Don't be like that

Before you read an comment on this post, you have to demonstrate that you have read this post and are willing to at least concede that I will stomp on any gay-bashing in this thread.

iMonk posted this on his panel moderation at CStone09, and somehow some have interpreted his view as being too conservative or too harsh. Michael's comment there is "We are not going to have that debate on this post."

I say good for him, but we are going to have it here. If you haven't read the iMonk's post, read it, then read my link about, and then use the comments for what the comments are for. Bashing GLBT or iMonk will be not tolerated in the extreme.

Your Next Church

It might be the one you're in right now. There's a book in my stack "to be reviewed" for which I am ridiculously exicted, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community.

Some of you have been ruined by this blog into having an attention span of about 37 seconds, and you'll be unable to read a 200-page book. Sorry 'bout that. So you might want to instead listen to the audio from the "Total Church" conference from ChurchBootCamp. The definition of the Gospel in this first session, btw, is worth your time all by itself.

Joe Thorn is a good guy

See – I put that headline up there to make sure that anyone reading this will not miss the fact that I said, “Joe Thorn is a good guy”. Because this post isn’t about whether or not Joe Thorn is a good guy or a bad guy. This post is about his new blogging endeavor.

See: Joe is a good guy. If you meet him, I promise you will probably like him. And if you ask me, that’s probably a good attribute for any Christian: as Paul would say in proper King James, lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. I think that’s Joe.

And he has opened up a new blog with fellow reformissionary Steve McCoy [note: AFAIK, STeve McCoy is a good guy, so no sleight-by-omission intended] called “sub•text”, about establishing the church in a suburban (American) context – which, you know, the suburbs are full of lost people. Everyone from Steve Camp to Steve Sjogren would agree with that. The suburbs need the Gospel.

I agree that the suburbs need the Gospel.

But then Joe and Steve affirm this:

For many Christians the mission of God is seen as the salvation of individual sinners from hell, sin and self. While this is an important part of God’s mission, it is only part of it.

The whole picture is that God is redeeming a people for himself made up of every tribe, tongue and nation. And his mission does not stop there, but includes the salvation of creation itself. His goal is the establishment of a new creation that will never fall into corruption; one that will reveal and revel in his glory for eternity. In fact, at every point along the way of the history of redemption God’s promise to redeem through the Messiah is never pointed merely at individual salvation. The reformed tradition has made this clear in its dealing with the covenants of God.

I added the underlines, btw. Before we go any farther, I don't know anyone who would deny the first underlined part except for a few hard-core anti-reformational types. People would fall on a spectrum of whether God's glory is in the foreground, the middle-ground, the background, or perhaps God's glory is the overarching metaphysical ground -- but the idea that "God's mission" is to glorify Himself is, frankly, baseline Christian metaphysics.

The second underlined part there, though, is where the dust cloud sorta kicks up. And the problem is not the reformed stress in what it means that God calls a people out to himself: it is what Joe and Steve meanby applying that tradition.

The next part is pretty neutral:

In God’s first promise of redemption after the fall (Gen 3:15), hope is given to the human race. Somehow, through the woman’s offspring, Satan would be defeated and sin would be conquered (See Geerhadus Vos, pg 43). God later promised that through Abraham’s seed all the peoples of the earth would be blessed. This covenant would be made with all of Abraham’s spiritual offspring (Gen. 12, 15, 17; Gal. 3). Ultimately God’s promises of redemption always reveal a communal salvation and a creation-restoration.

Now, again -- that's a pretty reformed idea that Jesus didn't die just to save me (even if I do get saved overall). It's also a pretty reformed idea that God will restore creation. The problem, of course, is that these two things are not completed as parallel work. That is: God calls out the church through the proclamation of the Gospel in the course of time, but the renewal of "the heavens and the earth" isn't a like that.

Joe and Steve, I think, would disagree with that:

Concerning the restoration of the earth George Eldon Ladd said it this way,

The biblical idea of redemption always includes the earth. Hebrew thought saw an essential unity between man and nature. The prophets do not of the earth as merely the indifferent theater on which man carries out his normal task but as the expression of divine glory. The Old Testament nowhere holds forth the hope of a bodiless, nonmaterial, purely “spiritual” redemption as did Greek thought. The earth is the divinely ordained scene of human existence. Furthermore, the earth has been involved in the evils which sin has incurred. There is an interrelation of nature with the moral life of man; therefore the earth must also share in God’s final redemption.

George Ladd, The Presence of the Future

For some of you, a bell just rang, and for others of you, well, you need a tour guides here. George Eldon Ladd was a dispensationalist and a baptist who wrote some interesting -- and, I think, when you read it as he intended it -- useful theology on the meaning of the term "Kingdom of God" and how we are to think about that in this church age. The problem is that Ladd's work has been somewhat co-opted by the "Kingdom Now" guys for the sake of setting up the groundwork of dominion theology and/or theonomistic approaches to the church in the world.

Here is what I am NOT saying: I am NOT saying that Steve and Joe have drunk the dominion theology Kool-Aid. I am sure they are not throwing themselves into the Pat Robertson/Gary North right-wing of dispensational reconstructionism.

Here's what I am saying: they are making the same mistake to the left.

