Need a New Term

This is quite interesting. Barna has just come out with a new study on how people in the US describe their religious commitments, and the statistics vary widely depending on how you ask the question. When someone calls himself a Christian, what does he really mean?

• Overall, 80% of adults in the U.S. call themselves "Christian."
  
• In comparison, the phrase "a committed Christian" is embraced by two out of every three adults (68%).
  
• The words "born again Christian" are adopted by just less than half of the population (45%).
  
• A two-part description of a person’s faith, in which they say they "have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important" in their life today, and in which they claim they will go to Heaven after they die because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, is also claimed by just less than half (44%).
  
  (This latter definition has been used by The Barna Group for nearly two decades to describe "born again" people without using the term "born again" in its surveys.)
  

Now, while you're thinking about that. Consider this: people evidently lie to pollsters when asked about their religious commitments:

• 17% of American adults say that they tithe (give 10 to 13% of their income to their church). Only 3% really do.
• Many polls indicate that the percentage of adults who regularly attend a religious service is about 40% in the U.S., 20% in Canada, and perhaps 10% or less in Europe. But when noses are actually counted, the true figures are about half the stated figures (about 20% in the U.S. and 10% in Canada.) The 50% figure also appears to apply in the UK.
  
  Author Monica Furlong commented: "...people questioned about how much they go to church, give figures which, if true, would add up to twice those given by the churches."
  

So maybe its time to start looking for a new term/definition... any suggestions?

Of course this also raises an interesting question: How come so many people want to be called "Christian" (regardless of their actual practice, beliefs, etc)? And why are people so offended if you suggest that someone is NOT a "Christian"?

Why the Left Hates Sex

Jennifer Roback Morse has gone out on a limb, tackling Why the Left Hates Sex (HT: JT). She raises some great points here, basically asserting that liberalism is deeply opposed to anything other than intrinsic egalitarianism. That commitment places it on a collision course with gender differences, and, I would argue, creates a fundmental tension with the much of the content in Scripture.

However, I couldn't help but think as I read the article: if the left hates sex, then what does the right hate? I can't escape the feeling that conservativism is also deeply committed to something equally unbiblical... but I'm not certain I can put my finger on a single term that captures it yet.

So I'd like to invite you to share your thoughts on Why the Right Hates ________ - you fill in the blank.

Authority vs. Identity

For those of you who are more theologically minded, here's something to consider. Scot McKnight asked recently whether we Christians should stop seeing the Bible as our "Authority" and start seeing it instead as our "Identity":

I know that for many of us the doctrine of Scripture is presuppositional and prolegomena to all we do. I fear that such an approach will turn the Bible as God’s Word into bibliolatry and idolatry, where mastery of the Bible is equated with loving God and others. Scripture is God’s gracious gift to us, but that doesn’t mean that every extreme is justifiable. We are in need of a new set of categories for understanding Scripture.

I’m suggesting we use the term “identity.” The term “authority” is that of power — it tells us that we are “under” something. The term “identity” speaks of the Spirit who is at work — in the world in God’s redemptive work, in the Church as the community of faith, and in that community as it tells the story of God’s redemptive work. And I’m not suggesting that we understand “identity” as filling the same spot as “authority,” but that we learn to see Scripture (not so much as the Authority) but as what gives us our Identity because through it God’s Spirit speaks to and guides us.

Click here to read the whole thing...

Scot raises an interesting question. On the one hand, he's pointing out how many times we Christians seem to think of Scripture as a weapon to be wielded to assert our will over others, to prove ourselves right and everyone else wrong. This kind of approach often sees Biblical "truth" as something to be mastered, and then used. I think Scot is suggesting that we would do better to see God's word as living, something that masters us, that penetrates every inch of our lives and defines who we are.

On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure how Scripture as our Identity can ever be divorced or separated from Scripture as our Authority - something that masters me will simultaneously claim a position of authority in my life (and in the life of the church). A quick word search through both old and new testaments reveals that God never seems to shrink back from claiming authority, and neither do his leaders in the church.

