Because I have moved ministry settings and, in turn, have become a North Carolinian, I have migrated my virtual geography as well. I will be dwelling here from now on.

This quote is for every man out there who grew up wondering just exactly how to define masculinity. We had no Masculinity 101, no rites of passage, no Bible passage that clearly spells out a how-to-become-a-man recipe, no spiritual mentor to show us how to read between the lines to find instructions in masculinity, and only vague examples with very little (if any) explanation.  This is not to dishonor our fathers because they were in the same boat. After all, what man worth his salt wouldn’t want to train their sons in how to be a man… if they knew how?

So maybe this picture that Lewis paints will be our Masculine apocalypse.  Maybe one day when I grow up, I can be a knight, too.

“The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth…”

…but…

“Knightly character is art not nature – something that needs to be achieved , not something that can be relied upon to happen.”

Watch the first of several installments of Dr. Greg Bahnsen speak to a room of college-bound high school students about the intellectual battle they will be immersed in while at university and what they can do about preparing themselves.  Dr. Bahnsen went home to be with the LORD in the mid-1990’s, but is still a monumental figure in the area of defending Christian truth against the assaults of unbelief.

If you don’t want to wait for me to post the other videos, just go to youtube and search for “Bahnsen myth of neutrality”.

I have recently received a call to be the assistant pastor of a church in North Carolina, so, over the next several weeks/months I will be trying to re-orient the thrust of my blog to fit my new ministry context.  I have started with the title of the blog, which, if you haven’t noticed already, is “boat14nc” instead of the former “boat14va”.  I hope everyone will bear with me during this exciting transition time for my family and me.

We have all read books or watched movies where good friends have had a falling out, traded embittered and hasty epithets, and been separated for many years.  But then something happens… something in the progression of life that reminds one of the other or reveals some great misunderstanding that has kept these friends separate, and they are brought back together again.  They might have to learn how to forgive, or be the first to step humbly forward and ask for forgiveness, or even find something new around which to rekindle the friendship.  But in any case, the barriers that were once high and thick between them are exacting too great of a price on both of them.  Their friendship is too precious to allow both to wither in separation.

I would propose that this is the story of science and the Christian faith.  Many modern day scientists see Christianity as a roadblock to an exuberant pursuit of scientific discovery and technological advance.  Many modern day Christians see science as the Great Atheist-Maker or a disease that is endemic to where on lives (like malaria) that must inoculated against in order to prevent infection.  But it was not always so.  Before The Age of Reason, Christian and Scientist were fast friends.  They both saw their experiments and observations as windows into the hidden pattern of how an artistic and loving God ordered the world around them.   But soon, as the printing press made books and education more widely available, Scientist began to wax arrogant in his growing knowledge and think more highly of himself than he ought.  His self-worth began to be drawn from how well-read or learned he was rather than from being an obedient servant of the Lord of Creation. 

The problem, however, was not with the printing press or books or education.  The problem lay in the heart of man.  Scientist saw his friend Christian as out-dated and unnecessary.  After a time Christian also began to become suspicious of Scientist because Scientist spent his time with none of the books that Christian read.  And so pride began to swell in the heart of Christian as well - pride in his knowledge of the Bible and theology and pride that he had remained faithful when Scientist had drifted.  Christian peered over the wall of pride he had built and said to his former friend, “Scientist, you are trying to take all of the heavens and fit them into your head.  Surely your head will burst.”  And Scientist said back to him across the wall he had built, “Christian, you are trying take your head and put it up into the heavens.  Surely your feet will never touch the ground.”  And so it was for centuries, and the friends’ hearts began to grow more and more hardened toward each other. 

During those centuries, Christian tried to use the power of the state to coerce people in the name of God, and Scientist grew more and more convinced that his former friend’s silly religion was the cause of much pain and suffering in the world.  Then the 20th century came and went and Christian was able to see people groups who had been persecuted in the name of Science and Progress.  It became more and more clear that Scientist was using his science like a religion… a religion that was founded on faith in certain unprovable principles.  And Scientist was using state power to coerce people to support his Scientism.  Christian and Scientist both had a distaste for the suffering of people and both resented coercion at the end of the state’s sword.  And so Christian invited his friend Scientist to come around the walls that they had both built so that they could try and rekindle the friendship they once enjoyed.  So when Scientist agreed and came over, Christian admitted the wrongs he had perpetrated, wrongs motivated by pride and not by piety.  Then they each sat back in their seats, lit their pipes, and began to try and put the pieces of a friendship back together…

I would like to invite readers to come back and enter this discussion where I will be reviewing chapter-by-chapter the book Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach by Dr. Vern Poythress.   Dr. Poythress is, I believe, uniquely qualified to write such a book because he has both a doctorate in mathematics and New Testament studies accompanied by decades of teaching experience in the academy.  And it is my sincere hope that my college degree in Earth Science, my experience teaching Earth Science, and my seminary education will allow my review to be fair, accurate, and even critical at points.  So please come back and check for future posts on Redeeming Science.

