Cowboys, Detectives, and Loner Christians

In Habits of the Heart (2008 ed.) the authors brilliantly illustrate American individualism by examining American stories – specifically stories of the cowboy and the detective.  Even more interesting is what John Locke has to do with cowboys and detectives.

“Individualism lies at the very core of American culture. …John Locke is the key figure and one enormously influential in America.  The essence of the Lockean position is an almost ontological individualism.  The individual is prior to society, which comes into existence only through the voluntary contract of individuals trying to maximize their own self-interest.  It is from this position that we have derived the tradition of utilitarian individualism.  But because one can only know what is useful to one by consulting one’s desires and sentiments, this is also ultimately the source of the expressive individualist tradition as well.”

“…A deep and continuing theme in American literature is the hero who must leave society, alone or with one or a few others, in order to realize the moral good in the wilderness, at sea, or on the margins of settled society.”

“American is also the inventor of that most mythical individual hero, the cowboy, who again and again saves a society he can never completely fit into.  The cowboy has a special talent – he can shoot straighter and faster than other men – and a special sense of justice.  But these characteristics make him so unique that he can never fully belong to society.  His destiny is to defend society without ever really joining it.  He rides off alone into the sunset….”

“The connection of moral courage and lonely individualism is even tighter for that other, more modern American hero, the hard-boiled detective.  …The detective is a loner.  He is often unsuccessful in conventional terms, working out of a shabby office where the phone never rings.  Wily, tough, smart, he is nonetheless unappreciated.  But his marginality is also his strength.  …To seek justice in a corrupt society, the American detective must be tough, and above all, he must be a loner.  …The hard-boiled detective, who may long for love and success, for a place in society, is finally driven to stand alone, resisting the blandishments of society, to pursue a lonely crusade for justice.”

In this chapter (6), the authors also wonder out loud if radically individualistic people are “capable of sustaining either a public or a private life.”  This discussion is also a good one for Christians to think about.  Such radical individualism is antithetical to the biblical concepts of covenant and communion (fellowship of the saints).  I would even say that this individualism is one thing that has weakened and is still weakening the Christian church in the United States.  Many Christians regularly avoid the assembly of the saints and view church membership as an imposition upon their individual rights and preferences.

God, however, didn’t create people to be loners (Gen. 2:18), and when he redeems sinners, he calls them into regular and personal fellowship and worship with other Christians (Acts 2:42, Heb. 10:24-25).  Christians living alone are going against the grain of the biblical faith and no doubt suffer for it.  We all need to pray against our own individualism and for those wandering alone from the flock of Christ.

The above quotes were taken from Robert Bellah, et. al, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press ,2008).

rev shane lems

Contentious Calvinists

One unfortunate thing I’ve noticed over the past ten years (give or take) is that sometimes new Calvinists are not a great benefit and blessing to the church.  Sometimes people who have recently discovered the doctrines of grace make for poor churchmen and end up being a thorn in the side of a local church.

I’ve heard it from other pastors as well.  Broadly evangelical Christians hear podcasts, read books, and listen to online sermons or programs and become enamored with the doctrines of grace (which is good!).  But sometimes these Christians then find a Reformed church and in their “Calvinist zeal” they cause many headaches and problems (which is bad!).  Eventually they leave, go to another Reformed church, and do the same thing all over again.  They like the doctrines of grace, but don’t like the church.  I’ve heard quite a few sad stories like this.

Why does this happen?  I’ve been discussing this problem with others, and I may bring it up again later here on the blog.  For now, I’ll let John Newton explain one reason why new Calvinists sometimes make for poor churchmen.  Apparently, he faced the same problem we face today.

“I believe a too hasty assent to Calvinistic principles, before a person is duly acquainted with the plague of his own heart, is one principal cause of that lightness of profession which so lamentably abounds in this day, a chief reason why many professors [i.e. Christians who profess the doctrines of grace] are rash, heady, high-minded, contentious about words, and sadly remiss as to the means of divine appointment” (Newton’s Works, XI p. 278).

