Posting from my own comment

Not that anyone really reads (or writes on) this blog anymore, so basically I'm just doing this for myself. But I was reading a comment I had written awhile back in response to a guest who had commented on my post regarding "Emergent Values" (no link, just scroll down), and I was impressed with myself (something that happens often, requiring continual repentance). Perhaps I plagiarized it, I don't know. Anyway here it is:

We find that throughout the history of the Church there have been periods when theological convictions have been tied more closely to cultural values as opposed to Biblical virtues. This is certainly the result of theology shaping itself to a particular zeitgeist. However, in the midst of that, there have always been those who have sought to protect true truth. American Christian culture and institutionalized church betray a weakening of conviction and a clinging to religiosity. If the ECM (emergent church movement) is to be seen as a backlash to that (which it is) I think it is one that has over shot its mark and made the same error on the opposite extreme. Both modernist and post-modernist Christian culture use the Bible to substantiate values that are not particularly Christian. Modernists used the Bible to create intolerance for all manner of "sins", speaking far beyond the Scriptures in many cases and advocating for the legislation of aesthetic morality(right wing politics). On the other side, post-modernists use the Bible to create tolerance for all manner of sin, speaking far beyond the Scriptures in many cases and advocating for the legislation of aesthetic morality(left wing politics). The error in both instances is the Christian faith being turned into mere religious expression.

I think if one commits to a deep understanding of the journey of the church through history, it is possible for any Christian to discern true Gospel truth. Read the early Church fathers, or the Reformers, or the Puritans, and one finds their observations and exposition of Scripture wholly relevant to life and Godliness regardless of cultural context. In addition, we must humble ourselves and believe God truly wants us to know his plan from the alpha to the omega of all time. We must believe that he has given it to us in his Word. We must believe that we are "transformed by the renewing of our mind", and that this comes first by knowing the Gospel as given in the Scripture; a Gospel that was initiated outside of our reality and is the relevant and transforming message for all generations. A robust theology in regards to the attributes of God, the nature of man, the incarnation of Christ, God's sovereign purposes in salvation and the mission and nature of the Church, are the strongest guard against the err of "time borne framework."

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Don't Miss This! RC and Ben Stein discuss Expelled

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Francis is my homeboy

I have had the pleasure of knowing Francis Chan casually over the last couple of years and have benefited immensely from his teaching and reformissional approach to church planting and building. He has a new book out called Crazy Love which Tim Challies reviewed. I've been anticipating it since I heard he was writing one and hope to read it as soon as I can get my hands on it. You should read it too. I expect it to share the trajectory of Don't Waste Your Life, with the added bonus of direct confrontation with the Southern California temporal dreamscape of stuccoed McMansion's and perpetual vacation that lulls hundreds of thousands of Christians into false security.

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philosophy matters

This is part of Francis Schaeffer's "How Then Shall We Live" video series entitled "The Idol of Peace and Affluence" and is undoubtedly prophetic. Considering the varying shades of what he calls "The New Left" slated to apprehend the Presidency, his words are even fuller with relevance today. Enjoy.

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girls who do

1 in 4 American teenage girls have an STD.

This is the legacy of the sixties progressive politics and libertine moral philosophy. It's the legacy of a President who obfuscated the meaning of th word "is" and deconstructed the word sex. It's the legacy of an American evangelical church that has marginalized true doctrine for self-help entertainment.

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is this a joke?

Just read this and bask in how asinine it is. If turning the shrill up to eleven against prosperity gospel peddlers, gospel-lite church growers, and money grubbing, cloaked charlatans is upsetting to the unchurched masses...? Do the editors at Christianity in Disarray even know what the Gospel is?

*Centuri0n blogged a response to this article a coupla' weeks ago.

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values of the emerging conversation

This is more of an abstract... just some linked random thoughts...

As I have been discovering this week (and here), much of the ethos of the emerging conversation relates to being a kinder, gentler person, and focusing on aspects of the Gospel that those in the more theologically convicted camp would call the "Social Gospel". Without depicting why those in the "conversation" have adopted this view, as it has been written about ad nauseum, I have this to say: I see little difference in the unbiblical asceticism of modernity and that of post-modernity.

We KNOW about the legalism of modern denominational and evangelical churches thank you very much. Post moderns and "emergents" have identified themselves as being accepting/tolerant/participatory of beer drinking, dressing down, tattoos, post-modern art and music, and left-wing activism. Fine, I don't hold dogma against any of those (well except the last). Many of the moral values of modernity are cultural not Biblical, but get trumpeted as absolutes. I understand the "emergent" complaint about this- but there is a fly in the ointment. I think that emergents have substituted only the content, and left the faulty presuppositions intact.

See, a lot of "emergent values" could be called post modern asceticism. Think about it. The cultural virtue of the 1950s is largely gone, and frequently mocked. Those cultural virtues have been transformed and altered over the last 50 years into the cultural values of political correctness as dictated by liberal political ideology. Tolerance, kindness, acceptance, dialog, etc, etc, these are the morals of the progressive culture, and not one's necessarily grounded in scripture, primarily being pluralistic, with an emphasis on marginalizing anything dogmatic. Emergents are so deeply attached to the progressiveness of post modern culture, they have shaped their theology around its values. It's no worse, but certainly no better, than it's predecessor.

