Archives for “social concern”
I think it’s safe to say that this is one post that most of my liberal Christian friends won’t be sharing with their friends.
I firmly believe that Christians should be preoccupied with the plight of the marginalized and the remediation of social injustice. I, too, have evolved considerably from my conservative Christian background and rejected the “Jesus is a Right Winger” presupposition characterizing the stereotypical American evangelical. However, time and again I am reminded that I am something of an anomaly among post-evangelical/liberal Christians (whatever you want to call me). My theological evolution did not result in some sort of flipped switch that automatically turned me into a Democrat-supporting left-winger. I do not assume that the ideal way of going about addressing social concerns is through the government or that those skeptical of the state’s ability or moral authority to do this are selfish cretins who hate the poor and destitute. In fact, I think that the use of force that the government depends upon is often responsible for creating and perpetuating their plight.
- The faith of a mustard seed and justice in the courts An amusing example of Christianese getting misappropriated in an inspirational context showed up in our office newsletter. One of these things is not like the other… What Makes a Dad...
- Creationism, education, and the state All right, here’s a rant for you. There’s a news story circulating about the well-known fact that homeschooling texts are ignoring or even (the audacity!) criticizing mainstream science in favor...
- Why Christian activism seems liberal Elsewhere I have blamed futurist eschatology for minimizing the Church’s call to focus on social issues and address the needs of the poor. But there are more causes than that...
View Comments Posted by Steve on Monday, July 12, 2010 at 1:17 pm.
Filed under Kingdom Living, government, Politics, social concern.
“God desperately wants an intimate relationship with you!”
Relax, I’m not going to spend the entire post bagging on this claim and those who make it. I will spend the greater part of this post explaining the problem that many Christians have with that statement, but you might be surprised where I end up — I certainly am.
Recently a friend pointed out how frustrated he was with this particular evangelical meme. I, too, have been annoyed by just such claims before. “Cerebral” Christians like myself are usually critical of those who simply trust what they think they know about God, since we have – not infrequently correctly – identified many of their beliefs as erroneous understandings that are sometimes counterproductive to the Christian mission. Surely no small part of the disgust that many feel toward those who typically speak of an “intimate relationship” with God issues from a sense that these evangelicals are stereotypically not as close to God as they seem to think they are: for these, daily prayer times, emotional worship services, and a commitment to avoiding “the world” seem to be the central components and hallmarks of a robust “relationship” with God, but this more often manifests as a general out-of-touch heaven-mindedness. In effect, it all sounds so make-believe, and a disappointing deficit of healthy fruit this type of “relationship” seems to produce bears that out.
Related posts:- I love “Historical Jesus” podcasts A fascinating discussion from two conservative evangelical scholars on the subject of the historical Jesus took place on last weekend’s episode of Unbelievable. Adam Bradford, defending his book The Jesus...
View Comments Posted by Steve on Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 3:56 pm.
Filed under Kingdom Living, Worship, Christian ethics, evangelicalism, George MacDonald, Gospels, Historical Jesus, Kingdom of God, New Testament, social concern.
This installment of “Theologically Interesting Lyrics” features a song by the late Mark Heard, master lyricist, connoisseur of several stringed instruments, and pariah to the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) industry of his time. Although widely acclaimed for his songwriting acumen, he was always an industry outsider: not only did he stand out as a “profane saint” who smoked, drank, and cussed, but because of his acute empathy for the outcasts of society and resulting social concerns, he even identified with the political left (whom he perceived to be more committed to those causes), setting him firmly at odds with mainstream evangelical culture. His lyrics are often melancholy, ironic, sarcastic, and rarely offer solutions.
Heard accused the Christian music industry of stifling the artists who strayed from the CCM norm of plastered smiles and facades of ethereal hope and who instead frequently deemed it necessary to use their lyrics to grapple with the problems of life and mourn the unfulfilled hopes that rightly plague us all, believers and unbelievers alike. On the last of over two dozen albums he released before his untimely death, he penned this song describing the plight of those artists like himself who felt exploited and whose not-always-pretty messages were essentially censored by what he considered to be a profit-seeking industry that held a seeming monopoly over Christian music.
