2007 August archive at Zeal For Truth

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Archive for August, 2007

Was Mother Teresa a Hypocrite?

Published by Thainamu August 31, 2007 in General and Religion. 15 Comments

Private letters written by Mother Teresa (1910-1997) have recently been made public, ten years after her death. Because she was both a public figure (e.g. winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979) and because her work among the poor was religiously motivated, her private thoughts are interesting to the religious and the non-religious alike.

Many of us who admired the work of Mother Teresa are not the least surprised by the difficulties, sadness and especially the doubt that she privately expressed. A few, on the other hand, are using this as a time to say I told you so, or to poke fun (I decided not to post the link here).

Mother Teresa led an on-going ministry in a tremendously difficult situation, working in conditions of hopelessness, dying, and endless need. Do her confessions of a cold heart and lack of faith mean she was just a sham? Truly God is the final judge of that, but I think we can safely say that just because you give your life to Christian service, doesn’t mean you are perfect either inside or outside or that you never have doubts. Is it hypocrisy to serve when you don’t feel like it? Or is it obedience?

We should not be surprised that Mother Teresa had doubts. She was, after all, a human sinner like the rest of us. Of course we have doubts at times. We can’t make sense of everything and we aren’t fully redeemed on this side of death. We can’t know everything. That’s why they call us believers.

The Roman Catholic Church is in the process of declaring Mother Teresa a saint. I am not a Roman Catholic and therefore I don’t give much thought to those who are sainted by their church. But if she were to be called a saint, perhaps she would become the Patron Saint of Those Who Don’t Give Up When Things Get Hard.

Book Review: The Gospel of Wealth

Published by Kenneth Martens August 30, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

Book review: The Gospel of Wealth: An Employer’s View of the Labor Question by Andrew Carnegie.

A series of high-profile strikes and lockouts in the 1870s and 1880s prompted Andrew Carnegie to offer an essay that analyzes the relationship between labor and employers. Carnegie’s goal is to find a way to avoid strikes and lockouts, which are disruptive and ultimately harmful to all involved.

A strike or lockout is, in itself, a ridiculous affair. Whether a failure or a success, it gives no direct proof of its justice or injustice. In this it resembles war between two nations. It is simply a question of strength and endurance between the contestants. The gage of battle, or the duel, is not more senseless, as a means of establishing what is just and fair, than an industrial strike or lockout. It would be folly to conclude that we have reached any permanent adjustment between capital and labor until strikes and lockouts are as much things of the past as the gage of battle or the duel have become in the most advanced communities.

One solution is to make all employees part-owners of the company. This does not work, because (according to Carnegie) employees are generally inept at running a company. It takes a rare genius to build a successful company, and it is counter-intuitive to human nature to ask these geniuses to voluntarily give the ownership of their company away to the employees.

Carnegie’s Primary Solution
A better solution is a plan that rewards employees based on the performance of the company, so that they have an incentive to do what is best for the company. Therefore: “wages should be based upon a sliding scale, in proportion to the net prices received for product month by month.” When employees have a vested interest in the success of the company, they will be less likely to demand increased wages when the company can ill afford to pay more.

In turn, the owners must agree to run the company themselves, instead of turning control over to “salaried officers” and professional managers who care for nothing except “to present a satisfactory balance-sheet at the end of the year, that they may therefore be secure in their positions.” Owners care about the long-term survival of the company, and thus have an interest in maintaining a satisfied workforce. Unlike salaried managers who view the workforce as numbers on the accounting reports, owners will stay in tune with their employees needs. Carnegie gives an example of a coal company, whose owners discovered the employees had to buy their coal from resellers at exorbitant rates. The company let employees buy coal at the wholesale rate, saving them a significant amount of money on their heating bills. Cost to the company for this benefit: zero.

So Carnegie’s solution looks like this:

Employees are paid on a sliding scale in proportion to the success of the company
Owners stay in charge rather than turning the company over to paid managers

The Necessity of Arbitration
But there will still be disputes, so Carnegie suggests that employees must form unions, which will negotiate with the company. The negotiation will usually resolve any conflicts: “my experience has been that trades-unions, upon the whole, are beneficial both to labor and to capital.” When negotiation fails to produce a solution, Carnegie envisions a system of arbitration: “There is no excuse for a strike or a lockout until arbitration of differences has been offered by one party and refused by the other.” Arbiters will be retired businessmen who have an intimate understanding of the industry. Their judgment will be final. Strikes and lockouts will thus be avoided.

