Spong Bob Heretic Pants

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Press Release:

It was announced today that plans are in the works to produce a multimedia extravaganza of anti-biblical proportions.

John Shelby Spong, former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, and Dan Brown, author of the best-selling work "The DaVinci Code," are teaming up to write a series of novels. The series will be entitled "The Jesus Who Never Was."

Spong and Brown took notice of the success of Evangelicals Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins with their "Left Behind" series and plan to outdo them in every way.

"We have already contacted Robert Mapplethorpe to do the cover art and illustrations for the series. Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino have agreed to codirect the movies. Marilyn Manson and Pete Seeger are writing some of the theme music," said Spong in a recent interview. The graphic novels will be done by Frank Miller, who is best known for "The Dark Knight" and "Sin City."

Brown shared his excitement, "We really hope to break some new ground in the area of revisionist religious history. We have basically abandoned every vestige of traditional Christianity in favor of a much more interesting, albeit equally probable, set of events. Only the characters' names remain unchanged."

The buzz is already loud concerning this project. The Jesus Seminar, while jealous that they did not think of the idea first, plans to capitalize on all the attention that is generated by releasing a series of devotionals titled, "Jesus As We See Him."

Christians are also weighing in with some positive assessments. Joe Somebody, a 20-something spokesperson for the Emergent Church, had this to say, "'The Jesus Who Never Was' meets the most important criteria for us. The series is both authentic and relevant. Spong and Brown are being true to themselves, thus getting a 10 on the authenticity scale. They are also exhibiting a tremendous departure from the biblical narrative, thus scoring at least a 9 on the relevance meter. The use of a multimedia platform is also really cool." Mr. Somebody has been hired by Spong and Brown to do web design.

The Southern Baptist Convention has also taken a positive stance towards "The Jesus Who Never Was." Filbert Gamoogen, head of SBC public relations, is especially interested in this new project. "We were actually starting to get bored. This new series promises to give us all something to be mad about for at least the next 3-5 years."

More on Moron Bible Interpreting

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For Part 1 go here.

Ten of us can sit together with our Bibles and our experiences and argue doctrine. We will probaly end up with 10 denominations by the end of the day. Is there any other standard to which we may appeal that can help us in our pursuit of the truth?

It is a great burden lifted when we no longer labor under the deception that God intends for us to take our Bibles and reinvent Christianity in every generation.* There is a more objective standard by which we can test our interpretations of the Bible. Instead of depending upon a scattered reading of random authors from the Church's history, why not delve into the most centrist writers, beginning just after the New Testament period, giving serious attention to the representative Patristic writers, and moving through the Middle Ages, Reformation and Modern eras, giving primary attention to those writers who are representative of the thought of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church, rather than those who occupy the fringes of Christendom?

I heard a medical doctor speak of the use of anecdotal evidence and its need to be balanced by "the literature" of the medical profession. Such an approach would well serve Christians who place much stock in their own experience. We take our experience into account, but it must finally defer to the authority of "the literature" of the Church's consensual exegesis.

The presence of the "Great Apostasy" mentality among pietists explains much of the suspicion of the theological enterprise and rejection of Church tradition. Ironically, those who most readily cast aside tradition most fervently cling to the traditions they have developed in the vacuum they have created.

I used to preach on campuses, street corners and other public places with some pentecostals. When we would challenge people with the truths of the Scriptures some would respond, "Well, that's just your interpretation." We would counter by saying, "I'm simply telling you what the Bible says. I am not interpreting it." Wrong answer. Even though we may have only quoted a Bible passage to the audience there was still interpretation involved. The right question to answer is "Is this interpretation right?" and that does involve looking at who is doing the interpreting. It is not true when Christians disavow interpreting the Bible by claiming that they simply believe/preach "What the Bible says."

Bible interpretation is practiced by all. There is no such thing as simply "the Bible says." When we quote the Bible, even without commenting on it, we are commenting on it. We quote it in order to make a point. Context determines what our interpretation is. If we simply quote the Bible without comment, we leave our listeners to draw the conclusions that we are suggesting. When we quote a passage of Scripture we are saying, "Here is what the Bible says and this is what it means." The latter comment is implicit in our quoting of the Bible.

*I am greatly indebted to my friend Vinny for this observation.

Master of Whaaa?!

