Thoughts on Penn State

Today I suggested a parallel between Esau's forfeiting his birthright for a meal (Genesis 25) with the officials at Penn State who forfeited justice for abused children to keep their jobs and maintain the school's reputation.

What are your thoughts on this issue? What are some important aspects of this that haven't been brought up in all the news stories?

MM

Black and White and Gray

Today I made the point that, in light of Hebrews 5:14, the more spiritually mature a person is, the more clearly he or she is able to discern the difference between good and evil.

What are some examples of moral issues where the right and wrong side should be clear to Christians, but often is not? And what's an example of an issue which many Christians treat as if it's cut and dry, when it actually is not?

MM

The Clash of Hope and History

Most of us are incorrigible optimists. And I don’t just mean the happy, bubbly people who could see the bright side of a sewer trench. Most of us, no matter our temperament, have a sense that the world will ultimately be good. We may not have all our future plans clearly mapped out, and we may be in the midst of struggles right now, but the majority of us have an inarticulate but definite sense that in the future the world is somehow going to be made right. In a word, we hope.

But hope is a curious thing in this world so filled with seemingly hopeless tragedies. We suffer directly as we or our family members grapple with pain and terminal disease. We witness the immense suffering of others in seeing Tsunamis wiping out entire cities and house fires taking the lives of children. And yet we still hold on to the belief that everything will be all right? But even if we could make every city natural-disaster proof, every house fireproof, and every disease curable, we would still eventually grow feeble and die, and that doesn’t meet anyone’s definition of all right. So where does hope come from?

It’s as if we live amidst the constant clash of two worlds: The world of hopeful desire on the inside of us, and the world of hopeless facts on the outside. The question is, which of these two worlds is the real world? Thoroughly cynical people (who, interestingly, usually still try to live as if there’s a future to hope for) accuse Christians of being childish and willfully ignorant. They say we live in a dream--that there’s no real difference between our belief in Heaven and a child’s belief in the Easter Bunny. Each of these beliefs, they say, is just a castle built in the air, with no objective facts to ground it. We’re said to be “escapists” who retreat to our inner fantasies about God and Heaven because we don’t have the good sense and fortitude to face the world as it truly is.

And it’s at just this point that confetti explodes over us Christians. The resurrection of Jesus was precisely the moment when the world of hope entered into the world of history: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)

At Easter, and all through the year, we want to proclaim to all the stiff-lipped “sensible” people who base everything they believe on the hard facts of history, that Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead is indeed one of those hard facts! It really happened, and because it really happened “...we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5:3-5)

In the words of, John Mark Mcmillan, “Jesus laid Death in his grave” and in so doing, He broke hopelessness and gave us the hope that does not disappoint.

Controversy and Inconsistency

Last week controversy erupted over an e-book sold on Amazon by Phillip Greaves, a 42 year old man from Pueblo, CO. The book's title is The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct.

There was such a public outcry, (including a big threat to boycott Amazon) that the book was pulled and is no longer available.

Just the thought of such a book makes me nauseous; I feel queasy just typing it. But the whole story raises some important questions:

In a society that is so open and affirming to people who consider themselves G, L, B or T, I find it interesting that most people are still quick to oppose those whose "orientation" is P. Don't misunderstand me. I'm glad that the vast majority of people decry pedophilia for the evil perversion it is. I just wonder what standard of decency people are appealing to when they do so, and how that standard applies to other types of sexual behavior. I know the first response is that pedophilia is severely damaging to children (which, of course, it is), though there are some advocates who argue that it isn't, and that it is only an "orientation" which is on equal footing with others which are more socially acceptable. I even read a quote from a gay rights activist once in which she referred not to pedophiles, but to those of a "trans-generational orientation," and argued that those who have that orientation are discriminated against just as homosexuals used to be.

