Responding to Death: the case of Lazarus

My mother died a few days ago. She was a remarkable godly woman. I’m reflecting on death as a Christian. John 11 comes to mind. How should we respond to death? It is natural and good to mourn the loss of a loved one. In John 11, Lazarus was sick. Lazarus died. Jesus loved Lazarus. Jesus saw the grief to others caused by the death of Lazarus (33). The emotions of the moment overwhelmed him. And so Jesus wept. As fellow humans with Jesus, we can relate. When my mother died, I wept. But I would weep again, hard, when I’d see my brother weep or my children weep. The death of loved ones hurt, even when or if we believe true and comforting things about them. Jesus wept despite believing that Lazarus was in a better place. Jesus wept despite knowing that Lazarus was no longer suffering. He referred to the death of Lazarus as sleep (no suffering, temporary, see verse 11). These Jesus knew both to be true. And still, Jesus wept. He wept because Jesus is human, with all the emotions that come with that. But Jesus also wept because, as God, he knew the meaning of and reason for death. Evil, moral and natural, including death, pain and suffering, is a result of sin brought into the good world that God the Son created in the beginning. So Jesus wept.

But Jesus also comforted those who wept with Him over Lazarus by telling them the purpose of this providential moment. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead; he commanded the stone to be removed and called Lazarus forth from it. By raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus was demonstrating to onlookers that the Son of Man has power over death. Christ, and not death, will have the final word in this fallen world. He had already said to Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus: “Your brother will rise again” (23). Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

Now notice the second response to death, given here by Martha, believe or trust in Jesus. The resurrection that Jesus performed was not intended to impress, it was not an end in itself, it was not to inspire people to be nice (although raising Lazarus was certainly an act of profound compassion and kindness). So then why did Jesus perform the resurrection? What response did he intend to elicit? Jesus said that God had sovereignly brought about this occasion, the illness and death of Lazarus, “for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it,” and “so that they [ordinary people] may believe you [the Father] sent me.” Jesus raised Lazarus to demonstrate that the Son of God has the power to resurrect dead people, those dead spiritually in their trespasses and sins and those dead physically lying in a tomb. Jesus showed that He can and will reverse the consequences of sin, spiritual and physical death. He is the “resurrection and the life” and all those who believe in Him will live an abundant life forever. How does he do this? He brings life to others by laying down his own life for them. Later in the passage, it is Caiaphas the High Priest, who gets it, albeit unwittingly, when he says to the others concerning the plot to kill Jesus (50-53): “it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.”

I once had a young person tell me that the purpose of Jesus in the world, and any miracles he may have performed, was mainly to inspire people to be nice to one another. But is that what Jesus says was his purpose here? If Jesus only had the goal of inspiring human kindness, no one would have responded with resentment. But some did. They understand what the the resurrection of Lazarus meant. It meant, as Jesus had been teaching, that man’s only hope to escape the clutches of everlasting death was faith in Christ Himself. This drove some to believe but others to plot (45). Are you a believer or plotter? He that has ears to hear, let him hear.

Ex-Lesbian Rosario Butterfield on How evangelicals should engage homosexuals

You don’t need a megachurch to go to heaven

From Hans Fiene @ The Federalist:

If you’re a parent trying to give your child the best education possible, I would worry about teacher quality and your own involvement in your little one’s intellectual development before I’d worry about class size. I’m not saying that having 19 children per room isn’t preferable to 23. I’m just saying that the student-to-teacher ratio won’t matter a tremendous amount if your son’s teacher thinks four plus twelve equals purple or you want your kid to memorize the chronology of WWE champions instead of U.S. presidents.

So if little Bryden (because that’s what boys are named these days, in case you hadn’t already given up on humanity) has a bit of an overcrowded class, but a solid teacher and great support from you, don’t let anybody convince you that you’re selfishly endangering his education if you don’t turn your life upside down by moving to a slightly less-congested school district.
Likewise, if you’re a Christian parent trying to give your child the best spiritual formation possible, don’t let anyone convince you that you’re selfish for not making the size of a congregation your number one priority. In particular, don’t let megachurch pastor Andy Stanley convince you that you’re endangering your child’s soul if you don’t attend a large congregation.

If you’re a bit confused by Stanley’s accusation (one that, to his credit, he quickly recanted), here’s what he meant: Making friends at church is what keeps people in the faith, and the more kids your church has, the more opportunities your children will have to make friends. Therefore, if you attend a congregation that only has enough kids for a joint middle school/high school youth group, you’re reducing your kids’ friend-making potential and thus putting them at risk.

It doesn’t matter if the local megachurch’s Christology is wonky enough to keep you at a smaller parish or if the mid-sized flock you belong to is where you and your kids were both baptized and confirmed, apparently. To Stanley, it would be better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be thrown into the sea than that you should cause your freshman to share a bag of Doritos and a TeenzAlive! Study Bible with a seventh grader.

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Just another day as a Christian in the 10/40 window

From the Barnabas Fund:

Fire gutted a Christian TV station in Karachi, Pakistan on 24 November, leaving the three-room offices a smouldering wreck following a suspected arson attack.

The blaze, which officials report took nearly two hours to extinguish, appeared to specifically target valuable broadcasting instruments that the station uses to spread the Gospel message to the nation.

Javed William, the brother of Pastor Sarfraz William who is the owner of the affected broadcasting station Gawahi TV, said that the fire seemed to be a deliberate attack aimed at thwarting the Christian work of the station, “This is not an attack on us; it is an attack on Christianity. Whoever did this does not want God’s work to happen.”

Whilst no one was hurt in the incident, the station’s equipment, including computers and cameras, was completely destroyed along with furniture and books. There was also evidence that the network’s security cameras had been tampered with prior to the incident, and some computer hard disks were stolen. Assistant manager of Gawahi TV, Irfan Daniel remarked, “Someone did this with a lot of thought.”

Gawahi Television was established in February 2013 through donations from the Christian community. The station broadcasts Bible readings, Christian hymns and videos with the intention of, “spread[ing] the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people of all religions who live in Pakistan”. The channel, which regularly airs to approximately 12 million people, was working on programming for the Christmas period at the time of the attack.

Previous threats from suspected militants, demanding the closure of the station, were reported to the police by Gawahi TV management, but they did not investigate the threats or give any advice or help to increase security.

A charred but intact Bible was found amongst the wreckage, a fitting reminder of the permanence of the Gospel, even in the face of such raids.

Christian persecution in Pakistan occurs frequently, whether it be through community oppression from the Muslim-majority, discrimination against Christians in the workplace or the unfair implementation of the country’s notorious “blasphemy laws”.

A recent report by the International Commission of Jurists has called on the Pakistan government to, “repeal all blasphemy laws … or amend them substantially so that they are consistent with international standards on freedom of expression; freedom of thought, conscience or religion; and equal protection of the law”.

Pope Francis failed to mention Jesus before Congress and the President. Would the Apostle Paul?

From Matthew Tuninga:

If the Apostle Paul or the Apostle Peter were given the opportunity to address a joint session of Congress, do you think they would mention the name of Jesus? Pope Francis allegedly occupies the place of St. Peter, the bishopric of Rome. Though often introduced as the “leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics,” his primary claim is to be the vicar of Jesus Christ. And yet the pope did not find it necessary to name the name of Jesus when he addressed Congress yesterday (transcript here; Nor did he mention Jesus’ name when speaking at the White House reception on Wednesday).

I am not the sort of person to be instinctively critical of Pope Francis, and I have praised his work before. Indeed, I largely agree with what he said in his speech about the importance of hospitality to the immigrant, care for the environment, justice for the poor, the protection of life, and the nurture of families. But I cannot get my mind around the fact that he mentioned all of this without saying why any of it matters. He did not even mention the name Jesus, or Christ, let alone say anything about Jesus’ death, resurrection, or future return.

Some of my Catholic friends are concerned about this too, and rightly so. Is Francis not as committed to the “new evangelization” as we had hoped?

Pope Francis has the attention of virtually the entire United States right now. The media is covering every word, every act, every moment of his visit. And what is the media talking about? Politics. Whether the pope’s comments benefit the right or the left, whether he’s helping Republicans or Democrats. No one, it would seem, cares much about the substance of the pope’s faith regarding Jesus. And why should they? The pope hasn’t mentioned Jesus, so Jesus must not be an important part of the pope’s message to America.

An atheist friend enthusiastically wrote on Facebook yesterday, “I am an atheist, and I love this Pope!” A writer for the Huffington Post happily declares that America has a “man crush” on Pope Francis. All people are speaking well of him.

There was a time when Jesus warned his disciples that such favorable reception on the part of “all men” is not a good sign (Luke 6:26). He warned them that the world would treat those who speak Jesus’ message as it treated Jesus himself (Matthew 5:11; 24:9). Prepared for this, the disciples insisted on doing everything that they did “in the name of Jesus,” using every opportunity, even when confronted by those in authority, to proclaim the good news of his death, resurrection, and future return. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians, “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17).

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The worldwide growth in evangelicalism (despite the secularization thesis)

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How much gospel content is in the command to “ask Jesus into your heart”?

Sadly, some think they are sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ when they tell others to “ask Jesus into their heart.” But one will search in vain throughout all of scripture for the gospel message to be described or presented in such a way. To be sure, someone who says they have asked Jesus into their heart may indeed possess genuine saving faith. They may have a sufficient understanding of the gospel. They may grasp their own unworthiness, guilt; they may understand that their best merits deserve only the wrath of God, that they are spiritually bankrupt and have nothing to contribute to their own salvation save their own sin, that their spiritual condition before a holy God is hopeless, doomed, and that their efforts to win God over are futile, that they are in desperate need of a perfect substitute, someone who obeyed all the divine laws they broke and who is able to be a sacrifice for sin in their place, and that God provided such a substitute mercifully and graciously in His own Son, Jesus Christ. So perhaps they do possess such faith. But the statement that “I have asked Jesus into my heart,” empty as it is of even minimal gospel content, tells us almost nothing of such faith, such as it is.

Pascal’s apologetic and evangelistic method

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.

Blaise Pascal was a brilliant 17th-century French mathematician and physicist who had a dramatic Christian conversion experience and thereafter devoted much of his thought to Christianity and philosophy. He began to assemble notes and fragments he hoped would be woven into a book called The Defense of the Christian Religion, but he died just two months after his 39th birthday and it was never written. Those fragments, however, were published as Pensees (“Thoughts”), and it has become one of the most famous Christian books in history.

One of the most interesting of Pascal’s Pensees is the one quoted above. Here Pascal looks holistically at how to present the Christian message to those who do not believe it. He begins with the psychology of non-belief. He says that people are not objective about religion (here meaning Christianity). They really despise it and don’t want it to be true—yet fear it may be true. Some of these are fair-minded people who see good, well-thought-out reasons Christianity is not true. Others are not so fair-minded, and they just vilify and caricature it. But no one is neutral. People know instinctively that if Christianity is true they will lose control, and they will not be able to live any way they wish. So they are rooting for it not to be true, and are more than willing to accept any objections to the faith they hear.

How should Christians respond? Pascal thinks there are basically three stages to bringing someone on the way to faith. First, you have to disarm and surprise them. Many people hope Christianity does not make sense on any level. They especially enjoy hearing about professing Christians who are intemperate, irrational, and hypocritical—this confirms them in their non-belief. When, however, some presentation of Christian faith—or simply a Christian believer’s character—comes across as well-informed, thoughtful, sensible, open-minded, helpful, and generous, then this breaks stereotypes and commands a begrudging respect.

After this, Pascal says, we should be somewhat more proactive. “Next make it attractive, make good men wish [Christianity] were true.” We might object to the term “make” and suggest that Christianity is already attractive, but that’s to miss Pascal’s point. Of course he isn’t saying we should make Christianity into something it’s not; rather, we should reveal, point out, and expose its existing features. But the phrase “make good men wish it were true” gets across that this takes determination and ingenuity. We must know our culture—know its hopes—and then show others that only in Christ will their aspirations ever find fulfillment, that only in him will the plot lines of their lives ever have resolution and a happy ending.

I’m glad Pascal calls for this because, understandably, in these conversations we want to talk about sin and the barrier it creates between God and us. Pascal isn’t arguing against that. Certainly he isn’t telling us to hide that. But do we take time to talk about the manifold and astonishing blessings of salvation? Do we give time and effort to explaining the new birth; our new name and identity; adoption into God’s family; the experience of God’s love and beholding Christ’s glory; the slow but radical change in our character; a growing freedom from our past and peace in our present; power and meaning in the face of suffering; membership in a new, universal, multi-racial counter-cultural community; a mission to do justice and mercy on the earth; guidance from and personal fellowship with God himself; relationships of love that go on forever; the promise of our own future perfection and glorious beauty; complete confidence in the face of death; and the new heavens and new earth, a perfectly restored material world?

If we do this, Pascal gives us a very specific outcome to shoot for. If we’ve pointed out such things in an effective way, then some (though surely not all) will say, “If Christianity really can give that, it would be wonderful. Yes, it would be great if it were true. But of course Christianity isn’t. What a shame!”

