Hope for the Evangelical Mind

In 2004, ten years after the publication of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark A. Noll was unrepentant about his assessment of the Evangelical mind.

I remain largely unrepentant about the book’s historical arguments, its assessment of evangelical strengths and weaknesses, and its indictment of evangelical intellectual efforts, though I have changed my mind on a few matters. Some readers have rightly pointed out that what I described as a singularly evangelical problem is certainly related to the general intellectual difficulties of an advertisement-driven, image-preoccupied, television-saturated, frenetically hustling consumer society, and that the reason evangelicals suffer from intellectual weakness is that American culture as a whole suffers from intellectual weakness.[1] 

He continues to point out the flaws with words like, “… we evangelicals as a rule still prefer to put our money into programs offering immediate results, whether evangelistic or humanitarian, instead of into institutions promoting intellectual development over the long term.” Then, at a certain point in the article, he turns to the matter of hope for the Evangelical mind.

Theological reasons to hope for better things from evangelical intellectual effort spring from the resources of classical trinitarian Christianity. Even if those resources are unused or abused, they continue to exist as a powerful latent force wherever individuals or groups look in faith to God as loving Father, redeeming Savior, and sustaining Spirit. Various forms of evangelical Christianity are, in fact, burgeoning around the world; the evangelical proportion of the practicing Christian population in North America continues to expand; where there is evangelical life there is hope for evangelical learning.[2] 

In Noll’s words, trinitarian theology remains at the heart of his hope for the evangelical mind.

If evangelicals are the ones who insist most aggressively that they believe in sola scriptura , and if evangelicals are the ones who assert most vigorously the transforming work of Jesus Christ, then it is reasonable to hope that what the Scriptures teach about the origin of creation in Christ, the sustaining of all things in Christ, and the dignity of all creation in Christ” - about, in other words, the subjects of learning” - will be a spur for evangelicals to a deeper and richer intellectual life: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15-17).[3] 

Noll then goes on to speak of signs of hope in contemporary Evangelical culture:

1.     “increasing engagement between evangelicals and Roman Catholics,”

2.     “the ongoing renascence of Christian philosophy,”

3.     “‘more institutions of evangelical higher learning’ … have seasoned their sectarian certitudes with commitment to ‘mere Christianity’,”

4.     “the consistent quality of intra-evangelical debate in forums such as the American Scientific Affiliation’s Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith” regarding evolution and creation,

5.     “the multiplying Christian presence in the nation’s pluralistic universities, where far more students of evangelical persuasion receive their higher education than at the evangelical colleges and universities,” and

6.     “greater intellectual responsibility [in] the world of publishing.”[4]

It seems to me that both Noll’s original book, and his ten-year assessment, offer an outline for those of us who still see ourselves in the evangelical, but not fundamentalist, tradition. If we pay attention to the six items listed and do our part to enhance each, we may yet redeem the Evangelical mind. 

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[1] “The Evangelical Mind Today”, in First Things First, October, 2004, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/10/the-evangelical-mind-today

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Hope in Troubled Times

The following is a short excerpt from a sermon preached at Bow Valley Christian Church on October 30, 2016. The entire sermon can be heard here.

In a world of fear and pessimism, Jesus provides hope. Can we proclaim that to the world? When we hear people lamenting about this weird presidential election in the US, can we say Jesus is our hope? When we hear people talking about real estate bubbles and the downturn in Calgary’s economy, can we say that Jesus is our hope? When we hear of people moving into the American Redoubt to live “off the grid” and away from trouble, can we say that Jesus is our hope? When we hear of wars in far off places causing a flood of refugees into Europe and the rest of the world, can we say that Jesus, the Messiah, is our hope?

Links to the news of our world:

Unusual, strange, weird election in the USA 

Real estate bubbles

Downturn in the Alberta Economy

Calgary economic downturn and small businesses

American Redoubt

Off the grid

Hope

 

Hope is what gets us through difficult times. Depression is the result when we face challenging circumstances without hope. Hope is not about knowing for sure that a good result is ahead; it is about having a reasonable faith that a good result is ahead. There are a variety of approaches to faith, but those of us who live by faith do indeed find hope. The Reverend Billy Graham once said, “I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right.”

Graham has hope because he has put his faith in an ancient story. The words of the Bible, written by many authors, over a period of many years, tell many stories. Yet, the theme that binds the stories together is this: “God, the one who made the universe, has a good plan for the universe and those who agree with God and seek his good plan for the universe can have hope of a good ending.” It is all going to turn out all right.

I know that faith is an unpopular idea right now. Faith is not in vogue. Rather, it seems that, protest, argument, standing up for one’s rights, atheism, and humanism are trending. Some would say that if we just love everybody, the world would be all sorted out. Can we love without hope? Can we love without faith in something? Can we love soldiers in Syria who believe they fight for a cause by using men, women, and children as shields in the civil war? Can we love a man who walks into a gay bar and kills innocent people in Florida? Can we love his wife? Can we love without hope for change? Can we love without faith that our love will make a difference?

