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Thursday, July 29, 2004 posted by R.C. 7:08 AM link |
The Last Refuge Politics is the art of the short hand. When your choices are binary, you don’t really need much more information than on or off. Of course in the past several elections we have had attempts to short-wire this truth. First we had Candidate Clinton, a new kind of Democrat who ran center, and then ruled, well, let’s just say the left loved him and the right hated him. Next up was the compassionate conservative, who appealed to the right with conservative, and to the left with compassionate. No one was much fooled either time. We know what we know, and precious little will change it. Republicans are pro-business, and Democrats are pro-labor. Republicans wear white hats; Democrats are a rainbow coalition. Republicans are for “values” while Democrats are for peace, love and understanding. Republicans love war, and Democrats love peace. Republicans love the United States, and Democrats love the United Nations. There, because both sides love the state, you have your five cents worth of difference. It is this last distinction that troubles me the most. As the political season opens we can rest assured that the rhetoric will ratchet up. My Republican friends will be waving the flag and parading their patriotism, all so folks like me will break down and once more vote for the lesser of two evils so that civilization will be saved. I hear this kind of talk regularly on talk radio, as everyone from Lindi England to the Commander-in-Chief is heralded as the next Aude Murphy. They are heroes, we are told, because of the sacrifices they are making for their country. It doesn’t surprise me that roughly half the products of government schools would fall for this kind of “logic.” Here is the syllogism—In times of great danger, heroes lay down their lives. In Iraq, nearly 1,000 American soldiers have laid down their lives. Therefore, these 1,000 soldiers are heroes. The first premise is true enough. So is the second. But that doesn’t mean the conclusion is sound. What we have is the classic fallacy known as asserting the consequent. It is the same pattern as: If it rains, the sidewalk gets wet. The sidewalk is wet. Therefore it has rained. There are lots of other reasons for wet sidewalks, and there are sadly many more causes these days for the death of an American soldier than that they were laying down their lives because of great danger. I am a patriot. I love my country. It is because I love this country that I oppose sending her sons to die for the purpose of remaking another country in our image. It is because I love this country that I oppose sending her sons to die for the purpose of punishing a distant regime that gassed its rebellious citizens. It is because I love this country that I oppose sending her sons to die in making war on “evil.” It is because I love this country that pictures of flag draped coffins do not swell my heart with pride, but break my heart. It is because I love my country that neither of these two parties got my vote four years ago, and neither will get it today. A soldier who dies by heroism is a hero. But a soldier who dies by folly is a tragedy. [comments] |
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Tuesday, July 20, 2004 posted by R.C. 9:34 PM link |
With It Real Good I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but I almost got caught up in a reality show. No, the Fox network didn’t contact me about doing a show called Cult Compound, where in each episode one more person has to drink the Kool-aid. I mean instead that I almost got hooked on watching one. This one is called The Surreal Life. The theme in this one is to gather a bunch of people on the far side of their fifteen minutes of fame, and put them through their paces. I saw one episode with Tami Faye Bakker, Gary Coleman, Vanilla Ice and Erik Estrada. Then I saw an episode with Emmanuel Lewis (apparently each show requires a preternaturally short black man. Next time I guess they’ll have Rodney Allen Ripey), M.C. Hammer, Corey Feldman and I forget who else. I confessed that these shows held my interest to some friends, and they each hit the nail on the head—“Those were your people.” That is, these falling stars were people I remember from when I was so deeply wrapped up in pop culture. If, or should I say when, the lust for more “reality” moves the show forward to having nineties has-beens, no doubt I won’t care. I missed those fifteen minutes, as I pray I will miss them for the 00’s. I no longer feel the need to keep time in fifteen-minute chunks. I don’t know what shows are on TV, and I don’t know what songs are on the radio. I couldn’t name enough current NBA players to fill a single team’s roster. I’m not even sure if they still play the game in college. So what have I lost? One of the ways we seek to spiritualize our worldliness is to see it as a tool for evangelism. That is, if I’m hip to the lyrics of the real Slim Shady, then I can help the homies be down with Jesus. If I devote my time and conversation to a disposable pop-culture, then maybe I’ll lead the poor deluded fools to a more permanent city. Trouble is, of course, when I spend all my time down at Pleasure Island, what should happen but that I begin to grow donkey ears, and begin to bray rather than pray. I end up worrying more about Valerie and Eddie’s relationship woes (or, to be slightly more current, Jennifer and Ben’s) than I worry about the relationship between Christ and His bride. Yes Paul quoted Cretan poets, but until we master the Bible as well as he did, I’d suggest we’d be better off learning David’s lyrics rather than 50 Cents’ lyrics. Meeting people where they are simply leaves them where they are and moves us closer to them. Interbreed with monkeys, and you won’t lift them up. Rather, devolution will follow. Our calling isn’t to mix and mingle, but to be set apart. That such scares us scares me. Where are they now? In a surreal world. Where should I be? Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. This is wisdom not from a dime-store poet, but from the very Spirit of Life. This is what’s best for me, best for you, and equally important, best for those yet outside His grace. [comments] |
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Thursday, July 15, 2004 posted by R.C. 6:26 AM link |
The Other “L” Word It is a sign of my sin that it should need to happen, a sign of God’s grace that it does happen. But every now and again, whether reading or preaching from the Word of God, I come across a discreet, clear application that I had never considered before. It happened again this past Lord’s Day. There I was, preaching through the first seven verses of I Peter 3. The passage begins with an encouragement for wives to submit to their husbands, and ends with a call to husbands to love their wives with tenderness and understanding. I had spoken/written on this theme only a hundred times or so, each time working out of the end of Ephesians 5. I have made people mad with the plain teaching of Scripture here many, many times. But then I saw something new, something truly terrifying. It is terrifying because it is first simply frightening. That is, note that your first reaction will be fear, fear of what the Bible seems to be saying. Then, be very afraid that you, as I am, are afraid of what the Bible seems to be saying. No, I’m not going to argue against make-up, jewelry and braids—it’s far scarier than that. “For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good, and do not fear anything that is frightening” (I Peter 3:5–6). How weak are we that we instead fear that which is not frightening? Isn’t this suggesting that godly women, as Sarah did, call their husband Lord? Shouldn’t we do the same? There it is, that scary thought. Before we desperately try to find an escape route, wouldn’t it be wise to be concerned that we are looking for an escape route? My concern isn’t first this passage, but that we would ever approach the Word of God as something to escape, to explain away. There are plenty of passages I don’t begin to understand, including some from the pen of Peter. I have no idea what it means that Jesus preached to the souls in prison. But I feel no need to escape it, whatever it means. There are things we don’t understand, and then there are things we don’t want to understand. There are passages we can’t figure out, and passages we can’t figure out, because we know it certainly can’t mean that. I suppose that our first line of defense is what it always seems to be, that this is simply cultural. Trouble is, such does show our line of defense—we’d rather follow our culture than the Word of God. Or we split up the internal and the external. Yes, we seem to reason, wives should have a submissive attitude toward their husbands. But why muddy things up by actually speaking this way? There is an important parallel between how we look at these issues and how we do our politics. Those who believe that wisdom means meeting the heathen half-way politically, those whose idea of progress is trying slow down regress, would in turn decide that we must also meet the world half-way. We are certainly comfortable being reasonably more conservative than the heathen. Some of us actually still say “Obey” in our marriage vows, after all. And in both instances we take half-steps on the road of good intentions. Our calling instead is to march to the beat of a different drummer. Our call is to be submissive, as the Bride of Christ, to call Him Lord, by doing whatsoever He commands, no matter how embarrassing. If we together are not the daughters of Sarah, then we are not together the sons of Abraham. Not every baptized, after all, is baptized, but only those who are baptized inwardly. May we have the faith of Abraham, that we would believe God, that righteousness might be accounted to us. [comments] |
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Friday, July 09, 2004 posted by R.C. 5:49 PM link |
