James for the Twenty-First-Century Church

 In the final chapter of A Theology of James: Wisdom for God's People, Christopher Morgan draws out "four broader aspects of James's message that are particularly timely for today's church." He is speaking with particular reference to the "evangelical" church and, as you will see, to the Reformed wing of things at one particular point. And it seems to me that he was seeing things aright when he wrote in 2010. His word has not become less timely ten years hence. The chapter from which these applications come is titled "James for the Twenty-First-Century Church." Here are, in summary, those four aspects, with my brief comments added.

First, we need to align with how "James views truth holistically. His holistic approach can serve as a helpful corrective to our contemporary false dichotomies or polarizations. Many evangelicals today have a tendency to separate such things as love for God and love for others, faith and works, evangelism and social ministry, and theology and practice. In contrast, James sees that these things function together."

Next, from "James we also learn that Christianity brings a reversal of values. Reflective of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, James notes this reversal in a number of areas. . . . Churches and church leaders have a tendency to reflect the society around them, but James presses us to think and act differently. After all, we are a part of a new society, the community of Jesus."

Third, Morgan points out the right emphasis of the importance of covenant theology among the Reformed, but he likewise brings in a right word of correction: "I fear that we do not sufficiently stress the importance of covenant faithfulness. The covenant is a helpful paradigm for understanding biblical theology, but it also makes demands on us. James continually presses the importance of our faithfulness to God."

Lastly, he stresses James' view of the church. And, in my judgment, this is one of those areas where we need the greatest reform. Evangelicals have not done well with thinking through a healthy ecclesiology; instead, we've often adopted the world's models and methods for running the church. But what we need to do in repentance, according to Morgan, is take care to think about "what the church actually is" from the book of James. The church, according to James, is "an eschatological covenant community that exists in the already and the not yet and thus displays . . . the arrival of the kingdom through its relationships to God, among its members, and to society."

Now if there is one thing the evangelical church doesn't do very well—it is being distinct, you know, salt and light. She's lost her saltiness. At least here in America, she blends right in with her environs and tastes like everything else. James calls this "friendship with the world" and "enmity with God" (4:4). She's specialized in being so much like the world for decades now, and her impotence is on full display for those with eyes to see. But if she is going to recover the full-orbed gospel and bring kingdom norms to bear for the sake of potent witness to the kingdom of God, she is going to need to display how the city of God differs from the city of man. James, Morgan stresses, helps us a great deal here.

—Christopher Morgan, A Theology of James: Wisdom for God's People (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: R&R Publishing, 2010), 187-189.

Disparities in Outcome and Getting at the Cause(s)

"The cause of a given outcome is an empirical question, whose answer requires untangling many complex factors, rather than simply pointing dramatically and indignantly to statistical disparities in outcomes, as so often happens in politics and in the media" (Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, 33).

History as Foil to the Present

"We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion" (C. S. Lewis, "Learning in Wartime" in Weight of Glory, Kindle, 58–59).

Trained in the Ways of Babylon

Commenting on Nebuchadnezzar's strategy of defeating Jerusalem, as recorded in Dan. 1:3–7, Sinclair Ferguson observes: Nebuchadnezzar "weakened Jerusalem's prospects by exiling the cream of its youth, and he prepared for the future by giving them a thoroughly Babylonian education. . . . Nebuchadnezzar was not the last leader to see the value of infiltrating the colleges and universities to find candidates for his future service" (Sinclair Ferguson, Daniel, 34).

The Word of God and Your Nation

"Righteousness exalts a nation,
but sin is a reproach to any people."

This proverb comes from the Christian Scriptures. Specifically, it comes from the old covenant holy writings that were part of the canon of the old covenant community (Prov. 14:34). That it has relevance to every nation, however, and not just the theocratic nation of Israel, observe those two words "any people." 

In a nation that has come to embrace a notion of the separation of church and state that drives faith into the inner recesses of your private heart, to be confined there for you to think sweet thoughts about it, but never to come out into public view, we see that God's holy Word messes with our hair. It knocks us off balance. It rearranges the furniture. It instructs us—as a nation, as a people—in righteousness. 

And so, if you're following this simple lesson so far, if our nation exalts sin, and spurns righteousness, it is a reproach to us. There is no neutral sphere within which American can cast off the Word of God and the righteous requirements of the Maker of heaven and earth.

Reformation Day, n.

In the vein of Ambrose Bierce's The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary:

Reformation Day, n. That one day of the year when Protestants pull out and dust off the seven or so Latin phrases they know (learned from R. C. Sproul), which had lain dormant since last October 31.

