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.

Because He Lives!

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

As we approach Easter Sunday my thoughts go to a few key passages about Christ’s resurrection and what it means for our own present and future.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ takes us to the heart of the gospel. It is the climactic event to which all four gospels lead us to look forward as we read along. And other New Testament authors also make it clear that Christ’s resurrection is at the heart of the gospel message. In Romans 1:2-4, Paul refers to “the gospel [God] promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord” (NIV). That Christ now reigns as “the Son of God in power” is established by his resurrection from the dead. The long-awaited time has finally arrived when, rather than being merely a bit player in the politics of the Ancient Near East as was the case throughout , God’s anointed Davidic king now reigns over all creation to bring righteousness, peace and joy to all those who recognize him for who he is. The resurrection of Christ is the promise of our future and that of creation as a whole, and gives meaning to our present life in the midst of the sufferings and challenges we face in this world. As Paul says in light of the resurrection in Romans 8:18, “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Here are a few more thoughts on the meaning of Christ’s resurrection, mainly in light of Paul’s discussion of it in 1 Corinthians 15 and drawn from the new Pillar commentary on 1 Corinthians (Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians [The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010], pages 737-9):

For Paul, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is at the heart of the gospel message (1 Cor. 1-15), gives meaning to our life and service to Christ in this present age (vv. 16-19, 29-32) and serves as a fundamental basis for perseverance in Christ (v. 58). It also clarifies (as do some other NT texts) the relationship between protology and eschatology (the beginning and the end of the human story, vv. 24-28, 45-49) and the relationship between Christ’s experience of resurrection and glory/reign and God’s intentions for the rest of his people (vv. 20-28). The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, more fully expounded here than in any other part of Scripture, makes it clear that God’s purpose has never been simply that of “saving souls” for a disembodied existence in heaven, as though creation itself was of merely temporal usefulness and significance. Creation turns out to be not simply the context in which God is working out his redemptive work, but reflects instead the breadth of God’s redemptive concern and plan. Physical, earthly and bodily existence have to do with the nature of creation as God made it and, in a completely redeemed and transformed version, are part of the nature of the context and existence that God has in mind for us and the rest of creation throughout eternity. Our life in this world matters, in part, because it turns out to be not merely a waiting room in which we pass our time until being invited into the rest of the building where we will really live. Our life in this world establishes the starting chapters for a story that will continue and flourish in radically new ways (and not merely begin for the first time) upon the resurrection of the dead.

As Oliver O’Donovan has argued (Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline of Evangelical Ethics, 13), “Christian ethics depends upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”:

In proclaiming the resurrection of Christ, the apostles proclaimed also the resurrection of mankind in Christ; and in proclaiming the resurrection of mankind, they proclaimed the renewal of all creation with him. The resurrection of Christ in isolation from mankind would not be a gospel message. The resurrection of mankind apart from creation would be a gospel of a sort, but of a purely Gnostic and world-denying sort which is far from the gospel that the apostles actually preached.[1]

O’Donovan also points out (p. 56) that “[t]he resurrection of Christ, upon which Christian ethics is founded, vindicates the created order in this double sense: it redeems it and it transforms it.” The proclamation of the resurrection of Christ “directs us forward to the end of history which that particular and representative fate is universalized in the resurrection of mankind from the dead… (15:23). The sign that God has stood by his created order implies that his order, with mankind in its proper place within it, is to be totally restored at the last” (O’Donovan, 15). This message gives meaning and significance to this present life, making it clear that our “life on earth is important to God; he has given it its order; it matters that it should conform to the order he has given it. Once we have grasped that, we can understand too how this order requires of us both a denial of all that threatens to become disordered and a progress towards a life which goes beyond this order without negating it” (O’Donovan, 14-15).

Although I’m not a big fan of Gaither music, I can’t argue with their famous chorus. It is because He lives that I can face tomorrow without fear, and life at this present moment has meaning in light of the fact that He lives and holds the future.

