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Religious Liberty

The Supreme Court recently voted 5–4 to keep a Christian campus group at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco from barring non-Christians from their group, homosexuals specifically. I’m decidedly against alarmism, but I believe this is quite a serious matter.

This has been a perennial partisan issue on American college campuses. My dad witnessed it at UVA in the late 1970s. It is not difficult to think that permanent victory has just been handed to the liberals, though that is not certain.

Conservatives amaze me sometimes—in their willingness to believe silly conspiracy theories, for example. But where liberals amaze me most often is in their utter blindness to their own epistemological hubris. Basically, liberals preach, “All views should be tolerated and celebrated—except those of my opponent.”

Justice Kennedy, for example, concurring with the Supreme Court majority, wrote that “a vibrant dialogue is not possible if students wall themselves off from opposing points of view.” But does this mean that homosexual groups are required to allow Christian conservatives opposed to their sexual practices to take up membership and leadership positions in their campus organizations? And if a Christian group bars immoral activity among its members, does this mean, ipso facto, that all who remain have walled themselves off from opposing views? How do we know whether or not those members have come to their views through a long process of careful evaluation and discussion with all parties? How do we know, in fact, that the entire Christian group at Hastings is not composed of former homosexuals? And isn’t it possible that there are some views we should wall ourselves off from, views not even worth debating? How do we know?

It is within the state’s interests to forbid a university’s KKK members from taking over their campus’ NAACP chapter, but I have a transcendent reason for knowing that this is so: God says racism is wrong (Gen. 1:26-27; James 2:1). But, of course, He says the same about homosexual desires. And even non-Christians should know that volitional homosexual acts are not inherited and impossible to change the way skin color is.

I think often of the words of a church historian not known for alarmism, Carl Trueman, who wrote the following during the controversy over Rick Warren’s prayer at Obama’s inauguration:

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the day is probably not far off when those who regard homosexual practice as wrong will be consistently presented as the moral, cultural and intellectual equivalents of white supremacists.  Al Mohler (who seems to have spent the whole week writing or speaking on the issues of Lisa Miller and Rick Warren) has pointed out that this issue is set to shatter any possibility of traditional, biblical Christians being considered cool.   You can have the hippest soul patch in town, and quote Coldplay lyrics till the cows come home; but oppose homosexuality and the only television program interested in having you appear will soon be The Jerry Springer Show when the audience has become bored of baiting the Klan crazies.  Indeed, evangelicals will be the new freaks.

Trueman counsels evangelicals not to compromise, but not to be hatemongers, either. Certain segments of evangelicalism have chosen the former route, certain segments of fundamentalism the latter. By God’s grace let us stand firm in following Christ—both in opposing people’s God-hating efforts to destroy themselves and in loving them as God’s image bearers.

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.

Beautiful Father’s Day Article for My First Father’s Day

Read it; it’s about a father who went to war—World War II—and was deeply affected by it.

I just read Stalingrad on my Kindle, a fast-moving and terrifying account of one of the most famous portions of WWII.

Now I’m on to 1776, also on the Kindle. What a gift and responsibility historians have, making the past come alive.

Bloggingheads at the NYT

I just watched a New York Times bloggingheads debate between Molly Ziegler Hemingway of Christianity Today  Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches over the matter of same-sex marriage.

Hemingway took what appears to me to be the most popular evangelical line, a case which insists it is not based on religion. Any person, religious or not, Hemingway said, can hold the position that marriage serves society best when it is heterosexual, procreative, and stable. At best, she implied, gay marriage is one for three.

As far as it goes, I agree with her case. But her case doesn’t go very far. It trades authority for a rapidly fleeting respectability. If evangelical Christians, of all people, are afraid to appeal to the authority of God Himself, then the only One who has the right to tell societies what to do with their bodies behind closed doors is left without a voice (except that of conscience, Rom. 2:12-16). Without God, let anyone marry anyone he or she wants, for tomorrow we die.

The reason I oppose gay marriage is not that “marriage is between a man and a woman.” I’ve always thought of that as a meaningless statement: just because something is a certain way doesn’t mean it ought to be. I oppose gay marriage because “God said in Scripture that marriage is between a man and a woman.” God also said that He has given every human being inestimable value by making each person in His image. So I love my monogamous homosexual relatives and my heterosexual philandering ones—and vice versa (you know what I mean). I oppose gay marriage and adultery—and pencil pilfering—on moral, religious grounds.

