Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Religion

All posts relating to religion, including those on the relationship of religion to other fields, such as science and politics

  • Small Offense Provokes Much Violence

    Yesterday I posted an aside regarding the attempted murder of the Danish cartoonist who drew the cartoon that provoked violent responses in the Muslim world.

    Today I saw this news story regarding reactions to a Malaysian court ruling that non-Muslims could use the word Allah. Behold how much violence a small matter kindles!

    I am an advocate for courtesy in discourse as long as it comports with honesty. But I want to use this story to clarify that while I am in favor of courtesy, I oppose laws that demand it, and I do not believe laws should require it, nor do I believe that its lack can justify violence.

    Right now, a great deal of the discussion regarding offending religious people relates to Islam, though the situation in Ireland indicates it’s much broader. So just to be clear, I also oppose laws against blasphemy as defined by Christians, nor do I think there is a justification for violent anger over insults.

    If I went further, speaking as a Christian, I believe that we should handle such things graciously and honestly, rejecting any violent response, and remaining courteous even when others are not. But that courtesy should be our choice, not something imposed.

  • The Passion in Gold and Diamonds

    I dislike criticizing ministries and their leaders for several reasons:

    1. There’s a bandwagon approach, in which everyone piles on a vulnerable leader and repeats the stories
    2. There’s a tendency to lack discernment about rumors, i.e. everyone repeats what is said about someone, especially someone who deserves criticism, but doesn’t do good fact and context checking
    3. There’s a tendency to throw the first stone without checking one’s own sins first

    In the case of Benny Hinn I would add one more. During my son James’s illness he was greatly encouraged through something that Benny Hinn said and did on his television show. James wasn’t a regular watcher, but came across it late one night when he was in distress and couldn’t sleep. It was not the false encouragement of telling him he wasn’t going to die, but the very real encouragement of knowing God was with him. It took me some time to accept this as I have numerous and profound differences with Benny Hinn in both doctrine and practice. Nonetheless I treasure every moment of encouragement that was given to James during that time.

    Having said all of that, I think the same principle applies here as I applied to prophecy in my post Say Not to Prophecy before you say Yes over on my Participatory Bible Study blog. The problem is that if we only affirm, we often so corrupt the good that we do more damage than if we simply shut everything down.

    With this, let me introduce the following video, with hat tip to The Church of Jesus Christ blog:

    There was one point in there that really blew my irony meter. It comes about 4:50 into the video when one of the medallions, which appear to me to have four figure price tags, is described as “the passion in gold and diamonds.” That is both ironic, and to me profoundly offensive. It leads me to wonder just what certain Christian leaders think before they do these things, or if they even think about the impact such actions have on the gospel.

    Yes, there are belts with a cross
    The belt with a cross on the Megabelt Book Table

    I have enough problem with gold and silver crosses. Recently my pastor came down out of the pulpit and pointed to the gold cross on the table. “The cross isn’t like this one,” he said. So true. Unfortunately, church custom insists on unrealistically beautiful crosses.

    When we were recently setting up the table for the release of Megabelt, the book by Nick May, we were looking for a good symbol. My wife asked for a large, fancy, belt buckle to use on the display. I suggested that if we could find a good looking buckle with a cross on it, it would make the point perfectly. Both my wife and daughter told me I wouldn’t find one, but I still checked the local Christian store, and sure enough, there amongst many “Christian” trinkets there was a golden belt buckle with a cross on it. I’m sorry that in order to have it as a decoration I had to encourage the designers with a sale.

    “The passion in gold and diamonds.” What has the church that claims to follow one who had no place to lay his head come to?

  • Masculinity Crisis?

    Rachel Held Evans says some things I wish I had said about the so-called masculinity crisis in the church. I guess I’m one of those “dudes who are still sort of chicks.” (Read the post if you don’t get it.)

  • Is Christianity the Best Deal in the Universe?

    So says Ann Coulter, paraphrasing an accusation made against Brit Hume when he suggested that Tiger Woods should become a Christian:

    With Christianity, your sins are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean and your eternal life is guaranteed through nothing you did yourself, even though you don’t deserve it. It’s the best deal in the universe.

    Now in fairness I must point out that this is the final paragraph of a substantial post and that two paragraphs earlier Coulter points out that Christianity is also the hardest religion in the world.

