By Lael Arrington

Truman Burbank was born and raised on a TV set, the star of his own show.  He is completely unaware of reality. He believes he lives on a coastal island.  He believes that his wife and friends, all paid actors, really love him. Christoff,  the producer in the film, says, “While the world he inhabits is . . . counterfeit,  there’s nothing fake about Truman himself.” Truman is real. That’s what makes him “so good to watch.”³

The 1998 film The Truman Show illustrates the often confusing distinctions between belief and knowledge, truth and untruth. What constitutes knowledge?  Most philosophers would agree that knowledge is justified true belief.   It is belief, something we take to be true by at least 51 percent, that agrees with the evidence.   At the beginning of the movie, Truman believes that his life on Seahaven is real, not a scripted TV show. But his belief does not qualify as knowledge because it is not justified by the evidence of which the viewing audience is clearly aware.

What is truth? Truth is telling it like it really is. Truth is not a thing, but rather a relationship between our words or ideas and reality. Whether Truman can see it or not, whether he believes it or not, whether his words agree with it or not, his life is entertainment for the masses. Truman’s beliefs do not correspond to reality. They are false.

We may think of belief as an all-or-nothing proposition. But belief is more of a continuum.  In the course of the movie, we see Truman’s confidence in what he believes to be true steadily diminish.  Lighting canisters fall out of the “sky.” The man he knew as “Dad” shows up one day, trying to warn him before he is hustled onto a bus. He catches on to his wife doing product placement commercials.  You can almost see the needle on the continuum between belief and unbelief falling, falling past the 50/50 point. He suspects he is being deceived and controlled.  When he escapes on a sailboat, the producer

creates a ferocious storm.  Truman shouts to the sky, “Is that the best you can do? You’re going to have to kill me!” He survives and sails on until the ship reaches the edge of the watery set and, quite literally, pokes a hole in the bubble of deceit that has been his life.

In the same way, we can live in deceit and illusion until one day we hit the wall of reality. When our false beliefs collide with reality, we then have a choice: Will we live according to knowledge — true belief justified by good evidence? Or will we settle for illusion? The producer promises Truman an illusion of safety. Truman chooses the truth that sets him free. The cheers from the audience gradually subside as they stare at their blank screens, then grope around for their TV guides and some other virtual  adventure to soothe and distract. But that is another story.

To seek knowledge, we weigh all our beliefs against the best evidence — God’s revelation, both general and special. In order to live and speak with truth, we do so “in the sight of God” (2 Corinthians 4:2). That is, we live and speak words that correspond to reality as God created it and as The One Who Sees Everything sees it.  Frederica Mathewes-Green has said, “Reality is God’s home address.” ⁴ To be a person of truth is to live before God in the reality he created rather than to settle for illusions, even those of our own making.

For reflection and discussion

As I look back over seasons of pain and escape into distraction and daydreams,

I think of how I described my journey in my book Godsight:

“I think how the emptiness I often felt came from being in a place, either

in my head or on a screen, where I was not present to God.  My life did not

correspond to his reality.

“I sensed the lack of integrity deep in my bones.  The reality of my own life,

full of potential moments of love and ser vice to God and others was ticking

by.  My escapes were killing me softly — one evening of entertainment, one

daydream at a time.

“What is most real is eternal life. Jesus said, ‘Now this is eternal life: that

they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’

(John 17:3).  If we truly want to love and seek God, we find him when our

words and lives correspond to reality, even painful reality.  Not in untruth,

fantasy or distraction.”⁵

• Have you experienced hitting the wall of reality? Did you discover that

any of your beliefs were untrue?

• What counts for true knowledge in today’s world? What limitations

might you find with today’s approach to knowledge?

When Truman discovered his life was an illusion, the director begged

him to stay in the safety of Seahaven. He didn’t stay. Why do you think it

is so hard to live in an illusion? Why not enjoy the safety?

• Are there places in your life or heart that do not correspond to reality as

God sees it? What reality have you constructed?

• What greater reality might God be inviting you into?

• What might you want to say to God about being a person of truth?

3. Andrew Niccol, The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, starring Jim Carrey (Hollywood:

Paramount Pictures, 1998).

4. Frederica Mathewes-Green, in a conversation with Lael Arrington in 2004.

5. Lael Arrington, Godsight: Renewing the Eyes of Our Hearts (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway,

2005).

Though their antecedents are rarely explored in the evening news, present

tensions in the Middle East are rooted in a family story that is more than

four thousand years old. This drama begins with Abraham, a model of faith

and a father to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Muslims learn about Abraham

through the Qur’an (Koran) of Islam. Jews and Christians learn about

Abraham through what the Jews call the Torah and Christians call the Old

Testament, beginning in Genesis.1

The first chapters of Genesis shed light on some basic questions — our

origins and purpose, why we fight, why we die, and how we live meaningfully.

We find glory, beauty, love, deception, shame, blame, punishment, sibling

rivalry, murder, expulsion — all in the first four chapters of Genesis. Before

long, God grieved the sin among his people and re-created the world through

a flood, a baptism, if you will. As author Madeleine L’Engle suggested, “The

flood was God’s tears.”2 But God found one righ teous family, Noah’s, through

which he rebirthed a freshly storied world.

From Genesis 10 on, the focus of Scripture is on covenant relationships. In

the context of cultural confusion in ancient Babel, where men were building

a great city for personal glory, the Lord not only separated people through

unique languages, he also planted the seed of a remarkable people who were

asked to reject idolatry and live in love. Like us, these were fallible and three dimensional

people, making Genesis a vivid, candid, R-rated page-turner.

Through it all God was faithful, and over many generations the seed grew

into a life-giving tree. Any person could be grafted into that tree, not by

fortune of lineage or wealth but simply by faith in God and in his promised

Messiah. God begins with a remarkable father and mother, a patriarch and

matriarch. Abram and Sarai (whom God renamed Abraham and Sarah) were

citizens of Ur, a great center of ancient Mesopotamia. And the Lord said to

Abraham, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household

to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation” (Genesis

12:1 – 2).

Muslims honor Abraham as the first monotheist, worshiper of the one

true God they call Allah. Muslims trace their heritage through Abraham and

Hagar, the servant who was Sarah’s childbearing surrogate, and their son,

Ishmael (Abraham’s firstborn child). Muslims prize the promise God made

to Hagar when she was abandoned in the wilderness: “Lift the boy [Ishmael]

up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation” (Genesis

21:18). Indeed, Ishmael was blessed with life and progeny, for he had twelve

sons, and his numbers quickly grew.

Jews and Christians trace their lineage through the son God promised

Sarah and Abraham — Isaac, the miraculously conceived son of the free

woman, through whom God would foreshadow and fulfill his covenant promises.

Isaac’s son Jacob then bore twelve sons, whose descendants became the

twelve tribes of Israel.

The account of Abraham and Sarah continues the theme of God’s covenant

(beginning with Noah) to one particular family. The Lord said to Abraham,

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all

peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

GENESIS 12:3

I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. . . . I will make

you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.

GENESIS 17:1, 6

The branches of this family tree would be known by their fruit. They

would, as a way of life, turn curses into blessings. Joseph, son of Jacob, grandson

of Isaac, converted the curse of exile into blessing: not only did Joseph

save his own brothers who’d sold him into slavery but he saved non-Jews as

well, including all of Egypt, from famine. The children of God would, and

will, become a blessing to the nations. “Thus there were fourteen generations

in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon,

and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah” (Matthew 1:17).

This shared respect for Abraham, with differing ideas of the past, present,

and future, makes the conflicts among Jews/Christians and Muslims — from 1

the medieval crusades to today’s Middle Eastern clashes — surprising on

one hand and understandable on the other. But embedded within the tension

there is also hope — that any cousin who so chooses will be present at the

family reunion.

For reflection and discussion

• How do you see this ancient story unfolding in our time?

• At the age of one hundred years, “Abraham gave the name Isaac to the

son Sarah bore him” (Genesis 21:3). Why do you think Abraham chose a

name that means, in Hebrew, “he laughs”? Sarah also laughed. Why?

The theme of Abrahamic covenant is so essential that the apostle Paul revisited

it two millennia later. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul tells Christfollowers

that they are not children of slavery but of freedom. In Galatians

3:26 – 28 and Galatians 5:1, he writes:

You are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into

Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile,

neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ

Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according

to the promise. . . . It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm,

then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

• What is it to be a child of slavery? What is it to be a child of freedom and

the Spirit? How might people in freedom bless those in slavery?

