DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed

“Why bother with church membership?”

I've been asked that question on numerous occasions. Sometimes it’s said with genuine curiosity–“So explain to me what membership is all about.” Other times it’s said with a tinge of suspicion–“So tell me again, why do you think I should become a member?”–as if joining the church automatically signed you up to tithe by direct deposit.

For many Christians membership sounds stiff, something you have at your bank or the country club, but too formal for the church. Even if it’s agreed that Christianity is not a lone ranger religion, that we need community and fellowship with other Christians, we still bristle at the thought of officially joining a church. Why all the hoops? Why box the Holy Spirit into member/non-member categories? Why bother joining a local church when I'm already a member of the universal Church?

I've found that some people just won't be convinced of church membership no matter what you say or how many times "member" actually shows up in the New Testament. But many people have not given serious thought to church membership. They are open to hearing the justification for something they've not thought much about.

Here are just a few reasons why church membership matters.

1. In joining a church you make visible your commitment to Christ and his people. Membership is one way to raise the flag of faith. You state before God and others that you are part of this local body of believers. It’s easy to talk in glowing terms about the invisible church–the body of all believers near and far, living and dead–but it’s in the visible church that God expects you to live out your faith.

Sometimes I think that we wouldn’t all be clamoring for community if we had actually experienced it. Real fellowship is hard work, because most people are a lot like us–selfish, petty, and proud. But that’s the body God calls us to.

How many of Paul’s letters were written to individuals? Only a handful, and these were mostly to pastors. The majority of his letters were written to a local body of believers. We see the same thing in Revelation. Jesus spoke to individual congregations in places like Smyrna, Sardis, and Laodicea. The New Testament knows no Christians floating around in “just me and Jesus” land. Believers belong to churches.

2. Making a commitment makes a powerful statement in a low-commitment culture. Many bowling leagues require more of their members than our churches. Where this is true, the church is a sad reflection of its culture. Ours is a consumer culture were everything is tailored to meet our needs and satisfy our preferences. When those needs aren’t met, we can always move on to the next product, or job, or spouse.

Joining a church in such an environment makes a counter-cultural statement. It says “I am committed to this group of people and they are committed to me. I am here to give, more than get."

Even if you will only be in town for a few years, it’s still not a bad idea to join a church. It lets your home church (if you are a student) know that you are being cared for, and it lets your present know that you want to be cared for here.

But it’s not just about being cared for, it’s about making a decision and sticking with it–something my generation, with our oppressive number of choices, finds difficult. We prefer to date the church–have her around for special events, take her out when life feels lonely, and keep her around for a rainy day. Membership is one way to stop dating churches, and marry one (see Joshua Harris' excellent book along these lines).

3. We can be overly independent. In the West, it’s one of the best and worst thing about us. We are free spirits and critical thinkers. We get an idea and run with it. But whose running with us? And are any of us running in the same direction? Membership states in a formal way, “I am part of something bigger than myself. I am not just one of three hundred individuals. I am part of a body.”

4. Church membership keeps us accountable. When we join a church we are offering ourselves to one another to be encouraged, rebuked, corrected, and served. We are placing ourselves under leaders and submitting to their authority (Heb. 13:7). We are saying, “I am here to stay. I want to help you grow in godliness. Will you help me to do the same?”

Mark Dever, in his book Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, writes,

Church membership is our opportunity to grasp hold of each other in responsibility and love. By identifying ourselves with a particular church, we let the pastors and other members of that local church know that we intend to be committed in attendance, giving, prayer, and service. We allow fellow believers to have great expectations of us in these areas, and we make it known that we are the responsibility of this local church. We assure the church of our commitment to Christ in serving with them, and we call for their commitment to serve and encourage as well.

5. Joining the church will help your pastor and elders be more faithful shepherds. Hebrews 13:7 says “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority.” That’s your part as "laypeople". Here’s our part as leaders: “They keep watch over you as men who must give an account.” As a pastor I take very seriously my responsibility before God to watch care for souls. At almost every elders’ meeting, as per our denomination's Book of Church Order, we “seek to determine whether any members of the congregation are in need of special care regarding their spiritual condition and/or not making faithful use of the means of grace.” This is hard enough to do in a church like ours where there is constant turnover, but it’s even harder when we don’t know who is really a part of this flock.

To give just one example, we try to be diligent in following up with people who haven’t been at our church for a while. This is a challenge. But if you never become a member, we can't tell if you are really gone, because we might not be sure if you were ever here! It’s nearly impossible for the elders to shepherd the flock when they don’t know who really considers them their shepherds.

6. Joining the church gives you an opportunity to make promises. When someone become a member at University Reformed Church, he makes promises to pray, give, serve, attend worship, accept the spiritual guidance of the church, obey its teachings, and seek the things that make for unity, purity, and peace. We ought not to make these promises lightly. They are solemn vows. And we must hold each other to them. If you don’t join the church, you miss an opportunity to publicly make these promises, inviting the elders and the rest of the body to hold you to these promises–which would be missing out on great spiritual benefit, for you, your leaders, and the whole church.

Membership matters more than most people think. If you really want to be a counter-cultural revolutionary, sign up for the membership class and join your local church.

Here we are--the last week before the fantastic final four. There was some controversy about whether last week's competition was rigged in favor of G.I. Joe. But I can assure you I did not like any of the cartoons offered last week. And apparently, few of you liked them either. Nevertheless, someone had to win, and that someone was G.I. Joe with 47% of the vote. Thundercats had a strong showing at 31%. He-Man was respectable at 20%. And She-Ra garnered 1 vote from a brave soul out there; 0% of the vote.

Who will join Duck Tales, Pinky and the Brain, and G.I. Joe in next's week's final? Whichever cartoon can make it through the vaunted Fighting Robotics Division.

You'll have until Tuesday morning to vote.

1. Go-Bots
Pro: It wouldn't take much to memorize thes lyrics
Con: A monkey could have written these lyrics ("The Go-Bots!")



2. Transformers
Pro: The iconic "More than meets the eye"
Con: A lot of strange, mechanical transforming noises; struggles to find a consistent meter



3. Voltron
Pro: Encouraging to see the good planets of the solar system working together for a change
Con: I can't believe Optimus Prime did the intro for Voltron



4. Mask
Pro: Nice to have an actual song again, vintage 80s sound
Con: vintage 80s sound

When you read this post, the elders and pastors of University Reformed Church will, Lord willing, be in the hinterlands of Michigan on our annual retreat. In previous years we have worked through a book or talked through a big issue facing our church. This year we are only going to do one thing: pray.

I've always been inspired and convicted by the Apostle's priorities in Acts 6. You know the passage well. Some of the Greeks were upset with the Jews because the Greek widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution. The Twelve had to do something about this problem. But they knew they were not the ones to handle it directly. "It is not right" they said, "that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables." So they appointed seven men full of the Spirit to take care of the distribution. As for the Apostles, they would "devote themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word."

That's what I want my ministry to be about--the word of God and prayer. In so far as the elders are supposed to be like the Twelve and the deacons like the Seven, I want our Board of Elders to be devoted to prayer and the ministry of the word. Of course, there are other responsibilities for the elders, shepherding and overseeing the flock being chief among those responsibilities. But we must never neglect prayer.

And if we are to be like the Apostles, we must do more than pray at the beginning and the end of our meetings. We must be so devoted to prayer that we say no to other worthwhile ministry. That's the inspiring and convicting part of Acts 6. Sure, I pray as a pastor. I pray privately. I pray in church. I pray at meetings. I pray for others. The elders pray for a good chunk of time at every meeting. They pray in people's homes and at the hospital. But what are we consciously not doing so that we can be devoted to prayer? We can't say yes to prayer as the Apostles did unless we are saying no to something else. For Friday and Saturday of this week at least we are saying no to agenda items, no to a football game or two, and even no to our families. It's not much, but it's a start.

I must be getting old because I find myself pining for the good ole days when television was funnier, nicer, and cleaner. Besides watching cartoons with my kids and some sports, about the only thing I like to watch is a good rerun of the Cosby Show. Now that was some funny stuff.

