HT: Pastor Timmons.

The CoE’s “growth” continues…

I recently re-watched the The Lord of the Rings on DVD and was struck again by the colossal achievement. I now believe it to be — by a mile — the greatest adventure film ever. The book isn’t too shabby either. (By the way, it is key to watch the extended DVD edition that adds 2hrs to the original trilogy. It eliminates disjointedness, adds great scenes, and supplies a depth that is missing in the original theatrical versions. They really should just burn and throw away the theatrical versions; the extended edition trilogy is the masterpiece.)

Anyway, there’s a stirring scene in the last film where Elrond presents the Narsil sword to Aragorn, saying: “Put aside the ranger. Become who you were born to be.” I reminded a young friend yesterday that is something we men need to remind ourselves of often, to step up to the plate. As Paul tells the Corinthians:

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. -1 Cor 16:13

I was quite interested in Adolf Hitler as a youth. I read and reread books about him. With the advent of the History (aka. Hitler) Channel, Hitler is even more fascinating to people. My theory is that much of this interest springs from the occultic and Wagnerian theatrics of his early dictatorship captured by Leni Riefenstahl. It’s the juxtaposition of the gas chambers with the candlelight vigils, the swastika, the salute, massive demonstrations of spartan order, all done with a painter’s eye. I still remember a high school friend’s funny imitations of a fanatical Rudolf Hess.

Stalin and Hitler shared many attributes. Both had alcoholic fathers. Both were involved in underground subversion. Both were eccentric, fanatical, paranoid, cunning, ruthless criminals. And yet, for all their shared traits, I think Hitler was, at core, a nut. Stalin was not a nut. And that perhaps explains his enduring fascination for me, perhaps more than any other non-Biblical historical figure.

Robert Conquest’s standard The Great Terror is a good starting point to learn about Stalin. There are the biographies of Volgonokov, Radzinsky, Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, and Rayfield’s Stalin and His Hangmen, Animal Farm, Darkness at Noon… the worthwhile books go on and on. Solzhenitsyn’s rapier-like Gulag Achipelago, especially volume 1, provides revealing insights into The Friend of the Working People’s character, as does a keen chapter from The First Circle describing an encounter between the old dictator, circa 1950, and his secret police chief Abakumov. Victor Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom is a harrowing and sadly forgotten journey of a Soviet technocrat through collectivization and terror. Malcolm Muggeridge’s upward journey from leftism began with his own experiences in early 1930s Russia, recollected in his riotous autobiography Chronicles of Wasted Time. David King’s sadly out-of-print coffee table book, The Commissar Vanishes, is an Orwelllian journey into the dangers of owning even pictures of Enemies of the People. It also shows ongoing falsification of photographs and history itself (for example, this infamous photo of Stalin, Molotov, and “the bloody dwarf” Yezhov). Imagine being part of the team who brushes out a body and replaces it with background! There are some great photographs in the book, including a particularly sinister NKVD group photo entitled “Murderers.”

On a lighter note, there is the singular East Side Story, a slow but truly odd 1997 documentary on the genre of Eastern European musicals. It includes vignettes from several American-inspired Soviet musicals of the 1930s, including Stalin’s favorite movie, the happy-go-lucky Volga Volga (I have the full version- alas, no subtitles!). Released at the height of the Great Terror, it is said that Uncle Joe saw it a hundred times and even gifted a copy of it FDR.

If they appear on Turner Movie Classics, don’t miss the dreadful Mission to Moscow and North Star. These wartime films were created by major studios at FDR’s behest as tokens of friendship toward our Soviet allies. Both are among the worst things Hollywood ever released. The first is just a wonder to behold; the falsehoods are astounding. It even pleasantly spins Stalin’s loathsome prosecutor Vyzhinsky, he of infamous lines like “I demand that dogs gone mad should be shot - every one of them!” Meanwhile, North Star, written by Lillian Hellmann (who is skewered in Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals), features a happy, well-fed collectivized village. The depredations of Ukrainian villages fresh in his memory, the defector Kravchenko said that the film “drove me to helpless despair.” “Why, why,” he asked, “did these Americans insist on fabricating a paradise and locating it in my tortured country?”

