"Groupthink" 2010 style

Writing in the winter issue of God's Revivalist and Bible Advocate, Kenneth Farmer finds striking similarities between Orwell's "monstrous machine" and today's political talk radio/TV. The whole article is well worth reading, but these are some highlights.

In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the "Two-Minute Hate" was a daily period in which party members of the society of Oceania were forced to watch a film depicting the party's enemies and encouraged to express their hatred for them and their principles. This actually was a form of brainwashing leading to party members being whipped into a frenzy of hatred and loathing, culminating at times with members feeling compelled to physically assault the telescreen. Imagine that!


. . . most of us will admit to listening to some talk radio. And having enjoyed it. But for some of us, this has changed; and here is how it happened.

The first thing that starts to get on our nerves is the arrogant tone. Once noticed, it is somewhat analagous to the grinding noise accompanying the Two-Minute Hate film. Orwell likened the sound to "some monstrous machine running without oil." Even for other voices which seem less arrogant, there is the growing awareness of wasted time . . .


The extreme voices get the headlines, the 24-hour news cycle elevates things of momentary insignificance to issues of importance, and you HAVE to take a side. Or so we are led to believe.


Don't allow the political hucksters to determine your views. When you take your stands, do so in a manner that is becoming of a Christian. For if we are "sound in speech which is beyond reproach" those who may oppose "will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us" (Titus 2:8).

Amen to all of that! Read it, print it, and pass it on -- here.

Jerry Bridges on "Gospel-Driven Sanctification"

The problem:

As I see it, the Christian community is largely a performance-based culture today. And the more deeply committed we are to following Jesus, the more deeply ingrained the performance mindset is. We think we earn God's blessing or forfeit it by how well we live the Christian life.

Most Christians have a baseline of acceptable performance by which they gauge their acceptance by God. For many, this baseline is no more than regular church attendance and the avoidance of major sins. Such Christians are often characterized by some degree of self-righteousness. After all, they don't indulge in the major sins we see happening around us. Such Christians would not think they need the gospel anymore. They would say the gospel is only for sinners.

For committed Christians, the baseline is much higher. It includes regular practice of spiritual disciplines, obedience to God's Word, and involvement in some form of ministry. Here again, if we focus on outward behavior, many score fairly well. But these Christians are even more vulnerable to self-righteousness, for they can look down their spiritual noses not only at the sinful society around them but even at other believers who are not as committed as they are. These Christians don't need the gospel either. For them, Christian growth means more discipline and more commitment.

Then there is a third group. The baseline of this group includes more than the outward performance of disciplines, obedience, and ministry. These Christians also recognize the need to deal with sins of the heart like a critical spirit, pride, selfishness, envy, resentment, and anxiety. They see their inconsistency in having their quiet times, their failure to witness at every opportunity, and their frequent failures in dealing with sins of the heart. This group of Christians is far more likely to be plagued by a sense of guilt because group members have not met their own expectations. And because they think God's acceptance of them is based on their performance, they have little joy in their Christian lives. For them, life is like a treadmill on which they keep slipping farther and farther behind. This group needs the gospel, but they don't realize it is for them. I know, because I was in this group.

Do these groups describe anyone you know? Maybe you can relate to that last one yourself. Here's the solution:

Gradually over time, and from a deep sense of need, I came to realize that the gospel is for believers, too. . . . Christians need to hear the gospel all of their lives because it is the gospel that continues to remind us that our day-to-day acceptance with the Father is not based on what we do for God but upon what Christ did for us in his sinless life and sin-bearing death. I began to see that we stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son. Therefore, I don't have to perform to be accepted by God. Now I am free to obey him and serve him because I am already accepted in Christ (see Rom. 8:1). My driving motivation now is not guilt but gratitude.

The truths contained in that last paragraph rocked my world around eight years ago. They can't be repeated too often. There will always be tension in the Christian life. A tension between what we know ourselves to be and what we desire to be. Desire will always outstrip performance for the growing Christian. That tension is itself an evidence of growth -- the person who thinks he's "arrived" is the one in real danger. The gospel -- preached and applied to ourselves daily -- is what will keep us going, saving us from despair on the one hand, and "easy believism" on the other. It provides the fuel to struggle against sin and grow in godliness. It points me away from myself and toward Jesus. And the real miracle is, the more I look to Him the more I become like him. Wow!

