Would you like the efficiency-size canon or the jumbo Ethiopian canon?

Worth reading: A post-Evangelical view on the formation of the Biblical canon.

And now, further obfuscating the matter of which canon is the canon and perhaps taking a solid lick at the foundation of the “the table of contents of the Bible is proof that ‘X’ communion is the correct one” apologetic argument:

Gardening guide by region

Aspiring gardeners, unite! Mother Earth News has published an online guide on when to plant what based on what region you live in. It’s kind of like an online farmer’s almanac.

Miracles, shrines and modern religion

In western culture — by this I mean the first-world Americas and Europe — we have a tendency to be reductionist, pragmatic and thoroughly modern. There’s a reason Hemingway’s books are considered the classic literature of the 20^th century, after all.

But this tendency also tends to bleed over into our faiths, and I’m not just talking about dry mainline Protestantism from the 1920s on. Aside from St. Faustina’s visions, present-day American Catholics don’t really have much of a devotion to mystical things, and even Pentecostals are more concerned with material miracles like faith healing and financial blessings.

The fact is, however, that for most of Church history the sort of things that modern man doesn’t like to think about — apparitions of saints, myrrh crying icons, miracle-working relics and the like — were not only accepted but kind of expected. Not expected to happen every day, the way Pentecostals expect miraculous things to happen, but expected in the a way that acknowledged that occasionally, these things happen.

Protestantism started shedding much of this belief very quickly during the Reformation in the name of getting rid of superstition. Cromwell destroyed the shrine to Our Lady of Waslingham, and Calvin whitewashed churches. But curiously, it did not shed the beliefs about evil apparitions as quickly as it did the belief in wonder-working material things – hence, supposed witches could be burned for funny looking birthmarks but reliquaries in monasteries had to be smashed.

Popular Catholicism in America is starting to veer in the same direction, because Americans have bought the lie that everything has to be both rational and naturalistic. But I’m not here to try to dissuade anyone from the idea that devotion to the Holy Child of Prague is anything other than otherworldly.

To be sure, many of the old beliefs and devotions of the patristic and middle ages can be attributed to superstition (the evil eye, anyone?), but I’m less and less inclined to think that some of those miracles based on what we think are goofy devotions weren’t true and also that they suddenly stopped happening circa 1917 (or at the death of the Apostles, if you’re a dry old Protestant fogey).

I know of one woman who — as an early teen with no prior religious training — claims she converted to Christianity after having a vision of Jesus and Mary. And if she is as serious about the Christian faith as she represents herself, she’s no flake. And if The Voice of the Martyrs (a Protestant publication) is telling the truth, that kind of story is not unheard of in traditionally non-Christian countries.

One group that doesn’t seem prone to the tendency to discount stories of miracles are converts to Orthodoxy. That’s not as much due to piousness, in my estimation, as it is to wanting to be un-Western in their convert fervor, though. I’m not saying it doesn’t eventually become genuine, but wait five years and we’ll have this conversation again.

In the interest of fairness, there does seem to be a renewed interest in this sort of thing among Catholic converts (despite the howls of their Orthodox counterparts that Guadalupe isn’t legitimate), but it’s usually among the kind of convert who becomes a capital-T traditionalist, or at least really likes the Latin mass.

In all of this, there is a truth that needs to be remembered — miraculous happenings and shrines are only as good as their purpose, which is to point our eyes to Christ. If they detract from Christ, your devotion endangers your soul.

As for me, if I knew where the miracle-working bones of Elijah were, I’d at least go have a look, and I’d probably make a few other stops along the way.

But I’m still very cautious about this sort of thing, moreso about stories of visions than miracle-working items. And that’s not the American in me.

Chrysostom on the culture war, sort of.

From One Hundred & Twenty Wise Sayings 
from The Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church:

For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the 
stumblings of sinners by force…it is necessary to make a man 
better not by force but by persuasion. We neither have authority 
granted us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we 
know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are 
kept from evil, not by force, but by choice. 
–St. John Chrysostom

From where I stand to where you stand.

Note: Except where I specify, I’m using “Catholic” as a generic, catchall term for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Old Catholics, Anglicans who want to claim it, etc. I know there are manifold differences between the groups. Likewise, I’m using a generic “Evangelical” in its most commonly understood meaning, not Reformed Presbyterians who label themselves Evangelicals.
Also note: I know Catholics don’t own the entire market as far as liturgy is concerned, and that there are plenty of liturgical Protestants. I’m just making a point.