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[1] O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 31. “The work of the Creator … is affirmed once and for all by this conclusion [i.e., the resurrection]. It might have been possible, we could say, before Christ rose from the dead, for someone to wonder whether creation was a lost cause. If the creature consistently acted to uncreate itself, and with itself to uncreate the rest of creation, did this not mean that God’s handiwork was flawed beyond hope of repair? It might have been possible before Christ rose from the dead to answer in good faith, Yes. Before God raised Jesus from the dead, the hope that we call ‘gnostic’, the hope of redemption from creation rather than for the redemption of creation, might have appeared to be the only possible hope. ‘But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead …’ (15:20). That fact rules out those other possibilities, for in the second Adam the first is rescued. The deviance of his will, its fateful leaning towards death, has not been allowed to uncreate what God created” (Resurrection and Moral Order, 14)

The Centre for Public Christianity: Communicating Christian Perspectives in Clear and Compelling Ways

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I’m writing this from Sydney, Australia, where I will be participating in the Moore Theological College conference on “The Wisdom of the Cross: Exploring 1 Corinthians.” Today, however, I had the special treat of going to the offices and studio of the Centre for Public Christianity (also known here as CPX) here in Sydney, where they interviewed me on the topics of Paul’s approach to sexual ethics in 1 Corinthians and on issues in Bible translation. For the former topic we did a longer audio interview to be posted as a pod-cast (and possibly a radio bit) and a shorter video interview to be posted online. On the subject of Bible translation we just did a couple of video pieces.

I must say I am very impressed with the work of CPX. They have put together quite nice library of audio, video and print pieces on a wide range of topics of interest to Christians and non-Christians alike. Their key categories are Christianity, Society & Politics, The arts, World Religions, Science & Religion, Ethics, History, and Big Questions.

The folks at CPX are an impressive and gifted group who are committed to articulating the Christian worldview and its implications in a way that is clear and (hopefully) compelling to modern listeners of various stripes. And for their efforts they have gained a reputation with some key media outlets here in Australia as being the key go-to people for getting the/a contemporary Christian perspective on whatever issue comes to their attention.

I encourage you to take a look at the resources available through CPX and to think about how they might be used in your ministry context, and how they might serve as a model for our own challenges in reflecting upon and communicating the implications of the gospel message for the issues of our days.

I think we need a ministry like CPX in North America. In the meantime I give thanks for the example they have set for the rest of us!

Whining Through the Ages

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Let me whine for a while. I think I’ve reached that moment similar to when I have played a favorite song one too many times. You know the kind of song I am talking about; the song with the lyric, the melody line, the refrain that perfectly encapsules some part of your life…perfectly. And, you make the fateful, if understandable, mistake of playing it one too many times. Now crushed by the weight of redundancy, the song loses its meaning. When does a cliché become a cliché?

This is what I feel about the current language describing Generation theory. No longer is it enough to call ourselves Christians, human beings for that matter. The current climate has us all corralled into increasingly-smaller holding pens called Gen X, Y, Z, post X, Y, Z, the emerging X, Y, Z.

It is not that Generation theory hasn’t been a helpful paradigm, even truthful to a point. The simple reality that cultural values shift through time from one generation to the next is so self-evident it is hard to conceive that it has only been in recent years that the idea has taken root in our national consciousness.

But, have we not pulled the thin strands that hold this concept together almost beyond the breaking point? How many churches have I observed in recent years being completely re-engineered on the basis of this concept alone? Worship services, small group ministries, evangelism, outreach, teaching: Every aspect of church-life has been filtered through the generational lens. Pastors now look upon their congregations as if they are filled with generational subspecies roaming across the Serengeti. Each subspecies—Gen X, Y, or Z--thinks differently, speaks a different language, and responds to God differently in the most fundamental of ways.

Not long ago, I met with the leadership of a national para-Church organization on behalf of the seminary and I made the fateful mistake of questioning the veracity of Generational theory. The silence around that table of leaders was deafening. For a moment, I thought perhaps I had questioned the Resurrection.

