metapundit.net

Learning to Fly

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:04:00 PST

All my life that I can remember I've wanted to fly. When I was very young (maybe 6?) one of my cousins who is an aircraft instructor gave me a plane ride for my birthday, instantly becoming the coolest cousin ever!

I can't remember when I first learned about hang gliding - I do remember watching Hang Gliders at a very young age when my family visited Fort Funston in San Francisco. I can still remember my feeling of awe at the magical way the colorful wings rose, seemingly effortlessly, into the skies to surf the invisible waves of the air. And ever since gliding flight has enchanted me. I've spent happy hours watching sea gulls ridge soar around the rocky point out at Pigeon Point Light House - tiny movements and adjustments controlling their flight, stopping and nearly hovering then wheeling and diving downwind... Somehow flight just seemed wondrous, magical, much more fascinating than the mundane world where my feet were firmly planted.

During my early teenage years a friend of mine found an ancient rogallo style hang-glider in his family's newly rented barn and offered it to me, knowing my fascination. I might still be a little bitter that despite all my pleading my mom said "Absolutely not!"

When I was in my early twenties and planning on getting married I took one hang gliding lesson and made it out to the training hill. But money was tight and I eventually put my dreams of flying through the air to one side and opted for the somewhat more practical but still exciting motorcycle.

And here I am. I'm in my thirties. I have three children - and I don't even have a motorcycle anymore. But I can (maybe) afford to take a flying lesson or two and my job actually has a somewhat malleable schedule that means I might be able to take enough time to go flying occasionally. Can I still pursue my dream at this late date? It turns out that I can!

Eric Hinrichs teaches for Bay Area Hang Gliding and I've been taking lessons from him for the last few months. Or more accurately - I took a couple before December and a couple in the last month. As a result I've gotten to know the path down the training hill at Ed Levin pretty well. I started out with a huge training glider that flies incredibly slowly - the Wills Wing Condor 330 - and Eric had me run on flat ground learning how to hold the glider, feel it rising off my shoulders, and come back to a stop supporting it. I slowly started working up the hill - getting my feet off the ground a little bit on my first lesson and gradually moving higher to make the flights slightly longer. The first few lessons are all about take offs and landing - controlling the angle of attack so that the wing flies when you take off and learning to feel ground effect, find trim speed and slowly push out to slow the glider upon landing.

My fourth lesson with Eric was Friday and I'm still flying high - I moved up a glider to the smaller Condor 225. Losing 105 square feet of sail meant things sped up and it took me a couple of tries to confidently power down the hill on launch and a couple more flights to be able to feel the right time to flare on landing. But by the end of the day my launches were strong, my flares were getting crisper, and I flew straight flights at a couple of different speeds to complete the tasks for my H1 novice rating. One multiple test later - I'm the proud holder of a temporary novice card and looking forwards to flying off the 300' launch on my way to an H2 license.

Eric was kind enough to strap a go-pro camera to my glider and post the footage. Yes - that's me skidding in on my knees the second time - but keep watching. By the end of the day landing smoothly, on my feet, with a crisp flare made me feel a mile high.

Driving home I thought to myself - In some ways I feel satisfied right now. I've accomplished a lifelong dream of mine - my feet have left the ground and I've felt, for 20 seconds at a time, the joy of pure flight. In some ways though I feel hungrier than ever. Those accomplished soarers - the hawks and vultures that spiral up in the thermals that rise around our training hill had better watch out - one day soon I'll be with with them climbing up into the blue skies.

Point and shoot camera's aren't

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:00:40 PST

I just bought a new camera and am so happy with it I'm wondering what took me so long to upgrade.

I've had a succession of point-and-shoot cameras since in the last ten years - but I've noticed for the last couple years that I don't take many pictures. And I don't take many pictures because all my pictures seem to look horrible. It's true that I can take good looking picture with my 6 megapixel point-and-shoot: of brightly lit non-moving scenes. But birthday pictures of small children running around in poorly lit rooms? Impossible - either too dark or too blurry or completely washed out by the direct and close flash.

Enter the DSLR. I do have a rudimentary understanding of aperture, shutter speed and ISO and understand that to get the most from my camera I'll have to learn more - but even on fully automatic I'm amazed by the superior light and detail. Compare two successive photos taken on full automatic of a room lit by a window - one from my A570 and one from my new Rebel T2i:

Do I have to say which came from the point-n-shoot and which came from the DSLR?

I'm looking forwards to enjoying taking photos again...

Good Eats Tex-Mex Style

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:11:31 PST

Everybody who knows me knows I like to cook. Learning to cook decent Asian food has been my obsession for the last couple of years but I've also really enjoyed the Tex-Mex stylings of Lisa Fain at Homesick Texan. I've made a enough of her recipes to trust her recommendation and added her newly published cookbook to my Amazon Wish List before Christmas.

Last week I got a chance to use my new cookbook and made four recipes when we had company over for dinner. I think all four are unique to the book - I hadn't seen them cross the blog at any rate. I had 3 winners and one recipe I may have to retry. Not too bad for the first time.

The "Salsa Fuego" recipe was the least successful attempt - I think I got too much adobo on the chipotle pepper it called for and the salsa was really smoky - too dark to be edible to my palette and I didn't serve it. Waste not however - I plan on using the salsa (with some citrus and olive oil additions) as marinade for a tri-tip next week. If you want a roasted tomato flavored salsa I highly recommend my go-to salsa recipe instead - a knockoff of Papalote's Salsa that features roasted pumpkin seeds. I'll probably give Salsa Fuego another try.

On the other hand the Habanero Carrot Salsa was awesome! Carrots gave a sweet flavor (and great color), the habanero adds spicy/fruity notes, and it's thinned with chicken stock which definitely adds to the meatiness of the taste and texture. This was easy to make and universally praised. Don't be scared off by the habanero - this was only low/medium in heat.

I also made the Red Rice recipe from the book and this was excellent if a touch too spicy for my kids. Those canned chipotle-in-adobo peppers pack a punch! Next time I make it I'll probably throw in some diced carrots and a handful of peas...

Finally the main course was Gas Station Style Pork Tacos. This consisted of cubed pork marinated for a 6 hours in a fantastic sauce - then fried in a skillet over high heat and wrapped in freshly fried corn tortillas. The secret to enjoying this recipe is to feature the pork - I made tacos with just a scoop of pork, a spritz of lime and a pinch of cilantro. Excellent flavor - I'll be making these again.

I've still got all sorts of interesting recipes to make from the book and am feeling pleased already after making 4 first-time recipes for company without disaster. If you're interested in some quality Tex-Mex downhome cooking check out the Homesick Texan.

Side Projects

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:49:48 PST

I hadn't done a satisfying side project in a long time. The last one that springs to mind was some simple PyGame typing games I made for my daughter when she wanted to play a computer game but couldn't get the hang of a mouse.

She's a little older now and is in first grade. We have a great home-school/tutoring co-op setup going and really only have to worry about the curriculum for first grade social studies. Recently my wife asked me to put together some worksheets for the "Symbols, Icons, and traditions of the US" portion of the California State Standards for 1st grade social studies.

True to my usual form I took the opportunity to play with software - I wrote a little script that takes directories of YAML files and runs them through some Jinja2 templates to produce a little website. You can see the resulting educational website and check out the code on github.

I took the opportunity to play with some html5 and css3 and didn't even try to shoehorn support in for IE - Chrome and Firefox both support the <audio> element, CSS gradients, CSS transitions and rotations, etc so the site looks quite spiffy in modern browsers but results may vary dramatically in older and less standards compliant browsers.

James and Real Faith

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:27:10 PST

I preached last Sunday. Right now the lay brothers who share in the preaching duties are going through the Book of James. We just finished Galatians - I guess we're striving to be fair and balanced!

