Category: Christianity

In the city

The 9Marks website has a great article on this whole “the city is where it’s at” “theology” that’s sweeping through city churches (and church planters) at the moment with nary a thought for those poor country cousins.

While I love and appreciate cities for all their goodness, and have lived in cities (excluding Townsville – which is regional) for just under half my life, I also think healthy, wholesome country towns are the lifeblood of the church and are often neglected.

A big part of my professional life involves helping the push for a regional area in Queensland to get appropriate per capita (and per revenue raised) government investment into infrastructure. It’s an eternal frustration. There are few votes in pleasing the country areas – so we’re the poor second or third cousins when it comes to government priorities.

There’s a real danger that the church ends up looking the same. It takes courage for a city raised ministry candidate to move to the boondocks. There’s no (real) program for sending graduates into rural service like there is for other vital professions (school teaching etc). City churches are too keen to snap up graduates for their vibrant and exciting “city” ministry.

And of course, as some good friends would itch to point out, these city churches could telecast their services into regional areas as a pragmatic solution.

There’s a lot to be said for feet on the ground ministry that’s engaged in community life – particularly when community life tends to be stronger the smaller the community (this is a generalisation based purely on my experience living centres with populations of 5 million, 3 million, 170,000 and 6,000). The opportunities for ministry are greater with greater natural community – but the opportunities for exciting ministry programs and huge growth decrease with the size of community.

So good on the 9Marks guys for pointing out this flawed hermeneutic (and particularly flawed Biblical proof texting) of city based ministry. It’s one of the few problems I have with the Mars Hill fan club. And in fact any city centric thinking.

June 12, 2009

The fine art of persuasion

Lets face it – for all intents and purposes any piece of communication is an exercise in persuasion. If it’s not you shouldn’t bother. So no doubt there’ll be something useful in these “50 Scientifically proven ways to be persuasive“…

Here are some samples:

Rhyming makes the phrases more convincing. People were asked to evaluate the practical value of parables “Caution and measure will win you treasure” and “Caution and measure will win you riches”. In general proverb A was considered to be more practical and insightful than proverb B.

Caffeine increases the argumentativeness of a strong argument. Group A drank regular orange juice, group B drank orange juice infused with caffeine. Both groups were then presented with a statement on controversial issue. Except one statement then made weak and hasty arguments, while the second statement made a strong case. Both groups equally dismissed the weak argument case. As far as strongly argumentative case, group B was 30% more receptive. A faster-working brain under the influence of caffeine seems to appreciate good arguments.

June 11, 2009

WWJS

Some churches just don’t get it. Particularly American churches – or at least in the case of the American churches I’m about to write about…

Just over a week ago a prominent late term abortionist was shot while attending his church. Those who are anti-abortion will no doubt not be grieving this loss as much as others – but most churches have been quick to condemn the killing (or at least to distance themselves from it).

Not these two…

The first, a church in Kentucky, is having an “open carry celebration day” – they want parishioners to bring their guns to church. Here’s what their “pastor” Ken Pagano has to say:

“As a Christian pastor I believe that without a deep-seeded belief in God and firearms that this country would not be here.”

Speaking about those objecting to his planned celebration he said:

“I understand their concerns and I applaud them for their expression because the whole point of this is to promote the First and Second Amendments.”

While he may not have made the link to the shooting directly – the journalist did – a link from the story’s intro takes you to the story about the killing.

Then there are those that have glorified in the killing…

I’m sure this is not the sort of commentary the church should be making about current events… nor the kind of mission Jesus gave us in the great commission.

But I propose, in order to take money out of the hands of these dangerous people, that we launch a range of Christian merchandise in the WWJS line – who/what would Jesus shoot… the money raised can be redirected to appropriate organisations like the Red Cross.

June 10, 2009

Church sharing financial misery

There’s been a bit of online chatter about the impact that the financial crisis is going to have on churches – the Sydney Anglican Diocese is perhaps going to wear the consequences more than anywhere else – which is sad, given that they train and resource most evangelical ministries in Australia in some capacity.*

“THE world’s richest and largest Anglican diocese has lost more than $100 million on the sharemarket and is investigating ways to cut programs and ministries across Sydney.”

According to the SMH the losses have been compounded by the fact they borrowed to invest.

“The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, has written to clergy warning that the global financial crisis has caused significant losses. He said the diocese had borrowed money to invest and used the profits to build churches in 2007.”