I didn't know it at the time, but it was also revolutionary--a popular show about a successful black family, conservative in their values and also proud of their African-American tradition. The show was an implicit commercial for diversity, but also for the value of education, hard work, and moral integrity. And above all, it was, and still is, very funny.

Enjoy these bloopers from Season 2.

The standard sermon ends with several points of application. I have nothing wrong with this. Many of my sermons end with some “now what” points that relate the text to everyday life. But congregations should not expect every sermon to end with three “take home” points. And pastors should not fall into the habit of giving application at the end of every sermon.

I’ve been preaching regularly for over seven years now. I know the routine of preparing sermons. I know the struggles. The introduction and the conclusion are the hardest parts for me, especially the conclusion. Landing the plane is not easy, even for seasoned preachers. Whether it’s by training or instinct, most preachers think about concluding with application. It may be explicit application ("here are three points of application from our text...") or implicit ("God doesn’t want us to be hearers of the word only, but doers, so in conclusion..."), but most sermons end with some thoughts on what to do as a result of what’s been heard.

This is often appropriate. If I’m preaching on showing hospitality to strangers I may finish with some practical suggestions on how to be more welcoming as a congregation. Strip every sermon of application and you won’t be a very good preacher. But some (many?) sermons should not end with application. Why? Because the point of the text is not always to get you to go do something. I know, application doesn’t have to be in the form of imperatives. Application can be a probing question or something to remember or believe. But I think most preachers revert to imperatives. Especially for conservatives, it just feels better to end a sermon with some strong exhortations. Maybe it’s laziness in preparation. Maybe it’s a dearth of creativity. Maybe it’s a fear of antinomianism. For whatever reason, so many of our sermons end with a stirring call to stop doing these bad things, try these good things, start feeling more joyful, etc. But many texts are not about oughts.

Last week I was preaching on Mark 1:9-11, the story of Jesus’ baptism. I struggled with how to end the sermon. The point of the passage is pretty obvious. Mark wants us to see the unique identity of Jesus Christ. Having announced Jesus as the Son of God in verse 1, Mark then tries to demonstrate in the rest of the prologue why he is the Son of God and what this means. John the Baptist predicts a mightier one to come after him in verses 7-8. Then in the next scene we see Jesus’ baptism, with three attendant signs that point to his unique identity (the heavens opening, the Spirit descending, a voice commending). The point of verses 9-11 is straightforward: Jesus is the new revelation from God, the bringer of the Spirit, the Son of the Father.

So how would you end a sermon like this? You could say “Look at the idols in your hearts. You need to love this Christ more.” Or, “This Jesus is worthy of all our obedience. Go live for him and keep his commandments.” Or, “Why don’t we share the good news about such a great Savior? Tell your neighbors this week about the Son of God.” All of those are fair points and it would not be wrong to connect the text to these thoughts at some point during the sermon. But if we land the plane on these points I fear we are missing the point of the passage. These three verses are here to give a glimpse of the glory of Christ. My fellow preachers and I should not hesitate to land right there. Are we so afraid of not being relevant or prophetic that we can’t end a sermon by exalting in the person of Christ? No application is needed to finish off this sermon. The last word ringing in people’s hears should be something along the lines of, “Behold your God!”

Maybe we just aren’t as passionate about the person and work of Christ as we are about getting in people's faces (which, trust me, I also do). Or maybe we think people will be bored if they don’t get some good practical advice on their way out the door (and it’s possible they are more eager to hear three points of application than ponder the glory of Christ). Again, I’m not saying no text can end with imperatives. "Repent," "believe," "obey" are all biblical injunctions. But we must let the text determine the mood of the sermon and not tack on honey-do lists at the end of every message. Preachers ought to rebuke when necessary, when the text calls for it. But it makes for bad preaching and beat-up congregations when every sermon concludes with exhortation. Sometimes it’s ok to end the sermon by simply telling the people about Jesus.

Here's a fascinating article called "The Whole and the Heart of the Gospel" from Ray Pennings in Comment Magazine. Pennings outlines four Reformed approaches to "the proclamation of the gospel and seeking the peace of the city." He labels the four approaches Neocalvinist, two kingdom perspective, Neopuritan, and Old Calvinisism.

The gist:

So to summarize the discussion within Reformed circles today: The neocalvinist says the fundamental presuppositions underlying the debate need to be changed if we are to have meaningful engagement. The two kingdom perspective responds that it won't happen; when we try to engage in discussion, we end up calling things Christian that really aren't, resulting in pride and a misrepresentation of the gospel. The neopuritans say that that is why we should avoid a systemic approach; we should focus more on the individual needs of our neighbors and show them, both in ministries of mercy as well as by positive examples, that faith makes a difference. The Old Calvinists say that in all of this activity, we are losing our focus and getting dirty as we dig around in the garbage cans of culture to retrieve a penny or two of value from the bottom. We and our culture need heart-surgery, not band-aids.

In his conclusion, Pennings' does not side with any of the four approaches. Instead he encourages us to eschew easy answers.

Neither I nor the church of which I am part pretends to have embodied the full range of biblical teaching as it bears on this challenging issue. As our culture is changing from one in which there was a majoritarian underlying Christian ethic (at least superficially) to one that more reflects a pre-Constantinian model, the questions of the relationship between the church and the peace of society will need to be rethought, as the "easy" answers of the past decades will be exposed as inadequate. It is my prayer that this generation may be found faithful and equipped by God's Spirit to wrestle with and to live out the teachings of God's word in the midst of these challenging times.

The article is not long, but I found the four categories to be helpful. Read the whole thing.

If any doctrine makes Christianity Christian, then surely it is the doctrine of the Trinity. The three great ecumenical creeds—the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed—are all structured around our three in one God, underlying the essential importance of Trinitarian theology. Augustine once commented about the Trinity that “in no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of truth more profitable.” More recently, Sinclair Ferguson has reflected on “the rather obvious thought that when his disciples were about to have the world collapse in on them, our Lord spent so much time in the Upper Room speaking to them about the mystery of the Trinity. If anything could underline the necessity of Trinitarianism for practical Christianity, that must surely be it!”

Yet, when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, most Christians are poor in their understanding, poorer in their articulation, and poorest of all in seeing any way in which the doctrine matters in real life. One theologian said, tongue in cheek, “The trinity is a matter of five notions or properties, four relations, three persons, two processions, one substance or nature, and no understanding.” All the talk of essence and persons and co-this and co-that seem like theological gobbledy-gook reserved for philosophers and scholars--maybe for thinky bookish types, but certainly not for moms and mechanics and middle-class college students.

So in a few hundred words let me try to explain what the doctrine of the Trinity means, where it is found in the Bible, and why it matters.

First, what does the doctrine mean? The doctrine of the Trinity can be summarized in seven statements. (1) There is only one God. (2) The Father is God. (3) The Son is God. (4) The Holy Spirit is God. (5) The Father is not the Son. (6) The Son is the not the Holy Spirit. (7) The Holy Spirit is not the Father. All of the creedal formulations and theological jargon and philosophical apologetics have to do with safeguarding each one of these statements and doing so without denying any of the other six. The Athanasian Creed puts it this way: “Now this is the catholic faith: That we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons, nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit, still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.”

The two key words here are essence and persons. When you read “essence”, think “Godness.” All three Persons of the Trinity share the same “Godness.” One is not more God than another. None is more essentially divine than the rest. When you read “persons”, think “a particular individual distinct from the others.” Theologians use these terms because they are trying to find a way to express the relationship of three beings that are equally and uniquely God, but not three Gods. That’s why we get this confusing language of essence and persons. We want to be true to the biblical witness that there is an indivisibility and unity of God, even though Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can all be rightly called God. The Persons are not three gods; rather, they dwell in communion with each other as they subsist in the divine nature without being compounded or confused.

