What About Israel?

Thanks to Scot McKnight’s ever-interesting Jesus Creed blog, I found an article by Pastor Jonathan Martin with the intriguing title, “On Israel, the Church, and the Politics of Jesus.” I’d not heard of Pastor Martin before, but I follow McKnight’s blog regularly. It’s certainly one of the livelier, and more diverse, blogs from any seminary perfessor  professor of an evangelical tilt.

What caught me about Pastor Martin’s post is his starting point:  “the relationship of the Church to Israel.” Pastor Martin goes on to write about how most evangelicals view the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and says:

“Anything less than a ringing endorsement of all Israeli policies is seen as an affront to the living God.  This position is largely determined by eschatological convictions (beliefs about the end of the world), in which Israel (as a modern nation-state) exists as a fulfillment of prophecy.”

He then follows that with a thoughtful and short essay (well, long for a blog post) countering this idea. It’s balanced and worth reading and, let me add, Martin is a Pentecostal pastor. He comes from a tradition that, for the most part, agrees with the “ringing endorsement.” He gives good reason why he himself doesn’t.

I’ve been wondering for myself about Israel (the nation-state) and the Church. I’m no longer satisfied with the idea that everything Israel does is right and justifiable and approved by God, and must be approved by the Church. What I see in the New Testament is a God who has begun with one man and his descendants but who now calls all nations his. Maybe I can sum this up with the statement:  What nation has God not called to himself? The whole of the New Testament shows this, starting with the Day of Pentecost, when Jewish disciples began proclaiming the glory of God in the languages of the nations. The Book of Acts begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome, the heart of the Gentile world (and hated conqueror of Judea). Paul’s final words to the Jews of Rome scolded them for rejecting God’s salvation, telling them:  “God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!” (Acts 28:28).

There are nuances here, but the main point is this:  How can we interpret the New Testament as saying that a modern state holds a special privilege before God—whether that state is Israel, the US, Russia or whatever state you live in? The issue of Israel as the people of God is not the same thing as the issue of Israel as a state.

Israel as a nation has the right to exist and to defend its borders from legitimate enemies; all nations have that right, so far as I can see in the New Testament. That doesn’t mean that everything Israel does is right. And pointing this out doesn’t make us heretics.

Technorati Tags: Jesus Creed,Scot McKnight,Pastor Jonathan Martin,Israel

Revelation In Translation

Probably the most important thing I learned as a teen-aged Christian was this:  Get yourself a good Bible. Good, as in:  a Bible you can understand. For, once upon a time, among Pentecostals (like me), there was this idea that the only REAL Bible was the King James Version, dropped straight from Heaven on an eagerly-awaiting English-speaking flock. And if you were a faithful believer, you just had to learn to      

English: King James IC (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

put up with find the beauty in the "thees" and "thous" of the King's English of 1611.

I know that the picture of fundamentalist/conservative Christians is one of hide-bound, stuck-in-the-past reactionaries. That's true in some cases, but the Pentecostal pastors who taught me were really quite revolutionary compared to the stereotypes. For one thing, I grew up in the local Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which has always ordained women, and I experienced first-hand ministry under women as pastors. At a time when "Christian Rock" (anyone remember that?) was controversial, my pastors favored it--not that they spun any Larry Norman records. But they never called it "the devil's counterfeit"; to them, it was like a missionary learning the language of the people he/she lived among. And, as for the new Bible translations that began making their way into the pews, my pastors were all for them:  The Living Bible, Good News For Modern Man, The Amplified Bible. . . anything that made Scripture more easily understandable.

My first non-KJV Bible was the Good News version, aka Today's English Version. Then I picked up a New International Version; and then, the Amplified, New American Standard, New King James and English Standard versions. Today, the NIV, NAS and ESV translations are the ones I use most. Out of these came another lesson:  It's important to compare translations before you grab onto a doctrine.

This matters for me because, from time to time, I get to fill a pulpit. And there have been plenty of times when I've had a bang-up sermon from a striking text run through my mind. . . until I researched that text in two or three translations. Suddenly the text changed, and I couldn't support the main idea. 

Example? Well, how about this one, quoted frequently by old-time Pentecostals:  "It's the anointing that breaks the yoke." That's from Isaiah 10:27 in the King James version:  "The yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing." Yet here are some other translations:

• "and the yoke shall be destroyed by reason of fatness" (American Standard)
• "And destroyed hath been the yoke, because of prosperity" (Young's Literal)
• "and the yoke will be broken because of the fat" (English Standard)

(Translations courtesy of Rick Meyers' e-Sword software)

It's easy to see where the idea of "anointing" comes in; but newer translations make clear that Isaiah is speaking, not of supernatural empowerment, but of freedom (for Judah, from Assyria) and blessing and increase as a result.

Moral of story? If you can't support your "revelation" through two or three translations, maybe you should simply set it aside.

