Cutting use of humor

by Dan Phillips

I recently finished my second go-through of the audiobook of Spurgeon's autobiography (see here and here). Among the many things that struck me were the great man's observations on humor, taken in turn from Lectures to My Students:

Sometimes, anecdotes have force in them on account of their appealing to the sense of the ludicrous. Of course, I must be very careful here, for it is a sort of tradition of the fathers that it is wrong to laugh on Sundays. The eleventh commandment is, that we are to love one another, and then, according to some people, the twelfth is, “Thou shalt pull a long face on Sunday.” I must confess that I would rather hear people laugh than I would see them asleep in the house of God; and I would rather get the truth into them through the medium of ridicule than I would have the truth neglected, or leave the people to perish through lack of reception of the truth. I do believe in my heart that there may be as much holiness in a laugh as in a cry; and that, sometimes, to laugh is the better thing of the two, for I may weep, and be murmuring, and repining, and thinking all sorts of bitter thoughts against God; while, at another time, I may laugh the laugh of sarcasm against sin, and so evince a holy earnestness in the defence of the truth. I do not know why ridicule is to be given up to Satan as a weapon to be used against us, and not to be employed by us as a weapon against him. I will venture to affirm that the Reformation owed almost as much to the sense of the ridiculous in human nature as to anything else, and that those humorous squibs and caricatures, that were issued by the friends of Luther, did more to open the eyes of Germany to the abominations of the priesthood than the more solid and ponderous arguments against Romanism. I know no reason why we should not, on suitable occasions, try the same style of reasoning. “It is a dangerous weapon,” it will be said, “and many men will cut their fingers with it.” Well, that is their own look-out; but I do not know why we should be so particular about their cutting their fingers if they can, at the same time, cut the throat of sin, and do serious damage to the great adversary of souls. [Spurgeon, C. H. (2009). Lectures to my Students, Vol. 3: The Art of Illustration; Addresses Delivered to the students of the Pastors' College, Metropolitan Tabernacle (43–44). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.]

This is a topic worth greater focus, some time. We would see that the most frequent form of humor in the Bible is parody, satire, sarcasm. You'll not be surprised that the examples leaping to my mind come from Proverbs, which features both brief and extended send-ups of the lazy (6:6-11), the blinkingly-naive immoral lad (7:1-27), the harridan (27:15-16), the drunk (23:29-35), and of course the various kinds of fool (17:12; 26:11; 27:22). In fact,

The fact is that God moves His servants to communicate His truth, and to warn people away from deception, by all sorts of means. He moves them to employ instruction, explanation, reasoning, pleading, warning, and yes, even acerbic, sarcastic satire. Indeed, the most common forms of humor in the Bible are satire, sarcasm, and irony. [From this, p. 62]

"Dangerous tool," yes. But a tool nonetheless, and an effective one.

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Coda to Frank: a few of Phil's PoMotivators, timely as ever

by Dan Phillips

It's nice working with people smarter and more creative than I am. So here are a few of Phil's brilliant Po-Motivator graphics that I think put a nice cherry atop the brilliant Biblely Sundae of Frank's exceptional previous two posts. Comments closed, to respect Frank's closure of the previous post — but my co-admins should feel free to add their own, and Phil should bump this if he has a post.

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Transparency

by Phil Johnson

f you have been reading the blog very long, this shouldn't come as any surprise:

I'm not impressed with the postmodern notion of transparency as a substitute for the old-fashioned (and biblical) virtue of humility.

Dan Phillips shares my point of view. Last year he posted a three-part series on the subject.



The type of transparency I'm speaking of is that faux-honesty so often used as an excuse for voicing various kinds of complaints, doubts, accusations, fleshly desires, and other kinds of evil thoughts. This exhibitionistic "virtue" is often paired with a smug self-congratulatory sneer or a condescending dismissal of anyone who dares to suggest that propriety and spiritual maturity may sometimes require us not to give voice to every carnal thought or emotion—i.e., that sometimes discretion is better than transparency.

