Getting Heaven Wright

N. T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham and respected New Testament scholar, is interviewed by ABC News concerning his book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.  Bishop Wright does a good job of reestablishing a biblical view of the new heavens and the new earth, and how that applies to life today.

Do not be surprised that a dude gave birth

One of the most curious pieces of news that I heard this summer was about a ‘pregnant man’ giving birth to a baby girl.  At first the news headline could seem shocking, but this dose of realism may get rid of the edge (bold font added for emphasis):

Thomas Beatie, a “transgender” man was born a female, but as a young adult took hormone shots and had her breasts surgically removed. Beatie gave birth to a baby girl on June 29, and over the past week, some variation of the sideshow headline “Man gives birth to baby,” has appeared virtually omnipresent in the international media. Public perception does not always match reality in the headlines, however, for Beatie—hormone shots and surgery notwithstanding—was, remains, and ever will be, a woman. Though the birth of every single child is a miracle and a profound blessing from our sovereign Lord, it is not earthshaking, headline news when a woman gives birth to a baby.

(Quote from Jeff Robinson)

A pick up line only a Calvinist can use

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(HT: Steve Treichler)

Christianity Today on the New EFCA Statement of Faith

Collin Hansen, Christianity Today editor at large and author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists, wrote an article on the new EFCA faith statement called It’s Not Broke, So Fix It.  It is a good article to read, particularly in light of the major decisions that were made on the doctrinal matters of open theism, the Atonement, justification, and inerrancy.  Here is a portion of the article:

If you want to make sure no one covers your denominational meeting, here’s what you do: Revise your statement of faith before certain issues become disputed in your churches. And yet here I am writing about the Evangelical Free Church of America’s newly revised statement of faith. Why? Because the time to fix your doctrine is when it isn’t broke …

By being intentional about revising the statement of faith before it breaks down, EFCA leaders just might save themselves the trouble of fixing it later.

New Statement of Faith for the EFCA

On June 26, 2008, the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) approved a new statement of faith at 124th National Leadership Conference.  I would encourage you to take a look at the new statement, and compare it to the old statement.

I have posted before on this matter, particularly in light of the issue premillienialism (see EFCA Statement Revision).  As I said in that post, I believe that dropping premillienialism from the statement would better reflect the EFCA’s commitment of “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, charity.  In all things, Jesus Christ” (Chrysostom).  There was hope that an amendment at the conference would do just that, but in the end that amendment was not passed.  The main reason being for the sake of unity since a strong minority would have voted against it, and many churches would have left the EFCA.

Am I now upset about the new statement?  Not at all.  I think the new statement, even with premillienialism in it, is a solid statement.  In fact, I am more committed to the EFCA as a result of them leaving the doctrine in there.  Why?  Because they underwent this process with much humility and commitment to the unity of the denomination.  Unlike the craziness in the Anglican church (see here and here), the EFCA is committed to both unity and the gospel.  I believe the day will come when premillienialism will be taken out of the statement, but understandably now is not the time.  Great charity was shown to those who embrace the non-essential of premillienialism, and as a result the EFCA continues to be united around the gospel.

P.S. For all you Reformed brothers who are still disheartened by the new statement, maybe John MacArthur’s sermon “Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist is a Pre-Millennialist” will help you cope.  It is an interesting sermon, but the title should have been changed to “Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist is a Dispensationalist,” just out of respect for historical premillienialist like myself.

New website for the Gospel Coalition

Take a look at the new website for The Gospel Coalition.  There is new information on the 2009 conference, and some news on how The Gospel Coalition now operates the theological journal Themelios.

May the Lord continue to use this coalition to unite many Christian leaders in Jesus for the advancement of his kingdom!

“The Secret” is dumb, and I’m not the only one who thinks so

If I were to come out and critique “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, then no one would be surprised.  I would just be another Christian critiquing a book that I’m narrow minded about.  Fine.  I’ll let someone else tell you “The Secret” is about as trustworthy as pyromaniac in a store that sells fireworks.

