Predestined to Be Predictable

January 23, 2008 @ 12:13 pm by JD

Ok, it’s no secret that I’m a fan of Mark Driscoll.  Most of my video/audio posts are links to the audio or video of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.  It’s also not a big secret that my theology takes a Calvinistic slant.  It seems that lately, the issue of predestination, election, free will and all that jazz has been coming up a lot with me in conversation.  This past week, Driscoll preached over the issue of predestination and I have to say that it is by far one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard on the subject.  He approaches the topic with grace, depth, and a brand of humor that I appreciate.  It’ll definately be worth your time to watch.

 Click here

JD

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Relevant Apologetics In The Church

January 16, 2008 @ 3:25 pm by Pressed

The church in today’s culture faces some of the greatest challenges to doing apologetics and to reaching the lost with the truth of the gospel message. The challenge begins with the startling discovery that people who claim they so strongly believe in the Bible can so easily and willingly live opposite of that belief. This is culminated in the prominent and apparent lack of integrity in the lives of evangelical born-again Christians. While the majority of Christians will claim to believe in the “truth” of God’s Word, we find that the “truth” is not actively lived out in their lives. There seems to be a disconnect between what people believe and the way they live. The church that says one thing and does another becomes impotent in evangelism and irrelevant in a society that is no longer searching for truth in facts and figures, but is instead seeking relevance for the individual through practical ideas that are effective. Apologetics is made irrelevant by those who use it to defend or prove the truth of the gospel but do not effectively live out the very truth it attempts to defend. I’ve done some research on the effect that today’s culture has had on individual evangelical Christians and what role they must play in making apologetics and evangelism relevant to people living in a postmodern world.

Apologetics can be defined as “a branch of theology having to do with the defense and proofs of Christianity.” More specifically positive apologetics deals with presenting the rationality behind the Christian faith and worldview, negative apologetics defends the Christian faith and worldview from those who attack it and contextual apologetics is an attempt to present the Christian faith and worldview to the modern-day mind set without surrendering fundamental elements of the Gospel message. Ronald Nash defines negative apologetics as removing obstacles to belief while he sees positive apologetics as providing arguments that reinforce the Christian belief. In the book, Unapologetic Apologetics, a quote by Emile Cailliet gives a notable definition to the purpose of apologetics which is to clear a path through “intellectual obstacles that would hinder people of modernity from hearing the gospel message.” Cailliet uses the example of John the Baptist preparing the way of Christ, apologetics prepares the way for the gospel to be presented in a positive and possible life changing way.

The church is facing some major roadblocks when it comes to apologetics and evangelism in today’s culture. This problem is amplified by Christians who are affected by the culture and live lives in opposition to what they claim to believe. If it is the churches duty and goal to reach the lost people in our culture, it must start by reaching the misguided Christians in our own church. Once the church affirms the truth and lives it, then it makes the gospel it defends relevant to those who are looking for answers in things that work.

There have been many hurdles to evangelism that the church has faced over time. In the early church apologetics had to speak to the overbearing worldview of Greek philosophy. All of the Greek philosophers held belief in the dualism of the soul and body in which the soul was spiritual and represented the good things while the body was physical and represented the bad things. In order to express the gospel in a way that would be effective for the lost people to hear it in that day, they had to frame the gospel in such a way that it spoke to the issues of the mind and body. Platonism became popular during this period.

The 13th century was called the golden age of medieval philosophy, or the age of Scholasticism. During this period of time in the church there was a shift from Platonism to Aristotelianism. Aquinas denied any basic conflict between faith and reason and thought that reason would lead people to great spiritual truth. Apologetics began to speak in an age of reason and of course had to be adapted to its environment. He was opposed by Bonaventure and Scotus who argued that “reason was limited in its ability to penetrate matters of faith” which meant that philosophy and theology must be separated.

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New Year’s Resolution Junk

@ 7:24 am by JD

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions.  As a matter of fact, I think that for the most part, they’re stupid.  Why can’t people who want to make changes in their life just do it?  Why do we feel that a new year means an opportunity for a new start?  Does a person have to have a new year to attempt to make changes in their life?  It doesn’t make sense to me.

 With that being said, I’ve made a New Year’s resolution for myself.  My goal for this year (and every year thereafter) is to read 3 books per month.  This action was primarily inspired by the writers strike that is plaguing Hollywood and television right now.  With nothing to watch, I figured it was a good opportunity to pick up on my reading.  Here’s two of the books that I’ve knocked out for January:

For awhile, I wasn’t sure about this book but ended up really liking it by the time I had finished.  Co-written by David Crowder (yes, the same one) and David Hogan, it has a very relaxed writing style that appealed to me.  The book approaches the subject of death from a variety of different angles that keep the book from getting into a rut.  At one moment, your reading about the history of bluegrass and the next, you’re reading an IM conversation just before delving into a three-in-one story that moves all over the place……literally (just get the book; you’ll see what I mean).

