Radio Carbon Dating vs. Radio Carbon Courtship

From an advice column at CNN.com:

I have been dating my boyfriend for about three months. We get along great and he would do anything for me. We just have one problem. He doesn’t believe in evolution and I very passionately do. We got in a discussion about it, which quickly turned into a huge fight.

The advice columnist, “the Frisky,” gave some perceptive advice. Here’s the key excerpt:

Evolution and creationism are beliefs that are at the basis for entire life philosophies, values, and behavior. They can be the lens through which people view their world, particularly if they’re very passionate about their beliefs, as you say you and your boyfriend are.

I find it very interesting that both Christians and non-Christians have come to see that the battle will not be won on evidence alone, because each side merely interprets the evidence to fit its view. In other words, they have begun to view the creation/evolution debate in presuppositionalist terms rather than evidentialist ones. So non-Christians lay bare the undeniable religious roots of creationism, thereby proving it invalid. Christians labor (so far mostly in vain) to point out that only on secular materialist presuppositions do religious roots invalidate anything.

Narnia Story 3

Before the first Narnia film came out, I was very skeptical. I simply did not believe that non-Christians would get it right. Narnia is suffused with a Spirit they do not know.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe managed to exceed my low expectations, but it still Hollywoodified the story—from opening with explosions to turning Peter into an unkingly jerk. Worst of all, it put Aslan in a cat-carrier in the back seat. He wasn’t the commanding presence he is supposed to be as the son of the Emperor-over-the-Sea. Still, the visuals were great and Lucy was sweet (even if her conversation with Aslan about fighting in the battle was adjusted to fit modern sensibilities).

The second movie, fed through the non-Christian worldviews of writers and director, also came out distorted and empty. Can we please have a kids’ story without a love interest, especially one featuring a girl who kisses the boys? Did Caspian and Peter have to have issues? Did we need shoehorned action scenes?

So here comes the third movie. What hope do honorary citizens of Narnia have that our second homeland will be recognizable?

We do have some hope, because there are Christians involved. Without them, this little vignette from Christianity Today tells us what would happen:

[Kathy, wife of Tim] Keller says that they got another critical scene right: The “un-dragoning” of Eustace, which many consider the highlight of the story. (In the book, the selfish boy Eustace turns into a dragon due to his greed; it is only through confession and penitence, and the Christ figure Aslan’s help, that he is able to shed the dragon skin and become human again.) Keller says she learned that writers originally wanted Eustace, still in dragon form, to fight a sea monster and “earn” his return to human form. But she says [producer Micheal] Flaherty, a committed Christian, “put them straight that you don’t earn grace, you receive it once you are humbled and aware of your need.”

Your worldview matters. It takes regeneration to truly get grace.

HT: Brian Collins

Count the Biblical Allusions in This Sentence

From a Chronicle of Higher Education article on the future of libraries now that Google Books is here:

As someone with experience in print and electronic publishing, Darnton is seeking “common ground” between the Luddite jeremiad and come-to-Jesus techno-millennialism.

You could conclude from this fun little sentence that to read intelligently today you still have to know the Bible—or perhaps simply to know the major things educated people know about it.

But is even that going too far? My read of our culture is that there are many people who understand this sentence perfectly without knowing the three Bible etymologies inside it. “Jeremiad” just means a “lamentation,” even to people who have never read Lamentations. “Come-to-Jesus” is recognizable as an evangelical TV preacher’s come-on. And millennialism is anyone’s confident utopian dreaming, not just Christians’.

People forget where their words and ideas come from. They’re just in the air. But we can be thankful to God that, by His grace, truths from His word are still floating around at all levels of our culture.

HT: Dustin Battles

The JEC at YDS

A first-edition copy of JE's Religious Affections, 1746

I’m at the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale Divinity School for a week taking a course on Edwards’ Religious Affections. It’s been fun and informative, especially our time viewing Edwards’ manuscripts and our class discussions—which I had the honor of starting the other day by asking a question about the following snippet from a 1729 sermon Edwards preached on 1 Peter 1:8, the passage which ultimately formed the launching pad for his 1746 book, Religious Affections:

There is no love like the love of Christ, in these following respects: 1. There is no love so free and disinterested as the love of Christ. That is one qualification of love from whence we denominate true love, that it be not mercenary. Now there is no love so remote from it, as the love of Christ; he loves his people freely; he has no interest in the cause; he don’t set his heart upon them because he seeks anything from them, whereby he can be any way advantaged.

I pointed out that I don’t think John Piper, certainly Edwards’ foremost interpreter and popularizer among evangelicals today, would say something like this. The word “disinterested” wouldn’t sit well with him. If I’m right, did Piper get Edwards wrong or is Edwards inconsistent?

A fellow class member, a pastor who has long loved Edwards, pointed to page 241 of the Religious Affections for at least some of the answer:

If after a man loves God, and has his heart so united to him, as to look upon God as his chief good, and on God’s good as his own, it will be a consequence and fruit of this, that even self-love, or love to his own happiness, will cause him to desire the glorifying and enjoying of God; it will not thence follow, that this very exercise of self-love, went before his love to God, and that his love to God was a consequence and fruit of that. Something else, entirely distinct from self-love might be the cause of this, viz. a change made in the views of his mind, and relish of his heart; whereby he apprehends a beauty, glory, and supreme good, in God’s nature, as it is in itself. This may be the thing that first draws his heart to him, and causes his heart to be united to him, prior to all considerations of his own interest or happiness, although after this, and as a fruit of this, he necessarily seeks his interest and happiness in God.

That, of course, does sound like Piper, and I’d like to reflect more on this, but the class discussion on Edwards’ 12 signs of truly gracious affections is about to start. So let me just point you here for more of your own study and thinking and eternal profit.

Soccerball

Opinionator at NYT: Soccer is “a game that teaches you that life is unfair. Because goals are so scarce, it is possible for a team to be outplayed for 89 minutes and yet still score one fluke goal and win the game. Superior performance often does not translate into victory.”

Exactly. That’s why I like football and ultimate frisbee. I realize what this means, that I may never make it anywhere but the US and North Korea—the only other nation in the world known to dislike soccer (at least that’s one possible explanation for why they hired Chinese fans to cheer for their team). I just don’t get the draw of a game with such low scoring. I’m open to learning, however, and the World Cup has been a good opportunity whenever I’ve gotten to catch a few minutes of a game. I’m also all for Africa raising its profile in the world, and vuvuzela is the coolest vocabulary word I have picked up this year.