Christianity
Two Reasons Why We Need to Correct Our Views on Love and Sexuality
Yesterday’s candid post on the Song of Songs prompted some interesting comments.
My wife said: “Ummm, babe, I think someone just hijacked your blog.”
Yes, I take that as a compliment.
My buddy Scott said, “This is by far the toughest sentence I have ever read.” He was referring to this statement:
Contrast this with the ephemeral, capricious and shallow character of contemporary loveand you see God’s vision for marriage involves a volitional, muscular emotion that has a singular and solitary intent to honor the object of it’s affections.
That’s actually my most favorite-ist sentence. And yes, I take his comment as a compliment.
Richard DeVeau’s comment is a different story.
He said, “Perhaps it’s my age, but when I read about apples, raisins, figs, walnuts and spices, I only think about pie.”
That nearly brought my yogurt through my nose.
Then another good buddy said, “Very well done. I feel that this is one of the most beautiful books of The Bible.”
I have to agree.
Finally, there’s Rob’s comment…a comment which pointed out that our silence on the topic of love and sexuality has led the culture to dominate and define it.
This is not good. Rob went on to say:
[Songs] clearly shows that sex, and even boyish giggle inducing when you talk about it sex, is a glorious & God-honoring blessing to man and woman and the only stipulation is within the hedge of protection provided by marriage.
In other words, sex within in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage is not only part of God’s original plan for creation [and indeed, a pivotal ingredient if we are going to succeed in this thing called "our cultural mandate"]–but it can also be erotic, deeply emotional and ultimately satisfying.
Rob closes his comment with two penetrating questions. Questions I want you to respond to:
How many Christian couples do you know that struggle with this? How many unbelievers do you know that have gotten a flawed view of sexuality from the church and that’s lead to them dismissing Jesus altogether?
I have to confess that my own view of sex within a Christian marriage has been distorted in the past. It wasn’t until pastors like Piper and Driscoll and a book by Kostenberger
This brings to mind something Grudem expresses the “Introduction” to his Systematic Theology
That’s not easy to do. But it’s part and parcel of developing a mature Christian mind.
And while the second question might sound shallow and baseless and somewhat offensive to an agnostic or atheist, it’s really not.
The reasons for dismissing Jesus and Christianity are often emotional and moral–not intellectual. Thus a flat, flawed view of sex within Christianity amounts to a dull, boring life…
“No thanks,” the non-believer might say.
That’s why I think it’s important to get this topic right–both for the believer AND the non-believer.
On the one hand a healthy, Christian view of love and sexuality avoids frustration and division within a marriage. Instead, it invites joy and unity.
On the other hand it allows us to control the cultural conversation and express a genuine benefit to unbelievers [not that we're trying to attempt to bribe them...merely taking an excuse away] about the passion and bliss found in Christian love and sexuality.
So what about you: Do you struggle with what love and sexuality look like within a Christian marriage? Besides reading and studying a book like Songs, how have you attempted to remedy that? And do you know anybody who’s dismissed Jesus and Christianity because of a flawed view of love and Christian sexuality?
I look forward to your thoughts. Brutal and all.
Contending with Christianity’s Critics [A Review]
Want quick answers to objections the New Atheists, Bart Ehrman and Open Theists bring against Christianity?
Then Contending with Christianity’s Critics is your book.
Now, William Lane Craig [editor and contributor] says the book is both accessible and apologetically cutting-edge.
While I’ll concede cutting-edge, I have to resist “accessible.”
I’ll show you what I mean in a minute.
Here’s the deal: Contending is made up of 18 essays divided into three categories: The Existence of God, Jesus of History and Coherence of Christian Doctrine.
What follows is a SHORT review of each essay. Nano-reviews, if you will.
Dawkin’s Delusion
In under 3 pages Craig demonstrates that Richard Dawkin’s doesn’t have “a very serious argument against God’s existence.” Instead, he’s got an invalid syllogism.
At Home in the Multi-Verse
All I have to say is that James Daniel Sinclair lost me at sentence one. Go figure.
Confronting Naturalism: The Argument from Reason
Victor Reppert’s argument in a nutshell: Meaning is ambiguous if naturalism is true. However, meaning is NOT ambiguous. Thus, naturalism is false.
Belief in God: A Trick of Our Brain?
Psychological experiments about a God-sense hardwired in our brain simply demonstrate what we already know: We’ve got an instinct for God.
The Moral Poverty of Evolutionary Naturalism
Mark D. Linville starts his essay like this: “Darwin’s account of the origins of human morality is at once elegant, ingenious and woefully inadequate.” He then defends that thesis in 16 pages of playful, Rob Powellesque language.
