If you are within 250 mile of this event, you must not miss it. And if you are a Southern Baptist within 500 miles, you need to go for the sake of your own convention.
"Somebody, a long time ago, did it for all of us," he added in a clear reference to Jesus.I'm sure the meta will have a lot to say about this. I'll try to be back around later today to take my licks.
Rahman also told the Italian newspaper that his family — including his ex-wife and teenage daughters — reported him to the authorities three weeks ago.
He said he made his choice to become a Christian "in small steps," after he left Afghanistan 16 years ago. He moved to Pakistan, then Germany. He tried to get a visa in Belgium.
"In Peshawar I worked for a humanitarian organization. They were Catholics," Rahman said. "I started talking to them about religion, I read the Bible, it opened my heart and my mind."
Shoot: I better do this before I run out of daylight:
As I was thinking about this topic while walking in the icy breeze between buildings, one of the things that crossed my mind was the complaint that arguing about John 3 or John 1 and who is actually saved by Christ is distracting from, for example, the looming martyrdom of Abdul Rahman. The complaint would go something like this -- that Abdul Rahman's extraordinary show of faith should not be sullied by squabbling over whether (and the Boarsmen have tossed around) "all means all".[the evangelist John did not believe] that the divine narrative was culminated in a series of technical definitions of words that indicate Jesus Christ came to limit salvation to a few Reformed Baptists.The exaggeration is this: there not even any legitimately-called "reformed baptists" who believe this. One might want to paint with an acre-wide brush and call (for example) Fred Phelps a "reformed baptist", but those who are actually reformed baptists (you know: like John Piper, and James White, and Tom Ascol, and Albert Mohler, and Mark Dever, and ... oh, you get the idea ...) would have a somewhat-large problem with that over-generalization. It would be like calling iMonk an "emergent pastor", which can only be true in a world where iMonk is "emergent" because of his internet pulpit, and a "pastor" in the sense that he was one once.
Reformed baptists are confessional in nature, and conform themselves to a limited number of admittedly-limited documents. Many of them refer to the LBCF (1689) as a standard. Ad in that case, what the LBCF has to say about the number of the elect, and the scope of Christ's atonement, is 100% applicable to the discussion of whether or not the RB's think only RB's are saved.
The real question is this: even if RB's are that frankly-addled in their reading of John 3, did John have any specific intention in writing the Gospel of John? Or was he merely spinning a great story by which he thought he could get people to say, "huh. Can't wait for the Movie." (or in ancient terms, "O Iohannes! Enim non expecto dramae!") And particularly, does John 3 tell us anything about the work of Christ?
I'm certain Nicodemus wasn't blown away by the new found thought that God has narrowed to doors to salvation.Again, who believes that? Could Dennis Laing name someone who does? I can't.
It is not the Jewish birth which informs you about the Messiah: it is the spirit of God, and Jesus makes that clear thus:
At the risk of being taunted again, I fail to see that I would have spent three years with Jesus and come away believing that the divine narrative was culminated in a series of technical definitions of words that indicate Jesus Christ came to limit salvation to a few Reformed Baptists.To be utterly fair to the iMonk, he was responding to this gem:
As I said, the reduction of the gospel to a series of logical problems to be solved by refined technical definitions and cross referencing is nuts. What would any 4th grader understand by the Gospel of John? The first 18 verses of chapter 1 summarize the whole book. I refuse to read these great verses as a discussion between universalism, a caricature of Arminianism, and advocates of a limited salvation. How did the Good News get to be the inner workings of interpretation, and not the plain meaning of the story?
How in the world John 3:16 can be isogeted [sic] as a proof-text for limited atonement is beyond the pale of understanding. I'm certain Nicodemus wasn't blown away by the new found thought that God has narrowed to doors to salvation. What's so revolutionary about that? Nicodemus already believed that!I would post my comments but I have a meeting I cannot miss. When I come back, let's find out what Dennis is trying to say, whether he's right, and then if iMonk has shed any light on the subject worthy of praise.
(v15) "...that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life"
(v16) "... that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life"
(v17) "...to save the world through him"
(v18) "...whoever believes in him is not condemned"
(v20) "...whoever lives by the truth comes into the light"
Nicodemus already had a theology of limited atonement and particular redemption. I seriously doubt Jesus was bolstering what Nicodemus already knew!
Posted by Dennis Laing at 08:28 AM
Being hanged to death! I accept it, yes I do, but I am not an infidel as I am branded and I am not an apostate. I am a Jesus Follower (Christian).Listen: that's the kind of testimony that needs to be heard here. He's not pleading for his life, is he? He is preaching the Gospel -- that faith in Christ is not an act of falsehood or a matter of comparative religion but a matter of ultimate truth -- right up to the moment at which his life will either be forfeit or spared.
