Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Mondays with MacDonald (on believing evil things about God)

August 8th, 2011 | 0 Comments

Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God. If they have not thought about them, but given themselves to obedience, they may not have done them much harm as yet; but they can make little progress in the knowledge of God, while, if but passively, holding evil things true of him. If, on the other hand, they do think about them, and find in them no obstruction, they must indeed be far from anything to be called a true knowledge of God. But there are those who find them a terrible obstruction, and yet imagine, or at least fear them true: such must take courage to forsake the false in any shape, to deny their old selves in the most seemingly sacred of prejudices, and follow Jesus, not as he is presented in the tradition of the elders, but as he is presented by himself, his apostles, and the spirit of truth.

by George MacDonald
from Unspoken Sermons, vol. 2, “The Truth in Jesus”

Mondays with MacDonald (on inheriting the earth)

July 18th, 2011 | 2 Comments

To inherit the earth is to grow ever more alive to the presence, in it and in all its parts, of him who is the life of men. How far one may advance in such inheritance while yet in the body, will simply depend on the meekness he attains while yet in the body; but it may be, as Frederick Denison Maurice, the servant of God, thought while yet he was with us, that the new heavens and the new earth are the same in which we now live, righteously inhabited by the meek, with their deeper-opened eyes. What if the meek of the dead be thus possessing it even now! But I do not care to speculate. It is enough that the man who refuses to assert himself, seeking no recognition by men, leaving the care of his life to the Father, and occupying himself with the will of the Father, shall find himself, by and by, at home in the Father’s house, with all the Father’s property his.

by George MacDonald
from “The Hope of the Gospel

I’m on Google+

July 15th, 2011 | 2 Comments

Click here to see the interactive Google+ demo

I’m enjoying playing with the new web platform that is Google+ (my profile: http://gplus.to/stevedouglas). Even though it’s not directly comparable to Twitter and Facebook, at very least I can say that I prefer spending time on G+ over both.

That helps explain why I’ve been relatively quiet here on the blog of late. Well, that and the fact that my blogging activity directly correlates with the amount of attention people are paying to the blog, and the latter has been in a bit of a slump for the last month, which brings my activity down a bit.

Yeah, I’m aware that activity brings attention. But considering the other irons I’ve got in the fire (including one very small, very precious “iron” due to come out of the fire any day now!), it takes a bit more pull to get me to put effort into posting stuff that’s likely to be missed anyway.

I’m not announcing a hiatus: I’m still gradually pecking away at the last post in my sin series. But if you really want to catch up with me, be sure to connect with me on Google+, where I’ve been glad to connect with many of my favorite bloggers.

The Southern Baptist Convention acting…well, Southern Baptistly

June 15th, 2011 | 0 Comments

The Southern Baptists have done it again.

Despite taking a surprisingly progressive stand in favor of “a just and compassionate path to legal status…for those undocumented immigrants already living in our country” at their convention in Arizona this week, Southern Baptists have also “unanimously or near-unanimously” passed other resolutions that affirm or re-affirm some of their trademark old-time-religion stances.

  • They lodged a complaint to the Obama Administration to revive flagging support for the Defense of Marriage Act.
  • Calling out Rob Bell’s book by name, they affirmed their belief in “the biblical teaching on eternal conscience punishment of the unregenerate in Hell.” Note, not just hell, but eternal conscious “punishment” (known less euphemistically as “torment”).
  • The gender-neutral and therefore “inaccurate” NIV 2011 was rejected, and pastors were encouraged to teach their congregations about the dangers of translating “men” as “people”, “sons” as “sons and daughters,” etc. Because that’s what the world needs now, apparently.

Regardless of your stance on each of those issues, I’m wondering how much influence large Evangelical and/or Fundamentalist bodies like the Southern Baptist Convention have on Christian culture. I’ve no doubt that there are plenty who try to follow what they have to say, but it becomes increasingly apparent that these bodies primarily serve the function of attempting top-down reform — or, as with the immigration and DOMA issues, attempting to use some high-profile influence to catalyze that quintessentially top-down reform known as “public policy”.

