Television: Agent of Truth Decay

Taken from "Truth Decay" by Douglas Groothuis. © 2000 by Douglas Groothuis. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com. The blog would not accept the footnotes; please see the book for the details.

"TV Guide" published a short manifesto - actually, an advertisement by ABC - on the goodness of television, just in case anyone doubted it.

For years the pundits, moralists and self-righteous, self-appointed preservers of our culture have told us that television is bad. They've stood high on their soapbox and looked condescendingly on our innocuous pleasure.... Well, television is not the evil destroyer of all that is right in this world. In fact, and we say this with all the disdain we can muster for the elitists who purport otherwise - TV is good.

TV binds us together. It makes us laugh. Makes us cry. Why, in the span of ten years, TV brought us the downfall of an American president, one giant step for mankind and the introduction of Farrah Fawcett as one of "Charlie's Angels." Can any other medium match TV for its immediacy, its impact, its capacity to entertain?[1]

Indeed, no one can dispute television's unrivaled immediacy, impact and entertainment capabilities. But it is exactly these features that make it a potent agent of truth decay in postmodernity. Television is an unreality appliance that dominates our mentality. We then take this unreality mentality and impose it on the rest of the real world. That is, we (mis)understand the world in terms of the mentality inherent to the form of communication that is television.

Throughout this book, I have distinguished between postmodernity as a truth-decaying social condition and postmodernism as a truth-decaying philosophy, as well as emphasizing that these reinforce each other in various ways. One primary engine or dynamo for truth decay is the cultural system of television. I will highlight five ways in which television contributes to the loss of truth, and then give three practical suggestions for overcoming these effects.

Television seldom, if ever, directly addresses postmodernist philosophy (or any other philosophy). However, its very nature contributes to a loss of truth by reinforcing certain crucial themes in postmodernism. Television has become a commercial and cultural institution in American life; as such, it is unproblematic to the vast majority of Americans and, therefore, highly influential. Jacques Ellul is right that 'television acts less by the creation of clear notions and precise opinions and more by enveloping us in a haze.'[2] Neil Postman captures our sad situation: 'Television has achieved the status of a 'meta-medium' - an institution that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of the ways of knowing as well.'[3] While many have noticed and object to the content of television fare (too much sex, violence, anti-Christian material, etc.), television's nature as a medium is largely ignored, thereby granting it a kind of epistemological immunity from criticism. Yet Scripture calls us to 'test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.' (1 Thess 5:21-22).

The medium of communication matters since it always shapes the messages it carries, and these mediated messages shape us. A novel and a television series based on a novel differ in crucial ways, for example. Therefore, any medium should be exegeted to determine its nature, function and structure. Only in this way can we ascertain what it does well, what it cannot do and what it does poorly. This is what Marshall McLuhan meant by his hyperbolic slogan, 'the medium is the message.'[4] Taking his cue from the discussion of idolatry in Psalm 115, McLuhan also remarked that, 'We become what we behold'[5] (see also Ps 1). When we become habituated to a particular form of communication, our mentalities and sensibilities bear its mark.

A raft of studies from several decades indicate that Americans consume vast quantities of television - an average of about four to five hours per day, with many taking in much more. Televisions are also becoming nearly omnipresent, imperialistically colonizing automobiles, airports, restaurants, classrooms, bars, daycare centers and computers.[6] They are even being placed on some gasoline pumps. Once, while attempting to explain a family member's strokelike symptoms in the triage area of a hospital emergency room, I found myself competing with a blaring television. After I turned it off (without asking permission), the attendant behind the check-in desk huffily turned it back on. Nearly 100 percent of American homes have at least one television, and three out of four have more than one. Eighty-four percent of households have at least one VCR. Many have elaborate home-theater systems costing thousands of dollars. And half of all Americans say they watch too much television![7]

The Image over the Word: Discourse in Distress

What is there about the nature of the television medium that shapes its message? First, television emphasizes the moving image over written and spoken language. It is image-driven, image-saturated and image-controlled. This is precisely what television does that books, recordings and pictures cannot do; it brings us visual action. However, when the image dominates the word, rational discourse ebbs. We are attracted to the incandescent screen just as medievals were attracted to stained glass windows. As McLuhan noted, the light comes through them as opposed to light being shown on them (as with books and photographs and other objects in the physical world). These technologically animated images move and combine in ways unknown only a few decades ago, thus increasing their power to mesmerize.

Ellul observes that the 'visionary reality of connected images cannot tolerate critical discourse, explanation, duplication, or reflection' - all rational activities required for separating truth from error. Cognitive pursuits 'presuppose a certain distance and withdrawal from the action, whereas images require that I continually be involved in the action.' The images must keep the word in check, keep it humiliated, since 'the word produces disenchantment with the image; the word strips it of its hypnotic and magical power.'[8] Words can expose an image as false or misleading, as when we read in a magazine that a television program "re-created" an event that never occurred. Novelist Larry Woiwode further develops the implications:

The mechanics of the English language have been tortured to pieces by TV. Visual, moving images - which are the venue of television - can't be held in the net of careful language. They want to break out. They really have nothing to do with language. So language, grammar and rhetoric have become fractured.[9]
When the image overwhelms and subjugates the word, the ability to think, write and communicate in a linear and logical fashion is undermined. Television's images have their immediate effect on us, but that effect is seldom to cause us to pursue their truth or falsity. Television's images are usually shorn of their overall context and meaning, and are reduced to factoids (at best). Ideas located within a historical and logical setting are replaced by impressions, emotions and stimulations. While images communicate narrative stories and quantitative information well (such as graphs and charts), words are required for more linear and logical communication. Propositions and beliefs can be true or false; images in themselves do not have truth value. The persuasiveness of the image on television led media theorist Tony Schwartz to claim that truth is now an outmoded concept, since it belongs to a time when print communication was dominant.[10]

Media critic Malcolm Muggeridge understood this well:

The one thing television can't do is express ideas.... There is a danger in translating life into an image, and that is what television is doing. In doing it, it is falsifying life. Far from the camera's being an accurate recorder of what is going on, it is the exact opposite. It cannot convey reality nor does it even want to.[11]

The images of television may be arresting, alluring and entrancing, but they are prefabricated presentations that shrink events into factoids or outright falsehoods. This is a feature of the very nature of television, as Francis Schaeffer pointed out:

TV manipulates viewers by its normal way of operating. Many viewers seem to assume that when they have seen something on TV, they have seen it with their own eyes....
But this is not so, for one must never forget that every television minute has been edited. The viewer does not see the event. He sees ... an edited symbol or an edited image of that event. An aura and illusion of objectivity and truth is built up, which could not be totally the case even if the people shooting the film were completely neutral .[12]

The triumph of the televised image over the word contributes to the depthlessness of postmodern sensibilities. Reality becomes the image, whether or not that image corresponds to any objective state of affairs-and we are not challenged to engage in this analysis. The above-quoted ABC piece of propaganda advises us to 'celebrate our cerebral-free non activity.'[13] As a consequence of such nonactivity, truth suffers and truthfulness is downplayed, if not ignored. Joshua Meyrowitch, a professor of communication, complains that his students 'tend to have an image-based standard of truth. If I ask, 'What evidence supports your view or contradicts it?' they look at me as if I came from another planet.' This is because 'It's very foreign to them to think in terms of truth, logic, consistency and evidence.'[14] Such oblivion exists not only in the case with media students but is true of culture at large, as Kenneth Myers stresses: 'A culture that is rooted more in images than in words will find it increasingly difficult to sustain any broad commitment to any truth, since truth is an abstraction requiring language.'[15] In postmodernism, truth and logic are mere social constructions, which can be deconstructed and reconstructed at whim. Television gives a powerful object lesson in these notions of truth and so furthers truth decay in the souls of millions for hours every day.

Muggeridge commented that when the Israelites worshiped the golden calf instead of waiting for the Word from Moses, they attempted to televise (or make visible) God.[16] Biblically speaking, God commands that we not make graven images nor attempt to televise the invisible. In the beginning was the Word, not the image (Jn 1:1). God gave us a book, not a video. When, in any culture, written language is marginalized by television, biblical truth begins to lose its vibrancy. Christians must restore the primacy and power of the Word as an antidote to truth decay by television.

The Loss of Self: Truth Removed

Second, along with the displacing of the word by the flickering television image comes a loss of authentic selfhood, whereby the self is deemed as a moral agent inexorably enmeshed in a moral and spiritual universe. Instead the self is filled with a welter of images and factoids and sound bites lacking moral and intellectual adhesion. The self becomes ungrounded and fragmented by its experiences of television. This matches the postmodernist abandonment of a unified and normative self that is disciplined and directed by transcendent truths.

