“We Can’t Be Amish…” or Can We?

30 April 2024

Throughout our time in the positive and neutral worlds, we have been able to take it for granted that a conscientious Christian could be involved more or less anywhere that mattered in our culture. Naturally certain vices were always off limits, but in the positive world they were generally acknowledged as vices, and you could be a fully-participating member of respectable society without them. In the neutral world, these vices were more readily accepted in mainstream society, but still regarded as largely optional.

Under those circumstances, discussion of the ethics of cultural engagement and participation would usually include the line, “Well, we can’t be Amish, so….” “We can’t be Amish” was shorthand for a series of related ideas: “we can’t just abandon cultural production,” “we have a duty to participate in every realm of the culture” and so on. How could you be salt and light, so the reasoning went, if you didn’t participate?

That reasoning no longer holds. As the enemies of God solidify their hold on gate-keeping positions in various institutions and fields, the question is actually quite the opposite: If you meet their criteria for participating, can you still be salt and light? If you had to affirm all manner of sin and wickedness get the job, and if you can only keep the job by soldiering on in complicit silence, are you being salt and light?

I think we all know the answer.

But we should also remember that God is endlessly creative, and loves to insert His people into places where they “have no business” being. Do not forget that Daniel ended up the leader of a pagan emperor’s “wise men” (read: magicians), and no matter what it said in the employee handbook, he got that position without eating the king’s unclean food and without giving up his daily prayers. Joseph was the minister-in-chief of another pagan king. Cyrus rebuilt the temple. Obadiah was in charge of King Ahab’s house, and saved 100 prophets’ lives. Naaman the Syrian was given God’s permission to escort his master into a pagan temple. Jesus got invited to the parties good Jewish boys didn’t go to…and He went. “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.” In the same way that we ought not take someone’s millionaire status as proof that he musta stole something, we have no business deciding that if that guy has that place or position, then he musta betrayed the faith. “I can’t see how a faithful Christian could possibly…” we will say. Just so—you can’t see. But what does that have to do with reality? Once upon a time, Peter couldn’t see how Jesus could possibly die on a cross, either. Turns out God’s more creative than we give Him credit for.

So go ahead and try for positions you “shouldn’t” be able to get. It will be easy enough to look at a particular institution’s public persona and conclude that no conscientious Christian could long survive in that environment. That might be true, but individuals within the institution often vary in their ideological zeal, and some of them still care more about getting the job done than they do about a hard-to-replace employee’s ideological soundness. Any number of conscientious Christians may be laboring away heartily, as unto the Lord, in the bowels of an institution that (on social media, at least) has impeccable pagan credentials. If God is leading you that direction, then off you go!

At the same time, you should remember that God also finds use for a wide variety of sacrifices and martyrdoms. Stephen represented the Lord faithfully and got murdered for it, following the example of Jesus and all the prophets before Him, “from the blood of righteous Abel to Zechariah son of Berechiah, whom they slew between the temple and the altar.” Many of us have since followed Stephen’s example, including the young fellow, one Saul of Tarsus, who ran the coat check at Stephen’s murder. Fortify your soul with their stories. If you’re looking for a good starting point, get Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Read the tales of what they did to us back in the day.

Then, when they’re going to fire you, reflect on the precipitous decline in the quality of our opposition over the past few centuries. They used to be creative. The saints of old were burned alive, fed to lions, staked to the ground at low tide, sewn into a leather bag with wild dogs and thrown into the Tiber. Today, you stand for Jesus, and you get some buffoon ominously talking about…H.R.? A cardboard box and a security escort to the parking lot? “They’re not even threatening to cut off my hand,” you’ll think to yourself, suppressing a giggle.

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. If he wants you to get that fellowship, that job, that professional license, that political appointment, then nobody can stop you. And when His purposes will be better served by demonstrating your immovable conviction in the face of persecution, you will be persecuted, ostracized, fired, expelled.

This to say: be curious about what God might be doing. Don’t decide in advance what God can’t do. But also, be faithful. Don’t bow to the idols. If that means you’re going to get consigned to “being Amish,” then so be it. Don’t take full participation in the culture for granted; as the culture gets grosser, you won’t want to fully participate anyhow.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“Not A Young Man”

30 January 2024

Among the list of qualifications for eldership is “not a novice” (1 Tim. 3:6). Depending on the translation you read, it may say “not a new convert” or “not a recent convert” or “not new in the faith.” The words “convert” and “in the faith” are simply not in the passage here. The word is νεόφυτος, and it means “young man.”

So why did some translators add the extra words? For the same reason they usually do: for clarity in English translation. There are two possible meanings: a literal reading (“not a young man”) or a metaphorical extension (“not young in the faith”). Translators who favor the metaphorical interpretation have often chosen to clarify their meaning by adding the additional words. In this case, that is a mistake.

