Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Energion.com

  • Adrian and Dave Warnock on the Atonement

    So far as I know, no, they’re not related.

    Adrian is concerned with the suggestion that anything in the Bible might be culturally conditioned. Wake up and smell the coffee, Adrian! Practically all of Hebrew scriptures is about leading people from here to there. The narrative is built around the exodus, about physically moving from here to there, and then that becomes a metaphor for spirituality. On what basis would one imagine that what God taught them would be anything other than culturally conditioned?

    But there is explicit scripture for this as well:

    I also gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they could not live. — Ezekiel 20:25, my translation

    The whole context of that verse is worth studying, as is the entire book of Ezekiel. In fact, looking at Ezekiel and Jeremiah as they deal with the Babylonian exile is a theological exercise well worth the time. The exile did not occur with its theological context all ready to go. These prophets, and 2nd Isaiah after them, had to build that context in the people’s mind. The success of this enterprise is demonstrated by the survival of Judaism.

    I think Paul reflects this somewhat with his concept of the law as a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24). God’s revelation is not always intended to be eternal in the form in which it was given. Even Jesus, God in the flesh, had a temporal context in which he spoke and acted.

    Dave Warnock, however, responds to this in somewhat more detail and with some excellent scriptures. I commend his post, Sub-Biblical arguments against Steve Chalke to you for study and thought.

    Now that you did that (you did go and read Dave’s post, right?) let me just comment that one doesn’t honor scripture by pretending it is something it is not, and was never intended to be. One honors scripture, I believe, by taking it as it is, as much as one is able.

  • Idolatry of Theology and Liturgy

    • In a recent comment on my video Why I Hate the KJV, I received a comment that began thus: “You were saved by the KJV. . . .”
    • A young man visited my home and discussed with me for more than an hour. At the end, he said he was concerned for my salvation because of various details in the way I understand salvation by grace through faith.
    • A student asked me just what set of beliefs he needed to convey to someone and convince them to believe before he could be sure they had been saved.
    • A church member quits attending worship because he can’t stand the drums, the organ, the people raising their hands, the people not raising their hands, the way the pastor prays, ad nauseum.

    All of these points do have something in common, I believe. There’s the theory of salvation by grace through faith (God does it), the theory of salvation by works (get working and earn it), and the wonderfully western theory of salvation by intellectual assent to correct theology. I would suggest, however, that this intellectual assent version falls afoul of Paul’s note “not of works lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:9, emphasis mine). I think that could justifiably be paraphrased “not of intellectual assent (or prowess) lest any man should boast.”

    But no, there’s a substantial group of Christians who hold implicitly, if not explicitly, that without getting certain parts of their theology right, people cannot be saved. No thieves hanging on crosses need apply! One wonders just how many facts about atonement the thief on the cross grasped in the moment that he said “Lord, remember me”? Did he even know what “Lord” meant in that context?

    Now I’m told that I put too much weight on the story of the thief on the cross, but I think it’s a tremendously important counter-example. That thief hangs there athwart the path of all those who want to make salvation difficult by requiring amounts of time, training, works, or even understanding. There’s nothing there but a cry for help and grace extended.

    People frequently paint pictures of God from the theological prose of the Bible that contradict the God who appears in the stories. Personally I think this is reversed. As the thief on the cross hangs athwart the path of those who require intellectual understanding, so do Deborah (Judges 4 & 5) and Junia (Romans 16:7) stand in the way of those who want to claim that God can’t use women as leaders. At a minimum, those two examples should make one look carefully at each individual woman one meets in ministry and ask, “Is she one for whom God has made an exception?” Of course I think there are better theological reasons for rejecting gender exclusion in ministry, but that’s another post.

    But what does all of this have to do with the last example I gave, a liturgical one, and with the title of the post which refers to idolatry? Quoth Paul again, “Much, in every way!” I use the basic definition for idolatry I got from reading Tillich: “Treating as ultimate anything that is not ultimate.”

    • The commenter on my YouTube video has made the KJV the ultimate thing, replacing God and Jesus as the agent of salvation, and replacing it with a book, a translation made by human hands.
    • The young man who questioned my salvation based on his theological propositions has made those theological propositions into his god. They are the idol of God before which he worships. I would note here, however, that in my view grace is sufficient for gossips and murderers, and yes, even idolaters!
    • The student who asked about what must be believed was a very sincere person who was nonetheless distressed by the idea that he might not present the right pieces of the puzzle and thus not reach someone. He was being tempted by idolatry.
    • The church member who quits over liturgy, well . . . see below.

