Couldn't Help Noticing

Laity fight back

The lay members of the General Synod of the Church of England have overwhelmingy voted in favour of reintroducing a tribunal to hear allegations of ‘heresy’ against English Anglican clergy.

The Telegraph reports that:

The House of Bishops has independently agreed to reintroduce the proposals, which were defeated by a narrow margin last July after clergy expressed fears that they would be victims of a witchhunt.

(Of course, in the Anglican Church these days, you never know, a witchhunt may be necessary from time to time. See Christianity Today article.)

One of the other interesting quotes in the report is this:

[Results of a survey in 2002 show that] just 76 per cent of clergy believed Jesus Christ died to take away the sins of the world, 68 per cent believed Jesus rose physically from the dead and 53 per cent believed faith in Jesus was the only way they could be saved. Among women clergy, the figures came in at about 10 per cent lower in each category.

It reminds me of a very humorous episode of a wonderful British television series called People Like Us. If you ever get a chance to see the episode called ‘The Vicar’, do so. One of the most amusing scenes is where the interviewer questions the Vicar about how he can preach to his congregation members when they actually have more belief in these key doctrines (like the resurrection) than he does.

Good things come in twos

There's a bunch of new products flowing out like animals from Noah's Ark, two by Volume 2. You can see both just there to the left. The first is a great new resource called Your Sneaking Suspicions? The teacher's manual and student's handbook encourage classroom discussion of the issues in A Sneaking Suspicion. Produced by CEP, they've done a great job of keeping things relevant, interesting and biblical.

The other newbie is Volume 2 of The Daily Reading Bible. For all those of you who bought Volume 1 when it just came out, and were wondering what you'd do next, here's your answer. The readings are from 1 Corinthians 5-7, Malachi, and The Trinitarian God.

Right behind

Here's another interesting bit of detritus from the Christian publishing world...

Co-author of the Left Behind series of books, Tim La Haye, has slammed his publisher, Tyndale House, for deciding to publish a new fiction series which promotes a different view of the end times.

“They are going to take the money we made for them and promote this nonsense,” LaHaye is reported as saying.

Jabez returns

As you'd expect with any first-run success, there's going to be a sequel.

Multnomah Publishers have announced that, in the wake of selling 9 million (yes, that's 9 with six zeros after it) copies of Bruce Wilkinson's The Prayer of Jabez, they are planning to release a sequel, Beyond Jabez.

According to Multnomah:

Beyond Jabez picks up where The Prayer of Jabez left off and goes even deeper, revealing testimonies of answered prayer and “bold, biblical teaching” intended to clear up any misconceptions readers have about the once little-known Old Testament prayer.

I wonder just how long this new book will need to be if its going to clear up all the misconceptions created by the first book?

The Tsunami and the Urge to Explain, part 2

It seems that for us to cope with an event of this magnitude, we need to give it a meaning. This urge to explain is as old as Job, I guess. When a disaster befalls us, we want to ask some form of the ‘why’ question. We want to know what the event is telling us—about ourselves or God or other people.

But here's the problem: without information from above, we don't know the meaning of these events because we can only ever view them partially from our limited perspective. This is Job's problem, and that of his comforters, and of everyone who has ever sought to wring an answer from the dumb, brute facts of human suffering. We just don't know why. Only God knows all the answers, and he is not obliged to tell us. Job never does discover the reason for the disaster that befalls his family. We, the readers, know from the very first chapter, because we are told. But Job is never told. By the end of the book, he learns the lesson that it is enough for him to know the all-knowing God, and to repent before his terrifying presence.

In a strange way, this is the message of Easter. As Martin Luther pointed out so powerfully, the cross of Christ shows us the nature of our world, and of the Christian life, in which God's presence is hidden behind a mask of suffering and desolation. The awful fact of a man's brutal, agonizing death on a Roman cross was, despite all appearances, a revelation of God's supreme wisdom, love and power. And such is the nature of our walk as Christians in this world. We cannot decipher the reasons for suffering. Like the disciples in John 9, we can't pronounce with any certainty why a man is born blind. Yet through the revelation of God's love on the cross, we can know that death brings life, that blood produces justification, and that suffering produces endurance and ultimately joy.