The Objective Scoreboard

The postmodern goo continues its attack on basic reality. Jason Collins is now the first ever pro sports player to be openly gay. Gauging the reaction, you might be led to believe that the revelation is as big of a deal as Jackie Robinson or something…oh wait. People are explicitly making those comparisons now.

What I’m about to say is related to the fact that gay is not the new black, no matter how much our culture really wishes to frame the debate.

As someone said recently, institutional racism first began to crumble in sports, because abstract lies can’t survive an objective scoreboard. Jackie Robinson’s talent could not be questioned. Those who did were objective idiots.

But now we have the opposite effect. An average NBA player, by most accounts, comes out as gay, and suddenly he’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The objective scoreboard, like everything else in our flailing culture, is now subservient to the sexual preferences of those involved. The press now moves to glorify the accomplishments of a man who, for the most part, has had a pretty mediocre career.

When I say mediocre, I’m obviously comparing his career to those we would call “top tier” in his profession. Me playing Collins in basketball would be a frog versus a fly situation. Being gay doesn’t suddenly make him better at basketball, anymore than having black hair makes me a better cook.

To compare him to Robinson also cheapens the true bigotry that existed back then. Robinson was barred from playing in the Major Leagues. Collins has been playing in the NBA for years, with people happy to pay him millions of dollars to do so. While I certainly wouldn’t want to lessen the harmful effects of words and locker room slurs, or whatever may cause the ears of those in the closet to burn, this is not a situation of widespread, institutionalized bigotry, and we shouldn’t treat it as such.

The press will continue to spin this as demolition for a major wall, and that now other pro athletes currently playing will feel more comfortable coming out of the closet. The key phrase in this is other pro athletes currently playing. To compare it to Robinson’s time shows a frantic leaping for straws, and comes across about as desperate as a bad car salesmen trying to reach his quota.

Gosnell – Our Idols’ Names Rhyme with Molech

Members of the media are starting to make some embarrassed apologies about the lack of coverage for the one of the most successful serial killers this nation has ever know. If you haven’t heard of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, no one can really blame you. It hasn’t really been covered by any of the major media outlets, let alone even a mention on the national nightly news.

Here is a rundown of the situation from The Gospel Coalition. You might not be able to finish. The stories contained in them are not of the train-wreck variety.

Other authors have made shown examples of other, far less monumental news (and in some cases downright trivial) making national headlines and sticking around in the news cycle far past their welcome, like lonely house guests on a school night. Sandra Fluke, Trayvon Martin. There wasn’t much restraint when these “local crime” stories were thrust into the national spotlight.

So why, when it comes to the horror show that was Gosnell’s abortion operation, has everyone suddenly found their restraint? This is a story of chopped up babies lying everywhere, unlicensed practitioners, medical rooms about as clean as gas station bathrooms, not to mention rampant racism and the failure of several governmental agencies.

I’m not suggesting any malicious intent to hide the truth or that there is deliberate selection bias going on for all parties. Only God knows the heart. We all have our own set of blinders that we wear. People are fully capable of making big mistakes on accident.

But why is this case being ignored? There were some rudimentary articles written about it back in 2011, but no serious digging. No real interest in the details.

This case presents the underbelly of sterilized infanticide…and people don’t like it. It throws back the curtains and shows the ugly monsters living under our beds. Turns out, their names rhyme with Molech.

Deep down, our culture has severe blood guilt. How can we not, with the killing of over 40 million innocents? Surely, the ground itself cries out the fact of our guilt.

We already know it. We don’t want to be reminded yet again, and slapped in the face.

We are a tragic people, because we have a strong sense of morality, left over from the dregs of Christendom, and yet turn our eyes when children are dismembered. So we compensate. We pour ourselves into saving puppies. Into crusades against factory farming. Into self-righteousness about organic foods. Into guilting others to drink fair trade coffee. We desperately want to be moral, to cleanse our conscience. But nothing can do that but the blood of Christ.

So normally, the media scrambles at the first sign of a juicy story about a horrific crime. It happens all the time. But in the case of Gosnell, they would simply be looking into a window of what they…WE…have allowed to happen.

In a time when a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman can say, with a straight face, that mothers should be able to kill their baby if it survives an abortion and is born, Gosnell’s abortion clinic reminds people how sick we really are. How infanticide is really the next logical step in our rampant idolatry of the orgasm.