• What resources have you been given to share as a blessing to another?

Reprinted from “A Faith and Culture Devotional”, copyright 2008, Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington.

The Faith and Culture Devotional contains over 100 daily readings in the subjects of Art, Science, and Life.  It is written, edited by Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington and published by Zondervan, 2008.

It is available for purchase from Zondervan at www.zondervan.com or through The Cornerstone.  The retail price is $16.99, Cornerstone’s regular price is $13.59 and currently there is a BSU student special price of only $10.00.

By Sam Storms, PhD

Physicists and cosmologists are ever in search of what they call “a theory

of everything,” an all-encompassing theory that can account for everything

from the subatomic world of particle physics to the galactic expanse of supernovas

and black holes.

Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University,

argues that for the first time in the history of physics we have a framework

with that capacity.   Scientists call it string theory.  The idea is that everything in

the universe at its most microscopic level consists of combinations of vibrating

strings. According to Greene, “string theory provides a single explanatory

framework capable of encompassing all forces and all matter.”

The problem isn’t that Greene and others have gone too far in making this

claim.  The problem is they haven’t gone nearly far enough!  Greene is clearly

drawn to this theory because strings make sense of every fundamental feature

of physical reality. But what makes sense of strings?  Why do they exist?

If they explain “all forces and all matter,” what explains them?  What accounts

for the shape they take and the functions they serve?

The answer is that everything exists for the glory of God. Everything

— from quarks to quasars, from butterflies to brain cells — was created

and is sustained so that you and I might delight in the display of divine

glory.   Only humans are fashioned in the image of God.  We are the only species

that establishes schools and conducts research and preserves archives

of information.  We alone have been granted remarkable capacities to reason

and reflect, deduce and conclude.  We alone can glorify God by rejoicing in

the beauty of his creative handiwork and relishing the splendor of his selfrevelation

in the person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

We’re touching here on the most profound question anyone could ever ask:

Why is there something rather than nothing?  The simple answer is that God

chose to create. This was certainly not from the anguish born of need, as if

creation might supply God what he lacked. God didn’t take inventory and

suddenly realize there was a shortage that only you and I could fill.  So what

prompted God to act?

The source of God’s creative energy was the joy of infinite and eternal

abundance! God chose to create from the endless and self-replenishing overflow

of delight in himself.

We must begin with the recognition that God delights infinitely in his own

eternal beauty. When God the Father gazes at the Son and sees a perfect reflection

of his own holiness, he is immeasurably happy. The Father rejoices in

the beauty of the Son and Spirit, and the Son revels in the beauty of the Spirit

and Father, and the Spirit delights in that of the Father and Son. God is his

own fan club! God created us out of this eternal community, this overflow of

mutual love, delight, and admiration, so that we might joyfully share in it, to

God’s eternal glory.

God doesn’t simply think about himself or talk to himself. He enjoys himself!

He celebrates with infinite and eternal intensity the beauty of who he is

as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we’ve been created to join the party!

To relish and rejoice in the beauty of God alone accounts for why we exist.

Enjoying God is the soul’s sole satisfaction, with which no rival pleasure can

hope to compete. Glorifying God by enjoying him forever. It’s the Christian

Theory of Everything.

Reprinted from “A Faith and Culture Devotional”, copyright 2008, Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington.  Mr. Storms article is adapted from his book One Thing: Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God.   Mr. Storms left Wheatonto found Enjoying God Ministries in Kansas City, Missouri; www.enjoyinggodministries.com

(Reprinted with permission from Credenda/Agenda. See bottom of article).

Christmas is impossible. It can’t be done. That woman won’t be silent. It can’t be expressed. Encapsulate all the colors, meanings, music, and history of World War II into one sentence, commas permitted. Now do it with a far more earth-shattering, far more complicated, more unspeakable event. That’s the tension of Christmas.

At the first creation, words were not enough. Too thin. Not even close. The expression had to go deeper, beyond mere words. Angels had to scream at the art—scream at the eagles, scream at the sand, at the elephants, at fire, oysters. “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit couldn’t be captured in words alone, so He used evergreens and walruses. The whole creation is the shout of His personality. But even tidal waves prove insufficient. He overflows. Thus, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.” The Christmas sentence. Two sentences, one with a compound predicate. God “has spoken to us by His Son . . . the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.” More insufficient sentences.

This second creation, this Incarnation was far brighter than the first creation. It built upon the first and turned it upside down. “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.” Christmas turned creation inside out; it broke the stranglehold of death; it thickened water. How could we even begin to express it? Wineskins could not hold it. Normandy was cheesecake. Even John who gave us the Christmas sentence gave up. He gave us word upon word, sentence upon sentence and then breathed his last, “even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” A fine trick. And yet we’re expected to express it: “And teach them to your children and your grandchildren.” And “tell it to the generation following.” Very funny. Very cruel.

It’s impossible, but neither can we hold it in. It pushes our skin out to its breaking point. Painful adoration. Stretch marks. We’re pressed from within. She couldn’t hold it in.

“And Mary said: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” Mary, Mary, don’t you know that Christmas is a pagan holiday? Hold your words in. Be silent. “For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.” Vixen.

If she can’t hold in Christmas, why should we even try? It’s a lost cause. Imagine the tension of living in the covenant in the centuries before Messiah. The conflict is stark; the psychology twisted, longing for relief. “The prophets proclaim justice: Israel will certainly be judged for disobedience.

But they also proclaim grace: God is coming to redeem his people. . . . Israel’s sins are worse than those of the pagan nations of Canaan, even of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God destroyed. How can a just God do anything less than wipe them out entirely? Yet the promise of grace comes again. God will surely redeem his people. But how can He wipe them out and redeem them at the same time? It seems as though God’s justice violates His mercy and vice versa. God is, it seems, in a bind. If He redeems, He must wink at sin; if He judges, He must renege on His promise. . . . God seems to be wanting precisely to build the tension, and build, and build. . . . And then comes Jesus. The wait is over.”—John Frame. Oh the agony of life without Christmas. No wonder Mary sings. She carries life from the dead, light from darkness, home from exile. “Sing, O barren, you who have not borne! Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, you who have not labored with child! For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman.” Imagine sitting in the deserts of Babylon and Assyria, counting the stars, juggling mercy and justice. “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” Christmas is the revolution of revolutions. To hide it behind paganism, to hide it behind indifference and busyness, to express it behind sentences alone, would be a robbery. I would be lying to my children. I can’t hold it in—“We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.”

And Mary sings: “And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” More Christmas words, Mary. But these words have not been commanded. Your Christmas celebration isn’t sanctioned from on high. Whatever is not commanded is forbidden. How dare you speak out like this? Will worship. You have fallen headlong into the sin of Esther—“establish among them that they should celebrate . . . . as the month which was turned from sorrow to joy for them, and from mourning to a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor.” Hold it in, Mary. Buck up. Christmas thoughts are offensive.

And with the coming of Emmanuel, “old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:18). In the Incarnation we see that “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Light overflows, overpowers, and blinds, like its creator. The Triune is the God of excess, the God who gives all, the light that chases  away darkness. The Son gives all for the Father and Spirit; the Father gives Himself over to the Spirit and Son; the Spirit returns more sacrifice and love back to the Father and Son. The coming of the Son is the express image of God bursting the old world. He tabernacled among us, and “How lovely is Your tabernacle, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” David faints and cries at the excess he saw. He would have burst to see his Son.

The Incarnation’s excess brittles my sentences as I stand before the kids, wondering how to  explain it. The words come out rickety, gap toothed. I can read and read to them but that’s never enough. Maybe I could set the whole house on fire in a searing white light with the darkest winter background, just a bit of star in the dining room, melt the neighborhood. That might come close. Instead I climb the ladder up the side of my house with my stupid little clinking lights; I loop and hang and wrap and pile them around as best I can. The electricity wheezes in the house, and the lights can be seen from two miles away; I tested. But I can’t stop; they’re never enough. It’s not fair. He gets to use glowing jellyfish and Texas lightning and Alpha Centauri, and I can only hang these pathetic glowing strings.

