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Thursday, May 08, 2008 ** NEW **The Power of the Tongue
Recently I have had good reason to reflect upon the capacity of people to destroy one another. I am not referring to war, murder, poverty, or anything of that nature, although human beings certainly can and do bring ruin upon their fellow man in those ways, too. I am, rather, thinking about the the things we say to and about other people.
Proverbs 18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of life and death." My, how powerful are our words to either set someone on a proper course or to derail them! Slander, unjust criticism, gossip, complaining, anger, cursing -- they all spew from the mouth. Matthew 12:36 says that we will have to give an account for every careless word we have spoken. What a frightening thought that is!
James 3 says that only a perfect man can control his tongue. A friend of mine likened the tongue to a nuclear reactor. I liked the analogy, because like a nuclear reactor, the tongue must be constantly watched; properly employed, it can generate enormous power, but if it goes unmonitored ... Chernobyls can happen. Such is the power of the tongue for life and death.
I wonder: were Christians to take seriously those passages of Scripture that speak to this subject, how differently might we be viewed by those who are not Christians? That is a convicting thought.
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Sunday, May 04, 2008It's About Grace
For the past year or so Fixed Point has been addressing, rather intensely, the issue of atheism. We have sponored a debate (with more to come), written articles, produced DVDs, offered lectures, etc. This has given me much opportunity to hear first hand the charges of the so-called "New Atheists" against religion and Christianity in particular. These charges fall under three broad headings: science, history, and philosophy.
I will not here outline those arguments or consider their merits. If you are so inclined and wish to explore this matter in some detail, I refer you to the resources you will find on our website: the debate CD/DVD between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox; Dinesh D'Souza's Latimer House Luncheon lecture (available on CD); and our film "Science and the God Question", which explores the supposed conflict between science and Christianity. These resources will be of much greater use to you.
Rather, I would like to make an observation concerning one area where the New Atheists have concentrated their attacks: the authority and integrity of the Bible. These attacks may be generally characterized as focusing on the reliability of Scripture for moral and intellectual light. The Bible is seen as obscurantist and anti-intellectual. It is the product of a backward and violent culture. The Law is understood to be an oppressive instrument used as a means of maintaining the existing power structure.
It is on this question of the Law that I am most intrigued. In reading the New Atheists, one finds that there are valid criticisms that they level against Christians. We have not, after all, always been good representatives of the God we profess to serve. But one charge, made by all of the New Atheists I have read so far, that is completely invalid has to do with their understanding of the Law, its purpose, and what orthodox Christians believe regarding it.
In Reading Hitchens' book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, it occurred to me that he, along with many other atheists, sees the Christian faith as a system of rules and regulations. One cannot live under such rules, he says. Sir Arthur Keith, another atheist, said something similar in his 1946 essay entitled Evolution and Ethics: "No human community could observe [the Law] with any degree of strictness, not even one day in seven ..."
This statement, while true, is also very revealing. Hitchens, Keith et. al. are correct in pointing out our inability to live by (or, more accurately, to save ourselves) according to the Law. The Law is, in a sense, oppressive. Where they are startlingly wrong is thinking that Christians believe otherwise. Historic Christianity has always understood the Christian life to be about repentance, forgiveness, and grace. No, man cannot live by the Law. On the contrary, our inability to live according to it reveals our imperfection and need for a merciful Savior.
As I have read them and listened to them, it has become clear to me that the New Atheists fail to understand the heart of Christianity: grace. Without it, Christianity is like most any other religious or ethical system. With it, it is life giving, liberating, and unique.
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Thursday, May 01, 2008Generational Miscues
Have you ever noticed how families freqently share the same traits? I am not referring to physical traits. That is too obvious. But rather such things as professions, interests, strengths and flaws.
This occurred to me recently when I reflected on the fact that a friend of mine mispronounces (and misuses) the same words and phrases as her parents. She had inherited the hugely entertaining trait and is likely to pass it on to her children. It reveals itself at unexpected moments: the ill-employed idiom or a nicely placed (depending on one's perspective) malaprop.
As I considered this, I realized that while in this case the inherited flaw was of minor significance and often humorous, there are those characteristics that are passed on from one generation to another that are not so funny: gossiping, negativity, addiction, poor marital or parenting skills, etc. Like mispronounced words, parents pass them on, as if genetically, to their children.
