Wrong Tree

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Christianity, God, Gospel, Idolatry, Liberalism, Nature, Nonsense, Panentheism, Theism, Theology, Truth, Union Theological Seminary, World

Union Theological Seminary is back in the news, with another display of the theological deterioration that liberalism brings.

I trace the progression something like this: the failure to hold to the truth about God as revealed in Scripture leads to an over-emphasis on the immanent, on the matters of this world; accordingly, the Divine transcendence collapses into immanence–aided by the feminist impulse, which takes umbrage at the masculine personalism of God in the Bible, and pushes either in the direction of goddess-worship or a loss of God’s personalism (or, paradoxically, both); the result is a slide from theism into panentheism, the conflation of Creator with creation.  I’ve read that Paul Tillich, possibly the most renowned 20th-century American liberal theologian, came to the point where he couldn’t really pray, but only meditate in or upon nature; God had ceased to be personal in his conception.

What I’m saying is that when your gospel becomes too this-worldly, so does your picture of God.

I am not saying that Union has arrived at panentheism yet, only that they are perhaps on the road there.  They have certainly arrived upon a place of absurdity; what else can you call a worship service involving confession to plants of mankind’s sin against creation?

To quote Union’s widely-circulated tweet:

Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.

What do you confess to the plants in your life?

It is not entirely clear whether they prayed to plants (i.e., regarded them as divine) or simply whether they prayed about their misdeeds towards plants or prayed with plants to God, so I give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t actually worship the plants.  But they did confess to them, regarding them as “beings who sustain us.”

It is one thing to poetically address plants as a sort of metaphor, or to speak about how they reveal God, as in Psalm 19 or my own poor poem from yesterday.  It is quite another to confess our sins to plants, as though they were personal beings and as though it were them, not their Creator, who we have offended by our wasteful destruction of the environment.  It insinuates devotion to Gaia, rather than to God.

Faced with criticism over this debacle, Union has defended their decision by pointing out that they weren’t exactly committed to wholehearted devotion to the one true God anyway.  As their statement is reported in the Washington Examiner article linked above, in their chapels:

“One day, you may come in to find a traditional Anglican communion, another day you may enter into a service of Buddhist meditation or Muslim prayer,” the spokesperson continued. “Another, you may find a Pentecostal praise service or a silent Quaker meeting. We create a home where people can worship side by side, in traditions similar to and very different to their own. Through this process, we learn from our neighbors and discern our own faith more deeply.”

That does fill in the picture, but its hardly comforting for anyone concerned about the students’ souls.

There is a God, a righteous and holy God, a jealous God–the God who says, “I am the LORD; that is my name!  I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols” (Isa. 42:8, NIV).

You must know Him; that is the single most important thing in this life.

There’s no absolution from confessing your sins to a fern.  It can’t forgive you.  It’s not the tree of life.  You have to bring your sins, instead, to Christ who bore them on the cross.  “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24, ESV).

But when you turn away from the cross, you can get so lost you find yourself talking to trees.

 

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Real Nonconformity

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Celebrities, Christianity, Culture, Happiness, holiness, Life, Media, Righteousness, Society, Subversion, Truth

Nonconformity is all the rage these days.

Except that it isn’t, of course.  It can’t be.  If it becomes popular, it’s no longer nonconformy–it’s just conformity.

So I think it would be more accurate to say that the idea of subversion is very popular, while actual subversion never can be.  This is a point that it would be nice to see impressed, somehow, upon certain populations, such as the literary industry.  If all the cool kids are waving your flag, you might be in rebellion against God, truth, nature, and so on, but you’re not ‘speaking truth to power.’

Real nonconformity is never fashionable.  But it can be righteous.  In Romans 12, the apostle Paul exhorts Christians, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (v.2, NIV).  There is a godly nonconformity, the transformed living that comes from the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work.

This nonconformity doesn’t parade its transgressiveness, but quietly displays its virtue.  Its hallmark is virtue, not virtue-signaling.  Its the nonconformity of the man who doesn’t swear and the woman who dresses modestly–the people who get mocked for their respectability, rather than lauded for their scandalousness.  The pattern of this world urges greed, pride, lust, and anger; the Spirit-transformed life displays charity, humility, chastity, and peace.

