True Horizon

As a follow-on to my post of a few days ago, USA Today provides an article that addresses, Those Touched Most Deeply By 9/11, A Turning Point In Faith. The story provides a short but telling insight into the way many approach issues of faith in our culture. The gist of the piece is that the tragedy of 9/11 had a significant impact — in both directions — on the faith of those who were personally affected by the terrorist attacks.

The “violence and pain” of the worst terrorists attack in history brought out not only the dangers of religious fanaticism, but the problem that all religions must face in addressing the problem of evil in our world. As the article notes,

Many whose lives were changed that day are still coming to terms spiritually with 9/11. Some have taken comfort from their faith; others have found it lacking. Some have a stronger faith, a different faith or no faith at all.

I admit that this is nowhere near a “scientific study” of the issues surrounding how people consider their faith (or lack of it), but I do believe the anecdotal evidence in this story reveals a lot about how many approach the topic. A few examples … (Read on …)

To be honest, it can get bit discouraging to constantly attempt to defend the Christian worldview here. In my efforts to stay up to date on what is going on in the world, I am constantly searching for news stories that touch on worldview issues. The result of that is that I am constantly mind-wrestling with negativity. It wears you down. That’s the nature of the beast I guess.

And don’t get me wrong, it is a passion of mine, I think it is vitally important, and I love to do it. But weeks like this one are particularly dispiriting:

In Britain, researchers have combined genetic materials to produce human-bovine hybrids. Why? Because they can. And apparently they see nothing Frankensteinian about it. Just doing research, you know — maybe harvest some stem cells along the way — and they justify it by claiming it may help cure disease. The manipulation of the very nature of humanness is apparently not an issue.

In Georgia, a group of 3rd graders hatched a plot to kill their teacher, this in retaliation for the teacher making a student stand on a chair. These kids had assigned students to cover the windows of the classroom, duct tape and gag the teacher, and supply knives to finish the job. How does a society produce a batch of 8 year-olds who can even conceive of such a thing?

In Oregon, Thomas Beatie (that would be a “he”) announced that he is five months pregnant. Oprah had him on her show. And, without any exception I could find, the entire news media insists on referring to Beatie as a “pregnant man.” Hello! His sex-change surgery notwithstanding, “Thomas” Beatie is, by definition, a woman. This is not debatable. Yet we live in a society that condones and patronizes those who demand not only that their “gender” is a matter of personal preference, but that those who would question the idea are nothing but old fashioned bigots. How did we get here?

Finally, today it is being reported that intelligence officials have uncovered substantial evidence of Al-Qaida’s plans to bring a nuclear attack on the United States. Given the number of nuclear components once stored in the former Soviet Union, and the current corruption of the government there that yearns for the old totalitarianism, the materials needed to carry out such a plot cannot be too hard to obtain. And so we live under the constant possibility that the terrorist planning could well come to fruition.

All this is disgusting and demoralizing not so much for me, but for the state of the future world that my children will be forced to live in. Such a world is beyond my comprehension but I’m afraid that it will not be beyond my children’s realization. All of it stems from the fact that ideas matter. Some ideas are wrong and destructive. And those seem to be the ideas whose stock is on the rise. It can all be very depressing …

… and then came yesterday. (Read on …)

A couple of weeks ago a co-worker and I were navigating through blizzard conditions in the Midwest when I said something like, “Wow, it sure is weird to think Easter is right around the corner.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just saying that when your running around in a snow storm, it’s hard to believe it’ll be Easter Sunday in less than two weeks.”

“Are you serious? When is Easter anyway?”

“It’s on March 23rd … Sunday after next.”

“Holy crap. I’m flying that day. I didn’t even look at the calendar when I bid for my schedule.”

