Christian Pharisees

Alright, so I watch way too much Comedy Central, but in all seriousness, Stephen Colbert does amazing things with satire. It is a shame, though, that secular media does a better job at expressing grace than the church does. I implore you to take below very seriously and ask if us Christians are not turning into (post)Modern-day Pharisees.



(And now I'm just going to go off...)

Do we not read the Bible seriously anymore, or are we just not reading it at all? Do the Gospel writers not scream in protest about this pharisee-ism? I mean, GUM! It's freaking gum! Jesus was continually jeered for eating with sinners, for serving them, for loving them. And this doctor is refusing to care for the sick because of gum. The irony of all this is Jesus uses this exact metaphor in Mark 2:17 about why he does spend time with sinners. "Those who are well have no deed of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but the sinners." What irks me the most is how much attention this right got. And now Christians everywhere have this stigma placed on them by this one dude. Hopefully, people aren't so brash as to dismiss the whole because of the actions of one. I'm sure this doctor loves Jesus, but somehow the thrust of the Gospel has completely gone over his head. Jesus warns us that he will say to some, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." And to those that did not treat the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, naked, sick or imprisoned? "These will go away into eternal punishment" (Matthew 25:31-46).

How can we, who were once sick ourselves, not care for those who still are? What are we doing to the name of Jesus? We call ourselves Christians-- little Christs. We're supposed to be exemplifying his love for the world, not destroying it because of our own purity laws. Ah! Flagellum! I can't even cohere words to describe what goes through me because of this. It truly breaks my heart to see a baby not be treated because of someone's personal "purity" in the name of Jesus. May God protect us all from our sin.

I'm gonna go listen to some Derek Webb.

The Quotable Snodgrass

Tuesday's are an incredibly long day, as I've mentioned before, but my class on Romans is a good reason to keep going, even when I'm about to crash.

Romans is taught by Klyne Snodgrass, a well-respected New Testament scholar, who refers to people like N.T. Wright as Tom, J.D.G. Dunn as Jimmy, and mentioned in class that he called up Bruce Metzger-- who is responsible for us having a Greek New Testament today-- as if it was an everyday occurrence. It's an extremely cognitive class and I had the brilliant idea to take it for credit, instead of auditing. Klyne is putting the finishing touches on a book on the parables of Jesus, which should be a goldmine. At the risk of infringing on copyright laws (of speech) and taking things completely out of context, I offer you some great quotes by the man himself.

"Grace is the perimeter within which Christians live."

"Faith is not what you do with your brain, it's what you live."

"To have faith is not saying something about you, but about the God in whom you trust."

"When you fail to honor God, humanity is dishonored."

"Worship precedes obedience."

"The wrath of God is in the revelation of the righteousness of God."

"There is no sin that is not constitutional-- we are always dealing with identity."

"Can you draw near to this God and not be affected by him? I think not."

"I don't care what you do with the genitive-- the focus is on the cross."

Slightly Ashamed...

So my blog is entitled that Not Ashamed... which up in title box thingy, I explain in Romans 1:16, Paul states that he is not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God. It was my prayer that I would not be ashamed of the Gospel as I went to Costa Rica and then I reworked it that I would take on that same frame of mind through out my whole life. This still holds true.

On The Colbert Report (Comedy Central) tonight, Stephen interviewed Larry King. One is a master interviewer who has been on for fifty years and the other is a crack job that provides hilariousness to ensue during my dinner. Stephen is a confessing Catholic and over all has an amazing grasp of the Gospel-- if this knowledge is lived out, praise Jesus. His only deep question to Larry was which dead person he would interview. "Christ," Larry replied. I nodded, but Stephen chimed in with the truth-- Jesus is not dead, he rose from the dead and is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Woof. I had to cringed at the thought of me nodding along when Larry exclaimed that Christ was dead. It is an easy trap to fall in, but one as Christians we need to be ever conscious of. We do not worship a dead body in a tomb, as yesterday's Discovery special wanted to claim. We worship a living God, who has conquered death and reigns over it. Who one day will come back and at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Please enjoy the clip below.

Manly Reads

This is my lazy man's blog for Monday. Last Tuesday, I sat down with another brother from North Park in regards to my posts back in November that caused such a stir. You remember those? While not agreeing with my position, he did share some concerns about the future of male leadership and the emasculation of male leadership. Further we talked about if the complementarian position is fully lived out, in regards to the vision in Ephesians 5:25-33, it would place women above men. I would say it does place women in a seat of honor as their husbands seek to love their wives a Christ loves the Church. Since then I've found some really good reads on being a Godly man and what that means in regards to women. And since I haven't caused much drama in the past few months, I figure it's about time again. So with that, here's my top-- well, we'll see how many I get.

