Together on God's Mission - A Review

The Cooperative Program is one of the most effective funding mechanisms for worldwide gospel ministry in the history of Christianity. Annually, autonomous local congregations give millions of dollars to support the advancement of the Great Commission at state, national, and global levels. Hundreds of pastors, missionaries, and lay people graduate from the six Southern Baptist Seminaries each year, better equipped for ministry and less financially burdened that would be possible if millions of people did not give to the Cooperative Program through their local churches. Missionaries go to language school, are transported to the field, and sustained in thousands of international locations because the gifts of small congregations are pooled with those of large ones to enable men and women from any sized church to dedicate their lives to getting the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Some might say the Cooperative Program is a wonder of modern missions. It serves as a catalyst for the spread of the gospel and offers a bright future for engaging the lost with the good news of Jesus Christ. Tragically, sometimes the purpose and fruit of Cooperative Program giving are invisible to people in the local churches. If Southern Baptists are going to continue to function in a collaborative manner to fund gospel ministry in the years to come, we must work diligently to celebrate the positive impact our cooperation can have and explore the shared theology that enables congregations who differ in their understanding of some doctrines to work together to advance the Great Commission.

The SBC has needed an updated simple, brief, and theologically informed case made for continued cooperation for several years. Together on God’s Mission: How Southern Baptists Cooperate to Fulfill the Commission, which released in early 2018, is a resource that fills that need.

Scott Hildreth’s recent book on cooperation in Southern Baptist life offers a concise history of the convention, with an emphasis on the Cooperative Program, and outlines a theological foundation for the ongoing collaboration of SBC churches in advancing God’s mission on earth. In less than one hundred pages, Hildreth significantly updates previous histories of the CP and makes explicit the ecclesiology that has for generations been assumed by cooperating Southern Baptists.

Part One of this volume consists of three chapters. The first chapter of Together on God’s Mission gives an overview of the early history of the Southern Baptist Convention as they shifted from mission society to a convention cooperating in ministry on multiple levels. Chapter Two traces the evolution of the early convention to a robust network of churches joined together to efficiently fund Great Commission activities. The third chapter helpfully informs readers how the Cooperative Program works.

In Part Two Hildreth shifts from history to theology. Chapter Four succinctly outlines a theology of mission. The fifth chapter offers a basic Baptist ecclesiology for cooperation which unites the many autonomous local congregations of the Southern Baptist Convention and enables them to work together with the other churches in the convention. In Chapter Six Hildreth outlines some of the ways the local congregations of the early church—that is, those documented in Scripture—cooperated, pooled funds for ministry, and sent personnel to accomplish the common mission of advancement of the gospel.

Part Three of the volume contains a single chapter. In the seventh chapter, Hildreth summarizes his arguments and offers some proposals for continued cooperation among Southern Baptists in the future. He commends churches to consider the theological implications of the Cooperative Program, evaluate cooperation in broader, non-financial terms, and celebrate the ability to participate in CP giving rather than viewing it as membership dues.

Together on God’s Mission was published by B&H Academic because it contributes to the academic conversation within the SBC about ecclesiology and history. However, the volume is written in plain English, with short chapters, and clear argumentation. These make the volume suitable for a popular audience. This book would be helpful to pastors who are not sure exactly what the Cooperative program does. It will also make a useful resource for prospective members of SBC churches who wonder what makes Southern Baptists distinct and unites them. As tensions continue to simmer over differences in ministry methodology, political persuasions, and doctrinal debates, this book can help recall to mind the good things that keep Southern Baptists working together. Together, the local churches of the Southern Baptist Convention can do a great deal more than we can do working alone.

This is a book that fills a void for the SBC at a time when a call to unity and recognition of the powerful way God has used the Cooperative Program to get the gospel to the ends of the earth. Together on God’s Mission deserves to be read broadly and discussed carefully as the convention marches toward two centuries of cooperative missions.

Together on God's Mission: How Southern Baptists Cooperate to Fulfill the Great Commission

By Hildreth, D Scott

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NOTE: This review was originally published at the B&H Academic blog, which has since been deactivated due to changes in strategy at LifeWay. I was provided a gratis copy of the volume with the expectation of an honest review.

Endless Wars in the Southern Baptist Convention

Next week thousands of messengers from local churches associated with the Southern Baptist Convention will meet in Nashville, TN for our annual meeting. This is predicted to be the largest SBC meeting since the watershed moment in 1985 when the long effort to shift the SBC back to its doctrinal roots was culminated.

The Conservative Resurgence and the News

In 1985 the battle lines were clear. There were leaders within the SBC and professors at our seminaries that did not affirm the authority and truthfulness of the Bible. As with all such debates, there was a mushy middle, too, who did not have particularly strong opinions or didn’t see the issues at the heart of the debate as worth dividing over.

People reading the news would not know there was a difference between arguments from several decades ago and today, even though the distance between the sides are much closer together. Proximity doesn’t mean the issues are insignificant, but it seems that it should temper the tone of the debate if the doctrinal issues are really the issue.

I’m pretty confident that the debate is more about different visions of the nature of the SBC than any doctrinal issue.

Power vs. Cooperation

The biggest problem with the SBC is a fundamental understanding of what the SBC is. Common misunderstandings about the nature of the SBC have created a winner-takes-all perception for complete domination of the SBC power structures.

