Don Carson has an interesting take on the situation in Galatia when Paul confronted Peter (Gal 2:11-14). His thought is that “men from James” and “the circumcision party” are two different groups. His theory is that Peter didn’t stop eating with Gentiles for fear of Judiazers from James. Rather, it was men from James who brought word to Galatia that Jews in Jerusalem were persecuting the believers there for doing such things. After all, it was Peter who’d received the vision from heaven articulating to him that all food is clean and that the gospel should go to the Gentiles. Peter knew this so surely he wouldn’t be swayed by legalism to stop eating with Gentiles, right? Carson admits that there is no historical evidence of persecution at that time but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened. Peter, out of compassion for Jewish believers in Jerusalem, draw back from things that incited persecution back home. This is how it could be that even Barnabas got carried away into it. (Gal 2:13) Neither Peter nor Barnabas had abandoned the gospel for their old Jewish ways, they were showing compassion on their friends and family back home. Paul’s beef is that in doing that even for good reasons, they were compromising the gospel.

What Carson’s approach does is to save Peter from looking like he’s clueless, spineless or compromised. Those are laudable things! I mean, if you take the conventional approach, that the “men from James” were the “party of the circumcision” and they intimidated Peter into withdrawing from Gentiles, then he does look pretty goofy.

However, there are some issues with Carson’s idea (and he freely admits it.) One is the verse I came across the other morning. Not a “theory slayer” but it does pose a difficulty. Titus 1:10 seems to indicate that the party of the circumcision wasn’t Jews outside the church but troublemakers inside. It seems to me that for Carson’s theory to work, Paul would have to speak of the party of the circumcision as unbelieving Jews who saw Jewish converts to Christianity as deserters from the faith. But Titus 1:10 speaks of them as if they’re troublemakers within the church. I think that tips the scales back toward the more conventional approach. “Men from James” were Judaizers who wanted Gentiles to essentially convert to Judaism before becoming Christians.

Ok, so what if they are? Well on this side of the scales, James looks like the doofus too. If he’s leading the party of the circumcision, then what was up with his speech at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15? It couldn’t be that Galatians happened some time before Jerusalem, Paul mentions the council in the letter. So from this side of the scale, James contradicts what he said at the council and Peter contradicts his vision. On the other side, Carson’s side, James and Peter are off the hook but now we wind up with the circumcision party joining the church at Crete where Titus was pastor. So the Jerusalem council didn’t settle that issue and chase those folks off and Paul doesn’t tell Titus to put them out, only that they “must be silenced.” Then following on from there in verse 11, it seems that these Judaizers are actually Cretans!

There is on really clear, simple explanation of what lead to Paul rebuking Peter in Galatia. Aren’t you glad I pointed all this out? I’d hate to have us sit comfortably on incorrect answers. I’m here for you. :)

In my previous post about health care reform, I suggested we follow the money to figure out why health care in America is so expensive and I pointed the knarled, bony finger of fault at trail lawyers and claimed that medical malpractice laws need to be reformed. I admitted that I could be wrong and I’ve personally wondered why there are no news outlets barking up this same tree.

Ha! I am vindicated! The Wall Street Journal has broached the subject with a slightly different approach. Medical malpractice law suits not only cost a lot of money, but to avoid them doctors may be using extra, unnecessary test and medications. Consider this:

But this is the one reform Washington will not seriously consider. That’s because the trial lawyers, among the largest contributors to the Democratic Party, thrive on the unreliable justice system we have now.

Almost all the other groups with a stake in health reform—including patient safety experts, physicians, the AARP, the Chamber of Commerce, schools of public health—support pilot projects such as special health courts that would move beyond today’s hyper-adversarial malpractice lawsuit system to a court that would quickly and reliably distinguish between good and bad care. The support for some kind of reform reflects a growing awareness among these groups that managing health care sensibly, including containing costs, is almost impossible when doctors go through the day thinking about how to protect themselves from lawsuits.

