Worth Reading - 3/24

1. Harry Emerson Fosdick's famous sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?," shaped a generation of revisionist Christians. That sermon, calling for steadfastness in rejecting Christian heritage motivated mainly in the liberal denomination to resist biblical doctrine. John Piper's 2000 sermon, "You Have One Life - Don't Waste It," preached at the One Day event that brought about 40,000 college students together may have had a similar impact. Time will tell. This post at The Gospel Coalition on the influence of that sermon is worth reading. The sermon itself is also worth your time.

“The morning of May 20, 2000, dawned damp and grey over a grassy field in Memphis, where a portable city had sprung up overnight. Thousands of muted tents stood in wet rows; fog made everything hazy.

About 40,000 college students had arrived for the fourth Passion Conference, its first outdoors. It was a day they wouldn’t forget, one they describe with words like “special” and “holy” and “weight of glory.”

Even people who weren’t there remember it, because that day author and pastor John Piper gave his famous “seashells” message.

“What an epic message it was!” said Desiring God executive editor David Mathis. “When we trace the history of Desiring God and John Piper’s rise in influence over the years, One Day 2000 may be the single most significant event in terms of exposing a wider audience to Piper.”

Before he spoke, Piper asked God for “a prophetic word that would have a ripple effect to the ends of the earth and to eternity.”

He got it. The message exploded out, sparking a book, a study guide, tracts, and even a rap song.”

2. The promotion of a wellness lifestyle by the government and big business is a gateway to being controlled by others. This article at First Things argues that point well:

“Promoting wellness is becoming a means for government and big business to exercise control over our lives.

The pretext is cost-cutting—the idea that if employers and government can persuade us to live healthier lifestyles, then society will benefit from less government spending on health care and reduced business costs from lowered health-insurance premiums and fewer employee sick days.

But when does helpfully promoting wellness—say, by providing exercise classes, or professional assistance to employees who decide to quit smoking—become an intrusion into personal privacy? When does a laudable desire to reduce healthcare costs become an obsession with controlling how we live our lives?

Here’s one example. Republicans in the House of Representatives want to empower employers to induce their employees to be genetically tested so that the obtained information can be compiled and used in fashioning company wellness programs. Currently, employees can volunteer to be genetically tested if their employer’s wellness program offers the service. However, it is illegal under federal law—the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—for an employer to punish those who refuse such testing or to offer incentives to persuade workers to allow their genetic makeup to be assessed.”

3. The ongoing Russell Moore kerfuffle in the SBC has had the potential to distract from the promulgation of the gospel. This week, the Board of Trustees of the ERLC issued a statement. Russell Moore also issued an apology. Hopefully this is a step toward reconciliation and continued pursuit of the Great Commission.

“As the year progressed, I felt convicted—both by my personal conscience and by my assignment by Southern Baptists—to speak out on issues of what the gospel is and is not, what sexual morality and sexual assault are and are not, and the crucial need for white Christians to listen to the concerns of our black and brown brothers and sisters in Christ. I stand by those convictions, but I did not separate out categories of people well—such that I wounded some, including close friends. Some of that was due to contextless or unhelpful posts on social media about the whirl of the news cycle. I cannot go back and change time, and I cannot apologize for my underlying convictions. But I can—and do—apologize for failing to distinguish between people who shouldn’t have been in the same category with those who put politics over the gospel and for using words, particularly in social media, that were at times overly broad or unnecessarily harsh. That is a failure on my part.

I was aware that there were many—including many very close to me—who were quite vocal in critiquing on those areas even candidates they were able to support. These people made clear what they were supporting and what they were rejecting on the basis of the biblical witness, and did not celebrate or wave away the moral problems. I did not speak much about those people because I wasn’t being asked about them, and I didn’t think they were causing the confusion that frustrated me as I was talking even to people I was seeking to win to Christ. But I didn’t clearly enough separate them out. Again, that is a failure on my part, and I apologize.”

4. Fake news isn't a new thing. This is a really interesting article in the Smithsonian Magazine about how fake news (a.k.a., propaganda) helped to turn the tide in World War II.

