1. I found this study interesting considering much talk about how the present postmodern generation tends to be less committed than previous generations.

Members of the Millennial generation are just as likely to open their wallets to charities as those born decades earlier . . . 

[Study] showed that young donors are as generous as those from older generations.

“We thought we would see some real differences, but giving across generations is not all that different,” says Edith Falk, chair and CEO of Chicago-based fundraising consultancy Campbell & Co.

. . . All other factors being equal, the study showed, the average giving level of Millennials is about the same as that of other generations.

2. Six Prayers God Always Answers (*Results May Vary) is a new book from Tyndale that explores some of the mysteries of prayer in a winsome and helpful way. In a chapter entitled “Prayers God Rarely Answers” the authors Mark Harringshaw and Jennifer Schuchmann say “Some questions get us in too deep, dredging up bottom filth that we never bargined for. Some questions are too big. Why is one of them.”

3. Theology Unplugged and Converse with Scholars. As we are anticipating some major “upgrades” here at Reclaiming the Mind, both TUP and CWS have been put on hold. Expect to continue to see them, but they will be more spuratic until the end of the Summer.

4. Pray for Ed Komoszewski. As you know, Ed has been such an important part of this ministry for some time now. He is also a dear friend. He has some serious health problems and is in need of prayer. As is the case whenever problems like this arise, there are many financial difficulties that he and his family are enduring. Please pray for this as well. I don’t want to share too many details here on the blog, but those of you who desire more details and would like to help, please let me know though email.

5. Bob Practico list the Top Ten Theological Scams.

6. Darth Vader Golfing:

7. Six reasons why Batman could take Yoda

1. Batman is taller.
2. Batman is smarter.
3. Batman would already know how to reverse the effect of the force.
4. The dark side would be mistaken for the Dark Knight and Yoda would compromise the code.
5. Yoda would simply be too scared to fight.
6. The anti-force alarm in the Batbelt.

8. Sproul on the difference between salvation and justification (love it!)

9. Was Noah’s flood local, global, parable, myth, or legend? What a conversation going on here.

Join Michael Patton, Rhome Dyck, and Greg Cromartie as they discuss the problem of the unforgivable sin.

 

 Theology Unplugged - Problem Passages 4 - The Unforgivable Sin [28:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I sat down with a young lady a couple of weeks ago and had a conversation. This was a conversation about faith—her faith. Better put, this was a conversation about a faith that once was and is no more. She was a very interesting and bright lady—inquisitive, well-read, and suspicious. She began by telling me that she was a Christian (past tense) and had since left the faith. Christ was once a part of her confession, but, as she recounted to me, after a long voyage of not finding sufficient answers for her doubts, she believes that she had no choice but to follow her own integrity and renounce Christ all together. I asked her what her problems were and she became very emotional. It was like I represented Christianity and she was ready to take it all out on me.

Ignorance. Pity. Shame. These are all good descriptions of what she thought of Christianity. But the primary description that I felt coming from here was “betrayal.” She had been betrayed by the Church because they duped her into a belief not unlike that of the tooth fairy. When she discovered this betrayal, no one had a valid answer or excuse. So she left. She is now an unbeliever—a soon-to-be evangelistic unbeliever.

One fascination, obsession, and focus (neurotic pulse?) I have in my life and ministry is with regard to those, like this young lady, who leave the faith. You may have noticed this. I have over a dozen books giving autobiographical sketches of those who once proclaimed to be Christian and are now evangelistic atheists, agnostics, or skeptics, with their goal to convert or, rather, unconvert others. I have been in contact with many people who either have already left or are on the verge of leaving. I get emails, phone calls, and visits from the same.

No, it is not a neurotic pulse. I believe that it is the recognition of an extremely serious issue that we are facing today. We are facing an epidemic in Christianity—an epidemic of unbelief among our own. Crowding our churches are those who are somewhere in the process of leaving. No, I am not talking about leaving a denomination. I am not talking about abandoning some institutionalized expression of Christianity. I am not talking about leaving the church (though related). And I am not even talking about renouncing religion. I am talking about those who are leaving Christ. Continue Reading »

As many of you may know, the blog was hacked and we lost most of the material due to corrupted files. As you can see, we have restored the blog up to a year ago, but as of right now, all the blogs for the last year are in the deep abyss.

