Lord of the Dance? Faith and Art

The relationship between theology and the arts has been a subject of interest to me for some time. The tendency to devalue creativity that does not have an explicit religious function is unfortunate and incompatible with a thoroughgoing doctrine of creation and redemption. This week I had conversations with two young people who have questioned the legitimacy of their being involved in the arts. I mentioned Jeremy Begbie, a systematic theologian and accomplished musician, to both of them. Dr. Begbie is the Associate Director of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts as well as the founder and director of the international research project, Theology Through the Arts.

Here are some other recommended titles (in no particular order):

• Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts - Steve Turner
• Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue - William Dyrness
• Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue - Robert K. Johnston
• Art & Soul: Signposts for Christians in the Arts - Hilary Brand & Adrienne Chaplin
• Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom & Discernment - Brian Godawa
• State of the Arts: From Bezalel to Mapplethorpe - Gene Edward Veith, Jr.
• Art and the Bible - Francis Schaeffer

Debate: Christian Theism and God's Hiddenness

On April 12 Trinity College's philosophy department will be sponsoring a debate on the question "Is Christian Theism Incompatible with God's Hiddenness?" Dr. Theodore Drange (atheist), retired professor of philosophy at Western Virgina U. will be defending the affirmative position against Dr. Paul Moser (theist), professor of philosophy at Loyola U.

I Want My MTD!

I just got around to reading an article that appeared in Easter Sunday's New York Times Magazine called "The Soul of the New Exurb." What are exurbs? Once small counties experiencing rapid growth "into dense communities of subdivisions filled with middle-class families likely to move again and again, settling in yet another exurb but putting down no real roots." The piece highlights Surprise, AZ and the megachurch of 5,000 that has grown in its midst. If the writer's description is accurate, it takes no stretch of the imagination to see why the authors mentioned in my previous post on "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" believe that the unorthodox theological beliefs of American teens don't differ all that much from those held by adults. Describing Lee McFarland, the church's senior pastor, Jonathan Mahler writes:

McFarland works under the assumption that people don't want to be intimidated by their pastors, that modernity has punctured the myth of the morally superior religious leader. He is replacing the sinner-be-damned fundamentalism that once characterized much of evangelical Christianity with forgiveness. McFarland never talks about transforming your life though struggle, surrender or sacrifice; he talks about being happier by accepting Jesus -- into your office, your kitchen, your backyard, your marital bed, everywhere. "People aren't looking for the elevated holy man who's got all of the answers," he told me one afternoon. "They want someone to be real with them."

There are more false dichotomies in that one paragraph than I know what to do with. Fortunately, we don't have to choose between taking a morally superior stance and telling a fellow sinner that he, just like us, is guilty of sin and in need of receiving God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ. It is exactly because I am under God's condemnation that the message of forgiveness is such good news. The pronouncement of forgiveness through faith in Jesus is not meant to replace the declaration that sinners will be damned but rather, presupposes it. Have we so imbibed the cultural concept of tolerance that we now think it self-righteous to preach the gospel?

The article notes that the church was built on Rick Warren's "Purpose-Driven Church" techniques. This included polling residents to find out what kind of music they listened to and why they believed people didn't go to church. The answers to these questions were then used to structure the services. Fuller Theological Seminary professor Eddie Gibbs, author of Church Next, warns: "The danger though, is that you end up with a Gospel that endeavors to meet your needs without challenging your priorities." He notes in his book that "Worship is designed not to make people feel good about themselves . . . but to make them holy" and offers the following caution concerning limiting worship music to sentimental praise songs: "Intimate worship that degenerates into a casual overfamiliarity is both presumptuous and embarrassing to those who see God from a transcendental perspective."

