Christmas: When Biology Meets Theology

It is Christmas, a time to remember the incarnation of Christ, when God came among us and demonstrated before our eyes to what good use these bodies we have could be put.

Pope John Paul II in his teaching on the theology of the body pointed out that it is in the incarnation of Christ that biology is taken up into theology, where the study of God includes the flesh. In our age, the current of popular opinion has been to continuously degrade the significance of our bodily existence. Our culture treats human existence as little more than an evolutionary accident, unborn children as little more than  'blob of flesh', and the body as a toy to play with for our own self-centered pleasure. It was this culture that the Pope hoped both to confront and to teach. On the first Christmas, as Christ entered a world dominated by a Roman empire both pagan and corrupt, it was not much different. His coming both confronted and taught the world, both in that time and ours, that He created these bodies of ours for better things, to reflect God's image in the world.

The apostle writes that He was 'the express image' of the Father. In his incarnation, we get to know God in a different way than in any other modes. The humility He expressed in taking on flesh to die on our behalf is in itself enormously humbling. The fact of the infinite taking on not just the finite but the form of a helpless babe is beyond my comprehension.

It is a somewhat academic question to ask, 'Which is the greatest miracle?' Yet to me the incarnation of Christ stands out. For the infinite Creator to take on flesh is as incomprehensible as the Trinity itself. It also makes possible the rest of his mission to redeem us, and confers upon our fleshly existence a dignity beyond what we could have imagined.

His Advent has shown us who He is, and also shown us who we are to be like.

Special before birth

The prelude to the Christmas story in Luke chronicles the birth of John the Baptist. John, like Jesus, was announced to his parents in advance of his conception by the archangel Gabriel, and was given his name at that time as well. This made him one of a very few in the Bible who would be named before birth.  Ishmael, Isaac, Solomon, Josiah, Maher-shalalhashbaz are agreed upon by most students of the Old Testament. Some say Moses, but that is not explicit in the text; some also say the emperor Cyrus, but that is a prophesy and not a naming event. Then in the New Testament we have John the Baptist and Jesus. Since name giving was a very important ceremony, a time in which the father essentially claimed the child as being his, this was a very special thing.

Even more special, though, was the fact that John is stated to have been filled with the Spirit before birth. (Luke 1:15). He also 'leaped for joy' in the womb when his mother heard the voice of Mary as she came to visit John's mother while carrying Jesus before his birth.

Several commentators have pointed out that this filling of the Spirit before birth is not something that happens to a 'blob of flesh', or an organ. It is a strong argument that the Scripture considers the unborn child a person, with the distinctive characteristics needed to be filled with the Spirit of God as a separate person from his mother. Our pastor brought this out in his sermon last week about John, and it does seem to me to support the dignity of the unborn child in a very unique way.

As we celebrate Christmas and the birth of the Christ child, it seems a good time to think about the dignity of every child, even before they are born.

A Blessed Thanksgiving

At Thanksgiving we pause to give thanks for the many blessings we have as well as feasting to enjoy those blessings. This makes it a good time to think about what it means to be ‘blessed’. We have recently been studying the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 on Sunday mornings, which begins with some unusual ‘blessings’: we are said to be blessed if we are poor in spirit, or meek, or merciful, or if we mourn, or are pure in heart.   These are not the kinds of blessings we are usually giving thanks for.  We say we are blessed when we are prosperous, have a good job, have good health, and have well behaved children.  Certainly those are things we desire but they are focused on our own comfort more than our character or ministry to others.

Some translations of the Bible replace the word ‘blessed’ with ‘happy’.   I think this misses the point completely. The passage is not about being happy. It is about having the right kind of character and about spiritual well-being. While the Greek word used in the text can be translated ‘happy’, Jesus was Jewish and the idea of ‘blessed’ is not a Greek idea: it is a Jewish concept. ‘Baruch’ is the Hebrew term that goes with the idea, and it is the start of many Jewish prayers and appears hundreds of times in the Old Testament. Jesus is talking about an old Jewish idea, baruch, and that is the idea we must understand in order to understand the Sermon on the Mount.  Matthew is simply seeking to translate that Jewish concept into Greek.

The Jewish people were the ‘elect’ and that was a great blessing. They were blessed. Yet, that very blessing made them accountable in a special way and also led to suffering. Similarly, when Mary took Jesus to the temple for His dedication, she was blessed by Simeon (see Luke 2). That blessing involves Simeon praising God for having lived to see the Messiah but also the blessing he gives includes telling Mary that ‘a sword shall pierce your own soul also’.  The blessing included suffering. This is a different idea from ‘happy’.  Using ‘happy’ in the Beatitudes instead of ‘blessed’ strikes me as a case of what C.S. Lewis called ‘verbicide’: killing the meaning in the word.

The Biblical idea of blessing has to do with being put in a special position, a position of special favor but also special responsibility. The eldest son typically received a special blessing from the father before the father died to pass on the inheritance, but with that blessing came responsibility to care for the extended family. At this Thanksgiving, it is easy for us in America to focus on our material well-being due to the economic difficulties,  though our spiritual health is suspect.  As a nation, we have special responsibilities to use our blessings for good and not just for our comfort.  Let us be thankful for the opportunity to do good with the abundance God has given.