Darwin’s Best Argument Against God’s Existence
Gregory Ganssle uses four counter-features to show that Dawkin’s best argument–that features of this life fit a naturalistic explanation better than a theistic one–simply doesn’t deliver.
Criteria for The Gospel’s Authenticity
When positive evidence accumulates…and one affirms a universe open to miracles…the Gospel’s authenticity is strongly attested. That’s Robert Stein’s argument.
Jesus the Seer
Ben Witherington makes an exquisite case for Jesus’ self-understanding as God by exploring his use of the phrase “Son of Man.” Must read.
The Resurrection of Jesus Time Line
Gary Habermas works back from the composition of the Gospels to Paul’s conversion to show that Jesus’ bodily record was taught as early as 30 AD. In other words: It’s always been a creed with the church.
How Scholars Fabricate Jesus
Craig Evans argues that the scholarly track record with respect to the use of extra-canonical gospels is embarrassing. Take note, Crossan.
How Badly Did the Early Scribes Corrupt the New Testament
Dan Wallace takes Misquoting Jesus to task, stating the author [Bart Ehrman] esteems provocative positions over honesty, excitement over boredom.
Who Did Jesus Think He Was?
Michael Wilkins makes a plain-Jane case that Jesus knew he was God. The only innovation appears to be Wilkin’s use of Peter’s messianic proclamation as a test case.
The Coherence of Theism
Taliaferro and Marty look at six specific attributes of God and their seamless interaction to prove God simply makes sense.
Is the Trinity a Logical Blunder?
Paul Copan makes a case for a simple understanding of the Trinity–yet with room for mystery and worship.
Did God Become a Jew?
Copan next argues that it’s NOT absurd to think about God becoming man. One way he does this is by warning us to start with the Scriptures–not Greek philosophy–when we talk about the Incarnation.
Dostoevsky, Woody Allen and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution
Christopher Hitchens complains that Jesus’ death as vicarious atonement makes zero sense. Steve Porter’s essay will fix that.
Hell: Getting What’s Good My Own Way
Very creative case for hell by Stuart Goetz based on libertarian free will, life plans and ultimate-good-seeking decisions. C. S. Lewis would be proud.
What Does God Know? The Problems with Open Theism
David Hunt tells us that open theism doesn’t have a scriptural advantage over classical theism because it fails four truth tests.
As you might’ve noticed, Richard Dawkin’s and Co. and their ideas get a lot of work. That’s intentional.
Thus, if you want answers to this new wave of objections to Christianity, Contending is a good buy. You’ll be happy to foot the $14. I was.
Anthony Horvath: Director of Apologetics Ministry Talks
I get the feeling that Anthony Horvath doesn’t sleep.
The guy’s got a lot going on.
For starters, he’s the director of Athanatos Christian Ministries, an organization “committed to applying the Christian world view in creative contexts that range from Christian apologetics to education to the edification of the church to literature and the arts.”
He’s also a public speaker on the pro-life circuit [for good reasons]. An author of two fiction books. The founder of a literary apologetics writing contest. And the brains behind this publishing group.
Throw in a wife and four children–and Anthony is busy. But very interesting. As you’re about to see.
1. Give me a little bio of you and your ministry.
I was raised in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and had every intention of becoming a pastor when, in my first year of college, abandoned my beliefs.
When faith returned, my new passion was Christian apologetics.
I graduated with a pastoral ministry degree with a minor in the Biblical languages and then proceeded to be a religion teacher and other church work positions.
In the midst of the professional church work I continued to do apologetics. I started with AOL and then moved to forum discussions.
About five years ago circumstances conspired so that I became a ’stay at home’ dad and apologetics my ‘full time’ activity. I am a father of four, and on account of the birth of my daughter who has spina bifida, my ministry has a distinctly pro-life bend in it, too.
2. What motivated you to start Athanatos Christian Ministries?
ACM made official what had been going on all along. There are any number of duties involved in running a ministry, much of them having nothing to do with ministry at all. People don’t appreciate this fact. I think small businessmen will understand, though.
Most of the ministry activities we’re doing now were started before ACM became an official non-profit. I chose the name ‘Athanatos,’ which is Greek for ‘immortal’ or ‘not dying’ rather than ‘Sntjohnny’ (my AOL presence my ministry began with) to cast a larger vision for an apologetics ministry.
“He has set eternity in the hearts of men…” Solomon said. As Lewis said, “We have never met a mere mortal.”
I take as my starting point that everyone is longing for truth and meaning and they pursue it as naturally as they breathe. ACM seeks to facilitate that pursuit by any means possible.
