Should Church Be Like Summer Camp?
Christian summer camp is something of a sore point for me. I never got the spiritual high that all the other kids got when I went, probably because I was a very introverted kid with some medical issues that created a lot of embarrassment. Even beyond that, at a very young age I was very aware of the manipulative techniques used by so many in that industry. They were well-intentioned folks, don’t get me wrong; but there was just something disingenuous about corralling kids in small groups and using all kinds of weird reinforcements and rewards for their acquisition of Biblical information.
“Memorize ten verses this afternoon and you get a free soda at the snack bar!”
“If your team wins the Bible trivia challenge, your counselor will eat a goldfish!”
There was this one year – I think it was my last – when the speaker was exhausting himself on the sins of drunkenness and excess every night. On the final night, he called for all the campers to come forward and pray at the altar because “The Spirit is moving.”
Well, he wasn’t moving me. I didn’t feel any kind of spiritual prodding or emotional need to go forward. So I didn’t. Over the course of about eight hundred verses of “Just As I Am”, I sat there quietly with my head respectfully bowed while all of the other kids in the pavilion went forward. At least half a dozen adults tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to go forward. They looked genuinely frustrated that I wasn’t stirring.
The experience troubled me. I came from a home where the highest spiritual discipline was not emotional responses but in-depth study of the Scriptures. (The previous year, I had astounded my counselor by translating John 1:1 from Greek when he wrote it on a napkin. It never occurred to me that other kids couldn’t do that.)
In my church, we didn’t go up front unless God was convicting you of sin, so I would have been dishonest if I had answered that altar call. But everyone wanted me to anyway.
I stopped going to Christian camps around the age of ten and never looked back. I have been in a lot of ministries where camp has been a big deal, and I have supported the work. But deep inside, I know that most of those emotional appeals won’t last long. The message only resonates in the echo chamber of isolation. Outside of the campground, the kids will most likely lose the “fire” they acquired.
I bring this up because Tall Skinny Kiwi posted a thought-provoking article about a summer camp that has been converted to something of a monastery in New Zealand. He writes:
I also have very fond memories of New Zealand camps when I was younger.
Camps are where you can hang out late at night, dress badly, discover yourself, fight the giggles at 2 in the morning, watch the uninhibited speaker embarrass himself publicly, eat poorly cooked food, get up surprisingly early to pray, create and perform silly skits, pee in a freezing cold cement toilet block, and share your life-changing decision with your new friends as bonfire flames lick your eyelashes.
He goes on to write about this camp-turned-monastery and how it has become a big hit among the Anglicans. People travel from all over the islands to spend time there for renewal and retreat.
I guess that is good, and I am glad that people have found a way to recharge their spiritual vibe. Personally, I have a hard time with this idea of part-time monasticism that drives both summer camp and trends like the ones Kiwi is writing about.
Is there really such a thing as part-time monasticism? Can a brief period of “retreat from this world” really do that much good in someone’s life? Am I just quirky?
It just seems to me that this kind of temporary retreat doesn’t really fix anything. It just seems that for the majority of people, it gives a hit of “spiritual” crack without really creating life change.
Don’t be Wrapped Up in Fame
Who has ever heard of Joseph Swan?
He invented the incandescent lightbulb.
What? You thought Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb? Actually, he and Swan worked independently on the project. Swan worked in England and had illuminated his home in the city of Gateshead before Edison learned of Swan’s use of carbonized thread filaments. Edison grabbed the idea and ran with it. Swan even developed an improved cellulose filament that Edison knew to be superior to the bamboo material he finally settled on, but Edison refused to use the improved material.
Because he also had the Sprengel pump (to create a vacuum in the bulb) and a plan for implementing electric lighting across large areas, Edison is often credited for the invention. And Edison was enough of a glory hound that he never led anyone to believe otherwise.
It might not have hurt that Edison’s General Electric Company also bought Swan’s company in the 1880′s and merged its interests with its own.
What about Nikola Tesla?
Among other things, Tesla invented the radio transmitter. You were probably taught that Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio transmitter. That’s what almost all American history textbooks say even though at the time that Marconi “invented” the radio, he did so by flagrantly ripping off seventeen of Tesla’s patents. Ultimately, the US Supreme Court even ruled that Tesla was indeed the inventor of the radio transmitter, but that was in 1943, long after long repetition had awarded the honor to Marconi.