In hindsight it’s easy to throw stones at that strategy – but is this ever “good stewardship” – the SMH headline makes accusations of “gambling” – which would seem inconsistent with their approach to investment in the business section.

*Though in my opinion too much stays in Sydney (this is purely to preempt accusations of backflipping following the discussion with Izaac a few weeks back…

June 10, 2009

YouTube Tuesday: The OCC Episode 1

A few years ago two jaded young Christian males (myself included) sat down to write a highly cynical depiction of Christian dating in the context of Christian camps. It was called “The OCC” – the Obligatory Camp Crush. It’s now on YouTube. It’s amazing what you can accomplish in a sick day. I’ll be putting them up in a serial fashion – probably daily. But if you’re the impatient type feel free to head on over to YouTube and check them all out.

I don’t know about you – but I reckon it stands the test of time. Despite the obvious Queensland in jokes. It is set at an Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) Mid Year Camp (MYC) – camps famous for bringing students from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the University of Queensland (UQ) together.

There was an epilogue of sorts that I’ll need to track down, and a trailer produced using Lego that I similarly don’t have on hand.

This was an “Everybody’s Second Favourite Segment” production by Phil Enchelmaier and myself. Stay tuned for more such awesomeness from our past…

June 9, 2009

Camp coffee

We had church camp over the weekend. An interesting time with some important discussions about the future direction of our church – we’re looking at a plant in a new suburb/growth area in Townsville.

That’s all by-the-by. I’ll probably talk about it shortly.

The campsite we were staying at (a Girl Guides site in Bluewater) was powered and had a shared kitchen. Which to me is an opportunity to not suffer through hand grinding beans for the stove top. I brought Sheila* with me. And made a lot of coffees (and hot chocolates).

We went through 42 litres of milk (I think that’s right – by my count it was 14 three litre bottles). Close to 1.5kgs of coffee. And by my very rough estimate made about 150 drinks. Which awesomely justifies my decision to purchase Sheila on “ministry” grounds.**

I had catered on the basis of previous camp experience (and a bit of dinner catering experience) – which left me about half a kilo wrong in my calculations – people drink lots of coffee on camps, especially at morning tea. This meant buying coffee from Woolworths – which is an ethically difficult thing to do if you’re a believer in the superiority of freshly roasted coffee. There’s stuff on the shelves that was roasted in Italy – which surely sits on ships, in warehouses and on pallets in the store before even making it to the back of the shelf. In a word, it’s stale. I am going to, in its very own posts, formulate some sort of scored index of coffee.

I spent so long yanking the portafiller in and out of the machine that I have blisters. Barista blisters.

* My hundred kilo three group Rancilio Coffee Machine – named after the tank from Red vs Blue.

** not the website where I buy my coffee – but on the basis that I’d use the machine “for ministry” it’s how I internally justify every infrastructure splurge…

June 9, 2009

Nemesis

I think I officially have an online nemesis. And I’m unworried. The Barefoot Bum has written a couple more posts about how many problems he has with me – and refuses to post my comments. How beautifully ironic given that he suggested I’d edit my comments after he posted his rant.

Anyway, don’t bother commenting there. It’s not worth the angst. He’s certainly pretty sure of his faith. And pretty abusive.

In closing, I give you this statement based on my experiences posting comments on atheist blogs this week:

Atheist communities are a group of people united by nothing.

June 8, 2009

Barefoot and fancy free

Well, the Barefoot Bum doesn’t like me. He called me a very rude word (that I won’t repeat here – don’t click the link if harsh language offends) in his latest post. And an authoritarian to boot. A Nazi even. Seems Godwin’s law doesn’t apply when you’re a raging atheist. Neither does context.

He didn’t like this comment I put on the previous thread:

If God is not hidden and the “priest, prophets, pundits” are his chosen messengers then you have every reason to believe me and/or them. Why would God personally reveal himself to you because your logic demands it? That doesn’t make any sense. When does a subject ever tell their ruler what to do in that manner?

Because somehow that’s “authoritarian” and I’m a Nazi.

“Nathan is essentially demanding that I obey him (or his chosen priests & prophets) because he asserts that he speaks in the name of god, and he denies any obligation whatsoever to justify his authority. [bad language removed] If you want me to do something, then make me. All “subjects” can demand their “ruler” coerce them. So coerce me.

