Freak Fall: A Preliminary Review

30 September 2015

 I plan to review Freak Fall in more depth  in a few weeks, but I want to start with a spoiler-free basic review. Stay tuned for more discussion later, but in the meantime, get over to Amazon and pick up your copy today.

 When teacher Mark Hanson heads to his family’s cabin in the Colorado Rockies for an uneventful spring break of snowshoeing, reading, and craft beer, he has no idea that his life is about to be altered forever. Twenty-four hours later, Mark has become the sole witness to a terrorist attack — one of a coordinated series all over the globe — and the unlikely companion to that attack’s sole survivor, a man who comes to be known as Freak.

The Freak believes he was miraculously delivered from certain death to deliver a divine message to the world. Mark isn’t so sure. Is the Freak a miracle, or is he just lucky and deluded? Decide for yourself….

Through Mark’s very fallible eyes, we see a story unfold that could come from tomorrow’s headlines. A page-turner from end to end, Freak Fall delivers compelling characters caught up in an unpredictable story. Whether it’s a supernatural thriller about the end of the world or a psychological study of survivor’s guilt and deep delusion, it will be worth your time. Pick it up — you won’t put it down.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Answering the 40 Questions

17 July 2015

On July 3, Matthew Vines posted an article titled “40 questions for Christians who oppose marriage equality.” A friend brought the article to my attention, and I wrote out my answers to the 40 questions mostly as an exercise for myself. Some of the questions were really good, thought-provoking discussion starters. Some exposed really weird presuppositions about history, marriage, and Christianity. A few questions struck me as purely rhetorical traps, but it might be that I misunderstood. All in all, I think the article bears discussing. So let’s. Here are my answers. What are yours?

  1. Do you accept that sexual orientation is not a choice?
    I doubt it’s that simple. We are sinners by nature and by choice; why wouldn’t both enter into it? I suspect that for most of us, our choices, especially our early choices, have something to do with it, as do our native proclivities and our early experiences. At the moment, it is politically convenient to present sexual orientation as fixed at birth and totally immutable, something one discovers rather than something one develops. (It is, in other words, the last stand of essentialism.) Ten minutes after the political necessity passes, I expect we’ll be up to our necks in carefully footnoted research about how sexual orientation is far more nuanced, complex and dynamic than we previously suspected.
  2. Do you accept that sexual orientation is highly resistant to attempts to change it?
    If you mean ham-handed attempts to “decide not to be gay” and that sort of thing, then yeah, I do. Many of any given person’s desires are highly resistant to that sort of will-driven change — a “beach bum” can’t just decide not to like the beach and love the desert instead, either.That said, I have known people who experienced themselves as having one sexual orientation, then later experienced themselves as having a different sexual orientation. Since I’ve seen it go straight to gay and gay to straight, again, the situation does seem to be a bit more complicated. And “gay for the stay” is a thing among prisoners for a reason.
  3. How many meaningful relationships with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) people do you have?
    Of course I don’t know. I’m 40 years old; I remember a time when almost nobody was ‘out’ in mainstream America. I had a friend in high school that was gay — he didn’t know I knew, and I didn’t bring it up to him out of respect for his decision to keep it private. I have (or have had) good friendships with several LGBT folk, along with a fairly large number of acquaintances. But here I have a question in response: So what? What are the implications for the conversation if someone says “Well, I’ve never had any,” or conversely, their number is bigger than yours?
  4. How many openly LGBT people would say you are one of their closest friends?
    You’d have to ask them. 
  5. How much time have you spent in one-on-one conversation with LGBT Christians about their faith and sexuality?
    A little. Not a ton, but not many seem to want to have that conversation with me — there’s a self-selection factor in play here.
  6. Do you accept that heterosexual marriage is not a realistic option for most gay people?
    I’m not sure that I do. It appears to have been the default option for nearly all of humanity for nearly all of human history. Obviously it can be done, and usually was. I guess we’d have to talk about what you mean by “realistic option.”
  7. Do you accept that lifelong celibacy is the only valid option for most gay people if all same-sex relationships are sinful?
    Lifelong celibacy is the only valid option for anybody who doesn’t get married. It was good enough for Jesus — what’s wrong with it?
  8. How many gay brothers and sisters in Christ have you walked with on the path of mandatory celibacy, and for how long?
    Not sure why it would matter if they’re gay or not — mandatory celibacy is mandatory celibacy. But to answer your question, a couple, and for a while.
    I have the same follow-up question here as in #3. So what? From your perspective, what are the implications for the discussion if I say “None,” or if my number is bigger than yours?
  9. What is your answer for gay Christians who struggled for years to live out a celibacy mandate but were driven to suicidal despair in the process?
    The same as for straight Christians who struggled for years to live out a celibacy mandate but were driven to suicidal despair in the process, or for any Christian who struggled with anything whatever and was driven to suicidal despair in the process. In a nutshell, to walk with them and help them to walk with God and hear His voice, so as to pursue their God-given destinies rather than letting their whole lives be about what they can’t do. I can hear the peanut gallery muttering something about cliches and platitudes, and I have two things to say: first, you may have had someone throw those words at you before, someone who didn’t know you, didn’t walk with you, someone who didn’t themselves live out the realities to which those words refer. Someone who was using “cast your cares on Jesus” as a screen to keep you away, because they were afraid of your hurts and your despair. Regardless of your personal history with them, those statements are not platitudes. They are living truths, and if God puts you in my life, I will live them with you, neck-deep in your mess (and you in mine), doing whatever it takes to help. Second, I know this approach is real because I have lived it out myself. Suicidal despair and I are old enemies.
  10. Has mandatory celibacy produced good fruit in the lives of most gay Christians you know?
    Most gay Christians I know haven’t tried it. A great number of the unmarried straight Christians I know haven’t tried it either. But yes — obedience produces good fruit, which ought not to be surprising. Lack of this particular obedience is a serious problem in the church, and our inability to address the issues surrounding gay “marriage” is just a symptom of a much deeper problem: evangelicals have as much trouble as the general culture does with sexual ethics. As a group, we hate biblical sexual ethics generally, and fall woefully short of even trying to live up to them. Having deified orgasm, we are now prepared to believe that there are many roads up the mountain, and it doesn’t really matter which one you take, as long as it gets you there.
  11. How many married same-sex couples do you know?
    One…but they just split up. Same follow-up question as #3.
  12. Do you believe that same-sex couples’ relationships can show the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?
    I am sure that at times it can. Sin in one area does not stop God from producing fruit in our lives — for which all thanksgiving. It does not follow that the sin is not sin, or that God approves of it, or that we ought to turn a blind eye to it, or refuse to call it by its right name.
  13. Do you believe that it is possible to be a Christian and support same-sex marriage in the church?