By contrast, a love of serious reading orients the self toward grand narratives and abstract truths - such as the holiness and mysteries of God, moral truth, the pursuit of virtue, the dangers of vice, immortality - and these truths place the self in a position of rectitude before them. People whose sensibilities and worldviews are adjusted through serious reading tend to live by what they have read. They live in conversation with great minds, even when they are not reading.[17] As William Ellery Channing noted, 'It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds.' Watchers of television, on the contrary, simply engage in the imitation of proliferating images and multiple personae. Barry Sanders sounds this grim theme: 'With the disappearance of the book goes that most precious instrument for holding modem society together, the internalized text on which is inscribed conscience and remorse, and, most significant of all, the self.'[18] Postmodern illiterates live their lives through a series of television characters (better: shadows of characters), and changing channels becomes a model for the self's manner of experience and its mode of being. Moral and spiritual anchorage is lost. The self is left to try on a pastiche of designer personae in no particular order and for no particular reason.

The reading of great literature immerses us in realities beyond ourselves, although not unrelated to our selves. But this life of reading requires an existential participation not permitted by television, which simply sweeps us along at its own pace. One cannot muse over a television program the way one ponders a character in Shakespeare or in C. S. Lewis, or a Pascal parable, or a line from a T. S. Eliot poem such as 'But our lot crawls between dry ribs/to keep its metaphysics warm.'[19] No one on television could utter such a line seriously. It would be 'bad television'- too abstract, too poetic, too deep, just not entertaining. As such, a serious selflhood - in which the self knows itself as a unique actor in a great cosmic drama that is larger than one's self - is rendered impossible. Inwardness and self-reflection are replaced by an outward compulsion for increasingly more mediated experiences that draw one increasingly further away from the essence of one's soul and its ultimate, eternal fulfillment. As fallen beings, we have always been mysterious to ourselves, but television can only exacerbate our sad stupidity. Kierkegaard perceived that the self is quite easy to lose in the ways of the world:

About such a thing as [the self] not much fuss is made in the world; for a self is the thing the world is least apt to inquire about, and the thing of all things the most dangerous for man to let people notice that he has it. The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed.[20]

Through television, oblivion to self is amplified and broadcast globally and ceaselessly. As a consequence, the self is destabilized, uprooted and hollowed out; it becomes ungrounded, weightless, truthless, opaque to itself - and it likes it that way, because no alternative is available (on television). Postmodernism prevails; the loss of the self in relation to truth is celebrated, not mourned, for 'TV is good.' But, as Jesus intoned, what is it worth if we gain the whole world (televised for all to see) and forfeit our souls (Mt 16:26)?

A Peek-a-Boo World: Discontinuity and Fragmentation

Third, television relentlessly displays a pseudoworld of discontinuity and fragmentation. Its images are not only intrinsically inferior to spoken and written discourse in communicating matters of meaning and substance, but the images appear and disappear and reappear without a proper rational context. An attempt at a sobering news story about slavery in the Sudan is followed by a lively advertisement for Disneyland, followed by an appeal to purchase pantyhose that will make any woman irresistible and so on, ad nauseum. This is what Postman aptly calls the 'peek-a-boo world'- a visual environment lacking coherence, consisting of ever-shifting, artificially linked images. In order to detect a logical contradiction, 'statements and events [must] be perceived as interrelated aspects of a continuous and coherent context.' When the context is one of no context, when fragmentation rules, the very idea of contradiction vanishes.[21] Without any historical or logical context, the very notion of intellectual or moral coherence becomes unsustainable on television.[22]

In reflecting on an essay by Walter Benjamin, social critic Jerry Mander discusses the implications of the detachment of image from context with respect to artistic values.

The disconnection from inherent meaning, which would be visible if image, object and context were still merged, leads to a similarly disconnected aesthetics in which all uses for images are equal. All meaning in art and also human acts becomes only what is invested in to them. There is no inherent meaning in anything. Everything, even war, is capable of becoming art.[23]

Since postmodernism thrives on fragmentation, incoherence and, ultimately, meaninglessness as modes of being and acting (since there is no God, no objective reality and no universal rationality to provide unity to anything), this facet of television serves postmodernist ends quite well.

The biblical conception of truth contradicts this surrender to incoherence, since truth is a noncontradictory, unified whole, and because God's universal plan proceeds in a linear (if often mysterious and unpredictable) fashion. The prologue to Luke's Gospel would have made bad television, since Luke claims that he 'carefully investigated everything from the beginning,' such that he could 'write an orderly account' of Jesus' life, so his original reader, Theophilus, might 'know the certainty of the things [he had] been taught' (Lk 1:3-4).

Pathologies of Velocity: No Time for Truth

Fourth, the increasingly rapid pace of television's images makes careful evaluation impossible and undesirable for the viewer, thus rendering determinations of truth and falsity difficult if not impossible. With sophisticated video technologies, scenes change at hypervelocities and become the visual equivalent of caffeine or amphetamines. The human mind was not designed by its Creator to accommodate to these visual speeds, and so the sensorium suffers from the pathologies of velocity. This means that one simply absorbs hundreds and thousands of rapidly changing images, with little notion of what they mean or whether they correspond to any reality outside of themselves. The pace of this assault of images is entirely imposed upon us; it bears little if any resemblance to reality. As Ellul notes, 'The person who puts the images in sequences chooses for you; he condenses or stretches what becomes reality itself for us. We are utterly obliged to follow this rhythm.'[24] This, of course, is the exact opposite of what happens in reading.

Habituation to such imposed velocities tends to make people intellectually impatient and easily bored with anything that is slow moving and undramatic - such as reading books (particularly thoughtful ones), experiencing nature in the raw and engaging in face-to-face conversations with fellow human beings. Hence, the apprehension of difficult and demanding truths suffers and withers. The pace of television's agenda disallows edification, understanding and reflection. Boredom always threatens and must be defended against at all costs. The overstuffed and over-stimulated soul becomes out-of-sync with God, nature, others and itself. It cannot discern truth; it does not want to. This apathetic attitude makes the apprehension and application of truth totally irrelevant.

On the other hand, the godly art of truthfulness requires a sense of pacing one's senses and thoughts according to the subject matter before one. As Augustine said, 'The peace ... of the rational soul [is] the harmony of knowledge and action.'[25] The acquisition of knowledge (warranted belief in what is true), requires intellectual patience and fortitude. One must linger on perplexing notions, work them through, compare them to other ideas and attempt to reach conclusions that imply wise and rational actions. Before God, one must shut up, listen and be willing to revolutionize one's life accordingly (see Eccles 5:1-7). God's word - 'Be still and know that I am God' (Ps 46:10) - simply cannot be experienced through television, where stillness and silence are only technical mistakes called 'dead air.' Television thus becomes a strategic weapon in the arsenal of postmodernist cynicism and apathy.[26]

The Entertainment Imperative: Amusement Triumphant

Television promotes truth decay by its incessant entertainment imperative. Amusement trumps all other values and takes captive every topic. Every subject-whether war, religion, business, law or education must be presented in a lively, amusing or stimulating manner. The best way to receive information interpersonally -through the 'talking head'- is the worst way according to television values; it simply fails to entertain (unless a comedy routine is in process). If it fails to entertain, boredom results, and the yawning watcher switches channels to something more captivating. The upshot is that any truth that cannot be transposed into entertainment is discarded by television. Moreover, even off the air, people now think that life (and even Christian ministry) must be entertaining at all costs. One pastor of a megachurch advises preachers that sermons should be roughly twenty minutes in length and must be 'light and informal,' with liberal sprinklings of 'humor and anecdotes.'[27] Just like television, isn't it?

The truth is that truth, and the most important truths, is often not entertaining. An entertainment mentality will insulate us from many hard but necessary truths. The concepts of sin, repentance and hell, for instance, cannot be presented as entertaining without robbing them of their intrinsic meaning.[28] Jesus, the prophets and the apostles held the interest of their audience not by being amusing but by their zeal for God's truth, however unpopular or uncomfortable it may have been. They refused to entertain but instead edified and convicted. It was nothing like television.

Becoming Untelevized: The People of Truth

As Postman, Ellul and other critics have noted, television is not simply an appliance or a business: it is a way of life and a mentality for approaching reality. As such, it amplifies and reinforces postmodernist themes of truth decay. Ellul is right: People are 'being plunged into an artificial world which will cause them to lose their sense of reality and to abandon their search for truth'[29] To thwart television's power, one must refuse its seductions. Television is good at some forms of entertainment but is very bad at helping us develop the habits of being that lead us deeper into truth for God's sake and the sake of our own souls. Mander does not overstate the cause when he claims, 'Television effectively produces a new form of human being-less creative, less able to make subtle distinctions, speedier, and more interested in things.'[30] Given this dire condition, some very practical steps can be taken to reverse television's truth-decaying effects on the human being.

1. Engage in a TV-free fast for at least one week and note the changes produced in your thoughts and attitudes. Discuss these effects with those closest to you and or record them in a journal. I require students in one of my courses to engage in a media fast of some sort, and most pick television. They almost uniformly report that the fast revealed a level of attachment to the tube they did not expect. They did suffer some withdrawal at first. However, they later experienced a calming effect and a more contemplative attitude to life; they found more time for friends, family and reading. When they went back to watching television, many were shocked to realize what they had not seen when they were habituated and desensitized to this medium: most television programming is insipid, illicit and idiotic.[31]

2. If either the will or the ability to go 'cold turkey' is lacking, create instead TV-free zones and times. For instance, many watch television when they are physically or emotionally drained. This is the worst time to do so, since television decreases intellectual vigilance and is not truly relaxing.[32] Therefore, one might make the two hours after returning from work a TV-free zone. The same could be done for the two hours before going to bed. Instead of having the television be the focus of the living room or family room (with all chairs drawn in its direction), place the television in another less-frequented room so that one has to go out of the way to watch it. This breaks the television reflex and leaves the way open to better things, truer things.

