Something I read in two articles recently bothered me some. The first was a report on the next Chronicles of Narnia movie, “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. The reporter was bothered that the Christian message of the book is being toned down in the movie. She mentioned that one of the producers was gay and pointed out how there would have never been an evangelical Christian in that position on “Milk”.

The other article was in the recent Christianity Today, a bio piece on Leslie Newbigin. The author pointed out the decline in people’s perception of evangelical Christians. The numbers are unimportant but it was something like only 3% of young people think positively of evangelicals as opposed to 33% who think that way of gays.

Here’s the problem. The opposite of evangelical Christian is not gay. The authors of these articles probably don’t mean it that way but that is how it comes across in the comparisons. It sets homosexuality as the opposite of being a Christian. I realize that homosexuality is the hot button issue these days and there is a battle over the definition of marriage. But by pitching the comparison this way a wall is created between gays and Christianity.

I’m not advocating homosexuality as an acceptable life style or anything. It is a sinful behavior but it is not the unpardonable sin that would exclude a person from the kingdom of Christ. By quickly picking our comparisons we may actually be creating a chasm between people who need Jesus and people who are charged to tell them about him.

So let’s be careful in our language. It really does mean something.

always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you – 1 Peter 3:15

Ever had someone quote that to you and ask when the last time anyone asked YOU about YOUR hope? As if to say that there is something wrong with the way you live your life as a Christian if people aren’t asking. Or perhaps you’ve seen this verse used as a proof text for showing that all Christians must be actively sharing their faith like mini-Billy Grahams or something? I believe I’ve used it that way.

But I’ve never met anyone who was point-blank asked, “What is the reason for this hope you have?” This kind of inclines me to think that maybe we’re misusing this verse. Consider the broader context it is in:

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. – 1 Peter3:14-17

Do you see it? The context is not Christians living regular old Christian lives, the context is persecution and suffering. When you’re persecuted and yet still hopeful people will ask. And then we must be ready with an explanation. And hope by the way.

This I have heard of. Joseph Tson was a Christian pastor in Ceausescu’s Romania. He was regularly arrested and tortured and yet maintained his joy in Christ. He would be tortured and released and ordered to return the next day. And he would return. It blew his interrogator’s mind. He even once apologized to his tormentor and asked forgiveness because he allowed himself to hate the man. Tson regularly included the gospel in his answers. Years later he met the man who tortured him and the man confessed that there was something about Tson that was compelling. As far as I know, he never became a believer but he was impacted by Tson’s joy and love in the face of horrible circumstances.

I think that’s what Peter was expecting, not so much that someone would appear at my cube and ask me about my joy. Do you see why context is important? There is no point beating yourself up over this verse unless you are under persecution and your joy in Christ is not evident. There are other parts of the Bible that show that Christians should be sharing their faith with those they know. Pay heed to them.

The Washington Post did a brief interview with Packer. He has many good things to say and the interview is worth reading. Here’s on thing I was glad to hear:

I think that the number of lively evangelical Christians in North America is, in fact, increasing. I think that if overall statistics show that churches are losing ground, it’s because the deadwood is dropping off the branches. Amongst younger people, there is a very great deal of evangelical Christianity. It’s not always deep, but it’s there.

This has been a thought I’ve had for a while. The church in America seems to be decreasing, but is it? Or is it just being pruned of dead branches? My impression is that the 1950s was filled with people going to church because that was the American thing to do. Communists were atheists and Americans were religious people, so go to church, it’s your duty! But many of those churches were liberal and lost. People attended on Sunday but didn’t care about the rest of the week. So churches are dropping numbers since then. In a way, that’s good!

When a man like J. I. Packer says it I’m relieved that it isn’t just me. Take a few minutes and read the interview.

These pines actually are tall, it wasn’t just the perspective. These are across the lake from our house and really are stately.

There was something about the untouched snow and the fence that I found almost poetic.

Took a walk around the block in the snow. These berries were near the end of the walk and just caught my eye.

This is the view from our kitchen window. I’m gonna miss this place when we move.

Our neighbor put Christmas bulbs in the tree outside her door. The heavy snow today made them that much more beautiful.

I haven’t written in a while mostly for good reasons. So this post is an attempt to reawaken my muse, get my brain going again and do some catching up on things that have been jammed into odd little corners of my mind.

Something has been occupying my time of late. My church has had a long, nodding acquaintance with church planting. They’ve wanted to do it for quite a while and we’ve even had some of our folks go out and plant churches but not with us. Last year we got serious with the plans and finally called a church planter. He and I were in seminary together and he was at Lakeland while he was there. But he moved back to California after graduation and I thought that was that. I was wrong. He and his family moved back to Illinois this summer and started working on planting LifeSpring Community Church in Spring Grove, IL. Me and my family kind of slowly agreed to go. Now we’re totally in. We’re looking for a house out there. If we were looking for a house for ourselves, we would probably be in one by now. But we’re looking for one for ministry and that makes things a little different. Anyway, helping out on this church plant has taken a lot of my time and energy.

Speaking of being out of it, I saw something the other day in the paper that made me say “hummmm.” So far my response to Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert has been “oh.” In other words, they’re everywhere and I still don’t care.  Seems I’m not alone in ignoring them. Susan Boyle‘s first album did really well in Britain and in the US it sold 710,000 copies, blowing away Lambert’s album. The buzz makers are fascinated with people the rest of us don’t care about. Way to go Susan! Along these same lines, the media hates Sarah Palin but many Americans seem to love her!