Read the whole article @ ModernReformation.org

Back at you, Dick

Yesterday on Meet the Press Gen. David Petraeus argued against the "enhanced interrogation techniques" a/k/a torture that continue to be defended by the former Vice President. Not only defended, but bragged about. The commander of CENTCOM went on to advocate abiding by the Geneva Conventions and closing Gitmo. I suppose the good general will now be accused of being soft on terrorists. I can hear it now. What kind of a name is Petraeus anyway? Sounds foreign. Maybe he's not a REAL American.

Here's the tape.

Augustine: facing the wrong way

And what did it profit me that I could read and understand for myself all the books I could get in the so-called 'liberal arts', when I was actually a worthless slave of wicked lust? I took delight in them, not knowing the real source of what it was in them that was true and certain. For I had my back toward the light, and my face toward the things on which the light falls, so that my face, which looked toward the illuminated things, was not itself illuminated. Whatever was written in any of the fields of rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or arithmetic, I could understand without any great difficulty and without the instruction of another man. All this you know, O Lord my God, because both quickness in understanding and acuteness in insight are your gifts. Yet for such gifts I made no thank offering to you. Therefore, my abilities served not my profit but rather my loss . . .

St. Augustine, Confessions (9.15.20)

Sean, Tiger and atonement

The ideas of sin and guilt before God are rapidly becoming alien concepts to contemporary Western society. Most Americans or Europeans don't go around worrying about forgiveness of sin like we did in centuries past. Yet that pesky law written on our hearts continues to rear its head now and again. Freud notwithstanding, notions of guilt and the need for forgiveness from someone persist.

Recently I watched an interview with Sean Penn about his humanitarian work in Haiti. Whatever you think of Penn's politics you have to admire his commitment. He spent several weeks in Haiti immediately after the earthquake and as of this writing is back for a second tour. You might also recall Penn helping to rescue Katrina flood victims in the aftermath of that disaster. Clearly he's a celebrity whose commitment to helping people in need goes beyond merely appearing on a telethon or writing a check. The interviewer asked Penn about his motivation for doing what he does. The answer was revealing, and I think honest. "Paying for sins or something."

Yesterday Tiger Woods broke his silence. I didn't watch the TV coverage, but I did read the transcript of his statement. It's hard not to be cynical about these public celebrity mea culpa's, but there's much to admire in what Woods said yesterday. For one thing, he acknowledged that the sincerity of his apology will be measured by his actions in the years ahead. He frankly acknowledged the betrayal of his wife and children. He also placed the blame squarely on himself and defended his wife from tabloid rumor and innuendo. He was blunt in describing his behavior, using words like "selfish" and "foolish". He spoke of the corrupting influence of money and fame. He admitted bringing "shame" on himself and his family. "I have a lot to atone for" he said.

How does Tiger plan to atone for his moral failures? He talked about getting back to his "core values" and living a "life of integrity" -- the need to become a "better person" and a "better man." All good things. For the sake of his family and many fans I hope he achieves those goals. Woods also pointed to a return to Buddhism as a source of inspiration. "People probably don't realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years. Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint." Christianity both agrees and disagrees with that critique of the human condition. You probably know where I'm going with this.

Christianity teaches that searching for satisfaction and security in anything else, or anyone else, than God Triune is ultimately unsatisfying. Buddhism offers "salvation" through the negation of desire, Christianity offers hope that our desires, and our actual physical bodies, can be redeemed. Buddhism offers a quest for self-atonement, Christianity offers atonement in the cross of Jesus Christ. Buddhism teaches moral transformation through a life of asceticism, Christianity through life in the Spirit. Tiger Woods and Sean Penn will find that paying for their sins themselves, whether in a life of good deeds or a life of self-denial, is a heavy burden to carry. The Apostle Paul, who had much to atone for, called that path slavery. May the brilliant golfer and the brilliant actor find the path of freedom that begins at the cross.

Humility and moral seriousness: requirements for knowing God

To whet my appetite for this Sunday's meeting of the Socrates Cafe of West Palm Beach (you're all invited!) I've been revisiting Loving Wisdom: Christian Philosophy of Religion by my friend and fellow elder Paul Copan. This book is an accessible entry point to a variety of topics related to apologetics and philosophy of religion. I heartily recommend it. You can read my full review of Paul's book ("Compelling, highly readable and accessible") at the Amazon link. I especially enjoyed reading again the chapter on the hiddenness of God. Here's a taste.