Only then will most people sit through any kind of substantial presentation of the evidence and reasons for the truth of Christianity. Now Pascal says to “show that it is [true].” If they have not been brought through stage 1 (being disarmed and surprised by the lives and speech of believers) and stage 2 (seeing the great and attractive promises of God in Christ), their eyes will simply glaze over if you begin talking about “the evidence for the resurrection.” They will still expect Christianity to be at best useless and at worst a threat. But if Christianity has begun to make emotional and cultural sense they may listen to a sustained discussion of why it makes logical and rational sense. By “emotional sense” I mean that Christianity must be shown to be fill holes and answer questions and account for phenomena in the personal, inward, heart realm. By “cultural sense” I mean that Christianity must be shown to have the resources to powerfully address our social problems and explain human social behavior.

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Only if their imagination is captured will most people give a fair hearing to the strong arguments for the truth of Christianity. Let’s appeal to heart and imagination as well as to reason as we speak publicly about our faith in Jesus.

Editors’ note: This article originally appeared in the newsletter of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

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The Evangelical Roots of the Duggar Disaster

Christians should not be surprised by the absolute giddiness, excitement, that accompanies some unbelievers when they hear and hastily share the news of Josh Duggar’s wicked actions in his adolescence. They should not be surprised because they are largely responsible for that reaction. Christians have accepted a number of falsities from the world, and pay the price for them. One is that Christianity needs to counter the celebrity driven culture with its own celebrities, even if what we actually know about them spiritually is limited to what has been packaged for us by directors and producers. This approach (“Our celebrities are better than yours!”) is doomed. That Christian celebrities deserve special favor, deference, respect, attention, honor, status, more than ordinary Christians and/or pastors, theologians, missionaries, is to adopt the world’s standards for success, not God’s.

But more significantly, more fatally, Christians have bought into the unbiblical notion that some men are good, innocent, and others are bad, guilty. Basically, they start believing that believers are good, clean, and nice and non-believers are bad, dirty, and rude. Believers go to church and have traditional families. Non-believers go to clubs and have alternative lifestyles. So, Duggars are good, Kardashians are bad, and therein lies the problem. The biblical message is quite different, since no one is good but God, all have sinned, all are conceived in iniquity, and any good done by anyone is a gracious and divine gift leaving no room for self-righteous boasting. Christians must come to grips with the fact that they pray in Jesus name for a reason: He alone lived a righteous life; He alone has satisfied the righteous requirements of God’s law; He alone may enter in the divine presence; He alone is holy. We are not to look to the Duggars as exemplars of righteousness any more than we are to look to the Kardahsians. Rather, we look to Christ, the Righteous One, alone, since the good deeds we might offer to assuage the judgement of God, believer or unbeliever, Duggar or Kardashian, are but filthy rags to God. But the deeds offered by Christ’s life and death were exclusively sufficient. Be In Christ. That is the safe place.

The miracle of Christianity in China

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A group of youth from Wing Kwong Church in Hong Kong. (Photo courtesy of Lee Grady )

Last week I worshipped in Hong Kong with hundreds of believers at the Wing Kwong Church, a Pentecostal Holiness congregation that has grown from 28 members in 1978 to more than 13,000 today. The modern megachurch, which meets in a sleek six-story building completed in the year 2000, gives thousands of dollars every year to fund international missions work. Under the leadership of Pastor Donavan Ng, the church sent a missionary couple to Kenya in 2006 to reach Chinese immigrants who have moved to that African nation.

“God has entrusted to the Chinese church a special mandate for the 21^st century,” declared James Hudson Taylor IV, a surprise guest in the Wing Kwong Church that evening. Taylor is the great-great-grandson of British missionary pioneer Hudson Taylor, who ventured to China in 1854 to evangelize the world’s most populous nation.

When Hudson Taylor sailed to China, there were no Christians there—yet the China Inland Mission that he established won 18,000 converts to Jesus Christ during his lifetime and became one of the greatest success stories in modern missions. Today, Taylor’s great-great-grandson has a front-row seat to witness the greatest miracle on planet earth.

Hudson Taylor’s beloved China is becoming a Christian country.

Many Americans today seem discouraged by evidence of spiritual decline in the West. Now would be the best time for us to heed Jesus’ words in John 4:35: “Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.” Our pessimism has blinded us to what is happening in the East.

Consider these facts about the Chinese church:

1. China will likely become the largest Christian nation in the world by the year 2030. Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University, notes that in the year 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China, and he believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025 based on current growth trends. (The United States had 159 million Protestants in 2010.) By 2030, Yang predicts, China’s total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian population in the world.

2. More Christians attend church on Sundays in China today than in Europe.Some people attend government-sanctioned churches like the 5,000-member Liushi megachurch, located 200 miles south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province. This church was forced to close in the 1950s, but it reopened in 1978 and has grown ever since. Many other Chinese believers prefer to worship in more covert “house churches” so they can stay away from any government interference.

3. Spiritual hunger is exploding in China, even though the country is officially atheist. A recent study found that online searches for the words “Christian congregation” and “Jesus” are far more numerous than for “communist party.” And as more people have moved from rural areas to big cities, large numbers of young professionals have turned to Christ. Missiologists say between 10,000 and 25,000 people convert to Christianity every day in China.

4. Persecution of Christians is still rampant in China, but it does not seem to be slowing church growth. A 2015 report by China Aid says leaders of the Chinese Communist Party remain worried about the popularity of Christianity, and this is the reason they have instigated recent crackdowns on churches and arrested house church pastors. President Xi Jinping is considered the most authoritarian leader in China since Mao Zedong. Communist leaders have also been known to bankrupt churches in an effort to stop their work.

5. The growth of Chinese Christianity is linked to its economic growth.Economists announced that China overtook the United States as the world’s largest economy in late 2014. China, with its population of 1.3 billion, now accounts for 16.5 percent of the global economy, compared with 16.3 percent for the U.S. A recent study by Qunyong Wang of Nankai University and Xinyu Lin of Renmin University of China discovered there was robust economic growth in areas of China where Christian congregations are growing.

Could it be that God will use the vast financial resources of China to pay for the next great thrust of world evangelism before Christ’s return?

China’s church is truly a marvel. The gospel seed that was planted by missionaries such as Hudson Taylor in the 1800s died in the ground after Mao Zedong unleashed his infamous Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. During that era, Mao tried to completely eliminate religion and foreign influence in China by forcing 10,000 missionaries to leave the country.

Mao also sent thousands of Christians to their deaths, but the blood of those martyrs has produced an unprecedented harvest today. No one on this planet will be able to ignore the full impact of China’s miracle.

J. Lee Grady is the former editor of Charisma and the director of The Mordecai Project. You can follow him on Twitter @leegrady. His work to protect women from abuse was featured in the March issue of Charisma. Check out his ministry atthemordecaiproject.org.

You hardly care for children if you hardly care for the nuclear family (CDC evidence)

From the CDC:

A couple new government reports have focused on the well-being of children in the United States. The first one focused on adverse family experiences¹ and discovered that those “children living with neither of their parents are 2.7 times as likely as those living with both biological parents, and more than twice as likely as children living with one biological parent, to have had at least one adverse experience such as those shown in the figure below.”

What’s worse is that children “living with one parent are fifteen times as likely to have had four or more adverse experiences as those living with two biological parents, and for children in nonparental care that number rises to thirty.” It is important to point out that “researchers did not control for household income or other demographic factors, and that the reported adverse experiences, apart from financial deprivation, include those that occurred at any time in the child’s life. That means, for instance, that the many adverse experiences of children in foster care may have preceded (and led to) their being placed in foster care, or that the violence or drug use of one biological parent could have led to the child living exclusively with the other biological parent…Nevertheless, the figures are a striking illustration of how children in the care of both biological parents are most likely to escape adverse experiences.”

The second report provides a snapshot of children’s health in the United States and its relation to family structure. Overall, those in nuclear families (i.e. children “living with two parents who are married to one another and are each biological or adoptive parents to all children in the family”) fared better than those in other family structures. Children in nuclear families wereleast likely to be in “good,” “fair,” or “poor” health as opposed to “very good” or “excellent” health.

Data on chronic conditions and behavioral issues produced similar findings. “Although some confounding factors were controlled for…the researchers emphasize that since they simply measured family structure and child outcomes at a single point in time, their findings still cannot be used to make conclusions about causality. Prior research, they note, suggests that the arrow may go both ways…And obviously, family structure is one among many factors that matter for children’s health. In the CDC data, lower socioeconomic status (conditions of poverty or near-poverty, or parental educational attainment of no more than a high school diploma) was associated with worse health outcomes for children in every type of family, and sometimes it essentially drowned out the association between family structure and health. On the other hand, family structure and stability are associated with children’s health in many parts of the developing world, where access to health care is limited and where single-parent families are actually less likely than nuclear families to be socioeconomically disadvantaged. Teasing out all the determinants of children’s health will take more research than is currently available, but at this stage, family background seems in many cases to be one significant factor.”

No, Reformed folk aren’t unfamiliar with John 3:16

It is ironic that in the same chapter, indeed in the same context, in which our Lord teaches the utter necessity of rebirth to even see the kingdom, let alone choose it, non-Reformed views find one of their main proof texts to argue that fallen man retains a small island of ability to choose Christ. It is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

What does this famous verse teach about fallen man’s ability to choose Christ? The answer, simply, is nothing. The argument used by non-Reformed people is that the text teaches that everybody in the world has it in their power to accept or reject Christ. A careful look at the text reveals, however, that it teaches nothing of the kind. What the text teaches is that everyone who believes in Christ will be saved. Whoever does A (believes) will receive B (everlasting life). The text says nothing, absolutely nothing, about who will ever believe. It says nothing about fallen man’s natural moral ability. Reformed people and non-Reformed people both heartily agree that all who believe will be saved. They heartily disagree about who has the ability to believe.

Some may reply, “All right. The text does not explicitly teach that fallen men have the ability to choose Christ without being reborn first, but it certainly implies that.” I am not willing to grant that the text even implies such a thing. However, even if it did it would make no difference in the debate. Why not? Our rule of interpreting Scripture is that implications drawn from the Scripture must always be subordinate to the explicit teaching of Scripture. We must never, never, never reverse this to subordinate the explicit teaching of Scripture to possible implications drawn from Scripture. This rule is shared by both Reformed and non-Reformed thinkers.

From Dr. R.C. Sproul

If John 3:16 implied a universal natural human ability of fallen men to choose Christ, then that implication would be wiped out by Jesus’ explicit teaching to the contrary. We have already shown that Jesus explicitly and unambiguously taught that no man has the ability to come to him without God doing something to give him that ability, namely drawing him.

Fallen man is flesh. In the flesh he can do nothing to please God. Paul declares, “The fleshly mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7, 8).

We ask, then, “Who are those who are ‘in the flesh’?” Paul goes on to declare: “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom. 8:9). The crucial word here is if. What distinguishes those who are in the flesh from those who are not is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. No one who is not reborn is indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. People who are in the flesh have not been reborn. Unless they are first reborn, born of the Holy Spirit, they cannot be subject to the law of God. They cannot please God.

God commands us to believe in Christ. He is pleased by those who choose Christ. If unregenerate people could choose Christ, then they could be subject to at least one of God’s commands and they could at least do something that is pleasing to God. If that is so, then the apostle has erred here in insisting that those who are in the flesh can neither be subject to God nor please him.

We conclude that fallen man is still free to choose what he desires, but because his desires are only wicked he lacks the moral ability to come to Christ. As long as he remains in the flesh, unregenerate, he will never choose Christ. He cannot choose Christ precisely because he cannot act against his own will. He has no desire for Christ. He cannot choose what he does not desire. His fall is great. It is so great that only the effectual grace of God working in his heart can bring him to faith.

Excerpt from R.C. Sproul’s Chosen by God.

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The Palmer Home, a worthy Christian charity you may consider supporting (or your church)

My church supports this wonderful ministry.  We have friends who left their comfortable lives to with their children in Hattiesburg to become foster parents and teachers here.  I’ve seen the success stories from start to finish change lives of young people by God’s grace.  Here’s a documentary on it:

The Apostle Paul demonstrates why a Christian mustn’t be a fundamentalist when it comes to education

The term ‘fundamentalist’ has many meanings to many different people.  If it means belief in the historic doctrines of a faith tradition (like Christianity), then many evangelicals and Catholics are fundamentalists.  Originally, in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early 20th century this was all it meant.  After all, the leading fundamentalist, J. Gresham Machen, was an true intellectual being a professor at Princeton and New Testament and Greek scholar.  So much for fundamentalism meaning anti-intellectualism.  Further, Machen enjoyed (in moderation) whiskey, cigars, and a new sport, American football.  So much for being socially backwards or legalistic.  But after the Scopes ‘Monkey’ trial, the term fundamentalist took on a different sense (the anti-Christian journalist H.L. Mencken was perhaps the leader in transforming the image of what a fundamentalist is).  It became associated with anti-inellectualism, backwardsness, cultural withdrawal and isolation, simple-mindedness, close-mindedness, legalism, and so on.  In particular, a fundamentalist was increasingly thought to be someone who was unwilling to ever read or listen to another viewpoint.

There are at least two ironies here.  The first is that there are many critics of Christianity who are fundamentalist in this latter sense.  They only read one side, assume their own side is the gospel, and won’t entertain notions to the contrary.  A liberal, theologically and politically, can be just as fundamentalist in this sense as an evangelical.  In fact, seminary education is a great example of how this is so.  In most evangelical theological seminaries, evangelical professors and students teach, read, and interact with higher critics of the bible (those who think the bible is replete with error, isn’t basically reliable, etc.).  But in liberal theological seminaries, traditionalist orthodox viewpoints and scholars are simply trivialized and given scant attention, if at all.