I haven’t said much about global warming on this blog mostly because I’m still undecided about it. My gut tells me that it may be happening but we can’t pin it on humankind. It is probably a normal cycle the planet goes through. Still the topic generates a lot of  heat (pun attempted and failed). The recent hacking of scientists’ email really hasn’t produce a smoking gun but did point up a problem with modern analysis. The “hockey stick” is almost assuredly a product of changing data sources midstream. However, even without it there is an increase in temperature. Cause of panic? Not so sure.

One thing the email lead did was point out that scientists, even climatologists, are human. They have their presuppositions and like everyone else they don’t like people messing with them. We needed a dose of realism and fallible scientists could have been it. It wasn’t but it could have been.

There is some Lord Somebody in England who is a climate change doubter. Watched a video of his and he struck me as bombastic as Richard Dawkins. One thing he said that at first bothered me was that he claimed when Communism fell in Europe he saw all the Socialists join the environmental movement. Poisoning the well I assumed. But listening to some of the chatter from Copenhagen makes me wonder if Lord Whatshisname might not be on to something. There is a lot of demand for developing countries (including China if you can believe that) to get funding from developed nations to help them fight climate change. Then there is the push for carbon trading. Developed nations will pay less developed nations money for not putting carbon in the atmosphere. In other words, we’ll pay someone else to not produce a naturally occurring gas instead of real products. And, folks, this is not a new idea. I remember in the 1989 seeing James Burk pitching this idea.

This term I’m teaching Nehemiah in adult Sunday school. I’m taking the tack Daniel Cooley took when he taught it last term because I think he was right. We’re looking at the book as describing a missional community in a hostile setting. Nehemiah isn’t a book on leadership though that is part of it. It is about being the people of God in a hostile setting.

Just a few comments on this. First, there is the question of when the 70 years of exile ended. Of course that depends on when the exile began doesn’t it. There are two chief theories on it but in my opinion it doesn’t matter that much. Is the exile over? Well, yea, they returned to the land. But no, because they didn’t ever establish their own rule of the land. They were always ruled by foreign powers. Along those lines, I asked one of the LifeSpring teams if we are in exile. The answers were a mix of yes and no and a few abstentions. I said that no, we are not in exile, Jesus has come! But we are in exile. I cited Hebrews 11 and the 1 Peter 1 as texts that indicate that we are in exile in a sense and we will be till Jesus returns and rules the earth.  I make that point to say, don’t worry about when the exile is over, we’re called to do what we’ve been told to do now. Whether it is building a wall or building the church, the world is going to think it is wrong and should be stopped but we must engage with it anyway.

Also, as I was reflecting on Nehemiah’s call I noticed how he was gripped by the problem God’s people faced and he jumped in. His prayer in Nehemiah 1:4-11 wasn’t his asking God what he should do, it was his plea for God to be faithful to who he is. In light of that, Nehemiah asks that God would bless what he was about to do. Today there are some whose ministry seems to be to lament the rubble of evangelicalism and point out the weak spots in the wall. The seem to be exercising their spiritual gift of criticism. If Nehemiah had done that, he might have stayed in Susa and written books like “Templeless Jerusalem” or “Putting Jews Back in Judah” or something. He would have probably had a blog. But this man of God didn’t waste his time. Nehemiah dug in with the compromised and messy. He decided to join those who survived the exile and to lead them to get Judah back on it’s feet. Read the rest of the book of Nehemiah and you’ll see him get angry at the compromise around him. He boots Tobiah from the temple, he ends exploitation of the poor, he enforces the Sabbath. It would have been much easier for him to stand outside of Jerusalem and lob the rubble at those dwelling there. Instead he chose to pick up that rubble and rebuild. American evangelicalism is a mess in some places and strong in others. We’re not called to simply criticize but to strengthen and build up. That may involve criticism where it is deserved, but it isn’t limited to it.

Rise up, O men of God!
The church for you doth wait,
Her strength unequal to her task;
Rise up and make her great!

I recently received volume 3 (Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther) of the newly released Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the Old Testament (ZIBBCOT) to review. The volume was shipped to me for free from Zondervan and I want to assure you that that fact will not in any way impact my review. Nor will the crumpled $20s used to package the book. Or the MacBook Pro used as padding. Or the Lexus it was “boxed” in. I’m not that easily bought! But I felt it necessary to disclose that I did receive it for free. ¹Okay, it was really just in a cardboard box but a man can dream.

Short attention span review: This is a cool, useful commentary.

The Details: The set consists of large, hardback books that lay (and stay) opened on your desk the way you wish all of your commentaries did. The pages are glossy and thick so they can support the massive amount of pictures that are littered across every page.

What I like most is right there in the title of the book: “commentary”. This set is laid out like a commentary not an illustrated dictionary and so it exists in a kind of half way land between the two types of reference works. That is, it isn’t just organized by book, the chapters follow the Biblical text and provide helpful information organized by chapter and tied to specific verses. There is ample cross referencing so you’re not paying for them to cut and past repeated information and there is enough data there to make it useful.

From my foray into Nehemiah (I’m going to teach it in a few weeks) I’ve found that it isn’t as dense and academic as a typical commentary but is still helpful. The pictures help take the reader into the world being described in a way that traditional commentaries can’t. At the same time the text, more often than not, addressed the questions I had about that verse; at least to one degree or another.

I do have one complaint. The only index in the volume is for the pictures. I can’t think of when I might need to use it. A topical index would be helpful and it is not there. That kind of limits the usefulness of the volume to only a commentary. The addition of a healthy index would have allowed the book to function as a bit of an illustrated dictionary also.

Summary: I don’t think you could use the ZIBBCOT as a sole source for work in a Biblical book, but I don’t believe that was Zondervan’s plan. This set would make a good supplement to a commentary, filling in some fresh air where some of the atmosphere in commentaries can get a bit stale. I look forward to leaning on this volume in my upcoming teaching.