Here's a biblical case-study that goes against conventional postmodern "wisdom": In Psalm 73, Asaph is rehearsing the confusion he felt over the reality that wicked people sometimes prosper while righteous people suffer. He says:

I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. And they say, "How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?" Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. (Psalm 73:3-12)

A note of resentment against God? A model of the very kind of transparency I decry? Sure sounds like it, huh? He continues:

All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.

Self-pity, too. Wow! Is that not a classic example of brilliant, transparent, postmodern confessional writing? The psalmist is venting his spleen, giving voice to his doubts, teaching us that it's OK to broadcast whatever doubts and resentments we maybe harboring against God. Right?

Well, not exactly. In fact, the point Asaph is making is precisely the opposite: "If I had said, 'I will speak thus,' I would have betrayed the generation of your children" (v. 15).

In other words, Asaph confesses that if he had broadcast his doubts before resolving them, it would have been a sinful act of betrayal against God and against the children of God.

Asaph is actually testifying about how he resolved those doubts and resentments: "But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end" (vv. 16-17).

He has acquired a decidedly un-postmodern kind of confident faith. He reaches a settled certainty about the very things he was tempted to doubt. Then he goes on to explain to his readers that the state of the wicked is not as comfortable as it appears to carnal eyes. He's spreading his new-found faith; not soliciting companions who share his doubts.

So this psalm is not an apologia for the sort of "transparency" whose only aim is to vent in a way that aims to legitimize skepticism; it's a condemnation of precisely that sort of intemperance.

There's nothing vague or confusing about the point Asaph is really making. As a matter of fact, the whole psalm starts with an explicit statement of his main thesis: "Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart."

Selah.



PS: Some random notes in passing: Longtime Pyro reader David Kjos thinks my Tweets are boring, and another blogger lists PyroManiacs in some rarefied company. Meanwhile, we came up tenth in a category we didn't even know we belonged to—"Church blogs." And did anyone notice our hit counter went over 3 million this week? Keep your feedback coming. It motivates us to do better.

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Emergent Village Tries to Reboot

by Phil Johnson



ou probably saw the announcement: Emergent Village 2.0 (code name: Village Green: "a generative environment where missional friendships are nourished") is now open for bidness.

Evidently there are still many in the Emergent[ing] movement who hold out the hope that a phoenix will arise from the pyre of that movement's massive failure. The jargon hasn't changed. The priorities are as convoluted as ever. Notice, for example, how the "special letter" includes big categories for "Arts" and "Justice," with no mention whatsoever of Christ, Scripture, or sound doctrine. (I'm prepared to argue that Emergent types generally have no better grasp of—and no more genuine appreciation for—art and justice than they have of sound doctrine, but that's another post.)

It seems all that has really changed is the cast. Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Brian McLaren apparently became too volatile to be the movement's main spokespeople and mascots. Their names are conspicuously absent from the "Special Letter About the Future." Don't be fooled by this. The new steering committee is no more sound, no less radical, and (judging from these new announcements) no less skilled in the jargon of pomospeak than their colorful and controversial former "National Coordinator" was.

It's hard to see anything in the "new" direction that is really distinct or significantly different from what Emergent has said and done in the past, but they do a good job of making it sound like the movement really has something huge and revolutionary to look forward to, don't they?

So let's not retire the Po-Motivators® prematurely, OK?

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Trump Card

by Frank Turk

I usually have this thing in an argument -- when one side invokes the epithet "Nazi", I recognize things have gone from reasonable or rational to absurd.

In that context, I present the following, HT: Abraham Piper & Andrew Jones.

Mind your coffee ...



Have at it.

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As Month's End Approaches . . .

by Phil Johnson

ince our longest-ever hiatus is only a couple of days away and Dan and Frank no doubt have major posts yet to come, I'm going to try to clean out my bottom drawer without getting in the way. To start with, here are a few stray PoMotivators®:

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Collectors' Items

by Phil Johnson

'm too busy at the moment to write a substantive blogpost. Here are a few never-before seen Po-Motivators® to tide you over:

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Mischief and Miscellany

Plus six all-new Po-Motivators® (see below)
by Phil Johnson



     was going to write a substantive post today. Then I decided instead just to link to a smattering of things that have puzzled, amused, intrigued, or appalled me lately. Here you go, in no particular order:

• More moral insanity from Great Britain: "A lap dancer, a lesbian, and a lapsed Christian with a pregnant girlfriend are among the participants on the U.K.'s newest reality show, Make Me a Christian."
  