 The other one that I’ve read this month (and that I absolutely adored) was Mark Driscoll’s Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons From An Emerging Missional Church.  Warning: don’t read this book if you’re easily offended.  Mark Driscoll is the preaching pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle.  It is a rapidly growing church that is doing some great things in one of the least churched cities in the U.S.  Confessionstakes you through all of the stuggles and triumphs that Driscoll went through as Mars Hill grew.  Anyone who is familiar with Driscoll’s style knows that he says what he thinks and lays it out in a very raw and unapologetic fashion…….which fits my style.  Here’s an excerpt:

Scrambling for ideas, I agreed to cancel a Sunday church service to let some of our long-haired public radio types take us outside to do a joint art project they had proposed….As a truck-driving jock who watches a lot of Ultimate Fighting, I can honestly say it was the gayest thing I have ever been a part of.

A few other favorite parts of the book included an incident where a guy called him at 2:00 a.m. because he felt guilty for having just watched a porn and acted on it and another time where he gathered all of the men in the church together to give them a crash course in what it means (and what it doesn’t mean) to be a man.

I highly recommend this one, but like I said, not if you’re easily offended.

I have a Piper book on the burner ready to tackle next, but after that, I’m not sure but I’m open to suggestions (but please refrain from suggesting anything from Joel Osteen or the Left Behind series in that it could get you slapped).

JD

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Is Music The Exception To Inerrancy? (Re-Post)

January 15, 2008 @ 11:28 pm by Pressed

This is a re-post. I originally made this post back in July of 2007. It should sound quite familiar to the post I made 6 months after this post since this has been something I’ve been thinking and writing about for awhile now. In view of recent posts I thought I would re-post this one in order to give more context to this thought process.

The essence of inerrancy is that the Scriptures are free from any mistake or untruth. The role that inerrancy should play in the church is essential to what the church believes, to what the church teaches, and to how the church accomplish its purpose. Everything that we do involving worship, ministry, evangelism, fellowship, and discipleship should be inseparably linked with inerrancy if we truly believe the Bible to be the infallible Word of God.

At some point I may delve into how important inerrancy is in ministry, evangelism, fellowship, and discipleship, but for right now I mainly want to focus on worship. While there are many aspects of worship, my main focus for this post is the music we sing, more importantly the words of the songs. Here is my question: If we are going to sing music with lyrics about God and to God then shouldn’t those lyrics stem from the message of the infallible Word of truth? Shouldn’t truth be more important than whether or not a song makes me feel good, makes me tear up, or sounds good musically? Now, don’t get me wrong. I love music. I love the way music effects my emotions and I love the way good music sounds… but what good is it if the music we sing and the words that are written are presenting God in a false light or representing half truths or untruths? What good is it when the words of songs make huge presumptions upon God that have no basis in the truth of Scripture? I think the church should be careful about what it teaches in both its discipleship and in the message of the songs we sing.

If someone were to come into most Baptist churches and teach a discipleship class that made blatant assumptions about God and twisted scripture to say something that it doesn’t really mean, I believe that on some level people would notice and they would have a problem with that. This is a good thing. Christians should constantly be on guard for things like this. But what happens when someone gets up and sings a song in church that makes assumptions about God or presents a message that just isn’t quite right? I think for the most part it goes completely unnoticed. But why? Why do we not have the same standards for a message in song as we do for a message that is taught? Is music the exception to inerrancy? Can we just do or say anything in music that we wouldn’t normally do or accept in any other setting?

The number one reason that music becomes the exception is because poeple just don’t think. When we listen to music it is like we just shut our brain off. As long at the music sounds good and has an emotional element to it that makes me feel a certain way then we call it good. We mindlessly sing songs without thinking about what the words mean. For example, there is a lady in our church who said to me one day, “I can’t sing the song Wherever He Leads I’ll Go.” She said that everytime we sing that in church she just stops singing. When she looked at the words she was singing she thought to herself “if God called me overseas would I really go?” She had decided that she wasn’t sure she would go wherever God would lead her and therefore she couldn’t sing these words to God. This is a perfect example of someone who actually thinks about what they are singing to God. It was her wisdom that really got me to thinking about this in the first place. When we sing “I surrender all” or “Wherever He Leads I’ll Go” are we being honest in the words that we sing? The truth is most people just mindlessly sing the songs as worship without any thought to whether or not they would really go where he would lead and with no thought as to whether or not they are actually surrendering all to Jesus. If we give very little thought to the words of songs and how they might apply to life then it makes it easy to slip messages, words, or even assumptions into a song that may not follow the consistency of inerrancy in Scripture. We could easily sing messages about God that aren’t quite true or that don’t line up with Scripture and not even notice. The sad part is we could be singing a false message and we could be calling it worship!

While I believe that those who plan worship should consistently think about the words of each of the songs that they pick, I also believe individual Christians should consider the words they are singing and really ask themselves if they believe what they are saying or singing to God.

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An Epidemic of Anti-Intellectuals

January 14, 2008 @ 8:30 pm by Pressed

This post is a repost from October 2004

I am so often amazed at the things I hear people say. Some things are without a doubt unintelligible
and irrational. We live in a society that is flooded with humanism, liberal nonsense, and postmodern thought that contaminates the mind.