This devilish definition was thought up by a junior devil who has been taking cues from Bierce's entertaining forays into lexicography.

Our Cultural-Linguistic Location in Christ

"Each of us is conditioned in our hearing and reading of God's Word by our cultural-linguistic location. Nevertheless, the most decisive cultural-linguistic location for the covenant people is 'in Christ,' under the normative authority of his Word" (Horton, The Christian Faith, 201).

It Happens All Too Often

"It is possible to hold a high view of biblical authority and sufficiency in theory while yielding a magisterial role in practice to sociology, politics, marketing, psychology, and other cultural authorities" (Horton, The Christian Faith, 200).

What Is a Worldview?

Many attempts to explain what a worldview is fall short of doing the phenomenon justice. And part of the problem is that the word itself (which suggests how we view the world and hence primarily intellectual involvement) points us in the wrong direction. But if the concept doesn't include more than one's mental furniture, or mere mental outlook, it is woefully lacking. (Another problem is that there's also no better word on offer at the moment.)

So how ought we to define "worldview"? And specifically, how should we define a worldview that attempts to connect with the true, the good, and the beautiful, and attempts to comport with reality? I'm acknowledging that some worldviews don't attempt to approximate ultimate reality or logical coherence or epistemic loveliness. In other words, I'm pointing out that there are defective worldviews. But I want, and I want others to want, to pursue a worldview that really does make sense of all things and accounts for the entirety of life lived on the stage of our world, and not one we wished existed.

So here's my attempt: A worldview (a sound one, more or less) is a comprehensive understanding of reality in word and deed. It includes the culture of a group or people. And the elements that make it up are narrative, catechesis, liturgy, and lifestyle.

Theses four aspects of worldview I've identified here I learned from N. T. Wright and Doug Wilson. These elements cover the ground of word and deed necessary for achieving a biblical worldview that is theologically satisfying and faithful. And, as you can see, I refuse to reduce understanding worldview to one's way of looking at the world, though of course such is included in my definition.

Pastors, Their Congregations, and Reading Culture

"Pastors have to help their congregations read culture so that we know what forces are trying to shape us. I believe that culture is in the business, 24/7, of spiritual formation: the only question is, What form does it want our spirits to assume?"

—Kevin Vanhoozer, "Methods, Norms, and Sources: How to Do Theology" (lecture, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL, September 16, 2015).

Lord of the Whole Wood

Obama is not a Muslim. Let's get serious. But nor is he a Christian. Do not be deceived. He's a secularist through and through. His religion is American civil religion. And he likes to use Christ for his political purposes. Just like many other politicians. But King Jesus is no politician's puppet. He's the Lord of the whole wood, I tell you. And if you're not sure of this, just ask Mr. Beaver. He'll tell it to you straight up, no political pandering, no civil prevarication, no expedient equivocation, no waffling or sidestepping the matter.

Lay Your Deadly Doing Down

"If you do not die first, you will have time to do it. If you die before you it is done, you don't need to do it" (Bloom, Beginning to Pray, 89).

Ending in Imbecility

"If Nietzsche had not ended in imbecility, Nietzsheism would end in imbecility. Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain" (Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 48).

How Reliable Are Psychology Studies?

The Atlantic recently published How Reliable Are Psychology Studies? It's an illuminating article, well worth your time, with helpful and encouraging suggestions and directions for a way forward.

Creation Care in Perspective

It is not unusual for (post)modern evangelicals to sound the alarms arm in arm with the secularists about the pending doom of creation if we don't act fast. It's commonplace, at least in my quarters of evangelicalism. And it's not that I am against stewardship of God's creation, but I do want to speak against what I perceive to be a lack of proportion and priorities.

I do believe that Christians should be good stewards of creation. But we need a focusing of our priorities. And so let's begin with creatures created in God's image who are eternal beings, and who are killed by the millions in our nation. It seems mentally and spiritually imbalanced to get bent out of shape over creation and not care much about God's image-bearing creatures who are taken to the slaughter in abortion clinics near you.

Now of course I realize that politically one issue is accepted and encouraged by many secularists (creation care), while the other isn't (civil rights of unborn children). And so therein lies the challenge. It's easy to go along with creation care in our culture—unless we're talking about the crown of creation, namely, human beings.

Many evangelicals are zealots when it comes to saving the planet (whatever that means), but these same evangelicals often just don't appear to care much about the unborn who are slaughtered by the millions, butchered for profit, with their parts sold cooly and calmly for grand and noble purposes (like buying a lamborghini). 

