pilgrim.not.wanderer

To the pacifist anabaptist folks:

You believe in nonviolence across the board, right?  

(I believe in non-violence in the Church, but I take it that you believe in nonviolence generally.  That’s what makes your position distinct, right?  I say the Church can’t rightly use violence to advance Christian discipleship.  You say the State can’t rightly use violence either, right?)

Do you believe in social democracy and the welfare state?  

(I do, basically.)

Don’t you realize that such a system depends on taxation?

Don’t you realize that taxation depends on (or is a kind of) violence?

(After all, many folks don’t want to pay their taxes and wouldn’t pay their taxes if it weren’t for the threat of violence by the State.  Since I don’t believe in non-violence when it comes to the State, my support of taxation is consistent with my beliefs.  But aren’t you being inconsistent?)

Isn’t it more truthful to say that you believe in non-violence when it comes to right-wing projects, but that you support violence in the pursuit of left-wing projects?

(BTW - I’m NOT saying it is inconsistent to be against a war but for taxes.  That makes you anti-war.  But, as I see it, it means that you are not a believer in non-violence generally.)  

Because of this stuff, I’m not Pentecostal or charismatic.  Watch it.  This is idiocy, isn’t it?  Isn’t this basically satanic?  

I’ve personally heard stuff like this (though slightly less crazy) from charismatic preachers.  I’ve personally experienced a preacher, who looked just like Tobias Fünke (from Arrested Development), try to “bless” the gathering at a men’s retreat by flamboyantly running around with a weird flag and dragging it over our heads.  In my opinion he was acting more like a gay witch doctor than a Christian pastor.   Wasn’t his so called blessing basically pagan, even if it was dressed up in quasi Christian language?

I bumped into him while returning to my cabin about an hour later and it was all I could do not to smack him.  I didn’t, obviously.  I bet that if I pointed out how ridiculous his behaviour was I would have been pinned down and prayed over by ’spiritual warriors’. I simply avoided eye contact with him and shook my head in disaproval.

My friend asked me these questions: Do you think that God communicates to us through coincidences? What would you consider the main ways that God communicates with us now a days?

One thing we know is that success and/or happy circumstances are not a sign of God’s pleasure/approval.

After all God

makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

The bible teaches that God doesn’t providentially rule the world such that the evil always suffer and things always go well for the good.  (See Psalm 73)  So is it wrong to conclude, simply from good and agreeable circumstances, that God is happy with us.  In my opinion this represents a kind of generically religious though unChristian superstition.  

If I want to know how God feels about me, I look to the gospel and to Christ.  I don’t look inside of myself or outside to my circumstances.

If I want to know what God would have me do, I

(a) read the gospels, the NT, and the OT as interpeted in view of Christ

(b) seek out wise counsel

(c) try to rationally evaluate the options

(d) try to make sure my conscience is properly formed and sensitive

(e) pray for wisdom and guidance

and other things like this.

I don’t think that there is a secret “will of God” which is hidden up in heaven and has to be pried from God’s hands through special spiritual techniques.  God expects me to be faithful to what he has revealed.  I don’t need to be on an endless search for secret information about my future and what God specifically wants me to do in each and every situation.  That’s called divination isn’t it?  Isn’t this forbidden? A Christian horoscope?

That’s my thoughts on this stuff, at least for now.  Basically, we need to spend more time in the Bible and looking to Christ and less time obsessing with God’s secret will for our lives.

I wouldn’t want to rule out God getting our attention with strange circumstances.  It also seems right to thank God when strange circumstances turn up in our favour.  (I got into a specialist the very next day instead of the usually 6 week wait last fall.  I thanked God for it.)  But we need to be cautious.  There is such a thing as superstition and it shouldn’t be confused with faith.  

Traditionally, in Christian theology, God has been understood to be impassible.  That is, God doesn’t suffer under the actions of anything/anyone completely apart from and outside of himself.  