    There’s some kind of weird presupposition behind these “Is it possible to be a Christian and ____” questions. It’s possible to be a Christian and deny Jesus (cf. Peter). It’s possible to be a Christian and commit murder (as some of the addressees of the epistle of James had done). It’s possible to be a Christian and an adulterer (as had some of the Corinthians). It’s possible to be a Christian and so abuse the poor at the Lord’s Table that God actually kills you over it (the Corinthians again — they were a mess!) In the same vein, it’s surely possible to be a Christian and a practicing homosexual — or simply approving of Christian homosexuals. Sure. God receives all who come to Him into His family. He doesn’t require that you clean up first — just come. And once you’re part of the family, you’re part of the family forever. If we are faithless, He remains faithful. But it certainly is possible to be faithless. It’s possible to be a Christian and sin in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and what we have left undone. Happens all the time, and praise God, He is kind to us. He came to seek and save the lost. So all that said, is supporting same-sex marriage the act of a discerning and faithful Christian? No. it’s rather plainly not. Does it define you out of the family? Of course not. God is a better father than that.
  14. Do you believe that it is possible to be a Christian and support slavery?
    Many were. Including Moses and Paul, depending on what you mean by “support slavery.”
  15. If not, do you believe that Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards were not actually Christians because they supported slavery?
    See above.
  16. Do you think supporting same-sex marriage is a more serious problem than supporting slavery?

    Yes, and how! They’re not even in the same league. Supporting same-sex marriage is supporting four-sided triangles. You are declaring a thing to be which is simply not so — and doing so in order to dignify a serious sin. Slavery doesn’t fall into the same category. So yes, it’s a much more serious problem.
  17. Did you spend any time studying the Bible’s passages about slavery before you felt comfortable believing that slavery is wrong?

