Solomon in a test-tube

A woman in the UK is taking a case to the court of Human Rights. She underwent IVF treatment some time ago, before she was left infertile after cancer treatment. Since then, her ex-'partner' has withdrawn his permission for her to use the 6 frozen embryos, which means that, according to UK law, they must now be destroyed.
The arguments rage over who has the right to decide what to do with the 'embryos'. Is it the mother, or does the ex-'partner' have the right to say he doesn't want it to happen? Does the mother have the right to 'use' the embryos because she can never have children naturally now? Should the ex-'partner's desire not to be burdened with a child emotionally or financially overrule that? It's all about free choice, surely, and one persons free choice in this case will completely rub the other persons free choice.

Whoa there. Take a step back. What are 'embryos'? They are children at an early stage of development. The Frankenstein technology is frankly, a side issue. This is not an issue of consent, either of the mother or the father. See, I used the word father. The man, whether he wants the responsibility or not, is a father. This is not an example of his sperm being stored and used, in which case I would completely agree with his argument. But this is not the case.
Consent was given the moment these children were created, the same as in a normal conception, consent is given at the act of copulation. It just is, whether you like it or not. In our twisted society, if this was a normal conception, the mother would be quite within her rights to have her baby killed in utero, with no say whatsoever for the father. In this IVF example it's ironically the other way round. But these injustices are immaterial. The issue is not who should have the decision, or even if it should be a shared decision.

The issue is this isn't a decision ANYONE has the right to make.

The children exist. That Frankenstein tech means we can have this conversation is just a very good reason why this Frankenstein tech is very ill-advised. It has no bearing on the fact that these children exist and it is wicked to kill them.

The return of Shame

As I was waiting for my husband to pick me up from the supermarket, I picked up a daily newspaper. I don't read them much, but for cheap, easy diversion on a Saturday morning, they work.

I read about the Doctor who organized an abortion for her 18 year old daughter who was 31 weeks pregnant, and is now possibly going to be prosecuted because some pro-life organization pressed for it. I read about the mother who smothered her 36 year old Down Syndrome son and not one word of censure was passed upon her by anyone. Even the local minister told of how everyone had great sympathy for her. I read about the 19 year old woman who was convicted of fraud because she helped a gang steal great wodges of cash out of little old widows life insurance payouts, with the judge lamenting that she was a vulnerable and intelligent young woman who was 'just a pawn'.

I read much in these reports about the 'sadness' of the situations, the understanding that those surrounding the key players had for them, and the pressure they were under.

I read not one word pointing out the things they had done were wicked, wicked things. Instead of repulsion and anger at their crimes, we were supposed to feel great sorrow and sympathy for them, with their hang-dog expression and hefty dose of the P.O.M.S.(Poor Old Me Syndrome).
Aside from the material facts that appall me, like the CPS only prosecuting the Doctor after a pro-life organization pressed them to, or that fact that it appears not to be murder to kill your hard work son as long as he's Downs, I noticed one great big long thread connecting these things, and haven't been able to escape it since.

Shame is dead. In our self-esteem obsessed culture, even those who commit horrendous crimes are absolved of the need for shame.
We appear to do this two ways. Some crimes are so horrible that even post-modern humanity sees clearly that they are evil, and thus the villain is demonized beyond all human recognition. Myra Hindley, Ian Huntley, Ian Brady, Harold Shipman all fit neatly into this 'subhuman' category. All nice and cosy and over there and nothing to do with us decent folk.
But by far the most common way of dealing with the evil evident in our society is to call it something else. Thus a woman who arranges the dismemberment murder of her own grandchild is a concerned parent, wanting the best for her daughter. A woman who doses her son up on tranquillizers and then holds a plastic bag over his face is a devoted mother who, to her 'credit' will be able to stay in her village because she's well-liked. A woman who cold-bloodedly plunders the bank accounts of those who have been recently bereaved is a vulnerable, co-erced young woman who didn't benefit materially from the crime, so can't really be held accountable.
By far the most common example of something that used to be considered utterly shameful, but is now cosseted and stroked with velvet gloves, is homosexuality.

