Hitting On Fred Phelps, Jr.

I haven’t had time to complete my thoughts on slavery, but while we enjoy this little interlude together check this out.  I’m guessing that since this was in Greensboro, NC this may have happened during the Southern Baptist Convention last year.  It’s stinking funny.

[HT: The Ship of Fools]

Free At Last, Free At Last

Slavery is an interesting topic to me for several reasons.  One is that it seems so…remote.  It doesn’t apply to our day and age.  It is a topic that might have been red hot a hundred and fifty years ago, but not today.  Not in America.  In fact, not in most places in the world.

It’s also interesting from a Biblical perspective because slavery was a common fixture of nearly every Biblical society - and extra-biblical one as well.  Slavery has been a common part of world cultures for thousands of years.  The notion that slavery is either "wrong" or particularly unbibilcal is new.  My Southern Baptist forefathers argues in favor of slavery from the Bible.

Slavery was a part of Old Testament culture.  The law did not abolish slavery, but rather regulated it.  Jesus never spoke for or against the cultural institution of slavery.  On the other hand, the Apostle Paul seems to be a rather mixed bag.  In both Galatians and Colossians he says that in Christ there is neither slave nor free.  In 1 Timothy he lists "enslavers" in the same category with the disobedient, ungodly, murderers and liars, yet later in that same book calls upon slaves to regard their masters as worthy of honor.  In Colossians and Titus he commands slaves to obey their masters in everything.  Yet he tells Philemon to receive his slave Onesimus back as a brother and no longer as a slave.

If we pay attention to Paul’s words we cannot escape the fact that he was undermining the institution of slavery in his own day.

Take, for example, the passage in Titus 2.  Paul says that slaves are to be submissive to their masters in everything.  But don’t miss what follows.  Verse 11 begins with the word "For," indicating that this is the reasons slaves are to do what he has commanded.  But 11-14 are generally read as a wonderful passage about the salvation God brings through Christ, not about slavery at all.  Yet Paul speaks of this salvation in terms of the slave trade.  God has redeemed us in order to make us a people for his own possession.  He has bought us back.  Paid the price to set the slaves free and now if we belong to anyone, it is no mere man, it is to be God’s own possession.

Then take Colossians as another example.  Once again slaves are told to obey their masters in everything.  Yet their work is not to be done to please some earthly master because, as he instructs the masters in 4:1, all who are in Christ have the same master, and it isn’t an earthly one.  In addition, Paul tells slaves that through their obedience they will receive an inheritance.  That’s just nonsense.  Slaves did not receive inheritances.  Slaves were a part of the inheritance.  They were passed along as property.  They didn’t receive property.  Only children receive an inheritance.  Thus, Paul is suggesting that they are no longer to be viewed as slaves, but children.  Once again, our service is not to men, but to Christ.

In both of these cases (Titus and Colossians) Paul is using the underlying story of Exodus as a backdrop for his instructions.  The God of Scripture is a God who sets people free.  The great story of the Old Testament is the story of God setting his people free from their bondage in Egypt.  The promise of the prophets was that a day would come when God would set captives free.  When Jesus arrived on the scene he indicated to people that this sort of liberation was the very thing taking place in their very presence.  God is not a God advocating human slavery, but a God who is at work setting people free.  Our new slavery is to God.  But that sort of slavery is the greatest form of freedom because we serve a loving, compassionate master who is looking out for us and who does not stop at calling us his servants, but now calls us his children.  Heirs.  Co-heirs with Jesus Christ.  Heirs of "all things."  If that’s slavery, then sign me up.

It should also be noted that Paul was familiar with the Old Testament commands which would have required that slaves be freed every seventh year as a reminder that God is a God who sets captives free.

If that’s what Paul meant, though, why didn’t he just say so?  As Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat suggest in Colossians Remixed, it was likely for the same reasons John wrote the book of Revelation in apocalyptic style and the same reason Jesus often spoke in parables.  Those were ways to communicate difficult truths without upsetting those who might not understand the style.  John was writing many things that, had he said them straightforwardly the Roman empire might have destroyed the letter, even more stringently persecuted the churches that bought that message and done away with John himself.  Jesus spoke in parables because it wasn’t yet his time to go to the cross.  Had he challenged the leaders of his day more directly they would have almost certainly have pushed for his death much sooner.  Instead he spoke in parables so that those who had ears to hear could hear while those who did not would simply go away confused.  So Paul could undermine the institution of slavery by sounding like he supported the position of the Romans, all the while using the Old Testament language of redemption and inheritance which the Romans would have remained oblivious to.  His audience would have gotten the point and the enemies of the church would have remained in the dark.

