Posted December 14, 2009 by Charles
This morning in church the pastor quoted C.S. Lewis’ well known “lunatic, liar, or lord,” trilemma during his sermon. I didn’t sleep much last night, so I was primed to chase a rabbit, and this was it.
Immediately this argument, which I had accepted wholeheartedly as a freshman in college and held in the back of my mind ever since, struck me as problematic. It became clear that the problem for me was the assertion that a person isn’t “morally reliable” if they are deceived or deceptive. In either case, it is not only acceptable, but perfectly logical to accept moral teaching from a lunatic or a liar.
In the Modern era morality is not the stable and absolute entity that it is in earlier times, and in the postmodern era it is no longer even broadly coherent. It is understood as a social and cultural construct, and in the pluralistic societies of the Western world, it is also understood as an individual construct. We can, as individuals or societies, develop our own personal or local moral codes through our own invention and through collecting the parts of existing codes that we accept as valid.
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Posted October 3, 2009 by Charles
I wonder if God left us the ambiguity of John 3:16 — that is, whether they are the words of John or Jesus — as a gift. It would be a strange gift, but God does that from time to time. It’s a strange gift that I love my son even when he is blatantly disobedient. It’s a strange gift that my wife puts up with me day after day. The platypus. That’s a strange gift.
The ambiguity of this verse reminds us that it doesn’t matter if the words are black- or red-letter, they are still the truth. The red-letter movement of McLaren and others has always bothered me because of just this problem. They have decided that the words of John, Peter, and Paul are less important than the words of Jesus. But all Scripture is God breathed—wait, Paul wrote that, it doesn’t matter.
Not knowing who said it is much more valuable to us in our approach to the Bible than knowing would be, because we are forced to admit that those black letters are important to, and that if we leave them out, we don’t have the Gospel.
Posted July 17, 2009 by Charles
“You think you have a monopoly on the truth.”
I have run across this phrase, and others like it, far too many times. I’d like to encourage you never to use it again. It’s the worst kind of cop out, and an inherently hypocritical statement.
Copping Out
When a person is arguing his point, but his opponent won’t relent, he’ll start arguing for the fifth. What I mean is that he’ll say things about his opponent and opposing position that will force either an incriminating response or an invocation of the Fifth Amendment. The goal of that statement is to, first of all, put an opponent in her place, as well as point out some level of arrogance on her behalf; it has the added bonus of getting oohs from progressive audiences, most of whom are, like 13-year-old girls, thinking, “OOOOHHHH, burn!”
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Posted April 21, 2009 by Charles
“So you, son of man: I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore you shall hear a word from My mouth and warn them for Me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you shall surely die!’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. Nevertheless if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul.”
Ezekiel 33:7-9
Am I the watchman? When I was in full-time minstry the answer was a simple yes. I was placed in a position to relay God’s word and his warnings to my students. I hope I did well in honoring that responsibility. But what about now?
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