Archive for the ‘Morality’ Category

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Self-forgiveness

Saturday, May 4th, 2013

Recently I came across the term “self-forgiveness.”  In counseling circles it has to do with loving ourselves, forgiving ourselves for not being perfect, and not judging ourselves. The premise is that we cannot forgive others and love others unless we truly forgive and love ourselves. It is the result of accepting our mistakes and failures. To be able to say “I behaved thoughtlessly, unkindly, foolishly etc. and I forgive myself for not being perfect” could be the biggest – and most healing – act of all. For when you can forgive the imperfection in yourself, it’s a lot easier to forgive them in others.

I must admit that I am troubled by this counsel. It reminds me of the 1973, “I’m OK, You’re OK” book by Thomas Harris of  Transactional Analysis fame. Self-forgiveness is an attempt at self-salvation. It teaches that our own guilt, sense of shame, conscience, can be eradicated by our self-acceptance and self-affirmation. If that were true then we have no accountability. We can be our own judge and jury as to our own acquittal.

What do we do with Jesus’ teaching that we are to strive to be perfect (Matthew 5:48)?  What do we do with the forgiveness of sins that Jesus brought to us? What do we do with the concept of redemption – that Jesus died on the Cross, at great cost, to purchase our freedom from condemnation? If we can forgive ourselves what need do we have of a Savior?

The Christian Gospel is that in Christ we find forgiveness for our sins. “In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” (Ephesians 1:7,8) “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1) When we have received that forgiveness in Christ, through repentance and faith, we do not need to forgive ourselves – we have been forgiven. It is a matter of receiving that which God has done for us by his grace in the redemption of Jesus on the Cross. To say that we need to forgive ourselves is tantamount to denying the work of Christ on the Cross and becoming our own Savior. It is to trivialize the cost of redemption.

We do not need to forgive ourselves in order to love others. We ask for forgiveness for our own sins, as we forgive the sins of others in the words of the Lord’s Prayer. We recognize that as we have been forgiven, we extend that forgiveness to others.

The counsel to forgive yourself as the deepest act of forgiveness is an attempt to do an end-run around God. It is the desire to heal oneself without seeking the healing of the Cross. If we wish to be forgiven we must seek it where it is truly to be found, not in ourselves, but in the Good News of Jesus. “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (Mark 2:5) “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little….Your sins are forgiven.” (Luke 7:47,48)

What do you think? What is your experience of forgiveness?

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National Day of Prayer

Saturday, April 27th, 2013

Heavenly Father, King of Kings and Lord of Lord, Ruler of all the nations, you have instructed us through your apostle to “pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Savior God wants us to live He wants not only us but everyone saved, everyone to get to know the truth we’ve learned: that there’s one God and only one, and one Priest- Mediator between God and us – Jesus, who offered himself in exchange for everyone held captive by sin, to set them all free.” (1 Timothy 2:1-6)

We pray for those elected to positions of leadership in our nation: all those in executive offices, all legislators and all judges. May they be guided by your wisdom and seek to serve you to promote justice and liberty in our land and throughout the world. May they uphold the truth of your holy Word, and standards of holiness in their legislation, judgments and administration.

We pray for all citizens, that we may be governed in our consciences by your moral law to do good, live honest lives, and be responsible in our work and in the choices we make.

We pray that marriage may be held in honor, that children be raised to honor their parents and be brought up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

We pray that our police, firefighters, emergency personnel, and military may be clothed with your armor as they seek to serve and protect: that they may take their stand against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil with the belt of truth buckled around their waist, fastened with the breastplate of righteousness, their feet fitted with the gospel of peace, taking the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.

We pray for our churches, that they may be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, faithful to the gospel of Christ they proclaim, built upon the foundation of the apostles, and filled with your love.

We pray for all organizations that minister compassion, charity and goodwill to the needy, that they may be effective in alleviating suffering and be led by people of integrity, and volunteers who seek to serve the least of those amongst us.

We pray for our schools, colleges and universities, that they may teach the truth, foster  a love of learning, and honor the historical legacy of our Western culture, the intellectual tradition of a classical education, the achievement of our founders, and respect the Constitution, the rule of law, and our Judaeo-Christian inheritance.

We pray for the media, those who influence through, the arts, entertainment and sports, all celebrities, that they may so live and work as those who will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. Raise up wholesome examples of people who produce in their lives the fruit of your Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

We repent of any arrogance, pride and chronological snobbery, thinking that we know better than previous generations. Help us to value the achievements of the past, the sacrifices that have been made by those who have come before us so that we might enjoy the advantages of freedom, peace, comfort, and faith.

May we come together for the common good and foster an environment where those who come after us will learn from our  mistakes, and take action where we have been either unable or unwilling, so that this nation will be more truly one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We ask all this, knowing our unworthiness but also your great mercy, in the strong name of Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen.

 

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Timothy Dalrymple on Wendell Berry’s Epic Rant

