“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.

The new German Faith Movement, essentially fused new ideas & pseudo Christian concepts and anti-Semitic ideas to lie … Christ was Aryan instead of Jewish. They thought the ‘evil of the Jews’ (among others) had disrupted the righteous Aryans. Fear and misinformation fanned the fires of “us” vs. “them.”

Historians say that many Germans were confused, disillusioned, and media illiterate. Coupled by their messed up soteriology, who could discern that Hitler was twisting all sorts of ideas for his agenda?

Because our thinking directs our living, we must not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of [our] minds, that by testing [we] may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

- We must not aquiesce, thinking that nothing can be done because politics is inherently evil and useless. The politically apathetic and those who practice cultural retreat must remember that while governments/politics are fallen, the sovereign God ordained (the function of) these until He officially sets up shop.

- We must not practice political idolatry; politics can ‘t save & our forefathers aren’t divine. Making something other than the Lord ultimate will ultimately lead to terrible pride, misinformation, division, and unforeseeable sin, not the unity and peace that Christ brings.

- We must remember that we are ultimately foreigners and aliens, our true citizenship is in heaven, our ultimate allegiance is to Jesus & His Gospel.

- We must discern what all prominent voices are really saying. What is the problem? Is it them, is our battle really against flesh and blood? Is the solution to be found in something other than Christ (e.g. a method of taxation, fiscal conservatism/liberalism, socialism, democracy, a grass-roots movement, or a particular politician?) For my money, we can detect this idolatry simply by seeing whether or not someone shows honor to their counterparts, the ability to make concessions, and by whether or not the person has peace and love.

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

- Karl Barth

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.

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.

In his 1949 paper, “What Experiences of Christians Living in the Early Christian Century Led to the Christian Doctrines of the Divine Sonship of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Bodily Resurrection”, MLK appears to deny these historic orthodox Christian doctrines: 1 – the Bodily Resurrection, 2 – the Virgin Birth, and 3 – the Deity of Jesus Christ.

1 – King argues the doctrine of the Deity of Christ (Jesus was God) was developed by the early church from the influence of Greek philosophy and was thus not a historical fact.

Because Christians are people of the scripture, it is there we find a total rejection, unless we doubt the clarity, authority, and reliability of the text itself. In Mark 2:28, Jesus claims to be the Lord of the Sabbath (Exodus 20:10), He claims to be greater than the prophet Jonah (Matt 12:41), King Solomon (Matt 12:42), and even the Temple itself (Matt 12:6). In Mark 2:1-12, Jesus claims authority to forgive sins and miraculously heals to prove it; something blasphemous and crazy if He wasn’t God. Jesus told the Pharisees, “…before Abraham was born, I AM!” – another divine title (John 8:58-59) that references one of God’s name in the Old Testament. John called Jesus “the eternal God” in clear and powerful language, and he sites John the Baptist’s agreement on Jesus in John 1. Peter and Paul also affirmed the divinity of Christ scores of times, e.g. Colossians 1:15. (To site all the references in the text would be ridiculous, just pick up a Bible if you think I’m bluffing)

2 – The “virgin birth” was unscientific and untenable; like divine Sonship, this doctrine developed as a way for the early church to indicate how highly they valued the uniqueness of Jesus.

Nope. I’ll let wikipedia take this one for the sake of space and time.

3 – The resurrection of Jesus was an attempt by the pre-scientific early church to symbolize the experience that they had with Jesus.

Paul is very clear about what this doctrine means to Christianity:

“…if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”

(1 Corinthians 15)

In sum:

Because I’m not aware of MLK recanting on these central doctrines, I’m left with two unfortunate conclusions about this great civil rights leader. If he believed these, he couldn’t be a (by definition) a Christian, and if he taught these, he would have to be (by definition) considered a heretic.

His efforts for justice were undoubtedly good and deserving of the Noble Peace Prize. BUT, without the Gospel or instead of starting with the Gospel and letting a concern for social justice flow out of that; the Gospel was either omitted or spun into something else.

The Gospel is not about justice or sexual purity or any good thing as ultimate. Those things cannot truly save humanity and cure the affects of sin. Anything not ultimately centered on the atoning work of the divine Jesus will be based on a relatively cheap morality and the futility of human effort. We will be with a hope that is not eternal and a righteousness rooted in imperfection. But, when get the Gospel at the center, we truly have inspiration, hope, morality, justice, and all good – which all flow from the Gospel; we’ll have a true and eternal perspective that glorifies what God has done and empowers His people to truly be virtuous.

That is why Paul addresses those who are,

“…turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all…trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” [He continues] “…even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:6-9) And in 1 John 2: 22, John also has harsh words for those that don’t affirm Jesus as He claimed to be.

*If you want a thick explanation of the Gospel, click and listen here.

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?

“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.”

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.”

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:

What are the cultural changes that have contributed to the marginalization of the church? First, we are in the midst of a shift from modernity to postmoderity… [Challenging the validity of modernity’s institutions and epistemological (ability to know) certainty]. Second, we are embroiled in a shift from Westernization to globalization. Third, we are engaged in a communication revolution, as we shift from a print culture to an electronic-based culture. Forth, we are in the midst of a dramatic shift in our economic mode of production, as we transition from national and industrial-based economies to economies that are international, information based, and consumer driven. Fifth, we are on the verge of significant breakthroughs in understanding the human at a biological level. Sixth, we are seeing a convergence of science and religion that has not been seen in centuries.

This truth has enormous implications for the church. On one end of the spectrum are those who have lost touch by taking for granted their epistemology, methods/styles, and theology that is contextualized to address the issues of a former period. (i.e. the Reformation). But attempts to drag culture back to into the arena of  modernity or Christendom in order to spread Christianity will likely be futile and will produce irrelevance to the rest of culture if successful.

On the other hand are those who have truly shifted with culture but are not appropriately discerning with it. While we must understand that we live in a very diverse and multicultural world with many worldviews intersecting, we must be cautious (as caution was called for in previous paradigms and will be called for in the future) to make sure our worldview is thoroughly in sync with the scriptures, not the zeitgeist. The church needs a non-domineering sensitivity and awareness that it is truly one of many voices. Yet some are going in a direction that isn’t warranted; universalism or Christocentric Universalism (because of Jesus everyone gets eternal life).

In short, we must firmly plant our feet in our immediate culture, but our worldview shouldn’t merely be modern, nor postmodern; it should be discerning enough to be truly Christian, something that will no doubt have compatibilities and incompatibilities in any paradigm.

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.