God. Real. Right.

I normally do not post along these lines, but need to this time. Two years ago, and again two years before that I had the privilege of traveling to India with a medical mission team organized by Doctors Janet and Sonya Merrill. While there in Orissa (south of New Delhi on the Bay of Bengal), I had the privilege of serving and becoming friends with a pastor-leader in the area named Soubhagya Nayak. Some pastors who serve under him shared with me the story of when he was kidnapped, beaten, and threatened with death by militant Hindus trying to provoke him to recant his faith. The event happened in the year between my two trips to the area. For hours he was held, beaten, and threatened, but he did not recant. The Lord gave grace, his captors became divided, and he was finally released. His friends told me how delighted they were when he came back to them.
Today I received an e-mail from him describing the outbreak of widespread violence against Christians there. The violence was always threatened, the tensions always present, so I am not surprised by the report–not surprised, but very disturbed. (I have left each correspondence unedited.)

Dear brother,

Read the rest of this entry »

Two previous posts identify the most difficult philosophical obstacle and most obvious practical objection to believing in a radical free will.
The post on free will before this one identifies the key theological problem of rejecting the possibility of radical free will. This post adds to that one another example of how rejecting free will goes hand in hand with diminishing respect for God’s sovereignty.
Subsequent posts will identify the key moral (or practical) problem of denying the reality of radical free will.
2.1.2 Attempting to explain God’s activity questions His sovereignty.
2.1.2.1 Claiming this world is necessarily the best of all possible worlds is an example of inappropriately explaining God’s activity.
Back to the nature of God’s freedom, which is important as a conceptual framework within which human freedom can then be described: To describe free will as logically absurd diminishes a person’s understanding of God. Why? Here’s a question that narrows the discussion a bit: is it better to describe God as free or rational? (Remember the first problem faced by those who believe in free will.) Obviously the position of this argument is that the best way to express God’s omnipotence and primacy is with His free will. Consider one philosophical system in which reason takes God’s place.
Leibniz’s argument about God’s rational behavior Read the rest of this entry »

This message is about James 5:1-11, the penultimate text of the book of James, and the final upload of my sermons from it. (The sermon on the final passage of the book was posted about three weeks earlier.) I preached this one at Bethany Baptist Church in Pleasant Grove (Southeast Dallas), TX while their pastor was out for one Sunday. It is a church where I served as interim for about a year in much of 2006.
Audio sermons posted to date, including this one, are also freely available on the sermons page, which is also linked on the sidebar, including as an RSS feed (for subscriptions, like with iTunes).
As with every audio link on this blog, you can click the text just left of the playable arrow and the audio will open in a new page, or you can right-click that text and select “save linked file” (or something similar) and download the file to your hard drive, or you can click the little arrow next to an audio file and it will play the sound on this page.

This week’s return to school has put back in the forefront the troubles facing many school districts and individual schools. The problems are defined in different ways by different parts of society, but all the symptoms point to poor performance. Students are not learning as they should. Two questions seem inseparable: why, and what to do. They seem inseparable, but they are not. Conventional thinking says that if the reason for poor performance can be discerned (why), then it can be addressed with this or that program or plan (what to do).
But, in fact, every explanation and accompanying solution appears to have failure built-in to it. If the problem Read the rest of this entry »

Some pertinent links for this article:
Irving Bible Church. The IBC Position Paper.
Denton Bible Church. DTS President Mark Bailey’s Clarification.
On August 24, 2008, for the first time in its forty year history, Irving Bible Church had a woman deliver the Sunday sermon to its congregation. For all I know (not being there but being in my home church instead) it was the best sermon they’ve heard in forty years, many people responded with commitments which will result in lifelong changes, and a burnt-over revival has begun in North Texas. But none of that determines whether it was the right decision.
The question remains, should a woman preach so to a congregation? To secularists it may understandably seem an absurd question. But to those who take obedience to New Testament teachings seriously, it is important. And to those who take the New Testament seriously and want to remain both relevant and prophetic in culture the question is not only important, but difficult.
What Catherine Albanese says about religion in general is also true about churches. That is, churches serve in both an ordinary and an extraordinary relationship with Read the rest of this entry »

A huge window sticker on a car on the highway reads, “Beast Mode.” What the owner actually intends, if anything, is unknowable. But the natural options of such a statement are only two. It either means “I am mindless” or “I am immoral”, although the owner might prefer the word “amoral” on the latter.
It is true that most of us are driven most of the time by the same things that motivate animals. Drivers move through traffic in packs like dogs, or pursue, preserve, and relinquish leads (usually completely unaware) just like horses in a race. Most of us emote and act almost blindly within large crowds exactly as the crowd acts. (It doesn’t take long, after all, for one clap to become thousands, and then again, for the thousands to die to silence.)
Most of the time neither the motivations nor behaviors matter one whit. We eat like animals (except with utensils–sometimes) and it does not matter. But one characteristic which sets us apart from animals is the ability to choose other than the expected biological, pack, or even self-interested behavior in favor of something with real value. Morality is uniquely human (and above, of course, if angels are included). The appreciation of beauty as beauty is uniquely human. Altruism is uniquely human (yes, despite some animal behaviors which make things appear otherwise).
The point is not that animals are bad and people are good. Quite the opposite. Jesus uses animals sometimes to say what we should be like (e.g., the birds of the air.) The point is not that we are like animals. The point is that human beings have a unique responsibility to act freely and responsibly rather than as cogs in a machine, plants in the ground, animals on a farm, or even minds in a behavioral maze. So we may act like cattle, or sheep, or rats, but we don’t have to; and just as importantly, we are commanded not to. Matthew 16:24.

or, more precisely, they can be changed.