It is Tesla, and not Marconi, to whom we are indebted for the invaluable technology that powers our televisions and our mobile phones, transmits information to both airliners and our computer wifi cards.
Why One and Not the Other?
I could go through an endless list of people who got famous from or got credited for the work of other, perhaps greater minds. Christopher Columbus was not the first European to sail to the Americas. He was just the first to publish the trek. Martin Luther wasn’t the first to protest the excess of the medieval Catholic church. He was just the first to use the printing press to broadcast it. Isaac Newton did not come up with the laws of gravity. He simply refined something one of his rivals had already come up with, and of course, he published it.
The way I see it, there are those who cannot live without credit and fame, and then there are those who do because they can. We innovate and initiate without a desire or need for broad acclaim. We do because we can, because we stand at the intersection of creativity and conviction and think different.
Don’t ever forget that Thomas Edison – he of the phonograph, the mimeograph, the incandescent light bulb – also sunk millions into a complete failure of an idea to pour concrete houses, complete with furnishings and invested a fortune in a DC electrical system that he ultimately replaced with the AC systems we know today.
Be content to be where you are, doing what you’re doing. Change the world around you and if it changes the larger world – great. If others take what you do and make it better, then let them. For every Edison, there is a Swan. For every Marconi, a Tesla.
The measure of a man’s greatness is not that others long to be him, but that HE longs to be him. To be who you are where you are is better than to try to be someone you are not in places you should never try to go.
Go Pats
Driving home from the AFC Championship game on Sunday, I heard a pundit talking about the Pats. He noted that the Pats had not beaten a team with a record better than .500 all season. It was a criticism we have heard before. As it turns out, it’s true.
Week 1: Beat Miami Dolphins (6-10)
Week 2: Beat San Diego Chargers (8-8)
Week 3: Lost to Buffalo Bills (6-10)
Week 4: Beat Oakland Raiders (8-8)
Week 5: Beat NY Jets (8-8)
Week 6: Beat Dallas Cowboys (8-8)
Week 7: BYE
Week 8: Lost to Pittsburgh Steelers (12-4)
Week 9: Lost to NY Giants (9-7)
Week 10: Beat NY Jets (8-8)
Week 11: Beat Kansas City Chiefs (7-9)
Week 12: Beat Philadelphia Eagles (8-8)
Week 13: Beat Indianapolis Colts (2-14)
Week 14: Beat Washington Redskins (5-11)
Week 15: Beat Denver Broncos (8-8)
Week 16: Beat Miami Dolphins (6-10)
Week 17: Beat Buffalo Bills (6-10)
Divisional Round: Beat Denver Broncos (8-8)
Conference Round: Beat Baltimore Ravens (12-4)
But what does it really mean?
After all, four of the teams were in the AFC East with the Patriots. The Pats beat all of them twice except Buffalo. That means the Patriots contributed significantly to their records being as bad as they were.
Now consider some of other facts.
The NFL had twenty teams at .500 or below. There are only thirty-two teams in the NFL, so that means five-eighths of the league was below .500.
The NY Giants lost to two of the teams the Pats beat (the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles, both of which are in the NFC East with the Giants). Most importantly, the Giants lost to every team over .500 that they played.
Week 1: Lost to Washington Redskins (5-11)
Week 2: Beat St. Louis Rams (2-14)
Week 3: Beat Philadelphia Eagles (8-8)
Week 4: Beat Arizona Cardinals (8-8)
Week 5: Lost to Seattle Seahawks (7-9)
Week 6: Beat Buffalo Bills (6-10)
Week 7: BYE
Week 8: Beat Miami Dolphins (8-8)
Week 9: Beat New England (13-3)
Week 10: Lost to San Francisco 49ers (13-3)
Week 11: Lost to Philadelphia Eagles (8-8)
Week 12: Lost to New Orleans Saints (13-3)
Week 13: Lost to Green Bay Packers (15-1)
Week 14: Beat Dallas Cowboys (8-8)
Week 15: Lost to Washington Redskins (5-11)
Week 16: Beat NY Jets (8-8)
Week 17: Beat Dallas Cowboys (8-8)
Wild Card Round: Beat Atlanta Falcons (10-6)
Divisional Round: Beat Green Bay Packers (15-1)
Conference Round: Beat San Francisco 49ers (13-3)
While the Giants have had a tougher postseason, their regular season was actually probably an easier schedule than the Pats had. They had a worse in-division record than the Pats.
