—Mennonite pastor Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith

[Christianity Today, 5/09]

Three things go by the name of Christmas. One is a religious festival. This is important and obligatory for Christians; but as it can be of no interest to anyone else, I shall naturally say no more about it here. The second (it has complex historical connections with the first, but we needn’t go into them) is a popular holiday, an occasion for merrymaking and hospitality. If it were my business to have a “view” on this, I should say that I much approve of merrymaking. But what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business. I see no reason why I should volunteer views as to how other people should spend their own money in their own leisure among their own friends. It is highly probable that they want my advice on such matters as little as I want theirs. But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everyone’s business.

I mean of course the commercial racket. The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity. Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him to Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children. But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers. Neither of these circumstances is in itself a reason for condemning it. I condemn it on the following grounds.

1. It gives on the whole much more pain than pleasure. You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to “keep” it (in its third, or commercial, aspect) in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long before December 25th everyone is worn out – physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them. They are in no trim for merrymaking; much less (if they should want to) to take part in a religious act. They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.

2. Most of it is involuntary. The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own. It is almost a blackmail. Who has not heard the wail of despair, and indeed of resentment, when, at the last movement, just as everyone hoped that the nuisance was over for one more year, the unwanted gift from Mrs. Busy (whom we hardly remember) flops unwelcomed through the letter-box, and back to the dreadful shops one has to go to?

3. Things are given as presents which no mortal ever bought for himself – gaudy and useless gadgets, “novelties” because no one was ever fool enough to make their like before. Have we really no better use for materials and for human skill and time than to spend them on all this rubbish?

4. The nuisance. For after all, during the racket we still have all our ordinary and necessary shopping to do, and the racket trebles the labor of it.

We are told that the whole dreary business must go on because it is good for trade. It is in fact merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition of our country, and indeed of the world, in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things. I don’t know the way out. But can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers? If the worst comes to the worst I’d sooner give them money for nothing and write it off as a charity. For nothing? Why, better for nothing than for a nuisance.

(FYI, I found this using Google at this site.)

Then later on, he posted some further thoughts:  More Thoughts on Judith

Eggs, almonds, citrus and garlic
These are some of my high-sensitivity foods, according to a food sensitivity analysis done on my blood last week.  In addition, the preliminary results seem to indicate that I’m at least somewhat sensitive to just about everything.  I’ll get more details when I go in to see her next week.  The naturopathic doctor I’m going to (for the purpose of weight-loss and health-gain) runs these tests as part of her overall evaluation.

Birthers
Birthers are a variety of conspiracy theorists who are still hanging on to the idea that President Obama is not a citizen and should not be allowed to remain as president.  James Taranto (Best of the Web Today) has a good summary of why we should discount their claims.

My points were (1) if a couple is dating and has committed to save themselves for marriage, moving in together is just too much temptation to handle for almost everyone, (2) a couple living together does in fact give the impression that there is a sexual relationship regardless of their claims, much more so than if they were not living together, and (3) if it’s accepted by the Christian community, a couple who does not have the resolve is more likely to move in together and end up in sin than if it weren’t unaccepted.

His argument is that we should not assume that a couple living together is having sex — we just don’t know, and assuming so is unjustly judging them, especially if they specifically claim not to be intimate.  There’s no valid “weaker brother” or “appearance of evil” argument because the current culture assumes that any dating couple must be having sex, and there is no difference whether they’re living together or not.  A co-habitating couple claiming not to be having sex is just as credible as one that is not co-habitating making the same claim.  (Note – my son is not living with a woman, and believes that sex outside of marriage is wrong.)

I confess that when we started this discussion, I was totally befuddled.  How could anyone reasonably argue this?  Are millenials really that different from us boomers?  My first point is cross-generational and should be enough to keep Christian unmarried couples from living together.  His second and third arguments assume a whole lot more change in culture than I see.  I agree that we have freedom in Christ to do anything that is not prohibited in the Bible, but three of those things prohibited are leading other Christians astray, giving an appearance of evil, and subjecting yourself to temptation.

My son stands by his arguments, and I stand by mine.  But we still talk, and I still love him.

I don’t know a whole lot about eschatology, but what I’ve been taught, and have had no reason to discount, is the teaching pervasive in Evangelicalism that these prophecies don’t refer to the fall of Jerusalem, but to sometime in the future.  The only preterists I’ve known in the past have believed that none of the references to the end of the age or last days referred to the future, but had already occurred in 70 AD.  The bodily resurrection and the rapture are explained away by saying that it is really a spiritual resurrection and a spiritual rapture.  But that’s clearly not what the Bible says, so I rejected it.

Sproul develops sort of a combination preterist/futurist argument, i.e. that many of the prophecies do refer to the destruction of Jerusalem, but others refer to the end of the world.  He calls it “partial preterism”.  I’m not going to present the argument here – it would just take too long.  However it is, as you would expect from Sproul, a well-thought-out presentation of the argument and I’d recommend reading the book if you’re interested in the subject.

