I’ll blame Halden for introducing me to the awful blog Parchment and Pen where I found this utterly stupid and unhelpful diagram.
What the hell is this? If D. A. Carson lies at the heart of a truly orthodox Christianity I give up.
About a year ago a man walked up to me in the parking lot of a grocery store and asked me if I knew whether I was saved. I thought about it for a second and responded, “Well, no, I don’t think I really have much choice in the matter.” He, of course, reminded me that I do in fact have a choice in the matter, so he handed me a tract with a prayer on it. He informed me that if I say this prayer I will know that I will be saved from the pit of hell. I told him that I wasn’t so sure that we could decide such matters, and that it is more likely that God makes these decisions.
A friend sent me this. Wow! This is serious. Don’t laugh. My 1 1/2 year old son, Owen, began to whimper when he saw this.
After hearing word that Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Guiliani this morning, I can’t help but think of Robertson’s infamous interview of Jerry Falwell two days after September 11, 2001. In case you don’t remember, in reference to the 9/11 attacks Jerry Falwell claimed that abortionists, gays and lesbians, and feminists “helped this happen.”
In his words,
JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way–all of them who have tried to secularize America–I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”
In response Pat Robertson said,
“Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.”
Of course, Falwell and Robertson are best known by terms like the Moral Majority and the Christian Right. With Falwell dead, Robertson has become the symbol of anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, militant rhetoric of the Christian Right.
The Christian Left has always thought of the Right as approaching moral issues too narrowly. You will often hear the Left say, “Yes, abortion is wrong, but be consistent with your focus on the right to life. What about war, the death penalty?” We all know the debate. Although the Christian Right has also been known to support US military operations around the world, I think the Left thought that it was really the social conservatism that held the Christian Right together (i.e. pro-life, anti-gay marriage).
Okay, do you see the irony…the man who once agreed with Jerry Falwell that the gays and abortionists helped 9/11 to happen, has just endorsed a candidate for president that is both pro-gay and pro-choice. Why? I assume it is what Guiliani said, “He supports me because we agree on what we think are the primary issues facing Americans: dealing with Islamic terrorism, dealing with the war on terror, dealing with the out-of-control spending in Washington.” But, wait, wouldn’t endorsing Guiliani actually have the reverse effect. I mean if the gays and the abortionists are given more room to spread their agenda, doesn’t this help the terrorists – like on 9/11?
I just don’t get Robertson’s shift in foreign policy. It seems like he supports terrorism.
WWJD? …What Would Jerry (Falwell) Do?
The late biblical scholar, James Barr, is best known for his demolishing of the linguistic fallacies of the so-called Biblical Theology movement in the 1960s. In The Semantics of Biblical Language Barr shows the lack of linguistic backing behind the assertions of the Biblical Theology movement. It truly is a wonderful book.
Barr is one of my favorite thinkers. In many ways, Barr got me “into” theology in the first place. He was an ardent critic of Brevard Childs’ “canonical approach” on the grounds of historical-criticism. When I spent most of my time reading biblical scholarship, I read almost everything Barr ever wrote. His volume on Christian fundamentalism remains one of the best introductions to the subject from a biblical critic’s perspective. Barr cared very deeply about the future of Christianity and saw fundamentalism as a major issue in the contemporary church. From a pastoral perspective he wrote Beyond Fundamentalism, which is a serious attempt at helping people “escape” from the pitfalls of fundamentalism.
In terms of scholarship, Barr never failed to produce wonderful and ground-breaking work. Late in his life he wrote a wonderful introduction to the major currents in biblical theology called The Concept of Biblical Theology.
Barr also presented the Gifford Lectures in 1991 and published them in a book called Biblical Faith and Natural Theology. In his lectures Barr argues that the Bible itself supports and utilizes a what could be called natural theology.
I’d recommend the work of James Barr to anyone because he is just a joy to read. He is brilliant writer and is one of the most hilarious authors I’ve ever read. It is not common for biblical scholars to be funny, but Barr certainly is.
His book Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism is an extremely helpful work on the authority of Scripture.
James Barr was a scot who at the end of his life lived in Nashville where he was Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt. I always wanted to go down to Nashville to visit him, but never got the chance. He died almost a year ago at the age of 82.