3. Replace television watching with truth-enhancing activities, particularly reading thoughtful books. The desire to read and the ability to read well suffer under the ruthless regime of television, as do writing skills.[33] Therefore, truth suffers. The very act of reading demands a deep level of intellectual engagement and bestows tremendous pleasure and benefit for the faithful. We watch television; we read books. Few have described the truth-conducive nature of print and reading as well as Postman:

Whenever language is the principle medium for communication - especially language controlled by the rigors of print - an idea, a fact, a claim is the inevitable result....Print is serious because meaning demands to be understood. A written sentence calls upon its author to say something, upon its reader to know the import of what is said. And when an author and reader are struggling with semantic meaning, they are engaged in the most serious challenge to the intellect. This is especially the case with the act of reading, for authors are not always trustworthy. They lie, they become confused, they overgeneralize, they abuse logic and, sometimes, common sense. The reader must come armed, in a serious state of intellectual readiness. [34]

The mental act of reading is not passive, but active. It engages the mind and the imagination in wondrous ways not possible through television - in ways that are, in fact, discouraged by television. Through reading, truth becomes possible and knowable. The discipline of wresting meaning from texts and assessing their truth is invaluable for people who aspire to '[speak] the truth in love' (Eph 4:15). Truth is restored by attending to the Good Book - whose authors are trustworthy, but not always easy to understand (2 Pet 3:16) - and to good books, which require the kind of cognitive criticism Postman describes (Phil 4:8).

The author of Hebrews chastised his or her readers because of their slowness and laziness in learning important biblical truths, which resulted in spiritual ignorance and immaturity. In our truth-decayed day when television hinders the acquisition, internalization and application of so much truth, we should transpose this ancient warning to apply to ourselves.

We have much to say about this [Jesus' priesthood], but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Heb 5:11-14)

Neutralizing the acids of truth decay means refusing the enticements of one of its chief postmodern agents - television.

For more about Truth Decay by Douglas Groothuis, visit
http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/isbn=0-8308-2228-3

Douglas Groothuis is also the author of The Soul in Cyberspace (Baker) and Unmasking the New Age (IVP). More information about Dr. Groothuis is available at http://www.gospelcom.net/ivpress/groothuis



1.'TV Is Good,' TV Guide, August 9-15,1997. No author is listed.
2. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Bluff, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids,Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990), p. 336.
3. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin, 1985), pp. 78-79. The dominance of television as a medium in American culture also fits into the category of what Ivan Illich calls a "radical monopoly." See Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 54-61.
4. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, reprint 1994), pp. 7-21.
5. Ibid., p. 45.
6. George Guilder believes the days of old fashioned television are numbered, because its basic functions will be absorbed by computers. See George Guilder, Life After Television (New York: W W Norton, 1994).
7. For these and more disturbing statistics about television watching, consult "Television Statistics," on the TV-Free American Web page 8. Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, trans. Joyce Main Hanks (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985), p. 142.
9. Larry Woiwode, 'Television: The Cyclops That Eats Books,' Imprimus, February 1992, p. 1.
10. Tony Schwartz, The Responsive Chord (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1973), pp. 18-22, cited in Kenneth Myers, All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway, 1989), p. 162.
11. Malcolm Muggeridge, cited in Woiwode, 'Television: The Cyclops That Eats Books,' p. 3.
12. Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1976), p. 240; see also Ellul, Humiliation, p. 140.
13. "TV Is Good."
l4. Quoted in John Leo, 'Spicing Up the (Ho-Hum) Truth,' U.S. News & World Report, March 8,1993, p. 24.
15. Myers, All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes, 164.
16. Muggerridge, Christ and the Media (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 59.
17. On this theme, see Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (New York: Faber & Faber, 1994). This book is highly recommended.
18. Barry Sanders, A Is for Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence in an Electronic Age (New York: Vintage, 1995), pp. 77-78.
19 T.S. Eliot, 'Whispers of Immortality.'
20. Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954), p. 165.
21. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 109.
22. Ibid., p. 110.
23. Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1977), p. 288. Mander is discussing Walter Benjamin's essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,' from the collection Illuminations. See also Birkerts, Gutenberg Elegies, pp. 224-29.
24. Ellul, Humiliation of the Word, p. 141. Ellul is right to point out in a footnote on page 141 that this can be overcome to some degree if one videotapes a program and stops and starts it when one chooses. But this is only a small measure of control overall, and most people fail to use this function critically.
25. Augustine The City of God 19.13.
26. For more on the problems of speed in postmodern culture, see Mark Kingwell, 'Fast Forward: Our High-Speed Chase to Nowhere,' Harper's Magazine (May 1998): 37-48; Stephen Bertman, Hyperculture: The Human Cost of Speed (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998); and James Gleick, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (New York: Pantheon, 1999).
27. Discussed in Douglas Webster, Selling Jesus: What's Wrong with Marketing the Church (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), p. 83. This is not Webster's own philosophy of homiletics!
28. For a satirical treatment of this, see the chapter 'Making Repentance Fun,' in Tom Raabe, The Ultimate Church: An Irreverent Look at Church Growth, Megachurches, and Ecclesiastical 'Show Biz' (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1991), pp. 39-42. This is a neglected classic and a rare piece of thoughtful evangelical satire.
29. Ellul, The Technological Bluff, p. 337.
30. Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991), p. 96.
31. Ellul reports the beneficial effects of television depravation in a French study in Technological Bluff, pp. 338-39.
32. See Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, pp. 192-215.
33. See Woiwode, "Television: The Cyclops That Eats Books," p. 1.
34. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 50; see also, Birkerts, Gutenberg Elegies, p. 122.

Wounded, Risen One

Please read Rebecca Merrill Groothuis's beautiful and theologically astute poem,"Wounded, Risen One," about Good Friday and Easter. Click here:

http://www.ivpress.com/groothuis/pdf.php/rebecca/000100.pdf. The hot link function is still not working for my blog.

Publishing Agenda

My next books:

1. "The Purpose-Driven Internalist, Critical Realist, Cumulative Case Apologist, Interactive Dualist, Egalitarian, Foundationalist, Noncessationist, Kindgom theology, Calvinist, Conservative Protestant Philosopher--Who Loves Jazz and Hates Kenny G."

2. "Leaving Logical Fallacies Behind: A End-Times Guide to Godly Thinking."

3. "The Prayer of St. Anselm: Your Recipe for Maximal Modal Success."

4. "The Law of Noncontradition: the Hidden Way to Increase Marital Intimacy."

5. "Five Philosophers You Meet in Hell--and What they Think Now: Hobbes, Nietzsche, Stirner, Sarte, and Rorty (if he doesn't repent)."

6. "Rapture Before the Rapture." Rolling in the hay and waiting for the End. (Why Tim LaHaye has not combined these two themes thus far is beyond me.)

7. "Misquoting Pascal: Everything You Know About The Wager is Wrong--And Other Contrarian Complaints"

"Are All Religions One?" booklet

In 1996, InterVarsity Press published my booklet called, "Are All Religions One?" I just received a new printing of it with a card saying that this is the "seventh printing, bringing the number of copies in print to 56,062." This booklet has sold more than my last five (or more) books put together! The number in print is gratifying because the booklet makes a basic but necessary point for contemporary apologetics: All religions are not one. Rather, a person must assess their individual truth-claims and not lump them together. To make this case, I compare Christianity with Islam and Advaita Vedanta (nondualistic) Hinduism in terms of their views of ultimate reality, the human condition, and salvation. Then, I give a brief case for the reality of Jesus Christ. Perhaps this booklet will be of help to you in the apologetics mission of the church (1 Peter 3:15-16; Jude 3; Matthew 28:18-20). (By the way, if anyone is thinking that I am trying to make more money, please know that I received a small amount for writing it ten years ago with no provision for royalties.)

Easter Life and the Facts of History

Easter commemorates and celebrates a historical event unlike any other: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. But what is the significance of the resurrection? Can we know that it really happened?

The four Gospels of the New Testament all report that Jesus predicted his death, burial, and resurrection. He was born to die. All of his wondrous teachings, healings, exorcisms, and transforming relationships with all manner of people—from fishermen to tax collectors to prostitutes to revolutionaries—would be incomplete without his crucifixion and resurrection. Shortly before his death, "Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priest and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life" (Matthew 16:21). Peter resisted this grim fact, but Jesus rebuked him. There was no other way (vs. 22-23). For, as Jesus had taught, he "did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28).

