I’m sorry, but I really need to deconstruct this….

Some people follow sports, some follow reality television, some follow the news and the markets, while others, like myself, have in their quiver of interests more obscure fascinations.  So….I still occasionally observe the going’s on of a growing ecclesiastic franchise  that was fundamental in shaping, both for good and ill, my perspective of the church-scape of America.

Yes, I am again pontificating on the business-driven corporate culture of the megachurch, specifically as represented by NewSpring.

About once or twice a month, I make a point to visit Perry Noble’s blog, just to see which way the wind is blowing at that particular place. Just recently, I found this gem of insight, Two Types of Church Planters, wherein Noble, artificially and self-servingly I think, bifurcates church planters into two groups, those with The Victim Mentality and those with The Victory Mentality, a success-driven framework that would make any C.E.O., or L.Ron Hubbard for that matter, proud.

What I find in Noble’s post is an abject lack of anything resembling grace and humility, but more of an American and business-like ‘just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,’ attitude that stands in sharp contrast to the Christian ethos of generosity, humility, and mercy. Perry infers that he and his church did it, got successful without outside help or handouts, and it is inferred, so should you. Such attitudes are understandable because you generally do not expect quiet mercy and grace from a measurable-driven corporate entity, and that is exactly the foundation upon which so many American churches set themselves.

My overarching question to Perry is this: Good for you that you never had to humble yourself to ask for ‘hand-outs’ or discounts, but how did your acquire the funds to grow your church and to attend those ubiquitous ‘leadership’ conferences to begin with? I will tell you. You shilled for funds and then people gave you money in the form of tithes and donations. You did not design a product and sell it on the market to make a profit so as to use said profits to fund your excursions. So, how dare you chastise a poor, struggling church plant, essentially call them losers, that dares ask your multimillion dollar church for help. What one finds in Perry’s post is a breath-taking example of hypocrisy and pride. Quite frankly, I think a Divine favor has been set upon a church that they should not be able to attend one of Noble’s business/leadership seminars.

Ultimately, the hyper-focus on business-driven, and often narcissistic, leadership skills and the elevating of tangible measurables as an indicator of success leads a church to a place of arrogance and pride. The counting of ‘salivations’ is ultimately not the job of the church. Such is reserved by God for the angels on the day when wheat and chaff are separated. It may be bold hubris on the part of a church to take that task upon themselves so as to measure the success of their efforts and methods.

Further, the measuring of a persons righteousness by the percentage of their income given to a church is wrong on so many levels that I could exhaust hours on the subject, but so many churches do just that, teaching an errant doctrine of tithing, using inferred condemnation upon the already-redeemed Christian as a manipulative catalyst for giving in order to increase the bottom line of the business. Income is an easy measurable. Ask yourself this, if you attend NewSpring, how many times, in the course of a year, do you hear a message on tithing. When I attended, I would roughly estimate I heard a tithing message at least six times a year.

Sadly, many aspiring and eager church planters, seeing the growth, glamor, and success, seek in good intention to model their churches and methods after NewSpring, Elevation, and fellow travelers. (As an aside, if Elevation’s Code does not make the Christian nervous, make one squirm, over their somewhat cultic proclamations, especially that ‘pastor’s vision’ thing, nothing will. It deserves it’s own polemic post) Quite honestly, these franchises are not always wrong in all they do all the time. I believe you will find many therein who are fervent in their love for the Messiah. That all being said, one cannot give a pass to those who are fundamentally redefining the nature of  the church. I think, on the day of Judgement, there will be some small church in some big city that never grew large numerically but was faithful in their selfless caring for one another, that did not compromise the Gospel, that did not sacrifice orthopraxy on the altar of pragmatism, that will be far more highly exalted in the Kingdom that some multi-campus megachurch video franchise that lost sight of the fact that the Messiah is our faithful Shepherd gently tending after His sheep rather than an example of cooperate American leadership.

In closure, it is so interesting that NewSpring has ‘ownership’ classes rather than membership classes wherein you can speak to other ‘owners’. More disturbing business-speak. I thought Jesus was the ‘owner’ of His bride.

