Ten Reasons Why Willy Wonka Is A Capitalist Pig

10. He is chairman and CEO of the largest multinational candy factory in the world and is worth billions but a family (the Buckets) just down the street from his home is starving.

9. He stages a massive, world wide advertising/publicity campaign without regard to the chaos such a venture creates in the public sphere.

8. He refuses to allow his factory to be inspected by Health and Human Services in compliance with federal regulations.

7. He circumvents Federal Food and Drug regulations.

6. He appears to have no regard for O.S.H.A. regulations.

5. His massive multinational corporation pushes the smaller candy making factories (e.g., Slugworth’s) out of business.

4. His company’s products are a leading cause of childhood obesity (e.g., Augustus Gloop).

3. His factory pollutes the environment.

2. His negligence results in the bodily injury and mental anguish of four families that are invited by him to visit his factory.

1. He lays off all of his local factory workers and hires foreign workers (i.e., the Oompa-Loompas).

Dry lands

Here is a Southern Seminary Student who has read Greg's Article and now sees the light. Viva la revolution.


Does anyone care anymore if people come to Christ? I meet more and more ministers who really practice post-modern gnosticism. That is they have figured God out and if you don't have that same knowledge you can't be in their club. Truth is you are treated like your call is in question but most likely your faith. As I spend time traveling and speaking on college campuses the "Christian" students are stuck in hot debates on theology with incredible passion rather than dialogue with unbeleiving students about the cross and ressurection. It can be difficult to find "christian" students who carry the bible anymore because the latest book by their favorite theologian has hit the shelf. As a college student I loved engaging my peers and professors with spirited discussions on theology. However, our white hot passion was to see unbeleiving students drawn to the Lord Jesus.

The same can be seen in the Southern Baptist Convention, where 25 years ago conservatives took over. The conservatives felt that the moderates had so screwed up the evangelistic efforts of the convention that total takeover was the only way to make things right. Now, the statistics show that after a quarter decade of conservative evangelistic zeal we have plateaued. Astoundingly, one of my favorite professors reached the most unscholarly conclusion that things would be much worse if the conservatives had not taken over. An argument from silence based upon screaming statistical evidence. However, now a new takeover is not the answer, now it is a local church problem according to the conservatives. I have a news flash for you, it was a local church problem then as well. I am a critic from within.
While I am conservative and appreciate some things that have occurred because of the resurgence, I do not know that I could say those things were worth a decreasing evangelistic zeal. Presidents, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, could not have the impact that millions of lay evangelists could have on the present culture. It is disheartening to see the political push by the top evangelical leaders of today. I do not think we will win the culture war in the political arena. If we do it will look much like constantine, where there are titles and no faith, or prohibition, where there was law, and no spirit. The culture war will only be won as beleivers lead their children, neighbors, co-workers, and friends to the gracy and mercy of Jesus Christ.

So, the culture is in need of the gospel. Jesus is the only hope for each individual. So we should flood the culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am afraid however, these are dry lands.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Updated

Well, I did get to see the film this weekend and it wasn't good. I would say that it is okay/fair at best.

I really think that Burton misjudged this project. There was no since of wonder about what was in the factory and very little imagination to be seen. The 1971 film is SO much better. How much better? Well, let me just say that the parts of the recent film that are best are the ones prior to entering the chocolate factory. Remember how wonderful the room which is entirely made of candy in the 1971 film? Even with 30 years of increased movie magic and digital computer effects, the 1971 room looks a whole lot better than the 2005 room. The Oompa-Loompas? Not good. Grandpa Joe? Grandpa George was a better, more interesting character. And what about Willy Wonka? Well, I think Depp is a great actor but I think he misjudged his character. To be more precise, I think Burton misjudged the character. And added subplot involving Wonka's dad (which is not in either the book or the 1971 film) suggests that Wonka is simply a overgrown child who has parental issues. Well, Depp plays hims as such and does a good job in doing so, but that really doesn't fit the story. Again, I do not blame Depp so much as I blame Burton. It ain't good.

Yes, I would not recommend this film. It's unimaginative, uncalculated, annoying, a bit boring, and totally lacking in any originality. Save your money and either rent the 1971 film or read the original book and its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

I think that most of us from a certain age group were quite excited to hear that a fresh adaption of Roald Dahl's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was being made. Even though many of us have never read the book (or its sequel), we were all familiar with the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder.

But as I have observed others and even my own response to the first previews of the new film, I understood that we were all thinking the same thing: this new film is not going to be good.

Now I and most everyone else are not thinking that this film fails in comparison to the previous version (even though we all suspect that it does), but, more accurately, the previes gave us the impression that the film fails as a film in itself. I am sure we all hoped that such early previews were somewhat misleading and that subsequent previews would honor our faith in the project ... but that didn't happen.

Yes, even until today there is a whole generation of potential theatre goers who are not looking forward to this film. Perhaps our kids do not yet have the sophistication to harbor such concerns, but I wonder if the time-honored classic of choice for telling this story will remain the 1971 film version?

It's almost like the time Hollywood made the sequel to the Wizard of Oz, the Return to Oz. What were they thinking?

I do believe that my faith in this new film has been somewhat helped by the review of Roger Ebert, who's opinion on such films I tend to trust. However, I now have new concerns about this version.

I think it is safe to say that Tim Burton is a hit or miss director. He can make films like Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Sleepy Hollow ... but he can also make films like Mars Attacks, Planet of the Apes, and, now it appears, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I have provided a link to Ebert's review. I would very interested in hearing opinions and reviews of the film in the upcoming weeks.

Culture and Calamity: Where Do We Go From Here?

Now that the Southern Baptist’s Convention is over, we have had a few weeks or more to reflect on what transpired. All in all I would have to say that this was one of the more pleasant conventions in recent years. First, the SBC did not remove itself from any evangelistic body or tell other denominations that they were apostate. Second, the convention did not embarrass evangelicals too much. Third, the convention appears to be addressing the evangelical crisis now. And that’s a good thing. The only lingering question I have is why I cannot find any transcripts of my seminary’s report to the convention. Really, how is my seminary doing? I cannot seem to find out, but I will. For the time being I am only getting reports from seminary students speaking at the convention. But that reminded me.

One of the unspoken themes of this year’s convention appeared to be recognition of the next generation of pastor’s and convention leaders. For several months leading up to the convention, many SBC leaders had either spoken to young pastors and seminary students or written articles in the Baptist Press encouraging my generation to become involved in the convention and the Cooperative Program.

The message to our generation is always the same: “The conservative resurgence was necessary but now it’s over and you have to lead this better convention into the future.”

It appears that the SBC leaders are under the impression that the next generation of Southern Baptists is VERY unsatisfied with the convention and would prefer to not directly associate with it in their future ministries. I think their impression is accurate.

As I talk with seminary students my age I hear a similar refrain: “The conservative resurgence was necessary but it went too far.”

Allow me to analyze the situation. My generation is too young to remember the conservative resurgence, understand that situation, and personally know the people who were accused of liberalism or of being sympathetic to liberals during this nasty episode. They were too young too experience those years and only know of it through second hand information; second hand information they receive from the former accusers. So they hear the accuser’s version of the events and say that the resurgence was necessary and my generation believes it because they do not know any better. However, they do know what is going on now. They do not need second hand information to understand what they are currently experiencing. They know something is rotten in the state of Denmark when their favorite professors and administrators are fired or asked to leave, professors who are fired for either being moderate or, worse, sympathetic to moderates. They see the current practices of their convention and know that such practices are not Christ-like. My generation is correct in this and only errs in thinking that such practices are new and did not occur in the early days of the resurgence when we were children. If they had been adults in the seventies and eighties they would be just as unsettled by the resurgence’s methods as they are today.

Now the SBC leadership knows this and is somewhat concerned by all this unsettlement on the part of my generation. It is true that some of my generation is completely okay with the current developments and those people are and will be picked as leaders in the future. But other leaders will have to come from the rank and file of the convention’s pastors. The next Rick Warren, Beth Moore and company are out their somewhere and the convention needs their support. Thus, the leadership is trying to convince the next generation that the dirty (but necessary) business is over with and clear skies are on the horizon for us to reap the rewards (to mangle my metaphors).

