Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Christian Carnival Hosting

    I believe there are a number of Christian readers of this blog who have never participated in or hosted the Christian Carnival. If you are one of these, let me suggest participation. If you don’t want to do it for the fun of reading all those entries, consider doing it for the incoming links and traffic.

    I normally host this over at my Participatory Bible Study Blog when it’s my turn, but I thought I’d put this notice here since I believe this blog reaches more people.

    You can find more information on hosting and contact information here.

    I’m maintaining an archive of carnival posts here.

  • If You Are Having Trouble Accessing God, Read This

    When I’m teaching church members, I like to emphasize service in one’s choice of a church congregation.  The best congregation for you is the one where you can best fulfill your call to minister to others.  I believe everyone has such a call.  That’s a generalization that often doesn’t answer that many questions, but it often does help.

    Thus I don’t like to talk much in terms of whether a church “fulfills my needs” or “feeds me” or whether I enjoy the worship services, and whether the services are up to standards.  That seems like selling church as a commodity, and whether you’re looking for child care or entertainment, it’s likely that your church isn’t going to compete well according to secular standards in any case.

    That’s not to say that all these things are not important.  The servant who is not fed, clothed, and housed is unlikely to be able to serve well.  That principle applies spiritually as well as physically.  So the search for a church in which I can best carry out my call to ministry may well come back to the question of where I will be fed, all other things being generally equal.

    I must confess that I’ve been having trouble with “church” for some time.  I’ve struggled with everything from attendance to writing the tithe check.  It’s not because I don’t like to get up that early in the morning.  I have normally had hours with the books before I ever get to church.  It’s not the financial scare of writing the tithe check either.  I’ve been in much more difficult financial circumstances.  The temptation is to right the tithe check to some other organization to accomplish some task that I choose, rather than to my local church, which is where I’m convicted it should go.

    It’s that conviction that keeps me going and keeps me doing these things.  But what if one is a church leader who needs to work with the folks who are a bit less convicted?  I belong to a United Methodist congregation, and 50% attendance on a given Sunday is considered very good.  Some churches run more like 30%.  Part of that is a paperwork problem, in that it is very difficult to remove members from the church rolls when they disappear, and people are not that keen on membership paperwork these days.  It’s one way in which the United Methodist Church is perhaps a bit out of touch–a bureaucratic church in an age when people want to escape that style, at least on Sunday morning.

    But that’s not the whole story.  Somewhere in that 50-70% who are missing on Sunday morning there are a lot of people who simply aren’t convicted enough or motivated enough to show up at church.  So my message to church leaders (including myself), is that we do have to be concerned with feeding the people and motivating them.  It’s all well and good to say they ought to attend church services, and they ought to be looking for a place to serve.  When I’m teaching them, I’ll tell them that.  But we as leaders need to help make them welcome.

    Making people welcome, involving phrases like “seeker sensitive” and even “user friendly” have gotten a bad reputation in some circles, and I think that in many ways they should have.  They can easily lend themselves to marketing a service or advertising entertainment, which is always going to be a losing proposition, unless our churches also fulfill spiritual needs, and fulfilling spiritual needs always leads to both the motivation for, and practice of, action and service.

    I discovered a blog through the Christian Carnival this week, Boston Bible Geeks.  They have a post titled The Necessity of the Church for a Persevering Faith, in which they say:

    But God has not left us alone to fight against sin and temptation.  He has given us each other.  He tells us to assemble together, not to meet a requirement or get a star on our Sunday School attendance chart.  He tells us to meet together so we can build each other up and keep each other from sinning.  We are given the responsibility to restore each other when we do sin (Gal 6:1, I deal with that verse here).

    Now you need to go read the entire post to get the context of that, but the point here is that the congregation–not just the pastor or the Sunday School teacher–is charged to encourage one another in their Christian walk, and the major purpose, according to Hebrews, is to keep us from falling into sin, and to help restore us if we do.

    That reminded me of something that has happened each time I signed onto my web hosting account this week.  There’s a message that appears right after I sign on that says, “If you are having trouble accessing your account, read this.”  It has made me laugh each time.  I even went to check whether it can be accessed without logging in.  It can, but it doesn’t appear conveniently on the login page.  The encouragement, you see, comes only after you’re “in.”

