There's a story in Judges about a man who sends his concubine out to be abused by the men of the town in order to save his own skin.  When he finds her dead in the morning, he sends parts of her body to all the tribes of Israel as a shocking, visual wake-up call revealing the depths of the country's moral depravity.

I imagine that the people of Israel who heard of this felt a nausea, horror, and sense of impending judgment similar to what I felt reading this today:

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts [an art student at Yale] will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body . . . "I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts said. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone."

There's a detailed description of the exhibit in the article, but there's no way I'm going to post it here.  All I can say is that our country is hurtling down a dark, ugly road if we're producing people like this woman.  How did the creation and destruction of human life become a clever way of "sparking conversation"?  We had better wake up.

Yale now insists that the whole project is a fake, but Shvarts is sticking to her story, saying her purpose was to point out that the "central ambiguity [of not knowing whether or not she was actually pregnant] defies a clear definition of the act [of miscarriage].  The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming--an authorial act."  Second, she meant to "assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form, It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are 'meant' to do from their physical capability."  It was her goal to use her body outside the "narrative of reproduction" in order to shock people into acknowledging that it is the "prerogative of every individual" to explore other uses for his or her body.  (This, of course, would be absolutely true in a postmodern, Darwinist, Creatorless world.)

Connected with the obvious atrociousness of Shvarts sick use of human life is her view of art:

"I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity," Shvarts said. "I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

Art is a medium for politics and ideologies?  Whatever happened to goodness, truth, and beauty?  To uplifting the viewer?  Where did this new grotesque and ugly standard of art come from?  Why is this the only standard she knows of?  It's not hard to figure out that just like in the days of Judges, a country that loses sight of the living, holy, good God will soon be stripped of all beauty, and everything--good or evil--rather than being things to delight in or abhor, will be reduced to mere "statements."

Because of God, there is real beauty and it's tragic that so many people in our culture have never tasted it.  It's easy to forget when we're feasting on the glory of God that most people have no idea a banquet like this even exists.  Let this remind us of our responsibility to tell them.

(HT:  Steve Wagner)

We all expect the Spanish Inquisition to show up sooner or later in our discussions with atheists.  Does the presence of the Inquisition in Christian history discredit all of Christianity?  Does it render our past completely barbaric?

Here's a question that can help clarify the issues involved with the Inquisition objection:  Do you honor Thomas Edison for inventing the light bulb, or do you merely scoff at him for not inventing a computer?  Edison explored the same world we explore, and yet he only invented a light bulb.  Was he a colossal failure?  Absolutely not.  Data (in this case, the data of the physical world) takes time to work through, sort out, and apply.  Edison had a less than perfect understanding of the world, but he furthered the process of our knowledge and application of the facts of nature by one more step, moving us all towards a more precise understanding of the one reality of nature that has existed since the beginning.  Eventually scientific data would lead to computers, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the beauty and wonder of the invention of the light bulb in its own time.  And even though at the time of the light bulb's creation there were many other false ideas about how to apply the laws of nature (the use of leeches, for example), the false applications did not discredit science for all time.

Now move this same idea away from science and into the realm of morality and Christianity.  Like the unchanging laws of nature, we have the unchanging words of God in the Bible.  And as in the world of science, in the world of Christianity we've had to work out our knowledge and application of those unchanging words into our societies.  This takes time because human societies started off so far from the ideal--with many false ideas and without knowledge of some true ideas of application that hadn't yet occurred to them.  (For example, the idea that a pluralistic society could peacefully exist and not tear itself apart looks obvious to us now, but before the cultural situation made the discovery of this radically new idea possible, it was assumed that one must enforce unanimity for the good of the citizens, in order to survive.)

It's no surprise, then, that 500 years ago societies had only reached the moral equivalent of the light bulb and not the computer; but the problem was in the application, not in the data.  That is, as inevitably as an application of the facts of the physical world led to computers, so the ideas of the Bible have led to the free societies we now see in the West.  But one ought not be surprised by the amount of time it took the societies of the West to work through ideas based on biblical data any more than one is surprised by the thousands of years it took us to work through scientific ideas based on the observable data of nature.  Nor does it make any more sense to fault the unchanging Bible itself for those societies' slow pace than it does to fault the always-present laws of nature for our formerly rudimentary ideas about science.  The Bible and nature remained the same even if the implications had not yet been fully explored and rightly applied.  And, as with the light bulb, we ought to honor the steps that were made in creating better societies rather than merely degrade the people of the past for not creating the inventions and institutions we have today.

