CT has an interview with Christine and Michael Swanson about their struggles to get theatrical distribution for their films. Go read it, it is an eye opener. This particularly caught my attention:

[I]n those days before the big-screen arrival of Tyler Perry, studios tended to insist that there wasn’t much of a market for values-based, PG-rated films aimed at black moviegoers.

That sounded biased to me. Who determinied that black families don’t want to watch films?And even worse, whenever faith is portraied as even faintly positive in movies, it is almost always a predominantly black church. So Hollywood is being two faced on this. Blacks can have faith for white audiences but not for black audience. That’s just wrong. Hollywood is weird.

The reasons for the inordinate amount of crime, violence, and broken families amongst blacks as compared to other ethnic groups is complex and varied.  I don’t intended to lay the blame at only one aspect, but if Hollywood was only aiming R rated films at black moviegoers, that doesn’t contribute to changing things. It might just contribute to the problem. Hurray to folks like the Swanson’s and Tyler Perry for breaking that stereotype.

I found this headline in my Google news feed hilarious. The picture seemed to fit too:

In a previous post I made reference to a chiasm in Colossians 2:8-22. When I wrote it I was still in the process of weighing the usefulness of the chiasm. I’m a big proponent of paying attention to the literary nature of the Bible and I know that in other settings the chiasm is legitimate. The question isn’t really if chiasms are Biblical, I think they are probably present at least in Hebrew poetry. The question is whether they are present elsewhere or everywhere in the Bible. There is a chiasm-mania that finds chiasms everywhere.

So in my stewing and rereading Colossians 2:8-22 I stumbled upon a reason to be very skeptical of chiasms. You could make them say what you want. Here’s an alternate chiasm on that same section:

A Elementary Principles (8)

B Head (10a)

C Rule & Authority (10)

D Circumcision (11)

E Baptism (12)

D’ Uncircumcision (13)

C’ Rulers & Authorities (15)

B’ Head (19)

A’ Elementary Principles (20)

In the other chiasm I found, the center was Jesus triumph over authorities. That would make it the point of the section. In my alternate chiasm baptism is the center. That means that the entire section is about our identity in Christ. Now the thing of it is that both ideas are present in the section. The question is whether either of them are the primary point of the section. Using a chiasm as a guide will probably lead you to the answer you’re expecting to find. There is no set rule as to how you construct them.

So in this section, I think it is better to just say that Paul repeats some concepts and words. He is making a point about Jesus and that’s what we need to focus on.

God’s grace is a big deal. How can you tell? Because hell is so horrible. If God’s wrath against sin is that intense, then the grace that matches it must be pretty huge as well. However, if hell isn’t a real representation of the immensity of God’s wrath, if his wrath is not that bad, then grace isn’t such a big deal after all. Or at least not as big a deal.

What came to mind was a dam. A dam on a stream is pretty and quaint but not very awe inspiring. It just isn’t restraining that much water. But consider the Hoover Dam. It is an impressive 700 foot wall of concrete that restrains the millions of tons of water that is Lake Mead. You would stand at the foot of it in silence. “Pretty” and “peaceful” are not words that come to mind when you look at it and consider what lies on the other side. If that dam was to release the water behind it, everything in its path would be destroyed in pretty short order. Imagine how silly it would look if you were to look on the other side of the dam and see a babbling brook! What a tremendous waste that would be.

Hell is distasteful to many people today, Christians included. It seems cruel and unfair. But if we make little of it, we either make little of Jesus work or make it a silly overkill. Jesus is the eternal Son of God, the one through whom and for whom all things were created. He left the privileges of deity to take on a human nature and die in the place of sinners. The immensity of the cost of the atonement should make us realize the immensity of the wrath and punishment it averts. The two go together.

I think this also speaks of the nature of faith. As you stand at the foot of the Hover Dam, you might be a bit frightened at the weight of the water it restrains. But you have no option other than to trust that the dam will contain it. Are you going to go help the dam restrain the water? That’s just goofy. You can only trust because you live in the town a mile down the river.

But even more, the water and the dam are just there. They aren’t personal, they don’t bid you to come and be with them. You could just look at the dam, give it a few oooohs and aaaaaahs, toss a rock or two in the lake, snap a picture or two and go back to Alabama. But God and Jesus are personal and they draw you to them. We come and dwell in the presence of God as sinners, knowing that the weight of God’s wrath is immense. But we dwell in Christ and trust that in him, God’s wrath is absorbed and satisfied in his death and resurrection. And that’s it. We can’t contribute to what Jesus did. Our ‘contribution’ is our sin. We dwell there in faith and find God now horrible but reverently lovely.

It has been over 4 weeks since I started running. I wouldn’t dare call myself a runner yet but I am loving it! Today’s run was a five minute brisk walk, run 3/4 of a mile in 8 minutes, walk 4 minutes, run 3/4 in 8 again, finished with a 5 minute cool down. Covered about 3.5km in 20 minutes. Not record setting but not bad for a 46 year old man whose been running for almost 5 weeks.

