Romans 3:1-8 is a passage that’s always puzzled me. It’s not that I disagree with what’s said there, but Paul seems to be addressing First Century arguments that nobody would make today, and that confuses the contemporary reader.

But reading it today, it occurred to me that Paul is addressing the modern mind in one sense:

But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” Why not say—as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is deserved. (vv. 5-8, NIV)

There are doubtless many deep truths in this passage that I’ve missed so far. That’s a given. But one point that struck me as I studied it today was that Paul is drawing a line here. He’s saying, “There is a difference between right and wrong. It’s not just a matter of point of view. It’s not variability in cultural values. God approves of some things and condemns others. He’s not broad-minded in the sense that’s fashionable today.

There’s a tendency to think of “spiritual” as being the same thing as “fuzzy.” In the spiritual realm, we imagine, all differences are smoothed out. All disagreements are discovered to be meaningless. Right and wrong are seen as equally valid manifestations of the Eternal. Yahweh and Baal are really the same Being, as is Asherah.

Paul says “Hooey.” God is just, and He has told us what He means by justice. Don’t imagine it’ll all even out in the end. Get with His program or suffer the consequences.

We’re all on notice.

• you think the Apostles Creed is the guy who fought Rocky in Rocky I.
• you think the Canons of Dort are like the Guns of Navarrone.
• you think the psalter goes with the pepper shaker.
• you think unconditional election is a practice of communist dictatorships.

And so on. Riddleblog has “You Know You Are Not Reformed If . . .”

Yeah, I didn’t think it was that funny either, but I hope someone gets a laugh out of it. (by way of the Jollyblogger)

“Satan in the New Testament should be regarded as holding the equivalent of such positions as Prime Minister, or Attorney-General, or Head of MI5, or Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and as no more evil than many zealous holders of these positions here on Earth,” says a Californian who wants to rehabilitate the devil’s public face. He’s written a book about that star who fell from heaven. The Times of London headline for the story: “Forget Judas, let’s have sympathy for the Devil.”

I should ignore this kind of foolishness, but it’s just so . . . foolish.

There was a Polynesian dance class going on in the park by Lake Crystal today as I took my constitutional. Sorry. Erase the picture that sentence generated in your mind. It wasn’t like my (and probably your) stereotyped fantasy of Polynesian dance. In fact, I’m not entirely sure it was Polynesian dance. I drew that conclusion because the teachers looked Polynesian to me, and the motions the students made looked more like something from the South Seas than anything else I could think of.

No, there were no nubile girls in grass skirts there, wiggling their firm, fetching brown hips. This was two lines of mostly middle-aged white people, doing a step-step-while-making-a-sort-of-rowing-motion-with-the-hands. I immediately judged them all former hippies, striving for some kind of multicultural salvation.

I felt particularly bad for the guys in the group, who were no doubt married to (or living with) women in the group who’d dragged them along. I’d be willing to wager that, if you got enough beers in them to get them to tell the truth (like Mel Gibson), they’d admit that if they had to make fools of themselves in public, they’d rather do live steel with the Vikings and me. Only their Significant Others wouldn’t let them, and the folks down at the Whole Foods store would never understand.

There. You know what one of my prejudices is.

Which brings me to this article, by way of Mirabilis:

With church-going on the wane in Europe, Africa’s vibrant Protestant churches are sending scores of men like Mukholi to the West to win souls and revitalize shrinking congregations — an ironic twist on the 19th century drive by Western missionaries to convert Africans.

I’ve been waiting for this for years. I have doubts whether Europe is salvageable anymore at this point, but it seems to me that if it is to be saved, this will be an important element.

It all depends on racism. Racism isn’t dead. Not here in America, and not in Europe. It’s just turned itself inside out. Instead of the nasty white people of the last century, who thought themselves Nature’s Pinnacle, looking down on the vile dark races, today’s white racist despises his own race and idealizes those blessed richly with melatonin. It’s been noted by other writers before me that whenever an author or scriptwriter wants a character to deliver a Message from God nowadays, he generally puts that message in the mouth of someone black. Preferably someone old and black.

This makes a lot of sense. It’s a rare old black person who hasn’t seen a lot of hate and injustice, and just surviving a long time under those conditions implies that they must have learned something.

But our respect for black people in the West goes far beyond this. It amounts to pure veneration. Idealization. That’s why the U.N. will never do anything about genocide in Africa, as long as it’s blacks killing blacks. To take action would be to admit that black people aren’t morally superior, and that would be a death-blow to their faith.

It is a little cynical, I suppose, to exploit this white racism for evangelistic purposes, but I’m basically a pragmatist. Whatever works, I’ll pretty much support.

The second reason I like this strategy is for its genuine educational value. African Christians know a whole lot about Islam and paganism, and they know it first-hand, not from New Age books and television documentaries.

I met an African man who went to our seminary a while back. I didn’t know him well, but he had an interesting story. He’d been an Olympic athlete for his country of origin. After converting to Christianity, he’d attended a mainline Lutheran seminary in the U.S. He left it angrily when a Comparative Religions professor assigned his class to attend a mosque.

“I do not need to attend a mosque to learn about Islam,” the man said. “I know about Islam.” He finished his seminary training with us.

The same sort of thing goes for paganism. People who’ve actually been pagans know it’s not about pretty naked women dancing under the stars. It’s about superstition and the constant fear of breaking taboos. It’s about sticky blood and sacrifice and ugliness.

So God bless the African missionaries. May He speed their feet and open the listener’s ears to their message.

Think Christian points out a Michael Novak piece which asks, “Is belief the key to a comfortable life?”

