For whom the Bell Tolls - the reality of shipwrecking the Faith

Here's a laughable parody of Rob Bell's new book 'Love wins'.

Robbed Hell - C.A.S.T. Pearls Presents from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

Most sad is the heresy of Rob Bell and his real failure to understand God's word. It is clear evidence of a shipwrecked faith.

Pray.

in Christ,
Gary

The Emergent conversation- good or bad? or perhaps in the middle

It isn't uncommon today to hear the word "conversation" or the phrase "having a conversation" in emergent circles in regard to talking about doctrine or methods of doing church or missiology.

Now what has struck me about this word conversation is how it was previously spoken of by Neil Postman in 'Amusing ourselves to death', a book he published back in 1985. Well before many of the emerging or emergent crowd were out of nappies.

First of all, I need to reject the objection that I am lumping emergents and emerging together, that I am taking them as synonymous. While I do see them as able to be distinguished, they do at times overlap and as pyromaniacs pointed out over at their blogspot, emergent can be treated as "a major influential element in the emerging conversation".

Secondly, so as not to fall prey to accusations of 'the genetic fallacy', that some may take what I say here to be saying that something is dubious because of its origin ( although it is at times proper to speak of such bad origins when satan is the source of something! ) I want to reject that notion up front. I am not saying that emergents picked up anything from Postman. Indeed I think he has some very valuable things to offer us to reflect upon and we and emergents could have learnt something valuable from Postman. While the terminology of "conversation" as some emergents use it seems to have strong similarities with Postman, the similarities have more to do with what Postman was countering. Listen to what Postman actually said back in 1985.

Postman used the word "conversation:" metaphorically to "refer not only to speech but to all techniques and technologies that permit people of a particular culture to exchange messages." pg 6. Further "in this sense all culture is a conversation or more precisely , a corporation of conversations , conducted in a variety of symbolic modes."

He then goes on "our attention here is on how forms of public discourse regulate and even dictate what kind of content can issue from such forms"

Sounds difficult doesn't it but it really isn't.

Consider his example of smoke signals by American Indians. They would not have been able to include philosphical discourse since they are insufficiently complex to do that. You wouldn't be able to have two indians conversing about the nature of existence using smoke signals. He said they'd run out of wood and blankets before the second axiom. The media just doesn't allow for philosophical argument.

I just love what Neil Postman says. It's so thought provoking. He seems to be describing exacty the situation of "conversation" that we find so prevalent today among emergents.

The trouble is, I think the emergents in many cases are settling for smoke signals.

Here I agree I need to carefully set out how I see emergents connection to the notion of "conversation" as Postman uses it.

I am not refering to the common notion of emergents as part of an "emerging conversation" which refers to a continued dialogue with others that the evangelical movement would have seperated from due to their unorthodox beliefs. I am using "conversation" to address the characteristics of an "emergent church service" such as Dr Sam Harbin described as follows: ( and has been described in magazines and newspaper articles about the emergent church )

"A place where ancient christian art decorates the walls, meditative activities at different stations around the room, ..." or there's prayer labyrinths, and someone writing in a worship journal, and or perhaps a stool on which sits at "pastor" having a discussion about christian things instead of a sermon and people mold playdoh into some model to represent the talk. A video screen off to one side of the room showing a plethora of images covering many subjects flashing by rapidly, and so on.

What we have going on here is the younger generations enthusiasm and predilection towards the media tools of the 20th and 21st century. Using different media to put across the gospel message as well as to teach the bible.

Now it's in that regard that what Postman was talking about has major ramifications in relation to Preaching. There are those who love to roll out the statement that "it doesn't matter what media you use, you just have to be faithful and true regarding the content", whereas the method they insist, can change, they declare they are faithfully keeping the message the same.

What they fail to understand is that the medium can distort, and even negate the message or be totally inadequte to convey the message.

They need to think more about Marshall McLuhan who said "the medium is the message".

Let me say that some emergents in their conversations about doctrine are so reliant on sound bites and unsubstantiated opinion and lacking any depth of argument that they are just like Indians, sending up smoke signals. If I permit myself a sound bite, as the saying goes, "one ought to be aware of smoke and mirrors". What is being "discussed" lacks just what Postman saw as missing in Public Discourse, any real depth of argument.

Now please don't accuse me of similar lack of depth of argument. I will readily admit there's much more to be argued, I just think it's been adequately said by Postman and lately by T. David Gordon.

In the meantime, just reflect on secular media and their impact. Video hits today predominantly visualise sexual themes and the music seems to not be the focus. Indeed sometimes the music is trash and the video is the only artistic part! What's happening is that instead of reflecting upon the words of the music and the message, often the message is visualised in a particular direction. What becomes the focus is the video, not the music. Indeed the music sometimes becomes secondary.

