Ethics

All too often, when we think of Ethics, we think in terms of a list of rules, and then we try to determine what goes on the list and what does not. Then, when we go to differentiate between Christian and non-Christian ethical systems, we think that the Christian has a lot of rules, while the rank heathen only has a couple. This lump of coal is only fit for Aristotle’s stocking. Like everything for the Christian, the gospel defines our ethical system and for us, the gospel is not an abstract formula, but the person of Jesus the Messiah and King of the world. We follow Jesus, which makes us dangerous the way that Jesus was dangerous. It is easy to keep the ‘holier than thou’ in line, because they are satisfied with certain concessions. People attempting to live a Christ-life are dangerous because they will not compromise. They insist on loving effectually, which entails a savage hatred of idolatry, the enemy of all mankind and all his institutions.

Bold like a lion with the dead lamb

A common sin in our day, that is often mistaken for righteousness, is the “Bold like a lion when the lamb is already dead” syndrome. This is where a preacher spends his time attacking the idols of past generations that have already been ground to pieces by our faithful forefathers, but refuses to step forward five hundred years and confront the temptations of the congregation in front of them. This kind of preacher has a Costco size Tiger Balm® in the locker room but won’t shut up about how great it is in order to take the lid off.

Towards a Theology of Song

Singing has traditionally held an important place in the church. King David (a superb Christian) forever established singing at the center of all the church’s dealings since his reign. Even before that, certain songs were central to what it meant to be a member of the body of Moses, the daughter of Yahweh (Ex. 15, Deut. 32). The musical heritage of the church is rich, diverse and full of blessedness. The Reformation itself was as much a reformation of liturgy as theology like choir being in the pews and the movement of the table for the Lord’s Supper and the placement of the pulpit. In the Bible we are told that the whole world is to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, serve God with gladness, and approach God with singing (Ps. 100:2). We are told to sing the psalms, to sing new songs, and to do it skillfully (Ps. 33:2-3). We are told that the wicked use their tongue to lay traps through flattery, but the righteous doth sing and rejoice (Prov. 29:5-6). Our singing is to include our understanding (1 Cor. 14:15), So no singing in tounges (like Latin or German) during the worship service, (this would include babbling, vain repetitions in song, and singing songs that are not true). And our singing is to be loud (Neh 12:42-43) (Early church amens used to shake the walls and scare the neighbors). We are to sing if we are joyful (James 5:13) sing to one another for mutual edification (Eph. 5:17-20), teach through songs (Is 5:1) (This is what makes Bob Dylan so affective, bad music so dangerous and good music so wonderful). Sing our thanksgiving (2 Sam. 22:50, Ezra 3:10-11) and sing our history (Ps 106:11-12).
One last aspect of our singing is something that the Bible teaches that isn’t often taken into account. Our songs are the breath of God, knocking down the wicked and their idols (Is. 30:29-31:1); The Choir in the pews is at war with the idols of their community. Because the church is the body of Christ, present in the world, our songs are powerful, more powerful that we ever imagine. They are prayers that God hears and answers. We are singing from within the triune communion, so our songs are sanctified and empowered by the Holy Spirit. And like a true arrow, true songs shoot straight. This is why singing the songs given to us by inspiration is so fun because we are ramming the gates of hell with a enormous battering ram, that was forged from Moses’ day until the exile into Babylon. And heathens get nervous when they hear the wood creak and begin to split with one gigantic boom each Sunday morning.

revolutionary christianity

I have been thinking a lot lately about how revolutionary we tend to be as modern American Christians. It everywhere when we begin looking, but two things in particular have stuck out to me lately. The first is our general distain for imperfect authorities besides ourselves (which, in spite of our chest puffing, can hardly be called authorities). It is obvious in the church, "by choosing green rather than red for the sanctuary carpet you are deny in the gospel," but it comes out in every area in our lives. The move toward self inflicted medicine rather than trusting the medical authority (which is imperfect. yet still a real intellectual authority) is one example of the way we tend to refuse to live in the world God has given us. We are responsible to be alert patients, wise patients, understanding patients and helpful patients, and, I would argue, submissive patients. We haven't gone to medical school and a doctor making a mistake or a misdiagnosis does not make him not an authority, but we revolt and insist on taking to Google for our medicine. The second area that I noticed (ok, I'll admit it, in myself) was our (meaning, of course, my) view of sanctification. God has ordained that the preaching of the gospel, once a week, and the sacraments only once a week, be the means of kneading the dough to get the yeast spread through the whole loaf over the course of a life time. people get sanctified slowly. Yet we want a decisive moment of sudden clarity, because then the book will sell (perhaps that is a little cynical). Christianity is ordinary and boring and I am going to try and get that pounded into my skull (not revolutionarily downloaded like the matrix, but slowly rubbed in like a good pepper rub on a sirloin tip roast). There are my thoughts, and now that you have them you have no excuses.

