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Gil Trusty passed me this article by author Eric Metaxas which challenges us to think hard about how we feel about cultural events such as the recent Noah movie. The whole thing is good, so I decided to repost it in its entirety. Enjoy:

In 532 A.D., a series of riots pitting the supporters of two different chariot racing teams, the “Greens” and the “Blues,” nearly toppled the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian. The Nika riots resulted in 30,000 deaths and half of Constantinople being burned or otherwise destroyed.

If it sounds like these people took popular entertainment far too seriously, well, you might Google “Noah” and “Christian.”

As several colleagues of mine have pointed out, the level of vituperation among Christians over Darren Aronofsky’s film is “nuts.” In the most-recent high-profile salvo, a theologian accused Christian leaders who endorsed the film of missing “a blatantly Gnostic subversion of the biblical story when it was right in front of their faces.”

This of course prompted denials and retorts from those being criticized. As my BreakPoint colleague Roberto Rivera put it, “and the wheels on the bus go round and round.”

As Roberto pointed out in a recent column at BreakPoint online, what’s missing in all the back-and-forth “is any consideration about why Christians should be so invested in what comes out of Hollywood.”

He’s not saying that we shouldn’t take note of what the entertainment industry is up to. Of course not. Given its outsized role in our culture, to ignore it would be folly. Nor is he saying that we shouldn’t be prepared to praise the good stuff and criticize the rest.

But he is saying that we shouldn’t look to the entertainment industry for validation of our beliefs and way of life. And that, sadly, is what too many of us are doing. We long to see ourselves—or an idealized version of ourselves—on the screen. Like Sally Field said at the Oscars 30 years ago, we want to say “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me.”

But while Field was being humorous, many of us aren’t.

What makes this especially unfortunate is that mass entertainment is, almost by design, intended to be a substitute for the Christian worldview that answered what Brad S. Gregory, a historian at Notre Dame, has called the “Life Questions.”

According to Gregory, consumerism, including the consumption of mass media, grew out of the rejection of Christian ideas about the good life and human flourishing. As he put it, we have exchanged the “good life” for the “goods life.”

These “goods” aren’t limited to cars, houses, and electronics. They include mass media: TV, music, movies and the internet. Even more than tangible “stuff,” mass media distracts us from the emptiness and the purposelessness of much of modern, post-Christian existence.

That’s why “people who couldn’t begin to tell you about the biblical Noah can talk your ears off about ephemeral pop culture matters.” In many instances, it’s the only thing they can talk about.

There are of course exceptions. Some films and TV can serve as illustrations of Christian themes and “conversation starters.” But as my friend says, “the goal of such illustrations and conversation starters should be to direct people’s primary gaze away from the screen (of whatever size) and toward the places where the ‘Life Questions’ are supposed to be answered,” such as in scripture and worship—not to mention in fellowship and in acts of service.

So let’s leave the online rioting to fans of chariot racing.

I love to promote and spread the stories of people in the “Young Adults” age who are abroad serving the Lord. One of our friends (and Young Adults fellowship members) on the mission field is Julianne Heilman, serving in Entebe, Uganda. If you aren’t aware of her blog, I recommend you check it out and keep up with her at http://juliannesjourneys.wordpress.com.

Here’s part of her latest posts:

There are many ways of sharing the love of Jesus with children. I want to do them all, consistently, day by day. I want to be a permanent part of their lives. To see them when they wake up. To feed them, bathe them, play with them, help with their homework. Tuck them in bed as they fall asleep. I don’t want to just see them on Saturday or just in the classroom once a day. I don’t want to just give them a hug once in awhile. I want to be a mother to those children who have no one to give them a mother’s love. I want to be their best friend that they can trust with all that is in their little hearts.

This is how I want to help bring them to Jesus.

I think the Lord has formed this desire because He is making a way for it to come to pass. Please pray that His will be done in my life. I long to give my life to His children here in Uganda who need Him so much.

I had a small glimpse of what this could be like last Friday evening. The church was having an evangelistic outreach in the market beside the church for Easter. We had praise and worship music with a skit about the death and resurrection of Jesus and a message from one of the pastors.

It was after dark and it became quite cold because we were by the lake. One little friend came to sit next to me. She was a bit shy, but I could tell she was chilly, so I began rubbing her back. She slowly moved closer and let me keep my arm around her when she realized she was much warmer that way.

Then, she took me by surprise be taking my hand in hers and holding it. A few minutes later, she took my other hand and we sat like that for about an hour. I was so surprised and happy.