First, let’s start with the vocabulary. Paul uses two different words in his writings to refer to the office under discussion here. The one in this passage means “overseer,” and the other word literally means “old man.” So when Paul says that the appointee should not be “a young man” — well, I ask you. The word Paul chose for this qualification refers to a new-growth plant in Job 14:9 and Isaiah 5:7; it’s applied to the younger generation in Psalm 127:3 and 143:12. In other words, Paul’s Greek OT source material uses the word literally.

Does that mean it can’t be metaphorical here? Not at all. Paul could be crafting a novel metaphor by applying the literal term in a new metaphorical context. As Christians, we already refer to conversion as being born again; calling a new convert a “young man” regardless of his chronological age would make a certain sort of sense. (In fact, that’s exactly the process by which new metaphors enter language.) But is Paul doing that here? If he were, how would we know?

One obvious way would be for Paul to add the extra words himself. If he’s crafting a novel (if fairly obvious) metaphor, it would be fitting to specify it: “not a young man in the faith.” But he doesn’t do that. Another way would be for the context to make it otherwise obvious that’s what he must mean. Proponents of the metaphorical view will argue that this is the case, because Timothy himself is a young man. Surely Paul can’t be giving young Timothy the job of appointing elders, and then telling him, “Don’t appoint someone your own age.”

Ah, but he could! In fact, we already know that Timothy doesn’t meet all the criteria in the list of qualifications. Being unmarried, Timothy isn’t the husband of one wife (for that matter, neither is Paul). Timothy doesn’t have a household to rule well. We don’t need to claim some special spiritual meaning for these terms, as if “husband of one wife” would refer to Timothy’s fidelity to the Church, the Bride of Christ, or that “rules his household well” must mean that Timothy functions properly in the “houselold of God.” No, “husband” and “household” have their ordinary meanings, and Timothy is a valid exception.

How is Timothy supposed to function in that situation — appointing people that meet qualifications he doesn’t? He’s exemplary. The overriding qualification is blamelessness. Paul has that, despite not being a husband. Timothy also has that, despite being young. When we’re evaluating elder candidates, if a man gives us reason to doubt his faithfulness to his wife, he’s not qualified. If we look at his household and think “yikes!” he’s not qualified. And if we look at him and see that his youth is a drawback, he’s not qualified. If, in contrast, we look at him and think “I wish I was like that” — if he’s exemplary despite being young — then he is qualified, in the same way that Timothy was qualified.

The older men who are married and running households are wishing they were like Timothy in word, conduct, love, spirit, faith, and purity. He’s setting an example for them, not the other way round. Because Timothy is exceptional, Paul has recognized him as an exception. And thus we can see that “young man” refers to age in the same way that “husband” refers to marital status and “rules his household well” refers to familial and business affairs — all the terms have their ordinary meanings in the context.

So how do we apply the criteria like Paul would? Clearly it’s not the case that no young man would ever serve as an elder, but it would be rare, and with good reason — chronological age actually is a concern. On the face of it, this ought to be obvious just from the terms chosen for the office: one means ‘overseer,’ but the other literally means ‘old man.’ Maturity matters, and most young men haven’t taken sufficient advantage of the scant time they’ve had, or haven’t had enough experience, to season them out. Life experience and maturity are simply more common in older men, thus most of your elders will be, well, elder men.

If the candidate you’re looking at strikes you as a greenhorn in any sense, you probably shouldn’t pick him. On the other hand, if he’s been raised in the faith from childhood, as Timothy was, and he presents himself as exemplary in word, conduct, love, faith, and purity, as Timothy did — sure, go with that guy.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Shiny Foil Wrappers

10 October 2023

Many times here in Englewood, I’ve seen Christians practicing so-called “Christian charity” by giving warm burritos to homeless folks. They’re doing exactly the same thing as when our local pagans give out burritos. Exactly. Right down to the delicious bacon crumbles and those shiny foil wrappers.

The parallels are really quite disturbing. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, people! Don’t be deceived!

***

“Pagans do something that looks like this” isn’t a valid means of discernment. Pagans pray, perform acts of charity, eat apple pie, go to work, wear clothes, make love, raise children. Pagans turn water into blood and staffs into snakes, and yet Moses is one of the good guys. We have to learn to pay attention to the difference that makes a difference.

An American soldier from WWII and a German soldier from WWII look an awful lot alike in dress and equipment. Suppose we have those two men in a lineup, along with a Minuteman and a Navy SEAL with the latest equipment. Which ones look most alike? The two guys from WWII, of course–but that doesn’t tell you which side they’re on.

We want discernment to be easier than it is. We want the good guys to look entirely unlike the bad guys. We want criteria we can photograph from across the street, and very often, it just doesn’t work that way. If we’re to believe the examples furnished to us in Scripture itself, God regularly steps over lines we wouldn’t. We need a discernment in the church that’s willing to reckon with the kinds of surprises God likes to give us.

  • There was no biblical precedent for God revealing Himself in a burning bush or a wet fleece…and yet He did.
  • Touching bones makes you unclean, and yet the guy who touched Elisha’s bones was raised from the dead.
  • Touching lepers makes you unclean too, but Jesus did–and they didn’t make Him unclean; He made them well! He let an immoral woman touch Him, too.