Jobs versus jobs

The celebration of Steve Jobs continues, and today's USA Today had yet another opinion piece on his greatness. As with many prior articles that have appeared in various publications since his death, this one once again quotes from the Stanford graduation speech he gave a few years ago, which is excerpted here:

• "The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it," he told students at Stanford in a commencement speech in 2005."
• "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. … Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Today's article attributed this insight to his Buddhism and the manner in which Buddhism views death. Since he seems to have embraced Buddhism, it no doubt impacted his view of the world and of life. I do have some issues with this point of view, however.

First,  Jobs' take on this is very modern, if not post-modern. He assumes that to do meaningful work requires loving that work. Unfortunately, for most of history the vast majority of people have had very little choice in their work. Constraints of education, poverty, tyrants, war, and culture have pushed most people into their work, most often just to provide the basic necessities of food and shelter. Jobs' philosophy reflects our very spoiled and privileged time and location in history, and when taken to its logical conclusion it would say that most work is not meaningful and that most people lived meaningless lives. That is quite opposite to what Christianity implies, which is that all work (assuming it is ethical and honest) can be done as an offering to God with inherent value and meaning, and all lives have inherent meaning.  If circumstances consign us to menial labor, that job can still be offered to God and provide satisfaction in doing it well. (see Eccles.2:24-25). Having choice is a great privilege and luxury, but it is not what determines meaning.

Second, Jobs' philosophy is quite counter to Christ's teaching that 'to find your life you must lose it'. Jobs' emphasis seems to be on looking inside yourself to focus on what pleases you, to find what provides 'self-fulfillment'. Christ, on the other hand, taught that we must look to God and please Him, and then whatever we do will be meaningful. The one is very self-centered, the other very God-centered.

The fundamental difference, to me, seems to be why we work: do we work to please and fulfill ourselves, or do we work to glorify God? To work in order to glorify God is certainly not to 'waste your life', as Jobs said, but it is very much like 'living someone else's life', though the 'someone else' is really the 'Someone Else'.

The Death of the Pied Piper

Steve Jobs has died. The outpouring of grief at his passing reminds me of when Princess Diana died. At this point I really should not be surprised at the cult of celebrity in our world. The current trial of Michael Jackson's personal physician has put another celebrity life into the news every day, and whenever a famous celebrity dies, such as when Liz Taylor died a few months ago, it seems to me that the media attention far exceeds the newsworthiness of the event. Despite this ongoing attention to celebrities, I still find myself at times surprised at the seemingly religious adoration that a few of them receive when they die. Princess Diana was one of those, and so is Jobs.

I found little in Jobs to admire. Clearly he was successful in business. He was also ruthless, angry, compulsively driven, and notorious for cheating his partner Wozniak in the early days. The success of the products from Apple since 2000 is unquestionable, but before his second stint at Apple the story was mostly about what might have been had he not been so stubborn, which allowed Windows(r) to dominate the 90's. He did seem to learn from his early mistakes the second time around, which resulted in much greater business success. His success as a human being seems much more in question to me.
Christianity Today recently observed in an article titled 'The Gospel of Steve Jobs' that he did preach a certain gospel. (here is a link to that article: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/januaryweb-only/gospelstevejobs.html ) His gospel is best summed up in his Stanford graduation address of a few years ago, which is quoted in the article and has been quoted endlessly in the news media the past few days. That gospel is to live your own life, don't be 'trapped by dogma',  be your own god. It is a purely secular gospel, as Christianity Today points out, and is all about self-fulfillment. In a culture that preaches that we should be our own god, even the secular long for someone to put on a pedestal for adoration.

Don't get me wrong: I take no joy at his passing. I like my iPhone, too. I just marvel at how much our culture longs for someone to idolize, and how very vividly that shows up at the death of a celebrity who has some sort of 'gospel' that he promotes. Even when his personal character is such that you would never want your children to grow up to be like him.

One Flesh

"So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. "So says Genesis in 1:26-28 about the creation of mankind. It is an interesting text in that it says God created man (singular) by creating both male and female, obviously not singular. Yet this is consistent with the later passage in Gen. 2:24 that they would be 'one flesh'. In other words, it takes both male and female to make one 'man'.  This, we are told in the 1:26-28 passage is at least part of what is meant by being made 'in the image of God'.

We had special services at our church yesterday on the topic of marriage. Last week was also related to this in addressing the idea of homosexual marriage. In the sermon last week it was pointed out that marriage does not exist primarily to make us happy. While happiness is generally a good thing, it is not the highest good. Marriage exists primarily to make us more like Christ. It also is an institution in which we live out the image of God, by which we demonstrate something about what it means to be created in God's image.  It often yields happiness, but not always. Happiness is not it's primary object. As Christians, we see God as Trinity and therefore in an intimate and loving relationship among the Trinity, who are One. Marriage gives us a limited image of that union in marriage and the family, and gives us reason to look forward to that fuller union with Christ in heaven, as Paul describes the union of Christ and the Church. In marriage we learn to imitate Christ in putting at least one other (our spouse) ahead of ourselves, and usually more than just one other when children are born into the marriage. So to be more like Christ, and to live out the image of God in this world seem to me to be the primary goals for marriage. Both of those involve the idea of completeness.