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
Wendell Berry’s Epic Slanderfest: Opponents of Same-Sex Marriage Are “Perverts,” Guilty of “The Lowest Form of Hatred”
January 15, 2013 By Timothy Dalrymple
In case you were wondering, those who defend traditional marriage and oppose same-sex marriage are continuing the tradition of those who slaughtered the Jews and the Native Americans. They’re also perverts who are trying to theocratize America. According, at least, to Wendell Berry. And no, I’m neither making this up nor exaggerating. I write this post with deep disappointment. I appreciate Wendell Berry’s literary artistry, and I appreciate his spiritual insights. But he indulged in an epic rant against gay marriage opponents to a gathering of Baptist ministers on January 11th in Kentucky. His comments were relayed by Bob Allen of the Associated Baptist Press. While Berry repeats uncritically a slew of bumper-sticker arguments and engages in some serious straw-man pyromania, the people in the comments box nonetheless marvel at his genius. This deserves a response.
Bear in mind that I have openly suggested that the time may have come for evangelicals to drop their legal opposition to same-sex marriage, even as they uphold biblical standards for the morality of sex outside of wedlock and the theology of marriage in the true sense ordained by God. I’ve also been repeatedly critical of the ways in which evangelicals historically have responded to homosexuality, and called for a radical grace and extravagant love shown toward our GLBT neighbors and friends. Also, sincerely, I’m very tired of talking about this. But the constant onslaught of hatred (read the below and tell me that word isn’t justified) for those who affirm traditional biblical sexual ethics and who wish to defend legally the model of marriage instituted by God is so extreme that I find myself compelled time and again to respond.This will be a long post. But let’s fisk what he has to say:
“My argument, much abbreviated [when he referenced it before], was the sexual practices of consenting adults ought not to be subjected to the government’s approval or disapproval, and that domestic partnerships in which people who live together and devote their lives to one another ought to receive the spousal rights, protections and privileges the government allows to heterosexual couples,” Berry said.
Fair enough, but defending the traditional definition of marriage has nothing to do with making “the sexual practices of consenting adults” subject to government dis/approval. It has to do with the divine creation of marriage and the family. The overwhelming majority of defenders of traditional marriage in America have no interest, none whatsoever, in outlawing homosexual sex. Many would also be perfectly fine with domestic partnerships that grant “rights, protections and privileges” enjoyed by married couples. But that is not what the advocates of gay marriage are seeking. They are seeking a legal redefinition of marriage — and I think it’s fair to say (though some will deny it) that the movement would also like to see an ethical affirmation that there is nothing morally objectionable with homosexuality.
Berry said liberals and conservatives have invented “a politics of sexuality” that establishes marriage as a “right” to be granted or withheld by whichever side prevails. He said both viewpoints contravene principles of democracy that rights are self-evident and inalienable and not determined and granted or withheld by the government.
Actually, no. Conservative Christians do not believe that marriage — homosexual or heterosexual — is a “right.” That’s the point. There is no right to join yourself to whomever you please and demand that the government recognize and reward it as “marriage.” The government does not define marriage. God does. But the government may have a compelling interest in recognizing and encouraging marriage. The only people who argue that marriage is a “right” are those on the Left. The “rights” language has infected the debate, turning everyone who believes in defending traditional marriage into the violators of gays’ “rights” and therefore not only mistaken or misinformed but gravely unethical, perhaps even criminal, equal to those who would deny their rights to women or racial minorities. I believe that gays ought to have – and as human beings do have inalienably – the same rights as heterosexuals, but I do not believe that either gays or straights have a “right” to compel the state to recognize their relationships as marriages.
“Christians of a certain disposition have found several ways to categorize homosexuals as different as themselves, who are in the category of heterosexual and therefore normal and therefore good,” Berry said. What is unclear, he said, is why they single out homosexuality as a perversion.“The Bible, as I pointed out to the writers of National Review, has a lot more to say against fornication and adultery than against homosexuality,” he said. “If one accepts the 24th and 104th Psalms as scriptural norms, then surface mining and other forms of earth destruction are perversions. If we take the Gospels seriously, how can we not see industrial warfare — with its inevitable massacre of innocents — as a most shocking perversion? By the standard of all scriptures, neglect of the poor, of widows and orphans, of the sick, the homeless, the insane, is an abominable perversion.”
It’s immensely disappointing to see Berry parroting these superficial points. First, no one is saying heterosexuals are “good.” None are good; all are sinful. We all stand as sinners in need of God’s grace. Second, the frequency with which a sin is discussed in scripture has nothing to do with whether or not it’s a sin. There are many things not frequently condemned in scripture — genocide, spousal abuse, child abuse, and even rape — that we would all agree are grave sins and deserving of our attention. The scriptures emerged from a Hebrew world in which the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality was not a live issue. And we need to attend not only to the scriptures condemning homosexual relations but to all the scriptures affirming the proper place for sex and the created definition of marriage. Third, Christians since the first century have employed a hermeneutic that distinguishes between ritual and ceremonial laws that were intended for a specific people at a specific time and place, and the moral law that is written into the order of creation for all people. To pretend suddenly as though Christians are being arbitrary when they choose to affirm the condemnations of homosexual relations and ignore the shellfish rules (or etc.) is disingenuous in the extreme. Fourth, Berry may wish to mount an argument that surface mining is wrong, but that has nothing to do with the proper definition of marriage and God’s design for human sexuality. Fifth and finally, yes, the Bible spends far more time encouraging us to care for the least and the laws than it does reiterating the moral law, which is why Christians and their churches spend a lot more time and effort caring for the least and the lost than they do defending their moral views in the public square.
“Jesus talked of hating your neighbor as tantamount to hating God, and yet some Christians hate their neighbors by policy and are busy hunting biblical justifications for doing so,” he said. “Are they not perverts in the fullest and fairest sense of that term? And yet none of these offenses — not all of them together — has made as much political/religious noise as homosexual marriage.”