Two verses that Bertrand Russel uses as examples of Jesus’ predictions not coming true are:

When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. [Matthew 10:23]

Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. [Matthew 16:28]

My response to Russel’s objection would have been that these statements did not necessarily mean that it had to happen right then, but in light of time relative to eternity, could happen far in the future.  Reading this book though made me realize that I was being as dishonest with the interpretation of these verses as the preterists were being with verses about the rapture and the bodily resurrection.  The plain reading of these verses are that Jesus would be returning within the lifetimes of most of those he was talking to.  Sure, I have futurist explanations (rationalizations) for both these verses, but Sproul’s book does a good job of knocking them down.  Sproul also points out that Jesus’ coming in glory to judge Jerusalem does not negate his coming at the end of the world.  He backs up both.

One of the more interesting parts of this book was the description of extra-biblical historical documentation of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.  Several historians witnessed and documented strange lights in the sky that could have been Jesus “coming in glory.”  Granted it’s not biblical, and it has been explained away by many, but interesting nevertheless.

Bottom line – my opinions in these areas have been challenged. And it occurs to me that almost all the meat in this book adds to my understanding, but there is some that I still need to investigate further.

Most of the day we spent walking around the grounds, sitting on the deck of the main Inn reading, talking with people at the Inn, coming back to the cabin to take a nap or to sit around and read some more.  I got through a couple of books and Cindy spent some time preparing for her women’s Bible study and doing some other reading.  We did give in to civilization one night and watched one of the movies that the Inn had available to borrow.

Last year, which was our first time there, we spent more time away from the cabin driving around the area.  This year we pretty much stuck close to home base and instead of eating every meal out, we brought some food with us.  We did eat out a couple of times, but for the most part we just hung out at the Inn and our cabin.

We saw much more wildlife this year than I remember seeing last year.  The evening we arrived, we saw two deer right next to our cabin not 20 ft from the road. We saw deer several times during our stay, including once when we watched two young deer apparently playing by chasing each other around one of the cabins, and parking themselves right underneath the cabin’s deck for a while to survey their surroundings.  We also saw plenty of squirrels, soaring birds, ducks, geese, and (Cindy’s favorite) robins.  None of these animals feared coming close, although they would run away if you tried to approach them.  One little bird was hopping around on the deck within a foot or two of Cindy, and squirrels frequently were running around our feet.

These few days were exactly what I was hoping for – a time to get away, cool down and relax.

In his review, Sproul says:

Advocates of intelligent design are directing most of their efforts toward addressing scientific questions and objections. They are not addressing the questions theologians might have about the implications of their work. If they were, it would probably bring more criticism down upon their heads. Be that as it may, Christian theologians do need to ask questions about the implications of their works.

He then talks about a theological error that intelligent design proponents frequently make, which is to say that if it can be explained from laws of nature, then you cannot say it’s designed (which, by the way, is an argument that is not made in Meyer’s book).   Sproul argues that this isn’t true:

… God designed things that can be explained in terms of natural laws as well as those that cannot. In fact, God designed the natural laws themselves! God not only designed irreducibly complex biological systems; He designed simple biological systems. He designed everything. It is the failure to deal with this issue adequately that has led many to see in the work of some intelligent design proponents a “God of the gaps” argument.

The “God of the gaps” argument, I assume, is that if you can’t explain it, it must be from God.  Does that mean then that if one day you figure it out and can explain it, it no longer is from God?  No one would use this argument if they thought about it for a second, and yet I’ve heard it.

The “thinking” behind this may be good-intentioned, that is to give God credit for understanding a whole lot more than we do.  But this argument could, and sometimes does, make ID proponents come off looking as blind  as evolutionists look.  We have to be disciplined in our thinking.

Speaking of evolutionists, my favorite evolutionist quote so far is from George Wald, a Harvard University biochemist and Nobel Laureate:

One has to only contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet we are here-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. [ref]

What faith he must have!

It’s interesting that Piper acknowledges that he would likely disagree with Mark Driscoll, who is currently my most-listened-to preacher.  Driscoll views it almost as a duty for Christians to watch some TV and movies in order to understand the world we are trying to reach.   Minutes 21 to 24 in this video contain an example of his thinking.

Piper on the other hand, does not see a connection between watching TV or movies and his effectiveness as a preacher.  On the contrary, he sees it as potentially damaging.  His concerns with TV in particular are “its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects”, and its consumption of valuable time.

The difference between the two viewpoints is the purpose and mental discipline with which you view these shows.  If your purpose is to figure out why people watch these things, you’re going to watch it differently, and be less susceptible I think, than if you are looking to be entertained, or are just “unwinding”.

I know myself though.  When it comes to TV and movie watching, I’m more inclined to be a Piper than a Driscoll.  And I personally believe the Driscoll-type viewers are extremely rare.

There is so much more in Piper’s short article.  I urge you to read it.