New Regulations for bloggers

In light of the new regulations for blogging let me just say that I love books. I've enjoyed reading them all my life. I highly recommend that you read books too. They will enrich your life. IN THE INTEREST OF FULL DISCLOSURE AND IN LIGHT OF NEW FEDERAL REGULATIONS, LET ME REVEAL HERE THAT YES, I HAVE RECIEVED FREE BOOKS IN THE PAST--FROM PUUUUUBLISHERRRRRRSSSSS. In the interest of even fuller discolosure let me say that publishers have not paid me any compensation for this endorsement of their product. :)

Changes since WWII

Most of the material in this post is from an e-mail sent to me by Mr. Terry Brown of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary: September 1st we marked the 70th anniversary of the commencement of World War II in Europe. Think of how the world has changed because of and since that great mid-century conflict. Imperialism, at least the overt, old style, fell out of fashion, as did premeditated, loose-tongued racism. The British, for example, lost much of thier empire in the two decades following (and had been losing it somewhat even before), and people changed in their outlook regarding colonies and "inferiors." \ Today, the descendants of former colonies are about to overrun the old British Isles, transforming them into solid outposts of Third World reverse-colonization and an Islamic redoubt. Many changes have taken place in the U.S.A. since the beginning of that war, some of it a result, at least indirectly, of the conflict. Those who died before or during WWII, would not recognize, nor readily accept, the post-WWII America of the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, integration, a Catholic President (Kennedy), or the modern scale of massive handouts and wasteful mismanagement of government, local, state, and federal. Many of us may recall hearing our grandparents lamenting the passing of the old order, never believing for a second in the equality of the races, except, possibly, a heavenly leveling. And mere mention of the sexual revolution or the homosexual agenda would have left them agape that such things could happen "right here in America!" Much, if not all, of the aforementioned, I am confident, would not have transpired, or, at best, would have suffered long delay, had it not been for the convulsions of World War II. Besides the cultural convulsions, consider the alterations and advancements in technology. Many people who lived through the early 20th Century and into the fifties/sixties loathed air conditioning and central heating, finding these aberrations in nature to be repulsive and undesirable, believing they caused colds and sinusitis. Also, we today have nuclear power, due to the war, and far, far better automobiles, aircraft, and innumerable other changes. We, in fact today take the tide of change and development as firm and established not novel or experimental. As for information, we have lived to witness a shattering event—the arrival of the Internet—akin to the dawn of printing and moveable type or the advent of engine-driven transport. Yes, as I realize, a substantial portion of the world’s changes and acquisitions would have come, regardless of the carnage and upheaval of World War II. However, it accelerated these, and created a culture in which research and technological inovation were much better funded, and carried out on a bigger scale than the pre-war world ever imagined. Before the war, "technological research" was Thomas Edison tinkering in his laboratory. After the War, it was corporate research labs, some created by the need to produce war related technologies, but afterwards dedicated to "new consumer products." But, we must not forget that WWII did precipitate momentous disturbances, and I am not in the least sure that we in the West could mount such a crusade again. Very, very sadly another causality of the second war was a loss of morality and courage. Having been sapped of the energy such things produce, we probably will not muster the effort to repel the next dark storm, whether it be radical Islam or some internal foe. Our foundations, despite the bright victory of the WWII Allies, crumbles and ebbs by the day, and I, for one, fear that to reverse our course lies beyond our ability, grasp, or even desire. Perhaps this last consequence of the postwar years, the loss of nerve and pluck, rests as the greatest change of all.

How movies have changed in less than 60 years

This link is to an outstanding article by Phil Boatwright. He chronicles changes in the moral content of movies since the 1950s. His article is factual, and thoughtful, without ranting or manipulation.