Anyways - anyone interested can listen to my take on James on Sermoncloud. In studying for the sermon I discovered D. Edmond Hiebert who was a long time instructor at Mennonite Brethren Seminary down at Fresno Pacific University. Hiebert wrote a lot of commentaries and has an interesting thesis about the book of James - if you're interested his essay "The Unifying Theme of the Epistle of James" is available online and is worth a read.

Counterfeit Gospels (Chapter 2 Response)

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:39:36 PST

My wife and I are co-blogging our way through Trevin Wax's Counterfeit Gospels. See my recap of Chapter 2 here and the rest of the posts in the series in related articles at the bottom. Stephanie responds below:

In Chapter 2, Trevin Wax pairs falling into the trap of the Therapeutic Gospel with misunderstanding the gospel story. (Trevin Wax pictures the gospel as a three legged stool of Gospel Story, Gospel Announcement, and Gospel Community, with each counterfeit being a particular misrepresentation of one or more legs of the stool). So, if we have an improper understanding of the Gospel story � the work God came to do, is doing and will do in the future - we could be susceptible to this counterfeit.

How does the therapeutic gospel spring from a mistaken understanding of the Gospel story? I would like to suggest that it is the narrowing and improper emphasis of the gospel story that leads to this counterfeit. The narrowing occurs when we equate the gospel to justification (the penal substitution model) and the improper emphasis manifests itself when the focus is Me. Specifically, me being happy and fulfilled!

For example, a variant of the Fill-er-up Gospel commonly preached in today's churches is the 'how to' sermons � How to have a better marriage, How to raise godly children, How to manage your finances/stay out of debt, etc. These topics are not the gospel story, however they may be implications of how the gospel story works out in our lives. Should one only preach the gospel story on Sunday mornings? I don't really know the answer to that question. But I do know anecdotally, that some pastors have made a mishmash of the above �how to� topics and the gospel, resulting in belief among their listeners that the good news is that if they are following God, everything will work out in marriage, family and all personal areas of life.

What the therapeutic gospel does is take the focus off God and His kingdom and places it on human self actualization. The aim then becomes to sand off the �rough edges�. Have a problem with gambling? There is a gambling anonymous group you can join. Going through a rough patch in your marriage? Sign up for marriage counseling from our pastor. Feeling unfulfilled and generally apathetic? Come join our small group Bible study on �. Under the therapeutic gospel, sin becomes a problem, confession becomes accountability, repentance doesn't get emphasized and grace gets taken for granted.

If the point of your life is to be happy the therapeutic gospel will find its way into your theology. Trevin Wax wants us to understand that �God loves us too much to only give us comfort and prosperity....He is forming us into the image of His Son�.

Food for thought: What is the role of suffering in the therapeutic gospel and what is the role of suffering in the Christian life?

Comments regarding Mike Wells

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:23:12 PST

Mike Wells of Abiding Life Ministries International recently died. As a result my blog experienced a steady stream of people googling for information about him. I wrote an essay in response to a sermon I heard Mike Wells give back in 2005 and it seems to be the only Abiding Life criticism out there so other people have linked to it and it has pretty good page-rank. Search for "Mike Wells" and up pops my little essay. I'm guessing many friends of Abiding Life stumbled across my essay in the last couple of weeks and moved on but one person stopped to engage me. Nick left a lengthy comment that I appreciated and thought was worth reproducing in full:

Hi,

Read your blog for the first time, re: Mike Wells' sermon. Interesting stuff. I can understand where you're coming from, but I don't think the message points you listed from his sermon actually sum up his broader body of teaching. I've known Mike for more than 20 years and his emphasis has always been on 'Christ in you, the hope of glory' as Paul writes in Col 1:27. While I wasn't there at the service you described, I have consistently heard Mike teach that a daily awareness of Christ, as He lives His life in us, reminds us that we are forgiven, and also that the struggles of today can be 'cast upon Jesus' as he strengthens us through His Holy Spirit. What Mike always stressed was that the only effort that counts is the spiritual effort Christ accomplishes in us. If we are boxing, running or striving in a spiritual sense, then itcx is possible because we are daily trusting in Him for our wisdom, strength and motivation. Mike never said daily devotional time, reading the scriptures, persevering, fighting addiction etc. was unnecessary. Instead he emphasized that none of this achieves anything without the revelation of the 'mystery' to which Paul refers in numerous passages. This is not some esoteric teaching, but basic truth from scripture. Christ is the mystery - and as you quite rightly point out - many evangelicals today struggle with how to make the Christian life 'work.' While I admire Bonhoeffer's example, his suggestion about 'costly grace' is not only a contradiction in terms, but a contradiction in theology. Yes, Christ paid the price for us. And I agree that thinking - now I'm saved I don't have to worry about how I live - is a dangerous belief. But the point of the Holy Spirit coming to live in us was so that we could have the 'mind of Christ', as well as His peace, joy, etc. He calls us into His service. And His service can be very costly. But His grace is in no way earned, or deserved. We are called to give and give and give of ourselves for the service of others. We can do this because His grace is sufficient for all our needs. He never stops giving and giving and giving. I understand the parable of the talents to be just this sort of picture. If the talents are understood to mean God's riches in glory, His grace, then those who invest it and use it are praised by their Heavenly Father. But the one who sat on it and didn't use what he had been entrusted with -was like the Pharisee whose view of God was akin to an angry, demanding judge. Grace is always free, but we can't truly enjoy it unless we are passing it on.

I don't mean that we shouldn't care about personal failure, but rather that we recognize personal failure as just that: something 'I' got wrong. When I am striving to live like Christ, I am worshiping an icon. When I daily let Him live in and through me, then I am transformed. In a literal sense the Gospels were a transitional period - but I think what is meant by that expression is: Jesus came to teach, heal and demonstrate His power as the only perfect Christian who ever existed. But the whole thing wouldn't have made sense unless He not only died, but rose again...and ascended into Heaven...and then sent His Helper, the Holy Spirit to prove that His life could be lived - not perfectly - but joyfully as was shown through the Book of Acts.

Telling the alcoholic that he needs to imitate Christ (without understanding that the HS is available to help) is about as useful as saying that changing his life doesn't matter because he's always forgiven. Few people struggling with these sorts of issues would happily declare that their problem doesn't matter now that they're forgiven. They know it does matter. And the only way they can begin to emerge from addiction etc. is if they do so knowing that they are forgiven, and that the Holy Spirit will strengthen them and guide them out of addiction. Maybe Mike's sermon that day didn't completely make sense. Fair enough. But I know that he talked about the 'abiding life' because John's Gospel was written to emphasize the absolute dependence that we must have on Christ in the form of His Spirit to accomplish His will. I don't mean to discredit what you were saying, and I know that Mike's message sometimes sounded too easy to be true, but so much of what he has taught in the past has been as I've described. He always demonstrated the indwelling life in a wonderfully wise and gracious manner, encouraging people to trust Christ for all their needs. Mike died three days ago while doing mission work in Costa Rica and the reason I stumbled on to your blog is because I was trying to find out more as to the circumstances of his death. Your blog came up. It's good to see someone questioning what they hear in sermons and teaching. Too few Christians are doing so. If you disagree with what I've said, don't hesitate to reply.

God Bless Nick

Nick - thank you for engaging with my essay about the Mike Wells sermon I heard. Obviously you have appreciated the ministry of Mike Wells and yet your comments are kind and irenic. I greatly appreciate it - if you read my initial blog post that links to the essay I tried to convey my hesitation at spending time criticizing someone near and dear to people's hearts. My motive in engaging the message of the sermon was to try to spur the congregation I am a part of to think more deliberately about how they understand the Christian life to work on a day-to-day basis and what that means for how we function as a body.

I was keenly aware that its easy to succumb to an attacking mentality when you set out to criticize something; it's also easy to become defensive when you're criticized. Like you, the people in my Congregation I talked to were pretty relaxed and interested mostly in clarifying both what I had to say and where I may have misunderstood what Mike had to say.

