I must follow, if I can

My blog has moved, once again...

2011-10-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

I have moved my blog to WordPress.com. You can find it at http://mustfollow.wordpress.com. I will be blogging over there on the reason for the move very shortly (and it's a very good reason). Please update your bookmarks, or if you use an RSS reader, please update the address for the feed, etc. Thanks!

I'll Have Both, Please!

2011-09-17T13:38:00.001-07:00

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Eaton Rd,Chico,United States

Septembeard.org raising money for Cancer Research

2011-09-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a little blog I wrote for work about our office's participation in the Septembeard fundraiser for prostate cancer.

Oh, and here's my beard, 15 days in.

Location:Orient St,Chico,United States

Google finally produces Blogger iOS app

2011-09-15T12:11:00.001-07:00

This is a long time coming. But it might just be way too late. Unfortunately, it's not a universal app also optimized for iPad, so I'm not going to be getting rid of BlogPress anytime soon. You can get the new Blogger app from the app store.

P.S. I used it to post this.
P.P.S. The location feature is better than BlogPress's.
P.P.P.S. Or not... It's cooler in the UI where you select it, but it doesn't actually append anything to your post.

Facebook and the Polarization of America

2011-09-11T19:39:00.001-07:00

There's like this weird vibe on Facebook now. It seems like people can't share what's on their minds anymore, since what's on their minds has suddenly become political. If they say anything they limit it to shallow topics. But there is one side that remains presumptively loud. I think it can be traced to events that started off the year 2011, beginning with the start of the Arab revolutions and the Scott Walker attack on working people in Wisconsin, and growing steadily through the year as the Tea Party congress tried to crash the Federal government into the ground over the debt ceiling and Republican campaign season began.

When I saw how social media was being used all over the world to bring social justice, I was inspired. I tried to participate in my own circles, such as with sharing news on the revolutions or on the Scott Walker union-busting debacle in Wisconsin, but was shot down. Twitter is where I had to turn for both consuming information on the political crises and the Arab revolutions, and sharing it. Then in the summer, Google+ launched to a limited audience of invitees. With its ingrained Circles system of adding people to your network, it made it much easier to target your posts to people you know won't pick fights with you about it.

It's really ironic that social media was used for social justice and the promotion of human liberty in these Arab revolutions, but in the US, it's like all the Facebook users closed ranks and became this Tyranny of Homogeny. The One Rule is: don't talk politics unless you're right-wing. If people don't say it out loud, they bully you into compliance. If you try to point out the cyberbullying they are engaging in, they accuse you of being a bully. If you speak up for truth and justice you end up being attacked yourself. You might hide their propaganda from your news feed to avoid the offense of unfriending them, but they can still comment on your posts (this is why I love Google+, by the way). If you try to unfriend them, they message you about it, and if you block them so they can't message you, or to prevent them from starting fights with you in comments to another person's post, they find out your cell number and text you at work.

It's not just Facebook, though. What's happening in Facebook is simply a reflection of what has been happening to American politics for years. Political analysts have referred to it as the "loud minority". Those on Facebook who won't accept the sound arguments of rational people are just like the Republicans in Congress who refuse to make compromises for the good of the country.

NPR Fresh Air week of 8/1/11 Discussed the increasing polarization if America resulting from redistricting. Those in power in the states, usually Republicans, redraw lines post-census to make the state redder, and dump Democratic citizens into zones which were already blue. The result is that we have more Tea Party Republicans in the house, most of whom are anti-tax secessionists who want the federal government disbanded. (So much for "give to Caesar what is Caesar's.")

It's probably best to avoid Facebook altogether today, the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. On a day on which we should be memorializing those whose lives were lost, on one hand we have liberals expressing sadness over where the country has gone since then, and on the other we have (louder) neoconservatives calling those same liberals douchebags. And this is supposed to be a day of unity. (In my opinion, a Californian has no right to tell a New Yorker how he or she should feel about 9/11. Watch the first 10 minutes of a certain Frontline episode until you want to throw up and then I dare you to go tell one of those people who were there what to do with themselves.)

I think one of the big problems with Facebook is that it misleads you into thinking the people on your “Friends list” are actually your friends, when they are not. They're aquaintances. People from churches you left 10 years ago. People you went to school with 15 years ago. Friends of friends who sent a desperate friend request. Maybe a half dozen of them are true friends, but you don't need Facebook to know what's going on in their lives when you can just talk to them on the phone or get together for coffee.

(Ironically, I've never had any trouble on Facebook with anyone who wasn't a "believer." The fact is, while some Christians are good for the world, actually being salt and light, representing Christ to the world as he commanded, there are others are not good for the world, but are like wolves in sheep's clothing, like the hypocrites and legalists Jesus railed against publicly. I've had "friends" freak out when they found out we were democrats. They asked us how in the world can we support the president when it's so obvious that he's the Antichrist?)

In the face of such opposition, sometimes it feels like silence is the only recourse. But it is my hope that people who care will take a stand, raise their voices, and find that they are not alone. Interestingly enough, it was on Facebook where I saw some old college friends in Wisconsin speak out about their own participation in the protests in Madison. Recently here on the (not-so-left) coast, a friend who has been opposed to talking politics in her online forums has recently taken at least one step towards breaking the silence on her blog, when she spoke out against a mindless meme that was being propagated, finally noting that silence was no longer an option.

In this information age, we have so many tools which should help us avoid ignorance. Unfortunately, at the same time, these tools can be abused to create a sort of feedback loop, where people with unhealthy ideas can reinforce each other's ignorance. I just hope in the end the real Truth will win out.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Eaton Rd,Chico,United States

I'm blogging.

2011-08-28T13:29:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow's a big day. This week's a big week. My replacement iPad is due to be delivered tomorrow, so I'll be an iPad owner once again, after having owned an iPad for two days and then been without one for a week. I'm also expecting to hear some news regarding a house I made an offer on (no more detail than that since we're seriously tired of the anticipation and letdowns). It's a big week at work, with several projects I'm in the middle of. My break from training will also be over. (I seem to have developed tendinitis in my right heel due to overtraining for a 10-mile race I wanted to run in September. Instead, I'll be training light, and in a few weeks I'll start a very gradual build-up over 6 months to prepare for the Bidwell Classic half marathon in March.) This week we'll also be paying off some debt and hopefully buying a family-friendly couch! Good times...

Update: [Monday, 11:55 AM] So far, not so good. The replacement iPad also has display issues, with a dotted-line streak running down the middle of the screen, beneath the glass.

Update 2: Apple decided to replace it again, and this time give me a free upgrade to 32 GB for my troubles...

Posted from my iPhone

Location: Eaton Rd,Chico,United States

Two Kingdoms: Natural Law, Common Grace and the Spiritual Nature of the Church

2011-07-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8 (NIV)

In my previous post, I discussed how social justice has played a factor in the development of my worldview. I've sought to allow the things Jesus was passionate about to affect my own ideologies. In fact, the Scott Walker union-busting fiasco in Wisconsin which was the last straw that caused me to finally change my voter registration. Another major issue for me has been the religious right's Dispensationalist foreign policy in the Middle East. Since I first began to hear John Piper mention the plight of Christians in Palestine years ago, I began to see how damaging U.S. foreign policy has been towards all non-Jewish states in the region. As amillennial and Reformed, holding to covenant theology as an overarching view of Scripture, I am strongly opposed to such policies.

The democratic revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have helped to expose how harmful U.S. Zionist policies have been in the region; for so long, the U.S. chose to prop up dictatorial despots even if they were guilty of gross human rights violations, as long as they signed a treaty with Israel. When the Egyptian revolution began in Cairo's Tahrir square six months ago, we saw young muslims and coptic Christians working together for change, even photographs of Christians forming human barricades around their muslim neighbors during demonstrations so that they could pray in peace without being bombarded by pro-regime thugs. Suddenly muslims were no longer the terrorists that Fox News and talk radio made them out to be. These sights helped to solidify the separation between church and state, and brought home the ideas of Two Kingdoms and Natural Law that I had already been studying.

According to the Reformed doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, Christ rules the kingdom of grace as the mediator of the covenant and our redeemer, and he rules the civil kingdom through his works of providence. The Christian must recognize the God-ordained position of the “magistrate” as one who does God's will, although unknowingly (Romans 13:1–7). Thought the Christian lives in both spheres, the spheres are separate; the Christian minister does not endorse a politician from the pulpit, nor is the magistrate permitted to bully his way into the pulpit (for example, to say who can and who cannot take communion). It is the Christian minister's obligation to teach Law and Gospel to believers, so that they may know what God requires of us, and so that they may believe the gospel of Christ and operate out of thankfulness as little christs when they go out into the world to spread the news of his grace.

Basically, over the years, thanks in part to Fox News and the Reagan-era Moral Majority movement, a sort of American nationalistic moralistic christendom has developed, and it's not “Christian” or “Christ-like” by any means. Christianity is not a nationalistic thing. When Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” he didn't mean he was an alien. He meant that the church is spiritual and has nothing to do with nationalism! It's a spiritual institution unaffiliated with any nation, ethnic group, or race, or politick. David VanDrunen observed,

In our own day, in the American context in which I write, various churches' identification with particular political causes or political parties, with particular economic agendas, with American military success, or simply with (idealized) American culture has been widely discussed and debated. It must be said emphatically that the church long predates America, will long survive America, and at present should view America, the world's lone superpower, as another ‘drop from a bucket’ (Isa. 40:15). (Living in God's Two Kingdoms, 149)

There's a sort of analogy I use to explain my vision for the church that goes something like if we were to go back in time to, say, Augustine's era and attend a church service on a given Lord's day, would it be recognizable to us? If one of them were to visit one of our services, would they recognize it? It turns out VanDrunen has thought of this, too, though his version uses a babel fish instead of a time machine:

[T]he church may wish to test itself by asking whether something it does or teaches necessarily excludes some Christians from participating in its life and worship because of their ethnic or national identity […] At first thought this might not seem to be a very helpful test of a church's fidelity to its spiritual character, since the limits of time and space necessarily exclude most Christians from most worship services most of the time. Churches must meet at a particular time and location and speak a particular language, and the vast majority of Christians, who reside somewhere else and/or speak a different language will not be able to participate. But let us imagine that one Christian is randomly chosen from all of the Christians in the world and dropped into an American worship service (and given the ability to understand the language). Here is the test that I suggest: does the minister say anything in his sermon to which this Christian cannot say “amen,” is there any phrase in any of the songs which this Christian cannot sing, or is there any visual prop that causes discomfort or offense to this Christian, on account of this Christian' ethnic or national affiliation?

If the minister prays for the peace and prosperity of America, this Christian from a foreign land should have no difficulty saying “amen,” since Scripture straightforwardly instructs believers to pray in this manner (e.g., see Jer. 29:7; 1 Tim. 2:1–2) and surely no Christian should wish war and poverty upon fellow believers anywhere in the world. Likewise, if the minister prays for a just resolution to an international dispute in which America is involved, this Christian should also be able to respond with “amen,” for what Christian would not wish justice to be done everywhere in the world?

But now we might imagine that the minister prays for America's victory in an international dispute or that the congregation is asked to sign a patriotic American song after the sermon (perhaps this Christian just happens to visit America on Fourth of July weekend). What if her own native country is the one having the dispute with America, and her own livelihood and security are at stake? What i she feels patriotic sentiments for her own country and has no interest in expressing patriotism for America? She would be unable to field her “amen” to such proceedings, and this would be perfectly understandable—just as understandable as an American worshiping in a Russian church and feeling disinclined to pray for the triumph of Russian foreign policy or to sing patriotic Russian songs. When we are immersed in our own culture and own national interests, it is often difficult to realize how often we attach the church's identity to a national or ethnic identity, and hence to betray the spirituality of the church. The scenarios that I have imagine might cause us to pause and to reflect upon how the church can do better at living as though there really is no Jew, Greek, barbarian, or Scythian within its walls. (149–150)

“What Christian would not wish justice to be done everywhere in the world?” I can think of a few. VanDrunen speaks of churches singing patriotic songs on the Fourth of July—a gross violation of the Two Kingdoms doctrine—and not too long ago I and my family suffered through that exact scenario in a local congregation! (We don't go there anymore.) So many people hold to Americanism, nationalism, patriotism, capitalism and conservatism as if it's equivalent to their faith. When people like Al Mohler make political statements in support of the right, or Fox News talking heads call up their Catholic upbringing to support their views, a significant portion of uneducated red-state white people is too gullible to make the distinction. It results in Fox having inordinately high ratings, not because it's audience is made up of wealthy corporate tycoons, but because it's made up of religious people who think watching the station is worship unto God, like going to church or (for them) listening to K-Love.

What's needed is a new way of thinking, a transformation of the mind and heart. Where better to get that from God's Word, namely Paul's great letter to the Romans, which ignited the Reformation and has ignited countless reformations in hearts around the world throughout the centuries. After spending several chapters outlining our need for the gospel by explaining the depth of our sin, and then explaining the depths to which God went to save us, Paul moves in chapter 12 to what our practical response to the Gospel should be (before laying out the Two Kingdoms doctrine in chapter 13).

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1–2, NIV)

As living sacrifices, we are wholly devoted to God, like the firstfruits in the Old Testament. If you had sheep, the first male lamb born from its mother would be given to God, and parents had to redeem their firstborn son, by offering a sacrifice in his place, because he belonged to God. So when Paul says we're “living sacrifices,” he means we don't belong to ourselves. When we go out in the world, we are serving as vessels for God to do his will in the world, his “good, pleasing and perfect will.”

“Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world,” he says. This isn't a proof-text for isolationism, nor is it a proof-text for the so-called “Christian” music or T-shirt industries. It doesn't mean to not associate with those “worldly” sinners, to dress funny, ride in horse-drawn buggies and avoid bars at all costs. The Greek word means “age”. Some have translated it “culture”. Contrary to the drives of ascetic monasticism or fundamentalist separationism, what this means is that we shouldn't be greedy or seek fame, or support a consumerist, capitalistic, American nationalism. For Christians to get in bed with big business and kiss the rings of billionaires is a grievous error, when what Scripture teaches is that we should be helping the “little ones”—widows and orphans, the hungry, poor, oppressed, sick, lame, imprisoned.

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is…” We renew our mind and know God's will through his Scriptures, and he's pretty specific about our mission: justice and mercy, and humility before God (Micah 6:8).

The two kingdoms doctrine is closely related with natural law, which provides a common moral reference by which Christians can conduct themselves with non-Christians. God has revealed enough of himself in nature as to allow Christians and non-Christians to agree and collaborate over matters of morality and government (Romans 2:14-15). But God's common provision isn't limited to morality; it also lays the groundwork for scientific collaboration. The Westminster Confession speaks of the “light of nature” and providence of God which leaves men inexcusable. The theological term for this is general revelation. This is what is meant when Scripture says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Thus, Christians can feel safe to engage in scientific work alongside nonbelievers, with the belief that if God is author of the Book of Nature as well as the Book of Scripture he won't contradict himself. (Modern science was actually invented by Christians who believed in the goodness of God and the consistency of his natural laws, over against pagan ideas of whimsical and capricious dieties).

We need to see the people in the world around us not as enemies, but as people who bear the image of God. Even if they don't believe, God has still shown them some measure of grace. Louis Berkhof wrote about Calvin's doctrine of common grace,

This is a grace which is communal, does not pardon nor purify human nature, and does not effect the salvation of sinners. It curbs the destructive power of sin, maintains in a measure the moral order of the universe, thus making an orderly life possible, distributes in varying degrees gifts and talents among men, promotes the development of science and art, and showers untold blessings upon the children of men. (Systematic Theology, 434)

When we see people in our town, state, nation, and around the world, not as opponents or enemies, but as neighbors and image-bearers of God, whom he commanded us to love as our own souls, we will hopefully start to support different policies towards them. We have dual-citizenship in two kingdoms at once, over both of which Christ is sovereign Lord (Php. 2:10, 11). Though we our sojourners here, we still need to be responsible citizens of the world, which belongs as much to Christ as heaven does (see Php. 2:14, 15, Romans 13:1-7). In fact, he wants to use us as the means to improve the earthly kingdoms, as he says in Jeremiah 29:4-7 (ESV),

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Social Justice and the Christian

2011-07-23T12:30:00.000-07:00

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.” (Lk. 6:20-21a, NIV)

“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.” (Lk. 6:24-25a, NIV)

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.” (Lk. 6:43, NIV)

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Lk. 4:46, NIV)

In terms of the doctrine of the ministerial nature of the church, there are certain responsibilities in Scripture given to the church itself, such as teaching, sacraments, and diaconal ministry, and there are certain things Christians are called to do as individuals and groups as citizens in their culture. The so-called “Protestant liberals” have understood this in terms of social justice, and so the church advocates that its members participate locally, civically, and politically in seeking the kind of mercy and justice which Scripture tells us to seek. More conservative churches completely ignore this aspect of Scripture, and it makes them a laughing-stock in the late-night infotainment. Pundits on certain networks even claim the idea that “God helps those who help themselves” is a Christian one, when it most emphatically is not.

Social justice activity by Christian citizens is a fruit of Reformed theology. “As the natural consequence of a proper understanding of the doctrine of predestination the Reformers saw a great deal of energy released for serving the needs of other people. Luther said there was no reason for buying indulgences; it would be better for people to spend the money instead on food for the poor.” (pcusa.org) Freed up from their “spiritual navel-gazing”, Christians are able to deny themselves and become more altruistic for the sake of the rest of God's image-bearers.

The Presbyterian church identifies social injustice as one of the enemies of the church, and recognizes in the Confessions a "[r]allying-point in times of danger and persecution. Confessions have often prepared and strengthened Christians to stand together in faithfulness to the gospel when they have been tempted to surrender to powerful forces of political, racial, social, or economic injustice." The confessions give us a concise and unified overview of the theological content of God's word (theologians having wrestled with its interpretation for thousands of years), which helps us to see when someone's Scripture it for their own purposes. It was the German Confessing Church which stood up against Nazism.

Reformed believers may look like they are compartmentalizing in a sense with the Two Kingdoms doctrine, but we also believe God is sovereign ruler of both kingdoms, and therefore we seek that his "will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." It is our responsibility as citizens of both kingdoms to do justice and love mercy. And so the lives of Reformed believers look much different from the lives of other Christians who may only seem different from the rest of the world on Sunday mornings.

I recognize that the point of the Gospel is not what we do for Jesus, but what he did for us, objectively, on the cross 2,000 years ago. But we are also to preach Law, as to conviction of sin; and the walking out of sanctification, as a sign to our souls that we are bearing fruit. And I cannot ignore the fact that so often, Jesus said things like, "Obey me", and "keep my commands", "as you've done unto the least of these", etc. His brother James the Just, a pillar in the early church, said our religion can be defined as seeking social justice by visiting orphans and widows while everyone else is telling them to better themselves.

Our new church does social justice. It supports local ministries geared towards low-income individuals and recovery programs. In addition to their evangelistic tasks, missionaries also build schools, with a goal to improving the temporal lives of the children, not just teaching them about Jesus.

Jim Wallis wrote:

An enormous public misrepresentation of Christianity has taken place. Many people around the world now think Christian faith stands for political commitments that are almost the opposite of its true meaning. How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war, and pro-American? And how do we get back to a historic, biblical, and genuinely evangelical faith rescued from its contemporary distortions?

When Jesus tells us he will regard the way we treat the hungry, the homeless, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner as if we were treating him that way, it likely means he wouldn’t think capital gains tax cuts for the wealthy and food stamp cuts for the poor represent the best domestic policy. Or when he tells us 'love your enemies' and 'blessed are the peacemakers,' it might be hard to persuade him to join our 'war against terrorism,' especially when there is so much 'collateral damage' to civilians, including women and children.

Yes, Jesus is a problem—for many of our churches, the Wall Street traders, and the powerful people in Washington who maintain the American Empire. But for millions of people, religious or not, Jesus remains the most compelling figure in the world today. The church may not be much more credible than the advertisers, the media, or the politicians, but Jesus remains far above the rest of the crowd. Somehow, Jesus has even survived the church and all of us who name his name but too often forget most of what he said.

Jesus, the incarnate God who had no place to lay his head, has been commandeered by the Republicans and über-rich conservatives like Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, and even Dave Ramsey, to convince the "faithful" that these rich people are on their side, that trickle-down economics (serfdom) is the WWJD take on economic policy, that rich people should pay less taxes than the middle class, that there's no need to take care of the earth because "it's all gonna burn" anyway, that PBS is satanic because the science shows teach evolution and an old earth, and that we should bomb all the Arabs because the sooner Armageddon comes, the sooner Jesus can come back.

It's all bullshit. My prayer is that more and more Christians will start to see it that way, too, and that more churches will become Gospel-centered while simultaneously becoming more obedient to Jesus commands for justice, bearing the fruits of that Gospel in our communities and the world around us. Jesus said our eternal destiny hinges on it.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” —Jesus (Mt. 25:41-46, NIV)

The state of things

2011-07-22T20:53:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to say, it's hard to get yourself to post on Blogger when you have Google+...

Posted from my iPhone

Abusive churches: what happens to those who leave?

2011-07-02T15:55:00.001-07:00

I'm not quite done with my series on the mainline church, and I hope to put up the remaining posts soon. For now, I came across a passage that I wanted to share.

In his book, Churches that Abuse (available online), Ronald Enroth writes,

…another sign of impending trouble in a church is an obsession with discipline and excommunication. Beware of churches that warn of certain doom if you leave their “covering,” or if you “break covenant.” Once banished from the group, little compassion is shown the wayward one. And overwhelming majority of the ex-members I have interviewed expressed the opinion that abusive leaders are cold, almost cruel, in their treatment of people who leave — whether that departure was voluntary or involuntary. Almost without exception they report that the leadership made no attempt at reconciliation and made no effort to heal the wounds inflicted. Instead, defectors are held up to the congregation as warnings to potential “sowers of discord.”

and,

A sure sign that a church is headed for the fringe is when family relationships are significantly disrupted and the leadership encourages the severing of ties with relatives outside of the group.

An overdeveloped sense of church membership or the church covenant can lead to a manipulative, controlling and authoritarian "regime" which refuses to accept diversity of opinion or personal freedom to come and go as one pleases. Let us beware in our zeal for building "biblical" churches that we not fall into such cultism.

Posted from my iPhone

Barefoot no more

2011-06-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

My personal barefoot revolution is over.

Since my comeback from my ankle sprain, I had done a lot of research, read some books and magazines, and a ton of online articles. I started getting blisters and assumed it was because my size 10 Inov-8 Terroc 330s were too small and/or too old. I got some Merrell Barefoot Trail Gloves (after a lot of research), and bought my wife a pair of the womens' Pace Gloves. Three months into my training, the blood blisters and purple toenails kept coming on my long runs. My physical therapist looked me over and decided I needed some inserts, and recommend the ones they sell at Fleet Feet in Chico. (My wife also ended up with Achilles tendinitis after her first run in her new shoes; the physical therapist told her to get orthotics as well, and I assumed he meant the expensive kind and freaked out a little bit, but these ones are only $22. I'm going to try to get her into the store soon.)

You can't wear inserts in the trail gloves, as they're designed to wrap your feet (like a glove) and aren't even meant to be worn with socks. Also, while I was in the store, they sized me up and it turns out because if my arch length, I need to wear a whole size larger than the 10.5 my feet measure at. So putting the insoles in my old, too-small Inov-8s wasn't going to work either, especially since I'm going to start doing some serious distance training here really soon, and after 5 miles my feet seem to suddenly grow. So I had to find some new shoes.

The sales staff are very knowledgeable, and were able to observe exactly what was going on with my bad foot while walking across the store in my bare feet. They even used a skeletal model foot to demonstrate just how my arch was collapsing as I walked, and how that's the reason my toes were ending up crammed into the edge of my other shoes even though they were technically the right size.

After trying on several pairs of trail shoes, it became apparent my feet were just made for Sauconys. Then we decided to go with the Saucony Kinvara 2 running shoes (in size 11.5), instead of the trail shoes, since my feet have become accustomed to the more minimalist, lightweight approach. I really like the width of the sides of the forefoot. In some other shoes, I feel like my feet are falling off the edge, and in these the outsoles go out at a slight angle, to provide a stable base. I also got some Spenco Walker/Runner insoles, since the hard plastic edge of the Superfeet insoles dug into my foot too much.

