There is a school of thought that says physics is the ultimate reality; that everything reduces to subatomic particles mindlessly subject to natural law.

The story is told—I don’t remember where I heard it—of two young women sitting in the front row of a concert hall, holding the score for the music the orchestra was about to play. The conductor saw them and stepped off the podium. He leaned over and whispered to them, “You will not find it in there.”

I was a professional musician earlier in my career, and in the course of my studies I learned enough music theory to be able to describe music mathematically. I’ve studied some acoustics, and I understand how to describe music in terms of pressure oscillations in the air. But there is something to music—the “it” of which that conductor was speaking—that is not to be found in vibrations, in mathematics, or even in the score.

Listen to Chopin. Listen to Coltrane. Listen to Crosby, Stills & Nash. In it you will hear reductionism’s rebuttal.

Over the holidays, my wife and I saw two movies, both on the recommendations of trusted friends: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Hugo.

I was, pre-children, a pretty hard-core film buff.  One week in college I cut an entire week of classes for a science fiction film festival, something like 17 films in one week.  How I avoided becoming a film major is still something of a mystery to me.  Post-children, movies are a rare treat, especially ones that don’t involve talking animals or treacle-heavy plots.

I was looking forward to Sherlock Holmes because I love the character and I think Robert Downey Jr. is one of the great actors of our age.  The film was more like a video game than a movie, with undeveloped characters and a plot of little consequence to the movie itself.  The theater, moreover, was filthy and the previews were jaw-droppingly offensive; the screen that proclaimed that the following preview had been rated for all audiences was embarrassingly inaccurate. When I left the theater, I had been entertained somewhat but was less than satisfied.  At least I wasn’t mad or felt cheated, which has been my sense at the end of way too many movies over the past few years.  What passes for good in Hollywood these days is ennui and nihilism, neither of which is an emotion worthy of the magic of the silver screen.

Hugo, on the other hand, was more of an accidental pleasure.  (more…)

In þe bigynnyng was þe word, and þe word was at God, and God was þe word.
Þis was in þe bigynnyng at God.
Alle þingis weren maad bi hym, and wiþouten hym was maad no þing, þat þing þat was maad.
In hym was lijf, and þe lijf was þe liyt of men; and þe liyt schyneþ in derknessis,
and derknessis comprehendiden not it.

John 1:1-5 (Wycliffe translation)

David Brooks links to some of the best magazine writing of the past year, and one of the articles is about the origin of the universe. In The Accidental Universe, Alan Lightman tells the story of how the fine-tuning of our universe has driven theoretical physicists to postulate the idea of a multiverse to escape the implication that our universe was designed. Ours is just one of an infinite set of universes that just happened to instantiate the right conditions for life. That is, there is nothing particularly special about our universe; given infinity, it was likely to come about at some point.

The fine-tuning of our universe is described well:

For example, if the nuclear force were a few percentage points stronger than it actually is, then all the hydrogen atoms in the infant universe would have fused with other hydrogen atoms to make helium, and there would be no hydrogen left. No hydrogen means no water. Although we are far from certain about what conditions are necessary for life, most biologists believe that water is necessary. On the other hand, if the nuclear force were substantially weaker than what it actually is, then the complex atoms needed for biology could not hold together. As another example, if the relationship between the strengths of the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force were not close to what it is, then the cosmos would not harbor any stars that explode and spew out life-supporting chemical elements into space or any other stars that form planets. Both kinds of stars are required for the emergence of life. The strengths of the basic forces and certain other fundamental parameters in our universe appear to be “fine-tuned” to allow the existence of life.

The data cries out for explanation, and almost no one has the gumption to write it off as sheer dumb luck. Some scientists agree with theologians that it is best explained by a divine act of design. Francis Collins, while skeptical of intelligent design in biology, warmly embraces the idea that the physical constants of the universe were orchestrated by a higher power to make the evolution of life possible. Even the long time atheist philosopher Antony Flew could not explain away the data and changed his mind about the existence of God. But this sort of move is not a popular one with leading physicists.

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I’m a bit out of my depth when it comes to international affairs, but the convergence of two deaths over the weekend bears commentary.  North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and former Czech president Vaclav Havel both passed the bar into eternity and their leadership could not have been more of a contrast in worldviews.

Kim’s creation of a bubble around his people has led them to poverty, starvation, and isolation.  His bubble has become rather famous for its ability to insulate visitors from the reality of the nation’s conditions, or, rather, for its ability to insulate its people from visitors who can point out the reality of the conditions.  The most visually stunning documentation of this is a snapshot of the Korean night sky from a satellite: bright in the South and dark in the North.

Havel, on the other hand, knew the power of the arts to demonstrate that the emperor (the Soviets) had no clothes (“power” over “the powerless,” as he called it).  While Havel was not per se a believer, his philosophy was laden with the fruits of Christian thought, from the dignity of all persons to the importance of balances that check the fallen nature of leaders.  His motto was, according to some sources, “Truth and love must prevail over lies and hate.”  James Sire, best known for the classic study in worldviews “The Universe Next Door,” produced one of the signature studies of Havel, “Vaclav Havel: the Intellectual Conscience of International Politics” (IVP 2001), which is helpful reading for anyone who travels in Eastern Europe or wants to understand post-Christian Europe.

