. I like to call the alternative “putting on your faith face.” I see it primarily in churches. You can’t possibly go to church, after all, without making sure that you are modelling a “self” that other church members will find acceptable. Unfortunately churches are often places where you will most likely be judged–and condemned.

    That is where grace is supposed to come in. As Christians, we are people who are what we are because of God’s gift, his grace. I can hammer the point about not judging, and quote Matthew 7:1 all day, but the key is in realizing that we are all the products of grace, and we need to extend grace. Church should be the place where you can truly be yourself, where it is safe to be yourself, because God’s grace is extended by everyone there.

    Tom continues: “The real person is the one in the blueprints, the finished product in the mind and heart of the Creator – fearfully and wonderfully made, beloved, creative, awe-struck, funny, joyful, and caring.” That’s God’s grace in action.

    Let me make a few suggestions for congregations that would like to be grace filled:

    1. Be honest. Each person who is honest and open about his or her experiences encourages someone else to do the same. If you’re open, people can trust you when they are also open.
    2. Don’t condemn. This doesn’t mean that you pretend that wrong is right. When someone brings a real problem to you, they don’t need to hear that things are fine as it is. It may be the hardest thing to do, but we are called upon to recognize sin, but show grace to sinners. If we can’t do that, we really can’t carry out the great commission.
    3. Don’t get stuck on the negative. God’s grace is building us all. We need to recognize what’s wrong and take action, but we don’t need to dwell on the wrong or wallow in the muck. Grace doesn’t mean we stay down. Grace means we get to move on toward the plan in God’s mind.

    Make each day a graceful one!

  • Some Creation-Evolution Reading

    I have been writing for a number of entries about Christian views on origins. Since in some of these entries I was describing someone else’s view, I thought it would be a good idea to call attention to some good reading from advocates of each of the views. For more detail see Energion.com Classified Directory Page – Creation vs Evolution.

    What I’m interested in in selecting this material is those resources that are accessible to a non-expert who is a serious student, that they are clear and generally complete, and that they represent their own position and that of others honestly. In this debate there’s a great deal of misrepresentation that takes place. This falls into two categories, with those in the young and even old earth creationist camps tending to question the sincerity of their opponent’s beliefs, and making what I would regard as spiritual judgments of them. This can even occur between young earth and old earth advocates. Belief in evolution is equated with atheism, and it doesn’t matter how much one confesses to belief in God, in Jesus, and other key doctrines, disagreement on this one topic is considered sufficient to effectively exclude one from Christianity entirely. On the other hand, there is a tendency by advocates of evolution to regard all opponents, young earth, old earth, and intelligent design, as either stupid or deranged.

    I prefer those materials from creationists that do not pass spiritual judgment on evolutionists. Those materials are few and far between. I think it is appropriate for creationists to question my doctrinal views, for example. I don’t believe in inerrancy, and it is quite valid to point this out and relate it to my approach to understanding scripture. But don’t call me an atheist, not because it’s an insult (in my view it isn’t), but because it’s simply not true. So I have no problem with literature that is doctrinally hard-hitting.

    From the other side I believe that false claims of credentials, misuse of credentials, and misrepresentation of opponents’ arguments are definitely fair game. But even if one regards certain arguments as stupid or ignorant, the people themselves may be quite intelligent and quite skilled in their own field.

    Obviously, I have no power or authority to enforce such standards, but I do my best to point out where material I reference follows them and where it does not.

    One general resource to look into is the book Three Views on Creation and Evolution. Note that I have not read this book, but I have read items by all of the authors, and I believe they represent their own position well.

    Young Earth Creationism

    Probably the major web resource on this topic is the Institute for Creation Research. In addition, if you read just one book on this topic, I recommend Faith, Form and Time by Dr. Kurt Wise (link is to my review). The reason I recommend this book is that its author has impeccable credentials, and spends most of his time on the data and very little time making negative remarks about his opponents’ character. The ICR material is more typical of the way this issue is often debated.

    Old Earth Creationism

    On the web, the key site here is Reasons to Believe, Dr. Hugh Ross’s ministry. Many people involved in the creation-evolution debate are actually old earth creationists, though young earth creationists tend sometimes to dismiss them. For information on old earth creationism, works by Dr. Hugh Ross (from the scientific perspective) or Gleason Archer (Biblical scholar) are generally good. Ross’s book A Matter of Days is a good place to start.