This state of affairs would be reprehensible if it were a society-wide attitude alone. But this thinking pervades the church. Me-centred churches have been peddling feathered ear-muffs for sometime now, as has been well documented elsewhere - EmergentNo being a very good example. As documented above, the local baptist minister could hardly bear to say a bad word about the woman who murdered her own handicapped son.

Now, don't get me wrong here. Understanding the reasons behind a wicked act is a valid thing. Anne Atkins is very good at pointing out the 'there but for the Grace of God' viewpoints. But so much of the modern world, and especially the church, seems to think that the Grace of God is making the wicked feel better about themselves. If a sermon made anyone feel ashamed, a pastor would have to write a wheedling apology in next weeks bulletin.


I am a sinner. One of my many sins was homosexuality. I absolutely hate it when Christians do this mollycoddle stuff with those who are struggling with this sin, because it's dressed up as compassion, when all it is is cowardice. One phrase du jour about homosexuality from Evanjellybeans is 'It's not God's best'. No kidding. So is grand larceny not 'God's best' either? Will the next bible paraphrase have Jesus Christ saying 'I say to you, when you look at a woman with lust in your heart, it's really not God's best', or 'If you're angry and call someone a fool, it's really not God's best'.

Not God's best? Not even God's keep-for-doing-the-gardening-in. Is abomination a bit of an ambivalent term nowadays?

I did not leave that sin because I was convinced it was not God's best for me. I left it because I thought of standing before a thrice holy God and I was ashamed. My cheeks still burn with it now.

Don't think you are doing someone a favour by pussy-footing around about something that quite clearly has no grey areas in scripture. If a person struggling with homosexual sin (and sorry, it's just as much a sin to be thinking about it as it is to be doing it..) and they actually ask for help, don't do this milksop God's best rubbish. Have some backbone and tell them the truth. Don't be rude, but don't be cowardly either. If they take it badly, and you've shared that truth with wise words, then they might actually be feeling shame. Shame is painful.

But, as I've shared before on this blog - pain is good

Calling sin evil is gospel work. It's not very comfortable, and it's not very fashionable, but did you really think that 'take up your cross' meant wear a really pretty necklace?

Why I love...

... making a white sauce.

It's one of those things that can go horribly wrong. Generally speaking, I make it at the last minute of the recipe prep, so, if it does go wrong, you have stymied the whole meal. But, oh, when it comes together... well, at that moment, I am George Peppard..

Big tip - use a balloon whisk, not a spoon, to stir the roux (butter and flour paste). Sorts out those lumps a treat. And make sure you have all the ingredients ready so that you can give it your full attention.
For real irrepressible smile factor, use a non-stick pan, too. Nothing like creamy thick sauce giving way to reveal glossy blackness underneath.

The genesis of the Evanjellybean

As requested, I shall define the term 'Evanjellybean'.

To do this, I need to explain a little history. Sometime ago, the good Lord started gently knocking me on the head with the sledgehammer of Calvinist systematic theology. I was attending a church in the 'Pioneer' chain of churches at the time. It was a fairly standard, friendly free evangelical charismatic church with some emergent tendencies and a youth pastor who liked telling poo-jokes. It was gently flirting with the cell church model, 24/7 prayer rooms and the purpose-drivel church stuff.
Gradually, as the Lord shook us up, we became more and more unhappy with the church for a variety of reasons, and eventually left, though not with any fire-works, and we remain on good terms with them and indeed love them dearly.
However, it remains a standard example of modern flippertigibbet theology, and that is sad. Before the incident I am about to relate, I used the word churchianity to describe much of the modern church of the stripe we attended, but it never quite worked. Churchianity is more your nominal C of E types who go to church because they like the choir and are on the committee. One thing I cannot take away from my dear Evanjellybean brethren is their genuine belief. They are emphatically not nominal, and will certainly, if nothing else, have a goal to be 'not a Sunday Christian'. Don't we all, of course.