The conversation went on but here’s my question. Can you even imagine the average American (let alone the average Christian) not realizing when Christmas was? (Read on …)

Though it wasn’t reported anywhere that I know of in the so-called “mainstream press,” a recent issue of Biola University’s alumni magazine reported on a tiny clay tablet that’s impact on the veracity of Christianity is inversely proportional to its size. You can read the article here for details but suffice it to say that many critics of the Bible have long claimed that the Old Testament book of Jeremiah is fictional. But the tiny tablet (which was actually dug up in the 1870s but, because it was written in cuneiform, remained previously undecipherable), contained the name of a chief officer in the Babylonian court of Nebuchadnezzar II — and was recognized as such by a visiting Viennese researcher. This tiny detail looms large because it offers proof that the book was actually written in about 595 BC by “someone with firsthand knowledge of the Babylonian court.”

This was a case of “lost in translation” brought on by unfamiliarity with the ancient Akkadian language that rendered the name in question ambiguous in differing manuscript versions. But it was by comparing the translations of different versions of the Bible with someone educated in the discipline that scholars were able to determine which was the most accurate. This process — like it always does — resulted in vindicating the Bible against those who had denounced its veracity.

Though such a find does not speak directly to the claim that the Bible is Divinely inspired, it does serve to solidify its historicity and thereby makes it all the more reasonable to accept the rest of what it says as well. For a book that has been compiled over thousands of years of history, numerous geographic locations, and a diverse band of authors, the message that comes through is incredibly consistent; the prophecy is inexplicably accurate; the correlation to scientific discoveries which were not verified until thousands of years later is eerily spot on. This is one incredible book — a book that has yet to be successfully discredited.

Our man-centered world may claim that “the devil is in the details,” but the more details we examine in this book, the more they reveal that our trust in the Creator and the Book He gave us is a well-placed trust indeed.

Because I try my best to adhere to the principle of being “tolerant of people, but intolerant of (bad) ideas,” I will not identify the author of the following. I only quote said author to make a point about the self-defeating consequences of anti-intellectualism in the church. Check out this excerpt (sorry it is so long) from a book which contains a chapter entitled, “Confused Mind”:

Reasoning Leads to Confusion

…O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves? … Matthew 16:8 (KJV)

A large percentage of God’s people are admittedly confused. Why? As we have seen, one reason is wondering. Another is reasoning. The dictionary partially defines the word reason in the noun form as an “underlying fact or motive that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence” and in the verb form as “to use the faculty of reason: think logically.”

A simple way to say it is, reasoning occurs when a person tries to figure out the “why” behind something. Reasoning causes the mind to revolve around and around a situation, issue or event attempting to understand all its intricate component parts. We are reasoning when we dissect a statement or teaching to see if it is logical, and disregard it if it is not.

Satan frequently steals the will of God from us due to reasoning … What God leads a person to do does not always make logical sense to his mind. His spirit may affirm it and his mind may reject it …

Don’t Reason in the Mind, Just Obey the Spirit

… the realization of how easily we can be led by our heads and allow reasoning to keep us out of God’s will provoked in me a “reverential” fear of reasoning.

Let me point out that this author “has been teaching the Word of God since 1976 and in ministry since 1980.” This author is the prolific writer of “more than 70 inspirational books” and has “released thousands of audio teachings as well as a complete video library.” This author can be heard on national radio broadcasts, seen on national TV programs almost every day, and travels nationwide speaking and doing teaching conferences. This author has influenced a whole lot of people. I don’t want to disparage the writer. I’m sure the writer has helped many people and is motivated to do so for all the right reasons. But, in this specific case, this person is just plain off-base. The teaching offered here is deeply flawed and destructive to any Christ-follower who adheres to it. Unfortunately, many new and vulnerable minds do just that.

Where do I even begin with this one?

First, the Bible verse quoted in the section heading (shown above: Matthew 16:8) is taken completely out of context. In keeping with the precept that you should be leery of anyone using a single Bible verse to prove their point (for a great discussion of this precaution go here: “Never Read a Bible Verse“), I would challenge you to look up the actual passage from which this quote was lifted. (Read on …)

It is easy — too easy — for someone like me to get engrossed in all the arguments for God, the scientific evidence for God, promoting our intellectual assent to God, and pointing out the deficiencies that result in our removal of God from the culture. All these are the kinds of things that “float my boat.” They are where I focus a lot of my energy, reading, teaching, and time. They are all fine and dandy — except that they can also be distracting detours from what should be my primary purpose in this life — The Pursuit of God.