3. You state on Anthanatos website that you no longer believe “the best, exclusive use of my time is to reach out and contend with atheists.” I like how you qualified that statement, but I’ve found in my own experience that engaging atheists enhances my understanding of my faith and actually better prepares me to answer challenging questions from Christians. Would you agree with that statement or disagree.
Well, I can see how this might come across as not wanting to engage with atheists but perhaps the statement should be understood by contrast to what I was doing before. My discussion forum, slightly a ghost town now used to consume all of my time.
When I say ‘my time’ I mean something on the order of 40 to 60 hours a week.
This includes the loads of reading and research that one would have to do to write intelligently. I draw heavily on this experience as I seek to equip Christians.
I definitely think that that kind of engagement is useful, because it helps us bridge the gap between what we think people’s objections will be and what they actually are.
I still contend with atheists (and others!). It just isn’t as much of my time as before. Also, as alluded to before, much more of my time is needed to management and administration of the ministry, which is a reality I’m not particularly happy about.
4. In 2006, you said that the Church was actually creating atheists. What did you mean by that? You also said that if you made that statement today, it’d hardly get noticed. What’s changed in four years?
That 2006 pronouncement was born of my realization that many, if not most, if not even all, of the atheists I was conversing with had been raised in the Church.
This goes to the other reason why I’ve shifted my time to equipping Christians over against banging heads with atheists: I deemed it might be more practical to stop Christians from falling away in the first place rather than try to win them back after they were long gone.
The really controversial part of my 2006 pronouncement, though, was that the Church itself was instrumental in breeding atheists.
Now, a certain natural cycle of doubt and questioning and a certain amount of people deciding that Christianity doesn’t have the answers is to be expected and is not problematic on its face.
The problem is that the Church is doing a poor job making sure that people are asking the right questions and then exposing them to the best answers. It’s worse than that: much Christian education actually sets people up to be clobbered when they finally started thinking through their faith.
I think Ken Ham’s Already Gone documents this very well. That book represents a survey that he personally commissioned and to his surprise they discovered that those most likely to have hardened positions against Christianity were those who had been through Sunday School, VBS, Confirmation, and the like.
Nonbelievers who were ’softer’ on Christianity hadn’t actually been through any Christian programming! While I don’t agree with Ham’s total conclusions, I think his theory on why this particular phenomena is taking place is probably correct.
Since I made that pronouncement in 2006, there have been a variety of studies that have come out showing that a high percentage of unbelievers were raised in the Church. Ken Ham I mentioned. Barna has produced numerous reports indicating something is amiss. There are others, too.
It isn’t a controversial pronouncement any more because I think generally speaking it is agreed that there is something seriously, seriously wrong in the transmission of the faith.
The remaining dispute is over what is wrong and what to do about it.
What Is the “Post-Evangelical Wilderness”?
I asked myself the same question the other day when I read Chaplain Mike’s post My Post-Evangelical Wilderness.
Basically Mike is explaining what life is like as a Christian in an environment he feels is dysfunctional and theologically shallow.
This is how Mike put it:
“For years, I’d had a growing dissatisfaction with evangelicalism’s lack of tradition, historical perspective, reverence and order in worship. I resisted its programmed approach to spiritual growth, its bourgeois commitments that blatantly disregard the NT emphasis on sacrificial service and inclusion of the poor and disenfranchised, its “temple” mentality that has little sense of serving Christ in daily life and instead revolves around what happens in the institution and its programs.”
Can you relate? I can. But I didn’t at first.
Yes, his commentary splendidly sums up my feelings of the evangelical church. But I don’t really feel like I live in a “post-evangelical wilderness.” Let me explain.
A Problem with Independent, Local Churches
Mike’s angst isn’t rooted solely in his disappointment in the old evangelical order. He’s also a pastoral casualty of an independent church.
He mentions and I think rightly puts his finger on the ecclesiastical problem of independent, local, non-denominational churches: no overarching governing body to lend support when a church goes under or a pastor needs a job.
It’s a rough and lonely world, indeed. You are on your own.
Mike learned this lesson firsthand and found himself without a job–and a church home. No wonder Mike feels like a stranger in a strange land.
And at the end of his post Mike explains this is what living in the “post-evangelical wilderness” means to him. [By the way: He's since found a job he loves but not a church he loves.]
He then goes on to ask “What does it mean to you?” That’s when the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
My Harsh and Compassionate Response
Even though I relate to Mike now, at first I couldn’t. I knew he got one thing right: There is a generation parting. Call it “evangelical” if you must and I certainly feel like I live a wilderness…
But I wouldn’t identify it as “post-evangelical wilderness.” There’s just way too much going on to tie up our Christian life in this neat package.
