Theology – Page 10

Peer Reviewed

As I was saying, I’m required by my class to read 1500 pages in addition to the assigned text, so I’ve been browsing the academic archives for articles relevant to pastoral counseling.

Be forewarned: Stay away from the Journal of Pastoral Counseling. It gives a whole new meaning to the concept of Peer Review. Apparently, the question to consider is ever “who are the peers?”

Just a few salient quotes:

> Secularization is based on fact and therefore it will inevitably dismiss beliefs that cannot be proven.
*From: “Psycholgy Versus Religion” (2001)*

Continue reading “Peer Reviewed”

One of the dangers in allowing a new preacher to come speak at your church is that he tries to fit everything he knows into a single sermon. I heard somewhere that Billy Graham, the first time he preached, put everything he had into that one sermon. When he ran out of things to say, he stopped. It had been 15 minutes.

Well, I did a little better than that last month: I lasted about 20 minutes. I worked and worked until I put everything I could think of into a single sermon. As far as I was concerned, it was perfect. I was finished. There was nothing else to say. So when Alex mentioned to me he was putting me down for another Sunday in July, I told him that wouldn’t be necessary: I’d already covered everything. As you can see, my argument didn’t get very far.

So for about a month now I’ve been scrambling and I’ve been praying that God would give me something to say today. And as I was praying, I was reminded of what I believe should be the most important aspect of every believer’s life: worship. The Westminster Catechism begins with the question: “What is the chief end of man?” and the reply: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Worship.

Of course, worship is a pretty big topic, and it’s something I think about a lot, so the big danger today is that I might try to fit everything I know about worship in to a single sermon: just one big giant mess. The good news is we’ll get out early.

So I continued praying, asking God to give me somewhere to *start*. And so I came to Psalm 150, which Arthur just read.

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary!
Praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds!

I have to say, I love this psalm. It’s short; it’s sweet; it covers everything. It starts off with the basics: “Praise the Lord!” Can’t get any more simple than that. In Hebrew, it reads Hallel u Jah! Hallel means ‘praise’ and Jah is short for “Yahweh.” Like Josh is short for Joshua.

Then it tells you *where* to praise him: in his sanctuary and in his mighty heavens. That is, praise him where he is, or maybe where his presence is. Then, it tells you *why* to praise him: because of what he’s *done*. And when you’ve covered all of that, just praise him for who he *is*.

Because no matter how you think about it, Yahweh is worthy of praise. More worthy than the Red Sox; more worthy than the Italian soccer team; more worthy than priests and prophets, presidents and politicians, more worthy than pastors or parents. More worthy of praise than anything in heaven above or on earth beneath, because of who he is and what he’s done. There’s no way you could give him too much praise.

Then it moves to the cool part. It tells us *how* to praise him. Because we’re human and we like traditions and doing everything just so, God’s given us a template in this psalm, so we don’t leave anything out.

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet.
Praise him with the harp and lyre.
Praise him with tambourine and dancing.
Praise him with the strings and flute.
Praise him with the clash of cymbals.
Praise him with resounding cymbals!

If you’ll look, you can see that the psalm actually mentions every classification of musical instruments.

“Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet.” There you’ve got brass.
“Praise him with the harp and lyre.” Now, I didn’t know exactly what the difference was. I thought the harp and the lyre were basically the same thing. Another translation I have says “praise him with the lute and harp” so apparently translators aren’t too clear on things either, especially since the lute wasn’t invented until around 500 years ago.So I looked some words up. Where the NIV says “harp,” the Hebrew word is *nebel*, which translates roughly as “skin bag,” or bladder. Well that’s exciting. How are you supposed to praise God with a bladder? Actually there are a lot of instruments that use a bladder: most prominently, the bag pipe, but also the accordion, and yes, the organ (hence the name: organ). The original organs actually had to have choirboys pumping a bellows behind it during the worship service.
Based on this information, I think we can safely say that, in the event that we ever find it necessary to get rid of our church organ, scripturally it would be appropriate to replace it with a set of bagpipes. Or perhaps an accordion. Nevertheless, apparently when the translators looked at this word, they decided *nebel* meant a harp, since a harp looked like a deflated bag of air. I don’t know where they got that idea, but that’s what Strong’s concordance tells me.

