Is Katniss Compatible with Christ?

I noticed the Hunger Games is coming out on video, and I have been thinking about putting my two cents in the ring. My son and I went to see the movie when it was on in theaters. He had read the book and I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.

I know the movie doesn't follow the book exactly, but I understand that the premise is the same: young people are forced by the powers that be to participate in a game of survival where they must kill or be killed. This struck me as post modern ethics. What do you do when you can't escape doing wrong? Christianity can't help you because it's simplistic and outdated and thus can't survive when the hard questions whack it over the head. Or can it?

I think the Christian response is and always has been not to participate. There are examples of whole families and communities dying together because they wouldn't play along in the arenas of ancient Rome. The Romans booed the Christians because they wouldn't give the audience the blood sport it wanted.

When Katniss volunteers to take her sister's place that seems to be redemptive, until you realize that she will have to kill someone else's brother or sister to save her own. Thus, the Christian response would be to make the aristocracy kill you themselves. That way they can't pretend it's a game, "And may the odds be ever in your favor."

Now someone may say, "Well you can play your own game and thwart the aristocracy." They may want to see you run through by gladiators but what if that makes the gladiators feel their own gladius? Its only self defense after all. But we must remember that it's being artificially imposed.

What if your playing Galaga, and suddenly the game informs you that instead of alien bugs its going to be real people flying at you with deadly aim. I think we would have to turn it off and let the consequences be what they are. This is what makes the story unsatisfying. The Christian version was told in Quo Vadis whose author won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905.

Preach the Gospel at All Times and When Necessary Eat More Chicken

Today is National Chic-fil-A Appreciation Day. There has been quite a dust-up between some Christians over participating for fear of further alienating homosexuals. That is a legitimate concern. We don't want to put stumbling blocks in the way of the gospel.

But what if the offense is already part of the gospel? Part of the gospel you say! How so? Well I would suggest that what the Bible says about marriage is good news for everyone. God made us in his image with a human nature that flourishes in marriage between one man and one woman. Any other arrangement is destructive to human nature.

The gospel restores us to these God-defined relationships. This is grace! So I believe that Christians should cheerfully participate in proclaiming the gospel with Dan Cathy and Chic-fil-A by supporting their business against those who have pitted themselves against it. This is for the sake of the gospel, homosexuals and all of us who need it, and the betterment of society which needs more chicken and less chickens :).

Christians should also participate in Chic-fil-A day, because first amendment issues of freedom of religion are also at stake.

The reason Mike Huckabee started the movement to support Chic-fil-A is because Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-A president, said, “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” which indicates one man and one woman till death do us part. This prompted city officials in Chicago and Boston to oppose Chic-fil-A restaurants from opening in their jurisdictions. This has been termed viewpoint discrimination and rightly so. We must support freedom of religion and conscience from the oppression of those who would falsely define gay marriage as a civil rights issue.

Christians shouldn't fear the politicization of the issue either. It is possible and healthy to distinguish church and state but impossible and unhealthy to distinguish religion and politics. God has given us both the realms of church and state, by which he has commanded us to transform his world. So we should go out equally motivated to fulfill the great commission and the cultural mandate. In fact, they are complimentary.

Time to Build

By wisdom a house is built,
and by understanding it is established;
by knowledge the rooms are filled
with all precious and pleasant riches.
A wise man is full of strength,
and a man of knowledge enhances his might,
for by wise guidance you can wage your war,
and in abundance of counselors there is victory.
Wisdom is too high for a fool;
in the gate he does not open his mouth.
(Proverbs 24:3-7 ESV)

Am I building my house with wisdom. Is it established? Are the rooms filled with knowldedge or diversion? Do we have "precious and pleasant riches" or mere gadgets?

Am I full of strength. If I am living wisely, I should be "enhancing my might," not getting weaker. With wise guidance I can wage war, rather than indulge my idiosyncrasies. Do I have many counselors instead or do I tend to worship a single hero at a time? Can I open my mouth at the gate, or am I silenced in the presence of the wise? The wise man built his house upon the rock. Jesus be my rock! It is time to build.

Neither Teen Nor Old-timer in Christ

In The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager Thomas Hine documents how advertisers purposely try to play up the differences between the generations in order to sell them their own unique identity. This is the main reason why the "teenager" was identified as a new social class in the mid twentieth century and the "emerging adult" more recently.

When churches have a hipster service and a traditional service are we not segregating the generations as well? If Paul were writing to the church in America today, would he point out that their is neither teen nor old-timer in Christ?

We have been part of a small group for years where our kids have mixed with people the age of their great-grandparents. I have been so grateful for this influence and shudder to think of teens, emerging adults, and other social groups who are isolated in their own "taste communities" and are never exposed to the richness of older and younger generations.

Let's desegregate, shall we?

Whose Story Is This?

