I just realized, I hadn’t remembered to post this. It’s a powerful little clip, and truly, as Jared says, a vivid picture of gospel-driven living.
Persistent prayer and the faithfulness of God
Hap has a really good post up on prayer, as of yesterday, which I commend to your attention. I’ve written about some of this before, here and here; for some people, faith and belief and persistent prayer come easy, but I’m not one of them. I don’t know whether the man in Mark 9 meant the same thing when he cried out, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief” that I do—but it’s something I find myself praying a fair bit anyway, because trust comes hard, and I just have to believe that God’s answer to prayer is dependent on his faithfulness, not on my faith. And I do believe that, because prayer isn’t about us changing God, but God changing us, and his faithfulness is neither contingent nor in short supply: it is unending.
Barack Obama’s Ayers challenge
When reports of Sen. Obama’s connection to Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn first surfaced, he tried to dismiss Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” and Ayers’ misdeeds as ancient history. Skeptics pointed out that Ayers’ radical views aren’t past tense, but very much present tense, and saw Sen. Obama’s association with him, along with his close relationship with people like the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as evidence of his comfort with radical leftist views, and of a general “no enemies to the left” policy.And that was about as much as people thought about it, until recently. I’m not sure who first raised the question of why Sen. Obama, with a pretty thin résumé that’s particularly lacking in executive experience, was no longer taking credit for his time as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), a foundation which Ayers helped found. Given that the foundation had a considerable amount of money (I’ve seen the figure $50 million bandied about, but I don’t have any hard data), this would seem to be experience well worth talking about. Given that, why was Sen. Obama keeping it so quiet?Stanley Kurtz decided to try to find out—and that’s when the fun began. When he asked to see the CAC’s internal files, held by the Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago, he was initially told he would be allowed to do so, and then the library began stonewalling him, offering a shifting collection of reasons to justify their actions.When Kurtz subsequently went on WGN-AM in Chicago to talk about his efforts with radio host Milt Rosenburg (audio here), the Obama campaign exploded. Rosenburg’s producer, Zack Christenson, invited the campaign to send someone to appear on the show with Kurtz, but they refused; instead, they tried to defeat the story by brute force. The campaign sent out an e-mail urging supporters to complain to WGN, calling Kurtz a “smear-merchant” and a “slimy character assassin” “pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations” via “divisive, destructive ranting.” Quite a lot of opprobrium for a guy who was just trying to get at some documents—he hadn’t even said anything yet. The e-mail also implicitly accused WGN of preventing the Obama campaign from responding to Kurtz, when in fact it was their choice not to send someone on the show.Now, this suggests one of two things. One, it’s possible that the Obama campaign’s reaction was justified by something truly explosive in those files. Honestly, though, that seems unlikely to me; I suppose nothing is impossible, especially in Chicago politics, but short of the CAC funding Sen. Obama’s 2004 run for Senate, it’s hard to see where there’s room for a true scandal in there. The most that would seem likely would be evidence that Sen. Obama and Bill Ayers were in fact close friends and associates.If that’s the case, then the Obama campaign appears to be overreacting in truly startling fashion. For one thing, it already seems pretty clear that Bill Ayers wasn’t just “a guy who lives in [Sen. Obama’s] neighborhood”; as Kurtz notes in the article linked above, the information that is publicly available leaves little doubt that they worked together pretty closely, and on a friendly basis. But if all there is in the CAC records is confirmation that they worked together and that Sen. Obama was comfortable with Ayers’ efforts and positions—well, honestly, conservatives already suspect that, liberals don’t care, and I don’t see that being an issue that sways a lot of folks in the middle. They probably half-suspect it as well, but it was a few years ago, and there are really more important things to worry about. If that’s all it is, the Obama campaign shouldn’t have tried to fight Kurtz; they should have just let him have his access, dig up what he’s going to dig up, and report it, then weathered the dust-up and gone on, confident that by November it will all be old news. Fighting as they did, if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, only hurts their candidate by drawing attention to the story and making it look as if he has something to hide—or, worse, something to be afraid of. That suggests that Sen. Obama’s biggest challenge isn’t Bill Ayers: it’s his own campaign.Update: of course, that assumes that Ayers doesn’t keep stirring the pot with stuff like this . . .