The second irony is that for some evangelicals who consider themselves fundamentalists, who relish the fact that they ‘waste no time’ reading and interacting with non-Christian viewpoints, they actually show that they aren’t fundamentalist enough  After all, if your model is ‘the bible only’ and if one would at least consider the Apostle Paul to be as fundamentalist as they come, and if you think we should obey the Apostle’s commandment to imitate him (1 Cor. 4:16), one might want to consider Paul’s approach to ministry in Acts 17.  One must ask of this passage, how much reading, interaction, with non-Christian viewpoints does Paul call for and demonstrate?  It seems here alone that Paul is both knowledgeable of and willing to interact with Epicurianism, Stoicism, Judaism, and even Greek poetry.

Paul in Athens

16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit wasprovoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

Paul Addresses the Areopagus

22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,3 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;4

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’5

29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

Should the church “turn inward” when faced with cultural alienation?

When faced with cultural alienation, should the church turn inward? I’m not sure “turn inward” is exactly what non-Kuyperians advocate, although many in the Southern Presbyterian tradition, with its spirituality of the church, may accept that terminology in terms of the church as the institution (not Christians as individuals) go. I think DA Carson has a somewhat more modified view (a kind of, it depends on the circumstances approach), in his book Christ and Culture Revisited. Perhaps James Davidson Hunter’s has an alternate view in his book To Change the World. Of course, the Two-Kingdoms crowd offers a fairly stark contrast as well (see Michael Horton’s work and DG Hart’s book A Secular Faith).

David Koyzis and Jordan Ballor offer a Kuyperian answer, which is an emphatic NO.

David Koyzis has a thoughtful piece up overat First Things today, reflecting on the legacy of pillarization in the Netherlands in the generations following Abraham Kuyper. Discussing the challenges of post-war secularization, Koyzis writes, “A religious community focused only on its own survival in a hostile environment may already have lost the battle, and this is where the efforts of Kuyper’s followers perhaps fell short. If we genuinely believe that the redemptive story contained in the Bible is not just our story but the world’s story, then we have reason, not to keep it to ourselves, but to proclaim that news with urgency and enthusiasm and to live accordingly.”

Read Koyzis’ whole piece. In regards to his “turning inward” thesis, and his points about how “an unprecedented wave of prosperity would combine with the spiritual exhaustion that had set in after two world wars to produce a nihilistic consumerism largely indifferent, if not altogether hostile, to the traditional faiths,” I would recommend Ad de Bruijn’s recent piece in the Journal of Markets & Morality,“‘Colony of Heaven’: Abraham Kuyper’s Ecclesiology in the Twenty-First Century.”De Bruijn’s article can help flesh out some of the discontinuity between Kuyper’s own views regarding the church and society and how those who followed after him departed from, modified, or abandoned that tradition. De Bruijn also goes on to make some helpful applications for what Kuyper’s vision might mean in contemporary contexts.

This idea of “turning inward” is an important ecclesiological phenomenon, because this is a perennial temptation for Christian communities, particularly Protestant communions. Kuyper himself identified this problem as one that went all the way back to ancient Israel and was alive among the Anabaptists of his day. This was a vision of the church that maintained its purity by withdrawing from the surrounding world and culture. As Kuyper puts it in his work on common grace:

The gaze of the Lord is neither limited nor narrow but always large and wide, and even as he still summons the church of Christ to Christianize the whole world and all its nations in its missionary work, so too he shows us from of old how he himself seeks the world through Israel, even when Israel was segregated as shadow and type of what was to come, how he goes out to that whole world in love, and summons all nations to enter the kingdom of heaven. Of course, we are faced with the same danger as that to which Israel succumbed. Within the walls of the monastery there is relative safety; when it was completely isolated in the Babylonian captivity Israel did not succumb to idolatry, and when we close ourselves in and close ourselves off in a sectarian way, we are formally less susceptible to danger. We know very well the enchantment of every kind of particularism. But even that inviting appeal must never cause us to stray from the path of God’s holy ordinances. And those ordinances, including those that involve Israel, tell us clearly and plainly that our God claims nothing less than the world, and that the voice of him who calls goes out toall the nations.

One of the things I appreciate about Koyzis’ essay is that it doesn’t simply blame Kuyper for what happened after his death. Certainly Kuyper didn’t always live up to his own ideals and his actions and attitudes weren’t always consistent with his convictions. But on the question of the church’s posture toward the world, Kuyper most definitely opposed the turning inward of the church, and envisioned, if I may, a church intended “for the life of the world.”

An atheist explains the different political theologies he sees in Christianity and Islam (does it explain violence and oppression?)

From Robert Tracinski in The Federalist:

The Charlie Hebdo massacre once again has politicians and the media dancing around the question of whether there might be something a little bit special about this one particular religion, Islam, that causes its adherents to go around killing people.

It is not considered acceptable in polite company to entertain this possibility. Instead, it is necessary to insist, as a New York Times article does, that “Islam is no more inherently violent than other religions.” This, mind you, was in an article on how Muslims in the Middle East are agonizing over the violent legacy of their religion.

It is obviously true that all major religions have had violent periods, or periods in which the religion has coexisted with violence. Even those mellow pacifist Buddhists. These days, especially the Buddhists, who are currently fomenting a pogrom against a Muslim minority in Burma.

But in today’s context, it’s absurd to equate Islam and Christianity. Pointing to the Spanish Inquisition tends to undermine the point rather than confirm it: if you have to look back three hundred years to find atrocities, it’s because there are so few of them today. The mass crimes committed under the name of Islam, by contrast, are fresh and openly boasted about.

As an atheist, I have no god in this fight, so to speak. I don’t think the differences between religions make one more valid than another. But as the Charlie Hedbo attack reminds us, there is a big practical difference between them. In fact, the best argument against the equivalence of Christianity and Islam is that no one acts even remotely as if this were true. We feel free to criticize and offend Christians without a second thought—thanks, guys, for being so cool about that—but antagonizing Muslims takes courage. More courage than a lot of secular types in the West can usually muster.

So it’s a matter of some practical urgency to figure out: what is the difference? What are its root causes?

As I see it, the main danger posed by any religion to its dissenters and unbelievers lies in the rejection of reason, which cuts off the possibility of discussion and debate, leaving coercion as an acceptable substitute. I’m with Voltaire on that one: “If we believe absurdities, we will commit atrocities.” But all religions are different and have different doctrines which are shaped over their history—and as we shall see, that includes different views on precisely such core issues as the role of reason and persuasion.

I should preface this by saying that I am no expert on theology, particularly Muslim theology. Yet there are a number of big, widely documented differences between Christianity and Islam that can be seen in the traditions established by their history and in the actual content of their religious doctrines.

The life of Christ versus the life of Mohammed.

Mohammed was a conqueror who gained worldly political power in his lifetime and used it to persecute opponents and impose his religion. He also fully enjoyed the worldly perks of being a tyrant, including multiple wives. Jesus, by contrast, was basically a pacifist whose whole purpose on earth was to allow himself to be tortured to death.

He even explicitly forbade his followers to use force to defend him. Here’s John, Chapter 18: “Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear…. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?”

This does not imply that all Christians ought to be pacifists. But it certainly sets a tone for the religion. The life of the founder of a religion is held up to his followers as a model for how they should live their own lives. The life of Mohammed tells the Muslim that he should expect to rule, whereas the life of Christ tells the Christian he should expect to sacrifice and serve. Which leads us to a deeper doctrinal difference.

“What you do to the least of these, you do to me.”
In Matthew, Chapter 25, Christ tells his followers what will happen during the final judgment, when he separates the righteous from the wicked.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Similarly, there is an episode during the Last Supper when the apostles are squabbling about which of them is greatest. Christ intervenes and tells them that the greatest is he who serves others the most.

And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
This is a very profound idea that goes against the grain of most of human history. I’m a big fan of the Classical world, but the pagans still regarded it as normal, right, and natural that the physically strong set the terms for everyone else. Thucydides famously summed it up in the Melian Dialogue: “The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Thucydides was clearly critical of that view, but the Classical world didn’t have a clear alternative. As far as I know, Christ was the first to insist that even the lowest, least significant person has value and that we will be judged by how we treat him.

The distinctive idea here is not a belief in self-sacrifice—Islam, with its emphasis on the glory of dying in battle, has that idea in abundance. Nor is it the idea of a duty to serve others—Communist regimes were built on the idea that the individual exists only to serve the collective. Instead, it is the idea that each individual has a supreme and sacred value. Even Ayn Rand declared this to be the idea from Christianity that most impressed her.

Islam has no corresponding idea. The news is constantly bringing us a story of some imam somewhere declaring it consistent with Islam for a man to beat his wife, and the rise of the Islamic State in Syria has provided us current examples of Islam sanctioning slavery, including the capture and systematic rape of sex slaves. This is a religion that is still very much in the “rights of the conqueror” mode, in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Again, this goes back to the beginning. Consider the story, from one of the earliest Arab biographies of Mohammed, of Asma bint Marwan, an Arab poet in Medinah who spoke out against the rise of Mohammed. According to legend, he asked his followers, “Who will rid me of the daughter of Marwan?” (His version of Henry II’s “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”) One of them took it on himself to sneak into her house and murder her in her sleep. There are questions about the authenticity of the story, but the fact that it was widely believed and reported indicates the example Mohammed set.

To be sure, this brutal attitude is partly because of the backwardness of some of the quasi-feudal societies that are majority-Muslim, where divisions of tribe and caste still dominate. But then again, Islam hasn’t done much to elevate those societies, despite having more than a thousand years to do so.

Read the rest

On Worldviews (and the myth of the “freethinker”)

From Dr. James Anderson:

On Worldviews

by James Anderson

Abortion. Euthanasia. Pornography. Same-sex marriage. Transgender rights. Embryonic research. Genetic enhancement. Christians surveying the cultural landscape in the West have a clear sense that things are headed in a destructive direction. While most believers can easily identify the symptoms of decline, few feel competent to diagnose and address the root causes. There are many complex factors behind these developments, but one invaluable tool for better understanding and engaging with our culture is the concept of worldview. The sociological quakes and moral fissures we observe in our day are largely due to what we might call “cultural plate tectonics”: shifts in underlying worldviews and the collisions between them.

What is a worldview? As the word itself suggests, a worldview is an overall view of the world. It’s not a physical view of the world, but rather a philosophical view, an all-encompassing perspective on everything that exists and matters to us.

A person’s worldview represents his most fundamental beliefs and assumptions about the universe he inhabits. It reflects how he would answer all the “big questions” of human existence: fundamental questions about who and what we are, where we came from, why we’re here, where (if anywhere) we’re headed, the meaning and purpose of life, the nature of the afterlife, and what counts as a good life here and now. Few people think through these issues in any depth, and fewer still have firm answers to such questions, but a person’s worldview will at least incline him toward certain kinds of answers and away from others.

Worldviews shape and inform our experiences of the world around us. Like spectacles with colored lenses, they affect what we see and how we see it. Depending on the “color” of the lenses, some things may be seen more easily, or conversely, they may be de-emphasized or distorted—indeed, some things may not be seen at all.

Worldviews also largely determine people’s opinions on matters of ethics and politics. What a person thinks about abortion, euthanasia, same-sex relationships, environmental ethics, economic policy, public education, and so on will depend on his underlying worldview more than anything else.

As such, worldviews play a central and defining role in our lives. They shape what we believe and what we’re willing to believe, how we interpret our experiences, how we behave in response to those experiences, and how we relate to others. Our thoughts and our actions are conditioned by our worldviews.

Worldviews operate at both the individual level and the societal level. Rarely will two people have exactly the same worldview, but they may share the same basic type of worldview. Moreover, within any society, certain worldview types will be represented more prominently than others, and will therefore exert greater influence on the culture of that society. Western civilization since around the fourth century has been dominated by a Christian worldview, even though there have been individuals and groups who have challenged it. But in the last couple of centuries, for reasons ranging from the technological to the theological, the Christian worldview has lost its dominance, and competing worldviews have become far more prominent. These non-Christian worldviews include:

• Naturalism: there is no God; humans are just highly evolved animals; the universe is a closed physical system.
• Postmodernism: there are no objective truths and moral standards; “reality” is ultimately a human social construction.
• Pantheism: God is the totality of reality; thus, we are all divine by nature.
• Pluralism: the different world religions represent equally valid perspectives on the ultimate reality; there are many valid paths to salvation.
• Islam: there is only one God, and He has no son; God has revealed His will for all people through His final prophet, Muhammad, and His eternal word, the Qur’an.
• Moralistic therapeutic deism: God just wants us to be happy and nice to other people; He intervenes in our affairs only when we call on Him to help us out.

Each of these worldviews has profound implications for how people think about themselves, what behaviors they consider right or wrong, and how they orient their lives. It is therefore crucial that Christians be able to engage with unbelief at the worldview level. Christians need to understand not only what it means to have a biblical worldview, but also why they should hold fast to that worldview and apply it to all of life. They should be able to identify the major non-Christian worldviews that vie for dominance in our society, to understand where they fundamentally differ from the Christian worldview, and to make a well-reasoned case that the Christian worldview alone is true, good, and beautiful.

The challenge is greater than ever. But we shouldn’t be discouraged, because the opportunities and resources available to us are also greater now than they have ever been. In the last half-century or so there has been a remarkable renaissance in Christian philosophy and apologetics, much of which has focused on developing and defending a biblical worldview. Whatever God calls His people to do, He equips them to do (see Eph. 4:11-12; Heb. 13:20-21). The problem is not that the church is under-equipped, but that she has yet to make full use of what Christ has provided for her.