The key in all these things is not “does this look like something the pagans might do?” The key is “What has God given us permission to do? Is He in this?”

If the answer is yes, then get to it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Torah as Wisdom Literature

29 August 2023

tl;dr: The Law isn’t law for us, but it *is* wisdom literature!

In my early Bible classes growing up, I was taught that there were three divisions to the Torah: moral, ceremonial, and civil. It wasn’t until seminary that I realized that as helpful as those categories sometimes can be, they are not organic to the Torah — you’ll search the Torah itself in vain for any such division. In the actual books of Moses, the Law is presented as a whole, and you can die for murder, gathering sticks on the Sabbath, or offering strange fire on the altar.

Therefore, when Paul says that we are not under the Law, he doesn’t mean just the ceremonial portions. He means the whole thing. The Law is a whole, and we are not under the Law as a rule of life, period. No part of it.

That said, Paul also says the Law is holy and just and good, and if you’re having trouble seeing that, then pray Psalm 119:18: “Open my eyes, that I might see wondrous things in Your Law.” We’re supposed to be singing the Psalms in the New Covenant anyway (see Eph. 4:18-21, Col. 3:16, Jas. 5:13), so this is a good start! Jesus Himself, and the NT writers who followed Him, all made great use of the Law in making spiritual and moral arguments. Paul does the same (see, for example, 1 Cor. 9:9, 14:34, 1 Tim. 5:18). So while we’re not under the Law as a rule of life, Paul continues to appeal to it. Why?

Because it’s holy and just and good. It reveals God’s character, and the truths thus revealed apply to our situation, even if we’re not in ancient Israel and aren’t going to do exactly what they did. So Paul borrows a command about how Israelites treat their oxen to make an analogy to how the church treats its elders.

Likewise, since we’re in possession of a civil law code created by Almighty God Himself, nothing could be sillier than to ignore it in our pursuit of the common good. He made it for Israel, not for us in the Gentile nations, but He says He made it for us to marvel at.

“Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?” (Deut. 4:5-8)

If we’re looking at the Law and all we have to say is, “Thank goodness we’re not under that!” then we’ve missed something crucial. We ought to be asking how we can appropriate that wisdom and apply it well in our own situations.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

She Didn’t Eat the Bark

22 December 2022

People who have command of an ideology wield a powerful tool for directing – if not possessing – the minds of other people. When the ideology is a theological system, the tool has usually been honed over generations, and whatever anomalous data the Bible presents has already been accounted for. The explanation may not be particularly compelling – especially to those not ideologically possessed by that particular theological system – but whatever the passage or objection, they’ll have an explanation already worked out, and it will work.*

*work = keep their adherents from dwelling on the problem passage

Experience, however, is another matter. It is one thing to ignore a verse that doesn’t quite make sense to you anyway. It is another thing entirely to ignore getting fired, being unable to conceive a child, losing a loved one. Major crises in life compel our attention: “God shouts in our pains” as C. S. Lewis said. 

For a leader who depends on his command of theology to order his world and his followers, reality is threatening, intrusive. A demand to base your theology on Scripture rather than experience is a way to throw pesky experiences out of court before they can be properly accounted for. 

That’s ridiculous on the face of it, since every experience you’ve ever had happens in God’s world under God’s control. The world and the Word do not contradict, and it is necessary to rightly interpret them both. But rather than exert the effort to properly interpret both, some people would rather insulate their poor interpretation of Scripture from falsification by disallowing God’s acts in the world as evidence. Jesus told people to believe the works, but some teachers would tell you otherwise. One wonders what they’re afraid of….

That’s bad, when a leader is running that game on you. But the really bad news is that a lot of us don’t need some nefarious cult leader to run that game on us; we’re busy doing it to ourselves. Having invested in learning a theological system that was supposed to make the world make sense, we refuse to consider anything that might upset the apple-cart and force us to revise our sense-making scheme, whether it’s a problem passage in Scripture or a problem event in life that falsifies our theology.

What should we do? Let’s go back to the Garden.

Eve looked at the forbidden fruit, and saw that it was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise. Three parts to her thought process. How did she know it was good for food? She’d never had fruit from that tree before. This is induction from experience, and if she’d been looking at any other fruit, she’d have been right. It was pleasant to the eyes – straightforward sense experience. Desirable to make one wise? That one she got straight from the serpent. 

We all know the story – on the basis of those three factors, she was deceived and she ate. What did she miss? The divine revelation. God had already told her that this particular fruit would kill her. The threat was imperceptible to her senses, which should have caused her to thank God for the warning. Instead, she was deceived and forgot the warning. 

Every other time she’d made that inductive judgment about a piece of fruit, she’d been right. And with any other tree in the Garden, she’d still have been right. But this tree was deadly, and because God is good, He’d warned her about it. 

The lesson here is not that we can’t trust our senses and reason. God made us for the world and the world for us; it is comprehensible to us. We can trust our senses and our reason, but we can’t trust them alone to get us to the truth. We also have to receive what God has told us. If we ignore divine revelation and try to go it alone based on sense data and reason – the Eve mistake – our grasp of the world will be fatally flawed.