If you happen to have any of the blog post from the last year, it would be great if you could post them here in the comments section. It really stinks to lose so much.

Stay tuned as we continue to try to recover.

Well, not me necessarily, but all Protestants. We Protestants really never know whether we are in or out with the Catholic Church. At one council it seems that we are damned to the fires of hell, and then, at another, we are “brethren,” separated, yet real brethren!

This all comes down to how the Catholic church is going to define their dogmatized phrase “outside the church [Roman Catholic Church] there is no salvation.” While Protestants often get blasted for our inability to agree on certain doctrines (rightly so in many cases), there is no less division among Catholics about what it means to be “outside the Church.”

Folks, I would like to know. My eternal life hangs in the balance.

On a more serious side-note, this does hamper Protestant/Catholic relations when it is believed that any non-Catholic is necessarily damned to hell (that is if they truly die a non-Catholic—more on this in a moment).

So, what do Catholics say? Continue Reading »

N.B. RMMers, this email is something that my little old gray-haired mother sent to a long-time friend recently. Many of you can relate to the bombardment of factoids on your computer from well-meaning friends and conservative spam-generators. You may not agree with Nayda Wallace about her viewpoints, but I trust that you’ll see some good wisdom here nonetheless. I have found her missive to be a very articulate statement about how conservatives (both politically and religiously) should integrate politics with Christian beliefs. There is a priority scheme here that focuses on kingdom ethics and on Christ Jesus. Mom, thanks for your continued wisdom and sage advice that you have shown now for more than five decades of my life.

Dear _________,

Whereas I usually agree politically with most of what you say, I don’t always agree that we must repeat the message to our liberal loved ones. Here’s why (choose whichever reason you prefer): 1) I have a stronger message for them (especially if they don’t know it already), and that is that Jesus loves them. 2) As Joe Aldrich used to say, “when love is felt, the message is heard.” 3) If # 2 is true the message will not be heard if it is mixed with capitalized Obama factoids (some of which are highly suspect as to being fact). 4) I don’t believe that the conservatives are the good guys and the liberals are the bad guys. However, I do believe that some of the strong points of each party are worth merit and many of each party are not worth merit. And I do agree with more of the conservative basics than the liberal ones. 5) I don’t believe we live in a black and white world except in matters of faith. And even then, I have reduced my matters of faith to just what I believe the Bible teaches absolutely! I like the way Dan explains it and it is thus: “The older I get and the more I study, I find I believe less and less but that which I do believe, I believe more and more.” (Apologies to Dan as I paraphrased from memory.) (In other words, no arguments about “dunking or sprinkling,” which version of the Bible was the one Paul used, and whether I would stake my life on post-trib or pre-trib rapture—either way, I want to be there!) 6) I don’t believe Jesus died for a political party, but for sinners…including Democrats, Republicans, Muslims, and HORRORS, even Nazis! I do believe that conservatives are frequently arrogant about that fact. 7) Hence, although I read what you send, and digest it, and frequently save it on my computer, I seldom send it on because I want my relationship with these loved ones based on my love for them which is only possible because I’m forgiven. Having said all that, I admit to storing little bits of political trivia in my ancient brain to recall at moments of opportunity. Always couched in the greater truth that the body politic is not the end-all, be-all in God’s kingdom. And having said all that, I nevertheless really enjoyed the ad the conservative businessman placed in the paper. It took guts and conviction, traits which are frequently in short supply. And so for it’s worth, your passion is admirable. Your consistency is …well…consistent! And even though I commented that I might have enough guts to forward certain items on, I actually knew I wouldn’t. I will, however, store it away as a possible topic of conversation at the rare opportune moment. End of sermon for the day.

Love, Nayda B.

You know how I like to make charts. Click on it to make it larger.

This is an interesting question: Is sin fun? The answer, I guess, is going to depend on how you define the word “fun.” We are going to enter into some subjectivity here aren’t we? Wait, I am getting ahead of myself.

I have often her Christians talk about the “pleasures of sin.” In this context, the pleasures of sin are not said to be pleasures at all. It is said to be a “pseudo-pleasure.” It is not really fun. “Here, enter into our world. You will see that sin is not really fun, you just think it is. Join us so that your fun can no longer be fun.”