Related articles

• King James and His Bible

Prostituting God

"I think people use the Holy Spirit the way they would a prostitute."

It was kind of a  shocking statement my friend made in our Sunday morning study. He knew it would be, and he apologized before making it, but still he had a point he wanted to make. 

"Christians use God just to feel better," he said. We're not quite so interested in actually doing what God says; we're not really interested in being like Christ. We want to feel a certain way. God is there to make us feel good, to make us feel satisfied.

I'd been about to say something myself--about how Christians react rather than act, and so we have this tendency to live unbalanced lives--but I was, first of all, caught up in what he was saying and, secondly, not willing to push the study into worship-service time (I'm not the study leader, after all). My friend had just made an important point worth mulling over:  The average Christian values a certain kind of experience over and above actual obedience to God. Christians use God.

It put me in mind of something the late Chuck Colson had written in one of his books--that he'd been studying then-current "successful Christian living" books and had a problem with them. "They were all telling me how to get more out of my faith, while I wanted to know how to put more into it." (Roughly remembered paraphrase here; you get the gist of it.) 

The heart of the matter is simple:  Does God exist for me, or do I exist for him? I can't think of any Christian of any stripe who would say:  "God exists for me, of course!" But I can think of plenty of times when I've acted as if God exists for me. God is supposed to make me feel better about myself, comfort me when I'm sorrowful, and make repentance simple and easy. He's supposed to accept my excuses for sin and forgive me and understand that I'm only human and might just go back and do the same thing all over again.

In the United States at least, people tend to think of "spiritual" experiences as "emotional" experiences. They don't need to involve any lasting change of character or personality. They are like one-night stands. It's all about the pleasure they give; no commitment is required.

Is there a way out of this? Yes; it's called "discipleship." It begins when a person decides to let his/her teacher shape every aspect of his/her own life. That means likes, dislikes, understanding of morality, sense of right and wrong, priorities--everything. And if it doesn't cut against the grain of my life sometimes (maybe even most of the time), then I may be in danger of using God for my own means.

Read Right (No ‘Rithmetic)

I recently won a much-coveted an earnestly-desired copy of the 3rd edition of How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart (thanks, Rob Bradshaw—your website rocks!). It’s a basic hermeneutics primer and I’d read good things about it since I first heard of it. So far, it has lived up to its promise.
I, like Professor Fee, grew up in a Pentecostal denomination. I’m still in a Pentecostal church; this one is in a fellowship rather than a denomination. The difference is that fellowships are affiliations; the local churches are entirely self-governing. There’s no hierarchy or governing authority over the local body. This has both advantages and disadvantages; but I digress. The main thing is that, being part of the Pentecostal flock all my life, I’ve heard downright strange stuff. Most of it hasn’t come from pastors but rather from independent teachers. . . or, really, from folks who’ve read something from some of those independent teachers.
I don’t intend to get into names here; there are plenty of websites where you can research the subject. But I have found that folks in the pews typically don’t read their Bibles the way Stuart and Fee say we should. In dealing with Old Testament narrative, for instance, Stuart (the OT scholar of the duo) points out that narratives have three levels. The top level is “metanarrative. . . the whole universal plan of God worked out through his creation.” The middle level is “the story of God’s redeeming a people for his name.” And the bottom level is “all the hundreds of individual narratives that make up the other two levels” (see Chapter 5 if you have the book).

But OT narratives are not, Stuart goes on to say, “allegories or stories filled with hidden meanings.” Nor are they “intended to teach moral lessons.” Yet they often “illustrate what is taught explicitly . . . elsewhere.” This isn’t quite the same as teaching a lesson or giving “the moral of the story.” A life is more than a moral lesson.
I’ve heard a lot of teaching that makes the Old Testament narrative into allegory. Maybe that’s just the Pentecostal way—looking for the hidden “deeper truth” while missing the plain hard-hitting “surface” truth. It’s refreshing to read this quote:  “You will get into all sorts of trouble if you try to find meanings in the text that you think God has ‘hidden’ in the narrative” (p. 102, paperback ed.). That alone is worth the price of the book.

Next Up: Return To Unity

Hoo-wee! Well, we done got through that election at last, didn't we? And we survived! Ain't life grand?

All right, enough of that. Now it's time for some unity. . . something sadly lacking in the United States. What are the chances of reaching it? Maybe not so great.

Cover of Daniel Amos

Lots of pundits are throwing around their takes on why this election came out as it did and what this means for The Future. As in:  Future of the Republic, Future of the Democratic Party, Future of the Republican Party, and so on. But reading the future works best when the future becomes the past (this is illustrated in the title of the Daniel Amos song, "It's the Eighties, Where's Our Rocket Packs?" Yes,it's dated; but it makes a point).