But Christmas insists. And so here in the north, during the darkest days of winter and death, this small town’s Christmas lights conspire together against the black night and start to reclaim reality. “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. . . . That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.” Slowly, slowly, Christ’s coming has been transforming the whole world, turning darkness to light, tribes to communities, wilds to gardens,  cannibalism to cuisine, philosophers to poets. “Since the Savior’s advent in our midst, not only does idolatry no longer increase, but it is getting less and gradually ceasing to be. Similarly, not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer make any progress, but that which used to be is disappearing. . . . On the other hand, while idolatry and everything else that opposes the faith of Christ is daily dwindling and weakening and falling, the Savior’s teaching is increasing everywhere”— Athanasius. No Pelagian Santa lies to kids there.

This new world suggests the oldest. It moves toward a mature Eden, the City of Eden, full of fruit trees. And so we plant trees full of “fruit,” mirrored balls staring back at our living rooms. We do this, too, in the middle of winter. These Christmas trees bring Eden back in the middle of the darkness. Fruit amidst death. My eyes roll to hear of pagan origins. Why do they stop arbitrarily at that point? Trees of life and knowledge were central to Eden. Sure pagans slunk off with edenic symbols and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, but that is their sin, not ours. They may not claim the trees. They belong to Jehovah. These pagans also prayed, yet we do not abandon prayer. The Bible begins and ends with trees. Christmas makes us look backward and forward.

And, yet, the newness of the Incarnation doesn’t stop with lights and trees. The whole creation has been made new. Christmas is the beginning of the New Heavens and Earth, and this bursts out in gifts—new clothes, new tools, new games, new books—a new world. Boxes are wrapped to separate them from objects of monetary exchange, objects of equal trade. Instead, gifts are excesses, surprises of grace. And if the Lord blesses and your tree is gloriously surrounded with boxes on top of boxes of this new order of stuff, you can stoop down from across the room, level with all those boxes and see that they resemble a city skyline, a new city, “the great city, the holy Jerusalem” — “the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones” where the nations “bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.” And in the middle of this city is “the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Your Christmas tree.

And Mary sings: “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.” She bursts forth still? Celebrating Christmas will lead to consumerism, Babylonianism, apostasy, and stockings. The gospel is about law and stinginess. Let the women be kept silent; for they are not permitted to speak. Who allowed this Mary to preach Christmas?

Still something was wrong. It all went by so quickly. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, done. The traditional church calendar helps express the largess of Christmas by the Advent season. This is a start. But I wanted to express a tinge of exile, a hint of that Old Covenant tension. Time needed to be stretched out. I could yak-yak-yak about the apparent tension between God’s justice and mercy, and for several years that’s what I did. But I wanted to show the tension—even through a glass darkly. I needed hints of Babylonian exile, “O Come, O come, Emmanuel.” Ezekiel saw and heard the bones in the desert—“Son of man, can these bones live? . . . Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! . . . Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. . . . [T]here was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone. . . . They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ “Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live.’”

Rattling bones, desert sand, sour wine. And so for more than a week before Christmas, we sing and read through the covenantal promises—Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, psalms, the prophets, Mary—always highlighting the wrestling of justice and mercy, yearning for release. We keep the rhythms of the songs with the rattle of bones (thick wooden dowels), and we partake of hints of vinegar and sand, a taste of ugly exile. Empty wine glasses sit before us, teasing, and at the close of that night’s liturgy, we sneak the tiniest bit of chocolate, a hint of Christmas to come. By Christmas Eve we are sick of sand and vinegar; we need freedom from the bones; the city grows around the tree; something more surely must burst forth; “O Come, O come, Emmanuel.” Please. We worship with the saints on Christmas Eve, and the presents burst open Christmas morning. The new world runs forth. At the final set of readings, we shift from “O Come” to “Joy to the World.” The sand and the vinegar vanish; the bones are replaced with bells; champagne and gourmet chocolates flow. “Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst!” Cry out and shout. Who can hold in Christmas? It’s impossible. I’m sure others can do better, but I’m forced to show something, my best shot.

And Mary sings, “He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.” Turn away from such druidic folly, Mary. Pass the day like any other. God wants you to hold it in and ignore the Incarnation. Cross your knees. God treasures silence more than shouting.

We enjoy the lights and sand and vinegar and chocolate and bones and presents and tree and more, using bits of His creation to try and show His wonder. Of course, “better is a little with the fear of the LORD, than great treasure with trouble. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fatted calf with hatred.” The greatest of these is love. But He’s the one who makes this love want to burst forth from within. It’s His fault, the God He gave us. He couldn’t even hold it in either. Sure, He speaks words through Mary, but when the time comes, He doesn’t hold back. He decorates the sky with brightness and cheats where no lighted house can hope to compete: “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’” Unbelievable one-upmanship. A sky that would make the greatest fireworks grand finale look like an electric short.

Christmas can’t be done, but it bursts out. And when Christmas days have just passed, more reality strikes. The Incarnation was just the beginning. Christmas would be nothing without Easter. And Easter would be nothing without Pentecost. So little time, so much impossibility.

Copyright 2009, all rights reserved, Credenda/Agenda magazine. This article first appeared in Volume 14, Number 5 of Credenda/Agenda magazine, and is reprinted with permission.

For the original article click here.

For Credenda/Agenda click here.

by Casey Luskin

(Reprinted with permission from Salvo magazine. See bottom of article).

This past May 20, there was a good possibility that your day started something like this: You crawled out of bed, logged on to the internet, and soon discovered that Google had changed its banner graphic to display the image of a small, long-tailed fossil primate.

Being the internet-savvy user that you are, you immediately recalled that it’s not uncommon for Google.com to change its design to observe holidays or honor famous historical figures. Nonetheless, you wondered what this cute brown mammal was doing on Google’s home page, so you clicked on the link.

Little did you know that this innocent fossil graphic was not just any link. It was a lure that had successfully led you into a carefully orchestrated PR campaign involving leading paleontologists, top TV networks, the internet’s most popular website (Google), and numerous other media outlets in a coordinated effort to promote evolution to the public.

The fossil, dubbed “Ida” by her discoverers, was introduced to the media as the “eighth wonder of the world” whose “impact on the world of palaeontology” would be like “an asteroid falling down to Earth.”

Famed BBC broadcaster Sir David Attenborough got involved, making a documentary titled Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, to explain why Ida is “the link that connects us directly with the rest of the animal kingdom.” Co-sponsored by both the BBC and the History Channel, the program attracted a massive audience.

For those who don’t get their information from cable TV, Ida’s promoters also held a press conference generating a flood of news stories:

• Good Morning America and Nightline covered the fossil.
• National Geographic called her the “critical ‘missing link’ species.”
• ScienceDaily and a Discover magazine commentator praised Ida as our “47-million-year-old human ancestor.”
• Skynews told the public that “proof of this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

With Google’s eager assistance, Ida went viral: One of the leading search terms that day was “missing link found.” Even the Drudge Report was reeled in by the media frenzy, briefly featuring Ida as the headline story.

In a statement to the New York Times, a lead scientist in Ida’s team justified the hype: “Any pop band is doing the same. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”

Perhaps, but at what cost?

Hype Balloon Busted

One of the scientists who studied Ida admitted to the Wall Street Journal that “there was a TV company involved and time pressure. We’ve been pushed to finish the study. It’s not how I like to do science.” Another scientist told Live-Science.com, “The PR campaign on this fossil is I think more of a story than the fossil itself. . . . It’s a very beautiful fossil, but I didn’t see anything in this paper that told me anything decisive that was new.”

Other critics weren’t so kind. One primate paleontology expert bluntly stated, “It’s not a missing link, it’s not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they’re trying to make.” The expert further charged that the scientists promoting Ida “ignored 15 years of literature.”

If someone bothered to delve into Ida’s original scientific paper, he would learn what the literature actually says. Scientists in the journal PLoS One wrote that Ida “could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved,” but added that “we are not advocating this here” (emphases added).

Indeed, twelve of the sixteen primate traits that the scientists were able to identify classified Ida with monkeys. Ida’s website boasts of her monkey-like opposable toes, thumbs, foot-bones, face, and binocular vision.

By now you should be getting the picture: Ida was a young, small-brained, monkey-like primate, whose evolutionary importance is anything but clear.

Wetherington’s Whoppers

Ida’s story is a tragic one. Long ago, she was fossilized after falling victim to some unfortunate accident, only to suffer a far worse fate millions of years later-becoming the victim of an absurd case of media hype, making her the centerpiece of a crusade for Darwin. Sad to say, she does not represent an isolated case of evolutionists overstating the case for human evolution.