Now what we have among some in the Church is the notion that we shouldn't have to rely just on preaching, since that is so cognitive and word oriented but rather we should be able to include dance and drama and visual art to get the message across. I acknowledge this isn't just a problem found in emergent circles because it is clearly evident in those seeker services of the 90's and in some earlier church services. The point I want to highlight is how we need to think through the whole issue of how different media can detract, distort, or negate the message.

Apart from Scripture itself telling preachers to preach the Word, to declare the Scriptures and explain the sense of the teachings, eg Neh 8 they have also forgotten that other forms can easily distort and even negate the message. Not just that but the form can be inadequate to get the message across anyway, just like the Indians smoke signals. To argue that in the bible the prophets used drama, so therefore we can also use drama, or that Jesus told stories so we also can use the story form, is to confuse us and our calling to edify and equip the saints through the Word with the fact that they are used by God the father to declare exactly what He wanted communicated. We are not prophets in that sense. We are teachers of God's already delivered Word. We are to contend for the faith ( Scriptures ) once for all delivered. Jude 3. We don't make up or bring our own ideas to God's people.

Consider drama - if we think that it's a clear substitute for the preached Word of God we are mistaken. First of all the actors tend to interpret things not written. Certainly they need to thoroughly understand the Biblical or theological point of some story or parable or acted drama in the bible if they are to "act it out." Sadly we see how easy it is to get this wrong, just consider how many books used in teaching children through stories get the point of the passage so totally wrong. Yet even if they get it right, those listening can focus on the wrong thing, firstly because the context of the acted drama has not been given, and it needs to be seen in the biblical context in which it is given. In many cases those we get to do drama are not the pastor-teachers but usually actors in the body who are not often biblically astute about what they are doing. But secondly, our visual sense can take over and override our intellectual assessment, thinking through what is going on. We are so prone to being entertained in our culture that we switch off our mind in the presense of such stimulation.

I am not denying that people can interpret a preacher wrongly. And certainly there are many bad preachers out there - a subject for the next post. Yet it is the Word of God that is a two edged sword, which the Holy Spirit takes and convicts people with. Scripture does not say the Spirit takes drama and uses it that way. The Bereans are lauded because they checked out everything that the apostle Paul said against the Scriptures, the written word. Acts 17. It keeps on coming back to God's Word. Once for all delivered.

We need a bit of thoughtful reflection. Many pastors lament the Biblical illiteracy of many of their flock. But are we encouraging that because of the media we are using? We need to hear "Preach the Word, in season and out of season." We are not there to entertain, or "amuse" but to edify with the Word.

Have a read of Postman's book and reflect on what you are doing.

In Christ,

Gary

The No Metanarrative Fallacy

Some of you may have read of the view of many emergents who reject metannaratives, the view that there is one overarching view of the world that is true and correct, claiming it to be abusive and a power trip. They do this having taken on board uncritically the view of postmodernism.

You will often hear "postmodernists" explain either their rejection of a metanarrative or in relation to all religions having part of the truth by using the example of the 6 blind men and the elephant. Where one has hold of the tail and claims this is the reality, another has hold of the trunk and says this is it, another has a leg, and another the ear and so on. Or that each person has partial religious truth and is to be respected for it's their perspective.

Without going into whether this is an epistemological rejection of an overarching view of reality or a rejection of metaphysical perspective per se we can see what they are getting at. It is I believe an illustration used by advocates of religious pluralism and radical skepticism. See Greg Koukle's article The Trouble with the Elephant.

However, have they a case to argue using this illustration or analogy? One thing that is often ignored but pointed out by Leslie Newbingen is that while there are 6 blind men groping around the elephant, we and the narrator of the story actually see the whole elephant. That is, at least the person using the analogy is claiming a total comprehension of reality. They themselves claim to know it all in order to be able to use the analogy in saying each of the 6 blind men only have part of the truth but it is truth as far as it goes and true for them!

You see, the person using this anaolgy is actually usurping the place of God who is omniscient and omniresent. That is, God who is the only one in the position to know everything and know it truly. He alone knows how it all fits together. And some of this he has revealled to us in Scripture. Not every known fact there is, but how it relates to Him as Creator., as Sovereign Personal Triune God.

Grasping this will help immensly in speaking and communicating with the present unbelieving generation.

In Christ,

Gary

Is the emergent church really dead?

Over at Parchment and Pen C. Michael Patten wrote that after 15 years the emergent church is dead.
One could reasonably argue that the emergent church wasn't really a church at all, but mainly a group of authors and blogists who picked up on disatisfaction with some aspects or concrete expressions of those that claim to be Christ's Church in the world.
One definite reaction seems to have been against mega churches that sought to express or impact the culure from a marketing perspective, such as is seen by Willow creek in Chicago and to some extent Saddleback church in L.A.

