As rivers seek the sea,
  Much more deep than they,
So my soul seeks thee
  Far away:
As running rivers moan
On their course alone,
  So I moan
  Left alone.

As the delicate rose
  To the sun's sweet strength
Doth herself unclose,
  Breadth and length
So spreads my heart to thee
Unveiled utterly,
  I to thee
  Utterly.

As morning dew exhales
  Sunwards pure and free,
So my spirit fails
 After thee:
As dew leaves not a trace
On the green earth's face;
  I, no trace
  On thy face.

Its goal the river knows,
  Dewdrops find a way,
Sunlight cheers the rose
  In her day:
Shall I, lone sorrow past
Find thee at the last?
  Sorrow past,
  Thee at last?

---Christina Rossetti

He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire:  and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god.

---Isaiah

I have always thought this is one of the funniest passages in the Bible. Isaiah is mocking idolators by visualizing their nonsense. A pious person must give serious thought to which end of his stick he burns; the possibility must occur to us that a careless worshipper might burn up his god and then pray to his firewood for deliverance.

Our recent tour of postmodern religious buffoons is not meant for our amusement only, although I still believe that this is one of those cases where laughter doeth good like a medicine. But the point should not be lost on us that we live in different times from our fathers, some of whom may not have shown clarity of thought, but they still had clarity of vision. At least they knew that a heretic was not a partner in conversation.

It helps to be reminded that we now lack even that minimal clarity.

There are no scripture texts explicit enough to persuade some people that heresy ought to be rejected and false teachers should be either corrected or silenced.

We've seen McLaren telling us we should be helping God heal his creation (and he is doing this at a moment in church history when very few people will admit that God had any perceivable rôle to play in creation in the first instance).

We have guys like Joel Hunter who do not just offer fanciful doctrines of "growing inerrancy", but who expose a group of very weak-minded people desperate for some—any—rationale for their disbelief.

And we have all around us a very shallow, sentimental religion with cyclopean chapels and fanciful saints. The saint we see in the upturned gaze of Mr. Arpin-Ricci is a caricature "of a sentimental nature-lover or a hippie ‘drop-out' from society which omit[s] the real sternness of his character and neglect[s] his all-pervasive love of God and identification with Christ's sufferings, which alone make sense of his life". *

(And we note that elsewhere a tempest blows over churches engaged in burning Bibles! Could any of us have imagined such a thing ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years ago? and if we couldn't imagine such a thing, why ever not?)

I absolutely agree with David Wells: this is the moment to show courage to be protestant.

____________________

* Oxford Dictionary of Saints, David Hugh Farmer, Fifth Edition, p. 205, s.v. Francis of Assisi

 

Legend has it that St. Francis on his deathbed thanked his donkey for carrying and helping him throughout his life, and his donkey wept.

 

You might remember Jamie Arpin-Ricci. He is the YWAM rocket scientist who tied three knots in the string that held his tau cross. The three knots represented for him vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. Other people take the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, Jamie ties the knots as a reminder of vows he hasn't taken himself but for which he has a deep emotional commitment when taken by others. He is not chaste, poor or obedient, but he's in favor of chastity, poverty and obedience in others. That's what his string means to him.

So he's got that going for him.

That whole thing was a little "overly casual" perhaps, and he wonders if that stunt threw open some "epistemological doors". I'm thinking it was just indicative of the casual and sentimental religious commitments that define postmodern religion. Tie a few knots, light a few votive candles, hang a picture of St. Francis, send off a spare tenner for orphans in Haiti...such personal sacrifice yanks mercilessly on our heartstrings.

Now here is Jamie having—his words—"something of a Franciscan moment" as he feeds a captured deer. It is extremely touching, and one wishes we had more petting zoos and more docile wildlife to induce the sensation of the old Franciscan virtues.

I think it would be helpful for you to rehearse in your mind the sort of catalog of religious disciplines we've seen lately.

Hunter tells us disbelief in Scripture is best understood as a matter of "growing inerrancy". Yah, growing inerrancy! When we believed Genesis we had a little inerrancy; now that we don't believe it, inerrancy has been significantly enlarged.

McLaren tells us that the Exodus is the controlling metaphor of scripture, showing that he is no more respectful of your intelligence than Hunter and Arpin-Ricci.

Even Sunday school tykes will recall that the next thing on the calendar of the delivered children of Israel took place at Mt. Sinai: terror, law, death and threats of death, none of which survive into the postmodern Christian imagination. Now it's all about queers, goats for Burundi and women in pulpits.

When the Son of man cometh, will he find Franciscan moments on the earth?

Where is today's Christian imagination?

We were recently treated to some very severe and hurtful criticism for the way we laugh at silly apostates on Remonstrans. And when I say "we", I mean "I"; and when I say "severe and hurtful criticism", I mean "quaint and air-headed piffle".

I kept an informal running count of Ms. Apokedak's protracted complaint which ran to roughly 22,279 words, all but 16 of which were written in haste. Some of you were annoyed by Sally's evasion of your questions and her unwillingness to address particular texts you thought were relevant. (It didn't go unnoticed that certain of you even dared to suggest that our, and by "our" I mean "my", behavior was less than perfect, and that's why your names will not be placed on the Wall of Remembrance at the candle-lit Closing Ceremony & Awards Banquet of our 2010 year-end bash.)

