Why We're Not Emergent - cont.

I have finished reading Why We're Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck and liked it overall.  Probably the most valuable thing I took away from it was DeYoung saying he appreciates the emergent critique of the church today but that their prescribed cures are frightening. 

Both authors' deference to the creeds, confessions, and councils as the "borders of faith" and "fence[s] between truth and falsehood," elevating them almost to the same level of Scripture itself, really bothered me, though.  I believe Emergents have a legitimate beef here, but their remedy indeed is frightening!  Instead of pointing to Scripture as the only authority, they point to the need to be real and express their feelings, to do good works, and to experience the other personal ways God mysteriously speaks to Christians apart from the Bible.

The emergent church is in fact quite squishy about Scripture.  Brian McLaren, a leading voice in emergent circles argues for a postmodern understanding of the Bible's role in our church: "When we let it [the Bible] go as a modern answer book, we get to rediscover it for what it really is: an ancient book of incredible spiritual value for us, a kind of universal and cosmic history, a book that tells us who we are and what story we find ourselves in so that we know what to do and how to live."  DeYoung explains that it's all well and good to speak of the Bible as a wonderful, rich story, or an amazing collection of deep writings, or an honored conversation partner, or an in-living-color book, but what does all of this actually mean?  Is it the final authority in matters of faith and practice?  Can it be trusted in all that it says?  Is it intelligible and knowable?  Basically, Emergents don't see the Bible as having intrinsic authority based on God having spoken, but rather as a functional authority dependent upon what the community of believers understand it to mean.  And since Donald Miller has been quoted as saying, "who knows anything anyway", where does that leave them?

It leaves them making up their own kind of truth!  In fact, Spencer Burke, also one of the formative voices in the emergent conversation, explains that, "Although the link between grace and sin has driven Christianity for centuries, it just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore. It repulses rather than attracts. People are becoming much less inclined to acknowledge themselves as 'sinners in need of a Savior.' A better approach is to see Jesus as 'the model of sinless living, the ultimate example to which all humanity should aspire."  Burke also basically rejects the cross of Christ as an atoning sacrifice for sin when he approvingly quotes from the Journalist Polly Toynbee: "Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to?"

This is the biggest difference between Emergents and traditional Christianity according to DeYoung: "Being a Christian—for Burke, for McLaren, for Bell, for Jones, and for many others in the emerging conversation—is less about faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ as the only access to God the Father and the only atonement for sins before a wrathful God, and more about living the life that Jesus lived and walking in His way."

Sadly, if people attending emergent churches are hearing that doing good works is the main thing, not that Christ died and rose again on our behalf, then emergent churches are most likely filled with unbelievers — because good works do not save!

Some who have read this book lament that a reconciliation needs to happen between the Emergents and Reformed.  In other words, "Can't we all just get along?"  But really, how can there be a reconciliation if Emergents don't see the Word of God as authoritative — and it clearly states:

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ (Rom 10:5-17).

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified (Gal 2:15-16).

Why We're Not Emergent

I am currently making my way through the book, Why We're Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Cluck.  Since Ted starts out by saying that people will probably blog about this book, I decided to do just that — blog about it.

All I can say is, so far, guys, I couldn't agree with you more!

Having recently read Donald Miller's popular book, Blue Like Jazz (you can read my review of it here), I was interested in reading more books on this post-modern emerging church idea.  True, Donald doesn't consider himself a follower of the "emergent" movement, but much of what he says paints him as such.  Consequently, his writings have become quite popular with many involved in the emerging church conversation.

Below are just a few lines from the beginning of Why We're Not Emergent.  Perhaps they will wet your appetite enough to give this book a try, too.


"... emergent leaders are allowing the immensity of God to swallow up His knowability.  In good postmodern fashion, they are questioning whether we can have any real, accurate knowledge about God in the first place ..."

"As Donald Miller says at one point in his wildly popular Blue Like Jazz, 'I don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reason.  Who knows anything anyway?'

"The emergent agnosticism about truly knowing and understanding anything about God seems to be pious humility.  It seems to honor God's immensity, but it actually undercuts His sovereign power.  Postmoderns harbor such a distrust for language and disbelieve God's ability to communicate truth to human minds that they effectively engage in what Carson calls 'the gagging of God ...'"