I am the descendant of the original spinner
I don’t know what to make of this tidbit that John Steele Gordon pulled up, but it’s interesting. It also makes my great-great-ever-so-great-granddaddy look like a pretty conniving politician, which isn’t an image I’d ever associated with him before.
When William Henry Harrison ran for president in 1840, his supporters put out one of the earliest pieces of American political ephemera, a handkerchief printed with scenes of his life. It featured, of course, the Battle of Tippecanoe, but it also showed his supposed birthplace: a small log cabin with smoke curling out of the chimney. Just plain folks was Ol’ Tippecanoe.There was only one problem. William Henry Harrison, in fact, was born at Berkeley Plantation, one of Virginia’s grandest 18th-century houses, on the James River. It was the home of his father, Benjamin Harrison, who was governor of Virginia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The lawn at Berkeley was capacious enough for the Army of the Potomac to camp there during the Civil War.The Whig campaign of 1840 accused Harrison’s main opponent, President Martin Van Buren, of being an aristocrat, eating off gold spoons in “the Palace.” But Van Buren’s father had been only a simple farmer and part-time tavern keeper.It was all exceedingly fake. It also worked: Harrison clobbered Van Buren in the election.
Barack Obama’s foreign-policy judgment
Sen. Obama: Iran is not a serious threat.
His mistake here: failing to understand that the Soviet Union, though a greater conventional military threat than Iran, was also a more predictable threat, and one with which we could negotiate on the basis of shared Western assumptions. Trying to deal with Iran on that basis would be like trying to keep vipers off your property by building a split-rail fence—just because it kept the neighbor’s bull where he belongs doesn’t mean it’s going to stop a snake.Here’s the McCain campaign’s take on that:
And here’s part of the reason why:
This man is not by any means representative of all Muslims—indeed, I would be surprised to find that his understanding of the world is even all that common among Muslims in most places—but he is representative of the sort of attitudes the ayatollahs of Iran are trying to foster and foment among Muslims around the world. Islam as such is not the enemy, but Islamic governments and movements which consider us to be the enemy (such as the government of Iran and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Hamas) most definitely are—and they’re enemies which cannot be dismissed as “not serious” simply because they don’t have large conventional forces. They have other ways of attacking us, they are perfectly capable of developing WMDs, and they are far, far harder to deter than the Soviet Union was because they don’t share a Western value system; telling them, “don’t do that or we’ll kill you” isn’t much of a threat if they’re convinced that doing that will please Allah and earn them a special place in paradise. As such, they’re perfectly capable of doing something perfectly crazy if we don’t take them very seriously as a threat.Sen. Obama doesn’t appear to understand this. Unfortunately, given that Joe Biden told the Israelis, “Iran is going to be nuclear—deal with it,” it appears his running mate doesn’t either. This doesn’t bode well if they win in November.
The Inheritance of the Saints
One of the great temptations of the Christian life, from the very beginning, has been to add to it. C. S. Lewis talks about one aspect of this in The Screwtape Letters, dubbing it “Christianity And”; and while he focuses there on one particular form of this temptation, he sets out its essence very clearly: to add anything at all to the gospel is to nullify it altogether, to “substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring.” We can be tempted into this error out of the desire to serve a particular cause—“Christianity and the Hot-Button Issue,” “Christianity and Your Chosen Political Party”—or the desire to please others, or spiritual pride, or the desire to have God on our own terms, or the fear that Christ really isn’t enough, or even a misunderstanding of what the gospel of Jesus Christ really is and means. There are a lot of reasons, but the mistake is the same: believing that Christ plus something else equals more than Christ alone. As Paul is at pains to tell the Colossians, that’s exactly wrong. To add anything to Christ is to lose Christ, but to have him alone is to have everything.
In the church in Colossae, the issue was accommodation to Judaism. This was a common problem in the churches of the first century; you had Jewish leaders working overtime to pull people back from the church to the synagogue, and others within the church, known as Judaizers, who wanted to stay in the church but bring the synagogue along with them. Their attitude may seem strange to a lot of us, but it’s really quite understandable when you think about it. For the early church, how they were supposed to relate to their Jewish roots was a real question—what should they keep, and what should they leave behind? And if there were those who wanted to throw out the entire Old Testament as outdated and irrelevant, it’s no surprise that there were also those who firmly believed that Christians had to keep on being fully observant Jews—circumcision, food laws, the whole nine yards. Tell truth, they had some reason for their position—after all, hadn’t Jesus said that he came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it? What they missed was the way in which Jesus had fulfilled the Law, and its consequences for their position.