But why, we may then ask, when first creating the nation of Israel, did God not immediately demand that they live as we do today?  The answer might be similar to the reason why He didn't supply them with computers.  A computer would have been completely beyond their grasp.  In the same way, Israel had a difficult enough time adjusting their society to what God did give them explicitly at that time.  Some things, to be fully understood, accepted, and lived out, have to be reached on our own as we struggle over time, learning little by little.  Applications of ideas are discovered and then take time to permeate and transform a society.  This, in turn, lays the groundwork for discovering more applications.

What God did do is speak to Israel where they were.  He addressed the world as they knew it, and He set a foundation of ideas in place through the Old and New Testaments that would infect societies in such a way that the spread of those ideas would eventually lead us to where we are today.  He told us that we're all--men and women--created in His image (Gen 1:27) and equal in value before Him (Gal 3:28, Philemon).  We're not to kidnap people and sell them into slavery (Ex 21:16), we're not to punish people in a way that humiliates them (Deut 25:3), we're not to make converts by the sword (John 3:5-8, 18:36), the State is under God and the law (Deut 17:14-20), no one--rich or poor (Lev 19:15), native or foreigner (Num 15:15-16)--is to be favored when justice is dispensed, and the foundation goes on and on.

Unfortunately, just as the lack of good scientific instruments slowed the discovery and application of the laws of nature, our moral weaknesses--stubbornness, ignorance, biases, selfishness, and inherited false beliefs--have made the application of the Bible to our societies a difficult, slow process.  This is why the Inquisition, while condemnable, is not unexpected or surprising and so does not successfully argue against the truthfulness of Christianity.  And in fact, it gives further witness to the truthfulness of the Bible's central message of our desperate need for Jesus and the forgiveness He provides.

You probably heard about the Berkeley City Council passing a motion declaring the Marine recruiters in their city "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" and about Code Pink's aggressive, ongoing protest against those recruiters, which includes carrying a banner with the words "No military predators in our town," calling the recruiters traitors, and physically blocking anyone trying to enter the recruitment center (as the police stand by, remaining "neutral").

But yesterday, I was told about a story you might not have heard.  Eamon Kelley, a Marine who was present at the continuing protest last week, witnessed an incident he described in an email to a friend:

While we were at the protest in Berkeley from 12 to 4 p.m., a white Volvo drove by and a man spat upon Code Pink.  They chased him down the street and got into a verbal altercation.  The police were NOWHERE in sight.  That’s not the best part, ready for this?  Medea Benjamin [co-founder of Code Pink] yelled, and I quote, “Marines!” She actually yelled for our help because this man had stepped out of his car.  I even asked her if she was yelling Police and she told me, “I said Marines” then put her arm around my friend Allen (the Marine Vet).  Ironic?

As I was listening to my roommate tell me about this, I admit I was hoping for some juicy justice in which the Marines said sadly, "I'm sorry, we've decided you were right.  You don't need us, and we should go away.  Good luck with your problems, there."  Nobody can deny that's exactly what they deserved.  But my snickers of anticipation were silenced when I heard there was no witty comeback from the Marines.  Apparently, they helped her.

The whole story ended up making me weep.  I wept at the strength, and mercy, and goodness of men who would risk their own safety to help a person who hated them, mocked them, picketed them, and demanded angrily that they leave town.  How, how were they able to do this in the face of such bitter and stark unfairness? 

I wept because I then saw the face of Jesus in these men--a beautiful, powerful, deeply humbling mercy towards me, His enemy.  In a new and biting way, I saw what I deserved, and the mercy of His self-sacrifice was suddenly beyond imagining.

I wept because I didn't see Him in me.  Lately, in dealing with those who mock the truth, I've been acting more like the spitting passerby who hated the protesters and wanted to punish them than the Marines who steadfastly persevered in serving them.  Oh, Lord, help me!  I don't know how to love people like that.  I can't love people like that. 

I wept for the people of this world who continue to scream at Jesus to leave them alone, stubbornly suffering the daily consequences of a life lived without Him.  There will be an end to God's patience, and the full, righteous, deserved justice will come.

May God have mercy on us all.

(Warning:  Spoilers ahead, touching on the last couple seasons.  If you don't watch Lost, turn off your computer now and go rent Season One!)

I've mentioned before that I've always been interested in stories that involve time travel of some sort, so I've enjoyed the direction Lost began to take last season.  But there's something different about this series.  Normally, the type of time travel described in a story will fall into one of two categories:  1) The people who go back in time change things, thereby creating a new future or even a new parallel universe (e.g., Back to the Future), or 2) The people go back in time, but the actions they take there don't change anything in the future because it was always the case that their actions in the past led up to the future they've always known.  That is, time is set--all of history already happened, and they already acted as a part of it (e.g., the ending of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure). 

