I was reading Exodus 1&2 this morning and I noticed something I had overlooked before. I remembered that Pharaoh ordered the destruction of Hebrew baby boys and that Moses was saved by being put in a basket and placed in the Nile. What I didn’t remember was how Pharaoh had ordered their execution: “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile” (Exo 1:22 ESV). I find it interesting (but not earth shatteringly important) that the method of destruction was also the way of escape. It was a way of escape for Moses and Moses was a way of escape for the Hebrews. God delivered them through Moses.

I just really like it when God works those little details like that. I mean Pharaoh could have commanded that they all be killed in some other way. Or he could have specified no method at all and left it to the desecration (or lack of) of his soldiers. But God ordered it to be like this. He is Lord of the details as much as he is of the major events.

Below are two responses from two different religions to the tsunami. I’ve edited them slightly to make it a bit less obvious and to get to the heart of the issue in each one. See if you can identify which is the Christian.

Response1: It is through the will of [God] that this has happened but then the positive side is the way mankind has reacted. People will question why it is taking place,why the enormity of loss of human life, but it is that aspect which is beyond us and it is our firm belief that any such disaster, anything of that nature happening, is through the will of [God]. [God] knows best. We certainly have the right to question. It’s a time for us to really think of ourselves, our deeds, our acts, and we need to ponder over this. It’s a sign that none of us are going to live for an indefinite period, therefore it is a sign for us to do something very positive. Death always takes place. When a person is born one thing guaranteed is death but what form it takes is always beyond us. People of faith need to have a very firm belief in [God], that at the end of the day it is through his will and it is for the betterment of mankind at large.

Response 2: In this litigious age we are always looking for someone to blame and in the absence of anyone else we look to blame [God] because it is a “natural” event. It’s quite clear the world is riddled with inequality but I don’t accept the idea that [God] is sitting up there mischievously tweaking the strings. In the case of the tsunami, [people of our faith] are challenged to live out our response. Until now at least, we have not been found wanting in our response. [People of our faith] have been among those at the forefront of the relief effort.

Okay, for bonus points, identify the religion of the both quotes.
Once you think you have it, check your answers at the source.

I’ve just finished Sam Stroms’ One Thing . It was a pretty good read and as I’ve said it is an entry level introduction to Christian Hedonism. It sort of goes along with the UnveilinGlory seminars. Popular format introduction to finding your greatest satisfaction in God. And pursuing it.

I’ve already mentioned one part that I found really helpful and the last chapter of the book is right on too. Stroms looks at something that has become a pretty popular subject lately: eschatology. In reference to a piece in Time magazine, Storms says:

The article that followed was an attempt to account for the increased curiosity concerning when the world might come to an end as well as the staggering sales of the Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins fictional series, Left Behind. On reading this article one might think the end of history is all about the Antichrist or Israel or the rapture or 666 or any number of other themes associated with the theology of dispensationalism. But it isn’t. The end of history is all about the beauty of God.

He couldn’t be more correct. All the end time fascination centers on mystery and speculation. But it shouldn’t. I doubt that most people find Left Behind (and other, similar works) encouraging, yet this is how Paul saw eschatology. However, instead of being frightened of being left behind or fearful of accidently accepting the mark of the beast or any other number of worries, eschatology is supposed to be encouraging as we look forward to what it is all about: Jesus return. When he comes to rule in righteousness and peace. When we, thought we have not seen him, will see him in glory. Wow. That is a whole lot more encouraging to me!

I’ll remember this chapter if I ever do a class on eschatology. It would make an appropriate introduction to the subject.

I’m currently reading One Thing by Sam Storms. One part, the most useful part in my opinion, set off an avalanche of related quotes.

Fruitless joys are what we turn to when life is boring and gray and lonely and we know that tomorrow nothing will have changed. Fruitless joys aren’t necessarily scandalous sins. They may be little more than harmless hobbies in which we invest countless hours to make life a little less dull. They may be the newest gadgets we work so hard to own and worry about losing. They may be the fantasies and daydreams that swirl around in our heads that we know will never come true but somehow strangely bring a measure of excitement to an otherwise dreary life.

But why call them ‘fruitless’ joys?… They are fruitless because no matter how effective they seem right now, in the long term they can’t satisfy. Often they leave us feeling guilty for our having squandered so much time and energy and money on something so trivial and petty…They fail to reach deep into the soul and make a difference where it counts…Fruitless joys are whatever we trust to bring change but prove powerless to help us in our battle with temptation. No matter how well they work in the immediate present, we know God made us for something bigger and better and more satisfying.

