I don’t know when it finally dawned on me that people were reading my work on the internet. I started Internet Monk in November of 2000, and at the time, I never really considered if I would have much of an audience. It was a way to write, and I needed to write. It was and is a necessary part of my being Self-publishing gave my ego the boost I needed to sit down and actually do the work of writing. After years of writing columns and articles that no one read, there was tremendous satisfaction in being author, editor and publisher. I still appreciate the amazing gift I received by the invention of this technology.

Of course, almost five years have passed. Internet Monk and Boar’s Head Tavern have a loyal- and increasing- audience. I have thousands of letters from readers, and, most recently, I’ve been told that I am leading Israel astray and might want to watch my back. “Those of us who know the truth” are watching. I certainly hope so. If you’re out there, keep reading.

I really haven’t thought much about the role of the Christian blogosphere until my recent run-in with those who considered it very important that I know “people are reading what you write.” Wow. Now I’ve had some time to think…and I’ve decided I’m a pirate.
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The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them,

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius,

all to no end save beauty
the eternal -

-William Carlos Williams, “The Crowd At The Baseball Game”

Monday morning, as we finished preparing for our district tournament game and prepared to load our equipment on the bus, I had several of the boys take the pitching machine out of the batting cage, and take it upstairs to winter storage. Every spring, bringing the pitching machine out of storage and into the cage marks the beginning of baseball season. As they took it up the stairs, they were quiet, pallbearers taking this symbol of our spring and our baseball season into the tomb for months of slumber, awaiting the resurrection on another day.
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Let’s catch up. Several weeks ago, I shared with my readers that I was tossing the label of Calvinist. I said I would always describe myself as a “Reformation Christian” because I share- broadly- the commitments of the mainstream reformers in regard to issues of faith and church. While still a credobaptist, I do believe in the “covenant family” concept that the children of believers are part of the visible church. I affirm the Solas, but have an ecelctic and somewhat troubled relationship with TULIP as used in many quarters of the reformed world. I attempted to be a “Bad Calvinist” for a while, but that didn’t work, as I found myself tied to a stake and doused with gas for saying I wasn’t like many of my “truly reformed” conversation partners.

Instead of some form of Calvinism, I identified myself as a Christian Humanist and introduced the concept in a previous essay.

Therefore, I now call myself a Christian humanist, a tradition that encompasses a vast and diverse tapestry of Christian history, but which also calls into question much of the Christianity of our time. We are increasingly presented with the concept of a God-centered faith that has removed the incarnation from it’s central place, putting there, instead, a kind of ambiguous, tangetial, uncomfortable awareness of human existence, constantly haunted by the tension between the “hallowing” of humanity in the incarnation, and the “polluting” of humanity in the reformed doctrine of total depravity.

It will now become my project, in future essays, to unfold Christian humanism as I understand it, and relate it to the faith of the New Testament and of the Creeds. I invite my readers to join me, to search along with me, to raise issues and questions, but to pray for me as I develop a more honest approach to the one thing we all share and possess with certainty: our humanity, and all the treasures centained therein. Pray that I will be able to help us, as persons made in God’s image, to love God, neighbor and self together in the Trinitarian, incarnational love of Jesus Christ.

In this second of several short essays on Christian Humanism, I will begin to explore what I mean by this concept. This post will explore the question of knowledge as it is answered in Christian Humanism.
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UPDATE: Tim Challies has just posted an amazing bit on the inner-workings of church marketing. If there are doubters out there about how we are perceived by the Publishing interests, this will sober you up. Required reading.

Some of my long time readers may remember that in a long-forgotten fit of exuberance, I swore off visiting Christian bookstores. I’ll have to confess that I’ve mostly kept that vow, but I’ve strayed enough to keep the economy stimulated. I don’t want those Lifeway employees to be laid off on account of me.

Actually, I live 2 hours from the nearest “real” Christian bookstore, (not counting local operations that I avoid completely) so it doesn’t take a great effort on my part to abstain. I spend my book money at Amazon. My employer lets me spend a little money at Lifeway, so I stopped in today, while I was in Lexington to see my daughter, and took a quick look around. I came out with some music. No books or other trinkets. I thought I would pen a few impressions for those of you who don’t get out much.
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In all of my recent “conversations” with my reformed friends and detractors, I’ve had one question that I’ve really wanted to ask. It occured to me as we were talking about my acceptance of my Roman Catholic friends as fellow Christians, but it really goes to a certain kind of perspective on your own journey.

I could ask it different ways, but let’s do this:

Assume for a moment you were once a professed Roman Catholic. How many of you believe you would have, by your own study of the Bible, come to believe what you currently believe, and/or would have come to the convictions you now hold? Or do you believe you would have likely remained in the Catholic Church?