In one of my shortest blog entries to date, I have something to say about the blogosphere today:Thousands of Christians around the world are praying for the persecuted Christians in Rajasthan and sending letters and faxes to the Indian government in New Delhi asking for emergency protection of the children and staff of the Hopegivers schools and orphanages in Rajasthan.Bring your prayers, and bring your support. This is the Gospel work. Get involved in it.
Local government bureaucracies in Kota, which have been politicized by Hindu extremist groups, have taken a series of illegal actions in the last month to prevent Hopegivers and Rajasthani Christian leaders from offering protection to abandoned children, educational and medical services.
"Of course," said Dr. Samuel Thomas in a recent e-mail, "none of these actions are legal. The terrorists and hate groups have taken the law into their own hands and sadly, we have lost confidence in the local government to control them."
Lawyers for Dr. Thomas and Founder Bishop M. A. Thomas are appealing to the High Court in Rajasthan's capital of Jaipur to set bond for the staff being held without charge in Kota jails. Bishop Thomas began a church in Kota in 1960.
"The Thomas'need to remain free so that they can lead a defense of the social welfare work in Rajasthan which includes 65 schools and 13 orphanages," said Hopegivers spokesman Dr. Bill Bray in a recent news interview.
Sometime between right now and Monday morning, the blog will cross 100,000 hits. By contrast, TeamPyro will have 100,000 posts from Dan Phillips by the end of lunch today.
There is a person in Kansas City, MO, who is viewing the blog from a MacOS X platform. There may be more than one of you, but you are all in the same office.
I just wanted to update the blog with a link to Adrian Warnock's 2000th post in the blogosphere. I know: I don't link to Adrian's blog usually (like he needs me), but this is a special occation and I thought I'd send some TTLB love his way this week.
In an effort to leave no stone unturned from the weekend, Ms. Ellen left a few comments that are front-page worthy for response:No: I'm agreeing that if someone doesn't want to be called a Christian, we should oblige him.To the first question, Ms. Ellen does something which is common is blog arguments: she misplaces the burden of proof. It is my suggestion to this discussion that the action of wanting to disassociate with the church by disavowing its common namesake is actually evidence against one's Christian status. On the other hand, wanting the name "Christian" attached to one's actions – while possibly evidence of one's discipleship to Christ – is by no means a conclusive bit of evidence that one is a Christian.
Is the opposite also true? If a person wants to be called a Christian should we oblige him?
If somebody said, "We are Christians in a very real sense and that is coming to be more and more widely recognized. Once upon a time people everywhere said we are not Christians. They have come to recognize that we are, and that we have a very vital and dynamic religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ", would you say, OK?
Ellen 03.12.06 - 7:46 am #
There is, by all means, more to it than that. I have spent a large portion of the 690+ posts on this blog talking about the matter of orthodoxy. My over-arching point, if I have one at all, is that there is far more to being a Christian than claiming to be one. But in that exact same measure, because the standard is high, claiming to be one is on the list – recognizing one's association with the church is certainly part of the qualifications.
To the second question she asks about a widely-published quote from Gordon Hinckley which is based on her first question. We could just write it off since I dispute her first point, but there is something else important to note: the definition of the Gospel. If some says that they "have a very vital and dynamic religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ", is that what it means to be Christian? Or does Paul dispel that completely by saying what he says in 1Cor 15, in an echo of what Peter preached on that first Pentecost in Acts 2?
Because Hinckley's "vital and dynamic religion" denies essential tenets of the Gospel, his enthusiasm to be called "Christian" is mitigated significantly by his lack of enthusiasm for the actual Gospel.
Ms Ellen continues:
So I'll be glad to honor his wish not to be called a Christian as long as he doesn't try to glom the things those *who actually are Christians* represent.The LDS also call themselves "the church of Jesus Christ" and "disciples of Christ" – so by the logic of your hypothetical disassociatives, that label is lost to the faithless. The question is if the faithless co-opt our name, do we change it or fight for what belongs to us?
Are you saying that you believe that those who prefer to be called "disciples of Christ" - or "Christ followers" are not Christian because they prefer to use those labels rather than share the label with anti-Trinitarians and Mormons?
Question: is the use of the term "Christian" in the Bible "descriptive" or "prescriptive"?
Ellen 03.12.06 - 7:51 am #
Look: my wife is married to me, right? She's married to centuri0n, and that makes her Mrs. Centuri0n (notice that her name gets caps). If I come home one day and there's some guy sitting at my place at the table eating my supper and I ask him, "who's been eating my porridge?" He'd have to have a lot of nerve to say, "it's not your porridge: it's mine. I'm centuri0n."
