Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Energion.com

  • A Forest of Signs and Waving People

    I headed out to vote yesterday in the Florida primary. We had contests for a number of local offices. I’m registered with no party affiliation, but there was one non-partisan race that needed thinning out and one race that would be settled by the Republican primary. It was a fairly easy task to fill out my ballot!

    I was struck again by the forest of signs around the polling place. There’s a sign indicating how close people can be to the entrance if they are going to solicit people’s votes. Actually nobody was all that close. They had chosen to gather around the entrance to the property Several people not only had signs, but had volunteers with t-shirts and hats who would wave to prospective voters on their way in. My precinct is in a church, so I suspect those folks wasted a bunch of waves on people visiting the church office or something of the sort.

    It’s not my major point, but one guy was standing by the road, and someone, possibly a friend, or perhaps even a political opponent had pulled up beside him in a pickup truck and they were talking. He waved to me and then tried to wave me around the truck, but unfortunately he also waved someone coming from the other direction. It took him a couple of minutes to think of the idea of getting that pickup truck out of the way of voters trying to get to the polls or leave again after voting.

    What I’m wondering is just how much such a display of signs and waving people impacts anyone’s interest in voting. My approach to choosing candidates is to read their web sites, read the literature they send out, read the newspaper interviews or fact sheets on them, and so forth. On local candidates, information can be hard to come by, but usually you can find out something more substantive than the person’s name and the office for which they are running.

    I can’t resist another detour here on the subject of campaign literature. This year I did read one piece of campaign literature that would have impacted my vote if I had been able to vote in that primary. (The candidate involved won his primary.) This was a simple postcard with a list of claims that I could easily fact check, and which appear to have been mostly true. They were negative, but provided good reasons not to vote for his opponent. Negative advertising can be of value. I don’t object to something just because it’s negative; I object if it is inaccurate or twisted and also negative.

    But to reiterate, how much do signs and waving people impact votes? Earlier in the campaign I saw some people holding signs for a candidate on an overpass over the interstate and waving to passing motorists. Is it possible that there is someone out there who doesn’t know who they plan to vote for and lets themselves be persuaded because they saw someone standing on an overpass with a sign and waving? It just seems too bizarre for words.

    Perhaps they just use that to gain name recognition, but then just what value is that type of recognition? You don’t know anything about the candidate. I get the sample ballots our elections office kindly provides and look up each and every candidate. Name recognition has nothing to do with it.

    Oh well, this will be only one of my election season rants. It seems to me that it is such a privilege to actually have a government in which we can each participate, and that any citizen would be willing to spend just a few minutes every couple of years to actually vote based on some idea of who the candidates are and what they stand for. Signs and waving people seem to argue against that.

  • Methodists and Evolution

    I reported some time ago that the United Methodist General Conference had passed some resolutions in support of evolution and opposing teaching faith based ideas in the public school science classroom. There’s a story in the Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal-Gazette about how this happened and the role of a local church member.

    I have observed some people trying to get resolutions passed at annual conferences or occasionally at General Conference and the process is somewhat difficult and I know that the individuals involved put a lot of work into the process. It’s nice to see people willing to be that involved. I do note that it seems that resolutions from general conference have little weight in practice.

    I would say that in the four congregations of which I have been a member, for example, the social principles only played a noticeable role in the most recent, and even there many members would probably be surprised to learn that there are social principles. (For non-UM folks, let me note that the social principles are only one area in the Methodist discipline which I’m using as an example, not the full statement of our doctrine and polity.)

    Perhaps it would be a good idea for Methodist pastors, teachers, and church leaders to refer to the social principles and other portions of the Discipline and Resolutions even when we don’t particularly like what they say, as will inevitably happen.

    Two early experiences of mine in the United Methodist Church come to mind. First, after I had read the relevant portions of the United Methodist Discipline prior to joining my first Methodist congregation, I asked the pastor about the social principles. I pointed out certain ones with which I could not agree. “Oh, the social principles,” he said, “we don’t really pay that much attention to those here.”

    The second was teaching in the same church, when I was asked to teach about the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian Perfection. I was raised Seventh-day Adventist, and SDAs have a substantial bit of Wesleyan in background and doctrine, so I was acquainted with Wesleyan theology. I looked up what we had in the Discipline, and included it on slides for the class. I found that of those attending (perhaps 40 or so), only the pastor and I were aware that there was such a thing as the doctrine of Christian perfection.

    It’s the Methodist doctrinal position with which I am probably least comfortable, but I would have thought more people would be aware of it. My guess is that pastors know their members are not comfortable with “perfection” in just about any form and just prefer to let that one slide.

    And just to get back to the topic in the title, I suspect evolution comes under the same heading. Why get into the debate if you don’t have to?

