Friendly Fire

This is my friend Mike Jolly's record of what Mark Driscoll had to say to Christian leaders about the church in Sydney.

Plagiarism: Materialism

This was written in about 1000 AD (italics mine):-

"It is natural for a man to desire what he reckons better than that which he has already, and be satisfied with nothing which lacks that special quality which he misses . . . . If he is clad in a rich garment, he will covet a costlier one; and no matter how rich he may be he will envy a man richer than himself. Do we not see people every day, endowed with vast estates, who keep on joining field to field, dreaming of wider boundaries for their lands? Those who dwell in palaces are ever adding house to house, continually building up and tearing down, remodeling and changing . . . . And nowhere is there any final satisfaction, because nothing there can be defined as absolutely the best or highest. But it is natural that nothing should content a man’s desires but the very best, as he reckons it. Is it not, then, mad folly always to be craving for things which can never quiet our longings, much less satisfy them? No matter how many such things one has, he is always lusting after what he has not; never at peace, he sighs for new possessions. Discontented, he spends himself in fruitless toil, and finds only weariness in the evanescent and unreal pleasures of the world. In his greediness, he counts all that he has clutched as nothing in comparison with what is beyond his grasp, and loses all pleasure in his actual possessions by longing after what he has not, yet covets. . . .

"It is so that these impious ones wander in a circle, longing after something to gratify their yearnings, yet madly rejecting that which alone can bring them to their desired end, not by exhaustion but by attainment. They wear themselves out in vain travail, without reaching their blessed consummation, because they delight in creatures, not in the Creator. They want to traverse creation, trying all things one by one, rather than think of coming to Him who is Lord of all. And if their utmost longing were realized, so that they should have all the world for their own, yet without possessing Him who is the Author of all being, then the same law of their desires would make them contemn what they had and restlessly seek Him whom they still lacked, that is, God Himself. Rest is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God. And so the soul says with confidence, ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee; and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee. God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. It is good for me to hold me fast by God, to put my trust in the Lord God’ (Ps. 73.25ff)."

- Bernard de Clairvaux, On Loving God, from http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bernard/loving_god.ix.html, accessed 14/7/08.

Plagiarism: Mutability

"A woman can't visualize too well because she has too many possibilities. She can be anything. Anything can happen to her. But it's out of her hands. It all depends on this man who's going to find her."

- V.S. Naipaul, Guerrillas

I think this is true of most women, even after marriage. And it's not necessarily a bad thing - we were made to be helpers afterall. I wonder if men long for a helper (as women long to help), or if 'gaining one' is more of a bonus? Of course the situation is difficult if women remain single a while - or if women are so caught up in helping that they forget their own identity. I think the trick is to trust your own worth and usefulness as an individual - and to get on with helping the people who are around you.

Plagiarism: Christian Hedonism

Though I love John Piper, I haven't read The book til I dipped into a bit today. He quotes C.S Lewis talking about the modern virtue of 'Unselfishness', a negative term where once was 'Love'. Lewis goes on to say:

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."1

We should find our pleasure and joy in the Lord, and so finding, we should praise Him. Or, more correctly, we will praise Him, for that's what people do when they love a person. "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation."2

1 C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), 1-2 from J. Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Inter-Varsity Press, 2003), 20
2 C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958), 94-5 from ibid, 22

Plagiarism: Real Sex

I was lent this book and read it to be nice and because I thought it might be good to give to other people. Ha! my arrogance has been floored! It's a great book.

"What sits at the center of Christian sexual ethics is not a negative view of sex . . . Rather, the heart of the Christian story about sex is a vigorously positive statement: sex was created for marriage.
. . .

God's vision for humanity is established in the Garden of Eden, and the uniqueness and one-ness of the marriage relationship between Adam and Eve is inaugurated in Genesis 1-2. In the first chapters of Genesis, we learn that God created a relationship between Adam and Eve. . . . In a graphic speech, Adam speaks of his and Eve's becoming one flesh.
. . .

The no to sex outside marriage seems arbitrary and cruel apart from the Creator's yes to sex within marriage.
. . .