• James White posts a collection of YouTube souvenirs.
  
• Our own Frank Turk leaves some profound thoughts in another blog's combox regarding the popular notion that there's something unsavory about contending for any mere matter of biblical principle when someone's feelings are involved:
  

  OK—I'm watching this society of christian brothers begin to populate this meta here with "Yes, more love please" affirmations, and I think that's a wholly-biblical, wholly-spiritually-industrious, wholly-useful endeavor: I think that people should think more clearly about the command of Christ to actually do unto actual others as you would have them actually do unto you.     Yes: I agree. In fact, I would take that to the root first before I took it to the blogosphere: you should do unto others in your local church and where you do business every day as you would have them do unto you. Because if that was happening, a few noisy scandal-bloggers would be seen as anomalies and not as a proliferation of the Church lady stereotype of christians. (Small "c" intended.)     The problem—and the issue here is that there is actually a problem and not merely a dysfunctional relational environment—is that the church is sick. Listen: pomos, conservatives, liberals, bloggers, pastors, unbelievers, you add your favorite category of person here—they all agree that the church is sick. The church is not healthy, especially in America.     But what's the cause of the sickness and what's the cure? Is it the rather-nebulous question of "love"? Or is it something less subjective and more actionable—and is there a resource or a proper authority which can spell out for us what the solution is?     This is really funny because I was watching a Steven Colbert clip last week about what was going on at Lambeth, and Colbert—a Catholic—was really beating down on the Anglicans because they couldn't figure out if God thought that gay men should be ordained as priests or bishops. His point, of course, was that there should be some guy they could ask who could sort it out for them.     I agree with Colbert that there ought to be "some guy"—but that guy is God Himself, and the answers lie in His Word, which, btw, is not a collection of Jack-Handiesque comforting maxims. The Bible is full of loving statements, gentle rebukes, and frankly-stark insults against those who are frankly intransigent and wrong.     Love is good. But it's not just one flavor. Expand your palate and taste and see the goodness of the Lord—no matter which flavor you think you like best right now.

• Joel Griffith points me to this article, about author Joe Eszterhas, who says he tried Protestantism and loved the sermon, but felt "empty" because of the lack of liturgy.
  
• Meanwhile, John Schoettler sends me this relevant quote from Spurgeon about the seductive dangers of elaborate liturgy and artificial worship. (Spurgeon also explains his preference for a capella corporate worship here):
  

  There is in human nature a tendency to permit religion itself to become mechanical : priests, temples, sacraments, the performing of services, organs, choirs, all go towards the making up of a machine which may do our worship for us, and leave us all our time to think about bread and cheese and the latest fashions. As cranks, pistons, valves, and cylinders take the place of bone and muscle on board ship, so millinery, bellows and ritual take the place of hearts and spirits in the place of worship. Certain outward appliances may be well enough in their place, but they too easily become substitutes for real heart-work and spiritual devotion, and then they are mischievous to the last degree. The preacher may use notes if he needs them, but his manuscript may steal from him that which is the very essence and soul of preaching, and yet his elaborate paper and his elegant reading may conceal from him the nakedness of the land. Praise may be rendered with musical instruments, if you will ; but the danger is lest the grateful adoration should evaporate, and nothing should remain but the sweet sounds. The organ can do no more than help us in noise-making, and it is a mere idol, if we imagine that it increases the acceptance of our praises before the Lord.

• Anyone who reads church history attentively can hardly help noticing parallels between some of the current soteriological controversies in the Reformed world (I'm thinking especially of the Auburn Avenue/Federal Vision mess; the New Perspective on Paul; and Norman Shepherd's highly nuanced reconstruction of the doctrine of justification by faith) and earlier controversies where some of the same issues and rhetoric were being hacky-sacked around the church chancel (and I'm thinking here about the Oxford Movement/Tractarian controversy, the Mercersburg Theology, and other movements whose leaders have seemed less than comfortable with the principle of sola fide and whose liturgy has tended to elevate the eucharist over the sermon in order of priority). So I've been reading The Parting of Friends: The Wilberforces and Henry Manning by David Newsome and thinking about the parallelisms between then and now. Then I serendipitously came across this rare little number whilst doing an unrelated Google search, and it reminded me that there really is nothing new under the sun. A fascinating read and an eery deja vu experience for those interested in these cyclical controversies.
  