At the same time, he would also have to have a lot of nerve to say, "It may be your porridge, but it is mine also because I am also centuri0n." That is to say, he thinks there's enough to go around, and because he's slightly overweight (no jokes, Daniel), slightly balding and slightly sarcastic, he wants to say he is enough like me to be entitled to what I have. And while I might just let is slide over the porridge, I would absolutely draw the line when he wanted to share Mrs. Centuri0n (among other things).
I think it takes a lot of nerve for Hinckley to say, "Mormons are Christians, too," when the foundational principle of Joseph Smith's writings and office as prophet is that no other church is in fact Christian. To come back with "me, too" when one's foundational premise is "me, only" takes giant amounts of chutzpah. And as such, it cannot be conceded even in the least. For the record, and so nobody misses this point, I would say exactly the same thing about Roman Catholicism. Once you have said "me, only", you had either better be right or better be ready to admit you were desperately wrong.
And after all of that, if you are actually centuri0n, and someone is actually sitting down eating your porridge, you would be somewhat of a dope to look at the phony in your chair and say, "because you have co-opted my name, I'm changing mine to 'leibowitz'. NOW What are you gonna do?" If I were the phony centuri0n, I'd then kick leibowitz out of centuri0n's house – because the house belongs to centuri0n, no leibowitz. Why? Because chutzpah doesn't have limits. And if you think the same thing is not in store for Christians who will not fight for the namesake of our church, you had better think some more about it.
The last question Ms. Ellen asks, however, intrigues me. Is "Christian" either descriptive or prescriptive? I think it is both – when it is used in the historically-common sense. For example, I think the term is abused when we say we are selling "Christian t-shirts" or "Christian toe rings". But when we talk about "Christian message" or "Christian church" or "Christian missions" or "me personally, a Christian", we are using the term in a way which since the first century has described those who are willing to even lay down their lives for the sake of the Gospel and therefore Christ. Saying we are "Christian" is descriptive in the sense that it tells where we come from; but in exactly the same way, it is prescriptive regarding where we ought to be going.
Steve's posts from the weekend are next on my agenda. And then back to the marriage series.
One of the stunning parts of my history of interaction with iMonk is the number of times the things I have actually said are replaced by things I have not at all said. For example, in the meta of last week's final comment, Michael Spencer said this:
Thanks for the inclusion of the links, as readers can go there [and] decide for themselves if what I've written is well represented by your post.What I find interesting is the question as to whether I have represented iMonk correctly. For example, did I say he was the one abandoning the label "Christian"? No – in fact, what my last blog post on this subject said was that he does some extraordinarily-bad things in trying to defend what his friend has done. For example, his case that "the Bible is on [rigney's] side" is such a poor example of considering Scripture that we cannot even call it exegesis.
Since this is someone else's experiment and not mine, interested persons
might follow my links to lief rigney's blog to actually dialog with
someone who eschewing the label "Christian." I am not that person.
Michael Spencer | 03.11.06 - 1:22 am |
Spencer:Fair enough, right? iMonk says I have misrepresented him, and I ask him "please tell me where". It's a fair question.
Please note for my readers where I said you where the one tossing the tag "Christian". I think I was pretty circumspect to say you were -defending- your buddy's decision, and not that you were joining him in his little (one-man) piece of performance art.
Your link, which you posted in the meta, prompted this reply. Please do not play yourself off as someone who got blindsided, rail-roaded, dragged out into the street and pants'd.
centuri0n | 03.11.06 - 7:59 am | #
Now please hear me clearly: if it is not a fair question, then there is nowhere this discussion can go. See: when I offer iMonk my opinion, I have the audacity to cut and paste his text, and comment on the substance of his actual text. In that way, when I say, "his reading of 1Peter is absurd because ..." I am referring to something he actually wrote rather than to something I think he was thinking and was trying to sublimate when he wrote what he actually wrote.
But what is the response? Is it, "well, cent, you said, 'and iMonk is himself now abandoning the Christian moniker.' That's pretty self-evident." Or is it, "well, Turk, when you say, 'and iMonk's in the same boat which is taking on water fast,' you are implying that he's doing what rigney is doing." Because those replies would be ways to correct the matters of fact and my own muddy self-perception, right?
Yeah: the problem is that I never said anything like that, so iMonk has the problem of having no evidence. Remember: his original point is that I have misrepresented him as joining in rigney's experiment. Let's see iMonk's response:
rigney's project is not about not wanting to be known as a believer in and follower of Jesus Christ. He clearly states that he is a public follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and wants to encourage others to do the same.OK: so there's no substantiation of the claim that I am misrepresenting iMonk – but a lot of extra information about rigney.
