immediacy is an illusion

In Our Own Backyard

2011-11-16T00:24:00.000-08:00

Over a year ago, when walking through the "forest" that's about a 10-minute walk from our house (Парк партизанской славы), we stumbled on a very cool-looking ropes course set up among the trees. It was closed at the time and we only really noticed the stuff that was pretty high up in the air. It was too much for lil' D then, so I didn't really give it a second thought.

Last month, Josie stumbled upon it again and recommended that I take D. I did a few weeks ago and, man, was it a hit! I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Dietrich has an acute love for the adventurous that borders on dangerous. I think our biggest problem is that he's at least a dozen centimeters—how's that for mixing categories?—away from advancing to the next level. He's already asking when he can go higher.

Here are some highlights of that first visit. (Here's the main page for the Seiklar website with You Tube videos at the bottom. Most of the videos are from a different park than the one we go to. Here's the photo gallery page. Most of the photos are from the park we go to.)

Dietrich's having-fun face.

Dietrich's in-the-zone face.

He didn't fall much, but this part of the course and this situation, in particular,
led to the most slip ups. Even when you're only 3 feet off the ground,
the safety of the harness is necessary for kiddos.

More serious action.

Sometimes D tried to simplify things by large steps and
leaps over the more difficult nuances.

This is one of the few times in the net bridge where he didn't lay down and
pretend to sleep. All the kids did it. Must be a 21st-century thing.

Figuring out the carabiner.

This shot shows both D trying to walk the plank without holding on and
the high level platforms in the background.
Daddy's pretty excited to try out the big kid stuff with D in a few years.

This shot shows D's internal struggle. "What I'm doing is totally cool,
but I can't wait to take on that supah-high stuff."

The GOP and Me

2011-10-09T12:23:00.000-07:00

I've been much less involved in politics while living overseas these last 7 years but, of course, with a presidential election coming up, I'm paying a good bit of attention. It turns out that we'll be in California for the 2012 presidential primaries so I've been watching the major debates, trying to keep up to speed. Let me just say that, as a connoisseur of philosophical and religious debates, party nomination debates leave much to be desired. I think I better start doing more reading and leave the media circus that is political debate behind. I finish watching each debate more flustered than I was before. In spite of the frustrations, I feel like I know each candidate well enough to say whether or not I think they would be a good person to consider voting for as GOP presidential nominee.

Acceptable Candidates

Rick Santorum - I'm likely voting for Santorum. Most of the candidates, as well as the media, have focused the discussion thus far on the economy. I'm more concerned about social and cultural issues than economics and the candidate who tries to talk about these things most often, and most conservatively, is Santorum. Unfortunately, he's probably too conservative to get elected. But the primaries are about voting your conscience so, Santorum's my guy.

Newt Gingrich - No candidate is more pleasant to listen to than Newt. He's clearly the most intelligent guy on the stage and he's one of the few who doesn't blurt out slogans and catchphrases at every turn. I liked Newt as the Speaker of the House and I'd like him as president. It's a genuine shame that a guy this politically talented has such a train wreck of a moral life. Besides that, no one thinks he's electable.

Possibly Acceptable Candidates

Mitt Romney - Over the course of the last few weeks, as this post was percolating, I had Romney in the "Acceptable Candidates" list. He is debating well and does not make me wince. A huge plus for him is that most everyone agrees that he is electable. However, I've always feared that, if Romney was the nominee, it wouldn't take long before the anti-conservatives would begin to criticize the religious, philosophical, historical and scientific mess that is the Mormon worldview. With that criticism being raised at the primary level among conservatives, I fear that Romney won't hold up as a viable candidate. I hope I'm wrong because he probably is the candidate most likely to defeat Obama.

Herman Cain - I like Herman Cain and think that he would bring good business sense to the White House. Unfortunately, America is not a business and needs more than a good businessman at the helm. He says very little about social and cultural issues and the media hardly asks him any questions in this regard. He might be a good candidate for president, if we had more information.

Absolutely Unacceptable Candidates

Ron Paul - Seriously. If you can't answer a question without getting mad about U.S. military involvement overseas and if the answer to every question posed to you is, "we need to stop fighting all these wars," then you do not have what it takes to be president.

Rick Perry - I voted for President George W. Bush twice and, while I don't regret that, I do wish that he didn't come across as so unintelligent. Rick Perry, as far as I can tell, is actually as unintelligent as President Bush is accused of being. When he takes notes while a question is being asked, I don't think there is anyone who believes he is able to hear the question and write something down at the same time. His consistent lack of coherent answers substantiates the concern. I know some people from Texas and they are more than happy to sit this election cycle out. I hope their wishes are fulfilled.

Jon Huntsman - Huntsman is simply trying too hard. As former Ambassador to China, we are thankful and impressed that you are fluent in Mandarin. But stop telling us that; it makes you seem haughty. Also, I'm Gen X and I like Nirvana. But please don't force Nirvana references into your talking points; I'm not impressed and I don't want Kurt Cobain influencing U.S. politics in any way. While Santorum is, unfortunately, too conservative to get the nomination, Huntsman is, fortunately, too liberal to get the nomination.

Gary Johnson - This guy just showed up at the last debate. He spoke about 3 times. He tried to make his candidacy appealing by saying that, as Governor of New Mexico, he vetoed more bills than any other state and, arguably, more than all of the other states combined. I'm sorry, all that does is make me sad for New Mexico. No one can get anything done there because veto-happy Johnson can't get along with anyone.

Michele Bachmann - Whereas Romney was on my "Acceptable Candidates" list and dropped to "Possibly Acceptable Candidates," Michele Bachmann used to be on my "Possibly Acceptable Candidates" list and is now on the "Absolutely Unacceptable Candidates" list. Ron Paul's answer to everything is, "no more foreign wars," Bachmann's answer is either, "I was the first/only/strongest opponent of that bill," "No one has fought/lobbied against/spoken out about this issue more than I," or "I will not stop/rest/be silent until issue x/y/z is repealed/solved/changed." The easy response to this type of argument, which has been successfully utilized over and over by the other candidates, is to state that almost every one of the things Bachmann opposed was actually enacted in the end. That lack of success is surely part of the reason why she is not the frontrunner she used to be.

At the end of the day, no matter how disappointed I may be by the results of this process, I agree with the sentiments of John Mark Reynolds that we're looking for someone who can lead our country well for 4 to 8 years, not someone who will establish a conservative utopia. That takes a lot of the pressure off as we wait to see who gets to run against Obama next November.

Our Crazy, Cross-Cultural Kid

2011-10-02T13:05:00.001-07:00

Dietrich is doing some amazing stuff linguistically as he continues to adjust to a 3-language environment (English, Russian and Ukrainian). Here are some of the funniest.

1. Он меня обидел (Ohn menya obeedel)
"He offended/insulted me" or "He hurt my feelings." The verb is pretty flexible in Russian but I don't think it's as flexible as it is when Dietrich uses it. When you ask Dietrich about his day, he usually talks about whether or not anyone at school did anything bad. Vlad took away Dima's toy. Vlad pushed Nastya down. Vlad threw sand at Sasha. (There are 2 Vlads in Dietrich's class and one or the other of them is the cause of 90% of the problems. We expect that these Vlads aren't the villains they seem to be on Dietrich's telling.) Now, when we're at home, we let Dietrich tell us about these things in English. But when we're on the street, we ask Dietrich to speak quietly, if he's speaking in English, or to speak in Russian. He'll often choose to speak in Russian about these things when we're out and about. He loves to start every account with the phrase, "So-and-so offended/insulted/hurt the feelings of so-and-so." After we ask for clarification he goes on to tell us the details. It's not often something were the verb "to offend," "to insult" or even "to hurt one's feelings" seems to be the best choice. When taking a way a toy, pushing someone down and throwing sand are all lumped together into the word "обидел," it's a sign that either everyone in his class is more concerned about being offended than anything else or that we need to help him expand his vocabulary a bit in this area. But I wouldn't want to offend him by proposing that. We'll just work on it in subtle ways.

2. Excessive punishment
One of the more troublesome stories that Dietrich told a few weeks ago was about a boy who, for starters, took off his slipper (slippers here have pretty hard soles) and hit another boy above the eye with it. The hitter then struck the same boy with his fist in the same spot above the eye. And just to make sure the job was done, he picked up the slipper and threw it at the same boy and hit him in the same spot. One of those actions caused the victim to start bleeding. Horrible, shocking story. We followed up by asking if the boy was punished/disciplined in any way (there is only one Russian word for punishment/discipline, which makes the theological distinction a bit tricky, but that's a topic for another post). Dietrich said that he was not allowed to come back to school. We asked how long he had to stay away from school. Dietrich told us that he had to stay away for 40 years! While feeling very sorry for the poor boy who had been stuck so many times, we had a lot of fun imagining a 5-year-old who, after being banned from school for 40 years, finally gets to go back to kindergarten at age 45. Sounds like the plot of an Adam Sandler movie. Since the aggressor is back at school, we assume that Dietrich misunderstood something. That makes guessing why D came up with the 40-year punishment all the more fun.

3. Why stop at 3?
On weekday afternoons, Dietrich is allowed to watch 30-minutes of something educational. Only on the weekends is he allowed to watch a feature-length cartoon. At some point, in order to help his Russian/Ukrainian language acquisition, we decided that he could watch 30 minutes of a feature-length cartoon during the week, if he watched it in Russian or Ukrainian. He doesn't choose that often but I've come home to him watching, Cars, Finding Nemo, Toy Story 2 or 3 in Russian or Ukrainian, only later to hear him playing with toys and using words, phrases and sentences in one of those languages mixed in with his English. Success. Until a few weeks ago. We borrowed Aladdin from some other missionaries and I, jokingly, told him that I was going to play it in Polish (region 5 DVDs come dubbed into a number of Eastern European languages). After answering his question, "what's Polish?" I played it in English and didn't give the conversation a second thought. The following weekend I had been out somewhere and came home while Dietrich was watching Aladdin. I was, as usual, trying to tune it out, but something wasn't right. I listened and couldn't understand a thing. Dietrich's obvious and nonchalant answer to my puzzled inquiry about what language he was watching the movie in has had me baffled to this day. I'd say he watched Aladdin, in Polish, all the way through, about 6-7 times. Masochist or future linguist? You make the call.

We love our little guy and are very thankful to God for how well he is doing with the confusing and complicated MK life he is leading. These and many other moments like them simultaneously lighten the mood and keep us grounded in reality.

How Not To Do Missions

2011-08-23T23:47:00.001-07:00

A particular Central Asian country with a religious population made up, primarily, of Eastern Orthodox Christians and Sunni Muslims, constitutionally allows Protestant and Evangelical Churches to register with the government and operate free of charge. No fees and no taxes are to be levied. Corrupt government officials, however, demand bribes from these Churches for registration, as well as other rights and privileges. With little money and high moral standards, the indigenous Evangelical Church refuses to pay the bribes, trying to influence the government to follow the constitution and allow the Church to do what they have every political right to do, i.e., to register and operate freely.

A particular missions-minded, non-Central-Asian Evangelical Church is doing Church planting in the aforementioned Central Asian country. These missionary Church planters are paying the unconstitutional bribes demanded by the corrupt government officials as they organize and operate new Churches. The corrupt government officials now believe that the Evangelical Church is able to pay a bribe and will, eventually, violate their moral standards and do so. The indigenous Church leaders are told that the missionary Church planters are paying the bribe and so they can/should/must, as well. The actions of the non-Central Asian missionaries are having a hugely negative political impact on the indigenous believers, resulting in even more hardships than those they already have to bear.

Horrible.

Goodness as Beauty

2011-06-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this, my 100th post, in the hopes that is it not my last "academic" entry for the next 3 years. However, as I have moved into a new and very different role here in Ukraine, I wonder if it might be. A month ago, I became the area director of our mission here and will thus spend my time working with people, leading and participating in meetings, strategizing and, of course, answering a steady flow of emails. I was going to be teaching ethics in March and would have spent the summer and fall reading lots of great stuff, like the article I'll be discussing below, to get ready for that. But with the job change, I'll spend much less time with my head in a book, and so I wanted to get this idea down before it is replaced by conflict resolution principles.

The April 2011 opinion piece in First Things entitled, "The Beauty of the Ethical," by Ross McCullough is, well, beautiful. McCullough talks about the essence of ethics, which boils down to the the way we interact with people every day. All of the theoretical, dilemma-ridden ethical discussions that arouse our passions but are rarely materialized in real life, should take a back seat to the way we act toward the person who sells us our groceries. The heart of ethics is found in what we really do rather than what we want to do or think that we should do. And so, as we live out our lives and act out of goodness toward others, we are being ethical, even if it it doesn't seem like we faced up to and overcame a major moral dilemma. To witness a life lived consistently in accord with well-grounded and truth-infused daily ethical standards is a thing of beauty, even if that life is never publicly acknowledged or rewarded in any way. The goodness of that life is itself beauty and we should strive to exemplify that everyday beauty as much as or more than we should worry about the right way to solve illegal immigration, the Arab-Israeli conflict or world hunger.

In case you don't want to read the whole piece, here are a few of McCullough's thoughts that bring ethics down from the top shelf and put them into the grasp of the everyday, illuminating the grandeur of a consistent, cultivated ethical character.

On the loss of a grand moral vision:
"Somewhere along the way the traditional scheme of virtues was greatly flattened. Morality was collapsed into justice and justice reduced to its political dimensions: Prudence came to be conceived as cleverness, temperance as a lifestyle choice, fortitude as an admirable but not a moral thing. General prohibitions and political action items became the substance of everyday moral thought: Do not rape; end global warming. We lost sight of the truth that chastity is no more about avoiding rape or even adultery than kindness is about avoiding murder: Certainly the two are incompatible, but cultivating the virtue goes far beyond avoiding its most flagrant violation."

On the bankruptcy of secular morality:
"And his [the secular moralist's] great fault is that he lacks a sense of the intimacy of ethics. ... They [the secular moralists] live their ethics in the selection of sandals, the choice of coffee stands, in the produce aisle: common enough situations in life, but hardly the stuff of it. They think always in grand terms, as if good politics made a good life, or love of man were the same as the love of men, or philanthropy charity. They judge their moral success always by the fate of the world and never by the fate of their marriage."

On the beauty of the moral life:
"There is a beauty to the moral gesture, the moral life, the moral soul; there is a quiet harmony to the parts of the act and to the priorities of the life and to the passions of the mind; and there is from all this a beauty that spreads slowly and subtly but unstoppably out across this sleeping world, like the first signs of the sun."

The Day I Almost Maimed 5 People

2011-06-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

We've been home for 3 days. We'd been traveling for the previous 7 weeks. That's not an excuse for not blogging; it's just an explanation. The last leg of our trip had us in northern Germany. Man, that's beautiful country! The Bible school that hosted the SEND Eurasia Family Conference was perfect for just about everyone. From elderly couples on the brink of retirement to young families with kids of varying ages, we all had a blast.

On our excursion day the "grown-ups" visited an old city and had a historic tour. The "young'uns" went to a bird park. It was half bird zoo and half super-cool playground. Here's Lev chillin' out with daddy to prove that it was a grand time, and to show how amazingly cute he is.

Time for the maiming. Here's me shooting out the barrel of an amazingly fast slide.

At the end of this slide you have two options. Option 1: Stay in the seated position and end up with a bunch of sand up your shorts. Option 2: Plant your feet and let the momentum stand you up straight. (Notice that there is no significant drop; it really does shoot you out with enough force to put you on your feet.) Here's me going with option 2.

Now, if I would have gone down the slide before taking Lev down with me, I likely would have opted for option 1 when I did go down with him. But that's not how it went down. Rather, as I stood at the top of the slide, Lev in hand, to monitor Dietrich's first slide run, I let two other SEND missionaries talk me into taking Lev down with me on my first attempt. Here we are, like a cannonball out of a cannon.

Looks fine, right? It was, until the extra 25 Lev pounds kicked in. Instead of just planting my feet and being stood up straight, I planted my feet, was stood up straight and pulled forward so powerfully that I had to take huge bounding steps forward to keep from falling over on Lev. And what you can't see in the photos is that there is only about 10-12 feet after the edge of the slide before a foot-high wood barrier separates the sandbox from a downward-sloping hill. Just beyond the barrier are huge bushes covered with inch-long thorns.

So, the first two people potentially maimed are me and Lev. I could have fallen on him or carried him right into the thorns with me. The third and fourth potential victims were the aforementioned missionaries who talked me into going down with Lev without a test run. They were sitting directly opposite the mouth of the cannon and, if they hadn't stopped me, would have been bowled over backwards right into the thorns. Thanks, Dave and Gardner.

The most unfortunate and actual victim of this whole affair was 7-year-old Matthew, who was innocently digging in the sand in front of his dad, Gardner. He—his right leg, to be specific—was right in my path as I lunged forward. I stepped right on it. As soon as I felt that I was on his leg I tried to ease up but even half of my weight (plus Lev's) would have been enough to do serious damage. Thankfully, nothing broke and he was alright after a few minutes. Poor little guy.

So, there you have it. I could have been responsible for quite a lot of pain on that pleasant Sunday afternoon and several of us could have experienced the German health care system, which is surely fabulous. Was it dangerous? Yes. Was it fun? Yes. Should I have followed my instincts and done a test run instead of my live-up-to-the-challenge nature? Yes. And am I thankful that no one was seriously injured? Yes and amen!

Going to College?

2011-03-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

If so, I want to recommend a tremendous resource. Now, when I envision my readership, high-schoolers or parents of high-schoolers don't really come to mind. Nonetheless, our kids (or your grandkids) will go to college one day so maybe you can utilize it the future.

First Things dedicated their entire November 2010 issue to a survey of American colleges and universities and to the state of American higher education generally. Unlike some issues, as far as I can tell, every article is available for online viewing. Here are the links to the best articles and why I like them in case you don't want to look through it all for yourself. But I recommend the whole thing, minus the poetry, if you have the time.

College Descriptions and Various Rankings, FT editors

This is a fairly broad survey of most of the major schools in America and includes a discussion of each institution's academics, social habits and religious context. Since the editors and the journal as a whole lean Catholic, they didn't think too highly of Biola, unfortunately. But they did rank Wheaton as the best religious school in America so we know they aren't completely closed to Protestant efforts in academia.

Go With God, Stanely Hauerwas

If you are a Christian and think that college is just 4 years of goofing around until you have to get a real job, or a time when you get to step outside the bounds of your faith and do a little experimenting, or simply an excuse for not giving your whole self in service to the Church, think again. Hauerwas powerfully communicates the fact that college is a special call from God, a unique time to either be influenced (if attending a Christian school) or influence (if attending a secular school) for the good of the Kingdom of God. Hauerwas often gets labeled a postmodernist—a claim about which I am not prepared to offer an opinion—but, in this article, he speaks as clearly as any early-20th-century fundamentalist preacher ever did. I wish I would have been able to read this before I started college; it took me years to learn some of the basic stuff he lays out in this article. If you're just staring college, read and obey.

Bacchanalia Unbound, Mary Eberstadt

If Hauerwas' article stimulates you, Eberstadt's article will scare you to death. The amount of drugs and alcohol abused and sex had in most of America's colleges and universities makes one wonder if the Amish approach to cultural engagement isn't the right one. No one, student or parent, should even think about college without intentionally working out a spiritual, moral, social, behavioral plan of attack against that rampant evil that is college "recreation." Thank you, Mary, for bringing these horrible realities to light.

Again, the whole issue is worth reading but, if you've no time for that, check out the above and be as prepared as possible for the college years.

Practicing the Presence

2011-02-28T11:10:00.000-08:00

Sometime in the past decade, I lost the ability to plan for and keep up with regular, personal, spiritual retreats. A legitimate excuse might be that, when I worked a manual-labor job with set hours, vacation days, holidays, etc., it was easier to schedule a time to go to the park and be alone with the Ever-Present One for several hours. Now that I live the life of a missionary-teacher, I'm either reading the Bible, reading about the Bible or teaching the Bible. I'm getting much more spiritual input than when I was making photocopies of psychology dissertations at Biola's Duplicating Center. But that's a bad excuse because I still need the silence and solitude that my current shared office and child-filled home don't afford.

Well, feeling the weight of the absence, I took a "personal day" last week. Man, did I need it. One of the things that I did was to pray through a spiritual classic, which also used to be part of my former regime. It's uniquely refreshing to let someone much more experienced and mature than you guide you in your thoughts about and conversations with God. Since I didn't have a lot of time I wanted to pick something that I could work all the way through in the amount of time I had. So I picked Brother Lawrence's, The Practice of the Presence of God. What a kickpuncher! There's nothing like a 17th century monk to shake your modern (or postmodern) mindset and get you thinkin' new thoughts!

Aside from recommending that you spend some time with a spiritual classic (click here and here for some good collections), I want to offer a few of the thoughts I found most powerful (or shocking, or encouraging, or challenging, etc.) this time 'round with Larry. (The quotes that begin with "Brother Lawrence told me ..." are from conversations that M. Beaufort had with him.)

1. "[Brother Lawrence told me] that we should establish ourselves in a sense of God's presence by continually conversing with Him."

2. "I engaged in a religious life only for the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him."

3. "[Brother Lawrence told me] that all bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless, except as they serve to arrive at the union with the love of God."

4. "[Brother Lawrence told me] that is was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to be different from other times; that we are as strictly obliged to adhere to God by action in the time of action as by prayer in the season of prayer."

5. "[Brother Lawrence told me] that we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed."

6. "[Brother Lawrence told me] that all things are possible to him who believes; that they are less difficult to him who hopes; that they are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of all three virtues."

7. "Sometimes I consider myself there [in set hours of prayer] as a stone before a carver, whereof he is to make a statue; presenting myself thus before God, I desire Him to form His perfect image in my soul, and make me entirely like Himself."

8. "There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. ... It is not pleasure which we ought to seek in this exercise; but let us do it from a principle of love, and because God would have us."

9. "I wish you could convince yourself that God is often (in some sense) nearer to us, and more effectually present with us, in sickness than in health."

10. "Let all our employment be to know God; the more one knows Him, the more one desires to know Him. And as knowledge is commonly the measure of love, the deeper and more extensive our knowledge shall be, the greater will be our love; and if our love of God were great, we should love Him equally in pains and pleasures."

At Long Last

2011-02-20T07:04:00.000-08:00

If you're proud of your alma mater, you probably like to see your former profs publish good books and write good articles (or the appropriate equivalent in whatever field you studied) so that more people than just you can enjoy the fruit of their labors. I definitely feel that way about Talbot School of Theology and think that many more people should be familiar with her faculty than actually are.

Now it's much easier with the launch of a Talbot blog — The Good Book Blog. Not all profs are posting there; I think it's a little less than half. But that's better than none and there are already some great posts to digest (see Dr. Ken Berding's posts on prayer and the family here and here) (also check out Dr. Ken Way's story of how he chose where to earn his Ph.D.). Check it out as often as possible, stretch your mind and enrich your soul.

Tribute to Oksana (Photos by Sergei)

2011-02-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

If you get our newsletter then you've seen this picture of my philosophy students from the class in November.

I'm obviously not in the photo because I'm taking the picture. However, there's one more person who should be in the picture but isn't. Her name is Oksana and, although I taught the class in Russian, things would have been a whole lot worse without her help. Here's just a few of the things she did:

-She went through my notes (which had been translated by someone else previously and contained mistakes due to the fact that I didn't have any live contact with that person during the translation process) and made extremely thorough revisions.

-She translated 2 new sets of lecture notes that I hadn't finished for the previous semester's class.

-She sat through the whole class and, whenever I didn't know a word/phrase or sufficiently slaughtered a word/phrase, she informed me of what I really should be saying.

-She helped me grade the assignments that were written Ukrainian, a language which is still way out of my reach.

So, as you can see, my pedagogical success (if you want to call it that — my students probably don't), is due in large part to Oksana's able and effective service.

Well, last Monday was her birthday and, in typical KTS fashion, she made a cake and brought it to the office. When the available seminary personnel gathered around to sing and congratulate her, we all partook of the goodies. Present at the shindig was Sergei Tarasenko, KTS librarian, TST-KE student and budding photographer. He graciously offered to give me the pictures that he took of me at the occasion and, in a rare moment of blogging forethought, I asked him for a number of other pictures so that I could post a tribute to Oksana for her wonderful work in my class. So, I present to you a few photos of Oksana and her office party, courtesy of Sergei.

Oksana, the marvelous translator

The food

Eric messin' up Sergei's shot

Eric doing some serious eating

Igor and Sergei (no, not photographer Sergei) doing some serious eating

Thanks again for all the help, Oksana, and happy birthday!

Join the Debate

2011-01-28T14:35:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon an amazing site while searching iTunes for some good theology/philosophy/apologetics podcasts. It's DebateGod.org and it's got an amazing amount of material for those who love to listen to debates and discussions on the major topics in the philosophy of religion. They claim to have over 500 debates available and, so far, I don't think they're foolin'. Go there, find something that interests you and indulge, for free.

But this recommendation comes with 2 cautions. First, in case you are easily offended, the site is not administered and moderated by a Christian. He's an agnostic and he's not afraid to use expletives. I learned this after I posted a comment on a debate that I had listened to and was responded to in a manner not suitable for all audiences. The comment was not personally directed at me but it was an introduction to what can be found on the site. Reader beware.

