Category Archives: misc
On the radio…
Sometimes I listen to the radio while commuting to work, and occasionally I tune in to local Christian stations. I note that perhaps the majority of the Christian programming is on marriage. Following marriage, I find there is much talk on culture, politics, and the moral implications found therein, culture war content. Next, I find financial stewardship to be the popular topic. All these topics are fine, relevant, and often edifying topics. But it seems something is missing, is under-reported.
I understand the aforementioned topics are of interest to the targeted demographic. I do not infer that deeper content is completely absent, but that it is often overshadowed by felt-needs programming. Maybe I am being a bit harsh and cynical when it comes to Christian radio, but what I would really love to hear is more about Christ, grace, the implications of the Gospel. I would love to hear more about the heroes and martyrs of the faith throughout history. I would love to hear more about doctrine. I understand that one does not need nor desire heavy doctrinal dissertations while navigating rush hour traffic, but I would occasionally like to listen to something other than moralism and political diatribes when I do tune in during my commute. I do, however, get a chance to tune in to John MacArthur for about five or ten minutes before I have to leave the car and clock in at 4:46AM.
My solution is thus – (and I just acquired a neato FM transmitter that allows me to broadcast the MP3 audio to my car stereo) download to my mp3 player sermons from good local churches as well as the following podcasts:
- White Horse Inn - Here is where you find the podcasts
- Radical Grace
- Table Talk Radio
- Fighting For The Faith
- Sound of Doctrine – a website, the author of which reviews media
- Issues, etc
Mo
st of these links are conservative Lutheran (Missouri Synod) in focus, and I believe they all fall under the Pirate Christian Radio Umbrella with the exception being Sound of Doctrine. White Horse Inn is more reformed rather than Lutheran in content and it, too, is featured in Pirate Christian Radio’s lineup. If anyone has any podcasts to add to the list, feel free to mention them in the comment section. I would love to hear what others are listening too.
And now, we come to the end of this episode. To all the ships at sea, signing off till the next scintillating podcast of “In Weakness, Grace Abounds.” No, on second thought, I do not think I will be doing a podcast anytime soon
A Polemic On Christmas Greetings
On the way home from work a couple of days ago, I turned the radio on, and to my surprise, it actually worked. I drive a reliable car, but having been made in the previous millennium, some of the subsystems do not always function when desired.
Scanning through the stations, I landed on a Christian radio station. What I was subjected to was a seemingly endless roll call of companies moving from some naughty list to some nice list. From what I gathered, the criteria for moving from one list to the other was for employees of said companies to greet customers with a salutation of ‘Merry Christmas’ rather than some politically correct alternative.
Now, it goes without saying that I have some thoughts on this subject, though certainly not original. In fact, I am being a bit repetitive as I voiced similar thoughts in this post regarding the boycott of Pepsi products of a couple of years ago. Perhaps I am being a bit hyperbolic, but I cannot help but equate these tactics, these threats
muster the troops to boycott a secular company for not doing something that is not a Biblical mandated as being akin to an Islam Lite behavior. It is almost as if a pagan business published a silly advertisement featuring a cartoon of Mohammad during Ramadan and offended the thin-skinned, perpetually outraged Muslims.
When those groups who chose to make a Christmas greeting a hill to die on, when they actually are successful in changing, by economic threats and for a short shopping season, the behavior of the employees of a company, are they actually being instrumental in changing someones heart so as to love the beauty of Christ? I think what these companies legitimately want is your Christian dollars, and if saying Merry Christmas rather than Seasons Greetings is what is required to mitigate the wrath of irate potential customers, then they will say what the public wants them to say regarding a holiday that is, ironically, not mandated in the Bible to be celebrated.
It should be noted, too, that the American Puritans did not celebrate the holiday. First, they understood that Christmas was not celebrated in the early church and secondly they viewed it as a venue to Christ-dishonoring worldliness and was a reminder of the Church of England. In fact, Christmas was banned in some areas.