So I'm going from a zero-drop to 4mm, which is still a remarkably neutral design (and even better than the 9mm drop in my old Inov-8s). I'll probably probably alternate (I hear that's a good idea), and I'll wearing the trail gloves in my 5K races and in shorter training sessions, and the Kinvara 2 on long runs. (I'll need a few days to break these babies in, so I won't be running in them until next week. My first 5K race is on Monday!)

Law & Gospel

2011-06-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite books.

Two of the things that have really helped me grow up spiritually in the last few years have been coming to an understanding of covenant theology as a framework for interpreting the Old Testament, and a right understanding of the relationship of Law and Gospel. Before I discuss matters of Social Justice (in an upcoming post), I'm going to talk about Law and Gospel, because I need to emphasize the importance of the gospel before I discuss our appropriate and active response.

The White Horse Inn radio broadcast has a panel of hosts, two of whom are Reformed from Westminster Seminary California, one of whom is a Missouri-Synod Lutheran, and the other is Reformed Baptist. Though differing slightly on some matters, they all have roots in the Reformation and so have much in common, and one of the things I really appreciate that they stress on the program is the importance of distinguishing between Law and Gospel. There's a Lutheran book by the same name, by C.F.W. Walther. (I like this book so much I would even consider going to a LCMS church if it weren't for the fact that they take a hardline stance for literal 7-day young-earth creationism.)

Luther himself wrote, “Whoever knows well this art of distinguishing between Law and Gospel, him place at the head and call him a doctor of Holy Scripture.” I believe that when Scripture speaks of “rightly dividing” the word, it's talking about knowing the difference between Law and Gospel, and how each should be applied.

The Law and the Gospel are different, and they ought not be confused. Zacharias Ursinus wrote,

Q. What is the difference between the Law and the Gospel?
A.The Law contains the Covenant of nature established by God with man in creation; that means, it is known by man from nature, it requires perfect obedience of us to God, and it promises eternal life to those who keep it but threatens eternal punishment to those who do not. The Gospel, however, contains the covenant of grace; that means, although it exists, it is not known at all from nature; it shows us Christ's fulfillment of that righteousness which the law requires and its restoration in us through Christ's Spirit; and it promises eternal life freely on account of Christ to those who believe in him. (Ursinus’s Larger Catechism, question and answer 36)

And Louis Berkhof wrote,

The law comprises everything in Scripture which is a revelation of God's will in the form of command or prohibition, while the gospel embraces everything, whether it be in the Old Testament or the New, that pertains to the work of reconciliation and that proclaims the seeking and redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ. And each one of these two parts has its own proper function in the economy of grace. (Systematic Theology, 612)

The letter kills, as Paul told us. But the Spirit gives life through regeneration purchased by Christ, and this is good news!

So many churches get these concepts confused. For example, what Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary, use words...”—it doesn't work. Human's are simply incapable of performing the gospel in their lives. The gospel by definition is what Jesus performed on our behalf once for all 2,000 years ago when he died on the cross for the sins of humanity. Other misuses of the term include the “social gospel”, or the “Do-Better Gospel”... there's no such thing. Gospel is objective, and historical; it's “good news” (literally) that we need to hear because we're lost. We can “do justice” and “do mercy” and so as image-bearers reflect the heart of God towards others created in the image of God, as we live out of gratitude for what he's done for us in the humiliation of the incarnation and crucifixion. But the gospel is 100% something that we could never do, for only Jesus could have done what he did for us when he bore our sins “outside the camp”. If every sermon you hear at church is a list of things to do (i.e. “application”), then you're not hearing the gospel when you go to church, you're hearing law. (The gospel is something that needs to be applied to our sinful hearts, but it's not we who do the application. Most Christians use that word to describe things we need to do.)

C.H. Spurgeon said, “We are not under the law as the method of salvation, but we delight to see the law in the hand of Christ, and desire to obey the Lord in all things.” Unlike antinomians or dispensationalists, we still see the law as relevant. But there is a big difference between the moral law given to Adam and summarized in the 10 commandments that apply to all people, and the peculiar ceremonial laws which set the nation of Israel apart from the Canaanites in order to preserve a bloodline for Christ. These peculiar laws include laws about tattoos, tassels, cheeseburgers, mixing fabrics and how you should shave... even tithing was a temporal ceremonial law established as a temple tax to support the Levitical priestly system. These were all fulfilled in Christ, who established a New Covenant in which his blood atones for the sins of the world.

But the moral law is revealed to all. It's sometimes called natural law, since it's obvious and in the consciences of all people, though we are corrupt and resist it, even to the point where Paul didn't see covetousness as wrong until the law came along and illumined the darkness in his heart.

Calvin and Luther both worked to formulate for us some statements on the right use of the law. They differ very slightly from each other, but they can be generally summarized as follows:

The law convicts sinners and points them to their need for Christ. It also points believers to their continuing need for Christ.
In establishing rules, the law protects people, as laws like “Do not murder,” and “Do not steal” are enforced by the magistrate.
Third, the law reveals God's will to us, operating as a guide for our continuing sanctification, helping us to discern the will of God and what kind of choices we should make in the world for the sake of righteousness.

Our obedience to the law issues out of thankfulness for what the Lord has done for us in terms of covering our inability to obey. Obedience brings no glory to people, since it's God who enables us to obey and gives us the will to obey. Obedience is an expression of our love (“If you love me, keep my commands.”, John 14:15, NIV), but it does not equate to it (“If I give all I possess to the poor ... but do not have love, I gain nothing.” 1 Cor. 13:3, NIV).

In an essay called “The Church of the Last Stop”, Pastor Greg Cootsona says that for a significant number of Christians who come to Bidwell Pres from other churches, the reason they make the move is because they are burned out by an overemphasis on law (legalism) and aren't getting enough of the gospel in their sermons and Bible studies (14). Bidwell Pres endeavors to make sermons understandable to anyone who may walk in off the street. As the pastors say, “We're here for those who aren't here yet.” And so, every sermon is saturated with the gospel, it's not just an afterthought tagged on at the end before the “altar call” (Presbyterians don't do altar calls, by the way).

The common assumption among Evangelicals which leads to law-saturated preaching is that the gospel is only needed to get you into heaven's door, and after that you just need to hear about how to live the Christian life. But even believers need to hear the gospel preached to them every week. This is what the Reformed mean by the "means of grace." By saturating worship services with word and sacrament, it's all in your face, and you come to live and breathe it. This is the “growing deep” part of our mission statement. We want to put down deep roots into what Jesus did for us before we can grow up and out and shine his light into the community and the world.

Attributes of a Healthy Church

2011-06-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

During a recent worship service at the local Presbyterian church, I jotted down a couple thoughts during the service:

Tiny church: you feel alone, like it's you vs. the world.
Big church: you worship God in community, gathered, hundreds of voices together. You don't feel like it's "us vs. world".

Driving around downtown Chico on a Lord's Day morning, you'll see lots of people walking all in the same direction, and you know where they're headed. You see people you recognize outside on the church patio between services catching up over coffee. The rest of the week you may find yourself smiling to random people on the street instead of ignoring them. You start to see yourself as part of a large community of Christ-followers. It's a far cry from fundamentalist isolationism.

9 Marks
One of of the modern standards for rating churches is the so-called “Nine Marks of a Healthy Church.” The mainline Presbyterian church we have started attending, surprisingly, seems to exhibit more of these marks and in greater measure than any other church I have been to. There's expository preaching where the sermon topic is taken from the text, and is taught for its objective message rather than twisted for some allegorical practical application. And biblical theology: they still have the Westminster Standards in their denominational Book of Confessions, and so, they are the spiritual heirs of the Puritans. The gospel is central (more about this in my upcoming “Law & Gospel” post).

The traditions I'm coming from don't require their pastors to be seminary-educated. As a result, especially as I've grown in my personal studies, I sometimes find myself feeling smarter than the pastor. When it comes to engineering or math, this may be okay, but not when it comes to theology. So I am very much encouraged to be able to sit in the pews and listen to some really smart guys preach and I know they have considered the Reformed tradition while preparing (even if they're not saying it explicitly for the sake of the hearers).

There is real conversion... as a Presbyterian church, the understanding is that the invisible church is known only to God, but they really do emphasize the "response" we have to God's call, and there is a real focus on sanctification as God's word is worked out in your life. They focus on the kind of fruit someone who is converted would bear, but not on the so-called "conversion experience" that has plagued the modern church and made good kids feel like they have to go out and get a testimony. Evangelism... locally, encouraging members to share their faith through friendships and loving the community vs. fly-by-night proselytizing; and several global missions projects, short term and long term, even missionaries to muslims in Bosnia, using real relationships that meet people where they are. Membership... growing quickly! (Adding a couple dozen this month, even.) Discipleship... "real life groups", and all kinds of adult education classes. There are even discipleship programs for the youth. Pastoral staff have even been known to go through Reformed dogmatics books with other members.

Discipline...

Not just 9 Marks, but the Belgic Confession also says discipline is one of the marks of the true church. My wife and I were both burned really bad by an abuse of the concept of church discipline, so I will say that it's not sufficient to have discipline in your arsenal, but you have to do it right, and know when, and when not, to wield it.

A church planter once told me he thought the very reason for a church having formal membership was discipline—i.e. you can't discipline someone who's not on the roll. But it's the other way around. Discipline exists to protect the members, to protect the weak and vulnerable—the “little ones” Jesus always speaks about—from the wolves and hypocrites who want to devour them. The end is membership.

Implicit in its inclusion in the 9 Marks is the idea that church discipline isn't practiced enough, but it seems to me there is plenty of ostracizing and spurning of people—or even just gossip—when they don't fall in line with the rest of the crowd. The passages in Scripture used to support discipline actually put the emphasis on restoration and forgiveness, not keeping people in line. It should only affect those sinned against, a small number of witnesses, and the elders. But, since the point is restoration, it should be invisible to the congregation if it is done properly. It seems strange to me to list it as one of the 9 Marks because you shouldn't see it, since people should fall into such situations only very rarely; i.e., you can't visit a church on any given Sunday with a notepad and check discipline off your list when you see it.

I do know that small churches, with a lack of heinous sinners, like to pick on tiny things.

Matthew 18 is the proof text for church discipline. When Jesus talks about the “testimony of two or three witnesses”, he’s quoting Deuteronomy, where the phrase is used in descriptions of court procedures for a murder conviction, which carries the death penalty. This is serious stuff, people! We're talking gross, “mortal” sins here, real crimes that people should go to prison for, not mere trifles or offenses.

You shouldn't matthew-eighteen somebody just because they have a different opinion from yours.

Discipline is supposed to be done under community and accountability, not from an authoritarian stance, and it should include some sort of an appeals process in case those performing it are in error. In the Presbyterian Church, church discipline occurs at the Presbytery, which is a level above the local church, where elders from each congregation in a region meet to judge such matters. As the Presbytery meets only four times a year, there's going to be some space between the incident and the discipline. Also, it provides accountability because it forces the elders to consult with other churches and not act unilaterally.

Ideally, discipline shouldn't be necessary. Discipline is not a sacrament.

Sacraments
Speaking of sacraments, notice there's nothing in the 9 Marks list about sacraments! Most Reformed believers would define a healthy church as a right handling of word and sacrament (baptism and the Lord's Supper).

The answer to Heidelberg Catechism question #66 is, “[The sacraments] are visible, holy signs and seals instituted by God in order that by their use he may the more fully disclose and seal to us the promise of the gospel, namely, that because of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross he graciously grants us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.” Baptism is a sign not only to the one being baptized, but to the church witnessing the sacrament. Just as participating in the Lord's Supper is a regular sacrament, so witnessing regular baptisms of new members of the covenant community is a regular sacrament for the whole body. If your baptist church isn't baptizing, then it's not fulfilling the mission of the church in word and sacrament. At the last two “baptist” churches I've been to, I've never once seen a baptism. In two months at Bidwell Pres, I've witnessed at least four.

The credobaptist view is: “I want to show the world that I'm identifying with Jesus.” The Reformed view tries to reflect that grace is something that happens to you, it's not a “decision” you make: “You are being identified with the covenant community through no act of your own, symbolic of the grace of God, who covenants with you and saves you through no act of your own.” In a roundabout way, I can reflect on these views of baptism as representative of different phases in my faith walk. I really appreciate the emphasis on God's grace as effectual in your salvation. “We love him because he first loved us.”

Safe Childcare
Not one of the 9 Marks, but I'm putting it on my list. The idea of being able to check in the kids to childcare before worship is very appealing to us. When I was in, probably, the fourth grade, I used to get more out of sitting in the main service with my bible and notebook in hand than in Sunday school with the other kids. When I later became involved in church plants myself, I would advocate for the absence of children's church programs concurrent with the service, since I've seen these programs abused to the point where you have age-specific churches within a church and nobody interacts with anyone from another age group unless they are the teachers. Later on when I had kids, though, I began to see the merit in nursery care for the youngsters who are simply incapable of sitting still for a half hour, much less 2 hours (at our new church it's just an hour!). Having known the Schatzes, whose children were extremely well-behaved and sat quietly in a row during Sunday services, I now feel I'd rather suffer the embarrassment of unruly kids than open the door to abuse by assigning biblical importance to a length of PVC tubing. But having our kids in childcare gives me and my wife the freedom to relax on a Lord's Day morning and not have to worry about such things.

Diaconate Resources
I've already mentioned the isolationism, smallness and lack of resources in the small churches I had been part of in the last few years, and how it made it difficult to spot warning signs.

There is another aspect to the presence of resources, and that is meeting one another's needs in times of need. Scripture calls us to “bear one another's burdens”. The biblical churches had deacons and diaconate ministries to take care of their members. Bidwell Pres has a full-fledged, multi-department diaconate ministry, where the deacons aren't just junior elders or elevated ushers, but they actually do the things that the deacons did in the book of Acts, taking care of people's real needs. My wife and I were going through all the brochures from the different “care ministries”, and there are an abundance of programs for all kinds of different areas of life.

The diaconate is very important to us, personally; the churches we had been going to did not have the resources for it, nor even a single deacon. Last year, my wife had surgery on her arm, and soon after the surgery we found out it could take a year to heal. It has not been progressing very well, and we missed church because she needed to rest and I either needed to take care of her or the kids, and couldn't handle both babies on my own. When we didn't show up, nobody from our old church called to check on us. We did get one call, but it was someone asking her if she could bake them a cake (note to all: she can't bake right now with her bad arm). It was like nobody was paying attention. We made some requests for help, but we only got a much larger response from our Facebook friends (no one from our old church is on Facebook). Bidwell Pres really looks like a good place to heal for people in all kinds of situations.

Plurality of Elders
And now we come to the final mark. Where better to find a plurality of elders than the Presbyterian church, which is governed by elders rather than senior pastors or congregational democracy? I've seen church plants hesitate on choosing elders, as they purport to avoid being “hasty in the laying on of hands.” But you really can't plant a new church without elders already in place; putting the intent of elders in the constitution isn't enough, either. On Paul's missionary journeys, when he planted new churches he made sure he had the elders set up before he moved on to the next town.

It's not enough to have a plurality of elders locally, though. The church needs to have greater accountability in a global, or at least regional, sense. Rather than “going it alone”, a church needs to participate in synods, councils, and assemblies with other pastors and elders who can hold them accountable and provide pooled resources for missions, theological education, etc. This has been the practice of the church since the First Jerusalem Council, ca. 50 A.D. (Acts 15). I have become convinced that “non-denominationalism” is dangerous. Independent churches open the door to isolationism and authoritarianism, and heterodoxy. I would even submit that my Reformed baptist friends should consider this when looking for churches, as Presbyterianism is a lot closer to what Reformed baptists really want than independence is.

Interestingly, I heard our pastor mention another list of healthy church qualities. There are only eight on this list, and they are very different from the 9 Marks ones: Empowering leadership, gift-oriented ministry, passionate spirituality, functional structures, inspiring worship service, holistic small groups, need-oriented evangelism, and loving relationships (Christian A. Schwarz, Natural Church Development). Our church has all of these, too, which is good to see. (I suppose functional structures overlaps with plurality of elders, small groups overlaps with discipleship, and they both have evangelism.) When our pastor mentioned this list, he referred to the passionate spirituality item as “joy”, and one of the characteristics the new members really noticed about this church were the smiles. But these aren't fake smiles, or smiles for fear of being found out in your pain. You wouldn't hear people at this church say something like, “Oh, it's not God's will for you to suffer! That's all from the devil!” There is real recognition that people hurt, but with these Reformed roots, there's also understanding that God is there with you through it all, and he has something to teach you through it.

The Marks of an Abusive Church

2011-06-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

Before I discuss the marks of a healthy church, which I will do in my next post, I need to go into some background a little bit. I have a lot of baggage when it comes to churches. Through several years of chaos since experiencing a painful church split a decade ago, and then having to leave a few others, I've become sort of an unwitting expert in what's right or wrong about churches, and contrary to what many would think, it doesn't boil down to musical style or baptismal practices. Though I will relate some personal experience here, my attribution of these qualities as “abusive” is not completely subjective or arbitrary. Ronald M. Enroth, professor of sociology at Westmont College, wrote a book called Churches That Abuse (which is available for online reading), in which he relays the experiences of many individuals he has interviewed from abusive church backgrounds. As I read each chapter, it was scary how often I found myself identifying with the stories he presents.

Some abusive churches sound almost cultic. But you don't just need right doctrine to avoid abuse; you need a right ecclesiology, and a right polity. Enroth writes, “A central theme of this book is that spiritual abuse can take place in the context of doctrinally sound, Bible preaching, fundamental, conservative Christianity. All that is needed for abuse is a pastor accountable to no one and therefore beyond confrontation.”

A lot of the churches I have been involved with have had an overdeveloped eschatology, and a very underdeveloped ecclesiology, with authoritarian structures with no accountability or elders. Either no membership whatsoever, or a heavily policed membership in which speaking to outsiders about church matters was forbidden. I've experienced too much emphasis on experience and receiving direct “words from the Lord” on one hand, or too much emphasis on a movement's senior pastor's dogmatic interpretation of God's word on the other. Completely cessationist on one hand, or so seemingly powerful in the spiritual gifts that I'd confess all my sins to someone in leadership because I was convinced they already knew because of their “word of knowledge.” Blaming the devil for everything, or completely lacking any confidence in man's sinful nature that all things secular were denounced and the world was seen as “out there” rather than something we're part of. “Faith healing” services where we were made to feel like the only reason we had to wear contacts was because we didn't have “enough” faith, or feigned differences in leg length allegedly went away as legs grew before our eyes in response to fervent prayer.

I've been involved in churches where earthquakes and billboards were seen as the voice of God, and others where the clear teaching of Scripture was dismissed just because it didn't fit with their man-made dogmas. I have been spiritually violated by those I trusted, and suffered psychological manipulation. There was confrontational intimidation when you expressed opinions not in line with their dogmas, or if as a musician, I found myself too stretched, unable to commit to a new "worship" band when I was already in two others, or unable to attend prayer meetings because I needed to focus on school. I was in financial bondage as well, told by well to-do pastors that I had to tithe even off of my unemployment insurance payments. (So much for separation of church and state... The church was funded by the EDD!)

Abusive churches tend to take a few verses in particular and elevate them above all the rest, as a sort of trump card. One of them is “Don’t touch the Lord's anointed.” Yeah, can't argue with that, can you? The problem is, in context, this statement had nothing to do with the church, but politics, with David talking about deposing the king, practicing great care to guard against his own presumption or the pressure of his followers. The Bible tells us all over the place to guard against abusive shepherds, but it says in Romans 13 that our political leaders are put in place by God.

If people are able to leave an abusive church and go somewhere else, often the verse of choice preached to those who remain is, “They went out from us that it would be clear yet were never of us.” This was spoken by the apostle John in another particular context, regarding particular people two thousand years ago. But many abusive churches take this verse and make it their own any time a member decides to leave and become part of the universal church, causing all their friends to shun them as if they are now unbelievers.

Another mark of an unhealthy church is isolationism, which I mentioned in my last post as a non-Reformed idea. One of the triggers of our recent migration away from conservatism and fundamentalism was the death of Lydia Schatz. I have written about the Schatz family before. They could definitely be described as isolationist. They used to attend a tiny church I had helped plant. Lydia's father was a fan of perfectionism, and he even expected it from his little ones. The church was so small, lacked a broad-based educated congregation or seminary-trained leadership or other denominational resources that could have spotted the warning signs, and it makes me sick to my stomach to think that if I had recognized the signs I could have said something to authorities or encouraged some accountable fellowship around him that could have steered him into a less isolationist direction.

The Schatzes left that church, and so did we. Our family ended up at another small church that was equally low on resources, and evidently, at least as isolationist. The morning after the event, the news about it had already spread, and here was a perfect teaching opportunity. Perhaps someone could express alternate exegesis of the meaning of "rod" in the Old Testament, or explain how maybe beating your children isn't necessarily a Christian thing to do. But no. Instead there were prayers from the pulpit that God would deliver this "Christian brother and sister" who were "falsely accused", being "persecuted by the world for being salt and light".

Pat Zukeran, in an article summarizing Churches That Abuse, wrote, “Abusive churches usually denounce all other Christian churches. They see themselves as spiritually elite. They feel that they alone have the truth and all other churches are corrupt.” According to this definition, until now I have only been to two non-abusive churches in my life. (Interestingly, these two churches are actually partnered together for missions and outreach ministries.)

At core of all of these churches' issues is a lack of continuity with church history, and a lack of accountability with the body of Christ at large. One of the manifestations of this incongruence can be found in the aberrant doctrine of dispensationalism, which directly contradicts what the rest of the Christians in the rest of the world had believed for 1,900 years before its invention. The local Calvary Chapel pastor was interviewed on the local news a few weeks ago, explaining why he thought Harold Camping is a crackpot, but Calvary Chapel's dispensationalist eschatology doesn't fare much better. Camping's view is tragic because it leads to poor people selling their earthly possessions and ending up destitute. Dispensationalism, on the other hand, breeds environmental exploitation and debt (because "it's all going to burn" anyway), leads to a war-mongering U.S. foreign policy which causes the deaths of thousands of Christians and Muslims in the Middle East by supporting a racist Israeli government at all costs, and wants to artificially induce the fated “Battle of Armageddon” in order to “hasten the day” of Jesus’ Second Coming. (In stark contrast, the Presbyterian Church encourages divestment in companies that do business in Israel, hoping to pressure them into adopting a more human-rights-oriented stance towards their neighbors.)

There's something to be said for ecumenism, denominational accountability, and church councils.

Tomorrow's post will discuss some characteristics of healthy churches. Yay! (Lord willing it will be a little more upbeat...)

Historic Confessions vs. the Contemporary Statement of Faith

2011-06-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

A page in the PC(USA) Book of Confessions

“[W]e do not approach God's Word as if we were the first people to read and interpret it. In fact, we draw upon 2,000 years of study, exegesis, reflection, and interpretation that testify to the truths of Scripture.” —Daniel R. Hyde

The doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture states that what's ultimately necessary for salvation can be drawn from Scripture with relative ease, but there are some Scriptural truths and doctrines that are more difficult, requiring a great deal of study and learning. So it takes study and learning to be able to discern whether certain things are actually taught in Scripture. The early church found it necessary to form councils and develop creeds to summarize the doctrines of the faith, because so many aberrant teachers were claiming to be ‘biblical’. Similarly, the Reformed churches published their confessions as apologetic documents to set them apart from the Roman church, and to explain to their magistrates and rulers that they were truly orthodox and not some new cult. In modern times, many churches have shorter ‘statements of faith’ that may either summarize the credal doctrines or itemize the particular distinctives of their congregation.

More than a year ago, I started working on a letter about church reform that I wanted to send to the leadership of the church we were attending at the time. We had some issues with their published statement of faith, and when a new pastor was appointed whose eschatological views were more like ours, it seemed like a good opportunity for reform.

So I started looking into the sources of their statement of faith, and it turned out to be a verbatim copy of the one from John MacArthur's church. I began analyzing each point of the document to see where it diverged from a more standard Christian creed or confession. Some of the key tenets were dispensational premillenialism, separationism/isolationism, Lordship salvation, and very dogmatic interpretation on the days of creation and the age of the earth. I think most of you know how I feel about dispensationalism if you've been reading this blog for a while, so we'll look at the other issues here. (As the church I'm talking about has acknowledged it needs to replace the statement, these criticisms should be taken as towards the source; MacArthur is well-respected and I'm sure there are other churches out their that have adopted similar statements without understanding its roots.)

