Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christianity

  • On Being a Love Preacher

    I’ve been talking about the incarnation and the two laws, and placing the concept of love at the center of Christianity. There are those who think that preaching love is somehow a weak form of Christianity, and a soft form of ethics. “All you need is love” is not regarded as a particularly profound message. “There’s lots more to it than just love,” I’ve been told.

    But I don’t think so. I think love requires some definition, because not everything we call love actually is. There are lots of details required to implement love. But love is the key, and love is anything but easy.

    My pastor this morning referred to the “cliche of ‘What Would Jesus Do?’” And indeed WWJD has become a cliche, with just about anything you might want to justify being explained as, of course, precisely what Jesus would do. And in practice WWJD has become something of a cliche, and unfortunately, in general people claim that Jesus would do whatever it was they wanted to do anyhow.

    But what would Jesus actually do? Well, we can get some idea from the gospel of John. (This message is scattered throughout scripture, but I’m using the passage in which it is most clearly stated.) Jesus gave up his life for his friends. And then he gave a command:

    12This is my command, that you love one another just as I loved you. 13Nobody has greater love than this, that he lays down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do that which I command you. — John 15:12-14 (TFBV, or see the CEV using BibleGateway.com)

    What would Jesus do? Well, he did give his life for his friends. And he did provide that to his disciples as a definition of love, of the love that they were to carry out.

    Now which is easier?

    • Believe a set of doctrines so that despite whatever you may do, you will still be saved and live eternally?
    • Put your trust in God and let him transform your life so that you exemplify this love, that is exemplify what Jesus would do?

    I think the easy road out is option ‘a’. We would really rather not be confronted with what Jesus actually would do in most circumstances.

    But that, I believe, is the challenge of the gospel.

  • Don’t Cover Evidence

    The Telegraph reports that some evangelicals in Kenya are trying to sideline exhibits on the evolution of human beings from Kenya’s national museum. In a story, Evangelicals urge museum to hide man’s ancestors, it is reported that the churches want those exhibits removed and intend a campaign to persuade the museum to do so.

    Folks, this is a way that Christians can prove themselves to be stupid and dishonest at one and the same time. Can there be any good reason to hide the evidence or to try to prevent people from seeing it? This is not an action that will be advantageous to the kingdom of God. It is simply “putting a stumbling block” in front of those who might otherwise be inclined to accept the gospel message.

    I sincerely hope that Kenya’s national museum will resist this campaign, and that the Christian leaders involved will think better of this activity.

  • Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator

    I’ve just created a blog aggregator specifically for Christian blogs. This is the result of recent questions from people looking for more moderate Christian presence on the internet. While I am happy to work with conservative or liberal groups whenever that is possible, I’d like to have a single place to look for commentary and information from a moderate Christian perspective.

    I still intend to participate in the Methodist blogosphere, and have actually been spending more time looking at the various Methodist/Wesleyan blogs, commenting, and sometimes linking to them. But this aggregator is for moderates of a variety of theological traditions.

    Right now I only have blogs with which I am involved in the aggregator, but I hope this will change substantially over the next few days. To be included, go to the Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator, take a look around, then follow the link to Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator Standards, fill in the form and submit it. I’ll get to adding you to this list quickly.

  • The Incarnation and the Two Laws

    34Now when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they approached him together, 35and one of them tested him by asking him, 36“Teacher, Which commandment is the greatest one in the Torah?” 37Jesus replied, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole being’ {Deuteronomy 6:5} and with your whole mind. 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ {Leviticus 19:18} 40On these two commands all the law and the prophets hang. — Matthew 22:34-40 (TFBV)

    I hope I’m getting across the idea in this series (starting with Christian Essentials: Incarnation at the Center) that rather than a list of doctrines and of standards I prefer a hierarchy. Both logically and in terms of importance various teachings fall into a hierarchy. At the center of all of this I see the notion of incarnation. I’m going to discuss my understanding of many other doctrines later, including ones I regard as non-essentials, and I believe in each case we’ll find the incarnation shedding light on how that doctrine should be understood.

