On loose cannons and perfunctory research

At the urging of several people, I'm posting this brief reply to the accusations Richard Abanes has made against John MacArthur in an interview Abanes gave to Tim Challies.

My inclination was to ignore the matter until I've had an opportunity to read Abanes's book and evaluate the actual substance of his central complaint against John MacArthur. Unfortunately, virtually all the material referencing MacArthur in the Challies interview is merely innuendo and abusive ad hominem. I don't need to respond to that at all.

But Abanes has also included three broad accusations, which I'll deal with in reverse order as they appear in part 2 of the Challies interview:

1. He suggests that MacArthur sinned against Rick Warren by not contacting him personally before criticizing The Purpose-Driven Life.
        This is one of the most confusing sections of the Abanes interview. It comes on the heels of a lengthy acknowledgment from Abanes that Matthew 18:15 does not require the critic of a published work to contact the author privately before making his or her criticism public. Yet Abanes also manages to argue that MacArthur was obliged to clear his criticisms with Warren before making them public, because unlike "other critics," who Abanes admits could "never get through to [Warren]," MacArthur "could easily have contacted Warren, as far back as several years ago when MacArthur first started voicing concerns about seeker-sensitive and related issues."
        Indeed, as Abanes is clearly aware, MacArthur's biblical objections against "seeker-sensitive" ministry were published and well known for more than a decade before he ever made any public criticism of Rick Warren by name. Which is to say, MacArthur's objections to Warren's pragmatism are biblical, principled, and philosophical objections, not the sort of personal vendetta against Rick Warren Abanes portrays.
        Furthermore, Abanes himself made no attempt to contact John MacArthur privately before launching his ad hominem broadsides in the Challies interview. Yet Abanes has more of a relationship with MacArthur than MacArthur has with Warren. MacArthur endorsed a book Abanes wrote in 1995. Abanes personally contacted MacArthur to solicit that endorsement, and received it from MacArthur via a personal letter. Abanes sought a second endorsement from MacArthur on a different book last year. MacArthur was unable to supply the endorsement because he did not have time to read the book before the publisher's deadline. But in the process of seeking the endorsement, Abanes wrote to MacArthur more than once. He certainly knows how to get in touch with MacArthur and "could easily have contacted" him but didn't.
        To be clear, I agree with Abanes when he says critics are not obliged to follow the steps outlined in Matthew 18:15-17 before publishing criticism of a Christian leader's published work. So I'm not criticizing Abanes for failing to contact MacArthur. I'm merely pointing out that both his words and his own actions prove that he does not really believe private contact is necessary in such cases. So its very hard to understand his rather forceful criticism of John MacArthur on this point.
        Also, the complaint Abanes makes is actually somewhat ambiguous. (Does his reference to "the aforementioned biblical passages" include Matthew 18, or not?). His actual complaint seems to hinge on his assumption that MacArthur was merely repeating "gossip" about Warren's book. That's where the other two complaints come in.
   
2. He claims MacArthur "falsely accus[ed] Warrren of things that Warren has never taught," and specifically that he did this on CNN.
        A complete transcript of what MacArthur said about Warren "on CNN" is here. The program in question (Newsnight with Aaron Brown, March 16, 2005) included a segment that was, in fact, a rather significant misrepresentation of MacArthur's position. The day after the program aired, I posted a statement on the Grace to You website explaining that the main substance of John MacArthur's complaint about The Purpose-Driven Life had been deleted in the editorial process, and the program was a gross misrepresentation of both what MacArthur said and why he said it.
        In other words, MacArthur's comment about Warren's book on CNN was not false, as Abanes alleges. But it was removed from the context where MacArthur had adequately explained what he meant.
        To be more specific: MacArthur made only one statement about the content of Warren's book that was not edited out of the segment. MacArthur said, "What you've got is a feel-good kind of approach. This is telling people exactly what they want to hear, telling people that God agrees with you. God wants you to be what you want to be. And this is pretty heady stuff, to tell somebody that the God of the universe wants them to be exactly what they want to be. But that is not the Christian message." MacArthur did not invent that complaint out of thin air, as Abanes seems to think. It was part of a much more lengthy critique of the self-esteemism inherent in statements like "God wants you to be yourself" (p. 103). Abanes may not agree with MacArthur's criticism of that sort of teaching. (I wouldn't expect him to, given his tendency to affirm whatever Warren says and explain away whatever Warren's critics say.) But his outrage here is all out of proportion to the facts. It also seems somewhat hypocritical, given the fact that Abanes is basing his opinion of MacArthur on statements CNN deliberately removed from their context, and Abanes has apparently made no effort to discover what the actual context really was.
        Abanes may claim he did not know MacArthur felt his statements on the CNN broadcast were deliberately twisted. If that's the case, he has no excuse, especially since his own main complaint is that Warren's critics are guilty of shoddy research. If he had done a simple Google search for the words "macarthur warren newsnight CNN," Google would have given him, ranked in order, a copy of the Grace to You statement, Tim Challies' next-day analysis of "Newsnight," (complete with a trackback link to Jollyblogger's careful deconstruction of CNN's hack-job on MacArthur), and the original of my statement on the Grace to You website (including a link to Justin Taylor's excellent blogpost, "CNN, John MacArthur, and Slander by Suggestion.")
        In other words, the three top links at Google would have put him onto at least five articles showing that MacArthur, not Warren, was the one whose position was distorted by the CNN broadcast—which, after all, did portray The Purpose-Driven Life in an almost completely sympathetic light.
        Abanes himself ought to have done the kind of careful research he calls for. Would he still disagree with MacArthur's position? No doubt. But it would be nice to be able to focus on the doctrinal, biblical, and philosophical difference between our different positions, and keep the harsh personal invective out of the discussion.
        Finally,
   
3. He suggests MacArthur has not done his own research and that someone is "feeding him information" about what Warren has written.
        Simply untrue. MacArthur has read both of Warren's major works thoroughly. I have MacArthur's marked-up copy of The Purpose-Driven Church. (I bought him a clean copy and took his annotated one, with his permission.) I've seen his marked-up copy of The Purpose-Driven Life. This sort of baseless conjecture on the part of Abanes is likewise inconsistent with his own call for careful research.

Because there has been misunderstanding about this in other venues, I want to state for the record that I have no complaint with the fact that Tim Challies published this interview. My criticism of certain statements by Richard Abanes should not be construed as criticism of Tim Challies, for whom I have the utmost respect, and who I believe conducted a very helpful interview.

Greg Koukl has responded to Abanes on the Stand to Reason blog. Ken Silva has responded at the "Christian:Unplugged" website.

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BlogSpotting: no longer a mere fad; now a classic tradition

• Loki Odinsson agrees with me on matters of faith, but not practice. It seems he doesn't like my choice of shirts.
  
• Steve "Purple" Hays may think of himself as "a Lilliputian," but he writes Gulliver-length posts. It's no fun to be downhill from one of his word-avalanches.
  
• Joe Carter thinks the bad ideas that become fixtures are more deadly than faddism per se. He makes some good points, steps on some toes, and riles a few people. One guy in the comment thread thinks Calvinism is as dangerous as any fad. Another commenter is "really sick to death of the bashing of ... many of the very items that are reaching some of the unreached." Then the critic who hates criticism indignantly asks, "What ideas do you have to reach unreached people?" Joe replies: "Um, share the Gospel? Share Christ? Something like that perhaps?" Interesting discussion, and a revealing window into how rank-and-file evangelicals tend to think about these things. The argument for fads is invariably rooted in the weight of numbers: Look how many people are being "reached" by this. How can you criticize that? Thus almost any fad can become immune from criticism simply by being popular enough. Here's the point I have been trying to make: That's broad-road religion. It's what Jesus preached against. (See Matthew 7:13-27; Luke 13:23-24; Matthew 20:16; 22:14; 1 John 5:19, etc.)
  
• Gavin, our friend in Perth, introduces us to a real find. It's The Aussie Bible, and it's no joke. Target audience seems to be Aussie drongos who are not the full quid. Here's an excerpt:
  

  Bonzer Tucker for a Fair Dinkum Mob (Mark 6:31-44) Jesus said to his team, "Come on out to the desert for a bit, so you can have some kip." (There was such a big mob hanging around they didn't even have time for a bite to eat.) They hopped in the skiff and rowed around the shore to a quiet spot in the scrub. But the mob saw them leave, and recognised them, and took off on foot. So people from all the townships got there ahead of them. When Jesus came ashore he saw this enormous mob, and felt sorry for them because they were like a bunch of aimless sheep with no one to keep on eye on them. He started talking to them, and gave them the good oil on a whole lot of things. Late in the arvo his team came to him and said, "This is dry mallee country, and it's getting pretty late. Let the mob pop off so they can buy themselves some tucker from local properties or townships. Jesus answered, "You feed them." They protested, "Do you want us to spend 200 smackers to buy enough bread for this lot?" He said, "Well how much bread is here? Go and check." They did so and said, "Five little pannikin loaves of damper—and a couple of fish." ...There were about 5,000 blokes in that mob.

  
  
• Samuel at "The Adagio County Independent" thinks the forty days of Jabez should be left behind. Good line. But Samuel's not kissing up to be BlogSpotted.
  
• Rhett Smith is the very model of a postmodern college minister. It's interesting to watch him wrestle with evangelical faddism from the paradigm of a young emerging church leader.
  
• Ben Wright got a kick out of the Biblezine parodies.
  
• Cindy Swanson wants my take on Matthew Fox. Easy. He'd go in the "Really, Really Bad Theology" section of my bookmarks. It's a no-brainer, really. Anyone who draws a connection between a document like this and Luther's 95 Theses does not deserve to be taken seriously as a theologian. In his capacity as a theological wolf, however, he ought to be taken very seriously.
  
• Keith Plummer coins a useful word: Kitschianity.
  
• Nathan White reminds us of the true priority.
  
• Matthew Self finds "some good non-PyroManiac related blogging out there.
  
• Chris at "Nihil Fit" has the perfect corrective for runaway faddism: read old books.
  
• Tim Challies says I've gone from being flavor of the month to flavor of the week. Dan Edelen, posting in Challies' comment thread, figures that's enough to make me a fad.

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What's wrong with jumping on and off the fad-wagons?

Some people actually watch the undulating waves of fads in the evangelical movement as if these were the best barometer by which to discern how the Holy Spirit is working in the world. Many evangelical leaders actually seem to think the fads are a better gauge than the Word of God for giving us a perspective on what God wants to do in His church from season to season.

Rick Warren, for example, encourages church leaders to develop their skill at fad-surfing:

At Saddleback Church we've . . . tried to recognize the waves God was sending our way, and we've learned to catch them. We've learned to use the right equipment to ride those waves, and we've learned the importance of balance. We've also learned to get off dying waves whenever we sensed God wanted to do something new. The amazing thing is this: The more skilled we become in riding waves of growth, the more God sends! (The Purpose-Driven® Church, 14-15.)

Notice his tacit assumption that the fads are the means God uses to bring growth.

Faddism has begun to usurp the role of Scripture in contemporary evangelical thinking. Fads (not the Bible) are seen as the main instruments of growth and edification. Fads (not Scripture) also set the agenda for church ministry. If you want to discover what God is doing and formulate a working strategy for church growth, you have to get your nose out of the Bible and hold up a wet finger to pop culture. Take a survey and find out what people want, then give it to them.

That is the not-so-subtle message of a hundred or so volumes on church growth that have circulated among evangelical leaders over the past 20 years.

By definition, a Fad-Driven® church cannot be a church governed by the Word of God. Those who set their direction by following the prevailing winds of change are being disobedient to the clear command of Ephesians 4:14, which instructs us not to do that.

It is a serious problem that in the contemporary, Fad-Driven® evangelical culture, very few pastors, church leaders, and key evangelical figures are both equipped and willing to answer the serious doctrinal assaults that are currently being made against core evangelical distinctives—such as the recent attacks on substitutionary atonement, justification by faith, and the doctrine of original sin.

Someone decided several years ago that the word propitiation is too technical and not user-friendly enough for contemporary Christians, so preachers stopped explaining the principle of propitiation. Now that the idea of propitiation is under attack, we have a generation of leaders who don't remember what it meant or why it's important to defend.

Something seriously needs to change in order to rescue the idea of historic evangelicalism from the contemporary evangelical movement.

And here's a good place for the change to begin: A generation of preachers needs to rise up and be committed to preaching the Word, in season and out of season, and be willing to ignore the waves of silly fads that come and go and leave the church's head spinning.

Bonus: Here's an excerpt from a sermon on Hebrews 4:12: We need to have more confidence in the ability of the Word of God to penetrate people's hearts. This is one of the real deficiencies in this generation of evangelicals. We don't have enough faith in the power of God's Word to penetrate a hardened heart. Some Christians—and even lots of churches—actually back away from proclaiming the simple Word of God to unbelievers in plain language. They think it's necessary to have musical performances, drama, comedy, wrestling exhibitions, or other forms of entertainment ("pre-evangelism") to soften people up and prepare them to receive the Word. And in most cases those who opt for such a strategy never do get around to declaring the Word of God with any kind of boldness. The idea is to find some activity or technique that entertains people and tries to make them friendly to Christianity while carefully avoiding the risk of confronting them with the truth of Scripture—as if something besides the Word of God might be more effective than Scripture at penetrating their hearts. That is sheer folly, and all the emphasis given to such gimmickry these days is a tremendous waste of time and energy. Nothing is more penetrating and more effective in reaching sin-hardened hearts than the pure and unadulterated Word of God. All our human techniques and ingenuity are like dull plastic butter knives compared to the Word of God, which is "sharper than any twoedged sword."

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On second thought...

"There's no way to parody them," I confidently wrote. "Try to think of an exaggeration, and it's already been done for 'real.'"

Some gentlemen I am familiar with quickly rose to the challenge. They wish to remain anonymous. All they wanted made clear is that they did these during lunch hour:





So, anyway, I was going to take back my assertion that nothing is too outlandish to be marketed for real, but now I'm told two Christian publishers have heard about these and are already negotiating for the rights. That may be an apocryphal detail. I'm not sure.

As Matt Drudge would say,

Developing....

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Omnium gatherum redivivus

Lots of loose ends to gather up and blog about today. I'm writing this post piecemeal, so if it lacks coherence or seems to jump from topic to topic, that's a perfect metaphor for the kind of day this has been. At the end of this rambling post, I'll include some BlogSpotting entries.

First, I want to answer a few questions and respond to a couple of remarks that have come up in comments. These are in random order.

Let's see... I need a heading:

Assorted pleas, rebuttals, statements of self-vindication, a few insults, and other off-the-cuff reactions to the Barbarian hordes and home-school moms who frequent my blog:

1. EdwardsFan asks: "no one just joins the blogosphere with a blog so fancy pantsy. I've tried and tried . . . lament . . . and still can't figure out this template stuff. Who's helping you on the side Phil? " No one is helping me yet. But I have been able to take advantage of many years' experience of barely cobbling together webpages. I used that meager knowledge to cut through the Gordian knot of blogdesign mystery and tweak one of the templates I found at Blogspot.com. But the whole thing still just barely makes sense to me. The graphics I likewise do by myself, usually hurriedly. Those with skilled eyes for design will notice that I have very limited artistic and design capability, so I've tried to keep it very simple and functional. My only goal is to look better than Triablogue.
   
2. Kim said, "I'm sorry if our dictionaries frighten you. Would slide rulers be less daunting?" Not really. The thought of suffering the wrath of a home-school mom, not merely her weaponry, is what terrifies me.
   
3. To all who comment: Please remember the rules—especially the rule about Christian civility. And please don't use my comments as a forum to debate issues that arise in other contexts. If you're disturbed with something Fred Butler posted on his blog, leave a comment there. If you're angry about something that was posted at the Boar's Head, leave a comment there. Oh, wait. Scratch that. If the BHT guys annoy you, join the club. But you'll have to start your own blog to answer them. Don't import fights from other forums into my blogcomments. We have enough to fight about here already.
   
4. Scott Nichols thinks we should just leave the fads alone and see what becomes of them. He writes: "I've always taken the Gamaliel approach to these things." Well, see this. Also, it seems to me that any one of Paul's commands in Titus 1:9; 2 Timothy 3:5; and 2 Timothy 4:2-5 would trump Gamaliel's advice when it comes to the issue of dealing with creeping worldliness and doctrinal decline in the church.
   
5. Jonathan Felt asks, What does it take for something to be "downright destructive to the core distinctives of evangelical doctrine"? How does one 'destroy' doctrine in the first place? Well, it's not the doctrine that is destroyed, of course, but the evangelical distinctives—i.e., the evangelical commitment to certain biblical truths that are fundamental and essential. When in order to increase their clout and visibility evangelicals move the boundaries of their movement so that even non-Trinitarians (T. D. Jakes, or Phillips, Craig, and Dean) are counted as "evangelicals"; when evangelicals link up in spiritual campaigns with members of sects and denominations where justification by faith in Christ alone is flatly denied; or when they count among their closest friends and allies religious leaders who deny essential doctrines—they have sacrificed evangelical distinctives for political expediency.
        Jonathan further asks, "If I decide to team up with someone on a legislative initiative, how does it follow that my core evangelical distinctives are in danger of being destroyed?" It depends, of course, on how much of your message or your testimony you have to stifle in order to "team up." If your allies are Jewish and you hold back from declaring the exclusivity of Christ in order to hold your coalition together; or if your allies are Roman Catholic and you carefully avoid any discussion of sola fide or sola Scriptura—then you are sacrificing your distinctives for a lesser cause than the proclamation of the gospel. It happens all the time.
        Jonathan then opines: "It looks to me like the culture war stuff is the odd man out in your list, since by definition it does threaten people's comfort zone, rebukes people's sin, and so on." Perhaps, but it does so very selectively, focusing on what is peripheral, not what is central. And that is the point. The pattern has been that those who invest the most in "the culture war stuff" are often the last ones to press the actual claims of the gospel, declare the truth of redemption through Christ's atoning work, proclaim the exclusivity of Christ, and preach the full and unadulterated gospel. They become obsessed with issues like getting prayer back in schools, ignoring the fact that any prayer ever sanctioned by the American government would have to be a prayer that implicitly denies Christ's rightful lordship.
        Face it: the evangelical thrust for political activism has (historically, not just theoretically) had an ecumenical tendency. That's what I mean when I say culture wars undermine evangelical distinctives.
        By the way, if you want to see this principle in action, tune into "Focus on the Family" for six months and keep a record of how many times the gospel is clearly affirmed on that broadcast, compared to the number times you are exhorted to write your senator or participate in this or that boycott, campaign, or protest. Or ask yourself how Jerry Falwell got to be so friendly with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and why, when they appear together, Falwell often (but not even always) confronts Jackson's political ideas, but he (almost?) never challenges his false theology.
        I'll have much more to say about this issue in the coming weeks. It's one that is very important to me, because I was up to my eyebrows in conservative political activism before I became a Christian. I had many friends and political allies who, as it turns out, were Christians all along and ought to have realized that I did not know the Lord. But not one of them ever spoke to me about Christ or tried to give me the gospel message. I am convinced that the kind of political activism they were involved with is incompatible with the true calling and priorities of the gospel ministry.
        And the rationale for mobilizing the church to political activism is extremely muddy and without any clear biblical warrant. Even Steve Hays has not been very convincing on this issue.
   
