The Conversation

I never read Ta Nahesi-Coates Between the World and Me. On the other hand, it was widely excerpted in many reviews, and the one excerpt I read that made me think I might want to read the whole thing some day was about "the conversation" that black parents need to have with their children about interactions with the police. I have since had opportunity to talk about this with an African American pastor I know and he confirmed that he has talked with his son, and given him this counsel: "Do what you have to do to survive the encounter. We can figure out how to respond legally later if we need to." Honestly, based on my (very limited) interactions with the police, I can't imagine having that conversation with my children, but I can certainly understand why it happens.

But over the last few days, I have felt the need to have a different sort of conversation with my teenage sons. The Kavanaugh hearings have developed a Through the Looking Glass feel to them, where the total absence of corroborating evidence plus a judicial philosophy antithetical to the so-called "living Constitution" is taken to equal proof of allegations of sexual assault some 35 and 36 years in the past. If there is any justice in the world, Kavanaugh's accusers would be asked to either provide significant corroborating evidence or face criminal perjury charges and civil slander and defamation suits. But I do not think that there is. In the world in which we now live, a long history of exemplary public and private conduct is no guarantee against accusations being made and believed. So I sat my boys down this morning and told them, basically:

Gentlemen, there are two reasons to not go to parties where drinking and sexual immorality are part of the equation. Number one, because fleeing immorality and drunkenness please God. That's the best reason. But the second reason is because we are now living in a world in which an accusation, true or not, can ruin your life. The only way you will survive living in that world is to live your days from now till death with complete moral integrity. If there's no evidence you were ever at such a party of sexually active with anyone but your wife, that truth might save you in the day of trouble. But you should still be prepared for a world in which you might well be Joseph.

Walking in God's ways is always best, always safest for many reasons. Here's another one. Though it saddens me that even doing so is no guarantee your reputation will be unsullied, it is my hope that these events might be one thing that points people back to the ancient paths and then, perhaps, to the Maker of those paths.

On #MeToo and the Sexual Revolution

I'm a child of the '80s. In some ways, it was an idyllic time to grow up, because it was the last decade in which a lot of the old cultural norms still held, but the ground was shifting fast. I found out what divorce was when a 5th grade friend told me that's what his parents were doing. I was shocked. None of the parents of other kids or anybody else I knew up to that point were divorced. He was the first, but definitely not the last, friend from those days to walk through the wreckage of his parents' selfishness. By 8th grade, lots of the kids I knew were drinking and some were into drugs at least casually. Sexual experimentation of various kinds was the expectation of virtually every dating relationship, and after someone had dated a girl for a few weeks guys asked each other, "how far is she letting you go?"

It was an Animal House world, and we all seemed determined to live it up within it, though for my part I felt completely out of step. I can remember trying hard (and mostly failing) to fit in and not seem holier-than-thou even though I was a fairly committed Christian kid. To my lasting regret, I participated in the prevailing culture of innuendo, sex-based humor and hormonally charged interactions with girls. Mustn't seem too weird, after all, even if I made sure that in my own life, I stopped well short of actually engaging in sex with anybody until I was married, didn't drink till I graduated from college, and never tried any illegal drugs. My friends were mostly not so fortunate (if that's the right word). Many went to the wrong kind of parties (those to which I was too nerdy to be invited). Broken hearts abounded and drunken evenings gave way to mornings filled with regrets carefully covered by bravado ("Man, I was soooo wasted last night! Did I do anything?"). Girls that went never seemed to have as much fun as the guys or to celebrate either the parties or their choices at them in quite the same way. Looking back, I suspect all of us were just trying to fit in. Nobody talked about the costs of drinking or sex, and especially not about what happens when the two get mixed together. I'm certain lots of lines were crossed during those darkened, inebriated nights that the sober wouldn't consider in the light of day.

How did we get there? The waves of our parents' Sexual Revolution washed over us and we were its first victims. As a culture, we discarded more than we intended. We wanted freedom to have as much sex as we desired without being bound by the norms of marriage-based sexuality. What we got was sexual freedom that soon turned into complete sexual anarchy. Having abandoned the rules, we got a culture of abuse, treating each other as means rather than persons.

All of which leads us to today. I think the #MeToo movement is a mostly healthy development, pushing back against all this. Women are rising up to tell the world that our culture, which treats so many of them as living sex robots, is doing real damage. Men have behaved abominably, even if not everyone so accused is necessarily guilty. Likewise, many women have been sexually exploitative, even though most men don't see those encounters in quite the same way.

What we need are some new rules, something solid and uncompromising, standards that everyone will agree to and our institutions will universally support. But to whom and to what source shall we turn to find them? Any attempt to create essentially Judeo-Christian norms absent their theological underpinnings will ultimately fail because it has no "Why?" underneath it. "Because God says so" is a pretty compelling reason, it turns out, but "because you might get in trouble later" is a recipe only for staying away from the kind of behavior that might carry legal consequences. Nobody wants to endure that lowest common denominator approach to themselves. The only way forward, at least as I see it, is for an authentic renewal of our historic faith. If that comes, I think we'll see a culture form that values and protects the weaker and more vulnerable among us. If not, then look for the waves of human wreckage to continue washing up on our shores.