Coming from a Christian pacifist, the title of this post may come as a shock. Let me explain. I recently read an op-ed in the New Brunswick, well, Irving Oil’s Telegraph Journal, written by a woman of the Progressive Conservative party (PC) of Canada. The op-ed was entitled, “The War on Christmas.” I was on my way back from dropping some friends off at the train station in Moncton and I was intrigued by this article while taking a “pizza break” at a Saint John Greco. I can’t recall all the details, but basically this woman was explaining a situation that upset her regarding a Canadian judge who had a Christmas tree taken out of a government lobby because it was a religious symbol. The author of the article apparently thought this was ridiculous for the judge to do and as the title suggests it is part of a broader “war on christmas.” When I read this I thought of another big Maritime issue: Sunday shopping. In many areas in the Maritimes there a specific restrictions on if and when a store can open its doors on Sundays. Of course, this seems quite strange for a city boy. Initially I remember thinking, no Sunday shopping? Is that a joke? Is the government really making corporations observe the sabbath? The all-prevailing myth in both Canada and the U.S. is this idea of protecting “our Christian values.” Thus, allowing the corporations to open shop would be evidence of the erosion of these values. And, surely taking Christmas trees out of government buildings is crossing the line!!
It is difficult to lay out the theological underpinnings and assumptions of that fuel the defense of Sunday shopping and Christmas trees in a liberal democracy like Canada or the United States. I mean I usually feel like I am living in a very secular, individualistic and consumeristic society that has little time for religion at all, much less Christianity. Indeed, it would take too much time to attempt a thorough analysis of this, but it is just something that has baffled me lately.
Indeed, North American Christmas celebrations have little to do with historic Christianity. The Christmas tree simply symbolizes the idolatry of consumption of goods. So, I guess it makes sense that people would be outraged, if they felt like their religion was being challenged. No Sunday shopping obviously reflects a deep conservatism and traditionalism found in the Maritimes.But it is actually more radical in that it says no to the corporation for a day, which we can all do with out (apparently the gov’t thinks so too).
For many Christian radicals Christmas is a difficult time, for it is when the state of our religion shows its true consumeristic colours. Is this really the way we celebrate the birth of our king? Aren’t we instead acting like we’re celebrating the birth of the corporation? Though there may be some effort to help the poor, this does not make things any easier for the radical who thinks there should be no poor. Indeed, the radical wants people to ask why there are poor, but not much space is given for this kind of questioning in the church, for it threatens to remove our Christmas trees.
Do you remember when President Bush spoke of creating a “culture of life” in relation to the death of Teri Schaivo. I remember feeling furious when he used that phrase – a culture of life. President Bush wanted us to believe that he was creating a culture of life domestically, while waging an illegal war abroad, all in the name of the Judeo-Christian God. There is no doubt that many people, and even perhaps mostly Christian people, bought what the President said. “Yes, we need to create a culture of life in the United States: no more passive euthanasia and no more abortions,” you could hear the Christian Right call. Christians listening to our Christian President who was creating a culture of life in our Christian nation. A President who has nominated supreme court justices to please his base, the Christian Right. Perhaps, now that two conservative justices have been nominated, the Christian Right will begin to broaden their moral perspective a bit.
Perhaps, there is more to creating a culture of life in the United States, which happens to be closely linked to U.S. policies abroad. However, I have come to think that the problem is much more deeply ingrained than our history of destructive foreign policy. I think that Joel’s comment on my post on Iran is exactly right: when the bottom line is money, then how can we expect any decision to be subject to moral consideration. The epitome of human greed has manifested itself in the capitalist ideology. Some humans have decided that profit should be put before people – most humans have not been involved in this decision but are forced to suffer because of it. Today, however, the problem is worse because the humans who have not chosen this lifestyle, have either bought into it, learned to except it, or have been forced to except it. In fact, for most, at least in the U.S., it is not even seen as an issue, because most either know no other way or think the only other way is running behind the trail of evil “commie rats”. Thus, because communism has failed in the past, capitalism must be the way of the future. Of course, this premise is a logical fallacy. Just because one way has “failed” does not make the other way any better, and certainly doesn’t make it the only way of the future.
When the bottom line is money, where does human life come in to play? It seems like it really doesn’t at all. It is hard to create a culture of life within a culture that runs on a destructive system that largely values money over human life. A system that prizes the money making merits of the individual, and leaves everyone else in disease, poverty, and death. Wars are waged abroad for a more global free-market, a more globalized world, where more money is available for the corporations. More money to distract from people – more money to distract us from our own self – our own existence – and certainly a moral conscience cannot adequately operate when one does not know even ones own self.
Recent Comments