There's no question that America is changing. The nation is aging; minorities are growing; "traditional religion" is slip-sliding away. It's easy to point out the failure of old models on both Left and Right; neither has lived up to its promise. Two things are missing:  A frank confession by both liberals and conservatives of where they have failed, and an honest and open debate of what we want to be as a nation.

We've been told for years that most Americans are, in fact, somewhere in the moderate scale (moderately conservative to moderately liberal). This accounts in part for the large number of independent voters who think that neither party truly represents them and who therefore choose no party affiliation. Politics has become the art of drawing folks in the middle to one extreme or the other, against their better judgment. This is not what democracy is meant to be. Democracy is built on finding consensus rather than persuading people to extremes. When parties try to push people to edges that they are not comfortable with, it's no wonder that party power swings from election to election:  Democratic gains in 2008, GOP gains in 2010, close margins in 2012 that (slightly) favor Democrats.


 The change you expect often isn't the change you get. Changing demographics don't necessarily mean wholesale changes in society. There is, I suspect, far more consensus even in the face of change than either Left or Right suspects. At heart, voters want to be safe; they want tomorrow to be like today; they want their children's futures to be better yet. Maybe it's time to build on this.

It's Time to Change Political Debates

Question:  Are you fed up with candidates who dodge debate questions, have a two-minute allotment for answering a panelist's question, and spend 110 seconds of that 120 by telling you how stupid/out-of-the-mainstream/socialist/reactionary their opponent is? No? You mean you like the way political debates are done?

Didn't think so.

Yes, debate season is about to open and we will soon be treated to more flips and spins than the Olympics ever gave us. We know how it goes:  Panelist (or audience member, in those trendy "town hall"-style debates) asks question, Candidate A acknowledges question has been asked, goes to talking point, Candidate B goes to own talking point, Candidate A gets the last word in--all in 3 or 4 minutes. Viewers are left with the knowledge that neither candidate has really said anything new or substantial; we've heard these soundbites before. They serve two purposes: Make the target look foolish, and keep the speaker on safe ground.

The one purpose they do not serve is answering the question.

THIS. MUST. CHANGE!

I hereby put forth a modest proposal to change the format and, I hope, usefulness of political debates. I want one simple change. Just one. Such a little thing. Ready? Here it goes.

Right after all this question/response/rebuttal/final response stuff, the moderator turns to the questioner and asks:  "Are you satisfied that your question has been answered?" The questioner must give a clear, concise response:  "Yes; as I understand it, Candidate A thinks we should do such and such, while Candidate B says we should do such and such instead." Or the questioner can answer:  "No. I have no clear idea what one (or either) candidate would do about this issue."

In most debates, candidates don't give specific actions. They attack. They tell us why their opponents are evil. They talk about their own selflessness and Compassion for the American People, and how their opponent has none of that (the cad!); but they say precious little about what they will do. Answering a question is no more than opening a can and dumping its contents out in front of the audience; and there's a big stock of cans in the cupboard for each candidate to draw on. They get away with it because, in most debates, nobody has the time or authority to point out that the question hasn't been answered. We cannot have substantive debate when candidates do this; and Heaven knows we need substantive debate now.

Related articles

• Mark Your Calendars: The Presidential Debate Schedule Is Here!
• Viewpoints: A quixotic quest for meaningful debates
• Dems want debate question barred

Why “Worldview” isn’t enough

Okay, so “worldview” is and has been the buzzword in conservative Christian circles for a while now. It’s all about worldview, you see. In the great American culture wars, presenting and converting people to your worldview is the key to victory. Or so you’d think, considering all the noise you’ll hear about worldview.

Here’s just one example. Someone I know well and deeply respect recently made this statement:  “The biggest failure of the Church today is its failure to pass on a Christian worldview to our children.” He meant by this that the church, at least in America, was losing teens and young adults because they were being secularized. Their parents, pastors, and youth leaders weren’t teaching them to think in a Christian way, and this was why they were either leaving their churches or straying while staying (staying in the pews but straying from the church’s teachings).

As I said, people I deeply respect are the ones saying these things. I don’t intend to mock or ridicule those who think this way, but I respectfully disagree with the emphasis on worldview. The first problem with worldview is this:  Worldviews are effect, not cause. You hold the worldview you have because you’ve seen certain things from a certain perspective. It’s more than what you’ve been taught; worldview is as much emotional as rational. It’s not rational, for example, to root for the underdog. How you felt about your mom and dad (or church, if you attended one) likely played as big a part in taking or rejecting their values as any rational breakdown of those values
.

