This is not primarily a political blog, and though politics is one of my great passions, I’m trying hard to stay away from a large amount of political discourse on a website devoted to all things Christian (of course, politics falls under the realm of Christian-thought).

I’ve been recently reading Ron Paul’s new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto and really been enjoying it. For those who don’t know, Dr. Paul is a Republican candidate for the Presidential nomination; which, of course, is fairly unattainable at this point. He is a staunch “old school” Republican and values such things as: individual liberty, small and decentralized government, a foreign policy of non-intervention, and drastic cuts to federal spending so as to produce a budget surplus rather than budget deficit every year.

Last night while reading I came across a few brief words on the topic of abortion. Dr. Paul is opposed to the federal government mandating laws on abortion and believes such decisions should be made at the local and state level.

One of the most contentious issues in our public life over the past three and a half decades has been abortion. As a physician, and in particular as an obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies, I have always had a special interest in the subject of abortion…

…I have heard the arguments in favor of abortion many times, and they have always disturbed me deeply.  A popular academic argument for abortion demands that we think of the child in the womb as a “parasite” that the woman has the right to expel from her body.  But the same argument justifies outright infanticide, since it applies just as well to an infant outside the womb: newborns require even more attention and care, and in that sense are even more “parasitic.”

If we can be so callous as to refer to a growing child in a mother’s womb as a parasite, I fear for our country’s future all the more.  Whether it is war or abortion, we conceal the reality of violent acts through linguistic contrivances meant to devalue human lives we find inconvenient.  Dead civilians become “collateral damage,” are ignored altogether, or are rationalized away on the Leninist grounds that to make an omelet you have to break some eggs. (The apostle Paul, on the other hand, condemned the idea that we should do evil that good may come.)  People ask an expectant mother how her baby is doing.  They do not ask her how her fetus is doing, or her blob of tissue, or her parasite.  But that is what her baby becomes as soon as the child is declared to be unwanted.  In both cases, we try to make human life into something less than human, simply according to our will.

Sometimes, following God’s will for our lives can be a difficult thing to do. I’m not even entirely sure what the phrase “God’s will” means in context of talking about one’s life. I’m not convinced that when presented with an array of choices, one is “God’s will” and the others are not. Rather, I guess being a good Presbyterian I remain committed to the idea that God knows what choice we will make before we will make it, but the choosing is still our own.

Practically I suppose this means that we have the freedom to make choices in life without agonizing over the question of whether it is God’s will for us or not. Certainly we should seek wisdom and counsel in decision making, but sometimes it’s good to move beyond fear and embrace our freedom in Christ to “just do it.”

More on this later - lots going on in my own life right now preventing me from posting more regularly, but expect some updates later this week.

Here is a passage from Are Christians Human on what happens when we try to go truer then true:

There is a distortion, an imbalance which, while claiming to stress what is good, results in a fatal disturbance of the truth. Some thing is emphasized in such a way as to deny other things that are true, in the process it ceases to be true. For when truth is exaggerated, it does not become some kind of super truth… What happens is that exaggerated truth becomes sub-truth, and sub-truth is falsehood.

So a distorted, exaggerated notion of faith leads to a denial of reason, an exaggerated idea of divine guidance distorts our understanding of Christian responsibility, an over emphasis on self-control effectively denies that man is an emotional creature, a naive concept of providence can so stress God’s care for the Christian as to lead him to expect to be lifted right out of the real world.”

-Nigel Cameron in Are Christians Human?

In this case, the metaphor of ‘bending the card the other way’ is not applicable. We must not compensate for or previous errors by going beyond the truth, but must always aim for the exact mark.

What is God’s relationship to time? In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis describes God as an author writing a story. Lewis pictures God as able to step away from his book (our universe) and deal with the events of the story while time stands still in the book. He uses this illustration to seek an answer to the question, “how does God have time to answer millions of prayers at the same time?”

This explanation of God’s relationship to time seems a bit too much like Santa Claus to me. Rather than proposing that God steps into and out of time in some sort of fairy-tale way, it seems to me that a proper view of God’s sovereignty necessitates that we accept that God can adequately uphold our universe and address all of our needs simultaneously.