Some posts for you…

Read and be edified….

 Miss Kitty has an identity crisis

To Grieve and Die Well

Are we thinking when we say: I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord

Looking to Christ + Loving Sin = Futility

Damnable Prayers, Spoken or Implied (scroll down to Thursday, June 2, 2011)

The Lens of Grace and John 3:16

On Free Will, by the same speaker, thinking my thoughts, but with more lucidity:

(a bit long for a YouTube, but worth the time spent in viewing it)

What should happen when one embraces the truth of Sovereign Grace is eventually an attitude of overarching humility and a destruction of prideful moralism. Without regard to the correctness of our Christian soteriology, we all still struggle with the bent of our old nature, though. I have collected all the swag, those metaphorical tee-shirts and bumper stickers, to know that such is true. I still have those struggles.

As an aside and in context to discussions that revolve around issues of free will, I really, intensely, dislike that “God does not want robots to love Him” thing. I have heard it too many times and from good people, but I know that conceit is sometimes driven by a prideful emotionalism that leads to errant, unbiblical conclusions. It ultimately leads to place where we find a needy God Who tries to make Himself attractive to us so as to woo us. We often find, too, a faux therapeutic gospel.

There is nothing attractive about the cross, that Roman torture and death machine. The foot of the cross is for rebels who hate the true God and have no place for Him, ultimately for you and me. It is only His sovereign grace  and His ability to replace a heart of stone with a heart of flesh that draws us to the beauty of the Messiah. Too, that door you hear about in altar calls upon which sad, patient Jesus is always plaintively knocking, hoping that somebody might open it for Him….it is not the door to the heart of the unregenerate, an evangelical call, but was the door to the church in first century Laodicea, a damaged, complacent, body of believers.

I think about the following, and quite popular, video, one I have watched and commented on before. I know that it has ministered to many people on some level, and I do not question the authenticity of their faith.

However, and without regard to how strongly this video tugs on ones emotional strings, I think it unbibically portrays fallen humanity more as victim than rebel, than sinner. I also find egregious error in its depiction of a god who waits helplessly on the sidelines for the victim to decide, or find within themselves the ability to reach out for help to Himself.

Also, that worried, hand-wringing portrayal of god is not the sovereign, settled, in-control of everything in the created order Triune God revealed in the  Biblical texts. He does not struggle to draw His people too Himself. This portrayal of God in the following skit, comforting and approachable as he may seem, stands in sharp contrast to the completely sovereign God, the one who captured my own darkened heart and sin-bound will.

I do not need a God who simply throws me a rope and then struggles to clear a path for me so as to, when I finally make my way to him, simply dust me off and dance with me. None of that is the Gospel.  I need a God who breaths life into me. Again, I am not merely a victim, but a perpetrator, and I need a sovereign Savior. I love Him, albeit so weakly, so falteringly in my humanity in contrast to which He is worthy, because He sovereignty drew me to himself when I was in death-bound rebellion against Him. If you think that makes me a robot, than so be it.

[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_M0H5nrY8E]

One more thought: How bold must someone be to portray God in a skit? I think of Peter who deemed himself unworthy to even be crucified in the same manner as our Messiah, asking instead to be crucified upside down.

In conclusion, here is some text from the same Gospel that gave us John 3:16:

John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which has sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

John 6:65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.

John 15:19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Richard Sibbs: The Bruised Reed

If you have read the previous four or five posts, you find my thoughts on The Shack. Quite frankly, it made me feel dirty while reading it. I know such sentiment places me in a minority in regards to the many good evangelicals who read and find solace in books of this kind, but there I stand.

As previously mentioned, I have picked up where I left off in reading The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbs. I cannot recommend it more highly. It is one of those books where most everything found there-in in quotable and Christ-centric. In reading it on my netbook using the Kindle application, I find myself highlighting so much that sometimes little text is left without a highlight.