Separationism
The idea of identifying separationism/isolationism as tenets of the Christian faith was a big concern to me, especially after what happened with the Schatz family, who seemingly raised their large number of children in extreme isolation from the world. Their children were so well-behaved, but it wasn't until it was too late that we understood it was because they feared a beating. Investigators found a fundamentalist book called To Train Up a Child in the house, and discovered the Schatzes were using techniques taught by the book. When I saw that there was a direct connection with fundamentalism there, I developed a very strong aversion to all things fundamentalist. If there is anything that remotely alludes to it (things like huge, extremely well-behaved families who take up a third of the church, unbalanced references to "the world"), we want to avoid it.

Isolationism is not Reformed, but hails from Anabaptists and the Radical Reformation. It is a form of legalism and perfectionism, as if they think Christians no longer have a sinful nature to battle against so by staying away from "the world", they can avoid sin altogether. Isolationism isn’t the only Anabaptist aspect to Fundamentalism. R. B. Kuiper has identified the whole Fundamentalist movement with “a rather pronounced strain of Anabaptism”—Anabaptism to the extreme, in other words.

Furthermore, there are God-given cultural blessings that separationists are missing out on. The Reformed doctrine of common grace shows us that God has the sovereign power to use unbelievers as the means to teach us important things. John Calvin wrote:

Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God's excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.2.15)

and,

...if the Lord has willed that we be helped in physics, dialectic, mathematics, and other like disciplines, by the work and ministry of the ungodly, let us use this assistance. For if we neglect God's gift freely offered in these arts, we ought to suffer just punishment for our sloths. (Institutes, 2.2.16)

In the 21st century, as a result of fundamentalist separationism, the church is in danger of disengaging from the post-Christian American culture in a way which will prevent us from fulfilling our calling as salt and light in our generation. We are not to be conformed to the pattern of the world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds through Scripture. But this doesn't mean we all need to move off to compounds in the hills and homeschool our kids. We are to be in the world—but not of it—but we are still to be in the world.

Jesus refused to separate himself from sinners, and because of this, the fundamentalist religious people of Jesus' day separated themselves from him! C. H. Spurgeon said, “Let us ... take heed that our separateness from the world is of the same kind as our Lord’s. We are not to adopt a peculiar dress, or a singular mode of speech, or shut ourselves out from society. He did not so; but He was a man of the people, mixing with them for their good.”

Lordship Salvation
There was this argument in the church a few decades ago, a battle fought by John MacArthur against those who he saw as promoting “cheap grace”. MacArthur insisted it's not enough to have Jesus as your Savior, he must also be your Lord, while those on the other aide insisted making Jesus your Lord was a sort of higher-level version of the Christian walk, for the “more advanced”, but people didn't really have to change to be saved. And so, in non-Reformed churches on both sides of the argument, it results in legalism, because the Lordship-types are trying to prove their salvation, and the so-called cheap-gracers are also being legalistic to earn their heavenly rewards, since their view of entry-level salvation results in only a beggar's spot on the streets of gold.

MacArthur's "Lordship salvationism" is relatively new on the scene. In the Reformed faith, there are no categories for this kind of talk. Jesus is the Lord of the universe, and that is a fact that has nothing to do with whether you “make him your Lord” or even agree with it (confessing it is another matter). It's good to be part of a denomination—even a congregation—that predates this argument.

Young-Earth Creationism
The view commonly known as young-earth creationism, or YEC, is the belief that the earth is only 6,000 years old and was created in its present form in seven literal earth days, with the animals only one day older than humans, and plants only one day older than animals, etc. I had already been doing research on the opening chapters of Genesis, and adopted the Framework view held by Lee Irons and Meredith Kline (see last year's polemic on the subject). Last year I started reading white papers by Tim Keller about it and paying attention to what the BioLogos Foundation had to say.

A couple years ago, MacArthur held a conference in which he declared that every self-respecting Calvinist has to be a young-earth creationist. Calvin would beg to differ, as he wrote in his commentary on Genesis, "He who would learn astronomy and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere." In other words, you don't learn science from the Bible.

At first, the reason I hadn't delivered this letter about church reform was that I prayerfully hadn't come to the point where I felt it was the right time, on the one hand; and on the other, so many of the changes I was asking for were starting to be adopted and therefore didn't need to be addressed by me explicitly. I had written this massive report but there were only a couple matters still outstanding; it was like the overarching theme of the letter didn't work anymore. However, once I came to the point where I realized I believed that science had proven the Big Bang (representative of God's ex nihilo creation), theistic evolution (by God's providence), a very old earth (as evidenced by natural revelation), and a localized Noahic flood (also proven scientifically), I realized to make this announcement would only be a stumbling block at the tiny church of fundamentalist home-schoolers. No longer would I be asking them to make room for gaps in the seven days, but I'd be asking them to make room for Darwinism. I thought forward to the days where my public-school-educated children would be sitting in Sunday school with home-schoolers and end up being told that their science is false and their daddy's a heretic...

Yet my conscience requires that I not just sit in the pews and hide my views.

It really made a big impression on me when, a year after my looking into these MacArthur statement of faith issues, worrying about how to break the news to our friends, I started visiting Bidwell Presbyterian, and discovered that one of their pastors actually wrote a book on the intersection of science and faith which embraces the views I've come to hold. Furthermore, the church has received a grant to promote conversation between science and religion, and is even overseeing a grant program to help other churches do the same. A phrase heard often is this isn't a church where you have to check your brain at the door.

And it's not just one pastor in one congregation. The 1969 Presbyterian General Assembly issued this statement: “Neither Scripture, our Confession of Faith, nor our Catechisms, teach the Creation of man by the direct and immediate acts of God so as to exclude the possibility of evolution as a scientific theory.” The other, more conservative Presbyterian denominations have made strong statements to the contrary, and so does the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

To put a section in a church's statement of faith about a young earth and a literal 7 x 24-hour-day creation week is to constrain members' consciences in a way that God himself does not require. This is referred to as a “quest for illegitimate religious certainty” by Reformed scholar R. Scott Clark. It is also a distinctly American issue; the Europeans got over it rather quickly. Finally, the push for YEC over the last hundred years or so is actually due to the work of Seventh-Day Adventists, who advocate it not for exegetical reasons, but because one of their leaders supposedly had a vision from God on the matter. As Clark writes, "Any boundary marker ... that includes the Adventists and excludes Hodge, Warfield, Bavinck, and Machen should not commend itself to confessional Reformed folk as a way to mark out Reformed identity" (Recovering the Reformed Confessions, p. 50).

In strong contrast to John MacArthur's particularist, peculiar, fundamentalist statement of faith, all Presbyterian and Reformed churches subscribe to the Westminster Confession, the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and the Heidelberg Catechism, among others—in other words, "the Reformed confessions”. I've come to realize the importance of having these deep roots in the historic Reformed confessions and avoiding all ties to Fundamentalism. Like the church in the days of Copernicus, folks like John MacArthur and Al Mohler, in regurgitating their fundamentalist YEC and dispensationalist views, are really doing a lot of harm to the Christian faith in the 21st century.

Diversity and the Nature of the Church

2011-06-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

“The great strength of Presbyterianism is its uncanny knack of fostering a fellowship in which people of different viewpoints continue to dialogue.”
—David Robert Ord

Here is a very concise statement on the nature of the true church: “The true church is one where the Word is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered.”

A right doctrine of the church doesn't require everyone in the church to have right doctrine (though members should have a basic understanding of the gospel). The business of the church is simply to worship God corporately, gathering together to partake in the sacraments, to hear God's words spoken to them, and to sing them back to him as one. The interpretation and application of God's words are secondary, and they are the responsibility of the individual's intellect, and the Holy Spirit, respectively.

Theologians have always put a strong emphasis on the corporate nature of the church. But it's really hard to do things corporately without a group of people, since in very small groups, the individuals are emphasized over the body. (Small groups are good for building relationship and encouraging one another, but only as supplemental to corporate worship that includes people not in your small group.)

"The unity of the church is compatible with a wide variety of forms, but it is hidden and distorted when variant forms are allowed to harden into sectarian divisions, exclusive denominations, and rival factions." So says the Presbyterian Confession of 1967. This is not to discount all denominations or abolish Presbyterianism, but to point us to the historicity of the Reformed faith, wherever we may find it, and whatever we may call it; but within those denominations, sectarianism must be discouraged. This is another reason why we've chosen to attend the growing downtown mainline church rather than being part of a tiny fringe congregation.

Up until now, we have called ourselves Reformed Baptist. But really, we're just plain Christian. For me, it was a long journey to get to where I am theologically, but for my wife it hasn't meant changing her views about things as much as recognizing categories for the things she's always understood the Bible to teach. We're looking for ancient orthodoxy. We want to share the same faith that Augustine practiced, that Athanasius practiced—the same faith as the first century church. (I hope that once I get some of these doctrinal posts out if the way, I'll be able to relax and just be a plain old "mere Christian" again.)

I find myself more Reformed than mosts Reformed Baptists, however, in that I recognize all the Reformed confessions (Belgic Confession, Canons of Dort, Westminster Confession, etc.). A good definition of a Reformed Baptist ought to be

Re·formed Bap·tist noun \ri-ˈfȯrmd ˈbap-tist\: a Presbyterian who waits until their children are of a so-called accountable age before baptizing them, upon their confession of faith.

But many Reformed Baptists don't recognize the source texts for their 1689 London Baptist Confession and seem to hold to it alone, and so they may end up with only two confessional documents (with Keach's Catechism as the other). By contrast, the PC(USA) Book of Confessions contains the Scots Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms. What's worse, in subscribing to the 1689 confession, many new RB churches seem to take more exceptions to it than the 1689 itself does to the Presbyterian Westminster Confession on which it is based--making themselves more different from authentic Reformed Baptists than authentic Reformed Baptists are from Presbyterians!

So I feel more welcome at a Presbyterian church than I do even at churches that claim to be Reformed Baptist. As John Piper said addressing baptism issues at his congregation: we shouldn't make the door to the local church more narrow than the gates of the Kingdom of God (membership in the invisible, global Church). I want to be part of a church where my annihilationist, consubstantiationist friends could be deacons if they wanted to be, because I know they believe the Gospel, and that's what matters.

It's like what Mark Driscoll says about the closed-handed vs. open-handed issues. The Acts 29 Network is credobaptist, but it allows for paedobaptist churches to be part of their network, because the things they agree on are more important than the things they disagree on. (Baptism is an important sacrament, but it only happens once—at least it should! After it's done you still have a lot of Christian living to do.)

Pastor Greg Cootsona blogged a couple months ago in response to Rob Bell's book, Love Wins:

The questions he [Rob Bell] asks can find honest engagement without rancor here. And really, mainliners here just engage (at their best) with the whole of the Christian church in time (reading not only Calvin and Luther, but also Gregory of Nissa and Thomas Aquinas) and in breadth (taking in the insights of Roman Catholics and Orthodox, for example). It’s simply a way of engaging what C. S. Lewis penned as “mere Christianity”.

And so we have come to the place where, if we want to be comfortable and welcome in a church even though we're Calvinists, amillennial, Sabbatarian, and believe in the antiquity of the earth, then we must recognize the only way we can feel welcome is to be part of a church that would also welcome Rob Bell-types. This is the nature of plurality and diversity. In order to feel safe and not labeled as heretical over our views on secondary issues, we also need to learn to be more open-minded and not label others as heretics.

David Robert Ord, in an article called What do Presbyterians believe about the Bible?, wrote, “Our Constitution requires us to promote inclusiveness, which means including all the different theological positions that are consistent with the Reformed tradition.” This is a breath of fresh air. It's much preferable to situations in which people leave and form new denominations or kick others out of their church who differ with them. Also, notice how it's not a kind of "anything goes" approach, but even in these postmodern times seeks consistency with the Reformed tradition.

In the past decade or so, our downtown mainline church has seen unprecedented growth. Not that it's about numbers, but people are calling it “renewal” and “revival” (as far as Reformed types can use those words). Associate pastor Greg Cootsona attributes it to “the ways that this particular church has sought to live out Reformed theology and practice.” I found it very reassuring to get an email from our new pastor reflecting on how he found freedom when he discovered Reformed theology, and the more articles, booklets, etc., that I read both from the denominational level and particular to this church, I keep seeing the word Reformed.

The phrase “mere Christianity”, coined by the great Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (after whom we named our son), was made popular by C. S. Lewis's book by the same name. Though it is a Reformed church, this church's mission is to point to the core of Christianity, those ancient orthodox doctrines which have been believed by all true Christians “at all times and in all places”. Lewis also spoke of the "chronological snobbery" that prevents modern people from reading old books as if they didn't have anything to say to their condition. It's very similar in modern American evangelicalism, that they don't think the Christians who went before them knew anything.

I should mention that I have personally come to understand the Reformed position on infant baptism, as correlating to old covenant circumcision in that it is a sign of the covenant, and as a metaphor for the electing grace which God bestows on his children before they ever had a say in the matter. But my wife is not comfortable with it. We also have different views on the importance of church membership. So, on these issues and others, we're learning to apply the same policy of diversity and tolerance on non-essentials which we have at our new church in our own family! Did you know Presbyterians will actually perform a “baby dedication” if you're not comfortable with sprinkling? So it's not even an issue worth forming new denominations over! (Good luck trying to get a Baptist pastor to sprinkle your kid!)

It's almost as if what we are doing as Baptists in joining a Presbyterian congregation is the opposite of leaving a church, since we are grafting back into the main branch of Reformation faith, and they'll still tolerate our credobaptist ways.

Why not “Mainline”?

2011-06-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

More than a decade ago, I was part of a church that sent “missionaries” to Scotland to try to show the Presbyterians how to do church, and I went on two such mission trips myself. In the years since, I have come to see that it's all the rest of us who need to ask the Presbyterians to show us how to do church.

I have become Reformed.

Becoming Reformed usually happens in stages, for those who didn't grow up with it. It often starts by struggling with predestination, moving from there to the sovereignty of God in all things, followed by terming oneself just a “four-point Calvinist”, until, finally, one comes to affirm the Five Points of Calvinism. But being Reformed is so much more than just five points. Eventually it should bring you to embracing the Reformed confessions and catechisms, and to appreciate the long and broad tradition of Reformed faith in its entirety.

This series of posts began as a polemic as to why it's okay for me, as a Reformed Baptist, to go to a Presbyterian church. I was going to start with an admission that there is always going to be something I disagree with about any local church—and explain why I'm choosing to overlook my differences with this particular church after weighing all options. But I think in the a passage of weeks, I have really began to discover that I have more in common with this church than any other.

The Presbyterian church in town is mainline Presbyterian. I should qualify this by saying if there were a NAPARC church in town that didn't compromise itself by paying rent to cultic landlords, we might have started our search there. I find a lot of affinity with a lot of the NAPARC guys I've read, so long as they're not a-capella Psalter-only types. But there are certain interpretations that some of those denominations make towards the confessions and certain passages of Scripture that I cannot subscribe to. (I will address this in a future post about credalism and confessional subscription.) Though embracing the confessions, mainline Presbyterians present a more open policy to different interpretations, and the only requirement for membership is confession of faith in Christ.

When I began my first drafts for this series, I would have said that there are not enough people in this town who feel the same way as we do, holding to the same Reformed doctrines and worldviews, to establish a new church with that affinity. (I said, “I would have said,” because, as the weeks go by, I keep finding more Gospel truth in this particular mainline Presbyterian congregation.) This is not something to bemoan. Rather, we ought to take the approach taken by the Reformers after their churches were established and they wanted to take them a further step (e.g. Calvin's desire for weekly communion and Luther's desire for a provably regenerate congregation): do what you can to encourage reform, but don't seek splits; seek God's providence and pray for him to work his will in the church through internal transformation.

So, what's with this “mainline” thing all about? The mainline Protestant denominations are the ones that made up the majority of American churches beginning in the colonial era, until the fundamentalist outbreak in the early 20th century. These are the churches that came from their Reformation roots in Europe with the first immigrants, from the Scottish Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, German Lutherans, English Puritans, Anglicans, Philadelphia Baptists, etc. This is the history I want to be attached to: to say we are the very Reformed church that came from Scotland and England. The church that participated in the Westminster Assembly in 1640s. A church that pre-dates the dispensationalist movement. We were not formed by the same Second Great Awakening which spawned Mormonism and countless other aberrations. We were not formed by the Jesus Movement of the 1970s with its peculiar “Moses-model” polity or its schismatic eschatology. To the contrary, we can be proud to be the spiritual descendants of Calvin's church in Geneva and part of the tradition which brought us puritans like Richard Baxter and John Owen, and the first president of Princeton, Jonathan Edwards, and B.B. Warfield, the “Lion of Princeton”.

I remember a story about C. S. Lewis, when he was asked why he was an Anglican. His response was that it was the established church in his town. If he were in Scotland he probably would have been Presbyterian; in Holland, Reformed; in Germany, Lutheran, etc. So it seems suitable for us to settle on this church, as one of the oldest congregations in Chico.

No Christian had any notion of a secret rapture before 1830

2011-05-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the theme of refuting dispensationalism, I wanted to post this link to an article about the secret rapture theory from a Reformed Baptist perspective, written by Brian Schwertley in 1999. He writes,

Whenever a Christian encounters a doctrine that has not been taught by anyone in any branch of Christ’s church for over eighteen centuries, one should be very suspect of that teaching. This fact in and of itself does not prove that the new teaching is false. But, it should definitely raise one’s suspicions, for if something is taught in Scripture, it is not unreasonable to expect at least a few theologians and exegetes to have discovered it before. The teaching of a secret pretribulation rapture is a doctrine that never existed before 1830...

BlogPress iPhone app review

2011-05-21T18:26:00.001-07:00

Downloading BlogPress was my last-stitch effort to save my Blogger blog. So much of my online activity revolves around my iPhone that my blog has suffered in recent years, since Blogger doesn't have a mobile version. I can post drafts via email, but they always end up with funny line breaks, and emailed pictures have not been importing properly.

Every few months I'd check to see if a new blogging app had been added to the App Store that might fulfill my needs, but I was never happy with what I saw. I had noticed WordPress had its own iPhone app, and was just about ready to make the switch when I discovered two things: BlogPress and the MovableType2Blogger conversion utility, which I could use to finish migrating my old blog.lorddesign.net blog over to Blogger. My MovableType CMS had been offline for a while, I think because my web host had upgraded to newer servers and moved my site around. But I was able to get them to fix it so I could export my old blog posts for conversion. That ever-pending task of migration was finally completed, so when I think of my blog, I can now think if new things rather than what's left to do with the old.

There are now two apps I use for mobile blogging, depending on how long I expect it to take me to complete a post: BlogPress and Evernote. Evernote is great because I can access it on my phone, on my Mac or PC or in a web browser. I use it for projects that require a lot of research and are going to take several drafts to complete, where I know the final draft is going to have to be posted from a computer with a lot of copying and pasting. But for shorter posts or ones I want to attach iPhone pictures to, BlogPress works great. It can even be used to save drafts online so you can work on them later. I should also mention my wife downloaded the app too, and it seems to have helped revive her blogging as well, since it's a little difficult to get your laptop out sometimes when you have a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old running around screaming all day.

There are a few issues with the app. There's a lame margin at the top of the editing window (see screen shot). Also, if you try to put a photo at the top of your blog, it seems to insert an empty line of text before it. Also, when you're typing and the cursor goes below the onscreen keyboard, the editor doesn't automatically scroll to keep the cursor in view. This also happens if you're multitasking. An additional feature that would be nice to have would be WYSIWYG editing, with the ability to select a block of text and then apply a size change or font variant.

Posted from my iPhone

Location: Eaton Rd,Chico,United States

Against Dispensationalism

2011-05-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

There's a whole lot of eschatological fervor out there, with the civil war in Libya, the earthquake in Japan a couple months ago, Harold Camping's yet-another-failed-prediction of the date and time of Judgment Day, and Obama's speech on Middle East diplomacy.

There are a lot of Evangelicals who are quick to admit that Harold Camping is a false teacher. But I submit that dispensationalist premillennialism is just as dangerous a departure from the historic Christian faith.

You can judge a tree by it's fruit. What's the fruit of Dispensationalism?

Dispensationalism leads to churches setting up all-powerful pastors with no accountability or elders to handle things when he's dead and gone.
Dispensationalism leads to churches meeting in strip malls or movie theaters instead of building stone buildings to last a hundred years so their children don't have to worry about paying for facilities.
Dispensationalism leads to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that promotes inequality by favoring Israel "at all costs" even when they perform illegal crimes against humanity.
Dispensationalism leads to U.S. environmental policy that is only concerned about the short-term, endorsing oil as fuel since it doesn't matter if it runs out because we won't be here anymore.
Dispensationalism leads to a U.S. environmental policy that doesn't care about raping the environment and exterminating species, because it's all going to burn anyway.
Dispensationalism leads to American Christians getting deep into debt to support their "prosperity gospel" lifestyle, since they expect they'll never have to pay the money back anyway.
Dispensationalism leads to American Christians failing to provide an education or inheritance for their children since Jesus is coming back tomorrow anyway.

As you can see by the fruit, it is an evil heresy. It's bad for our economy, and it's bad for the world. God put Adam in the garden to take care of his creation. He gave us the command to love our neighbors as ourselves. Dispensationalism gives us the option to throw all this out the window.

Yesterday, Obama gave a speech about U.S. policy in the Middle-East, hoping to lay the groundwork for peace. Some of my friends on Facebook started saying he wants to help the Palestinians "eradicate" Israel, though he said nothing of the sort. Though Obama is their Christian "brother", they were calling him evil, a pawn of Satan. It was truly ridiculous. This is what Dispensationalism breeds, and it's just as dangerous as Harold Camping setting dates and convincing people to sell their homes and give their money to help fund his agenda. I'm going to try to address some of the sentiments that erupted in that discussion.

“My views are right and you should feel the same way if you are truly a Christian and know God's word.”

Dispensationalist views are heterodox and have never been in the mainstream. Dispensationalism has its roots in the teachings of John Nelson Darby in Britain in the 1800s, but became a distinctly American movement about 85 years ago, stongly promoted in the South at Dallas Seminary and Bob Jones University. Before this, billions of Christians over two millennia never had such a notion. Dispensationalists think that the Church is the "Great Parenthesis", that it was completely unexpected by the Old Testament, and became God's "Plan B" when Jesus supposedly "offered" his Kingdom to the Jews and was rejected by them. Therefore, they take all of the Old Testament prophecies about a world-wide people of God made up of people from all nations and make them about Israel in some future millennial reign, like Jesus is going to offer his kingdom to them all over again and for some reason they won't reject him this time. And it will be an Old-Testament theocracy complete with abominable blood sacrifices. But Hebrews 10:12 says Christ "sat down at the right hand of God," after having "offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins" (ESV). This is what Jesus meant on the cross when he uttered his famous last words, "It is finished."

In fact, the entire dispensationalist system comes from leaving out the New Testament entirely, and interpreting all of the Old Testament prophecies with blinders on, to see what they might have imagined if there never were a church. As a result, it's built on a sort of alternate-reality/timeline theory. With no regard for the sovereign plan of God, who foretold the Gospel as far back as Genesis 3, Genesis 12, Genesis 15, they interpret everything as if it were pointing to some literal post-exilic restoration of the nation of Israel, as if the silly things Jesus' naive disciples were saying about a literal earthly reign (arguing about who's going to sit where, etc.) were actually what Jesus was expecting, too. This interpretation leaves out the Gospel entirely, even though the Gospel is the whole point of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation.

The more proper way to interpret the Old Testament is not with blinders on, but to interpret Scripture with Scripture. If there is a passage where Jesus says, "When it said this, this is what it meant," or "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing", or where Paul says that God was "preaching the Gospel" to Abraham, etc—we need to submit to Scripture's authority in the matter instead of arguing with it.

“I don't think God wants us to support a politician if they are not for God or his chosen people.”

When Scripture speaks of God's chosen people, it's not talking about Israel. It's talking about the church, the community of the elect, those who were "chosen by God" from every tongue, tribe, and nation. As for a politician being "for God", that's not in the job description—you are confusing the civil kingdom with the heavenly kingdom. But he is a Christian. If you want to use the Bible to justify whether you should support a politician, you would do better to consider Romans 13:1-2 (NIV), "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves." In other words, Fox News, in being contrary to all Democrat authority, is a rebellious and illegitimate institution that will face God's judgment and you will also, if you don't recognize God's providence in this matter.

“The Bible says Israel is the 'Apple of God's Eye'.”