The second Hebrew word, where the NIV says “lyre,” is *kinnowr*, a stringed instrument that you would pluck with a plectrum, what we would call a pick. Basically it was a guitar. You might could slide a piano in under that one too. So: “Praise him with bladder instruments and plucked instruments.” Amen.
“Praise him with tambourine and dancing.” The tambourine was originally considered more of a dance accessory than a rhythm instrument, so that works
“Praise him with the strings and flute.” Stringed instruments and woodwinds.
“Praise him with the clash of cymbals; praise him with resounding cymbals!” You’ll notice percussion get mentioned twice. I think the psalmist really likes those. He’s probably a boy.

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of stories about how this or that instrument was inappropriate for worship. I had a very nice girl in college explain to me very seriously that drums were bad for your health because they might throw off the rhythm of your heart. In reality, the tendency of the church has always seemed to be to follow what the musical trend was in the rest of society (with a little lag).

But what this verse tells us is that not only is every kind of instrument *acceptable* for worship, but we’re commanded to use them. All of them. You kind of get the impression that every kind of musical *style* is appropriate as well. This is good. Not every culture is able to express itself musically the same way.

I’d have a hard time leading worship with a service composed by Johann Bach. I might have similar problems if I thought the only appropriate praise should be accompanied by screeching electric guitars. It’s been done, but I’m not quite ready to do it yet.

But the psalmist goes one step further. While he doesn’t mandate a particular kind of sound or style, he does mandate what kind of praise we’re supposed to give:

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet.
Praise him with the harp and lyre.
Praise him with tambourine and dancing.
Praise him with the strings and flute.
Praise him with the clash of cymbals.
Praise him with resounding cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Everything that has breath. There’s a certain zeal here that doesn’t just tell you *that* you should praise him. It tells you the attitude with which you’re supposed to praise him. And that attitude is *intense*. It’s something that should be a little startling.

I don’t mean that we should only have fast-paced happy songs. Some of the things we need to praise God about are slow and serious. But you can’t properly praise God with the back half of your mind. If you’re going to do it, you need to do it with everything that you’ve got.

Then the psalm ends as it begins, summing it all up: Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.

Like I said. I love this psalm. It covers everything. But I always get stuck here and I have to ask a question. Really, what does music have to do with worship? I know what it does for me: it makes me feel the right attitude about God. But so does prayer. So does meditating on scripture.

This isn’t the only place in the Bible that talks about using music as a part of our worship. Twice in the New Testament, Paul talks about using “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,” in Ephesians 5 and in Colossians 3. (And in case you’re wondering, the Greek word translated “psalms” refers specifically to instrumental music, particularly an instrument with strings that gets plucked with a kind of pick. Kind of like a guitar.)

What is it about music that God likes so much? What’s the big deal? Worship has to do with relating properly to God. In Hebrew, the word is *shachah*, and has to do with falling flat on your face. In Greek, the word is *proskuneo*, to kiss toward, like an oriental servant prostrating himself before his king. What does that mean? As Dennis Jernigan says, “Isn’t it pretty simple? He’s God, and I’m not.”

But what does that have to do with music? I mean, in the worship that Moses instituted, there’s not a single note. Just sacrifices and offerings. Those sacrifices, of course, are concerned with getting us in right relationship with him by dealing with the sin in our lives that keep us from “glorify[ing] God and enjoying him forever.” And they called that worship.

And it *was* worship. Worship is being in right relationship with God and the point of those sacrifices was to *get* in right relationship with God. Of course, *we* know that those sacrifices really pointed forward to Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross truly sets us in right relationship with God. Jesus fulfilled all those sacrificial laws, which is why, shortly after he ascended, all those sacrifices stopped. Permanently. There was nothing for them to look forward to.

