Echoes in Eternity

"A vague religion - all about feeling God in nature, and so on - is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music." - C.S. Lewis

HT: Steve M.

Stories like this one of a Christian wife and mother leaving her husband and child for another man and so many like it (it would take more than my twenty fingers and toes to count all of the Christians I've personally known who have had their spouse leave them - and in some cases, a number of children - for another person) make me wonder what the foundational problem is in so many Christian marriages. If this were merely a problem among unsaved men and women, no big surprise. But it's an epidemic among Christians (or professed Christians, at least). And in my personal experience, it's primarily a case of a wife leaving the husband for another man (or woman). I wonder if there is a root cause (besides individual sinfulness) behind it. Is there a systemic problem in American churches that this is somehow a reasonable thing to consider? I cannot fathom what kind of mindset would lead someone to do this. I certainly understand the sinful propensity to be unfaithful... but for the grace of God there go us all. But what makes someone take the additional step of not only cheating on your spouse but utterly deserting him (and your children) as well? I'm at a loss at how one allows this evil thinking to creep in.

I wonder if there is a systemic problem in the American church, and if so, is it this: the idea that God is primarily focused on making His followers happy and content in this life, and He's fine with whatever means we use to attain that happiness and damn the consequences. We see this most obviously in the so-called Prosperity Gospel churches, but I am certain it has subtly crept into most traditional, Gospel-centered churches as well. Now, in many cases, the churches where these unfaithful deserters attended have probably not taught anything like this type of specious self-centeredness. But maybe they haven't done much of a job teaching AGAINST it either; that's more likely the problem. After all, the culture is teaching it. I don't think you could go a day without seeing an example of the secular culture promoting individual "freedom" and self-expression as moral virtues. But what is the Church doing to actively counteract that? We need pulpits grabbing people by the collar and screaming "HEY DOOFUS, GOD DOESN'T REALLY CARE ABOUT YOUR FLEETING HAPPINESS, HE CARES ABOUT YOUR HOLINESS!!!!!!" Okay, in some cases maybe without the screaming or name-calling.

This message needs to be particularly focused on Christian women, who, more so than today's men, get constantly fed the self-centered, emotionally-based drivel about personal happiness, self-esteem, and fulfillment. "Be happy," "find your purpose," and so on ad nauseam. Your "purpose" is to honor God, not yourself! Our culture at least still has some vestiges left of responsibility when it comes to men (if it had been the husband who left in the aforementioned story, the law would have required that he at least pay child support), but for women, society pretty much eschews any idea of personal responsibility. If a woman doesn't "feel" her "needs" being "met," she's perfectly justified to meet them somewhere else. I wonder if the Church has just become an outpost of this same mentality. If so, couching it in spiritual terms and (weakly) supporting it up with Scripture merely serves to make people twice a child of Hell than they would have been if left to their own devices and the societal forces around them. People need a counter-cultural Christianity rather than a sub-cultural one.

"The real future, as I see it, isn't an intramural conversation among Evangelicals (as many think), or even among Western Christians (as others think), but rather an expanding conversation among progressive evangelicals, missional mainline Protestants, progressive Catholics, and postcolonial Christians from around the world. Its future may or may not still use words like emergent, emerging, etc., but the cat is out of the bag. Deep questions are being raised, and when that happens, you can take two predictions to the bank, one of them being that you can't get the questions back in the bag, and the second being that some people will try.

The latter will say, "I was OK when we were talking about making church more up-to-date, culturally relevant, and successful (i.e. large), but when we start asking deeper questions - about theology and justice, for example - I'm checking out." Now I've never been against making the church more up-to-date, culturally relevant, and effective, as beset as that project is with dangers, toils, and snares. (The obvious alternative - keeping the church out-of-date and culturally irrelevant and ineffective - has its problems too.) But I've repeatedly laid my cards on the table: I don't think the problems in the Christian religion are cosmetic. I think we have some deep issues to deal with - issues of theology, justice, narrative, and identity." - Brian McLaren

So not only does McLaren think that traditional theologically conservative evangelicals aren't part of the solution but merely the problem, he also thinks the problem with Christianity is its foundation, rather than some of its fruit (or some of its members) and the methods involved. And here I thought he wanted a conversation with us. Instead, he admits that he only wants to talk in his own personal echo chamber where no one seriously questions his "progressive" form of Christianity. Didn't the whole Emerging Church movement grow around the premise that the problem with evangelical Christianity was that it had no room for dissenting questions or views?

