Bits and Tidbits, June 2011

• 10 Coolest Hidden Doors and Secret Passageways. These are so cool, I wish it was the "100 best." I'm seriously designing options for these in our house, in my head.
• The Garden's Secret Is Discovered. Really neat piece about an almost-forgotten building in St. Louis's botanical gardens, that is soon to be re-opened to the public. I wonder how many places there are like this in the world? Probably dozens, if not hundreds.
• The Glorious Ruins of the Erie Canal. How interesting would this excursion have been? Like the previous tidbit, this is another artifact of a bygone era that is worth re-discovering. Is there no use for the canal now?
• The Perils of a Heavy Bottled-Water Habit. A brief piece, mostly reporting statistics-- but hidden within them are some hard facts about bottled water that may make you re-think that flimsy plastic bottle the next time you're on the go.
• Onion-Like Headlines in Real Life. These are really something; hilarious, because they really do sound like something from The Onion (a satire news website).
• Plurality of Americans Believe Capitalism at Odds with Christian Values. Fascinating survey results here. Not that surveys establish truth, but when the predominate views of others-- including our fellow believers-- are that, basically, one of these things is not like the other, we should be ready to reconsider our views.

Sermon texts for July 2011

Well, I've slacked off a lot on listing the sermon texts for our preaching series at HWPC, but here are the texts for July:

7/3/2011 -- Genesis 25:1-18, Life, Death, and Abraham (end of "Life of Abraham" series)
7/10/2011 -- Acts 8:4-25, From Judea to Samaria
7/17/2011 -- Acts 8:26-40, Who Is the Prophet Speaking About?
7/24/2011 -- Acts 9:1-19, Proud Made Humble
7/31/2011 -- Acts 9:20-31, A New Believer's Life & Ministry

Calvin on the visible church

When I taught my seminar on membership in the local church at General Assembly, I received a number of great questions. One of them-- maybe the best one-- asked whether I took exception to the 4^th and 5^th membership vows in my firm stance that church membership is nothing more or less than a public profession of faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These two vows speak directly to the professing member's commitment to the church, and therefore some might infer that it is not a part of one's profession of faith in the Gospel.

I would contend otherwise-- that, in fact, our faith in the Gospel and our commitment to Christ's church are inseparable. This is an area where I hope/plan to do more thinking and writing in the next year or so. Meanwhile, here's a quote from John Calvin on the topic:

But as it is now our purpose to discourse of the visible Church, let us learn, from her single title of Mother, how useful, nay, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels (Matthew 22:30). For our weakness does not permit us to leave the school until we have spent our whole lives as scholars. Moreover, beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for, as Isaiah and Joel testify (Isaiah 37:32; Joel 2:32). To their testimony Ezekiel subscribes, when he declares, “They shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel” (Ezekiel 13:9); as, on the other hand, those who turn to the cultivation of true piety are said to inscribe their names among the citizens of Jerusalem. For which reason it is said in the psalm, “Remember me, O Lord, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people: O visit me with thy salvation; that I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance” (Psalm 106:4, 5). By these words the paternal favour of God and the special evidence of spiritual life are confined to his peculiar people, and hence the abandonment of the Church is always fatal.

John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (Ford Lewis Battles, trans., John T. McNeill, ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), Book IV, p. 6.

Facing "good" idols

At General Assembly, I was talking to a fellow pastor who confessed he and his wife' struggles with one of her "idols." She, it seems, is a perfectionist, and wrestles with it regularly.

What was interesting was my friend's comment about how he struggles with it: he said, "when she serves her idol, I benefit from it." It's nice, of course, to have a clean house, great meals, and other things that are the fruit of her skills and abilities wed to her perfectionism.

Here's the great difficulty with that, as with so many idols: they are rooted in good things. Her perfectionism is motivated out of a drive for excellence, which isn't bad nor is it sinful. The tricky part is, how do you embrace the motivation without serving the idol?

I think our addiction-prone culture has trained us to think of all idols (and addiction is surely one) in cold-turkey terms. In order to fell the idol, we have to stop all association with the activities associated with it. But how does this play out for perfectionism? For overeating? For the right exercise of leadership and power?

The antidote to a perfectionistic home-maker isn't, for example, to become a slob or a hoarder. Instead, it is to learn to serve the Lord, and not the idol, in keeping house.

How does this look for other idols?

The Bangles vs. the Go-Gos

Most of us who grew up in the 80s will remember the two all-female pop/rock bands that dominated the airwaves for a while. (Yes, I realize there were others, but these two were arguably the most successful.)

The Go-Gos, fronted by Belinda Carlisle (with most songs written or co-written by Jane Wiedlin) had some huge hits, including "We Got the Beat," "Vacation," and "Our Lips are Sealed." While they started out as a punk band, they transitioned to new wave and then on to "power-pop" which is the style they were most known for.