Our culture, including in the church, generally doesn't view it that way, though. Most folks seem to think that the purpose of marriage is to make them happy. For some, it is to obtain financial security. For some, to obtain companionship. But it seems to me that all of these are self-centered, are subsets of 'happy', and none capture the essence of the Genesis passage about how it requires 2 to make 1. I think the gist of that is that the purpose of marriage is to make us complete. Male and female are both incomplete, and require each other to make one 'man' or 'one flesh'. Completeness is also our ultimate goal in Christ (see Col. 2:10), and Christian marriage moves us in that direction. Paul also points out that singleness that pursues a life more devoted to Christ can also move us in that direction of Christ-likeness, though marriage is the norm for most people.

If we as Christians proclaim the purpose of  marriage to be the pursuit of happiness, financial security, companionship,  or sexual fulfillment, and all of these are common, then our marriages are not different from non-Christians or from gays. But gay marriage cannot offer the completeness for which male and female were created as one male/female complementary union; nor can it share the image of God that requires the male/female combination that includes procreation as an image of God's creation. I think by focusing on happiness we have, within the Church, undermined marriage.

I read last week that the average age of marriage has increased still more since the current recession began, up to about 29 now. The same article said something like 40% of those 25-35 have not married. I must admit some concern about marriage in our culture, especially in the Church. Marriage seems to be less compelling for men and women yet more compelling to homosexuals. I wonder if part of that is because we have lost the vision of its purpose being completeness and  have replaced it with the idea that marriage is just one way among many to pursue happiness.

The Cathedral of Liberty

We just returned from Washington, D.C., and I am always struck by the national symbols in our capital city. Having been there several times before, on this visit we went to visit things we had not visited in prior trips, including the World War 2 memorial, the Native American museum, and the National Portrait Gallery. The WW2 memorial visit caused me to reflect not only on the service of so many of our countrymen in that vast conflict  but especially of my dad who served in Europe from Normandy to Berlin, earning 5 battle stars and a Purple Heart along the way. The Native American museum has some interesting exhibits on the 3rd floor but overall was disappointing in its exhibits. I had hoped for more about key leaders of the various tribes and what they did to contribute to who the tribes are today. The National Portrait Gallery was spectacular and will be worth another visit. All of the U.S. Presidents have portraits on display along with many other notable Americans from throughout our history.

The layout of the National Mall again reminded me of a cathedral, which I am sure was intended. Consider this photo from Wikipedia showing the 1901 McMillan plan for the Mall:

If it were not labeled 'The Mall', you might think it was the floor plan of a cathedral. Notice that the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial was intended to be in the shape of a cross, though it was not finally built that way. The entire design is also in the shape of a cross, just like a cathedral.  As in other cathedrals, as a nation we go there to honor and mourn our dead, to reflect on things that are true, to give thanks for the liberty we have. As I have pondered the words of Lincoln's second inaugural address, carved into the wall of the Lincoln Memorial, I have been moved to tears as he reflected on God's judgement of our nation for the evil of slavery. On this trip I had to wonder what additional judgements may come from our current pursuit of the slavery that results from the idolatry of self-actualization and the autonomous self which has resulted in widespread abortion, pornography, homosexuality, and greed.

The Mall always make me think of a cathedral. We don't hear much about its resemblance to a cathedral nowadays, but I think it was intended that way, as a sort of cathedral of liberty. It reminds me of our blessings, the sacrifice it took to obtain those blessings, and the needed repentance to maintain them in an honorable way.

Polygamy and the Current State of Marriage

The current issue of First Things magazine points out how polygamy seems to be less objectionable to some folks nowadays, what with the TV shows about polygamy and all. It is obvious that once society becomes accepting of dysfunction like homosexuality, polygamy is the next obvious step. The same issue has an editorial piece about how the current underclass is characterized not only by economic poverty but also by impoverished values. That editorial bemoans the editor's frustation with his liberal friends who seem to only be able to see the economic poverty but cannot see the moral and cultural deficits in the underclass that keep them in their poverty even when they are given the opportunity to get out.

It was striking to me, in reading both the article about moral poverty and the comments about polygamy in a separate article, how both polygamy and the absence of marriage that exists in the American underclass result in many of the same ills. One key point about polygamy really should be obvious upon slight reflection: when a significant number of men have multiple wives, another significant number cannot have wives. One huge problem with polygamy is that it creates an underclass of men who are not able to marry and they of course tend to be those who are less desirable in the first place. Something has to be done with them. They have to be driven out of the community, or killed off in wars, or made eunuchs (like in Biblical times) or something. When they are not dealt with, they tend to take up high risk behaviors to get access to women, like aggression or murder or drunkenness or seeking out prostitutes. As a result, polygamous societies have a permanent underclass of unmarriageable men, with high rates of violence and crime. Meanwhile the women in polygamous marriages get less respect, more abuse, have more children, and end up raising children mostly alone since the father is spread among multiple 'families'. And, yes, homosexuality is a problem, too.