Confusing isn’t it? Sometimes it’s easier to understand what we believe by stating what we don’t believe. Orthodox Trinitarianism rejects monarchianism which believes in only one person (mono) and maintains that the Son and the Spirit subsists in the divine essence as impersonal attributes not distinct and divine Persons. Orthodox Trinitarianism rejects modalism which believes that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different names for the same God acting in different roles (like the well-intentioned but misguided “water, vapor, ice” analogy). Orthodox Trinitarianism rejects Arianism which denies the full deity of Christ. And finally, orthodox Trinitarianism rejects all forms of tri-theism, which teach that the three members of the Godhead are, to quote a leading Mormon apologist, “three distinct Beings, three separate Gods.”

Second, where is the doctrine of the Trinity found in the Bible? Although the word “Trinity” is famously absent from Scripture, the theology behind the word can be found in a surprising number of verses. For starters there are verses that speak of God’s oneness (Deut. 6:4; Isa. 44:6; 1 Tim. 1:17). Then there are the myriad of passages which demonstrate that God is Father (e.g., John 6:27, Titus 1:4). Next, we have the scores of texts which prove the deity of Jesus Christ, the Son—passages like John 1 (“the word was God”), John 8:58 (“before Abraham was born, I am”), Col. 2:9 (“in Christ all the fullness of Deity lives in bodily form”), Heb. 1:3 (“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of his being”), Tit. 2:13 (“our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”)--not to mention the explicit worship Christ willingly received from his disciples (Luke 24:52; John 20:28) and the charges of blasphemy leveled against him for making himself equal with God (Mark 2:7). Then we have similar texts which assume the deity of the Holy Spirit, calling Him an “eternal Spirit” (Heb. 9:14) and using “God” interchangeably with the “Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 3:16 and 1 Cor. 6:19; Acts 5:3-4) without a second thought.

The shape of Trinitarian orthodoxy is finally rounded off by texts that hint at the plurality of persons in the Godhead (Gen. 1:1-3, 26; Psalm 2:7; Dan. 7), texts like 1 Cor. 8:6 which place Jesus Christ as Lord right in the middle of Jewish Shema, and dozens of texts that speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the same breath, equating the three in rank, while assuming distinction of personhood (Matt. 28:19; Gal. 4:6; 1 Cor.12:4-6; 1 Peter 1:1-2; 2 Cor. 2:21-22; 13:14; Eph. 1”13-14; 2:18, 20-22; 3:14-17; 4:4-6; 5:18-20; 6:10-18).

The doctrine of the Trinity, as summarized in the seven statements earlier, is not a philosophical concoction by some over-zealous and over-intelligent early theologians, but one of the central planks of orthodoxy which can shown, explicitly or implicitly, from a multitude of biblical texts.

Third, why does any of this matter? There are lots of reasons, but borrowing from Robert Letham's work, and in Trinitarian fashion, let me mention just three.

One, the Trinity matters for creation. God, unlike the gods in other ancient creation stories, did not need to go outside himself to create the universe. Instead, the Word and the Spirit were like his own two hands (to use Irenaeus’ famous phrase) in fashioning the cosmos. God created by speaking (the Word) as the Spirit hovered over the chaos. Creation, like regeneration, is a Trinitarian act, with God working by the agency of the Word spoken and the mysterious movement of the Holy Spirit.

Two, the Trinity matters for evangelism and cultural engagement. I’ve heard it said that the two main rivals to a Christian worldview at present are Islam and Postmodernism. Islam emphasizes unity—unity of language, culture, and expression—without allowing much variance for diversity. Postmodernism, on the other hand, emphasizes diversity—diversity of opinion, believes, and background—without attempting to see things in any kind of meta-unity. Christianity, with its understanding of God as three in one, allows for diversity and unity. If God exists in three distinct Persons who all share the same essence, then it is possible to hope that God’s creation may exhibit stunning variety and individuality while still holding together in a genuine oneness.

Three, the Trinity matters for relationships. We worship a God who is in constant and eternal relationship with himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Community is a buzz word in American culture, but it is only in a Christian framework that communion and interpersonal community are seen as expressions of the eternal nature of God. Likewise, it is only with a Trinitarian God that love can be an eternal attribute of God. Without a plurality of persons in the Godhead, we would be forced to think that God created humans so that he might show love and know love, thereby making love a created thing (and God a needy deity). But with a biblical understanding of the Trinity we can say that God did not create in order to be loved, but rather, created out of the overflow of the perfect love that had always existed among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who ever live in perfect and mutual relationship and delight.

Yes, it's Monday again, and that means another week of high-stakes cartoon competition. Pinky and the Brain was our winner from Week II with 34% of the vote. Animaniacs nipped Tiny Toons for second place, 24% to 23%. Muppet Babies had a decent showing, but still finished last with 17% of the vote.

This week we meet four new competitors in the "Good-Guys-Saving-the-Universe" division. Voting will last until Tuesday morning. Let the games begin.

1. He-Man
Pro: "I have the power!", Skeletor's laugh, shares name with a family of Levitical musicians
Con: Not really a song per se, the bowl cut has got to go



2. She-Ra
Pro: Pretty funky sound, nice to see He-Man's sister tackling her own problems
Con: It's She-Ra



3. Thundercats
Pro: Whenever you have fighting felines the cool factor is very high
Con: I was allergic to this cartoon



4. G.I. Joe
Pro: A real American hero!
Con: Vocals (I use the term loosely) are a little pitchy.

This is the third part in an occasional series on social justice and the poor. Today we’ll be looking at the year of jubilee from Leviticus 25 (for a full sermon on the text go here).

The year of jubilee, which may have never taken place, was supposed to occur in Israel every fifty years. The celebration had two components to it: a return to the original land allotments, and freedom from servitude.

The first component dealt with land. Leviticus 25 looked forward to the time when Israel would inherit the promised land and receive tribal inheritances from God (cf. Joshua 13ff.). Over time, some people would inevitably be forced to sell some of their land. Whether due to death, locusts, bad weather, thieves, poor management, or laziness--no matter what precipitated selling off their land--during the year of jubilee everyone would get their original allotment back. The poor would get relief; the rich would lose some of the land they had purchased.

Prior to the jubilee, you could get your land back by paying the redemption price. This price of sale and the price of redemption were both calculated based on how many years left until the next jubilee. So in essence you could never really sell or purchase land, only loan or rent it. The original owner had the right to buy back the land at any time. So the sentence at the end of the last paragraph is not exactly accurate. The rich would not lose their land as much as the lease would run out on the land they were renting from their poorer neighbors.

There were other miscellaneous laws concerning walled cities, un-walled villages, and Levitical properties, but the basic principle for jubilee was pretty straightforward: (1) Land could be sold/leased for a price based on the number of years until the jubilee. (2) Land could be purchased back at any time according to the same principle. (3) After 50 years all land titles went back to their original holders.

The second component in the jubilee dealt with people. There’s a progression going on here. If you are in financial trouble, you can sell/lease some land to your nearest relative. If that’s not an option, you can sell/lease some land to a non-relative. If that doesn’t work, or you run out of land altogether, then you go to the next step: get a interest-free loan (i.e. a loan of subsistence not a loan of capital), which would be forgiven every seven years.

If a loan didn’t fix things, you cold sell yourself to another Israelite. Worst case scenario, you could sell yourself to a stranger or sojourner living among you. In both cases, you could be redeemed, by a family member or by yourself, at any time. The purchase price was calculated based on the number of years until the jubilee. If there were more years until the jubilee, you had to pay more for your freedom. If there were fewer years, you paid less. And if you were still a slave at the jubilee–an Israelite slave that is, not a foreign slave–you would automatically be released.

Not So Fast
I’ve simplified things quite a bit, but this is the general outline for the jubilee provisions. Knowing that the year of jubilee provided for the release of slaves and the re-allocation of property, many Christians equate the year of jubilee with forced contemporary redistribution programs. Now, one might try to make a case for why forced redistribution today makes sense on a economic level or why government-sponsored redistribution is a prudent way to help the poor, but advocating such an approach based on Leviticus 25 runs into a lot of problems.