The time travel in Lost, on the other hand, describes a third kind of time--one governed by Providence or fate.  Certain characters go back in time and can change things (history is still fluid, as it is in Type 1), but no matter what they do, they can't ultimately thwart the purpose of God or fate (just who is in charge remains to be seen).  So, Desmond can keep changing the future by repeatedly saving one of the characters from death, but eventually, the death of that character will be accomplished by the one who is governing the flow of history, moving it in a precise direction for a purpose.

It would seem, at first glance, that J.J. Abrams (the creator of Lost) believes in God or some sort of designer.  But, as with his other work (e.g., Alias), he creates a scenario that I suspect reflects a kind of battle going on in his own head:  Some characters see intelligent design and/or evidence of the supernatural in what's happening, and some see only naturalistic explanations.  In Lost, that inner-Abrams battle is characterized as "faith" vs. "science," Locke vs. Jack, purpose vs. random circumstances.  What's interesting is that you're never quite sure which side will win, or even which side should win.

It's as if Abrams wants the supernatural to be true, but he can never quite get there because he loves science and can't see a way to bring the two into harmony--and even though he feels a pull towards the supernatural, he's a little suspicious of the people who embrace it.  They seem somewhat...unstable.  So he keeps the two perspectives (supernatural and natural) existing side by side, almost as two separate stories, with each pretending the other doesn't exist--never touching, except to occasionally butt heads.

Sounds like Abrams's ideas are a good reflection of what our culture has done with religion and rationality (which they wrongly equate with naturalism), and it's a sad, compartmentalized way to live.  The two can be brought together; we can live as whole, integrated people who embrace God and rationality because they embrace each other in an integrated, whole reality.  "Live together, die alone," right?  Someone send this man a copy of Total Truth.

There has been some talk about Frank Schaeffer's new book about his father, Crazy for God.  Os Guinness's review is now posted on the Books and Culture website:

The problem is not so much that Frank exposes and trumpets his parents' flaws and frailties, or that he skewers them with his characteristic mockery. It is more than that. For all his softening, the portrait he paints amounts to a death-dealing charge of hypocrisy and insincerity at the very heart of their life and work. In Frank's own words, his parents were "crazy for God." Their call to the ministry "actually drove them crazy," so that "religion was actually the source of their tragedy." His dad was under "the crushing belief that God had 'called' him to save the world." Because of this, his parents were "happiest when farthest away from their missionary work." Back at their calling, they were "professional proselytizers," their teaching was "indoctrination," and it was unclear whether people came to faith or were "brainwashed" and "under the spell" of his parents. Frank's own arguments in their support, he now says, were a kind of "circus trick". . . .

 

For six years I was as close to Frank as anyone outside his own family, and probably closer than many in his family. I was his best man at his wedding. Life has taken us in different directions over the past thirty years, but I counted him my dear friend and went through many of the escapades he recounts and many more that would not bear rehearsing in print. It pains to me say, then, that his portrait is cruel, distorted, and self-serving, but I cannot let it pass unchallenged without a strong insistence on a different way of seeing the story. There is all the difference in the world between flaws and hypocrisy. Francis and Edith Schaeffer were lions for truth. No one could be further from con artists, even unwitting con artists, than the Francis and Edith Schaeffer I knew, lived with, and loved.

Guinness gives some interesting thoughts in his review on what he thinks happened in the Schaeffer family to bring them to this point, with lessons for anyone trying to simultaneously guide a ministry and raise a family.

(HT:  Between Two Worlds)

It's funny to me that while William Wilberforce needed to argue in his book, A Practical View of Christianity, that the religious affections--love, gratitude, joy, hope, trust, etc.--are a necessary a part of our relationship with and service to God, we have the very opposite problem only a couple of centuries later.  Today, knowledge about God, not emotion, is looked on with suspicion.  Many postmodern Christians prefer a fuzzy image of a God who is beyond our understandable categories, and they resist definitions that might "limit" Him.

But Wilberforce's words, though they were written to argue for emotion (i.e., the experience that postmoderns seek), also reveal the absolute necessity of knowledge as the foundation of true experience:

To ascertain [the genuineness and strength of the religious affections in a person] we must examine whether they appear to be grounded in knowledge, to have their root in strong and just conceptions of the great and manifold excellences of their object, or to be ignorant, unmeaning, or vague. . . .