However, they do have a problem, don’t they? On the one hand the SBC leadership is trying to convince my disillusioned and disaffected generation that the resurgence is over with and that they do not have to worry about other ugly episodes. On the other hand the SBC leadership is trying to explain to the older generations why the resurgence has failed to generate the promised evangelical harvest despite a quarter century of “conservative” leadership. In trying to convince the old crowd that the resurgence has not been a total cock-up of monumental proportions, the SBC leadership is saying that it’s not their fault but, rather, the resurgence hasn’t gone far enough and still needs to penetrate the state and local levels. They do have a problem, don’t they?

Now you and I may think that this is a large problem and we may be right, but I doubt that the SBC leadership sees it as such and with good reason.

First, the resurgent leaders are in power and have been for a quarter century. One of the benefits of being in power is that you do not have to (and let me choose my words carefully) “fool all of the people all of the time”; you simply have to “fool some of the people some of the time”. Now let me make it clear that I do not believe that the SBC is thinking they are fooling anyone or doing anything necessarily un-Christian. No, the people who are telling my generation that the resurgence is at an end do in fact believe this to be the case … as far as the national convention, its entities and the seminaries are concerned. But, in a practical sense, the leadership does not have to convince all of my generation of this; they only have to convince some of my generation some of the time. That’s the privilege of those in power. That’s why the status quo works for those in power. It is the problem of those who are not in power but wish to be that the status quo doesn’t work for them. It is their problem to convince all of the people all of the time of their point of view. It might seem a daunting task but it does happen (the Conservative Resurgence is evidence of this). But those in power are overthrown only to be replaced by those who will one day be taken out of power themselves.

Second, and I really do mean this, the SBC leadership really does not care what we as students and as a generation think about how they are running the SBC. Now this is a general and blanket statement and, unfortunately, it covers a lot of earnest individuals who really do care what we think about the SBC. I think Bobby Welch is one such person and there are others. However, in general, they really don’t care. Allow me to give an example: If 99% of the students at an SBC school like a particular teacher but the leadership does not, the SBC leadership will get rid of the teacher they dislike whether it upsets the students or not. Again, understand my words in their precise context. The leadership does care about us; they wouldn’t be good leaders if they did not. The leadership does care about what we think about certain theological, cultural, and ecclesiastical issues; if they did not they would not have been so keen to remove so many professors who thought differently than themselves. However, when it comes to how my generation perceives of the way in which the leaders conduct themselves in “fixing” the convention, I am sad to say it, the SBC leadership does not care. My guess is that 1) they think they know better and 2) once the “dirty” deeds have been done they will be able to rebuild our faith in their leadership. And indeed they might.

So where does all of this leave us?

Well, in order to justify the conservative resurgence and justify their explanations of why it hasn’t yet worked, the SBC leadership will have to continue their goal of creedal conformity and the sifting of tares from wheat or vice versa till all perceived heterodoxy is eliminated. Unfortunately, they have dug themselves into a hole from which they are trying to dig themselves out. My generation and subsequent generations will continue to become dissatisfied with the convention, seeing it as an incompetent and largely irrelevant, bureaucratic social club. This will be a sad but inevitable outcome.

I’ve often argued that the conservative resurgence was not a reformation as the leaders suppose or wished it to be. Rather I would suggest that the conservative resurgence was a counter-reformation. I would argue that the real conservative reformation began during the years following World War II and is continuing today. What we have been seeing since the 1960s and, specifically, since the 1980s is the response of those who have been opposed to this reformation.

Following the Protestant Reformation of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, the Roman Catholic Church launched a Counter Reformation to secure and codify those aspects of the Roman Church that the Reformers were protesting and those aspects of the Church that Rome was protecting. More than anything, the Roman Catholic Church believed that they were securing the true faith of the church and its orthodoxy from liberal professors such as Luther and his ilk. This was their thinking, but, instead, they were merely putting into their creeds the very aspects of heterodoxy that the Reformers were protesting.

Now the Protestant Reformation was very much a product of its time. By this I mean that we would not have had a Protestant Reformation if we had not had a Renaissance. Furthermore, we would not have had a proliferation of Christian bodies if we had not had an Enlightenment Period. I would go one step further and state that our current church polity, structure and methods of fulfilling our Great Commission duties are largely a reflection of our culture and our era. This reflection is true of all denominations and local church entities regardless of culture or place on the theological spectrum. We’d like to think that our manner of interpreting the methods of “doing Christianity” is steeped in the New Testament example. In a certain sense, this is more or less correct; we do apply many of the New Testament examples and principles in our own, unique way. However, each culture in Christendom’s long, diverse, and expansive history has adopted these principles to suit the culture in which they witness. For instance, the earliest New Testament churches were structured very similar to the Jewish synagogues. As the church ventured into the Greek world, the local churches began to take on a more Greek feel (a change that upset many in the Jerusalem church). The church in Rome took on a very Roman structure which was eventually modified by the Medieval European culture. To this day the Roman Catholic Church has many traditional structures that date back to the traditions of ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. Jump forward several hundred years, the Southern Baptist Convention in its structure of national, state, and local associations is very similar to the Federalist system of American governmental structure of national, state, county and city. In fact, much of the ways in which we fulfill our Great Commission duties and apply the New Testament principles is greatly influenced by our culture and the age in which we lived, the modern age. Yes, much of the polity, structure, and methods of the SBC are directly influenced by the modern era, i.e., the period of time roughly between the years 1789-1989. This is a rough idea of the period because it encompasses methods and ideas that came from the previous era and that era which follows.

What am I getting at? The Protestant Reformation was very much a product of its culture and time. The ideas that came out of the Renaissance had a profound effect upon Christendom in that it aided the Reformers in recognizing the flaws of Roman Catholicism and the lapse in Church orthodoxy. Now the general response of the Roman Church was the Counter Reformation and the codifying of their threatened practice and theology, practices and theology that was largely the result of Roman and Medieval thinking. The Roman Church actually codified the ancient Roman and medieval culture into their creeds with all its false theology and outdated methodology. Now the neo-orthodox movement that began with Soren Kierkegaard and was brought to fruition with Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Reinhold Niebuhr among others was carried into the Southern Baptist Culture by the work of Dale Moody, Frank Stagg, Ralph Elliott, Morris Ashcraft, E. Earle Ellis, and many others. This neo-orthodox movement was, as always, way ahead of its time. It refuted the errors of both liberalism and conservatism but maintained the benefits of both. Furthermore, as the ideas of the movement spread from culture to culture across Christendom, the areas which it took root blossomed into more effective witnesses of Christ to the lost culture, i.e., the Southern Baptist Convention from 1946-1979. But just like the Protestant Reformation, the SBC Reformation had its own Counter Reformation with which to deal. There were many in the convention that were tied to the traditional and culturally-conditioned methods of “doing Christianity” and were convinced that their culturally-conditioned conception of the faith was the only orthodoxy allowed by the Bible. They believed that all of those professors who were teaching Biblical principles and methods counter to their own practices were liberals and modernists. Actually, and with much irony, those threatened traditionalists were the modernists and the professors were the post-modernists. But in order to protect Christendom and the SBC from neo-orthodoxy and the encroachment of liberalism, those opposed to the conventions reformation launched a Counter Reformation to defend their practice and polity and codify their traditions, i.e., the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.

What I am saying is that while the Southern Baptist Convention may in fact codify its traditions and own particular brand of orthodoxy, the culture is changing and the rest of the Western World has arrived in the Post-modern Age. If the modern era of Western Christianity, in terms of structure and polity, were characterized by denominations and cooperation via such monolithic entities and, specifically, if American Southern Baptist polity was structured along the Federalistic system inherent in its surrounding culture, then we can expect the unrestrained future of Southern Baptists polity, structure, and methodology to reflect the new post-modern culture … which means greater choice!

Yes, the proliferation of choice that has come with the development of High Capitalism has allowed for greater selectivity and greater choice among consumers, including that of Christians. Yes, my generation, children of this new era, will continue to see the errors of their parents, grandparents and of the modern era of Southern Baptist Christianity and will select what polity and practice they are going to adopt for the future. The convention or denomination as a vehicle for the spreading of the Gospel message will forever diminish in importance and effect until it is only a mild curiosity of a by-gone age.

Oh, it will continue to have some effect and will occasionally make good on its Great Commission duties; even the Roman Catholics have some effect. But where the RCC has the best effect is in Third World Countries that haven’t yet reached the modern era let along the post-modern era. And how many of us want to be a part of that body of believers? Perhaps the SBC should find a relatively undeveloped culture in which to set up shop?

