Wednesday, October 10, 2007
'The Hobbit': Peace in Middle-Earth?
Fans have long dreamed ''Lord of the Rings'' director Peter Jackson would tackle J.R.R. Tolkien's ''The Hobbit,'' but a nasty legal battle with New Line Cinema has made it impossible. Now, at last, a cease-fire may be at hand
Despite little fan-fare, Byrd leads Indians
Paul Byrd lead the Indians past the Yankees and into the ALCS. (Kathy Willens / Associated Press)
"I'm not tall. I'm right-handed. I'm balding. I don't throw hard. And my breaking ball isn't that great," Byrd jokes.
Could Rodney have said it any better?
...His own son is — or was — one of his biggest skeptics.
Two years ago, Byrd was pitching for the Angels when his younger son, Colby, 7, made an observation that left him reeling.
Colby, as unimpressed with his father as only a son can be, told Byrd that if he was any good, he would be pitching for the Yankees.
Rodney, pick up the routine...
"He would play this baseball video game and say, 'You know, dad, your stuff's not very good,''' Byrd recalled Tuesday in an interview with FOXSports.com.
"He asked, 'Why are the Yankees always so good? Every video game we get, they've got the best team.' I explained to him that they spend a lot of money on players. If a player is really good, they try to trade for him. Usually, they have kind of an All-Star team.
"He kind of tucked that away in his memory," Byrd continued. "About two months later, I was signing autographs. He said, dead serious, 'Why would anyone want your autograph?' He said, 'You're not any good, you're just average.'
"I said, 'I've been pitching in the big leagues about 10 years. I've done this and that.' He said, 'Dad, if you were any good, the Yankees would have traded for you.'
"You talk about an all-time low. I kept waiting for the punch line. But there was no punch line. Nothing."
...
Byrd, an intense, fearless competitor, took great pride in the moment. His agent, Bo McKinnis, jokes that Byrd is a strong Christian, but has gotten into more fights over the years than any of his clients.
As Byrd spoke by phone from Cleveland on Tuesday afternoon, he had one more bone to pick. He was waiting for Colby to get home from school so he could call him at the family's residence in Alpharetta, Ga.
Colby, who once thought his dad only could be good if he pitched for the Yankees, was about to be taught a little respect.
"I'll have to remind him of that," Byrd said, laughing. "I'm going to harass him."
John Piper on David Powlison
John Piper has often commented on how helped he is by David Powlison’s thoughtful, biblical reflections on Christ and life. For example, he has written:
Among living authors who think deeply about the Word of God and the workings of the human soul, I know of no one who writes more perceptively or ministers more deeply to me than David Powlison. As I write this, for example (August, 2000), I am reading his article in The Journal of Biblical Counseling, titled “‘Peace Be Still’: Learning Psalm 131 By Heart.” I am finding myself naked before the Word of God, as if David Powlison were living inside of me and exposing the anxieties and obsessions of my heart. I am convicted and made to cry out for deeper, far deeper, freedom from pride and fear of man. There are many today who specialize in soul-care or deep, faithful grasp of Biblical theology; but there are few who do both. David Powlison does both.
At last year’s New Attitude Conference, C. J. Mahaney recommended and made available the following resources from Powlison that can aid you in knowing and enjoying Christ more:
Additionally, Dr. Powlison has given a number of talks at DG conferences. Check out:
Tim Keller: What are the risks for evangelicals?
Keller spoke in a number of sessions:
- What is an evangelical ministry?
- What are the risks for evangelicals?
- What is an evangelical ministry?
- Ministry in the city
In this talk, "What are the risks for evangelicals?" Keller talks about what's happening within the evangelical movement right now. There's a new hostility toward evangelicals in culture, and post-evangelicals (the emerging church) are also expressing criticisms. How should evangelicals respond?
Here are some highlights, along with notes from the entire talk.
Highlights
- Evangelicalism used to occupy the middle ground between fundamentalism and liberalism. It was orthodox, pro-scholarship, and facing the world. Recently, evangelicalism has become more hostile and condemning of culture. A younger generation has given up on evangelicalism as a middle ground and are looking for a new consensus. This group goes by a number of names, such as post-evangelicals or the emerging church.