And that struggle illustrates the root of the problem.

There should be no SBC power structures (or, at least, as small a one as practical).

The SBC is a loose association of doctrinally similar baptistic churches who have agreed to cooperate to fulfill the Great Commission.

Encouraged by the shifts of the Industrial Revolution and the flattening of society due to technology, the SBC has become more centralized in its structure and apparent function over the last century. The SBC has come to look more and more like a denomination.

But the SBC is not a denomination.

What is the SBC?

In purist terms, the SBC exists for two days a year when messengers get together and talk, sing, pray, and vote (probably a bunch of eating in there, too) about how to fulfill the Great Commission.

In reality, based on the need for logistics and the pace of busy work, there has been a necessary growth of the Executive Committee, the entities of the SBC (ERLC, WMU, seminaries, IMB, NAMB, LifeWay), and their ongoing, daily role. Sometimes we (and they) forget it, but the people that fill these positions are not the authorities in the SBC.

At the heart of the SBC’s current woes is a lack of clarity regarding the organizational structure of the SBC. The confusion is somewhat understandable among outsiders who deal with denominations and have little background in the weird history of the SBC. However, similar confusion is even more problematic when it is pervasive in the pews and even fostered by leaders who ought to know better.

Diagnostic Questions

There are some pertinent diagnostic questions that I’ve found clarifying as I’ve wrestled with my own tendency to quarrel.

What does it mean when the President of the SBC (or a member of the SBC Executive Committee) disagrees with me politically?

Absolutely nothing other than that I have a personal disagreement with someone. They may be a social media influencer, but they have not spiritual or temporal authority over me. Because the SBC President has responsibility to appoint personnel to appoint members to the Committee on Committees, which has trickle-down effect on the leanings of those nominated as trustees and appointed as convention staff, the SBC President has the ability to influence the future, but the steering mechanism is slow and complex, so that personal opinions a few shades to the right or left of mine should not be a major cause for concern. (The history of the Conservative Resurgence taught us both the importance of and the limitations of the SBC President’s influence.)

What if a professor at a seminary says something foolish publicly? Why does that individual get to represent the SBC?

If an individual that works for an SBC entity says something foolish publicly, that individual represents themselves and, if speaking in the role of their office, maybe the entity they are employed by. That individual never represents “the SBC,” because the SBC is a collection of loosely affiliated churches that meets for two days each year. The messengers of the SBC elect trustees for the entities who are charged to make sure the seminaries remain true to their mission and calling.

If an individual feels embarrassed that a professor (or other spokesperson) at an SBC entity “misrepresents them,” they should remember and remind others that those individuals do not represent them. The organic linkage between entity employee and church member is long and convoluted. We shouldn’t assume or accept that it is close or direct.

Why doesn’t the SBC fire pastors that are accused of abuse or its cover up?

The simple answer is that the SBC has no ability to hire or fire any pastor. Nor should it. However, if the local congregation fails to adequately deal with a public problem like abuse, then the messengers of other local congregations have the authority and responsibility (and the right to delegate if so agreed upon) to disfellowship a local congregation that has not maintained its public, gospel witness.

To use a biblical analogy, the SBC is like the people of Israel during the time of the judges. The reality is that “everyone does what is right in his own eyes.” This is a feature and not a bug. It comes with blessings and curses. Our hope and prayer should be that the Holy Spirit moves within local congregations and individuals to draw people more in line with clear teachings of Scripture for their life and practice. If they don’t, then the other congregations of the SBC have the responsibility to call them to repentance and expel them from our midst if they refuse to comply. Setting up a credentials committee with the delegated authority to determine whether or not to seat messengers from a particular church or call for investigation into the handling of abuse is a matter of policy that does not fundamentally change our polity.

What is the real heart of the unending street brawl within the SBC?

One of the major issues in the ongoing SBC civil war is that a large portion of the most vocal folks on either side of the battle either think we actually have a king (the defacto judges of the day often see themselves as such) who should have the ability to appoint his own heirs. Among those that don’t think we currently have a king, there people who are clamoring for a king to lead us into battle.

I’m in the camp that believes that having a king will only make the unending struggles within the SBC stronger and more vicious. We should be looking for ways to decrease the significance of our central entities, not consolidate their power, real or perceived.

What is the solution?

Ha! If I had a perfect solution, I would be a much more important person than I am.

My responsibility as a messenger to the SBC from my local congregation is to represent my congregation as well as I can, to vote my conscience on matters theological or practical, and to try to persuade other to emphasize the importance of the local church over the convention entities.

In an ideal world, I would only know the names of the Executive Committee members with whom I am personally related. In a good world, my chief contact with pastors of other churches affiliated with the SBC would be in discussing methods of cooperation to fulfill the SBC. In other words, the task is to decentralize the SBC again and see the committees and entities of the SBC as a means of cooperation rather than a power lever to control.

I can’t make this happen for everyone else, but I can certainly work to change my own perception and the way I talk about the SBC in all venues.

On a Recent Edition of Frankenstein

There are so many books coming out that it is sometimes hard to keep up. And yet, there are many very good books that have been deemed classics that I have yet to read. In general, like many people, I probably invest too much time in the latest books, usually non-fiction, to the detriment of my exposure to well-weathered literature.

