panic attack

Unlimited Liability is a term used in the military.  It refers to the soldier's acceptance that there is no limit to the cost he may pay, in mind and body in the line of duty.

For the Christian man or woman too, unlimited liability is a goal of faith: to aspire to let nothing stop us in the pursuit of our calling to grow closer to God, love our neighbours and in that love to make disciples in Jesus' name, however that calling may manifest itself in work and play.

Fear of death is natural.  The power of God to save is supernatural.  For the Christian the limit of exploitation is beyond the grave.  In an attack, this is the line beyond which a fighting force, for whatever reason may it be casualties or supplies or risk of over-extension, will not advance.  The limit to life is not the end of life as we know it.  But similar to the end of life as the pagan knows it, so too the limit of death as we know it is not simply death.  There is a terror worse than death just as there is a life beyond life–this is part of the meaning of the eternal power of God.

We as Christian people serve a God who is bigger than our natural imaginations and more righteous than our fantasies of righteousness, and more terrifying than anything we could ever dream of.  What He expects from us is the same in eternal power as what He gives us in Christ.  The excuses of the unbeliever will not make the "cut" any more than the life found in Christ ever end.

It is not that there should be no hope or fear, it is a question of where the fear and hope is laid.  Is it laid in the eternal, or the carnal, the natural, the man-made artificial?

Sample the prayer of Habakkuk (Habakkuk 3) found in the Bible and you get a quick picture of a man who was fearing and hoping in the right way.

Put it in perspective in one sentence: Habakkuk is a prophet who is receiving a message that his nation's wickedness is going to be obliterated by a Babylonian invasion.  God, in a word, is irate.  Habakkuk knows Israel needs this judgement for it's evil and it is coming.  So in light of an imminent apocalypse of biblical proportions, Habakkuk does the only reasonable thing; he prays.

So your homeland is about to be raped, pillaged, destroyed and sold into slavery for its evil, what might you say?  I really don't know what I'd say but you can bet it would be something along the lines of "God please don't do this I'd like to continue living in peace with my family, not get torn limb from limb, have my wife raped and my infant tossed against a stone wall."  God has a habit of sparing his children from disaster (check out  Noah & the Flood for but one example), but the thought of a "Chaldean horde", a "fierce, impetuous, dreaded and feared" people (Hab 1:6-7) running through town doesn't exactly inspire great confidence that everything's going to be peachy keen.

right fear
But Habakkuk prays a strange prayer, it actually runs more like a hymn of remembrance; there is no explicit request or supplication through the entire chapter which comprises it.  Who prays a prayer without asking for anything?  Habakkuk says he "heard of your (God's) fame" (v.2) and he recalls God's awesome power in battle, His unstoppable power over the forces of nature, over humankind and the events of human history.  Did somebody forget to mention to Habakkuk that his nation is about to receive the beat down of the millennium?  This isn't a 'panic prayer' over the Chaldean horde.  But make no mistake, Habakkuk is afraid, he is terrified, "I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound, decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled."

Habakkuk wasn't afraid of the fierce warriors or the incumbent orgy of death and destruction: he was afraid of Almighty God.  The thought of the wrath of the Lord God was enough to make him admit to posterity that he would have wet himself at the sight.  His attention was on the terror of eternal death rather than physical death.  

right hope
There's an antithesis though, another side to the story.  The nation coming against Israel is a natural army, it is a tool of God and nothing more, "They mock kings and scoff at rulers.  They laugh at all fortified cities...Then they sweep past like the wind and go on; guilty people, whose own strength is their god." (1:10-11)  The mounds unbelievers use to bury their fear of judgment and death, these vicious killers come to bring reckoning from the Almighty and demolish these pitiful piles with ease, laying bare the sins of nations.

The Babylonians idolize their own strength, and Habakkuk knows it, "Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us."  They do not know that there is a terror worse than death, a death deeper than the earth can bury and hide; the awesome and all-consuming power of God in His wrath.

Make no mistake, Habakkuk is in no state of delusion about his unlimited liability; but Habakkuk knows his limit of exploitation is only as far as the natural.  There is, because of God's mercy as Saviour to those who call Him Lord and Master, to those who are not his enemies, peace and absolution from the wrath which is worse than death.

real confidence, boldness,  joy and peace
Habakkuk's bold hope and confidence extends entirely beyond the simple avoidance of natural death,

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.  The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights." (Hab 3:17-19)

Habakkuk's bold trust is reminiscent of Job who said "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." (Job 13:15)  Or the heroes of the faith who looked beyond the grave for their hope in the letter to the Hebrews.  This is real faith, real hope, real joy and real confidence.  Habakkuk did not ask for God to be a powerful Saviour, to rescue him from the worst fate possible (eternal death), to arrange the course of events and planets alike and to annihilate the hordes; Habakkuk knew it.   It was no supplication, it was a proclamation.