    Ruin and Restoration Creationism

    This is one of the hardest views to get substantial information about. A good overview is The Invisible War by Donald Grey Barnhouse.

    Theistic Evolution

    Here your best online resource is the material from the American Scientific Affiliation. I recommend two books as must read information, Finding Darwin’s God by Dr. Kenneth Miller, and The Fourth Day by Howard van Till.

    Intelligent Design

    If you are unacquainted with this area, probably start with Darwin’s Black Box, by Michael Behe. It’s still kind of the starting point, especially for those of us who are not professional scientists.

    Atheistic Evolution

    There are those who might believe I don’t recognize this category, and in one way I don’t. I think that science done by a Christian believer and science done by an atheist should produce the same results, because both study the natural world. Disagreement centers on what else there may be. An excellent summary of the atheistic position is Richard Dawkins’ book The Blind Watchmaker. I found the book tremendously helpful in spite of the kind of gratuitous insults to my own position. Dawkins would probably prefer the debate to be entirely between atheistic evolution and young earth creationism. He might as well get used to disappointment. I’m even going to go right on buying and enjoying his books. So there! 🙂

    General Information

    For general information on evolution, I recommend Ernst Mayr’s book What Evolution Is. I’m definitely not an expert, and not even a well-informed amateur when it comes to biology, so this book was very hard reading for me. I read it with a dictionary within arm’s reach, and I had to go to the encyclopedia several times and also do a couple of web searches to learn about species that Mayr references as examples without any comment. But the experience was entirely worth the effort. This isn’t a book of polemics. It simply explains how evolution works and the basic evidence for it.

    Note

    When I continue this series I’m going to go into the key elements of a Christian doctrine of creation and relate them to these various views. I outline what I believe these elements are in the Participatory Study Series pamphlet God the Creator.

  • Negative Perceptions of Islam Increasing

    In an article that should be no surprise to anyone, MSNBC lets us know that Negative Perceptions of Islam Increasing, something I’m sure none of us would have guessed had there not be pollsters to tell us.

    As an aside, you can check out their daily poll, a true example of the stupidity of online polls, at Poll: How do you view Islam? What on earth is that question supposed to mean? It’s a polling question for stupid people, and the results are meaningless. But then, all results of online polls are meaningless. This one just stuck out as more meaningless than usual. But even though it does not collect useful information, it suggests and reinforces an attitude, the attitude that suggests that we can deal with all who claim to be Muslims as a single entity.

    This would be as though we decided that all Christians should be assumed to be like the Christian reconstructionists, and that if you meet a Christian, or make policy for dealing with a Christian you should assume that set of beliefs. Whether you agree or not with Christian reconstructionists, you know that most Christians do not, in fact, hold that particular set of beliefs.

    I do not mean to suggest that we should not learn from experience. The fact is that those who are attacking us the most at this point do claim to be Muslims, and while they may be bad Muslims (I certainly am not going to try to judge “good” versus “bad” members of another faith), they do hold at least some claim to the title. So there are certainly things that we need to do to guarantee security. But if we fail to distinguish the good from the bad, and even different attitudes amongst the rest of Muslims, it can only make the situation worse. I don’t mean that we do this because it’s politically correct, or because we have to feel guilty about defending ourselves by force, or out of altruism. I say it because I believe it is the best way to deal with the situation.

    The only thing that can result from us building up prejudice and hatred here in America against Muslims is to increase the number of our foes, and reduce the number of our friends. It can make it strategically difficult to find help and to gather intelligence. If Muslims in the Arab world (and it’s important as noted in the MSNBC story I cited to distinguish “Arab” from “Muslim”) believe that we are intending to destroy Islam, than many who might be willing to work with us against terrorists will instead be pushed to work against us. The instinct for survival does that to people.

    We, in the United States, need to repeatedly make it clear who is the enemy and who is not, both by words and by behavior. If you are a “good” Muslim from our point of view, you should be certain that you are safe and that your legal protections are guaranteed and will be respected. By “good” here I don’t mean a good adherent to the Muslim faith–that is not for me to judge. What I mean is a person who abides by our laws and means to continue abiding by them and upholding them.

