Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984)

It seems a bit odd to eulogize a man who has been gone for nearly 30 years, but it seemed a fitting way to note the centenary of Francis Schaeffer's birth.

Schaeffer was arguably one of the most influential Christian apologists of the 20th century (along with C. S. Lewis). Although I read several books by Lewis before ever cracking open a volume of Schaeffer, it was the latter that has had a more profound effect on my worldview—especially his books The God Who is There and Escape from Reason, and to a lesser extent Art and the Bible and Pollution and the Death of Man. It was through Schaeffer that I first discovered the value of presuppositional apologetics, and he may have been my first few baby steps toward Reformed theology. And, although he was not a direct influence on my own views, in the late 1970s he was one of the earliest Evangelical pro-life voices, whose influence made opposition to abortion a Protestant, not merely a Roman Catholic, concern.

Also, as I have noted previously in my lightning review of The Church at the End of the 20th Century, although some of his work feels dated today—much of his ministry during his most productive period was with the hippie counterculture of the 60s and 70s—many of the worldview issues he raised back then have come full circle. With the rise of draconian campus speech codes and pointless activism like the recent Occupy movement, perhaps we're in need of a fresh look at Francis Schaeffer.

A sad ending

When this story broke a couple weeks ago, I had a sinking feeling it would not have a happy ending. I would have liked to be wrong:

Greg Etue, husband of CTV Ottawa's Carol Anne Meehan, has been found dead near Killaloe, Ont.

The well-known pharmacist hadn't been seen or heard from since Jan. 16 when he left home in the family van. He had been battling multiple sclerosis and cancer for several years.

Ontario police said they found Etue and the 2008 Pontiac Montana on High Crest Lane in Brudenell around 12:30 p.m. Monday.

Foul play is not suspected.

[Full Story]

Ms. Meehan is an anchor for CTV's 6-o'clock news in Ottawa, so her personal tragedy unfortunately becomes a local news story. Prayers for her, her family and her in-laws.

Friday in the wild: January 27, 2012

It's Friday! Here's a compendium of bloggy goodness from the past week.

Scott Adams describes how both Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich set off his "non-believerdar":

It's starting to look as if Newt Gingrich will be the Republican nominee. If so, this might be the first time two non-believers ran against each other for President of the United States.

What?

Oh, that's right: You still think Gingrich and Obama believe what's written in the Christian Bible. I understand why you think that. After all, both men say they believe in god, and they do churchy things. The trouble is that Gingrich and Obama both set off my non-believerdar. (That's like gaydar for non-believers.)

[Read Non-Believerdar]

Adams then goes on to say that he doesn't really believe in "non-believerdar" (or gaydar, or any other -dar)—it's just his feeling that both candidates profess some sort of Christian belief for its utilitarian value in getting votes. And you know what? He might be right. Though I'd probably concede that Gingrich, as a convert to Roman Catholicism, actually believes it to some extent: squishy evangelicalism would play just as well, if not better, in the Bible Belt.

Last week, Alan Shlemon asked on the Stand to Reason blog whether Jesus' apparent silence on homosexuality actually meant anything. This week, he continues the series, asking whether homosexuality really is the worst sin imaginable:

Christians don't just think homosexuality is the worst sin. We act like it too. Christians who rarely cite scripture suddenly invoke Bible verses when the topic comes up. We get uneasy when gay men come to church, but we gladly welcome post-abortive women. We’ll move a lesbian who sits next to other females at youth group, but we won’t separate girls who gossip.

It's no wonder the culture thinks Christians hate homosexuals. We give their behavior a unique status: the worst sin of all. And because homosexuals are committing the supreme evil, we treat them like pariahs.

[Read Is Homosexuality the Worst Sin of All?]

I'll just add that Jesus said there was a sin that was unforgivable (Matt. 12:31), but it's not the sin of which Paul said to the Corinthian church, "such were some of you. But you were washed" (1 Cor. 6:11).