    Lots, which is why I would say that slavery is not necessarily wrong. It was not a sin for Abraham to own slaves, nor for Israel to own slaves, nor for Paul — under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit — to return Onesimus to Philemon and encourage slaves to obey their masters and masters to treat their slaves well. If you believe that slavery is categorically wrong, well…did you read any of these passages? Would you accuse God of wrong?
  18. Does it cause you any concern that Christians throughout most of church history would have disagreed with you?



    Moi    ? No, they wouldn’t. Does it bother you that they would find your position unconscionable?
  19. Did you know that, for most of church history, Christians believed that the Bible taught the earth stood still at the center of the universe?

    Some Christians said so, because they made the mistake of rooting their cosmology in pagan balloon juice and prettying it up with a few verses. It’s a pretty serious mistake to make, but it happens. As I said above, it doesn’t automatically define you out fo the faith, for which all thanksgiving.
  20. Does it cause you any concern that you disagree with their interpretation of the Bible?

    Nope. Does it cause you any concern that you are repeating their methodological mistake with the current vintage of pagan balloon juice?
  21. Did you spend any time studying the Bible’s verses on the topic before you felt comfortable believing that the earth revolves around the sun?

    I did, actually. I was quite the apologetics geek in my teenage years, before I learned how to love people instead of clubbing them.
  22. Do you know of any Christian writers before the 20th century who acknowledged that gay people must be celibate for life due to the church’s rejection of same-sex relationships?

    What a very tactical framing of the question. No, prior to the 20th century’s particular madness, this framing of the issue was unthinkable.  All the single folk were told the same thing regardless of sexual orientation: marry the spouse your family picks for you, and be fruitful. The relevant passages were fifth commandment and the creation mandate.
    Counterquestion: do you know of Christian writers before the 20th century who encouraged sexual activity outside of marriage? And even if you had dozens of  examples, which you definitely do not, do you think they matter, stacked up against the plain teaching of Scripture?
  23. If not, might it be fair to say that mandating celibacy for gay Christians is not a traditional position?

    This is just dumb. Traditionally, Mom and Dad picked a spouse for their kids, who had precious little choice in the matter anyway. Do you prefer that position? And the traditional position is to remain celibate unless and until you marry a person of the opposite sex — and you know it.
  24. Do you believe that the Bible explicitly teaches that all gay Christians must be single and celibate for life?

    Nope. It says no such thing. A gay man is free to marry a woman and bear children — as regularly happened.  A lesbian is similarly free to marry a man and raise children together. The Bible says, “Children, obey your parents,” which for most of history meant marrying who they said.  But perhaps you’ve heard of “necessary consequence?”
  25. If not, do you feel comfortable affirming something that is not explicitly affirmed in the Bible?

    Well, given what I said above, this little trap doesn’t apply to me — but just to be talking about it, yes, I do. The trinity, for example. Again, perhaps you’ve heard of “necessary consequence?”
  26. Do you believe that the moral distinction between lust and love matters for LGBT people’s romantic relationships?

    Of course, although it’s more a spectrum than a hard distinction. I’m not sure 0% lust is really attainable. But just because you care about the whole person to some extent doesn’t mean your actions are in their best interests. You can damage a person with good intentions, and by placing us out of relationship with the opposite sex and in wrong relationship to our own sex, same-sex relationships mar God’s design and damage the lives He wanted us to have.
  27. Do you think that loving same-sex relationships should be assessed in the same way as the same-sex behavior Paul explicitly describes as lustful in Romans 1?

    Paul seems to be saying that lust drives the descent into same-sex relationships, and he makes no qualifications in his denunciation of same-sex relationships. But come now, be serious. The exegesis here is in no way complicated. Paul’s denunciations of same-sex sexual relationships are as straightforward as they could be.
  28. Do you believe that Paul’s use of the terms “shameful” and “unnatural” in Romans 1:26-27 means that all same-sex relationships are sinful?

    Yup.
  29. Would you say the same about Paul’s description of long hair in men as “shameful” and against “nature” in 1 Corinthians 11:14, or would you say he was describing cultural norms of his time?

    I would say the same, actually. I see you rolling your eyes, but I’m serious, and so should you be. There are pretty hefty exegetical reasons to take it that way, and the reason we overwhelmingly try to beg off on some “cultural norm” explanation is not because the exegesis points that way — it rather plainly doesn’t — but because we don’t want to believe it. Sounds familiar….
  30. Do you believe that the capacity for procreation is essential to marriage?