    I believe it is possible for us to recognize how our own actions provoke reactions in the Arab world without blaming ourselves for causing the terrorist attacks. What I mean is that we can consider our words and deeds from a strategic point of view. What type of speech and behavior will make it easiest for us to live in the world and protect our security? One can teach a tourist, for example, what areas of the city to avoid in order not to be a victim of crime without also telling that tourist that he or she is to blame if victimized.

    But the reason I chose to comment on this story is simply this: If we think of Muslims as a monolithic group, all to be treated in precisely the same way, then we will restrict our ability to act effectively. Asking, “Do you have a favorable impression of _____?” and naming the group is sloppy thinking, and it can lead to sloppy actions.

  • Determining Date and Authorship

    This is a continuation of my series on Biblical criticism that started with my post Overview of Biblical Criticism – I. You might think I would now continue with Overview II, but I’m not nearly that consistent. My next post will continue that line, but first I want to look at some caveats, and a couple of the most basic issues in examining an ancient document.

    One of the major difficulties that I see with Biblical scholarship in general and Biblical criticism in general is simply that conclusions are often presented very confidently without an adequate presentation of the facts and reasoning that produced that conclusion. This is overwhelmingly true in material written for popular use.

    I’m writing this series to try to help improve on this situation. While I cannot provide a graduate education in Biblical studies or Biblical criticism in a few blog entries, I believe I can point out some key elements of how conclusions are reached in those areas so that lay persons can judge what they read more effectively.

    Cautions:

    First, some general considerations.

    1. Don’t read just one introduction to a Bible book or one article on a topic. While some writers are quite good at summarizing all views and providing the arguments and evidence for them, those writers are rarely the ones who write for a popular audience, and if they do, time and space constraints make it difficult for them to truly cover the evidence.

    2. Choose your sources carefully. Make sure that you have material both that presents the argument from the point of view of your faith community, if any, and also something that argues a view that is substantially different.

    3. Don’t mistake confidence for accuracy. There’s the old story about the minister who wrote in the margin of his sermon notes, “Point weak, shout louder.” That’s true of scholars sometimes as well. I recall a book by a well-known Biblical critic of the 20th century. As I was reading the first couple of chapters about 60 or so years after he had written them, I noted that there was a great deal there that I would disagree with, that there was hardly anything there I would regard as “proven,” and that much of the material had not stood the test of time in scholarly consensus. At the start of the next chapter he said, “All of this is the assured result of scientific study.” (I paraphrase.) Beware of that attitude!

    Date and Authorship:

    No matter where we go with Biblical criticism, from studying whole sections of the Bible involving multiple books (such as Samuel/Kings, Chronicles/Ezra/Nehemiah) down to individual pericopae (such as a single parable), the question of who wrote it and when will come up. (We will also want to ask what it was written for, and to whom, but that goes beyond the scope of this post.) Any student of the Bible will encounter this type of question, as it is included in most introductions to Biblical books in study Bibles. But if you look at a variety of study Bibles you will find significant disagreements on these questions.

    How can one determine the date and authorship of a book? We generally divide the evidence into two categories, external and internal.

    External evidence includes a number of elements.

    1. References by other authors
      If another author makes reference to a work, that work must obviously have been written before the reference. In addition, in some cases the author may simply state when he believes the document was written. One must, of course, determine the reliability of the person making the reference. A good example of this is when Eusebius quotes Papias (c. 140 CE) regarding the authorship of the gospel of Mark. External references also apply to authorship.
    2. Manuscripts of the text
      Again obviously the document must have been written earlier than the earliest known manuscript of this. You may laugh at having this mentioned as a specific point, but the discovery of a tiny fragment of the gospel of John from about 125 CE forced many scholars to rethink their dating of the gospel into the mid to late 2nd century.
    3. Quotations of the text
      Clearly, the book must have been written before it can be quoted. This is not always a simple as it might seem, because in many cases there is a valid question as to who is quoting whom, and therefore is the later author. Ancient authors did not always specify the name of a person they were quoting, and also sometimes quoted very loosely or simply made allusion to a passage.
    4. Inclusions in collections
      Again, it’s clear that a book can’t be part of a collection before it’s actually available. This issue comes up in dating books of the Hebrew Bible, because it appears that in the Hebrew book order, the books were accepted as canonical in three portions–Torah, Prophets, and Writings. For Christian interpreters, this applies particularly to the book of Daniel, which is grouped with the major prophets in our English Bibles, alongside Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, but is included in the Writings in the Hebrew Bible. The Writings tend to contain later material. (More on Daniel below.)

