More Thoughts on Giving and the Christian Heart

I posted some quotes on Christian giving at Giving and the Christian Heart.  One of the points quoted in the post was:

$10 billion would sponsor 20 million children for a year, and just $330 million would sponsor 150,000 indigenous missionaries in countries closed to religious workers. $2.2 billion would triple the current funding of Bible translation, printing, and distribution. $600 million would be enough to start eight Christian colleges in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

These figures only begin to spend that extra cash. What Christians could do—if they managed their money in a way that gave priority to giving a portion away—is astounding.

The point about what could be done if Christians would give what they could is well taken.  However, may I suggests that how that money is spent depends on local congregations and church leadership.  Perhaps we are assuming too much when we say that these billions of dollars would go to Bible translation, mission work, and training schools for ministry?  My belief is that even if this extra amount is giving to the church  in America it would be spent mostly on larger buildings, video venues, and other inward focused line items.  Do I have stats to back up this claim?  Not off the top of my head, but I do not think my hunch is too far off.

The church is exhorted to be “rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:17-19).  Does the size of our buildings and the number of multi-sites reflect an American church that is “generous and ready to share,” especially for the advancement of Christ’s global kingdom? What do you think?

Marriage Protects Against Injustice

A great perspective from an article titled “Christianity and Sexuality“ by Christopher Ash.  In the section on “Public Order: Servicing God by Guarding Sex for Marriage,” he introduces his point with these words:

It is worth asking in this connection what the difference is between unmarried cohabitation and marriage. Why not just live together? The main truth to understand is that there is an intrinsic connection between sexual intimacy and permanence. Sex is designed for permanence, and the breaking of a sexual relationship, whether by death, by divorce, or by infidelity, is always the breaking of something created to be maintained. This is expressed in a saying of Jesus: “those whom God has joined together, let not human beings tear apart” (Matthew 19:6). Every married couple is joined together by God. This has nothing to do with whether or not they were married in a church. It is a simple fact about marriage: when a man and woman publicly pledge themselves to lifelong faithfulness, God joins them together and holds them accountable for keeping their promises. Sexual intimacy is either in the context of the public pledge of lifelong faithfulness, or it cuts across Creation Order. This is important for at least three reasons.

The three reasons he gives are protection against injustice, the removal of ambiguity, and the accountability of a public promise.  Each point is worth reading, and so is the entire article, but his remarks on marriage and injustice are insightful:

the public pledge of marriage helps to provide a measure of protection against injustice. Whenever someone walks out on a sexual relationship, someone is hurt. It may just be the other partner; often it is children as well. If we swallow the myth that “what happens in the bedroom” is not the concern of the rest of us, then much injustice will be done, especially by men, and there will be no redress from those who are wronged. The public pledge of marriage, upheld by a healthy society, begins (at least approximately) to ensure that justice is done.

In the UK legislation is very gradually imposing obligations of justice on cohabiting partners. Perhaps before long no one will be able to walk out of a cohabitation without some obligation to fulfill responsibilities to the other (especially if there are children). We must welcome this. But we must also note that every move in this direction makes unmarried cohabitation less attractive to those who entered it precisely in order to avoid the obligations of marriage. Indeed, we could make a case for saying that society ought to treat cohabiting partners as if they were married, with all the obligations that entails. This would mean that to break a cohabitation one party would have to sue for what would effectively be divorce! If that were to happen, then the mere action of moving in together would come to signify the commitment verbalized in the marriage vows, and then cohabitation would mean marriage. It does not at the moment. And until and unless it does, only marriage provides proper protection for the vulnerable.

The UK legislation that he mentions may or may not be the best political solution to the problem, however, his point on the measure of protection that marriage gives against injustice is certainly a valid one.

Giving and the Christian Heart

I ran accross an old article by Rob Moll about the state of giving from American Christians.  Here are some portions from the article “Scrooge Lives!“

More than one out of four American Protestants give away no money at all …

Of all Christian groups, evangelical Protestants score best: only 10 percent give nothing away. Evangelicals tend to be the most generous, but they do not outperform their peers enough to wear a badge of honor. Thirty-six percent report that they give away less than two percent of their income. Only about 27 percent tithe …

American Christians’ lack of generosity might not be as shocking if it didn’t contrast so starkly with their astounding wealth. Passing the Plate’s researchers say committed American Christians—those who say their faith is very important to them and those who attend church at least twice a month—earn more than $2.5 trillion dollars every year. On their own, these Christians could be admitted to the G7, the group of the world’s seven largest economies. Smith and his coauthors estimate that if these Christians gave away 10 percent of their after-tax earnings, they would add another $46 billion to ministry around the world …