None of these works, though, answered questions I’d long pondered about Stalin. How did a man sign off on thousands of executions of innocents and then attend the cinema that same evening? How does he send millions to dreadful camps, destroying lives and families? How could he lovingly prune his roses and sing along to musicals and yet casually deport entire civilizations? How could he imprison and shoot members of his own family? His charm was considerable (he charmed even enemies like Churchill). That he charmed the dilettante FDR is no surprise. Nor was his appeal to leftists, including Shaw, H.G. Wells, and Paul Robeson. The ongoing fascination of leftists with Utopian thugs from Stalin to Mao to Che is well-chronicled — hilariously by Muggeridge and in more scholarly fashion by writers like Paul Hollander. (It’s hard to imagine now, but pre-WWII Russia was admired by progressives and the avant-garde. Fellow travelers went to faraway Siberian towns to build socialism. The motherland supposedly offered equality to all races. If a few million were crushed by the Bolshevik bulldozer, well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.) Furthermore, Trotsky and his followers said that Stalin was a clever politician but an intellectual lightweight. But how did that explain the mordant wit of his epigrams? His diabolical cleverness is seen in this exchange with the Spanish war correspondent Mikhail Koltsov:

Stalin: “How do they address you in Spanish? ‘Miguel’ or something?”
Koltsov: “Miguel.”
Stalin: “Don Miguel, we honorable Spaniards thank you for your excellent report.”
Koltsov: “I serve the Soviet Union, Comrade Stalin.”
Stalin: “And do you own a revolver, Comrade Koltsov?”
Koltsov: “Yes, I do, Comrade Stalin.”
Stalin: “And you are not planning to shoot yourself with it?”
Koltsov: “No, Comrade Stalin. I never even thought of it!”
Stalin: “Well, that’s excellent, Don Miguel! All the best, then, Comrade Koltsov.”
(Koltsov was afterward arrested and shot.)

So these were all vexing questions. But then this decade saw the release of two magnificent books by Simon Sebag Montefiore that have finally begun to answer them. The Court of the Red Tsar (2003) is a fascinatingly detailed look at the intricacies of Stalin’s court after his ascension to power. Young Stalin (2008) covers his early period through the 1917 revolution.

Born in Georgia of the southern Caucasus, Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili ended up in religious schools. The teenage boy was a promising poet who abandoned his Orthodox faith at Tiflis seminary (though he fondly sang Orthodox hymns with his cronies once in power). He went underground around 1900, and never truly resurfaced until 1917. It was during this time that he took his revolutionary name Stalin (man of steel). Young Stalin was always on the run, working his network of terrorists, criminals, sympathizers, party members, and lovers. Two illegitimate children resulted. It was one long period of robberies, agitation, and executions, always matching wits against Okhrana (Tsarist secret police) agents. As young Joseph put it: “To choose one’s victim, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to slake implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed.” It was said that Stalin had an uncanny knack for instantly knowing Okhrana spies. Periods of exile interrupted this existence (such relative Tsarist leniency would not characterize the Bolshevik regime). One such exile was a four-year interval in the frozen netherworld of the sub-Arctic Siberian taiga, where he could catch fish in the bitter cold and break off frozen, raw bits of flesh to melt in his mouth. It was perhaps the happiest time of his life.

Montefiore argues persuasively that Stalin never left the paranoid world of the criminal underground after the Revolution. He shared Lenin’s pitilessness. Lenin would send his Georgian disciple to the areas most in need of vicious repressions in the Civil War, whereupon the shootings would soon begin. After Stalin rose to power, war was continued against “rich” peasants and supposed double agents, industrial “wreckers,” and “hostile party elements.”

Aided by the archives, Montefiore explodes the idea that Stalin was an intellectual non-entity. He was a crucial figure in Bolshevik circles long before the revolution, and indeed was Lenin’s right-hand man for a time after it. He was a man of action with a will to power, a man after Lenin’s heart. Stalin was a voracious reader and autodidact. His preparedness and intelligence intimidated even his smartest underlings. Ruthlessness and brilliance is a bad combination.

Soviet Russia of the 1930s was one of the most bizarre and horrific periods in all of history. Peasants were herded into collectivized farms, with millions killed in the displacement (food was still exported during the resulting famine). The political show trials in the Hall of Great Columns featured witnesses and defendants beaten to ensure that all went smoothly. The Western press at the time predictably bought the lie. These sham trials featured those the maestro most despised; many were left pathetically groveling for full communion again with their beloved party. (Solzhenitsyn noted that at Yagoda’s trial, when he begged his life, “a match flared in the shadows behind a window on the second floor of the hall… and while it lasted, the outline of a pipe could be seen.”)