    I suspect that liturgy is the part of theology which tempts us most to idolatry. Many people ignore the atonement debates and simply believe that Jesus died for them. The idolatry is more frequently one of church leaders than church members. But everyone knows whether you raise your hands or don’t. Everyone knows what kind of music they like. Everyone knows whether they like a fixed order or a more spontaneous service.

    Preferences aren’t the problem. In fact, it’s not a problem to seek to understand and believe correct theology. That is, until what you say about God and how you worship becomes more important than God. Worship is about experiencing and worshiping God in community with one’s fellow believers, the body of Christ. When you let your personal preferences keep you from corporate worship, at least some elements of that are lost. In fact, I would suggest that if you are in no sense giving up something to others in worship, you may not be fully experiencing corporate worship.

    And when you let those individual preferences keep you from worship, then that becomes idolatry as well. Something that is not ultimate–the form of the worship service–has become ultimate for you instead of God.

    Should pastors, church leaders, and liturgists not strive for a good worship service? Absolutely they should do their best in this area. I am not advocating sloppiness either in theology or in liturgy. I am advocating the correct priority. When a pastor presents the Eucharist carelessly and thoughtlessly, for example, it may make it harder for people to experience the presence of Christ in their midst. I very much enjoy the Eucharist. There have been times, however, when I have had to work to experience the presence of Christ because it was so clear that the pastor was not experiencing it, and didn’t care.

    On another occasion I recall a minister who I thought might ascend from before the altar at any moment because he was so thoroughly engaged in the liturgy he presented. The simple fact that his worship was so completely directed at God, and so engaged his entire being, made it easy for the worshipers to join him.

    It is not good liturgy and good theology that I’m challenging here. Good liturgy and good theology help bring one to God. But no liturgy or theological proposition that stands between God and the person can be truly good.

    A tree is a good thing, but when one bows down and worships it, it becomes an idol. It is the same in our theology. A good doctrine, a good worship service, or a good deed, placed above the one in whose service they should stand, has become an idol.

    Friends, keep yourselves from idols. Amen! — 1 John 5:21

  • Reading Psalm 100 Out Loud

    One of my Bible study methods, though most important for devotional reading, is to read a passage aloud.  Since the lectionary Psalm for this week is Psalm 100, which is very short, I thought I’d read it aloud in a number of versions and then write my subjective impressions.

    I chose to read it from the REB, NJB, CEV, NRSV, The JPS Tanakh, and the NLT.  There was very little method to all this; those versions were just nearest my computer at the time.  I could have read from more by either walking farther or by using my Logos library, but I didn’t.

    Prior to reading these aloud in English I had read the Psalm a few times in Hebrew and had done a draft literal translation myself.

    The purpose of the exercise, beyond “whatever” was to get a feel for how each version would function in public reading.  I’m frequently asked what the “best” translation is, and one obvious question is always “best for what?”

    First, whether more functional or more formally equivalent, the translations were more similar than I would have expected when read side by side.  The NJB was fairly choppy.  I like its use of “Yahweh” in the Psalm, though I don’t use that as a rule in reading publicly.  The REB was similarly a bit choppy and appeared to use vocabulary that didn’t fit well.  (Note that I normally prefer the REB, though today was an exception.

    I disliked the use of “love” to translate Hebrew “hesed”, as was done by the CEV and the REB.  I understand the reason in the CEV, but the REB uses “acclaim” in verse 1, “acknowledge” in verse 3, I think they might have employed a few more letters on “hesed.”

    The very positive thing about the CEV is that it is very easy to understand when heard, with no difficult vocabulary.  At the same time, it loses all sense of Hebrew rhythm and parallelism.  This is one of those necessary trade-offs in translation.  You’re going to lose something, and if your goal is to translate for a fairly basic set of English vocabulary.

    The JPS Tanakh is an excellent translation, though it didn’t seem to read as well as the NLT read aloud.  The NRSV sounded remarkably good to me, which again is not usual.  I usually like the NRSV for the formal equivalence, but dislike its sound.  Unfortunately, it is the Bible used for most scripture readings at my church.

    Overall I would give the edge to the NLT as a compromise between easy to understand, decently flowing English text, maintaining some sense of the parallelism, and not translating any of the Hebrew words in too jarring a manner.