Consider what this tells us about the nature of our souls. Your heart will always be drawn to whatever brings it greatest joy…

[Fruitless joys] will lose their grip on your soul only when they are displaced by greater joys, more pleasing joys, joys that satisfy not for the moment but forever. That is why Augustine declared, ‘You [God] drove them from me and took their place, you who were sweeter than all pleasure!‘ Augustine didn’t cease his sinful indulgence because he had given up on pleasure. He simply found a more pleasing pleasure, a longer-lasting joy, a fullness of joy and pleasures that never end (Ps. 16:11). – Sam Storms, One Thing, 139-140

Another name for ‘fruitless joys’ could be ‘idols.’ Consider the similar comments of Richard Keyes in his essay The Idol Factory:

An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as a substitute for God. All sorts of things are potential idols, depending only on our attitudes and actions toward them…

…An idol need not be a full-sized replacement for God, for nothing can be. We become increasingly attached to it until it comes between us and God, making God remote and His commandments irrelevant or unrealistically prohibitive. In this society, our
idols tend to be in clusters. They are inflationary, have short shelf lives, and change, adapt, and multiply quickly as if by mitosis, or cell-division. An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a pleasure, a hero; anything that can substitute for God.

To summarize, idols will inevitably involve self-centeredness, self-inflation, and self-deception. Idolatry begins with the counterfeiting of God, because only with a counterfeit of God can people remain the center of their lives and loyalties, autonomous architects of their futures. Something within creation will then be idolatrously inflated to fill the God-shaped hole in the individual’s world. But a counterfeit is a lie, not the real thing. It must present itself through self-deception, often with images suggesting that the idol will fulfill promises for the good life. – Richard Keyes, No God But God, 32-33

If you go into the temple of your heart and cast out (or try to) an idol (they are almost impossible to move), another will quickly take its place. That temple is not meant to be empty. Sure, the idols of the past and present just don’t fill that temple they way they should, but they at least seem to keep things orderly there. It’s just that they get monotonous after a while and have to be upgraded or customized or refurbished.

What both Keyes and Storms are saying is that when we want to get sin our of our lives and get real meaning in our lives, we have to evict the idols, the fruitless joys, and place at the center of our being that which will actually hold it all together.

Likewise, John Piper explained it like this:

My conviction is that the better you know the supremacy of Christ the more sacred and satisfying and Christ-exalting your sexuality will be. I have a picture in my mind of the majesty of Christ like the sun at the center of the solar system of your life. The massive sun, 333,000 times the mass of the earth, holds all the planets in orbit, even little Pluto, 3.6 billion miles away.

So it is with the supremacy of Christ in your life. All the planets of your life; your sexuality and desires, your commitments and beliefs, your aspirations and dreams, your attitudes and convictions, your habits and disciplines, your solitude and relationships, your labor and leisure, your thinking and feeling; all the planets of your life are held in orbit by the greatness and gravity and blazing brightness of the supremacy of Jesus Christ at the center of your life. And if he ceases to be the bright, blazing, satisfying beauty at the center of your life, the planets will fly into confusion, and a hundred things will be out of control, and sooner or later they will crash into destruction…

There are many practical strategies for being sexually pure in mind and body. I don’t demean them. I use them! But with all my heart I know, and with the authority of Scripture I know that the tiny space ships of our moral strategies will be useless in nudging the planet of sexuality into orbit, unless the sun of our solar system is the supremacy of Christ.

Piper was speaking about sexuality but his point is appropriate for any sin. The strategies won’t work to keep those planets in orbit if the center of the solar system of our lives is anything less than Jesus Christ. Nothing else has sufficient gravity to align the orbits properly. The plants belong in their orbits, not at the center of the system.

This truth is once again boring its way into my thick skull. The trivialities of this life cannot satisfy me. Not fully. When I loose sight of Jesus Christ my solar system is unbalanced. So how do I delight in him? Is that the thing I just have to work harder at? Well, yes and no. If I don’t spend time with her do I really know my wife? If I am always focused on another woman (or women) is she really in the proper place in my life? The same is true of Jesus. We have to spend time with him. What Piper goes on to advocate is that we read great books about God. Read your Bible asking the question “what do I learn about Jesus here?” Talk to him in prayer. Look for answers, seek them out and be patient for them. Don’t focus first on the sin, focus on knowing and loving God through Jesus Christ and that will force the sin out. “Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1Jn 2:4). The two just don’t go together. But you don’t stop the sinning and
pronounce “now I know him!” That isn’t knowing him. Fill your mind with him, know him, and that will cause you to gladly keep his commandments, not slavishly.