That this is so is obvious when you think about it. It is also biblical. Exodus 20:5 tells us that the sins of the father may affect even the third and fourth generations. This passage does not mean that God is actively seeking to do harm to the offspring of man; I think it instead means that we can create a pattern of evil behavior in our children (or ourselves be the recipients of it) as they may observe and repeat what we do.
On a positive note, the opposite is also true. It is much more likely that our children will conduct themselves with honor, integrity, and courage when they have observed those qualities in us.
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Sunday, April 27, 2008In the Blink of an Eye
Yesterday, my family and I were on our way back from Nashville where my 15 year old had participated in the Music City Half-Marathon. When we were about 30 miles from home on I-65, the Chevy Blazer directly in front of us suffered a catastrophic blowout on the rear axle. The vehicle began to fish-tail, modestly at first, but with increasing intensity until the Blazer swerved across all three lanes, hit the cement barrier and flipped.
Avoiding the wreck, I pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, told Lauri to stay put, checked my mirror, and got out. Lauri, my wife, reminding me of her nursing skills, immediately exited the car and ran across the road to check on the injured. Traffic had slowed some, but it was clear that not everyone had seen the accident. Then I noticed an 18-wheeler bearing down with no apparent intent to slow at all. Driving at interstate speed, his horn announced his coming. With horror, I began to shout across the road to Lauri. The roar of cars between us made it difficult for her to hear me. I was certain that everyone--Lauri, those in the wrecked car, and others who had stopped to be help--would be killed when the truck reached the scene.
A car moved and the truck blew through the middle of parked cars on one side and the wreckage on the other. That no one was killed in either the initial accident or by the wreckless driving of the truck driver was no small miracle.
Upon reflection I was struck by how suddenly life can change or end altogether. One moment we are driving along having a pleasant discussion. The next, we are witnessing a major accident and might have been killed ourselves. Psalm 90 comes to mind.
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Saturday, March 29, 2008Good Reading
For many of us, last week was Spring Break, that annual American ritual that sees students and families alike head to the beaches or to the mountains for some R&R. It also offers a great time to do a bit of reading, and since we are frequently asked for book recommendations, I will cite three that I read last week:
• Heroes by Paul Johnson
• Londonistan by Melanie Phillips
• Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Heroes is Paul Johnson's latest book in a series of three, with Intellectuals and Creators being the first two installments. Paul Johnson is an English historian and I am a keen admirer of his work. He writes with a flair and isn't inclined to make the overreaching conclusion. In Heroes he considers a number of men and women who have been considered heroes down through the ages or are heroes to Johnson himself.
Portraits included obvious figures like George Washington and Winston Churchill, but also contained some surprises like Mae West and Emily Dickinson. And his conclusions were occasionally different from what one might expect: "Alexander the Great was a murderer." (True, but most historians conveniently overlook that point.)
Londonistan, by contrast, is a disturbing book. In it, popular British columnist Melanie Phillips evaluates the rise of Radical Islam in the U.K. According to Phillips, Islamists are using Britain as a training ground for terrorist activity against the West. Point of fact: the terrorists who carried out such atrocities as the USS Cole and 9/11 were either trained, funded or both from Britain, while Richard "Shoe Bomber" Reid and the 7/7 bombers were all British-born subjects. Phillips further asserts that all of this occurred -- or more accurately, is occurring -- right under the government's nose. Indeed, the government, through its failure to understand the nature of the threat, has facilitated its growth. Meanwhile, the established Church has done even less, preferring appeasement to engaging in the realm of ideas. Phillips's book is well written and well documented.
Finally, I read Till We Have Faces, the C.S. Lewis classic in which he retells the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche. I read the book after being compelled to do so by my three boys, all of whom loved it.
The book is not typical C.S. Lewis fare. Lewis's fiction usually contains obvious Christian symbols and parallels: Aslan = Christ, Witch = Satan, and so on. J.R.R. Tolkien, by contrast, believed in a kind of natural theology, that is, if one writes as a Christian, he doesn't need to put deliberate Christian markers into the story because his Christian worldview will come to the surface naturally. To that extent, Till We Have Faces seems much more like the work of Tolkien than Lewis.
I was most struck by Lewis's description of selfish love. Here, Lewis gives us a picture of love that is demanding, possessive, and prideful; the sort that we have all experienced or witnessed. But Lewis gives us a greater understanding of how true love must behave. In this regard, it is as though Lewis has fictionalized, both positively and negatively, I Corinthians 13, the "love chapter."