• . . . and finally, I'm sorry, but I just can't help myself:
  

NOTE: if you're still seeing the Escher engraving on the above poster, hit reload. I redid this one, because if you're going to push the limits of fair use on a copyright question, best to use an image belonging to someone who understands the concept of parody. Besides, I like this version better anyway.

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More unbridled cruelty

by Phil Johnson

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Stream of consciousness

A short interlude in that series about evangelical fads
by Phil Johnson

ome random but loosely-connected thoughts about the Fad-Driven Church® have been accumulating in my subconscious while I've been reposting those old entries about evangelical fads. So I've decided to interrupt the process of reposting old entries and take a load off my mind today:

• Warning. Irony ahead. Tim Keel is irritated that a "Christian" band ripped off a secular band's album-cover concept. But isn't that a perfect metaphor for the contemporary Christian Music industry itself? Ditto for every quasi-evangelical fad, including Emergent religion and all the other expressions of Christianized postmodernity promoted so enthusiastically at Tim Keel's blog. Keel promises that when the CD cover for his community's music comes out, it's going to be different. Not just so-quirky-you-might-not-get-it different. Oh, it will be that, of course, but much more: "When this deal comes out, it will be art," he grandly announces. "It has a voice."
       We'll see.
  
• Speaking of art. . . Has anyone else noticed that Emergents seem especially prone to confuse art and cliché? That's what I was pondering at the very moment when Tim Keel's page led me to gary aronhalt. (gary had actually commented about the album-cover ripoff before Tim did.) Meanwhile, gary, like countless others in the Emergent generation, likes to type as much as he can in lower-case letters. Very e. e. cummingsish. You know—artistic in that cheesy, schoolgirlish, trite-and-unimaginative way post-evangelicals seem to prefer making their expressions of cultural awareness. And we don't need to single out gary aronhalt. Lots of Emerging types have written lower-case-only entries in the Pyro-comment threads over the years. And they usually excoriate us for our lack of theological originality.
       To be clear: I don't really care whether anyone uses his or her shift key. I'm actually amused by the faux-humility of always lowercasing one's own name so as not to draw undue attention to it. But the popularity of the practice is yet another fitting symbol for just about everything that is currently fashionable on the evangelical fringe. Why is it that those who seem to talk most about originality are always so lemminglike?
  
• Take Erwin Raphael McManus, for instance. (Is there anyone more pretentious in all the world of postmodern religion?) Surely no one talks more about "innovation" than McManus. Yet no one seems to work harder than he does to keep in step with the spirit of the age. He more or less epitomizes the unimaginative, second-hand style of three decades of evangelical faddism, always limping far enough behind the world's fads to be just a little bit embarrassing. (Even McManus's writing style is "bland and derivative," to quote a famous blogging friend.) It's all quite the opposite of "innovative."
       But McManus's "me too" mentality is (by definition) disturbingly contagious. Someone wrote me last week asking what would be wrong with adopting McManus's methodology as long as we're careful to overlay it with a high view of Scripture.
       It's pretty hard for me to see why anyone with a high view of Scripture would want to adopt a methodology whose whole raison d'être is rooted in a low view of the sufficiency and authority of Scripture. It's a methodology that systematically subordinates Scripture to a secondary or tertiary role in the life of the church. Sez McManus: "Well, I build my life not on the Word of God, but the voice of God." He believes his role is not to teach the content of Scripture to his people. That's a "modern" idea. Rather, McManus's goal is to share his own life "through the Scriptures." I'm not sure how one would do that without deliberately reading into Scripture things that are not there. But I'd much prefer to be taught the truth of Scripture instead of having Scripture used as illustrative material (or whatever) for McManus to give me insights into his life (especially given the hyperbolic terms he always uses to describe himself). It seems to me that a pastor's life ought to be an instrument for teaching the truth of Scripture, not vice versa.

