Category Archives: Religion

Fiction, Religion

It’s Not About Winning, But Win Anyway.

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Jeffrey Overstreet talks about sports-and-faith movies in relation to the recent film When the Game Stands Tall. He says movies of this type usually reinforce bad ideas and behaviors.

“It’s a simple formula,” he says. “Show that winning and losing is fraught with trouble if the game is played for the wrong reasons (for glory, for money, for self-gratification). Then show the athletes learning some Sunday school lessons about humility and teamwork. And once they’ve learned those lessons, then give the audience the satisfaction of seeing those who are In The Right achieve personal victories (reconciling the family, winning the virtuous but skeptical girl, overcoming the bullies)… and, usually, scoreboard victories as well.”

The story easily preaches that good guys or the faithful will win, and God will win it for you, supporting the common belief that a good life with earn good rewards. There’s truth there, but when life gets hard or unjust, then we will crumble if our faith is in this formula, not the living God. I think the church in America needs the backbone that would come from knowing God is faithful even when we don’t win.

Jeff offers a good list of ideas he would like to see challenged in a movie about sports:

  • “how the commercialization of sports ends up encouraging lifestyles that are the antithesis of teamwork, health, and wholeness;
  • how money corrupts the whole enterprise, from outrageous salaries to the excesses of the circuses that tend to surround professional sports events;
  • how sports culture glorifies youth, and finds little of value in the experience of aging, so that athletes vanish from the national stage once they are too old to dominate the stage (unless they have enough charisma to become part of the youth-worshipping media machine);
  • how “fan spirit” usually devolves into tribalism.”

That’s only half of his list. Have you seen this movie? What did you think of it? If you like, share your thoughts on other sports-themed movies.

Authors, Religion

Authors Donating to Iraqi Christians

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A Facebook community of authors are donating September’s royalties to Iraqi Christians through Voice of the Martyrs. They call themselves Authors in Solidarity. We’ve reviewed a few of books featured in this community. Lars is donating his royalties from Hailstone Mountain (The Erling Skjalgsson Saga Book 4). There’s New Found Dream: Book Two of “A Healer’s Tale”, The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen, Bid the Gods Arise (The Wells of the Worlds) (Volume 1), and many more. Let us know if you join this effort to help Christians in Iraq.

Fiction, Religion

Following Your Heart Will Lead to Death

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“Dante shows us that you can just as easily go to Hell by loving good things in the wrong way as you can by loving the wrong things,” Rod Dreher explains. He has been reading The Divine Comedy for the first time and is working on a book about it.

All the damned dwell in eternal punishment because they let their passions overrule their reason and were unrepentant. For Dante, all sin results from disordered desire: either loving the wrong things or loving the right things in the wrong way.

This is countercultural, for we live in an individualistic, libertine, sensual culture in which satisfying desire is generally thought to be a primary good. For contemporary readers, especially young adults, Dante’s encounter with Francesca da Rimini, one of the first personages he meets in Hell, is deeply confounding. Francesca is doomed to spend eternity in the circle of the Lustful, inextricably bound in a tempest with her lover, Paolo, whose brother—Francesca’s husband—found them out and murdered them both.

She says romantic poetry taught her of Love’s power and held her entralled to her heart’s passion. “Can love be selective?” she might ask. Can anyone control their passions?

“We know, however, that it is really lust,” Dreher says, “and that her grandiose language in praise of romantic passion is all a gaudy rationalization.” Dante is overcome at the end of his encounter with Francesca, but not perhaps by her fate at a seemingly small thing. He may be overcome by the idea that his own poetry encouraged her to follow her heart into death.

Religion

Tribalism, Corporation, and Reading the Bible

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Politics...Anthony Bradley argues that most Christians today simply defend their political tribe using biblical language or proof-texts. They don’t hold to any confession of faith, but they believe their view of the Bible is right and other views are wrong or dangerous. “Progressive evangelicals, like their liberal mainline cousins, have simply traded off, in many cases, the tools in the Christian social thought tradition for the analytical tools of the social sciences and the humanities (critical race theory, feminist theory, etc.). For progressive evangelicals, the social sciences are authoritative and are often above critique.”