According to this technical usage of ‘passion’ and ‘impassibility’, when chocolate is brought before me I suffer a passion for it.  That is, the chocolate acts upon me and I’m passive–the chocolate is an agent and I am a patient.  I may choose to do what I want with my passion, but insofar as the chocolate really has acted upon me I have no choice in whether or not the passion is churned up in me.  I am passive and the chocolate is active.  In that sense I’m controlled by the chocolate.

The doctrine of the impassibility of God teaches that God can never be gripped and acted upon by an outside agent in this way.  It doesn’t mean that God can’t passionately love or passionately feel sad.  (I here use ‘passionate’ in the modern sense, meaning intense or fervent.)  It does mean that God’s love and sadness are different, in an important way, from that of ours.

Consider Romans 9, 10 and 11.  Here we find Paul, among other things, describing Israel’s betrayal of God and rejection of Christ.  God is obviously understood to be very sad and otherwise upset about this.  This not what God would prefer.  It is not what he wants.  He wants Israel to be faithful, and to receive Christ.  

Does this unfaithfulness of Israel come from outside of God and grip him, acting upon him such that he suffers as a patient to an outside agent?  In certain obviously sense, yes.   

But in a deeper and more mysterious sense, no.  Consider the last verse of chapter 11.

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

   “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
   “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Whatever else is included in the “all things” spoken of here, Israel’s unfaithfulness certainly is.  Context makes this obvious.  So we find that even this betrayal came from/through/to the Lord in some deep and mysterious sense.  

Even that which breaks God’s heart is ultimately given life and sustained by God himself.  In this sense God is never a pure patient to an outside agent.  And so in this technical sense God is impassible.

See how this differs from my passion for chocolate?  God, as God, relates to everything else in a fundamentally different way than I do.  I, as a creature, relate to everything else (save God) as a fellow creature.  God relates to everything as its creator and sustainer.  God is the one in whom “we live and move and have our being”.  That is why God is impassible.  This is no handicap and it represents no coldness or aloofness in God.  

It is rationalism which refuses to acknowledge this simply because it is incomprehensible.  (It is, however, apprehensible.)  

Prayer isn’t spiritual technology.  Prayer isn’t Christian spell-casting.  Prayer isn’t Christian divination.

It isn’t even a “proven and sensible” means to some end.  

The question of whether prayer works is nearly irrelevant.  To the person who prays, such a question is foreign.  If you find yourself dwelling on this question, it may be that you haven’t tasted the living flavour of prayer.  

Prayer bursts forth from the heart.  Thankfulness.  Praise.  Lament.  Longing.  Petition.  

We don’t pray these prayers because they work.  (Which is NOT to say that we pray them even though they don’t work.)

Real prayer isn’t so cold and calculated as to render such a question relevant.  In face of life we find ourselves with thankfulness, praise, lamentation, and longing for God to set things right.  Prayer is the expression of these matters of the heart.  We simply find ourselves with the need to express these things, and so we do.  

So like I said, in the heat of the moment the question of whether prayer works is foreign to the one who prays.

We don’t do it because it works, but because we can’t help but do it.  Real prayer is that desperate.  

Cold and calculative prayers are hardly worthy of the name.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,  but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. (Hebrews 1:1-2)

I’m satisfied with Christ and his apostles, thank you very much.  Why go back to the old ways when the real thing has come?

I guess I should elaborate on my recent ‘drive-by criticisms’ of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement generally.  (See here.)

I said: “ Pentecostalism is a kind of cancer that eats away at Christ centered piety in the church. “

In my younger days I heard it said more than once that we Evangelicals have spent too much time on Christ, to the neglect of the Spirit.  If anything, I’d say opposite is true.  The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, bestowed upon the Church by Christ.  The Spirit was sent to draw us to Christ.