One early finding: That estimate of $46 billion in additional giving is unrealistic. Not because it’s too big, but because it’s too small. Estimating 10 percent giving for every committed Christian in the U.S. neglects two groups: those who truly can’t afford to give 10 percent (due to illness or unemployment or similar reasons), and those who are already giving more than 10 percent (more on this group in a moment). If you calculate that 10 percent of Christians can’t give because of their financial limitations, most of the rest give 10 percent, and a handful of generous givers continue their current generous giving pattern, committed American Christians could realistically increase their giving by $85.5 billion each year …

$10 billion would sponsor 20 million children for a year, and just $330 million would sponsor 150,000 indigenous missionaries in countries closed to religious workers. $2.2 billion would triple the current funding of Bible translation, printing, and distribution. $600 million would be enough to start eight Christian colleges in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

These figures only begin to spend that extra cash. What Christians could do—if they managed their money in a way that gave priority to giving a portion away—is astounding.

The state of American Christianity that is explained above should not propell believers to give legalistically, but rather to examine our hearts.  Jesus said for “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21), and Paul wrote in 2 Corinithians 9:7 that each “one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”  Where is the heart of the American Christian?  Lord have mercy on us.

On Disciplined Reading

The following is from Between Two Worlds:

At the Between the Times blog (from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary), Professor Bruce Ashford has an excellent series on disciplined reading. Here are the five parts of the series:

1. On Disciplined Reading
2. What Should I Read? Choosing from a Vast Array of Options
3. How Should I Read? Tips on Getting the Most from Your Reading
4. Why Should I Read? Other Advantages of Reading
5. Questions, Answers, and Concluding Thoughts

On “what” to read, he offers these principles:

1. Guard your time in the Scriptures.
2. Avoid limiting yourself by era, tribe, or category.
3. Reading the great authors is more helpful than reading a great number of books.
4. Make a list of categories and read a selected number of books each year, in each category.
5. Read a few select journals and magazines

On “how” to read, he offers these tips:

1. If you would like to become a disciplined reader, you probably need to make a plan.
2. Figure out your “reading style.”
3. Always carry a book.
4. If possible, drink and read at the same time.

On “why” to read, and suggests that reading does the following:

• sharpens the mind
• exercises the mind
• gives one something about which to converse
• allows one to “travel” to other times and places
• reduces stress
• provides an inexpensive and low maintenance form of entertainmen

In the final post, he answers questions he’s been asked throughout the series, on:

• How to find books to read
• How to find time to read
• How to choose between print and electronic media
• How to keep discipline from being drudgery
• How to retain and organize what is learned from a book

In his final post, he also writes, “In the near future, I will provide suggested reading in various disciplines and genres such as theology, intellectual history, missiology, international affairs, fiction, history, and current affairs.” So keep an eye on Between the Times for this.

Virtual Plunge into a Black Hole

image from wikimedia.org

From a CNN.com article titled “Astronomers take virtual plunge into black hole“

To be sucked in by a black hole, you need to reach its event horizon, the one-way boundary beyond which nothing can escape. The more massive a black hole, the bigger this point of no return around it, said Jeff McClintock, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The most common black holes, which weigh on average 10 times as much as the sun, have boundaries 40 miles across. But most galaxies also have supermassive black holes at their centers, which weigh millions of suns and would have boundaries that stretch millions of miles. Blog: What is a white hole?

Approaching the horizon, you would notice nothing special, but someone observing you from the outside would see you freeze in place and become a lot dimmer because light that you emit at the boundary takes a long time to get out, Hamilton said.

Many people think you would be engulfed in darkness when you fall in, but that is a common misconception, Hamilton points out. The view of the outside universe would become distorted, but would not disappear.

Once you pass the horizon — or go over Niagara Falls, in the waterfall analogy — you would be falling faster than the speed of light toward the black hole’s center — called a singularity — and feeling the effects, Hamilton said.

“The gravity at your feet is stronger than the gravity at your head, as long as you fall in feet first. … You feel this difference in gravity between your feet and your head as a tidal force, which pulls you apart vertically in a process called ’spaghettification,’ ” Hamilton writes on his Web site.

“At the same time as you are pulled apart vertically, you are crushed in the horizontal direction, like a rubber band being pulled. So if you would like to be taller and thinner, then one way to achieve that is to fall into a black hole.”

If black holes are so powerful and majestic, then how much more is the God who created them.  The universe declares the glory of God!

Modern Women are Unhappy

Ross Douthat of the New York Times writes an article called “Liberated and Unhappy,” which interacts with the study “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.”  Here is a sample:

[T]he achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women …

a new-model stigma shouldn’t (and couldn’t) look like the old sexism. There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s — behind a social revolution that ostracizes serial baby-daddies and trophy-wife collectors as thoroughly as the “fallen women” of a more patriarchal age.

