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“First they came for the Communists; I did not speak because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews; I did not speak because I was not a Jew. Then they came to fetch the workers, members of trade unions; I did not speak because I was not a trade unionist. Afterward, they came for the Catholics; I did not say anything because I was a Protestant. Eventually they came for me, and there was no one left to speak …”

Martin Niemöller, Pastor – Dachau, Germany 1942.

I’m teaching my World History class some WW2 … wondering how Germany became what it became in the 1930′s & 40′s. The context was situated largely in economics and national pride/shame … and very bad theological responses to, “What (or who) is the problem, and what (or who) saves?”

To place this in context, we must first recall Germany was forced to sign a burdensome guilt clause that called for strict submission to its enemies and was required to pay exorbitant retributions for The Great War; something thought to be largely unfair (by President Wilson and many historians) and could thus fuel future resentment. Soon after, Germany experienced unparalleled hyper inflation and entered a terrifying economic depression. During this season, the Mark was worthless; some would burn their bills to stay warm, children would build kites with their parents’ money, others would even wallpaper their houses their currency.

In the midst of this chaos, the national conscience cried out for salvation and scapegoats; who was the “they” to be vilified and how could “their” removal be legitimated? Who was to be the savior?

Idolatry arose in the form of nationalistic religion, with charismatic Hitler leading the way.

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Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it.

- Karl Barth

Here’s an excellent and hard-hitting blog post especially for us who are young and serious about our church/theology. Even if you’re not fully in the same stream (I’m not a perfect fit) as Kevin DeYoung, it should still hit the bulls-eye.

There are two ironclad rules of Gen XYZ Americans: (1) They like to be trendy, (2) but only until everyone knows what they’re into is trendy. We want to be like everyone else but, at the same time, different. So we gravitate to whatever people are into as long as it doesn’t feel like everyone else is into it.

I believe God is at work in the under-40 generation, doing something doctrinally, ecclesiologically, and doxologically healthy among many youngish Christians. Further, I believe this work of God is being mediated through a remarkable network of like-minded pastors, preachers, and scholars. I don’t know when there have been so many folks, often friends, saying and writing more or less the same things about the gospel, the atonement, the Scriptures, the glory of God, the doctrines of grace, the centrality of the church, the importance of preaching, the roles of men and women, and on and on it goes. We are blessed with an inordinate and growing number of good teachers, good books, good blogs, and good conferences … But allegiance to our favorite conference or preferred tribe must always always be a means to further our allegiance to Christ. He must never be a means for recruiting more people to our tradition. The spotlight is always on the glory of God in the face of Christ.
So let’s be Christ-seekers, not trend-chasers.

Read the whole post by clicking here.

[You may say,]“Everything is permissible for me”–but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”–but I will not be mastered by anything. ” …  The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

- St. Paul

If we name Jesus and claim to understand His Gospel, we must acknowledge that His gracious and sinless blood was not shed to give us a license to be selfish and live without self-control. Our lives tell God, “This is how much I love You.” Our lives also give others a picture of God, regardless of how well we are representing Him.

Oh, may we live new lives that are for His glory and pleasure (which oddly produces the most possible joy for us in the process). May we not take lightly or ignore the one called King, Lord, Almighty, Alpha & Omega, Savior, Holy, Master, & Redeemer. May we imitate, not frustrate the One who was pierced for our transgressions. May we trust His way is actually better than ours.

Amen.

*Disclaimer - A man wiser than myself has said that people should think about the word “heretic” like they would the word “rape.” Heresy is a such a serious claim that it must only used when it has to be. I concur and I squirm in the presence of excessive suspicion and those who want to split hairs.

But, because I hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that I can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it (Titus 1:9); I must be the provocateur, faithful to my theological & intellectual commitments. Thus, from my historical examination, I do not see King as a faithful steward of the Gospel of the risen God-man Jesus Christ, who is to get primacy and priority in everything. Further, I wonder if King could be called a Christian, as far as historical orthodoxy is concerned.

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Ryan Adams – Wonderwall

Peter said, (2 Peter 1:5-9)

“…make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.”

When examining the Greek (I don’t know Greek, but I can spend 5 minutes clicking around a website with the best of ‘em), we learn Peter uses the word, spoude (spoo-day’).

Spoude means get on it.

I wonder if spoude is the same kind of powerful exclamation that the late Freddie Mercury had in mind when he screamed, “Get on your bikes and ride!” at the end of an especially catchy Queen song…

Go after goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love with: (definition of spoude)

- haste, with haste
- earnestness, diligence
- earnestness in accomplishing, promoting, or striving after anything
- to give all diligence, interest one’s self most earnestly

So, the question is, what does it practically look like for us to “make every effort” with those virtues?

Ben Folds – fred jones part 2

“Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.”

“If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.”

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

“As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.”

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.”

The Avett Brothers – The Ballad Of Love And Hate

I don’t get philosophical too often on my blog because I know it bothers or bores most people…to make up for it, I’ll soon return to short & funny clips. Anyway, I’ve done only a little reading lately (job hunt), but it has none-the-less been excellent. When I came across the following by Christian Smith, I said to myself, “Oh snap! This must be posted”. Modern snobbery seems to be unaware of the fact that rationalism/empiricism (and the things that have been constructed from these) are imperfect and insufficient; absolute and universal knowledge is elusive. In the end we really are dealing with being (un)confident of the things we know in part and hope for.