All in all, to say that Tom Brady and the Patriots had an easier schedule because the teams they beat did not make it above .500 this season is just plain foolishness. The same thing could be said about Eli Manning and the Giants.
Oh, and the Giants lost to the Washington Redskins TWICE.
I think the Pats have a pretty good chance at beating the Giants. I think they are actually the better team overall, but the difference is fairly small. The Pats will still have to play their hearts out. The Giants are solid, but if the Pats show up in Indianapolis and don’t make any mistakes, they are will win.
Straddling Realities
Posted by Erik in Church, History, Ecclesiology (Church), Eschatology on January 25, 2012
Yochanan b. Zecharyah was a Jewish teacher and prophet known to the Christian world as John the Baptist. In the gospel of Luke, he is Jesus of Nazareth’s second cousin and the son of a Jewish priest.
Appearing at the beginning of all four gospels and described as the “forerunner” of the Messiah and the last of the Hebrew prophets, John straddles the line between the days of the prophets and the “Day of the Lord.” If we are to believe the gospels, then we must acknowledge that the authors of those books saw John as the end of an age.
Every gospel tells his story a little different, but in all them John’s message was simple: Repent, for God’s Kingdom is at hand. There was nothing complex about this message. John was saying that God was coming, and the time had come to get right. To drive home the point, Luke quotes the prophet Isaiah:
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. (Luke 3:4-6 ESV)
It was hard to miss or misinterpret John’s message, and yet for all of our supposed ability and intelligence, we miss what he was saying.
Jesus is the Kingdom of God. He is the Temple of God. He is the Lord’s Messiah. And we live in “The Day of the Lord.”
John represents all that was Hebrew, all that was rabbinical. John is a Jew declaring the end of Judaism and setting the stage for the Messianic Age.
That’s why John’s message is not normative for the Church today. The era he lived in is over. The Law and Prophets are fulfilled in Jesus. The Hebrew epic has been completed and has been transformed into something more. Now what has been anticipated is at work.
The Kingdom is not somewhere we go when we die. It is the One who died for us. Heaven is not some other reality. It is the fully realized reality of Jesus and His resurrection. It is not this life somewhere else, but this life as something else. We are being transformed into Christ’s image, collectively.
The Kingdom is being realized imperfectly now, but will one day be fully realized when Jesus returns. But that does not make it any less real now. We do not perceive it or live it all the time, because we are blinded by sin and restricted by the forces of this world and its would-be usurper who styles himself the Prince of This World, Satan. But make no mistake. Jesus is the Kingdom, and those found in him are citizens of that Kingdom.
AFC Championship 2012
It’s true. I was at the AFC championship game yesterday. My friend Tom scored last minute tickets so we skooted out immediately after worship to drive to Gillette Stadium.
What can I say? It was incredible to be there and see history made. It was the first NFL game I have ever attended, and probably will be the last. The experience was worth it, but it was cold and I was surrounded by drunkenness and ignorant hostility.
Go Pats!
It’s Not All About Me or You
Posted by Erik in Church, Cross Posts on January 20, 2012
Joel Watts and I don’t always see eye to eye on everything. We encountered each other through a third blogger, Jason Skipper, when Jason started a forum for revitalizing the Fundamentals called re:F.
Joel runs in what most would consider a more liberal, more mainline doctrinal discussion than I do, although more often than not we can find common ground on most subjects. That’s one of the great things about having a network of bloggers to interact with on doctrinal and exegetical grounds. The diversity of opinion and position helps us look at our own views and the views of others more carefully.
Anyway, Joel’s blog is considerably busier than mine, and he has a number of contributors who write posts for him. He probably gets as many hits in an afternoon as I do in a month.
This week, one of his contributors, Leslie Keeney, wrote an excellent piece on the false interpretations that arise from reading the Scriptures as if they are all about your personal relationship with God. It resonated with something I am working on concerning the church, and I thought you might benefit from it.
