Don’t Be An Idiot!

How Jesus Helps Us Resist Culture’s Stupefying Forces (Part 1)

By Thaddeus Williams      

On the What’s Hot and What’s Not List of our culture today, reason is somewhere in the sub-zero temperatures of the Arctic. Deep thinking and the disciplines required to sustain a vibrant life of the mind are not “in.” Our reasoning powers—given by God for His glory—are under threat from many fronts. I briefly highlight four: 

1. “Doctrinal Doo-Doo”

On one side our minds are threatened by the kind of faith captured in the words of a popular worship leader:

The Lord is saying, ‘I’m bypassing your mind and going straight to your heart’ [because] the heart is what matters to the Lord.

It is as if our minds somehow don’t matter to the God who made them. In this anti-intellectual landscape Christian celebrities shout, “Don’t give me that doctrinal doo-doo! I don’t care about it” (an actual quote from Paul Crouch, founder of TBN). We end up in what George Barna describes as America’s “crisis of biblical illiteracy,” in which over 50% of graduating high school seniors think that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, 12% of Americans think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, and over 50% cannot name the four gospels. 

2. “The Science of Arresting Human Intelligence”

In addition to this anti-reason rendition of faith, our God-infused intellects are under assault by the “I consume, therefore I am” worldview. Big businesses pour billions into advertising, which has been well-defined by Stephen Leacock as “the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” The advertising genius behind the Jolly Green Giant, Marlboro Man, and Tony the Tiger, Leo Burnett counsels, "Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.” Experts have estimated that over sixteen thousand advertisements bombard the average American in a given day (The Consuming Passion: Christianity & Consumer Culture, ed. Rodney Clapp, InterVarsity). That’s nearly six million simple, memorable, inviting, and fun things each year clamoring over the voice of reason.

Lexus, for example, has advertised four thousand pounds of moving metal with the slogan, “Whoever said money can’t buy happiness isn’t spending it right.” Axe Body Spray sells canisters of cheap cologne with ads of scrawny white kids running down the beach hounded by a heaving army of scantily clad models. Carl’s Jr. sells burgers with Paris Hilton drizzling a Six Dollar Burger over her electrical tape bikini. With such ads, it is not reason that sells units.

3. “Media Hyperactive Ignoramuses”

We could also list entertainment among the forces stupefying our God-given intellects. Who knows how many brain cells are spent passing levels in the virtual worlds of video gaming, or how many of our great ideas get swept away with the endless flow of streaming movies and viral videos? As my friend and colleague Doug Groothuis observes:

This media milieu leads a generation of well-informed and media hyperactive ignoramuses. This idea of being simultaneously well-informed and ignorant is not contradictory. Having information dancing around in one's mind-usually factoids or sound bites-is not the same as possessing knowledge.

Novelist Chuck Palaunuik (author of Fight Club) was right to observe that, “The question of our generation is not ‘what’s the ultimate meaning of existence?’ but ‘what [movie is] that from?’” Or as my favorite Radiohead T-shirt reads, “Most people gaze neither into the past or the future; they explore neither truth nor lies. They gaze at the Television.”

4. “Death to the Mind”

As if religion, advertising, and entertainment weren’t enough to lull us into an intellectual slumber, there are powerful worldviews at work in our culture to do the same. There has been an influx of Eastern perspectives telling us that our minds are not a gift from God but our biggest obstacle to enlightenment. There is the legacy of gurus like Rajneesh whose “goal is to create a new man, one who is happily mindless,” and Timothy Freke’s Zen Wisdom focused on “wiping off the dirt of intellect.”

Then there are certain atheistic worldviews in which our origins are traced not to a thinking Being but to mindless matter. We are told that we are “just an aggregate of trillions of cells” (Jean Ronstand), “a self-compulsive bundle of 126 instincts” (William Costello), “a kind of miscarriage of the ape” (I.I. Metchnikoff), “a digestive tube,” (Pierre Cabanis), “the wholly physical outcome of a purely physical process” (Paul Churchland), “packages of tepid, half-rotted viscera” (Louis-Ferdinand Celine), and our “beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms” (Bertrand Russell). Look long and hard into this worldview and you will find little reason to be reasonable. As Charles Darwin asked,

Can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws … grand conclusions?