If I live in a nation which thinks it does not allow such grounds or which believes that our morality is entirely relative, so be it. I’d be dishonest if I pretended that my case isn’t ultimately religious.

Now, I’d like to counter that Sarah Posner’s case—along with that of every gay marriage proponent—is ultimately based on presuppositions taken on faith, too. But that’s another post.

Why I Chose the ESV over the NASB

The ESV and the NASB are very similar translations. When the ESV first came out in 2001 I started an Excel spreadsheet to record passages where I—in all my early grad school wisdom—believed one to be superior to the other. I evaluated them based on accuracy, mainly. In the end, they came out neck and neck. I just looked at that file again, and I’m not sure I’d make all the same choices, but reading the two translations over the years has led me to the same conclusion.

Both the ESV and the NASB are conservative translations. Both are willing to leave inspired ambiguity (like “the obedience of faith” in Romans 1:5) in the text instead of shunting readers into one interpretation or another (as both the KJV and NIV do). There is value in a translation which makes many interpretive choices for you—as long as you know that’s what you’re reading. But for daily reading, preaching, and study, I want to know all the options available to me. The ESV and NASB both do this—though the GNT is even better, of course!

The ESV is generally regarded as having greater literary beauty than the often “wooden” NASB, and the ESV follows in the great line of English Bible translations stretching back to the KJV. That means it’s closer to what I grew up with, and that has a value. But so does reading something like the NASB which forces you to rethink what you grew up with!

So which one should I make my primary Bible translation? If their quality as translations is more or less equal, on what basis do I choose?

I felt free to make my choice based on more or less pragmatic considerations:

1. The ESV has many more editions available than the NASB, and their typography and general quality far exceeds the available NASB editions. As an amateur graphic designer, this means a lot to me. Other things being equal, a beautiful Bible is better than an ugly one.
2. The ESV has multiple innovative editions, like the journaling Bible and the single-column reference Bible. The NASB had the latter, but it appears no longer to be available.
3. The ESV seems more likely to me to stick around than the NASB, even though it’s newer. The NASB has failed to gain much market share over its long existence. The ESV achieved a lot of popularity almost immediately.
4. I like Crossway; they have a distinct conservative identity. I also know many or most of the scholars who produced the ESV; I have their exegetical commentaries. The Lockman foundation has no identity apart from the NASB.
5. Crossway showed a commitment from the beginning—which they have kept up over almost 10 years—to making the ESV available in innovative technological formats. I use the ESV website probably 15-30 times a day. It looks great without being overwhelming and it has helpful features, such as free audio Bibles and different text display options.
6. The ESV Study Bible is the most beautiful production of its kind ever. And it has a very nice website.

Remark from a Carrot Top

Thank you, politics.

Without you, I wouldn’t even know any racial slurs.

Ignorance is bliss, and I’ve been happy for a long time. But along comes politics, and I have to learn words I didn’t want to know.

You would think that the number one rule politicians learn in Get Elected School is “don’t use racial slurs.” Apparently some of them cut that class. That’s the last time they cut anything.

Blog Advice

A friend just asked me for advice in starting a blog. This is what I sent him:

1. Have a definite purpose and audience for your blog. My purpose is to be for other younger seminary guys what my seminary roommate was for me: an older friend encouraging and modeling good Bible interpretation and nascent scholarship. I also throw in tech advice.
2. Post every other day at least. This is absolute when you start out, a little negotiable as time passes.
3. Read blogs so you understand the medium. You need to know what makes for a good blog: the length of posts, the kinds of posts, some of the mechanics of posting (like HT’s, etc.).
4. Have a Feedburner subscription counter on your main page.
5. Get a nice design; get help from friends who know design if you’re not sure.
6. Use Windows Live Writer to write your posts. It’s free. For Mac I bought Ecto.
7. Think very carefully about your blog’s name. Choose it only after looking at many other blogs in your portion of the blogosphere. Justin Taylor’s Between Two Worlds is arguably the most prominent, followed by Challies.com. There are many others, of course.
8. Recognize that the blog medium demands a little whimsy every once in a while. You can’t be dead earnest with every single word. Dryness won’t reach readers.
9. Use pictures whenever possible.
10. Comment on other people’s blogs, but never tout your own blog on their blogs. That’s considered very bad form.
11. Consider carefully whether this is a medium you can really shine in or not.