February 2004

Unnatural

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/21/04
  • 4

My son is three years old and has recently begun to become aware of the existence of death. At only three he has far greater capacity to wonder and to ask questions than he does to understand. This makes it difficult and as his father I struggle to try to share with him what death is and how something so terrifying and so final can be made an occasion of wondrous joy.

Today while my wife was at a Bible study, Nick and I settled down to watch a movie. It was a children's movie and at the end one of the central characters died. I watched Nick as this event unfolded. I could see his face fall and his eyes narrow as the character died. I saw tears form as he watched the loved ones gather around their fallen friend. He turned to me and with tears spilling down his cheeks sobbed, "Daddy, why did he have to die? When is he going to come alive again?" I pulled him to my lap and reminded him of heaven and told him that people who love God go to heaven when they die. I told him how heaven is a place where there is no more death, no more fighting and no more sadness. I told him that it is a place where we can always be with God and where boys and their daddies can be together forever. He tried so hard to understand, but how is a three-year old mind supposed to understand a concept as large and as unnatural as death?

And so we sat on the couch and we wept together. Nicky put his head in my lap and cried about something he could not understand and something he was not created to understand. Daddy stroked his hair and wept for this world - a world which was created for us to live in for all eternity with our Maker, but a world that has been defiled by death. I wept that a three-year old needs to concern himself with death; with things he cannot and should not understand.

I asked Nicky if I could pray with him and wiping the tears from his cheeks he said "yes" and closed his eyes. So I asked God if he would help Nicky understand that death is not something to be feared if we love Him. I asked Him to help Nick learn to love Him more and more. And of course I asked Him to give Nicky peace so that his young mind wouldn't be troubled by concepts too difficult for him to understand.

I wish I could explain to my son about the death of death accomplished through the death of Christ. I wish I could make him understand that if he places his trust in Jesus he has nothing to fear in life or in death. I hope, I trust, I pray that such an understanding will come in due time, so that when someday Nick's eyes close in death, he and I will be reunited in that place where death shall be no more, where there will be no more mourning, pain or sorrow and where God will have already wiped away the tears that filled his little eyes.

More About Mel

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/21/04
  • 5

Should this make me nervous? I know I sometimes have the tendency to “throw out the baby with the bath-water” but quotes like this do not do much for my confidence in the effects this movie will have: “After both of The Passion screenings I attended, the Protestant women talked about identifying with Mary as a mother who was watching her child suffer. From whatever point in his spirituality Gibson’s treatment of Mary is springing, it is touching deeply the maternal impulse in his viewers.” Now I’ll admit that Protestants do tend to shy away from Mary, but Gibson’s Marian theology is definitely far beyond what the Bible teaches. He calls her “a tremendous co-redemptrix and mediatrix.”

This article (also at Christianity Today) speaks more about Mel’s faith, focusing a good deal of attention on his use of Anne Catherine Emmerich’s Dolorous Passion of Our Lord.

Interestingly, neither article seems to point out the obvious error (heresy) of trusting in Mary as a co-redemptrix. What an indication of the state of Protestantism that such error raises no warning flags!

Another Day, Another Thousand Tickets

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/20/04
  • 3

The church bought up another 1000 tickets and I have spent the day editing the site to work them into the system. At 2 PM we got the system live and have again been overwhelmed with the response. The tickets are nearly gone.

All this ticket stuff has eaten severely into my blogging time so I apologize for the lack of meaningful content. I’ll find something interesting to write for tomorrow!

People Want To See The Passion!

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/19/04
  • 3

On Sunday my church began to give out tickets to The Passion of the Christ. We purchased several thousand tickets, buying out entire shows, which gives us the ability to speak with the crowd, give out literature and invite people to our church. On Sunday we had a few people come by the site and order tickets. It slowly increased during the week. Then yesterday evening the local paper, the Oakville Beaver, ran a full-page advertisement and an article about the church. BOOM! Within 18 hours we had distributed all of the tickets. I was receiving hundreds of emails an hour and the church phone lines were plugged. The people came in droves. As a matter of fact, we have decided to buy some more and already have a large list of people who want to be notified when they become available.

I’m not sure if people really want to see this movie or if people just can’t resist a deal. Either way, we are hoping we have lots of unsaved people go to the movie so we can meet with them afterwards and invite them to study groups and to church.

American Idolatry

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/19/04
  • 2

Thanks to Dave for sending along a link which ties in nicely to my post from last week entitled I Love What I Hate.

Weekly DV presents a short but hilarious mockumentary studying Americans and their gods.

