Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Worship that Builds

    Peter Kirk has a post on one of my favorite topics, order in worship, titled God is not a God of disorder but of peace. I want to call attention to a couple of points in his post.

    First, on the context of the passage from which his title was taken, he says:

    It seems to me that this verse gives a general principle, which here is being applied specifically to gatherings of the church but can be applied more widely. I don’t think the specific application here is only to prophecy, but to everything described in verses 26 to 32. Indeed the point is basically to support the last part of verse 26, “Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.” (TNIV). Thus it does apply to “untoward” manifestations of any kind, but of course that depends on exactly what is considered “untoward”.

    This is a good point, because Paul is talking about order in the worship service throughout 1 Corinthians 14. We tend to pick the verses from that chapter that best suit our own style of worship. Those who speak in tongues have one set of verses that talk about positive aspects; those who prefer not emphasize the verses that speak against it. But in order to understand the entire chapter, one needs to realize that the whole question here is what activities will be constructive, or building, in a worship service.

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  • Design, Direction, and Evolution

    Over on The Panda’s Thumb a number of writers are reviewing the new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. I haven’t read the book. I should, but I probably won’t get to it for two or three months. In the meantime, you can always read the book itself and the Panda’s Thumb reviews.

    A key issue in the debate about evolution and intelligent design, especially as it relates to Christianity, is the issue of direction in nature. Is there a purpose in nature, and is that purpose designed by God? If designed, how was it designed? Answers to those questions from ID advocates have varied. Some would claim that a theistic evolutionist such as myself is simply a closet ID supporter who refuses to admit it. Others would find the notion of a theistic evolutionist repugnant. A key to this question is the issue of direction.

    Quoting from the Panda’s Thumb review on chapter 1:

    “[There] is a fundamental conflict here [but] it is not between religion and science, or even between Christianity and evolution, but between traditional Christianity and Darwinism. Although the latter may allow for the existence of a deity, [that deity would not be] the God of traditional Christianity” (p. 173). Darwinism differs from evolution because it explains “the origin of not just one or a few species, but all species after the first

  • Moderate Thinking

    Since starting the Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator, I’ve gotten a few comments on what it means to be moderate. One very reasonable question is how I can combine the words “moderate” and “passionate,” as in “passionate moderate.” It seems like a contradiction in terms. And I do do intend the two words to convey a certain amount of tension. Nonetheless I don’t think they’re entirely contradictory.

    “Moderate” isn’t an ideological or party label. It’s a general description that some people are comfortable with. So what I’m about to discuss applies only to me. It may apply to other people. Many people I have run into who self-identify as moderate would be comfortable with most of what I’m saying, at least what I’m saying about the process of thinking, though not necessarily about the specific positions I have come to. I use my own specific conclusions simply as an illustration. It’s quite possible, and indeed likely, for those who identify themselves as moderates to disagree.

    There are people who espouse a form of moderation from apathy. They don’t care to make a decision so they generally find a center point, effectively a point of least conflict among those they have to live with. Another group may well find it difficult to make decisions and end up in the center through lack of concern. I’m not talking about these groups, but rather those who are active and committed and yet take a moderate approach.

    Here are the keys to what I think of as moderate thinking.

    1. Never improperly excluding a middle position

    Improperly excluding middles is a standard practice in both politics and religion. You are either a laissez faire capitalist or you’re a communist. You’re left wing or right wing. You accept Biblical inerrancy, or you don’t believe in the Bible at all. You’re a fundamentalist or an atheist. Each of these pairs ignores many positions between, and some of them ignore additional positions that are more extreme.

    2. Finding the actual extremes

    Very often politicians and theologians want to place their opponents on the extremes. Moderate thinking avoids this by looking for the actual extremes and finding the range of opinions. As an example, Ned Lamont, Democratic senatorial candidate in Connecticut, is called an extremist, and his election is supposed to mean that the Democratic party is turning far to the left. But Lamont, who wants to withdraw troops from Iraq over a period of six months is hardly an extremist. His position is probably held by a majority of the voters of his state, though they may vote for another candidate for other reasons. The extreme position would be a pacifist position that stated that we should not employ force against terrorists, but should turn the other cheek (figuratively) to them.

    On the other hand, Democrats try to paint Bush as an extreme right winger. But a few miles from me we have a Baptist pastor who was a Vice-Presidential candidate for a minor party in the last election and who thinks Bush is a liberal. That doesn’t make Bush right, any more than agreeing with a majority of Connecticut voters makes Lamont right, but it does mean that he’s not the extreme.