    But before I try to answer the question I asked in the title, let me point out that I have no problem with Brit Hume in his opinion show. By being a Christian myself, I make the obvious statement that in some way I prefer that religion over others. When I give specific testimony of what Christianity has done in my own life, I can certainly be heard as saying that other religions might not have done the same thing.

    I think it’s silly that we expect people not to express their opinions about religion in a political show on television. We allow opinions, some of them offensive, about almost anything else. I would point out to my fellow believers, however, that when we allow opinions about religion, that must include the opponents of religion. I regularly encounter Christians who are incensed that someone would say nasty things about their faith in the media. Blasphemy laws are becoming popular in some quarters.

    But just as I find it quite acceptable for Brit Hume to suggest that Tiger Woods change his religion (though as a Christian I don’t find it all that profitable), I also find it acceptable for atheists to suggest that my faith is silly or counterproductive. That doesn’t mean I agree with them in any way. I just believe it is right and proper that their viewpoint should be expressed.

    Having said all of that off topic, the problem I have here is with the reference to Christianity as a “deal.” I find Ann Coulter’s style pretty much useless. She’s trying to make this interesting and humorous, or at least that’s what I guess, but she fails miserably. All she does is make it seem wrong.

    Christianity is not a deal in which one utters some words and gets off for all that one has done. That’s an excessively simplistic reading of the situation. Following Jesus is a surrender of oneself, after which one may find oneself nonetheless facing the consequences of those actions. Of course, I hear risk conflating eternal salvation and forgiveness by God with one’s current life. But I think if one reads more than the few verses that Coulter has quoted, there is a good deal in Christian theology that conflates those ideas.

    One doesn’t accept Christ and get off free or even easy. One accepts Christ and has one’s life taken over. One invites redemption, change, recreation. Everything is new.

    Now if I didn’t so dislike the word “deal,” I might describe this as a good deal. But I think it is no more a “deal” that it is my thirst being quenched when I drink water a “deal” with the universe. It’s a gift, not a deal. Where we get off course is when we think the gift, which Coulter describes as a deal in her final paragraph, ever comes without the hard part, which she describes two paragraphs before.

    I’m not going to compare Christianity to Buddhism or any other faith. I have never found much value in comparison and contrast, especially by someone like me, who has practiced one but not the other. What I will say is that what Christianity demands of me is redemption, and it would demand the same of Tiger Woods.

    Having God’s forgiveness in the midst of all that is life-changing, indeed critical, in my view. But it still leaves the hard work of my forgiveness of myself, my gaining forgiveness from others, reconciliation, and recreation.

    It’s not a deal. Its’ a gift. And inside the gift package is some very hard work.

    PS: I find the title of her post–“If you can find a better deal, take it”–even less compatible with Christianity.

  • Congratulations to James McGrath

    He has been appointed to the newly revived Clarence Goodwin chair of New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University.

    My only question is how a university allows a chair like that to remain unfilled for 60 years. Thanks is very much due to the person who discovered the omission.

  • Todd Wood – the Evolutionist?

    A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had started reading Dr. Todd Wood’s blog (using the title Another Honest Creationist). The reason I call Dr. Wood honest (as opposed to some other creationists) is that he acknowledges that young age creationism relies on the Bible and specifically on a particular understanding of the early chapters of Genesis.

    I find it difficult to believe that someone can be a young earth or young age creationist on any other basis. The scientific evidence is simply much too strongly against it. Dr. Wood, like Dr. Kurt Wise, admits that there is substantial evidence for evolution, yet they accept young age creationism because that is what they believe the Bible teaches. I disagree on their interpretation of Genesis, but I can respect their stand and their honest statement of their reasons for taking it.

    Of course some other young age/earth creationists don’t like this approach. They believe that there really is no evidence for evolution and that there is some sort of conspiracy amongst scientists to pretend that evolution is true even though, they say, it is not.

    One of these, Joseph Mastropaolo, offers a $10,000 prize for evidence of evolution, and sends e-mails out to people and then if they don’t respond, he puts them on a list on his web site.

    All of this is fairly standard stuff in the creation/evolution debates, althought Mastropaolo’s twist of requiring his opponents to put up $10,000 of their own money, thus making this all more of a bet than a prize is interesting. I think that the prize offering thing is generally the last resort of those whose pockets are empty, but it’s all pretty common.