Sometime ago, we paid a return visit to a morning service. The theme of the service was Grace, and the bible example/story/text was Gideon. Now, like most of the OT, that is a tale loaded with Grace, so we were encouraged. However, we learned that Gideon was suffering from a bit of crisis of confidence, and that actually, he really should have thought a lot better of himself, because after all, God had a great plan for him. This may be an encouraging thought, but it's not Grace. Grace is that he was indeed the least of his brothers, and that God uses the least, not because of any inherent goodness, but because He is gracious. If Gideon had pepped up his self-esteem and said 'yes, I agree with you Lord, I am a mighty man of valour', then I'm fairly sure he'd have been left to thresh a wee bit longer..
Perhaps we were just picky, this was, after all, an all-age service. And I don't for a moment believe that those in leadership really didn't understand Grace.. they just didn't get it across very well. Still, a service on Grace is a wonderful opportunity to at least draw us back to the heart of our faith - our gracious redemption through Jesus Christ.
Who He? Ohh, you mean the name we say to 'round off' the prayers? I kid you not. A service on Grace, and Jesus name was only mentioned at the end of the one prayer at the end...
You're on tenterhooks now, waiting for the best bit, right?

As we sat in our seats, twitching, a few people came round with baskets of... go on, guess... yep.. jellybeans. We were all allowed one, and the person leading the service explained that this was an illustration of Grace. We didn't do anything to earn the sweeties, they were just a really nice gift. It hit me - Jellybean Grace - I couldn't think of a better illustration of the shallow, trite, cheap, unsatisfying version of The Faith offered by the post-modern, emergent, purpose-driven church. Grace as a nice gift in a fairly neutral setting, not Grace as phenomenal, extravagant mercy to those who are wicked God-haters. And so, the Evanjellybean was born.

That should give you some idea of the make-up of the Evanjellybeans. It's a fairly broad term, granted, but then, it's a fairly broad church.

One more thing.. my husband wasn't actually given one of the jellybeans, even though he sat right next to me and I got one. Was that actually a deep and profound reference to specific atonement?


naaahh.

Tupperware scriptural arguments

I'm not entirely sure this is a foible so much as an inconsistency..

In response to the first foible, it was mentioned that the case for cessationism is not airtight. The point is worth some attention. What is the definition of airtight? I personally find the scriptural evidence leads me to conclude the cessationist position is the correct one, despite having spoken in tongues myself, and prophesied and all that jazz. Heck, I even used to prophetically dance in church.. ahem.
Scripture has to be the grounding and have the final say - and that doesn't mean finding a few scriptures that support my position, it means, to the fullest extent possible to fallen humans, letting scripture speak for itself as a whole. This is 101 stuff.
One of the reasons I remain convinced of this is the completely opposite reasoning of those who come to a different conclusion. Now, I'm sure there are ivory tower deep thought types who may have come to the modern charismatic conclusion after real study and honest appraisal, and then watched as experience seemed to match scripture. But most all of the people I have ever spoken to about it had an experience first, or were convinced by someone elses experience, and tend to ground things on that more than scripture, though they do follow up with some argumentation from scripture.
That aside, the inconsistency arises from this. In making the suggestion that the cessationist argument is not airtight, the people I have actually spoken to aloud about this generally boil down their point to 'there is no specific scripture verse that says that all these particular gifts will stop when the apostolic period ceases'.
This, despite the fact that those gifts were clearly for a specific purpose in NT times, despite the fact that not that many people could do these things at the time, and despite the fact that modern attestable examples are, in charitable terms, highly questionable.
I might even be quite willing to agree that this is not airtight, as in, no-one could possibly see it any other way.
However, I have yet to meet a charismatic who held up their own scriptural exe/eisegesis to the same rigorous standards. Now, that is probably because an evanjellybean would rather garot themselves with their own intestines than be rigorous about anything except perhaps pogo-ing in worship, but the inconsistency remains just that.

disclaimer: none of this is directed at the person who used the word 'airtight' in the comments on this blog - it's merely the fruit of some sleep-starved rambling.

