Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Even Lawyers Can’t Mess This Up

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Chained Bible At our church, we are studying through the book of 2 Timothy in the New Testament. A line from Chapter 2 struck me where Paul writes, “but the word of God is not bound.” Paul is saying that even though he himself is bound, Scripture cannot be put in chains.

Our society is becoming increasingly restrictive as to when, where and how Scripture can be displayed or read out loud. Efforts are made to prevent the Bible from speaking into our society in an effort to live free from moral restraint. Lawyers around the country have brought suit to remove the Bible from mainstream thought.

When Charles Spurgeon was asked how to defend the Bible, his response became a classic. He suggested that those who attack the Bible are like men who seek to attack a caged lion with clubs. In that case, one does not have to defend the lion, one merely has to let him out of his cage and he will defend himself.

A couple of applications come to mind.

First, in light of the recent ruckus over the burning of the Koran (which was an inherently stupid thing to do), I suggest that burning of the pages of the Bible would not produce the desired result. We do not venerate the paper and leather on which Scripture is printed and bound, we venerate the words themselves as coming to us from God. However symbolic the Bible burner considers his act, neither God, nor the Church is diminished by it.

Another application of this is that we should take any opportunity to read, teach, preach and distribute the Bible. God promises that Scripture cannot be bound and it will affect change. My reading it will change me. My teaching it will change others. This is an appetite that can and should be passed on, a healthy addiction.

The reason why enemies of faith border on paranoia about the Bible is that the Chief Enemy knows how effective it is in changing individuals and society for good.

We should take this opposition as a sign that our efforts to teach Scripture are not in vain. God will bless the distribution of his Word. With regard to standing against the Enemy of Scripture, I will end with the advice of Winston Churchill:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

6 Reasons for a Church to Engage via Social Media

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Social MediaI am a relative newbie when it comes to social media (SM). My involvement with SM came as a result of a discussion we had in an elders meeting surrounding the potential benefit of SM for the church. In November of last year, I plunged into Twitter and paid more attention to Facebook.

Since my investigation was aimed at how SM could benefit the church, I would like to offer the following thoughts as churches consider using Social Media.

  1. There will be an increase of what some are calling “digital natives,” those who have never known a time without the internet and electronic communication. As a result, SM are the primary tools for communication for a increasing segment of the population. I was at an organizational meeting for a summer mission group recently where most of the participants agreed that Facebook was the preferred method of communication among the team.
  2. More people prefer to have information pushed to them as opposed to having to go looking for it. Twitter and Facebook can be used to push information to users. This saves people the effort of going to a web site and looking for the information they need.
  3. SM allow for a sense of community because they are interactive. People can post responses and engage in spontaneous conversation. We are called to build relationships with other believers and reach out to those who do not believe. SM is a tool to do this effectively.
  4. SM can provide near real-time response to issues and questions as they arise. In our electronic society, this speed is expected.
  5. Twitter forces brevity with its 140 character limit. Churches can get out a short message with a link to a registration form or web page if additional information in necessary. The benefit is that people don’t need to spend a lot of time wading through information that does not pertain to them.
  6. Facebook and Twitter give the account holders control over how and when they view information. Users can set up notifications and use filters to bring specific information to their attention.

I assume that there are other benefits that I have not included here. Please comment to add other considerations (both positive and negative).

Ed Stetzer, Jeremy Myers, Terry Jones and the Apostle Paul

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On Saturday, I saw this Tweet from Ed Stetzer:


I agree with Ed and apparently so do others since this was retweeted 100 times to date.

I also appreciated Jeremy Myers’ response in his blog.

This morning I read in Acts 17 where Paul proclaimed the Living God at the Areopagus in Athens. Perhaps Terry Jones has never had to preach through this particular section of Scripture. Had he studied it, I wonder if he would have thought that burning the Koran was a good idea.

In this passage, Luke records that Paul entered into the discussion group, acknowledged that the men were religious and went on to politely highlight the differences in belief between their polytheism and his faith in Jesus.

The same Apostle who preached in the Areopagus tells us to “speak the truth in love” in Ephesians 4:15. We are to tell people what they need to know about the living God but as the example of Paul in Acts 17 shows us, it should be done with wisdom and love. It should never be done in a way that intentionally gives offense.

Most people don’t react well to being told that they are evil or stupid. Most people do not react well when objects that they value are desecrated. It is just the way we are wired.

I like the proverb, “it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Instead of telling people they are wrong, perhaps its better to gently and respectfully tell them what the Bible says.

If there must be an offense, let it be the offense of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let it not be the offense of the messenger mangling the message.

No Other Gods . . .

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The drive to worship is deep in the heart of humanity. For evidence of this we need to look no further than any stadium in which an NFL game is being played. The energy behind the worship of the professional football team in the city near which I live is impressive. On game day during football season, green jerseys are seemingly everywhere. Thousands flock to the stadium, to bars and to homes to gather for worship of their beloved team.

I’m not saying that it is wrong to be a sports fan, I am saying that the fervor displayed by many fans is evidence of man’s inherent need and capacity to worship.

Apart from the Judeo/Christian world view, objects of worship are people, things or concepts that have their existence in the physical world. In some cultures they worship idols and other objects that are considered sacred. In the western world of the 21st Century, many worship science and technology as the saviors of mankind. All these religions (modern atheism demands the same level of faith and commitment as any religion) are grounded in what can be apprehended through the physical senses.

Demands for proof of the existence of God are rooted in the physical realm. It is considered foolish to believe in something that cannot be seen or touched. Yet, that is what God expected of Israel and what he expects of us today, to believe in him. He sets himself up as the God who is above and beyond the physical world and is worthy of worship.

He does not leave us in the dark to grope our way to him. He, the one who created the physical realm and our ability to perceive it, has provided the means for us to gain knowledge of him. There are two means of apprehending God that I would like to highlight.

The first is his word as revealed by the Biblical authors. God has revealed himself to us in terms that we can understand. He is a God who wants to be known and he makes that clear to us. I cannot touch God in a physical sense, but I can handle his word given to me. I cannot hear God’s voice with my ear, but I can hear through his word.

The second is the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. The Apostle John writes about the fact that Jesus could be seen, heard and touched. Jesus, as God in the flesh, revealed the nature of God to us in a way that we can understand. He, being fully human and fully God, could bridge the gap of separation between us and God in a way that no human could do. To look on the face of Jesus was to look on the face of God.

These thoughts were prompted by my reading of Exodus 20 this morning which contains the Ten Commandments. One of the commands is that no images are to be worshipped. Yet we see that humanity has had a bias toward worshipping what can be seen over the God who is unseen. God alone is to be worshipped but men refuse to bow to him, preferring to put their faith in other men or in science or in their own ability.

Men and science do not have a particularly good track record to date. The 20th Century was the bloodiest century on record. The century which had the greatest “freedom” from God had the most tyranny and destruction.

A common business proverb is, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Yet we keep denouncing God and trusting men and we are disappointed every time. I guess that means that as a culture we are insane . . .

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