For the record in the 5 weeks I’ve run (and walked) a total of 25 1/2 km in 5 hours 11 minutes. I’ve lost 6 pounds. My recovery time after each run has dramatically improved. I never thought I’d want to or would be able to do something like this. But I’m really liking it! The real test will be when winter comes. If I can make it though that, I might call myself a runner.

After this 9 week program is over, I’m going to start training for a 5k. You have to have goals and a plan otherwise you lose focus and feel like there is no point Well, I did anyway.

I’ve already voiced my opinion about the Colossian ‘heresy’ and said that my take is that there wasn’t “one”. The issue Paul was addressing was the draw the Colossians, and other Christians, were feeling to return to their ways from before their conversion. This difference is subtle but significant. If there was a body of doctrine that Paul was opposing, then Colossians is most useful when confronting the same sorts of errors. ¹Yes, you can draw out principles and apply them in other settings, but when you do that you’re actually applying the book the way I’m saying it was written. However, if I’m right, then the book of Colossians is globally applicable and timeless. Anytime Christians are faced with a draw to conform to their culture or their past, the book of Colossians stands as a warning and a guide, regardless of the practice or belief they’re attracted to.

Perhaps it is because I’m so deeply engrossed in Colossians right now but when I read in CT about an African pastor who was arrested for using human body parts in a ritual, the first thing I thought was “They need to understand Colossians!” According to the CT article:

“One out of 10 self-named Christians in this region practices only Christianity,” says Benjamin-Lee Hegeman, a former missionary in West Africa who now teaches at Houghton College. “Some people call it syncretism, but it may be more like dual religious allegiance, where Christianity is practiced in the daytime and occult [practice] is done at night. Many of the pastors will preach from the pulpit that this type of thing is wrong, but secretly take part in it at night. There is the mentality, especially in African Initiated Churches, where the prosperity gospel is preached, that you do what you’ve got to do to get ahead. You rely on the powers available to you. You are hopeful that Christ will help, but when he can’t come through on Sunday, you may take out a different insurance policy at night.”

Here’s why they need to understand Colossians. All of those powers that they are calling on, Christ defeated them. He marched them through the town making a mockery of them. They are nothing. I think the section of Colossians that nails that so forcefully is chapter 2 verses 8 through 22. If you accept the legitimacy of the chiasm as a literary device, that section literally and literarily makes the point that Jesus defeated all of that. Here’s how I put it together:

A Elementary Spirits (8)

B Deity / Head (9-10)

C Circumcision (11-14)

D Triumph Over Authorities (15)

C’ Diet / Days (16-17)

B’ Angel Worship / Head (18-19)

A’ Elementary Spirits (20-23)

With a chiasm, the point of the section is at the apex and what we find there is Christ’s triumph over powers and authorities. So when those African pastors are tempted to think that resorting to voodoo will help, Paul is telling them that those powers have been disarmed, defeated and exposed to ridicule. Those powers are powerless and appeal to them is not only foolish but dishonoring to Christ.

But we need to be careful here. I mean that’s Africa and this is the Enlightenment West, right? But brothers and sisters, we can feel that same draw they do. How many men have preached against the evils of adultery, p?rn?graphy and greed  from the pulpit during the day but fall prey to those sins in the night? We share the same weakness. We and the African pastors both profess Christ but then turn to other forces to get what we want, what we think will be good for us. We think that by resorting to those old powers we can get what Jesus is denying us and that that thing is good. As if in the weakness of sin and human depravity we know what is good better than the sinless Son of God! So don’t be too quick to tsk tsk those African pastors.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.  – Paul, The Epistle to the Galatians, chapter 6

Go read Colossians beginning to end in one sitting. It takes me about 40 minutes and I’m a slow reader.

I’m an evangelical. I am a member of the Evangelical Free Church of America and hope to be ordained there and someday to serve as a pastor in that denomination. It isn’t perfect, but it is pretty good. One of the “quirks” of the denomination was our statement of faith. It was written in the 1950s and feels like it was addressing the issues of those days. It was a decent statement; broad but good on the essentials. Generally.