Here’s an excerpt:
Suddenly, it dawned on me that one of the benefits of reading the Bible primarily as a narrative is that it automatically reduces the self-centeredness inherent in the “instruction manual” metaphor. If the Bible is God’s story, then the purpose of reading it is to become intimate with God and how He works, not how He can fix my life. No longer does every passage have to have a “practical” application that I can “use.” If the Bible is a story about God, it is not all about me. (Why It’s Not All About Me or You, Leslie Keeney)
Like I said, Joel and I don’t always see eye-to-eye so this is not a wholesale recommendation of everything on his blog; but I thought this was insightful.
Luke Slighting the Rulers of His Day
Posted by Erik in Ancient History, History, Reading on January 20, 2012
Luke slights rulers he does not care for. He does it a lot actually. As I have been reading and researching through Luke, I have noticed this tendency.
It is especially evident in chapter 3 of Luke’s gospel when he is describing the rulers of John the Baptist and Jesus’ day.
1. Luke always refer to the Herodian kings as Herod (except Philip, the tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis). This causes all kinds of confusion in history since Luke was our primary source for anything about the Herodians and the reason we even call them Herodians in the first place. Although the Herod who ruled Galilee in Jesus’ time was called Antipater by everyone, including his subjects, Luke calls him Herod. It is almost like some of the aristocrats of Victorian British society who always referred to their butler as Joseph, no matter what his real name was. It saved them the trouble of having to learn the name of the new guy.
So, if you’re Herod the Great or Herod Antipas or Herod Archelaus, it doesn’t matter to Luke. To Luke, they’re all interchangeable as the male lead in a long-running soap opera is today.
2. He refers to whoever the ruler of Abilene was at the time of John the Baptist’s ministry as Lysanias. The actual Lysanias died before Jesus was born, and the last known ruler of the area was his son Zenodorus. After Zenodorus’ death in 20 BCE, the region was placed under the rule of the Herodians. Luke seems to be mocking the ruler by calling him by his greater ancestor’s name.
Of course, this might have actually been the guy’s name, but to even list him seems a slight since he couldn’t have actually ruled anything. Luke heaps indignity on the Herodians and Lysanian rulers alike. After all, their insignificant principalities had no place being mentioned in the same breath as Tiberius Caesar.
3. Then there are the Jewish high priests. Luke adamantly refuses to write the name Joseph b. Caiaphas (Yosef b. Kayaffa in Hebrew) correctly. Instead he refers to him by his father’s name Caiaphas and always – always groups him with his father-in-law Annas.
According to Josephus, Caiaphas is something of a puppet in Annas’ hands. He does his father-in-law’s bidding. While he appears in Matthew and John’s gospels as one of many involved in Jesus’ trial. Luke does not even give him that much of a mention. Caiaphas is just a way marker for dating Jesus’ story.
The insult couldn’t be greater. Luke basically says, “There was this yokel ruler who thought he was something but couldn’t even live up to his dad’s reputation. He was just his father-in-law’s yes man.”
4. And in chapter 2, Luke writes of Quirinius being governor of Syria when Jesus was born, but Publius Sulpicius Quirinius was not the titular governor (legatus) of the province at the time. Although Quirinius would assume the post in 6 CE, at the time of Jesus’ birth the governor was Publius Quinctilius Varus – a bumbling politician who would later get himself and three Roman legions killed at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.
This is actually a slight on Varus, not Quirinius; but the principle still applies. Luke ignores Varus entirely, which is exactly what Caesar wished he could have done. At the time, Quirinius was governor of Dalmatia but Caesar sent him to Syria to find out why it was taking nine years for Varus to complete a census only done once every ten years. So, Luke insults Varus. Not that it mattered to Varus. He had died decades before, but you get the idea.
(I know. I know. I like Latin names. I can’t help it.)
Luke intentionally slights these men. He holds them in contempt. Of course, one could certainly understand it. They aren’t exactly a bumper crop of geniuses and dignitaries. These people are epic failures of leaders.
Not surprisingly however Luke is very careful to give Tiberius Caesar his proper title, and the same applies with Pontius Pilate. These were men held in high regard, for the most part, by the Romans. Tiberius was a successful, acclaimed commander and leader, even if he was something of a mediocre emperor; and Pilate was something of a brute (he massacred people on at least two occasions) but he was respected.
I can’t even tell you how awesome it is when you find something like this hidden among all the overly-religious interpretations you have endured all your life. It is endlessly humorous when you strip away all the pomp and circumstance we heap on the Scriptures and see the humanity beneath.