No, the future of Christian cooperation lies in loosely and temporarily aligned unions with a multitude of various organizations, i.e., the CBF, the BWA, Team Church, Hope Ministries, local associations and large churches with their own national and international ministries; and all of these organizations are going to have confessions of various levels of Biblical accuracy reflecting the strengths and weaknesses of their own culture. Such organizations and entities will have multiple associations with other organizations and entities and work with others in so far as those others are useful.

So what of my generation and the future of the Southern Baptist Convention?

Well, my generation will pick up its duty of leadership and make right decisions and wrong decisions until another generation picks it up and makes similar right and wrong decisions. Unfortunately, the way in which the 60s generation has codified their errors into the fabric of Southern Baptist culture gives little hope that my generation and its children will make more right decisions than wrong ones, if it would even matter.

Yes, the Conservative Resurgence (the Counter Reformation) will continue to be a failure. The SBC will continue to codify their errors and wonder why all the effective evangelism and discipleship are being done outside their increasingly diminished sphere of influence.

No, the future of the transmission of the gospel message in terms of its effectiveness lies elsewhere and ultimately, thankfully, in the hands of God. This should give us great hope for the intermediate future of our Church in whatever various cultural forms that it takes.

Therefore, I have decided to officially cease my public criticisms of the Southern Baptist Convention and its various entities. At this point in history I feel that making analytical observations of the positives and negatives of the actions and trends of the SBC fulfills no practical purpose for furthering our obligations as believers. In fact, to make such opinions known in today’s shifting climate would be akin to either arguing over 16th century papal misjudgments or critiquing the political maneuvers of the Carolingian Empire. The results are not worth the effort.

But allow me to finish this article by making final predictions regarding the near future of the SBC and by suggesting my own solutions to the current evangelical crisis.

With regards to the SBC’s near future the current crop of evangelically-minded leaders are guided by the assumption that effective evangelism results from correct theology. Therefore, if evangelism is not effective then there are those within the body that do not have the correct theology. In order to protect the correct theology and make sure that neither heresy nor heterodoxy takes root within the body, the SBC leaders have adopted the Roman Catholic method of preserving such orthodoxy, namely, the creed. The orthodox creed of our body is the 2000 BFM. Thus, in order to protect our theology and insure effective evangelism, the SBC has required intellectual agreement of all its national and international employees, including professors and missionaries. With this mindset and its subsequent practice, those who believe that they have a correct theology by which God will bless them will necessarily find the lack of God’s blessing as evidence that some in their body are harboring false theology. Therefore, I predict that in the name of protecting orthodoxy within the body, the SBC will continue its recent creedal quest by urging all state and local entities, including Baptist colleges to adopt the 2000 BFM. Furthermore, I predict that eventually all seminary students who receive funds from the Cooperative Program will be required to adopt the 2000 BFM. Finally, I predict that the overall structural trend of the convention will be the gradual elevation of governing authority to the upper levels of the body and away from local associations and churches. All of this will be in the name of the protecting orthodoxy and creating effective evangelism.

With regards to my solutions for the current evangelical crisis I would like to offer practical answers that the convention could accept without necessarily abandoning their current agenda. In my view the convention is currently quite incapable of reforming itself to the degree in which effective changes will have lasting effect. I am under no illusion that our leaders will abandon their current goals of creedal conformity, structural consolidation and political activism. However, perhaps some help can be administered to the SBC that will alleviate much of the rapid decline in baptisms.

Therefore, in the coming weeks I will offer my own modest solutions for the greater strengthening of our evangelical witness. Solution which I hope will stir the mind of all who consider them and, perhaps, make some small contribution to the greater work that we do as believers.

A Modest Proposal

by Richard Mouw

The Ten Commandments are on the front pages again, now that the Supreme Court is deliberating about the propriety of displaying that ancient moral code in public places. I have a suggestion for the justices to consider. Maybe they could recommend an alternative: substitute the Beatitudes for the Ten Commandments.

Actually the idea is not original with me. I got it from an unlikely source when it comes to spiritual matters: Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut, a gifted novelist not known specifically for his religious insights, made some good theological sense last year in a column he wrote. He noted that there is a lot of talk lately about making the Ten Commandments visible in public places, but no one ever seems to mention the Beatitudes as having any meaning for our public life. Why not? he asks. After all, the Ten Commandments are from Moses, but if you really believe in Jesus you should want his unique teachings to get some publicity. So, proposes Vonnegut, let’s put “Blessed are the merciful” signs in our courtrooms. And let’s have a big “Blessed are the peacemakers” billboard in the Pentagon.

I’m intrigued by Vonnegut’s suggestion. That’s not to say I have problems with the Ten Commandments. Both Moses and Jesus are in the Bible I read regularly. The commandments that God gave Moses on Mount Sinai are of fundamental importance for human morality, both collective and individual. But they do have a stern tone about them, and it could be that by emphasizing the "thou-shalt-nots" of the Ten Commandments, we Christians are coming across as a bit too self-righteous. Furthermore, it has long been acknowledged by Christian theologians that at least the first few commandments—the ones dealing with worship and idolatry—are not the sorts of things we want to impose on everyone in our pluralistic democracies.

On a more positive note, it might be better for Christians—especially those of us who talk a lot about "moral values"—to let our fellow citizens know that we do care a lot about the "blessed" traits that Jesus sets forth in the Beatitudes: meekness, peaceableness, empathy with the poor and the grieving, a spirit of mercy—things of that sort. To be sure, we will be criticized for this, too, by the folks who don’t want us to inject any of our religious views into the public square. But if we are going to be scolded by those who resist religious teachings, let’s at least be scolded for promoting something that comes straight from Jesus.

When George W. Bush said, during the last presidential campaign, that Jesus is his favorite philosoper, he took a lot of criticism from the intelligentsia. I did not join in the ridicule. Jesus is also my favorite philosopher. I believe Jesus has profound things to say to contemporary America—to all of us as citizens, as well to each of us as private individuals.

Which leads me to an even bolder proposal. People like me can push for this sort of move, but no one will really pay any attention. But if the President and a well-known novelist were to team up in urging the justices of the Supreme Court to endorse the public display of the Beatitudes—well, then we might actually get somewhere. The more I think about the idea, the more I like it. President Bush, please contact Kurt Vonnegut immediately.

Moral Living in an Immoral World

The editors of Panis Circenses would like to welcome our friend and frequent collaborator Patrick O’Riley to the blogosphere. We are humbled by his assent to our request of publishing the following piece. We thank him whole heartedly and further request of him to keep up the good work.


The recent announcement that the evangelical world is concluding its largely disregarded and overlooked boycott against Disney set me to thinking about moral living in an immoral world. There is much talk in evangelical circles, especially among those leaders who have made it their business to serve as putative representatives of Christianity and Christian believers to the political powers that be, about “standing up for”—sometimes “fighting for”—morality, by which these leaders mean using legal, political, or economic weapons to coerce others into moral behavior. This activity is justified in the name of working to restore the United States to its erstwhile status as a “Christian nation,” and “being salt and light,” (a phrase that in current evangelical discussions somehow always has political implications, whatever Jesus of Nazareth meant it to say).

Growing up as I did in a politically and religiously conservative evangelical home, church, and school, I was an early supporter of the boycott against Disney. I believed in the fight to restore “Judeo-Christian” or “traditional family values” to the culture, and saw Disney as a prime hindrance to this project, an exponent of all the irreligious, non-traditional, anti-family values that had to be stopped. My family refused to shop at the Disney store and did not buy any movies or other products that bore the Disney label, a position several members of my family have held religiously since the boycott began.

I don’t remember ever consciously ending my own adherence to the boycott, but I believe the time I simply stopped thinking about it was when I came across a list of everything Disney owns. This list includes the ABC and A & E television networks, Miramax Films, Touchstone Pictures, Buena Vista Home Video, and so many others. It was a daunting list, and much of it new information; I realized to my chagrin that I had been violating the boycott for years out of sheer ignorance. It was around this time that I also began to realize that my family was almost alone among all the evangelicals I knew who were even trying to support the boycott. Much of the Christian world never even got on board, and many others jumped ship early on in the venture. The result of these discoveries, of course, was the dawning realization that the boycott simply was not working, and, it would seem, could not or would not work. So much for standing up for morality, at least by that method.