Darwin asks a great question. Can you really trust a mind that is not a truth-knowing mechanism gifted to you by a Mindful Being, but a mere survival mechanism put in you by a mindless process?

"The Mind of Christ"

Religious and secular, eastern and western voices in our day have all joined in the mantra of hippie icon, Timothy Leary, chanting, “Death to mind!” What is urgently needed to reverse our slow descent into idiocracy is Christ-followers who are passionately serious about developing “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). Rather than Leary’s “Death to the mind!” as a means to self-liberation, Jesus calls us to foster the life of the mind as a means of God-glorification.

How specifically does Jesus model a vibrant intellectual life for those of us trying to resist the brain-freezing forces of our culture? Stay tuned for Part 2 of “Don’t Be An Idiot!”

REFORMATION DAY CHALLENGE 2012:

Help Write the 95 Theses of the Re:Reformation

By Thaddeus Williams 

October 31^st is fast approaching—a sacred day for costume stores trying to justify their ongoing existence and dads looking to raid our kids’ plastic pumpkins for a sugar fix. It is also a very special day for those of us who love the Gospel. Why? Because October 31^st is Reformation Day. 495 years ago this October 31^st a young German theology professor carried a hammer and parchment to the door of the Wittenberg Church and hammered his 95 Theses into the wood. They were 95 points at which Martin Luther questioned whether the church of his day was living in synch with the Scriptures. With no Facebook or blog posts to get people thinking about life’s big questions, Luther, like many professors in his day, posted on the next best thing—a church door (Al Gore would not invent the internet for another 470 years!). Rather than opening an app and refreshing their News Feeds, people would congregate around Europe’s church doors to read and discuss the latest posts. Luther’s post got Wittenberg and (with help from the newly invented printing press) most of Europe buzzing with questions about where the 16^th century church had veered off biblical course. The Reformation was in motion. 

Here’s some samples from Luther’s world-altering post:

“Thesis 27: There is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of the purgatory immediately when the money clinks in the bottom of the chest…” (In response to John Tetzel selling indulgences with the catchphrase ‘”As soon as the coin in the coffer rings the soul from purgatory springs.”)

“Thesis 36: Any Christian whatsoever, who is truly repentant, enjoys plenary remission from penalty and guilt, and this is given him without letters of indulgence…” (Signaling Luther’s shift from understanding salvation as something that could be purchased to a free gift from a gracious God.)

“Thesis 62: The true treasure of the church is the Holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God…” (Luther’s response to the Roman Catholic notion of a “Treasury of Merits,” a treasure chest in heaven full of the surplus good deeds performed by Jesus, Mary, and the Saints that the pope could allegedly reach into and credit to your spiritual account if you paid him.)

As we approach Reformation Day, let’s keep Luther’s tradition alive. He had the cutting edge, world-shrinking technology of his day—Gutenberg’s printing press—to help people seek biblical answers to church problems. We have an internet to do the same. He lived with a church in dire need of Reformation. We live with a church in dire need of Re:Reformation.

So allow me to welcome you to the Reformation Day Challenge 2012 to help fuel urgently needed conversations about God and His mission in the church world. Four quick guidelines:

1.  Let’s come up with at least 95 Theses by the time Reformation Day 2012 arrives (October 31^st).

2. The core question you should try to answer in whatever theses you contribute is: What ways has the 21^st century church strayed most dangerously off course from God’s Word and how can we get back on course?

3. Please post your thesis or theses (you are NOT limited to just one) in the comments sections under this post.

4. Let’s keep ‘em biblical folks!

I’ll get our conversation started by offering a first Thesis of Re:Reformation:

RR Thesis 1: As Re:Reformers let’s strive by the Spirit’s power to make glorifying the enormously huge and incomparably worship-worthy God of the Bible our most fundamental and driving passion in all things! (See Ps. 96:8a; Eph. 1:3-14; 2 Thes. 1:12a; Rom. 11:36b.) We confess letting relevance to culture replace reverence for God at the center of our church systems.