The man whose unlimited liability is covered by Christ's unlimited liability, he whose confidence, courage and plans are in God's keeping– this man is a terrible and powerful sight to behold.  His life and strength are endless, his absolution is complete, his avenger is the Almighty, and fears are only his victims on an irrevocable attack to everlasting glory:  For the eternal wrath and love of God have no limit of exploitation.      

Ray Comfort on Abortion

I admit I feel grieved when causes of every stripe recruit Hitler and "the gang" for their argumentative purposes; but we can't shy away from historical disasters and the ideologies that spawned them.

I think Christian-Jewish author and evangelist Ray Comfort makes a convincing argumentative connection between Nazi Germany and abortion in the short film linked here.  Critics will complain about semantics games, but I think even from a critical perspective, there's something more than language games at stake here, and Comfort presents some compelling moral thought experiments.

I warn you that it does contain some graphic images, and some objectionable language, I would also add though that this isn't a gross-out anti-abortion film.  There is a frank gospel message at the end to tie it together, so those that can't handle that are also forewarned.

Apologies aside, have it a watch, it may at least make you rethink one of the greatest ongoing crimes against humanity ever perpetrated.

I have to say, the most shocking thing in the video for me: how do you NOT know who Adolf Hitler is?  That's a red flag in and of itself!!

Why I Don't Believe in World Peace

Rick Warren's endorsement of McGrath's book Heresy (see last post), in light of his recent inter-faith bridging efforts with his mega-church's P.E.A.C.E. Plan strikes me as no coincidence. There's no sense in Muslims, Jews, Christians (and heretics alike) killing each other. I think we can all agree that we should try as best we can to work together and live harmoniously, respecting one another.  As a result, we want to have some neutral ground from which to come to the table and talk it out.  But there are couple major problems that stress the need for caution lest we fall into the trap of revising the gospel:

1. The problem is that despite our similarities, we have radical divergence of opinion as to how "World Peace" should be carried out.  Sharia and Christianity don't mix.  Period.  Certain forms of government (like democracy) do not port easily to certain faiths.  It is all well and good to establish "common ground" but this may be tantamount to compromise for more than one religion.  I remain unconvinced that many faiths, including Christianity, have not had to water down their convictions in order to start playing politics on a grand scale.  It's one thing for a politician to make sensible compromises to lead a country.  It is entirely another for an entire faith group to submit itself to a government which will only tolerate a particular (watered down) form of its theology.

Corollary:  If differences between religions are watered down to accomodate a single geo-political objective, we not only lose the uniqueness of said religions, but we then run into the problem of perpetuating the one thing we all have in common: evil.  World peace becomes essentially a code word for PAX ROMANA; there's peace because there's nobody who can have individual beliefs anymore without appearing as a virus in the system.  We tar these individuals as "bigots" "racists" "sexists" "Islamophobes" "homophobes" "anti-Semites" "heretics" "fundamentalists" "infidels"...and they are criminalized for having unpopular opinions that 'rock the boat'.  But of course, the extermination of dissent is not peace.  


2. There is no such thing as a neutral unbeliever.  Part of my love for a Muslim or Jew or Hindu would include being honest with him, where required, about his status before God.  He is not "saved" and he is not going to heaven and furthermore he is a child of the devil on the road to hell.  I owe him that much to tell him that he is in the same place I was before I trusted Christ as Saviour.  This deeply offensive message, as you can imagine (or as you are foaming at the mouth with rage about at this very minute or scoffing with indifference), does not lend itself easily to inter-faith dialogue writ large. I do not think this radical honesty annihilates dialogue, I believe it should actually strengthen it; but there will remain those who will only fume with rage.

The reason for this is that this is not an ideology of man we are talking about, this is the Word of God, and man's rebellion against it is far deeper than any issue-driven pet-peeve.  The continual witness of Scripture is that Christians will meet with hate, threats, imprisonment, torture, death, attempted extermination and so on.  I don't know what your eschatology is like, but our relative hey-day in the free west will not last forever.  The writing is on the wall.


I don't believe in World Peace.  It is a myth, and not a neutral one.  It's a lie.  We are not good.  We don't get along.  We never will.  Jesus calls me to be a peacemaker and perfect: I have done my best and I try, but I have failed at both and will continue to.  I am responsible to continue struggling; but beware the utopian myth-makers.

