Theology

Apparently people are getting a little bent out of shape about a pledge of allegiance routine in a Vermont public school. From Boortz.com:

Look, folks. If we put this much passion and interest into what students were actually learning in the classroom, maybe our education system wouldn’t be producing a nation of burger flippers.

Have I mentioned the report from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce?

Yesterday Doug LeBlanc at GR commented on two profiles of author Marilynne Robinson. One quote that caught my eye was this:

“The liberal criticism, rejection of the idea that one could be securely persuaded of one’s own salvation and could even apply a fairly objective standard to the state of others’ souls, was in fact a return to Calvinism and its insistence on the utter freedom of God. That is to say, it was a rejection on theological grounds of a novel doctrine. So here has opened the great divide in American Protestant Christianity. I fall on the liberal side of this division.”

It’s an interesting thought, one I’ve heard echoed recently from none other than my favorite Calvinist, Matt Chandler.  Matt’s approach is that we can experience spiritual things, but not be saved. Logically we could see spiritual things in others, though they aren’t saved.

Then I ran across something today that gave me an entirely different perspective.

Texas executes rapist, killer of 7-year-old girl

A former plumbing supply salesman was executed Tuesday for strangling and raping a 7-year-old girl whose body he hid in his attic. [...]

Nenno said nothing could excuse his crime and that he was prepared to die.

“My salvation is secure,” he told The Associated Press. “I know where I’m going when this is all over.”

Asked where that would be, he replied: “Heaven.”

At first I harrumphed and flicked to another page.  What kind of delusional fool would think this guy is going to heaven? But Paul just stared me down.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Collin Hansen at CT writes about the very apparent “Left-Left” connection. The connection is there he says, but not “inevitable.” He names several who, as Mark Driscoll claims for himself, are (or were) theologically conservative and politically and socially liberal.

The subhead asks, “Does one lead the other?” I think the answer is yes, but it’s hard to say which. I’ve known quite a few people who held liberal views of society and politics, and felt uncomfortable with the conservative beliefs they’d held.  So they became emergent or progressive Christians.

I’ve only known a few who were really guided by their liberal theology. It seems too often that politics comes before Jesus.  I catch myself from time to time saying things in a political conversation that make me cringe as the sentences are still forming. At that moment I can choose to make my theology meet my politics, or make my politics meet my theology.  It’s a struggle.

H/T JT

In the middle of a seemingly strong sermon about shunning an attitude of victimhood in suffering, Rob Bells says,

“What kind of God needs someone to die so that he can lave? … God didn’t will Jesus’ death…[He] willed Jesus’ obedience, which has consequences.”

“Jesus chose to do the right thing, and then do the right thing, and then do the right thing; and it led to his death.”

I go back to Bell once in a while hoping that I’ve misunderstood him. I hope that I’m wrong. But every time I do, I come across something like this. Sometimes it’s a throwaway, only loosely related to the main theme, as it is here. Sometimes it is the main theme. But either way it’s serious business.

This implies that the cross was simply the inevitable result of event set into motion by Jesus’ ministry. If that’s true, then it empties the cross of its power, because it is no longer the historical turning point Paul said it was, it was simply a demonstration of Jesus’ willingness to accept the consequences of his actions.

Where does Gethsemane fall into this equation? What was Jesus talking about when he asked for another way, then submitted to God’s will, if his death wasn’t part of God’s will?

This line of reasoning hits some early logical and theological roadblocks, and I don’t think it recovers well.

A new study out of Baylor has some interesting things to say about secularism and superstition.  Mollie from GetReligion has a piece out in the Journal that looks at the data.

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama’s former denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin’s former denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the possibility of communicating with people who are dead.

I’m trying to work through how to consider this. (continue reading…)

« Previous Page — Next Page »