By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

Looking in the Right Direction

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” – Mark 2:18-22

There are folks who will follow a leader but not listen to him. Perhaps John’s disciples loved his fire and his preaching and how he laid into the Pharisees, but not all of them listened to what he was actually saying. They listened to the preacher but not the message preached.We looked at this passage in small group last night and the group had some really great observations. The contrast here is between the fasting Christians do, or New Covenant fasting, and what came before. The first observation didn’t come from the group but something I caught later. The contrast isn’t just between Christian fasting and the fasting the Pharisees did because John the Baptist is on the other side of this equation. That’s something. The group asked why John still had disciples if Jesus had come and that’s a great question too. I think it might be related to the fact that John’s fasting was different from Jesus’. John the Baptist was the last prophet of the Old Covenant and his job was to point forward to Jesus. When Jesus came to be baptized John said that he should be baptized by Jesus. John announced “Behold! The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” when he saw Jesus. John was there when God spoke from heaven, “This is my beloved son, listen to him.” And yet, when John was in prison he sent his disciples to Jesus and asked, “Are you the one or should we wait for another?” John had his doubts, like we do, and that’s probably why he didn’t send his disciples after Jesus immediately. Also, there are folks who will follow a leader but not listen to him. Perhaps John’s disciples loved his fire and his preaching and how he laid into the Pharisees, but not all of them listened to what he was actually saying. They listened to the preacher but not the message preached.

So, how was John’s fasting like the Pharisees’ and not like Jesus’? The Pharisees fasting was probably all kinds of messed up. They prayed loud and long in order to get attention. They wore long robes in order to get seats of honor. They made their faces all downcast when they fasted so people would see how holy they were. But if you asked them why they fast, they’d probably have a very good reason that had nothing to do with why they really fasted. Their fast was one of anticipation. It was looking forward to the Kingdom of God coming. For them, that meant David’s son would show up and boot the dirty Romans, probably behead the compromised scribes and clean out the temple. It would mean that their party would be exalted. Messed up but looking forward. John’s was likewise looking forward, anticipating the coming of the one he was sent to herald. And like I said, John didn’t completely get it so his disciples most likely didn’t either. Christian fasting, on the other hand, looks back to the coming of the real Son of David and it looks forward to his return to take David’s throne also. John Piper put it this way in A Hunger for God:

Years ago I wrote in the margin of my Greek Testament beside Matthew 9:17 [a parallel to Mark 2], “The new fasting is based on the mystery that the bridegroom has come, not just will come. The new wine of his presence calls for new fasting.”

In other words, the yearning and longing and ache of the old fasting was not based on the glorious truth that the Messiah had come. (40)

In Jesus’ explanation talking about patches and wineskins you get the anticipation of his return as well as his passion. So Christian fasting looks back at the crucifixion as well as forward to His return. John only looked forward to his coming and the Pharisees were looking entirely in the wrong direction.

The other thing the group talked about was how Jesus’ talk about patches and wineskins applied to his talk about fasting. That may seem pretty obvious but I’ve engage in too many theological discussions where these ideas have been used and abused so they were kind of twisted in my brain. The group dove in without fear and made the observation that I recounted above. What is new is the kind of fasting. Trying to put Jesus’ fasting in the same category as John’s or the Pharisees’ is like sewing a new patch on an old garment or putting new wine in used skins. It won’t work.

And that brings up the last point, a minor one. If you pour grape juice in old wine skins there is no danger of the skins bursting. Only the fermentation process will produce enough gas to stretch new wineskins and burst old ones. The notion that Jesus only dealt with unfermented wine is nonsense and this text as well as others proves it.

Implicit or Explicit Self-glorification & Deification

Every form of modern secularism contains an implicit or explicit self-glorification and deification. Humanistic rationalism, forgetting that human reason as well as human physical existence is a derived, dependent, created, and finite reality, makes it into a principle of interpretation of the meaning of life; and believes that its gradual extension is the guarantee of the ultimate destruction of evil in history. It mistakes the image of God in man for God Himself. It does not realize that the freedom by which man is endowed in his rational nature is the occasion for his sin as well as the ground of morality. It does not understand that by this reason nature’s harmless will to live is transmuted into a sinful will to power. It is by this reason that men make pretentious claims for their partial and relative insights, falsely identifying them with absolute truth. Thus rationalism always involves itself in two descending scales of self-deification. What begins as the deification of humanity in abstract terms ends as the deification of a particular type of man, who supposedly possesses ultimate insights. – Reinhold Neibuhr, “The Christian Church in a Secular Age,” 1937

(Via: Lapham’s Quaterly)

Don’t Talk Dirty or Talk Dirt

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. – Ephesians 4:29, KJV

Don’t cuss. Don’t have a filthy mouth. Don’t use those words which in English are offensive. Don’t use double entendres with a wink. Don’t tell dirty jokes. Don’t speak of things that are unseemly. All of that is true and those are things we shouldn’t do. But I don’t think that goes quite far enough. It is possible to violate this command while at the same time using squeaky clean language and an equally squeaky smile.