Now, in the church in Colossae, Paul wasn’t dealing with the usual sort of Jewish influence; rather than the Judaizers he’d fought in the Galatian churches and elsewhere, the Colossian church seems to have fallen under the sway of a mystical strain of Judaism that promised its followers a spiritual ascent into heaven, into the presence of the celestial throne of God. This, too, taught them that obedience to the Law was necessary for salvation in addition to Jesus, but it added another incentive: if you’ll just go farther, do more, obey even stricter rules, then you can have a special experience of God that ordinary folks don’t get to have. If you want to really know God, to experience his fullness and feel his presence, you can have that in your life, if you just jump through all these hoops that we tell you to jump through. Again, Jesus alone is not enough, this time to know God and have a relationship with him—legalism is the only way.
In response to this, Paul tells the Colossians that if they really want to draw close to God, they’re going the wrong direction. In starting to follow this teaching, they’re moving away from Christ—they’re assuming that Christ is not enough, that they have to add these other rituals and religious observances if they want to know God—and in so doing, they are trading in the freedom of God for slavery to worldly ideas. The root of the problem here is that they don’t really understand who Jesus is, or what he did for them, much less what that means for their lives; they don’t take him or his work seriously enough, because they haven’t gotten their minds around the staggering reality and significance of his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. They have not truly grasped that their extraordinary efforts are unnecessary, and even counterproductive, because everything they’re trying to earn, they’ve already been given. That’s why they’re going off the rails, and that’s why Paul sets out in this letter to make all this clear for them.
Now, from his thanksgiving, we can see that there’s still a lot to be said for the Colossian church. They’re not in the kind of shape the Galatian churches were in, where Paul skipped the thanksgiving in his letter altogether and just started yelling at them right off the bat; here, he gives thanks for their faith in Christ and their love for each other, which were bearing fruit in growth—both in numbers and in spiritual maturity. This is telling; for all that they’re starting to follow some false teachers, their hearts are still very much in the right place. They simply need to be taught to recognize error when they see it. Note, by the way, the reason and foundation for their faith and love: “the hope laid up for you in heaven.” As will become clear over the course of the letter, that hope is nothing and no one other than Jesus Christ himself.
As we typically see in Paul, and as we talked about last week with Philemon, his thanksgiving for the Colossians is joined to prayer for them, and indeed moves him to prayer for them. And notice what he prays—if you were here last week, this might sound pretty familiar. Paul tells Philemon that he’s praying for him so that the communion of his faith—the community, the body, of faith of which he is a part, which shaped him and which he has shaped—would be effective in the full knowledge of all the good that is ours in Christ; in other words, that Philemon would be used by God to help bring about what Paul has been praying for the church in Colossae as a whole. As we saw last week, in the biblical mindset, knowledge isn’t just a head thing, it’s active and experiential: you can’t really claim to know something until you’ve integrated it into your life, until it’s reflected on a daily basis in the choices you make and the attitudes in which you make those choices.
The flip side to this is that it means that what you know, the content of your understanding, matters; if you get the head stuff wrong, you’re going to get the life stuff wrong, too. We can see, given that, why Paul was so concerned in his letter to Philemon, because the Colossians have started to buy into something that is very, very far from the truth—not knowledge, but anti-knowledge—and though for now, their hearts are still in the right place, that will change over time unless their false understanding of God is corrected. They’re seeking the right things, spiritual wisdom and understanding and the knowledge of God’s will, but they’re looking, and moving, in the wrong direction. Paul’s prayer, then, is that they would be turned around, that they would set aside their pursuit of false knowledge through false experience and allow the Spirit of God to fill them instead with the true knowledge of God and his will—so that they would then do God’s will, leading “lives worthy of the Lord,” lives that give honor to him by faithfully representing his character and his will in this world.
