Commenters' gallery

Well, the redoubtable Centuri0n finally updated his blogpicture a couple of days ago, so that we have a better idea of what he really looks like. That prompted me to compile a list of outstanding blogpics from the various people who have commented here at PyroManiac. If I left you out, it doesn't mean I thought your picture was ugly or uninteresting. But I have a limited amount of time, so here's the short list:

1. Brad Williams, "Sojourner" and baptist pastor, communes with a frog.
   
2. Frank Turk, "Centurion," renaissance man, all all-around good guy has a dramatic enough glow emanating from his head to make any Catholic saint or Eastern Orthodox icon look lame by comparison.
   
3. Fatbaptist, who works for the Ministry of Defence in the UK and knows me from my visits to the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, poses with a picture of my favorite Baptist preacher.
   
4. Impacted Wisdom Truth, my near-neighbor, is dressed in tails and a top hat. He looks like Dr. Demento, minus the beard.
   
5. The first time I saw the thumbnail version of Carla Rolfe, I thought there was a bullet hole in the picture just beneath her chin. But when you see the picture full size, it turns out to be the camera lens through which she took her self-portrait.
   
6. Loki Odinsson, "The Thirsty Theologian" looks like a smart guy.
   
7. Habitans in Sicco uses a famous painting by Quentin Massys, based on a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci. I've seen the original of this painting, by the way. It hangs in the National Gallery in London, in Trafalgar Square. It's the very definition of ugly. Just like Habitans. (I know who he is, though his identity is a closely guarded secret.)
   
8. Joe of "Joe's Jottings" seems to be holding a beverage of a questionable sort—but it could be a mini Lava Lamp®. Hard to tell.
   
9. Charlene Moore, Canadian artist, has a simple self-portrait. Her blog features more examples of her artwork, including this bonus self-portrait.
   
10. Kim, Canadian homeschool mom, uses her beagle's picture.
    
11. Bret Capranica looks too staid to be one of the dawgs at Fide-O.
    
12. Jeremy Writebol from "Fellowship of Nicaea" poses in a Cubs' T-shirt with cotton candy.

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New-model Christianity, or old-model heresy?

The following post, and some of the material that will follow in subsequent posts, has been adapted from one of my messages at the 2005 School of Theology at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London last month

About fifteen years ago, Christianity Today (February 19, 1990) published a major article describing several novel theological ideas that were (at the time) barely whispers among a handful of influential academic evangelical writers and theologians. Written by renowned Canadian theologian Robert Brow, the article was titled "Evangelical Megashift."

According to Brow, evangelical theology was quietly being remodeled by some of the movement's most influential thinkers. He used some benign-sounding language to describe how evangelical thinking had already changed radically, even though most evangelicals had not yet noticed the changes. But Brow implied that even more monumental changes were on the horizon. Subsequent history has shown, I believe, that he was exactly right in his predictions.

(Don't take that as an endorsement of Brow's theological perspective. In my assessment, he is himself a theological miscreant of the worst stripe. I've listed him in the "Really Bad" section of my annotated bookmarks and given a brief explanation for that assessment. I don't need to rehash it here.)

Brow's 1990 CT article pretended to be an objective report about what was happening in the theological world, but the truth is that Robert Brow himself was one of the main figures working hard behind the scenes in the academic world to bring about a wholesale remodeling of evangelical theology. He was an ardent advocate of virtually every theological innovation he described. So the article was actually a propaganda piece promoting what Brow referred to as "new-model theology."

Today the new model exists in full form, and it has a name: Open Theism. Every issue Brow discussed in that 1990 article touches on a key point of doctrine where some or all of the leading Open Theists have departed from the historic evangelical position.

But here's something I find even more interesting: Read Brow's article and notice that virtually all the issues he raised are also the pet issues of several leading figures in the Emerging Church movement.

I'm not suggesting everyone associated with the Emerging Church is also tainted with Open Theism. Nor would I necessarily accuse Emerging Church leaders of harboring deliberate sympathies with everything their "openness" cousins stand for. But I do believe the two movements clearly have common roots, and the Emerging Church, in a very real sense, represents the metastasis of the same unhealthy theological tendencies that gave rise to Open Theism. Brow's article is a catalogue of those pathologies.

In the days to come, I'll say more about this and examine some of the key similarities between Brow's "Megashift" and the Emerging Church. But in the meantime, if you want to take an interesting romp down memory lane, review the article referred to above, and notice how the clear theological agenda being touted by the more outspoken leaders of the Emerging Church (including various champions of innovation ranging from Steve Chalke to Tony Campolo) is a clear, almost point-for-point echo of what Robert Brow was already talking about more than fifteen years ago.

