Archive for the ‘Truth’ Category

THINGS ARE CHANGING

Friday, November 13th, 2009

That is all changing—and partly due to the popularity of the American home schooling movement. In massive numbers the American home school movement—initially and presently primarily an evangelical Christian movement—is depositing some of the brightest, capable students in our country into the old, august institutions like Harvard. And, what is more exciting, the flash-point of cultural change is changing from Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Stanford to Wheaton, Grove City, Calvin, and Liberty (all evangelical universities). Before long the new wave of elite culture creators will be graduating from American secular universities and Christian universities and they shall be a great deal different from the elite of which I was a part in the middle 1970s. I am not saying the secular university will change quickly—intellectual naturalistic reductionism makes that extremely difficult. However, I do see the whole complexion of university graduates to change significantly in the next twenty years. Never in the history of the world has such a thing happened.

Something similar occurred at the end of Augustine’s life in the middle of the first millennium. Augustine lived in a time when the Roman Empire was collapsing. However, while the barbarians conquered Rome, the Church of Jesus Christ conquered the barbarians. Augustine and his elite Christian generation was used by the Lord to assure the future of the European church and European civilization.

Again, in the 1600s a new generation of evangelicals arose—the Puritans. Likewise this new generation of elites settled the New World and established the United States of America.

Young people, if you are part of this new evangelical elite, you have immense opportunities ahead of you. A new Godly generation is arising. Are they called for such a time as this to guide this nation into another unprecedented revival? We shall see.

Now, though, it is important that we look at more practical considerations. For instance, how is one accepted and able to thrive in the most competitive universities—secular or Christian? What does it mean to be a “Christian” university?

As this author argues, however one may feel about it, most of the culture creators of America graduate from 10 or 12 prestigious, competitive, mostly secular schools. That will change slowly as Christian universities become more competitive in attracting the best students (this author observed recently that the Christian evangelical university Grove City had the same acceptance rate as Princeton University!). In fact, many of the world’s decision makers are graduates of these schools. And, praise God, evangelicals have more opportunities than ever to attend these schools. We have already discussed what the liberal 21st century university looks like.

Leaving Mecca – Part 2

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Readers should not presume that I am arguing for a return to this parochial purpose of higher education, nor are readers to suppose that I would like to live in a country where everyone is forced to embrace a particular religious world view. Nonetheless, by and large, the marriage of American education and religion was assured for about the first 150 years of our existence. Its demise in the 20th century had disastrous results.

In fact, this author argues that a primary cause of the present unnatural American embrace of narcissistic, naturalistic secularism can be traced to the evangelical loss of the university. When American elitism was separated from its evangelical moorings, the cultural decline of American culture was assured. The divorce of the American university–the breeding ground of American elite culture—and Christian evangelicalism has created some of the cultural woes we presently are facing as a nation. Its reclamation – the evangelical campaign to reclaim the elite leadership of this nation—bodes well for the future cultural health of the United States.

Recalling again my time in Harvard Chapel in the middle of the 1970s and hearing the bold—but accurate I fear—assertion that the next generation of of culture creators were attending this institution and institutions like it. We were told that we were the select few, the elite. That probably was true—evidenced by the cultural mess we find ourselves at the beginning of the next century.

LEAVING MECCA

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

One Harvard professor, the great evangelical author Fred Buechner resigned from Harvard Divinity School because he felt embarrassed to mention God in his classes. “The mere mention of God-an omniscient God, God as a transcendent being– when I was there . . . would be guaranteed to produce snickers,” Ari Goldman wrote (Atlantic Monthly, Dec., 1990).

By 1920, with its reductionism mentality, the American secular university had become an inhospitable place for evangelicals. The mother turned and ate her young. The place that was founded by evangelicals, to prepare Evangelicals to be the elite of American culture is now a place of danger, risk, and struggle for its progeny.

Worse than that: Evangelicals seemed to accept willingly their own demise. Evangelical Christians in positions of formal power passively yielded to each stage in the advance of secularism. And, when they did resist, they failed.