6. Several commenters echoed the request of Puritanicoal: "It would be great if you would devote a day or two blogtificating on what the everyday Christian should do when their Sunday School class decides to go through the latest Fad-Driven Sludge or a friend recommends reading the latest Freudian psychoBABEL they bought in the local Christian bookstore." Stay tuned. (And if I forget to do this, remind me in a couple of weeks.)
   
7. Tyler Wallick says, "I'm not sure I can define what isn't timeless truth - if something does not stand the test of time, was it ever really true?" No, but notice that the contrast I made was between "timeless truth [and] passing fashions." Truth versus fashion, not "timeless truth" versus "temporary truth." Truth by definition is timeless.
   
8. Mike Russell thinks "all the blogspotting and gimmicky things" at PyroManiac are "quite faddish."
        Ouch. You talkin' 'bout my graphics? What is it with all the people who hate the graphics? Should I go to THIS kind of thing as a blogformat? Maybe I could get Steve Hays to design the blog layout for me.
        Seriously, mere popularity—even temporary popularity—doesn't define what is wrong with faddism. The error of the fad mentality I'm describing is that it uses popularity and fashion as gauges and yardsticks for measuring truth. If you catch me doing that, slap me around. No, on second thought, just shoot me. Until then, humor me while I make my blog suit my own aesthetic preferences, and if you seriously suspect that I'm driven chiefly by a motive to court people's favor, I have a list of postmodernists, theonomists, charismatics, Arminians, drunken group-bloggers, Harry Potter-haters, Rick Warren aficionados, and home-school moms to whom I'll refer you for a more objective opinion.
        (By the way, if I inject a note of humor or post what you call "frivolous posts," it's not designed for anyone's benefit but mine. I'm not trying to tickle other people's ears—and oddly enough, until now, no one has ever suggested my style of humor serves such a purpose. Sorry if you don't like it. Lots of people don't. But my approach to writing a weblog is more like journaling than journalism. If you don't like it, you don't have to read over my shoulder.)
   
9. Steve Camp said, "I believe biblically (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1; 2 Cor. 2:17; 1 Tim. 6:1-6; 3 John 5-9) that anything less than that kind of "dramatic action" is just more evangelical spin and politics." Fundamentalist.
   
10. Steve commented: "Advertising is marketing. Unless the advertising is done in poor taste or is pushy, we don't have any problem with such, do we?" (By the way, Steve had several interesting observations. You ought to read his comment.) No, I don't object to marketing per se. What I have objected to is a market-driven approach to ministry, where every aspect of our message and the style of its expression is filtered through a marketing plan designed to appeal to "felt needs," opinion polls, special-interest groups and whatnot. Market-driven ministry and marketing aren't necessarily the same thing. I will have more to say about this in future posts, but all my posts are too long as it is.

• Brian Adams at "Christendom Blogosis" thinks my attitude toward secularism is too lax.
  
• Frank Martens dared me to answer a question. So I did.
  
• Adrian Warnock recalls his meeting with me in London on July 7, punctuated by the terrorist attacks. Neither of us had much time that day to blog about our meeting, but his account is absolutely correct: we talked about the stealth tactics—terrorist maneuvers—being used by people at the fringes of evangelicalism to confuse young Christians about the gospel message and the meaning of the atonement. Adrian notes that the atonement controversy needs to be addressed with rigor and passion. He is right. I intend to make that a topic in some future blogposts.
  
• Peter Bogert reminds us that in contrast to all the fads, God's Word endures forever.
  
• Keith Plummer was disturbed.
  
• Carla Rolfe asks, "Does this make me look faddy?"
  
• Eddie at "reformatus sum" marvels that Bruce Wilkinson fell from the radar faster than you can pray the prayer of Jabez.
  
• Laura at "Words Behind Me" makes a good point: It's much easier to be a critic than to offer solutions. And the solutions are never as quick and easy as the schemes that create the problems in the first place.
  
• William Dicks is amazed (as I am) that people who deny the Trinity are so widely accepted by evangelicals.
  
• Brian at "Doctrine, Theology And All That Jazz" doesn't think the term evangelical is worth keeping.
  
• Eric Rung notes that the slow encroachment of heresy has made evangelicals oblivious to what is happening around them.
  

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Here's what I'm talking about

A new Bible for "the diverse Hip Hop culture." I'm not making this stuff up. The real products publishers are turning out are already so extreme, there's no way to parody them. (Try to think of an exaggeration, and it's already been done for "real.")

This is the latest in one publisher's line of "Biblezines"—the complete New Testament in magazine formats tailored to specific market segments. Judging from the cover photo, the primary target audience here are rage-filled African Americans age thirty and under:

Price: Fiddy Cent.

Pardon me while I go down to the studio. It's completely soundproof. I'll probably be in there for the next hour or so.

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Shall we sell our birthright for a mess of faddage?

As I started to say last week...

Virtually all the people on Time magazine's list of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals" share at least one glaringly significant trait:

For the most part, these are the fadmakers. They are the cheerleaders for whatever is fashionable. They are the designers of the programs that are peddled by the out-of-control Christian publishing industry and purchased and implemented with little critical thought or concern by hundreds of thousands of people in the movement that calls itself "evangelical."

• Rick Warren, who heads the list, is the chief architect of the currently-dominant fad, "Forty Days of Purpose" and all the other Purpose-Driven® spinoffs.
  
• Tim Lahaye is the "theological" mind behind the best-selling fad of all time—the "Left Behind" series.
  
• J. I. Packer and Richard John Neuhaus have been the prime movers in the ecumenical fad—probably the last bandwagon we would have expected evangelicals to jump aboard 20 years ago.
  
• Bill Hybels masterminded the "seeker-sensitive" fad.
  
• Brian McLaren basically took Hybels' strategy ("contextualizing" the message for the extant culture) to the next level. McLaren is the leading figure in the "emergent church" fad.
  
• James Dobson is the most powerful figure in the "culture war" fad.

Too bad for Bruce Wilkinson that Time didn't do this piece two years ago when the "Jabez" fad was still hot, or he would have almost certainly been near the top of this list. The fact that he didn't even get mentioned is a testimony to how fleeting the fads can be.

Fifteen minutes of fame

Someone will almost certainly challenge whether it's right to label all those trends and programs "fads." But that is exactly what they are. They are popular for the moment, but they have nothing to do with historic evangelicalism or the biblical principles that made evangelicalism an important idea.

Not one of those movements or programs even existed 35 years ago. Most of them would not have been dreamed of by evangelicals merely a generation ago. And, frankly, most of them will not last another generation. Some will last a few short months (like the Jabez phenomenon did); others may seem to dominate for several years but then die lingering deaths (like Bill Gothard's movement is doing). But they will all eventually fade and fall from significance. And some poor wholesale distributor will be left with warehouses full of Jabez junk, Weigh-Down Workshop paraphernalia, "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelets, Purpose-Driven® merchandise, and stacks and stacks of "emerging church" resources.

Yes, if the lessons of church history mean anything, even the "emerging church" phenomenon is a passing phase. In a short time (probably short enough to be measured in months rather than decades) the hype will be focused on something else entirely. Most of the stuff you are currently being told you must read and implement will soon seem as hopelessly out of date as it currently seems well-suited to the fashions of the day.

As a matter of fact, the "emerging church" is a classic example of a fad that has to pass from the scene. It is, after all, self-consciously a product of contemporary culture. Those who love it have a clear preference for that which is timely over that which is timeless. Like everything that is dated, it will soon be outdated. (And even if emergent leaders try their best to remain fluid and keep pace with cultural changes, they will fade into irrelevance. No "contemporary" movement in history has ever managed to remain contemporary for much more than a generation.)

Christians, of all people—and evangelicals most of all—ought to understand these things and build their movements around timeless truth rather than passing fashions. See Colossians 3:2.

How post-evangelicalism gave birth to the Fad-Driven® Church

So why has the recent culture of American evangelicalism—a movement supposedly based on a commitment to timeless truths—been so susceptible to fads? Why are evangelical churches so keen to jump on every bandwagon? Why do our people so eagerly rush to buy the latest book, CD, or cheap bit of knockoff merchandise concocted by the marketing geniuses who have taken over the Christian publishing industry?

To borrow and paraphrase something the enigmatic Dissidens recently blogged (see "Remonstrans"), evangelicals and fundamentalists alike "have a genuine affection for the ugly and the superficial, whether in their art, their preaching, or their devotion." A few years ago, marketing experts learned how to tap into evangelicals' infatuation with the cheap and tawdry and turn it into cash.

Some of the beginner-level fads have seemed harmless enough—evangelical kitsch like Kinkade paintings, Precious Moments® collectibles, singing songbooks, moralizing vegetables, bumper stickers, Naugahyde® Bible covers, and whatnot. Such fads themselves, taken individually, may not seem worth complaining about at all. But collectively, they have created an appetite for "the ugly and the superficial." They have spawned more and more fads. Somewhere along the line, evangelicals got the notion that all the fads were good, because the relentless parade of bandwagons gave the illusion that evangelicals were gaining significant influence and visibility. No bandwagon was too weird to get in the parade. And the bigger, the better.

As a result, several of the more recent fads have been downright destructive to the core distinctives of evangelical doctrine, because most of them (Promise Keepers, Willow Creek, and the various political and ecumenical movements) have taken a deliberately minimalistic approach to doctrine, discarding key evangelical distinctives or labeling them nonessential. All of them adhered to a deliberate strategy that was designed to broaden the movement and make each successive bandwagon bigger and easier to climb onto.

"Bandwagons"? Somewhere along the line, the bandwagons morphed into Trojan horses.

Some of the very latest fads (represented by groups like Emergent, Oasis, and the "open theists") are utterly hostile to virtually every evangelical doctrinal distinctive. They have already launched major frontal attacks on essential doctrines like substitutionary atonement, original sin, and justification by faith.

How tabloid-journalist moguls took control of what you are offered to read

I have been involved in publishing for most of my adult life, and I love the historic influence Christian literature has made on the church. But the Christian publishing industry has changed dramatically in recent years. Companies once run by godly Christians have been bought out by powerful secular media czars and made part of massive business empires. Marketing, not ministry, is the driving force behind most of the industry these days.

Christian publishers have eagerly and deliberately fomented evangelicalism's bizarre craving for more and more fads and programs. Trust me: no one loves the Fad-Driven® Church more than the Profit-Driven® publishing industry.

There are some blessed exceptions, of course. There are still a few good and godly men who still have influence in Christian publishing. But they are relatively rare. They are drowning entities in an industry that is out of control. If you don't believe me, visit the annual convention of the Christian Booksellers' Association, spend an afternoon on the display floor, and take inventory of the dross that dominates the evangelical marketplace. It seems almost everything currently in style—and everything that hopes to become the next great evangelical fad—is tacky, trashy, and trivial. And the unscrupulous cheapjacks who manufacture and peddle this stuff hype their rubbish with marketing machines that rival anything in the secular world.

When it comes to books, have you noticed how few truly timeless and significant volumes are being published? That's because nowadays, decisions about what to publish are driven by marketeers who have little concern for the spiritual or editorial content of a book. I have sat in meetings with publishers while their marketing experts vetted concepts for new books. "That one's too biblical." (Those are the exact words one of these Christian kitsch-peddlers actually once said in my presence to a roomful of nodding experts from the Christian publishing industry. He was talking about a book proposal from a well-known Christian author. The book was later published anyway and went on to become a best-seller despite the professional marketers' almost unanimously tepid feelings about it.) Christian publishers have even been known to remove biblical content from books by Christian authors (especially books on leadership, parenting, and similar topics perceived to have "broad secular appeal"). The marketing specialists think de-Christianized books will appeal to a bigger audience.

That is precisely how all these fads are crafted. Content is deliberately dumbed down—purposely made soft, generic, and non-threatening. The message mustn't threaten anyone's comfort zone. It also doesn't rebuke anyone's sin; it won't embarrass anyone's worldliness; it and it isn't going to challenge anyone's shallowness. That's the way both the publishers and the people want it.

That is the culture the evangelical movement deliberately created when it accepted the notion that religion is something to be peddled and sold to consumers like a commodity. That was a major philosophical shift that created an environment where unspiritual and unscrupulous men could easily make merchandise of the gospel. It created a whole generation of pseudo-evangelicals, who are like "children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men" (Ephesians 4:14).

That's a perfect biblical description of the faddism that has overtaken the evangelical movement in recent years.

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Bonus!

• Randy Kluver has an interesting response to my concerns about the evangelical meltdown. Sure, he says (and I'm paraphrasing), evangelicalism has been commandeered by wackos who care not a whit for doctrinal soundness or accuracy in their handling of Scripture, but how is that leading evangelicalism to a disaster? Randy also reminds me that assertion does not equal argument. Right. Got it. Thanks very much for the lesson in logic. Now here's my favorite bit (and this time I am quoting him verbatim): "Is Rick Warren's influence really that great, beyond his publishing statistics? Get real." Get real, indeed.
  
• Matthew Self thinks I might have been irritated because he tagged me with a quote-meme and I didn't respond. Not at all. I haven't responded yet, but that doesn't mean I won't. My problem is twofold: lack of time and lack of functional memory cells in my brain. I have a very hard time remembering quotes, jokes, anecdotes, appointments, names, faces, and numbers. So in order to come up with a useful list of favorite quotations, I would have to do some research I don't currently have time to do. But people are welcome to tag me with memes all they want, and I promise won't get irritated. Here's what I do with meme-tags: they go in the "to do" file, where they ferment under 1,379 unanswered e-mail messages currently awaiting a reply. As I work my way through all those messages, the memes may eventually see the light of day again. But by that time, everyone will have forgotten, and then it will seem pointess to do them at all, so I won't have to.
  
• Bo Salisbury likes the look of PyroManiac.
  
• Fred Butler wants your help in his pathetic and desperate attempt to get BlogSpotted. He works in the same building as me. You'd think he would just come by and ask.
  
• Mike Firzzel thinks I might be able to pitch better than the Cubs' bullpen. He should have waited till after the Cubs' series against the Cards before talking smack like that. Did y'all see how Neifi Perez hit that grand slam after the umpire tried to hand the game to the Cardinals?
  
• Gavin at "The Squawking Cockatiel" notices that his hit-counter went crazy after he was BlogSpotted. Cool.
  
• Matt Gumm gives a really good review to PyroManiac. "Seething volcano." I like that.
  
• Jonathan Moorhead explains why Tommy Tenney is no true evangelical, but wonders if Tenney, who calls himself "the Holy Ghost Arsonist," is any kind of pyromaniac. See Leviticus 10:1.
  
• Brad Williams is blogstalking me. I'm sure of it.
  
• Tim Ake wants to think about the Harry Potter question a little more.
  
• Curtis Richardson doesn't need to think about it (or post about it) any more.
  
• Patrick Ramsey and a few of my Sabbatarian friends were pretty unhappy with my remark about "Chariots of Fire." I want to encourage critics to listen to my series on the Ten Commandments before accusing me of "not believing in the fourth commandment." Perhaps someday I'll do a post dealing with the Sabbath, the Lord's Day, the fourth commandment, and the distinctions between moral and ceremonial law, in which I'll explain my position on "the Christian Sabbath." But not this week. In the meantime, remember my comment about Romans 14, and I promise I won't try to pick any fights on the Sabbath issue. (That's not what I was trying to do in the first place, either.)

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Monday Menagerie VIII

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to esoteric and offbeat things, in the hope that these will supply learning experiences for us all.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham was England's answer to Benjamin Franklin. Born a generation after the American inventor, Bentham was himself an inventor, philosopher, mathematician, economist, and political commentator. (He even looked a little like Franklin.) Moreover, like Franklin, he was an extraordinary polymath—a genius who excelled in multiple fields of knowledge. He was a skilled writer, thinker, and polemicist with an extraordinarily fertile mind, and his impact on his world was profound.

The Panopticon

One of Bentham's best-known inventions was a kind of prison he called the panopticon—a circular arrangement where a single guard could observe multiple prisoners without moving from one central location. Bentham also coined a number of now-familiar words, including international, maximize, and codify.

But Bentham's most important and far-reaching invention was not any visible or tangible item. Nor was it a mere word. It was a philosophy, and one that has made a deep (and in my assessment, disastrous) impact on human history. Bentham was the inventor of utilitarianism, a way of thinking that begins with the assumption that "good" is defined by whatever produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Bentham's famous godson, John Stuart Mill, later refined and popularized utilitarianism as a philosophical system, but Bentham is the true father of the idea. (Perhaps godfather would be a more fitting term here.)

Bentham's philosophical outlook naturally set him at odds with eighteenth-century morality, which was largely inherited from the biblical and evangelical world-view of the Puritan era. His utilitarianism also made him a bitter critic of the entire British legal system. He argued, for example, that sodomy should be decriminalized. His treatise, "Offences Against One's Self," was not published in his lifetime, but it stands as a classic and very early example of how the utilitarian argument affects one's perspective on moral issues.

Bentham was born into a prosperous family of lawyers in the Spitalfields area of London. The family had apparently never been particularly devout Christians. (One of Bentham's great-uncles on his mother's side was a printer who published the first edition of Matthew Tindal's Deist manifesto Christianity as old as the Creation—arguing, like the Sadducees and the Socinians, for a naturalistic and moralistic religion devoid of any supernatural elements.)

Bentham's father realized Jeremy was a prodigy and pushed the young boy through college at an early age. The elder Bentham wanted his son to become a lawyer, but his heavy-handed fathering (combined with the fact that Jeremy went through his entire academic career as the youngest, smallest, most maladjusted student in every school he ever attended) made the young Bentham a reclusive, critical, social misfit with wonderful literary and academic skills. Those traits colored his whole life and philosophy.

Jeremy Bentham became a bitter and outspoken critic of the best-known legal expert of his time, William Blackstone. (Blackstone, of course, was one of the most pivotal and important figures in the history of British jurisprudence.) Although Bentham was essentially unemployed and unemployable as a lawyer himself, he loved the critic's role.

He was enabled to become a full-time critic when he inherited a small fortune upon the death of his overbearing father. Now independently wealthy, Jeremy Bentham made the most of his independence. He moved into a house in Westminster once occupied by poet John Milton. There he became something of a recluse and an eccentric. He named his teapot "Dickey," his walking-sticks "Dapple" and "Dobbin," and his cat "The Reverend Dr. John Langhorne."

Nonetheless, because his writings were filled with lucid prose and passionate arguments, he influenced the world. (I guess Bentham was, in a way, the original and quintessential superblogger.) He wrote for the next forty years, producing ten to twenty manuscript pages per day.

Bentham's legacy is still felt today in at least two major trends that have affected our world profoundly. First, he seems to have played a significant role in unleashing terrorism as a modern strategy for politics and revolution. His writings had a major impact on the Jacobins during the French Revolution. They justified the use of terror as a political tool with utilitarian arguments borrowed from Bentham. Bentham argued against natural rights, calling the concept "nonsense upon stilts." (A modern edition of his essays from that era was published a few years ago with the title Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and Other Writings on the French Revolution.) The arguments often given to justify terrorism today still owe much to the ethics of Bentham's utilitarianism.