The context of Ephesians takes our speech beyond just dirty words or concepts. “But speaking the truth in love…” Paul commands in 4:15 as he is calling us to unity. Not unity devoid of truth but unity in truth. To abandon truth is to violate 4:29. Likewise employing truth like a cudgel is equally a violation. Or speaking the truth at a time and in a situation or into an ear in which it isn’t appropriate does the same thing. Normally, that’s called gossip. If you spread something that isn’t true, that’s flat out lying and slander.

In chapter 5, Paul also says, “Let no man deceive you with vain words”. Bad doctrine violates Ephesians 4:29. In chapter 4 Paul wants us to be unified and says that God’s gifts to the church ensure that unity. According to 4:11 those gifts are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Those who call the church and instruct the church. They are the gifts Paul cites so that we might be “no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine”. It is important that we be very leery of new doctrine, of things we haven’t heard before. The latest thing to blow in from the internet or Oprah might just be the thing that violates 4:29.

So don’t talk dirty. But also don’t speak or teach dirt either. None of that builds up the church nor does it preserve unity.

The Function of Our Fear-Fantasy

Why are zombie movies so popular these days? I’ve heard a few theories lately but haven’t been satisfied with them so I figured I’d offer my own. One thing to keep in mind is that zombies have changed in film over the past 30 years. At first they were living dead who were under the control of a voodoo witch doctor. They didn’t eat your brains and you couldn’t become one if they bit you. So for clarity, we really need to consider the zombies of today’s movies.

One of the ways to understand American eras is to consider what they were afraid of and one of the best ways to do that is to consider the horror movies of that era. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was so powerful at the time because of the fear of Communist invasion. What if your neighbor was a secret Communist? The Day the Earth Stood Still, Them and The Incredible Shrinking Man (for example) demonstrated our fear of nuclear war and nuclear radiation. So what are we afraid of today that makes zombie films so popular?

Given the modern version of zombies, I think they are popular because we’re afraid of people who don’t think like us. They appear to be human but distorted humans. They appear mindless, yet driven by some force we don’t understand. And there is a fear that we might become like them if we get close.

Who is “them”? Could be anyone who is different from us. Conservatives, Christians, Muslims, Liberals, atheists, whoever. “They” are so different and scary because they don’t think like us and we have a sneaky suspicion that they’re out to get us. This difference feels like an attack and so the only response is equally violent. They must be destroyed. Their thought process has be obliterated. That’s why the way you kill a zombie is to destroy its brain.

Multi-culturalism seems to be such a great idea but in practice it doesn’t really overcome our basic fear of those we don’t understand. Why can’t they become more “normal”, that is, more like us? And yet we see them as essentially human yet their differences are frightening. Fortunately, people don’t act on their fear-fantasy and attack others. And that is the another function of our fear-fantasy; it expresses our fears and gives us a safe vent for a reaction to them where no one gets hurt.

Christ’s Descent

Into the lower parts of the earth. 1 “For ‘the lower parts of the earth,’ they may possibly signify no more than the place beneath; as when our Saviour said, (John viii. 23,) ‘Ye are from beneath, I am from above; ye are of this world, I am not of this world;’ or as God spake by the prophet, ‘I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath.’ Nay, they may well refer to his incarnation, according to that of David, (Ps. xxxix. 15,) or to his burial. (Ps. lxii. 9)” – Pearson These words mean nothing more than the condition of the present life. To torture them so as to make them mean purgatory or hell, is exceedingly foolish. The argument taken from the comparative degree, “the lower parts,” is quite untenable. A comparison is drawn, not between one part of the earth and another, but between the whole earth and heaven; as if he had said, that from that lofty habitation Christ descended into our deep gulf. – Calvin’s Commentary on The Epistle to the Ephesians, commenting on Ephesians 4:9

