Tony Jones, Guns, Satan and the Batman

JONES:

I imagine that I will write about Satan at some point, as some readers have asked in response to yesterday’s post. However, we should also talk honestly about guns. Guns are everywhere in America, as Bill Moyers notes:

There are some 300 million guns in the United States, one in four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, over the last 30 years, “the number of states with a law that automatically approves licenses to carry concealed weapons provided an applicant clears a criminal background check has risen from eight to 38.”

Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and perhaps as many as 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm violence costs our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns.
So why do we always act so surprised?  Violence is our alter ego, wired into our Stone Age brains, so intrinsic its toxic eruptions no longer shock, except momentarily when we hear of a mass shooting like this latest in Colorado. But this, too, will pass as the nation of the short attention span quickly finds the next thing to divert us from the hard realities of America in 2012.

In The New Christians, I recounted a similar fundamentalist response to the one I found from Greg Stier yesterday:

In the days following the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting massacre, Pastor Ronnie Floyd posted extensively about the tragedy on his blog, “Between Sundays.” He warned the American church to “get serious” and to “WAKE UP!!!” Thirty-three persons had died, he wrote, and they each went to heaven or hell. He then urged his readers to get busy with evangelism because “death is real,” and the job of Christians is to “bring others to Christ” so that they won’t go to hell when they die.

In Floyd’s blog posts about the Virginia Tech shootings, there was nary a word about Seung-Hui Cho’s ready access to guns and ammunition. No comment about the epidemic of clinical depression in our country. Not a mention of the prevalence of hurting people in our culture, often adolescents who are shrouded in anonymity, lost on college campuses with tens of thousands of other students. In other words, Floyd said nothing about the systemic issues that become acute to many of us during times of tragedy.

Floyd’s question is not how this young man’s mind became so twisted in his own mental illness, how he fell through the cracks of our societal net, or how he was able to purchase two handguns and hundreds of bullets with no more than a driver’s license. The question was about whether he and his victims had invited Jesus into their hearts before they died.

So critics can crow about me being insensitive for pointing to Stier’s comments, but he is simply one in a long line of conservative Christians who would rather supernaturalize these tragedies that deal with them in reality, where the rest of us live.

For the entire article, click HERE.

--Nick

Relational Rapport and Egalitarian Musings

While I found Eric's post on TGC helpful, I found his follow-up to not only be insightful, but almost a mirror image of my relationship with Allison. I shall explain after showing some of Eric's thoughts.

Reitan:

My wife is strong. She is determined. She is stubborn. She reaches for and accomplishes what most others imagine to be impossible. I am married to this woman, and I am proud of her. Proud to have her as a partner in life. Grateful that she is the person who stands beside me in raising our children...

I'm not sure what they'd say about my marriage to a soon-to-be Ironman triathlete. She is physically stronger than me. She does things I cannot fathom. But I'm not jealous. I'm proud of her. My manhood isn't threatened, because I don't buy into such a stupid, banal, and destructively straight-jacketing vision of gender relationships as the one that the Wilsons endorse. If I did, our marriage would collapse. As it is, our marriage grows.  

The rest of the post is worth your time, but I wanted to personalize some of the data in my own life. Allison has struggled with some issues in her past, and has since become one of the strongest women I've ever known. I count it a blessing to have a partner who has never considered herself greater than me, nor has esteemed me to the point of inflating my ego.

The issue of complementarianism came up early in our relationship, after we had begun our first school semester apart. We met at Biola Allison's final year and decided to pursue one another during her final Summer before her fated trip to Westminster. I was raised complementarian, and had never experienced anything but. My paradigm was narrow and I wasn't prepared for actually experiencing anything outside of my narrow frame of reference.

The worst part about the gender discussion wasn't that it happened. Instead, it happened over the course of thirty or more phones calls, which involved missed communications, frequent silences and difficult to reconcile passages. I actually (for the first time at Biola) tried to formulate a biblical argument to counter-act Allison's. Like Eric's bride, Allison has a stubborn streak grounded not only in independence, but of a desire to learn and grow.

I honestly threw everything I had at her. I spent weeks attempting to show (bully?) her into accepting the plain meaning of I Timothy 2. However, I did realize something. I realized that if I had convinced her to change her mind and return to complementarianism, I wasn't actually interested in leading.

I never was. I never had any desire to lead her or have her submit to me. I had been reacting to a challenge by another to the foundations of my preconceived paradigm. Instead of listening and learning, I was reacting.

This challenged me, and really got me thinking. I had some sun spots in Scripture that I couldn't shade. Deborah was one, as well as Paul's treatise on marriage and relationship in I Corinthians 7 (which was a shock to me, I didn't even know those verses existed). I am the type of person that has a strong disdain for inconsistency, especially for myself. If I cannot have a harmonized (within reason) theology, this bothers me greatly.

