T4G Talk #8 from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

Thursday on the Michael Medved radio show is Disagreement Day. On Thursdays, he sets an hour aside specifically for people to tell him he’s wrong about homosexuality, tax policy, and George Bush’s culpability in blowing up the World Trade Center.

Today, he had a call from a young man who wanted to disagree with him on the legalization of drugs. This caller said he smoked pot every day, and it wasn’t doing him any harm. He mentioned, as an aside, that he was a “born-again Christian.” Medved, who is Jewish but who knows quite a lot about our beliefs, questioned him more closely on that point. It turned out that he did not go to church at all, and had recently moved into his first house “with my girlfriend.”

I suppose there’s an element of Pharisaism in my response to that call. Certainly I fail to live up to the standards of Christianity in many areas of my life, not least in my cowardly flight from almost all personal interaction with other humans. But I think I can claim (at a minimum) that I know I’m doing wrong, and that I acknowledge that I ought to do better. I’ve been given grace to feel some guilt. I’m afraid that Michael Medved’s young caller is representative of many people who claim Christian faith in our country today. He didn’t seem to be aware that a Christian is called to live in any way that’s at all different from his neighbors.

I don’t know for a fact that this is true of the caller, but I think a lot of people claim Christianity purely as a nostrum for their own spiritual aches and pains. “Try Jesus! Now in Extra Strength! He’ll have you feeling better in no time!”

In point of fact, genuine Christianity often makes a person much less comfortable in life. We have been promised persecutions and tribulations, and to be reviled for Jesus’ sake. The joys and consolations of Christian faith have absolutely no necessary connection with comfort.

Lutherans like me have a complicated relationship with the book of James, where it says, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:17) We don’t interpret that to mean that faith and works are equal partners in the operation of grace. We reject absolutely the idea that any effort of our own can contribute to our salvation.

But, as we read it, works are the sign and byproduct of grace. You can tell a genuine faith from a false faith by looking at its fruits. If someone is living no differently than he did before his “conversion,” it’s probably not a genuine one. Someone has paraphrased Luther as saying, “We are not saved by faith and works, but by faith that works.”

(Not from the movie)

It probably won’t surprise you much when I inform you that I passed up the opportunity to listen to my president’s State of the Union address last night.

Instead I popped my DVD of Groundhog Day into the player, and watched it for the eleventy-second time. It was almost shorter than the president’s speech, and definitely less repetitious, from what I’ve read.

And it’s the right time of year.

I think Groundhog Day is my It’s a Wonderful Life. As I’ve mentioned before, IaWL just depresses me. The only message I get from it is “George Bailey has a wonderful life, BUT YOU’RE NOT GEORGE BAILEY!”

Groundhog Day, on the other hand, presents a lesson I can agree with—“If I had the chance to do my life over about a million times, I might eventually figure something out.”

I understand the original script was written by a Buddhist, and that the filmmakers cut out some of the more explicitly Buddhist elements. I suppose, to be consistent with myself, I ought to reject the film for the merest taint of Buddhism.

But what kind of theology does It’s a Wonderful Life present? Salvation by good works and self-esteem. “You may think you’re a miserable sinner, George Bailey, but they think very highly of you in heaven!” Not exactly Christian law and gospel.

What I like about Groundhog Day is the non-theological material—the simple moral journey of a man who does actually come to realize that he’s a sinner, and then works to become somebody whose life contributes. It’s not a saving knowledge, but it’s a good thing for the people who have to live with him.

To a large degree, it’s about humility. I could name some prominent people who seem to think that humility is for their country, but not for them as individuals. Such people need to wake up and see their own shadows.

(Crossposted at Mere Comments)

For some time, “higher critics” of the Bible have assured us that the biblical text can’t be older than the 6th century B.C., “because the Hebrews didn’t know how to write before that.”

Oops.

“It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research,” said Gershon Galil, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, who deciphered the ancient text.

As an added bonus, the inscription itself (not an actual biblical text) is a rather lovely one, calling on the reader to show kindness to widows, orphans, the poor and slaves.

Tip: Mere Comments.

Brit Hume suggested on air that Tiger Woods seek the Lord Jesus Christ for answers to his current problems, and people started talking. Selwyn Duke says the religious and the political are closely tied and always have been, so certain folk can reevaluate their offense to religious or specifically Christian evangelism when political evangelism goes on all the time. He writes, “I mean, could you imagine, let’s say, Jay Bookman stating, ‘You know, I like universal health care, but, hey, dude, whatever works for you’?”

Brit Hume suggested on air that Tiger Woods seek the Lord Jesus Christ for answers to his current problems, and people started talking. Selwyn Duke says the religious and the political are closely tied and always have been, so certain folk can reevaluate their offense to religious or specifically Christian evangelism when political evangelism goes on all the time. He writes, “I mean, could you imagine, let’s say, Jay Bookman stating, ‘You know, I like universal health care, but, hey, dude, whatever works for you’?”