    It is central to marriage in a center-of-the-bell-curve kind of way — and God explicitly commanded it, so it’s out of bounds for a Christian marriage to be hostile to procreation. That said, procreation does not define marriage: Adam and Eve had a marriage before there were children. The marriage must be valid in order for the activity that leads to procreation to be lawful. 
  31. If so, what does that mean for infertile heterosexual couples?

    It means it really hurts to be me some days. Other days I don’t think about it as much. Apparently today’s going to be one of the former — thanks for that. (If you’re feeling bad for bringing up a topic that is personally quite painful for me, don’t. My feelings are real, but they are not, in fact, the point, and you don’t have to let them dictate the course of the discussion.) Now, you see what I did there — dodge the issue and make it about my feelings? Let’s just make that off-limits for everybody, because it’s not helpful to the discussion. So to actually answer the question, for infertile couples it means that God opens and closes the womb as He wills, and we trust Him to know best, even though we don’t understand.
  32. How much time have you spent engaging with the writings of LGBT-affirming Christians like Justin Lee, James Brownson, and Rachel Murr?

    I haven’t. I don’t read the patents for perpetual-motion machines, either, and for the same reason.
  33. What relationship recognition rights short of marriage do you support for same-sex couples?

    If by “relationship recognition rights” you  ean, do  I pretend they’re really not together, then of course not. I If you mean some version of “marriage lite” like civil unions, I don’t. It isn’t my job to condemn or to fix people, but neither is it my job to nurture their sins. It is my job to love them. On a good day, I do my best. On a bad day, I do poorly, like everyone else.
  34. What are you doing to advocate for those rights?

    See above.
  35. Do you know who Tyler Clementi, Leelah Alcorn, and Blake Brockington are, and did your church offer any kind of prayer for them when their deaths made national news?

    My church doesn’t offer up prayers for the dead, but that’s not really the point you’re making. No, I had to google them. So I want to ask that follow-up question again: So what? Is attention to the popular news now a requirement for reading the Bible properly?
  36. Do you know that LGBT youth whose families reject them are 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide than LGBT youth whose families support them?

    Define “reject” and “support” please. I smell a false dichotomy.
  37. Have you vocally objected when church leaders and other Christians have compared same-sex relationships to things like bestiality, incest, and pedophilia?

    No, and for good reason. You listed four perversions in the same sentence. Why would I object?
  38. How certain are you that God’s will for all gay Christians is lifelong celibacy?

    I’m not. See above re. marriage. That said, God’s will for all unmarried Christians is celibacy, and again, by “marriage,” I mean the real kind.
  39. What do you think the result would be if we told all straight teenagers in the church that if they ever dated someone they liked, held someone’s hand, kissed someone, or got married, they would be rebelling against God?

    I think we would be lying to them about what God said, and as with all such lies, the results would be disastrous.
  40. Are you willing to be in fellowship with Christians who disagree with you on this topic?

    Again, define your terms. Have-a-beer-together fellowship? Sure. I do. Make-common-cause-on-sexual-issues fellowship? Not a chance — how would that even work? Welcome them to the Table? Of course — that’s where we all meet Jesus; why would I try to keep them away?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Seven Hard-Won Lessons From the Youth Group Nerf Wars

4 January 2015

1. If you’ve never had a nerf war with your youth group, you should seriously consider it. It quickly reveals who you want on your team in the event of a zombie apocalypse. You never know when you might need that information.

2. A nerf war is a GREAT way to revive the kids after a movie at a lock-in. Especially if you have a balcony to shoot from. And it’s cathartic.

3. Every nerf battle has 2 stages. In Stage 1, you expend the ammo load-out that you started the game with. In Stage 2 — which lasts a lot longer — you are scrounging darts off the floor, hoping someone will shoot at you so you can collect the dart and shoot it back. At any given time, you only have a handful of darts, unless you’re a hoarder. This 2-stage dynamic is important because…

4. In Stage 1, motorized, magazine-fed blasters are the most fun you can have. Good news: with good fire discipline and a couple high-capacity magazines, this stage can last quite a while. Bad news: when it’s over, it’s over. In a typical every-man-for-himself scenario, you’re on the run all the time. Reloading a magazine with scrounged darts on the run takes three hands, and when you’re reloading, you’re not ready to fire unless you’re juggling two magazines (which takes four hands). It’s not a ton of fun. Having one as part of a three- or four-man squad would probably be worth it, but by yourself, it’s just a pain.