The Bruised Reed is not a book for those looking to find five steps to overcoming temptation or discouragement. You will not find tips on living a higher Christian life of complete victory, health, wealth, and prosperity. You will not find too many exhortations to just buck up and get out there and tithe more, witness more, be more involved in your church. You will not find exhortations to gin up some super-duper, extra-special audacious faith to make ‘the sun stand still’ as is so common in the fad-driven American church.

Within this book,though, one finds the Messiah, the God-man Christ applying the sweet balm of the Gospel to the troubled souls of Christian sojourners. You will find a merciful and kind Shepherd who will not beat you up with the Law, but instead you find a kind Messiah who knows you are but made of dust and understands your weakness. Indeed, it is in your weakness that He is most glorified. I would like to share with you with some quotes, pulled, for the most part randomly, from the Bruised Reed.

Ungodly spirits, ignorant of God’s ways in bringing his children to heaven, censure broken hearted Christians as miserable persons, whereas God is doing a gracious, good work with them.

Richard Sibbes. The Bruised Reed (Kindle Locations 138-139).

Suffering brings discouragements, because of our impatience. `Alas!’, we lament, `I shall never get through such a trial.’ But if God brings us into the trial he will be with us in the trial, and at length bring us out, more refined. We shall lose nothing but dross (Zech. 13:9).

Richard Sibbes. The Bruised Reed (Kindle Locations 709-711).

Consider the names he has borrowed from the mildest creatures, such as lamb and hen, to show his tender care. Consider his very name Jesus, a Saviour, given him by God himself. Consider his office answerable to his name, which is that he should `bind up the broken hearted’ (Isa. 61:1). At his baptism the Holy Ghost rested on him in the shape of a dove, to show that he should be a dove like, gentle Mediator.

Richard Sibbes. The Bruised Reed (Kindle Locations 150-153).

And as there are differences with regard to temperament, gifts and manner of life, so there are in God’s intention to use men in the time to come; for usually he empties such of themselves, and makes them nothing, before he will use them in any great services.

Richard Sibbes. The Bruised Reed (Kindle Locations 107-108).

He shed tears for those that shed his blood, and now he makes intercession in heaven for weak Christians, standing between them and God’s anger. He is a meek king; he will admit mourners into his presence, a king of poor and afflicted persons.

Richard Sibbes. The Bruised Reed (Kindle Locations 157-159).

…this bruising makes us set a high price upon Christ. Then the gospel becomes the gospel indeed; then the fig leaves of morality will do us no good.

Richard Sibbes. The Bruised Reed (Kindle Locations 122-123).

After conversion we need bruising so that reeds may know themselves to be reeds, and not oaks. Even reeds need bruising, by reason of the remainder of pride in our nature, and to let us see that we live by mercy. Such bruising may help weaker Christians not to be too much discouraged, when they see stronger ones shaken and bruised.

Richard Sibbes. The Bruised Reed (Kindle Locations 128-131).

I think what attracts me to this book is that it is a refreshing alternative to all the quasi-legalistic human-centric stuff that floods the Christian marketplace. Instead, it gives the reader the true Gospel, what God has done for you. Only when you begin to understand that God is not glorified by your performance that you begin to understand the Gospel.

As an aside, I think The Shack and The Bruised Read are, to some degree, competing approaches to how God renders mercy to suffering Christians. In The Shack, we find an a-biblical god that is more a therapist, it seems, while in The Bruised Reed, we find a Messiah who is a good Shepherd. Only in The Bruised Reed to I really find true Gospel balm, and unlike Young, Sibbs does not throw the Bible under the bus to bring the immanence, the nearness of a tender God to the reader.

Perhaps, when I run into those times when the font of my bloggeria intermittently  sputters and runs dry, I shall share more quotes from Sibbs.

The Shack: Part 4…I can go no further..

Let me preface this latest, and perhaps last, installment of my rambling  thoughts surrounding The Shack by saying that, without regard to the negative reviews I have read, I wanted to like this book. I wanted to find an authentic depiction of a struggle with fundamental tensions regarding the nature of a good God in a world of suffering. However, my experience in The Shack thus far leads me to think I would be wasting my time to wade through to the completion of Young’s excretal narrative. My primary objections to Young’s thoughts are theological, rather than literary, though I have those objections, too.