Karen Swallow Prior has been working with B&H to republish a set of literary classics in lovely bindings with helpful introductions and annotations to help contemporary readers access some good books from our literary past. So far the set includes Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, Heart of Darkness, and Frankenstein. The general approach of the set has fit well with Prior’s earlier volume, On Reading Well, which encourages reading good literature for its ability to make us think morally, not simply to check a box on the Facebook “100 books every person must read” clickbait quiz.

Recently I picked up the new edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which is a book I had never previously read. First, it is worth noting that the physical book is a nice edition. It is a cloth hardback volume with quality paper, an easy-to-read font, with space between the lines and on the margins for notes and for the delight of the eyes. Unlike many reproduced classics, this is no cut-rate production that saps the energy through the process of trying to decipher tiny text on gray paper. Second, the introductory material is actually helpful. Too many reproduced classics have academic essays that diverge from framing the context for contemporary readers into second and third order scholarly debates that do little to help the average reader gain access to the information. Prior demonstrated restraint and focused on the most helpful bits of debate that actually pertain to the text (not its later interpretations), which makes the introduction worth reading before and after tackling Shelley’s work. Third, Prior frames the book for a Christian audience, which can be helpful. Instead of pushing the reader toward feminist interpretations or whatever neologism a particular scholar may be interested in, Prior offers some helpful points for consideration without providing the answers. Along with this, there are some reflection questions at the end of each of the three volumes of the book to encourage dialogue or reading with others.

The themes of Frankenstein are helpful for contemporary readers. Though the technology Victor Frankenstein uses to reanimate his monster is obviously fictional, it points beyond to moral questions of our own day like cloning, artificial wombs, and in vitro fertilization. Frankenstein conquers nature by “creating” life and that creature subsequently conquers him, taking away much of his joy, harming those he loves, and eventually resulting in his own death. In many ways, Shelley shows that by moving beyond the limits of nature, Frankenstein has really conquered himself. One great difference between Victor Frankenstein is that the misery caused by his invention has consequences that he himself feels, while many modern innovations externalize costs to another locality or a later generation. But a thoughtful reader may look around and wonder in what ways he or she is working to create a monster.

Readers should be grateful to Karen Swallow Prior for her work on this project and to B&H for refreshing these works of literature for contemporary readers to enjoy, discuss, and grow through. These volumes promise to be resources that can be appreciated for decades to come.

Some thoughts on The Postmodern Condition

Postmodernism was the bogeyman of the late ‘90s and early 2000s among evangelicals and other conservatives. In much the same way that one’s response to Critical Race Theory (which has some connections with postmodernity) serves as a shibboleth for acceptability in trendy circles, postmodernism functioned as a way to be part of the cool kids (on either side).

There are now those that think that postmodernism is really just another form of modernity (perhaps further advanced along its trajectory), and thus never really existed as a distinct movement, but there was something that adherents and opponents felt was different from the general stream of modernity, which still deserves some attention. With that in mind, I picked up, Jean-Francois Lyotard’s book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, to try to get a better understanding from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

Lyotard offers a definition in his introduction: “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”

In other words, Lyotard was arguing that modernity attempted to impose homogeneity on the world through metanarratives—high level explanations that were an attempt to make sense of everything. Postmodernity claims to recognize metanarratives as impositions from authorities that likely have little claim to correspondence to the truth.

At its best, postmodernity shakes the claims of modernistic empiricism, which leads to the apparent supremacy of “Science.” Postmodernity did not succeed in uprooting the religion of Scientism, as evidenced by the year of shaming that we “follow the Science” or “believe in the Science” or “listen to the Science.” In general, when someone puts a definite article in front of “Science” they are no longer talking about actual science, but about how they intend to try to browbeat you into doing what they want to. We are still very much living in an era where people believe that “Science” has or can produce a unified theory of everything. This despite Thomas Kuhn’s work in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which shows a truer picture of the way the scientific community develops metanarratives that evolve over time.

By Lyotard offers some helpful analysis beyond his definition of postmodernism. Though The Postmodern Condition was written in 1979, he predicted the information age with a surprising degree of prescience.

For example, he wrote,

“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control of access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”

There are obvious connections to information warfare, the psyops that are ongoing with bots on social media, election interference, etc. The fact that there are operatives from other nations whose primary goal is to stir up dissent and doubt among citizens of the United States is an illustration of Lyotard’s prediction.

Also, significantly for the concept of education and the role of the state, Lyotard anticipated the shifting role of the state with regard to education:

“The mercantilization of knowledge is bound to affect the privilege the nation-states have enjoyed, and still enjoy, with respect to the production and distribution of learning. The notion that learning falls within the purview of the State, as the brain or mind of society, will become more and more outdated with the increasing strength of the opposing principle, according to which society exists and progresses only if the messages circulating within it are rich and easy to decode. The ideology of communicational “transparence,” which goes hand in hand with the commercialization of knowledge, will begin to perceive the State as a factor of opacity and “noise.” It is from this point of view that the problem of the relationship between economic and State powers threatens to arise with a new urgency.”

It isn’t entirely a bad thing when the State is no longer perceived as “the brain or mind of society,” since the State has been significantly wrong about a number of life changing issues in the not-so-distant past. However, within Lyotard’s prediction is the anticipation of QAnon and similar conspiracy theories, which see a “Deep State” that is controlling the narrative. This has effectively made Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other outlets the de facto gatekeepers of truth, as congressional hearings and obnoxious overlays on social media posts frequently remind us.