5. Your best bet for Stage 2 is something small and VERY easy to reload. (Which is fantastic, because the little blasters are pretty cheap.) Single-shot is okay, but it’s better if you have the capability for at least one fast follow-up shot. For my money, a hammer-action revolver like the Hammershot is best. It shoots and cycles one-handed, leaving the other hand free for picking up darts and reloading (or wielding a sword, but we’ll get to that). It carries 5 darts in an open-front cylinder, so you can reload as you go, and you’re almost always ready to shoot.

6. In an all-out melee, nerf swords are much more useful than you’d think. You’d be surprised how much ground you can cover in a charge while your opponent is struggling to reload. There’s a serious shock-and-awe factor, and it’s mad fun. The swords are probably going to get destroyed, so get cheap ones.

7. Close-range hostage crises are best resolved with a sword. True story.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Why Bother?

27 July 2014

A good friend recently asked a question I’d like to share with you. I can’t quote it exactly off the top of my head, but the gist of it was something like this: the church is an absolute disaster of silliness and dysfunction, and God often seems absent in the doings of His churches. Given that, why would we want to lead people into the church? Why bother?

Let that sink in a while before you read any further. Why do you bother with the church? Do you think it’s maybe not as bad as all that? Do you think it’s exactly that bad, but you still have good reasons for staying engaged? What are your reasons for staying engaged? It’s a question worth pondering.

I’d challenge you to take a few minutes and write down your reasons. Below, you’ll find mine.

It is a worthwhile question. Why bother?

I have two answers. Because God bothers, and because it’s the only game in town.

Because God bothers. Because He has not lost hope. How do I know? Because I watched the sun shine through the clouds today. Because feldspar is the commonest rock on earth, but when two kinds of it intergrow just right, you get moonstone, a frozen rainbow you can carry in your pocket, a portable parable to remind you of the glory that’s released when God unites the different. Because when I confessed my sin to Him at the worship service this evening, He spoke to me. (Yes, even in church.) Because He gave grace and glory to the Englewood churches to cancel their Sunday morning services and meet together on the high school baseball diamond on Pentecost Sunday. Because yesterday in a cafe in Littleton, He met my friend and opened her eyes to new dimensions of His love for her. Because a few months ago He spoke to my homeless friend Michael and helped him get off the street.

We’re badly broken, each and all. Every gathering we pull together, whether it’s a ragtag band of tie-dyed hippies in a park or a country-club demographic wearing suits under a pine-paneled ceiling, is broken. From ties to tie-dye, I have seen pathologies that stagger the mind. I have wondered how anything could possibly get done with so much brokenness. I have second-guessed inviting anybody into such a messy environment. But then, who am I to have higher standards than God?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but God’s standards are appallingly low. The two most out-there broken groups I have ever experienced have also been two of the most faithful, directly productive for the kingdom. When we walk in the light–which just means not hiding, read 1 Jn. 1–we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. I have seen Jesus cover amazing weakness with His strength, and give the gift of fellowship to people who, by all rights, should barely be capable of human speech, let alone friendship. He has not given up.

While it’s true that the Sons of Korah would be excommunicated in some churches for their “unChristlike” song lyrics…they exist. And they have a thriving ministry. As do a number of other people crazy enough to take the Bible seriously. Sure, they take a lot of flak, but they exist. God could have completely given His Church over to its silliness. Instead, He has given His Church these godly madmen. If He has not given up, then why should I?

And anyway, my second answer–it’s the only game in town. I have a friend who has worked in Iraq, Jordan and Israel building reconciliation between Christians, Jews and Muslims. He does it by introducing them all to Jesus–once they are united to Him, they find that they are also united to each other. It doesn’t erase their longstanding divisions, and the issues don’t simply evaporate. But they are united and they love one another, and they call on God together to give them the wisdom to resolve their differences. Through him and a few others I know of, there are literally thousands of Taliban and Hezbollah fighters (and many others) who are followers of Jesus seeking to live in the kingdom of God, seeking real solutions instead of just the momentary gratification of violence. Is there a better idea for peace in the Middle East? I haven’t seen one.