You said "I don't think the message points you listed from his sermon actually sum up his broader body of teaching" and I have to confess that this is possible. I'm not that familiar with Mike Wells or Abiding Life Ministries. Before I wrote my essay I spent some time browsing articles at http://abidinglife.com/ to try to gain a little more familiarity. I'm also very familiar with people who have been mentored by Mike Wells - like you they are personal friends of his and and they have been heavily influenced by Mike's overall message over the years. From this level of familiarity Mike's message didn't sound strange or even that unexpected to my ears - he said some things more explicitly that I had already picked up from other people.

I should also say I have no objection to some of Mike's main slogans and themes. "There is nothing that the nearness of Christ cannot cure" - sounds pretty good to me. "Christ in you, the hope of Glory" - I better like that one - that's Scripture! I've seen the illustration many times: your problems are in one hand and Christ in the other - which hand will you focus on? And that also sounds like it may be good and sensible advice.

What I had heard many times before and clearly heard from Mike that morning that I do disagree with was the idea that the Christian life should be lived without effort on our part. I admit here that this is not simple and straighforward. There is a message of rest, there is the acknowledgment that it must be God who works in us to will and to do. By no means do I advocate a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps sort of Christianity where getting it right is simply a matter of trying harder.

I wouldn't quibble with your formulation that when we are exerting it is possible only because of the presence of Christ living in us. Or to phrase it a little differently - our exertions only do us good if they are driven by the life of Christ in us. What I didn't get from Mike, what I haven't heard from any other ALMI-folk is that sense of nuance. What I have heard is the negative commands to "give up", "come to the end of yourself", "stop trying", "realise you can't do it" sometimes followed by the positive command to abide or to rest. This word to (some) believers comes as a word of condemnation and discouragement. This message was so strong I would identify it as the theme of the sermon I heard and I want return to it later.

You also said: "While I admire Bonhoeffer's example, his suggestion about 'costly grace' is not only a contradiction in terms, but a contradiction in theology." I'm only guessing here that neither you nor Mike has ever tried to give Bonhoeffer a sympathetic reading. I don't know if you poked around on my site enough to realise I have a series of studies through Bonhoeffer's classic The Cost of Discipleship - this has been a book I've returned to frequently in my adult christian life so the comment by Mike (and your own comment) naturally catches my eye. The point of "costly grace" (if I can exegete Bonhoeffer for you) is not that we earn or deserve grace as you correctly point out - the point of costly grace is that we must correctly esteem the value of the Grace of God. "Cheap Grace" for Bonhoeffer is the grace we casually bestow upon ourselves apart from relationship with the Son of God. Bonhoeffer saw a Church that casually assumed God's grace while actively leading away from following Jesus and called upon his fellow believers to recognize that God gave his Son, that Christ shed his own blood, in order to be able to invite us into His family and His divine life. Costly Grace is not intended to be nor rightly understood a contradiction at all and Bonhoeffer remained Lutheran in his understanding of salvation, justification, and grace.

It seems to me that you intuit Bonhoeffer's point when you say "He calls us into His service. And His service can be very costly. But His grace is in no way earned, or deserved." But I'm not sure sure what you mean about personal failure when you say we should recognize personal failure as "something 'I' got wrong". Even more you lose me when you say "When I am striving to live like Christ, I am worshiping an icon." - I really don't know what this means.

I did agree with your definition of a transition period: Jesus is demonstrating who He is as messiah but will only fully be revealed in power and character by his death and resurrection. However - I very clearly got the sense that what Mike Wells meant by "the gospels are transitional period" was that we aren't to take Jesus words in the Gospels as commands for Christians. This is a theme I have also heard from other ALMI influenced people - that the words of Jesus in the Gospels are not for Christians but are to people still under the law. It is a mistake, from this point of view, to read the Sermon on the Mount and think that as Christians we should try to love our enemies.

This is the other major point of disagreement I felt with Mike's sermon. I suspect this is some of what your comment about "striving to live like Jesus" is aiming at even if I don't understand the icon bit - for me living the Christian life is a matter of entering into relationship with Jesus and by God's grace and empowerment seeking to follow him. Following is most directly done by hearing and doing what he taught. This is not simply a matter of following a new law - much of what Jesus has to say transcends simple "do" or "do not" commands and penetrates to our hearts. Yet I believe Jesus did and does intend that we hear his words and set about to obey them.

Phrasing it like that (and using words like obey, obedience, discipleship, etc) seems to be contrary to the message of Mike Wells as I have heard it both directly and indirectly so let me also note a couple of points of agreement. I definitely agree with last point: Christian ethics are incoherent outside the person of Jesus. Going around telling people to be more moral doesn't save them and ultimately the Christian life can't be lived outside relationship with Jesus, an indwelling of the Spirit, and communion with God. I am also clear that the process of sanctification, of discipleship, of growing in grace and knowledge, of maturing as believers only comes upon a solid foundation of understanding that Christ died for me, a sinner, that I am saved not because of my works but despite them, that the love of God is not conditioned upon my performance for Him but rather that I strive and am able to strive because I am loved by God and He dwells in me. However - I believe it does mature believers a disservice to teach (as I thought I heard Mike do) that we should not exert ourselves, that there is no effort in the Christian life, that we shouldn't be "trying", etc.

Haven't written more about Mike Wells since 2005 - despite enjoying a good argument I try not to make an occupation out of finding people to criticize. And honestly I felt even more reticent writing this essay than I first did now that Mike has passed away.

One thing I have considered in the meantime is the pastoral necessity of considering your audience and this both strengthens and reduces my criticism of the Abiding Life message as I have heard it.

It seems to me that Mike had a keen awareness of a particular trap or perhaps two - counterfeit gospels if you will - that express themselves in Christians who believe they must earn their relationship with God and who are consumed by guilt over sin and failure or who are tempted to reduce relationship with Christ to morality or ceremony. The shorthand I hear for these two counterfeits is "condemnation" and "religion".

Given an audience that falls into one of those camps I understand the pastoral appropriateness of the Abiding Life message. But I believe that at least as many Christians are influeced by a false Gospel that teaches that God loves you, saying a prayer once saves you, and now you can do whatever you want secure in the knowledge that the main point of Christianity (going to heaven when you die) has been secured.

To those people the Abiding Life message is at best incomprehensible: My problems are in one hand and Jesus in the other? How about I look at my new car instead of at my hands? And at worst it reinforces their contentment with their eternally secure salvation which requires nothing more of them and will get nothing more - including the nearness of Jesus. They don't need a cure! They're going to heaven aren't they?

At this point I agree with (and am compelled to quote at length) Bonhoeffer. This has been my personal experience in Christianity and I am convinced it is every bit as big a problem as "religion" or "condemnation":

The Cost of Discipleship, Chapter 1
This cheap grace has been no less disastrous to our own spiritual lives. Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it. Instead of calling us to follow Christ, it has hardened us in our disobedience. Perhaps we had once heard the gracious call to follow him, and had at this command even taken the first few steps along the path of discipleship in the discipline of obedience, only to find ourselves confronted by the word of cheap grace. Was that not merciless and hard? The only effect that such a word could have on us was to bar our way to progress, and seduce us to the mediocre level of the world, quenching the joy of discipleship by telling us that we were following a way of our own choosing, that we were spending our strength and disciplining ourselves in vain�all of which was not merely useless, but extremely dangerous. After all, we were told, our salvation had already been accomplished by the grace of God. The smoking flax was mercilessly extinguished. It was unkind to speak to men like this, for such a cheap offer could only leave them bewildered and tempt them from the way to which they had been called by Christ. Having laid hold on cheap grace, they were barred for ever from the knowledge of costly grace. Deceived and weakened, men felt that they were strong now that they were in possession of this cheap grace�whereas they had in fact lost the power to live the life of discipleship and obedience. The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works.

