When we lived in Toronto, some of my closest friends were from Iran (and Afghanistan). When our son Marcus turned one on September 28, 2001, we celebrated the event with them, just a couple of weeks after 9/11. A significant and influential part of my doctoral studies focused on Iron Age Iran. Some of my favorite professors while in graduate schools were born and raised in Iran who had an intimate knowledge of the area (Christy Wilson at Gordon-Conwell, Bill Hutchison at Harvard and Cuyler Young at the University of Toronto).
However, in spite of my love for the land and its people, I cannot quite bring myself to joining in the jubilation and celebration coming from the general direction of 1600 Penna. Ave. The Islamic Republic of Iran is still a terrorist state and an active sponsor of terrorists. An adoring press will be tempted to make comparisons with the Nixon/Kissinger deal with China, but the analogy breaks down so fast so as to make it quite meaningless. In recent months, cool heads including Dr. Kissinger in a great essay co-written with George Shultz, have warned of the folly to sit down with the "ayyatolahs."
I am also reminded of an old movie, The Heroes of Telemark where the Norwegian Resistance put an end to Nazi hopes for nuclear power during WWII. From a strategic standpoint, for Nazi Germany to go nuclear was simply unacceptable in the eyes of the Allies and no cost was spared to stop the production of "heavy water." We are such a long way from such determination by the Great Powers.
So let's keep Persia on our minds and in our prayers. The world just got a little more dangerous as a result of this agreement.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Friday, July 3, 2015
New Age of Heresies
This is a brief post that could swell into a monograph pretty quickly (I don't have the time to write such a book maybe someone will feel the call!).
A new age of heresies not unlike what the Early Church faced is upon us. It's now not unusual to see scholars and pastors who claim evangelical roots that have moved from orthodox understanding of the faith to new ideas (justification; inspiration of Scripture; historicity of Adam; deity of Christ; to name a few; and now we can add sexual ethics to the list). What is also troubling are those who are concerned with these movements are viewed as intolerant extremists. In this new era of the evangelical movement in North America, Early Christian documents will become more and more important as guidelines on how to deal with false teachings and false teachers. 1, 2 Timothy; 2 Peter/Jude; Revelation, 1-3 John are great texts and will provide a much needed corrective to more extreme forms of the missional and liberation/social justice movements. When I read this part of God's Word, it seems to me the inspired writers are clearly guilty of circling the wagon and they don't seem to be wringing their hands about it. What they saw was the need to protect the Church from the lies of the devil and those who were deceived by him. NT writers in the General Epistles (and other texts, of course) felt like the OT watchmen whose responsibility it was to alert the town of impending danger. In NT terms, it's the danger of the impending wrath of God against ungodliness and the proclamation that Jesus is the One who delivers us both from the wrath to come (1 Thess 1:10) and this present evil age (Gal 1). As Paul puts it in 1 Tim. 3:15, "if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth."
Maybe what we need to do is emulate the Early Church, shed some of the overemphases of the missional movement, and recover a robust view of the Church as "bulwark" (or in German "Festung") of the Truth.
A new age of heresies not unlike what the Early Church faced is upon us. It's now not unusual to see scholars and pastors who claim evangelical roots that have moved from orthodox understanding of the faith to new ideas (justification; inspiration of Scripture; historicity of Adam; deity of Christ; to name a few; and now we can add sexual ethics to the list). What is also troubling are those who are concerned with these movements are viewed as intolerant extremists. In this new era of the evangelical movement in North America, Early Christian documents will become more and more important as guidelines on how to deal with false teachings and false teachers. 1, 2 Timothy; 2 Peter/Jude; Revelation, 1-3 John are great texts and will provide a much needed corrective to more extreme forms of the missional and liberation/social justice movements. When I read this part of God's Word, it seems to me the inspired writers are clearly guilty of circling the wagon and they don't seem to be wringing their hands about it. What they saw was the need to protect the Church from the lies of the devil and those who were deceived by him. NT writers in the General Epistles (and other texts, of course) felt like the OT watchmen whose responsibility it was to alert the town of impending danger. In NT terms, it's the danger of the impending wrath of God against ungodliness and the proclamation that Jesus is the One who delivers us both from the wrath to come (1 Thess 1:10) and this present evil age (Gal 1). As Paul puts it in 1 Tim. 3:15, "if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth."
Maybe what we need to do is emulate the Early Church, shed some of the overemphases of the missional movement, and recover a robust view of the Church as "bulwark" (or in German "Festung") of the Truth.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Time to go dark
There were many good responses to SCOTUS' decision this past Friday by evangelicals and I personally liked a lot of them. In terms of what to do next, so far, my favorite has been John Piper with his motif of lament and mourning (maybe it's because I'm working on the Nehemiah part of our NIVAC Ezra-Nehemiah commentary). While we need to be careful to set the context in the Persian period for Nehemiah, there are points of applications for us nevertheless. Upon hearing of the calamitous news from Jerusalem in the province of Yehud in chapter 1, Nehemiah becomes a mourner and goes "dark" for a few months, praying and fasting and interceding for the king of Persia to revert a decree he had made (recorded in Ezra 4). Again, we can't have a direct application to the US situation, but maybe it's time for us to "go dark" too and to have a posture of prayer and repentance for our sins and the sins of the people. The idea that "nothing has changed" after Friday is ok if by that we mean that God is still in control and that the nations are mere drop in a bucket (Isa 40) etc. etc. However, it's not ok if we mean disengagement from the situation. We are to pray actively for our government, Scripture teaches us. We ought also to feel the weight of what happened and lament and weep over this decision that so blatantly goes against the will of God (as so many other SCOTUS decisions before). We should also pray that we might not be hampered in proclaiming the Gospel, esp. those of us involved in Christian higher education.
So, maybe it's time for us to go dark too and while we're there also to weep and mourn for the tragedy in Charleston, the persecutions of our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Middle East, China, and many other unknown places. Finally, and not least of which, let us weep and mourn also over our own personal failures and shortcomings, as Nehemiah prays, "even I and my father's house have sinned" (Neh 1:6)
So, maybe it's time for us to go dark too and while we're there also to weep and mourn for the tragedy in Charleston, the persecutions of our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Middle East, China, and many other unknown places. Finally, and not least of which, let us weep and mourn also over our own personal failures and shortcomings, as Nehemiah prays, "even I and my father's house have sinned" (Neh 1:6)
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