Second, the moral and ethical relativism at the heart of most postmodern thought also finds its origin in Bentham's utilitarian system.

Obviously, Bentham was not someone whose thinking I admire.

The Auto-Icon

The Auto-icon

But what I want to introduce you to in this post is Bentham's final, sneering prank against proper society: his "auto-icon."

In his will, Bentham bequeathed much of his fortune to the University of London (now known as University College London). Along with the bequest, he had some very specific instructions about what was to be done with his remains. Bentham had actually planned for the disposition of his body for many years. As a matter of fact, the portion of his will that deals with the preparation and final interment of his remains is worth reading:

My body I give to my dear friend Doctor Southwood Smith to be disposed of in manner hereinafter mentioned. And I direct that as soon as it appears to anyone that my life is at an end, my executor (or any other person by whom on the opening of this paper the contents thereof shall have been observed) shall send an express with information of my decease to Doctor Southwood Smith requesting him to repair to the place where my body is lying. And after ascertaining by appropriate experiment that no life remains, it is my request that he will take my body under his charge and take the requisite and appropriate measures for the disposal and preservation of the several parts of my bodily frame in the manner expressed in the paper annexed to this will, and at the top of which I have written 'Auto-Icon.'

The skeleton he will cause to be put together in such manner as that the whole figure may be seated in a Chair usually occupied by me when living, in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought in the course of the time employed in writing. I direct that the body thus prepared shall be transferred to my executor He will cause the skeleton to be clad in one of the suits of black occasionally worn by me. The Body so clothed together with the chair and the staff in my later years borne by me he will take charge of And for containing the whole apparatus he will cause to be prepared an appropriate box or case and will cause to be engraved in conspicuous characters on a plate to be affixed thereon

His wishes were followed to the letter.

Unfortunately, Dr. Southwood Smith botched the embalming of the head. Bentham would no doubt have been deeply disappointed by this. He had personally selected the glass eyes that were meant to be used in his embalmed head, and carried them in his pocket for a decade before he died.

Let's allow the good doctor himself to describe what happened to the philosopher's head:

I endeavoured to preserve the head untouched, merely drawing away the fluids by placing it under an air pump over sulphuric acid. By this means the head was rendered as hard as the skulls of the New Zealanders; but all expression was of course gone.

Today the head is shriveled and macabre:

Doctor Smith continues:

Seeing this would not do for exhibition, I had a model made in wax by a distinguished French artist... The artist succeeded in producing one of the most admirable likenesses ever seen. I then had the skeleton stuffed out to fit Bentham's own clothes, and this wax likeness fitted to the trunk. This figure was placed seated in the chair on which he usually sat; and one hand holding the walking stick which was his constant companion when he was out, called by him Dapple. The whole was enclosed in a mahogany case with folding glass doors.

Nowadays, Bentham's actual head is reportedly kept in a vault in a storeroom not far from the corpse, which sits in a hallway at the University College London. But a familiar picture does exist of Bentham's dessicated sconce on display at his own feet.

A very informative article posted on the Web informs us that "The 'distinguished French artist' who made the wax replacement head was Jacques Talrich (d. 1851), a medical man who turned to anatomical modelling after military and general medical practice. His models in wax and in plastic materials found their way to museums in Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States, as well as in France, where he was modeller to the Paris School of Medicine."

British sensibilities being what they are, perhaps it is no wonder that the College has never done much to give deliberate publicity to the Auto-icon. In fact, at first, Dr. Southwood Smith retained possession of the corpse-case. He apparently kept it at his own home until about 1850, when it was finally moved to the College. Dr. Smith recorded, " When I removed from Finsbury Square I had no room large enough to hold the case. I therefore gave it to University college, where it now is. Any one may see it who enquires there for it, but no publicity is given to the fact that Bentham reposes there in some back room. The authorities seem to be afraid or ashamed to own their possession."

Perhaps privately, however, University Regents were not so embarrassed by the Auto-icon. Nor have they always relegated their famous philosopher-benefactor to an out-of-the-way closet. One legend has it that for many years, the cabinet with Bentham's corpse would be brought into Regents' meetings and placed at the head of the table. The minutes would solemnly state, "Jeremy Bentham present, not voting."

The legend is exaggerated, no doubt. According to one of the more credible sources, the fact of the matter is that "the auto-icon has attended very few meetings. The only such meeting of record was hosted by the Bentham Club on 24 February 1953 in the men’s staff Common Room. Otherwise, with the exception of the German exhibition planned for 2002, its appearances have been of the ceremonial sort."

Nonetheless, more than 150 years after Bentham's corpse was handed to the College, he's still there, on display, and not at Madame Tussaud's. They mustn't be too embarrassed by it.

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Harry Potter and the Dark Maven of BlogSpotting

• Bret Capranica thinks my blogname fits my personality. He, on the other hand, has recently helped start a group blog called Fide-O. Less than a week after launching, Bret and the other dawgs at Fide-O have been cranking out great posts at a pace I can hardly read fast enough to keep up with. If they keep it up, I'll be adding Fide-O to my blogroll soon.
  
• Doug McHone seems to exclude me (and Hugh Hewitt) from the list of bloggers he "actually would like to meet." What's up with that?
  
• Paul Lamey thinks some cases of church arson are justified.
  
• Gavin at "The Squawking Cockatiel" manages to find a picture of the PyroManiac in the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. He's very clever at doctoring graphics, too.
  Elsewhere, he gives a brief account of how the effects of America's evangelical meltdown has reached even to Perth, Australia.
  
• Dr. Andrew Jackson expects the rest of my series on the evangelical disaster to be interesting. I'm going to do my best not to disappoint him.
  
• Shaun Nolan reminds us that the key to getting evangelicals back on track lies in looking back to Acts 2, not looking ahead to the next fad or looking around at what the world is doing.
  
• Andy at "The Last Homely House" says his view of the current state of the church is virtually the same as mine.
  
• Peter Bogert found a few good things floating around the blogosphere.
      There are lots more links I could BlogSpot, but some of the homeschool moms get really irritated when I BlogSpot them, and I don't want to risk getting clubbed with one of those unabridged dictionaries. I'm getting tired, anyway. So, finally...
  
• Matthew Self wants me to post an opinion about Harry Potter. As if we needed another opinion on that. Then again, what's the point in blogging at all if you don't want to express an opinion in a realm already glutted with opinions? So, without further ado:
  
  On reading Harry Potter books
      I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, so I'm not really entitled to much of an opinion about them. I've seen a couple of the Potter movies.
      In fact, I rarely read any fiction. The only two significant fiction works I recall reading in the past twenty years were both written by Tom Wolfe. I read those only because he was one of my favorite non-fiction authors. (I regularly read so much in the course of my work that when I get a hankering for fiction as entertainment, I'd normally prefer to watch a movie rather than read.)
      I don't agree, however, with those who think the Potter books should be automatically declared off limits for all Christians because they feature magical and occult themes. The argument simply proves too much. Ultimately, it would work as an argument against virtually all fiction. In order to be consistent, for example, those who make that argument would have to rule out The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, everything from the Brothers Grimm, The Chronicles of Narnia, and my own favorite book from childhood, A Wrinkle in Time (which I read in 1962, before it won the Newberry Award).
      All those books do teach some ideas I strongly disagree with. But they are, after all, fiction. Darlene and I taught our kids to read such books as fiction. We would have been concerned if the kids had shown any difficulty distinguishing between reality and fiction, or if they had become obsessed with Harry Potter, developed a fixation with sorcery, or taken any kind of personal interest in the black arts per se. If they had begun to live in a fantasy world of any kind, I would certainly imposed restrictions on reading fantasy and fiction. Since they weren't prone to that kind of dementia, I encouraged them to read as much as they wanted to read.
      Consider this: If you are a thoughtful and critical thinker, you'll have to acknowledge that even the "family fare" coming out of Hollywood—virtually all of it—is grounded in one non-biblical worldview or another. It is therefore usually most seriously flawed at the very point where it aims to teach us some lesson about religion or Christianity.
      As a matter of fact, speaking as a Christian who believes Scripture is authoritative, I have to say that I don't agree with the basic spiritual world-view in "It's a Wonderful Life"; "Star Wars"; "Pinocchio"; and a whole lot of other family films. (Personally, I didn't even like the rigid Sabbatarianism portrayed in "Chariots of Fire.") But I do like all those films as works of fiction (or historical drama, in the case of "Chariots").
      Now, I have no difficulty whatsoever living with both what I like and what I dislike about any work of fiction or drama. Because even where they get spiritual truths wrong, such works still provide opportunities for discussion and clarification of vital biblical points.
      I would naturally be inclined to argue that all fiction is useless and wrong, except for one stubborn fact that mitigates against that position: Jesus used fiction all the time in His teaching. In at least one case, even when the story's protagonist had an evil value system, Jesus used the story to teach a positive spiritual truth anyway (Luke 16:1-9). Creative parents, likewise, can use even the portrayal of evil in children's stories like The Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter to teach their children positive truth. The key is to be attentive, and Christ-centered, and biblical in your thinking.
      All secular works of fiction should be read with the utmost care and discernment. But then, even Christian works of theological non-fiction should be read with the same kind of careful, critical discrimination.
      I do happen to believe there's inherent educational value in reading great literature, even if it teaches moral or spiritual lessons we disagree with. "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:22). Daniel was taught "the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans" (Daniel 1:4). The benefit they derived from learning the ways of the Egyptians and Chaldeans surely was more intellectual than spiritual. But Scripture never treats such learning as a Bad Thing.
      Ultimately, therefore, how I might answer the question of whether Christians should read Harry Potter or not would hinge primarily on whether the books really qualify as good literature. Having never read them, I cannot give an informed opinion on that. But judging from all reviews I have read, they are quite well written. Judging from the films, they are inventive and entertaining. So I'm not going to frown on brothers and sisters in Christ who have read them and enjoyed them and who do think they are good literature.
      I know some will be disturbed by that. I'll respect your opinion and refer you to Romans 14.
  
  PS: My eldest noticed the subject of this post and remarked that Frank Peretti's demon-warfare novels and the rest of the cheap apocalytic fiction evangelical publishers keep cranking out are far more evil than Harry Potter, and that's what Christians ought to stay away from. I think he has a point.

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Omnium gatherum

OK, I know I was supposed to post the next blog entry on the evangelical disaster Friday night or Saturday. But I've decided to wait.

I have already written it, and it's ready to post. It's a very important article in the series. It will probably ruffle a few feathers and generate a few passionate comments. But since we're already into the weekend, and my blogtraffic is typically half or less on weekends, I've decided to wait till after the weekend to post it. (Which means I'll post it Tuesday, because Monday is Menagerie Day, reserved for more lighthearted issues.)

I hope you'll think it worth the wait when you read Tuesday's post. Please don't miss it.

Meanwhile, here are some odds and ends:

1. Technorati is a cool search engine. Over the past couple of weeks, however, it has been irritatingly sporadic and flaky. Tonight it seems to be working better and faster. Hopefully, they have fixed some issues with it. When I first searched there, it was smart enough to put ads for John MacArthur resources next to the search results that had links to PyroManiac. My recent posts naming some evangelical oddballs seem to have skewed those results, however, because tonight when I searched, the ads it gave me included "Holy Ghost Preaching: Anointed Sermon Outlines" and "Sermon Movie Illustration: Illustrations from Major Movies."
   
2. For those who have asked, there is no "typical" day in the life of the PyroManiac. I live by deadlines. Each day is different, depending on what's due. Today:
   
   • I awoke at 6:00, got ready for work, and read for a brief time.
     
   • Starting about 7:25, I wrote the morning blogpost and left for work by 8:15.
     
   • I arrived at the office a few minutes late (8:34). I had several meetings scheduled (including one that was about an hour and a half long). The first meeting began at 9:00.
     
   • After all the meetings, I wrote a column for Pulpit magazine.
     
   • I skipped lunch in order to finish the article by 3:00.
     
   • In between a dozen interruptions (phone calls, people bopping into my office, etc.), I answered some urgent e-mails and a couple of non-urgent ones.
     
   • After finishing the article, I browsed through my mail. (Kim, my secretary, is in Europe on a two-week short-term missions trip, so I had to look through junk mail that she would normally weed out for me.)
     
   • Rich Barcellos phoned me twice between 4:30 and 5:45. The second time he called, he reminded me that it was time to go home.
     
   • That's just what I did.
     
   • At home, my son and his wife had come over to watch the Cubs' game. We ate dinner together while watching the end of the game. The Cubs lost again. Even though they lost to the Cardinals on a squeeze bunt in extra innings, it wasn't as painful as yesterday. (Because all I could think about yesterday was that the iMonk was at the game, enjoying the Cubs' loss).
     
   • I relaxed for an hour or so, and watched the news until 8:30 or 9:00.
     
   • I browsed quickly through the comments at PyroManiac, surfed a few favorite blogs, and wrote this post.
     
   • After finishing this, I'll probably go to bed. It'll be close to midnight then. That's about as routine as my days get. Tomorrow I'll do yard work for half the day and study the end of Galatians 2 for the other half. I'm teaching through Galatians, but Don Green is teaching Sunday, so there is no pressure to get a whole message ready this weekend. I'll enjoy tomorrow. Perhaps I'll write a BlogSpotting post tomorrow evening.
   
   
3. Speaking of the iMonk, Li'l Brudder was quoted quoting Spurgeon on a Catholic blog. I've always said the Monk is at his very best when he's quoting Spurgeon. He should do more of it.
   
4. I have received several helpful suggestions regarding the blogformat and blogtools. Thanks for your feedback. I've decided not to switch to Haloscan for now, because that would delete all the existing comments. The benefits don't seem to outweigh the downside of that. Also, I briefly tried wider columns and did not like it. The narrow columns are easier on my failing eyesight. I like the current format, and for those who think the graphics are a waste of bandwidth, sorry. I like the look and feel of PyroManiac. As long as I don't get a lot of complaints saying that the content is a waste of bandwidth, I'm happy with it.
   
5. Incidentally, it's been less than two months since PyroManiac premiered, and yesterday marked exactly one month since I added the hit counter. The hit counter just passed 50,000, which is encouraging. I'll keep posting as long as people keep giving me feedback.

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Reforming Evangelicalism?

For the record, I have no sentimental attachment to the term evangelicalism or the visible movement that now employs that name. What's important to me are the principles of historic evangelicalism. I have explained a little more fully what that entails in an article posted here. Those wishing to delve into this theme more deeply should also read the document and subsequent discussion posted here.

The question of whether the evangelical movement is dying, dead, irrelevant, irreformable, or whatever, is not my primary concern in the series of articles I've been posting. If asked, I would say the large movement that has represented "American evangelicalism" for the past century and a half (beginning roughly with D. L. Moody and culminating in Billy Graham) is in its final death throes. (Billy Graham himself hardly seems "evangelical" most of the time nowadays.)

Actually, that's a really optimistic assessment. My strong suspicion is that the movement is well and truly dead, and we shouldn't mistake the bloated and expanding size of its corpse, or its occasional spontaneous post-mortem twitches, for signs of real life.

I'm not interested in reviving or reforming that movement. Neither church history nor Scripture gives us much encouragement to work for the reformation and perpetuation of organizations and movements. Earthly institutions and human campaigns always decline and decay. Even the Protestant Reformation had its main impact outside the Roman Catholic Church, the Catholic priesthood, and the papacy—although those were the visible institutions the earliest Protestants originally set out to reform.

Institutional reform almost always fails. Twentieth-century evangelicals who stayed in the mainline denominations ultimately failed to reform any of them. We shouldn't be the least bit surprised or discouraged by that, but we should learn from it. Our concern should be for truth and principles, not for visible institutions, organizations, and movements.

To be as clear and concise as possible: What I am eager to see preserved and perpetuated are the sound, biblical ideas that sparked the evangelical and fundamentalist movements, not the corrupt cultures that ultimately overwhelmed them and led to their predictable demise.

My main aim in this current series of posts is to delineate some of the important differences between sound evangelical and fundamental principles and the various fads and manias most people today falsely refer to as "evangelicalism."

I hope to make another post about the Fad-Driven® Church sometime tonight or early tomorrow. Watch for it. But given the direction of some of the comment-threads, I wanted to make this statement first.

For those who haven't time to look it up, here's what I have written elsewhere about how to define true evangelicalism: Historically, the word evangelical first came into widespread usage along with the Protestant Reformation. William Tyndale used the expression "evangelical truth" as a synonym for the gospel. By the 18th century, the adjective was being used to describe "that school of Protestants which maintains that the essence of 'the Gospel' consists in the doctrine of salvation by faith in the atoning death of Christ, and denies that either good works or the sacraments have any saving efficacy" (Oxford English Dictionary). Naturally, as Protestants, evangelicals affirmed both the formal and material principles of the Reformation (sola Scriptura and sola fide). They were also committed to the exclusivity of Christ; believing that His atoning work is the only hope of salvation for sinners. That usage of the term evangelical has been crystal clear for at least two and a half centuries. In other words, in the historic sense of the word, when we speak of the evangelical movement, we're speaking of those who share 1) a commitment to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture; 2) a belief in the necessity and the efficacy of Christ's atoning work; and 3) a profound sense of urgency about getting the gospel message to the uttermost parts of the world. The simplicity of the definition is the very thing that gives clarity to the expression. There is not really much that's vague about the historic meaning of the term evangelical. Notice: the distinguishing characteristics of historic evangelicalism are weighty, foundational, and fundamental principles—not peripheral matters. That is why evangelical convictions have always transcended denominational lines. Those vital truths established an unshakable core of unity and remarkable harmony on matters that are of the essence of the gospel. Yet they allowed for amazing diversity on peripheral issues.

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New terror on the Tube

For the most interesting and up-to-date firsthand accounts of today's lunchtime "incidents" in the London Underground, see the BBC Reporters' Log. That page is being continually updated and includes some interesting eyewitness accounts from the sites of the incidents.

This just in: Jon Trainer is blogging live from London, where he has been committing wanton acts of tourism all day, despite the heightened state of alert.

We now return you to our regularly-scheduled programming.

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Living in the aftermath of the great evangelical disaster

Time magazine's recent photo essay on "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals" would have been enough all by itself to convince me the evangelical movement has suffered a fatal meltdown. The list included people like T. D. Jakes, who denies the Trinity; former Lutheran-turned-Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus; Joyce Meyer, the jet-setting charismatic prosperity-gospel preacherette; and Brian McLaren, the postmodern pastor who dilutes almost every historic evangelical distinctive he doesn't outright deny, and whose views on the authority of Scripture undermine the concept of truth itself.

Thirty years ago, not one of those people would have been included in any list of evangelicals. They are not evangelicals in the historic sense of the word.

What has changed? The answer is clear: the concept of evangelicalism has been expanded to become virtually all-inclusive. The word evangelical has lost its historic meaning. These days it means everything—and it therefore means nothing.

So while evangelicalism may seem to be gaining clout and respectability in the eyes of secular media like Time, the truth is that evangelicals themselves are actually less evangelical. The movement has collapsed on itself.

By the way, it is clear where Time magazine thinks evangelicalism's clout is being felt the most—and it's not in spiritual matters. It's mostly in the realm of politics and entertainment—pop culture.