The second caution is in regard to "interaction addiction" to the site. I listened to a podcast of a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath. I wanted to make a comment in the forum that they create for some debates. You have to be a member to participate. I became a member and posted my comment. The moderator responded immediately and in a manner that enticed me to respond again. I started to receive emails every time something new was posted on the site (yes, that function can be turned off). A topic appeared that is extremely interesting to me. I spent an hour just a bit ago posting in the forum. And, on top of all that, they give you "activity points" every time you participate, which flips a little switch in your brain and makes you want to "play." As you can see, it can be addicting and I'm hooked. If you are prone to addiction, beware.

And now for the shameless plugging. Here are links to the forums that I've posted in, in case you are interested:

My comments on the Hitchens/McGrath debate

My posts in the Science & Faith forum

Join if you dare, read if you want, but, by all means, listen until your ears bleed. Nothing gets the the wheels turning like a good debate.

The Christmas/New Year's Book Bonanza

2011-01-01T05:14:00.000-08:00

Our Christmas/New Year's traditions have developed into a cool East-West hybrid that spreads the celebrating out for much longer than we're used to in the States. Let me explain.

Our local Church, Light of the Gospel, has services and youth performances on and around the 25th of December and, as a family, we do stockings and one family gift on that day. Most of the people around us don't acknowledge that date as anything special, so we keep it low-key and focus on the family and faith aspects of it.

The big day for Ukrainian gift giving is January 1. Of course, everyone is up late celebrating the New Year and boy, do I mean late. Not-quite-professional-but-highly-impressive fireworks get going at midnight all over the city and go strong until about 1:00AM. Then, after decreasing in frequency just a bit, they continue until 4:00 or 5:00AM. This year featured a bunch of youngsters misfiring a sky rocket that flew a few feet off the ground (horizontally instead of vertically) and exploded into the side of a car about 150 feet from us. I was torn between anger over such irresponsibility and curiosity over what would have happened if it exploded under the car, all the while thanking the Good Lord that we weren't any closer to the incident than we were. Mishaps and lateness notwithstanding, fireworks everywhere you turn is a great way to bring in the New Year.

So, the drawback to combining gift giving with New Year's is the sleep deprivation that accompanies all activities on January 1. But the pluses outweigh the minuses. First, all of the materialism that accompanies the gift giving is clearly shifted away from the celebration of the Incarnation. Second, nothing happens on January 1 so you have all day to lounge around and put together all of the stuff that a 4-year-old receives at this time of year. Third, no matter how hard they try, my parents' Christmas box never arrives before the 25th. This year it arrived on Thursday, which would have been late if we were counting on it for Christmas. But since we do presents on New Year's — blammo — presents on time!

You'd think that it's all over and done with, right? Well, given that this is an Orthodox country and thus follows the Orthodox calendar, Christmas is officially celebrated after New Year's on January 7. So, instead of being out of school from December 27-31, Dietrich will be out of school from January 3-7. Thus, more rest and recreation is ahead of us a family. Also, more celebrating is ahead of us as our Church takes advantage of the holiday to focus on Jesus' birth with a more evangelistic thrust the second time around, hoping to present the Gospel compellingly to any nominal Church-goers who may be simply trying to do their "religious duty" on that day.

The above, apart from explaining how we celebrate the holiday season, is mostly just a set up for why I'm bragging about my gifts on New Year's and not on Christmas. I always ask for books at the holidays — I take 'em any way I can get 'em — but this year I really scored. 10 books total and I want to read all of them right now! Realistically, I should make it through 4, maybe 5 of them in the next year so, if you want to know what I think, check back next year at this time. Here they are, in no particular order. If you've read any of them and have any thoughts, please comment.

Michael F. Bird & James Crossley, How Did Christianity Begin? A Believer and Non-believer Examine the Evidence (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008).

This book was advertised in First Things and caught my attention. I'm already about 20 pages into it. The fact that the "non-believer," Crossley, believes a lot things that non-believers are not supposed to believe should make the debate a lot more interesting.

John Mark Reynolds, When Athens Met Jerusalem: In Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009).

John Mark Reynolds is a dynamic and deep thinker and delivers a great lecture. It's probably safe to say that he delivers too many a great lecture given the time it took him to complete this book (I remember talking to him about it at least 10 years ago). In any case, this book should bring clarity to the often misunderstood relationship between Christianity and ancient thought. If I teach philosophy again in the fall, this book is definitely on my summer reading list.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010).

Obviously, Bonhoeffer is respected in this house, but I've always been embarrassed that I've never read this key collection of his final thoughts. By the time I knew that I should read it, the English translation of his complete works was already in process and I wanted to wait for it in that series. Now that it's out and I have it, I will consume it forthwith.

Peter Kreeft, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven but Never Dreamed of Asking (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1990).

I'm teaching a course in March/April that includes eschatology and I don't have a lot of books on Heaven (mostly because there aren't a lot of specifically theological books on the topic) for preparation. Kreeft is an excellent writer and has another book on the existential case for Heaven that is awesome so, I assume this one will be too.

Michael Rydelnik, The Messianic Hope: Is the Hebrew Bible Really Messianic? NAC Studies in Bible and Theology, Vol. 9 (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2010).

The NAC Studies in Bible & Theology series is awesome! I read Jason Meyers' The End of the Law, also from that series, and am still adjusting my worldview in light of it. I'm collecting all of the books from the series so, there isn't a specific reason why I asked for Rydelnik's book other than that I didn't have it yet. But I'm always glad to be forced to spend serious time with the Old Testament, which this book will do. And how can it not be beneficial to wrestle with Its promises of a Messiah that are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus?

Keith Ward, The Big Questions in Science & Religion (Conshohocken, PA: Templetom Press, 2008).

If I have an academic hobby (as opposed to a specialization), it's digging deep into the science-religion debate. While poking around on Amazon.com a few years ago, I came across this book and it promises to be a fresh look at some of the major questions that come up in that debate. Who knows when I'll get to this but I can't wait 'til I do. (The page for this book at Templeton Press says that the book is in Russian. If so, I may be reading it sooner than later. That's exciting.)

Thomas Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account, Cornell Studies in Science & Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

Molinism is the major view of divine providence in Talbot School of Theology's Philosophy of Religion and Ethics program and I need to know more about it than I do. William Lane Craig has a good introductory text on the view; Flint's seems to be the more scholarly and philosophical counterpart to Craig's book. Explaining how God can be sovereign while man can be free is not an easy task. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Molinist account compares to the standard Calvinist and Arminian/Wesleyan accounts.

D.A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty & Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2002).

One of the major contenders for a Calvinist explanation of the divine sovereignty/human freedom problem is compatiblism, which Carson contends for in this book. Carson is an amazingly sharp thinker and I expect to read a very well-argued and very biblical case for the view when I get around to tackling this book. I'll try my best to read Flint and Carson back to back, if I can.

Christopher Morgan & Robert Peterson, eds., Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004).

This book is also to prep for my upcoming eschatology class. The bummer is that it is the second time I've had to buy the book. I don't have a good system for keeping track of books that I lend out (call it irresponsibility or communalism). So, at some point in the last few years, I let someone borrow the book and never got it back. I've asked everyone I can think of if they have it and, with no positive results, my poor wife had to buy me a book that we'd already spent money on in the past. The good thing is that its a great collection of powerful essays that argue for a biblically faithful view of hell so, if the person who has it reads it, they'll be really well informed about where not to go when you die.

Bruce A. Ware, ed., Perspectives in the Doctrine of God: 4 Views (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2008).

I love the multiview book series by all 3 major publishers (B&H's Perspectives series, IVP's Spectrum Multiview series and Zondervan's Counterpoint series and here and here). This format forces the authors to succinctly state their view and to interact with others who share a view different, often radically different, from their own. This particular book would be good to read before I read Flint and Carson, as it would give the Arminian and Open Theist perspectives on the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom, as well. Maybe the summer of 2012 will be dedicated to that research project.

I hope you had a merry Christmas and as happy a New Year's as I did.

A Different Way to Read a Book

2010-11-29T23:50:00.001-08:00

I've referred to William Lane Craig's website a time or two before now. It's full of great stuff. It's possible that there is too much great stuff there, actually. I've still not looked at all of it because, when I think of going there, I usually decide that I don't have enough time to peruse it all.

The podcasts are a different story, however. Averaging about 20 minutes a piece, Craig and the host of the podcast, Kevin Harris, talk about a specific issue in theology, philosophy or apologetics, giving listeners a good general overview, often mentioning some key resources that contain more info for further investigation. Listen online, download or subscribe to the Reasonable Faith podcasts; they're super.

One of great things that Craig does from time to time is to review a recently released book of his and give a detailed overview of its contents. I find this extremely helpful in deciding whether or not I want to buy the book. 20 minutes is not a sufficient amount of time to discuss everything but it is certainly sufficient for determining whether the book is unique enough to add to my library. If the book is extremely lengthy or wide-ranging, Craig will sometimes do 2 podcasts on one book, giving even greater depth and detail.

Now to the point. In the fall of 2007, Craig did a 9-part review of the 3rd edition of his apologetic standard, Reasonable Faith (which came out in 2008). Yes, that's right, a 9-part review. Oddly, the podcast discussion sometimes veers from the contents of the book and addresses other apologetic topics. For example, part 7 of the podcast is about the historical reliability of the NT, while that chapter was dropped altogether from the 3rd edition of the book. Similarly, part 9 of the podcast is all about the New Atheism (a topic not addressed in the 3rd edition of the book) while the resurrection of Jesus (the subject of chapter 8 of the book) is not discussed in the podcasts at all. Oddities notwithstanding, when you are done listening to these 9 podcasts, which takes about 3.5 hours, you will have basically consumed the contents of Reasonable Faith, the book. You may not get as many details as you would have from actually reading the book, but you wouldn't remember all of the details if you had anyway. So, especially for those short on time, I recommend this new approach to "reading" Craig's book. And, in a world where "postmodernism" — both the term and the sociological ethos — is ubiquitous, I especially recommend giving your attention to part 6. Craig emphasizes the inconsistencies and absurdities of postmodernism, as well as the fact that philosophy, the hard sciences and historical studies are all more or less rejecting postmodernism in the academy. This will take time to trickle down to the masses. In the meantime, instead of directing all of our intellectual and ministerial resources toward accommodating and compromising the truth for the sake of reaching a supposedly postmodern culture, we should be taking a firm and convincing yet engaging and relevant stand for the truth.

Below are links to each individual podcast with the corresponding chapter title from the book, or else a description of the contents of the podcast when there is no correspondence with the book.

Part 1 — Chapter 1 — How Do I Know Christianity Is True? (Faith & Reason)

Part 2 — Chapter 2 — The Absurdity of Life without God

Part 3 — Chapter 3 — The Existence of God (1) (Cosmological Arguments: Contingency & Kalam)

Part 4 — Chapter 4 — The Existence of God (2) (Design, Moral & Ontological Arguments)

Part 5 — Chapter 6 — The Problem of Miracles

Part 6 — Chapter 5 — The Problem of Historical Knowledge (Skepticism, Relativism & Postmodernism)

Part 7 — The Historical Reliability of the NT

Part 8 — Chapter 7 — The Self-Understanding of Jesus

Part 9 — The New Atheism

Happy "reading."

When You're Stuck In the Scholarly Muck ...

2010-10-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

...remember this:

"Elegant, academic discussions may appeal to us as an intellectual exercise. But the only thing that finally matters is truth."

If you're interested, you can read the rest of Archbishop Chaput's thoughts here. Unfortunately, you have to have a subscription to FT to access this particular article. If you don't have a subscription, you should get one. That, or you can come visit us in Ukraine and read my copy.

Check Us Out

2010-08-16T17:17:00.000-07:00

Here at Kyiv Theological Seminary we are still plugging away at our official Talbot School of Theology-Kyiv Extension website. We hope to see at least some of the site go live in a month, or so. In the meantime, check out the TST-KE info page at the official Talbot School of Theology site. Pictured are about half of our current M.A. students and Dr. Ralph Alexander, SEND International missionary in Russia and superb Old Testament prof.

Consolation

2010-08-10T22:41:00.000-07:00

The Angels got swept by the last-place Orioles last week, and that pretty much put the icing on the disgusting carrot cake that is our 2010 season. Bad defense, bad offence and bad luck are throwing a huge party in the Angel organization as Texas marches toward the AL West championship. I was pretty down about it, until I read a recent article in First Things. David B. Hart—himself an Orioles fan—waxes philosophical on the perfection of baseball in an essay that is as intelligent and reflective as it is light-hearted and humorous. For those of you whose baseball teams have no shot at a pennant, step back a bit, read this article and be glad you are a fan of the perfect game and not one of those "oblong games." Here's a little taste ...

"Everything is so perfectly calibrated that almost every play is a matter of the most unforgiving precision; a ball correctly played in the infield is almost always an out, while the slightest misplay usually results in a man on base. The effective difference in velocity between a fastball and a changeup is infinitesimal in neurological terms, and yet it can utterly disrupt the timing of even the best hitter. There are Pythagorean enigmas here, occult and imponderable: mystic proportions written into the very fabric of nature of which we were once as ignorant as of the existence of other galaxies."

Read and be consoled.

Saying It Plainly

2010-07-28T00:23:00.000-07:00

I spend most of my time dealing with theology, philosophy and apologetics. In all 3 of these areas it's not hard to detect the constant need for Western Evangelical Christianity to confront Her intellectual, moral and spiritual foes. In the literature, the greatest contemporary foe of Evangelical Christianity goes by many names: modernism, materialism, naturalism, physicalism, scientism, etc. To each of these can be added innumerable adjectives, as well.

But I just finished a book that is about as far away from theology, philosophy and apologetics as I am prone to get. Lest you think that I've found the time for some fiction or maybe a classic, I must say that the this book will seem to most to be just like all the rest of the stuff I talk about on this blog. It's not. Here's the info:

Eric L. Johnson & Stanley L. Jones, Psychology & Christianity: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000).

[There's a revised edition with a 5th view, but I don't have it yet. Since the 5th view is presented by some Biola folk (one of whom is John Coe, the most sincere, transparent and spiritually penetrating man you'll ever meet), I'll have to get it soon and finish the debate started in the first edition.]

Each of the authors discuss psychology, or Christianity in psychological categories, which is not something I'm used to. It is an interesting and engaging discussion, one that makes me wish I had paid a little more attention in the one psychology course that I took in college. But at the outset, the editors made a statement that related the psychology discussion to the aforementioned task of Western Evangelical Christian theology, philosophy and apologetics of confronting Her greatest modern foe. And the statement is much simpler, straightforward and revealing than some of the unnecessarily convoluted statements often made by theologians, philosophers and apologists. At the very least, it's a reminder of how clearly the battle lines have been drawn. What's more, it's a glimpse into another discipline where the battle rages and where Christians must be ready to engage.

"Over the lat 150 years an alternative worldview has competed [with the biblical worldview] for cultural influence, and over the course of this century it has become the dominant paradigm for understanding ourselves in Western culture, a worldview now called modernism. One feature of modernism [is] its secularism; that is, its tendency to empty culture of its religious significance, discourse, and symbols ... The secularism that has pervaded the significant writings and major institutions of the Western culture in the twentieth century is evidence that modernism has superseded Christianity in influence ... Gradually, beginning in the early twentieth century, unwritten rules developed that excluded religious views from expression in the main forms of media, education, and science in the West. As a result, religious speech was relegated to private life and to religious institutions and media ... Beyond that, with few exceptions religious considerations were dropped from public discourse."

"This move away from a religious worldview to a secular one also happened to coincide with another very significant cultural development: the application of natural science methods to areas of the world to which they had not been previously applied ... These methods began to be applied to the study of society, human consciousness and behavior, economics and business, and education ... Secularism combined with the methods of the natural sciences in the study of human nature resulted in a number of sciences being newly formed or reformed in ways that excluded reference to the supernatural beliefs or assumptions. This mix of secularization and the application of scientific methods to the understanding of animal and human behavior, emotion, personality, and thought shaped the modern version of psychology. And it is this combination which has led to the present debate among Christians about how the findings and theories of secular psychology should relate to Christian belief and practice" (p. 13-15) (author's emphasis in italics, my emphasis in bold and italics).

Let's do our best, in psychology or wherever God has placed us, to combat secularism and stand for the truth of the Christian worldview in an informed and intelligent, yet winsome and convincing manner.

Personal vs. Experiential

2010-07-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

First of all, if you've never done it, go to William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith website and start catching up on all that you're missing. He's got blog posts, podcasts, full lectures and articles galore. Unless you are independently wealthy and live in the mountains with nothing to do and no friends, you will never be able to consume all of his stuff. But, no matter your schedule or life stage, you'll only be better off for whatever of Craig's you are able to consume. He's sharp, spiritually insightful, winsome, very well-rounded and worth every bit of time you can give to him.

OK, enough gushing.

We Evangelicals are fond of emphasizing that a person ought to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But what does that really mean? I think, for a lot of people, it means that we should have a relationship with Jesus that is similar to the relationships that we have with other people. In certain respects, this is true. I should feel free to express my feelings and emotions with Jesus as freely and openly as I can share them with my wife.

[I'll now start using the term relationship with God, implying that Jesus is God and that I intend Him, the Father and the Holy Spirit when I use the term.]

But there is a bit of a problem with the comparison. When I say something honoring or disrespectful to my wife, something in jest or with harshness to my son, something pleasant or offensive to another person, such things often result in an immediate response that is physically and/or verbally manifested and that often results in further conversation (or an immediate cessation of the same). But we don't—at least I don't—experience this in our relationship with God. There is no physical aspect to my personal relationship with God and He certainly doesn't communicate verbally with me in the same way that my wife, my son or my neighbors do. For example, I don't go back and read old letters and cards that my wife wrote or narratives that others wrote about my wife and mediate on them in hopes to better understand who she is and what she wants from me. But I do that with God. So, I think there is a bit of a disconnect between our blanket usage of the term, personal, and what we are intending to say when we use it.

In a recent podcast, a newly converted atheist asked just how she was to understand this personal relationship that she now had with God. I was expecting Craig to give something like the standard line that we often hear. Instead, he took a totally different approach to explaining the personal aspects of our relationship with God. Here are some of the things he put in the personal category:

-Individual reconciliation with God
-Peace with God
-Forgiveness from God
-Connection with God (no longer estranged)
-Adoption by God

Not what we're used to hearing when we talk about a personal relationship, right? All of the standard things that we intend when we use the word, personal, Craig put into the category of our experiential relationship with God. But this experiential relationship is decidedly different than what we experience with others due to the fact that God is immaterial and utterly transcendent. The experiential is a vital component to our relationship with Him but we shouldn't compare it to our experiential relationship with others and we should not confuse it with our personal relationship. The personal refers to our individual, positional standing before God while the experiential refers to our communication and interaction with Him, which is based on that individual, positional standing. Clear and beautiful. Furthermore, Craig emphasized that all of the personal, objective realities are true for believers, whether we feel them experientially or not, which is deeply encouraging when it seems that our experiential relationship with God isn't as dynamic as we think it should be.

Thank you, Dr. Craig.

Not to Be Negative or Anything

2010-07-08T12:32:00.000-07:00

I would much rather be talking about how great the Angels are doing; about the hot bats, the sharp offense and the lights-out pitching. But that seems to be descriptive of the Angels in an alternate universe. The real Angels are like the walking dead right now and we're all watching Texas (with not a little bit of help from Vladdy) run away with the AL West. It's a sad, sad sight. (We're currently listening to the Angels and they're about to lose their 4th straight game in a 4-game series to the White Sox after having lost 2 of 3 to Kansas City. Did I say it was sad? I'm wrong; it's depressing!

So, instead of singing the praises of the team I have to find something to complain about. But I don't want to take it out on the players just yet, so I'll focus on the announcing. I never thought that we could have a worse TV caller than Rex Hudler, but we do—at least when it comes to calling home runs. And home runs are about all we get to hear the TV guys call while we watch the "highlights" of the games on mlb.com. (We do get the audio feed, love Terry Smith and can put up with José Mota.) Victor Rojas gets to call the home runs for TV and man is it embarrassing. Here's a list of the 4 worst. You tell me if this makes you happy that your team just hit a home run.

After a 3-run home run by Torii Hunter:

"Torii Hunter with a 3-run JIMMY JACK!"

After a lead off, opposite field home run by Howie Kendrick:

"Howie Kendrick with a lead-off OPPO-TACO!"

After any home run by Kendry Morales (may he heal miraculously):

"A BIG FLY for the CUBAN MISSILE!"

And, the most recent display of baseball-calling idiocy, after a grand slam by Hideki Matsui:

"Godzilla goes BOOM!"

Seriously. Shut up already! Can you imagine Vin Scully or Jon Miller saying these things? Actually, it must be that the players are tired of hearing this nonsense and have stopped hitting home runs to silence the madness. So, Victor, for the sake of the team, please just call it a home run and leave at that. For the sake of the team and for the sake of our sanity.

A Word From the Inside

2010-06-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

It's pretty easy for Christians in religiously free countries to take that freedom for granted. Even when we are made aware of the terrible circumstances that our brothers and sisters in Christ face in countries or environments that are hostile to Christianity, we can be tempted to ignore it since all it does is make us feel sad and guilty. But the fact remains, the world is hostile to the Christian faith and many faithful believers die each day because they consider Jesus Christ more important than anything else.

I used to think that the best thing to do for the persecuted Church was to raise awareness and, of course, pray for the persecution to lessen or cease altogether. The former is necessary but, I just read a book that changed my perspective about the latter. The book is Back to Jerusalem by Paul Hattaway, titled after the Chinese house Church movement that goes by that moniker. I won't say much about the book other than I think that anyone interested in what God is doing in the world must read this book. God's Church may finally breakout in the Muslim and Buddhist world through these faithful brothers and sisters who will do anything to bring their Savior to the lost.

But what I want to share here are a few words from one of the leaders of this movement who has suffered a good deal of persecution for his faith. This representative perspective should cause us to rethink our prayers for the persecuted Church. Rather than praying for the persecution to cease, we should pray for faithfulness and perseverance in the midst of the persecution.

From Brother Yun:
"Sometimes Western visitors come to China and ask the house church leaders what seminary they attended. We reply, jokingly yet with underlying seriousness, that we have been trained in the Holy Spirit Personal Devotion Bible School (prison) for many years."

"Sometimes our Western friends don't understand what we mean because they then ask, 'What materials do you use in this Bible school?' We reply, 'Our only materials are the foot chains that bind us and the leather whips that bruise us.'"

"In this prison seminary, we have learned many valuable lessons about the Lord that we could never have learned from a book. We've come to know God in a deeper way. We understand his goodness and his loving faithfulness to us." (p. xi-xii)

"The past fifty years of suffering, persecution, and torture of the house churches in China were all part of God's training for us. He has used the government for his own purposes, molding and shaping his children as he sees fit. That is why I correct Western Christians who tell me: 'I've been praying for years that the Communist government in China will collapse, so Christians can live in freedom.' This is not what we pray! We never pray against our government or call down curses on it. Instead, we have learned that God is in control of both our own lives and the government we live under. ... Instead of focusing our prayers against any political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be pleasing to God."

"Don't pray for the persecution to stop! We shouldn't pray for a lighter load to carry, but a stronger back to endure! Then the world will see that God is with us, empowering us to live in a way that reflects his love and power."

"This is true freedom." (p. 57-58)

My prayer life will certainly be different as a result of Brother Yun's testimony and that of the other members of the Back to Jerusalem Movement. May they stand firm and may the Kingdom increase as they continue their service to the Lord.

And the Lion Shall Lie Down with the ...

2010-06-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

Lev Eleos Oldenburg was born on Friday, May 28 at 2:25 AM. Here he is with his brother who, until that Friday, seemed like the smallest three-year-old boy in the universe.

Now picking up Dietrich is like picking up a big bag of rocks and I feel like Lev is simply one of Dietrich's stuffed animals. Everything was new with D but, with time, a lot of those new and "unforgettable" experiences have been forgotten, or at least pushed way back in the memory. With Lev it is all coming back again and it is all precious and "unforgettable," just like the first time.

OK, enough with the comparisons. Lev is a Slavic name that means lion, hence the title of this post. We wanted a name that worked well here and, once we thought of Lev, we couldn't get it out of our heads. He is not named after Leo Tolstoy, although Lev was Leo's real name. From what we've been told, Lev is a rare, dignified and manly name around these parts, but we just like wildlife, and the Messianic connotations. Eleos is the Greek word for mercy, which we feel Lev represents after our previous, tragic birth experience. A great passage using the word is I Peter 1:3-5 . All of the beautiful descriptions of the salvific realities in which Christians abide are all by the mercy of God. For us, Lev exemplifies that mercy.

We love Lev and, whether you pronounce it with a Russian tongue, like me (Lyehv), or with Ukrainian tongue, like Josie (Lehv), we think you will love him too.

Too Much Passion

2010-05-09T03:18:00.000-07:00

It's always fun to read brand labels and clothing messages in this part of the world. Lots of it is black market and made by people who don't know English well enough to get their intended thoughts just right. Remember this great one?