    That’s the problem with church, and even with small groups.  What reaches out and encourages our Bible study each week?  I’ve been disturbed by the number of times I’ve taught a series of Sunday School lessons, and entire Sunday School classes will confess that they didn’t read or study anything that I provided on a topic during the week.  That means that they absorb (too often) or even reject what I say without giving it more thought than occurs in a Sunday School hour.

    It’s as though we have a sign on the inside of our church sanctuary and on the inside of our Sunday School classrooms that says, “If you are having trouble accessing God, read this.”  The church needs to create connections that go beyond the church setting, beyond the Sunday morning hour, and provide a “spurring to good works” (Hebrews 10:24) that lasts through the week.

    There are many means of doing this.  My home church’s new ICON service even has a Facebook page and Twitter account, so that they can send out messages.  But these are only part of the means, not the content.  I’m not a good person to go into all the means of reaching people socially.  I do know it needs to be done in order to build a complete Christian life.  Whether the means are high tech or low tech the question is whether the Christian activity of “spurring” continues all week.

    It’s that spurring, that building of a complete Christian life that will make church worthwhile, and if it’s really worth it, people will be there.

  • Christian Carnival CCLXI Posted

    … at The Ignorant Historian.  There’s some good stuff in there.  I also remind folks of the new archive I’m maintaining here.

  • Christian Carnival Archive

    I have created a new Christian Carnival Archive, which includes posts to date, and also links to the previous archives, so that you can have one central place from which to locate all available Christian Carnival editions.

  • The Need for my Series on Interpreting the Bible

    … amongst many other things.

    As I’m preparing to move forward in this series, which covers only one small area, I find this post from the generally enlightening Jason Rosenhouse, who lauds simplistic arguments in putting down other simplistic arguments.

    He approvingly quotes Coyne:

    Unfortunately, some theologians with a deistic bent seem to think that they speak for all the faithful. These were the critics who denounced Dawkins and his colleagues for not grappling with every subtle theological argument for the existence of God, for not steeping themselves in the complex history of theology. . . .

    Just so! In the same way as I would accuse someone of finding the least qualified person who calls himself a scientist, say someone with a high school level of scientific knowledge, I object when someone targets their arguments against theism at the level of the church pews.

    Certain people on the non-theistic side of this debate expect theists to drop to the lowest common denominator while not treating scientists in the same way. It’s fine if they wish to argue in that fashion, but they shouldn’t be surprised when those with more than a high school knowledge of theology find their arguments unconvincing.

    The success of Dawkins et. al. is more due to the miserable level of Christian knowledge than to any brilliance on Dawkins part. On theology, he writes like a rank amateur–and I say that as one who deeply admires his scientific writing.

    In the very manner I outlined in my previous post, these folks imagine a set of beliefs, note that this set of beliefs conflicts with evolution, and then announce that evolution cannot be reconciled with Christianity.

    But since that set of imaginary beliefs is hardly even related to my own beliefs, and those of many other Christians, I can hardly be expected to concern myself with reconciling the discrepancies, can I?

    (Let me call attention also to Tony Mitchell’s recent post The Dilemma of Science and Faith.)

  • Interpreting the Bible – Mid-Course Focus

    This isn’t a summary of previous posts, but rather an attempt to focus on the issue I’m trying to address with this series before I continue. The problem with a series like this is that the examples begin to take over the topic. Since I have used complementarianism and theistic evolution as examples, and brought inerrancy into the discussion in order to demonstrate that it is not the key issue involved, it is easy for a reader to decide that I’m trying to debate any one of those issues, or perhaps to prefer that I debate them and try to redirect the topic.

    Since the posts to which I responded brought up two more issues, homosexuality and violent passages in the Bible, which are again controversial issues, I want to focus back on the point I’m trying to make: It’s both difficult and inappropriate to tell your opponent what his or her position ought to be. In this case I’m responding to the charge that a Christian who accepts the theory of evolution is less Biblical because the “obvious exegesis” of Genesis favors a young earth creationist position.