Well said.  The “T” in TULIP should make us so humble we never stop thinking that others are better than we are (Phil. 2:3).  A Calvinist who is proud, contentious, and arrogant is a very inconsistent Calvinist (to put it nicely).  Someone who has truly been humbled by the darkness, evil, and depravity of his own heart will not come to a church assuming that he knows it all and that everyone else must conform to his superior ideas.

If you’re one of our readers who is just learning the beauty of the doctrines of grace, and, more broadly, Reformed theology, please pray for much humility as you look for a church that preaches these great biblical truths.  You’re never going to find a perfect church; you may never even find one that is exactly to your liking.  And when you do find one that preaches the whole counsel of God in and out of season, that administers the sacraments, and that practices church discipline unto repentance, thank God and ask him to help you use your gifts there (humbly!) to edify his people and bring him glory.  One part of being a consistent Calvinist is being a solid, helpful member of a local church.  But more on that later.

rev shane lems

sunnyside wa

Reading The Bible In And With The Church

  It is important to understand that Sola Scriptura for the Reformers did not mean that one should interpret Scripture alone, individualistically, and apart from the historic Christian church.  Along those lines, I appreciate these words of Kevin Vanhoozer in Is There A Meaning in This Text? 

“The church is the community dedicated to discovering the Bible’s meaning and to attesting its continuing significance.  It is, above all, the significance of Scripture that cannot be discerned apart from the receiving, believing community.  While biblical scholars can write commentaries about ‘what it meant,’ it takes the congregation – a living commentary – to display ‘what it means.’  The interpreting community does therefore have an important hermeneutic role, but…it is not that of producing but witnessing to meaning.”

“The church should be that community of readers whose hearts, minds, and imaginations are open to receive what is there in the text and who strive to embody it – the story, the promises, the commands, the law – in new contexts.”

“The testimony of the Spirit is not only to individuals but primarily to the church as a whole.  Yet the church is not the judge that arbitrates interpretive conflict so much as the permanent witness to Scripture’s meaning and significance.  …The Reformers had earlier likened the church to a schoolroom, in which believers become competent in the Christian way.  What Christians study in Scripture is God’s interpretation of reality, summed up in the story of Jesus Christ.  Christians, then, have a schoolroom (the church), a subject (the way of Jesus Christ), and a teacher (the Spirit).  And yes, there is a text in this class.”

Vanhoozer says it well: biblical interpretation is not a solo endeavor.  These paragraphs made me think of quite a few things – one of them being those Christians who never join a church or who do not regularly worship with the saints.  Do “solo” Christians set themselves up for misinterpretation of the Bible?  Quite likely that’s the case.  Can a “solo” Christian  practice and live out the true meaning of sola Scriptura?  I doubt it.  If a person willfully neglects the “schoolroom” of the historic Christian church, will his Christian learning and knowledge be deficient?  I believe they would.

The above quotes are from Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There A Meaning in This Text, p. 430.

shane lems

Raising Paine in the Church

 In this great book on the fellowship or communion of the saints, Philip Ryken explains one major hindrance to solid fellowship.

“Another obstacle to the communion of the saints is the pride of individualism.  This is especially a problem in the American church.  When the French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) visited the United States in the 1830s he observed that Americans ‘owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man, they acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands… [This attitude] throws [the American] back forever upon himself alone, and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.’”

“The pride of individualism has infected the American church.  Thomas Jefferson liked to observe, ‘I am a sect myself.’  Thomas Paine said, ‘My mind is my church.’  Now many Americans are raising Paine in the contemporary church.  They doubt the necessity of active involvement in a living church.  They rely on Christian radio, worship at home with a televangelist, or treat churches like leased automobiles, trading the old one in for a new one every five years” (p. 11).

Ryken is right.  Hard core individualism is a huge barrier to true Christian fellowship.  And this is one major reason why Ryken wrote and edited this book, The Communion of Saints.  Here’s how he said it himself on page 13: “The purpose of this book is to help us rediscover the lost communion of the saints.”   I do believe the book is a great help towards that end.  There’s even a study guide at the end which makes this a perfect resource for a Bible study or book group.  These are the kind of “churchly” books we need to be reading and studying!  You won’t find any trendy jargon like “enacted community,” or “Jesus the partier,”  but you will find a solid, biblical, and practical discussion of what the church is, says, and does in her pilgrimage.

