Reading and Other Matters

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Ever have one of those books you were embarrassed to say you hadn’t read but were afraid to admit it? You know, the kind of book you feel you would be caught with your pants down if someone asked you to weigh in on it for some reason: “You mean, you haven’t read such-and-such?”

So it is with Neil Postman’s Technology. I just finished it and feel guilty about having not read it a long time ago. I could not put it down. Now I can say to you, my readers, “What do you think of Postman’s view on the pervasive role of technology in American culture?” “What, you haven’t read it? You really need to do so.”

With this grand confession behind me, I actually don’t have a large quantity to say about the book itself except to say that, at its core, Postman reminds us of that most profound truth that the things that influence us the most in our day-to-day lives are the most subtle and evasive. We think we control our lives by sheer force of our own awareness of these influences. But like all things cultural, we are as much servants as kings of our own domains.

So embedded are our perceptions, in fact, in the “taken for granted” nature of the cultures surrounding us that we are rarely conscious of how these cultural phenomena affect us and the others around us. Like an iceberg in the North Atlantic sea, we may well be able to see and understand a small part of how our influences work and affect our lives, but it is the vast underworld beneath the waterline that is most telling. It is this underworld of culture that James Hunter says, in his book, To Change the World, that is most deceptively strong because culture is “most powerful…when it is perceived as self-evident.”

Such, says Postman, is the case especially with the technologies that fill our lives. We are often unconscious victims of the very tools we think we control. And by tools, he is not just speaking of the mechanical and electronic devices that fill our lives--computers, toasters, mp3 devices, and the like. Language, as we now use it, is a technological tool. How about polling? Think about how our values are being controlled now by the mere fact that we can almost instantaneously determine that 47% versus 53% now believe such and such is right. And, we now live in a world where we can know the most minute details of the most mundane set of facts immediately, all at our googled fingertips.

Our world is too much with us and we don’t even know it. I wonder how these technologies shape us ever so subtly? What is that Christian virtue of ‘patience’ you ask, for example? At one time, patience was that human enterprise that stretched out between spring-time when my grandfather farmer put his potato seedlings in and the fall when he pulled the potatoes out of the ground. For me, patience has been reduced to a milla-second as I pound on the side of my computer because it isn’t fast enough. Patience completely redefined and I don’t even know it!

Speaking of patience, I have got to end. I need to download my next book on my iPad.

December Faculty Forum

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

It’s always a dangerous thing to think when you are preaching. You start wondering why the guy in the fourth pew is staring out the window, or whether you have sufficient time to include the illustration about illuminated medieval manuscript, and suddenly you have no idea what you are actually saying at that moment. What’s even worse is the ensuing awareness of your dissociation: how is it that I’m talking and at the same time I’m aware I’m talking? How many “I”’s can there be?

I was reminded of this as I looked out my window at the bare branches of the winter trees outside my office. A few years ago I was preaching in a hall with large windows in the back, looking out on the same bleak tree-scape that greets me this morning. And as I was (at least supposed to be) teaching, I was struck by how human those particular trees were looking that day.

I had been set up for such arboreal anthropomorphizing for a long while. If the Wizard of Oz’ witch and winged monkeys set the standard for childhood terror, the malicious apple-flinging trees of the same film weren’t far behind. On the positive side of the ledger, I have always thought Tolkien’s Ents are just about the best thing Middle-Earth has to offer, hoom, hoom. I am one of the few people who thought the Two Towers film could have been vastly improved with a few more hours of Entmoot-musings from Treebead and his companions. I grew up on an acre of land that was almost entirely covered with tall pines, and spent much of my youth wandering through the woods down the road.

But what I saw that day, and this, was not simply the generic human-ness of trunks and boughs. These trees, it seemed, were doing something quite specific – stretching out their bare branches to the grey skies, crying out to God for the renewal of Spring, calling out for their own annual resurrection.

In the bleak mid-winter, on the cusp of Christmas, in the bareness and brokenness of our own lives, may we go and do likewise.

“The medium is the message”

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

I am actually going to quote Wikipedia: ‘"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.’[1]

I recently visited a church in which the medium used in the presentation of “worship” led me to think about this idea. When the service began, the lights in the auditorium were turned down, and spotlights on the stage and the worship team members were turned up. There was stage smoke billowing on the platform so that the spotlights created a visual line to the musicians. Four giant screens broadcast images, first of a meditation, then of the words of the songs the musicians were playing. As the singing progressed, a camera focused on each musician so that their image was projected onto the four giant screens as they played or sang. The background of the stage was composed of white and gray cutouts that were arranged in such a way as to resemble a house of cards stacked on one another. At first I did not notice the cross. But as I looked around me, I noticed that far above on the rim of the ceiling structure that held the spotlights was a cross. At the end of the set of songs, appropriately, the audience burst into applause. My husband leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’m waiting for Tina Turner to appear.” It was quite a performance.

I have also attended churches where everyone was encouraged to “make a joyful noise.” Some have been so committed to this that I have heard choirs sing off key, singers sing out of time with each other, and been subjected to a variety of screechy trumpets and violins, all of which have so distracted me from the worship of God that I could not focus on why I was there. Clearly, the church I just described was committed to not allowing these kinds of distractions from attendee’s worship experience. The musicians performed professionally and the quality of both instrument and voice were excellent. And yet, it did not lead me to worship.

Worship. A most central activity of my faith, and yet so difficult to define, capture, and facilitate.

I have noticed a trend in churches to have people lead worship who have no training in theology, church music, congregational singing, and sometimes even musicianship. Sometimes they are songwriters. Sometimes they are singers. It seems to have become quite rare for them to be trained worship leaders. As a consequence, the experience I described above is becoming more and more common.

One of the challenges, of course, is that many people find themselves joining a church with people from many different backgrounds, church traditions, and preferences. What one person needs to lead worship is different from what another needs. This is one of the things I see valuable about the multitude of congregations we have today. The variety of church cultures provides the possibility of each of us finding a church whose leadership provides a worship context that leads us into the presence of God. But, can we get it wrong? My reflection is not about the “worship wars.” It’s not about contemporary or traditional or blended or whatever. It is about worship and how the media we choose influences our worship.

It is a tremendous responsibility to stand in front of God’s people and lead them into his presence so that they may praise, honor, and glorify him in an act of worship. James writes “let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment” (James 3:1). This is the verse that drove me to seminary because I realized that if others were turning to me for leadership or instruction, I needed to be responsible about being adequately prepared to honor God and be faithful with the responsibility entrusted to me in the form of these people’s lives. So too should worship leaders be cautious and careful about how they lead others in worship. The medium through which we choose to express ourselves is a part of the message. It shapes the message. It is, as quoted above, symbiotic with the message.

I want to believe that the goal of every worship leader is to direct God’s children to enter into his presence and worship him. To do this, however, is not a simple task nor a small task. It is one that carries great significance, and requires much thought and preparation. If God gives you the responsibility of leading his people in worship, I pray that you will consider James’ words and ensure that your gifts and calling are strengthened and grown rich with adequate preparation. Formulate your theology of worship and ensure that it is consonant with your theology of God and church and spiritual formation. Use your theology of worship as a foundation for how you plan and lead worship, choose setting and context and instruments and songs and psalms, and everything other aspect of the experience you give to the people God has entrusted you to lead in worship. Anything less is a disservice to God’s people and disrespectful of the worship God as due.

