Donald Miller: The Truth About Powerful Personalities

HT Matt Johnson at the BHT. Johnson asks somewhat rhetorically

http://boarsheadtavern.com/2012/10/19/33777/

 Don Miller on Lance Armstrong. Does anyone not think Miller is talking about Driscoll?


Here's the link with an excerpt.  Why, no ... there can't possibly be any subtext to this one.

http://storylineblog.com/2012/10/18/the-truth-about-powerful-personalities/

... There’s really nothing wrong with power. Power is a tool. But it takes a certain kind of personality to become powerful. To be pointed, it takes the kind of personality who loves power. We tend to get what we aspire for. Power is rarely accidentally attained.

But power isn’t something God wants us to pursue. Scripture tells us to live a quiet life. Even Jesus mysteriously says He doesn’t regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. There’s a humility and even an anonymity about our faith that is quite appealing. Each of us is to try to get lower in stature than the other, to be lesser than, not greater than.

On power as sought out in a worship experience, or power as subject to an inflationary bubble of influence for which "conference Christians" could be considered a symptom, here's a little blogging blast from the past.

Guest Post at Internet Monk

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/guest-post-wth-on-there-is-neither-art-nor-pop-neither-indie-or-mainstream

Carl Trueman "There is something terribly, horribly sleazy emerging in broadly reformed and evangelical quarters ... "

http://reformation21.org/blog/2012/10/a-cloud-the-size-of-mans-hand.php

The recent events surrounding Dinesh D'Souza are surely a clarion call for all of us to examine ourselves: let him who thinks he stands, etc. etc. Yet, while the questions hanging over the matter regarding his marriage are worrying, I confess that I find equally disturbing the idea that there are Christian groups out there willing to pay Christian leaders salaries of $1,000,000 to head up Christian organisations and then fees of $10,000 and upwards for giving a single lecture. When my youngest son read the reports online, his initial reaction was not to the marriage issue but to the cash: "That's what really gets Christianity in this country a bad name." was his comment.

There is something terribly, horribly sleazy emerging in broadly reformed and evangelical quarters. As soon as your group, whether it be a conference or a coalition or a college, starts to be influenced in its choice of 'leader' or keynote speaker by the chosen one's ability to command serious media attention or simply fill that stadium, you have Corinthian Christianity and you are heading for disaster. When we are talking upper six and seven figure salaries for those involved in ostensibly Christian work, when figures like ten grand per lecture are bandied around and nobody seems to comment on it as something distasteful or downright inappropriate, we are heading into territory previously occupied by the televangelists and the prosperity hucksters. Given the fact that those with real influence seem adamant in their silence, their chummy farewells to each other and their forced public friendliness to all (except, natch, the occasional irrelevant whistleblower), I think we can expect that events of the last week - indeed, of the last year -- are only the beginning of what is to come.

At seventeen, my son seems to grasp something that has apparently been missed by so many of the great and the good.

Then there's this earlier post Trueman wrote:
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2012/10/the-cultures-the-thing.php

Steve at Triablogue weighs in on grounds for divorce

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/10/grounds-for-divorce.html

Piper's video dealing with how a wife might deal with an abusive husband went viral enough that Steve has, at length, decided to address the topic of grounds for divorce contra Piper's lines of argument.  It's a pretty short blog post considering it was written by Steve, and is worth reading. 

As a teaser to perhaps inspire you to read the rest, dear reader, here's a short snippet at the end that may inspire you to read Steve's much lengthier preliminary discussion of application:

xiii) In application to the specific issue at hand:

a) Domestic violence is a travesty of what marriage represents, in terms of companionship as well as the emblematic significance of marriage (i.e. to illustrate God’s devotion to the redeemed). It’s the antithesis of how marriage is supposed to function (e.g. Eph 5:22-33).

b) Breach of covenant can nullify a covenant if one party fails to honor the terms of the covenant. And this isn’t the case of a spouse who makes a good faith effort, but falls short due to sin. Rather, this is acting in bad faith.

c) There is also an argument from analogy. A battered slave could be manumitted (Exod 21:20-21). A fortiori, a battered wife can divorce her husband. What’s true in the lesser case of a slave is true in the greater case of a wife, for a wife has greater rights than a slave.

 

There's more but I threw in the conclusion in the hopes of inspiring you to read how Steve builds up to this excerpt.  It's pretty short for him, as noted earlier. :)

Orthocuban: Modern ideas of wisdom

http://www.orthocuban.com/2012/10/modern-ideas-of-wisdom/

In other words what passes for wisdom in the form of self-help books. 

Sovereign Grace Ministries pastors and church officials subject to lawsuit

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_REL_CHURCH_SEX_ABUSE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=163090194

http://www.journalreview.com/news/church/article_660274ab-07c6-50ec-bc18-84b3ce12e549.html

While the ministry/church network would be implicated by reputation and association the institution itself is not mentioned as being the defendent in the suit. 

The Associated Press broke this story recently and it's made the rounds. 

Mars Hill Church and the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability

http://www.ecfa.org/ComparativeFinancialData.aspx?ID=32663&Type=Member

We know some folks who were asking years ago why this hadn't happened before. 

Well, it's been years since those folks were still attending MH but for those who didn't already spot this, MH has submitted numbers to the ECFA. 

Allusions and reappropriations of themes in Isaiah 64 in NT passages

Bear with me, as I'm not one of those professional scholars here but these literary and thematic parallels intrigued me recently. Maybe it's just me noticing them--it's obvious in 1 Corinthians 2 but it of late seems equally obvious, though less direct, in 1 John 1, or at least it seems that way to me.

Isaiah 64:1-4

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
    that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze
    and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
    and cause the nations to quake before you!
For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
    you came down, and the mountains trembled before you
Since ancient times no one has heard,
    no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
    who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

John 1:1-13
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.  Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Matthew 27: 51-53
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split.  The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.  They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

1 Corinthians 2:6-16
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.  No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.  None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  However, as it is written:

“No eye has seen,
    no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
    what God has prepared for those who love him”

but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.  This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment:

“For who has known the mind of the Lord
    that he may instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.

1 John 1:1-4
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.  We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.  We write this to make our joy complete.

And another one from Christian Brady: Why did Mahlon and Chilion die?

http://targuman.org/blog/2012/08/19/why-did-mahlon-and-chilion-die/

This one is fun because Brady discusses the interpretive problem of how Boaz marrying Ruth was not violating the prohibition in the Torah against a Moabite entering the assembly.  One Jewish commentary held that Mahlon and Chilion died for marrying Moabite women against the prohibitions in the Torah.  This interpretation never caught on because it immediately raised the question of why Boaz wasn't judged by God for marrying Ruth. 

A more pallatable explanation besides the simple contradiction narrative was to note that Boaz was a descendent of Rahab, an Ammorite, and so he was not purely of Israelite stock to begin with.  Now that may not seem too appealing to people who don't think quite so highly of ethnic or regional purity of family lines but, hey, technically it works.  It also explains why Boaz wasn't considered as bad as those Israelite men who married Moabite women that Nehemiah got furious about in Nehemiah 13.

Another one from Christian Brady, Wikipedia won't let an author correct his own Wikipedia page as a matter of policy

http://targuman.org/blog/2012/09/11/wikipedia-again-avoids-facts-by-policy/

I keep advising against the use of Wikipedia for anything controversial (i.e. controversies that matter, as opposed to whether or not Captain America could beat Wolverine in a fight). This is another reason.  Even if we factor in bias primary sources beat secondary sources most of the time unless the primary sources can be proven beyond all doubt to be fraudulent.  That's a basic point about doing the best research you can.  If you're looking up wiki-anything it's like Megatron trusting Starscream.  Sure, technically you could do it and not have some plot against your life but you better not gamble ono the idea that he'll never let you down. :) Letting Megatron down is practically Starscream's destiny.

Intellectual evangelicalism and credo-baptism. Christian Brady throws out an idea

http://targuman.org/blog/2012/10/10/intellectual-evangelicalism/

First, the blog post. Robin was commenting that he (judging by the banner pictures that are all of men) grew up in a credo-baptist tradition¹, but has come to believe that rather than being “the Bible way” is, in fact, “sub-Biblical.” I want to say right away, I love that term and I intend to use it. His point is a great one.

The problem is that much evangelical theology simply makes baptism unnecessary (and this applies to many evangelicals in paedo-baptist traditions too — evangelical Anglicans, for instance, are so terrified of baptismal regeneration that they often water down NT theology too). We do it because Jesus told us to but for many of us, in our heart of hearts, we consider it an optional extra. After all, the important stuff is repentance and faith and while baptism offers testimony to God’s work in our lives we hardly need to get batised to do that.

