Author Archives: Rob Harrison

The old made new—not replaced

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As I noted a few days ago, God doesn’t promise us an escape from this world—he promises us the world remade new, and ourselves remade new within it, to start all over again. Sort of. Surprisingly, though the human story began in a garden, when God remakes the world, it will center on a city, the new Jerusalem; we aren’t going backward to be Adam and Eve again (contrary to Michael Omartian’s classic song), with all our mistakes erased as if they had never been, but rather, forward, with our mistakes redeemed—and with them, our accomplishments. To be sure, there are many of us who don’t care for cities, but as a whole, as Jacques Ellul has written (thanks to John Halton for his post on this), “The city is . . . our primary human creation. It is a uniquely human world. It is the symbol that we have chosen.” For God to center his rule on a city (especially when the city is “the place that human beings have chosen in opposition to God” [emphasis mine], as Ellul notes), is a sure sign that in remaking the world, God will take our works into account and redeem the works of our hands, even to the point of turning the center and hub of our fallen civilization into the center of his perfect reign. This tells us that the good that we have made, the good things we have built, the honorable works of our hands, will not be swept away in the final judgment; even as God will redeem and perfect us, so too will our accomplishments be redeemed and perfected. The gifts God has given us, and the good things we do with them to his glory, will also be saved. This is what it means that Jesus is preparing a place for us—that who we are and what we bring with us matter, and will remain.

Of course, that redemption and perfection are an important part of the picture. The late great Dan Quisenberry once quipped, “I have seen the future, and it is much like the present, only longer”; but if that tends to be drearily true in human history, it will not be true at all of the new creation. We will be raised in our own bodies, but our bodies will be different in kind. Now, they are perishable; our bodies erode, they wear out, they catch diseases, they break, they fail, and we die. In the new creation, they won’t be subject to any of that; they will be imperishable, what Paul calls “spiritual bodies.” Flesh and blood as we know it now cannot endure the glory of God, it cannot stand up to the brightness of his presence; it’s too frail and flimsy and shadowy a thing to breathe the air of heaven. It must be made new, remade, along with the rest of creation, in order to be solid enough and real enough to stand in the very presence of God. So too the works of our hands, those things we have forged out of our own hard work and the raw materials God has given us; that which is worthy will endure, but not as we have known it, for it too will be remade by the hand of God.

This is the promise of the gospel—the promise we see realized first in the resurrection of Christ, whom Paul calls “the firstfruits,” the first harvest, “of those who have died”; as the first one to be raised from the dead, as the one who went before us to show us the way, he shows us the new life that waits for us. We will be raised from the dead, not merely as we are now, but as he is, and the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and the power of sin in our lives will be no more, forever and ever and ever.

Holy discomfort

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E. J. Dionne has a good column up on the message with which Pope Benedict XVI is challenging America on his first papal visit. Given that Dionne is such a conventional American liberal Catholic, he’s surprisingly open to that message, with little more than a ritual genuflection to the “the Church needs to become more like us” altar; by and large, he seems to understand that the change needs to run the other way. To be sure, part of that is his recognition that the Pope’s message is in fact as countercultural and challenging in many ways for conservatives as it is for liberals, but even so, I’m glad to see him close with this:

For myself, I admire Benedict’s distinctly Catholic critique of radical individualism in both the moral and economic spheres, and his insistence that the Christian message cannot be divorced from the social and political realms. . . . Perhaps it is the task of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church to bring discomfort to a people so thoroughly shaped by modernity, as we Americans are. If so, Benedict is succeeding.

This is good news, because indeed, an important task for the church is to bring us to a holy discomfort with our lives and our world—to inspire us with a sacred disquiet with the selfish, reductionist assumptions we absorb from our culture, and with the ways in which that culture shapes us; and (as Dionne’s Washington Post colleague Michael Gerson notes) because of its size, ubiquity, and theological tradition, the Roman Catholic Church is and must be one of the chief standard-bearers in that work. It’s good to see that standard carried well.