"Because of the emerging church's implied doctrine of God's unknowability, the word mystery, a perfectly good word in its own right, has become downright annoying.  Let me be very clear: I don't understand everything about God or the Bible.  I don't fully understand how God can be three in one.  I don't completely grasp how divine sovereignty works alongside human responsibility.  The Christian faith is mysterious.  But when we talk about Christianity, we don't start with mystery.  It's some combination of pious confusion and intellectual laziness to claim that living in mystery is at the heart of Christianity.

"Yet, time and again, emerging leaders brand Christianity as, above all things it seems, mysterious."


"Certainty, for the emergent church, is the same as pinning down Jesus and summing up God, while uncertainty is a breath of fresh air.  'Drop any affair you may have with certainty, proof, argument—and replace it with dialogue, conversation, intrigue and search,' argues McLaren.  Clarity, after all, is usually boring and wrong 'since reality is seldom clear, but usually fuzzy and mysterious; not black and white, but in living color.'

"But why do intrigue and search have to mean the end of all certainty?  McLaren is guilty of a very modern error, insisting on either-or when a both-and is possible.  There is a place for questions.  There is a time for conversation.  But there is also the possibility of certainty, not because we have dissected God like a freshman biology student dissects a frog, but because God has spoken to us clearly and intelligibly ..."


(to be cont)

Blue Like Jazz

Another pop culture book I read on my recent reading jag was Blue Like Jazz.  A New York Times bestseller written by Donald Miller, I was curious what all the hubbub was about.  He makes a few good points, and I'll list them, but I see this book a little differently than a lot of people out there because overall I was unimpressed.

Donald is right on the money when he says that we love God because He first loved us, and that it's because of His love for us, and consequently our love for Him**, that we obey Him.  This is taken right out of Scripture itself (1 Jn 4:19; Titus 2:11-12).

"Rick says that I will love God because he first loved me.  I will obey God because I love God.  But if I cannot accept God's love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him.  Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will.  The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return.  Accepting God's kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do.  If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her.  This is not the voice of God.  God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love." (pg 86)

Then again toward the end of his book he says this:

"And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.  I think apart from the idea that I am a sinner and God forgives me, this is the greatest lesson I have ever learned.  When you get it, it changes you.  My friend Julie from Seattle told me that the main prayer she prays for her husband is that he will be able to receive love.  And this is the prayer I pray for all my friends because it is the key to happiness.  God's love will never change us if we don't accept it." (page 232)

Donald get more points, from me anyway, when he talks about the typical 'Trendy Writer" on pages 91-94 of his book:

"Trendy Writer talked about how Khwaja Khandir is his fishing guide.  He described Khwaja Khandir as the Islamic version of the Holy Spirit: Khwaja Khandir tells him where the fish are and teaches him things about life like how to manage his money or achieve inner peace or please his wife.  It was all hokey and hoo-ha.  I felt as if I were being visited by the ghost of Christmas future, and the ghost was saying, 'Hey, Don, you're going to end up like this guy: A yuppie Christian writer with no backbone!' ... For me, Trendy Writer coming to town was the beginning of something.  It was the beginning of my authentic Christianity.  Trendy Writer, Khwaja Khandir, and Tony the Beat Poet were the seeds of change.  I knew Christ, but I was not a practicing Christian.  I had the image of a spiritual person, but I was bowing down to the golden cows of religiosity and philosophy.  It was one of those enlightenments, one of those honest looks in the mirror in which there is no forgetting who you are.  It was a moment without make-believe.  After that moment, things started to get interesting."

I couldn't agree more.  Why are so many Christians taken with every trendy book or speaker that comes along?  Ironically, though, I put Blue Like Jazz in the "trendy pile." 

Why?  If you look closely you'll notice that Donald never really defines what "a spiritual person" or "Christian spirituality" (subtitle of his book) is.  He comes close on page 57, "And I love this about Christian spirituality.  It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true.  It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul." and on page 103, "I don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway? If I walk away from Him, and please pray that I never do, I will walk away for social reasons, identity reasons, deep emotional reasons, the same reasons that any of us do anything."  Then at the end of his book (page 239) he says, "I think Christian spirituality is like jazz music. I think loving Jesus is something you feel. I think it is something very difficult to get on paper." 

