Childermas and the Sanctity of Life

Does a baby have inherent value by being created in the image of God, or is his worth derivative from the ‘choice’ of someone else? Does the state have the authority to facilitate the slaughter of innocent children in order to meet needs within the adult community?

While questions such as these are at the forefront of today’s abortion controversy, the basic issues they raise are nothing new. In fact, these very issues were raised when Herod “the Great” massacred all the infant babies in Bethlehem in order to satisfy his own selfish needs.

The Magi and the Massacre

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, when Christians have traditionally remembered the baby boys in Bethlehem that King Herod ordered to be massacred. A week from tomorrow will be the Feast of Epiphany, when Christians remember the journey the Magi took to Jerusalem to seek the Christ-child. Today I have posted an article over at the Alfred the Great Society which explores the historical background to these two events and their relevance for our own age. After exploring the history of Herod and his family I suggest some reasons why he found the Christ-child to be such a threat. To read the article click on the link below:

The Magi, the Massacre and Herod the Horrible

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Postmodernism Notes

Earlier in the year I constructed a timeline for our Omnibus class to assist with the study of Gene Veith's Postmodern Times. Click HERE to download the timeline (and in the process, discover how the picture on the right embodies the principles of Postmodern art).

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C.S. Lewis's Delight in Hierarchy

Four years ago Esther and I commented how the movie of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe disrupted Lewis's hierarchical vision that was embedded in courtly etiquette. We made the point that Lewis shows in his writings, such as The Allegory of Love, that chivalrous themes and symbols are pointers to higher realities, and that Narnian culture is saturated with such images. By contrast, Adamson, the director of the first Narnia film, seemed intent on eliminating all the subtle nuances that point to these symbols and images. For example, regarding the Father Christmas scene, Andrew Adamson said

"[In the book], Father Christmas says, ‘I do not intend you to use it because battles are ugly when women fight.’ I thought that was very disempowering to girls, the fact that you get a tool and you’re not allowed to use it. I think C.S. Lewis wrote this book before he met Doug’s mother. I think there are a lot more strong female characters in his books after he met Doug’s mother. ‘Battles are ugly affairs’ made it more of a universal thing and not a sexist thing. "

The problem here is not simply that Adamson tried to create a politically correct Narnia  but that Adamson’s approach was essentially reductive, getting rid of the hierarchical themes that permeate relationships between the different classes in Narnia and between men and women. It is reductive because he was subtly rejecting transcendent themes such as a chivalrous society where men are manly and fight to protect woman. Similarly, the whole way in which family solidarity was made to replace loyalty to Aslan as the childrens' motivating factor throughout the narrative (an point we develop here) was another move away from transcendent themes to two-dimensional, empirically accessible themes. This approach has the effect of flattening Lewis’ Narnia, like turning something that is in colour into black and white.
  

I was delighted the other day to have our perspective confirmed by Steven D. Boyer who has written some great things about C.S. Lewis' hierarchical view of the world, and the films' implicit rejection of this worldview. In his article, "Narnia Invaded: How the New Films Subvert Lewis’s Hierarchical World" he makes the following observations:

Philip Schaff on the "Sect System"

"...the sect system...brings all sorts of impure motives into play, and encourages the use of unfair, or at least questionable means for the promotion of its ends. It nourishes party spirit and passion, envy, selfishness, and bigotry. It changes the peaceful kingdom of God into a battle-field, where brother fights brother, not, of course, with sword and bayonet, yet with loveless harshness and all manner of detraction, and too often subordinates the interests of the church universal to those of his own party. It tears to pieces the beautiful body of Jesus Christ, and continually throws in among its members the fire-brands of jealousy and discord, instead of making them work together harmoniously for the same high and holy end. It should not be forgotten, that Christianity aims not merely to save individual souls, and then leave them to themselves, but to unite them with God and therefore also with one another. It is essentially love, and tends towards association; and the church is and ought to become more and more the one body of Jesus Christ, the fullness of Him who filleth all in all. If, therefore, the observer start with the conception of the church as an organic communion of saints, making unity and universality its indispensable marks, and duly weighing the many exhortations of Holy Scripture to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bod of peace; he cannot possibly be satisfied with the sect system, but must ever come out against it with the warnings of Paul against the divisions and parties in the Corinthian church." Philip Schaff, America, p. 99

Further Reading

“To the dogs with the Head”: The Anti-inellectualism of Charles Finney

8 Gnostic Myths You May Have Imbibed

The Problem of Mediation in the First Great Awakening

Religion of the People, by the People, for the People

Recovering the Protestant Affirmation of Life

Finney and the New Measures

Gender, Morality and Modesty



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Jack and the Beanstalk and Miracle on 34th Street

All good stories are echoes of the One Story, telling the account of the fall and redemption.

 

Jack and the Beanstalk is typical of a good fairy story: it begins with Jack and his mother impoverished, which we later learn was because of the giant’s cruelty to Jack’s father. This is a type of the fall, although in this case the enemy is not the serpent but the giant.
 
Just as Adam and Eve were banished from paradise, so Jack and his mother are sent to live the life of paupers. Jack, who is a type of Christ, comes and plunders the giant’s castle and redeems is father’s lost fortune, just as Christ bruised the serpent’s head and redeemed us for His kingdom.

 

The reason Jack and the Beanstalk and similar tales are so compelling is because they echo themes at the very heart of our world and our humanity. All good stories follow this same basic pattern, telling a story of fall and redemption. (This is a point that Brian Godawa brings out in his book Hollywood Worldviews, by the way.)