Three Cheers for Church Discipline

Those of you reading that title must think that I have perhaps: a) taken leave of my senses; b) become a hard-line fundie, who loves whacking people publicly for their sin; or c) become hopelessly irrelevant in a modern church-going context, since the disciplined person(s) will, likely as not, simply go on down the road to the next church, probably a larger one, at which they can disappear and not bear the stigma of facing correction. Nevertheless, though option a) always remains a strong contender, I'll assure you that none of the above is the case. Moreover, I think that the restoration of discipline to the appropriate place in the life of the Church is of supreme relevance, because I believe that is the distinct lack of it which is at the root of many of the Church's problems in our day.

So without further ado, here are three reasons to celebrate appropriate, restorative, biblical discipline by the Church:

1.  Protection. One of the things which is even now wracking Roman Catholicism is the priestly sexual abuse scandal. Men who should have been immediately defrocked and removed from office were allowed to continue, even being moved from place to place so that they could find fresh victims. I am not so naive as to think such sins are strictly a Roman Catholic phenomenon(though this particular type is admittedly less common among evangelicals). Nevetheless, appropriate discipline serves to protect the people within the church from continually being victims of sin The good of the Body demands we protect its people.
2.  Purification. Sin is like cancer, always seeking to spread to new people. Churches which never discipline or do not seriously pursue it soon find themselves wracked by divisions and problems. Sin can even become part of the culture of a church, such that no effective ministry can be done because so much time is dealing with the results of sinful behavior. 
3.  Witness. Nothing is more thoroughly scandalous to me than the fact that, by many measures, Christians live their lives in a way indistinguishable from unbelievers. For example, the fact that many "Christians" watch porn and have sex outside of marriage leads many to think that Christians are not against sin, they are only against those forms of it in which they themselves are not participating. Thus we come across not as those who want to rescue people from sin and its results, death and hell, so much as self-righteous hypocrites who simply don't like other people and their sins. For our Gospel to be good news, it must be accompanied by the power of a life well-lived in submission to the Jesus we claim to follow. And our failure to discipline sin means that too many people see no distinction between the Christian life and their own as an unbeliever.

Christmas in Newtown

Last week, a murderer went on a rampage in a locked schoolhouse, killing 26 people before turning the gun on himself. And whenever things like this happen, the question is always asked: “Where was God?” That question is often asked, but it is seldom given a good answer. As a Christian, I believe that the Bible provides good answers to many of life's toughest questions, including that one. And one of the answers is provides, believe it or not, is Christmas. I can tell you that I love Christmas as much as the next guy. I love the stockings, the tree, the candy, the spiral hams, the parties, the Christmas music, the gifts, the cold and snow that hopefully will show up then. I love it all! I’m still a big kid, basically, when it comes to Christmas.

But Christmas, as anyone who has listened to Linus each year could tell you, isn’t really about any of those things, nice as they are. What it’s really about is how the God who made us loved us and invaded our world. He came on a rescue mission to put right the world we broke (and continue to break) and to do it in a way that doesn’t involve destroying all of us for the evil that lurks in our hearts. Christmas is about that, about God not only loving us, but loving us enough to wade into the darkness of this world and take that very darkness and the punishment it justly deserves upon Himself so that the world and its people would be healed from it and restored to relationship with Him. Christmas is about how God isn’t removed, watching us from a distance, like some absentee landlord, but willing to wade into the muck and mire of human life as one of us to deliver us from the destruction we by nature bring on ourselves and everyone around us.

Ever since the Fall in the Garden, every single human human being has flung himself or herself headlong into rebellion against God. That rebellion takes many forms, from pride, coveting, lust, greed, and other common, nigh unto "respectable" sins, to the darker ones like hatred, immorality, wrath, idolatry, rage, adultery, murder, and yes, schoolhouse shootings. All of it is fruit from the same tree, which is a twisted heart, bent away from God. Which is why whatever "solutions" we come up with to prevent the next example of this kind of evil may succeed in the short run, but will not eliminate evil from our society. As Solzhenitsyn said, "the line of good and evil cuts through every human heart. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" There are only two solutions: either eliminate all the dark hearted people (which is all of us!) or change the hearts of men.Without changed hearts, we will never run out of tragedies and examples of the deep evil present within human beings. Next week will probably bring another one. In fact, so will a good look in the mirror.

But the joy of Christmas is that Jesus came, just like God promised over and over and over through the Hebrew Scriptures. He is the Seed of the Woman, the son of Judah, the true Passover Lamb, the son of David, the Son of God, who had a ministry that began Galilee and ended with his rejection and death. God used heinous evil committed against His own son to bring restoration from and forgiveness for evil to all who will trust in Him. That is what Christmas is all about. That is the reason we celebrate Jesus’ birth, the certain knowledge that all the things in the world that are not as they should be will not always be the way they are. Indeed, we human beings, who have the most the do with the reason the world is the way it is, have the opportunity to be made right. That is God’s reason for Christmas, His Christmas gift to us.

The pull of the old ways...