Abortion and Killing Little Children

The right to life is traditionally considered one of the fundamental, "inalienable" rights that everyone has. Abortion however, denies that right to the very youngest of children--little babies still in the womb. This is morally wrong and ought to be illegal as well. The right to life ought to be protected by government for everyone, not just adults, or wealthy people, or people whom others want, but for all people. This, I believe, includes babies and children as well. It may be argued that children do not have all the rights of adults (they cannot drink legally, nor vote, nor make contracts), and therefore the child should not have a right to life as well, and abortion should be legal. However, I disagree. If the government is going to protect some peoples’ right to live (by making murder illegal, for example) it ought to protect everyone’s right to live. As the law now stands, a woman cannot legally kill her husband. She can legally kill her child under certain circumstances. Rather than allow husband killing, in order to make the law consistent, I prefer outlawing child killing (abortion) to make the law consistent. Government, I believe, has two responsibilities that are relevant here: 1) Government must protect the community and ensure its stability and continuity. Since the community is made up of people, its continuity depends on people being there, and therefore the government must protect people. Since fear of being killed creates an unstable society that will break down, government must protect people from that fear. When I go out to lunch from my office, I have a reasonable expectation of returning an hour or so later. This is because everyone knows that if someone is out there shooting a gun wildly they will be caught and jailed for it. We know that the law, and the police who enforce it, are there to protect us. On a smaller, and more realistic scale, everyone knows that they will pay a fine for breaking traffic laws. Therefore they (usually) obey them. That means fewer people are hurt or killed in traffic accidents. If I had a reasonable fear that I would encounter people shooting guns at just about anybody, and a reasonable fear that I would encounter people driving on the wrong side of the road, I would probably just skip lunch and stay in my office. The chaos, in other words, would shut the community down completely. Therefore the government makes killing people and endangering their lives, illegal. 2) Government must protect the future of the community. There has to be a sense that the society itself is a good thing, and that it is worth passing on to future generations. This means protecting the lives of children so that they will grow up to be adults. One may argue that the child is making no contribution right now, especially if it is still a baby. It is a drain on society’s resources. This is wrong thinking all around! A baby, or child, is a commitment to the future. A community is made up of people, and if there are no people, there is no community. Government, in its function of protecting the future, thus must protect the children and babies who will BE that future. In the end, abortion should not be an individual’s choice. If someone is pregnant, then both she and the baby’s father have a responsibility—to the child, surely, but also to the world that child will live in—to ensure that this child lives, and learns to live responsibly as a member of the larger community. The society should encourage this. I do not own anyone’s life—not even the life of a person within me (if I am pregnant). I am responsible to everyone around me, to do my best by them, to be honest with them, to help them as much as I can. If that person is in my family, my responsibility is greater. If that person is inside me, then I have an even greater moral responsibility to do right by that person. I have no right to kill that person. When someone has an abortion, I have lost a person whom I might have related to, done business with, laughed with, and whom I might have served in ways that would have been good for both of us. When a society allows the killing of children, it erases many of those opportunities. Finally, it seems to me that a society that allows the killing of its children is a society that has lost faith in itself. Having children is an investment in the future. By having children I am saying that the society I live in is a good one. It offers a good life, a life worth living, and I want that kind of life to continue, and I want to help pass on the goodness of it to the next generation. When people say it is alright to kill little children, it is saying that there is nothing here worth having, and nothing here worth preserving. Someone will say, "Now, now, Fred, wait a minute! What about unwanted children? Shouldn’t the mother have some right to say whether she wants a child or not. Aren’t unwanted children a burden to society because they grow up to be dope addicts and criminals. Do we want to spend the resources prosecuting, jailing, and supporting those who, had they been killed as babies, would have been less of a problem to us all." I’m glad “you” asked that. 1) a woman should decide whether she wants a child or not before she gets into bed with a man. 2) Many “unwanted” children have grown up to become productive adults, while many doted on children have grown up spoiled, only to become criminals and drug addicts themselves. 3) Society should, by a variety of means, lead people to want children, and to value them. A society that legalizes the killing of them is implicitly saying “It is OK to not want children. There are things more important than your family. The future does not matter—live for the moment!” Such a society encourages mothers to kill their babies because babies aren’t important, the future is not important, and the society itself is not important. Do we really want to give that message to our children? Do we really want to say to the world that life is not worth living? Do we really want to turn our backs on the community and live only for ourselves? I fear that for too many people, that is exactly what they want to do.