These are two obviously-bright guys who have and obviously-right heart about people and God. They want the Gospel to go out, and for it not to come back void, amen? So Joe and Steve are not bad guys. But in wanting to be faithful, and in not wanting to do what their forefathers in the faith have done, I think they are reacting against superficial problems rather than the root cause of their beef with SBC suit-and-tie types.

The problem is not that the SBC doesn't understand the command in James to not be hearers only of the Law but doers also: the problem is that the SBC has made the Law the Gospel in many ways, and has therefore transformed the communio sanctorum from God's work using God's means into men's work using men's means.

And as a word of advice to Joe and Steve, neither of whom are bad guys, let me suggest that changing the works from Gospel sings and passing laws against Gay marriage to, well, raves and passing laws against unkempt yards ... might as well just pass the resolution against alcohol, too, then. Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.

WORD OF CAUTION: I think it is conceivable that the rebuttal from Joe and Steve looks like this -- "dude, that is our point. The SBC is afraid to make superficial changes which will reach people, and that's wrong."

The problem is that this is not my point. My point is that there are fundamental problems in over-realized eschatology, both on the right and the left. I think we should stop quibbling about things like whether or not Lenexa, KS, has the same cultural environment as Miami, FL, and start worrying about whether or not anyone in either city has even encountered the Gospel. Hearing the Gospel proclaimed is not about putting it in the right fashion catalog. It is about whether or not the church itself has as its main focus a savior who transcends culture whose work is greater than aid.

the worst of all

OK: before I give you the link, you have to swear two things:

[1] You are completely and utterly forewarned that the language on the other end is ROUGH. Bar room, street-ugly, offends-Mark-Driscoll rough.

[2] YOU WILL NOT DROP A COMMENT IN THE THREAD.

You swear? I'm serious: you can't click the link unless you take an oath to the above, and if you violate the oath you can't say I didn't warn you, and you can't blame me.

Ready? Pajiba reviews For the Bible Tells me so.

Now, listen: here's why I don't want you people commenting over there. It's my opinion that 99.95% of you will go over there and start defending the doctrinal issue that homosexuality is a sin. And let's be clear: I think homosexuality is a sin, OK? If any Pajiba readers come back this way and want to cuss me out for that, fine, but my opinion is that arguing about that in the context of Dustin Rowles' review is utterly pointless -- because there's a worse problem in that review which really isn't the reviewer's fault.

Here's what I'm thinking: I think Dustin's complaint that the people who beat his dad to a pulp for being a homosexual is the real apologetic problem -- because he's right about them.

See: if I say, "well, homosexuality is a sin, Dustin," what Mr. Rowles hears -- and I think he's listening just fine -- is the subtle hint of this outrageous lie: "he actually deserved what he got." I know none of you regular readers of this blog would actually mean that, but the ones who harnessed that conclusion up to the horse of my assertion are the ones who pounded his Dad's face in for being gay -- you know, God hates fags, boy, so I'm going to smash a coke bottle in your face.

Before you read any farther, get yourself a coke bottle and a metal mixing bowl. Turn the mixing bowl upside down and cover it with a folded towel. Now try to break the coke bottle on the covered mixing bowl, and when you succeed observe the damage done to the metal bowl, and consider what sort of lunatic would do that to someone's skull. That's what someone did to Dustin Rowles' dad, they said, because homosexuality is a sin.

So the problem in talking to Mr. Rowles now is not trying to convince him what the Bible says about (for example) homosexuality. The problem is convincing him that you don't want to bash his father's head in over it. That kind of ferocious evil is what Dustin Rowles associates with the moral affirmation "homosexuality is a sin". My suggestion is that helping him believe what you believe about homosexuality is frankly a stupid gambit. At best, you might get him to conceded that the Bible says such a thing, but because the people who did this to his dad allegedly believe the Bible, you can stick that Bible in the toilet and flush until your finger bleed.

What somebody needs to show Mr. Rowles' (and, apparently, many of the Pajiba readers) is that Jesus didn't come to make skinhead punks or redneck drunks out of his followers -- which is not a matter of tea-totalling and wearing nice suits. It's a matter of recognizing that those of us who are allegedly ambassadors of Christ bringing a message of reconciliation have to somehow overcome the wicked and misguided violence of people who have in the past, are today, and will in the future represent the Gospel as a threat rather than the strong tower which protects from all threats, and the safe haven from the storm. The Gospel is not the threat to believe or else I'll crush you like a bug: the Gospel is that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst of all. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the worst one by far, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

Be in the Lord's house on the Lord's day with the Lord's people this weekend, and pray for Dustin Rowles' father, and for the men who made Jesus Christ a menace to him rather than a savior. Pray that by God's will and power, the true light which gives light to everyone will give them the right to become children of God, not born of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but born of God.

Mark your calendars

This weekend I was trying to catch up on podcasts, and I got Mark Driscoll's first answer to the 9 questions thing, and I got to the Q&A for the late-nite session at Ballard.

This is a historical day.

I just read this post by Steven J. Camp after listening to Pastor Mark Driscoll's birth control Q&A.

... wait for it ...

Wow. I agree with Steve. Not only is that not a talk you'd hear at the local homeschool co-op or in a rural church where guys churn their own butter, that's a talk which simply goes outside the bounds of public decency. Ephesians 5 anyone? It's one thing to give that kind of advice (such as it is) in a private context, but from the pulpit?

