Christian Bookstores (Part 1): Tolkien, Hagee and Political-Zionism

A week before Christmas I went to a popular Christian bookstore in Richmond BC with a friend. I asked if the owner could point me to the section with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings so I could buy it for myself (though I have read it I have never owned it -- I borrowed my brother's copy). His response was interesting: "We don't carry it!" he said emphatically. "You mean you do not have it in stock?" I replied. "No. We don't carry Tolkien. That is not Christian!" he exclaimed loudly. I kind of stood there for a moment really taken off guard. "Oh because the wizards and goblins and stuff" I tried to reason. "No! It is not Christian!" He repeated. At this point my friend turned to me to see what was happening. He had been flipping through Joel Olsteen's latest book proudly set up at the front of the bookstore. He walked over. "Do you sell The Chronicles of Narnia?" he asked. "Of course" he said. "That is Christian" My friend and I looked at eachother in amazement, less at what he was saying and more about how agressive he was being about this whole discussion -- so matter-of-fact; so black and white.

I said "You do know that Tolkien had a key role in bringing Lewis to Christ right?" He stared at me. "Lord of the Rings is not Christian" he repeated. "So you have made a decision--" he cut me off. "No. The Christian booksellers association of Canada decided not to sell that book in Christian bookstores." "Oh" I said. "It's just that I have seen it in other Christian bookstores". He exclaimed "No you haven't!" I said "Yes I have; they sell it at my school with big cardboard cut-outs and posters." "Which school?" he said. "Regent College." He fired back "Well they shouldn't!" I told him that they do and then said thank you. My friend put Joel Olsteen back on the shelf and we walked past the table full of useless Christian consumer goods (doilies, "Testa-mints", and bumper stickers that say "My boss is a Jewish carpenter") and we left. I arrived in Toront and the next day went to Michell's -- A Christian bookstore in Ontario. I walked in and asked them if they sell LOTR thaey also said no. I didn't even ask why. And then I looked around and got more and more discouraged as I walked around. I felt as if I had walked into a political convention for Zionism.

Everywhere I looked were books about the "end times", and mostly about how Israel are the true chosen nation/people/country of God and that we (meaning Christians and America) should support them at all costs. The book that this Christian bookstore had on display that day for sale was the latest John Hagee book In Defense of Israel. As I looked at the book the irony of it all struck me. The Christian bookstores were protecting people from the evils of Hobitts and a Christian writer (Tolkien) who was used of God to mentor, disciple and lead to Christ, arguably the most influential Christian writer of the twentieth century (C.S. Lewis), and yet they were promoting an author who spends his life arguing in support of the American foreign policy to support the country of Israel at all costs (even in their illegitmate wars), and who, in his recent book, seems to deny the Messiahship of Jesus (see below).

I was baffled. I was transported back to footage of Hagee, which I saw recently, in which my jaw hit the floor. He was leading a massive coalition of Christians in Washington called Christian Zionists or something, he stood up in front of these people and called for a pre-emptive strike on Iran before they attack the country of Israel. Hagee's Comments on video. I said: "Wow. A Christian pastor of a church of 20,000 people just called for a pre-emptive strike on a country. How far we have strayed." In his most recent book Hagee seems to deny an essential Christian doctrine:

If there is not one verse of Scripture in the New Testament that says Jesus came to be the Messiah … And if Jesus refused by his words or actions to claim the be the Messiah to the Jews, then how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered?” (page 136)

Now imagine how quickly people would be up in arms if one of the so-called liberal "Emerging" pastors made a comment such as this. People would be writing books saying "Oh those liberal pastors denying the essentials of Jesus!" but a key pastor in America says these things and the major Christian publishers/bookstores don't blink an eye. It sells because it is popular Christian writing (easy to consume, and thus easy to sell) -- the fact that it is heresy is no big deal I guess.

My fear is this: the bookstores / publishers are being driven by two things: the first is obvious and legitimate: sales -- people buy these books. Fine. But the second is what is scary -- these industries are driven by political and theological agenda's and that is wrong. I don't have a problem having this view point in book stores, the problem I have is that other theological/political viewpoints were not in the store! I will speak more about this next time (especially in relation to book publishers). For now: think on these things.

Good King Wenceslaus on the Feast of Stephen: God and Government

Christmas is over. So what did this mean to the church through history? The following is an article written by John Mark Reynolds, from Scriptorium

The day after Christmas, the Church wisely decided to celebrate the Feast of the first martyr, Stephen. We are reminded that not everyone was happy about the Good News.