I was talking to a friend the other day who was not a believer. He said “Michael, I like to have fun. If I become a Christian, I will not be able to have fun any longer. I like my friends and I don’t want to lose them. Our connection is in what we do together. What is wrong with that? Why does God get so upset when we have fun?”

I was not comfortable with the standard answer above.

Sin is fun. At least it can be. I admit to this. I am an expert at both sin and fun. I like one, but often find the former a necessary conduit to this latter.

Now, obviously, we would not classify all sin as “fun.” Exploding in uncalled for anger is not fun. Worry is not fun. Demeaning others for the sake of self-security is not really fun. In many cases, the deepest sinful bents we have are not practiced for the sake of fun.

But some sin is fun and fun is our motivation for this sin. No, it is not pride, hate, or lack of faith that catapults us into this sin . . . it is just plain fun. It is to remedy the often mundane boring circumstance we find ourselves in. Escape from reality? Maybe. But it is often the reality we feel we are compelled to. Who wants to be bored. Boredom and escape from what we believe to be a trapped personality waiting to happen, can cause us to say, “What the heck! What harm does it really do? If we have a good time while engaging in some sin and as long as no one gets hurt, what’s the problem?”

This is not a defense of sin. God’s word is our ultimate authority, not our definition and drive for fun. Often the Christian life will be boring. Often doing what is right feels to go against our natural inclination for the fuller life. I think that this is what is so hard for some of us to realize. The “fuller life,” “fun,” and “pleasure” often change from day to day, having many dependencies. Personal instability will redefine everything. Telling a non-Christian that they are not really having fun may be the wrong direction to take. As well, I don’t think that this is the best direction for Christians to take in own own battle against sin.

Yes, there is pleasure in sin for a season, but that “season” may be our entire life.

Anyway, these are some intentionally random thoughts without much by way of concluding thoughts.

By the time you read this blog post, I will be back in Athens, coming off a week-long expedition to the island of Lesbos. Yes, Lesbos. This is the third largest of the 2000 Greek islands. And yes, it’s the place where the name ‘lesbian’ comes from. The reason for the name and its association with female-to-female sex is due to the classical Greek poet, Sappho. She lived here on Lesbos and founded a finishing school for girls. Apparently (the historical documents need to be pieced together, if I recall), part of what she taught in the school was how to love one’s husband. But since it was inappropriate for the girls to be with men, they were taught such techniques by older women. Hence, the name lesbian.

The Lesbians actually don’t care much for their name being co-opted by a socio-political group with an agenda. One of the ways they’ve dealt with the problem is to have an alternate name for the island: Mytilene. But no one here, as far as I know, is known as a Mytilenian.

One travel guide book mentioned that one could frequently see women holding hands on Lesbos, since the island was a magnet for such people. The only problem with this statement is that European girls in general hold hands with each other, without any sexual connotations at all. We’ve seen absolutely nothing unusual here, nothing out of the ordinary for the rest of Europe.

But that’s not what brought us to Lesbos in the first place. We finished our photographic work on Patmos and decided to spend a week on another Greek island in search of manuscripts. Lesbos has one of the largest collections of any Greek island, so we decided to come here. The manuscripts are to be found in something like seven monasteries, spread all over the island, and two other places. That’s the interesting part of the story. One of those other places is a high school! It’s an old ‘gymnasium,’ founded in 1840, and dedicated to the highest levels of learning. They even have a professor who is earning his doctorate in paleography at Oxford University. Pretty impressive place. The gymnasium (now called the Experimental Lyceum of Mytilene) is in downtown Mytilene, but it took us a day and a half to find it. We knew of two Greek New Testament manuscripts there, but discovered that the real treasure is a third one, unknown to us previously. We are hoping to get permission to photograph these manuscripts later this year; this trip was simply intended to make initial contact. We met Vasilis Vlachos, the Oxford-trained professor. Delightful fellow, good scholar.

The other place that was a surprise is an institute called ‘Club Benjamin.’ At least that was the name of the place listed in the Kurzgefasste Liste, the standard reference book on where New Testament manuscripts are located in the world. The K-Liste is basically a Bible on Bibles. We always bring a copy of it with us on expeditions.

