:: in a mirror dimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

• Attack Dogs of Christendom | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction
  An atheist finds that Christians are the most hostile critics of his book . . .
  (tags: christianity)

Now that the discussion about Spencer Burke’s controversial book A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity has died down a bit, I’ve finally gotten around to picking it up and reading through a bit of it. I jumped right to the sections that seemed most controversial, especially Spencer’s thoughts on salvation and hell.

Knowing Spencer a little from the ETREK courses he leads, I find the following statement to be classic Spencer, “People often ask how a loving God can send people to hell. My response is that I don’t think God does. I do, however, believe that God allows people to choose hell—whatever that might be” (200). This is another way of saying his belief that salvation is an opt-out situation, and not an opt-in.

When Spencer floated these ideas in the fall of 2004 at the ETREK course I attended, he stirred up the pot quite a bit, especially among the more conservative Presbyterians in the group. The difference between then and now is that Spencer floats these ideas, and then follows with a series of Bible studies from the Gospels illustrating the ways that God seeks people out and then is either received or rejected. In other words, Spencer has some strong support for his opt-out scheme.

Of course salvation is a touchy issue, and when someone suggests we’ve been preaching, teaching, and sharing a message that isn’t quite right, the defensive position becomes most natural. I haven’t read Spencer’s book cover to cover yet, but for now I find his ideas provocative and helpful. 

Whenever I’m sharing the Gospel with people or simply explaining parts of Christianity with others, I make a point of including some diverse perspectives. This serves to open the conversation further and really draws people out. Instead of telling them how it is, we can discuss the merits of one view over another. Spencer gives us some food for thought here.

Whether or not Spencer is correct with his opt-out teaching, I do think his ideas have grown and developed over time. This is not a notion that he whipped up to sell books. He’s been wrestling with it over time and has some support for it. The book itself is well-written, even if some reviewers have lamented that Spencer is quite vague in his use of terminology at times.

I don’t plan on finishing it any time soon, as it’s a bit longer than I expected (I mean, the first edition is a hardback!), but I’ll plug away at it from time to time and share some thoughts.

My little Vermont town of Arlington is nestled in between the larger towns Manchester and Bennington, so we unfortunately do not have our own paper to report local news. However, if we did, the paper would record the following:

• A huge willow tree toppled over on Saturday due to high winds across from the Wayside General Store on route 313. It seems to have just missed a barn. The roots face the road so it’s super cool to see as you drive by.
• A bunch of Vermont Fish and Wildlife workers were working down on the Battenkill River by the Covered Bridge this week, leading to further speculation that the recent finding of bacteria (also known as “rock snot”) in the river could be a real big deal.
• On River Road a man in a small, white ranch house has been staying up late plotting the demise of the deer who ate all of the wild blackberries in his yard, to say nothing of the blueberries and raspberries.

Well, that last one may not qualify as local news, but I decided this week that if I was going to kill any animal, it would most certainly be the stupid deer(s) who ransack our yard, Bambi be damned. I think I’ll have to work on some kind of electric fence for next year. Then we may have some news …

A friend asked me this question today, and in a rare moment of clarity, I actually came close to putting my thoughts and feelings into something resembling a proper statement.

What am I looking for in church? I’m looking to meet with God along with fellow Christians. Arriving at such a simple statement has been a daunting process, since church has become so much more than an encounter with God, if we even get around to actually meeting God at all.

Before I fall into the “I’m emerging and want to whine about the church” trap, I should probably flip my question around a little. What is God looking for in church? Or perhaps we can whittle it down to, “What is God looking for?”

Perhaps the simplest answer is: “us.” I may flatter myself and the rest of humanity with such a statement, but when I look at the message of scripture and the experiences of Christians through the Holy Spirit, it seems that God is quite interested in keeping in touch with us.

And if meeting God–by that I mean a real life-changing, spiritual encounter through the Holy Spirit–is most important, then what does that look like and what does that mean for church meetings? Are we a little too focused on the talk and not so much on the practice of Christianity in our meetings?