For example, during a hearing before the Texas State Board of Education in January 2009, anthropologist Ronald Wetherington (of Southern Methodist University) testified that human evolution has “arguably the most complete sequence of fossil succession of any mammal in the world. No gaps. No lack of transitional fossils. . . . So when people talk about the lack of transitional fossils or gaps in the fossil record, it absolutely is not true.” Wetherington then insistently told the board that there were no “weaknesses” in neo-Darwinism worth disclosing to students.

The data, I suggest, says otherwise.

Our genus Homo is supposedly descended from the australopithecines, an ape-like genus whose name literally means “southern ape.” Hominid fossils thus generally fall into one of two distinct categories: human-like fossils or ape-like fossils. What Wetherington failed to acknowledge was the current absence of transitional fossils to bridge the gap between ape-like and human forms.

In 2004, the late authoritative evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr conceded that the earliest fossils of our own genus Homo “are separated from Australopithecus by a large, unbridged gap,” and that we do “not hav[e] any fossils that can serve as missing links.” The following year, two paleoanthropologists noted in Nature that the earliest fossil members of Homo have “been described as . . . ‘without an ancestor, without a clear past.’”

Likewise, an article in the Journal of Human Evolution concluded that the origin of Homo required “a genetic revolution” since “no australopithecine species is obviously transitional.” One commentator said this shows a “big bang theory” of human origins because “the first members of early Homo sapiens are really quite distinct from their australopithecine predecessors and contemporaries.”

Negative Reinforcement

Wetherington’s misstatements of the facts went further, as he told the Texas State Board that in the human evolutionary tree, “every fossil we find reinforces the sequence that we had previously supposed to exist rather than suggesting something different.” Yet the very first fossil he touted as “transitional”-the “Toumai skull”-refutes his claim.

When the Toumai skull was first reported in 2002, paleoanthropologists were presented with a dilemma. The skull was far too old for its modern appearance. But if evolutionists accepted it as a direct ancestor of humans, then many subsequent human ancestors would have to be thrown out of our family tree. Authority Bernard Wood lamented in Nature that if we place Toumai “at the base, or stem, of the modern human clade,” then the fossil “plays havoc with the tidy model of human origins.” Wood even observed that Toumai shows how “a single fossil can fundamentally change the way we reconstruct the tree of life.”

This doesn’t sound much like a fossil that “reinforces the sequence that we had previously supposed to exist.” And if that weren’t enough, some experts have suggested that Toumai is no evolutionary link, but merely the skull of a female gorilla.

Objectivity Overshadowed

Like evolutionist David Hillis, whom I critiqued in Salvo 9, Wetherington obviously overplayed his hand. But, considering Ida and other examples, why is this so common within the field of human origins?

The answer may be found in a 1981 article in the journal Science:

The field of paleoan-thropology naturally excites interest because of our own interest in origins. And, because conclusions of emotional significance to many must be drawn from extremely paltry evidence, it is often difficult to separate the personal from the scientific disputes raging in the field.

The study of human origins thus exemplifies a field in which scientific objectivity can be overshadowed by the modern-day equivalent of ancestor worship.

The lesson is simple: Maintain a healthy skepticism regarding media hype over “missing links.” Anyone who believes the hype that we’ve found the “missing link” has either forgotten history or isn’t looking very carefully at the evidence. •

Overblown Missing Links

The public likes to think of the scientific community and their publicity division, the mainstream media, as a trustworthy source of information. Unfortunately, history is replete with examples of missing links being touted to the public as proof of Darwinism, only later to be shown to be fake, suspect, or dramatically overstated. Here are a few of our favorite examples:

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Piltdown Man Discovered in 1912 in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England, this half-ape, half-man skull was immediately touted as proof of evolution. The New York Times published the headline “Paleolithic Skull Is a Missing Link,” and the fossil was featured as court-approved evidence for human evolution during the nationally followed Scopes Trial. One small problem: The skull was a forgery, pieced together from the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a human.

Unfortunately, the hoax wasn’t exposed until 1953, duping countless people in the interim to accept human evolution.

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Archaeoraptor The Chinese equivalent of Piltdown, this fossil was touted as proof that birds evolved from feathered dinosaurs in a full color cover story in National Geographic in 1999. What’s disconcerting is that NG published its “Feathers for T. rex” article even though experts had expressed doubts about the fossil’s legitimacy. Computer tomography scans later confirmed that it was a fake, produced in a Chinese “fossil factory.” Months later, NG buried a retraction letter from a Chinese paleontologist admitting, “Though I do not want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body.”

Though we don’t want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to show that the media is willing to publish stories promoting missing links even when unsure the evidence is authentic.

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Tiktaalik This alleged transitional fossil between fish and amphibians isn’t a fake (yet), but has enjoyed celebrity status among the Darwin-lobby since first being reported in 2006. Tiktaalik‘s lead discoverer, paleontologist Neil Shubin, published a popular book titled Your Inner Fish, promoting it as “a fish with a wrist.” Such rhetoric has led to the fossil being featured as the centerpiece missing link in a 2007 PBS documentary and a 2008 U.S. National Academy of Sciences booklet, as well as the customary New York Times articles.

Somehow, none of this fanfare has changed the fact that Tiktaalik has entirely fishlike fins and no wrist.

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Australopithecus anamensis In 2006, paleontologists reported finding a couple of teeth of “intermediate” size from the hominid species Australopithecus anamensis. Playing off the transitional-fossil feeding frenzy generated by Tiktaalik, MSNBC.com saw an opportunity, and declared these teeth evidence for a “missing link” and “the most complete chain of human evolution so far.”

And they wonder why we’re Darwin skeptics?

Copyright 2009, all rights reserved, Salvo magazine. This article first appeared in Autumn 2009, issue 10, of Salvo magazine, and is reprinted with permission.

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The value of reading depends upon the quality of man’s imagination and the nature of his thinking. If his mind vibrates with so slow a rhythm that it scarcely pulsates unless aided, then any reading is better for him than none. The fiction addict cheaply living in the cheap stories of other lives would be scarcely alive at all without his story, The adenoidic errand boy besotted by a page of comics is better off than crouched in a corner staring at nothing. But men and women who possess an interior world of thinking, feeling, living as vivid as the exterior world of circumstance are merely drugging themselves when out of laziness or vicious relaxation they read on and on into the endless columns of modern print where the level of what is said lies below the plane of their own intelligence. You can vulgarize taste as readily as improve it. You can get out of the habit of knowing yourself by too much lazy interest in knowing at third or fifth hand what other people are doing and thinking. (The Literary Review 1923)

In a sense, any reading is better than none. Reading a little or reading poorly is better than avoiding the written word altogether. But reading and reading well offers such a rich bounty of uncountable blessings that we ought to all do all we can to exploit this discipline. The discipline and processes of reading and writing can shape your critical thinking skills as well as make you a better communicator. These things are absolutely crucial for any job and are beyond necessary for the Christian who wants to understand and share their faith. It doesn’t matter whether you are interested in reading and writing as recreation or for their own sakes; these are tools you need in every part of your life. These things can be very uncomfortable for most people. Not everyone is born with an innate desire for the written word but, like learning to walk, it is worth the discomfort of trying something difficult.

For some reading is simply and completely pleasure and relaxation and they cannot conceive of it as a disciplined process. Anyone who thinks that discipline has no place in our pleasures and our leisure has no experience of its true operation. Undisciplined pleasure quickly becomes nothing of pleasure while retaining all of its undisciplined character. Unending sweets first please, then pall and finally sicken. Long vacations are initially relaxing, then dull and in the end, unendurable. Just so, unfocused and undisciplined reading becomes distracted, scattered and profitless. Like a petulant gourmand the careless reader flits from book to book seeking cheaper and cheaper thrills, the digestion becomes more and more dainty, unwilling and unable to wade through whole strong, meaty works for sustenance.

But it is not enough to know that something is good for one in order to be motivated to do it, that is the territory of the prim schoolmarm and the dour-faced bureaucrat. A recognition of the rightness, the saneness and the beauty of the thing is needed for the live soul. And my central contention is simply that Literature is eminently readable. Between the elaborate interpretation of scholars and the encrustations of ages of opinion there seems little room in common thought for the appreciation of its vast beauties. There is great pleasure in great literature. It is not an easy pleasure. It is not as accessible as the breezy storytelling of popular fiction but it is undoubtedly a profound pleasure. A pleasure that can and should be returned to again and again. A pleasure that needs to be cultivated to be fully understood. First Trollope and then Thoreau:

“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone…It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”

“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise. It requires a training such as athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and unreservedly as they were written.”