10 myths about Christian missions in history

I hear these all the time in the secular academy.

From Dr. Brian Stanley:

As followers of Christ and adherents of the Bible, Christians are called to be a people of the truth. Thus, it is crucial that we seek to understand our tradition as accurately as possible. So consider these top ten historical myths about world Christianity.

1. Christianity is a Western religion.

It neither began in Western Europe, nor has it ever been entirely confined to Western Europe. The period in which it appeared to be indissolubly linked to Western European identity was a relatively short one, lasting from the early 16th to the mid-20th centuries. The church in China, India, Ethiopia, and Iraq is older than the church in much of Northern Europe.

2. Christian missions operated hand-in-glove with the colonial powers.

Sometimes they did, but frequently they didn’t. Missions were usually critical of the way in which empires operated, mainly because they conceived of empire as a divinely bestowed trust. True, they didn’t oppose colonial rule on principle, but then who did before the late 20th century?

3. Christianity was imposed by force on non-Western people.

If this were true, it would reduce non-Western Christians—even today—to the status of passive recipients of Western ideological domination. In fact, Western missions never possessed the power necessary to achieve such capitulation, even if they wanted it, which they did not.

4. Protestant missions began with William Carey in 1792.

John Eliot’s mission work among the Native Americans of New England began as early as 1646. The first Lutheran missionaries arrived at Tranquebar in South India in 1706. In his famousAn Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792) Carey insisted that he had many predecessors.

5. Missionaries destroyed indigenous cultures.

Indigenous cultures were not static entities: to suggest that they were is characteristic of Western modernity. Missionaries often displayed what we would term cultural blindness, but their message, once translated into the vernacular, acquired indigenous cultural overtones. Missionary contributions to the inscription and study of indigenous languages have helped to preserve or enrich such cultures.

6. The 19th century was the great century of Christian missions.

It was the great age of Western missionary expansion, but not the great age of indigenous conversion and agency: that was the 20th century. K. S. Latourette’s “great century” is a misleading phrase.

7. ‘Christianity, Commerce, and Civilization’ was an imperial creed.

It was essentially an anti-slavery humanitarian creed, associated especially with David Livingstone (though he didn’t invent it). For those reasons it often led to advocacy of imperial solutions. Fighting slavery actually led imperial expansion as humanitarians called for deeper commitment from Britain to root out the slave trade at its sources in the African interior.

8. We live in a post-missionary era.

No, we don’t. There are approximately 426,000 foreign missionaries in the world today. In 1900 there were about 62,000. The United States still sends something like 127,000 missionaries overseas.

9. We live in a post-colonial age.

We certainly don’t live in a post-imperial age. Formal colonial rule is usually a last resort adopted by powerful nations who run out of cheaper options of control. Decolonization can be seen as a return to informal means of control. Definitions of what constitutes colonialism are contested: what about the subject status of first nations people in Canada, aborigines in Australia, Tibetans, West Papuans . . . and even the Scots?!

10. To proclaim the unique saving value of the Christian gospel is to be intolerant of other religions.

This is to confuse a theological position with an attitudinal stance. Because of their understanding of the nature of truth, Christians can (should?) believe that others are fundamentally mistaken in their beliefs and still defend to the hilt their right to hold and practise such beliefs.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the Centre for the Study of World Christianity.

Brian Stanley read history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and stayed on in Cambridge for his PhD on the place of missionary enthusiasm in Victorian religion. He has taught in theological colleges and universities in London, Bristol, and Cambridge, and from 1996 to 2001 was director of the Currents in World Christianity Project in the University of Cambridge. He was a fellow of St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, from 1996 to 2008, and joined the University of Edinburgh in January 2009.

Remembering John and Betty Stam today, the day of their martyrdom in China

From Tim Challies:

It was a dreary December day in the city of Tsingteh when John and Betty heard a rumor that Communist soldiers were drawing near to the city. The Communists were battling for control of the country and, of course, hated Christians or anyone else who would bring Western influence to their country. At the time the missionaries were not concerned; since they had moved to the city, just two weeks ago, rumors had been circulating but nothing had happened. They had been assured that government forces had come into their province to fight against the Communists. An hour later a man came running down the street shouting that the Communists were only a couple of miles away and would be upon the city in no time. Now the danger was clear. John and Betty grabbed a few supplies but they couldn’t find a way out of the city. Before they were able to flee, the soldiers surrounded the city, climbed the walls and opened the gates. There was no way to escape.

Very close to the city gate was the missionary home and it did not take long before the soldiers came upon it. The soldiers barged in and demanded to know the names of the people there; they demanded to know where they were from. Obviously two Americans would stand out in a small Chinese city. They took all the medicine they could find, all the money, all the valuables. John and Betty responded by brewing up some tea and serving each of the soldiers cake. But soon they were hauled off and put in the small local prison. They were told that they would be released only for a ransom of twenty thousand dollars. Read this letter that John wrote from prison—he wrote it to China Inland Mission, the missions organization that had posted them to China.

Dear Brethren,

My wife, baby, and myself are today in the hands of the Communists, in the city of Tsingteh. Their demand is twenty thousand dollars for our release.

All our possessions and stores are in their hands, but we praise God for peace in our hearts and a meal tonight. God grant you wisdom in what you do, and us fortitude, courage, and peace of heart. He is able and a wonderful Friend in such a time.

Things happened so quickly this a.m. They were in the city just a few hours after the ever-present rumors really became alarming, so that we could not prepare to leave in time. We were just too late.

The Lord bless and guide you, and as for us, may God be glorified whether by life or by death.

Read the rest

Secular liberalism and Christianity: same in form different in content.

The doctrine of original sin, church discipline and excommunication, creedalism and confessionalism, shunning, temples, sermons, evangelism and conversion, orthodoxy and heresy, book burning, it is all there, in the religion of secular liberalism.

From Joseph Bottom:

Every day she must search her conscience. Every day she must confront her flaws—discern the dark that dwells within her, seek the grace to turn toward the light. Oh, she is a moral person, she believes: good willed and determined to do good deeds, instructing us all about the heart’s deep iniquity. But even she, Kim Radersma, a former schoolteacher now preaching our bondage to sin—even she still feels the fault inside her. Even she must struggle to be saved. And if someone like Kim Radersma has to fight the legacy of inner evil, think of all that youmust do. Think how far you are from grace, when you do not even yet know that you are lost and blind.

In another age, Radersma might have been a revivalist out on the sawdust circuit, playing the old forthright hymns on a wheezy harmonium as the tent begins to fill. In a different time, she might have been a temperance lecturer, inveighing in her passion-raw voice against the evils of the Demon Rum. In days gone by, she might have been a missionary to heathen China, or an author of Bible Society tracts, or the Scripture-quoting scourge of civic indifference—railing to the city-council members that they are like the Laodiceans in Revelation 3:16, neither hot nor cold, and God will spew them from his mouth.

But all such old American Christian might-have-beens are unreal in the present world, for someone like Kim Radersma. Mockable, for that matter, and many of her fellow activists today identify Christianity with the history of all that they oppose. She wouldn’t know a theological doctrine or a biblical quotation if she ran into it headlong. And so Radersma now fights racism: the deep racism that lurks unnoticed in our thoughts and in our words and in our hearts.

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He “never made me feel like a project.” The unlikely conversion of Rosaria Butterfield

Former lesbian, feminist scholar, turned PCA pastor’s wife sits down with Russell Moore to talk about her unlikely conversion.

A story of redemption from homosexuality; review of the Dennis Jernigan documentary, Sing Over Me

From Professor Amber Stamper:

Here’s a not-so-very-pleasant place to start: I have nine gay friends, and every single one of them has been hurt by the Church.

And by “the Church” — lest we overlook ourselves in the term’s abstraction — I mean they have been hurt by individual Christians.

Having spent the last decade of my life in academia’s liberal and affirming circles, I have, of course, met dozens more than these nine professors, staff, and students — and quite a few of them have shared with me tales of some not-so-First Corinthians 13 encounters with Christians. But those nine are ones I’d call real friends.

“Sing Over Me opens up a safe space for homosexuals who feel — as Jernigan did — in need of rescue.”One — after agonizing for years over coming out to her family — was asked by her grandfather, a pastor, to never set foot in his house again. Another overheard his Christian roommate (half-)joking about him on the phone, saying he needed to “turn or burn.” Another was asked to stop participating in the church choir until he had gotten his sinful nature “under control.” Several others were just slowly “phased out” of their Christian friendships after coming out: texts went unanswered, calls went unreturned, profiles on Facebook were suddenly “limited,” and pretty soon they were being excluded from important life events like marriages and births with no uncertainty as to the reason why.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, this really isn’t such a hot track record. And I seriously doubt my friends’ experiences are unique.

What got me thinking about this in the first place was the documentary Sing Over Me, the testimony of popular Christian singer/songwriter Dennis Jernigan. I’d never heard of Jernigan, but some Google searches revealed that I’ve heard many of his songs. When I saw that his testimony centered on redemption from a life of homosexuality, though, I got nervous. I began anticipating all the possible ways a film like this could be trouble: preachy, judgmental, simplistic, aggressive, presumptuous — there were any number of land mines it could step on. Also, I was concerned about the medium. As a student of media and rhetoric, I know that the trouble with a format like film is that it’s not reciprocal. The audience sits and watches, the final credits roll, and viewers are left to think about what they’ve learned. There’s no conversation or chance for questions or clarification. This is fine for some subjects, but for others, lines of communication need to be open. I feared this was one of those subjects.

 So I was, to be quite honest, really surprised when, ninety minutes after suspiciously clicking “Play,” I found myself sitting calmly and thoughtfully in front of my computer screen feeling simultaneously motivated and meditative, provoked and inspired, challenged and hopeful.

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Christianity is a natural prop for liberal democracy, Chinese communists are continuing to learn

As history shows (Western Civilization; South Korea, predominantly Christians nations in Africa and South America; America itself) and as research empirical research has shown, the internal logic of Christianity tends towards liberal democracy, even a constitutional republic.  China is finding this out these days (excerpt)…

The involvement of Protestants and Catholics in Hong Kong’s protest movement is an added concern for Beijing, which on the mainland has put in place an elaborate bureaucracy of agencies and state-approved religious bodies to monitor and control religious groups.

Hong Kong churches have long tried to spread Christianity in China. Protestant pastors based in Hong Kong have helped propagate the evangelical brands of Christianity that have alarmed the Chinese leadership in Beijing with their fast growth.

A religious group gathered in Hong Kong’s Admiralty area, a focal point of the pro-democracy protests, on Wednesday. Paul Beckett/The Wall Street Journal

About 480,000 Protestants and 363,000 Catholics live in Hong Kong, a city of about 7.2 million, according to government figures from 2013. Buddhists and Taoists make up the vast majority of the city, the government says. Many Hong Kongers have been educated through large networks of Catholic and Protestant schools.

That includes some protest leaders. Joshua Wong, the 17-year-old who is a public face of the rallies, was educated at one of the top Protestant-backed private schools in the city. Now in college, Wong was a 15-year-old student at United Christian College (Kowloon East) in 2012, when he led a movement called Scholarism that defeated the Hong Kong government’s plan to introduce patriotic education classes in schools.

Occupy Central leader Chu Yiu-ming is a Baptist minister, while founder Benny Tai is also a Christian. On Thursday, Mr. Tai declined to discuss his faith in detail, but he did call himself a “part time theologian” and said he could “write a thesis” on the topic of Christianity and the protests. “My faith is in the streets,” Mr. Tai added.

Wendy Lo, 21, was born in China’s Guangdong province but grew up in Hong Kong and became Christian after attending an Evangelical secondary school. The University of Hong Kong linguistics major says her bible study group this past weekend discussed how to interpret a biblical story in light of the protest movement. The chapter they read was about Queen Esther daring to approach the king without his permission.

“The story made me think about speaking up for myself,” said Ms. Lo. “If Hong Kong residents don’t speak up for ourselves, who will?”

Full Article

Why does America, both its Christians and the left, neglect the plight of Arab Christians?

From Ross Douthat (excerpt):

WHEN the long, grim history of Christianity’s disappearance from the Middle East is written, Ted Cruz’s performance last week at a conference organized to highlight the persecution of his co-religionists will merit at most a footnote. But sometimes a footnote can help illuminate a tragedy’s unhappy whole.

For decades, the Middle East’s increasingly beleaguered Christian communities have suffered from a fatal invisibility in the Western world. And their plight has been particularly invisible in the United States, which as a majority-Christian superpower might have been expected to provide particular support.

There are three reasons for this invisibility. The political left in the West associates Christian faith with dead white male imperialism and does not come naturally to the recognition that Christianity is now the globe’s most persecuted religion. And in the Middle East the Israel-Palestine question, with its colonial overtones, has been the left’s great obsession, whereas the less ideologically convenient plight of Christians under Islamic rule is often left untouched.