The defense of traditional marriage is not about “hating your neighbor” but about defending biblical truth and preserving a clear understanding of what God has said. Caring for the poor does not create “noise” because no one wants to tell the stories of Christians doing daily heroic work through Catholic Charities or the Salvation Army or World Vision or Compassion or any number of organizations whose budgets individually are several orders of magnitude larger than any budget for any organization defending traditional marriage. And Christian organizations do advocate for the policies they think will best care for the poor and for all people. Nothing would please us more than to see this issue go away, but it remains a constant because those interests are seeking to redefine marriage, which we hold sacred, and constantly seeking to brand the defenders of traditional marriage as hateful and bigoted.Another argument used, Berry said, is that homosexuality is “unnatural.” “If it can be argued that homosexual marriage is not reproductive and is therefore unnatural and should be forbidden on that account, must we not argue that childless marriages are unnatural and should be annulled?” he asked.
“One may find the sexual practices of homosexuals to be unattractive or displeasing and therefore unnatural, but anything that can be done in that line by homosexuals can be done and is done by heterosexuals,” Berry continued. “Do we need a legal remedy for this? Would conservative Christians like a small government bureau to inspect, approve and certify their sexual behavior? Would they like a colorful tattoo verifying government approval on the rumps of lawfully copulating parties? We have the technology, after all, to monitor everybody’s sexual behavior, but so far as I can see so eager an interest in other people’s private intimacy is either prurient or totalitarian or both.”
Colorful images, but again disappointing. Has Wendell Berry never actually read a defense of traditional marriage? It’s not as though we just discovered the problem of childless couples. Has he never heard of the Catholic Church, which has a very sophisticated theology around this question? If he has heard it, he chooses to caricature it instead with colorful images of backside tattoos. Once again, this is not about legally forbidding sexual behavior. Trying to turn this time and again into an effort to illegalize same-sex sex may be effective rhetoric, but it’s fundamentally dishonest.
“The oddest of the strategies to condemn and isolate homosexuals is to propose that homosexual marriage is opposed to and a threat to heterosexual marriage, as if the marriage market is about to be cornered and monopolized by homosexuals,” Berry said. “If this is not industrial capitalist paranoia, it at least follows the pattern of industrial capitalist competitiveness. We must destroy the competition. If somebody else wants what you’ve got, from money to marriage, you must not hesitate to use the government – small of course – to keep them from getting it.”
One wonders how a mind as supple as Wendell Berry’s can accept these talking points so uncritically. Christians and their churches devote enormous amounts of resources to marriage ministries in an effort to strengthen marriages. A favorite target of the left, Focus on the Family, is almost exclusively focused on building up marriages and families. The lion’s share of effort does go toward strengthening heterosexual marriages. But just because heterosexual marriages are struggling is not a reason to abandon the biblical definition of marriage. There is no fear that homosexuals will “corner the market.” This probably ranks among the most ridiculous things Berry has said in a long series of ridiculous things. The concern is that, in a society where marriage is already suffering, altering the fundamental definition of marriage will only hasten the disintegration of the God-given family structure and therefore of society as a whole. Whether or not we find it convincing, let’s be honest about the argument.
“If I were one of a homosexual couple — the same as I am one of a heterosexual couple — I would place my faith and hope in the mercy of Christ, not in the judgment of Christians,” Berry said. “When I consider the hostility of political churches to homosexuality and homosexual marriage, I do so remembering the history of Christian war, torture, terror, slavery and annihilation against Jews, Muslims, black Africans, American Indians and others. And more of the same by Catholics against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics, Catholics against Catholics, Protestants against Protestants, as if by law requiring the love of God to be balanced by hatred of some neighbor for the sin of being unlike some divinely preferred us. If we are a Christian nation — as some say we are, using the adjective with conventional looseness — then this Christian blood thirst continues wherever we find an officially identifiable evil, and to the immense enrichment of our Christian industries of war.”
Accusing churches that are trying to hold fast to how (they believe) God defined marriage of perpetuating the same “Christian blood thirst” that led to the annihilation of Jews and American Indians is calumny of the highest order. Wendell Berry should be ashamed of himself. Worldwide, homosexuals historically have been persecuted. Christians, who have been persecuted worldwide as well, should be sensitive to this. But tying those who believe homosexual sex is wrong and that God made marriage for male and female to the instigators of genocide and religious warfare is truly beyond the pale.
“Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking even the courage of a personal hatred,” Berry said. “Categorical condemnation is the hatred of the mob. It makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob, a mob overflowing with righteousness – as at the crucifixion and before and since. This can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal to kindness: to heretics, foreigners, enemies or any other group different from ourselves.”
“Perhaps the most dangerous temptation to Christianity is to get itself officialized in some version by a government, following pretty exactly the pattern the chief priest and his crowd at the trial of Jesus,” Berry said. “For want of a Pilate of their own, some Christians would accept a Constantine or whomever might be the current incarnation of Caesar.”
Now the defenders of traditional marriage are likened to those who crucified Jesus. Apparently no blow is too low here. Even though Christians today are not advocating laws against adultery, or against premarital sex, or homosexual sex, nonetheless Christians are trying to get Christianity “officialized.” (I think he has a point here, but it has to be much more nuanced and qualified.) And what would Wendell Berry say of condemnation of habitual adulterers or environment-destroyers “by category” (which really means to say that those actions are sinful)? My only point is to underscore the ridiculousness of the charge that “condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred.” While I do not disagree that there are some out there who are simply hateful bigots, the great majority of people I’ve come to know who wish to defend traditional marriage are not hateful but simply attempting, in the face of epic slander such as this, to uphold what they perceive to be the truth of God’s Word.
“Finally,” says one commenter, “sanity in the discussion.” Says another, “We have been blessed with such a profound mind.” Comments like these, in some ways, sadden me even more than Wendell Berry’s comments themselves. Have we lost the ability even to recognize a sane and balanced and nuanced discussion? Because Wendell Berry, in this case, offers neither sanity nor profundity. There is no nuance here, no attempt to understand the arguments on both sides — really, there’s no grace here whatsoever. There is a raging condemnation of one side of the argument as the “perverts” who indulge in “the lowest form of hatred” and can be justly identified with the perpetrators of genocide and inter-religious slaughter.
Tell me again who is engaging in “condemnation by category”?