We live in dizzying times.  The former dictators are passing at a startling clip: Gaddafi, Kim, and many others.  So too, however, are some of our other leaders like Havel who turned selflessless into an artform (literally in his case).  I am grateful, in such times, for passages such as Isaiah 6:1: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and His robe filled the temple.”  God is not an emperor who lacks for clothes, and we are not a people who lack for a loving King.

He was an ardent opponent of Christianity, but I will miss him.

I sat in the front row for his debate with Dinesh D’Souza in Charlotte, NC last year (or was it in 2009?). Hitchens spoke first. It may have been the only time he had D’Souza completely flat-footed and unable to disagree with him. The reason was the debate topic: Is radical Islam a threat to America? It wasn’t a point they held in dispute.

D’Souza began his first speech essentially by saying, “I agree with Christopher, and since that doesn’t make for much of a debate, and since he already expressed my own opinion so well, I’m just going to go ahead and change the subject.”

Hitchens smiled and rolled with it. He was always quick on his feet that way. I don’t know of anyone who was more effective with the use of rhetoric. It was in many ways his undoing, I’m afraid, at least as far as most of the world could see.

In debate he relied heavily on rhetoric in the form of emotionally loaded language. Religion bothered him. God bothered him. I don’t know how well he was able to separate one from the other.

I can understand his feelings, at least to some extent. Religion bothers me: too much of it is shallow, sterile, and false, even within Christianity. Religion outside of Christianity is just wrong and (I am convinced) deadly.

God bothers me, too, though in a different way altogether. God places demands on me. The worst demands are not the moral ones, as you might think. The hardest demand he places on me is that I accept his love while acknowledging it is entirely his own initiative. I want to be the kind of person who can earn his love, but God loves me even though I am not. His love is very good—and it is also thoroughly humbling.

Though I’ve read Hitchens’ book God Is Not Great, I have no way of knowing what bothered him more: God or religion. He regarded God as religion’s invention, but from the way I understand reality to be, he had encounters with God, whether he accepted or rejected the reality of the experience. God was present in all the Christians he interacted with, including the believers he debated, and his own believing brother, Peter.

Tragically, he chose against God.

I will miss his brilliant repartee. I will miss the strong challenge he kept raising against religion, for we who believe need corrective criticism. I will miss his sense of humor. I grieve for the life he has lost.

Why study the Bible on computer? I’ve written previously about significant negatives associated with electronic study, especially Bible study. I don’t find it especially conducive to prayer and worship; it doesn’t draw me quickly into a sense of fellowship with God. Now I’m about to turn around and explain why that’s not so true after all.

Here’s the short version: deep study is a matter of focusing, expanding, meditating, and ultimately applying and/or presenting, and all of them are entirely wrapped in and around prayer and worship.

I’ll come back to that later, after I spend some time on focusing, expanding, meditating, and presenting. This is where great resources can be a great help. I’ve spent time lately with two top Bible applications, Logos (available for Windows and Mac) and Accordance for Mac. In what follows I’ll be assuming the position of a layman, although one who is serious about studying Scripture. Those who have a more extensive background in Bible or biblical languages will have no trouble seeing how this would apply at their level.

Let’s focus first on focusing.

To study the Bible requires, well, study. I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that God’s primary revelation to us is in the form of a book. My pastor tells me the difference between reading the Bible and studying the Bible is a pencil: writing what you see, think, wonder about, conclude, apply, and so on.

Well, that might work for him. For me there’s a problem. A pencil is no good without paper. Once I write something on a piece of paper, I have to decide where to keep it, so I can find it when I need it. I’m not very good at that dauntingly difficult, nay, oppressive life skill. I don’t get along well with paper, and paper doesn’t get along well with me. As I’m writing today I can turn my head and glance around the office, and I see seven stacks of paper. (I’ll organize it all someday, I promise.)

So the first time I downloaded an open-source Bible study application years ago, I had one question: can I make notes on a passage of Scripture, and can I tie those notes to that passage so I can find them next time?

It seems so simple, and in fact there are free software packages have made this possible now. Howard Hendricks, the great discipler/teacher from Dallas Theological Seminary, has a line for that, though: “Don’t let the simplicity fool you.” To me this is the most basic and most crucial service required of any Bible study system. If you’re like me—if keeping track of your study notes is a major life challenge, or even a minor one—then get yourself a good Bible study application and make good use of it. (I mentioned some free applications last time, and a reader suggested I add Olive Tree software to that list.)