I know this little girl does not have a mother. I know she does not have a father. She stays with her older sister with a woman who she calls Jjaja (grandmother). She needs a mother’s love and she needs a father’s love to teach her of the love of her Heavenly Father. I pray that God will bring her into a family that will cherish her.

I am blessed that I got to share a bit of love that evening. And I pray it will continue.

Please, do not hinder the children from coming to Jesus, but rather do whatever it is that you can to help them become part of His kingdom, no matter how small it may seem.

You can read the rest of this post, and all the others, at Precious in His Sight.

Tonight we’ll have Scott Cunningham, who is an assistant pastor at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa and director of the School of Worship at CCCM as well. He’ll be here to lead worship and share with us, along with two of his daughters, Madison and Rileigh, who accompany him.

Check out his website here. Scott is a long time worship leader and pastor on the west coast, and we’re excited to have him here.

For a preview of his flavor, here’s Scott and Madison leading at another Calvary (seriously, this song is beautiful, and you should go to his music page and listen to the studio recording too…):

And here’s another great video of Madison and Rileigh doing their thing:

In this post I wanted to highlight a couple of resources that are helpful if you’d like to study the bible’s teaching on evil and original sin.  I discovered them a couple months ago, and, even though they are pretty dense and academic–so you might find them tough going–if you want to do a thorough, detailed study of scripture’s teachings in the area and their implications, they will repay your efforts and help you think more biblically, and more hopefully, about the problems we face in this world. They are by a French theology teacher named Henri Blocher (pronounced, I believe, “Ahn-RAY Bloo-SHAY”). The first is his book Evil and the Cross: An Analytical Look at the Problem of Pain. In this short, closely reasoned book, Blocher looks at all the different explanations which philosophers and theologians have given for evil, and how they fall short. In the final chapter he gives a look at the biblical answer. His conclusion–which is that while we may not be able to understand the origin of evil, we are shown its final end–is summed up nicely in this paragraph from the book:

“Evil is conquered as evil because God turns it back upon itself. He makes the supreme crime, the murder of the only righteous person, the very operation that abolishes sin. The maneuver is utterly unprecedented. No more complete victory could be imagined. God responds in the indirect way that is perfectly suited to the ambiguity of evil. He entraps the deceiver in his own wiles. Evil, like a judoist [a Judo fighter], takes advantage of the power of good, which it perverts; the Lord, like a supreme champion, replies by using the very grip of the opponent. So is fulfilled the surprising verse; ‘With the pure you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you show yourself perverse.’”

The biblical cry about evil, he says, turns from “Why, God?” to “How long, O Lord?”–and it is there we find the hope he offers.

Secondly, here are links to five lectures Blocher did on the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. These are academic (and he has a thick French accent) so they may be tough going at times, but he really does a good job of opening up the Bible’s teaching on the subject. Let me know if you find these helpful!

• Lecture #1 – Original Sin as Taught in Holy Scripture
• Lecture #2 – Original Sin as Adamic Event
• Lecture #3 – Discerning Paul’s Mind on Adam’s Role
• Lecture #4 – Original Sin as a Key to Human Experience
• Lecture #5 – Original Sin as Propagated and Broken

Why did Methuselah live so long? Nathan Busenitz says it’s all because of God’s mercy:

A Short Reflection on the Man Who Lived the Longest

Anyone who’s ever played Bible trivia knows that Methuselah lived longer than anyone else. He died at the ripe old age of 969. But have you ever wondered why?

Putting aside all of the environmental factors of a pre-Flood world (where lifetimes lasted a lot longer than they do today), I’m convinced the answer has more to do with the character of God than the physical constitution or health consciousness of Methuselah.

When Methuselah was born, the text of Genesis 5 indicates that his father Enoch began to walk with God in earnest (Gen. 5:21–22). Many commentators believe that it was during the time of Methuselah’s birth that God revealed to Enoch the reality of the coming Flood—which is why Enoch spent the next three centuries warning the world around him of God’s impending retribution (Jude 14-15).

Methuselah’s name can be translated as either “man of the javelin” or “man of the sending forth.” It is likely, especially given the context of Genesis 5–6, that his name referred to the reality of God’s coming judgment—a global Flood that would be sent forth with sudden force and destruction. The further implication is that divine wrath would not fall until after Methuselah died. (Some scholars even render the meaning of his name as “his death shall bring forth.” )

Methuselah lived 969 years. If you add up the length of time between Methuselah’s birth and Noah entering the ark (187+182+600), it is also 969 years. That means, in the very year Methuselah died, the Flood was sent forth like a javelin on the earth.