Zechariah 2 is a prophecy of the church. It also speaks of him judging the nations, and this will happen on the Last Day, but this is not talking about God taking the side of some tiny ethnicity in the Middle East to the exclusion of all others. It says in verse 11 that many nations will join themselves to the LORD in that day. He's talking about the Gospel being preached to the Gentiles. And so "his people" is no longer Israel, but all of the nations who come to him.

“2 Chronicles 6:6 says God chose Jerusalem. We have to fight for Jerusalem to remain Jewish.”

You can't just take one verse out of context to support your view. You have to consider the overarching theme of Scripture, which is all about Christ and the Gospel. This particular verse is from a specific context. It's about David being king, and about moving the capital and the center of worship to Jerusalem. God's name is no longer in Jerusalem. The nation broke God's covenant over and over again. Though God was very patient with them, he finally kicked them out of the land. Though many were eventually able to come home, their efforts to restore legalism were never going to work. God was getting things ready for the New Covenant. Even the kingship of David is figurative of Christ, the "son of David." So anything that talks about his line being kept or restored is really about Christ's coming, and what he did to fulfill everything by dying on the cross for our sins, and this Gospel is to go to all the nations.

“The Bible says, 'I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.'”

This has nothing to do with Israel. God said this to Abraham in Genesis 12, and Abraham was the father not only of the Jews, but also of the Arabs. So there is no greater blessing by choosing Jews over Arabs vs. promoting equality for all of Abraham's descendants. Furthermore, in the same chapter, when Yahweh said to Abraham, "In you all the families of the earth will be blessed," he wasn't talking about how blessed the United States would be if they choose to support a new homogenous, rascist government made up entirely of ethnic Jews several thousand years in the future. He was talking about the fact that through Abraham's seed, the Messiah would come into the world, bringing salvation to all. In Galatians 3:8, Paul says God's speech to Abraham in Genesis 12 had nothing to do with a land or nation, but was all about the Gospel. When Christ was born, Israel's mission as as the bloodline through which Christ would come was 100% fulfilled. The true heirs of Abraham, the real chosen people of God, are the Church, no matter what their ancestry. This is what the Church has believed for 2,000 years. It's only in the last century that dispensationalism has taken hold, and it needs to be recognized for what it is: a heterodox teaching.

“But the Bible says we were only 'grafted in'.”

We are only "grafted in" in the sense that there is a spiritual lineage and a very long history of God redeeming his chosen people. But it's like a family tree, temporal. There are no longer any non-Christian Jewish branches. Paul's illustration says that branches were "cut off" that we might be grafted in. This means any Jews who still don't believe in Jesus are thrown into the fire. Also, Galatians 4 says it's not the Jews who are the chosen ones ("children of promise"), but the church. Paul says, "Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." He is speaking allegorically of Hagar, not as representative of the ancestry of Arabs, but spiritually speaking, of unbelieving Jews, who are the real illegitimate children. Israelis who reject the Gospel are completely out of the equation.

“I know some of them are going to hell but they are still chosen. THEY JUST ARE!”

Not anymore. Jesus said to the Jews in Matthew 21:43, "Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits."

And in what sense is someone chosen if they're going to hell? Romans 8:33-34 (ESV) says, "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?..." If you are chosen by God, you are justified and will never be condemned. So you must be consistent in your views. Either no Jew will ever go to hell, or not all Jews are chosen. As Romans 9:6-7 (ESV) says, "It is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring..." John 1:11-13: "He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." To base everything on race is to be distinctly un-Biblical and anti-Christian. As Paul said in Galatians 3:28-29, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise."

Just to be clear, I'm not bigoted against Jews. I am simply also not bigoted against Muslims, either. They both have a right to seek to worship the God of Abraham according to their ancestral religions. As a Christian, I believe they are wrong, and that God has provided the only way to him in Christ, but I also believe they are my neighbors and I will fight for their freedom of worship. In Galatians 3, Paul says the law was a schoolmaster to the Jews, to lead them to Christ. In the same way, Islam's law-keeping religion is just as much of a schoolmaster that can lead people to Christ. The two religions have equal legitimacy in that sense, and we should not treat Jews as somehow better.

Though one's salvation may not necessarily hinge on one's eschatalogical views, having a right Biblical view is still very important for Christians. You can't go through life promoting anti-Palestinian racist policies in the Middle East and calling Democrats the spawn of Satan as if you're justified by Scripture to do so when you really aren't.

How to spot a false prophet

2011-05-19T10:44:00.001-07:00

In light of the impending Judgment Day, I'd like to point put some things that are stated a bit more explicitly in Scripture than the date of the end of the world, namely, two easy ways to spot a false prophet.

1) Anyone who says they know the date of the end is a false prophet. Jesus said not even he knows, but only the Father. (Mark 13:32)

2) Anyone who says "Look, Jesus is back! He's here in the desert!" (Mt 24:23, 24) And yet we have had a plethora of cults throughout the ages who say just that.

Posted from my iPhone

The Two Kingdoms and the Death of Bin Laden

2011-05-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

God, the Supreme Lord and King of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates to be under him over the people, for his own glory and the public good; and to this end, hath armed them with the power of the sword, for the defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evil-doers. (Westminster Confession of Faith, 23.1)

The evil man responsible for the murders of 3,000 innocent men, women, and children--created in God's image--on September 11, 2001, has finally been brought to justice, after almost a decade of hard work and sacrifice.

I'm a little bit annoyed by all the Christians on Facebook saying stuff like "God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked", or "Do not gloat when your enemy falls", or with their Rob-Bell-esque "Jesus loves Osama, too"; or those consumed by fear on the other side, who say this will only lead to further retaliation. It seems to me these Christians are thoroughly confused about what it means to be a Christian as well as a citizen of the planet Earth.

"No creed by Jesus" bumper-sticker religion isn't going to help anybody here. What's really helpful in times like this is to realize that you're not the first Christian to think about these things. Dead folks like St. Paul, Augustine, Luther and Calvin though about them, too, and we would do well to consider what they wrote. Namely, I am speaking of the Reformed Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms.

God may not "take pleasure" in the death of this wicked man, but he sure as hell ordained it, both decretively and providentially. In the Noahic covenant, which applies to all individuals, no matter what their religion, God ordained civil justice in this way:

“And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
“Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind..." (Ge. 9:5, 6, NIV)

Paul discusses the role of the God-ordained civil kingdom in Romans 13:

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience. (Rm. 13:1-5, NIV)

(For all you Republicans out there, you'd be interested to know that Paul goes on to explain why taxes are also God-ordained.)

The job of the magistrate is to enforce the moral law, and this fact is God-ordained.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that individual believers should turn the other cheek when they are wronged by an evil person. He also said "Love your enemies". This would apply to you if your spouse or child were killed on 9/11 and one day you decided to go for a hike along the Afghan/Pakistan border and turning a corner on the hill you ran into the man who murdered your family. If you wanted to obey Jesus' command, you may choose to turn the other cheek. (Or if he was wounded like the traveler in the parable of the Good Samaritan, you could choose to show him some love by bandaging his wounds.) But the United States government must not turn the other cheek, or it would be an illegitimate magistrate, failing to fulfill its purpose to protecting the weak and vulnerable. The job of a soldier is a legitimate job for a Christian, and the armed forces are a legitimate institution for a nation of peace-loving people to have.

This is not about a blood feud between two warring clans who don't even remember what the grudge is about. This is about justice, and as far as millions of people are concerned, the requirements of justice have finally been met. A more proper attitude for these Christians would be to "rejoice with those who rejoice"--all those who are finally seeing some closure after the untimely death of their loved ones, and to rejoice that our brave men and women in the armed forces can maybe start to come home now.

Volitional Love

2011-04-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other. John 15:12-17 (NIV)

The commandments can be summed up as follows: Love God; love each other (Mark 12:30, 31).

"You did not choose me, but I chose you," Jesus said. From there, the pastor in this morning's sermon developed the ideas of the covenant love of God towards his people, in the typology of his relationship to Israel in ancient times, and in his relationship to the church through all ages, through the covenant of grace. As objects of God's covenant love, it is not our choice to receive it, but it is God's choice to bestow that love on us, and so, as we exhibit that love towards others (most explicitly in marriage, according to Eph. 5:25 ff.), we doing so as a reflection of Christ's love for us ("Love each other as I loved you").

We often associate love with a feeling, but feelings come and go. So much in modern-day American evangelicalism is based on "experience", and the highs come and go. But the goal of the Christian walk ("appointed...so that you might go and bear fruit") is much more concrete: Love God; love each other.

We often hear young people talk about "falling in love". The Greeks had four words for love: phileo, storge, eros, and agape. Agape seems to have been little used in classical Greek, and it was co-opted by the New Testament authors to express a different kind of love (actually, agape and phileo have overlapping meanings, and you can only determine the usage based on the context—see D.A. Carson's Exegetical Fallacies). In contrast to the love as a feeling, the love we are commanded by Scripture to exhibit is a conscious, intentional love, more volitional than emotional.

As a Calvinist, I tend to get nervous whenever someone mentions "choice" or an "act of the will." But then I remind myself, the Five Points of the Canons of Dort are about soteriology. If you want to look at it from the Jonathan Edwards Freedom of the Will aspect, you can consider that from our perspective, God has already given us the will and the ability to obey, so it's entirely appropriate for a pastor to address Christians by speaking to their volition.

C.S. Lewis said that if you decide to act in a loving way, it "primes the pump", and the feelings will follow. There have been scientific studies on the release of oxytocin by the brain when you're feeling romantic. Even if you're not feeling romantic, if you start holding hands, hug, kiss, speak affirming words... the oxytocin will start flowing!

God's covenant love (grace) is not based on our actions, not a contract. It is unconditional. Not quid-pro-quo, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Marriage has to be a covenant, not a legalistic contract. It's grace. It's the way we've been treated, because, "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (NIV).

The commandments to love God and neighbor are inextricably linked to each other. We are able to demonstrate our love for God when we obey him by loving our neighbor. In the context of the church community, our love for God is shared when we love one another as believers. But ultimately, it all derives from God's unconditional, covenant love (grace) for us.

And in our Law and Gospel moment for today... God's covenant love/grace for his people is definitely gospel. The response of his people in exhibiting the God kind of love towards him and towards others is law. We encounter the pedagogical use of the law when we see ourselves in the mirror and realize how far we fall short in our love for others, and the didactic use of the law in that we were actively being encouraged this morning to follow God's will in obedience to both tables of the 10 commandments (first table: love God, second table: love your neighbor).

Location: W 1st St,Chico,United States

Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Zakir Hussain

2011-04-13T23:06:00.001-07:00

We were pleased to receive complimentary tickets to see Béla Fleck on banjo, Edgar Meyer on double bass, and Zakir Hussain on tabla in concert at Laxson Auditorium tonight, courtesy of KCHO/Northstate Public Radio (kcho.org). The concert was amazing, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so if they are coming to your area, be sure to see them. They don't have any recordings that are just this trio; though they have collaborated often, the record they are promoting is 'concerto-style', with them accompanied by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and though some of the tunes they perform on the tour are on the album, but most aren't, and some are considerably rearranged or completely new derivations, based on, for example, a theme from the horn section that they didn't get to play themselves. (In my opinion, there are so many millions of notes being played by these talented performers—only half of which can really be noticed—that I don't think the orchestra is necessary.) In short, you are not going to find any single recording, or make your own compilation, that comes close to capturing what happens at one of these shows.

The first tune began with an Edgar Meyer solo. I must confess, I had never appreciated double bass solos before tonight. Meyer is a virtuoso, even having recorded the Bach cello suites. Christina was so enamored with it that she actually told me I have to learn to play the bass! Zakir Hussain's tablas are so precisely tuned, that you forget sometimes during his solos that he's the only one playing, until you look over to the other guys and they're just standing there watching, or snapping along keeping time, perhaps working up new tunes in their heads. I know Meyer and Fleck have collaborated on a duo project before, but Hussain's tabla provides a perfect link between the two instruments: the banjo is already percussive, and Hussain's tablas are tuned so well that they are melodic; when he presses his left hand on the larger drum to change pitch on-the-fly, he makes it sound just like the bass, and so Fleck and Meyer and Hussain can pass a tune around to each other in canon.

One of the things that has always struck me about Béla Fleck ensembles is how music that can sound so improvisational is often so intricately composed. You start to get an idea of this when you notice the musicians are playing fast riffs in harmony, or counterpoint, or hitting the same accents. But it's not until you see a behind-the-scenes documentary with band members studying pages and pages of sheet music at rehearsal that you see just how deep the level of control is, and how impressive it is that they don't need all these scores when playing live 3-hour sets.

There are some musicians that inspire you to make more music; there are some whose skills are so profoundly jaw-dropping that they make you want to give up and say, "I sucketh forever." I am not quite sure yet which of these this performance has done to me.

Laxson will announce it's 2011-2012 concert season lineup in June, so stay tuned to chicoperformances.com for the details.

The Problem of Hell

2011-04-10T22:38:00.001-07:00

I just read the chapter on hell in C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain, having been persuaded by Bidwell Presbyterian pastor, Greg Cootsona.

I have to say I have always considered C. S. Lewis as a sort of standard for Christian orthodoxy. If there was ever a doctrine I had questions about, if I were to learn about it from Lewis, that would settle the question. And so I come to his chapter on hell. At once it makes me realize how little of his works I have apparently read, and how much else is there, and why haven't I been more diligent to use Lewis as a resource through all the arguments of the last decade. It also makes me wonder why those who often seem to quote Lewis on every other page of their own works have completely disregarded him in the argument over Rob Bell's new apparently universalist book.

Their views are different, but neither of them resembles the Fundamentalist view. Rob Bell thinks hell is a state of mind, and that ultimately, God's love will melt the cold heart and the human soul will turn around and step into heaven. Lewis, on the other hand, recognizes the power of omnipotent God to know when a soul will never agree to turn, like a schoolmaster who knows the point at which it's pointless to make a student retake a test. But Lewis points out that retributive torture is only one of the descriptions of hell that Scripture gives us. It also uses images of destruction and banishment. Like burning a log, you end up with remains (ashes and gas), so what suffers in hell is not a human soul, but the remains of one—a “damned ghost”. Finally, hell and heaven don't coexist on parallel planes or timelines. While heaven was made for man, hell was not, and so they are not a yin and yang. Existence in hell is not about duration but of “finality.” “It is ‘the darkness outside’, the outer rim where being fades away into nonentity.” and so, Lewis sounds an awful lot like an annihilationist.

This is not the medieval view of Dante or the paintings. And it is not the view of the world of Evangelicalism which came out in full force to condemn Rob Bell (as if they couldn't see it coming?). The biggest thing is that we should not use hell to scare stoners and heshers into praying the sinner's prayer. It's not a tool to condemn "the other". It's a tool to condemn ourselves. A few years ago When struggling with the doctrine of election I finally came to the point where I realized if God were to send me to hell, he'd be perfectly justified to do so, and would be glorified in it. This is the humility Paul felt, the “chief of sinners”, and the position of all the Reformers, as sinners saved by grace alone. As Lewis put it, “In all discussions of Hell we should keep steadily before our eyes the possible damnation, not of our enemies nor our friends … but of ourselves. This chapter is not about your wife or son, nor about Nero or Judas Iscariot; it is about you and me.”

Posted from my iPhone

Location:Manzanita Ave,Chico,United States

Life More Abundantly

2011-04-10T15:16:00.001-07:00

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (Jn 10:10b, ESV)

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (Jn 15:9:11, ESV)

At the mainline church I visited this morning, the pastor said, “The reason Jesus came to earth was to enable us to live life to the fullest.” I freaked out a little bit and wanted to bolt out of there, until I realized he was paraphrasing John 10:10. Here are my notes:

Jesus himself tells us the purpose of his coming, and he doesn't say it's so people can have "eternal life" in the hereafter, but that they can have "abundant life," beginning now. We do that by abiding in him (dwell/Gk. meno), like branches get their life from the vine.

15:9. The Father's love can be defined as grace. This is unconditional "just because" love that has nothing to do with who you are or what you've done. You abide in it by keeping his commands (though it's not earned), and this is how you experience that abundant life. v11. Obedience brings us joy. John Calvin: “True knowledge of God is born out of obedience.” Do you believe that God really knows what's best for you?

Posted from my iPhone

Location:Main St,Chico,United States

Butte county parents plead guilty

2011-04-08T22:28:00.001-07:00

I have blogged about the case before, so I wanted to provide a follow-up post since the judicial proceedings are now over. The defendants agreed to a plea deal, in which the father pled guilty to murder and torture in exchange for allowing the mother to plead to a lesser charge of manslaughter. Way to man up, Kevin.

Posted from my iPhone

Location:Eaton Rd,Chico,United States

Public transit #fail

2011-03-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

I'm never riding the bus again, nor recommending it to anybody. I was standing at the stop in front of city hall and the guy didn't stop for me. He said I was outside the circle of intent even though I was 5' away from the pole and there was no one else on the whole block. I ran 4 blocks on my sprained ankle to catch the bus at 2nd & Salem and the driver argued with me and said it was my own damn fault for not standing on the curb.

Fortunately it was a shift change or he wouldn't have let me on.

Never riding the bus again.

Public transportation is good for your health

2011-03-10T11:59:00.000-08:00

So, gas is expensive because Gaddafi won't leave. I think the liberty of the Libyan people is worth it, however, and I generally get annoyed when the bulk of the media coverage is about money paid for fuel rather than lives paid for liberty. But I was listening to NPR yesterday and they were talking about the benefits of high fuel prices, and it made me want to pick up one of those free bus passes for downtown workers, so I did.

I only fill up the Rabbit once a month, but I think this could in theory save us about $50/mo. I can't stop at Dutch Bros. on my way to work, so that might help, too. Other benefits of more people using public transportation are supposed to be fewer particulates in the air, and average weight loss of 20 lb. because of the walking to the bus stop part of the equation. Plus I get to sit and play with my iPhone and catch up on the morning's news.

I started the morning off with a nightmare about missing the bus, in which I ran back and forth between two stops trying to catch the bus instead of just waiting for the next one. When the bus was finally in view, my legs were suddenly paralyzed. Lesson learned from the dream: stay put and wait for the next bus.

In real life, it was harder than it seemed.

Around 8 AM it started storming outside. “This is going to be fun,” I thought. But I wanted to go through with my plans, as a proof-of-concept, to show that this would work for me.

I ended up 20 minutes early to the bus stop, since I read the schedule wrong. It turns out the bus I was aiming for dead-ends on the north end of the route instead of turning around. It was cold and wet, and the wind blew my umbrella inside out, but I reminded myself people in colder and wetter places use public transportation all the time. Think Portland, Chicago, New York.

The ride was nice enough. The heater was working very well. I got to catch up on some Twitter and Facebook and argue politics with my friends. Once I got downtown, I realized I had misread the schedule in another regard, as the bus actually stops and sits for a while at the 2nd & Salem transportation center at 9:50 rather than continuing on down Broadway. It took me a few minutes to figure this out, though, and when I did I got off and walked to work from there. All in all, not a bad start for a transit newb.

Update: The ride home didn't go as smoothly. Well, the ride was fine from 2nd & Salem, but getting to 2nd & Salem was the hard part. See my follow-up post.

Single-Issue Politics

2011-02-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

I have become a single-issue Republican. It turns out I disagree with the party rank and file about every other issue, however. I support the labor movement. I want home schooling to be outlawed. I want my children to learn about evolution and the Big Bang. I want PBS and NPR to stay on the air. I think women who work should be paid as well as men. I’m for gun control and alternative energy. I blame lack of regulation for the financial crisis and the recession. I strongly oppose dispensationalist and Zionist policies in the Middle East. I wear Levi’s though many Christians try to boycott them. And my at-home PC is a Mac. It’s not like I’m even liberal. I’m merely moderate. And Californian. But it’s clear there’s no room for moderates like me in the Republican party.

At what point does a responsible Two-Kingdom worldview draw the line? The “sanctity of life”/“made in God’s image” argument likely comes across as a little hypocritical to many people when they see the positions Republicans take on so many other matters. If we’re going to argue for the sanctity of life, shouldn’t we oppose the death penalty? Shouldn’t we also be fighting AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa? Shouldn’t we oppose despots in the Middle East instead of strengthening them? Shouldn’t we have sanctioned Gaddafi three decades ago? (He’s killed thousands in the last 2 weeks alone.) And what about the quality of life for those lives made in God’s image? Can we stand by silent as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Can we allow financial markets to continue unregulated when they’re responsible for so much homelessness and bankruptcy?

I think Christians who use the “made in God’s image” argument should also consider what Jesus said, “Whatever you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done it unto me.” We are killing Jesus every day.

The most obvious parallel is the infant mortality rate in Africa. The number reported by UNICEF is is actually higher than the U.S. abortion rate reported by the CDC. Christians should ask whether their single-issue voting is crippling the foreign policies that could help reduce infant mortality rates around the world. Do you want to save lives or don't you? In contrast to the modern trend, there are old denominations that have had medical missions set up in these places for decades. But these are not mainstream American evangelicals.

If we were to step out of our GOP comfort zone and align ourselves with human rights activists, we might find more opportunities to really bring change. If we were to work alongside those who are more progressive, to actually fight for human rights and dignity as well as sanctity, then we might make a bigger impact on the world. If people could see some genuineness in our caring for others, it might help them see a connection between the rights of the poor and repressed and the rights of the unborn and helpless. It seems to me that some real good could be done. “They will know that you are my disciples by your love, one for another.”

I am not a papist, but the reigning pontiff, though staunchly pro-life, had suggested that Christians should consider the big picture when choosing a candidate, suggesting that there may be good policies a pro-choice candidate may have that could outweigh the bad, especially when compared side-by-side and holistically with his or her opponent. (Also, when’s the last time a pro-life candidate you voted for actually did something about it? After all, it’s up to the judges to make those decisions, not our elected officials.) So we should ask ourselves: Does my party affiliation sufficiently tip the party’s scales in the direction I want it to go? Would I do more good as a pro-life Democrat or as an anti-everything-else Republican?

Update: “Liberal” doesn’t mean what I was taught it means. It means freedom-loving. So maybe I am liberal after all.

Update #2: If you apply the percentages of a 2004 Gallup poll to the nation breakdown of party affiliations that year, you find there are 27 million pro-life Democrats and 30 million pro-life Republicans. Not exactly the polarization the right would have you believe.

Update #3: I re-registered today (3/4/11). I am no longer a single-issue Republican. Wisconsin governer Scott Walker pushed me over the edge.

2011-02-03T19:14:00.001-08:00

‎"No man is indispensable." —French proverb

"If I resign today there will be chaos." —Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak

Essential iPhone Apps

2011-01-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

My dad caved in and got an iPhone 3GS when the price dropped to $50. So, I thought I had better get him a list of my favorite apps to keep him from drowning in the endless chasms of the app store, and someone on Facebook asked me to share the list, so here it is.

First is Evernote. It's probably the most useful app I have. They also have desktop versions for Mac and PC. You can use it for journaling and song lists and all kinds of other things. I use it for composing blogs, project planning at work as well as task lists. Take a picture of a whiteboard and the text is searchable.

Speaking of task lists, I like Egretlist, which lets you use Evernote for task lists even though the iPhone version of Evernote only allows plain-text input. It also integrates with the calendar for reminders.

Next would be the Apple Remote, which lets you control your iTunes on your computer.

Pandora is a cool app which streams custom radio stations based on your preferences. It's also great for discovering artists you didn't even know you liked. It can play in the background like the iPod app while you do other things. If you stream over 3G, watch out for data limits if you're on the 200-MB data plan. Incidentally, the AT&T myWireless app will help you keep track of your usage.

iMovie lets you edit movies and even provide a soundtrack.

iBooks - Even if you don't want to pay for books, there are a lot of free ePub books you can download, and it also let's you save PDFs and bookmark them so you can pick up where you left off.

ESV Bible, by Crossway, is an awesome free Bible. The interface is elegant and beautiful, and it lets you enter notes and highlight. It's also the best English translation so far.

Facebook, of course.

Trillian lets you connect to multiple IM networks, and provides notifications if someone tries to talk to you when the app isn't open.

Skype - even though your 3GS doesn't have a front-facing camera, you'll still be able to chat and make/receive voice calls. It will also stay on in the background so people can call you as long as you've logged in since your last reboot, I believe.

Google Latitude will allow Mom to see where you are, if you're out and about, and it will also allow family members to see how far away you are when you're on your way for a visit.