That’s what I’ve said. And my original premise of following the money? How about this: “But under the current system, 54 cents of the malpractice dollar goes to lawyers and administrative costs, according to a 2006 study in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

And why does Congress have such a hard time doing anything about this mess?

 Former Sen. John Edwards, for example, made a fortune bringing 16 cases against hospitals for babies born with cerebral palsy. Each of those tragic cases was worth millions in settlement. But according to a 2006 study at the National Institutes of Health, in nine out of 10 cases of cerebral palsy nothing done by a doctor could have caused the condition.

Many of them are part of the problem. Or at least got to where they are now by benefiting from the problem.

I need to add that I’m not quite as willing to lay the blame solidly at the feet of trial lawyers as the author is. I think there is another side to this problem and it is in how major pharmaceutical companies conduct their business. So far, what we’re hearing from Washington seems to be mostly how to inject more money into this busted systems so those who are getting rich on this stuff can continue to do so.

In an odd defense of President Obama, that ain’t socialism folks. That’s unbridled capitalism in its worst form. While it might make for a good sound bite, calling Obama and socialized medicine “socialist” is really missing the point. The “socialized” medicine being kicked around the nation’s capital is going to benefit a few common people here and there but continue to line the pockets of the rich.

ABC is hoping to replace Lost which has been a very successful series and will soon come to an end. It looks like they’re hoping FlashFoward will fill the gap. I have to admit, I haven’t seen Lost but I did watch the pilot episode of FlashForward and I liked it.The premise is that at a specific time, everyone in the world goes unconscious for a little over 2 minutes and during that time they all get a glimpse of what they’ll be doing six months in the future. There is a lot of confusion and chaos that results from the blackout but the FBI starts piecing the events together. One of the lead characters played by Joseph Fiennes saw himself at his office and got a good look at the bulletin board where he is piecing the puzzle together. After his boss is convinced that something is indeed going on, he and his partner start making notes. At one point, Fiennes tells his partner what he saw on the board and his partner writes it down on a 5×7 card and pins it to the board. Finnes tells him, “No, not there. In the middle.” After the card is moved, the two look at each other for just a beat and then continue.

This seems to me to be an excellent story telling method. That one beat between these two spoke without words. That’s something unusual for TV networks to do. They usually assume their audience are idiots and will need to be spoon-fed. But not this time. The silence between the two kind of sucked the question they didn’t ask each other but made us ask it: Did that card wind up there because of what was just said or would it have been there anyway? FlashForward is playing with the rich theological and philosophical questions of free will and predestination. And it isn’t doing it in a stupid, heavy handed manner either. I like that.

I think there is a lesson here in storytelling that Christians should listen to. Nope, nothing to do with predestination, this has more to do with the art of storytelling. And when we tell the gospel, we do tell a story. A true story, the greatest story in the history of the world and really, the story of the history of the world. But it is a story.

A long time ago, I shared the gospel with a very intelligent co-worker. Instead of hitting him with “you’re a sinner and you’re going to hell” I thought it would be better to lead him to that. So we started talking about God’s holiness and our sin. Eventually, the conversation lead to the point where he said “Well, then everyone goes to hell!” I agreed and the explained what Jesus did to solve that problem.
I left a gap that he was force to fill in. I let him reason from the statements I was making and left him to ask the question. That’s just what FlashForward did for us. It can be an engaging way to communicate when handled with care. You don’t want to leave too much out so the person might wind up asking the wrong question. And you don’t want to include too much so they don’t ask. If you’re careful you can tell the truth in a way that they’re not rejecting a statement as much as a conclusion. For most thinking folks, it isn’t sufficient to leave a conclusion rejected without a reason. They’ll have to review the case you’ve made that lead to that conclusion and figure out where they disagree.

This is not meant to be a guarantee of success. Nor do I intend to say that this is the only way to share the gospel. That kind of talk is utter foolishness. All I’m saying is that this can be a useful approach. Though my coworker didn’t come to faith, I did see my pastor do a similar thing with a highly educated man in Asia. A few well placed questions and philosophical observations and we watched the man talk himself into faith. It was pretty amazing.

