Bandits No More

Looks like more starvation in North Korea. Can the nation behave rationally when they’re starving? What can we expect from a nation with one of the largest standing armies, the most most repressive government, nuclear weapons, and mass starvation? Oh – I forgot – they’re also extremely paranoid. How can the US act to help the people of North Korea for their (and their neighbor’s) longterm good?

An interesting interview with Thomas Barnett on defence, security, politics and economics issues as the US finds itself living in a large world.

David Lowes Watson was our speaker at The Gathering (Texas Annual Conference Pastors’ retreat) last month. He argued for greater attention to discipleship and for extending discipleship power and authority to laity. This article from Singapore majors on his suggestion that United Methodism needs to develop something like a “Lay Elder,” a lay person who is entrusted with spiritual authority. I sure think this would be a good move.

IN this article Robert Wright discusses his conversation with philosopher Daniel Dennett. Dennett, it appears, has taken a step toward openness to the mere possibility of purpose in the world. This is not a repudiation of evolution or an admission that there is design, just the mere admission that it may be possible. Little victories are important.

This piece in the Christianity Today weblog tells of the Supreme Court’s refusal to act in the case of Catholic Charities in California. Catholics have a strong conviction against birth control. But the law requires all employers to provide birth control for employees in their health plans. The Catholics protested that the law impinged on their freedom of religion. The California courts ruled that the organization didn’t fit their definition of a “religious organization” so the law DID apply and was enforcable. Scary.

Last night I attended a dramatic production – Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames – at a local church. I’d seen an earlier version of it several years ago, but my son wanted to go, so I took him.

In the pre-drama sermon, the producer said that they were not trying to “scare people into heaven.” Despite the disclaimer, it sure seemed like that was exactly what they were doing.

The drama consists of several vignettes, showing two types of people. People are shown going about their lives, some doing “normal” activities – driving, flying, eating lunch – others doing drugs, drinking, partying, etc. In each case they are talking about going to heaven. Some have given their lives to Christ and urge their companions to do likewise. “You never know how much time you’ll have,” they are admonished. In most cases, excuses fly: “I have plenty of time,” “I’m a good person,” “I have another way of handling things,” and “I have too much life to live right now to mess with god stuff.” But in each case, they don’t have enough time. They die suddenly and find themselves in heaven, a bright shiny place surrounded by angels. When they realize where they are, the Christians among them get happy, the non-Christians panic. The BIG THING is having your name written in the Book of Life. If the angel finds your name there, happy music ensues, Jesus appears at the top of the stairs, and you go up to him. But if your name ISN’T found there, the devil and his helps come out to loud clashing sounds and haul you off to hell. This happens over and over again.

If the message is: “Jesus makes an eternal difference in your life; You can have an eternal relationship with Jesus through faith; Heaven and Hell are real and through the grace of God we have a choice in where we go; and We don’t know how long we have;” then I think it is true enough. But the presentation – or we might say, the rhetorical style of the presentation was deceptive and will guide people wrongly.

Here’s what I saw:

1. It’s all about me. I need eternal life. I need to go to heaven. I need to have MY name in the book of life. BUT: It’s not all about me. It’s about God. We are saved for HIS sake, not our own.
2. Christianity is all about going to heaven. BUT: Christianity is about a love relationship with God. This relationship is multi-dimensional and includes much more (though not less!) than spending eternity with Jesus.
3. If you don’t know for certain – “beyond a shadow of a doubt” – that you’re going to heaven, then you’re probably in trouble. BUT: We humans have the capacity to doubt almost anything. If modern philosophers can doubt so much they find solipsism a rational position, then surely it’s not too much to have a doubt of one’s going to heaven. Being paralyzed by doubt it one thing, but attending to doubts and trying to eliminate them all will do nothing in the long run but nourish them and make them grow.
4. There was the intimation that it is our decision for Christ that makes the big difference. BUT: It’s Jesus that makes the difference. Our “decision” is part, yes. But our confidence is never in ourselves, our own confession of Jesus, our saying a prayer or our going forward in response to an altar call. Assurance comes from looking at Jesus, not from loking at ourselves and our religious/spiritual acts.
5. During the invitation sermon, the preacher made the comment (I paraphrase since I didn’t write the quote down immediately): “There is a YOU sized hole in God and a God sized hole in you.” BUT: Whereas the latter has been directly expressed at least since Pascal, the former is downright wrong – at least as mainstream Christianity sees things. I think the statement may have merely been careless rhetorical excess, but claiming that God NEEDS us again seems to be a way of saying “It’s all about me.”

An historical sidenote: I notice that the outfit that produces the drama grew out of the ministry of Rex Humbard. Their site makes much of their pioneering use of drama for evangelism.

Australian theologian Rufus Black sees the West as ill-equipped to deal with the challenge of Islam. He saysthe West

…is caught between two extremes of its own. One extreme is the Protestant and Catholic conservatism that occupies positions of political power from the West Wing to the Vatican. The other is the liberalism – which dominates the seats of cultural power in the universities and the arts – that has successfully made the undoing of belief one of its chief projects. Neither wing has the resources, nor the serious desire, to engage creatively with Islam.

But he has a solution:

To develop the middle ground required for a creative engagement across the spectrum of Muslim belief we need a true reformation of Christianity. What is required is a religion that is both substantive and modern. One that is as serious about harmonising its beliefs with modern science, history and psychology as it is about preserving its tradition of rituals, symbols and stories.

I think Mr. Black has over-identified the West and Christianity. Of course, this is exactly the mistake that Islam tends to make, so it is not too surprising.

Instead of calling the one side “conservative” and the other “liberal,” the positions he describes might better be called Constantinians and Secularisers. The first group tends to identify Christianity and the West, or Christianity and whatver nation state they find themselves in. If they’re American, then they see either a large overlap or an identity between the goals of the faith and the goals of the nation.

The second group, in contrast, reacts against their own religious heritage, using the tools of suspicion drawn from Marx, Freud, and the sociological tradition. God, they think, is merely a projection – either of the individual or of the society. This god may be of value to some people, but a commitment to disinterested truth and reason is better.

The “reformed” Christianity he proposes sounds no different than the liberalism I see in so much of American religious academia. Things may be different in Australia, but academic culture in the West has been mized for so long I have my doubts.

So – what does Christianity need if it is to engage with Islam? If we can get past the idea that a large conceptual entity – Christianity – can DO anything, we can perhaps make a start.

First, we need a Christianity that can differentiate between itself and the West. Yes there is historical overlap. But not only has the West turned its back on specifically Christian positions (not to mention actual participation in the church), but we also find larger numbers of practicing Christians outside the West today.

Second, we need a Christianity that does not consider social control to either be its goal or in its best interests. If we don’t need to be in control, then we will not need to kill – or even threaten – those who are different.

Third, Christians need to reconnect with the Christian tradition in an intelligent way. They need to be sure that when they encounter outsiders (like Muslims) that they are representing Jesus and not just Western ideologies with a veneer of Christianity.

There seems to be some active hungering for freedom in Iran. It is matched by an even greater hunger for repression of freedom on the part of the government. Keep praying for the people of Iran.

Opinionjournal.com features an interesting essay on economics from a Christian point of view. Deirdre McCloskey observes that contrary to much popular thinking, greed is not necessary for a well-functioning economy. Read the whole thing.

Beliefnet excerpts Richard Hays’ discussion of the biblical approach to homosexuality. Hay’s has been writing on this for some time, and the initial form of this article was first published over a decade ago. It was reworked (substantially) for his book The Moral Vision of the New Testament.