Review of Dan Dewitt’s “Christ or Chaos”

This would be a good summer read for any high school graduate getting ready to head off to college in the fall or for anyone else who wishes to read a very accessible defense of Christian truth.  It is a good presuppositional approach to apologetics aimed at the level of late-high school/early college-aged folks.  This little book (133 pages) is actually a good antidote to the weakest part of Tim Keller’s “Reason for God” because it gives a serious challenge to Darwinian evolution where Keller simply tries to show how evolution and Christianity aren’t incompatible.  Dewitt’s two main challenges to evolution go something like this:

1- It is posited by secular scientists et al that religion was an evolutionary necessity that helped humanity make sense of the world and therefore more equipped to survive.  However, religion is now like a vestigial organ, no longer of any use to humanity and on its way to elimination from the human scene.  But Dewitt responds by pointing out that, if this is the case, then evolution is the author of practical survival skills but also the author of deceit.  Though our genes drove us to religion and equipped us to survive, they deceived us and failed to lead us to what is true about reality.

2- It is also theorized by evolutionary psychology that we are an unrealistically optimistic species and that we are this way because evolution has hardwired our brains this way.  Dewitt quotes Tali Sharot from her TIME magazine article “The Optimism Bias”, “We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures… But both neuroscience and social science suggest that we are more optimistic than realistic.”  In simple terms, hope is irrational.  Again, Dewitt points out that if this is true, namely that evolution is the author of this practical survival mechanism in our brains, then it is also true that evolution has deceived and is deceiving us.

Dewitt rightly points out negatively that if evolution cannot be trusted to point us to an accurate view of reality about religion and even our own thoughts, then why should it be trusted to give us an accurate view in so many other areas?  Or as he puts it, “…how can we break free from the illusion?” (pg. 114)  But Dewitt also uses the data of the human impulse toward both religion and optimism to drive us to ask a positive, observational question: could we be hard-wired with this religious impulse and optimism because we are all yearning to return to Eden?  We have this ache because we know this world is broken, that we are all participants in its brokenness, and that we are incapable of putting the pieces back together by ourselves.  Yet somehow we feel that there is a place where all that is broken will be made whole and all that is sad will become untrue.  And if there is such a place, and if we can’t get there on our own, then maybe there is Someone to do what we can’t, Someone to get us where we can’t go.

Sabbatical Thoughts 2.0 – Help for my praying

One of the biggest hurdles I’ve had to clear while on sabbatical is finding motivation and discipline for my personal prayer life.  That might seem like a shock to some.  “What?!  You’re a pastor.  You guys are supposed to pray as easy as breathing.”  But I assure you that the same sinfully resistant heart resides in my chest as it does in everyone else’s.  Prayer is a battle and one that I have found is hard to jump start outside the context of my regular pastoral duties.  Well, this morning I picked up my copy of Valley of Vision to give me words to pray since I seemed to have none.  And what a blessing it proved to be.  If you are unfamiliar with this book, it is a collection of Puritan prayers that have been edited and organized for easier reading.  I have produced one below (lightly edited) that was particularly helpful to me this morning, simply titled “Resurrection”:

O God of my Exodus,
Great was the joy of Israel’s sons,
when Egypt died upon the shore,
Far greater the joy
when the Redeemer’s foe lay crushed
in the dust.
Jesus strides forth as the victor,
conqueror of death, hell, and all opposing might;
He bursts the bands of death,
tramples the powers of darkness down,
and lives for ever.
He, my gracious surety,
apprehended for payment of my debt,
comes forth from the prison house of the grave free,
and triumphant over sin, Satan, and death.
Show me herein the proof that his vicarious offering is accepted,
that the claims of justice are satisfied,
that the devil’s sceptre is shivered,
that his wrongful throne is levelled.
Give me the assurance that in Christ I died,
in him I rose,
in his life I live, in his victory I triumph,
in his ascension I shall be glorified.
Adorable Redeemer,
you who were lifted up upon a cross
are ascended to highest heaven.
You, who as Man of sorrows
was crowned with thorns,
are now as Lord of life wreathed in glory.
Once, no shame more deep than yours,
no agony more bitter,
no death more cruel.
Now, no exaltation more high,
no life more glorious,
no advocate more effective.
You are in the triumph car leading captive
your enemies behind you.
What more could be done than you have done!
Your death is my life,
your resurrection my peace,
your ascension my hope,
your prayers my comfort.

The Real Worship War

The following is a paraphrased excerpt from Paul Tripp’s Dangerous Calling (139-140):

We come into worship in the middle of a war that we probably don’t recognize.  It is a war for the allegiance, the worship, of our hearts.  In ways we probably don’t understand fully, we have again and again asked the creation to give us what only the Creator can provide.  We have looked horizontally again and again for what can only be found vertically.  We have asked people, situations, locations, and experiences to be the one thing they will never be: our savior.  We have looked to these things to give us life, security, identity, and hope.  We have asked these things to heal our broken hearts.  We have hoped that these things would make us better people. So a war rages and we sit in worship like so many wounded soldiers.  It is a glory war, a battle for what glory will rule our hearts and, in so doing, control our choices, words, and behaviors.

