The importance of Context in interpreting the Scriptures

In the book "Scripture and Truth" edited by D.A Carson and John D. Woodbridge, Carson makes the wonderful comment that speaks to the importance of considering the context of a passage.
Regarding Isaiah 55:8-9 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord'. As the heavens are higher than the earth ( now that has implications for Science doesn't it ? - gw ) so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Carson says "The context makes it evident that the categories do not concern competing logic systems or the like ( as though God operates by a different logic system than man - gw ), rather they are essentially moral. The previous verse exhorts 'Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts' Isa 55:7. Man's thoughts are to be bought into conformity with God's thoughts not by abandoning logic but by repentance."

Now there's something to mull over - perhaps we could use it when we gather together to Praise Him and Hear his Word and minister to one another.
In Christ,
Gary

Climate Warming - is it hysteria or should we be careful?

I have many questions about the whole global warming scenario. Is the hysteria a wake up call or should we be a little more aware of what stands as evidence and the part of motives of the people involved?
It seems to me that pseudo science is offered at times to induce people to accept massive political and power changes to our societies than are warranted. Al Gore's "An Incovenient Truth" seemed one of the more extreme in this tale, and it certainly requires discernment and careful analysis of the evidence along with the underlying unstated presuppositions which are most of the time left out of the discussion and presentation of the "evidence".

Irrespective of which way the evidence leads I for one believe that Christians ought to look after their environment. We are not to abuse it, rip it off, but care for it and I see this as rooted in the creation mandate of Genesis 1. See my blog on this.

However one place to consider are the people over at The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

One of their articles has the following nifty little poem which struck my fancy.

A doctor fell in a deep well
and broke his collar bone.
The moral: Doctor, mind the sick
and leave the well alone.

This famous poem arrives, though somewhat absurdly, at a good moral: Tend to the sick, not the well. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” We should examine the debate, science, and economics of global climate change in light of this principle, arriving at a responsible course of action.

Debate: “The time for argument is over,” say countless environmentalist politicians. “All the scientists agree.” But is there really a consensus in favor of anthropogenic ("man-made") catastrophic global warming theory? Not a chance! Marc Morano, of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee recently published the report, ”More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims.” So much for “consensus.” Besides, as Copernicus, Columbus, and others have demonstrated, “consensus” proves nothing (except, sometimes, where the money and power are).


look up the rest of the article and ponder what it is saying.

In Christ,
Gary

Culture Wars - Catherine Millet

Cultural wars – Catherine Millet
The French writer who has made her sexual promiscuity public in her books has to some degree shocked the literary and art world. It’s most likely dismissed by Christians as being exhibitionist and immoral however we do well to see what is actually going on here in her writing and more so in her life which is a lived out world view. Let’s be frank here, her writing is pornographic and in that sense detestable from our perspective of the Christian Worldview, but let’s go further and see how her worldview stacks up under an internal critique, using her own words and experiences – does it still hold together as a worthwhile system? [1] It's at this level that the cultural wars are to be fought as a Christian, no in slanging matches or in fearful ignoring of what is going on around us.

She seems to me to be the child of Kierkegaard and Sartre and Camus, those existentialists who threw out reason and objective Truth and took on subjectivity as the arbiter of right and wrong, good and bad. Truly you see in her actions and attitudes that all that matters is the experience. As with Kierkegaard, all that matters is personal experience, and no ones else’s “truth” invalidates mine because it is mine, and theirs is theirs. Yet such subjectivism and individualism must I think devolve into mysticism, where the irrational triumphs over the rational and people are alienated from each other more and more.

Observing this MacArthur says of such a system, what I call this existential worldview, that it has no integrity. “Those who espouse it cannot live with the repercussions of their own illogic.”[2]

“In practice a man cannot totally reject [ rationality ], however much his system leads him to it, unless he experiences .. some form of mental breakdown”[3]

And this I believe is exactly what you see in the life of Catherine Millet. The above observations by MacArthur and Schaeffer indicate for us what we might expect as ramifications for Millet’s Worldview.

Her writing, especially as found in her ‘The sexual life of Catherine M’ has found wide readership being translated into 40 languages and selling more than 5 million copies worldwide. It depicts her proclivity for sexual encounters with whoever, where ever and whenever, even attending orgies, all the time whilst married to Jacques Henric who himself knew what was going on.
As she says in one interview:

“The sensation that one was glorying in this unbelievable freedom, this transcendence. I look back on it with nothing but pleasure. It was important to me, to my identity, my ego, but it wasn’t an addiction.”[4]

No it wasn’t an addiction but a worldview where she is the ultimate authority on right and wrong, good and evil. Where she determines what is right for her. It reaches almost the status of religion where above she says the so called freedom was an experience of “transcendence”.[5]
What really rocked her world though was when she found out her husband had himself been having affairs all the way along. His unfaithfulness “knocked her sideways; she describes being unable to sleep or breathe; suffering wild fits of rage, feeling her heartbeat falter. At times she was banging her head against the wall.”