The revolution devoured its children during the Great Terror of the late 1930s. Longtime allies were rounded up and shot, including Stalin’s own in-laws. Former paramours were imprisoned along with the wives of his magnates. He executed the wife of his devoted attache. Scores were settled with old Bolsheviks like Kamenev and Bukharin who patronized or offended the young Stalin. Even most of his secret policemen were tortured and killed after serving their usefulness.

The gulags swelled with untold millions throughout the thirties. These chains of inhuman labor camps, the “sewage disposal system” to use Solzhenitsyn’s term, were put in place by Lenin just as Solzhenitsyn said long ago, back when it was still commonly said that Stalin had corrupted “pure” communism. As the archives show, this is completely false. Lenin was worse than his detractors thought. (As a sidenote, the ruthless Molotov knew both Stalin and Lenin well, and thought Lenin the more severe of the two. For example, a letter from Lenin to Molotov shows how Lenin used the famine of the early 1920s… “Now and only now, when people are being eaten in famine-stricken areas, and hundreds, if not thousands, of corpses lie on the roads, we can (and therefore must) pursue the removal of church property with the most frenzied and ruthless energy and not hesitate to put down the least opposition. … [P]ass a secret resolution of the congress that the removal of property of value, especially from the very richest lauras, monasteries, and churches, must be carried out with ruthless resolution, leaving nothing in doubt, and in the very shortest time. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better because this “audience” must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades.”)

Montefiore has summed up the dictator up this way: “Stalin is one of those subjects that one never gets bored with. He was incredibly complex and subtle, both diabolical and terrifyingly seductive.”

Mr. Montefiore needs to finish off a trilogy with a biography of the (underserved) 1917-1929 years!

What else can you say about this? This tasty treat will add a touch of class to any occasion.

“One morning just before the October [1917] Revolution,” recalls Anna Alliluyeva, “there was a ring at the door. I saw a smallish man dressed in a black overcoat and a Finnish cap on the threshold. ‘Is Stalin at home?’ he asked politely. … After a brief conversation, Stalin and he left together.”

Just days later, these scruffy, diminutive figures [Lenin and Stalin], who now walked the streets of Petrograd disguised and unrecognized, seized the Russian empire. They formed the world’s first Marxist government, remained at the peak of the state for the rest of their days, sacrificed millions of lives at the pitiless altar of their utopian ideology, and ruled the imperium, between them, for the next thirty-six years. -Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin, p332

Stories like this continue to surface stating that young evangelicals are peeling away from conservatism. It’s hard to tell how big of a movement this will be until the election (our liberal media has long indulged in wishful thinking in such matters), but it bears watching.

The reason given by these young evangelicals is that they aren’t “single issue” voters. They’re pro-life, but they also believe in “social justice.” What is social justice? Well, it’s pop-culture speak for the use of taxpayer money to “fight” poverty and AIDS, to “protect” the environment, etc. In other words, it’s the same old, tired liberalism. (To digress, I’m convinced that popular culture inculcates this propaganda more effectively than the usual suspects in the mainstream news media. It’s the subtle, liberal premise on MTV, VH-1, afternoon talk shows, movies, and Comedy Central that, with endless repetition over a period of years, work its magic on minds already untethered by discernment. This, along with churches no longer preaching the whole counsel of God and discipling the sheep, is what has led to the rapid acceptance of sodomy over the last 20 years. The shift in even the last 10 years has been incredible. What a damning lack of love we show by acting as if this is cultural advancement.)

I’m not a single-issue voter, either. I won’t vote for someone who is pro-abortion, but the role of government and the rule of law is also critically important. There’s a reason why a government that historically saw its main goal as providing for the common defense now regulates (via the EPA) the gallons-per-flush for your toilet. That particular power wasn’t enumerated in the constitution, but it didn’t come from nowhere either. It was an accretion on prior interventions in the market. Similarly, government funding of Planned Parenthood didn’t come out of the blue either. It was another layer of plaque buildup on top of prior unconstitutional prerogatives assumed by our government. If we get to the point in this country reached by a few European countries where it’s a “hate crime” to speak the whole counsel of God in matters of sexuality, you can be sure that that won’t come from nowhere either. It will follow other “plausible” and “sensible” government meddling in related matters.