And really that seems to sum it all up. Literature rewards reading. Literature rewards deep reading. It greatly rewards re-reading. Some of its joy is attained with some effort but it continues with an exponential return on investment.

Young or old, there are books that will enrich your life and deepen your intellectual and spiritual activity. There is great wisdom resting in books both ancient and modern and they are essentially at your fingertips. Log on to Project Gutenberg for free digital copies of everything from Augustine to Aquinas to Chesterton. Visit Amazon and buy ultra cheap copies of the same. Visit your local bookstore. Head down to Cornerstone. The wisdom of the ages has never been so accessible to the average citizen. The very fact that you are literate is a gift of history and geography. Merely 200 years ago, or a few thousand miles south, the odds would be greatly against it.
If you are human then you are limited by the constraints of time. Every activity is a choice. Every choice a renunciation of something else. Last year, a factoid made it’s way around the internet claiming that an “exceptional” reader who reads an average of one book a week, would only be able to finish 3000 books in their lifetime. Much of the reaction among the book-blogging community was horror at how few that really was, at how little they would be able to read in their lifetimes and at how limiting they found that number. But like a poetic form that first constrains and then beautifies the thoughts in it, knowing that limitation gives serious readers everywhere the chance to consciously shape and plan their lifetime reading experience. Realizing one’s finitude can seem morbid but wisdom knows that acknowledging mortality is nothing more than the readiness to improve what life one has.

So often in our lives of plenty and even of excess we simply do the easy thing that is next to hand. We pick up the magazine sitting next to us, we read the book casually loaned by a friend, or even worse, we simply watch television instead of making the effort reading takes. But if you already have a love of books, a desire to read much and to read well and an idea of how many books you can conceivably consume in your lifetime then you can set out to read only – or at least mostly – that which adds to your life. It really just comes down to a question of time and energy. How much time can you reasonably devote to learning, to reading and to studying? How much do you really want to devote to it? And once you’ve made that determination, what do you really want out of the effort?

I think I’ve made it sufficiently clear where my loyalties are, what I think reading is for and how it we ought to approach it, with discipline and focus. But even with my dedication, with my delight in learning and love of “difficult” books, I sometimes waver. Reaching for the easy book on hand, wanting more mental vacation than is consistent with my goals and deeper desires. When I am in that place I stop to remember how profoundly my own life has been changed every time I’ve disciplined my reading even a little. Once I made a list and stuck to it for one year and my life will never be the same. Get some specific advice about good books to read and make a list and then stick to it. Head down to Cornerstone and talk with the staff there or send me an email and I’ll get you started. Read books and read them well.

AmandaPatchin is 29, and a graduate student at Boise State. She is currently studying English Literature and teaching English 101. In addition to her busy academic life, she also has two toddler sons with her wonderful husband, and their home life is crazy in the sunniest possible way. You can contact her via email (amandapatchin1@boisestate.edu) or visit her in her office at LA 209D.

Do we hate the things God hates?

Carl R. Trueman, Issue Number 19, March 2008

Not many people today regard hate as a virtue. Even the great hatemongers of the last century, the Hitlers and the Stalins who so poisoned the history of modern Europe, presumably regarded themselves not as peddlers of hate so much as righteous crusaders for their respective causes, sick and perverted though those causes were.

Yet hate is indeed virtuous. There is, of course, a wicked form of hate to which Christians are prone and which has deeply damaged the image of Christianity. This form has given endless material to the anti-Christian propagandists of the present age.

But there is another form of hate, one that actually reflects an aspect of the very being of God, and is one which Christians should aspire to reflect.

In the 19th century, the brilliant radical thinker and essayist William Hazlitt wrote one of his most famous pieces, On the Pleasure of Hating. With his usual wit and devastating ability to observe the worst aspects of human behavior, he waxed eloquent about the fact that, while love was often transitory and—let’s face it—rather boring, hate was something which both possessed a perennial fascination and had seemingly limitless energy and creativity. As Hazlitt put it, “Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.” Needless to say, when he came to give examples of real hate in action, he zeroed in on religion, citing the particular example of Edward Irving, the brilliant but tragic preacher of the early 19th century. Irving’s preaching of hellfire and damnation, according to Hazlitt, was a classic example of creative hatred in action; and his popularity was indicative of the appetite for such among the London crowds who flocked to hear him.

Hazlitt is, I think, right. Hatred is far more interesting than love. This can be seen throughout pop culture. Films and soap operas which tell simple stories of girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love, girl and boy live happily ever after, simply do not exist. Nobody would want to watch such a storyline. Even at the level of entertainment, we need tension, drama, uncertainty, and excitement; and one way of achieving all of these things, perhaps the most obvious way, is to inject a little—or a lot of—hate into the equation. Hate, the very antithesis of love, stands so close to it as to be its evil and far more entertaining twin. Boy meets girl; they fall in love; then girl falls in love with someone else; then first boy hates both girl and second boy—that’s a more typical and marketable storyline.

As Hazlitt argued, hating is indeed pleasurable. But why? Well, on one level, hate represents the quintessence of fallen humanity. It is that aspect of fallen human nature which is the necessary counterpart to the central human difficulty: our insatiable need to love ourselves rather than God. To grasp this, we need to backtrack a little and analyze the problem of fallen humanity. Human beings were designed to find their full meaning and satisfaction in loving the infinite God. The Fall disrupted that and created a situation where the basic question of human existence—what should I love if I am to be fully human?—remained intact; yet the answer—You should love yourself! You should love the creature rather than the Creator!—left human beings perpetually dissatisfied and roaming from one experience or creaturely object to another, striving to satisfy with finite things that which can only be satisfied by the infinite God. Creaturely loves, if you like (and to borrow a memorable phrase from Top Gun), write checks that their bodies can’t cash. They promise satisfaction, but they serve only to exacerbate the human hunger further. Like crack cocaine, loving that which is creaturely can bring momentary satisfaction, but it is illusory—a fleeting sense of fulfillment which soon departs and leaves the individual craving more.

The Danger of Hate

And therein lies the dilemma for the Christian. Hate is not wrong. Forget the smug bumper sticker wisdom that informs us, “Hate is not a family value.” There are, in fact, many ways in which hate is a family value. I hate poverty; I hate pedophiles; I hate those who would seek to do my children harm. Indeed, the safety of my family depends on my hatred of precisely certain values and certain individuals committed to them.

Then, looked at through a more strictly theological lens, there are many things we must hate. We must hate all that stands in rebellion against God. And yet we also know that hate is a dangerous, seductive virtue, as easy to misdirect and to use for our own pleasure as anything. Indeed, hate as an aesthetic value can give endless amounts of entertainment, both as we witness it in others and as we indulge in it ourselves. Christians must hate; yet such hate is dangerous.

Of course, our non-Christian friends and neighbors are adept at spotting our tendency to hate. Most of my friends outside of seminary and church circles are those who would characterize themselves as liberal Democrats, with all of the social views that implies. And most, if not all of them, do not like evangelical Christianity. This is not because they find its worldview implausible; I doubt that many of them have a real understanding of the core theology of evangelical Christianity. It is because for them evangelical Christianity is synonymous with hatred, distinguished by what it is against—and passionately, unreasonably against—than anything it is for. And on this level, even the embarrassingly sub-Hazlitt prose of those condescending bumper stickers may have a valid point.

The problem with so much Christian hate is not that hate is wrong, but that it is perversely the object of our love. We can find ourselves loving to hate. Why? Because hate can be another of those creaturely objects to which we look for our fulfillment. Indeed, hate is the highest example of such self-love. We love to hate because it feeds that central myth of fallen humanity—that we are the answer to our problems, that we are the center of the universe.

Evaluating Hate

Two things are pertinent here, and point to the problem with so much of Christian hatred. First, there is the motivation of our hatred. Second, there is the selectivity of our hatred.

As to the first, all evangelical Christians would (I hope) say they hate homosexuality. Often, we try to soften the bluntness of this statement by drawing a distinction between loving the sinner and hating the sin. There are problems with that simple distinction, particularly when it comes to sexuality. In a world where people increasing identify themselves by their sexual orientation, it becomes more difficult—both practically and conceptually—to maintain this distinction. But we must try, especially if we’re to have any real loving concern for those outside the church.