Left-Handed Grace

Left-handed grace

Left handed right-thighed blade
paused and poised to pierce
a grease-gummed heart.
Surrounded by fat, grown
on the fresh flesh
of the good shepherd’s sheep.
A left-handed sword for a left
handed goat's stone heart.
Ehud, a judge of justice
bringing right-thighed
grace to be swallowed
hilt and all
by the fat
of exile.

Weasle-sucked words

for those of you wondering what a weasle-sucked words are, let me explain the metaphor. Weasles, when they come across an untended birds nest, have been known to just poke a hole in the egg and suck out the insides, then leave the shell. So when the mother returns there still appears to be a nest full of eggs. So a weasle sucked word would be a word or phrase that appears at first to have meaning, but when you look alittle closer, you learn that it is just a shell of communication. Some examples would be "Charismatic" "Right-wing" and the phrase "support our Troops." A weasle-sucked word is in need of another modifier to have any significant communicative power.

self-absorbtion

Walker Percy, in his book Lost in the Cosmos makes the point that the modern human self is empty. He points out that we attempt to fill our vacous soul with the meaning of the things of the world around us but, instead of ending up with a meaningful self, we end up with a meaningless world. Our empty modern souls devour the fullness of the meaningfulness around us and leave only invisible (to us at least) meaningless stuff. This is why, he argues, our fashion, funiture and culture flop between retro and grotesque (or both at once), because we imagine that the inherited meaning of old stuff or the shock value of "completely new" stuff will give our selfhood, previously drained of meaning by our self-absorbtion, lasting meaning, but instead, you get meaningless tye-dye and mullets and nudity and negliges in public that are no longer seductive in the bedroom. Perhaps this is also the reason behind moderns inability to use, understand, or develop subtlety and fullness of symbolism. When we do attempt it, we use it like morse code or worse, like bible code and end up with weasle sucked words.

That's hot

Though I don't normally do this, and I won't make a habit of it, I am putting a link to an entry in Dr. Leithart's blog, because it is really great.

http://www.leithart.com/archives/001403.php

corporate and individual election

The question of the primacy of corporate or individual election is a question that reveals one of our modernistic assumptions. The need for the one or the many to be primary, but the fact that the Church is made, by the accomplished work of Christ and the indwelling work of the Spirit, to reflect the covenant life of the Trinity, we ought to expect and look for ways in which the church has one and many dimensions. Election is one example. The family of those baptized into Christ is elect as the family of Abraham, yet at the same time the individuals within the family are elect individuals and a few are not elect individuals. The Bible brings these two together (not all Israel is Israel) so that they complement one another, work together, and are even parallel, and we ought to learn to do the same. It is called being comfortable with a lack of knowledge because we trust in the goodness and sovereignty of God.

Towards a developed sense of discernment: Christian movie reviews

Towards a developed sense of discernment:
Reviewing movies

A parable is an attempt to subvert other definitions of the world in favor of the world that you are creating with your story. Every movie is a parable. It is an attempt to remake the world into the world that you want it to be. It cannot be any other way. I am not imputing ill motives onto Hollywood, this is just the way that the world is because God spoke the world into existence. Story telling is warfare and we must have our rhetoric goggles on whenever we are watching a movie. With this said, there are two ways of deciding on a movie’s worth. The first is to go in open-minded with no preconceived ideas, let the movie wash over you for awhile and then examine the movie for 10 min or 10 days and try and decide if the dirt will ever wash off. The other way is to go in skeptical and prepared. I am in favor of the first method, (a joke). Of course as Christians we want to be wise in our movie and entertainment standards, not just because we don’t want our children to grow up and do drugs, but because we want our homes to be filled with wisdom and maturity and stories (which are to be entertaining and useful). Stories are the foundation stones of our worldview and our living. The Bible is filled with stories, the world is filled with stories, and our heads are filled with stories, (and, like Eustace Scrubb, usually all the wrong stories). Our story hearing should be directed toward being changed by the stories into wise Christians.
Wisdom is skill in living in the world that God made. The primary building blocks of wisdom are the fear of the Lord and a true understanding of the world. Believing true stories and rejecting false stories then is the mark of wisdom. And that is what these movie reviews are going to shoot at; teaching how to understand, interpret, and classify stories as they are presented to us in Movies.
There are six category questions that I ask while watching and when reviewing a movie. These are helpful revealers of rhetoric. This is how I discern what a movie is arguing for and what kind of world the movie makers believe God (or their idol) has made.

