Pet peeve about preachers

I've occupied both sides of the pulpit, so I know some of the joys, and some of the down-sides, of each. I'll share two that are a little of both.

First: Preacher stories. Because a preacher should proclaim the word of truth (1 Timothy 2:15), and serve the God of truth (Isaiah 65:16), "preacher story" should mean "true story." But it doesn't, does it?

The story may not be a lie; it may be an exaggeration. Or it may not be an exaggeration; it just may be fuzzy. Or it may not be fuzzy -- it just may be forty-third generation hearsay.

Like the story about the famous evangelist who had the drunk tell him, "I'm one of your converts," to which he replied, "You must be. If you were one of the Lord's converts, you'd not be drunk." Who was that? Moody? Wesley? Billy Sunday? It is told of a great many preachers. What bothers me is that it doesn't bother some preachers whether they can source the story or not. It's told as true.

Or take a favorite story of mine: Athanasius, told that the whole (Arian-leaning) world was against him, and boldly replying, "Then Athanasius is against the world!" I love that story. It should be true. I want it to be true. But I wanted to know for sure, to source it, before I told it as true. So, for a time, I tried and tried to document that story. I never got further back than the Middle Ages. So I have to tell it with a proviso.

We should care. We should want our hearers to be able to take what we say as grounded, sourced, solid. We don't want them to feel that they have to look up everything we say on Snopes.

Which brings me, very similarly, to...

Second: Unsourced quotations. Two of the greatest offenders I can think of are William Barclay and Warren Wiersbe, to touch two very different theological camps. Barclay was famous for making quotations without citations; but Wiersbe is the same. I love reading his Walking with the Giants. It's a wonderful book. But the documentation is atrocious!

This is a book full of quotation after quotation, but almost none of them is sourced! Wiersbe does give a general bibliography, but he doesn't cite his specific sources for his specific quotations and stories, as a rule. I can't verify what he says, unless I have the leisure and desire to read every page of every book in his bibliography. If I were to quote any of them, I'd have to say, "Wiersbe says that Dale said...."

And yes, you now know something about me. My sermon note do have footnotes. I may be a bit of a nut about it. The dear lady who typed my Master's thesis complained good-naturedly that half of it was in the footnotes.

But it's a bit like the whole Santa thing. I never told my children that there really is a demigod-Santa Pelagius looming somewhere, judging their works. First, it isn't true. Second, I don't think lying to kids is very nice. But third, I don't want them to have to start filtering what I say, and wondering whether ol' Dad is having a bit of a snicker at their expense when he talks about this other invisible figure who sees them when they're sleeping, and knows when they're awake. (Santa? God?)

In the same way, I don't want folks who hear me preach have to wonder whether I checked out what I'm preaching for myself first, or whether I'm just weaving a yarn because it sounds good and makes my point well. And as a hearer of sermons, I don't want to have to wonder, either.

(BTW, to the best of my knowledge, my current pastor never does either. He's an atrociously well-read man, with a terrific memory.)

Very varied variouses

Hi gang.

1. Kim Shay lost a dear friend; read about it, and mourn with those who mourn, here.
2. From there, I went to another daily visit of mine, Pastor Chris Anderson's blog My Two Cents. I was absolutely blindsided by his very moving, and at the same time very comforting and bracing essay, "Why would Jesus let us die? Doesn't he love us?" It was written the day after Pastor Chris preached at the funeral of a very dear friend, and is hard to read without tears. I won't soon forget the way Chris phrased this:

   Over the last ten years, Cindy has become “family” to me, my wife and our four daughters. For six of those years she has battled cancer, valiantly and selflessly. On Sunday afternoon, Cindy finally won: the cancer is dead and Cindy is in the presence of the Lord whom she loved, proclaimed and served. She enjoyed gazing on Christ from afar, and now she is doing so face to face. Victory!

