A Root of Indifference Springs Up and Troubles Us

The last time I listened to Matt Olson's talk on contemporary issues in fundamentalism, I caught a sentence I'd missed before. he said, "For the Christian, everything should be considered important and weighed out according to the Scripture."

Amen to that. Whatever Olson said or meant or why he said what he said rather than what he meant on the points we've previously discussed ad nauseam, I want to wholeheartedly affirm that statement above.

That's why I don't think the right way to respond to bad ways to talk about doctrine is to minimize the value of talking about doctrine.

That's why, when some expressed surprise that good things Olson said were being ignored, and the one really bad thing was getting all the press, I wasn't dissuaded. Olson is right that fundamentalism has often got it wrong on music. He's right that the associations argument on music doesn't hold much water. And he's certainly right that not all people who are serious about creating the right appetites in music are going to land in the same place. He's right that dogmatizing our personal conclusions puts us in trouble. (And as dissidens points out, he's just a hair outside the historic fundamentalist mainstream on that point.)

But biblical fidelity and robust theology are more precious than the freedom to sing sanitized Sovereign Grace music.

"Everything should be considered important and weighed out according to the Scripture."

We need to labor to squeeze every drop of divine truth out of the biblical text. We need to acknowledge that our differences may often not place significant limitations on our cooperation and fellowship, but that doesn't mean those differences are meaningless.

I wonder if the common binary mindset has produced the functional indifferentism in fundamentalism. The mindset seems to be that either something is a separation issue or it’s not important. Because if it’s important, we have to separate. And if fundamentalists have never separated over it, or if we just have a gut feeling that we shouldn’t break fellowship over a doctrine, then we ought to minimize or marginalize it.

Does this impulse explain why fundamentalist leaders discourage discussion about difficult theological issues in institutions that are perpetuated by support from a marbled constituency? Because they recognize the movement's separatist DNA and don't want that DNA to metastatize to historic non-issues and create new divisions that would further splinter the movement? I can't know with certainty whether that's related to the conversation we've just had, but we'd be fools to pretend it's implausible. And we'd be greater fools if pretend it doesn't matter.

The Fruit of Revivalistic Christianity

From Tom Brokaw's November 30th interview of Ted Turner on "Meet the Press":

MR. BROKAW: You were in an early stage in your life, as you once said to me, kind of a hellfire and brimstone guy. You went...

MR. TURNER: I was. I went to a very religious school that had evangelists come periodically and I was saved, I don't know, six or seven times, including once at Billy Graham's Crusade.

Peggy Noonan on Fur Proliferation and PETA

From today's WSJ:

This is what you saw. Knit caps, parkas, plaid scarves, face warmers, hoods up, braced against the wet cold, flags on light posts, security tents, motorcades, police vans, checkpoints, flashing lights, people hopping from foot to foot when crowds slowed and they had to stand still. Stately African-American women in sweeping mink coats. A friend, a canny social observer, said, "The antifur people aren't going to take them on!" I laughed and realized yes, PETA just took one on the chin. Mink wearing will be safe in the new era. A former GOP ambassador told a friend, after walking the streets, "There is a feeling of good." Not happiness or gaiety, he said, but good—good feeling, good humor.

Just remember, you heard it here first.

And here's her little postscript on this week's Right to Life march:

There was another great gathering in Washington this week, of those who themselves are not always invited or included, because of their unflinching views. The Right to Life march was marked, according to participants, by an air of peacefulness, and unusual sweetness. The attitude toward President Obama? They prayed for him. As great Americans, which is what they are, would.

Piper on Planes, Presidents and Providence

As much as I reject Obama’s stance on abortion, I am thankful to the bottom of my soul that an African-American can be President of United States. The enormousness of it all is unspeakable. This is God’s doing. The geese were God’s doing. The landing of Flight 1549 was God’s doing. And the Obama presidency is God’s doing. “He removes kings and sets up kings” (Daniel 2:21).