    Internal evidence:

    1. Statements in the book itself
      When the book of Isaiah begins, “The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz which he saw in the which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah,” we get a pretty straightforward piece of evidence for authorship and date. Though there is some disagreement about the precise dates of the reigns of those kings, that variation is hardly significant to the issue at hand. (But see below.)
    2. Chronological statements in the book
      Here I’m talking about statements that go beyond the general prologue I quoted above. For example, Isaiah 6 begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died . . .” Daniel gives precise chronological information, though in his case the dating is nonetheless controversial.
    3. Allusions and references to events and persons
      In the case of Isaiah, this is one of the key issues that has produced the 2nd Isaiah theory. Between chapters 44 and 48, reference is made to the Persian King Cyrus, who was certainly not a contemporary of the kings listed earlier. Was Isaiah in fact prophesying the work of Cyrus that much in advance, or was part of the book written later. (I’ll be talking a bit more about this in an introduction to Isaiah I’m preparing to place on my Energion.com web site. I’ll make a short blog post when that introduction is completed.) Such references can be obscure in themselves, such as the reference to Darius in Daniel 6. Who is this guy?
    4. Language used
      This is tricky, because a document can be written in archaic language, but especially when it concerns technical terms, it can be helpful. Jacob Milgrom, in his 3 volume Anchor Bible Commentary on Leviticus, surveys technical terms from the temple and tabernacle in late Jewish literature, in Ezekiel, and in the Pentateuch, and shows that the priestly source for the Pentateuch must be dated before Ezekiel. Since Ezekiel’s date is fairly well established, that pushes the date back considerably from what critical scholars have been saying.
    5. Interests and priorities
      This is more general, but one can expect a writer who is very interested in war to have written in either a time of war or when war was threatened. If the writer talks about a time of peace and complacency, he may be writing in an era when those were problems. This is very general, but if you have other indicators, it can help make the result more precise.

    In determining authorship, in addition to these items, one must consider the style of writing. This is a process of comparing material that is known to be by the author in question with items that are in dispute. One must be very careful of such arguments, however, because they often depend on assumptions about the topic and surrounding history. For example, in arguing that Jesus did not make certain statements about the end of the world, some scholars depend on the assumption that he must be either a wisdom teacher or an eschatalogical preacher, but not both. That assumption may or may not be valid, but it is often made implicitly and accepted without due consideration. In arguing that the pastoral epistles must be written by a disciple of Paul and attributed to him, scholars work with an assumption of how the church developed (things in the pastoral epistles reflect a more developed church structure than existed in the time of Paul), and also an assumption of how much Paul’s own interests can changes as circumstances develop. Again, these may be valid assumptions, but they need to be considered and accepted or rejected consciously.

    These are just the bare basics, but I will touch on many of these topics more as I continue this series on Biblical criticism.

  • Escambia Count Option Tax Extended

    As reported today in the Pensacola News Journal, the 1 cent option sales tax for our county has been extended. (I apologize to those of my readers who don’t live in Escambia County. You may find, however, that you have a similar situation with your local government.)

    My big interest in this story is not in the simple event, though I voted in favor of continuing the tax. You would hardly come to my blog for breaking local news. But there was an interesting statistic in the story that I want to underline. The tax won with 64% of the vote. But get this–that 64% of the vote was amongst 20% of Escambia County voters. Only 1 out of 5 local voters chose to get out and vote on this issue. The tax will raise approximately $380 million for the county over the next ten years. In our local budget that’s hardly inconsequential. It’s a 1% charge on everything you buy. Don’t you care?