Does Open Theism Deny Divine Transcendence

This link takes you to a digital site where my article on Open Theism appears. The thesis is that Open Theists point to scripture passages that classical theists have known for years. Clasical theists are willing to allow for tension between divine immanence and divine transcendence. Open theists are not. The classical position is the more biblical.

The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com

The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com

Posted using ShareThis

Great Preaching

We live in an age when truly great preaching is rare. Preachers have been trained for several generations to avoid solid biblical content and to focus on applications instead. They have been told to "preach for a decision" not to increase knowledge. The result is that we have churches full of Christians who have not grown spiritually, who see the Bible as a trivial book that has little of importance to say to them, and who know little about the God they profess to worship and trust. Clearly, a reformation in preaching is needed--and is, in fact, coming, as a new generation of homiletics professors bring a fresh perspective to our Seminaries. We are all learning that great preaching is expository preaching. The era of "topical preaching" as a mainstay of our churches is dying, and for that we should be grateful. However, I wish here to lay out some additional basic characteristics of really good preaching:

• Simplicity--This means that great preaching makes a clear point. No one should be left wondering what the preacher was talking about. NOTE this does not mean Shallow preaching. We've too much of that already. Simplicity can be coupled with . . . .

• Depth--Great preaching brings the "unsearchable riches of Christ" to the whole congregation. Too many preachers preach shallow sermons because they don't want to leave anybody out. The result is that people they have preached to for thirty years are getting the same easy little inspirational messages they were getting years earlier--no wonder they haven't grown! Closely relate to depth is. . .

• Relevance--I don't mean relevance to "where people are today." We need to call people UP from where they are to where God wants them to be! I mean relevance to the Scriptures and to the God revealed in them. Don't preach to me about me--preach to me about Christ! That is what I need! Relevance also takes in the idea that the sermon should grip my attention and matter to me as the hearer. This leads us to. . .

• Importance--great preaching is important preaching. A great preacher never neglects the great truths in a passage to preach some minor point. Never preach a trivial sermon! Never preach on lesser truths when God's word abounds with great ones! Never be content to give the congregation a little inspiration when they need a great challenge from God's word! Finally, great preaching is marked by. . .

• Intentionality--great preaching is intentional preaching. The best preachers in history--St. John Chrysostom, Martin Luther, C. H Spurgeon , S. M Lockridge, Adrian Rogers, etc.--never wasted a word in the pulpit. They planned carefully and made each word count! These men did not ramble! They did not get off the point! They did not "over tell" a story. Every word was carefully chosen and carefully used. It was intentional preaching!

Study Bible Available at Boomer in the Pew

Boomer in the Pew is giving away a Bible. One of the blogs that I now follow, Boomer in the Pew, is celebrating its first birthday. As part of that celebration, David is giving away a free ESV Study Bible courtesy of Crossway. David has all the details on how you can enter his birthday competition at his post, Win a Calfskin Version of the ESV Study Bible! The ESV is a highly literal translation of the Bible, and the study Bible is one of the better ones out there. It is well worth owning one, and this one has a leather cover, making it suitable for carrying to church, for using in leading a Bible Study, or in the pulpit. David's blog is well worth reading as well.