Last night the fam and I watched Mirror Mirror, and I found it delightful over all.

There were problems like (spoiler alert) the king doing a wedding. Not only was there no minister but the king pronounced the couple man and wife "By the authority invested in me ... by myself." Yikes! That's a recipe for tyranny worse than that of the wicked stepmother. Douglas Wilson recently quipped that a despot was anyone who didn't recognize any authority above himself.

There were also the modern slang updates such as the queen referring to Snow as "high maintenance."

At the outset I was very uneasy that this would be a postmodern retelling as the film opened with the queen narrating. She in fact called it "her story." But in the end good triumphed and the queen confessed that this was Snow White's story after all.

That is really the question in the culture war. Whose story is this? Is it the story of Jesus the Messiah, Allah, World Soul, or the secular elites? Since it is Christ's story we are called to play our role with all our might and leave the plot twists, climax, and conclusion to him.

Eros Undefiled

Mature romantic love is the cultivation of affection into an unconditional commitment that's consummated in marriage.

Gnostic + Update = Knostic

A quote lifted from here:

Many modern knostics have wanted to learn how to appreciate the arts of narrative. As far as that goes, nothing wrong with it, but whether writing about novels, or movies, or stageplays, they have found "redemptive" or "death and resurrection" themes in all kinds of grimy stories. In other words, an abstract thing, the structure of the story, is mysteriously able to sanctify the actual content of the story. By means of this amazing magic trick, any amount of Tarantino sludge can be made edifying.
Now . . . three cheers for structure, but content matters. Content is determinative. (Douglas Wilson)

A Parable of Bulverism

I'm going to riff off of Douglas Wilson riffing off of C. S. Lewis.

Bulverism, as Lewis defined it, is dodging your opponent's argument by psychologizing him. Your treat him like a psychological patient who needs your evaluation to explain why he came up with such a ridiculous argument in the first place.

So what was his inferior state of mind that produced the silly argument? Hmmmm.... Let's see (says the faculty at Enlightenment U). He's obviously so weak he needs a crutch. So he invents a God to help him through life.  

No! Wait (says Freud)! He misses his papa, so he invents a heavenly father to hold his hand every step of the way.  

No! Here it is. He doesn't live up to his goals so he projects a perfect image of himself into the sky and calls it God. Yeah! Yeah!  

Wait, (says the patient) but how do you explain the incarnation Feuerbach?  

Oh that's easy (says the philosopher). You see that projection got a little intimidating after awhile, so man just brought it back down to earth in the form of Jesus, so he could pat his God on the head and say "There, there. Your not so scary. You love me so much you're going to die and rise again to save me." 

Now let's all go to bed and rise tomorrow to live wiser lives (says the Lady of the Green Kirtle). 

What about Thomas's Five Ways (says the patient)? 

Oh, don't you know that philosophers have pointed for years out that those arguments don't really prove anything scientifically. Thomas' only use now is on my couch. That will explain everything.  

But aren't there grave difficulties in psychoanalyzing the dead (says Roland Bainton the perfectly sane historian)? 

No, not when they really need you (says the faculty of Enlightenment U in their most updated accent).

Secular Jihad

Today, when the whole population of every civilized country is subjected to an intensive process of schooling during the most impressionable years of their lives, it is the school and not the church that forms men's minds, and if the school finds no place for religion, there will be no room left for religion elsewhere.
                                Christopher Dawson, Cultural Historian, Civilization in Crisis  (1950) (Thanks to Chris Baker for this quote.)

When government schools declare religion out of bounds, they aren't, as they claim, being neutral towards all religions. They aren't just saying that religious expression isn't relevant to education either. They are enshrining the religion of secularism with its saints (like Darwin), martyrs (like Galileo), and liturgy ("separation of church and state") to be the established faith of the school.

Because religious beliefs are our most basic beliefs, they frame, color, and define our view of the world at every waking and sleeping moment. Claiming otherwise, would be like telling your coach you could see the ball just as well wearing your welding helmet as your batting helmet. The welding helmet keeps certain things out while the batting helmet helps you see as God intended. Your coach would not be fooled.

"What God has joined together no man can put asunder." So government schools pull a fast one by pretending to have put it asunder, while installing their own belief system for all practice day in and day out from pre-K to graduation.

The students get the message too. When I spoke up from a Christian perspective in my government school, it wasn't the teachers who were offended. It was my fellow students who told me to shut up!

Teachers are expressly forbidden from teaching from a Christian point of view. Evangelism is an outrage and Christianity is evangelistic. This makes Christian statements unwelcome in the classroom.

Christians in public schools have been conquered by secular Jihad and reduced to the status of dhimmitude, which means "concession, surrender and appeasement" towards government demands. The government isn't Sharia law but Secular law.

With government schools leaving no place for Christian expression, is it any wonder that the Christian recession in the public square starting in the early twentieth century continues today with disastrous moral results?

