Category Archives: Religion

Religion

On not being afraid of the dark

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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”

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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.)

Fiction, Religion

“I do not drink… wine”

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Patrick Archbold at Creative Minority Report meditates on vampires and zombies, and the differences between traditional monsters and modern ones.

Come to think of it, even the original zombies show signs of the secularization of our culture. Vampires sought to drink blood, what was then regarded as the life force. Zombies want to eat brains. I think that science and secularization is changing what is craved – in more spiritual times monsters craved blood for its life force – now they crave brains as animals crave meat. As a result they are less scary and more pathetic. Lions and tigers and bears are scary because they can eat you, but they can’t destroy your soul. Secular monsters are boring. I mean vampires aren’t even afraid of holy water and crucifixes anymore. They are clingy and misunderstood. If I want clingy and misunderstood, I will watch a Woody Allen movie. Come to think of it, Woody Allen is scarier than these vampires.

(Tip: View from the Foothills)

I’ve talked about the legend of the vampire before here. The traditional vampire (before the novelists got hold of him) was a miserable, vicious creature, barely sentient, dressed in rags, stinking of corruption, driven by hunger. He resembled a zombie a lot more than Bela Lugosi or Tom Cruise.

The novels and movies changed that. Vampires acquired style and status, the charm of the Exotic Foreigner. With time, they’ve become so cool they’re not even scary anymore (see “Twilight”). So it was necessary to import zombies to do the work vampires wouldn’t do.

But the difference as (Archbold notes) is also spiritual. Both traditional and fictional vampires had an essentially spiritual disorder. Sure, they craved a physical substance–blood–but that was a perversion of the Christian eucharist, like a Black Mass. That’s why crucifixes scared them. Modern vampires (I think Ann Rice who, ironically, is now a Catholic, pioneered this) laugh at crucifixes. Once you reach that level of materialization of the monstrous, the distinction between vampire and zombie is reduced to food preferences and fashion choices.

Today’s monsters are not damned souls, but merely consistent materialists. Scary, yes, but not very exotic.

Modern man looks for the most frightening thing he can imagine, and it turns out to be himself.