Jesus fulfilled all the sacrificial requirements, and set us in permanent right relationship with him by his death on the cross. Everything that we used to call worship was just about getting up to that point. And it’s a wonderful place to be. We’re able to come boldly before the throne of grace, unlike Esther, who was afraid to come before the king, even though he was her husband. She didn’t know if she could come before him in the throne room and live, because the king’s favor, by law, was capricious. If you came to the king without being summoned, you would live or die based on his whim. But when we come before God on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done, we are guaranteed his permanent favor. But now that we’re here, what do we do?

A few years ago, I joined The Perfect Church. Maybe you’ve heard of this church. Every one of us, it seems has an idea of what life would be like if they were part of the perfect church, that is, the church where everything is going exactly the way I think church ought to go. Everyone is committed and working toward the same goal. All the right programs are in place. The church has absolutely no financial restraints of any kind, and you know God is with them because they have been in the fever pitch of revival for at least 6 years. Unfortunately, The Perfect Church is inevitably clear on the other end of the country.

Well, 10 years ago or so, I packed up my bags and moved across the country to be a member of The Perfect Church and attend their ministry school. But when I got there, I realized something: I didn’t know what to do. I’m the kind of guy who jumps in with both feet and make a difference. I like to fix things. But at The Perfect Church, nothing was broken. They had plenty of volunteers, and in terms of revival, they were about as vived as you could get. I had traveled across the country to join The Perfect Church, and now that I was there, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. It hadn’t occurred to me to think about what kind of life I would be living once I joined The Perfect Church. I still had to set about living the kind of life I was supposed to have been living all along.

The same thing happened when Jesus rose from the grave, and it happens to each one of us when we first become Christians. Up to that point, the goal has just been to get right with God. But now that we’re here, we still have to live our lives. What is that supposed to look like? Now we can finally set about doing the things that we were created to do in the first place. You know: “to glorify God, and enjoy him forever.” Worship.

But what does it *look* like? Ultimately, our worship should be the sum total of our entire Christian lives: lives led by the Spirit and dedicated to reflecting His goodness in the earth. But I think that there is a special purpose for when we come together, particularly during the musical part of the service.

It turns out that there was one kind of offering in Moses’ law that Jesus didn’t *exactly* fulfill. It was called the wave offering. Normally, when there was a sacrifice, the thing that was being sacrificed was destroyed, usually by burning it. That’s why it was called a sacrifice.

But occasionally, God had a purpose for the thing being offered, and so he gave a ritual for setting that thing apart for God’s service. The classic example was the firstfruits offering.

Whenever the harvest season came along, before harvesting any other grain, the farmer was supposed to cut down one sheaf and bring it to the temple. There he would wave the sheaf in the air before the altar. The sheaf was supposed to symbolize the whole crop, and the point was to recognize God’s grace in providing the harvest and to demonstrate before the people what God had done.

Now in the church age, every sacrifice has been fulfilled by Jesus work on Calvary. There is nothing left to be done to earn God’s favor. In fact, all that’s left is the wave offering: to come before God and recognize the grace in the work that he has already done, and to come before the world and demonstrate what God has accomplished in us.

That’s what praise and worship is. We demonstrate what God has done with all the exuberance we can muster, with shouts and singing, hoping somehow to approximate the splendor of what God has done. And our hands and our voices just aren’t good enough, so we break out the instruments.

Even then, we can’t do it good enough. We’re just waving a sheaf of our lives, not the whole harvest. We haven’t even seen the fullness of the harvest of what God has done; not in our lives, and not in this church. But that’s the point.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” We *guess*, and then we try to praise him in proportion. All we know is that “All God’s promises are ‘yes, yes!” and we know the “amen” is coming. And while we wait, we praise him.