In my observation Pentecostals and charismatics deal with the the Spirit as a kind of mysterious hidden power which does exciting tricks and otherwise empowers us.  At its worse this amounts to a kind of natural, generic religion.  You could believe in and practice this stuff without ever hearing of Christ or reading the gospels.  If Christ is involved at all, He is merely the doorway in to this ‘higher’ life in the Spirit.  Our goals and our methods are then ‘empowered’ by this ’spirit’, rather than Christ’s goals and methods.  This turns Christianity into an ugly, greedy, power-hungry religion.  Somehow “taking back the culture” or growing a ridiculous TV ministry conglomerate becomes an expression of Christian piety.  Christianity gets turned into a way to get power to achieve exactly what we want.  This is paganism dressed up in quasi-Christian terminology.

I said: “ I see the Pentecostal/charismatic world as a bastion of spiritual abuse. “

In Pentecostal and charismatic churches humans gain tremendous power and authority.  With this ‘power’ comes all sorts of abuses of power.  

I said: “ Taking the Lord’s name in vain seems to be standard practice. “

The chief form in which this abuse of power takes place is through ‘words from the Lord’.  I can’t count how many times I’ve come across this.  I’ve heard someone say God specifically told them they’d marry their current girlfriend.  A year and a half later I found out they had a horribly messy breakup.  I can assure that God didn’t lie, so who did?  I’ve heard of someone approaching one of my friends with a message from God: you are supposed to break up with your current boyfriend, God told me.  They didn’t break up.  They are happily married.  Apparently God never felt the need to directly tell them to breakup.  He chose this blessed messenger instead?  I doubt it.  It seems extremely likely to me that this person was merely invoking God’s name to back up his own opinion.  That’s a pretty serious sin.  In my observation this kind of sin is absolutely rampant amongst Pentecostals and charismatics.

I’d like to add one more thing.  Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement  have transformed our understanding of the presence of God.  God is now thought of as very distant, and the way to get him to come near is by singing.  We coax him down from heaven by singing praise and worship songs.  D’you ever notice that in the midst of praise and worship singing the ‘worship leader’ will almost always comment on how close God is?  Where was he before?

This has lead to a vast reshaping of Christian piety.  Very many Christians I know are terrorized by the distance of God.  They live in fear of ‘how they are doing with God’.  When someone asks them, ‘How are you doing with God?’, their thoughts immediately turn into themselves and their own internal states.  They think of their emotions.  They live in a bi-polar spiritual cycle.  They have huge spiritual highs at ‘worship’ services and crazy lows at other times.

I believe in praise and worship, but I do not believe in ‘the Gospel of Praise and Worship’.  That is, I do not believe that singing praise and worship songs mediates my relationship with God.  I absolutely do not believe that singing praise and worship puts me in better standing with God.  Neither to I believe that God is only near to me when I feel him while singing praise and worship songs.  

This way of thinking has completely taken over Evangelicalism.  I was raised in it.  You’d be hard pressed to find a single church that doesn’t hardily embrace it.  I don’t buy it.  I think it amounts to a denial of the Gospel, at least in practice if not in official doctrine.

Here’s an interesting article by James J. A. Smith.  It is called Teaching a Calvinist to Dance.  It is a kind of personal testimony and apology (i.e. apologetic) for being both Reformed and Pentecostal.  

I couldn’t disagree more with his enthusiastic embrace of Pentecostalism.  

I know, nothing is more thrilling for an author (and yet so boring for his readers) than criticizing a fellow Christian on the web.  And few things are more evident of self-righteousness than ill-tempered, uncharitable criticism.  

Still, I can’t help but disagree.  Read the article yourself and come to your own conclusion.  

As for me, Pentecostalism is a kind of cancer that eats away at Christ centered piety in the church.  I see the Pentecostal/charismatic world as a bastion of spiritual abuse.  Taking the Lord’s name in vain seems to be standard practice.  (I take that to mean using the name and the authority of the Lord to back up one’s own projects and desires.  ”God told me to do this!”  ”The Lord would have us do that!”)  Pentecostalism is an ugly, power hungry version of Christianity.   

At least that’s what Pentecostalism is to me, according to my personal encounters with it in real Pentecostal churches and with real Pentecostal people.  I’ve attended Pentecostal churches and have some friends who still do.  I’ve interacted with tons of Pentecostals at the bible college I attended.  I have no doubt there are many saintly folks among the Pentecostal set.  It may even be that the official teaching of Pentecostalism (if such a thing exists) disapproves of these kinds of abuses.  Still, my lived experience of Pentecostalism was saturated with this stuff.  

