A speech about saving America and the church, in case you just don’t care enough actually watch the clip before you comment.

Anytime someone tells me the “Creation museum” is a museum I want to run this piece out. Ham’s organization owns this “museum.” It’s goal is to get the public in and discredit any science that doesn’t come to the conclusions of fundamentalists. You can get all four sessions of this “State of the Nation” speech in the Youtube sidebar. Don’t think that Creationism is a matter of agenda? Watch this talk and get back to me. Tell me that the kids being taken to this “museum” are learning “science.”

Ham believes that the reason young people leave the church is they aren’t taught AIG’s apologetics and views on science. That’s why young people leave the church: failure to teach creationism. (BTW, ask George Barna if his research shows young people want to be taught creationism to answer their questions.)

And what does the creationist dialog with contemporary science sound like? Like this:

All seven sessions can be found at the Youtube site. This is a lobbyist for a Conservative political group redefining science and declaring what the only acceptable attitude toward science can be. Listen to the discussion of “evidence.”

Now let’s be clear: I’m happy for creationists to take whatever approach they wish in their discussions, but I’m deeply concerned that this is being presented as the only true and Biblical “Christianity.” It’s not Christianity. It’s a kind of Christianity and it doesn’t speak for millions of us. I’m not precommitted to a view of science. My religious faith is the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed, not Ken Ham’s philosophy. Science disproves, advances, questions, disproves, advances and on and on. That’s a whole different business. If your science equals “the Bible is the only valid science and the only valid politics,” then say so and cut the “museum” act.

What you are listening to is the culture war. Politics. Not scientific inquiry of any kind, and I’m not sure what a person would have to be to actually miss that point.

(or Why Waste All That Time Considering Evidence When You Can Announce Your Presuppositions and Be Done With It)

I’ve been monitoring a discussion at a prominent Calvinistic blog regarding Richard Dawkin’s defense of evolution in his new book, The Greatest Show On Earth.

I do a unit on the New Atheists in my Advanced Bible class, so I get several hours of Dawkins vs John Lennox each fall. I’m always amazed at how naive Dawkins is regarding any kind of religion that isn’t the backwoods, book burning variety. He seems to think that those who aren’t creationists or fundamentalists aren’t cooperating sufficiently with his certainties of what religion is doing to the world. I could easily do six posts on goofy conclusions Dawkins draws about religion, i.e. there is a logical connection between religion and violence, but there is not a single case where he can see a logical connection between atheism and violence. Mmmmkay.

On Darwinianism, however, I find Dawkins to be a voice worth listening to. He does understand the significance of Darwin’s theories- something that Christians who reject evolution should still appreciate- and he represents well that shrinking minority of atheists who believe science necessarily leads to atheism. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: Vilesidious has appeared at IM before, writing a young protege on the subject of Christian schools.

The transcript of the following lecture was secured through means that cannot be revealed, but as C.S. Lewis said, are readily available to those who learn a few basic techniques. The general conclusion is that the following lecture is part of an advanced demonic curriculum specializing in leading Christians to abandon their faith.

Transcript of Class Discussion. Advanced Tactics for Apostasy Seminar. Professor Vilesidious presiding.

If you would please turn to page 853 in the teal binder. We’re looking at the outline and readings regarding “Advanced Techniques for Apostasy.”

***noise, pages turning, conversation***

It would be important at the outset to continue emphasizing the focus of this seminar: moving professed and generally assumed Christians to the point of abandoning the faith. Those of you selected for this seminar should be completely aware that much of what you learned in the basic curriculum is of questionable value at this level. A survey of case studies, such as Ehrman 32 for example, will reveal that failure in the basics of preventing a profession of loyalty to the enemy is of often the preparation for greater success in abandoning a very public and influential Christian influence. For that reason, apostasy is far preferable for our Father’s overall goals for the human race. Those of you who are able to assimilate this material and put it into practice will find your advancement in the lowerarchy to be substantially accelerated.

My own experience in advanced apostasy is available to you in the syllabus. I would not want to leave the impression that the considerable accomplishments you will observe there were simply the result of academic study. Far from it. I have made apostasy a passion and I cannot imagine any more satisfying contribution to the Kingdom of Darkness than to accomplish the discouragement of hundreds, even millions on the basis of one person’s renouncing of faith in the enemy. [Continue reading]

Greg is a former student and good friend. I learned today that he has left the faith.

The last time I saw Greg (Not his real name), he looked like he was walking away from it all.

I had a premonition at the time that Greg was troubled. He looked unsettled. I’d heard he was thinking of leaving college. His talk of an art history degree last year in my AP English IV class was just the kind of parrot talk that bright kids learn to repeat. They usually don’t know what they are talking about, and Greg was just humoring irrelevant adults like myself.