Looking back on this, I wonder if we evangelicals, for all our moral zeal, simply haven’t come to terms with what our political struggles are all about. It seems that somehow, we naïvely failed to remember that politics, like most things in life, is always about compromise—finding the least evil solution that appeases the largest number of people. The political arena is a poor forum for moralizing about an absolute standard. So perhaps the goals of conservative evangelical politics, which is currently the primary arena of our moralizing, simply are not attainable, and the sort of Christianesque utopia we have vaguely in mind when we enter the political fray never was a viable entity. This presumes, of course, that we actually know what our long-term goals are, that we have fully-orbed political and social philosophies and fully developed images of the ideal state. We do have many short term goals, to be sure; everyone knows that evangelicals want to ban gay marriage, outlaw abortion, and so forth. But were we suddenly able to remake American society to our own ends, completely without interference from any other groups or persons, I submit that we would have very little clue as to what we want, as the very nebulousness of the philosophically meaningless, even incoherent, term “Judeo-Christian values” suggests.

Moreover, I am doubtful that most evangelicals have given careful consideration to the kind of world we live in. Certainly, evangelicals properly hold to the sinfulness of humanity and the sin nature of human beings; many if not most evangelicals even believe in such doctrines as original sin and total depravity. But when it comes to engaging the culture, we make the fantastic assumption that we are to delve into a fight for moral values, as if the totally depraved human beings around us—from whose ranks we all came, lest we forget—were at all interested in moral values in any meaningful sense of the term. Much more dangerously, we assume that we have achieved the summit of the moral high ground ourselves.

Now, I am not at all suggesting that evangelicals know nothing about morality. Certainly, our attempts to live out the principles of Scripture under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in the community of the Church are significant moves toward the kind of holy life God would have for us. And the project of seeking personal holiness should never be abandoned; always we should strive to be more like Christ, to think and act and live more Scripturally. But let us not forget the state of the world we live in. It is a lost and depraved world as we evangelicals are fond of saying. And all its members are tainted by that depravity—even us. We cannot live in the world and avoid it.

Every day, I have come to realize, I make tacit allowances for living in a sinful world, just by going about my everyday activities. Indeed, in many ways, I even support values I abhor. My tax dollars go to pay for lots of things I think are immoral, including war and capital punishment, birth control programs in AIDS ravished countries, foreign aid for oppressive dictatorships—the list is long. I watch movies and television programs laced with profanity, sexual references, and violence (find some entertainment that does not have these things to one degree or another—it’s harder than you think, especially if you use an absolute standard). I invest money in mutual funds that buy stocks for hundreds of companies—and very likely at least some of those companies are engaging in activities I would consider immoral. I eat meat from animals bred and raised in appalling conditions, packed so tightly into confined spaces they can barely move, and force-fed hormone treatments. I drive my car doing useless errands, or sometimes just for pleasure, pumping a slew of pollutants into the air with every bit of pressure on the gas pedal. I use thousands of pieces of paper each year, only a small fraction of which ever gets recycled. I buy clothes that were very likely made in sweatshops—I have never taken the time or trouble to find out for sure. I drink coffee that was harvested by slaves—men and women disadvantaged by oppressive economic systems that chain them every bit as much as did the bondage of the human trafficking of previous centuries. I eat fine meals in fine restaurants despite the millions of people around the world and even in the United States who are starving, some of them to death. I spend discretionary money on movies and operas and trinkets and toys even though there are people in Africa who eke out a living on $2 a day. And yes, I consume products made by some of the many subsidiary companies of Disney, despite their open support of homosexual politics and various other unsavory things.

Just by living in the world, I violate, consciously or unconsciously, my own moral principles every day. In some of these cases, I am directly responsible; I commit immoral actions in my own personal sphere of influence. But in many other cases, I am not directly responsible; I don’t get to decide how my taxes are spent, I don’t personally raise animals, I did not take money or food directly out of the hands of the starving, I did not ask Disney to support homosexuality. And yet, I bear the stigma of involvement with immorality—I am part of the massive web of causality by which these immoral activities take place.

This is a primary reason I am cautious whenever we evangelical Christians wade into political or social matters, which is what we were trying to do with the Disney boycott. When it comes to living our values, especially in the political and social spheres, I’m not sure we are much more moral than our non-evangelical neighbors who are just trying to get by in this broken world. I could criticize Disney for its corporate stance on homosexuality, but someone could just as well criticize me for not giving more money to the poor. Both of these moral articles have clear attestation in the Scriptures, but of course, only I, and not Disney, claim that it is the Scriptures by which one ought to live.

It would be far better for us if we were to read all of those Scriptures more honestly, with a good deal more humility, especially those parts that tell us about ourselves: that we are sinful, depraved people, that we live in a fallen world, ravished and broken by sin, and that even those of us who have been crucified with Christ often don’t get it right. God alone is holy, and He alone can rescue us from who we are and the world we are part of and make us like Himself.

We should spend more time talking about that. I don’t think Scripture ever commands us to “stand up for morality” outside the believing community, but Scripture clearly commands us to bear witness for Christ to the world, and it is crucial to note that those two activities are not the same thing. Certainly we should ourselves strive to be ever more moral (I prefer the term “Christ-like”), but calling attention to our moral standards and demanding or even legislating conformity to them is an entirely different matter. The fallen world will do exactly as our theology should teach us to expect a fallen world to do. And sometimes, just because we live here and not in heaven, we will find that we too have been carried along by the world’s fallenness, perhaps have contributed to it ourselves. While this should never paralyze our attempts to grow in holiness, it should engender in us a profound sense of humility whenever we talk about morality, especially with those who are not empowered by the Holy Spirit, as we are.

Recognizing this, we come to understand that trading the Great Commission for promotion of merely “Judeo-Christian values” is a backwards step. Our task is not to make the world a little more moral and a little less fallen. Our task is not to force fallen men and women to act as if they were not so—especially since we are not so good at morality either. Our task is to keep pointing with a deep sense of grace and humility to the Christ who raises fallen men back to life. This is the only purely holy task there is on earth, and it will do what all the moralizing and boycotting and politicking can never do. Jesus saves—Jesus alone.



Patrick O’Riley holds a Bachelor’s degree in political science and is a graduate of the Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C. In his home state he was named as a delegate to the 2000 Republican convention and was a founding member of the local chapter of the Family Policy Center affiliated with Gary Bauer. He has been involved at the grassroots level with three presidential campaigns. He walked away from political and legal work to enter the ministry in 2002.

The Ordination of Women

Back by popular demand ... my Systematic Theology paper on the Ordination of Women.

A Parable

Once upon a time there was a professional football team that was the most winning team in their league. They consistently won their games and made it to the playoffs and even won the Super Bowl with clockwork regularity. Throughout the league this team was known to have the best coaches and best players now playing the game. It seemed that this team could do no wrong and would continue to win games far into the future.

Now the owners of this football team were very passionate about the game of football and very earnestly wanted their team to win games and do well. However, the owners, though being passionate, had only a fundamental knowledge of the game and were somewhat irked and confused about how the team's coaches and players played the game of football. The teams' training practices and even the games themselves were full of razzle-dazzle plays and apparently unorthodox strategies that confounded their opponents as well as the owners. Because the owners only had a fundamental knowledge of the game they were a little distressed by such plays, but, as long as the team won football games, they did not see it necessary to change how their coaches and the players played the game.

But one day a group of outside assistant coaches began coming to the owners complaining to them about the unorthodox plays that were being conducted by the coaches and players. They complained that such plays were an affront to the game of football and would soon lead to the demise of the team. They complained that such plays, if they continued, would spell doom for the most winning team in the league and that the current coaches and players, regardless of their past successes, would surely be soon losing their games. "We need to get back to the fundamentals of the game", they said. "Only then will we be assured of continuing our winning streak." In short, these outside assistant coaches played on the fears and ignorance of the owners and offered themselves up as the answer to the problem they had convinced the owners was soon to come.

Now the owners of this football team were very passionate about the game of football and very earnestly wanted their team to win games and do well. So, on the advice of the outside assistant coaches, the owners fired the head coach and his coaching staff and hired the outside assistant coaches as their new coaching staff. Soon the new head coaches began to make significant changes to the team, including firing most of the players that had once won so many games and altering the plays that had once won so many football games.

Soon the new coaches were advertising their new coaching staff and new players on every available media outlet and promoting their new and improved team with their great game strategy as the next great thing in football. The coaches and players appeared on sports shows and commercials and even appeared on the boxes of cereal. In time, the new and improved team began attracting more and more fans to the games and more and more money poured into owners' pockets and into the team. However, despite the new and improved team with its coaches and players who were dedicated to the fundamentals of the sport, the team could not win their games.

