... and his ministers a flame of fire

Thursday, July 14, 2005

[#] An Axe to Grind about World Poverty

There’s a chapter in the Bono book about African relief, and it is both touching and infuriating and, I think, incomplete.

Bono has two very large axes to grind over Africa: AIDS relief, and debt relief. I’m not sure I’m equipped to talk about AIDS relief yet, but as a knee-jerk person who claims to know something about Jesus Christ I’d say that we should be giving them AIDS relief. We should be finding ways to give them medical comfort – which ought to be paired with spiritual comfort and discipleship.

What I want to write about briefly is the matter of debt. Much has been made about the billions in debt owed by the poorest African nations and how it is crippling them economically. Well, whenever we talk about economics, there is of course the matter of “real people” who are either starving or dying from being fat pigs, and somehow the argument is always that the fat pigs are to blame for the ones who are starving. Let’s just take that “argument” as one side for a moment and frame another side.

I just did a quick Google for the total amount of debt (converted to US dollars) owed by the African continent, and came up with the number $40 billion. I couldn’t find it on the “Make Poverty History” website, which is odd since they are demanding that the only economic justice is to forgive all the debt; one would think that the scope of the demand would be outlined in a little more detail than simply saying “all”. So: $40 billion in debt. A quick scan of the World Factbook says that there are roughly (which is to say, rounding down for the sake of the argument) 800 million people living in Africa. fao.org says that the GDP per person in Africa is $736.

To get all terms in the same denomination, the debt per person for the continent of Africa is $40 billion / 800 million = $50. So here’s the comparison: the GDP per person is $736, and the debt per person is $50. Those of you with quick calculators can see that the debt-to-GDP percent of the African continent is 6.7934% -- we’ll round it up to 7% to keep things simple.

Now let’s look at the United States. The Population of the United States as I type this note (according to the US census bureau) is 296 million – give or take 500,000. The GDP for the United States for FYE 2004 was $10.841 trillion, and the nation debt of the US as I type this $7.849 trillion.

To get all the terms in the same denomination, the GDP per person for 2004 for the US was $36,625; the national debt per person in the US is $26,516. So the debt to GDP percent per person for the US is 72.4%.

To bring it all together, the debt per person in Africa is about 7% of what they generate in production of goods and services, and the debt per person in the United States is almost 73% of what they generate in production of goods and services. That is to say: the debt burden of the US per person is 10 times what it is per person on the African continent – as a percent of their productive output, not as measured in dollar-for-dollar comparisons. The dollar-to-dollar comparison says that the debt burden per person in the US is more than 500 times what it is in Africa.

There are probably a billion directions in which this discussion could go at this point – like the justice of making a nation pay back the debts of a despotic ruler they have overthrown, or the wisdom of making loans or “relief payments” to despotic rulers in the first place without demanding some accountability from them – but the question of debt “burden” seems to be one that does not account for the proportional matters of economic scale.

Listen: there is no doubt that there are people dying from poverty in Africa. Proving mathematically that their debt burden is really pretty small is the worst excuse to do nothing at all about the problem. In exactly the same spirit and mind, it is also the same kind of stupid to relieve the debt as if that debt was the cause of the problem – because it is not at all the cause of the economic black hole these people live in – it can’t be, because it is not large enough to create that kind of force.

I have dozens of Post-it notes in my copy of the Bono book, and I’m only about 1/3 through it. This was the first major take-away I had, so I thought I break the silence this morning to keep you readers properly informed on world events.

--

Note to RSS feeders: soory about the edits. MSWord does stupid things with quotes, and it was messing up the links. All fixed now, and back to your business.

[%] Frank Martens is brilliant

He has apparently fixed my blogger template, and did so gratis.

Visit Frank's site and tell him what a great guy he is. :-)

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

[#] ... and the blog was silent ...

... whilst the blogger read BONO in conversation with MICHKA ASSAYA.

For your interim pleasure, please read the links at the right, or browse the archives for past bits of persiflage and palaver.

[?] Seeking profession Help (pro bono)

No, this is not about the Bono book (which arrives today, so let's not forget that's still on the burner someplace, along with "he was buried, he was raised from the dead").

As many of you have noticed, the blog template has been updated from that very scary blue thing that I started with to this very soothing, non-confrontational white and gray thing. It's very nice, but it is also giving IE 6.X for PC fits. I have 3 ways to test the template -- on my Mac (OS 9.X, IE 5.X) at home, and on my PC at work (Firefox 1.0.1 and IE 6.X). I have no test data for Safari, but I'm also showing that less than 5% of all hits are coming from safari browsers. Becuase I am Mac loyal, Safari feedback is welcomed -- screenshots are better than descriptions.