Jesus was born to poor parents and his birth was in a stable. He never lived in a palace, never had servants wait on him, never lead an army. This was the God-man who took on the form of a servant. He washed his disciples’ feet. He had no place to lay his head. Jesus was humble when if anyone had a right not to be it was him.

One of the themes in 1 & 2 Samuel is that God humbles the proud and exalts the humble. Read Hannah’s prayer and then look for people being humbled and exalted throughout the books. Eli and his sons are humbled. Hannah is exalted and Peninnah is forgotten. Saul is exalted, then humbled. David goes from the last to first. Even the Philistines and their god Dagon are humbled before the presence of the Ark of the Covenant.

So it shouldn’t be confusing that Jesus would come in the form of a servant. From man’s standards, that was a lousy position to be in. The bottom rung of the success ladder. A nobody. But God sees things upside down. From God’s perspective, the humblest is the greatest. The last really are first. And so when Jesus came, he did come to the most exalted position. He came to the place that God loves and shows the most favor toward. If that doesn’t make sense to us, then we need to adjust our thinking.

God doesn’t really see things upside down. We do. It is perfectly normal for us to watch people walking on the ceiling as we sit on the floor wishing we could do that. But in truth, the rich, the proud, the popular, the beautiful, the powerful are really the most to be pitied. In the Kingdom, they shall be the very last. The have received their reward in full now. And life is but the blink of an eye and its over. That is nothing compared to eternity.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness? sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. – Matthew 5:4-11

Last weekend was an interesting weekend for me. A dear friend called me to task for my Post-Reformed stuff. And I think a lot of what he’s said is correct and I’ve taken it to heart.

1) The term “Post-Reformed” intimates more that it is intended to. By it I don’t mean that we should abandon Reformed churches in favor of…whatever. Just because a church is Reformed does not mean it is wrong or bad. The name “Post-Reformed” may seem to make it sound like that it what I have in mind. The same is true of Reformed Theology. Just because it is Reformed does not mean it is unhealthy. I am convinced of the exact opposite! Reformed Theology is the most healthy Christian theology I am aware of. Again, “Post-Reformed” may make it seem like we should abandon it. We should not.

2) The name “Post-Reformed” is insensitive to those pastors and other believers who are faithful to their confessions and charitable to those who do not hold to them. And there are many such as these. In retrospect, I know many more Reformed believers in this category then I do who fit the description I am reacting against. Many more. In other words, I coined a phrase that says more than I intended about more people than I was aiming at.

3) Though I am still committed to the larger evangelical church and hope for her continued growth and increased purity, I no longer believe that the term “Post-Reformed” communicates what I hoped it would. Sadly, the term is more alienating than it is inclusive. It doesn’t express my desire for the Church as much as it does my frustration with portions of a portion of the Church. If I am going to coin a phrase to express this, I need to come up with something better than “Post-Reformed”.

4) I am Reformed. I am committed to the the Five Solas, I am Calvinistic in soiterology, I am Covenantal in my approach to redemptive history, I am somewhere between historic premill and amill in my eschatology. The term “Post-Reformed” would seem in indicate that I’ve given up some or all of that and I have not.

5) The Preacher said it best: There is nothing new under the sun. The Reformed have a term for what I mean by Post-Reformed: Semper Reformanda. Always reformed and reforming. If you wonder what I meant by Post-Reformed or if you assumed something then please understand that my intention was encapsulated in Semper Reformanda.

So I am abandoning the term. It only angered many people it was not aimed at and could provide fuel to those I am reacting to.

I have expressed nervousness over the coming Da Vinci Code movie but when I read Roger Ebert’s review of National Treasure, my hopes are renewed:

That I have read the book [The Da Vinci Code] is not a cause for celebration. It is inelegant, pedestrian writing in service of a plot that sets up cliff-hangers like clockwork, resolves them with improbable escapes and leads us breathlessly to a disappointing anticlimax. I should read a potboiler like The Da Vinci Code every once in a while, just to remind myself that life is too short to read books like The Da Vinci Code.

Then again, Ebert is a critic who is trained to thing critically and recognizes a snow job when he sees it. John and Jane A. Merican are trained (by TV and advertisers) specifically NOT to think critically and buy snow jobs on a regular basis.

Now, about National Treasure he has a classic comment: “‘National Treasure’ is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line.” That is saying a lot about the movie.

Some have taken it upon themselves to apologize for America’s recent election. May I just point out that no one, not even a narrow majority, elected these people to speak on our behalf. Many of them insult the intelligence of the other half of America. Some of them are asking if they can sleep on another country’s couch till the current term is over. Very funny but not very American. We are still a democracy after all. A divided one, but a democracy none the less.