So that is a brief summary about how I began to rethink my preconceived paradigm about women and relationship. During this time, I had never once considered the roots of sexism or mistreatment of women due to the fact that I hadn't experienced it. I mean, I had experienced some religious intolerance, but that had nothing to do with my gender.

I found that it is easier to dismiss sexism and the mistreatment of others if one is unwilling to reexamine their paradigm. It is easier to dismiss sexism if one is in the majority, as it is easier to ignore the plights of the minority. I realize that such things require time and the influence of the Holy Spirit, and I hope that both are working together for us. And, of course, I could be wrong.

So, I suppose I am fully grateful to have a woman who can kiss me and kick my ass. I had no anticipation as to submit to my girlfriend, and now that we are together as one, I couldn't imagine anything less. 

For Eric's thoughts, please click here.

--Nick

Rob Bell and Rediscovering Wonder

Don't worry, he says nothing about Gandhi.

And the video is actually quite good.

Thoughts?

Rediscovering Wonder

--Nick

The Gospel Coalition and Circling the Wagons?

For the entire post and the subsequent response on TGC site, click HERE.

For Eric Reitan's provocative response to Wilson/s, click HERE.

For Scot McKnight's exhortation, click HERE.

For Daniel Kirk's musings, click HERE.

God bless. Still thinking.

--Nick

Evangelicals & Self-Criticism

Brick by Brick:

When it comes to evangelical disenfranchisement from the academy and wider culture, we are frequently our own worst enemies.

Please, don’t misunderstand me.  I don’t mean to suggest that there is not anti-religious and naturalistic bias in much of academia.  I am well aware that Christianity’s exclusive claims are unwelcome in our would-be pluralistic universities and are not tolerated in our would-be tolerant society.  But I have come to the conclusion that there are a number of Evangelical intellectual habits and material positions that are serious liabilities for us as we try to faithfully engage the academy and the wider culture:

1. Academia progresses by a process of critical peer review.  Academics are used to the fact that we learn more about the world by refining our analyses, revising our conclusions in the light of new data, tightening up our logic, moving on from discredited ideas, and so on, and the fact that this learning process is propelled by academics’ scrutinizing and criticizing each others’ work, showing where their survey samples were too small to support their conclusions, where they had conveniently ignored problematic data, where they had committed non sequiturs and so on.  It’s nothing personal.  It’s just how things get done.  Evangelicals have more or less opted out of this process in order to protect some of our more intellectually vulnerable (i.e., dubious) stances from serious criticism.  That’s not to say that Evangelicals do not “engage” with the questions and issues raised in academic settings.  But we tend to “engage” only when we can do so on our own terms, publishing almost exclusively in our own sectarian publishing houses and journals for a generally sympathetic and/or uninformed readership who either won’t or can’t argue with our conclusions.  Such “academic engagement” tends to be highly selective about what data and questions it deals with (which is a bit disingenuous), and thus amounts to little more than shadow-boxing with straw-men.  So long as we Evangelicals absolve ourselves from serious (self-)critical engagement, we neither deserve a seat at the academic table, nor should we expect to be offered one.  But we can do better than that.
2. When we Evangelicals are criticized, we have a tendency to prematurely assume a defensive posture, circling the wagons and sounding the “the gospel’s at stake” alarm.  And this goes for criticism coming from within the Evangelical community as much as (if not more than) for criticism from without.  When someone from within our ranks raises questions–however commonsensical or data-driven they might be–our tendency is to automatically make such people out to be outsiders, questioning their Evangelical credentials (as though Evangelicalism had a credentialing office) and painting them as traitors or apostates or worse.  (e.g., Read this, this, this, this, this, this, this…).  This sort of knee-jerk reactionary mode of response serves only to shut down important in-house conversations and to disengage our community from, well, reality.   To say the least, this is not a productive pattern of behavior.  But we can do better than that.
3. The “scandal of the Evangelical mind” persists.  Most of the intellectual maladies diagnosed by Mark Noll in his landmark book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind have not really been addressed by the wider evangelical community.  Our quirky, a-historical, literalistic biblicism, our paranoia about science, and our shallowly partisan political reflection are all intellectual paradigms long overdue for nuance, revision, critique, and even replacement.  The brighter lights within Evangelical academia have moved past these paradigms, but their thinking tends not to get much press and does not really filter down to the people in the pews (not least because of point 2 above).  But we can do better than that.
4. Evangelicals generally lack credibility within the wider academic world because the evangelicals who speak loudest are generally those who are guiltiest of problems 1, 2 & 3 and they generally go unopposed by others within the Evangelical community.  I don’t know of any other way to counteract this problem than by speaking up and encouraging others to do likewise.  Otherwise people in the academy and in the wider culture will be justified in assuming that the Ken Hams, Al Mohlers, and Jerry Falwells of the world speak for all of us on every point.  We need Evangelicals to regularly say to each other and before the wider world, “No, those people do not speak for me.  I think they’re wrong, and I am a Christian too.  I think we can do better than that.”