But that brings me to my problem. The blog will not render properly in IE 6.X. The sidebar gets dislocated and shoved down the screen as if either the main div or the sidebar was too wide. Frank Martens was kind enough to troubleshoot the blog a little and thought he found a problem in an older post that was messing things up, but when I shortened the front page history to eliminate those entries, it didn't correct the problem.

CALLING ALL BLOGGERS AND CSS GEEKS: I need professional help. Here is the checklist of things I want to fix:

(1) I want the sidebar to render next to the main div. Like any blog. Here's my content; here are my links and other cool stuff.

(2) The first date listed (the one at the top of the main div) should line up with the top of the sidebar, so that the top of that gray bar with the date in it lines up with the top of the sidebar div.

(3) There should be no gap between the main div and the sidebar, so those gray date headers look like they are growing out of the sidebar.

(4) Likewise, the white headers for the link lists should have no gray line separating them from white body of the main div so they look like they are growing out of the main div.

For those who are really concerned about this and have all day to spend working out the details, the actual blogger template can be downloaded here. If you need to e-mail me, you can do that at carm_centuri0n at yahoo dot com.

Lovely. Thanks for your help.

[%] The Common Anglican

We have a new link in the sidebar to the Common Anglican. He's linked to this site as well, and I got a kick out of the way he linked:

I think that list might actually cover all the ground that is necessary, in the end, but I got a chuckle out of it.

I really kinda like this guy personally from the few interactions I have had with him, so I don't want to snark him into oblivion, but you should click over there just to see his assortments of links. It's a day-brightener.

Welcome, Common Anglican! Congrats on your confirmation, and God willing you will grow in your love and service to Jesus Christ.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

[#] Why Doug Wilson is Wrong

Man. What a morning! This guy down the street would not shut his rooster up, but I finally found my industrial ear protection and was able to come back to the blog for a few minutes with you, the people who love me and whom I love so dearly. Group hug.

I’ve been trading bandwidth with said Rooster re: Doug Wilson in Credenda/Agenda on the church’s response to same-sex marriage. See: Rooster has his own opinions about the subject (I’m not sure we’ve heard his actual solution to the problem yet, btw), but his response so far is “Doug Wilson is wrong, for pete’s sake, because he says that we should just sit back and do nothing while the Goths storm the gates!” Or something like that.

Anyway, Doug Wilson is hardly living in a bunker or advocating that the church should live in a bunker. How could he? If he takes the Gospel even quasi-seriously (and I think he takes it much more seriously than that), he knows we must be in the world and not of the world. I would even offer that one of Wilson’s major themes – perhaps his strongest suit – is the matter of how we can be both “in the world” and not at all “of the world”. He takes the call to be aliens and sojourners so seriously that he rejects secular means at face value – and let’s be careful how we measure “secular”, shall we?

But all that said (over and over and over …), Pastor Wilson is still wrong in his essay, in my (I can’t even type “h^mble”, can I?) opinion. And it’s not a matter of being wrong about his call to action – because frankly I agree with him that the American church is in a miserable state brought on by a lot of things, but primarily by godlessness in the church. No, I have not gone Harold Camping here. The problem is that we do not do what the Bible tells us to do – and that, by definition, is godless.

We do not rule by elders; we do not offer discipleship, correction and discipline. There’s no doubt that we do not admonish people in adultery before marriage, or after. We simply wink out a tear at divorce – something that God says he hates! In that way, I think it is, um, not very perceptive to say that there’s not actually something wrong with the American church.

So what is Pastor Wilson so wrong about, anyway? Well, if we browse his Credenda site, we find a creed which tells us about what he believes. On the Gospel and Law: fine. Then we get to “On Justification”, and we come across this:

3. I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ, an organic covenant body, is also justified, sanctified, regenerated, and elect. Because her sanctification, like ours, is not yet complete (Eph. 5:24-32), I believe that non-justified, non-elect, non-sanctified, and non-regenerated individuals can be covenant-breaking members of this covenant body for a time. But in the passage of time all such fruitless branches are removed (John 15:1-7; Rom. 11:20; Matt. 13:24-40). Non-elect warts are removed from the elect Bride (Eph. 5:27).

Now, in theory, I agree that there are those who are not actually saved who live together inside “the church” with some who are saved, and that in the final account these “warts are removed from the elect Bride”. But at this point in this creed, Wilson and his associates are tossing around a rather loaded word: covenant.

