What is the difference between a theist and a deist?

Over thinking the brand

I know this is a bit of a leap, but I'm going to make it anyway. I feel like sometimes churches (or perhaps I should say "church staff") over think what they're all about. They try to turn church into something that sounds really, really great, even though you can't really pin down what they mean by most of what they're saying. The church is "authentic." What does that really mean and how does it fit in with the fact that most of the people on stage are paid staff/professionals? Or the word "covenant" is throw in before all the important words to emphasize how important they are, even if they don't really have anything in particular to do with the covenant. 

Here's a clip of Stephen Colbert sharing a sponsortunity he was given by Wheat Thins... with an overly thought out information sheet attached. 

The Colbert Report
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Grrrr, the video plays in edit mode, but not once I submit. So if this isn't working, click here to see the video. 

The only hermeneutic of the gospel...

I haven't read the book. In fact, I don't think I'd even heard of the author until yesterday. But to the extent that I understand what he's saying, I agree whole heartedly. If the world cannot see the gospel embodied in the church, then how can our story speak with authority or effectiveness?

The following is directly copied from Tolle Lege where I found the quote.

“I have come to feel that the primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a Christian impact on public life is the Christian congregation. How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross?

I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. I am, of course, not denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel– evangelistic campaigns, distribution of Bibles and Christian literature, conferences, and even books such as this one.

But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community.”

–Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 227.

To yield like air in matters of musical styles (specifically "praise music")

The topic of "praise music" vs. hymns came up in our Bible study this week. In fact, I was the one that brought it up. We're studying the book of James and were specifically talking about James 3:17 where it mentions not showing partiality and not being hypocritical. Our Bible study book had a great quote on this: 

He "will yield like air in matters of personal feeling or interest," but "will stand like rock in respect of moral principle." -- C. G. Moule

One of the gals in the study piped up, "But now-a-days everyone is expected to be tolerant" as if it were automatically a bad thing. So I replied, "Yes, there are definitely times when tolerance is important." Everyone seemed to look at me like I'd sprouted a third eye and one person asked, "What do you mean? Can you give an example?" I gave a few, but the one I finally landed on was the preference some people have for praise music and the alternate preference that others have for hymns sung with their traditional tunes. 

I was rather taken aback when this led to an immediate response about how bad praise music is (We do sing a fair bit of praise music in our congregation, by the way.) and how it often involves singing the same line over and over again, such as "God is awesome, God is awesome." I said (oh yes, I did), "you mean like when the angels sing 'Holy, Holy, Holy?"

I won't get into the rest of our conversation here. That's just hashing over a rather discordant and painful time. But I would like to take on the topic itself. I did a quick search of R.C. Sproul's thoughts on praise music (since he was referred to by the person who was so against it) and I found an article that wasn't actually written by R.C. but by a guy named Gene Edward Veith. I found a couple of debatable points in his essay, which you can read on the Ligonier website, but I'd like to zero in on one specific paragraph, just in the interests of trying to focus on the topic and not nitpick on the tangential particulars. He said;

The question is not whether or not we should make use of contemporary music in church, but whether we should make use of pop music. By its nature, pop music is catchy, entertaining, and thus “likeable.” It cannot have much content, much less complexity or depth. If it did, it would cease to be pop art. The art of the folk culture, with its traditions and communal experience, has such things, as does the consciously-crafted art of the high culture, with its challenging content.

I'm not sure how all praise music got condensed down into being pop music, or along the lines of pop music, but I'm going to roll with that. I also don't agree that all pop music is catchy and therefore "likeable" but again, I'll slide past that to get to the next two sentences. "It cannot have much content, much less complexity or depth. If it did, it would cease to be pop art." ... Really? Is that true? 

So I ask you, is pop art a veritable wasteland in the realm of art/music? Can you think of any pop music (or perhaps just a contemporary "praise song") that has any depth at all? And how would you evaluate depth anyway? Thoughts?

Communion Bread

Description:
I usually make regular old no knead bread for communion, but I've been longing to make the thick, chewy, sweet communion loaf that we had in one of the churches I grew up in. It must have been in Massachusetts, because that's where I had my first communion.

I've found a recipe that comes out looking like that loaf, but it's just flour and water. Apparently in the Catholic church, that's all that's allowed in communion wafers. We must have attended some renegade hippy Catholic church in my childhood (in fact, I know we did. They had great music.) and I would swear there was honey in that bread.

This is 1/3 of the measurements of the original recipe with a few modifications.

Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup honey (I didn't measure. So I'm guessing. It might have been more.)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
Mix ingredients together. Knead for 5 minutes. Let the dough rest for another 5 minutes. Divide into two balls for thicker pieces, three balls for thinner/crunchier pieces. Roll these out and mark with a cross (or plus... since it's centered). Make two consecutive circles around the center. Then make cuts in each section to make separate pieces. Cut at least 1/2 way to 3/4 of the way into the dough.