    (more…)

  • Non-Expert Comments

    In a post titled A Very Inconvenient Truth, Ben Witherington throws his weight behind global warming and our need to do something about it. I’m glad he has chosen to do so, and not just because I consider his commentary on Revelation to be one of the best available.

    And therein seems to lie the problem for some people. One commenter on his blog has called him to account for commenting on something in which he is not an expert. That is a charge that could also be frequently aimed at me, because I comment on many things. In fact, I see my call and mission as a popularizer, so I am almost always reporting things I have found in the works of the actual experts. I’m not terribly comfortable with being an expert. At one time I discovered that there were people at my church who were saying simply that if I could read Hebrew and Greek, and I believed the Bible, then they could too. Of course that bypasses the issue of what, precisely, I believe about the Bible, and of whether one person’s belief or lack of it is an adequate foundation for one’s faith.

    But on global warming and a host of other issues the people ultimately making the decisions are going to be non-experts. In our republican system of government, we elect people who make the decisions, but we generally choose those people based on their view on particular issues, as well as our general impression of them as people.

    But why should a person like Dr. Witherington, who is clearly expert in New Testament Studies, give his weight to one side of an issue on which he is not at all expert? I think there are several excellent reasons:

    1. There are others, equally inexpert who are making it a matter of faith not to act with regard to global warming.
    2. His voice at a minimum provides cover for conservative Christians who want to take action about global warming, but are pressured by others who suggest it’s some sort of liberal conspiracy
    3. He is very well placed to hear other expert opinion and to give a Christian view on the issue

    We should not decide what position to take based on opinions by people who are not experts. But such people often help deal with peripheral issues.

    Dr. Witherington says:

    The changing of the minds of many conservative Christians is perhaps a clear ensign that we are nearly to the point of recognizing we are dealing with an undeniable truth. Christians are sadly often the last to get religion about worldly things that have been obvious to others for many years. I say this to our shame.

    Because some conservative Christians have been in opposition to most actions related to global warming, Dr. Witherington, a conservative Christian himself is well placed to challenge that view. Perhaps Christians are often the last to get the word, but Christian leaders need to be ready to stand out from the crowd and say, “We have been wrong, and we need to take action.” At a minimum, we need to realize that the global warming debate is about facts and the strategies to deal with them, and is one on which Christians can disagree.

    But there are some principles at stake. Dr. Witherington asks a series of questions:

    What if there will be no escape from the problems of this world for the foreseeable future because Jesus told us to first evangelize all the language groups before the second coming? What if God expects us to properly tend and care for his good and beautiful garden-like creation until his Son comes back? What if when he returns instead he finds us sticking our heads in the sand, and ignoring the many ways we have bruised and abused the earth he created for our eco-system? What if our otherworldly redemption theology involves a gross distortion of the Biblical creation theology?

    I suggest you go to his article to see his answers. Those are all topics on which is is expert.

  • Missionaries and Mission

    John at Locusts and Honey called my attention to Mike Lamson’s post Getting rid of “missionary”. Many of my liberal and non-Christian friends are very surprised to discover that I’m not willing to abandon terms like “mission,” “missionary,” and “evangelism.” I think there are two potential problems with simply changing our terminology. First, we can change the term and keep whatever bad behavior was associated with it, in which case we just revisit the issue in a few years to change terms again. Second, we can change the term because we don’t want to keep up with the good behavior that should be associated with the term.

    It reminds me of the Bible translation term “dynamic equivalence,” a term that has been abandoned by most writers on Bible translation (I think so, at least; I haven’t done a survey). But to me the term conveys something that needs to be accomplished in the process of translation. I think that many who disparaged the term were actually hostile to what it meant. Finding a more congenial term didn’t make people do better things; it just changed the words, and in some cases I think it allowed people to claim that they were doing a better job of translation while they kept on doing the same old thing.

    In the case of missionary and mission we have a set of terms that have acquired some baggage. We have missionaries calling on people to convert or die, we have missionaries following behind armies, or destroying cultures by their bad behavior. But the fact that there are bad missions and bad missionaries doesn’t mean that there are no missions that need to be accomplished, and that we don’t need people to accomplish them. And those people would be missionaries.