Yesterday was my day off. I try as hard as I can to ensure that as little of my life is consumed by ministry on Mondays as possible. I don't usually answer the phone, don't usually go the office, or work on anything remotely pastoral. Instead, I spent the day hanging out with Karen, going for a run, and taking a nap. It's my small attempt at maintaining some helpful "margin" in my otherwise crazy life. As part of the day, we watched a little Michael Strahan and Kelly Ripa, who were interviewing Hugh Jackman (Valjean in the Les Miserables movie) and listening to Richard Marx (last seen in the 80's doing Right Here Waiting for You). Jackman was engaging, funny and, in the clip of film I saw, amazing as Jean Valjean. But what was really interesting was Richard Marx. He sang Casting Crowns' version of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. As long-time readers of this humble blog know, this is my all-time favorite Christmas hymn. The lyrics are based on a Longfellow poem written in 1863 at the height of the Civil War, after Longfellow's own son had gone to join the fight for the Union.

The carol's third verse is: "And in despair I bowed my head. 'There is no peace on earth,' I said. 'For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth goodwill to men.' And this is the verse that concluded Marx's rendition for Kelly and Michael. It ended despairing, with perhaps a glimmer of hope in the chorus about "peace on earth, goodwill to men," but without any real basis for that hope. For some reason he left off the final verse, which is: "Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, 'God is not dead, nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth goodwill to men.'" Without God, there is no hope. Without a living God, able to help, desires for peace and goodwill on earth will remain that, simply desires.

I think that in many ways, this rendition of the song is a metaphor for our culture here at the end of 2012. We still love the ancient traditions, the old songs, and the old ways, but without the substance on which they are based. We want "peace on earth, goodwill to men," but without the intervention of the Savior on whom that certain, though yet future, hope is based. We want brides in white dresses and church weddings, but without the chaste living the dress symbolizes. We want a middle class lifestyle, but without the work such a life requires. We want a powerful nation without any sacrifice of life or treasure, liberty without responsibility, and the whole world to bend around our individual desires. These are hopes and dreams that are bound to be dashed because they do not align with truth or correspond to reality.

Yet here at Christmas, the pull of the old ways is perhaps at its strongest, because even as we dash around making merry, we remember what really matters: faith in God, family, and living well by doing good. My Christmas prayer is that the old ways would not be forgotten when the last of the lights are stored away, that the basis for our hope at Christmas would not go unmentioned, and that we as a people would once again "seek for the ancient pathways" and find our Lord and Savior standing at the end of them.

Islam and barbarism

So on 9/11 enraged Muslims have killed a U.S. ambassador and assaulted the Egyptian embassy. This morning brought news that similar groups of the professionally enraged have attempted the same in Yemen. And predictably, we are witnessing the same self-flagellating members of the ruling class here in the U.S. reminding us once more that "Islam is peaceful" and these are "extremists." Apparently, this is to prevent us rubes out here in flyover country from drawing the entirely logical connection between the deepest beliefs of these excitable young lads and their actions. We are supposed to believe, instead, that the same people who insist that women must be subject to FGM and the sartorial equivalent of the burlap sack, that you may convert to Islam but never away from it, that Bin Laden is a martyr rather than a murdering thug, and so on have such finely honed sensitivities (sensitivities which are, evidently, not dissimilar to those of a land mine) that we do well to keep from offending them with provocative films and free speech critical of Islam, its "prophet" and its "holy" book.

I'm all for acting like a civilized person and not deliberately sticking a finger in anyone else's eye. Why unnecessarily provoke the perpetually provoked? War is a dirty business best avoided when possible, etc. That being said, it is better to die for freedom than to live in slavery and sometimes all some people understand is the business end of a gun. With such people, treading lightly is seen as weakness rather than forbearance and begets more of the same.

Moreover, it seems to me that the sort of people doing these atrocities are doing them specifically as expressions of Islam. Not being an Islamic scholar, who am I to tell them they are wrong? Moreover, Islamic institutions, such as Al-Azhar University (located, not coincidentally, in the recently much more Muslim Brotherhood friendly confines of Cairo) which are presumably full of Islamic scholars are telling them they are correct. So who is the fool here? It's past time to stop telling ourselves pretty lies and recognize that the views of the embassy raiders and ambassador killers have become the mainstream of the Middle East. That may be a scary reality, but at least it has the benefit of being reality rather than hopeful wishing.

Love and judgment

I read something an old friend wrote the other day. She said, "Love with judgment isn't love." I respectfully diagree. In fact, I think love without judgment is a good definition for indifference, which is first cousin to hatred. Who loves their child more, the parent who imposes boundaries, standards, and rules, even if they are temporarily hated by their child, or the parent who simply says, "Hey, whatever blows your hair back kid, go for it"? Absence of standards equals absence of caring about the other person at all. Reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges in Casablanca, where Peter Lorre's Ugarte asks Humphrey Bogart's Rick, "You despise me, don't you Rick?" Bogart answers, "If I gave you any thought at all, I would, yeah."

