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Christianity Today has an interesting and short quiz on the history of Thanksgiving.
I got 3 out of 6 right. How did you do?
Saturday night Crystal and I got together with some friends to watch an episode of Francis Schaeffer’s video series “How Shall We Then Live?” The series surveys significant eras of Western History, including the Roman Age, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and others. The episode we watched was on the Reformation. It was helpful and its quality was only augmented by Schaeffer’s very blatant pair of knickers (that’s actually him on the front cover of the DVD if you click on the link above).
Amazingly, the Reformation churned out some very great art. This raised the question for us of what the church’s role in art should be today. Should we see Christians being some of the world’s preeminent artists?
In a similar vein, we talked about what Christian art should look like. Take the movie industry, for example. Must a Christian script an expressly evangelistic film for his work to have redemptive value? Or is it possible to view all of the world as belonging to the Lord (Ps. 24:1) and craft a movie out of that framework?
And where do you draw the line? Crystal asked us if a Christian could have written and directed “The Dark Knight.”
What do you think?
In a Christianity Today article posted back in February 1999, Mark Noll responded to the following question:
“Considering the biblical injunction to submit to civil government (Rom. 13:1 and 1 Peter 2:13-14), were Christian colonists justified in participating in the Revolutionary War?”
Noll tips his hand from the beginning when he writes:
Only one population in the colonies clearly was justified by classical Christian reasoning in taking up arms to defend itself—the half-million or so enslaved African Americans who were held in bondage as the result of armed attacks upon peaceful noncombatants.
He clarifies his sentiments later:
To the extent that colonists really thought that Britain intended systematic despotism, their going to war could perhaps be justified in classical Christian terms. Armed action to preempt an enemy’s destructive intentions had long been considered moral. But if the problem in Britain was not primarily a malicious conspiracy but insensitive bungling, war would not have been justified.
His conclusion? Here it is:
As a result, Americans fought a war to gain the kind of freedom that Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were simply given after not too many decades. An evil precedent was also established in America for later times of national crisis by employing the Bible eccentrically (instead of theologically) and by worrying about classical Christian justifications for warfare hardly at all. The lesson here is not that America had a uniquely evil history, for the Founding Fathers were morally exemplary on many other matters. It is that using the Scriptures for public disputes requires a full measure of reasoned calm as well as passionate engagement.
What are your thoughts?
History is one of God’s kindnesses. Through reading it he allows us to rehearse our futures a thousand times over. Consider, for example, 1 Timothy 6:6-7: “Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.” In one sense, I have not yet experienced the end of verse 7 (”we cannot take anything out of the world”). But in another very real sense, I have.
During the winter of 1776, British and colonial forces were at a standoff. The redcoats were cornered in Boston while the ragtag American army encircled them around the perimeter. Finally, in a surprise move in early March, George Washington ordered his troops to set up defenses under the cover of night at nearby Dorchester Heights. Seeing that the colonial army had the unexpected upper hand, the British packed up shop and sailed away, bringing a number of civilians with them who were loyal to their cause. The hasty exit forced many to leave valuable belongings behind.
A man named Reverend Henry Caner reported his losses. David McCullough tells his story in the book “1776“:
“As rector of King’s Chapel, the first Anglican church in Boston, the Reverend Caner was the leading Church of England clergyman in Massachusetts and a greatly respected figure among all denominations. He had been rector for nearly thirty years and lived alone in a small farm house close to King’s Chapel, at the corner of School and Tremont streets. In his account of ‘goods left in my house at Boston, March 10, 1776,’ he listed, among other items: ‘a handsome clock,’ two mahogany tables, teacups and saucers, ‘one rich carved mahogany desk and book case (with) glass doors,’ pictures of the King and Queen ‘under glass with rich frames,’ a pair of brass andirons [used to hold up logs in a fireplace], ‘a fine harpsichord,’ 1,000 books, a barn and ‘appurtenances,’ a cow and a calf” (pg. 100).
When I read an account like this, it puts skin on a text like 1 Timothy 6:7 and I am reminded once again to not store up for myself treasures on earth, where ships and military stealth force me to leave them behind.
The harpsichord stays, Johnathon. The harpsichord stays.
I just finished reading George Marsden’s biography of Jonathan Edwards last night. I’ll admit, at some points it was pretty tough sledding (down a fairly long hill, too….it’s a thick book) but I am so thankful to have read it. Marsden does a masterful job of interpreting Edwards’ life in Edwards’ own terms. I found it to be very encouraging. My admiration of Edwards - shortcomings and all - is even greater than before.
Toward the end of the book, Marsden relates a study published in 1900 which compared the descendants of Edwards with the offspring of one of his corrupt contemporaries:
“The work, published in 1900, contrasted the character and intelligence of 1,200 descendants of one of his [Edwards'] most dissolute contemporaries to those of 1,400 of Edwards’ heirs. The descendants of Max Jukes, a New York Dutchman whose name the researchers changed to protect the guilty, left a legacy that included more than three hundred ‘professional paupers,’ fifty women of ill repute, seven murderers, sixty habitual thieves, and one hundred and thirty other convicted criminals.