However, because they are rather bright fellows, they follow up with this:

4. I believe that God established two distinct covenants with mankind, one before the Fall, and one after. The first covenant was called a covenant of works in the Westminster Confession (7.2). I would prefer to call it a covenant of creational grace. The condition of covenant-keeping in this first covenant was to believe God’s grace, command, warnings, and promise. If Adam had avoided sin in this temptation, he would have had no grounds for boasting, but could only say that God had graciously preserved him. Perfect and personal obedience, even for an unfallen man, is not possible unless he trusts in God’s goodness and grace. Because God endued Adam with the power and ability to keep covenant with Him (WCF 19.1), Adam was a recipient of grace, and thus, the sin that plunged our race into death was a revolt against grace.

OK: we can split hairs about what “the first covenant” is, but the key matter here is that prior to the second covenant, man had an obligation to obey God. Romans 1 & 2 works that all out by saying that no man actually has the excuse that he “didn’t know” that God had rules to obey because man’s conscience and creation itself speaks sufficiently to man about those things.

There’s no great controversy there, though there might be a swarm of minor ones. I’m not interested in the minors today, just the majors – relating to the way point (3) handles the word “covenant” and the way point (5) actually fleshes that out:

5. The second covenant is a covenant of redemptive grace. The thing that the two covenants have in common is grace, not works. The condition for keeping this covenant is the same as the first, although the circumstances are different. The condition always is to believe God.

So it is this second covenant, we must suppose, (3) is talking about when we read that the church is a “covenant” body, and that those who are “covenant-breaking” members can be rightly considered members of that body.

That is amplified when we get to the section on Baptism, which says:

1. I believe that the phrase baptismal regeneration, when taken in a wooden ex opere operato sense, has been the source of much rank superstition and idolatry. Baptism in water is a sign and seal of the new covenant, and as with all covenants, the new covenant has attendant blessings and curses. The blessings are appropriated by faith, not by water, and the curses are brought down upon the head by unbelief, against which curses the water provides no protection whatever.

. . .

4. I believe that the phrase baptismal efficacy may be helpfully used to describe an ex opere operato connection to the new covenant, with its attendant and standing responsibility to repent and believe. Reprobate covenant members who refuse to do this are no less covenant members for all that.

As I offer this next piece of exposition, let me say first of all that this is a digested version of Wilson’s view, and if I do him injustice then I accept the blame for what I have omitted. That doesn’t mean I’m omitting anything I think is critical, but it is admitting I’m open to correction if I got it wrong.

Yet this is where I come to the sticky place with Pastor Wilson. It is his view, as I read these passages, that all who are baptized are brought into the new covenant, but that those who are baptized into the covenant who do not, in the final account, have faith and have been faithful, are thereby condemned under the covenant. Which is to say (among other things), we can baptize infants in the promise of faith without (a) condemning them instantly because they do not have faith, and (b) with our hope in God who keeps his promises that the sign of baptism will be met with “fides salvifica”. Thus in baptism we enter into the covenant of redemptive grace, but apparently we are expected to keep the covenant of redemptive grace.

Well, maybe not. Point (6) under Justification does say this:

6. These points are made, not to smuggle works from the covenant of works into the covenant of grace, but rather the opposite. I believe we must insist that autonomous works be banished from every human realm and endeavor, whether fallen or unfallen (1 Cor. 1:31).{Emph Added}

So on the one hand, all who are baptized are under the obligation to keep the covenant (which they don’t actually keep unless God …) which comprises inclusion into the church, and all who are not baptized are called to keep a covenant (which the don’t actually keep unless God …) which does not comprise inclusion into the church.

The problem with all of this is that the Book of Hebrews says this about the second covenant:

That is to say, those with whom God makes the second covenant are blameless in His sight, and will undoubtedly receive mercy. So “keeping” the second covenant is in God’s hands and not man’s hands – and in that way, calling any man a “covenant breaker” of the second covenant is meaningless.

So what does all of this have to do with objecting to Jones/Wilson’s essay on the church’s reaction to same-sex marriage? It is this issue of “covenantial dynamics” which Jones & Wilson use to make the point that God is calling down judgment on the church for being what it is – because I do not disagree with Wilson regarding the state of the church.

However, my first question to him (if he were reading) would be: “when was the church actually any better, my friend?” There is much made of the Medieval view of the church in Credenda/Agenda, but one of the problematic parts of the Medieval church was that it was trying to be both secular and spiritual authority in the face of what Tim Enloe has called the disintegration of society. If those who, today, seek to oppose same-sex marriage legislation are wrong for the “secular” argument, the Medieval church must stand-to for the same charge.