Humans don't need Ph.D's to know God exists and to put their trust in him. From the least of them to the greatest, God's presence and grace can be known. Those determined to resist or ignore God, on the other hand, can still find loopholes for nonbelief. Again, the evidence is ample, not coercive. . .

God doesn't want us to come to know him apart from knowing him as loving Lord and Father—personally embracing and committing ourselves to him. Purely intellectual knowledge of God's existence is inadequate; God doesn't want us to treat him as just another object of knowledge—like memorizing lines from Shakespeare or having figured out how a computer program works. He desires personal, loving knowledge.

So instead of being passively "open," we must be morally serious toward God who makes momentous demands of us. And we can't be morally serious seekers if we say we'll believe in God if and only if we have firsthand miraculous signs from him. We also must be humble and undemanding seekers, grateful for indicators or pointers to the God who hides, seeks, and graciously reveals. God, by his Spirit, will not disappoint (Rom. 5:5).

Copan, Loving Wisdom (Chalice Press, 2007), p. 138

Remembering Gene

Gene Siskel died eleven years ago, in February 1999, from a brain tumor. He was fifty-three years old. He had suffered terrible headaches in those last several months, but he was private about his pain. He didn't talk about being sick or how he felt or what he expected or hoped for. He was stoic and solitary and quiet in his death. Siskel and Ebert were both defined, for most of their adult lives, by comparative measures: the fat one, the bald one, the loud one, the skinny one. Siskel was also the careful one. He joked that Ebert's middle name was "Full Disclosure." Ebert's world has never had many secrets in it. Even at the end, when Siskel knew what was coming, he kept his secrets. He and Ebert never once spoke about his looming death.

There are pictures of Siskel all over the brownstone — on the grand piano, in the kitchen, on bookshelves. The biggest one is in the living room; Ebert can see it from his recliner. In almost all the pictures, Siskel and Ebert — never Ebert and Siskel — are standing together, shoulder to shoulder, smiling, two big thumbs-up. In the picture in the living room, they're also wearing tuxedos.

"Oh, Gene," Chaz says, and that's all she says.

All these years later, the top half of Ebert's face still registers sadness when Siskel's name comes up. His eyes well up behind his glasses, and for the first time, they overwhelm his smile. He begins to type into his computer, slowly, deliberately. He presses the button and the speakers light up. "I've never said this before," the voice says, "but we were born to be Siskel and Ebert." He thinks for a moment before he begins typing again. There's a long pause before he hits the button. "I just miss the guy so much," the voice says. Ebert presses the button again. "I just miss the guy so much."

Esquire - "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" by Chris Jones

God's faithfulness in the details

The Old Testament Book of Joshua has some of the most exciting action narratives in the Bible, but it has a lot of boring parts too. In fact, the majority of Joshua is lists of hard-to-pronounce names. Chapters 12 - 21 are a challenge for any reader determined to read through the Bible. There are lists of the kings defeated by Moses, lists of the inheritances given east of the Jordan, and west of the Jordan, lists of cities allotted to each of the tribes, and lists of the cities designated as cities of refuge (a reminder that God's will for Israel included justice for the exile and sojourner). What seems like mind-numbing minutiae is the climax of Joshua's account of God's covenant-keeping faithfulness to Israel. The Holy Spirit saw fit to inspire the writer to put it all down just so. The details serve to underscore the primary theological message of Joshua.

Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass. Josh. 21:43-45

With this crescendo the writer makes clear that the conquest of the land, and the Sabbath rest that looks back to creation and forward to Christ, are because of Yahweh's faithfulness. Not Israel's faithfulness! For after Joshua comes Judges. Within a generation Israel would descend into chaos and idolatry, but God continued to work out his redemptive purposes through this rebellious and stiff-necked people. The covenant with Abraham stands. In Christ, the yes and amen of all the good promises, all will come to pass.

The Misfit's theology of crisis

"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

"Maybe He didn't raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her.

from "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

Revisiting the "long take"

A while back on Friday is for film I wrote about the long take, and included one of my favorite examples from Robert Altman's The Player.

Recently blogger Mike Le compiled the 20 Greatest Extended Takes In Movie History. Check it out. But be warned: if you're a film buff this is a huge potential time waster!