As a follow-up to the previous installment on my review of The Shack, I think Young almost verges into the realm of tri-theism in his depiction of a Trinitarian God. It was a subtle issue for me because, if I were prone, quite honestly, to stray from orthodoxy, I would probably drift in that direction. Too, it is hard for me to define why I see such an aberration in The Shack, but I know it is there. I think my impression stems from the distinctiveness, the separateness of the personalities found in Young’s god. I also find the physical incarnation of all three members of Young’s trinity to be disconcerting and unbiblical.

Further thoughts and concerns regarding Young’s unfolding of the Trinitarian nature of God refer to the lack of hierarchy found in his trinity. At one point, Papa tells Mack, “We don’t need power over the other…Hierarchy would make no sense among us.” However, we find the Christ being obedient to the Father, even unto death, an obedience found in a hierarchy based on mutual love, not power, but a hierarchy non-the-less.

Further mutations to orthodox Trinitarian theology occur when Young depicts Papa, his female African-American incarnation of the Father, bearing scars of the Messiah’s crucifixion, bringing confusion to each member of the Trinity’s redemptive role in securing the salvation of His children. Here we find, without regards to my concern for his seeming tri-theism,Young perhaps swinging towards a kind of modalism wherein there is actually little ontological distinction between the members of the Trinity.

The key is this: if one thinks good theology is but of a peripheral concern when approaching books that are, even if nominally fictional, theological in nature, that make clear, but questionable, doctrinal statements about God, then I will not be able formulate a convincing case for my concerns. One will be content to simply find solace in the easy sentimentality found in the Shack without regard to this influential book being a theological train wreak.

I am at a decision point, and I decide this: I will lay The Shack aside, review it no further, for I find myself parroting the same concerns as other discerning readers and reviewers. As said previously, I am already bent towards an often unhealthy cynicism, and this type of reading feeds that part of me. I want to read, now, something to clean the cerebral palate. I will go back to reading some old, dead guy named Sibbes.

The Shack: Part Three…or…the treacly trinity

There is so much to say, so much heartbreaking error in this book, I hardly know where to start. Here we find (and I have managed to arrive at Chapter 8), having dismissed early on, it seems, the authoritative nature of the Biblical texts, Young creating his own uniquely user-friendly trinitarian god.

In that eponymous shack, we find a clumsy Jesus, and the treacly trinity giggly like school girls over the spilled sauce, who we must now ponder His ability to hold one’s soul securely in His hands if He cannot hold a bowl without dropping it.

We find, too, Young’s god perpetrating crass racial stereotypes. He seems to portray Father God, his Papa, as, at least in this therapeutic incarnation, a cross between Aunt Jemima and the Oracle, the black woman who baked cookies in The Matrix. Mack later comments on Jesus’ unassuming appearance, and specifically on His big Jewish nose, the product, Jesus says, of the men on His mothers side of the family. Isaiah 52 and 53, this is not.

As I think about the god of The Shack and how this god interacts therapeutically with Mack, I think of a clichéd, puerile, and idealistic depiction of a group therapy session. There is lots of talk about love,  but there is an absolutely and stunning lack of gravitas in Young’s God. His is not so much a God to be worshiped in awe, but more so a depiction of how we think our better angels would look writ large.

Referring back to Young’s choice and reason for his god’s gender, I do agree that we should not anthropomorphically over-simplify our thoughts of God, and I think that this is a valid point that Young attempts to make from time to time in The Shack. I agree, too, and in my gift for recognizing things blazingly obvious, that the Father, being spirit, is not gendered in the same way as are the gendered creatures of His creation, but it is significant the Godhead refers to Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus instructs us to pray, “Our Father, Who Art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name…..” Father God has ontological reasons for us to refer to Himself as Father, and those reasons, I think, transcend any post-modern objections to the patriarchal social constructions of antiquity. It is with great arrogance and presumption that we assume to refer to the Creator in ways other than how He refers to Himself and how He instructs us to refer to Him.