Yesterday I saw a label on a pair of jeans that made me laugh, but not because of any grammatical or spelling errors. The company is as genuine as they come; they're Italian and, I assume, probably quite fashionable. But, for jeans manufacturers, I think they are investing a little too much passion and emotional energy. Here's how the label reads:

Free Soul

Jeans Community

Crafted with Love

"Soul," "community," "love?" Aren't they just pants?

Dear Film Industry,

2010-05-01T10:03:00.001-07:00

If you are considering giving Ben Affleck a lead role in a film and that film involves him crying, please, PLEASE reconsider. We all still appreciate Good Will Hunting and some agree that Kevin Smith (sorry, no non-offensive links available) knows how to cast Ben to get a decent comedy performance out of him. But you all now seem to think that he can play serious roles and that he doesn't look embarrassingly ridiculous when he tries to tear up and pretend to be sad. He does. Please don't make us watch that anymore.

Most recent example: State of Play.

(Since I can't find the relevant clip, watch this if you need evidence.)

Pedagogical Milestones

2010-04-20T09:14:00.001-07:00

So, we're about 3 weeks away from the close of the spring semester. Unless my mind completely shuts down before then, I will be able to say that I've reached the goal of teaching all my courses in Russian without major assistance from an oral translator (I did request one to correct me when my mistakes were really bad). This is a definite milestone and it definitely would not have been attained without the contributions of countless Russian-speaking language teachers, conversation partners, coworkers, preachers, congregants, supermarket and convenient store employees, willing-to-converse passersby, etc., not to mention all of the family members and supporters (financial and prayer) that make it possible for us to serve here in Ukraine. If you fit any of the above categories, I thank you from the depth of my being.

I should be encouraged by this, right? Well, I also recently attained another pedagogical milestone that seems to be taking the wind out of my Russian language sails. I actually taught something in my philosophy class last week that caused a student to respond, "and there's more proof that all blasphemies come from America." Last I checked, that kind of comment does not top the list of most-desired student reactions for most theological educators, at least not in our missions organization. Yes, there are countless reasons to disregard this student's comment. What I said wasn't that alarming and poses no major threat to any Evangelical tenets of the faith. Nonetheless, attaining this latter milestone at the same time as the former is definitely humbling and will help to ensure that I don't get all, you know, like that, about my long-awaited achievement of minimal fluency in Russian.

Eat That, Daddy!

2010-04-17T11:24:00.000-07:00

If you give Dietrich a piece of paper and some crayons or, as pictured, a whiteboard and some markers, this is what you usually get ...

The other day, he was doing more of the above and I asked him if he wanted to go play a game in the living room. He did, but first wanted to finish up the masterpiece. As I watched his "creative chaos," I thought, "Hmmm, maybe it's time to work with Dietrich on some circles. He really should be able to draw something that could at least be recognized as an attempt at one." So, I sat down with him, intending to hold his hand around the marker and guide it while putting up a nice circle that would help him get used to the feeling. Just before doing that, however, I felt the urge to let him have a shot at it unassisted. "Dietrich, go ahead, try and draw a circle by yourself." Uh ...

Please understand, I'm not saying that Dietrich is doing something that other kids his age can't. I'm sure the above circle is standard 3.5-year-old fare. But it's definitely not what we're used to and it was certainly an occasion for paternal humiliation. Needless to say, Dietrich can humiliate me like that whenever he wants.

Illuminating the Abstract (An Anselmian Reflection)

2010-04-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I made it through March, which was about as busy a period as we've had since we've been in Ukraine. Now I'm back to writing lectures for the philosophy class that I'm teaching. It's been an amazingly rewarding process, personally, to work through all of the introductory philosophical issues—I hope that I am making it somewhat rewarding for my students, as well.

The lecture I'm working on now addresses the arguments/proofs for God's existence. After giving a general intro and explaining what theistic proofs are, what we should expect from them and why they are valuable, I will take one argument and go deeper with it. Like a true novice, I'm choosing the hardest one for this project, i.e., the ontological argument. Here's my modification of Steven T. Davis' reconstruction of Anselm's version of the argument:

1. Things can exist in only 2 ways—in the mind and in reality.
2. The Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB) can possibly exist in reality, i.e., the GCB is not an impossible thing.
3. The GCB exists in the mind.
4. Whatever exists only in the mind and might possibly exist in reality might possibly be greater than it is (by existing both in the mind and in reality).
[5-8 attempts to disprove premise 5 by reductio ad absurdum]
5. The GCB exists only in the mind.
6. The GCB might be greater than it is.
7. The GCB is a being than which a greater is conceivable.
8. It is false that the GCB exists only in the mind.
9. Therefore, the GCB exists both in the mind and in reality.

Stephen T. Davis, God, Reason & Theistic Proofs, Reason & Religion series (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), 21-26.

Lots of people don't like the ontological argument; they think it's either too difficult and abstract or they think it is so baldly question-begging that it isn't worth considering or they think it is just false because you can't use it to prove the existence of anything else. But there are a good many throughout philosophical and theological history who have found it sound and successful. I'm in the latter group. But, at the same time, I'm also sympathetic to the view that it is amazingly complex, abstract and hard to grasp because I myself feel that way about it most of the time.

But in this latest wrestling match with the argument, after reading through some heavy philosophical stuff about it, I went back to the source. I re-read Anselm's, Proslogion, just to make sure that my understanding of the argument bears close resemblance of that of the author, since that is what I will be presenting to my students. What I found was striking.

When acknowledging that Anselm is the originator of the argument, philosophers will usually inform readers that the proof is presented as part of a prayer to God. The entire Proslogion is a prayer, in fact. Being a prayer, the ontological argument wasn't packaged in logical form when Anselm penned it. That's why any logical form of it is only ever a reconstruction, as is my modification of Davis' above. But this is usually where philosophers leave it. They mention that it was originally written as a prayer, which explains why there are so many different logical forms of Anselm's argument, and then they move on.

But what I realized with this reading is that the conclusion of the ontological argument is foundational for almost all of the other theological reflections made in the remainder of the book (the argument is presented in beginning chapters). Rather than using the ontological argument simply to prove the existence of the GCB and then moving on to discuss the attributes of the GCB, Anselm weaves the conclusion of the argument into his reflections on each attribute. God is necessary, unified and eternal because it is greater to be those things than to be contingent, complex and temporal for the GCB. In fleshing out the implications of the ontological argument, Anselm makes it as theologically and spiritually meaningful as it is philosophically groundbreaking. Below is an example of how Anselm uses the argument to show how God has to be good to the not-so-good.

"Surely in the deepest and most secret place of Thy goodness there lies hidden the source from which the river of mercy flows. For though Thou art wholly and supremely just, yet Thou art kind even to the evil, just because Thou art completely and supremely good. For Thou wouldest be less good, if Thou wert not kind to any evildoer. For he who is good both to the good and to the evil is better than he who is good only to the good, and he who is good to the wicked both by sparing them and by punishing them is better than he who is good only by punishing them. Thus Thou art merciful, just because Thou art wholly and supremely good. And though it might be apparent why Thou dost reward the good with good things and the evil with evil things, it is altogether wonderful that Thou, who art wholly just and lackest nothing, shouldest bestow good things on those who are evil and guilty in Thy sight. O the height of Thy goodness, O God! We see the ground of Thy mercy, but we do not see it fully. We see whence the stream flows, but we do not observe the source whence it is born. Out of the fullness of Thy goodness Thou art kind to those who sin against Thee, and still the reason lies hidden in the height of that same goodness. It is, of course, of Thy goodness that Thou rewardest the good with good things and the evil with evil things, but this seems to be demanded by the very nature of justice. But when Thou givest good things to the wicked, we know that the supremely good has willed to do this, and at the same time we marvel that the supremely just has been able to do it."

Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, chapter IX, in Eugene R. Fairweather, ed., A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1956), 78-79.

Beautiful stuff. I will certainly be emphasizing to my students the fact that theistic proofs should lead to theologically joyous exaltation as much as they lead to philosophically rational justification. Thanks, Anselm. As you've been influential for a thousand years since you've passed, may you be influential for yet another thousand.

Why I'm Not a Rock Star

2010-02-07T09:25:00.000-08:00

When I woke up this morning, it interrupted a dream I was having. In that dream I was singing in a band. The sound was super cool, like a really good Flaming Lips song. But the words were s-t-u-p-i-d!!! So stupid, in fact, that any flicker of hope that I may have had about being in a band is now completely snuffed out. And now I present to you exhibit A:

"If you need a boat,
Don't steal a boat.
'Cuz if you steal a boat,
Someone's gonna steal your boat."

See, I told you so.

If Stranded On A Desert Island ...

2010-02-04T12:51:00.000-08:00

Living half a world away, we're sometimes a little slow with American pop culture. While all of our friends were raving about The Office a few years ago, we didn't know what they were talking about. We've since come to love it, as well. We've now watched seasons 4, 5, 1, 2 and half of season 3, in that order.

In a more recent (for us) episode, everyone is stuck in the parking lot and a number of the employees are playing, "If stranded on a desert island ..." They started off with what 3 books each person would bring but had to move to movies due to the lack of literary depth in the office. In any case, when discussing books, Angela—the stereotypically conservative Evangelical of the group—lists the Bible and Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. She refuses to list a third book. It's a really funny Office moment but, I feel the compulsion to make a list that does a little more justice to the Christian tradition. So, for the sake of a fairer representation of my faith and the faith of millions, here are the 3 books that I think any Christian should take with them if stranded on a desert island:

Augustine, The City of God

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

I've read each of these authors but only a little of the above titles. However, the history of Christian thought would be drastically different if not for these monumental works. So, for their historical import alone, I'd make room for them. However, they are also all amazingly lengthy and would keep a reader busy for a long time, and a long time is presumably what you have in this kind of situation. Lastly, they are well known for their spiritual, theological and philosophical depth and insight which would be especially important in this case. Hmmm, the more I think about it, the more I'd like to be stranded on a desert island for a while so that I can invest some time in these classics.

[Note: For the person wondering why in the world I didn't choose the Bible, there's no need to worry about my Evangelical commitments. I take it as a given that a Christian would bring a Bible with them. So, I'm fudging a little by choosing 3 since I'd have to make room for the Word of God. But maybe I could get one of those microscopic Bibles that they used to smuggle into the former Soviet Union. There's probably one around here somewhere.]

Good Press

2010-01-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

Anthony Flew's conversion to theism from atheism is pretty well-known now and I made brief mentioned of it here, back when I was writing about the Craig-Hitchens debate. He (Flew) is very public and open about his conversion and still displays as much intellectual rigor as a theist as he did when an atheist. But this didn't keep Richard Dawkins from portraying Flew's conversion as the result of senility. Flew wrote quite the stinging (but apropos) response in the December '08 issue of First Things (yes, I'm that far behind). What I want to highlight here are Flew's comments about Biola University, my alma mater, former employer and current ministry partner in part of the work in which we are involved here in Ukraine. Here's what he had to say:

"In a monster footnote to what I am inclined to describe as a monster book— The God Delusion—Dawkins reproaches me for what he calls my ignominious decision to accept, in 2006, the Philip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. The awarding institution is Biola University in Los Angeles. Dawkins does not say outright that his objection to my decision is that Biola is a specifically Christian institution. He obviously assumes (but refrains from actually saying) that this is incompatible with producing first-class academic work—not a thesis that would be acceptable in either my own university of Oxford or in Harvard. ...

Finally, as to the suggestion that I have been used by Biola University: If the way I was welcomed by the students and the members of the faculty whom I met on my short stay in Biola amounted to being used, then I can only express my regret that at my age of eighty-five I cannot reasonably hope for another visit to this institution."

Way to go, Biola, and thanks for the more-than-kind words, Dr. Flew.

Philosophizin' 'Bout Jesus

2010-01-07T03:42:00.000-08:00

In a few weeks I'll begin teaching a course called, Philosophy: Introduction & History. While excited and invigorated by all the philosophy I've been reading lately (yes, that puts me in rare category), I'm a little intimidated by this, having spent most of my graduate education focused on theology. My apologetics training and its association with and dependency on philosophy is the only reason why I even considered the idea of teaching a class like this. Nonetheless, it will be a tough first go (but the first go is always tough, right?). Hopefully, I can pass my enjoyment of philosophy on to my students, even if I don't do full justice to the grandeur of the content. And hopefully I'll get to teach the class in the future, honing my skills and teaching more Ukrainian Church leaders to love philosophy as much as I do.

In looking for some texts to use as I prepare my teaching material, I came across some recent stuff by Paul Moser, a Christian philosopher out of Loyola University in Chicago. I read a fabulous booklet by Moser a few years back on God's hiddenness and I know that he's one of the key players in getting Evangelical Christianity a place at the secular philosophical table. So, I asked for these books for Christmas. Well, I got 'em and I can't put 'em down. Moser is awesome and I can't recommend him more highly. He is unashamedly Evangelical when he writes, yet this doesn't minimize his philosophical rigor in the least. And for the believer skeptical of philosophy, as most of my Ukrainian students will likely be, Moser exemplifies how to engage the philosophical world without compromising the truths of Christianity in the least. Below are 3 poignant and powerful selections from his introductory essay to Jesus and Philosophy: New Essays, a collection edited by Moser.

On the Atonement:
"The Good News movement founded by Jesus offers a divine manifest-offering approach to divine-human atonement. According to its unique message, what is being made manifest is God's character of righteous and merciful love, and what is being offered, in agreement with that character, is lasting divine-human fellowship as a gracious divine gift on the basis of (a) the forgiveness manifested and offered via God's atoning sacrifice in Jesus and (b) God's resurrection of Jesus as Lord and Giver of God's Spirit. The manifestation of God's self-giving character in Jesus reveals the kind of God who is thereby offering lasting divine-human forgiveness and fellowship to humans. Although the death of Jesus can't bring about divine-human reconciliation by itself, it is presented, by Jesus, Paul and others, as supplying God's distinctive means of intended implementation of reconciliation via divine manifestation and offering. For the sake of actual divine-human reconciliation, according to Jesus and Paul, humans must receive the manifest-offering via grounded trust and obedience." (p. 8)

On the Greatest Commandment:
"These commands [to love God and neighbor], found in the Hebrew scriptures and in the Christian New Testament, give a priority ranking of what humans should love. They imply that at the very top of a ranking of what we humans love should be, first, God and, second, our neighbor (as well as ourselves). They thus imply that any opposing ranking is morally unacceptable. More specifically, they imply that human projects, including intellectual and philosophical projects, are acceptable only to the extent that they contribute to satisfying the divine love commands. ... Loving God and our neighbor requires eagerly serving God and our neighbor for their best interests. Characterized broadly, our eagerly serving God and our neighbor requires (a) our eagerly obeying God to the best of our ability and (b) our eagerly contributing, as far as we are able, to the life-sustaining needs of our neighbor. ... We humans, of course, have limited resources, in terms of time and energy for pursuing our projects. We thus must choose how to spend our time and energy in ways that pursue some projects and exclude others. If I eagerly choose projects that exclude my eagerly serving the life-sustaining needs of my neighbor (when I could have undertaken the latter), I thereby fail to love my neighbor. I also thereby fail to obey God's command, as represented by Jesus, to give priority to my eagerly serving the life-sustaining needs of my neighbor ... The lesson about failing to love applies directly to typical pursuit of philosophical questions. If my typical eager pursuit of philosophical questions blocks my eagerly serving the life-sustaining needs of my neighbor (when I could have undertaken the latter), I thereby fail to love my neighbor. I also fail then to obey the divine love command regarding my neighbor. In this case, my eager pursuit of philosophical questions will result in my failing to love God and my neighbor as God has commanded, at least in the commands summarized by Jesus. The failing would be a moral deficiency in serving God and my neighbor, owing to my choosing to serve other purposes instead, namely, philosophical purposes independent of loving God and others. Even if a philosophical purpose is truth-seeking, including seeking after truths about God and divine love, it could run afoul of the divine love commands. ... Not all truth-seeking, then, proceeds in agreement with the divine love commands. This lesson applies equally to philosophy, theology, and any other truth-seeking discipline." (p. 14-15)

On Jesus' Influence On Philosophy
"Philosophy in its normal mode, without being receptive to an authoritative divine challenge stemming from divine love commands, leaves humans in a discussion mode, short of an obedience mode under divine authority. ... As divinely appointed Lord, in contrast, Jesus commands humans to move, for their own good, to an obedience mode of existence relative to divine love commands. He thereby points humans to his perfectly loving Father who ultimately underwrites the divine love commands for humans, for the sake of divine-human fellowship. Accordingly, humans need to transcend a normal discussion mode, and thus philosophical discussion itself, to face with sincerity the personal Authority who commands what humans need: faithful obedience to the perfectly loving Giver of divine love commands, for the sake of divine-human fellowship. Such obedience of the heart, involving the conforming of a human will to divine will, is just the way humans are to truly receive the gift of divine redemptive love. Insofar as the discipline of philosophy becomes guided, in terms of pursuits, by that gift on offer, it becomes kerygma ["proclamation" or "message"]-oriented in virtue of becoming an enabler of the aforementioned Good News message of Jesus. According to Jesus, humans, including philosophers, were intended by God to live in faithful obedience to the divine love commands, whereby they enter into volitional fellowship with God and, on that basis, with others." (p. 17)

Paul K. Moser, "Introduction: Jesus and Philosophy," in Jesus and Philosophy: New Essays, edited by Paul K. Moser (New York: NY, Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1-23.

If I Had a Facebook Account

2010-01-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!!! I just finished giving Dietrich a second bath after discovering that he had, while on the potty attempting to wipe, instead, wiped his business on the wall and on himself. 2010 can only get better from here, right?

Just One More, Before I Fall Asleep

2009-11-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

Dietrich is 3 and 1/6 years old and asks about as many questions every minute (which is normal, as I understand). Most are "why" questions or variations thereof but, sometimes, the combination of the oddity of the question and the oddity of the timing results in some pretty memorable queries, revealing the unique inner-workings of the young mind. Either that, or the kid is doing everything he can think of to keep from going to sleep. Here's our exchange when I stooped down to kiss D's forehead and started his lullaby CD for the second time tonight ...

Dietrich: Daddy, why you have a nose?

Me: Why do I have a nose? Everybody has a nose.

Dietrich: But not spiders?

Me: Uh, no, spiders don't have noses like people, they have a different kind of nose.

Dietrich: And not other bugs?

Me: Good night, Dietrich. Go to sleep.

Belarus Entry #3 - Speaking in Contemporary Language

2009-11-25T10:45:00.000-08:00

3 of the 4 members of our team had the privilege of preaching in the Sunday morning and evening services of the Church, which is located on the property of and connected with the seminary where the EAAA conference was held. The brother who had the opportunity to preach in the morning service got quite the earful from the pastor once the service was over. Here's what happened ...

During his introduction, our designated Sunday morning representative emphasized the need to present Christianity, the Bible and the Gospel in contemporary language so that hearers can understand what you're talking about. If you use Christian terms like "Gospel" and "justification" with certain people, and you do not explain them, they will, very likely, not understand what you're talking about. As an example, our brother explained how a certain Pauline word in the passage he was preaching from had negative connotations in the original Greek while the particular Russian word translating the Greek had positive connotations. The contextual meaning is weakened, if not lost altogether, if someone does not explain this fact. This all sounds very simple, logical and obvious, right?

WRONG!!! For at least 15 minutes after the service, the pastor, to put it nicely, gave counsel to our brother, stating that "normal" Russian language is all that is needed, the Bible doesn't need "contemporary" explanation and that he has Bible studies with nonbelievers and they all understand him despite the fact that he doesn't use such newfangled speech when explaining the Bible to them. And just in case we weren't sure how much he disapproved of the idea, he decided to instruct me before the evening service that I should not give an introduction to my sermon if I was going to go on and on about the need for contemporary language and the insufficiencies of "normal" Russian language.

[Note: if you are as confused about such a hard and fast distinction between "contemporary" language and "normal" language, don't worry, so were we. There is no such distinction in modern, spoken Russian, just like there is no such distinction in modern, spoken English. And our guy was not making a hard and fast distinction. He was just stating the apologetically obvious: you should speak truth to your audience in a way that they'll understand. Sure, there are older English words that we don't use anymore and the Russian-speaking world has its equivalent of the King James Bible with its accompanying linguistic antiquities, but there is nothing that makes sense of the pastor's diametrical distinction between "contemporary" and "normal" Russian. It was hard to fathom what he was so upset about.]

Now, this story isn't all that interesting until you understand what happened during the conference in the days following the above incident. You see, the EAAA is made up of the top Evangelical institutions in the the former Soviet Union and they are all doing everything they can to educate, equip and assist the Slavic Church as it strives to reach the countless lost among them. They are all united in doing this in "contemporary" forms and methods, using "contemporary" language and ideas. How do we know this? Because almost all of them told us so, using the same word over and over, during the course of the conference. Normally, this wouldn't be funny; it would just be timely and relevant instruction. But every time a presenter told us about the necessity of doing anything in a "contemporary" way, the 4 of us just lost it. I'm sure it's about as funny to you as it was to those sitting around us. But, let me assure you, it was a hoot and it created an inside joke that should fuel our discussions for months to come.

Belarus Entry #2 - Tongue Twisters For All

2009-11-17T11:48:00.000-08:00

One of the members of our Belarus team is a student in the Talbot School of Theology-Kyiv Extension M.A. program (website within months) that the rest of the members of our team are responsible for running. For a class coming up in December he has chosen to read the War Rule, a collection of Qumran texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Before our trip, I overheard this brother trying to name his assignment to another professor at our seminary. He first tried in Russian but the professor was unfamiliar with the texts. So the student then named the assignment in English, but the professor could not understand him. He tried about 5 times to say "War Rule," but that's really hard to say for someone whose main language has no "w" sound and rolls its "r"s instead of dragging them out. It was a tongue twister, for sure.

But while we were in Belarus, the four of us had an extended discussion about why "War Rule" is so difficult to say and decided to see how we could make it even more difficult. Granted, our final result is pretty meaningless, but it's pretty hard for even an English-speaking tongue. So, try this out 10 times fast ...

"The role of the real world rural war rule"

But so as not to pick solely on my Slavic-tongued fellows, I have to mention the name of the conference we were attending in Belarus. The organization is acronymed, "EAAA," which, conveniently works in both English and Russian. In English, it stands for the Euro-Asian Accreditation Association. Easy, right? In Russian it reads, "Евро-азиатская Аккредитационная Ассоциация." That likely doesn't mean much to you, so here's the transliteration ...

"Yevro-aziatskaya Akkreditatsionaya Associatsiya"

It's certainly not impossible to say but, in the middle of a sentence, combined with all of the necessary declensions and often surrounded by words that are just as difficult to say, it doesn't always roll off the tongue. Even one of the conference speakers mentioned how difficult it was to say, and he was a Russian-speaker! So, while I certainly topped the charts in mispronounced Russian words during our 5-day trip, I could pronounce sensical and nonsensical English words and phrases with relative ease. In the end, such discussions helped to balance out our respective embarrassment, as well as bringing some much needed levity to a conference whose main focus was that perennial thriller, academic institution accreditation standards.

Belarus Entry #1 - Where To Find Hot Chocolate

2009-11-16T13:08:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, I had a great opportunity with some friends/coworkers (emphasis on the former over the latter) to go to a conference in Minsk, Belarus. There are many, many stories of how repressive Belarus is toward Evangelical Christianity but, fear and trepidation notwithstanding, we had a tiring yet wonderful time and didn't feel any of the infamous repression. I'm sure that was due, in large part, to the fact that one of my coworkers is Belarusian and he made sure that we behaved ourselves. The other factor in play was that the conference was held at an Evangelical seminary and we were there for at least 12 hours a day. That didn't leave much time for shenanigans.

One of the things that we did try to do, when not knee deep in accreditation issues (more on that later), was to find hot chocolate. I had a hankerin' for some on Monday night and so we went searching. We stopped at 2 cafes with no luck (although we did stumble upon the Drama Theater of the Belarusian Army and had great fun imagining said army performing Romeo and Juliet or Swan Lake). That was enough for me. I was ready to settle for some tea. But whereas my desire waned as the night wore on, the hankerin' spread to my compatriots and they didn't want to give up so easily. We looked at 1 or 2 more places before settling on tea (or the wretched coffee for everyone but me) and dessert.

We hit the town the next night, as well, still with no success at finding hot chocolate. With each inquiry and negative reply, my hopes decreased. So, by Wednesday afternoon, just hours before we were to leave, my expectations were at 0%. But as we were leaving the super-huge-mega-market where we were buying our dinner and snacks for the train ride home, it started to pour. A 15-minute walk back to the seminary without umbrellas would have had us soaked until we arrived back in Kyiv the next morning. So we stayed inside for a while and moseyed on up to the cafe/kiosk of the super-huge-mega market. With 0% expectation, what do you think we found? Of course, we did. And it was really good. So, when in Belarus, don't look every imaginable place for the sweet, sweet nectar of the gods. Instead, find your way to the Hippo and enjoy.