And give his life he did, on an unspeakably cruel Roman cross—impaled for all to see before two common criminals. We call this day Good Friday because it was good for us; but it was dreadful for Jesus. Before I became a follower of Christ, I always associated this day with the Alaskan earthquake on Good Friday, 1964, one of the largest quakes ever in North America. I was there in Anchorage. After the death of Jesus, the earth quaked on the first Good Friday as well, heaving with a significance that far exceeds any geological upsurge in world history. As Jesus' disciple Matthew recounts: "And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split" (Matthew 27:50-51). When the guards at the crucifixion experienced the earthquake and the other extraordinary phenomena, "they were terrified, and exclaimed, 'Surely he was the Son of God!'" (v. 54). Yet another miracle was waiting, waiting—as the dead Messiah was pried off his bloody cross, embalmed, and laid in a cold, dark tomb, guarded to the hilt by Roman guards.

All seemed to be lost. The one who had boldly claimed to be "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), the prophet who had announced that "God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16)—this man now had died. The man who had raised the dead was dead.

On the first day of the week, two women, both named Mary, came to visit the tomb of their master. They had stayed with him as he died; now they visited his tomb in grief. Yet instead of mourning a death, they celebrated a resurrection announced by an angel, who rolled back the stone sealing the tomb and charged them to look at its empty contents. He then told them to tell Jesus' disciples of the resurrection and to go to Galilee where they would see him. As they scurried away, Jesus himself met them, greeted them, and received their surprised worship (Matthew 27:8-9). He directed them, "Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me" (v. 10).

The rest is history, and it changed history forever. The fact that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection puts the lie to the notion that the idea of Jesus' resurrection was concocted at a later point to add drama to his life. Women were not taken to be trustworthy witnesses in courts of law at that time (although Jesus always respected them). If someone had wanted to create a pious fraud, they never would have included the two Marys in their story. Moreover, all four Gospels testify to the factual reality of the resurrection. They were written by eyewitnesses (Matthew and John) or those who consulted eyewitnesses (Luke and Mark); they were people in the know, not writers of myths and legends (see Luke 1:1-4; 1 Peter 1:16).

After the resurrection, the gospel of the risen Jesus was quickly proclaimed in the very area where he was crucified. This upstart Jesus movement would have been easily refuted by someone producing the corpse of Christ, which both the Jewish establishment and the Roman government had a vested interest in doing, since this new movement threatened the religious and political status quo. But we have no historical record of any such thing having occurred. On the contrary, the Jesus movement grew and rapidly spread. Christian Jews changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday, in honor of Jesus' resurrection. Pious Jews would never do such a thing on their own initiative, because it would set them against their own tradition and their countrymen. Nor would they have ceased offering the prescribed sacrifices their Scriptures required had not Jesus proven himself to be the final sacrifice for sin, the lamb of God (see John 1:29 and The Book of Hebrews). The resurrection best accounts for this change in their day of worship, their manner of worship, and the transformation at the core of their lives. Moreover, the two key rituals of the earliest church—communion and the baptism—both presuppose the historicity of the resurrection and both are very difficult to explain without it.

The Apostle Paul, a man revolutionized through an encounter with the risen Christ (Acts 9), taught that "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Corinthians 15:14). Paul listed many witnesses of the risen Christ, some of whom were still living when he wrote (1 Corinthians 15:3-8), and confidently affirmed that "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead" (v. 20). He also proclaimed that Jesus "through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4).

Easter is the core of Christian faith and life. Without the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no gospel message, no future hope, and no new life in Christ. But with the resurrection at its center, Christianity stands unique and alone in the world. No other religion is based on the historical resurrection of its divine founder. When Jesus announced, "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 10:25), he meant it—and he demonstrated it. Let us, then, leave our dead ways and follow him today and into eternity.

• Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and the author of On Jesus. Web page: www.gospelcom.net/ivpress/groothuis.

Quiz

Knowing What Matters Most Quiz:

1. Name the five main characters of the television program "Friends."
2. Name the five freedoms of The First Amendment.

Humm...

I don't know the answer to (1.)--and am proud of my ignorance. Here is the First Amendment fo the United States Constitution.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The Gospel of Brutus: A Revolutionary Revelation About the Real Jesus

The National Oceanic Society has recently released a long-lost and world-changing document, The Gospel of Brutus, which was found in a water-tight piece of pottery off the Greek coast. The Gospel, written by an unknown follower of Jesus named Brutus, reveals the inner teachings of Jesus that were long suppressed by the orthodox, power-mongering, and generally narrow-mined and anal-retentive clerics throughout history.

The document claims that Brutus was a secret Greek follower of Jesus, to whom Jesus disclosed the true, secret, inner, esoteric, and self-empowering teachings that he never revealed to his other disciples. In fact, what he told Brutus completely contradicts most everything in the four canonical gospels. The document, dated by scholars to have been written in about 300 CE, but composed about a century earlier, shows that Jesus was not Jewish in this worldview or sensibilities at all. For example:

"To you, Brutus, I reveal the mysteries, secrets, and inner realities of the Kingdom of Spirit—truths not known to those enslaved by the earth and its supposed Creator, Yahweh.”

Hence, the idea that Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi who frequently quoted the Hebrew Scriptures is just a bald-faced lie. That is merely what the orthodox power-players want you to believe. Jesus further says:

"O Brutus, it is the Greeks, not the Jews, who truly understand the ways of the inner kingdom. The body is a mistake, a trash heep. I have no body, but only the ignorant cling to it, as they cling to all errors, not knowing the fullness of the utterly unknowable, but desirable, Being of Being of Being."

The newly discovered Gospel, of which there are no known copies elsewhere, also gives a remarkable prophecy:

"Far later, O Brutus, my beloved, when the True Unknowable Being will be revealed to beings, after the Time of Darkness, a scholar of the Light, of Truth, of true Prophet and Profit, will make the message known. Her name is Sage Maureen Bagels. She will be the shepherd of this Treasure, and nothing of the refuse of earth will hinder her overcoming. Follow her star and it will become your living fire."

Quite predictably, orthodox scholars have questioned the Gospel of Brutus on the ridiculous grounds that its author is unknown; it must have been written long after the canonical gospels; that its portrayal of Jesus as more Greek than Jewish flies in the face of history (both biblical and extra-biblical); and that an esoteric document of dubious pedigree hardly overturns two thousand years of Christian tradition that begins in the middle of the First Century. Sage Bagels has already defended the credibility of The Gospel of Brutus in "The Old World Times" and is preparing a learned treatise on the subject. “The people who revered The Gospel of Brutus did not think they were heretics,” she wisely intoned. “Give esotericism a chance,” she also sagaciously pleaded.

Jesus on Hell

[Given the discussion on the last post about hell, I thought I would post some pages from my book, "On Jesus" (Wadsworth, 2003), that discuss Jesus' view of hell. This is from chapter four, "Jesus' Metaphysics." It does not include the footnotes.]

Beyond history, Jesus speaks of a postmortem existence either with God in blessing or outside of God’s blessing in a state of regret, loss, and forfeiture. Jesus announces to the criminal crucified next to him that the man would be with Jesus in paradise that very day (Luke 23:43). In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus contrasts the beggar Lazarus, who “died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side,” with the oppressive rich man who died and found himself in “hell, where he was in torment” (Luke 16:19-23). Jesus also warns of a day when he will separate the “sheep” from the “goats” eternally on the basis of how people lived their lives in response to him and to their neighbors (Matthew 25:31-46). Jesus implicitly builds on certain passages in the Hebrew Scriptures to this effect (Daniel 12:2; etc.), but he makes himself the key agent of eternal judgment.

Jesus teaches that one passes from death into a disembodied intermediate state—either into God’s presence or away from it—and that at some future time this will be followed by Jesus’ own return to earth in final judgment. After this the permanent resurrection of the body will occur.

"For a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his [the Son of God’s] voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:28-29).

Jesus claims to have the authority to render final judgment.

"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers’" (Matthew 7:21-23).

Hell on Trial

Such statements by Jesus have led some to reject Jesus as a sound thinker or a moral teacher. Bertrand Russell in his famous essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” is illustrative.

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

Russell claims that Jesus demonstrated “vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching.” Moreover, Jesus’ teaching that it is possible to sin against the Holy Spirit such that one is never forgiven “has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world.” A kind person would never have unleashed such worries upon the world. Furthermore, Jesus took “a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often.” Lastly, Russell claims that the doctrine of hell “put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as his chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partially responsible for that.” If Russell’s charges stand, Jesus falls morally and philosophically. They may be questioned, however.

First, Jesus did not engage in “vindictive fury” when predicting divine judgment. He issues strong warnings at times, but shows no “pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Moreover, after pronouncing seven charges (or “woes”) against “teachers of the law and Pharisees” (Matthew 23:15-32), Jesus laments over Jerusalem for not accepting his offer of redemption.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing" (Matthew 23:37).

While dying on the cross, Jesus prays concerning those responsible for his crucifixion, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). This is not vindictive, but forgiving and compassionate. Rather than being spiteful, Jesus issues warnings precisely because he believes in both heaven and hell. That he warns of eternal loss repeatedly does not entail that he takes any enjoyment in it, any more than a physician enjoys repeatedly warning an asthmatic patient that she will die if she doesn’t stop smoking. If Jesus did, in fact, believe that an eternal sin against the Holy Spirit were possible, it would only behoove him to warn others against committing it (Mark 3:20-30). The fact that some have worried unnecessarily about committing this sin should not be credited to Jesus any more than pathologists should be blamed when hypochondriacs think they have contracted diseases they do not have.