Whereas most people outside of the church think that fundamentalism is the big threat, in fact it is Pentecostalism that poses the great danger.  It is the Pentecostals who think they have direct line to God.  It is the Pentecostals who seem so unwilling to exercise their critical faculties.  Pentecostal leaders can hardly be reigned in and kept in check–they speak for God himself.  If you are worried about Pat Robertson and his kind, you are worried about Pentecostalism.

I’ve encountered first hand far too many “words from the Lord” from Pentecostals which turned out to be complete and utter falsehoods.  I simply don’t buy it anymore.  Don’t try it with me.  (Don’t take me as saying that God doesn’t lead us.  God does.  But that is a very different thing from the Pentecostal/charismatic practice of constantly receiving “words” directly from the Lord.  So many of these “words” are obviously not from God.)

Smith has this to say:

In particular, I think Pentecostal spirituality and charismatic worship take the sovereignty of God so seriously that you might actually be surprised by God every once in a while. You are open and expectant that the Spirit of God is sometimes going to surprise you, because God is free to act in ways that might differ from your set of expectations.

In my experience, nothing is LESS surprising and LESS unexpected that the kinds of “acts of God” which pop up during Pentecostal/charismatic worship.  These things are very predictable.  For the life of me, I don’t know why more folks don’t call Pentecostals/charismatics out on this.  The Pentecostal dog and pony show can be (and usually is?) just as empty and formulaic as your worst liturgical high-church nightmare.  

What can I say?  Maybe my view of things is skewed.  But that’s how I see it for now.  I’m not Pentecostal or charismatic, and I’m happy about it.  I’m not Reformed either. 

OK, I’m only joking… but seriously, how come so many of the book-writing emergent church leader types as so freaking old?  I’m talking 40’s or early 50’s.  Or at least late 30’s.  I won’t name names, but you know who I’m talking about.  (If they aren’t really that old, then man, they really let themselves go.)

I’m not being ageist.  No.  I just think it is pretty hilarious that these old men are the supposed futurists guiding us into the world of today’s young people.  Go back to the 90’s where you belong!!!  

Heck, I’m 28.  Can you believe that?  These people don’t even belong to MY generation.  And the kids these days are reading them to find out about their own culture?  Only in Christendom.  Only in Christendom.

Relax, I’m half kidding.

BTW - Generation X folks are the new Baby-boomers.  Yes, Generation X folks are in their 40’s.  They are practically middle age.  Soon they’ll be seniors. 

Here’s the second accusation the Battleground God quiz made of me:

“Earlier you said that it is justifiable to base one’s beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction. But now you do not accept that the rapist Peter Sutcliffe was justified in doing just that. The example of the rapist has exposed that you do not in fact agree that any belief is justified just because one is convinced of its truth. So you need to revise your opinion here. The intellectual sniper has scored a bull’s-eye!”

First, allow me to make a qualification which the quiz wasn’t built to handle.  If I were to formulate my actual position, in my own words, I would omit the “regardless of the external evidence” part.  But I would not omit the “lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction” part.

(more…)

(I’m talking about morality itself, not the possibility of moral behavior from those who don’t admit God.)

Consider America’s invasion of Iraq.  Here are some of its properties:

Combat began in March of 2003.

The chief architect of the battle plan was General so-and-so.

Such-and-such number of troops were involved.

Such-and-such number of civilians were killed.

It was (or wasn’t) launched under false pretenses by Bush administration.

It was (or wasn’t) officially sanctioned by the UN Security council according to resolution such-and-such.

We could continue to list very very many properties of this invasion.  Each of these would constitute a fact.  For a thing having a property constitutes a fact.  And so there are facts about the invasion.

But are there moral properties?  Moral facts?

If the invasion was wrong, that would be a moral fact.

If the invasion was right, that would be a moral fact.