Clearly God is supreme over time and could stop and start time without our knowing it, but I think it’s an unnecessary weakening of his supremacy to say that He does.

I know this post is late, but this post is most fitting for today.

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

- Acts 1:1-11, English Standard Version

The bodily assumption of Christ is a basic tenant of Christianity and is reflected in the Apostles Creed when we say “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” Since the liturgical year is designed to walk through Christ’s life throughout the course of a year it is fitting that we remember his final words and deeds upon this earth.

Ascension Thursday is celebrated forty days after Easter just as Christ stayed with his apostles for forty days as the above verses remind us. The Catholic Church considers Ascension Thursday to be a “solemnity,” or one of the year’s most important feast days. The celebration is definitely an ancient one, dating back to at least the fourth century, although Augustine claims it began with the Apostles. Since it is a feast, we are to joyously celebrate Christ returning to his rightful place and look forward to our own resurrection and glorification on that final day.

I leave you with the following from the New Saint Joseph Sunday Missal:

Let us pray
[that the risen Christ
will lead us to eternal life]
God our Father,
make us joyful
in the ascension of your Son Jesus Christ.
May we follow him into the new creation,
for his ascension is our glory and our hope.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I’m currently reading through Elaine Scarry’s excellent book On Beauty and Being Just. I came across the following passage, which I found relevant to our current discussion of Liturgy. Now, Scarry is not, as far as I know, a Christian, nor was she referring to liturgy; but God, in his abundant common grace, has made the world in such a way that all truth is His truth. So, Scarry writes:

You are about to be in the presence of something life-giving, lifesaving, something that deserves from you a posture of reverence or petition. It is not clear whether you should throw yourself on your knees before it or keep your distance from it, but you had better figure out the right answer because this is not an occasion for carelessness or for leaving your own postures wholly to chance.”

Another quote that comes to mind is this on from Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk:

“Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourist on a packaged tour of the Absolute?
…
One the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?…It is madness to wear ladies straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should strap us to our pews.”

Discuss.

The two terms, ’spiritual’ and ‘theology’, keep good company with one another. ‘Theology” is the attention that we give to God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures and in Jesus Christ. ‘Spiritual’ is the insistence that everything that God reveals of himself and his works is capable of being lived by ordinary men and women in their homes and work places. ‘Spiritual’ keeps ‘theology’ from degenerating onto merely thinking and talking and writing about God at a distance. ‘Theology’ keeps ’spiritual’ from becoming merely thinking and talking and writing about the feelings and thoughts one has about God. The two terms need each other, for we know how easy it is to let our study of God (theology) get separated from the way we live; we also know how easy it is to let our desires to live whole and satisfying lives (spiritual lives) get disconnected from who God actually is and the ways he works among us.”

-Eugene Peterson from the Introduction to Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Part I

I want to make it clear before posting my next installment on liturgy that I am not arguing against other modes of worship. I am advocating liturgy because it is a philosophy of worship that often finds itself in ill repute. I hope these words edify you and challenge the notions that you may carry.

Liturgical worship services are often harangued for their needless pomp and pageantry, and evangelicals have reacted primarily in one of two ways: either the church meeting is more akin to a Broadway show than a reverent worship of the Sovereign of all creation or it is a bleak affair, quiet and sanitary. In either image, the congregants remain in their seats more audience than a fellow worshiper. We invest as much of ourselves in the worship of God as we spend solving crimes while watching our favorite iteration of CSI or as we spend sitting in a doctor’s waiting room biding our time until we are free to leave. Worship is meant as a communal activity, and liturgy helps us to do just that. Just as the clergy is meant to lead the service, so the congregants are meant to respond and participate. Many people would be absolutely frightened of speaking out during a service in fear that they would say the wrong thing, or worse yet, draw unnecessary attention to themselves. Liturgy treats the congregation as a unit, giving them the words they can speak to their God and allowing them to be engaged and involved in His worship. A prescribed order is also more than reciting words written long ago. It also gives a worship service a framework that is conducive toward worshipping God and understanding the relationships between ourselves and our Savior. For example, a service might begin with a glorification of God, followed by a confession of sin and absolution, which would subsequently be followed by a sermon and the Eucharist. That service would follow redemptive history: we are unable stand before a holy and righteous God, we must submit to his punishment, but are spared, and then we learn how we must live as his followers, and finally we share true communion with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as we are meant to. A service that encapsulates these truths is rich in imagery and serves as a weekly reminder of our great savior Jesus Christ and his work to redeem this world.