Related posts:- Theologically interesting lyric #2: All This Time I embedded a video at the bottom so that you can hear this TIL while you read it. All This Time written and recorded by Sting on The Soul Cages I...
View Comments Posted by Steve on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 2:42 pm.
Filed under Kingdom Living, Music, Theologically Interesting Lyrics, CCM, evangelicalism, Mark Heard, social concern, TIL.
In a recent post I defended believers whose genuine compassion causes them to show concern about homosexuality among believers. Unfortunately, there is another common response to homosexuality, often accompanying and getting mistaken for the compassionate type, that I find much less defensible.
It’s apparent to most believers, at least intuitively if not deductively, that some sins are “worse” than others. Fudging the truth (lying, intentionally misleading, etc.) is not considered to be as bad as theft, theft is not as bad as murder, murder is not as bad as voting Democratic (a little joke there), etc. Even the many Christians who would support the idea that all sins carry equal weight before God as a result of their belief in His perfectionistic criterion admit that, in the temporal realm anyway, some sins carry greater consequences than others. Even in the Torah, the severity of the punishment often fluctuated according to the crime’s varying severity.
Related posts:- The lost art of humility: homosexuality and usury Most of the hullaballoo surrounding Knapp-gate seems to have blown over for the time being, but its implications and the probability of similar future incidents continue to grow. Undeniably, a...
- Defending/critiquing the homosexual lifestyle In the wake of the Jennifer Knapp story, I’ve had a chance to analyze the reactions of people on either side of debate. One of the things that’s bothered me most...
- Questions for evangelicals I’d like to address a question to a group that is, on the whole, unlikely to frequent my blog: those who would characterize themselves as conservative Christians. Whether you were brought up in...
View Comments Posted by Steve on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 9:04 am.
Filed under Homosexuality, evangelicalism, fundamentalism, Homosexuality, Jennifer Knapp, social concern.
Since childhood, my personality has been marked by an undercurrent of a haunting yearning sometimes referred to in its extreme forms as “melancholy”, very much like what C. S. Lewis called “joy”. I have always chalked it up to my Scottish heritage, but I imagine a lot of other ethnicities (I’m thinking particularly of Russians) can claim the same. I’m not prone to depression or anything, but I’ve always been attracted to haunting music, mystical stories — anything that might be referred to as sad beauty.
It’s something I’d love to stir up in whichever of my children are like me. To that end, when I tuck my children in each night, I’ve begun to complement “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” and “Seek Ye First” with some old Scottish folk songs/ballads I know, such as “Loch Lomond” (stay with me — this is going somewhere):
Related posts:- More on what NT faith is about Under the typical Protestant understanding of “faith” as “not doubting something that one believes without proof”, I as a young Protestant could never fathom why God would be so tickled...
- How do you know you’re in the faith? I think Paul gives us a somewhat unexpected answer in 2 Corinthians. I’ll return to the subject of this post after a (possibly irrelevant) discursus here. This morning in Sunday...
- Major revision to an earlier post A correction from a commenter shows that I was wrong in attributing the following quote to Eusebius, the Early Christian Father (ECF), in my post entitled: “Is full preterism a...
View Comments Posted by Steve on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 12:03 pm.
Filed under Theology, Abraham, agnosticism, atheism, C. S. Lewis, evangelicalism, Faith, fantasy, folk songs, fundamentalism, John Keats, negative capability, science fiction, social concern, systematic theology, The Fall, uncertainty.
My regulars know that I like podcasts, so I thought I’d give everyone a heads-up on a reboot of an old podcast (on which I once appeared) from LFAM.
The new version is called At the Well Radio. In this incarnation, the regular hosts are the podcast’s founder, a young Christian who’s traveled a path similar to my own, and a Canadian friend who self-identifies as agnostic.