So long as you believe in either of these, or in something in-between perhaps, then you believe in at least one moral fact–this one.

(more…)

I just played an online quiz called Battleground God.  It is basically a test to see if you can answer true or false style questions about God without contradicting yourself.  At the end it gives you a score and points out the mistakes you made.  Here’s one of the contradictions it accuses me of making:

“You claimed earlier that there is no basis for morality if God does not exist. But now you say that if God does exist, she cannot make what is sinful good and vice-versa. But if this is true, it means that God cannot be the basis of morality. If God were the basis of morality, then she could decide what is good and what is bad. The fact that you think that God cannot do this shows that things must be right or wrong independently of what God decides. In other words, God chooses what is right because it is right; things are not right just because God chooses them.”

Here’s my response:

(more…)

What if I’m an emerging church kinda guy, and I didn’t even know it?  (Experientially and practically, not necessarily doctrinally.)

Here’s my rough and ready commentary on Galatians.  I was thinking about it on the bus ride home today. 

(more…)

“Shepherd,” Fackenheim continued after another noxious exhalation, “modernity thinks God to be vague, abstract, ethereal, ‘iffy.’  God, however, is concrete, solid, dense with a density beyond our imagining.  There is nothing ‘iffy’ about God; but there is a great deal that is ‘iffy’ about you and me.”  Dumbfounded at the spiritual assault (albeit benign) from a world-class philosopher, I was still reeling when he launched the next salvo.  “Shepherd, in view of the horrific depredations of our century – crowned by the Shoah – there are huge question marks above humankind.  But concerning God there is no question whatever.  Never forget,” he concluded, “We do not demythologize God; God demythologizes us as God exposes the groundless myths by which humankind is enthralled.”  I staggered out of his office, the topic of my philosophy essay all but lost in the aura without and the awe within that have never evaporated and that continue to keep Fackenheim’s name fragrant.

My wife’s grandfather died a day or two after Christmas.  He was cremated right away, but the funeral wasn’t until today.

It was held at a Catholic church that was showing its age in a bad way.  It was literally a stone’s throw away from a another Catholic church in much better condition.  I don’t know for sure, but it seems likely to me that neither church is bustling on Sundays.  So why were they built so close to each other?  Anyway, apparently my wife’s mom was baptized at this old church.  

(more…)

What’s your theological worldview?created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Neo orthodoxYou are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God’s most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. Neo orthodox 100% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 93% Reformed Evangelical 68% Roman Catholic 50% Emergent/Postmodern 46% Classical Liberal 32% Fundamentalist 18% Charismatic/Pentecostal 7% Modern Liberal 4%

The weird thing is that, under any normal understanding of the words, I most certainly do make “the Bible the central issue for faith” - or at least a central issue.  And so would Karl Barth, wouldn’t he?  I certainly take the Bible to be central to Christian faith.  And in most of the areas where Barth self-consciously separates from the Reformed tradition I disagree with him.  (e.g. Covenant theology, election, revelation)

Tonight I had my first real baby-sitting experience.  I’ve looked after kids before–but never a baby.  Definitely never a 3 week old baby.  Of course my wife was here to help.  (OK, I’ll admit it, she changed the diapers and wiped dirty baby butt while I held up the legs.)  Still, it felt like I was really taking care of the little guy.  I held him and fed him and burped him.  He’s a really easy going baby.  He only cried when hungry or poopy.  Otherwise he just slept and looked cute.

2000 years ago the Divine Son came down from heaven and dwelt amongst us as a tiny baby.   After tonight I think I better understand just how weak and helpless God became for us and for our salvation.  

The older I get the more important Christmas becomes to me.  Now that my lust for toys has been tamed (for the most part), my thoughts are free to contemplate the deep mystery of Christmas. 

(more…)

I take it that ‘fundamentalism’, properly understood, is the name of a  protest movement, first within American presbyterianism and then within the wider Protestant world, against church leaders who maintained their positions of ministry and authority, even though they no longer believed in certain basic (fundamental) Christian doctrines.  The main thrust of the argument was this: 

(more…)