Photo

Farida Pols Matte, 80, in Ankawa, Iraq, with her family and other Iraqi Christian refugees. They are among the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. CreditLynsey Addario for The New York Times

To America’s strategic class, meanwhile, the Middle East’s Christians simply don’t have the kind of influence required to matter. A minority like the Kurds, geographically concentrated and well-armed, can be a player in the great game, a potential United States ally. But except in Lebanon, the region’s Christians are too scattered and impotent to offer much quid for the superpower’s quo. So whether we’re pursuing stability by backing the anti-Christian Saudis or pursuing transformation by toppling Saddam Hussein (and unleashing the furies on Iraq’s religious minorities), our policy makers have rarely given Christian interests any kind of due.

Then, finally, there is the American right, where one would expect those interests to find a greater hearing. But the ancient churches of the Middle East (Eastern Orthodox, Chaldean, Maronites, Copt, Assyrian) are theologically and culturally alien to many American Catholics and evangelicals. And the great cause of many conservative Christians in the United States is the state of Israel, toward which many Arab Christians harbor feelings that range from the complicated to the hostile.

Which brings us to Ted Cruz…

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The death of Christianity where Christianity has always been – Mosul

From Philip Jenkins:

The ancient Christian history of the Middle East has become agonizingly relevant. Cities central in that history appear in headlines in the context of fanaticism and mass destruction. The State Department’s maps of the latest atrocities coincide with the most venerable landscapes of Eastern Christianity.

The city of Damascus in Syria needs no explanation in terms of its role in the Christian story, and late Roman Gaza likewise produced some pivotal thinkers and theologians. Both cities are also featured in the Old Testament. But what about Syria’s Hama, the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting in that country’s civil war? The Byzantines knew it as Epiphania, home of the historian John, who is a prime source for the Roman-Persian wars of the sixth century. Hama’s Great Mosque stands within the readily identifiable remains of the Byzantine basilica church.

The first Syrian provincial capital to fall under rebel control in the current conflict was Ar-Raqqah, which historians of Chrisian monasticism know as Kallinikos, a haven of learning and piety from the sixth century. Latakia was once Laodicea, where the bishop was the often vilified heretic Apollinarius. Homs, another frequent Syrian battlefield, was fifth-century Emesa, where a beloved shrine claimed the head of St. John the Baptist.

Syria can scarcely compete historically, however, with neighbouring Mesopotamia, the land we presently call Iraq (future maps might bear different names). Over the past summer, the city of Mosul has been the centre of global attention, following its capture by the forces of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

ISIS then went on to proclaim a revived caliphate, an office dormant since 1924, and promised to lead its followers against Christendom, even to the gates of Rome. It also launched a brutal reign of terror against both Shi’a Muslims and fellow Sunnis. Before the new self-appointed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, first addressed the Islamic world, his minions had murdered the city’s leading Sunni clerics. Although the so-called Islamic state may have stirred up too many enemies to prove an enduring presence, it naturally terrifies surviving members of other religions, especially Christians.

That story has been prominently reported, but few reports have paid much attention to the identity of those Christians and their spiritual culture which now seems on the verge of extinction. For Westerners, those local Christians face an easy choice: Why don’t they just leave? If they do, though, they will be abandoning a Mosul that in its day occupied a central place in Christian thought and development. Would Christians happily forsake Assisi or Santiago de Compostela, Canterbury or Cologne, if threatened with a similar situation? Would they not be held back by centuries of Christ-haunted memory and tradition? The story of Mosul is at least equal to that of any of these later upstarts.

Mosul was originally a centre of the fearsome Assyrians, and that connection attracted the attention of Jews, Christians and Muslims. All three faiths esteem the prophet Jonah, whom God sent to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Ancient Nineveh itself was once separate from Mosul but has now been absorbed into the metropolitan area that the region’s Christians call Nineveh rather than Mosul. Under its Arabic name of Nebi Yunus (Prophet Jonah), the prophet’s grave was a pilgrimage destination for millennia – although reports suggest that ISIS thugs are in the process of demolishing the shrine.

Mosul was an early centre of Jewish life and learning, where a Christian church emerged no later than the second century. It became a key centre for the Church of the East, the so-called Nestorian Church, which made it a metropolitan see. Also present were the so-called Monophysites, today’s Syrian Orthodox Church. These churches used Syriac, a language close to that of the apostles, and the Mosul area still has some Syriac-speaking villages.

Mosul was at the heart of a network of very early monasteries. Within 30 miles of the city are St. Elijah’s and St. Matthew (Mar Mattai), which date from the fourth century, Rabban Hormizd and Beth Abhe from the sixth or seventh, and many others: Mar Behnam, Mar Gewargis (St. George), Mar Mikhael (St. Michael). The greatest of these yielded nothing to such legendary houses as Monte Cassino or Iona. At its height, Mar Mattai was one of the greatest houses in the Christian world, with thousands of monks.

Around 850, Bishop Thomas of Marga described the lives of famous Syriac monks and holy men in his Book of Governor, which gives us a tantalizing picture of this lost spiritual world. Although his main interest was his own house of Beth Abhe, he mentions in passing dozens of small religious houses in the Mosul region, most of which we can no longer locate. The remains of many presumably survive under Iraqi village mosques.

The Church of the East that Thomas knew persisted for centuries, incredibly successfully considering it never enjoyed a close alliance with the secular state. Successively, the region was controlled by Zoroastrian Persians and by Muslim Arabs, but still the monasteries endured and flourished. In the histories of the thirteenth-century polymath Gregory Bar Hebraeus, the Mosul region appears as one of the hubs of the Christian universe. (Gregory himself was buried at Mar Mattai.)

Hard times arrived in the later thirteenth century with the coming of the Mongols. Facing growing intolerance in their old seat of Baghdad, the patriarchs of the Church of the East based themselves at the house of Rabban Hormizd. Christian life persisted there and in the surrounding religious houses. We get a sense of this from priceless Syriac Christian scriptures like the Cave of Treasures, which is preserved in the British Museum. It was copied in 1709 by the learned priest Homo, the son of the priest Daniel, who lived in Alqosh, near Mosul.

Mosul retained its Christian significance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Western Catholics arrived to bring those ancient believers into submission to Rome. The missionaries enjoyed some success. The ancient Eastern Church was split into pro-Roman factions, known as the Chaldeans, and the sturdily independent resisters, the Assyrians. In the long term though, those once bitter divisions would not matter too much. Both groups still exist – on a sadly diminished scale.

The fall of Christian Mosul loomed in the beginning of the twentieth century. Kurdish raids and bandit attacks repeatedly hit the monasteries and devastated their libraries. During World War I, the Ottoman Turks inflicted on local Christians the same attempted genocide they directed against the Armenians. By the 1920s, the once transcontinental Church of the East was reduced to about 40,000 survivors in the Mosul area. The church’s patriarch today is based in Chicago.

But even then Christians did not forsake Mosul. The population included Assyrians, Catholic Chaldeans, Syrian Orthodox and Orthodox Arabs, who hoped to benefit from the state secularism promised by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime. If their ancient glories were long past, they hoped to remain unmolested in the land of the prophet Jonah and of the great patriarchs and abbots. The Ba’ath regime was shaken by the 1991 Gulf War and then overthrown in the 2003 invasion led by the United States, which brought Islamist resistance to the fore. The ISIS campaign will presumably spell the end of a Christian presence.

We often read of the birth and growth of churches, very rarely of their deaths. In Mosul, however, we may be seeing the end of an astounding example of Christian continuity that lasted nearly two millennia.

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Co-Director of the Program on Historical Studies of Religion at theInstitute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University. His most recent book is The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. Copyright 2014 by the Christian Century. “Leaving Nineveh” by Philip Jenkins is reprinted by permission from the 20 August 2014 issue of the The Christian Century.

Understanding the legal and cultural context in which religious liberty has been trumped by homosexual rights

Very fair and helpful summary here, as well as suggestions going forward, from a religious liberty legal scholar (John Inazu):

A private Christian school holds what it considers a biblical view of marriage. It welcomes all students, but insists that they adhere to certain beliefs and abstain from conduct that violates those beliefs. Few doubt the sincerity of those beliefs. The school’s leaders are seen as strange and offensive to the world, but then again, they know that they will find themselves as aliens and strangers in the world.

This description fits a number of Christian schools confronted today with rapidly changing sexual norms. But the description also would have fit Bob Jones University, a school that barred interracial dating until 2000. And in 1983, that ban cost Bob Jones its tax exemption, in a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even for a relatively small school of a few thousand students, that meant losing millions of dollars. And the government’s removal of tax-exempt status had a purpose: one Supreme Court justice described it as “elementary economics: when something becomes more expensive, less of it will be purchased.”

The comparison between Bob Jones in 1983 and Christian schools today will strike some as unwarranted. Indeed, there are historical reasons to reject it. The discriminatory practices in Bob Jones were linked to the slavery of African Americans and the Jim Crow South. The 1983 Court decision came within a generation of Brown v. Board of Education, and its legal principles extended to private secondary schools (including “segregationist academies”) that resisted racial integration.

There are also significant theological differences between Bob Jones’s race-based arguments and arguments that underlie today’s sexual conduct restrictions. Those differences are rooted in contested questions about identity, as well as longstanding Christian boundaries for sexual behavior. Gay and lesbian Christians committed to celibacy show that sexual identity and sexual conduct are not always one in the same. But these points are increasingly obscured outside of the church. We see this in the castigation of any opposition to same-sex liberties as bigoted. That kind of language has moved rapidly into mainstream culture. And it is difficult to envision how it would be undone or dialed back.

How should Christians respond to these circumstances? First, we must understand the history from which they emerge. Second, we must understand the legal, social, and political dimensions of the current landscape. Third, and finally, we must recognize that arguments that seem intuitive from within Christian communities will increasingly not make sense to the growing numbers of Americans who are outside the Christian tradition.

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Living as Exiles is nothing new to Christianity and best explained and accepted in Reformed Theology

From Carl Trueman:

We live in a time of exile. At least those of us do who hold to traditional Christian beliefs. The strident rhetoric of scientism has made belief in the supernatural look ridiculous. The Pill, no-fault divorce, and now gay marriage have made traditional sexual ethics look outmoded at best and hateful at worst. The Western public square is no longer a place where Christians feel they belong with any degree of comfort.

For Christians in the United States, this is particularly disorienting. In Europe, Christianity was pushed to the margins over a couple of centuries—the tide of faith retreated “with tremulous cadence slow.” In America, the process seems to be happening much more rapidly.

It is also being driven by issues that few predicted would have such cultural force. It is surely an irony as unexpected as it is unwelcome that sex—that most private and intimate act—has become the most pressing public policy issue today. (Who could have imagined that policies concerning contraception and laws allowing same-sex marriage would present the most serious challenges to religious freedom?) We are indeed set for exile, though not an exile which pushes us to the geographical margins. It’s an exile to cultural irrelevance.

American Evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism start this exile with heavy baggage. Evangelicalism has largely wedded itself to the vision of America as at heart a Christian nation, a conception that goes back to the earliest New England settlers. An advertisement for The American Patriot’s Bible (2009) proudly boasts that it “connects the teachings of the Bible, the history of the United States and the life of every American” while “beautiful full-color insert pages spotlight the people and events that demonstrate the godly qualities that have made America great.” Yet a nation where the language of “choice” and “freedom” has been hijacked for infanticide, the deconstruction of marriage, and a seemingly limitless license to publish pornography is rather obviously not godly. That’s a hard truth for those who believe America belongs to them by right.

For Roman Catholics, the challenges of our cultural exile are different. Rome has somehow managed to maintain a level of social credibility in America, despite holding to positions regarded as intolerable by the wider secular world when held by Protestants. Her refusals to ordain women or sanction the use of contraception do not seem to have destroyed her public reputation. But if, for example, tax-exempt status is revoked for educational and social-service nonprofits opposed to the increasingly mandatory sexual revolution, the Church will face a stark choice: capitulate to the spirit of the age or step out into the cold wasteland of cultural and social marginality. When opposition to gay marriage comes to be seen as the moral equivalent to white supremacism, it is doubtful that the Roman Catholic Church will be able to maintain both her current position on the issue and her status in society. She too will likely be shunted to the margins.

Elsewhere—in France and in Poland, for example—Rome has, of course, proved resilient in much worse circumstances. Yet in America, in recent history, she has no real experience of the ignominy of marginalization from which to draw strength. The Know-Nothing era was long ago. It seems to me most Catholics today are very comfortable in, even jealous of, their place in mainstream America. They may not buy patriot Bibles, but Catholicism’s institutional footprint is so large—and Catholic theological (and emotional) investment in it so significant—that the temptation to preserve the Church’s place in society will be very great. This preservation will require compromise, even complicity, and it will very likely blur the clarity and undermine the integrity of Christian witness.

Perhaps I am mistaken and have portrayed my Christian brothers in a way that over-emphasizes weaknesses and downplays strengths. But of this I am convinced: Reformed Christianity is best equipped to help us in our exile. That faith was forged on the European continent in the lives and writings of such men as Huldrych Zwingli, Martin Bucer, and John Calvin. It found its finest expression in the Anglophone world in the great Scottish Presbyterians and English Puritans of the seventeenth century. It possesses the intellectual rigor necessary for teaching and defending the faith in a hostile environment. It has a strong tradition of reflecting in depth upon the difference between that which is essential and that which, though good, is inessential and thus dispensable. It has a historical identity rooted in the wider theological teachings of the Church. It has deep resources for thinking clearly about the relationship of Church and state.