Forward If You Love Jesus

Gone are the days of honking if you love Jesus. In the age of information technology, the new method of demonstrating one’s devotion to Christ is forwarding e-mail. At least that’s so according to a message forwarded to me recently whose subject read “DO YOU LOVE HIM?” The e-mail calls itself a “simple test” of whether the recipient loves Jesus. The reader is emphatically instructed (the directions are given in all upper case letters) to forward the e-mail to at least 10 other people including the person who forwarded it to him or her. The following poem appears in the body of the message:

I knelt to pray but not for long,
I had too much to do.
I had to hurry and get to work
For bills would soon be due.
So I knelt and said a hurried prayer,
And jumped up off my knees.
My Christian duty was now done
My soul could rest at ease.
All day long I had no time
To spread a word of cheer.
No time to speak of Christ to friends,
They'd laugh at me I'd fear.
No time, no time, too much to do,
That was my constant cry,
No time to give to souls in need
But at last the time, the time to die.
I went before the Lord,
I came, I stood with downcast eyes.
For in his hands God held a book;
It was the book of life.
God looked into his book and said
"Your name I cannot find.
I once was going to write it down...
But never found the time"

Immediately following the poem this question appears in bold letters: “Now do you have the time to pass it on?”

I don’t doubt for one moment that those who author and/or circulate messages such as these are well-intentioned, God-loving people who sincerely desire to spur fellow Christians on to godly living. In the case of the above poem, the good end in view is the ordering of our lives in such a way that our use of time reflects kingdom priorities as opposed to selfish pursuits. The temptation to allow the living God to be pushed to the margins of our thoughts and schedules by busyness is one we regularly face. That’s why the poem registers with us. There’s something about it that rings true with our experience and we know that what it’s calling us to is good and right. The motives behind messages like these are good. If we are going to be discerning, however, we have to do more than assess the ends and the motives. We must also evaluate the means and the messages used to reach the desired ends. It’s not enough to ask, “Is the goal a biblical one?” We must also ask whether the methods used to motivate toward the desired end are themselves consistent with the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Pragmatism is the belief that whatever measures help us successfully arrive at a desired goal are acceptable and permissible. Nothing is off limits as long as it aids us in accomplishing our task. “If it works” it’s right.” Pragmatism presupposes moral relativism and is therefore incompatible with a biblical worldview according to which God’s revelation in Scripture provides a standard for how we are to govern our lives. Pragmatism is enticing because it focuses on getting things done. After all, that’s what’s really important, isn’t it – results? Unfortunately, we as Christians are prone to believing that the answer to that question is yes. That’s the root of my concern about much of the e-mail endlessly forwarded among Christians. I fear that too much of it operates on pragmatic rather than biblical assumptions. Using the above e-mail as an illustration, I’d like to point out the evidences of a pragmatic mindset that forsakes biblical truth:

It relies upon man-centered manipulation. After I read the e-mail I had to decide what I was going to do with it. Was I going to forward it to 10 others including the person who had forwarded it to me or would I simply delete it? When I thought about the latter alternative, I admit considering what the sender would conclude about my spiritual state when he found that I had not “passed the test.” I certainly didn't want him to think that I didn't love Jesus.

Messages like this appeal to our fear of the opinions of others in order to get us to act a certain way. If this weren’t the case, it wouldn’t be necessary to include the person who forwarded the e-mail to you among those to whom you forward the message. According to the Bible, the fear of man brings a snare (Prov. 29:25). Who among us hasn’t felt imprisoned by our own craving for the acceptance and praise of others? While it may be of proven effectiveness to make people act in various ways, the fear of man can never produce the fear of the Lord that should be every Christian’s strongest motivation for obedience.

It plays on the emotions. Most of us probably remember the mathematical dictum that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Results-oriented thinking reasons in a similar fashion that the quickest way to yield a desired outcome is to appeal directly to the emotions as opposed to going the more circuitous route of addressing the mind. Advertisers are very familiar with the effectiveness of this technique. Television commercials give little information about the products being pitched. Instead, they seek to create positive emotional associations. Speaking of the strategy that has made MTV so popular among young people, founder Bob Pittman noted “The strongest appeal you can make…is emotionally. If you can get their emotions going, [make them] forget their logic, you’ve got ‘em.”…We make you feel a certain way as opposed to you walking away with any particular knowledge.”

