18Feb

A Comedian Slams the Bible

If you have friends like mine on Facebook, then this bit of drivel has probably been tossed your way:

“Because you know, when the Bible was written, and then rewritten, and then edited, and then re-edi -ted, then translated from dead languages and then re-retranslated and re-edited again, then re-re-re-edited, and then re-translated, and then given to kings for them to take their favorite parts out, and then re-edited and re-translated and given to the pope for him to approve, and then re-edited and re-written— all based on stories that were told orally 30 to 90 years after they had happened to people who didn’t know how to write… I guess what I’m trying to say is, the bible is literally the world’s oldest game of telephone.” (David Cross, comedian)

We could respond soberly, but I have an idea that is more fun. What if, in the middle of his comedic diatribe, Mr. Cross got smacked with the facts. The result might be something like this:

“Because you know, it seems that something might have happened in Jerusalem, but of course all we have is oral tradition and hearsay–oops, scratch that–well, apparently we have written eyewitness accounts, but we are stuck with only 1–oh? Goodness me–make that four eyewitness accounts, written 90 years–Oops, I’m sorry–30 years from the event (and–who knew? Turns out there are some mentions within the letters of Paul penned only 15 years afterward); Of course all of this was written in dead languages (like Greek–who can speak that?) by people who were clearly illiterate–like that Pharisee scholar Paul and Luke the physician–ok maybe not so illiterate but hey, let’s not let facts ruin a good narrative, eh?–And of course that information only survived in a few manuscripts–oops, turns out it’s actually tens upon tens of thousands of manuscripts, hmm–but these are obviously from centuries –oops, correction–as early as decades after their writing; still, probably they have wildly different information, which of course is because of later editing and endless re-translations and due to the activities of kings and medieval popes, and–oh wait–I guess it turns out that these copies are all virtually identical and differ only rarely in insignificant ways such as missing punctuation marks. Well, shucks, I guess it looks the Bible is more like honest reporting than like a game of telephone. But hey, I’m a comedian, not a scholar, and I still don’t like the Bible, so feel free to ignore it and ridicule any of your friends who feel differently. (Christians are fun to ridicule, because they are nice and won’t behead you like certain other scary religions we won’t mention).”

15Feb

Love and Hell

Valentine’s Day brings the annual punctuation of Winter’s cold by the arrows of Cupid. We are put in mind of romance and love, as we wander the rows of pink and red cards, and navigate the bewildering assortments of chocolate and flowers. We may find ourselves reading delightful poems by Donne or Byron, or perhaps thinking of tragic love stories from ages past.

Since we are observing the holiday this year on a Sunday, this is a good time to recall the deepest and oldest, and perhaps most tragic love story of all time. This story eats Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” for breakfast. It is more intriguing than the pathos conjured by Tolkien’s “Lay of Beren and Luthien”. The story in view here, of course, is the tragic tale of God’s deep love for humanity, for his created beings whom he made in his image, and endowed with the gift of life. He has loved us despite our rebellion and waywardness. God has endeavored to woo us back. The shocking finale is that God wrote himself into our story, taking our humanity and all its joys and sorrows upon himself.

As in the words of an old Lutheran hymn (Adapted from Thomas A Kempis)

“Oh, love, how deep, how broad, how high,
Beyond all thought and fantasy,
That God, the son of God, should take
Our mortal form for mortal’s sake!”

Sadly, that love often has gone unrequited. In the end, a soul that says, “leave me alone” gets its wish. In the title above, I invoked the idea of Hell, which I won’t try to fully define here. An important aspect of the definition is that the ultimate curse is the precise opposite of the ultimate blessing, as expressed in the famous “Aaronic benediction”. Instead of God’s presence, there is absence. Instead the light of God’s countenance shining upon his beloved, there is only darkness and loneliness.

Some might ask us how we square the idea of a loving God with a concept like Hell. I was recently listening to an old message by Tim Keller, of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and was struck by a statement, that we will never really understand the depth of God’s love for us without believing in Hell. What did it cost God to love us? Was it nothing? What did Jesus actually endure on our behalf?

It turns out that what really makes Jesus the “man of sorrows” arises from much more than the mere physical tortures inflicted upon him. It wasn’t just the weight of the cross that bore him down. Christian theology teaches that Jesus had to endure abandonment and forsakenness, the sudden disintegration of his relationship with the Heavenly Father. In other words, Hell.

I recall wasting a couple hours in 1997 watching “Event Horizon,” a science fiction horror film that is almost exactly like “2010” crossed with “Friday the 13th”. It begins creepily enough with a ghost spaceship returned after disappearing into a black hole, and a team of astronauts and scientists travel to investigate. From this promising start, the movie degenerates quickly into a fairly brainless gore fest. The spacecraft is orbiting what turns out to be a portal to Hell, and one of the characters gets possessed by a demonic entity. But there is an interesting point: At the end of the movie, one of the remaining crew members willingly enters the portal to Hell, in order to save the others.