It is interesting to read The Postmodern Condition at this point, to see how many of Lyotard’s anticipated realities have come true. As a description of reality, he is on the right track. He does little to help find a way to navigate through toward some better condition, but there is some value in the diagnosis.

Can Science Explain Everything? - A Review

Can science explain everything?

Most people would answer that question reflexively, but there is likely to be a divided response.

John Lennox, longtime apologist for Christianity and emeritus professor of Mathematics, argues that science cannot explain everything. His little book from The Good Book company, Can Science Explain Everything?, is a concise explanation of his response.

To some, the question itself might seem absurd, but one of the prevailing worldviews of the 21st century is scientism. We see this when people tell us to “follow the Science” or that “Science tells us” or some other trick of speech that assumes that there is a univocal authority in Science (it must be capitalized) that can shortcut any moral or practical concerns. Scientism is the belief that empirical scientific inquiry can answer any question and provide a consistent correct answer.

The question is significant because much of our cultural conversation seems to assume that science either knows everything or that it can know everything if we only ask the right questions and properly fund the research. There are huge ethical problems created by scientism, but there are more practical ones as well.

Scientism presumes that religion is either irrelevant to meaningful knowledge and thus useless for life or directly opposed to reason. This is the view of atheists like Richard Dawkins, but it is also a garden variety myth often used to marginalize Christians. Lennox topples scientism as a presupposition of reality and shows that while science is important, it is lacks sufficient structure to answer some of life’s most important questions.

Lennox opens his book arguing that being a scientist does not preclude belief in God. As a retired professor of mathematics, he has good reason to know this. But he also shares with us the account of his academic superiors attempting to shame him into rejecting Christianity. Lennox then moves on to a discussion of the shift in culture from faithful scientists seeking rational explanation for natural phenomenon because of their faith in God to some more contemporary scientists who seek to use their scientific findings to argue against the existence of God.

The substance of the argument of the book is that both religion and science are dependent upon reason, but they are often geared to ask different questions. Science tends to ask “What?” and “How?” while some sort of philosophical thought, including religion, is necessary to come to an answer about “Why?” The “Why?” in this case refers not to the process, but to purpose. Science can not answer questions of purpose.

Lennox also argues that there is no reason not to take the Bible seriously, despite the apparent power of science to explain all natural phenomena and exclude any supernatural events. He even argues that there is no reason to reject miracles. The miracles recorded in Scripture, like the resurrection of Jesus, are matters of history rather than of philosophy or science.

The whole book has an apologetic edge. Lennox is making a case that Christianity is credible. The book begins focused on the question of science, but turns during the discussion of miracles toward other objections to Christianity, for example, Lennox briefly discusses the problem of evil. After that point, he examines the trustworthiness of the text of Scripture we have as a way of explaining why the resurrection miracle has a historical basis. He then provides a chapter explaining that for the skeptic to falsify Christianity—that is, to prove that Christianity is not true, he needs to disprove the resurrection. Lennox shows that Christianity is falsifiable, but also makes the case that the account in the Bible of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection plausible and, indeed, even probable as the most credible explanation. Lennox closes the book by explaining how one can be a Christian and why it is important that skeptics and Christians test the faith honestly, seeking answers to doubts without perpetuating them indefinitely.

This is both a good book and a limited book. It is a worthy tool for the right applications, but is not the right instrument for every job.

Can Science Explain Everything? is an introductory level text. It is written at a level that an advanced junior high student could follow the argument. It is most suitable for those with more advanced reasoning skills—curious high schoolers, college students, or congregants who have come up against exclusive claims of scientism and are asking good questions about the faith. The book would also be helpful as an evangelistic tract for an open-minded skeptic who is honest about seeking answer to her questions. It will also be helpful for Christian students asking whether a skeptical teacher really has all the answers.

On the other hand, this is a book that is likely to meet resistance and ridicule by more hardened atheists because Lennox made the necessary tradeoffs between concision and completeness. In a book of 125 pages it is impossible to explore every contour of these important questions. This will lead more antagonist people to find the intentionally basic explanations Lennox offers unconvincing. This is not due to an inherent deficiency in the book, but a recognition of its purpose. Lennox has provided more substantial refutations of scientism in his book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

This is a good, useful book. Don’t ask more of it than it is prepared to give, but it would be a handy resource for a youth pastor or church bookshelf to answer some of this culture’s most pressing challenges.

Can Science Explain Everything? (Oxford Apologetics) (Questioning Faith)

By John Lennox

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We Need to Recover Virtue

Until a few years ago there was a lot of talk among orthodox Christians about character. Public concern for character has eroded as political tides have shifted. But throughout the history of Christianity character—that is, embodied virtue—has been a consistent focus of discipleship.

The term virtue has been less commonly discussed among Protestants than among Roman Catholics. Due to the primary focus on Scripture, Protestants have leaned toward deontological ethics. Obedience to the duties outlined in Scripture have framed the way that many Protestant Christians discuss holiness. Among Roman Catholics there is a more robust tradition of virtue ethics and the pursuit of virtue, not least because of the work of Thomas Aquinas on the subject, though one finds similar language in Augustine and others.