And I pray that President Obama has eyes to see. The “miracle on the Hudson” and the “miracle in the White House” are not unrelated. God has been merciful to us as a nation. Our racial sins deserved judgment a thousand times over. God does not owe America anything. We owe him everything. And instead of destruction, he has given us another soft landing. We are not dead at the bottom of the Hudson.

Read the whole thing.

Fundamentalist Indifferentism?

It's a curious thing, this fundamentalist impulse to attack labels and "-isms." Truth is, fundamentalists pick and choose. That's how you know what's important to them.

Gresham Machen, Dave Doran, and Kevin Bauder all agree*: In theological controversies, those who deny the historic faith aren't the final arbiters in the direction a fellowship or movement takes. Neither are those who stand ready to defend biblical truth at all costs. No, the people who decide the direction are the great bulk in the middle—men who claim to be biblicists but whose slinky spines bend whatever direction seems to keep peace. When they refuse to take a stand, those who deny the faith win since there is no collective will to expel error. Bradley Longfield's The Presbyterian Controversy documents this thesis well.

Machen, Doran, and Bauder call these men in the middle "indifferentists." I've believed for some time that fundamentalism is saturated with its own forms of indifferentism. Matt Olson's recent sermon at NBBC, discussed here and here, is just the latest example of it, no worse than many others that preceded it.

Olson's attitude is summed up in the statement, quoting a previous NBBC President, "We're no-point Calvinists. There's no point in talking about it. Don't be on either side—hyper about it or hyper against it."

To be fair, Olson attempted to clarify his words in the comments section of Bob Bixby's post, saying, among other things,

I do place great value on theology and discussing systems like Calvinism. It is part of education and growth in the life of any believer. By [sic] burden for students is when it becomes a point of pride and arrogance and when a system becomes the standard over the Word of God - and hero worship.

As much as I'm grateful for that clarification, I don't believe that he chose his words without purpose, just as I believe that spoke with purpose when he made the following comments:

I've found myself stymied in my attempts to find coherence in Olson's talk. In just 32 minutes, he struck two seemingly incompatible chords. First, he emphasized NBBC's ongoing identity as "an independent, fundamental, Baptist college and emphatically identified himself as a separatist Baptist.

Second, he outlined his opposition to adopting the Calvinist label and some imprecisely defined level of inquiry into Calvinist theology. His assertions include:

I am a little bit troubled when I get around people who are riding a system.

When you start to use labels, I think you can get yourself into trouble on a number of fronts. It becomes confusing. It becomes divisive.

[It is not healthy to the body of Christ] to be hyper-Calvinist to where you're always trying to figure out the mind of God. The secret things belong to the Lord.

There comes to a place where you just have to leave it with God.

You have to come to that place where you are in awe of God . . . not in awe of your own mind or your own ability to process those things.

I've never quite grasped why so many ministry leaders attack the Calvinist label when they would be horrified if their constituencies caught wind of some compromise on the systems and labels of fundamentalism, separatism, dispensationalism, pre-Tribulational Rapturism, cessationism, independent and Baptist. Why would men like Olson embrace some labels enthusiastically, even shaping their relationships and associations around them, and proceed to call other labels divisive?

Notice, Olson's not arguing that Calvinism is wrong. He's arguing that it's not that important and creates unnecessary divisions. But why is Calvinism more divisive than so man other "-isms"?

What's even more curious about this address is that Olson notes in a caution to aggressive anti-Calvinists that Hudson Taylor, Charles Spurgeon, William Carey, and John Paton all happily described themselves as Calvinists. Would Olson consider those men to have caused confusion or created division? Would he have been troubled to have been around them because they were riding a system? Does he really consider people who are trying to figure out the mind of God to be hyper-Calvinists? Who is suggesting that we should go beyond what Scripture affirms in order to construct a rationalistic, speculative theology? Are we not obligated to squeeze every ounce of biblical truth out the revelation we have? History is not on Olson's side, and he makes that case against himself.