I was reading the Sun Times today and ran across a promotion for a new book by Richard Roeper.  The book is called Debunked! Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legands, and Evil Plots of the 21st Century.  The Sun Times gave their readers a portion from this book in an article titled ‘The Secret’ conspiracy.  Here are some quotes from the article:

I read The Secret, and I have to admit it was very effective on one level: It gave me a decent workout because I had to keep getting up and retrieving the book after hurtling it across the room in disgust.

Rhonda Byrne and her army of associates and disciples would have you believe there’s a conspiracy of smart, enlightened people in the world who have long held access to the great solution of success in life — and you, too, can possess this “inside knowledge” if you just buy the crap she’s peddling.

What’s amazing to me is that Ellen DeGeneres, Larry King, Oprah, Montel Williams and other opinion shapers have embraced this book when they should be denouncing it as immoral, unethical, and spiritually bankrupt.

Byrne’s entire philosophy is based on “the law of attraction,” which states that if you fully dedicate your thoughts and dreams and wishes to achieving something, the universe will act in accordance with your thoughts and make these things happen.

Here’s how Byrne described it in an e-mail to the Associated Press:

“The law of attraction says that like attracts like, and when you think and feel what you want to attract on the inside, the law will use people, circumstances and events to magnetize what you want to you, and magnetize you to it.

Hence the term chick magnet.

Like a lot of people who have made it, Byrne falls into the trap of believing she made it primarily because she had big dreams and more than anything she wanted those dreams to come true. You get this every year at Oscar time, when some genetically gifted, talented and extremely fortunate person says, “This proves that if you want something bad enough and you never let your dream die, you can make it all the way to the top! If you don’t stop dreaming, it will happen to you!”

Maybe. Probably not. There are millions upon millions of people who work hard and wish hard and dream hard — just as hard as the superstars of the world — and never become rich or famous or even financially comfortable and respected by their peers. Winners of the life lottery often make the mistake of thinking they tapped into a special kind of belief system that made their dreams come true, when in reality it was probably a mix of hard work, God-given talent, and being in the right place at the right time …

Even more insidious than the just-wish-for-it mentality is the explicitly stated belief that if bad things happen to you, it’s your own damned fault. According to the teachers of The Secret, if you’re broke, it’s because you have too many negative thoughts keeping money from reaching you, and if you’re sick, it’s because you believed you could become sick. Without exception, everyone deserves what he or she gets.

This is a stunningly odious philosophy. Are we truly to believe that children born with life-shortening illnesses, that victims of terrorism and genocide, that starving families in Africa should blame themselves for their godforsaken bad fortune? Tell the widow of 9/11 victim or the mother of a child with cancer or the father who has just buried his seven-year-old son who was struck and killed by a car that if only those victims had believed in the law of attraction, they would have been just fine. Go ahead, tell them …

This is the book Oprah has blessed with two full shows. A book that tells you if you want something or someone, all you have to do is visualize it happening, and it will happen. A book that tells you not to observe fat people, lest their overweightness invade your thoughts. A book that says we should blame the victim — that if something sh—- and tragic happens to you, you had it coming. A book that says you shouldn’t get involved in fighting injustice because it only adds to the injustice.

I believe there’s nothing wrong with a little positive thinking. Hell, there’s nothing wrong with a lot of positive thinking. If you dwell on the negative all the time, if you walk around with a spiritual black cloud over your head, of course you’re going to make your own life and the lives of others more difficult.

But I don’t know how anyone can keep a straight face while selling The Secret. The world is filled with positive people who never got out from under a lifetime of pain and disappointment — and miserable bastards who catch one lucky break after another.

There really is a conspiracy at work here. It’s not a conspiracy of enlightened leaders who know the secret of the universe is the law of attraction; it’s the conspiracy of self-help hucksters to sell all these cheap, warmed-over ideas to people who are so desperate to believe in quick-fix, New Age “solutions” that they’ll believe all this bulls—.

“The Secret” is really bad fiction.  Mr. Roeper agrees with me, and he knows bad fiction when he sees it.

