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By In Wisdom

The Dark Side of Being Rescued

Christians pray for deliverance and there is plenty of Biblical reason for them to do so. Nevertheless, I’ve begun to have some doubts regarding how Christians apply the Bible’s material on praying for different circumstances. (Or at least, I don’t think I’ve always done it right.)

I mentioned in my earlier post the ambiguous results from winning the lottery. While data is hard to collect, it seems that coming into money is not the solution to life that some people expect. Indeed, it is not a solution to one’s financial problems in some cases.

In the Bible, an event that resembled winning a big lottery occured for the Israelites when God brought them out of Egypt. They had groaned for release and God heard them (Exodus 2:23-25; 3:7-10). God transformed a society of slaves into an independent nation. Additionally, they were both enriched from the Egyptians and sustained in basic needs by God’s miraculous provision. Their circumstances were supernaturally changed.

But the change didn’t work out the way the Israelites expected. First of all, they got angry with Moses for confronting Pharaoh (5:21). Later, they continally expected God to abandon them to their enemies or to starvation. The Israelites even claimed they were treated better as slaves by the Egyptians than by God (Numbers 11:5-6). Ultimately, the entire generation had to die off in the wilderness and only the children survived.

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By In Culture, Theology, Wisdom

Against Community

These days, everyone is talking about the importance of community, authentic relationships, and being part of a group. This is true whether you are a Christian or a neo-pagan. All sorts of groups are trying to build community: neo-monasticism, new urbanism, political parties, homosexuals, foodies, and socialists.

This desire to build and be part of a community is inherent in what it means to be human. From the beginning, people were designed to be part of something larger than themselves. We are made to be with other people. This reality is inescapable.  

Even though the desire for community is natural to humanity, this does not mean we are doing it correctly. In fact, our society mostly has it backwards and upside-down.  

Post-Modern Communities

The errors we find in today’s community projects stem from the Post-Modern ideology rampant in our society. When Modernism failed to build universal truth on human reason, Post-Modernism came in and began to question all universal narratives. This skepticism of universal claims, often fueled by the desire to be free from all authorities, encourages people to “find their own truth” and to live by that.

But once the Post-Modern project has demolished universal truth (or at least tried to), it leaves people with lots of unique, individual experiences and there is no way to connect them all. Francis Schaeffer says it this way,

“…if he is going to be really rationally and intellectually consistent he can only dwell in a silent cocoon; he may know he is there but he cannot make the first move out of it.”[1]

The Post-Modern project has left people in a lonely and desolate place but people are not made for that kind of desolation so they rush to build communities to push back against the darkness. And the Post-Modern myth urges people to build communities because groups offer the individual a chance to be part of something larger than himself. If universal truth is too hard for any one person to find and know, then that person must settle for what he can find: a group of other people who think and act like himself. In this way, people think they can find some meaning by being part of a community.  

The LGBT community is particularly strong in this kind of community work. Rosaria Butterfield testifies to this work in her book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. In some ways, the LGBT community builds community better than many Christian churches. But even these kinds of communities do not really last.

These communities do not endure because they are trying to build community on shared experiences and interests. Can there be something like “shared experiences” in a Post-Modern cosmos? Not really. The Intersectional Movement is reinforcing the loneliness: I have such unique experiences that no other human can know and understand what I have been through. When community is merely based on experiences and desires, then these communities crumble when these things change. If I no longer care for the current food trend, then I am no longer part of the foodie community. The common desire and experience that brought us together is no longer there.

In this way, we can see that the Post-Modern project of community building will fail. There is no way to maintain a vibrant community when there is no universal standard that both individuals and groups can appeal to. Inevitably, the individual’s freedom and desires will be swallowed up by the desires of the larger community. Without a universal standard, the community will either bully the individual into submission or kick him out of the community. In this way, the desire for community eats itself and the individual is consumed by the Post-Modern community.

Real Community

The only place real community can be found is in Jesus and in His Church. This is true for a couple of reasons. First, the Church is a real community because it is the work of the Spirit not the work of man. The Church did not come into existence because twelve guys back in Palestine decided they wanted to form an “authentic community”. The second point is related to this: the Church is not built around shared common interests or experiences like a club or interest group.

The Church, from beginning to end, exists because it is a work of the Spirit. In fact, the Church is the opposite of an interest group. If the people in the Church had it their way, they would probably pick a lot of other people to hang out with. But because it is the work of the Spirit, these people are brought together into the same community. In this way, the Church is the only place true and genuine diversity and harmony can be found. There is no other reason all these weirdos could be gathered together into one community. This kind of community just isn’t humanly possible.