This is not to deny the involvement of our emotions in our relationship with God and to advocate an intellectual stoicism. We are to love God with the entirety of our being. However, there is nothing Christian about pleas made to the emotions while neglecting the understanding. This is mere sentimentality which overlooks the vital role of the intellect in the process of transformation. As the late D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones noted in Spiritual Depression, “Truth comes to the mind and to the understanding enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Then having seen the truth the Christian loves it. It moves his heart…Truly to see the truth means that you are moved by it and that you love it. You cannot help it. If you see the truth clearly, you must feel it. Then that in turn leads to this, that your greatest desire will be to practice it and to live it.”

It presents a faulty view of God. This is by far the most serious matter. In order to make its point, the above poem portrays God as sharing our limitations and faults. He is capable of being distracted and preoccupied even to the point of never getting around to something he had intended to do – namely, record a sinner’s name in the book of life. Fortunately, this is not an accurate representation of the One who chose us in His Son from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4) and whose will it is that none of those He has given to His Son shall be lost. The triune God is not subject to the limitations of time, nor is His mind finite, requiring that He must decide what He will give attention to at a given time.

Another piece that has found its way into multiple electronic mailboxes and which also asks the reader if he/she has enough time to forward it to someone else, further illustrates the troublesome trend of portraying God in a sub-biblical manner in order to motivate believers to obey Him. The letter, written as though from God, recounts the numerous times throughout the day the Lord had hoped the addressee would spend time talking to Him. These divine hopes are consistently dashed, however, by the Christian’s preoccupation with other activities such as deciding what to wear, going to work, and watching television. Amidst the expressions of self-pity, God “writes”:

At one point you had to wait fifteen minutes with nothing to do except sit in a
chair. Then I saw you spring to your feet. I thought you wanted to talk to me
but you ran to the phone and called a friend to get the latest gossip.

Is the “God” who penned this letter the omniscient Lord of the Bible who understands our thoughts from afar (Ps. 139:2) and who has thorough knowledge of what we will speak before our lips make any utterance (Ps. 139:4)? By no means! Again, I understand and affirm the desire underlying these words. Provoking people to pray is most assuredly a biblically grounded aim. The Bible is filled with exhortations to God’s people to call upon Him in prayer. No, the problem isn’t with the desired outcome but with the method used to achieve it. God has told us what He is like and we are not free to make revisions in His self-disclosure in the name of stimulating believers in Christ to greater obedience. We can never glorify God by portraying Him in an unworthy (i.e., unbiblical) manner.

Ironically, both of the e-mails referred to, result from the very thing they’re identifying as a problem – lack of time for the Lord. By that, I’m not saying anything about the prayer lives of those who write and circulate such material. I have something else in mind. If we are going to be faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, then certainly we must take time to pray. But we must also make time to study and reflect on the Scriptures in an attempt to construct an outlook on all of life that is biblically informed. We must also be willing to invest time to thoughtfully evaluate messages presenting themselves as Christian. A pragmatic mindset has no time for such contemplation and the speed of cyber-technology doesn’t encourage it. In his book The Soul in Cyberspace, philosopher Douglas Groothuis notes

:…the rapidity and immediacy of e-mail seem to encourage an emotional discharge and superficiality that would be less likely even in letters, because they require more physical involvement at every stage of composition – printing out the letter on paper, signing it, folding it, stuffing it in an envelope, sealing
the envelope, and carrying it to the mail box. This gives the writer more time and physical contact that allows him to reflect on matters that are (literally) "at hand" and "in hand” before committing the letter to the mail.

