Category Archives: Religion

Religion

A beiger shade of pale

5 Comments

Joe Carter at First Things passes on a story about the “average color” of the universe, according to astronomers. You’ll quickly note that it’s about the same shade as the walls of a doctor’s waiting room. The joke is that this must be “God’s favorite color.”

It reminds me of an old Reader’s Digest story about a pastor who shows friends around his new parsonage. “Why are all the walls beige?” one of them asks.

“Because that’s the only color a committee can agree on.”

Is beige God’s favorite color? I doubt it very much.

In the first place, how do we know this universe is the only one there is? Perhaps there’s a bouquet, a rainbow of universes, running the full spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet. Perhaps we live in one of the dull ones.

My experience with God is that He Himself is anything but dull, and he doesn’t make decisions by committee. Like Aslan, He’s not a tame Lion. He has a taste for extremes, and the average beige of our universe represents a mean between the extreme joys and the extreme horrors of existence.

I have to imagine that His favorite color (like mine) is red. Because when He looks on the red of His Son’s blood, He is pleased and forgives our sins.

Religion

Saving Grace

13 Comments

Greybeard brought up Roman Catholic tradition vs. Scriptural understand in Lars’ post on braving the dark, and I remembered that reference last Sunday when we celebrated communion. It seems easier to hold to a doctrine in which saving grace can be administered to the unrepentant through ritual and the sacraments than to hold to the idea saving grace is the unmerited gift of God for whomever he wishes. I don’t want to offend anyone, but we’re talking about vital truth, aren’t we? This is the road to salvation we’re discussing.

It seems like an institutional idea, a concept developed from a desire to uphold the institution from which it came, to teach that baptism, communion, repetitive prayer, and a priest’s blessing grant bits of salvation to a soul who must act on those bits to merit full salvation. But Luther was set free from that unending cycle of salvific merit when he understood by the Lord’s grace that the righteous shall live by faith. The righteous–mind you, those who have been declared righteous by the one holy God–live by faith in God’s salvation. The same righteousness given to Abraham when he believed (Genesis 15:6) is given to those who believe today without a need for additional labor. Of course, when James says that faith without works is dead, he is dead right. Those who believe will repent of their sins and follow Christ to the best of their ability, but repentance and the fruit of belief are not works, “so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

When we celebrate communion, we celebrate the finished work of Christ. His suffering, death, and resurrection atones for all of the sin of his people, and anyone who understands the judgment he faces if he stands before God alone can repent and be saved. Christ’s work is the only work required. There is no other saving grace. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” (Galatians 3:13-14).

Religion

Egalitarian gnosticism?

3 Comments

This will be a short (as short as I can make it) meditation on a subject that deserves a far more comprehensive treatment. Chances are the idea I’ll raise isn’t original to me, and somebody else has already written about it, probably far more sensibly.

I was recently sent .pdfs of a couple open letters from prominent figures in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The first was this letter, written by former presiding bishop Herbert Chilstrom. In it he defends recent ELCA decisions that placed a blessing on the practice of homosexuality. The decisions, he says, are consistent with a Lutheran understanding of the Word of God. He quotes in particular the theologian Carl E. Braaten, writing, “The ultimate authority of Christian dogmatics is not the biblical canon as such, but the gospel of Jesus Christ to which the Scriptures bear witness—the ‘canon within the canon.’”

I was also sent Prof. Braaten’s response, which you can read here. Although Prof. Braaten is not someone I myself have ever looked to as a model in matters of scriptural interpretation, there are some things that can still make even an advocate of the higher criticism gag. Prof. Braaten answers, “You are right that the Word of God can mean one of three things, the incarnate Word, the written Word, or the proclaimed Word. In this case, the context makes it clear that it means the written Word of God, the Bible. I do not believe that the other two meanings of the Word of God diminish by a single iota the authority of the written Word of God.” Continue reading Egalitarian gnosticism? →

Religion

On not being afraid of the dark

17 Comments

Back in my low-rent Christian singing group days, we met a pastor who ministered in a southern Minnesota town. He was a fascinating fellow, an eccentric dresser, and a great extrovert with many wild stories to tell. He’d been a hippie before his conversion, and he told stories of his adventures with some occultists he’d lived with for a while in California. (Rory Bohannon in Wolf Time is based, in part, on him.)

Thinking back on our acquaintance, I don’t believe he was a fraud. His stories were sometimes spooky, but they lacked the self-aggrandizement of Mike Warnke‘s fabulations. I believe he was seriously trying to convey spiritual truth, and using the stories to draw us in.