I work with hundreds of unbelievers, many of them from all over the world. All my Ethiopians are Orthodox, and all believe they are Christians. Based on my conversations with them, I doubt that any of them understand the Gospel at all. But if I ask all the Christians in our school to raise hands, they all do. So clarification is a big part of evangelism.
rigney is in a major university setting. His project is not about denying Christ. It is about being able to have conversations with people who hear the word Christian and run down the road of a hundred wrong assumptions. If the experiment allows him to talk about Jesus with people who usually want to ridicule Christians, then he has my prayers and encouragement.
This whole discussion just dances around your desire to say that someone at the bht is denying the gospel, when in fact the very opposite is the case.
Michael Spencer 03.11.06 - 5:08 pm #
Thus, my response to this statement:
What is interesting is that I haven't said anything about the BHT "denying the Gospel". What I have said is:And let's be honest: the shot at rigney via ee cummings was uncalled for, so shame on me. At best, his views are an object in this
(1) Your assertion that the Bible supports your buddy's view is incorrect
(2) Your buddy's "experiment" sacrifices a moral tenet -- identification with the church -- for a pragmantic piece of "evangelism" -- starting a "conversation". (for Steve: if I deny that I am a Christian, or repudiate the label which is still a valid label for the church {and has been since the Apostolic age} in order to distance myself from actual Christians, I have done exactly the same kind of thing that the stripper "missionary" has done: I have sacrificed a moral standard for a pragmatic approach to evangelism. I stand by my comparison.)
(3) Your buddy's one-man discipleship is exactly one-man deep and wide
After that, where this post makes this into an imputation of all the BHT is up to you to prove rather than merely assert. But I suspect you will simply call me mean again rather than admit that my vivisection of your original post doesn't say anything outside of the scope of your pal rigney (like e.e. cummings, I suppose) and you personally.
Listen iMonk: if you don't want to be accused of defending the ridiculous, don't defend the ridiculous. It's a pretty easy formula to follow. And you have, via e-mail, my desire for you and the BHT. To here synthesize motives for me speaks again to your lack of balance in approaching hard criticism.
centuri0n 03.11.06 - 11:16 pm #
Your endorsement of the Universal Church of those calling themselves Christians is great. Mormons, JWs and millions of Roman Catholics and Orthodox thank you for your approval.
Again: the question is whether iMonk has any justification to say that I have done him wrong, and again iMonk tries to use a rabbit to divert the hounds. And why? Seriously: I'd like to know why it's so hard simply to review the evidence – that is rehearse it here – and explain what I did that was so wrong. Where did I say that the BHT denies the Gospel? Where did I says iMonk has abandoned the church? Where did I do any of the things iMonk wants to hang on me? Tell me, and I'll offer a correction.
There's a real irony in what you're about to read: I would actually agree in the broadest terms with the ever self-inflicted iMonk that if someone doesn't want to be called a Christian we should just not call him a Christian. This discussion is triggering a flashback to Jesuit all-boys High School where I had a Jesuit for senior elective theology and he was chastising the hypothetical Christian who did not what to self-identify. It made sense, he reasoned, that a devil would want to be reckoned as an angel -- because if you knew someone was a devil, you'd have to be crazy to follow him anywhere, right? And it made sense that if one was on the side of the angels one ought to want the credibility that goes along with being on Heaven's team. But what did you gain, exactly, by being an angel and posing as a devil? How does that deception advance the cause of truth?For starters, leif has the Bible on his side. The term Christian isIt always astounds me what people will say when they want to sound reasonable. For example, in Acts 11, on what basis can we say that the word "Christian" was applied to the disciples of Christ as a "derogatory" term? It seems to me that the word "Christians" in this verse is in the context not of the disdain of the unbelievers in Antioch but in the context of Barnabas' somewhat-wild success preaching the Gospel there, having been sent because of the in-roads Cypress and Cyrene had with the Greeks. That is, because there were so many of them, they gained a name for themselves.
never commanded to be used in any way by scripture itself. The term
occurs three times:
/Acts 11:26 And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians./
/Acts 26:28 And Agrippa said to Paul‚"In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?"/
/1 Peter 4:16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. /
None of these occurrences bears any particular imperative of compulsory weight. The name Christian is, in fact, a derogatory term, given to the disciples of Jesus by their detractors. It is as Christians that some may suffer, because Christians are fit subjects for persecution. Agrippa is amazed that Paul would attempt to persuade him to join such as despised sect.
