Inside 537

Christians and Politics

It's weird to me that people think that Christians shouldn't get involved in politics.  Or that they should keep politics out of their religion.  Weird.  That's because back in the mid-1800's the church began to get mentally lazy.  The Christian experience began to take on a greater and greater emphasis on emotion.  Intellect became almost taboo.  Listen to Christians today talk about the dangers of becoming too "intellectual."  This has not always been the case.  There was a day when Christians could take on all comers in debate and win.  Today your lucky to find a Christian who can name all the disciples.

Frank Pastore has a great article on Christians and Politics.  Here's an excerpt:

The best way for me to love my neighbor is through those things I choose to do personally. The second best way is through votes for candidates who support policies that I believe will promote the common good. Thus, I am political because I am loving, and I am loving because I am Christian. Therefore, I should argue—albeit in a God-glorifying manner—about politics.

Perhaps many Christians don’t know how to argue without getting angry—though there are times when anger is morally justified. The two things that we should be willing to argue about are theology and politics. This isn’t about getting mad or letting your emotions get out of control. In fact, when we lose our cool and merely emote, we’re not arguing very well and we actually become less persuasive rather than more so. It usually escalates into a test of whose emotional intensity is strongest, rather than the strength of the arguments themselves.

Perhaps many Christians think arguing is bad because they can’t distinguish between a person and their ideas. Even for themselves, they can take it personally when someone is arguing against their ideas. But not arguing does make me a nice person. And the fact that I do argue about consequential things does not make me unloving. Nice people can be wrong, and mean people can be right. I can criticize a person’s ideas without criticizing the person. The challenge is to communicate my disagreement—to argue—in such a way that the person understands I disagree with their ideas, not them personally. Friends can and do argue over their disagreements, though it is most often the case that they are friends precisely because they do agree on so many things.

To read the whole article, which is refreshing and enlightening, click here.

I remember a day when I could argue vehemently with my best friends about things we felt strongly about.  These days, as Pastore says, it seems that people can't indeed tell the difference between themselves and their arguments.  An attack on their ideas is a direct attack on themselves.  They find it impossible to be friends with those with different opinions.

Really?  We can't care about each other more than we care about McCain?  Or Obama?  Weird.  That's all, just weird.

Pagan Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christians get famous for missing the point.  Not the majority of us, necessarily, but those who do miss the point seem to get the most press, the current media being chronically Christophobic.  At this time of year the issues that inevitably arise are, the secularization of Christmas and, the mixing of the pagan and Christian symbols and rituals in the Christmas tradition.  The former is the attack from the outside.  The latter is the attack from within.  It doesn’t surprise me when atheists attack the presence of Christ.  That is as natural to them as breathing.  They don’t miss the point, they are making their point, and doing so with an alarming alacrity.  What concerns me is that in their endeavor they are abetted by Christians themselves, those of us who should know better.  The combining of the pagan and Christian so upsets some believers that they refuse to celebrate Christmas at all.  Others drop a few of the symbols, such as the tree, exchanging of gifts, elves, or whatever strikes them as smacking of the druidic.  They cite the well-known fact that Christ was not even born at this time of year.  Therefore, they find the placing of a Nativity scene beneath the branches of the Christmas tree to be particularly offensive. 

Their argument is that the true meaning of Christmas is distorted, or at best diluted by this subtle, “creeping paganism.”  They love to sidle up to you at the potluck and whisper conspiratorially, “You do know where the idea of the Christmas tree comes from, don’t you?”  Then they proceed to recite some arcane historical tidbit about the ancient Celts or what-not.  Who cares?  By that time the point has vanished over the horizon.

The way I learned it, the pagan rituals came out of fear.  People had gods for everything, and if you were not careful you would anger one or more of them and bring disaster down upon yourself, your household, or even your entire tribe.  One of their principal fears was death and darkness, and the winter of every year brought an abundance of both.  Primitive people saw the world coming to an end.  Their rituals were designed to persuade their gods to have mercy on them and return the world to light and life.

Fear.  Death.  Darkness.  That’s the opportunity we miss.  What better place to inject the singular ultimate hope of humanity?  What better time to celebrate the human birth of our Creator God?  Where better to shine a light than directly into the darkness?  “Perfect love casts out fear.”  1John 4:18 Why should we, as Christians see this as an attack on Christianity as opposed to our own attack on the darkness that paganism brings to the table?  Why can’t we see this as an opportunity to sieze?

In modern times we complain about the commercializing of Christmas.  Greed has replaced the fear and anxiety of the ancients.  Greed is our New Age darkness, the death of the human spirit.  The New Age spiritualism is all about the self; unleashing the power within ME; satisfying all MY desires; connecting with my own godhood (“I will make myself like the Most High...” Isaiah 14:14.  Sound familiar?).  That is the essence of greed.  What better place, then, to inject the unprecedented opportunity for an intimate relationship with the “Universal Oneness” (ie. Jesus Christ, the Creator of that universe)?  What better time of year to proclaim the ultimate selflessness — the redemption of an entire race of beings through the life, death and resurrection of their own creator?