1. We are not an ancient, agrarian society. Most of us don’t deal with land and farming. None of us deals with slaves or indentured servants or walled cities. More to the point, land is not our chief source of capital. Some of the richest people in the country may live in a penthouse in Manhattan and own very little land, while a farmer in South Dakota might have thousands of acres and a very modest livelihood. So freeing slaves and returning land to its original owners just isn’t the world most of us live in.

2. Most importantly, our property was not assigned directly by God. This is the real bugaboo for trying to apply the year of jubilee directly. What is “year one” for landholders? Last year? 1776? 1492? The year of jubilee only makes complete sense when it is seen in the context of the Holy Land. Palestine was God’s gift to Israel. He wanted his people to have it. He wanted the original tribes and clans to keep their original inheritance. True, the year of jubilee was about helping the poor, but it was also about the perpetuity of the original land allotments. The whole thing only made sense because God had assigned specific properties to specific tribes (and not in equal amounts either). The ownership of the land had been defined by God himself. That’s why it could not truly be sold, but only leased.

3. Our economy is not based on a fixed piece of land. Consequently, the pie of wealth is not fixed either. In Israel (like almost all of the ancient world) if someone got rich, it was probably because someone else had gotten poorer. The rich got rich because the poor got poor. Or, at the very least, the poor getting poor enabled the rich to get richer. If you squandered your money or lost it, you would have no choice but to sell your land or yourself. Bad break for you, good break for someone else. Prosperity was for the most part a zero-sum game.

But in a modern economy, wealth can be created. This isn’t to say the rich never exploit the poor. That happens too. But in a capitalist economy, the rich can get richer while the poor also get richer. This is, in fact, what has happened in virtually every country over the last two centuries. Almost across the board, people live longer and have more, even if too many people are still not anywhere close to what people in the industrialized world enjoy.

4. Our nation is not under the Mosaic covenant. We aren’t promised miraculous harvests in the sixth year. The blessings and curses for the covenant people in Leviticus 26 don’t make sense in our context, and aren’t directly for America.

5. Most of us are not Jews. If you read the jubilee laws carefully you’ll notice that they distinguish sharply between Israelites and foreigners. The year of jubilee was good news for the Israelite, but didn’t do anything to help the non-Israelite. In fact, if a stranger lived among the Israelites and acquired land, he would lose it all at the jubilee and have no land in Israel to return to. If a foreigner was made a slave, he wasn’t released. But if he had a Hebrew slave, he had to release him and his family. So if we want make the year of jubilee our model for justice, how would we apply this distinction? Between legal citizens and non-legal residents? Between people from our country and people from outside our country? Between Christians and non-Christians?

I’m not saying the year of jubilee was unjust, only that it’s aim was something other than “social justice” in the way people often use the phrase today. The year of jubilee was about keeping the Israelites free and in the specific land allotments God gave them. Certainly, Jubilee was about the alleviation of poverty too and God’s care for his people. But if you weren’t part of God’s people, it didn’t do much to help you.

Now What?
I mention the five points above to caution us from applying the year of jubilee in a feel-good way that doesn’t do justice to the text. But none of this is to say that jubilee has no ramifications for how we look at wealth and poverty. There are several applications.

1. We should find ways to give opportunities for the poor to succeed. Of course, we should not be ruthless to the poor. We should not take advantage of the weak. But more than that, we should look for ways to give them fresh opportunities to succeed.

The great thing about these jubilee laws is that they didn’t just give a lump sum of cash to poor people (though that can be called for in some situations). Jubilee did something better. It gave the poor opportunities. It gave them access to capital (i.e., land). It granted them new freedoms. It was intelligent assistance. Not everyone should be given a hand out, but everyone needs the opportunities that make self-sufficiency possible. The year of jubilee didn’t do for people what they needed to do themselves. But what it did do was give the poor another opportunity, by God’s grace, to make something of themselves.

2. The Bible supports the existence of private property. The land in Israel was not owned by the state, but by individuals, families, clans, and tribes. In fact, the property rights were guaranteed in perpetuity by God himself. The permanence of the landholding served as an encouragement to cultivation, development, and initiative. This was their land and they had the right to earn a living by it. There are few factors more crucial to economic prosperity than the right of personal property and a strong rule of law to protect this right.

3. The Bible relativizes private property. The right to own property was not absolute, but derivative. The true owner of all land was God (v. 23). "The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof." Jubilee reminded the people they weren’t going to get the big prize in this life.

Big deal, the Israelites had to give back newly acquired land every fifty years. We have to give everything back every 70 or 80 years. Private property is not what we ought to be living for.

4. Our God is the God of second chances. A text like this might be used to support modern bankruptcy laws and prisoner rehabilitation. It would certainly support the existence of a social safety net–by the state some might argue, but certainly by the family and the covenant community. Jubilee saw to it that everyone got a chance at a fresh start once in their lifetime. We should work to provide the same chance for the poor and disadvantaged in our day.

In the New Testament, this theme gets transposed to a spiritual key, teaching us that we should be willing to forgive and release others from their spiritual debts against us.

5. Jesus is Jubilee. When Jesus read from the Isaiah scroll in Luke 4:16-21, his simple message was, in effect, “I am jubilee.” “I am good news for the poor because I can meet their needs,” Jesus was saying, “and good news for the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I am good news for the captives in chains because I can them free, and good news for those in spiritual bondage because I can be their deliverer. I am good news for the physically blind because I can restore their sight, and good news for the spiritually blind because I will open their eyes to the glory of God. I am good news for the oppressed because I hear their cries for justice, and good news for the spiritually oppressed because I will conquer sin, self, and Satan.”

The Old Testament can teach us, by way of application, about poverty and justice. But we must not forget that the point is always Jesus (Luke 24:44).

I've been blogging since January, but it feels like longer than that. I've done over 220 posts in that span and thought about hanging up my blogging cleats at least a dozen times. But here I am, blogging away, with the intention to keep doing so for the foreseeable future. Nine months in I thought it might be useful to reflect on the good, bad, and ugly of the blog world.

The Ugly
Everyone who has spent anytime on the blogosphere knows that the ugly comes out when the comments section gets nasty. Blogs seem to attract the anonymously "courageous", the sarcastic, the conspiracy theorists, and even a troll or two. As I've said before, hell hath no fury like a blogger with too much free time. Thankfully, I've not seen a lot of nastiness on my blog. A few spats of needless diatribe, but not much. Thank you.

The Bad
Besides the danger of being drawn into cross-blog warfare (which I steadfastly try to avoid, despite a couple missteps), the bad of blogging has mostly do with the blogger himself. There is a temptation to pride when people like what you say and a temptation to anxiety when they don't. There is a temptation to narcissism when a lot of people seem to be talking about what you wrote, and a temptation to jealously when you think you are or should be getting more traffic than other sites.

And then there is the sheer effort it takes to post with relentless consistency. I really like writing so most of the time I look forward to blogging. But there are times when I don't have anything to say and don't have time to say anything anyway. I should really just go into blog silence on such days (or heaven forbid even weeks), but the type A-can't-let-people-down part of me forces me to write. I'm convinced that's a mistake. No blog is that important, no one has that many fresh ideas every week, and no one has time to read a deep thesis every morning. When I've thought about ditching the blog it's been because I was tired of worrying about who might get upset this time (my problem) and tired of cranking something out for one more day (my problem too).

The Good
Despite my own ambivalence toward blogging at times, I must admit that I have found it more beneficial than I imagined. For starters, blogging helps me write better. Practice doesn't make perfect, but it does makes for improvement. I also like the discipline of having to articulate what I'm learning or reading, rather than just underlining passages for myself. Blogging helps me learn too. The comments can be lame, but they can also be insightful. The interaction with others sharpens me to think more clearly.

There are other positives about blogging. It's given me an opportunity to "talk" more to my own congregation and to communicate with people all over the world. I love that I can recommend good books, weigh in on important topics, share a nugget from a great classic, and when necessary warn against bad ideas and false teaching. I love that I have a venue to share what I've been mulling over in my brain. As Doug Wilson says, "I blog to make the voices in my head go away."