The next time you receive an inspirational e-mail urging you to pass it on to however many others, don’t impulsively hit the forward button. Pause and do some pondering. Ask yourself the following questions: Is this message appealing more to sentimentality than biblically sound instruction? Is it trying to target my emotions by bypassing my mind? Is it relying on man-centered shame or emotional blackmail as motivation to what may be a good thing? Is the presentation of God’s nature and character true to what He has revealed of Himself in the pages of Scripture? If after asking these questions you have doubts, don’t pass the message on. You won’t be contributing to the clutter in others’ lives and hopefully the time they would have spent reading your mail will be used more constructively. Remember, “forward” isn’t always the way of progress.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

The current online issue of The Revealer contains a review of the book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, the product of the largest sociological study of adolescent religious beliefs and practices ever conducted.
According to authors Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, the majority of American teens believe in God and the majority of them are Christians. That may sound like good news but don't start shouting just yet. It seems that the theological beliefs held by America's youth are pretty much the same across religious divides. The authors refer to the common set of assumptions as "moralistic therapeutic deism" (MTD). The reviewer, Scott Korb describes the major tenets of MTD as follows:

Personal experience is what shapes our notions of truth, and truth is found nowhere else but in happiness and positive self-esteem. In religious terms, according to teenagers, God cares that each teenager is happy and that each teenager has high self-esteem. Morality has nothing to do with authority, mutual obligations, or sacrifice. In a sense, God wants little more for us than to be good, happy capitalists. Smith and Denton elaborate: "Therapeutic individualism's ethos perfectly serves the needs and interests of U.S. mass-consumer capitalist economy by constituting people as self-fulfillment-oriented consumers subject to advertising's influence on their subjective feelings." And to be good, happy capitalists, we should be good, unless if being good prevents us from being happy.

Korb reports that according to the authors, MTD is not just a teenage affliction:

What Smith and Denton call a parasitic creed affects religious American adults, as well. Though subtle, Smith and Denton's insistence that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree becomes a sharp indictment of America's religious grown-ups who may well speak, understand and think as adults , but cannot bear the thought of putting away their childish beliefs.

The authors conclude that American Christianity is "either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or ...is actively being colonized by a quite different religious faith." When asked to articulate their faith, not one of their interviewees mentioned self-discipline, working for social justice, justification or sanctification, and 112 of them described the purpose of religion in terms of "personally feeling, being, getting, or being made happy" (using the "specific phrase to 'feel happy' well more than 2,000 times").

Verbal Litter

There are a lot of areas in which my conscience stands in need of greater sensitizing but one behavior about which I'm already scrupulous is littering. I have very little tolerance for people who cavalierly toss trash out of car windows and drop wrappers, cans, or bottles wherever they happen to be upon completing their contents. If you ever do my laundry you'll want to make sure you check my pants pockets first. There you'll most likely find scraps of paper and gum wrappers that I intended to throw out when I got to the next garbage can but never did. No, littering is not a temptation to which I'm prone.

The information age is strewn with verbal (not to mention visual) litter. I'm thinking about the proliferation of words that computers and other media allow us to generate and disseminate so easily that words become cheap and the wonder and responsibility of communication escape us. By verbal litter I mean the heaps of words that are carelessly spoken, typed, and forwarded; that must be waded through in search of those that are really valuable. Part of my reticence to begin blogging was due to the fear of contributing to the staggering volume of foolishness. According to Proverbs 18:2, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion. For that reason, the internet with its chatrooms, emails, blogs, and websites can be a fool's paradise.

Proverbs personifies wisdom and folly as two women calling out to the passersby to come in and dine upon the meals they've prepared. Lady Wisdom raises her voice "on the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals" (Prov. 8:1). There she pleads with the naive and simple to heed her invitations: "To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense." (Prov. 8:4-5). The reason she must raise her voice is because she is situated in the hub of activity, the city gates abuzz with commerce and a variety of other social activities. She must contend with countless other voices conveying messages far more appealing. She struggles to be heard above the din.

In an editorial that appeared in the March 20th volume of the Chicago Tribune ("Knowledge in U.S.: I Know I'm Right and You're Wrong") Robert McHenry, former editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, describes the modern counterpart to the proverbial depiction of wisdom's struggle to be heard:

The simple fact is that the Internet has made instantly available to anyone who can connect to it all the information but also all the misinformation, all the thoughtful judgments as well as all the mindless prejudices, that the human race has thus far been able to digitize. It is left for us, the users whose lives are not lived entirely online but in the world, somehow to wade through these terabytes of data. Unfortunately, we are not, most of us, very good at this.