One common objection to virtue talk among Protestants is that it enables a drift from Scripture. Situational ethics, for example, is a version of virtue ethics that emphasizes one virtue––that of love, ambiguously defined. Situation ethics can be used to justify violation of the clear requirements of Scripture in the name of virtue. Similarly, in versions of virtue ethics (like that espoused by Blanchard and O’Brien in An Introduction to Christian Environmentalism) adherents sometimes justify obvious disobedience to Scripture (as with acts of violence and property destruction) in the name of some other virtue. The vagueness of virtue language has made this approach to ethics and discipleship unpopular especially among conservative evangelicals.

The ambiguity of virtue language and the potential for drift is real, but the price of abandoning the pursuit of virtue is taking a significant toll on the public witness of conservative Christians. A duty-based ethics, absent the guardrails of virtuous character, can fall into self-justification and casuistry very quickly. In practice it often looks like finding proxy sinners to do the dirty work. We can promote an unscrupulous politician, even if we cannot ourselves engage in similar skullduggery. More concerning that voting for one of several bad options is cheering on the misdeeds of the dark hero, which is where the motives of our hearts are revealed.

There is room for a re-engagement in virtue thinking among evangelicals. Indeed, I believe it to be absolutely necessary. Pursuit of virtue must, of course, be filled with the content of Scripture, but we must go beyond proof-texts and seeking bare duties if holiness is going to become the signature quality of evangelicals.

If we are to pursue virtue, we will likely find help from the Roman Catholic tradition, because they have more consistently maintained a focus on virtue. Some instances of this are more helpful than others, but as with any theology, we should be prepared to chew the meat and spit the bones.

Romano Guardini’s book, Learning the Virtues That Lead You to God is a helpful place to begin. The title gives away the fact that Guardini sees virtues as a way of gaining merit that can increase the likelihood of salvation or reduce time in Purgatory, but setting those important considerations aside, there is deep value in studying the virtues as Guardini presents them.

After a brief preface, Guardini considers the nature of virtue, where he lays the groundwork of virtue from Greek philosophy (particularly Plato) and argues that the pursuit of virtue is an incremental work that believers should begin with the virtues that are most familiar to them. There are sixteen meditations that follow, each on a different virtue. These are not the classical virtues, but sixteen character traits including truthfulness, patience, justice, reverence, disinterestedness, kindness, gratitude, and others. As Guardini notes in his preface, “This interpretation shall be carried out in a very unsystematic way.” The book concludes with a brief meditation on justice before God, which attempts to bring unity to the previous chapters and encourages the pursuit of holistic virtue. The conclusion is the least satisfying chapter for someone in the Augustinian tradition, because it ends on a minor key of perpetual pursuit rather than comfort in Christ.

Learning the Virtues that Lead You to God is a book that deserves to be read slowly. While we might not agree with Guardini on the purpose of a pursuit of virtue, there is a great deal of wisdom in the pages.

In dealing with Justice, Guardini notes, “All criticism should begin with ourselves, and with the intention of improving things. Then we would soon see how much goes wrong because we do not permit the other person to be who he is and do not give him the room which he requires.”

While considering reverence, Guardini writes, “In the measure in which cultural evolution progressed, and a rational understanding and technical mastery of the world increased, the religious element receded. The concept of significance and value became predominant and awakened a respectful attitude in which there was still an echo of the old awe, that feeling of reverence of which we are speaking and by which a man of proper discernment still pays tribute to greatness.”

Writing about disinteredness: “The power of personality stems from the genuineness of life, the truth of thought, the pure will to work, and the sincerity of one’s disposition.”

Wrestling with courtesy, we read: “We must emphasize another point, something that has a direct effect on people’s dealings with each other; namely, the lack of time. Courtesy requires time. In order to exercise it, we must stop and wait; we must make a detour and we must be considerate and defer our own affairs. But all this takes time, and in our age of forced deadlines, of precisely functioning machinery, of the high costs of construction, and of fierce competition, the loss of time is something useless, irrational, erroneous, and even wicked.”

These few quotes help show the flavor of the chapters and demonstrate why this is a book that deserves to be read slowly and repeatedly. We need not agree with everything Guardini says, but there is value in hearing him say it and considering it carefully for application in our own lives.

Learning the Virtues: That Lead You to God

By Romano Guardini

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How do We Know? - A Review

One of the biggest needs in the church, especially among theologically conservative Christians, is a recovery of epistemology.

The problem is that that first statement alone will significantly limit the audience for a post like this or the sort of study that is needed to really help change the unhealthy approach to media and Bible study by many Christians.

Epistemology is the study of how we know things. It’s one of those words that until you read it a bunch of times in different settings and hear a number of people defining and explaining it, you will often have a hard time grasping what it really means.

How do we know things? Well, we just do, right? Not exactly.

In certain crowds, if I ask “How do we know?” I am likely to be told that we read the Bible. “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” I’ve seen more than a few bumper stickers to that effect.

That may be a comforting way to end a discussion for some, but how do we know that the Bible’s statements are true? What do we do with phenomena about which the Bible does not speak? In other words, even if I accept the Bible as absolutely trustworthy in everything it addresses, how do I live in a world that is culturally unlike the Bible.

Additionally, how do I know that my reading of the Bible’s statements is correct? Exposure to individuals from other cultures will quickly reveal that different people perceive different symbols different ways. How can I know that I know what is true in the Bible is really true?