So I say let the pagan and the Christian mix.  When light combines with darkness, which always wins?  “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”  John 1:5.  How true.  After centuries of this bizarre juxtaposition, has the pagan overcome the Christian?  Has the darkness overcome the light?  I don’t think so. Let’s get a count.  Raise your hand if you look at the decorated tree and think, “Druids”?  Come on, be honest.  Now, raise your hand if you think, “the birth of Jesus”?  I think we have a winner.

Now, who has usurped whose symbols?

Pure Religion; James 1:27

Sheila is finally in Malawi.  Everyone is safe and has begun working.

But here's the thing.  She's on the plane to Heathrow Airport and some guy sits next to her.  Well, you know that at some point the topic of Africa is going to come up, right?  Yeah.  So, if you know Sheila you know she's fairly pumped about Malawi and the Passion Center for Children there.  She's been an intimate member of that team from Crest Community Church for a couple of years.  (O.K. Crest Community Church in Riverside under Pastor Eric Sythoff is a miracle in and of itself, but that's another story).  So she's just being herself, right?  An irresistible force crashing through an immovable object at light speed.  Well, they get off the plane in London and this guy writes her a check to help the orphanage.

$10,000.00.

I know.  The first thing everyone says when I tell this story is, "Was the check any good?"  I don't know.  I'm assuming it is because I want it to be.  The story's not over.  But now EVERYBODY'S pumped.  They weren't even there yet and God was already moving mountains.

I'm so proud of her.

Now I know this isn't part of the "Sandals" crew or anything, but if you want to get people pumped about missions somebody should invite these people to share their experiences when they return.  Talk to Sheila.  She's going again next year.  Visit the site.  Get involved.  100% of any sponsorship goes to the kids because the overhead is all volunteer.

I've got a feeling it's going to get a lot bigger.

Dem Bones

Discovery is at it again.  If you saw or ignored their latest comedy on the bones of Jesus, you may want to join the discussion.  Here are some bullet points from StandToReason.org:

 

 

 

 

    *Scholars have known about these tombs for over 25 years.  There's a reason they haven't taken these names seriously.  Only three have any direct biblical significance:  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  And that cluster of names is statistically unremarkable. In fact, it would be odd if a family with those three names was not found in a tomb together, given their common use (there are at least four ossuaries discovered inscribed "Jesus, son of Joseph," and one in four women were named Mary, so it's even money that one of these tombs would have that combination).  And connection of Jesus to any of the other names? Wild speculation.  So what you have here is a creative guessing game.

    *The entire argument is based on the statistical significance of the names in a cluster.  If Jesus was married, and if Jesus was married to a woman named Mariamne, and if Mariamne was also a nickname for Mary Magdalene, and if Jesus had a brother named Matthew, and if Jesus had a son named Judas, and if the now-famous James ossuary belonged to James the brother of Jesus, then you'd have all the members of Jesus' family together in one tomb.  But that's a lot of "ifs.

    *Even though this is called the "Jesus Family Tomb," there is no hard evidence that any of these so-called "family members" is even related.  The only DNA testing that's been done-between Jesus and Mariamne-came up negative.  Let me repeat that:  The DNA test came up negative.  That is fact.  The rest is speculation.

    *The documentary claims, "Jesus and Mary were married, as the DNA evidence suggests."   This is nonsense.  Think about it.  How can DNA evidence suggest someone is married? DNA can't "suggest" anything about legal relationships, only biological ones.  In this case, the DNA evidence showed Jesus and Mary were not related by a mother, not that they were husband and wife.  The truth is, she could have been married to any one of the males in the tomb, or to none of them for that matter.  The DNA "suggests" nothing.

    *The researchers claim they're just trying to connect the dots?  Fair enough.  But why connect the dots the way they did?  I'll tell you why.  Because it tells their story.  There are many other legitimate ways to connect those same dots-some much more probable than the way the documentary connects them, but won't give the story they're promoting.  But, of course, that wouldn't create breaking news, would it?

    *Jesus' family was a poor family from Nazareth , not a middle- to upper-class family from Jerusalem .  So this tomb is the wrong kind of tomb located in the wrong city.

    *The documentary claims Jesus spoke in codes.  This is false.  Jesus spoke in parables, like many of the teachers of His day, not in codes that needed to be deciphered.  They say Mary Magdalene was Jesus' most trusted apostle. But you have to wait 400 years before this evidence pops up in any alleged historical record.  They said that Jesus' family members were executed because He was a pretender to throne of Israel .  This is pure fiction.  Notice what this accomplishes, though.  All of these little exaggerations and inaccuracies make an unlikely tale sound more plausible when, on its own unembellished merits, it is not.

    *What we have here are two different characterizations of what happened to the body of Jesus of Nazareth 2,000 years ago.  One is based on artifacts-the ossuaries-and one is based on documents-the historical records of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Paul.  Now granted, these kinds of things are not entirely exact science, but all things being equal, which do you think gives us more precise information, bone boxes or written records?  The written records, obviously.

    *The claim of Jesus' resurrection, was part of the earliest, most primitive testimony regarding Jesus.  And it was made by those very same people that the documentary suggests knew Jesus' bones were actually secretly buried in Jerusalem .  Why would so many of them die for this lie when they knew it was a lie?  It doesn't add up.  But that's what you must believe if you take seriously the conclusions of this documentary.