Just read a blog post by R. Scott Clark at Heidelblog.

As Clark points out, there is a popular proclivity these days to vilify Reformation theologian John Calvin. Clark does an admirable job of carefully refuting that far-too-simple characterization of Calvin and concludes his blog post with this observation,

The true moral of this story, however, is of the danger of the Constantinian church-state alliance wherein civil authorities have the power to punish heresy. Nowhere in the New Testament or in the moral law is theological heresy a ground for civil punishment. The only sphere authorized by God to correct theological error is the visible church (see Matthew 18) and their means are purely spiritual: Word, sacrament, and discipline (e.g., rebuke, censure, excommunication).

While our culture tends to read history with an eye toward dramatizing the stories of it's heroes and villains, to do so without learning a life lesson through accurate and rigorous analysis of the underlying historical context relegates history to the status of storybook philosophy. Morals drawn from historical events and their consequences are invaluable tools for improving the wisdom of our modern day behavior. Why? Because history really happened. And because, of course, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. My observation is that history in today's popular culture is often used to make us feel better about our flawed characters. We inexorably paint complex historical figures as one-dimensional and incomprehensively evil, thus helping us - who are clearly leas evil than Hitler or Stalin or Calvin - feel better by comparison. R. Scott Clark astutely degreased Calvin's character but then went on to demonstrate the best way to handle history; as a telescope into the past through which genuinely valuable moral lessons can be discovered.

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

Just finished reading the book Bad Religion by Ross Douthat. Douthat was and, as far as I know, still is the youngest ever Op Ed columnist for the New York Times. Below are a few of the passages I highlighted.

"The religious mistake has been to fret over the threat posed by explicitly anti-Christian forces, while ignoring or minimizing the influence that the apostles of pseudo-Christianity exercise over the American soul." 

"This is the real story of religion in America. For all its piety and fervor, today’s United States needs to be recognized for what it really is: not a Christian country, but a nation of heretics."
"Heresy sets out to be simpler and more appealing and more rational, but it often ends up being more extreme." 

"Any theory of Christianity, my own included, has to allow that the line between orthodox and heretical beliefs often will be apparent more in theory than in practice, and clearer in hindsight than in the heat of controversy and debate." 

"Indeed, this is perhaps the greatest Christian paradox of all— that the world’s most paradoxical religion has cultivated rationalism and scientific rigor more diligently than any of its rivals, making the Christian world safe for philosophy as well as fervor, for the study of nature as well as the contemplation of divinity." 

"The great Christian heresies vary wildly in their theological substance, but almost all have in common a desire to resolve Christianity’s contradictions, untie its knotty paradoxes, and produce a cleaner and more coherent faith." 

"For these reasons and more, the crisis of traditional Christianity, not the rise of the conservative churches, remains the major religious story of the 1960s and ’70s. The gains of certain denominations notwithstanding, the era witnessed an extraordinary weakening of organized Christianity in the United States and a fundamental shift in America’s spiritual ecology— away from institutional religion and toward a more do-it-yourself and consumer-oriented spirituality— that endures to the present day. In subsequent decades, traditional believers would hopefully cite various revivals or awakenings as evidence that their faith might be regaining the ground that it lost between 1965 and 1980. But nothing that’s happened since, whether in small prayer groups or booming megachurches, has made up for the losses that institutional Christianity sustained during America’s cultural revolution." 

"Whether it was conservative Evangelicals hinting that the Holy Spirit had a strong position on the proper rate of marginal taxation, or liberal clergymen insisting that loving your neighbor as yourself required supporting higher levels of social spending, two generations of Christian spokesmen steadily undercut the credibility of their religious message by wedding it to the doctrines of the Democratic Party, or the platform of the GOP." 

"Over the course of a decade or so, a large swath of America decided that two millennia of Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality were simply out of date." 

"As went the university, so went catechism class. A typical religious education textbook from the post– Vatican II period wouldn’t deny basic Christian teachings like the Resurrection and the Atonement, or specifically Catholic concepts like purgatory and the intercession of the saints— but it would often ignore or minimize them, substituting the language of self-actualization and personal growth, until it became hard to distinguish a religious education manual from a typical handbook for building self-esteem." 