Some Good Music

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/18/04
  • 0

My buddy Jason of Jason McGibbon Project fame just had me upload some MP3s to his Web site. There are three preview clips and one full song available for download. Why not head over there, click on the CD Info and Music Preview tab and take a listen? Make sure you listen to “Do I Know You” which happens to be my favorite track from the album.

I recently discovered the music of Dale Nikkel. He is a Canadian singer and songwriter who leans towards the folk genre. He has several MP3s available for download. “Postcards From Home” is especially good!

Someone also requested that I link to the band Gretchen. Gretchen is a female-fronted rock band with obviously Christian lyrics. I love good, straightfoward hard rock and definitely enjoyed their sound. Perhaps if I link to them they’ll send me their CD! (just kidding, of course)

Reaction to Mel Gibson

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/18/04
  • 1

I watched with great interest as the Christian world reacted yesterday to Gibson’s interview on Primetime. As I expected, he was the talk of the blogging world yesterday. Meandean over at Blogs4God compiled a partial list of bloggers who wrote about Gibson. (You will have to scroll down a little bit to find the article).

Based on what I read on those blogs and on various forums around the Internet there are three main views of the interview.

  1. Gibson did a great job defending his faith and defending the movie. His comments about salvation being open to all faiths were taken from a different interview and were used grossly out of context. He certainly believes no such thing.
  2. Gibson did a great job defending his faith and defending the movie. His comments about salvation being open to all faiths were unfortunate but do not reflect his true beliefs.
  3. Gibson did a poor job defending his faith and an adequate job defending this movie. His comments about salvation being open to all faiths show that he has little to no understanding of the gospel. He should not be held as an example of a Christian and the movie should be judged on its own merits rather than as a movie made by a Christian.

I received quite a few comments on the article I wrote here. I agree with many of them and especially with what Leslie posted. She said “Let us not hold Mel Gibson up as some beacon of Christianity or somehow tout this movie as worthy because Mel was allegedly inspired to make it.” She also said “Secondly and more importantly,the real take-away from this movie will come near its end when Jesus says on the cross “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”. This is the starting point for helping a non-believer understand the redemptive nature of Jesus and His sacrifice. Instead of crying “Revenge”, Jesus cried “Forgive”. Therein lies the difference between Jesus and all of humanity, past, present and future. Focus the non-believer on that point and you are off to a good start.” I agree. Let’s get Mel out of the equation and take the movie on its own.

Mel Gibson on Primetime

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/17/04
  • 20

I watched Mel Gibson’s interview on ABC last night with great interest. I must say that generally I was impressed with the way he handled himself. Though at times I became half convinced that he had overdosed on caffeine before the interview, I thought he remained composed and fielded questions quite well.

However, he did stumble in one very important area.

Diane: When we talked with Gibson and his actors, we wondered, does his traditionalist view bar the door to heaven for Jews, Protestants, Muslims?

Mel: That’s not the case at all. Absolutely not. It is possible for people who are not even Christian to get into the kingdom of heaven. It’s just easier. I have to say that because that’s what I believe.

As a matter of fact, that is worse than stumbling. Gibson effectively proved that he has no real understanding of the Gospel message. To say that it is possible to non-Christians to get to heaven is in direct contradiction to what Jesus taught. It is in contradiction to what the epistles teach. It goes against the very basic tenets of Christianity.

Another concern that this interview reinforced is that the movie is being presented as an accurate representation of the gospel story. As Diane Sawyer mentioned, Gibson seems to believe that he had the guidance of the Holy Spirit in writing the movie. At the same time he says that many of the “details” of the movie were inspired by the writings and visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th-century German stigmatist and mystic. So Gibson is presenting extra-Biblical revelation as being synoymous with Biblical revelation and is making no distinction between the two.

To echo what I have said before - it is not the movie I have problems with as much as the laud that Gibson is receiving where his faith is being held up by the Protestant world as an extraordinary example. The movie in and of itself may be a wonderful opportunity to reach unbelievers, but indicating that Gibson’s faith is no different from traditional Protestant faith is to make a mockery of Protestantism.

Fishers of Men

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/17/04
  • 2

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Matthew 4:18-22

For such a simple analogy Jesus’ words about making His disciples fishers of men seems to be misunderstood by so many people. I don’t know how many times I have heard illustrations based on this passage that go something like this:

“We need to be fishers of men. To be effective fishermen we need to have a good fishing rod, we need to use the right kind of bait and we need to reel those unbelievers in!” Admittedly that is simplified, but is indicative of the sort of comment we often hear in connection with this story which is told in both Matthew and Luke.