Now the owners of this football team were very passionate about the game of football and very earnestly wanted their team to win games and do well. So they called their new coaches up and asked them to explain why the team was not winning as many games as the new coaches had promised or as many games as the old coaches had delivered.

"Well," said the new coaches, "we're taking in more revenue than ever, we have more fans than ever before ..."

"Yes," replied the owners, "but we're not winning football games and that's the whole point of having a football team in the first place. How do you explain this?"

"Well, a few of those assistant coaches that you fired, they are now teaching high school football and they're not winning as many games as we are so things would have been much worse if we had not become the coaches."

"That's not an explanation that is an excuse," the owners replied.

The coaches took in a deep breath and said, "Well, our team has the best coaches and the best players in the league - all chosen by us - and our team has the best football strategy - all okayed by us - so the only possible explanation for why our team is not winning football games is that the owners are not very passionate about the game of football."

Another Question

On Monday, Memorial Day, I posted the story about my visit to a small local church where I was surprised to see a Texas A&M flag in the sanctuary on one of the walls.

While admitting that I had reasons to believe that such a display was inappropriate, I requested that other individuals respond with their reasons why such a display is wrong. Here are the two responses that were given:

“I thought we were there to worship God, not Texas A&M.”

“I think such a display is a distraction from where one's focus and devotion should be directed within a house of worship.”

Both of these responses, I believe, are right on the money. However, I would now like to add to my own reasons to what these responses have said.

As both of these responses indicated, a church worship service is directed towards God and nothing else. A worship service is a body of believers communing together for the purpose of worshipping together in a corporate manner. What we worship is God and not a college or a particular team.

Now the church and its faith are not of this world and a worship service is where believers go to corporately commune with that other world. Teams and other factions ARE of this world. They are very much of this world and, while they may not be of any inherent evil in themselves, teams and factions are by their very nature divisive. Because they are worldly and divisive they need to be kept outside the church where division is not allowed. A person entering a church who favors a team other than Texas A&M or may have some ill will towards such a faction should not feel isolated from the body because of such a display or, even worse, begin to associate a college, a team, or a faction with the church. Again, the church and its believers are not of this world and should not associate themselves with such worldly institutions. The church cuts across such boundaries and transcends them.

Okay, does anyone have a problem with my reasons or the logic being applied?

If not, then let it now be said that, in fact, I did not see a Texas A&M flag at the local church that I visited; I saw an American flag.

Now, do not the reasons and logic applied above to the Texas A&M flag equally apply to the American flag?

Your response.

Question

I recently visited a small church where the congregation, being mostly Texas A&M fans, had put up a Texas A&M flag in the sanctuary on one of the walls. I frankly have a problem with this display and have a good reason for thinking such a display is unwise for the church. However, instead of posting my reasons, I would like to hear the reasons others would give for why such a display is wrong. Perhaps you believe such a display is fine; what reasons would you give for supporting its appearance in a church's sanctuary?

CRISIS IN THE POT: or The Southern Baptist Convention, The Conservative Resurgence, and The Evangelical Crisis.

BOMBSHELL RELEASED

Okay, two weeks ago I promised you a bombshell. Well, the bombshell was from a friend's blog at Southern Seminary. Unfortunately, he asked me to take down the post until further notice. For reasons that I am not at liberty to divulge he had been asked to take down his post. Well, for another reason I am not at liberty to divulge, he has reposted his article and has given me the okay to provide a link. I think his insights are right on the money and I would greatly advise everyone to read it at their leisure.

A Definition of Inspiration

This week an excellent three-part article appeared by The Rush discussing the relevancy of the Scriptures. I was priviledged enough to join the discussion and add my humble opinion to the mix. The statement I made about the relevancy of Scripture and its inspiration was as follows:

"But while the Bible was inspired by God, it was also authored by non-immutable, non-omniscient, non-omnipotent men and women writing from their own culture to people in their own culture. The Bible is written in three dead languages with loaned words from a dozen other dead languages. The Bible uses various forms of literature that are no longer used. The Bible speaks of cultural conditions that are no longer applicable. The Bible speaks of historical events, people, and places 2000-3000 years removed from modern American culture. The Bible uses poetic/symbolic language to speak about 1) the structure of heaven and earth, 2) the spiritual realm, and 3) pre-historical and post-historical events. All this must play a factor in its relevance."

Another person responded with this insightful request:

"I would be interested in hearing your definition of inspiration. Maybe you should treat this topic on your blog, so that we might understand your view. From your previous reply, it sounds as if your definition would be different from mine."

In order to answer the request posed, I must first deal examine three areas of this topic: the issue Inerrancy, the history of the doctrine of inspiration, and the meaning of the Word of God.

On December 22nd 2004, I wrote the following:

"I believe that the Bible is the inspired (God-breathed), inerrant, infallible, record of the revelation of God. But while I am an inerrantist I do not mind other Christians and Christian scholars who do not believe in inerrancy. I think they are wrong but their beliefs are their own and it is between them and God."

Since that time I have practically discarded the term inerrancy from my confessional statements. Inerrancy is a corollary to the full inspiration of the Bible. The term has not typically appeared in Baptist confessions of faith as a description of our belief in the Bible nor does so now. The term inerrancy means different things to different people. So many theories abound that the term has lost much of its meaning if it ever had any meaning to begin with. If anything, the debate over this term is just that, a debate over terminology. I have decided to drop its name but preserve the meaning of what I believe the actual nature of the Bible's "inerrancy" is, namely, inerrancy of purpose. Inerrancy of purpose holds that the Bible inerrantly accomplishes its purpose. The purpose of the biblical revelation is to bring people into personal fellowship with Christ, not to communicate historical, cosmological, and scientific truths. Therefore, we should not necessarily use the book of Joshua, Judges, Daniel as historical books even though they do contain many historical truths. The authors of the books under the guidance of the Holy Spirit had a theological purpose and shaped the historical events according to that theological purpose. I do not think the Bible is in error when it gets history or science wrong because its intent is something other than conveying history and science. Humans have the ability to uncover the truths of history and science on our own accord. The Scriptures are for us because we cannot uncover these truths; we need God for this.

Any statement about the biblical teachings on inspiration must be based upon examples, for no creedal passages are to be found. The inspiration of holy men is prior to Holy Scripture, for there were inspired prophets in the time of oral transmission. Both are included in 2 Peter 1:20f: "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy $pirit spoke from God."

This movement of the Holy Spirit from God is the exact impression received from the Deuteronomic historians. As the transition is made from the ecstatic power of the judges, the shopetim, to the ecstatic prophecy of the cultic prophets, the nebiim, the picture is one of possession of the prophet by the Spirit of the Lord (1 Sam. 10;1-13). Saul was "turned into another man" as "God gave him another heart" (10;6, 9). Saul uttered ecstatic prophecy when the Spirit came upon him (10;6, 13). Those who followed Saul were a combination of the two, "men of valor whose hearts God had touched" ( 10;26). Ecstatic power was manifested when "the Spirit of the Lord took possession of Gideon" (Judg. 6;34). This experience of appearing "touched" is the meaning of possession. Ecstatic utterances are first mentioned in the Balaam oracles {Null. 24:3f).

New Testament prophetism reflects the same distinction in ranking inspired prophecy above ecstatic utterances in tongues (1 Cor. 14). The boundary again is the rational content of the utterance. Praying and singing with the human mind and the human spirit, the nous and the pneuma, are higher forms of inspiration than praying and singing in ecstatic tongues in which only the human spirit, the pneuma, is active.

When this is applied to the inspiration of Holy Scripture it requires a view broad enough to include the historical writings of the Old Testament and Luke-Acts of the New Testament, as well as the almost dictation view of inspiration found in such apocalyptic writings as Daniel and Revelation. The inspiration of Holy Scripture became a theological question when oral tradition became a written record. A complex process of composition leads from the first documents to the central summary of Old Testament Scripture. Speaking of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament containing the Apocrypha, 2 Timothy 3; 16f. says; "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." After general agreement on the New Testament canon was achieved, this was usually applied to all Greek and Latin Bibles until the Protestant Reformation.