Science fiction and comedy writer Douglas Adams once wrote that it is amazing how one’s perspective can shift by taking just one step to the left. As one who has taken more than a couple of steps to the left (or right, depending on how you define things, I suppose), I’ve been thinking about this lately.

Evangelicals and Catholics tend to view each other in reductionist terms — you know the usual, “Their worship is just routine,” “They love rock bands in church,” etc. But a lot of this can be addressed by taking a step to the left, so to speak.

In Catholic worship, the emphasis is on what the people of God do corporately, while Evangelicism emphasizes pietism. In other words, one focuses more on what can be done as a group, while the other focuses on what can be done by the individual. While I’m not making a judgment call on which is better, liturgy or “praise and worship” (ok, I am — the answer to the test question is liturgy), I am saying how you view these things requires perspective. Someone who has been told their entire life that the only thing that really matters is how they personally relate to God is going to want an environment that makes them feel like they are relating to something, and music — which everyone grants is, in some form,  a legitimate worship device — is the perfect tool for that. All of this is going to color how they see worship that is different from that to which they are used.

Meanwhile, Catholics need to explain that, while the emphasis may appear to be about everyone worshipping in the same way, the idea is to pattern worship after the heavenly worship and to — as individuals and as the Church — join in with all the saints and angels in that heavenly worship. Nevermind the fact that liturgy helps curb bizarre Evangelical happenings like people barking like dogs during worship.

Another area where this can be useful is in how churches are — for lack of better terms — designed and decorated.

For years, I heard again and again that the reason Evangelicals have bare crosses rather than crucifixes in their churches is because Jesus is no longer on the cross. Fair enough.
One day, however, I was in a Roman Catholic church, and I heard an elderly lady remark that she had recently had a discussion with her priest about how Catholics were the only ones who showed Jesus on the cross, and she was truly puzzled by it. I know that this particular issue is tied into the Catholic church’s Eucharistic theology, but the hanging crucifix is their statement that Christ’s sacrifice was and is a present reality. Though Evangelicals may disagree with the Eucharistic conclusions, most would agree with that statement.

I am not saying that there are not differences between the groups that should be glossed over. Far from it. But I am saying that it would be helpful to walk over to where they are standing and realize that — from their angle — this is how things appear. It may not be the best angle, but this is their perception; once that’s established, asking what they see is next.

So, going back to what Douglas Adams said, maybe it’s best if we all take a step to the left and then take our fingers out of our ears.

Mileposts along the way

No matter how iconoclastic one is, we all collect religious relics – for some it may be actual relics, and for others just paraphernalia from the journey. I have a few items that are special to me, among them my grandfather’s leather-bound Christian Worker’s Edition of the Authorized Version, which has his hand-written notes in the margin, and a prayer card of St. Theresa the Little Flower of Jesus from the funeral of a friend who died unexpectedly. I keep these, not for any spiritual purpose (though I have used the prayer on the prayer card before), but because they remind me of loved ones who I believe are now interceding for me and for the world among the saints.

But I have another personal relic, one I have only recently reacquired. It’s a ratty copy of a special-edition of the New Testament that was printed for a Promise Keeper’s rally in the late 90s. I didn’t attend the event, but my father brought the Bible back to me, and it mostly sat on a shelf until one night in my mid-teens.

At the time, I didn’t believe in much. I was still claiming the Christianity I was raised with in public and even to my close friends for fear that any word of apostasy would make way to my family, but privately I was drowning in pseudo-mysticism that was akin to a blend of self-made Buddhism and Deism. I knew there was suffering in the world, and I did not like it, but I did not believe God would fix it.

One night, on an impulse, I picked up that Promise Keepers Bible, and started reading. At first, I did not like what I was reading Jesus saying and doing, and I picked up a highlighter and began to highlight passages I found offensive. Somewhere in the middle of Matthew, however, things began to change. There were things about Jesus that disturbed me, but in a way that I had to keep reading. That night, I read through Matthew, Mark and Luke. As I went, the things I highlighted changed from things I didn’t like to things that convicted me, or at least left me wanting more.

I did not turn from my sin that night. It would take another year, a couple of tragedies – the death of friends of friends – in my periphery and a lot of prompting from the Holy Spirit for me to really wake up. But I look to that night as a turning point, the point when I started to want to know more about Jesus and when I was increasingly attracted to people who really seemed to know him. And then one night, alone in the chapel at Dry Creek, I wept and told Jesus that – if he would have me – I belonged to him.