I have since taken all the time I felt necessary to reflect in tranquility, and I have a question you might like to reflect on.

We have viewed the vapid grousing by Emergents, fellow-travelers and postmodern bunkmates, and we have observed the largely unsympathetic hearing they got from broader Evangelicalism. Emergents swaggered onto the scene casting aspersions all over everything from Plato to American Christianity. The Emergents were not at all generous toward their critics, and they continued to resent any chastening they got from academic and pastoral types (like MacArthur, Sproul, Wells, Mohler, Carson, etc.).

They claimed that they were merely engaged in conversation, but this was a conversation only apostates were welcomed to. Guys like McLaren, Keefe-Perry, Morrell, Jones, Hunter, and Galli kept generating balderdash and felt no obligation to meet the objections of "the larger Christian community".

In fact I recently found this explanation on the Everything About Brian McLaren Brian McLaren Wants You To Know About Brian McLaren Blog as to why he wouldn't engage his critics there. I think it's instructive. His attitude shows all the generosity, love of diversity and desire for understanding we've come to expect from Kool-Aid Fundamentalists.

Here a bloke asks why Brian won't engage with readers:

In your recent blog post you write about converting those who do not accept the clean energy agenda. And, yet, there is no place for comments so that you might learn what it is specifically that turns people away from that agenda.

R: Thanks for your note. A few thoughts in reply ...
- The main reason I don't include a comments section here on my site is that I have a group of loyal but angry critics who frequently reply wherever I post (or am posted about) on the internet. The tone of their comments is frequently so harsh and ugly that I feel embarrassed to provide a platform for their views and/or rhetoric on my own site. I'm certainly not against disagreement - even spirited debate - but there is a kind of viciousness that I stay away from and don't want to associate with. The only way I could have open comments in good conscience, then, would be to moderate the comments, but I only have so much time, and I haven't been able to invest this kind of time. So, I understand your disappointment in this regard, and I myself have mixed feelings about this - and I have good friends that disagree with my decision. But until my conscience changes or the rhetoric moderates, this is the reason I don't open this site for comments.
- However, people can and do comment on my blogs on Facebook.
- And I am a regular or guest blogger for Sojo.net, Huffington Post, and a number of other sites - where comments are always open.
- Finally, be assured that I read widely on the subject and so try to keep abreast of why people are opposed to the things I am advocating. As you can see here, I try to respond when people send in civil questions or comments ...
Thanks for your feedback, and be assured this is a subject I will remain open to reconsidering.

Certain agendas are not up for discussion, obviously. "So that you might learn" is not something this Church of Latter Day Dogmatists has an interest in.

So I put the question to you: When the NT tells believers to have a care for purity of doctrine, and when a klatch of Sunday School dropouts refuses to entertain any correction, what sort of response ought to follow?

You don't have to answer this question here, or even out loud (and please don't defend me—if it wasn't worth my time, I can't imagine it is worth yours); this is intended to provoke your thinking. Given the glaring heterodoxy—and the breath-taking goofiness—we have seen offered, and given the insensitivity of today's apostates, what do you think scripture requires of the faithful? As the church becomes softer and more shapeless, what sort of response would you encourage among the young people who haven't already left the church?

Don't consider this in the light of what Apokedak thinks of dissidens. Think of the postmodern church as a soft and shapeless collection of truisms and private interpretations which are not up for discussion.

If Emergents are not unruly and vain talkers, what would an unruly and vain talker sound like? If Titus was a real historical person (unlike Adam) and if Paul actually wrote an Epistle to him containing the words "...whose mouths must be stopped", what might that instruction entail?

I've mentioned Joel Hunter previously on this blog. Joel is a kind of chaplain over at BioLogos dot org. I really believe that Hunter has a promising future as a world-class clown. I have watched several of his routines and I honestly believe that the only thing standing between him and early induction into the COAI Hall of Fame is his lackluster costume.

His outfit is short on color and imagination, but his routine is guaranteed to keep everyone in stitches.

I'm going to be talking with our legal department about starting a fund to buy Joel Hunter some appropriate shoes and a bemusing wig.

Here is a snippet of Joel's current thinking on inerrancy:

The superintendency of the spirit, as the words were given to the writers, or as God transmitted the message to the writers, the superintendency not only went to those writers, but the same spirit that went to those writers is also supposed to be in us as we interpret those words, and therefore when circumstances change, when we learn more, when we understand more the context, but we also understand our context more, then God can make those same words even more accurate in our understanding, and speaking a greater truth than we understood before. So it's not one was inerrant and the other was, you know...it's, it's...the inerrancy grows with our interpretation because the understanding of that spirit, the superintending understanding of that spirit grows with our understanding of how God operates in other fields and speaks to us in other fields as well as from scripture.

God can make his earlier words "even more accurate in our understanding".

We realize these are economically stressed times, but give some thought to how much you would feel comfortable setting aside to send Joel some big hair and work shoes.