It would now benefit us greatly to examine the history of the doctrine of inspiration before I make a definition public. A doctrine of inspiration was not fully formulated unfil the Protestant Reformation when biblical authority became the supreme appeal over ecclesiastical tradition. A doctrine of biblical authority produced theories of inspiration. The Roman Catholic reaction to the Reformation declared that both Scripture and tradition were dictated by the Holy Spirit. On April 8, 1546, the Council of Trent declared that the whole of Scripture, as well as the body of unwritten tradition, was given Spiritu sancto dictante, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. Vatican Council I, 1869-70 and Providentissi mus Deus, an encyclical by Pope Leo XIII in 1893, reaffirmed this dictation view. Later pronouncements, especially Spiritus Paraclitus by Benedict XV in 1920 and Afflante Spiritu by Pius XII in 1943, dealt with the issue, but a dramatic debate took place in 1962. When the conservative constitution Dei Verbum was presented to Vatican II, Pope John XXIII intervened and appointed a special commission to rewrite it. The new draft, enacted on Nov. 18, 1965 by a vote of 2,344 to 6, subordinated tradition to Scripture and confined inerrancy to matters pertaining to salvation. The modern historical approach to the study of the Scriptures was approved, and the two-source view of revelation was left an open issue.

The Reformers resisted the unwritten tradition, but they too adopted the dictation theory of biblical inspiration. Lutheranism hardened into a mold of biblical rigidity that still resists the historical reconstruction of biblical history and any effort to adapt the early chapters of Genesis to the modern scientific view of the world and man. A current example of this is the conflict at Concordia Theological Seminary in which the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church is called back to the pre-scientific and pre-critical views of the Reformation.

Historic Calvinism taught the dictation view of inspiration for Holy Scripture. When Louis Cappel of the French academy of Saumur denied the verbal inspiration of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Helvetic Consensus (Formula consensus ecclesiarum Helveticarum) of 1675 declared even the Hebrew vowel points, added centuries after the close of the canon, to be inspired. Even after the Helvetic Consensus was no longer required by most adherents of the Second Swiss Confession of 1566, this belief was widely held. The classic defense of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures was no doubt Louis Gaussen's Theopneustia (1840), and this is the usual basis for most later defenders of the theory.

By the end of the nineteenth century A. H. Strong, in his Systematic Theology (1886), could delineate four theories of inspiration: (1) the intuition theory that is but the higher development of natural insight into truth, (2) the illumination theory that adds the belief in the inspiration of the writer but not of the writing, (3) the dictation theory that regards the writers as passive, and ( 4) the dynamic theory that holds to both a human and a divine element in inspiration. This last theory he regarded as the true view, so he was able to accept much of modern science, including evolution and higher criticism. Other modified Calvinists among Baptists found Strong's view acceptable. A conservative as staunch as J. McKee Adams seemed to hold the dynamic view.

The dictation view is, however, very much alive. Most who speak of the Bible as "God's inspired, infallible, and inerrant word" stop short of Strong's dynamic view. A storm of protest went up among Southern Baptists when Clifton J. Allen, in the introductory article to the Broadman Bible Commentary (1969), advocated the dynamic view. It is not sufficient to repeat Strong's exclusive approach. Even the intuition and illumination views have value when stated positively. Bible writers did have great natural insight as well as illumination by the Holy Spirit. Some passages in the Bible do approach passive reception, even though this is not the usual impression.

A biblical view of inspiration must be broad enough to include the truth in all the historical theories and adequate for a constructive theology in dialogue with the sacred writings of other world religions, the contributions of great systems of philosophy, and the discoveries of modern science. The biblical view is broad enough to include both the view in the late priestly tradition which says the two tables of stone were "written by the finger of God" (Ex. 31: 18, cf. 8:19), and the older history by the Yahwist in the Hexateuch who competes with the author of the Early Source in 1-2 Samuel for the name "father of history," a title usually given to the Greek historian Herodotus who lived at least five hundred years later. The description of the apocalyptic inspiration of Ezekiel in the Later Prophets comes near to the dictation theory. Luke 1:1-2 describes a historical method evident in the composition of Luke-Acts, but it is no less inspired than Revelation and other apocalyptic writings that describe the writer in a more passive role (Rev. 1:2, 10f.; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10).

Now turning to the meaning of the Word of God, on December 22nd 2004, I also wrote the following:

"Furthermore, I agree with the neo-orthodox scholars who say that the Scriptures are not the Word of God. To understand what the neo-orthodox scholars mean by this statement it is important to understand that they have a very high view of what the Word of God is. They also have a very high view of revelation. To them revelation is when the Word of God comes to a person. When a person reads the Scriptures it can have two different effects upon them. On one hand, a person can read the Scriptures and God can speak through it to the person and the truth is revealed to that person. On the other hand, the person can read the Scriptures and God does not speak through it to the person and the truth is not revealed to the person. It is only when God speaks through the Scriptures to the person that the Scriptures become the Word of God. Reason suggests that this must be the case. Why is it that someone can read the Bible and have an experience with the Divine while others can read the Bible and not experience anything other than reading a document? The difference is that God has chosen to or not to speak through the Scriptures to the person. So the Scriptures are not the Word of God, the Bible is not revelation but, instead, is the vehicle of revelation and the manner in which God can speak to man. And, lastly, I agree with the 1963 BFM that states that “the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.” I think this is a beautiful declaration of faith that I am sorry is no longer a part of the Southern Baptist confession. This statement existed to answer questions about how we relate to the Old Testament. Do we stone people who are caught in adultery? Do we exert ourselves on the Sabbath? How do Christians interpret the Law of Moses? The answer is that we follow the teachings of Christ and use Him as our means of interpreting Scripture."

I still hold to this confessional statement to be true.

Therefore, having briefly examined the issue of inerrancy, the history of the doctrine of inspiration, and the meaning of the Word of God, I can now offer my definition of the inspiration:

"The influence of the Holy Spirit on the Scripture writers which rendered their writings an accurate record of the revelation of God's communication to humans of truth that they need to know in order to relate properly to God."

I think the Scriptures are extremely complex and varied with regards to the various theories of inspiration. I think the Bible contains aspects of the dictation theory, the verbal theory, the plenary theory, and the dynamic theory. But in general, I hold to the dynamic theory because I think this theory holds to the majority of the Scriptures. The dynamic theory emphasizes the combination of divine and human elements in the process of inspiration and the writing of the Bible. The Spirit of God works by directing the the writer to the thoughts or concepts, and allowing the writer's own distinctive personality to come into play in the choice of words and expressions. Thus, the writer will give expression to the divinely directed thoughts in a way uniquely characteristic of that person.

Thus ends my definition of inspiration.

Spirited Away

I saw this film this past weekend. Let me say that this is the best film I have seen this year. Brilliant! A masterpiece! I would highly recommend this film to all. Here is a Japanese animation film for people who do not like Japanese animation.

The highest grossing film in Japanese box-office history (more than $234 million), Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (Sen To Chihiro Kamikakushi) is a dazzling film that reasserts the power of drawn animation to create fantasy worlds. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Lewis Carroll's Alice, Chihiro (voice by Daveigh Chase--Lilo in Disney's Lilo & Stitch) plunges into an alternate reality. On the way to their new home, the petulant adolescent and her parents find what they think is a deserted amusement park. Her parents stuff themselves until they turn into pigs, and Chihiro discovers they're trapped in a resort for traditional Japanese gods and spirits. An oddly familiar boy named Haku (Jason Marsden) instructs Chihiro to request a job from Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette), the greedy witch who rules the spa. As she works, Chihiro's untapped qualities keep her from being corrupted by the greed that pervades Yubaba's mini-empire. In a series of fantastic adventures, she purges a river god suffering from human pollution, rescues the mysterious No-Face, and befriends Yubaba's kindly twin, Zeniba (Pleshette again). The resolve, bravery, and love Chihiro discovers within herself enable her to aid Haku and save her parents. The result is a moving and magical journey, told with consummate skill by one of the masters of contemporary animation.

Oxford Trip 2004 X: St. Andrews

Now that my semester is almost over I can now take time to post the rest of my pics from last summer’s trip to Great Britain. I think I need to finish these posts before I go back to Oxford this summer. Certainly I need to finish these posts before the anniversary of these events comes around in July.



On our last stop in Scotland we come to St. Andrews, a town known for its Presbyterian University and great golf course. It’s nice to know where golf and pasturing originated.

This is the University of St. Andrews is currently well-known as the residence of Richard Bauckham, one of the best contemporary New Testament scholars. No, I did not get a chance to meet him.



Here you can get a great glance at the sea looking out from the ruins of the castle at St. Andrews.