Part of what drives my passion on this issue is personal and results from my own work in my doctoral work on assessing the empirical research on religious conversion. Fifteen years ago, if anyone would have questioned the truthfulness of brainwashing or deprivation theories as singular explanations for how individuals change religious commitments, they would have been laughed off the stage. Not so today. We have moved well beyond these explanations to others. Similarly, the surrounding orthodoxy around Generational theory is equally vulnerable to change. To speak of it as a concept is not so much to diminish its usefulness as to caution us of its limitation. How much now rides on this conceptualization in your church?

I think one of the most dangerous implications of our over-dependence upon Generational theory is that it so causes us to focus upon the differences in individuals within our churches at the expense of what unites us together. My twenty-some-year old son wears his pants a little lower than I do. He uses vocabulary at times that sends me scurrying for further explanation. He enjoys different forms of music. But, when I look deep into his eyes, when we talk about what touches us most intimately, when we speak about God, and our family, and our mutual traditions, we are the same species.

Further, we share the same Gospel. The things that both of us look for in Christian community—authenticity, honesty, winsomeness—are the same. Exactly the same. The similarities far outweigh the differences, and the current focus on what makes us so different prevent us—prevent us as a church—from focusing on the most important things, that which binds us together in Christ. The huge amounts of time spent on fine tuning our churches into parts has become a grand diversion from what really, really matters.

I’m done whining now.

Something about the Sea

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I have never lived far from the ocean. Even if the busyness of life keeps me from heading to the sea, it is a comfort to know that it is out there close in its grey infinitude. You don’t need to press your ear against a sea shell to hear its voice beckoning. The sound of the waves goes well beyond earshot.

What is the ocean’s allure? Personal history of course plays a part. If half my childhood summers were wasted in the slough of despond that is 1970’s television (“Joker, joker…and a triple!”; “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”), the rest were spent on the beaches of Duxbury, MA. There was plenty of opportunity to think as you walked to Duxbury Beach from the mainland, across what was said to be the longest wooden bridge in America; or as you walked down its six miles of sand. From the prospect of high waves to ride in youth to the reality of broken romances in adolescence, the ocean was the backdrop for much of my life. All of this clings to your mind as determinedly as the sea salt once stuck to your skin.

On a more philosophical level, the sea side incarnates the tension of land and liquidity, changelessness and change. The shore may erode through the slow decades, the sea may explode in hurricane force, but the shore is still the shore and the sea is still the sea. The marriage endures through the storms. Yet the sea is always shifting: changing color, changing shape, changing depth. A friend of mine admitted that he was reluctant to move to St. Andrews in Scotland because living by the sea would be so monotonous. He happily discovered how wrong he had been. The Greeks said you can’t step into the same river twice; the same could be said of seeing the sea. For the land-loving Israelite, such shape-shifting made the sea a ready image of the chaos that always threaten to engulf the world (Daniel 7, Revelation 21:1). But even they knew that down deep it was the magnificent handiwork of the living God, and even the dread Leviathan was just a (Ps. 104:24-26).

The sea is also the great repository of memory, a magnet for musings. Dylan Thomas writes in the beginning of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”, “All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves.” It is a great gray slate waiting for you to scratch your thoughts on its surface. There is no therapy quite so satisfying as simply spinning your shredded soul into the forgetfulness of the deep. Not for nothing did God promise that he would cast our sins into the depth of the sea (Micah 7:19); there they can be drowned as dead as Pharaoh.

And so the sea’s highest call is to remind us of God: beautiful in his simplicity, ferocious in his wrath, unfathomable in the depths of his sin-swallowing grace.

Thoughts on Theological Polemic that Honors Christ

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

In Matthew 7:3 Jesus asked his disciples, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” The answer, it seems, is very simple! Because I actually think the thing in my brother’s eye is a log, and I only have a tiny speck of dust in my own eye. I’ve been thinking lately about how we tend to get so comfortable with our own views that we begin to think that our perceptions of things are “natural” while those of other people are not. In theology we often go through an early stage or period where we see strengths, weaknesses and problems with both or various sides of some issue. We wrestle through those issues, deciding which strengths outweigh which weaknesses and which problems are easier to resolve than others and we decide where we stand on the issue. We may decide tentatively initially, or we may decide with the zeal of the convert who has made a definitive commitment and who now believes they have finally come to the truth of the matter.

