Basically, picture the typical college guy gathering to watch a bowl game, but change the TV from a bowl game to an academic debate and you got the right idea.

Anyway, the debate was enjoyable. If you missed it, watch it online.

Addendum: The NY Post has the best summary of the debate that I’ve come across thus far:

“Does Satan exist?

That is what “Nightline” wants to know.

What the hell is Dr. Deepak Chopra talking about?

That is what we want to know.”

‘It’s a sign of the times,’ he said.”

Read the full thing here.

Thoughts?

“We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.”

I’ve been thinking about this fact lately, and not just because I’ve been doing a pile of theology reading for seminary. As I’ve spent time over the years in writing and public speaking, I consistently find myself confronted with a dilemma:

What place does rhetoric have in our discourse as Christians?

By rhetoric, I simply mean saying things in a way that is beautiful and compelling. The “theologically-minded” Christian (a label which I have in the past embraced, and to some extent still seek to) is often quite suspicious of rhetoric of any sort. It is, in all likelihood, simply a bunch of emotional appeals and poisoning the well.

Yet emotional appeals are the bread and butter of biblical argumentation. When I read the Old Testament prophets or Paul or Jesus, their arguments are never tidy syllogisms. Instead, alongside the logic (and at times superceding it) are stories and satires and poems and, on more than one occasion, flat out name-calling (I’m talking to you, cows of Bashan).

The reason we don’t think this way is that we have too narrowly defined “truth.” We have embraced a sort of knowing which is all test tubes and microscopes and control groups. When God says idolatry is wrong and sin is foolish, we too often hear “irrational” and “unscientific.”

This is particularly evident in how we do theology. We are seeking to know God more fully, but what cannot be overlooked in this process is the knower. To suck the wonder, the mirth, the outrage and the poetry out of our discourse in order to help us focus on “knowing things about God” is in fact to do quite the opposite. We cannot approach God as computer-like brains when He has created us to be holistic creatures.

And this is why we need Christian rhetoric. It is not enough to speak truths about God - we must spend ourselves making them beautiful. It is too small a thing to demonstrate that sin is unethical - we must also show it to be grotesque and silly. To do any less isn’t really to communicate truth at all.

I am not advocating that we become unchristian in our rhetoric, of course. There is a sort of “rhetorician” who uses demagogy and parlor tricks to obfuscate what is really true. But there is also a sort of “philosopher” who uses dispassionate reason for the same end.

What I am saying is that we must learn to write skillfully for our God. He will bear with us in our weakness on the road, but we should not insist on the simple healthiness of water where He desires that we drink wine. Let us not make His poetry into dry prose.

For Losers like Us (that’s what I would’ve called it… but that’s getting into a whole nother discussion…)

This is for Ted.

Ted, as blogger Michael Spencer aptly put it, is a loser.

Ted agrees with Spencer, saying he’s a loser because he’s a 42-year-old insurance salesman, when just a few years ago he was making six figures.

As the president of a nationwide association representing millions, he led a local organization of over 15,000 and regularly had the ear of President George W. Bush in his weekly teleconference with other nationally known leaders.

But he was a loser then, too.

(Read the rest here. I have to do this because technically the column is now copyright of the DN and so I probably am not allowed to publish the whole thing elsewhere.)

There was once a rather misguided young man. One day, he decided that the attractive young woman he had been dating was, indeed, his soul mate. By that, he meant that she apparently didn’t realize what a lazy fool he was and also had quite pretty eyes. He decided to propose.

After taking her out to dinner (and even going so far as to offer to pay!), our young Romeo knelt on one knee and said “I have something for you.” The girl’s eyes brightened. “Yes?”

“Well,” he said, “if you promise that you will always love me, and that you’ll fully trust me in everything, and if you’ll swear that you’ll do half the laundry and the dishes, then I will go buy a ring and get engaged to you.”

Not surprisingly, the girl and he were not after all soul mates. After a few choice rooms, she stormed out and even dared to not return the boy’s phone calls. After moping about with a broken heart for as long as it would elicit pity from his friends, he decided that he had most certainly been wronged. After all, what kind of fool would reject such an unconditional gift?