"Ultimately, the Christian sexual ethic asks more of people with same-sex attraction than it does of straights— a far greater self-denial, a more heroic chastity. And as gays left the closet behind and entered the mainstream of American life, they ceased to be convenient scapegoats for the moral revolution that heterosexual desire had wrought. Instead, they became just sons and daughters, friends and siblings whose aspirations seemed no more radical than the sexual freedoms that straight Americans had already embraced." 

"Christianity is a paradoxical religion because the Jew of Nazareth is a paradoxical character. No figure in history or fiction contains as many multitudes as the New Testament’s Jesus. He’s a celibate ascetic who enjoys dining with publicans and changing water into wine at weddings. He’s an apocalyptic prophet one moment, a wise ethicist the next. He’s a fierce critic of Jewish religious law who insists that he’s actually fulfilling rather than subverting it. He preaches a reversal of every social hierarchy while deliberately avoiding explicitly political claims. He promises to set parents against children and then disallows divorce; he consorts with prostitutes while denouncing even lustful thoughts. He makes wild claims about his own relationship to God, and perhaps his own divinity, without displaying any of the usual signs of megalomania or madness. He can be egalitarian and hierarchical, gentle and impatient, extraordinarily charitable and extraordinarily judgmental. He sets impossible standards and then forgives the worst of sinners. He blesses the peacemakers and then promises that he’s brought not peace but the sword. He’s superhuman one moment; the next he’s weeping. And of course the accounts of his resurrection only heighten these paradoxes, by introducing a post-crucifixion Jesus who is somehow neither a resuscitated body nor a flitting ghost but something even stranger still— a being at once fleshly and supernatural, recognizable and transfigured, bearing the wounds of the crucifixion even as he passes easily through walls. The boast of Christian orthodoxy, as codified by the councils of the early Church and expounded in the Creeds, has always been its fidelity to the whole of Jesus. Its dogmas and definitions seek to encompass the seeming contradictions in the gospel narratives rather than evading them. Was he God or was he man? Both, says orthodoxy. Is the kingdom he preached something to be lived out in this world or something to be expected in the next? Both. Did he offer a blueprint for moral conduct or a call to spiritual enlightenment? Both. Did he mean to fulfill Judaism among the Jews, or to convert the Gentile world? Both. Was he the bloodied Man of Sorrows of Mel Gibson; the hippie, lilies-of-the-field Jesus of Godspell; or the wise moralist beloved by Victorian liberals? All of them and more…. The goal of the great heresies, on the other hand, has often been to extract from the tensions of the gospel narratives a more consistent, streamlined, and non-contradictory Jesus. For the Marcionites in the second century, this meant a merciful Jesus with no connection to the vengeful Hebrew God; for their rivals the Ebionites, it meant a Jesus whose Judaism required would-be followers to become observant Jews themselves. For the various apocalyptic sects that have dotted Christian history, this has meant a Jesus whose only real concern was the imminent end-times; for modern Christians seeking a more secular, this-worldly religion, it’s meant a Jesus who was mainly a moralist and social critic, with no real interest in eschatology." 

"Even if you do not consider yourself a Christian, chances are that your values and beliefs owe more to Christianity than you think. Even if you think that you have left your ancestors’ faith behind entirely, chances are that you are still partially within the circle— more a heretic than a true apostate, more Christian-ish than post-Christian. If so, then there is something to be said for returning to the source, for looking again at your half-forgotten patrimony, for considering anew the possibility that Christianity might be an inheritance rather than a burden. You may be disappointed in what you find. But then again you may be joyfully surprised. And just as importantly, your very presence might make a difference to what others find, when they come to look themselves."

Sunday Bible Class Notes - May 5, 2013 (Pain & Suffering)

How can a "good" God permit pain and suffering?

Implicit premises of that question...