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^[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

Giving Thanks for Our Alumni

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Just before Thanksgiving weekend I was at the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature, all of which were held in San Francisco this year. I enjoy going to the meetings to meet old friends, make new friends, and have my thinking stretched by papers and presentations presenting new information, ideas, perspectives or approaches. I love coming back with some new things to chew on and to follow up and possibly incorporate into my teaching or research. But perhaps one of the things I like most about attending these annual meetings is the opportunity catch up with some of our alumni who also attend. I run into them between sessions, and also get to sit and talk with some of them during the GCTS Sunday breakfast and the dinner that we usually have for doctoral students and recent doctoral grads. It is such a joy to see our grads prospering in their studies (even if they struggle at times as well, of course) or teaching ministries.

This year I was able to chat with some grads studying biblical studies and others teaching missions, church history, and biblical studies. I’ve also had recent contact with grads who are faithfully ministering in the church ministries to which God has called them and who are using all that they learned while in seminary to minister to the people God has put in their care. Such quality people, doing such important things!

I am so grateful to God for the gifted and committed people he brings to Gordon-Conwell, and that I have the privilege to work with. Our students shape my thinking and inspire me to be a better Christian, scholar, teacher, and person. Our alumni do the same. And I know I am not alone, but that the whole faculty would heartily agree with me. This year as I think about the gifts of God for which I am grateful, you should know that alumni who are faithful to whatever calling God has on their lives (and who have left their marks on Gordon-Conwell along the way) are among the most precious gifts for which I give thanks. Psalm 106:1-5 reminds us that as we give thanks to God for his mighty works we are also to rejoice in the prosperity of his chosen ones and to glory in his heritage.

¹ Praise the LORD! O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. ² Who can utter the mighty doings of the LORD, or declare all his praise? ³ Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times. ⁴ Remember me, O LORD, when you show favor to your people; help me when you deliver them; ⁵ that I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation, that I may glory in your heritage. (NRSV)

I hope you are staying in touch with some faculty members, letting them know what God is doing in and through you. You can rest assured they are eager to hear from you and happy to pray for you, and are thankful for you and your commitment to advancing God’s purposes in his church and his world.

Day-to-Day Normalness of Life

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Everything changed. In little more than a month on that barren, floating shoal, their perspective on their lives was so radically altered. What they valued most in their lives up to that point--the tiniest pleasures that were their largest preoccupations, thought lives filled with what they considered “normal” things--all so quickly and unalterably became of so little consequence. In a relative moment in time, the “stuff” of their lives became the basic, unadorned preoccupations of survival. So little mattered of their old lives; so much rested on a new point of view.

If you haven’t read Alfred Lansing’s gripping story of Sir Ernest Shackelton’s ill-fated 1914 expedition to Antartica, I highly recommend it. It is a survival story of 29 men set adrift for five months on ice packs after their ship was crushed by ice, only to then suffer through a 1,000 mile voyage in an open boat across the stormiest ocean on the globe. It is a magnificent picture of persons pulled away from everyday normal life and forced to live and think in radically different ways.

Short of subjecting ourselves artificially to some form of fringe experience, I wonder what it takes for us to break through the day-to-day “normalness” of our lives? How do we who seek to bring freshness and new perspective to those to whom we minister keep our own lives fresh? How do the things that really matter from God’s perspective become our common, consuming passions?

I certainly don’t claim to know the answer to these questions, but if Shackelton’s story is of any help, it is that none of these men would have changed on their own. To a man, all of them were relatively comfortable with the make-up of their own lives. It was only as they were forced to change that they did change.

Certainly this is what is behind the joy we are all called to consider in the first chapter of the book of James. God makes trials and temptations part of the warp-and-wolf of our lives because He knows that we don’t have it in us to change on our own. Our faith grows, not from within, but from without as God works in and through the circumstances of our lives.

The Sea in My Hand?

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Last night I found myself holding the sea in my hands.

Now, I first need to point out that it was only the Barents Sea, which Wikipedia describes as “marginal” -- “marginal” being a technical term for territorial waters, with no disrespect intended…though how the Barents itself feels about the description is another question. (Its former name, the Murmans Sea, has a certain allure, until one realizes that it translates to, “The Sea of Norwegians”.)

The second, and even more critical, thing to note is that I wasn’t actually holding the Barents Sea. I was actually holding a few plastic pieces from a 3-D globe puzzle one of my sons is working on. The pieces had fallen on the floor and I had slipped them into my pocket while cleaning up. The pieces represented the Barents Sea – they weren’t the sea itself.

And now for the inevitable lesson.

As we carry our Bibles about, in our hands or in our heads, we can sometimes imagine that the mere possession of the book magically sanctifies us. The words on the page, or the smart phone, or the brain cell, seem to possess a talismanic power to lead us on the path of blessing. We have God’s word, and thus to some extent God, right in our hands.

I want to choose my words carefully hear, and assure the reader that my goals here are modest. I believe the Bible is God’s Word in a unique way. I am not getting into the question of whether the Scriptures simply contains the word, or whether it needs to be activated by the Spirit to become God’s word, or any of those questions which understandably keeps theologians up at night. All I am saying is that the words on the page gain their currency because they point to something greater than themselves: the reality of God and his kingdom.

Take the words, “Jesus is risen from the dead.” Five simple English words, with one English-ed Greek name itself derived from a Hebrew original. I hope you hear them as the stunning climax of the greatest story ever told. But that power comes not from the mere words, but from the fact that they point to the truth that God did in fact raise Jesus from the dead.

The fact that the words are sign pointing to something doesn’t diminish their value; it establishes their value. My puzzle-solving son remarked the other day that we ought simply to print out endless barrels money so people can have whatever they want. (Note to government officials and presidents of large banks: this is not actually a good idea.) I tried to explain with my own feeble economic understanding that the dollar bills only stand in for, or mark out, value; the paper points towards one’s labor or one’s land. So it is with words, at least in many instances: they point towards reality.

This is no idle academic musing. When we focus merely on the words in Scripture, and not on the reality they are gesturing towards, we can end up deluding ourselves with a “faith” that is nothing more than the barest assent to a few propositions. We need to recognize that God’s word is there to throw us into the reality of his kingdom, with all the peril and promise that holds. The word is there to point us to a God who actually does hold the Barents Sea, and the whole cosmos, in his almighty hand.

Work and Pray

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

“. . . work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (NASB Php 2:12b–13)

Does having a business plan, using marketing strategies, or taking lessons on how to raise funds for a mission on ministry mean that we are not living in faith and trusting God? Several times in the last month, I have heard Christians indirectly talking about this question. I know people who land on both the positive and the negative side of the answer to this question. A new missionary wants to practice his “spiel” on me to see how it flows and if it will be effective in getting financial commitments. We have a discussion among faculty, and one faculty member asserts that marketing strategies demonstrate a lack of faith that we are engaged in God’s ministry and that he will provide. What are we to believe about this?

When I was a brand-new Christian, before I had read this passage in Philippians, my spiritual mentor encouraged me to “work as if everything depended on me and pray as if everything depended on God.” When I read Philippians, I had an aha! moment. I can work as if everything depended on me because God is working in me, both giving me the desire to fulfill his will and enabling me to do the work to accomplish his good pleasure.

