Justin Taylor's Blog, page 80

4 Questions about Cultural Artifacts and the Limits of Worldview Thinking

Building off of the four laws of media in Marshall and Eric McLuhan’s Laws of Media: The New Science (1988), John Dyer, author of From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011), has helpfully labeled these observations and turned them into questions:

Enhancement: What natural function or older medium does the new medium amplify or intensify?
Obsolescence: What natural function or older medium does the new medium drive out of prominence?
Retrieval: What older medium or practices are recovered by the new medium?
Reversal: What happens when the medium is overused or pushed to its limits?

To show how this works, Dyer uses the example of a mobile phone:

Enhancement: The mobile phone amplifies the human voice and our ability to communicate. It also extends the range of older land lines.
Obsolescence: The mobile phone makes land lines less important, but also other less instantaneous forms of communication like letter writing.
Retrieval: The mobile phone restores oral communication for those separated by physical distances who used to only be able to communicate via letters.
Reversal: When overused, the mobile phone disconnects and isolates people. Users can also annoy those around them and no be truly present with those in their midst.

Dyer also suggests that this can be roughly mapped on to the biblical storyline:

Reflection: (Creation) How does this technology display the imago dei (Gen 1:26-27)? How does it help accomplish the creation mandate (Gen 1:28; 2:15)?
Rebellion: (Fall) How does this technology attempt to live apart from dependence on God (Gen 4:17)?
Redemption: What effects of the Fall can this technology help overcome (Gen 3:7; 1 Tim 5:23)?
Restoration: What unintended consequences or shortcomings does this technology bring? Do these make us long for Christ to return and restore all things?

In his popular book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (IVP, 2008), Andy Crouch has his own twist on this, focusing upon assumptions (both about what is and what ought to be) and results (new possibilities, new obstacles, new responses)

 

What does this artifact assume about the way the world is?
What does it assume about the way the world should be?
What does it make possible?
What does it make impossible, or at least a lot more difficult?
And what new culture is created in response?

To see how Dyer would respond to these questions about Twitter, go here.

But there is some danger in all of this: we can take an intellectualist approach to new technologies and cultural artifacts and increase our knowledge along the lines of “worldview thinking” (which I support). But it’s not enough. As Crouch said in an interview:

These questions certainly include the issues that “worldview thinking” addresses, though I think they go a bit beyond to examine the concrete effects of cultural goods as well as the ideas and values they embody. I would love for more Christians to use questions like these in all sorts of settings, for what we consume as well as what we cultivate and create.

Crouch goes on to illustrate the practical effect of asking and answering these questions when it came to buying a TV for his family:

Last week I purchased the first television our family has ever owned. You can bet I went through those questions several times before making the decision to buy that TV, because I’m keenly aware that bringing this cultural good into our home will make some things possible and other things impossible or much more difficult. Indeed, once I’ve answered those questions, part of my responsibility as a Christian is to ask what other new cultural goods I need to introduce into our family’s life to mitigate the potential “impossibilities” that the TV might create.

For example, I need to consider where the TV is placed in the house—in our case, we put it in the basement, far from the heart of our family’s life, which centers around our dining table, grand piano, and fireplace.

I need to articulate values for our kids about what we will use the TV for—watching movies we have chosen in advance rather than, God forbid, turning on the TV to see “what’s on,” and for the most part avoiding advertising-supported content since I think that advertising-supported content is almost always inferior to content that people are asked to pay for directly. (This is why HBO is so much consistently better than network television.)

I may need to strengthen our family’s counter-consumption disciplines of generosity, which is why, at Catherine’s suggestion, we gave away twice what we spent on the television to Africa Rising, an organization that supports indigenous development efforts in East Africa.

But you see that if all I do is ask those five questions, I will have done very little to harness the good and minimize the harm of this new artifact I’m introducing into our family’s culture. I can’t just be a “cultural critic.” I have to move beyond that to asking what I will create if I’m to have any hope of shaping a flourishing culture in our home.

Worldview thinking is a fine place to start, but we need to move beyond it to creativity.