    All this is, as I have said, very subjective.  One impression is very strong–all of the translations seemed less smooth and readable when read aloud than when read silently.  I know the CEV is designed to be read orally, but I think there it is very hard for me to come from reading the Hebrew text with the parallelism and some sense of similar length poetic lines, and then go to a translation that deliberately eliminates both elements.

    I suspect that a major reason why the NRSV sounds good to me in this case is that this is one of those Psalms I memorized in the KJV as a child, and the NRSV is the closest to the KJV amongst those I read.

    One thing I believe I should think about is the quality of reading involved.  There are some readers who can make a scripture reading really resonate.  I wonder how much my own inclinations about reading impacted the way I felt about what I read aloud?

  • Coolness and Complacency

    OK, I’m going to try for three short notes at a time. In this case I’m helped by Dave Warnock, who already wrote on the topic.

    It seems that Adrian Warnock doesn’t like people to be “cool-headed” about the atonement. He says:

    To be honest, when I heard this book was going to be “cool-headed” I was already concerned about it. I’m not sure the atonement is a subject that it’s possible to be terribly cool about. That’s because another word for cool is lukewarm. Jesus hates us to be lukewarm about crucial issues, even threatening to spit the lukewarm from his mouth (Revelation 3). I much prefer interacting with someone who is either hot or cold about important issues like this.

    Dave correctly points out that Adrian is using a questionable definition of “cool-headed.” But I would like to make a few more remarks.

    There’s a tendency among many religious or spiritual people to believe that the more belligerent and confrontational one is, the more truly one believes and is committed to one’s beliefs. I would suggest that just as frequently the one who is belligerent and pushy is quite insecure about those beliefs and makes up for confidence with bluster.

    I’m frequently told that my self-designation as a passionate moderate is an oxymoron, as one cannot be both passionate and moderate at the same time. There’s a grain of truth to this, if I accept that the meaning of words is determined by usage. But many people who self-identify as moderates would also regard themselves as passionate about their moderate beliefs. Having determined on a position that is not at either extreme on a particular issue, I can be quite passionate about opposing either of the extremes.

    But there’s another point here. Often being cool-headed is the best way to advocate for a particular course of action. You stir more people up by being confrontational, but you don’t necessarily persuade anybody that you’re right.

    Having said that, I’m not sure that I’m as cool-headed as Dave on this one. Frankly I do find the hard-line position of penal substitutionary atonement, when it includes the idea that this is the meaning of the atonement, rather than one (only slightly) helpful metaphor amongst many, is not just wrong, but dangerous. It is a position that drives people away from God’s grace, not toward it in many cases. I also believe it is scripturally wrong.

    Often the liberal or moderate position is argued as an OK, not so tense, alternative to the conservative position–acceptable, rather than more correct. That is unfortunate. I believe what I do because I believe those positions to be better than, not merely an OK alternative for more relaxed people. I regard the teaching of PSA as the meaning of the atonement as wrong. I regard exclusion of women from positions in ministry as wrong. It is not that I ask tolerance from my more conservative brethren for my sake. Rather, I believe tolerance would be good for them.

    So perhaps I’m not the best person to argue for cool-headedness in this case.

  • Theodicy and Politics

    This is another brief thought. As I was thinking about politics I also considered some of the questions that come up in theodicy. In politics, many of us look for protection from risk, from the consequences of our own actions.

    It seems to me that in theodicy many people prevent “consequences” as an example of an evil universe. The idea seems to be that a “good” universe is one in which everyone is comfortable and never has to do any suffering no matter what. The universe as created, of course, includes many, many consequences.

    We should at least divide these between consequences of our own actions, and consequences of the actions of others. If my actions bring consequences for me, that’s one thing. When those consequences begin to hurt my wife, my children, or my grandchildren, that’s another matter. But in reality, it’s hard to imagine an arrangement of the universe that distinguishes those things.

    It may be that we really do live in the best possible universe–if people are allowed meaningful choices.