    Now I’m willing to bet that it won’t be just 1 in 5 Escambia County voters who will be complaining over the next 10 years. I’m guessing there will be lots more. They’re going to talk about local government corruption, about excess taxes and lack of public services, all at the same time. They’re not going to ask where the money will come from to fund those services. When it was time to actually make a decision, to exercise just a tiny bit of responsibility (it took me less than 5 minutes all told to vote), they didn’t have the time or the energy.

    Some of those voters will show up when “important” things are at issue, like candidates for congress, or the presidency, or a well-publicized state-wide vote. But they just aren’t interested in taking responsibility for local issues. I once heard a political strategist speak to some activists and he said that you don’t have to investigate to find out whether local government is corrupt. It is. He said just to go make a “sunshine law” request from any department you want to, and you’re going to find problems. He’s probably right.

    But the reason that can be true is simply that people don’t get involved in local issues. It’s not that they have no interest. They will complain plenty about county roads, local education, police protection, and other local issues.

    But at least here in Escambia County, when it was time to make a decision about how to fund those services, only one in five could be bothered to mark one ballot.

    For shame!

  • The Kingdom of God is a Monarchy

    Brian McLaren, author of The Secret Message of Jesus and co-author of Adventures in Missing the Point with Tony Campolo, among many other books, has an article currently on the Sojourner web site entitled Found in Translation. I want to thank Shane Raynor of Wesley Blog for calling my attention to this article with his entry Brian McLaren: Shark-Jumper or Prophet. Raynor expresses his concern at abandoning the kingdom terminology.

    I first want to say that I have really appreciated Brian McLaren’s writing. While I did not agree with everything in it (who could?) I found Adventures in Missing the Point to be challenging and helpful. Indeed, I found the article itself quite helpful. McLaren offers six new metaphors to use in discussing what the rest of us would call “the kingdom of God.” He calls the term “kingdom of God” so “last century.” All of these metaphors have an element of truth in them about God’s work. All of them have some value in communicating God’s will and God’s way to modern people. He says, “In addition, for many today, kingdom language evokes patriarchy, chauvinism, imperialism, domination, and a regime without freedom

  • The Five Minute Solution

    It’s nice to know that the desire for the “five minute solution” is not restricted to my own field of Biblical studies. Many people have asked me over the years for a way to become really knowledgeable of the Bible with only a short devotional study, and I have to tell them that while one can benefit from five minutes a day, one will not become an expert on that plan.

    Recently I had been watching the way science is discussed in the media and in normal conversations, particularly with reference to the creation and evolution controversy. There people simply don’t want to take the time to understand the subject, whether reporters, opinion writers, or ordinary people expressing their opinions. The question has been whether scientists communicate badly, or whether the public needs to dig in and take more responsibility themselves. (For the record, I’m pretty simplistic on this one. I think better public education would solve or ameliorate many, many problems. I think it would be the best investment of public money possible. See my essay Make Education a Priority.)

    Now Newsweek, through a story featured on MSNBC, (Food News Blues) has brought a different topic into focus, but dealing with the same issues–diet. Now I need to make a personal confession. I’m overweight. But I grew up in a medical family, with my father an MD, my mother an RN, and the scientific approach to medicine a part of the daily intellectual diet. I can tell you why I’m overweight. I eat too much and exercise too little. I know how to solve the problem. Eat less and exercise more. There are numerous details about my diet that can be improved because of studies in nutrition. There are specific things that I should eat more of, and specific things I should eat less of, but none of those details change the basic formula.

    The writers blame the situation on “too much information.” Another blog (Remember, it’s never the media’s fault) has commented that this isn’t quite accurate. He asks about the writing of headlines that tend to misguide. There are several examples of those headlines in the Newsweek article as well. One wonders why they didn’t focus on that.

    As an aside, I recall a headline a few years ago about the excavation of a town in Galilee, where Peter once lived. The headline implied that the archeologists were looking for “the house where Jesus taught” while any reading of the archeologists reports would have suggested no such thing. The headline grabs attention, but it doesn’t convey information, at least not accurate information.