Now it’s your turn. 94 Theses to go! I’ll close with the opening line penned by Luther over his 95 Theses. Luther began: “Out of love and concern for the truth, and with the object of eliciting it…” So out of love for truth and with the goal of eliciting truth in how we do church in the 21^st century, post away!

Viva Re:Reformation!

To stay connected to the conversation please follow on Twitter (tap the icon on the left) and/or share this post with friends in your network!

THE SECRET TO BECOMING IRRELEVANT:

SPEND ALL YOUR TIME TRYING TO BECOME RELEVANT!

By Thaddeus Williams

“10 YEARS LATER AND WORSE”

The Peace and Love Hippie Hostel is one of Paris’ most budget-friendly, a dingy sanctuary for under-showered backpackers. It was there that I met Derrick. Derrick didn’t believe in organized religion. Derrick didn’t believe in unorganized religion. He didn’t believe in God, holy books, or that there was any transcendent meaning to the human story. Derrick believed in Marijuana, and that Marijuana alone gave life meaning. One factor that drove Derrick to find meaning in chemicals rather than Christ was, quite frankly, Christ’s people—the church. In Derrick’s own words, “Whatever the world can do, Christians can do ten years later and worse.” He went on to cite Christian music, movies, literature, and church trends that struck him as derivative, contrived, inauthentic, shallow, and kitsch. The version of life’s meaning coming from the Christian mainstream seemed utterly irrelevant to Derrick. The big irony was how so many of these Christian endeavors were aimed precisely at being relevant to guys like Derrick. The harder the church tried to be relevant, the more irrelevant she became.             

There’s something about achieving irrelevance in our quest for relevance that is just so typically human. We find our efforts achieving opposite results at every turn. The harder we try to achieve happiness, spending all our time and energy making our three best friends—Me, Myself, and I—happy, the more dismally unhappy we become. The harder we try to fit in, the more we feel self-conscious and out-of-place. The more bent we are on creating a utopian heaven-on-earth, the more hell-on-earth we unleash. The Bible is full of this upside down logic. Cling to your own life and you will lose yourself. Lift yourself up and you will end up low. Seek first place and you will finish last. Human logic says “To move forward push the gas pedal to the floor.” Divine logic reminds us that, although we are moving full speed, the transmission is in reverse. The self-clingers lose themselves, the prideful end up humbled, those jostling to be first end last, and, now it seems, those trying the hardest to be relevant end up most irrelevant.

THE RELEVANCE QUESTION           

Behind this irony lies a question that is both good and dangerous. It is what we may call the “Relevance Question,” which asks: What would it look like for us, as believers, to be relevant to unbelievers? We don’t want the Derricks of the world to see us as a quirky tribe of xenophobes. We don’t want to look crazy and cultic to outsiders. So in answering the Relevance Question we usually come up with a projection of what we think those unbelievers out there are like. Once we think we’ve got a good grip on the tastes and preferences of our unbelieving target demographic, we take the Relevance Question further: we reinvent how we do Christianity so that what we’re selling coincides with what they’re buying. As perceived demand shapes what we supply, innovative church models begin to emerge. We exodus from the old and dead to the new and vibrant. We re-infuse the story of Christian meaning with fresh power. We make Jesus relevant again.  

Or do we?

Not according to Derrick and the many like him. Many end up feeling patronized and put-in-a-box. Even more tragically, they see Jesus as little more than another product for comfort and convenience. Why? Because we have manufactured a messiah no more worthy of worship than the latest luxury sedan or smart phone. With the Relevance Question as the first step in our journey, our final destination is irrelevance.

Sure God is big enough to make Himself relevant even when we are at our most irrelevant. Sure the Relevance Question has its place (e.g., Paul didn’t speak Hebrew on Mars Hill or cite the Stoic philosophers in the synagogues). The Relevance Question is a good question; it is just not to be the first question. When relevance is our first priority we end up powered not by the Spirit of Christ, but the spirit of the age. There is a more fundamental question we must face squarely together. Before asking what relevance looks like to this or that culture (or subculture), we must first ask “Who is the Jesus we exist to worshipfully reflect with our lives?” Let us call this the “Reflection Question.” Much of the tragicomedy of today’s church, the irrelevance of a movement waving the banner of relevance, can be traced to our allowing the Relevance Question to trump the Reflection Question.