Here’s the info: Philip Ryken (ed.) The Communion of the Saints (Philipsburg: P&R, 2001).

shane lems

A Review of Tim Chester’s “A Meal With Jesus”

  One of Tim Chester’s newest books is called A Meal with Jesus (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011).  Since I’ve benefited from some of Chester’s other works (including You Can Change and Total Church), I picked up this newer book.  FYI, the subtitle of A Meal with Jesus is “Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table.”

The book is a discussion of the meals found mostly in Luke’s gospel.  In six chapters, Chester discusses Luke 5, 7, 9, 14, 22, and 24.  All of those chapters of Luke have stories of Jesus eating a meal or talking about food.  Chester does a good job of explaining the OT background, the redemptive historical aspect of meals, and how Jesus feeding and eating with sinners is a picture of the gospel of grace.  I appreciate the book because it has lots of Bible discussion and is gospel centered.

However, I also have to say I don’t recommend this book.  Here are a few reasons why.

First, I can’t stand the trendiness of it.  Chester uses the terms “mission” and “community” far too much.  He talks about Jesus being a “party animal” whose “mission strategy” was a “long meal stretching into the evening” (p. 13).  Chester also uses words like “reshaping community,” “enacted community,” “Christ incognito” and “enacting mission.”  Those terms aren’t necessarily wrong, but they are somewhat ambiguous because of their trendiness.  What is an enacted community?  Can I enact community?  These buzzwords annoyed me already after I finished the first chapter.

Second, I think Chester far overstates the importance of meals in the Bible.  I do agree that the Bible has much to say about meals, and that they are significant to some extent.  However, it seemed like the theme of meals is the lens by which Chester approached the Bible, which made him overstate the case quite often.  Here’s one example of an overstatement: “Meals…embody God’s grace and so give form to community and mission” (p. 15).  Here’s another example: “If you routinely share meals and you have a passion for Jesus, then you’ll be doing mission” (p. 89).   I love the fact that Jesus ate with sinners, but there are tons of other threads in the Bible to which we must pay attention if we want to remain balanced.  Chester doesn’t really talk about verses like Rom. 14.17 (the kingdom is not a matter of eating and drinking) or other similar texts (i.e. 1 Cor. 6.13 and 8.8).  I didn’t like this book because it made too much of one small biblical thread.  Perhaps it would have been better as a short 50 page booklet.

Third, I strongly disagree with this sacramental (mystical) theology that Chester espouses: “Our life at the table, no matter how mundane, is sacramental – a means through which we encounter the mystery of God” (p. 10).  Later he says, “Hospitality can be a kind of sacrament of forgiveness” (p. 48).  This too was pretty bad: “Meals enact mission.  But they enact mission because they enact grace” (p. 88).  The list goes on.  To view regular meals as sacramental is unbiblical.  I don’t have the space to give a description of the Lord’s Supper here, but it certainly is not me, my family, and a neighbor eating left over pizza on Friday night before a baseball game.  Holy Communion has to with the church publicly gathering together to partake of bread and wine after hearing the word of Christ and self-examination (1 Cor. 11).  If Chester allows regular meals to be sacramental, why not snacks in the afternoon?

Fourth, the book was far too romantic for me.  By that I mean all the meals Chester describes are quaint and charming.  He talks about long parties, kebabs, music, Bengali cookbooks, laughter, homemade curry, and people talking for hours over different cuts of meat.  Some of those things are great - but many are very culturally conditioned.  I’m not sure a three-hour meal is possible in all cultures (especially when you have to work at 5AM and kids to put to bed at 8PM!).  As I read, I often thought, “Who has meals like that?”  A great meal setting in one culture is not necessarily the same in another.

In summary (no surprise here!), I don’t think this is Chester’s best book. In fact, I’d say don’t bother getting it.  If you’ve read other RE:LIT books, you won’t need to get this one since it re:states (pun intended!) a lot of the same “missional” and “community” themes that all the RE:LIT books talk about.  I suppose I’m old-school, but I prefer the Reformation teaching that the only means of grace are the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments.  I love meals with Christian friends, but they do not feed my soul like the bread and wine of Holy Communion.

shane lems