That last question reveals how strange the question can get really quickly. It’s easier to jump back to “common sense” where we simply accept the received wisdom from epistemic authorities—the people or institutions we trust—than ask this slippery question.

But what happens when manipulative predators realize that folks are going to take their word for it? And what happens when there are so many entities posing as epistemic authorities because of the information age that anyone can jump on YouTube and present themselves as an authority that anyone can find and some folks will believe?

You get the right epistemic mess that we are in, with conspiracy theories flying around a mile a minute, distrust in any group that does not agree with you or your in-group, and a failure to recognize that even with an authoritative text like the Bible, a reader can bring so many presuppositions to the table that he or she can entirely misread the message. It’s a pretty bleak situation.

However, there is hope. First, because we have a living and loving God who inspired the Bible and illuminates it, so that the person of the Holy Spirit will continue to work on the minds and hearts of those who are honest in their pursuit of holiness. Second, there is hope because of books like How Do We Know? An Introduction to Epistemology, which was just released as a second edition, by Jamie Dew and Mark Foreman.

How Do We Know? is an attempt to provide a resource on a tricky subject that does not require a background in philosophy to understand. The authors come at the problem head on in the first pages of the series introduction: “Many people today have embraced, often without realizing it, an approach to knowing reality that undermines their ever coming to truly understand it.”

The book asks a series of questions in each of its chapters:

What is epistemology? What is knowledge? Where does knowledge come from? What is truth, and how do we find it? What are inferences, and how do they work? What do we perceive? Do we need justification? [of belief, not soteriology] Can we be objective in our view of the world? What is virtue epistemology? Do we have revelation? How certain can we be?

That is a lot of questions for a very short book. In about 150 pages, the authors try to provide reasonable answers to each one of those difficult, but very important questions. They do quite well.

How Do We Know? is a good place to start in getting a foothold in what I believe to be one of the most important topics for our day. There are obviously some side, tribal battles that pop up and might be cause for disagreement among more experienced theologians and philosophers. For example, some Reformed individuals who have been exposed to presuppositionalism may find points of disagreement. However, on balance, the authors are fair in their dealing with the tribal disagreements within Christian philosophy. As a result, the 150-pages of this book may be more helpful to a beginner than the 400-page tome that is John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, for example. Dew and Foreman wrote an introduction with all of its blessings and limitations. But it is a good introduction.

Even though this is the sort of book that is written specifically for those that have little background in philosophy, it requires either some scaffolding through a class or a decent education. This would make for an excellent undergraduate text, a useful volume for a small-group study with reasonably educated lay people—especially those who read. This is a book that would be well-placed withing a high school homeschool curriculum, particularly if a parent was available to help work through some of the hairy edges of the concepts. In other words, this is an accessible book, but the topic is very abstract and sometimes help is needed. Dew and Foreman have done about as well as can be done with an exceptionally important, but extremely difficult field of study.

One can hope that How Do We Know? gets a wide readership beyond academic settings. The church in general, and evangelical churches specifically, have a significant crisis of knowing, trust, and critical thinking on their hands. The answer is not more five-minute YouTube clips, but basic discipleship and training in how to process information, which is exactly what How Do We Know? provides.

How Do We Know? (Questions in Christian Philosophy)

By Dew Jr., James K., Foreman, Mark W.

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

The Ends Don't Justify the Means

The most destructive of ideas is that extraordinary times justify extraordinary measures. This is the ultimate relativism, and we are hearing it from all sides. The young, the poor, the minority races, the Constitution, the nation, traditional values, sexual morality, religious faith, Western civilization, the economy, the environment, the world are all now threatened with destruction—so the arguments run—therefore let us deal with our enemies by whatever means are handiest and most direct; in view of our high aims history will justify and forgive. Thus the violent have always rationalized their violence.

But as wiser men have always known, all times are extraordinary in precisely this sense. In the condition of mortality all things are always threatened with destruction. The invention of atomic holocaust and the other manmade dooms renews for us the immediacy of the worldly circumstances as the religions have always defined it: we know ‘neither the day nor the hour. . . .’

Wendell Berry published these paragraphs in 1972 in an essay called “Discipline and Hope”, but they could have been written yesterday. Maybe some of his examples would have changed, but the point is still valid.

Though Berry is still alive and the book is not quite old enough to count as an “old book” by Lewis’ definition, it is helpful to realize that about 50 years after these paragraphs were penned, the problem is still very much the same. It’s ok to be brutal to people on “the other side” because they are trying to destroy the SBC, the nation, the economy, the environment, Christianity, etc. The story is the same and so is the truth.

The truth is that it won’t matter much which side wins the culture war if the goodness of the culture is torn down to win it. Looking back, our children’s children will think we are fools and backward for a number of reasons that we can’t see and would never to think to recognize. They will look at some of the battles being fought and wonder why there was so much energy spent, when really the obvious problem was. . . .

But we can’t see what fills in that blank. And that is the nature of it. The very things that we do not question today because we can’t conceive of them being questioned will be the things that are assumed to be completely true or false (and obviously so) by a future generation.

As Christians we can see that there are many things wrong with this world and many people taking a wrong direction. But I can see the same thing in myself. The difference is that I can do something about myself and I have only limited influence on the rest of the world. My most significant influence on the world may be by living rightly in my own sphere of influence, showing people a positive way forward based on the truths of Scripture, and embodying those to the maximum extent possible. If the culture war is about goodness and truth, then so should our daily lives be.