I’m not convinced Carnegie’s concept of arbitration would work. The main problem is that if the arbiters are retired businessmen, they will naturally be biased toward the owners and against labor (Carnegie does suggest that retired trade union presidents could also be arbiters). However, Carnegie is right when he says that a well-informed workforce should work for the success of the company, even if that means some sacrifices. We see that happening in the United States today: pilots’ unions and flight attendants’ unions are giving in to airline demands because they realize the future of the airline is at stake. They understand that if the airline goes bankrupt and out of business, everybody loses, so they are willing to take a reduction of salary and benefits.

Modern Worship III: Articulation

Published by Colin August 29, 2007 in General. 5 Comments

I encountered a great worship song the other day. Here is a taste of the lyrics:

For all those times You stood by me
For all the truth that You made me see
For all the joy You brought to my life
For all the wrong that You made right
For every dream You made come true / for all the love I found in You
I’ll be forever thankful Jesus / You’re the one who held me up
Never let me fall / You’re the one who saw me through through it all

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn’t speak
You were my eyes when I couldn’t see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn’t reach
You gave me faith because You believed
I’m everything I am / because You loved me

Ok, so I just took Celine Dion’s hit from Up Close and Personal and stuck Jesus in there instead of “baby” and capitalized the “you’s.” However, this song would pass with flying colors as an embodiment of the current content of Modern Worship. It vaguely seems to refer to Christian concepts such as:

bringing around an ignorant or sinful person
joy
being thankful
advocacy
love lifting a person above their trials

Anthropomorphising God
I say vaguely, because the song also refers to the generalities in any love relationship. In other words, there is nothing really specific to God in the song. He would be seen as having the attributes of a really good human friend or significant other - but not as a holy, righteous, all-knowing all-compassionate God. The Lord of all creation is boiled down to a really good husband, wife, boyfriend or best friend.

The lyrics speak to attributes that people want from their relationships, not necessarily what actually exists. Atheists have levied a very good criticism at Christians in this manner - that we have made a God that explains away the difficulties we encounter in life. In essence, they accuse us of scientific idolatry. This could be considered idolatry in worship - where vague and/or anthropomorphic language is artfully painted upon a god-image and praised as though it is actually God. The ideals of men are infused into the music, regardless of reality, and abstract language embodying general emotional concepts is held as more important than specific examples or concrete attributes.

A Possible Relief
I was thrilled about seven months ago when I discovered worshipland.com - a worship site with chords and song samples written at the local level and freely shared with the universal body through the internet. Many of the songs that worship leaders had written were absolutely amazing and clear in their boldness for praising God. Take “Greatest End” by Jeff Bourque:

May I fear You greater than I fear man, I fear man
May my love for You be measured by obedience, by repentance
And in that moment humbly bow - teach my heart, show me how
To fear you more my Lord, my God! Faithful Friend, greatest End

May I love You greater than my own will, my own will
May I seek my greatest pleasure from your hand, from Your hand
And in that moment lift my eyes to the cross, up to Christ
Die to self and gain Your life savior friend, greatest End

This song has the same concepts that the Celine Dion song has, only they are beautifully and thoughtfully articulated in specific reference to God. Love is not spelled out vaguely, it is demonstrated by repentance, obedience and yielding our will to God. The song doesn’t merely call God our friend and compare him to friends in the earthly sense, but calls God our friend because he has faithfully committed himself to us by grating salvation. The song even notes that joy (or pleasure) is found from the hand of God - as he gives it out as a consequences of the actions the rest of the song mentions.

The Higher Call of Worship
Anyone can write an emotional poem or set of lyrics. A lot of people can also write emotive chordings and melody. But worship music requires a lot more than writing mere songs - the songs must encourage the worship of God. They must lead the believer to recognize the attributes and works of God, in scripture, in his own life and in overall concept. It takes a lot of care, thought, reverence and prayer to accomplish this. As we saw with Nadab and Abihu, we don’t want to be offering God strange fire. We must strive to worship him in purity - that is the only manner worthy of a perfect God.