In a powerful scene that puts Orual, the book's central figure, in the dock before the gods who re-examine her life's story in the light of their truth, rather than her version of it, Lewis challenges our trite, cheap, commercialized (e.g., "Jesus is my co-pilot) notions of the transcendent and restores something of its awe and majesty. It is enough to give one pause.
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Saturday, February 09, 2008The National Prayer Breakfast
This past week my wife, Lauri, and I were honored to attend The 56th Annual National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) in D.C. Since the Eisenhower Administation, the sitting President of the United States has attended this event along with ordinary men and women, public figures, heads of state, and various other noteables. Indeed, even presidential hopeful John McCain took time out of his campaign (or was it part of it?) to attend, making a grand entrance with his potential running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Sitting on the dais (in addition to the President and First Lady) were Senators Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.), Ken Salazar (D., Colo.), Dianne Feinstein (D., Cal.), and Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.); Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen; musician, Michael W. Smith; and businessman and keynote speaker, Ward Brehm.
If you think that an eclectic gathering of this kind might be vague when it comes to identifying the entity to whom prayers are directed, your skepticism is not altogether misplaced. Some of the prayers were quite vague and, I suspect, deliberately so. Were they praying to some unnamed Higher Power? Allah? Or to God the Father in the name of His only Son, Jesus Christ? In a few instances, I was reasonably certain that it was not the latter. At another NPB gathering latter that day, former Cardinal Archbishop of D.C., Theodore McCarrick, essentially stated that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same god. Some prayers at the NPB were undoubtedly spoken with this philosophy in view.
That the Cardinal Archbishop made such a remark is disappointing, especially since he should know better. Perhaps it was made in an effort to cultivate a sense of unity and reconciliation among his listeners. He is presently engaged in an effort to bring peace to the three major religions in and around Jerusalem and unity is his noble goal.
One may reasonably wonder at the price such harmony is purchased. A unity that affirms no doctrine or creed is shallow and affirms nothing at all but unity for its own sake. It is frequently obtained at the expense of truth itself. Unity, be it Christian or otherwise, must have a foundation. It must begin with a consensus. Adherents must declare "We hold these truths to be self evident ..."
The unity one experiences among the some 4,000 attendees at the National Prayer Breakfast is not of the lasting sort. Nor can it be without tremendous compromise from somebody, since everyone cannot be right. I am doubtful that Senator Feinstein abandoned her convictions to join her adversaries across the aisle, that an atheist embraced faith, or that any Jews or Muslims converted to Christianity as a result of breakfast with the President. Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Muslims and Christians -- there is a gulf that separates these groups and no enduring unity will ever be achieved among them unless it is based upon something real and true.
And that is, I think, evidenced by the NPB itself. The unity, however brief it may be, that one experiences there is due to the foundation all in attendance are called upon to acknowledge: the sublime nature of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Oh, there were plenty of remarks that did not have Christ or the Bible as their
source or even as their inspiration. But those who made them were not,
I suspect, Christians. Others, in a spirit of gentleness and respect
(II Peter 3:15), affirmed the Christian message: Michael W. Smith sang
"Amazing Grace"; Admiral Mullen read Philippians 4:8-9; and Ward Brehm
spoke of how God has changed his life through his interaction with the
poor of Africa. At another NPB function, Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver spoke and prayed boldly in the name of Jesus Christ.
What one sees at the National Prayer Breakfast offers us a glimpse, albeit a fleeting and somewhat artificial one, of true unity. That such an event like the NPB exists and aspires to bring people together in the name of our Lord is a good thing so long as Christians themselves do not make egregious compromises of their faith. And I was not witness to compromises of this sort. The organizers of the event have accomplished something special and unique: opening an essentially Christian gathering to those of other faiths (or non-faith), but doing so without sacrificing the Truth or integrity of the Gospel.
In his remarks, President Bush, nodding toward Senator John McCain, said "Every President since Dwight Eisenhower has attended the National Prayer Breakfast -- and I am really proud to carry on that tradition. It's an important tradition, and I'm confident Presidents who follow me will do the same." It is a tradition worth keeping. It reminds us of who we are, of our roots, and of our need for the One True God's intervention in our lives individually and as a nation.