Mother May I? Or, He Who Lives By the Keys, Dies by the Keys, or Wild Bull Loose in the Vineyard We have been enjoying a resurgence of late in conversations on ecclesiology. We even have within the sub-genre of discourse known as blogdom a subgenre of “Reformed catholics” some of whom are in still another sub-sub-sub genre known as eccelesiocentrists. The church, it seems, is all the rage. And that’s a good thing. Ten years ago I wrote a commentary for World magazine about how the IRS determined that a television station that ran images of nature, with Scripture verses scrolling by, and muzak on the soundtrack was in fact a church. Meanwhile the average evangelical somehow has it in his head, don’t ask me how, that the church is a social club made up of well-behaved suburban Republicans. Obviously we need to think this through a little. Those who have done some fine work in getting us to have a more historical understanding of the church, who remind us that he who does not have the church as his mother has not Christ as his father, however, also have some pitfalls to avoid. While we want to give our obeisance to the church, we still have to figure out what the church is. Some months ago I asked the cyberworld whether the practice of baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost was sufficient to make one a church. I offered up several institutions that do just that, and asked if they were churches. The Mormons, I noted, baptize in the Trinitarian formula. So too, I presume, do Campbellites whose non-creed argues that failure to be fully immersed on earth will ensure full immersion in a lake of fire for eternity, wherein baptism is a ground of justification, and so do full preterists, who deny the resurrection of the body. Added to this list in this previous piece was Rome, whose standing dogma holds that those who affirm that a man is justified by faith, apart from works ought to be damned (see the sixth session of the Council of Trent.) This got the thunderpuppies barking. I was told that it was patently obvious that we ought to accept Romish baptism as valid. That of course, for all her faults, she still has the authority to baptize people into the covenant. To fail to recognize that work of hers was narrow, sectarian, Donatist, Gnostic, and not in keeping with our high intellectual standards. So here’s my question- If we are to accept Rome’s welcome into the kingdom, should we also recognize her boot out of it? That is, if I am supposed to call the Pope “brother,” aren’t I then also supposed to call Luther “publican and tax collector”? Now I know my friends are put off by Luther’s law-gospel distinction, but are we really supposed to think him cut off from the vine? [comments] |
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Monday, July 05, 2004 posted by R.C. 1:52 PM link |
The Honesty of the Crook One of the benefits that comes with eschewing a Gnostic understanding of the Christian faith is the sudden onrush of examples. That is, once you begin to think of the Christian life in terms of Christian’s lives, you begin to discover the lessons God has dropped in your life. “What to do with widows in your midst” is a wonderful thing to think through, until God drops a widow in your midst. Then suddenly God has given you a Jesus to deal with. How many of us have thought through, for instance, the Christian doctrine of suffering, only to discover that God has sent us cancer or a child with violent seizures? This, I believe, is the reason that God has not separated what we have torn asunder. There is no question that He has showered us with varying gifts. The sundry giftings that He has given His servants is as astonishing as it is bewildering. Some He has made to be prophets, and others He has gifted with hospitality. The harmonizing of complexity that is the human body is less shocking than the harmonizing of complexity that is the body of Christ. That He has given us evangelists, however, doesn’t remove from us the obligation to proclaim His good news. In the dance of the Christian life, the foot cannot say to the mouth, “Hey, this is your job. Let me stick with foot work.” In like manner, it is not His habit to separate the role of teacher from that of pastor. (One of my favorite books, James Jordan’s Theses On Worship make’s much the same point when He warns us of the danger of a tape ministry. The moment we begin taping our sermons for the scattered sheep is the moment we stop preaching to the sheep in our midst.) If we would teach well, we wouldn’t teach in the abstract, but right in the midst of the sheep dip. My father is a well-known teacher of the faith. But one of the things he teaches best is his own understanding of the role of the pastor. As a theologian he is confronted often with other pastors who either seek his wisdom in understanding an issue, or who want to challenge his wisdom. Often they begin with, “Dr, Sproul, I know I am just a pastor…” and before the next word of challenge escapes their lips they are confronted with a challenge from my father, “JUST a pastor?” he asks incredulously. “There is no such thing. Your calling is the high calling. I am JUST a theologian. Now, how can I help you?” In all honesty, as my own calling drifts, in God’s providence, back toward caring for the flock, as pastor begins to consume teacher, I am reminded of this same wisdom. Ideas are just ideas. But biblical balm for suffering sheep is the very work of ministry. Which means in turn that the measure of my own success isn’t how many people are listening to my teaching, but the joy and growth of the sheep within my care. God, in growing the flock of Saint Peter Presbyterian Church such that I find once more sheep under my care, has gifted me in a mighty way. May I not only teach the real and eschew the abstract, but may my gratitude for my real calling be as real as that calling. May I not love sheep as sheep, but these sheep as my sheep, entrusted to me by the Great Shepherd. [comments] |