I confess I see myself in that paragraph and I accept the critique. One of the great things of my becoming an Anglican was realizing/discovering the “mystery” of faith. The term “mystery” here is used not in the Holmesian sense, there is nothing to be uncovered and explained, but rather in the historical and theological sense of something that is known only through revelation.

There's a bit more to read at your leisure if you're inclined.  It invites a question as to what the real significance of baptism is if it consider to be a symbol of a rebirth that has already taken place.  It's not that I can't appreciate or understand that line of argument but in another way it would seem to obviate the need for baptism on any other grounds than to make a theological case of "Well, Jesus said to do it so even though we deny that there is any inherent efficacy in the action itself we gotta do it because Jesus said to and we'll come up with an explanation for it as we go." 

The Elephant's Debt and recent developments

http://theelephantsdebt.com/2012/10/16/recent-developments-16-october-2012/#more-989

... Over the past few days, several well-meaning individuals have argued that this site has not included all of the relevant “facts” pertaining to the debt. While we do not believe this to be an accurate assessment of the situation, we offer the following information as means of a explaining why we parsed the data in the way that we did.

As we presently understand it, HBC is estimated to have nearly $150 million in material assets, including real estate and other goods. If one subtracts the debt of roughly $65 million (2010 levels), HBC still has a positive balance sheet of approximately $85 million dollars.[1] On these grounds, some have argued that HBC is not technically in debt. Here is why this discussion was not included in the original publication.

First, these material assets are what we call “hard” assets. In other words, they are not “liquid,” which means Harvest is not sitting on a large cash reserve from which it can service its debt. The debt, however, must be immediately serviced, and it must be paid off in due course.
Secondly, the value of Harvest’s material assets is entirely theoretical. It only becomes actualized when the church sells the property. So, in theory, if they sold enough of their real estate, Harvest could pay off the existing debt. But this move would most likely require the church to close more than one of its existing campuses, which in turn would most likely lead to a downward turn in weekly attendance, and thus, weekly giving.

Thirdly, there is no present guarantee that the asset value can be realized because the value of a property is only worth what an actual buyer will pay. At present, Harvest’s balance sheet only reflects an accounts fair market value estimate. In other words, the balance sheet represents what the bank believes to be fair market value. But in this economy, there is no guarantee that Harvest would be able to find a buyer willing to pay that price. Moreover, the most valuable asset owned by Harvest is the TV station in Aurora. To sell that property, one would have to find a suitable buyer. Needless to say, the market for selling a TV studio is very limited, and in this economy the prospects are even worse.

Finally, and most significantly, several of these assets, including the TV studio, were obtained well after MacDonald had accumulated the original debt. So to suggest that our argument is flawed based upon the current, theoretical value of these unsold properties is somewhat foolish. When MacDonald was making these decisions, he had no way of knowing what the future would hold. So to say that all is now well and good because the numbers “turned out okay” is to unreasonably remove the moral responsibility from the man who, in our opinion, was making reckless financial decisions.

Anyone who has read blogs dealing with public criticism or inquiry into decisions at institutions will have noticed by now that Christians as a group can often play the Matthew 18 card to suggest that public inquiry into "private" matters is best avoided.  Most Christians commenting on blogs have probably not spent a lot of time looking into theories of the press, the nature of mass media or broadcast media, and have therefore not thought through the implications of what they're actually getting at by "private". 

So we can get a situation where one megachurch pastor denounces the theology of another (such as Driscoll denouncing Joel Osteen from the pulpit or William Young's book The Shack).  Fans of Osteen and Young step in to say that Driscoll should have contacted Osteen or Young privately with criticism and to not be so rough on men who have a successful thing going that God has used to bless people.  The defense of the Driscoll criticism would be to say that Driscoll is defending sound doctrine.  When the shoe is on the other foot and people cast doubt on whether Driscoll has conflated common grace with particular atonement and whether or not Driscoll's credentials as at least a nominally Reformed theologian come up, let alone questions about Driscoll's demonstrable competence as an exegete or if people ask questions or raise criticisms about Driscoll and Mars Hill in connection to firings or discipline, then Matthew 18 gets brought out again, only this time where it was ignored as having any relevance to Driscoll on Osteen or Young it suddenly becomes very germane to a criticism of Driscoll's failures as a pastor, scholar, or exegete.  Suddenly the argument that you can't argue with success matters a whole lot more than it did for a Joel Osteen or a William Young. 

The problem that arises in these sorts of situations is that since all these guys became public figures criticism is both possible and warranted.  Reactions of fans can often fall into the realm of two errors, the first would be special pleading and the second related error would be a double standard.  Matthew 18 is what I get to use to tell you that you don't get to criticize my favorite celebrity while a double standard permits me to establish that, somehow, my favorite celebrity doesn't qualify for coming under the same criticism because the criteria are actually different. 

Now those who can explain that the criteria are actually different would have a point--if the criteria are indeed different. For instance, when Driscoll criticized the theology of The Shack this could have been perfectly legitimate if the express literary aim of the novel was to function as a catechism, but this was not necessarily the case.  Driscoll then turning around and urging that no one pass final judgment on Jakes until Driscoll had gotten on a plane for Jesus this became a different set of criteria on assessing a public figure on a point of doctrine in a case where the differences would indicate that the pastor ought to be held to a substantially higher level of criticism and examination than a self-published author who has not been a megachurch pastor. 

Now something that commonly happens when a blog like The Elephant's Debt goes up is that people dispute the legitimacy of such a site on a couple of grounds, grounds that the creators of the site adequately address themselves in their specific case. 

At a broader level a few words may be said about sites like The Elephant's Debt generally.  The first thing to be said is that what people can be inspired to say is "You're not getting the whole story here.  There are two sides to every story".  Well, no, there could be up to fifteen sides to a story and not just two and in cases of this sort there has been some effort to see to it that there is no story at all where the public is concerned.  Critics of critics may want to ask themselves whether they simply have a different set of standards for churches than they have for politicians, political parties, and the level of discretion and disclosure required for one form of non-profit entity over another. 

The second thing to be noticed is that "We are all sinners" gets trotted out in most cases as a way to delegitimize criticism.  Well, if we're all sinners then there's no point in skipping public discussion or debate because nobody has the moral high ground.  Obviously this is almost never what those who employ this particular line of reasoning are even trying to get at, usually the opposite.  The sinner commenting on how we are all sinners doesn't want his being a sinner to preclude him (not always a him, of course) from saying that other people are sinners and should not be so quick to judge. 

A problem that can show up with this rhetorical path is that it is, well, a rhetorical path.  Evidence and claims are not necessarily up for consideration.  A broad-brush rhetorical flourish casting doubt on the provenance and credibility of a set of controversial claims skips past verification and goes into the realm of character assessment, and often character assasination.  It becomes perilously easy to impute motives for people and schools of thought.  Contrary to the bromides of pious Christians on the internet "both sides" are likely to drop the ball at this point. Critics are apt to presume a level of guilt and malice that can be impossible to prove while defenders are apt to presume a level of altruism and honesty that strains credulity well past the breaking point in some cases.  This becomes more acute when the defenders roll out the "we're all sinners" objection because if they took that seriously (at all) it would mean they would have to concede that their pet subject of defense is not always as competent or well-meaning as they could be and they sin.

The most pervasive shortcoming Christians on all sides can have is to make a distinction in which all sin must be volitional and intentional.  There's simply nowhere in the scripture that says that a sin is something you did on purpose.  The Psalmist asks the Lord to clear him of hidden faults.  In the Torah there were provisions for sin offerings for inadvertant sin.  Too much online discourse presumes, wrongly, that if people are sinning they must know they are sinning.  This is one of the key reasons that public discussion of things some Christians want "private" for the sake of preserving the reputation of their favorite Christian celebrities needs to happen, both for the sake of "critics" and of "fans".  There's no concession that despite the assumption of good intentions that things can still go bad.  You have to be innocent because you don't think of sinning and don't want to sin, or you have to be guilty of knowingly defying whatever good and proper conduct and thought are.  Thanks to the internet we live even more in a time when people prefer conspiracy to imcompetence as an explanation for everything.  Let's attempt to revive the consideration of imcompetence for the sake of a humbler and more generous public discourse, shall we?

Now, of course, defenders of pet religious favorites will find this unacceptable because the last thing we want to concede is that our favorite Christian celebrity or brand could be mired in imcompetence or drop the ball in expensive and life-changingly bad ways.  It doesn't us make us feel much better to hear that our favorites may have been imcompetent than if we hear claims that they have done actual, willful wrong.  But we're all sinners, right?  It is at precisely this point the argument used to speak against public discussion most boomerangs on itself. 