Closing the Baseball Book

2009-11-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

The New York Yankees won the World Series. I feel like I should either be more happy or more sad about that than I actually am. I could be happy that the Angels ended up losing to the World Champs rather than to the runners-up. Or I could be sad that the Phillies didn't give the Yanks the trouncin' that I'm usually happy to see. But I don't care all that much. Maybe it's because I'm too exhausted from a very busy month at KTS and from spending all of my baseball energy trying to root the Angels into the World Series (feeling extra tired because that energy was expended on behalf of a team that expended their energy trying hard to stay OUT of the World Series). Nonetheless, I have a lot of reasons to be happy about the Angels' '09 season (ALCS performance excluded) and can wait expectantly for things to start up again in April. And, if any Yankees were to shine, I'd want it to be Mariano Rivera and Hideki Matsui. And they did. Brightly. Now I can get back to posts about theology and apologetics.

Foreshadowing?

2009-10-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

The Angels are up 2-0 against the Red Sox. Read that sentence again and let it sink in. I don't believe it half of the time myself. But whether I'm dreaming or wide awake, I wore my too-red-to-be-seen-in-the-Ukrainian-public Angel shirt today to celebrate. While walking down the street with the aforementioned shirt exposed, I saw Sergei, the Academic Dean of KTS, coming from the opposite direction. As he approached, I noticed that he was wearing his New York Yankees hat. As soon as he recognized me, he, without hesitation and with a look of trepidation, turned his hat backwards. Hmmm. Was it in jest, or are Yankee fans the world over shaking in their boots at the prospect of facing us in the ALCS?

With a Spring in My Step

2009-09-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (still the dumbest decision in baseball naming history), won the American League Western Division by shutting out the hated Texas Rangers by a pleasant margin of 11-0. That makes 6 playoff appearances in the last 8 years. Awesome! The only problem is that, if the Angels happen to finally defeat the Red Sox this year, my busiest 3 weeks of the semester are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weeks of October. I'll be extra sleep deprived if the Angels make it to the league championship. But I can sleep in November, right?

Bills, Banks and Benevolence

2009-09-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

We've been back in Ukraine for a little over a month and I'm not quite used to all of the routines yet. For instance, bills are due on the 20th of the month. The bills come in the mail between the 5th and the 10th and then you have until the 20th to figure out how much you owe (you fill out the water and electricity bill yourself) and then get to a pay place and do so. You can pay at most banks, at the post office, at some automated bill pay machines and, allegedly, online. Obviously, paying online or at an automated machine is very modernized. It's too modernized for us, in fact; we go to the bank.

Anyway, as you could guess, if you pay your bills at a counter of some kind and do so on the 15th, the lines will be fairly short. If you wait until the 19th or the 20th, the lines are much longer. If the 20th falls on a Sunday, when the post office and all banks are closed, then all the people who wait until the 20th to pay are in line with all of the people who wait until the 19th to pay and it's torturously long. Our routine is to pay on the 16th or 17th but, since I'm not yet back into the routine, I didn't put 2 and 2 together until this morning and had to rush to arrange all the paperwork and get to the bank, with a myriad of others.

Now, we usually go to one particular bank that charges a very small fee for bill processing (25 cents or something like that). This guarantees a shorter line. Additionally, this bank will process our internet bill, which some banks and the post office will not process. Unfortunately, this bank isn't open on Saturdays like it was a year ago. So, I was forced to go to a bank with a longer line and, as far as I remembered, did not take our internet bill. However, as I was standing in line I noticed that other people were holding their internet bills in their hands from our very same internet company. How cool! I'd still be able to pay all the bills at once and, since I waited in a long line, I wouldn't have to pay extra to do so.

Or so I thought. As soon as I got to the counter and handed over the bills, the teller handed me back the internet bill and said something too quickly for me to understand but that communicated that I would not be paying that bill at that place today. I'd have to come back when there was a shorter line or go the internet company and get a new form or something. (When you don't understand, just about everything is a possibility. I wasn't feeling too proud of my language abilities at that point.) Then she said the total for the other bills that I needed to pay. It was clearly higher than it should have been but, with 20-25 people behind me I wasn't about to say anything. I just guessed that, due to the economic crisis or something, all bill pay stations were charging fees now. I gave her a round sum and, being short on change, she had to go get some from her coworker. That gave me time to think about how much more the bills were than they should have been. I was coming up with about $4.50 or so (35-40 hrv.); WAY too much for a processing fee. But again, I didn't want to feel the piercing stares of 20-25 people on they out, so I just exited.

When I got to work (Josie had taken Dietrich to the store; I was not abandoning my family), I messaged a friend to see if my bank-fees-for-all-bills theory was true. It was not. I also called the internet company and asked if they might know why the bank refused to process my bill. They said that I had likely taken the wrong bill to the wrong bank. And that solved a mystery. We received 2 internet bills that looked identical. We could not discern a difference between them and so I tossed one—like a dummy—and took the other with me to the bank. And, in fact, I had tried to pay the УкрСиббанк bill at Ощадбанк. I asked where the nearest УкрСиббанк was located and, on my way home from work I tried to pay the internet bill there but, of course, it was closed on Saturdays. So I went home with an unpaid bill and a $4.50 less than than I should have come home with. Telling myself that I was making a contribution to a struggling economy provided no real solace.

Josie got home a few minutes after I did and she could tell I was down. She asked what was wrong and I told her that I'd tell her in a minute, after I had finished catching up on her brother's Los Angeles Angels blog. I was trying to lighten my spirits but I was too disappointed with myself. I started to tell the story with even more boring details than you've just read.

And then it happened. The bank called, right in the middle of my story, and told me that they had charged me twice for one of the bills. If I could come back to the bank in the next 10 minutes (before they closed) then they'd give me my money back. Unbelievable. Not only did they stop my quick slide into depression, they showed me that they care enough about the hundreds of people that pour into their bank every day to follow up. If I were them, I MYSELF might have considered the mistake as a contribution to the struggling economy. But they not only caught the error; they corrected the error. I'm a much happier person now. I've got $4.50 in my pocket and more hope for Ukraine's business future. Happy Saturday.

If Your Last Name Starts With a P ...

2009-09-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

... you might want to stay away from baseball altogether.

In the last few years, I've posted once (about Dustin Pedroia) or twice about bad character on the field. There was another incident last night involving Jorge Posada of the Yankees. And while I've not yet written about him, A.J. Pierzynski of the White Sox carries quite the negative reputation (in spite of the fact that he thinks that's cool).

Pierzynski, Pedroia, Posada. Not a good sign.

So I say to all of the young Johnny Pattersons and Nate Phillips out there, play dodgeball instead.

Too Good Not To Share

2009-09-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

Theologians love definitions. We love them because developing them allows us to take large amounts of data and sum it all up in a sentence or three. When you're dealing with a field as diverse as theology (or, more broadly, religion) definitions can be very helpful.

Apologists (who should be considered a type of theologian), also love definitions. I would say that of all of the proper apologetics texts that I've read, every other contained a definition of the discipline. These are particularly helpful because an author's definition will reveal his understanding of the apologetic task. I've not even written an apologetics text and I have my own definition. Here it is ...

"Christian apologetics is the theological discipline aimed at establishing philosophical foundations for the Christian faith. In addition, and more popularly, it provides evidences for Christianity, answers questions about Christianity and confronts objections raised against Christianity. Apologetics is also involved in the evaluation of worldviews, primarily providing support for the Christian worldview. Finally, apologetics seeks to strengthen the faith of believers through all of the above tasks. In all that it does, apologetics has as its goal the glorification of God by showing the rationality, evidence, coherence and superiority of Christianity."

But that is not what I want to share. A few months ago I suggested that you check out Doug Groothuis' blog. Well, he just wrote a short post on apologetics that hits the nail on the head as far as the kind of character that any apologist—and we are all apologists—should exhibit. In the course of the post Dr. Groothuis gives a less specific, but much more poetic and persuasive definition of apologetics. This is what I want to share. It's really, really good. Read it and then get off your keister and do you some apologetics!

"Our job is to faithfully give the best arguments possible from the purest heart possible."

You Know Your Clothes Are Inauthentic When...

2009-09-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

During a particularly busy and stressful day, while walking home for lunch, I followed a guy across the street whose shirt said the following:

I ased to do a feshi on Vicris
Llow I only wear armani

My day was much better after that.

Fast Food Fantasies

2009-09-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

Ten months in America turned Dietrich into a lover of fast food, just like his dad. I cherished the opportunities to take Dietrich to Der Wienerschnitzel or Hot Dog On a Stick for a delicious corn dog. And we couldn't go for very many days in a row without being asked if we were going to have french fries with a meal. (All of this, by the way, is tough to reconcile with Josie's growing infatuation with Michael Pollan and his campaign against the not-food food items that we regularly consume.) I'd call us junkies, but we live in Ukraine where there is one, and only one, American-style fast food option and we try to limit our visits. Maybe you could call us American fast food junkies in absentia.

The real proof of this comes from conversions with Dietrich that go something like this:

Dad: Dietrich, what would you like to have for dinner?

Dietrich: Ummm, I wanna corn dog and fren fwies.

Dad: Well, Dietrich, we're in Ukraine now and they don't have corn dogs here. But we're going to McDonalds and they have french fries. What would you like with your french fries, a hamburger or nuggets?

Dietrich: I wan nuggits.

Dad: Ok, but are you sure you don't want a hamburger?

Dietrich: No, I no like hambuhguhs. Win I was liddo, I like hambuhguhs. But den, I saw the diesoaun [dinosaur] step onna — pschhhh! — an I no like hambuhguhs any moah.

Some Socio-Political Wisdom

2009-08-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

I was pretty depressed when I got my last issue of Christian History & Biography (the link is to what the magazine has become now that they've moved to a totally electronic format). I've been getting this magazine since I graduated from college and a few years after the start of my subscription I ordered all of the back issues too—it was that good. It came out quarterly, which is a good pace for me. And, since I have some minor psychological issues that require that I read a magazine from cover to cover, the fact that I actually wanted to read CH&B from cover to cover made it the best magazine out there, as far as I was concerned. Farewell, my good friend.

Now it's gone and, for the remainder of my subscription period, the controlling company of CH&B, which is Christianity Today, decided to send me that magazine instead. Now, I'm not against Christianity Today in any way; they're widely read, widely respected and they put out some really good articles. I'm just sayin' that it's not going to fill the void left by the absence of CH&B. The reality that I will not renew the subscription when it runs out is the natural consequence to my lack of passion for it. Sorry guys.

But that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna read the issues that I've received since CH&B bit the dust. I can't just let them go to waste, can I? One of the major problems, however, is that CT comes out monthly, which means that I'm about 8 issues behind. (That explains why I'm commenting on something that's as many months old.) The upside, however, is that I'm getting some good insights into modern issues and events rather than commentary on events that are hundreds, if not thousands of years old. An prime example is a recent article by John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Professor of Theology & Culture at Regent College (and check out his blog here). While written to prepare readers for the November '08 elections, Stackhouse stays general enough to provide long-lasting principles to help us think straight politically and socially. I don't agree with everything he says in the article, and that's fine. We live in too diverse a society with too many choices and issues facing us to find complete agreement with someone, even with fellow believers. But what he says here is something that I think should help us all as we face both present and future social and political realities as committed followers of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

"Jesus once described the world as a field full of both grain and weeds (Matt. 13:37-43). So what should we expect in this weedy world?

We should expect sin. We should expect some politicians to accept graft, and some executives to sell out their companies and shareholders and customers for personal gain. We should expect drunk driving and drug pushing and cartels and sexual assault and stock manipulation and terrorism and a hundred other evils.

Beyond outright sin, we should expect waste. It should not shock us that governments and armies and corporations and schools waste money. It should not shock us that institutions waste people's time and waste people's talents and waste the earth's resources. Indeed, beyond sin and waste, we should expect stupidity and absurdity, vanity and promiscuity. And we should also expect a certain amount of confusion in which it is not always clear what is weed and what is grain ...

All of these negative expectations, however, arise not out of despair, which enervates and immobilizes, but out of both clear-eyed empirical analysis and our own theology, which illuminate and motivate. For our theology, which contains a robust doctrine of sin, includes also robust doctrines of both providence and redemption. God set up institutions to bless us, despite their corruption, and he continues to work through them. God also rules history and aids those who press for greater shalom in those institutions. God is not discouraged by the evil evident in ourselves and our world. He is sad about it, angry at it, and grieved by it, but not discouraged. He works away at it, knowing that his labor is certain to produce fruit. And he has called us to do the same as human beings and as Christians."

"A Variety of Evangelical Politics," Christianity Today, November 2008, p. 55.

Mid-Season Reflections

2009-07-15T21:29:00.001-07:00

The day after Opening Day, I expressed my thoughts about the Angels and their chances this season. I didn't say much because, first of all, the Angels had only 2 of their 5 starting pitchers on the roster (the rest being on the DL). Secondly, my reflections were based on only one game. Not much to go on there. Nonetheless, I was excited but on the fence about whether we could preform well under the particular constraints under which we started the season.

But now it's the All-Star Break and half of the season is over. Here's the negative perspective:

-We still don't have all five starting pitchers healthy.
-Nick Adenhart (a young replacement starter) was killed the night of his first start.
-I'm not sure about now, but for most of this first half, our bullpen has been the worst in baseball.
-Vladdy has spent more time on the DL than not on the DL.
-We've gone 2W-7L against the Rangers, our AL West competitors.

Actually, the last one hurts the most since our ability to perform against the Rangers may determine our playoff chances down the stretch. If you would have forced me to write this email one week ago, it would have been too depressing to read. We had just lost 2 of 3 to Texas and losing that series knocked us out of 1st place and propelled them into that spot. It was terrible and I didn't think that following that performance up with a series against the Yankees was going to help things much. Imagine how excited I was to hear that we were entering the Yankee series with Torii Hunter and Vlad Guerrero on the DL with Juan Rivera joining them the next day!

But now it's time for the positive perspective:

-We swept that series against the Yanks and, with the Rangers losing 2 to Seattle, we entered the Break in 1st place by a game and a half.
-Jered Weaver is pitching up a storm and is carrying our struggling pitching staff.
-The little guys (Izturis, Aybar and Mathis) are making up for the home runs that Vladdy and Bobby Abreu aren't hitting.
-Torii Hunter is going above and beyond what anyone could ever ask of him, providing needed leadership and inspiration on and off the field.
-The Angels have won 5 of the 6 games that I've been able to attend and they've all been pretty exciting.

So, as my beloved Halos enter the 2nd half, I'm hopeful. I'm not sure when or in what condition Vladdy, Hunter and Rivera will return and I always worry that trips to the DL might ultimately mean the end of a season—or career—for a player. But the Yankee series showed that, if the rest of our team has their game on, we can play adequately without them. Our bullpen still needs A LOT of help, but they've settled down somewhat and aren't an exhibition in dismal failure anymore. I'm going to see the Angels play the Athletics in Oakland tomorrow night. That will be my final game before going back to Ukraine. I'm not excited about seeing Ervin Santana pitch but, if the offense is on, I'm not too worried. And even if we lose, they'll still have a winning record on games that I've been able to attend—I can't ask for much more when I'm around for only parts of every 3rd or 4th season. So, as we say goodbye to the first half of the '09 season, I can say, from the depths of my heart and with high hopes for the remainder of the season, "Go Halos!"

Thrill-seeking's in the Blood

2009-07-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

When I was young, my dad used to do some crazy stuff. I have memories of standing on the beach, watching my dad swim away from shore with his face mask and flippers on. He'd swim so far out beyond the waves that I'd no longer be able to see him. I think that's the point at which I'd start crying, thinking that he'd never come back. I also remember outings that involved descending into old mines that I'm sure have been closed off by now as safety hazards.

Well, I wasn't too old when I started to manifest my own thrill-seeking nature by climbing dangerously high into trees, eating live bugs and jumping off of all kinds of things. As a kid, I never felt any need to psychoanalyze it, I just had lots and lots of fun. The thrill of jumping off the roof of our garage just never got old, EVER!

But now I have an almost-3-year-old. Everything that I do is lodged into my son's memory. If I say it, he might say it. If I do it, he might do it. I'm almost to the point where I believe that if I think it, he'll think it. Needless to say, as a parent, you have to be cautious about what you do. That, combined with the fact that my knees are 35 years old—25 years older than at peak roof-jumping time—and I don't find myself jumping off of too many things anymore. If Dietrich doesn't see his daddy jump off of stuff, maybe he won't feel the need to jump off of stuff.

Wrong-O, buddy bean! Dietrich jumps off of everything. Everything that we'll let him jump from, that is. It proved to be solidly part of his daily routine about 6 months ago and there isn't much that we can do about it, except mildly monitor and, when it's not too out of control, enjoy it. Oh, and there's one more thing that we (read, "I") can do. I can join in the fun! As noted, my knees aren't what they used to be, but I can out-jump Dietrich, for now. So, here's me and him indulging at a park while visiting the younger Martins in Camas, WA, in April:

On that same trip, Dietrich did had a lot of fun with Nels and Willem. One of their thrill-seekingest moments was this tire swing at another of Camas' great little parks:

The fun continued once we were settled back in Morgan Hill, CA, at Josie's parents' place. A short-lived joy was cruising down the driveway—driveways are quite long on a 3-acre farm—on daddy's 1967 Honda CT-90, named Vanguard. Dietrich thinks that Vanguard's motor is a little too loud, so he didn't want to get anywhere near it while it was running. But he loved to sit on it while it wasn't. And, as it turns out, he loved coasting down the driveway on Vanguard with daddy holding him. Here's 2 great shots of that fun:

But notice that a lot of the verbs in the previous paragraph are in the past tense. Dietrich "loved," not "Dietrich loves." That's because there is a flip side to the thrill-seeking lifestyle. The danger is accompanied by the pain of accidents. And the accidents can be traumatic enough to keep us from retravelling some avenues of thrill-seeking. On what would prove to be our final ride, a car was coming up the driveway as we were coming down. I put on the brakes and the combo of only having one hand on the handlebars—the other hand being on Dietrich—and being on a particularly gravelly part of the driveway resulted in us tipping over. Dietrich got a nice scrape on his ankle but was fine otherwise, physically. Psychologically however, he's done with the motorcycle or, as he calls it, "da muh-kah-duh." In retrospect, he's much too young to go on actual motorcycle rides with the engine running so, maybe this incident was meant to keep him from wanting to move from the engine-off stage of riding to the engine-on stage. We wouldn't have stepped it up to that level and much frustration would have ensued. Still, the powerful memory of that accident lingers as a reminder that thrill-seeking has potentially painful consequences.

But the incident at the Splash Zone of Gilroy Gardens was the topper. We discovered Gilroy Gardens in early June and, since Dietrich loved it and it's only a 20-minute drive away, we upgraded our one-day admission to a membership and have been back about 10 times since. About 4 of the first 5 of those visits involved a trip to the Splash Zone. What a great way for a kid to spend part of his day! I remember when all I had available were the sprinklers in the front yard. Here's Dietrich busting through a geyser, an action that causes him to scream with delight:

But then it happened. On what would prove to be his final visit to the Splash Zone, Dietrich was running full speed at the same geyser pictured above while a kid not much older than him—but twice his size—came running full speed from the opposite direction. Right on top of the geyser, the 2 of them collided, sending Dietrich falling backwards right onto the back of his head. "Smack!" You could tell it was gonna be a doozy and it was. We had to keep a close eye on him for the rest of the day and it seemed like it took a few days before he was his fearless, thrill-seeking self again. But, due to the memory of shock, pain and disappointment, Dietrich has closed this avenue of excitement for himself. The only time he's ever seemed interested in returning to the Splash Zone was when I offhandedly commented that he needed a Splash Zone helmet. Unfortunately, there's no such thing and I'm afraid that all I did was add to the disappointment by mentioning the mere possibility.

So, Dietrich certainly is an adventurous little tike. It's fun to watch him have a blast discovering new ways to exhilarate himself and to occasionally join in the fun. But he's had some hard lessons in the last few weeks about the downside to thrill-seeking. It's hard to watch the tears fall when the living out of the Oldenburg nature leads to the accidents that accompany that nature.

Another Book and Another Blog

2009-07-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

A few months back I made mention of J.P. Moreland's newest book, The God Question. I ended up making time for it much sooner than I expected to and just finished it last night. I confirm and multiply the force of everything I said here. This is the book to start with if you've not dabbled much in apologetics or Christian philosophy before now. I remember giving a friend J.P.'s Scaling the Secular City as a gift, like 15 years ago, or so, and he still hasn't read it. He says it's too much for him. If The God Question was out back then, I would've given it instead.

Interestingly, when I was about half way through the book, I came across Doug Groothuis' brand new blog (which is actually the blog for Denver Seminary's Christian Thought division—but only Groothuis has posted, so far). I was checking out Ph.D. programs (which they, unfortunately, don't have) when I found the blog and I didn't exit until I'd read everything there. Groothuis, like Moreland, is as sharp as a Ginsu, offering perceptive insights on some of today's most pressing issues. Add this to your bookmarks and read it when you can. Groothuis writes at a pace more like mine so, don't expect floods of material. But when he does post, expect nothing but the best. One of his posts, fortunately, is a review of Moreland's, The God Question. Thus, instead of writing a bunch myself, I can just link that review and be done. Thanks Professor Groothuis, I think I'll go take a nap.

But before my snooze, I'll leave you—as has become a veritable custom when I've read a book that qualifies—with the review entry for my annotated bibliography of Christian apologetics for The God Question.

"J.P. Moreland, The God Question: An Invitation to a Life of Meaning (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers: 2009).

It would not be outrageous to guess that if a first-rate Christian philosopher—one who has spent two-thirds of his life propounding the deepest aspects of Christianity in professional and academic settings—attempted to present the basics of those aspects to an audience unfamiliar with them, that confusion and misunderstanding would result. Not so with Moreland’s, The God Question. Moreland speaks primarily and directly to the skeptic of Christianity and, secondarily, those believers who have not been introduced to some of the basic issues in Christian philosophy and spirituality. What he’s said in thousands of pages of technical work in the past on arguments for the existence of God, the historical reliability of the New Testament and how to live a life of genuine spirituality and happiness, he says here in just 200 pages of conversational prose. And not only is he able to communicate these complex issues clearly, he does so winsomely, with passionate conviction and genuine concern for those who do not yet know God. This is a book to give to anyone who is interested in the rationality, coherence and meaning of a vibrant life as a disciple of Jesus but who isn’t yet able to plunge into the intellectual deep end of the Christian faith. Reading this book will move that person toward those deep waters, armed with many of the devices necessary for staying afloat as they get there."

A Treasure Trove of New Testament Scholarship

2009-06-20T21:26:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I came across quite an amazing site. It's a blog forum called PrimeTime Jesus. A bunch of Evangelical scholars, including Darrell Bock, Craig Blomberg and Dan Wallace, all contribute regularly about the latest media happenings that concern the New Testament. I've read several blog posts and can say that it's a great place to visit. It's a good way to keep on top of stuff that you'd never know about if someone didn't point it out. One of the most provocative and popular posts is Blomberg's criticism of a recent National Geographic piece. It's wonderful that these guys are making their work public and not keeping it confined to journals and books. Read and be enlightened, edified and encouraged.

In a related note, you should visit the Day of Discovery site. I can't vouch for any of the other programs that DOD puts out, but the Jesus: Man, Messiah or More? series is phenomenal. It has it's cheesy cinematic moments, as most Christian productions do, but the research presented is worth putting up with the cheese. A group of Evangelical scholars, known as the Jesus Group, which includes some who regularly post on PrimeTime Jesus, worked together for a decade, defending the historicity of the portrait of Jesus that's found in the Gospels against the many critical portraits that have arisen in recent decades. (And because I must, I'll note that the Jesus Group includes Mike Wilkins, Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Dean of the Faculty at Talbot School of Theology.) Each of the 8 shows are filmed in Israel, so it's much more exciting than just reading words on a page. Check it out if you get the chance.

Hmm, How Should I Put This?

2009-06-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

On the recommendation of a friend, I just finished reading a little book called Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists, by Collin Hansen. Hansen is an editor at large for Christianity Today and, as far as the major objective of the book is concerned, he did a fabulous job. He not only tracked down and interviewed some key figures in the so-called New Calvinism, like Al Mohler, John Piper and Mark Driscoll. Hansen also brought out the more representative views of some "laypeople" in the movement, as well. I was really excited to hear about the birth of thriving Evangelical Churches and the growth of solidly Evangelical seminaries all around the US. To read about thousands of young adults worshipping God, being passionate about theology and having a passion for evangelism and missions brings joy to the heart.

But I couldn't quite get as excited about the fact that most people cited in the book seemed to be as excited about Reformed theology/Calvinism as they were about their faith and about Scripture ("I've been saved for a while but I wasn't on fire for the Lord until I became a Calvinist," and "I read Scripture but it didn't make sense until I read it Calvinistically," are paraphrases of common comments found throughout the book). Granted, when you are able to make sense of something as huge as Christianity, you will be excited within the boundaries of the system that helps you make sense of it. Reformed theology in general, and Calvinism in particular, are pretty extensive in scope and can answer a lot of questions. So I understand the excitement to a point. But the author spun the data in such a way as to give the impression that Reformed theology/Calvinism is the great, undiscovered key to the future of Evangelicalism. This is how the Church will weather the storms of relativism and postmoderism. This is how the Church will reach this culture as well as others. I'm sorry, but I just don't think the Kingdom of God is limited to one denomination or theological system.