After a pencil, or the on-screen equivalent, the next great difference between reading and studying the Bible is the resources you call on as aids. Top-tier software packages allow you to dig underneath the English, without requiring years of Greek or Hebrew study. You could find the following on Ephesians 4:15, for example: the Greek word translated “speaking the truth,” according to multiple sources,“has the widest sense of being true.… It it almost impossible to express it satisfactorily in English.” It is “holding the truth”; “following the truth”; opposed to “error” or “deceit” (Ephesians 4:14); it is “truthing it;” or being “followers of truth,” though not in the sense of searching for it; “lit., ‘truthing in love,’ which has the idea of maintaining truth in love in both speech and life”

That insight came out out of perhaps half a dozen sources—dictionaries, commentaries, alternate translations—but just one computer screen. Not incidentally, it also corrected my erroneous understanding of what that verse was about. I thought it was really about speaking, but I was wrong; it’s much more than that.

This Electronic Student series is for those who, like me, are not trained in the original languages of the Bible. Those who do know Greek and/or Hebrew will find much more to like in commercial Bible software’s Greek and Hebrew tools: parsing, diagramming, explaining, analyzing.

Also of Interest: Accordance or Logos?

In putting the finishing touches on my manuscript on authority, office and the image of God, I came across this wonderful passage in Thomas Molnar, Authority and Its Enemies (p. 112):

There have always been people like Dr. Ronald Fletcher, who writes: “Never accept authority; whether that of a jealous god, priest, prime minister, president, dictator, unless in your own seriously considered view, there are good grounds for it. . . . Rationalists in the modern world reject the authoritarian heritage of Moses and substitute a set of non-commandments, i.e., principles on which the individual must work out his own conduct when faced by particular problems.” One wonders what authority issues (or doesn’t issue?) the non-commandments which tell individuals how they must work out their problems, and one is reassured again that the enemies of authority do not allow authority to fade away. If not Moses, then Dr. Ronald Fletcher is in authority.

Addendum: By the way, Molnar’s book contains the earliest negative use of politically correct that I’ve come across (p. 99).

Many of us are persuaded that religion is not merely one element among many in life but is central to one’s entire being. Social and political scientists have explored the implications of this for partisan loyalties, among other things.  But could one’s ecclesial commitments influence the more mundane side of life? For example, take a look at this map:

. . . and then look at this map:

I won’t pretend to isolate the causal connection, but it certainly appears that what Southern Baptists call coke, Lutherans and Methodists call pop and Catholics call soda. I offer this puzzling phenomenon to the graduate student in the social sciences casting about for a dissertation topic.

“Obviously, the way people ‘sell themselves’ has a lot to do with creating certain illusions, creating positive impressions and that is what interested me in reading the personals in the New York Review of Books, which sounded completely implausible and unbelievable.  My response to those personals was that if such people exist, why would they have to advertise?”

Gayle recently spoke with Paul Hollander, author of Extravagant Expectations: New Ways to Find Romantic Love in America.  Hollander was born in Budapest. He studied at the London School of Economics, the University of Illinois, and Princeton before teaching at Harvard and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  He is the author or editor of fourteen books on political sociology and cultural-intellectual history.

Gayle Trotter: This is Gayle Trotter, and today I’m speaking with Paul Hollander, author of Extravagant Expectations: New Ways to Find Romantic Love in America. Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Mr. Hollander.

Paul Hollander: You are very welcome.

GT: Could you tell us what sparked your interest in love in the American style?

PH: I begin with the fact that I live here, and I am not a native-born American. Therefore the customs of my not-so-new country seem to be different than the prevailing customs of Europe or Central Europe, where I grew up in Hungary. But, in addition, there was a more specific point of departure for this interest and that was my reading the so-called “personals” in the New York Review of Books which I have been doing for many years, and I was always astonished by them by their apparent implausibility, or the apparent misrepresentation.

So I wrote an article about that five or six years ago — just one article about the personals in the New York Review of Books and that led to the book. Because then I mentioned the topic to my publisher at the time and he thought that was a good idea but, of course, I should also write something about the Internet and then I added the so-called self-help or relationship books as a third source.

So I suppose there was another interest, a more general interest, which had something to do with this topic. I have been writing books on totally different topics in my entire professional life — more political topics about communism and intellectuals and anti-Americanism. I have also always been interested in things like political propaganda and commercial advertising and the connections between theory and practice or apparent and real and various types of misrepresentations. Yet another avenue or a path of interest in romanticism had to do with my literary interests. I have been teaching courses on the sociology of literature, and I used some of the classics which dealt with romantic love. So I was rather interested in comparing old-fashioned notions of romantic love with contemporary American versions of it.

GT: What were traditional ways of finding a marriage partner?

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The proposal:

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., an outspoken pro-life advocate, is preparing to do battle again on Capitol Hill.

On Tuesday, he’ll chair a House hearing in support of his latest legislative effort, the Prenatal NonDiscrimination Act (PreNDA). The measure would ban abortions done on the basis of gender or race.

“It would simply say that you cannot discriminate against the unborn by subjecting them to an abortion based on their race or sex,” Franks says.

The response from Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights:

“This bill is a cynical and offensive attempt to evoke race and sex discrimination when actually it’s about taking women’s rights away,” said Northup.

She says that protecting young girls from sex-selection abortions is “about taking women’s rights away.” We don’t know whether she has a position on racial discrimination. I suppose she probably does. I’ve done a web search on her name and on the name of the House bill, though, and I can’t find anything on that.