Also, by saying “post-evangelical wilderness” we are implying there once was an “evangelical paradise,” a notion I think will make us all snicker.
Mike’s post was a bold one. He opened up. Became vulnerable. But you know what? I kind of thought Mike was whining.
So I mentally hashed out my response–I isolated his problems and presented the solutions in my patented curt approach.
So very man of me. And unregenerate.
But fortunately my conscience wouldn’t allow me to leave it at that. I knew God was nudging me to go further…to step into Mike’s shoes.
So I did my best at proposing a second, compassionate response. I can’t say I succeeded. You be the judge. Here are my original thoughts:
Couple things come to mind when I hear “post evangelical wilderness.” First, cop out. Second, phase of life.
Cop out: I think we’re all pretty much frustrated with the dysfunction of the human race. Paul’s approach to dealing with dysfunction in the church? Laying down the truth. Believers in persecuted nations would love to have a dysfunctional church to worship in. As you can probably tell, this is my harsher side coming out.
Phase of life: This is my softer side coming out. I can only imagine Paul got very, very disillusioned with the persistent dysfunction of the church, too. Indeed, you can sense that in his second letter to Timothy. And I imagine all of us go through phases in which we feel lost and let down by the “church.” But let’s not forget the invisible church. Elijah was reminded when he experienced his lonely, dark winter of spiritual discontent that God had preserved 7,000 others just like him. Fortunately we live in an age that allows us to connect with vibrant, merciful believers around the world who can encourage us when our own local church isn’t.
Chin up, Mike. God loves you and wants you to fight.
Don’t get me wrong: I love neat phrases like “post-evangelical wilderness.” And as cognitive beings who love solving problems, we have a bent for them.
[See this Dug Down Deep review for another example.]
But anytime we align ourselves with a movement–whether post-evangelical or Emergent or New Calvinism–we are in danger of becoming dogmatic, entrenched and ultimately dysfunctional in the eyes of the next generation…something I’d love to avoid…if possible.
Your Turn
So tell me…am I dead on? Or way off? Also, do you see yourself in a “post-evangelical wilderness”? And what does that mean to you? Also, got any solutions for the independent, local churh? I’m curious. Leave your thoughts–brutal and all–in the comments.
Monergism.com: A Quick and Dirty Guide
Monergism is the name for the doctrine that the Holy Spirit acts independently of the human will in the work of new birth.
It’s also the name for one of the best online resources for all things reformed: Monergism.com.
In many ways, it’s the reformed communities best kept secret.
But it’s not likely to stay that way for long.
The Birth of Monergism
Around the year 2000, web developer John Hendryx started to get disturbed by the growth of heretical information on the web.
At the same time he also noticed that there wasn’t anywhere online you could go to find sound doctrine in a single place. Naturally, he felt like he should use his God-given creativity to spread the gospel.
So, in his spare time, he built Monergism.com to help recover the true biblical doctrines of the historic faith by collecting and centralizing reformed resources across the web on one site.
And what began ten years ago as a small website with a handful of links has grown into a mammoth directory of all things reformed.
Five Things You Can Do at Monergism.com
Monergism.com amounts to a vast archive of online articles, PDFs, books and mp3s. So if you’re new to monergism–whether the doctrine or the website–start here…
With over 80 links to topics on regeneration, the will of God, justification and biblical devotion you’re likely to be busy for awhile–especially if you settle into the 26-part audio lecture on Calvin’s Institutes.
The second great way to use Monergism.com involves the exposition of Scripture. Simply pop in any Bible verse into the search box, press submit and voila: a stout list of written and audio commentaries on that verse.
The third great feature at Monergism.com is it’s biography pages. Take Tim Keller, for example. On his bio page you get a professional summary then a long list of resources.
Then there’s the Monergism mp3 library–a massive archive of sermons and lectures on just about any topic under the reformed sun. Name a living theologian or pastor–like Tim Keller or D. A. Carson–and you are likely to find all their available sermons.
Lastly, Monergism.com has developed into a bookstore where you can find classic Puritan works by Flavel, Edwards and Newton to current works by Francis Chan, Kevin DeYoung or Adrian Warnock–often at reduced prices.
Keep This in Mind
Monergism.com is a non-profit organization. That means Hendyx and Co. work off of donations and book sales…
Anyone who’s worked in non-profit knows that this often amounts to dirt, which should give you an indication when you consider the size and quality and longevity of Monergism.com that this venture has a lot to do with one man’s unrelenting vision to see the historic confession of Jesus Christ dominate the theological landscape…
Something I can wholeheartedly get behind. What about you?
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