From the “Good News” file

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Any actual medical use is still a long way off and far from assured, but we may have seen a major conceptual breakthrough in cancer treatment. Certainly many cancer researchers think we have, and they’re excited about the possibilities. The basic idea, the brainwave of a businessman, radio technician and cancer patient named John Kanzius, is simple: use radio waves and small metal particles (carried into the cancer cells by specially-modified antibodies) to cook cancer while leaving normal cells alone. It’s already been used to kill small tumors in animals; if they can find ways to target cancer cells that don’t rely on doctors knowing the cells are there (and thus to ensure they get all the places where cancers metastasize), they should be off to the races.

Iraq as a litmus test for presidential seriousness

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The great problem with the Iraq War in American politics is that most Americans believe what the media tells them about it, and the media haven’t sought to report accurately and fairly from Iraq; instead, they’ve been trying to use their reporting to score points on the Bush administration and the GOP. As such, lots of people believe we were “lied into war,” when in fact, as Christopher Hitchens has pointed out, that point of view is based on a misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of what President Bush actually said; lots of people believe that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and other terrorists, when in fact (as Hitchens also notes), the connection has been clearly established; lots of people believe that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with our war on al’Qaeda, when in fact al’Qaeda itself knows better (see here for the highlights); and lots of people believe our work in Iraq has strengthened al’Qaeda, when in fact they’re a shell of their former organization. The fact is, the surge has largely worked, we’re winning the war, and things in Iraq are getting better, to the point that good reporting is beginning to convince Iraq War opponents they were wrong.

Unfortunately, the MSM are still trying to spin the war for maximum benefit for the Democrats rather than simply reporting it and letting the chips fall where they may. This distorts the public understanding of the situation in Iraq and makes it difficult to have the kind of forthright national discussion that would truly serve our nation well; in particular, it enables those who want an immediate and total withdrawal from Iraq, notwithstanding that (as Israel’s experience in Gaza shows) such an act would only give aid and comfort to our enemies. Now is a critical stage in the evolution of Iraq as a nation, and in our campaign against al’Qaeda; this is exactly the wrong time to back down. As such, this is when we most need sober, dispassionate reflection from the presidential candidates as to what would be the best course to chart in Iraq, because this is perhaps the key test of their seriousness as potential American leaders on the world stage.

With John McCain, we know where he stands; he started pushing for the surge in 2003 in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, and has maintained a consistent position ever since, even when that position seemed an insurmountable obstacle for his White House ambitions. That’s consistency, integrity, character, and wisdom of a sort that Barack Obama hasn’t shown with respect to Iraq; where Sen. McCain has situated himself firmly in the internationalist foreign-policy tradition of “people like Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Stimson, Dean Acheson, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan,” Sen. Obama began a major speech on foreign policy by appealing to Woodrow Wilson. Mismatch, anyone? (No wonder the New York Times has resorted to flat-out dishonesty in attacking Sen. McCain’s foreign-policy credentials.) Ironically, Sen. Obama then went on to make the case for pulling out of Iraq immediately in order to . . . escalate the war in Afghanistan and dramatically increase our involvement in Pakistan. Indeed, in declaring, “For years, we have supported stability over democracy in Pakistan, and gotten neither,” he essentially endorsed the Bush Doctrine. So, Senator—why in Pakistan, but not in Iraq?

What shall we do with a Christless preacher?

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(If you know the sea chantey, feel free.)

Over at Gospel-Driven Church, Jared has been writing a fair bit about the problem of Christ-free, counterfeit-gospel preaching in the American church, which he’s quite correctly dubbed “the new legalism.” He’s not the only one, of course; another redoubtable voice on the subject has been that of Michael Spencer, the iMonk. Recently, though, someone asked the iMonk, “What do we, in the pew, do about this?” (scroll down near the end of the comments)—an important question, but not one I’d seen raised; so Jared set out to answer it. IMHO, he did his usual excellent job, and I commend the post to your reading.