I have faith that there is a plan for the universe. I have faith that God holds the plan in his hands. I too have read the last chapter, the last page, the last instalment. It really does have a happy ending. The ending is redeeming, just, loving, sacrificial, and triumphant. It’s all going to turn out all right.

Aedes aegypti mosquito

Photo credit: Alex Wild[1]
(Click on the photo to get a larger image.)

This terrifying picture shows an Aedes aegypti mosquito rising out of the water immediately after it has metamorphosed from its larval stage. Without a sense of scale this creature looks like some dragon from a Peter Jackson film. Despite the fact that it is just a mosquito, the insect is none-the-less horrifying. This is the mosquito that carries the Zika virus that has been plaguing much of the tropical zones of the world. This is not a new virus; it has been documented as early as 1947. For some people the Zika virus causes nothing more than a rash and flu-like symptoms. What is new is the link between Zika and two conditions in humans. There is growing evidence that the Zika virus can induce microcephaly in the fetuses of pregnant women and that Zika may trigger Guillain-Barré syndrome (a disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system[2]).

Scientists and the World Health Organization are extremely concerned about the effects of this virus and are working hard to develop vaccines and ways to combat the mosquito. It is now known that the Zika virus can infect and kill neural progenitor cells in vitro and this may be the mechanism by which it causes microcephaly.[3] The world waits as more research and vaccine trials occur. Let us hope and pray that effective solutions may be found.

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[1] Science News; March 18, 2016; “Special Report: Here's what we know about Zika”; https://www.sciencenews.org/article/special-report-heres-what-we-know-about-zika; accessed 2016-03-23.

[2] NIH; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; Guillain-Barré Syndrome Fact Sheet; http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/gbs/detail_gbs.htm; accessed 2016-03-23.

[3] Science News; March 18, 2016; “How Zika became the prime suspect in microcephaly mystery;” https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-zika-became-prime-suspect-microcephaly-mystery; accessed 2016-03-23.

The Storms of Life

Andrew Stanton, one of the directors at Pixar, is quoted in Ed Catmull’s book, Creativity Inc. Stanton has written and directed Finding Nemo and Wall-E (among many others) and knows the incredible amount of work that goes into assembling a team and then creating an animated movie. He has this to say about life’s difficulties.

“If you’re sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing?” he says. “You have to embrace that sailing means that you can’t control the elements and that there will be good days and bad days and that, whatever comes, you will deal with it because your goal is to eventually get to the other side. You will not be able to control exactly how you get across. That’s the game you’ve decided to be in. If your goal is to make it easier and simpler, then don’t get in the boat.[1]

Why is it that I seem to seek an easy life rather than a significant life? Why do I find myself in a sailboat wondering why I am experiencing all of this weather? I should be grabbing the rigging and setting the sails to take advantage of the wind. I should be delighted that the wind and the waves are driving me on. Yet, most of the time, that is not my first reaction. I want smooth seas and gentle breezes. I want to meander down the river rather than brave the ocean waves.

There are many elements in life I cannot control: the world price of crude oil; the value of the stock-market in New York, Toronto, or Beijing; the risk of cancer in the general population; or political corruption in Alberta, Ottawa, Washington, or Greece. These are the rough seas and winds of life. They happen with or without my consent. My confidence cannot be in the investments I own, or in the people who guide the country in which I live. I will put my confidence in the Maker of the wind and the sea. I will trust the One who knows the beginning, middle, and end of the story. I will trust that the One who made the wind and the waves will deliver me safely to the other shore. I will set my sails to catch the wind He sends upon my boat.

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[1] Catmull, Ed. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Kindle. Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, 2014; Location 3469.

We Started Turning Feral

Tana French opens chapter six of Broken Harbour with two paragraphs of philosophical musing by her protagonist, Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy. He reminisces about the way things were and then he states that something has changed. Somewhere along the line "we started turning feral."

I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid's mind to tell an adult to f[***] off. There was plenty of bad there, I don't forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn't break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbours, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero.

Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it's spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the business-men shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can't have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.1

Tana French is writing about Ireland but could easily be writing about Canada or the United States. We recognize a truth in Scorcher's words. There is a sense in which the broadly accepted cultural philosophies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have led us to a more feral, survival of the fittest, mentality - with little hope. We are losing the ability to see past the immediate fulfillment of desires. We are losing the long view of a humanity which desires to improve civilization. We are losing hope.

I recently saw the movie The Shawshank Redemption on television and was struck by what this film has to say about hope. At one point, the character named "Red," played by Morgan Freeman, has this to say about hope, "Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane." Yet, at the end of the movie, we are given a very different picture of hope.

Andy: [in a letter to Red] "Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." . . . Red: [narrating] I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."2

The final scene of the movie plays like a metaphor of life and death and the border between this world and heaven. Might it be this kind of hope that is missing in Ireland, Canada, and the United States? Without hope of something more than just this world and all its joys, pains, sufferings, and triumphs, might we slowly become more and more feral? Maybe for just a moment, those who have no hope in a life beyond this world could try having that hope. Put your faith in a life beyond this world and see how it changes the view.