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The triumphant return of BlogSpotting

• A Taiwanese guy who goes by the screen name "Satan" (though he spells it with Chinese characters) says he likes the graphic look of PyroManiac. For those who don't read Chinese: He's using a screen shot from my blog as an example of what he hopes to do with the graphic look of his blog. We'll watch and keep you apprised of how his blog develops. It's nice to get good reviews from Taiwan, but a little disconcerting when the commendation comes from someone who calls himself "Satan."
  
• Carla Rolfe, homeschool mom, pulls out the grammar book—and class commences.
  
• Eric Schumacher has an interesting article on Charles Finney's denial of penal substitution.
  
• Rob Wilkerson has a superb idea for the Fad-Driven® Blog. How'd he ever get that photo of the top of my head?
  
• The tipplers at the Boar's Head are dismayed to find themselves in accidental agreement with something the PyroManiac posted.
  
• David (Andy) Jones at "The Last Homely House" liked the post about Jeff Williams.
  
• Jonathan Felt wants me to answer his every argument in favor of turning the evangelical movement into a political lobby. (No, I'm kidding. I know he's not consciously arguing in favor of that. But he seems blissfully unaware and unconcerned that that's what in fact is happening.) Unfortunately, I simply cannot answer post after mutiple-page post on the subject as exhaustively as he wants, partly because he keeps thinking of more arguments, and every offhanded comment from me triggers another eight-page post from him.
       Jonathan seems determined to put a tar baby in my path. Having been burnt out on politics in my pagan years, I'm not all that keen to devote major investments of time and blogspace debating this issue in 6,000-word installments. But I will nonetheless have more to say about it from time to time. And anyone, including Jonathan, who wants to dispute with me about my position is welcome to do so—as long as you can reasonably stick with the main points, and preferably just one or two main points at a time. (Hint: if you write a ten-page, 45-point "rebuttal" and the first point you make is pure bosh, don't be too surprised, and don't feign outrage, if I respond to that point and pretty much ignore the rest.)
  
• Meanwhile, Jonathan Felt is by no means alone in his views. Scott Klusendorf recommends Felt's position rather than mine.
  
• Jacob Hantla borrows my excuse for meager blogvolume.
  
• Sean Higgins, on the other hand, crows about the fact that his new Titanium PowerBook G4 took him only three hours out of the box to set up. Yeah, well, my GameBoy wasn't too hard to configure, either. Have fun with it.
  
• Frank Martens has a sharp new blogdesign.
  
• Paul at "Cup of Coffee Talk" may be the only person in almost a century to tell the story of Fred Merkle without once using the word "bonehead." That was one of the few times in Cubs history when a weird incident played out in the Cubs' favor. It precipitated the Cubs World Series victory that year. Paul mercifully has omitted another unpleasant detail: that was the Cubs' last World-Series win in nearly a hundred years. They aren't going to break that streak this year, either.
  
• Matthew Self can't think of any metaphors for the PyroManiac. It's not hard, really. Here's one: I tend to think of myself as a melted piece of fundamentalist-flavored gum on the shoe of the evangelical movement.
  
• Brian Colmery is spending six days on a houseboat with a youth group and a plumbing implement lovingly nicknamed "Mikey"—and he's worried the next evangelical fad might come and go while he's away from his Internet connection. I think all of us know what that fear is like, Brian.
  
• My nephew Chris Freeland is blogging. He hates broccoli. Feed it to the beagle, Chris. If he's like Wrigley, he'll eat anything. And I mean anything.
  
• Speaking of non-finicky eaters, Nutria Boy pays homage to my willingness to try strange foods by blogging about larvae-filled fajitas. I'd give "escamoles" a try, but I gotta say, N.B., that picture you posted doesn't make them look very appetizing. Some chef needs to work on his presentation.
  
• Tim Challies reminds us that the worldly Christianity of recent generations hasn't made the church better; it's just made rock 'n' roll worse.

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Good morning. This is your wake-up call

The first successful Space Shuttle landing in more than 2 and a half years was completed early this morning. Weather diverted the Shuttle to Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert of Southern California, but the crew landed without further incident at 5:11 this morning.

When the Shuttle lands in southern California, it flies pretty much right over my house. It always makes a tremendous double sonic boom, and that was my wakeup call this morning. Darlene, who had been tracking the Shuttle on NASA TV, knew the likelihood of a California landing, so she was in the backyard with a pair of binoculars in time to see the shuttle fly overhead.