The goal of this podcast is to help Christians and other seekers to navigate a “third way” between mainstream evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity and an absence of all faith in God, encouraging its audience to step back from unexamined dogmas and look at what — besides condemnation — our faith has to offer the world. By partnering with an agnostic, Travis is able to use this podcast to strip away the artificial barriers between those with faith and those without faith that unnecessarily exacerbate the Church’s isolation from our mission field (the world) which obstructs our accomplishment of anything useful in the world.
View Comments Posted by Steve on Monday, April 19, 2010 at 11:18 am.
Filed under Kingdom Living, agnosticism, evangelicalism, fundamentalism, LFAM, podcast, social concern.
I embedded a video at the bottom so that you can hear this TIL while you read it.
All This Time
written and recorded by Sting on The Soul Cages
I looked out across the river today
I saw a city in the fog and an old church tower where the seagulls play
I saw the sad shire horses walking home in the sodium light
Two priests on the ferry, October geese on a cold winter’s night
All this time, the river flowed
Endlessly to the sea
Two priests came round our house tonight
One young, one old, to offer prayers for the dying to serve the final rites
One to learn, one to teach which way the cold wind blows
Fussing and flapping in priestly black like a murder of crows
View Comments Posted by Steve on Monday, April 5, 2010 at 7:00 am.
Filed under Theologically Interesting Lyrics, Eschatology, Kingdom of God, social concern, TIL.
Under the typical Protestant understanding of “faith” as “not doubting something that one believes without proof”, I as a young Protestant could never fathom why God would be so tickled by us believing in what we had almost no evidence for. This question came home to me most clearly whenever I heard informal apologetics arguing that the reason God doesn’t just show Himself to us is that if He did, no faith would be necessary, and God really wants us to have faith. Obviously this is quite circular, akin to being asked, “Why do we have to have faith?” and answering, “Because faith is necessary.”
So when I found out in third-year Greek (undergrad) about a related discussion that had been going on in scholarly academic circles, I was intrigued. The main question was about the Pauline expression ek/dia pisteos iesou christou (e.g. Philippians 3.9), customarily, but probably inaccurately, translated as “faith in Jesus Christ”, whereas scholars such as Richard Hayes have argued for the reading “faith(fulness) of Jesus Christ”; I just posted my exploratory paper on this topic yesterday. As I described in another recent post, the Greek word that we translate as “faith” also carried the meaning faithfulness (notice that English uses the root “faith-” in both “faith” and “faithfulness” as well). In fact, there is no other word in NT Greek that translates as “faithfulness” as directly as pistis. So theoretically, whether Paul had meant to describe a concept more on the “faithfulness” side or on the “belief” side of pistis, or some hybrid of both “belief” and “faithfulness, he would have in all likelihood used the word pistis in any case. “Belief” and “faithfulness” are two very different English words and markedly different conceptually in our modern understanding, but the fact that the NT often uses them in their divergent semantics in places where the meaning is ambiguous suggests that pistis meant not either/or but indicated a concept closely related to both of them. After all, belief is in a sense a commitment to an idea, and I recognize this usage for “faith” and “believing” (Gk pist-euo) in the NT as well.
Related posts:- An (ancient) introduction to “faith in Christ” vs. “Christ’s faith” Originally inspired by this recent post by Doug Chaplin, I exhumed a paper I wrote in third year Greek while an undergrad (I estimate this to be c. 2000-2001). As...
- Defining faith in Hebrews 11.1 I have always thought that Hebrews 11.1 sounded beautiful, with a mystical air to it: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen....
- Campbell: what did Paul mean by “justified”? Here’s an excerpt from the first part of a review of a book I’ve been interested in since I first heard about it. It’s from the New Perspective school of...
View Comments Posted by Steve on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm.
Filed under New Perspective on Paul, Theology, Faith, Faithfulness, New Perspective on Paul, NPP, Paul, Pauline theology, pistis, Reformed, social concern, Theology.