Why? Douglas Sloan, in Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox) argues that the university looked to liberal Protestant Christianity to replace Evangelical Christianity. What no one understood, including Evangelical Christians, was that science, as understood in the late 19th century, was fundamentally at odds with Evangelical thought. The university was firmly in the camp of positivistic philosophy that basically had discarded the notion of supernatural from American intellectualism. Evangelicals tried accommodation, but, after the Scopes Trial, they abandoned ship, so to speak. So, if the secular university rejected evangelicalism, by 1920, evangelicalism abandoned the secular university.

In the end the university pulled back from affirming the real possibility of knowing God and of the existence of a spiritual world. What evangelicals learned, or thought that they learned, was that the secular American university was too dangerous a place to be. So they formed their own universities. It is unfortunate that there was no fight to the finish in the 1920s. If the issue had been forced who knows if we would live in a society dominated by secular-minded people. In the initial stages, though, Evangelicals did not muster the intellectual resources necessary to challenge the cultural assumption that knowledge comes only from natural sources (see Phillip E. Johnson , “How the Universities Were Lost,” in First Things 51 (March 1995) 51-56). They never have–even until today.

SUMMARY (University Series)

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

In summary, until 1800 the intellectual elite of the United States emerged largely from evangelical seminaries. Policy, programs, and culture were created from an educated evangelical base. This slowly changed as the American university implemented its own version of the Enlightenment. Toleration became the lodestone that drew the American university forward. Evangelicals were relegated to graduate schools, seminaries, and courses. They no longer were welcome in the core undergraduate secular university. At the same time, in response, evangelicals abandoned the American university. That decision was bittersweet.

The effect of that decision was brought vividly to this author’s life when he entered graduate school.

I had looked forward to this day all my life.

Since I was 12 years old I had been told that I was going to Harvard. I had finally arrived.

It was late September and I was on my way to convocation. Now, keep in mind, convocation at Harvard University in the middle 1970s was convened by a homosexual Unitarian, so you can imagine how inspiring it was! But it was the only convocation that I had and I meant to make the most of it.

I lived outside Harvard Yard so I had to plan my trip over carefully. After referencing several Harvard maps, I had planned a perfect strategy to reach my destination. I set out.

However, along the way, I could not help noticing that several Harvard professors, the leaders in their fields, were going in a different direction. They were dressed in all their academic regalia. I tell you, they were impressive! I wanted those crows’ feet on my robes! I wanted to be like these fellows!

Now, I had a choice to make. I could follow my own path–a path that I had carefully laid out. Or I could follow these robust paradigms of academia! One would think that these professors knew a better way than I. They lived here. They had Ph.D.s—I could trust these people.

Wrong! They were lost and we all were late.

What is remarkable to me, too, is that I decided to follow these men without any prayer–indeed, as I realized that afternoon, I was attending Harvard without praying about my decision! No prayer at all. I was a believer for 5 years, still young, true, but it never occurred to me to ask God where He wanted me to go to graduate school! I was the perfect candidate for the American secular university: I was making decisions from an existential base and not from a confessional base. I was drawing my information from circumstances and my own scenario generating equipment. I was not walking with God! Yet, the allure of the secular university is quite substantial!

Fear & True Intimacy

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

These church fathers and mothers knew that they were loved. They moved beyond the fear and rejection of their world and embraced the love of God. Out of that love flowed their genius.

The fire in many of us lies untended. We live in real or imagined fear and rejection. In his famous liturgical play Murder in the Cathedral, T. S. Eliot speaks through a chorus, “We have seen births, deaths, and marriages . . . / In a void apart. We / Are afraid in a fear which we cannot know, / which we cannot face, which none understands (lines 182 – 185).” As fervently as secular authhors such as Kafka, Sartre, Hemingway, and Nietzsche have developed that fear, church fathers and mothers such as Origen, Bonhoeffer, McDonald, and Mother Teresa have stood against that fear. And the church is winning the war!

Because modern people are so afraid, they rarely risk true intimacy. Intimacy cannot thrive in fear. However, as we read the church fathers and mothers – this gathhered inheritance – we sense that there is no fear, but only love, love foor God that nearly takes our breath away! That comely, winsome love draws us first to the author, and then to his or her God! They intensely loved their God and his people. Among these readings and in the lives of these saints, we meet the God celebrated by James Weldon Johnson in his poem “Creation.”