After we live from within the position we have adopted for a while, we tend to become more and more comfortable with the arguments we found in favor of our position and against the alternative(s). This is often to the point that we eventually fail to remember that the position we hold had and has problems of its own (which is why godly and intelligent people do not all agree on the issue and why we had to work through the issues and challenges in the first place.)

So the Arminian forgets that there are some biblical passages that seem to more easily support a Calvinist position and the Calvinist forgets that there are some biblical passages that seem to more easily support an Arminian position. Similarly, the egalitarian forgets that some biblical texts do seem to point towards a more complementarian position and the complementarian seems to forget that there are some that seem to support a more egalitarian position. Of course the number of issues could be limitlessly expanded to include various solutions to the problem of evil, the proper mode and subjects of baptism, the meaning and practice of the Lord’s Supper, Christian views on war and the use of violence, eschatological views, understandings of sanctification, and many, many more.

The longer we live within the viewpoint we have adopted the harder it becomes to recognize that what we originally thought to be branches of more or less equal thickness have over time begun to seem more like specks on one side and logs on the other. That’s not quite true. In many cases we don’t think ours are even specks any more, but the biblical and theological problems in the other person’s position clearly look like logs – obvious, embarrassing, ugly logs. I’m getting to the age where I need to visit the eye doctor on a regular basis. My vision is changing over time. Our intellectual and theological vision also changes with time. It may not deteriorate in general, but we may begin to have difficulty seeing problems with our own positions that once were not quite as difficult to see. Theological debate is made more difficult when we fail to realize that the advantages and normative status we attribute to our own positions, the positions which provide us with such a clear view of the deficiencies in others’ ideas, are not readily apparent to those with whom we differ.

When or if we enter into debate about any of the issues that have divided brothers and sisters in Christ it is important to remember that arguments and evidence that we now consider clear and obvious are not so clear and obvious to others, who are perhaps even more attuned to other arguments and evidence that we might tend to neglect or downplay. It is also important to make sure we practice love of neighbor and its proper application in the context of theological debate.

Roger Nicole, professor emeritus of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has written an excellent article reminding us of our obligations to those who differ from us. As he puts it, “what we owe that person who differs from us, whoever that may be, is what we owe every human being--we owe them love. And we owe it to them to deal with them as we ourselves would like to be dealt with or treated. (Matthew 7:12)”

Nicole helpfully reminds us that, “we owe it to our opponents to deal with them in such a way that they may sense that we have a real interest in them as persons, that we are not simply trying to win an argument or show how smart we are, but that we are deeply interested in them--and are eager to learn from them as well as to help them.”

Nicole provides a wonderful model for the way we ought to present the views of those with whom we disagree:

One method that I have found helpful in making sure that I have dealt fairly with a position that I could not espouse was to assume that a person endorsing that view was present in my audience (or was reading what I had written). Then my aim is to represent the view faithfully and fully without mingling the criticism with factual statements. In fact, I try to represent them so faithfully and fully that an adherent to that position might comment, “This man certainly does understand our view!” It would be a special boon if one could say, “I never heard it stated better!” Thus I have earned the right to criticize. But before I proceed to do this, it is only proper that I should have demonstrated that I have a correct understanding of the position I desire to contest.

D. A. Carson shares a helpful excerpt from Bryan Magee’s book, Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 152-3, about what he learned about argumentation from Karl Popper. It takes the approach recommended by Nicole in the previous paragraph one step further:

I had always loved argument, and over the years I had become quite good at identifying weak points in an opponent’s defense and bringing concentrated fire to bear on them. This is what virtually all polemicists have sought to do since ancient times, even the most famous of them. But Popper did the opposite. He sought out his opponents’ case at its strongest and attacked that. Indeed, he would improve it, if he possibly could, before attacking it. . . . Over several pages of prior discussion he would remove avoidable contradictions or weaknesses, close loopholes, pass over minor deficiencies, let his opponents’ case have the benefit of every possible doubt, and reformulate the most appealing parts of it in the most rigorous, powerful and effective arguments he could find—and then direct his onslaught against it.