Don’t roll your eyes about that last remark, political progressives. You do it, too. The question these days doesn’t seem to be whether we should use the government to legislate our religious values: it’s which religious values you’re going to try to legislate.

I’m not just pointing all this out as an excuse to bag on “those loony Southern Baptists.” I wanted to suggest that resolutions and legislation from authoritative bodies, both ecclesiastical and governmental, may be as fine and dandy as they are inevitable, but the best reform comes from the ground up. And it seems to me that the Southern Baptists are losing that battle.

Eric Reitan interviewed on the [ad hoc] Christianity Podcast

June 10th, 2011 | 0 Comments

Just in case you didn’t get the memo:

We were pleased to have the chance to chat with Eric Reitan. Eric is Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University and the author of the excellent blog The Piety That Lies Between: A Progressive Christian Perspective (a favorite of our blog reviews), as well as two books. We talk about the background of his faith, his response to Richard Dawkins in Is God a Delusion?, his thoughts on the nature of apologetics, and his forthcoming co-authored book on Christian universalism, God’s Final Victory: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism.

Listen/subscribe to the show over at [ad hoc] Christianity.

About my new tagline…

June 3rd, 2011 | 8 Comments

I often wish I could change the name of my site, but there’s no way I’m going to put in the effort to change my domain, website settings, Twitter handle, etc. in order to do so. Plus, it’s something of a unique brand (although it does get confused in search results with a conspiracy theory warning everyone of the “U.N. Deception”), so I’m sticking with the name for the foreseeable future.

However, for a breath of fresh air I have occasionally changed my tagline:

  • When I started the blog I chose, “Test everything…hold fast to that which is good.”
  • A couple years ago I changed it to “By faith, Abraham…” in reference to my developing theology as an experience of following God on a journey into unknown lands.
  • The tagline to the [ad hoc] Christianity podcast I participate in is “…adjust as necessary.”

In grad school, my major professor liked to use the Latin ablative absolute expression mutatis mutandis, which means ‘what needs to be changed having been changed’. It does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? My new tagline, “Faith, mutatis mutandis,” is meant to express my willingness to make whatever changes are necessary to my faith. Implicit within the expression is the fact that, with all changes accounted for and applied, the identity of the starting product is not to be distinguished from that of the current product: in other words, it’s the same faith in the same God that I’ve always had…with all necessary changes being made as I come across them.

What do you think?

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“Homosexual Christians”? Really?

May 19th, 2011 | 10 Comments

I have the depressing feeling that this will fall on deaf ears among most of those it’s intended for. But I’ve got to try.

A friend reacted with disbelief after reading the description of the [ad hoc] Podcast’s recent show on homosexuality and the Church. The offending sentence:

How should the growing number of us who support treating homosexual Christians with fairness (to varying degrees) approach those who disagree?

To paraphrase this friend, “Being a Christian is about setting aside our old, sinful ways. So wouldn’t Christians who are struggling with homosexuality want us to help deliver them from their homosexuality rather than enable them to live in that sin?” A true Christian isn’t content to live in sin.

Many who accept homosexuality as a valid lifestyle do not understand those who object so strenuously: after all, we all occasionally do things that we believe are sinful but that don’t inspire the kind of reaction we see on the homosexuality issue! The answer is that, agree or disagree, the Christian rejection of homosexuality is based on the fact that supporters are viewed as making excuses for and “living in” an obvious sin: people with homosexual desires refuse to do what it takes to reform, justifying themselves by coming up with clever ways of saying that their sin is actually not sin.

Now, granting the sinfulness of homosexuality, this would be understandable — although a modicum of loving concern (what used to be called “Christian charity”) should temper even a justified objection like that. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to grant that homosexuality is sinful behavior. But wait just a second before you expect everyone else to grant this.