Sin and Salvation – Who needs to be saved and from what? What would prevent salvation? Who does the saving and how? Is there a hero or an antihero?

Justification – Who is shown to be vindicated by the end of the Story. Who are the good guys (those whose actions are justified) and who are the bad guys? From what source does their justification come?

Eschatology – In which direction is the flow of the story? What is the purpose of history? How effectual are love and righteousness? Do the wicked or the righteous come to a bad end? Is History random, fated, controlled, or willed?

Beauty – Is the story told well? Is the story beautifully portrayed? Is the definition of beauty creationally consistent, or is it opposed to God? Is beauty married to goodness and truth or at odds with them? Is this movies world full of glory, mystery, and things unseen, or dull, boring, and quantified?

Glory – Who is glorified and why? What actions lead to glory? What constitutes glory? Does glory follow humility and death or force of power? Does Glory flow to those who think of themselves or to those that think of others?

sins (with a small s) – what sins are portrayed, implied, condoned, or displayed and does this affect the age appropriateness of the movie? Are there scenes that make the movie unrecommendable by there presence? Are there scenes that you out to have gone without? Was the skin level out of hand (even if it is condemned by the story)?

More confessions of an ex-atheist - naturalism

Naturalism (or materialism) teaches that there is nothing but nature and human beings are little more than a complex venus fly trap. A fly lands on the trip wire and SNAP, the fly begins struggle against being digested alive. A Homo Sapien has more and more complex trip wires, but essentially, we are the same. Ther are two divergent views within the naturalistic camp that, in the Spirit of fairness, we will deal with separately. The first being the particular brand to which I held, the second being a little more complex and a little less inteligable.
The particular brand of Naturalism to which I clung was the kind which teaches that a human, being no more or less than a bundle of localized actions and reactions was solely a creature of nature, and as such, whatever a person did was natural. In fact, there was no such thing as unnatural. If there is only nature, then there can be nothing un-nature-ish. This of course meant that there was no right or wrong, no heaven and hell, no judgement and no freedom. Now, at first this seemed to be clipping along at a right old speed down the road to do-whatever-I-want-ville (of course my desires because illusory, but no freedom never really bothered me as long as I got to do what I wanted). This meant that I needn’t feel all of those guilty feelings about the lies that I told, or the cheating that I occasionally did on my homework. You shouldn’t feel guilt for what was only natural. But of course, ?Idid begin running into problems, Others needn’t feel guilty about lying to me and suddenly, the guilt that I thought to alleviate suddenly became a natural thing, and not being something that needed to go away. Guilt was a natural as a sunflower’s stretch for the sun orthe clubbing of baby seals.
But here’s the clincher, there was no hell for me, that seemed fine (though I wasn’t exactly convinced I would go there if there was one, having had an unnaturally inflated view of myself), but there was no hell for the people that I thought deserved it. There were people that I hoped would get more justice than could be allotted to them on earth. Even though I would have to say that the raping and killing of children was just natural, the death penalty just did not seem to be enough. The spilt blood and suffering of children seemed to cry out for more.
And to finish of the liturgy of the Irish boxer, I must kick naturalism while it is down. The particular fly that I had bitten was naturalism, and that was only natural, but someone else’s natural response was to insist that naturalism is not true. Why should I trust my natural response, if I am just a bundle of responses. If I am right than I can’t be trusted. If I can’t be trusted, then I certainly ought not to be trusted to declare my own untrustworthyness.

What I learned from harry Potter

I am a fan of the Harry Potter series. Not a GINORMOUS fan, but a middle distance fan. The kind of fan that can sing the chorus to "Voldemort can't stop the rock" but not the verses. The kind of fan that has only read through the books twice (except for goblet of fire which I've read four times) The kind of fan that has already pre-ordered the half-blood prince but havn't googled for guesses as to who he is (though I am taking the easy way out and guessing Hagrid). But I have spent my fair share of brain space nawing on young Potter and here are some of my reflections on things that we can learn from the stories.

You have to go underground if you want to save what is above ground.
#1 Passage under a great three headed dog (who incedentally gaurds the underworld in classic literature)
#2 Chamber of secrets
#3 a hole under the weeping willow
#4 a graveyard (the death symbolism being unmistakable
#5 Miles under the Ministry of magic (Which is, like the gryfindor quiddich team, filled with church images).