Clothed in the right amount of virtue-signaling, the pattern of this world may get you headlining music festivals and photographed on magazine covers.

But the transformed life is usually happier now, and eternity awaits.

Rejecting Young Lives

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Academia, Christianity, LGBTQ+, Secularism, Sexual Revolution, Society, Truth

Famously liberal Religion News Service gave an unintentionally apt title to a recent article: “Duke University’s student government rejects Young Life over LGBTQ policies.”  It would have been even more apt had they not capitalized “Young Life.”

The story is an old one by now: supposedly tolerant university decides that, in the wake of the sexual revolution, the standard Christian morality that has been a cornerstone of two millennia of Western civilization is no longer to be tolerated.

Not surprising, since Duke University is a very prominent academic institution, and therefore expected to yield immediately to inane cultural movements.

Interestingly, Duke’s motto is Eruditio et Religio, “Knowledge/Learning and Faith.”

The eruditio is hard to dispute, but I have a question about the religio–namely, what religion would that be?  Not the Methodism of the school’s history.  Some sort of paganism, apparently.

In their privileging of sexual deviancy above Young Life, Duke’s student government has shown they do not understand what will really nourish the minds and souls of young lives.

One more reminder that secularism is a mask for anti-Christian ideologies, and not the neutral force it pretends to be.

The Price of an Immoral Society

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Censorship, Christianity, Culture, Education, God, Government, Gun Control, Humanity, Law, Liberalism, Liberty, Media, Security, Society, Truth

Gun control has been in the news a lot lately.  Partially this is due to recent tragedies, and partially due to the season of political campaigning–gun control being a highly politicized issue.

The politicization of it suggests a certain disingenuous flavor to much of the conversation.  On a roundup of today’s liberal opinions, I observed both the contention that because of the Trump presidency we are on the verge of becoming a fascist totalitarian state, and various calls to disarm the American populace–both of these ideas being promoted from the same side politically.  Surely this is an odd juxtaposition?  When reality imitates parody, how can we take such people seriously?

I would like very much to live in a safer world.  I see the suffering, and the violence that continues to unfold.  But I am concerned that the way all of this is being discussed points not to safety but to slavery.

So Beto O’Rourke said, with damnation-invoking enthusiasm, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”  I don’t have either of those, but I do wonder what might be taken from me a little bit down the line.  Freedom of speech, conscience, assembly, religion, perhaps?

‘Nonsense,’ you say.  ‘Conservative fear-mongering.  Slippery-slope fallacy.  All the liberals want is a reasonable assault-weapons ban, nothing more.  Pinky-swear.’

Maybe; but I doubt it.

For one thing, conservative fear-mongering is a difficult charge to make in light of recent history.  Ten years ago, saying ‘if we legalize gay marriage, Christian bakers and photographers and others will find themselves being prosecuted for not wanting to participate’ would have been called ridiculous fear-mongering.  Five years ago, ‘teachers will be fired for refusing to call boys girls’ would have been called fear-mongering.  Radical social shifts happen awfully fast these days, and the unthinkable can become the standard before you know it.

But back to the point at hand.  If the gun control debate were really just about some background check laws, or banning AR-15s, we could have that conversation.  But I really don’t think it is.  I think the debate we are seeing in America is not about controlling guns but controlling people.

There are two reasons I think this.

The first is simply my observation that the defining feature of the left is centralized control.  You wouldn’t think that, given the fact that we call the political left “liberals” and “Democrats,” but it’s true.  Their center is big government, and a substantial amount of their power comes from big business, big media, etc.  Increasing government control over various areas of life is at the heart of a lot of their policies.  Their radical wing is socialism.  So the left’s position on gun control must be seen in the big picture of their general approach to society.