This feast has a carol associated with it that also reminds us of the nature of good Christian governance.

Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel.

“Hither, page, and stand by me, if you know it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

“Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither,
You and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither.”
Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together,
Through the cold wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather.

“Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger,
Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, my good page, tread now in them boldly,
You shall find the winter’s rage freeze your blood less coldly.”

In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,
You who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing.

The carol is based on the legends that grew up around the rule of the Duke of Bohemia, Saint Wenceslaus. According to the Anglican Breviary Duke Wenceslaus ruled justly.

“To the orphaned, the widowed, and the destitute, he was very charitable so that sometimes in the winter he carried firewood to the needy on his own shoulders. He helped oftentimes to bury the poor, he set captives free; and at the dead of night he went many times to the prisons to comfort with money and advice them that were detained therein.”

Whatever the actual history of his life (which from this distance it is hard to ascertain), the important thing to notice is what kind of legends crept around a model Christian ruler. You can know a great deal about a religion based on the myths it wants to tell about its heroes!

First, Christianity has always recognized the equality of all persons before God. Whether the Good Duke actually carried wood for a poor man, it is the sort of thing the Church encouraged rulers to do. Rulers had a different function than their subjects, but they were not better as men.

This assumption is so normal to us as moderns that it is hard to recall how difficult it was for the Church to teach it to the Europeans. The Church herself did not always consistently hold to this doctrine, but never could deny it. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, when He took on flesh, did not come as a member of the elite, but to a working class family without political power.

This commonplace fact of Christmas was constantly used to rebuke Christian princes or governors with pretensions to superiority.

Christians can respect the job of ruling, but we do not owe the person of the ruler any more (or less!) dignity than the woodcutter.

Second, the charity of a good monarch was personal. Christians long recognized that a state that attempted to eliminate poverty as official policy was a dangerous expansion of power. Given their experience with Caesar, they were happy to check the power of government and not expand it.

At the same time, the monarch was urged to live simply in his personal life. Statecraft might require a palace, but the ideal monarch would live a rigorous personal life. He would eat simply and dress modestly. The absolute kings living in glorious settings such as the Sun King of France were a degenerate class in a culture losing its Christian moorings.

The Church recognized that the danger of ruling was losing track of how everyone else lived. The command to a good ruler was to serve the poor . . . sometimes literally washing their feet. They were urged to extensive personal charity (building schools and hospitals). Personal charity ennobled both the giver and receiver.

We forget sometimes that the gap between how a good king of the Middle Ages lived and how a free peasant lived was not so great as the difference between the super-rich and the very poor today. Partly this is the result of increased wealth, but it is also a result of a false view of possessions. While nobody should steal from a rich man in order to give to a poor man, the rich man is wrong if he allows his neighbor to suffer. Charity cannot be forced, but it can be commanded.

A king who lived in luxury while his people starved was a wicked ruler.

Third, the great job of a Christian ruler is to do justice. This justice must be impartial to the status of those before his bench. The rich must not get lighter punishment than the poor. Too often in the American legal system injustice occurs because the rich are able to buy better lawyers or deceive juries with high priced experts who lie for cash.

Finally, Christians learned slowly over time how to practice the great truths of the Faith. We always believed all humans were created equal, but practicing it in the fallen world was (and is) hard. Our ancestors made mistakes as do we.

To cite one example, Christianity was born in a world that condoned torture and thought it useful. At first, the majority Christian view was that torture, under some circumstances, was justified in a fallen world. There was always a minority who worried about it, but practical considerations seemed to justify the practice.

However, like the views of Christians on the death penalty, over time the deeper belief that each human contained the image of God began to undermine the practice of torture. Over time most Christian states abandoned it or made it so restricted that in practice it vanished. Experience with modern secular states that used the power of science to torture (like the Soviet Union) confirmed the fact that this was one power the state could not use safely.

(It is ironic that the torture chambers of the late Middle Ages which were emptied by the Church are our image of torture while few think of the scientific torments of Stalinist Russia.)

Fundamentally, the role models for Christian rulers were kind men and not so much warriors. Many sainted rulers were martyrs who failed at war (such as Saint King Edmund). Even Crusaders like Saint Louis were best loved for their buildings and charity and not for their (often unsuccessful) warfare. Good Christian rulers like Duke Wenceslaus were not remembered for their use of torture, but for their chartity!