  • Quick Thoughts on the Economy

    As an exercise in brevity, some things that occurred to me while watching political TV and reading the blogs:

    • An economic expert is one who provides the arguments that allow me to get what I want. An incompetent economist is one that says I can’t have it.
    • The entire argument is based on need. The financial sector needed capital, the automakers need money to get through this situation (however long that is), the country needs the auto industry not to collapse.
    • I hope someone is asking just what it is that is going to make any of these sectors come out of the spin. They aren’t going to do it because we need them to.
    • If a company is borrowing money to build a factory, that’s hopeful. If a company is borrowing substantially to cover cash flow, that’s dangerous. It doesn’t change if the government is lending the money.
    • It’s interesting to see the difference between the folks in the white house and those in congress. Bush is asking for things that a very similar to what Obama wants; congressional Republicans want to say no. (I’m with the congressional Republicans on this, though I doubt they’ll be at all consistent.)

    It doesn’t look good!

  • Republican Role: Defend Capitalism?

    In an MSNBC story today Senator Jeff Sessions, from our neighboring state of Alabama is quoted:

    Fellow Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions also opposes helping the auto industry. “Once we cross the divide from financial institutions to individual corporations, truly, where would you draw the line?”

    Just a second here. Line? What line? Look in your rear view mirror. That thing way back there, practically out of sight? That’s the “line.”

    You see, congress may have passed a law providing relief to “financial institutions” but the actual money goes to–you guessed it–corporations. But the line was crossed many years ago when the government decided to rescue Chrysler, after which Lee Iacocca was known to run about posing as a champion of capitalism.

    I’m not a purist on capitalism, but I do think we need to realize what we’re actually doing. The most socialist actions we’ve taken recently are not proposing minor chances in the structure of redistribution as provided by the tax code. It’s in these gifts of capital to private industry.

    It’s good that Republicans are working on opposition to this type of activity, though I don’t think they will be very successful. There’s too much fear in our economy right now. I noted during the election that I was in kind of a reverse of the rest of the country. I thought I’d give McCain an edge on the economy and Obama the edge on foreign policy–not that McCain had a large edge.

    So what do I think ought to be done? Personally I would not directly aid these industries at all. We have a problem in this country regarding deficit spending, but most importantly we carry out deficit spending on projects that will not produce anything later. In other words we borrow money from our children and grandchildren with no prospect other than that we will have to borrow some more from their children and grandchildren in order to pay them back.

    But deficit spending is not necessarily bad in the short term. What is bad is when deficit spending becomes essentially eternal, when we will carry on building the deficit even when an emergency is past.

    Two elements would be necessary in any plan for me to feel unqualified support for it. (Note that I’m aware that nobody is waiting for my unqualified support!) First, it would have to accomplish goals that I generally think can be accomplished well by government, such as building infrastructure. (I include basic education as an infrastructure issue, so building schools would be acceptable.) Improving this country’s infrastructure would have the potential of improving our economy down the road, providing those infrastructure projects were well chosen.

    Second, we need a commitment to ending the spending, and making a corresponding reduction in either taxes or in the deficit (depending on how the work was financed) when the mission was accomplished. I have little hope that such a commitment would be made and kept, but since I’m writing almost entirely about fantasies–nobody’s going to do this stuff–why not fantasize about that as well.

    In the meantime we’re going to be stuck with debates on whether we are giving money to “institutions” or “individual corporations” carried out by people who ought to know better. Or perhaps they do know better but don’t feel like admitting it.

  • Measuring Media Fairness

    A corollary of the fundamental idea of a free market is caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. I look at that from a slightly different angle than usual, not as an indictment of the free market, but rather as a statement of its driving force–the decisions of buyers. As a buyer, you vote every day on what will succeed and what will not.

    Regarding the media, both Republicans and Democrats seem unwilling to accept this necessity, and to believe that it works. To their credit, the Republicans do not seem to be advocating new regulations at the moment; they are simply complaining as buyers that the product is not to their liking. Some Democrats, on the other hand, are calling for the fairness doctrine to be re-enacted especially to deal with talk radio, which is an area that tilts strongly to the right. This is one of the many reasons that, while I left the Republican party some years ago, I never became a Democrat. I do not think either party favors freedom in a reasonably consistent manner.

    I might as well pick on two bloggers, though the information is all over the blogosphere right now. Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. wrote in his election Post Mortem that:

    . . . In fact as a recent Pew Research Report showed, the only major network that showed any sense of balance was actually the nemesis of the left Fox News, which had equal percentage of negative stores on McCain and Obama, and slightly higher percentage of positive stores for Obama. On the other hand on MSNBC over 70 pecent of the McCain stories were negative, compared to only 14 percent for Obama.

    On the Stones Cry Out blog, Doug wrote:

    The adulation given to Barack Obama was far more than can be accounted for by his historic run for the Presidency. . . .