It will be equally flawed if we expect to navigate the world with God’s word alone apart from the senses He gave us. Eve ate the fruit of the trees, not the bark.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Parable of the Hats

13 July 2022

Once upon a time, a feller named Jack grew disturbed at the number of people running around without hats. Finding hats both useful and stylish, Jack set about to change the trend, to which end he founded the Hat Society “to promote the wearing of hats.” Jack worked hard at helping see the advantage of hats, and the Society grew to the point that they were running on a half-million dollars or so a year, all to promote hats. Now Jack himself had always worn a fedora, but at Hat Society meetings you could find cowboy hats, homburgs, berets, bowlers, baseball caps, tams, even a few propeller-topped beanies.  

Over time, that began to change. The propeller-topped beanies were the first to go, but they hadn’t done much for the dignity of hat-wearing, and nobody really missed them. The guys in berets and tams kinda disappeared a few at a time. A few years later, baseball caps began to get scarce, and that feller in the fishing hat with all the flies on it was asked to never come back. 

Fast-forward a few more years, and there’s an occasional cowboy hat around, but pretty much everybody at the meetings is wearing a fedora. Jack himself is maintaining that a dark fawn fedora is the perfect epitome of hat-ness, and he never wears anything else. At one point, this led to a confrontation between Jack and the board; Jack asked all the non-fedora-wearing board members to resign, which they did.

Some folks claim that back in the day, Jack used to sometimes wear a grey fedora. Others maintain that it was always dark fawn. Nobody seems able to prove it for sure either way, and most of the people who were around back then have long since left. Oddly, it’s not called the Fedora Society; it’s still the Hat Society, and the mission statement still reads “to promote the wearing of hats.” 

Now Jack may be within his rights to promote the dark fawn fedora, and perhaps even to use Society funds for the purpose. But he can’t really claim to speak for the community of hat-wearers anymore, can he? 

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Posted by Tim Nichols

On Being Misunderstood

24 November 2020

Paul required that elders be of good reputation among those outside the faith (1 Tim. 3:7)–and this in a culture that sometimes accused Christians of atheism and cannibalism, that crucified us, threw us to the lions, burned us alive. Paul himself had quite the criminal history as a Christian, as did that escaped jailbird Peter and many others, all following the condemned and executed Jesus. Plainly Paul did not mean that you can’t serve in church leadership if anybody has bad things to say about you. He cannot mean that you’re only qualified if your godly conduct has never been misunderstood by the world. 

Yet we are surrounded by Christians who think that’s exactly what having a good Christian testimony means. These credulous folks have been lulled by four centuries of unprecedented prosperity and freedom, during which the culture took it for granted that being a Christian was a good thing. (Perhaps a little too wholesome and not much fun, but a good thing nonetheless.) But it has not always been that way, and–have a look around–it is not really that way now. 

We are going to be misunderstood. Sometimes it will be an honest misunderstanding brought about by simple confusion. The devil excels at manufacturing that sort of thing. Sometimes it will be a tactical misunderstanding, and the wounded party will be flopping about like a French soccer player, even though nobody was within 3 yards of him. There’s a great deal of the latter, actually, and our National Evangelical Leadership (all rise!) has been steered by the flopping soccer players of the secular world for some time now. Steered straight into severe compromise, and all in the name of empathy for the player with the allegedly injured leg. 

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Posted by Tim Nichols

We Have To Do This Work

8 March 2019

There was an interesting little controversy last month over on Theopolis Blog, and now that I’m caught up on reading the whole thing (which took a little while), I’d like to offer some color commentary from out here in the cheap seats.

It starts with a forum called “Theopolis Conversations,” in which an author makes a proposal, four other authors respond to it, and finally the initial author finishes with a rejoinder to his four respondents. In this case, the topic is “Paths to Human Maturity.” The initial article by David Field (which is looong!) also has links to the follow-up responses, except for a surrejoinder Doug Wilson posted on his own blog after the discussion was over. I’d encourage you to read the whole thing; it’s worth your time. But there’s a particular aspect to the kerfluffle that I’d like to comment on, and in order for my comments to make sense, I’m going to summarize the initial proposal, below.

In a nutshell, Field proposed a project, thus:

Reformed Christians would do well to take a look at the proposals and practices of psychoanalysis, the Desert Fathers, and Zen Buddhism because these supposed ‘paths to human maturity’, at the very least, generate some important challenges and questions for us.

Field then posed the situation of a pastor named Ira, “a sincere and spiritually mature man” who “meets the requirements for elders and bears the fruit of the Spirit.” Ira has carried a great deal of repressed anger since childhood, and although of course he is not conscious of it, his anger “does come out in various ways ‘above the surface’, i.e. in conscious, visible life. There are moments when there’s a [hint] that there is something lurking underneath, but Ira does not pay them any serious or sustained attention.”