  • Denominationalism – The Disease

    Consider these situations:

    • A Sunday School class for young adults is growing by leaps and bounds. Many young men and women who are not members of the church are showing up just for the class. The church leadership shuts the class down because it is not using denominationally approved curriculum.
    • A speaker who is not a member of the same denomination is invited by a pastor. The guest has an extensive publication record, which the pastor has read. He has spoken to other groups of the same denomination, and even taught pastoral continuing education programs. Leaders in the church make such a fuss that the speaker cannot be allowed to speak at the church because of the divisiveness. (None of the objectors have read any of the speaker’s books, nor have they ever heard him speak.)
    • A leader claims that only denominational material can be used, because if it’s in print, the members will believe it, and so the leadership must make sure that nothing “wrong” appears before the members in print.

    I’m guessing that most of my more liberal readership is imagining that these are stories that come from my conservative upbringing. If that is what you assume, then you’re wrong. Now I could match those stories with ones about attitudes from my upbringing as a Seventh-day Adventist, a group that surely is infected with denominationalism, but I actually took those stories from my experience in United Methodist churches.

    It’s interesting to note that my experiences as a Seventh-day Adventist and those as a Methodist are not all that different. There is a difference of degree, there is some difference in the specific theological issues, but the attitudes are so similar that I can tell stories of what I experienced in Adventist churches to Methodist congregations without specifying the denomination, and they ring true, and similarly I can discuss Methodist experiences with my Adventist family and friends and they have no problem relating.

    I find it tremendously humorous in Methodist circles that the same people who criticize the denomination and the agencies in Nashville bitterly, will also act as though having “Abingdon” or “Cokesbury” on the cover of their book somehow makes it “safe.” One wonders if they have really considered that issue logically.

    This is one symptom of the disease–and I do think it is a disease–of denominationalism. By denominationalism I mean a view that suggests that one’s own denomination is really the true Christianity, that books written by folks in other denominations are dangerous simply because they aren’t from the same denomination, or even that people in one’s own denomination are somehow closer to God, simply by virtue of being a member of that denomination.

    I do not mean here loyalty to one’s organization. As a member of a United Methodist congregation I am obligated to support my church and to do things that build it up. I believe that denominationalism is actually destructive of my church congregation. I also don’t mean here that all selection of curriculum materials is bad, but rather that selection based simply on the “it wasn’t made here” criterion is dangerous and fear based.

    This type of denominationalism results in fear-based decisions. It tends to isolate people from other members of the body of Christ who worship across the street or down the road. It tends toward theological inbreeding. It produces sheep in all of the negative senses, and none of the positive ones.

    There are a number of positive things about denominational churches:

    1. Accountability to some higher authority. Completely independent churches can have accountability problems and are even more subject to inbreeding of ideas than are denominational churches. But note that the variation by congregations is pretty wide. I’ve encountered very open independent churches and denominational churches that were closed to other congregations in their same denomination.
    2. Stronger connections to other Christian churches. Within the denomination this is obvious, but it is also possible that the denomination, through programs of outreach and cooperation with other groups, can help the local church be more connected.
    3. “Brand” identification. When I’m visiting a town and looking for a place to eat, if I have no local recommendations, I’m likely to go for a chain restaurant, simply because I know where I’m going. For some people, being able to identify the general focus of a local congregation through the denominational label can be helpful.

    There are certainly more points that can be made. Take the inverse for independent churches. Remember, of course, that all generalizations, including this one, are wrong! If you are looking for a congregation in which to worship and serve, you may need to look for the symptoms of denominationalism even in the smallest independent congregation.

    My suggestion? While being loyal to any organization to which you have offered your loyalty, work actively to build connections and understanding. Understanding your neighbor does not mean necessarily agreeing with your neighbor. If you think church members believe everything that’s in print, instead of trying to limit what they see, try to educate them to realize that this is not so. I actually believe you’ll find that church members aren’t as stupid as you think.

  • NLT Study Bible – Initial Reaction

    I intended to get started on my response to the NLT Study Bible (Bible Nlt) written a bit earlier, but several things have kept me from getting started.

    I’m going to write two posts today and tomorrow. This first one is simply a quick, preliminary reaction to this new study edition based on the NLT 2nd edition. The second will compare the introductory information to the gospel of Luke with that of several other study Bibles I use regularly.

    I need to note first that this is an evangelical study Bible and I am not an evangelical. That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to like it, of course. The basic combination of scholarship involved and the quality text of the NLT makes this a useful Bible whether you are evangelical or not. Thus far, I have found it to be the best I have seen to get a quick view of the evangelical understanding of a book or passage. Names like Tremper Longman III, Philip W. Comfort, and George H. Guthrie are just three names that caught my eye. Contributors such as those suggest that this will be a useful resource.