- A new gospel is being preached about the Kingdom of God and Jesus Christ overcoming the evil powers forces of injustice in the world. The pendulum has swung the other way.
- To respond, evangelicals must understand and practice biblical repentance as a result of believing the gospel. This will allow evangelicals to admit their sins, even if they disagree with 80% of the criticisms from the post-evangelicals, and even if the remaining 20% is expressed poorly. To the degree that we understand the gospel, we will be able to freely admit our shortcomings as an evangelical movement.
- Don't ever think that we can respond to legitimate criticisms of our practice by defending our doctrine. In defending our doctrines, we have not responded to the criticisms of our practices. Orthopraxy is part of orthodoxy.
- It is necessary to draw boundaries. What really matters is how we treat the people on the other side of those boundaries. People are watching. We're going to win the younger leaders if we are the most gracious, kind, and the least self-righteous in controversy. The truth will ultimately lose if we hold the right doctrines, but do so with nasty attitudes and a lack of love.
- We need to approach the controversies with a repentant heart corporately and say, "Despite all the bad things that are being said here, there's a core of truth here and we need to deal with it."
Notes from "What are the risks?"
Review from Keller's First Talk - What is an Evangelical Ministry?
Evangelicals are gospel people. They believe that the gospel essentials are the most important thing. There are many other things the Bible teaches, but we major in the gospel essentials. These things unite us:
- We get the gospel from the Bible, and believe in the final, full plenary authority and clarity of Scripture.
- We believe that the gospel is that we are saved by sheer grace alone through faith alone through the substitutionary work of Christ alone.
- The gospel is activated by lives initially and constantly through repentance.
Today, we want to look at what the challenges are that face evangelicals today, and how we can effectively handle them.
What are the challenges that face evangelicals today?
We are entering into a greater time of criticism, both within our ranks and outside. This is a great opportunity for growth, and a teachable moment. You always learn and grow more from criticism if you know how to handle that criticism.
There is a backlash in the culture against evangelicals, and there is fragmentation and controversy and disunity within the culture as well.
a. Backlash withIn culture
For years, evangelicals were tolerated or ignored. There is now a sense that we are dangerous. Why is this happening?
To some degree, the situation is our fault (American's fault). 25 years ago about half of evangelicals voted Democrat. Now about 80-90% vote Republican. Evangelical Christians are concentrated at the conservative end of the spectrum.
We are seeing a backlash:
- The number of Christians who say they have no religious preference has always been miniscule - 3 or 4%. In the last 10 years that has almost tripled. There is an enormous backlash against the religious right.
- When cultural influencers read books like The Next Christendom, describing a robust Christianity is growing at 7-10 times the population rate in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, they express panic and fear that we are going back to the dark ages.
- Books from Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris take an aggressive stand against Christianity. There are also some influential books in America warning that if we have a recession, the Christian right will take over and we'll be in the same position as Germany in the 1920s. Most of the reviews only say that this book goes a little over the top.
This hostility will continue within culture.
b. Fragmentation within evangelicalism
Billy Graham, Harold Ockenga, and Carl Henry in the States, and John Stott in the UK, carved out a new space between liberalism and fundamentalism between the 1940s and 1960s.
Basically evangelicalism is this: The liberals are not orthodox in their theology, but are engaged with culture and scholarship. Fundamentalists are orthodox in their theology, but are separatist and anti-intellectual. Evangelicalism aimed to be orthodox but engaged, concerned with scholarship, and facing the world. And actually, it worked. This middle ground has been the most vital - until recently.
The rise of the Christian right has made many evangelicals more hostile and condemning to culture. Then you have the charismatic movement, which has been good in many ways but is sometimes anti-intellectual.
A younger generation - sometimes called the emerging church, sometimes post-conservatives or post-evangelicals, are saying, "The old consensus isn't going to work anymore." They are responding to the anti-intellectualism of the charismatic movement, and to the rigidity, self-righteousness, and political narrowness of the Christian right. And they are blaming it on classical evangelical doctrine.