It’s not surprising that Reformed Christianity equips us well for exile, because it was itself forged in a time of exile, often by men who were literal exiles. Indeed, the most famous Reformed theologian of them all, John Calvin, was a Frenchman who found fame and influence as a pastor outside his homeland, in the city of Geneva. The Pilgrim fathers of New England knew the realities of exile, and the conditions that it imposed upon the people, only too well. Winthrop’s famous comment about being a city on a hill was not a statement of messianic destiny but a reminder to the colonists of the fact that their lives as exiles were to be lived out in the glare of hostile scrutiny. Exile demanded they have a clear and godly identity.

The Reformed Church has its own baggage, but given the nature of its origins and our own moment, it is the right baggage: light when it needs to be light and heavy with the Gospel when it needs to be heavy. A marginal, minority interest in America for well over a century, she does not face the loss of social influence and political aspirations that now confront Evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism. We do not expect to be at the center of worldly affairs. We do not imagine ourselves to be running indispensable institutions. Lack of a major role in the public square will cause no crisis in self-understanding.

This does not arise from indifference or a lack of substance, but instead from clarity and focus. Doctrinally, the Reformed Church affirms the great truths that were defined in the early Church, to which she adds the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. She cultivates a practical simplicity: Church life centers on the preaching of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, prayer, and corporate praise. We do not draw our strength primarily from an institution, but instead from a simple, practical pedagogy of worship: the Bible, expounded week by week in the proclamation of the Word and taught from generation to generation by way of catechisms and devotions around the family dinner table.

Full Essay (great read)

The Rise of Chinese Nationalism and how it has, is, and will ratchet up Christian persecution

From Peter Berger:

On May 30, 2014, The New York Times published a story by Ian Johnson about what seems to be a concerted government effort to clamp down on Christian churches in Wenzhou, the city with the highest percentage of Christians in China. It has long been known that there are regional differences in official attitudes toward religion, not always reflecting the views of the central government. It is conceivable that the events in Wenzhou could be a relatively local matter. But at any rate one aspect of the story makes one wonder: The provincial head of the Communist party who initiated the anti-Christian measures, Xiao Baolong, is a close ally of Xi Jinping, the president of China since March 2013. The president is not known for a liberal outlook. Do the events in Wenzhou reflect or foreshadow a policy change on the national level? It is too early to tell, but it is worth reflecting on the implications if there is a policy change emanating from Beijing.

Wenzhou is a city in southeast China. It has 9 million inhabitants in its metropolitan area (I suppose this makes it a medium-size city in Chinese terms). The climate is good all year long, because it is located in a hilly area with fresh breezes. It has long been known for having a successful class of entrepreneurs, many of whom have moved to other parts of the country and to the overseas Chinese diaspora. The economic market reforms began with a government-sponsored experiment in Wenzhou. The city now contains 130,000 private enterprises, four of them listed among China’s 500 top firms. Intense Protestant missionary activity, most of it from America and Britain, began there in the late nineteenth century. Wenzhou now has the largest percentage of Christians in the country—estimated at 15%. No wonder it has been called a “Christian Jerusalem”! What is particularly interesting is that the Christian community, most of it Protestant, has a large number of successful business people, known locally as “boss Christians”. Some of them expressed the opinion in a study that Protestantism would become the majority religion in China, and that this would not only be good for the economy but would help China become a great power (a prospect they welcomed). Until now, there have been relaxed relations between the Christian churches and the local power structure (state and party).

Christianity in China has exploded in numbers in recent decades. The phrase “Christianity fever” was used to describe this. I generally rely on two demographers of religion, Todd Johnson and Brian Grim. In their book The World’s Religions in Figures (2013), they estimate the total number of Christians in China at 67 million (about 5% of the country’s population). There are other estimates, the highest, by the World Christian Data Base (an Evangelical outfit), at 108 million (about 8%). This may be wishful thinking. Official Chinese government figures are much lower (possibly wishful thinking too, as is typical of all statistics released by authoritarian governments). Johnson and Grim estimate that the total of Protestants is 58 million (4.3 of the country’s population), with Catholics far behind at 9 million (0.7%). I would think that the Protestants are mainly Evangelical, many of them Pentecostal/charismatic. All these estimates include both churches that have been officially registered by the government, and those that have not. The distinction is important: The latter category of Christians (often referred to as belonging to “underground” or “house” churches—rather a misnomer, as some of them are very much “above ground” and worshipping in large buildings). However, even if tolerated by local authorities, the members of unregistered churches are very hard to count. I would therefore guess that totals of Christians including both categories are under-estimated.

Just what happened in Wenzhou? And what does it mean beyond that charming little town of nine million people?

Protestant Christians, with all the funds raised by themselves (between three and five million dollars), had built a cathedral-sized church (with the spire 180 feet high, topped by an enormous cross). The Sanjiang (“Three Rivers”) Church) was erected on a hillside. It could be seen from far away. Finished in 2013, it had quickly become a landmark of the city and a powerful symbol of the Christian presence. That prominent presence was resented by some adherents of other religions, at least partly because they wanted to build sanctuaries of their own and competed with the Christians for suitable building spaces in the hilly environment. The construction had been approved by the provincial religious affairs bureau (these government agencies exist all over China). Thus Sanjiang was an officially registered church, not a so-called “underground church” (the usual targets of government repression).

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This isn’t a new thing for Nigerian Islamic extremists

This isn’t a new thing for Islamic extremists in Nigeria:

(WNS)—Deep in the rural regions of northern Nigeria, a group of kidnapped schoolgirls bear names far removed from their condition—names like Comfort, Blessing, Grace, and Glory.

The teenage girls vanished in the early morning hours of April 15, when militants from the Islamist terror group Boko Haram raided a school in the predominantly Christian town of Chibok. The gunmen loaded more than 300 girls onto waiting pickup trucks, and fled into a dense forest.

As many as 50 girls escaped into the woods but reports indicate two of the escaped girls died from snakebites. By mid-May more than 270 schoolgirls—ages 15 to 18—remained missing.

A 16-year-old girl who escaped told the Associated Press the militants first said they were soldiers. But after moving the girls outside, the gunmen set fire to the building. “They started shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great),” the student said. “And we knew.”

For the first two weeks of the girls’ captivity, it seemed as if few others knew about the mass abduction. Agonized parents armed with bows and arrows formed search parties when the Nigerian military failed to act. Government officials claimed they had recovered most of the girls—a claim the school principal and bewildered parents immediately refuted.

Meanwhile, international attention remained fixed on the missing Malaysian airliner that carried 239 people, and the April 16 South Korean ferry disaster that killed at least 187 people, mostly high-school students. For weeks, the plight of more than 200 still-living Nigerian girls barely registered.

Burned school where gunmen abducted more than 200 students. By the third week, the story gained traction, as women’s groups demonstrated in the Nigerian capital. A Twitter hashtag—#BringBackOurGirls—caught on, and a Nigerian petition on Change.org calling for better rescue efforts drew more than 450,000 signatures. By May 6, President Barack Obama announced the U.S. government would send a team of personnel to Nigeria to help the military coordinate search and rescue efforts.

Across town, Ann Buwalda of the Washington, D.C.–based Jubilee Campaign said she was thrilled with the international attention on the girls’ abduction, but she noted that similar atrocities have been happening for years: “How many churches have been blown up, and how many Christians have been killed, and nothing’s happened?”

Indeed, Boko Haram has been waging a brutal campaign to force Islamic law in northern Nigeria for more than a decade. This year marks the deadliest year of the insurgency so far, with as many as 1,500 killed since January. The group has burned churches, razed villages, kidnapped women, and massacred civilians for years. In January, Boko Haram militants barred the doors of a Catholic church, and burned the building with worshippers inside.

The Obama administration barely acknowledges the widespread Christian persecution raging in northern Nigeria. But in a video released on May 5, the leader of Boko Haram boasted he would sell the missing girls as slaves, and repeated the group’s intentions: “It is a Jihad war against Christians and Christianity,” he said with a smile. “Allah says we should finish them when we get them.”

Nigeria advocates say rescuing the Chibok girls is critical, particularly as reports swirl that some of the girls have already been sold into marriage to their captors for the price of $12. But experts also emphasize that a single rescue effort won’t stop more atrocities. If Boko Haram isn’t crushed, says Buwalda, “they’ll do this again. There will be another church. There will be another school.”

There already was another school attack less than eight weeks before the Chibok kidnappings. In a horrific exploit that gained scant international attention, militants stormed the dormitories of a school in Yobe State on Feb. 24.

This time, the gunmen released the girls. Witnesses reported the militants told the young women to go home, get married, and abandon the education the militants called anti-Islamic. The boys fared worse: The militants burned down the school with the boys inside, and shot some who tried to escape. The attack killed at least 50 young men ages 15-20. The local police commissioner reported: “Some of the students’ bodies were burned to ashes.”

A similar attack last September killed 40 students. Less than two weeks before the assault on the young men, militants killed more than 106 civilians in the predominantly Christian village of Izghe.

Boko Haram militants also have killed Muslims in the predominantly Muslim northern region, particularly if they view them as hostile to the group’s extremist efforts. At least 16 of the missing Chibok girls reportedly are Muslim. But Boko Haram’s campaign against Christians dates back to at least 2005, when the group began kidnapping pastors. In 2009, militants beheaded Nigerian pastor George Ojih after he refused to convert to Islam.

The years that followed brought more attacks on government buildings, schools, and churches, and more executions of Christians, particularly men with large families. One widow reported in 2012 that militants had killed her husband and kidnapped her two young daughters. Other widows said gunmen had killed their husbands after asking if they were Christians.

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The prodigal daughter and a Dad’s pursuit

From Courtney Reissing:

My dad and I are really close. In fact, we’re so close that I worked for him doing all of his bookkeeping for the year before my twins were born. I loved talking to him nearly every day, especially since he lives so far away from me now. But we weren’t always so close.

I was once a prodigal daughter.

For nearly two years I ran from my parents, family, and the Lord. I liked sin and liked living in sin. Talking to my dad (and mom) meant conviction, and I wanted nothing to do with it. If you peered through the window of my past you would have seen that I perfectly fit the profile of the son in Luke 15:11-32. I was wild, impulsive, and opposed to authority on every level.

A quick survey of the families in your church would probably reveal that many have or had children who in some way have strayed from the faith of their upbringing. Parenting is hard work with no real guarantee of the outcome. While every situation is unique and has its own challenges, one thing is certain—prodigal children need to know they are loved. And my parents made sure of that.

In the years I lived away from them, they never abandoned contact with me. While our interactions looked different, they made sure to take advantage of moments where they felt I needed exhortation, encouragement, or just the acknowledgment that I was loved by them. My mom bought me Christmas and birthday presents every year, even though I never once tried to see them for holidays or family gatherings. The presents waited for an opportune time, revealing to my brothers and ultimately me that I was never once forgotten from their grieving memory. I have a box full of letters from them that serves as a painful yet necessary reminder that while my sin was (and still is) grievous, the grace I have received is extravagant.

Love, No Matter the Cost

We often talk about memories from our childhood. For me, my childhood was pretty good. We made wonderful memories together as a family of six. But the memory that captures the most formative event in my life is the one that I rarely think about anymore.

The entire time I was living in rebellion, my parents prayed for me every day. So when I told them I wanted to move home one cold December morning, and was tired of my life of sin, they were overjoyed. This rock-bottom-moment was exactly what they were praying to see. Immediately they began helping me prepare for the move. They arranged flights for me to come home, paid for a moving truck, and began helping me think through where to finish college.

And then I got mono.

I suddenly found myself uninsured and in the emergency room. At this point I was too sick to do anything besides barely plug along to finish my school semester. There was no way I was going to be able to pack up and get myself to Dallas (three hours away) to the airport. My dad had already intended to come help me move home by picking up my car and driving it to Michigan. At this point, I needed him. I had no energy, no real friends, and no ability to think through a move. I was helpless.

My dad flew to Dallas and picked up a car from a friend to drive down to where I was living. Less than an hour outside of the city, the car he was driving broke down. But nothing was going to stop my dad from getting to me. I will never forget the words he said to me as he sat in the Greyhound station waiting on his bus to drive him to San Marcos.

I will get to you, Court. If I have to walk there, I will get to you.

 

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How to befriend someone struggling with same-sex attraction (from someone who does)

From Richard G. Evans at Public Discourse:

Carissa Mulder recently published an excellent essay here at Public Discourse entitled “The Single Life: Where Do We Go from Here?” As Mulder expressed so well, human persons truly are not meant to be alone. We are designed for community. After having a marvelous Lent and subsequently disastrous Easter Sunday totally by myself, I can strongly relate to the author when she encourages married friends to include single people in their holiday celebrations.

My position, however, is slightly different from Mulder’s, because I am a faithful Catholic man who experiences same-sex attraction (SSA). I will never again marry.

Yet, like Mulder, I long for community. I have struggled with loneliness and isolation—experiences that every person, whether single or married, has probably suffered through. Loving community is the solution to this struggle. But how does that happen? How do we go about building such a community, particularly one that will embrace those of us who experience same-sex attraction?

You Already Have SSA Friends and Family

I am acutely aware in writing this that I am but one voice of many. I do not presume to speak on behalf of all within the LGBT or SSA communities. I simply speak for myself. I am a man who, for whatever reason, tends to be drawn to and have a desire for closer attachments to other men than some who are male and heterosexual may be comfortable with or used to.