Is it any wonder that no one really wants to talk about it?

Book Review: The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

I can say, without any exaggeration, that Peter Leithart’s A House for My Name is a book that helped change my life. Its a whirlwind tour of the Old Testement, and such a good introduction to looking at the Bible with new eyes, that it will make you want to sit down at a table and do something strange: just read Scripture for the pure enjoyment of it.

And if you are one of the Christians who think the majority of the Bible is just a collection of moralistic stories (some cool, some boring), genealogies, and archaic building instructions with nothing beyond the immediate surface, that book will string you up by your ankles…and swing you around until you don’t know up from left from north. I would say it encourages you to go further down the rabbit whole, but that would clearly be going in the wrong direction. Rather, it encourages you to take another step up the mountain, beyond the tame foothills.

The Four: A Survey of the Gospels is (sort-of) the direct follow-up. He gives the gospels a similar, though more varied, treatment. Each Gospel gets its own chapter, which seems absurd. Any one of the Gospels can, and has, inspired books upon books upon books. But Leithart’s book is exactly what it claims to be: a survey. While not meant to be exhaustive, each chapter offers a clear invitation to dig deeper, to study and meditate more. Leithart also identifies a theme or thread that runs underneath each Gospel.

The Meat of the Book

Matthew: Righteousness That Surpasses the Scribes. Jesus is the fulfillment and the true interpreter of the Law. He is the new lawgiver, the new Moses, the living embodiment of Israel.

Mark: The Way of the Son of Man. Jesus is a man of action, always on the move. Jesus is the strong man, taking the battle to Satan and his demons.

Luke: A Table for the Poor. Jesus came to bring good news to the poor. He eats with sinners, moving from one meal to another. Jesus proclaims a true Sabbath.

John: Seeing the Father. Jesus is the Son. Jesus is the one born of the Spirit. Jesus does only what he sees his Father doing. The Father is revealed by his Word.

While each portrait has something interesting to say, my favorite to read were the chapters on Mark and Luke. In Mark, Leithart points to some examples of subtle irony that make the Pharisees look even worse than they did before, and even in some cases has the disciples looking even more confused than they had before. But the chapter ends with two questions: “Are we not as blind as the disciples about Jesus, the stronger man? Would we recognize Jesus as Son of God as He’s dying in anguish?”

With Luke, Leithart treats both the Gospel and Acts as a single volume, and that perspective offers some thought-provoking questions. Luke spends much time on the journey to Jerusalem, while Acts moves outward from Jerusalem.Some themes are left hanging, only to be completed in the second book, and there are many other parallels. It also suggests that the Jews not only have Jesus as a witness against them, but the apostles. The hardening of the Jews and their rejection of Jesus doesn’t come to completion until they also reject the apostles of Jesus. The structure of Acts also has both Peter and Paul repeating the pattern of the life of Jesus.

This will make it very hard in the future for me to study Acts as a self-contained book without making it also a study of Luke.

Each section is appended with a series of questions, which is the same format Leithart took advantage of in A House for My Name. The first sets of questions are “review questions,” which ask basic questions about the section you just read. To find the answer to these questions, you simply need to pay attention while reading. The second sets of questions are “thought questions,” and this is where you try and workout your own Biblical thought processes. Be sure and stretch first, however, because many of these have the potential to cause a sprain.

These thought questions force you down some helpful paths, offering tantalizing hints. Many would be great to kick-start a discussion in a group setting or other Bible study. Many could also be used as the premise of an entire essay. Don’t skip them. They are worth thinking about.

My only issue with them is that some of them seem so obtuse to those of us who are not as learned as Leithart. They feel like they are pointing you to a raging river with no bridge. Or maybe pointing at some tower in the distance, hidden with fog, with no obvious path on which to proceed. The way looks insurmountable.  I wish the author had answered some of these harder questions himself, or at least offered some more hints. Undoubtedly, some of them are answered in some of his other books, but it would be nice to know which ones.

Here are examples of some of the more accessible thought questions:

  • Why is it important that Jesus turns water to wine at a wedding? See John 4:27-29.
  • Compare the early chapters of Acts to the early chapters of Joshua. How are they similar? Why?
  • Mark mentions that there are wild beasts in the wilderness where Jesus is tempted. Why?