Alister McGrath & "Heretical Neutrality"

I found myself frustrated and a little disappointed by a central thesis of the book. Dr. Alister McGrath contends that heresy is not the product of "malevolent and arrogant apostates", but well-meaning "insiders" of the church. (p.175)

Let me state for the record that I have great respect for Dr. McGrath as a Christian brother and scholar.  I don't argue with the fact that heresy arises from within the church. I also agree that we could hardly call the work of many heretics in such hyperbolic terms as some kind of conspiratorial Satanism.  I also think I understand at least some of Dr. McGrath's intent.  Let me take a stab.

A Possible Intent

Too often, when a person within the church reveals beliefs to the general Christian populace which are radical, strange or challenging to comprehend and/or just plain out of line with what Scripture teaches, the response is like a team of attack dogs going for a piece of meat.  In addition to those people who actually care about the person, this attack contains elements of those who:

a) Don't really care about learning a new perspective.
b) Attack heresy for the sheer joy of destroying someone with their own virulent legalism.
c) Are only interested in destroying the heretic to make themselves look good.
d) Can't handle paradox, mystery or questions about/to their faith.

Any one or more of the above and you have an allergic reaction which overall doesn't help anyone.  But there remains a problem when we suggest that heretics were "well intentioned" insiders.

The Problem

First and foremost, this appears to fly in the face of Scripture.  Jesus Himself stated in Matt 7:15, "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves."  Or how about 2 Timothy 3, where Paul warns Timothy about those that "hold to a form of godliness but deny its power" and are "evil men" "impostors" "deceiving and being deceived" followed by his famous admonition that Scripture is "inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;".  Or how about Acts 20:29, "I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock."  Paul clearly wasn't talking about anyone particularly well-meaning in these passages, nor was Christ.  It's also clear they weren't talking about Roman soldiers, they were talking about insiders, people who would come in and rip the church apart from the inside out.

The reason for heresy may at first be simple misunderstanding; this is the point at which we come alongside a brother or sister and attempt to correct gently with instruction.  But persistence in error, in contravention of what is plainly taught by the Scriptures is sin.  It is the failure to take God at His Word and believe it.  This is what Paul was talking about in 2 Tim 4:3, where people do not find the teaching of Scripture to be agreeable to their human reason and/or their lifestyle.  This is the point at which you take your two or three witnesses and give this person the heave-ho.

Take Marcion for example.  It amazes me that McGrath can maintain this thesis when he details the fact that Marcion excised large portions of Scripture because of his distaste for Judaism (p.129).  Does this sound like someone who is humble and submissive to God's Word, or someone trying to revise it for his own ideological tastes?  It's an absolute no-brainer.

How many heretics do you know would openly claim, "Yes, I am a false teacher attempting to change the clear teaching of the gospel to suit my own interests and destroy the church."?  I doubt we will find many takers. People want to believe what they tell themselves is true.  Fortune tellers, faith healers and other charlatans depend on this human habit every day.  "Well-meaning" is irrelevant if it cohabits with self-deceit. Heresy is a subtle self deception; and it is also perfectly natural.  Nobody, except for an avowed opponent of the church would wake up and plot its destruction.  There is always a back story; a mitigating compromise of mind in sin which leads the heretic to deny the orthodox.  Our recent encounters with the universalist heresy for example, I believe are motivated by a genuine interest in loving people and getting along combined with a willful ignorance of what the bible actually teaches. 

McGrath's efforts appear to be an attempt to find some neutral ground from which to dialogue with past and present "heretics"; but I don't think this presentation of the "friendly wolf" lines up with Scripture.  People deny the orthodox because they are sinners or are genuinely uneducated in Scripture.  Heretics are those who have been told but still rebel anyways.  They may not have some malevolent desire to dismantle the church, but failing to "token" this explicit desire in the head does not absolve the heretic from an ultimately evil motivation.  Believing, "I'm right" in the head can be far more destructive than possessing the intent, "I'm out to dismantle the church".

The Challenge

As believers we are all "heretics" at various points in our lives in varying degrees.  Many "Christians" have never confronted many of the "hard" sayings of Scripture. This makes it easy to pronounce many as "Christians" before they have ever wrestled with and assented to the life-altering implications of the gospel.

We do not work from a faith of "deductive proofs"; but neither are the Scriptures an unintelligible mass of socially constructed metaphors.  Preach the gospel and be patient with the unlearned; but boldly throw out the deceived. The day we have no more heretics is the day we have no more courage for faith.