So how much of Scot's suggestion is really fueled by a deficiency in the term/concept, and how much is just an example of the Emerging Movement embracing mainstream "anti-authoritarianism" rather than critiquing it for what it is? I think this is the thing that concerns me most about the EM - I don't see them paying enough attention to how Scripture views itself, and I don't see them thinking critically enough about the postmodernism they have embraced.

What's particularly interesting is how many comments have been generated in response (well over 100 last time I checked). That alone would seem to indicate this is a hot topic for many people...

What If...

So what if 50 babies a year survive birth after an attempted abortion? It's happening in Britain, according to this article. If this is true, then by extrapolation, that means we'd probably be looking at 250 such cases here in the US. Per year.

I'd be very curious to hear from any readers who have had (or might consider having) an abortion - what kind of response does this article generate in you? I'm not really interested in debating the abortion issue itself here - I'd just like to see how real people outside the pro-life camp react to this news. Anyone want to share?

(PS - If you have friends who fit the bill, please invite them to share their thoughts...)

Pagan Thanksgiving

So what's a pagan thankful for? My good friend charlesdog has emerged from his blogging hiatus to pen a few thoughts:

I never really used to like Thanksgiving. I mean I like to eat good food and sometimes throw back a few cold ones, but I just didn’t get what the big deal was about it. I think that part of it had to do with my smug liberal intellectual complex. But then again, maybe I had a point. I mean we thanked the Indians by killing them and taking their land, and then created a Holiday celebrating that. It sounds like a cruel joke.

But I think that at the end of the day, I used to not like Thanksgiving because I felt like I had nothing to be thankful for. I found it so corny how people would do all these cheesy ass testimonials about what they are thankful for. It would go something like, In these times, yadda yadda, at this time of year, yadda yadda, thankful, yadda yadda, our health, yadda yadda, friends, yadda yadda family. And now, it’s a cold day in hell, because I feel this certain urge to embrace the bask and glow of cheesy triteness.

Click here to read the rest...

I like charlesdog, because he's always honest about what he's thinking. Great to have you back online, man, and even nicer to be included in your list (I know, no one will be able to find me in the list, I'm sure). Sorry I missed your call on Thursday. I feel like I'm being a pretty sucky friend right now, with my nose in the books trying to finish everything that's due this coming Friday. 3 papers down, 1 to go (so the end is in sight). Rest assured, I'll be in touch soon...

Nobody Loves Me

From Derek Webb's The House Show CD, discussing his song, "Nobody Loves Me"...

This is a song about the risk that we run as those who are called into community together (which we necessarily are) - if you divorce the people of God, local community, from the gospel, then it ceases to be the gospel.

There is no other context for your faith as a Christian than to be in community with other people. I've heard a lot of people say to me over the years "Its just me and Jesus and that's all I need." Well that's not the gospel in Scripture.

If we are going to be those who claim to love Jesus, then you and I will be compelled to love also the things that Jesus loved. And he not only loved, but he came and gave himself up for the church. And that makes it our concern as well. And if that's not hard enough, we aren't just called to live in community together - we are also called with a mandate that we preach the gospel to each other...

As a Christian culture, we often mistake the gospel for the thing that we preach only to non-believers in the hopes that they will come down our isles of our churches and place their faith in Jesus. Now it certainly is that, but much more than that - the gospel must have, necessarily has, a primary place in the lives of believers.

We've got to hear it every week, if not every day.. If we stop hearing that every single day, especially in light of the great "righteousness" that we might prop up as an idol from time to time, then we are never ever going to grow, our hearts are never going to change, our commnuities are never going to be sanctified...

Flattery at its very best will encourage really nothing more in you and in your community than behavior modification - modifying your behavior to act the way you should, to hide the things you do that are wrong, and to try and amplify the things you do that are right.

But here's the truth - all the behavior modification in the world will never change your hearts, and it can never change our communities. Jesus however, he does change our hearts, and he will change our communities. And that is why boldness is called for.

We have got to be honest. We should have no fear in being honest to one another about who we really are - not just offering up the sins that we feel safe confessing, but being completely bold, completely forthcoming about who we really are, and saying "I am going to stop hiding from you, and I am going to tell who I really am because I believe the gospel is really true."

I can only admit who I really am to you because I believe Jesus is who he really is as well. You will never be truly filled w/ joy unless you truly know yourself for who you are. And until you are a real sinner with a real savior, you will be a hypotheitcal and theoretical sinner, with a hypothetical and theoretical savior...