Moreover, given Peter's use of the word in 1Pet 4, iMonk's very interesting claim that it is a "historical accident" that the followers of Christ are called "Christians" starts to look like something even he doesn't really believe. What we can see if we turn a few pages in scripture is that there is a people for his name's sake. For example, this turn of phrase is used in Mt 10:22 and Mt 24:9 by Christ Himself to describe his follower as the very reason they will be hated and persecuted. This is repeated in Mk 13 and Lk 21. In Acts 15, Peter sees for himself that there are Gentiles called by Christ's name.
"My dear fellow," comes the tempered and reasonable reply, "you cahn't mean that you think Christ meant we would be called 'Christians', do you? The reasoning is at least as sketchy as you claim to find the reasoning of dear old Michael."
In fact, I do mean that when Christ said "for my name's sake" he meant, in part, "because my name will represent you." It is another way of saying we are in Christ. In that way, it is completely credible to expect that when Paul says he is a "bondservant of Christ", he is placing himself inside the body of Christ in the same way that Peter does when he says that suffer as a Christian is not shameful but glorifying to God.
After that, iMonk dispenses this pearl:
I'm convinced that rigney's interest in southern literature is a contributing factor to this experiment. Most of us who live in the south are aware that the name Christian has suffered the indignity of being equated with so many different aspects of southern culture that a person really has no idea if a Christian is a racist or a martyr against racism. Finding a path through this confusion may necessitate something like an abandonment of the abused and obscured term, in order to refocus the meaning of "Christ" in any meaningful way.
And it is because of racism in the last 200 years or so that we ought to abandon the term -- not because of the history of other kinds of evil perpetrated allegedly by Christians. As I said elsewhere, apparent rigney was fine with being a Christian like Torequemada, and a Christian like Chrisostem (who was an anti-semite), and a Christian like Innocent III, but Boar's Head forbid that one is a Christian as portrayed by a liberal media which cannot gets its fact straight about the abolition of slavery and the rise of civil rights in the West -- which is to say, a tobacco-chaw'n hog-cawler in half-buttoned overalls who don' wan' no nigres 'round a'ter dark.
Before someone calls that hyperbole, what the stripper-missionary would be doing is eschewing that label "modest" for the sake of the lost -- and never mind that the call to modesty is part of the Christian walk. What someone who eschews the label "Christian" does is sack all appearances of Christian fellowship (whether he does, in fact, forsake fellow being completely not in question) in order to present a lopsided (and false) view of the Christian life to the lost.
Let's think about something as I close up for the weekend here: while the Bible may never demand that we adopt the letters C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N for the name of our little group, it does in fact demand that we identify ourselves as a group -- and that, as James said, we turn our brothers away from sin. How are we doing that if we are disavowing that we belong to the visible church? And how is confusing the issue of what the followers of Christ call themselves in any way enlightening to those in spiritual darkness?
My opinion of this "experiment" is that it is self-important and frankly silly. It's hyper-separationistic -- it literally draws a circle so small that only one person can stand inside. So I'll be glad to honor his wish not to be called a Christian as long as he doesn't try to glom the things those who actually are Christians represent.
Have a nice weekend; spend it in the Lord's house with the Lord's people and do not be ashamed of His name.
I have read through your post 3 times now and have mulled it over because my knee-jerk response to this kind of post is, "Max Lucado already does it better." And the reason Max does it better is that he doesn't try to couch philosophical criticism under the cover of Helen Steiner Rice platitudes.
What I am talking about is the interesting statement you make when you say, "Of course, the church isn’t a building. It’s people. Including those beloved and sweet people who enthusiastically read Your Best Life Now or Left Behind and who are, unbeknownst to them (because they don’t really care about the blogosphere), laughed at. By snobs like us."
"By snobs like us"? I'm not sure that the use of self-denigration in "us" here mitigates the philosophical concern that it is snobbery to (as you say) "laugh" at those who read YBLN or LB and think themselves spiritually-enriched. You did pick two keen examples of things we can laugh at (rightly), but if we are rightly laughing at them, how is that snobbery? How is it snobbery, as you continue down in your brief essay, to object to immature believers demanding to lead worship as they are lead by their emotions? I think it is overstated at best to call the premise that the mature should lead the immature "snobbery", but I'd be interested in someone who could demonstrate otherwise.
But that's my knee-jerk reaction. After consideration, I think you make a much worse mistake -- and that is mixing together necessary, humble things like working in a benevolence kitchen and doing the physical work around the church with randy, damaging things like EC pseudo-monasticism and Charismatic experiential excesses. I would suggest to you, without confiscating the blog meta here, that you are personally confusing the wheat with the tares. If your premise is sound -- that the bride is right now beautiful -- it cannot be because she is lost among the foolish virgins: it is because she is the bride and cannot be confused with those who reject her Groom.