The one thing I would add, from a preacher’s perspective, is to reinforce something Jared says: if your pastor isn’t preaching the gospel, talk to them about it if there’s any way you can—and specifically, do three key things. One, find whatever gospel elements you can in their preaching, tell them you appreciate that, and tell them why. Give them whatever positive feedback you can that will draw them in the direction of preaching Christ. Two, tell them you’d like to hear more of that (in positive terms, though I wouldn’t advise going so far as flattery), and ask them to try to preach more of the gospel, more about Jesus and his life and work, and to put Christ more at the center of their preaching. If you know others who think and feel the same way, tell them so—and use names. (One thing preachers in most churches learn quickly, if they’re going to survive, is to give anonymous complaints/suggestions very little weight.)

I say this for two reasons. First, while there are no doubt preachers who don’t feel the need, most of us are always trying to evaluate our preaching to see if we’re improving, how the congregation is responding, if our sermons are actually influencing anyone—if our preaching is “working,” whatever we might understand that to mean—but that’s very hard to do without clear, specific, intelligent feedback; and in most churches, that kind of feedback is hard to come by. For most preachers, if you present that kind of feedback in an encouraging, affirming, appreciative way, you will receive a positive response; and while that might not result in any real change in their preaching, then again, it might. (If it does, of course, follow that up with expressions of gratitude and further encouragement.)

Second, most of us preachers are, at some level, utilitarian in our view of our preaching. That’s not to say we’ll do anything if it works (though some will, to be sure), only that there aren’t many of us who will keep on doing something that clearly doesn’t. In some ways, that’s unfortunate, because in churches that are resisting the gospel message, what needs to be done is to keep preaching the gospel whether it’s “working” or not; but in another way, it’s not only proper but necessary. After all, if our preaching isn’t bearing any fruit, then clearly, we need to change something. The only real problem here is making sure that we have the right definition of “fruit.”

All of which is to say, whatever your preacher is preaching, it’s a reasonable bet that they’re doing it because they’ve been told that’s what works, and unless your congregation is small and shrinking, their experience has probably convinced them it works. Realistically, you’re not likely to get your preacher to change unless you can get them to believe that gospel-centered, Bible-rooted preaching will also “work”; and the best way to make that happen is to help them see that people in the congregation are hungry for it.

There’s a third key thing you need to do as well if your preacher does begin to change: support them through the backlash. Assuming attendance is healthy in your church, it’s likely that many (if not most) of the folks there like the preaching just fine and don’t have the same problems with it that you do; of those folks, there will almost certainly be some who will strongly resent the changes, and they’ll let the preacher have it with both barrels. At this point, three main scenarios present themselves:

—the preacher gives in and the church reverts to its previous normal;

—the preacher leaves and the church reverts to its previous normal; or

—the preacher digs in and there’s a conflict of some sort.

Given the tendency among most preachers to conflict avoidance, the third scenario is the least likely unless they have your strong, vocal support, and the strong, vocal support of everyone who appreciates the new direction in their preaching. What’s more, if you’ve been involved in urging them to change, and they’ve changed as a result, you have a moral responsibility to support them as they deal with the consequences of that change.

America’s Stone-Age Navy

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OK, so maybe that’s an exaggeration—but when it comes to computer technology, it’s frighteningly close to the truth.

Consider the Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyer. It is one of the most sophisticated and capable fighting ships the world has ever seen. With its advanced SPY-1 radar, 96 vertical-launch tubes armed with a variety of long-range weapons, an advanced sonar system and antisubmarine warfare capabilities, it has everything a naval warrior could want. Consider, now, the Blackberry that has become ubiquitous in our culture. The two-way communication bandwidth of a single Blackberry is three times greater than the bandwidth of the entire Arleigh Burke destroyer. Looked at another way, the Navy’s most modern in-service multi-mission warship has only five percent of the bandwidth we have in our home Internet connection. And the bandwidth it does have must be shared among the crew and combat systems . . . The recruiting posters promise, “Accelerate your life!” but the best we can do is “decelerate” access to information. The Economist summarized the challenge: “If Napoleon’s armies marched on their stomachs, American ones march on bandwidth.” During the past ten years we have seen an explosive growth in commercial bandwidth, and each year the Navy’s connectivity falls further and further behind. By 2014, our homes will have 250 times more bandwidth than a [guided-missile destroyer], and 100 times more than the next-generation aircraft carrier. We have to reverse this trend. And if we want the Navy to become a more interactive, collaborative, and effective fighting force, we have to leverage the innate collaborative nature of our Millennium Sailors.