Here is an article by Congressman Ron Paul that gives us another reason to distrust (and be disgusted by) a big federal healthcare program.
The Immorality of Tax-Payer Funded Abortion

How does a man visit six cities, interview everyone from the octagenarian J.I. Packer to nineteen year-old college Calvinists, cover church traditions from charismatic to seventh-day adventism, dip into the subcultures from deep south Bible-belters to postmodern Seattle hipsters, and then review it all in a coherent and engaging manner in less than 160 pages?  Well Collin Hansen, editor-at-large for Christianity Today has managed to do so in his Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (2008).

The way I see it, Hansen’s book divides loosely into 4 sections and are as follows:

• Chapter 1-3 … From John to Jonathan (Piper to Edwards that is)

• Chapter 4 … Battle for the heart of Baptist America

• Chapter 5-6 … Winsome Charis-Calvinism

• Chapter 7 … The Reformed Shock-jock

In chapters 1-3, Hansen starts with the Calvinist fruit that he finds, namely those young college and barely-not-undergraduates who’s hearts have been turned upsidedown by a God who won’t be tamed.  Hansen shows quite well how these young Calvinists are captivated, not initially by tightly argued theological systems, but by an empassioned, Christ-saturated beauty.  It seems that a younger generation has little patience for the Jesus-is-my-buddy pathos of their parents’ traditions and are in turn drawn to the gravity and joy that accompanies a full-bodied, unapologetic embrace of God’s sovereignty.  Hansen quotes John Piper (author of Desiring God and a staple at the ever-popular Passion conferences) as saying, “They’re not going to embrace your theology unless it makes their hearts sing” (p.17).Hansen then moves from the fruit in chapter one to the branch and the root of the current Calvinist resurgence, namely John Piper and his Puritan mentor Jonathan Edwards.  Hansen captures John Piper’s modus operandi (i.e. promotion of God’s glory) in chapter two quite well in quoting Piper as saying, “God is most glorified when we’re most satisfied in him.  Affections are central – not just marginal – and it’s okay to be happy in God.” (p.33)  It is in this chapter that Hansen even-handedly introduces the reader to the perennial theological melee between people on opposite sides of issues like free will vs. a will bound by sin and particular atonement vs. universal(?) atonement.  But it is in chapter three that Hansen follows the branch (Piper) all the way to his theological root, namely Jonathan Edwards, famous Puritan minister of the First Great Awakening in the mid 1700’s.  And for all of Edwards’ well-established academic prowess, Hansen does well to show his readers that it is Edwards’ aesthetic theology that attracts all the renewed attention.  Or in other words, people are drawn to God through Edwards’, not because he is supremely True, but because he is supremely Beautiful.  Hansen quoting Piper: “What Edwards saw in God and in the universe because of God, through the lens of Scripture, was breathtaking…And the refreshment that you get from this high, clear, God-entranced air does not take out the valleys of suffering in this world, but fits you to spend your life there for the sake of love with invincible and worshipful joy.”  For the rest of Chapter three Hansen introduces his readers to the footprints of Edwards left both in New England, in modern theologians like J.I. Packer, and in the hearts of a Calvinist resurgence that is pointing young people, not to big name/big music conferences, but to the Church.

Chapter four is aptly titled “Ground Zero” as Hansen chronicles how the current Baptist-American struggle with the doctrines of grace is progressing.  He centers his discussion around Al Mohler and the Calvinist influence of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  This chapter is full of extremes, encouraging accounts of Calvinistic evangelistic zeal and anecdotes containing vomitous stories of power-plays within churches.  While it might be obvious that Hansen is himself a Calvinist simply because he devoted the time and effort to write this book, he obviously shows his reformed cards in this chapter by offering a critique (albeit, very brief) of how Baptist Calvinism-detractors refuse to take the Scriptures at face value in places.  He also spends a good bit of print debunking the misconception that Calvinism kills evangelism and missions.  (Good for you, Mr. Hansen!)