As Francis Schaeffer referred to, she is finding herself below the line of despair, which is where the existentialist with his worldview is.

It is the moment of crisis because no man is an island. They exist in community and the fundamental community is that of God and family. Where one has friendship and trust and love with the opposite sex within the plan of God, within marriage. Where is intimacy when one lives as a self-determining authority? Where is integrity when you set the standards only for yourself and others determine their own standards? What we have in Catherine Millet at this point is the clash of her worldview with reality. That she is hurt, feels cheated and ignored is not surprising for the Christian who understands that sexual encounter is far more than a physical encounter, it is the becoming of one flesh as God in His Word proclaims. Elsewhere she proudly proclaims that the sex act is like an empty pocket [6] into which people put different things, like love as in “if you love me you’ll..” or even money or as in her case “pleasure” or so she claims but her anguish expressed above and the beating of her head against the wall reveals that she is really in denial. She is as Romans’ 1 tells us suppressing the truth about God, and one of the results of this is abandonment to abnormal sex where true passion and pleasure are destroyed.

What I find interesting is what seems to be prevalent today in out society of doing what’s right in your own eyes, of being the self-legislators of “truth” does not end up satisfying people. That even whilst searching everywhere in ways like this there is still for many a deep hunger for social relationship, for community, and more so with one special person, where love and intimacy and acceptance will be found. No matter how far people rebel against God and run, they are left only in despair and loneliness and loss of intimacy which themselves point to the reality that they are the absolutes they have abandoned in their rebellion against God.

I am not recommending you read Catherine Millet’s book, indeed I wouldn’t want you to because the language is so explicit it’s demeaning. Rather I want you to see that she is like so many others who run from God and attempt to make themselves the arbiters of Truth only to end up in shallowness and a world lacking intimacy and worth and love.

I would also hope that in God’s Grace she might hear of the good news of the gospel message that alone can release people from such bondage.

your brother in Christ,
Gary

1. Some see her work as porn as the new art, but I have no interest in arguing against that view here, but rather the more important question of whether such a worldview implodes upon itself into despair.
2. John MacArthur ‘Reckless Faith’ Crossway Books 1994 pg 27.
3. Quoted in MacArthur ‘Reckless Faith’ pg 27.
4. Mind Games by Jon Henley ’Life’: The sun-Herald Magazine Dec 6th 2009 pg 21
5. Mind Games by Jon Henley ’Life’: The sun-Herald Magazine Dec 6th 2009 pg 21
6. http://dtl.unimelb.edu.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1260584686450~273&locale=en_AU&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=4&search_terms=SYS%20=%20000009892&adjacency=N&application=DIGITOOL-3&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true

Unity in the Faith -

Unity is such a buzz word and rightly so. It does and should urge us to seek a fellowship which is God's body gathered together to serve Him and each other. A place where people have community and care for one another.
But what makes the local church different from a R.S.L or a golf club where people meet together and enjoy each others company?
The local church is different because Biblical Unity is always based upon Truth. It's never mere emotionalism or desire or having a common goal.
Paul in Philippians 4 pleads with Euodia and Syntyche to agree with each other, to be likeminded. Yet the likemindedness spoken of here has to do with "in the Lord". There is never an injunction in the Scriptures to "Unity at all cost", Unity requires discrimination.
Indeed in Philippians, as the great preacher Martin Lloyd Jones pointed out,

they are exhorted "to stand fast in the Lord" Just like he'd exhorted the Corinthian Church "to stand firm in the faith" 1 Cor 16:13 Similarly, Phil 1:27 "Stand firm in the one spirit". All these suggest the same thing. To stand firm in the Faith"
Here is not unity at the expense of Truth, here [ there ] is no unity with those who deny the deity of Jesus.

Martin Lloyd Jones speaks of the issue of unity in the context of the ecumenicalism of his day. One is to stand fast in the the Lord and that is to stand fast concerning the truth of the Lord.