Ouch. Steve was brave enough to link to the offending content. Sorry kids -- I'm not that brave. I'm not hardly brave enough to listen to this for more than 30 seconds at a time. ME. And I think he gives bad advice on top of everything else, so there's not much I can do to even say "yeah but ..." on behalf of MHC for this presentation.

Apparently Mark doesn't want to be the 21st century Billy Graham ... or maybe he does and is and I'm the one who doesn't get it. Either way, that's a hall of shame moment for those of us who are on-record as fans of Mark and Acts29.

I need 2 Excedrin and a Coke ...

The Christmas thing

This topic just kills me – because it goes completely haywire! I mean, that's why I posted the Piper link: who's going to argue with Piper?

Well, obviously somebody. And this feels like explaining the punch line of a joke to me, so if I seem a little put out by this, I am.

[1] It is frankly bizarre to associate what happens these days on December 25th (and the 4-ish weeks prior to 12/25) in the English-speaking world with Roman Catholicism in the theological, ecclesiological, or worshipological senses. That is: there's nobody I know who's celebrating Christmas because the day itself turns out to be more holy – except, of course, some Catholics. The rest of us are considering that Christ, in order to die for our sins in accordance with Scripture, had to be born. Which leads me to ...

[2] ... the obvious objection that taking a day and setting it apart to reconsider the birth of Christ is making something holy which God does not – it's a sort of Regulative principle objection. But here's the problem: if one doesn’t read the whole Bible every day and think about the whole thing every day, one is doing by default what one is criticizing others for doing with intention.

You know: you can't mull over the whole of biblical and systematic theology in any kind of thorough or even careful way in the 14 hours you're awake one day and then repeat the process again tomorrow and (for example) hold down a job or take a bath. So breaking the particulars of Biblical and systematic theology up over time – for example, into 52 weeks like the Heidelberg Catechism, or into a "church year", or into a daily reading plan – makes practical sense.

Because you have a human brain with human constraints, you're going to cause each day to be different in some way because you really don’t have a choice. The question turns out to be whether or not you're going to have an intentional way of, as the Bible says, being transformed by the renewal of your mind, or if you're just going to sort of stumble through it.

[3] And then the question comes up, "well, are you saying I must celebrate Christmas? Isn’t that legalism and violating my Christian liberty?" I think the fair comparison – the clear-sighted comparison – is to evangelism, because ultimately that's what I am talking about here (which we will get to in a minute).

You know: when you're standing in the waiting line at the Olive Garden with your family or whatever, I have no qualms saying that you should talk to someone there and try to get the Gospel in as much as it is possible. You should. My guess – and you can argue about the statistics behind this guess if you're that kind of person – is that someone in that waiting line is a lost person who has a sin problem that ends up being a hell problem, and is someone the Gospel is given to be declared to. If you believe in hell and in the only savior of men, you should find a way to talk about the Gospel.

Should. Expresses obligation, propriety, or expediency. Disciples of Christ have an obligation to express the Gospel. Even at the Olive Garden, which may or may not have some historical association with the Roman Catholic church particularly by being an Italian restaurant [sic].

Now, if that's true – and I'd love to see the person who's willing to say that Christians do not have this kind of obligation – how much more obvious is this same obligation on a day which, in the English-speaking world, bears the name of Christ and the whole world is frankly stopped because of it. Last year I published a harmony of the Gospels here at the blog – what if we intentionally gathered as families with both the saved and the sinners and read something like that rather than treating the day as if it's just another day, just like every other day, even though Wall Street and the banks are closed and everyone is frankly looking for something to do?

Opportunities like that don’t just fall out of the sky, especially in a post-Christian culture.

[4] And to connect the dots here between [2] and [3], one might say, "well, cent, I actually do read the Heidelberg Catechism to my kids and we follow the three forms of unity, so my obligation to bringing up my children in the way they should go – evangelizing them, if you will – is taken care of, so your beat-down on me for not observing this day is uncalled for."

Yeah, no. And pay attention, because this is where you imaginary objectors really get my goat.

Paul said this:

"All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

and again:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

I agree with you that one perfectly "lawful" means of doing your Christian life is the consideration (as in our example) of the Heidelberg Catechism. Where I part company with the imaginary objector is that you are straining out gnats and swallowing camels, and you have a really big problem if Rob Bell understands something which you do not.

I want you to imagine something: imagine that the whole English-speaking world stops for one day – and by "stops" I mean that there's not even any sports on the TV worth mentioning. Everybody stops working for one day. And for the most part, everyone has this yearning to be with family – even the most weird feel like this day bears some kind of meaning in that it would be good to be with family just this one day.

And on that day, the disciples of Christ get up in the morning, read Heidelberg Catechism Week 51 (ironically, "about the Lord's Day", speaking of holding one day above another), and wander off to work to show those idolatrous Catholics we don't bend a knee to the Pope, carn-sarn it.

Let me suggest to you that this is not only an avoidance of a right-minded "should" for a sort of smug and intellectually-selfish "ought", but it is completely tone-deaf to the real spirit of Christ who became flesh and took up residence among us, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, who has made God known.