    Also, though I believe that theistic evolution is the best position to take at the moment, I am not attempting to demonstrate that. Rather, I’m attempting to show that it, along with a number of other positions on Genesis, can be held plausibly as interpretations of the Biblical text. The particular position one adopts depends on other factors, including the particular approach one takes to Biblical interpretation. After this mid-course focus I’m going to look at other issues and ask whether the exegesis is so obvious that an opponent of some particular brand of theology can easily dismiss it as “not real Christianity.” Within some limits, Christianity allows, and has always allowed, some flexibility.

    The problem often starts with a charge that goes something like this:

    1) The Bible clearly teaches X
    2) X is unthinkable or false
    3) So Christianity must be false

    Now there are numerous and huge gaps in the logic as I have written it, but I think those gaps generally exist in the argument as presented by critics of Christianity. (Note to my philosophically inclined friends: To avoid general implosion with possible damage to the space-time continuum, do not try to critique that as a syllogism. Did I say it was a syllogism? I did not!) Let me apply this to a couple of relevant issues:

    1) The Bible clearly teaches that the earth was created in seven literal days 6,000 years ago
    2) That teaching is false
    3) Christianity must be false

    One obviously missing element here is “Christianity actually teaches X” but that is generally assumed, as is the direct connection between “The Bible clearly teaches X” and “Christianity accepts X as true.”

    For example, one could say that the Bible teaches that an animal must be brought as a sacrifice if one sins, but Christianity does not teach this, for reasons that seem good and proper to pretty much all Christians. Here we have a teaching that is fairly clear, but that Christians believe applied to a particular set of times and places, not including the present. You can try to use this to demonstrate that Christians don’t really follow the Bible, but it’s not going to help as an argument against Christianity because it teaches animal sacrifice. (PETA beware!)

    That would fit more with another form of the argument:

    1) The Bible teaches that God condones and even commands violence
    2) Condoning violence is unthinkable (but where is the demonstration that it is wrong?)
    3) Therefore Christianity is false

    Now supposing this argument is used against a Christian who is a pacifist. Clearly the conclusion is false with reference to that person’s belief.

    The point I am trying to make here is not primarily whether the Bible teaches any of these things, or whether they are true or false, but whether a Christian can believe or disbelieve them and still be a Christian. Is it proper to dismiss theistic evolutionists and even old earth creationists as “not real Christians,” rather than to respond to their actual position?

    Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion, clearly wants to argue with fundamentalists and then dismiss all Christians based on his arguments against fundamentalists. I blogged about that starting in From the Land of the Deluded, where I make some similar points.

    I have two suggestions here. First, that Christianity is not defined by American fundamentalism. I have supported that partially and will continue to do so as the series progresses. Second, that it is better to respond to an opponent based on what that opponent actually believes rather than what you imagine them to believe or what you think they ought to believe.

    It is inevitable that this will sometimes fail, but it is an admirable goal in any case, and trying to define your opponent out of existence as the first step to a debate is probably not going to get you very far.

    Christians do this to atheists from time to time as well, in particular by concluding that an atheist actually hates God or does not desire to be under authority. This suggests that an atheist isn’t really an atheist, but is rather a rebellious theist. Perhaps it would be a good idea to stretch our Christian imaginations a little bit, and allow that someone might just not find the idea of God convincing, or might not see sufficient evidence to believe. Imagine, in other words, that the atheist is honestly stating his or her beliefs.

    Further, we need to realize that what seems to us a certain result of a particular belief might not be so certain for someone else. In talking about grief, I am likely to mention that my relationship with Jesus Christ and spiritual disciplines including prayer and fasting have been critical to me in facing loss. Do I mean that someone without those particular beliefs will not be able to handle what I have handled? Not at all! From personal experience I know persons from other faith traditions who have found their beliefs and spiritual practices critical, and I know non-believers who have also endured and come out of such trials successfully. I mention this particular case because it is very common for Christians to believe that atheists will be unable to endure hardship and loss.