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Why Am I?

Tuesday, January 1st, 2013

The Introduction of my new book, WHY AM I? Reflections on Meaning and Purpose in Life from Genesis 1-11, begins with these words:

When I first held my newest grand-daughter, Erika, in my arms and looked at her, I asked, “Who are you? Where have you come from? What will your life be like?” Her perfectly formed face, eyes, nose, ears, fingers and toes fascinated me, as did my two daughters’ when they were born. I was also aware of Erika returning my gaze. What was she thinking? “Who is this person? Where did he come from? Why am I here?”

Why am I? Who am I? How do I make sense of my life? Am I just an accident? Am I just a higher animal? Am I just a collection of chemicals and genes? Who is the baby I hold in my arms? What does her life mean? Why is she so precious to me her grandfather and all who love her?

What is the value of your life? Why are you who you are? These are questions I have asked all my life. Where do you look for answers to these questions? That is what this book is about. Will you journey with me as I explore these questions and their answers as prompted by the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis?

GENESIS 1-11 AND SCIENCE

There are many who discount the Bible in favor of a rationalistic approach to the meaning of your life and mine. Here is one such approach.

“Scientism, according to one standard definition, is ‘an exaggerated confidence in the methods of science as the most (or the only) reliable tools of inquiry’.… The main tenets of this philosophy are bracingly summed up in a series of questions and answers. Is there a God? No. What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Why am I here? Just dumb luck. Does prayer work? Of course not. Is there a soul? Is it immortal? You must be kidding. Is there free will? Not a chance! What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.”[1]

What is your response to such a catechism? Mine is: How does he know? What is the basis of his dogmatic claims? How does he live? How does he make moral decisions? How can he be so dismissive of the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus? I am amazed when I read in the popular press derogatory comments about the Bible, such as, “Modern science has disproven the Biblical view of origins in Genesis.” Anybody who makes such a statement is ignorant of both the limitations of science and the interpretation of Scripture.

MY APPROACH IN THIS BOOK

In the following chapters I will be looking at Genesis 1-11 from many different angles. But the most important question I will be asking of the passages will be: what is God saying to us today through his Word about his purpose for your life and mine. The fundamental questions of the secular world are: Who is God? Who am I? Why am I here? What am I for? How can I give my life meaning? How do I get faith? What is this life all about? Why is the universe here? Why is there something rather than nothing?

 

A CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION

I will be looking at Genesis from a New Testament perspective. I am writing as a follower of Jesus Christ. I am looking at Genesis 1-11 through the spectacles of Christian belief. I will consider what is meant by the beginning of all things. How does God reveal himself to us? What is the process of creation today? What is the nature of our human condition, our uniqueness, our purpose, our temptation and fall? I will consider the problem of evil, the breakdown of relationships between Cain and Abel, the judgment of the Flood, and the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel. What is the relevance for all these to our lives today?

I believe in the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. I believe that God speaks to us through these words according to our need. Without this divinely revealed truth we cannot know the answers to life’s great questions. Without the truth of the Bible we are condemned to the doubt and agnosticism of the otherwise brilliant literary critic, George Steiner.[2]
He wrote in his memoir,

“All of us are guests of life. No human being knows the meaning of its creation, except in the most primitive, biological regard. No man or woman knows the purpose, if any, the possible significance of its ‘thrownness’ into the mystery of existence. Why is there not nothing? Why am I?”

To the contrary, God has revealed to us the answers to those questions if we will but receive them. Genesis 1-11, and the rest of the Bible, is given to us to answer these questions, to know the meaning of our creation and the purpose of our existence.

 

It is available through Amazon and Amelia Plantation Chapel.

[1]
Anthony Kenny’s review of The Atheist’s
Guide to Reality, Alex Rosenberg, Times
Literary Supplement, June 22, 2012, p.24

[2]
George Steiner, Errata: an examined life,
Yale, 1998, p.60

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My Annual Reading List

Tuesday, January 1st, 2013

(Highly Recommended in bold)

 

DON’T SING SONGS TO A HEAVY HEART: How to relate to those who are suffering, Kenneth C. Haugk, 2004

WHAT SHALL WE SAY? Evil, Suffering and the Crisis of Faith, Thomas G. Long, 2011

KIERKEGAARD: An Introduction, C. Stephen Evans, 2009

APING MANKIND: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the
Misrepresentation of Humanity, Raymond Tallis, 2011

A WINDOW TO HEAVEN: When Children See Life in Death, Diane
M. Komp, M.D. 1992

A HOLY TRADITION OF WORKING: Passages from the Writings of
Eric Gill, 1983

GODLY AMBITION: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement,
Alister Chapman, 2012

DIARY OF A SOUL, Pennar Davies, 2011

WHY JESUS? Rediscovering His Truth in an Age of Mass
Marketed Spirituality, Ravi Zacharias, 2012

THE RESURRECTION OF MINISTRY, Andrew Purves, 2004

MOVE: What 1,000 Churches Reveal About Spiritual Growth,
Greg Hawkins & Cally Parkinson, 2011

WHAT THEY DIDN’T TEACH YOU IN SEMINARY: Lessons for a
Successful Ministry in Your Church, James Emery White, 2011

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED: A New Psychology of Love,
TraditIonal Values and Spiritual Growth, M. Scott Peck, 1978

EXCELLENCE IN PREACHING: Studying the Craft of Leading
Preachers, Simon Vibert, 2011

CHRIST AMONG THE DRAGONS: Finding our Way Through Cultural
Challenges, James Emery White, 2010

A MIND FOR GOD, James Emery White, 2006

RETHINKING THE CHURCH: A Challenge to creative Redesign in
an Age of Transition, James Emery White, 2003

A SEARCH FOR THE SPIRITUAL: Exploring Real Christianity,
James Emery White, 1998, 2008

LIT! A CHRISTIAN GUIDE TO READING BOOKS, Tony Reinke, 2011

THE SEARCH FOR COMPASSION: Spirituality and Ministry, Andrew
Purves, 1989

THE LAST ENEMY: Preparing to Win the Fight of Your Life,
Michael E. Wittmer, 2012

WRITTEN IN TEARS: A Grieving Father’s Journey Through Psalm
103, Luke Veldt, 2010

THE WIZARD’S TALE, Frederick Buechner, 1990

THE FORGOTTEN TRINITY: Recovering the Heart of Christian
Belief, James R. White, 1998