On the next leg of Hansen’s journey, he brings his readers into the bright, humble, and bouncy world of Calvinistic Charismatics.  The biographical tapestry he weaves about C.J. Mahaney and Josh Harris endears one to their spirited spirituality and discerning doctrine.  Hansen shows how a Calvinist resurgence in the Charismatic camp has helped bring some balance to a corner of the church that has caused raised eyebrows from the more decently-and-in-order crowd.  An interesting digression from the discussion of charis-Calvinism in this section is where Hansen interviews Michael Horton (editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation), who helps the readers see that not all Calvinism is Reformed.  But over all, these two chapters and their anecdotes and stories surrounding the Mahaney/Harris camps are replete with the themes of wonder and exuberance, all of which is comfortably reclining at a table of “humble orthodoxy.”

The last section of Hansen’s chronicle is in dealing with Mark Driscoll and the edgy engagement he has with the surrounding hostile Seattle culture.  It is in this chapter that Hansen, through the lens of Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church, helps his readers begin to see through the postmodern fog that surrounds what has been labeled the “emergent church movement”.  Although he started off as the heir-apparent in the emerging church, Driscoll’s refusal to buy in to the “distributed authority” (a.k.a. idolatrous egalitarianism) of the emerging church has caused him to become, ironically, the first “heretic” of that movement.  Hansen shows quite well how Driscoll’s unapologetic words and actions have not only drawn severe fire from many different sources (from John MacArthur to Doug Pagitt to People Against Fundamentalism), but ultimately has shocked many in his community out of their comfortable spiritual malaise and into a saving relationship with Christ and His Church.

In the final analysis, this book is mostly about reporting and not about analysis… a journalistic description and not a grassroots prescription about what to do next. And as far as it goes, it is an excellent book.  But a reader is going to read this book, be energized by its exuberance for truth and its vision of God, and then wonder, “Ok.  What am I supposed to do with this in my home church?”  And to that I would say, “You’re starting out on the right foot.”  I would say that people need help seeing the church as the center of a Christian’s spirituality.  Carry any exuberance and energy gleaned from the book and funnel that into efforts poured out for others through the church.  Hansen has helped us with his reporting about how God is using a Calvinsitic movement to build His Church.  Let’s help point the energy, time, and zeal of the young, restless, and reformed back tothe church and show people exactly how deep the well goes and what Christ can do through His Bride.

In an age when it appears that public truth boils down to whoever has the best spin doctors, it’s comforting to know that there are some atheists who are publicly honest about the philosophical dividing lines between their worldview when compared to Christianity.  When atheists and Christians alike try to obfuscate or blur the lines of division between the opposing worldviews, then each side becomes suspicious that the other side is trying some intellectual hocus pocus on the other.  This suspicion quickly retreats into either public shouting matches (“We’ve got truth. Yes we do. We’ve got truth how ’bout you?”) or sectarian bigotry (“He’s obviously wrong because he listens to NPR”).  When public debate and discussion devolves to this point, very little can be said.  Chesterton likened this way of public discourse to walking near a cliff in a fog.  On a clear day, a man will walk right up to the edge of the cliff because he can see the exact point where gravity would take effect to his detriment.  But in a fog, a man will stay a hundred yards from the edge of a cliff because the dividing line between safety and a full-body cast has been obscured.  So in that spirit, I salute the following atheists (both living and deceased) for their public honesty concerning Darwinian evolution and what it has to say about who we are and what we should or should not believe.

“…matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity.”  –Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist

“…man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”  George Gaylord Simpson, Harvard paleontologist

“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit in this one complaint. . . the literalists [i.e., creationists] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”  Dr. Michael Ruse, author of Taking Darwin Seriously, Darwinism Defended, and a contributing author to The Companion to Ethics 

“Morality . . . is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. . .  In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.” -Michael Ruse

Commenting on how helping the poor, healing the sick, caring for the mentally ill, and inoculating people against small pox affects natural selection, the father of evolution wrote, “No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.” — Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

I have been enamored for many years with Ambrose Bierce’s satirical lexicon The Devil’s Dicitionary in which he redefines words with a slightly sarcastic and sometimes darker meaning. So here are a couple that I have either picked from forgotten sources or created myself. Feel free to chime in with your own “devilish” definitions and look for future additions.

expectations: (n) premeditated disappointments

control: (n) a pleasant illusion granted by the Lord for brief periods of time. It is only claimed to be truly possessed by fools and the insane.