Perhaps even worse, many just don't want to get into it because it involves swimming against the tide culturally and politically. It involves cross-bearing. And that's uncomfortable to our tender little evangelical hearts. If we stand up for the unborn, in Jesus' name, we just might not be accepted. And above all we can't have that.

So, yes, let's be good stewards of creation. But let's not let secularists define for us how this looks. And surely the crown of creation—image-bearing human beings—ought to be the focus of our energies and efforts in caring for creation. God cares more about human beings than he cares about trees and lions. (Not doubt about it. Not afraid to say it. But, at the same time, this is not the same thing as saying he doesn't care about trees and lions at all.) And perhaps once we've stopped shedding so much human blood our hearts might be in better shape to think and act straight about trees and lions and the like.

How could anyone argue otherwise? Well, actually, no one, so far as I know, is arguing that caring for creation while ignoring creatures is the way to go. Yet the relative neglect of concern for the unborn among creation-care types should give us pause before following their lead. When these folks start giving themselves to the most vulnerable and most valuable among God's creation, God's beloved image-bearers, then perhaps we should pay a little more attention to what they're saying. Perhaps then their hearts will be in the right place to speak wisdom about creation care.  

Redemptive Communication

A redemptive strategy for engaging readers and hearers is summed up in these six communication tasks:

1. Know the people with whom you are speaking.
2. Love them genuinely.
3. Enter into their questions, their defining experiences, their terminology.
4. Retell their story in a fuller way than they are able to tell it, creating dissonance.
5. Show and tell the truth of God and his gospel of Christ in a fresh and personally relevant way.
6. Hold open a door of invitation to come in.

—David Powlison, "Giving Reasoned Answers to Reasonable Questions," Journal of Biblical Counseling 28, no. 3 (2015): 5–6.

Peaceful Planned Parenthood Protest

I participated in a peaceful Planned Parenthood protest today in Aurora, IL, which was part of a nationwide protest effort. It went well. There was an outstanding turnout.

It almost makes me want to become a Roman Catholic again. Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters are leading the way in this greatest of civil rights issues of our times. I'm proud of them.

To my Protestant brothers and sisters, I'll say what one local Presbyterian minister said publicly to the Protestants in the crowd: "We've got a lot of catching up to do."

However, this is not a Christian concern only, though of course many Christians are concerned precisely because of our beliefs and convictions: we value all human life as bearing the image of God, and as given incalculable worth by God himself. 

But we want all Americans who stand for the civil rights of all people—all people, regardless of their age or stage of life, including life in the womb—we want all Americans, whether Christian or not, to join in this greatest of all social justice issues. You won't want to be on the wrong side of history on this one.

So let's follow the lead of the Roman Catholic Church and fight for the life of the weakest and most helpless in our society (which, not incidentally, oftentimes includes the women who are taken advantage of for their babies' body parts to sell).

The Fierce Christ of Easter Faith

Here's a portion from Timothy P. George's powerful piece over at Patheos, "A Franciscan Moment," which speaks into the discussion of the future of evangelicalism:

As parachurch groups like Campus Crusade and InterVarsity appealed to an earlier generation, so today movements like The Gospel Coalition, Acts 29, and the Passion conferences are calling thousands of young Christians to take up their cross and follow Jesus — not the tame Jesus who would fit in well at a cocktail party but the fierce Christ of Easter faith.

You may read the whole piece here. 

Looking Away from Abortion

A sober piece by Ross Douthat of the New York Times: "Looking Away From Abortion."

Here's an excerpt:

The reluctance to look closely doesn’t change the truth of what there is to see. 

Those were dead human beings on Richard Selzer’s street 40 years ago, and these are dead human beings being discussed on video today: Human beings that the nice, idealistic medical personnel at Planned Parenthood have spent their careers crushing, evacuating, and carving up for parts. 

The pro-life sting was sweeping; there are reportedly 10 videos to go. You can turn away. But there will be plenty of chances to look, to see, to know.

The New Establishment

R. R. Reno:

The Obama administration is staffed by people whose skin colors and ethnic backgrounds make them look very different from the old WASP elites. But they’re almost entirely formed by Establishment institutions once run by WASPs, institutions that deliberately and successfully ­reinvented themselves with slogans of diversity and ideologies of multiculturalism. The president himself is perhaps the most perfect example of the new Establishment, which has emerged in profound continuity with the old one.

 —"Our Carrie Nation," First Things June/July (2015): 4.