Club Benjamin is in a town known as Plomari. That’s all the information we had. We drove to Plomari on hairpin mountain roads without guard rails. The drop off was deadly. The many crosses erected on the sides of this twisting, turning, tiny road are mute testimony to the treachery of driving in Greece. The one thing we didn’t want to do was to drive back in the dark.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Plomari a little late in the day due to my underappreciated navigational skills. (Anyone who knows me knows that I should never be assigned the navigator! I get lost going home!) Anyway, after a 40-mile detour, we finally found Plomari. But we didn’t find Club Benjamin. We got out of the car and asked all the locals if they had heard of the Club. No one had. We then drove another half a kilometer (on Lesbos, everything is allegedly half a kilometer away), right into the heart of this harbor town. We found some parking and Billy Todd, veteran of several Patmos expeditions, got out of the car and looked up at the two-story building right in front of us. The title of the old building was “Beniamin, o Lesbios.” Benjamin the Lesbian. Could this be the place? We found a way up to the second story (a back staircase) on this unnamed street. When we got up there, the folks in the place were surprised to see us there. In part, because we were younger than all the patrons by a good margin! This ‘club’ was not a nightclub, but a retirement home of sorts. It was a place where old, retired Greeks could play backgammon, billiards (though the pool table hadn’t been used in years), drink Ouzo, and gawk at the folks walking below in the town square. It was a place where gossip and old yarns could be spun without anyone looking at a watch. Very charming in its own way.

We noticed some glass-covered book shelves with some very old books in them. But the shelf number we were looking for was not there. So we spoke with one individual about what we were looking for, but he could hardly understand our impeccable English or Erasmian-slaughtered Greek. So, I wrote out in Greek what I wanted to say and he immediately placed a phone call. Answers were coming.

About 25 minutes later, the president of the ‘club’ and a friend came on the scene. It was about dusk now. We figured that we had better leave in the next few minutes if we were going to miss Death Trap Highway. I gave us fifteen tops before we could kiss our lives goodbye.

These gentlemen were most helpful, especially the friend. His English was excellent, making communication much easier. I asked where he learned it. He said, in a thick Australian accent, that he had been living down under for the past 44 years. Giorgio was just in town visiting old friends when the phone call came. Timing is everything.

We learned that the manuscript was no longer there, but we didn’t know where it was. Another phone call was placed and the owner of the club indicated that he had the manuscript in Athens currently (where he also happened to be). It was being photographed so that it could be published in a book, coming out next month.

Although this was disappointing news, we were able to buy a pre-release version of the facsimile with a handshake and exchange of some Euros. Before we could leave, however, food was served. Food and drinks and more old-timers showing up. Ouzo, the national drink of Greece, is especially big on Lesbos. The local Ouzo distillery was just a couple of kilometers away, and it had a great museum. The CEO of the distillery was soon at our table inviting us to take a tour of the place with him as our guide!

By the time we could say our goodbyes, daylight was a thing of the past. We were going to have to grope our way home on those unforgiving mountainous roads. When I thought that the Lord would surely protect us, I was reminded of the many crosses I had seen on the way to Plomari. Obviously, God doesn’t always work that way for his children. Sobering thoughts, but the kinds that get one to pray a bit harder.

As it turned out, driving in the dark ended up being a blessing in disguise. We could always see when an oncoming vehicle was approaching, and both could slow down and make the necessary adjustments. I suspect that many of the highway fatalities in Greece are due to small cars having to swerve to avoid big tourist busses that give no quarter. But our driver, Michael Schumacher (a.k.a. Brian Wright) himself gave no quarter. I’m just glad the police were sleeping off their Ouzo in other parts of the island!

Such are the adventures in looking for ancient copies of the New Testament. Now, we are back in our hotel—which has no telephone, no alarm clock, no television, and no air conditioning. And the Internet is unreliable, shutting down by 11 pm every night and hardly running well at other times. But since we’re on the coast, and the Aegean is especially calm tonight, I can get reception from another hotel half a kilometer away. Yes, half a kilometer away. Everything in Lesbos is half a kilometer away.