They are looking for a new center and consensus.
In the older culture, people believed they had to be good, that there are moral standards, and that if there is a God he's mad at them. Therefore the older gospel is that you have a problem with God and turns aside the wrath of God.
They say this gospel won't work anymore, because people don't believe they have a problem with God, and if we look within the church we see all kinds of problems and not many changed lives.
The new gospel is not that Jesus took away the wrath of God and that if you believe in him you can be forgiven. The new gospel is that the Kingdom of God is here. Jesus Christ has overcome the powers that are oppressing the world. By dying on the cross he has opened the way to a new way of life, allowing you to become an agent of peace and justice in the world. You become a Christian by entering into community and by a mixture of faith and work in making Jesus Christ Lord.
This gospel says to the non-Christian that we're not about the wrath of God, we're about a new way of life. It says to the unchanged evangelical that being a Christian is not just believing; it is following him.
We as classic evangelicals believe there are huge problems with that. When you change the gospel to deal with the powers, it ignores the problems within. As G.K. Chesterton supposedly said, the problem with the world is me. The problem with the world starts with our sin. The other problem is that we can't be agents of reconciliation without a heart change. We can't abandon being saved by grace alone through faith alone in favor of a program of works. It won't lead us to sing, "My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee."
Dr. Richard Lovelace used to say that in history you see the pendulum swing like this: In times of low spiritual vitality, orthodox churches tend to detach justification from sanctification. That is, people say that they are saved without working that out in repentance. As a result, people are shaped by culture and not changed. Then the pendulum swings the other way, and people begin to load sanctification into justification. Some of the puritans did that; so does the higher life movement. That is happening again. The emerging church is, to some degree, loading sanctification into justification, when what we really have to do is repent.
How can we effectively handle these challenges?
How are we going to face this hostility from culture and fragmentation within? The general resource is the biblical doctrine and practice of repentance.
Luther began the 95 Theses that began the Reformation by writing this: "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said 'Repent,' he called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance."
Why did Luther say this? Nobody was bigger than Luther on the difference between faith and works. Religious people generally believe that God accepts them because of their good works. In other words, they base their sanctification on their justification. In which case, religious people are either sinners or they are loved at any given time.
Luther understood that the gospel - salvation by grace through faith through the substitutionary work of Christ alone - brings a paradoxical personal identity that nobody else has. We are simultaneously sinners (in ourselves) and completely accepted (in Christ) - simul iustus et peccator. We have Christ's righteousness. We understand that we're sinners but infinitely loved. We're as loved now as we will be a million years from now.
This means that we are weaker and more sinful than we ever before believed, but also more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope.
If that is the case, the way that you can tell that you are a Christian who understands the gospel, rather than a religious person, is how you handle repentance. If you are religious, repentance is occasional and traumatic. It's what you do to get out of the sin bucket into the love bucket. Repentance then becomes another weapon in your arsenal of self-salvation. It becomes a work. But you never know if you've been repentant enough.
But if you believe the gospel, then we understand that the gospel has nothing to do with our performance. This gives us the freedom to see sin everywhere in our lives. We don't have to be in denial about sin in our lives. George Whitefield wrote:
I cannot pray but I sin -- I cannot preach to you or any others but I sin -- I can do nothing without sin; and, as one expresseth it, my repentance wants to be repented of, and my tears to be washed in the precious blood of my dear Redeemer. Our best duties are as so many splendid sins.
To the degree that we understand the gospel, we are free to admit the worst about ourselves finally. Repentance isn't how we get right with God; it's just the right response. It gives immediate assurance.
Lloyd-Jones tells the story of someone who says, "I was at your house the other day, and you weren't home. A bill came due to you, and I paid it, so you're off the hook." Lloyd-Jones said that we would have no idea how to respond to this man, because we're not sure if it was a package with postage due costing a few pence, or it could be back taxes due worth thousands of pounds. Until we know the size of our debt, we don't know whether to say "thank you" or fall down and kiss his feet. The more we understand the size of our sin, we understand how loved we are.