    3. Setting relative values on issues and positions

    This third point simply means that in general moderates are not one issue people. Many people have numerous litmus test issues. For example, they will not vote for a candidate who differs with their position on abortion, or on the war in Iraq, or on taxes, or on any of a number of other issues. I don’t do litmus test issues. There are certain positions I find very hard to stomach, but in choosing a candidate to vote for, I have to deal with a range of issues, and generally no issue is absolute.

    Application

    Much of our political and religious discourse is conducted with excluded options. Let me just take a few examples.

    Gun in the House

    I have made a decision not to have a gun in my house. I have had all kinds of reactions to that decision. I have been congratulated on my high moral stance against gun control. I have been condemned for not believing people should be permitted to defend themselves. But gun control advocates should not take comfort from my stance, and homeowners who wish to protect their property with a weapon should not be concerned. I’ll be voting for candidates who will uphold your right to self-defense.

    So then why do I not have a gun? I have simply made a calculation that my own level of alertness, my normal reaction time, and my decisiveness under the appropriate circumstances are not quite good enough to make the gun a good idea for me. I’m not bad with one on the range, or at least I wasn’t a few years ago when I last tried. I have decent aim. But I don’t believe the odds are good that I’m more likely to get the weapon from a safe place, locate a target, and use it effectively, than I am to have it stolen and used to shoot me, for just one example. And to those who have told me I should darn well get that good, I say, “You get that good. I’ll do what I think best.”

    I have no moral qualms about shooting an intruder. If I can get the guy with a baseball bat, I will. But that is where I think that I am safest. The extremes here are a complete refusal to use violence on the one hand, and a “guns blazing” approach on the other. I ask what will make my family safer.

    War in Iraq

    I oppose the war in Iraq. Again, there are those who respond to my high moral stand against war, and there are those who think I’m a wimpy pacifist (no, I’m not calling all pacifists wimps). But neither are dealing with my own reasoning. The question is one of strategy. What is the best way to use force? Here I see the extremes as pacifism, in which we do not respond violently to terrorists, and the parking lot view, which suggests we make countries that support terrorists into parking lots. I look for the action that is going to result in a better state of affairs after it has been accomplished. I cannot see how the Iraq war can end in a better state than things were before the war, and thus I regard it (and did so before it was launched) as a bad strategy.

    Historical Jesus

    This is a topic on which it’s easy to get Christians confused, because most simply don’t know all the various options, and in fact, very few probably need to know all of them. To identify the extremes, however, we have on the one hand a historical Jesus who is precisely as a harmony of the gosples would make him, and on the other hand we have the belief that Jesus was made up, that he is not a historical figure, or even a historical figure around which some myths have grown, but that he never existed at all. There is quite a lot of ground between those two positions.

    I would like to see us recognize the many possibilities between “every detail of the gospels are historically true without even normal eyewitness variations” and “most of the gospel record is false. For example, one can assume that certain details such as how many times the cock crowed and how many times Peter denied Jesus may have been remembered differently by different people. Even more substantively, one can wonder whether there were, in fact, multiple feedings of 5,000 people and then 4,000 people, and can do so without doubting the entire story of Jesus.

    I recall an online written debate in which I undertood in a series of messages to defend Jesus as a real, historical figure. I came up with six points that I would defend and began the debate. A number of Christians observing these posts told me that I had already given up Christianity because I was not defending the virgin birth or the resurrection. But I had not denied either of those doctrines; I had merely taken on a more limited task–demonstrating that Jesus was, at least, a historical fiction, and not totally a construction of his followers.

    Passionate Moderation

    How can one be a passionate moderate? I see no reason why one cannot be passionate about one’s beliefs just because they are not extreme. In other words, I don’t see the problem here. Let me give a quick example. On the topic of evangelism and missionary effort I get pegged both as evangelical and as liberal. Why?

    First, I believe passionately that Christians are to be witnesses for Jesus. We are not to be ashamed of who we are, and we are to testify of what Jesus has done for and in us.

    Second, I believe passionately that it is the Holy Spirit who convicts and converts, and that our witness is never to be forceful, intrusive, emotionally manipulative, or offensive. (Note that I did not say that the gospel itself would not offend; our witness to the gospel should not offend.)

    The first of these points gets me called evangelical; the second gets me called liberal. And if you were to hear and see me carrying out those statements, independently of one another, you might agree. But together, they seem to me to be the “Jesus” way of evangelism. The combination seems moderate to many people, but I simply think it is right, and I’m passionate about it.

    Conclusion

    That, to me, is the essence of being a passionate moderate. Your mileage will probably vary–moderately, I hope!

  • Reacting to a Gay Candidate

    One of the many things that annoys me about sports broadcasters is their tendency to create a trend out of every slight turn of the game. My stepson is a professional pitcher, and if he throws a strike the announcer is sure to start talking about the strong performance and how if he just keeps pitching that way, the game is in hand. If he throws a ball, that too becomes a trend and we’re about to walk the opposing side.