IRS: If it’s Worth Something to You, it’s Worth Something to Us

Published by Ornot the Majestic August 28, 2007 in General, Politics and Current Events. 6 Comments

On August 7th, SF Giant’s left-fielder Barry Bonds pounded the final nail into ‘Hammerin’ Hank Aaron’s 30 year home-run record coffin when he knocked #756 into the right-field stands off a lefty pitch by the Washington Nationals. It marked not only a big day in baseball, but it unintentionally changed forever the life of one Met’s fan, Matt Murphy, forever.
From his August 9th interview on NBC’s Today Show:

Part of me wants to keep it. It’s the greatest American sports accomplishment in history. Part of me might want to sell it, but I really am leaning towards keeping it. It’s just too valuable, sentimental.

Well, as it turns out, he doesn’t really get much of a choice.

Applying Murphy’s Law to the matter of Catch 756, it is clear that catching a baseball worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is (assuming you can keep nearby fans from wrestling it away from you) an immediate and valuable ascension to wealth. Granted, the recipient/beneficiary/ball catcher has done nothing whatsoever to “earn” the income, but this does not mean it is not income—it merely means that it is not subject to social security or self-employment taxes on earned income and wages.

To make matters worse, according to John Barrie, a NYC tax attorney, capital gains taxes also could be levied in the future as the ball gains value. Essentially, it becomes subject to property tax and income tax, whichever may come first. Essentially, Mr. Murphy, a college student from Queens, NY, may be forced to sell the ball based on that principle alone.

The IRS’s argument? Since he could sell it, it is considered income and a liquidable asset, so therefore subject to taxation based on approximated value increase. My own personal aversions to taxes aside, according to the law, this makes sense if Barry Bonds is knocking two-story beach homes over the fence, not so much when a $14 baseball suddenly becomes considered valuable due to fluctuations of the emotionally-based memorabilia market. Are we then to be taxed each year based on “determined income” of my computer, my vehicle, my gun collection and my DVDs? All these items could be sold, some for profit, within a few hours. They probably would be if this “rent-to-own” tax mentality was an actual reality, which is the basis of the immoral property tax: continual payment on property already owned based on yearly considerations of worth. Hardly makes “owning” anything worth it from that standpoint.

Then again, that’s the summation of progression of most governments, hence why the right to property is of utmost importance to all people. For with this right we gain the right to control, profit, transfer and sell. In a sense, we become the ruler of that estate, and it is by this right that all other rights come into being. For if our property no longer becomes ours, but instead becomes the government’s, we are then subject to the government. Hence why taxes on owned property is the antithesis of the basis of our rights - it wrestles our right to own freely, as it forces us to pay dues to an unintended body.

As John Locke said in his Second Treatise on Civil Government:

…it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.

In more recent times, Ayn Rand made her case in Atlas Shrugged:

Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

Mr. Murphy may make his own anti-taxation statement once he gets the bill for the ball that calamitously fell from the sky.

Emerging Impulses: Missional

Published by Jasen Tracy August 27, 2007 in Religion and Emerging Church. 2 Comments

Origin and Description of the Term
Although the term “missional” was used beforehand, the concept was not popularized until the writings of Lesslie Newbigin in the 1990’s. Newbigin was a British missionary to India, and as many missionaries before and after discovered, he had to struggle with presenting the gospel over the cultural divide that he faced. This was expected on the missions field, but when Newbigin returned to the United Kingdom, he realized he faced the same problems there. Thus, the missional approach owes alot to lessons learned on the mission field.

Perhaps the best brief description of missional comes from Rick Meigs:

Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the “come to us” invitations with a “go to them” life. A life where “the way of Jesus” informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.

What it Means in Practice
From the above definition, it might seem that a church “being missional” is only a semantic distinction, but it does lead to important differences. They are rather hard to identify though, since it’s more of a mindset change than the establishment of programs. Other people have covered it better than I could, so I”ll point people to http://friendofmissional.org/ for examples.

Of Emerging and Missional
Most emerging churches have a commitment to the missional idea. Some combine the terms, referring to themselves as an “emerging-missional” church (this is apparently more common in Australia and New Zealand). Not all missional churches are emerging churches though. Some (perhaps many) churches who hold to missional ideas do not consider themselves to be emerging churches and show few of the other emerging impulses.

Does It Matter If Languages Die?