    I am, as almost always, disappointed with some of the marketing style claims. Lines like “revolutionary breakthrough in study Bibles” or the slogal “The Truth Made CLEAR” don’t resonate well with me. But these are elements of the cover, and they are common to the marketing material. The NLT is good and this study Bible is good, but I wouldn’t go as far as “revolutionary.”

    And indeed some of the major concerns I have with any study Bible, as well as the marketing language (indirectly) are addressed starting on page A17 (How the Study the Bible with the NLT Study Bible), where we find:

    No feature of the NLT STudy Bible is more important than Scripture, the text of the Bible itself.

    I wish all users of study Bibles would recognize that fact. Too often Sunday School class or study group members read the notes in their study Bibles as the one interpretation of the text, and don’t bother to think about how that note might have been derived. Now if I could just get them to read this “How To”!

    In addition, this same section suggests reading the Biblical text first, and “. . . leav[ing] the notes and other features for later.” This entire section is outstanding, and one hopes that all Bible students who use this Bible edition will read it and follow its advice, including this note:

    Please do not treat the NLT Study Bible study notes and other features as the full and final word on any topic of passage. (p. A19)

    I’m going to get into more specific features in my next post, in which I will compare and contrast the NLT Study Bible five other editions, but overall my impression is a very useful edition. My teaching work is mostly in United Methodist churches, though not exclusively, and focuses on the educated lay person. I have lacked a single edition that I can unreservedly recommend for evangelical Bible students, one that gives them an overview of scholarly information available, but doesn’t fall into either excessively technical language or oversimplify. At the same time such an edition should refrain from providing the one true interpretation of a text without adequate support. Tall order, no?

    Thus far, I think this one will do. My wife is using it as well and giving me her input. She is an educated person and has done a good deal of Bible study, but has not pursued this study academically or professionally. She finds it more useful than The Learning Bible, one that is quite helpful to beginning Bible students in my experience. Thus far, she thinks its language is clear and it addresses topics that are of interest to her. I’m going to urge her to blog some about it herself.

    I’m embedding the video provided by Tyndale House on the features, rather than reciting them myself. I will then go into specifics one post at a time.

  • Georgia and Ossetia – Asking the Right Questions

    I am not proposing answers at this point, because I haven’t had time to study the situation in any detail, but it seems to me the right time to point out some problems with the questions.

    It appears to me that almost everything I read about the situation with Georgia, Russia, and Ossetia involves ad hoc justifications for something someone wanted to do in any case. One of the major problems with American foreign policy, in my opinion, is that we really don’t have one, that is, other than attack the people we don’t like (sometimes), support the people we do like (sometimes) and blather a lot about everyone else.

    In addition, the justifications for what we do seem to have very little relationship to the actual reasons. Publicly, during the first gulf war, we heard about atrocities and about defending poor little Kuwait. I’m not denying the atrocities, nor am I even saying that Kuwait was undeserving of defense, but we did not similarly take a military position on East Timor, where atrocities were also happening. Unfortunately for the folks on that piece of an island, they lacked oil.

    In the case of Ossetia, I suspect that if we moved some of the players a bit, but kept all other factors the same, our reaction would be substantially different than it is.

    Here are some questions:

    Just how small does a territory have to be before we no longer think it deserves independence from the surrounding country? Will we apply the same standard here?

    What conditions must exist before one portion of an existing country can declare independence and receive support? (In this case, differentiate Kosovo wanting independence from Serbia and Ossetia wanting independence from Georgia.)

    Do the conditions for independence of some region change if it’s the Russians that back up the breakaway region rather than the United States?

    How big does a country have to be before it can be regarded as an oppressor?

    How long ago must a territory have been conquered before it can be considered an integral and essential part of a country? (Remember that Kuwait was once part of Iraq, sort of, Georgia was part of Russia, while Ossetia was also a conquered territory. Then there’s that other Georgia that was once largely Cherokee country, because a British colony, became part of the United States, attempted to separate, but was forcibly kept in the union with military force.)

    I don’t know the full history of Ossetia, and it will probably be some time before I might even imagine, probably incorrectly, that I understand the situation, but it seems to me that we are not working on the same set of principles in all of these various places.

    It sounds to me like atrocities are military actions carried out by the other guys, and invasions are when other people’s armies enter a country that is not their own.

    If we did that sort of thing, of course, we would demand that one consider the fact that we were merely defending the just desire of the local population for self-determination. Or something like that.

    Some background from the BBC.

  • Todd Bentley’s Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

  • John Hobbins on TUCC

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

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

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

    (Update: John has now added another post.)

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

  • Forgiving or Excusing

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Two Good Things from Church

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

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

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

  • Edwards: Is Marital Fidelity Strictly Personal?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.