Hipstamatic is my favorite cool toy camera app. We've even ordered some prints and they've come out great.

Star Walk identifies constellations via "enhanced reality," as you point the camera around, using GPS and the compass.

Gas Cubby for mileage tracking.

PayPal - lets you check your balance and send money. If there's another user with an iPhone you can exchange funds by bumping your phones together.

AuctionSniper (I made this!) - automatically bid at the last second on eBay auctions to get them at a lower price than with a bidding war.

Runkeeper is one of my favorite apps. It uses GPS to track your runs and calculate your speed. The pro version is free through the end of the month, so get it now even if you don't think you'd use it that often.

Guitar Tools by Planet Waves - tuner, metronome, chord finder, etc. Very cool.

Dragon - for dictation

As far as games go, my 3 favorites are Infinity Blade, Flight Control, and Tetris. There's a lot of hubbub about Angry Birds, but I haven't yet succumbed...

Sent from my iPhone

What Happened to the Fertile in Fertile Crescent?

2010-10-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

In ancient times [...] much of the Fertile Crescent and eastern Mediterranean region, including Greece, was covered with forest. The region's transformation from fertile woodland to eroded scrub or desert has been elucidated by paleobotanists and archaeologists. Its woodlands were cleared for agriculture, or cut to obtain construction timber, or burned as firewood or for manufacturing plaster. Because of low rainfall and hence low primary productivity (proportional to rainfall), regrowth of vegetation could not keep pace with its destruction, especially in the presence of overgrazing by abundant goats. With the tree and grass cover removed, erosion proceeded and valleys silted up, while irrigation agriculture in the low-rainfall environment led to salt accumulation. These processes, which began in the Neolithic era, continued into modern times. For instance, the last forests near the ancient Nabataean capital of Petra, in modern Jordan, were felled by the Ottoman Turks during construction of the Hejaz railroad just before World War I.

Thus, Fertile Crescent and eastern Mediterranean societies had the misfortune to arise in an ecologically fragile environment. They committed ecological suicide by destroying their own resource base. Power shifted westward as each eastern Mediterranean society in turn undermined itself, beginning with the oldest societies, those in the east (the Fertile Crescent). Northern and western Europe has been spared this fate, not because its inhabitants have been wiser but because they have had the good luck to live in a more robust environment with higher rainfall, in which vegetation regrows quickly. Much of northern and western Europe is still able to support productive intensive agriculture today, 7,000 years after the arrival of food production. In effect, Europe received its crops, livestock, technology, and writing systems from the Fertile Crescent, which then gradually eliminated itself as a major center of power and innovation. (Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, pp. 410-411)

Pete Enns on the Dark Night of the Soul

2010-09-23T14:15:00.001-07:00

There is a benefit of doubt. Doubt is a gift of God to move us from trusting ourselves to trusting him.

Doubt forces us to examine what we believe about God—and this can be unsettling. What we thought was our “faith in God” sometimes winds up being little more than faith in ourselves—our own ability to grasp God, to possess him our way, to have him figured out.

Doubt is God’s way of tearing down the private fantasy we have constructed about him—where what we think about God is without further need of reflection, no longer open to growth. Doubt does not mean that God is “dying” for us. Doubt signals that we are beginning to die to ourselves, and that can be very painful—dying usually is.

In the words of some theologians, doubt helps tear down the idols we have constructed in making God into our own image.

"God Lisps": Calvin on the Incarnational Nature of God's Word

2010-09-23T10:51:00.000-07:00

The Anthropomorphites also, who imagined God to be corporeal, because the Scripture frequently ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet, are easily refuted. (For who, even of the meanest capacity, understands not, that God lisps, as it were, with us, just as nurses are accustomed to speak to infants? Wherefore, such forms of expression do not clearly explain the nature of God, but accommodate the knowledge of him to our narrow capacity; to accomplish which, the Scripture must necessarily descend far below the height of his majesty. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, xiii)

September 15, 2007, the first day of the rest of our lives

2010-09-15T10:40:00.001-07:00

On this day in 2007, I took Christina out on our first date, to see 3:10 to Yuma--which is a very good movie, by the way. I would have preferred to go the night before but she had plans with her girlfriends. After the movie we went to Starbucks and sat at the stone table in front and talked for hours (Dutch Bros. wasn't open on that end of town yet). Though I had known her for years, it was the first really deep conversation I had with her, and I knew it was over.

Pat and Andi had been hinting for a while that I should ask her out. I had been trying to sit next to her at church. There were mixed signals. If she tried to sit next to me at Bible study I'd make a comment about needing to move my podcasting equipment--still with every intention of moving it--but it was too late. She had already gone out to her room in the garage to hide, embarrassed. The weekend before I asked her out, I was on my way to Pat and Andi's for Bible study, and the song 23 by Jimmy Eat World was playing on my iPhone through the stereo adapter. When I got there I just parked and listened. I'm more of a cessationist than most, but I still felt like God was providentially telling me something:

"You'll sit alone forever
You wait for the right time
What are you hoping for?
I'm here, right now, I'm ready..."

Here was this girl I should have married 4 years earlier. In one sense it felt like I could have saved both her and me a lot of grief if I had. But we also know we wouldn't be where we are today without everything God had used in our lives to bring us to that point. We both had a lot of growing up to do.

So, tonight is date night. I have saved a playlist of the songs we listened to in my old Nissan Frontier on our first date--a mix of Dead Kennedys, Sex Pistols, Johnny Cash, The Clash, and Social Distortion--and they will be playing in the Rabbit tonight as well. I'll take her to see a movie at the same spot, though this time it won't be a western, but a romantic comedy. But that's ok. The first date is actually the least awesome of all dates, as you have no context, no history and no commitment. And it's like what the Martians say in C.S. Lewis: there's no point trying to relive an experience once you've had it. Sure, we'll do some things to bring back memories, but we don't need to retrace our footsteps. We are living the dream now, and ever day is a new day, taking us to a higher vista.

Don't give away the end...

Are you worldly?

2010-08-02T16:29:00.001-07:00

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Romans 12:2 (ESV)

White Horse Inn's Rod Rosenblatt was on the conservative Lutheran talk radio program Issues, Etc. from July 12-16. On Wednesday's episode, he talked about old-line Protestant liberalism's view of Scripture as a product of evolution, the view that "only the uneducated would say what Grandma says, that this is God's very word. The educated know better, and if it's use at all, it's as a springboard to your sort of experience of... not even salvation--that they didn't believe in either--your experience of deeper education on things important."

When Christians get together and start talking about "worldly"... the things that come up are from the saloon in the early Americas, you know, cigar smoking and whiskey drinking and that sort of thing. We don't see that worldly first applies to joining up with the skepticism of a given age. It's first of all a matter of the mind. And it's tough to go up against what 90% of your own contemporaries think is what's in vogue, or a better representation of a position than it was a century ago. That's tough. But we're up against worldly in the worst sense of the word, that is, a sort of a mental set that's opposed to Christianity, opposed to the person of Christ, opposed to anything creedal, and that occupies the brains of 90% of the educated of our day. Now that's tough.

You can download the segment here.

Baxter, cross-processed

2010-07-09T22:36:00.000-07:00

Equipment: iPhone 4, LED flash. Touched-up with CrossProcess.

Natural Revelation and the Framework Hypothesis

2010-06-30T22:21:00.000-07:00

Many, no doubt, will turn in impatience from the inquiry--all those, namely, who have settled the question in such a way that they cannot conceive of it being reopened. Such, for example, are the pietists, of whom there are still many. "What," they say, "is the need of argument in defense of the Bible? Is it not the Word of God, and does it not carry with it an immediate certitude of its truth which could only be obscured by defence? If science comes into contradiction with the Bible, so much the worse for science!" --J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, pp 8,9

At the 2010 Ligonier Conference, Al Mohler claimed, "The exegetical evidence based on a Reformation understanding of Scripture leads to a natural understanding of 24-hour days in creation" (as transcribed by Tim Challies). This Southern Baptist is making quite a claim.

John MacArthur, another five-point "Calvinist", made similar claims at the Shepherd's Conference last year, when he spoke on "Why Every Self-Repsecting Evangelical Should Affirm Literal Six-Day Creationism."

I place "Calvinist" in quotes here because, by embracing only the five main points of the Canons of Dordt and rejecting the complete package of Reformed theology, they are commandeering/hijacking the Reformation for their own ends, but keeping their hundred-year-old (very young in comparison to the age of the church) doctrines of fundamentalism and dispensationalism as their main foundation. Both of these normally well-respected preachers are sensationalizing the issue in their quest for illegitimate religious certainty, and they are playing the "Reformation" trump card, in an effort to convince all Calvinists to take their side.

MacArthur used the same technique to promote his eschatological views three years ago at the Shepherds' Conference, in a speech entitled, "Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist Is a Premillennialist". Speaking of eschatology, Reformed theologian Meredith Kline once said that one's understanding of the end of Revelation is directly related to one's understanding of the beginning of Genesis. MacArthur and Mohler would agree with him on this point--MacArthur also made the eschatological connection last year at the Shepherd's Conference. As literal six-day creationists and premillennialists, MacArthur and Mohler are in the same vein with each other about both the beginning and the end.

Now for a couple comments:

I take issue with John MacArthur's choice of sermon titles: Calvinists are not self-respecting; a true Calvinist considers himself a worm and gives all glory to God.

Second, their appeal to Reformed theology is unfounded. Anyone who is committed to the Reformed faith expressed in Calvin's Institutes or the Westminster Standards or the Three Forms of Unity knows that we cannot have such a distrust of God-given natural revelation as these men are promoting.

Natural revelation
John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, argues that, "There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity" (McNeill/Battles, 43), and, "He not only sowed in men's minds that seed of religion of which we have spoken but revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe. As a consequence, men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him" (51-2). The entire first section of the Institutes is about the knowledge of God: that he reveals himself through natural revelation, in his works of creation and providence. But this knowledge was corrupted by sin, and so we needed intervention, and so we have special revelation, given by God in ancient times through the patriarchs and later written down as the Scriptures were compiled, all leading up to the promised One, the Christ, the Second Adam, who redeems us from the corruption of sin.

The Calvinist understanding is that the special revelation given by God in Scripture is not contrary to the natural revelation given by God in creation, but is more specific. That is, both the wonders of creation and the powers of the human mind reveal that there is a God, and that he is good. But we cannot know the way of salvation without the gospel; we cannot know the rules for how to approach him in our sin unless or until he reveals those rules and the provision that he has made.

The Reformed confessions, specifically the Westminster Confession and the 1689 London Baptist Confession, state, "Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation." Therefore God ordained the Scriptures, which contain "the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life."

The word "life" here is not all-encompassing, but refers to the so-called "Christian" life, or "abundant" life. As R.C. Sproul said at the 2002 conference, citing Augustine and Aquinas, "Nature does teach very important truth to us that's not found anywhere in Scripture. So the sufficiency of Scripture does not mean that everything that's worth knowing is found in the Scripture. God also reveals things in the scientific laboratory for our benefit... Everything you need to know in terms of your faith and your life before God--everything you need to know relative to salvation and your sanctification--that is found in sacred Scripture. It's not going to tell you how to balance your checking account or how to work a computer..."

Scripture is a record of redemptive history, containing the message of the gospel. It is not a geometry textbook; its purpose is not to teach us astronomy or biology or mathematics or medicine or government or paleontology: for these subjects God in his Providence has left us to "the light of nature and Christian prudence." The Catholic church in the middle ages made a grave mistake in this matter when they condemned astronomers as heretics for saying the Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. They had bound the consciences of believers to something which Scripture itself does not bind us.

Eric Landry wrote on the White Horse Inn blog: "Just as in the days following the Reformation, when the church could not decide between the geocentric and heliocentric views of the solar system, so today there is not unanimity regarding the age question. Ultimately, the heliocentric view won out over the geocentric view because of a vast preponderance of facts favoring it based on increasingly sophisticated observations through ever improving telescopes used by thousands of astronomers over hundreds of years."

The Bible is the revelation of the gospel, of the way of salvation; it is not a scientific textbook. Like those Christians who came before us who were forced to recognize that Scripture is not making a scientific declaration when it says, "the sun rose", the same elasticity is required of us today when we look at Genesis 1 in the light of what our telescopes and shovels reveal to us.

There are alternative understandings from the fundamentalist young-earth position which line up better with the Reformed confessions and natural revelation. One interpretation is called the day-age view, which states that when it says "day" it really means "eon" or "age". But the view which I think is more tenable is called the framework interpretation, promoted by people like Henri Blocher, Lee Irons, Tim Keller, and the late Meredith Kline.

What is a day? (Genesis 1)
I'm not arguing for day-age view, because I think the framework view is the more evident reading, but I do want to address the overly literalistic interpretation of the word "day" by young-earth creationists. The Hebrew word yom does not always have to mean a 24-hour period. The prophets who look forward to the "great day of the Lord" were not looking for one 24-hour holiday in the future (the way we look forward to Christmas every year), but an eternal state (in fact, this is what the Sabbath prefigured). Furthermore, "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Pe 3:8, ESV). (Again, I must caution against over-literalness--this does not mean that creation actually took exactly 6,000 years: Peter is simply saying that time is no object for God.)

The reason a day on Earth is 24 hours long is because that's how long it takes for the planet to make one rotation on its access. (On Mars, we wouldn't say "24-hour day", because a day there is 24 hours and 37 minutes.) The reason we know a day is 24 hours long is based on our view of lights in the sky. We can measure from sunrise to sunrise, or from noon to noon, or from sunset to sunset, and know that's a day. In the semi-poetic language of Genesis 1 (vv. 14-19), the astronomical bodies were not created until Wednesday. This means that the definition of a "day" as a 24-hour rotation of the earth on its axis is untenable as there is no frame of reference. You can't have "evening and morning" without a sunset and a sunrise, you can't have a sunset and sunrise without a sun. Our coming look at Genesis 2:5 in the next section will make it apparent that God made use of "ordinary secondary means" during the creation era. So if there was a literal "evening and morning", then there had to be a literal sun before the literal sun was created on the 4th day. Without a sun, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of the creation week were not days at all, and this makes it impossible to hold to a "six literal 24-hour days of creation" view.

The day-age view typically holds to the order of events in Genesis 1, even though it extents the time of the "days". This is why I don't think the day-age view is a tenable alternative, because those first three eons of creation had no sun--as if the earth existed separately from the solar system, and was just floating out in space by itself, and even had plants growing on it, before the sun was made! The framework interpretation offers a much better explanation.

Plants need water and sun (Genesis 2)
Meredith Kline, in his article, "Because It Had Not Rained," makes an excellent argument for the framework interpretation based entirely on exegesis of Genesis 2. Kline shows that God in his providence made use of ordinary secondary means to sustain plant life (e.g. water, photosynthesis) during the era of creation. Genesis 2:5, 6 says, "And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth: and there was not a man to till the ground; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground" (ASV). The statement in Genesis 2:5 about the normal biological requirements of plants is in direct conflict with Genesis 1:11-12, which puts plants on earth before the creation of the sun. So the conclusion we must come to is that Genesis 1 cannot be literal; rather, is a semi-poetical framework used to present the case for the Sabbath. It is a literary preamble to Genesis 2, which begins the more literal historical record of the Fall of Man and the ancestry of the human race.

The Framework Interpretation
And so we come to the form of the framework itself. I will begin with a note on exegesis: Opponents need to be careful that they don't accuse those who hold to the framework view of not having a literal, historico-grammatical hermeneutic. Mohler claims that "disaster ensues when the book of natural revelation is used to trump the book of special revelation." That is not what Lee Irons, Henri Blocher, and the late Dr. Meredith Kline were doing: the framework hypothesis comes not from a liberal effort to reconcile the Bible with science, nor an effort to prove it wrong, but was developed exegetically, based on the forms of the passage and interpreting it in light of Genesis 2.

The most obvious formal component of Genesis 1 are the literary refrains

"And God saw that it was good."
"And there was evening and there was morning, the nth day."

In addition, we can recognize poetic elements of parallelism and building towards a climax, when we separate the six days into two stanzas:

First Stanza: The Elements (vv. 3-13)	Second Stanza: The "Rulers" (vv. 14-31)
Day One: Light	Day Four: Sun, Moon, and Stars, as light-producers
Day Two: Air and Water	Day Five: Birds and Sea Creatures, masters of sky and sea
Day Three: Earth and Plants	Day Six: The Beasts, culminating in Man as the Imago Dei

Finally, Genesis 2:1-3 says God "rested" on the seventh day. This is the key to the meaning of this passage.

God is omnipotent. When he works he does not exert himself. He does not get tired and as such has no need of rest. Furthermore--as Colossians 1:17 says of the second person of the Trinity, "In him all things consist"--if God really took a holiday, then existence itself would cease. Jesus also speaks of the Triune God's perpetual work, even on the Sabbath: "My Father is working until now, and I am working" (John 5:17, ESV). So what this mean when it says God rested?

We must notice that Scripture commonly uses literary devices, such as the symbolism employed in the apocalyptic sections of Revelation, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and the common devices such as allegory and anthropomorphism which are used throughout Scripture. The Bible speaks of God the Father having a hand or an arm; we know that God is spirit, and does not actually have a hand or an arm, but the imagery shows us the Father's power and intervention. Psalm 23 says the Lord is my shepherd, but we know we are not literally sheep, and God doesn't literally carry a rod and a staff. Yet we know this is a helpful metaphor for his providence.

What we have in Genesis 1 is an anthropomorphism: it is the Creator's metaphorical work-week. The passage exists to teach humans--the image of God--the importance of our own creative work, and the importance of the Sabbath. God is depicted as getting up in the morning, going to work, and at the end of the day, looking upon all that he had accomplished and saying, "it is good." His work is done for the day, and he goes home and goes to bed. We reconcile the sunless evenings and mornings of the first three days because they are the evenings and mornings of the working God's metaphorical work-week, not actual evenings and mornings in Earth's history.

God's seventh-day rest from creation continues to this day, because as we can see, he's not creating in this way anymore. New islands appear in Hawaii as the volcanoes on the ocean floor erupt, and new dog breeds are fashioned to fit into the purses of rich women, and, more impressively, new stars and galaxies are being formed on the edge of the universe. But creating new laws of nature, such as gravity, fusion, photosynthesis--these laws are not changing. God completed his creation work, and this present age is his seventh day. This is why the Bible constantly points to the creation story in support of the Fourth Commandment: God rested (and is resting), and so we must also rest every week. Despite God's total ability to create new things, new types of life forms, new dimensions of reality, he is not doing so, and if he, the infinite, omnipotent one, took a break, then who are we to say that we don't need to take a day off?

Why does the universe look so old? (Hint: because it is...)
The view held by many fundamentalists, and propounded most recently by Al Mohler at the Ligonier conference, seems to depict God as being deceitful, as if he put the dinosaur bones there to deliberately lead people into error. But Scripture says God tempts no one. Mohler says the laws of the universe changed because of the fall, that it merely "looks" old and hasn't been progressing at a constant rate since the beginning. According to Mohler, when God created Adam, he created him as a grown-up, and in the same way, he created the Earth and the rest of the universe all grown up; it just appeared suddenly, fully formed...

If this is so, then it would mean that ordinary secondary means involving the properties and speed of light were not in place: the photons of light belonging to stars millions of light years away were already only 10,000 light years away the instant the universe was spoken into existence, though the light sources were on the other side of the galaxy. It would also mean that ordinary secondary means regarding decay and fossilization were not in place: the dinosaur fossils which "only appear" hundreds of thousands of years older than the oldest human fossils were put in place only 10,000 years ago. They were in the dirt already on the third day, pre-aged to throw off the atheists, so the fundamentalists would claim. In other words, dinosaurs never existed; they were only ever bones. The fossilized nests where paleontologists learn how certain dinosaur mothers cared for their young represent not actual paleontological history in which a certain female dinosaur was taking care of its offspring a very long time ago: she never did; she never existed. It's an illusion. If young-earth creationists really believe the earth is only 10,000 years old, this is the conclusion they must come to.

All the evidence points to an old earth.

Scientists can get an approximation of the universe's age by using telescopes and measuring the frequencies of light. When a car is about to drive by with a loud muffler or honking its horn, the sound waves rise in pitch and then suddenly drop lower when it passes. The sound waves are bunched closer together when coming at you, and spread out when going away. It's the same with light waves: the frequency varies with speed. This is called Doppler Shift. Using Hubble's Law, astronomers can tell how far away stars and galaxies are, and at which speed they are moving, based on color, the "red shift". Using their God-given powers of observation, they can look back over time to the very instant when God said, "Let there be light." And it was much longer than 10,000 years ago.

The fact that billions drive to work everyday in vehicles powered by fossil fuels and have done so for over a hundred years--and that people have used coal as a fuel since prehistoric times--is evidence enough for the earth's age. It takes a lot of dead algae, trees and dinosaurs to make all that oil and coal, living over thousands of generations. Modern science can be used to date fossils, and it can be used presumably to figure out how much time it takes to make a fossil into oil. Let me tell you, it's a very long time, much more than 10,000 years. (Or are they claiming that the earth came pre-packaged with its fossil fuels?)

If they think God put this evidence into place even though the earth is only 10,000 years old, then they are making God out to be a liar, and he is not. If he were, he would cease to be God, for God is good. If God were not good, he would cease to exist, and therefore young-earth creationists are actually joining the side of the atheists by helping to kill God themselves.

John MacArthur recently stated: "Here's the Christian view: 'The Bible is the key to the past, present, and future.' Taking God at His Word allows true scientific inquiry to take place because it provides the preconditions for rational thought." Mohler and MacArthur's view of inerrancy is different from the church's historical position. It's as if, for them, if the Bible said 2 and 2 is 5, or that the sky is purple, they would believe it, "because the Bible says so," even though every other person in the world would think them to be buffoons, and they would probably be institutionalized: "The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it." Jesus said the smallest seed was the mustard seed. But it's not. He was making a point using illustrations with plants simple peasant farmers would be familiar with. Yet, for these literalists to be consistent in their view of inerrancy, when someone shows them a seed that's smaller than mustard, they'd have to say, "No, that's not a seed, it can't be, by definition. Jesus said the mustard seed is the smallest seed, and that's smaller than a mustard seed, so it can't be a seed!" Honestly, these men need to answer for why they don't believe the earth is flat, and square, with "four corners" like a map, and why they don't believe the sun orbits around the earth. Their views on literal interpretation and the requirements for inerrancy necessitate these conclusions, if they take their method of interpreting Genesis 1 and apply it to the rest of Scripture.

The relationship of science to religion
Science does not trump Scripture; it proves it. It helps us classify Jesus' miracles as miracles, because we know they don't happen ordinarily, and we can't replicate them in a laboratory, and yet we have so many witnesses. Science also shows us where we need to change our hermeneutic. Just as the church eventually got over the whole heliocentrism thing, as finally persuaded by the facts of science, so fundamentalists today need to get over their view of the universe being only 10,000 years old.

Machen wrote about this necessary dependency of religion on science:

For example, if any simple Christian of one hundred years ago, or even of today, were asked what would become of his religion if history should prove indubitably that no man called Jesus ever lived and died in the first century of our era, he would undoubtedly answer that his religion would fall away. Yet the investigation of events in the first century in Judea, just as much as in Italy or in Greece, belongs to the sphere of scientific history. (Christianity and Liberalism, p 5)

The apostle Paul also explained why it is necessary for our faith that the facts of things line up with Scripture:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:12-19, ESV)

Our only hope is in the fact that Christ was actually raised from the dead (which, though a miracle contrary to the laws of nature, is attested by eyewitness testimony to the fact that the tomb was empty and a lot of people saw him alive and healthy). If someone found his body, and by DNA evidence proved that the bones were his, the conclusion we would have to come to is that "we are of all people most to be pitied!" Contra MacArthur, Paul does not acknowledge Scripture as the precondition for rational thought; rather, Scripture presupposes rational thought and science.

This is the Reformed view: the confessions state that special revelation presupposes natural revelation. And the confessional faith also teaches us about God's providential use of ordinary secondary means to accomplish his sovereign will in the universe.

The renowned Reformed Old Testament scholar Dr. Bruce Waltke, who served on the translation committees of the NASB and the NIV, recently said, "If the data [were] overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality [would] make us a cult…some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we [would] not [be] using our gifts and trusting God's Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness." This post is not about evolution, but about the fight between young-earth creationism and old-earth creationism (though old-earth creationism includes a sub-group of theistic evolutionists). But even if you exclude the part on evolution from this statement, Waltke's remaining point is very important: To deny reality makes you not a Christian, but a cultist, because the Christian faith is grounded in fact.