I have been reminded of that recently as I’ve been reading a book that has been sitting in my bookcase, untouched, for several years. Greg Koukl mentioned the classic, Desiring God, by John Piper, in a recent radio broadcast and motivated me to dust it off and dig in. What a treat.

Some may have a negative reaction to Piper’s call to “Christian Hedonism.” I did. If so, I would encourage you to listen to his entire argument and the Biblical justification proposes for making it. Some of it is still sinking in. Some of it sounds disagreeable to me. I have to consider it more. Some of it though, is just eye-openingly on target. Though I have no intention of analyzing it point-by-point, the message that came through loud and clear to me was the recognition that there is an affective element to the Christian faith that people like me sometimes minimize to our own detriment.

To be honest, I have become jaded (even antagonistic?) toward this notion — turned off by the feelings-based, thoughtlessness of the American church in general. History shows that many of the denominations that exist today in America were born in the Great Awakenings that occurred early in our nation’s history. The emotional appeal of those “Awakenings” were relevant and proper, they also helped to produce an anti-intellectualism in the American church that is alive, well, and amplified in the contemporary “Oprahfied” culture. I believe and defend the claim that this trend is not only dangerous but unbiblical. Christianity has never been based on the mindless acceptance of a blind leap of faith. It has always been anchored in intellectual assent to objective truth, embodied in Christ himself — a thoughtful, willful decision. But Piper makes a beautiful point in that regard (p. 247):

It is astonishing to me that so many people try to define true Christianity in terms of decisions and not affections. Not that decisions are unessential. The problem is that they require so little transformation to achieve. They are evidence of no true work of grace in the heart. People can make “decisions” about the truth of God while their hearts are far from him. (emphasis mine)

This is something we know but that is easy (at least for someone like me) to forget. A wooden, solely mind-centered faith is not only equally invalid, and equally dangerous — it is also practically handicapped and unbiblical as well. (Read on …)

Just under a year ago, Dr. Esam Omeish, President of the Muslim American Society, could be heard here defending the stance that moderate Muslims are the majority in this country, while denying the claim that extremists are making it their mission to recruit for the cause of jihad in American prisons. Fair enough. Because of his moderate stance, and because he is “a respected physician and community leader,” Omeish was appointed by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to the Virginia General Assembly’s Commission on Immigration. Great … until last week when he was forced to resign.

Here and here are a couple of speeches Dr. Omeish has given, one as recently as two weeks ago. Quite the “moderate,” eh? Forget the political question concerning how it is possible that this guy could be on a panel that advises anyone on official U.S. immigration policy. That is not the point I want to address. What blows me away is this “respected physician’s” call for “the jihad way.”

Consider this. In July, the world watched as Scottish police unraveled a failed bomb plot by eight doctors in Glasgow. The leader of the radical Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, who was recently killed in an Israeli raid, was a trained pediatrician. Theodore Dalrymple, in his National Review piece, “Cutthroats In White Coats,“ reports on a few other infamous cases: (Read on …)

On August 31, 1997 Princess Diana died in a tragic crash in Paris in a car with her boyfriend while her husband and two children waited for her in London. Five days later, Mother Teresa of Calcutta died due to complications that apparently developed after a decades-long battle with heart disease that worsened with her contracting malaria the year prior. Over the next 3 months Princess Diana graced the covers of the major news magazines (Life, Time, Newsweek and others) at least 9 times. The world grieved. Her story led the evening news every night and her funeral was broadcast live to millions. Elton John even re-wrote a song for her.

Meanwhile, Mother Teresa barely warranted mention in the news tsunami that left her swamped behind the flash and glitz of the princess. This said more about our cultural values than Mother Teresa ever could have said herself.