If the answer comes back (and I think it must) that “the church has always been full of sinners,” I would say first of all, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” And second of all, if the church has always been a place where sin has, because of the nature of man, existed next to, because of the nature of God, grace-placed virtue, how can we say now, “bollix! The jig is up and God’s going to judge us now”?

I do not deny that it is God’s prerogative to judge – and that He cannot judge but rightly and justly. But it is His covenant that says “I will be merciful toward their iniquities and remember their sins no more.” And that covenant is a better covenant than the old, mediated by one who sits at His right hand and the sacrifice which seals that covenant once for all. And those inside that covenant will not be judged.

Now the massive question, really, is how do I take this conclusion that calling the homosexual revolution a judgment of God on the church “wrong” and then say, “well, I’m the same guy that’s just spent 10 hours refuting Rooster’s complaints about Doug Wilson”?

I think the answer is simple: it is possible that God is judging the nation and not the church for the sins of our secular state and theology. It is, in fact, right that God should judge our nation because we do not fear the Lord and we do not lift up His name. We are in fact frauds for the most part. In a nation where 85% of us profess to be Christians, 45% attend church on any given Sunday, 55% say they share their faith in the course of a year, 49% favor the distribution of pornography, 50% think truth is unchanging, 69% believe that God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect creator that rules the world today, 41% think Christ sinned when He was here in His earthly incarnation, and 39% think there was no bodily resurrection. (thanks, Barna)

If there is a nation in the history of the world that could have heard the truth, has heard the Truth in the Gospel, and has actively rejected that truth, it is the United States. God has no covenant with this nation but that it serves His ultimate purpose.

So what to do? See: the irony is that I think Wilson got the “what to do” part right. The call of the church is not to crush the bones of sinners under foot as His Truth Is Marching On. The call of the Church is to preach the Gospel that some might repent – and that preaching doesn’t start on the street corner or on the radio or on TV or by passing a law: that preaching starts when we get on our knees and admit to ourselves and to God that we have failed Him. We. Us. The Church. You. Me.

We have failed what we ought to do – because if we were preaching the Gospel, the Word does not come back void. The Gospel is not about passing enough laws to keep the sinful and the evil at bey: The Gospel is about showing that God has changed us – who were and are sinful and evil – in grace and mercy so that we – by the power of the Holy Spirit – can now show grace and mercy. We should be better fathers and husbands; we should have better children and tighter families. Our churches should not be disorderly country clubs but houses of worship and fellowship with God. We should not abide in our own ranks the sin we are so quick to point a finger at in the midst of the world – but we should overcome evil with good. And “the good”, for those who have somehow missed it on my blog, is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. “the good” is the sacrificial love of Christ which we demonstrate to each other (in the church) and to those sinners we meet elsewhere.

That is orthodoxy, readers. That’s who the Apostles were. That’s who the Christians who converted the pagan world were.

Who and what are we?

[*] More on TBR and Doug Wilson

[] The Rooster Doug Wilson

While we are waiting on Bono’s interview book to finish up with the Brian Mattson’s review of U2’s last CD and my 20-year Beef, I was scanning said-Rooster’s blog and came across some criticism he had of Doug Wilson.

Hey: very frequently, Pastor Wilson should have to field criticism. In fact, there is some likely criticism for the essay Mattson criticizes that may or may not make its way from me to the blog. However, there is a difference between criticizing what was written and making unfair criticisms. Thus, the following response:

Doug makes a number of points I'd like to briefly address: 1) Homosexuality is primarily a judgment on the church. This is entirely speculative, and makes no attempt to argue from the Scriptures.

Well, thank heavens you linked to his article. Wilson prefaces the entire article by saying:

We denounce homosexual sin and understandably want to reject same-sex legislation, yet we too often fail to ask about the meaning and purpose of homosexuality in a covenantal world of dynamic curses and blessings. (emph added)

So Jones/Wilson’s point is not, “sheesh – let’s just cave on the homosexual issue” – because they say we “understandably want to reject same-sex legislation”. But instead, as is their presuppositional basis for all their claims, they assert that the Church exists in a covenantial relationship with God, and in that the Church ought to do certain things which God will pass judgment over – either blessing if the covenant is kept, or cursing if the covenant is not kept. You can reject Jones/Wilson’s covenantialism if you like, but you have to do so for a reason – not simply ignore Jones/Wilson’s starting point and then misunderstand the rest of what he says.

And that said, Jones/Wilson’s argument about why Homosexuality is running rampant in our society is a plain one from Romans 1: God hands men over to these sins when they have rejected Him.

Totally pagan cultures have prized homosexuality all throughout history (in fact, paganism and homoeroticism invariably go hand in hand. See my paper on the topic. Right click the link to download). Further, the Apostle Paul pronounces the curse specifically against "those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness," not the faithful.