Christmas is the opportunity to make God known, people – particularly, to make Christ known. You have the liberty to do that in an obscure or untranslatable way, and you have the liberty to do that in a public and sort of lavish and joyous way – one which reflects your personal response to this God who poured Himself out, took on the form of a servant, allowed himself to be laid in a feeding trough, and came to die for people who deserved themselves to be put to death.

You can play baseball when the sun is shining, or you can play your PSP in your basement and wonder why you don’t know any real people. What you can't do is pretend that your liberty is more valuable than spending your liberty on your responsibilities.

[5] And that leads to my last point (because this is page 3 in WORD), which is to make it clear that what's at stake here is the declaration of the Gospel of God to the lost by all means possible. That's the real "culture war". You have to consider what it means to have a public faith at some point in your travels through sanctification.

Some people want to tell you that the only meaningful way to have a public faith is by church-community and church-worship. That is: somehow the only way, or perhaps the most efficacious way, of demonstrating a public faith is in liturgy in community. And we have to grant something here: depending on what you mean by "liturgy" and "efficacious", and depending on how important you rate the Lord's table and baptism, they have a point.

But if our worship stops at the last pew in the chapel, so to speak, we're just fans. We're not playing the game: we're just watching it.

You are called to do more than watch the game, reader. You are called to run the race, and fight the good fight, and be someone who's not just shadow-boxing in vain. You are called to be a spectacle for the sake of the Gospel, and that doesn’t happened behind closed doors.

Merry Christmas.

gingerbread man

This weekend as we were building up to the big thing tomorrow, my wife pulled out a bag of gingerbread mix (listen: if you add the eggs and milk and whatever, it's home made) and my kids started cheering. They love the gingerbread stuff -- the house, the people, the tree.

"So you're going to make the gingerbread this year?" I asked her, trying not to imply anything.

"Nobody'll care after we frost it," she said, trying not to concede anything, and I realized I had the headline for my Darrin Patrick post.

Now, don't get me wrong, OK? I liked all of his 3 talks at Covenant Seminary, and especially liked his talk which he called "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" of the emergent church. But after listening to part 3 there, I sorta felt like he thought that if he layered on enough rhetorical frosting, nobody would care that he was really telling the radical edges of the ECM that they were preaching a different gospel, and that they needed to get over others pointing that out because that's the only way to resolve the differences.

I mean: that's how he pretty much ended that talk, and I was sort of blown away by how frank he was about it. And if you listened to only, say, the last 10 minutes of the talk (prior to the Q&A portion), you probably will get a very different impression of what he intimates about that movement than if you sit through all the "good" part, and even through the "bad" part. His description of the "ugly" is spot-on, even if it's covered in all kinds of other things to sweeten it up.

There where were moments in part 3 where I had to pull out a pen and scribble down a note or two. For example, it was a little sheepish (trying to avoid saying "coy") to use Justin Taylor as a cover for the "bad" segment of the talk. Sure: JT was plainly the source of that segment, and good on Pastor Darrin for citing his source. But it seemed to me that he was trying to avoid being the bad guy by pretty much reading what JT wrote on the subject of the ECM word for word.

Another moment was when Pastor Patrick followed a rabbit about what it means to preach to the culture -- you'll find it in the section where he says he wants to be preaching to "dudes", among other "cultures".

Here's what I don't disagree with: I think we have to context our churches in a way that the people to whom we are reaching out will give us a listen. You know: I'm the guy with the comic book blog, right? I don't think Fuller-brush door-to-door evangelism is useful today, and I think it is more useful to find social forms which people today can relate to in order to present the Gospel to them there.

But here's my problem with where I think Darrin's talk leads to: I think it leads to a place where we forget that the Gospel is (sing it with me) the solution to culture. That is: it's fine to get to the "dudes" and the "DINCs" and the farmers and so on by having some kind of way of talking with them and to them. It's another altogether when we avoid, because it is hard, the fact that the Gospel is supposed to reconcile races and cultures and all kinds of men not just to Christ but to each other -- that is, that all kinds of men are (not will be) reconciled to each other because they are reconciled to Christ.

I think that's the fundamental challenge to the current iteration of "missional" thinking -- failing to make reconciliation a real issue for people. It seems to me -- and people are welcome to knock this one down if they can -- that making "dude" churches (as one example) overlooks the fact in Scripture that "dudes" need older people to have a complete body of Christ, and vice versa. It's not enough just to say that your church is part of the greater, invisible church.

So that said, I enjoyed Darrin Patrick's impression of the gingerbread man. You may have a different opinion, and you now have the full-fledged version of haloscan into which to express it.

And have a napkin -- you have some frosting on your lip.

shepherd in the field

Our buddy johnMark interviewed these church plant pastors, and it's worth reading. Don't go out and get a tat for your new favorite doctrine, but think about supporting gospel workers among the poorest of the poor.

Let me define missiology ...

... by linking to a post by John Piper on how the church ought to foster maturity.

da bea'down

Anthony Bradley represents:

The great tragedy of American Christianity is that it has no idea how to reach men like Joe. What do guys like Joe need? Answer: salvation, healing, restoration, mission, fortified in genuine love because Jesus died for guys in hardcore culture but few men have the vision to tell these men the story.

Read it, and then ask yourself: why do all the people in my church look alike?

Son

Get this and make your life look like it.