If we would fall back on sound theological confessions or a biblically developed history of Christian social consciousness, we could discuss issues like believers should and find common ground aren’t finding now. As Dr. Bradley concludes, “A lively discourse about the right application of Christian principles within the Christian tradition is far more fruitful and interesting to me than engaging in a tribal war that tries to prove whose tribe best represents Jesus.”

Speaking of a topic on which progressive Christians fail to think, Andy Crouch writes about the shrinking legal window on corporate identity: “In her dissent, Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited approvingly the idea that for-profit groups ‘use labor to make a profit, rather than to perpetuate a religious-values-based mission. The words rather than are key. In Justice Ginsburg’s view, it seems, corporations cannot serve—or at least the law cannot recognize that they serve—any god other than Mammon.”

Continue reading Tribalism, Corporation, and Reading the Bible →

Religion

Who is my neighbor? A terrorist, apparently.

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Little did I know, when I moved to Robbinsdale, Minnesota, that I was relocating to a seedbed of treason. But so it appears. Not one but two jihadist casualties overseas have been identified as former students at Robbinsdale Cooper High School. And it gets closer than that, as I’ll explain.

First, a little orientation. Robbinsdale Cooper High School is not in fact located in Robbinsdale. The historical reasons are convoluted (I don’t actually know them), but enough to say that the school district includes several inner ring suburbs. In any case, it’s close to me.

More than that, early reports (the information seems to have been redacted now; perhaps it was in error) stated that the latest casualty, Douglas McAuthor (sic) McCain, dead in Syria, lived on Oregon Avenue in New Hope.

Before I bought my house, I lived in an apartment building on Oregon Avenue in New Hope. New Hope isn’t that big. Oregon Avenue isn’t that long. We were neighbors. I very likely rubbed shoulders with him at some point.

Even so, I find it hard to generate a lot of sympathy for the young man. He was born in America, and New Hope isn’t a ghetto. He had ample opportunities to respond to the gospel. Instead he joined a death cult to murder infidels and rape women.

Still, after some consideration, I can think of a couple reasons to pity him. Continue reading Who is my neighbor? A terrorist, apparently. →

Religion

On the Job

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Job’s Tormenters, by William Blake, 1793.

Thought thunk today: The Book of Job is the oldest book in the Bible, one of the oldest books in the world.

What does it say about humanity that in the 8,000 years since, we haven’t managed to surpass it in terms of wisdom?

Update: Ori, tedious pedant that he is, pointed out that my numbers are off by slight margin of maybe 5,000 years.

I wish I were surprised. I’m always doing that with numbers. A counselor once told me that the problem wasn’t in my brain, but in my emotions. Somewhere along the line I developed a fear of numbers that blossomed into functional innumeracy.

But with education, support, and billions of tax dollars you can make a difference. Give today through the United Fund.

Or just buy one of my books. Or double that and buy three.

Religion

Bullies on Mars Hill

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The stories out of Seattle regarding Mars Hill Church are one of the reasons this past year has been one of my hardest. I hate this news. Many stories are coming forward through many venues.

This co-founder of the church, who left in 2007, says:

It has been written, spoke of and declared, that in order for a church to be “On Mission” that sometimes people need to be “Run over by the bus” and a large pile of bodies is a good thing. I know where this kind of thinking came from because I believed it to be true and was in full agreement. While it is true that those who desire to lead people astray (the bible calls them wolves) need to be dealt with, I believe we went way too far and responded with anger and self-righteousness’ in throwing people under the bus. I ask your forgiveness for my part in promoting and approving this kind of behavior, it was godless!

Run over by the bus? Is that a line from the Inquisition?

A long article with many stories of spiritual abuse appeared this week on Crosscut.com. It describes Driscoll’s inflammatory language, the congregation’s habit of shunning disgraced members, and narcissism from many leaders. Witnesses claim the church encourages misogyny and sermons are “relevant” at all costs.