Second, Russell’s claim that the very idea of hell induced generations to cruelly torture others is terribly overstated. We can cite a few Inquisitors who tortured heretics in hopes that early torment might spare them eternal punishment, but this is but a small and deeply aberrational percentage of Christians throughout the ages. The majority of those who purport to follow Jesus have adopted the attitude of warning and invitation with respect to Jesus’ message of redemption, not the practice of torture. Torture is nowhere commended by the Jewish or Christian Scriptures (or any Christian Creed) as a method of conversion or purgation or retaliation.

Third, while some regard the very idea of hell as utterly repugnant, philosophical arguments have been marshaled in support of the doctrine of hell. If one can rationally support the idea of God’s perfect and infinite holiness and justice in relation to the reality of human sin and moral responsibility, the idea of the perpetual punishment of one who rejects God’s offer of redemption is not without warrant. As Milton’s Lucifer put it in Paradise Lost:

So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear,
Farewell Remorse; all Good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my Good. . . .
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.

Moreover, there are biblically tenable and philosophically defensible models of hell that are not vindictive at all.

Jesus articulated a robust metaphysics. He embraced a highly personal theism and God’s dominion over human and cosmic history, a dominion that was entering a new and decisive stage through his own ministry. Jesus was a mind-body dualist, who acknowledged the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. He often engaged the demonic realm through exorcism and healing, and he spoke of Satan, demons, and angels. However, his main focus was always on God and his own mandate “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

Reporting on an Evening with Atheists

On Friday, March 24, I received an email from Justin Bosch, who was sponsoring a screening of the film, “The God Who Wasn’t There” at the historic Oriental Theater in Northwest Denver. Mr. Bosch screens films related to media reform and social ethics, but he was venturing into the religious deep. Since the film is very critical of Christianity—claiming that Jesus never existed and that Christians are dangerous simpletons—he wanted to give some response time to a Christian, as well as to an atheist. So, at the last minute it was arranged that Will Providence, a local atheist of the Objectivist stripe (a follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy), and I would make some brief comments after the film and then answer questions.

Although I seldom participate in highly-charged public forums with little notice, I was interested in doing this because without me there would have been no Christian response. Further, I was familiar with the basic arguments of the film and was able to mine quite a bit of material on it and the producer on line.

The event nearly filled the theater. The first half hour or so was taken up by an audio presentation of a comedian who recounted her loss of Catholic faith and her turn to atheism. It was the most uncharitable presentation of the teaching of the Bible I had ever heard in one sitting. The Old Testament is nothing more an amoral mess. Jesus isn’t as nice as he thought. After all, he was impatient with his disciples, and so on. The Catholic priest who taught her the Bible was a fideist, who said she had to have faith and that he would pray she had faith. That was not good enough, and eventually “God disappeared” for this poor soul. Then came the film. The best thing about it was that it was mercifully short: sixty-two minutes. The film advances the solidly refuted claim that Christianity was started by Paul, who invented a Jesus out of whole cloth—the cloth of mystery religions. There are so many inaccuracies that I don’t know where to begin, so I won’t. However, Mike Lacona has written a long and thorough piece on the movie. Christians were presented as rapture-bedazzled nincompoops who wanted to take over America and persecute as many infidels as possible.

After this torment was over, Will and I took the stage before about 125 people. I made an opening statement that focused on the films three basic arguments (if I can so dignify such propaganda): (1) the claim mystery religions influenced, (2) that Christianity leads to persecution, and (3) that Christianity is intrinsically irrational. Will spoke for just a few minutes on what atheism meant to him. He did not address the film at all. We then took questions from the audience for about 45 minutes. Most of the questions were aimed at me. The audience was largely made up atheists, it seemed; although a few Christian friends attended. I infer this because when Will or a questioner made a point against Christianity or God, people tended to applaud. I would sometimes interact directly with Will—a young and presentable Iranian man in law school—but he didn’t have too much of substance to say except that he based his philosophy on reason and not faith. He also made positive allusions to Saint Ayn Rand. The questions—or sometimes just accusations against Christianity—related to issues such as the concept of truth, the supposed sexism of the Bible, hell, and so on. They really started piling on about hell at the end. In some cases, people would yell things from the audience instead of going to the microphone. When I presented an egalitarian account of gender relations (with ample reference to Rebecca Merrill Groothuis’s books), someone yelled, “Read Paul!” I have, amazingly enough, and he was no sexist.

This was easily the most hostile group I have ever addressed in twenty-seven years of public speaking. I spoke after an hour and half of anti-Christian propaganda and was on stage with an atheist before an audience of many atheists. Nevertheless, I think my opening comments refuted important claims in the film—I needed several hours to respond to all the errors, many of which were absolute howlers—and attempted to fairly and calmly respond to all the questioners. I was not stumped by any of the questions or comments, but I always wanted to say more. (I am a professor, after all.) I tried to give Will ample time to respond, but he often wanted to move on to the next questioner. He seemed quite nervous. At several points, I was able to present the essential gospel message, once in response to a question on hell: Jesus came to save us from that fate.

I hope that people who attended this event will post comments. You are better judges of me than I am, and you may be able to add your own observations of the event as a whole. Nevertheless, I offer a few reflections. I solicited widespread prayer for this, which is my custom (and was the Apostle Paul’s custom as well). This makes a tremendous difference. Despite the antagonistic crowd, I did not feel threatened or panicked. Several questioners wanted to back me into a fideist corner, but I never said that Christianity was without reason or evidence. I provided arguments and no subjective testimony or “I just know in my knower.” The caricature was applied because most Christians do not give reasons for their faith, even though they are commanded to do so in the Bible (1 Peter 3:15). A philosopher defending Christianity as rational probably blew some of their materialist circuits. It was also heartening to talk with several people afterward who seemed to be genuinely interested in Christianity. One of the co-owners of the theater was every enthusiastic about having me there and complimented me on my ability to respond reasonably to questions. He had probably never seen such a thing before. I hope to follow up with him. I also received an email from a man who is an agnostic who would like to interact with me.

My final blast is this (although I’ve said it a thousand times): We need more thoughtful and well-informed Christians in the market place of ideas, even in the hot spots. As Os Guinness as stated, most of American Christian evangelism in America is aimed at those already very interested in Christianity, but don’t know how to become Christians. This leaves out a vast number of souls who are hostile to Christianity or have no interest in it at all. We are called by Jesus Christ to engage these people as well.

Discussion after "The God Who Wasn't There"

Susan Arnold has a post on the event I spoke at Sunday night. It is very insightful, I think. My link function isn't working (!), so here it is: http://deut64.blogspot.com/2006/03/still-there.html#links

"The God Who Wasn't There"

I will be speaking (along with an atheist named Will Providence) at the end listed below. We will both make brief comments after the film and then respond to questions and comments from the audience. This came together at the last minute, which is why I am only now posting it.

The God Who Wasn't There

Sunday, March 26

7:00 PM

Oriental Theater

4335 W. 44th Ave, Denver

(44th & Tennyson)

Tickets: $8 available at the door


Holding modern Christianity up to a bright spotlight, this bold and often hilarious new film asks the questions few dare to ask.



Your guide through the world of Christendom is former fundamentalist Brian Flemming, joined by such luminaries as Jesus Seminar fellow Robert M. Price, professor Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris and historian Richard Carrier.



Hold on to your faith. It's in for a bumpy ride. In this provocative, critically acclaimed documentary, you will discover:



• The early founders of Christianity seem wholly unaware of the idea of a human Jesus



• The Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to other ancient heroes and the figureheads of pagan savior cults



• Contemporary Christians are largely ignorant of the origins of their religion



• Fundamentalism is as strong today as it ever has been, with an alarming 44% of Americans believing Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes





www.argusfest.org

Frank Flunked: Francis Beckwith Denied Tenure at Baylor

Prolific author and professor Francis Beckwith has been denied tenure at Baylor University, where he has taught for three years. Despite Professor Beckwith's prodigious achievements in publishing and lecturing, Baylor has refused to grant him tenure. Beckwith will be challenging this decision according to his schools appeals policy.

My only conclusion is that this is a purely political move, and one that sadly fits a pattern at Baylor. The leadership at Baylor had been attempting to move it toward a solidly evangelical identity in which the Christian worldview would be at the center of the curriculum. This was called the Baylor 2012 program, instituted by then President William Sloane. (For a marvelous statement of the vision of a truly Christian college by Wheaton College's president, see "Conceving the Christian College" by Duane Litfin.) In recent years, Baylor courted and won many notable evangelical scholars, such as C. Stephen Evans, Beckwith, and William Dembski. Dembski's contract was not renewed after a three-year research (no teaching) position. With the departure of the President and Provost who led this vision, the school seems to be reverting to its provincial and traditional Southern Baptist ethos, which tends to separate faith and scholarship in unhealthy ways.