How Christians Mess Up Community

Christians are tempted to mess up Christian community in two ways. One is for us to think like the Post-Moderns and claim that Christians are the ones who build authentic community. The church is made up of Christians so it can look like it is made by Christians. The second error, which comes from the Post-Moderns also, is to think that Christians find their true purpose in community. We think, if only I can be with these people, or if I can worship with those people over there then I will be part of a real community and I will have a purpose. Both of these errors make an idol of community and these desires will destroy true community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it well, “He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter.”[2]

True Christian community can only be found when one is seeking the creator of the community: Jesus. Bonhoeffer writes, “Christian community is like the Christian’s sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim.”[3] The first place we must look for true community is the fellowship of Jesus. Only in Jesus can real Christian community be found. The only way to hold on to community is to look away from community and toward Jesus. In this way, Christian community is not like Post-Modern community at all because as Bonhoeffer says, “We are bound together by faith, not by experience.”[4] Jesus is the head of His Church and He is the one building the community with His Spirit. All other communities are shams and fakes. The key then is to look to Jesus first and then true Christian community will flow from that.


[1] Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, p. 124.

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 27.

[3] Bohoeffer, Life Together, p. 30.

[4] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 39.

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By In Art, Culture, Family and Children, Scribblings, Theology, Wisdom

Advent and the Art of Arrival

Guest post by Remy Wilkins

“The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.”

~ G.K. Chesterton, On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family

I love it when the hero arrives. I get chills when a fedora appears in shadow or when a farmboy watches two suns set. I get tickled every time someone knocks on Bilbo’s door. And although the joy of my introduction to the dear Baudelaire siblings that grey and cloudy day at Briny Beach was mingled with sadness, I still cherish the miracle of their lives.

The season of Advent, the time just before Christmas, is all about arrivals. It is a preparatory season for the celebration of the incarnation, his first coming, and it is looking forward to his second coming. The Messiah’s first arrival was both inauspicious, sleeping in a feeding trough, and universally portentous, declared by astronomical signs. His second coming is also grand and mysterious: no man knows the hour or day in which he comes. It’s a good debut. As a reader, I can get excited about this story. Anticipating the end is also great fun. I love it when stories are interrupted by better stories. (more…)

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By In Wisdom

Solomon’s Obsession with Sex and Violence

Proverbs begins and ends with women. Perhaps it is a bit delayed in the beginning (more on that below) but, once Wisdom is revealed to be a female human being, it becomes clear that even Proverbs 1:2 may be about more than you think when it declares the writings are to enable the reader “to know Wisdom.” (more…)

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By In Politics, Wisdom

The Genesis of Adulthood: Proverbs 3:13-22

Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.

The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew.

My son, do not lose sight of these—keep sound wisdom and discretion, and they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck (ESV).

Many people want to know and have wanted to know what comes next in the Christian life. Once you’ve “been saved,” is there anything more you need or need to do in this life? What is this life for? Why does God keep us here?

Some groups of Christians push evangelism as the answer. We don’t need much but we are left with the remaining years of our life on this planet to get other people saved. In some quarters, it seems that learning how to present the Gospel as simply as possible, and doing so as often as possible, is a Christian’s main purpose in life.

Other groups have developed new quests for Christians to pursue. In some traditions, all Christians are supposed to acquire some kind of “complete sanctification” that often must be pursued for a while. Later, we got other groups that made “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” the mission that all Christians are supposed to pursue.

I differ from those traditions, but instead of talking about what might be wrong with them, I want to address what the “Christian quest” is actually supposed to be.

God’s Purpose for Humans

Obviously, evangelism is important, but do we really want to imply that there is only a point to the Christian life because there are non-Christians in the world? If everyone was a Christian, and the Lord hasn’t returned, what would be the point of the Christian life? Would it have no point?

More activist-oriented Christians might argue that the quest of Christians is to build a certain kind of community or even Christian nations. And, like evangelism, I think this has some merit. The Great Commission, in the context of Scripture, seems to encourage us to do that.

But again, does that mean once we were to form an ideal community, whether a church or something else, that there would be no point to the Christians remaining in this earthly life?

What I’m asking is: Is there a purpose for our passage through this life even apart from the issue of sin and salvation? (more…)

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By In Wisdom

Spider-Man & Proverbs: The False Wisdom of Vices

I argued recently that Uncle Ben’s urgent plea to Peter Parker is quite similar to Solomon’s exhortation to his “son” in Proverbs. The Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movie really brought this out.

But there is another aspect to that franchise that also is quite similar to the warnings of Proverbs.

Peter Parker’s development of unexpected and profound new powers threatens to lead him to a bad end. For years he’s been bullied by stronger and faster jocks. Suddenly, they are in the inferior position and he has a chance (he imagines) to replace them and attract the female that he thought would never notice him.