Not Funny

Two years ago today, the largest and most costly natural disaster to strike the USA ravaged our town. And if you're tired of hearing about New Orleans and the impact of Hurricane Katrina, just imagine how difficult it is for us living here to endure the seemingly non-stop silliness and negative press.

The reality, however, is that God sovereignly ordained this tragedy for His glory and purpose, and part of that intention is that His gospel be proclaimed and lived out before men.

It is to that task that we set our minds and plows.

With your help, we seized this unprecedented opportunity to plant an outpost for truth in a very dark region that revels in sin and open abandon. Together, we took up the call and established an anchoring. Now, as we press on amidst the rebuilding and related hands-on ministry with a handful of long-term volunteers, we ask for your renewed help.

Our main needs are:

* Prayer for wisdom, perseverance and God's continued provision. * Skilled workers (carpenters, drywallers, painters, plumbers, tilers, etc.) to help put people back in their homes. * Skilled finishers to help put our relief operation into its new building. * Financial support for long-term volunteers, fuel, supplies and materials.

For further details, see our Sovereign Grace Homeland Missions news blog.

By His grace and for His glory,

Charles Busby and Eddie Exposito
Elders, Sovereign Grace Fellowship Slidell, Louisiana

Salvation vs. Calculus

I've had interesting conversations during Hiatus (such as it has been), and it's interesting the common threads that has (ahem) emerged from them. One thread in particular interests me, and it's on the subject of … orthodoxy. You know: how right do I have to be to be saved?

This is a brilliant question, and the New Testament gives us a two-fold answer. And that is itself a brilliant answer because that means the truth is not a checkbox or a light switch: it's not either on or off but a nuanced distinction which sets it apart vividly from error.

One answer the NT gives us is this: you don't really have to know anything to be saved. That is, you can the faith of a little child, and God will welcome you (cf. Mt 18:1-6, for the proof-texters and OGs everywhere). You can have a simple faith, a milk-drinking faith (cf. 1Cor 3), and be saved.

But there's another piece of the NT which frequently gets soft-soaked, and it's the answer which James gives: while a simple faith saves, it does not save only in the eternal sense. That is: it saves you to maturity:

the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

That is, your simple faith is also a living and breathing faith which grows you through trials to a "complete faith".

Many folks read this – rightly, btw – to mean "a right faith does works", and that's fine. That's a good application. But is it the only application? Is it the only one James intends here?

For example, when James says,

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

isn’t James saying that God's word is there so that we can take action upon it, and learn how to live in faith?

And glancing up this post a second, isn’t it also Paul's point in 1 Cor 3 that the Corinthians ought not to be forever babies in the faith, but that eventually they have to move on to the meat of the word? That is: their faith ought to make more of them, and be more than (as Paul implies) baby food.

So in that, there is a second answer to what you ought to know to have a saving faith: it ought to be true, and correct, insofar as you are mature and maturing in your faith.

Here's what I mean by that – by way of example. Let's think about math for a second. My son loves math (thank God – please Jesus make him a man who has a heart for God and people who is an accountant), and we are working flash cards to learn how to multiply. He can add, he can subtract, and now he wants to learn how to do "times". Which is great, if you ask me: he ought to learn how to do "times".

The other day, he asked me, "Daddy, do you do math at work?" And the answer, of course, is yes – I do a lot of math at work, a lot of it requiring advanced algebra. So I told him, "yes, son: I do a LOT of math at work."

"Can you show it to me?" he asked.

Well, sure I can show it to him – so I open up my laptop, open up some spreadsheets, and I show him the greek-like formulas we have either borrowed or invented to discover things like how many dollars we are earning per hour, given the rate of production vs. the standard work for a given work center. And then there's the statistical stuff I have to do verify and compare forecasts. And then there's the financial comparisons vs. plan and vs. last year. And so on. (hey: wake up. The boring part's over)

So he says to me, "but where are the numbers?" See: in his understanding of math, you need two numbers to make an equation, and those two numbers yield a fixed answer – which, factually, is the right view of arithmetic, and ultimately the right view of how a formula yields an answer you can use.

So I tell him, "Son, we fill in the numbers when they come by. This kind of math shows us how to think about certain problems, and when a problem comes up, we change out the letters for numbers to get an answer."

"WHAT?!" he yells, sort of laughing. "Daddy, you can't add up two letters!? You can't add 'A' plus 'B' and get 'C' – they're LETTERS!"

Well, really: he's right. Even in algebra II, the formula gets solved down to its simplest state, or most useful state, and you don't really get numbers at the end – you get formulas. But understanding that requires a leap from linear, arithmetic thinking to something more conceptual – something which is taking in the big picture of how adding 2 + 2, or making 3 "times" 4, works.

So my son can have a completely –correct- view of arithmetic, and be –unable- to grasp algebra yet. That doesn't make his view of math "false": it makes it incomplete. He's not a heretic to the math community: he's a student. His view is correct insofar as it is advanced, but it doesn’t account for all of math.

Now, if in 10 years my son and I sit down and he says to me, "Dad, open up your laptop for me – I want to see what you're doing at work," I'll be glad to oblige. My fatherly optimism will be that he's just completed Trig and he's about to show me how to simplify some of my 3-legged-dog formulas into something a little more sleek and functional.