One could argue that Popper’s approach is most consistent with the Christian ethic of love for one’s neighbor (although the word “onslaught” may not be the best description for a Christian approach to debate!). All too often one walks away from a debate sensing that one person’s (or neither person’s) strong and valid points were ever acknowledged or that many of the points of criticism that were made were completely valid but that they addressed secondary or non-essential aspects of the opponent’s arguments rather than the key planks in the foundation or essential points of their argument.

I highly recommend a careful reading of Nicole’s whole argument to all who might ever enter into any kind of theological debate. It is full of wisdom and grace. I’ll just cite two more paragraphs, regretting those that I must omit.

To raise the question, “What do I owe the person who differs from me?” is very important, for otherwise any discussion is doomed to remain unproductive. The truth that I believe I have grasped must be presented in a spirit of love and winsomeness. To do otherwise is to do detriment to truth itself, for it is more naturally allied to love than to hostility. (Eph. 4:15) Belligerence or sarcasm may, in fact, reflect a certain insecurity that is not warranted when one is really under the sway of truth. It may well be that God's servant may be moved to righteous indignation in the presence of those "who suppress the truth by their wickedness" (Rom. 1:18)…. But when dealing with those we have a desire to influence for the good, we need imperatively to remain outgoing and gracious.

When we give due attention to what we owe those who differ and what we can learn from them, we may be less inclined to proceed in a hostile manner. Our hand will not so readily contract into a boxing fist, but will be extended as an instrument of friendship and help; our feet will not be used to bludgeon another, but will bring us closer to those who stand afar; our tongue will not lash out in bitterness and sarcasm, but will speak words of wisdom, grace and healing (Prov. 10:20, 21; 13:14; 15:1; 24:26; 25:11; James 3).

Of theological debate, like the making of many books, there is no end. In fact, healthy theological debate is vitally important for the health of the church and so it is tremendously important that the church learn to do it well, in a way that honors God and edifies the church. May God help us, as we seek the truth and its benefits, to recognize our own logs, and to be people in whom Christ’s own love, grace, wisdom and patience may be seen, so that (although this may seem a stretch to some) even our theological arguments could be perceived as having been practiced in such a fair and gracious manner that they may be seen as light shining before others who might recognize them as (Christ-inspired) good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16).

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

I just hosted Will Willimon at a pastor’s event. His bio includes the fact that he has written sixty books. Do the math. Will Willimon is sixty plus years old. He has written sixty books. Aside for this fact about him, I really liked him.

It has taken me over a year and a half to write my little book and I am still not finished. But, it is this monthly obligation—opportunity—to blog to you that has sent me scurrying to my anthology of modern poetry.

E.E. Cummings has a wonderful little poem called [a man who had fallen among thieves]. In it he speaks of “a man who had fallen among thieves lay by the roadside on his back dressed in fifteenthrate ideas.” “Fifteenthrate ideas.” That’s me on most days. Asked to periodically pull my way away from the minutia of my administrative position here at the seminary, asked to pull my way away from the settled, undisturbed pond of my own middle age lifestyle, you would think I could come up with a first rate idea at least once a month that could provoke or cajole, or at least mildly stimulate another person.

I find that most of the time I wake up in the morning with a head full of fifteenthrate ideas. They actually seem like first-rate ideas when I am between that lukewarm time period between twilight and dawn when it is difficult distinguishing between dream and awakenness. But, when the sun comes up and the light shines on these great ideas, they fade like a bad pair of jeans.

And then I think of a pastor who every Monday morning must look deep into the lens of Scripture—every week—and the expectation is to craft a new sermon full of first rate ideas for the next Sunday. He or she has to start all over again, every week., month after month, year after year. From the perspective of the pew, is there anything worse than sitting down to a sermon full of fifteenthrate ideas?