More to come.

I read an interesting interview the other day with a Portland, OR couple who have refused to pay that portion of their taxes every year which were being used to support wars they disagreed with. Rather than simply using this as an excuse to not pay any taxes at all, the couple has written a check to their local government every year covering the amount they have refused to pay to the national government. Of course, as you can imagine, Uncle Sam is not a big fan and has pursued these uncollected taxes rather vigorously.

This is pretty radical to think about for your average American. All good, law-abiding citizens pay taxes, and avoiding doing so seems somehow dirty or wrong. I can’t help but feel like this couple is doing a moral thing, however. They are paying exactly the same amount in taxes as the government says they should, they are simply refusing their money to be allocated towards that which they feel is immoral.

Christians should stand up for what is right, and good, and honoring to God. We should also not allow our allegiance to worldly institutions to supersede our allegiance to Christ. According to Christ’s commands, we should follow the rules of, and pray for, our government. These things being said, there is a clearly a point at which “rendering unto Caesar” crashes headlong into “honoring Christ“, and our commitment as Christians to that which is good and pleasing to God must always win.

For example, if the government were to designate a portion of your tax dollars towards subsidizing the cost of abortions in America (thus increasing the rate of abortions for convenience sake alone), and you felt that abortion was a morally unacceptable thing for a Christian to financially support, then surely you would be justified in not helping fund such an endeavor by voluntarily withholding, and redirecting, your tax contribution towards abortion subsidies.

By the same logic then, if a Christian were convinced that tax-payer funded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were morally unacceptable things for followers of Christ to support, then would they not be justified in following a course of action similar to that of this couple from Oregon? Do we ever allow our allegiance to our government and unwillingness to experience social (or legal) pressure prevent us from following Christ radically?

In the beginning of this first chapter, Cameron notes that the church in this century has had something of a psychology of retreat. She has had to defend herself at the same time from liberalism on the inside, and a growing secularism on the outside. So apologetics has come to take a prominent place in evangelicalism. But there is a danger: “Christian apologetics often seeks to make Christianity believable and acceptable on the worlds terms.” We must guard against an apologetics that becomes: ‘Sorry about the Scandalon, here’s my book to show that the whole thing is actually tame and uncontroversial. Sorry about the stumbling block, let’s work on fixing that road so that it does not offend.’ The gospel is intended to knock us off our feet and bring us to our knees. So while apologetics is important, we must remember that it is the Holy Spirit who changes hearts. Also, when emphasizing apologetics, we must be careful to not be “constantly seeking to reinforce our own convictions.” Always being in self-defense mode may cause us to be uncritical about our own thoughts.

“Justifying the ways of god to man has taken over from expounding those ways in every area of the evangelical church.“

Apologetics has overshadowed dogmatics. Cameron shows that our emphasis on apologetics, defending the faith, has started to subtly affect and distort the faith it is defending by placing greater emphasis on those doctrines that the culture happens to deny. Theology has come to be governed by apologetics:

“The tail has begun to wag the dog. The center of gravity of our thinking about God has been shifted from true. The need to justify ourselves before a skeptical world has distorted our theological understanding.“

In order to counter this error, Cameron suggests:

“What is needed is an awareness of the silent distortions which constantly result from this process if it is not checked. Since we can hardly lay less stress upon apologetics, we must consciously compensate for it’s distorting tendencies by deliberately giving more adequate emphasis to areas of Christian belief which are not on the apologetic front line.“

In this context, Nigel Cameron then turns to look at the Humanity of Jesus.

For more information on Are Christians Human?, look at this summery from Mars Hill Audio, or check it out on amazon here.