Sentimentalism is a thin veil over cruelty
Umbridge is one of my favorite antagonist, kittens and cruelty and power-hungry eyes.
One of the scenes that I thought especially inciteful was when umbridge accuses of Minerva of trying to take her job at the ministry. (Sounds like some old crackpot revolutionary politician that got into his position of influence through back-room meetings that sees conspiracy theories everywhere. [I could give you his BLitzkrieg initials but I sort of feel sorry for the old hippies in Moscow ID who think that they can stop the Holy Spirit with a back room declaration that the Holy Ghost doesn't have a city permit])

Resurrection ethics

5-29-05 - call to repentance

Your body is going to be resurrected. These bodies that you sit here in this morning will last forever. In the twinkling of an eye that body that you sit there in this morning will be raised incorruptible. Those eyes with which you coveted this week are the same eyes that will some day look upon the Lord forever. Those ears with which you listened to gossip and lies willingly and quietly will be the ears with which you hear the Lord say well done my good and faithful servant. That mouth with which you tore down your neighbor, that tongue with which you lied, those lips with which you shot flaming arrows of destruction with your harsh and unkind words are the mouth tongue and lips that you will use to praise the Lord eternally, everlastingly, forever. You are going to live in your body forever, live in it now. Do not act as though your body is not going to last. Live to the glory of god with your body now. Make a covenant with your eyes to not desire what is not yours. Men, do not desire after the body of a young woman that the Lord did not give you. Women, do not desire after the body of a young woman that the Lord did not give you. Be satisfied with the body God did give you. Use your eyes like they are going to be seeing for eternity. Make a covenant with your lips to not speak harshly to those you are to build up. Clean water and dirty water can not both spill out of the same cup. Speak like you believe that your tongue will live forever. Set your hands to work as everlasting hands. Build up and do not tear down. Look at your hands. Look at them; they are going to be raised eternally to praise the Lord. You are washed in the blood of the lamb; heart, mind, body, and soul. Why would you set your hands to a computer search for pornography? Why would you set your hands to work on the tearing down of your own family? Why would you set your hands to the manufacturing of idols and the construction of the tower of Babel? What kind of god do you serve? What kind of god do you serve? He is a God that gave you a body that He will raise again. The kind of God that sent His Son to die in a body to cleanse our bodies of sin, Let His son be crucified in His body, be buried in His body, and be raised in His body, and now you can know that you will be raised and what you do in you proto-resurrected body is established as meaningful. Jesus is risen in His body, and has sent you His Spirit, what more do you need as a guarantee, that your body will be raised to bodily life. This reminds us to use our bodies to repent of our sins. Let us kneel with our pre-resurrection knees before the Lord our God our maker and confess our sins of the body before the Lord. Selah.

Confessions of an ex-atheist - Psychoanalysing myself

The first question that popped into my head after my first ever experience with God (which, to prove how powerful God is, was on a senior high disco retreat) was “How do I know that this isn’t just some psychological trick that my sub-conscious is playing on me because I am too weak to deal with the hard truth? This was a question that haunted me for the first couple of years of my Christian walk. How do I know? At times I would be convinced that I was playing tricks on myself and that I needed t quit, sometimed I didn’t care because my life was obviously improved and I was just a utilitarian after all (which bothered the snot out of me, sort of an internal yin and yang playing tug o’ war), but the I realized something. I was asking the wrong question and I needed to just stop. How was that any more intellectually satisfying? Well let me explain why it is the wrong question. If your watch is broken and one of the gears decides that the watch needs to be fixed, it does not help if that gear climbs out of it’s spot to tromp around inside your watch trying to find the problem because now one of the major problems is that the gear is out of place, it is out trying to fix the problem when the problem is that it is out. Our mind is part of us and it is supposed to be working in harmony with the rest of us. If we let it wander around banging on things with a wrench, then we will never work properly, because our mind is out of line. When I quit asking that silly question, I realized something else. The psychologist who was telling me that I couldn’t trust myself because I was only acting the way that I was conditioned to act was only saying that because he was conditioned to say that, and since you can’t trust a conditioned action, (so he insisted) then I can’t trust what he is saying. And if I can’t trust what he is saying then I don’t know if my actions are untrustworthy after all. Realized that if he was right, then he was wrong, and if he was wrong then he can’t be right, and if he isn’t right, then he is wrong. As I said before, my problem all along was that I was asking the wrong question.