Around the same time that the Go-Gos hit their peak, The Bangles also hit the scene. Their break-through single was "Manic Monday," and they subsequently released a handful of other strong offerings: "If She Knew What She Wants," "Walk Like an Egyptian," "Eternal Flame," and a great cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade of Winter." With a background more in the folk-rock and "jangle-pop" realm, their sound was quite different from The Go-Gos.

My friend Courtney Thompson has an incredible story about her experience as a Go-Gos fan and concert-goer; if you know Courtney, you should definitely ask her to tell you the story. Prepare to be amazed.

It is out of my love for Courtney and her great story that I offer the following suggestion with some trepidation: while I love The Go-Gos, and still enjoy their music, I think it's safe to say that The Bangles out-rocked The Go-Gos.

Rock and roll (or "rock 'n' roll") has always been a lot about letting loose the cares of the impressions and opinions of others and just expressing oneself truly. For all of their musical talent and creativity, The Go-Gos could never quite get there. Whether it was Belinda Carlisle's hunger for the spot-light or her and Jane Wiedlin's feud over credit, they seemed to be held back by concern over the attention they got and the opinions of others.

The Bangles were all about rock. The media attention given to Susanna Hoffs was unintended, garnered mostly because she happened to front most of their hit songs (and thus was the most recognizable of the band). But the typical practice of the band was to share vocals, even splitting some songs between them. While Hoffs' prominence was essentially the fault of the record company (who chose songs with her vocals to release as singles), it was also a sad and significant factor in the band's eventual break-up.

Here's the litmus-test: can you ever picture The Go-Gos doing "Walk Like an Egyptian"? Of course not; it's the kind of song that preys on self-consciousness. Yet, The Bangles not only recorded it, but it's probably the one time-testing single that they released, and not to their discredit. It's still a good song 25+ years later. That is a tribute to the fact that The Bangles weren't just a good band musically, but they were all about rock and roll.

(And now you have a sample of the kind of thing Marcie has to listen to me ruminate about...)

Culture or not culture-- which is it?

A pastor I knew back in the 90s was a big fan of Frank Sinatra. My friend loved Sinatra's voice, his musical offerings, and even the sense of "swagger" that was evident in the man. When asked about his thoughts on Sinatra's lifestyle (a serial divorcee with alcoholic tendencies and alleged ties to the mafia), my friend would shoo the question away, saying, "that stuff doesn't matter-- he's a great musician!"

Yet, the same friend was outraged about the antics of a certain former U.S. president, whose philandering ways had recently come to greater public attention. Because of the new knowledge of this president's personal life and conduct, my friend asserted that he should be ousted from office-- regardless of the professional and political success and effectiveness that was also displayed.

Jump forward a few years: while I was in seminary, I was the teaching assistant for a professor whose area of research (that eventually became a book) focused on the Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator and how personality/temperament plays into calling, communication, etc. During that time, I visited a family from church in their home once, and over dinner the topic of my professor's research and book came up. One of my dinner companions (the husband/father in the family) dismissed it, saying (in sum) that such pop-psychology nonsense had no useful place in the church.

Meanwhile, we were enjoying some good music during and after supper; I remarked that it had been years since I had heard this particular album, by the long-successful band Kansas. What followed was an interesting conversation about good music, and why my hosts never listened to the stuff that was often passed off as Christian music-- they preferred, by far, to enjoy the talents of bands like Kansas.

Music isn't the same thing as psychology, nor are musicians the same sort of public figures as politicians. I'm not trying to draw a direct connection between the categories, but simply wondering this: if the personal life of a public figure like Sinatra is irrelevant to the quality of his professional achievements, why is a politician different? If the contributions to culture of a band like Kansas are acceptable-- and even preferred-- for (at least some) Christians, why not the cultural contributions of thinkers like Myers and Briggs?

Here's the underlying nature of my concern: those who would hold up "secular" artists as preferable in the quality of their art often appeal to concepts like the image-bearing of all of humankind, the creative nature inherent to that image-bearing, and the idea that "all truth is God's truth, wherever it may be found." Do those concepts only apply to artists, or do they apply in other realms of culture-making (such as the cultivation and maintenance of culture)?

If the second, then my friends given in the above examples are inconsistent. That's okay; we're all inconsistent in at least some ways. But the result is a luke-warm, halfway approach to culture that, I think, is damaging to their overall aim of seeing God glorified in creation.

Not that I would prefer necessarily that they become culture warriors! Rather, I would hope that they would see in presidents (past and current), psychologists, and others the same sort of "glorious ruin" that they are able to appreciate in the musicians they love.

Winter Light

As you may know, I work with a ministry called Doulos Resources, and one of the things we do is publish books and other materials that we see as meeting a particular need within the church, particularly those that don't have another venue for publication (because they fit into a "niche" for example).