As a literary aside, I do not think Young, thus far, does a convincing job of  communicating the visceral darkness of The Big Sadness. Young portrays Mack more as petulant than broken. For this, too, Young should be ashamed.

Perhaps in the next installment, Part 4, I will pontificate on Young’s treatment of trinitarian hierarchy, or lack thereof, in The Shack.

As for me, the hour is late, and I now prepare to journey to the land of Nod. 3AM, my time to awake to prepare for work, is not so far away.

The Shack: Part 2

In part one of my review of The Shack, I ended the post with a quote from the book that, if truly taken to heart by the Christian, would tend to undermine the foundation of the faith, the authoritative nature of the Biblical texts, and would do so with such a breezy dismissal that it takes one’s breath away.

The fact that large swaths of the evangelical church could entertain this book after  reading no further than the aforementioned quote, and more, endorse it, is a subject of great concern for me. Before elaborating further, I must admit that, beyond the unbiblical casualness exhibited by all parties at Mack’s encounter with Young’s version of a triune god in that shack,  I understand deeply the yearning for an authentic experience with God. I understand the burning desire, even if theologically errant, to have hard things explained and to be given a coherent reason for suffering. However, like Job, we will ultimately find that we must sometimes be content with the fact that God is God and owes us, the limited and created things, no explanation. For fallen people, that is a hard thing to swallow.

We must also affirm that the Biblical texts are a sufficient revelation of God’s nature, of redemptive history, of His self-revelation that we need not look to subjective experience or extra-biblical revelation to define the nature of God or what He desires to communicate with mankind, without regard to where we reside on the scale of modernity.

Young also does his readers a great disservice, he lies, when he infers that the God of the Hebrews was in constant individual communication with His children of antiquity, that modernity and the church militant limits itself when it limits itself to the Bible. At no point in Biblical redemptive history do we find God gushing over all ‘His kids’ with personal messages and revelation.

If I had a dime for every time someone has said something ridiculous under the auspices of divine revelation, that ‘God told me this’ thing, or the “God revealed to me that’  thing, I would be a less financially limited man.The Apostle Paul would be jealous of God’s informality with  today’s Christian.

More to follow…..

Also, to those who do not wish to navigate my bloggeria so much, here is the quote from The Shack to which I refer:

…the thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?

A book review, part 1: A bit behind the curve on this one..

Recently a friend from work lent me her copy of the Shack. I have read the reviews, am aware of the controversial nature of the book, and know that my perceptions of this read are going to be colored by the aforementioned. Even so,  and even if the wave of controversy surrounding The Shack has long since crested, I will now put down other titles I am reading, focus on The Shack, and render my thoughts on the book as I read my way through it.

First, I know that The Shack was, and is,  dearly loved by many. It’s lengthy stay on the New York Times best-seller list attests to that fact. I think it brought a sense of solace to many and made God seem warmly imminent, perhaps for the first time in their lives. I think many people have their own “Shack” somewhere in their history, and I know I do. We all, to some degree, struggle with the very real and very theological problem of persistent evil in the world, and The Shack is one such story of struggle, perhaps a theodicy of sorts.

Next, as mentioned earlier, I am aware of the theological controversy surrounding this book. The reformed tribe, among others, found egregious error, even heresy, in much the theological assertions in The Shack. Others pontificated that this is not a theological textbook, but a mere novel. “Lighten up, man!’  However, I say any theological talk, be it in a novel or a systematic theology, especially when it is warmly received my much of the American evangelical community, is worthy of critique, and what follows is mine.

The First Five Chapters:

From the first page, I find Young’s writing, quite honestly, a bit cloying, as if written by an earnest fourteen year old school-girl with but a modest amount of talent with the written word. Second, I hate overt emotional manipulation. Before going further, let me state that I am a bit of a romantic, at times. At the end of the movie, The Gladiator, my eyes were a bit moist. I found the framing device of Saving Private Ryan a bit sentimental, but, again, my eyes were moist when Tom Hank’s character dies at the end of the film. I have to admit, too, that as a father, Young’s writing made me feel Mack’s pain. I did get a bit misty.

