Welcome to the first Friday in the Wild of 2024! Between the Christmas holidays and a lingering cold, it's been a while. But I've been collecting links for the past couple of weeks nonetheless, so rather than waste them, this will just be a longer installment than usual. (I'm also a day late due to time constraints—but hopefully not a dollar short.)
At Stand to Reason, Alan Shlemon wants us to stop speaking "Christianese":
Christianese is the language Christians speak at church and to other Christians. It has two characteristics. One, it’s churchy. It contains theologically loaded lingo that is understandable to Christians but largely incoherent to non-Christians. Two, it’s full of clichés and idioms. Christians use phrases that take little effort to articulate but a lot of effort to apprehend.
I think there's a value to theological language: it's shorthand for not having to explain complex concepts like justification repeatedly. Explain it and give it a label: it's a great time-saver. But I agree with Shlemon when it comes to church lingo. I didn't grow up in Evangelical churches, and so I don't naturally speak that way. I find it awkward.
I related to this article by Tim Challies because my theological journey has brought me in and out of many of these churches as well:
It is one of the realities of the Christian faith that skeptics love to criticize—the reality that there are a host of different denominations and a multitude of different expressions of Christian worship. But while believers have become accustomed to responding to this criticism with a sense of shame, I choose to see it in a different light. I choose to see each tradition as highlighting different aspects of God’s purpose for the local church. As a prism refracts the light and separates it into its component colors, the differing traditions refract the Bible’s varying commands and emphases. And this is why I feel at home in so many different churches.
Like Tim, I'm a convictional Baptist. I was born and raised Baptist, then subsequently attended churches of the United Church of Canada, the Brethren, various flavours of Baptist again, no denomination, and finally my present one, the Associated Gospel Churches. I feel at home in any church, High or Low, where Jesus is preached.
Muslims revere Muhammad as God's final prophet, but their reverence sometimes has no grounding in the historical Muhammad. A. S. Ibrahim of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary writes a fascinating article for Desiring God about the Muhammad of tradition, the Muhammad of legend, and the Muhammad of history.
Also at Desiring God, Mark Johnston provided a guide to that classic book of Puritan prayers, The Valley of Vision:
The beauty of this collection of prayers is multifaceted, traversing the entire scope of the Christian journey from the depths to the heights. The prayers express the deep desires of the heart and the perplexities of our Christian experience in language full of deep reverence for God on the one hand and, on the other hand, a down-to-earth sense of our needs, longings, and failings. Through them all, there is the rich gospel realization that, despite our manifold sins and transgressions—through omission as much as commission—the grace of God in Christ is more than sufficient for our guilt, and the aid of the Holy Spirit is more than equal to our human weakness.
[Read The Valley of Vision: A Reader's Guide to a Christian Classic]
Personally, I was surprised to learn (though not from this article in particular) that The Valley of Vision was not an original Puritan work but a modern anthology—;it is in fact younger than me—and also that the prayers were not originally in poetic form. Neither of which diminishes the value of the book in any way.
Joni Eareckson Tada writes at The Gospel Coalition about the emotional effect of the third stanza of the modern hymn, "In Christ Alone":
There’s one stanza so compelling that it's emotionally irresistible. It drives people to their feet, whether out of awestruck reverence or with effervescent joy, and I've watched as they jump from their seats, stretch their arms as if to touch heaven itself, and sing with abandon,
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.I'd give anything to join my friends at that point. I'd love to rise from my wheelchair, stand on tiptoe, throw my head back, and cry and laugh at the same time.
[Read The "In Christ Alone" Stanza That Makes Joni Want to Leap]
It seems to be a universal experience that this particular hymn gives that emotional lift to everyone who sings it, in that same place. In fact I can't think of any other hymn, commonly sung, that has this same effect. The refrain of "And Can It Be," perhaps? But that's it.
The Orangutan Librarian did a post about the books with the best beginnings. She hit a lot of the classics, obviously—The Hobbit, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre—but I'm sorry to say she missed the best opening sentence of any 20th-century novel: "The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse," from Charles Williams's War in Heaven.
Douglas Wilson wrote an article about striking a balance between buying into a strictly materialistic view of the universe, and buying into a superstitious one:
When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, they thought they saw a ghost (Matt. 14:26). This tells us that they were a group of men who believed in ghosts. At the same time, we need to recognize that the text reassures us that what they saw was Christ, and not a ghost. They were wrong about what it was, but not wrong about what it could have been. And making a similar point from the opposite direction, what they did see was a man walking on water. Voltaire wouldn’t have gone for that any more than he would have gone in for the ghost.
I'm reminded, somewhat, about what C. S. Lewis said about the biblical account of the defeat of Sennacherib by Hezekiah: the Bible says it was due to angelic intervention, while Herodotus said mice nibbled the Assyrians' bowstrings. The open-minded man is on the side of the angels, Lewis said. The biblical story is consistent with how you'd expect angels to behave. Mice, on the other hand, don't do that kind of thing.
Last one: Again at the Gospel Coalition, Andrew Spencer published an interview with Derek Cooper, author of Christianity and New Religious Movements:
On one hand, all we need for evangelism is a thorough understanding of the gospel. However, we can shape our explanation of the gospel in helpful ways if we understand who we're talking to and what they believe. This is what Paul did when he spoke to the Athenians in the Areopagus (Acts 17:22-34). He wasn't just referencing pop culture; he was connecting their existing belief structures to their need for Christ as Savior. Paul had done his research so he could help bridge the gap between people's existing beliefs and the gospel.
Several years ago, a friend of mine, who was then an intern at my church, did a lengthy Sunday school class on other religions, for much the same reason. I was glad to participate in one or two sessions.
And that's it, until (hopefully) next week. Share and Enjoy!
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