Henry Hazlitt, whose Economics in One Lesson should be read by all, noted:

This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.

That about says it all for liberalism. My late father defined a liberal as “someone who likes to spend someone else’s money.” Well, another definition might be: “Someone who always — always — overlooks secondary consequences.” (In Ohio now, we have a group pushing a ballot issue to force businesses with more than 25 employees to provide seven mandatory sick days. Now isn’t that a fine prescription for making Ohio, already one of the worst business climates in the country, more competitive, especially in this era of expanding inflation and high gas prices? Pity our small business owners.)

Here’s what I say to young, wavering evangelicals:

• Barack Obama is another in a long line of empty-suit, vote-buying demagogues peddling phony hope for power. (McCain is a vote-buying demagogue too, but that’s a matter for another time.)
• If you think abortion a negotiable issue — should a mother be allowed to kill her offspring? — then examine your heart. You’re out of line with what the church has always believed.
• Liberal social justice is a violation of the eighth commandment. Sure, you spend a few trillion and you’re going to manage to help someone. But who’s really benefiting from it? Politicians, lawyers, and special interests, that’s who. And who’s paying the price? Taxpayers, the poor people who live around bums, drunks, and crackheads, and the bums, drunks, and crackheads themselves. African missionaries like David Wegener and my pastor can tell you the effects of foreign aid in Africa. A better answer is the exact opposite of what the social justice movement offers, namely property rights, the replacement of public “safety nets” that enable bad behavior with private charity, the return of vagrancy laws, discouragement of sodomy instead of handing out rubbers (Planned-Parenthood style), and, most of all, the gospel of Christ. The abortion movement is flat-out evil; liberal social justice is flat-out stupid and counterproductive (and that’s a charitable take).
• Liberal social justice (and that includes the environmental movement) is an enemy of freedom. Value your freedom to live and worship. The government already takes half of our income on average, and there is some truth in the idea that every dollar spent by government is a dollar of our freedom. That’s one reason why, for example, many families don’t feel they can afford to have mom at home, because politicians in Washington — especially the ones who prattle on about “working families” — think they know how to spend our money better than we can. This arrogant attitude is well demonstrated by a U.S. senator in favor of a 1990s tax hike who said something to the effect of “well, if we don’t do it, people will just go out and buy more VCRs and TVs.”
• The Christianized version of liberal social justice offered by the Rick Warrens isn’t a new reformation of Christianity; it’s the same candy-coated spirituality offered by the social gospel movements of the 19th and 20th centuries that decimated the mainline churches.

Doesn’t this get you pumped up about the latest Narnia film? (Yes, I know, the movie has been out for weeks and this is late… but fashionably late).

Yawn. The feminist hits keep-a-comin’ with this series; we heard this routine last time. Maybe it’s time for Disney and Walden Media to pack it in with this series so someone serious can come along in a decade and do Lewis right.

At least it avoided this dialogue from Walden’s “family film” The Bridge to Terebithia:

Leslie Burke: I seriously do not think God goes around damning people to hell.
Jesse Aarons: Why not?
Leslie Burke: He’s too busy making all this! [opens her arms, gesturing to creation, music swelling]

I’ve never thought much of Habitat for Humanity. It always had that vague taint of the (now-trendy!) social gospel and political leftism espoused by regressives like Tony Campolo. Now Habitat is revealing itself by logrolling with Planned Parenthood.

Someone at National Review (back when it was much better) once posited a rule that any organization that is not explicitly conservative will drift leftward over time. I don’t know if Habitat really had to drift too far. I do know this: Not one dollar of our money will be sent to organizations like Habitat or Susan G. Komen.

Most tourists visit Moscow to see the ballet, the Kremlin, and the churches. There weren’t any Stalin tours when I was over there a few years ago. Requesting such from a Russian would prompt a suspicious retort: “Why would you want to see that?” They were amused, even proud, that a foreigner would be interested in their recent history. However, it was their history, and maybe it was still too fresh. They were ready to move on.

Reminders of Stalin were therefore more of the “if you know what to look for” variety: the “wedding cake” skyscrapers, the House on the Embankment (adorned with a Mercedes symbol of all things), the Lubyanka, the grand but unrenovated subway where Stalin spoke during German bombings, and Red Square of course.