Anyway, this summer we finally got a rewrite of the statement approved at a national conference. It is organized better and is centered on the gospel primarily. As Colin Hansen points out, the significant thing about this is we did it without controversy. That is to say, we didn’t change it during or after a controversy and though there was some opposition and some compromise, there hasn’t been a large squawk or exodus after the adoption. I like what Colin says in his article, “If it ain’t broke, fix it.” We didn’t wait till we faced an uprising of Open Theism in the denomination before we tightened the statement on the foreknowledge of God, for example. The rest of Hansen’s article is spot on and worth looking at if you’re scratching your head and wondering why on earth I’m in the EFCA and not your denomination. Might not convince you, but it kind of explains it. :)

But I said “almost entirely” about my pride. One of the things that doesn’t belong in a statement of faith is an eschatology. If you look at the creeds and confessions of Protestantism throughout the ages, you’ll notice that they all speak of eschatology in broad terms. So where the EFCA statement is broad on the question of Calvinism vs. Arminianism, it is fairly specific on eschatology: premillinnialism. My postion is kind of a weak kneed premill with a post-mill confidence in the gospel and an amill appriciation for Christ’s current reign (the best kind of “panmillennialism” in my opinion!) But I don’t believe the premill statement belongs in the statement of faith. Early drafts excluded it but some pastors opposed that exclusion strongly. So it is back in. For now. We’ll see if we can revise it later.

There are Free Churches who simply overlook that part and say that they don’t care what your position is but part of the impact of the premill statement isyou can only be ordained if you’re premill of one variety or another. Also, teachers at TEDS, our denomination seminary, must be premill. That restricts the pool significantly. Could you image if we could have picked up someone like John Frame when he left WTS-CA? That would have been a huge benefit to the school. Oh well, we have a new statement and it is better than the previous one. We can work out the remaining kinks as time goes on.

It is interesting what happens when a major archeological find is, uh, found. Sometimes it turns up more than the artifact. I’m not a follower of debates over Jesus, they’re just to speculative. So when a tablet was recently discovered that dates from the century before Jesus’ birth and describes a suffering messiah and might even make reference to his resurrection after three days, I thought it was interesting but didn’t think it would impact the faith too much. What I found more fascinating is what the tablet ‘proves’ according to radical Jesus scholars.

It turns out that before the tablet was found, the radicals claimed that the idea of a suffering messiah didn’t exist in Jesus’ days and that the authors of the gospels (and probably Jesus himself) made it up years later. Great, so this slab of stone with writing on it should shut down that theory right? I mean, in light of that kind of scholarship shouldn’t this prove that the idea wasn’t invented? It doesn’t prove that Jesus was who he said he was but at least it should shut down that line of reasoning.

Sort of. One radical scholar claims that since the tablet predates Jesus, the myth of a dying and rising messiah was already around and so Jesus and the gospel writers simply pick up existing folklore and apply it to Jesus. As the New York Times puts it “it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.”

To sum this up: If the idea that the Messiah would die and rise wasn’t part of Jewish tradition at the time of Jesus, that proves it must have been invented years later. And if the idea that the Messiah would die and rise was part of Jewish tradition at the time of Jesus that proves that it wasn’t unique and was adopted by Jesus and the gospel writers. Either way, whether there was or wasn’t an expectation that the Messiah would die and rise, Christianity is supposed to be false based on that. How you read the evidence is based on what you presuppose the truth to already be.

Reading J. Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership has been a huge blessing. Consider this excerpt:

COMPROMISE

Can we waive a principle to reach agreement? Lowering standards is always a backward step, and compromise nearly always requires it.

The epic contest of Moses and Pharaoh is a classic example of the temptation to compromise. When Pharaoh realized that Moses meant to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, he used cunning and threats to frustrate him. “Worship God if  you will,” was his first overture, “but don’t leave Egypt to do it.” A modern equivalent would be “Religion is okay, but don’t be narrow about it. No need to let religion isolate you from the rest of the world.”

When that approach failed, Pharaoh tried something else: “If you must go out of Egypt to worship, don’t go far. Religion is fine, but there is no need to be fanatical about it. Stay as close to the world as you can.”

Yet a third attempt played on natural affection: “Let the men go and worship, and the women and children stay here. If you must break with the world, don’t force such a narrow lifestyle on everyone else in the family.”

Pharaoh’s last attempt was an appeal to greed: “Okay, go. But the flocks and herds stay. Don’t let your odd religious commitments get in the way of business and prosperity.”

With clear spiritual insight Moses cut through each evasion: “Not a hoof is to be left behind,” he said (Exodus 10:26). Moses passed with honors a great test of his leadership of God’s people.

I love the way Sanders turned the focus on to Pharaoh’s temptations toward Moses and away from the question of God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.

In unrelated news, Colorado passed a law making it illegal to discriminate against against someone based on lifestyles or perceptions, whatever that means. Colorado, recall, is the home of such evangelical power houses as Focus on the Family so it is pretty surprising that such a law passed. WorldNetDaily website, which is a fairly conservative and Christian leaning news service, quoted Colorado Family Action who quoted Cathryn Hazouri, executive director the ACLU, in her testimony as saying, “One may practice one’s religion in private; however, once a religious person comes into the public arena, there are limitations in how the expression of their religion impacts others.” Separation of church and everything apparently. This is not how the founding fathers envisioned it, I don’t believe.

Lisa and I walked to the end of the breakwater at the Waukegan beach and watched the sun set for my birthday. It was a lovely evening.