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary!
Praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds!
Praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet.
Praise him with the harp and lyre.
Praise him with tambourine and dancing.
Praise him with the strings and flute.
Praise him with the clash of cymbals.
Praise him with resounding cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord!!

Millennium

This post, I think, legitimately counts as schoolwork, since my assignment (due today!) is that I produce a 5-10 page Statement of Faith. One of the topics I must cover is eschatology. Tim Challies, and others who read him, have recently been skirmishing on the beast of Revelation, and what relation that beast may or may not have to the Roman Catholic Church. I’ve avoided the question for the most part, since I feel I need to have a cohesive eschatology before I can make informed judgments about little details like the identities of beasts and whores and antichrists. Which brings me to questions on the millennium.

The millennium, the thousand year reign of Christ on earth, is probably the biggest point of contention among Christians who think about the last things described in scripture. In all the text of the Bible, it’s only mentioned in one place: Revelation 20. Nevertheless, 1000 years is an awfully long time, which is why the number is frequently symbolic of an era, an epoch, or an age. Most empires and dynasties last shorter than 1000 years. So what a person thinks about “The Millennium” can dramatically affect what they think is God’s will for man’s life on earth. Continue reading “Millennium”

Transformed

This sermon first delivered at Pigeon Cove Chapel in Rockport, Mass, on June 11, 2006

Before I begin, I’d like to mention that I’ve heard some nasty rumors about what exactly should be thrown at the newbie preacher, so I thought I’d share a little scripture on that. The only verses I know that have anything to do with throwing things are Psalms 60 and 108. It’s pretty much the same in both spots –

With exultation I will divide up Shechem
And portion out the Valley of Succoth
Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine;
Ephraim is my helmet,
Judah my washbasin;
Upon Edom I cast my shoe;
Over Philistia I shout in triumph.

So scripturally, it’s probably okay to throw shoes. But, uh, no high heels please.

My actual text for today is 2 Corinthians 3:7-18. I’m reading out of the English Standard Version, mostly because that happens to be the bible I’m carrying around with me right now.

Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

I had the benefit a few weeks ago of sitting in on one of Valerie’s environmental health classes while they were discussing the public health concerns dealing with atomic radiation. As a precursor to the discussion, they reviewed the mechanics of how radiation works, and that was when all kinds of lights started going off for me. I don’t remember anything from the rest of the class.

Somehow, in all my years of education, I managed to get hardly any science education at all. Since I was an English major in college, my advisors assumed I couldn’t do numbers and couldn’t understand detailed theories, so they strongly “encouraged” me toward science classes for the “non-majors,” that is, science for dummies. To my great shame, I listened to them. We spent the semester determining that streams that had been turned into concrete ditches with no trees were bad for the environment. I never took a single class in chemistry, or physics, or anything else that sounded “complicated.” So I knew basically what they tell you on the news: Radiation is bad. Nuclear bombs are bad. Stay out of the sun. Don’t let any nuclear power plants blow up.

So in this class, I learned a lot of really cool things. Here’s how this works: Radioactive decay happens when large, unstable elements like Plutonium deteriorate by losing subatomic particles – electrons and neutrons – one at a time. Radiation can be used to generate energy by placing a large amount of these unstable elements together and triggering a chain reaction, which causes things to get really hot, generating steam, running turbines, etc.

Radiation becomes a health concern, however, because of the how this deterioration happens. Each subatomic particle that is lost is a nanoscopic missile hurled at an impossible rate, accompanied by a high-powered burst of energy. Nanoscopic missiles don’t have much effect on things that are composed mainly of large chunks of the same dense stuff. The wall of a nuclear plant isn’t very concerned that it might become pock-marked by millions of micron-deep bullet holes.

But a living person has every reason to be concerned, since our bodies aren’t exactly made of concrete. Every cell of our bodies is separately alive, and a micron-deep bullet hole is just the thing to really mess things up, or even kill a living cell.