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Sunday, January 27, 2008Hope in the Midst of Tragedy
On January 19, 2008, a sweet little two year-old boy lost his life. Having slipped from the house unnoticed, he fell into the family's swimming pool. The boy's name was Bronner Burgess. He was the youngest son of Rick and Sherri Burgess. Many people here in the South know Rick as the other half of the syndicated radio show "Rick and Bubba." It has been our privilege to work with Rick and Bubba (and producer
Calvin "Speedy" Wilburn) on a number of occasions, so the news was not
impersonal to those of us here at Fixed Point.
On the evening of the tragedy, I got an email from "Bubba" that struck like a hammer: "January 19th has been a tragic night for us all ... Rick and Sherri lost their youngest son ..." Perhaps like any father, I immediately thought of the pain Rick and Sherri must be feeling. I thought of my own children, three fine boys, that the Lord has so graciously granted to my wife and to me. I thought of what it might be like to lose one of them. But I couldn't. Not really. Even so, the thought hurt. How much more was (is) the pain suffered by the Burgess family?
I imagined a family asking a lot of questions. I imagined a grief stricken mother blaming herself for something every mother (and father) has done a thousand times. My wife and I recalled the times our boys had "escaped" from our house without incident, though tradegy might just as easily have been the result on any one of those occasions. I remembered another time when our middle child, Christopher, slipped under the water of the deep end of a pool and surely would have drowned if his mother had not looked at that very moment. I wondered at the apparent randomness of Bronner's death.
Can a parent or a family recover from such loss?
I have known parents who have lost children. It is the most devastating of catastrophes to a mother or father. My old headmaster used to say, "There are two kinds of parents: those who have lost children and those who have not." I knew precisely what he meant, having said it right on the heels of a meeting with parents who had lost their son.
The Monday after the tragedy, the decision was made to broadcast the show live, as is the usual practice, rather than replaying an old "Best of Rick and Bubba" broadcast. No, Rick was not present. That is, he was not present physically, but his instructions to his radio co-hosts was clear: tell the audience that the Burgess family is suffering, that they covet their prayers, and that their hope was in their faith in Jesus Christ.
The broadcasts were powerful. This was not an effort to exploit the tragedy, but to celebrate a life. Bronner's life. There was no pretense. These were not people pretending that they were not suffering or struggling to come to grips with why such a thing should happen. Tears were shed and the anquish was real. But in the midst of it all, something extraordinary, Divine really, rose to the surface to reveal itself: Hope.
The sturdiness of one's religion, philosophy, or worldview is not known so long as it remains untested. And any faith that does not provide meaningful direction and practical tools in times of trouble is an irrelevant faith. Moreover, in the times of trouble, one can either run from God or run to Him. Facing what is likely the greatest trial of faith that any parent can face, Rick and Sherri chose to run to God. Acknowledging their lack of understanding in what had happened and why, they remained steadfast in what they had said was true before the tragedy: that the God of the Bible is a sovereign God of mercy who grants eternal life to those who have the faith of a child.
In the midst of tragedy, the rock of true faith and hope was revealed.
I am sure some cynics will read this blog and write it off as sheer nonsense. You are free to do so. But before you discount what I have said and what Rick and Sherri are, at this moment, living, what hope could you offer them or people like them? More directly, what is the source of your hope?
Do you put your hope in the political process? Many people do. It is a shallow hope. No government or political leader can solve all our problems or provide enduring happiness. Is it atheism? No worldview is more hopeless. You live, you die, and that's it. No right and wrong, no meaning. No thanks. Is it "religion"? Any religion that does not lead to Jesus Christ is a dead end.
Hope is a precious gift. Indeed, it is the greatest of gifts. And true hope can only be found in one place: it rests on the promises that Jesus Christ has made to those who have entrusted themselves to Him. He is the source of Rick and Sherri Burgess's hope that they will see their son again. He is the source of their strength.
May God bless them and grant them strength. He is all they have. He is all any of us can have that is real, true, and hopeful when all seems hopeless.
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Thursday, November 29, 2007Spare the Rod ...
Today I had the delightful experience of spending my afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles. What should have taken, say, thirty minutes, took more than two hours. My son, Christopher, had to take the test for his learner's permit. As we sat waiting for our number to be called, I engaged an African-American woman sitting next to me in conversation. She, too, had a child waiting to take the test.
Our conversation meandered until she brought up "disrespectful youth" and pending legislation in Massachusetts that would make it illegal for parents to spank their children. She was a no-nonsense mother with three adolescents and simply could not imagine what could possess someone to take legislation of this sort seriously.