    But I think there is an even deeper problem. It’s not just too much information or badly formed headlines. We will get badly formed headlines and poorly organized information as long as that sells newspapers. The newspaper with the headline “LOW-FAT DIET DOES NOT CUT HEALTH RISKS, STUDY FINDS” will generally sell more copies than the one with the headline “LOW-FAT DIETARY PATTERN AND RISK OF INVASIVE BREAST CANCER.” And as long as that’s a fact, it’s silly of us to expect our news media to produce the latter–an accurate headline–when what we will pay for is the former.

    If we think we can get our health information in five minutes a day, we are going to get the quality of health information that people with that little interest in their health deserve. The same thing applies to every area of policy. We complain about the spin politicians put on things, but we tolerate it, and the media reports it, because we pay for it. Then we vote for the politician with the best spin, and he gets elected. Immediately after the election we return to griping about the horrible politicians and their spin. Well folks, they’re just providing for us what we’ll pay for. The media is just providing for us what we’ll pay for.

    Isn’t it about time we demand better?

  • Iraq:What Now for Mixed Shia – Sunni Families – MSNBC.com

    In an article subtitled Love in a Time of Madness Newsweek (via MSNBC.com) calls our attention to the human side of the conflict in Iraq. It’s easy to become tied up with strategic goals such as how we prevent terrorism, how we can get out of Iraq and still at least feel that we accomplished something. But then there is the daily human tragedy that is still what life is in Iraq. What exactly have we done?

    This story brought some personal history to mind. My family were missionaries and we lived in southern Mexico when I was a child. There I saw the conflict that could erupt between family members who were of different Christian denominations. In Guyana, South America, we arrived only a few years after a conflict between races. Guyanese of African ancestry and East Indian ancestry had come to blows, and there were mixed families, and children who were of mixed race. When the violence started where would those couples, those children go to be safe? We had numerous friends who would recount their stories of fear because they didn’t really belong anywhere. South Africa, during apartheid made a special category for people of mixed race. People who have not experienced such a thing may have difficulty understanding what that does to one’s identity.

    I mention the personal history because this story reminded me of those things. But most importantly, it reminded me of how human this story actually is. It’s easy for us here in America to distance ourselves from the human tragedy involved. After all, most of us, myself included, couldn’t give a reasonable resume of the differences between the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam. Those things are silly differences between other people in other places. But as I read about the one couple’s argument over cleansing the feet, I had to think, “That’s a little bit like our Christian arguments over what form of baptism is right, or what kind of music is legitimate church music, or just how the order of service is arranged.” All of those things have produced arguments between Christian couples. And it hasn’t been all that many years since such arguments amongst Christians have resulted in violence.

    It’s very much a part of the common human condition. Stress most any of us sufficiently, and you’ll find conflict erupting, and often doing so over the most trivial of issues–trivial, that is, to those who are not involved. It’s not one of the good things about us as human beings, but it is a reality we have to live with and deal with. And when we undertake to alter another society, it’s a reality that’s likely to come back to haunt us.

    Before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote an essay entitled Revenge!. In it, I commented that Saddam Hussein had certainly provided a good reason for someone to use violence against him. In that sense, action would be justified, but what would happen afterward? I asked:

    But I believe there is a second part to the justification of violence. How can things be better when it’s done? In this case that includes the question of who will rule Iraq following an invasion. Will there be a power vacuum left in its place?

    You see, no matter how bad a government is, there is a possibility for something worse.

    I’d compare the justification for violence I was discussing in that article to a personal justification for violence. If someone is robbing my house, do I have the right to resist? Certainly. But if I resist ineffectively, I could simply make the problem worse. I could turn robbery into assault, and assault into murder.

    At this point, I’m still left to ask the same question about Iraq. I still don’t know how one makes a better situation overall come out of the troubled and violent situation there. But maybe we can start by simply realizing, as a nation, that these people are like us in many ways, that their problems are not other people’s problems, and that we have made ourselves part of an ongoing tragedy. No, I don’t think we caused it all. The situation was bad before we went there.

    Perhaps we need to quit thinking of Iraqis as “people over there” with odd beliefs and incomprehensible conflicts. They are, in many ways, just like us, with similar hopes and dreams, similar angers and hatreds, and a similar desire for peace and security. It’s just much harder to accomplish those goals in their circumstances.