So why did God allow Methuselah to live for so many years—longer than anyone else in human history?

I believe it was as an illustration of His incredible patience. The fact that Methuselah lived almost 1,000 years demonstrates the longsuffering nature of God. From the time God revealed the reality of that judgment to Enoch, it was almost a millennium before raindrops of wrath started to fall in the days of Noah.

Methuselah’s long lifetime fits with Peter’s depiction of God’s patience in 2 Peter 3. After discussing the Flood (in vv. 5-6), the apostle writes in verses 8-9:

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

So, next time someone asks you, What’s the name of the oldest man in the Bible? Don’t just answer “Methuselah” as if his age were merely some trivial factoid. Instead, consider the fact that 969 years is a really long time—not just for any one man to live, but for a holy God to be patient with a rebellious planet.

“The cross had to be carried and endured before it could be preached. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not to clarify the concept of sacrifice. He did not come to teach about the cross, but to be nailed to it. He came that there might be a gospel to preach…

Sin dug a gulf in a relationship. The cross bridged it.

Sin resulted in estrangement. The cross reconciled it.

Sin made war. The cross made peace.

Sin broke fellowship. The cross repaired and restored it.”

–Thomas Oden

How does scripture describe what it meant for Jesus to come from glory and travel all the way to what we call “Good Friday,” the day when he was crucified? Here’s a very thoughtful and sobering look at the journey he took to retrieve us from the far country:

The humbling of the eternal Son proceeded in a long sequence of ever-lowering stages culminating in death and burial. Each step is an historical event told in the Gospels as a real and true narrative of a fully human life. Taken together, key events of the humiliation of the Son reported in Scripture are pictured as this poignant sequence of ever-lowering steps:

Being in the very nature God
He does not grasp for the equality with God due Him
He empties Himself
He voluntarily gives up unbroken independent exercise of the divine attributes
He is conceived by the Holy Spirit
He is born of a poor virgin in a humble manger
He was born a Jew, a son of the law
He was made one gender on behalf of two, a man, born of a woman
He willingly took the form of a servant
He first became a child
He become subject to human growth and development
He was circumcised signifying subjection to law though He was Giver of the law
He was made like His brothers in every way that He might make atonement
He humbled Himself
He became obedient
He became voluntarily subject to instruction by parents
He worked in economic subjection lacking property
He was a common laborer in a manual occupation
He voluntarily subjected Himself to the teachers of the law
He faced all the ordinary discomforts of human finitude
He took up our human infirmities
He was despised and rejected by men
He endured the reproaches and ill-treatment by others
He was a man of sorrows, familiar with grief
He faced suffering of body, mind, and spirit
He endured political subjection to unjust political authority
He became obedient, even unto death
Even the death of the cross
He experienced the abandonment of His followers
He became a cruse for us, dying “outside the camp”
He was buried in a borrowed grave
He descended into the nether world to preach to the captives

Each step descended further than the previous one. It was an ever narrowing descent from heaven to hell. In sum He as Son of God humbled Himself in every conceivable way. He became obedient to reveal the true nature of humanity amid the dreadful conditions of the history of sin. In doing so He was prepared to serve as the representative of humanity in the Father’s presence, presenting to God the perfect obedience due from humanity (Rom. 6:14; 13:10).

What the law was powerless to do “God did in sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering” (Rom. 8:3). “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:2; Gal 3:13; 4:4-5)

Nowhere in nature is the heart of God so fully revealed as it is in the history of Jesus: “God’s transcendent power is not so much displayed in the vastness of the heavens, or the luster of the stars, or the orderly arrangement of the universe or His perpetual oversight of it, as in His condescension to our weak nature,” wrote Gregory of Nyssa. “We marvel at the way the Godhead was entwined in human nature and, while becoming man, did not cease to be God.”

–from Classic Christianity by Thomas Oden

Here’s an interesting article about how the Chinese government seems to be conducting a coordinated plan to demolish protestant churches, although they are officially denying it.

“Communist officials in China have denied waging a “demolition campaign” against churches in the country’s most Christian regions, after reportedly   ordering a dozen to be destroyed.

The other day, in a conversation with a Muslim friend, a question popped into my head and I asked him–“What’s it like for you to be a Muslim?” It struck me, at the moment, as kind of odd, in that I don’t think I’d ever thought to wonder that before. But it led to a great discussion, and I immediately realized, I was really interested in what the experience of being Muslim was like for him.