The most surprising thing about blogging is how humbling it can be. Yes, there are plenty of dangers to pride and self-absorption, but I have found the whole enterprise very humbling. It is humbling to have people pray along with you when you offer a prayer request. It is humbling to think that there are people who have made you a part of their daily reading. That could stroke the ego, but usually it strikes me as a serious privilege. Most of all, it is humbling to realize that your writing has so many typos, your ideas are occasionally half-baked, and sometimes others know more than you do. I rarely respond to comments because I am a busy guy and simply have to draw the line somewhere. But I almost always read them. Often the comments make me think how my own argument could have been stronger or needs to be tweaked. Blogging is helping me reason more carefully and more clearly.

So all in all, I'm glad I started blogging. I've learned a lot and hopefully some people have been able to learn from me. On a bad day, blogging becomes a "have-to" duty that has you scrambling for something to say. And on the worst days a blog can ruin your day. But on a good day, it trains your mind to look for lessons around you and read books with an eye to teaching others. On a fun day, blogging forces you to watch Duck Tale reruns and sing songs about Chick-Fil-A. And on the best days, blogging gives you the opportunity to put in a good word for Jesus and the good book. For the Lord has exalted above all things his name and his word (Ps. 138:2).

G.K. Chesterton on the dangers of syncretism, inter-faith mumbo-jumbo, and making Christianity just another acceptable myth in the world:

"The Theosophists build a pantheon; but it is only a pantheon for pantheists. They call a Parliament of Religions as a reunion of all the peoples; but it is only a reunion of all the prigs. Yet exactly such a pantheon had been set up two thousand years before by the shores of the Mediterranean; and Christians were invited to set up the image of Jesus side by side with the image of Jupiter, of Mithras, of Osiris, of Atys, or of Ammon. It was the refusal of the Christians that was the turning-point of history. If the Christians had accepted, they and the whole world would have certainly, in a grotesque but exact metaphor, gone to pot. They would all have been boiled down to one lukewarm liquid in that great pot of cosmopolitan corruption in which all the other myths and mysteries were already melting. It was an awful and appalling escape. Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realise that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions" (The Everlasting Man, 178).

Karen Armstrong's apologetic for the existence of God is so bad that Richard Dawkins does a better job explaining theism, and he argues against it.

On Saturday the Wall Street Journal ran a piece called Man vs. God where the Darwinophile Richard Dawkins argued against the existence of God and the best-selling author Karen Armstrong argued for it. Dawkins argument is typical. Evolution is the greatest show on earth and disproves any antiquated notions of an intelligent creator. The special thing about life is that it never violates the laws of physics (and if it did, Dawkins reassures us, scientists would just find new laws). Life may push the boundaries of physics, but miracles never happen. In Dawkins' thinking, evolution is God's "pink slip." It renders him redundant. There is nothing for God to do, which is good because he never was in the first place.

And how does Dawkins know that the universe is the product of evolutionary chance? Easy: "Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable —and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a lifeless universe—the miracle-free zone that is physics." Is it just me, or does this sound like circular reasoning to you, and of the vicious kind. "The universe can't be created by an intelligent designer, because intelligence is complex. And everything complex comes from something simple. Therefore there is no innate complex, intelligent life." Ok, unless a complex intelligence is the never-beginning, eternal source of all life. I don't get it.

Anyway, the real disappointment is Armstrong's "defense" of the existence of God. As an orthodox Christian (or orthodox believer of almost any faith) you know you are in trouble when Armstrong's first line is this: "Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived." It only gets worse from there. Armstrong argues that we should really go back to an earlier pre-enlightenment time when "Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call 'God' is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart." Armstrong's "God" bears no resemblance to the Christian God. He (She? It?) is merely a symbol, an analogy like Tao, Brahman, or Nirvana, to describe the ultimate reality that lay beyond the reach of words.

Armstrong's religion is not new. She is an advocate of an ahistorical, therapeutic religion that disavows a personal, knowable, objectively real Creator God to whom we must give account. In decrying the baleful effects of scientific rationality on religion, she ends up repeating the same tropes that have been standard fare among liberals since the Enlightenment: the Bible can't be taken literally; religion is about myth not fact; there is no revelation from God, just man's attempts to make sense of life's imponderables.

For Armstrong, like Dawkins, evolution is the one unassailable fact in life and everything else must adjust accordingly. This leads Armstrong to offer a hopelessly mealy-mouthed pomo apologetic for the existence of God. "Darwin made it clear once again," she writes "that—as Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas [really, Aquinas?!] and Eckhart had already pointed out—we cannot regard God simply as a divine personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the 'God beyond God.' The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry. Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and which cannot easily be put into words." It's all well and good to argue that theology deals with mysteries and things not easily put into words. But when your idea of God is just that, an idea of God, a symbol for the unutterable transcendent somewhere out there, you are not defending anything like a Christian understanding of God, or for that matter a Jewish or Muslim understanding either.

Armstrong's concluding argument focuses on the ubiquity of suffering that Darwinian natural selction uncovers (as if people didn't understand suffering until 1859). It is in meditating on this suffering, she maintains, that the faithful learn to feel compassion, which leads us to something that some people might want to call God. Here's the clincher: "The almost unbearable spectacle of the myriad species passing painfully into oblivion is not unlike some classic Buddhist meditations on the First Noble Truth ("Existence is suffering"), the indispensable prerequisite for the transcendent enlightenment that some call Nirvana—and others call God."

Well, God-as-the-label-for-our-enlightenment is not exactly what gets 52 million Americans out of bed for church every Sunday or compels many Asian and some African Christians to risk their lives for their faith week after week. Why the Wall Street Journal had someone argue for the existence of God who doesn't really believe in a God anything like the God almost all believers believe in is beyond me. Wouldn't a pro-con with Tim Keller or Lee Strobel or Alvin Plantinga or even Anthony Flew have made for more interesting reading? The cynic in me says the only reason this piece was here in the first place is because both Dawkins and Armstrong have books coming out this month. Armstrong's is called (gulp) The Case for God.

The irony in all this is that Dawkins understands theism better than Armstrong does. He writes:

Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: "Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn't matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism."

Well, if that's what floats your canoe, you'll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists. If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

At least Dawkins recognizes that almost everyone who believes in God believes that he really, objectively exists and not just as a symbol for higher consciousness or the inscrutabilities of life.

Please, Mrs. Armstrong, in all seriousness, it seems like you are well-read and are searching for something, but have you considered taking the Bible on its own terms and not reading it through the lens of German higher criticism? Have you considered that God, not evolution, might be the first unassailable truth? Have you considered the evidence for Jesus' life, his teachings, his death and resurrection? At the very least have you considered that the God you argue for is not a God worth worshiping? He is not a God who could have possibly inspired billions of people to follow him and sacrifice in his name. And he is not anything remotely like the God in the Bible. He is, in the final analysis, not even a God that seems to exist.

You can ask my wife, I hesitated on whether or not to do this Battle of the Cartoon Theme Songs. It is supposed to be fun, but it may not exactly scream gravitas. Oh well, maybe it's a good idea not to take yourself so seriously.

But I do want the important things discussed here to be taken seriously. So in order to avoid the awkward juxtaposition of, say, a 9-11 montage next to a cartoon poll, I'm only going to keep the poll up until tomorrow morning. So call your friends and neighbors and have them vote before I leave for work tomorrow morning.

With those preliminaries out of the way, I can announce that Duck Tales won its division handily with over 50% of the vote. Gummi Bears came in second with 20%, then Tailspin with 14%, followed by Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers in last place with 13%.

This week is the "Warner-Brothers-Cartoons-I-Was-Too-Old-For-But-Still-Watched-Occasionally" division. I could only come up with three good entries in this category, so you'll notice one cartoon definitely doesn't belong here. But, I guess the fourth cartoon still deals with small creatures, so that's what holds it all together.

Here are the four competitors for this week.

1. Tiny Toon Adventures
Pro: Good rhyming scheme
Con: Hard to top the original Looney Tunes



2. Animaniacs
Pro: Bill Clinton plays the sax, baloney in our slacks, play for pay contracts
Con: A bit exhausting



3. Pinky and the Brain
Pro: "Same thing we do every night, try to take over the world." Classic.
Con: Does not exactly appeal to the better angels of our nature.