    I am the son of missionaries. My father is an MD, and my mother an RN, and they served in medical missions both at home (Canada and the United States), and abroad (Mexico and South America). Caring for the sick was a mission for them, and they were missionaries.

    As Christians we are kingdom people. As kingdom people we always have a mission, which is to be witnesses. The particular form that may take will be different from time to time. We are not called to convert people, because that is something that the Holy Spirit will do. But the Holy Spirit will do converting around one’s witnessing. Sometimes witnessing is simply a matter of living one’s life. Sometimes it’s a matter of talking. But in all cases it’s a matter of being a kingdom person.

    Now obnoxious people have given the term missionary a dirty name, but the kingdom person will still be on a mission, a mission to be the salt of the earth, to be that little bit of leaven that will change lives and communities. I don’t think changing the term is necessary or useful. I think we do need to change our thinking. But as often as not the problem for mainline Christians especially is not that we are too pushy, i.e. we shine our light in people’s faces, but more that we hide such light as we have under a bushel. A sense of mission would be really helpful to many mainline churches.

    In fact, I would suggest that this is the one piece of theology that is most decisive in making mainline churches shrink and more conservative or charismatic churches grow. In the mainline we’ve tended to lose any sense of mission, any sense of direction, any sense that we have anything worth sharing.

    I’m talking about the incarnation in another series of posts. Isn’t living a life worthy of the incarnation a mission worth taking on? Isn’t helping someone else to find the power of the resurrection in their own spiritual and emotional life a worthwhile mission? It’s not about being pushy or obnoxious. It’s not about being critical or talking down to people. It’s not about threatening them with the fires of hell, which aren’t under your control in any case. It’s simply about having God’s love in your life, knowing that it’s important, and making it real for others who need it.

  • Incarnation Essentials

    In a previous post I started a discussion of what I think are the essentials of the Christian faith. I think it’s going to be a bit difficult for me to keep clear when I’m talking about essentials, and when I’m talking about how I apply those in broader detail, but since I believe that is precisely what we, as Christians, must do, I will make every effort.

    In simple form, the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation states that Jesus came in the flesh, and that he was wholly human and wholly divine. Many Christians are unsure what this means, as they are about many doctrines. I’d like to restate what I consider the essentials of the doctrine of the incarnation:

    God was present on earth in Jesus of Nazereth. Jesus was human enough so that he is able to understand us completely. Jesus was divine enough so that he is able to redeem us.

    Now I accept the 100% divine/100% human formulation for myself, but this is what I believe it is essential to believe. Stated even more simply: God wants to save you. God can save you. A Biblical statement is: God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). I’m going to expand on that, but my expansion is not part of the essentials.

    Now as I understand it this reconciliation was the ultimate reconciliation; there is no conceivable reconciliation that could cross a greater gap. God is infinite, we are finite. No matter what you subtract from infinity, it remains infinite. God bridged that gap. In bridging that gap he made all other gaps irrelevant. As Paul put it, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). From the incarnational perspective all gaps have become infinitessimal, because they are all to be seen from the perspective of the incarnation, an event that spans infinity.

    This is one reason why I reject the complementarian position. I do not believe it is worthy of the incarnation, and I don’t believe that we can accept any doctrine that is not worthy of the full meaning of the incarnation. Coincidentally, Suzanne McCarthy has again been writing about this on the Better Bibles Blog where she comments on the theology of the incarnation, and specifically about the use of male terminology in translations related to it. Why does the ESV translate terms related to the incarnation with male specific references?

    In a comment on Suzanne’s post, Peter Kirk calls attention to 1 Peter 1:21, in which qelhmati anqrwpou is translated “will of man,” when the contrast should be “human will” as opposed to divine will. This is a clear focus on the minor human differences which should have been overwhelmed by the reality of the incarnation. In a more relevant case, Philippians 2:7-8, the ESV translates en omoiwmati anqrwpwn as “in the likeness of men” rather than the more precise “in human likeness,” though oddly they use “human” for anqrwpo" in the next sentence. This is thinking that is clearly not worthy of the full impact of the incarnation.

    I’m going to reflect more on this later, although I need to move through the essentials in just a few posts, so I’ll leave that further comment for a few days.