Ira, though wholly sincere and genuinely godly, is not one to slow down, attend to the surface signs of unconscious passions, and connect with the associated emotions. He certainly has quiet times but in these his mind is busy – with intercessory prayer, memorising Scripture, and theological reflection. There is not time for extended, unhurried, radically honest, and exploratory conversation with another (therapist, counsellor, friend) and in any case, this would feel self-indulgent.

Moreover, drawing from contemplative traditions that might help Ira to notice what is happening in him seems “to represent a departure from the Puritan spirituality he so cherishes and therefore…to represent also a lack of trust in Scriptural ways of maturation.”

Therefore, Ira soldiers on,

And, in his case, the repressed anger manifests in his consciousness as a critical or reforming spirit which he identifies as the desire that things should be ‘right’….[H]e may control the conscious expression of this spirit and desire which can take the form of resentment at bearing responsibility, at an endeavour to control, at an obsession with correct doctrine or social conduct, as shame at the public sins or shortcomings of family members and so on….[H]e doesn’t realise…that underlying several of these various emerging ‘pressure-points’ is the one unresolved, un-named, unconscious passion of anger.)

Ira would like, of course, to be free of these besetting temptations against which he struggles. Field suggests that the only path from where Ira is to where Ira wants to be goes through “radical honesty with God,” which will require a kind of stillness and attention that Ira has not heretofore cultivated. Field further proposes that the Desert Fathers have something to offer Ira in such a season, as do the observations of the world gathered together by Zen Buddhism and depth psychology.

Field is pointedly not suggesting that Ira abandon his Christian faith. “The proposal is that we should investigate these pathways [the Desert Fathers, Zen, and depth psychology], not that we should adopt them.” [emphasis added] Why would we look into these traditions in particular? “The address to the self and associated practices which are found in these movements…are impactful and…have interesting connections with key biblical themes.” He then goes on at some length (which I’ll let you read yourself), discussing ways in which these three traditions intersect with biblical themes and might be worth investigating.

Peter Leithart, Uri Brito, and Alistair Roberts all responded with some measure of endorsement, but also varying degrees of caution. Their responses are well worth reading, and fairly brief. (As a massage therapist who works with essential oils, I particularly liked Leithart’s jag on the biblical ramifications of aromatherapy.)

What interests me here is the fourth response, from Doug Wilson, in which he (by his own later admission) “pulled the fire alarm.” In an article titled “A Crisis, not a Conversation,” Wilson rebukes the principals for even starting the conversation, and does so on asbestos paper with napalm ink. Wilson is at his fightin’ fundie finest here, quoting the expected passages about philosophy and vain deceit and banging the drum for the sufficiency of Scripture. He voices a number of valid concerns, most of which Fields ably addresses in his rejoinder. (I’ll probably have something to say on that subject later, because Wilson’s argument here is weak in ways he doesn’t realize. He argues in ways common to, say, the NANC/ACBC/BCF group, who have made “integration” a theological swear word–but he’s publicly committed to integration. Lotta tension there.)

Wilson goes more than a little over the top in his closing recommendations that Theopolis’ financial supporters might want to reconsider their giving, and threatening to do the closest thing his polity allows to calling for church discipline for the folks that started this thing, but that’s also another matter for another time. The first thing I want to comment upon here is what he doesn’t say.

Because here’s the thing: Ira, the fictional pastor with the repressed anger problem? Not so fictional. He’s more like a cliche. I’ve known a dozen of him, at least. These guys are spiritually mature (to hear the community tell it, anyhow), doctrinally sharp, honest in their business dealings–salt of the earth, right?

Yeah, about that..multiple times I’ve seen Ira’s unacknowledged wrath tank a whole ministry when it finally found its way to the surface. (And a another one where the underlying issue was vainglory, rather than anger.) I’ve been treated to the spectacle of warring Iras in the same ministry–a lot of people (me included) got drowned in that particular pissing match. Twice, I’ve had different sets of Iras blow up my whole life. Stats on pastoral failure and burnout tell the same sad tale. Various Iras, with their unaddressed sins and consequent inability to get along with one another for Jesus’ sake, are shambling through the evangelical church, leaving bodies and burning wreckage in their wake, and nothing could be plainer than that standard-issue evangelical piety is not addressing the problem.

Field is proposing an answer. Wilson doesn’t like Field’s answer. I like the way Field addresses it better than the way Wilson doesn’t. When the problem is real, which it is, in spades, having no answer is often as bad as having a poor answer. You can’t make course corrections in a parked car, and at least the guy with the poor answer is moving….

…which leads to my second point on all this: Field’s answer isn’t a poor answer. We have to do this work. We have to do it because our parishioners are not all as clueless as Ira. Some of them know something’s wrong, and they have figured out that they aren’t getting the answers they need at church. They may or may not encounter the Desert Fathers, but depth psychology has permeated our culture, and Zen mindfulness and meditation practices are not far behind. Our parishioners are searching for answers, and they are encountering this stuff. They work alongside people who are trying meditation and getting benefit from it, who are seeing Jungian shrinks and sometimes growing as a result, because common grace works. Think they won’t dabble? Bah. Of course they will. So will Wilson’s–they just won’t tell him, and what a loss that will be, both for him and for them!