Bonhoeffer had no new commands to offer, no program of works to set up, no new moralism to establish. He is merely concerned that we hear the call of Jesus to follow, and that we do in fact follow where Jesus calls - and he resented deeply the German Christianity that turned men away from following Jesus with the word "Grace". I would encourage you to read Bonhoeffer if you haven't done so and it strikes me, in fact, that the last paragraph of Chapter 1 expresses the Christian life in a way that doesn't seem that incongruent with message of Mike Wells.

Happy are they who have reached the end of the road we seek to tread, who are astonished to discover the by no means self-evident truth that grace is costly just because it is the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Happy are the simple followers of Jesus Christ who have been overcome by his grace, and are able to sing the praises of the all-sufficient grace of Christ with humbleness of heart. Happy are they who, knowing that grace, can live in the world without being of it, who, by following Jesus Christ, are so assured of their heavenly citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in this sense of the word. For them the word of grace has proved a fount of mercy.

Thank you Nick for taking the time to write to me. I hope I've been as gracious as you were - and know that I mean what I said about Christian unity. In Christ we are brothers even when, maybe especially when, we don't see things eye to eye but recognize Christ in each other anyways.

Counterfeit Gospels Chapter 2 - The Therapeutic Gospel

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 23:03:46 PST

My wife and I are co-blogging our way through Trevin Wax's Counterfeit Gospels. See the Related Articles links at the bottom for the rest of the articles in the series.

Chapter 2 begins an examination of some of the gospels that are counterfeits of the real thing. Grouped together under the title "The Therapeutic Gospel" these variants emphasize different aspects but focus on our human need for happiness in a way that is at odds with the Biblical message about who we are.

Happy Meal Gospel

First up is the Happy Meal gospel. Wax talks about his son as toddler wanting to go to McDonalds but I think its really just the marketing chutzpah of the name of the menu item that makes him use it. I confess I hadn't ever really thought about it - a meal that promises Happiness!

The Happy Meal gospel occurs when we make felt human happiness our ultimate value and goal. Wax sees as typical of this gospel a scene in the evangelical-friendly movie A Walk to Remember where the heroine, arguing with her pastor-father trumps his arguments from scripture with "I think God wants me to be happy."

Fill 'er up Gospel

The Fill 'er up gospel is another variant of the therapeutic gospel that uses more explicitly therapeutic language. Here happiness is still the goal but the means is increased self-esteem. For the fill-er-up Gospel humans just need to abandon their poor self image and recognize their true worth in order to be happy - like a car low on gas a simple addition of the fuel of self-esteem promises to restore functioning.

Pastors in this version of the Gospel are there to encourage and motivate. Wax identifies typical motifs like "the real problem is deep down we feel we're not good enough to approach a holy God" or more straightforwardly motivational messages like "there is a hero within you waiting to be awakened" as markers of the Fill 'er up gospel message. It's all about YOU! And with a little help YOU can be who YOU were meant to be!

Paid Programming Gospel

The Paid Programming Gospel is the result of using salesmanship to pitch the gospel based on the benefits it brings. "Come to Jesus and your life will get better". This is true - but it depends on how "better" is defined and too often "better" is defined as happier, more prosperous and the Christian life is sold on the basis of the blessings it will surely bring to your life.

God as Vending Machine

Finally and most vulgarly is the God as Vending Machine approach. The various flavors of the prosperity gospel fit here - God, it teaches, is obligated to bless you and give you whatever you desire. You pay the fee of faith or obedience and God will give you your selection from His array of goodies.

Wax rightfully points out that there are more subtle versions of this heresy - most people can spot the flaws in Kenneth Copeland's theology of blessings but what about promising that God always honors our obedience with blessing? Some Churches offer money-back guarantees for their giving - tithe, they argue, and God will surely bless your finances. More subtly - how many times have you heard the plea to serve God by going on a mission trip, adopting an orphan, giving to support charitable work with the promise that God responds to our obedience with blessings?

Why they are tempting

The middle section of the chapter was on spotting the counterfeits, identifying the things they get right but also the results they produce in the lives of believers. Finally Wax talks about combating these counterfeit Gospels in our own lives.

Part of why they are appealing or not even always obviously wrong is that the counterfeits contain truths - maybe even truths we sometimes do not emphasize enough! Humans certainly have worth - but we have worth because God loves us, God does not love us because of our intrinsic worth. God is indeed faithful to keep his promises and He does bless His children and many blessings are promised to those who are faithful.

Those promises and blessings are not contracts, however, they are indicative of the nature of God and they are accompanied by stories and admonitions to trust in God who acts in ways we cannot understand. God relates to us as his children - always acting for our good but not always in ways that are comprehensible to us.

If we see God as a vending machine we will end up in a crisis of faith when tragedy or suffering befalls us. Haven't we been faithful enough? Surely God isn't breaking His word?

Therapeutic language minimizes sin - and leaves us outside of Scriptural language and provision of grace and repentance.

If the blessings become the point we miss the point and can't see Jesus because we're so busy focusing on our family, our business, our prosperity.

To combat these tendencies Wax proposes that we make sure we are focused on God. You are not the center of the Story - the Story is about Jesus. Your desires and hopes and dreams are not insignificant to God - but the aren't the point and may not be the best for you anyways! We most not focus on ourselves but instead should focus on God.

When we do this we can find our joy in God and our worth and identity in the Gospel. Are you looking for the blessings? Are you in it for the rewards? If we can find satisfaction in God alone, if we can place our sense of worth in our identity in Christ, we are nearer to comprehending the Gospel and less likely to fall prey to the counterfeits around us.

My Thoughts

I have to admit I don't have a lot of first hand experience with the Counterfeits Trevin Wax identifies. Consequently none of the portraits he paints really feels that familiar to me. That isn't to say that they don't exist - I have bumped into the "name-it-and-claim-it" variety of Christianity that reduces God to the great vending machine in the sky - but in general my own Christian experience has been mostly free of these counterfeits.

I suspect that the "Happy Meal" gospel is the most subtle counterfeit so far because its premise is often unstated. Baldly stating "the Good News is that God wants you to be happy" is clearly ridiculous. But much of evangelical teaching and preaching does seem to be oriented around becoming satisfied, fulfilled, contented, enriched, etc etc. All synonyms in some way for happiness - and an imbalance that can lead to a Happy Meal expectation from the Gospel without ever coming right out and stating it.

I also appreciated the discussion of the Fill-er-up gospel. The focus on "positivity" in Evangelical circles has long irritated me - although it may just be revealing of my personality that the local Christian radio station's motto "Positive and Encouraging" has always irritated me and any hint of "Motivational Speaker" style communication from the pulpit makes me cringe.

I've also really noticed the trend of therapeutic language replacing the language of Scripture in some circles lately. The "Celebrate Recovery" movement seems to do this to some degree and it produces Christians who prefer therapeutic concepts and attitudes to Scriptural ones - the language of "sin" is harsh and condemning while "addiction" is an extrinsic human flaw we're not personally culpable for. "Confession" becomes therapeutic confession where everyone "shares" and is "honest" with one another - but no one would dare to challenge anyone else because that would create an unsafe atmosphere. And so forth - until the language that Scripture itself uses becomes unfamiliar and harsh to our therapeutically conditioned ears. This is tragic.

This is not to say there is no place for therapy or therapeutic language - it is just that for Christians it should not take the place of the Church and therapeutic language should not drive out the language Scripture uses.

Most convicting to me personally was the section on combating these counterfeits. Do I take Joy in the presence of God? Do I find my fulfillment and identity in Him? This sounded to me like John Piper's Christian Hedonism - "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." This is a notion I agree with, but struggle to practice. If our Gospel does not lead us into companionship with God, however, if it it does not call us enjoy and glorify Him than we certainly gone wrong somewhere.

