Pic-O-The-Week

Sorry for the late submission.  Been in VBS all week which keeps me busy with things other than blogging.

Thistle.

Such Compassion….Not!

Someone please remind me to quit reading the online version of the Florida Witness.  In this week’s edition a letter to the editor proposes an iron fist response to the immigration issue (scroll to the last entry).  I’ve already admitted that the immigration issue is a complex one.  It requires a complex solution, I’m quite sure.  But this reader writes a letter to the editor proposing that Congress call in the military to secure the borders, cut off aid to illegal aliens and stiffen the penalty to those who employ them.  He then calls this obedience to God’s laws.

Whaaaaa?  Did Moses descend from Sinai with the U.S. Constitution and I just missed it?  Did Jesus actually give the Sermon on the Bill of Rights instead of the Sermon on the Mount?  I thought the Hebrew Scriptures taught the people to make provision for the aliens.  Maybe Moses only had in mind the legal sort - though in my memory the Penteteuch doesn’t make a distinction between "legal" and "illegal" aliens.

George Bush said he was going to put the "compassion" in "Compassionate Conservative."  I wish folks like this brother would put some compassion in Christianity.

Journalistic License

Apparently some nerves were struck at the SBC annual meeting.  There was a resolution on alcohol abstention that passed by an 85-90% vote of the messengers and apparently the 10-15% are what makes news.  That vote has been commented on by seminary presidents Paige Patterson and Danny Aiken and editorilaized in the Florida Baptist Witness.  I guess we Baptists value conformity these days more than even I suspected.

And not that this is a new tactic, but James Smith of the Florida Baptist Witness thought the issue was so foundational that when he editorialized on the convention it became the topic du jour.  And to make his point he apparently doesn’t mind avoiding silly things like facts and reality.  By the way…I e-mailed Bro. Smith and got no reply.  I’m still trying to recover from the shock.

The reality that Bro. Smith would like to avoid was the election of Wiley Drake.  I’ll admit that that one was up in the air for me right up to the moment I had to un-hang my chad on the ballot card.  For me it was between Drake and J. D. Greear.  J. D.’s a young guy from North Carolina.  I’ve had a little interaction with him in the past and my brother met him when they served together representing the SBC to the Baptist World Alliance.  Todd has always spoken highly of J. D.  I also went to his church’s website and was impressed with some of the things they have going on as they reach out to their communities.

But in the end I voted for Wiley.  It wasn’t the speech, by the way.  I voted for Wiley because he represents a segment of the SBC that is annually under-represented in convention life - the small church pastor.  It’s gotten to where we don’t seem to have confidence in the average pastor.  Denominational leaders tell us that people must "pay their dues."  What does that mean, exactly?  It seems to mean that they have to spend a certain amount of time sucking up to certain others.  Tow the party line.  Play by the rules.  Get nominated by someone important.  Get your reward.  I wanted to see someone there who tows his own line and plays by the rules of his own conscience and I’m not sure who the guy is who nominated him, but he had a nice little hair hat.  Besides, Wiley isn’t getting any younger and J. D. has lots of time to get older.  J. D.’s name will likely come up again at some point.

But James Smith sounds like he’s sucking on lemons about the matter.  Here’s what he said: "it was sad that the Convention elected a man more known for his
microphone-hogging, self-indulgent and almost always out-of-order
motions than for his serious support for the work of the Convention
through the Cooperative Program."  Nice.  And great class, by the way.

Then, as he bemoans the fact that there was debate on the alcohol resolution and that it passed by a paltry 85-90% he unloaded his rhetoric on Ben Cole and those who oppose the IMB policy restrictions on baptism and private prayer language that were passed last November.  This is where he avoids the facts.  He writes: "So, this is the kind of Christian liberty that is desired of
missionaries and other leaders in Southern Baptists life — the right to
drink booze, speak in tongues and hold as valid baptisms at churches
believing in baptismal regeneration? I cannot imagine that the vast
majority of grassroots Southern Baptists agree with this notion of
Christian liberty."  Neither can I, Jim.  In fact, I’ve yet to hear anyone, anywhere, make any of those points.

A friend uesd to say, "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."  That friend wasn’t Jim Smith, but apparently Jim has heard the expression before and took it to heart.  Someone needs to write him a ticket for editorializing in an unbrotherly manner.

This, my friends, is why so many state Baptist papers have become nothing more than good liners for the bird cage.  A good place to potty train the new puppy.  Kindling for the camp fire.  Smith writes in his editorial about the influence of bloggers being overestimated.  He’s probably right.  And the influence of papers like the Florida Baptist Witness will probably be even less before long.

Christian Talismans and Superstitions

Some of the stuff that passes as the Christian faith is just plain nutty.  Like this over at Purgatorio.  I’m amazed at how often we fall to the temptation to give in to something other than trust and confidence in God himself.  So much of this bologna is nothing more than a feeble attempt at manipulating God.

In the above mentioned post at Purgatorio there are a couple of links to online "resources" about "pleading the blood of Jesus."  One says that you have to do it three times and use the Hebrew name Yeshua to get maximum impact.  Please, please, please (three times ought to be just right, don’t you think) don’t fall for this crapola.

Life is hard and full of challenges.  Even here in the land of the free and home of the brave people find life to border on the unbearable.  So we come up with these silly things hoping they will force God’s hand to ease our burden.  But Jesus already gave us the formula for an easy yoke and a light burden - come to him.  No, it isn’t a magical formula or incantation.  It is the surrender of ourselves into his hands and to his ways.  The problems of life don’t go away, but we discover the very presence of God himself in the midst of our crucible.