The frequent warnings against speaking rashly and answering before hearing a matter (marks of the fool and not the wise person) should lead us to seriously ponder how we make use of this medium. There's no doubt that the internet can be a valuable tool but we need to be on guard against buying into the values of what Quentin Schultze calls informationism, the utopian belief that the ability to transmit, acquire, and store information at greater speeds and volume is the means to overcoming societal decay. According to Schultze, "Informationism stresses the instrumental value of accessing information over the intrinsic good in knowing well." It shouldn't be difficult to see how enticing an emphasis on the instrumental value of accessing information is to an evangelical culture in which pragmatism often trumps truth.

The ability to instantly respond afforded by blogging, email, and other forms of information technology can indeed be a good thing but not necessarily. Schultze alerts us to a potential disadvantage:

Quickly sending and receiving short digital missives will never direct us to shalom. Many people have reached a point technologically where most of their communicating is only unreflective and trivial messaging. In the information age, we might be losing our capacity to listen and thus to become intimate with the moral wisdom embodied in religious practices. It may never even occur to us that listening can be a virtuous practice of willful obedience to truth. To listen is to give attention to the "other" - even to the divine other. From the perspective of cyberculture, listening is inefficient, old-fashioned, and impotent.

Unfortunately, Schultze's book, Habits of the High Tech Heart, is one whose cautionary notes will most likely only be read by those already aware of the dangers being cautioned against. Doug Groothuis's The Soul in Cyberspace is another valuable volume offering guidance in thinking about information technology from the perspective of a biblical worldview.

Spring Break

I'll be computer-free for the next five days, enjoying extended time with my family, so I won't be posting anything.

In The Christian Mind, Harry Blamires identifies six marks of the Christian mind and devotes a chapter to each. They are: its supernatural orientation, its awareness of evil, its conception of truth, its acceptance of authority, its concern for the person, and its sacramental cast. Here's a selection from his chapter on its supernatural orientation:

The Catholic tradition of our Church is that the Christian life is a life for the full man. There is no room in Christendom for a culture of the spirit which neglects the mind, for a discipline of the will which by-passes the intellect. It may be that the dominant evil of our time is neither the threat of nuclear warfare nor the mechanization of society, but the disintegration of human thought and experience into separate unrelated compartments. . . In so far as the Church nurtures the schizophrenic Christian, the Church herself contributes to the very process of dismemberment which it is her specific business to check and counter. For the Church's function is properly to reconstitute the concept and the reality of the full man, faculties and forces blended and united in the service of God. The Church's mission as the continuing vehicle of divine incarnation is precisely that - to build and rebuild the unified Body made and remade in the image of the Father. The mind of man must be won for God.

The New Choc'late Cross

In an attempt to reach Christian consumers who might balk at celebrating Easter with chocolate bunnies, Russell Stover Candies Inc. is marketing a chocolate cross. Unfortunately for them, however, members of the targeted audience object to the idea. Today's Chicago Tribune reports Rev. John Vakulskas, a Catholic priest in Alton, Iowa as describing the cross as being "in poor taste."


Anyway, happy Resurrection Day, all! He is risen indeed!

Morality and Reality

In today's New York Times op-ed section, columnist David Brooks (free subscription required) claims that the arguments on both sides of the Terri Schiavo debate are flawed. Social conservatives insist that all human life is of equal value and warn of the dangers involved in ascribing greater worth to some individuals on the basis of their ability to function on higher levels than others. "The true bright line is not between lives," he writes, "but between life and death"

While recognizing the moral force of this line of thinking, Brooks says that its flaw lies in that "for most of us, especially in these days of advanced medical technology, it is hard to ignore distinctions between different modes of living. In some hospital rooms, there are people living forms of existence that upon direct contact do seem even worse than death." A further weakness, according to Brooks, is the fact that the majority of Americans believe in some kind of life beyond death in which case it's not necessary to "cling ferociously to this life." "Why not allow the soul to ascend to whatever is in store for it?" This is to resort to the same kind of pragmatism he later criticizes liberals for. (Unfortunately, I've heard Christians use the same argument, one that if consistently applied could be used to justify the murder of any believer experiencing adversity).

