The latest shooting in Buffalo has the political left calling for their standard lockdowns on guns and “hate speech.” Aside from the weekly death tolls in Chicago, which many times match or exceed the number of deaths and injuries in Buffalo, we consistently hear how guns are the problem. But now the regulation of speech has come to the fore with the advent and popularity of social media. “Hate speech” must be regulated, by which they mean any speech with which they disagree. Hate speech provokes violence, so it has to be shut down at its source. The implications of government regulating speech to this degree are terrifying.
(more…)
A Review of the Documentary, “Eve in Exile” from Canon+
Guest Post by Melinda Brito
Rebekah Merkle’s documentary, Eve in Exile, begins where all good theology does: in Genesis. It reminds us that in God’s creative order, work and specific mandates were given to man and woman. Man was created first, and then the woman was created to be a fit helper for man. They were designed to accomplish these God-given tasks together.
The documentary continues by presenting a historical overview of the rise of feminism. Merkle identifies three “waves” in the feminist movement. The second wave is probably most relevant for us to consider because it came after the rise of technological inventions and innovations. The result was that the fixed and fulfilling work that women had been doing, the arduous yet rewarding work of producing and preparing food, making and repairing clothing, and educating the children, necessary tasks for the survival and well-being of the family, began to change. With the advent of easy-to-use domestic inventions, these tasks that were the worthy work of women became less time-consuming. As a result, women could shop for their food and clothes, cook meals, keep a clean house, and still have time to spare.
In 1963, The Feminine Mystique, authored by Betty Friedan, found a sympathetic audience by a generation of women who felt isolated, bored, and discontent with merely being ornamental in their homes. Friedan’s answer to the problem was that women should find work and the fulfillment of a full day of labor outside the home. This effectively began “the tearing down of the house” by women’s own hands.
While Rebekah does a more than adequate job of demonstrating the shift of women from inside to outside the home, she also takes the opportunity to critique the Christian woman’s lack of thoughtful or biblical consideration and wholesale acceptance of the secular community’s answer to the problem. While we may find commonality in identifying a problem, the generation that opened their arms and embraced feminist ideals as their messiah did not consider the end of the matter. Even today, Christians fail to grasp that the “how” and “why” of how someone comes to a conclusion is just as important as the conclusion itself because the how/why will determine the path we take as we seek to deal with the problem. In this case, Christians blindly followed the path set out by unbelievers on how to deal with the issues of boredom, feelings of unfulfillment, and loneliness simply because they agreed that a problem existed. But Christians must contemplate a truly biblical response to the problem, rather than adopting unbelieving presuppositions.
(more…)
Temptations for Christians Who Want to Change the World, Part 2
Guest post by Rev. Jeff Meyers
This is the second installment of a condensed version of the “Final Reflections & Summary” from my book Wisdom for Dissidents (full title: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Christian Dissidents).
The third temptation is to cozy up to our enemies, thinking that we can win their favor. If we can get them to like us, maybe they will leave us alone. This is the “partiality” problem James criticizes in 2:1-13. It is not simply that they are favoring the rich over the poor. That would be bad enough. But the man who is being catered to in their assembly is the one who wears the ring of authority and the robe of office (2:20). He is explicitly identified as an oppressor, someone who drags them into court, and a blasphemer against the name of Jesus (2:6-7). To “judge” the rich oppressor as someone more deserving of special care than the poor believer is “to become judges engaging in an evil conspiracy” (2:4). That evaluation from James is not just about individual “evil thoughts” but about how the brothers have conspired together to appease their rich enemies. They have thereby dishonored those poorer disciples whom “God has chosen . . . to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom” (2:5).
The appeasement option ought not to be on the table for conscientious Christian leaders. To turn a blind eye to immorality and abuse with the hope of getting a hearing from some powerful government or academic figure would be to betray our allegiance to the Lord. Not only is such schmoozing mostly ineffective—the more you give, the more they will take—but such behavior runs counter to the examples of the prophets and of Jesus himself. The prophets denounced the rich and powerful, even, maybe especially, when they were in positions of authority in Israel. Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others did not cozy up to corrupt, immoral leaders. Neither did Jesus.
