o1mnikent

Today the Georgia senate voted to allow public schools to teach the Bible. A Reuter’s article says that

the elective courses, according to the bill, are to “be taught in an objective and nondevotional manner with no attempt made to indoctrinate students,” and should “not disparage or encourage a commitment to a set of religious beliefs.”

Regardless of religion, the Bible is a bestseller and has been for quite a few years now. It is thus on par with the works of Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, and Emerson, among numerous other great works of literature.

“Are we to say that the world’s best seller, a book that has influenced Western culture more than any other, is off limits to kids?” Georgia Sen. Tommie Williams, the measure’s chief sponsor, told Reuters, adding that he was concerned about biblical illiteracy among students. “If you asked a kid what the Good Samaritan Law means, there’s a history behind that that they probably don’t know.”

I completely agree. The Bible is a great work of literature and should be taught as such. But then things get ambiguous:

Williams, a Republican, said the proposed curriculum had been widely adopted in school districts in many states. “The Bible is just so much a part of our culture that I think it should be taught, but not to indoctrinate,” he said.

But I’m not exactly sure if the Bible can be taught objectively, at least in the way that Williams (and the Georgia senate) proposes. Even most Christians don’t agree on most matters concerning the Bible – from inspiration to interpretation to canonization to historicity. I’m not saying there’s not a single correct interpretation, but I am saying that if there is one, history has proved that this interpretation has been really tough to find. We’ve got this book that is in many ways like all of our other books, but somehow not like any of our other books. But we can’t agree why. This is why we get people like John Eldridge and Pope Benedict and Martin Luther and and James Dobson and St. Augustine and Joseph Smith and Neal Plantinga and Charles Finney all reading and affirming the same book.

If the church doesn’t know how to discuss the Bible, I can’t imagine that teachers in public schools across the state of Georgia will do a great job at this. I have a feeling that this will not end well.

[By the way, inerrancy doesn’t jive with MS Word’s spellchecker. Word suggests that I replace it with ignorance.]

I’m a bit of an aviation nut. The Airbus A380 is set to enter the market later this year with Singapore Airlines, carry over 800 passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney, and force the renovation of international terminals to accomodate extra people and space required of such a plane. Over the last year, the Airbus A380 has undergone numerous flight and safety tests, the latest an evacuation test (see this article in the Boeing-biased Seattle PI).

Today is March 20, the first day of spring. Today also marks the three year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Today I’m also working on a sermon on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Today I’m still thinking about the idea of America as a Christian nation and the confusion of American and Christian ideals.

It is very interesting that today I happened to check Adam Cleaveland’s blog and stumble across an excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech to a group of clergy and laity at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. His message is apt for today.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

full text

Readers of this blog who share my interest in linguistics (I know there are a few) may be interested in an article in the New York Times that Nathan pointed me to: It’s Not the Sights, It’s the Sounds. In it, Tim Sulton documents his linguistic roadtrip, using The Atlas of North American English by William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg as his guide.

An interesting response to the article is posted by Ben Zimmer over at Language Log.

I’ve been reading some interesting stuff in the last couple days about gender and language that I’d like to post about, and I’ve also been thinking about how the CRC celebrates the Lord’s Supper (because, you know, why not…). In the meantime, however, I’ve been reading an excellent book entitled The Search for a Christian America, written about ten years ago by Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden. For my church history class, my professor asked us to write an essay in response to the book. I thought about posting the whole essay, but it’s too long for a blog. So here are a few excerpts. I should also mention that (a) this is a rough draft, and (b) depending on who I’m talking to, in most cases I would consider myself to be an evangelical.

Enjoy.

—

Many evangelicals lament that America has strayed from her origins as a Christian nation, and they call America to return to its status as a Christian nation. If we as a nation recover ideals of our Founding Fathers, they say, we will be able to combat the evils of the world. This Christian society was comprised of free people who were free to practice their religion without fear or persecution. In this society, a majority of the population attended church and identified with Christian belief, these leaders claim. This had direct bearing on matters of governance, and, hence, contributed to the establishment and maintenance of a stable society. As a result, God blessed America by defeating her enemies across the Atlantic and across the frontier, and gave her relative peace and prosperity for decades to come. These evangelicals closely link America’s success, prominence, and preservation to America’s Christian origins.

Many of these same evangelicals claim that America is in jeopardy of losing its status as a powerful, peaceful, and stable nation, because America is slowly losing its identity as a Christian nation. In particular, the Supreme Court decision to legalize abortions and the more recent move toward legal homosexual marriage have compromised America’s Christian identity. As America slowly becomes more corrupt, she will lose her status; God will cease to bless America. Christians must naturally respond by fighting against this moral and social backsliding. They must campaign against legalized abortion and homosexual union, they must return America to the same Christian ideals characteristic of America’s early years. Only then will peace and prosperity continue; only then will God look favorably toward our country.

This entire assumption is completely false, for several reasons. First, America was not, nor has it ever been a Christian nation; such an idea is based on a totally inaccurate and narrow view of history. Second, the idea of a Christian nation in and of itself is somewhat oxymoronic, because linking Christianity with a particular national identity is both detrimental to society and totally antithetical to the Gospel. This misinformed notion of America’s past is important to rectify, because if Christians are to carry out the mandates of the Gospel in the public arena, their assumptions about America’s status as a Christian nation cannot be based on false theology and a distorted view history.