Chris Rosebrough attended the Elephant Room conference this week. Rather, he tried to—but upon arrival was informed that he was no longer welcome and would be arrested if he didn't leave. Nonetheless, he posted on the theological weaselliness¹ of "Bishop" T. D. Jakes:

Jakes' full answer was this:

One God—Three Persons. One God—Three Persons, and here is why . . . there . . . I am not crazy about the word persons this is . . . most people who follow me know that that is really. My doctrinal statement is no different from yours except the word. . . .

Driscoll completes Jakes' sentence by filling in that "one word" and its [sic] the word "Manifestations."

[Read Theological Sleightof Hand at the Elephant Room]

"Manifestations" is, of course, the usual way that Oneness advocates try to avoid the traditional Trinitarian language of one God in three distinct Persons. Jakes is trying to play to his audience and sound properly Trinitarian, but he can't get away from his own sect's jargon. As Rosebrough adds: "See what a difference just one word can make?"

On Twitter, James White posed one good question that would settle Jakes' view of the nature of God unambiguously: "Did the Son, as a divine person, distinguishable from the Father, exist as a divine Person prior to the birth in Bethlehem?" I'm not holding my breath.

Credo provided a good reminder that two valuable resources are available for free for the download: an audiobook of J. I. Packer's Knowing God from ChristianAudio, and Timothy George's lectures on the theology of the Reformers. The Packer book, at least, is only available for the remainder of January. Grab it while you can: it tops the list of extrabiblical, Christian books that I recommend to friends.

Desiring God Blog pointed to an article by Richard Pratt on the Ligionier Web site, about how proverbs are not promises:

Now, we need to be clear here. The proverbs commend certain paths to family members because they reflect the ways God ordinarily distributes His blessings. But ordinarily does not mean necessarily. Excellent wives have good reason to expect honor from their husbands and children. Fathers with integrity often enjoy seeing God’s blessings on their children. Parents who train their children in the fear of the Lord follow the path that frequently brings children to saving faith. But excellent wives, faithful husbands, and conscientious parents often endure terrible hardship in their homes because proverbs are not promises. They are adages that direct us toward general principles that must be applied carefully in a fallen world where life is always somewhat out of kilter. As the books of Job and Ecclesiastes illustrate so vividly, we misconstrue the Word of God when we treat proverbs as if they were divine promises.

[Read Broken Homes in the Bible]

And so, until next week, I bid you adieu. Enjoy.

Footnote

¹ I have my doubts weaselliness is a word. But, dang it, it should be.

And now . . . this - Jan. 27/12

A woman plans to marry a partially demolished building in Seattle on Sunday.

Even though cranes have already started demo work at 10th and Union Warehouse, Babylonia Aivaz reports "I'm STILL Getting Married."

"Yes, I'm in love with a 107 year old building!" writes Aivaz on the wedding invite page on facebook.

[Full Story]

There is a positive to this: since the building is on it last legs anyway, by the time "Babylonia" comes to her senses and decides to marry a person, she won't have to fight a messy divorce—who gets the little sheds, and all that.

Amazingly, someone in the media thought this nitwittery was newsworthy. And the affirming, encouraging comments on the Facebook page are hilarious as well, perhaps unintentionally.

How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?

A lightning review of The Road by Cormac McCarthy (New York: Knopf, 2006). Hardcover, 256 pp.

In the near future, a catastrophe (which I inferred to be a nuclear holocaust, though McCarthy has suggested it was an asteroid strike) has left almost nothing alive and covered everything in blowing ash. Civilization has broken down; only small scavenging bands roam the ruins. Many have resorted to cannibalism.

A man and his son struggle to travel to the ocean with their meagre possessions and small stash of food. They are alone in the world: the boy's mother committed suicide shortly after the disaster. They have a gun, but only two bullets. The man realizes that he is dying, but nonetheless he still wants to reach the coast, protect his son from the evil around him, and assure him that they are the "good guys."

The Road has been described as Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece. I’m struggling to understand why. Its repetitive storyline lacks plot: man and boy are starving, find food, eat food, man and boy are starving. Lather, rinse, repeat. To McCarthy's credit, he has an accurate view of human nature as fundamentally evil. Whether or not civilization would completely crumble as the result of such a disaster thankfully remains to be seen; I do know that more local-scale catastrophes have not resulted in the complete breakdown of society. The Road was a quick read (a couple of hours), but in the end, rather disappointing.