So many times, Christians argue about whether the ultimate is one thing or another (for example, God’s sovereignty versus human responsibility, or here, works versus faith). When I read scripture, it becomes clear to me why it’s so difficult for us to reduce it to one ultimate thing. It is because the Bible teaches both. God is sovereign and we are responsible. Our salvation is by faith and we must do works as evidence of and response to that faith and salvation provided by God. We must resist the temptation to seek a single ultimate, bottom line assertion.

This verse is a great comfort to me because it assures me that I can step out in faith and use all of the gifts, resources, skills, and education that God has given me to plan, strategize, and execute these plans and strategies, knowing that it is a God at work in me, giving me these gifts, resources, skills, and education so that I may follow the desires he has implanted in me to accomplish his good pleasure. Of course, one of the gifts we must always exercise is discernment. I believe God guides us into what he would have us do, but also when and how and with whom. But as I plan and move forward, I pray and I trust God that I am moving forward in his plan.

When Dr. Sid Bradley, former dean at Charlotte and founder of the counseling program of which I’m the director, talked about utilizing psychology as a Christian counselor, he talked about the Exodus, and how the Israelites when they left Egypt, at God’s command, “plundered the Egyptians.” When we learn strategies and approaches from the world (compatible with biblical principles of living), we are plundering the Egyptians. We are taking the gold, silver, and precious jewels of the world and utilizing them for Kingdom work. So may I also encourage you to “work is if everything depends on you and pray as if everything depends on God.”

Happy Reformation Day; May We Always Be Sempre Reformanda!

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

This week many Protestant churches celebrated Reformation Day, in commemoration of Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 theses on the Wittenberg Door on October 31, 1517, in response to the preaching and selling of indulgences. It is still worth reading those theses, both for their historical significance and for greater awareness of what Luther’s position was on the related issues at the time. Perhaps the key to the whole is found in the 18^th thesis, where Luther indicates his understanding that doctrines must be proved “either by reason or Scripture.” The actual positions affirmed in the theses reflect what is called the “early Luther,” before he developed his more distinctive understanding of justification by faith. The fact that Luther’s views on some key subjects evolved in time reflects the fact that the Reformation was not about the rejection of one completely agreed upon set of finalized theological positions for a new set of finalized theological positions, but about continual reformation (for the church to be sempre reformanda) in light of our best understanding of Scripture (see again that part of his 18^th thesis as the presupposition behind them all).

Of course, our temptation is always to think that our current understanding is the ultimate and that we are beyond a point where our understanding might still need further development through continued study of Scripture, perhaps from perspectives we have yet to consider, or that have yet to be formulated (perhaps due to our own cultural or interpretive blinders). That does not mean we’re prepared to turn our theology on its head at the first proposal to interpret Scripture in a way that conflicts with what we have thought to be true. It does mean that our confidence is not in our own doctrinal formulations, but in the Scriptures, and the more clearly our theological convictions are supported by the Scriptures the more likely any future changes to our convictions will reflect merely nuancing of views that passed the test of time and experience.

The question is not if Luther had it all right when he posted his theses, or later when he lectured on Galatians or something else, or if Calvin got it all right with the first edition or with later editions of his Institutes, or if Wesley got it all right at one point or another of his ministry. The question is, where might I still learn from others today, even from (or with) those with whom I might have serious disagreements, and especially from (or with) those whose experience and whose blinders are different from my own?

Reformation Day reminds us of our need to continue to be humble before God’s Word, recognizing our own perpetually limited grasp on the truth we have discovered so far and our need to go on being taught by Scripture, rebuked by Scripture, corrected by Scripture and trained in righteousness by Scripture so that we might “be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17; NIV). May the Reformation continue, to the glory of God and the blessing of his people!

Seeing through the Mundane

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Perhaps poets have this perspective in a way that most of us don’t, poets and novelists. If they have taught us anything through the years, it is that in the smallest, mundane details often overlooked in our lives are revealed the greatest truths. It is in the linnet’s wings of Yeats, and the common spider web of Frost, and the mundane daily trek out into the ocean by Hemingway’s fisherman that we find the largeness of life and death exposed.

Profound truth embedded in the mundane: Perhaps this is why we miss so much of what makes our lives so rich and worth living. We look far out over the distant horizon to understand our lives and, in doing so, we overlook the meaning that is right there in front of us. We so often find ourselves tyrannized by the familiar, allowing the redundancy of time and familiarity of place to rob us daily of what is most important in our lives and souls.

All this crossed my mind the past three days as my colleague and historian, Garth Rosell, and I led a group of individuals from the west coast on a Spiritual Heritage Tour of the north shore of Boston. For those of us who live here in New England, chances are many days we walk unthinkingly over ground that Whitefield may have trod on his way to preaching to thousands upon thousands of his fellow colonialists. Or, without giving it a second thought, we pass by the place where the young D.L. Moody was converted in downtown Boston, a mere stones throw from where the five men fell during the Boston Massacre. Or, could any of us be accused of being more interested in window shopping the stores of Salem without a thought that the modern missionary movement was given birth right there on its shores?: Holy ground masquerading as common, everyday terra firma.

The privilege of leading the tour for these thirty some modern pilgrims involved, of course, the opportunity to point out the significance of places that have long since faded into the woodwork. To multiply our efforts, Dr. Rosell has written a self guided tour book, Exploring New England’s Spiritual Heritage: Seven Daytrips for Contemporary Pilgrims. Hot off the press, the Ockenga Institute has had the privilege of editing and publishing the tour book. For those of you who may be interested in purchasing a copy, please stay tuned to our website for further information in the coming weeks.

What Words Do and Don’t

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

“What is Conscience?” That was the question on the poster for a college roundtable discussion, replete with a picture of Homer Simpson flanked by Little Devil Homer and Little Angel Homer. (I still tend to speak of Little Devil Donald Duck and Little Angel Donald Duck…times change.) What interested me was not so much the question of conscience itself, but rather the way we talk, and therefore think, about things like conscience. (We are back, in other words, to the same concerns we raised in our previous Every Thought Captive posting.)

“What is Conscience?”, for instance, may imply that there is some absolute entity Conscience out there (where?), and that it is of the utmost importance that we figure out precisely what it is so that we use the word correctly. Academics serve as a kind of Truth in Advertising Commission, determined to make sure the product matches the label and the label matches the product. Granted that Conscience does not consist of two tiny spiritual beings atop separate shoulders, what is it…really?

But I am not at all sure that this is how words function – or at least how words like Conscience function. The picture of Devil Homer and Angel Homer might be silly, but it still effectively communicates the reality that we often find ourselves in inner conflict about what to do in a given situation. It is as if there are two voices inside me offering different counsel, and yet both those voices are somehow me. Devil Homer and Angel Homer provide a humorous visual expression of that reality; the word “conscience” just labels the same phenomenon a bit more efficiently. (The rabbis, for their part, spoke of the Good Inclination and the Evil Inclination within people; so it is not as if this is a new issue.)

You could fruitfully explore how we get that sense of good and evil, or how it works out in various individuals or cultures, but it is not as if you were going to discover something you didn’t know a good deal about already. The reality gives birth to the word, and not vice versa. The word does not magically capture the essence of the thing and bury that essence within the letters. It simply points more or less effectively to what we know.

You could use another word to point to it, if you wanted.