Anyway, I find her response patently absurd. I could even consider it comical in a way, if I could get past its injustice, its coldly hypocritical cynicism, its rhetorical manipulativeness, and its deadly background and intentions. She’s claiming to defend the rights of women, but she’s willing to throw baby girls under the bus for them.

Clearly she’s not supporting females’ rights. She has a particular and exclusive interest in the rights of “women,” meaning, females old enough to bear children. Of course that’s why we protect individuals’ rights, isn’t it—so that we can take care of the physically mature and able, at the expense of the weak? No. That’s as upside-down, legally and historically, as any view of rights could possibly be.

I can’t imagine what she thinks about girls’ rights. I’m thinking about, say, nine-year-olds.

Something seems unseemly and inappropriate about that question, as if it really shouldn’t be asked. I’m trying to track down why it feels that way. Maybe the question is sexist. I can’t imagine what would be wrong with that, though, when the rhetoric is already sexist (“women’s rights”). Is it age-ist, then? But Northup approves of age-ism—it’s only those who are of childbearing age who have “women’s rights”—so that ought to be okay, too. Sexism is fine. Age-ism is fine. Killing babies is fine. What’s not fine anymore?

The abortion rights lobby has always been about the powerful trampling on the defenseless. Formerly its members could play it the other way around, as if it were about protecting women, as the historically politically underprivileged sex. How do they think they can maintain the pretense now?

Reformed Christians often refer to Genesis 1:28 as the Cultural Mandate:

And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

There is nothing especially earth-shaking in this; it is simply affirming that, as God’s image-bearers, we shape the world around us and adapt it to a diversity of uses. In recent years a number of books have been published by Christians on precisely this topic. One of the best is Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.

However, there is a persistent tendency amongst some to misidentify the Cultural Mandate as a command to redeem the larger culture from the distorting effects of sin. Chuck Colson’s recent Breakpoint commentary is typical in this respect: Dual Commissions. Colson properly understands that the Cultural Mandate — or Commission — and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) are not antithetical but, properly conceived, are complementary. Nevertheless, his understanding of the former is not entirely spot-on: (more…)

We are given to understand that many religions have something akin to prayer beads to assist the devout in saying their prayers. The rosary is one such aid used especially by Roman Catholics. However, it seems that the prayers accompanying the rosary long ago supplanted the Psalms for the use of illiterate people who had no access to the latter. Here is the story, according to this website:

The Rosary is actually believed to have developed as a result of the monasteries, because in the monasteries the monks would pray the Psalms, 150 altogether. However, many monks as well as townspeople were unable to read, but wanted to be in solidarity in prayer with the monks, and so developed a means of praying 150 “Our Fathers” which later, given the rise in devotion to Mary, added the “Hail Mary” as well. This is why sometimes the Rosary is called “Mary’s Psalter.” However, what would happen is given the amount [sic] of prayers, it would be hard to keep track, so they developed a sort of abacus in order to keep count, originally it was stones but later developed into beads on a string.

This is confirmed elsewhere. Finally, here is the account given in the Catholic Encyclopedia (with sources deleted for ease of reading):

But there were other prayers to be counted more nearly connected with the Rosary than Kyrie eleisons. At an early date among the monastic orders the practice had established itself not only of offering Masses, but of saying vocal prayers as a suffrage for their deceased brethren. For this purpose the private recitation of the 150 psalms, or of 50 psalms, the third part, was constantly enjoined. Already in A.D. 800 we learn from the compact between St. Gall and Reichenau that for each deceased brother all the priests should say one Mass and also fifty psalms. A charter in Kemble prescribes that each monk is to sing two fifties (twa fiftig) for the souls of certain benefactors, while each priest is to sing two Masses and each deacon to read two Passions. But as time went on, and the conversi, or lay brothers, most of them quite illiterate, became distinct from the choir monks, it was felt that they also should be required to substitute some simple form of prayer in place of the psalms to which their more educated brethren were bound by rule. Thus we read in the “Ancient Customs of Cluny”, collected by Udalrio in 1096, that when the death of any brother at a distance was announced, every priest was to offer Mass, and every non-priest was either to say fifty psalms or to repeat fifty times the Paternoster. Similarly among the Knights Templar, whose rule dates from about 1128, the knights who could not attend choir were required to say the Lord’s Prayer 57 times in all and on the death of any of the brethren they had to say the Pater Noster a hundred times a day for a week.

I am unaware of any Reformed Christians using a rosary, and certainly no Reformed church endorses the practice. However, I have come across two efforts to reconnect the rosary with its origins in the Psalms and other scriptures: Pray the Rosary with the Psalms and The Daily Prayer Rosary.

Yesterday, the first sunday in Advent, our English-speaking Roman Catholic brethren began using a newly revised liturgy that is closer to the Latin texts than the previous 1973 version in use for nearly four decades. Liturgy Training Publications has posted a comparison of the two texts for those wishing to see the differences side by side. Perhaps the most immediately noticeable change comes with the greeting at the beginning of the eucharistic prayer, which runs as follows in the old version:

“The Lord be with you”
“And also with you.”