We need to recognize for ourselves and others that some of our most disastrous mistakes seemed like good ideas at the time.  David took a census that led to the deaths of thousands and the books of Samuel and Chronicles tell us alternately that God prompted David to do this because He was angry with His people and that Satan inspired David to take a census. To go by the sentiments of Christians reacting to "critical" blogs it sometimes seems as though what they would want to say about David is "Well, we're all sinners here and David was God's annointed and so it wouldn't have been wise to question God's appointed leader about the wisdom of the census because maybe God was telling David to take the census."  Okay ... well, consider that the Bible shows God making leaders make terrible decisions as the basis for catalyzing the deaths of thousands of people.  It's in there.  If God did it with David who could be said to have had a role of "wrote books of the Bible" how much more could it be true of some favorite Christian celebrity now? 

Let's suppose that critics of critics are right about something, that the other side of a story has not been told.  How often do critics of critics actually share that other side?  It seems unfortunately common that the "other side" is merely a rhetorical device used to cast doubt on "the one who speaks first".  A proverb is brought out as a prooftext rather than as an exhortation to actual wisdom.  The first person to speak seems right until the cross-examination, yes, but that is not an excuse to avoid cross-examination and it is the cross-examination that too often never gets thought about.  The proverb is misused as a way to suppress further discussion or investigation or disclosure. 

This is an election year in the United States.  Do Christians who would say we should not investigate the reliability of claims made by self-selected leaders of churches say the same about political candidates?  That doesn't seem likely.  When it comes to policy decisions will a Christian say, "Well, we're all sinners here so we shouldn't contest this or that politician's political track record" will they? 

It's something to at least keep in mind when you come across Christians saying that this or that blog shouldn't even exist and that this or that thing should have been dealt with "in private". If they're willing to say the same thing about their politicians then, well, they're consistent.  If being a pastor is a lower calling than being a politician then perhaps we could say that this could justify a lower level of accountability. ;-)

HT Jim West: A Very Damning Truth: Walter Grundmann, Adolf Schlatter, and Susannah Heschel’s The Aryan Jesus*

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=6&fid=8633104&jid=HTR&volumeId=105&issueId=03&aid=8633103&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0017816012000119

As I have written a bit earlier, one of the ironies of Schlatter's observation that our own share in evil is not removed by our condemnation of evil in others is that Schlatter laid a foundation for views about Judaism that, at best, were profoundly problematic. 

As useful as Schlatter's commentary on Romans can be his views on Judaism (like that of a variety of pre-Holocaust Christians across time and place) are not without some troubles.  While a significant advantage in reading commentaries and study of biblical texts across eras and regions has the advantage of widening our understanding of texts it brings with it a risk that we will bring with those the insularity or problematic limitations of each time and place.  To put it in broadly evangelical terms, all interpreters will be fallible regarding biblical texts so that there will be some problem in each generation no matter what good may come of an overall understanding of Christian teaching. 

In Reformed blogging there's debate between advocates of two kingdom this and unified that but both approaches could be very easily appropriated in a direction that could justify tyranny.  We cannot imagine that, as Carl Trueman recently expressed this sentiment, that if we get all the doctrinal ducks in a row that the culture we have isn't capable of cultishness or tyranny. 

A rather too swift summary of the above article is that Schlatter's distaste for a variety of things in National Socialism did not preclude an anti-Judaic theology that was able to contribute to anti-Semitic views and actions. 

My own convictions have been to take a skeptical view of any nationalist loyalty or ethnic loyalty as such. Boasting in one's race or heritage should not be the basis of an actually Christian practice. The reformation or rejuvenation of a national or ethnic or social legacy should not necessarily be a goal of Christian study, piety, or practice. After decades of observing how people in the United States have been interested in "revival" the aims of "revival" are often, at the end, too bluntly nationalistic or economic to find much confidence in even wanting "revival".

When you spend a good chunk of your life ignoring American Christians who attempt to revive this or that social or political agenda in the process of seeking to understand biblical texts then it's not a huge step to, say, read some of Schlatter's commentary on biblical texts and to also set off to the side a few things that were of his time.  Our own era must have its own appropriations and assimilations that a century from now may be seen as rabid and rampant advocacy disguised as dispassionate scholarship.  The more we learn about the way the human brain works and how we argue with each other the more it seems to be that much of what passes for "reason" can be a faulty intuition that retroactively seeks a rationale.

In terms of a New Perspective on Paul one of the biggest implications of saying that late medieval scholastics misconstrued and misrepresented Judaism is not hard to grasp in a post-Holocaust world, it's impossible to soft-pedal the harm of a "works righteousness" theology in how that theology became an ideology with social, racial and political implications.  This is not necessarilly to say (as I suppose some have already) that a traditional Reformation era understanding of the Law and Gospel must necessarily be anti-Semitic but at another level the question (raised by Jewish thinkers and Christians alike) about how far the diatribe against Judaism really goes in early Christian writings won't go away, not least because even if we can establish that the earliest Christians were not anti-Semitic in the fashion in which National Socialists became notorious the seeds did all seem to be there.

Some scholars might go so far as to say the entire realm of justification theory itself becomes the problem, a bad theology which has been imposed upon the entirety of the Pauline corpus but we're not here to attempt to get into that whole field of dicussion just yet. 

Mockingbird: three responses to conflict

http://www.mbird.com/2012/10/the-3-responses-to-conflict-fight-flight-and-appeasement/
Mockingbird links to a David Brooks piece that discusses a theory by psychologist Karen Horney.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/opinion/brooks-the-personality-problem.html?ref=davidbrooks&_r=2

More than most of her male counterparts, Horney felt that people were driven by anxiety and the desire for security. People who have been seriously damaged, she argued, tend to react in one of three ways.

Some people respond to their wounds by moving against others. These domineering types seek to establish security by conquering and outperforming other people. They deny their own weaknesses. They are rarely plagued by self-doubt. They fear dependence and helplessness. They use their children and spouses as tools to win prestige for themselves.
      

These people are often excessively proud of their street smarts. They deeply resent criticism and seek the vindictive triumph — the reversal of fortunes in which they can lord their excellence over those who scorned them. These people can’t face their need for affection, so they seek to cover it by earning admiration and deference.

 

For this sort of person, the Fighter, vulnerability has to be dealt with by ensuring that others are taken down a few pegs.  A fighter may be perfectly aware of his or her own weakness and dependence but the main thing may to be minimize how many people know about or may be able to exploit such weakness.  For those who may have heard of research done on the "badass" you may have read that the stance of the badass is bolstered by the appearance of being able to take down anyone in a fight through sheer crazy/brutal fighting so that the badass doesn't actually have to fight most of the time and can coast along on reputation alone.  The badass doesn't have to win every fight, just the ones that ensure that he (usually) or she wins the publicly visible fights that help bolster his or her street cred. 

 

This stance could be embraced even by those who are plagued by self-doubt.  Far be it from a badass to let you know that he or she is actually at to feel weak.  As adaptive strategies go a person would be no more a "pure" Fighter, it seems, than a person would be a "pure" extravert or intravert.

 

Other people respond to anxiety by moving toward others. These dependent types try to win people’s affections by being compliant. They avoid conflict. They become absorbed by their relationships, surrendering their individual opinions. They regard everyone else as essentially good, even people who have been cruel.

      

They praise themselves for their long-suffering forbearance, their willingness to live for others, even though in reality they are just too scared to assert themselves. They think they are behaving selflessly, but they are really using others for whatever drips of affection they can provide.

 

Perhaps here would be the place to mention the paradoxical possibility of a selfishness that can lay dormant underneath altruism.  Remorselessly nerdy moment here, this would be Lex Luthor's rebuke to Superman.  Saving other people will not make those people actually like Superman more, it means that Superman merely depends too much on the approval of others.  Nerd digression ended.

 

Other people move away from others. These detached types try to isolate themselves and adopt an onlooker’s attitude toward life. As Terry D. Cooper summarizes the category in his book, “Sin, Pride and Self-Acceptance,” “To guarantee peace, it is necessary to leave the battleground of interpersonal relationships, where there is constant threat of being captured.”

      

These detached people may put on a charming veneer to keep people away. They tamp down desire, avoid ambition and minimize conflict and risk. They want to avoid the feeling of needing someone. They seek to live tranquilly in the moment.

 

If a Fighter were to live with a person who Flees emotionally that could end up being a miserable existence, couldn't it?  Brooks has a little to add past these three summaries of reactive styles and it's simple enough to notice that each reactive style can be quite damaging and maladaptive. 

 

Now if this were a standard issue pious Calvinist blog perhaps here would be the part where you get asked to consider which maladaptive coping approach is yours.  Because, after all, you've got to have something wrong with you, right?  And, to be sure, you very likely do (as do I).  But what makes this not quite a standard issue pious Calvinist blog is we're not going to lock you into the assumption that you absolutely must have one of these three tendencies and that it is only ever maladaptive.  It "could" be but notice that framing Horney's approach is informed by maladaptive reactions to trauma.  It's possible to use wisdom to correctly select and calibrate fight, flight, or appeasement for a given situation. 