Here in Englewood, we’ve had a bunch of homeless folk who are busily destroying themselves and making certain parts of the city much less enjoyable in the process. Nothing that anybody tried worked. But we’ve got a dedicated corps of volunteers who have spent the last 3 years building relationships and loving our homeless people in Jesus’ name. Some of those hopeless folks have jobs and apartments now. And yeah, some of them are every bit as bad as they ever were. Some of the success stories have relapsed. One of the guys we baptized recently went back to jail for something stupid. It isn’t perfect. But it’s working, and it’s working better than anything else that anybody else has tried. It’s working so well that the mayors of the metro Denver area recently came down to see what these folks are doing–because it’s working better than any of their programs.

There are lots of days that are painful and confusing, when I don’t know what God is up to and the whole thing looks like nonsense. But even on those days, like Peter said on one painful and confusing day 2000 years ago, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life.”

He does. That’s why I bother.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Reading Literally

25 May 2014

The covenant with Noah was a terrifying precursor to Pentecost, an outpouring of divine anointing previously unmatched in the history of the human race. In its wake, Noah’s children and grandchildren walked as gods among men, outliving their great-great-great grandchildren and ruling as no one has since. The great river valley civilizations were born overnight, deliberately created from whole cloth by men and women divinely commissioned to build human culture from the ground up.

A non-literal reading of Gen. 1-11 is boring, boring shit. Why do theological liberals persist in the silly notion that Tolkien is better at world-building than Yahweh?

The irony here is that these same people can’t help noticing the evidence of literary design in the text, but can’t imagine that God would display marks of authorship in the actual world. They can imagine God telling a dramatic story, but not making one.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

What I’m Getting for Lent

31 March 2014

I attend an Anglican mission church (PEARUSA, for them as keep track of such things), and Lent is kind of a big deal for us. But I don’t believe in Lent.

Why not? Well, Lent is a 40-day fast, a time to meditate upon and lament your sins. That is a great thing to do, but it’s badly imbalanced. When Yahweh Himself created a religious calendar, He had a time for fasting, meditating upon sin, and (as He put it) “afflicting your souls.” It was called Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The operative word, for our purposes, being day. All the rest of the religious festivals in Yahweh’s calendar were parties. Under the Old Covenant, it was mostly through parties that you learned to fear The Lord (Deut 14:23). It cannot be that now, after the victory was won on Golgotha and the Messiah is ascended to the right hand of God until His enemies are made His footstool, now we get less celebratory and more into mourning and fasting.

You will say, “But Jesus did it! Jesus fasted 40 days; following Jesus is what Lent is about!” Yes. Yes, He did. Once. When He was 30. And He didn’t just give up ice cream and swearing, either. So fine, if you want to be like Jesus, go for it — fast for 40 days when you’re 30. If you live to 60, you can do it again.

Of course, meditating upon one’s sins really is a good idea, which is why God built it into His calendar in Yom Kippur. I don’t particularly observe the Jewish calendar, so Good Friday seems to be an appropriate day for that.

And yet here I am, part of a community that observes Lent. These are my people. We observe Lent. We have for centuries. Nobody will complain if I just blow Lent off — we’re not legalistic like that. But I don’t want to just blow it off. These are my people.

So how can I navigate this in a manner that is agreeable to my conscience? Well, this year, I settled on a positive Lenten observance. I can’t get my head round a 40-day period of mourning and flagellation, but I certainly can get my head around a 40-day period of waiting and receiving from God. So I selected a stack of books for devotional reading — about 900 pages altogether — that I’m committing to get through during Lent. It’s enough of a load that I will have to alter my lifestyle to get through it. I’ll end up giving up something for Lent, just in the course of re-prioritizing to get through the reading. A few weeks into it, I’m well into the 900 pages — definitely on track to finish before Easter. But I’m honestly not sure what I gave up.

Whatever it was, I don’t miss it. But God’s giving me a ton.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

On Getting Vetted by the Priests of Dagon

5 March 2014

I resigned my post teaching and writing curriculum at the seminary a couple years ago, and owing to the vicissitudes of small-school scheduling, my classroom presence had been spotty the year before that. I must admit I wasn’t really looking forward to this much time away from the classroom, but in hindsight, I’ve found it refreshing, and it’s not as though I’ve lacked for other work to do.

