“We are changing. We are not changing.” Northland’s Quagmire.

“Men love plain speech.”

Fundamentalists have so long confused intransigence for steadfastness that they have to resort to announcing change by saying there is no change. This is the quagmire in which my alma mater is currently wallowing.

I must preface the following comments by declaring myself as a happy, supportive and encouraged alumnus of the non-changes in my former institution that are so remarkably different from my days as a student that I’d be very tempted to call them “changes” if I were anyone else but a loyal occasional dues-paying alumnus. Long afflicted with a quirkiness to see something as it really is, to call a spade a spade, I find it very difficult to suppress the urge to call the non-changes at my alma mater changes. On the one hand, we are told that “things are changing” and alumni chatter about “the changes,” but on the other hand we are told that there are no changes.

And I’m charitably enthused!

Imagine, however, how another variety of the human species may interpret the data coming out of the North Woods like, say, normal people. Normal people would be a tad mystified that there is such a big announcement about no change. A mass mailing. An open letter on a widely-read blog.  And though we are told, for example, that the music philosophy of the institution is the same as it always has been, it is simultaneously announced that the Director of Fine Arts cannot take them forward in this way. He brought them hither; but he cannot take them yon. It would appear that the Director is uncomfortable with the non-change.

This is explained by saying that while there is no “philosophical” change, there is now “missional” change. Normal people scratch their heads.

Please, my friends, stop the silliness.

Let’s just be plain in our language. To even use the word “missional” is a philosophical change, not to mention the “missional” emphasis in music training that is now the new focus. There has been a philosophical shift. Call it what it is. Though in my vainer moments I like to fancy myself as a notch above average in understanding nuances between abstract terms thus enabling me to put a more charitable interpretation on almost anything that would appear like obfuscation to mere mortals of lesser intellectual sophistication, I am nonetheless repressing my average-joe instinct to say, “What that there politician is tryin’ to say is that they’re making changes  by sayin’ ‘xactly the opposite.”

So enters self-defined curmudgeonly one from the right armed with common sense. Never give your opponents the common sense edge. Never. Of course, he is immediately pounced upon as being ornery, cantankerous, and basically typical of his normal self by defenders of the institution, but no one (so far as I can see) has actually dealt with the uncomfortable reality that common sense is his ally. In normal experience and in normal language all these non-changes are, in fact, changes.

If they are not changes at all one who was an alumnus in the early 90s must conclude:

1. That the current attitudes toward, say, non-fundamentalists like Rick Holland and Bruce Ware and Warren Simien were so masterfully disguised that one thought that he was in a typical fundamentalist school. Alas! I was duped. I would have been so much happier had I known that was the official stance!

2. That the current missional approach to music was a well-kept secret perk consistent with the what-seemed-to-be-excessively-legalistic limitations of music checks (non-existent now) and stylistic restraints. I was not sophisticated enough to know that the lectures on guilt-by-association masked a then-held philosophy that could so easily discard music checks and ultimately embrace “missional” (?) training. Alas! Had I known that the philosophy was that elastic I would have spared myself the effort of disengaging myself from it. Years of wasted time. Sigh.

The bottom line is this. There has been change. There is change. There will be change. Change is happening. And the letter basically says, “Deal with it.” That’s my interpretation in plain speech.

I’m frustrated though.

I think the changes are overdue. And, yes, I do think there is a sense in which some of this is not new. Certainly, the disposition of Northland toward many of these issues has been favorable toward its now-public stance. I offer myself as Exhibit A of alumnus influenced by latent reasonable disposition under shell of fundamentalist hard nose. Therefore, I think the changes are, in the main, good changes.

But there is something that Northland and other fundamentalists leaders and institutions really need to change and that is the latent pride that cannot come to grips with the fact that they have been, in some instances, wrong. In five years we have seen a flood of changes with many of these places and people but concurrent with the changes comes a torrent of explanations that all boil down to “we are who we have always been.”

Really?

The problem is because the culture of fundamentalism twenty years ago (and in most parts of it today) was stagnate and could not tolerate dynamics of growth, development, maturation, and change. Change of any kind was tantamount to compromise. Compromise of any kind was always akin to apostasy. Consequently intransigence replaced steadfastness as a virtue and no one realized it. It was never in fundamentalist vocabulary to say, “You know, we held this position for so long but we’ve come to realize that we were wrong on that position. We are now changing.” The practical result is a culture that fears to admit change more than it fears being dishonest about changes. “Sticking by the stuff” is the cardinal fundamental fundamentalists are so proud of that when they quit sticking they passionately redefine the new stuff they are by and say that they have always been sticking by it.