Counterfeit Gospels (Chapter 1 Response)

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:48:22 PST

My wife and I are co-blogging our way through Trevin Wax's Counterfeit Gospels. See an introduction to our series and Stephanie's recap of Chapter 1 here.

I'm happy to have a co-blogger and a goal to keep things moving on the old blog. Lately I have taught classes, preached, and written reams of personal correspondence - there's a lot going on but not much has made it to my blog. I've also kept up, more or less, with my reading but haven't blogged about any of the many excellent books I've read lately.

It's nice to change all that. Like Stephanie I already had a predisposition to like Trevin Wax's Counterfeit Gospels. I've known for a long time that something is lacking in Evangelical presentations of the Gospel. And despite the renewed focus on the Gospel in evangelical circles lately which Wax alludes to, I still see something missing in many presentations of the Gospel.

For example in 2009 I highlighted a brief clip of Matt Chandler (who wrote the foreword to Counterfeit Gospels) preaching from I Timothy at the Desiring God conference. His focus here is on making the Gospel the center of all teaching and I said:

Matt Chandler believes in preaching the Gospel to Christians - but the Gospel is not limited to "believe in Jesus and you won't go to hell when you die"!

I've also been generally encouraged by reading folks like Scot McKnight to see the Gospel as bigger, more expansive than the formulations I heard around me and have blogged about that in this space from time to time. Given this background I really appreciated Wax's metaphor of a three-legged stool as a symbol for the presentation of the Gospel. Remove any leg - and the stool topples. He rightly drew attention to the dangers of the counterfeit - it resembles the real enough to be true, but may not be nourishing enough to sustain us.

For Wax the three legs of the Gospel stool are the Gospel Story, the Gospel Announcement, and the Gospel Community. I've never heard exactly these categories attached to defining the Gospel before so I'm looking forwards to examining them in-depth.

Intuitively I appreciate his divisions: the way the legs reinforce one another makes sense to me. From my perspective the Evangelical wing of the Church focuses on the Gospel Announcement but by discarding the as inessential the Gospel Community and much of the Gospel Story they get the announcement wrong too. "Jesus died so you can go to heaven when you die" doesn't bear much resemblance to the actual proclamation Jesus made.

And similarly more liberal wings of Protestantism focus more on the Gospel Community and perhaps the Gospel Story as well. But by discarding the Gospel Announcement that salvation comes to sinful man through Jesus alone they end up misunderstanding much of the Gospel Story and the resulting Community only bears some of the marks that should typify the Body.

So what does Wax consider to be the Gospel Story? Chapter 1 focused on the Gospel Story and, as Stephanie discussed, defined the Gospel story within the Creation/Fall/Redemption/Restoration framework. I've heard of this framework before from people like Tim Keller but haven't spent a lot of time considering if it is a fruitful one for understanding Scripture. It does have some obvious fruits - I'm in agreement with Stephanie that much of popular Christian thought is confused about the role of the Old Testament and this framework solidly unites both Testaments into a single story.

Additionally I always have an eye towards the cosmic end of the salvation story - my main complaint about understandings of the Gospel that only tell a sin/salvation story is that they minimize the cosmic scope both of sin and of the nature of salvation. Framing Jesus in the story of God's good work both past and future properly refocuses us away from a purely individualistic approach. As Wax points out this is what the Scriptural authors do whether it is the "according to Scriptures" Paul or the Isaiahic refrains of Luke. Using the Creation/Fall/Redemption/Restoration framework helps us see the cosmic scope of God's work and frees us from a me-centered approach to the Gospel.

Counterfeit Gospels (Chapter 1)

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:10:37 PST

I never seem to blog here anymore...

To fix that I'd like to introduce my first guestblogger - the metawife and I have been reading an interesting book lately by Trevin Wax entitled Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope and would like to blog our way through it. Our current idea for format is that we will take turns describing the chapter and our reactions with the other partner writing a response. I admit to some trepidation about starting a series (especially since "Part 1 of 5!" has become a punchline for those in the know) but hope this will inspire me to more faithful writing.

Stephanie will be leading off with her take on the first chapter. I guess this means that I'm on the clock!

Counterfeit Gospels Chapter 1 (stephanie's take)

Imagine, for a moment, that you had set out to join a book club. Professing a desire to read good literature you join a group that boasts a book a week (if you can keep up). A little daunted you go to a local bookstore and pick up Gone with the Wind, which is the selection of the week. Throughout the next week Gone with the Wind is your constant companion. Arriving at the book club meeting a few minutes early you quickly finish the last few pages. As you walk into the room your attention is immediately drawn to your fellow members' matching yellow and black book covers. Your book cover is white with a picture of Scarlett O'Hara on the cover. You are puzzled and begin to suspect you missed something important. The meeting begins. The discussion is lively and the book club members are friendly and funny. At a lull in the conversation you bring up how Scarlett's obsession with Ashley Wilkes really shaped and drove the most important decisions in her life from her marriage to Charles Hamilton, her decision to purchase the sawmills and her dislike of Rhett Butler. The silence following your comment is long and uncomfortable. Finally someone speaks up, �But I thought she married Rhett Butler, how could she dislike him?� Profoundly shocked, you grab the book of the lady sitting next to you and see a prominent �Cliff Notes� printed across the front of her book.

The shock and confusion experienced in the above situation mirrors the feeling I've had listening to the presentation of the gospel by Evangelicals (I will use the term evangelical to denote non-mainline, born again Christians). A conventional example of the gospel statement will begin, �God created the world and Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve then sinned and had to leave the Garden of Eden, and because Adam sinned we are all born with a sin nature now. So we are all guilty and deserving of death in God's eyes. Then God sent Jesus who died on the cross and then he rose from the dead and if you believe in Jesus then you won't have to go to hell and can spend eternity in heaven with God.� And in its worst characterization �If you died tonight would you go to heaven?�

There are many problems with this widespread �Cliff Notes� presentation, but I will mention two that resonate with me. First, it shortchanges the cosmic scope of God's intervention and salvation of humankind and focus' solely on the act of atonement itself. Secondly, it encourages a tendency to think much of the Bible is superfluous in this day and age. The confusion about the Old Testament is widespread as evidenced by the quotations from Leviticus in the recent gay marriage debates and Christian�s lack of understanding how to respond to the charges. Currently the #2, #3 and #5 spots for the Google search �is the old testament...� yields: Is the Old Testament still valid, is the Old Testament true and is the Old Testament relevant, respectively.

Enter Counterfeit Gospels by Trevin Wax. In the first chapter he argues that the gospel needs to be understood and thought about as a three-legged stool. First leg is a gospel story, the second leg is gospel announcement and third leg is gospel community. Wax believes that our gospel presentation needs to be firmly rooted within the context of Scripture. He writes �So the gospel needs the story in order to make sense. The announcement may be glorious and true, but without the surrounding story, it can be misunderstood. It's important that we get the story right; otherwise, we will lose something integral to the plotline and wind up with a counterfeit.� (p.29)

Trevin Wax describes the four movements in the gospel message (think classical music): Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. It is in this section that the beauty and power of the full gospel message begins to shine through the lines of this book. I have a quote from each section, which I believe gives a good overview of each part.

Creation

The gospel story begins with God's love in action � a creation of the world in all of its magnificence and placed within that creation, man.

�One Hebrew world sums up the picture of Genesis 1 and 2: shalom. Peace. Earth was full of God's shalom, the kind of peace in which everything works according to God's intention. The world was made for human flourishing, where we could live in joy in the presence of our Maker, worshiping God by loving Him and one another forever. Looking past all the galaxies and planets, looking through space and time, over and above the exotic creatures that filled the earth, God set His affections on us � His human image-bearers-whom he created to share in the joy of His love forever.� (P.31)

Fall

Representing humanity, Adam and Eve chose to disobey God � rejecting His rule over their lives. Because of their sin � sin and death entered this perfect world, marring God's beautiful and perfect creation.