And then there was the New Tretyakov gallery. It housed an incredibly interesting collection of Soviet art, including huge portraits of the mustachioed Friend of the Working People. After communism fell in the early 90s, Muscovites didn’t want monuments of Lenin and crew prominently displayed about the city, so they took them down (Stalin had been removed many years before). These dark reminders, including the Dzerzhinsky statue that ominously fronted the Lubyanka before being famously toppled in 1991, were eventually moved to a courtyard adjacent to the art gallery. The unkempt courtyard was coined the “Graveyard of Fallen Monuments.” Someone apparently decided that it was too good of a fate for the statues of Bolshevik monsters, and so gulag sculptures were added here and there.

What a motley sight it was a few years ago, another odd and yet moving spectacle of Russia. Alas, it sounds like less of it remains today.

There are some really bizarre places in Russia. Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, for one. The modern part is where the glitterati who didn’t make the Kremlin Wall were buried: Yeltsin, Khruschev, Raisa Gorbachev, Mayakovsky, Orlova, Stalin’s second wife, cosmonauts, generals. Even Solzhenitsyn’s censor. Pictures do the totality of Novodevichy Cemetery little justice, but to give you an idea, check out this, this, this, this, and this. There was one particularly hideous grave featuring a bald man’s head jutting almost horizontally out of a rock formation. Alas, I cannot find one picture of it; ours must not have turned out.

Individually these graves at Novodevichy were all quite appalling, as the English might say, and emblematic of man’s boastful pride. The haphazard landscaping at the cemetery added to the bemusing quality of it all.

Don’t miss Novodevichy Cemetery if you go to Moscow. Hopefully you will leave it wanting the humility of a simple marker.

I don’t agree with Bob Dewaay on everything, but he’s clearly gulped deeply from Reformation (and scriptural!) wells on the matters that really count. He’s one of my favorite commentators on current issues facing the church. His recent article Why Evangelicals are Returning to Rome notes:

[W]hy are literate American Christians running away from sola scriptura at a time when searching the Scriptures (especially using computer technology) has never been easier? On this point I am offering my opinion, but there is good evidence for it. I believe that the lack of gospel preaching has allowed churches to fill up with the unregenerate. The unregenerate are not like “newborn babes who long for the pure milk of the word” (1Peter 2:2). Those who have never received saving grace cannot grow by the means of grace. Those who are unconverted have not drawn near to God through the blood of Christ. But with mysticism, it is possible to feel near to God when one is far from Him. Furthermore, the unconverted have no means of sanctification because they do not have the imputed righteousness of Christ as their starting point and eternal standing. So they end up looking for man-made processes to engineer change through human works because they have nothing else. Those who feel empty because of the “pragmatic promises of the church-growth movement” … may need something far more fundamental than ancient, Catholic, ascetic practices. They may very well need to repent and believe the gospel.

I sometimes wonder where pastors who don’t preach the gospel (or the law) regularly think that people are going to hear it. Certainly not from Joyce Meyer (who isn’t a “pastor” anyway) or Joel Osteen. There’s an arrogance behind it, a “we’ve moved beyond the cross” mentality. Compare that to the formidable R.C. Sproul’s observation that although he has studied the cross of Christ for over 50 years, he still feels that he is “barely scratching the surface of the meaning and significance of [it].”

Dewaay helpfully wraps up the article:

Perhaps the best antidote to rejecting sola scriptura and going back to Rome would be a careful study of the Book of Hebrews. It describes a situation that is analogous to that which evangelicals face today. The Hebrew Christians were considering going back to temple Judaism. … The key problem for them was the tangibility of the temple system, and the invisibility of the Christian faith. Just about everything that was offered to them by Christianity was invisible: the High Priest in heaven, the tabernacle in heaven, the once for all shed blood, and the throne of grace. … But the life of faith does not require tangible visibility (Hebrews 11:1). The Roman Catholic Church has tangibility that is unmatched by the evangelical faith, just as temple Judaism had. Why have faith in the once-for-all shed blood of Christ that is unseen when you can have real blood (that of the animals for temple Judaism and the Eucharistic Christ of Catholicism)? Why have the scriptures of the Biblical apostles and prophets who are now in heaven when you can have a real, live apostle and his teaching Magisterium who can continue to speak for God? … Why have only the Scriptures and the other means of grace when the Roman Church has everything from icons to relics to cathedrals to holy water and so many other tangible religious articles and experiences? I urge my fellow evangelicals to seriously consider the consequences of rejecting sola scriptura as the formal principle of our theology. If my Hebrews analogy is correct, such a rejection is tantamount to apostasy.