*I have no idea if Nathan will alter the content of the comment; he doesn’t strike me as being any more honest than he is intelligent. I’ve reproduced the accurately and in full, adding emphasis to the particularly [Again, Bad language removed] authoritarianism.”

Right, so I’m neither honest, or intelligent, I’m a fan of censorship, authoritarianism and a Nazi. This guy knows me well.

“But don’t think that you have any right to escape criticism and condemnation for your slavish submission to authority or your demand that I submit to your authority.”

Slavish submission?

Here are some thoughts on the matter.

  1. Writing something on your own blog does not make it truth.
  2. Writing something in the comments of someone else’s blog also doesn’t make it true – no matter how insulting or ridiculous you find their arguments.
  3. Declaring something loudly on your blog and having your commenting sycophants back you up also does not make your statement truth.
  4. Being insulting to people you’ve never met does nothing for your cause.
  5. Showing disregard for context without questioning the context and posting inflammatory posts about people you’ve never met also does nothing for your cause.
  6. Burying your head in the sand on any counterpoints to your opinion will never end well.
  7. Logical fallacies are only logical fallacies if you presuppose that your opponent is irrational and illogical.
  8. You will always win an argument if you set the parameters and the parameters naturally exclude the person you are arguing with.
  9. If God exists then it’s not up for us to set the parameters for considering his existence on natural law. If God exists the concept of “natural law” does not apply past what we are capable of observing.
  10. The Friendly Atheist is actually friendly by comparison to this particular atheist.
  11. If you remove the fundamental authority and evidential standard from any argument – it falls over. So you can’t ask a Christian not to argue from their understanding of the Bible, a Muslim not to argue from their understanding of the Qu’ran or an Atheist not to argue from their understanding of Science*. All are equally subjective.
  12. As a follow up point from point 11 – atheists expect Christians to familiarise themselves with science, and Christians often do so superficially which frustrates Atheists – but when it comes to the “theistic” evidence they’re only prepared to take a superficial understanding of theology to the table. Because that’s easier to refute.

*Capitalised to indicate usage as a proper noun not the verb.

June 5, 2009

Big red A

This symbol is not an indication of quality on the blogosphere but a declaration of atheism.

Just so you know. I found out because “The Barefoot Bum” deemed my propositions on atheism worthy of his attention. And ridicule. His link to my post read “another mole to be whacked”…

June 4, 2009

10 further reflections on atheism

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook (and you’ll find a link to add me on the right hand column of this site) will know that my status yesterday was “is looking for a fight”. Well, I found one, a bit, over at the FriendlyAtheist. 

It’s an interesting site. I have some reflections from my discussions there that I think are worthwhile. 