While this commandment is hard to swallow, it is basic to understanding the good news of Christianity. And it is undeniable in terms of biblical teaching; particularly, Romans 3:10ff.
An essential element of a functional society is optimism or hope. There must be a belief that things can be maintained, succeed, or even that they can progress. In a secular culture that optimism is in human nature. “People are basically good.” “We all have goodness in us.”
But a Christian worldview is incompatible with that optimism, finding hope instead in the intervention of God to transform people from what they were to what He intends for them to be.
Optimism in human nature promotes foolhardy confidence in appeasement, in value-neutral education, and in government. Realism toward human nature promotes prudence (being wise as serpents) in dealing with those who would harm us, awareness that education is only as valuable as the subject being taught, and a healthy regard for the edict: “that government is best which governs least.”
It is untrue that there are no evil people. Quite the opposite. However, much contemporary cultural analysis is based on the view that every culture’s morality is right for them, and only wrong from the perspective of a different, myopic culture. So, they suggest, if some radical Muslims believe it is right to die as suicide bombers killing innocent people in order to prevent the stabilization of a free economy or the introduction of real democracy, who are we to question their ethics? But the reality is that while some evil is motivated by confusion with good, some is motivated simply by evil. And neither motivation justifies it.
But as grave as our original condition, so great is the desire and provision of God to change it. It is from that desire that both the revelation of our need and the provision of our rescue comes.
The long and short of it is that people are not good to begin with, do not seek God until He moves them to do it (which He does), and cannot get to Him even if they did want to. But God loves us while we are bad, seeks us when we ignore Him, and brings us together Him when we could not do so ourselves.
This commandment does not promote pessimism regarding people. On the contrary, it allows no observer to discount the hope that any person, no matter how bad for the moment, can be changed.

This commandment’s significance is impossible to cover in a brief post. So here is an introduction to the subject’s range.
The first “Matter” refers to the material world around us: atoms, rocks, birds, and and everything else that takes up space for a period of time. The second “Matter” refers to whatever is important.
The level of second “Matter” (value) we apply to the first “Matter” (stuff) is represented with money. Hence, materialism (the belief that only material objects exist) becomes materialism (an obsession with money and the things which can be purchased with it). There. Now the vocabulary is all clear!
The love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6) because it indicates both an obsession with the material world and a disregard for the spiritual.
A Christian outlook on life includes everything excluded by materialism: personal character and responsibility, volition, spirituality, eternal life, and God. Believe it or not, consistent thinkers “know” (ironically) that even consciousness itself is not compatible with materialism (the kind that says only matter exists) since a brain and a mind are not the same thing.
The extent to which science can speak accurately is entirely determined by the extent to which it limits itself to the material domain. Science speaks powerfully to the way material things operate, but it cannot speak at all to the value or meaning of anything. So it is particularly important for those with a Christian worldview, a worldview very much governed by value and meaning, not to be limited by the same myopic obsession with matter.

This commandment is based on Jesus’ statement in Matthew 7:12, the golden rule. As it turns out, it is extensionally equivalent (sorry for the obfuscation here) to Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. Many people seem to think the golden rule is about making sure we’re nice to other people so they’ll be nice to us. Hardly.
The point is that if we are going to claim anything is right for us, we must also acknowledge that it is right for everyone else. And if we are going to claim something is wrong for someone else, we must acknowledge that it is wrong for us. As it turns out, this rule is more than coincidentally powerful. It is rationally impossible to believe morality is real and not hold this view. Further, when all is taken into account, it appears that this one rule manages to encompass every moral imperative about living with people.
In traffic, it means one person cannot ethically take the shoulder since the benefit of doing so hinges on everyone else following a rule he has not applied to himself.
In economics, it means there must be a level playing field. That is, there must be a free market, with governmental intrusion only where there is fraud.
Respect for authority, for life, for marriage, for personal property, and for truth itself are all products of this one commandment.

This commandment simply recognizes that saying something is “right” means something real, and something more than saying that it “works”. It is the contrast between what is called “moral realism” and either “moral nihilism” or utilitarianism. Two Proverbs make the point that people choose to do things because they are right, even though the result of those things makes it obvious they were not. “There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end of it is the way of death.” Moral judgments become basically meaningless when the definition of what is right becomes malleable. (For those paying close attention, I should point out that “the way of death” is not the same as “death” itself, and so these Proverbs are not utilitarian. For everyone else this parenthetical note probably should have been skipped. :O)
Paul also expressed this point to Timothy: “if a man is trying to achieve something, he will not receive his prize unless he strives for it according to what is right.” (2 Timothy 2:5)
When Christians make moral judgments based on what will work BEFORE they have discovered whether the act itself is right or whether a character capable of doing such an act is virtuous, then they are not following Jesus. It is crystal clear (from the crucifixion itself, to the command that to follow Jesus means to deny self and take up the cross) that the result is not the responsibility of a follower; obedience is.
At its base, this commandment is inescapable for those wishing to have a Christian worldview. There is an absolute and universal truth in Christ which includes what is right and what is wrong. The expression of right and wrong may take a different form in every culture. But it will still be either right or wrong, and the difference between the two will not change. To hug an old friend may be right in America and wrong in India. But it is right in both places to care about others and be respectful of them as persons.
Acknowledging different expressions (called the context sensitivity thesis) does not compromise moral reality. Determining that something is right (like helping someone in need) and then choosing which act to do based on what will work best (like pushing rather than pulling their car) does not compromise moral reality. But determining that something is right just because it brings about desired results absolutely does compromise any commitment to moral reality. So don’t do that!