Over the last few days I’ve been mulling over the related question, turned back around at us. Shouldn’t we be able to answer, if someone asked us the same thing?

What about you? What would you say if a friend who didn’t believe in Christ turned to you and asked, “What’s it like for you to be a Christian?”

Great night last night with the Calvary Chapel Bible College Chapel Band. We also continued  our study of why Jesus matters, and what he shows us about God, humanity and life–this time by looking specifically at what he shows us about humanity. Here are the notes:

Intro: Jesus, the image of God, and what a human really is.

Jesus is the true Image of God: Hebrews 1:1-3, Colossians 1:15
Humans are made in the image of God: Genesis 1:26
We are being conformed into the image of the son: Romans 8:28-29, 2 Corinthians 3:18-6, 1 Corinthians 15:49

Looking at these scriptures, we can see that something about who Jesus is (as the incarnate Son of God) is fundamental to what it means to be human. In some way, who we were originally created to be is related to how Jesus as the Son is related to the Father. He is the image of God, and we are created according to the image of God. Possibly this means that we as humans are originally patterned after, not simply God, but God the Son. We were meant, on this earth, to image the Son’s place in the Godhead: to exercise rule over creation according to the will of the Father. This is part of what Jesus came to restore: the place of humanity both in its relation to God and its relation to creation.

So we put these facts together: The Son is the perfect image of the Father. Human beings were made in the image. Then, after sin has separated human beings from God, the Son comes as a human being. So when the Son, who is the image of God comes to be one of us, who are made in the image of God, we have this amazing opportunity to see what it meant for him to be human—and also (then) to see what it means for us to be human. Because when the perfect image of God comes and lives a life that perfectly pleases his Father, we can look at him and say, this is what a human is supposed to be!

This is important because we often get tempted to read about Jesus and think, “well, he’s God, so this doesn’t really apply to me.” And there are some parts of who Jesus is that operate this way. (Like his ability to control the weather, walk on water, or raise the dead, for instance.) But there are many parts of his life that we should probably see as just simply humanity as it was meant to be.

What Jesus shows us about what it means to be human.

Jesus shows us a humanity that is:

1. Led by the Spirit. (Luke 4:1, Romans 8:14)
2. Not defeated by sin. (Luke 4:1-13, Romans 6:14)
3. Totally free (from constraint, from anxiety, from compulsion—doing what he wants) (John 10:17-18, 14:31, John 8:31-36, Galatians 5:1)
4. ..and yet, totally submitted to the will of the Father (John 4:34, 6:38, Mark 3:35)
5. ..because he was in constant communion with the Father. (John 11:41-42, Romans 8:9, 2 Corinthians 13:14, Hebrews 13:5)
6. Living with purpose (Luke 19:10, John 18:37, John 17:18)
7. Knowing its future (Matthew 25:31-32; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:5)

This is not the whole story, but it is a beginning glimpse of who and what we were meant to be. By living as a real man, in our world, the Son of God showed us what humanity is supposed to be—in other words, he was displaying the image we were made in. He also showed us the pattern we are being conformed to now and for the future. His life is a picture of who and what God is making us to be. We are being shaped into this same image—we’re being made into this kind of human. And, since this kind of human is the true intention for humanity, you could say that we’re being made more truly human. You could also say that to move away from this picture of humanity Jesus showed us, to reject Jesus as the true Man, and to become some other kind of human, is to actually degrade our own humanity and choose something that is less than human.  (No leading of the Spirit; no spiritual life in them; defeated and enslaved to sin; bound by all kinds of outer constraints and inner anxieties; totally out of step with God and not doing his will; no communication with God; living without a true, transcendent purpose; totally unaware of eternal things or the future in store for the world and humanity.)

Jesus came to be what we never were, and to open the doorway for us to become what we were meant to be. He lived it out, and then died as if he hadn’t lived it, in our place, and then rose again to proclaim forgiveness for all our falling short and a new life for anyone who would believe.

In all of this, Jesus shows us a picture of God’s love—God is not the kind of God who would make us and then just throw us away as soon as we ruined ourselves. Instead, he was willing to go all the way to becoming one of us, to live and die as a human, in order to bring payment and forgiveness for the things that we ruined ourselves with, to show us and empower us to regain what we lost as a race, and to enable us to enjoy his good plan for us as individuals and as a human family.