No reason, of course, save the fact that contemporary America doesn’t seem willing to accept sexual stigma, period. We simply don’t have the stomach for permanently ostracizing the sexually irresponsible — be they a pregnant starlet, a thrice-divorced tycoon, or even a prostitute-hiring politician.

In this sense, ours is a kinder, gentler, more forgiving country than it was 40 years ago. But for half the public, it’s an unhappier country as well.

[HT: Owen Strachan]

Pro-Life Secularists

Gallup recently released a poll that showed for the first time “a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.”  One of the many things that this poll reveals is that there are multiple worldviews that affirm a pro-life stance.

One example is a recent Denver Post column by David Harsanyi called “Abortion Debate Changing.”  Here is a sample:

As an atheist and a secular kinda guy, I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I’ve always struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion. Apparently, I’m not alone …

After a life of being pro-choice, I began to seriously ponder the question. I oppose the death penalty because there is a slim chance that an innocent person might be executed and I don’t believe the state should have the authority to take a citizen’s life. So don’t I owe an nascent human life at least the same deference? Just in case?

American Spirituality and Dan Brown

A New York Time article called Dan Brown’s America by Ross Doutha explains:

In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.

The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don’t suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married.

These are Dan Brown’s kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospelsand alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who’s a thoroughly modern sort of messiah — sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.

[HT: JT]

The Idol of the Intellect

From Graham Cole, “Do Christians have a Worldview?”

an explanatory perspective on life is one thing, but the living of it is another. The danger of worldview talk is that it remains just that: talk, talk, talk. Some Christian thinkers have noted this danger. In his own inimitable style, Søren Kierkegaard imagined this scenario. When Christians die and go to heaven they will be confronted by two doors. One will have this sign on it, “Heaven.” The other will have, “Lecture on Heaven.” He thought most Christians would go to the lecture.

Non-Christian Evidence for Jesus

In some curious and extreme circles, some would suggest that Jesus never even existed.  Such a claim seems unreasonable since even non-canonical resources provide good details on the life of Jesus.  From Craig Blomberg, “Jesus of Nazareth: How Historians Can Know Him and Why It Matters“

It is, of course, historically prejudicial to exclude automatically all Christian evidence, as if no one who became a follower of Jesus could ever report accurately about his life and teachings, or to assume that all non-Christian evidence was necessarily more “objective.” But even using only such non-Christian sources, there is ample evidence to confirm the main contours of the early Christian claims: Jesus was a Jew who lived in Israel during the first third of the first century, was born out of wedlock, intersected with the life and ministry of John the Baptist, attracted great crowds especially because of his wondrous deeds, had a group of particularly close followers called disciples (five of whom are named), ran afoul of the Jewish religious authorities because of his controversial teachings sometimes deemed heretical or blasphemous, was crucified during the time of Pontius Pilate’s governorship in Judea (26–36 C.E.), and yet was believed by many of his followers to have been the Messiah, the anticipated liberator of Israel. This belief did not disappear despite Jesus’ death because a number of his supporters claimed to have seen him resurrected from the dead. His followers, therefore, continued consistently to grow in numbers, gathering together regularly for worship and instruction and even singing hymns to him as if he were a god (or God).

Contemporary reactions to this composite picture sometimes complain that this seems like a rather sparse amount of information. On the other hand, until the last few centuries, history and biography in general almost exclusively focused on the exploits of kings and queens (or their cultural equivalents), military conquests and defeats, people in official institutional positions of power in a given society, and the wealthy more generally, not least because it was primarily these people who could read and/or afford to own written documents. Jesus qualified for attention under none of these headings. Moreover, no non-Christians in the first several centuries of the Common Era had any reason to imagine that his influence would grow and spread the way it did in the millennium and half ahead. So it is arguable that it is actually rather impressive that as much has been preserved outside of Christian circles as has been. And of course, most ancient testimony to any person or event has been lost over the centuries, so many other references to Jesus might have existed that we simply no longer know about.

Paradoxically, Jesus did end up being a conquering king, but in a way unlike any other king that exists in history.  Most kings kill in order to further their conquests and reign.  Jesus, the King of kings, died so that other may have life, and so death and sin would be conquered.  Impressive indeed, and the fuel for the expansion of this kingdom live on because of the work the resurrected King continues to do today.

*  For more resources that validate the statements above, Dr. Blomberg quotes:

The most thorough and even-handed presentation and assessment of these data appears in Robert E. van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), from which the English translations of Tacitus, the Talmud, and Josephus have been taken. Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), is particularly helpful from a Jewish perspective on the clear references and various additional possible allusions in the rabbinic literature. What Josephus originally wrote has been disputed, but a reasonable consensus suggests that the only Christian interpolations were to affirm Jesus’ messiahship and resurrection rather than simply note that his followers alleged that they occurred. See John P. Meier, “Jesus in Josephus: A Modest Proposal,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 52 (1990): 76–103.