HANNAH COULTER: A Novel, Wendell Berry, 2004 (A masterpiece)

ERRATA: An Examined life, George Steiner, 1997

AM I CALLED: The Summons to Pastoral Ministry, Dave Harvey,
2012

FATAL PARTNERS: War and Disease, Ralph H. Majors, 1941

THAT DISTANT LAND: The Collected Stories, Wendell Berry, 2004 (Superb)

THE BLOOD OF HEROES: The Alamo, James Donovan, 2012

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY: with an inquiry into the causes of its inefficiency, Charles Bridges, 1830. (A Classic)

THE FACE OF GOD: The Gifford Lectures, Roger Scruton, 2012

HOLINESS: its nature, hindrances, difficulties and roots, J.C.Ryle. (Superb)

THE INTOLERANCE OF TOLERANCE, D.A. Carson, 2012

MIRACLES, The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 volumes, Craig S. Keener, 2011

ANIMAL FARM, George Orwell, 1944

HEALING: The Three Great Classics on divine Healing, ed. Jonathan L. Graf, DIVINE HEALING: Andrew
Murray, THE MINISTRY OF HEALING: A.J. Gordon, THE GOSPEL OF HEALING: A.B.
Simpson. Gordon’s is the best, balanced and biblical.

EXPOSING MYTHS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY: A Guide to Answering 145 Viral Lies and Legends, Jeffrey Burton Russell, 2012. (Excellent)

A FREE PEOPLE’S SUICIDE: Sustainable Freedom and the
American Future, Os Guinness, 2012

UNBROKEN: A World War II story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand, 2010

LIFE OF THE BELOVED, Henri Nouwen, 1992

KNOTS UNTIED, J.C. Ryle

POLITICS FOR CHRISTIANS: Statecraft as Soulcraft, Francis J.
Beckwith, 2010

OUR FIRST REVOLUTION: The Remarkable British Upheaval The Inspired America’s Founding Fathers,
Michael Barone, 2007. (Terrific)

DEMONIC: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America, Ann
Coulter, 2011

THEIR BLOOD CRIES OUT: The Worldwide Tragedy of Modern
Christians Who Are Dying for their Faith. Why It is Being Ignored. Why the
Silence. What we Can do, Paul Marshall with Lela Gilbert, 1997

WATER FROM A DEEP WELL: Christian Spirituality from Early Martyrs to Modern Missionaries, Gerald L. Sittser, 2007. (Rich inspiration)

THE NEARLY PERFECT CRIME: How the Church Almost Killed the Ministry of Healing, Francis MacNutt,
2005. (Excellent)

POWER THROUGH PRAYER, E. M. Bounds. (A Classic)

THE DISENCHANTMENT OF SECULAR DISCOURSE, Steven D. Smith, 2010 (Important)

BAD RELIGION: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, Ross Douthat, 2012 (Essential Reading)

THE EXPLICIT GOSPEL, Matt Chandler, 2012

THE HOBBIT, J. R. R. Tolkien, 1937

DEEP AND WIDE: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend, Andy Stanley, 2012 (Andy’s story of starting Northpoint Ministries)

KILLING THE BLACK DOG: A Memoir of Depression, Les Murray,
2009

GLORIOUS RUIN: How Suffering Sets You Free, Tullian Tchividjian, 2012. (Excellent)

ATHEIST DELUSIONS: The Christian Revolution and Its
Fashionable Enemies, David Bentley Hart, 2009 (Rips the façade off the
arguments of the new atheists)

THE SERVILE MIND: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life,
Kenneth Minogue, 2010 (Important critique of the welfare state)

THE SECOND COMING: A Novel, Walker Percy, 1988

C.H. SPURGEON: AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Vol.1 The Early Years, Vol.2 The Full Harvest, 1897 and 1973. (Inspiring,
informative, Challenging.)

MEDITATIONS FROM A MOVABLE CHAIR, Andre Dubus, 1999. (Profound)

LIBERTY AND CIVILIZATION: The Western Heritage, ed. Roger
Scruton, 2010 (Culturally and Politically Informative)

THE DEAN’S WATCH: A Novel, Elizabeth Goudge, 1960 (My third reading of a favorite book that warms my heart)

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND, Thomas Merton, 1955

 

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Thomas Merton on Suffering and Sin

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

A society whose whole idea is to eliminate suffering and bring all its members the greatest amount of comfort and pleasure is doomed to be destroyed. It does not understand that all evil is not necessarily to be avoided. Nor is suffering the only evil, as our world thinks.

If we consider suffering to be the greatest evil and pleasure the greatest good, we will live continually submerged in the only great evil that we ought to avoid without compromise: which is sin. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary to face suffering, which is a lesser evil, in order to avoid or to overcome the greatest evil, sin.

What is the difference between physical evil – suffering – and moral evil – sin? Physical evil has no power to penetrate beneath the surface of our being. It can touch our flesh, our mind, our sensibility. It cannot harm our spirit without the work of that other evil which is sin. If we suffer courageously, quietly, unselfishly, peacefully, the things that wreck our outer being only perfect us within, and make us, as we have seen, more truly ourselves because they enable us to fulfill our destiny in Christ. They are sent for this purpose, and when they come we should receive them with gratitude and joy.

Sin strikes at the very depth of our personality. It destroys the one reality on which our true character, identity, and happiness depend: our fundamental orientation to God. We are created to will what God wills, to know what he knows, to love what he loves. Sin is the will to do what God does not will, to know what he does not know, to love what he does not love. Therefore every sin is a sin against truth, a sin against obedience, and against love. But in all these three things sin proves itself to be a supreme injustice not only against God but, above all, against ourselves.

No Man Is An Island, p.83f.