Earlier this year, our board determined that one of the real needs for the church is good "literary" books that are also theologically sound. Consequently, we formed Kalos Press, an imprint of Doulos Resources, to focus on this need.

The first title from Kalos Press is now available: Winter Light: a Christian's search for humility by Bruce Ray Smith. Winter Light is everything we could want in a first title, setting the bar high for the rest of our forthcoming titles.

Even better, it is a great study in every Christian's struggle and quest for humility. Written in a journal style, it is at times poetic and always profound. The writing is beautiful, matched and surpassed only by the deep devotion and insight that the author displays in his own journey away from abject pride and toward a greater re-making in the image of Christ.

Winter Light is for sale in print and digital form; you can buy it from the Kalos Press website or the Doulos Resources eStore. It is also available through the Covenant Seminary Bookstore, Hearts & Minds Books, and the usual online venues.

I highly recommend Winter Light for your summer reading.

Recipe #1: No-knead bread

I've had half-a-dozen requests for a few of my recipes lately (I do most of the cooking at our house, so I have quite a few), and someone suggested that I post them on my blog. I get a lot of my recipes from other blogs and websites, so this seems a little redundant to me-- but then, I've tried plenty of recipes that were no good or needed a lot of "tweaking" so maybe I'll make a small contribution to the collective wisdom here, or at least serve as a screener.

Here's a great recipe for no-knead bread dough. This is from the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

Ingredients
1-½ tablespoons granulated yeast (about 1-1/2 packets)
1-½ tablespoons kosher salt
6-½ cups unbleached flour, plus extra for dusting dough
Cornmeal

Instructions
1. In a large plastic resealable container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm (about 100 degrees) water. Using a large spoon, stir in flour, mixing until mixture is uniformly moist with no dry patches. Do not knead. Dough will be wet and loose enough to conform to shape of plastic container. Cover, but not with an airtight lid.
2. Let dough rise at room temperature, until dough begins to flatten on top or collapse, at least 2 hours and up to 5 hours. (At this point, dough can be refrigerated up to 2 weeks; refrigerated dough is easier to work with than room-temperature dough, so the authors recommend that first-time bakers refrigerate dough overnight or at least 3 hours.)
3. When ready to bake, sprinkle cornmeal on a pizza peel. Place a broiler pan on bottom rack of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and preheat oven to 450 degrees, preheating baking stone for at least 20 minutes.
4. Sprinkle a little flour on dough and on your hands. Pull dough up and, using a serrated knife, cut off a grapefruit-size piece (about 1 pound). Working for 30 to 60 seconds (and adding flour as needed to prevent dough from sticking to hands; most dusting flour will fall off, it's not intended to be incorporated into dough), turn dough in hands, gently stretching surface of dough, rotating ball a quarter-turn as you go, creating a rounded top and a bunched bottom.
5. Place shaped dough on prepared pizza peel and let rest, uncovered, for 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it in lidded container. (Even one day's storage improves flavor and texture of bread. Dough can also be frozen in 1-pound portions in airtight containers and defrosted overnight in refrigerator prior to baking day.) Dust dough with flour.
6. Using a serrated knife, slash top of dough in three parallel, 1/4-inch deep cuts (or in a tic-tac-toe pattern). Slide dough onto preheated baking stone. Pour 1 cup hot tap water into broiler pan and quickly close oven door to trap steam. Bake until crust is well-browned and firm to the touch, about 30 minutes. Remove from oven to a wire rack and cool completely.

Notes
I double this recipe, and put it all in an 8-quart dough bucket I got from a local restaurant supply store for about $5. With that amount of dough, we can make rolls, pizza dough, and a couple of loaves over the course of a week or more.

Also, I've used this as communion bread with great response; if you don't have a conviction about whether communion bread should be unleavened, your folks will love this.

Grand Rapids rocks American Pie

So, apparently Newsweek listed Grand Rapids, Michigan, on one of those lists that cities don't like to land on-- 10 most declining cities, or 10 worst places to live, or 10 cities that smell funny, or whatever.

In response, the mayor of Grand Rapids and the people of the city set out to rehabilitate the city's reputation. How? They did a city-wide lip-syncing video (called a "lip-dub"), using Don McLean's "American Pie" (a live version, no less) as the music. It set a world record for the largest lip-dub, and Roger Ebert called it the "greatest music video ever made."

I'm not sure I would quite agree with Ebert's effusive assessment, but it's well-done, meticulously coordinated, and a lot of fun. It certainly makes you think well of Grand Rapids, I think.

Have a look:

Thoughts on creation

I recently read this piece on Scot McKnight's blog about a youth pastor who found himself in a crisis of conscience about what to teach regarding creation (the youth pastor is sympathetic to a "theistic evolution" view, while his congregation-- and especially the parents of his students-- hold to a "young earth creation" view).