 

The Warp Speed of This Revolution

Ross Douthat on the backlash to Indiana’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act:

As I’ve said before, I don’t think the issues in the wedding industry deserve the label “persecution” that some religious conservatives have slapped on them, and I don’t think the view taken by these florists/bakers/photographers is necessarily mandated by orthodox Christian belief. But it is my very strong impression that if a religious conservative (or anyone on the right) had said, back in 2004 or even into President Obama’s first term, that they accepted that marriage should be redefined nationwide to include same-sex couples, that they further accepted that this would happen swiftly through the courts rather than state-by-state and legislatively, and that all they asked of liberals was that this redefinition proceed in a way that allowed people like Barronelle Stutzman some wiggle room about whether their businesses or facilities had to be involved in the wedding ceremonies themselves — with the mechanism for opting out being something like the (then-still-bipartisan) RFRA model – this would have been treated as a very reasonable compromise proposal by a lot of people on the center-left, gay as well as straight. I cannot prove this absolutely, and I concede that there are lots of people on the left who wouldn’t have liked the deal. But the world of liberal opinion is a pretty familiar one to me, the world of the past isn’t that far past, and I think my assessment is basically correct.

Today, though, as I said above, I think the consensus center-left position has basically shifted toward the argument offered by Garrett Epps for The Atlantic: It doesn’t matter if Stutzman or any other wedding vendor is a nice person with sincere religious beliefs, and it doesn’t matter if she or they would provide her services to gay clients in any other context; her religious anxiety about decorating a wedding chapel for a same-sex couple is no different from the objection to integration of a Southern store-owner whose preacher taught him the races should be separate, and needs to be dismissed with extreme prejudice lest anti-gay discrimination flourish and spread.

And whether you find this view, this analogy, persuasive or you don’t, it has a lot of possible further implications. Because in the annals of American history, both Jim Crow and the means we used to destroy it are, well, legally and culturally extraordinary. So if our current situation with same-sex marriage and religious conservatives really is analogous, there is no obvious reason why we’ve reached any kind stopping point once the florists and bakers have been appropriately fined or closed down.

You can read the whole thing here. Note in particular his seven questions on how far liberals will extend the logic.

For a primer to the discussion, see Joe Carter’s What You Should Know about Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.

How Much Did Prayer Cost God?

Tim Keller:

The only time in all the gospels that Jesus Christ prays to God and doesn’t call him Father is on the cross, when he says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus lost his relationship with the Father so that we could have a relationship with God as father.

Jesus was forgotten so that we could be remembered forever—from everlasting to everlasting.

Jesus Christ bore all the eternal punishment that our sins deserve.

That is the cost of prayer. Jesus paid the price so God could be our father.

—Tim Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Dutton, 2014), 79-80.

In Death, a Witness to Life: Kara Tippetts (1976-2015)

Kara Tippetts went to be with her Lord on Sunday, March 22, 2015.

You can read her obituary here.

She recently wrote on her blog:

My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping.

But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus.

He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live.

I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives.

I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves.

I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven.

I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide.

He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all.

And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.

Kara was the author of the book The Hardest Peace, and also the author of an open letter to suicide advocate and victim Brittany Maynard.

Psalm 145:17-19



The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.

The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

He fulfills the desire of those who fear him He also hears their cry and saves them

Psalm 16:11



You make known to me the path of life;

in your presence there is fullness of joy;

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, 16, 18



13 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Revelation 22:20



He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Screwtape on a 3-Step Plan to Make Faith a Means for Political Gain

C. S. Lewis’s diabolical advice in Screwtape Letters, chapter 7 (emphasis added):

Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion.

Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part.

Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism.

The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience.

Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.

Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

HT: Warren Throckmorten

Three Free Lectures by Russell Moore: “Onward Christian Strangers: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel”

Russell Moore, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently delivered the Spring 2015 Gheens Lecture Series on the campus of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville (March 18-19, 2015).

Dr. Moore’s next book, to be published in August 2015 by B&H, is entitled Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel. Moore explains the vision of the book here:

This book is a vision for Christian social engagement in an era in which Christianity is increasingly strange. I think we should own the strangeness, because it’s the freakishness of the gospel that changes things.