WHEN RELEVENCE TRUMPS REFLECTION

I briefly highlight four effects of putting the Relevance Question ahead of the Reflection question:

1. We alienate anyone who doesn’t fit the bill. If we start with a drive to be relevant to postmoderns, then we become instantly irrelevant to anyone who still puts faith in science, still values logical propositions, or holds out hope for objective truth. If we assume that postmodernism is in the oval office of ideas in Western culture (and that’s debatable), there are still protesters in the streets who voted for the other guy. That’s not to mention people who couldn’t care less about modernism or postmodernism. Don’t all these people need the Gospel too?

2. We play a never-ending game of follow the leader. Like every other “ism” created by human minds, postmodernism’s days are numbered. One day the polls will come in and some new “ism” will be sworn into office—post-postmodernism. Eventually we will realize that our postmodern church is yesterday’s news, ask the Relevance Question all over again, and dream up a post-postmodern church. In this train-of-thought, the church has made herself the caboose, always trailing distantly behind culture. What’s even more of a problem is that culture itself has become the engine, pulling the church caboose along. Shouldn’t Jesus be our engine, and His Word the tracks we follow into the future?

3. We present a torn portrait of Jesus to the world. Postmoderns, so we are told, value the image over the word, narrative over prose, poetry over math, mystery over certainty, questions over answers, the relational over the rational. So the relevance-driven church follows suit. If post-postmodernism one day swings the pendulum back toward reason and objectivity, then what happens to the relevance-driven church? She packs her candles and icons in storage, swaps out story-telling time with serious study time, and replaces open questions with closed answers. Yet Christ is simultaneously relational and rational. He used stories and prose, words and images, mysteries and certainties, questions and answers. When we begin with the Relevance Question, we allow cultural trends to determine which few aspects of our multidimensional Christ the church expresses. Shouldn’t we be displaying a wider spectrum of Jesus’ radiance to the watching world?

4. We lose sight of the chief end of everything. The chief end not only of man, but of everything—waterfalls, education, subatomic particles, romance, art, science, food, sex, sleep, golfing, parenting, mountains, humor, tears, etc.— is to glorify God. Driven by the conviction that “the aim and final end of all music is none other than the glory of God” Johann Sebastian Bach created some of the most original, powerful, and beautiful music ever composed. Imagine, however, if he saw the “aim and final end of all music” as being relevant to a culture that likes music. What if the primary factor determining where Bach’s dots fell on the score sheet was not glorifying an infinite Being, but merely making something that people would like? Do you think that his music would have been as powerful? Me neither. When we put the Relevance Question first, yes, we will make art (if that’s what people want, of course). But there is a profound difference between the art motivated by adoration for God and that motivated by the approval of people. Anyone who has listened to both Handel’s Messiah and the latest Christian music mega-hit knows what I mean. Shouldn’t worship be the deepest motive behind every thought we think, word we speak, and sound we make?  

BECOMING TRULY SEEKER-SENSITIVE 
In sum: live a life of authentic reverence for Jesus and you become relevant to the watching world. Live your life to become relevant and you become both irreverent to Jesus and irrelevant to the watching world. Let me say again, the Relevance Question is a good question, it is just not to be the first question. Before we ruminate on how to reach seekers, we must focus on how to revere the Great Seeker, the God who seeks worshippers who worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). Christians exist to “ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name” (Ps. 96:8a). You exist “to the praise of His glory” (Eph. 1:12b, 14b), “so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you” (2 Thes. 1:12a), that your life and mine would shout together Paul’s anthem “to Him be glory forever” (Rom. 11:36b)!