The word evangelical used to describe a well-defined theological position. What made evangelicals distinct was their commitment to the authority of Scripture and the exclusivity of Christ. Now "evangelicalism" is a political movement, and its representatives hold a wide variety of theological beliefs—from Neuhaus's Roman Catholicism to Jakes's heretical Sabellianism, to Joyce Meyer's radical charismaticism, to Brian McLaren's anti-scriptural postmodernism. There's only one person in Time's entire list who would remotely qualify as an evangelical theologian: J. I. Packer. And Packer himself has been on a quest for the past 20 years to make evangelicalism as broad and ecumenical as possible.

Frankly, none of the people highlighted above would even agree among themselves on any of the points of doctrine that make their respective views distinctive. They probably wouldn't even agree on the essential points of the gospel message. The one thing they clearly do agree on is that they'd like to see the evangelical movement become as broad and inclusive as possible.

But that's not really historical evangelicalism, is it? That kind of latitudinarianism has always belonged to Socinians, Deists, modernists, and theological liberals. It is antithetical to the historic principles of the evangelical movement.

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Who Let the Dogs Out?

• Scott Hill writes for a brand-new group blog with a canine theme, called "Fide-O." (Is that pronounced like "Fido," or "FiDAY-oh"? Judging from the rottweiler photos, I'd guess it's the former.) Anyway, in his very first post, Scott is talking smack about "the ladies at the Boars Head." My advice to Scott and the rest of the pack at Fide-O: duck and cover.
  
• Steve Hays, one of my all-time favorite blogheroes, may not have the best-looking blog in the blogosphere, but it's always engrossing and fun to read. Sort of like watching an autopsy. Steve dissects the dissent of some of my commenters with his ordinary meticulous attention to detail.
  
• Keith Mikkelson Has a fascinating article about kimchi, well-illustrated with interesting graphics. That's the kind of blogging the PyroManiac likes to see.
  
• Daniel J. Phillips thinks Jan Crouch's hair may be the sign of the Beast.
  
• Troy Walling tests my vision with fine print. I pass.
  
• Jared Bridges compares me to a porcupine. I think of myself more as a hedgehog.
  
• PaulinTexas wishes the rest of my posts were as interesting as the Monday ones.
  
• Rich Gelina agrees that churches cannot live by opinion polls alone.
  
• Scott reminds us that demographics are a moving target.
  
• Kevin Johnson demonstrates his unrivalled skill for making a tedious argument for the wrong side of any issue.
  
• Nathan White has been reading while on vacation in Hilton Head.
  
• Brian Adams at "Christendom Blogosis" still thinks my posts have too much "filler." (Which I gather is a reference to the graphics, which he regards as a waste of bandwidth.) He still wishes I would use Haloscan or other blogware with trackback capability. He still doesn't always agree with me. But he did like my remarks about Fad-Driven® Churches.
  
• Michael Schweppe at "A Cognizant Discourse" posts a cartoon that makes a good point about "the blind pursuit of relevance."
  
• Jeri Massi doesn't really want to turn her blog into a running critique of mine, but she does it anyway.
  
• David Wayne at "Jollyblogger" perpetuates the "Books that Will Never Be Written" meme.
  
• Carla Rolfe is encouraged. You should be also.
  

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More on the Fad-Driven® Church

In the book Tony Campolo co-authored with Brian McLaren (Adventures In Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel) Campolo seems to suggest that seminarians ought to pay more attention to marketing techniques and less attention to theology, exegesis, and other traditional seminary curricula. After all, those are academic subjects with limited practical significance, and pastors these days hardly ever use such stuff after seminary. In Campolo's own words:

What if the credits eaten up by subjects seminarians seldom if ever use after graduation were instead devoted to more subjects they will actually need in churches—like business and marketing courses? It is not true that with a gifted preacher, a church will inevitably grow. Good sermons may get visitors to stay once they come, but getting folks to come in the first place may take some marketing expertise.

It was a marketing degree, not an M. Div., that Bill Hybels had when he launched the tiny fellowship that would one day be Willow Creek Community Church. It's not that Hybels is a theological lightweight, contrary to some critics. His sermons are biblically sound and brilliantly relevant to the needs of his congregation—and the relevance comes not from giftedness or theological discernment, but from thoughtfully studying his congregation. As any good marketer would, Hybels deliberately surveys his people with questionnaires in order to determine what they worry about, what their needs are, what's important to them. . . . Then he schedules what subjects he will preach on in the coming year, and circulates the schedule to those on his team responsible for music and drama in the services.

The result is preaching that is utterly biblical and acutely relevant. But the process isn't something you'll learn in most seminaries. Maybe it's time that some business school courses find their way into seminary.

I don't know where Tony Campolo has been for the past twenty-five years or so, but if that advice sounds the least bit fresh or novel to you, you haven't been paying attention to the drift of the church growth movement and its influence in seminaries over the past three decades. What Campolo is suggesting is precisely what many evangelical seminaries started doing some twenty years ago.

Pastors these days are thoroughly indoctrinated with the notion that they must regard their people as consumers. Religion is carefully packaged to appeal to the consumers' demands. There are even marketing agencies that specialize in church marketing. (Typical slogan: "Changing the Way the World Looks at Christians.") There are seminars for church leaders who want to learn how to "brand" their churches as a marketing strategy.

This stuff is everywhere. Fad-driven® pastors can even buy prepackaged, market-tested sermon ideas or whole sermon series. ("New fall message series designs!" now available.)

Church leaders these days are obsessed with image, opinion polls, public relations, salesmanship, merchandising, and customer satisfaction. They have been taught and encouraged to think that way by virtually every popular program of the past two decades.

It has been nearly twenty years since George Barna published Marketing the Church. In that book, he proposed this then-revolutionary notion: "The audience, not the message, is sovereign." That is the basic idea that underlies every Fad-Driven® church. And it's a notion that thousands of pastors and church leaders have uncritically imbibed—and it has been parroted in virtually every major book on church leadership up through and including The Purpose-Driven Church. The audience is sovereign. Their "felt needs" should shape the preacher's message. Opinion polls and listener response become barometers that tell the preacher what to preach. That's what Barna was calling for back in 1988. He wrote,

If [we are] going to stop people in the midst of hectic schedules and cause them to think about what we're saying, our message has to be adapted to the needs of the audience. When we produce advertising that is based on the take-it-or-leave-it proposition, rather than on a sensitivity and response to people's needs, people will invariably reject our message.

Compare that with the words of the apostle Paul, who said, "The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables" (2 Timothy 4:2-5).

What was Paul's point? Do you think he would have agreed with Barna, who said we must adapt our message to the preferences of the audience, or risk having them reject the message?

I think not. Here's what the apostle actually did say to Timothy: "But you . . . fulfill your ministry." "Preach the word! . . . in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching."

That is what pastors are called to do—not ape the fads and fashions of our culture. Not even to follow the silly parade of evangelical fads. I'm convinced that those who do not get back to the business of preaching the Bible will soon see their churches shrivel and die—because, after all, the Word of God is the only message that has the power to give spiritual life.

And, frankly, the death of the fad-driven churches will be a good thing in the long term. It's something I hope I live long enough to see.

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How shall we then BlogSpot?

• Aaron Armitage broke his long, uncomfortable silence just so he could be BlogSpotted.
  
• Joe at "The Potter's Clay" shares my sentiments about the way language is commonly used to disguise the truth.
  
• Daniel up in Winnipeg got a bang out of my post on Fad-Driven® Churches.
  
• Brad Huston says I broke his message—or at least misunderstood his point.
  
• Kevin Johnson thinks I look like someone he saw in a movie. Since it's a movie I would never deliberately watch, I'll have to take his word for it. I'm sticking with Starbucks, too.
  
• Sherry Early remembers Isaac Watts's birthday. Hey, Sherry:
  
  1. You have a cool blogdesign.
     
  2. I mentioned Isaac Watts, but only once in passing. I meant to include this picture of his grave marker:
     
     ...but I forgot. Thanks for the reminder.
     
  3. Happy birthday to Isaac.
     
  4. I renamed the post you linked to, and it destroyed your link. If you want to fix it, here's the correct link.
  
  (Note to everyone: I renamed all the "Monday Menagerie" posts with Roman numerals, so if you were linked to one, your link probably stopped functioning. Sorry. I didn't realize that would happen when I renamed them.)
  
• Scott Zeller's reflections on Edwards's "resolutions" in light of the current situation are well worth reading.
  
• Brad Williams explains why there were tears all over the box when he delivered your pizza.
  
• Rob Ziegler has been unleashed on the unsuspecting blogosphere. If someone gets hit upside the head with a soccer ball, don't say I didn't warn you.
  
• Doug Burtt lobs another empty at my commenters from the darkened safety of the tavern.
  
• Frank Turk evidently considers me a nobody. I'm not sure what's up with the picture of a flasher in Frank's new blogdesign, but fortunately, his content is normally better than his graphics.
  
• The Sinner over at "Kudzu Gully" makes the most pitiful plea yet in his shameless attempt to get BlogSpotted.
  
• Tulip Girl wonders whether I will have more to say about Ezzoism. Stay tuned.
  
• Dan Paden has good advice for pastors and church leaders. This is my paraphrase, not Dan's words, but here's the gist of it: quit dumbing down your teaching. The widespread doctrinal ignorance today doesn't mean Christians are stupid; it does mean they aren't being well taught.
  
• Kim at "The Upward Call" tries to send any disgruntled Ezzoites who may be looking for a fight over here. She thinks I'm a lout and a barbarian but notices that I have one redeeming feature: my beagle, Wrigley.
  
• Will at "Prydain" wishes I were wrong (as do I), but thinks I might have a valid point. One of his commenters opines that I may have been a little too hard on "Forty Days of Purpose." I'll go this far: I agree that Rick Warren's material is a vast improvement over some of the fare one might be exposed to in the typical episcopalian environment, but I still find scant encouragement in that.
  
• Abednego at "Parableman" has some helpful thoughts about hell.
  
• Mark at "Give Me Back My Bullets" reminds us that we've been here before.
  
• The surfer dude at "Step Onto Liquid" wonders if blogging is beneficial at all. I'm off to the beach for the rest of the day.
  
• John Schroeder adds a couple of hearty amens.
  
• Milton Stanley likes John Schroeder's response.
  
• rev-ed at "Attention Span" will think about it and get back to us later.

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Monday Menagerie VII

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to esoteric and offbeat things, in the hope that these will supply learning experiences for us all.

Tiger Balm Gardens

On my first trip to Asia in the early 1980s, I encountered Tiger Balm for the first time. I love the stuff. It's an herbal ointment with almost magical properties.

My mom always thought Vicks® VapoRub® was the perfect remedy for everything. Tiger Balm is way better—like Vicks® on steroids. And the Tiger Balm fragrance is ten times better, too. (Regular and extra-strength Tiger Balm are different. They are even different colors. I recommend you try them both. They both beat the aroma of Vicks®, and any kind of Tiger Balm also renders Ben-Gay® totally unnecessary.)

So, anyway, ever since that first trip to Asia, I have always kept a supply of Tiger Balm on hand.

When I visited Singapore again a year later, I stayed with some friends whom I had met on that first trip to Asia—Adrin and Jennifer. (They are already famous at my website because they are the ones who introduced me to Durian.) Naturally, when they offered to take me to a local tourist attraction called "Tiger Balm Gardens," I was instantly intrigued. I had no idea how supremely interesting—and unforgettable—the day would turn out to be.

Tiger Balm Gardens was one of Singapore's earliest postwar tourist attractions. It was originally the site of a mansion (Haw Par Villa) built in 1937 and owned by brothers Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par, founders of the company that manufactures Tiger Balm. Boon Par died in Rangoon during World War II, and Boon Haw demolished the mansion after the war. But Boon Haw maintained the gardens, opening the grounds to the public for family picnics and as a free gathering place. From the earliest days, various snake charmers, jugglers, charlatans, and street vendors made it a picturesque place to visit.

For the rest of his life, Boon Haw continued making improvements on the place, adding a massive, colorful dragon statue and other brightly colored figurines made of glazed earthenware, picturing familiar scenes from Chinese folklore, Confucian tradition, and beloved children's tales. His aim was to teach Confucian values to children in a vivid and memorable way.

The Confucian concept of hell

The centerpiece of it all—and everyone's first choice as the most stunning and unforgettable attraction in the whole menagerie—is a section known as "The Ten Courts of Hell."

It's a graphic and disturbing depiction of the many horrifying tortures that make up the complex concept of hell in the Confucian tradition.

"Hell" is really a misnomer. The tortures in Confucian hell are not everlasting punishments; they are actually an intricate system of purgatory where the souls of sinners are prepared for the next incarnation by being subjected to a series of judgments that determine the degree of a person's guilt and the extent and the duration of the punishment.

Here is where several generations of Singaporean parents have brought their children to scare them straight. Some of the depictions of torture in "The Ten Courts of Hell" are horrifically detailed and sadistic—far too graphic to post at PyroManiac. If the attraction were a movie, it would earn at least an R rating. I was left shaken by it, and (having been employed for a couple of years as night watchman in a morgue) I assure you, it takes a lot to rattle me.

Gallery of horror

Nonetheless, here are a few selected images that I hope will give you the flavor of Boon Haw's hell without offending anyone too badly:

Someone who forgot to return a library book is sawn in half with a big razor

People who lacked filial piety are crushed between two massive stones, while another guy nearby is flogged with a flesh-tearing whip

A troublesome relative is disemboweled by a giant thing that looks like an Oral-B® PowerHead® toothbrush

Drug users are tied and fried on a red-hot copper pillar

A rumor-monger has his tongue cut out with a razor by a Smurf

People who cheated or cursed are thrown onto a tree-branch where knife-blades have sprouted

Confucian eschatology

I have tried to cobble together from the literature a basic explanation of the concept of hell depicted at Tiger Balm Gardens. I don't know if what follows is the canonical Confucian doctrine of hell, or simply Aw Boon Haw's individual version of it. In any case, here is how I understand the images and explanations of the Courts of Hell at Haw Par Villa. If someone with expertise in this area notices any details I have got wrong, please leave a comment.

Scripture indicates that a degree of knowledge about God ("even his eternal power and Godhead") is innate in every human heart, and those who suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness are utterly without excuse (Romans 1:18-20). I believe something in every healthy human conscience tells us that "every one of us shall give account of himself to God" (Romans 14:12). And that's why I find the Confucian doctrine of hell fascinating—because it is a reminder that the concept of hell itself seems to be an essential element of our intrinsic understanding of justice.

Unfortunately, in this case, it is a corrupted and superstitious idea of hell:

First Court of Hell The first court involves a preliminary judgment where the "good" are separated from evildoers. Those deemed virtuous may pass over the golden bridge to paradise. (Incidentally, the bliss of heaven is not eternal in Confucian eschatology, either; it is merely a temporary respite before the next reincarnation.) The guilty are forced to repent at "the mirror of retribution"; then they are taken to the appropriate courts of hell. SINS PUNISHMENTS Second Court of Hell petty theft and pilfering inflicting physical pain gambling prostitution grifting thrown into a volcanic pit frozen into blocks of ice drowned in pools of blood Third Court of Hell ingratitude disrespect drug addiction trafficking in illegal goods tied to a red hot copper pillar and grilled heart cut out Fourth Court of Hell dodging taxes business fraud lack of filial piety pounded by stone mallet body ground between two large stones Fifth Court of Hell money lending plotting against others for their property thrown onto a hill of knives Sixth Court of Hell pornography cheating swearing wasting food misuse of books body sawn in half thrown onto a tree of knives Seventh Court of Hell rumor-mongering rape suicide tongue pulled out thrown into a wok of boiling oil Eighth Court of Hell causing family discord cheating in school harming others body dismembered intestines pulled out Ninth Court of Hell robbery neglect of old or young limbs and head chopped off crushed under boulders Tenth Court of Hell After suffering whatever punishments were suited to their sins, penitents are subjected to final judgment and cleared of any further guilt. They are then brought to "The Pavilion of Forgetfulness," where they drink a magic tea that wipes away every memory of their past lives. Next, they arrive at The Wheel of Reincarnation, where, depending on how they lived their previous lives, they are reincarnated in various human or animal forms. Whether you return as a mollusk or a monarch depends on the life you lived before. So, it seems, even the tortures of hell don't fully atone for sin.

See also:

• "The 10 Courts of Hell and other Myths at the Singapore Haw Par Villa," by Jehpin Liew
  
• "10 Reasons to Enter The Courts of Hell: Revisiting Haw Par Villa 28 Years Later"
  
• "Haw Par Villa: Land of Ancient Chinese Mythology"
  
• The Myths of Haw Par Villa (extensive, sometimes disturbing site with an excellent section on "The Ten Courts of Hell")

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Five things that really brightened my morning:

1. Joe Carter's fine defense of humble certitude.
   
2. Justin Taylor's post on Mark Driscoll, with a link to an e-mail where Driscoll chides the growing numbers of "young guys denying substitutionary atonement and the like after drinking from the emerging church toilet."
   
3. Kevin Bauder's analysis of medieval civilization, currently posted at SharperIron.
   
4. Kurt (the AfroSwede) Nordstrom's alarm over some of the commentors who frequent PyroManiac. They scare me sometimes, too, Kurt. (And for the record, by the way: I am not volunteering for the Luther role. Since Luther looked a little like Brian Dennehy, I want to nominate Tim Irvin for that.)
   
5. Tim Challies' riff on my Saturday blogpost. A great improvement on what my post said. Tim summed up the point perfectly with this: "We do not need a second Reformation. The first Reformation returned us to the principles that shape and define a biblical faith. What we need are Reformers, men who will humbly return to the Scriptures, asking the Holy Spirit to guide them to the truth, sparking the light that it might once more shine brightly into the gloom that is evangelicalism, and the gloom that is the world around us. We do not need a second Reformation: we need to rediscover the first."

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The worst of times: Evangelicalism in critical condition

With the wild popularity of so many evangelical fads like "Forty Days of Purpose"; the lucrative success of the Christian publishing and contemporary Christian music industries; the growing influence of the "emerging church" phenomenon; and a recent cover story by Time magazine featuring "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America," lots of evangelicals might be tempted to think these are the best of times for their movement.

My own assessment would be that evangelicalism's spiritual condition at the beginning of the twenty-first century is reminiscent of the medieval church just prior to the Protestant Reformation.

No, I take it back. Things are much worse among evangelicals today than they were in the Catholic Church in those days. Modern and postmodern evangelicalism is just like medieval Catholicism was—only more superficial.

Think about it: Luther was provoked by Tetzel, the charlatan fund-raiser who went through Europe promising people indulgences in return for money so that the Pope could build St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. We've got at least a dozen Tetzels appearing daily on TBN, promising people material prosperity in exchange for money. Jan Crouch uses that money to make the sets of the TBN studios more garish and more gaudy than any room in the Vatican, and she has added so many tawdry pink hair extensions to her hairdo that it now rivals the size of the dome on St. Peter's.

Tetzel peddled his indulgences with trite songs and sayings ("As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs"). Modern evangelicals are experts in writing doggerel and banal platitudes and have even made silly, superficial songs the centerpieces of all their liturgy.

The medieval church was overrun with superstition. We've got people reciting the prayer of Jabez every day who are convinced it's a magic formula that will bring them wealth and good luck.