The second is that, by contrast, the constitutional freedoms of American society have a sort of coherence, and those who attack one are likely to attack others.  I am not fear-mongering, just observing.  In a recent interview, UCLA professor Douglas Kellner underlined this, saying, “I don’t see the Second Amendment as absolute, just like I don’t see the First Amendment as absolute.  In both cases, there need to be qualifications in certain contexts.”  The first amendment, just like the second one, may be subject to “qualifications” for the purpose of addressing gun violence; we should further regulate what people are allowed to say.  Given the rather broad scope of what the left is willing to label as hateful, harmful, or extremism, the implications of this kind of thinking are considerable.

Ultimately, I think that what we’re seeing from the left in the gun control debate is the offer to trade freedom for safety.  An unhappy trade, but I understand why people would be interested in making it.  It should be noted, of course, that when societies give up freedom in pursuit of slavery, they sometimes end up both enslaved and unsafe.  But, however we go forward, we should go forward with open eyes.  Safety, as being dangled before us, has slavery attached down the line.

Yet there is a third option.  I’ve said this before, so I hope I don’t sound like too much of a broken record.  Instead of chaos or control, we could choose Christ.  It is possible to have both a great deal of freedom and a great deal of safety–if you add to the mix a great deal of virtue.  Instead of giving up the right to keep and bear arms–and the right to free speech, and freedom of conscience, and probably a few other things–we could give up paganism.

Give up paganism?  I know, it’s a big ask to a lot of people, but we could do it.  We could put the Bible and prayer back in the schools, and the Ten Commandments in prominent public displays.  We could stop watching movies and TV shows filled with violence and vulgarity and nudity, thus compelling Hollywood to produce edifying entertainment instead.  We could stop listening to musicians whose music, apparel, or conduct are indecent.  We could stop letting the rich rob the poor with cigarettes and slot machines.  We could stop killing babies, and show that we actually value human life.  We could teach children–in the public schools–that life has a transcendent meaning, that God their Creator is holy and loving, and that they, too, should do good and love one another.

With a culture-wide embrace of virtue, grounded in God, we could be able to be both safe and free.

Or we could keep our paganism, and choose between anarchy and slavery.

Immorality comes with a high price tag.

Love Indescribable

Tags

Christ, Christianity, Cross, Culture, God, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Life, Love

So many things are advanced under the banner of ‘love’ these days, and such a variety of things are condemned as hate.  As a culture, we are deeply confused about love.

But there is a transcendent standard, if we will look to it: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Love is a self-giving for the other, and there has never been such a marvelous demonstration of love as when God the Father sent His Son to die in our place, the Savior of the world.

We were not good and worthy of saving.  We were His enemies, not His friends.  He wasn’t in our debt; we already owed Him everything, and had reneged on our obligations towards Him.  Any attempt to see us as deserving of salvation cheapens God’s grace and undercuts the matchless mystery of His redeeming love.

Christ died for us because God is love.  God is so consummately loving, that He gave His only beloved Son for our redemption.  God’s love was demonstrated, enacted, incomparably displayed, upon the cross where Jesus died for us.

Love indescribable, wonderful and wild, extravagant and incomprehensible.  This is the majesty of divine love.  This is love that shakes the world.

The Path of the Prodigal

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Adoption, Christianity, Father, God, Gospel, Grace, Liberalism, Progressive Christianity, Truth

In yesterday’s Briefing, Al Mohler was describing an excessively liberal church that had been featured in The New York Times, and among the interesting elements in that congregation’s worship was the removal of masculine names for God.  They still wish to call on God, but not to call Him Father.

This is not an isolated or surprising feature for a liberal church.  Masculine language for God is increasingly regarded by the left as an artifact of oppressive patriarchy.  For a more direct example, near the beginning of last year the Washington D.C. Episcopal diocese decided to remove such masculine references to God when they update their Book of Common Prayer.

There’s a lot that could be said about this move: the basic irreverence towards God, the self-reflective idolatry, the studied disregard for Scripture, and so on.  But I want to draw attention to the tragic way in which this undermines one of the most precious blessings of salvation–adoption as a child of God.