“He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.” –Richard Whatley

“I think it is true [that] Hitler went to heaven (if such a thing as heaven really exists). He felt that what he did was right, and I think that if what you feel you’re doing is right, in your heart, then you can’t be wrong!” – Korn guitarist James Shaffer, (who apologized for his remarks two days later, quoted in Spin magazine.)

“If you feel that what your doing is right in your heart then you can’t be wrong” is one of the central messages in humanism. The world revolves around me and my feelings and whatever I feel to be right is right and whatever you feel to be right is right and even though our views conflict with each other they are still both right… In reality, the last time I checked 1 + 1 can’t equal both 2 and 7. There are just some things in life that do not allow for everyone’s conflicting theories to be right. There is a right and a wrong! However, if we go with the relativistic theory, then where does it end? Do we remove people from prison and abolish laws because we shouldn’t oppose our own feelings on what is right and wrong? Should anyone be allowed to steal and kill as long as they feel like it is right in their own heart? I don’t think we will take relativism that far, only far enough to justify some of the things we do and believe.

I think you are free to believe whatever you want about religion, morals, and life, but not everyone is free to be right about it. Just because you believe something to be true, doesn’t magically make it true. Believing that God doesn’t exist, or believing that people who do what they “feel” is right in their own hearts can get into heaven because of it, are both false assumptions . It’s just not true.

“In political matters feeling often decides more correctly than reason.” – Adolf Hitler

Here we go again with that word feeling. That seems to be one of the biggest problems when it comes to anti-intellectualism. People are more concerned about their feelings and less concerned about their thoughts, knowledge, common sense, and reason. We live in the “please-me” age where most people are more concerned about their own self pleasure and feelings than the moral and ethical good of society as a whole. The problem is that the desire to gratify ourselves and our feelings often leads to immoral and irrational behavior. For instance in the process of abortion it is the feelings of the women that cause her to irrationally get an abortion and the result is the ruthless murder of millions of children. How is that so different from Hitler?

“So long as we do not harm others we should be free to think, speak, act, and live as we see fit, without molestation from individuals, law, or government. . . .” John Stuart Mill

Here we have some relativism shrouded in good deeds. This statement is an argument for humans to do whatever they see fit for themselves as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. I can somewhat agree with this. I think people should be allowed to believe, think, and act freely, after all, everyone has the right to be wrong. However, my question is, who is to decide what does and does not harm others when it comes to ethics? For example, I would say that abortion harms others because it is the thoughtless murder of another human. But someone else who doesn’t ‘feel’ that a fetus is a real human, they may not see that as harming another person. Here we have a conflict. The same thing goes for Christianity. I see speaking out for what is morally right as something good for other people to help them to see the truth, but others who hear me speaking out against their actions see it as harm to them. When there is no morality or absolute law, things simply end up chaotic. Everything is in conflict.

“A man is not moral because he is obedient through fear or ignorance. Morality lives in the realm of perceived obligation. . . .” Robert Ingersoll

There is some truth to this. I think morality is an obligation, however the problem with this statement is that it is found in only what is perceived by the individual. If I perceive that it is my moral obligation to feed the poor, then in doing so I am being a moral person. Not because I am obedient to some ‘moral law’ but because I was obedient to my perceived obligation. The problem with this is similar to the last one. Who is to decide what is moral? It’s left with the individual and whatever they perceive. Again, we arrive at a place of chaos. There is no standard of morality that everyone should follow, it differs by perception.

“Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close.” Carl Sagan

While I believe that science is valuable, it is constantly finding itself wrong. Science has changed so much over the years, not because the world has changed, but because scientist realized that the old theories were completely wrong and had to change things. So, has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy of science? I think there is a religion that goes beyond the accuracy of science, and if science doesn’t prove what the Bible says now, it will soon enough when it catches up.

“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” - Robert Frost

__________________

So what is the problem? Here are several other quotes of people who have recognized some of the problems we face in our present society.

“We’re captive to this culture of relativism. There’s no truth, so who are we to impose our values on anyone else? All anybody can do — like a business school teacher — is help people think through problems and arrive at their own conclusions while telling them that no conclusion is any better than any other — a formula for disaster. This is what modern worldviews teach. But what happens when you allow people to arrive at their own moral conclusions? They do what is right in their own eyes, and we end up with the likes of Enron and WorldCom.” –Charles Colson

“It isn’t that we don’t know where to look for guidance in how to build lives of personal integrity and governments and institutions that reflect them. It is that we have chosen to ignore such things in the pursuit of immediate gratification.” –Cal Thomas

“In the context of narcissism, the mystery of children killing becomes less mysterious. That we have more such killers than we used to isn’t so much about guns and bullies as it is about our Me-First culture, a convenient mechanism of which is media fame.” –Kathleen Parker

“Santana High did everything modern schools do to reduce the chance of violence. They had counselors, conflict resolution, anger management and the rest. We are finding that without basic morality these are useless.” –Mona Charen

Pressed

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