I’m going to try to tone down the exultation. After all, a human being has died, one who was loved by God and might have found salvation. One who might have done much good if he’d turned his heart and considerable gifts to Jesus Christ, rather than to a doctrine of bloodthirsty deception.

Nope, can’t do it.

This was not some Pakistani peasant who’d never been out of the mountains. This was a sophisticated man, born to wealth, who’d spent time in the West and surely had the opportunity to hear the gospel. He was not interested in grace. He chose a form of Islam which hails the murder of innocents and considers women and children the perfect body armor (a woman was used as a human shield in the final firefight. I understand she was one of Bin Laden’s wives, but whether he or someone else tried to hide behind her I haven’t been able to determine). In his own words, he loved death better than life. He was a man without pity, who joyfully slaughtered thousands of my countrymen.

As a Christian, I’m gospel-centric and forgiveness-oriented. But I think we sometimes forget that justice is also a part of God’s nature. One of the chief consequences of the Fall (and a chief complaint of atheists and agnostics in their attacks on religion) is that the world is not just. God has postponed final judgment, leaving such justice as we can scrape together in this world in the hands of fallible human beings. In a situation like this, I think it’s permissible to rejoice a little bit when we see some partial justice done, especially when it’s visited on an individual who knowingly embraced evil.

There’s a troubling and intriguing passage in 1 John—Chapter 5:16:

If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying he should pray about that.

I don’t claim to understand what that verse means. But I think it provides adequate grounds for me to conclude (I could be wrong) that some people have gone so far in evil that the only thing that can be done with them is put them out of the world.

And if that putting out makes the world a safer place, and gives closure to the families and friends of victims, I feel good about that.

That’s my opinion. You may disagree.

What do I think of the royal wedding?

I think it’s very sweet that a whole country would get together to pretend a) that they believe in traditional marriage, and b) that they believe in the Christian religion, all just to please one old lady.

Frankly, in spite of my own snark, I’m tired of all the snide commentary about the event. I approve of tradition, and I am not at all offended that large amounts of public money are spent for ceremonial purposes. It’s one of the least corrosive uses for government funds I can think of.

I just can’t work up any enthusiasm. I have this feeling that tradition is the only thing driving this business–that nobody involved actually cares much about the sacred union of a man and woman in the eyes of God. That orchestra you hear playing the “Lohengrin” march? Their last gig was on the Titanic.

Marcia Segelstein writes about the true nature of God and what made the cross so difficult for Jesus. Quoting Tim Keller, she notes, “Jesus began to experience the spiritual, cosmic, infinite disintegration that would happen when he became separated from his Father on the cross. Jesus began to experience merely a foretaste of that, and he staggered.”

I write emails for a prayer list about once a week, and since it’s the Easter season, I wanted to share one with you.

“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” (Psalm 17:15 ESV)

You know, asking what is life about may miss the mark. The better question is who is life about, and though it doesn’t flatter our pride at all, the answer to that question is Yahweh, the Lover of our Souls. Every good thing comes from him, but is not independent of him. That’s the reason Scripture calls us to give him our worries and find in him joy and peace. It doesn’t tell us to be satisfied in what the Lord can give us. Though the flooding river may destroy our current livelihood or careless men shatter the health of those we love, the Lord will take care of us. Today and in the life to come, we will behold his holy face in the righteousness he gives us and find satisfaction.

This week, we celebrate Christ Jesus wrestling death to the ground and breaking its back, so that we would live forever. He stood between us and the hatred of the world, so that when we face persecution we will know it cannot overwhelm us because someone on our side who has dealt with it before. He is the hero who accomplished what we could not do for ourselves; he absorbed God’s holy wrath so that we could be righteous.

“Keep me as the apple of your eye;

hide me in the shadow of your wings,

from the wicked who do me violence,

my deadly enemies who surround me.” (Psalm 17:8-9)

Oh, Lord, do not let us wander out from under your shelter. Wean us from those things that distract us or worry us, so that we will be completely satisfied with you alone. (Photo by Alex Scarcella, on Flickr)

Was the resurrection simply the recasting of ancient mythology, akin to the fanciful tales of Osiris or Mithras? If you want to see a historian laugh out loud, bring up that kind of pop-culture nonsense.

One by one, my objections evaporated. I read books by skeptics, but their counter-arguments crumbled under the weight of the historical data. No wonder atheists so often come up short in scholarly debates over the resurrection.

That’s from Lee Strobel’s article in the Wall Street Journal on how Easter killed his faith in atheism.