We have a strange capacity for regarding blessings as curses.  A comparatively trivial example is our ability to twist the gift of freedom and leisure into boredom.  But the present case is far more serious.  God’s Fatherhood is not a curse, a relic of oppression to be thrown off by those sufficiently enlightened through feminist theory.  Fatherhood is a facet of the divine identity, and it marks a relationship into which we are wondrously invited.

For Jesus Christ, the one and only son of the Father, has given Himself for us; united with Him by faith, we are offered adoption as children of God.  “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 Jn. 3:1).  We may call on God as our Father, as Jesus instructed His disciples to do (Matt. 6:9).  God the Father becomes our Father.  We come to know His Fatherly love and care, we come to have that priceless privilege of adoptive sonship in the Son.

The desire to be free of the Fatherhood of God leads, like the way of the prodigal son (Lk. 15), into the far country of disappointment and loss.  Freedom from God is slavery to sin.  But the gospel remains; for those prodigals who wish to come home, the loving welcome of the heavenly Father waits.

Blessed Forever

Tags

Christ, Christianity, Faith, God, Hope, Identity, Idolatry, Jesus Christ, Life, Salvation, Worship

In Romans 1, the apostle Paul speaks of mankind’s tendency to idolatry in our fallen state.  “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.  Amen” (Rom. 1:25, NASB).

We are creatures–created beings.  Our fundamental identity and purpose is found in worshiping and serving our Creator, blessed forever, God Almighty.  This is where joy and meaning are found; and this is why sin is so deadening and unfulfilling, and why idolatry is so twisted.

The mystery of redemption is the great work of God to draw us back to Himself.  He seeks lost creatures, fixes broken people, and enables us once again to worship and serve Him in grateful joy.  To reject redemption, to run from God, is to shut oneself off from flourishing as a human being.

To embrace the gift of God is to discover life as it is meant to be, eternal life in the ever-living God, who is blessed forever.  Amen.

Case in Point

Tags

Big Tech, Censorship, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, LGBTQ+, Media, Secularism, Society

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the non-neutrality of secularism.  I don’t think this is a controversial claim, but if anyone needs convincing…

It’s been in the news lately that Amazon, though it carries all sorts of obscenely objectionable material, has decided certain books that oppose aspects of the sexual revolution are simply out of bounds.  An apt example of the thinness of secularism’s commitment to neutrality.

But this is only an early stage in the effort to regulate the marketplace of ideas.  Big tech censorship is a matter of private enterprise.  Parts of Europe are more advanced.  In the UK, you can face charges for telling the truth about a “transgender” person’s identity.  And, most recently, in Finland, the police are investigating a politician who cited the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality.

Ostensibly neutral secularism is just the camouflage worn in the West by anti-Christian ideologies.

Resurrection Hope

Tags

Bible, Christ, Christianity, Easter, Eternity, God, Gospel, Hope, Jesus Christ, Life, Paul, Resurrection

When the apostle Paul was dragged before the Sanhedrin to give an account of his teaching, he expressed the core of the Christian faith with profound simplicity: “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees.  I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 23:6, NIV).

Now, in the context we are shown that this was a very savvy move given his situation.  He observed that the assembly included both members of the party of the Pharisees (who affirmed the resurrection) and of the Sadducees (who did not) (v.6).  Declaring that he was on trial over this contested doctrine was a cunning way to turn the united opposition against him into a body divided against itself–as immediately followed (vv.7-9).

Nonetheless, it was not only a rhetorical technique; it was also a fair statement of the Christian hope.  When Paul was later brought before Governor Felix, he spoke of his faith in terms of the Scriptures, God, and “a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked” (24:15).  Then, presenting his faith before King Agrippa, Paul quickly puts the resurrection at the center (26:6-8).  Indeed, his faith is the story of his encounter with the risen Christ (vv.12-23).  The centrality of the resurrection is further evident at various places in Paul’s letters, as well as other New Testament writings.

The Christian faith is a resurrection faith, a resurrection hope.  We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and in the coming resurrection to eternal life of all who belong to Him.  Indeed, these two are inseparable: for salvation is union by faith with the Son of God, such that His death is our death to sin, and His resurrection our new life.  The resurrection is inaugurated in the resurrection of Christ; death has been dealt a mortal blow; our sins were paid for on the cross, and we were declared justified in the resurrection.  This is the faith of the Christian church.