Canadian Author Margaret Atwood is quoted by Bill Moyers on his “Faith & Reason” site: “If a god showed up every time you put a quarter in the prayer slot it wouldn’t be God, it would be a puppet that you could control by doing that…that would make the deity subservient to you. So it wouldn’t be a deity would it?”

That’s good. It points a problem many Christians have, because we kick around a lot of bad theology on prayer. God never announced that he would pardon us for specific sins after we repeat a memorized prayer nor does he wait for us to use specific phrases from the Bible in our prayers before acting with power. He is the Lord of all creation and everyone in it. No one can stop him from doing what he wants and no one can make him act.

For more on this idea, I recommend a book by J.B. Phillips called, Your God Is Too Small.

Before I say anything else, I want to give you this link from Blue Crab Boulevard concerning a new replica Viking ship that recently made its trial run. Why news outlets waste time on Middle East wars when they could be covering really important events like this, I’m at a loss to understand.

In the Comments yesterday, I said I’d write a little more about Sir Robert Anderson, the English Secret Service official, Scotland Yard commander, lay preacher and amateur theologian.

I wanted to tell you a story he told that I read some years back (in Decision Magazine, I think). I can’t find it online, so I’ll retell it from memory. I always thought it was neatly put (unfortunately you’ll be getting my words, not his).

Sir Robert recalled a visit to his office by a wealthy woman. She confided to him that she was unable to feel secure in her salvation. She felt that God demanded something more from her in payment for her sins.

“You already do many good works,” he said. “I’ve been told that you frequently host meals for the poor.”

She admitted that she did that.

“Do the poor pay you for these meals?”

“No. Of course not. They have no money to pay.”

“But surely they have something! They could give you the clothes they wear, for instance.”

The woman laughed. “If you were to see the filthy rags those people wear,” she said, “you’d know that I wouldn’t ever even want them.”

“And that is precisely how it is with God!” said Sir Robert. “The Bible says that all our righteousness is as filthy rags to Him. He does not want your filthy rags of good works in payment for His forgiveness. His forgiveness is already paid for out of His infinite abundance in Christ.”

Kevin at Collected Miscellany recently posted this interview with author Jeremy Lott on his new book In Defense of Hypocrisy. I hate to dispel the common misconception that I have everything figured out, but this interview cleared up an important logical point for me. I’ve realized for a long time that there’s a fallacy in the modern insistence that hypocrisy is the worst sin, and that everyone who fails to live up to his own moral code at every single point is a hypocrite (“therefore,” the argument goes, “there’s no point even trying. Enjoy yourself and forget ethics!” The new moral prophet is John Belushi in Animal House).

What Lott explains here is that there’s a difference between hypocrisy and moral weakness. A guy who tries to live up to his principles and fails is not a hypocrite. He’s morally weak (as we all are to some extent). But he’s not a hypocrite. He’s not worthy of contempt.

This helps me. “There’s a difference between hypocrisy and moral weakness” is an axiom, and I personally need axioms in order to think. Maybe some of you can think clearly without them, but I can’t do it.

Alan at the Thinklings writes about Barry McGuire today.

You youngsters won’t remember McGuire, but I remember him well. He first swam into my ken as a member of the New Christy Minstrels folk group (and yes, I liked them. So indict me). He was everybody’s favorite Minstrel. He had a gravelly voice that added a microgram of spice to that highly processed musical mix. After he left the group, he had one big single hit, “The Eve of Destruction.” All about how the world couldn’t possibly survive past 1970 or so.

Then he became a Christian. There was much rejoicing. This was part of a phenomenon, related to the Jesus Movement, which will seem as strange as the New Christy Minstrels to younger readers. Lots of famous people (B List at least) were professing Christ back around then. McGuire, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary (whatever happened to him, anyway?), even Wonder Woman. Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash (who brought in Kris Kristofferson for about a week). Jimmy Carter, a professing born-again Christian, was elected president.

We were on a roll, we thought. Bill Bright had a plan for evangelizing the whole world by the year 2000. I had my doubts, but anything seemed possible at the time.

Today, a little more than a quarter century later, we’re wondering how long the government will allow us to keep our churches open.

Things change.

Let’s hope that remains true.

A ticket agent says the movie States of Grace is “being advertised as a Christian film, but it’s really a Mormon film,” and Mormons are shocked, claiming to be Christians. Ted Olson, Christianity Today’s online managing editor, reports on other complaints Mormons have had in the news and concludes with this:

Even more [evangelicals] see Mormons as non-Christians—-or worse—-while seeing liberal Protestants as “bad Christians”—-though both groups equally deny classical Christian doctrine on revelation, the full divinity of Christ, the nature of man, and other key points.

With their strong family values, constant Jesus talk, and passion for evangelism, Mormons seem almost like evangelicals’ cultural twins. In some ways, they represent our ideal. Maybe that’s one reason why so many evangelicals are more comfortable with liberal Protestantism than with Mormonism. We like our differences stark, with red-and-blue color coding.

Is Ted being snarky here? I suggest the real difference b/w Mormons and liberals when evangelicals want to label them is a desire to avoid generalizations. Mormon doctrine is not Biblically sound, so a faithful Mormon can be safely label non-Christian, whereas Methodist or Episcopal doctrine may be sound despite what individual churches teach or what certain bishops say to reporters. You can’t broadbrush all Episcopals by calling them non-Christians. They aren’t, no matter how liberal their denomination appears to be. And you can’t call Mormons Christians no matter how much they talk about Jesus. They aren’t talking about the God/Man who words are recording in Scripture, and He never spoke to Joseph Smith either. [seen on Open Book]