    Now my gut feeling is that the coverage was not fair and even, but I have serious problems with the manner in which that fairness is being measured. Counting positive, negative, and neutral stories does not seem, without much broader context, to be a very accurate method. One would first have to establish a base as to what was the correct ratio, and I think it is very difficult to find an unbiased way of establishing that base.

    My gut feeling depends on my idea of what fairness would be, what stories would be relevant and what would not be. I then compare that to the portion of the media to which I listen more, which is admittedly more left leaning (more MSNBC than Fox, for example, and no talk radio at all), and as a result I get the strong feeling that the sources I watched didn’t balance it out all that well. Most commonly, I watch via the internet clips of the stories I regard as relevant. After watching a number of shows from start to finish, I’m very much convinced these clips are the only way to go with news stories–then I get to set the ratio according to my prejudices!

    The question is just what is the correct ratio of stories. Let me illustrate. If a reporter were writing about the Alaska senate race, in which one candidate was convicted of multiple felony counts and the other was, well, not so convicted, what is the proper ratio of stories? If we come back to the McCain/Obama race, another accusation is that the media favored process stories over substance (which is also my gut feeling).

    Assuming for the moment that the numbers and my gut feeling are correct, out of those stories, what was the proper ratio? I would suggest that the Obama campaign provided much less “process” fodder than did the McCain campaign. Bluntly, I was interested in almost none of it, but that doesn’t answer the question about the ratio.

    Besides talk radio we now have the blogosphere to try to bring various stories to our attention, but again, in most cases where I looked, while blogs bring in material that doesn’t make the mainstream media, very often it is less vetted, and less relevant than the mainstream media’s material. Since Republicans seem to have been on the short end of the stick, let me note that most of the stories of which they wanted to see more coverage, would have simply gotten me as a viewer to change the channel. I already knew about the abortion votes, Ayers, Rezko, and Wright during the primaries.

    I was also uninterested in stories of book bannings at the Wasilla library, unless someone could produce something more than an alleged conversation. I wasn’t concerned about who prayed for Governor Palin in her church. I’ve had people lay hands on me and pray who hold views I would certainly oppose, and I’m sure it will happen again.

    In other words, there was a great deal of material in the election that I found quite irrelevant. One thing of which I am quite certain is that two categories of stories got way more mention than they deserved: 1) Candidate associations, and 2) Political process.

    But why was this? I’m going to suggest that very few voters are willing to watch through a serious dissection of the policies of one candidate or another. Republicans who have talked to me wonder how I could favor Obama over McCain. Invariably they will bring up several topics such as government spending, redistribution (the socialism charge), and freedom of speech (campaign finance being an example). Those issues were a wash as far as I was concerned.

    The problem here is simple. The Republicans do not represent responsible fiscal policies. They do not oppose redistribution, and their candidate is one of the great proponents of campaign finance reform. A solid examination of the issues would bring all of those points out. One of my greatest objections to President-Elect Obama is the combination of his support for public financing of campaigns with his decision to opt out of the system. He practiced what I preach, but he didn’t practice what he preached.

    But the specifics of such a discussion are not the most important thing here. There was information available on all of these things. People complained that they didn’t know what candidates, especially President-Elect Obama, stood for. I don’t believe we have any major reason to doubt the general outlines of the policies espoused by each candidate. You would have a hard time finding out, however, if your only source of information was television news.

    And a note to my Republican friends (and enemies). If you think Joe the Plumber and the whole related discussion constituted discussion of the issues, you’re in trouble. But there were a bunch of people who wanted to watch that, so there it was.

    Which is where I get back to the free market. I think the media, and the television media in particular, do a much better job of reflecting the votes of their customers than we give them credit for. Debating the fairness of the various outlets is an appropriate exercise in order to try to change the market share of the various outlets, but not in order to pretend that it is the fault of the media that one candidate loses or wins.

    The media coverage is the fault of the market, and in this case I think the market is doing quite well. Barack Obama’s campaign with its internet driven fundraising, however, will point the way not only to a greater freedom in terms of political money, but also to a greater variety in the media. The weakness in the market is that minority positions can be driven out simply because they don’t have a large enough constituency–yet. That’s true of physical products as well. An inventor of a device that is only intended for a tiny percentage of people has to find the right outlet to reach those people who will listen.

