“The world will always laugh at the gospel of the cross. . . . The theology that teaches men are sinners before God and need a sacrifice to die and atone for their sins is deemed primitive in our culture,” observes John P. Sartelle, a senior minister of Tates Creek Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. In his essay in Tabletalk, April 2009, he offers this challenge:

“Many of us evangelicals deny that we know Jesus by taking the emphasis away from the cross as we speak to His disciples and present our gospel to the world: ‘Follow Jesus: He will straighten out your marriage. Follow Jesus: He will make you better parents. Follow Jesus: He will make you financially solvent. Follow Jesus: He will enrich your relationships.’ Now, that is a Jesus who is easy to like and easy to follow. It is easy to stand in the world and be proud of that Jesus. To attract the world we say, ‘Come, drink coffee and hang out with Jesus. Be comfortable with Him. Kick back with Him. He is anti-institutional. He is anti-authority. Living with Him is a cool ride.’

“Dear reader, if we would recapture the gospel we must return to the ignominious cross. ‘For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured’ (Hebrews 13:11-13).”

We might keep this in mind as we pray for other’s salvation and discipleship in Christ. The gospel is the hope we all stumble over or break ourselves on. May the Lord have mercy on us and those near us.

Today I was reminded of an incident back when I was attending a Lutheran college in the Midwest (go ahead and guess which one; I went to three). I was in an English Literature class. The teacher was a very pleasant woman. She was openly liberal, and liked to season her lectures with provocative ideas to challenge her students’ beliefs, but she wasn’t a hostile person.

I remember her describing a story she’d read that was “controversial.” But it was a very good story (she said) one that raised important questions. I don’t recall the title or the author. I don’t recall whether it was a short story, a novel, or even a play.

She said the dominant character in this story was a remarkably difficult woman. Other characters tried various methods for coexisting with her, and she frustrated every one of them. “In the end,” my instructor said (and I’m quoting her exact words here) “there was nothing you could do about this woman except rape her.”

I sat there listening to this, and I immediately rejected it. I felt very provincial and callow in doing so, of course, because I knew I lacked my instructor’s sophistication. But I couldn’t think of any circumstance in which rape would be appropriate. I’d just have to accept, as I had many times before, that I was an unsophisticated hick from the farm.

Years have passed, more than 40 of them, and if that instructor is still alive, I suspect she’s changed her opinion of that story. Sophisticated people no longer consider rape an edgy, taboo subject to be explored. Rape is evil, the foul fruit of male social domination.

My point is that I didn’t have to wait for fashionable opinions to change in order to see rape as categorically wrong. My liberal instructor did.

I was following the North Star. She was listening to voices in the dark.

Photo credit: Andy Dingley

I don’t know why I imagine anyone wants to know what I think. And yet I send out these posts, like a man throwing small stones into the ocean. Perhaps it’s just for the sake of the mental discipline it takes to put my thoughts in organized form.

Anyway, in case you’ve been waiting for my opinion of the recent Supreme Court rulings on same sex marriage, here it is. I hear the sound of a “click.”

That click is the noise of a ratchet. The metaphor of the ratchet, not at all original to me, is a very good one, I think, for understanding social change.

A ratchet does not move smoothly. Sometimes it stops, and every now and then it goes backwards for just a moment. But the main movement of a ratchet is always in one direction.

The Supreme Court decisions on same sex marriage were a ratcheting up of the mechanism. We lost another half inch or so that we’re not likely to get back. Continue reading The sound of a click →

Carl Trueman reviews Candida Moss’ book, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom.

Her argument is simple: the myth of the persecution of Christians has fuelled a paranoid victim mentality on the political Right that imperils intelligent civil discourse. Ironically, as she makes this case, she herself engages in precisely the kind of myth making that she rightly decries. On page 252, she recounts her shock at hearing two students at Notre Dame expressing no sympathy for a nine-year old rape victim who had had an abortion. She was right to be shocked; but if her point is that the Christian mythology of persecution polarizes the world around and destroys civil discourse, then she herself here provides a good example of how alternative myths do much the same.