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I’ve just graduated from seminary with a Masters of Divinity. Oh, don’t bother heaping the appropriate coals upon my head regarding how disgustingly presumptuous such a degree sounds. What makes it worse is that I was in the “honors program.” All that means is that I was silly enough to think I had the goods to write 60-100 pages of research-oriented work about God.

I can hear the following exchange in my mind and am mortified.

“So, what degree did you get from the seminary?”

“I have a Masters of Divinity.”

It sounds for all the world like I am saying, “Yeah, sucker, I have mastered divinity. I am master of the divine. All the mysteries of the eternal, the holy have been comprehended by yours truly. What do you need to know? I’m the man with the plan. When it comes to religion, I’m the answer to the question “Who’s your daddy?”

Yeah, right.

I have another image in my mind. He-Man, Master of the Universe, crying out, "I HAVE THE POWER!" Except I raise a Bible over my head and my T-Shirt, hiking shorts, tennis shoes ensemble is transformed in to a radiant black shirt and collar number. As I glow with certainty and answers, the Skeletors of skepticism and heresy fall before my feet.

Whatever.

Don’t get me wrong. The seminary I attended was not a place of arrogance and presumption. Quite the opposite, I was instructed by virtuous people who recognize both the comic and important natures of what we are doing. These are people who are seeking to “do justly, love mercy and walk humbly” with their God. They helped me immensely. Much of what I say on this blog comes from what I learned under their tutelage.

4 1/2 years. 91 hours worth of classes. 6 hours of thesis. I just dropped the final copy on the dean's desk Wednesday mroning. The dud finally went “thud.”

What am I supposed to do now?

Honest and Irreverent Prayers Explained

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OK. What got into me last week? What was up with that post? Here's my explanation.

That post was simply a clearinghouse for some stuff that's on my mind, bothering me, etc.

I think that honesty with God is very healthy. We need to do better at telling God what is really digging at us. Trust me when I tell you, I am in greater need of this admonition than you are. If I was Adam I'd have had a whole fig leaf tuxedo.

1. I mean no disrespect to the Bible. I hold it in highest esteem. I simply want to encourage a true reaction to the Scriptures. If you find portions of the Word confusing, offensive, morally questionable (like the command to kill Canaanite babies), or, yes, even boring, tell the Lord. I promise that he is not threatened by your feelings. Also, he knows anyway. Upon acknowledging your true reactions you might find some help.

2. Teen sexuality. Hot topic. How do you deal with it? If you ignore the monster you are a fool. Young men and women should be taught respect for the opposite sex and should be encouraged to have a healthy fascination with them. Boys and girls are going to think about each other. A lot. Are you going to help them think holy, right, edifying thoughts? Or are you going to leave them to fashion their own paradigms? MTV will be happy to assist them.

3. Oh, the working man. Pillar of Western Civilization. Object of ridicule. I hope he's getting fed up. I pity the evangelical working man whose serving of home-cooked disrepect has religious flavoring. Have Christian husbands and fathers dropped the ball? Yep, big time. How are you going to help them out, Christian homemakers? Nagging ain't gonna get it done. Nobody like to feel like they are a disappointment, especially to the person with whom they have been made one.

4. Finally, the preacher and his hearers. I pity all involved. I've preached. I've listened. I've done both poorly. I sympathize greatly with those whose job it is to get up in the pulpit every week and talk about the most important things that exist. Blessings upon you, my preacher brothers and sisters. May you see the Lord in his Word and have the Spirit's enabling to speak well. Blessings upon you, fellow sermon-hearers. May we show up ready to do our part, which is to listen attentively and "be doers of the Word." May we consistently pray for those who have the resposibility to speak the Word to us. Amen.

Judge Not?

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“Judge Not!”

A recollection I had of my time spent street preaching was a common Bible quotation that was hurled at my compatriots and I quite often. It is taken from Matthew’s Gospel chapter 7 verse 1. One of my friends called it “the devil’s favorite verse.” He meant that it was the verse misused most often to turn a person’s attention away from what was pressing to what would assist him in justifying his sinful ways in his own mind. The exchange would usually go something like this …

Preacher – “The Bible says that God commands all men everywhere to repent, etc., etc.”

Listener – “The Bible also says, ‘Judge Not!’ You’re not supposed to judge anyone, etc., etc.”

Here is the passage:

Matthew 7

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

Now, what does it mean?