The sonic booms startled Wrigley. It was his first Shuttle landing, and it made him wake up angry—for about thirty seconds. He barked furiously at the ceiling for fifteen seconds, listened quietly for fifteen seconds, then went back to sleep.

I did exactly the same thing, minus the barking.

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Monday Menagerie X

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

Someone you ought to meet...

Jeff Williams

Yesterday after church I had lunch with a friend whom I want to introduce to you: Jeff Williams. Jeff is a graduate of West Point. He competed on the sport parachute team there. He is also an expert scuba diver and had a distinguished career as a test pilot and helicopter pilot. He has multiple degrees in aeronautical engineering and a master of arts degree in—get this—"national security and strategic studies" from the US Naval War College. He also reads PyroManiac.

So, obviously, Jeff is a bright and highly motivated guy.

Jeff and his wife Anna-Marie live in the Houston area. But they were in California yesterday to visit Jason, the younger of their two adult sons. Jason is spending the summer as an intern on a tall ship, currently sailing south along the west coast. It's the schooner "Bill of Rights," currently docked in Oxnard, about 50 miles from here.

Now, you might think sport parachuting, scuba diving, and test piloting is pretty exciting stuff. And a summer on a tall ship is cooler yet.

But I haven't even told you the most interesting thing about Jeff: He's probably the only PyroManiac reader who has ever done this:

Jeff in the cockpit of the Space Shuttle Atlantis

Yes, that's the real Space Shuttle, and Jeff is really performing a maneuver with it. And it's really in orbit.

Jeff's a NASA astronaut. He was a mission specialist on STS-101, the third US Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). While Shuttle Atlantis was docked with the ISS, Jeff and fellow-astronaut Jim Voss completed a 6-hour, 44-minute space walk that spanned parts of May 21 and May 22, 2000.

The space walk

In NASA parlance, a space walk is called EVA, for extra-vehicular activity. (In our house, "extra-vehicular activity" is just something you do with the spare car.) During Jeff's long EVA, he and Voss installed a Russian crane, repaired and re-seated an American crane, put handrails on the outside of the ISS, and installed an external camera cable and an antenna.

In all, Jeff was in space for nearly ten days. More than half that time, the Shuttle Atlantis was docked with the ISS. While docked, the Shuttle thrusters were fired three times, pushing the Space Station to an orbit some 27 miles further from earth than previously. Atlantis returned after ten days in space, landing in Florida.

Before going into space, Jeff had obtained a copy of The MacArthur Study Bible on CD-ROM, and he loaded it on a laptop for use while he was in orbit. He brought the CD-ROM back from space, and we have it framed and hanging in a place of honor in the Grace to You office. It has traveled further than any other copy of the MacArthur Study Bible in history.

I met Jeff not long afterward, when he came to Grace to You to give John MacArthur the CD-ROM. Jeff loves Christ and has a wonderful testimony.

Darlene and I got to know both Jeff and Anna-Marie a year or so later on a ministry-sponsored trip to New England. At the time, Jeff was on vacation between training sessions for a future space mission.

He is still in training for a six-month stint at the ISS. Much of his training has been in Russia, because the plan is for him to travel to the Space Station with a Russian crew in a three-man Soyuz vessel that will launch from Kazakhstan next year. He's also on the backup crew for a mission scheduled to launch in October (less than two months from now), so there's a small chance he'll go up then.

In any case, he'll spend half a year in weightlessness and near isolation at the Space Station. How cool is that? He's promised to send me an e-mail from space. And since he'll be up there for six months, he'll surely need a PyroManiac fix or two also.

To my surprise, Jeff tells me the Space Station doesn't have an Internet connection that allows astronauts to surf the Web. (He says they have more important business to do than read blogs.) But since he will have e-mail access, I suggested he start a blog of his own and keep an on-line journal while he's out there. I hope he does.

Anyway, now that you know Jeff, keep him and Anna-Marie in your prayers. Even if he doesn't blog while in orbit, I'll try to blog a few updates on him during his six months at the Space Station next year. Watch this space.

A footnote: Last year I was preaching on Psalm 19 ("The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork") and Jeff, who was in town for the Shepherds' Conference, came to my class. In that message, I described a photo of Jeff, hanging in space with the earth under him, which I was using for Windows Wallpaper. Several people who have downloaded that message have e-mailed me to ask how to get a copy of that photo. I'll do better than that. I'll give you the URL to the mother lode.