This now reads:

“The Lord be with you.”
“And with your spirit.”

This brings the English liturgy into closer conformity, not only with the Latin of the Novus Ordo mass, but with its translation into other languages as well, for example, French and Spanish. This month’s issue of First Things carries Anthony Esolen’s fascinating discussion of the new English texts: Restoring the Words.

Many other church bodies followed the Roman example during the 1970s, adopting the texts of the ordinary of the mass for their own use in, for example, the Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican Church of Canada’s Book of Alternative Services and the Lutheran Book of Worship. Our own congregation yesterday celebrated the Lord’s Supper with the now familiar greeting: “The Lord be with you.” To which we responded: “And also with you.” This new disparity in our liturgies prompts me to wonder whether other denominations will eventually follow the Roman lead once again and bring their own liturgies into closer conformity with the new, more accurate, texts.

At this point I am reluctant to speculate on this question. Official ecumenism has fallen on hard times in recent decades, as various denominations have gone their own way on a variety of divisive issues, seemingly unconcerned with the impact on their sister churches, and sometimes even on their own communions. A more practical consideration is that composers have used the 1973 texts for their own mass settings, which are in use in countless congregations throughout the English-speaking world. Without a Vatican-style authority to impose a different translation on them, force of habit will likely incline them to stick with what they have. In the meantime, as of yesterday we are all just a little further apart, liturgically speaking.

Being George Washington
Glenn Beck
A Live Blog Review
11/25/2011 2:23 PM

This review is not about Glenn Beck.

Whatever, you think of Glenn Beck; many of the parents of my students listen to him on radio, subscribe to his television network (GBTV), and read his books.

In this new book Being George Washington, from now on BGW, Beck engages in an old classical tradition. He uses historical example to teach an important lesson. Glenn Beck, like Plutarch or Weems, is less interested in the details than in the big picture. (more…)

If Christianity were my religion, I wouldn’t thank God for the Cross. But it’s not my religion, and on Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S. tomorrow, I will be giving God all the thanks I can for the Cross of Jesus Christ.

I know I need to explain that, and I will. First I’ll need to clarify what I mean about “my religion.”

Choosing Our Religions
We live in a world of religious pluralism. A recent Gallup poll says that 70% of North Americans believe that many religious could lead you to God. The Pew Forum surveyed Americans who belong to various religions in 2008. They found that 57% of Americans who attend Bible-believing churches (evangelical or black churches, in their study) believe that many religions can lead to God.

I take it that those 57% believe their choice of Christianity is an expression of their personal preference. Maybe it has to do with their culture, upbringing, friends in church, or what they’re comfortable with. As far as spiritual life goes, though, they think they have a choice, and the choice they’ve made is evangelical Christianity. They picked it out, and it’s their religion.

For my part, I follow Jesus Christ and his teachings, to the best of my capacity in Christ. I am a Christian. I do not, however, consider Christianity my chosen religion. I didn’t choose it off some religious clothes rack; I didn’t say, “I don’t really feel like a Buddhist or a Muslim for this life; I’m a traditional American, so the Christian thing just seems to fit me better.”

No, I didn’t buy it and I’m not trying to make it my own. Christianity is too big, too grand, too filled with God for that. I am a Christian because the one God has called me to relate to him in that unique way.

So as you see, my opening statement hinges on what i mean by “my religion.” If Christianity were my choice from a list of options, if it were my religion in that sense, I wouldn’t thank God for the cross.

History’s Most Despicable Act of Injustice?
How could I? Remember how at Gethsemane Jesus prayed that this cup could pass from him? He was asking the Father (though he knew the answer already), “Couldn’t there be some other way?!” He was arrested in humiliation and betrayal. Couldn’t that have been avoided? He was humiliated in trials before the Jewish court, Pilate, and Herod. Did he really have to go through that? He was mocked, beaten, tortured. Was that really necessary? He was hung on the Cross until he screamed the agony of forsakenness; and he died. Why, God? WHY?

Why? Because he loved us and wanted to bring us to God, and because there was no other way.

What if there had been another way? What if these 57% believe correctly that Christianity is one of many true ways to God? Then it should never have happened. The cup should have passed from the hand of the Son of God. There would have been no need for his brutal passion experience. Far from being something to thank God for, the Cross would have to been the worst of all needless atrocities in history.

Do not, I repeat, do not say, “All religions lead to God, but since I’ve grown up a Christian, I’ll follow that path for myself.” Do not make Christianity your religion that way. If you do, it is as if you are glorifying history’s most despicable act of cosmic cruelty. If you think there are multiple paths to God, then for Christ’s sake (I mean that reverently and literally), don’t choose Christianity! Don’t choose the religion that includes his torture and execution!

Or History’s Most Astonishing Declaration of Love and Justice
The question hinges on whether Jesus really did die on the cross for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. If he did, then we can be sure he did it because it was the only way to God. He said so himself in John 14:6. I am convinced that he did; that the God who created us entered human history in the form of a child who grew to be a man; who taught, healed, and demonstrated a life given wholly to God; and who died on the Cross, was raised from the dead, and was glorified into heaven.