   Agh, excuse me a moment; something in my eye. Again.
3. Speaking of suffering and sin, let me plug today's essay over at my other-other blog Hellenisti Ginoskeis, titled Hebrews 5:8—breathtaking word on Christ's pedagogy. It's written for folks who can read Greek, so tell your pastor, if you haven't already. I think some might come through, even if you don't know Greek.
4. There's an excellent column titled The bones of Jesus of critical concern to Christians, by Pastor Mark Minnick (h-t Chris Anderson, comments to the article cited above). Minnick explains why "the Jesus tomb" controversy matters a lot—and, I'd add, why it's so loved by those who hate Jesus.
5. Thanks, Phil. Bro Johnson throws down about MacArthur throwing down, closes comments, then tells angry amills to come over here and rant. Perfect! So I just need to find the time to teach courses in remedial hermeneutics for folks who've married a system that numbs them against it, and answer every single (already-answered) question they throw at me, as if answering every single (already-answered) question they throw at me will convince them to let the Bible speak for itself and mean what it says. And of course, that's to say nothing of my own continuing need to remedy my own hermeneutics from the Word, and find the countless answers to the countless questions for which I don't have answers. So, great! On three! One... two....
6. I doubt anyone reads this blog who doesn't also read Pyromaniacs, but in case that's so: Sacramento-area folks who find themselves free to do so are welcome to hear me preach this Sunday (DV), on Proverbs 3:5-6, at Soaring Oaks Presbyterian Church. Service is to start at 10:30am, and you can find directions here.
7. I don't think I've ever bought a MacArthur sermon before, but I'm glad I got his controversial opening talk at the 2007 Shepherd's Conference. It's pretty powerful in itself. Also, it's a good vantage-point from which to assess the near-hysterical reaction from some whose systems are threatened by what Mac said. One in particular suggested that amills are upset because MacArthur didn't deal with specific biblical passages or doctrinal matters. Having heard Mac out, I can't understand the criticism. Disagree with him or not, you have to grant that MacArthur deals at some length with passage after passage after passage after passage, and gives a number of theological arguments. Disagreement is one thing. Misrepresentation is another altogether.
   

Mac make Big Boom!

Intro. Many readers will know that a blogstorm has been set off by John MacArthur's opening address at the 2007 Shepherd's Conference at his church. The title was something like "Why Every Self-respecting Calvinist is [not "should be"; I checked] a Premillennialist."

If you want to hear it, you'll have to buy it for $2.00. If you want to comment on his talk, I really think you should listen to it. You can purchase it, if you wish, at the link given above.

Mac and me. Because I have the blessing and privilege of blogging with my friend Phil Johnson over at Pyromaniacs, some have very understandably assumed that I work at (or at least attend) Grace Community Church. In fact, I think I've only walked through its doors once. Ironically, it was to attend a prophecy conference and hear Dr. Merrill Unger speak. Since Unger died in 1980, before some of you were born, you know that was hundreds of years ago.

So you know I don't work at or attend GCC. Still, you might assume that I am an unqualified admirer of MacArthur's. This is also not true. I am an admirer, but not an unqualified admirer. I could list off areas of difference or reservation. But that doesn't change the fact that I admire a great deal about him. I admire his unswerving position on the Word, I admire his emphatically Bible-teaching ministry, I admire his concept in starting the Master's College and Seminary. I can't think of many leaders whom I'm happier to see as a guest on (say) Larry King, knowing that not only will he not embarrass me as a Christian, but he'll give solid answers and take the conversation to the Gospel of Christ.

All that to say this: if you assume that I'm going to say something positive about his talk just because he's MacArthur, you've made a miscalculation.

Having said all that. John MacArthur has been okay with "Reformed" folks because he's an unapologetic five-pointer, he's popular, he stresses the Bible and does it well, and he's popular. However, he's known as a dispensationalist (cue scary music). Given that a lot of "Reformed" folks have adopted something more like Rome's approach to eschatology, and given that "Reformed" folks have very often actually characterized dispensationalism as cultic and evil, how is that okay with them?

Because MacArthur once said that he was a "leaky" dispensationalist.