That is all.
40,000 Hits
While I wasn’t looking on Tuesday, we passed 40,000 hits at Unorthodox Faith!
We hit 30,000 hits back in July, so it has taken us six months to rack up another 10,000.
That’s pretty cool considering it took us 2 years and 9 months to reach 10,000 and another 13 months to reach 20,000.
10,000 = 33 months
20,000 = 13 months
30,000 = 12 months
40,000 = 6 months
Since I don’t write on popular topics, don’t really follow trends, and don’t use the blog to sell other people’s products, I’m content with our readership. Obviously I hope it grows and expands, but whatever happens happens.
Real Marriage: Part 1, Chapter 1 – New Marriage, Same Spouse
Posted by Erik in Book Reviews, Marriage and Family, Reading on January 19, 2012
Mark Driscoll can be an arrogant chauvinist. He has admitted that freely, so I don’t think I am revealing anything he has not addressed himself.
When I finally went ahead and downloaded the controversial book Real Marriage, which he wrote with his wife Grace, it was not with the best of intentions. In fact, it was because he had given an interview with Justin Brierley in which Driscoll behaved himself like the animal Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
It takes a lot for me to pick up a book by Driscoll these days. I would like to say his behavior in the Brierley interview was unusual, but it isn’t. He can be a real jerk sometimes, and I was afraid that this book on marriage would be more of the same.
That being said, the book is #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list, and everyone in the blogosphere is buzzing about it – both good and bad. So, I laid down my $8 and bought the Kindle version of the book. (Bless you, Amazon, for saving me $14!)
Reading the first chapter, I encountered something I did not expect. First of all, Driscoll openly confesses to his chauvinism and anger issues. He calls his behavior sin, which further surprised me since in other books I have read from him, he justified his behavior.
What really caught me was that he was treading over years he covered in Confessions of a Reformissional Rev and exposing the pain that was going on in his heart during those years. A lot of his bombast and arrogance was tied to a deep, secret problem in his relationship with his wife Grace.
It is never easy to be in the public eye and have deep, emotional, sexual sin causing your spirit to twitch. Driscoll was very much in the public eye – by choice – while his private world was a disaster, despite appearances. And even his explanations that he provided in Confessions were false because he was hiding the real problems – perhaps even from himself.
I expected bombast and arrogance. What I encountered was the honest dialogue from Mark and Grace about their failings and sexual frustrations. It surprised me. It caught me off guard, and I had to put down a lot of the preconceived fears I had about the book.
I’ll let you know tomorrow if I feel the same way after reading chapter 2.
Genre: Epistle
Posted by Erik in Ancient History, Church, General, History on January 18, 2012
The final genre I am going to write about is epistle. I think that by and large, the church gets the reading of an epistle pretty close to right. In a way, that is the problem with how we read everything else. We tend to apply the interpretation schemes we use for epistles to everything else.
What is an epistle? It is a letter sent from a person in authority to those under his authority.
Epistles are not exhaustive theological treatises although they often contain a lot of theology.
An epistle is a carefully thought out, well-developed letter of information and command. Often they were written in response to specific questions, which makes reading them sometimes a challenge because we do not have the questions before us. This is particularly true of 1 & 2 Corinthians, which are clearly pointed responses to questions we never heard asked.
How do we read epistles?
First of all, read them for internal consistency. Don’t spend all your time trying to make connections to other epistles or other portions of Scripture unless the author makes a clear connection. (Galatians is a book that has a lot of clear connections made.) Instead, read the epistle as a stand-alone letter first.
Then, consult other epistles.</b< If there a passage that seems easily misunderstood or could have multiple meanings, keep it in mind when you read other epistles. You will be surprised how often the Scriptures interpret themselves.
Most importantly, read them understanding that the authors were placed in authority over the church by Jesus himself. The apostles develop the themes of the church in the epistles. Jesus did the work of salvation; and the apostles struggle to apply that work to the church’s life.
Remember also that the epistles do, to a certain extent, involve a dialogue – a give-and-take as the apostles worked through the ramifications of Jesus’ work and teachings. It is important to let these ideas be worked out. Be dogmatic about the body of work as a whole, but don’t be dogmatic on specific, isolated passages that seem to be inconsistent with the rest.