And here is the group with which I ventured to Great Britain. If you look real close you can see three or four doctorates.



And here are our two mediators. Between the professors and the students stood these two gentlemen, Mike Odem and The Rush. I am not really sure what they are discussing … possibly something to do with the dreadful sandwiches they continually passed out … sandwiches which made us pass out.



Here is the inside of the well they are standing beside. Maybe they are trying to figure out how to get the coins out. Since this is a Scottish well, I doubt their chances.



And here are the ruins of the cathedral at St. Andrews. This was quite an interesting place.



I later ventured out on my own (as always) trying to find a good place to get a burger. Never really did find one. However, I did find a good restaurant that offered a decent burger. Interestingly, after I had ordered, a bird flew into the restaurant and perched itself in the rafters. The bird (a dirty bird indeed) commenced to poop upon the patrons. It would hop from rafter to rafter leaving a surprise in its wake. I quickly grabbed my food and headed into a section of the restaurant away from the falling poo. For the next half hour I watched from a distance as the restaurant staff chased the bird around with nets and brooms. Yes, the food is decent, the service is okay, but the floor show is spectacular.



For the next few hours, I ventured around the town stopping into book stores. I was able to find a few good books, including a Penguin copy of the speeches of Cicero. Nice reading.





And this is a nice church whose picture I took. It was a costly shot. I dropped my then fiancée’s camera while doing so.

So ends my time in Scotland. Lovely country.

Prayer Labyrinths Revisited

Alright, I have given the issue some thought and now feel comfortable recommending Prayer Labyrinths. I have even provided a link to an Online Prayer Labyrinth on my links column. I suggest giving it a try to see for yourself.

Is It Just Me ...

... or is there a similarity here?

'We Want God'

When John Paul II went to Poland, communism didn't have a prayer.

Thursday, April 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Everyone has spoken this past week of John Paul II's role in the defeat of Soviet communism and the liberation of Eastern Europe. We don't know everything, or even a lot, about the quiet diplomatic moves--what happened in private, what kind of communications the pope had with the other great lions of the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher. And others, including Bill Casey, the tough old fox of the CIA, and Lech Walesa of Solidarity.

But I think I know the moment Soviet communism began its fall. It happened in public. Anyone could see it. It was one of the great spiritual moments of the 20th century, maybe the greatest.

It was the first week in June 1979. Europe was split in two between east and west, the democracies and the communist bloc--police states controlled by the Soviet Union and run by local communist parties and secret police.

John Paul was a new pope, raised to the papacy just eight months before. The day after he became pope he made it clear he would like to return as pope to his native Poland to see his people.

The communists who ran the Polish regime faced a quandary. If they didn't allow the new Pope to return to his homeland, they would look defensive and frightened, as if they feared that he had more power than they. To rebuff him would seem an admission of their weakness. On the other hand, if they let him return, the people might rise up against the government, which might in turn trigger an invasion by the Soviet Union.

The Polish government decided that it would be too great an embarrassment to refuse the pope. So they invited him, gambling that John Paul--whom they knew when he was cardinal of Krakow, who they were sure would not want his presence to inspire bloodshed--would be prudent. They wagered that he would understand he was fortunate to be given permission to come, and understand what he owed the government in turn was deportment that would not threaten the reigning reality. They announced the pope would be welcome to come home on a "religious pilgrimage."

John Paul quickly accepted the invitation. He went to Poland.

And from the day he arrived, the boundaries of the world began to shift.

Two months before the pope's arrival, the Polish communist apparatus took steps to restrain the enthusiasm of the people. They sent a secret directive to schoolteachers explaining how they should understand and explain the pope's visit. "The pope is our enemy," it said. "Due to his uncommon skills and great sense of humor he is dangerous, because he charms everyone, especially journalists. Besides, he goes for cheap gestures in his relations with the crowd, for instance, puts on a highlander's hat, shakes all hands, kisses children. . . . It is modeled on American presidential campaigns. . . Because of the activation of the Church in Poland our activities designed to atheize the youth not only cannot diminish but must intensely develop. . . In this respect all means are allowed and we cannot afford any sentiments."
The government also issued instructions to Polish media to censor and limit the pope's comments and appearances.

On June 2, 1979, the pope arrived in Poland. What followed will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.

He knelt and kissed the ground, the dull gray tarmac of the airport outside Warsaw. The silent churches of Poland at that moment began to ring their bells. The pope traveled by motorcade from the airport to the Old City of Warsaw.

The government had feared hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands would line the streets and highways.

By the end of the day, with the people lining the streets and highways plus the people massed outside Warsaw and then inside it--all of them cheering and throwing flowers and applauding and singing--more than a million had come.

In Victory Square in the Old City the pope gave a mass. Communist officials watched from the windows of nearby hotels. The pope gave what papal biographer George Weigel called the greatest sermon of John Paul's life.

Why, the pope asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Perhaps it was because of how Poland had suffered for centuries, and through the 20th century had become "the land of a particularly responsible witness" to God. The people of Poland, he suggested, had been chosen for a great role, to understand, humbly but surely, that they were the repository of a special "witness of His cross and His resurrection." He asked then if the people of Poland accepted the obligations of such a role in history.
The crowd responded with thunder.

"We want God!" they shouted, together. "We want God!"

What a moment in modern history: We want God. From the mouths of modern men and women living in a modern atheistic dictatorship.

The pope was speaking on the Vigil of Pentecost, that moment in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit came down to Christ's apostles, who had been hiding in fear after his crucifixion, filling them with courage and joy. John Paul picked up this theme. What was the greatest of the works of God? Man. Who redeemed man? Christ. Therefore, he declared, "Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude. . . . The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man! Without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland." Those who oppose Christ, he said, still live within the Christian context of history.

Christ, the pope declared, was not only the past of Poland--he was "the future . . . our Polish future."

The massed crowd thundered its response. "We want God!" it roared.

That is what the communist apparatchiks watching the mass from the hotels that rimmed Victory Square heard. Perhaps at this point they understood that they had made a strategic mistake. Perhaps as John Paul spoke they heard the sound careen off the hard buildings that ringed the square; perhaps the echo sounded like a wall falling.
The pope had not directly challenged the government. He had not called for an uprising. He had not told the people of Catholic Poland to push back against their atheist masters. He simply stated the obvious. In Mr. Weigel's words: "Poland was not a communist country; Poland was a Catholic nation saddled with a communist state."

The next day, June 3, 1979, John Paul stood outside the cathedral in Gniezno, a small city with a population of 50,000 or so. Again there was an outdoor mass, and again he said an amazing thing.

He did not speak of what governments want, nor directly of what a growing freedom movement wants, nor of what the struggling Polish worker's union, Solidarity, wanted.

He spokeof what God wants.

"Does not Christ want, does not the Holy Spirit demand, that the pope, himself a Pole, the pope, himself a Slav, here and now should bring out into the open the spiritual unity of Christian Europe . . .?" Yes, he said, Christ wants that. "The Holy Spirit demands that it be said aloud, here, now. . . . Your countryman comes to you, the pope, so as to speak before the whole Church, Europe and the world. . . . He comes to cry out with a mighty cry."

What John Paul was saying was remarkable. He was telling Poland: See the reality around you differently. See your situation in a new way. Do not see the division of Europe; see the wholeness that exists and that not even communism can take away. Rhetorically his approach was not to declare or assert but merely, again, to point out the obvious: We are Christians, we are here, we are united, no matter what the communists and their map-makers say.

It was startling. It was as if he were talking about a way of seeing the secret order of the world.

That day at the cathedral the communist authorities could not stop the applause. They could not stop everyone who applauded and cheered. There weren't enough jail cells.

But it was in the Blonie Field, in Krakow--the Blonia Krakowskie, the fields just beyond the city--that the great transcendent moment of the pope's trip took place. It was the moment when, for those looking back, the new world opened. It was the moment, some said later, that Soviet communism's fall became inevitable.
It was a week into the trip, June 10, 1979. It was a sunny day. The pope was to hold a public mass. The communist government had not allowed it to be publicized, but Poles had spread the word.

Government officials braced themselves, because now they knew a lot of people might come, as they had to John Paul's first mass. But that was a week before. Since then, maybe people had seen enough of him. Maybe they were tiring of his message. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

But something happened in the Blonie field.

They started coming early, and by the time the mass began it was the biggest gathering of humanity in the entire history of Poland. Two million or three million people came, no one is sure, maybe more. For a mass.