We need to remember that when Paul speaks to Euodia and Syntyche that these are fellow Christians, those he speaks of in 4:3 whose "names are written in the book of life." They are the opposite of the dogs of Philippians 3:2 who all are to be on guard against. These two women are not false teachers riling against reach other but fellow saints whom he pleads with. As our passage tells us "they are in the Lord" yet their quarelling with each other is detrimental to fellowship and so Paul pleads with them to stop.
What we can say then from our passage is that these two were not arguing over some doctrine, some teaching of God's Word. If they had been we would have expected rightly for Paul to exhort the elders at Phillipi to correct their errors or where they lacked in teaching and urge them to be reconciled. Or if they had been two eagerly checking out what the other claimed Scripture said against Scripture, then I expect Paul would have applauded then as Acts 17 might suggest regarding the Bereans. Of course if that endeavour was being unkind and not seeking the others good then I believe he would have surely rebuked them about that, but I don't think that their problem was grounded in a dispute over Scriptures teaching, and that's why Paul pleads with them to stop and be likeminded.

What more can we learn from God's word to us about Unity here? Perhaps you might suggest something?
your brother in Christ,
Gary

Understanding Hermeneutics - the first step

When considering hermeneutics some are a bit put off by the fact that some begin by quoting Scripture as providing the contours, the boundaries as it were for proper hermeneutics, hermeneutics which is the proper method of Interpreting Scripture. They see this as perhaps circular reasoning and are maybe embarrassed by it.
Let me suggest that this same unease is encountered by some who study and debate Christian apologetics. They are uneasy about beginning with Scripture. They think that this somehow is a refusal to find “common ground” with “the unbeliever” or “the seeker”. ( if there is such as person as a seeker in the Bible’s sense of the term. ) and that such a method commits the fallacy of circular reasoning. Furthermore in such debates from Christians discussing apologetics you find the fear that if the believer begins with Scripture, then all that will ensue with the unbeliever is a “shouting match” where the believer says “God says” and the unbeliever rejoins “Who says” or perhaps a seemingly reasonable argument that “we must not assume the very thing we are trying to prove”.
What is often forgotten is first of all the motive for the Christian to do apologetics, that is offer a defence for what the Christian faith is, is his faithful response to the word of God found in 1 Peter 3 “Always be ready to give an answer … the reason for the hope you have.” And the reason he is motivated by this is because the Lord God has already worked in his heart to convict him of his sin against God, brought him to repentance and filled him with his Holy Spirit. That is, God has transformed him, and that is the reason why he wants to obey 1 Peter 3:15. It is only a Christian, one transformed by God already who wants to do apologetics with his unbelieving neighbour.
That is the foundation for all he does as a Christian. So methodologically he begins apologetics with his understanding of the unbeliever as a sinner, one in rebellion against the Lord God. Then he takes a two pronged approach to the unbeliever. He reasons with him to show that his worldview, the unbeliever’s worldview – whether it be naturalism or a even a religious worldview, is incoherent, it just doesn’t provide for meaning and reason and love and ethics and right and wrong and science and the like. Then he asks him if he can share about the Christian Worldview of the bible that does provide and account for these things and he can speak of the Creator of all, God, who is personal and Sovereign etc, Who is outside of His Creation and yet enters into it to relate to man, and how man sinned and rebelled and how God in His wisdom and plan sent Jesus, Who is God, into the world to redeem Him, etc.
In the end it has to be assumed, that the unbeliever is in rebellions against the God who is his Creator and Creator of all, even though he does know him. Rom 1. The unbeliever is actively and continually suppressing that knowledge.
So what we need to understand here from this illustration from apologetics is that methodologically it is reasonable and coherent to argue from Scripture right from the very start in any endeavour we take as a Christian, and ever so much more when it comes to hermeneutics.
Thus we begin our discussion of correct hermeneutics, that is, how one can rightly interpret the bible by quoting Scriptures that make it clear that:
1. Scripture is God’s Word. Inspired, breathed out. 1 Tim 3:16.
2. Scripture has to be accurately handled. 2 Timothy 2:15 “accurately handling the Word of Truth”.
3. Scripture is Truth. 2 Tim 2:15.
4. Scripture is clear though it has some passages that are hard, but not impossible to understand. So 2 Peter 3:15-16. It just means a lot of hard effort needs to be put in, indeed in 2 Tim 2:15 it requires “a workman”, one who puts in much effort! In Deut 6:6-7 Moses tells the Israelites to teach these words to their children, to discuss them. The assumption is that it can be understood. Then in the reading and application of the book of the law in Nehemiah 8:8, it says the scribes ”read and gave the sense of the Scriptures” Now there’s a good reminder of the role of the elder in expository preaching of the word to God’s people. Then Jude 3 assumes that Christians can understand the word of God for we all are to “contend for the Faith once for all delivered.”
No doubt there are others to add, but these at least are a minimum.