We face something similar in recent discussions of “the soul”. There has been a raft of commentary both inside and outwith the evangelical world lately to the effect that we don’t have a soul. It would be more accurate, some suggest, to say that we are a soul. Now, there is certainly something to this. Many Christians assume that God is only concerned with invisible person within them, and not with the body they just happen to inhabit. But surely the Scriptures have their eye on the whole person as a responsible (or irresponsible) member of the community of faith, such that one’s actions are just as important as one’s inner thoughts and feelings. The fact that the Bible regularly uses psyche for life in general rather than just the “soul” gives added weight to these critiques. If we turn to everyday life, we can all cite examples of where physical illness precipitates a change in our “soul” – the kindly and patient grandmother turns crotchety in her old age; the learned and affable mentor becomes confused and depressed with the onset of Alzheimers. Was it their “soul” that changed, or their body?

But does that really mean that all this talk in Scripture and the church about a “soul” is completely misguided? Of course not. Just as “conscience” effectively points towards the idea of inner conflict, so “soul” crisply captures the reality that we have an interior awareness of things distinguishable from mere bodily functions (even if that awareness is admittedly enmeshed with bodily functions). We can make decisions to do things that our bodies don’t necessarily want to do, from leaving the last brownie on the plate to rushing into gunfire to rescue a fallen comrade. Everyone knows this, and “soul” is the way we point towards that thing we already know about.

The trouble only comes when we imagine that the “soul” is a “piece” of us in the same way that our gall bladders or our toenails are – that if we disassembled a human we would find the soul squished inside the chest cavity or tangled around their kidneys. Once we get past that, we can recognize that “soul” is a perfectly adequate way of speaking about that interior dimension of a person that we all experience – indeed, it is far more adequate than having to go around speaking of “that interior dimension of a person” all the time. We don’t need to give an exhaustive account of precisely “what” the soul is, or precisely how it functions – it could be the sort of thing that simply doesn’t yield to that kind of investigation. Scientific investigation and philosophical speculation might not be the right tools for thinking about “soul” or “conscience”.

But the words “soul” and “conscience” are pretty good ways of speaking about those realities in everyday life.

Creation Care and Environmental Justice

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

Yesterday, I was driving in my car listening to an NPR program called “The State of Things” which is produced by our local radio station at the University of North Carolina. They were describing the origins of the environmental justice movement, and interviewed the couple living in Warren County, North Carolina, who are credited with founding the movement. The story was an interesting account of their efforts to prevent their poor, predominantly black community from having a toxic waste landfill located in their community. In this story, the “environmental” aspect of the story is obvious. The “justice” aspect of this story is the way poor, and often predominantly minority, communities are exploited in this way. One aspect that caught my attention, however, which leads to this essay, was the couple’s rationale for their activism.

When the interviewer asked them what motivated them. They unabashedly declared, we are Christians, and we must take care of God’s creation. It is our duty. This was their motivation . . . . in the 1970s. As the story unfolded, their Christian commitment and how it motivated them to care for God’s creation wove in and out like a golden thread. It was a spiritual battle they were waging. It delighted me to hear this couple innocently declaring how their faith in the Creator God led them to engage in resisting the pollution of their community with toxic substances and in doing so gave birth to the environmental justice movement. All of that on NPR!

Today, I am more likely to hear evangelicals and other conservative Christians express criticism of environmental activism, and promoting development of all stripes. I’m always surprised by this, and that led me to reflect on why I find conservation issues so compelling. In my mind, it starts with the creation account. God created us in his image and gave us dominion over the creation. He placed us in the garden he had made and gave us the responsibility to tend it and cultivate it:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. . . .Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” [1]

When I was an undergraduate, I learned about ecology as a biology major, I became a Christian, and I learned about creation. The juxtaposition of these three experiences intertwined to set me on a course to be a Christian who believes in conservation, and what today has come to be known as “creation care.” Ecology taught me about the complexity of the world and the utter interdependence of each element on every other element in the environment. We cannot survive without each other. You eliminate all the wolves and the deer population grows explosively. They overgraze the forest until all the trees die. They get hit by cars and people are injured or die. They starve to death. We protect designer species like the tiger by setting aside great tracts of land, which protect all of the creatures who live in that environment, not just the tiger. As our environment goes, so goes the planet, and so go us.

As a young Christian, I learned that God made the world. Not only that, but he made us stewards of it. He gave us dominion, but that dominion was a stewardship under his sovereignty. God still is the creator of it all and the sustainer of it all. As a Christian, therefore, I realized that someday I would stand before my Lord, my God and the Creator of all that is, and account for my stewardship of the creation over which he gave me dominion. I have, therefore, always been confused by the opposition I have encountered among so many evangelicals and otherwise conservative Christians to conservation or any aspect of the environmental movement. Granted, taken to its extreme, it can be both idolatrous and ultimately destructive to the environment it desires to protect. Furthermore, our dominion as the only creature made in the image of God, includes cultivation of that creation. Therefore, my environmentalism is not a blind “leave it alone it does best when left to itself” view of the creation. God gave us the stewardship of the creation in order for us to care for it, cultivate it, and use it responsibly, knowing that ultimately we will have to give an account of our stewardship to the true owner of everything that exists. To do anything less seems to me to be both disobedient to the God who created us for this purpose, and destructive to the creation of which we are stewards and to our witness to the God we serve before the unbelieving world.

---

^[1]New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Ge 1:26–28; 2:9-17). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

What Would It Mean to Err on the Side of Life?

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

In a recent debate between Republican presidential candidates, one of them defended their executive order requiring (with a parental opt-out option) adolescent girls of his state to receive the vaccine protecting against the human papilloma virus and thus some forms of cervical cancer by saying, “I will always err on the side of life.” That’s an argument that would normally resonate strongly with traditionally pro-life evangelicals. In this case it didn’t really work that well for the candidate. But it does raise the question again of what it would look like if Christians did consistently tend to err on the side of life.

But when it comes to the death penalty there is no recognition that a consistent commitment to erring on the side of life would mean recognizing that there has been a history of erring on the side of death and that that reality will continue as long as we deal with imperfect legal systems and imperfect evidence or witnesses. Why would one be prepared to err on the side of death in these cases?

In the constant attacks on the EPA one hears that the agency has a negative impact on businesses and the economy. But the EPA estimates that the changes that have been proposed “could save up to 2,500 lives,” not to mention that other negative impacts on human health and the health of the environment. Perhaps their number is inaccurate. But anyone who is committed to always erring on the side of life would have to weigh how much 2,500 lives (and further damage to the environment) might be worth in business expenses.

One presidential candidate has excoriated “Obamacare,” arguing that if his care had been entrusted to Obamacare during his recent fight with cancer he would be dead today. I confess that I find this argument (repeatedly used) outrageous, deceptive, and outrageously misleading. The point of Obamacare is not to make people who can afford better care to “settle” for something less than what they now have available. Those of us who already have good healthcare can continue to use what we have. The point is to find ways of making healthcare affordable for millions of Americans who are currently without any healthcare at all (a 2008 estimate put the number at 45.7 million people). So instead of contrasting his care under his high-end healthcare coverage with his imagination of what it would be like under Obamacare, the only appropriate comparison is one between the treatment that 45 million people would receive right now with no healthcare, and what those same people would receive under Obamacare (see the informative article on healthcare in the US on Wikipedia, where it is pointed out that ours is the “only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have [some] coverage”). How many millions are more likely to survive under one of those scenarios than the other? In this case, what would it mean to consistently err on the side of life?