And there’s one thing he said that I’ll always remember. “When you talk to people about the occult,” he said, “they almost always respond in the same way. They say, ‘I don’t believe in it—tell me about it.’” Continue reading On not being afraid of the dark →

Fiction, Religion

A couple of things

2 Comments

Came across this in my reading today, and thought it was good:

I dreamt. Jeremy tells me that we all dream every night but we don’t remember our dreams. The trick to remembering is to wake up during a dream. Poets, he said, are particularly good at waking up during or immediately after a dream. Something lets them know some good stuff that they might be able to use has been going on. Jeremy’s current favorite poet was Byron. I read a few Byron poems. The guy had nightmares. I preferred the book of William Blake poems Jeremy had given me, though I didn’t understand most of them. I just liked the way they sounded and it was the only poetry book I’d ever seen with drawings in it.

(Stuart M. Kaminsky in Think Fast, Mr. Peters, p. 90)

I’m still not sure this story is authentic, but if true, it’s just delightful. Apparently Larry David did an episode on his Curb Your Enthusiasm HBO series about urinating on a picture of Jesus. Hilarity ensues as those stupid Christians react in their simple-minded, provincial way.

However, now the Council on American-Islamic Relations has sent a letter to HBO, expressing their offense at an insult to someone they revere as a great prophet.

What a dilemma for a citizen of Hollywood—“Do I apologize, and please Christians (which is unthinkable), or do I insult Islam (also unthinkable)? How can this have happened? I’m so sensitive!”

That sound you hear is me chortling. Chortling evilly. In a simple-minded, provincial way.

Religion

Pastor Burns Bibles for Halloween

4 Comments

A misguided pastor from North Carolina plans to burn “satanic” books this Halloween, including recent translations of the Bible.

“I believe the King James version is God’s preserved, inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God… for English-speaking people,” the pastor said.

Of the non-biblical books to be burned, they have works by Billy Graham, Rick Warren, John Piper, John MacArthur, Mother Teresa and many others. You can read a list here. (Maybe a Christian bookstore closed recently.)

I guess my impulse is to laugh off such foolishness, but I can’t do it this time. I’m grieved. This man and his congregation are deceived about the nature of God’s holy word in English and the mercy or gracious freedom he gives to his people. I’m even more bothered by his claim to have studied at a Christian college in my town. He says he left because they were too liberal, which is a little funny. Fundamentalists are known by the way they divide up believers and separate themselves from others. The plain meaning of the text is all they need to know God’s will, and by “plain meaning” they mean their interpretation alone. They have gone to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice they hear is Jesus’ voice, so how could they misinterpret anything?

I’m not too bothered, of course, because there isn’t anything I can do about it. Still, having heard stories of religious abuse, I can’t laugh when those who appear to be clanging cymbals like this hit the news. I’m not a satirist, I guess–which brings to mind this video of a panel discussion from a Ligonier Ministries conference. Doug Wilson gets into acting like Jesus acted, saying we throw some heavy interpretation into our answers when asking what Jesus would do. We almost never think that Jesus would give a satiric or biting answer, like calling some religious leaders a brood of vipers. Piper, Sproul, and Mohler all comment on that idea.

Non-fiction, Religion

A Life of Prayer

3 Comments

Sean Michael Lucus reviews and recommends Paul Miller’s book A Praying Life, released this year.

Tim Challies also reviews the book, noting a caution about quotations from Thomas Merton. In the comments, Paul Miller responds to that concern and critics the mystics on prayer.

Non-fiction, Religion

Redemptive

2 Comments

Take note of this new book, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. It’s an essay collection on the Christian use of words in writing, speaking, and singing. No doubt the more bloggers who understand and practice the teaching in this book, the better, more God-honoring the blogscape will be. Here’s one endorsement:

“Solomon tells us, ‘Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits’ (Prov. 18:21). Words kill and words give life; they’re either poison or fruit. They have massive potential for both good and evil. They have the power to either build up or tear down. The contributors to this volume understand this well, and they show, in both theologically deep and practically down-to-earth ways, how the church must be marked by redemptive speech. They show how the sweetness and strength of the gospel-the sweetness of grace, the strength of truth-should flavor everything we say. John Piper asks, ‘What would the world be like-the home, the church, the school, the public square-if words were used the way Jesus used them?’ Read this book and find out.” Tullian Tchividjian, Pastor, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church; author, Unfashionable

(FTC Note: Despite this glowing post, I have not been materially compensated in any way by Crossway or the editors and writers of this wonderful book. A PDF is available for free to anyone through Desiring God Ministries. I heartily recommend the staff at the FTC read this book along with the Bible and surrender to Christ.)

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

“Goddess Unmasked”

27 Comments

Remember what they told you in college about the Mother Goddess, and how all the ancient religions worshiped her, and how modern wiccans are actually carrying on her timeless cult? Remember those eminent theologians who complained that the Christian church had covered up the essential femininity of God?

Balderdash, says Philip G. Davis, in the new book, Goddess Unmasked, reviewed here at The American Spectator Online by the always readable Hal G. P. Colebatch.

(Colebatch, by the way, is an e-mail friend of mine. He’s co-written a book for Baen Books, and allowed me to read the beginning of an unfinished mystery he’s working on. I really look forward to reading the whole thing in print someday.)