Listen: I would say with you that I love the church -- no question that one of the marks of the believer is love of the church not only in theory but in fact, by action. But what is one of the hallmarks of love of the church? The book of Hebrews says, "23Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."
Holding fast to our confession of faith; stir one another to do good; meeting together to encourage each other. In that, criticism is not snobbery: it is itself love -- because criticism is not just saying, "man, that's bad" but also "because this is what is good."
I think it is somewhat phony to believe that the only way to love is to white-wash the problems; I also think it is phony to believe that confusing the right with the wrong -- or saying that the distinction is arbitrary or unimportant -- is a kind of loving response.
As for your closing note that some at BHT are thinking about abandoning the monicker "Christian", what could I possibly say about that which would not be perceived as taking a shot at them? If they didn't mind being called "Christians" when they knew Christianity had a history which included anti-semites, crusaders, auto-flagilists, pardoners (in the Chaucerian sense), inquisitionists and witch-burners, but now suddenly because the popular modern church has a serious case of stupid they are too good for the family name, the point of view speaks for itself.
Sorry to be a nay-sayer. I think your view here is simplistic and gives comfort to those who need to be less comfortable with what they think they believe.
There once was a guy who wanted to own a christian bookstore. He wanted to build it from scratch, so in that he had to find some way to stock the place full of books -- because you can't open without any books. He puzzled over that problem for a few weeks, and he decided to bring the problem to the people who would be his #1 supplier for books.
However, he told his supplier to go ahead and send him the RMI and he would review it and get back to them. And he did: he reviewed every line, struck out the items he knew would be poison, struck out the stuff that he knew he would be unwilling to sell without some kind of intermediate explanation, and then added back enough stuff from authors on the list who were substantial to get his dollars back into the range he wanted to spend.
In short, he started from the best position he knew he could start from to make a statement to his customers.
The books came in, he put them on the shelf, and believe it or not, they started selling. He was somewhat excited about the fact that he was right about selling "the good stuff", but he noticed that his competition was selling the stuff from the RMI and doing pretty well. And over time, his customers started to request things he would rather not carry -- Your Best Purpose Now, The Life-Driven Life, A Divine Revelation of Pizza, whatever. And, if they wanted to order it, he would special order it.
One day he was reviewing his business, and he realized something: his automated reordering system was starting to stock the stuff he explicitly disqualified in the RMI. The RMI was creeping into his inventory in spite of his initial circumspection -- because of the volume of specials he was generating.
Another thing he noticed was that the complaints were starting to file in -- what did he have against this author? What's wrong with this book? You're not a "Calvinist", are you? And sadly, his employees were just employees, and they couldn't answer all the questions -- so some of the inventory creep was due to his employees being ill-equipped to respond to the questions.
And the bookstore owner realized something: unless he took stock of his bookstore frequently, he would wind up exactly like the kind of christian retail he got into the business to campaign against. While it was important to stay in business, it was far more important to first stand up for the truth for the sake of the body of Christ.
Just to show that he is willing to steal from any source in order to bump a post at TeamPyro, Dan Philips has posted this piece which clearly rips off my entire desiderata for the "not up to you" series.
We don't do that here. It's untoward.
I am loathe to even refer you to this other blog as it is frankly a barnyard of large livestock and you have no idea what you might step in while walking around, but Harry Shearer (who does wa-a-a-ay too many voices on the Simpsons) wrote this, and I think it's worth reading.
For the sake of not flooding the blog, I stopped mid-example yesterday, but I'm sure it left you wanting more, so welcome back.
The answer the Bible gives me – particularly in Eph 5 – is that I am still her husband in the covenantal sense. That is to say, I am her husband because I left my father and mother and held fast to my wife, and nobody -- not even me -- has any right to try to take apart what God has joined together. (that's Mt 19, but you get the idea) If the love a husband is supposed to show his wife is the love Christ shows the church, my job as a husband is not to worry about how "happy" (whatever THAT means – God forbid we ever become people who are obsessed with being "happy" because we would never sleep) I am but whether or not I am living up to my vow to hold fast to my wife.
See: it's not up to me to decide that marriage is too hard, or that I'm not happy, or that "it's not you: it's me". If I have read Eph 5 right, if I'm trying the ol' "it's not you: it's me," I have done exactly the opposite of what Christ does for the church.