    On that basis third parties like the Libertarians or the Greens have much more to complain about. Or not. You can’t have market share until you have market share, just as you have to have money in order to make money.

    I think it’s a good idea to look at media fairness, as long as it doesn’t turn into advocacy of government control, such as the fairness doctrine. It’s a good way to try to persuade people to vote with their channel changers–the one appropriate way in which to control expression.

  • Trashing Bible Translations is Trivial

    . . . not to mention easy.

    In the just completed presidential election here in the U. S., were I to list all of the reasons why I might not vote for the candidate for whom I eventually did vote, the list would be fairly long, and might convince someone I thought that candidate was quite a scoundrel.

    Similarly, I could quite easily make a list of only the positive points of the candidate for whom I did not vote, and make someone think he was the man!

    Candidates are rarely perfect.  They rarely fully reflect one’s own views, so there is some compromise involved when one goes out to vote.

    So what does this have to do with Bible translation? Quoth the apostle Paul:  Much, in every way!

    Critics of one Bible translation or another, or even one method of translation or another often simply find cases in which the particular translation or method produces results they regard as less than the best, or perhaps just plain bad.  Like negative political ads, these notes are supposed to add up in our minds to an eventual rejection of that particular translation or method.

    The problem is that every translation is susceptible to this approach, as is any particular mix of translation methods.  That’s because, like political candidates, translations are imperfect.

    It’s very easy to get into advocacy rather than evaluation.  I know.  I do it all the time.  But no accumulation of negatives ever turns into a positive message.  Unless, that is, in Bible translation it turns into motivation to learn the Biblical languages.  Since I suspect that isn’t going to happen as a mass movement, we’ll probably be living with translations for the forseeable future.

    A particular example of this kind of criticism of translation can be found in the preaching and teaching of many pastors who are well-versed in the Biblical languages.  Because of their extensive knowledge, and based on their extensive study, they can proclaim some particular translation misleading or just plain wrong.

    Now doubtless they have good reason for making this claim.  I recently heard it made and I agreed fully with the speaker.  The translation in question was, in my view, unfortunate.

    Since I have studied the process of Bible translation, however, I know that the rendering that the speaker and I both thought was poor, was actually produced by a committee of well-qualified scholars in the relevant field.  Their decision was reviewed by many others.  Comments were gathered, and then a final rendering was chosen.

    Does the speaker wish to take on that powerful committee?  Does he wish to suggest he knows better?  Of course he does!  So do I!  It’s fun.  It’s what this study is all about.  That’s the normal give and take of scholarship.

    But the congregation doesn’t really hear it the way we do.  First, most of them are not so well aware of how translations are made.  What they actually hear is that the translators are wrong, and they may infer possibly that those translators are less intelligent, less well-trained, and or less careful than their pastor or teacher.  They learn to distrust the translation, and instead of trusting the source languages instead, they have to trust their pastor.  Of course, in their personal study, they still have to trust some translation.

    I have written before about those who know very little Greek or Hebrew and yet proclaim, based on some commentary or other reference, that a particular word means some particular thing, contrary to the text of their translation.  In that case I’m talking about people with inadequate knowledge misleading because they are not fully competent to say what they say.  In this case, however, I’m talking about people who are very competent accidentally misleading people.

    What do I suggest?  To pastors or teachers skilled in the Biblical languages:

    1. Moderate your vocabulary.  Even when you are very certain, claim your statements about translation as your opinion.  “I believe” goes a long ways here.
    2. Don’t just work from the source languages.  Educate people on translation and on how to make effective use of the numerous English translations.
    3. Make both positive and negative statements about translations, when they are applicable.  Don’t just talk negatively about the ones you don’t like.

    To Bible students I suggest:

    1. Use multiple translations.  If you don’t know the source languages, try to get a better idea.  Choose translations that use different philosophies as well.
    2. Read prefaces, introductions, and footnotes.  Know the strengths and weaknesses of your particular Bible version(s).
    3. Learn as much as you can about the Biblical languages even if you don’t have time to actually learn them.  This will help you sort through the many, many claims.

    Note that I’m not talking about blog posts here for the most part.  You can’t always cover everything in a blog post, so you might simply include something negative from one verse but cover something positive at another time.  In that case the balance is in reading more than one post.