    One last illustration might help. I speak frequently to Methodist groups, as I’m a member of a United Methodist congregation. Every Methodist group with whom I have discussed Calvinism has come to the conclusion that Calvinists will not engage in evangelism. Why? If Calvinists believe in predestination–that God has determined who will be saved or lost–what purpose is their for evangelism? The result is already determined!

    Now I have always pointed out that Calvinists do, in fact, practice evangelism, and thus attacking them for a failure in outreach would be inappropriate. A few years ago, however, I had the experience of hearing John Blanchard, a Calvinist evangelist (something many Methodists would regard as an oxymoron), who was asked this very question: Why, if you believe in predestination, are you an evangelist?

    His answer, as I remember it, was this: Predestination is a doctrine, and I believe it; evangelism is a command, and I obey it.

    Hmmm. A bit different logic than we Methodists were assuming he would use, but here we have him believing both things. He is not the person we assumed he would be.

    Neither is the theistic evolutionist the person you assumed him to be. He is not necessarily a scientist whose religion is loosely pasted on. He might be a devout believer and a scientist. On the other hand, his training might be in Biblical studies, like mine is, and the church and faith might be the stuff of his daily life. In any case, he (or she) not likely to be impressed when you claim he’s not who he says he is.

    As I move forward I’m going to discuss views on homosexuality and the church. It may surprise some to know that many advocates of acceptance of gays and lesbians in the full fellowship of the church are actually quite conservative in their understanding of exegesis. One can fault their results in a number of passages, in my view, but one can hardly say that they lack the intent or a conservative approach, even as one charges them with special pleading in particular cases.

    And so as not to disappoint, let me note right now that my intention will not be to argue one side or another here, but rather to look at the types of Biblical interpretation involved.

    Previous posts in this series were:

  • Christian Carnival Fifth Anniversay Edition Posted

    … at Fish and Cans.  I am overwhelmed with work and didn’t get around to making a submission, but there’s bunches of good stuff.  Folks who have been reading my work on inerrancy either here or at my Threads blog should see Jeremy Pierce’s contribution

  • Quote of the Day 1-20-09

    From Bruce Alderman:

    To be honest, I think the ugliest thing about Christianity is the pervasiveness of preachers and apologists who try to scare people into the faith, and who seek to reduce their flocks’ exposure to other viewpoints. …

    The entire post is worth reading.

    There’s a great deal of good material in the blogosphere if you can just find it. I don’t promise truly “daily” quotes of the day, but when I find them, I like to post them.

  • Is Tomorrow a Down Payment on the Dream?

    On Meet the Press on Sunday Tavis Smiley made a comment that stuck with me. I have to extract this from a longer statement, and you can find the whole thing here. He said:

    … I think, though, it’s important to state that Obama’s election is a down payment on King’s dream, it is not the fulfillment of King’s dream, and that’s a crucial, I think, and critical distinction we have to make. A significant down payment to be sure, and King would certainly be celebrating this moment. But the closest thing in King’s lifetime to this Obama moment was the election of the first black mayor of a major American city, Carl Stokes in Cleveland. King went to Cleveland and, if I can paraphrase it this way, talked about this notion of black faces in high places. And while that’s something to celebrate, there is work to be done and we have got to keep the focus on the issues. And where Mr. Obama is concerned, while black America and all of America will certainly celebrate this, because King is, again, not just a black leader, he’s the best of what America is all about. …

    Now Mr. Smiley makes a good point. Election of the first African-American president is not the end of the story in terms of equal rights in America. There will be much more to be done. One of the benefits I see in having Barack Obama as president is that the very fact of his being in office will start many discussions and help change perceptions. He is not so much the sign of the end of a process but rather a milestone showing how far we have come and how far we have to go.

    But there is a problem with the whole “payment” and “down-payment” type of language with reference to what has gone on. I’m not talking about the validity of any claims for reparations. I’m talking about the way we think about equal rights and freedom for everyone. It’s practically a cliche to say that if one person isn’t free, then nobody is free. But I don’t believe we often think about how true that is.

    In doing injustice to one group of our citizens, we also injure ourselves. It is tragic for any group to be oppressed, but what about the insanity of oppressors? One of the things that the bus protest in Montgomery managed to communicate to some remarkably thick headed people was that the African-American community was part of the same economy, and that by oppressing that part of the community the opportunities of everyone were limited.