↩1 “For ‘the lower parts of the earth,’ they may possibly signify no more than the place beneath; as when our Saviour said, (John viii. 23,) ‘Ye are from beneath, I am from above; ye are of this world, I am not of this world;’ or as God spake by the prophet, ‘I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath.’ Nay, they may well refer to his incarnation, according to that of David, (Ps. xxxix. 15,) or to his burial. (Ps. lxii. 9)” – Pearson

That Cheap Carnival Ride

To be clear, I wouldn’t vote for Michelle Bachmann if she were the only candidate in the 2012 presidential race. I’m not pleased with the Tea Party. They have a single approach to economics that doesn’t take into consideration the environment it is to be applied in. There are other issues that I believe are important that the Tea Party leaves out so they can get consensus on their misguided economic policy. And, they misunderstand Ronald Reagan and his economic approach. I’m not sure I can forgive them for the last one. Are we clear? Good.

That said, I was kind of surprised when I read “Leap of Faith” by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker the other day. It paints Bachmann and her beliefs in the worst possible way. But when Lizza got to Francis Schaeffer, I knew for sure that there was a six week dead chipmunk in the middle of the article. Don’t bother reading it, it is far too long at 8,300 words and if the length doesn’t get you, you’ll surely get motion sick from the heavy amount of spin and the out and out distortions are similar to those mirrors that make you look tall and skinny or short and round. Yes, it is that cheap of a carnival ride.

I was very happy to see someone take Lizza to task for his distortions of Schaeffer. Joe Carter at First Things points out the nature of the distortions without subjecting us to each and every one. Here’s a clever way Carter clues us in to the hatchet job:

Did you know that in a speech about her family moving to Iowa in 1857 she confused a plague of grasshoppers with a plague of locusts? Yes, you and I know that locusts are grasshoppers; Lizza and the New Yorker fact checkers probably do too. But if you put the words in scare quotes and imply that they are different you can give the impression that Bachmann somehow made a mistake.

From there Carter gets into the glaring errors Lizza and The New Yorker made when it comes to presenting what Schaeffer taught and believed. Carter finishes by schooling them with four lessons on journalism. I hope someone important at The New Yorker read them and took them to heart.

I’m not going to touch the Newsweek hatchet job so don’t ask. There was a time when Newsweek was a fairly reputable news outlet but in the past few years they’ve traded journalistic integrity for sensationalism. It is almost as if they’re adopting a National Inquirer approach in order to remain in print. It has gotten so bad that NOW defended Bachmann for the cover photo Newsweek chose of her.

Gag Reflex

I recently bought a mouth guard thing because my dentist and my wife said I’m grinding my teeth at night. The dentist recommended one on Amazon or they could charge me $600 to custom make one. I went with Amazon (buying one off eBay just didn’t seem right.) I discovered two interesting things in the process. First, our federal government has actually spent time regulating mouth guards. Seriously, there is a warning on the package that says federal law requires you buy one from or under the direction of a health care professional. I mean, what would happen if someone just went out and bought one and started using it without being told to? Chaos, folks, utter chaos. I’m covered here since my dentist told me to. (Also, in case the FBI is reading, I’ve left those huge, unnecessary white tags hanging off my pillows, mattresses and patio furniture cushions.)

Second, I’ve discovered that I have a more sensitive gag reflex than I realized. I wonder if that’s regulated too?

When Cultural Christianity Kills

[Norwegian killer Anders] Breivik calls himself a “cultural Christian.” Religious Christians, he observes, have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which he himself does not have. For Breivik, “Christendom” is a vehicle for preserving European self-identity and is not necessarily opposed to elements of “paganism” such as Breivik’s own “Odnistic/Norse” heritage, even though the cross, he argues, has a greater symbolic power than Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir. In spite of this, the initiation ceremony Breivik envisages for “Knights Templar” has no cross, only a candle, sword, skull. – Matthew A. Schmalz, Washington Post On Faith blog.

If only Breivik did have a personal relationship with Jesus… I heard a BBC program this weekend where they were talking to a psychoanalyst about whether Breivik had some form of mental illness or something. The sad truth is that his 1,500 page manifesto was coherent and presented a consistent worldview. No, Breivik isn’t mentally ill, he is evil. His political views took him in the direction of violence and he acted on them. The reason is not because there is something wrong with Breivik, but there is something wrong with all of us.