To be fair to the author's main point and to the gist of most comments, the bottom line of the conversation was God and His grace. But that is why I still feel so unsettled when reflecting on the book. Why do I still feel like I'm supposed to have a greater passion for Jonathan Edwards than for Augustine, Anslem or Aquinas? He's great, but he's not the only dead theologian that should inspire us. Why do I still feel like I should consider the recent explosion of Reformed theology/Calvinism as a theological resurrection from the dead? Reformed theology/Calvinism was never dead; I've known groups as passionate as any in the book for as long as I've been a Christian. I guess I just think that Hansen made this aspect of his case a little too strongly.

I'm going to close with a quote from the book that conveys a postion that I think gives a better tone than most of what is found therein. And it comes from an amazing New Testament scholar who is highly respected and who is providing the world with outstanding Evangelical theology and exegesis. If I were to call myself a Calvinist, I'd resonate with these following comments from Tom Schreiner:

"If a church asked me, 'Are you a Calvinist?' I'd say, "Yes, but I don't use the word Calvinism. I teach what Scripture says, and I explain it in terms of biblical theology, what the Bible as a whole is teaching, the framework of Scripture. That's what I want to teach this congregation. I want this church not to be a Calvinistic church but a biblical church. Now I think there's a lot of overlap there biblically. But we're not indebted to John Calvin; we're indebted to the Scriptures at the end of the day." (p. 85)

Thanks, Tom. May your tribe increase!

Such Reminders Are Never Out of Date

2009-06-11T21:43:00.000-07:00

I know the murder of abortion doctor, George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas is now several weeks past and is no longer headline news, but just in case you haven't come across Al Mohler's commentary on it, I wanted you to know about it. Sure, I probably wouldn't have pointed it out if Mohler hadn't turned it into an discussion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (my son's and this blog's namesake), but his point is clear, well-argued and worth reminding everyone, lest anyone get the idea that murder is the right way to respond to murder.

"A" for Effort, "H"ilarious for Achievement

2009-05-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

Driving home on Monday night, Dietrich (2 yrs., 8 mos.) and I listened to the Angels-Mariners game. About mid-game, with Chone Figgins at the plate, this is what most people heard ...

"Two balls and two strikes to Figgy."

In his continuing, wholehearted effort to figure out the ins and outs of baseball, this is how Dietrich processed and repeated the above call ...

"Two balls and a piggy!"

Clearly I have some more educating to do.

Making Relationships Work

2009-04-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia gave an excellent Veritas Forum lecture on how to have a happy marriage. Wilcox is a Christian but all of the advice he offers comes from current sociological research and not from the Bible or Christian teaching. Not surprisingly, the research turns out to be very supportive of a general Christian worldview. Wilcox is not the most gifted speaker and he annoyingly begins every answer in the Q & A session with, "That's a good question" (20 times in 20 minutes is way too much). The quality of the audio is also horrible but, in spite of all of these drawbacks, the following points give some needed direction for those who are dating as well as to those already married.

The "Dos" and "Don'ts" of Dating

1. Don't cohabit, or have casual sex.
2. Don't put off marriage.
3. Don't rely on "chemistry."
4. Don't marry a stonewaller or a nagger.

1. Do look for commitment.
2. Do look for a virtuous man or woman.
3. Do rely on the advice of friends and family.
4. Do seek out someone of a common faith.

The "Dos and Don'ts of Marriage

1. Don't seek a 50/50 marriage.
2. Don't be unfair or selfish.
3. Don't be intimate with members of the opposite sex who aren't your spouse.

1. Do strive for emotional engagement.
2. Do appreciate complementarity.
3. Do have friends who share your faith commitments.

Saying Goodbye to Hitchens

2009-04-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I picked up, Is Christianity Good for the World? A Debate, at the Hitchens-Craig debate last weekend. Hitchens' sparring partner in this little book is Douglas Wilson, a Christian pastor and prolific author. I can say that Wilson played the Hitchens game magnificently. He didn't let Hitchens get away with much and he didn't stick to a predetermined set of arguments the way Craig did in the debate (this is not a strong criticism of Craig, I just thought Craig could have come down a few notches to engage Hitchens on his terms). Wilson was forceful when he needed to be, humorous at all the appropriate times and he pushed Hitchens to answer questions that he couldn't. Since the two of them continue to appear together in various venues, it seems that Hitchens doesn't mind it when Christians take the gloves off. And not to make it sound like Wilson set his Christian love aside, he did clearly and winsomely invite Hitchens to consider Christianity as the best way to ground the truth and morality that he so clearly values. Here's one of my favorite (more pointed) moments in the book ...

"Christopher Hitchens argues carefully, but given atheism, I want him to justify his use of reason. If there is no God, what is truth? Christopher Hitchens displays great moral indignation, but, given atheism, I want him to justify that indignation. If there is no God, then who cares? And Christopher Hitchens writes as a very careful wordsmith, but given atheism, I want him to justify his vibrant and engaging prose. If there is no God, then yammer, yamber, yaw&^% ..." (p. 19)

But now I've interacted with Hitchens in three different ways (book, public debate and print debate) and I can safely say that I'm familiar with his thoughts and his style. He hates religion vehemently, he is extremely and offensively pejorative in print, kind but condescending in public and he has a wide—but limited—array talking points that he thinks no one can counter. He presents his talking points with an indiscernible order and doesn't seem to listen when those talking points are rebutted. He also rarely answers direct philosophical questions that are asked of him by the other side. He does offer evidence that the thoughtful Christian should consider but I don't think any of it is strong enough to raise any serious doubts about the Christian faith. So, I'm saying goodbye to Hitchens and will turn my attention to other philosophical and theological concerns. I'll close with the review entry for my annotated bibliography of Christian apologetics.

"Christopher Hitchens & Douglas Wilson, Is Christianity Good for the World? A Debate, Foreword by Jonah Goldberg (Moscow, ID: Canonpress, 2008).

As a key, if not the major player in the New Atheism movement, Christopher Hitchens and his influential ideas deserve to be engaged at many levels and in many formats. Fortunately, Hitchens is quite eager to participate in any and every format in order to promote the negative answer to the question posed in this book. Douglas Wilson argues the positive answer to the question, although neither of them stick to the point very consistently throughout the debate. Part of the problem is that Hitchens’ broader agenda is to vilify religion in general, the major point of his bestseller, god is not Great. Most of the claims he makes to Wilson are restatements of what he’s already said there. The other problem is that Wilson—a presuppositionalist—spends most of his time trying to show the absurdity of Hitchens’ positive statements about truth and morality, given atheism. But these problems show only that the book is poorly titled, not that the dialogue isn’t engaging and provocative (as anything involving Hitchens will be). Wilson carries the day, it seems, because Hitchens isn’t able to adequately answer Wilson’s questions, he merely dismisses them as unnecessary for establishing the basis of truth and morality. Wilson matches Hitchens’ sharp and sometimes biting literary style, not considering it inappropriate to be offensive to someone as offensive as Hitchens. This particular volley will not be the turning point in the broader match between theism and atheism, but it is worthy of consideration as a unique, accessible and witty exchange in the course of the game." (p. 12)

By the way, the conversation continues to rage in the comments of Doug Geivett's blog post about the Hitchens-Craig debate. There are over 100 comments now. Lots of atheists are showing up and Geivett is interacting them brilliantly and kindly.

Early Season Reflections

2009-04-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

Josie, myself and a friend had the privilege of being present for Opening Day at Angel Stadium last night. It's been a while since we've been to a game—baseball is certainly not Ukraine's national past time—and wow, was it great. Not only was it fun to be back at the ballpark, the Angels also played some decent ball and came away with a win. Howie Kendrick had a hot bat, Joe Saunders pitched well for 6 plus innings and, for now, one day into the season, all is as it should be with my Halos. Hmmm, can we stop the season now, before we run out of healthy pitchers?

From Another (Read: Better) Angle

2009-04-06T23:20:00.000-07:00

A while ago, after his visit to Kyiv, I recommended Doug Geivett's blog. Here's another recommendation for the same thing. Only this time, I'm recommending particularly his response to the Craig-Hitchens debate from Saturday night. I've given my thoughts in the comments to this post, but Dr. Geivett's thoughts are those of a trained philosopher. Obviously they carry a weight of authority that my thoughts don't. Not only that, he made some observations that I missed. If I were a trained philosopher, maybe I wouldn't have. It's just so tough down here in the minors! In any case, read and enjoy a real philosopher's take on the philosophy of this great debate.

Another Reason Not To Be an A's Fan

2009-04-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

Although this news report makes it all sound outrageously funny, it sure would stink to have people driving around your neighborhood with whistle tips on their mufflers. I'm glad that this seems to be contained to Oakland and hasn't made its way to L.A.

The Bubb Rubb News Report

Because it's so comical, people have turned Bubb Rubb into an icon of sorts and have created some remixes that take out the news and leave us with Bubb Rubb in nothing but his woo-wooing glory.

A Bubb Rubb Remix

And if that wasn't enough, somebody made us a Bubb Rubb-Dukes of Hazzard clip that will leave your sides aching. I know that technology has too large of a role in our society but, with stuff like this coming out, it's hard not to overindulge.

The Bubb Rubb-Dukes of Hazzard Episode

Date and Debate Night or What Kind of a Guy is Christopher Hitchens?

2009-04-03T22:59:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night Josie, myself and another couple are going to dinner and then to a debate between William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens at Biola University. Josie has been referring to it as "Date and Debate" for weeks, which brings a little levity to what could be a rough night. I say that because I just finished Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and I'm having a hard time believing that Hitchens is going to be able to behave civilly in a room with 2000 Evangelical Christians. I'll list just three general thoughts that lead me to belive that, if I were to meet Hitchens at a party, I'd reconsider whether or not I wanted to be there.

1. How not to win friends and influence people (The personal problems)
I can't say that I was ever bored while reading the book and I have no criticisms of Hitchens as a wordsmith. But, if I was trying to convert people away from religion and to an atheistic-humanistic secularism, I sure wouldn't call those I was trying to win over "stupid/moronic/backwards/repressive/oppressive/evil" on every page of my book. There are plenty of Christians who have to learn this lesson also but, as Hitchens is one of today's leading atheists, he should be able to reach out a little more and keep the ad hominems to a minimum. I've heard and read many William Lane Craig debates and can say that this will not be a problem for him. Evangelicalism doesn't have too many more winsome than Craig.

2. Is everything on the table? (The factual problems)
Gary Habermas of Liberty University addresses these issues much more thoroughly and effectively in a recent article for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, so I don't need to do it here. Nevertheless, Hitchens makes some claims that, on their face, are so outrageously false (or misrepresentative) that I couldn't help but wonder about the truthfulness of the claims of which I didn't have any firsthand knowledge.

a. Hitchens says, "The contradictions and illiteracies of the New Testament have filled up many books by eminent scholars, and have never been explained by any Christian authority except in the feeblest terms of 'metaphor' and 'a Christ of faith.'" (p. 115) This claim can only come from someone who didn't actually ask any of Christianity's own "eminent scholars" for such explanations. My personal library alone—small as it is—has enough in it to provide reasonable answers to any of the claims that Hitchens raises in God is Not Great. I hope the general public is more investigative than he when asking serious questions about Christianity.

b. In a debate about the Resurrection of Jesus, the then-atheist Anthony Flew (who has recently renounced atheism for deism) made essentially the same following point as Hitchens. The latter phrased it this way, "exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence." (p. 143) I'm still thinking this through epistemologically, but I think I want to say that, depending on the claim, we don't necessarily need more evidence than is available, we just need the best possible explanation of the facts at hand. Hitchens says that the evidence for the Resurrection doesn't have nearly the evidence needed to justify belief in it. For a 2000-year-old event, the are quite a few known facts surrounding Jesus' supposed death, burial and the subsequent empty tomb. The issue is, given the facts at hand, whether or not the Resurrection is the best possible explanation. Hitchens is not off the hook by saying that there isn't enough evidence; he needs to offer an explanation of the facts that are there. Until he's done that, his dismissal of the case for the Resurrection is unwarranted. (My library also has plenty of material that offer reasonable explanations for the Resurrection of Jesus. Hitchens apparently didn't look at any of them either.)

c. After de-religionizing Martin Luther King, Jr., Hitchens makes the following claim about why it took so long to overcome slavery and racism in the United States, "The chance that someone's religious belief would cause him or her to take a stand against slavery and racism was statistically quite small. But the chance that someone's religious belief would cause him or her to uphold slavery and racism was statistically extremely high." (p. 180) It was, by Hitchens' telling, only once America became secular enough that it was able to eradicate slavery and marginalize racism. But given the Christian heritage of the U.S. and the robust possibility, logical consistency and modern reality of opposition to slavery and racism from a Christian worldview, Hitchens' claim falls flat. Supposed biblical justifications for slavery and racism have proved to be based on misunderstandings of the Bible rather than accurate reflections of Its teachings. Mistaking failures by those of a religious system for faults in the religion itself rarely leads to the proper conclusions.

3. Are we talking about apples or oranges? (The methodological problems)
Hitchens' main point is that all religion is bad. But, as he proceeds to make his case throughout 19 distinct chapters, he seems to jump to whatever point on the religious map he needs to in order to come up with a particular conclusion. One chapter will focus on Judaism and Hinduism while another will highlight Mormonism and Buddhism with the next honing in on Christianity and Islam. And he will talk of atrocities from a 3000-year-old incident in the same breath as a something from today's headlines. It's as though all religions are the same in the end and that any apparent differences in worldview are secondary to the fact that they all harm and hinder. It's a kind of reverse religious pluralism where, instead of all religions leading to God, all religions lead to evil. But if you are going to take religions seriously, you have to factor in the distinctives of each and how those distinctives disallow a melting pot approach to God (either positively or negatively). I'm not going to encourage Hitchens to write another book but, I think this one would have been more effective if he would have treated each religion individually and attempted to disprove each one. By loosely lumping them all together and not specifying his assaults he leaves gaping holes in his argument and his premise far from proven.

I'm on the side of religion so, of course, I'm not going to praise Hitchens for his work. He's made me think about some things but, more than that, he's upheld my confidence in the coherence, veracity and beauty of Christianity. I'm sure this wasn't his goal but I'll thank him anyway. I think the debate will be interesting tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it. But I hope to see a more personable side to Hitchens than I have in God is Not Great. Not because I want his atheism to be more palatable—we score more points when he acts so unbecomingly—but because I want to see some proof that there is some humanity behind his "humanism."

One of the Worst Analogies Ever

2009-03-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

For Christmas, my father-in-law got me half an iPod. After ponying up for the other half, I discovered the wonderful world of podcasts. Veritas Forum's and William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith podcasts are at the top of my list but, thanks to a friend's recommendation, I've discovered the oddly captivating personality of Maxie Burch. Burch is the Associate Pastor for Faith Development at North Phoenix Baptist Church. Holding a PhD in history, he does a lot of teaching at NPBC on Church history and historical theology. He's got about 30 lectures or so on iTunes and I'm slowly working my way through them. He's passionate and brings new perspectives to some old theological questions. And while I reject some of his presuppositions, his take on certain details and some of his conclusions, I welcome his attempts to bring theology to the local Church and to get all believers thinking deeply about their faith and about the God of their faith.

But today he went too far. I was listening to his introductory lecture (because I haven't been doing so in order) when he gave the wise admonition that we should read theology broadly while, at the same time, being discerning about what we appropriate into our own belief systems. I wholeheartedly endorse such an approach to theology but I absolutely reject his analogy:

"Here's my rule of thumb for theology. You do theology like you eat fish. You eat the meat and spit out the bones. Part of the reason for a course like this is, in your own heart and mind, trying to identify for you what the bones are. But it's not a good rule of thumb to never eat for fear that there are bones. There's a lot of good stuff out there to eat, it's just a matter of figuring out how to manage the bones."

Absolutely disgusting! If I did theology like I eat fish, I'd be out of a job. I agree that it's not a good rule of thumb to never eat fish for fear that there are bones. But it is a good rule of thumb to never eat fish since fish are gross. I get his point, of course, but wow, he certainly achieved the opposite objective with me than I'm sure he was intending. Thanks for the advice, Maxie, but, next time, pick a more tasty analogy.

I’ll Have an Order of History, Hold the Theology

2009-03-16T00:27:00.000-07:00

It took me 5 of 7 books, but I finally figured out what makes me uncomfortable about Thomas Cahill. When he sticks to history, which his works primarily address, he is superb. I read him ravenously because of this. But when he delves into theology, his thinking is really convoluted. That’s why I liked his book about Jesus and the New Testament much less than his book about the ancient Greeks. Because the Greeks didn’t believe in the Judeo-Christian God, Cahill didn’t talk much about Christian theology and I could take in the history with curiosity and enjoyment. And his discussions about the theology of the Jews were so broad that he didn’t give himself the opportunity to make any mistakes of particularity. He dealt solely with how the Jews stood out in their ancient near-eastern context and with how they radically changed the world as we know it. And when he wrote about the Irish and how they saved civilization, he rarely brought up theology and focused on how Celtic Christianity upheld culture while the rest of Europe was being deculturalized by the barbarians. Cahill is a superb historian for the uninitiated, like me, but he’s a horrible theologian for the person who knows even just a little bit of theology. That makes him dangerous for the non-theologian since he can so easily lead someone into wrongheaded theological thought.

The book I just finished, The Mystery of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World, fits the above description exactly. It’s a book about the influence that the Middle Ages have had on western culture, and you can’t do that without discussing theology a great deal. Again, his history is great, especially when he is talking about all of the things that our culture has that it wouldn’t if there had been no middle ages. He helps to correct the popular belief that the Church was only evil during these times and that the western world would have reached enlightenment sooner if those angry, conservative, fundamentalistic, repressive and anti-intellectual Christians hadn’t been in charge of things. What Francis of Assisi did for social justice, what Hildegard of Bingen did for women’s spiritual equality, what Dante did for public moral discourse, and what Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon did for science are all trumpeted boldly in this work. For these things Cahill is to be praised and the book should be (and has been) widely read.

But Cahill makes theological blunders that devalue the work significantly. I’m not a historical theologian but I play one on TV (actually, depending on how the chips fall, I may try to get a PhD in historical theology which would give me a bit more authority here). That being the case, I know enough to say that if you put Peter Abelard on a scale with Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm is going to carry more historical weight. I’m not saying that Abelard is insignificant, I’m just saying that if you’re going to give him 50 pages of press, you’d better at least mention Anselm. Anselm’s work on the atoning death of Christ revolutionized the discussion and planted the seeds for the revolution of the Reformation. And his ontological argument for the existence of God has been discussed for close to a millennium. Abelard’s work was discussed greatly for several centuries but he is now remembered more for his tragic romance with Héloïse than for his theological contributions. Cahill’s perspective leads to the exact opposite conclusion.

Another theologically atrocious claim by Cahill, also made in his discussions of Abelard, concerns the current debate about the doctrine of the atonement. I’ll let him speak for himself here:

“And though the idea that Christ died to repay his Father for human sin is still a favorite theory of many (especially evangelical) Christians, it is a doctrine no one can make logical sense of, for, like the Calvinist theory of Election, it necessitates a sort of voraciously pagan Father God steeped in cruelty and, in the case of Jesus’s horrific death, his son’s blood.” (p. 199)

This little chunk of text is filled with enough theological confusion to write an essay on, let alone a simple paragraph, but I’ll stay short. First, to compare the Calvinist theory of election to the penal substitutionary view of the atonement is laughable. The latter is embraced by evangelicals of all shapes and sizes, while the former is limited to a particular theological system. Secondly, thousands of pages have been written in just the past few decades on such a view of the atonement and they have quite ably “made logical sense” of it. Here’s just one example. Finally, to say that such a view “necessitates a sort of voraciously pagan Father God …” can only come from someone who hasn’t thought about the doctrine all that much. To make the claims Cahill does without at all mentioning the holiness of God and what sin’s violation of it might require for man’s reconciliation is theologically shallow, unfortunate and irresponsible.

So, while I recommend Cahill’s newest book highly, just like his others, I do so with the strongest of theological cautions. His history is intriguing, as always. He’s got great new stuff on some well-known historical figures and he introduces the reader to some lesser-known folks that we should be aware of. But don’t buy his theology. It’s not only misrepresentative in certain historical respects, it’s misleading as far as the Christian worldview is concerned. Feast on the historical meat but go somewhere else for your theological dessert.

Do Politics and Theology Mix?

2009-03-11T16:01:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite political commentators, Hugh Hewitt, and one of my favorite philosopher-theologians, J.P. Moreland, answer the above question with an absolute affirmative here.

The occassion for the interview is J.P.'s new book, The God Question: An Invitation to a Life of Meaning. I have 5 or 6 J.P. books that I want to read already so, I was prepared to skip this one, since I already have other books that touch on the issue. But, in reading J.P.'s rationale for the book and a brief description, I've changed my mind and want to read it tomorrow. I won't, but I will add it to my list. This is more than just a philosophical exercise or an anthology of apologetic arguements for the existence of God. It's much more than that and it's a book that I can recommend even without having read it.

Back to the interview, I hope that all of us take more seriously our obligation to participate in the political process and heed J.P.'s instruction to think much more deeply about and integrate more effectively our theology and politics.

What Does My Son Want To Be When He Grows Up?

2009-02-25T22:03:00.000-08:00

For the past few weeks, Dietrich has been singing a really sweet little prayer song that goes like this:

We thank You, Lord
We thank You, Lord
We thank You, Lord, this day.
Amen.

At first, it didn't sound all that clear or on key, coming from a two and a half year old. As he began to sing it more and more, however, we got more and more curious about how the song actually goes. We just assumed that he learned it in the Church nursery where he spends about 6 hours a week, so we began to ask the various teachers and leaders about it.

No one has ever heard of this song!

So now we are beginning to wonder if our tiny little guy has composed his first worship tune. Pretty amazing, if true. Might he grow up to be a worship leader?

Please comment if you've seen or heard a song that looks at all like this one. Because we still have no confirmation on the words, and because he's only singing it slightly clearer than when he started, something in the ballpark might have been his inspiration. Not that we don't think Dietrich is capable of creating worship music—from the mouth of infants and whatnot—it's just highly unlikely with me as his daddy. My musical inabilites would significantly hinder the positives he got from his mommy.

More Good Stuff from Cahill

2009-02-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Thomas Cahill's Hinges of History series over the last few years and have commented here and here on the second and third books (the post on the third book contains some thoughts on the first book). I'm about to finish the fifth book and, before I write about it, I thought I'd better say a few words about the fourth, which I finished earlier last year.

For those of you who think that I post too infrequently, we're all in the same boat. I am only able to post about 1 in 5 ideas that come to mind and I'm always mad at myself when I finally find the time to post and all the "stored-up" ideas are just get too far out of reach to resurrect. This one's an exception.

The fourth book is, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter, and is about as good as any of the others. I hesitate to say this because, in contrast the other books, the history of the Greeks is filled with a whole lot of depravity and Cahill really accentuates that aspect. So, if you choose to read this one, beware. However, in spite of the depravity, we have a lot more in common with the Greeks than we think we do and it is very enlightening to make some of those realizations. Art, philosophy, history, poetry and politics all took a huge turn toward the recognizable in the centuries before Christ came and much of it at the hand of the Greeks. We can be thankful to them for the skeleton of our form of government and, of course, the kind of robust philosophical life that we value today (or should value) became much more normative in the Greek culture.

But the coolest observation that Cahill makes has to do with the mix of the Greco-Roman culture with the Judeo-Christian culture. His words give substance to the Christian claim that the idea of God, revealed to Israel and revealed in Jesus Christ, is revolutionary. This world should not be and is not the same with the advent of our one true religion. Cahill doesn't necessarily believe in Christian exclusivity, but his words sure do support Her uniqueness. And Her uniqueness points to Her authenticity.

"For the most part, in the union of Greco-Roman with Judeo-Christian, the Greco-Roman turn of mind combined with Judeo-Christian values. While the outward form of the Western world remained Greco-Roman, its content became gradually Judeo-Christian. The worldview that underlay the New Testament was so different from that of the Greeks and the Romans as to be almost its opposite. It was a worldview that stressed not excellence of public achievement but the adventure of a personal journey with God, a lifetime journey in which a human being was invited to unite himself to God by imitating God's justice and mercy. It was far more individualized than anything the Greeks had ever come up with and stressed the experience of a call, a personal vocation, a unique destiny for each human being. The one God of the Jews had created the world and everyone in it, and God would bring the world to its end. There was no eternal cosmos, circling round and round. Time is real, not cyclical; it does not repeat itself but proceeds forward inexorably, which makes each moment—and the decisions I make each moment—precious. I am not merely an instance of Man, I am this particular, unrepeatable man, who never existed before and will never exist again. I create a real future in the present by what I do now. Whereas fate was central to Greeks and Romans, hope is central to Jews and Christians." (258-259)

May you be filled with that hope today.