There are lots of reasons why we increasingly find ourselves on the margins of our society and the academy.  Scientistic reductionism, methodological naturalism, secularism, creative antirealism, and a host of other cultural and intellectual forces have combined to create a general atmosphere of bias against traditional Christianity.  But I believe that the hard truth is that by acquiescing in the bad habits enumerated above, we have become our own worst enemies, undercutting our ability to credibly counteract the corrosive cultural and intellectual trends of our time.  Until we develop a capacity to engage in and receive constructive (self-) criticism (particularly from within our community), the Evangelical community will have little right to claim a seat at the academic table or to expect much of a hearing in the public square.  If we fail to do this, I fear we will fail the next generation worse than have we failed the last.

This strikes me as overly pessimistic. But, something to think about.

For the rest, click HERE.

--Nick

"The Earth is Full of His Glory?"

Allison Quient:

Dr. Beitzel strikes again with some amazing insight into the Biblical text. Usually our Bibles translate Isa 6:3b as “All the earth is full of His glory,” but Beitzel speculates that this history of interpretation could have come from the later Greek translation of the Old Testament. However, is this the best translation? It all depends on how you take the word for fullness (mala). Usually we take it as a noun, but it can actually be translated as: “that which fills all the earth is His glory” (Inf Con).

What does this difference mean for the rest of the passage and theology? Some might immediately protest that this translation makes God’s glory dependant on man. However, I don’t see how this would be necessitated. God is personal and God is holy and He desires the holiness of His people. He desired the earth to be filled and Israel to be the light to the nations and entered into a covenant relationship with His people. This is His holy desire being fulfilled.

This translation makes more sense in the context of the rest of Isaiah. For instance, consider the grim description of death in v.12 and 13 and ch.7. Many people die and this is a sign of the covenant having been broken and God’s judgment in the land. God’s glory can be found when His people fill the land and His covenant is kept.

What does this understanding of Israel’s land and its people mean for the final restoration of all of the earth?

For the post, click HERE.

--Nick

Hopped and Bothered; Ballast Point Sculpin

Ballast Point -- Sculpin

Alcohol content 7%. The coloring is copper, clear as a penny. Its clean and crisp. Instant grapefruit rind on the sip. Aroma is heavy mango with a hint of bread. A hint of pine on the after bite. After several seconds, the mango becomes stronger on the bite. Apricot mouthful. Quick finish. Bitter and potent finish, with pine resin and mango essence.

Buy if: No BUTS. Buy this.

Overall: One of the great IPAs, with excellent fruit overtones and an amazing finish.

4.5 out of 5.

--Nick

"Christian Leaders and Their Cartoon Counterparts"

I was checking my email updates, and Sojourners just nailed this. I couldn't stop laughing. Quite good. Enjoy.

Sojo:

To see Joel Osteen, Brian McLaren and others, click HERE.

--Nick

Genetic Politicalism & the Liberal Gene?

 Time:

The differences between liberals and conservatives run wide and deep, and a new study suggests they may even be reflected in the very structure of their brains.

In the study, led by Ryota Kanai of the University College London, people who identified themselves as liberals generally had a larger anterior cingulate cortex — a comma-shaped region near the front of the brain that is involved in decision-making. By contrast, those who identified as conservatives had larger amygdalas — almond-shaped structures that are linked with emotional learning and the processing of fear. (More on TIME.com: In Politics, It’s Survival of the Fittest, Literally)

These structural differences, the authors suggest, support previous reports of differences in personality: liberals tend to be better at managing conflicting information, while conservatives are though to be better at recognizing threats, researchers said. “Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual’s political orientation,” said Kanai in a press release. “Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure.”

For the study, Kanai and his colleagues asked 90 young adults to rank their political views on a five-point scale from very liberal to very conservative. Then, the volunteers underwent structural MRI scans, which revealed “substantial differences” in brain structure. (More on TIME.com: The Politics of Perceiving Skin Color)

This is not the first attempt to locate the biological roots of party affiliation. In an October 2010 study, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University identified a “liberal gene” — a variant called DRD4-7R, which affects the neurotransmitter dopamine — that has been linked with a personality type driven to seek out new experiences.

 For the rest, click HERE.

--Nick