Doesn’t all of that sound like a wonderful argument that should have been made 150 years ago?  What in the world does that have to do with life today?

Tomorrow I want to explore some of the implications this has for our world in our day.

Friday Is For Football & Fotos

What a meltdown by Virginia Tech last night.  They held BC to around 130 yards passing through about 50+ minutes and then gave up over 150 in the next ten to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The following are games that have some intrigue this week:

West Virginia vs. Rutgers.  The Scarlet Knights knocked off #2 last week.  Can they knock off a second top ten team in two weeks?  I’m picking them to do it again.

Colorado at Texas Tech.  Colorado has a chance only because they have a pretty good defense.  This game matches a good defense against a good offense and a bad defense against a bad offense…and it’s in Lubbock.  I’ll give gunslinger Mike Leach the advantage on this one.

USC at Oregon.  This is about a toss-up, but I’ll go with Oregon just because it’s a home game.

Nebraska at Texas.  Wow.  Could Nebraska be worse?  Actually they could.  OU fans know this.  Yes, there was a worse coach for OU than Schnelly.  Scuttlebutt on the radio suggests Nebraska could boot Callahan in favor of Turner Gill.  Texas will stomp all over Nebraska and Bill Callahan will return to Lincoln under the cloak of darkness.

Kansas travels to College Station to take on the soon-to-be-Franless Aggies.  A&M should enjoy their final day tied for first in the Big XII South because it will come to an end tomorrow at the hands of a basketball school.  My side prediction is that Mark Mangino will do his best Mr. Creosote imitation within the year.

I’ll also predict a Cal upset over Arizona State.

OU is off for the week getting ready to give Texas A&M their second straight loss next week sending the Aggie nation into a tailspin.  OSU is also off meaning that it is unlikely we’ll see Mike Gundy carried away by those nice men in white coats this week.

And now for a pic or three from our recent trip to the lake.  The first is Lake Tenkiller.  The second is a painted mural on the side of a building in Vian, OK that I thought was pretty interesting.  The third is my oldest daughter.  Ain’t she purdy?

Slowing Down

Time for a little reflection.  Fact is, I don’t get much time for reflecting these days.  With six kids a full-time job and competing interests it’s been difficult to maintain my thoughts here.  Most of the time I simply don’t know what to say or I’m too tired to say much of anything.  I participate in another group blog and I’ve been forcing myself to say much of anything there as well - and I’ve given it more time than I’ve given this.  That, and reading Southern Baptist blogs just has me feeling….dirty.  I’m also as busy as ever pastoring.  My creative outlets are watching my kids play soccer and basketball and taking photos with my new camera.  So, I don’t know what I’ll have to say in the immediate future.  I may say most of it with some of my photos.  Here are a couple I took a while back at the OKC Zoo.

Back In The Saddle Again

Back from the lake.  I’ll have some pics later, probably Friday (that I took with my nifty new Canon 400D/Rebel XTi).

In the mean time, here’s a question that Dr. John Franke asked David Phillips not long ago: What does the Trinity mean to everyday life?  What is its practical meaning?

I’m reading some books on the subject as I look forward to collaborating on a book project with David, Joel Rainey and my brother Todd as we seek to give some answers to the question of the practical nature of the doctrine of the Trinity.  I’m actually pretty amazed at the number of recent books touching on this subject.  One I am enjoying right now is God the Holy Trinity: Reflections on Christian Faith and Practice, edited by Timothy George.

How would you answer Dr. Franke’s question?

Gone Fishin’

I’ll be gone the rest of the week.  I’ll be looking at this:

iMonk On Joel Osteen

Michael Spencer pretty much sums up the problem with Joel Osteen here.

Now Is The Time For Gloating

I just MUST share the following that I received in an e-mail.  Some of you have already gotten this in a friendly e-mail from me, but it’s so good it’s worth repeating here. 

In honor of the 6^th Longhorn
football player to be arrested since June, they have decided to go with a new
logo…

The Gospel For A Community

I remember sitting in my seminary preaching lab when Dr. Grant Lovejoy told us that most Baptist preaching breaks down into one of the following: pray more, read your Bible more, give more, witness more.  Pretty true.  And one thing each of those has in common is that the emphasis is on the individual exercise of those things.