So in that, when I thought I was useless because I lost my job, my response ought not to be, "Why would she love me if I couldn’t keep that job?" but "I love my wife and I should do what she needs to be set apart for righteousness' sake." I should consider my vow to love her in sickness and in health – understanding that not only does it mean if she gets sick, but it also means if I get sick, mentally, spiritually, physically or economically. I took a vow to love her -- as Christ loves the church -- which means circumstances do not dictate whether I will love her right now or not.
And it's funny: when Christ spelled this out for the people listening to him, his disciples said, "If this is the case with a man and his wife, it would be better not to marry." And if you read this, and you don't think that the first time you read it, I suggest you do not understand what it is saying to you. It means that golf takes second place behind your wife. It means you put NASCAR in second place behind your wife. It means you put your job in second place behind your wife. The KJV says cleave to your wife. That word is only used to described the commitment of husband to wife -- except in Acts 5 where Gamaliel describes the men who joined themselves with Theudas to the death.
And in the example of me, the clarity of Scripture regarding exactly what I ought to do for and toward my wife was so clear that it changed me. Eventually, you will get sick of me telling you how many times Scripture has changed me, but in the same way Scripture changed me when I was an atheist into a repentant sinner who pleaded with God for forgiveness, Scripture changed me from a man who was romantically and passively in love with his wife to a man who sought Christ-likeness through his relationship with his wife, who would love his wife as Christ loves the church.
So in those two examples, let me say this: it is not up to you to determine what marriage is, and in particular men, what being a "husband" is. Like any driver on the road, and like anyone who plays sports, and like anyone who works inside a business, it is already determined what you will do if you are actually what you say you are. The question is only if you will go out and do it.
And let me also say this: the rest of us who are not in circumstances which are testing our marriages ought to treat people in marriages who are driving them on the wrong side of the road as people who need immediate and urgent advice about getting back on the right side of the road. When we treat it like it is not our business, we are saying that the spiritual and physical well-being of those with whom we are gathered together in Christ's name is not our business. I hope you can see how wrong that is without an extended proof.
"But cent, you insensitive Baptist slob," comes the reader who has been offended, "my spouse left me. My spouse is cheating on me. The Bible and Christ say without a doubt that I am off the hook, right? Or are you going to look down your nose at me for being the one who was violated?"
That is a great question, and I will pick it up next time.
I was listening to the radio at lunch today, and I was proud to learn that my Christian bookstore is a ministry partner with "Cheapo's pawn" in supporting Christian radio.
So I have started this series on marriage without a degree in family counseling, and without 15 years of pastoral experience, and without a net. What I ought to do is somehow pot a course from here to there building precept upon precept until I have an unassailable case by which you, the reader, can then go out and beat up you lesser-informed church family on the nuances of nuptial theology.
And that's the really crazy part of my assertion here: if we see someone driving like an idiot, we honk our horn, and employ sign language, and shout at the top of our lungs – and maybe we even discover parts of our vocabulary usually compartmentalized to BHT and drunken stupors. But if we see two people driving their marriage on the wrong side of the road -- even in church -- we pretend that it's none of our business. However, again without any extended syllogistic infrastructure, I'd bet that if we were honking our proverbial horns and waving our proverbial sign language and raising our actual voices to warn and scorn people who were using their marriage like an El Torino is a demolition derby, it'd be harder to want to become divorced, and I'll bet we'd be more careful not to "drift apart".
Are you divorced people reading angry yet? I'll bet some of you are. But I haven't been talking about you yet: I've been talking about the church's attitude toward divorce. Let me give you two counter-examples from real life.
I was working in my bookstore back when I was sole prop and chief bottle washer, and it was a quiet night. A guy from church walked into my store (and this has happened more than once, so if you're from HABC and reading this, I am sure you don't know who I'm talking about) and we started chatting. The conversation turned to family, and our wives, and he started telling me he wasn't really happy right now, marriage-wise.
It's a statement that always makes me stand up and open a Bible – which is what I did. I asked him, "what do you mean by 'not happy'?" And I turned to Eph 5.
He started to tell me (in words to this effect) that he didn't feel appreciated, didn't feel honored, didn't feel motivated, etc. He was more open than most guys who see me open a Bible, so points for his transparency, but as you can imagine, I didn't want to hear that garbage.
Ephesians 5 says this, for those of you who are not already there in your Bibles:
This statement by Paul doesn't have anything to do with "being happy". It has everything to do with (Baptists, hold on to your hats) the matter of covenant and finished work. For instance, Christ loved the church by choosing the church (v. 1:4) not in a fickle or conditional way, but in a way which reflects his own purpose – which says something about Him as God. We have "redemption in His blood" (v. 1:5) – which means He pays a generous price for us when we are the ones who incurred the debt. You know: Christ doesn't love the church because it's such an example of what it ought to be. Christ loves the church because Christ loves the church. It's His purpose and character that is revealed in the way He loves, not even a microscopic jolt about what we deserve or might earn. He does it because He has decided to do it, and He's not a soteriological indian-giver.