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The Servile Mind

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Kenneth Minogue is an emeritus professor of political science at the London School of Economics. He was born in New Zealand and educated in Australia. I have recently read his book, The Servile Mind:How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life (Encounter Books, 2010). It looks at how Western morality has evolved into mere “politico-moral” posturing about admired ethical causes – from solving world poverty and creating peace to curing climate change. Today, merely making the correct noises and parading one’s essential decency by having politically correct opinions has become a substitute for individual moral responsibility. Instead, Minogue argues, we ask that our governments carry the burden of solving our social – and especially moral – problems for us. The sad and frightening irony is that the more we allow the state to determine our moral order and inner convictions, the more we need to be told how to behave and what to think.

The modern democratic project is to actualize on Earth the ideal society by moral, social, and political action. This is a breathtaking ambition: nothing less is involved than the project of transforming the human condition, man taking human destiny out of the hands of God and into his own hands. It is the Titans storming heaven. The new version of salvation involves a string of separate projects such as ending capitalism in order to save the planet, closing the gaps between rich and poor, and moving power away from states to international bodies. And since salvation is collective, the basic evil may be recognized as individualism, understood as consumerist and self-indulgent. Collective salvation is the aspiration toward a world harmony in which human conflict will have been superseded by cooperation and compassionate feelings toward everybody.

The basic principle is that evils result from social conditions. The implication is that little or nothing can be expected from individual responses to those conditions. In this model, educational success becomes a matter only of how much cash has been invested, longevity is a function of medical availability, communal harmony a result of tolerance being inculcated by higher authority, etc. A further implication is that we are responsible for the conditions in which they live. In other words, the world consists of active promoters of good, and passive victims of bad conditions. The problem is that idealism is at odds with the Western way of life in which competition produces as one of its consequences people who lose out. Losing out can be painful. If such inequality is taken to be a problem, one solution is central direction of the economy, which might in principle eliminate the role of luck and provide equal benefits to all. It’s a great idea, and leads straight to poverty, not to mention despotism and oppression. A less dramatic solution to the problem of poverty consists in governments taking from the rich, and businesses, and giving to the poor.

Again, this is a great idea, except that it often demoralizes the beneficiaries, and makes the rich less enterprising. Beyond a certain point, redistribution diminishes the prosperity, not to mention the vitality, of an economy. It is an idealist’s dream of a managed society in which the point of the management is to save individuals from the pains of failure.

The essence of the servile mind is the readiness to accept external direction in exchange for being relieved of the burden of a set of virtues such as thrift, self-control, prudence, and indeed civility itself. What becomes of the moral life of individuals without its implicit Christian underpinnings? Christianity is the source not only of individualism, but of the spiritual egalitarianism that individualism also involves. Each soul is unique and valuable to God.

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Domestic Violence

Saturday, November 24th, 2012

Many women in our congregation have been active in establishing the work of Micah’s Place, the domestic violence shelter for our county. They have raised our awareness of the need for help for wives and mothers in abusive relationships. All too often patterns of violence have been repeated in generation after generation. I commend to you the support of organizations in your area that provide help for abused women. Often the abuse is hidden as women are embarrassed by it and often are made to feel that they have contributed to it in some sick way. There is no excuse for domestic violence. Husbands who claim that the Bible says that their wives should submit to them are misinterpreting Scripture. Christ sacrificed himself for his bride, the Church, and so should husbands. The pattern of Scripture is that a husband loves his wife as Christ does the Church. I found the following prayer from a battered wife which is to the point.

My God, I can no longer recognize the face that I see in the mirror. Where was the radiant bride that stood here merely five years ago? Where was the young woman full of hope, full of love and full of the promises of a brand new life ahead of her? For the woman who stands here now seems no longer a woman at all. Gone was the light in her eyes that used to be the envy of all. Gone was the blush on her cheeks that used to be caressed with tenderness and love. Those eyes are now swollen from endless tears. Those cheeks are now shadowed by bruises and scars.

I have been transgressed and defiled, and I have allowed it all! I have allowed it for the most cliché reason of all. O how I thought I loved him, but the truth is that I don’t even know how to love my own self. How conceited indeed can a woman be? To think that she could change the man who doesn’t even want to change himself? Am I a God who can look into the hearts of men and seek the goodness that can be drawn from each one? Even God doesn’t force us to change if we wish to be stubborn and go our own sinful ways. Indeed, I am no God, and neither is the man I have worshipped so wrongfully all these years.

My God, help me to see things as they really are, not as I would have it. Help me to forgive myself as you have forgiven me, to love myself as you have loved me. Help me to know what love really is that it may take root in my heart and that it may bear fruit for others to also find their way. I used to think that love is being able to give everything even if it hurts. God it hurt so much! But now I know that love, even if it may hurt sometimes should never be at the expense of self-respect and dignity; love, even if it may entail sacrifice should never be at the expense of being shattered and broken.

For true love, if it is true indeed always brings wholeness and peace, and bears the fruit of goodness upon all who give and receive it. Love is not a matter of control or manipulation. Love is an invitation and a gift that can only be received with openness and a grateful heart. Help me find my way O God, not only for myself but more so for my beloved children. Help me to provide for them not only their material needs, but their emotional and spiritual longings as well.

Truly I have a long way to go and a great many more battles to face, but I dare to begin now God. I begin with your forgiveness and your love. I begin with your providence and healing. Help me through it all O Lord and one day soon, I know I will be able to see that radiant and beautiful bride once again.