your brother in Christ,
Gary

What happens if you take Genesis 1 as semi poetic

If you happen to study the issue of how a christian is to interpret Genesis 1 you will no doubt find a small number of people who take the genre of Genesis 1 to be semi poetic.
I actually read yesterday on the net that Rob Bell takes the even stronger position of calling it poetic, even though most commentaries point out that it is certainly not Hewbrew poetry as found for example in the Psalms. Have a read of Wenham's Commentary on Genesis 1-15 where this is addressed.
But a few take the supposed lesser position of calling it semi poetic.
Now even though I don't believe it can be taken as semi poetic, after all, finding a few repetitive phrases or even a triadic structure that some see in parallel days of 1&4; 2&5; 3&6 doesn't make something semi poetic, let's for a moment assume they are right and see what follows from taking it that way.
If it is semi poetic then day, morning and evening do not function in the specific and clear way they seem to. Indeed as one advocate of this approach says for example about the creation of Eve from Adam's rib, this is just "a wonderful literary expression of the closeness between the sexes." In that case everything in Genesis 1 is not to be taken literally but poetically, even though it is asserted that this does not deny that Genesis 1 is historical.

Given all that we now meet a methodological problem in that when they get to 1:26f they suddenly switch hermeneutical horses and call that literal, not poetic since they still want to claim man is made in the image of God.
What this tells me is that this issue is very much a hermeneutical issue. And what's more, proponents of the semi poetic view are being arbitrary in their taking of Genesis 1 as semi poetic.
And that is totally irrespective of having to address the issue of the whole nature of poetry being somewhat subjective.
This is a very serious and difficult problem for those who advocate taking Genesis 1 as semi poetic and it is something they have to deal with.

What do you think?

In Christ,
Gary

Apologetics methodology - reaching our culture where it is at.

Pastors wake up! we are past Josh McDowell's plaid trousers. To put it another way -
Pastors, we are not in Kansas anymore. At least Dorothy had the perception to realise that she wasn't in Kansas anymore, unlike many pastors and evangelists today. Back in the late 60's or early 70's I had the pleasure of watching a movie involving Josh McDowell speaking about Christianity and the Evidence that demands one make a verdict about Jesus. It was relevant and informative and challenging, for in those days many were asking the question about evidence for the christian faith.
I remember the laughter however when Josh, appearing before a University crowd came on the screen dressed in plaid trousers. At the time something culturally relevant for Americans but not so with Australians where Blue Jeans was the "in thing".
Thirty odd years on however, we have Pastors who just don't get it that those sorts of answers that Josh gives don't cut it anymore in evangelism purely because most unbelievers are not asking those questions anymore.
These Pastors who quote McDowell are in effect wearing plaid trousers without any awareness that the culture has moved on.
Our Culture has moved on. Far fewer have any basic understanding of the Bible or the Christian Faith. It's revealed partly by the unbelievers best known verse which isn't John 3:16 but rather "Do not judge". Most unbelievers think that objections to Christianity have won the day. Many live by unexamined assumptions about life where beliefs are picked up by adding them to your plate from the smorgasbord of beliefs and chosen on the basis of pragmatism only. What "works for me" seems to be the guiding motive in what people believe today. They accept half-baked worldviews such as postmodernism with any investigation or deep thinking about what is involved. The Closing of the American Mind is aptly descriptive of the Australian scene and indeed most Western advanced countries. But surely it is tragic if this is the situation of our pastors also.

Some might think that apologetic method is not important for the Christian, he just needs to tell others about Jesus. But this is both simplistic and untrue. It ignore that Paul shows a clear method of being culturally relevant to unbelievers and showing them that their worldview is a house of cards and that Christianity alone makes sense of it all. In Acts 17 Paul helps us see the importance of what he elsewhere calls "pulling down fortresses." The unbeliever is shown how man has 'a worldview of choice' that is internally incoherent, for example he makes idols of the same wood he uses to warm himself by the fire.
And we need to repeatedly hear that Evangelising doesn't mean everybody responds positively as we see clearly from Acts 17, indeed Paul is denigrated and maligned by some of his hearers but such responses are not a reason to refrain from proclaiming the gospel message.

Isn't this something we take for granted, this cultural awareness in evangelism - when preparing missionaries for the mission field. We do this as an integral part of the training we do when sending missionaries overseas to the Chinese or Africans. We learn the culture and language so as to be able to communicate and not needlessly offend by saying inappropriate things or using gestures in the wrong manner. So why are we so reticent at home within our own culture?
Is it that we are so cut off, or perhaps it's the opposite of being so absorbed by our culture? that we are not aware that our professing of evangelistic truth is not hitting home and we blame the lack of response to being due to hardened hearts or refusal to turn to God.

I hope all of us will spend some more time in pondering this as we seek to take the good news to those without the Lord Jesus Christ.

Your brother,
Gary