In conclusion, churches should not make the literalistic approach to Genesis 1 a requirement for believers, as it binds Christians' consciences in a way that Scripture itself does not require. We should not be more specific on this matter than Scripture is, and we should be careful to protect our own orthodoxy by not holding to strange beliefs that are not true. Such things hinder our evangelistic fruitfulness, and dim our light in the world, helping to relegate the church to a state of irrelevance in our culture. We must think about the eternal consequences: Jesus warned about causing people to stumble, and there are probably a lot of God's elect who have stumbled over the fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis 1. Let's preach the gospel and avoid drowning out the message with the noise we've been making over young earth creationism.

Recommended resources:
http://static.veritas.org/media/files/VT_Irons_UCLA.mp3

Jon Hopkins: Insides

2010-06-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

I was introduced to Jon Hopkins while watching the organ donor scene in the season finale of NBC's Mercy. The scene was accompanied by a droning violin track, the kind of bagpipe-emulating, medieval-viol-esque drone I have been known to bust out on my own fiddle ever since I was started getting into celtic music about 15 years ago. I knew this television soundtrack piece was just of a higher caliber; I suspected it was not the product of the house composer, so I pulled out Shazam and it told me it was the first track from Jon Hopkins's album Insides. After sampling the tracks in iTunes on my iPhone, I downloaded the album, and it went on to become a fitting soundtrack to the birth of my son, Baxter.

This album compelled me to bust out my Sony MDR-7506's (which make my iPhone look bad-ass, by the way). I had actually gotten used to the Apple earbuds since my old original iPhone couldn't interface with anything else.)

This is not your run-of-the-mill DJ. Though he admits he doesn't remember how to write scores,* Jon Hopkins is a legitimate composer, like the next incarnation of Steve Reich--sans tape loops--coming of age in a time when Macbooks and affordable M-Audio controllers are readily available to the masses. Lucky...

He even studied at the Royal College of Music, and it shows. From end-to-end, this album is like an orchestral suite; if he doesn't literally repeat themes, he uses themes and textures that remind you of previous "movements". Even the "disgruntled brutally gutteral bass growl"* of the title track "Insides" expresses itself in sonata form like a bass concerto transposed for electronic sequencer. Full disclosure: I don't like bass concertos. They're not usually very cool. But this track is. Probably because it's easier to bust out the vibrato and wide interval jumps more quickly and precisely with a sequencer than on a bass.

The previously-mentioned opening track, "The Wider Sun", is definitely my favorite. But as they all flow together in sequence, I wouldn't separate it from the album. The strings help to give it a chamber-music feel, and the familiar arpeggios, whether played by piano throughout the album, or with pizzicato strings on "The Low Places", help you to keep your bearings through the tempest. The album's closing tracks come together to wrap the whole in a blanket of hymns, like Ave Maria putting Night on Bald Mountain to rest at the end of Fantasia. "Small Memory" begins the lullaby. A rhythm dance groove rises quietly over minimalistic tenuto strings and piano in "A Drifting Up". Phillip Glass and John Adams would be proud. Speaking of Ave Maria, the album closes with the final track, "Autumn Hill", a piano piece which I think is reminiscent of Schubert himself. You can even hear the piano bench creak as he sits down!

I recommend this album to music afficionados who have a taste for the more modern stuff. I do have one regret, however: downloading it from iTunes instead of purchasing a tangible, durable disc means I'm left without liner notes.

2010-06-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

2010-05-30T18:52:00.001-07:00

Our son Baxter shares his birthday with Bob Dylan.

Sent from my iPhone

Some family resemblance

2010-05-24T09:14:00.000-07:00

The first one, with the Kung-Fu viper moves, was Ava. The other one is
Baxter.

2010-05-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

Baxter Isaac Lord

2010-05-24T02:48:00.000-07:00

Baxter Isaac Lord was born at 1:21 AM, weighing 7 lb 4 oz, 19 in long.

2010-05-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say I finally found the charger for the old Nikon 5400 I bought from James, and I also found a USB sync cable on eBay. All this just in time for the pending birth of our son. (Yeah right, she says, he's never coming out.) So you will likely see some more pictures from us soon.

Blogging as Niche Journalism

2010-05-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Scott Rosenberg gave a timely talk last Friday at Stanford, addressing the issue of whether bloggers are journalists. He included the following statement about net neutrality, which topic old media definitely does not know how to cover:

This morning John Nichols said something that I want to repeat now: he said, “Most of the people who cover politics don’t know anything about net neutrality,” so the coverage is lousy. That’s quite an admission, I think. And it’s an example of a phenomenon that helps explain why so many blogs do such a better job covering niche subjects than the general news media does.

The phenomenon is this: There’s an inverse relationship between the amount of knowledge you have on a given topic and your level of satisfaction with the media coverage of that topic.

More simply: the better you know a subject the more you think its coverage stinks.

So this model is broken. We need to move the knowledge closer to the coverage. And the more inclusive our definition of journalist is, the more of that knowledge we can actually bring into the coverage.

A Perfect Day

2010-04-17T16:08:00.001-07:00

It started out with a smoothie for her and a Dutch freeze for me.

Then we went to Wildwood Park and took in a little league game.

And played in the dirt.

And saw a fire engine.

Then we headed up the hill towards Deer Creek to kick in the tires in the new Raumwünder. Oh man was that fun! Like I said, a perfect day.

She was asleep by 12:30.

There's still snow at the top of the ridge!

Deer Creek, just across the orange bridge.

I think the flavor fell short of her expectations.

Back in the car.

Hi!

Taking in a little league game

2010-04-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

Daddy date

2010-04-17T10:41:00.001-07:00

Today I'm taking Ava off to Dutch Bros for a smoothie. Then we're
going to the park to try out her new plastic bucket. Then we're going
to take the new Raumwünder for a spin up highway 32. I'm guessing
she'll probably be napping for that part.

Html input controls in Mobile Safari

2010-04-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

As someone who does web design for iPhones and Android devices, I enjoyed this article from 8164.org on web design for the iPad. He includes this Regular Expressions trick:

Zip Code: <input type="text" pattern="[0-9]*">

Whee...

My new zippy commuter!

2010-04-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

John Piper on why he's taking a leave of absence

2010-03-29T20:01:00.001-07:00

"But on the other hand, I see several species of pride in my soul that, while they may not rise to the level of disqualifying me for ministry, grieve me, and have taken a toll on my relationship with Noël and others who are dear to me. How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody? I'll say it now, and no doubt will say it again, I'm sorry." http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2010/4555

Sent from my iPhone

Trillian for iPhone update

2010-03-25T19:54:00.001-07:00

The new update for the Trillian iPhone app will let you stay signed in for up to 7 days!

RunKeeper Shared Fitness | Walking Activity

2010-03-22T14:54:00.000-07:00

RunKeeper Shared Fitness | Walking Activity

More than Five Points

2010-03-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

Calvinism is something much broader than the "five points" indicate.

Calvinism is a whole world-view, stemming from a clear vision of God as the whole world's Maker and King.

Calvinism is the consistent endeavour to acknowledge the Creator as the Lord, working all things after the counsel of His will.

Calvinism is a theocentric way of thinking about all life under the direction and control of God's own Word.

Calvinism, in other words, is the theology of the Bible viewed from the perspective of the Bible—the God-centred outlook which sees the Creator as the source, and means, and end, of everything that is, both in nature and in grace.

Calvinism is thus theism (belief in God as the ground of all things), religion (dependence on God as the giver of all things), and evangelicalism (trust in God through Christ for all things), all in their purest and most highly developed form.

And Calvinism is a unified philosophy of history which sees the whole diversity of processes and events that take place in God's world as no more, and no less, than the outworking of His great preordained plan for His creatures and His church.

The five points assert no more than that God is sovereign in saving the individual, but Calvinism, as such, is concerned with the much broader assertion that He is sovereign everywhere. —J.I. Packer, Introduction to John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

HT: John Piper

ESV for iPhone from Crossway

2010-03-18T14:31:00.001-07:00

Crossway just released the ESV for the iPhone. I have stuck with their web-based mobile-optimized version because it's better than any of the other native iPhone versions in the app store. But this new one is amazing and elegant.

To Brainwash a Parent...

2010-03-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

This commentary was posted on WorldMag.com.

Cause of death

2010-03-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

Action news reported tonight that the coroner's report was released today. The medical examiner confirmed Lydia Schatz died from rhabdomyolysis resulting from the torture and abuse she suffered at the hands of her parents, who whipped their children with 1/4" plumbing supply line because it was endorsed by fundamentalist preacher Michael Pearl as the biblical "rod" most appropriate for chastening your children.

Today is Lydia's 8th birthday. Happy birthday, little one.

Was Tertullian a Reformed Baptist?

2010-03-15T23:44:00.000-07:00

It is true that Paul also was speedily baptized: for Simon, his host, speedily knew that he had been appointed a vessel of election. God's good pleasure sends as herald its own privileges : any request can both disappoint and be disappointed: It follows that deferment of baptism is more profitable, in accordance with each person's character and attitude, and even age: and especially so as regards children. For what need is there, if there really is no need, for even their sponsors to be brought into peril, seeing they may possibly themselves fail of their promises by death, or be deceived by the subsequent development of an evil disposition? It is true our Lord says, Forbid them not to come to me. So let them come, when they are growing up, when they are learning, when they are being taught what they are coming to : let them be made Christians when they have become competent to know Christ. Why should innocent infancy come with haste to the remission of sins? Shall we take less cautious action in this than we take in worldly matters? Shall one who is not trusted with earthly property be entrusted with heavenly? Let them first learn how to ask for salvation, so that you may be seen to have given to one
that asketh. —Tertullian, De Baptismo

Links for Church Reform

2010-03-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

I am presenting a couple links here that may be useful for those who are seeking to bring the Reformation into an existing church. As I dig further into the historic Reformed confessions, I find myself agreeing with them more and more. But I am still convinced of two positions that seem to differ with the Reformed church, namely their position on a capella psalter-only singing, and their position on infant baptism. So my first link is to bring to attention the fact that the Trinity Hymnal—Baptist Edition is now being sold online at SermonAudio.com. This is great news for those who only need them in small quantities as the snail mail order form previously required didn't state the shipping cost. Second, there's a great article on radon.thoughts that brings up a great point that I've also been thinking about regarding infant baptism: why do you baptize infants but you won't let them participate in the Lord's Supper? Last but not least, here is an excellent article recommending the practice of preaching through the catechisms at a "second service" each Lord's day evening.

Praise him with the κιθάρα...

2010-03-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp! (Psalm 150:3, ESV)

αἰνεῖτε αὐτὸν ἐν ἤχῳ σάλπιγγος
αἰνεῖτε αὐτὸν ἐν ψαλτηρίῳ καὶ κιθάρᾳ (Psalm 150:3, LXX)

gui·tar... Etymology: French guitare, from Spanish guitarra, from Arabic qītār, from Greek kithara cithara (m-w.com)

I've already had to deal with the issue of a capella worship as a violin major at Pepperdine University. At the time, I wrote off the practices of the Church of Christ as a result of their heterodox interpretation of the canon, in which the Old Testament is given about as much weight as Greek mythology. But their tradition is much different from the Reformed tradition: though they require a capella singing, they still use four-part harmony congruent with the music theory developed by the devout Lutheran worship leader J. S. Bach, and sing classic hymns on Lord's day mornings as well as the new praise choruses of the Jesus movement during mid-week college ministry gatherings. What's worse, they let their worship preference carry over to secular life, giving vocalists and choirs an elevated status over instrumental musicians and orchestras. What else is disturbing is they had their own a capella rock stars, who actually imitated the sounds of instruments and percussion with their mouths. But this is a digression from the matter at hand.

I just finished reading R. Scott Clark's chapter on the regulative principle from Recovering the Reformed Confession (pp. 227-291). It was such a great book until now: I was just about ready to start driving an hour away every Lord's day to visit the nearest Reformed church. But this chapter game me some serious concerns. I must be careful in my critique because Dr. Clark will probably see it (I have a suspicion that he has a Google Alert set up to let him know whenever anyone blogs about his book). Clark says that when you apply the regulative principle of worship in a manner consistent with the Reformed confessions, you must come to the conclusion that you can only sing the Old Testament Psalms or other "inspired" songs recorded in Scripture. He also says you cannot use instruments or harmonize, because these are not commanded in Scripture.

One thing that's disturbing is that the origin for Clark's argument is not in fact sola scriptura, but is grounded in the old tradition of synagogue worship and the idea that early Christian worship was patterned after it (244). They sang Psalms in the synagogue, so so should we. According to this argument, should we also put up a mechitza to keep the women away? Synagogues are not biblically prescribed, but were developed in the inter-Testamental period during the Babylon captivity. If we want to sing Psalms, we need only look for biblical reasons to do so (e.g. their inclusion in the canon), and not look to the synagogues as an example. Let us truly apply the regulative principle and do what Scripture prescribes, please.

I make it my goal to apply the regulative principle in my worship. The argument I will present for so-called "uninspired" hymns with instrumental accompaniment is not pragmatic, nor is it from a desire for an improved religious experience, but it is from a desire to be biblical in everything I do, and to do it all to the glory of God—the God who said to "Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings..." (Ps. 33:3, ESV)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col. 3:16, ESV)

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart... (Eph. 5:18-19, ESV)

What does the regulative principle do with these verses? According to the theological notes in R. C. Sproul's Reformation Study Bible, some Reformed churches see these as subcategories of the inspired Psalms, but this seems like eisegesis to me. If that were the case, where do we see this breakdown? I've read through the Psalms dozens of times and have never noticed it (apparently it's obvious in the Septuagint [277]). Furthermore, the words "hymn" and "ode" are not exclusive to Hebrew scripture. Rather than accepting these as legitimate concerns regarding his application of the regulative principle, Clark has unsatisfactory arguments to explain these away as either not talking about corporate worship, or talking about singing "Spirit-inspired" biblical texts only (277-280).

How did the apostles worship? Did they use non-canonical hymns? The New Testament has several instances where extra-biblical early Christian hymns are quoted.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Php. 2:5-11, ESV)

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
When he was reviled, he did not revile in return;
when he suffered, he did not threaten,
but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,
that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
By his wounds you have been healed.
For you were straying like sheep,
but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Pet. 2:22-25, ESV)

He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory. (1 Tim. 3:16, ESV)

He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
For by him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—
all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
that in everything he might be preeminent.
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col. 1:15-20)

In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him,
and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life,
and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.
He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world,
and the world was made through him,
yet the world did not know him.
He came to his own,
and his own people did not receive him.
But to all who did receive him,
who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God,
who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we have seen his glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father,
full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-14, ESV)

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature,
and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb. 1:3, ESV)

When Peter or John or Paul or the writer of Hebrews sang extra-biblical hymns, did they only in that instant become biblical and therefore achieve the status of "inspired" retroactively? Or was he performing the "extraordinary actings of the saints" (248)? No, these hymns seem to be normative to me, as if they are quoting hymns with which the churches would already be familiar, just as modern-day preachers like John Piper, Alistair Begg, and R.C. Sproul do. Also, does it really seem like a decent argument to say that it would be inappropriate for anyone to sing these in church before the apostles wrote them down, but since the inspired apostles did write them down, they are now eligible for singing by us today as inspired songs? No, we must believe that these hymns were not composed by the apostles; they were written down for our edification, but they were sung by the catholic church before they were ever written down. Might I add that all of the Psalms were likely sung before they were ever compiled in the Psalter?

What about the Psalms that describe and even advocate worshiping the Lord with instruments, such as Psalm 150 and many others? They are even worded in the imperative: "Praise him with lute and harp..." In contemporary evangelical praise choruses, don't you feel like a hypocrite or even a liar when singing, "I lift my hands," or "clap my hands" or "bow down," in a church where such things are not allowed? In the same way, doesn't one feel like a hypocrite when singing, "Praise him with the harp... trumpet..." in a church where instruments are not allowed? Or do you skip those Psalms?

Clark says the Psalms about instruments are to be taken figuratively just as the imprecatory psalms. In this he fulfills the objections of the fundamentalists and dispensationalists who accuse the Reformed of over-allegorizing the Word. My answer to this is that we have actual inscriptions that recommend which instruments should be used, both in the Psalms as well as other places (Habakkuk 3:19), and these are clearly not figurative or allegorical, but prescriptive.

You might object, "If we allow instruments, what's to prevent us from allowing dancing, as it's also mentioned in the same Psalms?" The answer is that dancing is not mentioned in the New Testament as an ordinance of the church. You might say, "Neither were instruments," but the Psalms originally came with instrumental accompaniment. They were a package deal. It is inconsistent to say we will implement only the lyrics of the Psalter but forbid the orchestrations.

The light of nature teaches us that musical composition involves two parts: the composition of lyrics as well as the composition of melodies and orchestrations. The actual tunes of the Hebrew Psalms have been lost to time, as they were composed before the development of musical notation, so the new Reformed settings are no more closely fulfilling the original Psalms then a full orchestration with four-part harmony would be. If the tunes are lost and require new ones, then the use of these new, man-made melodies is just as much "uninspired" as the use of paraphrases, alternate translations, or completely new hymns that contain the same biblical doctrine. You cannot use the "inspired" argument as a justification for Psalm-only singing unless you also recover the original tunes and the original instruments and sing them in the original Hebrew.

We need to consider the context of the Psalms, and I don't mean the Mosaic, sacerdotal, sacrificial, ceremonial worship, but the worship leader, the Psalmist, King David, the "man after God's own heart," who wrote much of the material not only for psalmody, but also all the hymns and praise choruses based on the psalms. He was an instrumentalist, and he intended all of his hymns to be sung with instrumental accompaniment, and, dare I say, instrumental interludes indicated by the word Selah.
Finally, I will also conclude that the antiphony of some of the psalms implicitly allows for the use of harmony, since the cantor and congregation are clearly singing different parts. As a musician, it is my expert opinion that the use of different instruments, with their different timbres and multiple strings, also implies that the Hebrews incorporated a primitive harmonic method in their worship.

What about the Psalms that say, "Sing to the Lord a new song?" Does not the regulative principle teach in the very Psalms that it emphasizes 1) that new songs should be sung, and 2) that instruments may be used and a joyful noise should be made

The New Testament speaks of spiritual worship, and the Psalms and Revelation speak of singing "new songs." The use of the adjective pneumatikos (for "spiritual songs") seems to indicate that the Holy Spirit has the continuing right to inspire new songs for the church. Clark contends that "Spritual" means Spirit-inspired and therefore refers to the canon of Scripture. His cessationalist stance seems to have gotten the better of him, even to the point that the Holy Spirit's sovereign authority to govern synods, councils, committees, elder boards, pastors, or worship leaders in the choice of hymns has been totally eclipsed by the doctrine of total depravity.

Instead of taking the extreme of Psalm-only monophonic chanting, and posing burdens too hard to lift, why not better use the Trinity Hymnal, produced by NAPARC member the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, compiled with the regulative principle, "with the full consciousness that 'the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men...or any...way not prescribed in the holy Scripture'" (Trinity Hymnal--Baptist Edition, v)? Though these hymns are not "God-breathed", they are just as "inspired" in their statement of biblical doctrines as the metricised English translations of the Psalms, since God breathed in Greek and Hebrew.

I use the regulative principle and find that Scripture admonishes me to seek out new (doctrinally sound and corporately appropriate) songs and to play instruments skillfully and unto the Lord. When I hear that the regulative principle is used to enforce a capella, Psalm-only worship, it seems to me like those who do this are reading a completely different Bible than the one I'm reading. In fact, it is application of the very same regulative principle that causes me to guard against a capella psalter-only worship as a legalistic, Pharisaical, man-made religious construct that has no place in the Reformed faith. I am a fan of the regulative principle, but to me, the principle itself compels me to sing non-canonical hymns (though biblical in content) and "Praise him with the κιθάρα."

Finally, I will make a practical argument, but I will do it using the Apostle Paul: "If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played?" (1 Cor. 14:7, ESV) In the same passage talking about decency and order in worship, Paul discusses decency and order in music. He says it's important to be careful to play instruments clearly and in tune in order that people will know what tune is being played. He uses instruments to illustrate this point when he just as well could have mentioned singing. But I think the point is well made that instrument help the congregation know what note to sing, and they help the congregation stay on pitch for the duration of the song (as compared to pitch pipes, which should help them start strong, but they won't end in the same key they started). In this way, instruments actually facilitate public worship, in the same way that literacy and the printing of psalters and hymnals has facilitated it since the invention of the printing press.

I am not advocating Mosaic worship. I am advocating Davidic worship, as developed by he who said, "sacrifice and offering you do not desire." it is the Son of David whom we laud. It is the same Spirit who hovered over the waters and inspired the canon of Scripture and raised Jesus from the dead that regenerates us and illuminates the Word and unites us as the church. God is not dead. Though I am not charismatic, I believe the Spirit is at work today to bring about God's sovereign purposes in the lives of the saints, and in this way the regulative principle may be applied and still allow for new hymns and instruments. We use Scripture as a guide, measuring hymns by their doctrinal worth, and not their global popularity and standing on the CCLI top 40.

Despite all this, I am impressed by the desire to connect our worship to the past by adapting the Psalms. (I always wished I could go back in time and transcribe them the way they were done in Old Testament worship.) The Baptist edition of the Trinity Hymnal has made sure all the Psalms are represented, and I hope to be able to incorporate them into our worship some day.

Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!
Praise befits the upright.
Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;
make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts. (Psalm 33:1-3, ESV)

Soli Deo Gloria

Case Updates

2010-02-25T15:34:00.001-08:00

Note: these are updates from news outlets only, no inside information here.

First, Paradise Post reports some new facts which were not previously published: 1) District Attorney Mike Ramsey says Kevin and Elizabeth "took turns" (previously we were told she held the children down). 2) Ramsey does not think a case against the Pearls "would fly." This is disappointing because the Pearls should definitely be held accountable. It's not just a matter of free speech, because of the authority they hold as ministers: ignorant people obey them. I guess the responsibility is left to us to educate ourselves and all our friends until there are no Pearl supporters left.

Second, there is late news from the Oroville Mercury-Register about today's court appearance. The Schatzes were expected to enter a plea today (the topic of many of our prayers), but they did not. This part of the arraignment is delayed once more because Elizabeth has retained new counsel. The Register also reports that Kevin's lawyer, Michael Harvey, may seek a change of venue.

Christians unite against child abuse

2010-02-23T12:21:00.000-08:00

This is what Scripture says:

Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:3-6, NASB)

Our Lord says child abuse and filicide are not merely life-or-death issues; they are much more, for they may affect the eternal state of one's soul.

For this reason, as Salon reports, Christians are finally starting to speak out against so-called "biblical" child abuse.

Paul speaks out:

If you call yourself a Christian and you don't immediately think it's a foul, unthinkable, disgusting suggestion to whip your child at least 10 times per offense (more "if needed"), wearing the weapon visibly at all times, having a weapon always at hand with which to whip your child, menacingly hunting down your child when they are fleeing punishment in terror like the villain in the Halloween movies, and even manufacturing occasions to whip in order to "train them", if you don't immediately recoil from such things, I would highly recommend you put down the plastic tubing and go pick up your Bible. You may have reason to be concerned about the state of your soul.

Laurie speaks out:

And, PLEASE, won't the men in the church stand up and speak?! This is NOT just a mommy problem. The fathers are at the head of these Pearl households. The wives are taught to submit to them. Nothing will change unless we reach the men, and these are NOT men who will learn from women.

Paul, via Salon:

Not to be crass, but you slap the title 'Christian' on something, and all of a sudden it's the 'Christian' thing. Sometimes, in my experience, that's all it takes for Christians to start following something. There's not a whole lot of discernment.

We must make a stand against child abuse, child murder, and Pelagianism, and leave no room for doubt. The gospel is not about behavior modification, but regeneration. Our righteousness is not our own, but the righteousness of Christ, which is reckoned unto us by faith alone (Philippians 3:9). Scripture admonishes us over and over again to stand up for the fatherless, the widows, foreigners, and those who are too weak to defend themselves. Please join me in standing up for Lydia and Zariah. Their parents were not salt and light, but were the very wolves in sheep's clothing against whom we must guard the flock.