Fourth, the most insidious temptation, according to James, is to use the power of our words to guide the church toward aggressive and violent action thinking we are acting thereby as agents of God’s justice. As we have argued, James 3:1-12 is at the heart of the letter. And the key passage that unlocks the entire letter is James 1:19-20, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” Anger against their oppressors has fueled impetuous speeches with the intent to rally the disciples to make things right by means of aggressive, retributive action (3:13-16; 4:1-12). This kind of Christian “zealotry” will not make things right. Instead, such speech and behavior are not of the Spirit but demonic (3:15). These angry and violent responses have been fueled by the immature rhetoric of their teachers, the brothers responsible for leading their communities. They want freedom, but they are going about achieving liberty in the wrong ways.
(more…)
C.S. Lewis and the Artwork of the Chronicles of Narnia
I’ve never been able to get over the artwork in the original Chronicles of Narnia, particularly this image.
Lewis learned of the illustrator, Pauline Baynes, from his friend JRR Tolkien, who himself used her to illustrate Farmer Giles of Ham. She was young, relatively inexperienced, and felt understandably insufficient for the task. When Lewis sent her the manuscript for the first volume—The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—he included no instruction and left no clue as to any deeper meaning the stories might contain.
As she came to draw the White Witch tormenting and killing Aslan, she found herself stuck. Each time she neared completion of the drawing, she would be so grieved that her tears would stain and ruin the paper, forcing her to start over, again and again. Obviously, she was eventually able to complete the now classic illustrations and be done with the image, but the image wasn’t done with her.
For days afterwards, she found herself, like Aslan, tormented. She was haunted by this scene of evil binding and triumphing over good. Deliverance from her heavy cloud of depression came like a lightning strike, when she finally understood the words Aslan spoke after he came back to life:
“…though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who has committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack an Death itself would start working backwards.”
Aslan was the Lion of Judah, the lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world. Most of us approach the Chronicles with this typology in mind, but not Baynes. She, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, had her heart strangely warmed when she realized that all Lewis had written, like Moses and the Prophets before him, was concerning the Messiah.
(more…)
The Tongue: A Matter of Life & Death
Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
and those who love it will eat its fruits.
Proverbs 18.21
Disagree with someone, criticize his lifestyle, or question his choices and you might be accused of violence in present-day Western culture. “Words as violence” has become something of a trope for anyone who feels injured and wants to use the power of victim status to cancel another speaker.[1] While the “words as violence” weapon is overused by the thin-skinned narcissists in our culture, there is truth in the fact that words have power that can be used violently, even causing death. The apostle John sees the ascended Jesus, the Word of God, riding a white horse having a two-edged sword coming out of his mouth–words–to strike down the nations (Rev 19.13-16). Words can destroy. But words are equally powerful to give life. They can be used to instruct and encourage people to move in the right direction. Death and life are in the power of the tongue.
Solomon’s statement in Proverbs 18.21 is not hyperbole. Rather, his words are rooted deeply in God’s revelation of himself and his relationship with his creation. The many instructions that Solomon gives his son concerning speech in Proverbs are not the words of some self-help guru who is writing chaff about techniques to manipulate situations in your favor. The proverbs of Solomon concerning speech are the meditations of a wise theologian who understands the nature of the world in which we live and how best to align ourselves with the purpose of the Creator to complete the mission he has assigned us.
(more…)
Hypocrisy, Atheism, and Ragamuffins Revisited
I’ve never read anything by Brennan Manning.
I grew up with Rich Mullins’ smash hit “Awesome God” on constant rotation on our local Christian FM station. And I came to learn through a college roommate that Mullins was a big fan of Manning, even naming his band “A Ragamuffin Band” in ode to Manning’s book “The Ragamuffin Gospel.”
I’ve never read anything by Brennan Manning, but I realized this morning that my younger self was perhaps more influenced by him than I knew. And that influence came through one, lone, gravelly-voiced audio quote within another smash hit album of my youth: DCTalk’s 1995 world-shaking “Jesus Freak.”
On the album, immediately after the title track, is that quote from Manning:
“The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
My teens were filled with that quote rattling around in my mind, and that sentiment pervading the Christian culture I grew up in.
I remember those days, and I remember that world. But I wonder if it’s true anymore? I wonder if that’s still the world we live in?
(more…)
Temptations for Christians Who Want to Change the World, Part 1
Guest post by Rev. Jeff Meyers
This is a two-part, condensed version of my “Final Reflections & Summary” from my book Wisdom for Dissidents (full title: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Christian Dissidents).