Then God reached out and took the light in His hands,
And God rolled the light around in His hands
Until He made the sun;
And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said, “That’s good!”

This is part of the gathered inheritance, the blessing that belongs to us all! And that’s so good!

Our church fathers and mothers, a cloud of witnesses, draw us into blessedness.

Blessedness is always at risk. The inheritance is at risk. Always! Sarah is apparently barren. And so is Rachel. Abimelech may kill Abraham. The promised people are enslaved in Egypt, and then in Babylon. So our church fathers and mothers wrote in risk, and in hope. They gathered the inheritance for us to cherish, for us to enlarge.

There is a power that wishes to thwart that progress. An apocryphal story circulated around Princeton Theological Seminary, where I once attended, about Professor Bruce Metzger. Professor Metzger is considered to be the most eminent and capable New Testament scholar of the twentieth century. Once, while lecturing in a class called “The Person and Work of Jesus Christ,” Dr. Metzger mentioned that Jesus met Satan in the wilderness – a staatement that drew a snicker from a brave and foolish student. Gently, Dr. Metzger stopped and asked the student why he was laughing.

“Because,” the student replied, “I don’t think there is a devil. Do you?”

“Yes.” Dr. Metzger calmly replied.

“Really?” the confident student asked. “How do you know there really is a devil?”

“Because I have met him,” the imminent Dr. Metzger replied. “Because I have met him.”

It is important to remember that the church fathers and mothers knew the evil one. Satan was real to them, and notwithstanding our modern sophistication, he is as much a reality in our world as he was in theirs. But just as saints of past ages moved ahead in confidence, we can go on unafraid. The great Reformer Martin Luther said it well:

A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing.
Our helper he, amid the flood
of mortal ills prevailing,
for still our ancient foe
doth seek to work us woe.
His craft and power are great,
and, armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.

Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing,
were not the right Man on our side,
the man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he!
Lord Sabaoth is his name,
from age to age the same.
And he must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed
his truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim,
we tremble not for him.
His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure.
One little Word shall fell him.

That Word above all earthly powers –
no thanks to them abiddeth.
The Spirit and the gifts are ours,
through him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also.
The body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still.
His kingdom is forever. Amen!

Fear is dissipated by promises; evil is overcome by good. It is all here in these pages. Promises, hope, goodness, and life. A gathered inheritance. We again recognize that the secret things belong “to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29). A gathered inheritance!

Theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “The lightning illuminates all and then leaves it again in darkness. So faith in God grasps humanity, and we respond in ecstasy. And the darkness is never again the same, . . . but it is still the darkness.”

All of God’s saints – past, present, and future – are flashes of lightning in the sky. And the darknesss is never the same again because the light reveals what life can be in Jesus Christ. “Memory allows possibility,” theologian Walter Brueggemann writes. Ignatius, Nee, Tolstoy, Guyon – they flash across the sky on these pages. A gathereed inheritance. They bring memory. They bring possibility.

Passports to Regions

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

In THE SCARLET LETTER, Ch. 18, a crisis has arisen. Dimmesdale has just discovered that his boarder, Dr. Chillingsworth, is actually the husband of Hester Prynne and a diabolical, evil man, committed to destroying Dimmesdale. But, in the face of his lover, and good friend, Hester Prynne, there is hope and joy. Hester is undeterred by the exigencies of life–she has lived isolated from human company for 8 years. She has grown closer to her God and more secure in her consciousness.

ARTHUR DIMMESDALE gazed into Hester’s face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak.

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her in tellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticizing all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

She had “had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. ” Do you know any saints like this? A man or a woman of such strength and character that he or she can be trusted with anything? That person is a great friend.

“Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amisss.’ Life had made Hester strong but not bitter.

I propose that these are the very best friens to have. Friends whose “tendency of her fate and fortunes has been to set her free.”

The protagonist in A SEPARATE PEACE is having a conversation with a good friend, a friend who is injured. The injured friend shares some incredibl e thing about life with the protagonist. The protagonist argues with his injured and friend and asks him, “How do you know this thing to be true?”

“How do I know it is true?” the friend retorts. “I know it is true because I have suffered.”

I thank God for the hard times that He gives me and for friends to walk through them with me. I thank God for the people I know who have “passports to regions” I have never been but am sure some day I shall surely go.