I imagine that we’ve survived this handicap (which isn’t just the Navy; this is a problem for each of the services) to this point because we haven’t been up against opponents with the ability to exploit it. With China rising, we will—and probably sooner than we think. This needs to be fixed.HT: Max Boot

God’s victory coming

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“Heaven” is one of those words that when you say it, people think they can stop listening because they already know what you’re going to say. When we die, our bodies aren’t us anymore, and our immortal souls go up to heaven where we watch over the people we’ve left behind. Add in the usual clouds and harps and pearly gates, with St. Peter standing outside them behind a lectern with a huge book—and what on earth did poor Peter do to get stuck with that, anyway?—and you have the basic picture that floats around in the back of most people’s minds; that’s what “heaven” means to us.

Personally, I don’t believe a word of it. I don’t believe I have an immortal soul, and I don’t believe it’s going up to heaven when I die, and I most especially don’t believe we’ll be playing harps then if we don’t in this life. (If you want to tell me heaven would be a place where I’ll play bassoon well enough that it will still be heaven for everyone else, we can talk about that, but I’m no harpist.) Obviously, if by “heaven” you mean the place where God lives and is fully visibly present, yes, I believe in that, but I don’t believe in heaven as most people think about it; and the reason I don’t is because the Bible doesn’t either. The Bible, instead, promises us two very different and very much greater things: the resurrection of the dead, and the new heavens and the new earth. Jesus didn’t come to Earth just to save our souls, he came to redeem us as whole human beings, body and spirit; indeed, he came to redeem his whole creation, not just us. God isn’t in this just for souls, as if he’d be happy to let the rest of the world he made go to rot; he’s in this to take it all back.

The ascension makes this clear, and underpins what Paul is saying about the resurrection from the dead in 1 Corinthians 15, because it shows us that Jesus’ resurrection was no temporary thing. He came back to life as a flesh and blood human being—albeit one whose body could do things that ours can’t—and when he left, he didn’t leave that body behind and go back to heaven as a spirit; he returned in the body, as a human being. That shows us what God is about in our own redemption. To raise us as spirits and leave our bodies behind would leave death with some measure of victory in the end; and it would devalue the world God has made, the world which he pronounced good. God isn’t interested in letting either of these things happen. Rather, his intent is to absolutely undo all the damage done by our enemy when he led Adam and Eve into sin, and absolutely destroy all powers opposed to him, leaving them no scrap of accomplishment at all. The absolute destruction of all death, and the absolute victory of all that is life, under the rule of Jesus Christ our Lord is what we have to look forward to—nothing less.

Not so new after all

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So Barack Obama is now looking to turn his back on public campaign financing in favor of a “parallel public financing system”—which is to say, on the same old way of raising money; and why not, really, when he can spend a day hobnobbing with billionaires and raise $3 million. The thing is, though, given some of the things Sen. Obama has said in the past, that starts to look more than a little like rank hypocrisy; as Zombie contends,

Michelle Obama (and other Obama campaign spokespeople) aren’t telling the truth. It seems that a signficant portion of Obama’s monthly campaign contributions are coming from “large donors”—i.e. rich people, not just the “$20 to $50” donations they’re constantly bragging about. . . . The single most insidious aspect of American politics is that candidates often must pander to and do the bidding of the wealthiest Americans, who have the funds to get the candidate elected. It’s so commonplace, we no longer think of it as “corruption,” but that’s basically what it is. So when Obama spends all day doing nothing but going to a series of private fundraisers populated exclusively by the wealthy, the only “change” I feel are the coins jangling at the bottom of my pocket.And I don’t like hypocrisy.

Neither do I; which is why, when you combine this with the evidence that Sen. Obama is, in the end, just another Chicago machine politician, I’m coming to the point where I agree with Peter Wehner:

Early on in this campaign I was impressed with Barack Obama as a thoughtful, inspiring, and admirable (if far too liberal) political figure. As the months have worn on, it’s become increasingly apparent that the candidate is projecting mere shadows on the wall. Our Republic deserves better.