Charles Spurgeon once said, "If your sin is small, then your savior will be small also. But if your sin is great, then your savior must be great." And folks, our savior is great...

Sound interesting? Read the lyrics or listen to a soundbite on Amazon...

Praising a Master Artist

A quote from John Piper (and he's quoting CS Lewis)...

The answer to the ... question -- "Why is it loving God to be so self-exalting that he does all that he does for his own glory? -- came to me with the help of C.S. Lewis. When I was pondering the fact that in Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14 Paul says that God performs all the acts of redemption so that we might praise his glory, I discovered that in his early days as a Christian, Lewis was bothered by the commands of God to praise God. They seemed vain.

But then he discovered why this is not vain but profoundly loving of God to do. Here is his all-important insight:

The most obvious fact about praise ... strangely escaped me ... I had
nevernoticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise ... The
worldrings with praise - lovers praising their mistresses, readers their
favoritepoet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite
game -praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, horses, colleges,
countries,historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare
beetles,even sometimes politicians and scholars ... My whole, more general
difficultyabout praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards
thesupremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help
doing,about everything else we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merelyexpresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another howbeautiful they are, the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

(from John Piper, Let The Nations Be Glad, p. 224; quoting Lewis, Reflection on the Psalms)

Killer Art

For your viewing pleasure, a couple of links that my brother Nicholas passed my way (Nicholas has an amazing eye for artwork, and is a very good graphic designer himself). If you have a few minutes, pull up a chair and feast your eyes upon these photos (here's a sample):

• Tuomo Väinämö - Finnish Shooter, incredible skies / landscapes. Razor sharp, crisp saturated colors.
• Jim Erickson – Ad Industry killer. Excellent depth of field. Versatile. Amazing compositions and out of this world post edit effects.
  

What I find interesting about great photos like these is how they manage to convey something - there is always a depth of experience and emotion, story mixed with mystery, even with very mundane subject matter. I find myself wanting to see these places, meet these people.

I don't totally understand how it works, but I find it fascinating. This is a hobby I want to get better at over the coming years...

Thinking About Life Together

Krissy has some thoughts on her quest for community. In particular, she shares a great quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung up from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams.

Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. [...]

Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial."

This is powerful stuff. The other day I caught myself thinking about the future, thinking about how what I really long for are deep friendships, meaningful community. Those are good things. But then it struck me - do I want to plant a church for my own sake, to fulfill my own needs and desires? Or am I truly motivated by Christ, to please him, to be about his work rather than my own.

Too many times, what I really want from the church is my own little wish dream. I want friends for my sake, not Christ's. What I need to desire is not others, not even the church (at least not as an end). I need to desire God.

Make no mistake, Christ is all about building the church. But it's for his sake, not ours; it's to bring his Father glory. Now we are surely beneficiaries of this redemptive effort, but we are not the the impetus or reason for his work.

Christ does indeed love us, but that love does not flow from us - it flows from him, to us. He doesn't love us because of some fundamental goodness in us, as if we deserve to be loved. He loves us because God loves us. And God loves us simply because he wants to.

I need to remind myself of that, or I will never find the fulfillment that I desire in community. Community is not about me, or even about us. We will find true community (and all the benefits that flow from that) only when we stop looking for community as an end in itself, as the object of our desires, and start looking at Christ, desiring him instead.

Fortunately, God's grace doesn't leave us to ourselves. It shatters us with a life full of hardship and dissappointments - it will not let us find rest anywhere but in God.

That puts a whole new perspective on grace, at least for me. Bonhoeffer's words are a needed reminder for me these days. Thanks Krissy...

Through the Looking Glass

I started working through Richard Bauckham's James tonight; he opens his Prologue by talking about Kierkegaard. As someone who has spent the past three years in seminary, I find his comments particularly relevant for us today...

Christian Scholarship is the human race's prodigious invention to defend itself against the New Testament, to ensure that one can continue to be Christian without letting the New Testament come too close [or to ensure that one can continue to NOT be a Christian by not letting the New Testament come to close].