• Pain and suffering are bad
• We are at liberty to question God
• A "good" God is incompatible with one who allows what we consider evil
• At least some people don't deserve pain and suffering
• God does not experience pain or suffering

Reasons for pain

1. Pain warns us
2. Pain lets doctors know how to heal us
3. Pain defines it's opposite - pleasure
4. Pain authenticates courage
5. Pain teaches us
6. Pain allows us to appreciate Christ's torturous death
7. We earned it

Reason for suffering - perseverance

• Suffering Perseverance demonstrate God's character through us
• Suffering Perseverance authenticates the source of our faith
• Suffering Perseverance allows us the opportunity to comfort those who suffer
• Suffering Perseverance allows us appreciate the depth and duration of Christ's torturous death
• Suffering Perseverance defines it's opposite - ease
• Perseverance in suffering for Christ identifies us with Him
• And, in the end, it really is what we deserve

Thoughts on Romans 8 (among others) - all humans deserve hell - ultimate pain, suffering and death. It is only by the infinite mercy and grace of our loving God that he spares even one of us the full force of what we have earned while we draw breath on this earth and confers the righteousness of Christ any of us. If all humans were to be cast into the lake of fire, God would still be perfectly just. If just one person were spared from punishment in hell, God would be infinitely merciful. As Christians, we suffer knowing that our pain is not wasted. Our pain and suffering will end. Our pain and suffering will not increase infinitely in eternity - in fact, just the opposite. Only by experiencing pain and suffering in this life are we able to understand just how incredible a gift we have been given in eternity through the sacrificial pain and suffering of Jesus on our behalf.

Discussion Questions

• Why did Jesus decline the anesthetic offered to him on the cross?
• Why did Jesus have to go through such pain and suffering? Wouldn't it have been good enough for him to just die?
• Do children born with birth defects deserve to experience such pain and suffering?
• How can a "good" god allow horrible things like schizophrenia?

Book Highlights from Hole in Our Holiness

I recently read Hole in Our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung.

The quotes below are what ended up highlighted in my copy of the book.

“Not only is holiness the goal of your redemption, it is necessary for your redemption. Now before you sound the legalist alarm, tie me up by my own moral bootstraps, and feed my carcass to the Galatians, we should see what Scripture has to say. . . . It’s the consistent and frequent teaching of the Bible that those whose lives are marked by habitual ungodliness will not go to heaven. To find acquittal from God on the last day there must be evidence flowing out of us that grace has flowed into us.”

“On the last day, God will not acquit us because our good works were good enough, but he will look for evidence that our good confession was not phony. It’s in this sense that we must be holy.”

“It’s all too easy to turn the fight of faith into sanctification-by-checklist. Take care of a few bad habits, develop a couple good ones, and you’re set. But a moral checklist doesn't take into consideration the idols of the hearts. It may not even have the gospel as part of the equation. And inevitably, checklist spirituality is highly selective. So you end up feeling successful at sanctification because you stayed away from drugs, lost weight, served at the soup kitchen, and renounced Styrofoam. But you've ignored gentleness, humility, joy, and sexual purity.”

“The world provides no cheerleaders on the pathway to godliness.”

“How awful it would be to inhabit this world, have some idea that there is a God, and yet not know what he desires from us. Divine statutes are a gift to us. God gives us law because he loves.”

“Expecting perfection from ourselves or others is not what holiness is about.”

“We can think it’s a mark of spiritual sensitivity to consider everything we do as morally suspect. But this is not the way the Bible thinks about righteousness. . . . For those who have been made right with God by grace alone through faith alone and therefore have been adopted into God’s family, many of our righteous deeds are not only not filthy in God’s eyes, they are exceedingly sweet, precious, and pleasing to him.”

“One of the main motivations for obedience is the pleasure of God. If we, in a well-intentioned effort to celebrate the unimpeachable nature of our justification, make it sound as though God no longer concerns himself with our sins, we’ll put a choke on our full-throttle drive to holiness. God is our heavenly Father. He has adopted us by his grace. He will always love his true children. But if we are his true children we will also love to please him. It will be our delight to delight in him and know that he is delighting in us.”