The verse that keeps coming to my mind regarding church is 1 Corinthians 4:20 “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” I’m currently wrestling what that “power” looks like for a gathering of Christians.

While folding laundry and listening to the latest podcast from “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” this evening, I was regretting my lack of blog posting this summer. Two or three posts a week isn’t much for someone used to posting regularly ever day. And then I realized that I have a reason for this drop in posting, and more than that, I haven’t publicly posted on it yet.

Much of my thought and writing time has been consumed of late because I’m working on a book that will be published with NavPress in the Fall of 2008. Morning, noon, and night I’m editing, researching, and writing.

Working at a day job four days a week and keeping up with house and rabbit chores means that I’m quite busy of late, especially with company and all kinds of trips to Indiana, Boston, Ohio, and Philly on the schedule.

My current goal is to have a draft of the book together by September 1st. If I have a really good week, that may happen. After that I’ll be working on two study guides and revisions.

The book is tentatively titled Theology for Everyone (that will change for certain), and it aims to provide a simple introduction to contextual Christian theology. Planting theology in the middle of our relationship with God and in his mission to bring redemption to creation, I hope to provide an alternative to the divisive theology that does more to divide than unite and bring life.

The project began as an independent study with Dr. John Franke of Biblical Theological Seminary. Under Franke’s direction I wrote a massive paper that is the foundation for the book. Though it has changed quite a bit, all for the better, and been given different titles, the same goal of making theology accessible for the church has remained.

While the book is still in the formative stages, I’ll be looking for input this week in a few areas. I would be grateful if each reader gave them some thought and either posted a reply or passed them on to someone who may have a perspective to share. Stay tuned!

I was recently listening to a Christian teacher preach through a passage of scripture that has profound implications for the church and the way we share the truth. I thought of a few areas where the American church has some issues, and I surely overlooked plenty of my own blind spots as well.

The sermon ended up doing two other things than what I had in mind: explaining what’s wrong with the world and what’s OK with the church. Though gentle and devoid of righteous indignation, the sermon amounted to little more than a pat on the back for the church and a wag of the finger at the world. In short, the sermon lacked relevance for today.

Theology is toothless when we study scripture and come up with interesting Biblical data and stray away from speaking prophetically to our world and to the church. Surely there are times when the church has things right and should be affirmed when appropriate, but when we have it coming, teachers and preachers who tip toe across the soft ground of self-affirmation do far more harm to the church than good.

• Christians for Biblical Equality
  This is a great collection of articles that work through the complexities of the debate among Christians about gender roles. I’m a big fan of “egalitarianism.”
  (tags: theology)
• Emerging Pensees
  Mike has a creed from the Masai people that makes for excellent reading and meditation.
  (tags: theology christianity culture)

Just as an alcoholic is never completely done with the desire to drink, so too are humans never quite able to say they’ve mastered sin completely. This is a hard thing to say as a Christian. Paul talks about dying and rising with Christ so that we are now new creations. Isn’t sin in the past for Christians?

The trouble is that we are new creations with some fatal flaws. Even if the grip of sin has been broken in our lives, we are not immune to it. In fact, we can knowingly place ourselves under the influence of sin, even if God is now the ruler of our lives.

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• Manna Cabana: Christian Links and Resources
  theology resources sorted into useful categories
  (tags: theology)

As always I’m behind in the times, most recently evidenced by my “johnny-come-lately” joining of Facebook. Though blog father Andrew Jones questioned the usefulness of Facebook, I’m impressed so far.

For one thing, the interface is cleaner and easier to use than goliath My Space. Even if the pages don’t offer the same customization options, I’m thinking that a standard white background with simple black Arial font is a good thing.

The networking functions are pretty good so far and the ability to integrate other online tools such as blogs and flickr are great. I’m not interested in maintaining a completely different space, but I will gladly set up a space that puts them all together in one spot.