  

"If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. Maranatha." -1 Cor 16:22

"But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerors and idolators and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."  -Rev 21:8

Education for Newborns

It is with some sadness that the Christian brings a little being into the world; a little child of the devil, born into the sin of Adam.  He or she will make many or all of the same mistakes you did.  Maybe more than you did.  Maybe more often than you did.  It is not as though you do not feel the burden of responsibility, or the enthusiasm to succeed where others abscond on theirs; the reality is simply that our children are born into the human race the same way we all have been: fatally flawed in a state of spiritual death.  The idea of infant baptism is one which I find psychologically attractive though unsubstantiated in Scripture; no matter, it is enough for me that God is Judge – the soul of every child is His. Although tainted by original sin, I have no further fear of or stock in the myth of "generational curses".

My thought is not about baptism; it is enough to say that the child will grow up and find "many devices".

Without despair, in Christ we begin training the child early, but at the very beginning with the easiest, most primal of things: eating, sleeping and defecating.  These are acts Christ Himself had to learn.  The "Holy infant tender and mild" I imagine screamed just as any baby might.  In the absence of rational conversation, I doubt that Jesus would have expressed the gnawing pain of hunger any differently than John the Baptist or your very own bundle of joy incarnate.  The absence of original sin did not remove the consequences of the rest of our folly for a suffering baby Jesus. 

I know a particular child who has the particular habit of avoiding the important necessity of eating.  The pain of the sinful world, that threat of death which rises from the stomach, rouses the baby from deep slumber.  The baby's father responds quickly, his ear is trained and he is always within earshot.  He is listening for signs of life.  At the beginning, the child sucks the milk vigorously, her eyes are transfixed on her father.  At a certain point she may become uncomfortable: she has swallowed more than nutritious milk.  Her daddy straightens her and vigorously pounds on her back until the malaise lurches forth.

The feeding carries on, but soon the child's eyes leaden in weight.  She grows quiet and all-too comfortable and her limbs drape limply at her sides.  Knowing that she needs to keep drinking, father tickles the hand, nuzzles the foot and does what he can to rouse his daughter.  This prompts a short revival.

But soon the little newborn, with eyes closed and arms flailing blindly with all their poorly coordinated might is fighting daddy, pushing the bottle away.  With some consternation, he manages to keep the nipple in her mouth.  She is still wailing, but does not remember why.  A little distraction by daddy causes her to forget the crying and the link is finally severed. Suddenly she is tender and mild, draining the sustenance vigorously.

She wonders why daddy would ever do such a cruel thing and hide the milk from her. Why would he hold her arms from getting that milk she wanted all along?  I imagine that when she is old enough to eat solid food, the question will have vanished into the advent of a new perspective.

Perhaps the inexperienced father has misread the signs. I am not deterred. There's a greater lesson. It is about the death and resuscitation of children, adults and entire nations.  It must be remembered and retaught; or our newborns will give us an inevitable, untimely and terrible re-education.

Who is the Fairest of them All?

An old German fairy tale by the brothers Grimm reads "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the Fairest of them all?" The wicked step-mother of Snow White would pose this question to her magical mirror, but one day it told her something she did not wish to hear: her step daughter had grown into a beautiful little girl. The wicked step-mother responded by ordering Snow White's death.

Artistry has a way of being our mirror...music, literature, film & games. What man has contrived in his mind has become the stuff of art for centuries; that that era is changing is an interesting subject for further study and debate, but I will assert here as uncontroversial that man's ideology, his religion, his philosophy has constantly borne itself out in the artistic expressions (or reactions) of humanity.

I ask you to consider the idea that if a piece of music or art seems terrible to you there could be a multitude of reasons, but it could be possible that it is just bad art masquerading as good art. That is to say, it is ugly, degenerate, false, evil and/or immoral, and not beautiful.

Art that has burdened itself with the ideological death of man has the same characteristic sound and appearance of despair. The profanity, immorality and outright anti-God rebellion of a great deal of modern artistry reflects this spiritual state of death and defeat.

But before we conduct a book burning (see my first post), we should pause and think a little further. Hitler called much modern art "degenerate"; he was attempting to make modern art into a racial issue. But individuals who painted dadaism or cubism were not somehow physically inferior or incapable of seeing the 'beautiful' or the proper order of the structured world.