An internet institution - already??

I refer to the sainted Pyromaniac aka Phil Johnson. Not content with the Spurgeon archive and the easiest way to kill 3 hours, the Bookmarks, Phil has come along and created blog-heaven. Thoughtful, well-read articles and excerpts, pictures of dead bodies, postcards and comic books, what was I doing before the Pyroman came along?

It's the whole interactivity that swings it for me - it's like hearing Dr Peter Masters on the telly and being able to add my thoughts on his thoughts afterwards. My, it's even a bit like a robust church.

I know the internet is a fast-paced animal, but the speed at which Pyromaniac has become big makes me wonder if he is, in fact, one of the illuminati....

You mean you're a Christian and you're actually different?

Ah, the BBC, flagship of impartiality and balance... ahem, sorry, got a bit dizzy there.

Last night, on the current affairs programme Newsnight, there was an article about American homeschooling, and specifically those doing it for a religious reason, and those who were politically active in the movement. The tone was generally veering towards the negative, but that was largely because the BBC tend to be a wee bit snooty about Americans anyway. Perhaps a too common trait of the English as a whole. Apologies..

What they really didn't like was that these people are actually training their children to be pro-life, born again believers who smack their children and don't 'take advantage of the free schooling the state offers' FREE SCHOOLING??? I thought these poor unfortunate homeschooling families were actually the ones who pay for the state schooling without seeing any benefit, because they pay their taxes...

What really pushed the button on my ear-steam valve was the censorious tone in which we were informed that '25 years ago, homeschooling was illegal in all but a handful of states. Now, mostly through aggressive lobbying the government, it's about to be given the same recognition as the state system' *Gasp* that horror! What a dangerous and subversive thing this is...

Of course, these are the same people that talk about the aggressive lobbying by left wing groups, like the homosexual lobby, or the pro-death bunch, in wholly approving tones and soundbites.

I'm with Michael Farris, who said that although tolerance was the buzzword for the modern generation, Liberty was a much more important concept. Amen to that.

On a side note, I was amused to see that the reporter telling us that the family interviewed believed in their girls dressing modestly... I have to say that was either a blatant fabrication or the family has some very wierd standards for what constitutes modest. Skinny-rib t-shirts with slogans and shorts don't seem all that modest to me. It was an amusing thing to realize that we are even more conservative than the 'extreme' examples the Beeb found, roflol.

Charismatic foibles #1

I have a lot of charismatic friends, and I love them all. As an ex-charismatic myself, I'm familiar with quite a bit of the more quirky aspects of the group, and thought I'd take some bandwidth to explore them.

Prophecy is an interesting animal, charismatic gift-wise. I want to document a phenomena I've chosen to call 'escalating prophecy'. This can occur in a number of settings. The most common would be in a modern prayer meeting.The meeting has been going for sometime, tongues are being muttered sotto voce, and the feeling arises that the thought which just crossed your mind is from God, and needs to be said audibly. So, screwing your courage to the sticking place, you speak the words, falteringly at first, but gradually with more conviction, until you are gesticulating, and occasionally quite screechy. Then something happens... you realize you have taken that step and nothing bad has happened. So your confidence grows and you listen to the voice in your head to see if anything else is there. After all, you had a few fearful doubts about the first bit of prophecy, and it was fine, and now you're up there, well, you just go with it.
At this point, adrenaline takes over, and your mouth runs away with you. Suddenly, not only did God want to say that His hand was on His people in a loving way, but He adds 'And I will bless you greatly with a four-fold increase in the next year'. Most often, escalating prophecy is encouraged by the collective and growing 'yes, Lord's and 'amen's coming from the other participants. Then someone else will feel emboldened and begin to prophecy in the same vein - only bigger and better. This can happen a few times, until God has not only told you that the church will increase, but the Prime Minister will be converted next week at your evening service, and Jesus will return in the car park the week after.
It's best summarized as a group wishful thinking exercise. I've seen it happen on television, I've seen it happen in a small group setting. It seems to me the easiest route for a group to become a cult by far. And it doesn't seem all that different to dear old Mohammed, though I've yet to hear a prophecy in a Christian service where God tells everyone they should really make sure they all help put the chairs away after the service.
Come to think of it, that's not actually too bad an idea..