Social liberals, on the other hand, defend the right of each individual or family to determine for themselves when life is no longer worth living."They don't emphasize the bright line between life and death; they describe a continuum between a fully lived life and a life that by the sort of incapacity Terri Schiavo has suffered, is mere existence." Brooks accurately notes:

The central weakness of the liberal case is that it is morally thin. Once you say that it is up to individuals or families to draw their own line separating life from existence, and reasonable people will differ, then you are taking a fundamental issue out of the realm of morality and into the realm of relativism and mere taste.

What begins as an appealing notion - that life and death are joined by a continuum - becomes vapid mush, because we are all invited to punt when it comes time to do the hard job of standing up for common principles, arguing right and wrong, and judging those who make bad decisions.

I agree with Brooks that the liberal argument is flawed. It is self-referentially incoherent in that it denies the existence of objective moral truths in which case the appeal to end Terri's life on the grounds that it is the merciful and right thing to do is undercut. Where Brooks errs, however, is in claiming that the pro-life argument is flawed as well. He has not identified a flaw in the argument. Rather, he has described the difficulty we often face in consistently applying a pro-life ethic. It doesn't follow from the fact that we find a particular course of action hard, that that action is not right. The fault doesn't lie in the argument but in us.

The Whole Story: Biblical Narrative & Counseling

In their book The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story, Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen note the piecemeal fashion in which we're prone to read the Bible along with its detrimental results:

Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little bits - theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented way, we ignore its divine author's intention to shape our lives through its story. All human communities live out of some story that provides a context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the unity of Scripture is no minor matter; a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshippers.

Among the "stories" that exercise great formative power in our culture are those told by the psychotherapeutic communities. These stories are practically inescapable. We hear them not only in professional counseling offices but on television, the radio and in casual conversations. When we see ourselves as characters in these stories instead of the biblical narrative of creation, corruption, redemption and consummation, phrases like self-esteem, self-love, needs, and codependence ring loudly in our ears, drowning out biblical themes like idolatry, self-denial, faith, and transforming grace. We may not completely abandon the Bible's story but we don't really expect it to speak as meaningfully about our problems as do the therapeutic tales.

In his unfortunately out-of-print book, Taking the Word to Heart: Self & Others in an Age of Therapies, Robert C. Roberts writes: "the kind of persons we become (the kind of character we develop) is a function of how we think about ourselves." This is just another way of making the same point as Bartholomew and Goheen. Whatever story functions authoritatively in our lives will shape us and our interpretation of ourselves. Roberts refers to the various schools of therapy as "alternative spiritualities" and offers the following warning:

The danger is that these psychologies may to one degree or another replace Christianity without most people even noticing that any substitution has taken place. In some instances the influence of the therapies -even from within the church - may be so strong that our character and relationships are no longer Christian but are now Rogerian, or family-systemic, or Jungian, or rational-emotive...In short, under the influence of these psychologies, our souls may turn out Therapeutic rather than Christian.

Too often believers regard the cultivation of the intellectual life as an abstract, impractical pursuit but it need not be. We should seek to think well so we can love (both God and neighbor) well. I'm grateful for the efforts of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation towardhelping the church to think well about how each of our stories is a subplot in the grand narrative whose central figure is Jesus Christ. David Powlison is one of those at the forefront of this work. Yesterday, Justin Taylor provided an informative introduction to Powlison along with a bibliography of his writing at Between Two Worlds. That entry prompted this one.

Spirituality in the Real World

If you've ever thought that your daily routine and relationships are obstacles to real intimacy with God, you should check out this interview with Eugene Peterson at Christianitytoday.com. Peterson is the author of The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language and the recently released Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology.

When asked whether misunderstanding about the nature of spirituality even in Christian circles has anything to do with the New Age movement, Peterson replies:

The New Age stuff is old age. It's been around for a long time. It's a cheap shortcut to - I guess we have to use the word - spirituality. It avoids the ordinary, the everyday, the physical, the material. It's a form of Gnosticism, and it has a terrific appeal because it's a spirituality that doesn't have anything to do with doing the dishes or changing diapers or going to work. There's not much integration with work, people, sin, trouble, inconvenience.