It’s unfortunate that the letter that dismisses playing politics came across as politics. I think that the substantive change that fundamentalism needs is to move from intransigence to steadfastness. And that comes by shoot-from-the-hip transparency in the growing process. Steadfastness allows for all the wonderful changes that many are trying to make and has the added benefit of giving people the assurance that you are indeed who you say you are. Presently, the changing institutions that are insisting that that they are not changing have added a new problem to their complex public relations challenges: the lack of credibility.

We would all do well to learn from Spurgeon:

“In minor matters as well as more important concerns I have spoken my mind fearlessly, and brought down objurgations and anathemas innumerable, but I in nowise regret it, and shall not swerve from the use of outspoken speech in the future any more than in the past. I would scorn to retain a single adherent by such silence as would leave him under misapprehension. After all, men love plain speech. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The real change fundamentalism needs is not in the cultural matters of music and fellowship, but in the culture of intransigence and pride that precludes the possibility of growth and adjustments without the acrimonious condemnation of other intransigents. Where there is humility, there will always be growth. Where there is growth, there will be change. Changes are good. Just say it.

From the Real Pensées

We know the truth, not only through our reason, but also through our heart. It is through this latter that we know first principles; and reason, which has nothing to do with this, vainly tries to refute them. The skeptics have no intention other than this; and they fail to achieve it. We know that we are not dreaming. Yet however unable we may be to prove this by reason, this inability demonstrates nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge, as they assert . . . Our inability must therefore do nothing except humble reason — which would like to be the judge of everything — while not confronting our certainty. As if reason could be the only way in which we can learn!

Blaise Pascal in Pensées 110

Secularists and Conservative Theologians Agree on Genesis 1-3

Both secular professors and conservative theologians agree that Genesis 1 -3 was intended by the author to be understood literally. The only difference is that the secularists don’t believe it.  It is Theistic Creationists that bend normal hermeneutics to accommodate atheistic science. James Barr was no friend of conservative evangelicals but consider this:

Another Reason Why the Rest Hates the West

Mark Farnham gives an excellent little commentary on Why the Rest Hates the West over at SharperIron. It is an easy read and it would be very good for Americans who can only perceive of this country as a beacon of virtue and freedom to read in order to attempt the intellectually honest activity of walking in the “the rest’s” sandals. There’s a lot to chew on here and I found the article compelling enough for me to want to purchase the book for myself.

But quite honestly I’ve been — if I may say so myself — pretty fair-minded with the haters because of having lived in other cultures. I don’t agree with them all the time, but I can sympathize. There are profound academic, cultural, and philosophical reasons why the rest hate the west, but then there are also ridiculous statements from prosperity-intoxicated pastors that contribute to the “rest’s” rage. Take this for example:

The Rev. Horace Sheffield III tells WJBK-TV his congregation at New Destiny Baptist Church will try to surround the Lions’ Ford Field “in prayer.”

Hall-of-Fame running back Barry Sanders and a carousel of coaches over the years has not translated into victories for the Lions.

Sheffield said “maybe it’s time to get God to help,” and that a city suffering through a terrible economy and high unemployment shouldn’t have to deal with a losing team.

I find the last line to be utterly repulsive. Besides the fact that it is easy for me to think of plenty of reasons why Detroit should, in fact, deal with a losing team, it is egregious and Marie-Antoinette-ish to whine about the burden of having a group of millionaires unable to be able to pull off a record better than 2 – 7. The fact that the man calls himself a pastor is abhorrent to me. I wish he’d go to Haiti and spend a month sleeping in one of the thousands of camps that are there, drinking cholera-infested water and watching people pee on the streets because there is nowhere else to go to get away from a crowd and then see if he thinks Detroit can tolerate another season with a losing team. Or maybe he should have spent the nights with me, earlier last month, on the floor of a wooden clinic six inches away from a woman on the other side of a thin piece of plywood as she retched all night long in the sweltering heat. I can assure you I didn’t feel the need to pray to Merciful God to have pity on my poor Chicago-based flock because the Bears have been disappointing us this season.

Idiotic. Absolutely repulsive. Another reason why the rest hate the West.

Church Discipline and Social Media (i.e. Facebook)

The idea of excommunication is sobering to me. It is rarely practiced and very few people have faith in the process. When we are about to practice church discipline on a person who has already abandoned the church I am often asked why we even bother going through the motions. “What difference will it make in their lives?”, they ask.  I would suggest that a few of the reasons for this lack of faith in God’s process  are as follows.