1. Piper's still going with his sermon series on marriage. He said he was going to get to headship soon, so it could be yesterday's, which at this time is yet to be posted.
2. Tim Challies is a great blogger that posted a couple entries entitled The Extraordinary Value of Women I & II. Both of which I highly recommend.
3. Justin Taylor, who used to work at Desiring God Ministries and is now in Wheaton, posted an excerpt of an old sermon by Albert Mohler that he had recently reread entitled The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage. He has links to both it's full text and audio.
4. Justin's also posted a few other dated posts to take note of: Wayne Grudem on his marriage, and an older sermon by Piper on submission.

So it's only four, but I think there are enough hyper links up there to give anyone ADHD. I do hope they're for your edification.

Postmodern Jesus Tombs

Yeah, I watched it, at least some of it. It was actually rather entertaining and I got a good laugh. Much of the things they were stating were so out of line with the Biblical evidence and, as some argued, good archaeological methods. For a discussion of the evidence, I point you to Craig Blomberg's response. The part that contained the most meat, though, was the hour long special with Ted Koppel--I was mesmerized by his hair.

It was actually surprising that Discovery had gone out and gotten some credible theologians for the discussion, especially the conservative evangelical Darrel Bock from Dallas Theological Seminary. What was most interesting about the whole discussion was the weaving of modernism and post-modernism-- or, as described on the program, the evidence and the narrative. Throughout the "documentary" Simcha, the filmmaker-- or journalist, he never could decide-- interlaced dramatic scenes depicting the events that they are trying to prove. Here is where the Biblical scholars took issue. The scenes give overwhelming power to the evidence being presented. Whereas, in a modern world one would use evidence to back up the historicity of a story, the postmodern world is using story to give power to the evidence. I find it a very interesting flip.

Photo Friday

The first photo is a collection of old photos of my grandfather (Rohles) and the second is me after I finished reading Romans.

Foto Friday Remix

Same photo as before, just a little more work done on it. This one I prefer.

Foto Friday

I'd been wanting to get out all week to shoot and finally was able to take the morning to walk around the neighborhood to get some shots; two hundred to be exact. This is the one that I had set out for in the first place.

Mr. Scratch

Current Read

D. A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church has been sitting on my side bar as a "Current Read" almost as long as I've actually been reading it. So after finally breezing through the last chapter and a half, I figure I'll give my two cents, which is as much stock as most of my readers give to what I have to say.

Becoming Conversant above all is an extremely accessible book that gives a fair, yet biased, analysis of the Emerging Church and many of the main proponents of the Emerging Church. Carson steps through, as complete as he can, what the emerging church is, how they view current cultural trends and how they respond to those trends, before he gives his own analysis of their response and his own critique of where the emerging types have gone awry. As Carson admits, it is a difficult task to evaluate the emergents, because of the vast breadth that the term covers, just as postmodernism is as much a blanket term that encompasses both hard- and soft- postmoderns, who are very distinct in their epistemology.

In his most practical chapter, Carson takes a look at Brian McLaren's book A Generous Orthodoxy and to a lesser extent The Lost Message of Jesus, by Steve Chalke. Very un-generously, Carson takes apart McLaren's book, not in one fell swoop, but slowly and carefully like a surgeon, drawing out the many inconsistencies in McLaren's theology. The best, and briefest, example of this would be McLaren calling himself a Calvinist, but then takes apart the TULIP acronym and places his own meaning behind the letters, which has nothing to do with historical Calvinism. Even if you disagree completely with Calvinism, you can see the inconsistencies this brings.

So do we rely on our own experiences or on the truth of Scripture? Carson answers in this way:

Experience or truth? The left wing of an airplane, or the right? Love or integrity? Study or service? Evangelism or discipleship?... Damn all false antitheses to hell, for they generate false gods, they perpetuate idols, they twist and distort our souls, they launch the church into violent pendulum swings whose oscillations succeed only in dividing brothers and sisters in Christ. The truth is that Jesus Christ is Lord of all--of the truth and of our experience. The Bible insists that we take everyt thought captice to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Carson has put out an introductory book that is useful for anyone still trying to get a grasp of what postmodernism and the emerging church are all about. Further it rightly critiques many of their inconsistencies, while also acknowledging some of the contributions they bring-- but you have to search for those acknowledgments.