The disengagement has allowed me time to reflect on our ways of preparing people for ministry, and alternatives that might actually be preferable to our existing classroom methods. As I contemplate what sort of partners I want for the front-line work I’ve been doing in the past few years, I’ve got to admit “seminary graduate” doesn’t leap to the top of my list of desirable qualifications (doesn’t even crack my top five, actually) — about which more in another post, perhaps. In fact, my present partners include at least one guy who, a couple of decades back, dropped out of seminary in disgust and seems none the worse for the experience. Another partner got all his (very thorough) preparation for ministry in a local church, and looks at the whole seminary enterprise with more than a little suspicion. I get asked periodically whether I’d seek to re-engage in the academic milieu if the opportunity arose. As I consider it, I find myself thinking of it as a fairly dangerous undertaking.

There are several reasons for this, but the first one is that engaging in scholarship in our society is not a neutral endeavor. As in any field, there are (relatively arbitrary) conventions. Credit must be given where due, but how? Style manuals have whole chapters on footnote, endnote, and bibliography formats to answer this question, and MLA has different formats from APA, which is different from Chicago, and so on. This is not a bad thing in itself. Every guild has its standards, and it is important to the corporate identity and cohesion of the discipline that this be the case. Every initiate chafes at seemingly pointless constraints, but it’s a matter of loving your guildmates enough to show that you value their wisdom and have a place in their discipline. You will never have an opportunity to give to them if you can’t show them that you have something worth giving.

On the other hand, Christians have always had a very tense relationship with professional guilds. Making sacrifices to idols always seems to be a membership requirement in guilds controlled by pagans, and the American academic guild is unequivocally controlled by pagans and administered for purposes that, at very best, are in service of secularism.

Secularism is a false god; it is a competing theology, as antithetical to Christianity as the worship of Dagon. In it, “neutrality” toward all things religious is a sacred duty, and bowing the knee to any particular deity in any way that affects the public sphere is blasphemy. If it is to be practiced publicly at all, a religion must agree to the equal validity of all other competing religions — or at least manage to behave as though all other religious paths are equally valid. You’re allowed to practice whatever religion you want, as long as you don’t act like it really matters. A private hobby-religion is fine. Some people build ships in bottles; some people juggle geese; some people go to church. Whatever floats your boat.

Christians are required to be at war with secularism, root and branch. The earth is Yahweh’s, and everything in it, and we are not allowed to pretend otherwise for the sake of getting along. In the sphere of education, even the education of ministers, we are not doing well at honoring the Lord who bought us.

Churches and individuals give sacrificially to seminaries in order to support the training of the next generation of pastors. But few, if any, such donors show up at the school to give it a thorough review and see exactly what their money is supporting. We simply assume the work is getting done; we believe seminary newsletters and press releases as if they were the fifth gospel. On the other hand, the authorities of the academic guild — who owe their allegiance to Dagon, let us not forget — police their boundaries religiously. If you’re going to award Ph.D. degrees, you must have x number of faculty, themselves with recognized Ph.D.s in this or that field, y number of books in the library to support the program, and so on–and they do show up on campus to check and see that you’re in compliance. Some of these standards make sense. Others not so much. The point, however, is that we allow ourselves to be inspected by the priests of Dagon, and attempt to manage the affair without making any compromises. Since the results of this have been discussed elsewhere as well as I could write them here, I’ll just link to one such discussion.

For my purposes, though, the point is that submission to the priests of Dagon is not a particularly helpful posture for a minister of Yahweh’s gospel. Perhaps in a given instance no harm comes from it, but does anybody really think it’s desirable?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“Peace To This House”

3 December 2013

Check out the new post at the Headwaters Blog.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Jacob Restored

27 November 2013

“You showed favor to Your land, O Lord; You restored the fortunes of Jacob.” (Ps. 85:1)

Jacob, after a lifetime of struggling with God and men, becomes Israel.

Israel, charged with a ministry to the nations, is unable to fulfill its role.

Jesus becomes for Israel what Israel could not be for itself.

In the person of Jesus, Israel, God’s firstborn, ascends to the right hand of the Father.

The fortunes of Jacob are restored, not by his sword and his bow (Gen. 48:22), but by the cross.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Happy Reformation Day!

1 November 2013

Okay, so I missed posting this by a day. I’ve had the thing ready for months, and just forgot to switch it over from “draft” to “scheduled.” Anyway, here it is, and enjoy!

On this day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of Wittenburg Chapel. Brother Martin, then an Augustinian friar, was simply trying to have a scholarly conversation with the literati of his day. In God’s providence, however, he became the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany. I usually post something serious and gratitude-filled today. But sometimes, you just gotta have fun.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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