The Edwards family, by contrast, produced scores of clergyman, thirteen presidents of institutions of higher learning, sixty-five professors, and many other persons of notable achievements” (pg. 501).
I think this contrast embraces something of what it means for God to visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children (Exodus 34:7) and to bless the generation of the upright (Psalm 112:2). This is not to say that there are no exceptions. After all, Edwards’ grandson, Aaron Burr, Jr., was the famed bad apple who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Nor is it to say that God cannot raise up children for Abraham from the stones of a wicked ancestry.
Rather, what we ought to hear in a report like this is that we should so pray, so study, so delight in Jesus that, should God be pleased, we will breed a herd of holiness for generations to come.
While we were in Syria a couple weeks ago, our team visited the ruins of a church dedicated to one Simeon Stylites. Born around 390 A.D., Simeon was an ascetic monk who lived on a platform atop a pillar for a total of 37 years until he died in 459. Minus the boulder, the structure Crystal and I are standing in front of is the remains of what used to be his 45-foot-high home (he lived on other smaller pillars earlier, but this rocky pole was his last perch).
Wikipedia explains:
“In order to get away from the ever increasing number of people who frequently came to him for prayers and advice, leaving him little if any time for his private austerities, Simeon discovered a pillar which had survived amongst ruins, formed a small platform at the top, and upon this determined to live out his life. It has been stated that, as he seemed to be unable to avoid escaping the world horizontally, he may have thought it an attempt to try to escape it vertically.”
His odd abode eventually drew a crowd, and he permitted visitors by ladder. From his roost he wrote letters and preached to those gathered below.
Simeon’s unconventional arrangements, of course, present all sorts of logistical questions. Some are probably best left unasked.
Side note: In 2002, magician David Blaine, in Simeonesque fashion, performed a stunt called “Vertigo” where he stood on top of a 90-foot-tall pillar in New York City for 35 hours.
To round up our discussion of sin, I would like to bring in a long-silenced voice from across the Pond. Thomas Watson (born 1620) was a Puritan who studied at Cambridge and went on to pastor St. Stephen’s in Walbrook, London from 1646 until 1662 when he was ousted due to the Act of Uniformity. Undeterred, he went on to preach privately and then publicly until 1680, when he retired on account of poor health. Husband to Abigail, father of at least seven (four of whom died young), Watson died in 1686 while he was praying.
He wrote a number of books, one of which is “A Body of Divinity.” In this book Watson gives a chilling description of sin:
“It is a defiling thing. Sin is not only a defection, but a pollution. It is to the soul as rust is to gold, as a stain to beauty. It makes the soul red with guilt, and black with filth” (pg. 133).
He goes on to expose the heart of sin: “Sin strikes at the very Deity…. Sin is God’s would-be murderer. Sin would not only unthrone God, but un-God him. If the sinner could help it, God would no longer be God” (pp. 133-4).
Sin is horrendous. What unspeakable mercy that God would condemn this murderous pollution in the flesh of his Son for all who will trust him (Romans 8:3-4).
Russell Moore from Southern Seminary has posted a perceptive article on Charles Schulz, titled “You’re A Lost Soul, Charlie Brown.” In the article, Moore reviews the book “Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography” by David Michaelis.
Sadly, life for the Peanuts creator was not as idyllic as his fictional characters might suggest. After serving in World War II, Schulz immersed himself in the Church of God community and seemed to have been influenced in his lifestyle by the Christian ethic. However, as he began his cartooning career, this influence began to wane and he gradually declined into a Godless despair. Moore writes:
“Unlike Schulz’s view of comic strips–they should never have an ultimately unhappy ending–the end of Schulz’s life was the capstone of his despair. The man who, like Charlie Brown, always feared that no one could truly love him, died, in the words of another cartoonist, ‘angry at God, angry with friends, angry with fate–angry [about] all the troubles he could never let go of.’ This fellow artist concludes: ‘He had control over the [ Peanuts] universe for fifty years, but he had no control over his death. He didn’t accept it graciously. He wasn’t ready.’”
Schulz’ despair need not be the final word. Moore admonishes us to learn from it and love those who are gasping for hope:
“That kind of vanity, that kind of despair, is found all around us, even next to us in the pew. This book is a sober call to us to remember, to pray for, and to love those especially who will never believe they can be loved.”
This is the kind of love the world needs. We have all settled for cheap replacements. Hobbies. Facebook friends. Grades. Buffets. Jokes. Visa cards. They are caves of futility if they become our gods. Real love comes through blood, spikes, and splintered timber:
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8).
May God grant us to drink deep from this love and pass the cup to others.
Thomas Oden, retired professor from Drew University in New Jersey, has recently written a book titled “How Africa Shaped the Modern Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity.”
Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter (thanks to Amazon):
“The telling of Africa’s ancient Christian heritage has languished for many centuries. Though it needs telling, there is some reticence to think that anyone from the West is adequately equipped to tell it. Yet it is so important to the history of Africa and global Christianity that it needs to be told accurately and without unfounded conjectures” (pg. 35).
Marvin Olasky has briefly reviewed the book.
David Neff from Christianity Today posted an article about it in late February.