That’s because we tend to overwhelmingly view the Christian life as an individual endeavor.  But I think that individualism comes more from American culture than from the nature of the good news, the Biblical message and apostolic teaching.  I’ve been teaching a Bible study through Hebrews.  When the author of Hebrews wanted to address the threat of people in the church abandoning their faith he didn’t preach a good "pray more, read your Bible more, give more, witness more" message.  He challenged them to band together for mutual encouragement and accountability.  "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" (Heb. 3:13, ESV).

The gospel and the Christian life is not something we were meant to have a go at on our own.  But modern churches are often structured such that we continue to live largely isolated lives.  This is especially true the larger the church is.  I’ve known quite a few people who wanted to join a big church so that they could "get lost in the crowd."  But even in smaller churches our structures often keep us isolated from meaningful contact with one another.  We come.  We sit.  We sing.  We listen.  We leave.  And many won’t have any contact with anyone else from their church until the next official meeting time.  How is it possible, in that context, to "exhort one another every day?"  Could it be that in missing that we find one of the reasons for our own "hardening by the deceitfulness of sin?"  What would a gospel living community look like?  What would have to change in how we currently think of and practice the life of the church?  Are these things possible in the context of our present cultural situation?

Spiritual Discipline Tuesday - Worship

As I thought about what to say today about worship my thoughts drifted back to a newsletter article that Robert Webber wrote in July of 2003.  There is much to be said about worship.  This should probably be a series.  Too much worship today has become narcissistic.  But rather than try to reinvent the wheel I want to reproduce that newsletter article here because it says much of what is on my mind about worship.

Is Worship an Experience?

I have found that it
is common to speak of worship as an experience. If you tell someone you visited
a different church, most likely you will get the question, "Was it a good
experience?"

It is hard to know what people mean by this question. It is
also difficult to understand what people mean by their responses: "Oh, yeah, the
music was great!" "Loved the sermon." "Great skit!" "It was worshipful." "Yep,
had a good time."

So what does "experience" mean? In its broadest sense,
all of life is an experience. Life itself engages the whole person. We think
about things, feel, make choices, move about, relate to people and our
environment and engage all our senses; we smell, hear, taste and touch. And all
these experiences include emotions such as fear, trust, love, anger, fidelity,
and the like.

Worship is a specific experience within the broad
experience of life. But usually the worship experience is defined more
narrowly.

For some, a good worship experience is cheerleading for God; a
rally—"rah-rah"—for Jesus. For others, a good worship experience is more quiet
and contemplative.

Lindsey Johnson sent me an interesting e-mail telling
me her story of worship in both the approaches mentioned above. She writes: "I
knew how to raise my hands at the right time and close my eyes and tilt my head
heavenward. I knew the perfect time during a song to kneel down, when to bow,
and when to jump exuberantly … I thought that no matter how I was feeling I
needed to ‘give my all’ to Him in worship and that was how to do it."

Let
me offer an interpretation of her experience. It sounds like the worship that
arises from me (see July newsletter, 2003). This worship can become a "new
worship legalism": "I can do it better than you. My worship is more intense and,
therefore, more acceptable to God."

Next, she describes a worship
experience more like the one I advocate in Ancient-Future Talk. She writes: "God
taught me something new about worship—the whole time filling me with His
incredible, indescribable, non-contrived, and uncontainable worship for Him.
This worship nourished my heart and made me feel vibrant all over."

I
interpret her second experience as worship that comes from above. That
is, God is active in this worship. It is not only God who is worshiped, but it
is God who acts upon the worshiper.

Worship that arises from the
self is exhausting. The worshiper feels that he or she must produce
worship. Essentially this kind of worship is a "work-worship." I must do it.
I must act excited. I must close my eyes. Lift my hands. Tilt my head or bow my
knee as an offering of my worship.

Compare this worship with a worship
that actually derives from God who is at work in the assembly of gathered people
in Word, sign, and gesture:

One kind of worship demands of us; the other
fills us.
One worship is a legalistic effort; the other is a grace-filled
gift.
One worship will tire your spirit; the other will bring you to rest.

One worship will make you think, "I did it," and the other will make you
aware that God’s presence has filled your heart, energized your spirit, and
filled you with the sense that, in spite of all your life issues, all is
well.

The first worship seeks a relationship with God through the effort
of self. The second worship is union with God through prayer.

Let me also point you to the June 2003 newsletter where Webber specifically addressed the narcissistic nature of much that gets passed off as worship these days.

Be sure to check out Joe Kennedy’s blog for what others are saying about worship today.

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