This is tragic for many reasons, but one looms large. There is no major evangelical research university in America, as Mark Noll pointed out in "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" in 1994. We spend our money elsewhere. Our theology does not make room for it. Neither will Baylor support this grand vision, apparently.

Against Personality Stereotyping

Every once in awhile (and always too often) I hear someone or oneself described in a serious of four letters. This is from a personality test, the Myers-Briggs, which is Jungian in its assumptions. Jung's psychology is not to be trusted for many reasons (first and foremost because he was a gnostic), but I absolutely rebel against personality typecasting. We are individuals, not abstractions, which are created by so-called experts who have never met us. This personality stereotyping goes very deep in American culture: ministries use these tests, as do many other organizations. It is but another attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, to make the qualitative and unique into a faceless category to be manipulated and processed by pundits.

Yes, there are broad generalizations that can be made about people, but often they are constricting. For years, I viewed myself as an introvert. That is, until someone challenged that view after noting my behavior in a group. It turns out that he (Jim Howard, thank you) was right. I enjoy the presence of people, or at least the right kind of people, although I also need time alone, especially to study. I don't fear being alone; but I don't dislike certain social settings either. So hang the "introvert" and "extrovert" categories--as well as strings of letters to describe individuals made in the divine image. This labeling another sad case of a technology usurping the need for spiritual discernment--testing the character of oneself and others--which comes through conversations, prayer, and just being-with another qua another, not the other as the instantiation of an abstract category dreamed up by a psychologist or psychiatrist. I am a human being. Do not label me--or anyone else, especially in psychological categories. Think up your adjectives after divining the character of your neighbor (if you can). If not, hold your peace.

"I am the Slime"

I'm The Slime
by Frank Zappa
I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little had changed
I am the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I am the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I am the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't got for help...no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks..
Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin'room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

TV Turn Off Week

TV-Turnoff Week 2006 will take place April 24-30, 2006 - and it's not too soon to get ready! See: http://www.tvturnoff.org. (The link function is not working on this blog right now.)

Letter to the White House

[I sent this letter to the White House home page. Please pray about this terrible situation.]

Dear White House:

What is the Bush Administration doing about the man sentenced to death in Afghanistan because he converted to Christianity? America supposedly liberated this country from oppression in the hopes that it would be democratic and honor freedom of religion and speech. Yet an innocent man faces death for his faith. This is very wrong.

I encourage the White House to do everything possible to put pressure on Afghanistan to free this man and to reform its unjust laws.

Sincerely,
Douglas Groothuis

A Bad Poem About a Tough Class

Dread.
Hume,
Kant,
their epistemology...
for the uninitiated,
the community college.

Years of my study,
Three hours of our pain.

Is anyone home?

1. Matter of fact.
2. Relations of ideas.

What is the difference?
Does anyone know?

Kant, the intrepid revolutionary:
Synthetic a priori knowledge.
What is it?
Why think about it?
Who cares about it?
Is it possible?

Engaging ideas, raging teaching.
Blank stares.

And yet...
That ring-in-lip young women venturing answers to my many questions.
Sometime right, sometimes wrong, but sometimes!
Her expressions show concern.
Her pen is active.

Hume is wrong, I aver. Internal inconsistency.
Kant is wrong, I plead. Internal inconsistency!

Do they fathom "internal inconsistency" at all?
Have they made the law of noncontradiction their friend,
or is it an enemy or a stranger?

There is another way of knowledge, I suggest:
It is God-bestowed; it avoids skepticism;
it transcends transcendental idealism (Kantianism).

I offer "divine preformation" quickly as an alternative,
--with a reference to a book not required--just before the quiz.

Is anyone home, anyone here

--besides that frowning, nodding, and writing young woman?

Tribute to my Father, Harold Fred Groothuis

[This is the revised version of my November 21, 2005 essay. I tried to update the essay on my blog for that date, but the changes are somehow not registering. So, I am reposting this essay here.]


What can I say about my father—so long gone, so impossible to forget? Harold Fred Groothuis was born on December 28, 1927 in New York. He died in a small plane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska on this day in 1968. Walter Cronkite ended the evening news that day with a short comment to the effect that "Alaska labor leader, Harold Groothuis, was killed in a plane crash in Alaska today along with several others who were serving on a government commission to investigate labor abuses." I watched that in my bedroom on that dreadful, world-changing day. I was not quite twelve years old.

Dad was leaving Point Barrow, Alaska along with other volunteers who were part of the Governor’s Employment Advisory Commission, created by then Governor Walter J. Hickel. They where investigating charges of the mistreatment of Alaska native workers there. Only one of passengers of the propeller plane survived. Not long ago my mother sent me a letter from Alaska native leaders in Point Barrow, which expressed their sorrow and thanks for my father's commitment to their people. At Dad's funeral, a Presbyterian minister eulogized Harold Groothuis as a man who represented "people who worked with their hands." So he did. Many of these people were African-American, Native Alaskans, and Hispanics. First Presbyterian Church of Anchorage, Alaska was filled and overflowing with mourners.

Dad came to the territory of Alaska in the mid-1950s (it became the forty-ninth state on my second birthday—January 3—in 1959), worked as a laborer, and lived in a packing crate with a few other men. He then went back East for a visit to friends and family. There he met a young Italian woman named Lillian Cominetto, who would become my mother. It was love at first sight for both. He returned to Alaska, but wrote Mom love letters. They married in New York 1955 and then traveled back to the frozen north, leaving behind all their relatives.

Why write of my father now, thirty seven years after his tragic, unexpected, and unforgettable death? I am a man of many written words—too many, perhaps—but I have never written of my father in anything but personal letters. I want to pay a short tribute to his short life of forty years, without becoming maudlin or sentimental.

Dad was a big man—big in size (six feet, four inches and well over two hundred pounds) and big in personality. Many were drawn to his love of life, his strong opinions, and his commitment to causes and friends. As my mother said today on the phone, "He would do anything for his friends." He was a union man all the way, and a staunch Democrat. This, to my mind, was the right thing to do at that time. The Democratic party of that day—the party of Hubert Humphrey, for example—was a far cry of what we see now. Dad campaigned for Humphrey's candidacy for President in 1968 by delivering two speeches on Anchorage, Alaska television, which were broadcast live. I remember that Dad mentioned that Nixon refused to debate Humphrey. This was a character defect in Dad's eyes. I agree. Well, HHH (as Hubert Horatio Humphrey was called) lost, and Dad was killed a few weeks later. "There is a time for every purpose under heaven," as Ecclesiastes reminds us.

Dad had a fierce love for his family, for his job, for his friends, for Alaska, for food, and for life. He was an avid sportsman (hunting and fishing) and camper. He once shot a huge Kodiak Black Bear that was charging him. That bear (or part of it) ended up on our living room floor. (For those who don't like hunting—and I don't—this can be construed as self-defense; although they were on a hunting trip.) He was an intense man who neither suffered fools gladly nor could be accused of being low key or nonchalant. Because of his strong opinions, he had a few enemies. One of his enemies (a union malcontent) once threatened to blow up our house. We spent the night elsewhere. Dad had a temper that could get the better of him. He had attended a Presbyterian church as a child, but only attended sporadically as an adult. I was sent to Presbyterian Sunday School for a few years. However, Dad believed in God and had deep moral convictions. As a Christian, I can only hope he made his peace with God before that small plane hit the ground. Dad was a faithful husband, a good provider, and a loving—if sometimes imperious—father. I loved him deeply and I miss him every day of my life in one way or another. He wasn't there for the turning points in his only child's life: the graduations, the wedding, the achievements (such as they are). My dear mother says—and she is the expert, of course—that he would have approved. In any event, I can claim the truth of Romans 8:28 for my life no matter what.

This is my tribute to Harold Fred Groothuis, who died on this day in 1968, serving the laborers of Alaska and loving his small family. I will never forget him, nor will anyone else who knew him well.

Revised Tribute to Harold Fred Groothuis, My Father

On November 21, 2005 (the day of my father's death in 1968), I posted a short essay in tribute to Harold Groothuis. I sent this to my mother, who alerted me to a few small errors of fact. So, I have revised this essay somewhat. It can be found on this blog at November 21, 2005.

Last week in a class I responded to a few of my students who held that all whites were part of "the oppressive class" against minorities. I harked back to Dad, who, while both white and male, was an advocate for the manual laborers in Alaska, many of whom were Native Americans, African Americans, and Hispanics. He was no part or member of an oppressive class. He was an individual who fought (and ultimately died) for the working man (of every race). I am proud of him for that.