I can't imagine that this sort of indifferentism is what Olson really means. But it is what he said, and the slice of the blogosphere that hears his clarifications won't include all the students who were conditioned to think in a certain way about certain dimensions of theology and the people who speak seriously about it.

It does seem that Olson used a certain style of rhetoric in an attempt to address another problem. He discussed in both his address and his comments on Bixby's blog that he was really trying to confront pride. I respect and appreciate that. I don't share his perspective that rhetoric is the right approach. Describing a theological position as "not worth talking about" is an ineffective way to address the destructive attitudes that my accompany it. That strategy may have worked in the past. It doesn't work now, and it undermines credibility among sincere, inquisitive theological minds.

The solution to proud Calvinists is not theological reductionism. A better solution would be to embrace authentic Calvinistic soteriology. Nothing could be more humbling than to grasp the depths of one's own depravity and hopelessness apart from God's sovereign work to create a new heart within us. Nothing impresses humility upon the human soul than grasping the reality that we respond to his effectual call in a way that we never would or could have apart from his unconditional election.

For that matter, why not recommend that students read C.J. Mahaney's Humility? If anyone can talk to young Calvinists about humility, he's the guy. Of course, he's not an independent-fundamental-Baptist-dispensational-cessationist. But does that make it too much to ask?


*One of my axioms for life and ministry is, when Machen, Doran and Bauder agree, I'd be an idiot to disagree.

PETA Cannot Be Pleased

I believe I saw more dead animals on the Mall this weekend than on all the berms of lonely Midwestern county roads in all my life. It's not that I have a problem with wearing furs. I just found it a bit . . . ironic, given the special interests gaining influence in Washington.






































































Just a little FYI: These are not all women.

Pandemonium

I just got back from a jog on the Mall and around the White House, and it's crazy out there. Thousands of people—I'm guessing in the tens of thousands—are just walking around looking at the setup and buying lots of stuff. I don't think there's anything else going on, except for MSNBC's outdoor broadcast booth.

There's more energy in the air than yesterday when the Mall was full from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument for the concert. The trip was exhilarating—probably a combination of the chilly weather, the electric atmosphere, and the fact that I was wearing a t-shirt bearing the image of my favorite former President.

The sense I take away, and I could certainly be reading my expectations into this, is that African Americans are enjoying this moment when America really feels like their country—perhaps for the first time. No matter what policies shape the next four or eight years, I'm convinced that is a welcome and long-overdue hurdle we've crossed in American history.

One other observation has stuck out to me this weekend, but it deserves some photojournalism. Hopefully that'll happen tomorrow.

For what it's worth, there was also a little bit of pandamonium in town this weekend.

Plane Crash/Rescue Video

Those of you who live in the land where people watch TV may have already seen this a bajillion times, but this video shows how stunningly fast passengers got off the plane and how quickly NYC ferries arrived. The plane comes into view about 2 minutes in.

"Wall Street did get "drunk" but Washington had set up the open bar."

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting narrative on how government policies created the economic crisis.

The Ponzi Scheme That You're Falling For

13.58

That's the number of years it'll take Social Security just to pay me back the principal that I'll have been forced to hand over for decades.

In other words, when I'm eligible for retirement benefits at age 67, I will have to live past the age of 80 just to get back the exact same amount of money that I started paying them when I was a teenager. I won't see the first penny of interest until I'm well past the actuarial charts. I'd be better off stuffing the cash in my mattress, because at least then I'd get all the principal on the day I retire.

I did the math. When you get your annual Social Security statement, you should do it too. Here's the formula I used. And of course, this is assuming the system's still afloat in a few more decades.

We've all been hearing about Bernard Madoff's $50 billion dollar fraud, but that's dwarfed by the $40 trilion scam our federal government is running with Social Security and Medicare. John Stossel lays out all the details in this article at Townhall.com. Don't read it unless you're in the mood to be infuriated.