Solomon writes to “sons” on the cusp of adulthood and is worried they will adopt ways of violence and run after the wrong kinds of women (the two long temptation narratives of Proverbs 1-9). In Parker’s case, the woman isn’t necessarily the wrong type, but how he sets about winning her is foolish.

While the Maquire Parker doesn’t intentionally embrace violence against his high school rivals, in the 2012 Amazing Spider-Man reboot, Peter Parker (played by Andrew Garfield) definitely does.

It’s hard not to enjoy this scene, and the tongue-lashing delivered by Uncle Ben to Peter seems aimed at the movie audience as well for their vicarious enjoyment. (Later, the “bully” is revealed to be no villain.)  Parker is headed in the wrong direction with his new powers. His straying continues until he participates in a minor way in the theft that leads to Uncle Ben’s murder.

my son, do not walk in the way with them;
hold back your foot from their paths,
for their feet run to evil,
and they make haste to shed blood (Proverbs 1:15–16; ESV)

It is clear that Parker, though quite intelligent, is rendered stupid by his new abilities. He is headed towards villainhood and it takes the death of Uncle Ben to enable him to hear the voice of wisdom and change course.

Coming back to the Tobey Maguire franchise, the escape of Peter Parker from foolishness is highlighted by the path taken by those who become villains. In the original movie, the Green Goblin is created when Norman Osborne takes a drug that gives him strength and speed but makes him psychotic. While Parker is initially led astray by his abilities, Osborne’s actually speak to him as a split personality:

In the second movie, Doctor Otto Octavius develops automated arms that he can plug into his nervous system to control them to perform an experiment. The arms have an artificial intelligence that could control Octavius except for a chip that restrains them. When the experiment goes wrong, the chip is destroyed.

The result is a great scene where Doc Oc’s abilities/habits/ambitions/desires start doing his thinking for him:

Solomon warns that our habits do our thinking for us. Ideally, we learn from out mistakes. But, if we don’t, our mistakes provide a fake wisdom that leads us downward.

Thus, “A man of great wrath will pay the penalty, for if you deliver him, you will only have to do it again” (Proverbs 19:19; ESV). You would think that the penalty would train a man to bridle his anger and develop different ways to respond to frustrations. But it often doesn’t. Anger is its own reward once you become accustomed to it.

Or consider sloth: “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth” (Proverbs 19:24; 26:15). This is irrational and self-destructive behavior, but sloth is inherently self-rationalizing to the one who falls into it. “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!'” (Proverbs 22:13; 26:13). Does the fear produce the sloth or does the sloth pursue the fear? “The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor” (Proverbs 21:25). But the sluggard is not likely to admit he’s killing himself. “The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly” (Proverbs 26:16).

The behavior of an alcoholic (to use modern terminology) is well-known. Proverbs warns against being “led astray” by wine because the one so led “is not wise” (20:1). But all foolishness can be similarly enslaving.

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is led astray (Proverbs 5:22–23).

As we become adults our abilities give us great power in the service of God. But otherwise they become ultimately lethal masters. Instead of seeing the danger and changing course, these vices often provide false wisdom to those under their spell.

Mark Horne holds an M.Div from Covenant Theological Seminary and is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America. He is the executive director of Logo Sapiens Communications and  writes at www.SolomonSays.net.

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By In Wisdom

Gospel Catechism

Luke provides the clear purpose for his Gospel in his opening words: that Theophilus might be convinced of the words in which he had been catechized (Luke 1.4). The Gospel is written to be persuasive, to assure Theophilus that what he has learned is true. Luke doesn’t write simply to lay down a great number of facts about Jesus, but he sets his hand to join with others in writing a narrative that is an “orderly account,” a word in Greek that connotes that Luke is setting out a persuasive order of events so that Theophilus will be fully assured of the fact that God has revealed himself in the historical figure of Jesus the Christ.

This is the goal of all Christian catechism. Catechetical instruction is rooted in facts. In its most basic form it can be laid out in question-and-answer format. “Who made you?” “God made me.” Simple. Straightforward. Factual. Getting the facts right is vital to being catechized in the Faith. As we move through the Gospel, we hear of the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, the fact that he lived during the time of Herod the Great under the rule of the Roman Empire. Jesus is baptized, tempted in the wilderness, teaches, heals, is condemned, dies, rises again, and ascends to sit at the right hand of the Father. Facts. Vital, indispensable, facts. Facts that need to be learned. (more…)

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By In Culture, Politics, Theology, Wisdom

Principalities and Powers, Part II

The Principalities and Powers, Part 2

For Part 1 of this series, click HERE.

The great question for the emerging East, Asia and other awakening third world areas, for an emerging nation like China is, “what fate awaits them?” They are now emerging from an analogous paganism that the West emerged from centuries ago. Here is an amazing quotation from David Aikman, the Time Magazine religious editor. He is a quoting from “a scholar from one of China’s premier academic institutions, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing, in 2002.”