This prayer of a battered wife was written by HIYAS at itakeoffthemask.com

Read more http://itakeoffthemask.com/prayers/battered-wife-prayer/

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The Long Game

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

Andrew Klavan
The Long Game
Three areas the Right should address, financially and intellectually
7 November 2012
Life is short, said Hippocrates, but art is long. There is a practical corollary to that great truth: elections are won and lost in the politics of the moment, but it’s the culture that makes the nation.
In the aftermath of President Obama’s victory, conservative political thinkers will have to ask themselves some hard questions. How much of our defeat was due to strategy and how much to structure? How can we reach out to struggling workers without sacrificing our commitment to free enterprise and individual liberty? How can we speak to single women without losing voters committed to family values and the lives of the unborn? How can we welcome the children of illegal immigrants without compromising our belief in the rule of law?
The smartest political writers in the country, all of whom are conservative, will now be addressing those questions. I’m an artist; I play the long game. To win that game, to create an electorate more deeply committed to true liberty and resistant to the sort of cultural scare tactics the president’s campaign team used so effectively, there are three areas to which conservatives need to commit intellectual and financial resources—three areas that our intelligentsia and funders, in their impractical practicality, too often ignore.
The mainstream news media. Major news outlets, like ABC, NBC, CBS, and the still influential New York Times have now become so ideologically corrupt that they are engaging in the sort of Nixonian cover-ups they once prided themselves on exposing. Their studied creation of non-scandal scandals and non-gaffe gaffes on the right and their active suppression of such true scandals as Fast and Furious and Benghazi on the left amount to journalistic malpractice on behalf of the state. The late Andrew Breitbart understood the depth and extent of the problem better than the cooler establishment heads who wrinkled their noses at him. He declared a guerrilla war on the media in the name of truth.
While Breitbart disciples like John Nolte, Ben Shapiro, and Joel Pollak continue that underground fight, it is long past time for conservative minds and money to take the battle to the mainstream. How is it possible that the mind-boggling success of Fox News has failed to spawn half a dozen imitators at least—especially venues for the libertarian young with their antic sense of political incorrectness? Rupert Murdoch, God love him, can’t live forever. It’s time for others to step up.
The entertainment industry. Conservatives think when they have won an argument in the newspapers, the fight is over. Leftists know their Hippocrates. They know they can rewrite history in novels, on TV, and in the movies, and a generation later, their false versions will be accepted as truth. As former ambassador Joseph Wilson said, when his questionable actions were rendered heroic in the dishonest movie Fair Game: “For people who have short memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember the period.” It’s not that conservative ideas don’t make their way into popular entertainment; it’s that they always come in disguise. Even leftists love deeply conservative films like the Lord of the Rings and Dark Knight trilogies, because they recognize good values when they’re not forced to apply them to real life. But conservatives themselves quail when conservatives speak their values plainly in the arts. Too preachy, they cry, too much propaganda, too much . . . too much . . . conservatism! We don’t need more conservative artists. We need an infrastructure to support them: more funding, more distribution, sympathetic review venues, grants and awards for arts that speak the truth out loud.
Religion for intellectuals. Normally, I would have said number three was “reforming the academy,” but I believe this is where the fight for the academy is centered. Recently, a number of books by secular intellectuals have noted the disaster that is postmodern relativism—the nihilist philosophy that has corrupted and gutted Western liberal education. Education’s End, by Anthony T. Kronman, Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians, by Marcello Pera, and What Ever Happened to Modernism?, by Gabriel Josipovici, come to mind. All lament the abandonment of our commitment to the Great Conversation—the intellectual’s belief that the creative tension of the uniquely brilliant Western literary and philosophical canon can lead us in the direction of moral truth.
But the authors cannot fully grasp the nettle of the solution. Many assume that the Great Conversation depended on the sort of open mind only secularism can provide. As Kronman puts it: “Every religion insists, at the end of the day, that there is only one right answer to the question of life’s meaning,” thus rendering the pluralism of the Great Conversation impossible. I would contend the opposite: only the existence of a God in whose image we are created can support the notion of moral truth at all. It was always Judeo-Christianity, and that alone, that made the Great Conversation possible. Pera understands this intellectually, but cannot really plunk for faith. And therein lies the problem. The triumph of science, the comfort of Western life, and a sophisticated elite virulently hostile to religion have all contributed to an intellectual atmosphere of unbelief—a sense that atheism should be the default mode of reasonable, thinking people. That is a mere prejudice and needs to be answered in the culture, not with Bible-thumping literalism and small-minded judgmentalism—nor with banal happy-talk optimism—but by sound argument made publicly, unabashedly, and without fear. John Adams and the other Founders were right about this: an irreligious people cannot be free. Liberty lives in the palace of moral truth, and you can’t build that palace on the empty air.
In the aftermath of a crushing electoral defeat, all this may seem a distant business, an airy conversation for another day. It isn’t. The demography of the country is changing, but demography is not destiny. Ideas are. We must retake the culture and begin speaking truth to a new America.
Andrew Klavan’s new suspense novel for young adults is entitled If We Survive.

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Tracing the Logic of Liberalism

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

Tracing the Logic of Liberalism

Posted By David T. Koyzis On October 28, 2012 @ 10:00 PM In
Featured,Noteworthy,Opinion | 10 Comments

In the American context the labels liberal and conservative are used in an ahistorical way—more as terms of opprobrium than as accurate designations for what people actually believe about political life. Liberals and conservatives alike differ less on fundamental principles than on who can better claim custody over the same principles—the principles of, well, liberalism.

The liberalism of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Of Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill. After all, the Declaration of Independence is a liberal document, unquestioningly accepting that popular consent stands at the origin of political authority. As Alasdair MacIntyre has put it, in the Western world there are conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals, but all adhere to the basic principles of liberalism.

So what accounts for the differences between Democrats and Republicans, between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? What separates them is that each represents a different stage in the larger development of liberalism. Those who do not like what liberalism has become in recent decades have not repudiated it as such but have tried instead to hold onto it and return it to an earlier form—one thought to be purer and closer to its original meaning. I believe liberalism can be traced through five stages of development.