Marriage . . . instructs the church in what to look for when the kingdom comes - eternal, intimate union.

And singleness prepares us for the other piece of the end of time, the age when singleness trumps marriage. Singleness tutors us in our primary, heavenly relationship with one another: siblings in Christ.
. . .

Singleness tells us . . . of a radical dependence on God.
. . .

In singleness we see not only where our true dependence lies, but also who and what our real family is. Singleness reminds Christians that the church is our primary family.
. . .

Single Christians remind the rest of us that our truest, realest, most lasting relationship is that of sibling: even husband and wife are first and foremost brother and sister. Baptismal vows are prior to wedding vows."

From Real Sex: the naked truth about chastity by Lauren F. Winner

Plagiarism: The Trouble with Principle

Stanley Fish is a generally sharp thinking atheist, who here hoes into pluralism. It's all been said before, but rarely so well. Enjoy the clarity of his prose, I bid you.

" . . . [R]eligion can be part of university life so long as it renounces its claim to have a privileged purchase on the truth, which of course is the claim that defines a religion as a religion as opposed to a mere opinion.

It's a great move whereby liberalism, in the form of academic freedom, gets to display its generosity while at the same time cutting the heart out of the views to which that generosity is extended . . . . [It] asks you to be morally thin; and it does this by asking you to conceive of yourself not as someone who is committed to something but as someone who is committed to respecting the commitments of those with whom he disagrees.

. . . .

[T]he strong multiculturalist faces a dilemma: either he stretches his toleration so that it extends to the intolerance residing at the heart of a culture he would honor, in which case tolerance is no longer his guiding principle, or he condemns the core intolerance of that culture (recoiling in horror when Khomeini calls for the death of Rushdie), in which case he is no longer according it respect at the point where its distinctiveness is most obviously at stake.

. . . .

[And besides,] [h]ow respectful can one be of 'fundamental' differences? If the difference is fundamental - that is, touches basic beliefs and commitments - how can you respect it without disrespecting your own beliefs and commitments? And on the other side, do you really show respect for a view by tolerating it, as you might tolerate the buzzing of a fly? Or do you show respect when you take it seriously enough to oppose it?"

Stanley Fish, The Trouble with Principle, pages 40, 41, 61, 66

Plagiarism: These Bodies and World

"I suspect that our conception of Heaven as merely a state of mind is not unconnected with the fact that the specifically Christian virtue of Hope has in our time grown so languid. Where our fathers, peering into the future, saw gleams of gold, we see only the mist, white, featureless, cold and never moving.

The thought at the back of all this negative spirituality is really one forbidden to Christians. They, of all men, must not conceive spiritual joy and worth as things that need to be rescued or tenderly protected from time and place and matter and the senses. Their God is the God of corn and oil and wine. He is the glad Creator . . . . To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But . . . . These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King's stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else - since He has retained His own charger - should we accompany Him?"

C.S.Lewis, Miracles

Plagiarism: The Existential Kicks

Epiphanies are coming thin and slow, so I've resorted to stealing other peoples' material. This is an excerpt from a sermon on Jesus' family tomb by my friend and pastor Mikey Lynch. He's talking about what it would mean were clear evidence found to show that Jesus is dead, never risen and ruling.

You get the existential kicks, sure. You have community, which is nice. You have spirituality, which is lovely. You have a hope for the future, which is not real but it sort of helps you now. You have some morals to guide you. You have a sense of meaning.

Sure you have the existential kicks, but ultimately forgiveness of all the things you’ve done wrong, your guilty conscience, trust in the forgiveness given by the death of Christ – you don’t have that. You’re still carrying with you your guilt. All of the failures and the hurts you’ve caused, none of that’s washed away because Jesus didn’t die for it. It’s still with you. You are still in your sins. You still have no right to ignore the guilt that is legitimate in your life.

And hope after death – well not in Jesus it’s not available. If he’s dead, well then his offer for life after death is annulled. So death is still, at least a nothing, if not facing God’s judgement without a Saviour.