 

The problem with what some blogging acquaintences might call a "Calvinista" approach is the presupposition that you have to have a maladaptive approach and that anything you might pick that could be a potentially healthy response in a given situation A may be translated into an unhealthy approach for all categories.  The kind of teacher who might take this approach will simply presuppose that you may be fearful or lazy in one setting without conceding that there are other responses that are possible.  Not everyone will be fearful or lazy in equal measure in equal settings.  A workaholic may not be lazy in work and earning money but the workaholic may be lazy about non-work relationships.  A person who invests a great deal of energy in family relationships may be lazy about engaging fellow professionals. There may be plenty of people who manage to find a more or less healthy if imperfect balance between work and ordinary social life for whom this whole range of categories is not entirely appropriate. 

 

The difference between a lazy mass-categorization matrix and the use of insights into the human mind could come down to this, one seeks to assess all people and relationships through a grid to determine the utility of the relationship and the value of the person.  The other takes the knowledge of temperaments, adaptive methodologies and the like and may employ them to better understand and reinforce existing relationships and establish new ones.  Needless to say a person may display both approaches within a life but when the former approach predominates we are probably not dealing with a person who is dealing with relationships with people quite as much as they may be attempting to deal with people in a system of precepts and evaluational grids. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Life: How Silly Do Protestants Sound When Pining for Christendom?

http://oldlife.org/2012/10/how-silly-do-protestants-sound-when-pining-for-christendom/

Hart, again it seems, takes a measure of amusement at Doug Wilson's pining for Christendom and lays out a case for why Christendom is more conceptually the property of Roman Catholics and how Wilson has to define his Christendom down a bit to make it semi-pallatable to some fellow Protestants.

Whether it's "Jihad if you Do, Holy War if You Don't" or the more recent humor at the expense, it seems, of Wilsonian conceptions of Christendom Hart manages to be at least interesting and amusing.  It doesn't seem unfair for Wilson to be on the receiving end of at least a little of some of his medicine.  Soft words make hard people and hard words make soft people and all that.  Saying that Wilson's ideas about Christendom are loopy and absurd might be just what a doctor ordered. ;-)

D. G. Hart on the Puritans, defenses and attacks, and perfectionist polemics

http://oldlife.org/2012/10/will-piper-carson-and-keller-alone-be-left-standing-or-why-dont-rappers-rap-about-native-americans/

In a blogging moment that comes across as "I can't believe I'm about to do this ... ." D. G. Hart points out that criticizing the Puritans is fine and that a defense of them independent of their acceptance of slavery is possible but that the "one strike and you're out, scorched earth" policy warranted direct address. 

Hart winds up to a point that others have tried to make but have made too indirectly and too lamely.  Yet Hart makes this point as someone who is not all that thrilled with the Puritans as a group. 

... In other words, inherent in the anti-slavery position is not a form of genuine Christian reflection but one of perfectionism. This is a one-strike and you’re out scorched earth policy, with certain sins achieving red-letter status. If you break those, we’ll never hear from you again. This has happened with the American founders, slaveholders and chauvinists that they were, among large sectors of the academy. ...

Perhaps the best way out of this dilemma is to toughen up. After all, how happy were the early Christians hearing the apostle Paul quoted in their worship services? Wasn’t he the guy who helped kill Christians? In fact, if we apply our standards of social justice all the way through the past, we will have to close the good book altogether. The reason is that none of the Bible’s saints could withstand our moral rectitude.

Some folks attempting to defend that the Puritans can be seen as something more than just despotic evil at a certain blog seemed to be trying for this qualified defense but didn't articulate it.

Practical Theology for Women: Esther, Victimes, and a Reformed View of Depravity

http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2012/10/esther-victims-and-reformed-view-of.html

... Here's the issue with depravity. Scripture clearly presents that all have sinned and fall short of God's glory. This does NOT mean, however, that every person is as bad as they possibly could be. It does not mean that every person always makes the wrong decision. It does not mean that no person is able to help or be good to another. No, our depravity is better expressed as pervasive than total. Pervasive means it affects all aspects of ourselves. It is spread throughout, and we are unable to reverse it. But it does not mean that every response every time in every situation is 100% or totally wrong. I hear this wrong view of depravity discussed as Jesus wears the only white hat, and everyone else has black hats. [emphasis added] Or Jesus is the only hero, and everyone else is the bad guy.   There's a sense in which that is pervasively true, but it is not totally true.  *Note that such subtleties matter a great deal when discussing something as sensitive as sexual subjugation.*

This difference is crucial for understanding Esther's situation. If you think that all people make bad decisions all the time, well, first that is really depressing, and second it's just not true. In Esther's case, you then likely interpret the fact that she ends up in the king's harem and eventually as his wife due to her own poor choices, because, well, that's the nature of man (or woman) in your belief system. That paradigm has no category for the honest to goodness VICTIM. If you are totally bad all the time, then of course you made only bad choices along the way that led to your victimization.

...

It's very easy for someone with power who is not threatened to surmise what they would do if they had NO power and were threatened. In contrast, anyone who has been threatened sexually and feared for their life or the life of their family will likely give a very different perspective when reading Esther than the one that she contributed sinfully to her own situation. ...

In some circles this might be called a Monday morning quarterback approach to things.

Of note is the observation that it is a truncated view of what depravity means to say Jesus wears the white hat and everyone else wears the black hat.  There are two very obvious problems to this approach.  The first is that it's demonstrably not true, the second is that those who espouse it can't even show they consistently apply such an interpretive approach to biblical texts in their own discussion of them.

More on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife and how it might have been forged.

HT Jim West
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/anthony-ledonne-why-im-glad-hes-joined-our-blogging-family-and-why-blogging-really-actually-matters/

http://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/jesus-wife-fragment-further-evidence-of.html

How The Gospel of Jesus' Wife Might Have Been Forged: A Tentative Proposal

... I am going to cut to the chase and offer an "executive summary" of what I regard as the most important contention::

Line 1 of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fragment copies a typo from a website interlinear of Coptic Thomas

There's quite a bit more, of course, but that's the teaser for those interested in tracking this story.
Some light reading for your weekend, if you wish.

Mockingbird: The Authenticity Hoax--the perpetual Coolhunt & The Law of Keeping it Real

http://www.mbird.com/2012/10/exploring-the-authenticity-hoax-the-perpetual-coohunt-and-the-law-of-keeping-it-real/

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2012/10/08/yanss-podcast-episode-five/

People can’t stop themselves from competing for status. It is branded into the side of the brain before you are born. As a primate, status hierarchies are a part of life, and when you remove yourself from the competition in the mainstream you just join the competition in the counterculture. As long as there are clusters of people bent on avoiding what is most popular, within those clusters people will compete for status through conspicuous consumption of art and fashion, music and movies, furniture and gadgets, signaling to insiders the quality of their taste or the ingenuity of their search for the authentic, and signaling to the outsiders that they are not one of them. Whether you are a Juggalo in Kentucky or a Kogal in Tokyo, the internal affairs cool police are always on the prowl for posers.

The application of this to any community is apt, including religious communities.  Ten years ago when I was still at Mars Hill Martians looked down on the outsiders.  Now people who would fit in the label "alienated by the institutional church" look down on the religious institutions they used to give their money to.  But the status-clambering has not changed on either side of the divide, has it?  If it had then, perhaps, a person could provide help or encouragement to people on that other side of the institutional divide in a way that does not dehumanize them.  Conversely, people still on that other side of the divide could look at those of us who aren't on their side and step back and think a moment about how we are not really any less "cool" than they are. 

The quest for authenticity would be a whole lot easier if we didn't so often have a reflexive desire to not express sincere affection for something without seeming to appear as though we're complete suckers for something.  We want to be "authentic" but if we seem "sold out" we might look a bit crazy or appear to be fools.  I have so jaded a perspective on a certain megachurch that people who express zeal for it come off sounding silly and naive to me ... but it's equally true that anyone who is going to actually go watch Atlas Shrugged Part 2 comes off as just as much a sucker (because they are). We're all suckers for something but authenticity seems to be a stance through which we want to say "I'm all for this Subject X but I am not a sucker." 

Adolescent passion seems to simultaneously be the measurement of "sincere" ardor and yet the measure of the coolest and cruelest dismissal of such ardor.  There are few things that seem to simultaneously be so easy to sincerely attach significanct to in music and so easily satirized in the same as adolescent attraction.  The self-authentication of our authenticity may be what dooms our authenticity more than anything else ... yet if we let others authenticate us we are subject to their judgment.  I could try to do some trite thing here about how it will matter whose authentication of your self you seek ... and sometimes the trite thing is the best thing to end with, mentioned without irony and without an attempt to say more.