Anyone who knew me at the time knows I went out-of-my-mind  religious after that. In the years since then, how that has manifested itself has changed dramatically, but it also remains the same.  In my heart, I am still a boy who wants to know Jesus as well as he can.

And that is why I am happy to have that ugly, abused copy of the Promise Keepers Bible.

Advent 2009

These dry bones
Like all creation
Are groaning

The weight of history —
the glory and its despair —
Making them sing
Like a plucked string wound tight,

Begging God’s condescension
So that they, too, may look Him
in the eye

and know

their King is among them.

Airing our clean laundry

Foundational to any good homestead is a good clothesline.

My brother-in-law helped me sink these posts today. I’d like to say it was because we wanted to be green, use less electricity and become less dependent on the electric dryer, but the truth is it’s just the easiest way to dry all of those cloth diapers. At least the house will be clear of all those drying racks on sunny days.

The house in the background is the neighbors (i.e. family). I didn’t want to take credit for the fencing and porching work they’ve done. But I did beat them to a clothesline.

Book Review: N.D. Wilson’s “Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl”

N.D. Wilson has done a good thing with his book, “Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl” — he argues for a creator and then he argues that creation is good, a notion lost to many evangelicals today.

At times, Wilson examines the whole of the world from the subatomic level — quarks, leptons and other tiny things that you cannot see but do exist. At other times, he just seems to get caught up in the joy of living in a world over which God pronounced, “It is good.”

But the part I appreciated the most was that he avoided veering into the kind of hard scientific apologetics that evangelicals have gotten very good at doing very badly — ultimately, that’s not his point. The book is both a superb — if unintentional — argument for general revelation, as well as for another idea, that you should enjoy what God has created.

The writing in “Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl” is kind of like being on a tilt-a-whirl, and I’m not sure how many folks it will suit. I liked it; I’m not sure everyone else will. It’s not irreverent, but I suspect some people will think it so; at one point Wilson comments that Jesus transformed water into wine, and later the wine into urine. Should we deny it?, he asks.

N.D. Wilson’s “Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl” is a good — and even fun to read — book. It’s not the most remarkable thing I’ve ever read, but I recommend it to those who like to read books that can be described as both “sound” and “trippy.”

Thomas Nelson Publishers provided a review copy of this book.

Losing the Bible in an attempt to reclaim it

Sometimes I wonder if Christians realize that the Bible is more than a book of good advice, that it is the book of the Church and cannot be rightfully separated from her. You hear lots of polemics from conservatives about the Bible being inspired, inerrant, infallible, but then you hear about this:

http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

Once you separate the Bible from its context as the book of the Church, you get goofy ideological narratives about it. The stated goals of the project start out innocently enough:

0.Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

0.Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

0.Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]

I have no problems with these, depending on how you define “liberal bias,” though gender neutrality doesn’t really bother me and I think translations that are accessible to those who are only barely functionally literate are a good thing.

But then follow the doozies:

0.Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.

Using inaccurate “conservative” terms is just as inaccurate as inaccurate “liberal” terms. Besides, there’s already a conservative version that does just that — it’s called the ESV.

Also, I wasn’t aware that the meaning of “miracle” had changed; and what are they going to call Jesus, the Prince of Not-What-You-Think-When-You-Say-Peace?

0.Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”;[5] using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census

See my previous comments. I can’t see why include this except for some kind of sneaky political motive that has nothing to do with the Kingdom of God.

0.Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

I don’t really know what they mean by “the logic of Hell.”

0.Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

See my comment earlier about the Bible being a book full of good advice.

I wonder if they realize that the so-called economic parables were not meant to be about economics, but about stewardship. But then again, most parables are actually about salvation. Of course, expressing them in their “full free-market meaning…” sounds suspiciously like what they’re accusing liberals of doing — corrupting the biblical text for political purposes.

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

Nevermind that textual criticism is traditionally a liberal field, I wonder how these folks came to the conclusion that they know what is Scripture in opposition to the testimony of the Church throughout the ages. And I’m not sure how the adulteress story is particularly liberal. Grace?

0.Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

Don’t really know what they mean here. Like at all.

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.” 

How about preferring accuracy? As literal as possible, as free as necessary? New Bible translations don’t bother me, but this won’t be a scholarly work — it’ll be a mutilation.

I self-identify as “conservative,” but I read about this and am disgusted and angered.