Dr. Ronald Nash has died

Evangelical philosopher and prolific author, Ronald Nash, has died. Just a few days ago I read several chapters in his excellent introduction to philosophy, Life's Ultimate Questions, and thought of contacting him to thank him for such clarity and wit in writing philosophy. (I am teaching an Introduction to Philosophy class for the first time.) Now it is too late. I was accepted into the MA in philosophy at Western Kentucky University in 1984, where he was then head of the department and where he served for many years. However, since the school did not grant a Ph.D. in philosophy, I decided to attend a school that did: The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over the years, I have read many of Dr. Nash's books on subjects ranging from Augustine, to epistemology, to economics, to philosophy of religion, to social issues. Here are some I recommend: God and the Greeks (formerly titled Christianity and Hellenistic Culture), The Word of God and the Mind of Man, Social Justice and the Christian Church, Life's Ultimate Questions, Is Jesus the Only Savior? and Faith and Reason. Dr. Nash was a crystal clear writer who advocated a Christian worldview that was Reformed, rational, and engaged in the great ideas of the ages and today. His criticisms of leftism and empiricism were especially telling. Let us mourn his death, thank God for his life, and emulate his intellectual dedication to his Lord and Savior.

What is Truth?

I wrote this essay about ten years ago, but I believe it is still pertinent and true. Let me know what you think.

Over 500 Scientists Who Question Darwinism

Discovery Institute News1511 3rd Ave Suite 808 - Seattle, WA 98101 - (206) 292-0401 x107

Over 500 Scientists Proclaim Their Doubts About Darwin’s Theory

By: StaffDiscovery Institute February 20, 2006

The Scientific Dissent From Darwinism list is now located at a new webpage, http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/.

SEATTLE — Over 500 doctoral scientists have now signed a statement publicly expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution.The statement reads: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” The list of 514 signatories includes member scientists from the prestigious US and Russian National Academy of Sciences. Signers include 154 biologists, the largest single scientific discipline represented on the list, as well as 76 chemists and 63 physicists. Signers hold doctorates in biological sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, computer science, and related disciplines. Many are professors or researchers at major universities and research institutions such as MIT, The Smithsonian, Cambridge University, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the Ohio State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Washington.Discovery Institute first published its Scientific Dissent From Darwinism list in 2001 to challenge false statements about Darwinian evolution made in promoting PBS’s “Evolution” series. At the time it was claimed that “virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true.”“Darwinists continue to claim that no serious scientists doubt the theory and yet here are 500 scientists who are willing to make public their skepticism about the theory,” said Dr. John G. West, associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. “Darwinist efforts to use the courts, the media and academic tenure committees to suppress dissent and stifle discussion are in fact fueling even more dissent and inspiring more scientists to ask to be added to the list.”According to West, it was the fast growing number of scientific dissenters which encouraged the Institute to launch a website -- www.dissentfromdarwin.org -- to give the list a permanent home. The website is the Institute’s response to the demand for information and access to the list both by the public, and by scientists who want to add their name to list. “Darwin’s theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought,” said Dr. David Berlinski, one of the original signers, a mathematician and philosopher of science with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (CSC). “It is large, almost completely useless, and the object of superstitious awe.”Other prominent signatories include U.S. National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell; American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow Lyle Jensen; evolutionary biologist and textbook author Stanley Salthe; Smithsonian Institution evolutionary biologist and a researcher at the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Biotechnology Information Richard von Sternberg; Editor of Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum --the oldest still published biology journal in the world-- Giuseppe Sermonti; and Russian Academy of Natural Sciences embryologist Lev Beloussov.

Bitter-sweet

From "The Temple" (1633), by George Herbert:

¶ Bitter-sweet.
AH my deare angrie Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve:
And all my sowre-sweet dayes
I will lament, and love.

Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons," The New York Review, January 1997, p. 31.

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."

Poetry Reading by Constructive Curmudgeon

Denver Seminary is having an "Open Mic" night from 7-10 PM in the Student Union area Friday, March 10. I will be reading my poem, "Subwoofer" sometime during these three hours. The better reason to attend is the talent to be shown by students and other faculty.

Movie review of "Whatever Happened to Kerouac?"

“What Ever Happened to Kerouac?” is a 1985 documentary now available on DVD about sporadic creativity enshrouded in decadence, degeneracy, and decay. It impressionistically recounts the adult life of Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), the literary beat of the “beat generation.”

The “Beats” (circa 1948-1960?) are sometimes cast as proto-hippies: Bohemian; anti-establishment; aflame with the exotic and taboo; worshippers at the Dionysian fount of creativity; nonconformists—now nihilist, now visionary; poets of the absurd and the profound; idolizers of Charlie Parker’s jazz. Theirs was gut-existentialism and “Beat Zen,” Hindu cosmology and nuclear eschatology. “To be Beat,” wrote Kerouac, “was to be at the bottom of your personality looking up.” Beat was birthed by the misfits, the downbeat, the offbeat—not by the poor urchins who could manage no more than sleeping in parks and begging money, but by the artistic urchins who gave a voice to their rebellion and (somehow) got published.

Kerouac was arguably magnificent at times—churning out rambling, but poetic prose—despite the fact that he was dubbed by one of the literati as “a Neanderthal with a typewriter.” The film is appropriate punctuated by Kerouac reading chunks of prose on “The Steve Allen Show.” Kerouac’s work was impassioned and original; he invented a genre of continuous, spontaneous narrative seen in novels such as The Dharma Bums and On the Road which was written at high speed on a continuous sheet of paper a hundred feet long. Beat poet Allen Ginsburg called it “a magnificent single paragraph several blocks long.”

But Kerouac burned bright but briefly, then burned out rapidly, because being Beat meant being a rogue. As the interviews with family, friends, and acquaintances make plain, Kerouac was a drunk (who drank himself to death), an adulterer, a drug user, and a buddy of more of the same kind of misfits of the day such as William Burroughs (homosexual and junkie), Allen Ginsberg (homosexual and sometimes psychotic), and other assorted thieves, dopers, and thrill-seekers.

But decadence was heralded as transcendence and orgies as oracular. Cultural critic Carl Raschke notes that “Kerouac was self-consciously attempting to depict the whirl of sensation as the key to cosmic understanding, as a vehicle of liberation: though he left little distinction between the liberation of the mind and libertinism of the youthful rake and rebel.”

Decadence was avant-garde, and was touted as the engine of artistry. But the gaunt, sour, bitter faces of many of his now aged or recently deceased compatriots reveal that debauchery indeed debauches—even debauches the Beats, and especially Kerouac. Handsome, lithe, and vigorous as a young man, middle age found him to be bloated and beaten beat.

Particularly pathetic are short clips of William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” in 1969. Buckley presided over the intellectual debris of a quasi-incoherent Kerouac who was asked to consider the relationship between Beats and Hippies. An unflappable Buckley gracefully withstood Kerouac’s juvenile ramblings, seeking to bring coherence out of chaos. Buckley smiled knowingly. Kerouac smirked contemptuously—an appropriate Beat response, perhaps. A rummied out rebel without a cause met a conservative rebel with a cause. The juxtaposition was telling, almost painful.

Kerouac at his best may have unmasked some of the pretensions of a complacent, self-righteous, post-war America; he may have celebrated elements of life—such as bebop jazz—that were unjustly ignored by others. But he exacted too high a price. By going “on the road” he deserted the Protestant work ethic that undergirds a productive and healthy culture, exchanging postponed gratification for immediate gratification (and addiction), exchanging hard work for protracted play—and encouraged others to follow suit. His promiscuity denied the sanctity of the family. (We see several clips of his abandoned daughter reflecting on her father’s life.) But Kerouac and friends corrupted more than themselves; they inspired a whole counterculture—as William Burroughs notes in the film—that both amplified and refined the Beat spirit of nonconformity, hedonism, and Eastern religious intrigue. And don’t we even hear something of “the beat” in the punks?

The film reports that Kerouac said that because he was a Catholic he couldn’t commit suicide, so he decided to drink himself to death (which is really gradual suicide). Although his prose drew inspiration eclectically from Buddhism, Hinduism, and just about anywhere—Beat was nothing if not unsystematic—several friends and his priest tell us that Kerouac was entranced by the crucifix, and painted pictures of Christ and cardinals toward the end. Yet no conversion was evident—only an alcoholic’s eroded body, mind, and soul. It seemed he never caught the spirit of the one he could not forget. Jesus said “seek and you shall find.” Jack Kerouac must have been looking in all the wrong places.

Groothuis ID article translated into Finnish

My editorial defending Intelligent Design, which first ran in The Rocky Mountain News, is now available in a Finnish translation.

New essay on the supremacy of Jesus

My essay, "Why Believe Jesus is the Only Way?" is now posted here. Please search the cite, TrueU, for other apologetics articles by me, J.P. Moreland, Robert Velarde, and others.

Blue Like Jazz: Deliver Us from Glibness

[Several months ago, I posted an earlier version of the essay that follows. It generated considerable controversy and rancor against me. Given the essay’s excessive vituperation (Miller really exasperated me), I pulled it. Nevertheless, I believe my basic critique was correct, so I now post a somewhat revised version.]

One of my students called to my attention a paragraph in the best-selling book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. The first paragraph (page 103) of his chapter called "Belief" is remarkable for its illogic and glibness. In it—a marvel of confusion, contradiction, and distortion—Miller claims that his struggle with Christianity is not intellectual. He doesn't "do that" anymore. "Smart guys" can prove God exits and other "smart guys" can prove God doesn't exist. The arguments aren't about God anymore, but only about who is smarter, and our knowing writer tells us he doesn't care. Moreover, "Who knows anything anyway"? And if our writer ever walks away from God it would not be for intellectual reasons, but "for social reasons, identity reasons, deep emotional reasons, the same reasons that any of us do anything."