I am convinced he did it because it was the only way we could come to God. He did it for love; for the joy set before him, knowing the life it bring to us whom he loves. He was willing to endure it because it was necessary in order to reconcile humans to God. The Cross was good, but it was only good because it was the only good way to bring us to God.

I do not follow Christ because Christianity is my religion of choice. I have chosen to follow Christ, yes; but that doesn’t make Christianity my religion. It’s God’s. It’s his initiative, it’s his action, it’s his grace, it’s his revelation, it’s his plan; and I’m thankful he has given me grace to enter into the relationship he has called me to.

For that reason, tomorrow on Thanksgiving, as an every other day, I will humbly and heartily thank God for the Cross of Christ, where I was rescued from death. I thank God, too, that the story did not end in death, but in resurrection, glory, and a mission for us to pursue until Christ returns.

Finally: If like me you are thanking God for the Cross, but at the same time you’re trying to hold on to the impossible belief that other religions can lead to God, it’s time to make your choice.

Also at Thinking Christian

This great interview with the Rev. Timothy Keller of Manhattan’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church is worth sharing here:

In 1952 Miklós Rózsa, one of Hollywood’s great film composers, borrowed the Genevan Psalter’s tune for Psalms 36 and 68 in scoring Plymouth Adventure, the story of the Pilgrims’ migration to North America in 1620.

Here is the text sung by the chorus:

Confess Jehovah thankfully,
For He is good, for His mercie
Continueth for ever.
To God of gods confess doo ye,
Because His bountiful-mercee
Continueth for ever.
Unto the Lord of lords confesse
Because His merciful kindnes
Continueth for ever.
To Him that dooth Himself onely,
Things wondrous great, for His Mercy
Continueth for ever.

The film’s creators obviously did their homework, for this text comes from Henry Ainsworth’s Psalter of 1612, which the Pilgrims brought with them from the Netherlands. This versification is of Psalm 136, which Ainsworth’s Psalter assigns to this tune. I’ve not seen this film myself, but a friend told me that it aired last evening on television.

The horrifying news out of Penn State has many of us talking about ethics lately, especially those of us who work in academe as I do.  One of the terms I’ve heard mentioned the most is “loyalty,” as many commentators have observed that a misplaced sense of loyalty in the circumstances surrounding misdeeds often enables the accused and delays justice for all parties in the case.

If loyalty is a virtue, it’s one that I relish.  Indeed, I’m trying to cultivate it in my children, because loyalty, rightly understood, is a form of grace.  It overlooks the flaws in others and allows us to sustain relationships in spite of our failings and those of others.

But, loyalty, like all of the other virtues, is not a thing unto itself.  It is always subordinate to an overarching integrity that is rooted in righteousness.  Once it becomes primary, it ceases to be a virtue.  Loyalty detached from justice is a particularly perverse vice; however, loyalty that sustains justice is demanding, in that it calls us to use our relationships to inspire confession and repentance in the pursuit of righteousness.

I interviewed for a job many years ago where I asked the prospective boss what virtue he valued most of all in his team.  He focused on loyalty: “I not only expect loyalty, I demand it.  Without utter loyalty, nothing progresses in this organization.”  A few years later, I found out that he had been embezzling funds from the company and that his assistant managers had been involved.  It’s amazing how quickly virtuous “loyalty” morphs into wicked “conspiracy.”

Charles Colson tells a story that is illustrative in How Now Shall We Live?  After addressing some two thousand Marines, Colson was asked by a master sergeant, “Which is more important—loyalty or integrity?”  The Marine creed is, of course, semper fi, “always faithful,” but Colson, understanding very personally the stakes of unfettered loyalty, responded, “’Integrity comes first.’  Loyalty, no matter how admirable, can be dangerous if it is invested in an unworthy cause.” (p. 379).

As a leader, I expect of my colleagues professional loyalty, but I expect it to be conditional loyalty: it goes only as far as my integrity and righteousness allow.  When I fail in either instance, I have broken whatever covenant for loyalty I have entered into with my colleagues.  To be loyal to me in such a circumstance would be to supplant loyalty with its perverted cousin, conspiracy.

Conspiracy goes way back in human history, all the way back to Eden, when Adam and Eve exchanged their righteousness for corrupted loyalty toward one another, entering into a thin conspiracy to cover their loss of righteousness.  Sinfulness never changes, does it?

If learning is the key to human flourishing, then the age of electronics ought to be our long-awaited golden age of social renewal; for when in history have we had so much knowledge right at our fingertips?

You’re not buying that, I can tell. Here I am kicking off a multi-part series on learning in the electronic age, and I’ve lost you already in the first sentence.

Never mind that human flourishing encompasses far, far more than intellectual advancement (though the deepest and most lasting spiritual awakenings in history have been accompanied by some of Christianity’s wisest, most thoughtful writings). We all know that the Internet has not turned out to be our golden key to knowledge and wisdom. Information, yes, the Internet has that in abundance. This really is an unprecedented golden age for data on just about everything. There are facts galore, in every description. New facts, old facts, true facts, false facts. (Please don’t ping me on that contradiction; I’m aware of it.) Does anybody remember having to (gasp!) go to the library to look something up?