I've been a pastor most of my life, for some 45 years. I love doing this. But to tell you the truth, the people who give me the most distress are those who come asking, "Pastor, how can I be spiritual?" Forget about being spiritual. How about loving your husband? Now that's a good place to start. But that's not what they're interested in. How about learning to love your kids, accept them the way they are?

Peterson also has some worthwhile thoughts about the dangers involved in using the language of the culture to interpret the gospel (e.g., speaking of "intimacy" with God).

The Resurrection: Real but not Historical

Something happened that first Easter morning that was powerful enough to embolden Jesus' band of followers and lead them to change the weekly day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath to the first day of the week. But whatever it was, it wasn't Jesus being raised from the dead. In fact, the resurrection doesn't have anything at all to do with Jesus' body. That's the position Bishop John Shelby Spong sought to defend against evangelical apologist, Dr. William Lane Craig in The Great Resurrection Debate , an event broadcast live last night by the Church Communication Network.

According to Spong, who described himself as not being a "biblical literalist," it's not possible to be a Christian and deny the "reality of the resurrection." But, says Spong, this reality should not be understood as a physical return from death. What appear to be historical narratives are more properly understood as symbolism employed by Jesus' followers to convey their powerful and ineffable "God experience." A God-experience, says Spong, must be put into human words and our language is not big enough to envelop that inbreaking of eternity.

Granted, our language is not capable of capturing God's totality. But that's not to say that language is incapable of communicating any truths about God. As Francis Schaeffer noted, God has not given us exhaustive truth, but He has given us true (though partial) Truth.

Once I heard Bishop Spong's take on the inadequacy of language to describe God, I patiently waited for him to refute himself by ascribing some attributes to God. I wasn't disappointed. In his closing statements, just a few moments after saying "I cannot tell you who God is or what God is," the bishop proceeded to affirm that God is the source of love and the ground of all being.

It was evident to me that what really motivates Spong is the desire to make the Bible and Christianity plausible to the modern mind. This means adopting a hermeneutic that takes all references to miraculous events as poetic symbolism. If we fail to open the Scriptures to scholarship (by which Bishop Spong means the naturalistic rationalism assumed by the so-called biblical scholars of the Jesus Seminar of which he is a member) we will end up twisting twenty-first century minds into first century pretzels. 


As I watched and listened to the exchange, the words of C. S. Lewis in the first chapter of Miracles, kept coming to mind:

...the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our sense, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our sense are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.

Another Lewis quote, this one from"Learning in War-Time," is likewise appropriate. "Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." Those interested in learning how to answer the bad philosophy of the Jesus Seminar will find this article by Dr. Craig of interest.

OK, I Broke

I did it. I leaped into the blogosphere despite my initial skepticism and reluctance. The more I kept trying to push it to the back of my mind, the more it crept to the front. What were some of the factors that convinced me to take my leap? Well, first there was listening to Hugh Hewitt and reading his book, Blog. Then there was Tod Bolsinger's post, Blog, for Christ's Sake, in which he offers persuasive reasons for pastors to join the fray. Most recently, it was an article linked to from Stand to Reason's blog which suggests that blogging is good for the brain.

A few words about my blog's name. It's my way of paying tribute to Harry Blamires, a man whose book The Christian Mind: How Should A Christian Think?, made a lasting impression on me. Tears filled my eyes when I read the quotation cited in the header. Someone had recognized and put into words the alienating experience that was often mine as a follower of Christ who enjoyed the world of ideas, study, and reflection. Someone was saying that the life of the mind need not be in conflict with life in the Spirit. Blamires' description of Christendom in the early '60's could have just as well been written today:

Christianity is emasculated of its intellectual relevance. It remains a vehicle of spirituality and moral guidance at the individual level perhaps; at the communal level it is little more than an expression of sentimentalized togetherness...The mental secularization of Christians means that nowadays we meet only as worshipping beings and as moral beings, not as thinking beings.