I am particularly curious if my Calvinist friends believe that, if they had been born Catholic, they would today, be Calvinists and would have left Catholicism?

Not trying to start a fuss. Just curious.

One of my unmet goals on the internet has been to start a blog devoted to a critical discussion of the theology of John Piper. I love Piper and his work has a huge place in my journey, but I am ever more convinced that his “Christian Hedonism” would greatly benefit from rigorous assessment. There are great strengths, and some fairly serious problems, especially in the area of Christian experience.

So I was surprised to find Christian Hedonism critically assessed by Steve Brown of Key Life Network. Steve Brown has to be one of my favorite “reformed” teachers, if for no other reason than he has a great sense of humor and an unending appetite for the gospel of grace. His current on-line article at Key Life’s website won’t be there long, so I want to excerpt his assessment of the possibilities for the spiral of despair in John Piper’s theology of Christian Hedonism. I’ll excerpt from the mention of Piper to the end.
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In my study of the New Testament, I’ve collected a few questions that have stayed with me. One of them fascinates me endlessly, and I have never read an answer that seemed sufficient. Perhaps the readers of Internet Monk would like to take a swing at this pitch, or direct me to a source that addresses the question.

Here you go: Why does the Apostle Paul not refer to the stories, miracles and teaching from the ministry of Jesus in his letters to churches?

Edumacate me. This one has me stumped.

I’m serving as interim baseball coach for OBI’s team this week, and will be tied up for at least another week. Blogging will be rare, and possibly nill. Thanks for the patience. I will post some iMonk 101 reruns if one strikes me as appropriate.

Hat tip to the Reformissionary for the best example of “Wretched Urgency” I’ve read in a while. SEBTS President Daniel Akin- a generally thoughtful scholar- urges Southern Baptists to become “rabid dogs” for evangelism. Metaphor alert, Dr. Akin. Being perceived as “rabid dogs” is a good bit of the problem. Was Jesus a “rabid dog?” Reread “Wretched Urgency” if you need to know what I think of this sort of crusade-stryle rhetoric. Works great with the SBC faithful, and scares everyone else to death.

It’s not often that I use IM as a place to point my readers to other blogs, but I will make a much-deserved exception for Jordan Cooper’s deft and on-target analysis called “The Threat That Is The Emerging Church.” You must read the post and consider his major points because he is starting to make some connections that I believe are immensely helpful. Jordan’s post stimulated a bunch of thoughts for me as well.
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God is like a Rorschach test. You know, the ink blot test, where you look at an image that really presents nothing coherent, and you describe what you see. Kind of like looking at clouds and talking about what you see.
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Just before I left for work this morning, I made a several discoveries:

First, I discovered that “c.t.” in the current essay’s comment thread is a person who has been feeding off my web-sites for several weeks now.

Second, I discovered that this same person was the source of the original “Reformed/Calvinistic Tent” quote that I used as the launching point for my post. (I had noticed earlier that the quote was removed from the site where I found it, which doesn’t surprise me at all.)

While this doesn’t change a single word of the views I present in the essay, it did possibly violate a personal standard I have of not dialoging with or responding to certain kinds of people who are, either by their own choice or through no fault of their own, unable to participate in civilized conversation without resorting to death threats and racism. So I took it down, but will now post an edited version of it in the extended comments. The quote is gone, and the essay doesn’t feel right without it, but we can all just live with it. My apologies for the whole matter. Five years doing this and I’ve finally managed to have my own troll. I’m so special.
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For the last three months, I’ve been leading a study of the story of the prodigal son in a men’s Bible study here at OBI. We met twice a week, and I simply took the study whatever direction was interesting to me. It’s been a lot of fun, and I have a lot of material that I would like to discuss here or write elsewhere.

The story of the prodigal son is often judged as the most effective of Jesus’ parables. Certainly it is the most emotionally powerful, as it touches close to circumstances that are timeless. One of my personal treasures in a copy of Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” which was the subject of Henri Nouwen’s excellent book on the parable and the painting.

I’ve always been fascinated by the original setting of this story. What was the audience and setting that first heard Jesus tell this story? In the movie “Jesus of Nazareth,” Jesus tells the story to the “sinners and tax collectors” at Matthew’s dinner party (Mark 2:15-17), while the disciples- especially Peter- play the role of the older brother standing outside the party, looking in the door. At the conclusion of the story, Peter comes into Matthew’s house, apologizes to Jesus and accepts Matthew as a brother.

Despite the Hollywood spin on that particularly setting, it is entirely believable to me that the story of the prodigal son was told with the intention to create a particular kind of community, and not just to invite individuals to respond to God’s offer of forgiveness.
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