J. S. Bangs: Toddler Language: Getting Past

http://jsbangs.com/2012/10/09/toddler-language-getting-past/

... So I don’t think this is something that he acquired as a fixed form, but rather appears to be him accurately applying regular past-tense morphology.

Go read the whole post.  This particular sentence is very cute, though. 

There are dads who are proud of their children for being able to use words and there are dads who are happy to report when a son appears to be accurately applying regular past-tense morphology.

That wins the internet for this week so far as Wenatchee The Hatchet is concerned.

Fighting for the Faith discusses The Elephant's Debt

http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2012/10/pharisectomy.html

http://theelephantsdebt.com/

Carl Trueman: The Culture's The Thing

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2012/10/the-cultures-the-thing.php
I'm going to highlight a few spots of this to the degree where if you say any bold text that's my emphasis added, not Trueman's.

Looking back on the creepy cults of the 70s and the self-indulgent excesses of the televangelists of the 80s can be a little like watching an episode of some ghastly 'reality TV show': as the freaks and frauds parade on the television screen, that subtle sentiment of "I thank thee Lord that I am not like other men" is never far from the surface.

When it comes to cults and televangelists, of course, evangelical Protestants have an obvious foundation for assuming their superiority to the wild-eyed megalomaniacs and the superannuated mullet-haired mountebanks of the TV revival brigade: orthodox theology. The scoundrels are all deviant or downright heretical. We have the right theology, so we cannot be cultists or corrupt, can we? Sadly, that is not so.

In fact, as Paul himself makes clear, the gospel - the true gospel - can be peddled for power and for profit. To borrow Lutheran terminology, just because the product being sold is the theology of the cross does not mean that the salesman is not a theologian of glory. Cults and corruption are reflections of certain cultures, not of confessions. They can be as orthodox on paper as the Chalcedonian Definition but as perverted in their practices as a poker game run by a man called 'Honest John.' So just because somebody preaches the gospel, uses the name of Jesus every other sentence and cries when they talk about the lost does not guarantee that they are not a cult leader or simply in it for what they can get out of it.

The key is the culture. One must ask cultural questions of such men, not simply doctrinal ones. Is the culture of their church or organisation transparent? Are there clear lines of accountability which flow both ways, from the leadership to the grassroots and from the grassroots to the leadership? Is opposition to leadership decisions addressed in an open fashion or via thuggish backroom manoeuvres and public derision and isolation of critics? And one interesting question which I remember a pastor once asking in a pulpit when I was a college student: how far above the average economic level of the congregation or funding constituency does the leadership live? That little old lady putting her ten dollars in the plate each Sunday or sending in her pledge -- is she funding a lifestyle for functionally unaccountable leaders which is lavish beyond words and built on gospel rhetoric, on not-for-profit tax breaks and on an overwheening sense of entitlement? That can be quite an interesting gauge of whether the church or ministry takes seriously its role as steward of the money it receives. It is, after all, easy to prostitute yourself to the prosperity gospel when your own prophecies of material wealth are effectively underwritten by the desperate dreams of the poor and destitute which you yourself have helped to create and upon which you prey with a depraved and insatiable hunger.

Cultists and con-men are identifiable only by their culture, not by their confessions.

Nathan, David, and Gad the seer: one prophet seems to show up when the other seems missing

It is a common colloquialism for Christians to ask where the Nathan is to speak to David about his wrongs.  It's an understandable collquial expression but I have wondered where Gad the seer was when David took Uriah's wife and had him killed.  Gad the seer was described as David's personal seer through 1 Samuel while David was on the run.

Gad is the name of a prophet who appears in 1 Samuel 22:5 instructing David to head to Judah.  Gad the seer is described as David's prophet in 2 Samuel during the disastrous census.  So "if" Gad is the same person in both books where did he go in the middle?  If Gad was David's prophet or seer (David had a few advisors, it seems, one of whom was Ahithophel, who turned on David eventually and joined Absalom's insurrection) what was Gad up to when David took Uriah the Hittite's wife Bathsheba and arranged for Uriah's death?

Nowhere?

We know from Gad's role in talking to David during the census that he an important role but Gad is absent. 

To piggyback on the colloquial question of where Nathan is for David perhaps we can introduce a new element for reflection, where was Gad the seer?  Gad seemed to have played a role in advising David previously but was absent here.  Perhaps a Nathan appears not simply because David had sinned but also because the prophetic voice David had relied on previously had also failed in some way. Nathan, to go by Samuel and Kings as a cohesive narrative, seems to show up when Gad may be out of the picture or drops the ball.  Not that Nathan's scheming with Bathsheba to place Solomon on the throne isn't itself a little problematic but bear with me.  I'm proposing that the need for a Nathan may not just involve a sinful king but also the failure of the king's prophet to confront the king.  Maybe Gad was advising the soldiers on the field and didn't know of David's actions?  I don't know, I'm just throwing that out as a question about the narrative given that both Gad and Nathan play significant prophetic roles in the reign of David.  We've seen from the fitful hand-off Samuel oversaw in setting up Saul and then David as kings that even prophets and judges could mess things up. 

Still, fallible as even they could be their role in challenging David was important, whether it was Gad who told David what he'd done wrong or Nathan.  This may also be a reminder that no matter how great you think your accountability person/network is the reality is that if David's life in the books of Samuel is any indication, that network can fail you and the corrective challenge may come from another avenue you didn't select, didn't anticipate, didn't want, and that hits you with your guilt in an unexpected way by using your own moral outrage as a way to show you your wrongdoing. 

Matt Redmond: Why do they leave the church--vocation and opportunity costs?

AN EVANGELICAL WORLD WITHOUT OPPORTUNITY COSTS

http://mattbredmond.com/2012/10/09/why-do-they-leave-the-church/

Here is my theory – one reason why so many people, young and old, leave the faith is no one is helping them think about what the great majority of what their lives are made up of.

Christianity is given (sold?) to us, in the main, as a life of evangelism, morality and church activities. Evangelism is painful for most people. Morality is great but there are always unbelievers who are more moral. And church activities, even when profoundly helpful, are another spinning plate in already busy lives.

Honestly, I can’t help thinking this is not enough.

Lutherans might suggest that American evangelicals have so imbibed pietistic concepts of faith even in ostensibly non-pietistic settings that there's no theology of the ordinary and no theology of vocation.  Not that I'm a Lutheran ... but I'm making a guess.

Sure, there are the gospel-hyphenated movements that get people to be gospel-centered, and these do some good in helping people see the big picture. But the big picture is not enough. It is not enough to see the big picture.

Our lives are made up of finely drawn details. Each day is full of countless ones. We do all these “little” things at home, at work, and in the marketplace and they just don’t get a lot of sermon time.

Yep.  The big picture is inspiring and wonderful but try explaining the significance of what that big picture might look like in any setting besides a conference and see how long stuff gets discussed. 

I've seen that spiel about "the tortured beauty of the cross" and it doesn't add up to much.  Sorry.  That's still too big picture.  It's vision-casting without boots on the ground.  If I were to do something as, say, a musician, then how I understand the big picture would need to inform how I handle even the minor details of putting together a musical work or playing a piece of music.  A lot would depend on setting. 

If I were playing music in a church then no matter how much I'd want to be able to play some sort of musical extract from Messiaen I wouldn't play it if it alienated listeners.  I've put up with singing or playing songs I actually can't stand for the sake of being of some benefit to others.  I'm an amateur musician but I don't doubt for a second that "vocational" musicianship can often involve being asked to play a piece of music you can't stand that you do because you're able to play it and because someone who loves some music you don't like is willing to pay you enough money for you to do a respectable job playing that music.  This might be why Aranjuez keeps getting played even though a lot of guitarists get sick of it.

They walk away because we are answering the questions they are not asking.

This, I think, is key.  Francis Schaeffer used to say that the problem with American evangelicals is they were busy saying "Jesus is the answer" without considering for a moment "What is the question?" You'd think after decades of evangelicals admiring Francis Schaeffer they'd have paid the slightest bit of attention to his warning but, nope, it seems a lot of folks used Schaeffer's life and work as a shortcut so that they will never have to struggle with any of the stuff Schaeffer struggled through. 

For instance, this is a hobby horse I admit to having, in music if we take seriously that through Christ God is reconciling all things to Himself then there is no high and low, art and pop, serious and frivolous in the arts.  The worship wars played out for decades on a supposition, it seems, that even though we will say there is in Christ no slave or free, Jew or Greek, male or female we're sure those distinctions are deal-breakers if things aren't observed the way we want them to be.  That's neither an endorsement nor criticism of either traditional liturgical music or CCM as such but of a mentality that presupposes that all styles are not in some fashion capable of being legitimate musical possibilities. 