The problem with hating homosexuality (and anything else forbidden by God) is not the hatred, simply considered. Rather, it is that the human heart will inevitably take this hatred and turn it into an object of love, which then serves to reinforce our belief in our own righteousness. “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men,” said the Pharisee in the temple, as he turned his contemptuous eye on the tax gatherer. Hatred of the corruption and greed which marked this other man’s life was driven by, and served, the Pharisee’s own desire to make himself a big man in his own eyes, in the eyes of others, and even in the eyes of God Himself.

On this level, I have a sneaking suspicion that much of what passes for evangelical hatred isn’t really hatred at all. Rather, it is love of self—a kind of love that is expressed through the idiom of hatred. For example, I hate gays so that I can feel as if my own heterosexuality makes me that much more acceptable to myself and thus God (whom I make in my own image). I hate atheists so that my own theism allows me to imagine I’m just a bit better. In other words, it’s all about me, it’s all about self-worship. And the hate I typically exhibit, even as a Christian, is rooted in love of myself – which is the very problem that lies at the core of the human predicament.

This is evident in the selectivity of hatred as well. There is plenty of evangelical hatred of homosexuality out there. One has only to insert the relevant words into Google to come up with dozens of Web sites devoted to such. Yet, while we are quick to hate certain things which bolster our own self-image as being zealous for the Lord, there are other matters which never seem to cross our horizons. Materialism, greed, anger, to name just three, are matters which could scarcely be described as the objects of our hatred. Again, the love of self is surely key in this. These are things which cut a little too close to home. To hate anger involves hating myself, the very thing I want to avoid.

Good Hate

So what constitutes virtuous hatred? We know that God hates certain things, since Scripture makes this clear. For example, Proverbs 6:16-19 outlines six things that the Lord hates and seven that are an abomination to Him, including those who commit murder and those who sow dissension. Hatred is, in a sense, an attribute of God. It is something which is essentially characteristic of God in relation to these things. And, as Christians and those made in the image of God, it is right, proper, and, indeed, virtuous that we too hate what God hates.

So how do we do this, bearing in mind that hatred in itself is a deeply and dangerously seductive thing which can more easily lead one into paths of self-righteousness than into the way of truth?

The first thing we need to recognize is that God’s hatred is not an end in itself, nor is it merely instrumental to some other end. He does not hate because He enjoys hating for its own sake. Nor does He hate in order to feel good about Himself. Rather, His hatred is directed toward that which does not reflect His own glory but in fact derogates from that glory. We might say that, for God, hatred is the natural, active, personal response to all of the havoc which willful human disobedience has introduced into the world.

It is analogous to my hatred, as a father, of pedophiles and poverty. I hate the former because of the potential damage they can do to my children, and I hate the latter for much the same reason. For me, hatred of such is rooted in a deeper commitment to and love for my children. Were I, on the contrary, to trust pedophiles and to desire poverty, then I would expose my children to danger or to hardship, something that no loving father should do. Hatred is a virtue in this situation. And Christian hatred is good hatred when it is motivated at the deepest level out of love for God, jealousy for the name of God, and for protecting His glory from those who would seek to insult Him.

So if the virtue of hatred lies in its motivation, how can I know that my hatred is driven by the right motives? The answer is: I can’t. One thing you can be sure of is that your motives for hating – on this side of eternity – will always be mixed. But the mixed motives I might have for loving my wife do not render my love to her equivocal, and so it is the same with hate. We are to hate what God hates; we are to work each day at bringing our minds into conformity with the mind of God; and we are humbly to seek His forgiveness that even the purest act of hatred on our part is horribly contaminated with self-love and personal agendas. In short, we are to sit under the regular preaching of the Word, where God’s Spirit can search us, try us, and transform us, and where we can be regularly reminded of the glory of God and the contrasting evil of human disobedience to His will. We are to expose ourselves each day to God’s holy Word in the safe and certain knowledge that doing so will give us the necessary reality check both on ourselves and our relationship to the world around us.

Opposition to God

Finally, we should bear in mind one crucial reason for virtuous hatred, particularly as it relates to other human beings — the thought that anybody might be able to remain adamantly and arrogantly opposed to God. This is where our hatred of the homosexual, for example, should become the flip-side of our love for the homosexual. It is not so much that we hate the sin and love the sinner. It is that we hate the fact that any sinner could continue to defy God.

Therefore our hatred is to be connected to persuasion. Hating the idea of rebellion against God, we should do our best to persuade those who are rebels to change their allegiance. Do we do this by screaming slogans at them across the barricades? Doubtful. Most likely we do it by behaving in persuasive ways of the kind laid out in Scripture: turning the other cheek, giving of ourselves to our enemies, making sacrifices to help those who despise us. We need to call them to account before our holy God, but we need to make sure we do this because our hatred of them as rebels manifests itself in love to them as lost sheep who are in urgent need of a shepherd.

Hatred is indeed a Christian virtue, but only when it is rooted in a deep love and jealousy for the glory of God. Such hatred can never be used as a means of idolatrous self-love, and it will always manifest itself in a manner that tries to persuade those in rebellion to repent and submit to God. Given this, hate is indeed a Christian family value, and one we should nurture and cherish.

Carl R. Trueman is vice president and professor of historical theology and church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pa.

Copyright 2008, all rights reserved, byFaith magazine. This article first appeared in the February 2008 issue of byFaith and is reprinted by permission.

The central dogma of higher education goes by many names, but its basic thrust is as easy to grasp as it is hard to miss. Whether it is called multiculturalism, social constructionism, or left-leaning liberalism, the bottom line is that higher education in America these days promotes cultural relativism. Colleges do not advertise this fact for obvious reasons, but look closely at what they say in their promotional literature. Colleges talk about broadening your perspective, expanding your horizons, and offering you new experiences, but they do not talk about teaching you how to make moral judgments, how to distinguish the beautiful from the ugly, and how to seek the truth. That is because secular liberal-arts colleges and public universities do not believe you should make moral judgments, contemplate the beautiful, or acknowledge universal truths. And they don’t believe these things because they do not believe there is something called human nature.

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Remember The Da Vinci Code? Consider the astonishing impact this fictional book had on our culture: It has 60 million copies in print, was translated into 44 languages, and the movie earned $215 million in the domestic box office and $540 million in overseas receipts.

The Christian community rallied by writing pamphlets and books, establishing Web sites, and hosting lectures and forums. All brought clarity and truth to the novel’s claims, which were based on myths and the author’s rich imagination. Many great thinkers, writers, and pastors worked hard to react to the false “facts” in Da Vinci.

It was wonderful to see the Christian community taking the book and film seriously. That’s the first step in taking back culture—what should be ours to impact, as the people of God.

But believers can go much further—by creating films and other media as well as responding to them. While it’s healthy to critique and assess the trends and dangers within our culture, we need to do more. We need to create the new stories, movies, and anthems that inspire and shape culture in America and—because entertainment is one of our major exports—the rest of the world.

When will Christians assume the role of culture shapers, instead of mere reactionaries? Why do we hesitate—are we afraid? Don’t we realize the scope of the problem and the opportunities God is giving us? What biblical passages can equip us for such a task?

The Church’s Response to Hollywood

The Church has had two basic responses to Hollywood: 1) conservative Christians have seen it as the enemy and responded with boycotts and picket signs; 2) liberal Christians have embraced the culture, often taking a social “gospel” to it—one that lacks the power to transform.

Both options fail to be redemptive or transformational. Conservative Christians pursue purity while abandoning the culture. Liberal Christians pursue relevance while abandoning the heart of the gospel. Hollywood sees these dynamics and concludes that the gospel of the conservative church is irrelevant because it is disconnected, and the gospel of the liberal church is irrelevant because it’s merely a social club.

The good news? There’s another approach.

As Jonathan Edwards would claim, a biblical Christian is one who pursues not only personal piety and doctrinal orthodoxy but also cultural relevance. These pursuits are not mutually exclusive, but the one we talk about the least is the responsibility to engage culture.

The Cultural Mandate

From the beginning, God has called us to tend the culture as we would tend a garden. He defined the parameters for Adam and Eve and gave them a mandate: God “took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” He commanded them “to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”

Just as God brought order out of chaos during creation, He commanded this man and this woman, made in His image, to pursue and maintain order as they established their family, who eventually would populate the earth and create culture.