My dear friends, most churches make the mistake of selecting as leaders the confident, the competent, and the successful. But what you most need in a leader is someone who has been broken by the knowledge of his or her sin, and even greater knowledge of Jesus' costly grace. The number one leaders in every church ought to be the people who repent the most fully without excuses, because you don't need any now; the most easily without bitterness; the most publicly and the most joyfully. They know their standing isn't based on their performance.
All of life is repentance, and repentance increases joy. It's not traumatic; it's joyful and it's healing.
What this means for us is that as we look at the criticisms we are getting, especially from inside, it's like when I do marriage counseling. A husband and wife are both saying something critical about the other. In each case, 80% of what they are saying is wrong. And yet 20% is right. Yet with the 20% that is right, the way it's expressed may be exaggerated, and the motivation may be wrong. It may be expressed outrageously. It's almost impossible for each side to hear the truth.
What I say to them if they are Christians is, "If you believe the gospel, you will be humble enough and assured enough that you can admit your sin and admit the 20% that's right without excuses or rancor. Just ignore all the exaggeration and bad motivation and admit that 'what you say about this is right and I'm going to repent of it.' If you both do this, it's a tremendous opportunity for growth. If you don't do it, it's because you don't believe the gospel no matter what you say."
All the criticisms of the post-conservatives are wrapped in horrendous doctrinal proposals, and yet at the bottom there is usually a core of truth. It usually has to do with our practices.
Never believe that criticism of our doctrine is all that's going on. It's also criticism of our practices. And don't think that by writing books defending your doctrine you've dealt with the criticisms of our practice.
So, for instance, we may be criticized for being unkind to homosexuals, that we don't know how to be kind to them or pastor them. We may be told that we need to change our understanding of what the BIble teaches about homosexual practice. The answer to that is no, but the first part is true. We can hold to our doctrine and admit that we have been unkind. Can we do that?
Or, some may say that conservative evangelicals don't care about the poor. So, we're told we have to redo the entire gospel, so that Jesus Christ on the cross is only dealing with corporate, structural evil, and becoming a Christian is simply joining a community that is working for peace and justice. Our answer has to be yes and no: yes, we need to care about the poor in a way that we haven't; no, we're not going to re-engineer the gospel.
Can we go back through every single criticism wrapped in these horrendous doctrinal proposals and catch the core of valid criticism, no matter how poorly motivated and exaggerated? Is there any way we can do that? See, if we understand the gospel, we won't get on our horse and say, "How dare you say that?"
There is a whole slew of younger leaders out there. They are watching us. We can't avoid drawing boundaries. Everyone does it, and if they say you're not doing it, then you're drawing a boundary by saying you're not doing it. But what matters is how we treat the people on the other side of the boundary. We're going to win the younger leaders if we are the most gracious and the most kind and the least self-righteous in controversy toward people on the other side of the boundary.
Some may say, "They should care about truth and they shouldn't care about things like that," but doesn't Jesus give them a warrant here when he says that we would be known by our love? Isn't orthopraxy part of orthodoxy? Of course it is!
One of the worst things that has happened over the years is typified by the book Reforming Fundamentalism, a history of Fuller Seminary. At a certain point in Fuller's history, they dropped their commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture. Here's how it actually happened. It happened in the mid-1960s, not because there were two parties, one for and one against inerrancy. There was a group that believed in inerrancy, and there was a group that believed the Bible has errors in it. But then there was a group in the middle that actually believed in inerrancy but hated the attitudes of those who championed it. As a result they were just indifferent. As a result, the group that didn't believe in inerrancy won.
I believe that is happening now. There are all kinds of people looking at the controversies, and saying, "I actually believe in the doctrine of those guys, but I absolutely their demeanor and tone of voice." Therefore they're just sitting out, and as a result the truth loses because of a lack of love.
Lastly, let me apply this to a few areas. Here are a few areas we'll have to approach with a repentant heart corporately and say, "Despite all the bad things that are being said here, there's a core of truth here and we need to deal with it."