The Importance of Imagination

If you enjoy a good author and haven’t acquainted yourself with the writings of G.K. Chesterton, please find the time this year to squeeze one of his works in.  He is extremely rewarding to read.  If you are a fiction kind of person, read his Man Called Thursday  or Father Brown mysteries.  If you are a non-fiction fan, read his Orthodoxy or What’s Wrong with the World.  His poem about Alfred the Great is really good, too.  But while you are deciding on what to read, please enjoy this blog article by Dale Ahlquist (a modern authority on all things Chestertonian) on what Chesterton thought about imagination.

An Unscientific Look at Jack Collins’ book (part 2)

[Opening Caveat: This post is really for eggheads like me.  Let the reader be warned that my thoughts are often confusing and confused.  Or maybe I’m just trying to ask the reader to give me license to do a little poor writing.]

I get the feeling as I read Dr. Collins’ book, namely his discussions of the literary culture in which Genesis was written and the author’s communicative intent, that there is a little bit of confusing-trees-for-forest problem going on.  Dr. Collins works quite hard at showing his readers that the biblical creation account has a lot of the flavor of ancient near eastern myths and yet isn’t somehow a myth in and of itself.  I’m fine as far as that goes.  But I am not sure where the idea comes into play that there is a Divine Author at work here.  Dr. Collins is working mightily to demonstrate how human authors would have taken Moses’ words in Genesis, but where is the discussion of how God is revealing more of his original intent as we march through redemptive history?  [Dr. Vern Poythress lays this process down quite well here, but no where is any of Dr. Poythress’s works mentioned in a footnote nor included in the 11 page bibliography in the back.]  If I could draw an analogy to help illustrate my frustration, it would go something like this.  Imagine all the ancient near eastern myths create a large multi-colored fog.  As you walk through the misty surroundings of ancient near eastern history, the myths are floating all around you in various forms and colors.  But then you come to these two large stone tablets that have words written on them.  And because these tablets are in the middle of this fog, they are covered with the multi-colored dampness of the fog.  But there is a drastic difference between the multi-colored fog, and the tie-dye appearance left by the fog on the tablets.  The difference is this: the tablets are solid.  The fog isn’t.  I feel as if Dr. Collins is spending page upon page discussing the patterns of condensation left on the tablets without ever discussing the tablets themselves or the words written thereon.  Maybe the discussion of the divine author’s intent is outside the scope of the book, but since he is writing to an evangelical audience who cares about such a thing, it would seem like bad planning on Dr. Collins part if that is the case.

An Unscientific Look at Jack Collins’ book (part 1)

When coming at a subject like the one Dr. Collins is attempting to wrestle to the ground, it must feel a little like that scene from Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring where that cadre of unlikely heroes are just outside the mines of Moria and trying to battle the multi-tentacled Watcher in the Water that rose up from the murky depths nearby.  Just when you think you have the reach of the beast in hand, you find three more tentacles threatening to drag you under.  And Dr. Collins adds a few more tentacles to do battle with because he insists that his book “say something about everyday life” (p.21).  But I commend Dr. Collins for this because the amount of glory gained for Christ when slaying any beast is directly proportional to the number of tentacles it has.

Well the first aspect of this topic toward which Dr. Collins applies his academic and pastoral tools is how we should read biblical history, including what relation the biblical accounts have to “myth”, and how our worldview lenses filter all this stuff.  For starters one of the things that I loved to read was Dr. Collins’ insistence on the overarching need, even in this age of technological expertise and scientific precision, for a “captivated imagination” (pg. 20).  He uses C.S. Lewis to help us see where the concept of “myth” can help us by joining forces with history and science to present our modern minds with something far more satisfying and liveable than any of the parts by themselves can provide.  Think of it this way: we are all modern/postmodern, so the idea of holding onto “myths” might be fun, but certainly not true.  After all, science and technology hold the keys to the secular kingdom of which we are all well-adjusted citizens.  But we also see day in and day out that the priests of science insist we pay homage to their god before the voice of “myth” can be heard.  But when we listen to the music that is being played in the secular cathedrals of science, what we hear is something akin to a cat trying to climb a bay window with its claws.  Dr. Collins is quite successful in pulling back the curtain to reveal the reality that every worldview, even the modern priesthood of scientism, is underwritten by some sort of myth.

However, it is exactly at this point that I think Collins fails to help us as his students, not simply to recognize that the myth is there, but to evaluate the myth that is there.  Certainly, he speaks of the modern scientific materialism of today as being founded on a “bleak” myth or a story that ends with a pointless life (see pages 29-30), but nowhere does he help us evaluate these overarching stories as either good/evil or beautiful/ugly or even if we are obligated somehow to choose which one should have the upper hand.

