Suggestion No. 1.

Neil at One Salient Oversight makes an interesting suggestion about how to create a win-win situation for the abortion debate. The nuts and bolts (as I understand it, at least) is for people who take a pro-life position to recognize the pro-choice position is not pro-abortion – most pro-choice advocates are concerned to protect the choice of women to have abortions if they want to and also the choice not to have an abortion. Pro-choice advocates admit that abortion has its dangers and will readily agree with pro-life advocates about those dangers, but the issue is not that abortions must happen, but that women are free to have an abortion if they want to.

That being the case, Neil suggests that pro-life advocates change their tack from agitating for the illegality of abortion – an approach that is failing – to educating and resourcing women so that they learn how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. In this way, while laws will allow for abortion, women will still have the choice – and so please the pro-choice people – and yet not need to take advantage of it – and so please the pro-life people. Neil also provides statistics to back up this idea.

This broad concept is not a new one for Neil – he uses similar logic for dealing with drug addiction, though the present situation is one step behind in Australia since marijuana is still illegal here. The concept is also a biblical one, i.e. dealing with the root problem of sins instead of just the fruit. In fact, one of the reasons the Law was given by God specifically to increase sin, so it is not news that laws against certain activities do not solve problems. Even William Wilberforce’s motions to enact laws against slavery did not succeed until public opinion turned against slavery.

Still, that was not the only reason a law is given. I’m totally for the idea that Christian living comes from a changed heart, but even in that case there are guiding laws that the Christian is subject to. So, I’m not sure I can agree with Neil’s idea that abortion should be legal, no matter the pragmatic results. (I should note that Neil himself is not explicitly drawing on Biblical thought to come to his conclusions, but is instead self-consciously pragmatic. My approach, however, is that if the Bible teaches people how to overcome sin, then it should provide guidelines for how to approach issues such as abortion).

Suggestion No. 2. 

My less developed thoughts about how to deal with the issue of abortion from a pro-life perspective run along different lines.

I’ve mentioned before that in today’s society right and wrong have been redefined as liberty and oppression. Therefore, in the abortion debate the pro-choice movement is ahead before they even begin. Choice is more important than life. The pro-life movement, therefore, needs to reframe their arguments in order to feed into today’s understanding of right and wrong.

What about presenting abortion as a denial of rights of an unborn child? Yes, it has been said before, but emphasize that as the main issue. Compare the re-definition of unborn children as non-human with the re-definition of Aboriginies in Australia as flora and fauna in Australia’s shameful past; the re-definition of Jews as of lesser value than other humans during the Nazi era; the re-definition of black-skinned people as lower on the evolutionary scale and the re-definition of the intellectually differently-abled (I think that is the latest term) as being a lower level of human than “regular” people so justifying their institutionalisation.

Along with those comparisons, cast women who have abortions as unintentional oppressors. Note, unintentional. I do not believe that women who have abortions are thinking of the best way to harm their child. They either truly believe that the baby in their womb is not a human or they are not sure. Loading guilt on them is not productive or loving. At the same time cast those who carry their baby to full-term as liberators of their unborn child. Recognize bearing with the inconvenience of an unwanted pregnancy as an heroic sacrifice for the good of an oppressed group i.e. unborn children.

Will this work? I don’t know. But I do think that reframing the pro-life position in such terms will help get more traction in the community at large. What I do know is that the side that wins a debate is usually not the side with the most compelling argument, it is the side with the most compassionate argument. Calling abortion murder and implying that women who have abortions and doctors who abort babies are murderers is not the most compassionate approach. In practice, you are alienating the very people you are trying to reach.

I’ve added the blog Parchment and Pen (the blog of Reclaiming the Mind Ministries) to the Site-seeing section.  The contributers include C. Michael Patton, Dan Wallace, Ruth Tucker, Paul Copan, J. Ed Komoszewski, and Robert Bowman, though to be honest, I’ve only really seen Michael Patton and Dan Wallace write much.

As I’ve said before, Dan Wallace is one of my favourite scholars, mainly because he is open to honestly considering evidence that would make him completely change his mind.  He believes in inerrancy, but counsels students to consider the problem passages seriously and, if persuaded that inerrancy cannot hold up, to go with that conclusion.  He considers the central belief to Christianity to be the gospel, not biblical inerrancy.  I like his honesty and willingness to come to less than popular conclusions.

I know very little about Michael Patton, but his posts indicate that he, also, is someone who asks the hard questions and is willing to come up with far more than pat answers - and even non-traditional ones if the Biblical text points that way.  Anyone with that tendency gets high marks from me.

Bible.org is the home of the internet based NET Bible.  It is full of free resources and Dan Wallace has been heavily involved in this.  Some great articles there from people all over.  Don’t know why I haven’t added it before.  It’s under Good Websites, though at this stage I’m not sure I remember what the difference between Site-seeing and Good Websites is.

UPDATE: Okay, I’ve reorganised the links section again - cut a couple of links and renamed the categories.  Hopefully it makes more sense.  I’m hoping that one day Paula will include some links of her own, because it’s fairly one-sided at the moment and she has a better variety of interests than me - but unfortunately they don’t coincide with the internet very often.  I’ve added the EziBuy site and the baby site that keeps sending us updates.  Don’t hold your breath for more from that quarter.  Paula will likely never get around to adding anything else.

WAHOO!  GLENN AND DEBS ARE MARRIED!!!

I decided to clean up my links.  My main reason for doing so was that I was reading blogs that discussed Southern Baptist and American Christianity and issues that really have little to do with me.  I’m happy to keep informed, but I think it better not to be more familiar with a Church situation in America (or anywhere else for that matter) than I am with that in my own locality.