4. Muppet Babies
Pro: Very singable with a warm sock-hop feel
Con: Inter-species romance

So I guess it's come to this...

From First Things:

On the front page of the Wall Street Journal, an article about thefts of hay in Texas, in which we're told, "Searing summer temperatures and a lack of rain have turned pastures here brown and crunchy, depriving cattle of the green grass they usually live on this time of year. That has made hay, a particular kind of dried grass that is nutritious feed of livestock, a precious commodity."

Think about that for a moment. The Wall Street Journal now thinks it has to define for its readers what hay is, in case they don't know. Turns out to be a "particular kind of dried grass." Often used, as it happens, to feed cows (a particular kind of large domesticate animal) on ranches (a particular kind of property on which nutritious livestock is kept).

Time for some folks to take a trip to the heartland, or at least read Click, Clack, Moo or watch Babe or something.

A nice tribute video in remembrance of those who lost loved ones on 9/11.



I found this moving.



A classic Billy Graham message one month after 9/11.

I've written two books with Ted Kluck. We've shared dozens of Hot N Ready Little Caesar's pizza. I've been to his house for growth group about a hundred times. And our kids have bloodied each other on numerous occasions. All that to say, it would be hard for me not to like one of Ted's books.

But Ted is not just a great friend. He is a great writer too. His latest book, The Reason for Sports: A Christian Fanifesto, is funny, entertaining, and full of good biblical sense.

There are plenty of books about Christian athletes, and plenty of books by Christian superstars. But there is precious little writing on sports from a Christian perspective. It's amazing really. Americans are obsessed with sports, especially men, and yet Christians haven't done much to reflect on the good and bad of sports. That's why I love Ted's writing. He knows sports. He's played sports. He's done real sports reporting. And he's a strong Christian who knows how to write.

For example, here's the opening paragraph to Chapter One on the Jock Apology.

My son watches a lot of sports because I watch a lot of sports. He's five, and he's giggle at beer commercials (he likes the Coors Silver Bullet train) and not (thankfully) asked me to define "erectile dysfunction" when forced to sit through commercials that portray old men either singing about Viagara in a deserted roadside bar or, inexplicably, two people sitting outside in different bathtubs, watching a sunset. He's also watched an unhealthy amount of jock press conferences. He knows the phrase "it is what it is." And as such, he's sat through an inordinate amount of jock apologies (19).

Classic Moody don't you think? But Ted is not just funny. He can also notice the profound lessons in sports.

Part of the appeal of the Rocky movies...is that Rocky seemed to care about only two things in life--beating whoever was in front of him at the time, and his wife, Adrian. This is appealing on both an athletic and a romantic level. His life seemed stripped of many of the complications that we experience. When he was training--doing one-armed push-ups, drinking egg yolks, running, and hitting the punching bag (and, in Rocky III, even racing and then frolicking in the surf with Apollo in one of the worst scenes in American cinema)--he seemed to want for nothing expect victory. This singleness of purpose is something that Christian guys long for but rarely achieve in our spiritual lives (111-12).

If you like sports you will like Ted Kluck writing about sports. In this book Ted talks about steroids, Tony Mandarich, Tony Dungy, bad sports movies, the scouting combine, humility, race relations, and letting your yes be yes--all of which is relentlessly interesting and full of wisdom. There aren't too many writers who can quote Mike Tyson and J.C. Ryle and know what they are talking about in both instances.

Bottom line: The Reason for Sports is a terrific book. I highly recommend it.

And I'm not just saying so because Ted will beat me up if I don't.

[Update at the end of post]

Ockham's razor states that "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily," which means that so long as a given solution does not contradict the facts, the simplest answer is usually best.

I was reminded of Ockham's famous razor while re-reading a March 2003 JETS article by Robert Stein entitled "Is Our Reading the Bible the Same As the Original Audience's Hearing It? A Case Study in the Gospel of Mark." Stein's thesis is pretty straightforward. Like most of the author biblical books, Mark was written to be read publicly and heard by a corporate audience. As a consequence, we should be reluctant to offer complicated interpretations that would have been completely missed by an average hearer listening to the book for the first time.

We don't think about it much, but it makes sense that the NT writers would understand their audience to be corporate hearers and not so much individual readers. After all, only 3-10% of the Christians could read in the first century, scrolls were scarce, and most of the NT books were addressed to plural audiences. Add in a lot of other clues that Stein lists and it seems a pretty safe bet that the NT authors wrote primarily for hearers not readers.

The consequences of this thesis are worth pondering. For example, are we really to expect that complex chiasms--the ones NT scholars are so quick to find--would have been employed in teaching to a first-time listening audience? And what about obscure rabbinincal or Qumran allusions? Or subtle shades of meaning gleaned from exhaustive word studies? Too often in contemporary biblical scholarship possible meanings and possible reconstructions are given more weight than they deserve when simpler more straightforward explanations are available, explanations that don't require us to imagine the illiterate original hearers of the New Testament possessing multiple degrees in almost every subject under the sun.

Here's part of Stein's concluding paragraph:

"Let me repeat one of these consequences in closing. It is one that biblical scholars, like I, may be uncomfortable with. I argued that the meaning of Mark is probably one that a first-time hearer of the text would have been able to understand. As a result complicated and obscure interpretations most probably miss the more simple meaning that Mark intended his hearers to understand....Mark and the other NT authors did not intend to write secret, Gnostic works that only scholars in the twenty-first century would be able to understand."

In a world where every dissertation is supposed to unearth a new discovery and in a church culture where sparkling new insights and dubious parallels always jazz the crowd, it's good to remember that simpler is usually better.

*****
UPDATE

Some have suggested that while the spirit of this post is commendable, the argument lacks sufficient nuance. So let me be clear that I am not anti-scholarship and I do believe with the Apostle Peter that some New Testament texts are "hard to understand" (2 Peter 3:16). Dr. Stein points out in his article that although the listeners of the NT were not scholars, they did have certain advantages that we have to make up for. They spoke Greek; they understood their own culture; in most cases they possessed knowledge of the Jesus traditions; in many cases they had a good understanding of the Old Testament; they were more attuned to listening well; they were more proficient at memorization. Dr. Stein makes all these points, and I agree with them. In fact, he talks about a couple of these points in the paragraph I quoted above. I didn't include the whole paragraph (hence the ellipsis) so as to make a tighter post, but the nuance is there in the article.

Even with these qualifications I think the argument about simplicity is still helpful. If the goal of interpretation is to understand what the author meant to communicate, we would do well to consider the limits of his original audience.

Yes this is another post on homosexuality. Believe me I’d rather talk about something else too. I don’t relish the thought of people thinking I’m a nasty conservative. I don’t like the idea of being labeled homophobic. I’d rather spend time encouraging courageous brothers and sisters who battle to overcome their same-gender attraction. And frankly, I’d rather talk about something other than sex.

But every generation in the church has some parcel of truth to defend and this is the plot for the present generation. It sounds nicer to be argue about the doctrine of Scripture or original sin or something less intensely personal. But then again I’m sure those controversies would be no fun either (and probably need to dealt with in our time too!).

So whether we like it or not the controversy over homosexuality is here to stay. Especially in the Reformed Church in America (RCA). Especially as long as my denomination continues to hesitate between two opinions.

A Tempest in the Twin Cities
As most everyone knows by now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voting last month in Minneapolis, approved a resolution allowing gays and lesbians in “life-long, monogamous, same gender relationships” to be ordained. The United Church of Christ (UCC) has gone down this road already. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has flirted with the idea. The official, though not undisputed, position of the RCA is that homosexual behavior is sinful and marriage is between one man and one woman.

These four denominations–the ELCA, the UCC, the PC(USA), and the RCA–share a Formula of Agreement which states, among other things, that we recognize each other “as churches in which the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered to the Word of God.” There are any number of reasons for the RCA to extricate itself from the Formula of Agreement. The recent action by the ELCA is one of the strongest.