  • On Being Christian and Killing People

    I was reminded this morning that it was Veteran’s Day, not that I had forgotten, because I got an early note of thanks from my wife, who regularly thanks me for me military service, defending, as she always notes, her freedom. At the same time, I will either read or hear from some Christian friends who will say that military service is not compatible with being a follower of Jesus. This year, this function was served by my friend Peter Kirk, who is not happy with acts of remembrance in church, of which he says:

    If military people wish to have their own parades to mark their fallen comrades, they are welcome to do so. But please can they do so well away from the churches, whose fundamental attitudes are, or should be, completely at odds with theirs. And please can churches stop pandering to the expectations of those in the world outside, and of those among their own numbers, who hold anti-Christian militaristic views and expect the church to hold ceremonies for them, and disrupt its own regular programmes to do so.

    Now my point here is not to go after Peter or his position on this issue. What interests me on this is simply that I have many people in my life who simply would not be able to hear one another’s position. Many local Christians that I know consider pacifism a crazy notion held by people who aren’t really quite Christian, and probably live in California. They would be very surprised to meet Peter, hear his authentic testimony of Christian faith, and yet find that their views on war are so diametrically opposed.

    I have an interesting family history here as well. My father spent part of World War II planting trees in Canada because he refused to bear arms. He was willing to work in the medical corps, a reasonable option considering he intended to be a physician, but he was not accepted into that form of service, and because he refused to train with or carry a weapon, he was given alternative service. He lived to see both his sons serve voluntarily in the U. S. military.

    My father’s religious background was Seventh-day Adventist, many of whom reject bearing arms, but will serve in the military in medical capacity. One thing I found disconcerting about growing up in SDA communities was the rather large number of people who would reject personally bearing arms and yet voted for the most pro-military and pro-war candidates that were available. I have a much greater respect for pure pacifism than I do for those who refuse to do the killing themselves, but vote for the policies that lead to others doing so.

    A few years ago I was teaching a group of teenagers at a United Methodist church, and I found that the one thing they wanted to know about me was whether I had ever personally killed anyone while in the military. As a veteran of the U. S. Air Force, that is unlikely. The Air Force is not generally very “personal” about killing, and I was simply a cog in the machine that made it happen.

    I don’t believe that relieves one of responsibility. I consciously chose to be in that position. I chose the particular job I wanted in the Air Force. I knew what I was doing, and I re-enlisted to continue to do what I was doing. I was not a practicing Christian at the time, so it is appropriate to ask whether I would still do it.

    The answer is yes. I’ve written about my position before in a post titled Why I Am Not a Pacifist. I think that there are circumstances under which peaceful protest is the correct approach. I think there are circumstances in which one must suffer evil silently. But I also believe there are circumstances in which one needs to respond with force. The state doesn’t carry the sword in vain, and my citizenship in this country in this world means I may be called upon to carry out my part.

    A peaceful protest or civil disobedience is an approach that depends on the conscience of the enemy. There are times when one faces an enemy without a conscience. Peaceful protest often works by wakening the consciences of others who will bring force to bear. There need to be people with an ethical approach to bringing such force.

    I recall a conversation while I was in the Air Force. Since I was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base, headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, we got an unusual measure of the nuclear freeze protesters, which was the major movement of the time. A group of us were discussing this, and most indicated they were annoyed to be defending the freedom for people to protest against them. Flag burning even got into the discussion, though I don’t recall any flag burning amongst the freeze protesters at the base. They were generally painfully courteous about their protests.

    And indeed those protesters couldn’t have been doing the same thing on the other side of the conflict of the time. They were using the freedom for which we might be called to pay in order to protest against us.

    But for me that was precisely the reason for me to be there–to defend the freedom of people to annoy me in any number of ways. That freedom was what made it worthwhile to serve in the military and to be prepared to be there in time of war.

    It’s worthwhile noting that as a voter, I would have opposed every one of the wars in which I was involved (Grenada, Panama, and the first gulf war). I don’t think they were well conceived. At the same time, I believe that having a democracy in existence with the military force to stand against communism was absolutely necessary, and that helping to keep that democracy safe was a good thing.

    Those who are regular readers of this blog will know that I have opposed the current Iraq war since before it started. But I want to be clear that my opposition is not to the use of force. Sometimes actual use of force is required. Frequently, the ability to effectively use force is necessary.

    There are those who will respond only to force. For those force is ready. For this reason I look back on my own 10 years of service with satisfaction, and I thank all those others, especially those in those jobs that require one to get more personal about killing, not to mention being killed.

    It’s because of you that I can engage in this debate.