�Sin is personal. We are guilty of cosmic treason, asserting our own lordship over the lordship of God. We seek worth and value in something other than the Source of all worth....Make no mistake. Sin is ugly. And until you get a grip on just how ugly our sin is, you will never fully comprehend the gospel story....At the time of creation, the earth is shalom-filled. After the fall, the earth is shalom-shattered. God's intent to have humans rule the world rightly has been, temporarily put on hold. Now work is toilsome. Childbirth is painful. Natural disasters sweep over our lands. Nations rise against nation. Death snatches away our loved ones, and we sense its unrelenting approach hot upon our own necks as well. Even the created order groans under the weight of our sin.� (P.34-35)

Redemption

�...the narrative of redemption doesn't begin in the New Testament. God reveals His rescue plan just after He exiles Adam and Eve from the garden. He promises that one of Eve's descendants will make right what she and Adam have done wrong.� (p.35)

Wax then goes into detail of God choosing Abraham, and through Abraham, the nation of Israel and finally the exile of Israel.

�The Old Testament is a story in search of an ending....Enter Jesus...This Messiah-King takes upon Himself the punishment for human sin. His atoning sacrifice reconciles us to God, inaugurates His kingdom, and becomes the means by which we are remade into God's image.� (P.37)

Restoration

�The story doesn't end with redemption. God has promised to renew the whole world, and the Bible gives us a peek into this glorious future....In a far greater way, Christians are to live in the present by anticipating what God has promised in the future. We can smell the fragrance of new creation. The restoration of the world as already begun, but has not yet fully taken place. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the life of heaven has invaded earth. The kingdom of God has begun to advance.� (p.38)

As I have read the 9 ½ pages it takes for Trevin Wax to get through his gospel story, I am intrigued and inspired by the implications of God creating and attempting relationship with mankind. For each of his sections I have briefly outlined my thoughts.

Creation. It can be tempting, I think, to confuse man's sinful tendencies with man himself. God created us in all of our human-ness with our emotions, our brains and our abilities and they are all good. Sin has wrecked havoc on mankind, which is displayed by our emotions, brains and abilities, but let our complaints and anger be directed towards the problem of sin and not at creation.

Fall. Modern day presentations of the gospel message tend to undercut the full impact of the fall on God�s creation. Adam and Eve�s sin is an important point to make, but we seem to jump from their sin to the fact that we are all now born with a sin nature. I tend to think �why do I have to be born with a sin nature just because Adam and Eve sinned?� The picture Trevin Wax draws gives a fuller view - we are born into sin because the entire world is now mired in sin � there is not one thing in God�s creation not affected.

Redemption. I love the fact that God has always had a plan to get man into a relationship with Him. The whole Bible � Old Testament and New Testament - is the story of God�s attempts to establish and re-establish communion with His creation.

Restoration. In this section I hear echoes of N.T. Wright�s Surprised by Hope. I am intrigued by the idea that I may not go to heaven when I die � at least not in the popular understanding of it. In fact I may come right back to this earth, it will be a new heaven and a new earth to be sure. Frankly, I�m more than a little relieved by the idea that heaven might not be an endless concert of praise music�perhaps I�ll be a farmer.

Gunwalker is a conspiracy

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:41:47 PST

Saw a link tonight from somebody who agrees that the ATF/Gunwalker scandal smells like a deliberate op. I had earlier posted a link to to a story about the State Dept selling military weapons to the Zetas and speculated that when two different Departments of USGOV are moving weapons across the border it smells like a plan, not a foul-up to me. I know, I know, never explain with malice when stupidity would do and all that...

But after seeing the stories about the Feds cutting deals with the Sinaloa Cartel I begin to wonder if all the news is related. Well, apparently I'm not the only one thinking these thoughts.

Does Jesus save us from God?

Tue, 03 May 2011 06:00:00 PST

This is a response to an ongoing conversation over at Kevin Gonzaga's blog Speak Faithfully. Kevin posted his thoughts about our understanding of God in Why do we believe God is not a threat?. I won't recap his arguments here but I left one brief comment which he engaged in a follow up post asking for more response. First my comments and Kevin's questions. I said:

The wrongness of the portrayal of Jesus saving us from God is exactly why I have never felt penal substitution is adequate to fully explain salvation - http://metapundit.net/writing/atonement_theology

In his follow up post Kevin responded:

Simeon, I read your blog and appreciated how you brought out the fact that there is a multitude of ways scripture talks about how atonement happens and that there is not one clear �biblical� model for atonement. I agree with you that this situation helps us to relate the Gospel to other culture and other people and even remember our conversation months ago where you brought up Loki/trickster popularity in the hacker sub-culture and how Christus Victor could play well into that context.

Each model seems to break down at a specific point and it is clear that you, like others throughout history, believe that penal substitution breaks down because Jesus saves us from God. God saving us from God fails to make sense to you. I do not share this belief. If God is truly in charge of everything, if God is the one who decides what is sin, if God is the one who decides what the punishment for sin is, if God decides who to forgive and whom to damn, I do not see how we can be saved from anything but God.

Did Satan determine what was sin? Did Satan decide what the punishment for sin was? Did Satan decide whom would come to a saving faith in Christ and who would not?

I would ask you to explain two things so I can better understand your argument. First, in your opinion why is it offensive/nonsensical that God saves us from God? Second, why did many people in the Old Testament fear God, and why is "fear of the Lord" deemed an appropriate response to encountering God in a variety of passages?

So my response - the first thing I want to note is that what we are are implicitly arguing here is Calvinist and Arminian views of theodicy. I want to return to that point but first - arguing from what has been said explicitly: Is Jesus God? If Jesus is God then the notion that Jesus saves us from God is inherently nonsensical. In the strong sense of the phrase Jesus would be opposing God and working against His will. If this is not so and Jesus is working in harmony within the Godhead then we must say that God has chosen to save us in Jesus. If Jesus is in fact working in some way contrary to the character and nature of God, if "Jesus is saving us from God", I must observe that any theology that postulates that Satan is a loyal servant of God but that Jesus is not has gone wrong somewhere!

As to the fear of the Lord - I actually agree with your overall thrust that the Holiness and "Otherness" of God is not an image we can safely do away with. I have no desire to neuter God and Isaiah 6 is the passage I turn to when I think of encountering God. It is right that we perceive God as He is and recapture the Fear of the Lord where it has been lost. Our God is a consuming fire! We must also, however, recognize that God's character is described by Scripture as tender, merciful and loving towards His people. I have been greatly influenced by Jacques Ellul's exegesis and see the Old Testament account as full of God choosing to limit Himself in His dealings with us for our sake. Who may abide the Day of His Coming? And yet in mercy for our sakes He came as a man. I think Ps 103 captures this sense of God well:

8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. 9 He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever. 10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities. 11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; 12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. 13 As a father pities his children, So the Lord pities those who fear Him. 14 For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. 15 As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. 16 For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more. a 17 But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting ...

Now back to my first point. You said

If God is truly in charge of everything, if God is the one who decides what is sin, if God is the one who decides what the punishment for sin is, if God decides who to forgive and whom to damn.

Did Satan determine what was sin? Did Satan decide what the punishment for sin was? Did Satan decide whom would come to a saving faith in Christ and who would not?

Here I return to the observation that underlying the discussion of our view of God is our answer to the problem of theodicy. You do indeed aptly summarize the dilemma but I find myself agreeing with Roger Olson:

Arminianism begins with God's goodness and ends by affirming free will. The latter follows from the former and the former is based on divine revelation: God reveals himself as unconditionally and unequivocally good, which does not exclude justice and wrathful retribution. It only excludes the possibility of God sinning, willing others to sin or causing sin. If God's goodness is so mysterious that is it compatible with willing and actively rendering certain the Fall and every other evil [...] of human history it is meaningless. A concept that is compatible with anything and everything is empty. [...]