And you’re probably wondering what this has to do with Moses and being transformed. Well, let me take you back to Moses. If you’ll remember, back in Exodus 20 or so, God had just delivered Israel from Pharaoh in Egypt. They’d crossed the Red Sea and come to worship at the mountain of God. So God shows up. He comes down in thunder and lightning and a dark cloud and smoke and basically scares the heebie-jeebies out of the Nation of Israel.

And all 1.2 million of them as a body came together and said, “Oh no, Moses, no you don’t. That God saved me from Pharaoh, I’m very grateful. But if you think I’m going to go up there and talk to *that*, you’re nuts! Yahweh wants to be our God, great! You go talk to him on the mountain. We’ll stay down here, where it’s safe!” And that was that. So at about chapter 24, Moses goes up on the mountain to talk to God. And a month later, he hasn’t come down. Do you know what’s happened to Moses? I don’t know what’s happened to Moses. Maybe he’s dead.

By chapter 32, they can’t handle this any longer. Obviously Moses is dead, so they go to Aaron and say, “Ok, we can’t do this any longer. It’s time to get moving. Aaron, make us a God.” So Aaron said ok, and he collected a big lump of gold and he made them a cow. I don’t know why he made them a cow, but he made them a cow. And they got together and threw a party and said, “Praise be to this cow, who brought us out of Egypt!”

So about this time, Moses starts coming down the mountain with his two stone tablets God had made for them. Now, I know this has never happened to anyone here, but I’ve heard stories about parents going out of town for a weekend and leaving their teenage kids at home. Something comes up and the parents decide to come back early and they get home and the kids are having this massive party, and they are doing all kinds of stuff they’re not supposed to do. Right here, Moses feels like those parents. He is not happy. He is really really angry.

So Moses takes this golden cow, and he grinds it down into powder. And he throws the gold dust on a giant tub of water. And he makes them drink the water. “You think this golden cow brought you up out of Egypt? You think this cow can save you? Fine! Eat the cow! Did that help?”

Now, because of this experience, Israel down through history got this one truth burned into their minds: “God is not a cow.”

Now, that sounds really funny. But, we get some funny ideas about who God is too. Some of us think that God is like some kind of marine drill sergeant who’s always yelling at you and tells you you’ll never be good enough. Others of us think that God is some kind of smothering mother, whose whole world revolves around making us happy. Maybe you think God is some kind of senile old man who will let you get away with anything. He’s the living God of heaven, who loves us, but whose zeal will never rest until we are conformed into the image of his beloved perfect son. God is not whatever it is that you’ve imagined. He’s someone real.

Israel learned that day that idol worship is terrible. It can kill you. People died that day. But the worst thing is that God has made us to worship. It’s our nature to be conformed, to be changed by the things that consume our lives. By worshiping that golden cow, what were they being changed into? Nothing at all. That cow in scripture becomes the overriding image of what idolatry is. They talk about it in Psalm 115. Verses 4-8

Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of human hands
They have mouths, but do not speak
Eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear,
Noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
Feet, but do not walk;
And they do not make a sound in their throat
Those who make them become like them;
So do all who trust in them.

If you’ll look up at verses 2 and 3, you’ll see one of my favorite passages. What about our God?

Why should the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
Our God is in the heavens;
He does all that he pleases.

So what about us, in the 21st century? Paul talks in 2nd Corinthians about Moses, who would put a veil over his face, so people wouldn’t be shocked at the glory shining from him, and so they wouldn’t see it as it was fading. And he says also that people who won’t turn to the Lord have put that same kind of a veil over their hearts, so that when the spirit of God comes, it won’t change them.

And that reminds me of that class of Valerie’s that I sat in on. Radiation can destroy living cells based on the amount of energy and the size of the particles that hit them. A vagrant proton volleying through the air is like a cannon shot. It can cripple, or even destroy the cells it touches. But because it is relatively huge, its impact is relatively small: it doesn’t go very far into you before all its energy is spent bursting through cell walls. But a loose electron, since it’s so much smaller, can create little worm holes all through your body, rearranging hundreds of cells.