“Although this was hardly the first instance of a wartime disinformation campaign, Delmer’s “Black Propaganda,” as he called it, shared plenty with today’s “fake news.” It was agitprop masquerading as inside dirt. To be sure, British intelligence agents played a role, but it was behind the scenes, unlike traditional government propaganda. By most accounts the broadcasts were insidiously effective: Hitler’s high command repeatedly attempted to block the signal.

It turns out that Delmer, the subject of a new documentary, Come Before Winter, developed a fake news factory aimed at disrupting the Nazis. He introduced several other radio stations, including one anchored by a young German named “Vicki,” who read a mixture of real news culled from intelligence sources and fake items, including a fabricated report about an outbreak of diphtheria among German children.

In November 1943, Delmer ended Der Chef’s reign of error by penning a script that had Nazi troops storming the studio and “shooting” him mid-broadcast, but many other ruses lived on. Beginning in May 1944, he produced a German-language newspaper called Nachrichten für die Truppe (News for the Troops), which was air-dropped to soldiers on the Western front.”

5. Bruce Ashford of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary takes on the common assertion that Jesus was not political during his time here on earth.

“So, was Jesus “political” during his time on earth?

In certain contemporary American senses of the world “political,” no he was not. He never took out newspaper ads telling the folks in Nazareth to “vote for option C in the sewage referendum.” He was not a government official and never ran for public office. He never spent his free time on Facebook yelling at people from the other side of the political aisle, employing a generous use of the CAPS LOCK and !!!!!!!!!! keys to make his points.

But in a deeper sense, Jesus’ ministry was profoundly, thoroughly, and inescapably political.”

6. If you are interested, I had an article published in the Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies. In the article I argue that work has value inasmuch as it glorifies God. Work is not valuable in and of itself.

“In his 1972 book, Working, Studs Terkel begins with a startling description of the purpose of his book and the nature of work. He writes, “This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence––to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations.” But he goes on to note that the book is “about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash . . .; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” For Terkel the reality falls far short of the ideal, but there is an ideal for which people earnestly yearn. For Terkel’s subjects, work is instrumentally necessary to earn a living but lacks deeper value. He interviews dozens of workers and mostly finds out how unhappy they are. The accounts are poetic, rich, and raw. His work is powerful, but it leaves the reader longing for a better ending. It conveys the deep human longing to find value in work.”

Worth Reading - 7/8

This week has been tragic and gut wrenchingly hard. I would like to find bright and cheery posts and set up an oasis of humor in the midst of the waves of raw emotion. However, I have chosen not too because there are a few posts that I think are very important to share and discuss at this time.

1. Aaron Earls is asking meaningful questions in light of the two shootings of black men on back to back days.

Why are many conservative white Christians afraid of government overreach from a federal government they never see, but never questioning the militarization of the local police department in their backyards?

Why do we acknowledge that the justice system can be unfairly tilted toward someone because of name and connections, but refuse to accept the possibility that it might be unfairly tilted away from someone because of the color of their skin?

If we truly believe that all lives matter, why would we react negatively to someone saying that black lives matter?

As the church in America has increasingly looked to politics as the primary solution for culture, we have allowed that perspective to color everything.

As individual Christians, we should also be thinking through how often our principles shift depending on the circumstances and those involved.

These shootings and the reactions become political. We view it as an “us versus them” situation, instead of treating it as an “us” situation—an attack on human dignity.

The church has to be better. Christians have to be better.

2. A lecture to The Gospel Coalition deals with the issue of Black Lives Matter and whether it is the contemporary Civil Rights movement. This address is vital to understand what the majority of the individuals engaged in the BLM movement feel. Here is the link to the article, but the audio below is worth your time, too. It has helped me shift my understanding of the movement, and I think it is worthwhile to listen to even if you disagree with it in the end.