But this week that changed. Suddenly, Mother Teresa is newsworthy … the lead story no less … cover material. This week Mother Teresa has even supplanted the backwash tsunami of the ten-year remembrance of Diana’s death. But it is not the ten-year remembrance of Mother Teresa that the press has found so marketable. It is not even a belated appreciation for her 60 years of work with the poor and dying in India.

No, what is so tantalizingly important about her now is that she had a “crisis of faith” that has recently been revealed in letters which she had specifically requested not be made public, but rather destroyed. (Funny how the press’s commitment to its sources’ privacy changes from time to time — especially when they can scoop a story like this one). The hook, you see, is that Mother Teresa, a world-renown icon of religious commitment, sometimes questioned her faith. Time magazine reports that …

… one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

That, to a secular press hell-bent on de-legitimizing faith or anyone who claims to have it, is too juicy to not be shouted from the rooftops. Mother Teresa has become a target for their secular wrath. And that is the only reason they have any interest in her now. In her crying out to God, militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens see nothing but an opportunity to exploit. Hitchens despises a:

… Church [that] should have had the elementary decency to let the earth lie lightly on this troubled and miserable lady, and not to invoke her long anguish to recruit the credulous to a blind faith in which she herself had long ceased to believe.

But just what was Mother Teresa’s “crisis”? At various points in her life, she questioned the existence of God because He seemed hidden and unreachable amid the squalor and misery of life that engulfed her. God’s hiddenness was painful to her, her longing for Him palpable:

For me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see,—Listen and do not hear—the tongue moves but does not speak … Such deep longing for God—and … repulsed—empty—no faith—no love—no zeal.—[The saving of] Souls holds no attraction—Heaven means nothing … What do I labor for? If there be no God—there can be no soul—if there is no Soul then Jesus—You also are not true. (Read on …)

The Reverend Billy Graham recently made what I consider to be one of the most profound confessions I have ever heard. In James Emery White’s book A Mind For God, (p.9), Graham is quoted as saying “I’ve preached too much, and studied too little.”

If Billy Graham, one of the most respected, admired, and successful Christian men in modern history, can look back over his life and make such a statement, we would do well to re-evaluate our views and commitments to his assertion.

Our dedication to study needs to be more “intentional.” To his eternal credit, I think this is a realization that Billy Graham has come to late in his life. The culture in which he began his ministry is not the same culture as the one in which it ended.I do not mean this in a derogatory way, but I imagine that for someone as gifted and eloquent as Billy Graham, delivering an effective sermon may have become somewhat mechanical. Though it may have taken much courage and preparation when he began his ministry, after several deliveries the project must have become old hat. After several thousand times, he could probably have done it in his sleep.

I do not begin to question the fact that Billy Graham addressed many audiences in unique ways and in situations to which very few were privy. But, having heard him speak at large evangelistic events twice, I can safely say that his message was not an intellectual appeal to the veracity of Christianity. It was based on Biblical truth, but it was not in-depth or intellectually challenging. It was powerful, but its power came from its ability to move us emotionally. I believe that, in part, this is why Graham was so successful. He was a master at hitting his contemporary audiences in the gut, not in the head. Our culture is emoto-centric. Our feelings drive us. For many, our feelings are our primary means of determining what we believe … and that is dangerous. (Read on …)

For those who may be interested, the Summer issue of Marriage Partnership contains an article by yours truly regarding an experience Mary and I shared several years ago. It includes some thoughts about how truly clueless I was in my lame attempts to help her deal with what was, and still is, a traumatic event in out lives. The article stems from something I wrote at the time and then left stashed in a drawer, hoping I would forget about it. A few months ago I ran across the piece, dusted it off, and submitted it for publication. After some serious editing, it showed up on-line here.

I will be interviewed by a John & Stephanie of WORD FM (101.5) Pittsburgh about the whole ordeal on May 30th at 5:10 EDT. If you happen to be driving through Pittsburgh at the time, give a listen. If not, please join me in praying that I don’t say something too stupid …