Of course, Paul recognizes that this requires strength beyond our own merely human capacity, and so he prays for the Colossians that they might be filled, not only with the knowledge of God, but with the power of God—power to do his will, power to stand firm in the face of opposition and difficult times, and power to remain joyful and grateful to God no matter what may come. The Christian life is not meant to be a life of grim endurance through the struggles and sorrows of this world, but a life of joy and peace—of victory, not necessarily over them, but in their midst. This is something the world cannot give—only God can; it’s only possible by his power. It’s only possible because we have been given something the world doesn’t have: a share in the inheritance prepared for the saints in the realm of light, the hope laid up for us in heaven. Christ has conquered the power of darkness—by his sacrifice on the cross, he has bought our freedom from the power of sin—and through the work of Christ, God has rescued us from that power and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
With this statement, Paul strikes the note that will ring through this entire letter—a note which indeed can be heard throughout all his letters: every aspect of our salvation, and indeed, every aspect of the life which God gives us, is contained in Christ. Nothing is lacking in his work—nothing more is needed; nor is there anything our own efforts can add to what he has done. There is no space for spiritual pride in the Christian life, because there is nothing to our own credit in our salvation, nothing we’ve earned and nothing of our own deserving; there is only room for gratitude and praise to Jesus, because he’s done it all. Yes, he calls us to live life in a new way, different from the way the world lives, but not in order to earn his favor or to repay the debt we owe him; both are beyond our power. Rather, he calls us to live in accordance with his will because that’s the logical working-out of the new life he has given us, and out of gratitude for that gift. We live differently, or should, because we know differently, think differently, believe differently, love differently—our motivations have been changed, and that changes the way in which we live our lives. But we do so not out of duty, but out of love and gratitude; and not in our own power, but in the power of the Spirit of Christ who is within us.
Jesus Brand Spirituality: Introduction
A number of weeks ago, I wrote a post highlighting an extremely positive review of a book called Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back. In response, I received a friendly communication from the author, Ken Wilson, the senior pastor of the Ann Arbor Vineyard, asking me if I wanted a copy. That was an easy one (of course I did), and in return for his generosity I promised to review the book once I’d finished it.
Unfortunately, various circumstances delayed me in starting the book, which I was only able to begin reading this past weekend, so I have not yet been able to redeem my word to the Rev. Wilson. I have, however, greatly appreciated the book so far, and am eager to do so. However, never having written a true review essay, I’m a bit dubious of my ability to do it justice by reading the whole book and writing on it all at once; what’s more, doing so properly would produce a very long piece which might not be well-suited to the medium of a blog. So, what I’ve decided to do is to comment on the book a chapter at a time, and then once I’ve finished, write a concluding post with final commentary. I realize that this has its drawbacks, but I think it’s probably the best way to do it. It’s also the quickest way to get started, which factors into my thinking as well.
I hope to get the post on the first chapter up in the next day or two—unfortunately, it isn’t finished yet, but those who follow this blog will be aware that I’ve had one or two other minor matters occupying a lot of my attention here. For now, I’ll close with one of Phyllis Tickle’s encomia from her foreword:
This . . . is a book that contains niches and corridors and apses of beauty that catch my thorax and make me feel the salt and burn of beauty rising.
John McCain in a nutshell
can be found, as Kevin McCullough points out, in the conclusion to his acceptance speech:
Long ago, something unusual happened to me that taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I was blessed by misfortune. I mean that sincerely. I was blessed because I served in the company of heroes, and I witnessed a thousand acts of courage, compassion and love. On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn’t any worry I wouldn’t come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn’t think there was a cause more important than me. Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn’t feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn’t set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn’t get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life. I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. Our Code said we could only go home in the order of our capture, and there were men who had been shot down before me. I thought about it, though. I wasn’t in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down. A lot of prisoners had it a lot worse than I did. I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as many others. I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door to me, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for my country and for the men I had the honor to serve with, because every day, they fought for me. I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.I’m not running for president because I think I’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God. If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you’re disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier, because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself. I’m going to fight for my cause every day as your President. I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me. Fight for what’s right for our country. Fight for the ideals and character of a free people. Fight for our children’s future. Fight for justice and opportunity for all. Stand up to defend our country from its enemies. Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. Thank you, and God bless you.