My purpose here is to appeal particularly to heterosexual men who might be willing to take up a challenge they may never have imagined before: authentically befriending someone from my background. Truth be told, you probably already are friends with some of us—you just do not realize it. They may not have told you, or you may not have guessed. But they are there, or somewhere nearby. Today, I am asking you to listen to an SSA man who may yearn for your presence in his life more than you know.

Many people have strong opinions on what causes same-sex attraction, and on the legal and moral solutions to its existence. But far fewer of these people seem to have the ability or the desire to reach out to those of us with SSA in friendship or to help integrate us into local communities. We from the SSA world need you.

This Easter, for example, I attended the Easter Vigil Mass at my parish, which means so much to me each year. I came home elated—and then crashed, both physically and emotionally. After a very arduous and fruitful Lent, spent striving to keep my Lenten intentions and commitments, I relived my own experience at the Vigil eight years ago, when I returned to the Church after thirty-five years away and was finally confirmed at age fifty. That night, I suppose I expected to be walking on both air and water. Stepping inside my empty apartment and realizing that I could either order take-out or not eat at all was too much for me. I felt forsaken by God, family, and friends, even though I knew that no one intentionally abandoned me. Especially not God! Still, the pain was there and acutely real.

Those who are blessed enough to be married and have families of their own can sometimes forget that those of us called to be celibate and permanently single still have a great need to connect with “family,” particularly on holidays and holy days. This applies to single people from many backgrounds: the widowed, priests, and, of course, those with SSA.

In assisting your friends with same-sex attractions, in particular, the concept of “disinterested friendship” is an important key. The word “disinterested,” as opposed to “uninterested,” means impartial, fair-minded, and neutral. Of course, a disinterested friend does not have to be neutral in judging behavior, but in judging the human involved in such behavior; such a person is willing to be a friend and travelling companion to that person on his or her journey to wholeness. For many, becoming this kind of friend may entail stepping into corners of your own life that are not totally comfortable.

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The Future of Protestantism (video of the entire panel)

What does Piety look like in academia, college life?

From R.R. Reno in the Intercollegiate Review:

Faith involves convictions about God, sin, and salvation, but it’s also a habit of mind, a disposition of piety. We need to be clear about this distinction if we’re to understand—and respond effectively to—the challenge that modern secular education poses to the life of faith. For the contemporary university is far more hostile to the pious disposition of trust and loyalty than to the content of any particular creed. To thrive as a student with faith, you need to become a pious intellectual, not just an intellectual who happens to be pious. You need to learn to think under the authority of a living tradition of truth.

Piety involves more than religion. True patriotism (which is very differ­ent from nationalistic jingoism) is a kind of piety, one that encourages us to look to our national traditions for renewal and guidance. We often speak of filial piety, which means honoring our parents. Religious piety follows this pat­tern. It disposes us to honor and trust the people, traditions, and institutions that guard and transmit the faith.

Our contemporary educational culture works against all pieties. Pro­fessors argue about what to believe. Some psychologists insist on the priority of nature over nurture; others argue the opposite. Some philoso­phers are skeptics; others, rational­ists. Physicists argue for this or that view of the origins of the cosmos. But on one point nearly all agree: the great goal of higher education is to encourage “critical thinking.”

This goal involves encouraging students to question and doubt inherited authorities. This is not easy to do, because human beings have a natural tendency toward piety. We tend to be loyal to our families, to our communities, to our nation, to our culture—and to the faith of our childhood. So to encour­age “critical thinking,” teachers use techniques designed to drive a wedge between students and their inher­ited assumptions. For example, a history professor can attack patrio­tism by teaching the history of the oppression of the “marginalized” or “excluded.” The point is not simply to introduce new facts about the evils in our national history, which in itself can enrich piety. Rather, the professor wants students to achieve “critical distance,” which means a colder, less ardent love of country.

Similarly, the philosophy professor typically begins with what seems like a perfectly reasonable requirement: we must have good reasons for our beliefs. He then goes on to show that we don’t. Or the sociology professor teaches about the sexual moralities of other cultures. The aim in either case is not to convince students of anything but to make them ques­tion whether their own assumptions aren’t really just contingent, change­able aspects of our cultural history.

The ideal of critical thinking undermines the faith of most students. If you say that you believe something because you trust the one who taught it to you—and religious faith always relies on this sort of trust—you’re committing a cardinal sin in present-day academia. Professors tolerate bizarre beliefs, but not piety. They’ll indulge stu­dents who experiment with Eastern religions or who adopt totalitarian ideologies, but they’ll hammer away on anything the majority of students are inclined toward because of loyalty and trust, which is why Christianity so often comes in for rough treatment.

We can be tempted to criticize the critics by pointing out that universi­ties have their own favored pieties, most often liberal political ones. But I caution against this approach, for it only contributes to the skepticism and ironic detachment of higher education (and of our culture more broadly).

Better, I think, to recognize that wrongly believing what is false is not the only danger in the intellectual life. Another, perhaps greater danger is failing to believe what is true.

A sparsely furnished mind is more impoverished than a full one that includes things that are false. As John Henry Newman wrote, “I would rather have to maintain that we ought to begin with believing everything that is offered to our acceptance, than that it is our duty to doubt of everything. The former, indeed, seems the true way of learning.” Only when we’re enlarged by truths we draw near to in love and loyalty, however mixed they may be with error, can we enter into the answers to the big questions about the meaning of life.

Piety, therefore, is a crucial ele­ment of any genuine intellectual life. Deep truths often speak in a whisper, and we need to draw close to hear. We must submit ourselves to truth.

For a college student in America, that means developing an active loy­alty to the Western tradition, however imperfect it might be. Dwelling in one place for an extended period of time produces a great deal more depth of thought than does a multicultural bus tour. Choose courses that intro­duce you to this tradition. Seek out teachers who love the great books. Fill your own shelves with classic texts. Become a pious intellectual.

When I arrived at college many years ago, I didn’t have very clear ideas about God or Christ—or much of anything else for that matter. (I was, after all, a freshman!) I couldn’t answer philosophical objections to theism. I wasn’t able to formulate cogent moral arguments. I had, however, a vague but nevertheless real faith. I presumed that the answers I didn’t have to hard questions about life I couldn’t clearly formulate were most reliably found somewhere in the neighborhood of Christian teaching.

In a word, I was pious. I remained loyal to Christian teaching, not always knowing how it added up, not always able to meet secular objec­tions, but trusting in its power to heal my soul and illuminate my mind. I have, of course, failed in many ways. I’ve entertained stupid thoughts and done sinful things. But in my piety—in my refusal to be seduced by our academic culture’s false promise that critical thinking will get us anywhere worth going—I have not been disappointed or betrayed.

You won’t be disappointed either. You don’t need to master apologetics or be able to persuade all your col­leagues and professors that Christian­ity is true. Settle down into the tradi­tion. Trust its essential truth. Some answers will come with study, some with time. The life of faith is in that sense very much like the life of the mind. We receive the deepest truths only when we’re patient enough—and stable enough and docile enough—to allow ourselves to be taught them.

R. R. Reno is editor of First Things and a former professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University.

Original source

Summary notes for Carl Henry’s classic on Modern Fundamentalism

If you don’t have time to read this book, here are the summary points (with full quotations) from Matt Perman:

I recently took notes over Carl F.H. Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Written in 1947 (when “fundamentalism” and “evangelicalism” were equivalent terms), Henry’s call was for a theologically informed and socially engaged evangelicalism. Henry was concerned that, through its separatist mentality and tendency to separate social action from the concern of the Christian, modern evangelicalism was becoming irrelevant — and, more than that, unbiblical.

Henry’s call is just as relevant today as it was then, though evangelicalism has made immense progress. There is still a tendency to over spiritualize, to focus on the “spiritual” side of things in a way that tends to diminish and demean physical and social needs. And, on the other hand, when being rightly practical and concerned about social action, there is a tendency to do this apart from the important doctrinal foundations on which the Bible places these concerns. We need to continue increasing in our concern for social issues and addressing large global problems, while at the same time doing so on a theological foundation, recognizing that classical Christian doctrines are actually the best foundation for diligent social action.

In order to do this, however, we need to understand how Christianity and culture relate. Henry’s book is one of the best expositions of that issue. It is not only a call to action, but also gives the basic fundamentals for thinking about the relationship between Christianity and culture and how Christians can effectively partner with those who do not share our faith but do share our concern for confronting large global problems head on.

Russ Moore recently had a good post on Carl Henry, writing about this book that:

Henry’s “Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism” is perhaps the most important evangelical book of the twentieth-century. It is just as relevant as it was in 1947, and should be read again by all those with a serious commitment to applying a kingdom vision to every aspect of life. The kingdom Jesus inaugurated spoke to the whole person, to spiritual lostness, to physical sickness, to material poverty, to the need for community. A church that joins Jesus in preaching the kingdom will too. We need that reminder every generation, perhaps especially now. The evangelical conscience is, after all, still uneasy after all these years.

It turns out that today would be Carl Henry’s 100th birthday. So, in honor of his 100th birthday, and in light of the call to us as Christians to care about all suffering and be intelligently and helpfully engaged in social issues for the good of the world and glory of God, here are my notes on perhaps his most important book, which is just as relevant today as ever.

Introduction

“This book is both a detailed complaint about evangelical failures and a call to renewal.”

In the late 40s, Henry and other evangelical leaders were concerned that evangelicals were ill-equipped to address the crucial issues of the day.

Evangelical and fundamentalist were equivalent terms at that time.

Henry and Ockenga saw this book as setting an agenda for Fuller, which was established the same year it was published. The elements of a founding vision are all here.

• “a deep commitment to a new kind of evangelical scholarship that would wrestle seriously with the important issues being raised in the large world of the mind”
• “a hope for a more open evangelicalism that would transcend the barriers that had been erected by a separatistic mentality”
• “a profound desire to engage culture in all of its created complexity”

We need to engage culture!

The evangelicalism of the first fifty years of the twentieth century failed in its intellectual and cultural obligations.

It is possible to promote an intellectually and culturally engaged evangelicalism. Further, a worldview “based solidly on biblical authority” is “desperately needed.” Currently theological options have in their own ways failed to “provide satisfying answers to the deepest questions of the human spirit.”

They named specific issues evangelicals were on the wrong side of.

Henry called “for an evangelical activism that recognizes the need for broad cultural involvement.”

Henry’s call was “an invitation to an evangelical cultural involvement that was based solidly on the kind of profound theological reflection that could only be sustained by a social program that was closely linked to a systematic commitment to the nurturing of the life of the mind.”

“There is often a considerable disconnect between grassroots evangelical activism and carefully reasoned theological orthodoxy.”

Tendencies in all sectors of evangelical life to “dilute the proclamation of the gospel.” Also to negotiate too-easy settlements between evangelical thought and various manifestations of postmodern culture.

We must articulate our cultural involvement within a supernaturalistic framework.

Constant assault on the evangelical position. “One of the things which modern man most needs to be saved from, is a moral sense which is outraged at a divine provision of redemption.”

“What concerns me more is that we have needlessly invited criticism and even ridicule, by a tendency in some quarters to parade secondary and sometimes even obscure aspects of our position as necessary front phases of our view.”

To that extent, “we have failed to oppose the full genius of the Hebrew-Christian outlook to its modern competitors.”

“We have not applied the genius of our position constructively to those problems which press most for solution in a social way. Unless we do this, I am unsure that we shall get another world hearing for the Gospel.”

“If we would press redemptive Christianity as the obvious solution of world problems, we had better busy ourselves with explicating the solution.”

The great biblical doctrines are “the only outlook capable of resolving our problems.”

The “uneasy conscience” is “one distressed by the frequent failure to apply them effectively to crucial problems confronting the modern mind.” He is pleading not for a revolt against the fundamentals of the faith, but an application of them to the large cultural issues before us.

Many seem “blissfully unaware” of the new demands upon us.

Seeks to provoke a united effort.

While we are pilgrims here, we are also ambassadors.

The church needs a progressive evangelicalism with a social message.

We are not to be fatalistic on ethical problems. Yet, most evangelicalism is precisely that. We need a “growing revolt in evangelical circles on ethical indifferentism.” “It is impossible to shut the Jesus of pity, healing, service, and human interest from a Biblical theology. The higher morality of redemption does not invalidate moral consistency.”

“A Christian world- and life-view embracing world questions, societal needs, personal education ought to arise out of Matt. 28:18-21 as much as evangelism does. Culture depends on such a view.” Evangelicalism is dissipating the Christian culture accretion of centuries, “a serious sin.”

We are not to abandon social fields to the secularist.

This book is “a healthy antidote to Fundamentalist aloofness in a distraught world.”

 Chapter 1: The Evaporation of Fundamentalist Humanitarianism

The charge against evangelicalism from non-evangelicals: it has no social program calling for a practical attack on acknowledged world evils. “On this evaluation, Fundamentalism is the modern priest and Levite, by-passing suffering humanity” (2).

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How foreign aid to poor nations may contribute to violating the rights of the poor

From developmental economist William Easterly:

Poverty Is a Moral Problem

Development economist William Easterly says too much aid undermines the rights of the poor.

Interview by Kent Annan/ April 2, 2014

Page 1 of 1

William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University, is one of the most prominent iconoclasts in the field of international aid. In 2006 he published White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Kent Annan (Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle; After Shock) talked with him on a frigid Manhattan day over hot green tea the day after the launch of his new book, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (2014).

What are the “forgotten rights of the poor”?

The rights of the poor should be the same as the rights of the rich: the core, inalienable rights that started with the language of the Declaration of Independence, including the idea that governments exist by the consent of the governed.