It is striking to me how similar these results are to what we currently see in American low income society where marriage and the family is in crisis, where 70% of the children are born out of wedlock. There we also see a permanent underclass of men who are pretty much unmarriageable due to their high risk behavior, criminality, and lack of education,where women are often abused, where the children are brought up predominantly by women. Homosexuality is also on the rise.

Similarly, in China and India where the one child policy led to selective abortion of unborn girls, there is much concern over the rising generation of men who will not be able to marry due to lack of women as a result of abortion. While the circumstance causing the shortage is different than in polygamy and in America, the expectation and concern is similar for the resulting high risk behavior as men seek to gain access to women: there is great concern that China and India will become violent as this generation of men without wives comes of age.

So in our current world, we have 3 examples of quite different ways to create dysfunction in the basic family structure, but all have similar negative consequences in terms of creating men who are unmarriageable and who will almost certainly engage in destructive behavior.

It is remarkable how fundamental the basic one man/one woman family is to society at large, and how it's demise, no matter how that demise is created, wreaks that same kinds of havoc.

The Royal Wedding

Just before the sudden killing of Bin Laden all the news was about the marriage of the British heir to the throne and his commoner bride. They certainly gave the appearance of a fairy-tale couple, he the prince charming and she the beautiful princess.  While everyone knew that they had been living together for about 8 years already, the world just overlooked that as if it simply didn't matter. All the focus was on the fairy tale of the lovely couple who would live happily ever after.

To some degree I can understand why such fanfare was expected for a public personage like the heir to the British throne, as it would not look good to become king with a common law marriage. The laws around common law marriage have been changing as co-habitation has become more common, but when I was growing up in Ohio, the law was that after 7 years of co-habitation you were considered married for purposes of estate, health care, children and property rights. As far as I am concerned, the royal couple was already married, whether they admitted it or not. While it would be unseemly to talk about 'William and his common-law wife, Kate' when talking about the royal family, that was in fact the reality. What I do not understand is why the church would pretend otherwise in conducting a church wedding for them.

Back in the early 80's one of the shift supervisors at the paper mill where I worked was living with a woman and he was contemplating getting officially married. This was to be his fourth marriage, but he said he 'of course' wanted a church wedding. I asked him why. He did not attend church regularly and was not sure he believed in God. So then why, I asked, would he want a church wedding since he clearly was not part of the church? Well, it just seemed like the right way to have a wedding to him. It was the way you did it.

I recently read The Shadow of Almighty by Elizabeth Elliot, which is about the life of Jim Elliot, her martyred husband. Back in 1953 he complained that 'Twentiety century Christian weddings are the vainest, most meaningless forms. There is no vestige of reality.' He and Elizabeth were married in a civil ceremony in Quito, with 2 other missionary couples present as witnesses. Very simple. He simply couldn't abide the vain events that weddings had become. It has gotten worse since then.

The wedding ceremony is loaded with symbolism, most of it made a mockery in the recent royal wedding. The white dress represents the purity and virginity of the bride which was clearly not the case; the giving away by the father of bride shows that she is leaving his house to dwell now with the groom, obviously no longer appropriate; the vows are made before God to obey God, but His commands about fornication had long since been flagrantly discarded. The entire event made a mockery of what a Christian wedding should be, just like it would have been for my co-worker in Ohio back in the 1980's, but that is pretty much the norm today. 

It was a lovely event. They make a lovely couple. And it was all meaningless. I hope their marriage proves to be more meaningful than their wedding.

Easter Reflections

I have commented in the past on how much I love the Christmas season. It is easy to delight in the joy of the season, the festivities, the anticipation of the children, but also to be awed at the thought of the Creator taking on flesh to dwell among us. This Incarnation is such an enormous miracle, so unheard of in other religions that the infinite God would humble Himself to walk among us, that it makes the entire season one of unalloyed joy.

Many argue that Easter is the greater holiday, though. It is certainly clear that the Resurrection is the linchpin of Christianity. As the apostle Paul says, if Christ is not raised then we are yet in our sins and without hope in the world. And yet its joy is not unalloyed. That is the result, of course, of the great sorrow of Good Friday. At Easter, as at no other time of the year, we are confronted with the enormous ugliness of our own sinfulness. The crown of thorns, the merciless beating, the horrific death on the cross of Calvary all show us in a scene too horrible to look at the ugliness of our sin. When I have watched Mel Gibson's  movie The Passion of the Christ, I have to look away during the scourging. It is depicted very accurately in historical terms, and I cannot watch it. It is too painful to watch, especially when I know all too well why it happened.

There were hints of this at the Passover. When Israel was delivered from Egypt, the Jews would also have had their firstborn taken by the death angel had they not sacrificed the Passover lamb; they too were guilty enough to die. A substitute was needed. Even as God was delivering them His justice required recognition of the fact that they, too, were worthy of death. When Jesus re-interpreted the Passover at the Last Supper He made that connection more clear; He would be the substitute, for the Jews and all mankind. He became the Passover for all of us. So whenever we take the Lord's Supper we celebrate a new kind of Passover.