    Right now I’d also like to relate this concept of the incarnation to the notion of legalism, total depravity, and our ability to save ourselves. I think the doctrine of total depravity is one that again misses the point. It doesn’t matter if we can be righteous. The Bible calls Job righteous, for example. Modern Christians are uncomfortable with that, but the Bible writers had no such concern. The problem is that no matter how righteous one becomes one is still a finite, limited, human being. It is not merely a matter of being wicked that separates us from God; it is a matter of being not-God. No matter how good we can became, we will still be not-God. Any element of eternity must, by nature, be God’s gift. (Note that I do not refer to us becoming gods; rather I refer to all those elements that fall on God’s side of the line, such as eternal life. There is no possibility that we, who are not eternal, could somehow earn eternity. It doesn’t belong to our reality, but to God’s. It is, by definition and by nature, only attainable as God’s gift.) The gap cannot possibly be crossed from our side. It has to be crossed from God’s.

    In my next entry I’m going to discuss the two laws given by Jesus, love for God and love for neighbor, and tie them to the definition of the incarnation. I think we can hardly find anything more essential than what Jesus said were the first and second laws.

  • Christian Essentials: Incarnation at the Center

    One of my principles of constructive criticism is that one should generally be prepared to propose something positive. This doesn’t always work–sometimes you know one solution won’t work before you have an alternative, but generally I think it’s a good rule. So having said some negative things about the Together for the Gospel statement, I think I should say something about what I do believe.

    As I thought about this project, I came to realize more and more that there are differences between what I consider the core of my experience and the logical center of my beliefs. But as I thought even more about it, they seemed to come back together. I see both now as kind of the layers of an onion, but we start at the center and move out, the core being the most essential, and the outer layers less so. I have previously discussed the importance of distinguishing essential and non-essential doctrines in order to have some unity or coherence of the faith, but at the same time be able to include and celebrate appropriate diversity. I think my best reasonable length statement on this is Unity, Diversity, and Confusion. You can follow some links from there. I also listed four doctrinal items that I hold as essential, which I derived from Elgin Hushbeck Jr.’s Consider Christianity books. (You can see a brief summary at Understanding Christian Apologetics.) But neither of those provides either the reason why I would consider those things essential, nor does it put the life into it.

    I’m going to try to be brief on each of these entries (STOP LAUGHING!), but I will make a number of entries in this series. In the early stages I’ll be making statements that I will leave to back up later, and also I will use scriptures without developing their interpretation from the context, but I will try to remember to tie up all the loose ends as I go on.

    So what does put life into it? I believe the life gets there by putting the right thing at the center and then keeping it centered.

    (more…)

  • Newsweek on Billy Graham

    Newsweek has a good article on Billy Graham in its current issue, titled Pilgrim’s Progress. It’s a fairly long article that presents some interesting points.

    While Graham is certainly not abandoning any essentials of his faith, he does admit to softening on some things. I believe that the things he indicates Christians can appropriately disagree on are well chosen.

    For example, he spends less time on political affairs:

    “The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.” His mind is on the heavenly more than the temporal, on the central promises of Christianity more than on the passing political parade.

    . . . and . . .

    Others relish the battlefield; Graham now prizes peace. He is a man of unwavering faith who refuses to be judgmental; a steady social conservative in private who actually does hate the sin but loves the sinner; a resolute Christian who declines to render absolute verdicts about who will get into heaven and who will not; a man concerned about traditional morality

  • Freedom of Expression is Important

    Ed Brayton has a wonderful post today titled Answering Ancient Brit on Thought Crimes. I could not agree with Ed any more completely and forcefully. Europe’s response to “thought crimes” is itself extremely dangerous.

    I would add a note for my fellow-Christians. When you pursue religious liberty and the rights of religious expression, you need to also pursue freedom of opinion and expression generally, especially for those you dislike the most. You need protection from people who truly despise you and are willing to engage in violence to put their opinion into action.

    Christians should be front and center in fighting for the rights of Muslims, Jews, Pagans, and any other religious group. In fact, that effort should be extended to non-religious groups. Freedom needs to be protected for everyone. Freedom of religion is not the freedom for Christians to do what they want; it’s the freedom for everyone, Christians included, to practice their faith as they see fit.