There is an ongoing debate around the world between the advocates of freedom for the individual and the advocates for more authoritarian, powerful states like Russia and China, and seen in battles from Ukraine to Venezuela to Ethiopia.

The sad thing is that the field and practice of development have too often been on the wrong side of this debate. They’ve implicitly painted themselves into a corner where they’re on the authoritarian side. Then they’re backing the autocrats, backing the oppressors against the oppressed.

You are an economist, but this book seems to largely make a moral argument.

As an economist, to include such a strong moral dimension is a bit unusual. I start the book making it clear that the idea we can have a purely technical approach to resolving the problems of poverty without any moral implications is an illusion.

For me, this has been a long intellectual journey, from being one of the experts who was oblivious to the “rights of the poor” issue, to now criticizing those experts. In my development career, I worked closely at various times with autocratic governments and officials in places like Mexico and Russia and Pakistan, and in Africa with Ethiopia and Ghana before it was democratic.

I realized our attitude towards the poor is so often condescending and paternalistic. We think of them as helpless individuals. We don’t respect their dignity as individuals.

The next step was not to just avoid paternalism or condescension but actually to go back to first principles and think about the rights of the poor and what role those rights play in development. Economists’ research actually does give the institutions associated with individual rights a lot of the credit for the development in the West and the rest of the world. This combined with my own moral awakening that these rights are a desirable good in and of themselves. Whenever we violate them, we set back development.

Humility or self-restraint seems to be a theme through your work.

My cultural and faith upbringing contributed to the feeling of humility. I grew up in the Midwest, in Ohio, with a faith background that stressed humility, not being over-confident in your own wisdom, not being too self-important. That informs my openness to a critique of experts as being too arrogant in their own knowledge and too oblivious to the moral consequences of their overconfidence that can lead to doing damage to other people.

For example, if you work with the government of Ethiopia, you have to consider whether you may be indirectly contributing to someone being kept in jail for 18 years like Eskinder Nega, a peaceful blogger who made quite innocuous criticisms of the government.

Some people believe authoritarian development pays off and justifies violating someone else’s rights. But we have to be humble about the limits of our knowledge. It’s a strong burden of proof for someone to say, “We have good enough evidence that we’re willing to take away your rights to make you better off.”

You talk about Bill Gates in this context. He’s been giving away billions of dollars to help people. Where does he fit into your understanding of this?

I think Bill Gates is the poster child for the technocratic illusion—that alleviating poverty is purely a technical matter. That there is just a long list of technical solutions to finance. The illusion is that you are paying no attention to who is actually implementing these technical solutions and that there are no politics or moral choices involved in who is actually doing the implementing.

Of course, I’m not disagreeing with giving medicine to sick people. [The Gates Foundation] is doing great things with medical aid directly or indirectly throughout malaria-prone regions like Africa.

But Gates lavished praise on the government of Ethiopia in his annual letter last year, explicitly giving them all the credit for the reduction in child mortality in Ethiopia. He overlooks direct evidence that the government of Ethiopia is not at all benevolent. Unfortunately, Meles Zenawi and his successors have been serial human rights abusers.

But equally importantly, the data Gates celebrates is incredibly shaky. About the only safe thing we can say is that there is a significant child mortality decline, which we should all celebrate. It’s great—but it is a regional thing that’s happening all over Africa, and all over the world. No one government should get credit for this if it’s happening everywhere.

If Bill Gates would just talk about his technical solutions and the direct effects they would have on helping people with real needs, then I’m very sympathetic. It’s wonderful that he’s so generous with his own money. But why did he have to praise an oppressive, human-rights-abusing government, siding with the oppressor against the oppressed? There is a technocratic blindness to the moral dimension of development.

What about when some American evangelical Christian leaders get involved in, for example, Uganda or Rwanda?

I think Rick Warren, when he collaborates with President Kagame of Rwanda, is suffering from the same moral blindness as Bill Gates. You just have to open your eyes to the full picture and understand that autocracy is an evil system. I’m very comfortable in making that moral statement because autocracy does things to people without their consent.

And Kagame is committed to maintaining autocracy at all costs. People are overlooking clear evidence of indirect involvement in war crimes in the Congo, assassinations and attempted assassinations of political opponents. Kagame is understandably concerned about protecting minority rights after the genocide. But he’s also been involved in wars that are creating misery and death and suffering, and backing people who are accused of war crimes. And then somehow, Kagame is able to turn on the charm for American church leaders. It baffles me.

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Q&A with Reformed Evangelical Theologians on Contemporary Issues

From R.C. Sproul’s Ligonier conference:

Video Link

Message 3, Questions and Answers #1:

 

Sinclair Ferguson, Robert Godfrey, Steven Lawson, Albert Mohler, and R.C. Sproul answer questions ranging from addressing how we should speak with those who have embraced a homosexual lifestyle, to the use of images of Jesus and recent movies featuring biblical themes.

Questions:

1. How do US army chaplains stay faithful to God and His truth, and provide the gospel to same-sex couples? How do they stay faithful amidst the persecution? (00:13)
2. I have a son who has entered in to a homosexual lifestyle. How do I handle this, how do I act, what do I say? (02:58 )
3. I have many Christian friends who are libertarians and say the state should not be involved in marriage at all. Is this a correct position? (14:13)
4. I have a relative who is constantly trying to say that if I try to say something is false or sinful I am “condemning” the person or the thing and am not being loving. What do I say in response? (23:13)
5. Is personal peace and affluence the biggest impediment to Christian witness? (28:37)
6. How do I explain the reality of sin? (29:41)
7. Since there is one God, why is it that we have so many different views and denominations? (30:27)
8. We live in a rural area without access to solid biblical teaching, let alone Reformed teaching. The nearest church with such teaching is 2 hours drive away. How should we agree to meet with and serve when we don’t agree with things taught from the pulpit? (36:04)
9. Dr. Lawson, could you elaborate on the Lord’s concept of salt and light in the Sermon on the Mount and how He describes Christian character? (37:40)
10. Dr. Mohler, is homeschooling a retreat from the world? Can we put children in school and expect them to engage the world? (42:05)
11. What is the biblical way we should think about movies such as, Son of God, Noah, God’s Not Dead, and Heaven is for Real? (45:25)
12. What words of advice and encouragement would you give to someone teaching three and four year-olds? How do we prepare them for a world that will be against them if they follow Jesus? (54:20)

Note: Answers given during Questions and Answers sessions reflect the views of the individual speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dr. R.C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. Here is our Statement of Faith.

Are altar calls a good idea?

Good program on whether altar calls (a practice unheard of prior to the 19th century) are biblical or helpful as part of corporate worship. I imagine the arguments and information from these two baptist professors will surprise many.  Worth a listen from Moody Radio’s Up For Debate Program.

 

When missionaries insist you leave all you know and seek to “escape” from this world

From Allan Noble:

Few things make me more nervous, defensive, and anxious than when a non-Christian friend visits my church. It’s like inviting someone to meet your family for the first time, but more like your extended family, and the event opens with your cousins leading the family in an emotional sing-a-long of some old family tune that your edgier cousins have adapted to more modern music, followed by your grandfather giving a lengthy exposition of a book that everyone except for your friend has read. And you’re worried you might actually have to introduce your family to your friend. Will they be nice? Will they ask him good questions? Will they care about him at all? You’re tempted to quickly escort your friend to the exit to avoid any awkward conversations.

The truth is, our family is kinda weird (mostly in a good way). And they can sometimes have a hard time relating to other people, especially when they think those people are the weird ones. Nothing brings this point home more than watching a non-Christian friend talk about his or her experience with your church. It can be painful, and we may become defensive when a friend shares his or her perspective about our family. But it can also be revealing and edifying. That was my experience when I heard Win Butler, the lead singer of Arcade Fire, singing about missionaries to Haiti and their troubling theology of culture on the band’s latest album, Reflektor.

Arcade Fire is no stranger to religious themes. Their sophomore release was titled Neon Bible and features a track criticizing televangelists. After their next album, The Suburbs, won album of the year at the 2011 Grammys, the band put out a “deluxe” version with two bonus tracks, one titled “Culture Wars,” which directly criticizes the evangelical culture wars, and the other titled “Speaking in Tongues.” Win Butler sings with the voice of an insider, someone who has witnessed church culture personally. In fact, he was raised Mormon and got his BA degree in religious studies.

The story Butler tells in the song “Here Comes the Night Time” is a common one in church history, a story of cultural conflict between missionaries and foreign people groups. The conflict centers around the music played by the Haitians at night. A lack of working electricity—perhaps a result of the 2010 Haiti earthquake—drives the people outside to play music and dance each night. Over the course of the song, the titular refrain, “Here comes the night time,” builds and builds, creating anticipation for the revelry, which finally breaks out into an uptempo and impassioned bridge. The song is hard not to dance to; just ask my daughter.

Lyrics Aimed at Missionaries

There is a deep appreciation for the Haitians and their culture in Butler’s lyrics, a sense of respect and love. Win’s in-laws are both from Haiti, and the band has done a lot to help the country rebuild after the 2010 earthquake, so this love of the Haitian people and their culture is experiential and personal for Arcade Fire. Butler values their ability to delight in goodness through music and dance. And in this song he contrasts their embodied delight in music with the antagonistic distance from the music displayed by the missionaries.

While the Haitians go out onto the streets to dance, the missionaries condemn them:

And the missionaries

They tell us we will be left behind

Been left behind

A thousand times, a thousand times.

If you want to be righteous,

If you want to be righteous, get in line

‘Cause here comes the night time.

The Haitians are warned that if they do not want to get “left behind”—in the rapture or in hell?—then they need to seek after righteousness by following the missionaries’ lead and going inside. Butler replies that they already have been “left behind, a thousand times.” From the context of the song, Butler seems to be implying that Christians have often abandoned Haiti, keeping them at arm’s length (later he describes preachers talking “up on the satellite”), ignoring their economic and political struggles. But more than that, the missionaries abandon them physically, withdrawing from the Haitians and their culture so they can stay “righteous.”

In the next verse, Butler continues his criticism of the missionaries:

They say, heaven’s a place

Yeah, heaven’s a place and they know where it is

But you know where it is?

It’s behind the gate, they won’t let you in

And when they hear the beat, coming from the street, they lock the door

But if there’s no music up in heaven, then what’s it for?

These lyrics play off of the image of the pearly gates of heaven, with one important difference: it is not God but the missionaries who control the gate. If you want heaven, the missionaries tell the Haitians, you must come through us. Leave everything you know and follow us.

Read the rest here

Documentary about whether the Jesus of History is the Christ of Faith

Great Jesus documentary featuring top scholars. Did Jesus exist? is the Jesus of history the Christ of Christianity? Do the gospels tell us what Jesus actually said and did?

Most of the documentary is available free below.  For $5.99 purchase the full HD video here.

A sex slave story (pray, give, go)

Investik8

Investigative Journalist

Eden: a sex slave’s story

with 469 comments

Wearing just their underwear, the girls line up with their backs to the wall, arms by their side, heads down, frozen to the spot. They dare not move.

Their captors walk up and down the line – picking them seemingly at random and tapping them on the shoulder – ‘You, you, you and you… come with me’.

In the back of a warehouse truck, they are driven for miles across the scorching Nevada desert until they reach a hotel. There, they are forced to have sex with up to 25 men one after the other.

This was life for Korean-born American Chong Kim who, at 19 years old, was sold as a domestic sex slave in 1994 to Russian gangsters and held captive for more than two years.

“The clients never came to the warehouse,” she recalled “That was just where we slept. There was nothing there but bed mats on the floor and we would just lay there.

“They would give us colouring books with fat crayons and we would colour. But then we would hear the knock outside the storage unit doors and have to all line up.

“If you were chosen, we would get in the truck and there would be a gallon of water between us. You could tell it was hot outside because it was made out of metal aluminium and it was too hot to touch.

“We were sweating when we got to the room and we’d get a make up bag and toiletries and they’d say ‘you have ten minutes to take a shower’. They would have lingerie laying on the bed.

“I remember sitting in the shower because it felt so good to be in water that I just cried. When I was done I had to basically lay in bed naked waiting for the customer to come in.”

About half of her clients were American and others were Russian but some had accents she wasn’t familiar with – they could have been British, Australian or European, she couldn’t tell.

“They all had one hour to spend time with us but most of the time they didn’t spend the whole hour, they just came in, raped us and then they would leave. And then we had to shower for the next client. That was pretty much our day.”

The traffickers would take up to 15 girls to ‘service’ hundreds of men in one day.

“One time, I could hear the screaming on the other side of the hotel room and I could tell another girl was being raped and she was screaming and it was really, really hard for me to concentrate.

“And when we got done throughout the day we would get so sore that I remember asking for a bag of ice and had to put it between my legs because it hurt so much.”

Sometimes the girls were returned to the warehouse, sometimes they didn’t. Any attempts at fighting back or escaping were met with brutal beatings and torture.

“I tried to escape numerous times,” says Chong, now 38. “I remember one time the warehouse truck stopped somewhere and we had to get out to get changed and use the bathroom and that’s when I started running.

“We were in the middle of the desert and I didn’t know where I was. The next thing I knew, I had what I think was a crowbar hit me in the back of the head. When I woke up, I was tortured. I was on a meat hook and beaten like a piñata. Other times they would bust both my knee caps or they would put me in a tub of ice naked.”

Read the rest here