Over a week ago I argued that it's time for a formula of disagreement. Since then RCA spokesman Paul Boice has reiterated the RCA’s commitment to the Formula of Agreement. In an article by the Christian Post, Boice is quoted as saying "Cutting ties with the ELCA over their Assembly’s narrow decision would witness to the world that Christians will fight and divide themselves from one another, and break the bonds of Christian fellowship, over such an ethical difference.” Boice also explained: "The official stances of our two churches [RCA and UCC] differed, and continue to differ today, as with the ELCA." But, "the difference on this ethical issue did not involve the core of the gospel; in other words, we still recognized one another as churches." And later Boice argues that "If we began cutting ties with every denomination with which we had a difference, we would be unfaithful to our Lord’s call to seek the unity of his body and do serious harm to our witness and mission in the world."

Unity Does Not Answer the Question
From what I know about Paul Boice he strikes me as a decent fellow, probably an evangelical in some sense of the word. But his explanation for maintaining official ties with the ELCA is very disappointing.

For starters, playing the unity card is an overused trick. Every Christian in the world believes in unity. We’ve all read John 17 and Ephesians 4, and we know that unity is a good thing. But the question is always "unity with whom and on what grounds?" It’s not fair to position the two options as “maintaining our present ecumenical agreements” or “sinfully dividing over every little difference.” Obviously, some division is not called for. But some is. Sometimes “there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1 Cor. 11:19).

Unity must always be based on truth, and visible external unity must be pursued only with those with whom we share real spiritual unity. Surely the history of the church teaches us that unity is not a simple matter of joining hands with anyone who goes by the name of Christian. Unity with Arians and Gnostics and Socinians is not the sort of unity we ought to prize. Just as there is schism that masquerades as principle, there is also faithless compromise that goes by the guise of unity.

In fact, the whole ecumenical enterprise ought to be challenged as a bureaucratic waste of time. I’m certainly not opposed to Christians of different stripes working and worshiping together. I love my pastors group which consists of a PCA pastor, a Baptist pastor, a Sovereign Grace pastor, and me. Where did we get this notion that unity is only achieved when denominational officials sign paperwork together? And why do we think that leaving denominational agreements means ruining our witness for Christ? Isn't purity an important witness too?

And let’s be realistic, are lots of new converts being made in the congregations of the World Council of Churches because a watching world can witness our unity? Hardly. The denominational ecumenism of the past 60 years has done little that is relevant to the average Christian in the pew and even less to win the world for Christ because it has been a unity based on doctrinal indifferentism and progressive politics.

The bottom line, of course, is that unity with those who encourage sexual immorality is not the sort of unity Jesus prayed for. Are we really to believe that if the Apostle John and Philip started having sex together in a committed monogamous relationship that Peter (not to mention Jesus) would have been ok with that? Or to put it in similar terms, are we to believe that if John started a church and ordained a man having gay sex with his partner that Peter would have thought, “Well, Jesus said we should be one. So no biggie.”

Come on, let’s be serious. Does anyone honestly think that if we could take a time machine back to 60 AD and we found (what we certainly would not find) Timothy and Titus sleeping together that Paul would have told the other churches “Relax, it’s only an ethical issue”? We can do all the mental gymnastics we want with word studies and the dialectics of Lutheran or Reformed hermeneutics but at the end of the day it takes an extraordinary degree of historical re-invention, not to mention hubris, to imagine the Apostles and the Church Fathers marching in gay parades and defending their associations with those who would.

And then there’s Jesus. It’s hard to imagine that the Son of God who promised not to relax one of the least of the commands of the Old Testament--this same Jesus who lovingly confronted the woman at the well and who upheld the sanctity of marriage in the strictest terms against the liberalizers of his day--would have blessed homosexual intercourse in direct disobedience to Leviticus 18 and 20?

Yes, the Gospel is at Stake
I have argued time and time again that there are not just two sides to the homosexuality debate. There are three: homosexual behavior is bad, homosexual behavior is good, homosexuality doesn’t really matter. The deviousness of denomination-speak blinds many evangelicals who know homosexuality is wrong into tolerating it as ok. In the RCA for example, there is very little chance in the next five years that the majority of the denomination will side with those who argue that same-sex unions are a blessing from God. But many may lack the courage to say that the promotion of homosexuality is flat-out unacceptable. Instead they will be lulled into thinking that we should simply agree to disagree and move on to “the really important issues.”

This is the underlying presumption in Boice’s statements about homosexuality being just “an ethical issue.” And if any RCA folks are reading this, you can be sure that this same argument for toleration of the ELCA has been and will be offered as a reason to tolerate gay marriage and gay clergy in the RCA itself. Too many "evangelicals" end up saying, “Hey, it’s not my thing. I wouldn’t support it. But the gospel isn’t at stake. So let’s not fight over this any longer.”

So why is Boice wrong when he says “the difference on this ethical issue [does] not involve the core of the gospel”? Let me suggest several reasons.

1. Promoting homosexuality is a violation of the catholicity of the church. Sure many in the West are arguing for the legitimacy of same-sex relationships, but for 99% of our history the church has considered homosexual behavior to be sinful. (And before anyone mentions slavery at this point I would encourage him to read Rodney Stark’s book For the Glory of God where he debunks the myth that the church was pro-slavery for 1800 years.) No one had to write a confession about homosexuality, because it was an implied status confessionis issue. No church would have tolerated a difference of opinion, let alone a deviant practice.

True, church tradition is not infallible. But when we make a decision (accepting homosexuality or tolerating those who do) that virtually every single Christian who has ever lived would consider unthinkable, we ought to pause and wonder if we’ve drunk too much from the spirit of the age. We would be wiser to listen to the testimony of our brothers and sisters in the two-thirds world who know that homosexuality is not an agree-to-disagree kind of issue.

2. Homosexual behavior is so repeatedly and clearly forbidden in Scripture that to encourage homosexuality calls into question the role of Scripture in the life of the denomination that accepts such blatantly unbiblical teaching. Luke Timothy Johnson, New Testament scholar and advocate of legitimizing homosexual behavior, is commendably honest when he writes, “I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.” At its root, support for homosexual behavior is not simply a different interpretation of Scripture, it is a rejection of Scripture itself.

3. Far from treating sexual deviance as a lesser "ethical issue", the New Testament sees it as a matter for discipline (1 Corinthians 5), separation (2 Corinthians 6:12-20), and an example of perverse compromise (Jude 3-16).

4. Most importantly, commending homosexuality involves the core of the gospel because it urges us to celebrate a behavior the Bible calls us to repent. According to 1 Corinthians 6 unrepentant homosexuals (along with unrepentant thieves, drunkards, idolaters, adulterers, revilers, swindlers, and money-lovers) will not inherit the kingdom of God. Heaven and hell literally hang in the balance.

Of course, homosexuality isn’t the only sin in the world. But I know of no one who is advocating idolatry or championing stealing as a special blessing from God. Yet, many are advocating homosexuality, and the ELCA not officially endorses it. It is not an overstatement to say that such advocacy is in danger of leading people to hell. This isn’t because homosexuals are worse sinners than all the rest, but because unless we all turn from our sin and fight against it in faith–with victories and defeats to be sure–we will face God’s wrath. In tolerating the doctrine which affirms homosexual behavior, we are tolerating a doctrine which leads people farther from God, not closer. This is not the mission Jesus gave us when he told us to teach the nations all that he has commanded.

In short, those who pervert the grace of God into a license for sensuality are false teachers who do not preach the gospel rightly (Jude 4; Titus 2:11-15). A true church does not encourage people in deliberate sin when it ought to call them to repentance.

A Personal Word to My Fellow RCAers
I’ve been in the RCA my whole life. I’m convinced that the best and worst thing about our denomination is that we don’t like controversy. This is good in so far as it keep us from majoring on the minors and focusing on each other's faults. This is bad in so far as it keeps us from acting decisively and courageously. There are some denominations who can’t say yes to anything. That’s not us thankfully. But we often have a hard time saying no. We are a small group, tight knit, held together by relationships that stretch back into seminary, college, and family reunions. But the word of God calls us to a higher standard than niceness and warm relationships. It calls us to truth and grace–the truth that sets us free and the grace that transforms and forgives.