    The south didn’t lose the civil war because they were morally wrong, though they certainly were–they lost because they did not have the economy to handle such a war. One reason was that a slave economy was really not all that efficient.

    I would regard slavery as immoral even if it was not also quite insane, but there is a certain disgusting pathos about people who are oppressing someone else while at the same time making their own lives worse than they might be otherwise. Perhaps there is a reason why white-supremacy rallies do not appear to be attended by the best and the brightest!

    Now there are certainly some people who can prosper in such an economy, but overall and in the long term such things tend to fail, and to fail in a spectacular manner.

    As a Christian I believe we do owe one another allegiance, and that we do have a duty to help free the oppressed, to care for the poor and needy. I think there is a moral duty to do such things not because they are good for me, but because they are good. At the same time, I think God has so ordered the universe that it seems that I can do good for myself by doing good for others, that I will live in a richer and better society if I am willing to sacrifice for others and fight for their rights.

    Ultimately, the greatest good that can come from this election is not in the person we elected, or in specific milestones in our progress, but in the changes in the way we think about freedom, and in a determination to pursue freedom and justice for everyone. The down-payment was paid much more when each person made his or her decision about the election, and decided to vote based on the content of the candidate’s character and the good of the country, rather than on the color of that candidate’s skin.

    (Note that, as I wrote before [see Yes, Race Influences my Vote], I believe there was a value in electing an African-American president of the United States. I put that under “good of the country.” Were the content of his character not appropriate, however, the value of that symbolism would be inadequate to drive my vote.)

    Now some people did vote purely or mostly on the basis of race, at least as indicated by the polls. Some cast their vote out of hatred. But I believe that the majority went out a voted their conscience, and that was the down-payment–not the inauguration of the particular person who was elected.

    We have much further to go in terms of equal treatment of all people. One example of the type of insanity I described is the discharge of much needed linguists from the military simply because they are gay or lesbian. In a time when we have a documented need for more linguists, we have released some of them because of a sexual preference. There is an unmeasured and unmeasurable claim that morale will suffer that is allowed to overcome a demonstrable need. That’s insanity, in my view. We need to change it.

    “Don’t ask, don’t tell” means that qualified people who want to serve their country are not permitted to do so. At the same time the country is denied their services. That’s insanity and it needs to stop.

    Our attitudes towards race and toward all other forms of discrimination–all discrimination that is based on irrelevant factors is not only immoral in itself, it is insane. In allowing freedom to be withdrawn from others, we cultivate oppression for ourselves.

  • Mounce on What the Greek Says

    Bill Mounce, author of the wonderful Basics of Biblical Greek, which I have used in teaching, has a post at Koinonia titled <em>Matthew 7:26-Is a moros a moron</em>, with the very proper answer–NO!

    There are two things I’d like to call attention to in this post.  The first is an excellent illustration of the false allure of etymology or seeking cognates.  This is more for the serious Hebrew student, but while sometimes one must look for ideas for a “hapax legomenon” in cognate language, one should be aware that the cognate provides ideas, not proof of a new meaning.  Context provides the final judgement, and if a word occurs once, that means that humility is called for regarding that final judgment.

    The second is the sprinkling of “what the Greek says” (or Hebrew) into sermons, especially by those who don’t really know, which is the vast majority of times I’ve heard this used.

    Mounce says:

    I know it is tempting to show a little Greek knowledge and try to create a helpful word picture, but unless you are absolutely confident that your Greek is absolutely right, I strongly urge you not to display your Greek knowledge.

    Which brings me to the general point. I encourage my students to never say, “In the Greek ….” Why would you do that? To impress the audience with your academic acumen? To convince them that you are right when you can’t prove your point with biblical logic? Perhaps I am being a little harsh, but I am sensitive to pastors claiming to be an authority and putting themselves up on a pedestal. That’s not where servants belong.

    Just so.  I have rarely been privileged to quote two paragraphs from a blog post with which I agree more completely.

    PS:  You’ll have to read Mounce’s whole post to discover more about morons!