The abortion issue, which monopolized so much evangelical political involvement in recent elections, has hardly been mentioned at all this time around. But it is fascinating to me to notice the strange way in which evangelical-focused rhetoric (and rhetorical coming from some evangelicals) on various political issues relates to profound issues of life and justice. Three years ago Tony Campolo (and others) argued for an approach to consistently erring on the side of life:

[W]e should be consistently pro-life, which means that life is sacred and should be protected not only for the unborn but also for the born. This requires that there be commitments to stop wars, end capital punishment, and provide universal healthcare for all of our citizens—in addition to stopping abortions.

He referred to this as a “consistently pro-life position.” Unfortunately, in my view, Campolo’s approach to erring on the side of life hasn’t found much traction in many Christian circles either. Proverbs 18:21 reminds us that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” That should be enough to motivate us to think carefully about what we do or do not say (and the critical assessment we give to what any politician says) about topics that have consequences for the lives (and deaths) of people in our nation or another.

Pulling a Sting

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

When he said it, not many of us really thought that much about it at first. In fact, it sounded a bit odd. We were all sitting around the Ockenga conference table—the thirteen of us as we do every month at our Pastors Roundtable—and one of our group told us very innocently that the thing that finally was bringing his congregation back to life was his fledgling little Junior High ministry.

This pastor had been racking his brain for years, trying to motivate his church toward some sense of vitality. He had given his congregation the big vision talk, followed quickly by the even bigger envisioning process, leading to the development of a vision statement. He had read all of the books. He had preached all the sermons about perishing without a vision. Nothing seemed to pry his congregation from the grips of years of lethargy. Nothing…nothing seemed to be working.

And then, out of no where, with hardly a strategy in mind and certainly beyond the scope of his own best intentions, the right volunteer couples from his little church in Maine, with the right giftedness and sincerity in their hearts, connected with the right junior high students. And it was this that brought new life as families began to be attracted to his little church. Broadsided with the simple and unintended! Imagine that; the life and vitality of a church resting on the narrow shoulders and low riding jeans of a group of adolescents. The church took off.

In subsequent conversations with this and other Pastor Roundtable groups, similar stories began to surface. In another of our New England churches whose pastor had a cup of coffee on a pro sports team, the church’s sports ministry to the community became the place of new growth and excitement for the congregation. For another pastor, it was their children’s ministry. Imagine a church whose annual summer focus on Vacation Bible School became the spark that has brought genuine excitement to the entire congregation the year round.

I wonder sometimes if we miss the forest through the trees for those of us who are committed to breathing new life into our places of ministry. With our best intentions in tow, we place five thousand pounds of vision and strategy down on a five hundred pound church. It is utterly crushing.

I admit it. I have done the same thing periodically when asked to do church consulting. Frankly, it is not that difficult to diagnose the problems within most churches. The real difficulty lies in churches having the resources and the will to respond to the solutions offered. The economics of the situation work like this: The smaller the church, the bigger the problems to be solved. But, alas, the smaller the church, the less resources there are to respond effectively to proposed solutions. The solutions sometimes almost become more onerous than the problems.

To be considered healthy, why must every church have a thriving small group ministry and thriving youth ministry and thriving evangelism ministry and thriving hospitality ministry and a thriving community outreach ministry and so on…? Rather, what if we looked at our churches more organically than systematically? It takes some investigative work, but where is the place—sometimes ever so small—of vitality in your church? Where is there evidence that God is working, and how can we come along side of that place(s) where He has decided to work uniquely in your setting? Where is the thin thread in your church that, if pulled, could unravel into whole new possibilities for your church?

I am convinced that every church has these areas, sometimes in the most surprising of places. As one pastor of a church that is filled with the currently perceived deadly demographic of elderly people told me the other day, the point of excitement currently in his church is a small group of his elderly couples that have found new excitement in their faith. The fragrance of their newfound excitement has wafted across the rest of the church. Go figure, old people and junior high kids: places where God is doing His best work in His church. There must be a God.

Watch Your Language

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Most readers of this piece will already know that the word “theology” consists of the Greek words for “God” (Theo’s) and “word/speech/account” ((logos). What we sometimes forget is that this logos is our account of God, and not God’s account of himself. Theology walks down the path of human language. Trouble, as it often does, lies on either side of this path.

On the one side, we may be tempted to despair that we can say anything meaningful at all about God. This sentiment has been around for ages, but it is particularly popular in the modern non-Christian world. All our words about God, to cite the popular fable, are just the gropings of blind men describing an elephant. (The twist, of course, is that the enlightened tale-teller knows it’s an elephant – but this never seems to get noted.) Christians, who have experienced God’s Word in the deeds and words of Jesus the Messiah, can steer clear of that danger pretty easily.

The other trap is one to which evangelicals are perhaps more prone; and that is imagining that our language about God is simple and exhaustive, and thus – unlike all other human speech -- needs no qualifications. Indeed, for some people the search for just this kind of unequivocal speech about God constitutes the essence of the theological task.

The first sign that God himself does not seem to endorse this sort of talk comes from the nature of Scripture itself. If the goal of theology is to give a perfectly straightforward, reasonable account of God, we have to admit the Bible does a pretty poor job of it. We have compilations of stories from a distant place in a strange language, none of which explain themselves very much. We have commandments which are rather more straightforward…but while some of them make instant sense (“don’t mislead a blind man on the path”), others remain obscure (“don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk”). Even the clearest summary statements about God can raise some questions even as they answer others: “The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious, showing mercy to thousands and judgment to threes…” So, yes, he is more merciful than judgmental: but how does he decide when to be which?

In response to this we often try to be clearer than Scripture itself. “The most important thing to know about God”, some will assert, “is that he pursues his own glory.” Now, there are any number of Scripture passages that back up this assertion, and thus every Christian ought to heartily affirm it. But as soon as we put the thought into a specific language, and speak it to actual people, problems arise. To take the most pressing one: the idiom “to seek one’s own glory” in modern English carries overwhelmingly negative connotations. The bare statement, “God seeks his own glory”, is in danger of painting a portrait of God as a megalomaniacal dictator, the Kim Jong-Il of a cosmic North Korean kingdom. Surely we must do better than that.

But what can we do? We can’t simply shrink back and refuse to speak about God. He has said and done too much in our presence to make that a viable option. We have to speak. But if we take the Scripture as our guide, we will be liberated to speak of him in a fully human language comfortable with paradox and qualifications. We will be happy to let God’s speech about himself provide the model for our speech about him.

We will also embrace stories as meaningful forms of theological discourse, not mere tales to be moralized or theologized before they are of any use. To return to our example of “God seeking his own glory”: we could rightly devote an entire tome to explaining that God’s pursuit of his own glory is a world away from our pursuit of our own glory, that his pursuit involves embracing those lower than himself rather than annihilating them. Those would hardly be wasted words.

But we could also simply read the story of the crucified Messiah, “lifted up” upon the cross, and see it all in a moment.

Gender: Creation or Construction?