All this makes me think of a quote from N.T. Wright:

"Having decreed that almost all sexual activity is good and right and commendable, we are all the more shrill about the one remaining taboo, pedophilia. It is as though all the moral indignation which ought to be spread more evenly and thoughtfully across many other spheres of activity has all been funneled on to this one crime. Child abuse is of course stomach-turninlgy disgusting, but I believe we should beware of the unthinking morlaism which is so eager to condemn it simply because we hate the thought of it rather than on properly thought-out grounds. 'Morality' like that can be, and often is, manipulated. Lashing out at something you simply know by intuition is wrong may be better than tolerating it. But it is hardly the way to build a stable moral society." (Evil and the Justice of God pg. 27)

Like Wright, I see a big inconsistency in opposing one type of sexual immorality and affirming all others. There has to be a higher standard of sexual behavior than the arbitrary criteria of that which takes place among "consenting adults." (as does adultery).

Certainly this is a discussion-worthy topic if ever there was one?

Mike

More thoughts on OT Violence

(I want to cite a long quote and wasn't sure if there'd be room in the comment section)

There's a well-thought-out article on OT violence from a Christian philosopher named Paul Copan. I posted it on my website: thoughtsifter.com. (Just click the "Violence in the OT" tab at the top). Here's a quote form that article I found interesting:

“All that breathes.” I observed in my previous essay that the lan- guage of total obliteration (“all that breathes”) is an ANE rhetorical device, an exaggeration commonly associated with warfare. For example, in Deuteronomy 2:34 (“we captured all his cities at that time and utterly destroyed the men, women and children of every city. We left no survivor.”) and 3:6

(“. . . utterly destroying the men, women and children of every city”), we come upon what is a standard expression of military bravado in ANE warfare. In 7:2–5, alongside Yahweh’s command to “destroy” the Canaanites is the assumption they would not be obliterated—hence the warnings not to

make political alliances or intermarry with them. That is, we have stock ANE phrases referring to a crushing defeat and utter obliteration in my earlier article, but this is what Goldingay calls “monumental hyperbole.”

Also, I think the Craleys hit on something that is key. We have to consider the radical difference in what we could call mental or cultural climate. We have almost no idea what it was like to live in such a radically different culture so many thousands of years ago. It's my understanding that, in ancient near eastern culture, warfare was often inseparably tied to religion. In many cases victory in war was taken as a sign of the superiority of a nation's God. This was the cultural climate within which God was communicating to people. This doesn't remove all the difficulty of the issue, but the more we consider different factors like this, the more we see how much more complex a thing it is to discern than it sometimes seems upon an initial reading.

Also, Gregory Boyd has a great chapter on this in his book Letters from a Skeptic. One of his main points there is that we should always work from the known to the unknown when trying to understand hard passages like these. We know that Jesus is the full revelation of God, so what ever else God is, his character cannot be contrary to what we see in Jesus. We may not be able to understand God's commands of violence in the OT, but we have more than sufficient grounds for believing God can be trusted in light of what we know in Jesus.

God-Ordained Violence in the OT

Pastor Jim's Monday night Old Testament study discussed the issue of God's commands to kill (apparently entire) gentile populations in certain areas like Jericho, as we read about in the book of Joshua.

Like a lot of people, I have always thought of this as one of the most difficult parts of the Bible to wrestle with, and I was wondering what types of questions came up in the Monday night group, and if any who weren't in that group have some thoughts about this as well.

I had a few thoughts about this, but will wait until a later post.

Any thoughts?

Christians and Retirement Accounts

I made the comment in today's (Sunday, Oct. 10) sermon that, in light of Jesus' teaching on the rich fool in Luke 12, if someone is more than, say, ten or fifteen years from retirement age, and has enough money in savings to live comfortably if he were to stop working today, that person is probably not following Christ to the fullest.

Of course we must be responsible and save and manage money wisely to see that our families are taken care of. What I mean is a large sum of money saved back in order to secure a comfortable lifestyle once one retires from working.

A clarifying question would be, if a person has this large a sum of money sitting in an account (a decade or two before retirement)--what would be the difference between that person and the rich fool in Luke 12?

MM