“Of all the crazy things Paul said, 1 Corinthians 4:4 may be the most jolting. Here’s the apostle Paul — Mr. Wretched Man That I Am, Mr. There Is No One Good, No Not One — and he tells the Corinthians, ‘I am not aware of anything against myself.’ Seriously?! You can’t think of anything, Paul? Not a single idol buried somewhere under ten layers of your subconscious? Now let’s not miss the next line: “but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.”

So Paul isn't aiming to be okay just because he feels okay. But he is saying he has a clear conscience. He obeys God and sticks close to his Word. This doesn't mean he’s perfect. No doubt, he’s bringing his sins daily before the Lord to be cleansed from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:8–9; Matthew 6:12). But he’s not walking around feeling like a spiritual loser. He’s not burdened with constant low-level guilt because he’s not doing enough or because he detected a modicum of pride over lunch.”

“Sanctification is not by surrender, but by divinely enabled toil and effort.”

“Some Christians are stalled out in their sanctification for simple lack of effort. They need to know about the Spirit’s power. They need to be rooted in gospel grace. They need to believe in the promises of God. And they need to fight, strive, and make every effort to work out all that God is working in them. Let us say with Paul, ‘I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me’ (1 Corinthians 15:10). Without this biblical emphasis, we’ll be confused, wondering why sanctification isn't automatically flowing from a heartfelt commitment to gospel-drenched justification. We’ll be waiting around for enough faith to really ‘get the gospel’ when God wants us to get up and get to work (Philippians 2:12–13). Because when it comes to growth in godliness, trusting does not put an end to trying.”

“The Bible is realistic about holiness. Don’t think that all this glorious talk about dying to sin and living to God [Romans 6] means there is no struggle anymore or that sin will never show up in the believer’s life. The Christian life still entails obedience. It still involves a fight. But it’s a fight we will win. You have the Spirit of Christ in your corner, rubbing your shoulders, holding the bucket, putting his arm around you and saying before the next round with sin, ‘You’re going to knock him out, kid.’ Sin may get in some good jabs. It may clean your clock once in a while. It may bring you to your knees. But if you are in Christ it will never knock you out. You are no longer a slave, but free. Sin has no dominion over you. It can’t. It won’t. A new King sits on the throne. You serve a different Master. You salute a different Lord.”

“I've written this book to make you hopeful about holiness, not make you hang your head.”

“Union with Christ means God’s power for us working in and through us.”

“To run hard after holiness is another way of running hard after God.”

“Which brings us to one of the most important axioms about holiness: when it comes to sanctification, it’s more important where you’re going than where you are.”

“You shouldn't take your spiritual temperature every day. You need to look for progress over months and years, not by minutes and hours.”

“Sincere biblical repentance is as much a work of grace as not sinning in the first place. To err is human, to make progress is divine.”

“A dying world needs you to be with God more than it needs you to be ‘with it.’ That’s true for me as a pastor and true for you as a mother, father, brother, sister, child, grandparent, friend, Bible study leader, computer programmer, bank teller, barista, or CEO. Your friends and family, your colleagues and kids — they don’t need you to do miracles or transform civilization. They need you to be holy.”

“Holiness is the sum of a million little things — the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances.”

Killing Calvinism - How to Destroy a Perfectly Good Theology

Because I gravitate to Reformed theology, I re-read this book frequently.



Killing Calvinism on Amazon by Greg Dutcher

Here are some passages I highlighted:

"I realized that God’s love for me was so great that he had my eternal well-being deep in his eternal heart long before I came on the scene. I also came to see that my sinfulness was so horrible, so debilitating to all of my faculties, that without God outright saving me, apart from any cooperation on my part, I was doomed to everlasting judgment." 

"We desperately need more Christians who know how to think along clear, biblical lines. But we cross a line when we are more focused on mastering theology than on being mastered by Christ." 

"Although Jesus’ grasp of theology was infinitely perfect in every way, what stands out the most about him is how he lived and what he did." 