Though he uses C.S. Lewis when it comes to defining myth, he would have done well to go a little further in allowing Lewis to be his tutor in helping us see the value of marrying the concepts of myth and history.  Here, let me quote an excerpt from another Lewis essay entitled “Myth Became Fact” taken from God in the Dock.  Though he is speaking specifically of the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Lewis’ insights are pertinent to the discussions surrounding the biblical creation story:

      Myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to.  It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.  … The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact … By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle…  To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth  (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths.  The one is hardly more necessary than the other… We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology.  For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.

Here, in my opinion, is the best way to make use of the often-slippery term “myth” as it relates to the creation account.  Here is where Lewis helps us see that the Creator God isn’t the dispassionate and distant watch-maker of the scientists who must create and govern according to their rulebook.  Nor is He the capricious and fanciful divine child who we see playing in the dirt in so many Ancient Near Eastern mythologies.  What we get in the biblical account is a Creator who gives us our playbook but reserves the right to come and play in the dirt at His pleasure.

Preliminaries to an Unscientific Look at Jack Collins’ book

Charity.  It’s what I hope to characterize the following musings about C. John “Jack” Collins’ book Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?  Charity towards a fellow believer’s published writing seems to be the best order of the day as well, especially if one plans on being somewhat critical (which it appears to be the case here, though I do hope Dr. Collins will help correct me where I am muddle-headed).  So toward those charitable ends, I must reveal a few of my credos, my beliefs about Dr. Collins, though he and I have never met.  First of all I believe him to be a sincere Reformed Christian who is devoted to Christ and is ill-deserving of the blogospheric pontifications he mentions that he has endured here.  In this same light, I do not believe him to be a teeth-gritting, hand-wringing respectability hound who is desperately seeking entrance into what C.S. Lewis called “The Inner Ring“.  I believe his being a minister in good standing within his presbytery and in the employ of our denominational seminary for almost 20 years ought to grant him the benefit of the doubt from his fellow PCA ministers like myself. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I have had no personal correspondence with Dr. Collins about his book.  I did not feel the need to check with him before hammering out a few thoughts on  his book for the same reason (I imagine) that he did not feel the need to check with me before he published his book (But if you read his acknowledgements you’ll see he certainly has a lot more rock stars in his brain trust than I have in mine. ;))  But all of these provisos, credos, and other forms of mental brush-clearing is not to say that Dr. Collins’ work doesn’t deserve some closer scrutiny.

Lastly, so any readers know what mental drawer to file this under, I titled this post (and any subsequent posts)  “unscientific” for two reasons: 1) because I only have an undergrad degree in a hard science, so I don’t think I am necessarily qualified to offer any thoughtful scientific input on the subject; and 2) because I am not finished reading the book yet and so my comments will be non-systematic, meandering at times, and subject to qualification and retraction.

Review of “The Orphaned Generation”

Below is my review on amazon.com of the book The Orphaned Generation: The Father’s Heart for Connecting Youth and Young Adults to Your Church by Scott Wilcher.  I hope people will read this and be motivated to get a couple copies for their church.  It’s simple, clear, vivid, and will hopefully change the posture of your heart toward the younger generations.

There are plenty of screeching voices on the subject of the modern youth ministry.  This book is not one of them.  What this book DOES accomplish is it becomes a wise guide for those who choose to take up the challenge implied by the book’s subtitle.  It is not guilt-manipulation aimed at the older generation.  It is not the I-am-really-hip-and-have-the-perfect-program-for-your-church kind of book.  It is not a the-modern-youth-group-model-is-of-the-devil version of youth ministry.  No where were the words “family integrated model” substituted for the words “Jesus Christ” like I have seen in other places.  What any reader will see is a deeply felt compassion for drawing in youth who don’t live in a traditional, nuclear family setting combined with a working knowledge of and fideilty to Christ and His gospel.  The author combines his compassion with a nitty-gritty knowledge of how things ARE not how we WISH them to be idealistically.  The reader will also find his or her own assumptions challenged as the author is hard on both the older and younger generations.  An example of one of the major challenges to the older generations is the call to know the mind of Christ better, to not view the younger generations as belonging “over there” in their own strata of ministry but see them as “our kids” who we love and serve and fold into our weekly life.  Church members do this in order to become the wise guides that this book calls them to be so that an orphaned generation can once again feel like the heavenly Father wants them for his sons and daughters.

May 21 came and Jesus didn’t…

Here’s a good excerpt from a newsletter that the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen wrote that references Harold Camping’s date-setting.  This excerpt was written in 1994. 

http://feastofbooths.blogspot.com/2011/05/if-you-received-this-world-did-not-end.html

How does he do it?

How does G.K. Chesterton seem to excite my imagination, delight my sensibilities, and bring conviction in the span of a few sentences?  And it’s not as if he does it once but seemingly every time he has put pen to paper.  Enjoy!

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.