Where does one begin to assess (best-selling) glibness? After thirty years of intellectually and existentially engaging the Christian worldview in relation to the truth-claims of other religions and philosophies, I know that the arguments for and against God's existence are not just ego games or "head trips." There are good and sufficient arguments for the existence of God as the creator, designer, and moral lawgiver of the universe—not to mention arguments the rest of Christian apologetics. Further, the notion that person A can "prove that God exists" and person B can "prove God does not exist" is impossible. To prove something means (roughly) to rationally establish a truth claims as far superior to any contrary claim. Therefore, one could not prove that Bill Clinton was the greatest American president while another person proves that he was not. Miller's language is sloppy and unserious. Maybe he meant something else, but we cannot be sure. The writing evinces an autobiographical and unbuttoned casualness that pollutes so many memoirs today.

Perhaps we should bring into question the recent proliferation of memoirs. Unless you are a saint or a genius or an otherwise historically significant person, why should anyone be interested in a book about your personal life? The writer of a memoir should ask himself a probing and potentially embarrassing question, "Is my life worth inflicting on others in book form?"

"Why knows anything anyway?" writes Miller. What are we to make of this? Does it mean that no truth claims are justified? If so, so much for Miller's own statements. He doesn't know they are true, so why should anyone believe him? If he knows nothing, then how does he know that arguments and counter-arguments concerning God's existence are just ego trips in disguise? Further, the claim is absurd on many levels. Think of the counterexamples. Miller knows that torturing the innocent for pleasure is always wrong. He also knows that he wrote the book called Blue Like Jazz. (The way he misrepresents that transcendently lovely art form called jazz cannot be addressed here.) Miller makes some stupendous knowledge claims in the same paragraph in which he rejects the possibility of knowledge. He claims to know that the only reason anyone does anything is rooted in "social reasons, identity reasons [what does that mean?], deep emotional reasons." It is the case that no one does anything on the basis of settled convictions based on rational reflections? On what basis does Miller claim to know this? He gives none. It is simply his life speaking, his feelings being ferreted out. Autobiography trumps rational discourse once again.

In light of Miller’s intellectual recklessness, we should remember that Christianity is a knowledge claim. It claims that God can be known through certain ways. Christian belief should not be a lucky guess or a reaction like an instinct (as Miller claims in his equally indefensible chapter on faith in which he likens belief in Christianity to a penguin's mating instinct...) To know that P is a special kind of belief; it means that there is some reason, warrant, or justification for P. We are called in Scripture to know God in Christ. Further, we are instructed to make the gospel known through proclamation, defense, and godly living.

One could go on, but what Miller’s abysmal paragraph reveals is another outbreak of the epidemic of postmodern glibness. Miller addresses titanic issues with a smirk and a shrug and a pose. He finds no need to be serious intellectually or to pursue subtleties. After all, he has his "story" to tell. This reminds one of Frankfurt's little book on bovine excrement (On Bullshit)—reviewed elsewhere on this web log. People feel obliged to state opinions on matters of which they know nothing. Moreover, they trouble the air and page with words with no concern for accuracy about the facts; they are more concerned to be sincere about themselves. Indeed. But why should anyone listen to them?

I have two suggestions for Donald Miller—and his myriad fans. First, read a good introduction to philosophy text such as Questions That Matter by Ed Miller and Jon Jensen. This may inculcate a better sense of the power of reason and the history of ideas. Second, read a substantial book of Christian apologetics, such as Scaling the Secular City by J.P. Moreland. This may spark a more intellectually respectful treatment of the rationality of Christian faith.

Doug Groothuis on Cyberspace from JETS

The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS) has also put my article, "Christian Scholarship and the Philosophical Analysis of Cyberspace Technologies," 41/4 (December 1998): 631-40, on line as a PDF file. This paper is related to my thinking in The Soul in Cyberspace, but it developed in more philosophical depth.

Pascal on Human Nature

My article from The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, "Deposed Royalty: Pascal's Anthropological Argument" (June 1998) is now on line in a PDF file. If I may say so myself, this is probably my most original piece of apologetics writing. Of course, I am merely expanding on the master's work.

Review of "Breaking the Spell" by Daniel Dennett

The New York Times has rightly skewered Daniel Dennett's new book as screed of irrational and question-begging scientistm. The book attempts to debunk religion on the basis of Darwinian explanations.

"Pride and Humility" by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

Humility is much to be preferred over pride. Pride is a noxious, toxic, nerve-wracking affair—always having to defend a tenuous turf that you know isn’t really yours.

Humility allows you to be comfortable inside your own skin. You realize that it simply is not about you, so you do not require the incessant approval of people. There is no need either to prove yourself or to conceal yourself. You live in response to God—his word, his will, and his everlasting love.

Humility is the only path to lasting freedom from all the anxieties that enslave and terrify the proud in heart.

The US and the UN: What You Won't Hear on NPR

Journalist Mark Steyn has an acerbic, but enlightening essay on the United Nations in the most recent issue of Imprimus, which I recommend you read. I know from Liberian friends that the UN "peace-keeping troops" in Liberia are deeply corrupt and rapidly spreading AIDs.

Madness and Madness

"Men are so inevitably mad that not to be mad would be to give a mad twist to madness."

Blaise Pascal. Pensées. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. New York: Penguin Books, 1966, #412/414 , p. 148.

He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God's sight"--Jesus Christ, Luke 16:15 (TNIV).

Letter submitted to The Daily Camera on Internet Addiction

Thanks to Elizabeth Mattern Clark for her good article on Internet addiction. Humans are prone to excess, obsession, and addiction--with or without technological assistance. And whatever overcomes us becomes our master and we its slaves. Part of the problem the Internet is that many do not realize that the very form or nature of the medium has intrinsic limits and dangers. Living too much in a disembodied world saturated by images and high speed information transfer may disorient our consciousness and remove us from the given goodness of the unplugged and the unmediated world. Thus we forget to attend to our souls in silence, converse with friends, and enjoy creation for what it is.

The Westminster Confession, Chapter Three

Of God's Eternal Decree
1. God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
2. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.
3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.
4. These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.
6. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power, through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.
7. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.
8. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men, attending the will of God revealed in his Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel.

Saying No.

Take up another challenge: Spend a 24-hour period with no entertainment whatsoever. That means: no TV, no recorded music, no movies, no video games, no internet surfing. Can you divide your life into the entertaining and non-entertaining? There would be more silence, for example. Think about it, then unplug. Enter another world within this world (and above it). Then, please converse about your discoveries with others--or even on this blog if you'd like. Selah.

Super Bowl Boycott

I call on all those reading to boycott the Super Bowl. Have nothing to do with it. It is a debauched institution, although part of the liturgical year of most evangelical churches. Try going to a church service that day that doesn't mention it. (I'm preaching tomorrow and won't mention it, but the worship team probably will...) The Super Bowl is punctuated obscene and juvenile commercials (featuring mega-bimbos everywhere) that appeal to the seven deadly sins. Parents: do not expose yourself or your children to this! Moreover, it is a colossal waste of about three hours. Instead: read a book, pray, worship the King of Kings, call a lonely friend, take a nap (it is Sunday after all). Do something else that counts for eternity. As Thoreau said, "You cannot kill time without wounding eternity." See Psalm 90:12 as well.

Ghost-Preaching: Sermon-Stealing and Sermon-Buying

Sermon-stealing and sermon-buying are particularly egregious forms of plagiarism that effect and infect the church more than we might like to believe. Like ghost-writing, these forms of deception are quite popular. One nationally known pastor makes his sermon outline available for $4 a pop. I met with a group of pastors about two years ago who complained that they were tired of the retread sermons they heard in their pulpit by various pulpiteers who were filling in after the loss of their beloved pastor. I assured them that if they wanted me as an interim preaching pastor that the sermons would be my own, for better or worse. I would not be relying on a ghost preacher.

Titus 2:7-8 instructs teachers to have integrity and be serious about their teaching. 1 Peter 4:11 exhorts those who speak to speak "as the oracles of God." That probably eliminates sermon-stealing and sermon-buying. Teachers will be judged more strictly, says James 3:1-2--and not on a curve. As Phillip Brooks said in Lectures on Preaching, preaching is "truth through personality." One refracts God's truth in preaching through the diligence of one's own efforts. This requires grappling with the sacred text through one's own study and prayer--complimented by the prayers of others. It cannot be done on the cheap. While some on-line sermon outlines are hawked as "road tested" (because a famous preacher preached them before a big crowd), a biblical sermon is soul tested in the fires of study, reflection, and prayer. Fire in the bones cannot be downloaded (Jeremiah 20:9). One climbs into the pulpit alone--but before God as the audience of One.

Ghostbusting the Ghostwriters

A new blogger has a short and to the point essay on ghostwriting. I respond in a comment as well. This has been a long-time concern of mine. It is rampant in "Christian" publishing, sadly.