We’ve all experienced the cliches and boredom of a graduation ceremony. There’s that point during the speech where, as Orwell described it, “one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them.” That’s what made this Alan Keyes speech memorable when I first saw it on C-Span years ago. It was so strikingly different than the usual flowery nonsense. It spoke of inevitable disappointments and (imperfectly and obtusely) the point of the Christian life.

And at some point in your lives I think you will pass a certain line… where you feel the weight of your past a little bit more than you feel the lure of your future. … [Y]ou will reach a point … where most people most of the time have to acknowledge that all of the wonderful dreams that fill your mind today didn’t quite come true. The books were not written, the films were not all made, the loves were not all enjoyed and somewhere along the way you have to deal with things you already have begun to know. The hard hours and the tough losses, the things that don’t work out and the people who were here yesterday but are gone now, whose love was a certainty that failed, whose hope for you was expressed in ways that you did not understand until it was too late.

I, unlike some folks, I can’t stand up here and say, Well, just go out, dream as you please and everything will happen, success will be yours, all you have to do is believe in yourself!’ This is not true. You can believe in yourself all you like, you’ll still fail, some of you. But in the midst of all of that, in the midst of all the things that go wrong and don’t come out right and don’t quite measure up to what you had hoped would be the case as you sit here today, if you are able to believe in something more powerful, more important, more permanent, more true, more good, more just than you are, then, then you have some hope of real success.

We’ve heard that term “American exceptionalism;” I think many American graduates have great expectations for life. However, then life happens and they realize that they aren’t going to be the center of anything extraordinary in earthly terms. They won’t be St. Augustine, putting an unmistakable stamp on civilization. They likely won’t even attain 15 minutes of fame. Consider, though, that even those obscure fishermen of Galilee, if Christ hadn’t come to them, would’ve lived out their days as obscure fishermen. God raises up and casts down.

And so this, it seems to me, is our purpose: to live our lives modestly, fulfilling our vocations, looking forward to our entry into the presence of God. To not seek fame with the world, but, as Lewis termed it in The Weight of Glory, “fame with God.”

How can I tell of the rest of creation, with all its beauty and utility, which the divine goodness has given to man to please his eye and serve his purposes, condemned though he is, and hurled into these labors and miseries? Shall I speak of the manifold and various loveliness of sky, and earth, and sea; of the plentiful supply and wonderful qualities of the light; of sun, moon, and stars; of the shade of trees; of the colors and perfume of flowers; of the multitude of birds, all differing in plumage and in song; of the variety of animals, of which the smallest in size are often the most wonderful,— the works of ants and bees astonishing us more than the huge bodies of whales? ; Shall I speak of the sea, which itself is so grand a spectacle, when it arrays itself as it were in vestures of various colors, now running through every shade of green, and again becoming purple or blue … How grateful is the alternation of day and night! how pleasant the breezes that cool the air! how abundant the supply of clothing furnished us by trees and animals! ; Who can enumerate all the blessings we enjoy? If I were to attempt to detail and unfold only these few which I have indicated in the mass, such an enumeration would fill a volume. And all these are but the solace of the wretched and condemned, not the rewards of the blessed. ; What then shall these rewards be, if such be the blessings of a condemned state? What will He give to those whom He has predestined to life, who has given such things even to those whom He has predestined to death? What blessings will He in the blessed life shower upon those for whom, even in this state of misery, He has been willing that His only-begotten Son should endure such sufferings even to death? Thus the apostle reasons concerning those who are predestined to that kingdom: ; He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also give us all things? (Romans 8:32) When this promise is fulfilled, what shall we be? What blessings shall we receive in that kingdom, since already we have received as the pledge of them Christ’s dying? In what condition shall the spirit of man be, when it has no longer any vice at all; when it neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to any, nor has to make war against any, but is perfected, and enjoys undisturbed peace with itself? Shall it not then know all things with certainty, and without any labor or error, when unhindered and joyfully it drinks the wisdom of God at the fountain-head? -Augustine, City of God, XXII