    This entry isn’t about sports but it is about overreaction and the things that tend to help us overreact. It starts with a news item from Agape Press, titled Sweet Home Alabama. The story begins in a more or less straightforward manner, with a close election, in which Patricia Todd won by 59 votes over Gaynell Hendricks. The district is predominantly black, and Todd is white. But in addition, she is a Lesbian.

    The district committee voted to disqualify Todd, and also Henricks for that matter, because they had failed to file a financial statement to the party. The state part overturned that and restored Todd’s candidacy. It’s interesting to note that the Agape Press story fails to mention the fact that the financial statement requirement hadn’t been enforced in Alabama since 1988 because state financial disclosure requirements had taken its place. Compare their story to this one from the Montgomery Advertiser: Win OK’d for Gay Candidate.

    Now here’s the comment from Joe Murray of Agape Press:

    What happened next is what exposed the deep divisions in the Democratic Party and the power of the gay lobby.

    Huh? Just where did he get that. A gay candidate is nearly removed and survives by a very narrow margin at the state level and it shows the power of the gay lobby? I’d suggest instead that the gay lobby, such as it is in Alabama, barely managed to keep the candidate on the ballot. And the key thing here is that she won! I’m sure there’s something wrong somewhere with lobbyists trying to get the candidate who wins the primary election on the general election ballot, but I can’t quite think what that would be!

    The claim, of course, is that African-American voters are being displaced in favor of Gay and Lesbian candidates. But in a majority black district, one would have to assume that some African-American voters also voted for the winning candidate. Despite all efforts at gerrymandering, and I think our politicians in both parties should be ashamed of their district drawing efforts, the bottom line is people voting, and in this case they voted for Patricia Todd, who is white and a Lesbian.

    Joe Murray continues:

    Understand this — the homosexual lobby is on a quest to raise its rainbow flag over every state house in the Union. Blacks in the South are now learning this lesson, for their party is on the receiving end of a forcible makeover. Make no mistake, Todd was a trophy candidate; a candidate funded by the gay lobby, and her victory signals the Democratic wind is blowing in a new direction. Gays in, blacks out.

    This makes me curious as to just what Murray believes Gay and Lesbian lobbying groups should be trying to do. It seems to me that the natural activity for a lobbying group is to try to get its candidates elected and its issues noticed and supported. Murray makes it sound as though attempting to win an election is some kind of dirty deed. But of course we know that if a candidate were a “trophy candidate” of the Christian right that would be OK. The sole problem here is that Todd is a Lesbian. The rest is just rhetoric to make perfectly normal, perfectly legal activity sound like some kind of conspiracy to commit fraud.

    But then we have the reason I brought up my sports reporting analogy: How on earth does this mean “Gays in, blacks out?” Does Patricia Todd not have the right to run in a majority black district? Would a black candidate be wrong to run in a majority white district? That would result in no minority candidates at the national level, and is obviously silly. What all this comes down to is simple: The Lesbian candidate won the election. There’s nothing illegal about it.

    The rhetoric that Murray is using in his article is very simply aimed at creating a split between African-American Democrats and Gays and Lesbians. “You can’t both have a place at the Democratic table, so come to us,” say the Republicans.

    Somehow I just can’t see this kind of deceptive, divisive practice as appropriate Christian behavior. Let the winner win, whether we like her or not. And come to think of it, I haven’t heard anyone challenge her on any grounds other than that she’s white and Lesbian, and those are neither qualifications nor disqualifications. They don’t tell us what kind of legislator she will be.

  • Religious Freedom and the Schools

    The Christian Alliance for Progress has been reporting a particularly egregious case of religious intolerance in the school system. There is now a petition drive, and you can get involved here.

    To be honest, I’m not terribly optimistic about the value of this type of petition campaign, but I would imagine it can’t hurt.

  • Jesus is God and the Bible Is Not

    This is one that seems fairly obvious to me for anyone who partakes of orthodox Christian theology. If you believe that Jesus was God incarnate, God in the flesh, the Word become flesh, then Jesus must be the center of Christian faith and Christian theology. If you believe that Jesus was merely a prophet or less, then you obviously have the potential for other answers. One prophet, for example, could not become the center as opposed to all the prophets. But for now let’s stick with this more or less orthodox, trinitarian, incarnational theology.

    A friend called my attention to a blog, Biblical Foundations, where Dr. Andreas Kostenberger posts. There he has a post titled Jesus and the Bible, in which he complains of people making Jesus more central to Christian theology than the Bible, a complaint which he could certainly level at me.