When I was a kid and a teenager I'd hear this or that style was off the table for Christians, which would mean there'd be some other Christians, usually folks who already wanted to keep buying more of that music, who would come up with a set of rationales for why that music was more awesomer than the traditional old fuddy-duddy music.  These days the catchphrases used would be "incarnational" (as in "I've heard of it before and i like it") and "missional" (as in if we play this music instead of forty strains of "Have Thy Own Way, Lord" people will sit through things long enough to listen to the forty-minute sermon).  Well, some of them will, no doubt.

Once you get out of the plugged-in plan-to-be-leaders set even in the neo-Calvinist set what do most people do?  Don't they potentially jsut show up, give on Sunday, hit the community group, and have pretty normal lives?  Most people will not end up being community group leader material and don't need to be.  Not that small groups are necessarily bad but small groups discussing what a preacher said earlier the same week is no more "community" than people trading pictures of cats and dogs on Facebook, is it?  It's exactly "not" social interaction in any sense but it may well be no less "mediated", to borrow a media theory abstraction.

Now I could go on at some length about how I came to the conclusion that a Christian musicians can approach all musical styles as equally legitimate and get into points of comparative musicology and observing the way temperament and tuning systems laid a ground work for new approaches to music.  I could try to explain how the old and new styles in the Baroque period paved the way for a polystylistic approach being possible within Church music centuries before the worship wars were happening in the U.S.   I could try to demonstrate how common practice harmony ends up looking curiously the same across the pop and art divide where secondary dominant functions are or how contrapuntal invention is possible in more than one style. 

But rather than do any of that I'm going to make a sweeping assertion, absolutely nobody in church leadership came up with even fifteen words to articulate any of this stuff.  The whole lengthy decades-long process I'm describing was something I worked out privately and with influences and people I couldn't describe as having ever been in some kind of formal ministry.  The official theologians and pastors and so on were generally not equipped to have any connection to any of this sort of process, at least not many of the ones I ever met in person.  I mean, sure, I'd say a Harold Best or a Michael Card could have tackled both a musicological and doctrinal approach to how multiple styles could be approached and in what practical context but they're professionals on both fronts. 

No, if I were to try to think of someone who proposed, for instance, that the musical divisions of the East and West may one day be broken down it was Toru Takemitsu I first remember reading making that comment.  How many evangelicals who would opine on music in a seminary know who that was?  A few, really, but they'd be in music departments, by and large.  Experiments with juxtaposing sound and silence was not strictly the domain of Arvo Part, after all.

Now we could say that people miss the big thing about who God is.  But let me bring it back to music again, how does saying God made all things inform your understanding of a non-modulating transition compared to a modulating transition?  This is where the pious platitudes about the vertical seem more than anything to have no intersection with the horizontal.  I've got some quibbles with the vertical/horizontal stuff but I'll save that for some other time.  For now the distinctions are more useful than annoying.  The vertical angle is great for people who are at the top of the pyramid and want everyone at the bottom to keep siphoning their money up to whatever the vision-caster wants done.  The thing about the vertical is that it's great for people who are on the leadership track where ever they are at.  I get that, but for the people who don't live to get more progressive plulgged-in into being on the mission and have normal lives tehre's a lot of talk about God that doesn't translate because the points of translation get to things that the people who like to talk about God really don't seem to care about. 

For the never married this can become strikingly obvious.  If you want people to avoid fornicating you have to do more than just camp out on the don't fornicate part.  Suppose a guy has never dated anyone and doesn't feel like dating because all the people who pair off don't do anything much artistically?  Now in a neo-Calvinist setting the stock reaction to that would be the guy hasn't manned up and realized that getting hitched and making babies to the glory of Jesus is his God-ordained designed role.  But life is full of opportunity costs.  Talking about Jesus and God doesn't eliminate the reality of opportunity costs. 

There's a price for any investment and interest in life and it may be the big failure of evangelicals, per Matt Redmond's theory, is not simply that we haven't managed to discuss vocation but that we also don't care to talk about opportunity costs in normal ways.  It's easy to talk about the opportunity cost (infinite) Jesus made for the atonement.  If we are defined by what we say "no" to that's a weak spot but it also seems a weak spot that when we say "yes" to something there are things we have to say "no" to along the way.  Evangelicals tend to think of the "yes" and "no" with respect to sin and righteousness while forgetting that there's a whole realm of conduct in which the "yes" and "no" are not about sin and righteousness so much as opportunity costs in which once you commit to something love of neighbor would enjoin you to keep your word even when it ends up being painful. Think of it as a "cheap grace" problem in discussing vocation.  If you choose to marry and start that family you may have to give up the dreams you had of writing those books or songs. 

Conversely, if you write those books or songs you may not have the spouse or the money to support kids.  Are one set of options sinful and the other set not?  No, but evangelicals seem unable to distinguish between competing goods as well as they find ways to polarize decision-making into the right and the wrong.  Evangelicalism may have failed not merely for lacking a theology of vocation but for failing to address the reality that many of lives greatest disappointments and challenges are the result of decisions we regret where we see the opportunity costs of choosing one of two actually legitimate options. When Paul said that marriage or celibacy were equally legitimate options it was as though he gave way too much freedom and people have been trying to systematize a one-size fits all either/or option ever since. 

Maybe the reasons people leave the church is not simply because we are answering questions that aren't being asked (per Francis Schaffer half a century ago). It may also be because we can't level with people about the reality that life is full of roads not taken and that many of these roads are equally legitimate; Most of life's regrets are not necessarily between a Christian choosing righteous option A when he or she wanted to choose sinful option B.  We don't seem to know how to talk with people about the regrets that come from picking one of a couple of equally legitimate options. We have to talk to them as though whatever they didn't pick, or whatever they wanted, was probably a sin.

I've rambled enough on that topic for this post.

The Elephants Debt, a website that discusses James MacDonald and Harvest Bible Chapel real estate and finances

http://theelephantsdebt.com/2012/06/13/hello-world/

I haven't had a chance to read through every single document on this one but since James MacDonald teamed up with Mark Driscoll to shake hands with T. D. Jakes this site might be of interest.

Link to the "howdy" page presented for your consideration.

Andrew posts something on Ed Welch, counseling, and heuristics in counseling

http://www.cityofgodblog.com/2012/10/psychology-and-the-christian-difference/

For folks who haven't heard of a "heuristic" it can be thought of, broadly, as a mental shortcut.  With that in mind, Andrew posted some comments from a friend on Ed Welch and on how "Christian counseling" can be understood. 

Here's the snippet I want to quote and throw out for consideration to readers:

... The problem with many “Christian” approaches is that, as the Dooyeweerdians rightly note, they work with a picture of a “spiritual” man who is basically an angel in flesh, but ahistoric and simple. Thus, there is a tendency to want to reduce all psychotherapy to either a) exorcism, or b) church discipline. This is an enormously stupid mistake. [emphasis mine] In reaction, we now have Christian counseling which, although it might be fine philosophically (meaning, personalist and non-materialist), is hardly Christian at all, though in a secularist and materialist age, philosophical rectitude is already *so* different from the prevalent model that Christians can mistake it for being specifically Christian. ...

Well that doesn't sound like any Christian counseling we've ever heard about, does it? ;-)

Matt Redmond's Thursday's random thoughts this week ...

http://mattbredmond.com/2012/10/04/thursdays-random-thoughts-42/

2. We have moved on from bumper sticker theology to Twitter theology.

And we can all agree that Twitter theology is vastly superior to bumper sticker theology, can't we?

love of music means having some life without it

Now if this were the only post you read you might mistakenly think that I write about Hilary Hahn more than I actually do.  In an interview she once mentioned that she does other things besides playing the violin and has other interests.  After all, if she became injured and couldn't play or got to a point where she could never play music again she'd want some kind of life not interwoven with music so that she'd have, you know, a life. 

Now I'm hardly a musician of her caliber but I see her point.  For composers of music you might think we listen to Beethoven a ton and try to find that mystical feely-touchy groove where music inspires us to make music.  Yeah ... well ... no.  I've often had my biggest moments of inspiration in a quiet room with pencil and paper scribbling out a chart in which I am seeing how many things I can do with a sequence of notes before I find one that sounds interesting.  You read that correctly.  I might start off by playing a riff on my guitar, or a few chords on the keyboard, and I might sing a melody or two to myself at first, but a lot of a composition can end up being worked out on paper. 

If you're serious about this business of creating music then thinking through musical possibilities on paper and putting those sounds together in your head can get more done than hours at a keyboard or hours on a guitar.  When I began to write what became 24 preludes and fugues for solo guitar the vast majority of the most difficult but important work I did was just with pencil and paper away from any instruments, sometimes during breaks at the day job, sometimes during unexpected and unwanted hours where I couldn't get anything done at my real day job because the server or network crashed and the IT people didn't know when it was going to get fixed but I needed to be around in case things got fixed.  Yeah, like that.  Well, it was often in those kinds of moments I might work out entirely on paper and thinking through the options, what might become a prelude and fugue in A major or something like it.