Radiation changes people, usually not for the good. So, when we’re confronted with an energy source that comes from atomic decay, the natural and proper response is to avoid it. In the sun, we wear sunscreen. In the X-ray room of the hospital, the technician gives you a lead apron to wear. We protect ourselves, we veil ourselves, so our bodies might not be changed.

The Bible says that something similar happens when we turn to the Lord. 2 Corinthians 3, verse 17: “Now, the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

The natural response, because we are sinners, when we encounter the Spirit of God is just like when we encounter radiation: we want to avoid it. We want to veil ourselves so that we won’t be changed. But what we have to realize is that, while radiation generally brings death, “the Spirit brings life.”

We were made to worship, and if we turn away from God, we will turn toward something else, an idol. And to paraphrase the scripture, those idols, whatever they are, are deaf, dumb, blind and stupid. And those who worship them will become like them: deaf, dumb, blind and stupid. Eventually, dead.

So where do we go from here? Well, what I’d like you to think about is what areas of your life you are still covering with a veil. What is it that you’re scared to death to change? Because I guarantee you that behind that veil is an idol of the heart, and if you leave it there, you’ll become just like it – deaf, dumb, blind and stupid. Eventually dead. I’d even recommend that you pray about it and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal those areas to you.

As David said in Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” I believe that if you ask him, God will do just that. Maybe that veil covers your whole life. Maybe you’ve never been willing to let God change you at all. If so, I encourage you to repent and turn to Jesus. Because in spiritual matters, the most terrible thing would be to stay the same.

But if we turn to the Lord, and remove whatever things we using to veil ourselves from him, then beholding the glory of the Lord we will be being transformed into the same image as Jesus Christ his Son, from one degree of glory to the next. That’s what God wants for us. That’s God’s design for us.

And then, one day, when Jesus Christ returns and we meet him in the air, First John 3:2 says, “What we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Then every veil will be stripped away, and we will be truly transformed.

Amen.

The Holy Spirit as “Proof”

Anthony Hoekema, in his book *The Bible and the Future* has a chapter on “The Holy Spirit and Eschatology,” which he begins by saying, “The role played by the Holy Spirit in Eschatology has not always been fully appreciated.” That is, to put it mildly, an understatement. I don’t think I’ve heard Him mentioned in this context in mainstream theology at all. Charismatic voices, like Rick Joyner, will talk about the future pouring out of the Holy Spirit during the end times, performing such works as miracles and wonders as a *sign* of the end times, but little has been said about the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer throughout the Christian age as a guarantee of Jesus’ future return. Yet, scripturally, this is one of the Holy Spirit’s major functions in the church.

In Acts 2, Peter quotes Joel’s famous prophecy about the pouring out of God’s Spirit: Continue reading “The Holy Spirit as “Proof””

Theology and Science Fiction

Theolgians don’t read enough science fiction.
I’m serious. Really I am.

Properly though, I shouldn’t say *science* fiction, because I mean fantasy too, and both are subcategories of a larger genre called “speculative” fiction, which is the art of telling stories about things that *ain’t real*.

Ok. Now that I’ve (hopefully) offended the realists and literalists among us, let me explain. (No, explianing takes too much time; let me sum up.) Theology (presumably) is something we take seriously because it describes something real. As opposed to certain philosophers like PJ O’Rourke who have apparently gotten PHDs and gotten rich and famous by propounding things they don’t take seriously because they aren’t real (“Truth is whatever my colleagues let me get away with”?). But if we take it seriously ad we think it’s real, why am I suggesting that a good preparation for proper theology is a background in speculative fiction? I mean, it sould lose on two counts – first, it’s speculative, and second, it’s fiction. So why…?

Well, for starters, a little review of speculation might teach certain people to know the difference. Then, on the other hand, the “speculative” and the “fiction” might just cancel each other out and prove an antidote.