    He says:

    It seems strange why anyone would want to pit Jesus against the Bible, but in recent weeks the question which of these two is primary, Jesus or the Bible, has once again taken center stage in many circles.

    As long as there are people who put the Bible ahead of Jesus, this is certainly an excellent topic to discuss.

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  • Comic Sues Jews for Jesus

    Today CNN.com reports (an AP story) that Jackie Mason is suing Jews for Jesus over the use of his image and name in one of their pamphlets. (See the Jews for Jesus press release in response here.)

    I haven’t seen the pamphlet itself, but this action seems over the line to me. The only thing that should offend people in Christian evangelism is the gospel, not the way we deal with other people. When I recently attended a Jews for Jesus event, I was disturbed by a skit based around the song “Tradition” from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Because the folks on the platform say that they are Jewish, and I’m not, I may not be the best judge of such things, but the skit seemed disrespectful of Judaism. I don’t regard disagreement as disrespectful–I knew the group would disagree with mainstream Judaism–but there are respectful ways of presenting a disagreement, and then there are, shall we say, less respectful ways.

    It is my hope that Jews for Jesus will settle this out of court. I don’t think trying to force the issue of the use of someone’s reputation and image in this way is going to be good for the gospel or for interfaith relations.

    Update: Here’s the URL for the tract: Jews for Jesus Jackie Mason tract.

  • Free Christian Apologetics Books to Selected Bloggers

    Chris Eyre has started a series of comments (What Price Apologetics? and Christian Apologetics) on the Consider Christianity Series by Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr.. Chris is somewhat critical of the series, and I thought he would provide a good starting point for discussion of it. Note that I own the publishing comany (Energion Publications) and that I edited the series. I’ll probably not get too deeply involved in this, because I think that a writer should be immune from getting beaten up by his own editor, and therefore one has to take favorable comments by that same editor with due consideration for his bias.

    Those who read this blog regularly should not expect either Chris’s or Elgin’s views to be identical to mine. I think it would be fair to say that Elgin is more conservative, and Chris more liberal, but precisely how much remains for you to discover! I don’t publish either on the web or in print because someone agrees with me, but rather because I think they have something valuable and challenging to say.

    Now, for those who have read this far and are still waiting to hear about free books, here’s the deal. I am granting myself five sets of the Consider Christianity series to hand out to bloggers who might like to join this discussion. At first I thought I’d look for the top five entries on apologetics that somehow linked into the discussion, but then I decided that if people are to discuss a book, they really need a book, and they can’t buy it to discuss it to get a free copy. Is that sentence long and unclear enough?

    So, to get a free copy of one or more of the Consider Christianity series, e-mail me with the following:

    If you are chosen to receive some books, I’ll ask for your snail-mail address at that time.

    I have no idea what the response will be, as I’ve never tried something like this before. If there are more entries than I have books, I’m going to choose in categories, and then take a first come, first served approach amongst those who are best qualified, which means essentially that other than fulfilling the categories I’m going to do my best to be fair.

    Categories are:

    • Secular bloggers who would like to challenge the contents
    • Christian bloggers from other apologetics approaches. Elgin uses evidentiary apologetics, and it would be nice to get a pressupositional response
    • Christian blogger likely to be supportive to some extent
    • Small, low-traffic blogs (I’m not that high traffic myself!), that show promise

    I’ll fill these categories first. If I get a very good response, and the discussion looks good, I reserve the right to add a set or two sent to people who either expand the range of ideas or who have particularly interesting blogs.

    I think you can guess at this point that the whole idea here is to generate discussion of Elgin’s books. I have a mercenary interest in this and I don’t claim otherwise. But I do think these books are worth discussing, and I think you will benefit from the debate.

  • Christian Apologetics

    I think that after my start, I should say that I enjoyed reading Elgin’s first two “Consider Christianity

  • An Individual in Unity with Himself

    An individual identifying himself as yes2truth left a comment with reference to my new moderate Christian blogroll. I don’t usually do this, but the comment is so ironic that I just had to call attention to it. I must warn you that the irony level is off the scale.

    yes2truth said:

    My full question is this:

    Why do we need moderate Christians? In fact, why do we need any kind of pigeon holed Christian group?

    If I answered this normally, I would suggest that we should first be Christians and second members of whatever particular fellowship we belong to. I do think that there is a value in denominational organizations as long as they are not exclusive.

    But in the context of what follows, the question is itself ironic. It’s rare that someone makes my point for me so clearly, but people frequently complain about the factionalism of others, or how other churches are preventing true Christian unity, while what they really want is for all Christians to unify around their concept of what is true. You can find tiny groups of people all over the world who claim to be in exclusive possession of the truth, and who would expect that the rest of Christianity would unify if they would just understand that the particular little group had truth locked up.

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