Is there a straightforwardly biblical answer for these folks that makes a foray into other traditions unnecessary? If so, then let’s flesh it out and offer it to the church. Do we need some response to these other traditions anyhow, since our people are encountering them? Obviously. Would we rather have something wise to offer them in this area of common grace, or just leave them to their own devices? For a shepherd, that’s no question at all.

And anyhow, we are called to retake the territory; we play offense. To the extent that there’s anything there of value, it belongs to Christ, and we are commissioned to return it to its proper service to Him. Field has thrown down the challenge; what are we waiting for?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Martial Arts and the Christian

1 March 2019

A friend wrote me recently, passing on some questions he’d been asked about Christian participation in martial arts. Of course I’ve addressed these questions many times over the years, and his email ended up sparking an essay. So–lightly edited–here it is.

One of the first lessons I learned about speaking on Christian participation in martial arts training is that context matters. In the usual settings where the subject comes up for me, my principal concern is explaining my own practice—which is quite a different thing from addressing whatever might happen in the storefront dojo nearest you.

So I have two basic things to say: On the one hand, these things can be done well, and to the glory of Christ. On the other hand, they often are not, pagans are plentiful, and an awful lot depends on the teacher. Discerning whether a particular school, instructor, or class is a good choice for a particular student can be a tricky business, since it depends not only on the instructor but also on the maturity and needs of the student. But we are called to have our senses exercised to discern good from evil, so if it’s going to be difficult, we’d better gird up our loins and get to it. God is light; He’ll show us the way.

As with all such areas of liberty, Romans 14 applies. It’s good to look into it, and it’s good to be fully convinced in one’s own mind. Different people may come to different conclusions about the same program, and they may both be right…for them.

A Christian who walks into your typical storefront dojo (a taekwondo school, say) finds himself in an alien world. There’s a bunch of people wearing pajamas and bowing to one another, folks with arcane titles like “Master” and “Grandmaster” and so on. What does it all mean? Can a Christian be part of it?

As to the bowing and titles, I’d advise looking into what it means in the parent culture. If two businessmen in that culture would traditionally bow to one another when they meet (as opposed to shaking hands like we do), then I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s a greeting. You’re paying to learn a practice from someone else’s culture; it’s silly to be upset that they don’t act like Westerners. Similarly, look to what the titles mean in the home culture.

For example, my own title (which I never use except on official paperwork, but more about my practice later) is Guru Muda, which is enough to make any red-blooded, English-speaking Christian spit. But in Bahasa Indonesia, guru means ‘teacher’ with no particular spiritual connotations; one can be a guru of chemistry or Chinese literature or engineering. (Muda means ‘young;’ the ‘young teacher’ designation is roughly analogous to an ‘associate professor’ in our university ranking system. The next step up is ‘teacher;’ the one after that is ‘master teacher.’) The reason guru has spiritual connotations in English is because spiritual teachers from India used their native word for teacher (guru) when they came here—Vivekananda and the like. For the same reason, the Japanese sensei has martial arts connotations in America, thanks to the karate teachers who came here (and the Karate Kid movies)—but again, in Japanese it just means teacher. A friend of mine who was teaching English in Tokyo thought it was really funny that his students called him their sensei. They didn’t understand why it sounded funny to him—to them, sensei has no martial arts connotations.

As to the flag and the yin-yang symbol: Taekwondo in particular is regarded as a Korean national heritage, and the Korean flag is nearly always displayed in Taekwondo schools (as you’ll sometimes find the Japanese flag displayed in a traditional Karate school). I look forward to the day when the symbol on the Korean flag is a cross rather than a yin-yang, but I’d be reluctant to conclude something was spiritually fishy about a particular school based on the flag alone. I mean, jeepers, there’s a bunch of pentagrams on the American flag, but nobody thinks you’re secretly worshiping the host of heaven because you happen to have a flag on your porch or in your church. (Whether it belongs in your church, and what it means to display it there, is another discussion. But it doesn’t mean you’re a sky-worshiper.)

On these sorts of things, you have to keep in mind what you’re doing, and accept its necessary conditions as the cost of doing business. You’re learning to fight from people who know how. Taking one thing with another, the people who are really great fighters did not get that way by being happy, well-adjusted humans. You’re not likely to be dealing with saints and Sunday school teachers, ya know? (Yes, there are exceptions. Don’t hold your breath.)

Another (often-)necessary condition is crossing cultural barriers. Here in the West, we developed firearms to an exquisite degree, and at the same time we have developed a society that’s less violent than anything ever seen before in human history. Apart from some arcane holdouts if you know where to look, the West has not really preserved its traditions of hand-to-hand combat; those that have a serious need, carry guns. So you’re going to a culture where their hand-to-hand arts haven’t been lost, to learn the way they do it—which is different than how things are done here. So you remember who’s the visitor, and be polite. If they bow instead of shaking hands, you learn how to bow. If they like onion in their tea, then you learn to drink onion in your tea. If they treat their bruises with foul-smelling herbs after practice, then you do too.