The Medieval church produced Niccolò Machiavelli, the cynical and unscrupulous political theorist who believed the end always justifies the means. We've got a host of evangelical celebrities with shady reputations, from Gary Ezzo to Benny Hinn. We've also got a thousand church-growth "experts" who insist pragmatism is the only workable philosophy for the church today, and that we will never "reach" this generation until we first study which way the winds of popular culture are blowing and follow along.

Evangelicalism as a movement has bought that lie. That's why we have so many Fad-Driven® Churches and so few where Christ is honored and His Word obeyed. That's why the gospel is not only in eclipse but actually under attack on several fronts within evangelicalism.

We don't need more hype and activity and mass movements. We need the pure light of God's Word—"the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises" (2 Peter 1:19).

The alternative is a postmodern darkness that is shaping up to be worse than the murkiest spiritual gloom of the Dark Ages. We could sure use a new generation of Reformers.

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Dog Days (continued)

• Andrew Cairns at "Wonderings" notes that "Postmodernism is fast becomming the terrorist’s best friend."
  
• Brad Williams doesn't think he could take getting BlogSpotted. But I have to BlogSpot him; he has some good observations and valuable ideas about the value of trash-talking the enemy in the war on terror.
  
• Agent Tim likes the graphics here. He wondered aloud if I use Photoshop.® Actually, no. I have a copy of Photoshop Elements, which I rarely use. I do most of the graphics here and on my website with Paint Shop Pro. It's cheap and easy and I have been using it since about 1996. The truth is, I spend very little time on graphics for the blog. Many of them start with pictures I take with a digital camera (Nikon). The picture above is a dog I spotted tied up outside a McDonald's somewhere in Tennessee in 2003, while Darlene and I were driving home from our son's wedding in Virginia. (The guy who owned the dog saw me from inside the restaurant. He came out indignant, untied the dog, and left. I dunno what the bandage or whatever is on top of the dog's head. I think he had just had his ears cropped. But it looks like a sad little party hat that really completes the melancholy look on the dog's face. I also don't know the dog's name, but I nicknamed him "Jabez.") I do also occasionally rip off and modify a .gif or a .jpeg from the Web. If I need a quick image of, say, a Zippo® lighter, I'll find one by using Google's image search feature. It takes me 5-10 minutes at most to modify an image. For example, I found this image of a "Mind the Gap" sign through Google. It was from a collection of photos documenting a trip to London with a group of students from the University of Texas at Dallas—the 2002 McDermott Scholars. I liked that photo because it included all the primary colors. The photo was unattributed and had no copyright notice, so I appropriated it without compunction. First I scaled it down and cropped it:
  
  To avoid messing up my blog's template, the image can be no wider than 400 pixels. That determines the scale of every image for me. I also add a single-pixel red line around most images. Next, I erased the existing graffito and added one that says PyroManiac. Voila.
  
  Time spent: about 3.75 minutes.
  
• Speaking of graphics, Adrian Warnock has fittingly themed his blog with Big Ben, courtesy of the PyroManiac's graphics factory. Looking good.
  
• Rebecca Stark apparently doesn't want to be BlogSpotted again, so she has tried to refain from saying anything clever. My standards must be slipping, because even that was clever enough to catch my notice.
  
• Carla Rolfe cited my remarks about the emerging church at "Emergent No," and it generated quite a flood of comments. It seems the tolerance vigilantes are not very happy with the PyroManiac.
  
• Scott at "Scattered and Covered" also thought my observations on the EC were "a little over the top." And I thought I was being fairly restrained. I'll have much more to say about the follies of the "emerging church" in the days to come. If you think what I already said was over the top, I'm guessing you're really not going to like the rest of what I have to say.
  
• Mailman at "A Firm Nail" "generally" agrees with my remarks about the BBC's language scruples, and how postmodern ambiguity undermines true justice. I'm disappointed. I was hoping he'd say I nailed it.
  
• Jeri Massi is not happy about the war in Iraq.
  
• Tim Ake liked my thoughts on how our use of language is increasingly being used to obscure the truth about things.
  
• So did Joe at "The Potter's Clay."
  
• Brad Huston, on the other hand, thinks those of us who want to see terrorists brought to justice are guilty of "legalism."
  
• Paul at "Cup of Coffee Talk" is jealous of Chris Pixley. No wonder. Pixley has made one vacuous post, and already he has four comments and a BlogSpot. Think of it like this, Paul: all the pressure is on Chris. You can post or not post whatever and whenever you like. But if Pixley doesn't come up with something profound soon, he'll never live it down.
  
• Jon Trainer wonders if complaining is the key to getting BlogSpotted. Not necessarily. But I guess it doesn't hurt, either.

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One more thing about language games and the politics of war and justice...

I have another thought about political correctness and our use of the word terrorism. Someone will doubtless try to frame this as a contradiction of what I posted yesterday, but it's really just the flip side of the same point:

Sometimes the term terrorism itself is employed in a way that deliberately muddies reality. Such as in the expression "The War on Terror."

It irks me that we always speak of the current unpleasantness as a battle against "terrorism." It troubles me that everyone from George Bush to Billy Graham is so keen to insist that Islam is "a religion of peace," as if this fight had nothing to do with Islam but were only about the principle of terrorism. And it drives me insane to see how the mainstream media, the government, and even most Western religious leaders are programed so that they regularly, automatically, and mindlessly intone the same mantra: "The troubles in the world today have nothing whatsoever to do with religion."

In the days when plain-speaking was deemed a virtue, we would have called the strife that now dominates western society what is in reality: a war against radical Islamists and their fanatical belief system. As a matter of fact, the conflict that dominates world news today has everything to do with religion. The aggressors have all been fanatical adherents to one religion in particular.

Here's a clue: It's not the Amish.

Let's face the truth honestly: There is not a great deal of diversity among our enemies in the present conflict. They are all members of the growing jihadist death-cult that cannot be divorced from Islamic fundamentalism. Unless we identify the enemy clearly and focus our energies on defeating that enemy (instead of the vague and ethereal principle we call "terrorism"), we cannot hope to win the war.

Furthermore—as difficult as this is for our secularized, humanistic, postmodernized culture to come to grips with—all religions are not the same. False religion is downright deadly. It is sometimes just as deadly in a worldly and temporal sense as it is in the eternal and spiritual sense. False religion is always evil, though not always manifestly so. But in this case, it is overtly and conspicuously diabolical. Unless we face that fact honestly and courageously, we will never defeat the evil.

This is not a good time in American history for the language police to have the upper hand. It's not an auspicious climate for postmodern sensitivities to color our country's foreign policy. And my expectation is that things are going to continue to get worse for our side in "The War on Terror"—until we wake up and declare war on the Islamofascists, who, after all, are the real enemies here.

Lest we forget:

From the Washington Post, 13 September 2001

AN IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to make something perfectly clear, because I am pretty sure someone will try to twist the point I am making: I'm not calling for any kind of hostility against all Islam. I realize not all Muslims affirm the radical principles of the jihadists. There are indeed many peaceful Muslims. I know some of them personally. My complaint here is not with them. The point I am making in the above post is about their fundamentalist brothers who think they have a mandate from Allah to exterminate "infidels." (It needs to be said, however, that if the genuinely peaceful Muslims had been more outspoken from the start in condemning the radical extremists in their midst, the problem would not be nearly as great as it is today. You can bet that if Pentecostals started beheading apostates—or even if they merely threatened to break the kneecaps of people who disagree with their beliefs—all of Christendom would rise together in unison to condemn them loudly. For whatever reasons—perhaps related to the ease with which radical Islamists issue fatwas—that sort of clear and high-volume protest has not even yet been forthcoming from the Muslim "mainstream.") However, I am not suggesting that because our enemies are driven by religious belief, we ought to wage a "holy war," and advance a different religious cause in favor of Christianity. Biblical Christianity has never advanced at the point of a sword, nor should it (John 18:36). What I am saying is that our adversaries (who are not merely America's foes, but the mortal enemies of all civilized culture) have formed a large and growing jihadist death-cult. Until that cult is either subdued or eliminated, the strife will continue. Those administering the war on behalf of the civilized world need to face up to that fact and plan their strategy accordingly. The jihadists have made it clear that they will not be pacified. They do not fear death, but love it. Their belief system is the problem, even though the hypertolerant postmodern mind is loath to admit it—or to say that anyone's beliefs are "wrong." But if we don't break out of the postmodern miasma and come to grips with reality here, civilization itself will continue to be tortured and tormented by misguided religious thugs acting in the name of Allah. I'm sorry to be so un-PC, but reality itself is not PC. If you doubt me, I can point you to a couple of websites that have graphic photographs of several beheaded victims of the jihad.

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Cack-handed circumlocution and cold-hearted moral ambiguity as "aids to understanding"

Darlene and I were in south-central London (Southwark) when we got the earliest reports last Thursday that the London Underground had been brought to a halt by something. First reports were unclear. It was a power surge; multiple power surges; a series of explosions. No one at first seemed quite sure what had happened.

We returned as soon as possible to our hotel room to try to make some phone calls overseas. Darlene flipped on the BBC, and it was there that we—and most of London—first learned definitively that what we feared and expected most was indeed true: this was a series of coordinated terrorist attacks.

Early reports from the BBC freely referred to the unknown perpetrators as "terrorists," of course. Terrorists is the right word. It describes precisely what the perps were.

It now appears, however, that such plain language violated the BBC's own canons of political correctness. The Beeb regards the term terrorist as derogatory and therefore unsavory. Such words are officially deemed undesirable in all BBC news reports.

BBC editorial guidelines instruct writers in the nuances of careful, creative ambiguity, and they specifically cite the word terrorist as a prime example of what not to say: "Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgements. The word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding."

Therefore as soon as the initial shock from the attacks subsided, a memo went out by e-mail, reminding all BBC writers about the policy. The early accounts of the attacks (originally written while the news was breaking) were subsequently re-edited to refer to the terrorists with a more neutral term: "bombers." (Gene at "Harry's Place" has posted a few examples of The Beeb's revisionism.)

In response to queries about this issue, a BBC spokesperson insisted, "The word terrorist is not banned from the BBC." But another look at the editorial guidelines reveals this (and I quote): "We should try to avoid the term [terrorist], without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them." In other words, if someone else uses the T-word and you quote it, that's OK. But the word terrorist is indeed officially banned from the BBC's own writers' descriptions of terrorist acts. Those who make policy at the BBC are apparently convinced their own "credibility" would be undermined by such unbridled moral and linguistic clarity.

Thus yesterday's BBC stories about the suicide bombings in Netanya were devoid of any mention of "terror," "terrorism," or "terrorists." The organization known as Palestinian Islamic Jihad—rank terrorists who have repeatedly claimed credit for many suicide bombings and other acts of terror, and whose central business seems to be the recruiting and outfitting of various kinds of bombers who deliberately target innocent civilians—are never properly referred to as a "terrorist" organization by The Beeb. Palestinian terrorists are always referred to with words that don't have such strong "emotional or value-judgment" connotations. Those guys blowing up mothers and babies on public buses are merely "militants."

Now we see that the BBC won't deliberately refer to suicidal killers as "terrorists" even when they bomb civilians on the London Underground. No, the geniuses who drive editorial policy at The Beeb are convinced that neutral and ambiguous expressions are much better aids to "understanding."

It's one of the amazing and disturbing ironies of our generation that so many of the gatekeepers in the world of professional journalism (whose main business ought to be communication) subscribe to the postmodern hypothesis that double-talk and euphemism actually increase "understanding," while clarity is actually deemed an impediment to communication.

And it's not just the BBC, unfortunately. While we're at it, let's be really blunt: the same philosophy drives most of the mainstream news media. And the same sort of genteel wordsmithing is also ubiquitous in the academic world, in the world of theological dialogue—and more and more in everyday public discourse.

It all stems from several basic assumptions that have been uncritically adopted by multitudes over the past half-century: "Conversation" is invariably a better option than combat. Uncertainty is always intellectually superior to strong convictions. And moral and ethical neutrality is clearly more desirable than the hopelessly medieval belief that objective standards of good and evil exist.

Postmodernism, not merely liberal media bias, is the real culprit here.

Now, don't misunderstand. I would by no means suggest that war is always superior to peace talks, that dogmatism is inherently better than diffidence, or that neutrality per se is wrong. I believe the duty spelled out in Romans 12:18 is binding: "If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men." And "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God" (Matthew 5:9).

Nonetheless, Scripture also teaches that the soldier, policeman, or executioner who wields a sword against an evildoer is doing something good. "He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil" (Romans 13:4).

By the way, miscreants and evildoers do exist, although value-judgments are sometimes necessary to identify them. Moreover, it is gross injustice to insist on always remaining morally neutral. True justice requires not only the ability to recognize evil, but also a willingness to punish it.

In other words, there are clearly times when combat is called for and "conversation" with an evildoer is folly. In some cases, strong convictions are needed and any pretense of benign deference is immoral.

That goes for journalists the same as anyone else—or it ought to.

Yet the high priests and priestesses of the mainstream media remain blindly committed to their credo: moral neutrality is the one permissible dogma of this postmodern era.

It is a particularly foolish—and potentially fatal—article of faith in an age of Islamofascist terrorism.

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Dog Days

Oh, the monotony. . .

I'm too busy to write much of substance today, and I'm not in a frame of mind to try to be provocative. I'm very sorry to add to the ennui of what is shaping up to be a bad blogweek. Both the Thinklings and Li'l Brudder's Tavernfolk are already pretty high strung, though (see below). So if you're looking for something spell-binding, give them a visit. In one place they're fighting like schoolgirls, and in the other, they're posting about their schoolgirl crushes. No way I want to try to compete with that.

Meanwhile—

Here's some quick BlogSpotting to tide you over, at least until tomorrow:

• Mark Gibson bites his tongue, but not hard enough. Elsewhere, he explains why he's not having me over for steaks. Hey, Mark! I like bratwurst, too.
  
• Joshua Duncan mines my blog for decent bloglinks.
  
• Chris Pixley hasn't posted much of anything yet, but I can't wait to hear what he has to say.
  
• Bryan in Winnipeg wishes I would take a leap.
  
• Doug Burtt takes my criticisms of the "emerging church" personally, and the mere mention of the subject starts a 36-hour catfight among patrons at the local beer garden.
  
• Editor, Living Room Section thinks the homeschool moms who frequent my blog with their dictionaries and grammar books dropped the ball when they stopped by "Editors in Pajamas." I can attest from my own experience in the publishing world that the very finest editors need help with spelling at times. After all, that's what proofreaders (and homeschool moms) are for. So let's work a little harder out there, OK?
  
• Jared at "Thinklings" notes that it's been more than a week since I wrote anything that piqued his interest. Sorry, Jared. I got so mezmerized by the veritable flood of engrossing posts about the Thinklings' recent quilting party that I guess I lost focus, because I was all worried about where De went and everything. Besides, when the standard of "interesting" is defined by a two-and-a-half-year-long discussion about the color of Gatorade, it can be really discouraging for a tyro like me. But I've been toying with the idea of posting a picture of some maggot-infested filet mignon and starting a thread called "What Color Is This Meat?" I realize that wouldn't even begin to measure up to De's recent posting of a Relient K album cover, and the stunningly provocative commentary he included with it; but, hey—I'm just one guy and a neophyte to blogging. I'm watching you guys and trying to learn. Please bear with me.
  
• Tony Kummer is going to have to install some censorware on his computer.
  
• Heather from New Brunswick admits that she has been stealing stuff.
  
• Suzi at "My Own Thoughts" shares her thoughts about worship styles. She found her way here from Jon Schroeder's blog.
  
• Jeri Massi, who is a pretty decent fiction writer (published by my former employer, Moody, no less), links to Pastor Hugh, Dr. Who, and you-know-who. Her whole blog is like a Who's-Who of some of my erstwhile fundamentalist friends. Ive been forgetting to BlogSpot her site. Now she wants to kill me. Actually, she's an eighty-third-degree black belt or something, so in point of fact, I am truly and genuinely frightened of her.
  
• Dave Bish has a friend in Guildford, Paul Huxley, who thinks the world might be safer if I stopped travelling and Dave stopped going to conferences. I hear that all the time.

Now, finally...

Phelps alert:

A word of caution is in order about a certain person who has sometimes commented on posts at PyroManiac under assorted pseudonymns since our launch on June 1. Now she appears to have begun a blog of her own. (It's actually the latest of several abandoned blog-attempts from this deeply troubled individual). Unfortunately, her new blog contains material too blasphemous to link to. Her writing has the distinct flavor of things that have been said and published elsewhere by the infamous Phelps klan of Topeka, KS, and it is my strong suspicion is that she is somehow aligned with that family-cult. If you have never heard of them, consider yourself fortunate. Their website and their activities are a serious blight on the reputation of Christ's church. I bring it up to say I will delete any future comments posted by this person, and I would appreciate it if other commenters would refrain from knowingly engaging her in debate or dialogue of any kind in the comments sections of my blog. Thanks.

The infamous Phelps Web site has long contained a link to . I am embarrassed by this, but there's little I can do to stop them from linking to Spurgeon. In response, I have given them a link in the "Really, Really Bad" section of my bookmarks. I have encountered Phelps family members on line in various forums before, and both the tone and the results of their contributions to any discussion or debate are always the same as the placards they hold up at their infamous protests: utterly profane and perfectly fruitless.

"These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame" (Jude 12-13).

Update: The woman with the blasphemous blog has responded with a denial that she is in any way associated with Fred Phelps. I believe her, because I don't think a Phelps would have enough moral fibre to be properly ashamed. (I once encountered one of the Phelpses using a pseudonymn in a theological forum and confronted her. She was more than happy to admit who she really was.) It would also seem quite out of character for a Phelps to masquerade as a Presbyterian. It's actually even more disturbing, however, to think that there is someone so unbalanced outside the walls of the Phelps compound. What's worse is that this person claims to reside not far from where I live.

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Monday Menagerie VI

My dinner with a true hero of the faith
Revised edition posted at 5:00 pm. HT and many thanks to Noel Piper.

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to esoteric and offbeat things, in the hope that these will supply learning experiences for us all.

Cindy Swanson's recent interview with Noel Piper reminded me of someone whom I had not thought of in a long time: Esther Ahn Kim. She was one of my favorite authors when I was a manuscript editor at Moody Press. (Her Korean name was E-Sook Ahn. She liked the biblical roots of the Anglicized version.)

When Esther was a young woman, she was interned and tortured for six years in a Japanese prison. A young schoolteacher just before the outbreak of World War II, she was singled out during the Japanese occupation of her native Korea because she refused to bow at a Shinto shrine.

Esther was a committed Christian and understood that a public display of idolatry—especially under duress—would dishonor Christ and severely hurt her testimony to her countrymen who were not Christians. So in an action reminiscent of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, she boldly and resolutely remained standing alone in a crowd of thousands of people who submissively bowed on command. As a result, she was consigned to a Japanese detention camp under the most degrading and dehumanizing circumstances until the end of the war. What sustained her and kept her mind busy and full of hope during those bleak and lonely years was meditating on the Scripture she had memorized.

Her remarkable life story (If I Perish) was originally published in 1977 by Moody Press. It was one of the first books I ever edited. (I began my career in publishing in the summer of '76, and the cover copy that was used on the dust jacket of Esther Ahn Kim's book is one of the earliest things I ever wrote that was actually published.) If I Perish is a profoundly moving story of remarkable faith and courage, and Esther Kim was a living example of the goodness of divine providence.