Arminianism is all about protecting the reputation of God by protecting his Character as revealed in Jesus Christ and Scripture.
Arminian Theology, p99-100, ellipsis mine

Thodicy is all about resolving the question of God's power and goodness in the face of evil. One way of resolving this is to uphold God's power in a deterministic sense while observing that His goodness operates at a level we do not adequately comprehend. This is the reformed position as I understand it.

The other option is to uphold God's goodness and observe that His power does not have to function deterministically in order to uphold the Biblical depiction of God. This does not have to lead inextricably to open theistic understandings as evidenced by Catholic and Eastern Orthodox understandings of God's will. Even within the broad confines of Evangelicalism most anabaptists, Anglicans, free-will Baptists, and the various Wesleyan influenced groups span the range from liberalism to fundamentalism yet hold orthodox Christian views that include a God who does not deterministically bind mankind to sin and damnation.

I recognize that the Scriptural witness is complicated. Some passages indicate the immutability of God's decree while others say that He changes His mind. Accepting foreknowledge and predestination without determinism involves logical contradiction. The same is true for the Reformed position of course - accepting determinism while not making God the author of sin involves logical contradiction - but what everyone along the entire axis of orthodoxy (to coin a phrase) can agree upon is that we cannot lay the charge of evil at God's feet. Whatever our view of God we cannot set Him against us as the unalterably Other, as remote as any Lovecraftian "deity". In the midst of all of our theological ramblings we must continue to accept the profound and childlike truth that God is Love. Against this truth the idea that Jesus saves us from God becomes an offense - a failure to recognize that inexplicably, beyond our understanding, in all His Glory and Majesty, God loves us.

Who is in Charge?

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 23:13:54 PST

I've read a couple entries from this blog when they've been posted on reddit. It's an anonymous blog by a man who is visiting 50 Churches in his neighborhood this year and blogging his thoughts about each one.

Recently he attended a Church of the Brethren congregation and wrote about his experience. What struck him most about his Sunday morning stay was the sense in which the Church seemed to belong to the congregation instead of to the Pastor. I'll let him explain...

Most of the churches I�ve attended, even visited, in my life have been pastored by a personality. There is nothing wrong with the spokesman having some moxie; it helps make their messages memorable. The truth is, the identity of a church is usually established by those in control; those in control are usually those in out front; those out front are usually the ones leading the way

By contrast at this congregation it seemed that each person he met took ownership of the Church. Many people participated in the service, several people helped him find his place in the Congregation, and the Pastor's charisma was not the center or focus of the service. In particular:

The pastor finally did get his time in the order of the service, and he brought a thoughtful message for the church to prayerfully consider and apply. What it lacked was vision�by that I mean that I noticed the absence of the pastor trying to sell me on a program, a direction, or a ministry to sign up for. It was really refreshing!

This particularly caught my attention. I've recently had conversations with fellow believers recently where we talked about the desire for CEO-style leadership in the Church: someone who has a plan, tells us what to do, and becomes the point man for the whole Church. This is very much the style of most large sucessfull Churches in the US. And yet I'm happy to have leadership that functions as shepherds of the flock. Why don't I place a high value on pastoral charisma, why don't I feel a need to see the pastor as the public face of the Church? [1]

Perhaps it is that the other side of that coin - the Church expressed by the gathered saints - seems to me to be much more like the depictions of the Church in the New Testament. I believe the Body is best expressed by the gifts distributed among the Body and a stranger who enters a healthy Church is ministered to, no matter who it is that he meets. That, more than a single charismatic figure, seems like a mark of God's presence among us and answers the question Who is in Charge? by pointing to Christ.

1. One thought that occurred to me in that conversation is that as an observer of the open source software community I've seen very effective groups with totally different organizational structures. I know from personal observation that you don't have to have a charismatic and powerful leader to successfully accomplish a great deal.

Don't worry about Brian Wilson - worry about Charlie Sheen!

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 06:00:00 PST

Recently Brian Wilson visited Charlie Sheen. This raised concern among Giants fans due to Sheen's history of drug use and erratic behaviour - see this story in the Chronicle for example.

Since Wilson's visit Sheen has made headlines with bizarre pronouncements like:

I am on a drug, it's called 'Charlie Sheen'. It's not available because if you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.

and:

I'm tired of pretending like I'm not special. I'm tired of pretending like I'm not bitching, a total fricking rock star from Mars, and people can't figure me out, they can't process me. I don't expect them to. You can't process me with a normal brain
www.guardian.co.uk

In retrospect it's obvious we were worried about the wrong guy! Brian must have passed on his sea-captain's hat(s) of +6 media baiting to Sheen. Alas, not all mortals can wield such weapons in safety!

Oooh, fancy!

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:33:06 PST

This is a belated valentine's day shout-out to a couple of my favorite food blogs: the (awesomely named) Crepes of Wrath and White on Rice Couple. I read a bunch of food bloggers and many of them are specialized (mexican-by-way-of texas food, asian and middle-eastern cuisine, and so on). Lately though I've been getting a little more into baking and fancy food prep that looks as good as it tastes. A lot of inspiration for that has come from Crepes of Wrath and White on Rice.

So when I saw this recipe for Caramel French Toast I didn't even have to read the recipe to know what I was going to do for a meal on Valentine's Day. I cut heart-shapes out of texas toast white bread, made French Toast (dip in mixture of cream, eggs, home-made vanilla extract, fresh grated nutmeg, a pinch of salt, a dash of brandy, and a squeeze of lemon, then fry in butter) and then sprinkled the pieces with vietnamese cinnamon mixed with sugar and caramelized the tops with a torch. A finishing sprinkle with powdered sugar and drizzle of maple syrup completed the plate...

Thoughts?

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:53:38 PST

Silent Night

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 09:55:05 PST

Merry Christmas, fellow Guitaristas (and peace on earth to all people of goodwill.)

This is my first attempt at a guitar lesson video - mostly just to figure out the webcam and try out some video editing software under linux... I'll crosspost this at learnchordmelody.com.

Mennonite Retrospective

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 21:49:03 PST

Well this entry reveals (in case you didn't know already) that I'm a theology and Church history geek. While all Church history is interesting to me I am particularly interested in the Believer's Church tradition and the various Old Order groups they eventually became in North America - Anabaptist and Pietists, Mennonites and Brethren are all particularly interesting to me because I feel a degree of kinship and relation.

I actually haven't had many Mennonite contacts but I do have a dogeared copy of The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision and have long been impressed John Howard Yoder's examination of theology from an anabaptist perspective. With that background in mind - pretty much a positive view of Harold Bender (if not sure about his thesis) and John Howard Yoder - this thread on mennodiscuss.com really set my hair afire. There were too many good quotes in the thread to quote them all, too many to let them all go... A few of the head turners:

The key flaw in my judgment in Bender, Yoder, et. al. was restitutionism. Bender thought he could "jump over" 4 centuries of Mennonite history to arrive at a "pure" Anabaptism, just like he also thought that the Anabaptists had jumped over 14 centuries of corrupted Christendom to arrive at a "pure" New Testament church...

The theory of restitutionism tries to give a supposedly intellectual justification for being the "true" church. It doesn't work. Every authoritative community requires some tradition to justify itself Every one of the above bullets is based on a traditioned reading of scripture (i.e., a reading of scripture informed by and guided by some tradition).

Again, I must resort to metaphor to make my point quickly: Bender/Yoder let the monster of restitutionism in the Mennonite house, because they thought it would destroy the impurities of "Mennonitism". To the contrary, it destroyed the very essence of the Mennonite tradition. That is why I predict MCUSA will become a miniature mainstream Protestant church. Having fed tradition to the monster of restitutionism, it has no authority, no communal heritage to fall back on. "He who lives by the sword,...."; he who debunks tradition will be himself debunked.