…

For a time, God chose Israel to be God’s people, but since Christ has come, the Gospel is available to all. No longer does God choose a nation (such as the United States, or modern day Israel, for that matter) or a people; the work of Christ transcends ethnicity, political identity, gender, race, and class. The idea of a Christian nation is theologically problematic and totally contrary to the bible: no single nation is chosen by God more than any other.

…

There is also a further problem with defining something as distinctly “Christian.” Noll, Marsden, and Hatch observe that “something that is ‘Christian’ may turn out to be only generically Christian, that is, having some Christian lineage; or it may be only weakly or vaguely Christian…. There were many non-Christian influences… and America’s origins were, in important ways, a mixture of these non-Christian and Christian influences.” (129)

Jesus
heresy
schism
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schism
heresy
schism
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1529
schism
Protestant Orthodoxy
1725
heresy
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Louis Berkhof

(from Deis Natalis at CTS)

Still journeying to the cross, whether I like it or not. Only one more month till Easter.

This morning’s service began with confession, Lutheran style. We confessed, and we continued to confess. The somewhat formal “welcome to church!” didn’t happen until twenty minutes into the service. Clay preached about that journey Jesus was making up north in Mark 9 (I think) when the disciples affirm (probably unknowingly) that he’s the Messiah. After this, the tone of the whole book changes. Peter affirms Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus heads back to Jerusalem. Unreal.

Came home and pondered the story of the rich man and Lazarus for awhile. I’ve been wrestling with this text in preparation for a sermon for my preaching class in a few weeks. That story is puzzling; I tend to think that the rich man’s problem wasn’t his stuff, it was his ignorance. His problem was his condition, and his condition kills him. And our condition kills us to.

Tonight’s service began in similar fashion. Lots of confession, followed by profound assurance. I love talking about sin. I think we need to do it more often. You can’t make it “relevant.” I thought of the rich man walking through his gate, totally oblivious to Lazarus. But ironically, for both the rich man and Lazarus, death becomes the great equalizer.

We took communion at LOFT. As usual, everyone gets somber. I still don’t get that. As I sang, I looked around and noticed deep, somber, emotional silence, and it didn’t seem right. “Let’s recap,” I wanted to say to everyone. “You just heard a prayer that rehearsed all of salvation history. Then, you heard the words of Christ inviting you to participate in something so grand and inexplicable, and to top it off, the Holy Spirit lifted up your hearts to Christ, who is, right now, interceding in deep places. The least you can do is mean it when you say ‘thanks be to God.’”

I’ll close the second Sunday of Lent out with a cup of tea and the first round of severe thunderstorms of the season, scheduled to hit Grand Rapids at around 11:30 tonight.

Today, Wednesday, March 8 is Blog Against Sexism Day? When I first read about this on Bethany’s blog yesterday, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about? But then Matt stole my idea? And since he did such a good job, I won’t repeat what he said, but only add to it?

I drive to Lansing regularly, and I’m constantly amazed at the many terrible drivers on the road. (Although for all I know, I could be one of them.)

That said, I came across this video…

A Meditation on Speed

Lent started yesterday, and it caught me a little off guard. I don’t really like Lent, partially because it’s so mis-understood (“Let’s be sad and sing songs in minor keys!”) but mostly because it’s really uncomfortable.

The thing I like about Advent is that being uncomfortable is the whole point. Advent is a time of waiting and longing and expecting. It’s about paradox – already, but not yet. It’s about hoping in Christ’s second coming. It’s about Christology, eschatology, and waiting. During Advent, I read from Isaiah that talk about Emmanuel or about when all the nations will come back to Jerusalem. I read from Joel and Hosea and pray for injustice to end, knowing that eventually it will. And then we reach Christmas, where on the one hand we reflect and celebrate Christ’s first coming, but also rehearse, in a sense, for Christ’s return. The trajectory during Advent is positive.

Not Lent, though. Lent is hard. It’s natural (and easy) to hope, to acknowledge that something isn’t quite right in the world – that’s pretty self-evident – and that Jesus had better come back pretty quick or we’re all screwed. During Lent we realize that we are all screwed. Really screwed – not just an ‘out there’ kind of screwed, where we talk about all things being fallen and in need of redemption and how we need to participate in this grand cosmic renewal, but an ‘in here’ kind of screwed. This kind of screwed can only be fixed when we die and rise again with Christ. We have to ask hard questions – did God suffer? Did the Father actually turn his face away? What do we do with “Why have you forsaken me?” Will God forsake us, too? And we don’t get to read fun texts from Isaiah anymore, but we have to read stories about how everyone was happy that Jesus showed up in Jerusalem, and they waved Palm branches and then a few days later killed him. Stupid people, we think, but we’re the ones who are stupid because we do the same thing. We’re really screwed in an ‘in here’ kind of way.

Paul writes about this in Romans 7. I can almost see him pulling his hair as he writes.

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Paul continues a few verses later, and I don’t think he’s asking this question rhetorically: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

The resolution comes in Romans 8:

For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering.

Thanks be to God. Happy Lent.