We were never called to merely focus on ourselves in a pietistic ghetto. Man’s responsibility was to tend creation, so that it would be fruitful, and for man himself to be fruitful. When they were planting seeds, digging irrigation, creating economic systems, or establishing governments, they were fulfilling their calling as men and women made in the image of God and called to create and “subdue.”

So it is today. As we are fruitful, we must tend to our families and society at large, just as Adam and Eve were to tend to their garden.

Abraham Kuyper, one-time prime minister of the Netherlands and founder of The Free University in Amsterdam, brought great clarity to the meaning of this mandate: “In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘That is mine!’”

If we understand this correctly, then it’s embarrassing to realize how few Christians engage and transform our culture by way of media and entertainment. Though we may have been involved in other valuable pursuits such as mercy ministry and missions, we may have neglected journalism, the arts, and business—and the impact their transformation might bring.

If we fed all our homeless and sent millions of missionaries overseas but failed to engage the most powerful communication networks in our own backyard, we would fail to transform this culture and thereby fail to carry out God’s first command.

Bezalel: An Artist Called by God

What does it look like to transform culture? One answer lies in the story of God redeeming His people when they left Egypt. After centuries of their immersion in the pagan idolatry of the Egyptians, God transforms the Israelites’ understanding of culture by commissioning an artist.

In Exodus 31 we read: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I have chosen Bezalel … and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of crafts—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship.’”

So the first person in the Bible “filled with the Spirit of God” is an artist, yet many Christians barely notice him.

Why? We may skip over his name, because, as good modernists, we assume that art and artists are incidental instead of integral to God’s redemptive plan. So, when pastors, theologians, and churchgoers read this passage, we may simply miss it—like we gloss over genealogies, lists of cities, and other information for which we see no direct link to our daily life. By doing so, we miss something about God’s plan for redemption and a vital connection between our spiritual life and life in the world around us.

Though this is not a commonly preached passage, it was pivotal for the Israelites. After Moses led them out of Egypt, they crossed the Red Sea (Exodus 13-15) and three months later were at the base of Mount Sinai, awaiting God’s directions.

God gave Moses the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), but something else happened on that holy mountain. We find this amazing passage where God specifically calls an artist to do the work of building artifacts for the tabernacle. In fact, a third of Exodus is spent describing the artwork.

When the Israelites heard that God wanted them to build a tabernacle, imagine their shock. Why build anything akin to a temple? They had been rescued from slavery, oppression, and the task of building temples for kings and idols. Their memory was still fresh with the blasphemy that could take place in temples.

It’s easy to imagine a smile on God’s face. Even this act tells of His character as One who redeems—art, artists, temples, and entire cultures, as well as individuals and a whole people group called the Israelites.

In Exodus we learn that God would redeem everything they knew of culture. He did not look at the misguided and misdirected worship of the Egyptians and conclude that it was too corrupt to redeem. Quite the opposite. God rejoiced over the opportunity to show that He redeems all things (Colossians 1), including pagan temples and pagan hearts.

God placed worship at the center of the Israelites’ desert camp, just as it was at the center of Egyptian culture, but now He directed His people to worship the Creator, not the created. He changed the rules and the focus, so they could see how they were designed to be worshipers of the God who made them in His image.

Revolution in Redemption

As God redeemed the Israelites, reshaping the culture they were commanded to tend, artists continued to play a critical role. In battles to come, the ark of the covenant, made by Bezalel and his helper, would be the primary visual reminder of the glory and power of God.

All the artwork—representations of angels, animals, plants, and structural components—were made to help Israelites remember that their God is the One who created everything. He is the One we worship; the beauty we see throughout creation is a reminder of Him.

Not once does God diminish the role of art in worship, nor the value of the artist to reshape their culture. God loves to redeem, and He loves to use the arts.

Bezalel is a model for Christians today, a picture of God’s heart for the art world, for New York, Los Angeles, Hollywood, and the entire entertainment industry. God is not calling us to abandon the arts but to become His hands and feet as He redeems the very center of our culture.

In fact, as we consider this dynamic we may recall other characters in the Bible who were called to be salt and light in the heart of pagan environments. Whether we consider the life of Daniel and how he was called by God to be second in command for idolatrous kings, or how God called Joseph in a similar manner, it’s clear that God does not call us to retreat from working in hostile environments.

This should not sound like a new concept, but to many Christians today, it does. The Church has fallen asleep in the area of engaging culture. It’s as if we are culturally dead, and like Lazarus, need to hear afresh the voice of our Savior calling us to awaken and thrive.

For too long the Church has seen Hollywood as a modern-day Nineveh, and hoped for its destruction. However, God is the great Redeemer, and we are reminded not to be like the prophet Jonah who was angry when the Ninevites repented.

Instead, we must reflect God’s heart to redeem Hollywood and the arts world, realizing there are “other sheep not of this fold.” We must stop demonizing those who don’t know the Savior’s voice. And we must stop minimizing the influence and power of art and entertainment.

It’s time to engage. It’s time to be at the forefront of creating songs, novels, and films that inspire our nation, and ultimately our world. Then we’ll begin to lead the way to a revolution in redemption.

Joel Pelsue is founder and president of Arts & Entertainment Ministries in Los Angeles, Calif. Pelsue holds a B.A in Philosophy from Westmont College and an M.Div. from Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando. A teaching elder in the PCA, Pelsue has been ministering to artists for more than 15 years.

Perspectives that Keep Christians Away from Pop Culture

Scope of Redemption. Evangelical Christians often focus on the Great Commission at the expense of the cultural mandate. Yes, God redeems individuals (Ephesians 2:4), but Christ also died to redeem entire people groups (Isaiah 43:1)—thrones, powers, rulers, things visible and invisible (Colossians 1). Creation itself awaits redemption (Romans 8:20-22).
If our view of redemption is focused solely on evangelizing people, we’ll miss our responsibility to tend to the culture. But if our vision of redemption mirrors the Bible, then we’ll realize our obligation to engage culture in every facet, believing God will redeem components of the art world and encourage our children to be part of His plan.

Sacred/Secular Dualism. Many Christians have been dualistic in their thinking, compartmentalizing their world into sacred and secular.
This sacred/secular dualism has led to a separatist mentality. The only way to remain pure was to separate ourselves from any hint of evil within our culture. Therefore, instead of engaging the culture, we withdrew.
This separatism pushed us to the point of creating our own subcultures, including independent “Christian” music labels and production companies. Then, even within the subculture, artists could not write music or create art that was not explicitly religious.
God’s Word speaks of topics such as sensual love between husband and wife, even murder, rape, and lust. However, if “Christian” artists explore these topics, they are harshly criticized and their work usually is not accepted in their marketplace.
Francis Schaeffer lamented, “About all that we have produced is very romantic Sunday school art.” A friend of ours who is a stand-up comedienne does a bit on stage about this sentimental art, and she keeps Christian and non-Christian audiences in stitches. Why? Because it is just as ridiculous as it is true.
Sentimental, nostalgic art can send the message that the “best times” are in the past, while the core of the gospel proclaims the opposite: the best is yet to come. It may require suffering, death, and sorrow, but God will be victorious. Biblical Christians are not pessimists about life or about our culture but believe in God’s sovereignty and His promises of hope.

Discerning Between Form and Content. Some Christians remain separate from culture because of difficulty discerning between content of the artwork and the form in which it’s presented.
If words in a song are bad, then the entire piece, and sometimes the entire genre is condemned (think of the judgment on jazz and rock music). If the words are godly, then the genre may be perceived as holy.
Of course, this doesn’t really work because there is no holy genre. We falsely assume that classical music and high art are pure forms. However, it does not take much research to realize that classical music, operas, and “high art” have their own forays into pagan mythology and graphic themes.
As Gene Veith writes in State of the Arts, “That the arts can be corrupt does not mean that Christians should abandon them. On the contrary, the corruption of the arts means that Christians dare not abandon them any longer.”

This article may be found in its original context here

Copyright 2007, all rights reserved, byFaith magazine. This article first appeared in the December 2007 issue of byFaith and is reprinted by permission.