In the book, I argue that the church is, if we ever were, a moral majority no more. We are, on our best days, a prophetic minority, rooted in the gospel of the kingdom. This minority status doesn’t mean siege mentality. The prophetic word, after all, uproots and rebuilds. The new era before us, though, gives us the opportunity to toss aside some aspects of our past that never reflected the gospel in the first place: starting with our bargain-basement prosperity gospel.

We are not ambassadors of “traditional values.” We are stewards of the mystery of the gospel.

The book argues that the kingdom of God should set our priorities, that the kingdom should reorient the cultures of local congregations to speak to the outside world, and that a holistic mission ought to define our engagement. This kingdom-culture-mission framework drives us then to a distinctively Christian vision of human dignity, of religious liberty, and of family integrity.

The kingdom doesn’t just change what we say, though; it changes how we say it. We speak with convictional kindness because we are not enraged losers. We are more than conquerors in Christ. The Christian church, then, should be confident, hopeful, and future-directed. We should march triumphantly into the future. We pledge allegiance where we can and where we ought. We render unto God and we render unto Caesar, but we don’t forget the difference between the two. We are Americans best when we are not Americans first.

The future will be challenging. Hucksters and heretics can’t withstand it. But the gospel of the kingdom can. We’re not in Mayberry anymore, and we never were. But the gospel didn’t emerge in Mayberry. It came rocketing out of a Roman Empire in which nothing could be stranger than the idea of a crucified Messiah. Onward Christian strangers.

You can watch Dr. Moore’s lectures below, on (1) Kingdom, (2) Culture, and (3) Mission. (For audio only, go here.)

3 Wrong Ways that Some Christians Think about Heaven

In his book Meditation and Communion with God: Contemplating Scripture in an Age of Distraction (IVP Academic, 2012), John Jefferson Davis challenge three common assumptions about “heaven.”

He uses verses like the following:

John 14:2
Galatians 4:26
Philippians 3:20
Hebrews 8:5
Hebrews 9:24
Hebrews 10:1
Hebrews 11:6
Hebrews 12:22
Hebrews 13:14
Revelation 21:2

In passages like these, we see that “heaven” =  new Jerusalem = Jerusalem above = new creation.

Davis shows that the following ideas, even though they are common, are unbiblical:

Heaven is only future.
Heaven is only spiritual.
Heaven is inaccessible.

1. Heaven Is Not Only Future But Also Present

Davis writes:

[H]eaven or the new Jerusalem (= new creation) already exists in the unseen dimensions but will be visibly revealed when Christ returns visibly and in a physical, bodily form at the end of history.

The writer of Hebrews informs us that in true worship we have already arrived at the heavenly Zion/Jerusalem (Heb 12:22), as truly as the Israelites in the old covenant had arrived at the visible Mount Sinai.

The John of Revelation sees the new Jerusalem coming down of out heaven from God; he sees a city already fully built, not just bricks and mortar arriving on semitrailers for some future completion date. The transition is not from not-existing city to existing city, but from invisible, existing city to visible and existing city.

2. Heaven Is Not Only Spiritual But Somehow Located in Space

Here Davis is responding to the idea that “heaven is purely spiritual, consisting of disembodied spirits flying around in some gaseous and ethereal realm.” Davis writes: “Let us be very clear about this: this notion of heaven is gnostic and Neo-Platonic and a heretical distortion of biblical teaching. Strong language, to be sure, but I believe that it is justified.” Even though I wouldn’t use the word “heretical” to describe this deviation from Scripture, Davis is right about its origin:

Neo-Platonism, which rooted itself in the Christian church and spirituality from the time of Pseudo-Dionysius in the sixth century A.D., presupposed an alien vision of salvation and the spiritual life as a flight from matter and the body to the pure realm of spirit, away from the changing world of distinctions into the changeless world of the One.

He then shows, by contrast, the biblical depiction of heaven and the framework within which it is presented:

Heaven is depicted as a city: a structured environment, a complex topography that in some sense has extension and dimensionality, and is occupied by bodies located in some form of space.