My Broken Heart for Darfur’s Women

This week I read a heartbreaking report from CNN on how rape is a way of life for Darfur’s women.  Here is part of that report:

Some relief workers say that almost every woman living in aid camps has been raped or become a victim of gender-based violence. Many teenagers, while out running errands such as collecting firewood, are raped multiple times by militiamen, the workers say.

They say the situation has now become so bad that many women are now resigned to rape as a way of life and men are unwilling to accompany them because they fear that they will be killed if they try to defend them.

Oh how I pray that this evil would cease for these women, and that the Lord who bore the sins of the world would be their comfort through the counsel of his Spirit!

Dawkins vs. Tolle: Who is the bigger threat to Christianity?

There are two streams of literature that are popular in today’s culture.  One stream is the new proselytizing atheists such as Richard Dawkins.  The other is the “neural buddhists” such as Eckhart Tolle.  Both streams are reaching a big audience of people.  However, I wanted to pondering which stream is more dangerous for the Christian church?  Consider this quote from David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times, and his article The Neural Buddhists:

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

I believe Brooks may be right.  I would like to hear other thoughts.

All the forms of the gospel

Tim Keller recently wrote an article called The Gospel in All its Forms.  The main point of the article is to show that “God the gospel is one and more than that.”

Evangelicals have articulated the simple gospel of: “(1) God made you and wants to have a relationship with you, (2) but your sin separates you from God. (3) Jesus took the punishment your sins deserved, (4) so if you repent from sins and trust in him for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified, and accepted freely by grace, and indwelt with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.”  Today, this simple gospel has come under attack because it appears to be too individualistic and because “the Bible itself contains many gospel presentations that exist in tension with each other.”

Keller explains that there is only one gospel (cf. 1 Cor. 15:10-11).  There is no such thing as a gospel according to Jesus, which red-letter emergents follow, and a gospel according to Paul, which old evangelicals follow.  The truth is there is ”a single body of gospel content.”  On the other hand, “there are clearly different forms in which that one gospel can be expressed” (cf. Gal. 1:8, or the Gospel of John verses the Synoptic Gospels).

How do we articulate this gospel with differnt forms?  Keller, referencing Simon Gathercole, touches on three main points of the gospel.  They include:

1. “Jesus was the promised Messianic King and Son of God come to earth as a servant, in human form. (Rom. 1:3-4; Phil. 2:4ff.).”
2. By “his death and resurrection, Jesus atoned for our sin and secured our justification by grace, not by our works (1 Cor. 15:3ff.)”
3. On “the cross Jesus broke the dominion of sin and evil over us (Col. 2:13-15) and at his return he will complete what he began by the renewal of the entire material creation and the resurrection of our bodies (Rom 8:18ff.).”

These three themes can be traced through the gospels (Mark 1:1; 1:14-2:10, 10:45; Matthew 19:28).  In light of this outline, Keller takes a crack at articulating the gospel in a “simple” statement: “Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.”  I really like this articulation.  It balances well both the personal and cosmic implications of the gospel!

It is clearly important to balance both the personal and the cosmic “good news” of the gospel.  There is a tension, but one should not pit one against the other.  To emphasize the cosmic or “kingdom-corporate versions of the gospel” at times lead to obscuring “how offensive sin is to God himself, and it usually mutes any emphasis on God’s wrath … to speak about the gospel in terms of doing justice blurs the fact of salvation being all of grace, not works.”  On the other hand, “so many of us who revel in the classic gospel of ‘grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone’ largely ignore the eschatological implications of the gospel.”  This fact is sad because the cosmic implications of the gospel help us to realize “that Jesus is going to someday destroy hunger, disease, poverty, injustice, and death itself … This full version of the gospel reminds us that God created both the material and the spiritual, and is going to redeem both the material and the spiritual.”

If we are honest with ourselves, it is hard to preach both aspects of the gospel and respecting the biblical tension.  Keller ends the article offering these personal suggestions:

1. Don’t “don’t put all the gospel points into any one gospel presentation.”
2. Use “both a gospel for the ‘circumcised’ and for the ‘uncircumcised,’” that is the religious and the pagan.
3. Use “use both a “kingdom” and an “eternal life” gospel.”
4. Use “use them all and let each group overhear me preaching to the others.”