However, is it possible to construct a more cynically and emotionally manipulative framing device than the one presented by The Shack?

First, we find Mack and Missy having just had a discourse on the nature of grace and sacrifice in Mack’s recounting of the story of the Multnomah princess, supposedly an analog of the Gospel, though I think a profoundly weak one. In that story, the princess voluntarily sacrifices her life by jumping off a cliff to her death, something apparently required by an Indian prophesy to save the men of the tribe who were all dying from some illness.  As an omen, perhaps, young Missy later asks Mack if God would ever ask her to jump of a cliff? Mack, his heart wrenched by Missy’s question, says no.

Soon after, we find Josh and Kate, two of Mack’s five children, involved in a canoeing mishap wherein Mack, his instincts as a life-guard in his younger days rising up at this moment of crisis, dives into the water and saves his son Josh from drowning. Upon returning to shore, crisis over – at least that one -  everyone safe and sound, Mack finds his youngest daughter, ten years old, if memory serves, ominously missing. The stage for The Great Sadness is set.

As the story unfolds, Missy’s body is never found, but the dress, now blood-stained, worn when she was abducted by her killer is located. It is found in a shack in the woods.

I am at the point now where Mack has received an invitation, via a message in his mailbox, from a character called  Papa to visit him at the shack, a proposal of which Mack is understandably quite dubious, though intrigued.

Again, is it possible for a Young to construct a more emotionally manipulative framing device, the abduction and murder of his ten year old daughter by a serial killer who preys on young girls for a narrative than the one he constructed in The Shack? He has built a literary device of great manipulative and visceral power seeming designed so as to emotionally deconstruct any critical thought.

I will end this initial installment with a quote, found below, starting at the end of page 65 of the soft-cover edition. My next post, when time allows and sooner rather than later I hope, will be to deconstruct this wretched, sophomoric, post-modern intellectual detritus that passes for profundity and then perhaps examine the next few chapters….if I can muster up the where-with-all to stay the course…

…the thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?

Today’s petition

Our Father Who resides in heavenly places,

Thank you that you provide for me. Thank you for the food and shelter you give me.  Thank You that You are faithful even when I am faithless.

Father, even in your generous provision,  I confess I am often discontent. I am bent in many places, but even so, I ask you to make me useful to You and Your kingdom.

If You love me, and I am aware of this place of bitter irreverence, sin, and ugly doubt from which my preface wells, please, in Your absolute sovereignty, make my will malleable and conform it to Yours. Make me, please, a messenger of your grace and mercy, a messenger of the Gospel. Render me useful to you, and when I die, let me be forgotten. I can have all the wealth in the world, but if I do not believe you will make a way to use me for Your glory, I am the most poor and wretched man on earth.

Father, I am, and you know this, spring-loaded to the cynical position at times. I often find myself surrounded by voices that do not long for the things I long for, do not understand things the way I understand them, and I am, more often than I care to admit, influenced by those voices. Sometimes it seems easier to conform than reform. Sometimes, even often, my own heart betrays me and desires and acquires things that are hay and stubble. Make Your longings my longing.

If You desire that my vocation be to humbly work with my mind and hands, make me content with that. Take away those desires that are born from my pride and selfishness, please.

In the name of Christ,
Amen.

I have seen the hooligans, and they could have been you or me….

I am thinking about the recent riots in Britain a bit today. It has been the subject of conversation over the last couple of days with most of the opinion being that those restless yobs, those vandals and hooligans, should just get a job and shoulder some responsibility for once in their wasted lives. Vent your wretched boredom, rage, sense of injustice, or whatever it is that drives your wanton acts of destruction into a more productive and socially beneficial conduit. Others, however, may blame, and with perhaps some small validity, the influence of malignant economic, political, and social forces outside the domain of individual responsibility as being the prime mover behind the unrest and place the perpetrators into the category of victim or righteous rebel.