NASA has several brilliant online photo galleries, where you can download spectacular digital space photos for free. (Actually, your tax money has already bought the photos, so enjoy them.)

If you want some stunning photos of Jeff Williams in space, click here, and do a search for photos from STS-101. The pictures below are small samples of what you'll find there. These thumbnails (some of which are just small, cropped and downsized fractional images of the real pictures) don't really do justice to the actual photos. The high-resolution versions of these photos that you can download are fantastic. (Click on the small versions below for direct links to the NASA URLS where you can download the high-res versions.) Costco, Wal-Mart, or Kinko's can print these for you in large format, or resize them to make great Windows Desktop wallpaper.

Jeff Williams (foreground) and Jim Voss walked in space for nearly seven hours

Jeff flashes the One-Way sign

Jeff peers into the window of Atlantis's cabin while walking in space

This is one of my favorite photos from Jeff's mission. They shot a lot of photos of volcanoes from space. This is Mt. Etna. (You can download a copy from NASA without my labels by clicking on the picture.) Notice the plume of smoke drifting east from the volcano. Darlene and I went to Sicily that year to do a conference in the picturesque town of Giardini-Naxos, right on the coast, at the very base of the volcano. The mountain was erupting off and on that year, and we saw this same scene from ground level.      If you have Google Earth, click here to see the same view in a mosaic of satellite pictures.      If you don't have Google Earth, click here to get it.

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Bonus double post: two issues I might have blogged about if I had been blogging this week

1. The new laptop

To those who have asked, it's a Dell Latitude D810 with a wide screen. Even though the screen is wider, it's not as high-res as my previous laptop, so there's less real estate on my Windows Desktop, and the fonts don't look as smooth. But fonts and pictures are bigger, so it's much easier on the eyes. Already I'm not squinting as much.

I mentioned that getting a new computer is a drawn-out, high-stress ordeal for me. Unlike almost everyone else I know, I simply cannot start with a factory-installed version of Windows and add individual applications as I use them over a period of many weeks. I have this obsessive need to install all my software up front, set every program's options as nearly as possible to the same settings I had on the old computer, and make sure all my data, directories, and utilities are in exactly the same places they were on the old computer. Until then, I can't use the computer very productively.

One of the first things I do with a new computer is systematically uninstall and delete most of the factory-installed, space-wasting promo-ware, free trial software, and useless utilities that always come pre-loaded on a new computer. It's not that I need the space; I just despise the clutter. That gives you an idea of how finicky I am when it comes to setting up a new computer—and why it's at least a two-day process.

What's "new" about the new computer when Phil is finished with it? you may wonder. Well, I always change the wallpaper. And of course, I appreciate the higher speed and many additional features that come with every new computer. I also take the opportunity while reinstalling to make sure I have all the latest upgrades and drivers for everything. But I still want the new computer's directory structures, start menus, and program selection to work as much like the old one as possible.

For that reason, I'm still using a directory structure that had its genesis on the first IBM-PC I ever owned, back in the days of DOS 1.0.

As a matter of fact, I began using a personal computer for writing and editing in 1981, about 6 months before the start of the PC era and the rise of Bill Gates. My first computer (a NEC pc-8001) used an operating system called CP/M, which was very crude but quite efficient. CP/M was similar to DOS; in fact, a lot of DOS features were borrowed directly from CP/M. When you booted your computer, you got a C:> prompt; nothing more.

I still like C:> prompts and command lines. I'm comfortable with them. I prefer to be in control of the computer as opposed to having it control me. I also still do a lot of file-management stuff in a DOS window, using some of the same DOS utilities I've used for two decades. For that reason, I still name most of my files and directories with eight-character-or-less words, using (at most) a single three-letter filename extension.

Oh, and my favorite word processor is still WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. I run it in a DOS Window, and use it ten times more than any other word processor or text editor. In fact, I use it exclusively when I'm dealing with book-length editorial projects.

So you know I'm not going to let a professional IT guy install my software for me. I appreciate what those guys do, but I want my computer set up the way I want it, as lean and mean as possible.

Incidentally, the two go-to guys for IT help at Grace to You are Bill and Ted.

No, I'm serious. Bill Fickett (one of the organization's key departmental directors) is a supremely competent guy who is more knowledgeable about the latest software and technology than anyone I know. Ted Ng, our main computer-support guru, can quickly fix most software and hardware problems. And if he can't fix it, he'll find out how. It's Ted's job to install software for everyone but me (and Bill, I suppose). I had to get Ted to bail me out about four times this week. I consulted Bill's expertise only once or twice. (Bill has had a family medical crisis this week, involving his son Cooper. Thankfully, the worst seems to be over, and Cooper is home from hospital.)

