Thinking Christian

Something amazing happened yesterday. The controversy around Premise Media’s upcoming movie Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed became the hottest topic in the blogosphere. According to BlogPulse, a service of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the issue held the number one slot throughout the day on Monday, March 24th (http://www.blogpulse.com). There were also over 800 results on Technorati (www.technorati.com).

“It is amazing to see the reaction of PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and their cohorts when one of them is simply expelled from a movie. Yet these men applaud when professors throughout the nation are fired from their jobs and permanently excluded from their profession for mentioning Intelligent Design,” said producer Mark Mathis. Mathis was at the event that has raised this controversy.

[From EXPELLED Controversy Top Issue in Blogosphere]

Nothing unexpected here. Last September I wrote:

Come next winter the Intelligent Design debate is going to have a bomb ignited under it. The film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, featuring Ben Stein, is set for release in February. If the film comes anywhere near the level of the interview Rob Crowther did with producer Walt Ruloff, it’s going to hit our culture hard.

The release date was pushed back, but the interest level is about what we all should have expected. And reactions by P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins are about what we should have foreseen as well.

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This talk on Views of Truth was given on March 9 to the Chapel at Kingsmill. I regret that I had no control over the recording method–the microphone was far from the front of the room, so there’s room noise. It’s still audible and listen-able in spite of that, though.

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They thought they had Jesus figured out, and they also thought they had him under control. Not so:

He [Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor] entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:9-11)

Pilate thought he had authority, and that only by his command would Jesus fate be determined. But the authority lay elsewhere. A few hours earlier Jesus had held back a follower who had tried to use force on his behalf:

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 26:52-54)

The power lay not with Pilate, nor with the religious leaders or the crowd who pushed the governor to execute Jesus. The power lay with God, who had the whole circumstance planned out and prophesied long before.

There is yet another irony of which I was reminded at church this morning. It’s in Luke 24:13-34. Jesus, just risen from the dead, is talking with two people about the events of the weekend. They do not recognize him immediately in his resurrection body. So he asks them what’s been going on. They reply,

“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?”

It reminds me of a story, probably true, of two English gentleman having a dispute over some topic. One of them suggested they settle it by consulting the Encyclopedia Britannica. The second one pulled it off the shelf, read the entry, and said, “Well, according to this, apparently you’re right.” And the first one said, “Yes, well, that’s what I thought I wrote there.”

Jesus must have been enjoying a similar kind of playful smile inside when he said, “What things?” They thought he was the one person who didn’t know what happened; he was the one who really did know! Read the rest of the story, though, and you’ll see that he didn’t move into gloating over his knowledge as our encyclopedia author. He taught them instead, in a way that connected deeply with their hearts.

The lesson again is not to try to outwit or outpower God. We are on his turf and meet him only on his terms–terms that are good and loving, for our life and freedom, and sometimes even with a sense of humor besides!

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First posted on February 1, but made for Easter, for He is Risen!

Jesus Christ lived on Earth and displayed a life of perfect love, trust, and worship. His example is incomparably great–and it’s unreachable. Part of the validation of the message of Christ is in its unique combination of reality and perfection in the character He displayed. The standard He set is strongly desirable–if being a person who lives for the sake of God and others, and in great joy is attractive to you–and yet it is impossible.

The Example Was Not Enough
This takes us back to the predicament we all started in. God created us for relationship with Him, dependence on Him, and rich, full relationships with each other in an environment that didn’t constantly fight back. We haven’t lost the sense of how things ought to be, but we’ve certainly lost the experience of it. We’re told that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Sin is defined in the original context (and also in the original language) as a falling short, a failure to hit the mark.

In other words, if Jesus came just to teach and set an example, we might as well say, “A lot of good that did us! We can’t live up to that!”

But that’s not all he did. Again, going back to earlier in this series, recall that the penalty for rebelling against God was death. Jesus Christ lived to show us how to live, and then He died on the cross for us. We could speak of at least fifty reasons He suffered and died, as John Piper has done (skim the Table of Contents here), but most Christians put this one at the top of the list: he paid the death penalty on our behalf. Because He is God, and because He joined with us as a man Himself, he could do that on behalf of us all.

Rescue From Something Bigger Than We Are
The story is told of a drowning man, whom two men went to help. The first threw him a book on how to swim. The second pulled him out of the water. This is the difference between teaching and rescue. The analogy, like all others, is imperfect; this one understates the real value of teaching. But it does remind us that there are situations where teaching is not what we really need, and one of them is when we’re dying and cannot help ourselves. Most of the passengers on the Titanic were in that situation: even the best and strongest of them needed rescue. The water was too cold, the shore too far.

We can too easily fool ourselves about our need. Once I was chatting with a seatmate on an airplane. He said it was his first flight in over 10 years, but he was okay with that; he seemed quite at home and comfortable. I sensed he was the type who would feel quite at home and comfortable anywhere. Somehow we got to talking about Jesus Christ. He said, “I don’t need that. I’m in control of my life.” I said, “Well, I don’t see you flying this aircraft.” He responded, “Well, I could!”

I don’t know where my remark to him about flying the aircraft came from, but I do know that he had a vastly overrated sense of himself. A friend of mine who flew F-116s and A-10s for the Air Force said even he wouldn’t try to fly a commercial aircraft–not unless the flight attendant came back and said, “The cabin crew have both just had heart attacks, so could somebody please land the plane for us?” Then, he said, he might volunteer, but never otherwise. Every aircraft is different: too different to permit even a fighter pilot to think, “I can fly one, I can fly them all!”