If they bow to a little shrine containing pictures of their ancestors in the art, you politely explain that you will happily offer God a prayer of thanksgiving for those who have preserved the art for you and passed it down to you, but God forbids bowing to images of the dead. If they won’t teach you because of that, off you go—that one wasn’t for you. But the point here is that outside of things God actually forbids, there’s no point in going all ‘ugly American’ just because the foreigners are acting foreign. If you don’t like it, go to a boxing gym.

The degree to which a particular school spends time on whatever philosophy may underlie the art varies widely from school to school, and sometimes from teacher to teacher even within a single school. Some places, it gets pretty deep. Other places focus on the physical art. (One teacher, asked about the spiritual side of his (Japanese) art, said, “Yeah, there’s a spiritual side: the dead guy doesn’t get to go to church.” Another one, this one Chinese: “Our philosophy? Our philosophy is to crash through the opponent’s center and kill him.” Not everybody uses the art as a platform for teaching a spirituality.)

The point here is, you gotta go and find out for yourself, and whether it’s a deal-breaker depends on what the prospective student is ready for. An awful lot of Christians want some kind of guarantee in advance that nothing will make them uncomfortable. They seem afraid of getting somehow tainted by rubbing shoulders with pagans. They’d prefer to do all their research online, and won’t go to the events and meet the people. That’s a poor way to handle apologetic engagement. Apologetic engagement requires, well, engagement. If you don’t go and see for yourself, you’ve no right to complain when people answer your objections by telling you that you don’t know the first thing about it. They’re right; you don’t.

Having found out, you then have to answer some hard questions. Is this philosophy attractive to me? Does it repulse me? Why? What is true about it? What is false about it? How do I know? The cautions Paul gives in Colossians about philosophy and vain deceit apply here, as do the characteristics of idolatrous thought laid out in Romans 1. Any Christless philosophy is vain and self-defeating, but sometimes it takes some growth in us before the self-defeating nature of the system becomes apparent to us. At the same time, because everyone–despite their ardent pretense otherwise–is living in Yahweh’s world, they often learn some useful things about that world. Sifting the operations of common grace from the operations of human depravity takes a good eye. So we need to grow, but there’s no need for panic.

Those same cautions apply to enrolling in Leviathan State University as an engineering or pre-med major. The student will encounter all kinds of ugly ideas and sub-Christian worldviews. There’s work to be done to counter them, but God has not given us a spirit of fear. You don’t want someone enrolling—either in your state university or in a martial arts school—who isn’t up to the challenge the environment will present to their worldview. So get ‘em ready, and then send ‘em in.

Now, as to what I do with my classes: I don’t pretend this is The One Right Way To Do Things, but I’ve been teaching since 1999, and this is what I’ve found works best for me and mine. I practice Kuntao Silat, an Indonesian art brought here by Dutch-Indonesian immigrants in the 60s. Some of the leaders and senior practitioners are Christian; some are not. The roots of the art are deeply mixed: Muslim, animist, Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist, Christian. There are some practices in our history I don’t find appropriate as a Christian, so I don’t do them.

The terminology of the art is largely in Bahasa Indonesia, with a smattering of other languages thrown in; Indonesia is a polyglot kinda place in language and culture, just like it is in religion. I know what the Indonesian terms mean, but my students mostly don’t;  I teach my classes in English. (E.g., sapu and beset are two fundamental leg movements in the art; my students know them as ‘scoop’ and ‘drag’ respectively.) Shoot, half my students don’t even know my title is Guru Muda. They call me Tim.

We don’t open my classes with a bow. We open my classes with a blessing (and since I’m not starting a cult, we do it round-robin style; I give and receive.) All my students learn to speak blessing over other people, even if it’s a simple, “May the Lord bless you and keep you,” or “May your training be blessed today.” If you’re not willing to look another human being in the eye and speak blessing over them, I’m certainly not going to teach you how to hurt people.

After the blessing, we begin the class, which is informal and at times very demanding. You can teach martial arts with a number of different focuses (sport, cultural heritage, performance art, fitness, healthy movement, mental discipline, self-defense); I focus on healthy movement, discipline, and self-defense.

At the end of class, we finish with a closing circle where each student has to articulate one thing he learned that day, and one thing he intends to practice in the coming week. Then we have a closing blessing, and class is over.

Along with translating the terms to English, I’ve dropped a lot of the cultural trappings. This is a philosophical decision each teacher has to make for themselves: do you try to replicate your own learning experience as closely as possible, or do you cannibalize your own learning experience selectively to craft a new learning experience for your students? If you are, say, a traditionally raised Japanese man who learned jiu-jutsu from another traditionally raised Japanese man, you have a pretty good shot at reproducing your learning experience for the next generation of students, and it might be a good idea.