Biblical spirituality and salvation is not a rising from the world of matter to a realm of pure, disembodied spirit, but rather a transition from matter “under the curse” to a redeemed and glorified material creation (“creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” [Rom 8:21]).

The inaugurated eschatology of the New Testament teaches not a transition from matter to pure spirit but rather from matter in its present state to “matter enhanced” and glorified, suffused with the glorious Spirit of God, who was present to the material creation (Gen 1:2) and has never abandoned it (cf. Ps 104:30, presence of the life-giving Spirit in the biological world).

3. The Reality of Heaven Is Accessible, Not Inaccessible, to Believers

David correctly observes:

In true worship we are already in the presence of the new Jerusalem, of God, the risen Christ, the angels and the saints and martyrs (Heb 12:22-25); we can already experience the powers of the age to come (Heb 6:5). If we but have the eyes to see it, every Sunday morning we are “in the presence of the angels” and all the heavenly host. We are really present to heaven, and heaven is really present to us—again, the reality of inaugurated eschatology.

This is not merely an academic point but a profoundly practical teaching. Davis reminds us that this mean “the very transformative energy of the age to come (‘the powers of the coming age’ [Heb 6:5]) is already being made available to the church for its ministry and mission.” Here’s why this matters:

Alas, all too often the church today is being run on the natural energies of this age, rather than the supernatural energy loosed by the resurrection of Jesus and the descent of the Spirit! If we have lost our heavenly imagination, we will be disinclined to access, by faith and prayer, the heavenly energy from above. Which energy does your church run on?

Paul reminds us that we are already in heaven, seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Eph 2:6). Our molecular selves are still very much located on earth, but since we are united to Christ, with our spirits connected to Christ by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:17), our extended selves are projected (Skyped) and represented in heaven by the Holy Spirit. As Calvin rightly observed, “the Spirit truly unites things separated by space.”

Taken from Meditation and Communion with God by John Jefferson Davis. Copyright (c) 2012 by John Jefferson Davis. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com

An Interview with Sam Storms on What the New Testament Really Teaches about Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Security

In the new book, Kept for Jesus: What the New Testament Really Teaches about Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Security (Crossway, 2015), Sam Storms looks at every passage in the New Testament that addresses assurance, security, and perseverance—with a gifted combination of exegetical rigor and pastoral sensitivity. He seeks to show that the Bible presents a different way from both those who say that true Christians can lose their salvation and those who say “once saved, always saved” (implying that perseverance is not necessary for final salvation).

Storms and I recently sat down to ask him some questions about the book:

00:00 – How did you come up with your new book’s title, Kept for Jesus?
00:32 – How do terms like “eternal security,” “perseverance,” and “assurance” relate to one another?
02:53 – What do different theological positions teach about eternal security?
05:13 – How would you respond to the claim that the Arminian perspective seems most consistent with our experience of seeing people fall away from the faith?
09:04 – Is assurance of salvation normative for the Christian life?
12:15 – Who do you envision using this book?

Learn more, download an excerpt, or download a free bonus chapter, “A Primer on Perseverance.”

“I have wrestled with the issue of assurance of salvation not just as a pastor counseling timid souls but as a sinner trusting in God. What a great help is Kept for Jesus, then! Handling the relevant biblical texts with clarity and precision, Sam Storms has crafted real ministry with this book, working by the Spirit to plant the security of union with Christ in the believer’s heart.”

—Jared C. Wilson, Director of Content Strategy, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

“With care and compassion, Sam engages in a wide-ranging discussion of the love of God, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, spurious faith versus saving faith, human dignity and human depravity, the nature of eternal security, God’s preserving power in faithful Christians, the problem of apostasy, and much more. Not shying away from the controversial nature of his topic and tackling head-on dozens of difficult passages, Sam offers an engaging book that deals biblically, theologically, and practically with the all-important matter of assurance of salvation.”

—Gregg R. Allison, Professor of Christian Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Too often the gospel is reduced to only wiping away sin’s debt. Storms shows us a more wonderful gospel of love and direct relationship with God in which Christ is inseparable from us, keeping us, and holding us as family. Storms is a pastor of pastors, walking us through the thorny issues—such as the warning passages—and into green pastures of communion with our Savior. He calls us into the beautiful tension and transformation of God’s forever grace.”