    But what’s humorous is that Mastropaolo sent an e-mail to Dr. Wood asking him to put up some evidence and then added him to the list of non-responding evolutionists.

    He says:

    170. Dr. Todd C. Wood, of Bryan College, who wrote, “There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it.” Upon request and with the incentive of unlimited $10,000 grants for his Center for Origins Research, he did not send any evidence. Can it be that there is no scientific evidence to support evolution? Can it be that Todd C. Wood uses brass and bluff like the other 363,000 anti-science evolutionists worldwide? (12-30-09)

    So a young age creationist who is working on building evidence for creationism is now an example of an evolutionist. Who ever would have imagined it?!

  • Patriarch Bartholomew on 60 Minutes

    HT: Allan Bevere.

  • Sumerians Witness Creation

    This is too funny (from The Onion). HT: Exploring Our Matrix.

  • Advent Conspiracy

    Here’s a conspiracy I could get on board with!

  • Liberal, Charismatic, Moderate, and Passionate

    My blog subtitle reads: Thoughts on Religion in the World from a passionate, moderate, liberal charismatic Christian. One common response to this line is to tell me that it’s impossible to combine those four things into one, so I’d like to provide a few notes on why I use these four labels when self-identifying.

    First, let me note that I did not take any of these from the subtitle of Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN. Much as I appreciate Brian McLaren’s writing, I use these labels to identify specific elements of my theology, not to indicate breadth. That characterization may be mildly unfair to McLaren, but I’ll have to live with that.

    I must also note that these terms came to me in two parts, and I usual use them that way. Liberal charismatic was an epithet used of me by an opponent in an online debate, which was accurate enough that it has stuck. When I was considering using it in the subtitle of my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic, even my wife said, “That’s you, honey!”

    Passionate moderate is a label I created for myself. I discuss this combination in my post On Being a Passionate Moderate. Those two previous posts go into more detail than I plan to do right now. I’d just like to define how I connect these four labels with myself.

    1. Liberal. This is the one label many of my Christian friends would like to avoid. Because they are kind people, they also want to resist applying it to me. “I don’t see you as a liberal,” said one. “You’re really just a very open evangelical.” My main concern is just the opposite. There are things a liberal is expected not to believe by many. I can’t count the times someone has assumed that I deny miracles and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Instead I affirm both. In politics it’s often assumed that I will favor government intervention in various economic activities. Actually, I lean rather strongly toward laissez faire capitalism.

    In what way am I liberal? In terms of my Christian faith I am doctrinally open. I do have those doctrines that I believe, but I do not assume that if you disagree on any of these that you are not right with God. In fact, I don’t assume that I can know the spiritual state of any other person. I lean more toward concern about practice than about belief, though I would maintain that real belief generally results in action consistent with that belief. In studying the Bible, I use the historical-critical method, and I don’t always come up with conservative results. On the other hand, sometimes I do.

    2. Charismatic. I call myself a charismatic for one reason: I believe that any and all gifts of the Holy Spirit are still available to the church. I do not believe they ended after the apostolic age or at any other time. I differ from many charismatics and Pentecostals in that I do not believe that speaking in tongues is a necessary sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In fact, I believe that every Christian “receives” (I really dislike the word, thus the scare quotes) the Holy Spirit, and that every Christian is gifted.

    3. Moderate. The term on this list that I like least is “moderate” yet I have not found a good alternative. It is too often used for a centrist or for someone who does not feel strongly about anything and thus lives by compromise. I use it to indicate two things. First, I don’t believe that doctrinal choices are binary in nature; there is a range of options. Second, I believe in examining the entire spectrum and recognizing the actual extremes. I have found that I also end up not being at the extremes, but sometimes I do. For example, I am a strictly orthodox trinitarian. I am careful to keep my view of the trinity in accord with the church councils that formed the doctrine.

    4. Passionate. When all is said and done I pursue that which I believe passionately. My moderation does not involve not caring or simply taking a compromise position in order to avoid having to defend a more extreme one. One could almost say that I hold my moderate positions in an extreme way.

    I hope that helps explain my subtitle. Again, for a more detailed explanation, see my previous posts on liberal charismatic and passionate moderate.