Google Profile for Buzz and Reader sharing

2010-02-20T17:21:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to follow me in Buzz or Google Reader, or just check out what I'm reading online, you can do so through my Google Profile.

Dual citizenship is not antithetical

2010-02-20T16:42:00.001-08:00

Here is another great Michael Horton quote from the CRI article on authoritarianism:

Scripture admonishes us, [with Christ’s words ‘my kingdom is from another place’] to avoid either the tendency to confuse the kingdom of God with an earthly nation (Israel, America, etc.) or, on the other hand, to view citizenship in one kingdom as completely antithetical to citizenship and participation in the other. (p. 5)

I cannot overemphasis the necessity of this Protestant two-kingdoms approach. Separation of church and state is actually a good thing.

Clark on Two-Level Subscription

2010-02-19T21:44:00.000-08:00

Does your church have one statement of faith for elders and a different one for members? Are you so sure this is a good idea?

Dr. R. Scott Clark writes,

It is not obvious that establishing two levels of subscription, one for laity and another for ordained officers, is either biblical or consistent with the Reformation. From where in Scripture would one deduce that God expects one level of subscription for officers and another for laity? Certainly it is possible for one to be a Christian without affirming every proposition in the Reformed confession, but that is beside the point. On that rationale, why should we bother establishing Reformed congregations at all? If the Reformed confession defines what it is to be Reformed, then establishing two distinct relations to the same constitutional document would seem to be a recipe for confusion and effectively two churches within one. (Recovering the Reformed Confession:, p. 179)

Local DA provides more details to the big city reporters

2010-02-18T20:48:00.000-08:00

Butte County District Attorney Michael Ramsey revealed more details than have previously been described in the media in the Sacramento CBS affiliate's newscast tonight, in a story that comes complete with props and dramatic reading (link to video / text).

We now learn:

Elizabeth allegedly held the girls down for "several hours" while Kevin beat them, hence the two being tried together for the same crimes.
For Zariah, "being a liar and a bad influence on the seven-year-old" was what set them off (we already knew about the alleged mispronunciation trigger).
According to the story, the Schatzes admitted to police that they were followers of Michael and Debi Pearl.

I also just heard in the local news promo here in Chico 20 seconds ago that Zariah has been released from the hospital. Thank the Lord.

Pearl still claims innocence, for himself and his followers

2010-02-18T15:19:00.001-08:00

"We do not teach 'corporal punishment' nor 'hitting' children," Michael Pearl told the Paradise Post. "If indeed these parents were abusive, and that has not yet been proven by the courts, it is regretful that our teachings were not able to turn them from their predisposition to abusive habits..."

I think the quotes various bloggers have been posting from his various works indicate they do, in fact, teach corporal punishment to the point of injury, whether physical, mental, emotional, or even spiritual. He says don't stop, keep going until you break the child's will. Sit on him if you have to. Maybe dude should read his own stuff.

Authoritarianism, isolationism, and their theonomic roots

2010-02-16T23:14:00.000-08:00

I've come across an article from CRI about the authoritarianism and isolationism of the Pearls and the entire movement of which they are just one arm. Author Rachel D. Ramer traces it back to the theonomy of R.J. Rushdoony:

Considered the father of Christian Reconstructionism, Rushdoony has stated, “All the basic governmental powers in society, save one, the death penalty, have been given [by God] to the family, not to the state nor to the church....A mark of anti-Christianity is the move to strip the family of these powers.” In response to this idea, voices such as Patriarch magazine promote “home education, home business, home church, home birth, family ministry, family health, family worship...courtship and betrothal, family-based welfare.” This view of the family may also include rejection of organized sports, church youth and singles’ groups, and neighborhood playmates.

(If you didn't know, theonomy is bad. We're talking like taking sinners out and stoning them in the streets like the Pharisees did. Bad. How come so many people who claim to be Christians skip the New Testament entirely? "He who is without sin cast the first stone!")

Ramer continues:

Patriarch further suggests that youth groups and Sunday school programs demonstrate a “failure of the church to teach the principles of parental responsibility for child training and to reinforce it in the church’s programs,” and that the use of these programs in a church “may well be a reason to leave.”

I have a problem with youth groups that coincide with normal Lord's Day worship services, because they create a "church within a church", and the young people don't receive the benefits of being influenced by older Christian brothers and sisters. They grow up and form "college/young adult" churches with the same kind of music they're used to, and church for them becomes an affinity club rather than the diverse, cross-cultural, multi-generational legacy with historical roots that it's supposed to be. But I do not at all think that the presence of a youth group or Sunday school justify leaving a church.

In the Reformed understanding of ecclesiology, the two functions of the local church are the preaching of the Word and the officiating of the Sacraments. For the Reformed, the only valid means for leaving a church are over 1) improper handling of the Word, and 2) improper handling of the Sacraments. Al Mohler writes,

Church shopping violates the integrity of the church and the meaning of church membership. When members leave for insufficient reason, the fellowship of the church is broken, its witness is weakened, and the peace and unity of the congregation are sacrificed. Tragically, a superficial understanding of church membership undermines our witness to the gospel of Christ.

There is no excuse for this phenomenon. We have no right to leave a church over preferences about music, personal taste, or even programming that does not meet expectations. These controversies or concerns should prompt the faithful Christian to consider how he might be of assistance in finding and forging a better way, rather than working to find an excuse to leave.

Christians cannot look to this question as merely a matter of consumerism. We are called to love the church and to pray for its peace and unity, not to look for an opportunity to move to another congregation.

There are times, however, when it is right to separate from a congregation or denomination. But in such a case, the issue is not taste but theology.

We have the Reformed confessions as our standards, whether they be the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westmister Confession and Catechisms, or the 1689 London Baptist Confession, as excellent summaries of the system of doctrine taught in God's Word. If what you're teaching about a given text differs substantially from what's taught in those documents, then you might want to reconsider your interpretation, because people have been thinking about these things for a couple thousand years now.

Ramer quotes my hero, Michael Horton, with his view of the doctrine of the "two kingdoms":

Fourth, Christ and culture in paradox sees the kingdom of God and the kingdom of humankind as “different spheres with different purposes....Culture can never be an avenue of finding God....But neither can culture be an object of disgust, since culture never promises to save or redeem.” In this view, while not all pleasurable aspects of life are spiritual in the salvific or godly sense, God is still present in them.

Horton says elsewhere:

This view says that every Christian is a citizen of two cities—the City of God and the City of Man. Each of these spheres is separate, and they have different purposes. Luther expressed this idea in his doctrine of the ‘two kingdoms’. On this model, one cannot coerce faith, nor can one accommodate faith to secular modes of thought. However, it's possible to live out one's faith in the light of special revelation so that the wider culture can experience the influence of Christianity. Calvin and Augustine also expressed similar ideas.

This is reflected in the Westminster Confessions' admission of the distinct spheres of the civil magistrate and the church government, and it coincides with Romans 13, which says that the civil magistrate is not your enemy, but your guardian—unless, of course, you're behaving wickedly, in which case he becomes the rod of God (used figuratively, as I believe it is usually is in Scripture, except Exodus 21:20, of course) to chasten you.

So all those "Christians" who tell you not to watch good movies, or to listen to good music, and instead they advocate watching Kirk Cameron movies and listening to K-Love... Yeah, that stuff sucks. And the "Christian" rock stars are up to just as much no-good backstage as the "worldly" counterparts who they're trying to sound like. Luther said to the Christian shoemaker, make a good shoe and sell it at a fair price. He didn't say, put a cross on it, charge 10% more, and market it as a Christian shoe, if you can't make it in the "secular" marketplace. Gah!

(In summary: if you're going to listen to rock, listen to the good stuff.)

We've already seen examples of the dispensationalist fear-mongering by the Pearls, telling people if they don't beat their children, they're going to line up to get the Mark of the Beast tattooed on. Or they're going to be lulled into a drug-induced slumber by the New World Order.

The Pearls also tell parents, “Fail to use the rod on [a disobedient, bullying child] and you are creating a ‘Nazi.’” Fear of producing a Nazi may compel parents to use a “rod” even when their intuition tells them there is a better option in a particular situation.

Did anybody else read The Wave in high school?

This whole regimented thing is much more like the Hitler Youth than anything else. Conformity. Do what you're told or you'll get a beating. No questions, etc. But wait, there's more:

“You must look for opportunities to demonstrate that you have the last word, that your authority is to be obeyed without question....If, during the course of a day, no contest arises naturally, you should arrange one. Seek opportunity to thwart the child’s will, to cause him to submit to your command.”

Are you seriously going to pick a fight with your little kid? Come on people, use some discernment! Throw those crappy books away!

"Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart" (Col. 3:21, ESV).

You know how every single time a pastor comes to a text about God as Father, he has to apologize because he knows that most people probably don't have good fathers. And it's because of people like Rushdoony and Pearl, and all those who advocate their teachings. If it weren't for those who twist scripture in order to justify their own abuse, we wouldn't have to have caveats when we teach on the Fatherhood of God.

HT: Parenting Freedom

My interrupted jog...

2010-02-16T08:35:00.000-08:00

The brokenhearted sinner

2010-02-15T13:36:00.000-08:00

The Bible says if you strike someone and they die, you have committed homicide: "Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:12, ESV).

If you hit somebody, and they die, it's not an accident. The next verse gives provisions for accidental manslaughter. But the implication in verse 12 is if you hit someone and they die, even if you didn't mean to kill them, it's still murder.

The "eye for an eye" in verse 24 of the same chapter, which Jesus made famous in the Sermon on the Mount, is not about payback and revenge, but about justice and equity. For example, if someone spits on your shoe, he does not get the death penalty. It is not meant to be taken literally, but is an analogy which speaks of the appropriate fine (verse 22). If he steals your sheep, he owes you the price of the sheep; he probably doesn't have any sheep of his own with which to give you a sheep back, but he will have to work with his hands to earn the money to pay you for what he took. If he takes your eye out, it does not mean a surgeon removes his eye; rather, if you're his slave, he lets you go free, because your eye is at least worth your freedom. (This is in contrast to the cruel and unjust moslem laws which require that thieves have their hands amputated.) I am not advocating theonomy, and I'm certainly not advocating the death penalty if you punch your dad in the gut. But "eye for eye" is a good principle of justice that governments would do well to consider.

Back to my point about verse 12. The Schatz case is not the first death associated with the child-training techniques of Michael and Debi Pearl. There have been other cases, such as the 2006 case of Sean Paddock, whose mother pleaded not guilty because it was routine abuse. She was found guilty and then the case went to appeals last month. Even though a jury of her peers examined all the evidence and told her she was guilty, she still didn't believe them.

What breaks my heart is that someone whose child died at their own hand would not just be completely broken and confess and spend their time and effort pleading for the court's mercy rather than claiming innocence. There is no reason to claim in such cases that you are a good parent. You made a mistake. Obviously the Pearls were wrong when they said 1/4" plumbing supply line wouldn't leave a mark or damage tissue. Obviously the writer of the proverb who said your child won't die from "using the rod" must have meant something else...

I know it's a hard place to be, but wouldn't you be breaking the Ninth Commandment to say, "Not guilty", to a judge when he asks you, "How do you plead?" I admit that I am not a lawyer, and I know the definition of homicide in section 187 of the state penal code is somewhat different from the one in Exodus 21, as some sort of "malice" (in the legal sense) seems to be required. And I also know that Lynn Paddock's crime was committed in North Carolina which probably has a different definition as well. By my thing is—why is it so hard for these "Christians" to admit their fault?

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Rom. 7:14-25, ESV)

The great apostle Paul, who admitted in 1 Timothy 1:15 that he was the worst of sinners, advocates humility regarding victory over sin. "Nothing good dwells in ... my flesh." Our serving of God can only be done in our minds, in a spiritual sense, because the carnal soul is still serving sin. When we mess up, we need to be the first to admit our imperfections. We are sons of Adam, and despite all our objections, if it were us as the federal head of the human race in the garden, we would not have done any better.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:17, ESV)

Pray for the Schatzes. Pray for their attorneys, judges, jury, and D.A. Michael Ramsey. Pray for the children. And pray for yourself.

Baby registry time!

2010-02-14T16:23:00.000-08:00

Greetings! I hope this Valentine's/Presidents Day weekend finds you well!

If you're following my Buzz you probably noticed we registered yesterday at Target. Yes, I know this is our second kid and our first is still in diapers, but we went all-out pink with Ava! We do have white onesies of various sizes, but everything else was pink, so now we are in need of non-girl stuff.

Our son Baxter Isaac is due May 31. I don't have info on the baby shower yet.

A Reformed identity

2010-02-14T15:22:00.000-08:00

The Reformed understanding of things is that we do not have immediate access to God's being. We have mediated access through God the Son incarnate and through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. The goal of our theology is to think God's thoughts after him, as his image-bearers, as analogues. —R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession, p. 151

DA links Schatz case to Michael and Debi Pearl

2010-02-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

Happy V Day

2010-02-12T15:34:00.000-08:00

The Devil Who Made Them Do It...

2010-02-11T14:39:00.000-08:00

I've seen many episodes of Law & Order in which persons in authority or otherwise powerful positions such as authors, preachers, TV & radio personalities, etc., were considered just as responsible as the actual perpetrators who did what they told them to.

My wife found a blog in which a woman was commenting on the Schatz case. This same woman had commented on other cases which bore eerie similarities. Pretty soon, I found more mention of the plastic tubing and the Pearls, and I was able to track down this confession from Debi Pearl, direct from the website of the "ministry" that brought you Train Up a Child:

The rod we speak of is a plumbing supply line that can be bought at any hardware store or large department store. It is a slim, flexible, plastic tubing that supplies water to sinks, and toilets. Ask for "¼-inch supply line." They cost less than one dollar. I always give myself one swat before I swat the child to remind myself how much force to exert. It stings the skin without bruising or damaging tissue. It’s a real attention-getter. Michael demonstrates its use in our new Seminar videos.

I've seen other blogs mention the welts and bruises this device can leave.

I hope Michael Ramsey finds this.

Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows...

2010-02-09T13:47:00.000-08:00

The most in-depth coverage I found so far was posted on the Paradise Post overnight. I have included it below for preservation because the Post seems to have a short news cycle, archiving their articles rather quickly to a section that requires user registration. The good news is that the other child is expected to survive.

Ridge parents arrested in child's death
By Trevor Warner, Assistant Managing Editor
Posted: 02/09/2010 01:00:00 AM PST

Two Paradise residents were arrested after their 7-year-old adopted child died early Saturday morning.

Kevin Schatz, 46, and Elizabeth Schatz, 42, were booked into Butte County Jail on murder and child abuse charges. Police responded to the 500 block of Crestwood Drive at about 1 a.m. after receiving a report from Elizabeth of a female juvenile who was not breathing. Officers arrived to find the child in full cardiac arrest.

The responding officer, Tim Denecochea, performed CPR and the girl, identified as Lydia Schatz, was transported to Feather River Hospital where she began breathing again with the aid of life support. The girl was to be transferred to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento via LifeFlight, but bad weather prevented a helicopter from making the flight. Lydia was being rushed by ground to the Chico Municipal Airport to catch a plane but died en route. She was pronounced dead at Enloe Hospital.

Paradise Police Sgt. Steve Rowe confirmed that the girl was allegedly beaten for mispronouncing a word. Police determined the incident was a result of child abuse and upon a follow-up investigation, police discovered an 11-year-old girl, Lydia's adopted sister, in the same residence with significant injuries. Rowe could not elaborate on the elder girl's injuries, though he said the girl did not suffer cardiac arrest. He said the girl does have kidney failure and originally was not expected to survive. However, the 11-year-old has improved and is expected to survive, he said. Despite her improved state, Rowe said she is still listed in critical condition.

District Attorney Mike Ramsey said the girls were allegedly beaten with a 15" piece of flexible plastic tubing commonly found in toilet tanks. There were seven other children in the house—the 3-year-old adopted sister and the Schatz's six biological children ranging in ages from 8 to 16.

The three adopted children were adopted from the Republic of Liberia in Africa three years ago, said Ramsey. He said authorities are investigating how the adoptions were made and through what agency. The remaining youths were taken into protective custody and released to Child Support Services.

Ramsey said the remaining children have indicated that they sustained similar discipline with similar instruments.

The children were being home schooled and had no affiliation with the Paradise Unified School District. Ramsey said the children were being home schooled through a Christian home school organization. He did not know the name of the organization at press time. There were no reports of prior child abuse history with the family. The incident is still under investigation.

Ramsey said that since this is an alleged homicide, the Schatzes are facing a life sentence. According to a Dec. 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record story, Kevin Schatz set up 50 Internet Wi-Fi locations throughout Paradise and Chico through employment at Community Network Wi-Fi. A Paradise Post interview with the Schatz family in April 2007 indicated the adopted girls were named, from oldest to youngest, Princess, Koko, and Blessing. Princess was 8 years old at the time, Koko—whose name appears to have been changed to Lydia—was 5, and Blessing was three months old. The last time the county saw a case like this was in 1982, when a 3-year-old was beaten to death by the parents, Ramsey said.

He said cases like this are wrenching for everyone involved. The district attorney's office is assisting police with the investigation. An autopsy will be conducted Wednesday, said Butte County Sheriff's Office Lt. Dennis Cooley. He said if it is proven that the child died of cardiac arrest, he would have to have a doctor explain how it is possible for a 7-year-old girl to be beaten into a heart attack.

Anyone with information regarding the incident is encouraged to call the Paradise Police Department at 872-6241. The Post will update the story as new information is made available.

Corporal Punishment and the Two Kingdoms

2010-02-08T00:56:00.000-08:00

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:3-4, ESV)

Can we all please take a moment to acknowledge the elephant in the room?

In an example of a contrast that could not be starker, as the Saints and former San Diego Charger Drew Brees were reinforcing their closing lead over the Colts this evening, on the other channel, the district attorney was on the local news to express his sorrow over the tragedies that have come upon these children: first, that it happened, and second, that they cannot all be kept together in order to support each other through these horrific times. He also tipped his hand regarding the county's case against the parents: they believe that the “cumulative effect” of repeated, habitual corporal discipline in the same location can, over time, cause toxic amounts of potassium to be released into small bodies, resulting in cardiac arrest. But they are still waiting on the coroner's report to be sure.

On its own, this is one thing. But add to it the fact that another of their lovely children is simultaneously hospitalized in critical condition, from child abuse injuries. Action News' Debby Cobb reported late last night that she had taken a turn for the worse, and late tonight said her "condition is deteriorating", so please keep her in your prayers.

We know this family. Our hearts are broken. We have been to their home and benefited from their hospitality. The meek mother and daughters were welcome guests at Ava's baby shower. Their love for their children was apparent. Out of respect for the family, we don't want to speculate. We weren't there the other night when it all went down, and under the law, they are innocent until proven guilty and condemned by a jury of their peers. God has not made me a judge, and I am only reporting what was released to the media outlets by the police and district attorney. But I need to talk about how Reformed theology speaks to this situation, and what we can learn from it, and how we all ought to change our hearts going forward, according to Scripture and the Confessions.

There is an unfortunate tendency for Christians to think that they can do no wrong, and that everything bad that happens to them is not of God, but is a conspiracy or attack from the devil or the so-called Secular World (a.k.a. liberals and New-Agers). It is this issue that I want to address, as it relates to evangelical Christians in general, especially in a backwoods corner such as the north valley. I want to stress that I am not speaking about the particular situation I have mentioned, other than the fact that it brings these sentiments to light in all those acquainted with it.

First, and most importantly, God is sovereign, and he is not surprised by untimely deaths. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 10:29-31, ESV). We must take comfort in the fact that everything is working according to his perfect plan, and that this crazy world in which we are living is in the end going to prove to be the best of all possible worlds, in that God will get more glory in the end because things happened this way than we would if they happened differently.

Second, I want to talk about the Reformed doctrine of the two kingdoms, which topic will take up the remainder of this post. This doctrine comes from the Scriptural teaching that God has not only sovereignly ordained the government of the Church, but he has also sovereignly ordained the governments of nations, states, counties, and cities.

We confess:

It is the duty of the people to pray for magistrates, to honour their persons, to pay them tribute and other dues, to obey their lawful commands, and to be subject to their authority, for conscience' sake. Infidelity, or difference in religion, doth not make void the magistrate's just and legal authority, nor free the people from their obedience to him: from which ecclesiastical persons are not exempted; much less hath the Pope any power or jurisdiction over them in their dominions, or over any of their people; and least of all to deprive them of their dominions or lives, if he shall judge them to be heretics, or upon any other pretense whatsoever. (WCF 23.4)

Civil magistrates being set up by God for the ends aforesaid; subjection, in all lawful things commanded by them, ought to be yielded by us in the Lord, not only for wrath, but for conscience' sake; and we ought to make supplications and prayers for kings and all that are in authority, that under them we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty. (1689 LBC 24.3)

The Westminster Confession goes on in chapters 30 and 31 to describe the distinct spheres of the church officers civil magistrate. Luther wrote about these two “kingdoms” in his book On Secular Authority, but I make the following quotes from his sermon on 1 Peter 2:1: “It is this way: Our sins being blotted out through the blood of Christ, we need not to make remuneration or render satisfaction for them; we are children of grace and enjoy forgiveness. Nevertheless, inherent sin is not entirely purged out, or mortified...” (Martin Luther, Sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter; 1 Peter 2:1). In the Lutheran view, even if the entire world were to be converted to Christianity, with remission already being made for their sins, their sins would still be in need of mortification. The world would still be a world full of sinners, and for this reason, a civil government is still necessary to keep us in line.

“Peter goes on to say: ‘Be subject to every ordinance of man...whether to the king...or unto governors’; again, ‘Servants, be in subjection to your masters...also to the froward.’ How is it consistent with royal citizenship in a celestial country to be a pilgrim on earth? How can we live here with wives and children, houses and lands, and being citizens under a temporal government, and yet not be at home? There is a distinction here which, as before said, was at first difficult for the beloved apostles themselves to understand. But to Christians, especially those of today, it should be clear. Christ and the apostles do not, in this teaching, design the rejection of external government and human authority—what Peter here terms ordinances of men. No, they permit these to remain as they are; moreover, they enjoin us to submit to and make use of them...” (ibid.)

We “make use of them” in various means, in that they make daily life function and offer us protection from wicked men, but also in that the laws and the enforcement of those laws help keep our own sinful natures in check and help us to mortify our sin.

“Every Christian, be he lord or servant, prince or subject, should conduct himself as befits his station, using in trust whatever God has given him—dominion and subjects, house and home, wife and children, money and property, meat and drink. He is to regard himself solely as a guest of earth, as one eating his morsel of bread or taking his lunch in an inn; he must conduct himself in this earthly harbor as a pious guest.” (ibid.)

Christian, do you live as a polite guest in this nation? ...in this state? ...in this county? ...in this city? Or are you constantly at odds with it?

Now let us go straight to the source, with this decidedly un-American section from Paul's letter to the Romans:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.” Romans 13:1-7, ESV

Paul clearly teaches that if one is imprisoned, it is more likely that the one is deserving of chastisement than that he is unlawfully imprisoned. I am not denying that false imprisonment occurs, merely that it is the exception, not the rule. If Paul, who himself was imprisoned innumerable times for the gospel, said this about the tyrannical government of the pagan Roman Empire in the first century, how much more in this modern, post-Christian government, fashioned after the Reformed polity with distribution of powers, in which freedom of worship has been established and the slaves have been emancipated.

As it concerns the situation at hand: a lot of people in the local home school clubs are in flat-out denial. Pastors are declaring from the pulpit that this couple is being falsely accused merely for being “salt and light.” On the other side, local newspaper website comment threads are filling up with people blaming CPS and the System.

But if you want to know who to blame, all you have to do is look in the mirror.

When bad things happened to so-called good people in the New Testament, Jesus said, “Do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you all will likewise perish” (Luke 13:4b-5, ESV). In saying this, Jesus declared that all Adam's offspring are likewise guilty and deserving of all the bad things that happen to everybody else. (This is also why those false teachers who claim that Haiti got what she deserved should be trembling in their boots.)