I listened to President Obama’s health care speech to Congress with interest and a little hope. There were some things I was hoping he’d say. He talked a lot about insurance and costs. Requiring coverage for preexisting conditions, something about employers having to provide health care, etc. Where I perked up was when he tipped his hat to the Republican side of the room and said that considering malpractice reform wasn’t the cure-all but should be investigated.

In other words, I didn’t hear what I wanted to hear. In the days after the speech I’ve been stewing on not so much how Obama and the Congress are wrong but what they should be doing right. The approach that keeps coming to mind is “follow the money.” If health care is expensive that means that money is moving somewhere. Someone (or someones) is getting rich on this. So if you want to fix health care, find out where the money is going and start there.

I could be wrong, but as I understand it health insurers aren’t going out of business but they’re not making record profits either. Employers certainly aren’t making money off employee benefits so lets not start with these two. Sure, they may need to be fixed but that isn’t where the money is. Doctors make a lot of money, but not all of them. They are highly educated and skilled and so I think they deserve to be better paid. There is some money there but I don’t think doctors are the end of the trail. A friend of our family is a doctor and he told me that he knows a neruo-surgeon who pays $200,000 a year in medical malpractice insurance. So if this guy has to factor that much overhead into his rates, maybe we’re getting close to what needs to be fixed!

From what I can see, the ones who are making big bucks in the health care arena are big drug companies and lawyers. Again, I’m not an expert but merely an observer. I could be way off base but what bugs me is that I don’t hear anyone investigating where all this money goes. If the government really feels like they need to fix the health care system in America, it seems to me they should start with these two big money makers.  That means that President Obama’s halfhearted, lukewarm “maybe we’ll eventually begin to take a look” at legal reform needs to get firmed up. That’s a tall order. It doesn’t fit in a nice little box that can be dealt with relatively quickly. It touches on a wide range of legal issues and it faces some very stiff resistance. Many of our lawmakers are lawyers and many lawyers are lobbyists and as I’ve noted, there is a lot of money with the lawyers.

And who is ready to tangle with big pharma? Look at all the good their drugs have done and aren’t they allowed to make some money off the investments they’ve made bringing this life-saving medicines to people? See how that can be framed? Tangling with the big pharmaceutical companies could turn into a political “third rail” pretty quickly.

So I don’t think out politicians have the courage to actually deal with what may well be the problem with health care. Instead we’re going to focus on the insurance companies and employers who pay the health insurance companies. And the insurance companies pay the doctors and hospitals who pay the pharmaceutical companies and they all pay the lawyers.

I have a question for you. Can you read the above quote and not think “compromise”? It is an important question and it has nothing to do with Mark Driscoll or Matt Chandler, it has more to do with the success of the gospel. Are you optimistic about the progress of the gospel or are you skeptical? Here in America we’ve become so used to faith in general and Christianity in particular being ridiculed and dismissed and so many big haired, fake TV preachers making Christ look bad that it kind of shades our view of events like this. We almost expect the gospel to fail. Kyrie eleison.

Remember that in his vision of the end, John saw:

[A] great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” – Revelation 7:9-10

Salvation is not for just a few scattered here and there. Jesus died to redeem his people and there will be many of them! While it is true that “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14) that is in comparison to those who are called to salvation by the preaching of the gospel. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there will only be a few saved. God’s grace is generous and overflowing. In the end many will be saved.

And now a word of caution. Just because Chandler added 2,000 by adding a video campus doesn’t mean that they were successful. One of my concerns with Driscoll, Chandler, Piper and other “celebrity” pastors is that, through no fault or action of theirs, these things can turn into fan clubs. Instead of 2,000 conversions were these 2,000 Christians changing churches? I’m sure that not all of them were. There were probably folks who’d stopped attending church who are starting again and some recently converted believers in that 2,000. But how many? That’s where a church can add 2,000 in a day and be successful. Or add 2 in a day and be successful.

Haven’t done one of these in a while so here goes.