Religious affections are only sustainable if they are attached to a real God who is known to be worthy of those affections; they simply can't carry themselves for very long.  But when knowledge is in its proper place, and the perfect and beautiful, solid and known truths about Him are meditated upon, desire for God inevitably follows; and that desire, in turn, fuels more intellectual pursuit of the truths of God.

Wilberforce charges that we all know this interplay between knowledge and affections exists, and it's the way any person would encourage another to continue on in a difficult task of any kind (not just religious): 

Weigh well (he would say) the value of the object for which you are about to contend, and contemplate and study its various excellences, till your whole soul be on fire for its acquisition. . . . Accustom yourself to look first to the dreadful consequences of failure; then fix your eye on the glorious prize which is before you; and when your strength begins to fail, and your spirits are well nigh exhausted, let the animating view rekindle your resolution, and call forth in renewed vigor the fainting energies of your soul.

Why, Wilberforce argues, should this be different only in the case of religion?  Knowledge is the root of love, passion, service, and perseverance.  With knowledge, you get all of these things.  Without knowledge, you'll have none of them.

A friend alerted me to a description of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right after the author, E. J. Dionne Jr., was featured on an hour of the Hugh Hewitt Show.  From the publisher, Princeton University Press: 

The religious and political winds are changing. Tens of millions of religious Americans are reclaiming faith from those who would abuse it for narrow, partisan, and ideological purposes. And more and more secular Americans are discovering common ground with believers on the great issues of social justice, peace, and the environment. In Souled Out, award-winning journalist and commentator E. J. Dionne explains why the era of the Religious Right--and the crude exploitation of faith for political advantage--is over.

Now, this is amazing.  If you vote on the right because you believe in those positions--and, in fact, believe they better reflect Christian values and goals--you are "selling out," and "abusing faith," and (from the next paragraph) you are a "prop for the powers that be" who is being "crudely exploited for political advantage."  But all this would be over if you would only learn to vote on the left!  If you favor positions on the left for exactly the same reasons, then you're just doing the right thing.  I think I know why people like Dionne are unable to see the unbelievable hypocrisy of this, and I'll explain in a moment.  But first, another excerpt:

Based on years of research and writing, Souled Out shows that the end of the Religious Right doesn't signal the decline of evangelical Christianity but rather its disentanglement from a political machine that sold it out to a narrow electoral agenda of such causes as opposition to gay marriage and abortion.  With insightful portraits of leading contemporary religious figures from Rick Warren and Richard Cizik to John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Dionne shows that our great religions have always preached a broad message of hope for more just human arrangements and refused to be mere props for the powers that be.

The idea that all politically conservative Christians care about is abortion and same-sex marriage is an embarrassingly misguided one, and yet very widespread (I believe this goes back to the left's unwillingness to understand people on the right or take them at their word).  Dionne is honestly unaware that people could possibly think that the issues of justice (including economic) and social good are all better addressed by conservative positions than liberal ones.  Have they ever even heard of the Acton Institute?  No, for Dionne and many of the religious left, the only possibility is that conservative leaders have deviously trapped gullible religious people in a "narrow electoral agenda."

One has to make a deep, unexamined assumption to end up with this inexcusable blindness.  The assumption is:  liberal policies are obviously moral and conservative policies are obviously immoral.  Therefore, they conclude, if any religious person thought about anything other than abortion and same-sex marriage, then naturally, he would be on the left instead of the right.  Therefore, widening his scope of issues would keep him from voting for conservative candidates and thereby becoming a "prop" of the right.  (How it could be that taking on and promoting uniquely leftist policies would not simply cause these newly leftist Christians to become "props" of leaders on the left is never actually explained.)

It's amazing--and a little scary--how rarely people on the religious left examine themselves and their rhetoric and how little they understand conservatives.  This doesn't bode well for robust and productive debate anytime in the near future.

Tim Challies is here today to discuss his book, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment.  Welcome, Tim! 

AMY:  Which aspect of contemporary Western culture do you think most hinders us (Christians shaped by this culture) from developing the skill of discerning the truth about God and His will?  Which aspect of Western Christian culture?  What practical steps can we take in our own lives to help us resist these particular cultural influences?

TIM:  In the book's second chapter I deal with some of the negative influences that tend to keep Christians from emphasizing spiritual discernment. I mention internal, spiritual and cultural influences. There are four cultural influences that I write about there: a secular worldview, a low view of Scripture, a low view of theology and a low view of God.