And this means that watered-down Christianity can be no more acceptable to us than it would have been to the apostle Paul.  “Faith” has no value unless it is faith in the risen Son.  Vague theism offers no hope.  Liberal theology that sees the resurrection as a poignant myth is utterly bankrupt.  Only the boisterous supernaturalism, the potent scandal of orthodoxy, holds the secret of hope–resurrection hope.

And resurrection hope is stronger than all the tempests of life.  The terror of death itself is overwhelmed in the mystery of resurrection life.  The apostle’s confession is the perennial and world-shaking witness of the Christian faith: “I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”

Fighting the Last War

Tags

America, Bible, China, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Education, Freedom, Hong Kong, LGBTQ+, Liberty, Secularism

As I look back over American history, and the radical cultural upheaval we have seen, I am reminded of the old saying in the discipline of military history, which goes something to the effect that ‘generals are always fighting the last war.’  What it means is that it’s hard to predict how things are going to be in the future, and trying to learn from the past all too easily takes the form of preparing to meet the next challenge as though it were going to be like the last one.  The result is wrong preparation, and a shock when the new challenge turns out to be truly new.

The classic example of this is the Maginot Line.  After the trench warfare of WWI, the French built a massive line of fortifications against German invasion.  It would have been great, if the next war had simply been a replay.  As it was, WWII began with a display of unprecedented mobility, as the Germans invaded through the Low Countries and the Ardennes Forest and swiftly overcame the French.  The mighty Maginot Line was obsolete, because it was built to fight the last war.

What is the relevance of this to America?  It seems to me that our founders did not take adequate steps against the threats of secularism and paganism, because those threats were hardly on the horizon at the time.  The threat from which our founders sought freedom was sectarian Christian persecution, the battles between Catholics and Protestants and the oppression of an official state church.  So they saw the need for a separation of church and state.  Very good.  And, indeed, it may be fair to say that they were not fighting the last war, but the current war; all the same, they did not anticipate the next war, and the protections they laid down may prove to be something of a Maginot Line in the defense of freedom.

For a simple glance over our nation’s history makes it quite clear that they did not see the separation of church and state as incompatible with having–and pursuing–a Christian nation.  They taught the Bible in Christian schools for most of our nation’s history; for example, Bible reading was still mandatory in Pennsylvania schools until a supreme court decision in 1963.  Freedom of religion and the separation of church and state were designed to prevent the rise of a repressive state church, not to make room for militant secularism to suppress religion in the public square.  It was assumed that the nation would be explicitly Christian in its worldview and morals.

It was assumed that the next war would look like the last war.

But what do you do when you realize you’ve been outflanked?  How do you address it, when you find that your protections against oppressive religious sectarianism have proved weak against militant secularism?

I think the first step is for Christians to see clearly through the secularist charade.  There is a pretended neutrality about secularism that many Christians have uncritically accepted for far too long.  Secularism may oppose all religions evenly, but it does not create a space that is worldview-neutral.  On the contrary, it creates a space that is either functionally atheistic or functionally pagan–perhaps an odd and contradictory admixture of both.

Don’t fall for it.  The flag of neutrality is waved hard for long enough to get the Bible out of schools.  Then, suddenly, the flag of neutrality disappears, and the rainbow flag of paganism is being hoisted instead.  And, in their audacity, the secularist still claims this is the flag of neutrality.  But we know it’s not.  We should have realized that the flag of neutrality was always a false color.  But better late than never.

It is clear now that the steps taken at America’s founding were insufficient to properly ground freedom against its enemies.  For, make no mistake, the secular revolution, advancing primarily as a sexual revolution, is an enemy of freedom.  The lawsuits against Christians trying to conduct their business as Christians continue, and will continue; but these are just early rumblings.  The direction to which secularism heads is more appropriately forecast by looking at nations such as China.  There are environments in which freedom may flourish, and others in which it will not.  Christianity and freedom properly go hand-in-hand.