- Class and race - We need to reflect biblically and theologically on class and race. Culture is always invisible to those within it. Don't ask a fish to write an essay on water, because the fish will say, "What's water?" Some years ago, an African-American friend said, "The trouble with you white Christians is that you don't know you have a culture. We talk about black culture and a black way of preaching and a black way of music, but the way that you do things, that's just the way it's done." Class is a bigger deal in the UK than it is in other countries. What you make, where you went to school, your accent, how to process and express emotion, how you dress - in each class, those things are different. The people who are down in the scale feel their exclusion here more than in other countries. If we recognize that we're not doing a good job ministering to the working class, I don't have the solutions, but why in the world aren't we talking about that? We may expect people to get over it, but that's putting sanctification before justification. You need to do something to adapt. The European future is a multi-racial one. You have to deal with this topic.
- Corporate vs. individual - Here's another one: unlike the progressive evangelicals who pit the individual against the corporate, we don't have to. A robust Christian theology can pull together working for peace and justice in society with the old-fashioned gospel that says people need to be converted. There is no reason to pit these two against each other. It can be done. It worries me that very few movements are combining the two. Churches that focus on social renewal often can't evangelize themselves out of a paper bag, and churches that focus on evangelism and discipleship often ignore caring for the needs of the neighborhood because they're scared of taking resources away from evangelism. There is a way of integrating the two. Think about that, and be the first movement in the whole world of evangelicalism that really integrates the two.
- Suffering - A lot of the younger evangelicals are, I think, afraid to suffer. They may be making doctrinal changes because they don't want to look stupid in the eyes of the world. Repenting of that is important. We should understand our fear of suffering and persecution and repent of it. The Bible doesn't just give us a joy that works in spite of suffering. It holds forth a joy that is enhanced by faithful suffering. Great line from Lord of the Rings: "Is everything sad going to become untrue?" The answer of the gospel is yes. Our eventual joy will be greater because of our current suffering. Nobody grows except through suffering.
From The Brothers Karamazov:
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men.
Something so great is going to happen in the end that all of the suffering is only going to enhance the future and ultimate glory greater. It begins to happen as we embrace suffering faithfully.
If we embrace the gospel and we're willing to repent and own the 20%, and we are gracious to our opponents, we will grow in a way that only repentant people can.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Fed fast food of opinion, ESPN audience starves for reported fact
The Shrinking Deficit
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We hate to be the bearers of good news, but someone's got to do it: The Congressional Budget Office has released its preliminary estimates for Fiscal Year 2007 that ended September 30, and the federal budget deficit fell again, this time by 35% to $161 billion.
Americans coughed up a record $2.568 trillion in taxes to the IRS in 2007, or 6.7% more than in 2006. This means federal receipts have climbed by $785 billion since the 2003 investment tax cuts, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. Income, dividend and capital gains tax rates were all cut in 2003, but individual income tax receipts have soared by 46.3% in four years, with payments by the wealthy accounting for most of the windfall. Last year's increase in individual income payments was 11.3%, or more than double the rate of growth in nominal GDP. Don't worry, class warriors: Hannah Montana and others among the "new rich" are paying their taxes.
Overall federal revenue is now 18.8% of GDP, compared with the 18.2% average of the past 40 years. The nearby table shows how far off CBO was, as usual, in its static-revenue estimates that failed to anticipate the impact of taxes on incentives and growth.
The biggest surprise in fiscal 2007 was the slower growth in federal spending. CBO reports that federal outlays crept up just 2.8% last year (2.5% after adjusting for timing in payments), which was "well below the 7.3 percent average over the previous five years." The decline was largely due to lower disaster-related payments compared with Hurricane Katrina's aftermath the year before, plus the budget deal last winter that kept domestic spending stable as Congress changed hands.
This is a one-year wonder. Congress is already gearing up to splurge again, with its $35 billion expansion in the children's health program, a $286 billion five-year farm bill, $23 billion in water projects, and $22 billion more in non-defense discretionary spending. Combine this blowout with slowing revenue growth due to the housing recession, and the deficit may not fall again in 2008. This is all the more reason for President Bush to finally use his veto pen on spending bills.