On to my larger point: My friend is a practicing lesbian who evidently believes that it isn't Christian love to warn people about the dangers of that life (spiritual, emotional, and physical). To this there are a couple possible responses: 1) Jesus frequently warned people against sin in the strongest possible terms (cutting off limbs, plucking out eyes, brood of vipers, whitewashed tombs, etc.), so doing as he did minus the graphic verbal images isn't non-Christian or unloving, at least not obviously so; and 2) Which is more loving, telling a friend you love that the road they are on is the broad highway leading to their destruction, or simply standing back and affirming them in their choices as you witness the train wreck their life becomes? How much do you have to hate someone not to warn them away from self-destruction?

Evangelicals and the closet

A thought experiment regarding the current direction of our culture:

1. Try to think of all the places outside of the evangelical Church where "coming out" LBGT would hurt your career prospects.
2. Now try to think of all the places outside of the evangelical Church where "coming out" as a Bible-believing evangelical Christian would hurt your career prospects.

It is at least interesting to me to note that there are, if you think about it,  many more places where coming out evangelical would hurt your career advancement than coming out gay, lesbian, etc. We as a society no longer frown on what used to be defined as immorality. Now we celebrate that, and what we now condemn are what are seen as immoral and/or retrograde beliefs. Thus evangelicals are closeted and people engaged in all sorts of immorality no longer feel any shame: from fornicating to adultery, from porn to "friends with benefits" and all the variations of being gay, lesbian, etc., whatever blows your hair back is good, baby. Let your freak flag fly! It's a weird world, to say the least. Put more biblically, I am grieved to see non-Christians (and some Christians!) on the one hand becoming hard-hearted and calloused toward sin (Eph. 4:18-19) and on the other hand see Christians so afraid of the disapproval and jeers that we will not "come out of the closet" to share the Gospel with people who need most to find freedom from their slavery to lust.  

Be bold, my friends! A world gone crazy needs the life and freedom granting power of the Gospel now more than ever.

On politics and religion

Jonah Goldberg is not a Christian. I don't know what his faith commitments are, though my guess would be some variety of Conservative (as opposed to Orthodox or Reform) Jewish. Regardless, his comments from today's G-File are among the best and most reflective that I've read anywhere about the role politics currently plays in modern American life. Here's the meatiest part:

 If you clear the public square of what we traditionally call religion -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Buddhism etc. -- we will not have a public square free of religion. We have a public square full of religion fighting under the false flag of "secular values" -- with no opposing sources of moral authority to resist it.

The utopianism, millenarianism and radical egalitarianism at the emotional core of liberalism are fundamentally religious in nature. That doesn't mean liberalism is evil or totalitarian. But it is less than totally self-aware. The nice thing about traditional religion is you know where it comes from. The unwritten faith of liberalism masquerades in the costumes of modernity, progress, social justice and the like without recognizing that liberalism requires leaps of faith, too.

Liberalism's lack of self-knowledge about its nature makes it very powerful and very dangerous. Liberals can simply claim -- without seeming like they're lying, because they actually believe it -- that they are cold, rational presenters of fact and decency. Comte's "religion of humanity" has forgotten that it is a religion at all. But forgetting something doesn't make it any less real. Wile E. Coyote forgets there's no land underneath him. His ignorance doesn't keep him aloft.

This is how the New Class of experts and helping professions become secular priests of a wholly political religion. We confuse credentials for ordinations, regression analyses for consecrations. And without a conception of a higher authority, without a more enduring and transcendent dogma to inform our consciences, we are left following the captains of rudderless ships leading us to ruin.

And one more makes...twenty!

It's been interesting to watch the reactions to the excited announcement by Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar that they are expecting their 20th child. It seems we are quite discombulated as a culture by the idea that a loving couple might be so...what's the right word?...ah yes, unnecessarily prolific. I mean, maybe back in the day when everyone farmed and people buried as many children as they raised (and often more), maybe such fecundity made sense. But now? In the post-Pill, post-Roe era? Why, such people are as hard to understand as aliens from outer space. I've heard reactions from admiration that one woman could even endure that many pregnancies (one dear friend, who is currently expecting said to Karen, "Just thinking about 18 more babies makes all my lady parts hurt!") to celebration of life (many Christians), to a scolding, don't-you-know-how-babies-happen-yet-you-coupla-rednecks (many on the left side of the media). Interestingly, the same sort of reactions, along the same sort of spectrum, could be found at the recent announcement that the 7 billionth child had just been born this month.

And while I find the thought of adding 16 children to our family fills me with a sense of profound weariness, when I see this lovely family, celebrating new life not as a number, but as a long-awaited joy, my heart fills with joy for them, though I don't know them, at the same time that it weeps for a culture where babies are  not as welcomed bundles of joy, but as a burden to society. May that change. And to all my "young evangelical" friends in search of a cause worth giving your life for so that our culture reflects Gospel values: here's one.

The Christian and the Vote

“every true, born-again follower of Christ ought to embrace a Christian over a non-Christian.” ~ Robert Jeffress, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Dallas

On the off chance this particular deceased equine hasn't been sufficiently flogged, let me ask the question: Is that true? Should a Christian always prefer the Christian candidate in any particular political race? What if the candidate in question is a fool, or his/her theology is off more than half a bubble out of plumb? How much theological heterodoxy is permitted before a person can be safely declared "not a Christian" and thus no longer require me, a "true, born-again follower of Christ" to vote for him or her?