This passage presents a great example of the value of the inductive method of Bible study (or grammatical-historical hermeneutics). If we impose our modern-day presuppositions about fishing onto this passage we walk away with an interpretation that is foreign to the meaning Jesus intended. Now I am not going to deconstruct this passage today - I am just going to provide some of the ideas Jesus was hoping to convey.

The men Jesus called to be His disciples in this passage were fishermen. Their method of catching fish did not involve rod and reel, though that method certainly did exist in that time and is even mentioned in the Bible (Matthew 17:27). When we think of fishing we often picture a young man sitting on the bank of a creek with a piece of grass in his mouth, snoozing as his line bobs in a river, but this is not the picture of fishing we see in the Bible. Rather, these first-century fishermen used a net to catch their fish. This method involved toss a net overboard and slowly dragging it along, hoping to trap fish in the net. The net would then be hauled back onto the boat, emptied and dropped overboard once again. They would often have to spend time repairing and cleaning their nets. They did not use bait, but rather relied on time and repetitive effort to bring them their catch. This was a time-consuming and often frustrating process. In Luke’s parallel passage we can see some of this frustration. Jesus tells the men to let their net down and Simon answers “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!” The men had spent all night fishing and had nothing to show for their work.

When we understand that Jesus was referring to this difficult, laborious process, we see that there are several meanings we can draw:

  • Jesus was referring to hard work! Evangelism is difficult work and demands that we apply ourselves to it.
  • Jesus was referring to a lack of results. Evangelism is often characterized by lack of results, yet we cannot let the results dictate our enthusiasm and motivation.
  • Jesus was referring to obedience. Reading further in the passage in Luke we see that Peter obediently let down his nets at Jesus’ bidding and immediately hauled in a huge catch - a catch so great that he had to call for help to bring it all in. When we are obedient God will use our work for His purposes.
  • Jesus was referring to dependence. Simon’s bountiful catch had nothing to do with his skill or his technique. He had spent the entire night using all of his own ability and had nothing to show for it. But when he realized that his own ability could do nothing God was able to use him.
  • Jesus was referring to God’s plan. God’s plan is that many come to repentance, not just a few.

There is great depth of meaning in this passage. When we interpret it through first century eyes rather than through our perspective we can see the meaning that Jesus intended.

Unbelievers Must Be Stupid...

  • Tim Challies
  • 02/16/04
  • 6

If I were to use the average church outreach program as a guide, I would have to assume that the average non-Christian is lazy, stupid, ignorant, unwilling to learn and suffering from attention deficit disorder. He has two kids that he loves but never spends any time with, leaving him racked with guilt. He is trying to hold a marriage together but his wife ranks a distant second to his career.

It really seems that this is the way many Christians regard unbelievers. Consider, for example, Bible translations. Though most Christians were brought to the Lord through an "old-fashioned version of the Bible," those translations are apparently much too difficult for today's unbelievers. After all, who could understand a difficult translation like "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" when we could use something so much easier like "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life." Why would we want to give them God's literal words and make them think when we could do the thinking for them? I recently heard a person in a Christian bookstore explaining to someone how difficult the New International Version is and convinced the patron to purchase The Message. If I was an unbeliever I would consider this insulting! The NIV is easily readable and understandable by anyone with even an elementary-level education.

Or what about preaching? We seem to believe that despite the fact that we all sit through two or three hour lectures all the way through post-secondary education, when it comes to preaching it had better be fifteen minutes or less or we will lose their attention. Having been raised in a television-saturated culture we assume they no longer possess the ability to sit still for more than 22 minutes. So we shorten the preaching and change it to feel more like a casual talk than expository preaching of the Word.

We no longer pray in church, believing that time dedicated to prayer will drive away "seekers." Whatever happened to good old-fashioned congregational prayer? Our perception of the unbeliever's attention deficit disorder has made us lose this practice.

Even our music shows the way we regard unbelievers. We somehow think that four verses of a hymn will bore them to tears, so we cut our music down to short choruses (which, ironically, we repeat ten or twelve times).

It is ironic that in an age where we so highly regard the New Testament church, we seem to lose sight of what made that church so great. Throughout Acts we read about the first Christians "praying continually," "searching the Scriptures," and studying doctrine. Yet in our churches we so often suppress the Scriptures, pray only before the offering and push doctrine away altogether. We do all of this to remain inoffensive to unbelievers.

I think unbelievers come to church looking for something different. If they wanted exactly what they experience in their daily lives, they would not need church. If a man sits in an office for eight hours a day why do we try to give him the exact same look and feel on his day off? Churches get noticed by being different, not by being the same. Let's take pride in our differences and trust that God will use these to reach people for Him, just as he did with the earliest church.