In 1980 a friend approached me after church and handed me a manila file folder. “Read these and let me know what you think,” he said. I did. It turned out the folder was filled with samples of 3 or 4 Christian newsletters. These were newsletters giving Christian commentary on contemporary cultural issues—abortion, economics, art, and politics. After reading them, I mailed in a donation and a request for subscriptions to all of them.
I had just come out of a severely dispensational Christian community where everyone was convinced that the end of the world was upon us. Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth was a Christian bestseller. Because the world was ending you don’t polish brass on a sinking ship, rather you wait for the ship to begin to sink and then Jesus will swoop down deus ex machina to snatch up Christians off the tilting deck and rapture us into heaven. This meant that careful thinking about what might be happening in American society and how Christians might make a difference was new to me. But I was 23 years old with a wife and newborn daughter which meant I was motivated to think about the future.
Well, we thought things were bad back then. Christians in the early 1980s were worried about the increasing secularization of American culture. A few months ago, we renovated our basement and I had to box up three walls of books. I had an entire bookshelf of books from the 1980s that analyzed the anti-Christian drift that was occurring in American society.
Today, however, the marginalization of Christians in education, culture, and politics has accelerated faster than anyone could have imagined even ten years ago, let alone in 1980.
And this has led to some interesting proposals from Christian leaders on how Christians ought to respond. Everything from the call to “faithful presence” by James Davidson Hunter, to the “benedict option” by Rod Dreher. And then there’s the Trump-inspired populism of the last few years. Now, Dreher is prepping us to suffer as martyrs in his recent book Live not by Lies.
(more…)
Worship Music and the War for Longevity
What’s the most popular Christian song sung in churches today? It’s called “Build my Life” from Bethel Music. The song was written in 2016 and has stood the test of a whopping six years of longevity.
A new study on worship music “found that the lifespan of a hit worship song has declined dramatically in recent years.” There are reasons for this phenomenon. The research indicates that worship songs are made to “feed the algorithm.” In other words, they are intentionally written to supply a current need, instead of embracing any sense of historical need. As one pastor observed:”
…the churn of worship music reflects the way Americans consume media in general, where ‘everything is immediate and has a short shelf life.'”
I suspect anyone who has been reading my words for the last couple of years, has a deep appreciation for my parody-like observations on such topics and is assured by my vivacious display of righteous anger towards the inevitable words above.
But I don’t want to simply use the above as some apologetic for despising Bethel or Hillsong. So, give me a couple of minutes to indoctrinate you just a bit. After all, it’s the only reason I have a Facebook account. It will be slow and painless. I promise. I will even tell a few stories. Then, I will close with some pertinent questions. So, stick around, kids!
Back in the 1990s–give or take a year or two before the rapture–I remember engaging in some random radio program when I lived in Pennsylvania. The speaker had this remarkable voice filled with the sophistication of someone trained rhetorically under the best. He hailed from a town about an hour from where I was called Ligonier.
(more…)
5 Lessons to the Local Churches in the Coming Migration
Should Roe (1973) and Casey (1992) be completely overturned in 2022, what we will experience this summer is a massive migration. As an example, over 330,000 have moved to Florida this past year. Most of this stemmed from COVID policies that crippled other states economically and socially. Almost nine million people in the U.S. changed their address during the last two years. COVID regulations strangled large portions of the country and revealed much of the internal dynamics between politicians and power. Many realized that when Nero has power, power he doth not wish to give way. Control is a technique of tyrants. Nevertheless, what they minimized was the capacity of people to see trends and follow trends to their ultimate telos.
And people, who began March of 2020 enamored by the Fauci, now gladly join the chorus of Fauci-deniers. Don’t overestimate the power of deception (Numbers 32:23). Things do come to a halt eventually and the kids will start asking about whether the pope speaks ex-cathedra or whether that chair is fake after all. If COVID measures woke people out of slumber like a storm in the middle of the sea, Roe and Casey will also do a thing more powerful yet. We should, in fact, expect a massive migration among those who–unlike Keller and Moore–see culture wars as a real thing, and not a figment of our imagination. People are flocking to towns where there is a massive-scale Jesus-is-Lord culture. I am not speaking of the generic Jesus-is-Lord culture, I am speaking of those towns where communities arise, dine, and wine in the Jesus-is-Lord culture. They take their culture wars with an extra shot of espresso.