That's to tell you that even for musicians important stretches of life, even important moments in life writing music, do not involve controlled vibrations of air.

The German emigre composer Paul Hindemith complained about how American culture saturates a person with hours of unwanted music in A Composer's World back in the 1950s. His complaint was that this ubiquitous use of music would drain any power or significance from our musical experiences.  He also complained that all the American educational system seemed able to do was produce music teachers who would, in turn, produce the next generation of music teachers and that every American kid seemed to be taught music in a way tha tacitly suggested "YOU could become the next Beethoven."  But Hindemith is not the topic of this blog post. 

Instead the topic of this blog post is to piggyback on a post at Internet Monk.

J. S. Bangs on rhyme and reason, and the abjection of the past in fantasy literature

http://jsbangs.com/2012/10/04/rhyme-and-reason/

http://jsbangs.com/2011/08/17/time-travelers-or-the-abjection-of-the-past-in-fantasy-literature/

J. S. didn't exactly plan for these two to be bookends of an overarching idea but I'm presenting the links back to back because I think they do present an overarching idea, one that can be summarized by his use of Eve Tushnet's observation:

"Realism" only works for people whose worldviews are already accepted as realistic. The rest of us must make do with genre.

Everything old tends to get new again and if rhyme has become hip now it might be because after generations of poetry teachers telling you that you need to grow up and stop doing end rhyme so much a bunch of writers may have decided that that stance is silly.  A lot of tedious music, art, literature, theater, dance and film has been made in the name of "progress". 

If you read Alex Ross' book The Rest is Noise he wrote about the ascent of serialism and atonality in American academic music in the 1960s and 1970s.  The Cold War was raging along and in reaction, partly, to the aesthetic ideology of "socialist realism" a lot of American composers decided (with some help from government funding and foundations) that writing music that was not at all traditionally tonal was the most democratic and intellectually honest thing to do.  The champions of the European avant garde had, by and large, fled in the build-up to the Second World War and often settled in the United States. 

It was almost a patriotic duty for a serious, academic composer to eschew the popular stuff like conventional melody and harmony.  Even someone as popular as Bernstein could still have semi-nice rather than glowing things to say about Gershwin, who really came from the pop side of the pop/art divide and whose forays into concert music inspired some of the biggest names in "serious" music to be more than a little dismissive of Gershwin's work.  I hardly need do more than ask readers how many of them have heard Gershwin's "Summertime" compared to hearing a Virgil Thomson work of any sort.  I'm aware that given how I blog about music there's going to be a sample bias because anyone who comes here and recognizes the name Atanas Ourkouzounov has probably actually heard Virgil Thomson music.

But while in academia and "serious" music major and minor chords were being cast off right and left (there's a joke in there not just about the profligacy with which the high-brow cast off tonality, it's about the different ways in which different political interests contrived reasons for this) the popular culture in the West began to plug in and rock around the clock.  Sure, you could point to all the stuff in pop music and talk about how bound it was to older styles but people were listening to it.  For the advocates of atonality tonal music was about as bad as the 19th century.  Some people caught in some kind of middle-brow snobbery would look down on popular music without realizing that compared to Stockhausen or Elliot Carter pop music was at least preserving some semblance of tonality, however expanded and attenuated it might be and this, really, no further than the harmonic devices employed by Debussy.  There's not much in the heavy metal I've heard that can't be traced to folk music from Scandanaiva or central and eastern Europe, to get absurdly sweeping about that.

Neither the archetypal renegade nor reactionary is really representing the vast and fascinating continuum of the arts in any media.  Even in the Baroque we can go back and see the old style and the new style and how composers could adapt to one or the other and synthesize. 

In the 20th century the West was full of people trying to cast off the rules and break the mold.  In the 21st century as digital storage and algorythmic analysis of cumulative works becomes more practical we are getting people philosopically musing on how nothing is original and how everything derives ins ome fashion from the past.  All may be flux and Heraclitus may have been right to say you can't walk through the same river twice but let's suppose we ask another question, woudl he still have tried catching fish in that river a week after he uttered his axiom?

What Bangs has touched on thematically across two posts in two years is something I want to play with and bring into a bit more light, if possible.  On the one hand in the 20th century there was an abjection of the past.  The idea was that whatever the past was it was some benighted epoch of ignorance and stupid people doing evil things or making uninspiring this or that.  There's a whole emotional/social narrative of a Dark Ages that is something you conveniently didn't have to live in or live through.  We judge the past and consider ourselves better than it, however we define that past.  That was often how things could be perceived and conceived and told in the 20th century. 

But then at the other side there are those Baby Boomers who had kids growing up to love the Beatles and to consider it to have been a fantastic life to have grown up during the 1960s.  Baby Boomers make movies congratulating themselves on having "changed the world" or "changed everything".  There can be a praise of the past that is appealing to those who can look back and, in some way, call that past something connected to their present.  It is something we all sahre even when we don't want to admit we share this impulse, too.  There is somethign in which each of us can say with some pride and some nostalgia, "I was .... when X was ... and things aren't as good as they were back then."  Alert and longtime readers won't have to make too many guesses as to where some probably unwarranted nostalgia might nest here. 

Isn't it a bit strange to have a people that will abject the past of their ancestors while havinga  nostalgia for their own individual past?  I'm not saying it's impossible I'm just saying I don't quite get it.  Americans may have a meta-narrative of overcoming the great obstacle or failure of one's own family and upbringing through the powerful discovery of "real" "community" or "logic".  I admit to beign skeptical about that kind of stuff. 

In the arts I'm not sure I could describe myself as a traditionalist or a proponent of new-(insert field here).  Like I said earlier there's an amazing continuum of possibilities and options and it is that spanning of time and space that makes the arts so fascinating now.  Anyone who would attempt to break the rules and defy conventions by now has to recognize that in the information era and the age of the internet it will be impossible to break any rules.  This does not mean that nothing new can possibly be made.  Even Arnold Schoenberg, champion of dodeccaphony, once remarked that there was still plenty of music to be written in the key of C major.  That which seems to be old and even old-fashioned does not have to be tedious and pointless because billions of people have discovered or enjoyed things before.  Put in very blunt terms none of us would have been born to be possibly reading or writing on a blog if the only things that were cosnidered worth doing were the things that haven't been done before. 

But as a friend once complained about an aspiring writer, tehre's a writer who writes as though nobody had any idea what sex was before he started writing about it.  I recall coming across a silly headline with a silly sentiment that Christopher Hitchens writing about death was finally an honest book about death.  That author may have just been unaware or forgot that Ecclesiastes did a decent job being honest about dying being miserable and the end of everything.  Since it was a book canonized into a religious text it would make sense why a Hitchens fan might have overlooked it, though.  Part of why a lot of the "modern" from the 20th century can seem played out in every art form is because it could get too precious and too self-aware but the bad kind of self-aware of proposing something that "mattered". 

Sometimes things happen that change the nature of an art form.  Not everyone wants to admit the action/adventure film is an art forum but Raiders of the Lost Ark,with that one scene where Indy shoots the swordsman, did change action cinema.  The protagonist was willing to skip to lethal force rather than fight a foe on equal footing.  The protagonist was willing to press a substantial combat advantage and skip what was at that point the expected and for that time, "inevitable" sword fight.  Or so the legend goes.  For the sake of discussing how innovation happens in the arts the legend is useful for my point, that not all innovation is necessarily done on purpose.  Innovation doesn't have to be done on purpose to be compelling.  Conversely, as a survey of the work of J. S. bach goes you might be hard-pressed to find Bach's formal and conceptual innovations as a composer and yet no one could contest the significance of his influence. 

If in the 20th century the great pioneers in the arts broke the rules, thought outside the box, and came up with things that were new the 21st century, 12 years in, may be full of an anxiety of influence stretched out on a massive canvas and painted in alternately dour or chirpy tones.  What we often forget if we don't bother to study enough history of the arts is that cycles of fragmentation and consolidation are common.  When fragmentation became the value it was important to be part of that iconoclastic, transgressive process.  It was in the late 1990s, perhaps, that Leo Brouwer said that the academics have missed the boat on fusion as a movement, wasn't it?  It was easy to dismiss jazz/rock fusion and other forms of fusion like progressive rock (and, really, it IS easy to be dismissive of a lot of progressive rock anyway).  But generations of failure were not without success.