I think many of them interpreted that as meaning that Mac was a bit embarrassed to be a dispensationalist. They thought it meant that he wasn't consistent about it, he wasn't insistent on it, and he wasn't confident of it. So Mac would never make a big thing about it, or embarrass them about their eschatology. So he was okay—just so long as he shut up about prophecy and ecclesiology. Maybe Mac's dispensational, but at least he's got the grace to be ashamed about it.

Now in this talk, "apologetic" and "embarrassed" and "tentative" are not words that one should apply to MacArthur's basic outlines of eschatology.

So I'm hoping that that is at least one good thing that will come out of this: Calvinists who like MacArthur will have to confront the misconception that he's timid and embarrassed about his dispensationalism. It sounds as if, on this one issue at least, MacArthur and I are of one mind: we are Calvinists for the same reason we are dispensationalists, and vice-versa.

Of course the better thing would be if it caused many "Reformed" folks actually to do the semper reformanda thing, take their hermeneutic back to the Bible, and lose the rest of the unhelpful Roman trappings left by Calvin, et al.

Not so far, though, judging by all the crying, chest-beating, and blustering one sees at some places. "That wasn't a shark, and we didn't jump it." All of the shouted insistences, clean-up operations, and table pounding may belie the core embarrassment they feel over their inconsistent hermeneutic. I suggest, you decide.

Confrontation always leaves two choices: change direction, or redouble efforts in the wrong direction. Again, you read it, and you decide which you think is going on.

Of course, Kim "What shark?" Riddlebarger has the answer.

MacArthur isn't really Reformed.

In fact, he's not even a Calvinist!

I. Am. Not. Kidding. If your hermeneutic is closer to Antioch than Rome, you're not Reformed. Read it for yourself, have a good chuckle, shake your head sadly, draw your own conclusions.

Ranking bad emotions

There's unlikely to be any "happy" to this post. Feel free to skip it.

I imagine a lot of us who watched Data's struggle over having/not-having human emotions wished we could tell him he wasn't missing much. (Non-geeks: this is about Star Trek: the Next Generation. Relax; I'm done now.)

So, what's the worst of the emotions? Desire? I gather the Buddhists would say so. Nonsense. Desire, in itself, is simply wanting to have something, and there isn't a thing wrong with it in itself. The object and the degree of desire tell the story. The same Greek verb epithumeō is used both of the flesh's perverse desires, and the Holy Spirit's pure desires (Galatians 5:17). Without desire, no one would eat, pray, get married, reproduce, converse, get a job, achieve.

Forbidden desire is pretty bad, though. Wanting something you can't have eats at the soul. For a Christian, this is exacerbated by the knowledge that all this energy is utterly wasted. You want it, you can't have it, you know it... so why are you still thinking about it?

Yet the "plus" side—for the practicing Christian, which should be but isn't a tautology—is that you do know where the lines are, and what to do. You must not pursue the desire. You will not have that object. Wanting it hurts, but your God-defined path is not in doubt.

So I can't rank it worst.

How about fear? It's a bad one. It can twist or empty or liquify your gut, make your palms sweat, dry your mouth, lock up your mind, paralyze you. It can sap your joys and lay you low. Unquestionably and (on an emotional level) quite literally, fear sucks.

But fear isn't reality. What you dread may not happen. It hasn't happened yet. Of course, that's the cheat of fear: it robs the is in view of the might-be. But I'd much rather fear harm to my family, or cancer, than experience either one.

So then, how many votes for guilt? Real guilt has the reality that fear lacks. Real guilt focuses on something specific, grabs you by the collar, slams you against the wall, and screams "You did it! This is your fault!" And Guilt is right. You look at it and know you're nailed. You can't pass the blame left, or right. There may have been complicating factors, there may not. It doesn't really matter. What matters is you did it, or you failed to do it, and now everything that comes from it goes on your bill.