So I told my over-confident seatmate that day, “I understand you don’t feel a need for this right now, and in that case I wouldn’t expect you to respond to what I’m saying about Christ. But I predict someday you’re going to run into something bigger than yourself. I urge you to keep this in the back of your mind until then.” I offered, and he accepted, a written summary of the message of Christ, similar to this.

We’re all going to run into something bigger than ourselves. (Some of us are looking it down the throat today.) The one most certain example is death. That’s why we need rescue and not just good teaching. Jesus’ death for us accomplished a rescue: not that we will never physically die, but that it will not be the end of the story.

A New Life
It certainly wasn’t the end of the story for Jesus! On the third day, He rose from the dead. He appeared first to several women, then to others of His followers, and on one occasion to more than 500 people at once. (Evidences for this abound, here, for example; though in this series my primary purpose has been to explain more than to prove. ) He defeated death for us! The rescue He accomplished was not just to pull us out of the water and into the ICU on life support, but to give us everlasting life with a full experience of love, joy, worship, and yes, also very significant challenge.

We need His example, but beyond that, we need His life in us.

By the way, that life is not just for someday in heaven. What Christ does for us also includes giving us a whole new quality of life on Earth.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.

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The religious and political leaders thought they had Jesus all figured out. I doubt there’s anything in history or literature to match the irony of that.

They expected was the kind of thing they usually saw during a trial and execution: fear, self-protection, defensiveness; or possibly something like guilt, regret, or remorse. They thought they were in control. They thought it was about a political power struggle, in which Jesus was, to some of them, a nuisance, and to others a pawn. They thought they were taking care of themselves.

They had it all wrong.

It started a few days before Jesus’ arrest, when the high priest, no friend of Jesus, was tapped by God to utter an inadvertent prophecy:

“You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. (John 11:49-52)

The context of the whole begins many months earlier, though, when Jesus made it known that he had come for an unexpected purpose:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. (Matthew 16:21)

When they arrested him they were on his agenda. It was not that he had a death wish; he dreaded his coming ordeal. But he knew his purpose, to stand in through his death for the deaths of many others. The crowd had it in for him; they did not realize they were setting up a perfect illustration of what Jesus’ death was all about: he died so that others might live:

Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” (Matthew 27:15-23)

And Pilate let Barabbas go free, while Jesus was executed in his place.

They mocked the king by pretending he was a king:

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. (Matthew 27:27-31)

While he was on the cross, others mocked him further:

And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” (Matthew 27:39-43)

They derided him for not saving himself; they did not know he was saving them. They thought his claim to be the Son of God was dying along with him; they did not know it was about to be proved with unparalleled power.

Pilate and the Jewish leaders got into a squabble about the charge under which he was to be executed.

Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” (John 19:19-22)

This was all political: Pilate was trying to embarrass them, to show that Rome had power over anyone among them who seemed to be someone, and especially over their Establishment. In the process, he got it right: Jesus is king of the Jews and of all creation.

The ultimate irony was revealed on Sunday morning. On Friday, Jesus looked like the weak, despicable loser. He died an agonizing and humiliating death. He was wrapped in thick grave clothes and interred behind a heavy stone in a tomb. He lay there lifeless for two nights.

Then he stood up.

He stood up, and the stone rolled away, and he appeared in his true power and glory as the conqueror of all humiliation and the master over suffering and death.

There’s a lesson for us in all this. Jesus had a plan all along. They thought they were dealing him on their terms, when all along he was dealing with them on his terms. But he was obviously not perpetrating a power play; he was sacrificing himself for their good, and for ours. The lesson for us, then, is that God will deal with us on his terms, too; not for the sake of power but for the sake of our good, and to submit to his terms is very, very good. Or, the next time you think you have God figured out and you can set the terms for him, remember he doesn’t work that way–his way is better.

You see, we live in irony, too: the greatest freedom and life come by submitting to the one who died for us.

(Scripture quotations from the English Standard Version)

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It doesn’t matter what you think about Intelligent Design or ID, and you don’t have to agree with all the comments and commentary here. Still, the punch line on this story really is hilarious:

Expelled! – The Panda’s Thumb

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From a blog post a few weeks ago:

Make no mistake, the cross of Jesus Christ is a drastic solution to a serious problem, and the problem is our fundamental distance, because of rebellion, from the God who created and loves us. He loves us enough that He was willing (”for the joy set before him” Christ did this) to sacrifice Himself to solve our problem. There is no other solution for such a deep difficulty as we are in. It was a very costly solution. Do we trivialize our own faults? Do we recognize the sacrifice by which we are freed from them?

As my friend Jimmy Fauntleroy sings:

Three crosses on a hill, I had forgotten now I never will
Three crosses on a hill; there’s yours and mine and there’s another still….

This is the medicine that goes deep within your veins
Kills the cancer [but] has a tendency to intensify the pain
This is the marriage of purity and shame
This is a bloody war–it ain’t no game!

Life was won for us by direct confrontation. Purity and shame met on the cross, and purity defeated shame. Life met death, and life won. The result: the cancer is cured! But what is this “tendency to intensify the pain” about? Unfortunately I can’t bring the full context of Jimmy’s overall message here. He would also say, and he exemplifies, how greatly it intensifies joy and life. The pain, I take it, is what we feel when facing our fallenness, the big and little ways we need the “medicine that goes deep within your veins.” It is one of the ways we all participate in that mighty confrontation.

This is the paradox of Christianity and of Jesus. His death led to our life. We die to self, to live the fullest life. The deepest joy comes from overcoming the deepest pains. This is Good Friday, the day of remembering the deepest pains. But God is an overcomer, and Sunday’s coming!

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