What really captured him was the outdoors, exploring, and a new girlfriend who kept him on the road on weekends. School wasn’t putting any light in his eyes, but the fire was gone elsewhere as well.

The last time I saw Greg, the fire of his faith was burning low. I should have known where things were going. It’s all quite familiar now.

He wanted some books on philosophy. I gave him Somerset Maugham’s novel of a man who follows his own path, The Razor’s Edge. [Continue reading]

Bill Kinnon shot this talk by Dr. Denis Alexander on “Evolution and the Church.” Dr. Alexander is with the Faraday Institute on Science and Religion. This is NOT a creation/evolution talk, but on how Christians might understand evolutionary biology from their own perspective. Heavy for some IM readers, but others will like it. Thanks to Bill Kinnon for the video. Power Point slides are now included in this footage.

Dr. Dennis Alexander on Evolution & the Church from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

This is most (not all) of an IM essay written during the early years of this web site (2001 I think.) My children were up to their ears in Ham/Hovind videos and I was feeling very alone in my own reading of Genesis. Things are better now, though the seeds of young earth creationism have borne their inevitable fruit. Hopefully, it will encourage some of you to continue thinking about these issues.

The Roots of My Problem

I have been reading creationist materials since high school. I bought The Genesis Flood when I was a very young Christian. I was converted in a fundamentalist church that contained very few college educated members, but they were aware of the challenge posed by the teaching of evolution. Darwin’s theories were skewered and preached against, in traditional fundamentalist fashion, by preachers who had never read Darwin or sat through a college biology course. [Continue reading]

FIRST: Read “Evangelicals and Science” at Tim Stafford’s blog. Niki is fictionalized, but not much. I am hoping this post will make one point: the Gospel combined with anything- a view of science, political opinions, convictions on gender, etc.- becomes a non-Gospel. Let the Gospel be what Paul describes in I Cor 15!

Her name is Niki. (Not her real name.) She’s a Japanese student who lived with an American family for a year and attended a Christian school. She took a year of Bible. She attended worship and heard lots of preaching. The Gospel was explained to her many times. She was well liked and sociable.

A very smart girl. A great student, much advanced over the average American student. She made A’s in everything, including Bible.

She left America after graduation and went back to Japan. [Continue reading]

UPDATE II: McKnight on Translation Tribalism.

UPDATE: Why the LCMS choose the ESV. I doubt that it was the Piper endorsement.

I have this nagging feeling that the English Standard Version isn’t as good a translation as I’ve previously thought.

My experience with the NLT has me in major regrets that I’ve got my students using the ESV, that there isn’t a cheap textbook version of the NLT, etc.

I’m using the NLT in preaching most of the time, but when I read the ESV for personal study, sermon preps, classes, etc…..something just isn’t right. I’m wondering if I’ve been “marketed.” That is, I’ve bought the impressive ESV marketing version of itself, but the translation isn’t living up to its own press.

Is it really clunky….and awkward? Do people really have problems reading it? Is it stylistically difficult? Does it do all of the things it accuses other translations of NOT doing? Is it just not up to its own press clippings? [Continue reading]

When I started studying Mark’s Gospel many years ago, I learned that, in Mark, faith is not contrasted with unbelief, but with fear.

The command to “not be afraid” was common in Mark. The disciples are constantly choosing between faith and fear as they journey with Jesus. It is fear, not unbelief, that cripples the community of Jesus-followers.

I don’t believe Christianity is a mind-game where we force ourselves to think happy thoughts. Far from it, I believe Christianity allows- even insists on- a full embrace of the difficulties, obstacles and deadly realities of life.

What does concern me, however, is the response of disciples to the media universe we live in, a media universe that uses fear in ways that are crippling to the mission of Jesus and detrimental to the work of the Holy Spirit. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: Piper “clarifies” his tornado comments by referring to his bout with prostate cancer. The message of every event is repentance: “That is the message of every calamity (Luke 13:1-5). And every sunny day (Romans 2:4).” It seems to me we are simply not going to get past the issue of how we can say, as God’s word, that a specific event has a specific, divinely connected, design that I can speak to you: THIS happened so that you would do THIS. As opposed to THIS happened, you SHOULD do THIS, but I can’t say the two things are connected causally. Cause of tornado = message or Cause of tornado = weather systems/ Application of tornado in Christian worldview = repent, etc.

An event has an application, and God has a Word, but making the various aspects of weather in a particular place a clear word from God is raising a human pastoral application up to the level where all the problems we’ve discussed become real problems for many people. Such connections will cause many to stumble in their faith as they wonder “what was God’s Word to me in taking my child? Why did he have to speak that way instead of another way?” Piper clearly, WILL answer that question for suffering people out of his high views of God ordering all that comes to pass. Many other Christians will not. It’s the difference between a pastor saying, “in the tornado, I see a lesson” and saying “in the tornado, God is saying to you.” There’s a significance difference between these two expressions. I, and many others, frequently call to mind the lessons of providence, but they are the connections we see, not the connections God has made absolute. “The tornado caused me to think about God” and “God sent the tornado to Minneapolis so I would think about God” are simply two pastorally different statements. I’d suggest that what I can say about my house fire (or Piper can say about his cancer) and what I can say about Minneapolis’s tornado are two very different things on the level of using my interpretation of events as God’s Word.