Sanctity of Life Sunday in the wild: Jan. 22, 2012

Today is the 39th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of the United States Supreme Court, which legalized abortion on demand citing a supposed right to "privacy." Thus it is also commemorated in many churches as Santity of Life Sunday, as normally the third Sunday of the month would be the one closest. National Sanctity of Human Life Day was originally proclaimed by Ronald Reagan, and the tradition has since been continued by both Presidents Bush, but not either Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama—which really tells you all you need to know about the powers-that-be of the Democratic Party when it comes to the issue of unborn human life. In Canada, our lack of abortion restrictions is due to the R. v. Morgentaler decision of January 28, 1988, not Roe, so Sanctity of Life Sunday may get a nod in Canadian churches, if that. Nonetheless, American policy and tradition tend to have an effect on Canada as well.

Typically at around this time of year, the blogosphere starts to buzz a bit with life issues, and so I've decided to highlight a few of the posts that attracted my own attention over the last few days.

Superman Saturday: Beat up a Filipino for truth, justice, and the American way!

Tonight, Superman returns! And not in the bad, Brandon Routh kind of way.¹

When we last left our heroes, in September, they were left hanging in the middle of an exciting radio serial. Clark Kent was on the scene of a high-rise fire, when as Superman he rescued secretary June Anderson, trapped in the offices of the North Star Mining Company. While being treated in hospital, she was then stabbed by Bart Penderton and Joseph Dineen, officers of the company. June knew that Penderton and Dineen were swindling investors in the worthless North Star gold mine, and had entrusted the incriminating documentation with her brother, the captain of a munitions freighter, the Madison, currently steaming down the East Coast.

Back at the offices of the Daily Planet, Pemberton posed as a North Star investor and tricked Kent into telling him where the papers were. He and Dineen rushed to intercept the Madison. They forced Captain Anderson into the hold at gunpoint and started a fire that would destroy the Madison, along with the evidence against them. Fortunately, Superman learned he had been tricked, and arrived on the scene just in time to rescue the captain from the hold and the bundle of papers from the safe, moments before the ship went up in a fiery explosion.

Tonight, we conclude the adventure of the North Star mine with the final two episodes, starting with . . .

Additional notes on reading

It's hard to tell sometimes, but I am—or, at least, used to be—a voracious reader.

As a young child, I'd read anything I could get my hands on, from classic literature (The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland) to modern children's literature (Walter Farley, Gordon Korman or Beverly Cleary) to genre fiction (the Bobbsey Twins or Hardy Boys). I'd blitz my way through three mystery novels in a summer afternoon. I'd have to make two trips to the library. My parents would worry for my eyes and suggest that I watch more television.

It's not my fault. They taught me to read before I set foot in a school.

This is a habit that I kept all the way through to the end of high school (having once read the entire curriculum of a grade-13 English course on a school field trip, including the optional books). It was only once I was away from home and at university that I found the pressures of my required curriculum seriously eating into my recreational reading, which was more or less limited to summers and co-op work terms, when I had sufficient free time (or plenty of time on the bus). Paradoxically, transferring to the English department from Engineering made it worse: my reading workload increased, but not necessarily becaue of books I wanted to read.

In my last year, I got sick of this, and in September 1996, I resolved that, come hell or high water, I was going to read one novel per week over and above my required reading for that year. And I managed it, although I don't know what had to give way. Sleep, maybe.

This is a habit that I kept up for a number of years afterward. I wasn't in school, but I was in the workforce, and for a significant number of years I lived and worked on opposite ends of Ottawa—which meant two hours every weekday of otherwise-useless reading time.

And yet, starting in about 2005 or so, my reading volume took a nose dive. I don't know why, but somewhere along the line I stopped being a reader and started being a viewer, getting my entertainment more from movies than books for the first time. And, then, starting in about 2008, I discovered that podcasts had taken over from movies as my primary source of information or entertainment—again, at the expense of the printed word.