Last Year's Top Ten

2009-01-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

I don't have a concrete plan for what books I am going to read for the year. There are 10 plus books that I would like to be reading at any given moment, but I can't handle more than 3 at a time and 2 is preferred. I foolishly think annually, "This is the year that I'm gonna read 50 books!" I'm much to slow of reader for that and I only end up reading about 30 a year. My actual reading options are often narrowed when the seminary schedule is set and I begin to prepare for courses that I'll be teaching. That means that I read other books than those on my general wish list. Clearly, I need to adjust my desired book consumption. My reading life will be less frustrating that way.

Aside from the complaining however, I read some really good stuff last year and I thought I'd share a little about each. They are in a completely random order — I don't dare try to say that any modern author will have the justified longevity of Anslem, yet I enjoyed some of these books more than his. And I don't fully agree with all of the authors on everything either — it's often a perspective other than your own that will cause you to think the most. But I'd recommend each of these books to just about anyone because they will make you think more deeply about your faith, your beliefs, your God and His Word.

John R.W. Stott, Baptism and Fullness: The Work of the Holy Spirit Today
I've known about this book and had it on my shelf for years. I somehow escaped my Christian university and seminary education without it being assigned to me when most of my fellow students had to read it. I always looked at it and said, "Can it really be that good, it's not much more than 100 pages?" The answer is yes. Stott nails the heart of the evangelical view of Spirit baptism and presents it in a winsome and Scripturally faithful manner. Even though I was preparing to teach pneumatology, I was going to skip it this time 'round but, being sent on a major errand, I grabbed it and read the first third on public transportation. I was done a few days later, embarrassed that I'd neglected it for so long, rejoicing in all of the clarity Stott brought to the issue and praising God for the His presence with us in the Holy Spirit.

John H. Walton, Genesis, NIV Application Commentary
This is not your standard commentary on Genesis. See my comments here.

Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
Schreiner is an excellent scholar and is able to dig as deeply into the exegetical and theological issues as necessary to draw out the meaning of Paul's words to the Church in Rome and their meaning for us today. He handles the issues associated with the Law (and hence, the New Perspective on Paul), the flesh/Spirit controversy and the issues of how weaker and stronger Christians ought to relate to each other in a superb manner. You'll come away with a deeper appreciation for the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, having read this commentary.

Craig J. Hazen, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach To a Reasonable Faith
No, I didn't only read this because Hazen is a friend and directs the M.A. program from which I received a degree, but those were major factors. I did read this because I think we need many more authors doing apologetics though fiction. Hazen succeeds in providing a compelling and unique story that teaches the importance of sharpening the intellect and living out your faith. I'm proud of him and hope that he inspires more apologists and theologians to follow in his steps.

Kenneth Berding, What Are Spiritual Gifts? Rethinking the Conventional View
Unless you are prepared to abandon your current view of spiritual gifts in light of Berding's thorough reexamination of the Biblical evidence, do not read this book. His research is complete and his presentation winsome as he draws the reader to a more faithful understanding of Scripture's teaching on spiritual gifts. The main point is that the Holy Spirit is in total control of empowering His people to serve; we are not automatically given a "talent/ability" and then left with the responsibility of discovering and using that "talent/ability." Rather, every "ministry assignment" is Spirit-directed and we humbly do that which the Spirit leads us to do, regardless of whether we tested well for it on our spiritual gift test.

Graham A. Cole, Engaging with the Holy Spirit: Real Questions, Practical Answers
It was hard to choose this book over Cole's larger work on the Spirit, He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which was outstanding. I'm recommending this 150-pager in hopes that you might be more inclined to read it (He Who Gives Life is 350 pages). Also, it is more focused. Cole tackles 6 major questions about the Holy Spirit, most of them stemming from the various actions that we read about in the New Testament that can be committed against Him; what does it mean to grieve, quench, resist, blaspheme against the Spirit? You'll come away with clear answers to these questions and some strong exhortation not to commit them. In addition to the practicality of the book, Cole lays out and follows a consistent and solid theological method that systematizes the work very well.

Anselm of Canterbury, Why the God-man?
I read this book early on in my seminary training and remember being pretty impressed by it. Since I was assigning it to my students last spring, I thought I'd better refresh my memory as to its contents. I'd forgotten just how good it is. I want to read it again just thinking about it. If you let yourself forgive Anselm for indulging in certain 11th century Catholic minutia, you'll be overwhelmed by His ability to plum the depths of the necessity of the Incarnation. Were there no sin, I'd owe God my total obedience as His creature. Enter sin. Now I owe God my total obedience as His creature and an infinite debt for having transgressed His infinite holiness. Only Someone Who was fully God and fully man could do anything about that. And since Jesus Christ was such a God-man, He is able to satisfy not just my total obedience and infinite debt, but the obedience and debt of any who come to Him. Beautiful.

D.A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil
Carson clearly states that this book is not an attempt to answer the philosophical problems of evil nor is it a book to help someone who is going through tremendous suffering. Its goal is to help Christians formulate a coherent Biblical framework for processing evil and suffering so that, when suffering comes, we are as prepared as possible and hopefully won't come to unbiblical conclusions based on our experience. The gist is that we need a high, very high, view of God's sovereignty and total trust in Him so that we don't question His goodness or control when things, for us, get out of control. As one who's studied the philosophical problems and has recently experienced some intense sufferings, I'll reject Carson's caveats and say that his perspective is integral to a fully orbed approach to the problem of evil and is, at the same time, extremely useful for the person in the midst of suffering.

Preston Jones, ed., Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism and Christianity
I think anyone and everyone should read this book. See more thoughts here.

C. John Collins, Science and Faith: Friends or Foes?
I'm now much more concerned with refuting naturalism than I am about figuring out which creation view is the right one. And although Collins is very clearly an old earth creationist and this book is a solid defense of that perspective, he shares my concern (better to say that I share his). His book is more fundamentally an attempt to show that science and faith are friends, and friends that ultimatley oppose a naturalistic worldview. The whole first section of the book is a discussion of how to approach the science and religion question philosophically — something skipped over or assumed in many books on the subject — and it's the book's most valuable component. A major plus for this book is that it has been translated into Russian. When I taught Science and Religion last spring, I was only allowed to assign 100 pages of reading. Bummer. If I could have assigned 400, I would have given this book to the students without hesitation. As it was, I could only give them the first part. They all found it extremely helpful, or at least that's what they told me.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T21:32:00.001-08:00

I hope that you are all enjoying the wonder of Christmas and are able to reflect on the glory and depth of the Incarnation. In Jesus Christ, our God took on flesh for us and our salvation. Amazing.

For those of you with a more modern ear, I'd like to recommend Sufjan Stevens' "Songs for Christmas" CD set.

Sufjan presents some of his own original Christmas music, which is phenomenal (here's a sample), but he excels in taking many traditional Christian Christmas songs and re-presenting them in new, yea glorious, arrangements. I wasn't able to find many links to these Christmas songs (here's his wonderful rendition of "O Come O Come Emmanuel"), but you'll get a general overview of his style from his renditions of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" (sorry for the cheesy video accompaniment) and "Amazing Grace."

It's already Christmas and you may not want to buy a Christmas album now but, trust me, it's worth it and you will listen to it all year 'round. Merry Christmas to all of you, whether Sufjan is a part of it or not.

Please, Let Them Be There

2008-12-16T20:19:00.000-08:00

I know that life in the Millennial Kingdom will be radically different and indescribably greater than it is now.

And I know that the subsequent New Heavens and the New Earth will be utterly different and infinitely greater still.

But one of the few things that I really hope remains a constant from this life to the next are …

A Beautiful, If Non-Traditional, Advent Moment

2008-12-01T17:13:00.000-08:00

Our Church in Ukraine has, in the past, discussed acknowledging Advent, but has never followed though once that 4th Sunday before Christmas rolls around. Partly, it’s due to a lack of personnel; the inevitable absence of the majority of our leaders around the holidays makes doing anything out of the ordinary quite difficult. Partly, it's due to the simplistic nature of our services; they're always the same and they've never included Advent before, so it's hard to veer into the new now. All that to say, it's been a while since we've been around a Church that celebrates Advent and puts full focus on the Incarnation for a solid month. I've been anticipating this season for a while.

Our NorCal Church is Morgan Hill Presbyterian, and we love It dearly. They've been very welcoming to us since our return 2 months ago and have given us lots of opportunities to be involved in the life of the Church. And, being Presbyterian, they are fully immersed in the Advent tradition, so Sunday was a great start to what will be a great month worshipping our God in response to the gift of His Son. The highlight was the choir's rendition of Of the Father's Love Begotten, one of my most beloved Christian hymns. But we also sang a song entitled, The Love of God, which didn't seem particularly "Adventy" and which I had never heard before. In the middle of the second verse, I found myself wondering, "Why are we singing this when there are so many better and Adventier songs to sing?" When we hit the last verse, I stopped caring. It is so beautiful, capturing both the immensity of God's love and our complete inability to comprehend it's depth that it could have been sung to the tune of a Beatles song and I would have been overcome by it's simple profundity. So, as this Advent season begins, I wish you God's peace and a fresh perspective on God's love from the following words …

Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, tho' stretched from sky to sky.
O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure — The saints' and angels' song.

When You're On, You're On

2008-11-20T20:40:00.000-08:00

On the recommendation of a family member, I recently read Michael Yaconelli's little book, Dangerous Wonder: The Adventure of Childlike Faith. I didn't know quite what to expect. On the one hand, I remember the days when I used to get The Door and the anticipation with which I would read Yaconelli's Back Door columns. They were the most serious pages of a highly non-serious magazine and he could cause you to laugh and think at the same time. On the other hand, I wouldn't have pegged Yaconelli as one who could write a full-length book — he always seemed just a tad too scattered and disconnected to be able to pull that off well. Additionally, the family member who recommended the book has one major theme around which most of what he thinks and reads revolves. In brief, it goes like this: "I love Jesus, but I hate the Church." This sentiment doesn't sit well with me and the increasing frequency with which I am reading and hearing it troubles me. I knew that Yaconelli had to hit on this theme for the book to be on this particular family member's recommendation list. So, with a mixture of expectancy and trepidation, I opened the book.

A glance at the table of contents reveals that some of my concerns were valid. Yaconelli was trying to get the reader's attention with shocking chapter headings and bold statements about what it really means to live a life of faith. Here are the titles, see if you can notice a pattern: dangerous wonder, risky curiosity, wild abandon, daring playfulness, wide-eyed listening, irresponsible passion, happy terror, naïve grace, childlike faith. He seems to have gotten a year's worth of use out of his thesaurus in just coming up with those! And the chapter contents themselves are filled with similarly exaggerated and superfluous statements that don't hold up well under Biblical or theological scrutiny. But, since he likely wasn't writing this as research for a Ph.D. dissertation, I won't fault him too much.

But I do want to credit Yaconelli with hitting the nail on the head with one vitally important point. In context, he is discussing the Gospel of Luke, chapter 7, and John the Baptist's lack of certainty about whether Jesus is really the Promised One that the people of God were supposed to be waiting for. After all of the groundwork that John and his disciples had laid, Jesus' ministry sure seemed to be harvesting mixed fruit. So, with pressure mounting and public opinion turning against this new Jesus movement, he sent some of his own to ask this supposed Messiah what in the world was going on. Here's Yaconelli's brief paraphrase of Jesus' words to a worried John:

"The Jesus who can rescue you is the One you can trust even when you're not rescued." (p. 118)

What a simple but powerfully poignant way to put it! John was eventually imprisoned and beheaded, but he had to trust Jesus anyway. Likewise, Jesus may not rescue us in the ways we think that we ought to be rescued. This doesn't mean that He can't, just that He has a good reason not to. And we have to trust that His reasons not to rescue are better than our reasons for His rescue. I read these words on the way to the hospital the day before Andrei Elijah's birth. I haven’t forgotten them, they are deeply meaningful and they will likely prove to be so whenever me, or a member of my family, faces the darker side of life in this fallen world.

Ukrainian Evangelicalism in the Spotlight

2008-11-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

For anyone interested in a perspective other than our own about how the Church is doing in Ukraine and Kyiv Theological Seminary's role in the Evangelical movement in Eurasia, read this recent Christianity Today article. On the whole, I find it a positive reflection of what we're seeing God do, even though I would squabble with the author over a few of the details. I don't buy the "all press is good press" line, but this press is certainly good for KTS and the Ukrainian Body of Christ.

Follow-up on Preston

2008-11-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

Since I'm still mulling over the interaction contained to the book alluded to in the previous post, I decided to look over Preston Jones' curriculum vitae. I noticed that he has a few articles in First Things and, being a FT disciple, I checked them out. One looked particularly interesting, so I read it. You should too. It is a response to the oft-advanced criticism that evangelicalism has a shoddy and underdeveloped intellectual life. While affirming that evangelicals need to engage academia with integrity and to pursue a robust life of the mind, Jones says that we shouldn't demonize our evangelical brothers and sisters who may not yet be on the bandwagon. In short, we should be charitable to our fellow evangelicals as we all strive, to varying degrees, to love our Lord with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength. Thanks for the good reminder, Preston.

The Same Questions Through Different Lenses

2008-11-02T20:40:00.000-08:00

I'm not all that smart, but I do read stuff written by very smart people. So, when I come across something that is really good and that can make the complex understandable, I try to let people know about it. I assume that mostly family and friends are reading my blog so, those are the people I have in mind when I recommend stuff. That is not necessarily what I am doing with this post.

I just read a book that I think the smart people ought to read. It should prove to be a rousing read for just about anyone but, for the academics, it provides insight that we (and I am using the "we" very loosely) need to be aware of and interact with.

The book is titled, Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism and Christianity, edited by Preston Jones. It contains about 2 years' worth of email correspondence between Jones, a believing history professor in Arkansas and Greg Graffin, lead singer of Bad Religion, who holds a Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell. Jones really likes Bad Religion's music and, considering himself a little rebellious within the Christian subculture, decided to engage Graffin in dialogue regarding God and Christianity, science and religion, faith and philosophy, etc.

The discussion is fascinating because, while both hold Ph.D.s and are therefore academics, Jones is not part of the swelling evangelical-philosophical tidal wave of the last 20 years and Graffin, being primarily a punk and not an academic, has not engaged much in the formal academic advance of naturalism. This, and the fact that the dialogue takes place via email and not in a lecture hall, means that all of their thinking is outside of the traditional categories. A huge bonus is that Jones went back and added comments, quotes, notes and study and reflection questions that would make the book useful in a variety of settings, not just for a stimulating read.

But the reason I think the academics should read this book is because it reveals how a dyed-in-the-wool naturalist — particularly one who hasn't engaged with any research of the aforementioned tidal wave — thinks about religion generally and Christianity specifically. There is a certain predictability to the standard debates between the evangelical masterminds and the naturalist and Gnostic gurus of the day. That predictability is not bad but it leaves certain key issues out of the discussion. But in this conversation we get the nitty-gritty. It should cause evangelical academics to assess how they present their material and consider how to better utilize the material they regularly use. So, if you're an academic, and accidentally reading this post, buy this book and think about how you'd answer a punk rocker with a Ph.D.

A few years ago I began compiling an annotated bibliography of Christian apologetic material. Below is the entry for Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant?

Preston Jones, ed., Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism and Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006).

In this dialogue between historian, Preston Jones, and Bad Religion lead singer and Ph.D. in zoology, Greg Graffin, the reader will find the raw and real interaction of apologetics, rather than the prepared and formal stuff of academic debates. This has its positives and negatives. Negatively, since neither Preston nor Graffin have formal training in theology, philosophy or religion in general, many of the spoken and unspoken ground rules for this type of discussion are completely ignored. This means that questions raised are not addressed and fallacies committed are not confronted. It is clear that Graffin has no training in philosophy or theology, yet he speaks authoritatively of their shortcomings, failing to realize that most of what he says has no basis in the science, of which he is an expert, but is founded upon a philosophy of science which stands behind everything he says. Needless to say, his philosophy of science — a strong scientism claiming that the empirical method is the only way to have genuine knowledge — does not stand up to rational scrutiny and has been effectively criticized by J.P. Moreland, William Lane Craig and others. Jones, also due to his lack of theological/apologetic training, misses key opportunities to address Graffin's questions and criticisms of Christianity of which someone familiar to such a discussion would take advantage. Positively, however, because they are expert academics in their fields and very intelligent men in general, Jones and Graffin carry on a very stimulating conversation, it is engaging and interesting on every level. It is amazing that Graffin and Jones were able to carry out such a dialogue for so long via email and that such a haphazard style of communication lends itself to such a good book. In the end both faiths, Christianity and naturalism, are given a fair hearing in a way that will enlighten the reader to new insights regarding how apologetics works (and sometimes doesn't work) in today's world.

A Good Word on God's Will

2008-10-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

Our good friends, Eric & Shelly, loaned us with high recommendation, The Jesus of Suburbia: Have We Tamed the Son of God to Fit Our Lifestyle? by Mike Erre. They sent us their copy just days after we arrived from Ukraine (with lots of other things for Dietrich and Josie, of course). With all of the other books that I brought home to read and study, I wasn't sure when, or even if, I was going to get to it. But I picked it up yesterday and haven't been able to put it down. I should be done by the close of the weekend. It's very readable but, at the same time, a strong challenge to some of our 21st century Western conceptions of Jesus and Christianity. It helps immensely to have had Mike as a classmate in seminary and to have seen his dynamic oratory style. Images of him preaching the text make it much more alive than it would otherwise be. In any case, the book confronts our culture with the cost of true discipleship and challenges people to put their faith in the Biblical Jesus, not in the mass-marketed, feel-good, meet-my-needs Jesus so prevalent today.

In chapter 2, there is a section about God's will. I think many Christians (including myself for a good stint of my adulthood), at some point, feel the anxiety of whether or not they are doing God's will, stress over how best to know God's will or fear what will happen if they do something outside of God's will. A deep trust in God's sovereignty and several attentive reads through Scripture should help relieve most of these anxieties, stresses and fears. That, and keeping in mind these words from Mike …

"God is more committed to having you walk in his will than you are … Pharaohs stood against God and failed; Nazis and communists have tried to stamp out God's movement and succeeded only in spreading it farther; Caesars and Herods have shaken their fists at God, but no one has ever been able to stop the purposes of God in history. Why then, if we believe God to be that powerful, do we think we can so easily miss doing his will? God is so good, so sovereign, and so caring that he will reveal his will to us if our hearts are open. There are no magic formulas to this, no seven-step lists to memorize, no guaranteed incantations. There is just the simple trust that God will lead us where he wants us to go and we cannot miss it if we simply keep our eyes open." (p. 30-31)

Just to Wrap Things Up

2008-10-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

For the 4th straight postseason appearance, the Angels have been embarrassing to watch. We've been demolished by the opposition — 3 of the 4 times by the Red Sox, hence the hatred — making commentators and critics talk about how much of a fluke it is that we were even in the playoffs. Our lineup and offensive approach get criticized, Mike Scioscia gets labeled an imbecile and Vladimir Guerrero goes home without a World Series ring. It's all very sad, especially when you're coming off the winningest season the Angel franchise has ever known. But, given the events of the previous post, this season's end isn't all that painful; my focus has been understandably elsewhere. I'm only now starting to sit down to watch the game with interest. Needless to say, I'm presently a raging fan of the Rays and yesterday's 9 to 1 victory over the Sox was delightful. Hail Tampa Bay! Of course, I'm already counting the days to next April and am hoping for a great start to the 2009 season for my beloved Halos. I must say, as frustrating as our postseason play has been since 2002, I prefer it to the postseasonlessness of my late 20th century Angels. Dashed hopes are better than no hope at all, in baseball life, at least.

Infinitely Greater Degrees of Everything

2008-10-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

It’s not yet been a month and it seems like we’ve been through a year’s worth of experience. On September 16, we found out that the precious little baby that we were expecting, then 20 weeks old, had a 50 percent chance of having Trisomy 18, an almost always fatal genetic disorder. After an ultrasound and consultation with doctors and specialists, we decided to take our home service early and come to the States on September 27. It was discouraging to think about not being in Kyiv for the rest of the semester. I would miss meeting the new students for this year, miss two Talbot-Kyiv Extension sessions and would have to give my Theology IV class (covering pneumatology, ecclesiology and eschatology) to another colleague to teach. But being present for and participating in those things was not worth the prospect of miscarrying the baby in Ukraine and not being around family, friends and our own culture, were such a thing to happen. Heading home was a much easier decision to make than I expected it to be.

But then, on September 25, we went in for one last Ukrainian ultrasound for no other reason than to see the baby one more time before heading to the States. Our hearts were crushed to see our little baby motionless and without that wonderfully fast-paced and ever-so-comforting baby heartbeat. Exactly what we had been hoping and praying against had happened. Our baby had died and we had to deliver him in a Ukrainian hospital that didn’t have an adequate translator and that was thousands of miles from those with whom we would most want to be during a tragic time like this.

We cancelled our return tickets and got Josie settled into the hospital to start the birthing process. The days were long and tiring, especially the ones where I took Dietrich on a 3-4 hour roundtrip ride to see his mommy. God’s greatest blessing during this time was the presence of dear friends Jon and Andrea and their daughter, Joy, who happened to be headed to Kyiv when we heard the news. They graciously extended their stay by 5 days in order to care for Dietrich while I was with Josie in the hospital. (In Dietrich-speak they are now affectionately referred to as Dzat, Anana and Bwueah.) With the exception of the night that Josie gave birth, I made sure I was home in time to put Dietrich to bed, and I slept near him to make sure he was still able to get some dad time during the hard days without mom. It was so hard to lay down at night with Dietrich, knowing that Josie was on the other side of the city, grieving alone.

Then came the life-altering night of Andrei Elijah’s birth. When we went to bed Monday night, Josie’s contractions kept her from actually falling asleep, but I was out like a light. I was startled awake by Josie calling my name. The baby was coming and, being so small, he came very quickly, at about 1:00 AM on September 30. There were some necessary follow-up procedures that took place, followed by 30 of the most bittersweet minutes of mine on this earth. We spent these moments with little Andrei in tears and pain, but cherishing every one as they would be our only time physically and tangibly with him. Every part of him was so small and so full of possibility, but the life was gone. His little arms and littler hands, little legs and littler feet, and his beautiful, beautiful eyes had moved all they were going to. It was painful to give him back to the nurse, knowing that we wouldn’t see him again and knowing that our only memories of Andrei outside the womb would be those we had just had. Heart-wrenching, indeed. We said good-bye to our precious second son, called each of our parents to tell them what had happened and then cried ourselves to sleep at about 3:30 AM.

The days since Andrei’s birth have been indescribable, but I’ll do my best. We finally did wrap things up in Kyiv and made it back to the States on October 5. We’ve enjoyed setting up our temporary home in a trailer on Josie’s parents’ property and especially watching Dietrich have fun on the farm with goats, sheep, cows, Rosie the family dog and, of course, Baba and Papa Miller. He goes to bed exhausted from very active and fun-filled days. But then there are the things that remind us of Andrei, things that make immediately present the pain and loss. Some of these are expected, like when we sit down at the end of the day and look at the pictures that we have of him. Others come out of nowhere and blindside us. While driving home from the airport last Sunday night, the song “You Are My Sunshine” came on and everyone but me started to sing it in an attempt to keep Dietrich awake until we got home. For some reason, I burst into tears thinking about the sentiment of that song’s chorus in relation to sweet Andrei. Now I can’t even think about that song without tearing up. It’s too bad we sing it to Dietrich all the time.

So, we’ve experienced an excruciating month, however, our God has proven Himself close to comfort and ever faithful as we mourn the loss of Andrei. I’ve noticed 4 areas in particular where I’m recognizing, feeling and experiencing things that I’ve never recognized, felt or experienced before, at least not to this degree. Each of them comes from the Lord’s good Hand and it would be improper of me to mention the pain of our experience and not God’s provision in the midst of it all. Here they are, in no particular order:

The Pain of Death
This is an obvious one, but, until Andrei, I had not lost anyone really close to me in such a sudden manner. Cancer and old age have taken many a loved one, but they haven’t come as shockingly in my family as Andrei’s death has to me. Those first days when his death was only a possibility, I held out hope. We have an all-powerful, all-good God, and I had no doubt that He was in sovereign control of our baby. And I didn’t want to grieve without reason, so I prayed and waited expectantly. The Biblical teaching on prayer gave me no other option. Seeing him lifeless on the ultrasound hit me like a ton of bricks. Holding him after he was born hit me like a megaton. There was almost a physical pain that accompanied the emotional pain as we sat there holding a little boy who should be alive and still developing in his mother’s womb. The pain of death is tangibly real to me now.

Hatred of Sin
Sin is the ultimate reason for Andrei’s death. Not my sin or Josie’s sin in particular, but sin in general. We live in a sin-marred, pain-ridden world where dysfunction, death and decay should either not exist, or should not plague humanity the way they do (depending on your creation perspective). God’s handiwork longs for the day when things like genetic disorders will be eradicated and the world will function as it was originally designed (this is at the core of our millennial hope). That sin has manifested itself in taking the life of our son, and I hope to never think of sin in the same way again. As a result of creation’s rebellion against God, our world is cursed. And while God’s grace, salvation in Christ and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence allow us to fight against the curse in many ways, we still participate in death-causing rebellion every time we sin. The death of my son will be an ever-present reminder of how serious sin is and will stimulate and strengthen me in the moment-by-moment struggle against it.