To celebrate Christmas in a Christ honoring is fine. For the minority that gets whipped into a frenzy over an isolated skirmish in an ill-conceived culture war, understand our mission is not about our power or our ability to economically intimidate the world. There should be no need to explain this.
You silver-tongued devil, you….
I pasted the text from chapter 3 of a post of mine titled An Ecclesiastical Journey into the text block of I Write Like , and this the analysis:
I also had the site analyze this post and the results were thus:
I Am Boycotting Your Boycott!!!
OK, I am, at least for now and after thought and prayer, rescinding my blogging hiatus. Here I go again…
I found our recently that some focus on the family kind of group sent out an email encouraging Christians not to buy Pepsi products because Pepsi supports gay rights. All this is probably old news in some denominational circles. After giving this issue some time to percolate, here are some thoughts on Pepsi and boycotts.
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Do we need to come up with a WWJD (what would Jesus drink) bracelet? But that might lead people to abandon Pepsi for wine!!! Irony….
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Is there a list of approved beverages? Can someone point me to a sinless company from which to buy my sodas?
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Does the advancement of the Kingdom really come about due to boycotting the consumer products of the world?
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Related to the previous bullet point, so what if we get everyone to behave nicely and quit with all those outward expressions of sexual immorality. Do we do the world a favor by forcing the Law on them without also pointing them to Grace? I think Satan would be quite happy, quite satisfied, if the gay people quit being gay and the adulterers quit adulterating and the drunks quit drinking as long as they think they are being ‘righteous’ by their own efforts.
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I assert without ambiguity that marriage is to be between a man and a woman. I also declare abortion is wrong; it is a holocaust. So, our government condones and supports partial-birth abortions. It is easy, it is without cost, to refrain from drinking Pepsi and send them them emails explaining your moral outrage. Now, put your money where your mouth is. The United States of America collects taxes, some of which goes to funding legal partial-birth abortions. If you think the dyslexic sexuality (I wish I could remember who came up with that description) of gay people is bad, how much worse is infanticide? Quit paying your taxes and boycott a country that funds killing babies if you think boycotts are the way the Kingdom is grown. (I hear crickets chirping.) “But I have to pay taxes” you say. No you don’t. You will go to jail if you don’t. It will cost you and your family unlike switching from Pepsi to Coke and sending Pepsi a few emails. So, do your really think boycotts are the way to go out into the world with the Good News to the glory of the Triune God?
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Do you think gay people going to be redeemed by Christ and change their orientation due to your boycott?
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Are there non-gay people, even some Christians, working for Pepsi that may lose their job if your boycott actually takes a substantial toll on Pepsi’s income-earning potential?
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Does not these boycotts sound a bit like the tactics of Islam Lite? “Conform to our moral codes or suffer the consequences!!” “Say ‘Merry Christmas’ during the holidays or we will take our business elsewhere!!!” So, if people do change there behaviors and marketing practices due to your boycotts, does it really reflect a change of heart or is it more due to a desire not to lose your Christian dollars?
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Do boycotts really reflect the call to be salt, to be a light on a hill?
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That all being said, if you desire on some personal level to refrain from drinking Pepsi because of their politics, I think that is quite OK and honestly admirable. Many years ago, I decided not to buy Hitachi stereo equipment because they sold the Soviets equipment that made Soviet submarines more difficult to detect. As an aside, and if memory serves, the president of Hitachi later killed himself. I hope there was no cause and effect.
Lurid eschatology…
A couple of days ago, I received a flier in the mail, an invitation to a prophesy seminar. Now, not too many years ago, I entertained a fascination with the whole The Late, Great Planet Earth, Left Behind phenomenon. I believed there would be an Advent 1.5 seven years prior to the ‘real’ Second Advent. I believed Christ would perform, as a cheeky someone whose name I do not recall once said, a ‘touch and go’ to extract the church from the world before the great tribulation. The church would be spared ‘the great suffering’ . I accepted the whole peculiarly American contemporary evangelical rapture theology, a theology of costless entitlement, without much question.