VEGAS BABY, VEGAS: 

Looking for Jesus in All the Wrong Places

By Thaddeus Williams

Before there was Fifty Shades of Gray, before Hunger Games, before Harry Potter, there was the Bible—history’s undisputed bestseller (with over five billion copies more than its closest rival, Quotations From Chairman Mao). Yet human history’s bestseller is also the most distorted, misinterpreted, and misapplied literature in the history of our small race. The Bible has been what the Dutch theologian and astronomer Albert Pighius famously described as a proverbial “nose of wax,” molded and contorted to fit the profile of human traffickers, war mongerers, power-hungry religious institutions, and anyone else who wants to forge a divine signature of approval over their dehumanizing ideologies. As a free tip for aspiring cult-leaders: The best way to twist the Bible into divine warrant for your own agenda is to adopt an interpretive methodology that glosses over the original, historic, intended meaning of the text (e.g., the Inquisitors who burned heretics alive would have a hard time vindicating their actions as divinely sanctioned if they took seriously what Jesus actually meant when he said “Love your enemies”). How many historical travesties unleashed under the waving banner of “Thus sayeth the Lord” could have been averted if people actually took the time and did the historical homework to hear what the Lord actually did “sayeth?” As French philosopher and math whiz Blaise Pascal reminds us, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction."

I was recently reminded of just how waxy we can make the Bible when reading the following words of a popular teacher: “There are several levels of understanding in the Bible. You can just read it and understand what it says on the surface, but there’s a whole lot deeper stuff, like these Bible codes.” If the devil published a warfare manual I wouldn’t be surprised to find these words inside: “Sidetrack people from studying the messages the Enemy has spoken by sending them on wild goose chases for secret messages the Enemy has not spoken. To get them hooked for the chase, convince them the secret messages are God-spoken and add a heavy dose of sensationalism and end-of-the-world insight.”

Consider a case-in-point. The same teacher cited above calling us to “a whole lot deeper stuff” went on to popularize the notion that God has revealed the “gospel story in stone” in the structure of Egypt’s Great Pyramid. He conjectures:

·  The 153 steps of the narrow way match the 153 fishes gathered in John 21:11, which may be a reference to all nations of the earth gathering into the kingdom of God (See John 21:11).

·  The king’s chamber is on the 50^th row of stones; 50 was the year of Jubilee (See Lev. 25:11)….

·  Although most have been torn off, the pyramid was originally covered with 144,000 polished casing stones, the number of witnesses in Revelation 7…

·  The cornerstone at the top is missing, symbolic of Christ, the rejected chief cornerstone (Dan. 2:45; Ps. 118:22; Matt. 21:42; Mk 10:12). The 5-sided cornerstone may represent the number of grace.

Let’s apply the same methodology this teacher uses with the Great Pyramid to another great pyramid: Las Vegas’ Luxor Hotel and Casino. I have found the following striking parallels (that I want you to know about before my front-page findings hit the press). Brace yourself:

·  The casino/gambling area of the Luxor is 120,000 square feet. 120,000 was the same number of Midianite troops who fell at the hand of Gideon, Israel’s deliverer in Judges 8:10.

·  The Luxor houses an Imax theatre with a 7-story screen. With 7 loaves of bread Jesus fed about 4,000 men (coincidentally there are approximately 4,000 rooms and suites in the Luxor hotel), after which the disciples collected 7 basketfuls of leftovers (Luke 15:35-38). 7 may also represent the number of completion or fulfillment.

·  Like the Great Pyramid, the Luxor also has no cornerstone. Moreover, the tip of the Luxor pyramid emits the brightest beam of light in the world. Christ, the rejected chief cornerstone (Dan. 2:45; Ps. 118:22; Matt. 21:42; Mk. 10:12) repeatedly claimed to be the “light of the world” (see John 8:12, 9:5, 12:40).

The point is this: the “gospel story” is no more contained in Egypt’s Great Pyramid than it is in Las Vegas’ Luxor Hotel and Casino. It’s right where it has been for thousands of years—the Bible. Jesus never sat down with a secret decoder ring to count Hebrew letters in a hunt for hidden messages, or tallied steps and stones to decipher gospel truths. Jesus studied and taught the plain Scriptures, and so must the church in the 21^st century. We must prayerfully and diligently do our homework to discover and apply what God and the forty human authors he enlisted to tell His story are actually saying. Let us not get distracted by esoteric fun and games. I’ll close with a salient reminder from Bible scholar, J. Paul Tanner:  

“The so called Bible code has no biblical warrant and is not substantiated when carefully examined….People do not need some “biblical crossword puzzle.” Instead they need to read and meditate on the revealed truths of God’s holy Word. They need to be engaged in Bible Study to learn the marvelous truths that God has revealed, rather than being diverted by the speculative counting of letters” (“Decoding The Bible Code,” in Biblioteca Sacra, vol. 157:626, April-June 2000, 159).