Confessions of an ex-atheist - the Problem of Reepicheep

When I was a child, thanks mostly to my father and mother (and to some extent a government program called Tesera) I filled my time with the reading of books. But not lame books like the time machine, great books like the chronicles of Narnia, King Arthur and the nights of the round table, the hatchet, and the hobbit (I remember at the time thinking that Bilbo’s trip home was longer than necessary; I have since changed my opinion). In the sixth grade, because I had decided on physics as my future occupation, I became an Atheist. From sixth grade until my conversion in the tenth grade I held just about every intellectual theory close to my bosom for some short period of time. I was an evolutionist, an existentialist, a materialist, and even a Marxist. For a time psychology held sway, then biological determinism, then multiculturalism, but at some point along the journey I realized that I had lost Reepicheep. He was no longer on my side. Imagine Reepicheep in a confined space for any period of time with someone that says things like Karl Marx “A prostitute is more valuable in a society than a housewife.” He would run him through and no one on the Dawn Treader is going to stop him. Or Freud “No little mouse, you are wound up because your Id desires to sleep with your mother” Not only would no one stop him, everyone would cheer when Reepicheep sword spilled Freud’s blood all over the starboard deck. This was disconcerting for a junior higher. I was loosing my hero’s so that I could say ridiculous things like, “Multiple partners is our animal instinct, I mean come on, its just mating.” And you just do that because your older brother was always stealing you lime light, and besides, if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad.” I new that Arthur wasn’t saving a seat for me at the round table. This is one of the things that kept me wondering about Jesus; Reepicheep, Arthur, and Bilbo all seemed to need Him to make sense. I new that I was half-hearted (at best) about everything that I did. I was slipping away from what I wanted to be, someone that Reepicheep would respect.

Bureaucratic thanklessness

Bureaucracy is institutionalized thanklessness. In bureaucratic communities (like ours), you can work with countless institutions and never have anybody to whom you can send a thank you card. If you qualify for the permit, then the faceless bureaucracy must grant you your rights. Check the boxes get the signatures, and you qualify. And if you can do it all over the internet, you don’t even have to talk to anyone. Bureaucracy is impersonalized, thankless, semi-meritorious mediocrity. We think that if we can check all of the boxes then we deserve what we are getting. It is our human right. But why should I thank anyone for my education, I meet all the criteria; I qualify. Why should I thank anyone for this government grant, I qualify, I deserve it. There is no one expecting a thank you card in a b bureaucratic institution, because there is no to thank.
Often times our solution can be worse than the disease. We don’t want to just get all sentimental about feudalism, or the ante-bellum south or the American war for independence. But in particular, we don’t want to just start complaining about those bureaucrats over there in the house and senate. The answer is to repent of our thankless view of God being some big bureaucrat in the sky. God does not think of us as just a number that needs to get the boxes checked. We need to stop thanking that we just need to get the boxes all checked and everything will fall into place. I have checked all the boxes, it is now my right to have believing kids. I have done what I am supposed to, it is now my right to live long and prosperous without any severe hardship. I have a Christian worldview (I took the CWVAT Christian Worldview Analysis Test), I’m postmillennial, I am classically educating my kids, I am home schooling, I am covenantal, I am reformed, I drink and smoke and don’t work on Sundays. We will use almost anything to set ourselves apart.But God is not a bureaucrat. God is not waiting to check the boxes. God gives promises. God says raise your kids to fear me and I will give you believing kids, and we say, there’s the box, got to get it checked. But God says, “believe me, trust me, quit trying to accomplish what I have told you that I will do.” Quit trying to do what God has already accomplished when Jesus Christ died on the cross for you and your children. Just say thank you. Say thank you. God is not a bureaucrat. God is a personal king who is gracious, who is full of grace, and gives wonderful gifts. He gives believing children, he gives unexpected money, he gives unexpected bills, he gives jobs, he gives cars, and car wrecks, he gives arthritis. He gives unbelieving politicians and He gives persecution and times of peace and we say thank you. We say thank you for it all because God is not a beaurocat. We do not get what we deserve, we get what is good for us, and we get what is right for us, so we need to quit whining.

More on Gossip

I wonder why they call all those magazines in the checkout aisle gossip magazines?

On Gossip

I recently realized that Gossip is not lying. Gossip is when you take refuge by appealing, "What, it's true." Gossip is destructive often times because it is true, but of course we must do unto others, and that does not mean that because you like to hear gossip that you will do unto others and share the gossip. That means that we ought to be willing to shut up our mouths to defend our brothers, because, someone seeking the destruction of the people in their own camp (which is what gossip is) is not seeking the good of their people.