In my circumstances, that approach didn’t make much sense. The men who brought my arts to the U.S. grew up in colonial Dutch Indonesia before WWII, and like the Preacher said, “All is mist.” They are the products of a unique time, place, and culture that no longer exists. I’m a white boy from Virginia; I can’t reproduce that culture and I don’t intend to try. All the bowing and flags and so on leaves me cold, so I don’t bother with it. I’m passing on the fighting art, so that’s what we spend time on. I’ll teach some tidbits about the culture and history as it illuminates the movement or the mentality of the art (which it does), but the point is to understand the fighting art.

In my classes, we laugh a lot. We play, we have fun. But I also make my students face the ugliness of what we’re doing, for two reasons. First, I want them to come to terms with it in training before they have to face it for real. Second, it’s bad for your soul to romanticize a discipline where the raw material is healthy bodies and the finished product is cripples and corpses.

The theology is relevant, and it comes up as we work through the ethical issues that come with training to injure people. We can’t lose sight of the fact that what we are training for is not good. We broke the world, and introduced evil. We are living with the consequences, which include the need to fight evil—if you love sheep, you have to be ready to fight wolves. But—thank God—these things have an end. Jesus has already triumphed over evil and buried it in the heart of the earth; it just doesn’t know it’s dead yet.

On the glorious last day, we will beat our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks. From that day forward, we will no longer study war, and that will not be a sad day. No one will look back nostalgically at the good old days when we worked so hard to be ready to hurt people. But you have to know where you are in the story; friends don’t let friends over-realize their eschatology. Our job is to be ready for the last day when it comes, and until then, to be ready for tomorrow no matter what comes.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Redemption of Natural Philosophy

9 November 2018

In order to understand the place of science in the world, we need to define some terms.

Natural Philosophy: an investigation into the way the natural world is and the way it works. In ancient times, philosophers weren’t just concerned with intangibles or ethics or human nature, they were also concerned with how the world worked. So Aristotle, for example, expresses a natural philosophy.

Science: born out of natural philosophy, science is a particular way of investigating the natural world that relies on generating ideas about the world, generating predictions from those ideas, testing the predictions through repeatable experiments, and revising the ideas accordingly. Or so it says on the wrapper….

Scientists object to being lumped in with natural philosophy because they consider themselves vastly more rigorous than the natural philosophers, and insofar as they really are more rigorous, they have a point. But then, many scientists also regard naturalism as coextensive with ‘Science,’ and naturalism is a religious conviction not subject to scientific testing — so they’re natural philosophers. They just can’t help themselves. Religion gets into everything, and there is no neutrality.

Special Revelation: God telling us something particular. Sometimes questions about the world do address an area where God has spoken. For example, “Is it true that we’ll die if we eat this particular fruit?” As our experience in Eden demonstrates, when God has spoken to a point, it is wise to take His revelation into account.

False religion: various untrue ideas about spiritual things. The principal goal of these ideas is to suppress the truth in unrighteousness, to keep Yahweh out of human awareness.

We are obliged to hear special revelation. What God has shown us must be taken into account, period.

We are obliged to disregard false religion. We may not bow down to or in any wise serve idols, and ideas that exist to turn us away from Yahweh are to be rejected out of hand.

Science and natural philosophy, however, are a different matter, and have to be handled differently. Science and natural philosophy are always tied in with an overall worldview, and it matters which one they’re tied in with. Carl Sagan’s science is no more to be trusted than Lao Tzu’s natural philosophy — but no less, either. To the extent that they have observed the natural world accurately, they must be recognized. Paul requires it: “Whatever things are true…think on these things.” To the extent that they have failed to glorify Yahweh and be thankful, they have exalted themselves against the knowledge of God, and they must be cast down. Since we have to do both of these things, we are simply not permitted to discard them, nor to swallow them whole. We are required to seek the redemption of science and natural philosophy, to see these disciplines brought into obedience to Christ.

In the Western world, we like to lump science on the side of the angels, and demonize natural philosophy. Christians have adopted this into our theological schema very uncritically, such that Western medicine is appropriate for Christians (despite its pronounced tendency to murder babies) and acupuncture is not, because it’s not scientific and tied up with Taoism.

Well, sure it’s tied up with Taoism. Good thinkers always seek a consistent, integrated view of everything, and Chinese natural philosophers didn’t keep their Taoism locked in a box whilst they were observing the natural world. Whaddaya expect? Nor did Carl Sagan keep his atheism locked in a box when he looked through a telescope — but I don’t know even one Christian who thinks that means we should ignore what he saw. If we’re prepared to accept insights about the natural world from the round-eyed observer, then why are we so balky about the slant-eyed ones?

Frankly, I think it’s simple xenophobia. Our M.D. doesn’t believe that we have a soul, and that doesn’t bother us at all, because we’re used to it. An acupuncturist says something about yin and yang, and we lose our minds — without even stopping to find out what he meant. As communication improves and the world comes back together again, we need to learn to listen carefully rather than simply rejecting unfamiliar things out of hand. We might learn something.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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