These are not idle questions, but cut to the heart of the matter: How should a Christian vote?

In my mind, it comes down to the following criteria:

1. Proven character. A good leader should be a good man or woman first. If he or she has not proven faithful in smaller matters, like being able to police his/her passions, why should he/she be trusted with a position of leadership? Personally, I was never comfortable with the idea that a person can be privately immoral, but publicly lead well. A person who has integrity in private will exercise it also in the conduct of his/her official duties, and who lacks it privately sooner or later won't be able to demonstrate it publicly either.
2. Effective leadership. Can the person inspire people and get important tasks accomplished. Is there a record of such accomplishments? Any politician will have to lead not just people of his/her own party, but also those of the opposition. Can he/she make even enemies be at peace with good decisions, well executed?
3. Enforcing justice fairly. This is one of the areas of our society which is always under challenge. Biblically, we must not grant special favors to the rich or connected because of their riches or connections. Cronyism or class-based favoritism is prohibited. But similarly, we must not put a thumb on the scale for the poor against the wealthy. We in the church are called to help the poor, but government's role is to enforce the law fairly for all. Does the candidate understand that, or does he/she stand on one side or the other?
4. Policy proposals that focus on results rather than intentions. Nothing is easier than endorsing policies which sound good and make their promoters feel good about themselves. But as the old proverb says, "The road to hell..." Good intentions matter less than good results where people are concerned, and politicians do well to remember that Murphy was an optimist, and most policies have unforseen consequences. [Consider for example the push for so-called "electric cars." What they really are in most parts of the country is "coal powered cars," since the electricity they run on is provided by coal, a less-efficient and dirtier form of energy than gasoline. If everybody buys a taxpayer subsidized electric car, that will effectively result in a need to construct a whole lot more coal-fired electrical plants and much dirtier air].
5. Minimization of the role of the state. If we believe what the Bible says that man is sinful and that man given power is prone to not just mischief, but destruction, then we should seek politicians who want to minimize rather than maximize their own role and their own scope of power over others' lives. This applies whether the pol in question seeks war or just do goodery "for the children." The power of the state seems to operate on a one-way ratchet, so look for pols who are either seeking to undo the ratchet a few clicks or at the very least, advance it no further.
6. No political messiahs. This is related to last one. It seems that every election brings out the messianic in every pol. This is natural, as it seems you have be an above-average narcissist just to run for office. Thus, they promise "heaven" to those who vote for them and that "hell" will result if they are not elected. They scare the voters, hoping that the glories they promise for support and the hell of their own loss will result in their elevation. But knowing that this is the nature of politics, we as Christians ought not be bamboozled. There is one Messiah, Jesus, and all others are mere pretenders. Don't vote for a man or woman who is there to save the world; they can't. Vote for the fellow who takes the tragic view that our best efforts can only improve things a bit, if at all. It's downbeat as a philosophy, but realistic in it's expectations of fallen people.

God and Science

David Berlinski is one interesting dude. And I think I've found a book I want very much to read (Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion). This 11 minute video is, I'll promise you, the most interesting reflection on the interaction between science and faith that you will watch today. Watch the whole thing, as they say.

Polygamy and the Bible

As many of you no doubt know, the State of New York recently legalized gay marriage and, significantly, did so in the absence of judicial fiat (as in Connecticut, Iowa, & Massachusetts) or ultimatums (as in Vermont) but through the normal legislative process (as happened in New Hampshire). New York is the largest state by far to have instituted gay marriage, and its passage there has been the occasion of a lot of commentary from both left and right about the nature of marriage itself. More and more, people on both sides of the political aisle are finding it difficult to conclude that marriage necessarily means one man and one woman. As a result, that biblically based concept is increasingly under fire, and now is seen as the last refuge of the bigot.

Indeed, one of the more common attacks against it is the idea that there is simply no such thing as "biblical marriage" as equivalent to one man, one woman given the polygamy of some of the patriarchs and kings of the Old Testament. Thus, the reasoning goes, if God does not condemn polygamy, how can monogamous, albeit homosexual, "marriages" be worthy of condemnation? They are, in this, partially correct. It is true that God nowhere explicitly (more on that in a moment) condemns polygamy anywhere in the Old Testament and it is true that some of the patriarchs and kings were polygamous and yet blessed by God. So how can this be if it is true that God's plan was always monogamy? But they conveniently choose to leave out the following facts:

Genesis 1 tells us that God, in making humanity "in his image" created one man and one woman in a relationship (marriage) designed for fruitfulness and mutual blessing. There are no indicators that any other kind of relationship was ever part of God's original design.

Genesis 2 speaks of God creating and then bringing the woman to the man as his perfectly suited companion. Again there is no indication that multiple women, or indeed, multiples or singles of anything or anyone other than a woman would be the ideally suited companion to complete the man.

In Genesis 4, we meet Cain, who is not only the first murderer, but also the one who sets up a civilization opposed to God. One of Cain's descendants (Lamech) not only doubles down on Cain's murdering, he is also the first polygamist. Say what you will, this is hardly a recommendation for the concept.