Cetainly Brian McLaren as an author is still having a wide impact on many "christians" and Tony Jones and his friends at emergent village are likewise putting forth ideas that are far from orthodox, such as their view on hell, homosexuality and the authority of Scripture. It's not that I decry people asking questions but rather the failure of many asking the questions to do serious homework and see the answers which have already in the past of theological study been powerfully offered.

Certainly one can describe many who claim to be emergent or belong to the emergent corral as having accepted the philosophical views of postmodernism, even when they lash out at the evangelical church for having accepted without criticism the assumptions of modernism. Here they are commiting the same blunder they accused the mainstream evangelical church of doing.

However in regard to emegents many are following the mood of postmodernism which really is internally inconsistent and a worldview at odds with a Biblical Worldview.

I want to say more about postmodernism soon, but in the meantime we could perhaps descibe it as really something very old, as being self-legislating in regard to absolutes. Doing what was around in the time of the Judges, where "every man did what was right in his own eyes."

Still where does that leave people today? having moved on from postmodernism are they post-postmodern? Perhaps they are epiphenomenalmoderm? That is, valuing the experiences generated from modernism. Experiences based on the fruits of modernism.

I prefer to call then emodern. They are people who want and use the inventions of the modern era such as computors and ipods and iphones and so on and yet blithely say that there are no absolutes, but the very science which undergirds these inventions requires absolutes. The Logic used in computor hardware has the states of a 1 or a 0 or the state which can be labelled "don't care", there's no fourth option. Computer programming is fiercely absolute in requiring adherence to these laws or things don't work! Just imagine the present 16-25 yr olds reactions if their iphones and laptops suddenly stopped doing what they we designed to do.

Perhaps the generation before us us truly just a reflection of the very logic of solid state hardware, they are heading towards the "don't care", the "whatever" has become a don't care. They seek the experience for experiences sake. But even here they are usually discriminatory. They have not taken Camus or Sarte to their logical conclusion of despair. They don't normally try suicide for the experience.

But overall, is such a discriminatory response livable?

We have a worldview, the Biblical Worldview that gives account for value and meaning and truth and trust and love and knowledge and morality. When we realise this, we will be able to challenge them in their lostness.

In Christ,
Gary

Truth in a "whatever" World.

Here's a timely reminder from Bill Muehlenberg’s book review of John MacArthur's book 'The Truth War'
He says in part:
"Many evangelicals, especially those in the emerging church movement, have recently declared that doubt, uncertainty, mystery and questions are superior to certainty, belief, faith and conviction. This seems to stand in marked contrast to the affirmations of Scripture. Consider a remark made by John Stott some 40 years ago in Christ the Controversialist:
“In those things which are clearly revealed in Scripture, Christians should not be doubtful or apologetic. The corridors of the New Testament reverberate with dogmatic affirmations beginning ‘We know’, ‘We are sure’, ‘We are confident’. If you question this, read the First Epistle of John in which verbs meaning ‘to know’ occur about forty times. They strike a note of joyful assurance which is sadly missing from many parts of the church today and which needs to be recaptured.”
Today many church leaders are glorying in doubt and uncertainty, and are telling us that having firm convictions and strong beliefs is arrogant and somehow un-Christlike. But as MacArthur reminds us, “this is not authentic Christianity”. To refuse to embrace and defend the revealed truth of God “is a particularly stubborn and pernicious form of unbelief”."

Are we wanting to be authentic Christians? Then it means accepting what God's Word says about Truth, in face of those waving their finger about being in a postmodern culture.

We should imitate the Bereans of Acts 17.

In Christ
Gary

The Unbelief of Brian McLaren

For many years now I have observed and read Brian McLaren with great concern that he is just way off mark with even a basic understanding of the Gospel. He has I think been just like the liberal academics found in liberal German schools of the 19th Century and much of McLaren's teachings reminded me of just their teachings.



I'm not suggesting that Christian's should not be able to ask worthwhile and deep questions about the Christian faith, rather they need to understand that some questions are not only nonsense but have no proper framework on which to understand a correct answer when they get one or not. If you start with some autonomous human authority as your standard of Truth, ie yourself, or even a claim that Reason is the standard of truth, and not the Scriptures as the revelation of God Himself, then you will stray into the muck of liberalism and unbelief or even heresy very quickly. This is not to say that the Christian faith is unreasonable, far from it, rather it is when man takes Reason as his Standard of Truth instead of reason as a tool, with the Standard being God and his Revealed word that problems begin.



To see where the slippery slope leads, one just needs to consider McLaren's book 'Everything must change', but be careful, one must read with the same attitude the Berean's had towards the preaching of Paul.



See Don Veinot who writes very powerfully on this issue. Please take time to read it.
We ourselves need to ask: "Is it not loving to point out someone's error and call them to repentance"? And not merly that, but all Christians are called to defend the faith once for all given. Jude 3.

God Bless
Gary