This made a difference in how Christians viewed the “ideals” for government. We expect personal charity from our rulers and justice in their official capacity. We have come see torture as incompatible with good governance and war as a last resort.

On this second day of Christmas, the Feast of Stephen, let us celebrate and, if we have power, try to emulate Wenceslaus by some act of personal charity toward the poor or oppressed.

The Hobbit

Three weeks ago I was up late talking to a friend, which is not rare, and I was physically gesturing with my hands and body, again which is not rare, and anyone standing outside my house looking in might have thought that this passionate display of emotion had something to do with the person I was speaking to: Maybe I was yelling at him for something. My whole demeanor was angry and violent. What I was angry about however was not anything he had done, in fact people might argue I had no real reason to be angry at all, for what I was fuming at was the fact that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema's could not work their stuff out in court and thus they were not going to make The Hobbit.

"They are so dumb." I said, "The make the best trilogy in human history, LOTR (sorry Star Wars fans but you know its true!), and now they have an opportunity to keep it going and they are in court battling over a puny 40 million dollars! Come on I want to see another good movie because most of what Hollywood is creating these days is, well, not very good at all!" The news that they were not going to join together to make the movie upset me and has kept me upset for the last year. New Line actually started looking for a different director (they were looking at Spider-man director Sam Raimi--ugghh! Spider-man 3 was horrific!). Anyway as Erin and I packed late into the night before flying to Toronto this week a friend called at 12.45 at night. He said "Sorry to call so late but I have big news for you: Peter Jackson is making The Hobbit" I was speechless. The Hobbit: finally!

My only thing now is that he has not signed on for director, only writer/producer which is still great but he needs to direct it. He has scheduling issues because he is making two other films; and they want them releases by 2010 and 2011 (did I mention they are making two films?). My issue is that there needs to be strict continuity with the Lord of the Rings. If he can create that with producing it fine; but I say shelve the other project and focus on The Hobbit.

Here is the story as it ran in TIME:
Bilbo Baggins is finally progressing on his most fraught journey — landing a leading role on the big screen. After three years of legal wrangling and public sniping, director Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have reached an agreement to make J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, the prequel to the Lord of the Rings blockbuster trilogy that made nearly $3 billion at the box office and earned 17 Oscars. The Hobbit is Tolkien's most accessible and popular book, a fairy tale about the reluctant adventurer Baggins, who embarks on a trip with 13 dwarves and the wizard Gandalf.

Jackson, who directed the Rings trilogy and inherited creative stewardship of Tolkien's massive fan base, will serve as executive producer for The Hobbit with his wife, Fran Walsh. A director and screenwriter will be chosen in the New Year, when Jackson and Walsh meet with the studio heads. MGM, which owns the distribution rights to The Hobbit, will co-finance and co-distribute.

The reconciliation between Jackson and New Line was set in motion when Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, co-chairman and co-CEOs of the studio, approached Jackson's agent at the Cannes Film Festival in May. "We said, 'Let's get past the acrimony that's been created by each of us and the rest of our clans,'" says Shaye. "Let's talk about something productive and creative."

After the resounding critical and commercial success of Rings, relations between Jackson and New Line should have been rosy — studio and director each deserved credit for the other's good fortune. But the partnership soured over disputes about New Line's accounting for that fortune. In 2005, Jackson sued, claiming that New Line committed fraud in its handling of the revenues generated by 2001's The Fellowship of the Ring, underpaying him by millions. As Jackson and New Line's lawyers and accountants tangled over paper, the director and Shaye engaged in a bitter battle via the Web.

Last November, when Shaye told Jackson he was looking for other directors for The Hobbit,The Hobbit. This was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker." In December Harry Sloan, chairman and CEO of MGM, invited Jackson and Walsh over for dinner and heard Jackson's vision for The Hobbit. Yet Shaye was still bitter, telling the Sci Fi Wire website in January, "I don't care about Peter Jackson anymore. He thinks that we owe him something after we've paid him over a quarter of a billion dollars!" Jackson posted on the fan site The OneRing.Net, "[We were told] that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on The Hobbit. This was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker."