Without regard to what political pole you swing from, I see things somewhat differently. I believe, perhaps with what some would see as no small bit of cognitive dissonance, the hoodlums, without regard to environmental influences, are morally responsible for their acts. But if you or I, in castigating their behavior, were born into their circumstances, having been raised on and subsisting by the largess of the welfare state with no real incentive to work, would we behave any differently than they do?

Where I go in my thoughts is perhaps to a place of a sophomoric and unoriginal debate on free-will and determinism (and with a bit of compatiblism thrown in). Quite frankly, the more I ponder the human condition….the more I look beyond the predictable punditry and common wisdom, and without regard to some religious people who proudly tout their free will to choose a Savior, the more I believe people are trapped. We are held in bondage, defined by our upbringing, by our genetics, by our brain chemistry. By the light of reformation theology, I see, too and more profoundly, that we are held in bondage by our innate fallen nature. You do not need to teach a child to misbehave and act selfishly.

I did not choose, nor am I responsible for, where I am born, to what time or generation I am born, nor to whom I am born. I did not choose my gender, I did not choose my eye color, nor did I choose my skin color. I did not choose the economic milieu into which I was born, nor did I choose my intellectual capability, IQ, or lack thereof. I also do not choose any genetic markers that may predispose me in certain directions physically or behaviorally. Given all the aforementioned, are we merely a passive passenger on the train of causality? Are we merely sophisticated meat machines?

In regards to behavior, I recall my years working in health care, as a non-professional, often assisting geriatrics, many suffering from dementia, from Alzheimer’s. To see the pages of the books of their lives been slowly torn out, one by one, and discarded by their malfunctioning brain is truly heart-rending. They would have moments of lucidity and moments when they would exhibit behaviors that would have got them slapped, or worse, in other times and places. They were not responsible for their behavior in their biological duress, though.

Too, I think of those with dyslexic sexuality who claim no choice in their same-sex attraction. Quite frankly, I have no choice in my very attraction to the opposite gender.

The over-arching question is this: at what places am I truly free? An idealistic eighteen year old neophyte intellectual taking a entry level Philosophy class will think on such things differently than a thoughtful, though academically bereft factory worker. I will tell you what I think as I look through my favorite and best lens, my theological ones, and ultimately, everything in the final analysis, whether one admits it or not, is theological.

Think on this: you set before your pet dog a bowl of English peas to its left and a bowl of juicy, meaty dog food to its right. The dog can physically and freely eat from either bowl, but he will choose according to his nature. The dog will chose the meaty dog food. The machinery of the dog is wired in such a way so as to predispose the dog to choose the bowl on the right.

We are not so unlike that dog. We have certain, limited freedom of choice, but our choices are limited by our nature. We must admit, too, that even though we are breathtakingly more sophisticated in thought and behavior than that dog, we are still made of humble meat, not so unlike the dog . In the Garden, the Triune God breathed life into dirt. We are not meant to be Gnostic in our view of matter.

However, in the Fall, the Great Rebellion, and event in real time and real place, all our aspects, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, the meat and the software, were damaged beyond complete repair by the free act of our federal representative in the Garden. Our choices became limited to our now fallen nature. We often put pretty coats of paint on our derelict house of self, and that house may often look pretty from the outside for a time, but all we do is cover up rot. That is the current nature of unregenerate humanity. Our choices are not always the worst, most evil, possible choices, but they are always colored by our fallen nature. Ultimately, this leads me to a place where I cannot stand on a home-made moral loft and say that I am innately better, more moral than a soccer hooligan or Compton gangster below me, for we differ by at best small degree, not kind. We are all now, and left to our own devices, to some tangible degree, sub-righteous.

So then, I will ask rhetorically, where can one find true freedom? Most of those drawn to this blog already know the answer. It is at that place where the Gospel snatches you out of your imprisonment.

As a personal aside, it seem sometimes, though, that the journey out of prison may not be seem to be as experientially instantaneous as one would like. Freedom isn’t always easy.