Over the next several weeks I plan to post a series on what I’ve learned about being a student in this electronic age: What’s helpful? What’s not? What are some of the best resources to call on? What are the some of the most serious obstacles?

I won’t try to make this anything like a grand unifying perspective. I’m 55 years old, I use a Macintosh computer, and I have a couple other electronic gizmos (a wifi-only Nook ebook reader and an iPhone) that I’ll bring into the discussion. I’ll be talking about various software options, and I’ll have reviews of two of the top Bible study software packages. That’s what I’m qualified to speak on.

I won’t be able to talk about the Kindle or the iPad (not unless someone wants to send me one :)). Most importantly, I won’t be able to convey the perspective of today’s “digital natives,” those who were born a couple decades later than me; though I’m not exactly a stranger to these cyber-neighborhoods myself.

Focus Or Not
I got my Nook as a birthday gift about six weeks ago. I had a Sony reader before that, one that had also been gifted to me, which my daughter is using now. A friend saw me using my Nook, and he asked me why I hadn’t gone for an iPad or one of the other Internet-enabled readers. I said, “That’s exactly the point.” He looked puzzled, so I explained it to him, as I’ll do again now.

The Internet is the best and the worst thing that ever could have happened to serious study. The really good thing about it is all that you can find there, and all thjat you can do. The really bad thing about it is all that you can find there, and all that you can do. I’m not even talking about the seamy side of the web (that’s bad in ways that extend far beyond our topic today). I’m talking about good material that becomes distracting.

My favorite two features in my Nook are that it holds a lot of books, and that it can’t surf the web or check email. I thank God that it can’t surf the web or check email! Would you believe that right in the middle of writing the paragraph before this one, I checked my email, found out that there’s an update available for one of my Mac’s applications, went to the web, and started the download process? Do you know how dumb I feel, known that I did that right while I was writing about distractions on the Internet?

The Web is a fascinating playground, sometimes too fascinating. I’m expecting two or three very important email replies sometime today or tomorrow. I thought I’d take a quick peek over there and see if one of them had come in. What I found instead in my inbox was a nice bright shiny object: an application upgrade with some cool new features. It’s not the application I’m using to write this, and it’s not one I’m planning to use in the next few days, but the upgrade was bright and shiny and distracting nonetheless.

Maybe you’re not subject to that kind of distraction; maybe you’re more naturally disciplined and focused than I am. But for me, distraction is by far the top issue to overcome as an electronic student.

Oops—I just checked again for new emails. I really am eager to get those replies I mentioned earlier. This is not just a matter of shifting attention. The eagerness itself, the sense that something interesting might pop up right here at any second and I had better be on the lookout for it! has me slightly on edge. It’s not conducive to good thinking or good study.

Freedom, Blessed Freedom
I have two defenses against this. One is the shareware application Freedom. Its developer (who has not paid me to say any of this) describes Freedom as

a simple productivity application that locks you away from the internet on Mac or Windows computers for up to eight hours at a time. Freedom frees you from distractions, allowing you time to write, analyze, code, or create. At the end of your offline period, Freedom allows you back on the internet.

I describe it as my sigh-of-relief, now-I-can-think software program. I run it frequently through the day, typically for 45 minutes at a time. I can’t get on the Internet while it’s running, and thank God for that! When it lets me back on the network, typically I check my email, respond to blog comments, and so on; and then I’ll start Freedom back up again. I don’t always do that: some days, for example, I stay connected and engaged in comment discussions for a large part of the day. But if I have serious reading or original writing to do, I do far better at it with the Internet out of reach.

For me, this is essential background for everything else that has to do with being an electronic student.

I’ll come back to this series in a few days, when I’ll share some surprising ways you may never have known to use an e-book reader for serious study. There will be much more to come after that.

This series is also running at Thinking Christian.

Let me praise Newt Gingrich.

When nobody else could imagine a Republican House majority, New Gingrich saw it and made it so. If you are a backbench legislator doomed to decades in the minority, Gingrich is just the bomb thrower and innovator you need.

If a student finds history boring, Professor Gingrich will make it exciting. He will gallop across ideas until any dullard can see why old events still matter today. Professor Newt may not always be right, and one can question some of his connections, but nobody will leave class without knowing history counts. (more…)

I just read Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo.  A few of my family members recommended it very strongly.  The main attraction is that Mr. Burpo’s son nearly died of acute, misdiagnosed appendicitis and survived to report that he had been to Heaven.  Young Colton Burpo did not simply recover and start telling everyone about his trip to Heaven.  Rather, he said some things in conversation that piqued the interest of his parents.  They eventually began asking him questions and were astonished by what their 4 year old had to say.