There is always a good measure of truth in the lie. The world that Hitler wanted to create was a tunnel vision of the flesh. It could only see beauty in the outward manifestation. Hitler condemned works of art that celebrated things (acts, attitudes, lifestyles) that we should rightly condemn as truly "degenerate", but fear, racism, and the aim of social control was Hitler's agenda. I won't go ahead and presume to tell you what art is and is not good. That would be to miss the boat again.

The problem with truly "degenerate" art is that despair and the sin of the human condition is not represented by images, but by the human thoughts and attitudes that created them; that is, the sin that created them. The demonic power of degenerate art (what I would call "BAD" art) is its propensity to pass on that evil to the receiver.

I do not believe that any picture, story or sound is inherently evil. The physical aspects of smashing a hammer into a man's skull or having a homoerotic adventure are about as evil as having afternoon tea. It is human blindness and rebellion which have the potential to make even the most innocuous of activities into crimes against God.

Surprise! Aunt Maud, that gossiping old biddie at church every Sunday is every bit as bad and worse than the stripper, the drug dealer and the murderer. In this life, we have to establish the guilty act or the actus reus, as well as the guilty mind (mens rea) in order to charge someone with a crime. But before God, and before him alone, the mens rea is enough to die for. (Matt 5:28)

Where does that leave us? The question is, where does your artistry leave you? Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) said we're all in need of different kinds of beauty. (I'll let you read On the Aesthetic Education of Man) I think he's right about that part. What does the artistry you choose to enjoy do with your heart, mind and soul? Don't simply avoid the degenerate, add the regenerate.

Is your art a mirror or a corruptor? First ask yourself if it is only you. "A crooked mind finds no good, and he who is perverted in his language falls into evil." (Prov 17:20). Sadly, we're all like this sometimes, even in the most innocent of circumstances. But if your art communicates something that explicitly motivates, encourages, implies, celebrates or otherwise leads you to do or think evil, maybe its time to throw away that Justin Bieber album. Does the art change you for the better, motivate you to do good or does it dismantle you?

When Snow White finally did wake up and make her comeback, the evil queen got a rather artistic end for her vanity. This should send a powerful message to our youth because yes, she died doing that vile act of dancing with piping hot iron shoes! So there. These days I don't think you'll die dancing, though I'm personally amazed that while doing so more don't get pregnant.

I'm not here to choose your art. I won't burn your books, movies, games or porno mags; but Jesus Christ is coming again to separate the sheep from the goats, the righteous from the filthy...and the wheat from the chaff. Don't let the page or note dictate to your heart but rather inspire it.

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
~Philippians 4:8~

The Nameless Hero of Faith

After a centurion has appealed to the Jewish elders in a bid to save the life of his "highly regarded" slave, an interesting exchange develops which defies the typical definition of greatness. It is thus a story to be grappled with, as it challenges the well-meaning heroism of the world with the heroics of faith. (Luke 7/ Matthew 8...I prefer the more detailed Luke 7 version here.)

The Jewish elders explain to Jesus, "He is worthy for You to grant this to him; for he loves our nation, and it was he who built us our synagogue." To paraphrase a little, "This guy is really worth your time, he loves the people and is really patriotic for Israel. He even constructed our local worship building!"

The centurion loves the people, he obviously has some respect or understanding for Judaism (if not outright conversion), he has worked hard in the service of others, he cares for even his slave, he has the recommendation of the people his Emperor has conquered and at this point in the text we can see that the centurion believes that Jesus has at least some power to help him.

If this fellow isn't worthy, (Jew vs Gentile theological discussion aside) then certainly no Gentile is worthy.

Jesus appears to take the bait so to speak. But I believe it is because He knew what would be written in history to follow and also because Jesus isn't one to deny those who knock, worthy or not.

What makes the case of the centurion so unique follows next, for as Jesus arrived near to the centurion's household, the centurion's friends bid him come no further saying, "Lord do not trouble Yourself further, for I am not fit for You to come under my roof; for this reason I did not even consider myself worthy to come to You..." (v.6)

As it turns out, the centurion did not think himself worthy as the Jewish elders praised him; and it was for this reason Jesus considered him worthy. The centurion acknowledged that Jesus was Lord and had the power to do the impossible; in other words, by sheer report of Jesus the centurion knew his superior commander from the rest of the world's meaningless monarchs. He had never met Jesus and yet acknowledged His authority (v.8).

Worldliness always measures heroism and righteousness by signs that it can see: patriotism, loyalty to family and kinsmen, moral acts, buildings and battles.

By contrast, the great spirituality of the Centurion was measured by his unwillingness to count himself as anyone more than a man under the hand of God; and that this God was alone worthy and able to accomplish what concerned him; even the impossible.