Don’t get me wrong; Scripture is filled to the brim with first-rate ideas. Christ’s atoning work on the cross, as it finds its way through the annuls of the Old Testament and as it bears fruit in the final pages of Revelation, is the ultimate great idea. But, why is it that most of us have to be convinced of this every Sunday? Most pastors find their sanctuaries filled with expectations of something more than the simple call of the Gospel. They want something with a little more pizzazz, a bit more luster.

Why is this? More to the point, why am I stuck with this fifteenthrate idea in writing this blog?

Lost in the Taiga

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

What could it be? Scanning across the sea of dark green coniferous forest, there it was, a square break in the darkness, a tiny patch in the fabric of the uninhabited Siberian quilt. It almost looked like a tilled garden. But, how can this be? They were hundreds of kilometers from civilization.

From their helicopter on that spring of 1982, Russian geologists looking for drilling sights in the subarctic mountains--taiga--of Siberia were desperately searching for a small morsel of land where they could put down. What they found, instead, was a thin fragment of civilization that first dumbfounded them and then captured their full imaginations. Parachuting in, they found themselves staring into the black din of a musty, sticky cabin, barely held up by sagging ceiling joists.

And from out of that cabin came an amazing human story. Huddled in that humble cabin came five hollow figures seemingly held together by bailing wire. First came the old man, his disheveled beard matched by his patched—his re-patched—shirt and pants. Two grown sons followed him, and then, behind them they could hear the hysterical cries of two grown daughters. It was summer so all were without shoes. But, come winter, they walked the snowy mountain range with homemade birch bark boots. The geologists stood face to face with the Lykov family. In turn, the Lykov family stood face to face with other human beings. The grown children had never seen another human face other than their family members. Never. They lived their lives completely to themselves, surviving solely on subsistence fare of potatoes and pine nuts.

What could have driven this family of hermits into this vast wilderness? Vasoly Peskov tells this amazing story that has reached millions of readers in his chronicle, Lost in the Taiga. What drove this family for decades into a life radically set apart from civilization? The Lykov family was part of a small group of “Old Believers” who began their journey from the outside world during the reforms in the Russian Orthodox Church during Peter the Great. Systematically setting themselves apart from the world, they spent what time they had each day that was not filled with scraping together enough food for the next, in long ritualistic, pietistic prayer. Their sole goal in life was to remain uncontaminated by the larger world.

The story of the Lykov family was part of my summer reading. I found it an amazing story not because it was so dramatically different from where most of us live our lives, although this is certainly the case in one sense. Quite the opposite, I found the story so compelling because I related so much to it. What is this impulse in all of us that closely measures our commitment to Jesus Christ by the degree to which we separate ourselves from the world around us? Like the Lykov family, I realize there is safety in maintaining a distance from the world, be it geographical, intellectual, or moral. But, in playing it safe, do we not risk a contamination of another sort? Like the Lykov family, losing contact with their world caused them to live tiny, utterly selfish, and distorted lives.

The point is, Jesus’ example in the Gospel clearly points us to the often forgotten truth that we, the Church, need the world out there—our associations, our towns and communities, our relationships with our unbelieving friends and enemies—as much as they need us. Without continuous, ongoing connections with our world, we all run the risk of living very small safe lives robbed of the very relationships that stirs the gospel in our souls.

Nasty Neighbors at the Lost and Found

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

My favorite quiz show moment came years ago on the late, lamented “Tic Tac Dough”, hosted by the effervescent Wink Martindale. A map of the United States was displayed on the screen, with one state lit up in red. The contestant was asked to identify the state. With that peculiar confidence born of complete cluelessness, he answered soberly, “I believe that’s Ohio, Wink.” While memory fails me as to precisely which state was in fact lit up, I do remember that it was one of the most un-Ohio-like of the fifty – perhaps California, Texas, or Montana.

Sometimes apparently easy questions can trip us up. Imagine, for instance, that Wink Martindale were to pop into your living room just now and ask, “For fifty points: what is the unifying theme of the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son in chapter 15 of Luke’s gospel?” Most of us would immediately reply, “I believe that’s, ‘lost things get found’, Wink.” And we would be correct. Mostly.