 

The movie, Miracle on 34th Street, is no different. It begins with Doris and Susan in a fallen state, although in this case it is a fall into a rationalistic, restricted epistemology which the cold Doris adopted as a form of self-protection after her divorce. Kris revealingly refers to Doris and Susan as “a couple of lost souls.” By the end of the film they are no longer lost but have found redemption, metaphorically, through “faith.” However, unlike Biblical faith, this faith is an existential leap of irrationality, revealing the postmodern epistemology of our age.

For more about this, see my article "Miracle on 34st Street and the Problem with Postmodern Epistemology."

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Odysseus’ Emotional Labours

Click here to read my thoughts on some of the obstacles that women present to Odysseus on his voyage home from Troy and what we can learn from these about his character.

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Domenic Johansson Update

In an article I posted last week, titled 'Swedish Social Services Snatch Christian Homeschooler and Jail Father', I shared about the tragic case of a Swedish homeschooler who was snatched from his parents by social services even though the parents had not broken any laws. Since then I have written an update on the situation with the father in prison for the December edition of the Christian Voice magazine. (To join Christian Voice and receive their monthly magazine, click here). I have been given permission to make my article on Domenic available, and it can be downloaded by clicking on the following link:

Swedish SS Snatch Christian Homeschool and Jail Father

Those interested in the case should also watch and share the following short video which the Alliance Defense Fund produced on Monday.

The American contrasted with the Englishman

"The American, I grant, has less solidity than the much older Englishman. But he makes up for this in vivacity, elasticity, and capacity for improvement. The Englishman, too, is shut up on his island; the American moves on a great continent and between two oceans. The former has not yet been able to assimilate to itself the Celtic Irishman in his immediate neighborhood, nor thoroughly to redress his grievances; the latter, at once infuses into the immigrant the common feeling of the American." Philip Schaff, America
 

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Swedish Social Services Snatch Christian Homeschooler and Jail Father

On June 26, 2009, seven-year old Domenic Johansson was seated in a commercial airliner with his parents awaiting departure of a flight to India. Domenic is a dual citizen of Sweden and India.

Though the family had received no prior warning, Swedish authorities boarded the plane just minutes before take-off, forcibly removing Domenic from the custody of his parents and placing him in foster care.

Domenic is a citizen of India, and his mother’s family all live in India. However, Swedish Social Services in Domenic's home town of Gottland decided to prevent the departure in order to force the boy to attend their school.

The family had received no preliminary warning, nor had they been forbidden from leaving the country.

Ravi Zacharias and the "Indispensable Balance"

I recently posted about Charles Finney and the unbiblical disjunction he posited between the head and the heart. In that post I pointed out that any system which elevates one's own feelings to an authoritative status in the name of the "heart", and then short-circuits rational critique by appealing to the spurious disjunction of between the head and the heart, is a charter for the worst type of spiritual abuse. I argued instead that the head and the heart, while being distinguishable, should not be divisible since scripture tells us that in Christ we are given both a new mind as well as a new heart. Both are to be sanctified under Christ and integrated within redeemed man.

 

My wife Esther recently drew my attention to some fascinating comments that Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias made in an interview. Ravi talks about the "indispensable balance" between the head and the heart that is so necessary within the Christian faith. I highly recommend these two short interviews which are available on Youtube. His comments about the necessary integration of head and the heart are in the first of the two interviews.

Ravi Zacharias Interview Part 1

Ravi Zacharias Interview Part 2

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Finney and “The New Measures”

Known as the “Father of Modem Evangelism”, Finney grew up in the frontier wilderness of Oneida County in Central New York and always retained a robust pioneer attitude towards life. As a young man Finney found he was particularly gifted at debate and trained to be a lawyer as a consequence. While practicing law Finney experienced a dramatic conversion experience and decided to devote his life to the ministry. After being ordained into the Presbyterian ministry, he began ministering in upstate New York.

Finney’s evangelistic efforts climaxed in 1830 in Rochester, where he preached 98 sermons between 10 September, 1830, and 6 March, 1831. Finney’s electrifying personality, booming voice, musical ability and piercing eyes kept the community hypnotized and in a perpetual state of excitement. Many of Finney’s meetings lasted into the early hours of the morning and occurred over a series of successive days. It was not untypical for shops and businesses to close so people could attend his meetings, while crime reportedly dropped by two-thirds over the same period. When news of the revival spread, Christians throughout the nation began to look to Rochester as a pattern for revival and Finney as the revival’s chief spokesman, even as a century earlier the revival at Northampton had thrust Jonathan Edwards into the role of spokesperson for the first Great Awakening. But it was there that the similarity ceased.

Read entire article

Quantitative Easing Explained

For more about what is wrong with our economy, click here.

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"To the dogs with the Head"

I recently challenged a couple who have led a church out of their house for many years (if regular meetings, the administration of the sacraments and spurious "Word from the Lord" can be considered church) and whom I believed were guilty of grave spiritual abuse. The type of abuse I witnessed was not unlike the way the Pharisees treated people during the time of Christ.
 
I shared with this couple some of the things Jesus said to the Pharisees, hoping they might be convicted and seek forgiveness from their victims. When this couple eventually responded, instead of addressing the scriptures I had shared, they said that the the problem was with me, and in particular the way I relied on the head rather than the heart. The Lord, they said, favours cardiac faith rather than cerebral religion.