While we are primed by an emotional/cultural narrative in which the Beethoven or the Mozart is the "real" artistic hero we are coming into a time where the Haydn or the Bach could be a hero, in the sense that consolidation, assimilation, and summation are just as fun as iconoclastically pushing the envelope and breaking hte rules.  In a global information network such as ours, I tentatively suggest, assimilation and consolidation is the more challenging task before us. 

In many cases assimilation will happen in ways that are not easily grasped without a lot of research.  For instance when anime began to trickle into the United States the big eyes got complaints.  Never mind that the big eyes were simply one of a dozen ways in which anime was indebted to the saucer-eyed characters of Walt Disney.  The British invasion in pop music was in many ways British boys repackaging the music of black American musicians in a way that made the music less exotic or intimidating to white audiences in the U.S. 

Fast forward a few decades and the influence of Asian action films slowly worked its way into American action films so that The Matrix appeared and showed that if you assimilate enough of Yung-woo Ping's choreography into the gun-fighting people will respond to it like it was something never seen before.  In an American cinematic context it was sorta kinda new. For anyone with even some exposure to Asian cinema it was basically not much different from what you'd have seen in John Woo's Hong Kong films.  The early Beatles were not necessarily that far off from Roy Orbison but, hey, what's wrong with being influenced by Roy?

The hipster response, for want of a better way of putting it, may be to cast the net wider for stuff that's harder and harder to find.  Indie music in the 1990s was in a sense very easy to get into.  Liking stuff because you were privileged with the special intel nobody else had was easier when there was nothing like the internet or Google.  This credibility was not just about the art if, at the risk of overstating things, there was nay point to the art as art.  The credibility was also about the scene.

Back in my teens I didn't think there'd be any artistically significant thing to come out of rap or hip-hop.  I didn't enjoy the music, didn't understand the music and I'll admit I still mostly don't get the genre.  But I don't see it as not-music.  I wouldn't have anticipated liking any country and I still don't care for "new country" because it sounds like warmed over "old rock" but I have come to enjoy Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Sr., some Willie Nelson, and some Merle Haggard.  John Prine may not exactly be country but some of his stuff is okay, too.  If you'd asked 17-year old me whether I would like either rap or country and consider them viable musical styles I would have scoffed at you.  I've mellowed on that.  I've come to a point where I may never like a certain style of music too much but I can find things in a musical style that I can respect or find interesting. 

While I suppose there's something to be said for "remix" concepts of art and human thought I don't feel any obligation to commit to that or to an older Romantic idea of "genius".  It's not like authors in the Enlightenment didn't consider the topic of genius.  "Genius" may elude us and it may be in one age thought of as a capacityto put together the new, in another it may be the capacity to "steal" the old in a way that makes it seem as though it were the thief's own idea.  Perhaps a review of even some of Bach's collected work could remind us that geniuses did make use of associative memory and recursive ideas.  So often movements seem to be founded on schools articulating a fixed point and a set array of ideals. 

If rhyme comes back in "literature" it never went away in other art forms.  If I'm right, and I'll hardly make any bets about that, the 20th century's epic fragmentation may have reached an end point and the 21st century in post-industrial societies invites new possibilities for consolidation.  For musicologists and music history fans we can remind ourselves that Baroque was not what the practitioners of that musical art called their stuff.  There was the old style and the new style, wasn't there?  There were those who made use of the Renaissance stylsitic heritage and also of the newer, emerging major/minor key system.  By the dawn of the Classic era there was a big mess of ideas and styles and devices available.  The emergence of the sonata cycle as an organizing set of forms for music didn't happen all at once. 

But at this point I've run so far afield of what Bangs was blogging about I figure I'm done with this post.  Go read both posts.  They're fun.

CNN, conflict of interest, and international coverage

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/04/cnn-business-state-sponsored-news

It just so happens someone ran something by someone recently and someone decided to post a link to it.

Conflict of interest is a great (as in "terrible") way for the integrity of a journalistic enterprise to be compromised.  While I've heard people complain about liberal or conservative bias causing this or that disaster in the "mainstream" or "establishment" media conflict of interest would be far more dangerous.  Even a person with a significant bias may have to concede facts on the ground over against one's own bias.  But a conflict of interest can end up having the function of a bribe in which the story is in some sense bought already.  That's worse than "bias" because while a bias may blinker your vision a real conflict of interest can prompt you to lie and say that things are X when they are really Y and you know you're blowing smoke. 

It's been a few years since I studied in journalism coursework but a teacher once said that you're going to have biases.  Only a fool would think he or she has no biases.  The thing is that if you're a responsible journalist you won't let your biases get in the way of discovering what the facts are, even if the truth points to something you find objectionable or appalling.  If you're NOT willing to do that then you might as well admit that what you want to do is not journalism but marketing, advertising, or public relations.  Then it's not a conflict of interest to put the best spin on anything and everything, it's jsut a matter of whether you can go to sleep at night really believing in whatever you're selling.  That can still be honest, respectable work in a lot of cases.

Well, that's easier to grant in the abstrat than the concrete because there's something that feels weird about selling a bunch of people on stuff.  How do people do that?  By sincerely believing in what they're selling?  Maybe?  Meh, that's not the aim of a post such as this. 

what jobs are available to apply for at Mars Hill today?

http://www.facebook.com/notes/mars-hill-church/work-at-mars-hill-october-job-opportunities/10150391867595155


http://marshill.com/jobs

Church positions
http://marshill.com/jobs/executive-pastor

There doesn't seem to be an executive pastor at Shoreline since both James Harleman and Chad Toulouse stepped down from that role within just a few months.  Then again, Mars Hill Tacoma is slated as "coming soon" and there might need to be an executive elder there at some point.


Central positions
http://marshill.com/jobs/director-of-kids-ministry

Kids ministry director functions at the level of a deacon now.  There used to be a pastoral role that filled that slow but I may be mistaken in recollecting that.

Then there's senior accountant here.

http://marshill.com/jobs/senior-accountant
This was posted September 15, 2012


http://marshill.com/jobs/finance
This doesn't have a post-date but here's a LinkedIn profile for a previous Accounting Manager who became the Finance Manager.  This position was listed as open for a time but isn't listed as one of the options in marshill.com/jobs today.  The Accounting Manager may have recently been filled.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jarrodjob
Jarrod Job had the role of Finance Manager until November last year during what was apparently a big re-org where the financial staff changed and Munson stepped down and Sutton Turner joined.

Finance Manager

Mars Hill Church

Nonprofit; 51-200 employees; Religious Institutions industry

August 2011– November 2011 (4 months)Seattle, WA

Accounting Manager

Mars Hill Church

Nonprofit; 51-200 employees; Religious Institutions industry

May 2008– August 2011 (3 years 4 months)Seattle, WA

Summary:
To connect the unified mission and vision of Mars Hill Church with the accounting function. Logistically building the accounting function in such a way that ultimately results in more opportunities for transformed lives for Jesus.

Detail:
Creating value for the eldership [management] through process and scalability improvements to the accounting function, opening more financial and human resources for our Pastors and Deacons to transform lives for Jesus.
Ensuring accurate and relevant reporting through solving logistical and communication challenges brought forth from being a high growth, multi-site church.
Building up team-members through intentional, confidence building feedback. Immersion in a high-performing, technical environment where mistakes are made and emphasis is on the grace and educational rebound from that mistake.
Utilizing social media and bleeding edge technology to increase our training and communication methodology resulting in stronger community upstream and downstream. An example of this is the creation of an library of iPhone ready screen-casts, which reduced the number of reporting queries by 50%.
Decreasing costs and creating efficiencies that result in annual decreases in professional service fees associated with accounting guidance and the external audit.
Other details of the position include managing capital and operating budgets, treasury function, financial reporting, fixed asset management, and the income and expense function.

The current Accounting Manager at Mars Hill Church since November 2011 to the present (according to LinkedIn) is Jessica Pickett

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jessica-pickett/21/76a/562

Accounting Manager

Mars Hill Church

Nonprofit; 51-200 employees; Religious Institutions industry

November 2011– Present (1 year)Seattle, WA

Kerry Dodd is the Chief Financial Officer at Mars Hill since December 2011

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kerry-dodd/12/747/a41?trk=pub-pbmap

CFO

Mars Hill Church

Nonprofit; 51-200 employees; Religious Institutions industry

December 2011– Present (11 months)Greater Seattle Area

http://marshill.com/governance

Who are the officers of Mars Hill Church?

For state law purposes, Mars Hill has a president, Mark Driscoll; a vice president, Dave Bruskas; and a secretary/treasurer, Sutton Turner. Mars Hill also has a chief financial officer, Kerry Dodd; and a chief legal officer, Chris Pledger.

Chris Pledger is gone so clearly Governance had to post-date Kerry Dodd becoming Chief Financial Officer and pre-date Chris Pledger's departure from Mars Hill. 

For those who may have wondered about the governance series (if any) there "may" be some further posting about that stuff.