- Kierkegaard (1)

Looking at the fruits of the academy, Kierkegaard realized that "far from fullfilling its professed aim of assisting Christian reading of Scripture, [biblical scholarship has] functioned rather to impede it" (2).

James 1:11-25 tells us that Scripture is like a mirror - Kierkegaard says "the Christian who reads Scripture as Scripture, as God's word, must first observe himself in the mirror of the word, and must then put what is heard into practice... (3)

"The first step, therefore, must be to see onself in the mirror. Kierkegard detects in his own age [and much more so in ours] a possibility the parable of James does not explicitly envisage: that of observing only the mirror and not seeing onself in it. This is what happens when biblical scholarship intervenes between the text and its hearers... in fact biblical scholarship raises so many questions about the text that it can never conclusively answer... its effect is to postpone faith and obedience to God's word indefinitely." (3)

The academic enterprise, with its quest for objective certainty, "is a way of avoiding the subjective encounter with what is perfectly plain in the text" (4)

Kierkegaard is really combining two complaints against biblical scholarship... One is that the process of reasearch and interpretation is never done.(4) ... For scholars, "the temptation [is] ti substitute study for faith and action" (5)

The second is the idea of objectivity itself, not in the same way that postmodernim does... "Kierkegaard's complaint against biblical scholarship is quite different... It is that in 'objective' study of the texts, one is not relating to them as Scripture at all... this is observing the mirror instead of seeing oneself in it" (5)

If you are a scholar, remember that if you do not read God's Word in another way, it will turn out that after a lifetime of reading God's Word many hours every day, you nevertheless have never read God's Word... (5)

If God's Word is for you merely a doctrine, something impersonal and objective, then it is no mirror... if you want to relate impersonally (objectively) to God's Word, there can be no question of looking at yourself in the mirror, because it takes a personality, an I, to look at oneself in a mirror; a wall can be seen in a mirror, but a wall cannot see itself or look at itself in a mirror. No, while reading God/s Word you must incessantly say to yourself: It is I to whom it is speaking..

- Kierkegaard (6)

"Kierkegaard insists that action need not wait on learned interpretation of the text. After all, there are plenty of requirements in the Bible whose meaning is perfectly clear." (7)

This is not to suggest that there are no obscure passages. "His point is that there enough perfectly clear ones to keep one busy without having to wait for the conclusions of biblical research before one can live as a Christian" (7)

With Kierkegaard, we should all take a good hard subjective look in the mirror, to see what God reveals, and to act on it in response.

Worth Reading

It's been extremely busy (and will continue to be for the next 3 weeks), so I haven't posted much. I will, however, point you in the direction of a thoughtful post by Master Aegidius called Mule Deer Hunting and Ministry - reflecting on how the hardness of "work" and intersects with the joy of your "calling." Good stuff. Enjoy!

Scot McKnight on a Generous Orthodoxy

This post has moved...

Scot McKnight Responds to D.A. Carson

This post has moved as well...

For the Love of Hunting

During our time "back east," we've made a number of friends who are completely mystified by the whole Montanan "love of guns and hunting" thing. Some of you, I am sure, think we are complete hicks, bloodthirsty barbarians. And maybe we are. Once you experience it, however, it begins to make sense. And if you've been hunting with your dad since before you were old enough to walk, then it's hard to imagine anything else.

Nice 6x6 bull elk that my dad shot last weekend in the Crazy Mountains, MT.

Well, this is hunting season back in Montana, and hunting season means stories, and since my brother Jake (aka. Master Aegidius) is as good a storyteller as he is a hunter, I want to take this opportunity to give you a window into our world. Jake has been writing about hunting this past week, and I think you'll enjoy what he is written.

Where to start? How about Happiness is a BIG Buck in Your Crosshairs, followed by My Hunting Partner Naomi, then Bird Hunting with David, and finally (the culmination) The Big Buck.

I have some thoughts of my own that I may add in the next week - about how the time honored tradition of hunting not only has much in common with our Native American heritage, but how it also connects us much further back to the mythic world of the Old Testament. In that sense, hunting is intimately bound to the postmodern rediscovery of story.

But that's a tale for another day. In the meantime, grab a cup of coffee and go hunting with my brother...