On a cue from Philip Harland, I found this remarkable passage showing an example of the perception that some pagans entertained of mid-second century Christians. It’s not pretty:
[Cynics and Christians] divide and upset the household, and bring into collision those inside with each other, and tell them the worst ways to manage their household. They never say, find, or do anything socially productive. They do not participate in panegyrics (festal assemblies), nor worship the gods, nor help govern the cities, nor comfort the sorrowing, nor make reconciliation with those of opposing persuasions, nor arouse the young – or anyone else for that matter – to the affairs of the world.
–Aelius Aristides in The Defense of the Four, as cited by Frances Margaret Young in The theology of the pastoral letters, p. 17.
This was written by an orator who is associated mostly with Asia Minor but who was certainly well travelled. It’s difficult to say how widely his observations applied to Christian communities throughout the world at the time, or whether he was taking just a few bad apples and making gross overgeneralizations. I point it out because 1) much of what Aristides described then seems to correspond to various visible factions of Christianity today and because 2) to the consternation of a wide range of critics both ancient and modern, those commonalities are probably indicative of what a significant constituency of the early church thought was proper.
Related posts:- What the first century church really looked like Read 1 Cor 5.11-13 (below). The church usually focuses on the words I omitted in the “…” But what about the words I left in? Do we do what Paul...
- Not historic, orthodox Christianity Today Joel Watts posted a quote from one of the Early Church Fathers on the subject of the Eucharist (a.k.a. the Lord’s Supper or Communion): For not as common bread and...
- Levity as Leaven in Today’s Church Picture the children of old being taught by their elders the stories of their ancestors and the history of their faith. Imagine them with wide eyes as they absorbed and...
View Comments Posted by Steve on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 11:42 pm.
Filed under Eschatology, Biblical studies, ecclesiology, Eschatology, evangelicalism, First century church, fundamentalism, Hermeneutics, Preterism, social concern.
For those without access to YouTube, the relevant quote is, “[The people of Haiti] got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We’ll serve you if you get us free from the French.’ ”
Another black eye for Christianity.
View Comments Posted by Steve on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 4:18 pm.
Filed under General, Humor, Charismata, nonsense, Pat Robertson, social concern, Theology.
This story is certainly making the rounds around the blogosphere, but I can’t pass it up, particularly because I have some things to say about it I haven’t read elsewhere. I thought I’d link to one of the better reactions I read (be sure to read the whole thing):
An Associated Press story this weekend fetes Saddleback Church’s Rick Warren’s ability to raise 2.4 million dollars at his megachurch in an economy where many are suffering because of our national plague of greed.
via Money Driven Life « Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.
As someone else put it, “I’m curious if [Warren's] ‘hoi polloi’ could be galvanized to donate that much money in that little time to a worthy charity.”
Related posts:- Podcast recommendation: At the Well Radio My regulars know that I like podcasts, so I thought I’d give everyone a heads-up on a reboot of an old podcast (on which I once appeared) from LFAM. The...
- Evolution and evangel(ical)ism The poll in my sidebar asking Christians how important they considered the faith/science debate to be ran for four months as of yesterday. In that time, 99 votes were cast. Today...
- How true Christians live When the Church of Jesus When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door, Lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer: May our prayers, Lord, make us...
View Comments Posted by Steve on Monday, January 4, 2010 at 12:02 am.
Filed under Kingdom Living, evangelicalism, evangelism, fundamentalism, Kingdom of God, social concern, Theology.
Sometimes money makes the world go round — at least a few more revolutions for a few people.
Someone known only as “Anonymous Friend” has given $100 million dollars to the Erie Community Foundation. This organization “is a collection of charitable endowments operating under the administrative umbrella of a single public charity.” The anonymous donor apparently singled out fifty-one nonprofit groups to receive the money in various amounts, based on the donor’s perception of need.
Amazing what good can be done by one person Providentially supplied with money and with the will to give hilariously. I wonder if this donor is a Christian? I wonder if there are Christians with such means willing to give and make such necessary strides toward advancing the interests of the Kingdom.
View Comments Posted by Steve on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 12:23 am.
Filed under General, Kingdom Living, Theology, Eschatology, social concern.