The second problem with the worldview argument is that it’s not, in fact, the biggest failure of the Church (or church) today. Our biggest failure has really been the same all along. It’s not a muddled worldview but a simple failure to live up to Christ Jesus. We say all these things about him; we talk about being disciples; we call him “Lord,” and are left in the same place as the disciples to whom Jesus said:  “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46, ESV)

Intellectual arguments are attractive. Obedience issues are not. Framing arguments to influence worldviews will be much more fun than giving food to a beggar or holding our tongues when we’re angry. And, let’s admit it, there’s something convenient about blaming apostasy on something besides the mere fact that we aren’t all that much like the Jesus we call Lord. I respectfully suggest that it is time to work on seeing Christ Jesus as he says we are supposed to see him. Then we can work on how we see the world.

Technorati Tags: worldview,Christianity,apostasy

Could This Change Higher Ed?

I first heard about the OpenStax College project a few months back, when Apple made news with its book-publishing app. Some reporter (wish I could credit him/her) mentioned that the OpenStax project was already working towards making FREE, yes, FREE college e-texts available. So I looked into the project and signed on for updates.
And now, the OpenStax Introduction to Sociololgy text is available for download. It comes in a PDF, epub, or “Web View” format. PDFs can be printed or read on a computer (and on many e-readers, including the Kindle); epub files are open-source ebook files (think Nook, NOT Kindle). “Web View” simply means reading the textbook online, with color images and linked footnotes and references.
So what makes OpenStax digital texts different? Mostly, the fact that they’re free. Rice University in Houston is the main driver behind OpenStax College; the Rice imprimatur will carry weight. The texts (there is currently a complete College Physics book as well) are “peer-reviewed” and “meet most scope and sequence requirements.” The available formats ought to cover any tablet/e-reader on the market.
The vision behind OpenStax is to cut the cost of a college education—a worthy goal, of course. I finished two college courses in the fall semester of 2011, and the texts for those classes ran over $240. That’s not unusual for college textbooks. But what if free, or low-cost, books really can catch on? How would they change self-study, and distance-learning, and continuing education? If you could download a quality text—not a study guide, not notes, but a full textbook—that cost you nothing, would you be more likely to resume/enroll in college? How would it affect your children’s education? Would you prep them if you had the chance? If enough free texts covering enough subjects became available, would community colleges expand their offerings? Would employers do more to fund post-secondary education for their workers?
Online schooling already has begun to change the way people are educated. Could OpenStax texts take online colleges to a higher level?
Related articles

• Guest Post: Marc Sher on the Nonprofit Textbook Movement (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Another Tip That Education Is Changing: Open Stax Textbooks (madisonian.net)

Technorati Tags: OpenStax,education,e-readers,college,ebooks,electronic textbooks

Never Again, Dell

Do I like Dell? Uh-uh. Nope. Sorry, I don't.

Do I like Dell people?

Well, the guy who came to my house to fix my wife's laptop was pretty nice. He took my conversation on Linux and Macs in stride. Pointed out the advantages (and there are some) of Windows and mentioned that Macs are pricey. But then, he wasn't fixing the iMac. He was fixing the Dell XPS, which the iMac had made obsolete for my wife.

Of course, Dell had already made it obsolete for my wife by making it a poor product. She'd long coveted a Mac anyway. She works as a graphic designer, uses a Mac at work, and had been using a Mac in her college classes for the last year. The XPS, when we had bought it, was going to be her go-to graphics laptop. We'd outfitted it with the best discrete graphics card we could afford. It had HDMI and a TV card and it was a pretty nice system for $1500 and change. REALLY nice, for the year we bought it (2008). It was the first year Dell put out the XPS, which was meant to capitalize on the Alienware line that Dell had just picked up.

Four years later, here's the summary:

• Hard drive replaced twice;
• Motherboard replaced;
• Power cord is loose on the connector;
• System has not charged the battery or recognized the ANY adapter for a year and a half (this includes both the OEM battery & adapter and non-OEM replacements)

And when she decided to upgrade to Windows 7, with the laptop just over a year old, Dell provided no support, no updated drivers, no Knowledge Base articles. The Dell website did not list the XPS as able to be upgraded. This was a 1-year-old model, for goodness' sake, that clearly had the hardware to run 7.

My family has owned 3 Dells, because my workplace qualifies for Dell's employee-purchase plan and I can buy a Dell interest-free with installments taken right out of my paycheck for a year. We loved the first one, a desktop that is now 8 years old and which my oldest daughter could still fire up if she weren't so in love with her MacBook. The XPS was the second; well, you know about that. The third is almost a year old--a desktop, purchased with my artist-in-waiting daughter in mind. It's already showing signs of being . . . balky. I'm not sure how much of that is rough usage and how much is the product. Because of our experience with the XPS, I'm having a hard time giving Dell the benefit of the doubt. But it's got a 4-year warranty and I'm pretty sure I'm soon gonna see the little guy who had such a pleasant conversation with me on Macs and Ubuntu.

Tux, the Linux penguin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yeah, that'll be nice. Thanks, Dell.

Related articles

• Again, Apple gets all the attention

  ---