     I confess I do not understand the near-reverential respect McManus's admirers lavish on him. Sure, if you read his own PR about himself, you might think he is the most wonderfully creative and forward-thinking guy ever to grace a platform. But I can't think of a single idea he has proposed that is not somehow adapted from the standard seeker-sensitive repertoire, cherry-picked from Emerging postmodernism, or purloined from some neo-gnostic playbook. Can you?
     I've always thought it mildly funny (and seriously bombastic) that McManus likes to label himself a "futurist" instead of a pastor. Yet despite his use of that title, he seems to have little or nothing to say about the future from a biblical and eschatalogical perspective. Instead, his main areas of interest are conspicuously earthbound and worldly—contra Colossians 3:2.
     For example, it's not easy to find any emphasis on holiness in his teaching. In a YouTube video featuring McManus talking about "purity," the rationale he gives for staying morally chaste is entirely man-centered. It's all about "relationships," and specifically human relationships, with no reference to the holiness and righteousness of God himself.
     McManus even makes the hackneyed claim that "to God, the central principle of the universe is relationship. . . There's nothing of greater value to God than the way we treat each other." He gives zero biblical authority for that claim, of course—because there is none—but he delivers the line as if it were the key to gnostic enlightenment. He clearly believes it's an idea more important than any old-fashioned notions about holiness. McManus makes one scant and completely oblique reference to Scripture in the whole video. (He says, "You are the temple of God," but he seems to apply that idea to believers and unbelievers alike; he doesn't actually say he is referring to any Scripture; and he purées the statement together with his own unbiblical remarks: "There's nothing more core, more central" than sexuality "because you are the temple of God.")
     In the current version of his website bio, McManus has dropped the title "futurist" in favor of a longer list of occupations ("author, speaker, activist, filmmaker and innovator"). There's nothing in the bio that identifies him as a Christian, much less a pastor. McManus's whole website actually reads like a parody of the kind of pretentiousness that has become his trademark. You have to follow all the links on his main page to learn everything about Erwin: "the author; the speaker; the artist; the leader."
     I've never had much to say about McManus, mainly because most of what disturbs me in his teaching are ideas I have already critiqued when I have dealt with postmodernism and the Emergent Conversation. Even though McManus bristles when such labels are applied to him, he has dabbled in and around the edges of the Emerging-church sideshow almost since its inception.
     Still, my fundamental quarrel with McManus is not about whether he repudiates this or that label. It's not even about the menagerie of high-flown titles he does load his resumé with. It's this: clear gospel truth is almost impossible to find in the material he publishes and posts for public consumption. And in that regard, I don't see a whole lot of difference between Erwin McManus and Joel Osteen. He's Osteen with blue jeans and an occasional soul patch rather than a shiny suit and a perpetual grin.
     Am I being too hard on McManus? I expect we'll get lots of commenters (including the usual suspects and some first-time drive-bys) who will insist that I am. McManus seems to have lots of passionate devotees online. To them I say: Welcome to our blog. Convince me. It should be easy to do if I'm wrong. Simply show me a few places where McManus makes the gospel plain and clear for his audience, with straightforward, biblical explanations of sin, atonement, and justification for sinners—including a distinct and compelling summons for sinners to repent.
     Yes, I realize that is historic, confessional, old-style doctrine—and it's not at all the sort of thing a "futurist" likes to talk about.
     That's my point.

• Also in the category of Things That Parody Themselves: The Soliton Network. "The Soliton Network is an invitation to the rhythms of hospitality and generosity as well as to share resources, laughter, dreams and friendships. Soliton events are informal opportunities for people to reflect on the edges of Christian spirituality and practice—all are welcome, and many have been surprised by how rich the experience is. Speakers/facilitators at previous Soliton events have included Brian McLaren, Erwin McManus, Greg Russinger, Christine Sine, Doug Pagitt, Si Johnston, Jo Coles, Gareth Higgins, and many more."
       Riiiiiight.
  
• And finally . . . The incredulous words of former presidential candidate John Edwards give us an important lesson that hasn't yet dawned on most American politicos and postmodernists: "Being 99 percent honest is no longer enough."

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