I don't envy the youth pastor his dilemma, and it made me grateful for a presbyterian system in which variations of views are brought out and dealt with at ordination; for example, this youth pastor may not have been ordained, or he at least would have been given instruction about how to teach/not teach his variant view. But it also drew out a few reflections on the topic of creation, some of which have been matters of pastoral care for me as well. I don't get a lot of questions on this topic, but I've gotten a few.

Therefore, here are some thoughts on creation-- not the final word by any means, but perhaps worth a moment's reflection:

• Let's keep priorities straight. Yes, creation is an important issue; however, its importance is almost entirely because the relationship of the question to our view of Scripture. Beyond that, it's important because it speaks to the dignity of humanity and our uniqueness among all the creatures. Apart from these two subjects, I have to question whether it isn't simply a point of trivia. Consider this: in the whole of the Bible, we have a single chapter discussing creation in general, and a second chapter that focuses on the creation of humankind. On the other hand, in the same book we have 15 chapters about Abraham; 12 chapters about Joseph; 9 chapters on Jacob; 4 chapters on Noah; 3 chapters on Isaac; and 2 on Sodom and Gommorah! Which seems like the higher priority to God?
• The issue is not as simple as "creation vs. evolution" as it is often presented. When the PCA constructed a study committee a few years ago, the chair of the committee reported that he occasionally received phone calls asking for him to visit a church and do a presentation on "the two views on creation." His response was, "I'd be happy to; we've identified five views so far-- which two would you like me to present?" As Christians like to do, there is a good bit of over-simplifying of this issue that is unhelpful. We need to recognize that there are a number of different views on our origins, many of which can be described as consistent with biblical teaching.
• I have friends who are scientists whose view is that it is scientifically impossible, and therefore irresponsible, to maintain a young-earth creation position; therefore, the best they can do is an "old-earth creation" position. Radiocarbon dating, for example, by its very definition seems to stand in the way of any sort of "young earth" view, and it is a generally-accepted method for determining the age of things. I can see why this presents a major obstacle, and an intellectual hurdle. And I'm not ready to discount "old-earth creation" (or any of its variants) as heresy or selling out the Gospel.
• At the same time, I think it is nearly impossible to discount "young earth" 24-hour, six day creation solely on this basis either. According to Genesis, the whole universe was created "mature." When I consider the many nuances-- physical, physiological, mental, emotional, spiritual-- that led to my own maturity, it is staggering to think of the implications that such a factor may make when it comes to the appearance of things, versus the reality of things, in terms of the age of the earth. Likewise, without knowing exactly how a whole-earth-covering flood looked from a scientific standpoint, can we make reasonable estimates regarding how that much pressure would have changed the very nature of geological matter on the earth? Obviously some people are convinced that the answer is "yes"-- but I'm not.
• Why is creation so important to conservative Christians-- even to the point (in some presbyteries in the PCA, for example) of refusing to ordain otherwise-qualified candidates because of their differing views from literal 24-hour, six day creation? Here's why: what you believe about Genesis chapters 1 and 2 suggests much about your view of Scripture in general. In other words, if you read Genesis 1-2, and it comes across as something other than an actual account of God's work, what else in Scripture will you receive that way? On the other hand, if you take Genesis 1-2 at face-value, you will probably take the rest of Scripture that way, too. Likewise, if your view of creation is such that it casts question on the inerrancy, authority, and reliability of the Bible, that is a huge factor in whether you can be (or should be) ordained.
• Every major figure in Scripture-- Moses, David, Jesus, and the apostles-- speak of, or at least implicitly regard, the events of creation as actual historic events, and Adam as a real person. This presents real problems related to the previous point; if you think Jesus was mistaken about whether Adam was a real person, what else was he mistaken about? And does even the one mistake affect his capacity for imputing righteousness according to the law to you? Think also about Paul's declaration of Christ as the "second Adam" and therefore the doctrine of atonement through one divinely-appointed representative.
• A more literal view on creation introduces a great sense of eschatological hope. I read another post recently from McKnight's blog, wherein someone said that God would have actually had to walk with Adam and Eve and talk with them in order for them to understand what violating His command would mean (and thus, they concluded, this was not an acceptable position). Leaving aside the implications that, if God doesn't come and walk alongside YOU then He must not have ever done it with Adam either, this introduces a view somewhat closer to deism than I'm comfortable with, and strips us of the hope and anticipation that all things will be made new, and that we will share in eternal fellowship with God-- as was originally intended, the Bible indicates.
• I think Dr. Jack Collins's new book, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care, will be immensely helpful in understanding this discussion and resourcing others to think clearly about it.

That's all for now. Maybe more to come...