  1. The vast majority of atheists come out of some form of theism – many of the commenters on that blog are former church goers from a range of denominations – there are also a bunch of Mormons. They see their atheism as a natural progression towards enlightenment. 
  2. American culture must be harder on atheists – they all seem so bitter and I suspect that’s largely because the culture of American Christendom is difficult. 
  3. “Good” and moral are different – Christians have made a mistake because of a semantic difference on the definition of good. While Christianity teaches that nobody – not even Christians – is capable of “good” behaviour – this generally means “behaviour that counts towards salvation” – for an atheist it means anything that would be considered selfless or moral. Atheists, as a general rule, seem very angry at the idea they are incapable of moral behaviour because they don’t have God. Which leads them to ask if it’s only God preventing Christians from living immoral lives. (Which was well considered in Andrew’s recent post…)
  4. “Strong Atheists” (those who believe “Absolutely, positively, there is no god.”) are apparently being taught to argue as though they are “Weak Atheists” (those who believe “I don’t believe in God because no one has provided me with any credible evidence that God exists.”) in order to shift the burden of proof to Christianity. 
  5. Thanks to Dawkins and co atheists continue to argue with a caricature of Christianity – and also put forward issues or challenges to Christianity that are considered and covered by the Bible as if they’re compelling evidence – and refuse to accept belief in the Bible on the basis of a history of bad translations, poor doctrine and bad application. For example – David Attenborough, the prominent nature documentary maker – argues that the existence of “evil” in nature (specifically a worm whose only purpose is to burrow into the human brain) is proof that God isn’t loving and doesn’t exist. This dismisses any theological thought put into areas like this – and in fact the basic Christian teaching of the Fall’s impact on God’s creation. 
  6. As a further point on that last one – when the Bible does speak to a “logical” problem atheists have with Christianity it’s rejected on the basis that “the Bible would say that wouldn’t it…” as though considering the issue is part of a grand scheme to dupe us. 
  7. Faith is seem to be a “superstitious logical jump” in the face of conflicting evidence rather than a conviction of truth without all the  evidence.
  8. Atheists hate being compared to Mao – but love comparing Christians to the Crusaders (or in fact any nasty people carrying out nasty acts in the name of Jesus). When you suggest that these Christians weren’t being Christian you’re guilty of breaching the “no true Scotsman” fallacy – when you suggest that their anger at the Mao analogy is similarly a “no true Scotsman” fallacy you’re told that Mao was not motivated by his atheism… is it just me seeing this as contradictory?
  9. A whole lot of bad teaching is coming home to roost – doctrinal clarity is important. Ideas like “God is love” that don’t speak to God’s wrath, holiness, or judgement have caused more harm than good. This is what happens when only part of the gospel is considered with another part swept under the carpet. 
  10. At the end of the day – my staunch “Reformed” understanding of evangelism and election means that I’m not in any position to convince those whose hearts are hardened to the gospel. The parable of the sower would tend to suggest that the standard atheist experience of a choked faith is natural and to be expected for many “converts”…  
  11. And a bonus point – “evidence” is seen to be some sort of magic bullet for atheists – but naturalism presupposes the supernatural – and as soon as something supernatural is demonstrably tested it’s no longer supernatural but just an undiscovered natural entity – God is, by definition, supernatural. He can not possibly be tested in this manner, because we can’t expect him to conform to our “testing” and act the same way over and over again… There are biblical examples of God being tested – Ezekiel and Gideon spring to mind – but these are of no value to this argument… because of point six. This link should take you to what I think is a nice little evidence analogy in one of my comments.

These reflections come from my experience and discussions on these posts. Feel free to critique my arguments or approach in the comments.

June 3, 2009

Morality play

If you haven’t been keeping up with the interesting and constantly evolving debate on morality occuring on this post… then perhaps you should be.

After our Westminster Confession session finished last night conversation turned to this same topic – a discussion of morality, with particular reference to gay marriage.

I suggested that, consistent with my stance in that other thread, Christians shouldn’t be imposing our moral standards on others – and that in fact this is a strategically bad idea because the greater the gap between Christian behaviour and social standards the more powerful the witness of our difference becomes – which I see as one of the essential roles the Old Testament Law played (it marked Israel as different).

One of the counterpoints to that argument was that God’s judgment against nations follows immorality (eg Sodom and Gomorrah). While this can, taken to extremes, lead to church groups picketing soldier’s funerals – there may be a point.

Though I wonder if the lack of general morality is in fact part of the judgment – rather than there being cataclysmic consequences there are societal consequences where we pay the price for our actions.

I also wonder why those Christians who believe that the “judgment against the nations” means hastening the rapture, tribulation and judgment day aren’t arguing for the sort of behaviour that would bring things to a hasty end. It seems inconsistent.

However, this is essentially an incredibly long preamble to today’s slightly crass XKCD comic – which perhaps makes the point… morality is a slippery slope.

June 3, 2009

Pick your battles

This SolaPanel post comes at a particularly relevant moment what with all my inner-argumentative-angst navel gazing and debates about what issues are worth fighting for.

  1. Fight for what is right. (truth)
  2. Argue for what will work. (tactics)
  3. And keep quiet about everything else. (preference)

Fight for the God-given Biblical principles, argue for how to put them into practice and just leave all the personality or preference issues up to each person to work out for themselves.  I can hesitate on preference, in a meeting I can even back down on my view of tactics, but I must never back down on truth.

Me, I fight on all three, but care about 1 and 2 almost equally (and interchangeably – the media is the message afterall… Or something like that).

June 2, 2009

Lobbying for God

Dave (Walker – there are far too many Daves for this just to be a first name thing) and I have been thoroughly enjoying a discussion on the role of government (and Christians in relation to government) back on this post.