It is odd that you and Wilson & Jones agree on this point: faithful people are not handed over to this sin. Wilson’s exact words are “Widespread homosexuality is a sign that the society in question is not living under normal chastisements; it is the sign of God's abandonment of us—Ichabod.”

You and they agree. The problem is not that there is disagreement over whether the unfaithful are condemned in this way: it is whether the church itself is faithful. You seem to take it for granted that the church is faithful. Jones/Wilson take it for granted that the symptom indicates the disease, and because the symptom is in the church, the disease is in the church.

Yet it is argued: "The American Church's compromises with idolatry are deep and dated, and God appears to be sending us a highlighted curse." I don't see anything particularly "highlighted" about it, and I don't see an actual argument as to why the mind of God ought to be interpreted in this fashion.

TBR: you yourself make the specific claim that paganism and homoeroticism “invariably go hand in hand”. Who is in charge of history? Who is it who makes man’s suppression of the truth go hand in hand with these sins which dishonor the body?

I don’t think you actually disagree with Wilson’s exegesis here: I think you disagree with his application. This sin is particularly highlighted by Romans 1, and you have shown in that past that all idolatrous civilizations have embraced it. The only disconnect between your argument and Wilson’s is that Wilson says, “the American church is caught up in idolatry”.

Now whether you agree with Wilson’s statement or not, let me ask you: is it possible for the American church to be caught up in idolatry? Or if you prefer, think of the question this way: what does Christ accuse the churches at Sardis and Laodicea of in Rev 3?

Further, as we will see, Doug engages in a fallacy: if something is a curse, it should be embraced; if it is a sin, it should be denounced. But what if it is both? This is not an either/or proposition.

I think you have misread Wilson & Jones, and you do not understand the use of these words.

2) Curses are removed by repentance, not denunciations of them. Of course; therefore the one being cursed ought to repent. Only if one assumes that the church is the primary target of the curse of homosexuality - which Doug has not given a single good reason to assume - can one argue that the church ought not "denounce" homosexuality.

Wilson’s article certainly does not demonstrate “standard” syllogistic composition. That is to say, he doesn’t mechanistically order his essay “The church has allowed fathers not to be leaders in their homes; this leadershiplessness has given way to idolatry; God hates that; God punishes what He hates; the church is in a special covenant with God; the special covenant makes God’s judgment more purposeful and intentional; Paul in Romans outlines one particular judgment God places on the idolatrous; that punishment is homosexual sin; God’s punishment on the American church for idolatry is homosexual sin.”

Instead, Jones/Wilson start with the obvious problem: the homosexual revolution. And they say that, superficially, one can understand why we want to stand in the way of legalizing homosexual marriage. Moreover, they also say that that there ought to be laws against homosexual marriage -- but only stemming from the cause of faithful worship in God’s church and not as a hope that we can change people’s minds by forbidding them to do whatever they think is right.

But, of course, even that is a non-sequitur. Repentance, I daresay, involves denouncing sin! And if the curse is a handing over to sin, then it hardly follows that we suddenly "embrace" (or "own," to use his words) the sin! Even if his breathtakingly speculative link between "bad fathering" and "homosexuality" is true (though the only thing we have to go on is his say-so), we can certainly repent of bad fathering and denounce homosexuality at the same time!

In this passage you have completely missed the point Jones/Wilson is trying to make: in “owning” or “embracing” the sin, we are not making friends with it or becoming a partner with it: we are admitting that we are the cause of it. Consider what they have written here:

Instead of duplicating the sins of the past by dealing with fruit rather than with roots, i.e., denouncing the spread of homosexual marriage and culture, we need to own the cultural curse. By this, we mean we must accept the fact of it as just. Pointing to "their" corrupt fruit does not address our corrupt root. This is the core failure of neglectful/domineering fathers and husbands. Given these circumstances, we ought live in exile, as Jeremiah's Israel did, until God Himself lifted the curse. Jeremiah said to "seek the peace of the city" (Jer. 29:7), not protest pagan legislation. Under a curse, we should own the curse of same-sex marriage and not fight it so far as it concerns them. That is not our calling.
The calling of Christian men is to be godly husbands and fathers, within the family and within the Church. In a public sense, we ought to acknowledge the curse of same-sex marriage as a just judgment on us and our culture. In the brewing culture wars, we ought not to stand with those seeking to ban same-sex marriage (or with those seeking to impose it). We ought to declare publicly (frustrating both sides) that we embrace this curse. If the civil authority demands our political tunic, we let him have our political cloak also. We own the sin in the first place.