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

I am taking a break from grading my students’ “theology of sexuality” final research papers from the sexuality courses I taught this spring and summer at Gordon Conwell. Foundational to their theology is the Genesis account of our creation. It is very obvious from even the most superficial reading of Genesis 1 and 2 that our maleness and femaleness are a part of God’s act of our creation. Human beings are male and female, designed and created so by God. We as Christians tend to see this as so foundational as to be beyond question. Any small or great deviation from this fundamental dichotomy is presumed by us to be something gone wrong. We live, however, in a radically changing culture in which postmodern, deconstructionist interpreters are gaining ground in presenting gender as a social construction.

The argument for the social construction of gender asserts that gender and sexuality do not exist as unique, dichotomous, biological entities. Rather, culture, or rather the dominant voices in society, use language and power to create these ideas of gender and sexuality. These ideas, they then argue, are used to suppress and persecute those who do not conform to these socially constructed definitions. Many of the writers arguing for the social constructionist view are homosexual or in some other way a part of the LGBTQ community. One of my students pointed out that “Michel Foucault . . . was the first to question the ideas of gender and sexual identity. He himself was a practicing homosexual but refused to identify himself as homosexual or as a specific gender. He questioned the commonly held ideas of a static gender and bimorphous sexuality. He preferred the idea that people can self-associate with a specific gender if they so please, as long as they realized that gender is a culturally conditioned idea and generally arbitrary.” Foucault, you may recall, is also the philosopher responsible for the beginnings of postmodernism philosophy as well.

Another student read and reviewed a recent publication by Inter-Varsity Press by Jenell Paris, The End of Sexual Identity (2011). Her review of this book, slightly edited, says:

Evangelicals need more thoughtful and informed writing on the area of gender and sexuality, but Paris’ work is not one that proves helpful to believers. A trained anthropologist, Paris’ main crux of her work is a dismissal of the traditional personal identifiers of sex like heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual. She says instead to reject any sexual orientation label and live as an un-sexually oriented person. She purports that sexual orientation language is falsely stigmatizing and isolating to those who are given sexual orientation labels. . . Paris’ disregard for sexual identifying language is on the cusp of full-fledged identification with queer theory’s central position, namely that gender is culturally constructed and arbitrary. The beginning of Paris’ book is basically affirming the idea that sexuality is culturally conditioned to the point where gender is only cultural and thus arbitrary. . . . What Paris desire to do – make sexual orientation not the ultimate thing – is a reasonable endeavor, but the means by which she attempts to do it – by disregarding sexual identity language markers – is caustic to her eventual goal. . . . she is on the precipice of queer theory, and she needs to move back into a more bibliocentric and theological understanding of language.

It was not very long ago that I would have said that the distinction regarding sex and gender is clear between a Christian and non-Christian worldview: God created us male and female, Period. Yet, here is a book published by Inter-Varsity Press almost fully affirming Queer Theory regarding sex and gender: Sex and gender are arbitrary. We need to abandon the words.

My colleagues on the faculty and I were recently discussing the importance of theology and doing theology. We believe that not only do professional, vocational pastors and ministers need to be grounded in theology, but every member of the church, everyone seated in a pew or chair, needs to “always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15). Leaders, especially, are admonished to be “ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:2).

When we think “Gospel,” we tend to think of the good news that God became flesh and dwelt among us, and died on the cross, rising again from the dead, to redeem us from our sins and give us eternal life. But the gospel is bigger than that. It is encompassing. It defines a world view that touches every aspect of our lives. We need to be salt and light in every corner of the world, to bring God’s truth into every dark place. This issue may appear philosophical and esoteric, however, it will trickle down in very practical ways. Indeed, it has already trickled down to shape our culture’s view to the point of endorsing practices such as gay “marriage,” which is wholly contrary to the teaching of Scripture on sex and marriage. In Ezekiel, God tells the prophet that the watchman is called upon to warn the people of coming judgment. If the watchman fails to do this, he too is held accountable and subject to the same judgment. We are called to warn. We need to speak truth to our generation. For their sakes and ours.

Thanking God for Friends from Seminary

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

They were the first couple that Marcelle and I met when we arrived at seminary back in 1982, and we quickly became the best of friends. To avoid referring to them as “they” or “them” let’s call them “Keith” and “Rebeccah”… Keith and I had many classes together and talked through all kinds of subjects. He and Rebeccah introduced us to music we hadn’t been familiar with but liked right away and that has been a part of our lives ever since. They also taught us some card games and, as poor seminary students, much of our leisure and entertainment time in seminary was spent playing cards together as two couples and talking into the night. We also went camping together (at the foot of the Maroon Bells ) and enjoyed great times of fellowship.

We wouldn’t be where we are today were it not for the influence of Keith and Rebeccah, and others like them, in our lives. Keith saw me as a seminary professor long before I could ever see myself that way. He became the president of the student body and appointed or recommended me to serve as the student representative on the seminary’s Faculty Affairs Committee, which gave me the opportunity to get to know faculty members and see how they conducted some of their business and to imagine what it might be like to be in their shoes someday. When Carl F. H. Henry came to campus it was Keith who arranged for the two of us to have a private meeting with him, during which Keith referred to me as the “theologian” of the student body. It was a title I didn’t deserve, by any means, but it reflected Keith’s perception of my gifts (and calling), one that would later be confirmed by others and within myself. To this day I don’t remember a bit of what we talked about with Dr. Henry, but I’ve never forgotten the complement paid to me by my friend and what it said about his view of my potential!

Keith has been a faithful pastor since our days in seminary. He’s now pastoring a church in Arizona. Marcelle and I just enjoyed a wonderful visit from Keith and Rebeccah. They took the time to come and spend a few days visiting and catching up with us. We walked the freedom trail in Boston, visited Salem, attended church together, discussed the Bible, theology, ethics, philosophies of ministry, ministry challenges, family issues and many other things. We also enjoyed evenings with long card games and deep conversations into the late hours. He and Rebeccah continue to be an encouragement to us and models for us of faithful ministry in both good and very challenging circumstances. I thank God for them and the roles they have played in our lives.

Do you remember particular friends from college or seminary that have encouraged you, or helped you identify your gifts or who played key roles in shaping your vision for your future ministry? Was there someone (or more than one person) without whom you don’t know how you would have gotten through, or that you feel made a significant contribution to your understanding of God’s call on your life? If you haven’t been in touch with that person for a while, or haven’t expressed your appreciation for them recently, perhaps you should think about giving them a call or writing them a note. And perhaps you might even think about planning a way to get together again for a few days to renew that friendship, and see if you don’t both benefit from the truth expressed so well in Proverbs 27:17: ^“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (NIV).

The Hard Work of Hospitality

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

We first take away their cell phones. We take away their cell phones and then we take away their access to Facebook, followed by their access to email and the internet, and finally (gasp) we take away their IPods. We call it a Technology Sabbath. All of their forms of media are gone in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. You can almost see the scratch marks on their laptops and IPods as we pull them all away for thirty long days.

After this, we put them through one month of hard situations in which they, as a group, are required to crawl together over various obstacles. Some of these obstacles are solid and real, even terrifyingly real. They find themselves high above the treetops on a high ropes course and dangling on the side of a mountain on a rope climb. Some of the obstacles are less concrete but every bit as real as they are confronted with theologically rich questions they cannot answer easily. Finally, they are required as a group to confront the discomfort and dissonances of a cross-cultural setting in South America.