Full speech:
Palin rumors and Palin facts
I was pleased to find, today, a good comprehensive list sorting out all the things that have been said about Sarah Palin. Yes, she’s not perfect; yes, there are people who don’t like her (many of them Alaskan Republican politicians); yes, there are things to criticize about her and her record (since she, like any of the rest of us, is a sinful human being); but no, overall, the attempts to hatchet her down don’t stand. And yes, the list offers its compiler the chance for some wonderfully snarky comments.HT: The Anchoress
Pro-life ministry in an oversexed society
One of the biggest things I miss about living in Canada is the newspapers. I miss having the Vancouver Sun and the National Post show up on the step every morning; I miss the caliber of the reporting, the vigor and sense of responsibility of the political coverage, the wit and keen eye of the columnists . . . it’s a long list, which absolutely must not omit the consistently superb movie reviews of Katherine Monk. (She writes great good reviews, and even better bad ones.)I was reminded today just how much I miss them when RealClearPolitics tossed up a link to a piece by George Jonas on Sarah Palin. I’d forgotten about George Jonas, which is too bad; it’s a typically good piece on the feminist reaction to the Palin nomination. Still, I was more interested in a link in the sidebar to an article by David Frum. The article is titled “Sarah and Todd Palin and the quiet success of the pro-life movement,” but that’s not really what the article is about; the true subject of the article is, as Frum puts it, “the transformation of the pro-life movement from an unambiguously conservative force into something more complex.” It’s about the way in which the evolution of the pro-life movement and the law of unintended consequences have significantly reshaped evangelical attitudes and social conservative politics. To quote Frum’s conclusion,
The experience of the Palin family symbolizes the effect of the pro-life movement on American culture: Abortion has been made more rare; unwed motherhood has been normalized. However you feel about that outcome, it is not well-described as either left-wing or right-wing.
In saying this, Frum has captured and crystallized something of which I was aware—in my own attitudes and approach to ministry, no less than in the lives of others—but which I hadn’t consciously thought about. Put simply, when pro-life concerns cross with the concern for other issues, the tie goes to the baby. We have learned, as Frum puts it earlier in his article, that
So long as unwed parenthood is considered disgraceful, many unwed mothers will choose abortion to escape disgrace. And so, step by step, the pro-life movement has evolved to an accepting—even welcoming—attitude toward pregnancy outside marriage.
Now, that “even welcoming” bit is wrong; but otherwise, he’s right. We came face to face with the law of unintended consequences and realized that the stigma on unwed motherhood was driving abortions, and so we set it aside for the greater good; what else are crisis pregnancy centers all about?Of course, that has unintended consequences of its own; as conservatives understand, subsidizing behavior encourages that behavior, and supporting unwed mothers certainly qualifies as a subsidy, if a private-sector one, on unwed motherhood. Thus, according to Frum’s statistics, some 37% of all babies born in the US are born out of wedlock. Whether this contributes to the ongoing decline of the institution of marriage in this country, I’m really not sure—I actually tend to think not, judging from my own experience (and here, the example of the Palin family would be a bit of anecdotal support for that as well), but I could easily be wrong—but it certainly contributes to the ongoing weakening of the sense that marriage and children are supposed to go together. Which isn’t a good thing . . . but is clearly a lesser evil than abortion.But still, it isn’t a good thing, and it needs to be resisted, and counterbalanced—but without providing incentives for abortion. What I think the interplay between rates of abortion and unwed motherhood demonstrates is that promoting abstinence by “going negative” doesn’t work (a point also made, from a different angle, by Lauren Winner in her superb book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity). We need to articulate the positive case for chastity—which, you will note, is a positive word, where “abstinence” is a negative one—and we need to do so holistically, weaving together emotional, social scientific, biological, relational, and, yes, theological arguments into a single cohesive and coherent position; we need to respond to the “elemental powers” view of sex with a greater and a higher vision, one which compellingly presents the idea that chastity is not self-deprivation, but is in fact a valuable self-discipline which leads to blessing. As churches, we need to contribute to that by moving away from the simplistic approaches to sexuality which we too often take and toward a fully-developed, fully-considered, fully biblical theology of sexuality and pleasure. “Just say no” doesn’t work, and especially not in our sex-saturated society; if we’re going to tell people they need to say “no” to something, we also have to help them understand what God is calling them to say “yes” to in its place. To do otherwise isn’t just bad theology—it’s bad ministry, and it doesn’t work.Update: Janice Shaw Crouse has an excellent column on reducing teen pregnancies and abortions.