So, I culled.  I’ve left “Good Websites” and “MP3s” pretty much the same for now, combined “Blogs” and “Friends” and another category together into “Site-seeing Itinerary” and included the following sites for the following reasons… (Note, everything is subject to change).

Continue Reading »

You’ve been waiting a long time for this, I know. The revelation of our gorgeous little girl.

Well, here it is: the first Kiwi and an Emu chick pic.

In this chapter, Theophilus begins outlining his “rules”.

“[T]here should be stewards in every fellowship” the number according to the number of people or geographical location i.e. if there are fewer people spread out over many districts, one should come from each district.

Eusebius suggests that stewards would be head over everyone and so highly gifted – more experienced, wise, discrete and cautious than others – along with the ability to recognize “the temperament, the emotions, the troubles and the inclinations of all the different ages and ranks” of those in the fellowship. In this way the stewards can help each person where they are at, not treat them like people on an assembly line. Continue Reading »

I find the refusal of many Christians to reconsider the way Church is biblically meant to meet mind-boggling. The same people who decry liberal scholarship’s view of the Bible as containing error, who shake their heads at egalitarians dismissing certain texts as culture-specific, who are outraged at the reinterpretation of verses that identify homosexual relationships as sinful, these are the people who look at 1 Corinthians 11-14 and say without blushing that what is described there does not provide a model for Christian meetings.

Now, I will give kudos where kudos should be given. Some people outright admit that their refusal stems from living and earning a living in a Church structure for the majority of their lives (see 7^th comment, though Spencer is not an inerrantist nor a complementarian, so maybe he’s not a good example). Others do cast an evaluative eye over their own Church systems and acknowledge the need for some changes. But the idea of a complete overhaul and maybe even getting rid of the one-man preaching band – preaching, I tell you! – is akin to denying the deity of Christ.

Take a look at the quote below. It was hauled out by Imonk as a slam-dunk response to the yet-to-be-published book, Pagan Christianity and, by implication, all others who would question Church-as-we-know-it. I myself have huge reservations about Frank Viola and his approach to critiquing the “institutional church”; Viola, and George Johnny-come-lately Barna, seems to want to tear the present Church system down using guilt by pagan-association and pointing out where things are failing, whereas I believe the more biblical approach is to look at the Bible (strangely enough). Still, while I don’t want to be thrown in with Viola and Barna, I hardly think Peterson has dropped words of irreproachable wisdom here.

What other church is there besides institutional? There’s nobody who doesn’t have problems with the church because there is sin the church.  But there is no other place to be a Christian except the church… I really don’t understand this naive criticism of the institution.  I really don’t get it.

Frederick Von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree.  There’s no life in the bark. It’s dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within.  And the tree grows and grows and grows.  If you take the bark off, it’s prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive.  And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn’t last long.  It disappears, gets sick, and it’s prone to all kinds of disease, heresy and narcissism.

Eugene Peterson in an interview, Christianity Today March 2005 (p.45). 

Quite apart from the need to define terms (what is the “institutional church”?), Eugene seems to be taking the lowest common denominator and using it as the norm. “Yes, I know it looks like a corpse, but the heart is still beating. My friends, here is an example of a living human being!”

Who would deny that the “institutional church” is not a Church? Christ is everywhere his people are. There are healthy Church’s and unhealthy ones; Churches with a lot of life and Churches with only sparks; there are those that function well and those that function poorly. But is it true that institutionalism is as necessary to the Church as bark is to a tree? Bark?

My friends, you need another analogy. The Church is a corporate person, not a plant, and persons already have something that protects them from disease, dehydration and death. It’s a living thing called skin. Yes, institutional structure has been used of God, and yes, it keeps a church going – often beyond its use-by date – but here is my question:

Since when is it considered integrity to choose what works over what the Bible teaches?

The book Pagan Christianity by George Barna and Frank Viola has not yet been released, but advanced copies have been sent to various bloggers for them to read and review.  And there have been a few.  Here’s an incomplete list: Pastor Joe Thorn, theheresy, Letters from Kamp Krusty, Kingdom People, Dash House, and so on.  The book is actually the second edition, the first written by Frank Viola alone and reviewed at  The Kingdom Come and Sue’s Book Reviews.  

Viola has answered some questions that have arisen from the book.  According to Frank, this review ”was excellent.  It fairly characterized the book.  It was witty, refreshingly honest, and strikingly accurate.”  Strangely enough, it was also the only review in the above list that had nothing negative whatsoever to say about the book.

I might say something more about this book later on.

Joel Osteen has been reviewed also.  Not so positively.  HT: Imonk.

Aaron seems to have stopped attempting to cause any ripples at all.  Where are you, Aaron?

And tea’s on the table.  Doesn’t have anything to do with blogs other than indicate I’d better stop blogging for the moment.

This is something I think there needs to be more thought put into.

Theophilus begins his defense of experience meetings with the assertion that, even if there were not a single example in the Old or New Testaments, the fact that the meetings bring such benefit to Christians is proof enough that they are God’s will. The benefits he refers to include the following: Continue Reading »

Heard a really decent sermon the Sunday before Christmas called “An Apologetic for Christmas.” The pastor was giving all the reasons why Christmas does not necessarily line up with the actual birthday of Jesus, quoted Charles Spurgeon saying Christmas and Easter are not worth celebrating, and then turned to 1 Corinthians: 19-23:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I may save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

The pastor then said, “I don’t need another day put aside to worship Jesus – I worship him all year. But I make use of Christmas to tell people the gospel.”

Great thought.

And my mind went to how we are going to talk to Lylie about Christmas. Continue Reading »