keep a ring on it

This week’s Time magazine has an insightful cover story, “Why Marriage Matters.” Along the way it claims that “There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers’ financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation’s underclass.”

And then there is this paragraph, which has implications for single moms and lesbian parents: “Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father at home. ‘As a feminist, I didn’t want to believe it,’ says Maria Kefalas… . ‘Women always tell me, “I can be a mother and a father to a child,” but it’s not true.’ Growing up without a father has a deep psychological effect on a child. ‘The mom may not need that man,’ Kefalas says, ‘but her children still do.’”

Here is the bottom-line conclusion: “The fundamental question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of the century is this: What is the purpose of marriage? Is it—given the game-changing realities of birth control, female equality and the fact that motherhood outside of marriage is no longer stigmatized—simply an institution that has the capacity to increase the pleasure of the adults who enter into it? If so, we might as well hold the wake now: there probably aren’t many people whose idea of 24-hour-a-day good times consists of being yoked to the same romantic partner, through bouts of stomach flu and depression, financial setbacks and emotional upsets, until after many a long decade, one or the other eventually dies in harness.”

“Or is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function—to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation’s own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can’t be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children’s lives—that’s the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old.”

YIKES!! What can the church do to help this situation? (Besides excommunicating the weekly Christian politician who confesses his affair—and putting a muzzle on Mark Sanford).

4th of july

Just for fun (and to be contrarian), here is an excerpt from John Wesley’s “A Calm Address to Our American Colonies.”  It shows that not every Christian, especially those in England, thought that America’s independence was a good thing.  Read Romans 13 at your parade or fireworks display and you’ll get his drift.  Here it is: 

            One writer asserts twenty times, “He that is taxed without his own consent, that is, without being represented, is a slave.”  I answer, no.  I have no representative in Parliament, but I am taxed, yet I am no slave.  Yea, nine in ten throughout England have no representative, no vote, yet they are no slaves; they enjoy both civil and religious liberty to the utmost extent.

            He replies, “But they may have votes if they will; they may purchase freeholds.”  What!  Can every man in England purchase a freehold (property that entitled one to vote)?  No, not one in an hundred.  But be that as it may, they have no vote now; yet they are no slaves, they are the freest men in the whole world.

            Who then is a slave?  Look into America, and you may easily see.  See that Negro, fainting under the load, bleeding under the lash!  He is a slave.  And is there no difference between him and his master?  Yes.  The one is screaming, “Murder!  Slavery!” the other silently bleeds and dies!

            But wherein then consists the difference between liberty and slavery?  Herein:  You and I, and the English in general, go where we will and enjoy the fruit of our labors:  this is liberty.  The Negro does not:  this is slavery. Is not then all this outcry about liberty and slavery mere rant, and playing upon words?…

             But whence then is all this hurry and tumult?  Why is America all in an uproar?  If you can yet give yourselves time to think, you will see the plain case is this:   A few years ago, you were assaulted by enemies [in the French and Indian War], whom you were not able to resist.  You represented this to your mother-country and desired her assistance.  You [were] largely assisted, and by that means wholly delivered from all your enemies.

            After a time, your mother country, desiring to be reimbursed for some part of the large expense she had been at, laid a small tax (which she had always a right to do) on one of her colonies.  But how is it possible that the taking of this reasonable and legal step should have set all America in a flame?…  

            Can you hope for a more desirable form of government, either in England or America, than that which you now enjoy?  After all the vehement cry for liberty, what more liberty can you have?  What more religious liberty can you desire than that which you enjoy already?

            May not every one among you worship God according to his own conscience?  What civil liberty can you desire which you are not already possessed of?  Do not you sit without restraint “every man under his own vine?”  Do you not, every one high or low, enjoy the fruit of your labor?  This is real, rational liberty such as is enjoyed by Englishmen alone and not by any other people in the habitable world.

