Lots on the go right now… I’m presently away with the family and some friends, sitting “off the grid” at the edge of a lake, enjoying the long weekend. Upon my return I’ve got some work to do — I’m behind on some writing projects and have web development stacked up, including some server migration and WordPress update work. In the meantime, while blogging in abstentia, I’ve compiled a digital reading list for you while I on the other hand am hoping to have more time with some analogue reading material, including Frank Viola’s newest, Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, which a friend loaned me with the assurance I’d like it, but I’ve not yet started, having gotten distracted by Clay Shirky.
Oh, and about Rob Bell’s latest Nooma video, “She” — I don’t know anything. Nada. But don’t worry, everyone else is blogging about it.
So on with the link fest!
- What do you know? Dan Edelen posted final thoughts on the charismatic cleanup, citing John 3:30 and the subject of humility on the same day as I posted my 3 Leadership Lessons from John 3. Yeah, we’re on the same page — must be something to what we’re saying.
- cartoon: the church sings Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida”
- An Interesting Exercise Would Be “A comparison of * Bishop Schnase’s Five Practices * Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life * Scott McKnight’s Five Streams of the Emerging Church * Gibb’s and Bolger’s 9 Core practices * John Wesley’s Holiness of Heart and Life” — and it is interesting. Sorry, forget who gets the hat-tip on this one.
- Neat little video on the Preservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls (via Mike DeVries)
- Trevin Wax names the ‘Top 5 Christian Theologians,’ with runners-up
- Love this quote: “Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you.”
- Every fall, somebody points out the perspectives of those just starting college… it’s always a bit chilling, and makes one feel old. This year, those kids were born in 1990. Wow, that was like — last week, I think, right? To them, soft drinks have always been in recyclable plastic bottles and IBM has never made typewriters. What a strange world they live in.
- Not sure why this is news, but a group tried to get 315 Bibles into China, had them confiscated, and spent 26 hours trying to change officials’ minds. The US Embassy told them to give it up already. I mean, it’s news in the sense that Christians should how how this works in China, but not in the sense that it represents zero change to their policy in the past 21 years since I did literature transport there. Not like the old days of Communism: they still let you in the country, and they give back your literature on your way out. (The groups that regularly do this stuff just try again, of course.)
- Bob Carlton on Obama’s VP Selection
- McLaren endorses Obama, on (digital) film, paid for by the Matthew 25 Network. I gather Bob didn’t like it.
- Now that I’m on the Obama subject, regardless whether Rick Warren thinks his “above my pay grade” comment was a cop-out, I just want to ask all those single-issue voters who have been casting their vote based on the same single issue since 1973, “How’s that working out for you?” And perhaps, “What makes you think it’s going to be any different this time?” That’s a long time to chase a losing strategy strategy of protest, but Christians have done it before. Hmm. I just discovered some thoughts by Steve Knight along the same lines. He also points to Frank Schaeffer, the pro-life Obama supporter. Oh, okay, and even if some presidential hopeful says he’s going to overturn Roe v. Wade, do you really want a country where the grand poo-bah can and will overturn a 35-year-old supreme court ruling at will?
- Oh, and one more thing: Obama Expected to Take “NLT-Only” Position
- Speaking of Bible translations… Bill Mounce on punctuation in the Greek New Testament; you don’t hear a lot about this, but the absence of quotation marks in the text is one of the reasons I don’t like having red letters in my Bible. That and they’re simply harder to read. And he covers quotation marks in his next post.
- Those who think Christian art needs to include cute kitties or bunnies or sandy footprints or waterfalls or rainbows or sunsets might be interested in Michael Spencer’s take on it. I’m with him — those things are about as convincing as a trite bumper sticker.
- David Wayne has a good post introducing spiritual warfare by looking at the Hebrew word “elohim” and asking, “Who are the elohim?” Original linguists and OT Geeks enjoy.
- Jon Stewart: the prototype postmodern news anchor Really? I thought USA Today was already “news-lite.” Some state of affairs this is.
- Wild. A Printer For Your Latte (HT: Bill Reichart)
- Why is Hell Eternal? or “Will one white-lie send someone to Hell for all eternity?” Are you sure?
Thanks for the honorable mention. Humbled to be part of such a list. Press on!
Maynard,
Thanks for the links to my series on the Charismatic Crackup.
As to being a “single-issue voter,” I must protest.
It is not whether voting that single issue has changed anything. I fully realize that most of the pro-life politicians have been ineffective at changing anything about Roe v. Wade. I realize that for many of them their position is a convenient one.
BUT…
Being pro-life is baseline. To hold a position that it’s okay for a woman to choose to destroy her unborn child is to descend into a place of madness that is beneath what God made us as creations in His own image.
It was an abomination to God that people sacrificed their children to Molech, to curry favor with that false God. How much worse that we sacrifice our children to our own selfishness, to the same lie that lurked in the fall of man.
To hold a pro-choice position means that the holder is literally capable of the worst atrocities known to man. It is to concede that one is literally capable of anything, that the limits and standards have been entirely jettisoned, that anything is possible, anything worth pursuing, no matter how evil. It is a repudiation not just of one’s fellow human beings (in this case, the weakest), but it is the very repudiation of God.