Dave, for the uninitiated, is the same guy who spoke at a conference in Brisbane recently and made a joke about me without realising that very few people in the audience knew who I was… this time round he’s called my doctrine of creation anaemic. I would have thought it was slightly lumpy myself, congealed perhaps…

Anyway, I was relaying the debate to my wife (who probably agrees with Dave)… and considered for the first time that while the government in the New Testament era was far from democratic, the model we see of Paul relating to those in authority while on trial is almost, almost, an example of Christian lobbying. With Paul playing the role of the advocate. I would stress that the distinction I see is that he’s not seeking to impose Christian morality on others, but to protect the rights and freedoms of Christians. I’d never really considered Paul in that light before. I see some inconsistencies between this sort of advocacy, and that practiced by the Australian Christian Lobby.

May 31, 2009

The Friendly Atheist

I’ve been reading a bit of the back catalogue of the Friendly Atheist, who is in fact a friendly atheist – it’s a same about his lunatic band of followers who deface every moderate post with comments about why Christianity should not exist… I’ve been doing this because I think engaging with just one or two posts from this sort of blog and getting all preachy in the comments is harmful. I like to understand context before I go off disagreeing (yes my specific atheist friends this is important to Christians…).

The Friendly Atheist, Hermant Mehta, achieved some fame ebaying off his time with a promise to visit churches identified by the winning bidder. He turned it into a book – which would no doubt be informative reading for anybody wanting to look at church practices from the outside. He also used his experience to write a couple of reflective posts – one about things about church that are annoying (and I agree with most of them) – as do many Christian commenters on the post (which is still getting comments almost 2 years later)… and this one – ten things Christians do better than atheists – which is a bit less friendly. I guess because both target the fringe parts of Christianity that I personally have struggles with… Which in itself is interesting. I think the “rational” evangelical arm of Christianity probably spends a lot of time agreeing with atheists and throwing stones at Christian brothers rather than focusing on the unity we have with our “irrational” fellow Christians. Which is pretty challenging. Especially in the light of passages like 1 Corinthians 1 (incidentally if you google the phrase: 1 Corinthians 1 biblegateway esv – the third result down is a page on the MPC website (dad’s church for the uninitiated))…

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

The more I grapple with, and try to convince my atheist friends of the rationality of the gospel the more I am convinced that this is the case – they’re going to read this and tell me I’m copping out for falling back on a proof text written in order to justify just this criticism – but that’s where I guess our “doctrine” of Scripture disagrees. If it’s a true representation of God’s intentions why wouldn’t the Bible say it?

Craig linked to the article from the Friendly Atheist I posted the other day, with a wise disclaimer encouraging Christians to be sensitive when posting – advice I perhaps failed to heed with my own comments – lest we give more ammunition to the disdain these atheists show for Christianity. It’s particularly pertinent advice given some of the “drive by” evangelism that happens in the comments on that blog – evangelism without relationship is pretty futile. As perhaps best expressed by this Friendly Atheist post of advice for Christians as they evangelise to atheists…

May 31, 2009

Sad

Nothing makes me sadder than this post on “the friendly atheist” and the tales of “deconversion” shared in the comments.

In short, he was much happier being religious. I think anyone would expect this, but the problem is that I don’t think he has found anything positive in atheism yet, and I think he’s finding it very depressing that there might not be a god. I don’t think that “better moral guidelines” and “seeing the universe as it is” can outweigh what could well be the loss of his entire family, at least not at this stage.

It’s sad that these atheists (the blogger in particular) – make it their life’s ambition to bring misery to people in the form of “enlightenment” – if they truly believe there’s no God – why proselytise aiming to deconvert someone and disrupt their family?

It’s also sad hearing tales of broken lives driven by broken understandings of Christianity perpetuated by broken people. There’s so much anger and anguish underpinning the genuine hurt many of these “deconverted” atheists feel having “wasted their lives”. It also seems many of them have been ostracised by their “Christian” families for doing so.

It’s stories like this, repeated time and time again, that make me angry and sad. For all parties involved.

I come from an Evangelical Southern Baptist strand of Christianity so I think our situations may be similar. I was truly a warrior for Christ – daily Bible readings coupled with prayer, tri-weekly Church visits and I made every decision in my life based on the Truth I knew from the Bible. Of course I was still a teenager at the zenith of my faith so my decisions can’t truly compare to those made about a spouse or career.

I was 22 when I told my mother that I no longer believed Christianity was valid and it initiated the single hardest time in my life. She effectively disowned me and we did not speak for several months. In her rage she told our extended family of my betrayal and even “outed” one of my friends to his own family. I was told that I was to no longer speak with my own brother.

May 29, 2009