For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” – Romans 3:9-18

Breivik did what he did because mankind is sick. We need a new heart, a heart inclined to good and not evil. Sure, we’re not all Breivik’s who act on our evil plans and desires but we’re all sick with sin. If Breivik was more than a cultural Christian his heart would have been inclined in a different direction. It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have killed, but it might. A Christian national or cultural identity isn’t enough. We can’t enact enough laws (Breivik broke many) and we can’t keep enough violence off TV to prevent this kind of thing. Also, notice from Paul’s statement in Romans above that this isn’t an ethnic issue either. It isn’t like one nationality is prone to violence more than another.

I have a friend who is Norwegian and she once told me that she was really grateful for Christianity coming to Norway. She said that before Norway was evangelized, the Norwegian people were violent. Violent to outsiders and violent against their own. Over the weekend I’ve heard many people from Norway interviewed and all of them are shocked because Norway is such a peaceful and open society. “How could this happen here?” If it weren’t for the influence of Christianity in Norway, it might well be a much more frequent thing. But once Christianity is stripped of its power and becomes merely cultural, the evil in people’s hearts is made apparent.

Successive Christianizations

David Martin has intriguingly proposed that we may actually be witnessing a series of successive Christianizations rather than a history of secularization… Thus the Christian faith evangelizes, gains great influence, and falls into a terrible struggle (each time ensuring slippage)… However, the successive Christianizations solve different problems each time and may represent a form of progress toward something quite apart from secularization. Each time, however, the projection of faith results in recoil. Martin contends we may have been living in a period of recoil from Protestant advance. – Hunter Baker, The End of Secularism, 103-104

Though I found this quote fascinating, it probably bears a bit of explanation. Baker has been discussing various theories of secularization and how many fail to match reality. Often they perceive some “golden age” of religion and then progress into an age of reason where religion loses it’s place. Baker pointed out historians’ frustration with sociologists’ lack of awareness of history. In the quote above Baker turns to a theory that might actually fit the facts. Instead of a “golden age” of religion, David Martin turns the theory on its head. He sees a cycle where Christianity struggles and evangelizes. The faith then gains converts and begins to become prominent in society but soon has to wrestle with its new power. The question is how spiritual power works with and is reconciled to secular power. This results in a struggle between engagement and isolation which causes the faith to begin to lose its position. Soon there is a recoil in society against the faith which could result in secularism or compromise or isolation. But Martin points out that each time the faith moves forward like this, something is learned and gained even when some ground is lost.

The reason this was so appealing to me was because I think this may be the cycles of the church in the book of Revelation. Rather than presenting one linear timeline of faith in the world, it may be seven cycles of the struggle, rise and fall of the faith culminating with the final one followed by Jesus’ return. I don’t know, I haven’t really studied it and test to see if the cycles fit any pattern but having read through it a new of times it is just the impression I have. What was neat was to see someone find that cycle in the patter of history.

Source Code in Plato’s Cave

Disclaimer: This is more of a review than Source Code deserves.

I watched Source Code last night in the best way possible for that film: free streaming from Amazon. I’m glad I didn’t spend any money to see it in the theater or gas to get there. It has a glaringly implausible story line, a zero-chemistry “romance”, straight-out-of-the-box characters, and a twist you saw coming after the first minute of the film. I think script development took a day and involved a lot of cut and paste. On the plus side, I would love it if my Metra rail car was like the one in the movie. I’d even take conductors with handcuffs on their belts though I’m a bit concerned about giving them a gun protected by such ineffective locks.

So why bother with a review if the movie was so cookie cutter? Not so much because of the film making but more because of the social and (accidental) philosophical commentary contained in the tissue paper thin script. For starters, it used to be that the military-industrial complex were the people with the evil motives in films like this. James Cameron’s Avatar is a ham-handed, overwrought example. In Source Code, only the civilian side of the duo has the greedy and evil motivations; Captain Goodwin is clearly bothered by the experiment and does the right thing in the end against her civilian bosses orders. That’s a twist. Perhaps it is a reflection of our American communal guilt over how we treated the Vietnam vets when they returned. Hate the mission, love the soldier. And yet, it doesn’t really absolve the military. The Source Code project is housed at Nellis AFB so the unnamed military leadership who don’t appear in the film are still in cahoots. Hate the mission and leadership but love the solider, I guess. Political correctness didn’t go away, it just got more nuanced.