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C.S. Lewis, Mythology and Reality

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
But draws some wisdom from the only wise,
And still recalls Him.
-JRR Tolkien, Mythopoeia

The great 20^th century Oxford Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Christian apologist, lay theologian and author, C.S. Lewis, was also (IMHO) the greatest modern mind to study and elucidate the unique qualities of the particular type of story commonly called myth. Not to be lumped in with legend, a type of story rooted in a true event that as ages pass by is embellished with fantastic details and impossibilities. Or fairy tales and folk tales that seek to impart moral lessons of virtue and vice. Myth is an imaginative story born from the poetic mind to impress on the senses the truth about reality. Myth results from man’s attempt to understand the phenomena of nature and the world he lives, in light of the eternity written on his heart. Whilst Mythology writer Edith Hamilton, and modern mythology scholar Joseph Campbell would claim that myth merely was an early form of science melded with art, C.S. Lewis would say it is much more than that; myth is the exercise of human imagination reaching for the Creator who transcends, yet is immanent in his creation.

Prof. Lewis describes six characteristics of literature that make a myth:

1. It is extra-literary, or independent of the words used. Mythology is not a literary style; it is not a specific form of poem, book, or essay. It is an image that carries with it a meaning that touches human experience and longing.
2. The pleasure of myth does not depend on literary devices such like suspense or surprise. The mere existence of the stories image is what one finds enjoyment in. Creative plot is not an important function. In some myths, it is clear from the beginning what is going to occur; in fact in many cases, the exact end of a character is revealed before the story is even underway.
3. Our sympathy with the character is minimal. We do not identify specifically with the character. They are like shadows moving along a wall. We are not sad or joyful for the individual character, but their tragedy or triumph is something we understand and react to.
4. Myth is always fantastic and deals with impossibilities and the preternatural. Myths reside in a world where the uncommon occurs. The natural order of the world and the universe are constantly subverted and changed by the powerful influences of its supernatural inhabitants.
5. Though the experience may be sad or joyful, it always is grave and never comic. There is never humor for the sake of being funny. The experience of myth leaves the feeling that we have encountered something solemn.
6. The experience is not only grave, but awe inspiring. We feel as if something of great importance has been communicated to us. We recognize that whatever it was, it was much greater than ourselves. We somehow know that the facts we believe to be true, though not wrong, are somehow incomplete to the way things actually are.

Secular mythologists would claim that mythology is the result of ancient man observing the facts and building up the story upon them. As time progressed, simple and crude myths became more elegant and complex, constantly reappearing in higher, more organized forms. Jesus Christ is immortalized in legend as a god that dies and comes back to life, because the concept was copied from less ordered myths about corn gods or gods of the harvest, who die in the fall and are reborn again in the spring. The secularist sees the search for religious significance as growth upward from the simple answers of mythology. C.S. Lewis says that this is the modernist assumption that higher things are always copies of lower things. Much like Darwinian evolution, where more complex life forms have evolved from lower life forms, the secularist claims that Christianity, along with other great religions, is simply myth evolved into a higher form.

On the contrary Lewis would demonstrate that lower things are copies of higher things. Mankind exists as the main example of this. We are made in God’s image. We are a copy of an infinitely higher being. Though the communicable attributes of God are present in mankind, mankind is not God and never will be. Likewise the pagan myths are true in as much as they are copies of the complete truth. The pagan myths though not true in historical reality, are nonetheless the distorted reflection of a higher reality.

We discover then, that the heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. “By becoming a fact it does not cease to be a myth. God is more than a god, not less. Jesus is more than Balder not less,” Lewis says. Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection, rather then being the enemy of the mythical heroes of paganism is actually the historically true fulfillment of what those myths were about. The pagan myths give us a glimpse into what was really meant to satisfy our longing as humans. Pagan myths do not disprove Christianity, but reveal that pagan people received a glimpse of truth and reality prior to it becoming fact. One finds truth expressed in pagan myths that are the echoes of God himself.

The human imagination is the receptor for the shadows and echoes of what God left for us to desire. We readily recognize in human stories the qualities of beauty and truth that we long for. The patterns of mythology originate in God and carry part of His truth, even though it is often distorted. Mankind longs for the beauty embodied in myth that cannot be complete in this world. The fulfillment of that longing is what Lewis calls joy. “If I find in myself a desire in which no experience in the world can satisfy, then the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it; that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures where never meant to satisfy it, but only arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” So then, says Lewis, if we are made in Gods image, and cannot exist apart from him, then it would make sense that we have a craving for this very joy that is beyond all earthly satisfactions. The imagination therefore reflects this truth. In its longing for fulfillment it creates an image that reflects the reality we were created for.

C.S. Lewis also claimed that it is right that other religions possess truth. The similarities or parallels that other religions contain should not alarm Christians. In fact, according to Lewis, we should be alarmed if they didn’t. It is the similarities that demonstrate the divine origin that humanity shares. All the great religions possess the truth to some extent, but they do not have the complete truth. The pagan myth contains some truth; that is why as humans we find momentary satisfaction in the images they present. But the Christian myth is a factually true myth. It contains the complete truth and provides lasting and complete fulfillment, or joy. Lewis says that “the story of Christ is a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with a tremendous difference that it really happened”. Other religions are made up of men’s myths, generally revealed by God in the minds of poets. Christianity is God’s myth. God’s special revelation expressed through real things. Pagan myth seeks an answer, but God’s myth is the answer.

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