Jeremiah Wright has been busy of late claiming his prerogatives as a pastor. Fair enough, but the media is predictably missing that his exposition of Scripture is worse (and far more dangerous) than his political commentary. Example:

MODERATOR [at National Press Club yesterday]: Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the father but through me.” Do you believe this? And do you think Islam is a way to salvation?
WRIGHT: Jesus also said, “Other sheep have I who are not of this fold.”
(CROWD APPLAUSE)

The comical thing is that John 10:16, the verse quoted from by Wright, actually refutes his universalism when read in its entirety:

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

One voice, one shepherd. Luke lays it out:

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. -Acts 4:11-12

Compare with John 1:1, John 8:58, John 10:30, John 17:2-3, Acts 10:40, 1 Cor 3:11, 1 Cor 8:6, Col 1:15-20, Col 2:9, 1 Tim 2:5, Heb 1, Heb 3:3-4, Heb 13:8, and 1 John 2:22.

McCoy: We were speculating. Is God really out there?
Kirk: Maybe he’s not out there, Bones. Maybe he’s right here. [points to his heart]
-from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Every few years, a book comes out that captures the world’s attention using the same basic New Age stew (and a big marketing budget). The latest deceiver is Eckhart Tolle. He’s being touted by Oprah Winfrey, who herself has a long track record of pushing falsehood. The book names may change, the endorsers may change as the decades go by (John Denver, Shirley MacLaine, Marianne Williamson), but the beliefs are pretty much the same vapid samplings of pantheism, paganism, gnosticism, and self-help.

Paul and John in particular warn against those pushing false knowledge of hidden things (e.g. the book of Colossians). The early church father Irenaeus meticulously chronicled the “absurd ideas” of gnostics like Valentinus. Compared to the complexities of the old heretics, the pop-culture smorgasbord tends to serve heretical appetizers (a little bit o’ this and a little bit o’ that) and junk food.

Given that, why would anyone waste time reading Oprah Winfrey’s latest guru instead of mining the Scripture? Well, for one, these false teachers tell itching ears (2 Tim 4:3) what they want to hear. They impart supposedly “secret” knowledge that turns out to be the same old lies: You are a good person with great potential, so look within and become a god (compare with Jeremiah 17:9…”The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”). And of course, they tell us not to worry about King Jesus. Jesus, to these false teachers, is a “demigod” or “spirit guide,” but not the only begotten Son of God who rules the nations (Psalm 2). He’s tame.

Also, these books prey on the ignorance of our Christian neighbors. This is the kind of stuff — along with all the other self-help, quasi-religious therapy of television talk shows — that forms people’s spiritual beliefs. Peter Brown, in his biography of Augustine, noted the time Augustine spent correcting and guarding his flock in letters marked by “an inspired fussiness, and by a heroic lack of measure when it came to the care of endangered souls… [They] catch the barely suppressed sigh of a tired old age, characterized by constant quiet acts of self-sacrifice as Augustine lent his pen, again and again, to the defence of his Church, at the expense of intellectual projects that engaged him more deeply.” (pgs 466 and 492, 2000 edition)

Well, I saw Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I hardly agree with its premise that academic freedom is the solution to persecution of those who believe in Intelligent Design. A better solution would be to tear down the evolutionist’s fort by abolishing state-funded education. Public schools — particularly universities — are largely sheltered from market forces and allow for the creation of intellectual fiefdoms. In other words, we’re free to disagree with Darwinists as long as we keep funding them. How about making these people get real jobs that aren’t based on government coercion? As a Christian, I would add that academic freedom means only so much if our wills are in bondage to sin.

Those caveats aside, one only need look at the absurdly negative reviews of Expelled to see that it’s touched a nerve (cf. universally positive reviews of this documentary). It’s the same nerve jangled when sodomy and abortion are discussed, a nerve inflamed by hatred for God and his church (aka. those inferior ‘religious nuts’).

It is well-made. It makes good points. You’ll have to see Expelled to hear some utterly absurd Darwinist theories about how life began. Also, David Berlinski– the guy had me laughing.

More signs of the drift in evangelical youth. Where did people get the idea that there is virtue in living sinfully — indeed, flaunting it like Anna Karenina — as long as you’re honest about it? Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. Authenticity must be the tribute that vice pays to vice.

In his review of Ben Stein’s new movie Expelled, Time magazine critic Jeffrey Kluger tells us:

The man made famous by Ferris Bueller, however, quickly wades into waters far too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth’s primordial soup. The answer is it couldn’t–and it didn’t. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing.