The only major glitch in all my software reinstalls came when Libronix (formerly "Logos Bible Study Software") stubbornly refused to run after installation, re-installation, and several tweaks and re-installations. I tried every remedy suggested on the FAQ at their website. Didn't help. A quick call to their support line got the issue resolved pretty easily. I think I made only one other support-line call, to Adobe, because my serial number for Adobe Audition (my sound-editing software), was an upgrade number, so Audition insisted that I reinstall the original version of CoolEdit that I upgraded from, and then go through the upgrades again. I have a few programs that require such a process. (It strikes me as sheer folly to make reinstalls so difficult for users.) In other cases, I have been instructed to save old versions in case reinstallation is ever necessary. But when I upgraded from CoolEdit to Adobe, the new software had no warning about keeping old versions, so I threw away my original CoolEdit programs two years ago, when I upgraded. That's just one example of the kind of thing that makes reinstalling software so intensely frustrating, but the Adobe customer service guy was friendly, helpful, and understanding—and he managed to work out a solution for me, even though it took about 30 minutes to do so.

Anyway, I've got the new computer pretty much all set up now. (There are just a couple of lingering issues Ted will have to help me resolve.) This is my first official blogpost from the new computer, and I already like it. The old laptop (a Dell Inspiron) had a flimsy feel and a noisy exhaust fan. This one looks and feels more solid; it is screamingly fast; and it's refreshingly quiet. Darlene refuses to let me have coffee while I'm using it.

Now I'm already planning for my next new computer, which will probably be a wholesale replacement of the main computer here at home. We have a monster antique desktop Gateway that still runs Windows 95, and I intend to take 3 days off work and replace it sometime in the next two months. When that happens, I'll also finally have high-speed cable access installed at home, with a wireless network to simplify life for everyone in the family. They can't wait. I'm already dreading the process again.

2. Roast PyroManiac au Jus

I returned to the blogosphere this morning to find that I'm getting savaged on one of my favorite blogs: Triablogue.

Jonathan Felt, posting as "Jus Divinum," does a pretty fair imitation of the encyclopedic style and long-winded form of Steve "Purple" Hays ("'Scuze Me, While I Diss This Guy").

As if Triablogue needed more long, text-heavy posts.

No, seriously, Triablogue is one of my very favorite blogs, and I normally agree with Steve Hays. But not on the issues of Christian Reconstruction and the church's duty with regard to the political arena.

Anyway, so far, "Jus Divinum" seems like more of a one-issue guy than Steve Hays. He's passionate about evangelical political activism, and he rarely misses an opportunity to defend the politics and strategies of the American Religious Right. Since I have on occasion expressed concerns about American evangelicalism's obsession with trying to address spiritual problems through political lobbying, I have heard from Jus on this matter before.

(For the record, I think both Scripture and history teach us that forays into secular politics are dead-end detours for the church of Christ. I've already indicated that I plan to post more on this issue, and I'm beginning to think it will probably be a time-intensive discussion.)

This time, Jus dissects an article I wrote a few months ago for the Shepherds' Fellowship. Steve Camp posted it on his blog yesterday (thus sucking me into the vortex of my second accidental controversy in what was supposed to be a slow week).

The original article was part of a series of rants I have written in response to some of the pet themes one finds in Christianity Today. In this particular one, I was critical of Chuck Colson's incessant pleas for "cultural engagement," pointing out that in Colson-speak, that involves ecumenical political activism.

Jus has replied to my rant with an eight-page post elegantly titled "Neo-Pietism or Ostrich Evangelicalism." You can easily read it for yourself if you have a few spare hours. No need for me to rehash it line by line.

But here's the Cliff's Notes version of Jus's argument: He points out that in the Christianity Today column I was replying to, "Colson never once mentions the need for ecumenical political alliances." Jus even describes my link to "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" as "gratuitous." He thinks I am being unfair and uncharitable to Colson to read the issue of ecumenical politics into Colson's plea for "engaging the culture."

Oh, puleeeeze. Who is taking the "ostrich" approach, here?

Colson's campaign for ecumenical activism has been his dominant message for more than a decade. It was the central point of his book The Body. It was the main motivation behind "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" (ECT), which Colson co-authored. ECT expressly defines "the Christian mission"—including the engagement of "culture"—in a way that focuses specifically on the issues of law, politics, and public policy. ECT also deliberately and pointedly downplays the significance of Catholic-Protestant differences on the core issues of the gospel. And then it calls for ecumenical cooperation in the political arena (arguing, in effect, that the church can better fulfill her "mission" if both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics forget about our soteriological differences relative to the gospel and focus instead on the moral and political issues where we ostensibly do agree).