Their point is not at all that we cannot say homosexuality is a sin: their point is that if the church accepted the fact that it was not discipling men to be godly fathers and household leaders, and then did something about it, the church could claim to have clean hands. The church cannot claim to have clean hands here: in saying “I condemn the homosexual and hand him over to the law”, the church fails to see its own roll in setting the table at which the homosexual activist eats.

You also say that Jones/Wilson make a ‘breathtakingly speculative link between "bad fathering" and "homosexuality"’. There is no doubt that they offer no evidence in this article about this link. However, the correlation between the two has been demonstrated repeatedly. Here are some links you might want to brush up on before calling this part of the Jones/Wilson essay merely “speculative”:

http://www.gaytostraight.org/cos-chapter2.html (particularly the notes to the work of Dr. Elizabeth Moberly, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, and Dr. Harville Hendrix)

http://www.letusreason.org/current8.htm (particularly the ref. to Irving Bierber’s work)

http://amcap.westernstandard.com/AMCAP_Journal/lpext.dll/Infobase/2/3f?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm&q=[s][rank%2C100%3A[domain%3A[and%3A[and%3ARobert+L.+Blattner+]]][sum%3ARobert+L.+Blattner++]]&x=Advanced&2.0 (You’ll have to paste that into your browser I’ll bet, but it’s from AMCAP journal)

You can also check there off-line resources:

H. Biller, (1974). Paternal Deprivation: Family, School, Sexuality, and Society (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath)
G. Rekers. Journal of Family and Culture, 2, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), p. 8-31.
H. Biller, Paternal Deprivation: Family, School, Sexuality, and Society (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1974), p.114.

Jones/Wilson go farther than these to say that it is not just a pathology: it is a spiritual fact of life. You may argue with that aspect of their argument, but the matter of the association between “bad fathering” (emotionally or physically absent fathers) and “homosexuality” is very well established.

3) We should seek to "own" homosexual sin.
What he means by this is that we shouldn't
oppose the normalization of homosexuality in
our culture.

He doesn’t mean that at all – not in the least. Good heavens man! When Jones/Wilson say that we must “own” the judgment, they mean that we have to accept that it is justice that we are receiving (because it’s God’s doing) and that we must take action ourselves as a church to repent from the causes of the sin.

Certainly they say this: ‘Pointing to "their" corrupt fruit does not address our corrupt root. This is the core failure of neglectful/domineering fathers and husbands. Given these circumstances, we ought live in exile, as Jeremiah's Israel did, until God Himself lifted the curse. Jeremiah said to "seek the peace of the city" (Jer. 29:7), not protest pagan legislation. Under a curse, we should own the curse of same-sex marriage and not fight it so far as it concerns them. That is not our calling.’ That is to say: pointing the fingers at pagan sinners doesn’t do squat if the problem is that we are the ones who have made pagan sinners out of them.

They are not saying not to oppose the sin: they are saying to admit that we are part of the problem -- that we are sinners -- and to do what God calls His church to do as a matter of fact: repent of our sins. Can you repent of my sin? No, of course not. Can you repent of Elton John’s sin? No, of course not. Can you repent of your sin? Holy mackerel, Rooster: that’s the only sin you personally can repent of!

And when Jones/Wilson write what they have written, they’re not writing like two stupid bloggers in cyberspace: they are writing as Pastors to the church. So their pastoral position and vision must be accounted for. There is no doubt that, Promise Keepers notwithstanding (they’re a whole other kind of idolatry), the church today does not produce families that are consistently godly households. Divorce is as-likely inside the church as outside; children inside the church have a relativistic view of truth and morality; there is no such thing as church discipline anymore. And in that, the church must repent of its view of the family.

We should "embrace" the judgment of God.

Because it is just. We embrace God’s judgment because it is just.

Interestingly, he doesn't give a single biblical example of such "holy" masochism. That is because there aren't any. There is plenty of the opposite. I never read the Psalmist lamenting the judgment of God and saying, "Give me more, Lord!" "Let us have it!"

I enjoy the assertion “because there aren’t any” because it demonstrates the opportunity to grow together. It is true that Jones/Wilson doesn’t provide many examples of their point, but they do provide one: Jer 29. It is an interesting letter from God (via Jeremiah) to Israel: it says (in digest) I have exiled you in Babylon, “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jer 29:9) See: God is punishing Israel and at the same time expecting them to obey Him anyway because His punishment is just.