So in that, Christ doesn't love us because we made Him happy. If you are going to love your wife the way Christ loves the church, you don't love her because she makes you happy: you love her because you are loving, and because you have purposed in your heart that you will love her. you do it because you made a vow that you will do it, which means if you don't do it, you're a liar.
You might imagine that he was a little stunned that I would give him both barrels and stop to reload, but it shook him up, and a few days later he realized that if he really trusted God's word, he needed to change the way he thought about love, and the way he thought about his wife. Amen?
Love is not duckies and puppies. It's not all cotton candy and corndogs. In fact, I would say from experience that the times when I have least demonstrated and least loved my wife was when it might have been easiest to do so. Which leads me to my second example, who is me personally.
We will continue the exposition tomorrow.
So I'm reading this story about the Space Elevator, and I scoll down to the last comment (at that time) and I read this:This is a classic in material science classes. Most real engineers look at this problem and laugh at it, myself included. The material science involved in this issue are light years ahead of where we are right now. Even then its not likely that a matierial exists that could provided the following characteristics: Light weight, incredible tensile stength, toughness, abrasion resistance, nonexistant ductility. In short, unobtainium. If you used our currently most extreme materials the weight of the material while in atmosphere before it was under the influence of the tensile force would be enough to destroy the material at nearly any point higher than a mile. The weight of the cable would literally be too much for the cable to hold up.There is nothing more dangerous than an engineer with a decent vocabulary.
50 years would be a magical shot in [bleep]. We'll be using brain waves to lift things to the heavens before a material that can do this is synthesized.
Yes, I incessantly talk about myself. All the time. I am my favorite -- I admit it.
So I got this e-mail about a week ago:...I've sought and obtained Godly, wise counsel when responding to my marital circumstances. And I've read both sides of the divorce & remarriage issue. At this point, I've pretty settled squarely into my current stand on it.I'm keeping the writer's ID obscure because if this person wants to tell us who they are, they can do so in the meta (and I know "they" is plural -- don't brow-beat me).
All 'at to say: My Good Brother, if you've been pondering this matter, and have previously considered blogging it, then by all means...do so. I provoke you to such, not as one seeking more guidance on the matter ~ for me, it is settled ~ but to the potential benefit of your (assumedly level-headed) readers.
I mean, after all, even if I happen to disagree with your writings, it matters little, if at all. Your blog is simply that, a web log, not a Universal Pulpit, right? (As long as you don't pronounce some kinda curse on me or an excommunication from the church catholic, or the like...)
Then, again...if for you, propounding upon this issue would necessitate your having to draw some sort of "line in the sand," then maybe just forget I ever brought it up providin' your conscience says the same.
So if we are going to discuss this topic, we have to start with the essential definition of marriage first, and then work from there to what the solutions are when things veer off the perfect world of the ideal and the theoretical, and it has implications which even help us sort out problems like the alleged-desire of Homosexuals to have "marriage".
Let me also say, as I begin this series, that the only marriage I have substantial knowledge of is my own marriage to my own extraordinary wife, and in that I may be basing my experience on something which is far above the norm because of the person to whom I am fortunate enough to be married to. In that, you are probably going to be offended by what I am going to say in this series. While a lesser blogger would say to you, "don't take it personal," I say to you, "take it personal because that's the only way it makes any sense."
As you undoubtedly noticed, I like comics. I wouldn't call myself a "fan boy" because I don't give a flying FOOM what they are worth. That said, almost all the images on my blog are scanned from comics I own -- so they are scanned from comics I own and are used under what I assume is the basic tenets of "fair use" under copyright law. It would be frankly impossible to tell you where each images comes from specifically.
Many are © and/or ® Marvel Comics Group, with all rights reserved.
Others are © and/or ® DC Comics, which is an arm of Time/Warner, and not only are all rights reserved but they are a little jealous about it, so if I get "the letter" from them, those images are just going to turn into blank spots until I configure out what to do about that.
There are also the occasional images from Valiant, Image, Defiant, Dark Horse, and some indies which I'm not sure even have a name, and they are all also © and/or ®, all rights reserved.
All other images not covered by this disclaimer are the property of their respective owners, and if you are one of those people and you see your image on my blog, tell me what you want me to do about it and I will. No sense making people angry.
Hope that helps.
The link they are looking for is 