Christians are still corrupt. Left to our own devices, we are prone to all kinds of aberrations. In order to mortify sin, believers must submit themselves to a covenant community, where elders can practice church discipline and call them to account for their errors. The same fundamentalist independent spirit that causes Christians to refuse to submit themselves to the covenant community is manifest in the broad anti-denominationalism which causes pastors to seek to be accountable to no one. It can also be manifest in some families which home school not out of necessity (e.g. missionaries, farmers, special needs, or those who, like my sister's family, have lived out in the middle of nowhere where there are no schools), but because they believe they know better than professional educators and the government. Look—professional educators with a five-year college education are necessary for this simple reason: kids are a handful. Moreover, this constant opposition to the government needs to be tempered with this fact: our government was structured to resemble Presbyterian polity, under the premise that we are all corrupt, but, when we get together, we can hold each other accountable through checks and balances. Raising kids is hard, especially in isolation. In a school, teachers are trained to spot the signs, so that you and your children can get the help you need before things get out of hand. In a church, seminary-educated pastors and elders—even Sunday school teachers—are likewise trained to spot the signs and doctrinal errors and bring the necessary intervention.

This fundamentalist, narcissistic spirit seems to be the spirit of the age. R. Scott Clark writes in Recovering the Reformed Confessions, “The purpose of the fable of Narcissus is to warn of the danger of self-absorbtion and to warn against mistaking subjective experience for objective reality” (p. 17). Many Christians use the false logic that says, “I am a Christian; I think ____; therefore, ____ is Christian, and anti-____ is anti-Christian.” Along these lines there is the potential for people to harp on their own interpretation of one portion of Scripture and run with it, rather than taking the written revelation as a whole. For example:

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6, ESV).

This is not an absolute promise. We all know someone or have been someone who in fact grew up in the covenant community but walked away from the faith in their adulthood, so God-given natural revelation shows us that there are limits to the possible meanings of this text.
This is not actually what the Bible says. The text does not include “should go” in the Hebrew, and the verse is more likely a warning rather than a promise; it should probably be rendered: “If you train up a child to go after his own way, when he is old he will be stuck in it.” In other words, if you teach a child to follow his own path, as it were, he will stay on that path. With this reading, this verse speaks more about the narcissism I have mentioned than to the particular home school ethic which has embraced it.

“Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die” (Prov. 23:13, ESV).

Consider that in Exodus 21:20 the Holy Spirit acknowledges that this same rod can be lethal in the wrong hands.
We interpret the Old Testament with the New. Whatever Jesus or his brothers or the apostles say about a subject takes precedence over what was said in the Old Testament:

And Jesus did say, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea” (Mark 9:42, NASB), and, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Mt. 25:40, ESV). I think of the scene in Mel Gibson's Passion, where the Roman soldiers were flogging our Lord and Maker. Could I be one of those soldiers, methodically counting each lash out loud as his back splits open and his sacred blood spills out on the ground...

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25a, ESV).

Propserity Preachers and the Economic Downturn

2010-01-26T21:00:00.000-08:00

The Atlantic Monthly has a piece that implicates the Prosperity (false) Gospel as the cause of the Great Recession.

The subprime officers were drawn from “an utterly different background” than the professional bankers, she told me. She had been running a small paralegal business; her co-workers had been car salespeople, or had worked in telemarketing. They were prized for their ability to hustle on the ground and “look you in the eye when they shook your hand,” she surmised. As a reward for good performance, the bank would sometimes send a Hummer limo to pick up Jacobson for a celebration, she said. She’d arrive at a bar and find all her co-workers drunk and her boss “doing body shots off a waitress.”

The idea of reaching out to churches took off quickly, Jacobson recalls. The branch managers figured pastors had a lot of influence with their parishioners and could give the loan officers credibility and new customers. Jacobson remembers a conference call where sales managers discussed the new strategy. The plan was to send officers to guest-speak at church-sponsored “wealth-building seminars” like the ones Bowler attended, and dazzle the participants with the possibility of a new house. They would tell pastors that for every person who took out a mortgage, $350 would be donated to the church, or to a charity of the parishioner’s choice. “They wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, Mr. Minister. We want to give your people a bunch of subprime loans,” Jacobson told me. “They would say, ‘Your congregants will be homeowners! They will be able to live the American dream!’”

HT - Mark Driscoll

Update

2010-01-25T23:59:00.000-08:00

For any of you who may be lurking on my blog, wondering what happened to the series on Mike Horton's book Introducing Covenant Theology, I have not forgotten it. I took time out to read Kim Riddlebarger's A Case for Amillennialism, and now I'm reading R. Scott Clark's Recovering the Reformed Confession.

The young church where I am one of the worship leaders began welcoming members recently, but we have a few issues with the doctrinal statement, such as the explicit inclusion of the word "literal" between "six" and "days", the inclusion of the words "rapture" and "tribulation", and the taking of a specific dispensational premillennial stance. Though Covenant Theology definitely speaks to all these issues, I wanted to read A Case for Amillennialism to help solidify my own position as well as get a better understanding of all the major positions. We are welcomed at our church despite our differences, but I think it would be better if the doctrinal statement was more like the Reformed confessions and less specific about its millennial position.

[The exegete] might ... well observe the likeness between Moses' record of the creation "week" and certain visions of John, the seer of the Apocalypse, which are heptad in structure with successively numbered divisions and yet are not strictly chronological in sequence. It appears that the God of revelation chose to reveal the primeval ages of creation and the eschatological ages of re-creation in similar literary form. --Meredith Kline

As for Recovering the Reformed Confession, I think this book will help me get a better understanding of what it means to be Reformed to those who have grown up in that tradition for generations. Though we have been Calvinists for a few years, we are coming to the Reformed faith from the outside. There's a small batch of young people in this town from Calvary Chapel who have been converted to 5-point Calvinists, and we were compelled to find refuge elsewhere. But to be Reformed goes so much deeper than TULIP, so we're still only on our way... semper reformanda.

Other ways I'm keeping busy include our daughter Ava who just turned one, and our son Baxter (named after the Puritan pastor), who still needs another four months in the oven. My lovely wife and I recently celebrated our anniversary with dinner at the Sierra Nevada brewery and gives exchanged from Kay (which every kiss begins with). And I already mentioned leading worship. Coming from a Calvary Chapel and Vineyard background, I'm used to three chords and the truth, but now I do hymns exclusively. Having a music degree helps me with the arrangements, but, since I have not been steeped in hymnody since my childhood, virtually every time I lead I'm learning a new song, just hoping I've got the tempo right.

Earthquake Forecasting

2010-01-20T14:54:00.001-08:00

It looks like scientists had forecasted the Haiti earthquake two years ago, according to this report from Physics Today: http://blogs.physicstoday.org/newspicks/2010/01/more-science-from-the-haiti-ea.html

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Guess who's one!

2010-01-16T14:28:00.000-08:00

Begg on Stonewall Jackson and the Fourth Commandment

2009-12-21T13:05:00.000-08:00

Alistair Begg says:

General Jackson is a legend in American History. Any of you who have read of Jackson know that he was a man of extreme principle and character. At the very heart of this was his conviction of faith in Jesus Christ. And his extreme rigorous character attached itself also to the observance of the Sabbath. And writing in his biography, his widow says,
Certainly he was not less scrupulous in obeying the divine command to "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy" than he was in any other rule of his life. Since the Creator had set apart this day for his own, and commanded it to be kept holy, he believed that it was as wrong for him to desecrate it by worldly pleasure, idleness, or secular employment, as to break any other commandment of the decalogue. Sunday was his busiest day of the week, as he always attended church twice a day and taught in two Sabbath schools! He refrained as much as possible from all worldly conversation, and in his family, if secular topics were introduced, he would say, with a kindly smile, "We will talk about that to-morrow."

He never travelled on Sunday, never took his mail from the post-office, nor permitted a letter of his own to travel on that day, always before posting it calculating the time it required to reach its destination; and even business letters of the utmost importance were never sent off the very last of the week, but were kept over until Monday morning, unless it was a case where distance required a longer time than a week.

One so strict in his own Sabbath observance naturally believed that it was wrong for the government to carry the mails on Sunday. Any organization which exacted secular labor of its employees on the Lord's day was, in his opinion, a violator of God's law.
And so his life was marked by a rigorous obedience to the Law of God. Now, loved ones, here's the question: Is this quote from Jackson an anachronism? In other words, if Jackson was right, where does that leave us? Cos' if we're right, most of us, he was wrong. But one thing is for sure: we're not both right. -- Alistair Begg, Holy Day or Holiday?, sermon

Saint Nicholas of Myra

2009-12-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

I've posted a link to this one before, but it's worth a repost: Mark Driscoll on Saint Nicholas

I am still concerned about how it seems our culture seems to think Christmas is more about Nicholas than Christ. Saint Nicholas's Day was yesterday; it has come and gone. Christmas, the day we celebrate Christ's birth, is still a few weeks away. Still, I find encouragement when researching the Christian roots of Saint Nicholas, in the histories of the Bishop of Myra.

Beautiful weather

2009-12-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

Palin Ignites New Debate On GOP Support For Israel

2009-12-06T17:02:00.001-08:00

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a17333/News/National.html

Although it's good to see that Jews are seeing through
dispensationalist agendas, I think it's sad that in the last 100
years, it has come to the point that if a politician is labelled as
Christian, the default assumption is that the person holds a
dispensationalist agenda.

What is wrong with this country?

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Christian at the head of the NIH

2009-12-05T17:08:00.000-08:00

Al Mohler recently posted an article called, What Do You Really Believe About Human Dignity, Dr. Collins?

I was optimistic at the beginning of the article, but saddened as I continued. Invitro fertilization is unjustifiable if it results in viable embryos that will never be implanted--people who have such a "desire... [of] strong moral good" should just get over their selfishness and adopt. If there are existing embryos in stasis--nothing should be done with them except to leave them in stasis until medical technology (or would-be mothers) comes to the point where they can be brought to term. Otherwise they should be left in stasis. But they are human beings created in the image of God who have a right to live... They should not be destroyed in the name of research just because nothing else is being done with them.

Update: I should mention that there are a lot of other things I like about Dr. Francis Collins, including his work on the Human Genome Project and his efforts to highlight the compatibility of science and faith. In fact, I'm a bigger fan of Dr. Collins than of Dr. Mohler.

Google Latitude: It Works!

2009-11-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

When Latitude was first released for the iPhone as a web app, I was
unimpressed, because it appeared to be using the cell-tower-
triangulation method of finding your location rather than the GPS
coordinates. But I loaded it up today, and it's 100% accurate even as
I walk down the street!

I don't know if they fixed a bug, or whether this was caused by an
erronneous setting on AT&T's end that caused their system to think
that my new iPhone 3G was actually my old first-generation iPhone (we
got that straightened out after MMS went live).

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Ava is a Puritan!

2009-11-17T09:31:00.000-08:00

Why the Reformed are not Millennarian

2009-11-15T14:21:00.000-08:00

"The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture, is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly." Westminster Confession of Faith, I.9.

The First Resurrection of Revelation 20

2009-10-29T21:37:00.001-07:00

Kim Riddlebarger takes a crack at the meaning of the First Resurrection in Revelation 20, and also discusses the "already and not yet" aspect of our "already raised" status in Christ. Sounds familiar. ;-)

“The Age of the Holy Spirit” (mp3)

I know some of you will appreciate this.

Some interesting quotes, and a response

2009-10-28T00:18:00.000-07:00

Observe:

“Jesus can help me get a promotion and he can relieve my stress.” –John Frame

“God is concerned about human happiness, even in the details of our lives.” –John Frame

“Preaching cannot possibly have the precise emphasis that Scripture has, for its work is not to replicate Scripture but to apply Scripture to its readers.” –John Frame

“Not every concern with self is selfish. It is wrong to covet, but not every desire for earthly goods is coveting.” –John Frame

“The law is good news, gospel. And the gospel is law.” –John Frame

In contrast:

“[The] difference between the Law and the Gospel is the height of knowledge in Christendom. Every person and all persons who assume or glory in the name of Christian should know and be able to state this difference. If this ability is lacking, one cannot tell a Christian from a heathen or a Jew; of such supreme importance is this differentiation.” –Martin Luther

Now there’s something Frame said that I just can’t leave unanswered:

“[Jesus] commended David’s behavior in supplying food to his hungry men.” –John Frame

Here's what Jesus really said:

One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:23-28

John Frame falls far short in supplying this passage as evidence to justify the allegorization/moralization of Bible stories. First of all, the point is not that we all should learn a lesson from David’s behavior on this occasion. I think that is obvious when you consider that David’s behavior or that day cost the lives of not only the entire priesthood, but of an entire city (1 Sam. 22:16-19). In a post-9/11 world, how could Frame possibly miss this detail? What’s more, when David heard the news of the resulting massacre, he deeply regretted what he had done. This means if we are going to learn a lesson from this story, it is most certainly not that we should do as David did.

The entire point is the Son of Man is the Lord over everything, even the Sabbath. He is the greater Son of David; if David has the right to use a holy thing on a holy day to meet the needs of his men, how much more does the divine Son of David!

Unlike David, however, Jesus is perfect and has never broken the law. Therefore, we can consider his actions and consider his behavior as an example, as Paul did in Philippians 2:5ff., and numerous other passages. So, if we had to look for personal application in Christ’s example (which Frame would appreciate) instead of just looking at what the text teaches about Christ, what we can glean (pardon the pun) from it is this: meeting needs such as hunger is not in violation of either the Fourth Commandment or the ceremonial law that indicated the showbread is for priests. (See Lev. 24:9. Basically it was the priests’ dinner, and they shared it with David and his men because it was all they had, so this is not actually a violation but common hospitality.) The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; therefore, the Sabbath laws were never intended to be a burden too hard to bear. Again, in this case it is Jesus who is our example, and not David. In the final analysis, all this is very different from Frame’s man-centered and simplistic interpretation, “[Jesus] commended David’s behavior in supplying food to his hungry men.” Jesus did no such thing.

“Instead of drawing a straight line of application from the narrative to us, which typically moralizes or allegorizes the story, we are taught by Jesus himself to understand these passages in the light of their place in the unfolding drama of redemption that leads to Christ.” –Michael Horton

Don't forget to feed the cat

2009-10-27T16:23:00.001-07:00

The Resurrection of Believers: Already and Not Yet

2009-10-24T18:36:00.000-07:00

Richard Gaffin, quoted by Rev. Kim Riddlebarger in A Case for Amillenialism:

The unity of the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers is such that the latter consists of two episodes in the experience of the individual believer—one which is already past, already realized [e.g. Col. 2:12: “having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead”], and one which is future, yet to be realized [e.g. Col. 3:4: “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”]. In the period between the resurrection and the Parousia of Christ, any believer is one who has already been raised from the dead, and is yet to be raised. . . . The distinctive notion that the eschatos, the “age-to-come,” is both present and future, is reflected in [Paul’s] teaching concerning the fundamental eschatological occurrence for the individual believer: his resurrection is both already and not yet. (67)

This passage really helps explain how Jesus’ kingdom is already realized, though we await the final consummation.

True Saints or Hypocrites?

2009-10-18T10:57:00.001-07:00

"True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable nature of the things of God. And this is the spring of all their delights, and the cream of all their pleasures: it is the joy of their joy. This sweet and ravishing entertainment they have in the view of the beautiful and delightful nature of divine things, is the foundation of the joy that they have afterwards, in the consideration of their being theirs. But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order: they first rejoice and are elevated with it, that they are made so much of by God; and then on that ground he seems, in a sort, lovely to them." --Jonathan Edwards

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HT: John Piper

"My kingdom is not of this world..."

2009-10-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

You may remember my recent post about the "Evening of Eschatology" at Bethlehem Baptist. Justin Taylor posted recently on What You Must Believe if You Are a Premillennialist, and included a lengthy chapter (really too long for a blog post) reprinted from a Sam Storms work-in-progress. Then Jim Hamilton posted a rebuttal, reiterating his argument from the panel discussion: that at the time of Christ, there were a lot of people, including Zealots and Rabbis, who believed the Messiah was supposed to come and establish his earthly kingdom on the throne of David; but, as it turns out, he didn't come to do that the first time. In Hamilton's view, Jesus is going to do all the things the Jews expected the second time around, when he returns to sit on the throne of David in the Millennium. Hamilton says this principle of expecting the fulfillment too soon is the same when it comes to the end times: that Scripture may lead Amillennialists to think that the consummation will happen at the Second Advent, but, as Hamilton says, it's not going to happen until a thousand years later.

This argument falls flat with anyone who's not a dispensationalist. We interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. We see the Old Testament kingdom and sacerdotal system as types and shadows of the ultimate realities, which are heavenly, and we do not see a legitimacy for a return to the Old Testament types and shadows. We do not see a gap between the First Advent and the coming of the Kingdom. We see Christ as having come as King already. As Kim Riddlebarger put it recently, his victory over sin and death is so much a bigger deal than a king kicking the Romans out of Palestine and ruling over a tiny strip of land in the Middle East. (I highly recommend that mp3 by Kim Riddlebarger about the Kingdom, by the way.)

Riddlebarger quotes Anthony Hoekema and George Eldon Ladd, who said the kingdom of God is to be understood as God's kingly reign over his people as well as the universe. He also says when Jesus said "the kingdom is at hand", it was literally "right under your noses." Its coming has already begun, and Reformed Christians believe it will finally be consummated when Christ returns.

Even Abraham, when he received the promises from God about making a great nation from his descendants, did not consider an earthly kingdom the ultimate fulfillment of the promise. "For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God" (Hebrews 11:10, ESV). This kingdom that Abraham looked forward to is spiritual, and though there was a physical kingdom from his descendants, this was a shadow of the things to come. "But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel" (Hebrews 12:22-24, ESV).

Hamilton says, "From the eagerness of the disciples to reject the idea that Jesus was going to suffer in Jerusalem, and from their desire to see the kingdom restored to Israel in Acts 1, they seem to agree with Justin that the continuation of sin and death is depressing." But what he doesn't understand is that the disciples had it wrong! We are not supposed to justify our misinterpretation of Scripture by saying that's what the pre-Pentecost disciples did so it must be right! the mistake the disciples made was that they had an over-realized eschatology. They failed to understand that Christ's kingdom is "not of this world", and never will be of this world! (I submit that premillenialists are committing a gross error by neglecting this verse.)

Dr. Kim Riddlebarger writes in his book, A Case for Amillennialism,

Much like modern dispensationalists expect Jesus to reign over the nations in the future millennial kingdom, the Jews expected the Messiah to establish a political kingdom whereby Israel would rule over the Gentile nations. This explains why the Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah. The New Testament, however, equates Israel's restoration, prophesied in the Old Testament, with Jesus' kingdom--a kingdom not of this world (John 18:36). (pp. 59-60)

Jesus is already sitting on the Throne. Revelation 3:21 (ESV) says, "The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne." Jesus conquered (past tense), and sat down on the throne, indicating his work is complete.

As the author of Hebrews says,

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

“This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,” (Hebrews 10:11-16, ESV)

Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father, on a throne that is much greater than David's chair, governing the hearts and minds of his people. He is the king of the elect, and his kingdom knows no bounds.

When Stephen spoke about the nature of God's kingdom to the Jews with their over-realized eschatology in Acts 7, they stoned him.

"Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says,

"'Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,
or what is the place of my rest?
Did not my hand make all these things?' [...]"

Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. (Acts 7:48-50, 54-58, ESV)

Hamilton says they expected Isaiah 11 and 65 to be fulfilled at Christ's first advent, but it wasn't, so it's going to be fulfilled when he returns. But this argument falls back on itself, because he says it will not be fulfilled at Christ's second coming just as it was not fulfilled at his first. The wolf-and-lamb, child-and-adder, lion-and-lamb imagery in Isaiah 11 and Isaiah 65 are symbols for peace, representing the undoing of the effects of the Fall of Adam, which we who are justified by the blood of Christ experience. R.C. Sproul's Reformation Study Bible says that Isaiah 11 and 65 are fulfilled in Ephesians 2:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:11-12, ESV)

Jim Hamilton mentions Isaiah 11 and 65 in an attempt to support his argument that death and suffering will continue for another 1,000 years while Christ is actually sitting on a physical throne in Jerusalem. But Scripture is explicit that at the consummation, death and suffering will be no more. It is one thing to say the Old Testament prophecies were partially fulfilled at the first Advent, with an expected consummation at the second: the New Testament teaches us this. But there is no grounds to say that they will be partially fulfilled at the second advent and then finally consummated after another thousand years. The only way to do this would be to take an overly-literalistic approach to Revelation 20. But Revelation 20 makes much more sense if you interpret it in the context of the literary framework of Revelation, as the seventh and final in a series of visions that each describe, from a different vantage point, the entire period of redemptive history between the kingdom's coming (in the First Advent) and its final consummation (in the Second Advent). The principle of the perpescuity of Scripture means that we interpret the least clear parts of Scripture with the clearest. If there is any one singular passage of Scripture that makes no sense on its own, we cannot come up with an interpretation that is not supported anywhere else.

The flaw of the Jews who expected a political Messiah was that they interpreted Old Testament prophecy "reading through the lens of current events", internalizing them and making them personal to the state of the Jewish nation under Roman oppression. The flaw of dispensationalists is that they interpret Old and New Testament prophecy with the daily newspaper in the same way, "reading the Bible through the lens of current events," naming Antichrists, Gog, and Magog, the Mark of the Beast, etc., based on what's happening in the news.

But His kingdom is not of this world.

Eschatology Panel at Bethlehem Baptist Church

2009-10-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

John Piper asked some teachers to remain after the Desiring God conference for a panel discussion on the three views of the millennium in Revelation 20. The audio, video, etc., can be found here. Sam Storms argues the amillennial view based on Paul's description of the abolishment of death in 1 Cor. 15 ("The last enemy to be destroyed is death." v. 26, ESV). His interpretation of Revelation 20 is the same as what I've read from B.B. Warfield: the millennial reign of the saints refers to the martyrs in the "intermediate state", before the throne of God above. Doug Wilson argues the Post-millennial view, declaring that we are moving towards a "Golden Age" where the Gospel will have a literal reign on the earth. Jim Hamilton argues the historical Pre-millennial view. His interpretation of Revelation 20 is something that you "make room for", and "use your imagination". He says that just as the Gospels say Judas was hanged, but Acts says he "fell headlong"; and in the same way, his interpretation of Revelation 20 does not require conformity with the rest of Scripture (e.g. what Paul and Jesus say), but is something that can be added. John Piper tries to hold it all together and maintain unity through it all.

The two-hour session is a good overview for the different perspectives for those who don't know where they stand as well as those who have picked a team but need to know more about what the others say.

Jonathan Edwards, Healer of Rifts

2009-10-09T14:31:00.001-07:00

Today the power was out at work mid-morning. We were sent away to lunch early but then expected to return, and then sent home when it was determined the power would likely remain off for most of the afternoon. so I had twice as many commutes today as I normally do, during which I was listening to Steven J. Lawson lecture on the great American puritan Jonathan Edwards.

I was particularly struck by a story about Edwards' 8-month internship at a Presbyterian church in New York City (at which time he wrote the Resolutions). This small congregation had split from its parent church not because of theological or doctrinal agreements (they had none), but because of matters of polity. After 8 months under Edwards' preaching, Lawson said, the congregation decided to return to the very church they had left.

Douglas Sweeney puts it this way,

Within a year, their schism was healed, thanks in part to Edwards' ministry. Anderson resigned the pulpit at First Presbyterian and Edwards' flock returned to its former pasture. Despite the brief and rocky history of this wayward congregation, though, its people treated Edwards well and gave him room to grow. By all accounts, his first pastorate proved a blessing to all concerned.

I suppose the story loses some impact when you consider that one who had offended the disaffected had resigned; you don't know if the other pastor's resignation is a cause, or an effect, or merely incidental. Regardless, that's a nice legacy to leave. Most modern American churches are centered around their pastor, rather than the flock. In Edwards' time, for the most part, the flock was the flock, with exceptions in large towns like New York where you had people from different religious backgrounds (the city was mainly Anglican). It's good to see the flock reunited.

Christianity and Popular Culture

2009-10-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

This episode of The White Horse Inn from September 20 is a must-listen: Christianity and Popular Culture (it's actually a rebroadcast from 12 years ago). Michael Horton and his guest Ken Myers offer a poignant and precise critique of the "Christian" industry ghetto, with its second-rate rock stars and cheesy praise choruses that bear more resemblance to commercial jingles than to legitimate art. It's followed up by panel commentary that includes Kim Riddlebarger pointing out that those evangelicals who reject covenant theology tend to be the same ones who embrace the fads and shallowness of the "Christian" ghetto. Don't miss this one. All pastors and worship leaders and elders should listen to this, as well as their wives, and anyone who goes to church or has ever been to church and who feels like there's something "off" about those Christian radio stations, bumper stickers, bookstores, etc.