After the war, Esther married Kim Dong-Myung (Don Kim), and they moved to America so that he could study for full-time ministry. While students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, they were appointed as Southern Baptist home missionaries. Together they founded Berendo Street Baptist Church in Los Angeles (still considered the "mother church" of Southern Baptist Korean congregations). Countless Korean church leaders trained there and were disseminated all over the United States. In the 1970s, Esther committed her life story to book form, and Moody Press was fortunate to publish it.

About the time her book was released, Mrs. Kim came to Chicago and visited Moody Press. I don't remember what circumstances kept Don Kim from accompanying her on that trip, but I recall that she was traveling alone and needed someone to help her with transportation while she was in Chicago.

I normally relied exclusively on the Chicago Transit Authority and my own feet for transportation in those days. But since I was officially Mrs. Kim's editor, Moody Press lent me a company car and assigned me the task of transporting her around Chicago for the day. Chicago was unfamiliar to her, but she had several longtime friends from Korea who now lived in Chicago. She had their addresses, and it was my privilege to chauffer her around the city so she could visit these old friends.

She was a very elegant woman, gracious, dignified, and Christlike. Having worked in detail through her life story, I was in awe of this truly great woman. Unfortunately, parts of the day were extremely awkward, mainly because of language and culture barriers. She actually spoke English quite well, but because of her Korean accent, I didn't always understand her the first time, and I kept having to ask her to repeat herself. On top of that, I knew nothing of Korean culture or history, so my attempts to make conversation were clumsy at best. She remained very gracious and polite, but I'll bet she was sick and tired of me before mid-afternoon.

That evening, her last stop was at a Korean restaurant not far from Wrigley Field, right in my neighborhood. She had an old friend who owned and operated the restaurant, and she would be spending the night at that friend's house. My plan was simply to drop her off, return the car, and go home.

But Mrs. Kim graciously invited me to stay and have dinner with her. She wanted me to try Korean food. At the time, Taco Bell burritos were about as far as I had ever ventured into "non-American" food. I knew absolutely nothing about Korean food. (I think that fact had come out pretty clearly in one of my bungled attempts at making small talk.) The woman who owned the restaurant was apparently such a close friend that Mrs. Kim didn't even ask if it was OK to invite me along. She more or less insisted that I must stay and have dinner with them.

Indeed, the friend who owned the restaurant seemed delighted to have me as a guest. Without showing me a menu or asking what I liked, she bustled off into the kitchen. After a very short time (no more than 10-15 minutes) she came back with about four waiters carrying an amazing feast. There were at least twelve courses. It was far more food than I could eat. It would have been enough to keep me going for a week. The best I could do was sample most of the dishes she had prepared.

And the food was absolutely splendid. There was some BBQ beef that was the best I have ever tasted, even to this day. I also had my first taste of kimchi that evening—several varieties, as I recall, all spicy and all delicious. I don't even remember everything they served me at that meal. I do recall vividly that it was all superb.

What I remember best was the soup. Mrs. Kim herself prepared a serving for me, filling a sizable bowl from a large stockpot brought by the waiters. I noticed that she seemed to be taking care to ladle out the best bit of meat and make sure that this one particular morsel was part of my portion. I thanked her effusively as she handed me the bowl of soup she had so specially prepared for me. It had a wonderful aroma. She was obviously enjoying feeding this young single guy whom she probably assumed never ate very well. (Aa a matter of fact, in those days I was training for a marathon, so believe it or not, I looked pretty malnourished.) She was visibly eager for me to try the soup, so I picked up a spoon and immediately began to sample the broth.

That's when the morsel she had so carefully selected for me floated to the top. It was a fish head, eyes still intact and looking at me with a glazed expression. My surprise must have registered on my face, because Mrs. Kim quickly assured me that the fish head was there on purpose, that it was completely edible, and that she considered it the best part of the soup. Not wanting to offend her, I ate the soup, and even tasted the fish head.

That was the moment when the cross-cultural awkwardness disappeared and Mrs. Kim became a friend for life. I only saw her a couple of times after that, but we had forged this unbreakable bond, and it was clear she genuinely liked me. The feeling was mutual.

It was an important lesson about breaking down cultural barriers, and I have often put it to good use on the mission field. Almost every culture has some delicacy or another that the typical American will politely turn his nose up at. I've found if you are willing to try new things, and show a sincere interest in whatever aspects of culture or cuisine your instincts might tell you to turn away from, you can quickly sweep aside the awkwardness of clashing cultures.

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Salmagundi

Leftovers from a week to remember:

• Turns out the first three bombs exploded almost simultaneously. The "official" timeline, cited in the note I added to my Day Seven post, was wrong.
  
• Steven King (features editor of the Belfast Telegraph, who is a totally different kind of writer from horror novelist Stephen King) was in London during the terrorist attacks, and he wrote a fascinating personal account. (HT to Peter Epps, who helped sort out the facts on this one.)
  
• Here's another personal account of the London bombings that particularly interested me. It's by Jon Mackenzie, who was in town to attend the same conference Darlene and I had come to London for. (As a matter of fact, Jon was very graciously bringing me a bag of Minstrels, which I hope he enjoyed. He needed them more than I did anyway. And, after all, it's the thought that counts.)
  
• To those who have complained because my negative assessment of "Live 8" was so wantonly and callously inattentive to the normal conventions of political correctness, I want to remind you that just the day before, I had made a post in favor of whirled peas.
  
• All week, I was continually asked to give my opinion of the "emerging church" movement. Here's the short answer: I think it's little more than the twenty-first century equivalent of "The Church of What's Happenin' Now," and the movement's true patron saint is Reverend Leroy. You can put whatever pretentious mask you want on it; you can dress it up in a tweed jacket with a pipe and teach it to speak in avuncular tones; or you can put it behind a pasty-white complexion and dress it in Gothic black with a full array of tattoos and body piercings. But at the end of the day, it still owes more to Flip Wilson than to 1 Corinthians 1:21-25.

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One more binge of BlogSpotting

I'm just catching up, and there are far too many links to get them all. If I missed you, sorry. You might be thinking, He looked for these links and still didn't find me. What am I, invisible? Actually, I ran out of time and energy. There were also tons of links to my post on the day of the bombings, and there was no way to link back to all of them. Thanks to you all for your prayers and kind wishes.

Notice: Starting with this post, I won't be able to link indiscriminately to every blog where one of my posts is mentioned. From now on, you're going to have to say something really clever, post something especially profound, or insult me in a very creative way to earn a spot in BlogSpotting. The posts have been too long and tedious, and I don't want to bore people. Meanwhile—

• Kate at Under the Sky says she loves "odd items." Naturally, she was delighted to find PyroManiac. She's a home-school mom, and she knows Gollum-speak, so watch out for her.
  
• Michael Spencer, Doug Burtt, and the denizens of the Boar's Head expressed gratitude that Darlene and me were OK. Thanks for the kind words, gentlemen.
  
• Meanwhile, Editor, Living Room Section joins a whole lot of my friends who blame me for the London bombings.
  
• Sven disagrees with almost everything I say, and he enjoys it, too.
  
• John Schroeder gets the point.
  
• Adrian Warnock makes good use of Darlene's photo from July 4. Because of the terrorist interruption, I didn't blog much about my meeting with him July 7, but he's as amiable and interesting in person as he is on line. Thanks for your time that day, Dr. Warnock. We didn't know when we saw you off into the Tube that it was going to be such a wild ride. Glad you made it safely to your destination.
  
• Tony at "Theological Meditations" posts a terrific article on hyper-Calvinism.
  
• Steve, one of "The Fat Triplets" is bound for England. I guess he figures it's safe enough there now that I'm gone.
  
• Missy at "Marsupial Mom" follows up her earlier post, which apparently was quite popular among PyroManiac readers.
  
• Kevin Johnson can't seem to get his mind off stronger beverages than coffee, and he wishes I would blog about beer. Sorry, Kevin. You're looking for a different blog. the PyroManiac's beverage of choice is sparkling water with a twist of lime. (Sometimes coffee, but I usually get my coffee from a source in Seattle.)
  
• Sean Higgins, who is easily impressed, notes that I have been Wikied.
  
• Cindy Swanson liked my post about Bunhill Fields.
  
• Jon at "Misplaced Keys" is on his way to Wally World and dares me to BlogSpot him before he gets off the Holiday Road. Done.
  
• Julana Schutt was glad to read that we are OK.
  
• Scott at "Scattered and Covered" was angry about the terrorist attacks but interested in our news from London.
  
• Bret Capranica also followed our exploits in London.
  
• The Pedantic Protestant is bored with his life and evidently I'm partly to blame.
  
• Bob Bixby is amused and provoked.
  
• Tony Kummer. . . Yes?
  
• Loki Odinsson hopes I'll be more sensitive to his feelings than the last time I linked him. Here's something for you, Loki.
  
• Brandywine Books notes my presence near the terror zone.
  
• Mark Hanson discovers the dictionary. All he needed was one of those home-school moms to conk him on the head with it.
  
• Boyd at Sixsixteen agrees with my remarks about "Live 8." And I agree with him when he calls the emergent church movement the wicked daughter of the seeker movement.
  
• Doug Burtt doesn't really want to get BlogSpotted again, but what the heck. He liked T. David Gordon's 2002 Modern Reformation article on "The Insufficiency of Scripture."
  
• I don't know about you, but I think Tim Irvin (Jabbok) looks just like Brian Dennehy.
  
• Tim Challies wins the prize for his shameless attempt to attract my notice. What's the prize? This link.

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We will return to our regularly scheduled programing

...after this word from our sponsors:



Darlene and I arrived safely home without further incident Friday afternoon. But I was too tired to blog. Now that we're unpacked and back in the swing of normal life, I thought I would catch up on some BlogSpotting. Here is a sampling of various friends and critics around the blogosphere who have mentioned PyroManiac lately:

• Eric Zeller over at FoolishBlog figures I'm already burnt out. He wonders if anyone else has noticed how the quality of PyroManiac has been plummeting lately. He wishes I'd get back to more serious business.
  
• On the other hand, Gavin at The Squawking Cockatiel (all the way from Perth, Australia), lists me among his favorites—saving the best for last. He wryly notes that I wasn't the only pyro-fiend in London last week. (I figured it was only a matter of time before someone would make that connection.)
  
• La Shawn Barber did her usual great job of reporting and commenting on the very latest developments on the day of the the London bombings She noted that the PyroManiac was on the scene in London.
  
• Michael Bates thinks Darlene's July 4 photo is really cool. If you missed our postcard from London on July 4 and want to see what a brilliant photographer my wife is, click here. She had gone to Westminster bridge to hear the noonday chimes (because she had never been that close when Big Ben struck twelve). At the stroke of noon, the Red Arrows flew over. Darlene quickly pulled out the camera and turned it on just in time to snap this photo. Unfortunately, the noise of the Red Arrows' nine T.MK1 Hawks drowned out the sound of Big Ben, so hearing the noonday chimes remains an unfulfilled wish of hers. But the photo was worth it. I've been telling you she is wonderful. Now you know.
  
• Mark Hanson is mystified by my speaking in tongues. But he nonetheless gives me an honorary PhD. (By the way, for instant online help deciphering any unfamiliar words or foreign expressions, Dictionary.com is the latest thing.)
  
• Dr. Andrew Jackson at Smart Christian says he would rather be knocked unconscious than travel with me. Does this mean you don't want me to come to the Christian Blogosphere Convention, Dr. Jackson?
  
• Mark Gibson thought of me when he learned of the London bombings, and it provoked him to think deeply about the mystery of divine Providence and the truth that God is sovereign over every intricate detail of our lives.
  
• James Spurgeon, better known as The Howling Coyote, made a great post about the doctrinal downgrade, its pattern, its subtlety, and the ultimate good that God ultimately brings even from seasons of apostasy. At the end, he virtually begs to be BlogSpotted.
  
• Kim at The Upward Call thinks the ambience here at PyroManiac reeks too much of old gym shoes. But she approves of my article on "The Second Great Commandment" in July's TableTalk. She's a home-school mom. Say no more.
  
• Charmaine Yoest was liveblogging from the G8 summit. she paused to give a hat tip to the PyroManiac.
  
• Finally, I have no clue who Thucydides 67 is, and she hasn't even really launched a blog yet. But judging from her preliminary blogroll, the blog is going to be—um, interesting. [Note: I edited this entry and removed the link, because some grossly blasphemous material was posted at the blog in question. I'm leaving the reference as a cautionary alert to the blogosphere. See also the comments below, and the July 12 blogpost (above) titled "Dog Days." It's probably best to avoid "Thucydides 67" if at all possible.]
  
• But, then, Josh Hicks reminds me that there's no such thing as "bad" publicity.
  

That's all I can do for now. I haven't attempted to be comprehensive. But I'll probably do more short BlogSpotting posts as the week grinds on.

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A London Journal—Day Eight

An amazing week in London

OK, it goes without saying that this week was absolutely unforgettable. It's a week that will surely go down in London history as one of the busiest, strangest, most hectic, most glorious, and most tragic weeks ever. It began with the massive Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, built up to the euphoria about winning the Olympic bid, and then finished with the trauma and outrage of the terrorist bombings. For London, the first week of July 2005 was like the summer of '69 packed into one week.

For me, however, it's been a more or less typical week on the road.

Someday when I have nothing else to blog about, I might post a long chronicle of all the weird things that have happened to me on various trips around the United States and overseas.

Meanwhile, here's an abbreviated summary:

My very first excursion to a foreign land was to India in 1984, and it happened to be the week of Indira Ghandi's assassination. On that same trip, I was caught in a massive hurricane in Madras—locked down overnight in a horrible hotel with no electricity. I was in the Philippines during the overthrow of Marcos. Once during the apartheid era I was in Johannesburg, South Africa when a massive riot there made international headlines.

In 1997-2000, I was in six different earthquakes on four continents: one in Pune, India; one in New Zealand; three in California; and one in Italy. On my way back from India in 1997, I nearly died when a series of unfortunate incidents on a Tokyo-Los Angeles passenger jet landed me in hospital for emergency surgery. (That whole tale is legendary; read it for yourself.)

Once when I was boarding a cruise ship, the baggage handlers dropped a piece of my luggage in the ocean. Another time, I was stranded in the desert when the transmission on my car burned up—forced to spend a miserable week at the height of the summer heat in a crummy motel in the middle of nowhere in Arizona while a guy who had no clue what he was doing tried to fix my transmission. (He ended up in jail for spousal abuse before my car was fixed.)

I've experienced every imaginable kind of bad weather, volcano eruptions, canceled flights, emergency landings, car trouble at 1:00 AM on a deserted road, and (just last year) a high-speed blowout at midnight, 50 miles from the nearest tow truck.

Stuff always goes wrong when I travel.

I admit I feel somewhat guilty about it. Good friends of mine refuse to travel with me. I've been told I'm like Fearless Fosdick, the character in Li'l Abner who always left disaster in his wake. Fosdick somehow survived everything, but people around him were always getting hurt. The Fosdick Syndrome.

P. J. O'Rourke wrote a book called Holidays in Hell about his experiences in the middle of some of the 20th Century's greatest catastrophes, while he was reporting for Rolling Stone and National Lampoon. He may be the only person on the planet who has met with more disaster on the road than me. But he sought out trouble deliberately. It was his idea of fun. I don't have to look for trouble; it finds me.

So let this be a warning to the citizens of California: I'm on my way home.

Actually, things have gone very smoothly so far this morning. Last night when we got back to our hotel, we tried to book a taxi service to Heathrow. The hotel desk told us it was hopeless; all their regular airport transport services were fully booked until noon today. (Our flight is at 11:00 AM.) Their suggestion was that we simply hail a city cab on the street in the morning.

I knew from experience that would be futile in the early morning on a difficult travel day in Central London (like today is expected to be). So we decided the prudent thing to do would be to get up very early—around 4:00—and get started, in case the trip to Heathrow turned out to be a four- or five-hour ordeal (as it apparently was for some people yesterday). We packed, went to bed after 1:30 AM, got up early, and left the hotel by 4:30.

There were absolutely no cars—and no cabs, either—on the road that early. Just as I expected. So we decided to schlepp our luggage over to Waterloo Station (about half a mile away), where I figured we could most easily get a cab.

Immediately upon leaving the hotel, we conveniently and unexpectedly spotted a trolley from Waterloo abandoned in the sidewalk. (A half mile from the station. Go figure.) So I loaded the heavy luggage on the trolley, and we made it to Waterloo easily in about 12 minutes. The station was virtually abandoned. We saw no one at all but maintenance people. So we went to the nearest cab stand, where we found one cab waiting. I had planned to have him drive us to Paddington, where we could catch the Heathrow Express, but I suddenly had a change of heart, decided the cost of the cab fare was no issue today, and told him to take us to Heathrow.

Amazingly, there was virtually no traffic on the road. It was the fastest, easiest trip to Heathrow I have ever made. We arrived at the terminal at 5:30—just one hour after we walked out of the hotel with all our luggage. We're already through passport control and sitting in the huge departure lounge, surrounded by an eclectic assortment of interesting shops. Darlene got me a drip coffee, extra cream (Venti) and a granola bar from Starbucks.

Things rarely go that smoothly for me.

Anyway, we now have 4 hours to kill in the departure lounge. Fortunately, it's a T-Mobile HotSpot®. (I subscribe to T-Mobile. I love it, except for one irritating thing: you have to pay an additional fee to use it in London.) So I turned Darlene loose in the shops, found an electrical outlet, plugged in, logged on, and checked my e-mail. And while I'm at it, I figured I could post this one last blog from London.

By the way, let me tie up a few loose ends. First, here's a picture of part of the crowd at the School of Theology. For the second year in a row, the conference broke all attendance records. The people at the Met Tab are always very responsive and encouraging. This year, however, the fellowship was unusually warm and friendly. Darlene and I have always been made to feel very much at home when we are here, but this was something special.

It's amazing whom you might meet at the Met Tab. (The first year we were here, we met Jamie, who was a student in London at the time. Now she is Wrigley's vet, working at an animal hospital in Van Nuys.) This year, as usual, people had come from all over Europe and from as far away as Singapore and Australia. It was a great week and a wonderful conference.

Something I haven't followed up on is the computer problem I experienced our first day in London. I'm pretty sure it's a problem with the battery. The computer has shut down without warning four times; always when it was operating on battery power. If I leave it plugged in, it will run indefinitely. So the burning-electrical-component smell I noticed on day one was probably a core meltdown in the battery. I'm glad the computer itself held up.

That's about it. I think I'll go browse through some of the shops in the departure lounge, sample the cologne in the duty-free shop, and see what the morning news readers on the BBC are saying. See you in LA.

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A London Journal—Day Seven

Posted at 8:45 AM—Yo Adrian!


I had breakfast this morning with British überblogger Adrian Warnock at the Starbucks on the lower level of Waterloo Station. I have corresponded with Adrian via the Internet for more than a decade now, but we had never met. My mental image of him was a mustachioed, bespectacled, English gentleman with a sweater and umbrella. He's a medical doctor, you know. Turns out he is a young guy, very engaging. We talked about the blogosphere, theology, preachers and authors we both appreciate, the iMonk, and Jollyblogger. Had a great time. It was too dark in there for Darlene's camera to get a good image, but there it is.