But if we open up the laptop and when he looks at the spreadsheets he says to me, "You know what, Sir Dude? [he uses 'sir' out of respect because he was raised right] I still don't buy the algebra thing. I know what you call it – I just don't buy it. It doesn’t work. 2 + 2 = 4; A + B doesn't equal anything. All this stuff you say you've been doing for the last 10 years is just guff. And there's no way for you to prove to me that it does work."

At that point, we have crossed over from incomplete knowledge to something else – a knowledge which refuses to grow, refuses to receive more. It's willful ignorance.

In Biblical terms, it's what Paul called the "shipwreck of faith" – that is, when some rejects "love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." "Love" is certainly the product, but one of the components of that love is a "good conscience". In my example, my son can’t be said to have a good conscience – because he establishes what cannot be true apart from the facts which are plainly in evidence. In our faith life, we cannot be said to have a good conscience if we are unwilling to receive the facts of faith.

That's a big deal, for example, for Catholics – because the right-minded Catholic view is that Protestants who willfully refuse the teaching of the Church are unrepentant sinners. And if they are right about what kind of final authority the Church as an institution holds, they're right: you can't have a good conscience with you reject the truth.

But for Protestants – not merely evangelicals, but confessional Protestants – what Scripture teaches us is what we must accept as the truth about our faith. And as we advance out of spiritual immaturity to spiritual maturity, the burden upon us to accept and demonstrate the truth in Scripture becomes a greater responsibility. This is why the warning to teachers is such a serious thing; that's why the anathema against a different gospel – and the criteria for knowing what that is – is an anathema and not just a rebuke.

And for good measure, think about this: that's why John called the Pharisees who came to see him a brood of vipers, and why Jesus called the same men whitewashed tombs -- because the Gospel had not changed, but these men, who ought to have known better, did not know it when they saw it.

You don't need a perfect confession to save you, but you do need a faith which is perfecting you, not leading you into more error.

More Inspections - Better Plans

3 video clips this morning, courtesy of Dave Dravecky and DGM.







Here's what I'm particularly interested in with these videos: notice that Dave, who has lost more than most of us will ever have, and has frankly been through more physically than most of us will ever suffer, has an interesting point of view about how to comfort those who are suffering right now, today.

Hiatus

I've been on vacation for almost two weeks, which was nice. However, part of that time was spent assessing personal priorities, and it turns out that as much as I like blogging and believe I have something to say, it's at the bottom of the list of personal priorities -- and things which I say I value more than the blog are getting pushed out.

For example, I have a lot of weight to lose; you can't lose weight if you don't exercise, and I only have a fixed number of hours in the day. I also have two children who deserve to have a better Dad than the one who sits in front of that stupid flat screen monitor half the time, and I have a wife who works much harder than the average wife who deserves not to have to work that hard -- she deserves to have a better husband than I am.

There are also the issues of whether I am doing in real life what I blog so passionately about here, and again there being only so many hours in the day, you get the idea. What about my church? What about that trailer park? What about my pastor? What about the Gospel and lost people?

So that all said, thanks to you loyal readers. Keep your powder dry. booyah.

Church: AWOL?

Anthony Bradley swings for the fence and breaks a window on both the emergent clown car and the megachurch mercedes.

HT: Justin Taylor.

Universal Health Care

I'm pretty sure nobody who reads this blog day in and day out is in favor of universal health care, but I have an axe to grind about the subject (not related to the previous post), and I have 10 minutes, so here goes.

Obama has apparently just come out with his version of universal health care. As you all know, Hillary is also an advocate for such a thing. No doubt all the candidates on the Left are going to come out in favor of it this Presidential season. (gosh, it started early, didn't it?) And let's face it: when they spell it out in the broadest terms possible, it sounds like a no-brainer.

Seriously: let's imagine some guy who's just an average Joe. He's 40, he's worked all his life in his own business (he makes a living doing lawn services like mowing and tree trimming), and up until about 5 years a go, he was doing pretty good. But 5 years ago he started developing some weird symptoms, and when he goes to see his doctor he is informed that he has Hepatitis C -- the blood-born kind which you can only get by blood-contact, sexual contact or by sharing needles. Well, he never did any drugs, but it turns out that his ex-wife had cheated on him in many ways, and he picked up the virus from her.

Now, after 5 years of progressive advance of the disease (he never had any health insurance), he's too sick to work consistently, so he's at the mercy of the welfare system. He worked hard for those years, and now he's too sick to work, but he's a relatively young man. His blue book value, so to speak, should be pretty good, but he's got a bad liver that's getting worse.

The existing medicade/SSI system will not help Joe. He's too young to retire, and liver disease is not considered a top-shelf disability. It takes him literally years to get anything approaching nominal treatment -- they drain his feet occationally from the fluid that's building up, and they tell him to alternate motrin and advil for the pain, but he has to go easy on those because they actually make his liver worse -- but he's given psychological care to make sure he doesn't go postal or commit suicide.

Joe becomes a homeless, unemployable person -- and for the most part, it is because his wife cheated on him, that made him sick, and then health care became a luxury he couldn't afford. The no-brainer for Joe is universal health care: everyone should have access to whatever degree of health care they need and cost should not be an issue. After all, he's a human being in God's image, right? Saved or not, Joe as a human being ought not to have to die sleeping under a bridge because he didn't have the money for a specialist.