I Q Test

This 4 minute video was forwarded to me by Jim Grier, which means that if you find it funny then you’re probably pretty smart.  If you don’t get all of the humor–and there are approximately 37 distinct funny items (can you list them?)–then you may yet need a liberal arts education.

the education of John Calvin

Despite what some blogs will tell you, we haven’t yet reached the anniversary of Calvin’s birth.  But we’re getting close.  I’d say next week, but I’ve been wrong before (I’m the Jack Van Impe of guessing birthdays).  To mark the impending occasion, my friend Chris Brauns wonders what it would take to bring Calvin up to speed so that he could minister well in our world (e.g., should he be required to watch a season of Seinfeld?).  Read his ideas and contribute your own here:  http://www.chrisbrauns.com/2009/06/29/giving-calvin-homework-how-would-we-bring-calvin-up-to-speed-on-500-years-of-history/.

time to sell

I’m catching up on the reading that piled up while I was playing miniature golf in Myrtle Beach (and thinking that churches should implement their own version of Jungle Safari’s stroke limit—“You’ve been hitting this sermon for 30 minutes, Pastor Woods, and it’s obvious that this one isn’t going in the hole. A large group is impatiently waiting for you to get past the hazard. Why not pick up your ball and move on to next Sunday?”).

One disturbing article is Fareed Zakaria’s June 22 cover story on Newsweek. In “The Capitalist Manifesto,” Zakaria supplies his typically stellar explanation of the causes of our economic meltdown, and concludes that what we need, both in government and on Wall Street, is “greater self-regulation.” We cannot write enough rules to close every loophole and prevent every abuse, so “there needs to be a deeper fix within all of us, a simple gut check. If it doesn’t feel right, we shouldn’t be doing it” (45).

I agree with his assessment that only a return to morality can save us, but really, what are the odds?

what the what?

Several of the women in my neighborhood (ladies is a bit too strong) attended a party last night that celebrated a distinctive male body part (the one responsible for procreation). One of them baked a cake in the shape of this item and called my wife to come over and view it. She declined, saying that while she wasn’t offended, that really wasn’t her thing.

Has anyone else heard of similar parties? Do you know of other middle-aged married women who behave like junior-high boys? Is this a one-off event or a sign of decline in our culture?

In unrelated news, where can I find a news story on Michael Jackson? So much for the revolution in Iran.

is this Protestant?

I love Tom Wright. He is the only Christian leader I have paid to hear speak, and I considered it money well spent. I once heard him lecture on worship, and I realized that I had probably never worshipped before in my life. I read his stuff on God’s cosmic plan of redemption, and I thought that I was just beginning to understand the immense scope of salvation. I cheered Wright on Nightline and The Colbert Report and on most of what he said in his new release, Justification.

But before I get to that, I want to target the part of the book that troubles me. Wright says here, as he has said before, that our present justification is by faith and our future and final justification is by works. Wright does not say that we merit or earn our final justification, because the good works that we do are the gifts of grace and they are never perfect, but merely “seeking” or “looking toward” God’s righteousness (192, 237). As the medievals would say, these works earn merit de congruo rather than merit de condigno (“close enough” rather than “full merit”).

I am not sure that I completely understand Wright’s view, for sometimes he says that we are justified solely by faith in Jesus (“the only justification the Christian will ever have is because of the merits of the Messiah, clung to by faith, rather than any work” [186]; “Paul concentrates on attributing justification, not to anything at all on the part of those who are justified, but to the work of the Messiah” [225]; and our assurance “rests all its weight, not on anything in ourselves, but only on God’s achievement in Christ” [238]), but he also repeatedly says that our final judgment or justification is “according to works” (102, 187, 191, 214, 234, 238).

He apparently reconciles this tension by declaring that our faith in Jesus must also include faith in the Holy Spirit, who inspires us to do increasingly good works which demonstrate that we are the children of God and so receive God’s final verdict that we are righteous (107, 146, 188, 239). This final justification by works seems more foundational than our present justification by faith, for Wright says that the point of our present justification is that it lets us know, in advance, what our final verdict will be. We now know by faith what will ultimately be true “on the basis of the entire life!” (214, cf. 139, 144, 147, 204, 215, 225, 239).

I will examine later the biblical-theological merits of Wright’s view, but for now I want to ask if his view is sufficiently Protestant. When I raised this question several months ago, some of you responded that Wright’s view was Protestant because he was using justification as an ecclesiological rather than a soteriological category. I didn’t think that let him off the hook, for as Cyprian taught us, ecclesiology and soteriology are inter-related (“Outside the church there is no salvation”). Wright himself makes the same point: “Is this ‘ecclesiology’ as opposed to ‘soteriology’? Of course not. It is ecclesiology (membership in God’s people) as the advance sign of soteriology (being saved on the last day. It is ‘justification’ in the present, anticipating the verdict of the future” (146-47, emphasis his; cf. 132, 174, 214).