1. The Hobbesian commonwealth

The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes set forth an alternative story to the biblical redemptive narrative of creation-fall-redemption-consummation. For Hobbes, history consisted of a grand movement away from a chaotic state of nature and toward a civil order presided over by a sovereign capable of keeping the peace. The key to this change was a contract among individuals motivated by fear of a violent death to seek a more peaceful state. Only an all-powerful sovereign could put an end to the war of all against all and bring about more agreeable conditions. Hobbes’s sovereign could do no wrong legally and morally speaking, because he was the source of law. But there were real practical limitations on his power, for if he pushed his subjects too far they might decide to take their chances with the state of nature once again and try to unseat him.

2. The night watchman state

This second stage in liberalism’s development is most associated with John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson. The narrative structure is still the same. According to Locke, the state of nature produces certain inconveniences that can be remedied only by individuals entering into a contract to establish a civil government. If the Hobbesian sovereign is established to protect life, the Lockean government is set up to defend life, liberty, and property—or, as Jefferson put it, the pursuit of happiness. Government remains small and allows sovereign individuals to pursue their own respective goods as they understand them. With respect to economic life, government limits itself to setting and enforcing the rules of the game, allowing the players to seek their own advantage. The net result will be a spontaneous order emerging, almost providentially, out of all this self-seeking.

3. The regulatory state

In reality, of course, self-seeking, while undoubtedly producing certain material benefits, did indeed lead to abuses, such as those engendered by the early factory system: excessively long work days and weeks, dangerous working conditions, and low wages due to a surplus of potential laborers in the marketplace. In its third stage, liberals call on government to rectify these abuses. Theodore Roosevelt is a paradigmatic figure, in so far as he brought the power of government to bear in checking an “industrial baronage” represented by the large corporate concerns. The U.S. Congress passed the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts in 1890 and 1914 respectively as means of restoring competition to a marketplace now dominated by monopolies. The breakups of Standard Oil in 1911 and of AT&T in 1984 were motivated by this concern.

4. The equal-opportunity state

Each of the previous stages sees the proponents of liberalism undertaking to expand individual freedom—first from fear of death, second from threats to property, and third from economic monopolies. The shift from stage 2 to stage 3 sees a necessary expansion of the apparatus of government. However, many liberals regard this as insufficient. In particular, if the quest for economic advantage is likened to a game, and if government sets the rules of the game, contestants inevitably have an uneven start. Unlike Parker Brothers’s famous Monopoly game, in which every player begins with $1,500, real life sees people entering the marketplace with greater or fewer advantages than others. The effect of the Great Depression of the 1930s accentuated the feeling of many liberals that a small night watchman state and even a regulatory state are not enough “to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness,” as Franklin Roosevelt expressed it in 1944. This, of course, necessitated another expansion in the apparatus of government, leading to what we now know as the welfare state.

5. The choice-enhancement state

The welfare state received another boost in the 1960s with President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” Now the focus shifted yet again to enabling citizens to expand their range of choices, the ordinary constraints that life imposes on one’s options now being deemed oppressive. To be sure, there were positive advances for society as a whole in that era, as African Americans, women, and other minorities were incorporated more fully into the body politic and into social and economic life as a whole. Nevertheless, the legitimate liberation of people from past wrongs quickly became a general quest to emancipate everyone from a variety of norms and standards impinging on their own wills. This had immediate effect on sexual mores. Norms inhibiting consensual sexual behavior were discarded, with the state increasingly refraining from judging among a variety of sexual relationships. As Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously put it, “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.”

Paradoxically, however, this changed attitude towards sexuality called for an even larger government apparatus. A government may refrain from judging the choices individuals make, but it cannot decree that these choices will have no negative consequences. With a rising divorce rate and the proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, government is increasingly called upon to step in to neutralize their negative effects on the population. Fifth-stage liberals typically call on political authorities to cushion the effect of a wide variety of personal choices whose consequences would otherwise be destructive. If divorce exacerbates poverty, government is expected, not to make divorce more difficult since that would limit the right to choose, but to commit more funding to the broken families themselves.

Is Liberalism Circular?

Are there only five stages in liberalism’s development? What lies beyond the fifth stage? We cannot say for certain, of course, but there is much to suggest that we may end up doubling back to the first stage. In short, the development of liberalism may prove to be circular. How so? The most famous sentence in the United States Supreme Court’s notorious decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey [2] (1992) holds the key:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

This is heady stuff. Just imagine: defining my own concept of the universe and of existence itself. I didn’t know I got to do that. Now imagine everyone doing the same thing and you get a pretty grim picture of what could be in store for us. Hobbes had his own expression for it: bellum omnium contra omnes—”the war of all against all.” For which, once again, he prescribed the Leviathan, a sovereign ruler knowing no legal or ethical bounds, only practical ones. Is this where we are heading? Are we destined to repeat the whole process again?

The Alternative to Liberalism

We should be aware that all of these stages follow the basic redemptive narrative conditioning the liberal worldview: the pre-political state of nature, wracked with the attendant dangers to life and liberty, followed by the establishment of a civil commonwealth to escape these dangers, by terms of a contract whose parameters are set by its parties. If the commonwealth and the magistrate set over it fail to live up to its terms, the parties to the contract are justified in reclaiming the freedom they sought to protect in the first place. (Notice that circular pattern again.) If government is deemed an obstacle to this freedom, they will then try to keep it as small as possible. If, on the other hand, government can be enlisted to expand this freedom, then so be it. This is how both opponents and proponents of “big government,” who seem so diametrically at odds with each other in political debates, can fit under the larger liberal umbrella.

What is the alternative to this overarching liberal framework? One that recognizes what I call the pluriformity of authorities in society. Human society is made up, not just of individuals and the state, but of a variety of authoritative agents, each of which has a unique task in God’s world. The diversity of God’s creation is not limited to the natural world but includes the rich array of human institutions, communities, associations, and relationships. This creation, in all its fulness, is caught up in the drama, not of a continual expansion of individual freedom and a liberation from perceived oppressions, but of redemption in Jesus Christ—a redemption he will bring to fruition in his own good time at his return.

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