MORTIFICATION: 
7 PHASES ALONG THE SIN-KILLING CONTINUUM
by Thaddeus Williams

Mortification (noun): The Spirit-powered process of killing all of our propensities for sinful, self-destructive pleasures that compete for superior pleasure in the all-satisfying God.

If we care about living then sin-killing (or the old school word “mortification”) is something we cannot afford to ignore: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13 cf. Gal. 5:16-25). Sin-killing in the believer's life may be thought of along a 7-phase continuum that looks something like this (try to figure out where you sit along this continuum):

Phase 1—My sin is no big deal. I’m not at war against the sarx (Paul’s word for our "flesh" or "sin nature"). Life by the flesh doesn’t lead to death or rob me of superior pleasure in God.

Phase 2—The “flesh” (sarx) does lead to death, enjoying God really is superior to sin’s short-lived pleasures, and I need to do something about it. But the “flesh” is a general faceless problem. I’m not sure what specific shapes it takes in my own life.

Phase 3—Oh, those are specific outward manifestations of sarx in my life. I’ll focus on those behaviors—the gossip, the pornography addiction, the lying to paint myself in a better light, or whatever. All I need is a few me-powered self-help measures to kill those specific sinful behaviors.

Phase 4—Wait, there is something way deeper going on here. My behavior-correcting tactics are not actually killing my sin. These bad fruits must have bad roots. I can’t change the bad fruits—the behaviors—I need to get to the root of those behaviors, which is my messed up heart. I’ll try that on my own (rather than letting others see the gnarly sin skeletons living in my heart’s closet).

Phase 5—Ok, so my isolated, solo, self-help efforts aren’t getting me anywhere. I’ll take the sin in my heart’s closet out into the light of community. I’ll enlist trusted fellow Christians as allies in this battle, maybe join an accountability group. That should guarantee victory.

Phase 6—Knowing I’m at war against forces that destroy my joy in God, knowing what the specific tanks are in my life, knowing those tanks are not outward behaviors as much as they are in my heart, knowing my spit-shooter self-help techniques are no match for this internal enemy, inviting others to help me wage war—Check, check, check, and check. But I still haven’t made my sin die. I need supernatural sin-killing power here! I will pray persistently, calling in the divine air support of the Holy Spirit, like a supernatural F-16, to blast these internal evils to smitherines (and get my fellow Christian allies to pray the same).

Phase 7—I have been prayerfully relying on God’s power, the power of Christ's cross, the power of the omnipotent Spirit as I strive to kill sin, and sin is actually being killed! Not ‘yay me!’ but all praise and thanks to the sovereign God who changed my heart!

So… 

...at which phase of this continuum do you find yourself? 

Wherever you are MOVE AHEAD! Why? Because as John Owen reminds us in his classic work, The Mortification of Sin, “Kill sin, or sin will be killing you!” Don’t let your sin drop bombs on your joy in God without relentlessly blasting back in the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.

“The vigor, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh…All other ways of mortification are vain… it must be done by the Spirit… Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world… A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.” -John Owen, The Mortification of Sin

Death to sin!

Joy to You!

Glory to God!

Free Song: Gottschalk

Click the song title below to listen:

Gottschalk
by Thaddeus Williams 

Renegade German monk in cell

Driven insane by the holy vicar's minions.

All is well, all is well with your soul.

All is well with your soul.

Bring on your forces.

Bring on your chains.

Bring on your power.

Bring on your pain.

Death at my door.

Sophia stay home

'Cause my consolation

Is a crown and a throne.

Bring on your forces.

Bring on your chains.

Bring on your power.

Bring on your pain.