The ends don’t justify the means. It is no good to win the culture war and lose our own souls, which is exactly we are risking. History may judge us all fools, and it may judge some on one side or the other of any issue as morally better than the others. But history isn’t the ultimate judge. God is. At the end of this life, our individual legacies will be laid before God. Our works will pass through the fire. Only those works wrought with faith, hope, and love will remain. The ends will be judged by the means.

We don’t know when the judgment is coming, but we Christians know the judge. We know his character. We have access to his standards through Scripture. We of all people should live like we know his judgment is coming, which should shape the way we fight our political battles today.

How Rigged is the Economy against Individuals?

One of the prevailing themes in contemporary American public discourse is that the economy is irredeemably rigged against the little guy. The theory runs that the richest 1% have so much money that they are keeping the rest of us down.

That is a powerful story. It feeds on examples of cases where there are excessively wealthy people who do not have financial concerns that some anywhere close to the ones that ordinary citizens have. There are legitimate cases of harassment and discrimination prevent some people from achieving their potential.

However, the more complete story seems to be that despite inequalities in wealth, the potential for people to gain moderate levels of wealth is still present, even for people with median incomes.

In the FIRE community (Financial Independence/Retire Early) one of the more common targets for net worth prior to checking out of the workforce is $1M USD. Given that about 40% of American adults claim they can’t cover an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing or selling something, some argue that breaking into a seven-figure net worth is impossible.

Considering that the median household income in 2018 was estimated to be about $63K, which doesn’t include non-cash benefits like the company portion of insurance benefits, I’m more inclined to believe the people that tend to be optimistic about economic opportunities. Thomas Stanley and Sarah Stanley Fallaw’s recent book, The Next Millionaire Next Door, tends to support general optimism.

The first and most obvious allowance we must make in the whole debate, however, is that not everyone can get to the point of having a large net worth. There are people who have disabilities or medical conditions that will prevent them from engaging fully in the workforce and whose assets are regularly depleted by needed expenses. There are others who have, due to little or no fault of their own, been left in a precarious economic position because of poor choices by others or have had to leave a situation due to abuse. And, to be fair, half the households in the United States fall below the $63K income threshold, which makes it more difficult (though by no means impossible, down to a certain level) to create a large net worth.

But many in the top half of earners are not millionaires and never will be. In fact, according to Forbes in 2019, 18.6 million Americans have a net worth over a million. That means that approximately 1 in 17 people in the US are millionaires. That’s 5.6% of the population. Not bad when you think about it, but not as much as you would think.

The Next Millionaire Next Door is a follow up to Stanley’s 1996 book, The Millionaire Next Door, and basically asks if the economic system is really so rigged that no one can get ahead. He began the work with his daughter (Sarah Fallaw), and she completed the book alone due to his untimely death in 2015. The conclusion is that the basic patterns of behavior of millionaires has not changed in a fundamental sense in two decades.

The recipe for growing your net worth into the seven figures is the same as it was in 1996 and basically the same as it ever has been. Find work that uses your talents and do it vigorously. Live below your means by avoiding “status wars” with people at and above your income level. Invest your money; don’t just let it sit in a coffee can or a savings account. Do this for an extended period of time.

The upshot is that the path to becoming relatively wealthy is extremely simple. It has a lot to do with hard work and frugality. In fact, both the 1996 book and this latest book emphasize frugality as a central element of financial success. Even in 2019, the vast majority of millionaire’s surveyed had never spent more than $300 on a watch. Most of them drive Fords, Toyotas, Hondas, or Chevy’s that were purchased used, and very few of those surveys had ever spent more than $40,000 on a vehicle. Although they can “afford” to purchase more expensive products, they chose not to because the increase in value did not match the increase in price.

Also important to note is that those who accumulate wealth tend to be much more generous with their wealth. Individuals and families that have a high income, but a very low net worth do not tend to give much away. However, those that tend to save much of what they earn at whatever income level are, statistically speaking, more generous than your average American. Many of these next-door millionaires give away more than 5% of their income per year to registered charities, in addition to gifts to family.

To some this may seem counter-intuitive. Why should the savers be better givers? However, it makes sense when we consider the question from a different angle. High spenders don’t hang onto their money, but they have been mastered by their money and take pleasure in its spending. They, therefore, have a stronger love for money because of what it can get them. In contrast, the savers have mastered their money. They see it for its good beyond immediate consumption. They are also much more likely to want to see those funds invested into their community in a way that will cultivate hope for others.

The Next Millionaire Next Door leads me to believe that the majority of the “rich” are not the ones that are featured in the tabloid news or that are constantly scrabbling greedily for wealth. Rather, many of those who have obtained wealth in our society have, in some form or fashion, heeded the principles of 1 Tim 6:8–10:

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Though the political left, especially young socialists, tend to demonize those that have worked within the American economic system for decades to slowly accrue wealth, that demonization appears to be unwarranted. Those Christians who demean others, especially other Christians, for building businesses, working hard, participating in the community, giving regularly, and still managing to cultivate relative wealth are missing the fact that many of the next-door millionaires have done so by not loving money.