Whenever I pause to think about these four influences I reach a different conclusion about which of them is most detrimental or most destructive. But maybe we could take one step further back and look to a different aspect of our culture and that is an unrealistic assessment of mankind. After all, if we get our own human nature wrong, we also get God wrong and Scripture wrong and everything else wrong. Our culture tells us that we are innately good at heart. It tells us that we are not the work of a loving Creator, but the result of an evolutionary process that "chanced" us into existence. We have no planned beginning and have no place to look forward to in the end. Even morality becomes something that has developed intrinsically rather than something that is extrinsic to us--something handed to us from God. Culture exults humanity and human reason to the place of divinity, determining that in our own minds we can prove that God does not exist. We elevate reason above the one who created it. In this cultural atmosphere it is increasingly difficult for Christians to have a realistic, biblical assessment of their own nature and hence their own depravity.

Discernment is a skill that is necessary because of our sinfulness. In heaven we will have no need for discernment as good and evil will no longer be in conflict. We will have a prefect appreciation of the vast difference between God and man and will truly understand who we are. But today we continue to elevate ourselves and to lower God. The more highly we think of ourselves and the more we blur the lines between humanity and deity, the more difficult discernment will be.

When we consider which aspect of Western Christian culture most hinders us, sadly, we do not need to consider anything too vastly different. Western Christian culture today bears such a resemblance to the secular culture that in many cases they are nearly indistinguishable. Where mainstream civilization struggles, so too will Western Christian culture. So I suppose the Christian culture's persistent refusal to truly separate itself from the world is what most hinders us from developing discernment.

To resist these influences I think we need primarily to think biblically; we need to think Christianly. We need to develop the mind of Christ so that we understand ourselves the way we truly are and the world the way it truly is. We need to be mature, discerning, growing Christians who are dedicated to knowing God and to living in the way that He commands us in His Word. As we mature in the faith, we will grow in our discernment and we will rejoice ever more in good and be grieved ever more by what is evil. The only way to maturity is to dedicate ourselves to those ordinary means of grace God gives us--prayer, the reading of Scripture, fellowship with other Christians, and the like. These are the means God gives to teach us both to think and to be more like Him.

But what I appreciate most is that he puts everything into the proper perspective by grounding the whole enterprise of discernment first and foremost in knowing God:

We can only know God's will when we first know God's truth, for what God desires and requires of us must always be consistent with his character.  Wise decisions are those that are made on the firm basis of what is true about God and, thus, what is true about the world, about life, and about ourselves.  Those who make decisions that honor God are those who have invested effort in studying what God says to be true.  (p. 54)

And he communicates all of this in a clear, accessible, engaging way.  This is why I'm excited about the book--its wisdom, accessibility, and practical help (he doesn't just leave you with a vague challenge to become discerning but gives specific exercises you can use to develop your skill) make this book a great tool for small groups in any church.  And we need this.  We need this to better love, honor, and follow our great and glorious God.

I posed a question to Tim about discernment and will post his response tomorrow, then he'll be ready to discuss the subject with you; be sure to stop by with your comments.  We'll see you then!

Tim Challies will join us on The A-Team Blog this Wednesday as part of a blog tour promoting his book, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment.  He'll be here to interact with all of you in the comments section, so be sure to stop by with your questions, challenges, and congratulations.

I've read most of the book now and highly recommend it.  In his book, Challies defines discernment as "the skill of understanding and applying God's Word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong" in the two areas of "the truth of God and the will of God."

Here's a taste (I'll post another teaser quote tomorrow):

Spiritual discernment has never been an easy calling.  Throughout the Bible we see men and women of discernment being persecuted, mocked, and reviled both by those within the church and those outside of it.  Just as the judges, prophets, and apostles suffered for their discerning faith, so those who seek to emphasize discernment in our time can expect to suffer.  They can expect to face opposition and disagreement from those who claim Christ and those who do not.  They will face opposition from their own sinful hearts and from spiritual forces.  And still, like the apostle Paul, they must persevere, straining forward to what lies ahead and pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:13-14).  They must believe that to serve and honor God--to think Christianly, to treasure the Bible, to seek to know God as he is, and to humble themselves before his holiness--is a prize far greater than anything they may suffer.  (p. 51)

To hear more about the book, follow the tour:

Jan 7:    Evangelical Outpost
Jan 8:    Tall Skinny Kiwi
Jan 9:    A-Team Blog
Jan 10:  Adrian Warnock
Jan 11:  Gender Blog 

Jan 14:  Jollyblogger
Jan 15:  Between Two Worlds
Jan 16:  Team Pyro
Jan 17:  Internet Monk
Jan 18:  Church Matters