Love for Family
As hard as it was to hold Andrei’s lifeless body in my hands, Josie held him inside her. For about 20 weeks she carried him as he grew and developed and was able to feel the first few kicks before he died. I will never know what this is like, but I do know that Josie has a connection with Andrei that I don’t, and that the pain is real to her in a dramatically different way than it is to me. To see her love and concern for Andrei deepens my love for her. The pain of losing him makes her presence that much more precious to me.

And then there is Dietrich. In the presence of a baby who has died, the life of a healthy baby takes on a whole new meaning. Every petty display of my impatience or frustration with Dietrich sickens me now that I have a sense of what life could be like without him. His every move and every word take on a whole new quality and character as manifestations of real life. And very few things are as hard as telling Dietrich how sorry I am about his brother’s death. Josie and I are not the only ones deprived of Andrei; Dietrich has lost someone too, even if he doesn’t yet comprehend it. Oh, how I love my wonderful little boy.

Trust in God
Finally, I am forced by this experience to bow, broken and humbled, before by my all-wise and all-controlling God, my only source of stability in the midst of such heartache. Only He can or will know why Andrei died and, because He is God and I am just a man, that has to be OK with me. And it is OK with me. My faith has been and will be tested as we struggle through the loss of Andrei but, at this point, I can say that God has proven Himself more trustworthy and poured out His lovingkindness on us more lavishly, not less, in the last month. I don’t question and am not angry about God’s decision to allow Andrei’s death. That doesn’t make the pain any less, but it does mean that, at the end of the day, I can say, as my wife did here, “It is well with my soul.” God is faithful, and this is especially important to believe when things are bad. I’m thankful that He is proving Himself such to us at this time.

And Boy, How It's Lasted!

2008-09-18T21:56:00.000-07:00

Since my last post the Angels have continued to play outstanding baseball. They clinched the AL West many days ago. Frankie Rodriguez broke the all time saves record for a single season. And our offense picked up just as our pitching started to cool down. (I know that giving Frankie so many save opportunities means that we are not blowing other teams away offensively, but I'm content to celebrate the achievement and enjoy the excitement of close games while turning a blind eye to that criticism.) Of course, all of this is overshadowed by some disheartening news that will come to you shortly. But, in those moments when a positive distraction is in order, the Angels continue to provide. Here's to a great, Yankee-less post season!

On Enjoying It While It Lasts

2008-08-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

This could end anytime, so I better get all the mileage out of it that I can ...

-The Angels have won 8 of their last 10 games.
-The Angels swept the Red Sox, outscoring them 22-9.
-The Angels opened a 4-game series against the Yankees by beating them 12-6.
-The Angels have the best record in baseball.
-The Angels lead the AL West by more games than all other division leaders combined.

-Garrett Anderson got 4 hits in each of the last 2 games.
-John Lackey got within 2 outs of no-hitting the Red Sox.
-Torii Hunter hit a 3-run home run against the Yankees last night.
-Juan Rivera hit a 3-run home run against the Yankees last night.
-Vladimir Guerrero hit a 3-run home run against the Yankees last night.

Sure, I'm really upset that we traded Casey Kotchman for Mark Teixeira. Kotchman is playing great baseball right now and really fits the Angels' persona. The fact that Garrett Anderson is sad to see him go is a sign that it may have been a bad move. Another factor is all of the heartache Teixeira caused us when he was a Ranger. I hated it when he came to bat! But, when all is said and done, Teixeira is a better and more proven player and we're a slightly better team with him on the field and in the lineup. So, given that, and the 10 exciting things listed above, it's great to be an Angel fan right now.

Go Halos!!!

On Over-spiritualizing Things

2008-07-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, maybe 5 or 6 years old, I went to the local Lutheran Church with my grandparents. I remember odd things like playing with the kneelers (to the annoyance of everyone in the row), going up to the front of the Church for the children's sermon (I don't remember actually being up front or any of the content of the sermons, of course) and asking my grandma for gum during the service (and her graciously giving me half a stick of Freedent). None of these things explain why I feel warm towards Lutheranism to this very day, that story belongs to another post. This one deals with one other element of a traditional Lutheran Church service that I still vividly remember.

On the wall toward the front of the Church, in plain view of everyone in the congregation, hung a metal (or possibly wooden) sign with slots to easily insert and arrange numbers corresponding to the hymnals in the pew, so that people could find the hymns prior to them being sung. I guess these are called hymn boards, but I surely didn't know that as a kid. I simply had a grand time finding the hymns for the day's service and proudly giving a well-marked hymnal to my grandparents. I'm sure I thought that I deserved that half-stick of gum.

When I got older and started thinking more deeply about worship services and how best to prepare myself for and engage in corporate worship, I grew to appreciate the idea of the hymn board, even though no Church that I'm currently affiliated with uses one. In the days before mass duplication of weekly Church bulletins, it seems like a great way to let people know what hymns would be part of that day's worship. But that's only the pragmatic reason. The spiritual reason for finding the hymn board so impressive is so that people can look up and contemplate the words of the hymns prior to the start of the service. If someone comes to Church about 20 minutes early they can easily meditate on the sermon text for the day (which is posted on the street sign outside of my childhood Lutheran Church) and contemplate the day's hymns in soul-preparation for the day's liturgy. This all seems like it could foster an aura of spiritual preparation. That's the kind of thing lacking in Churches where a large portion of the congregation comes after the service has already started.

But today, as you either know or could have guessed, I found out the real reason for the hymn board. And the reason, while quite remarkable, contains no hint of concern for soul-care. I finished the summer '07 issue of Christian History and Biography, which focuses its attention on the life and work of J.S. Bach. In issues that focus on an individual, Christian History and Biography usually has an article highlighting other influential figures of the time period. In this particular issue, the article highlights Lutheran musicians between Luther and Bach. One of them was Dietrich Buxtehude, a Lutheran composer and organist from the late 17th - early 18th centuries. From here I'll let the author of the article, Carlos Messerli, explain.

"Buxtehude was a virtuoso organist, skilled in improvising. Many of his pieces featured a chorale melody in either simple or highly ornamented arrangements. His very elaborate musical introductions often left the congregation in the dark about exactly which hymn was to be sung next. This confusion led to the practice of posting the hymns (by number) on a board visible to all, a practice that was still common in many churches throughout much of the 20th century." (p.22)

So, I guess I let my imagination get away from me a bit on that one. Not that people can’t use the hymn postings for spiritual preparation; they can and they should. It's just that the original intent wasn't nearly so lofty. Buxtehude indirectly gave us the hymn board, for which I thank him. And I thank the author of the article for pointing out reality, to which I'll allow my beliefs about the hymn board correspond from here on out. But I'll refrain from thanking myself for the over-spiritualizing of the whole thing. In fact, I'll take it as a lesson for the future.

Again with the Red Sox

2008-06-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

During last year's MLB playoffs, I wrote a post about how disgusted I was with Red Sox character. Well, they've done it again this season and I'm again disgusted that they are the best team out there. Actually, the offending episode really only involves one player but it's certainly in keeping with what the current Red Sox have proven themselves to be.

I was pretty invested in last year's negative display, mostly because it happened with my Angels on the loosing end of the score card. But last week's violation is bias free because it was against the Tampa Bay Rays, a team I don't give a flying rip about (I kind of give a rip now because I'd love for the Rays to mop the floor with the Sox after this series of incidents). You can watch the following clips to see what happened:

Red Sox vs. Rays, June 4, 2008 — Coco Crisp is "offended," slides dirty and curses like a sailor.

Red Sox vs. Rays, June 5, 2008 — Coco Crisp charges the mound.

Was Coco's first steal inappropriately blocked by the shortstop, Jason Bartlett, or was the block against the rules of the game? Sure. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But, Coco did successfully steal the base and Bartlett's block was not so flagrantly inappropriate or so against the rules that any umpires decided to do anything about it. It certainly didn't justify Coco delivering a forearm to the groin of the Rays' second baseman, Akinori Iwamura (not the guy who "inappropriately" blocked Coco earlier!!!), several innings later while trying to steal another base. And the kicker was the shouting match that ensued between Coco and the Rays' manager. What justifies that kind of public outburst when you are the one who started all the dirty stuff in the beginning? Nothing, of course. Not in the game of baseball where we try to keep that kind of thing to a minimum.

And then we have the fight the next night. I must say that the former pro-wrestling/ultimate fighting fan in me gets a little excited when the benches clear. In principle, however, I'm against baseball fights (and not only because baseball players are really poor fighters). So Coco gets hit by Sheilds' pitch, IN THE LEG, and he charges the mound. This is the point at which Coco looses any amount of credibility as the "offended party." If a baseball pitcher wants to throw at you, he can throw right at your head, threatening your life. When he throws at your leg it was more likely an accident than intentional. Maybe Sheilds threw intentionally but, if he did, why charge the mound if he only threw at your leg? Because of your massively inflated ego, that's why. Since baseball players can't fight, no one got hurt physically in the rumble (unless I'm remembering incorrectly), but Coco Crisp, and the Red Sox by association, certainly hurt themselves in the eyes of civilized, morality-conscious baseball fans everywhere (this group, of course, being defined as those that agree with me).

The icing on the cake is that the Rays, who got forearmed in the groin and suspended for being involved in the fighting took all of their suspensions as assigned and did not try to appeal them. Coco Crisp, however, appealed his suspension. I don't care why he did so. I just think that if you're going to dishonor the game with cheap shots, a foul mouth and undisciplined aggression, pay the consequences and move on.

Probably, the Red Sox will make it to the playoffs. And if the Angels make it to the playoffs, the Red Sox will probably beat them. But, even if that happens, at least we won't be the ones who gave the game a black eye for playing like a self-indulgent, narcissistic street gang.

When a Philosopher Comes to Town

2008-05-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

I really like to read and study philosophy. That doesn't make me a philosopher. Several of my colleagues in theological education (missionaries as well as Ukrainians) can really get serious when our discussions cross over into philosophy. That doesn't make us philosophers either. And all of us end up teaching philosophy, in one way or another, in the various courses we teach and sermons we preach in institutions and Churches throughout Ukraine. Not even that brings us close to sharing the kind of nature/intellectual caliber possessed by a true, academically trained and actively engaged philosopher. I know because I just spent the last week with a real philosopher, and it wasn't anything like the above experiences.

Dr. R. Douglas Geivett — accidentally referred to as "Dr. Doug" during dinner one evening and hence, referred to as such from now on in our home (sorry Doug) — taught apologetics to the Talbot-Kyiv students this past week. Dr. Geivett is a professor of philosophy of religion and ethics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. He has graduate and post-graduate credentials in philosophy, and he has been teaching apologetics, epistemology, philosophy of religion and a host of other courses for over 15 years. He has written and edited several books, written chapters and articles for edited works, written journal articles, and he speaks and debates regularly at Christian and non-Christian institutions and academic conferences. He is at the forefront of the evangelical revival in philosophy and it was quite a privilege to have him here in Kyiv to provide top-notch training to our M.A. students.

I tried to sit in on his class as much as I could. I've taught apologetics twice since being in Ukraine and expect to teach it many more times in various settings before our time here is done. My course (and the future students to whom I will teach it) can only benefit from my gleaning from Dr. Geivett new ways to think about and present apologetic themes and ideas. But being an administrator for the M.A. program, I had to spend lots of time out of the classroom attending to other necessary matters. I should have refrained from going to the class altogether, since what I did sit in on only made me want to be there all the more. Fortunately, one of the students recorded the lectures and will provide me with a copy. Unfortunately, I won't have any of Geivett's PowerPoint slides or most of the charts he drew on the whiteboard. Maybe the student will lend me those, too.

The personal highlight of Doug's visit was Saturday, after the course was over, when I took him on a 9-hour tour of Kyiv. Because professors for our M.A. program have to teach 8-hour days for one week straight, I try to refrain from barraging them with too many questions and discussion items during that week. But once the course is over, it's my turn. We talked about epistemology, apologetic methodology, potential graduate programs and plenty of good books, all interspersed with facts and figures about Ukraine and info about our respective families, of course. In general, I always get a little discouraged when I think about future Ph.D. studies, because I'm not sure if I'll get accepted into a program or be able to handle the level of study if I were to be accepted. Doug, in spite of his full exposure to my inferior capabilities as a philosopher, was extremely encouraging and gave me some really good advice (applicable whether I choose to pursue a philosophy or theology Ph.D.). Not all philosophers are so analytical that there's no room left for grace and friendliness. Thanks, Doug.

If you have a chance to read anything by Dr. Geivett, do so. He started a blog a few months ago and it is already jam-packed with posts and links. He most recently edited the book, Faith, Film & Philosophy: Big Ideas on the Big Screen, which has its own blog, as well. He gave me the book as a gift and I look forward to reading it this summer. You should too! You can see what else he's written by checking out the faculty publications page of the Talbot website or by downloading his curriculum vitae from the same site. If you get a chance to hear him preach, lecture or debate, or are able to take a class with him, do that too. You'll only benefit from it and you'll be that much sharper, intellectually, for it.

But to any future teachers coming to teach in the Talbot program, be warned; when a philosopher, theologian, Church historian or Biblical scholar comes to town, you'll have to deal with more than just the students. Your leisurely tour around Kyiv after a long week of teaching will include some hard questions and serious discussion.*

*"Hard" and "serious" are relative. What's hard and serious for your tour guide, won't likely be hard for you.

Jesus on Film — Give Us the Gospel of Mark!

2008-05-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

During the course of my preparations to teach last week's Christology class, I came up with an idea. Inspired by both Scot McKnight's little book, Who is Jesus? and Donald Guthrie's big book, New Testament Theology, I decided to read through the four canonical Gospels in a week and underline every name Jesus was ever called or by which He was ever referenced. McKnight and Guthrie both provide deeper and more insightful than normal investigations into the various titles assigned to Jesus in the Gospels and the meanings those titles carried for those who used them. My goal was to read them all in context and in comparison with each of the other Gospels.

Well, as I often do, I bit off more than I could chew and found myself closing in on the end of the week prior to my class having read only Matthew, Mark and the first third of Luke. Thankfully—as many of you likely already know—there is a movie out that is not just based on the Gospel of John, it is the Gospel of John, word for word, no additions, no subtractions. Visual Bible International puts Scripture to film and, preserving the text in full, builds the acting and cinematography around the text. It's the same thing that happens when you read John and imagine how it all played out, only someone else has done the imagining for you and made a really great movie from it. So, instead of watching another episode of Lost or a little more of Ken Burns' mammoth documentary Baseball, we watched The Gospel of John.

I was as blown away by how beautiful of a film it is as I was when I saw it in the theater in late 2003. I remain baffled as to why it was released during the height of the debate over Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Almost all of movie-going Christianity (and a good chunk of those who refrain from movie-going) had focused all of Its attention and energy on The Passion, hence almost no one went to see The Gospel of John. If it would have been held six to nine months and released in the late summer/early fall of 2004, I think it would have been infinitely more noticed and appreciated for how unique and powerful it is. I don't have anything against The Passion, I just think the Gospel of John is outstanding and should be on more people's radar screens.

"And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen ..."

And here is why I'm a little down that it is not more appreciated than it is. At the beginning of the DVD there is an ad for a Visual Bible International version of the Gospel of Mark, using the same superb actor and, I would expect, the same disciples and other characters from The Gospel of John, most of whom did a fabulous job. The only thing stated as far as a release date was "coming soon." Not having seen that ad before, I rushed to the computer and tried to find out if it had been released yet, or when it was going to be released. I couldn't find much, but what I could find informed me that the project is pretty much dead in the water since The Gospel of John did not bring in the revenue or attention that all had hoped. There may be some things happening to push the new film project forward that aren't being disseminated via the internet, but it doesn't look good. So, with as much enthusiasm as I can muster in light of my apparently dashed hopes, I encourage you all to buy, not rent, The Gospel of John. It's better than The Jesus Film, a more complete picture of Jesus' life than The Passion and is just a great movie. And then, if you agree that it's great, tell everyone you know about it. And then, with time, just maybe we'll get to see the literary beauty of Gospel of Mark expressed in the same cinematic beauty as was the Gospel of John.

Phones and Motorcycles

2008-02-24T06:03:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, my wife had a post called "too bad I don't have a camera phone," which talked about some very Ukrainian cultural experiences. Yesterday, for a brief moment, I wished I had a camera phone to capture what I thought was going to be a very American cultural experience with Dietrich.

We were in a nearby mall and, while Josie shopped for a few things, I did my best to entertain Dietrich. It helped that there was an indoor skating rink (plastic, not ice) since Dietrich loves other little kids and can spend quite a while simply observing them. His dad, on the other hand, got bored after a while and looked for some other amusing distractions. I noticed a few of those riding machines for little kids—a spaceship and a race car, to be exact—but they required that you put the kid in them alone, so they were intended for kids a little older than little D. But around the bend I saw a few more machines—a horse and a police motorcycle, to be exact—and they were just Dietrich's size. I could stand nearby and hold him on the machine while it did its thing.

Next I tried to insert some coins. There was no way any standard Ukrainian coin was going to fit into the slot that seemed to be the intended place of insertion. I walked over to the spaceship and race car and noticed a sign (printed on a standard sheet of paper in Ukrainian, not Russian) that might have been telling me where to get tokens from, but I couldn't read it. I walked back to the horse and motorcycle and noticed the same sign nearly hidden between two huge, illuminated, protruding posters for clothing. Finding the sign wasn't much help, since I still couldn't read it, so I asked a nearby security guard how to use the machines and, since he answered me in Russian, I was off to get a coin.

$1.00 later, and for the first and last time at that price, we headed toward the motorcycle (no pink and baby blue horses for my son!). I put in the oddly but properly shaped token, held Dietrich on the motorcycle and we were off. That was the moment I wished I had a camera phone. But it was a brief moment. Within 5 to 7 seconds, he was certain that he did not like this black and white contraption with its flashing lights and poorly tuned, quite loud engine. I promptly took him off, gave him a few seconds to recover and gave it another shot. He let out a ear piercing shriek and we were done with the riding machine experiment for the winter of 2008.

No need for a camera phone just yet.

Bad News for the Futrue of the Sanctity of Life Movement

2008-02-17T06:15:00.000-08:00

Although it can be depressing to think about how little progress has been made in the fight against abortion and against the slow move toward the acceptance of euthanasia, one thing is encouraging—the debate has remained in the center of the public square. As long as sanctity of life issues are debated and discussed we can hope and pray that the maxim of Justin Martyr might eventually prove to be true, "it is not impossible to put ignorance to flight by presenting truth." Maybe, just maybe, we can persuade the public and influence the government of the atrocities of abortion and euthanasia by sticking to our consistent, rationally defensible and morally superior message of the value of all life. With these issues debated frequently and fervently, it could and should happen.

But our goals will be harder to attain if the debate simply fades into the oblivion of historical curiosity. If younger generations fail to see life vs. choice issues as worthy of sustained public attention, then our message will have not only intellectual, emotional and moral obstacles to overcome, we will have to overcome issues of general knowledge and basic awareness. According to an article in the Feb. 11 edition of Time, we might be facing just such a change. The article focuses on the youth vote in the '08 presidential campaign and the contributors make the following comment,

"Pollster Frank Luntz gathered a group of New Hampshire students on the eve of the primary there, and the hour-long conversation barely touched on the hot buttons of yore: abortion, crime and affirmative action. Their world, after all, encompasses RU 486, lower murder rates and Oprah. What concerns many of them is the nature of politics: the perceived gridlock of parties, conniving special interests and shallow biases of the media." p. 39

I won't dwell on the lack of substance in the group of issues that do concern this particular group when compared with the issues that they supposedly don't care all that much about. All I'll say is that I hope, for the sake of the human dignity issues, that this little sample of youth is not representative of the broader youth population. If it is, our job is going to get harder, not easier.

In But Not Of

2008-01-19T08:39:00.000-08:00

With the spring semester starting this week, I probably won't finish this book for a while. That being the case, I want to share something from Kenneth A. Myers', All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture—a horrifically bad title for an outstandingly great book—before I forget. By the time I finish the book, the current passage I'm mulling over will have been replaced by countless others, I'm sure.

First of all, a word about the book in general. It was written in 1989 so, lots of the "popular culture" Myers addresses is not so popular anymore. But so far, none of his now-outdated references have negated any of his principles. You can take out references to VCRs, cable boxes and Bon Jovi and replace them with DVD players, Wi-Fi and Justin Timberlake and the message hits home just as effectively. In sum, Myers warns us against completely removing ourselves from culture—which would be not in and not of—and against mimicking our culture by keeping all of its forms but replacing the secular content with Christian content—which would be of but not in. He proposes that we live in such a way that we influence our culture towards consistency with what God intended for it in the beginning. Christians, being Spirit-filled, live sanctified lives that can affect and influence the unsanctified culture in which we live. This is how to truly be in and not of. The rest of the book is a discussion of how we got the popular culture we have, how to assess it and how to go about influencing it for the better.

The passage that struck me today is about properly evaluating various pop culture products (songs, books, films, etc.) and determining which, if any, are acceptable for us to consume. Being the kind of person who often wonders whether or not I'm consuming too much, the chapter seemed directed right at me. I was relieved and encouraged to hear Myers express these concluding thoughts, not just because they leave a place for the intake and enjoyment of popular culture but because they correctly reflect my take on the Bible's instructions to us about culture. I think they should serve as a challenge to every citizen of the Kingdom of God as we enjoy the world into which God has placed us and, at the same time, try to influence it to be as reflective of its original intent as it can be this side or our Lord's return.

"Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial or constructive, says Paul in I Corinthians 10. Eating meat offered to idols is no problem for the Christian as long as the Christian doesn't believe that the idols have any spiritual reality. As long as the Corinthian believers were not caught up in the Zeitgeist of Corinth, as long as the sensibility of the culture did not dominate their own sensibilities, they could participate in the intrinsically innocent activities their culture afforded. But if someone was gripped by the culture's own myths, even the meat was tainted."

"The same holds true in our day. There is nothing wrong with frivolous activity for one whose life is not committed to frivolity. There is no harm in superficial pleasures for one who also has a knowledge of the tragic and of the transcendent. The subjectivism of popular culture is impotent for someone whose life is characterized by a rootedness in objective reality."

"Christians should not fear the idols and myths of our day, as long as they have no reverence for them. But idols and myths can take the form of moods and sensibilities as well as stone and creed, and there are many disturbing signs that many contemporary Christians have made the limited and limiting sensibility of popular culture their own."

Thanks, Uncle Sam

2008-01-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

Read the following song lyrics:

CHICKEN!
pay the chicken back back, pay the chicken back,
pay back the chicken back, do the chicken payback.

PIGGY!
pay the piggy back back, pay the piggy back,
pay back the piggy back, do the piggy payback.

MONKEY!
pay the monkey back back, pay the monkey back,
see the monkey, do the monkey, pay the monkey back.

CHICKEN!
pay the chicken back back, pay the chicken back,
pay back the chicken back, back, do the chicken payback.

CAMEL!
pay the camel back, sittin' on the camel back,
see the camel, do the camel, pay the camel back.

DONKEY!
pay the donkey back, back, pay the donkey back,
pay back the donkey, pay back, pay back the donkey.

all the animals together, break it down, let me hear ya …

CHICKEN!
pay the chicken back back, pay the chicken back back,
do the chicken payback, pay back the chicken.

PIGGY!
pay the piggy back back, pay the piggy back
see the piggy, do the piggy, pay the piggy back.

MONKEY!
pay the monkey back back, pay the monkey back,
pay back the monkey, pay back, pay back the monkey.

CHICKEN!
pay the chicken back back, pay the chicken back,
pay back the chicken back, do the chicken payback.

CAMEL!
pay the camel back back, pay the camel back,
pay back the camel, pay back, pay back the camel.

DONKEY!
pay the donkey back back, pay the donkey back,
pay back the donkey, pay back, pay back the donkey, pay back.

PAY THEM ALL BACK!
pay back the donkey
PAY THEM ALL BACK!
pay back the piggy
PAY THEM ALL BACK!
pay back the monkey
PAY THEM ALL BACK!
pay back the chicken
PAY THEM ALL BACK!

Do you find it hard to imagine why in the world I've posted these? You won't, if you go here and then imagine how much fun it is to jump around the kitchen with my 16-month old to this catchy number, while he laughs and screams contagiously. Every time we play this song, I'm amazed at how such meaningless, almost idiotic lyrics can bring such happiness to our little threesome. Way to go, Band of Bees, way to go!

But really, thanks goes to Dietrich's uncle, Sam, who put the song on a mix CD in celebration of the little one's life. Sam has been great about keeping us up-to-date musically through periodic mix CDs. Were it not for Sam, I would be in the dark about Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, all bands that I can't imagine not listening to. Being in Ukraine, we miss out on a lot of American culture, but with Sam's help we're staying somewhat in touch musically. Keep it up, Sam, it's greatly appreciated.