But that sacrifice is always in view, at least for me, at Easter. I did not want to see Mel Gibson's movie, but I forced myself to see it. When I have attended Passion plays, I have forced myself to go. I know what I am going to be confronted with, and it is ugly: my own sinfulness.

I think we could do better on Easter morning, or at least I could. I have a hard time shaking off Good Friday. I think the women at the grave and the Disciples did, too. 'Where have they taken His body?' they asked. But He was not there. ' He is Risen!' replied the angel. He is risen indeed! Let us rejoice, for the ugliness now has been dealt with.

Completely Inclusive?

In his book The Reason for God, Timothy Keller addresses one chapter to the accusation that Christianity is a straitjacket that robs people of the right to think for themselves and forces one set of values on everyone else. In the chapter he discusses the idea of truth and the issue of making a claim that a proposition or set of propositions is the truth. He points out that our Supreme Court has defined freedom as the right to define our own concept of truth; he also points out how people like Freud, Nietzsche and Foucault claimed that all truth-claims were just power-plays, seeking to control us while not noticing that they themselves were also making a truth-claim. All of this leads to an untenable position among modernists: they claim to have the truth while also claiming there is no truth. This led Chesterton to point out that modern rebels are total skeptics, never trusting anyone and denouncing anything that claims to contain 'truth'. The result is that such a rebel can never be a true revolutionary, because to be a revolutionary is to reform the status quo with a better system: and to be 'better' implies a moral doctrine of some kind, a claim to be 'true' in a more fundamental way. So modern rebels are truly, like the book title, rebels without a cause.

All of this leads Keller to conclude that no community can be totally inclusive. Every community has to have a set of moral constraints that hold it together which it considers true; it cannot tolerate those who ignore those constraints. Our system in the U.S. requires some basic beliefs about property rights, rule of law, freedom of speech, and so on that will not allow stealing,  killing our children for changing religion, and other things. We cannot be inclusive of those who will not live within those boundaries. This calls into question the fallacious idea of a growing part of our society who seem to think that it is possible to be totally inclusive; that somehow we should tolerate most anything, failing to see where that could lead us in the long run.

This also raises questions about how we act in the broader world. Keller comments that 'every account of justice and reason is embedded in a set of some particular beliefs about the meaning of human life that is not shared with everyone'.  A couple of weeks ago a nut-case in Florida burned a copy of the Quran; the radical Islamists in Afghanistan responded by killing a number of people in Afghanistan, both U.N. staff and some Afghans as well. Karzai, the ne'er-do-well head of the government, used the burning to incite the trouble, making no effort to calm it. While I think we were fully justified to depose the Taliban after 9/11 by evicting them from Afghanistan, it is fairly clear that the 'set of particular beliefs about the meaning of human life' there is far from ours. Should we be fighting for them? My feeling is that we need to limit our goals in the Islamic world to only matters that clearly involve our own security and interests. Their underlying values are not something I wish to defend. I think we had a legitimate interest in deposing the Taliban in the wake of 9/11; it is much less clear that the popularly elected regime there now is worthy of our support.

Defining Yourself

The  March 28 issue of Newsweek includes an article by one Roz Savage about how divorcing her husband and quitting her job to row across the ocean transformed her life of mundane existence into a life of meaning and value. I was amazed. It was all I could do to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. I have read some incredibly shallow and self-centered things in my life but this has to be near the top of the list for the 'most self-centered' award.

I hope there is more to her story than meets the eye in this one page article. Her brief recounting of how she graduated from Oxford, became an investment banker, got married, and found herself in a meaningless existence is not by itself surprising. I have a low view of the investment banking community anyway. Careers that have more value to the world than that are plentiful, so she could easily have changed career path to something more useful. What the issues were in her marriage are not stated, but she barely mentions the marriage as if it were little more than a trifle. She seems to indicate that the only reason she wanted out of the marriage was to avoid the risk of being defined as a wife. One has to wonder why she married in the first place. She clearly was making lots of life decisions without much reason for any of them.

What amazed me most, though, was that she viewed rowing across the ocean as a more valuable investment of her life than things like marriage and contributing to society. What she wanted was a life 'filled with spectacular successes and failures' and to define herself by whatever was left when she got rid of anything else that might be connected to her, things like a job and a husband. She clearly sees the ultimate value in life to be defining herself; never let her be defined by something outside herself, like maybe her Creator. God forbid. So having now found found her true self, she 'thanks her lucky stars' since she would certainly never be caught thanking God.

How strange. I hope she lives through her 'spectacular failures' long enough to understand how truly impoverished her self-defined values really are.

Book Learnin' for business and church

The new April issue of Harvard Business Review is all about learning from failure in business, and how most businesses really don't. There is much to be learned from things like failed product launches and failed new business launches, but most often the pain of learning from them makes us hesitant to do the self-assessment that is required to learn from it. At the end of this issue is an editorial piece about an attempt to publish a book about an entrepreneurial business failure. The publisher commented to the author, 'All the evidence suggests that business books are not in fact about learning, but about escapism, just like a romance novel. The business book is about imagining yourself a success, not making yourself a success through learning from failure.'  I had not thought of it quite that way, but that is one reason I read few business books: I try to carefully pick the ones that have a lot of analysis and learning involved (The Innovator's Solution is especially good, by the way) since I find most of them very superficial. In the case of failures, experience seems to be more the norm than 'book learnin', as my grandfather would say.