For many summers now, I have had the opportunity to observe cohorts of approximately thirty young adults each year being challenged by a Lilly-funded youth program we host at the Ockenga Institute called Compass. They move from living in a wilderness setting, to the classroom, and finally to a missions context. It has been a laboratory of community of sorts for us as we have had the privilege of standing back, year after year, and observing intentional community in the making, where complete strangers are transformed into a lifelong community of brothers and sisters, all in the confines of one month. How long does it take for the awkward glances of a nervous stranger to become heartfelt straight-ahead, eye-to-eye acknowledgements of a fellow believer in Jesus Christ? We have found it has not taken long when these fellow believers are required to face hard times together.

And it does not take long for these young people to express authentic forms of hospitality toward one another. We see it everywhere, from the simple words of encouragement extended to a sister who is trying to make it up the last 20 feet of the side of a mountain, to their small group conversations as they tell each other their stories, to the youth sitting up all night next to a fallen comrade who was a stranger only a few weeks prior, caring for her as she barfs up foreign food in a foreign land, to the worship they share that, at moments, are deeply moving and instructive to their souls as brothers and sisters in Christ.

The lesson learned in simple ways is that extending hospitality to one another in our churches is not always easy. It is not easy for these youth on a one-month excursion into community building, and it certainly is not easy for us in our churches. But too often we have relegated our expressions of hospitality to its entertainment value. Isn’t this, in fact, what we point to in our culture when we talk of the ‘hospitality industry?’ We point to entertainment in all its forms. Hospitality and entertainment have become synonyms in our cultural consciousness.

Unfortunately they have become synonyms in our church lexicon as well. Too often we have built our lives together around entertainment. At worst, our times together serve as distractions; we use them like watching a good movie or a baseball game on television where the entertainment value of the experience itself becomes an end in itself. Too often hospitality is relegated to self-selected venues where we invite those we feel most comfortable with to share a common experience of mutual gratification. Often times not much is required of us outside of the effort it takes to make a salad or, in the case of a typical men’s ministry, pancakes. We like to keep things light and conversational. In fact, this is how we measure success and failure for ourselves; the degree to which we individually leave feeling at least mildly satisfied.

There is nothing wrong with any of these forms of entertainment in themselves. However, the danger that entertainment brings to the topic of hospitality is when the entertainment value of our lives together takes over. The various enticements of the forms of entertainment at our disposal can easily serve as a distraction to the hard work required of expressing true hospitality to one another.

Look and listen closely to the stories around you in your churches. You will see and hear hard choices being made everywhere: An unemployed brother over there just trying to keep his credit rating from exploding; the teenager over here making decisions surrounding new temptations that could impact the rest of her life; the couple over there whose marriage secretly isn’t going all that well; the single sister over here who is so lonely she can hardly keep herself together; and the elderly woman over there who has got to make a decision on when to pull the plug on a life partner. If all that our hospitality involves is simply about entertaining ourselves, none of these stories will be heard let alone responded to.

Approaching the Center (and Temptations) of Imperial Power

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I spent last week in Istanbul. It was my first time ever in Turkey and I loved the experience. Most of the week was spent with some of my favorite kinds of people – Bible translators – as an invited participant in a global consultation called by SIL International to discuss some challenging issues being faced by Wycliffe Bible Translators and others working in the field.

On Saturday¸ my last day in the country, I was able to do some basic exploring of the city. I visited the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul and got to see the Soreg Inscription, the Siloam Inscription and the Gezer calendar, among other things. I also visited the Hagia Sophia museum, which was Constantinople’s cathedral from A.D. 360 until it was turned into a mosque in A.D. 1453. It has been a museum since 1935. It is a fascinating place, the key to so much important history in that time period. Among other sights in the main hall one may see the Omphalion, the spot where the coronation of every Byzantine emperor took place over many centuries (the large round slab in the middle of the smaller marble slabs) and where they would sit during religious ceremonies.

I couldn’t help but think about the continuing relationship between religion and politics through time – of both the good and the bad things that flowed from establishing Christian (and then Islamic) empires – and of our current political situation here in the U.S. where one can find a fusing together of some forms of evangelical piety with Republican political agendas with little or no attention being given to the exploitation that takes place when political agendas and religious identification are merged. All the talk about “culture wars” suggests a very dangerous metaphor is at work that is designed to lead to militant political fighting and to perceiving some Americans as enemies to be opposed and beaten. As the political campaigning in this country begins to get more and more heated I’m sure we can expect to see more and more candidates seeking votes on the basis (in part, at least) of the religious convictions they hold, and with the explicit or implicit promise that those convictions would lead them to support policies that would be pleasing to those who hold similar religious convictions.

I confess this keeps me thinking about issues of cultural and religious imperialism and their presence even in places that lack kings, emperors and thrones…. May God give us all wisdom to discern the kind of leadership our nation needs and to live out our faith with a humility that honors Christ, the perfect King, the one who taught us to put the needs of others (especially the weak, powerless and marginalized – those who are unable to help themselves) above our own interests. In 1 Peter 5:3-4 we are told that Christian leaders should follow Christ’s example and “not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away” (NRSV).

If only our politicians (and the Christian leaders they woo) would demonstrate a commitment to using their influence not to build the coffers and power of one political party at the expense of the other, or to lead one sector of our society to lord it over any other, but to lead us all to adopt stances of humility marked by wisdom, compassion and selflessness. I think that kind of power would show just how wrong-headed both explicit and implicit forms of imperialism are when it comes to seeking the common good.

Accuracy in Bible translation

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

“Gender Debate: SBC Pastors Denounce NIV

Southern Baptist delegates passed a resolution criticizing the 2011 update and asked LifeWay stores not to sell the Bible translation.”

This was the headline in the Christianity Today Direct e-mail I receive as a subscriber of the magazine, today, July 26, 2011. I clicked through to the website to see what this was about. At their annual meeting in Phoenix in June, the Southern Baptist convention passed a resolution denouncing the 2011 NIV update, and asked their bookstores to not carry it. The accusation is “gender inclusive” and they claim the new NIV is an inaccurate translation.

These are fighting words. In fact we have heard that repeatedly as the publishers have tried to update and edit the NIV to improve the translation based on new scholarship. These attempts have been beaten down and battered by groups such as Focus On The Family, and the Council Of Biblical Manhood And Womanhood. If these claims were true, I’d be the first in line to agree with the objections raised. Unfortunately, they are not.

There are some passages of Scripture which have been used to argue that women should be excluded from leadership in the church and subordinated to their husbands in the home. The Southern Baptist convention has codified this in their revised faith and mission statement (http://www.sbc.net/bfm/bfm2000.asp). The difficulty is that many passages of Scripture which we read unthinkingly in terms of gender restricted language turn out to be inaccurate translations. What the new NIV editions have been trying to do is to correct those inaccuracies.

I will give you one of many examples I could cite to give you a flavor for the difficulty. In I Timothy 3:1, we read

It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. ^[1]

This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. ^[2]

And now, for the NIV:

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task^[3]

This year we have been celebrating the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible. It basically was the official Bible of United States of America since the founding of the country practically. For example when Bible reading was mandated in the public schools, it was a King James version that was read. When we quote the Bible we often quote the King James Version. It has been powerfully influential in shaping what we believe the Bible says about many topics. In this verse, the King James Version taught us to see the office of bishop occupied exclusively by men (gender distinctive intended). The radical mistranslation of the NIV suggests that not only men may aspire to be bishops but also women, as they would be included in the “anyone” of this translation. This is the kind of “mistranslation” to which the Southern Baptists are objecting. However, if we look at the original language we learn the following: it is not the Greek word for man, aner. Nor is it the Greek word for human being often translated as man, anthropos. It is a gender-neutral pronoun, most accurately translated “anyone,” tis.