Published by Thainamu August 24, 2007 in General. 17 Comments

In recent years, a lot has been said about dying languages. The Ethnologue, a comprehensive source of basic information about all the world’s languages, states that there are 516 “nearly extinct” languages spoken in the world today (the definition of “nearly extinct” is when “only a few elderly speakers are still living”). To the man on the street, this is likely a non-issue, especially for those of us who live in monolingual cultures. Most people have no idea that there are 6,912 known languages in the world today.

However, if no one else cares, linguists (and their academic brothers, anthropologists) are very interested in the fact that languages are disappearing rather rapidly. A number of university departments and other stand-alone organizations are dedicated to learning why languages are dying, documenting nearly extinct languages and trying to stop them from dying (some examples: Foundation for Endangered Languages, Endangered Language Initiative, The Endangered Languages Project, and the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages). Further, the US government has grant money available to study endangered languages. There are also efforts underway to revitalize and revive dying languages.

Why People Care
Here are some reasons people care that languages are dying:

When a language dies, a wealth of cultural knowledge (history, art, native religion, ethnomedicine, etc.) tends to die with it.
Since language is the identifying feature for a people group, when the language disappears, that group’s distinctive identity is diminished and it is therefore less able to access political or material things it used to own.
The scientific quest for universal grammar, or information about a theoretical “original” language, is hindered by fewer samples to study if a language dies.

Does God Care?
Yes, some people care if languages die, but does God? According to the book of Revelation, God expects there to be representatives of all language groups in heaven to praise him (Rev 7:9-10):

9 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

I was recently telling someone about my job as a missionary Bible translator, and mentioned the fact that many languages are dying. She replied, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe it is a good thing since there would be fewer languages that need to have the Bible translated into them. More people can understand the gospel message already available in another language.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply. So my question is: In view of this verse, does it matter to God if languages die?

Tragedy and Faith

Published by cchrisr August 23, 2007 in Religion. 12 Comments

This is intended as a recap of the first three posts in “Faith Problems.” Why a recap in the middle of series? Well, primarily this is because the first three posts were discussions on Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. From here, the series is going to leap from that groundwork into what I would consider much more complex. Understanding the groundwork I have presented will be important in understanding the application of the philosophy of difference (the more complex future) to Kierkegaard’s concept of faith.

What faith is not
Kierkegaard’s opus has revolved around three different characters: the aesthetic, the tragic, and the knight of faith. These are characters in the sense of how a role is to be played, as if Kierkegaard is a stage director and everyone is an actor. This is similar to Nietzsche’s project in The Birth of Tragedy in that Nietzsche is telling Richard Wagner how roles should be played more so than how people are. For Kierkegaard, the role of the Knight of Faith is the most elusive to capture; very few people can perform in that role. The best example of this character is the story of Abraham going to sacrifice his son. Before we analyze what faith is, we should look at what it is not. For all cases below, the character is placed in a position between the universal ethical and the particular.

The Tragic Hero
The tragic hero is the most referred to figure in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling as a contrast for the Knight of Faith. The tragic hero can be seen in the figures of Brutus. The point with this character is that he never violates the rule of the ethical. The universal ethical law always wins in this case. Brutus must rebel against Julius Caesar because it is his duty towards the universal ethical. Even though he is close friends to Julius, maintaining the universal is more important than that friendship. Everything is subsumed under the concept of the universal. The status quo overpowers the different.

This is the same concept Kant has in mind when he formulates the Categorical Imperative (act as if each action were a universal law for all). What makes the tragic hero tragic is that he must make a sacrifice in order to maintain the universal ethic; Brutus must betray and kill his close friend to the point where it is even against his own desire.

The Aesthetic Hero
This character is more like a comical mishap. The aesthetic hero is put into his situation by chance or accident. It is the old fool mistaken as the secret agent. The aesthetic hero is able to question others about his position. The best example of this is Agamemnon, who swears to the gods that if his ship can safely make it back to Greece from Troy, he will sacrifice the first person he sees. When his ship arrives back in Greece safely, the first person to meet him is his daughter. He is caught between the universal ethical (sacrifice his daughter to fulfill his oath) and the particular (transgress his oath and let his daughter live). He is able to speak to others (his wife, his captains, the priests) before he finds that he must sacrifice his daughter in order to maintain the universal. The law must be upheld and there is nobody above it.