[Note: Moments after I made the above post, a series of terrorist attacks brought all London to a standstill at the height of the morning rush hour. At 8:51 AM, A bomb rocked a London Underground train just leaving Liverpool Street station toward Aldgate. Seven people are confirmed dead in that blast. (In a remarkable twist of irony, former New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani was in London, having breakfast very close to Liverpool Street when the attacks began.) Five minutes later, a second bomb halted an Underground train between the Russell Square and King's Cross stations. Twenty-one people are confirmed dead in that blast. Twenty-one minutes later, at 9:17, a third bomb exploded on another Underground train at Edgeware Station. Seven were confirmed dead in that blast. At 9:47, exactly half an hour later, in Tavistock Place (adjacent to Russell Square, close by the British Museum) a fourth blast opened a double-decker bus like a can of sardines, killing at least two. All transportation systems in central London were immediately shut down. The death toll is expected to rise. As the day wore on and news leaked out, I made the following posts:]

1:00 PM—EMERGENCY UPDATE

The coordinated terrorist attack (news reports are reporting seven major explosions) hit central London just minutes after Darlene and I left Adrian Warnock at the train station this morning. Adrian has e-mailed me to say he and his family are safe, though his brother narrowly missed one of the explosions.

Darlene and I are also safe. We were not in the immediate vicinity of any of the attacks (all of them were north of the Thames; we're south); but cell-phone systems have been shut down for emergency use only, so we've been unable to call friends and relatives. Authorities have also closed Central London so that the Underground trains and buses cannot go in or out. In fact, all London Transport is currently closed. Buses are queuing at Elephant & Castle. Here is a picture taken through the upper-story window of the Metropolitan Tabernacle:

The Scene at Elephant & Castle

Sirens have been blaring nonstop all morning. The School of Theology continues, though attendance seems a little low this morning. We're getting periodic updates on the news between sessions. I most likely won't be able to post a further update until late evening, but we wanted friends and family to know we're OK.

6:30 PM—update on the disaster in London

Injuries from the bombings are reported to be widespread and severe. Ambulances have been coming and going all day. A friend of ours who is a physician was called in to work a special 12-hour shift in the emergency room. There have also been nonstop police sirens (as well as the ambulances) traveling every conceivable direction all day, and the streets this evening were so full of pedestrians it reminded me of India.

Other than that, we are basically insulated from the confusion and tragedy, watching, as you are, only on television. But London officials seem to have things well in hand. I've been amazed at the number of train stations and bus lines that are already repoened. We're hoping things will return to near normal before we have to travel to Heathrow tomorrow morning. If we get through security in time, perhaps I'll blog from the airport lounge. Other than that, this is probably the last you'll see of me before I get back to Los Angeles.

7:00—PM Recapping the School of Theology

Today, of course, was the last day of the School of Theology. Believe it or not, the London bombings barely disrupted the conference. Announcements were made about travel conditions at every break throughout tre day. Other than that, all sessions went on as planned, and all speakers stuck to their planned messages. (I briefly considered doing a special message in the final hour on the goodness of divine providence even in disaster, but on second thought decided to go ahead with my message on as planned, on justification by faith from Philippians 3:9.)

I'd love to give a summary of every message from the conference, but that would take too long, and I couldn't do justice to any of the messages in such a short space. Here are just a few highlights:

• On Wednesday morning, Pastor Chris Buss gave a brilliant message from 2 Corinthians 5:20 on the need to persuade unbelievers with the gospel. He fired a few well-aimed missiles at hyper-Calvinism. Chris has a wonderful accent, and an informal, easy-to-listen-to style. His message was one of the true highlights of the week.
  
  
• Vernon Higham was the next speaker. He has spoken at the School of Theology every year I have been here, and he is always one of my favorites. He has a sweet disposition and a very gentlemanly style—but ironclad convictions. He is a poet, too. (A book of his hymns has been published in a hardcover edition.) He was a pastor in Cardiff, Wales, for many years, but now is busier than ever in itinerant ministry. He's a delightful person, and always interesting to hear.
  
  
• Today, in the earliest afternoon session, Dr. Peter Masters gave a message on evangelistic preaching that made a perfect complement to Chris Buss's Wednesday morning message. He gave a wonderful defense of the gospel's free offer. To say that Dr. Masters is not a fan of John Murray's book Redemption: Accomplished and Applied would be putting it mildly. He objects to Murray's treatment of regeneration as an instantaneous, almost unconscious event. Dr. Masters sees regeneration as a process that subsumes various aspects of God's converting work—effectual calling, conviction, spiritual awakening, conversion, and the genesis of faith. These, he said, usually aren't simultaneous; they occur over time and are the work of God's Word on the mind. That's why evangelistic preaching ought to be persuasive. When an elect person comes to faith, his mind ought to be fully convinced in the process. Dr. Masters said that John Murray, by contrast, seems to regard conversion as so much the work of God that the believer's mind is, in effect, totally passive and may even remain unconscious of the change that has occurred.
  
  Dr. Masters at one point said of Redemption: Accomplished and Applied that in his assessment, "about 25 percent of it is hyper-Calvinistic." He made a very direct appeal for a return to passionate, persuasive, evangelistic preaching. It was a great message, very thought-proroking and well worth listening to. Dr. Masters' opinion on Calvinism and evangelism would seem to have a special credibility in light of the amazing fruits of the evangelistic ministry here at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

I've met at least a dozen people at the conference who are here from Northern Ireland. One particularly interesting guy was converted from Roman Catholicism at age 28. He is now doing evangelism among Roman Catholics. He talked about the difficulty of ministering in a society where the gospel has been politicized. He believes the close linkage between evangelicalism in Northern Ireland and Iain Paisley's political stance has seriously hurt the cause of the gospel in that nation. It reaffirmed my conviction that the church ought to avoid becoming a political lobby.

Anyway, we have a busy last night planned, fellowshipping with some friends, so I must get going. See you later.

11:30 PM—One final update

The BBC are currently reporting the confirmed death toll at 38. At least one of London's morning newspapers already has an early edition that reports 53 dead. Our doctor friend, who works in a hospital in central London but not in the immediate neighborhoods of any of the bombings, reports that multiple victims with amputated limbs have been admitted to that hospital. Television news programmes tonight have shown disturbing pictures of horrible carnage. A massive hunt is underway for the bombers. The death toll will almost certainly rise, and many lives will be deeply impacted by this atrocity.

We have not ventured north of the Thames tonight. Even on the South Bank, however, emergency vehicles are still very active and sirens of all kinds are constantly blaring. After listening to several horror stories about commuter delays, Darlene and I have decided to allow an extra three hours for our trip to Heathrow tomorrow morning. If everything goes well, we should be back in California by this time tomorrow.

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A London Journal—Day Six

Odds n' ends

Congratulations to London, 2012 Olympic host city

When Darlene and I were in London in February, the Olympic Committee were also in town, dining with Her Majesty. London has been campaigning hard to be the host city of the 2012 Olympics, and today they were awarded the games—in a major upset victory over Paris. (Paris has now made three successive unsuccessful bids for the games.) There was a massive crowd in Trafalgar Square to hear the announcement, and the place went wild. Same thing at Waterloo station. Meanwhile, there was bitter mourning in Paris.

Food in London, one last time

Speaking of French losers, let it be noted for the record that I do not agree with Frog president Jacques Chirac about anything. Everything the man says is wrong.

He's got the whole of Britain in an uproar at the moment because of his snide remarks about English cuisine. While I have said English food is bland and restaurants in London are often disappointing, I would not go as far as Chirac, who pronounced English food "the worst in Europe, next to Finland."

In point of fact, one of the worst—and most expensive—meals I have ever had was in Paris, right in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, at a place supposedly renowned for French onion soup. The soup bore the distinct flavor of second-hand cigarette smoke, the bread was stale and tasteless, and even the Coke was flat. So much for French dining.

I realize, of course, the French have a reputation for their cooking, and some of the world's finest cooking schools are in France, but I can attest from personal experience that they are also capable of serving a lousy meal. The main difference between the bad restaurants in England and the bad restaurants in France is that the ones in France are usually more expensive.

Incidentally, several people have very kindly sent me London food and restaurant recommendations. But for the remainder of my time in London (this time, anyway), I'll be tied up with the conference. I won't even have time to try the very intriguing restaurant recommended by my friend Todd Stanton: Locanda Locatelli. Todd says it is his all-time favorite Italian restaurant. Check their menu. Mmmmm. Squid ink and pasta. Now that's my kind of restaurant.

By the way, I got some HobNobs. Whoever recommended those: good call.

The Fourth of July

You saw the fantastic fly-over photo Darlene took on the 4th. We thought it odd that England would take note of the Fourth of July, right? Canadia Day is one thing. American Independence Day? No way. Well, it turns out that the fly-over was not in commemoration of the American holiday. It was a celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II. And yes, those were the Red Arrows. They did it again today when the announcement about the Olympics was made.

The School of Theology

The conference is still going well. Today was a long day—with preaching from 10:00 AM till 9:00 tonight, breaks only at mealtimes. I was going to try to post summaries of all the messages, and I actually started writing them, but it became too much. Tapes, CDs, and DVDs of the conference will be available from the Met Tab Bookshop. Get them.

Anyway, I can hear Big Ben tolling 11:00 PM. I've got to go to bed. I have an early meeting with our friend Adrian Warnock at Waterloo tomorrow morning.

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A London Journal—Day Five

A report of the goings-on at the Metropolitan Tabernacle

...and did you know that Louisiana is the pelican state?

The School of Theology is underway. It began this afternoon with three messages—one each from Jack Seaton, James Grier, and Chris Hand.

Jack Seaton's message was on the nature of true faith. He illustrated faith's submission with the example of Mary's surrender to the Lord's will. Jim Grier followed that with his first message in a four-part series on union with Christ, and since he began by talking about Christ's incarnation, the segue from Jack Seaton on Mary to Jim Grier on the incarnate Christ flowed so naturally that it almost seemed as if it had been orchestrated.

Chris Hand began with the first of a two-part critique of The Purpose-Driven Life. He was gracious and measured, but thorough, very pointed, and straightforward. The complete series will be a good introduction to some of the basic problems with the whole "Purpose-Driven" philosophy. Chris does a superb job of distilling a wide variety of information plus documentation into a format that never seems tedious or dry. If you are one of those who has trouble understanding why Rick Warren even has critics, you ought to give this series a listen.

After an extended break for meal time, the schedule called for me to speak twice in a double session tonight. In the first hour, I introduced the series I plan to do this week—which will be a four-part defense of the biblical principles of substitutionary atonement, imputed righteousness, and justification by faith. Then in the second hour, I spoke on justification by faith from 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Here's a thumbnail sketch of my introduction: I began by describing an eerily prophetic article titled "Evangelical Megashift" by Robert Brow that appeared in Christianity Today in 1990. It's no secret that I have little sympathy with the ideas of Mr. Brow. He is a Canadian author and theologian who thinks biblical truth has been given to us in various "models" from which we can pick and choose what we like, rather than propositions which we either believe or don't. (Brow can hardly write three sentences without using the word model. His website, called "The Robert Brow 'Model Theology' Webpage" is prominently listed in my bookmarks under "Really Bad Theology.")

You might think I disagree with Mr. Brow about everything. Not so. He was absolutely right in that 1990 CT article when he predicted that a theological megashift would soon rock the evangelical world. Most, if not all, of his 1990 predictions came true to the letter. He predicted, for example, that the coming generation of evangelicals would abandon or severely modify the ideas of substitutionary atonement, original sin, hell, and the wrath of God. That is exactly what is happening today. The Open Theists have taken all those ideas further than anyone, but various "new-model" ideas—many of the very same ideas Robert Brow was promoting back in 1990—are currently being touted by several well-known evangelical authors loosely aligned with the so-called "emerging church" (such as Brian McLaren, John Eldredge, Steve Chalke, Dave Tomlinson, and many others) who do not necessarily identify with "Open Theism."

The common thread in all these ideas is that they seek to tone down and tame the biblical concept of God—by eliminating the law-court imagery of God as a judge; by redefining his wrath; by questioning the reality of hell; and in general by trying to eliminate any need for the fear of the Lord. This inevitably culminates in an attack on the principles of original sin, imputation, and the idea of the atonement as a penal substitution.

Do away with original sin, imputation, or penal substitution and you undermine the foundations of a proper understanding of justification by faith, the principle of imputed righteousness, and ultimately the gospel itself. These are perilous times. People have itching ears. It's a time when Christians need to be sober, vigilant, and ready to give an answer.

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Monday Menagerie V

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to esoteric and offbeat things, in the hope that these will supply learning experiences for us all.

The Bunhill Fields nonconformist burial ground

My first introduction to Bunhill Fields was an article by Warren Wiersbe in his book Listening to the Giants: A Guide to Good Reading and Great Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980). Wiersbe was my pastor for six years and one of my earliest mentors. His book and its predecessor, Walking with the Giants, introduced me to a number of authors and historical church leaders who became my favorites. The Bunhill Fields article (which, if I recall correctly, was an appendix in Listening to the Giants) made such an impression on me that when I first began to visit London in the early 1990s, I always tried to stop by that little-known non-conformist cemetary, where some of the greatest figures in Puritan and Baptist history are buried.

It's a peaceful place and a rare bit of quiet greenery in a noisy, concrete part of London. To get there, first make your way to the Liverpool Street Station. From there it is an easy quarter-mile walk to City Road. Or you can take your choice of the 214, 275, or 205 buses to City Road. Get off at Wesley's Chapel (which is well marked). Bunhill Fields (which is not so well marked) is directly across the street.



I suspect the cemetary's history is not fully appreciated by the hundreds of modern Londoners who walk through it or eat their lunch there daily. But here you will find the graves of several Protestant luminaries, including John Owen, John Bunyan, John Gill, and John Rippon.

Here's an account of Bunyan's death and burial, from an 1884 work titled Brave Men and Women, by O. E. Fuller:

In the Summer of 1688 he undertook to plead the cause of a son with an angry father, and at length prevailed on the old man not to disinherit the young one. This good work cost the benevolent intercessor his life. He had to ride through heavy rain. He came drenched to his lodgings on Snow Hill, was seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days. He was buried in Bunhill Fields; and the spot where he lies is still regarded by the Non-conformists with a feeling which seems scarcely in harmony with the stern spirit of their theology. Many Puritans, to whom the respect paid by Roman Catholics to the relics and tombs of saints seemed childish or sinful, are said to have begged with their dying breath that their coffins might be placed as near as possible to the coffin of the author of the "Pilgrim's Progress."

Bunyan's tomb was restored in 1862, so what you see here is a Victorian-era monument, but the gravesite is the original:

John Bunyan's tomb

When the refurbished tomb was complete, Charles Spurgeon was asked to be the speaker at a dedication service held May 21, 1862. The weather that day was too rainy to hold a service by the gravesite, so Spurgeon spoke from the pulpit of Wesley's chapel across the street.

You didn't have to be named John, and you didn't have to be a theologian to be buried at Bunhill Fields. This is also the final resting place of literary giants such as Daniel DeFoe (author of Robinson Crusoe), poet William Blake, hymn writer Isaac Watts, and dramatist Joseph Reed. Also prominent are the graves of Susannah Wesley (mother of John and Charles), Thomas Bayes (the mathematician who developed Bayes's theorem of inverse probablity and gave his name to the theory known as "Bayesian probability"), and George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement.

Here's a map to the famous gravesites in the cemetary. And here's a website with more pictures and information.

One of the most intriguing—and disturbing—tombs in the cemetary is the vault of Dame Mary Page. One side of her tomb says, "Here lyes Dame Mary Page relict of Sir "Gregory Page Bart. She departed this life March 4 1728 in the 56th year of her age." The other side includes this timeless epitaph:

"In 67 months she was tapd 66 times
Had taken away 240 gallons of water
Without ever repining at her case
Or ever fearing the operation."

Ouch.

The size of Dame Mary's tomb indicates that she was from a very wealthy family. Indeed, John Gill apparently disapproved of the ostentatious display of honor shown to the Lady at her funeral. Soon afterward, Gill wrote a piece titled "An Essay on the Origin of Funeral Sermons, Orations, and Odes. Occasioned by Two Funeral Discourses, Lately Published on the Death of Dame Mary Page, Relict Of Sir Gregory Page, Bart. The One by Mr. Harrison, with an Oration at Her Interment; and an Ode Sacred to Her Memory. The Other by Mr. Richardson. With some Observations on each of them."

Gill began,

I have for some time been of opinion, that the custom of preaching Funeral Sermons, and making Orations at the interment of the dead, took its rise from some such practice first in use among the Heathens. Two discourses of this kind having been lately published on the death of the Lady Page, both attended with some odd circumstances, which I am sensible you are no stranger to, they have occasioned some fresh thoughts on this subject, the result of which I now send you, together with some few observations on the said discourses, all which I humbly submit to your impartial judgment.

The full essay, which is much to long to reproduce here, is part of the John Gill collection available from Ages Software.

Finally, here's more from Spurgeon on Bunyan:

Bad men die out quickly, for the world feels it is a good thing to be rid of them; they are not worth remembering. But the death of a good man, the man who was sincerely a Christian—how different is that! And when you see the body of a saint, if he has served God with all his might, how sweet it is to look upon him—ah, and to look upon his coffin too, or upon his tomb in after years! Go into Bunhill-fields, and stand by the memorial of John Bunyan, and you will say, "Ah! there lies the head that contained the brain which thought out that wondrous dream of the Pilgrim's Progress from the City of Destruction to the Better land. There lies the finger that wrote those wondrous lines which depict the story of him who came at last to the land Beulah, and waded through the flood, and entered into the celestial city. And there are the eyelids which he once spoke of, when he said, "If I lie in prison until the moss grows on my eyelids, I will never make a promise to withhold from preaching." And there is that bold eye that penetrated the judge, when he said, "If you will let me out of prison to-day, I will preach again to-morrow, by the help of God." And there lies that loving hand that was ever ready to receive into communion all them that loved the Lord Jesus Christ: I love the hand that wrote the book, "Water Baptism no Bar to Christian Communion." I love him for that sake alone, and if he had written nothing else but that, I would say, "John Bunyan, be honored for ever." And there lies the foot that carried him up Snow Hill to go and make peace between a father and a son, in that cold day, which cost him his life. Peace to his ashes Wait, O John Bunyan, till thy Master sends his angel to blow the trumpet and methinks, when the archangel sounds it, he will almost think of thee, and this shall be a part of his joy, that honest John Bunyan, the greatest of all Englishmen, shall rise from his tomb at the blowing of that great trump. You cannot say so of the wicked. What is a wicked man's body but a rotten piece of noisomeness? Put it away, and thank God there are worms to eat such a thing up, and thank him still more, that there is a worm called Time, to eat up the evil influence and the accursed memory, which such a man leaves behind him. All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done." Charles Spurgeon The Wicked Man's Life, Funeral, and Epitaph 13 June 1858

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A London Journal—Day Four

Happy Independence Day!