Horrors! Horrors!

Friday, July 17th, 2009

The reader finds out about Kurtz through Marlowe prying around and gleaning information from everyone he meets. Slo wly, Marlowe’s detective work reveals a very disturbing picture of an evil man. Kurtz appears to be a man with vision. He is driven. He is a man of substance, morality, and, most of all, of predictability. Marlow knows what he wants and goes after it. This is a comforting thought to the modern Marlowe, who is far more comfortable with the praxis, than the subjective, and whose world view offered an answer to everything.

What Marlowe found, however, was spontaneous and unpredictable. Kurtz’s story was not scripted by a Rational God, or a Theistic God. His story was scripted by a Naturalistic God. At the end of the book, Charlie finds Kurtz. Kurtz is very sick, and depressed. Marlow talks to a man who had been with Kurtz for a long time and he told Marlow what he knows. He told him that Kurtz was a monster. He was the most ruthless and remorseless of all the cannibals in the jungle. Kurtz started out with a clear mind but slowly became this ruthless monster. Kurtz began as a modern man, a scientific hero, a man who believed that knowledge could do everything. He went to an uncivilized land full of superstition and folklore. In other words, Kurtz was a “missionary” for “modernism” in a culture that was based on feelings and other abstractions. African society at this time, was prehistoric. Ironically, though, the pre-civilization African culture changed Kurtz’s sophisticated culture, not vice versa. Kurtz, a child of science, a child of modernity, had his life pulled from him when he realized science was not the way to find happiness and, to a large extent, it killed him.

“. . .supreme moment of complete knowledge . . . ” The “knowledge” is the realization that science cannot fix the whole world. That is what drove Kurtz to become this monster. It was the “The horror! The horror!” (Peter Stobaugh)

Heart of Darkness

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

A great story includes characters, plot, and other literary components (from Ch. 26, SKILLS FOR LITERARY ANALYSIS). It also has profound and eternal meeting. Its meaning, or theme, should transcend time and location. The following is a paper written on one theme in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In this book the thoughtful protagonist Marlow is looking for the idealistic Kurtz who has disappeared while trying to enlighten the natives in Africa.

One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, “I am lying here in the dark wishing for death.” The light was with in a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, “Oh, nonsense!” and stood over him as if transfixed. Anything approaching the change that comes over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror-of and intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision- he cried out twice, a cry that was not more than a breath: `The horror! The horror!’

The adventuresome protagonist Marlow found the lost Kurtz, only to lose him again on his deathbed. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, has many different themes. One theme Conrad develops was a suspicion of modernity, a world view that argued that science and human knowledge could solve most anything.

Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness in the early 19th century when western culture was full of optimism. The Industrial Revolution was well underway, advances had occurred in medicine, and the horseless carriage–the automobile–was even devdeveloped. Human ingenuity and progress seemed to have no end! . Conrad, a Polish-born English novelist, in Heart of Darkness, in particular, we see Conrad exhibiting the vulnerability, limits, and flaws of human knowledge.

Heart of Darkness is a story that takes place in the mind of the protagonist, Charlie Marlow. Charlie Marlow, a young man who wants an adventure, sets off with money from an aunt to the Congo River. He hears rumors of a man named Kurtz. Kurt, a missionary, has disappeared into the jungle-wilderness of interior Congo. Marlowe is first fascinated, and then obsessed with Kurtz. Like most modern men, enthralled with knowledge, Marlowe desperately wants, or needs, to find him, and talk with him. He wants to know why he disappeared and why. He is on a modern, Hegleian search for truth–truth that arises from the struuggle. This search, however, takes Marlowe where he scarcely wished to go.

IT IS TIME! – DAY 3

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Christian home schooling, then, moves backward in time, far back in time, when intellectualism was not separate from religion. It blows the claims of the Enlightenment to bits. Home schooling has brought back stability into the lives of countless millions of America when the majority of Americans are living in a context of clashing realities where (as sociologist Kenneth J. Gergen explains “the very ground of meaning, the foundations and structures of thought, language, and social discourse are up for grabs.” When the very concepts of personhood, spirituality, truth, integrity, and objectivity are all being demolished, breaking up, giving way, home schoolers are doing things the old fashion way: parents stay home and love the kids and in the process lay their lives down for all our futures.

Theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “The lightning illuminates all and then leaves it again in darkness. So faith in God grasps humanity, and we respond in ecstasy. And the darkness is never again the same, . . . but it is still the darkness.”

All of God’s saints—past, present, and future—are flashes of of lightning in the sky. And the darkness is never the same again because the light reveals what life can be in Jesus Christ. “Memory allows possibility,” theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote. We home schooling parents bring memory. Our young people bring possibility. And Jesus Christ remains the Way, the Truth and the Life!

IT IS TIME! – Day 2

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

I am more hopeful than ever. As sociologist Peter Berger accurately observes, evangelicals (and home schoolers are mostly evangelical) generally subscribe to two strongly held propositions: that a return to Christian values is necessary if the moral confusion of our time is to be overcome, and that the Enlightenment is to be blamed for much of the confusion of our time. The Enlightenment, again, advanced the Platonic idea that good is somehow connected to knowledge. It believed that everyone was good.

Christian home schooling is one of the most potent anti-Enlightenment movements in world history. Christia n home schoolers, argue that the largesse of Enlightenment rationalism has sabotaged the certitude of classicism and Christian theism that so strongly influenced Western culture long before the formidable onslaught of the likes of David Hume.

The fact is, too, that Christian home schoolers are quickly filling the ranks of American’s future leadership corps. Higher test scores is only one reason that home schoolers are capturing the elite culture of America.

The other reason is that our children know they are loved. The Christian psychologist Morton Kelsey argues that the most important component of mental health is that we know, without a doubt, that we are unconditionally loved. Friends, my wife Karen and I were not the best home schooling parents, but, by golly, we knew how to love our kids! And when they graduated from high school t hey knew that at least!

It is this combination of love and truth that is radically changing the social fabric of our nation. Home schoolers, let us proclaim the truth in love across this land. This is our time. Our moment. This movement we call home schooling might be one (but not the only) instrument that God is using to bring revival in this nation.

There is precedence. The American intelligentsia from 1620 to 1750 was radically Christian (i.e., Puritan). This combination of intelligence and spirituality has potent consequences. Christian social thinkers were the most capable urban sociologists in the 19th century much like many Christians are the best playwrights in Hollywood today. Could the home school movement be re-establishing this marriage of intellect and faith that our nation so sorely needs?

The Washington Post in 1993 coyly observed that evangelicals are “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.” Evangelical professor Mark Noll unkindly observed, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” Indeed. Not anymore. Today, more than ever, in the garb of Christian home schooling, evangelicalism has gained new life.

Christian home schooling has opened up a whole new arena for debate. While conceding that faith is not a makeshift bridge to overcome some Kierkegaardian gap between beliefs and evidence, home schooling posits that it still is important that we look beyond our experience for reality. Reality is more than a two car garage and a membership in the country club. We have discovered that these are hard to own if we live on one income! Besides human needs and aspirations are greater than the world can satisfy, so it is reasonable to look elsewhere for that satisfaction. Worth is the highest and best reality (a decidedly anti-Enlightenment notion) and its genesis and maintenance come exclusively from relationship with God alone. Home schooling families, with its sacrificial love of one another and its extravagant gift of time to one another, offer a radical path into this new way of looking at reality.

A further complication is the fact that lukewarm Christianity, Christianity that is more existential than confessional, is not cutting the mustard. We need to live radical, go-for-broke-lives. As a friend once explained, we homeschoolers don’t make good middle management.

The great religious writer Unamuno created a character, Augusto Perez, in his book Mist, who, through omniscient narration, turned to his maker (e.g., Unamuno) and cries: “Am I to die as a creature of fiction?” Such is the cry of modern humankind. The Christian author and Harvard Professor Robert Coles lamented that we “we have the right to think of ourselves, so rich in today’s America, as in jeopardy sub specie aeternitatis, no matter the size and diversification of his stock portfolio.” As my old, eccentric Harvard Professor Harvey Cox (author of The Secular City ) said, “Americans once had dreams and no knowledge to make them come true. Now Americans have knowledge to make dreams come true but they no longer dream.”

But we are dreaming great dreams, aren’t we home schoolers?