According to Barna Research, the percent of female pastors in Protestant churches has doubled in the past ten years. This isn’t surprising but I think it does need a bit of unpacking. First, it is an increase in percentage, not necessarily raw numbers. That doesn’t say anything about why the percent has increased. Theoretically, the number of female pastors could remain the same over that ten year period and the number of male pastors could decrease. I don’t think that’s what’s going on but it is a possibility. Second thing to consider is that it is amongst “Protestant” churches. That could be anything that isn’t Anglican, Roman Catholic or Orthodox. Anything from the farthest left liberal church to the most strict fundamentalist. Barna has a problem with defining these groups some times. John Piper kind of takes them to task for this.

The second item, unrelated to the previous paragraph, is pretty self-explanatory.  Perhaps quoting the opening paragraph of the article will suffice. I don’t really have much more to say about it:

Government scientists figure that one out of five male black bass in American river basins have egg cells growing inside their sexual organs, a sign of how widespread fish feminizing has become.

Probably best to read it for yourself.

I heard a story on BBC World on the way to work this morning that has kind of stuck in my head. Partly because it takes place in the part of England in which Lisa and I met and in the town Ben was born in. But there is more to it also.

Church bells are ringing again in St. Lawrence church in Ipswich. This is notable because they are the oldest bells in the world, dating back to the early 1500s. They were recently removed and restored though they are completely original bells, including the clappers. So as they rang out across Ipswich, they sound just as they would have 500 years ago. The bells had to be moved when they were put back. They’d been moved into part of the bell tower that was which was taller but not as sturdy. The man they interviewed said that the tower would sway when the bells were rung. Putting them back down in the portion of the tower built in the 1500s meant they were more stable.

It all sounds lovely doesn’t it? An ancient English countryside church being restored, church bells once again pealing across the city. Lovey. They even had tea and sticky buns in the church. As the interviewer said as he wrapped up the story “Tea, sticky buns and church bells. If there is anything more British I can’t think of what it is.”

Yes, sadly the story is very British. Modern England kind of British. Church bells were once used to call the people to worship. They sounded before the church service and let everyone know what was taking place. The bells weren’t supposed to be a nice aural decoration, they were part of the worship service. The church these particular bells are housed had its congregation dwindle and the building fell into disuse and then into disrepair. It is now a community centre (using the proper British spelling there) and no longer a church. The bells are a cultural artifact.

Something I found interesting and rather symbolic was that the bells had been in the part of the tower that was added in 1883 but it wasn’t sturdy enough to hold them, they had to be returned to the older portion of the bell tower in order to be safely rung again. Isn’t that something? In 1883 modernism was taking over Western culture. “Reason” was changing how people thought about the world. Darwinism was emerging on the Continent and gaining a strong foothold. In a few years the Fundamentalist/Liberal debate in America would begin splitting denominations.

It is almost as if those bells and that church represent the gospel in the West. At one time, the bells were firmly mounted in a prominent manner so that they could call people to worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Modernism weakened that call though it attempted to hold the bells up even higher. Eventually, the church that housed them lost members and became abandoned. Today the whole thing is restored not as a place of worship but as a reminder of what once was, minus the religion. Church is a community centre and the bells are a quaint reminder of a simpler time. And Jesus is nowhere in sight of any of it.

For the bells to safely be used again, they had to be returned to the original, more sound structure they once in inhabited. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a church began meeting in that “community centre” beneath those sainted bells and one day that building could once again be used for the worship of the True and Living God? Where are our bells in America? Is ours the ancient tower that can safely hold the bells so that they can ring out loudly? Are our churches turned into community centers?

I was very impressed with Timothy George’s brief article in Christianity Today about the execution of Michael Servetus in Calvin’s Geneva. George doesn’t excuse Calvin and he does a very good job of putting the event in context without likewise slaying Calvin. Here’s the heart of it:

Calvin worked with a more medieval understanding of the unitary nature of society and thus limited the degree of liberty he was willing to concede to religious dissenters. We can note that the Genevan officials who condemned Servetus to death were actually Calvin’s opponents, not his henchmen. We can also point out that religious persecution was commonplace in Calvin’s century: Mary Tudor sent hundreds of Protestants to their deaths in England, thousands of Huguenots were killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, and many more Dutch Calvinists were slain by the Duke of Alva.