Photo credit: Darlene Johnson Taken at the stroke of noon from the Westminster Bridge, July 4, 2005

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A London Journal—Day Three

The Metropolitan Tabernacle

The Metropolitan Tabernacle in London is a thriving evangelistic congregation. Anyone who thinks Calvinism is hostile to evangelistic zeal ought to come here and see firsthand what evangelistic Calvinism looks like.

In fact, this church goes against all the wisdom of modern church-growth experts. It's an inner-city church doing a fine job of reaching its own local community with the gospel. The neighborhood is about as diverse as you can imagine, comprising people from more than a half dozen cultures—African, Russian, Asian, Sri Lankan, Indian, Eastern European, English, and more. The congregation, including the diaconate, reflect that heterogeneity. Yet, as far as the style of worship is concerned, there's no accommodation to cultural diversity. The services are pretty much like they were in Spurgeon's day. Nothing is deliberately contemporary or entertainment-oriented. There are no choruses. There are no video screens. There are none of the accoutrements of "contemporary worship." Although all the church-growth experts continually insist such things are absolutely necessary, the conventional wisdom is belied by the reality of what is happening here. The centerpiece in every worship service is the preaching of the Word. It's straightforward and plain. And yet every service I have ever attended at the Tabernacle has been full to capacity.

This plaque was brought from Mentone, France, when the hotel where Spurgeon died was demolished. It's part of the Tabernacle's superb memorabilia collection.

Probably the most significant change in worship "style" since Spurgeon's time is the addition of an organ. But even that is kept carefully in check. It's there to keep tune and tempo on track; you won't hear any embellishments or creative harmonizing from the organist (who is a fine musician nonetheless). Dr. Masters once told me he likes the fact that English hymnbooks usually include the words only, because it encourages people to sing in unison. (That's very different from what I have heard in Wales, where people sing with great gusto in beautiful harmony; or in Scotland, where every man sings what is right in his own eyes.)

And yet, the music at the Tabernacle is hearty and robust and strangely moving. I've been here more than a dozen times, and I would estimate that only about 15 percent of their hymn-tunes are familiar to me. But the tunes are easy to learn, and the hymns are rich in theology and vivid language. Consider this first stanza from a hymn we sang tonight:

Extended on a cursed tree,
Besmeared with dust, and sweat, and blood,
See there, the King of glory see!
Sinks and expires the Son of God.

We also sang "Rock of Ages" to a stately tune that I presume is the original one Augustus Toplady's own congregation would have used. It was much more solemn and dignified than the trite tune most American congregations use—or used in those days long ago when we still sang that great hymn.

Anyway, I love the hymns and the worship here. I realize that puts me in a small minority, but the vibrant congregation here at the Met Tab is a living and very definitive rebuttal to those who think contemporary "style," rather than the power of God's Word itself, is the essential key to church growth.

I spoke today in the morning service on "The Limits of Temptation" from 1 Corinthians 10:13. Tonight Dr. Peter Masters gave a wonderful evangelistic message on Luke 11:27-28. He made good use of his own testimony as an illustration of how unbelievers use various bogus means to defend and preserve their own unbelief in the face of every good reason to believe. I thoroughly enjoyed and was blessed by every aspect of the day.

She's got a tikka to ride

More on London food: My friend Duncan, who is a doctor here in London, informs me that recent surveys show the most popular food in England is not fish and chips, not bangers and mash, not bubble and squeak—but chicken tikka masala?!!

There's no accounting for British tastes. If they like spicy Indian food, why are their own traditional foods so devoid of taste? Or is London's love for ethnic fare merely a rebellion against the generations of blandness in their diet? Seriously, there are kebab shops, Mediterranean restaurants, and spicy ethnic foods of every imaginable kind on every street in London. Not much that is truly American, though. Even Burger King's burgers are assembled by Ethiopians, who seem to think more is better when it comes to condiments. Darlene had a Whopper with cheese that was so dripping with mayonnaise that it proved to be inedible.

And speaking of chicken tikka, one of my longtime favorite London fast foods is a chicken tikka sandwich on a baguette from The Upper Crust, a sandwich franchise you can find in every train station in town. The one I had tonight, however, was laden with about a half cup of mayonnaise and twice more chutney than chicken. It was awful—at least as bad as Darlene's burger. I can't wait till Starbucks opens for breakfast. Strong coffee and a muffin is just what I need.

Speaking of Starbucks, there seem to be almost as many Starbucks stores as drunken Canadians in London. Sometimes you'll see two Starbucks within a block of each other. I'm not sure what that's about, since Brits still prefer tea to coffee. I guess the ubiquitous coffee places cater mostly to tourists. But seeing all the Starbucks helps me understand why Europeans are so worried about American economic imperialism. I'd feel the same way if The Upper Crust moved into Santa Clarita on every corner.

But the Cornish Pasty shops are still welcome.

See you tomorrow. It's a study day for me.

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A London Journal—Day Two

Not your typical day in London



LONDON—I slept till 10:00 AM. I don't know how I accomplished that in spite of the early summer sunrise and traffic noise. But Darlene was quietly watching Wimbledon on the telly when I finally awoke. After I finally got ready to go out, she wanted lunch and I wanted breakfast, so we walked to Waterloo Station, where I went to Starbucks for coffee and a scone. She got a healthy lunch at McDonald's, and we sat together at a nearby table. I love her.

On the way home, I got a haircut at a randomly-chosen barber shop in the neighborhood. Risky, I know. But it looks pretty good.

There was a lot going on in London today: the Wimbledon women's singles final (Venus won), the massive Live 8 concert at Hyde Park (I was nowhere near the place), a one-day cricket match at Lords (the Pommies fought Australia to a rare draw), a televised rugby match from Wellington, NZ, that had people packing into the London pubs (the All Blacks had their way with the British and Irish Lions); and the Gay Pride parade from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square. Oh, and did I mention the massive cleanup job left by last night's Canadia Day reveling?

My thoughts on "Live 8"

I hate to be a killjoy, but I find all the hype, hysteria, and hypocrisy of Live 8 nearly as revolting as the Gay Pride proceedings. Live 8 was broadcasting all day, so it was on the telly in the barbershop and everywhere else I went all day. Is there a silly rich blonde girl anywhere in London today who wasn't handed a microphone so she could emote for the audience about how "no one has done anything about poverty for 20 years, since the original Live Aid Concert"? I doubt it.

The BBC's coverage also featured a non-stop parade of worldly luminaries who have devoted their whole lives to shallowness—now suddenly smitten in conscience and determined in a single day to "Make Poverty History." Someone (I think it was Bob Geldof) convinced everyone that they could end poverty the same way Hal Roach's Little Rascals survived the Great Depression: "Hey! Why don't we put on a show?" The celebrities alternated as if on cue between giddy and grim.

Do sane people really think Western materialism, self-conceit, and celebrity-worship can be leveraged to solve the problem of African poverty? I agree with this guy.

The most disturbing picture of the day was when Snoop Dog took the stage and began spouting appalling profanities in rhythm to a rap beat. The camera cut away to an English dude (probably a banker) in a pin-stripe suit and tie, squinting as if deep in thought and nodding in time to the cadence—as if he really gets it.

Sorry. I know stuff like that tends to make most people get all teary-eyed and sentimental, but it has the opposite effect on me. John 12:3-8 seems appropriate in this context. There you see an artificial concern for the poor motivated by selfish pretext. It's a sin at least as old as Judas. And consider how arrogant the "Make Poverty History" slogan is, in light of Jesus' words in verse 8.

Anyway, to something only slightly less dour—

More about London food

Actually, the food situation in London is not as bleak as some travelers like to make out. I think the biggest problem is the high price. But that is true of everything in London. I know how Londoners could end poverty in Africa if they really took a mind to: turn all the restaurants in London over to African owners. The food would be better, I'm sure. And a couple weeks' profit could probably pay off several developing nations' debt.

But the scarcity of good food in London is exaggerated, frankly. If you know your way around, you don't have to resort to Pizza Hut to find edible dishes. (I swore off British Pizza Huts some 15 years ago, because the pizza didn't have an authentic Pizza Hut look and feel. I like sausage pizza, and sausage in the UK is—well, that's another story. Bangers. An acquired taste. Not bad for breakfast, once you get used to them. But they don't work on pizza, and never will. First time I asked for sausage pizza in England, the waitress said—and I am not making this up—"Ha! That's an interesting idea!) Anyway, the restaurant scene all over England has vastly improved over the past half decade. They still have a way to go, but there's no need for an American to feel like a total foreigner.

Tonight, for example, I took Darlene to Chiquito in Leicester Square. They offer a reasonable facsimile of Mexican food. The tortilla chips have a vaguely rye flavor, and in order to make the nachos substantial enough for a meal you have to buy a side cup of chili (look for "chilli beef" on the menu), but the jalapeños are authentic and the salsa is pretty decent, all things considered. I've been there before, and the chimichangas are passable, too. Darlene always has the cheeseburger. She gave me a bite tonight, and it was decent—not like the typical English cheeseburger, designed to be eaten with a fork and knife. (More about English manners in a minute.)

Then, as one of my commenters pointed out, there's always Chinatown, a block north of Leicester Square. I've eaten in three or four of those restaurants over the years. Every one I have tried was authentic and superb.

If you're in a train station and want fast food, skip the American chains like McDonald's and Burger King and go for the Cornish pasty shops. Really fine. I wish we could get decent Cornish pasties in Santa Clarita.

For snack food, the Brits have invented something really wonderful: Galaxy Minstrels. They are like M&Ms, only four times as large. I'm not a huge fan of sweets and chocolates, but these are really, really good. (Note to self: Bring back two large bags for the bowl on Kim's desk.)

English manners

The difference between the English and the Americans can be summed up by a look at their respective road signs:

English American

Plus, the English eat everything with a fork and knife. Not only cheeseburgers, but even chicken wings. Tonight at Chiquito, people at the tables on either side of us were trying to eat fajitas with a fork and knife!

So, since the English are known worldwide for such impeccable manners, can someone please explain to me why central London is now dotted with public, doorless urinals? I'm not talking about the Live 8 concert here; they have one of these things in the Strand, traditionally thought of as an upscale location, just across from the Hotel Savoy, and right in the main traffic pattern of one of the busiest sidewalks in central London. They have them at Leicester Square, too—always the busiest, most crowded spot in London when Live 8 is not in town. I confess I don't get it. I suppose it could be just a big joke for the tourists' sake. You never know with the British.

See you tomorrow.

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London Journal—Day One

LONDON—Our hotel practically abuts Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It's nearly midnight, and the Bishop has not yet stopped by or phoned to check on us.

We arrived from the airport at about 2:45. After unpacking and making sure I had Internet access in the room, I took a nap for an hour and a half. I realize travel experts will tell you a midday nap on arrival in a far-off time zone is a sure-fire way to exacerbate the problems of jet lag, but I do it every time I come. I have no choice; I couldn't possibly stay awake after the cramped and grueling overnight flight. I literally fell asleep in the taxi on the way from the airport. Why I can sleep in a London cab that jolts to a stop every thirty feet but I can't sleep decently in an airplane (no matter how smooth the flight) is a total mystery to me, too. But there you have it.

When I awoke, the computer was inexplicably off. The power cord had shut itself off, so the computer went into sleep mode. When I plugged the power cable in again, it wouldn't stay on. The green light would light and immediately go out. Although the cord is made to be compatible with the 220 current in the UK, I suspected something was overloading. So I unplugged everything, including my webcam, the cable for synchronizing my Palm computer, and the computer's power cable. The computer itself seemed to be working fine.

I plugged the power cable back in. The green light stayed on this time, but the whole room was soon filled with the smell of overheated electronics. By sniffing around, I isolated the source of the smell. It was coming from the back of my computer, where the little exhaust fans are. The fans have been extra noisy lately. Not any more. I shut the computer off, unplugged the power cord, said a prayer for the healing of my computer, and went to dinner with Darlene.

London is legendary for its lousy restaurants. If you want good food in London, the Asian restaurants are usually your best option. English food tends to be bland, stale, and meager. (Why did the British conquer the world in search of spices, of all things? What did they intend to use them for? Embalming?) There's a superb Indian restaurant just two doors away from our hotel. I love the place, but Darlene isn't fond of Indian food. That's OK. I also know a wonderful restaurant with (believe it or not) great English food.

The place is Porters, a full block west of Covent Garden. It's a across the Thames and about a mile and a quarter from our hotel, but we needed a long walk anyway. So we set out across the Westminster bridge around 6:30 PM. (The weather was threatening rain, and it sprinkled a few times but never really unleashed.)

On the way to Porters, we saw an unusual number of noisy drunken people wearing maple-leaf insignias and Canadian colors. Turns out today is some kind of Canadian holiday. (I'd been on an airplane for hours; didn't get to read Challies today, remember?) Anyway, I didn't know Canadians were permitted holidays, except for "boxing day," and an oddly-timed and barely-noticed Thanksgiving. But it seems some Canadians got really worked up about this back in 1868, and (envious of our July 4) they had July 1 declared a holiday. In 1982, it was given the name "Canadia Day." Who knew?

Well, a lot of people in London know about it tonight. There are so many revelling Canadians in central London right now—I wonder if anyone is left in Canadia. A block before we got to Porters, on the adjacent street (which has the misfortune of being home to a Canadian-themed pub), the entire area was jammed with Canadians drinking beer for at least a quarter mile. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, not doing anything except trying hard not to spill their beer. The only thing holding them up was each other. There were at least 10,000 of them. No lie. That's more Canadians than I have ever seen in one place, even when I went to an Expos game in Montreal a few years ago while the Expos were actually in a pennant race. Many of tonight's Canadians in London are carrying multiple six-packs. (Public consumption, sadly, is quite common here in London.) Its going to be a long night. I hope Challies will be able to post tomorrow.

Anyway, the food at Porters is as great as ever. Their fish & chips are the best I have ever had, with some really fine tartar sauce on the side. But my favorite side dish is mushy peas. It's a small bowl of well-cooked and mashed peas—about the consistency of refried beans, but with the flavor of a really rich split pea soup. You're not supposed to use it as a condiment for dipping fries, but it works superbly that way.

The desserts at Porters are legendary. Of course in England, all desserts are called "puddings" in that delightful British patois. Even cake is a "pudding." (Believe it or not, pig intestine is also called "pudding.") The specialty of the house at Porters is a famous English pudding called "Spotted Dick." If I were in the mood for a pudding—which I'm not—I think I'd go for the pig entrails.

Back at the hotel, the electrical smell was gone. I plugged the computer in, observed that the electrical cable was working; checked to see that the light signifying a charging battery was on; and noted that everything seemed normal. So I turned on the computer, and as you can see, it seems to be working fine.

Something in it is melted, however. I'm pretty sure of that. Maybe it has something to do with last Saturday's coffee fiasco. I don't have time to worry about it now. I'm going to bed. Bill Fickett: I'm going to get that new lap top ASAP when I get back home. You and Ted can start pricing units.

Update before my final edit: The computer turned itself off without warning a few minutes ago. I think I'm in trouble.

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Emerging from the London fog

LONDON—I hate long flights. Anything over four hours can drive me up the wall. But one of the things I like to do on overseas flights is catch up on my reading.

Yesterday I packed a four-inch-thick stack of papers (mostly web documents that I had printed out over the past three months, thinking I would read them at the first opportunity). They all roughly fit in about four categories:

1. Articles and reviews (both pro and con) about the New Perspective on Paul; Federal Vision/Auburn Avenue Theology; Norman Shepherd; and "Reformed Catholicism."
   
2. Open letters and blogged replies both defending and critiquing the Emergent Church Movement. (Most of these were items occasioned by "Our Response to Critics of Emergent," from Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Spencer Burke, Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, Andrew Jones, Chris Seay).
   
3. Some really long and diverse blogposts from various souces on assorted topics (ranging from the whimsical to the deadly serious). They all looked interesting but were too long to read when I found them.
   
4. A few academic papers on hyper-Calvinism.

On top of that, I had about a dozen recent magazines—mostly issues of World, dating back to late April. This was a thick stack of magazines I had not had time to read. I read them and left them on the plane, so my luggage is already 7-10 pounds lighter than when I left home.

That's how our ten-hour flight became a marathon reading session for me. It's a typical way for me to occupy myself on long flights, really. I can't usually sleep on planes, and on overseas flights, everyone else always does. So it's a great opportunity to read. But about seven hours into the flight, my brain is totally fried. There's no way I can possibly read through everything. That's OK. I'll read the rest on the way home.

Here are the three best items so far:

1. "Emergent church proponents respond to their critics," by Ron Gleason at Challies Community Blog. This was sharp and witty, and the interaction in the comments was a hoot to read. Best quote: "By the way, if McLaren and the others didn't want to create new jargon, they've failed miserably because everyone from James McClendon to McLaren, to Miller uses virtually identical jargon. They are, in a word, 'jargonal.'" I loved this article and Gleason's writing style. This was my first encounter with Ron Gleason, but I'll be searching out more of his material. I see he also has an article about Emergent's pet foul-mouthed virago, Anne Lamott. I'll be reading that next.
   
2. Al Mohler's two-part evaluation of D. A. Carson's critique of the Emerging Church. A good digest of the problems with pomoism. Favorite quote: "There is a thin-skinned sensitivity on the part of many of those who identify with the Emerging Church. Even as they level severe and unstinting criticism at the inherited evangelical models, they recoil from criticism directed at their own proposals." Precisely: "Let's have a conversation—only you don't get to talk at all unless you affirm me."
   
3. Gary North's assault on T. David Gordon's infamous article, "The Insufficiency of Scripture." The Gordon article, published in the Jan/Feb 2002 issue of Modern Reformation, has discreetly been removed from the magazine's online archives. It was probably the low point (or perhaps second lowest) of that magazine's otherwise often distinguished record. North's analysis is, as you would expect, acerbic, entertaining, informative, and a perhaps a little paranoid. But hey, that's why we read Gary's stuff. This article reminded me what a keen mind Gary North has, and what a shame it is that he has been so obsessed over the years with doomsday scenarios and money-making techniques. The best quote of this particular article is too long to cite in full here, but here's a bit of it:
   

   The problem as [Gordon] sees it is this: the Bible is insufficient.
   
   

   I would suggest that part of the reason our unbelieving friends succeed as often in marriage as we do is that they are never hoodwinked by any misunderstanding of the self-sufficiency of Scripture. They are never counseled to "read two verses and call me in the morning."

   
   Is this clever, or what? Can he zing pastors, who spend much of their time in marital counselling, usually free of charge?
   
   My conclusion: It is a lot easier to give lectures at a humanist-accredited, PCUSA-run college than it is to give counsel to couples about to divorce.
   
   OK, let's get down to specifics. Let's go to the Bible. Here are my two verses. Dr. Gordon can call me in the morning.

By the way, here's a fourth item that I really enjoyed, and since I haven't indulged in BlogSpotting for several days, I'll shamelessly and vaingloriously point this out: At the end of the current issue of World, Marvin Olasky includes a special section: "Useful books for summertime reading." He gives a thumbs-up to Fool's Gold?—a book published recently by Crossway that several of us who are connected with The Shepherds' Fellowship collaborated on. It seems Mr. Olasky liked my assessment of N. T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul a whole lot better than Li'l Brudder did.

Good stuff. Now I'm going to take a nap.

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