    As Christians, we are admonished to love our neighbors as ourselves. Could it just be that Jesus would regard the Iraqis as our neighbors?

  • Characteristics of a Living Church

    43Now awe came upon every person, because many miracles and signs were accomplished through the ministry of the apostles. 44All the believers were in unity and had there possessions in common. 45They sold their possessions and assets and divided among all those who needed them. 46Every day they went faithfully to the temple, they broke bread in their various houses, receiving their food with rejoicing and simplicity of heart, 47praising God and being gracious to all the people. And the Lord added daily those who were being saved  (Acts 2:43-47, from the TFBV project). 

    When Paul says, “You are the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27) he introduces a powerful metaphor for use all around the church.  One of these applications is the question of life.  A live body has breath, blood flow, and most importantly doesn’t have substantial dead pieces falling off of it.  (I’m aware of dead skin and hair cells.)  Visitors to a church will often say something like, “This congregation is really alive,” or “This congregation is totally dead.”  They don’t mean, of course, that the members of the one are physically alive and of the other physically dead.  They mean that there is a spiritual life of the whole body, collectively, that can be seen, felt, and experienced.

    So what makes a church alive?

    I find the definition in the passage from Acts that I quoted above.  I’m not one of those people who want us to closely imitate the early church in every detail.  I believe that there can be a wide variety of ways in which a church can work in a community.  I live in Pensacola, FL, and I don’t expect every little detail of the church in 1st century Jerusalem to be the same as it is for my church in 21st century Florida.  But I do think the principles will be the same.

    From this passage about the early church, I see several principles:

    1. Continuing “power” ministry
    2. Unity and mutual support
    3. Faithful common worship
    4. Worship that extends beyond the worship center (homes, small groups)
    5. Continuing “God-powered” outreach

    I believe I can summarize these points with the word “discipleship.”  It’s important to note that discipleship is closely related to mission.  In fact, one cannot exist without the other.  A church may have different specific missions, and various emphases, but at some point in all churches there must be the two elements of following Jesus (discipleship) and mission (reaching out to others).  Try operating without the element of mission, and you get an ethical club.  Without the element of discipleship, you have a simple social service organization.  (Either option may be alright under appropriate circumstances, but they do not constitute a church.)

    Now let’s look at individual points.

    First, the necessary elements of “power” ministry are the infilling of the congregation, as a group, with the Holy Spirit, the empowering of the members with the gifts of the Spirit, and releasing all the membership to do ministry.  Not all of these elements are specified in Acts, but they can be supported scripturally through 1 Corinthians 12-14, Ephesians 4:9-16, and Romans 12:3-8.  But they can also be established logically.  If only the pastor or a small leadership group carry out the ministry, very little can be accomplished.  The goal clearly must be to have everyone acting together.

    Logically, the need for unity and common support follows.  If the entire body is to work together, it must be healthy.  Too often we work with numbers and percentages, assuming that if a portion of the body is in good shape, we can just ignore the rest.  I would add a note on the church owning everything in common.  That seems to me something that was practical and appropriate in Jerusalem, but not so practical now.  But there is a principle that should be applied today.  We should be ashamed that there are people in our churches who are in need and are not taken care of.  The resources exist for us to make sure people are properly taken care of, and we should consider this a responsibility of the church, not just an option.

    Faithful common worship is an essential of maintaining unity.  Our common times of worship must offer us the opportunity to worship, but also an opportunity to fellowship–to worship together and to bond as the body of Christ.  This fellowship involves encouragement and accountability.  We encourage one another in our discipleship and ministry, and we hold one another accountable for what God expects of us.

    At the same time, the larger the church, the less of the encouragment and accountability can take place in a large, common worship service.  We have the need of smaller groups to provide this additional needed fellowship.  Such small groups also provide additional opportunities for mission.