Before we go any further, I just want to clear up a common misconception about the Black Lives Matter sentiment. Black Lives Matter does not mean “black lives matter only.” It means “black lives matter too.” It’s a contextualized statement, like saying “children’s lives matter.” That doesn’t mean adult lives don’t matter. But in a culture that demeans and disparages them, we understand we have to say forthrightly and particularly that children’s lives matter. In the face of a historic and contemporary context that has uniquely disparaged black life as not worth valuing or protecting in the same way as others, they are saying black lives matter just as much as every other life. Ironically, saying “Black Lives Matter” is really a contextualized way of saying, “All Lives Matter.”

3. At the National Review Online, David French calls for an effort to tap the breaks on the cultural and political divide that seems to be pushing us toward the abyss.

Last night, as the shots rang out across Dallas – as protesters scattered, and we watched the horrible, endlessly replayed video of a police officer’s cold-blooded murder on cable news – I felt that we were witnessing an unraveling. Our unrest hasn’t yet reached the levels of 1968, but it’s moving in that direction – against the backdrop of the worst partisan polarization in decades.

We are faced with choices today. At a time when all the short-term incentives point toward unreason, our leaders, political and cultural, must choose reason. At a time when group solidarity is trumping individual accountability, we must choose individual accountability. At a time when the loudest voices don’t wait for evidence to make sweeping judgments, we must wait for the evidence.

4. John Piper deals with the larger issue of truth in relation to the racial tensions, protection of the unborn, and potential for deception. We must pursue truth, particularly the truth found in the person of Jesus Christ. Some might see this as a deflection of the central issue of the week--the ongoing racial tensions--however, I think Piper is trying to reach the audience of white conservatives struggling with how to engage that issue by relating it to an issue in which they are already engaged. In any case, I think it's worth a read.

Finally, the reality of truth. It is a great irony that the philosophical, academic, and social power of left-wing elites since World War II have devoted themselves to showing that there is no truth. It has no transcendent reality. Truth, they say, is an outmoded enlightenment construct created to justify political, racial, and gender privilege.

This is an irony because it is precisely these left-wing elites that cry most loudly against injustice, not realizing that the limb of truth that they just sawed off is the only one that can provide trans-racial, trans-political, trans-gender, trans-cultural support for justice, and decisive resistance to injustice.

5. Russell Moore writes to help the church process the this week's events. It originated at his blog, but has been reposted at The Gospel Coalition. We have to talk about it. We have to deal with it. The moral fabric of the nation may well depend on it.

What we should understand, first, is that this crisis isn’t new. Many white evangelicals will point to specific cases, and argue the particulars are more complex in those situations than initial news reports might show. But how can anyone deny, after seeing the sheer number of cases and after seeing those in which the situation is all too clear, that there is a problem in terms of the safety of African Americans before the law? That’s especially true when one considers the history of a country in which African Americans have lived with trauma from the very beginning, the initial trauma being the kidnapping and forced enslavement of an entire people with no standing whatsoever before the law. For the black community, these present situations often reverberate with a history of state-sanctioned violence, in a way that many white Americans—including white evangelicals—often don’t understand. 

Second, we should understand the peril here. These shootings, and the root causes behind them, come at a time when the United States is hyper-polarized and socially fragmenting. In addition, there’s a resurgent wave of blatant racism and anti-Semitism on display in social media channels and in upheavals around the world. The social bonds in our culture are weak indeed, and ought to cause us to have the same gravity Great Depression leaders had, not knowing whether the crisis would propel the nation to greatness in problem-solving or to meltdown.

6. A post from the Reformed African American Network on processing pain in a time of grief:

We must also guard our hearts. During times of pain, we are more susceptible to lies and deception. We are prone to self-medicate. We are tempted to look for an escape from reality. Family, we can’t check out. We must pray and stay grounded in the Word. We must process our pain through redemption and truth. Where sin abounds, God’s grace abounds much more.

Processing our pain doesn’t mean that we are to be inactive and silent. It helps to ensure that our hearts do not become bitter. Wounds that are not properly cared for become infected and deadly. Our hearts are wounded. The wounds are deep. The wounds are old, but there is a balm in Gilead.