It should be plain to most readers that both Colson's column in CT and my response are part of a much larger context. One would have to be willfully obtuse or incredibly naive to argue with any degree of seriousness that Chuck Colson's plea for engaging the culture has nothing to do with the ecumenical strategy he has laid out in multiple books and documents over the past decade or so. Since I don't believe Jus is either obtuse or naive, I have to wonder if he's just arguing for sport.

In the several times Jus has engaged me on this issue, he has never actually attempted a heartfelt defense of the pragmatic ecumenism that in fact does dominate the Religious Right. His argument, pretty consistently, is that he sees no necessary reason why ecumenism and pragmatism must go hand in hand with political activism. He'll point out that this person doesn't practice ecumenism, and that person didn't explicitly call for ecumenism in that particular context, so why is politically-motivated ecumenism such a major concern of the PyroManiac's?

I've pointed out repeatedly in reply that the kind of ecumenism I'm concerned about is a fact, not a groundless or superstitious fear held by those of us who don't think political activism ought to be moved higher up on the church's agenda. As I said in an earlier post, the evangelical political right has historically—not just theoretically—fostered an ecumenical drift.

Until Jus addresses that issue, all his other niggling arguments have no real traction. So far he has compared politics to dentistry, posted a long, impassioned defense of someone I didn't even criticize, and now devoted eight pages to a desperate attempt at obfuscating what is really a simple, straightforward, rather obvious point: Chuck Colson strategy for political activism has ecumenism at its heart.

And if Jus seriously thinks ECT is not germane to Colson's master plan for "cultural engagement," he ought to read the document itself.

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Jury Duty

I got the new computer about noon Tuesday. The process of simply transferring my data took the entire rest of the day. In fact, I didn't actually finish. I left the two laptops at the office overnight, copying data from the old one to the new one across the network. I thought I'd get back to the process first thing Wednesday morning and start actually installing some programs.

Wrong.

One thing I forgot to mention when I was making excuses for not blogging much this week was this: I'm on standby for jury duty. So, naturally, I got notification that I needed to be at the courthouse Wednesday morning. So much for installing software. (See Monday's post for a reminder of the principle at work here.)

I hate jury duty. The process is unbearably demeaning and inefficient. You're herded into a large waiting room with some 200 people where an obnoxious woman yells the same instructions she has been yelling at people every day of her life for years. There's a portable public address system at her podium, but she doesn't use it. She seems to like screaming at people. After all, her life is like "Groundhog Day." She's done this same morning briefing so many times that her delivery is a cynical sing-song. I've heard the same speech from the same woman with all the same "jokes" every time I've gone for jury duty for the past four years.

I have never been seated on a jury. I probably never will be. Attorneys don't want strongly opinionated people on juries.

But today was something special. I knew it would be when I walked in and the first thing I saw floating in the juror pool was a barely-post-puberty angry-goth-type guy with thick, dark tattoos all over his arms, a massive bent-barbell-shaped piercing-rod through his septum, and a wrinkled black t-shirt reading "Satan is my Homeboy." I don't think this was a ploy to keep from being seated as a juror. He looked like he meant it.

Anyway, I'll spare you the long account. After all the interminable preliminary lectures and forms to be filled out, they herded all 200 of us into a single courtroom built for 50, where a harsh-voiced, angry-looking, much-too-masculine woman presides as judge. She informed us that they are beginning the voir dire process for a major multiple murder trial that will probably last a minimum of seven weeks. My heart sunk. She thought that might be a hardship for some of us, so they had forms to be filled out for people requesting hardship exemptions. She sternly cautioned us that in only a few instances would she consider anyone's circumstances a real hardship, but fortunately for me, one of the "real" hardships she listed was for those who have a vacation booked with non-refundable tickets.

Darlene and I are going to be spending some days in Tulsa with my parents in a few weeks, so I asked for one of the forms to request the hardship exemptions. Then at the lunch break, I phoned Darlene to make sure the tickets were non-refundable. The judge said she wanted flight numbers and departure time, so Darlene got me all that information, and I wrote it with the maximum possible detail and pathos on the form supplied.

