Benedict Option or Jeremiah Option?

Links to old articles, I started writing in 2014!
  
What do you think?  What impact does this have on the church, and on Christ's kingdom?


www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/benedict-option


ZvonimirAtletic / Shutterstock.com



www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-would-jeremiah-do


Sistine Chapel, prophet Jeremiah / Wikimedia Commons

Rage at death

“It is essential to grasp the theological point that stands at the heart of our lostness, and therefore of our redemption: death is, finally, the result of our sin, and therefore rage directed against God, as if he were unfair for passing the sentence that our sin deserved, is inherently foolish, as foolish as criticizing a judge for passing a just sentence on a bank robber. Our rage is better directed at the ugliness of death, the wretchedness of sin, our sense of betrayal and self-betrayal. It may be a venting of our profound loss and frustration. But thoughtful Christians will never lose sight of the origins of death, and therefore will not, at least on this ground, rage against God himself.”

- D. A. Carson, How Long Oh Lord?  http://ref.ly/o/howlonglord/225520 

As I reflect back on 2019, and the entire decade (which really does not end this year, but that's another issue!), I am reminded of the failures of leaders ... and of us all.  This video clip is a good approach to reconciling how we live in light of God's Gospel.


How John Piper Processes the Moral Failures of His Historical Heroes from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

sex, cosmology, and the future of the West

Stepping back in time, these words from Dreher and The Economist have gained even more significance through time. In what state do we find American culture in this one issue? Father, please forgive our plunge into decadence and self-pleasure.

Rather, in the modern era, we have inverted the role of culture. Instead of teaching us what we must deprive ourselves of to be civilized, we have a society that tells us we find meaning and purpose in releasing ourselves from the old prohibitions.How this came to be is a complicated story involving the rise of humanism, the advent of the Enlightenment, and the coming of modernity. As philosopher Charles Taylor writes in his magisterial religious and cultural history A Secular Age, “The entire ethical stance of moderns supposes and follows on from the death of God (and of course, of the meaningful cosmos).” To be modern is to believe in one’s individual desires as the locus of authority and self-definition. 

How this came to be is a complicated story involving the rise of humanism, the advent of the Enlightenment, and the coming of modernity. As philosopher Charles Taylor writes in his magisterial religious and cultural history A Secular Age, “The entire ethical stance of moderns supposes and follows on from the death of God (and of course, of the meaningful cosmos).” To be modern is to believe in one’s individual desires as the locus of authority and self-definition.
Gradually the West lost the sense that Christianity had much to do with civilizational order, Taylor writes. In the 20th century, casting off restrictive Christian ideals about sexuality became increasingly identified with health. By the 1960s, the conviction that sexual expression was healthy and good—the more of it, the better—and that sexual desire was intrinsic to one’s personal identity culminated in the sexual revolution, the animating spirit of which held that freedom and authenticity were to be found not in sexual withholding (the Christian view) but in sexual expression and assertion. That is how the modern American claims his freedom.

(2013: www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sex-after-christianity/)

The demand for sex probably does not change much over time, but other things do. A century ago, when sexual mores were stricter, prostitution was more common and better paid (see table). Men’s demand for commercial sex was higher because the non-commercial sort was harder to obtain—there was no premarital hook-up culture. Women were attracted to prostitution in part because their other job opportunities were so meagre. And they commanded high wages partly because the social stigma was so great—without high pay, it was not worth enduring it.

(2014: www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599351-laying-bare-supply-and-demand-oldest-profession-sex-lies-and-statistics)

x

Wise use of the time given us

I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

AI

Interesting articles on the issue of AI,  faith, and ultimately what it means to be human, specifically imago Dei.  A conversation I want to engage in greater depth...

https://erlc.com/resource-library/statements/artificial-intelligence-an-evangelical-statement-of-principles

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/god-alexa-tech-religious-leaders-ponder-future-ai-together/amp/

Related: software and understanding scripture.

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/pastors-programmers-bibletech-conference-explore-deeper-theology-code/amp/

Whispers of Disruption

An interesting brief in CT. I agree with the author: I am a data guy (being a Data Architect by vocation), yet I know there are nuances not reflected or culled from the data. And I believe there is a new unity across denominational barriers, focusing on the essentials of the Gospel. We can debate the secondary doctrines (and we should!), though it is the core which binds is together.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2019/april/whispers-of-disruption-new-move-of-god-in-our-time.html

Addicted to innovation? No time to rest? Nothing new!

"The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution; you have a genius for keeping what you have got, accompanied by a total want of invention, and when forced to act you never go far enough. Again, they are adventurous beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are sanguine; your wont is to attempt less than is justified by your power, to mistrust even what is sanctioned by your judgment, and to fancy that from danger there is no release. Further, there is promptitude on their side against procrastination on yours; they are never at home, you are most disinclined to leave it, for they hope by their absence to extend their acquisitions, you fear by your advance to endanger what you have left behind. They are swift to follow up a success, and slow to recoil from a reverse. Their bodies they spend ungrudgingly in their country’s cause; their intellect they jealously husband to be employed in her service. A scheme unexecuted is with them a positive loss, a successful enterprise a comparative failure. The deficiency created by the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled up by fresh hopes; for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got , by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. Thus they toil on in trouble and danger all the days of their life, with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting: their only idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to them laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a quiet life. To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others.”"

from The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War 

by Thucydides, Robert B. Strassler, Victor Davis Hanson, Richard Crawley   

http://amzn.to/1hJhQUI

Pattern of change

Gradually, then suddenly.  O'Reilly identifies this pattern of change repeatedly experienced in my industry, or more broadly, in the economy as a whole.  Quoting from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, this pattern has been experienced multiple times, and I've lived through it:  the web; the shift from mainframe to PC to server to cloud; the movement of audio from vinyl to cassette to CD to mp3.    Read the article here: www.oreilly.com/ideas/gradually-then-suddenly

While O'Reilly applies this appropriately to the economy, I wonder about the impact on the culture and the church.  We have witness this pattern exemplified over the past 10 years culturally.  What is the long-term impact of this?  Where are we headed?  Nietzsche's The Madman comes into play:

How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?

- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.  www.historyguide.org/europe/madman.html

Our culture has gradually wiped away all reference points, all standards of truth, right, justice.  All that remains is relatively, identity-based reference points which ultimately are power-based reliant upon a social contract.  There is no defined horizon.  The sense of plunging, unknown which ways is up or down, straying into an infinite nothing ... this is where our culture is suddenly experiencing.

What does this mean to the church?  How does the church recognize the time, and respond with the hope, love, grace, meaning, and purpose of the Gospel?   It is for such as moment at this that He has called us.

Family first?

The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home
by Russell Moore (B&H Publishing Group, 2018) 

I came across a review of this book recently. In the midst of the busy-ness of life, I'm working through it.  My initial impression: it is a much-needed (in my life, at least) clarification, and even correction, of my understanding of family.  Recommended!