Sometime between making that bold statement and Cannes, Shaye softened his stance. "Each of the respective sides looked at our confidantes, wives, etc. and said, 'This is really getting out of control,'" says Shaye. "Maybe it's worth a voice-to-voice conversation instead of letting a bunch of lawyers and intermediaries get in the middle and muck things up."

New Line's tough last couple of years at the box office has also magnified the studio's need for a sure hit like The Hobbit. Shaye and Lynne's latest attempt to recreate the box office magic of Rings, the fantasy adaptation The Golden Compass, underperformed, with $25 million at the box office its opening weekend.

Jackson delivered his stamp of approval in a statement: "I'm very pleased that we've been able to put our differences behind us, so that we may begin a new chapter with our old friends at New Line. We are delighted to continue our journey through Middle Earth."

Principal photography on The Hobbit has been tentatively set to start in 2009, with the goal of releasing the film in 2010. And Jackson and Walsh have already come up with the plan for a sequel — a film that would link the conclusion of with the start of The Fellowship of the Ring. Expect that one in 2011.

Sienna: The One We Love

This covers the second six months of Sienna's life.

Seeker-Engaging or Not?

The people who rail against "seeker-sensitive" churches are excited that Bill Hybels and Willowcreek have recently said they have made some mistakes over the years; creating churches that do not put a high level of focus on Bible and theology, but more of an application based teaching style to issues of life with Biblical theology in the back-ground. The statement of Hybels was as follows: We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

A couple things: It is important that the church learn from a seeker-sensitive spirit that focuses the church not on just learning about of stuff, but which drives the church to be missional. A church can do both equip people and be evangelistic and seeker-engaging at the same time -- the dichotomy of either equipping /or seeker-engaging is a false dichotomy and must be relegated to the garbage dump of history. If you teach about Jesus and lift him up people will both be equipped and saved. The church's primary goal is to reach the world for Christ. Nothing else matters.

We must ask and answer the following question: Is community the mission or are we supposed to be a community on mission -- there is a world of difference. Community is great but it is not sufficient. The church in the past has often been a bunch of people sitting around, debating the rapture, the anti-Christ, and the five points of Calvinism -- and while it is nice to think that we have the luxury of such conversations the truth is: we don't. People are dying everyday without knowing Jesus. Recently, in the best presentation of missiology I have ever heard Mark Driscoll said Canada right now is in the single digits Christian and dropping fast. "There are more Christians in Baghdad than there are in Vancouver" (see http://www.willingdon.org/refocus/default.asp?id=760 ) Bottom line "seeker-engaging" is not a category or an option for the church it is what the church should be; both in the day to day life of those who make up the church and when we gather formally. The question is then: what does that look like?
Many preachers, in answering this question have lapsed into a form of teaching which is based on people's "needs", it becomes therapy, "chicken-soup", for the soul. And the product is watered-down, application-driven, people-focused, sermons about our problems and "going to heaven when we die". The problem is that what gets lost is the Bible, doctrine, theology and the gospel. The Bible becomes a tool where preachers search out proof-texts for their latest "How-to" sermon series. The Bible gets used to simply prove a point and then placed aside for the next proof-text. No wonder we have a generation of Biblically illiterate people! They think the Bible is their own personal treasure-chest of daily answers to their questions about dating, jobs, and whatever else.

Hence the critics are right: The Bible and theology get marginalized from seeker sensitive churches.

I am convinced that this is the greatest mistake of the movement, and a very unnecessary one.

The Bible is central to anything we do as the church and we should never feel as though seeker-engaging means marginalizing theology or Biblical teaching -- we should not assume people are stupid but that they are educated and should engage them at a high level of discourse. There are plenty of examples of church who focus on 20 -30 somethings and do so by engaging them at a high level of discourse precisely because we are an educated generation.

Here are three:
The Meeting House (Oakville, ON) -- 3,000 people meeting around Biblical teaching at a high level of discourse under Bruxy Cavey (and my friend Paul Morris; hehehe)

Mars Hill Church in Seattle -- Mark Driscoll teaches theology and Bible for an average of 1 hour sometimes up to 2 hours and his church has 6,000 people meeting on Sunday's all 20 to 30 somethings;

Mars Hill Bible Church (not connected to Mars Hill Seattle) in Grand Rapids Michigan -- 10,000 Sunday worshipers mostly 20 to 30 somethings gathered around the teaching of Rob Bell.

I could give more examples, but the point is each one of these churches is committed to a high level of teaching, all focused around Jesus and they accomplish two things at once: equip believers and present Jesus to non-believers.