So did 90 percent of the potential jurors. No surprise there. Frankly, it's hard to see how a 7-week trial would not be a serious hardship for anyone who lives in the real world, but the judge didn't see it that way. Before even reading the forms to see what our actual hardships were, she chided the whole group because so many of us wanted to be excused. She took the opportunity to deliver an angry lecture about the cost of citizenship. Frankly, I think most in the jury pool were more concerned about the cost of rent and groceries after being out of work for seven weeks, but there you are.

Satan's homeboy was not one of the people who requested a hardship exemption. The $15 per diem may be more money than he has ever earned in his life.

What a mess the American court system is! I get called for jury duty virtually every 12 months. I'm not alone. Almost everyone in our office gets called regularly, too. There's hardly a week in the year when we don't have someone in the office on standby for jury duty.

At the end of the day, they excused me with about a hundred other hardship cases. On the way out, the woman who screams instructions at potential jurors told me, "See you in twelve months."

I can't wait.

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I know. I know. But this was just too disturbing to let it pass without comment

Less than twelve hours after I said I was going to take a break, and here I am. But 1) I don't have my new computer yet, and 2) something has already got me really torqued this morning. Blogging about it was the only thing (short of breaking some furniture) I could think to do to blow off steam. So here goes:



A colleague of mine whose interest was piqued by last week's discussion of publishers' attempts to contextualize the Bible for urban youth went and purchased a copy of Real: The Complete New Testament. He reports that it really is "Da Shizzle BAM Bizzle."

Not.

Here's the basic idea: notes have been inserted dealing with "timely" topics in hip terms that, frankly, try much too hard to make the Bible cool enough for street punks. Some of the inserted material is so clumsy and so tasteless (not to mention racist) that I wouldn't even try to give a full description here.

But to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, let's just say that smack in the middle of Acts 7 and the biblical account of the stoning of Stephen, there's an utterly inappropriate sidebar about sex, titled "How far is too far?" discussing whether a certain technique technically qualifies as "fornication."

Then there are top-ten lists throughout, including "Hot 10 Ways to Know if a Man is Into You." (Number six: "Brings you around his boys.")

And then there's the "Hot 10 Best Cars" (starting with "Rolls Royce Phantom" at number 10, and culminating in "Maybach" at number 1.) Just what urban youth need to be encouraged to think about, huh?

There's also a list of "Hot 10 Movies You Should Have in Your Collection"—starting with "Dogma" (an overtly blasphemous and ostensibly comedic cinematic catastrophe); including "Lord of the Rings (trilogy)"; and culminating, predictably, in "The Passion of the Christ." (The trilogy counts as only one movie in urban math, so young gangsta couch potatoes will be happy to know that there are actually a dozen movies in the must-have "Hot 10.") I can hear a budding gang-banger protest, "But ma! My Bible says I need to have 'Remember the Titans' in my collection."

Directly across the page from the movie list is a sidebar where a smiling girl answers the question, "What has been the greatest source of pain in your life?" Now the gang-bangers might have a hard time relating to this girl, for two reasons: 1. she doesn't seem angry enough, what with that smile and all. (See cover for some folks with more street cred.) And 2. her answer suggests she has been isolated from the normal pains of urban culture:

"What has been the greatest source of pain in your life?" The most pain I've ever experienced was when my ex-boyfriend broke up with me. I was all into him, but he wasn't feeling me. I did some crazy stuff to try to hold onto him. Some of the stuff I did made me look crazy. I learned that if it's love you don't have to go off all the time.

Unquote.

Eugene Peterson: take note. In the next edition of The Message, that would be a good paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13:5: "If it's love you don't have to go off all the time."

Finally, here's an item from page 240. A gentleman with rasta dreads answers the question, "What has been the greatest source of joy in your life?"—

My mother is the bomb! I have the dopest mother in the world. We can hang, kick-it and talk to each other.

There's a CD glued inside the back cover. I didn't have the courage to listen. All the "Christian" rap music I've ever heard is just too dope for me, if you know what I mean.

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Taking a day or two off from the blog

I'm supposed to be getting a new laptop this week. Many will remember that I have had a few computer mishaps lately. My main computer is a laptop that goes everywhere with me. I've used laptops for more than a decade, and generally wear one out every 18 months or so. (It takes me about 10 months to wear the paint off the keycaps. Literally.)

The current laptop is already more than 2 and a half years old, and it's been the most durable computer I have ever had (even though it has had an annoying tendencey to overheat, and sporadic power-supply problems from day one). Now it's definitely time for an upgrade.

And I hate it, because it means at least a three-day ordeal installing software, transferring data, and setting up the system the way I want it. So be forewarned: I'm likely to be slightly more cantankerous than usual for the remainder of the week. And I won't get a lot done. I may post, but don't expect anything profound and insightful—or lighthearted and full of warmth.