Kirk’s Illogical Premise
It is at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want the spoilers…too bad) where we can start to see the character of the Knight of Faith.

In the last dialogue between Kirk and Spock, Spock questions Kirk why Kirk came back to rescue Spock. For Spock, the logical (and universal ethical) thing to do was to let him die as a sacrifice because Spock willingly sacrificed himself in order to save everyone else. Kirk’s response to Spock’s question is where we discover the abandoning of the universal for something more important: “Because the needs of the one…outweigh the needs of the many.” There was something that Kirk found to be more important than the universal, more than the status quo. Sarek (Spock’s father) tells Kirk, at one point in the movie, the illogical nature of his actions: “This cost you your ship, your son…”. Kirk’s immediate response, though, is that of a higher calling: “If I hadn’t tried, it would’ve cost me my soul.”

For the Knight of Faith, his actions against the universal may be harmful to his livelihood, even his life, but to not do it would cost something even greater than those. The Knight of Faith is apprehended by this call from the unknown; the directive comes from an Absolute that is greater than the universal. This Absolute is infinitely particular and specific. The person possessed by this “higher calling” is absolutely differentiated from all others. He is unable to speak about his calling because it is unintelligible to the universal. It is illogical, incoherent, and crazy.

We see this in Abraham. He had at least three people he could have discussed God’s message with, but he did not. In fact, he could not because he could not have made his case understandable. All three people would have said that he misheard God, that he was crazy, and that he should not sacrifice his son (under any circumstances). Abraham could not “test the spirit” against any known authority because all authorities would have said it was impossible that God commanded Abraham to do something that is against God’s own laws.

The Paradox of Faith
Abraham’s story is a clear example of the paradox: “either Abraham was every minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox that is higher than all mediation” (Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 56). In other words, either there is or there isn’t something greater than the universal ethical. If there isn’t, then Abraham was a murderer, plain and simple. If there is, then it is something irrational, illogical, and yet supersedes the universal. For Kierkegaard, this is faith, the duty towards the absolute (God).

The Knight of Faith, then, must stand absolutely different from mankind. He cannot resolve the paradox of faith with the universal ethical. Abraham remained in the paradoxical position: he must sacrifice his son while still loving him. For Abraham to no longer love his son would would make him a murderous person. For Abraham to reject his duty to God would make him unfaithful.

Brutus, our tragic hero, was in this position briefly, but he chose to sacrifice his friendship in order to maintain his duty to the universal. Abraham is torn between being unfaithful to God and unfaithful to his family. Were he to falter on either side would have meant everything to him, his very soul. It is through the absurdity of both accepting and rejecting the universal and duty towards the absolute that the Knight of Faith walks. This is why he is absolutely different from mankind.

Christianity and femininity

Published by Kenneth Martens August 23, 2007 in Book Reviews and Christian Books. 7 Comments

Book review: The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity by Leon J. Podles.

Podles starts with a premise that may seem counter-intuitive: the modern Western church is dominated by a feminine spirit that drives masculine men away. Podles begins by offering evidence to demonstrate the truth of his premise. Then he looks at the history of the Christian church to figure out why and how we have arrived at the current crisis.

Definitions of Masculine and Feminine
After showing some evidence that the modern church is dominated by women, Podles spends several chapters defining masculinity and femininity. Femininity is characterized by:

union
communion
fellowship
immanence

Masculinity is:

separation
self-sacrifice
transcendence

Formation of gender identity
Podles offers a bizarre biological and psychological explanation for the difference between men and women: a girl is born and identifies with her mother, then matures to adulthood with an “identity [modeled] after her mother’s.” Boys, however, identify first with their mothers, but must eventually break from her and form a new male identity. This painful separation is often re-enacted in cultural rites of initiation into manhood. This rejection of women and formation of a new identity is uniquely male, and thus anything that involves separation or isolation or apartness can be considered masculine. Anything that involved continuing union or fellowship can then be considered feminine.

Podles’s psychology is junk, but if you can suffer through those chapters, he moves on to an insightful examination of the history of the church. In particular he focuses on the origins of bridal mysticism.