The attacks of September 11 and the resulting war against terrorism have brought to the front once again the question of the Christian view of war. The question is particularly complex because it is hard to see how war can be consistent with the biblical emphasis upon forgiveness and forebearance and love. This emphasis is perhaps most pointed in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:39-44)

Does Jesus’ teaching that we should turn the other cheek and love our enemies mean that it is always wrong to go to war? Should the world have turned the other cheek to Hitler and tried to love him into surrender? When Osama Ben Laden ordered the attack on the World Trade Center, should the U.S. have responded by sending him the Sears Tower as well? Or does Jesus allow a place for both loving our enemies and yet, in certain situations, using force to restrain life-threatening wickedness?

What follows are some of the primary reasons we believe that it is right for the military (and Christians who are a part of the military) to engage in wars that have just cause–namely, self-defense, the restraint of life-threatening evil, and the punishment of nations and individuals who have committed unjust acts of war against one’s country. This is called the just war theory. We will close by seeking to explain how this fits with the command to turn the other cheek, love our enemies, and not resist him who is evil.

Pacifism is harmful
To let someone murder when it is in your power to stop them is completely contrary to our moral sentiments. If a Hitler is on the move and seeking to bind the world in tyranny and destroy entire ethnic groups, it would seem very clearly wrong not to oppose him with force (which sometimes is the only effective method). It is true that war itself is harmful and tragic; but pacifism would result in even more harm to the world because it would give wicked people virtually free reign. We of course must be open to letting the Bible transform our moral sentiments, but this observation should at least cause us to pause and reflect more deeply before concluding that Jesus is intending to teach pacifism.

Consistent pacifism would have to eliminate the police, not just the military
In fact, if we were to conclude that governments should always turn the other cheek and never resist evil, then we would be logically committing ourselves to getting rid of not only the armed forces, but also the police force and criminal justice system. For police officers arrest criminals, using force against them if necessary, and put them in jail. That is not turning the other cheek. Does Jesus intend his command to turn the other cheek to apply to the police? Surely not as their primary way of responding to evil. God does not want evil to run about in our society unchecked (cf. in the OT the numerous civil laws and in the NT Romans 13, to be discussed below). If one accepts the legitimacy of police using force in some instances, there can be no objection to the military using force in some instances, either.

Luke 3:14 allows military service
It is significant that John the Baptist did not tell the soldiers to leave the military when they asked him what it meant to repent: “And some soldiers were questioning him, saying, ‘And what about us, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages’” (Luke 3:14). Since it is, therefore, possible to live a godly life and yet be in the military, it must be because engaging in war is not always sinful.

John 18:36 acknowledges the right of the sword to earthly kingdoms
In this passage, Jesus says: “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting, that I might not be delivered up to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” When Jesus says that if his kingdom were of this world his servants would be fighting, he implies that it is right for kingdoms of this world to fight when the cause is just and circumstances require it. As Christians, we are citizens of “two kingdoms”–our country on earth, and heaven. Jesus shows us that it is never right to fight for the sake of his spiritual kingdom, but that it is right to fight on behalf of earthly kingdoms (when necessary to counter evil and destruction).

Romans 13:3-4 grants governments the right to use force to restrain and punish evil
Paul writes: “For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil.”

Here Paul affirms the government’s right to use force in two ways. First, he says that it “does not bear the sword for nothing.” Second, he states that government is a “minister of God” when it executes vengeance against evildoers.

Governments, of course, do not have the right to use force for any purpose whatsoever. They do not have the right to use force in order to lord it over their citizens and impose unnecessary restraints upon freedom. There are two purposes for which this text says the government is justified in using force: the restraint of evil and the punishment of evil. The purpose of force is not just to prevent further evil from happening, but to punish evil acts by bringing the perpetrators to justice. Government is acting as a “minister of God” when it serves as “an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil.”

Does the right of the sword in this text extend to the case of war? The immediate context does have in mind the use of physical force in regard to a government’s own citizens. But by extension this also implies that if one nation commits an act of war against another nation, the offended nation has the right to engage in self-defense and to avenge the wrong. Would it be consistent to say that a nation has a right to restrain and punish evil committed against it by its own citizens, but not to restrain and punish evil committed against it by another nation? The mere fact that the civil offense was committed by another country does not remove their accountability to the country they attacked.

1 Peter 2:13-4 confirms the teaching of Romans 13:3-4
In 1 Peter 2:13-14, we are taught: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.” Once again, the right of governments to punish evil is affirmed.

Is it right for a Christian to fight in a war?
Since the Scriptures teach that it is right for a nation to engage in a just war, it follows that it is therefore right for a Christian to fight in such a war. Some have argued that non-Christians may fight in wars but believers may not, but this distinction is not found in Scripture. Scripture teaches that it is not sin for a government to engage in a just war, and there is therefore nothing that forbids Christian from being involved in just wars.

Church and state must be distinguished
It is very important, however, to remember here the distinction between church and state. The Christian fights in a war not as an ambassador of the church or on behalf of the church, but as an ambassador of his country. The church is not to use violence (John 18:36), but the government at times may (John 18:36; Romans 13:3-4; etc.). So the Christian fights not as an agent of the church, but as an agent of the government of his country. Both are ultimately under the authority of God, but each has a distinct role.

What about turning the other cheek?
What, now, are we to make of Jesus’ radical commands in Matthew 5:39-41? “Do not resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone wants to sue you, and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. And whoever shall force you to go one mile, go with him two.” How does this fit with what we have seen above?

First, we need to clarify what the problem is not. The problem is not that Jesus appears to be telling us to lie down and let evil overtake us. That is clearly not what he is saying. Instead, he is telling us what it looks like “not [to] be overcome by evil, but [to] overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). We have all seen the wisdom of Jesus’ words here in our everyday lives. Much of the time, the most effective way to overcome evil is by not resisting. If someone says a mean word, it is far more effective to respond with kindness than with another mean word in return. If someone tries wrongly to cut you off on the freeway, it is usually best just to let them do it. If we would learn these principles, our lives would be much more peaceful and, ironically, we would be vindicated more often.

So the problem is not that it looks as though Jesus is telling us to let evil steam-roll over us. The problem is that it looks like Jesus is telling us that the only way we should ever seek to overcome evil is by letting it go and responding with kindness. It looks as though he leaves no place for using force in resisting evil.

Part of the answer to this difficulty lies in understanding the hyperbolic nature of much of the Sermon on the Mount. I don’t think that Jesus is telling us never to respond to evil with force (such as in self-defense) or always to literally turn the other cheek when we are slapped any more than his command later in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:6 means that we should only pray when we are completely alone or his command in 5:29 means that some should literally gouge out their eyes. Jesus himself drove the thieves away from the temple with a whip (John 2:15) and Paul at times insisted on his rights as a Roman citizen (Acts 25:11; cf. also the interesting instance of 16:35-40). Jesus is using hyperbole to illustrate what our primary disposition and attitude should be, not to say that we should literally give in to every attempt to do evil against us. That is part of the answer.

The main part of the answer, however, lies in remembering that Jesus is speaking primarily to individuals. He is not mainly addressing governments here, but is primarily speaking at the personal level. This text, then, shows that an individual’s primary response to evil should be to “turn the other cheek,” while the other texts we have seen (e.g., Romans 13:3-4) show that government’s God-given responsibility is to punish those who commit civil crimes (murder, terrorism, acts of war, etc.). While it is sometimes appropriate even for individuals to use self-defense, it is never appropriate for individuals to seek to punish others. But it is right, however, for governments both to take measures of self-defense and to execute retribution.

There are, in other words, various “spheres” of life. God has willed that some spheres include responsibilities that are not necessarily included in other spheres. Personally, it would be wrong for us to execute retribution on people who harm us. But passages like Romans 13:3-4 and John 18:36 show that Jesus is not denying governments the right to execute retribution on evildoers. Therefore, when a Christian is under the authority of the government and authorized to fight in a just war on the nation’s behalf, it is appropriate for him to fight. For he is not fighting as a private individual, but as a representative of the government to which God has given the power of the sword.

In doing so, a Christian soldier should strive to love one’s opponents in war as people, remembering that he opposes them as agents of the opposing government/system, not as private individuals. When at war, we need to look at people in the opposing army/terrorist group at two levels–the private, and governmental/public. Because of the private level, the soldier should pray for and love the opposing soldiers. And because of the public level, the soldier fights against them–not as private individuals, but as public representatives of the system and evil that is being opposed. That distinction, I am sure, would be hard to maintain in battle. Neither would it remove the pain and difficulty of being involved in fighting against other human beings. But it is perhaps a faint reflection of how the personal and governmental spheres overlap and involve one another while still remaining distinct.