The historic Protestant position distinguishes justification from sanctification, with the former coming solely by faith in Christ and the latter being the good works which arise from and attest to our regenerated and justified state. Roman Catholics conflate justification and sanctification, so that good works are an essential part of our justification.

Here is my question: is Wright’s view sufficiently Protestant? If so, how? If not, aren’t Protestant pastors who adopt Wright’s position obligated to inform their congregation that they differ from the historic Protestant view on justification?

Note that Wright’s big-tent Anglicanism may not feel pressed to answer the Protestant question, but it is a concern to those who serve in Protestant churches.

good times

I’m being presumptuous here, but some of you may have noticed that I didn’t blog last week.  I spent the week enjoying Myrtle Beach, S.C., with my parents and three brothers and their families.  I would have told you that we were gone, but I just bought a Wii and I didn’t want anyone to think they had a green light to break into my house and steal it.

Random vacation thoughts:

1. I just called my mechanic about my Oldsmobile van.  He’s going to find the cause of the green oily liquid that is leaking from beneath the back shock absorber (probably coolant for the rear air conditioning), fix my rear wiper, and discern why my “service engine soon” light came on.  I’ve decided to live with its broken fuel gauge and heated seats that don’t.  I guess this is about what I should expect from a discontinued line from a bankrupt company.

2. The key to winning at miniature golf is to avoid unforced errors.  Many holes come down to dumb luck:  roll the ball down the hill and see where it ends up after bouncing off a couple of walls—this was confirmed by my two year old nephew, who scored two holes-in-one by doing this.  But while it’s hard to predict which balls will make it in the hole on the first try, the key to a low score is to avoid blowing makeable putts.  Here I’m thinking of my nephew’s father, an occasional visitor to this site who three putted from three feet.  You can’t win the game on any one hole, but you can certainly lose it there.

3. Who brings their own putter to a miniature golf course?  I saw a father in a Ping T-shirt and Titleist cap who brought his and a miniature version for his kindergarten son.  He reminded me of the “Real Man of Genius” ads:  “Here’s to you, the Tiger Woods of miniature golf.  You make your son hit first so you can read the slope of the fairway, you pump your fist when his ball goes into the drink, you refuse to share your night vision goggles for the obligatory hole played inside a fiberglass cave, and nothing makes you happier than to win a free game by acing the mystery hole.”

4. Who drives through a tunnel with their left blinker on?  Where do they think they are going?  This being South Carolina, I thought that once I was being followed by NASCAR fans.  I eluded them by turning right.

5. Funniest moment:  upon being told that he tends to boast, my nephew said, “Yeah, but I win a lot too.”  Point made.

6. I did manage to read N. T. Wright’s Justification by the pool, and I plan on organizing my thoughts together and blogging about this important book later this week.  For now I’ll say that I thought Wright was thrilling when he spoke on the topic of Christian worldview (God’s plan through Israel to save the entire world), but he disappointed with his statement that our final justification is by works.  I was hoping that he would spend more time clarifying and defending this view—which I think is the most controversial part of the book—but apparently he didn’t think it merited such close attention.

what could you do in Geneva?

Which of the following was not a blue law in Geneva?

a) taverns were turned into religious clubs, where customers were permitted to sing Psalms or edify other diners but they could not swear, slander, or dance.

b) wine was forbidden on Sundays

c) the authorities must approve the names of newborn children.  There was a black list of prohibited names that parents could not use for their child. 

d) women were not allowed to act in the theater, for as one pastor said, “the women who should mount the theater to act that farce would be shameless creatures.”

who did Calvin marry?

A long-time bachelor with disastrous dating habits (think about it, would you want to have dinner and a movie with this man?), Calvin finally married who?  The answer is in the comment section.

a) a wealthy German whose large dowry supported his life as a scholar.

b) a French Protestant cougar, recommended by John Farel, who was 15 years older than Calvin.

c) a highly recommended French-speaking suitor who agreed to come to Strasbourg for a marriage interview.

d) a former Anabaptist whose husband died from the plague.