And don’t think for a moment that this film isn’t packed with political correctness. As Jake Gyllenhaal’s Captain Stevens is trying to find the terrorist who blew up the train, the first person he goes after is darker skinned, perhaps of Indian descent. Jake’s girlfriend on the train even utters “racial profiling now” as he investigates the man. And, as in 2006’s Deja Vu starring Denzel Washington, the terrorist is a white guy. Now, that isn’t too far-fetched, Timothy McVeigh was a white terrorist. At the same time, statistically the biggest terrorist threat to America doesn’t come from domestic terrorists. Still, if you commit that to film you’re reinforcing a stereotype not of terrorists but what the person on the screen looks like who plays the terrorist. Subtle but strong.

** SPOILER ALERT **

Having mentioned Deja Vu, I can’t help but use that film as a foil for this film’s twist at the end. In Deja Vu, the cockamamie premise was that scientists had opened a wormhole near the earth that would let them look back in time 4 ½ days. Washington decides to climb through that wormhole and saves the beautiful murder victim he’s been watching and has fallen in love with. In Source Code, the rescue takes place only in Gyllenhaal’s mind and yet the twist at the end is that his actions actually changed the course of history. He actually saved the people on the train even though the scientist who created Source Code insists that isn’t possible.

Take a moment to digest the commentary on reality presented in each of these films. Deja Vu is a time travel thriller yet it insists that reality exists beyond us. Washington has to physically move back in time to save the girl. Gyllenhaal’s mind is linked to the last 8 minutes of memory of a dead man from the train, yet when he successfully finds and defuses the bomb, reality is changed. For Source Code, reality exists in the mind.

Keep in mind (eh, sorry, no pun intended) that I don’t believe the screenplay writers thought that hard about this. I think they just came up with what they thought would be a cool twist on a summer popcorn munching action movie. Recall my comments at the beginning about the apparent writing method. Yet, intentional or not, this does make a comment about reality. It can’t not. When we tell stories we talk about reality at some level. If the story is chaotic and incoherent, we present reality as chaotic and incoherent. If the heroes fight against the chaos, the commentary is that reality should be ordered. If reality can be changed by someone’s mind, then reality is presented as figment of our imaginations and we’re actually stuck in Plato’s cave with no way of knowing true reality.

I’m going to wax a bit philosophical for a moment. Source Code’s presentation of reality is unsatisfying and ultimately inconsistent. If reality only exists in the mind, why is it Jake Gyllenhaal’s mind that it exists in and not Captain Goodwin’s or Dr. Rutledge’s?  Or is it that we never actually left Plato’s cave and the twist at the end only exists in Gyllenhaal’s mind too; in reality the train did explode and all those people did die. To compound the problem, how can we hope to figure it out? I mean, beyond the fact that after Gyllenhaal’s eight minutes are up Goodwin pulls the plug and he dies. This inconsistency most likely comes from the hack and slash screen writing and not from an intentional commentary on reality.

Okay, it is just a lame movie, but it raises questions about reality. How can we know ultimate reality? We exist in it but the post-modern mindset of doubt demands that we can’t actually know it. Well, that is, beyond the reality of being certain that we can’t know reality. Stop asking those kinds of questions and just doubt like the rest of us. In the end, we can know reality because reality exists beyond our doubting minds and has revealed itself to us. God is ultimate reality and he isn’t content to let us wallow in doubt. He speaks. He acts. He comes and dies and rises. And in this speaking and acting, he confronts our doubts about reality. Reality isn’t the shadows of a puppet show on the wall of a cave nor is it a lie we must overcome because even in those scenarios there is a puppet master and someone who told the lie. There is a reality beyond the reality we fumble with and it has interacted with us. And if it has then we know, at the very least, something of that reality. Plato knew the puppet show wasn’t real and that reality exists outside the cave. Buddha knew that things weren’t right and looked for what was.

In the end we come back to a riff on Descartes, “I doubt therefore I am.” If there is someone to doubt reality exists, then there must really be someone to do the doubting. So if I am doubting, then I exist. Even if I’m just a brain in a vat (which Gyllenhaal’s character essentially is) then there really exists a brain and there really exists a vat. There is a reality beyond me and I can hope to understand it and interact with it. This is the way out of Plato’s cave, just follow the footprint Descartes left in the sand. What is finally portrayed in Source Code was not a way out of the cave, but the notion that we can control the shadows on the wall with our minds. There is no way out of the cave but if we follow the Disney gospel and just believe in ourselves, we can change reality as it is.

If that’s the case, make up your legs and walk out of the vat.