The other sad thing I note is that he continually thinks he's original, like he is asking questions that no one has ever asked (or answered). Either he's intellectually dishonest or a solid seminary (or just an honest study of church history in general) would have done him a world of good. Probably a little of each.

The nanny state leftists are really kicking their big government statism into high gear. The EU just announced their plan to make vacationing a human right. I don't know if I want to live in a world where everything becomes a right granted by the State rather than a blessing given by God.

Marshall Posey's winnings from Book Bracketology (plus he won a $40 Amazon gift certificate)...

"Here it is, in a nutshell. The state is either under authority or it is not. If the state is not under authority, it has no authority -- only power. That means that prudence might dictate doing what they say, but conscience never could. So the only way conscience can direct the citizenry to obey the state's authority is if the state itself is under authority. No created entity has authority unless that created entity is under authority. But if the state is under authority, this means the state is under limits.

Being under limited authority means that it is possible to know the nature and extent of those limits. If they go past those limits, everybody knows about it.

If there is no God above the state, the state has no authority. If there is a God above the state, then the state has no authority outside the limits that have been set for it. And in either case, there is no reason grounded in conscience for putting up with legalized plunder." - Doug Wilson

"When equality is treated not as a medicine... but as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. " - C.S. Lewis

"Our call to war, to love the captive soul,
But to rage against the captor..."

- from the hymn "O Church Arise"

On the recommendation of N.D. Wilson, my wife, nearly six-year-old daughter, and I went to see the new film "How to Train Your Dragon." It is great! The graphics are absurdly good, the story engaging and enjoyable, and it has a great message as well [be warned, I could include a couple little spoilers below]. As Wilson said in his review, the main message of the story stunned him. And as I looked back at his post, I noticed something that I hadn't quite caught during the movie.

Why did [the dragons] do these evil things? Well, because they served The Dragon. The big one. The huge, ancient, evil one. And the story progresses not with one small boy (Hiccup) successfully communicating to his father (Stoick) that dragons were misunderstood, but with that boy crushing The Dragon’s head and . . . losing his foot in the process. {emphasis added}

The Christian parallels to Genesis 3:15 are unmistakable. Furthermore, as Christians we should recognize that just as these dragons were not inherently evil themselves but served a master who was, the unbelieving lost in this world are not inherently bad or lost, but rather are enslaved to a master who has blinded them to the love of God. It's our job to free them from their chains and to open their eyes. Ephesians 6:12

If you ever wondered what it looks like when people worship God in spirit and... well, just spirit, watch this video.



Hopefully I didn't ruin anyone's meal.

This may be an extreme example, but every Christian could use a reminder that God isn't looking for a bunch of emotion junkies who sing stupid songs and think worthless thoughts in their praise. He wants His people to worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).

Doug Wilson has a great analogy here.

The fundamentalist is a "get-to-the-bottom-line" kind of guy. He knows where the plane is going, and he knows that right away. His mistake is that of thinking that wherever the plane is going must be the place where the plane is already. He thinks that everyone in the world sees the implications of an idea just as quickly as he does, and that if they embrace an idea that naturally leads to x, then they must be self-consciously embracing x right now. If they deny this, then it just goes to show their mendacity in addition to their heresy. But there are many Christians who are better Christians than they are logicians. And, sad to say, and more germaine to the point I am making now, the church also contains a number of logicians who are better logicians than they are Christians.

Crazy.

I found him! Nathanael Blake, that is. As readers of this blog who have been around the premises for awhile may recall, I used to quote Mr. Blake quite frequently back when he wrote regularly for the Oregon State University newspaper and for the Human Events blog. But after graduating, he mostly disappeared from view for the last couple of years, until finally resurfacing with his own blog. A brilliant writer, philosopher, and wordsmith, Nathanael is the reason I first found Dr. Dalrymple's writing. I look forward to following his posts and recommend that you check him out as well! I've also put a link to his blog to the left.

**Interesting side note and explanation of the title of this post: Blake is most famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask) for "winning" Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" award on MSNBC due to something he wrote in response to the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 (which I actually posted on at the time).**

N.D. Wilson, son of Doug Wilson and author of the brilliant Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl and the exciting 100 Cupboards trilogy which I am currently reading with my daughter, recently posted a review of the recently-released "How to Train Your Dragon" film on the Credenda/Agenda journal which makes me even more interested in seeing it with my daughter.

I don't know, but something about this just strikes me as missing the point. It makes me a bit nauseous, in fact. What do you think?