I want to state up front that in no way, shape , or form do I question the intent, character, motives, or sincerity of those who sent this invitation to this seminar. I also want to state that there are many godly men and women who accept this eschatology. Sophisticated, I ain’t, and all that being said, I think most would have to raise an eyebrow at the images from the flier below.
I think that this view of Christ’s return forces a focus on current headlines rather than the Word. Perhaps more accurately, it forces Scripture to be interpreted in the context of current news, a lens far removed from the context of the original readers through which Scripture is to be first understood. I also think this eschatology is a bit dangerous because it infers that the contemporary Church will not have to suffer tribulation as history approaches closure. Think about the persecuted church through history; think about those Christians in the third world, in Islamic countries, in China, in this day and age, who are being martyred for their faith in Christ. Where is their ‘rapture’ from tribulation? So much could be said on the subject.
In closure, as I read and study the Word, I am moving more to an amillennialist eschatology. I also look forward with great anticipation the return of my King, our mighty Redeemer and Saviour, Christ Jesus. His return may occur within the next heartbeat or long after I pass on, but I long to see my Saviour. Whatever your eschatology, I hope you, too, long for the Lord’s return.
…thrives on paradox.
Ran across an article a couple of days ago (HT: Between Two Worlds) in the NYT Magazine titled Who Would Jesus Smack Down, an essay on Mark Driscoll and his church, Mars Hill, in Seattle in specific, and the growing interest in Calvinism in general.
I’m just getting around to putting the final touches on some quick, rambling, and perhaps peripheral thoughts regarding the article:
First, though not the best example of unbiased journalism to be found, I thought it an interesting read even in it’s rather insufficient understanding of Calvinism. But there again, I have engaged some of the same misunderstandings until rather recently.
I think sometimes the church wants to react as a pendulum on some issues. Not growing up with much of a church background, I have not been exposed, other than in examples found in old paintings portraying a soft, medieval Euro-Jesus, to this feminine church culture alluded to in the article, but I do not question that such exists. That being said, on the other side of the pendulum lies an equally distorted hyper-masculine polar opposite, a phenomena that I have been witness to on a couple of occasions. I don’t think this is where Driscoll resides. More, I perceive he gravitates to a Biblical center. I strongly suspect a few pastors try to emulate Driscoll but lack his theological underpinning; there you find at times a reactionary caricature of masculinity. Also, the reference to his reputation as the ‘cussing pastor’ is a bit passé.
It must also be understood that Driscoll is called, and uniquely fitted, to be a pastor in Seattle with all it’s post-modern, post-Christian cultural distinctions. Seattle is not in the Bible belt. Too, I think Ed Stetzer, quoted in the article as follows, is dead on the mark when he says “Mars Hill is “a reaction to the atheological, consumer-driven nature of the modern evangelical machine.” Though they may share some elements, some practices, not all mega-churches are cut from the same cloth. I think that Mars Hill, unlike many mega-churches, is as deep as it is wide.
All that being said, I really like and have been edified by what I have heard and read by Driscoll. I also, take a bit of umbrage at this quote found at the end of the article:
At one suburban campus that I visited, a huge yellow cross dominated center stage – until the projection screen unfurled and Driscoll’s face blocked the cross from view. Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.
One, that is perhaps unnecessarily inflammatory rhetoric and reads more into the described moment than that moment intends, but I understand where the perception comes from. Two, I would say it is the nature of the beast, without regard to embraced theology, to be spring-loaded to a position of arrogance and pride. It is not unique to any ideology or theology. That being said, when properly understood, the doctrines of grace presents the most radically humbling and absolutely Christ centered of all theologies, an antidote to arrogance. Also, speaking and acting with strength of conviction is not necessarily synonymous with arrogance.
Westminster Bookstore