This is an interesting reversal. Next-door millionaires tend to be those who are generally content with food and clothing. They did not desire the wealth, but when they acquired wealth, they were good stewards of it. Statistically speaking, they give generously, live modestly, and work diligently. In fact, for most of those highlighted in this book, becoming wealthy was a secondary result of living wisely with those behaviors.

This sort of study might be helpful in overturning some negative perceptions and hostile rhetoric toward a portion of the population that has been diligent and, often, less self-interested than others in their pursuit of the good life. In this case, the good life being defined not as the unending accumulation of wealth, but of working hard, loving family and neighbor, and stewarding resources to have a reasonably secure future. In the United States that sort of lifestyle is often (but not always) rewarded with an abundance of resources over time.

Your Money or Your Life - A Review

In 1992 a little book was released that is still creating ripples today, nearly three decades and three editions later. Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez published Your Money or Your Life not long after a major stock market crash on Black Monday 1987, as the United States was suffering under a slow-recovery recession after a decade of decadence. Your Money or Your Life is largely credited as the inspiration of the FIRE movement, which calls people to work hard, live frugally, save vigorously to achieve financial independence with the goal of being able to step away from the daily grind years before normal cultural expectations.

In true American fashion, the book is fashioned as a simple nine-step process that raises the reader’s awareness of where your money has gone, where it is going, and where you would really like it to go. The central concept of the book is that in the modern economy, humans trade time for money. And, since time is the one thing every human has a limited amount of in this life, they describe the employment relationship as one of trading life energy for money, hence the title: Your Money or Your Life.

As with many truly helpful things, the book’s premise is incredibly simple: For a great many people, raising awareness of expenses and asking a few value questions can reorient attitudes in ways that help shake of consumeristic habits and lead to a great deal more financial freedom. The concept works much better for those that are middle-income or higher, since the poor tend to already have a tight focus on their finances. But as Robins points out, many middle-income people have no idea where their money goes and are wasting a great deal of their time earning money to spend on things or experiences that give little satisfaction.

The practical advice in Your Money or Your Life is sound, which helps explain why a third revision was just released. The core is sound, though the specifics of recommendations have had to change. For example, in a low interest environment, the early advice to use bonds to fund retirement would be a relatively quick path to ruin.

Philosophically the book is all over the place. It mixes a few proof-texts from the Bible with Eastern thought, as well as some assumptions that are more American than anything else. However, by common grace there is a helpful integrity to the outlook, however quilted the underlying ideas may be.

One of the more helpful ideas that the book promotes is that all of life should be viewed as a whole. We can’t see our budget as one piece of our lives, our work as another, and our home life as something entirely different. All of them are of a piece and impact one another, as anyone who has worked alongside someone going through a divorce can attest. This isn’t to suggest that getting one thing right fixes everything, but what Robin and Dominquez point out is that viewing them all together helps us make better choices in the places we have agency. Spending money is, for many of us, one of the places we have the most agency. Therefore, the encouraging people to ask questions about how their spending reflects their values can lead to changes that open up opportunities in other areas.

Another significant element of the book is that it forces readers to rethink the nature of work. They argue,

The real problem with work, then, is not that our expectations are too high. It’s that we have confused work with paid employment. Redefining “work” as simply any productive or purposeful activity, with paid employment being just one activity among many, frees us from the false assumption that what we do to put food on the table and a roof over our heads should also provide us with our sense of meaning, purpose and fulfillment. Breaking the link between work and money allows us to reclaim balance and sanity.

There are too many eggs in the “work” basket for many of us. We define ourselves by our job and invest our best energy into tasks that may be demeaning or seem to be designed to be frustrating.

To some degree, that is the nature of an industrialized economy, which sometimes reduces tasks to repetitive minutia in the name of efficiency. Connected to this reduction is that due to the liquidity of modernity, there are few stable aspects of a contemporary human’s life. We are likely to change jobs, move thousands of miles, and undergo shifts in vocation that would have been unthinkable for the majority of human history. Work was meant to be satisfying as we create and organize, being made in the image of God. What work has become is not what it was meant to be. This is helpful truth that the authors recognize.

The book carries some significant baggage philosophically. The authors seem to assume that one of the primary purposes of humanity is to achieve a degree of autonomy. The number of cases of divorce they seem to celebrate is significant. There is an assumption that happiness can be achieved in some measure through material goods. All this and more lie beneath the surface, which should cause the Christian to read this book with care. At the same time, the advice is presented by non-Christians who argue for a distinct worldview, which makes it easier to chew the meat and spit the bones than when someone reads Dave Ramsey or another of the Christian financial gurus, where a heavy dose of proof-texts and testimonies saturated with church language can cause us to lower our guard, allowing greed to slip in when we least expect it. Your Money or Your Life is helpful, in part, because it is written from a different perspective that can be illuminating even as we filter it carefully.

For many American Christians, the lure of consumerism has led to an increase in consumer debt, a lifestyle of excess that would have shamed earlier generations of believers, and an increasing difficulty to enjoy the benefits of real wealth in one of the most affluent societies on earth. Books like Your Money or Your Life can present an alternative picture that is, in fact, closer to a biblical attitude toward money and the unity of life than many similar products from faith oriented Christian publishers offer. It’s high time American Christians began to rethink their money habits, and Your Money or Your Life is a decent place to start.

Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Fully Revised and Updated for 2018

By Robin, Vicki, Dominguez, Joe, Mr. Money Mustache

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