• Pastors lack the courage to follow through with a biblical and formal excommunication because so many other pastors in town will accept the excommunicated member without so much as pretending to do an investigation into their reasons for departing the previous church. Pastors seem to be the first to assume that they are the only reasonable leaders around and they easily buy into the notion that that the case of the disgruntled former members of the other church was severely mishandled.
• The Temptation of the Pile-On. Pastors sometimes lack the conviction to act so forcefully on the basis of one obstinately held sin. Thus, they find themselves wanting to build a case against the obstinate person and suddenly find themselves feeling icky. The icky feeling is simply because they have succumbed to the temptation of the Pile-On and feel like they cannot move forward unless they overwhelm the “jury” (the local church) with an onslaught of damning evidence against the obstinate and unrepentant church member. Consequently, they lose their sense of peace. This is as it should be. Confident and biblical men don’t need to pile-on evidence. They simply take it as a matter of faith that the one clear, biblically-definable sin combined with obstinate refusal to repent is sufficient enough for excommunication.
• The fear of interfering with Christian social life. Contemporary social life is so shallow and superficial that we don’t really have categories of social interaction. I have over 800 “friends” on Facebook. But are they really friends? We can find ourselves chatting with people we would normally never think of, much less fellowship with, on Facebook. The superficiality of it is probably mostly benign, but what about facebooking with people who have been excommunicated out of the church?

I don’t know the answer.

One of the most helpful things I’ve read on church discipline (and I’ve read a lot lately) is from William Ames’ (1576-1633) The Marrow of Theology. I wonder how this would fit with contemporary superficial socializing with technological media?

An obstinate sinner cannot be separated from the faithful unless the faithful be separated from him, and this produces a salutary sense of shame, 2 Thess. 3:14.  Those who are lawfully excommunicated are to be avoided by all communicants.  This refers not to moral and other necessary duties, but to those aspects of social contact which presuppose acceptance and inward familiarity. Speech, prayer, farewell, entertainment, table, are denied.

Does church leadership dare to ask their congregants to defriend on Facebook the excommunicated member?

I think people of faith are willing to ponder the hard realities of their convictions.

But one more thought. I think people have little faith in the process because it is entirely spiritual. Ames is particularly helpful here, especially when one considers the era in which he lived.

[Excommunication] pertains to all those, and only to those, who have the right to partake of the sacraments.  To such people it applies the will of God, i.e., those means of spiritual reformation which Christ alone has given to his churches, 2 Cor. 10:4. Therefore, punishments and pains of body or purse have no place at all in ecclesiastical disciplines.

In other words, the person who asks, “What will it matter to them?” is demonstrating a lack of faith and conviction that our battle is spiritual and we do not wrestle with carnal means.

When you don’t want to write, link.

Here are two good posts, one by Ryan Martin and the other by Jeremy Scott. I think both are relevant for ministry. Ryan’s post highlights a reality that I think should have been obvious to evangelicals a long time ago: fashion is arbitrary. Jeremy Scott, one of the pastors at our church, gives some good pastoral advice about technology and social media.

Is New Calvinism Really New Fundamentalism?

This is the question that David Fitch asks over at Out of Ur.  Now, you must understand from the outset that the question is loaded with implication. This is very much like asking

• Red Sox fans if their local police are the new Yankees?
• African-American if  the Republicans are the new Klu Klux Klan?
• Liberal Democrats if the Blue Dogs are the new Tea Party?

You get the point. Before the discussion has even begun, the well is poisoned. The very fact that the question is posed suggests that there are enough similarities that it merited a thoughtful reflection. Superficial thinkers will freak out and flee at the slightest resemblance of the caricature that they so despise without taking the time to ponder deeper distinctions. Not everyone that has a silly mustache is Adolph Hitler.

Having said that, I don’t think people with silly mustaches should be upset if someone notices similarities between them and Adolph. But quite honestly Fitch’s claim that New Calvinism is the New Fundamentalism in a pejorative sense is utterly ridiculous because of the way he characterized fundamentalism. It should be common sense that you can’t define a thing by the similar characteristics it has with another thing even if it is granted that the similarities are real. It is even more ridiculous if you use characteristics that are universal.