Photo credit: Bowling United Industries



I went to a funeral today, for the mother of an old friend. It was a sad occasion, but not the worst kind of funeral, because it was the kind where the departed was old and full of days, and the event not unexpected. They’d asked me to read the Scripture in the service, something I was happy to do. I enjoy reading in public, and a favor is none the worse for being a pleasure.

As some of us sat in the Catholic sanctuary, waiting for the priest to show up to give us our stage directions, I looked at the little card rack on the back of the pew in front of me. You’ve probably seen such things – small wooden racks just large enough to hold Communion cards (at least that’s what they use them for in my church). It had a little round hole at either end, for those stubby pencils they use, the ones that are too short to be worth anybody walking off with. There were no pencils in the holes.

I peeked down into the card reservoir, which was also empty of cards. But I could discern, in the low light, a pencil lying down at the bottom.

“Hello,” I said to myself. “There’s a pencil, in a space too small for anyone to fish it out with their fingers. If I could get it out, I could put it into one of the holes, and do a favor for the next communicant.”

So I took my pen out of my pocket and fished down in the reservoir with it. After a while I tipped the pencil up and out.

And behold, there was another pencil in there below it.

I did my work once again, and got the second pencil out. And I saw that there was a third.

When all was done, I’d fished fully six little half-pencils out of that reservoir, not only providing pencils for future worshipers, but freeing up enough space in the reservoir for them to put cards in again next Sunday. Which I’m not sure they had room for, before my search and rescue operation.

If anyone wants to nominate me for a papal medal, I am not too stern a Protestant to accept it.

One of the things my friend Ian Barrs told me, in his capacity as an expatriate Englishman, during our time together a couple weekends ago was, “Don’t link to the Telegraph as an authority for information. It doesn’t have a very good reputation for factuality.”

Still, I think I’ll link to this interesting article, entitled “Bible outpaces Fifty Shades of Grey to become surprise hit in Norway.” (Tip: First Thoughts)

Yet the Bible, printed in a new Norwegian language version, has outpaced Fifty Shades of Grey to become Norway’s most popular book, catching the entire country by surprise.

The sudden burst of interest in God’s word has also spread to the stage, with a six-hour play called “Bibelen,” Norwegian for “the Bible,” drawing 16,000 people in a three-month run that recently ended at one of Oslo’s most prominent theaters.

There’s more information on the new Norwegian Bible translation:

Released in October 2011 by the Norwegian Bible Society, the new translation replaces a 1978 edition, with the goal of improving readability and accuracy.

For example, in the older version, Mary was called a “virgin.” In the new translation she is referred to instead as a “young” woman.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops also made this change in its latest Bible translation from 2011, saying the change did not alter teaching about Mary, but was meant to address the possible different meanings of the Hebrew word “almah” in the text.

Now I’m going to call monkeyshines on that statement. No doubt it’s accurate in reporting the translators’ attitudes, but it’s also highly misleading. The meanings of the Hebrew word “almah” and the Greek word “parthenos” have been broadly debated. You can certainly argue about what Isaiah had in mind. But there’s no question (especially in context) what Matthew meant. It’s impossible to claim that this translation brings us back to Matthew’s intentions in writing. It’s an arbitrary editorial alteration of the Greek gospel text.

A few years back I translated a book for my friend Dr. Norvald Yri, a Norwegian missionary and Bible scholar. In that book he denounced several recent Norwegian Bible translations, and I’m pretty confident this one was one of those, or if not it’s been added to his list since. He himself has been a contributor to a more literal translation.

Still, I won’t condemn the phenomenon altogether. God can use very flawed vehicles.

A pastor friend of mine told a story about a Russian evangelical leader he once met. The man told how he came to be converted. He had a hunger for God, but could not get access to a Bible in the old Soviet Union. At length he went to the library and took The Encyclopedia of Atheism off the shelf. He went through its pages systematically, noting every spot where the Bible was quoted for purposes of ridicule. Out of these bits and pieces he was able to reconstruct enough of the gospel message to call on Jesus for salvation.