Going Meta with the Gospels

Before Leithart even gets to the main event of the book, however, he opens with a series of introductory chapters, which help prepare for what is to come, and gives some much-need history lessons and context. The second chapter is essentially a summary of the NT Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God, and Leithart readily admits this in the footnotes. This was helpful, as it has been over six years since I’ve read any of Wright’s tomes, and things have gotten jumbled and layered with other books and experiences. It was a welcome review.

However, I can see it being jarring for those who have not at least dipped their toe in Wright’s views. While Wright builds his case bit by heavily-footnoted bit, gradually drawing you into the world of the first century, Leithart races through at a speed that could cause some awkward tripping. The pace is unavoidable in a book like this, but it is a slight negative.

To resolve it, just go and read Jesus and the Victory of God already. What’s taken you so long?

Another preliminary chapter has to do with the “synoptic problem” and dating the Gospels (and by good and necessary consequence, the rest of the New Testament). Regardless of what Leithart himself says about the chapter (that it is more technical and can be safely skipped or skimmed), you should read it. It summarizes some recent scholarship and offers some ammo in accepting an early date for the entire canon. How early? At least four years before 70 AD, the destruction of Jerusalem.

Overall, this is a great book. It makes you want to read the Gospels again, and with more attention than you have before. It also offers the teacher many springboards from which to jump from, both for general direction of the class or sermon itself, but also in discussion questions to engage participants.

Verdict: Buy.

This is on a simple scale of three: don’t read, borrow, or buy.

Are all sins equal? (Or, Quench an Idol’s Thirst)

Every sin is against a holy God, and against Him only do we sin (Psalm 51:4). This, with the fact that we are all guilty and deserve death (Romans 6:23), can sometimes tempt us to flatten all offenses  and treat them all as equal. After all, James 2:10-11 says that if you fail to keep the law in one point, you are accountable to the whole law.

Jesus and the Pharisees

One of the warnings given against any kind of ranking is that is the temptation of pride, to act like the Pharisee who looks over at the sinner, and thanks God that he is not like him (Luke 18:9-14). While the sin and temptation to act like a Pharisee is perennial, we often are blind to what the sins of the Pharisees actually were, even though Jesus spells it out quite clearly for us time and again. We are never more like Jesus’s disciples than when we are like this: befuddled, confused, and always missing the point.

What were Jesus’s actual criticisms of the Pharisees?

Matthew 23: 23 – 24

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

There are weightier matters of the law. And some things are gnats while some are camels.

In the Sermon on the Mount, which is partly a response to the “rightouesness” of the Pharisees, Jesus says in Matthew 7:3-5:

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (ESV)

Some matters are a speck, and some are a log. The fact that they both impair eyesight does not mean they are equal.

And lest we forget, Jesus also explicitly says that there are some commandments that are greater than others.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matt. 22:37-39 ESV)

If certain commandments are more important, it makes sense that breaking those commandments would be a more serious matter.

Of course, this is not to ignore the other commandments. But some are foundational, and some are not. Some commandments are downstream from other commandments, caught up by the momentum of the current.

Finally, let’s not forget the the true unpardonable sin, blaspheming against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:28-29). If we can’t say that this sin is worse than others, does the Christian have any basis of making any value judgments at all? Do words mean anything?

So what was one glaring part of the Pharisees’ problem? Not that they weighted sins differently, but the fact that they weighted sins improperly.

God’s Character Revealed in the Old

I’ve discussed the continuity of the covenant in some other places, and it is important here too to reiterate that the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New. His character is revealed in both.

Every sin is against a holy God. But has that same God made known that some are more despicable than others? Should we, perhaps, pay attention? The entire law is filled with sins that are given different penalties. Read Ezekiel 8. Some things are more detestable to God than others.

And then, mercy gets bumped further up in the line, for God desires mercy, and not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6). That is an astounding statement, because sacrifice is the very thing that makes it tolerable for God to dwell near his people.

Blood guilt was (and still is) a very real thing, but stipulations were made to take into account motive. Was it an accident or premeditated (Deut 19:4)?  That state of heart made a difference in the severity.

And in the New Testament…Continued

Why did Jesus say it would be worse for Sodom than a town that denied hospitality to his disciples? The sins of Sodom were great, but they didn’t seem to light a candle to some of the sins of the generation Jesus preached to.

And what about those who turned Jesus over to be crucified?

Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. (John 19:11 ESV)

When we get to Paul, we see the same thing. Paul’s list of qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy assumes that some sins will disqualify someone from being an elder.

Then there is the curious statement in 1 Cor. 6:18:

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Sexual sin is a serious matter. Not only is it a sin against the body committing it, its so bad that God uses the sin itself as a judgement against the wicked (Romans 1). In many ways, it is its own punishment.

This even applies to doctrine itself. Of first importance…(1 Cor 15:3-5). God doesn’t hold to irreducible materialism, and neither should you. Some things are the foundation of the house, and some things are just the window trimmings. If we take pride in assuming they are of the same importance, people will rightly give us funny looks when we try to construct an addition to the house and start with laying down the curtains.

Why We Cringe

Why do we react against the simple truth that not all sins are equal? There are three main reasons.

 1. Flattening all sins helps us justify our obsession over pet issues.

We all have pet issues, things that we like to focus on to help create our own illusion that we are more righteous than someone else or some other group. If all sins are equal, that helps us pretend that the faith itself is at stake! If all commandments and sins were NOT equal, we would be forced to give our fellow brothers some slack when they did not agree with us on our favorite issue, and therefore realize our personal passion isn’t the most important thing ever since the Resurrection. It slows us down from devouring one another (Gal 5:15).

Weighting sins and commandments properly is a powerful corrective against sectarianism. If you must love God and love your neighbor above all else, then you must love God and love your neighbor above all else. Looking over at the adulterer, and feeling smug because you never cheated on your wife, is completely foreign to the two greatest commandments. Looking over the guy drinking a beer, and congratulating yourself on your teetotalism, is actually hating your neighbor.

So we, like the Pharisees, ask “Who is our neighbor?”, desperately hoping Jesus doesn’t point over there and say…that guy.

Most of the time, these are traditions that have been elevated, but this even applies for those matters that are not traditions. And this where wisdom must come in. Real life is messy, and it cannot be navigated properly with a simple pietism. This leads to our next point…

2. The desire for simple, immature, and straightforward pietism.

One reason that men desire to collapse everything into an indistinguishable glob of goo, including the weight of certain sins, it makes things easier to discern. If everything is black and white, we can just descend into a simplistic form of pietism that requires minimal wisdom. We don’t want to grow up. We don’t want to eat solid food. We don’t want to the constant practice it requires (Heb. 5:14). At least, until the real world slaps us in the face, and then it all collapses. When that happens, we just thank God we’re not like those other people over there, and congratulate ourselves for not compromising and keeping ourselves pure.

Take the cliched scenario of Nazis looking for Jews. If you were hiding Jews in your basement, and the Nazis came knocking, it will not do to wring your hands over lying, or stand tall in your obedience of Romans 13. If you do either, you are not being righteous. You are being a coward. The command for mercy trumps many things. You could even say it is a weightier matter of the law.

3. The most important commandments are really, really hard to obey.

Other people are annoying. I mean, they’re other people after all. Sometimes they smell funny.

Idols also have much too easy of a time settling down in our hearts, and finding a cozy spot on the couch. And then we offer them some iced tea before kissing their feet.

If we are honest, we must admit that we fail in the greatest commandments every single day. We are guilty. But if all sins are equal, perhaps we can take some misplaced solace in the fact that we have succeeded in something monumental.” I haven’t committed adultery and I don’t steal. I must be doing pretty good.” When we try and flatten all sins, we imagine them as deep as the kiddie pool, below our knees. If we don’t commit some, we can high-step it out of this muck.

In reality, the muck is constantly over our heads, and we are drowning. If we miss out on the greatest commandments, the others do not matter. And that is uncomfortable.

We are not in need of weeding our garden. We are in need of a strip-mining crew to lay it bare, haul in new soil, and reseed the cursed ground. Only once we treat the greatest commandments as the greatest commandments, does weeding the garden even make any sense. Only when we have this perspective does tithing out of the spice rack have any value.

The Weight of Shed Blood

The earth itself groaned and shifted under the weight of the shed blood of the Son of God, and the sun hid its face from the sight. That same earth was stunned into silence for three days. And then the sun simply rose like it always does, to shine on the other risen Son.

The Resurrection is the miracle that gives all other miracles their meaning. It tears down, only to build back a better version, just as the Gospel kills us first, only so we can be born again a better creature.