I say, “mostly”, because when you look a little more closely at Luke 15 as a whole, you will see that God’s love for the lost is, strictly speaking, the premise for Jesus’ main point, rather than the main point itself. Notice how the chapter begins: “Now the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ Then Jesus told them this parable.”(Luke 15:1-3 NIV). We would expect the parables that ensue to be directed as much to the Pharisees’ grumbling as to the fact that sinners are coming to Jesus.

This is exactly what we find. About half of the parable of the lost sheep takes place after the little lamb is already safe and sound: “Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” (15:6-7). The parable of the lost coin ends the same way: “And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (15:9-10). And we are all familiar with the elder brother in the story of the prodigal son, whining that he never gets to have a party with his friends.

It is not difficult to see Jesus’ point: rather than grumbling like the elder son, the Pharisees and teachers of the law ought to be like the neighbors who rejoice with the shepherd and the woman. We don’t lose the familiar blessings of the parables by noting this: the fact remains that God really is on the hunt for sinners. It is still perfectly appropriate to wrap up an evangelistic meeting with a thoughtful reflection of the prodigal son’s return home (though even there we might ask whether in the world of the parable the son is driven more by pragmatic food-based incentives rather than a heartfelt longing for dear old dad).

What we gain, meanwhile, is a valuable lesson for all of us who have been in the fold for a while. While we would of course never come out and grumble, “Why are all these sinners becoming Christians?”, it is all too easy for veteran saints to slip into the habit of downplaying the “shallowness” or “emotionalism” of new converts. Just as parents have to make a concerted effort to remember what it was like to be child, so older believers have to make a concerted effort to remember the undercurrent of pure joy that accompanies a genuine turning to God. May we rejoice with God and his angels for his continual work to seek and to save the lost.

Tame Tigers

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

A few weeks ago, I went to the circus. They had the usual circus-y things: a marginally amusing clown troupe, acrobats, and tightrope walkers, all “enhanced” by a booming twenty-first century audio system and unnecessary video supplementation (why watch a live clown when you can watch one on TV?). Two things stood out: a fellow named Bello, who, while a clown in name and dress, is a jaw-droppingly good acrobat. Dressed in his silly clothes, he does handstands on a swaying chair fifty feet or more above the crowd (with no net) or runs on the outside of a gerbil-wheel/pendulum contraption that again lifts him net-less far beyond where any sane human being would go. Bello: the LeBron James of clowns.

The other memorable figure was the Tiger Tamer, though here I had a much more mixed reaction. On the one hand, it was amazing to watch one man and his whip (was it electrified, as some in the crowd murmured?) make eight or nine tigers do his bidding. James the brother of Jesus knew that mankind had tamed every type of beast (James 3:7), but I suppose even he would have been impressed by the display of mastery here. Tigers shaking hands, tigers running through hoops, tigers hopping across the circular cage like friendly little bunnies…

And I think it was that last one that turned the tide for me. Watching the tamed tiger jumping on his back legs like that suddenly didn’t seem astounding or frightening or amusing. It was just sad, sad to see a beast of such power and dignity compelled to do something so out of keeping with his nature. Was it the whip, electric or otherwise, that drove him on, or the promise of a few steaks after the show? Where had the tiger in him gone?

Sadder still was the thought that all too often we Christians are the same tame tigers. Bearers of God’s Spirit, heirs of a kingdom that will never end, partakers of the powers of the age to come, we cower when the world cracks its whip of persecution. We, whom God has purchased with the life of his Son, hop around like everyone else and slink back to our cages as long as they toss us a few slabs of beef. It is a pretty sad spectacle.

And while I would not have wanted the tigers to break out of their cages right there in the Boston Garden, I do think the church could unleash a little mayhem to break loose from our Babylonian captivity. I remember the words of Bagheera in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. He had been a pet once, too, as he reveals to Mowgli, but he was a pet no more: “They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera – the Panther – and not man’s plaything, I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. Is it not so?”