I think that is true of many popular Christian books as well, so they need to be selected carefully. Much of the popular press is superficial. C. S. Lewis said he tended to focus on books that had already stood the test of time. It is interesting how often we rehash the same issues over the centuries. The current debate about Rob Bell's latest book and his tendency toward 'universalism' is a recent example (in my opinion he has always had a rather post-modern point of view in which his concept of 'truth' is very mushy) where a rather shallow look is taken at an issue that has been debated in great depth through the centuries of the church (here is a link to an interesting overview of that history from a 2001 issue of First Things from the Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus who leans toward Bell's view but recognizes that universalism can never be doctrine and points out the history: 
//www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/will-all-be-saved-30  He too caught much flak for this position though he makes clear the limits of his own hopes. This review of Bell's book in the online Christianity Today is very even handed and points out Bell's distortion of history:  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/april/lovewins.html?start=2 ). In a great many Christian books, the writer doesn't  argue with himself enough, failing to bring up and discuss opposing points of view in a way that seeks to learn rather than to dismiss. We all tend to do that in conversation, but one of the purposes of writing is to be rather more thoughtful and complete than we are in everyday conversation. Another is to confront things like our failures that are too painful to confront in everyday conversation.

So I think there is much to be gained from 'book learnin'; but I agree with Lewis that those that have stood the test of time deserve priority.  With newer books we should make sure they have made the effort not to re-invent what the church has already learned through the centuries.

Are all Christians Missionaries?

Having just had our annual missions conference at church, we were once again challenged to consider our individual roles in carrying out the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. Those were Christ's parting instructions when He ascended, and so they are taken seriously. We are told by some that all believers are called to be missionaries and personally fulfill this commission.

This is on the surface an appealing sentiment, I think 'sentiment' is exactly right. I agree with what I think is the spirit of the comment that 'we are all missionaries', but I think it is a sentimental approach that doesn't do justice to the reality of missions.

Back in 1979 I had the opportunity to sit in a class on missions under Dr.Herbert Kane at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS). This sentiment was already on the rise at that time, and he addressed it both in class and in his book Understanding Christian Missions. He had served as a missionary in China for 15 years himself before the Communists evicted all the missionaries.  He agrees that all believers are needed to be fully engaged in the missions effort, but not all are 'missionaries'. He defines 'missionaries' as those who serve full time in ministry of the Word and prayer (as spelled out in Acts for the apostles), who have crossed geographical and cultural boundaries to spread the gospel in areas where it is mostly unknown.
I generally prefer a simpler version: those who spread the gospel across cultural boundaries/barriers.

Many don't like these kinds of definitions. They feel that they create artificial distinctions among believers, separating secular work from the sacred. I disagree. Kane goes on to give what I think is a good illustration from World War 2. All of America was involved in the war effort. Everyone was needed for the war effort, and everyone experienced rationing, many sent their sons to war, many left the farm to work in munitions and equipment factories, many volunteered in the USO and bond drives and other volunteer efforts, many experienced hardships on the home front. But only those in uniform were soldiers. It was still clear that civilians were not soldiers, no matter how committed and involved. Kane suggests that it is the same in spiritual warfare. Many are highly involved and committed, but those who go across geographical and cultural boundaries full time are the 'soldiers'.  I think he is right.

To say we are all 'missionaries' strikes me as making the word itself meaningless. We are saying that missionaries are no different than 'witnesses'. This kind of  dumbing-down of our language is very much like what the secular world is doing to 'family' and 'marriage',  reaching for a lowest-common-denominator approach to these words. We should not be doing that in the church. We devalue those who are missionaries this way, just as the secular world has devalued marriage and family. We should be more careful with our words: they really do have meaning.

Visions and Dreams

We had our annual missions conference at our church during the last few days and I had a chance to hear some reports on work in countries that have majority Muslim populations. The most dramatic of those accounts was in a large meeting where a number of missionaries were making short comments about recent events in their area, and one talked about the murder of a local Christian pastor by a large mob after which a large number of those in the mob all had the same dream in which God showed them the blood they had on their hands but told them someone would come to tell them how they could get the blood off their hands; in a few days, a new preacher came and this large group became Christians.

On Saturday evening, we had a pot-luck supper with another missionary from a different area in the Middle East. We asked him about his experience in Islamic countries regarding visions and dreams, and he replied that until recently every one of those he had met who converted from Islam had done so as a result of a dream or vision. However, recently the arrival of the Internet and satellite television has allowed people in Islamic countries to hear the gospel in other ways so now, especially in Egypt, many have become Christians as a result of hearing the gospel through those media.