We should expect cultures to be fairly defined in the next coming years. We should expect California to return to some level of 1929-culture; perhaps not of immediate economic turmoil, but certainly, cultural turmoil as the seeds of cultural decency will leave in mass and find refuge in cultural havens for spiritual refugees. I am somewhat hopeful that a few towns there will remain virtuous enough to reject the mandates from Fauci’s right hand and fight Newsom like a Puritan colony. If that happens, I will gladly send some monies to their accounts.
(more…)
Slow To Anger
When you are younger, anger seems almost like a superpower. You cower in the presence of anger, and you see others do as well. Rage gets things done and brings people under your control. If you don’t like a potential decision by the Supreme Court that reverses Roe v. Wade, you yell, scream, and threaten in order to intimidate and make people fearful for their safety in order to try to manipulate the court. If you don’t like what someone does, you verbally or physically bring him into submission through rage. Anger is power.
As you grow older and wiser, you realize that anger of this sort is weakness. You don’t control your passions, they control you. These passions you can’t control are used by others to control you; they “push your buttons” and manipulate you. You are a slave to the unpleasant circumstances around you. Your bursts of sinful anger destroy everything precious to you, isolating you from everyone. Undisciplined anger, far from being a strength, is a display of weakness. Real power is the freedom that comes through patience.
The quick-tempered man in Proverbs is a fool. A fool is not intellectually disabled or a clownish figure. He is a moral deviant, a man given over to sin. Solomon instructs his son in wisdom, and one aspect of that wisdom is to discipline his God-given anger so that it becomes his servant and not his master. To take up the Adamic mission of bringing God’s wise order to the world, cool heads must prevail. In the end, cool heads, the patient, will prevail.
Quick-tempered men, hot-heads, act foolishly (14.17) and exalt folly (14.29); they bring disorder to the world by creating chaotic, tense, unhealthy situations instead of peace (15.18). Their anger isolates them, causing them to be hated by others (14.17), because they keep everyone at a distance through their anger, and, besides that, no sane person wants to be around this drama queen and live with this anxiety.
In his quick temper, the slave to anger loses perspective, not able to take in and deal with all the information because his hasty anger hyper-focuses his attention on one object, putting blinders on him. His limited vision means that he has no understanding or insight that allows him to put all the pieces of the situation together in a proper relationship because he refuses to see all the pieces. Consequently, the quick-tempered man cannot fulfill his God-given mission of dominion. His outbursts of anger are one of the works of the flesh that Paul says is characteristic of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal 5.19-21).
The wise son cultivates patience. He is slow to anger. He has the ability to calm and steel his mind through hope rooted in faith so that he can endure until he reaches his goal. Patience is not passivity or indifference. Patience is actively working on achieving the goal of defeating evil and building what is good by keeping its wits about him.
Patience is a discipline that must be cultivated. When we are young, our parents are responsible to discipline us in patience. As we grow older, patience must become a self-discipline. We must develop the ability to master our minds so as to direct our desires, will, emotions, and bodies to accomplish our mission. As with all self-discipline, the cultivation of patience requires pain, stressors that will challenge you mentally, physically, and emotionally. The way you respond to that pain will determine if it will make you stronger or break you. Because many stressors in our lives are outside of our control, the only power you have is your response. The stress reveals the weakness in your character. It doesn’t create it. If that weakness is to be strengthened, you must accept this stress as something of a frenemy; others may have plans to destroy you through this, but you know that God in his providence has brought this to be a servant to develop the strength of patience (cp. 1Cor 3.18-23). Your loving heavenly Father intends to make you a stronger son through this training. As you keep that in mind, knowing that all things do indeed work together for good to those who love God–faith–you develop the mental toughness and resiliency to endure, not being knocked off track through uncontrolled passions.
Whining, complaining, and moaning all the time about your situation reveals and cultivates weakness. You are not positively acting. You become the cowed victim that is a prisoner to others or your circumstances.
Patience is freedom. People and circumstances don’t enslave you by your own passions. You are free to be who God called you to be and accomplish what he put you here to do. Being patient, you are a true son of your heavenly Father who is slow to anger.