Freedom From Responsibility

Thanks to Mark Horne for this quote:

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. -- Edward Gibbon

Burning Eloquence

Got this from Blog and Mablog:

One of the best definitions of eloquence is, 'to have something to say and to burn to say it'." (Fish, Power in the Pulpit, p. 18).

Technology and Barbarism

Technology is not a cure for barbarism.

"Intemperate Minds Cannot Be Free"

Edmund Burke wrote in 1791:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites .... Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. 

We tend to define freedom in terms of the maximizing of choice. We think the more we can have what we want the freer we are. The Christian view of freedom is the ability to do what is right. Since we have given up on any standard of right and wrong that applies to everyone, we are left with, "I'm free to do what I want any old time." This is a recipe for bondage. Jesus didn't say, "He who sins has free choice." But, "He who sins is a slave to sin."

Burke explained the proliferation of law that we see today. Our view of freedom as personal choice throws off internal restraint. We aren't born with internal restraints. They must be instilled by parents and other God-given authority figures teaching the word of God through words and wood. This needed little back up from government when churches and parents were doing their jobs. Today it's left up to government and laws try to keep up with accelerating lawlessness. But now the law looks more and more arbitrary and is taken less and less seriously.

John Witte Jr. argues  that without a basis in divine and natural law, positive law becomes a sort of wish list. To make up for this courts are invested with divine like power. In an episode of Seinfeld, Poppy challenged Elaine to defend her pro-choice view by asking her, "What gives you the right?" She replied, "The Supreme Court!"

Rick Santorum recently remarked in a Republican debate that government doesn't give us rights. It's job it to recognize and protect our God-given rights. This is much more satisfactory than Ron Paul's naive view, expressed in the same debate, that his religious views wouldn't affect his presidential politics. "You can't legislate morality," they say, but isn't it the case that we shouldn't legislate anything but morality? If so, where do we get it?  If we don't get it from God it will be the end of society. If we return to him individually and in our homes, work, churches, and in public, there is hope of a most glorious and gracious kind.

To sum up: Without divine law there's no internal restraints. Without internal restraints positive law increases. Without divine law to back it up, positive law has little force. To give it more force we give more power to our government, especially our courts. But its not the job of government to give us laws and rights but to maintain the God-given ones. If we don't acknowledge what we acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence then we won't be independent much longer. If we return to him we return to hope.

The Start of Abolition

The abolition of slavery as an institution didn't begin with William Wilberforce in the early 19th century, but with Gregory of Nyssa's Easter sermon in 379:

If man is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and
has been granted authority over everything on earth from God,
who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs
this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious
gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). God would not therefore
reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we
had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom.
But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his
own power above God’s?

Historians have searched in vain for a predecessor to Gregory, so I guess we will have to take Gregory's word for it. He must have gotten this from the Bible.

The Sucking Canvass of Nothingness

I heard a portion of an interview with Woody Allen on NPR on my way to teach class. Allen confessed that it is hard to find any pleasure in life because of the human predicament hanging over every happy moment.

This means, for Allen, that every enjoyment is not pointing beyond itself to the Joy of joys but is, in his words, "ephemeral." Allen has made atheism the canvass of his life. Whatever pleasing strokes he brushes on are immediately absorbed by the sucking canvass of nothingness.

This has reminded me that life without God is painfully subjective. But life with God guarantees an objective reality that our senses were created to know, and Scripture declares that God has personally entered that reality and we are part of his business of redemption. Let's join the family business!

A Reformation Day Sermon

I preached this sermon on Reformation Sunday at New Life Presbyterian Church in Muncie, IN.

http://www.newlife-pc.org/media/20111030-WorshipService-1.mp3

Reason and the Logic of Revelation

Thomas Aquinas believed that reason can prove what faith accepts when the books of nature and Scripture overlap. When special revelation stands alone however, reason receives it and may serve to show its logic.

The Queen of the Sciences

"Everyone [in the Middle Ages] agreed that theology was by far the most important and highly skilled profession of all. Only the most rigorously trained individuals could practice it. It took seven years to qualify as a theologian, and that was after spending at least four years working on a first degree.... If a philosopher did want to tackle matters of faith, then he was perfectly entitled to join the theology faculty and train as a theologian" (Hannam, The Genesis of Science).

We Are Lovers, This Is True

We are basically lovers. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength," says Jesus. I'm one who tends to lead with my mind, which isn't necessarily bad. But when I reduce man to mind that's bad. Especially when I look down on my less cerebral brothers and sisters.

So I need to remember that the life of the mind is important to an abundant Christian life but not the be all end all. In other words, we all have our primary, secondary, and tertiary love languages when it comes to loving God. We must proactively promote the love languages of our brothers, especially when they are different than ours.

Language and its Detractors

We tend to forget that the postmodern skepticism about language is communicated through language.