Truth in the Least Likely of Places

2008-01-01T02:34:00.001-08:00

Here in Ukraine, only the Catholics and the Evangelicals — who together make up a very small percentage of the Christian community — celebrate Christmas on December 25th. Instead, Ukrainians do their gift giving on January 1st and celebrate Christ's birth according to the Orthodox calendar, which is January 7th. All of this means that things are busy right up to, and even after December 25th, making it hard to slow down and focus on the spiritual Center of the coming holiday. So, this year, we decided to move our sleeping in, special breakfast and gift giving to January 1st. Rather than feeling like New Year's Day, today feels like Christmas morning.

In that spirit, I tracked down the song, Spotlight on Christmas by Rufus Wainwright that a friend of ours had mentioned in an email. And it turns out that I actually love it, despite my best intentions to avoid being sucked in by catchy pop music that lacks creativity and does not involve much talent. I'm not making a blanket judgment on Rufus Wainwright, not knowing him or his music very well. It just seems, from this song and the few others that I've heard, that he creates catchy pop music that lacks creativity and does not involve much talent.

The main reason that I love it, however, has little to do with the music but a lot to do with the second verse. It goes like this:

People love and people hate
People go and people wait
But, don't forget Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Once were a family poor but rich in hope, yeah
Don't forget Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Running from the law, King Herod hath imposed
And they were each one quite odd
And mensch, a virgin, and a God
But don't forget that what kept them afloat
Floating through the desert doesn't take a boat, no
Don't forget that what kept them above
Is unconditional love

Yes, the line about the boat in the desert is cheesy and yes, he may not believe what he sings about Jesus, Mary and Joseph but, at the end of the day, finding Christian truth proclaimed unexpectedly in a pop song kinda gets me going. Nothing beats Linus reading Jesus' birth narrative from the Gospel of Luke in A Charlie Brown Christmas. But with our VCR broken this "Christmas," I'll thank Rufus Wainwright for bring the Gospel to me through pop culture.

A Three-Run Triple

2007-12-30T10:45:00.000-08:00

That's how I would describe the third installment of Thomas Cahill's "Hinges of History" series entitled, Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus. To complete the analogy; his first book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, was a home run in the 8th or 9th inning for a team down by a few runs but who ultimately wins, revitalized by the solo shot. I was not expecting that book to be as good as it is and dedicated myself to the whole series, after having read it. It enlightens us on an aspect of Western history that we know little about and gives me greater appreciation for Celtic Christianity's role in the history of the Church and Her development and influence in that particular period. Cahill's second book, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, is a flat out grand slam (read my views on it here). It is vital for every Christian to be intimately familiar with the Old Testament. Cahill makes the point that, in order to truly understand who we are and from whence we've come as a civilization, it is vital for every westerner, regardless of religion or lack thereof, to understand Jewish history and how they revolutionized the world.

So why is his latest book a three-run triple? I've scored this hit with particularity. First of all, I just can’t bring myself to call it a home run, due to that fact that Cahill would not allow himself to proclaim that Jesus is God or that the New Testament proclaims such a message. I John 5:12 states, "He who has the Son has the life." If you don’t believe that Jesus is God, you don’t "have the Son." While, refreshingly, Cahill often challenges some of the popular and ridiculous conclusions of the Jesus Seminar — and others of their ilk — regarding the historicity of the Gospels, at other times he follows the modern, antisupernaturalist scholarly line, proposing that the divinity of Jesus is a development of the later Church and not something that anyone who actually knew Jesus actually believed.

"In this dialogue [between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4], as in the one with Nathaniel [in John 1], Jesus possesses some of the ease and humor of the Synoptic Jesus surely, but he is now all-knowing, which he is never shown to be in Mark and Matthew, and of which there are but occasional flashes in Luke." (p. 268)

"… never shown to be in …"?!?! A cursory reading of any Gospel reveals Jesus as divine and each clearly portrays Him as sharing in the Father's omniscience. To deny this is to be caught up in the criticism and skepticism of a New Testament scholarship that won’t let the Bible say what it actually and plainly says. For all of the wonderful truths that Cahill brings to light, I can’t call his book a home run because he won’t call Jesus God or let the early Christians believe that He was. The book has many such uncomfortable and ultimately disagreeable moments and it is clear that he did not even try to engage with any conservative New Testament scholarship that would challenge these critical/skeptical views.

But on to the three runs. As with his other books, Cahill writes compellingly and makes connections that aren't always made in Biblical/historical studies. The first chapter of the book is a 50-page account of Greco-Roman history and how that history involved and influenced the Jews. This introduction sets the stage for the kind of Savior that the people in the first century, of whatever persuasion, would have been expecting. The remaining chapters reveal how Jesus met all such expectations, no matter how unexpectedly He may have done so, and how His Person is interwoven into the fabric of our civilization in a way that we will never be able to get rid of, nor should we attempt to. Cahill talks about Jesus as a new believer might, with fresh insights that those of us who have walked with Jesus for some time may have forgotten or at least failed to reflect on recently. The book is not recommended for someone looking for Evangelical exposition or even broadly Christian theological reflection. It is recommended for someone who is looking for good writing and a perspective on Jesus that is unique and that will cause you to be that much more appreciative of your Christian heritage. I don’t intend for the three runs to correspond to three particular truths that I think Cahill poignantly illiterates. I do intend for the three runs to convey that, even though it's not a home run, Desire of the Everlasting Hills is worth reading and has whet my appetite for book four.

A Quick Word About Character

2007-10-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

Now that it's been a week since the Boston Red Sox destroyed my beloved Angels in the ALDS, and I've had a chance to calm down, I think I can write more reflectively and less reactionary on what I observed. I can't make any excuses for the Angels because the Red Sox beat them in every conceivable category. So, my comments are not so much about the details of the game as they are about how the game was played. My basic thoughts are the same as they were a week ago, I'm just less hot-headed about them. It does help my soul that the Red Sox are down two games to one in the ALCS. Go Cleveland!

I'll start off by saying that my observations don't have a lot of statistical verification. As I'll explain, I'm working from a very small sample and what I have to say may be contrary to reality. But all I have to go on, in this case, are my observations so, I'll speak my peace and let those of you who can refute me, do so in the comments.

Since 2002, I've been to approximately fifty Angel games and watched about as many on TV. I've listened to probably a hundred but, as you'll see, that doesn't help my case. I've also watched several hundred mlb.com video clips of game highlights. In that same time period, I've seen maybe five Boston Red Sox games that didn't involve the Angels, and none of them were live. Obviously, we're dealing with imbalanced research and substandard investigative reporting.

However, the imbalance highlights my point. You see, in all of my experience with the Angels, it isn't often that they show poor character. Back when Troy Glaus was an Angel, he would swear every few games after a strikeout, which is amazing considering how often he struck out. Jarrod Washburn had a tendency to swear every now and then when a batter would hit one out of the park — also amazing considering how often he gave up home runs. And our wonderful Texan, John Lackey, doesn't always display his best side when he has a bad outing. When things are going well for the Angels, there is relatively little showboating or grandstanding. No throwing of the bat or raised arms when it is clear that the ball is headed out of the park and definitely no "joyful swearing?" when a double play is turned. In general, I'm proud of how the Angels carry themselves as they play the game.

The Red Sox have a completely different field presence. During the last few weeks of the season, I saw Dustin Pedroia — likely this year's rookie of the year — turn a double play and let out an enthusiastic "f*@# yeah!" When Jonathan Papelbon struck out an Angel to end the inning in the second game of the ALDS, there was no mistaking that he felt it necessary to give us all a, "yeah, yeah, f*@# yeah!" This is what the Red Sox do when they do something good! Not to mention that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez — in this year's ALDS, at least — couldn't hit one out without throwing the bat, admiring their performance for what seemed an eternity and walking half way to first with their hands raised in the air. Their showboating or grandstanding puts Barry Bonds to shame.

After realizing that the Red Sox are a team full of the kind of people that I don't want my son to grow up admiring , i.e. people with lots of talent but with egos and attitudes that render that talent morally worthless, and that the Angels are, for the most part, the kind of people I want my son admiring, I found myself actually believing the ol' cliché, "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." I would have loved to watch the Angels take the World Series this year, to see Vlad Guerrero finally get a ring, to see Garret Anderson prove himself in the latter part of his career. But if they'd have had to act like the Red Sox to do it, no thanks. I'll settle for the AL West Championship and proudly dress my kid in Angel gear, knowing that the character they exhibit is the kind I'd like him to exhibit as he grows up and learns to play sports, study in school and live life. Character does matter. Keep it up Angels.

"No Conflict Between Science and Religion" - What in the World Does that Mean?

2007-09-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

On the recommendation of a family member, I started reading Jimmy Carter's 2005 book, Our Endangered Values. I've only read half of it, but I find myself pulled in 2 directions.

On the one hand, Carter seems undoubtedly Evangelical, having shared his faith in Jesus Christ with world leaders and dignitaries whose faiths are indifferent, if not hostile, to his own. He has studied and taught the Bible in a local Church setting for decades. I respect this about President Carter and am jealous of his zeal for evangelism.

On the other hand, while I agree with Carter that America's moral values are in serious trouble, I attribute the cause of moral decline to the exact opposite of whatever he attributes such decline. For example, he believes that the social conflict in America over Church-state relations is not due to the fact that the government (more specifically, the legislature) is taking a stronger stance against Christianity and Its values, but because religious fanatics (fundamentalists, the religious right, etc.) are pushing their morality on the public and forcing religion into politics. I find Carter's logic invalid, his examples circumstantial and his conclusions unsound.

Which brings me to the subject of this post. Chapter 5 of Carter's book is titled, "No Conflict Between Science and Religion." Before starting the book but having browsed the table of contents, I was intrigued and excited to read what he had to say. I also believe that there is no conflict between science and religion and thought that Carter and I would have something to agree on here. However, as I began to read the book and experience the discrepancy described above, I realized that it was highly likely that Carter meant something utterly different than I mean by that phrase. And sure enough, upon reading the chapter, I now know that I have a completely contrary understanding of the relationship between faith and science than does Carter.

At some point in the course of reading the chapter and realizing our disagreement, I recalled that Francis Schaeffer had written a piece about the relationship of science and religion with a similar title to Carter's chapter. I checked volume 2 of Schaeffer's complete works and there it was, No Final Conflict. I doubted highly that Schaeffer and Carter shared the same view but, due to my initial error in judgment about Carter, I wondered if even Schaeffer and I shared the same view. I imagined the 3 of us, all espousing that there is no conflict between science and religion, having three radically different relationships in mind. It's not the potential different perspectives on the relationship that troubles me but that the 3 of us could have different views and all call it the same thing. I have a book entitled, Science and Christianity: Four Views wherein, obviously, 4 different views about the relationship between science and faith are fleshed out. Needless to say, none of the views are called the same thing and the titles clearly describe the content of the perspective, without equivocation.

So I read Schaeffer as well and, thankfully, came to realize that his view of the relationship is quite similar to mine, and quite the contrary of Carter's. But I am still, a week later, working through the reality that "no conflict" can mean two different, and quite opposing things. Let me summarize the views and then let Carter and Schaeffer speak for themselves.

No Conflict: Carter Style - Science and religion do not conflict because the former deals with fact and the latter with faith. Science describes the physical world and how it works, while the Bible describes spiritual world and God's message to man. The conflict we experience is the result of trying to make the Bible relate to science or science to the Bible.

No Conflict: Schaeffer Style - Science and religion do not conflict because both general revelation, i.e. science and special revelation, i.e. the Bible both come from the same non-contradictory God. Whatever conflict we experience as fallible human beings is the result of our inability to rightly understand one or the other.

I believe that most of the supposed conflict between science and faith that we hear of today is the result of a Carter style worldview that is inherited from the Enlightenment. A foundation stone of current secular western thought is the independence of science from religion, a demarcation that says the two don't have anything to do with each another. When we try to mix them we get nothing but contradictions. The Bible says that God created man but science says that man is the result of a mindless evolutionary process. Christianity tells us that the universe has purpose and direction but science shows no sign of these things. Rather than try to wrestle with these problems, if we relegate the Bible to only being God's spiritual message and let science describe empirical reality, we avoid the conflict. Here's how Carter puts it:

1. "I had always understood that we didn't need scientific proof for the existence or character of God. In fact, whenever there was adequate physical evidence to prove any theory or proposition, then we didn't need faith as a basis for our belief."

2. "It seems obvious to me that, in its totality, the Bible presented God's spiritual message, but that the ancient authors of the Holy Scriptures were not experts on geology, biology, or cosmology …"

3. "Whenever there is a scientific discovery or a theory that is proven by the observation of facts, these are just additional revelations to fallible human beings of truths that have always existed. They cannot possibly have an adverse effect on the status of the omnipotent Creator of the entire universe."

4. "The existence of millions of distant galaxies, the evolution of species, and the big bang theory cannot be rejected because they are not described in the Bible, and neither does confidence in them cast doubt on the Creator of it all. God gave us this exciting opportunity for study and exploration, never expecting the Bible to encompass a description of the entire physical world or for scientific discoveries to be necessary as the foundation for our Christian faith."

Carter's position is clear – science and religion do not mix and were never meant to. Controversy arises when we try to cross the firmly established lines between them. If we let each speak only to its own appropriate sphere, all is well.

But do we live this way? Can we live this way? Did God intend for us to live this way? When we ask these questions, Carter style "no conflict" seems to present problems. We don't live as if the science and religion don’t relate. When I read the intricate details of Israel's history (including the miracles) in the Bible, I get the sense that I am supposed to believe both the history and the spiritual significance. In fact, the spiritual significance is deepened and strengthened because it is historical. Conversely, when science tells me that smoking destroys the body I, knowing that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, see smoking as a negative activity both physically and spiritually. Life doesn't allow us to slice it up and keep its spheres separate and neither does God want that. Of course we don't, "need scientific proof for the existence or character of God." God reveals Himself through many means other than the merely scientific. Nonetheless, He gave us proof, scientific proof (see the results of Intelligent Design research), and it would be foolish to ignore it. So, it seems, Carter's version of no conflict depends on an idealistic impossibility. In addition, Carter's position that faith is not necessary to believe something that has been empirically verified shows that he doesn't understand the Biblical idea of faith nor how much faith is required even in the scientific realm.

But where does that leave us? Science and religion often do seem to conflict. If we are going to propose that they don't, we have some explaining to do. Here's Schaeffer's view:

1. "And there is a reason for being shaken [if the Bible only addresses the spiritual], for there is no reason to keep what the Bible says religiously if we have put it in an upper story and thrown away that of which the Bible speaks when it touches history and the cosmos. God could have given us the religious truths which He sets forth in the Bible in a theological outline. … But instead of this, He gave us religious truths in a book of history and a book that touches on the cosmos as well. What sense does it make for God to give true religious truths and at the same time place them in a book that is wrong when it touches history and the cosmos?"

2. "The Bible is not a scientific textbook—in the sense that science is not its central theme, and we do not have a comprehensive statement about the cosmos. 'The Bible is not a scientific textbook' is true in the sense in which we have just spoken. But many people use the statement in a different way—that is, to say that the Bible does not affirm anything about that in which science has an interest. When the statement is used to mean this, it must be totally rejected. The Bible does give affirmations about that in which science has an interest."

3. "What the Bible teaches where it touches history and the cosmos, and what science teaches where it touches the same areas do not stand in a discontinuity. There must indeed be a place for the study of general revelation …—that is, a place for true science. But on the other side, it must be understood that there is no automatic need to accommodate the Bible to the statements of science. There may be a difference between the methodology by which we gain knowledge from what God tells us in the Bible and the methodology by which we gain it from scientific study, but this does not lead to a dichotomy as to the facts. In practice, it may not always be possible to correlate the two studies because of the special situation involved; yet if both studies can be adequately pursued, there will be no final conflict."

So, when it comes to science and religion, like with the rest of life, we have our work cut out for us. We know that God is one and that His truth is, therefore, unified. There is no real, ultimate conflict between science and religion, no matter how irreparable the breach might seem to us now. When science says one thing and the Bible says something else, we can't side step the issue by proposing a dysfunctionally compartmentalized perspective. Carter style "no conflict" will not work in the long run. Rather, we trust in our consistent God as we strive to integrate the truths of science and religion, understanding that there is, in fact, no final conflict but a beautiful, eternal harmony, even if we never grasp it on this side of Heaven.

Visit this Blog Forum ... Every Day

2007-08-19T11:07:00.001-07:00

I'm ashamed that I haven't recommended this site before now. I check it every day and, even if I were able to read one post each visit, I still would not be able to keep up with all of the great stuff found here. The forum is Scriptorium Daily and features blogs by several professors, all of whom teach in or are affiliated with the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. I may be partial because I'm a Biola graduate and thoroughly enjoyed and had my life changed by the classes I had with several of these professors (though not, unfortunately, as a Torrey student). But even if I am biased, I think you'll find their posts encouraging, stimulating, humorous and insightful. Topics address everything from politics to art, cultural commentary to literature, theology to film. I especially recommend Fred Sanders' posts under the avant-garde category where he offers artistic, literary and theological criticism of his children's artwork. If it doesn't bring a smile to your face, you need to re-prioritize your life. Happy reading!

More Theological Thoughts (mine and others')

2007-07-19T21:43:00.001-07:00

On the 3rd Thursday night (approximately) of each month during the school year, a small group of American and Ukrainian Evangelicals get together to talk about the burning theological issues that we are wrestling with. One of our members started a blog for our group, which you can access here, or via my list of other blogs. It's summer, so there isn't a lot going on, but once the semester starts and we get to meeting again, I trust the blog discussion will increase.

Most recently, there, I posted my assessment of a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. I post on that blog even less frequently than I do on this one. Nonetheless, feel free to check it out. That post has a link to the debate, if your interested.

Determining Evangelcial Reality

2007-07-01T05:15:00.000-07:00

I recently read two articles from different publications that, quite providentially (or quite coincidentally, depending on your point of view), discuss the same phenomenon but come to two radically divergent conclusions. They both discussed whether Evangelicalism in the mid to late 1900s fostered intellectual and cultural engagement with unbelieving society in order to effect change or whether its negative imagery and language of despair when talking about society hindered such engagement and the integration of faith and learning for Evangelicals. George M. Marsden argues the former in "The Born Again Mind" from issue 92 of Christian History & Biography (CHB), while James A. Patterson argues the latter in volume 49:4 of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS) in his article, "Cultural Pessimism in Modern Evangelical Thought: Francis Schaeffer, Carl Henry and Charles Colson." Had I not read the articles within mere days of each other, I would have found myself in agreement with both authors. However, since I did read them so close together, I am forced to process the seeming incompatibility. What better place to process than a blog? If my process is bad or my conclusions wrong, someone can let me know. After a few caveats and a presentation of Marsden's and Patterson's positions, I'll state my conclusion. After that, lemme have it!

Caveat 1: JETS is an academic journal, while CHB is a popular magazine. It may not seem fair to compare articles from such mismatched sources, but in this particular case, I think it’s permissible. Masden is not the kind of scholar who would play loose with the facts in order to get an article published. A large majority of his research and writing has been devoted to the history of Evangelicalism, making him qualified to write a popular article that is spot on regarding the facts and their interpretations. This is not to make less of Patterson, rather, it is to say that we can trust Marden's article regardless of CHB’s more popular focus.

Caveat 2: It took me quite a while to get my mind around the key difference(s) between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. In fact, knowing what I do, there are still times when it is difficult to distinguish between them. In my opinion, it may be better to divide between fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist forms of Evangelicalism, rather than between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. (I'm going to withhold a firm commitment until I finish reading Marsden's Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism.) In any case, the fact that "fundamentalism" is now primarily understood as a pejorative sociological/psychological term rather than a descriptive religious/denominational one means that a lot of defining is required before any significant progress is going to be made in this discussion. I mention it here simply because it directly relates to how I address the issue at hand. If you disagree with my understanding of this distinction, it may cause you to disagree with my conclusion.

After discussing the varied activities of key Evangelical leaders in the mid 1900s, which were attempts to initiate a revival in Evangelical scholarship and engagement with academia, Marsden has this to say:

"From these and other modest beginnings, a genuine renaissance in evangelical scholarship would grow geometrically throughout the next decades. By the 1970s and 1980s, not only were many evangelical colleges assembling excellent faculties, but increasing numbers of evangelicals were publishing in the academic mainstream and taking their places in the broader university culture. Today this growth continues and has burgeoned into a considerable force in American academia. All over the country, outstanding evangelical students are crowding into graduate programs …" (p. 38).

To Marsden's list can be added the continued growth and recognition of Evangelical colleges and universities as legitimate contributors to U.S. higher education in areas beyond the purely religious. Also, the public debate stirred up by the Intelligent Design movement — which contains no small number of Evangelicals — definitely reveals the attempt and success at engaging culture intellectually. And, as mentioned here, there are a growing number of excellent, big-budget, wide-release films being produced by Christians, some of whom are Evangelicals.

Patterson, on the other hand, paints a starker picture. He readily acknowledges that the desired goal of Evangelical leaders, namely, Schaeffer, Henry and Colson, was to positively influence academia and culture for the Kingdom of God. However, he proposes that the harshly critical expression and "us vs. them" mentality of these leaders actually hindered the accomplishment of their goal.

"While Schaeffer, Henry and Colson all made notable, albeit sometimes, indirect, contributions to the Christian higher educational enterprise, their cultural stridency may actually have been counterproductive for the challenge of integrating faith and scholarship. … The confrontational, attack-mode style that often accompanies ‘dark age’ rhetoric undercuts the mission of evangelical Christian higher education. First, it seems likely that some of those exposed to such language, especially students and their parents, will be more apt to dismiss the culture than to engage it seriously. … Second, hostile, combative, and even exaggerated descriptions of contemporary culture threaten efforts to integrate faith and scholarship by undercutting concepts of general revelation and common grace." (pp. 808, 819, 820)

So, who’s right? Did the Evangelicalism of the past half-century promote and inspire the intellectual and cultural engagement that we now see? Or does our current situation — which, while positive and encouraging, forever demands of us prayerful, prudent and persistent action — exist in spite of the well-intentioned but "counterproductive" and "undercutting" efforts of Evangelicals past?

I side with Marsden for four reasons:

1. Biblically: The New Testament is filled with language about "the Kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness," "the Church and the world," "the people of God and the people of Satan," that Evangelicals use in their writings and speeches about secular culture. And yet, Christianity worldwide — which, knowingly or unknowingly, has as its authority New Testament teaching — is continuing to grow and flourish in spite of the fact that the Bible uses such rhetoric. Patterson's argument is weakened by saying that Evangelicals hurt the Church by doing something that the authoritative teachings of the Church do themselves.

2. Logically: If Evangelicals, using whatever language, constantly and consistently encouraged cultural and intellectual engagement and, decades later, Evangelicals are more engaged culturally and intellectually, it seems logical that their tactics were effective in accomplishing their goal. For Patterson to say that some people would hear or read Evangelicals and respond with a Fundamentalist attitude toward culture and academia — Fundamentalists encourage separation from culture and approach a separatist form of academics — doesn't seem to logically follow.

3. Common Sensically: Social and religious developments and movements almost always are associated with lots of intentional and passionate activity on the part of those effecting change. Newton's First Law of Motion, "objects at rest tend to stay at rest," seems to apply here. How can we explain the current state of Evangelical engagement if, on Patterson's appraisal, the Evangelical attempts to encourage such engagement were discouraging, even damaging, to what they were trying to accomplish? It makes much more sense to interpret the situation as Marsden does. After World War II, Evangelicals began to advance cultural and intellectual engagement, they were successful at this, and now Evangelicals are more culturally and intellectually engaged. It seems that their harsh descriptions of culture and the bleak future they envisioned without an Evangelical renewal inspired the change that they sought.

4. Personally: Having graduated from an Evangelical institution — one that, oddly enough, has Fundamentalist roots but which, years ago, took an aggressive and exciting Evangelical turn — and now working with an Evangelical mission, I can say that all of the doomsday language about culture and academia do, in fact, inspire rather than discourage engagement with culture. I am surrounded by Evangelicals who have been, directly or indirectly, affected by Schaeffer, Henry and Colson, and we all want to see our culture and society won for Christ. In fact, I can't say that I personally know anyone who holds a strict Fundamentalist attitude toward culture.

For these reasons, I consider the work of Evangelicals since the mid 1900s to have been unbelievably positive in spurring the Church on to engage the culture. One can find Evangelical influence in almost every sphere of life. This couldn't have happened by accident. I also consider it a privilege to be part of Evangelicalism and the work that is going on worldwide. The Evangelical Church in Eurasia is in the midst of the Fundamentalist controversy but, as happened in the west in decades ago, the Church is moving toward a more aggressive and active program of cultural engagement. This is a lot of fun to watch, even if it at times it feels like a one step forward, two steps back situation. And, above all, I consider all of this to be part of God's sovereign plan to expand His Kingdom, save the perishing and glorify Himself. To watch the Church take the light of Christ to the world and to see the world transformed as a result is exactly what the Holy Spirit wants, and it makes Satan cringe and cower. May the spirit of Evangelicalism continue to carry out the task God has entrusted to it, even if that includes being a prophetic voice in a culture that is still a far cry from what it could and should be.