Or, if you want to get actually into the details, consider the four major figures who were polygamous in the Old Testament. All were blessed by God, but it must have been in spite of their polygamy, because their polygamous families are all presented in their respective narratives as a mess you wouldn't want any part of. Consider first Abraham: Abraham married Sarah, Hagar the Egyptian, and Keturah. He had Isaac through Sarah, Ishmael through Hagar, and six sons through Keturah. Hagar and Sarah were at war when they lived in the same household and Hagar was eventually "sent away" (i.e., divorced). Her son, along with the sons of Keturah, formed the Arab and Bedouin tribesmen that were at war with Israel (the sons of Abram's grandson Jacob) from 1500 BC to the present day. So that worked out well.

Now consider Jacob: He had two wives, Rachel and Leah, along with two concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah. There was unrelenting competition among the legit wives, who each gave their handmaiden to Jacob as an additional wife. The whole sordid story, including Leah "renting" Jacob from Rachel in exchange for some of Reuben's mandrake roots, the selling into slavery of Joseph, the firstborn of Rachel, and so on makes one wonder "How can God be using these people to redeem the world?" but it never makes you think, "If only I had some more wives, because this looks like a good plan that God blesses."

How about David? Well, one of his sons (Amnon) raped his half-sister Tamar, in recompense for which he was murdered by his half-brother Absalom. Absalom then, after a complicated series of events, led a rebellion against his father David and took the kingdom for a time. This rebellion was due, at least in part, to the fact that David was not going to give the kingdom to him, but to the son David had with Bathsheba, whom David had gained as a wife through seduction and murder. That son, Solomon, had his half-brother (Abijah) executed because Abijah was scheming for the throne as Solomon's older brother by a (more) legitimate wife. So again, this seems like a pattern worth replicating, no?

Solomon, the all time biblical polygamy champ, was "led astray" from the Lord by his many wives, who introduced explicit idolatry into Israel again. He is in fact the living embodiment of the reason for God's command in Deuteronomy 17:17 that the king "must not take many wives for himself, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold." Moreover, because of Solomon's violations of these very commands, his foolish son Reheboam lost the northern half of the kingdom to a former general who set up idolatry, continuing the worship that had been imported along with Solomon's wives. The spread of idolatry, which grew to prominence in precisely this way was in fact the reason for the eventual exile from the land of both northern and southern kingdoms.

Moving to the New Testament, Jesus emphasized repeatedly that "At the beginning of creation, God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one." (Mark 10:6-8). Note that Jesus goes back to Genesis 1 and 2, emphasizes the original pattern given by God as equivalent to God's plan for marriage. Also note the following: 1) male and female; 2) "wife," not "wives"; and 3) the repeated use of "two" as the number denoting a proper marriage. Jesus doesn't support the polygamous idea as anything other than a corruption of God's ideal.

Further, in the list of requirements for church leaders (elders and deacons) in the Pastoral Epistles, the Greek term mias gynaikos andra (literally, "one woman man") is used to indicate that the proper number of wives for a Christian leader is one.

Thus, there is simply no evidence for the claim that biblical marriage has a wider definition than that of the one-flesh union of one man and one woman. Not that I think this will convince anyone not already inclined to accept the Bible as authoritative and true. That is, I don't believe that anybody making this argument is doing so as anything other than as a way to tell Bible believing Christian to shut their collective pie holes already. But at least you can point them to what the Bible actually teaches on the subject rather than what they seem to think that it does.

What If...

By any measure, the cost of college education has grown far beyond the ability of the average American to sustain it. To cite just one example: I am now not quite 15 years past my college graduation. When I graduated from old TU, the total bill for tuition, room, board, and books was approximately $17,000 per year, for a 4-year total of $68K (a bit less in my case since I graduated early, and that was the senior year price, but still). The total cost for four years at 2010 prices? $144,000. As much as I love my alma mater, you can't convince me that the cost (nevermind the value) of a Taylor degree has increased by 111%. And old TU is far from alone in this: just check out what a school like Wheaton, or even Illinois State, costs compared to 15 years ago.

But what if it was possible to earn your degree in the following way:

• Take classes from the best, most respected, most learned professors in each discipline.
• Complete the traditional 4-year degree in 2-3 years, while taking classes at the times of day and/or on the days of the week that work for your schedule.
  
• Engage in a learning community with not only the professor, but with other students.
• Avoid and eliminate the political correctness, bureaucracy, barnacle encrusted processes, and institutional arrogance that infests most major (and many minor) universities and colleges.
  
• Get the annual cost down to somewhere around $2,000
• Never have to leave home.

This, according to some little-known tech revolutionary named Bill Gates, is the future, where most education is done online, and where the vast majority of "place-based" institutions find an ever-diminishing market for their product. Could happen. And I, for one, don't think that would be all bad. In addition to costing less, it would diminish the cultural power of institutional academia, and that would be a very good thing indeed. The various educrats of our world might have to (shudder!) get real jobs, the gifted teachers and profs would find their incomes vastly improved, and the students would get qualitatively better instruction at dramatically less cost. Remind me again: why we haven't done this already?