Here's the problem for the no-brainer: Joe is already in the system receiving health care for free. He's on medicare and SSI. The problem is not that the treatment doesn't exist for Joe but that the system has already decided to what extent Joe should get health care. It has decidied what it is willing to pay for Joe's treatment. And the question, really, is if having this system expanded to every person in the country will increase Joe's chances of getting treated, or if it will decrease his chances of getting treated.

See: Joe's already a goner. The best case for Joe is that he can stabilize his current condition and live the rest of his life as an invalid. If that's where he's at medically, won't hundereds and perhaps thousands of cases get more funding and attention than his? Isn't the point of triage -- which is what has to happen in a situation where medical resources are finite and are exceeded by the number of patients in line -- to put the resources available in the right place to only stabilize the patients in line so that the most survive rather than are cured to the best of the existing technology's ability?

I bring this up because I think there's a Gospel answer to this question, but we have to get the matter of the local church resolved to answer it. You know: if the local church is merely the number of people who have the right-hearted reverence of Christ, and once in a while they get together and sing praise songs and hear a really good and passionate speaker, that local church has no Gospel solution to the problem of Joe.

Think about that as I reconstruct the lost part 3 of my pet peeve: did Jesus intend the local church to have a response to guys like Joe, or did Joe never occur to Jesus?

A pet peeve

I have this thing about the local church -- and I have no idea when or where I developed this condition, but it's probably going to be fatal to me in the long run.

See: I spend a lot of time here at the blog giving the local church a hard time -- mostly for surrendering its obligations to religious circuses and media sideshows. I think it's not just a shame but shameful when the local church is doing the sociologically-Christian version of watching MTV and eating chips on the couch.

So far, so good, right? Everyone in the blogosphere is prolly saying "amen" to that.

Here's where I get under people's skins: I think that's no excuse for leaving the local church for nothing at all. You can't find a proof-text for becoming a spiritual lone ranger in the Bible, kids. It doesn't exist.

Before we go any farther here, I want us to think about the book of 1 Corinthians for a minute, because it's relevant to this issue. Paul writes to this church which he established because they wrote to him, and they have apparently sent him a laundry list of "stuff" that they can't figure out. For example, they can't figure out who they should follow -- they have factions, and some are Paul disciples, some are Appollos disciples, and some (I am sure these were the protobaptists in the crowd) make the clear claim that they are followers of Jesus and not men -- very pious types, I am sure.

But these people, who apparently have many teachers all of whom has a claim to fame, can't seem to stop bickering. They have disputes which roll over into (what we would call) the secular courts; they don't have the will or the guts to discipline sin for the sake of turning a brother away from destruction; they use daGifts as if they were for entertainment or self-sulfillment; they abuse the Lord's table -- and worth of all, they just don't understand the Gospel.

Your church may be this bad. I am sure many churches today are this bad. Some -- a handful, lead by actual heretics who deny the Trinity or gloss over sin with either self-help psychology or legalism -- may be worse. The problem of having broken or sloppy churches is not a new problem: it is literally as old as the faith. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in c. 55 AD, so in the last 1952 years it's not like this is a new problem.

But let's listen to 1 Cor for a second. Of all the things Paul says to our brothers in Christ there -- the ones Paul says are "sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ", the ones "enriched in [Christ] in all speech and all knowledge ... so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift" -- he does not say, "and if you can't fix these things, people need to leave the church because it is broken beyond repair."

Paul says to fix what is broken -- which is only possible (he demonstrates) by understanding the Gospel and the consequences of the Gospel. And one of the consequences of the Gospel is the local church. But the other consequences of the Gospel -- for example, in 1 Cor 3, "let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's" -- are to be carried out inside the local church.

So let's imagine that you belong to a Purpose-Driven, First [non-denominational denomination] Community Fellowship Tabernacle of Praise and Holy Spirit theme park church, and you've been dutifully reading the blogs and the various Confessions, and your Bible, and listening to John Piper and John MacArthur and (because you're above average, but under 40) Mark Driscoll and Darren Patrick (or if you're over 40 but still above average) and the White Horse Inn and Mark Dever, and suddenly, your church looks a little small and mundane -- or worse, it looks like it worships its programs more than it worships Jesus.

That is: you have deep pangs of conscience -- and rightly so -- that your church is a disciple of Rick Warren, while it ought to be a disciple of Mark Dever, and a person who used to work for the church (and still attends the church) is suing the church for this or that, and the way your church treats baptism is a joke, and the Lord's table is barely practiced at all, let alone practiced as a solemn remembrance of the New Covenant, and last Sunday your pastor warmly received the text of Your Best Life Now as edifying reading.

Is it your duty to split from that church because it is a disgrace? Paul doesn't even consider that an option. He doesn't put it on the table for the Corinthians. So why is it an option for you?

This is going to come at at DebateBlog pretty soon, so I want you to think about something: how necessary is the local church? That is, do you have an obligation to belong to it, or not? And if you do, how far does that obligation reach?

And no, I have not forgotten the Zens paper. It's right here next to me on the desk. I'll get to it this wek.

... and elbows ...

OK -- back from Fishin'. Had a nice vay-kay with my family and my in-laws, and I discovered that I am allergic to Dallas. Somehow since we have been these I have had the most wicked allergy attack since I was a teen, but the benadryl still seems to work out the kinks, so no substantive complaints.