Is there an "up" side to guilt? Well, yes. For one thing, guilt means your conscience is alive, and that's a good thing. I have known people (and lived under the presidency of one) who seemed to have no living, sane conscience, and that's a scary reality. A live conscience is a sign of health, and guilt is a sign of a live conscience. Inability to feel guilt is a sign of nothing good.

Also, by specifying real guilt, I am speaking of sin. And sin, while horrible, is forgivable. It is what Jesus' death was all about. Easter reminds us that He succeeded in atoning for sin.

Sin is also repentable. You can see how it was wrong, why it was wrong, learn not to repeat it.

Sin is also (often) reparable. We're called on to bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance. We can labor to right what we made wrong, assuming we don't "deal" (= not deal) with it by renting a condo by that river in Egypt.

So while I loathe the feeling of guilt, I can't say it's the worst. Here is my candidate.

Regret. Regret looks at bad decisions, lost opportunities, wrong turns, sees all the fruits, and mourns. "Sounds like guilt," one might say. It isn't. Real guilt focuses on sin. You may or may not live in regret for sin; you may deal with sin decisively and in a godly manner, and be done with it. Regret may not even focus on sin.

Suppose you had a job offer and passed it by, then saw that you really really should have taken it. Was that a sin? By no means. But the whole rest of your life is affected by it, and it can't be undone or corrected.

It isn't hard to think of other situations: a relationship you ruined, a friendship you lost, a church you (pastor) mismanaged, a witnessing opportunity you bobbled, years you wasted in trivialities and aimless, self-absorbed wandering. None of these is specifically a sin. They're stupidities, follies, misfires.

So you can't exactly repent of them and ask to be forgiven them, per se. You certainly can confess them and pray about them, and try to learn from them. But that decision is still made. That friendship is still lost. That opportunity is still gone. That asinine, barkingly inane comment is still made.

Yes, you can learn from it. But that doesn't guarantee that the same opportunity will ever come by again. Or you will still have to live in the aftermath of that decision.

You can try to stop thinking of it. But that won't make it go away, the reminders will keep coming, and they will not sweeten with time.

Yep, regret is a good candidate. But I may be able to go one better.

Fear of regret. This adds the bonus of paralysis and the self-loathing that can accompany it. You are considering something very important, but it's high-risk. Decide wrongly, and you will live with regret for the rest of your life. To not decide is to decide not, so there really is no out. You will either regret making the decision, or you will regret not making the decision, or you'll be happy with the decision. But you fear you won't be happy.

So you shrink back from the decision, in the classic attraction-avoidance stalemate. But you know that this isn't a real out. You either will eventually have to decide, or your refusal to decide will itself default to a decision. The crisis will come and pass, and will leave you either happy or forever regretful.

But this focuses only on decisions, punctiliar things. Regret needn't be so specific. Regret can fasten on a specific wrong turn and see its wrongness, see the path that should have been taken. But not necessarily. You can regret a decision, a series of decisions, or an era—but still not know what you should have done. That's a delight. You see a wrong turn, but no matter how many times you go over it, you don't really know what you should have done.

This is a real delight. It has all the joys of regret, with the added extra that you haven't really learned anything, and so you'd probably make the same regret.

Yep. Regret and its suburbs. That's my pick.
---------------------------
Now I had that all worked out and polished, ready to publish sometime... and I come back to it and wonder if despair, or the feeling of utterly impotent sidelined irrelevant pointlessness are better candidates.

Such a fun subject. I think I don't want to re-think it.

Um, let's see... happy thoughts, happy thoughts... um....

My son got accepted into med school in Ohio! That's one.

My wife had the great idea of throwing a little surprise party for him to celebrate, and it went off really nicely. That's two.

Great sermon yesterday. That's three.

I get to preach this Sunday, DV. That's four.

There. Now I'll stop.

Pastor Mike Huckabee... Just Huh?!!

Maybe Frank can explain his neighbor Mike Huckabee.

Man's running for President, as the conviction-since-teenager conservative. He's going to fix his anonymity problem by oureaches and activites that will convince conservatives —like doing an interview with Newsweek.