    This fellowship will include at least the following elements:

    1. Bible study
      In a living congregation the members knows why they are doing what they are doing.  They will be aware of their basic doctrines, and they will be able to study these things for themselves.  This does not mean that “doctrinal purity” is a primary essential of a living church.  It does mean that Biblical and doctrinal awareness is important so that members know why they are doing what they are doing  (see Acts 2:42 and 17:11).  There are some basic essentials that are important, and we should learn to distinguish the essential from the non-essential.  (See the Participatory Study Series pamphlet Understanding Christian Apologetics.)
    2. Prayer
      Prayer is communion or conversation with God.  This is an essential part of keeping the body breathing.  The Holy Spirit is the breath in the body of Christ, and we receive it in communion with God.  (See I Want to Pray! pamphlet and book.)
    3. Grace
      We are recipients of God’s grace, and if we understand that, it will motivate us to have grace ourselves. Many people believe that having more rules and better enforcement is the way to go, but people don’t come to church to find out what the rules are.  Most people know the basics of behavior.  What they are looking for is the motivation and the ability to put that knowledge into action.
    4. Action
      If a new member does not find a way to get active, they will not remain in the church.  Some may continue to attend out of habit, but they become dead weight.  It may be risky to have everyone active–some of them will make mistakes, but it’s the only way to go.

    God-powered outreach brings us full circle.  We are not called to do what we can do; we are called to do what God can do–through us.

     

  • Creation, Evolution, and Genesis 1-11

    Now that I’ve given admittedly brief summaries of the major views on origins held by Christians, I’d like to summarize all these views and how those who hold them understand the first 11 chapters of Genesis, element by element. But first, just in case you’re just joining this topic, let me link to the prior entries:

    In addition, I present an overall summary in my pamphlet God the Creator, from the Participatory Study Series.

    In the following table I will present the key elements of the story of the first chapters of Genesis and then briefly discuss how each of the views treats that element of the story. The elements include passages and ideas. Briefly, here is the list:

    1. The starting point
    2. The days of Genesis 1
    3. The narrative of Genesis 1
    4. The creation of human beings
    5. The fall
    6. Genealogies of chapters 5 & 11
    7. The flood
    8. The Tower of Babel

    I want to make sure it is very clear that in a summary table like this, and even in the expanded discussions presented in my previous entries, it is impossible to represent all the variants in each of these general views. The best way to understand a viewpoint in more detail is to read something written by an advocate of that view.

    YEC OEC RRC TE
    Starting point Describes the creation of the universe Describes the creation of the universe Describes a recreation Describes creation within the ancient understanding of cosmology
    Days Each day is a literal 24 hour period Each day represents a long period of time Each day is a literal 24 hour period The days are part of a formal structure presenting the figurative story
    Narrative The narrative is an accurate, chronological narrative of events on each day The narrative is a general, simplified description of events over a period of time The narrative is an accurate, chronological narrative of events on each day The narrative is a figurative description of God’s relationship to the creation process
    First Human God literally formed the first man of the dust of the ground Forming from the dust may be figurative, but God directly intervened in the creation of human beings God literally formed the man, Adam from the dust, but that might not be the first human/humanlike creature Forming man from dust indicates a personal care and relationship to God, and long-term relationship to the earth; God uses normal evolutionary processes in forming the first human being
    The Fall God used a literal tree as a test of obedience. The first couple ate from it. The tree may be literal or it may figuratively represent some other test of obedience God used a literal tree as a test of obedience. The first couple ate from it. The fall, or eating from the tree, figuratively states a change in a close, but simple relationship to God into a spiritual separation
    Note: There are significant variations in each of the camp concerning the fall and precisely how literally each element is to be taken. Some young earth creationists see symbolism in the story of the fall; old earth creationists can take it quite literally.
    Genealogies The genealogies are literal and complete, including all patriarchal ages The genealogies are (probably) literal, but definitely incomplete The genealogies are literal. Whether they are complete or not is a matter for disagreement The genealogies and neither literal nor complete, though it’s possible some of the individuals named are historical.
    Flood The flood is literal and universal The flood is literal, but is local, though widespread The flood may be either local or universal, but is literal The flood was local, and may simply be based on the memories of many large floods experienced by early humanity
    Tower of Babel The Tower of Babel story is literally true, and explains why languages are different The Tower of Babel is literally true, though may be dated much before the time proposed by the young earth advocates The Tower of Babel story is literally true, and explains why languages are different The Tower of Babel story represents the social interaction between those establishing towns and cities and those continuing a nomadic existence; the evolution of language is much more complex.