Anyway, I get back from an internet fast while on vacation, and I find this post from iMonk based on this video from Pastor Mark Driscoll.

Go ahead and watch the video as it contains nothing which ought to offend you -- except maybe one word, and my suggestion to you is that he said that the nicest way anyone can say what he meant. But in spite of that, I am not interested in your prudery, so if you don't like to hear one sin of the unsaved mentioned, don't watch the video.

Now, that said, iMonk has watched this 8-ish minute video and come away with commentary on whether or not men ought to want to have sex with their wives every day. Well, here's what iMonk said:

I have to admit that when I heard Driscoll say that young men want to know how to have sex with their wives once a day, I was stunned. I know Driscoll walks the edge, but this was the kind of juvenile distortion I don’t expect to hear. I’ve had plenty of young males ask me about sex in marriage, and I’m not bashful or less than straightforward, but this isn’t a good answer, and it’s presenting the wrong description of a Christ follower.

And to be fair to everyone involved here, here's my transcript of the portion of this video which has suddenly made iMonk into a post-Puritan Victorian:

People walking in tend to think that a church planter is … a pastor. He’s not yet a pastor: he’s trying to build a church so that he can be a pastor. A church planter has a different skill set. He’s got a different mission that he has to be on – to gather men.

To gather the best men that he can find. To gather men who are willing to be trained, willing to repent, willing to learn. Willing to learn both doctrine and practice. That’s why Paul tells Timothy to watch his life and his doctrine closely.

The sad, hard, painful truth is that most churches are struggling, dying, and failing, and most church planters will just be part of the rising body count of failed church plants if they are unable to gather, to inspire, to correct, to discipline, to instruct MEN.

And this is particularly important for young men. The least likely person to go to church in the United States of America is a young man in his early 20’s. These are guys who have absolutely made a wreck of everything. They’re [PURITAN EDIT SQUAD] their girlfriends. They are guys who are blowing all their money, staying up all night playing World of Warcraft, finding free porn on the internet, and trying to figure out how to get a bigger subwoofer into their retarded car.

Those are the guys who must first be gathered, they must get a swift boot in the rear, they need a good run through boot camp, they need to be told that Jesus Christ is not a gay hippy in a dress, and that they’re dealing with the King of kings and Lord of lords, and there’s a mission that he has called them to.

60% of all Christians today are female. I’m glad that the ladies love Jesus. But if you wanna win a war, you’ve gotta get the men. And once you get the men, you must know what to do with them.

They wanna know how to get married. They wanna know how to have sex with their wife at least once a day. They wanna know how to make money, buy a home, how to have children, how to pay their bills, how to father their sons, how to encourage and love and instruct their daughters, and so in addition to being to being the right kind of man, he must clarify the mission that he is on. And he must understand that his first priority is to gather men, and to, by God’s grace, force them to become the kind of men that are needed for God’s work and God’s kingdom so that that church can actually be established, those women can actually be loved, those children can actually be raised, and that that city will have an example of the difference that Jesus makes.

Now, I underlined the one sentence that iMonk has somehow isolated from the rest of this stuff. Let me ask you: is he [Mark Driscoll] giving advice here, or is he listing the kinds of questions young guys of the sort he has already described have?

See: it seems to me that he's talking about the kinds of questions that need to be answered. Like "how do I get married?", which does not have a technical manual or a how-to book which would be worth the paper on which it is written. So the question, "How do I have sex with my wife at least once a day?" is that same sort of question.

And when iMonk comes up with this:

Listen, a lot of young preachers I enjoy talk a lot about sex and gender issues. Good for them. When I preach on sex and gender my students listen, ask questions and want more. I have a grasp on how this works. But I cannot present the Christian life primarily as a way to great maleness. Given too large a place, that’s close to just another prosperity gospel.

If you follow Jesus, you may have lots of sex or no sex. You may give up sex because you have to care for a sick or ailing spouse. You have to put your sexual agenda at the bottom of a list of things like crying babies, the stress of daily life, emotional realities and physical facts. If a man tells me his wife provides him daily sex, I’m happy for him. He’s way above average. But I have some questions about periods. Crying babies. Housework. Illness. Non-sexual affection. And I have some questions about demands being made for the sake of some idea of sanctified maleness.

If a guy shows up to talk to me about his marriage and says his wife is depriving him of daily sex, I’m going to bluntly tell him he needs to rethink what marriage means in more realistic terms.

Jesus was the perfect sexual male, and he never had sex. He called us to take up our cross, lose our lives and find his life. He called us to fight, but also to serve, love, wash feet, go after lost sheep, be tender, weep, pray and just hang in there.

I have to wonder: did he listen to what was being said, or is he simply having a knee-jerk reaction to a throw-away statement about the kinds of questions young men have?

It's ironic that Pastor Driscoll was talking about reforming the things which are most obviously wrong with the young men in America today and iMonk somehow thinks that this is devoid of real discipleship.

Sheesh.

I also have another post about this video's message which is bound to be even more controversial than this one. Stay Tuned.

And while you're at it ...

And listen to the intro of this podcast episode because it's beautiful and real. Somebody, please, have this kind of passion of the local church!