It is striking to me that these accounts, and others I have heard in the past from Islamic countries, are so very similar to the Biblical accounts of dreams to Jacob, Joseph (in Genesis), Joseph (in the gospels, telling him to marry Mary), Peter in Acts, and others. Those accounts seem so foreign and melodramatic in our western culture, but are so very current in the East and in Africa. Certainly those biblical accounts must seem more real to them than they do to us. It makes me wonder what else in the Scriptures are we out of touch with?

Why America confuses Europe

The most recent issue of First Things includes an article that begins with 2 reflections on his past by the author. In the first he recalls asking a German friend in grad school what she found most remarkable about the U.S.. She replied with a story about an evangelical women telling her about her prayer journal. The prayer journal alone would be most unusual for a German, but she kept it on a very advanced home computer. This combination of piety and technology struck the German woman as troubling and at odds with what she thought the modern world should be. Piety was out of place with the modern, technological world. The second reflection was from an academic conference at which a Scandanavian woman spoke on the American interplay of religion and politics. Educated Europeans, she pronounced, understood that Freud was right, that religion is childish illusion and a form of neurosis.

We were recently visited by our friends the Conrads who have lived in Germany with Campus Crusade for the last 30+ years. I asked Duane to have a look at this article and whether he thought it was correct, based on his experience. He agreed: the American view that Christianity is compatible with both democracy and modernity is completely baffling to Europeans.

The article then revisits European history regarding how complete the rejection of Christianity was, from the French Revolution onward. He points out that in France, they even wrote a new revolutionary catechism to emphasize this, which included things like this:

• Question:What is baptism?
• Answer: It is the regeneration of the French begun on 14July1789 and soon supported by the whole French nation.
• Question: What is communion?
• Answer: It is the association proposed to all peoples by the French Republic henceforth to form on earth only one family of brothers who no longer recognize or worship any idol or tyrant.

This catechism no doubt went along with the new role of the cathedral of Notre Dame as a 'cathedral of reason' in which the church had been thrown out. They felt obligated not to just leave the church, but in fact to attempt to completely redefine its terms and its places.

As an American the experience of religion being completely free from any direction or coercion from the government is something I take for granted, but it is in fact quite exceptional. In Europe, the old monarchies were so allied with the organized church, with the church often playing the role of king-maker, the church was both identified with tyrants and in fact supported tyrants. In America the church has been free to hold the government accountable morally. In Europe, they were partners with the government and did not, could  not, hold it accountable for its tyranny. Now, having lost all moral authority, they also cannot hold the culture morally accountable as it has collapsed into depravity. The quest in Europe is for the church to re-gain some moral authority.

It seems to me that the issue in the U.S. is for the church to keep its moral authority. The church must be the voice that holds our culture accountable morally, including the government but not only the government. That is one reason we must call out the immorality of our culture, whether it is abortion, homosexuality, adultery, pornography, or whatever. If the church does not stand as the voice of morality, holding  both the government and the culture accountable, then no one will. No one else can. To speak with moral authority requires a life of moral excellence. Somehow we often lose sight of that in this very free nation, where our faith seems to be just one more consumer good.  The morality of the church is not just a consumerist choice, or just optional. While the church is never free from sinful behavior, it is still held to a higher standard than those who reject the very idea of morality, as Europe has done.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the Islamic world. In places like Iran, the monarchy was overthrown and replaced by a religious tyranny, one tyrant exchanged for another. Will Islam also become viewed as incompatible with freedom, as the church was in Europe? 

An Evening with Os Guinness

Last week our church had Os Guinness speak and do a question/answer session. He is an interesting guy. His great-great-great grandfather founded the Guinness brewery in the U.K.; both his parents were medical missionaries in China, and he was born in China around the end of WW2. He was sent out of the country during the communist revolution while his parents were under arrest for 3 years, during which time they committed to memory about 75% of the Bible. He has a doctorate in social science from Oxford and has been in the U.S. for much of his adult life, working variously as a BBC reporter, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and now running Trinity Forum. As a young man he spent 3 years at L'Abri with Francis Schaeffer, and his concern about culture and the life of the mind reminds me much of Schaeffer. He has written about 25 books, the most recent of which is about true civility.

It was an affirmation to me to hear him say that civility in America is bad but has been worse, specifically during the Jefferson/Adams presidential race and the entire early 1800's, really until the civil war. I agree...these are very partisan times, but not as bad as those days. He refers to civility as a 'republican' virtue, one that is vital to a healthy republic and for responsible citizenship. The lack of education on what it means to be a responsible citizen is one of his concerns. More importantly, he sees the culture as post-modern and thus the entire Western world must be re-Christianized. We must re-win the West, as it was won when the Goths, Vandals, Celts, Vikings, etc were Christianized centuries ago.