Now, I read this with interest. Many years ago I heard good things about Huckabee. I am someone he could certainly win over, because I am not happy with any of the GOP front-runners. I'm the sort of person he wants to reach.

But look at some of the questions and answers, and tell me (A) whether you're convinced, and more fundamentally (B) what is he even thinking? The interviewer's questions are bolded.

The Rev. Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, once told me about how when she preached at a major Baptist event, the audience turned its back on her. You used to be head of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. Do you agree that women shouldn’t be allowed to be preachers?
It would seem so rude, no matter what a person thought about the structure of a church, to do that. That’s not Christian behavior. One of the unique things about Baptists—every church is its own autonomous unit. My attitude is, let each church make that decision. I go to a church in Little Rock. A lot of people think we’re strange. We don’t fit the mold of a traditional sit-there-stiffly-in-the-pews-church. We don’t even have pews. We focus on ministering to people who are poor. We feed hundreds of kids every week. Our church has offered line-dancing lessons to get people to come. You can be a person off the street with more metal in your mouth than a GM car has on its exterior.

Are you personally against women being preachers?
I’d rather speak up for the Lord than not. I let each person in each church deal with their own conscience. I have enough of a challenge being obedient to God in my own life than to try to dictate to someone else. It’s not an issue for me.

Do you believe that gays are going to hell?
No. I don’t know that Baptists would make a statement that anyone goes to hell based on sexual orientation. Heaven is about one’s personal faith and therefore it has to do with one’s relationship to Jesus, not someone’s relationship to someone else.

I ask because you’ve made a comment about the openly gay congressman, Barney Frank, that sounded pejorative. [Addressing Iowa's Christian Alliance, Huckabee said: "In our lifetimes, we've seen our country go from 'Leave It to Beaver' to 'Beavis and Butt-head,' from Barney Fife to Barney Frank, from 'Father Knows Best' to television shows where father knows nothing."]
It wasn’t intended about same-sex lifestyle. He epitomizes as far left as you can get, far away from the Main Street American way of life.

And then this. The interviewer tosses Pastor Huckabee a wide-open softball of a question:

Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?

Wow. We conservatives often complain, and rightly, about softball interviews with the likes of Hillary! and Kerry and the rest. This is a softball.

So what would you say? You choose to be identified as a conservative Christian candidate for President. With the country and culture in the shape it's in, you have a chance to hit one out of the park, to pick any issue you want, and say anything you want. This is your big chance to convince everyone that you're the man, you have The Vision Thing. You can identify the big issues, and you have answers, you have solutions. You will show leadership.

So what will it be? The War on Terror? The corrupt culture? Broken marriages? Skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birth-rates? Taxes? Morale? Morals? What?

What does Huckabee choose? I will indulge in adding emphasis, but otherwise I'll let his words close this. That, and the title I chose, above.

There’s one issue I want to touch on. A key element of education is music and art education. It’s not expendable, extracurricular or extraneous. The future economy of America is going to be a creative economy. I am very passionate about it. Math, science and language scores improve dramatically when the student has music skills. Spatial reasoning is enhanced by music instructions. It is who we are. It defines us as a culture and a civilization. Very few people my age are still playing tackle football, but I’m still playing bass guitar in a rock-and-roll band.

Lisa Nunley and friends discuss my Questions for a Godly Wife

You can check it out here. Join in, or bring it over here, as you wish. Or get a coffee.

Whatever.

I'm easy.

My word on Ann Coulter's use of the other "f-word"...

...is Al Mohler's word on it (h-t m'mate Craig).

Oh, I don't agree with every syllable of his essay, but his big points are the right point. There's a lot I like about Coulter. She's had the guts to say a lot of what really needs to be said, and has said it well. And, unlike most GOP "leaders"—is that getting to be an oxymoron?—she stands behind what she says and defends it heartily.

Unfortunately, that also applies to things she says that she just shouldn't have said. Like this one.