Bake for 20 minutes at 400 for lightly browned loaves. (I think I've got the ingredients where I want them, but I'm still working out the cooking length part.)

I'll try to remember to take some photos next time so you can see my cutting handiwork. (Still didn't get photos this second time around. Once we started into eating this batch, it went quick. I might make some in plane old cracker shape next time around to nibble on at home.)

Update (7/6/13): I've started making this for a larger crowd and have fiddled with the recipe some. I'm now using:

6 cups freshly ground whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup clover honey
1 1/2 cups water

This leaves me with dough that's somewhat goopy. I cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper, glop the dough out on the paper - spreading it as evenly as possible - then cook it for 17 minutes at 350 F. When it's done I pull the parchment paper right off the cookie sheet and use a large knife to trim the edges, then cut the block into about 200 pieces. I actually need 300 pieces, so I might be refiguring the amounts. Scraps cut off the block are quite tasty and a good way to "test the product." (That's the excuse you can use, at least.)

Why do we care why God allows suffering?

In high school, we read Edith Hamilton's Mythology book. While reading that book, I don't think the concept of the gods being just, or even good, ever really registered. Assistance, hospitality, caprice, revenge, and unending desire for pleasure all popped up over and over. The gods were good and they were bad. They were a lot like humans - well, super humans. Though you might hope that they would be kind and generous and loving, you really couldn't count on it, even when you were a demi-god, the child of a god.

So why, then, would people have a belief today that God should only be good and should only allow good things? Why would a post like this show up in my Google+ feed yesterday asking, "Why does god allow suffering?" Where did we ever get the idea that maybe God shouldn't allow suffering? It certainly seems like the gods of mythology (not just Greek, but Babylonian, Nordic, etc.) all created a fair bit of suffering among humans. Even Jehovah didn't spare his own son from suffering. So why do we seem to expect that God would forbid suffering during this life time? Why do we think that the existence of God cannot possibly coincide with the existence of suffering in the world? Why do people feel that suffering is one of the strongest arguments against God?

I wonder if the question doesn't reveal more about our own opinions of ourselves rather than our opinion of God. Did our sentiment around God and suffering change during the Enlightenment as we started to put more value on the individual?

I finally posted a response on the G+ thread: "I've been thinking on this one since you first posted it. What keeps popping back into my head is, 'Why do we expect god to not allow suffering?'" Joel, the one who originally posted the question, replied, "Great question. I guess for me it comes down to this: If god doesn't help people, why have a god? Why do so many people pray to god, if god isn't interested? Does he give us any benefits at all over not having a god?"

I thought that his questions, in turn, were also good. I'll post my reply to him here (in case you don't want to click through to the original post) but I'd be curious to also hear your thoughts. Why does God allow suffering? Why do we care? Are there any benefits at all to having a god over not having a god?

My last reply:

"What if god does help people, he just doesn't help all people all of the time? Does that make a difference?

"Or what if god provides basics - such as a working ecosystem that's well suited to our needs - but not necessarily all of our wants - such as the end of all sickness. Does that make a difference? In this scenario, no god would mean no ecosystem or a crappy ecosystem... and we'd still have sickness.

"I just think the underlying assumptions beneath your original question are really fascinating. I've heard people argue about god and suffering till the cows came home. But I don't think I've ever heard a conversation on the premises that these discussions are based upon.

"I wonder if the ancient Greeks ever sat around and asked, "Why does Zeus allow suffering?""

Spare the rod, spoil the logic

There's an article in yesterdays's New York Times about a pastor in Pleasantville, Tennessee, who has written a book about how to raise children. Apparently the book was hailed by parents who severely abused their adopted daughter until she died. When her body was found she was emaciated, had been beaten, and apparently had been forced to live outside in an unheated barn. The upshot of the article was that the pastor had written a book along the lines of, "People are inherently sinful. Parents need to train their children not to sin. The only way to keep them from sinning is to spank them, or withhold food from them, or give them some other form of punishment until they eventually learn to behave."

What strikes me is the inherent lack of the gospel in this story. At the very end of the article the  pastor is quoted as saying, "To give up the use of the rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity." Where is the gospel in that? Where is grace? He seems to believe that the only way to get to heaven is to beat our human nature into submission, physically, so that God will accept our beaten up submission and allow us into heaven. If the only way to get rid of sin is to beat it out of a person, then why didn't Jesus come down with a big stick and give us all what for?

Isn't the whole point of the gospel that we can't sacrifice enough to ever make ourselves worthy? No amount of beating will ever cleanse us from our sin. Only the atoning death of Jesus can pay that price. And then we don't have to. There's no, "grace plus beating" clause in the gospel. The pastor's comment makes no logical sense in light of what Jesus has already done.