I think that the sense is reasonably easy to discern. The important qualification to the previous statement is that it is pretty easy to discover the sense of the passage if your agenda is finding the sense of the passage. If your heart is set to find some way to use that Bible against itself, then prepare for a fall into blind absurdity and contradiction.

I do not like tediously long Bible exposition any more than you do. I will be brief.

The passage in question is spoken by Christ as he draws the Sermon on the Mount to a close. He clearly limits the prohibition to hypocrites, telling them that they have no business judging others. Notice, Jesus tells the hypocrite what he can do in order to put himself in a position to judge correctly. After showing how the hypocrite can amend his ways he immediately commands people to make judgments about others. Don’t give holy things to dogs. How do we know who’s a dog? I think we’re going to have to make a judgment about people. We have to decide whether they are a dog/swine, or whether we can give them holy/precious things.

I know. It’s not nice to call people names, especially names like dog and pig. I vacillate in how I feel about name-calling. Sometimes it would feel good to say to some people, “Such your stinkin’ pie-hole, you swine.” I know there are people who would like to say something like that to me, and rightfully so. I suspect that kind of behavior is not what the Lord is advocating.

We should do our best in discerning the truth, applying ourselves to its pursuit with fidelity to God and his Word. We should humbly work out the ramifications of our discoveries. We should not be jerks about it.

Lesson: Don’t be a hypocrite. Make judgments that are righteous and be righteous yourself. Give God’s stuff to people who will appreciate it. Otherwise someone will walk all over you.

Here endeth the lesson.

That wasn’t too hard, was it?

Hack away.

Your Pastor's Sermon Title This Sunday

The Tyranny of Simplicity

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The Tyranny of the Simplicity-Mongers and
Their Misconceptions Regarding the Interpretation of Scripture

Systematic Theology is the most "Biblical" Theology. Biblical Theology is captive to the tenants of modernity through a Christian reaction to it. Historical Theology may or may not ultimately be concerned with answering the summum bonum question, "What is the truth?" Systematic Theology takes the best of Historical, Biblical and Philosophical Theology as they correspond with and accurately interpret the Scriptures.

Theological Method is practiced by all. Guild theologians may have done a disservice to laymen with the labels placed on the different aspects of theology. Systematic Theology does not sound as important as Biblical Theology, although ST can eat the meat of BT while spitting out all the bones.

Interpreting the Bible in accordance with our experience is one type of theological method. An eggregious abuse of this practice occurs amongst the modern tongues advocates. They lift the scanty, Biblical date from Acts and 1 Corinthians pertaining to "speaking with other tongues" and impose their experience upon it. This interpreted data is then offered as a restoration of a "lost" gift of the Church. One question for the Pentecostals, Charismatics, and others to answer is, "How do you know that your experience corresponds with that of the people in Acts and Corinth who 'spoke with other/unknown tongues?'"

One answer to this question is an appeal to the witness of the Holy Spirit. "God told me that this is the right way." This subjective response leads to another question, "How do you judge the accuracy/validity of your experice?" In other words, "How do you determine that the 'witness' is not simply your own emotions, mind, etc?" There must be a more objective standard. Also, this reasoning involves one in a hopeless circularity. I know that my experience is Scriptural because of the witness of the Holy Spirit. I know that it is the witness of the Holy Spirit because it in accord with the Scriptures. An on and on we go.

Honest and Irreverent Prayers

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1. For your "quiet time": "Lord, do you mind if I put on some music while I'm reading 1 Chronicles? It is excruciatingly boring in places. Amen."

2. For the young men in the youth group: "Lord, thank you for making [insert name]. She's hot."

3. For the husband who works all week and whose wife spends all week at women's prayer circles, bible studies, reading devotionals, listening to Christian radio, etc, etc, ad nauseum and then nags him that he doesn't do enough in God's service: "Lord, please tell my wife to shut up. She's only listening to you these days."

4. For the pew-sitter of moderate intelligence: "Lord, would it be possible for you to point our pastor in the direction of some preaching assistance? His sermons stink. The humor is corny. The stories are canned. And what he says about the Bible is not interesting, helpful, or theologically engaging. I know he's trying. Throw him a bone."

Next week I might make sense of these prayers for you. If you're good, eat your veggies, wash behind your ears and are nice to your sister, I might tell you the reason I wrote this post. Until then,

Hack away.