This year, I plan on reviving the one-novel-per-week policy. It's been far too long, and there are too many books going unread. My "rules," such as they were back in 1996 and onward, go something like this:

• Each calendar week, I will start and, if possible, finish a novel.
• Selections should vary somewhat in style, genre, authorship, etc. from week to week. (For example, don't read two Stephen King novels consecutively, unless there's a good reason.)
• The week starts on Monday, to allow Saturday and Sunday for catching up, if necessary.
• If a novel is finished early, use the remaining days of the week to read non-fiction instead of another novel.

These rules served me pretty well, and managed to keep a balance between genres and subjects. I've added one more task to the curriculum: blog something about everything I read. Sometimes this will be a full review (of 1000 words or more), but for the most part will be "lightning" reviews: roughly speaking, whatever I can write in about 250 words and/or half an hour. This isn't meant to be a detailed book review or analysis, so much as a first impression and an excuse to write. I've posted a number of these over the last few weeks, as I work my way through the Christmas reading blitz.

If you'd like to follow along with my reading, the most recent books in my list are in the sidebar, or you can follow the entire year in my Google spreadsheet. If you want to know what I recommend (or don't), I have a master blog post indexing all my reviews: not only books, but also movies and the occasional album as well.

And, of course, in September I'll be doing my usual moratorium on science fiction: this year, I plan to revisit the Canadian literature I didn't get to when I used this theme back in 2005.

Finally, CBC's annual Canada Reads debates will be broadcast February 6-9 on CBC One. For the first time, the annual search for Canada's must-read book focuses on non-fiction. I will be paying attention to the debates, though frankly the selections on the short list don't turn me on (although the thought of Alan Thicke defending Ken Dryden's The Game certainly is intriguing).

Happy reading!

Friday in the Wild: January 20, 2012

Welcome to the inaugural FitW of 2012! You may have noticed that my blogging output has increased somewhat over the last couple of weeks. Here's hoping that's permanent. Bringing back my weekly compendium of stuff frm the rest of the blogosphere is, I hope, a symptom of this "second wind." Since it's been awhile, this post goes back two weeks instead of the usual one.

Phil Johnston takes on Mark Driscoll, Ed Young, and the never-ending fad of risqué evangelical sex teaching:

[E]vangelicals have been complaining for decades that we don't talk enough or hear enough teaching about sex. From the point of view of many non-evangelicals, sex is about the only thing evangelicals have demonstrated a serious and sustained interest in for the past 40 years. As early as 1977, Martin Marty, a liberal religious scholar, referred to the trend as "Fundies in their Undies."

So the premise that evangelical churches are in desperate need of more and more explicit instruction on sex techniques is a risible falsehood.

But evangelical leaders who aspire to be at the vanguard in this trend have to keep looking for even kinkier ways to contextualize their Kama Sutras and spice up their "sexperimentation."

[Read Evangelical Exhibitionists]

I almost never know what to make of Mark Driscoll. He seems to alternate between periods of brilliance and stupidity. These days, he's more the latter than the former.

And now . . . this - Jan. 20/12

So it's come to this

Students in Utah may have voted to urge on their sports teams with the battle cry "Go Cougars!"

But the school district has overruled the popular choice because it claims it would be insensitive to women. . . .

While cougars—the large mountain cats—are prevalent in Utah, the principal Mary Bailey worried people would also be reminded of the popular culture use of the word to describe sexually aggressive middle-aged women who attract younger men.

[Full Story]

Good grief. Political correctness has gotten to the point where we're actually worried we'll offend 40-year-old Twimoms and Beliebers.

Despite the humour of the situation, the story does have its less-obvious darker side:

Ballots were sent out to 4,300 kindergarten through eighth grade students in Draper communities that will feed into the school. Two hundred seventy-three wanted Cougars, 180 wanted Diamondback, 171 wanted Falcons and 141 wanted Raptors. . . .

While student input was taken into consideration and appreciated, she added that it was always the board's intent to make the final decision.

The moral of the story? Voting makes no difference. Hope these kids don't take that to heart 10-15 years down the road.