All this is true, but the fact remains that Calvin should have known better. The logic of his own thinking could and should have led him to agree with Sebastian Castellio, his sometime friend and later critic, who declared: “To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine; it is to kill a man.”

I am a Calvinist and so I admit that Calvin was a sinner in need of God’s grace. He was a real gift to the Church of Christ, but he was not a replacement for Jesus.

Jeremy asked an excellent question on the prior post and I don’t want to reproduce it here (go read it already!) but it was a good question and I’ll try to touch on it in this post.

Right off the bat I have to admit a few things. First, I don’t think there is a whole bunch of information in the Bible about the earth during the millennium. Unlike some, Historic Premillennialism doesn’t contain a bunch of detail about when things will happen and how it will all look. We must be content with the revelation God has given and the fact that there are some holes in the details.

Second, I haven’t read much on this aspect of Premillennialism yet either so I could be wrong.

I think the most important verse on this question would be Romans 8:19 “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” But frankly, it doesn’t help much. What does Paul mean by “the revealing of the sons of God?” Is it “creation” or “creature?” ¹Linguistically it can be either though most translations have ‘creation’. If it is “creation” is it only living beings or everything? What about the rest of the universe, is that included? Yikes.

Intellectual and hermeneutic honesty here demands that I not bypass this verse for something “clearer” so let’s work at it a bit. First, the creation/creature is awaiting the apokolupsis of the sons of God; that is, their “revelation, manifestation, coming, appearing.” Currently the sons of God are hidden but at some point they will be uncovered. Frankly, that sounds a lot like the first resurrection. You won’t be able to miss the sons of God, they’ll be the resurrected and glorified ones ruling with Jesus! That sounds like the earth will be renewed at Jesus’ return but according to a Premillennial scheme, that won’t happen till the New Heavens and New Earth and frankly, that’s where I’d feel more comfortable keeping it.

Another idea here is that “creation” is really “creature” which means the individual who gets saved. That changes the meaning of all of this from the created order groaning under the burden of sin to the individual till their redemption. This is the position argued by J. Ramsey Michaels in his chapter in Romans and the People of God [Google Books]. I don’t buy it. I don’t understand why Paul would go all cryptic at that point in the letter. It doesn’t make much sense to me. Paul doesn’t seem to maintain the focus but broaden it to the Spirit and all of creation groaning.

So where does that leave us? Here’s where I think it leaves us. If Historic Premillennialism is correct then the “revelation of the sons of God” is not till after the millennium. How can that be? Simple, the resurrected saints do indeed reign with Christ on the earth but that is not yet the totality of the sons of God. Presumably, there will be those who are born and come to faith during the millennium as well. The resurrected saints are not all of the elect.

Okay, so the earth in the millennium is not renewed. But does that mean it continues the same? Not really. Keep in mind the difference between whose running the world now and who’ll be running it then. Fallen, mostly unredeemed man is running the world and doing it largely without or flat out against God’s principles are in charge now. But during the millennium Jesus will run things. The planet will be blessed by perfect, holy governance. This is God’s creation after all and therefore Jesus would handle it correctly.

So to Jeremy’s question. Is there anything endemic to Historic Premillennialism that speaks to working on environmentalism, social justice and political reform now? Does the Historic position help keep us from a “polishing brass on the Titanic” attitude about the present world order? Right off the bat I want to say that none of the eschatological positions should produce that kind of fruit. Even Dispensationism with its focus on the Rapture shouldn’t engender that kind of “let it burn” approach. It just violates so much of Jesus’ clear injunctions. So any eschatology that does produce indifference is probably eschatology misunderstood or mishandled.

Talk about really healing the planet! Next up I have a few thoughts on humanity during the millennium I might work on.