“For centuries, many Western thinkers have tried to identify a universal and certain foundation for human knowledge. Various movements within the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century “Enlightenment” in particular sought to specify an authoritative foundation of knowledge not based on the revelation, faith, and tradition of Christianity. Instead this project sought to identify a strong foundation for knowledge that would be secular (non theistic), universal (applicable to all people despite their differences), and indubitable (irrefutable and certain). One way to understand philosophical epistemology since Rene Descartes is a story of of repeated unsuccessful attempts to identify this kind of foundation of human knowledge. Like the would-be champions who sought to become the first to be able to draw the fabled sword from the stone and so become king, many philosophers have ventured to identify this prized strong foundation of knowledge on which the rational. universal, modern social order could be build. In each case, however, other philosophers always stepped forward to demonstrate why their attempts at this secular, universal, indubitable epistemology did not work.

As a consequence, what we have come rather decisively to see in recent decades is that this epistemological project itself is fatally flawed and that all such attempts to discover a universal, indubitable foundation of knowledge have failed and necessarily will fail. Strong foundationalism is dead. Its quest has come up empty-handed. There is no secular, universal, indubitable foundation of knowledge available to us humans.

What we have come to see is that, at bottom, we are all really believers. The lives that we live and knowledge we possess are based crucially on sets of basic assumptions and beliefs, about which three characteristics deserve note. First, our elemental assumptions and beliefs themselves cannot be empirically verified or established with certainty. They are starting points, trusted premises, postulated axioms, presuppositions, — “below” which there is no deeper or more final justification, proof, or verification establishing them. In philosophical terms, these beliefs and commitments may be “justified,” but they are not “justifiable”. Rather, they themselves provide the suppositional grounds on which any sense of justification, proof, or verification for a given knowledge system are built.”

About a year old, but a timeless point is still being made here…(get it?)

Now playing: Phil Wickham – Beautiful
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Me thinks that ‘now-a-days’ is perhaps the most important season of the Western church’s existence for it to have an understanding of the zeitgeist(s) of the culture it inhabits. Formerly, the church occupied a position of privilege and many of its ways were stride for stride with the modern and relatively uniform culture…but now the Western Church is in the midst of rapid decline.

In writing about the need for the church to be culturally literate, Gibbs & Bolger, explain the dramatic paradigm shifts that have altered the Western cultural landscape:

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Now playing: Eddie Vedder – Society
via FoxyTunes

I came across a CT article about how some proponents of the prosperity gospel (the belief that the point is to ‘bling-bling’ for Jesus; God rewards faith with wealth, health, and happiness) are not prospering at the moment. The article additionally cites specific examples and contains a few other noteworthy quotes that help give a healthier view of money – something Jesus talked about very often.

The “name-it-and-claim-it theology found in some charismatic churches“, is finding some of its adherents trying to make sense of what is going on. And in both this piece and in my experience, it seems the prosperity mindset views all happenings with a broken merit-based explanation. For example, when my grandfather died 11 years ago, some of my grandmother’s prosperity-minded friends told her that she and he must have had some sin or lack of faith…when in reality they were probably never ‘better’ as far as their ‘Christian behavior’ was concerned.

Scott Thumma, a sociologist who studies megachurches, concurs: “Most clergy who preach a prosperity gospel would interpret for their congregation any conflict, scrutiny, or questioning as an attack of the Devil and proof that they are not following God.” And if you ask me, I think this is about as perfect of an example of people over-spiritualism as I can see. The theology doesn’t accurately represent God, nor does it accurately explain reality. It’s no wonder that its falling apart.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF (YOUR) LIFE???

Please answer, I’m dying to hear what you have to say! Take this question however you want and holler back – I’d love your 2 cents…Are there multiple valid answers? Is there really meaning?

Just post your thoughts on your site (then link a comment) or leave a comment here.

Thanks & I’ll weigh in later,

- Justin

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Now playing: The Frames – Dream Awake
via FoxyTunes

“Our Christian faith – and correlatively, our account of apologetics – is tainted by modernism when we fail to appreciate the effects of sin on reason…postmodernism can be a catalyst for the church to reclaim its faith not as a system of truth dictated by a neutral reason but rather as a story that requires, “eyes to see and ears to hear.”

- James K. A. Smith, Whose Afraid of Postmodernism, p.28

Well said indeed. While I don’t have a postmodern worldview, (nor modern – I aim for a scriptural/divine worldview) I can’t help but the love the honesty & humility that post-modernity brings to our ability to know. I’ve had many conversations with those who pooh-pooh postmodernism, or any critique of ‘absolute knowledge’ because they really don’t understand the implications. It’s easy confuse man-centered & modern presuppositions with a ‘Christian’ worldview when this thinking is smuggled into nearly everything we do.

If modernity says, “I can know fully”, post-modernity returns us to Paul saying, “I know in part.” The result isn’t arrogance or faith in human reason, but rather confidence in an unseen God who we know by faith (as well as our ability to reason). That is what I see going on in 1 Corinthians 2: 3-13…

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Now playing: U2 – I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
via FoxyTunes

“The Bible is there to enable God’s people to be equipped to do God’s work in God’s world, not to give them an excuse to sit back smugly, knowing they possess all God’s truth.”

N.T. Wright

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Now playing: Ben Folds – Brick
via FoxyTunes