Of course people with a lot of contacts can be weighed down by all manner of friendship requests, the complaint of Mr. Jones, but for those of us with a modest collection of friends Facebook is perfect. I’ve already reconnected with some great people and even contacted a few by chance who share similar interests.

I’ve been struggling to hammer out all of my thoughts lately on this blog, so I am grateful when I can read other blogs that are confronting some tough issues and working through them. Makeesha has two posts with comment threads worth a look: theology and egalitarianism. I’ll let her posts speak for themselves.

Somewhere in Vermont or Eastern NY state there is someone with a huge decorative fireplace that used to be in our house. The previous owners of our home left it sitting in the living room; a full-size fireplace made for decoration only and sporting a nifty light bulb somewhere inside to give off some semblance of a glow.

It’s a truly ugly invention that I cannot imagine purchasing. Though the wood on the sides is in good enough shape, the rest looks fake, and the time it spent outside our house these past 3 months did not leave it looking all that flattering on the top.

I’d been trying to work up the gumption to take it to the dump, when the wise words of my father-in-law came to mind. “If you ever want to get rid of something, stick a ‘free’ sign on it and leave it by the curb. People can’t resist the ‘free’ sign.”

So I stuck a free sign on the fireplace after Julie and I hauled it to the road side. We live on a relatively quiet dirt road since it runs parallel to the main road, but we strategically waited until the weekend of Arlington’s town-wide garage sale.

All Saturday no one took the bait, though several cars slowed down to give it a look. On Sunday morning we left for an overnight trip at the family camp up at Lake George, returning on Monday evening.

We pulled in as usual and then Julie asked me, “Do you think the fireplace  was moved to somewhere else on our property or did someone actually take it?” Sure as shootin’, the fireplace was gone. I felt triumphant. The sign worked! Not only did we keep that hideous thing out of the land fill, we saved the cost of dumping it.

With the help of The Message I have been reading through Second Chronicles in the Old Testament. It’s been a long time since I plodded through the lengthy lists and endless collection of names in Chronicles, but Peterson’s simple translation takes off the edge and allows for easy reading, even if I’m reduced to skimming names at times.

To my surprise, Second Chronicles is a fascinating book about the kings of Judah, basically ignoring the kings of Israel unless they did something with relevance for Judah. There is more detail about each king than in the book of Second Samuel, and so that creates some striking portraits. In light of my recent post about pastors falling into affairs, I noticed that just about every king, whether God-fearing or not, failed in some major way, especially later on in life.

In fact, it seemed that several kinds did well so long as a priest or two kept them in check, but once the oversight was lifted, there was tremendous temptation to do as they pleased, thereby offending God and causing the people of Judah to suffer.

My theory in the previous post about pastors seems to apply here, especially since God did not originally want all of the power over his people concentrated in one person: we need less trust and more grace for our leaders. When I say less trust, I’m implying that we put too much trust and consequently too much pressure on our leaders. We are overconfident in them and also in ourselves. When a leader does fail, as even the Bible implies is highly likely, there often is a lack of grace for our leaders who buckle under the pressure and difficulty of bearing so much by themselves.

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• Amazon.com: Out of the Ooze: Books: Spencer Burke
  The ooze is filled with all manner of fantastic contributions to discussions of Christianity and culture, so its only fitting that there’s a greatest hits collection compiled by Spencer.
  (tags: christianity theology emerging)
• Out of Context: Mark Labberton | Out of Ur | Following God’s Call in a New World | Conversations hosted by the editors of Leadership journal
  The quote on this page is both provocative and challenging. I need to give it a bit more thought.
  (tags: christianity)

I’m thinking about heading down to Massachusetts to fight it out with the seminary geeks at the Christian Book Distributors sale. I’ve heard it’s absolutely nuts down there, but I’m interested in expanding my theological library a bit. Anything in particular I should be looking for?