Earlier this week, The Office funnyman and atheist Ricky Gervais opines on “Why I’m A Good Christian.” Gervais spends most of the article saying he has kept all Ten commandments, but his main point is here:

Jesus was a man. (And if you forget all that rubbish about being half God, and believe the non-supernatural acts accredited to him, he was a man whose wise words many other men would still follow.) His message was usually one of forgiveness and kindness. These are wonderful virtues, but I have seen them discarded by many so-called God-fearers when it suits them.

This splendid article by Peter Wood in The Chronicle of Higher Education states some hard truths and asks some hard questions about assumptions concerning religion that reign in academia today. How come Christian Fundamentalists are openly discriminated against in educational hiring, while scholars promoting the more ridiculous claims of feminists about a supposed prehistoric matriarchal “golden age” are routinely welcomed and promoted?

There is no real evidence that humanity every passed through a stage in which society was matriarchal, and abundant evidence to the contrary. Goddesses, of course, appear frequently in the world’s religions and myths, but the notion of a great prehistoric cult of the Goddess in Europe connected to matriarchal rule has no foundation.

Why bring this up now? Because higher education’s relaxed attitude about appointing faculty members who not only believe but who actually teach this moonshine demonstrates the hypocrisy of those who say that faculty members are acting out of the need to protect the university from anti-scientific nonsense when they discriminate against conservative Christian candidates for academic appointment. The possibility that a candidate for a position in biology, anthropology, or, say, English literature might secretly harbor the idea that God created the universe or that the Bible is true, is a danger not to be brooked. But apparently, the possibility that a candidate believes that human society was “matriarchal” until about 5,000 years ago is perfectly within the range of respectable opinion appropriate for campus life.

Splendid stuff. A long article, but definitely worth reading. Tip: Cronaca.

A randomly selected reader asks the following question:

Lars, given the sea-faring nature of the Vikings, what do you think (perhaps what did they think) of the words in Revelation about the new heaven and earth.  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” Perhaps they never heard a sermon on that verse and didn’t have the Bible in their language to read themselves. So, what do you think?

 

Phil Wade

Dear Phil,

Thank you for your question. It is always good for young people to seek wisdom from their elders.

The passage to which you refer is Revelation 21:1. What did Viking converts think of this? I don’t think it’s a matter that came up much, and I know of no discussion of the matter in the sagas.

My first thought is that the Vikings might not have cared as much about this issue as we might expect. I’ve always loved the sea, but it was the idea of the sea I loved. I grew up hundreds of miles from the nearest shore, and the sea was a romantic image to me. For those who live close to it and deal with it every day, it’s not (I suspect) the same thing. Just as the American prairie has never held much magic for me.

My great-grandfather, I know, grew up working in the Norwegian herring and cod fishery, and once he was able to get a landlocked farm in Minnesota, he never looked back. He couldn’t see why anybody would want to go fishing, ever.

I might add that my own interpretation of that particular passage is not literal.

One thing I’ve learned in my Bible study is that the biblical Jews viewed the sea as almost entirely an evil thing. They identified it with the premordial abyss of Genesis 1:2: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep…” The sea was the treacherous place where there was nowhere to stand, where a man was swallowed up and lost forever.

This, by the way, is important to remember when reading the New Testament stories about Jesus calming the storm and walking on water, etc. He was asserting His authority over hell itself, in the disciples’ eyes, when He did those things. It also explains the plea of the demons of the Gerasenes not to be cast into the abyss, when they in fact end up in the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8:31-33).

That’s why I read Revelation 21:1 symbolically (that’s hardly a liberal reading, as so much of Revelation is clearly symbolic). I think the passage means that the wanton chaos of our moral world will be gone forever. Life will be fair at last.

But if I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll learn to live with it.

“Those who operate without a proper call seek no good purpose. God does not bless their labors. They may be good preachers, but they do [not] edify. Many of the fanatics of our day pronounce words of faith, but they bear no good fruit, because their purpose is to turn men to their perverse opinions.” – Martin Luther

More on Aaron Armstrong’s blog

Mike D’Virgilio talks about the first season of “Spartacus” and what the world would be like if Christianity had never existed. As we’ve touched on many times on this blog, one thing that would been different is the idea of forgiveness. Forgive others as Christ has forgiven you? Crazy. I wonder if Islam, which spun off of Muhammad’s exposure to Christianity, would have come about either. Even Buddhism and parts of Hinduism have changed in response to the teachings of Christ Jesus. The Way, the Truth, and the Life has really turned people upside down over the years.