One Thought On New Orleans

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As I watched the news coverage of the devastation in New Orleans I saw hundreds of African Americans suffering. I was troubled as I heard some of them interviewed and their cries of help were so gut-wrenching.

One thing bothered me as I reflected on what I had seen. I was sitting in a predominately white church in suburban Atlanta and I thought, "How much more would the disaster have affected me if the faces on the TV who were suffering were white, upper middle class suburbanites rather than poor, black urbanites?" I am ashamed to admit that I think I would have been glued to the TV for the last week if the faces had been white.

I want to make a theological application. I'm not great at it, but it's about all I'm good for. Does anyone else out there suffer from my same ethnocentricity? How does this tendency affect my view of Jesus? Do I identify with him because I anglicize him? or americanize him? Would I feel less affinity towards him if I saw him for the 1st century Jew that he was?

Oh, I lament my stunted capacity to identify with the suffering of others. May the suffering Lord, who is the Lord of the sufferers, grant me the grace of identification with all of his children. This prayer may be especially pertinent as we remember another tragedy that occured in our nation 4 years ago today.

The Confessor - Part 3 (Union with Christ)

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See the gracious form of the prophet Daniel, the determined gait of the Apostle Paul, the unshakableness of Maximus the Confessor, as they stand in the midst of their trials holding fast to the everlasting truth of God's nature and experiencing his merciful kindness. Take note, dear Christian. There is nobility in the sufferings of the faithful. The Lord infuses these trials with glory, and we witness to the world of the self-giving, holy love of the Trinity. We are able to resist the pull to be self-consumed in the midst of trial. By the Lord who sought to comfort His mother in His own darkest hour we are empowered to reach a healing hand to others around us. This is not simply the vocation of the halo-crowned saint, but the beauty of holiness found in every follower of the crucified One.

We are not grim stoics, steeling our wills to stand unmoved in storm and trial. We are united with the One who is moved with the feeling of our infirmities. In other words, we feel deeply and this makes our steadfastness that much more of a witness to those who observe as we confess by our words and lives the truth of the Gospel.

Take heart. The person who does not seem to be listening to your testimony for the faith under normal circumstances may be persuaded to give you an ear when they witness your steadfastness in the midst of suffering.

I do not know if you and I will simply be like another confessor, Nicodemus, bearing witness for Christ in the face of those who oppose him. Those of us called to minister in his name may, like Nicodemus, adorn the Body of Christ with white robes. While Nicodemus prepared the Lord's Body for burial, we assist the living Body of Christ, united with Him in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, to prepare for marriage to her Head. May those of us called as clergy have the great privilege of helping the Body of Christ clothe herself with pure white robes of righteousness in preparation for her marriage to the Lamb. We may or may not have the high calling of writing theological treatises like the Apostle Paul or St Maximus, but we can bear witness, confessing the faith in the face of whatever opposition comes our way in the providence of God.

May we faithfully confess the Christian faith unto death. May we, like St Maximus, offer our very bodies for the Gospel of Jesus. By our lives - the exciting, the painful and the mundane. By our deaths - whether in long life and health, sickness, tragedy or martyrdom. By our words - in every circumstance, whether on the job, in the neighborhood, in public and private, at home or abroad. By our deeds - however simple, however sacrificial, however seemingly menial. By all we have, do, say and are. By our very being let us be confessors of the most holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - to His eternal praise and our eternal benediction.

And now to our heavenly Father, to His beloved Son, our Savior, and to the most Holy Spirit, the Comforter, be ascribed as is most justly due to the Almighty all honor, glory, power, dominion, strength and blessing, both now and forevermore. Amen and Amen.

Tip for Wanna-be Evangelists (like me)

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Douglas Wilson of Credenda/Agenda observes:

"And this thing that has the capacity to make story-telling glorious is love. Just as great teaching is loving a subject in the presence of students who are also loved, so it is with story. A man who loves the story he is telling, and loves the people he is telling it to, is a formidable bard. Something mysterious happens when story-grip sets in. One man writes a disheveled story, breaks numerous rules, and gets away with it. Another man writes a story with every hair in place, prim hands folded on the lap, and it stinks.Then someone else writes a textbook example of doing everything right, and it works anyway. Failures of story-telling are at some level a failure to love. Successes in story-telling are examples of love triumphing."

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