"More often than not, though, zealotry untempered by wisdom is just obnoxious and obsessive—whether your passion is computing or theology." 

"Paul paid a high personal price, suffering hardship and spending himself to bring the gospel and preach the gospel to people who were already certain to be saved! Why? Because the saved are the means God uses to reach the lost." 

"A shared secret—whether a trivial bit of nonsense, a shameful slab of gossip, a stock tip, or a lewd joke—is just one of several ways by which people join together to form 'in' crowds. An especially powerful and enduring form of the 'in' crowd involves a shared passion, like for a sports team, a method of brewing coffee, or a theological system. What they all have in common is special knowledge coupled with passion that others do not share. Combine that with the capacity for raging pride that we all have lurking in our hearts, and any kind of special knowledge can quickly lead to an attitude that says, 'We get it, and you don’t.' " 

"If our Calvinism has become a platform from which we look down upon others, we desperately need God’s grace to convict us that this is sinful." 

"As one who ministers mostly to those who don’t see themselves as Reformed, I ask you to trust me when I say that letting go of a worldview can be like letting go of a loved one. For the typical evangelical in the West, what helps him or her make sense of the world is a kind of unexamined “Arminianism lite,” absorbed by osmosis from the broader Christian culture, tainted as that culture is by humanism and postmodernism and whatever else. For many of these genuine believers, this perspective is Christianity, however vague and ill-formed it may seem from our side of the theological fence. They love it and feel they need it. To let go of something you have cherished in this way often requires a period of grieving."

Total Depravity
Sin controls every part of man. He is spiritually dead and blind, and unable to obey, believe, or repent. He continually sins, for his nature is completely evil.
Unconditional Election
God chose the elect solely on the basis of his free grace, not anything in them. He has a special love for the elect. God left the rest to be damned for their sins.
Limited Atonement
Christ died especially for the elect, and paid a definite price for them that guaranteed their salvation.
Irresistible Grace
Saving grace is irresistible, for the Holy Spirit is invincible and intervenes in man’s heart. He sovereignly gives the new birth, faith, and repentance to the elect.
Perseverance of the Saints
God preserves all the elect and causes them to persevere in faith and obedience to the end. None are continually backslidden or finally lost.

Drew Barry - Unseen Biology

Didn't work? Click here.

Four Critical Leadership Qualities

Pilots have checklists. Some are referenced on every flight. Some are for emergencies. And a few are so critical that they must be committed to memory perfectly - or you just might die.

Pilots call these checklists "Critical Action Procedures" or CAP's for short. A while back I discovered that leaders need CAP's - whether they know it or not.

For military pilots, CAP's are the steps that must be taken, in perfect order and without delay, when the safety of an aircraft is in jeopardy. When pilots undergo the periodic simulator evaluations required to be rated to operate specific aircraft, the Instructor Pilot running the show always tests all the CAP's for that particular jet. Mistakes are not tolerated. No exceptions.

How seriously do pilots take these CAP's? Beyond the simulator evaluations, Air Force F-16 pilots are required to write out their CAP's – in ink, perfectly – at least once a month or they are grounded pending additional training. When the experience level of a squadron is relatively low, commanders routinely require completion of a written CAP's test every week. Failure to speak or perform the CAP's perfectly in a simulator evaluation results in a permanent black spot on the pilot's record and reputation.

As the Commander of a fighter outfit, I gave my leaders another set of CAP's – Leadership CAP's. My Leadership CAP's were adapted from an idea on loan from the book The Leadership Challenge. There are dozens of qualities that can be valuable to a leader. But exhaustive, worldwide, cross-cultural research has clearly identified four qualities every human being wants in a leader they will follow willingly. Those four qualities became my Leadership CAP's.

1. Honest
2. Competent
3. Inspiring
4. Forward Looking

Kouzes and Posner (the authors of The Leadership Challenge) elaborate on those four qualities and many other valuable insights. Their findings are profound.

May I make a suggestion? Study the life of Jesus of Nazareth in light of these leadership qualities. He employed them perfectly.