As for the Psalmist, for example, Ps 94 says:

12Blessed is the man whom You chasten, O LORD,
And whom You teach out of Your law;
13That You may grant him relief from the days of adversity,
Until a pit is dug for the wicked.
14For the LORD will not abandon His people,
Nor will He forsake His inheritance.
15For judgment will again be righteous,
And all the upright in heart will follow it.

Plainly, God chastens those whom He loves and uses that as a method to teach out of the Law, but He will not forsake His people to final condemnation.

That’s not masochism: that’s discipline. If you accept Jones/Wilson’s covenantialism (and I’m sure you don’t), God is just to punish those who are covenant breakers.

Instead, I read cries for mercy. Of course, the
ultimate example is our Lord Jesus, who,
owning our sin, absolutely did not ask his Father
to judge him, did not resign himself to his fate,
but rather pleaded, "Let this cup pass from me!"

Oh brother. What Christ said was, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." (NASB) You might refer the KJV:” O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” If there is anything evident in this statement, it is certainly God’s mercy – in putting His wrath on His Son rather than on those who would believe. Christ did “resign Himself” in obedience. That is exactly what Jones/Wilson is arguing for here: obedience even when God is pouring out His wrath.

It certainly sounds pious to "own" God's
judgment, but that is a self-righteous chimera.
Jesus is the exemplar: one can "own" sin in the
deepest sense possible and still legitimately seek
the alleviation of the curse. Doug could not be
more wrong here.

You clearly do not understand what they are saying. In that, your criticism is not very useful.

4) Homosexuality is about resentment.
Doug's theological explanation for
homosexuality here is simply wrong. It is not a
longing for communion with a father; it is a
desire to eradicate gender distinctions and play
out on the physical plane the fundamental
metaphysical "monism" or "oneness" of
paganism. Again, see my paper for lengthy
historical and biblical evaluation of this topic.

I again refer you to the clinical/professional sources I have cited, and offer you that Wilson has said, “At its root, homosexuality is a love of sameness rather than difference. Jehovah teaches us to love difference, and in this fallen world obsessed with finding ways to deface God, homosexuality rejects difference in order to spite God.”

5) Christian fathers are the primary cause of
the curse of homosexuality.
I don't know where one even begins to argue
with this kind of blind assertion.

Because you are not familiar with the argument that neglectful fatherhood has a high correlation to homosexuality, I will again refer you to the sources I have cited.

6) Homosexuality will only pass when Christian
fatherhood is pleasing to God.
I don't know how Doug has discerned the mind
of God here as to the duration of his judgment,
but I call it "making things up."

Suit yourself.

Finally, he sums up by saying this:
"In true repentance, we should invert as many
contemporary categories as we can—own the
curse of homosexuality upon our parenting,
grant the science, and explicitly embrace God's
transformation of our civil order. True
repentance in the Church, not trust in civil
coercion, will either restore that order or
establish a different order. So we openly accept
homosexual marriage in the civil realm as God's
means of undermining that civil realm, and we
accept that He has done this in judgment for
wicked fathering within the Church."

"True" repentance allegedly means resigning
oneself to the curse, and "explicitly embracing"
the disfigurement of our civil order. Not
surprisingly, we get no biblical references, no
biblical examples, no biblical warrant
whatsoever for construing "true" repentance this
way. It all sounds very pious, as I've said
before, but nothing in Scripture requires me to
put this twisted spin on the nature of
homosexuality or the nature of "true"
repentance.

Well, you have summed up all your misconceptions of Jones/Wilson’s thesis here, so I’ll simply point up the page to where you have made your mistakes.

At one point Doug points to Jeremiah 29.7
which tells Israel to "seek the peace of the city" -
to which he adds, "not protest pagan
legislation." But on the contrary, seeking the
"peace of Babylon" is precisely to support godly
legislation and laws in Babylon, so that it might
prosper! To not protest pagan legislation is to
abdicate the salt and light function of God's
people in the world, and to resign Babylon to
judgment; I fail to see how that is seeking the
"peace" of the city.

Oh good heavens – did you read this essay or not? Moreover, did you read Jeremiah 29 or not? Do you have any idea what kind of government was in Babylon when this letter was written by God to Israel?

Here’s the main text:

4"Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD.”

Where does it say anything about “supporting godly legislation”? In what way could they have done so? It says to pray for the city because their own welfare it connected to that city’s welfare. That is: live in exile peacefully and in obedience, and (most importantly) do not listen to the deception of the prophets who claim to live there.

What exactly do you think was going on in Babylon during this 70-year exile? Were the Israelites citizens of Babylon? Rooster: they were slaves and exiles – some in high places, like Jeremiah, and most in low places. They weren’t voting. They weren’t holding civil authority. Nebuchadnezzar was king. Period.