People who hold a pro-choice position, then, have effectively disqualified themselves from participation in any and all leadership roles. Instead of upholding the truths of God and the preservation of those who cannot defend themselves (the very hallmark of leadership and humanity), they have instead allied themselves with the worst, most dictatorial regimes in history, the ones infamous for their genocide, leaders that most sane people recognize for being the human monsters they truly were.
Pro-life is baseline. Any other position is simply madness. For that reason, no one who votes pro-life is a single-issue voter. Instead, they are simply choosing to eliminate the position of madness.
Dan,
I think we’re of quite different minds about the nature of the question. Even being fully committed to a pro-life stance, one should be able to separate the issues. You suggest that anyone who is pro-choice is essentially a genocidal monster capable of the worst atrocities conceivable… but this is far too much. I know pro-choice people who are sane, thinking people who love their children too, who are concerned about poverty, crime, and so much else of what you and I are concerned about. Who call themselves Christians, even. You could sit and talk with these people and find them intelligent, compassionate, entertaining, even inspiring… and only much much later might you discover (if you asked) their position on abortion. To suggest they are genocidal monsters is just far too extreme, and rather closed-minded, an example of why the debate is fully at an impasse. The first thing people on two sides of a disagreement must do is listen to each other… yet here we have people convinced that the other person is stupid, backward, or monstrous. Little hope for them to understand one another well enough to dialogue.
As for the political question, you must understand that if a person doesn’t believe that abortion is murder, then none of your characterizations fit. Those who are “literally capable of the worst atrocities known to man” commit murder while knowing what it is and not minding what it is. If the premise is not accepted, your conclusion doesn’t follow. It isn’t that they have jettisoned all limits and standards to the willful pursuit of evil, it’s just that they don’t agree with you about the nature of one particular act.
Of course it was detestable to God that children were sacrificed to Molech. But they were not unborn children, so it isn’t really on point with your argument. I don’t think your reasoning supports the conclusion of madness at all — it just highlights how your presupposition of the conclusion shuts down the dialogue with character judgment before a compelling argument is even made for your conviction. My own position would be pro-life, but this kind of thinking does not help that cause.
This really is down to single-issue voting. I could perhaps build a case that failing to institute universal health care discriminates against the poor and is an aggregate cause of an early death for enough that it too should be considered a form of genocidal atrocity, and anyone who votes for a candidate not working toward universal health care is mindless alignment with monstrous acts that repudiate the kindness of God. This too is ignoring those who cannot financially defend themselves against the cost of health care. I wouldn’t try to make such a case though… it should be an issue that receives due discussion and consideration just like abortion. No single issue should be the cause to stop examining the remainder of a candidate’s platform… you’ll always end up voting for what someone else thinks is the baseline for madness.
For the sake of argument, of 20 platform issues, if a candidate holds your view of 19 of them but disagrees on one, should that be enough to get you to vote instead for someone who aligns with only 6 of your views? I don’t think that makes for good politics at all. I think it does allow politicians to purchase support from single-issue voters by making overtures about an issue they can’t affect in order to push through the rest of the platform. Illusionists and pickpockets would call this slight-of-hand… you always want to keep an eye on both hands if you’re to spot the trick.
I hear what you’re saying, but even if I agree with your position on the issue, the logic doesn’t connect with the voting decision.
Maynard,
Monstrosities lurk inside the most “normal” of people. That’s not just my position; it’s God’s, too. But for the Christian, Christ cannot have fellowship with Belial. Therefore, the Christian must put off the monstrous and put on Christ. To resist doing so is rebellion against the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification.
All truth has a baseline. The truth from Scripture is that God knit us together in the womb and knew us before we took our first breath. Christians must operate from that baseline. I can no more alter that baseline than I can state that it is okay to hate my brother. The Bible certainly does not endorse hating my brother, so to hate my brother can never be an option. The baseline must be love, just as the baseline must be pro-life.
The pro-choice position has a baseline supposition, too: selfishness. Problem is that pro-choice proponents are uncomfortable with that reality because it frames them in a negative light. But darkness is darkness, isn’t it?
Christians are called to make character judgments all the time. Those judgments are rooted in the truth of God’s word. Sinful thinking is sinful thinking. You can dress it up and call it something else, but it’s still sinful thinking.
I don’t believe a pro-choice (heck, let’s cut the semantics and just call it pro-abortion) position can be held by a born-again Christian in the long run. Would Jesus support abortion? Hardly. If we are to be remade in His image, how then can that image support a pro-abortion belief system?
Brother Maynard wrote “I know pro-choice people who are sane, thinking people who love their children too, who are concerned about poverty, crime, and so much else of what you and I are concerned about.”
I wonder if they have given thought to the truth of just what abortion is? I know that most have hidden behind the rationalization that an unborn child is really just a “fetus” or “zygote” skipping over the philosophical issue of when “life” begins. It could be an issue of definition except that this is human life we are talking about, and how we define one another has been the basis of the rationalizations that led to genocidal behavior throughout human history. I’m sure the German people at the height of WWII could be defined in much the same way as your description above. Rationalization will take a people very far, indeed.
It is far easier to rationalize abortion if we think of abortion as “terminating a pregnancy” rather than “killing a child”. If one thinks of abortion as killing a child, then what sane person would approve? But we have allowed ourselves to believe the redefinition of what that child is, much as the Germans allowed themselves to believe in the redefinition of what a Jew is. And so millions of human beings were marched off to gas chambers by sane, thinking people who loved their children, too.