Reverence and Worship

Someone recently asked me “Is reverence a biblical principle?” This came in the context of questions about contextualizing our ministries. I suspect the questioner had in mind the “Emerging Church” but perhaps evangelicalism in general. It is an important question for it is an illuminating way to think about principles vs methods, contextualization, the message vs the medium etc. This is the substance of my response to the question. I invite anyone’s comments: The people who raise the question about principles vs. methods are also fond of saying "the message stays the same--the medium changes." Reverence is a principle (not a method). It may also be a medium--or part of the medium--through which the gospel is communicated. I believe it is, to some degree, an essential part. When we communicate the gospel in irreverent ways, we say harmful things about the gospel, even when we don’t mean to. There are those who say we must communicate the message in contextualized ways to the modern world. They carry this to the extent of preaching in old blue jeans and T-shirts, in a casual atmosphere. Some have even gone to the extent of "beer ministry" taking the gospel to bars and such places as that. I think much of this is wrong headed thinking. When we cheapen the medium we inevitably cheapen the gospel. This is why I believed it was a poor idea a few years ago, for churches to show the Superbowl on their projection screens, and then preach the gospel during half-time. It makes the gospel incidental to something that looks "much bigger." I don't think eternal life and righteousness in Jesus Christ ought to be incidental to "the main event." Am I saying that informal settings are always wrong for gospel presentations--not at all! There are times and places where we can preach the gospel informally—but never “incidentally.” What is difficult for us is that we must separate the cultural from the essential even in the matter of reverence. It is all to easy to think of “reverence” in terms of specific reverent kinds of things (I will deal with that below). I think that a good broad and universal definition of reverence helps us here: Reverence means to treat a person or thing as --important --serious --worthy of careful attention --worthy of a certain formality--almost to the point of "artificiality" --special and different from the normal run of persons and things --being more important than me. --to be appreciated on the level of the mind--not in a sensual or visceral sort of way. Now, we have some guidelines. You or I might be inclined to think of reverence in terms of specific kinds of reverent things that are traditional in Western Culture: --classical music--Mozart, Bach, Handel --ornate worship surroundings--vaulted ceilings, gold gilt altars, carved woodwork --formal dress--neck-ties, suits, white shirts And we would be “right.” All these are “reverent” in a church service. Our emerging church friends will point out however, that all of these are "cultural trappings," and technically they are right too. Then they will proceed to have their church service in a dance-hall atmosphere, with "bump and grind" music, and the preacher in ragged jeans and a rumpled and worn out T-shirt. We will say, "That is irreverent" and WE are right. They will say, "These are the cultural trappings of our time" and they are right too. So what is the answer? First we need to look at the definition of reverence given above. The Reverent things—classical music, carved wood, all fit that definition, certainly. However, they are not the ONLY ones that fit those parameters. Obviously, there are ways of being formal, careful, serious, etc. in other cultures that differ from our preferences. For example, in Japan, the music might be very different, but equally "classical" in the sense of appealing to the mind over the body. The mistake our emerging church friends make is to assume that we must imitate the “everyday” aspects of the culture in order to “reach” it. That would be true if we were dealing with an “everyday” matter--but Jesus Christ is not an "everyday” matter! He is far more important than the mundane matters of normal life, and should be treated as such. (And yes, I know that Jesus is with us every day, and with us in the mundane aspects of life. I am not denying that. I only mean that he is more important than pizza, clothing, bills of lading, Starbucks, and the price of gas.) If we were selling pizza, of course we would want to be informal, "popular" etc. because by its nature, pizza is that kind of thing. We do not treat pizza with reverence. But, Jesus is not pizza, and deserves a very different treatment! When we treat Him like we do pizza, people will regard him with the same level of importance as they do pizza! This is exactly the situation we have in most of our evangelical churches! Here are two mistakes made by advocates of the emerging church, and many other evangelicals as well: First mistake--Worship is about "reaching people." This error goes back to the Second Great Awakening and the frontier revivals. After that era, the Sunday Worship Service became a sort of mini-revival meeting. The focus was on the visitors, and on "reaching them" with the gospel. In truth, worship should be about Jesus Christ. The focus should be on Him, not on the visitors, and certainly not on "us." (The whole “worship wars” thing in recent years, between “praise choruses” and “traditional hymns” has been very much about “what I like.” Even when we couch it in terms of “what reaches people” somehow, “what reaches people” and “my favorite kind of music” seem to be the same thing. Therefore I do not even trust myself on this matter—for I do the same thng.) Second mistake--We should contextualize worship to the "feel" and "style" of everyday life. This is wrong thinking. Worship should properly be something very different from normal activities. (Now, understand, I agree that "God is God of the secular as well as the sacred." But we must not then assume that the sacred and the secular are the same things--they are not! God is God of both--but the only reason to say that is because they ARE so different from each other.) Worship is, or ought to be different from a concert, a festival, a party. We are relating to a divine Person who is far far far different from “most folks.” Our worship should reflect who He is. Let us ask the question, not "How can we contextualize worship to the feel and style of everyday life" but rather, "how do we worship God in a way that most people today would associate with the definition of "reverence" given above?" How do we say to THESE people, "This is important"; "This is different from what you experience every day;" "This is serious business and you should pay attention;" "This is about something more important than you." I suspect the answers to those questions would include: --preachers in neckties, or other rather formal attire--people in America associate neckties with lawyers, doctors, and other serious people. If we preach a serious gospel, shouldn’t we present it in a serious manner? --music that moves the mind rather than the buttocks (I am not saying Bach and Handel, necessarily, but at least music that is serious in intent rather than merely “entertaining.” -- a style of décor, a setting that says "this is not casual—this is an important matter"--perhaps institutional colors, pictures in gold frames on the walls, (I am not sure what it would take, but somehow the decor of the room needs to say to Americans today that "this matters.")