The Psalmist didn’t say, "Yea, though I walk around the valley of the shadow of death…" but "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.  Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

So quit using these superstitious attempts to make God act a certain way, and discover his presence in the midst of where you already are.  The presence of God with us, though we be in the deepest, blackest, hottest hole on earth, is greater than God’s absence though we reside in the lap of luxury and ease.  If we could just learn that, and trust that it’s true, it would eliminate a whole lot of human foolishness and especially that which is ostensibly done in the name of Christ.

Saved, Saved, Saved

There’s a thought-provoking post over at opensource theology that’s worth pondering.  Here are a couple of things that had me rubbing my chin:

I do not think that the Bible defines ‘Christianity’ fundamentally or centrally as a religion of salvation, and certainly not of the highly individualized personal
salvation that is characteristic of modern evangelicalism; so I do not
think that the question ‘Are you sure you are saved?’ really gets at
the heart of the matter. I believe that the God who called Abraham has called
me to be part of his own people, and that my inclusion in that people
is a matter of grace and is a consequence of Christ’s death and
vindication. It could not have happened without the victory over
Israel’s sin, its alienation from God, the prospect of judgment, and
the opposition of the powers that ruled over Israel, that - to my mind
- is best captured in the story about the suffering Son of man who
receives ‘dominion and glory and a kingdom’ from God. This is a
narrative of salvation but it is worked out primarily at a corporate
level and it is set within a larger narrative of the calling or
election of a people to be a place of God’s dwelling in the world.

……..

There is another reason why I hesitate to speak of a personal
relationship with Jesus at the moment. I think that much of the New
Testament language that suggests this (eg. Phil. 3:10) refers specifically to the experience of communities of believers that had to share in sufferings of
Jesus - the sufferings of eschatological transition, the birthpangs of
the age which has now come. This is a major part of the argument of The Coming of the Son of Man.
Otherwise, I am rather inclined to think that the doctrine of a
‘personal relationship with Jesus’ is almost as much a modern invention
as the Catholic doctrine of the assumption of Mary. It may have been a
legitimate and necessary reaction against rationalism and formalism,
but it had the unfortunate side-effect of reinforcing modernism’s
obsession with the individual ego.

Don’t that make you scratch your noggin?
[HT: Wade Hodges]

Obligatory Ed Stetzer Post

Ok….my hit stats have fallen off a little.  Somehow it seems that I use Ed’s name in a post and my hits go way up.  I quit using Ed’s name and my hits go way down.  Ed, sorry to sully your good name like this, but the truth is I  like the attention.

As you were.

Quote Of The Day

"A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing."

Joey Adams

Pic-O-The-Week

This is a meadow on the property of the Mendenhall Plantation, an old Quaker plantation in Jamestown, NC.  We visited this site during our recent trip to Greensboro for the SBC.  The old stone table in the bottom right corner has a marble slab on top that was used for leather tanning.

See my photos in my Photoblog.  A link is in the left sidebar at the top.

Jesus In Context

Joe Thorn has a good post on contextualizing our faith.  Here’s a snippet:

God himself is the Great Contextualizer. God contextualized, both by
using human language so that all men could understand, but also by
speaking truth and acting in a way that allowed a particular culture to
get his message. Contextualization (for the church) boils down to using
cultural symbols to translate eternal truth. The truth remains the
same, but its expression varies. Think about it - God contextualized
his message by choosing to reveal himself through the use of Ancient
Near Eastern law forms. I imagine some think God invented case law,
etc. but the truth is God used what was already in place; what was
culturally understandable. God also chose to use various genres of
literature to make his glory known, speaking to us in poetry and prose,
in historical narrative and epistles.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

The Price Of A Cheap Convers(ion)

I remember my first pair of Chuck Taylors.  I literally wore them out.  I think a pair costs somewhere around $50 today.  As a kid of seven or eight they were much (much!) cheaper.  That’s really the only consideration for an eight-year-old buying tennis shoes.  You don’t want to spend $50 on a pair of shoes that won’t fit in six months.  The Converse All-Stars had a rubber toe that joined the canvas upper.  I wore those things out to the point that the canvas separated from the rubber at the toe.  I still wore them.  If I walked too fast the rubber toe would flop below the shoe and my toes would stick right out of the front of the shoes.  I was eight.  I thought it was cool.

But it was an example of "you get what you pay for."  When my foot quit growing I was presented with a choice I’d never made before: keep buying really cheap shoes and buy a new pair pretty often, or buy a more expensive pair and buy them less often because they lasted longer.

It strikes me that many corners of the church sell a cheap conversion.  All my life religious leaders and pastors have bemoaned the lack of discipleship present in the average Christian.  But that’s pretty inherent in the product we’ve been selling.  As a result we have to come along behind and try to shore up the parts that keep falling off.

The Southern Baptist Convention boasts 16 million members.  Most weeks we have no idea where to find the majority of them.  I’m afraid we’ve sold them a cheap pair of shoes.  And to keep the remainder in line we enforce various codes of conduct.  When I was a kid a good Baptist didn’t drink, smoke, chew, dance, play cards or dominoes or listen to rock music.  We were taught to live in the world of Jack Chick.  I guess we still live in that world.

As an example, we passed a resolution at this year’s annual convention against alcohol.  I know the dangers of the stuff.  I spent a while working in the Chemical Dependency Unity of the VA hospital in Oklahoma City.  I wasn’t stunned by our position or by the outcome of the vote.  I was stunned to learn that this is the sixtieth time we’ve adopted a resolution on the matter.  And yet, at the same time, we passed on a resolution on integrity in church membership.  How ironic is it that we are on record that it is more important not to drink than that you even show up?

I’m convinced we make these sort of pronouncements (and we make them every two to three years) because, rather than calling for discipleship to Jesus we are offering cheap fire insurance.

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