I am having a flashback to Columbo.

Murderer: “Well, apparently the killer did a, b, and c.”
Columbo: “Oh… well that explains it.”
Columbo walks toward door, pauses, and turns: “Oh, just one more thing, sir.”

OK, so the soup was stirred for a million years… What difference does that make?

By the way, the authoritative Mr. Kluger is a journalist and attorney who’s authored some stuff on science topics. I guess that gives him standing over and above the rest of us “nonscientists.” You know, it’s the old “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.”

[Church growth proponents] apply industrial and mechanical models to something that is fundamentally organic and mysterious, the Body of Christ. Modern ideas about church growth stem directly from business techniques… -Recovering Mother Kirk, p. 45.

The church does not need to be in a constant state of anxiety, thinking up new ways of reaching the lost. The right techniques of church growth are the means of grace that God established when our Lord commissioned the apostles to disciple the nations by Word and sacrament. These techniques are not flashy. In fact, they are rather low-key. But as the Bible reveals, God has a habit of saving his people through means that the world considers foolish. -ibid, p.50

These comments are spot-on. People decide that God’s ancient means for growing and nurturing His church aren’t good enough. And so, videos and skits replaced Bible reading. Uplifting praise music replaced the psalter (which has it share of minor keys). It replaced more Biblical hymns (well, sometimes). It replaced prayer. Meanwhile, therapy and moralism replaced sound preaching.

Eventually these fads will go the way of the altar call, itself a fad that replaced communion. A 19th-century innovation with Pelagian underpinnings, the altar call faded as churches found that successful people would rather skip the embarrassment of “going forward.” And the church growth movement is about nothing if not giving people what they want.

Greetings evangelicals. I hope today finds you getting geared up for Earth Day. Only one week away! The excitement is palpable in the Pipe household.

The Pope is baptizing Muslims. Evangelicals are preparing speeches on The Gospel and Global Warming. Saving souls, one recycling bin at a time.

[I]f we were to examine a worship service to see if the Holy Spirit were active in it, what would we be looking for? In the current rage for expressive and spontaneous worship, most people look for the Spirit’s presence in the style of song, the emotions and posture of worshipers, and whether people feel blessed upon leaving the service. But this reflects a radical misunderstanding of the work of the Holy Spirit, as if the Spirit is involved with only the experiential or emotional aspects of the Christian life. In fact, the bible teaches that the principal work of the Holy Spirit is to reveal the truth of God. … [T]he purpose of the revelatory work of the Spirit is to yield proper understanding, not warm feelings. This means that a Spirit-filled worship service will be one that conforms to the revelation of the Bible.

Looking at the work of the Holy Spirit this way means that so-called traditional worship, as opposed to contemporary forms, has the greatest claim to being Spirit-filled. This statement will likely startle many readers because worship in the Calvinist tradition has not been known for its zeal and intimacy. Instead, the words cold, formal, and stodgy come to mind most often. … Yet this impression reveals how much contemporary Protestant thinking equates the work of the Spirit with emotions, not with understanding and believing the Bible. It also shows how much contemporary Protestant thought has separated the work of the Spirit from the teaching of God’s Word. -D.G. Hart, from Recovering Mother Kirk, “Spirit-Filled Worship”

To paraphrase Tim Bayly, have we all gone mad? What’s up with this whole green movement? Mercy.

“Eco-friendly” is the latest triviality engaging the world. A Google news search on “environment” yields 182,000 hits. “Green” yields over 200,000 (granted, a few of these aren’t about the environment, but most are). By comparison, “Jesus” yields 29,000 hits.

Yes, there’s always More We Can Do to save the planet. Another light bulb to buy, another letter-writing campaign, another statement to sign, another politician to elect (after all, the green tree has red roots).

I’m all for stewardship, but enough with the idiot hopes and idiot despair. It makes me want to go out and buy some styrofoam.

And they will say to you, Look, there! or Look, here! Do not go out or follow them. -Luke 17:23

You know, occasionally a blog comes along bringing satire that is almost inspiring. A friend sent this along. Don’t miss the conversion stories to the right.

A Christian is not someone who has no sin or feels no sin; he is someone to whom, because of his faith in Christ, God does not impute [count] his sin. -Martin Luther, Galatians