A few years later, he ran into this girl and the man who was now her husband. After exchanging pleasantries, he managed to take the husband aside. “How did you get her to agree to marry you?” he asked.

“The usual way, I suppose,” the husband replied. “I gave her a ring, told her I was giving her my heart, and asked if she would give me the joy of being my bride.”

The young man was miffed. Isn’t that what he had done? Puzzled, he wrote it off as youthful indiscretion on her part and went on his way.

Note: This is a continuation of a series, the first two posts of which can be found here and here.

He looked at the man and - in front of everyone present - “I have been blessed by your ministry for many years, but there’s one thing missing from it.” The man asked what that was and Piper leveled him with one word: “Tears.”

What follows are some excerpts from secrettweet - a twitter version of PostSecret in which people can anonymously post their secrets. These are secrets shared by people we walk by on the street every day. People we sit next to in class or share an office with. And if reading these doesn’t move us to tears, then we are failing in our role as God’s grace-restored, shalom-infused agents for redemption in a world wrecked beyond all recognition. (HT: Jared)

This reality challenges both the old revivalists and the new activists. The great failure of the old evangelist was that he thought that what God was up to in the world was simply saving souls. The reason this view is doomed to fail is that it is much too small. While the fact that I have been saved is of enormous importance to me, it is for God a beautiful incidental on the way to restoring a creation stewarded by His image-bearers which together sings in a symphony of worship to Him. The God of the Bible is about calling human beings to their created glory and duty, not simply an anxious bench. If I lose sight of this I will make humans the point of the story rather than the actors of the new story of new creation, which is the oldest story of all. We’ll be all dressed up in shining white robes with nowhere to go.

However, the “new evangelicals” (of whom I have been informed I am a member) are just as indited by the reality of Scripture. God is about restoring all things, but He didn’t write the Bible to persuade people to fix what’s wrong with the world, whether that be social institutions, food shortages or a lack of progressive politicians. He revealed himself in Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ in order to fix what’s wrong with the world - people. We cannot reverse the effects of the fall by pretending like it wasn’t human sin that brought the curse in the first place. Arsonists make terrible firefighters and sick people poor doctors.

Evangelism, then, is both the greatest and least of our priorities. It is the most important thing because to try to do anything else before it is just giving a burning man a bucket of water to put out his burning house. However, if we douse people and then tell them “Help your neighbors, but please ignore the house burning down all around you,” we end up with a circular bucket chain to nowhere. Evangelism makes a terribly incomplete end, but to try beginning elsewhere is a fool’s errand.

A friend recently asked why it seems more acceptable in many churches to talk about social justice but not to talk about evangelism. I’ve been pondering the question, and decided that since I’m sure Jake and I could be accused of just this, I would write a post about the e-word.

Before we begin, I want to defend the fact that many of us are responding to holes in our Christian upbringing in spending time thinking about social issues. Many younger evangelicals are excited about “social justice” because they’ve gotten a taste of the fact that the story of the Bible is much bigger than their Sunday school teachers told them. To point out that they’re reacting against another view is simply to say that they are creatures with a creaturely way of knowing. To think that you’re not doing the same thing is a sure-fire way to end up in trouble.

That said, the process of spiritual correction must be constantly flexible and responding to individual problems. There are many churches in which a two-minute gospel presentation at the bus stop is still touted as the pinnacle of Christian calling, and I’m more than comfortable rattling their cages. On the other hand, there are an increasing number of evangelical churches which are uncomfortable with anything bearing even a hint of “conversion” and get along better with political activists than evangelists. This seems dangerously close to jumping off one cliff because, hey, at least its not that other one.

We inevitably steer a crooked course down the narrow path, needing a shove as we veer toward the ditch on the right. However, we will almost always overcorrect, and if we’re not stopped on the other side, fall into the ditch on the left instead. I’m not implying that Christianity is some inevitable pendelum swing - I think that as we’re consistently corrected by Scripture and the body, we begin to get a feel for where the center of the road really is. However, we need this consistent correction. Extolling the biblical joys of wine is a great corrective for the legalistic teetotaler, but a bitter cup if we keep serving it when he has become a washed-out wino in the gutter.

With that little point out of the way, tomorrow let’s discuss evangelism