In my conception of pastoral care, there are things you can think and believe, and then there are things you say at particular times. In the neo-natal ICU, when a child is about to die, people are making these connections: God is punishing them, God isn’t there, God is wanting something from them, etc. I believe pastoral care doesn’t tell people why that tornado is in the ICU. It humbly clarifies what we know about God from Jesus and the Gospel. I’m not going to say “this happened for the glory of God” THEN. I’m going to lament THEN. I’m going to take the time to see death for the enemy that it is, not say this is God. I’m going to Romans 8:28, etc LATER. If your first word to those parents is God’s sovereign ordering of all things so they will repent, I don’t think you’ve spoken a false word, but in the context, you’ve spoken a word that makes it more difficult to trust God. Jesus wept even when he’d said Lazurus’s death was for the glory of God. Some believe the highest expression of God’s sovereignty in the midst of tornadoes is the best pastoral and evangelistic word at that moment. It’s a legitimate disagreement, and no one should be embarrassed for having it. [Continue reading]

Revelation 12:10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

Jesus is the constant mediator. Jesus is the constant advocate.

Satan is the constant accuser.

The law of God also accuses our conscience. And the grace of God in the Gospel, Jesus himself, answers the law’s thunderings.

Satan has plenty to work with in the law, and in my life and yours. It is no wonder he accuses us “day and night” before God.

Have you thought what the devil would do if he took to the pulpit of a church? [Continue reading]

For those of you keeping score, we gave up the television about 4 months ago. We discovered that, for $60 a month, we were watching one episode of House, M.D. a week and I was watching baseball. Not worth it, especially with MLB.com and Hulu. Everyone is fine, we’re using Netflix, buying some DVDs and I’ve discovered Star Trek: Enterprise in iTunes.

I watched the original Star Trek as a 10 year old child. I religiously watched the reruns after school throughout my middle and high school years. I sampled about half the movies- loved Khan and the one with the whales- and was dimly aware of the spin off series, though none really got my loyalty.

Watching the “prequel” Star Trek: Enterprise has reminded me of many “fascinating” aspects of the Star Trek universe, but none quite so much as the appealing case the overall approach of the series makes for atheism, agnosticism, pan/panentheism or some form of evolutionary theism.

In the Star Trek universe, cultural relativism gets its most appealing face. Science is no longer debating evolution with anyone. Christian fundamentalists- or any sort of fundamentalists- are a footnote in a minor museum somewhere. Exclusive religion exists in those cultures that have yet to wake up to the true nature of an ancient and diverse universe, cosmic evolution and the ability of science to solve any problem or answer any question. While spirituality may have persisted, its healthier forms are the Vulcan variety: a mysticism and clarity of logic; purity and humility before the greater knowledge. [Continue reading]

Some of you may not know that I moderate and contribute at Boarsheadtavern.com, one of the longest running group blogs in the blogosphere. Often, we will have a question addressed to the group as a “Question of the Day.” Yesterday, one of the “fellows” asked a question about how a Christian married couple could resolve what seemed to be an irreconcilable difference regarding how many children they should have.

It’s not a question I’ve eve experienced, but I’ve faced similar issues in counseling, so I jumped in with some comments, as did several other contributors, but upon reflection later, I posted again. Here’s that post. [Continue reading]

2 Cor. 5:14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.* The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling* the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The Bible says the love of Christ controls us, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. [Continue reading]

iMonk 101 posts are replays of previous Internet Monk posts.

This piece comes from February of ‘07 and was written in response to comments by then NBA player Tim Hardaway about gays. I’ve never republished it. Hardaway apologized for his comments, but Jewish pundit Michael Medved wrote a column that gave the Jesus-subtracted culture war view of the subject. I think it will keep the IM audience involved in the Andrew Marin/Love is an Orientation discussion.

UPDATE: Michael Medved regularly reminds me of the difference Jesus makes in how I look at a cultural issue and how a Jewish conservative looks at the same issue. Law by Moses. Grace and Truth by Jesus.

“You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people,” he said. “I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.” -Former NBA player Tim Hardaway.

As soon as I read the comments of former NBA player Tim Hardaway, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I heard a Christian come as close as possible to saying the exact same sentiment.

True to my intuition, it happened within a week. “Let’s not join the secular media in condemning Hardaway for not being politically correct, because as Christians, we hate that sin, too…..” [Continue reading]