But in all earnestness, my reason is that theologians are entirely too esoteric. Continue reading “Theology and Science Fiction”

The Holy Spirit and Baptism

So… baptism.

In the ancient church, when you became a Christian, you got baptized. This was an outward sign to you and the people that you were committed to a new life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and it was a covenant between you and God which God ratified (that is, he made it real) by sending his Holy Spirit. John said, “I baptized you with water, but he who comes after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

And he did. At Pentecost. 2nd chapter of Acts. Tongues of Fire. Speaking in Tongues. “We’re not drunk as you suppose.” Peter preaches. 3,000 get saved. Yea! And it happened over and over again. It was so regular and predictable that Simon the sorcerer offered Peter money so he could lay hands on people for them to receive the Holy Spirit.

But you know, not everybody gets their own personal fireworks display when they get saved. For most of us, it’s a pretty quiet experience even if we charged down the aisle during a Billy Graham Crusade. To be a Christian, you have to receive the Holy Spirit, but how do you know you have him? This got really weird when early Christians started having babies. Parents dutifully baptized their babies into the church, but how do you know they really believe?

So, when kids hit a certain age – an age of responsibility – the elders would quiz them on what they believed. Then they would lay hands on them and confirm that they really were in fact Christians. They called this whole ritual “confirmation,” and they believed that was when you actually received the Holy Spirit.

So, two questions –

How do you know you’ve received the Holy Spirit?

and

What difference does it make?

Beholden?

One of my great mistakes last semester was choosing Calvin’s *Institutes* as my theology text. The assigned reading for my theology class had merely required that I read the appropriate sections in any theology text, and then listed about fifty examples. I figured now was as good a time as any to bone up on my Calvin, since I’d heard so many good things about him.

Last semester was not the time. Three weeks after classes, I’m still slogging through it.

Understand, Calvin is good. In fact, as theologians go, he’s by far one of the most interested in the actual working out of the Christian life. I’ve even mentioned before that reading the *Institutes* was the closest thing in reading a book I’ve ever come to a direct worship experience: reading Calvin promotes a heart attitude of worship. But.

The problem with reading Calvin is that he wrote 400 years ago, and he wrote in Latin. (To his credit, he also wrote in 16th century French, but that doesn’t help me any.) And for some reason, even the best translations are horrible. They seem to think that Calvin has the best impact if they use the vocabulary and phrasing of mid-19th century Britain. So, they throw in extra commas, just for effect, and truly, the verbage choice is most astonishing, in its anachronism. Continue reading “Beholden?”

A Means to an End?

Nick, a member of Chesapeake Church, a Sovereign Grace church near Baltimore has made some very pointed comments regarding my “roadmap” post from about a month ago. He dearly loves the Sovereign Grace movement, particularly the King of Grace church in Methuen, which has received a lot of support from his home church. My post seems to have struck him as taking a lot for granted from an organization I barely even know, and so he suggests maybe I’m going about it the wrong way. The biggest concern is the impression that I’m looking to Sovereign Grace Ministries as merely a means to an end. I felt his thoughts were significant enough for me to make a new post by way of reply.

Reading back through what I wrote, I can see how it might strike a passing visitor that I was being flippant, even arrogantly presumptive, especially from the perspective of a member of the community upon which I am declaring intentions to inflict myself. And to a certain extent I was being flippant, but my intent was for it to be self-directed. Continue reading “A Means to an End?”

Christ’s Humanity

Honestly, in today’s environment, convincing somebody of Jesus’ humanity is hardly difficult. If they believe he existed at all, people believe that Jesus is human. Nevertheless, it’s important to recognize that Jesus was a man for the sake of saving us. Hebrews 2 says that “he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin… since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself took of the same things…. He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” If any part of him is less than human, it is precisely in that area that his salvation is less than effective. With that in mind, it’s worthwhile still to examine him as he was examined in Jerusalem, to see if there is any “flaw” in him, that is, any inhumanness. Continue reading “Christ’s Humanity”

Tag: Theology