Step back for a moment to view things outside the presumption of your correctness. Some Christians have been convinced that it is sinful to ignore Torah’s dietary laws, collect interest (or at very least, high interest) on loans, read versions other than the KJV, drink alcohol, dance, attend church on Sunday, work on Saturday, or – going way back – eat food offered to idols. Other Christians think that although many of those beliefs are well grounded in Scripture, those other believers are misidentifying those practices as sins for one reason or another. Assured that we know better, we are nonetheless considered by those groups to be living in willful sin, making excuses in order to justify our chosen lifestyles.

A growing number of Christians are finding it harder and harder to believe that God has a fundamental problem with homosexuality, even when they do not accept it as ideal. This is particularly true of Christians who have tried their very best for decades to get “straight” again, enrolling in re-orientation programs, getting married to someone of the opposite sex, etc., all to no avail. Their stories are heartbreaking. That is, if you have a heart, and if you can avoid making the awful leap of responding that, since you are confident in your beliefs, those people must just not be trying hard enough (those who do this obviously don’t know any of “those people”).

Let’s take a poll:

1. Can principled Saturday churchers have fellowship with Sunday churchers, despite the latter’s Sabbath-breaking ways?

2. Can usury-eschewing believers have fellowship with interest-charging believers, despite the latter’s greed-driven refusal to acknowledge the difference between the ritual aspects of the Law that did pass away and the moral obligations of the Law (such as the Ten Commandments and usury prohibitions) that are still in effect?

3. Can Christian socialists have fellowship with self-centered, overly individualistic capitalist Christians, despite the clear evidence in Acts that those who try to fool others into believing they are giving all they can to the cause are subject to being stricken down dead on the spot?

4. Can men-pastored church members have fellowship with women-pastored church members, despite the latter’s Bible-ignoring and culture-beholden compromises?

In my experience, reasonable believers on both sides of the fence will answer at least a qualified “Yes” to most of those questions. Even most evangelicals who would be against having a woman pastor come and preach in their churches can accept her as a fellow believer and even work with her church to do outreach, etc. But there are certain other differences in understanding what constitutes “sin” that produce a radically different answer. I’m sure you saw this one coming:

5. Can Christians who are anti-homosexuality have fellowship with Christians who advocate for gay rights? With homosexuals who self-identify as devout Christians?

The question you have to ask yourself is this: if not, why not? They go about their Christian lives learning to live out their faith, worship God, forgive and serve one another, and they usually hold most of the same beliefs about the nature of God and the work of Christ that you do. They, too, have theological explanations for their behavior that many find convenient, compromising, and unconvincing. But unlike the other disagreements over sinful behavior I listed above, it is routinely concluded that homosexual Christians are the way they are because they’re just disgusting, perverse sin-lovers who require only as much of our Christian empathy as will motivate us to cite Romans 1 and expect it to convince them to repent. Until they do repent…let’s not pretend that their so-called Christian lives consist of anything other than justifying their willfully sinful bedroom activities. Jesus wants to cleanse you from all unrighteousness, provided you allow him to start on that sin first!

Why is there a different standard for homosexuals? It’s not as though their every second is spent having illicit sex; and if homosexuality is really just a choice, outside of their moments of lust they aren’t even being homosexuals. I suggest that one common reason for the sharp reaction we see, other than disgust in imagining the sex act, is a fear that what they most boldly proclaim to be true is actually false after all: maybe homosexuals really are born that way. Maybe they don’t have as much of a choice as our theology says they must. Or maybe God has unfairly laid upon them a requirement that’s almost impossible for them to meet. Their very existence, not to mention their recent flourishing and acceptance within mainline Christian denominations, is a vivid reminder that our theology just might be wrong.

We have to come to grips with the fact that not all of those who are committed to picking up their crosses and following Christ will also carry all of our own convictions with them. Jesus makes our own burdens light: how wrong is it of us to insist upon placing burdens on the back of others? Where we are wrong, we trust our loving Father to correct us. And so we must encourage one another’s faith, entrust others’ commitment to error to God, and work on getting the planks out of our own eyes, the secret sins that might not give us a lisp but do cause us to live in enmity with one another and cause the weak among us to stumble — which is a sin Jesus actually did warn us about.