Stacey Solie writes, “Driscoll also started to preach more about male privilege and sexual entitlement. This had a damaging impact on many marriages, said Rob Thain Smith, who, with Merle, was acting as an informal marriage counselor to many young couples.

‘He created enormous abuse of wives,’ Smith said. ‘He helped young men objectify women, by his over-emphasis of sexualization of women and subservience.'” Continue reading Bullies on Mars Hill →

Reading, Religion

Are reader-friendly Bibles just marketing hype?

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J. Mark Bertrand echoes another reader of the ESV Reader’s Bible in finding he reads more in this edition than in other editions. Readability, he says, is a thing, and it influences how we read. “Yet, like Steve, I’ve found myself getting sucked into the reader, coming up for air much later than expected.”

Publishing, Religion

How Orthodox Must a Christian Publisher Be?

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The National Religious Broadcasters has pressed WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, to resign from its organization over the publishing of a book under a new sister imprint, Convergent Books (for more on that book: “‘Biblically Based’ Author Argues Against Biblical Morality”). Convergent is a little more than a year old. I could care less about this, because I’ve been ramping up to lead the Lars Walker’s Awesomest World Publishing Group for the last few months. Soon that will be the only label you’ll want to watch for. You heard it here first.

But seriously, NRB President Jerry Johnson explained the problem in a letter to his board. According to Christianity Today:

“Unfortunately, while the Multnomah Publishing Group is separate from Convergent, as a legal and business entity, the staff of the Multnomah and Convergent operations are substantially the same,” Johnson wrote. “Most notably, Steven W. Cobb serves as the chief publishing executive for both groups. … Other Christian workers do so as well. … This issue comes down to NRB members producing unbiblical material, regardless of the label under which they do it.”

I understand how the book in question is unbiblical, but what about other books? For years, thoughtful Christians have criticized Christian bookstores for selling pablum and heresy. Are these publishers accepted in the NRB? It’s one thing to sell The Prayer of Jabez; it’s another to sell Joel Osteen’s Break Out. Jabez was a mid-90s book from Multnomah. Osteen is published by Faithwords, a division of Hachette.

The publisher’s About page shows its diversity: “Based near Nashville, Tennessee, FaithWords has grown dramatically by acquiring a solid list of faith-building fiction and high-profile authors with edifying messages, including bestselling authors Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, John Eldredge, and David Jeremiah. Several FaithWords titles have appeared on national bestseller lists, most recently Every Day a Friday, by Joel Osteen, Living Beyond Your Feelings, by Joyce Meyer, and I Never Thought I’d See the Day!, by David Jeremiah.”

Two sister imprints to Faithwords target mainline and “uplifting” divisions in the broadly based spiritual book market, and none of them are members of NRB.

Non-fiction, Religion

Barnabas Piper is a Pastor’s Kid

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The Pastor's Kid, by Barnabas Piper

Barnabas Piper’s new book, The Pastor’s Kid, is out today. In his interview with Matt Smethurst, Piper talks about his own feelings and what he learned from other pastors’ kids.

Your book is based on what you learned from hundreds of conversations with pastors’ kids over the years. What surprised you most as you interacted with other pastors’ kids?

Two things surprised me. The first was the consistency of the stories and experiences regardless of context. Even the phrasing of answers and the quotes they shared of what people in their churches had said to them were almost verbatim. While I expected similarities, it was almost like a bunch of people had copied the same answer on a test or something. It gave me real clarity about what needed to be addressed as well as assurance that my own experiences weren’t the outlier.

The second thing that surprised me was how many PKs are now in vocational ministry. The stereotype is of PKs who turn their back on the church, but I connected with dozens who, despite their struggles, love and serve the church.

The tendency for judging pastors’ kids was a dual expectation of perfection and rebellion. People thought these children should be models of the Christian life while also believing they would rebel and reject the church. It’s an impossible standard.