Sen. Obama inserts foot in mouth, commences chewing

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You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them—like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they’ve gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

So says Barack Obama, as of April 6 in San Francisco, in an astoundingly condescending moment which demeans many Americans on multiple levels; and in defending himself, his response has essentially been, “Why all the furor? All I did was say what everyone knows is true.” Paging Thomas Frank . . .To this, Hillary Clinton responds,

You know, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it’s a matter of Constitutional rights. Americans who believe in God believe it is a matter of personal faith. Americans who believe in protecting good American jobs believe it is a matter of the American Dream. . . The people of faith I know don’t “cling to” religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich. Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe.

And,

I saw in the media it’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that’s not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard every day for a better future, for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them; they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.

On Commentary‘s “Contentions” blog, Jennifer Rubin called that first comment “probably the smartest thing she’s said in her entire political career”; I think Rubin is right. Of course, John McCain’s campaign is on top of this as well, as witness this quote from one of his advisors:

It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.

The theme is clear here: Sen. Obama is an out-of-touch ivory-tower elitist snob who looks down on ordinary folks. As David Paul Kuhn put it,

Last year [Sen. Obama] responded to an Iowa farmer’s concerns about crop prices by asking if “anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” There are no Whole Foods in Iowa. Recently Obama tried to bowl in Pennsylvania and looked like the sort of Democrat who thinks of Whole Foods when discussing crop prices. Now Obama talks about what drives rural voters’ cultural concerns and ends up looking like the kind of Democrat who bowls a 37 in seven frames. Soon there is a storyline. The silly is now serious.It seems that every time Obama makes a mistake he brings it up again, offers context, laughs about it, and then defends it. No matter, the bowling and arugula mistakes were still small time. But the bitter remark was a game changer.

Unfortunately for the Obama campaign, this is a theme that reminds a lot of folks of the Jeremiah Wright diatribes against America and Michelle Obama’s “the first time I’ve ever been proud of my country” comment; it seems to fit with them all too well. The question is, is this his helmet-in-a-tank moment? Certainly it looks like it might be in Pennsylvania; and while it’s too early to tell for the long term, you can be sure that if Sen. Obama manages to hang on and win the nomination, we’ll be hearing a lot about this from now to November. Sen. Obama shot himself in the foot good and proper; now he’d best just hope he doesn’t get gangrene.

On praying for heart attacks

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As Robert Mugabe continues to dig in his heels, I’m reminded of a conversation I had a while back with a couple folks I know in Zimbabwe. When we asked them how we should pray for them, one of them said, “Pray that God will strike Mugabe with a lightning bolt.” We were rather taken aback by that, but they know their country can’t begin to recover until Mugabe is gone, and in their view, the only way he’ll leave is feet first. As long as he’s alive, they don’t believe he’ll ever relinquish power. It’s hard to argue with them.

There are those who would have trouble with the idea of praying for the death of our enemies; that point of view came up last summer when the Thinklings discussed this question. Certainly I understand the concern, given that Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us; but he doesn’t tell us what to pray for those who persecute us. Clearly, we should strive not to pray anger and hatred against our enemies, but I don’t think that means we can’t or shouldn’t pray that God would bring them down, one way or another. I remain convinced as I was at the time of that discussion that David’s prayers serve as a model for us on this point, boiling down roughly to this: “God, either bring my enemies to repentance or strike them down, I don’t care which, but remove them as my enemies.” As Jared put it at the time, “in extreme cases, in unrepentant, ongoing, debilitating situations of abuse on those who cannot protect themselves, I am driven to pray for God’s justice in a radical deliverance. So the motivation is not ‘kill this person’—it’s ‘make them stop or make them gone.'”

That’s where I am with regard to Robert Mugabe. If God wills to strike him dead, good. If God wills to strike him to his knees in full repentance, good—indeed, better; better that he be redeemed, and besides, with all he’s done, I think for him, repentance would hurt more. But whichever kind of heart attack God may send, I’m praying he sends it soon, for the sake of my friends, and the sake of all Zimbabwe. Amen.