That’s exactly what Jesus did. He took on Hell so that we might escape it. That’s a love that is astounding and unfathomable. However, if we try our best to understand it and embrace it–to take it into our hearts–it will be life transforming.

So, reflect on that, and happy Valentine’s Day.

10Feb

Ash Wednesday and Lent

There are different ways to measure the height of a mountain. It is typical to list the elevation above sea level. By this measure, Mt Everest, at 8848 meters (29,029 ft), is clearly “the rooftop of the world”. However, if you measure from base to peak, other mountains are taller. Everest emerges from the already very high Tibetan Plateau, and from base to peak is a mere 4000 meters or 13000 feet (of course, this is still pretty impressive!). Mt. Denali (formerly McKinley) in Alaska beats this with a base to peak height of about 5500 meters (18,000 feet).

Today, many churches celebrate Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. Lent is a Christian observance that dates to around 325 or so. The season of Lent, like many of the Christian observances we know and love, isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Bible. Previous to this, the early Christians mainly just celebrated Easter. Easter, spiritually speaking, is Christianity’s Mt. Everest. This is the highest height, and the greatest summit for us this side of Eternity. Easter heralds the ultimate victory of Christ over death, and the triumph of Good over Evil. We glow as the risen and glorified Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age”.

How do we do justice to something like Easter, when we remember it in our hearts and meditate upon its meaning? How do we do it justice in our yearly cycle of celebration? What could we do to make something that spectacularly good even just a little bit more special? What I take to be the genius of Lent is that it is a human attempt to make the Easter commemorations even more grand by deepening the depths from which our Himalayan summit rises, thereby creating a larger base-to-peak journey. We descend to the deepest depths and darkest darkness before emerging blinking into the blazing glory of Easter.

How do we do this? Lent begins with the admonition that recalls our mortality: “Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” Many Christians observe a season of fasting, or abstaining from certain foods or beverages. You can read more about fasting here. Many Christians delve into exercises of spiritual disciplines, such as bible study. Some will try to do more acts of charity.

However you choose to prepare for Easter, I commend to you the season of Lent as a time of prayer, penitence, reflection, and discipline. By scooping out a deeper valley, Lent helps Easter rise that much more gloriously ahead of us.

03Feb

Alberta Embraces Gender Identity Craziness

The new socialist government in Alberta, Canada has put forth new “guidelines” (really mandates) on gender identity that must be enforced in all schools. Rules include gender neutral speech codes, and insist that children have the right to decide their own gender identity, and which washroom to use. The mandates are binding upon all schools, including (apparently) church run parochial schools. Boards that don’t comply could be dissolved by the ruling government.
(The guidelines can be read in entirety here).

The bishop of Calgary did not mince words with his reaction to this, as posted below. Let’s hope and pray that our Canadian brethren can successfully fight back against this madness.

Calgary’s Roman Catholic bishop has denounced as “totalitarian” and “anti-Catholic” the province’s new guidelines for respecting students’ gender identity.

“This approach and directive smack of the madness of relativism and the forceful imposition of a particular narrow-minded anti-Catholic ideology,” Bishop Fred Henry wrote in a blog post on the website of the Catholic diocese of Calgary.

“Such a totalitarian approach is not in accordance with [Canadian law] and must be rejected,” he added, in a post titled “Totalitarianism in Alberta.”

(Read more at CBC News)

01Feb

Paul Anderson, a Wonder of Nature and a Man of God

Look up Paul Anderson in Wikipedia and you’ll see the story of a man of amazing strength:

In 1955, at the height of the Cold War, Anderson, as winner of the USA National Amateur Athletic Union Weightlifting Championship, traveled to the Soviet Union, where weightlifting was a popular sport, for an international weightlifting competition. In a newsreel of the event shown in the United States the narrator, Bud Palmer, commented as follows: “Then, up to the bar stepped a great ball of a man, Paul Anderson.” Palmer said, “The Russians snickered as Anderson gripped the bar which was set at 402.5 pounds, an unheard-of lift. But their snickers quickly changed to awe and all-out cheers as up went the bar and Anderson lifted the heaviest weight overhead of any human in history.” The Russians referred to him as a “wonder of nature”.

Disappointingly, the remainder of that Wikipedia article somewhat underplays the role of faith in his life. More than a mere “wonder of nature”, he was also a man of deep faith in Christ.

He went on to win the gold medal at the Olympics the following year, despite an ear infection and a high fever. As one source put it, a weakened Anderson, facing defeat, decided to “call upon God’s strength”:
Before his third and final attempt, Paul Anderson called on God for extra help and strength. Later he would say, “It wasn’t making a bargain, I needed help.” As those tree-trunk legs and massive arms moved into motion with renewed strength he hoisted the bar high over his head. The once sick, frail boy from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains was now the “Strongest Man in the World.”(read more here).

He devoted much of the rest of his life to sharing his Christian testimony. After impressive feats such as back lifting 6270 lb, or benching 480 lb, he would say, “I am nothing without the strength of Christ.” He married a devout Christian woman named Glenda and devoted himself to raising money for a youth home in Vidalia, Georgia. He died of his kidney ailment (Bright’s disease) in 1994.