"That just won't fly down South," she said. "What does the Bible say? Spare the rod and spoil the child!"
She had given the matter a lot of thought and was full of opinions.
"I mean, what happens when junior doesn't get disciplined at home and then gets arrested? Are the police going to give him 'time out'? I don't think so." She gave a snort of derision at the very thought of it.
"I know what I would do if I lived in a state with a crazy law like that," she continued, "When my kids misbehaved, I'd take them across state lines, give'em a good whippin' and then drive back home!"
Sometimes I think our legislators would do well to rub elbows with people in so-called "fly over country."
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Thursday, October 25, 2007What is Truth?
Tonight is the last in our "Seven Questions Everyone Should Know the Answers to" series. Our speakers in this series have been wonderful. I have heard each of them speak in other settings, but it seemed that they stepped-up their "game" a bit.
This last talk addresses the question of truth. How can we know the truth? What is truth? Aren't truth claims dangerous? These are all legitimate questions and I hope to answer them with equally legitimate answers. We shall see ...
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Thursday, October 11, 2007"When I consider your heavens ..."
Recently our family had opportunity to visit the beach. A busy summer scheduled dictated that I dispense with a family vacation until early fall. It was with much anticipation that we all packed up our beach gear and headed south for the Gulf Coast. Alabama's beaches really are a well kept secret. I haven't seen any that are more beautiful. The powder white sand, fair weather, moderate surf, and lack of crowds all combine for a pleasant holiday.
One night we went out to the beach to star gaze. Living in the midst of metropolitan Birmingham, we don't get much opportunity for that. The glow of the city lights prevents any meaningful observation of the night skies. But on the coast, away from the highrises and streetlights, the stars come marvelously into view as the sun sets. On this night, such was the case--but more so. A clear, cloudless night, hundreds (thousands?) of stars and planets dotted the vast sky from horizon to horizon. Lauri, the boys and I counted meteorites, speculated about distances, contellations, and, inevitably, life on other planets.
I became mindful of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans: " ... what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." Yet some look at the same display of power and divine nature that I see and postulate a very different explanation: there is no God, only random processes. How can this be so?
Some would suggest that those of us who believe in God do so because of our "memes." A meme is a cultural replicator. To put it another way, we believe a given thing because we are culturally predisposed to believe it. That there is some truth to this is obvious to even the casual observer. Buddhists, for example, no more abound in the American Bible Belt than Yankees fans in Boston. But it seems to me that the problem is more complex than this explanation would suggest.
Anthropologists have long observed that every early culture known to us believed in a god of some kind. They postulated a divine being (or divine beings) from their observations of nature. Certainly they lacked the sophisticated understanding that we possess in explaining the natural order and the plethora of created "gods" they worshipped were absurd. Indeed, Paul goes on to say this both here and elsewhere. But this is, I think, beside the point. In the opening chapters of Romans, Paul is suggesting that belief in the transcendent is not a byproduct of one's culture, it is innate to all men; to suppress it, one must deny their very nature.
Still, belief in the divine, whether it is a result of cultural factors or human nature, does not make such belief true. Paul anticipates this objection, pointing out that belief in the divine is also logical. Nothing comes from nothing. There must be a Primary Mover. When Paul was in Athens debating atop the little rock that is Mars Hill, he maintained that the Athenians had, in fact, arrived at a partially correct solution to the great mystery of the universe's origin: there is a god. What they got wrong was his identity. Indeed, the more intellectually honest among them, rather than inventing a god, had made an altar with an inscription reading "To the Unknown God." Paul went on to reveal to them the one thing that had, until then, eluded their understanding.
Natural revelation, that is, to postulate the existence of a god when gazing at the sky on a starry night, is both natural and logical. But it is not enough. Many Christians were thrilled by the much celebrated "conversion" of the English atheist and philosopher Anthony Flew in 2004. But Flew merely acknowledged what Paul might have called his natural inclination toward theism. He did not convert to Christianity or any other religion. Natural revelation had lead him to theism--which is all that it can do--but it did not lead him to Jesus Christ. That requires additional revelation: "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of Christ."
There is something special about observing the created order, a starry sky in this case, when one believes not only in some sort of vague theism, but knows the identity of the Creator and something of his character and motivations. It tends to put things in perspective: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him?"
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