And it was there, at the end of his trip, in the Blonie field, that John Paul took on communism directly, by focusing on communism's attempt to kill the religious heritage of a country that had for a thousand years believed in Christ.

This is what he said:

Is it possible to dismiss Christ and everything which he brought into the annals of the human being? Of course it is possible. The human being is free. The human being can say to God, "No." The human being can say to Christ, "No." But the critical question is: Should he? And in the name of what "should" he? With what argument, what reasoning, what value held by the will or the heart does one bring oneself, one's loved ones, one's countrymen and nation to reject, to say "no" to Him with whom we have all lived for one thousand years? He who formed the basis of our identity and has Himself remained its basis ever since. . . .
As a bishop does in the sacrament of Confirmation so do I today extend my hands in that apostolic gesture over all who are gathered here today, my compatriots. And so I speak for Christ himself: "Receive the Holy Spirit!"

I speak too for St. Paul: "Do not quench the Spirit!"

I speak again for St. Paul: "Do not grieve the Spirit of God!"

You must be strong, my brothers and sisters! You must be strong with the strength that faith gives! You must be strong with the strength of faith! You must be faithful! You need this strength today more than any other period of our history. . . .

You must be strong with love, which is stronger than death. . . . When we are strong with the Spirit of God, we are also strong with the faith of man. . . . There is therefore no need to fear. . . . So . . . I beg you: Never lose your trust, do not be defeated, do not be discouraged. . . . Always seek spiritual power from Him from whom countless generations of our fathers and mothers have found it. Never detach yourselves from Him. Never lose your spiritual freedom.

They went home from that field a changed country. After that mass they would never be the same.

What John Paul did in the Blonie field was both a departure from his original comments in Poland and an extension of them.
In his first comments he said: God sees one unity of Europe, he does not see East and West divided by a gash in the soil.

In this way he "divided the dividers" from God's view of history.

But in the Blonie field he extended his message. He called down the Holy Spirit--as the Vicar of Christ and successor to Peter, he called down God--to fill the people of Poland, to "confirm" their place in history and their ancient choice of Christ, to confirm as it were that their history was real and right and unchangeable--even unchangeable by communists.

So it was a redeclaration of the Polish spirit, which is a free spirit. And those who were there went home a different people, a people who saw themselves differently, not as victims of history but as strugglers for Christ.

Another crucial thing happened, after the mass was over. Everyone who was there went home and turned on the news that night to see the pictures of the incredible crowd and the incredible pope. But state-controlled TV did not show the crowds. They did a brief report that showed a shot of the pope standing and speaking for a second or two. State television did not acknowledge or admit what a phenomenon John Paul's visit was, or what it had unleashed.

The people who had been at the mass could compare the reality they had witnessed with their own eyes with the propaganda their media reported. They could see the discrepancy. This left the people of Poland able to say at once and together, definitively, with no room for argument: It's all lies. Everything this government says is a lie. Everything it is is a lie.

Whatever legitimacy the government could pretend to, it began to lose. One by one the people of Poland said to themselves, or for themselves within themselves: It is over.

And when 10 million Poles said that to themselves, it was over in Poland. And when it was over in Poland, it was over in Eastern Europe. And when it was over in Eastern Europe, it was over in the Soviet Union. And when it was over in the Soviet Union, well, it was over.

All of this was summed up by a Polish publisher and intellectual named Jerzy Turowicz, who had known Karol Wojtyla when they were young men together, and who had gone on to be a supporter of Solidarity and member of Poland's first postcommunist government. Mr. Turowicz, remembering the Blonie field and the Pope's visit, told Ray Flynn, at the time U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, "Historians say World War II ended in 1945. Maybe in the rest of the world, but not in Poland. They say communism fell in 1989. Not in Poland. World War II and communism both ended in Poland at the same time--in 1979, when John Paul II came home."
And now he is dead. It is fitting and not at all surprising that Rome, to its shock, has been overwhelmed with millions of people come to see him for the last time. The line to view his body in St. Peter's stretched more than a mile. His funeral tomorrow will be witnessed by an expected two billion people, the biggest television event in history. And no one, in Poland or elsewhere, will be able to edit the tape to hide what is happening.

John Paul gave us what may be the transcendent public spiritual moment of the 20th century. "We want God." The greatest and most authentic cry of the human heart.

They say he asked that his heart be removed from his body and buried in Poland. That sounds right, and I hope it's true. They'd better get a big box.

Christian Tradition Selector

For those interested in short online quizes, try out the "Christian Tradition Selector." My results are below. Interesting...look at what came in last. But I do not think that I am really that Calvinistic.

I would love to see the scores of others.

Rank Item Percent
1: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (100%)
2: Lutheran (87%)
3: Church of Christ/Campbellite (85%)
4: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (85%)
5: Congregational/United Church of Christ (84%)
6: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (83%)
7: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (81%)
8: Seventh-Day Adventist (79%)
9: Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England (77%)
10: Eastern Orthodox (70%)
11: Roman Catholic (62%)
12: Presbyterian/Reformed (61%)
13: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (59%)

Requiem For Chuck E Cheeses

Tuesday night I had the opportunity to attend a performance of Mozart’s Requiem at my seminary. I must say that the first 2/3 of the performance was thrilling and well worth the price of admission. However, the last third of the concert was somewhat mediocre at best. It appears that there is some serious scholarly discussion over the authenticity of the final three movements of the piece. I would have to offer my dilettante opinion that Mozart did not write these pieces. But the rest of the performance was great. The Fort Worth symphony orchestra was excellent. The seminary choir was excellent. The featured soloists were superb as always. I heard all of these performers last Christmas at a performance of Bach. I must admit that I preferred the Bach performance but probably because I prefer Bach to Mozart. I think Glenn Gould said it best when he quipped that Mozart was just a flashy song-writer in comparison to Bach. With minor adjustments, I would agree with this opinion.

Also, before the performance, I took the missus to Chuck E Cheeses. Yes, Mozart and Chuck E Cheeses – don’t those two just go together? My lovely wife has been wanting me to go there for over a year now and I have steadfastly refused until now. I finally felt that the absurdity of going to a kiddie casino followed by a performance of one of my favourite decomposing composers was contradiction whose irony God had blessed.

You’ll notice that I called Chuck E Cheeses a “kiddie casino”. Yes, very quickly, while I was there, I was reminded of Las Vegas’ Circus Circus casino. In fact, as I looked at all the tokens these kids were pumping into the games I quickly realized that THIS was a casino.

So, parents, if you want to start your child off on the road towards high class casino lounging then I suggest taking your tot to Chuck E Cheese. It’s never to young to start. I think that’s how Don Giovanni began.

Reasons For The Effectiveness of John Paul II

I thought I would take a brief moment to give a few opinions about the passing of Pope John Paul II.

Now I am not a Roman Catholic and have no desire to be one but, I have to admit, as far as popes go, John Paul II was a good one. In fact, the almost universal opinion of all Christians and most world leaders is that John Paul II was a great Pope and will probably go down in history as one of the best popes the Roman Catholic Church has ever had. Probably in the top five.


This then begs the question: Why was Pope John Paul II such a good Pope?

In considering this matter, I came up with three probable reasons:

1) Karol Jozef Wojtyla spent a lifetime fighting fascists (either Nazi or Commie) for both religious and electoral freedoms. These early years of freedom fighting had an indelible impact upon his life and made him an effective Pope with regards to the pursuit of freedom in the world.

2) Pope John Paul II combined both moral conservatism and social activism. It is interesting that in a day when the Protestant Church is largely divided among believers who want more social activism and those who want more moral conservatism that we have a Roman Catholic pontiff who combined both and was admired by both sides of Protestantism. Yes, as I have perused the eulogies this week, I read the conservatives hailing the Pope for his moral stance and the liberals hailing the Pope for his social stance. Now what does this say? To me it says that when a person combines both biblically based moral and social concerns to their ministry that they will have a positive impact on the Church. I think the successful ministries throughout Christendom both in Protestant and Roman Catholic circles bears this out. A lesson for us all.

3) And lastly, and this cannot be overlooked, Pope John Paul II, was one of the first Popes to benefit from the technological wave that has swept the world. Through great advances in satellite and Internet technology, parishioners and all people all over the world could now see and hear the Pope live wherever they or the Pope were. What’s more, the advances in transportation allowed this Pope to be the most traveled in history.

I am sure that there are other significant factors that have led to the success of this Pontiff’s reign. Any one else have a good reason?