Consider these wise words:

There is one who speaks rashly, like a piercing sword;
but the tongue of the wise [brings] healing. (Proverbs 12:18)

The tongue of the wise makes knowledge attractive,
but the mouth of fools blurts out foolishness. (Proverbs 15:2; both
CSB)

All the worthwhile things Coulter says are devalued when she says stupid things and won't back down. Yes, the media treatment of Coulter (and all conservatives) is unfair. Yes, they're stinking, foul hypocrites, winking at comparisons of President Bush to Hitler, and public wishes that he and Vice President Cheney were assassinated or otherwise dead, while rising in sanctimonious outrage at this passing asininity.

But their rank idiocy doesn't make her rank idiocy okay. It just means that one of their most trenchant critics has shot herself in the foot... and appears to be reloading, when she should be reconsidering.

Quick thought on trusting in God

Commenting on 2 Corinthians 12:9 ("My grace is sufficient for you"), C. H. Spurgeon remarked:

As for his failing you, never dream of it-hate the thought. The God who has been sufficient until now, should be trusted to the end.

"Hate the thought." Christian friend, if you are going to believe what you say you believe, then there are only two kinds of situations:

1. Situations in which you will see God's goodness immediately.
2. Situations in which you will see God's goodness eventually.

That's it. Every possibility of God doing you actual and final harm was absorbed and deflected by Christ at Calvary. To say that Christ is the hilastērion (Romans 3:25) is to say that He is the sacrifice which absorbs and turns away the wrath of God. Now God sees you only with love, plans for you only good, and will bring to bear all the wisdom of omniscience and all the powers of omnipotence. Can anyone defeat His purpose?

Now, sitting there healthy and happy, it is easy for you and me to nod at this Biblically-irrefutable logic.

Here's the challenge: remember it when something goes horribly wrong, or your mood takes a turn for the medieval.

On writing with and without computers and revelation

Over at the Greek blog I waxed rhapsodic about the literary and theological marvel that is Hebrews 1:1-4. That's primarily for Greekers; this is for everyone.

At first, I thought that pc's were a fad. They seemed that way at Talbot. But one of the first things that sold me on them was how easy it is to rewrite, and to cut and paste.

I'm a chronic re-writer. I re-do just about every post I put up at any of my three blogs. Often, this continues after publication. In the days before pc's, this was a pretty rough process. There was no such thing as just rewriting a paragraph, without re-typing the whole paper. It gave a lot of motivation for doing the best as possible the first time, and putting off a rewrite until I was pretty sure that I had all my rewrite ideas set.

Now turn with me to the literary marvel that is the Bible. Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Hebrews—even on a literary level, these are sparkling gems of creative genius.

But how did they do it? I thought about this, relative to Hebrews 1:1-4. How did Apollos do that? Had he preached this message many times, polishing the intro each time, until he had it just right? Did he crumple up papyrus scrap after papyrus scrap? Did he have his wife, his buddy, his junior pastor sitting by him, so he could say his thoughts aloud, rework them, rinse, and repeat? And then did he write, but only after he was sure he'd captured le bon mot?

We do know that obviously this process of thought and reflection was often part and parcel of the process of revelation. Some of the Bible was dictated; much of it was not. The sage pondered, reflected, and then wrote Proverbs 24:30-34 under inspiration. The Preacher did similarly in Ecclesiastes 12:9-10.

We learn that effort, thought, deliberation and art are in no way antithetical to inspiration. These were men under the direct, revelatory working of the Spirit of God — and yet they clearly brought the full arsenal of their God-given creative abilities to its formulation and communication.

What does this say to the sanctified sluggard to slaps together an ill-conceived sermon at the last moment, having whiled away his preparation time in empty pursuits (Proverbs 28:19)? Or, worse still, to him who slanders the Holy Spirit by implying that He can only give a message on the spur of the moment, and not—as He regularly did in the Biblical writers—confluently with the process of revelation, inspiration, and inscripturation?