More information about this remarkable man can be found at the websites for Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Paul Anderson Youth Home.

31Jan

A Call to Traditionalists

We have previously written of the case of a faithful priest forced out over gay marriage In the Episcopal diocese of Kentucky. I have also since heard privately from a friend about a Presbyterian minister in Montana who may be about to resign in a struggle with some liberal members of his congregation.

I know of a large moderate-to-conservative church in an eastern seaboard city, which hired a progressive pastor a few years ago; the results have been nearly disastrous. Once teeming with youth and boasting a Sunday attendance well over 1200, this number has since plunged nearly in half as the more conservative members have fled. The church is now struggling financially.

To those of you who happen to be in a successful traditionalist church: Do not be complacent! Your situation is only a fortunate accident waiting to be undone. If you are not on your vestry, or session, or board of elders, you should find the time to become more engaged. Sure, you are busy and don’t have time for this sort of thing; you have all consuming careers, and your plate is full raising your children. Left leaning activists are somewhat more likely to be childless, young, single, lightly employed–just the sort to have the time and energy to sit on and dominate committees.

Realize that progressive activists are seeking control anywhere they can get it. If you don’t have a seat on the search committee for your next pastor you may be disheartened by the results. You may come to realize too late the major betrayal that has occurred, as you start cringing at the “new thing the spirit is doing” at your church–at the heresy that is emanating from the pulpit and from your kids’ new Sunday school curriculum. You will find yourself gagging over the “breath of fresh air” touted by those who have been duped by the Evil One, and can’t recognize the stench of death.

We can no longer assume that the problem will be limited, or that things will get sorted out in the end. The head of the deacons at the aforementioned large church said, “sure he’s not a good pastor but we can wait him out.” The winners in these struggles will be the handful of LGBT activists who gained all the seats of power, and a few old people who just plan to be loyal to the end so they can be buried in the church yard. Everyone else will be worshipping in school gyms, joining different faith communities, or giving up on church altogether. Eventually the remnant congregation will be forced to sell the building, or it will decay to the point of being unsafe. Where your church used to be located you will someday drive past a church-shaped shell that has been transformed into a condominium complex, nightclub, or mosque.

We can no longer “play nice” or “just go along to get along”. The foe is ferocious, determined, and willing to stop at nothing to get their way. They’ll win or destroy a church trying. (Stepping aside and letting them win is no act of noble peacekeeping–destruction is also virtually assured if they win). To the left, victory must be total–there’s no room for compromise. Once they’ve won, there will not be any chance for a “do over” after the giving drops, and the majority of faithful Christians have left.

Ultimately, the victory is God’s, and those who tinkered with theology and wrecked the great churches will be called to account. We can and must pray for the churches that we love, and for the faithful who serve them. We should, of course, continue to hold in mind that the church is its people, not its wood and bricks. Our citizenship is a heavenly country where the buildings are everlasting. We know that if called to do so, then we may have to abandon these temporary structures to the enemy. But let’s not give up without a fight.

28Jan

Muslim Man who Tried to Save Christians is Dead

A Kenyan Muslim teacher who risked his life to shield Christians who were on a bus with him, has died from the gunshot wound he received.

Salah Farah was on a bus travelling through Mandera in Kenya when it was attacked by al-Shabab in December.
The attackers told the Muslims and Christians to split up but he was among Muslim passengers who refused.
A bullet hit Mr Farah and almost a month on, he died in hospital in the capital, Nairobi.

In interviews, when asked why he did this, he replied,
“people should live peacefully together”.
“We are brothers.
“It’s only the religion that is the difference, so I ask my brother Muslims to take care of the Christians so that the Christians also take care of us… and let us help one another and let us live together peacefully”.

An Inglorious Death

I was sad to read of a Detroit motorist who went out of life in a rather inglorious way. The 56 year old man died as his car flipped and partially ejected him through his sunroof; he was found to be not wearing pants and had been watching porn on his phone. Naturally this has reverberated around the web with poor taste puns like “this man was really beating traffic”. For reasons of respect, I omit the driver’s name. More can be found at various news outlets, including Detroit Free Press.

Aside from one obvious conclusion–don’t drive while watching porn–it struck me that for many, death is inglorious in a more cosmic sense. No matter how dignified our deaths may seem to fellow mortals, unless we are clothed with the white robes given by Christ, we will all be found pants-less and ashamed before the throne of God.

27Jan

Jonas Aftermath

Our heartfelt prayers for the families of those who have died in the aftermath of the recent winter storm. As far as I can tell, the death toll from Winter Storm Jonas is at 48, according to a Weather Channel report.

(Weather Channel)

26Jan

Travesty in Houston

The sad tale of aborted fetuses for sale has taken another wicked turn. A grand jury acquitted Planned Parenthood and decided to go after the activists who exposed them.

HOUSTON — A grand jury here that was investigating accusations of misconduct against Planned Parenthood has instead indicted two abortion opponents who made undercover videos of the organization.

Brother James’ Airs

Author: BrJames