So again I agree with the critics here: That we, as the church, need to expect people to think and investigate critically. But here is the problem with these kinds of people offering that criticism.

Unfortunately the same people who are opposed to seeker-sensitive teaching embrace a form of Christianity and way of learning doctrine that does not give way for critical investigation outside a modernistic framework, exegesis that is not familiar, or theology that might challenge the old paradigms. So the same people who get angry or upset when someone teaches something that challenges long held beliefs (i.e. young-earth theory, the rapture, forms of worship) are the ones saying "teach us the Bible!" and "Lets think critically". So, really what they mean is: do those things within a certain boundary that I am comfortable with.

I hear complaints along these line all the time. So we must realize that many people say they want doctrine taught but then limit the people trying to teach it by acting as if they can't say anything fresh or look at the text from a different angle -- thus by their actions they relegate the teachers in their church to saying non-threatening things (simply confirming what they have thought all along) and so these teachers lapse into "therapeutic theology" ... which is easy for them and easy listening for people investigating Jesus, but for mature Christians it feels like "fluff".

Let me end with a personal story: Two weeks ago I preached a message called "a Theology of the Cross" (see DSF Sermons) in which I said it was a travesty that all I could find in the Catholic monastery I was at on the weened were statues of Jesus on the cross while all I could find at our church was an empty cross (celebrating the resurrection). I proposed a balance in both churches, and then went on to teach penal substitutionary atonement for an hour to a room full of 20 - 30 somethings. I got no email encouraging me on that difficult task. That week a lady bought me a crucifix with Jesus on it and gave it to me. So i put it behind my on a mantle as I preached last weekend. A man who wants biblical theology taught in the church called the church this week and complained saying "We are not Catholic" -- interesting isn't it? The same people who want theology taught don't actually feel all that comfortable when it is.

"No Country for Old Men": Thoughtful, Frighteneing, and Beguiling

I was going to write a review of No Country for Old Men myself but then I found this review and I felt that I couldn't have agreed more or said it better:

When a film ends with the recounting of a dream in which a weather-beaten, life-weary man searches for the fire his father is building to warm them, it's impossible not to think of the love we all yearn for and can hopefully muster. It's also a welcome spiritual respite when that film has seduced its audience on a journey into a hell of the relentless violence that follows a man after he steals drug money in the naïve belief that its owners might ignore him, and the slow-moving chase that ensues when a truly psychopathic person pursues the man and the cash. No Country for Old Men, the new picture from the Coen Brothers, based on Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, is probably the most accomplished film released this year.

I'll do my best to avoid spoilers, as it would be unfair to assume that readers have seen it. So I must skirt around the issues that cause me to praise this film so highly. In short, No Country for Old Men is a slow, thoughtful, frightening, and beguiling film about the selfishness of people and the desperate need to restore the virtue of community bonds. Its central character – called Anton Chigurh, and played by Javier Bardem – is one of the most titanic characterizations of evil intent I've ever seen in a film. He simply kills what gets in his way, and even plays sport with some of his potential victims - inviting them to toss a coin to determine their fate. Josh Brolin is the man who finds the money belonging to Chigurh's employers, and Tommy Lee Jones the sheriff baffled by the trail of death that ensues in their wake.We follow these characters - scared of the killer, ashamed of the thief, and hoping against hope for the sheriff. We look away from the screen when the violence occurs, but may perhaps feel a little horrified by the fact that a part of us still wants to watch. And when one character finally stands up to Chigurh, it is not with physical violence, but by simply speaking and refusing to accept his games, forcing him to face the fact that he, and he alone, is responsible for his murderous ways.

This film does not suggest that – as some critics have implied – there is no way to stop evil, but rather that we live in an age where we need to find new ways of resisting the violence many of us face. It doesn't provide simplistic answers, but suggests that the path may be found in such things as renewing the bonds of community and mutual respect, refusing to accept the moral reasoning of those who resort to force at the drop of a hat, and embracing something like the vision of the 5th century BCE Chinese thinker Mozi:'If every man were to regard the pain of others as his own person, who would inflict pain and injury on others?'The country where violence is king may indeed be no country for old men; but, to my mind at least, the film that takes this term as its title offers nothing less than a prophetic reflection on the most important question facing humanity today: Where do we go from here?

Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at http://www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com/