Here’s what we SHOULD be sorry about:
i repent of my pursuit of America’s dream
i repent of living like i deserve anything
my house, my fence, my kids, and my wife
in our suburb where we’re safe and white
i am wrong and of these things i repent
i repent of parading my liberty
i repent of paying for what i get for free
the way i believe that i am living right
by trading sins for others that are easier to hide
i am wrong and of these things i repent

i repent judging by a law that even i can’t keep
wearin’ righteousness like a disguise to see through
the planks in my own eyes

i repent of trading truth for false unity
i repent of confusing peace and idolatry
of caring more of what they think than what i know of what they need
and domesticating You until You look just like me
i am wrong and of these things i repent – I Repent, Derek Webb

On the other hand, no one authorized these folks to represent us either! Just because their side won is not reason to be smug about it. This election shows how deeply divided this country is. Whoever gets in office next is going to have a very tough job pulling it all back together again.

Strike another pose
Power politics
Swallow their conventions
Get your power fix
We love to mud wrestle
We love to be politically Koreshed
Practice that smug
Post it like a man
One part Master Limbaugh
Two parts Madame Streisand
Now pretend you’re in a band
My, my, we’re looking smug
Very very very very – Smug, Steve Taylor

Doesn’t ANYONE understand what democracy means any more?

I find it interesting that Merck is being sued for Vioxx. It was supposed to be a drug for arthritis pain but it turns out that it causes strokes and heart attacks. Now there are lawyers gathering to start the litigation.

At first I was miffed at the lawyers. Blood suckers. But then I thought about the cycle. The drug company spends millions developing a drug that is supposed to do something great. They spend millions more marketing it (Vioxx had more money spent on its marketing than did Pepsi). The public decides that they need it. The insurance companies start paying for it. Millions of dollars move from the insurance companies to the drug companies and millions of doses move to the ailing public. Then something goes wrong. Someone dies or get sick. The lawyers move in and start suing. Millions (maybe billions) move from the drug company to the lawyers and insurance companies and a small portion goes back into the pockets of the injured public.

The money swirls around. It originates with the public who pay the insurance premiums and by the medicine. In the end, insurance companies and lawyers get a big chunk or it remains with the drug companies who largely produce medicines that cover our pain or the symptoms but mostly do not cure anything. They just make the disease manageable and the people dependent on the drug. I just found the entire process fascinating.

I loved Star Wars, thought Empire Strikes Back was okay, was sadly disappointed by Return of the Jedi, hated Phantom Menace and groaned through Clone War. My major beef with Lucas was the way he collapsed the entire universe into Anakin Skywalker. The entropy began when Vader turned out to be Luke’s dad, it continued when he also turned out to be Leia’s dad and it accelerated when it turned out that he was from Tatooine and he built C3P0. In my opinion, the plot line annunciated by Obi Wan in Star Wars would have been fine: Vader betrayed and murdered Anakin.

What should have happened then was for Luke to become a Jedi like his father and settle the vendetta: Hello. My name is Luke Skywalker. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Return of the Jedi could have been the actual return of the Jedi Order; Obi Wan via Luke could have rescued a bunch of beings Vader kidnapped who were strong in the Force (he was trying to turn them to the dark side) and the Jedi could have come back. Picture Vader and a bunch of Stormtroopers turning around when a blast door opens and there is Luke and 15 or so others with lightsabers drawn. Return of the Jedi (plural) instead of Return of the Jedi (singular).

So when I saw the trailer for Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, I found it very interesting the way they edited Obi Wan’s speech from Star Wars. When he is telling Luke about his father, in this trailer, they omit the part about him being killed by Vader. Humm. I wonder if Lucas is trying to get himself out of this corner? I have heard that Lucas claims to have had this plot line laid out from the beginning. I doubt it. Why did he have Luke kiss his sister in Empire Strikes Back? Why did Obi Wan lie so badly about Vader? I mean really, it would have made more sense for him to say that Luke’s father was a pupil of his and that Vader murdered him rather than claim that Vader was the pupil. Why didn’t C3P0 recognize Tatooine since he was built there?

Still, there is at least one concept that seems to have been there from the beginning. I remember reading back in the 70s that the reason Vader wears a suit and has to have a machine breath for him is because he and Obi Wan were fighting and he fell into a lava pit. That seems to be born out by the trailer so we shall see.

Will I see Episode III? I don’t know. Probably. The kids will want to see it and I would be interested to see how Lucas connects the dots from Episodes I through IV. I’m just afraid that we’re going to see Anakin build the Millennium Falcon and sell it to Lando, introduce Chewie to Han Solo and get Boba Fett started in bounty hunting. The universe may continue to collapse.