Privacy

When I was growing up, as least as I remember it, much more was considered private than is today. It was considered bad manners to inquire too deeply about someone's health, their income, personal habits, politics, marital status, and such. If you were a friend (i. e., a real, rather than simply a Facebook friend) you knew most of this already. If you weren't, you didn't. And more to the point, you did not expect to. Today, of course, we live in an exhibitionist culture and our private lives are no longer all that private. Obviously, as the keeper of this humble blog, and a Facebook member besides, I am something of a contributor to that culture, even if a small one. But occasionally, I think back on the older culture, the one in which it was still possible to move somewhere new and start over fresh if your old life didn't work well, which it often didn't and still doesn't. As a believer in sin, but also in redemption, I wonder sometimes if what we have lost in our mad rush to embrace ever more technology is more than what we have gained.

Here's Peggy Noonan today, from her Wall Street Journal column, echoing my thoughts:

An odd thing is that when privacy is done away with, people don’t become more authentic, they become less so. What replaces what used not to be said is something that must be said and is usually a lie. ("The Eyes Have It," WSJ, May 21, 2010)

Read the whole thing.

The "Boys of Pointe du Hoc"

I like Peggy Noonan. I've liked her ever since I learned she was the speechwriter who wrote "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc" speech for Ronald Reagan's D-Day commemoration (the 40th anniversary) all those years ago. After Lincoln's Gettsyburg Address, I don't think better words were ever spoken by a U.S. President in honor of men who sacrificed, some of them their lives, in service to a cause of ultimate nobility. The anniversary of that day approaches soon, on June 6th. Here's just a portion:

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.

Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.

And behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor."

It's easy to forget, in these troubled days, that our nation has faced far worse calamities in the past. We who are worried about the fate of the Euro, the rise of Islamist terror and Iran and Pakistan's "Islamic bomb," and the weakening of the U.S. need to remember that we have seen worse. The blood of my grandfathers ran strong, and they clawed back the continent of Europe from the Nazis and re-took the Pacific from Imperial Japan. My father's generation fought the Soviets in hard places all over the world and finally set free the half of Europe which Roosevelt and Truman permitted to fall under their boots. We are not a perfect nation, nor are we a perfect people within it. And our generation may yet prove to be made of limper stuff than that of generations past. But I do not believe that this is so. I believe that we will rise again, by God's grace, as a force for good in the world.

Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders is probably the most controversial European politician of whom Americans have never heard. Mr. Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament who is currently being prosecuted by his own government for the "crime" of standing against the Islamification of his own country and with it the extinction of freedom. His political party (the PVV or "Freedom Party") is poised to win the majority of seats in Parliament in the June general elections, yet is invariably described as "far right" and "extreme" by the press on both sides of the Atlantic. Wilders himself considers Maggie Thatcher his role model for effective government, but I guess how "extreme" and "far right" a person seems depends on where you stand. The PVV has called for an end to "non-Western" immigration to a country where Mohammed is already the most popular boy's name. So the man who may be the next Prime Minister is on trial for defending his party's platform, which is an intriguing thing for a Western politician to experience, to be sure. In addition, even before his trial, he was accompanied 24/7 by armed guards, who are necessary to protect him from the various excitable folk who are eager to put him to death in the name of Allah. Ironic, isn't it? The people group threatening death to the country's most popular politician are neither prosecuted nor even labeled as extremists, while the one man who stands most in opposition to their evil is treated as a criminal.

The lights of Western culture are being turned out, one by one. Since when do Western governments start prosecuting people for their opinions (especially in Holland, of all places?!). Apparently, it is since we started thinking it is better to appease the Islamic minority in our midst, lest some of the lads among them start blowing people up. Yet when the norms of a culture go undefended against even violent opposition, it is not long before that culture goes extinct. And who would trade the West's glories for a gradual transformation into another of the world's Muslim tyrannies? I think the supply of those is already more than sufficient, thanks very much.

It is past time to wake up. Islam is on the move again, after centuries of relative somnolence. Where Islam conflicts with anything else, peace is rare and never lasting. Concessions made in the name of peace turn quickly into legal rights to be enforced against all citizens, whether Muslim or not. We cannot keep doing what we are doing. If the lamp of freedom is extinguished in the West, who knows how long it will be before it is re-lit, or even if it ever will be again?

Kinda Christianity

An old friend from long ago is now the coolest author of books that analyze/criticize the Emergent/emerging church. And so naturally, not just because he is a friend, but also because he is a friend with some really important things to say to the 21st century American evangelical church, I'd like to commend one of his latest offerings to you ~ Kinda Christianity: A Generous, Fair, Organic, Free-Range Guide to Authentic Realness. Here's the book description, from its own Introduction:

So you're ready to take the plunge. Ready to translate your quest into action! Without defining yourself, and certainly without boxing yourself into one particular rigid way of doing theology or church, you're ready to become emergent. You have a username and clever screen name picked out at Emergent Village(tm), and maybe you've even begun having church in an empty warehouse in the industrial sector of your city. If so, good for you! But those are just the first, baby steps in your journey (your dance, if you will) into Kinda Christianity. This book will help you along the rest of your uniquely creative path to super-terrific self-discovery.

Are We All Part of the Modern Family Now?