So, which is the most accurate translation? The one with which we grew up and which we memorized and learned to trust as truly God’s word? Or is it this new NIV against which the Southern Baptists delegates have reacted so strongly? I agree that the Holy Spirit has been at work in our world since its beginning, and he has been teaching the church since its birth on Pentecost. I believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, and I believe that the Holy Spirit has guided and preserved its translation. Because of this, I believe we must respect traditional understandings and interpretations and translations. However, translators are human beings. They are, like the rest of us, fallen sinners saved by grace, and therefore capable of error in their work. That error may come from their expectations and biases, unintentional or otherwise. Therefore, in my mind, it is imperative that we remain open to the teaching of the Holy Spirit. When we see such obvious errors in translation as those described above, we must correct them. Not to do so would leave the church burdened with restrictions on women not authorized by Scripture because of inaccurate and biased translation. Therefore I would say that we should welcome the NIV which corrects mistakes like this in earlier translations and try to accurately reflect gender when gender is indicated in the original language and inclusiveness when inclusiveness is indicated in the original language. Anything less is bad translation.

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^[1] New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (1 Ti 3:1). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

^[2] The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2009 (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version.) (1 Ti 3:1). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[3] The Holy Bible: New International Version. 1996 (electronic ed.) (1 Ti 3:1). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Reading the Bible in Light of Scot McKnight’s Blue Parakeets

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

If you read Christian blogs you are probably already familiar with Scot McKnight’s popular and insightful blog, Jesus Creed. I don’t always read blogs, (Christian or otherwise), but when I do, I prefer Jesus Creed… That is, whenever I go there I find good, sane wisdom. Scot McKnight’s writing is always worth your time. I just came back from a week’s vacation. I brought three books along with me and although I spent some time with the other two books the one book I read straight through (years after everyone else already read it, probably including you) was Scot McKnight’s The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008).

I think it is a wonderful and even very important and easy book on the interpretation of Scripture. It is an easy read and is not the kind of book that is likely to persuade anyone who is already committed to a different way of reading the Bible, but for those who are not already committed to a different way of reading the Bible, who are looking for some initial guidance and/or are willing to let Scot serve as their insightful guide, this will be a very helpful book. (Scot teaches undergraduate students at North Park University and this book is filled with material reflecting that context and clearly would be very useful for students in a context like that, as well as for many other kinds of readers.) The book discusses the tendency to read the Bible as a law book or a rule book or to treat it like a puzzle, and argues for the need to understand it as God’s story in which God spoke to (and through) different people in their days and their ways.

“Blue parakeets” (a reference explained through an observation of bird behaviors at a birdfeeder in the McKnight’s yard) are texts in the Bible or questions that people ask about them that cause us to stop and think again about our understanding of Scripture and how we use it today (see pages 24-25). Scot asks us to face up to the fact that readers pick and choose (or adopt and adapt) which texts we will obey and apply (and he provides plenty of evidence that that is indeed the case) and he seeks to uncover the unwritten and unconscious process of discernment that would explain how we go about that process of picking and choosing so that we can think more clearly about what we are doing and why. Along the way the book emphasizes a number of themes that have become dear to my own heart (and which I have addressed in some of my earlier posts here), including, among other things, Augustine’s promotion of a hermeneutic of love. He also emphasizes the importance of learning to read the Bible with the Great Tradition (but not through the Great Tradition).

I am slightly uncomfortable with some of the language used here and there (like “Is this passage for today or not?”; page 25), but Scot clarifies (I think) that it isn’t ultimately about some passages being for today or not but about whether they are to be applied/obeyed/practiced today and in our culture (or in other times and cultures) in the same way as would have been expected for the original audience or if they may serve as “blue parakeets” that can lead us to stop and think and point us to something beyond the original context and inform our understanding and behavior in different ways that are also informed by the rest of Scripture and our ever-developing understanding of creation and culture. (Scot would compare and contrast “our days and ways” with “those days and ways.”)

James’ Long Boney Finger

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

I was reading through the second chapter of James the other day and found his long boney finger poking me in the chest again. The good brother of Jesus was once again yelling at me, in this case about my ever so subtle tendency toward expressing favoritism in my church.

The scene he paints could not be more vivid: The setting is the gathered place of worship, perhaps a messianic synagogue (James 2.2-4). As we read the story in the second chapter, possibly the glint of gold on the finger as the sun hits it is what we are drawn to first. Then we notice the purple robes. Clearly this person who just entered the synagogue is a person of distinction. We cannot help but notice him, and if noticing him is our only fault, perhaps we would be okay. But, it takes only this first glance at this visitor for the social gravity of the place to take over. Like a rock, the rich visitor falls to the front of the place of worship. When he arrives at the front, he found a poor man without a ring, void of a colorful robe, and perched at his feet. Let the worship service begin.

Extending beyond my own personal proclivities in this matter as I face the fellowship hall of my own church every Sunday, I find the most dramatic example of preferentiality in the church today in general is in the celebrity status we give to some within our congregations. Don’t we offer certain individuals in our Christian circles celebrity status that mimics the larger culture around us? People and US magazines have nothing on us in this regard. If we were to compare the lists of celebrities who are hot commodities in the Christian world at any time, our lists would be remarkably similar. We should resist this celebrity culture for the sake of these individuals as well as for our own.

Further, the greatest dangers in our churches in this regard maybe the most subtle. Discussions involving the status of churches themselves inevitably will illicit a clear profile of what would conventionally be considered “healthy” or vital churches versus those considered not so. Any pastor committed to the current canon of literature involving numerous church growth models in circulation will know that the “sweet spot” in any congregation involves attracting young couples in their 20’s through their 40’s who have lots of children and youth to fill church programs. These are the productive years in the lives of families; the hope is, of course, some of this productivity will translate into the productivity within our churches as well. Conversely, when discussing less productive churches, the most natural description is that they are small churches “filled with old people.”

There is undoubtedly logic to this profile that has a great deal of merit to it, and it has, by and large, passed the test of time for pragmatic reasons. But stepping back far enough to see this perspective against the larger backdrop of the kingdom of God, does this profile of church life not illustrate precisely what James rails against in his example of what is not to go on in the churches he is writing to in first century Asia Minor? Like the silver ring and purple robe of the wealthy visitor, we give preferential treatment to the most productive in our midst. It is for these that we re-engineer our worship services, sometimes to the objections of a prior generation. It is for these that we develop our best programs. And it is to these we seek to attract and accommodate. We do these things while those who we may deem less productive—the aging, sometimes singles, at times the economically challenged—tend not to get as much of our attention. Even our descriptions of them suggest that we view them somewhat as liabilities to our church life.[1] Of this, I will only repeat James’ admonition: “My brothers (and sisters), as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism (2.1).”

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[1] There are several who are beginning to rethink some of these values that have become so central to our thinking of church life. Two who have especially rethought the role of the elderly within our churches are Gordon McDonald, Who Stole My Church (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2007) and Cedric W. Tilberg, Revolution Underway: An Aging Church in an Aging Society, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984.