Unfortunately, he sees the modern church becoming post-modern just as post-modernism is being abandoned in the secular academy. He is Anglican in background and admits that the American Episcopal church must now be abandoned since it has abandoned the truth. Similarly, he sees the 'emerging church' and folks like Brian McClaren as also embracing post-modernism and also abandoning the truth. It seems he has debated this topic with McClaren publicly. I agree that the emerging church is soft on the very concept of truth. Interestingly, he also feels that much of the church is focused on some of the wrong things in this matter of truth. He mentioned 14 evangelical believers he knows at Oxford in the area of physics, all of whom he considers strong evangelicals who have no concerns about the science of an old earth
and evolution. He sees those as matters of science that do not contradict scripture and should be settled by believing scientists. His concerns are things like the fact that there are no evangelical journals about serious cultural issues (I think FIRST THINGS is that kind of journal but it comes from a conservative Catholic perspective generally; it has no evangelical equal). There is no evangelical university with graduate programs that are competitive with the better secular or Catholic schools, either. His book FIT BODIES, FAT MINDS deals with these things.  Christian education in general, both home schools and private schools, generally do well to equal the public schools in the area where they are found. Since the whole nations seems to agree that public education is not up to snuff, just keeping up with them is certainly not providing a better option, at least not for content though it may be better in terms of the environment for the child.

As I look around at the church today, I agree with Os that we in the evangelical world continue to be behind the curve on matters of the mind. We do better than the liberal church or the Catholic church on evangelism and relief missions; we do worse on matters of the mind.  Some, like the emerging church, who claim to be evangelical are now waffling on the very idea of 'truth'. If we are to re-win the West we will need to establish that there is such a thing as the Christian Mind.

Two Things I Cannot Do Without

I recently finished the book American Lion by Jon Meacham, a biography of Andrew Jackson that is focused on his years in the White House. At one point in his second term in office, Jackson was enduring a bout of poor health, which was a recurring issue in his life. He was encouraging the doctor to be straight with him, to tell him clearly what action he needed to take. He was a strong willed man and he considered himself fully able to do whatever was necessary. He did put one limit on the doctor, however. He told the doctor that there were 2 things he could not do without: coffee and tobacco!

I laughed out loud when I read that, though I am sure the doctor did not! In my case I would say the two things are coffee and chocolate! That little vignette gives a key insight into the man in a few words, though. He was in many ways the quintessential American, a self-made man. He had been orphaned during the Revolution and had made his way in the world through sheer willpower and force of personality. He was both stubborn and self-reliant to a fault, which resulted in a great many fights and duels along the way. The fact that he survived long enough to be President is a marvel in itself.

Like many 'self-made' men, he came to see his view as the only right view. You were either for him or against him. If you were against him, he could be severe and haughty; if you were in his inner circle, no one was more loyal and caring than Jackson to you. As a result, his life was an ongoing battle. He was not a man convinced by reason and argument; once he decided, he doggedly pursued his goal no matter if he was shown to be incorrect. As a result, he accomplished a lot, though some of those things were right and some were wrong.

I began the book with a low opinion of Jackson. He had forced the eastern American Indians onto the Trail of Tears for no good reason, destroyed the national bank creating economic problems for the country for several generations, and defended slavery. I leave the book with a much greater appreciation for his humanity and his contributions to the Union in fighting off the early attempts of South Carolina to secede, and in his being the first President to use the veto to confront and lead a belligerent Congress. His legacy is mixed. In reading the book, though, it also became clear that bitter and extremely partisan politics is nothing new in our country. The battles that went on in his time and continued through the Civil War appear even worse than today. And the violence we recently saw in Tucson is also nothing new: Jackson was nearly assassinated himself, but the gunman's pistol's both failed to fire.

He strikes me as quintessentially American in another way. He would have viewed himself as a Christian throughout his life, and his beloved Rachel encouraged him to follow the Lord with her dying words as he entered his first term in office. Yet after he left office and retired he appears to have had a conversion experience. Apparently a sermon that used his own life as an example of Providence got his attention, forcing him to see that he was not as much in control as he thought. Shortly after that he did what he had never done before: joined a local congregation and stood before them to make a profession faith, leaning on his cane as he did so. As he neared death he apparently made special effort to talk about Christ to his household, telling them his conversation on this topic was for them. I have to wonder, had this happened earlier in his life, if there may have been a few more things that he could have done without.

Snowbound

First wet snow, then snow, then freezing rain on top for a total of about 5 inches, which has shut down Atlanta and most of north Georgia for 3 days now. Today I managed a test run of about a mile down the road to the Publix grocery and found the roads passable at low speeds for low volumes of traffic, but speeds over about 25 mph would have been a disaster. The major intersection by the grocery store was solid ice and had to be crossed at about 5 mph. It was good that the schools were closed and traffic very light. Even at that several major roads were shut down on and off still today. Most have some lanes clear, but if the volume gets high at all, accidents multiply quickly. Still, 3 days being home bound has reminded me of some important things:

• Those panics that clear out the grocery stores just before winter storms in the south, times like this make them seem not so unreasonable.
• After shoveling my driveway, but taking about 4 sessions to get it done, reminds me of why short driveways are common and practical up north.
• Thankfully few trees fell so power outage has not been a big problem. I should be more grateful every day for blessings like reliable electricity!
• When I started my career I could basically get no work done at home at all; now I can do a great deal by computer. The productivity difference is startling.
• I am amazed at how many folks do not have so much as a viable shovel for snow.
• The government continues to confirm for me that they don't handle anything out of the routine effectively, even when it is predicted every day for a week in advance.

It has been a strange week, but the Christmas decorations did get taken down!