Meanwhile, check this out: "Why Boomers resist the 'Emergent fad.'" I thought it was an interesting and candid perspective.

And if you still get bored, read Steve Hays and Steve Camp, and be sure to alternate between the two of them. That ought to keep everyone busy for a while.

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Monday Menagerie IX

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

The worst great day of my life

James 4:13-15 says, "Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that."

Several years ago, the Lord (in the infinite wisdom of His good Providence) allowed me to experience something that has remained in my mind ever since as a perpetual reminder of that truth. It seems relatively trivial, but it was certainly memorable. And that is an effective way to learn a lesson such as this.

It was the perfect day, and I was in the perfect place at the perfect moment. It was one of those rare instances when you consciously sense the confluence of everything auspicious—your own energy, the weather, the love of your family, and divine grace itself—and you feel as if God is smiling on you.

It was August 10, 1989. Darlene and I and the boys were on vacation. It was a warm day but not too hot. We were sitting in the front row of the left-field bleachers in Wrigley field. The Cubs were playing the Phillies.

Darlene and I had our very first date ever at Wrigley field in 1977, and we have both been devoted Die-Hard® fans of the Chicago Cubs ever since. So in 1989, when our three boys were finally old enough to appreciate the grandeur of it all, we used our vacation to make a long pilgrimage in our little Honda from our home Los Angeles back to where we had our first date.

On our first day in Chicago, we had standing-room only tickets on the third base side, far back under the canopy. The boys stood transfixed and paying close attention through the whole game. And the Cubs moved into first place in the pennant race that day.

But the next day—this day—promised even better things. We had seats in the front row of the bleachers—the greatest place in all the world from which to view Major League Baseball.



One moment from that day looms large in my memory. The score was 10-3 in the fifth inning. The Cubs were comfortably in the lead. They had already hit a couple of home runs that sailed right over our heads. This game was awesome. I was feeling good. A sense of absolute well-being swept over me.

I decided to roll my sleeves up over my shoulders and get some serious sun.

Darlene has this thing where she starts to act like a mother when everyone is having fun. And so she asked me if I didn't want some sunscreen for my pasty-white shoulders and knees. (She carries this big bag to baseball games, and she can pull anything she wants out of the bag.) Before I could even say no, she had dragged out about five varieties of sunscreen concoctions and started trying to foist them on me. But I didn't want lotion or oil. It makes you all gummy and sticky, and I didn't want to spoil a perfect moment.

Now that moment is frozen in my mind, and I have often recalled it, because that particular moment was one of the most perfect moments of my life. I was on vacation—no pressure. My kids were loving it. My wife was especially beautiful in the outfield sun. A heroic aura seemed to surround me. The Cubs were comfortably out in front, and we had front-row bleacher seats on a day when the weather was as close to heaven as Chicago ever gets.

And the thing I remember most about that moment was what I said to Darlene when she started nagging me about putting on sun screen. She was warning me that I'd be sorry later if I didn't.

I said, "This is a perfect day. We've got perfect seats at the perfect game on a perfect day. The Cubs are in first place. They're way out in front in this game. The weather is perfect. Nothing will ruin this day."

As soon as those words escaped my lips, James 4:15 came to mind ("ye ought to say . . .") and my conscience smote me.

But before I could tack on the words "...Lord willing" to the end my sentence, a home run from the bat of some Philly sailed right over my head onto Waveland Avenue.

Before the fifth inning was over, the Phillies had hit two homers. By the end of the inning the score was tied 10-10.



But that was only the beginning of troubles. The final score was 16-13. The Cubs lost. And in the last two innings a thunderstorm blew in from Lake Michigan. The sky turned incredibly dark—so dark they had to turn on the lights. Lightning was hitting the buildings all around Wrigley field. And at the very moment the game ended, it began to rain so hard that by the time we got to our car, we could not have been more wet if we had actually gone for a swim in lake Michigan.



We were too wet to turn on the air conditioner, and the windows were steaming up from the humidity. It was miserable. We were soaking wet. The traffic was terrible. The kids smelled like—well, wet kids. We were facing a ten-hour drive that evening to get to my sister's house in Missouri.

And my sunburn was already killing me.

Later that night, several hours into our long drive to Missouri, Darlene looked at me sweetly, and said, "You're right. This was an absolutely perfect day. Nothing could've spoiled it."

And then she whacked me on the knee, right where my sunburn was the worst.

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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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