—Daniel Montgomery, Pastor, Sojourn Community Church, Louisville, Kentucky; Founder, Sojourn Network; author, Faithmapping and Proof

“This is classic Sam Storms: warm, thoughtful, clear, and wise. Not all readers will agree on every detail, but all will be well served by working through the issues with such an insightful guide. Throughout the book, God’s protection of his people shines through—and so do the joy and security that this brings to all who trust him.”

—Andrew Wilson, Pastor, Kings Church Eastbourne, East Sussex; author, If God, Then What? and Unbreakable

“Sam Storms has given us a book that is fair, humble, straightforward, and helpful. He consistently presents views that oppose his own and frequently admits he does not have all the answers. He argues biblically and passionately for the truth that God keeps true believers saved to the end and focuses on the Christian life and rejects errant views, including those that cut the biblical cord between God’s keeping us and our keeping on in faith, love, and holiness. This is a good book, and I am happy to recommend it.”

—Robert A. Peterson, Professor of Systematic Theology, Covenant Theological Seminary

6 Stages in the War for the Heart

In his book Instrument in the Redeemer’s Hands, Paul Tripp unpacks James 4:1-1o and the war for the heart according to the following stages:

Stage 1: Desire (“I want”)

“The objects of most of our desires are not evil. The problem is the way they tend to grow, and the control they come to exercise over our hearts. All human desire must be held in submission to a greater purpose, the desires of God for his kingdom.”

Stage 2: Demand (“I must”)

“Demand is the closing of my fists over a desire. . . . I am not longer comforted by God’s desire for me; I am threaten by it, because God’s will potentially standards in the way of my demand. . . . The morphing of my desire changes my relationship to others. Now I enter the room loaded with a silent demand: You must help me get what I want. . . .”

Stage 3: Need (“I will”)

“I now view the thing I want as essential to life. This is a devasating step in the eventual slavery of desire. . . . To ‘christen’ desire as need is equivalent to viewing cake as I do respiration. . . .”

Stage 4: Expectation (“You should”)

“If I am convinced I need something and you have said that you love me, it seems right to expect that you will help me get it. The dynamic of (improper) need-driven expectation is the source of untold conflict in relationship.”

Stage 5: Disappointment (“You didn’t!”)

“There is a direct relationship between expectation and disappointment, and much of our disappointment in relationships is not because people have actually wronged us, but because they have failed to meet our expectations.”

Stage 6: Punishment (“Because you didn’t, I will. . .”)

“We are hurt and angry because people who say they love us seem insensitive to our needs. So we strike back in a variety of ways to punish them for their wrongs against us. We include everything from the silent treatment (a form of bloodless murder where I don’t kill you but act as if you do not exist) to horrific acts of violence and abuse. I am angry because you have broken the laws of my kingdom. God’s kingdom has been supplanted. I am no longer motivated by a love for God and people so that I use the things in my life to express that love. Instead I love things, and use people—and even the Lord—to get them. My heart has been captured. I am in active service of the creation, and the result can only be chaos and conflict in my relationships.”

So what do you do when desire has morphed into demand into need into expectation into disappointment into punishment?

The first step must be vertical (with respect to God) before you can make progress on the horizontal (with respect to people). Because relationship problems are rooted in worship problems, James’s solution, Tripp rightly notes, is “Start with God”:

“Submit yourselves therefore to God” (James 4:7).
“Draw near to God” (James 4:8).
“Cleanse your hands . . . and purify your hearts” (James 4:8)
“Humble yourselves before the Lord” (James 4:10).

The entire book is recommended reading to explore this further.

—Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 85-89.

Why Sin Shuns the Light and Wants to Remain Unknown

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Sin demands to have a man by himself.

It withdraws him from the community.

The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.

Sin wants to remain unknown.

It shuns the light.

In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person.

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together in Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 5, ed. James H. Burtness and Geffrey B. Kelly; transl. Daniel W. Bloesch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 110.

HT: Ed Shaw, The Plausibility Problem: The Church and Same-Sex Attraction (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2015).