The part of the book that was really gripping for me was the account Todd Burpo gives of the year leading up to Colton’s near death experience and his terror at nearly losing a child.  My daughter was very ill during her first two years and I felt some of those fears, but not at the level of crisis which faced the Burpos.  What Colton has to say about Heaven is interesting, but does not give me the sense of powerful revelation.  He saw relatives in their young and healthy forms.  He saw Jesus.  People were wearing bright white robes with sashes.  Jesus had a dazzling rainbow colored horse.  There is a war between heavenly and satanic forces.  The strongest evidence of Colton’s visit is that he was able to identify his great grandfather as a young man in a photo without ever having met him or really having knowledge of him.  He knew who the man was and what he was called.  Overall, though, the description of heaven did not strike me as ultra-surprising for a son of a pastor, even a very young one.  Still, it is interesting.  I read the book quickly and was eager to find out more as I went.

The problem, I think, is that there is something fundamentally wrong with human attempts to describe heaven and/or the things of God.  I’m not saying it can’t be done at all, but it seems to me that other than through full-on revelation (as in the book of that name), the sublimeness of heavenly things can only be approached from the side or seen from the corner of the eye.  A direct confrontation seems doomed to fall short.  I felt that way to some extent about Heaven is for Real (a non-fiction account) and more so about the picture presented of the divine appearing by Jerry Jenkins at the conclusion of the Left Behind novels.  When Jesus arrives in the story, he appears to everyone in exactly the same way with exactly the same message.  It feels like the description of a heavenly voicemail attached to a hologram.

Second Corinthians 12:4 mentions the man who was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things he is not even allowed to mention.  The most powerful sense of eternity I have ever experienced in reading outside of the Bible was in Walker Percy’s Lancelot (a dark book).  A man has had a confrontation with evil which has left him a little insane and obsessed with harsh justice.  He completes his book-long conversation with a priest-psychologist friend from his youth.  During the course of the story, we observe (only in flashes) that the priest-psychologist is returning to his faith and his vocation.  He will take a small parish in Alabama.  His one-word replies (always the same word) to Lancelot in the final chapter made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  He doesn’t describe anything.  But the reader can feel the gigantic, looming reality which will explode forth just as the story ends.  Out of the corner of the eye.  Possibly inexpressible.  The mystery remains a mystery until, all of a sudden, the image clears and we will see and understand and will know as we have been known.  But not yet.

In 1989 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was subsequently signed by representatives of 140 countries and ratified or accepted by 193, with the notable exceptions of Somalia and the United States. This was not the first time that obligations towards children had been expressed in terms of rights; an earlier Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child had been adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, although in its five brief points it never once used the word “rights,” speaking instead the language of duty: the child “must be fed,” “must be sheltered and succored,” “must be protected against every form of exploitation,” &c. The 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child is similarly spare in using the language of rights, mentioning them twice under Principle 1 and not at all in Principles 2 through 10. By contrast, the CRC consists of 54 articles in which “rights” are referred to 26 times and the obligations of “States Parties” mentioned 110 times.

These differences between the CRC and the two earlier documents are significant in that they represent an historic shift which Michael Ignatieff has described as the Rights Revolution, Francis Fukuyama as the Great Disruption, and what I have elsewhere referred to as the dawn of the choice-enhancement state.

It is worth noting that, especially in the US, the CRC is controversial because it would seem to bring the state too deeply into the legitimate sphere of family intimacy. Such reservations have thus far successfully prevented the US from ratifying the Convention. Even among the signatories, several states, including the Vatican, have explicitly qualified their acceptance for various reasons. Indeed it is not altogether clear that recasting parental or societal obligations towards children as rights represents genuine progress in ensuring the latter’s well-being, especially if we do not curtail the tendency to view all rights as policed by the courts.

In one sense, of course, no one can doubt that children have the right to be loved and cared for by their parents. Yet the primary agents for fulfilling this responsibility are the parents themselves, and not the “states parties” which have signed the document, though the latter certainly have an obligation towards both parents and their children under their general mandate to do public justice. It is worth noting that the word authority appears only three times in the text of the 1989 Convention and each time refers to legal or judicial authority. When used in the plural form, authorities always denotes political authorities. Noticeably absent from all three documents is a recognition of the primacy of parental authority in nurturing the child towards maturity.

I have just completed the first draft of a manuscript on the subject of authority, office and the image of God. In the course of researching and writing this, I have become convinced that we need to reconfigure the ongoing conversation surrounding authority so as to recognize that it resides in an office – or, better, offices – given us by the God who has created us in his image. Accordingly we would be better served, in speaking of parental obligations towards their children, to focus on the authoritative offices borne by each, namely, father, mother, son and daughter.

What will a shift to the language of authority gain for us? I believe it will enable us better to account for the full complexity of the relationship between parents and minor children – necessarily an ever-changing relationship as the children grow to maturity. It will also help us to distinguish between the legitimate authoritative offices of parents and government, recognizing that, while both presumably intend the child’s best interest, the secondary authority of government is necessarily limited by the primary authority of parents. It is thus not a matter of opposing freedom, say, of parents to the authority of the state but of recognizing that different agents possess authoritative offices whose demands are different yet, properly understood, mutually supportive and equally worthy of respect.