Sprechen zie Jellybean?

In certain cult groups, language is used as a marker as to whether you are in or out. As an example, Jehovah's Witnesses will use the term 'new System' quite a bit, in reference to the future paradise they believe is fast approaching. Most non-JWs wouldn't even notice this jargon, but it lets other JWs know, albeit subtly, that the speaker is likely to be trustworthy. Not for definate, of course, because apostates generally know the lingo too, but you're usually on secure ground.

An Evanjellybean also has this little quirk, too, but being an exceptionally faddish creature, it is a constantly evolving jargon. It lends itself very well to soundbites and catchphrases, epithets for largely undefined groups like 'the Joshua generation'.
The biggest buzz in evanjellybean circles in the past few years has been the metaphor of the river. Starting off as standard scriptural imagery, albeit in an experience driven setting, the lingo gradually started to shift to apply the metaphor in ever-expanding ways.

So, at first you have the waterfalls of God's love, and very personal uses for this watery stuff.. but eventually you have the mega-scope of all denominations being re-branded as 'streams' which of course, come together as the one river. A neat exercise in how to lambast divisions and denominations and still keep them. I'd mention the having and keeping cake analogy, but I don't think that was ever evanjellybean-speak, however apt, and nor is it watery enough. Soggy cupcakes perhaps.

Anyway, I mention this because I'm sensing another new verbiage in the jellybean zietgeist. These things tend to emerge on the conference circuit and trendy magazines, which give them the kudos of being the 'cutting edge' terms that show just how spiritual you really are if you use them.

The latest appears to be based on painful eisegesis of the story of King Saul and King David. Saul is styled as the older, traditional generation, and the young, hip, emergent generation are, of course King David. Thus you can get in lots of humble sounding stuff about submitting to the older generation for a season, while you all the while feel a sense of great superiority that you are part of the generation seeking after Gods heart. It's not lost on them that David was a songwriter, too. All manner of excruciating parallels are then drawn, ad absurdum.

Watch out for it in a new evanjellybean pulpit near you...

Guests staying late? Get a revelation...

In all honesty, Mohammed comes across to me as nothing so much as a cult leader. Following on from my previous posting, I found it extremely telling that after his marriage to Zaynab, the ex-wife of his adopted son, he had some of his followers outstay their welcome in his tent.
Now, I'm familiar with the situation. After a good evening together, you serve the coffee, and yawn a bit, but people just don't get the message and call it a day. It's one of those social things that you just have to deal with, using tact and patience. Mohammed felt just as awkward. But he had a hotline to the Almighty, of course, so he could deal with it much more directly.
After they had gone, Mohammed again received a revelation from the very obliging Allah. If you bear in mind that muslims believe that the Quran was written down in heaven before the world began, this quote from it seems even more absurd..

“O you who believe! Do not go into the Prophet's rooms except after being given permission to come and eat, not waiting for the food to be prepared, However, when you are called, then go in and when you have eaten, then disperse, and do not remain wanting to chat together. If you do that, it causes injury to the Prophet though he is too reticent to tell you. But Allah is not reticent with the truth. "Qur’an (33:53-56)

Basically, Mohammed is too polite to tell you to leave, but Allah doesn't have a problem sorting out these inconveniences...

Now, if you'd heard these revelations and been told they were all 'given' to David Koresh, I don't think you'd be surprised. Which is just another example of why, as much as the muslims tell me Mohammed is the best of all creation, and a really top guy, I cannot take him seriously.