 “One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world,” he said. “We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective.  At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.  Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”1

There is a speeding up of history. (more…)

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By In Culture, Men, Politics, Theology, Wisdom

Principalities and Powers, Part I

The Principalities and Powers, Part 1

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By In Art, Books, Culture, Film, Wisdom

We Don’t Need Another Type of Hero, III

Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character,” Part III

The recurring characterization problems with such Strong Female Characters arise in no small measure from the struggle to show that men and women are interchangeable and can compete and cooperate with each other on the same terms. As I have already noted, this falsehood serves no one. It sets women up for frustration and failure as they have to justify their agency on men’s terms and it produces an embarrassment about male strengths that should be celebrated rather than stifled. It reflects a drive towards intense gender integration and de-differentiation in the wider world.

The traditional world of women—typically a different existential and intersubjective mapping of spaces that were shared with men—has been reduced through the migration of work away from the home, the expanding social role of the state and its agencies, the shrinking and contracting of families, the thinning out of neighborhoods, and the removal of much of the burden of domestic labour through technology. One’s value in society has also become increasingly contingent upon advanced educational attainment, career, wealth, and consumption. Within this new situation, women have had to forge new identities within worlds created by men and which play to male strengths. Shrunk to a sentimental reservation of domesticity, there is relatively little dignity to be found in what remains of traditional female worlds in most Western societies.

Often natural differences in tendencies and aptitudes between the sexes (as groups, there is plenty of individual variation and departure from the norm) replicate themselves in the wider economic world. Women are frustrated as their desire to have children and raise families prevents them from earning as much as their male counterparts, or enjoying the same social prominence. Women’s greater natural orientation towards relational and caring activities leads to their underrepresentation within the more lucrative and powerful professions. Women are drawn to subjects and occupations that are more personal, artistic, and relational, while men to those that are more realistic, investigative, and thing-based. Despite the expense of considerable money and effort to change male and female preferences, they are surprisingly resistant to change in many respects.

On men’s part, male dominance in realms of high achievement is frequently and often instinctively characterized as pathological. There is a zero-sum social game being played between the sexes and male privilege is a sign of a great injustice, something about which men should feel guilty. The possibility that men dominate because the realms in which they dominate play to their various strengths as a group or involve areas where they produce the most exceptional performers is not an idea that can be entertained in many quarters.

The push for ‘diversification’ and ‘inclusion’ can be a threat to many male groups because their natural rougher socializing tendencies are stigmatized, they are no longer permitted to play to their strengths, and their shared cultures and cultural products are jeopardized by a sort of gender gentrification imposed upon them. The existence of extreme misogyny in many of their reactions to such developments should not be allowed to disguise the presence of understandable concerns (and definitely vice versa too), even where the appropriate response to these concerns may not be that of wholly rejecting the diversification.

We have moved from a situation with distinct worlds of gendered activity—albeit typically deeply interwoven and involving extensively overlapping spaces—to one in which men and women are being pressed into a single intersubjective and existential world, one that was traditionally male. The result is a stifling of men, as manliness becomes a social threat and male strength a problem to be solved. Male strengths have to be discouraged to give women more scope for expression and achievement. Women, on the other hand, are caught in a world that seems rigged against them. The Strong Female Character is one way in which the anxieties, insecurities, resentments, and embarrassments produced by such a situation register in our imaginary worlds.

It is also a revelation of a failure of imagination. Fictional worlds are places in which we can explore possibilities for identity and agency. The fact that women’s stature as full agents is so consistently treated as contingent upon such things as their physical strength and combat skills, or upon the exaggerated weakness or their one-upping of the men that surround them, is a sign that, even though men may be increasingly stifled within it, women are operating in a realm that plays by men’s rules. The possibility of a world in which women are the weaker sex, yet can still attain to the stature and dignity of full agents and persons—the true counterparts and equals of men—seems to be, for the most part, beyond people’s imaginative grasp. This is a limitation of imagination with painful consequences for the real world, and is one of the causes of the high degree of ressentiment within the feminist movement.

Heroic Women and Good Story Telling

The Bechdel Test originally appeared within the comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. It is an informal test to determine whether or not a film passes the lowest bars for the portrayal of women: 1. Does it have at least two women in it? 2. Do the women talk to each other? 3. Do they talk about something other than a man? It is a helpful heuristic tool for alerting people to the degree to which women and their intersubjective worlds fail to appear within the frame of so many movies and works of fiction. It is far from scientific, nor is it an accurate tool for determining the existence of stunted portrayal of women more generally, but it does often provide an initial indication of limitations or problems.

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