March 29
To R. Scott Clark and C.S. Lewis for Clark's blogpost that quotes C.S. Lews as he wrote about democracy in education and its effects. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Some don't really understand what egalitarianism is all about. While others don't understand the present time because they have removed its context, which is the past, from how they interpret the present time. It is important to keep the context for the present in mind when interpreting it because that context will tell us what to accept or modify in the present and what to discard.
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To Michael Young and his article that gives a harsh crituqe of Kristin Kobes Du Mez's book: Jesus and John Wayne. This appeared in the American Reformer blog.
Criticism regarding religiously conservative Christianity has more often than not become a contest between those whose arguments are deductively arrived at vs those whose arguments are based on inductive investigations. The problem for the former group is that they fail to recognize that conclusions arrived at deductively become suspect when they are challenged by the results of inductive investigations. And that is what appears to be the contest in the above review of Du Mez's book, Jesus and John Wayne--I personally like to add 'The Baptist' at the end of the title of the book because of the wife's first attempt to find the book.
One problem with the above review is that the reference to 'Evangelicalism' can be ambiguous. That is because Evangelicalism is sometimes represented by a certain set of beliefs while at other times it is represented by its people. The same can be said of Christianity. And if Du Mez is not taking issue the Evangelical Theology, especially that which is concerned with the Godhead and Soteriology, it is concerned with its people and its theology that concerns itself with how we are to carry out the 2nd Table of the Law as the Church.
Now it seems to me that while we religiously conservative Christians must never budge on theology concerning the Godhead and Soteriology, we should be open to hearing criticisms about how the Church has either taught about our relationships with others or how it has treated them. For it is the in criticisms about the latter that most of the criticisms leveled toward the Church can be found.
But Young's response is both authoritarian and unnecessarily defensive. His response is authoritarian because it seeks to discredit, by association, Du Mez's claims rather than to deal with them rationally on a case by case basis--again, when conclusions arrived at deductively are challenged by inductive investigations, something is amiss.
Another aspect of Young's response that is authoritarian is that it employs a great deal of black-white thinking. In particular, Young sees nothing of value in Post Modernism even though Post Modernism has been rightly complaining about abuses committed by those who feel entitled to commit them because of their exclusive claims to knowing the truth. And it is those exclusive claims to truth that have enabled many a leader to abuse or exploit others--something Du Mez has been trying to point out.
Acknowledging the truths that Du Mez has happened on doesn't imply that all of her claims are correct no more than citing the weaknesses of Post Modernism implies that it has nothing of value to offer. And just because Post Modernism points out that everything is written in and interpreted by its own context, that doesn't imply that there is no absolute truth.
Young exhibits another flaw that so many of us religiously conservative Christians seem to have in abundance. That flaw is that we tend to try to deduce what all of reality must be rather than learn some reality by experience.
So Du Mez has pointed out some serious flaws in the Church regarding how we treat others. Why should that bother us when our faith revolves around what we believe about the Godhead and our reliance on Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. But such bothers Young and my guess is that Young is experiencing a tribal anxiety because some of his past heroes and horizontal theologies are being challenged and have been found wanting. That doesn't imply that everything he has been taught is false.
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April 1
To Joseph Pearce and his article that challenges the progressive notion that conservatives are on the wrong side of history. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.
Besides the gross misrepresentation of progressives as being so monolithic, we should note that we don't have to be approaching some desired utopia to realize when someone is on the wrong side of history on a given issue. For example, we know that those who supported slavery in past were on the wrong side of history. And yet, we are far from any of the dreams dancing around in the heads of progressives.
A number of people whom many conservatives would regard as progressive don't believe that comfort will rid us of crime and problems. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't believe that. He didn't measure progress by how many new comforts we have but by the quality of our relationships with others. Chris Hedges doesn't see our society or the world progressing toward some absolute or relative utopia. Rather, he has a very pessimistic view of where the world is going. Noam Chomsky automatically dismisses any notion of achieving a utopia.
And though I don't deserve to be included in the above mix, I lean toward the real left politically but also hold to the 5 basic tenets of Christian Fundamentalism. I remember discussing with a friend how our society has made progress in some areas but has suffered set backs in other areas.
The above article seems to have been written to paint progressives as having nothing to contribute to society. Of course, the above article complains when conservatives are so portrayed. In either case, it is arrogance to believe that we need not listen to the views of others. That because there is no ideology that is omniscient, we all have things to learn from each other. And thus ideological tribalism is harmful because it is based on an obvious false presumptuous assumption.
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To Chris Gordon and his blogpost on using the Confessions, here he is speaking about the Reformed Confessions, as an aid in pursuing sanctification. This appeared in the Abounding Grace Radio blog.
I struggle with the above article because I believe that our Reformed Confessions encompass too wide a scope of subjects. As a result we can easily develop an ever growing dependency on the confessions that can compete with our dependency on the Scriptures.
Another problem with using confessions that have such a large scope of subjects is that it unnecessarily divides not only given movements, like the Reformed churches, but the Church itself. Tribalism sets in afterwards and with tribalism can come Christians persecuting other Christians because of the disparities in the standard beliefs that each set of Christians hold too.
But perhaps the biggest problem that can come with a high dependence on the confessions is that once we rely too heavily on the confessions to understand the Scriptures, the confessions become a canon above the canon where the confessions make up the first canon and the Scriptures make up the second canon.
If our confessions did not cover such a wide scope of material, we could better distinguish what are the essential beliefs to those who call themselves Reformed without being unnecessarily divisive and without putting one's preferred set of confessions on too high a pedestal.
Mark 7 should effectively warn us against putting any set of confessions, a.k.a., traditions, on too high a pedestal. Will we let Mark 7 speak to us effectively?
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