We are not called to be abrasive and arrogant, harsh and hateful. But we are called to be strong and courageous, willing to do the hard, uncomfortable, painful act of holding each other accountable and saying no to ungodliness and worldly passions (Titus 2:11). Let us not be cowed into silence by those who claim that all that’s at stake are two different interpretations of Scripture on an ethical issue. There comes a time when we must rule certain interpretations–no matter how sincerely held–out of bounds with Christian orthodoxy, unfaithful to Scripture, and unacceptable in our churches and in the churches we officially affirm.

While we do not want to be deserving of the words, let us not be afraid of epithets like “mean-spirited” and “intolerant.” Jesus himself commended the church at Ephesus because they did not “bear with those who are evil” and hated “the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (Revelation 2:2, 6). Besides, If we tolerate homosexual behavior and advocacy in others, we undercut the efforts of men and women in our congregations who struggle–in faith and repentance–to overcome same gender attraction.

Let us refuse to take the easy way out. Let's not allow what we know to be unbiblical under the auspices of unity and mission. We must not cry “Peace, peace,” where there is no peace. With hearts of love and theological backbones of steel we must not compromise on homosexuality. Adding an amendment to our Book of Church Order in the near future would be one way to settle things, for the good of the denomination and the peace and sanity of all involved. Dropping the Formula of Agreement would be a place to start.

Now this is really important. Over the next few weeks we are going to have a little fun voting on the best cartoon theme songs. I know, there are hundreds of cartoons to choose from, but since this is my blog, and because I'm guessing a lot of my readers are around my age, I decided to pick from among the cartoons I remember watching as a kid. So as not to completely waste lots of my time I've limited that Cartoonorama to 16 theme songs divided into four divisions. I'll unveil one division per week, culminating in the fifth week with a final four showdown of epic proportions.

The first division is the Disney-Spin-Off division. There are four strong challengers.

1. Duck Tales
Pro: Solid beat. Very singable. Entertaining montage of avian hijinks.
Con: A few words are indecipherable. Sounds like Wham!



2. Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers
Pro: High production quality. Musically interesting.
Con: A lot of stuttering.



3. Tailspin
Pro: Animal protagonists are a step up from ducks and chipmunks. The jungle-beat rap at the end is pure gold.
Con: Rap section is too short. Not a lot of going on lyrics wise.



4. Gummi Bears
Pro: Good use of alliteration. Soaring melody. Practically summons you to sing along.
Con: Tries a little too hard at times (e.g., "High adventure that's beyond compare..."). Makes me hungry for sweet, chewy mammals.



So here's the deal. I've added a poll over on the left side of this blog. Watch the four theme songs and then cast your vote. Next Sunday night I'll close the poll, and then on Monday I'll announce who moves on to the final four and introduce the next division.

Here's J. Gresham Machen's answer from the conclusion to his provocative 1933 essay "The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age":

"The responsibility of the church in the new age is the same as its responsibility in every age. It is to testify that this world is lost in sin; that the span of human life--no, all the length of human history--is an infinitesimal island in the awful depths of eternity; that there is a mysterious, holy, living God, Creator of all, Upholder of all, infinitely beyond all; that he has revealed himself to us in his Word and offered us communion with himself through Jesus Christ the Lord; that there is no other salvation, for individuals or for nations, save this, but that this salvation is full and free, and that whoever possesses it has for himself and for all others to whom he may be the instrument of bringing it a treasure compared with which all the kingdoms of the earth--no, all the wonders of the starry heavens--area as the dust of the street.

"An unpopular message it is--an impractical message, we are told. But it is the message of the Christian church. Neglect it, and you will have destruction; heed it, and you will have life" (in Selected Shorter Writings, edited by D.G. Hart, 376).

I came across this on Bob Kauflin's Worship Matters blog. It's a clip of Matt Redman humbly and honestly reflecting on whether some of our worship music is too romanticized. Listen for the insightful line at the beginning about the church being "under-fathered and over-mothered."

This isn’t the type of book I usually read. Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them is a church growthy, charts-and-surveys kind of book. A little bit of this reading goes a long way for me, but I actually liked this book.

Granted, I didn’t like everything. Like a lot of books that survey people and then interpret the results, there is too much over-interpretation for my liking. I would have preferred a shorter book with the bare-bones summary of the data, fewer stories, and fewer faux post-it notes in the text. I’m wasn’t crazy about all of the advice, and the recurring story at the end of each chapter was for some reason put into an annoying italics font.

But these points notwithstanding, Ed Stetzer, Richie Stanley, and Jason Hayes have written a book that will be helpful to many churches as they try to reaching young people with the gospel.

Good News, Bad News
I appreciated that Stetzer (he’s the main author) refused to hype the current church situation in America as the most dire of all time. Instead, he convincingly argues what many of us already intuitively understand: reaching the younger unchurched (roughly those in their twenties) is filled with unique challenges and opportunities. On the bad side, “the younger unchurched believe the church is too critical about lifestyle issues, full of hypocrites, and not necessary for spiritual development.” On the good side, “the younger unchurched clearly indicate they are willing to dialogue about Christianity and Jesus” (65). Basically, younger folks are turned off by religion, but they are very interested in talking about it and checking it out.

But while the younger unchurched would rather be spiritual than religious, this does not mean they hopelessly anti-churhc. In fact, Stetzer claims they are generally less fed-up with religion than older unchurched people (49). He argues that “as best we can tell, the younger unchurched are not more upset at the church than the older unchurched” (54). They may harbor a lot of negative stereotypes about the church and Christianity, but they probably don’t dislike the church more than others, and are actually more open to hearing about Christ than older generations.

Against the Grain
In Part Two of the book, Stetzer and his team identify four markers or values in ministering to young adults. From my experience as a young adult and in ministering to a church with lots of young adults, Stetzer’s conclusions ring true.

First, community is vital. We all know that. Young people want genuine relationships with others. They want a place to be real and they want people to be real with them.

Second, depth is important. Young people don’t want pat answers. They don’t want the church to stay away from the hard questions. They want content. They want Bible studies that actually teach the Bible. They want sermons that are meaty and challenging. “They told us,” writes Stetzer, “that they’d rather be ‘in over their heads’ in life as opposed to kicking around in the shallow end” (68). You don't have to water down to reach out. In fact, you reach out by not watering down.

Third, responsibility is strongly valued. Young adults want opportunities to use their talents and abilities. They want to serve. They want to put their faith into action. Stetzer reminds us that service projects are a great way to make connections with the unchurched. They might not come to church with us right away, but they will probably be willing to build a house with us. That’s a good place to start.

Fourth, connections matter. This is, of course, true for everyone. We all want to know others and be known. What’s interesting is Stetzer’s assertion that young people want more connection what is old. This means many young people actually prefer cross-generational ministry to simply being placed in mono-generational or affinity groups. It also means that there is a growing desire for hymns, liturgy, creeds, and traditional architecture. Does this mean we just reinvent church to suit the whims of the 24 year old? No, but it means we cannot ignore the church’s musical and liturgical traditions any longer because they “just don’t resonate with young people.”

Keep On Keepin' On
Much of the book’s content will not be a surprise to those who have read about younger generations before or belong to the younger generation. And many of the “characteristics” of churches that reach young adults are simply characteristics of good churches. But still, this book can give the pastor, college minister, or interested lay-person some good ideas on how to reach out to young people. (For example, if your church does not have a half-decent website you are missing one of the easiest and most likely ways that young people will find out about your church.)

The book contains many helpful summaries along the way, so even if you don’t read the whole thing you can benefit from the underlying points. As far as church growthy books go, this was a breath of fresh air. It emphasized the basics, like being humble and honest, giving people deep truth, fostering community, serving others, and utilizing the gifts and traditions of the ages (not to mention the aged). Reaching younger generations doesn’t take gimmicks, just a little bit of thought and a lot of faithfulness.