• It was characteristic of Saddam Hussein to eat three meals a day. Barack Hussein Obama eats three meals a day and has the same name. Barack Obama is therefore an Americanized version of Saddam Hussein.
• The Nazi Germans characteristically had blond hair and so do many liberal Democrats that I know. Let’s write an article entitled, “Are Liberal Democrats the New Nazis?

Fitch characterizes fundamentalism with three categories:

1. Insularity. There’s a mentality of insiders over against those who don’t believe.
2. Distrust toward culture as a place where God is at work.
3. An “us against them” mentality.

You will be forgiven if you think that 1 and 3 overlap. I think you could also be forgiven if 2 makes you scratch your head and wonder how anything could be more meaningless and inapplicable to the people that he is criticizing, Al Mohler and Kevin DeYoung. But perhaps I don’t understand the sentence. After all, while I know many people who do in fact trust culture, one rarely meets a person who, like Fitch apparently, would boast in having a “trust toward culture” even if it is a “place where God is at work.” What in the world does that mean?

If he is saying that Mohler, et. al. do not believe God can work in culture and the culture is a “place where God is at work,” he needs to read a few more things besides his own blog.
If he is saying that there is an evident suspicion of culture then he is merely highlighting a characteristic that is common to all religions and the atheistic professor in the local community college. Of course, we don’t even know what culture he speaks of. The supposedly defining characteristic is useless because of its meaninglessness.

But he also assumes that there is something dastardly about believing that some are saved and others are not saved (1) and that affirmation and denials of certain propositions equals an “us against them” mentality which is, in his mind, always wrong.

The whole poorly written and thought out post reeks of someone trying to guarantee some traffic to his blog and for that he must be credited with a job well-done. I decided to venture an answer, but I probably should have followed the example of one commenter that said reductionist questions should get reductionist answers after he answered as one of “them,” yes, yes, yes.

Here is my attempted to give a non-reductionist response on his blog:

I would agree. I think I agree with your conclusion, but I’m not sure I agree with your analysis. Having grown up in fundamentalism and still being accused of being such (even though most in my own circles have repudiated me with the dreaded “conservative evangelical” label), I personally think that it is irrational for anybody to disagree with your conclusion that the New Calvinism is a new fundamentalism.

However, I am thinking of fundamentalism in a denotative way and ignoring all of its bad connotations. Since most think of its yucky connotations, most in New Calvinism will vehemently and rightly resist the label.

Since “fundamentalism” is a pejorative term in the eyes of most people (excepting radical fundamentalists) it complicates reasonable discussion because it puts the accused on the defensive.

But I see both pros and cons with the resulting conclusion of your analysis although I think by using the term “fundamentalism” only in a pejorative way as you have done has prejudiced the discussion.

What do you mean by “fundamentalism”? Are you speaking of the J. Gresham Machens of the 20′s who, (though he specifically was uncomfortable with the term), were accused of the very same things that you indicate in the above video? Or are you speaking of the post-Ockenga fundamentalists?

If you are accusing them of being like the earliest fundamentalists, fine. I would agree with you and I would also concur that there was a definite “we/they” mentality which you seem to think is wrong. But (and I’m not trying to be combative), what is wrong with a “us vs. them” mentality when it comes to the conflict of ideas? In fact, aren’t you enjoying the same kind of mentality when you talk about “them”?

I’m not offended by that. You think that “them” are wrong and your article is clearly appealing to those respondents that will find comfort in being a part of the “us” who are put off by the New Calvinism. That’s all perfectly fair. But does that make you fundamentalists?

It is God who invented the us/them dichotomy and it is impossible to avoid it. Some are his children; some are not. I think it is almost silly of people to accuse “fundamentalists” for being “us vs. them” when their accusation effectuates the very same result. Furthermore, while it is not ungodly or “fundamentalist” to suggest that “we” are right and “they” are wrong about any area of doctrine. It is wrong to be wrong, but one is not wrong simply because he has the temerity to think that others are wrong especially if he happens to be right! And if he finds some one to agree with him suddenly they are now an official “us.” What’s wrong with that?

To disagree is fine. To argue over right and wrong is necessary. To say that Mohler and DeYoung are absolutely wrong would be much more impressive to me than to conjure up an evocative connotation that muddies the water simply because they have the spine to say that some people are right and others are wrong.

Having said that, I think that the New Calvinism is a good thing and, yes, in my mind it does very much give the impression of being similar to the earliest fundamentalists. Sadly, I would also have to agree that there is an insularity (particularly the hero worship) that smacks of the post-Ockenga fundamentalism that I have grown to deplore.