1 French, Tana. Broken Harbour. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2012, p. 101.
2 The Shawshank Redemption. Directed by Frank Darabont. Performed by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. 1994.

Good Work

When I grew up in Western Canada there was a weekly CBC television show called "Marketplace." The theme song was sung by Stompin' Tom Connors and the lyrics I most remember said,

The Consumer, they call us,
We're the people that buy
While everyone else is out to sell
Some kind of merchandise
Another sale on something,
We'll buy it while it's hot
And save a lot of money spending money we don't got
We'll save a lot of money spending money we don't got

Oh, yes we are the people
Running in the race,
Buying up the bargains in the old marketplace,
Another sale on something,
We'll buy it while it's hot
And save a lot of money spending money we don't got
We'll save a lot of money spending money we don't got

 

It was only a snippet of a longer song that spoke of the difficulties of the working population who were trying to pay their bills, get a good deal, buy quality products, borrow more money, and generally get a fair shake. Stompin' Tom was using his platform as a folk-singer to say some of the same things Dorothy Sayers said in a 1942 essay entitled "Why Work?". She says,

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.

Nearly seventy years later, I wonder if we have learned anything from Dorothy Sayers'  important essay. Indeed, have we learned anything from Connors' folk song? Or are we simply "saving a lot of money spending money we don't got?" As economies of the world plunge to new depths and we wonder how it will affect our country and our jobs, politicians encourage us to see things as "business as usual." We continue to consume more than we can afford and individually and collectively go more and more in debt. We are told that it is just a temporary slowdown in the economy. "It will all get back to normal if we put our nation first. But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse."* We spiral into more debt and consume more to stimulate our flat economy.
Sayers suggests,

Whatever we do, we shall be faced with grave difficulties. That cannot be disguised. But
it will make a great difference to the result if we are genuinely aiming at a real change in
economic thinking. . . . The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is so ingrained in us that we can scarcely imagine what a revolutionary change it would be to think about it instead in terms of the work done. To do so would mean taking the attitude of mind we reserve for our unpaid work – our hobbies, our leisure interests, the things we make and do for pleasure – and making that the standard of all our judgments about things and people. We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?”; of a man, not “what does he make?” but “what is his work worth?”; of goods, not “Can we induce people to buy them?” but “are they useful things well made?”; of employment, not “how much a week?” but “will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?” And shareholders in – let us say – brewing companies, would astonish the directorate by arising at shareholders’ meeting and demanding to know, not merely where the profits go or what dividends are to be paid, not even merely whether the workers’ wages are sufficient and the conditions of labor satisfactory, but loudly and with a proper sense of personal responsibility: “What goes into the beer?”

Sayers is reminding us that our jobs are about more than money; they are about producing a good product. We ought to "clamor to be engaged in work that was worth doing, and in which we could take pride." Work is to be about making a difference in the world. I wonder if we might try that for a while.


*Bruce Cockburn, "The Trouble With Normal."

Character

I had a dream last night that prompted me to think about the word "character." More specifically, I have been thinking about "good character." What does it mean to be a person of good character? In this dream I was asked for my opinion of a definition of character. The definition I was given was, "the ability to ask good questions." I considered the definition and said, "yes, it is the ability to ask good questions but also the ability to make good choices." Good character is about asking good questions and making good choices whether or not anyone will ever see our good questions and good choices. J. C. Watts said,

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.

May each of us seek to be a person who lives in such a way that our secret choices might be shouted from the roof-tops without fear or fault.

Red Letters

A few days ago I saw a heart-rending sight. I came upon a suicide just as the police had arrived and put a blanket over the body. Someone (I could not tell you who they were or even their gender) had jumped off of the pedestrian walkway of the Burrard Street bridge to the sea-wall below. I spent a silent 30 minutes in the pool where I swim lengths after witnessing this sight. As I did I thought and prayed about that person's life. What had caused them to be so hopeless that they had made this choice? Why were there no alternatives for this person? Who was missing them right then? Was someone wondering where they were?

Today, I went by again. A few bouquets of flowers marked the spot. One person had written some words addressed to the deceased. I am sure the words were heart-felt and meant to bring peace but as I read them I thought how empty the words seemed. Could any words not seem empty after the fact. I wondered what I would have said to this person if I had had the chance to speak to them before this tragedy. What could one say?

What they needed was hope. We all need hope. Our world tries to convince us that there is no hope. But there is hope for the hopeless. There is hope in one Person. And that one Person has left us His words of hope in Red Letters.

There is love in the red letters
There is truth in the red letters
There is hope for the hopeless
Peace and forgiveness
There is life in the red letters
In the red letters.*

*"Red Letters," DC Talk from the album Supernatural, 1998.
Songwriters: Michael De Wayne Tait; Kevin Max Smith; Toby McKeehan; Christopher Harris; Mark James Heimermann.