As Doug would have it, the Christian thing to do
when the barbarians are at the gates is hand them
the keys, invite them in and make them a spot of
tea while we're at it. Again, I fail to see how
that seeks the "prosperity" of the city.

Again, you simply don’t understand what Wilson has written.

As I see it, Doug has written far too many off
the cuff, poorly reasoned, biblically suspect
screeds in his career, and this is the worst
example yet. And the size of his megaphone is
disproportionate to the biblical soundness of his
ideas. Nothing personal here; but there is too
much at stake to let things like this get a pass

Yes, of course: nothing personal. That ameliorates what you have said above into something that one shouldn’t get too worked up about, I guess.

And before you get into the saddle and ride out a response to me, let me make a couple-6 things clear:

(1) The definition of the problem is this: it is crucial that the church realize that radical sexual autonomy is not a discrete or isolated matter; it is not merely an agenda reserved for a few “civil libertarians;” it is not merely a “political” issue; it is not “just about” the privacy of adult consensual sex; it is rather one very public facet of a far more comprehensive vision for a selfconsciously post-“western,” post-Christian and post-modern society. (wow: look at that! I agree with the Rooster!)

(2) Homosexuality is certainly a sin. I’m on the record all over the place on that matter. There’s no way to justify it.

(3) The “God hates Fags” approach doesn’t win any battle, and ignores the admonition to speak the truth in love.

(4) If I were to criticize Jones/Wilson’s approach here, it would be on the basis of their application of the matter of the New Covenant regarding the cause of the problem – not in their application of the New Covenant in the solution to the problem.

(5) Tacking the 10 commandments to the Town Hall door doesn’t solve the problem even if that action defines the problem with epistemic sufficiency.

(6) I cannot ask God to forgive me if I am myself still willingly disobedient. This is a very important point which requires more than a bullet to unpack.

Let’s say, for example, that I am a devout Catholic (I am not), and that it turns out that the Prots were right all along and the mass as Rome explains and demonstrates it is idolatry – that is, praying to bread and wine is giving something to not-God which is due only to God. Now frankly, the Catholic doesn’t believe that this is wrong, but that doesn’t make it right: it makes it wrong with the explanation, “the Pope told me so”. Funny that this excuse didn’t work for Adam or Eve, so we can’t expect it to work for me, the hypothetical Catholic.

Now as a Catholic, I go to confession every Saturday in order to make myself right for the Eucharist on Sunday. “Bless me father for I have sinned. Since last week I did yadda yadda yadda. I confess I did wrong. Thank you for my penance.” And on Sunday I treat the Eucharist like God, never once confessing it – because I don’t think it is wrong.

Now how is it possible that this Catholic will ever be forgiven for being idolatrous – given the premise that treating bread like God is idolatrous? He never confesses – he never even feels guilty. He certainly never repents – because it never occurs to him that he’s doing anything wrong.

Now take that example – one man, wrong in a way which never occurs to him but wrong in a way which is catastrophic – and multiply it by the length and breadth of the evangelical church. What if the evangelical church has traded its internal authority and holy call for worldly influence and material/political gain? What if evangelidom has given up the prayer closet for the voting booth, and the pulpit for the stump?

I suggest to you, Rooster, that the evidence is in for the church and it should occur to us that we are doing something wrong. It has been wrong for a long time – a lot longer than most people will realize, because it hasn’t been wrong since the 1960’s or the 50’s but it has been wrong even before the death of Nietzsche.

That doesn’t make Wilson and Jones right. What it makes is a new question which disarms the principalities and powers of this world.

[?] Why I hate MSIE

Here's what the blog ought to look like (and it looks like this, more or less, in Firefox and in MAC MSIE 5.X):

And then here's what it looks like in MSIE for PC (6.X):

You can right-click those to open them up in their own windows so you can really see my dilemma. For some reason, MSIE 6.X thinks that the "sidebar" doesn't have room to sit next to the "main" section.

Friday, July 08, 2005

[?] Well ... THAT was FUN?

OK -- I have reindexed my blog, and for those of you who wan to know what all the [?] and [!] are all about, here's what you need to know:

ICON     CATEGORY
----     --------
[!]      Gospel
[*]      The Mote in my Neighbor's Eye
[#]      The Log in My Eye
[@]      Orthodoxy
[%]      Name Dropping
[$]      schtick
[?]      Fluffernutter

So when you see these indicators in the titles, you can rest assured that it is to help me maintain the index page.

Also, welcome to the new template. I designed it myself. Pretty neat, huh?

I have to go home now and meet my kids when they come home from Mimi's house.