What Government should be and do

I believe that I must define “responsible freedom” or “responsible liberty.” It is liberty in a less than Libertarian sense. People should be free of government coercion, but in an atmosphere wherein their freedom is acted on responsibly. Francis Schaeffer said, many years ago, that free democratic societies can only operate where a Christian worldview and high moral standards prevail. France and Russia both had democratic revolutions that overthrew royalist powers, and both descended into tyranny very quickly. The U.S. had a successful revolution because there was a Christian worldview and moral foundation to its culture. As these things erode, America slips into tyranny. We have more laws today to protect the order of society, simply because people have become less civilized. Gertrude Himmelfarb (Bill Kristol’s mother), has written about the decline of “civil society” in the west. Civil society is the veneer of politeness and public virtue that makes a nation run smoothly. It is a whole network of social expectations that, by their very presence, prevent a host of problems. When civil society declines, crime inevitably increases. (Consider what happened at a Walmart before Christmas, where an employee was killed in the stampede when the doors opened.) What America needs is a return to a working concept of civil society, based on Christian moral ideals. That, along with diligent protection of freedom will preserve both our democracy and our civilization. In the mean time, let us recognize that until this happens we will need more laws, more prisons, and more money spent on regulating an unjust and barbaric people. That being said, we must still recognize that government is, by its nature, inclined to increase its power, to exercise that power, and that in doing so, it harms the best interests of the people. While we need MORE government today than we needed in 1955, because the American people are more barbaric today than they were back then, we need to be even more diligent in limiting that government, and its power, to the bare minimum necessary to maintain some kind of order. It is not the government’s job to keep me safe from myself—or from the ineherent accidents of life. It is not the government’s job to make sure I am prosperous. It is not the government’s job to regulate or hinder the flow of ideas. The government has two basic jobs: 1) It should ensure the safety and continuance of the nation itself—protecting us from foreign threats (aggressive nations, terrorists) and from internal threats (criminals). a. Strong defense b. Laws against theft, murder, 2) It should act so as to encourage the kinds of virtuous behavior that make for a stronger nation. a. Laws protecting the sanctity of marriage—no gay marriage, laws against adultuery, AND no easy divorce! b. Laws against things that make people weak and immoral: gambling, pornography, drunkenness. c. Laws encouraging moral, socially responsible behavior—tax exemptions for charities, tax deductions for charitable giving; legally sanctioned preferences for art museums and symphony orchestras. d. Laws encouraging industry and thrift—creation of a pro-business environment, tax incentives for job creation and industrial development. Other than this government has little or no proper role in the world.