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]

Here’s a previous IM essay on this topic: “What Do Gays and Lesbians Hear? (When They Are With Evangelicals.)”

UPDATE: I appreciate Andrew’s kind words in the comments. I have to confess that I’m a little disappointed that the emphasis of Andrew’s book- relationships and conversations- seems to be lost, and the discussion is drawn immediately toward “what should churches do to those people?” As I said, this book will not be the normal reading experience. Andrew is trying to do something- in his own experience first- that is incredibly difficult: pay the price to love those who are very angry with us.

This book has been as profoundly unsettling as Sara Miles’ Take This Bread. It’s Jesus shaped Christianity, and it does not leave you alone. It is not what you’re prepared for. It will hit you like Jesus’ love for the unacceptable hit his world..

Love is An Orientation. Andrew Marin. “Elevating the conversation with the gay community.” Inter-Varsity Press.

I’m hoping to write a book in the next few months. I have something I want to say and I think it’s important. I hope all of you buy it, and I wouldn’t mind if a few million people bought it and I could change my life accordingly.

But I want you to hear what I am about to say: If you had two books to choose from, whatever I will write and what Andrew Marin has written in Love Is An Orientation, I would want you to buy Andrew’s book.

What Andrew Marin has written in this book isn’t just interesting. It is absolutely vital that evangelicals hear what Marin is saying about the state of things between Gays and Evangelicals. This is a message that may be more important than any issue evangelicals are currently discussing short of the content of the Gospel itself. [Continue reading]

Without any intro, I’d like to get right into what I would be saying about Matthew 18 if I were lecturing on the “What does Matthew 18 tell us about church discipline?”

I’d begin by noting that the church discipline material in I Corinthians 5 predates Matthew 18 in composition. Assuming Markan priority, it’s safe to assume that the matter of what to do with certain kinds of situations in the early church moved Matthew to include more material for that context than you find in Mark or the other Gospels. There is a focus in Matthew on catechetical material and church context.

The epistles (including Revelation 2-3) are evidence enough of what these situations were and why they were of the utmost concern. They ran the gamut from interpersonal conflicts, family issues, business disagreements, immorality of various kinds and division. Evidence in the epistles also is clear that leaders were to function as shepherds in working toward the resolution of these conflicts. The matter in I Corinthians 5 is a matter of scandalous immorality, but it is also part of the larger Corinthian church problem: complete lack of functioning leadership, resulting in a kind of “charismatic” leadership that was allowing the church to go down the route of Thyatira in Revelation 2. [Continue reading]

Down through the years, I’ve been part of a few in-church discussions about church discipline. They were all memorable. Almost everyone was against it and treated me like I was going off the deep end for bringing it up. Being against church discipline was an issue worth yelling over, and I’ve been yelled at more than once.

In my denomination and tradition, church discipline of a certain kind was common in the late 1800’s and even early 1900’s. I recall reading the business meeting minutes of a church I belonged to that was founded in the late 1700s. In the the late nineteenth century, many business meetings involved the discipline of members for things as trivial as card playing and as serious as shooting another church member.

In the 1920’s, church discipline began to disappear and today is almost totally unknown in Southern Baptist circles. The reason is clear. Southern Baptists and most evangelicals completely lost the ability to see anything positive in church discipline, at least by the measurements they now use to measure what is positive and helpful in church life.

Church discipline was punitive and exclusionary, overstepping the church’s role and destructive to the church’s mission too represent Christ. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: CNN has the same story as USA Today, but with more reference to the academic discussion and the psychology of myth perpetuation. Evangelicals who are angry at me for posting this should just skip it.

Here’s a detailed review of a book by Dave Cullen that is looking at the law enforcement information.

“These are not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation,” psychologist Peter Langman writes in his new book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. “These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems.” -Peter Langman

The Columbine high school massacre has, unfortunately, been a professional interest for me. Part of my job involves doing risk assessments of high school students applying to our program, so understanding the dynamics of school violence is a necessary preparation.

As a Christian, I’ve had a different kind of interest in Columbine. The shootings have become part of conservative evangelical culture war mythology. Some of the dead are considered martyrs. Books have been written. Speaking tours traveled through churches and Christian media. The pundits and cultural critics have used Columbine as exhibit A for everything that was wrong with America. Here, we were told, was the results of America’s surrender to secularism and proof that we needed everything from the closure of public schools to the Ten Commandments in every classroom. (Think what a difference seeing “Thou Shalt Not Kill” would make.) [Continue reading]

This post is from November of ‘04. It’s a little quote from Martin Luther that’s the kind of anti-legalism/moralism injection all of us need occasionally. Some of you won’t like it for better reasons than others. I like it because Luther gets Jesus and isn’t afraid to be provocative to help me get him too.

This woud be a great excuse for you to buy the NRP “Weak on Sanctification” t-shirt.

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” -Martin Luther

Martin Luther is certainly my favorite person in church history. Time and again his grasp of the Gospel and unabashed honest humanity have come to my rescue. Luther has an ability to make the Gospel as outrageous as possible, and to chase the rats of legalism out of the attic before they make a nest. [Continue reading]

I have purposely avoided watching Jesus Camp until this week. One of my Advanced classes is using it to write a response paper to The Screwtape Letters, so over three days we watched it, with some debriefing every day.

In this class of ten, several students could relate to various aspects of the film. One young man had been in similar churches and experiences for the first eight years of his life. One of my Ethiopian girls was from a Pentecostal church in her country. One of my American girls was homeschooled on and off for several years. Others had heard various sermons that reminded them of the rhetoric in Jesus Camp.

I have, of course, been around youth camps, youth rallies and youth events my entire life as a Christian and a minister. I grew up in a church that used high pressure evangelism tactics several times a year. I’ve been to youth events where the speakers or musicians were similar to the adults in Jesus Camp. All my life I’ve been surrounded by end-of-the-world scenarios and Satan-is-out-there-in-Harry-Potter type rhetoric. [Continue reading]

No pictures this time. Just a few thoughts to close out the topic.

Evangelicals have no serious arguments to make against the use of “gear.” We’re up to our ears in our own versions of the stuff. We can point out the differences in what we believe is going on, but we’re no innocents. God using matter and the senses works just fine for evangelicals, so get that smirk off your face.

Have you seen how Bibles are marketed in evangelicalism? The covers? The “Favorite preacher” editions? The things we say will happen if you buy the right one?

Have you seen people buying relics from Spurgeon? (Not bones, but publications, pictures, letters.) Have you seen the picture I posted from the Lifeway at Southern Seminary selling Calvin bobbleheads and busts of Spurgeon? If they were actually selling “hair from Spurgeon” how do you think that product would move? [Continue reading]