I'm not generally a fan of "slippery slope" arguments, because it is far from obvious that just because X undesirable social problem exists, it does not necessarily result in Y. For example, it is not obvious to me that forbidding teacher-led prayer from public schools necessarily produced the social upheavals which followed that 1962 Supreme Court decision. It seems far more likely that the social currents of the times produced the men who produced the decision, which did more to symbolize the unraveling social consensus than to create it.

That being said, it seems obvious to me that we humans seem to move naturally along a progression from being shocked by sin, to being mildly uncomfortable with sin, to failing to even notice it anymore. Consider the progression of three popular shows featuring homosexual characters: In the early '90's, Ellen was considered avant garde and was critically acclaimed for the "Puppy Episode," in which Ellen Degeneres' character "came out." The show, however, flopped in the ratings afterward. But 1998 brought us Will and Grace, a show in which two of the principal characters (Will and Jack) were openly homosexual. This show raised protests (and ratings!) initially, but eventually became so much a part of the landscape that NBC placed it on its "Must See TV" line-up on Thursday nights. Will and Grace ran for 8 seasons, garnering 87 Emmy nominations and 16 wins. It finished in the top 10 shows on TV for 5 of its 8 seasons.

Now we have Modern Family. What's interesting about this show is that it centers around a fairly ordinary suburban family. Dad (Ty Burrell) is a real-estate agent while the mother (Julie Bowen) is a stay-at-home mother. Mom and Dad celebrate their 17th anniversary during one of this season's episodes. They worry about their kids, work on their marriage, and encounter all of the challenges of modern life. Her father (Ed O'Neill) is married to a much younger Latino woman (Sofia Vergara), who has a son by a previous marriage, while her brother (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) is one-half of a committed gay couple who have an adopted Chinese daughter. So within one show there is racial diversity (a good thing), a recognition of the realities of divorce and the difficulties of blended families (also a good thing), and the celebration of healthy, long-term committed marriage and the importance of Mom being home with her children (all good things). But there is also the persistent, never quite stated, but still presented idea that a committed gay couple has just as much right to be called a family as any other family structure. It's not the "out and proud" vibe of a show like Will and Grace, or weird coming-out drama like Ellen. It's more of a plea: Please love me, respect me, and regard me as equally a member of the family, the Modern Family, along with you. On top of all of this is some really great writing and some hilariously funny bits, all serving to make this attempt at intellectual and cultural reformation go down with sugar instead of salt.

Which strikes me as tactically brilliant. Humor disarms far more effectively than argument, and sympathetic portrayal does far more to advance the cause than impassioned protest. Moreover, I believe that this show is a reflection of the current state of American culture, just as surely as Engel v. Vitale was. If my prognostication skills are working, I think it will not be long before gay marriage and gay adoption seem simply to be part of the postmodern, post-Christian landscape of American life. Shows like Modern Family are helping that cultural transformation along, making us laugh our way through the gradual, but still radical, reshaping of our country.

Missing Men

One of the abiding challenges of ministry in the US here at the beginning of the 21st century is the relative absence of real men. Within the church there are lots of "guys," males who are successful in their jobs, faithful to their wives, and do a decent job of trying to be involved in their childrens' lives. They go to church regularly, and often give time and even money to church and other spiritual activities. But they just aren't that deeply committed to or excited by following Jesus.

I'm far from the first person to notice, of course. The legions of frustrated wives who wish their husbands would lead their families in a spiritual way give loud testimony to it. Likewise, virtually the whole genre of "men's books" on offer at the local Christian bookstore are an epiphenomenon of this reality. So men are encouraged to be Wild at Heart, or Tender Warriors, or to be the Point Man or to take a look at the Man in the Mirror. We have been told Why Men Hate Going to Church. All of these books and the multitude of others like them have at least some nuggets of truth to them (some considerably larger than others). All try in various ways to both diagnose the problem and to offer some solutions. Generally speaking, the problem is understood to be both a confusion about appropriate sex roles in our post-everything society and the lack of godly masculinity within the Church itself. Solutions include doing more Bible study and prayer to such things as modifying the language of church ("We're glad you're here and we want to have intimate fellowship with you" and "My boyfriend Jesus" type songs just creeps out most men), as well as practicing the "manly arts" of rock-climbing, fishing, wilderness camping, etc. There is merit to all of the suggestions, I'm sure. Bible study and prayer are, after all, central to Christian living and what man wants to be in a quasi-romantic relationship with God or other people at church? And I'm an outdoorsman who relishes the masculine aspects of outdoor sports, as many men do.

Yet it seems to me that the bigger problem is not societal, or even ecclesiastical, but a matter of the heart. Men have not been gripped by the true knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is not just the compassionate Father of Luke 15, but also the conquering King of Revelation, who commands obedience and submission from all. They have not encountered the true Christ, who offers to men (and women as well!) a life worth living and a faith worth dying for. And until Christ is encountered in all his glory, a man senses little to gain from the spiritual life apart from gratefulness for forgiven sin and appreciation for eternal salvation, and little to sacrifice for apart from the goal of being a generally nice guy. Thus, we in the church produce legions of nice guys who are thankful for their salvation, but make little impact on the world for having occupied time and space in it.