And again a little later

But as a matter of "fact" (apart from the theoretical validity of Yoder's position), I disagree that Yoder's "hermeneutic" has brought a "vitalizing vision" to the Mennonite community. He identified nonresistance with the pacifist movement of the late 60s. This in turn led many Mennonites to assume that whatever else that movement stood for, was part of the truth of the gospel. As a result, feminism, environmentalism, and the morality of the homosexuality activity became regarded as essential to "Anabaptism." (I am aware that the MCUSA has--barely--escaped endorsing the last. But Lancaster Conference--formerly the bastion of conservative mainstream Mennonitism--is on the verge of accepting female ordination.)

Note the crucial irony (stated in cliched Mennospeak): Yoder's theology make the Mennonite Church more worldly, not less.

As far as describing Anabaptism as a "hermeneutic," my response is precisely that that hermeneutic is wrong. It is not justified by the NT, by history, by theology; it does not further Christian faithfulness.

Wow! And all ably defended. Fascinating reading and a pointer to an interesting set of essays (entitled Refocusing at Goshen College), particularly the Steve Nolt entry...

Alms Dealers

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:17:27 PST

Via Philip Greenspun I came across this interesting discussion of the way international humanitarian groups may facilitate conflict. Is it possible that high profile humanitarianism makes things worse, not better?

This argument parallels the argument that aid to developing nations retards their growth. I first became aware of this argument when reading Theroux's Dark Star Safari but have noticed with interest the last few years as African nationals such as Dambisa Moyo make the same argument. Who could be against a helping hand? But nothing is as simple as it seems...

Phishing fail

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:22:08 PST

Got this in my email - if your phishing filter is activated by spelling mistakes this ought to send it off the charts:

    EFTPS ONLINE
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    Your Federal Tax Payment ID: 01037591600 has been not accepted

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Wow!

I cannot do otherwise...

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:57:56 PST

I've been thinking about how to describe my recent Church troubles to an uninvolved party - and I think the following pretty well captures where I'm at:

I attend a Church - lets call it Neighborhood Community Church or NCC for short. NCC has a leadership group of ministers, elders, and deacons. As a congregation we do not to have a head pastor in charge or a board of elders that runs things; the leadership is lay leadership, elected from the congregation, and decisions are made by consensus within the leadership group and in the congregation.

Recently one of our ministers left to work at another Church. In the aftermath of his departure another member of the leadership team accused the remaining minister of a variety of un-Christian conduct. The accusations are serious but are of the internal/attitude sort - envy, pride, and jealousy. Most of the actions that precipitated the accusation are themselves not wrong and certainly open to interpretation as to motive and intent.

The minister so accused denies the accusations. The rest of the leadership group also denies that anything serious has happened - while there were personal tensions in the leadership group these were not the fault of one individual and were addressed within the context of the leadership group.

Inevitably within a Church special relationships develop between some people. Perhaps it is ideological and theological alignment, perhaps it is ties of family or friendship; whatever the cause some members are closest to the individual making the accusation while others are closer to the accused or the other members of the leadership team. The result is that the Church is divided with some feeling strongly that the accusations bear enough weight to disqualify the minister from service while others feel that the accusations, unsupported as they are, should not be cause for action.

Despite no close personal ties to anyone on the leadership group I find myself firmly rejecting any actions based on unsupported accusations. It is un-Biblical to attempt to unseat a minister based on unsupported (and highly subjective) charges. Further it just doesn't make sense: to pursue such a course against the denials of the rest of the leadership group means they must all ultimately be deposed. There is no outcome I can see from pursuing such a course that does not lead to division - and that is precisely what we're experiencing as a body...

When one member of the body hurts, we all feel it. That's the way the body works - so even when I disagree with members of my Church family the pain that they feel leaves its mark on me as well. I would ease the sting if I could - but what else can I do while still doing what is right? I don't see any way - so here I stand.

The People of God from Beginning to End

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:28:16 PST

I preached recently at Church - if you are interested in listening you can stream or download an MP3 from sermoncloud.com.

Keeping an eye on Mexico

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:26:30 PST

I guess I've blogged about the war on drugs quite a bit lately. Reading police critics like Radley Balko has convinced me that based purely on its effects on our society alone, the drug war is a bad idea. I hadn't considered the effects of America's drug usage on other countries.

That changed for me yesterday when I found Borderland Beat - a blog that covers organized crime on the northern border of Mexico. Did you know that nine reporters have been killed in the last year by narco-gangs? That fifteen Mayors have been killed since Calderon was elected in 2006? That increasingly assassinations are followed by the murders of the police and prosecutors assigned to investigate them? (eg: crime reporter Armando Rodrguez was shot and killed in his driveway while getting ready to take his daughter to school. The two prosecutors assigned to the case were both killed a month later.) That increasingly the clashes between Police and Narcos or worse, between Narco and Narco are large scale involving military hardware and multiple fatalities? One article mentions clashes that involve the death of 19 narcos, another in the same region that resulted in the deaths of 25 narcos, all after the massacre of 72 migrants by narcos, and the list goes on...

I should warn that Borderland Beat isn't for the faint of heart. I've never seen so many severed heads and dead bodies! But it is important to realize what is going on in our neighbor state and come to grips with the reality that it is at least partly a result of our policies. Over the period of about a year the Tucson sector Border Patrol in the US seized 940,000 lbs of marijuana from smugglers. That's three quarters of a billion dollars worth of pot - and it's money flowing to organized crime driven by our demand and our policy of criminalization. I don't know how Mexico can recover from the levels of violence and crime that it experiences but I can't see any argument for the criminalization of drugs that adequately deals with the horrific conditions we are causing elsewhere.

Instapundit missed the best part

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:47:57 PST

Instapundit links to this account of a minor mishap with a Gatling Gun with the comment "I still want a Gatling Gun, of course..."

He missed the best part though - the article notes that the instructor had minor cuts from bullet fragments and "also injured his right forearm while moving to a prone position during the incident." Based on what I'd do if a Gatling started misfiring in my general direction (and given that the Gatling in question was mounted on the turret of an armored car) - I'm guessing he "moved to a prone position" at a high rate of speed! Abandon Ship!

Waiting for Superman

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:00:00 PST

Winston Churchill famously described the course of WWII in 1942 "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

I am more optimistic than that - in the effort to reconsider how education is accomplished in this country I tend to think we are at the beginning of the end - and about ready to start trying solutions and making progress instead of fighting political battles that have little to do with education and everything to do with bureaucracy, money, and power.

Why am I optimistic? Popular culture seems to be turning against the educational establishment; among other leading indicators the buzz about the new movie Waiting for Superman is percolating through the media. NY Mag had an insightful article on some of the players in school reform and their reactions to the movie - I encourage everyone interested in education to read it.

Site Refresh and the rest of Bonhoeffer

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:47:54 PST

I used some of my Labor Day holiday to fix some things on this site that were bugging me. I know - I'm a geek.

The old Bamboo theme was bugging me so I've dropped to a new more minimalistic theme. Four different shades a grey - woohoo! I've also been meaning to improve the discoverability of content on the blog - I've added the ability to show related articles and am displaying the categories on individual posts again. I've also got a cool site-exploration tool in the works - so stay tuned for that.

Finally - I've got a list of devotionals done chapter by chapter in response to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's classic The Cost of Discipleship. I've had the last few essays waiting to be spell-checked and formatted - I finally got around to that and filled out the Bonhoeffer section with the rest of the essays. I covered the 32 chapters in 29 essays that were originally delivered as opening devotions at my Church. Re-reading the last few made me realize how long it's been since I read the book - and also perhaps how much my desire to be a disciple has receded as parenthood, career, and life have taken my attention. It's time to get re-acquainted with Bonhoeffer's thoughts on Discipleship!