The Heresy of Bridal Mysticism
The Bible refers to the church as the bride of Christ (feminine), but individual believers are sons of God (masculine). A confluence of events in the 12th and 13th centuries resulted in a “massive influx” of women into the church. This provided fruitful soil for a new heresy: bridal mysticism. Thirteenth century preachers taught that each Christian is a bride of Christ. They used sexual metaphors and the romantic imagery to describe the relationship of Jesus to individual believers.

Bridal mysticism took root and continues to thrive even today. The effect of this heresy has been to equate Christian spirituality and morality with that of a feminine receptive bride. Men today are asked to view themselves as brides of Christ rather than sons of God. This romantic imagery is incompatible with masculinity, and consequently drives men from the church. The few men left in the church are meek, gentle men who feel at home in a feminine environment. The stereotypical Christian man is shockingly un-masculine.

Practical ideas
The Church Impotent offers an interesting interpretation of church history and the origins of feminized Christianity. Podles does not focus on the present-day church, though. For the modern church that is struggling to attract strong Christian men, The Church Impotent has little to offer.

UK Cancer Patients Dying in Line

Published by Colin August 22, 2007 in Current Events. 13 Comments

The Telegraph has reported that the UK now has the lowest cancer survival rates in Europe. To blame?

Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists.

How long are people waiting? According to Scotland’s Daily Record, cancer patients who are labeled as needing “urgent” treatment are waiting between two and seven months before being taken care of.

Cancer patients are still waiting up to seven months for treatment. Patients are supposed to be treated within 62 days of urgent referral. But figures out yesterday showed only three areas in Scotland were meeting those targets every time. In the worst cases, sufferers were kept hanging on for 220 days.

The figures, for the first three months of the year, show 85.4 per cent of patients across Scotland were seen within 62 days. The target set two years ago is 95 per cent.

Note, the target is still two months and change. This is not for routine cancer treatment but “urgent” treatment. Fortunately for the remaining population, as people slowly and painfully die of cancer, the wait should get less by sheer mathematics.

On a more serious note, we are actually talking about literally hundreds of thousands of people needlessly dying per year waiting in line.

The power is in the math - per 100,000 men diagnosed, 21,500 of them will die in the UK system who would have survived in America. For women, 10,200 per 100,000 would die. Consider that in the US alone, 1.4 million people will be diagnosed this year.

Much like the American Education predicament, where the US spends double or triple on per-pupil education with worse results - the UK is spending three times the amount that Poland is on care for comparable results.

Which country had the best rate of survival - the most evil, greedy, selfish nation on the planet of course* - the United States.

*sarcasm intended.

Changing Church Part. 2

Published by Bryan August 21, 2007 in Religion and Emerging Church. 9 Comments

The critique of the church that is the most broad in scope is that it has embraced a modern world view, divorcing itself from the way church has been done in the past. This critique goes beyond the idea that the church should minister to those in the culture around it by being relevant to that culture. It’s argument is that a large part of the North American church today has become to identify the church of modernity with the way church must be, and there can be no other.

An example may be helpful here. Someone may argue that, given the modern culture around us, the church should produce apologetic arguments based on science and rationality as that is the language and world view that the world around us understands. This would be a way of making the church relevant to the current culture. Another person however may go further and say that the only apologetic arguments that the church can use is those grounded on science and rationality and begin to read, understand, and identify only with a Christianity that fits within the rational and scientific understanding of Christianity. That would be identifying “The Church” as a modern church.

Often the line between the two practices is blurred. A practice may be adopted by a church because it best ministers to the community around them, but as the generation which adopted it begins to die out and the next generation takes over the church, the practice is maintained simply because that is what they have always understood church to be.

It is important, therefore, to look critically at the practices of local evangelical churches. Worship bands, alter calls, baby dedications, greeting time (the list could go on)…are all ways that various churches have sought to put biblical teachings into a specific cultural and philosophical world view; the modern world view. Arguments can be made for how biblical or unbiblical these practices are, however, that is not the point here. We must first recognize that these practices are a way that the church has sought to be relevant to a particular culture; the church should not hold these practices as the only way to do church.

As I noted in the first entry in this series, one of the ways advocated by some in the church to counter this identification with modernity is to revive practices from the pre-modern church. There is certainly some merit to this position. Reviving such practices will encourage the church to understand itself as neither pre-modern, modern, or post-modern, but as a universal object with different instantiations in different times. However, caution must be exercised not to begin to identify the church only with historical practices and rejected the modern church as it has done to the historical church.

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