The overriding lesson here is that the best antidote for deficits is faster growth, not tax increases. The budget deficit has declined more rapidly this decade in the wake of the Bush tax cuts than it did in the 1990s in the wake of the Clinton tax increases. CBO is still forecasting a balanced budget in 2010, but if Congress gets its way on spending and taxes, all of this progress will be short-lived.
White House on bin Laden tape leak
Q Dana, you said this morning in the gaggle that the White House did not leak the information about the bin Laden tape. How do you know that?
MS. PERINO: Well, this is -- let me take you back. This is the -- there was a private company that contacted the White House to let us know that they had found the Osama bin Laden tape, asked us if we wanted to have the federal government review it. When -- the standard practice at the White House is to take that phone call -- to take that request and direct it to -- directly to the DNI's office. So we do not ask to have that information just solely reviewed at the White House, we immediately turn it over to the National Center for Counterterrorism.
That's what Fred Fielding and Joel Bagnal did, the two people who were aware of the link. And it went to the DNI -- I'm sorry -- it went to the NCTC. And to the extent that we have Americans coming forward to provide us information, whether it be a private citizen or a private cooperation, or anybody in America that can provide the government information, we take it very seriously that they should, one, feel comfortable that in providing that information, that their sources will be protected; and that we will act on it, if necessary. We appreciate what they did. This was a cause of concern that the information was leaked. And I would have to refer to the DNI's office in regards to any possible investigation into that leak.
Q But I guess my question is, Fielding and Bagnal both knew about the information; you're positive they didn't leak it or take it --
MS. PERINO: Correct.
Q -- or take it further than the DNI's office?
MS. PERINO: We asked that the company contact NCTC directly and get that information to them directly.
Q So they didn't contact NCTC, the SITE company did. Who did Fielding and Bagnal contact? DNI?
MS. PERINO: I would check on that. I know that they asked for the company that called to contact NCTC directly. I don't know who else they might have called within our government -- possibly the DNI's counsel's office. But I'm not positive. I can check.
Q My question is, you're saying they contacted these other places. The company asked them not to. So how do you know that the leak didn't come --
MS. PERINO: No, no, we asked --
Q -- from Fielding or --
MS. PERINO: Because I've talked to Fred.
Q Okay, that's my question.
MS. PERINO: I have talked to Fred. And what we do is we ask -- the call comes in from the company, and then Fred said, we'd like for the federal government to be able to look at this, thank you, but don't send it to me, send it directly to the NCTC -- the National Center for Counterterrorism -- which was what was -- taken place here.
Al Qaida Goes Dark?
While the nation's intel apparatus is certainly capable of gross buffoonery, it's unlikely that any mid or high-level official would be willing to "blow" Obelisk unless they had other, better means for accessing Al Qaida communications--avenues that wouldn't be compromised by media coverage of the bin Laden video. Presumably, those 'access points" are still available and producing valuable intelligence--as evidenced by last month's arrests in Europe.
Meanwhile, Ms. Katz and her organization learned a couple of hard lessons. First, don't always assume you know more than the folks at Ft. Meade, who still have tools and methods that are unavailable to commercial intel firms. Secondly, be careful entrusting proprietary information to intel and security bureaucrats, who will gladly use private data to cover their own work, even if it means compromising your sources in the process.
What Is Orthodoxy?
"A two-part post by Mark Dever that looks at the essentials of Christianity--those basics we must agree upon. He gives three ways that we learn what we must agree upon, gives a fourfold test you can put on a doctrine to discern its importance, and then gives three things ("the essentials of the essentials") that we must agree upon to have meaningful cooperation as Christians."
Monday, October 08, 2007
Evangelical President
Worshipping at the Altar of Mac
The Formula: From Grass to Gas 
The Prescription: Switching to Renewables 
4 Technologies on the Brink 
Silicon Valley Cleans Up: A Wired Flowchart 