Do you see it?  Donald's idea of spirituality is all feelings-based. What a scary place to be!  Emotions and feelings change constantly.  They should never be the driving force behind what we do or don't do.  Donald is putting the cart before the horse. True Christian spirituality is based on faith in what God says is true.  In other words, it's taking God at His Word.  When we're in the Word, believing the Word, looking at the world through "Word-colored glasses," living out the Word, that's true Christian spirituality.  The Word is the horse, feelings are the cart — they come after because the Word is pulling them along, keeping them on the right track.

Basing everything on feelings is typical of post-modern thinking: You come up with a list of things that you think are necessary to follow — what feels right to you — and the rest doesn't matter. And if someone should happen to call you on anything you're believing or doing, well they're just being judgmental and unloving (chapters 12 and 18).  Basically, it boils down to this: It doesn't really matter what you believe (because "who knows anything anyway") or how you live, just as long as you're following Jesus (and whatever that happens to look like to you).

The ramifications of this kind of thinking are even more troubling.  If, as Donald says, Christianity should be replaced with Christian spirituality ...

"For me, the beginning of sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained" (pg 115).

... which to him is all about experiences and what you feel (because nobody "knows anything anyway"), ...

"At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow" (pg 205).

... then Scripture is no longer authoritative — experiences and feelings are.  Another reviewer of Blue Like Jazz explains this particularly well:

"A million to one is very low odds that "any" of our theology is right. What about the theology of the atonement? Is our chance of understanding that a million to one? What about the theology of Jesus Christ's return? Can we possibly know whether or not He is coming back? And what about the theology of biblical inerrancy? Can we even trust the Bible? With the odds Miller suggests, no, we can trust nothing about God's Word at all. Praise God, that Miller's odds are completely wrong!"


**There are two words for love in the original Greek Scriptures — phileo and agape.  Phileo means "to be a friend to (fond of [an individual or an object]), i.e., have affection for (denoting personal attachment, as a matter of sentiment or feeling); agape means "love, i.e., affection or benevolence — embracing especially the judgment and the deliberate assent of the will as a matter of principle, duty and propriety — the former [phileo] being chiefly of the heart and the latter [agape] of the head."  In other words, agape love is not just a feeling, it's also a decision.  Agape love is the only love believers are instructed to have for God.

The Hunger Games Trilogy

I've been on a reading jag lately, catching up on some pop culture reading.  It seems that ever since the movie The Hunger Games came out, everybody's been talking about it.  So I decided to read the book.  I wasn't sure I'd like it going in because it really isn't written for my age group.  But I enjoyed it.  If fact I enjoyed it so much, I ended up reading the other two books in the trilogy as well.

The Hunger Games trilogy are young adult books by Suzanne Collins.  They are written from the perspective of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where the countries of North America once existed. The Capitol, a highly advanced city, dominates and rules over the rest of the nation. To maintain its iron grip, the Capitol holds an annual event called The Hunger Games, to which each of the 12 districts surrounding the Capital must send one boy and one girl aged 12-18 to compete in a televised battle until only one person is left.

The 12 districts rise up and overthrow the Capitol by the end of the third book, and Katniss and Peeta marry and have children.  Still the story ends on a rather sad note because Katniss is afraid their peaceful lives won't last, that The Hunger Games and war will begin again. 

Interestingly, toward the end of the story the author has Katniss asking Plutarch if he's preparing for another war to which Plutarch replies, "Oh, not now. Now we're in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated," he says. "But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss." "What?" I ask. "The time it sticks. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of the human race. Think about that."

Is this what we're all waiting for — the evolution of the human race into something better?  Wishful thinking, that, because the Bible tells us a different story.  Man is fallen; he cannot improve.  That's why we so desperately need a Savior.

"All of our theology must eventually become biography.

The constant challenge in this life we call Christian is the translation of all we believe to be true into our day-to-day life-style."

You Gotta Keep Dancin’

(In the midst of life’s hurts, you can choose joy!)

by Tim Hansel

Cuneiform

I have started reading another "assigned" book called, The Bible and the Ancient Near East by Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg. It's interesting so far; however, it has referred to cuneiform a couple of times, and since I know very little about it, I decided to do a short study on it. Here's what I found out:

The word cuneiform comes from two Latin words: cuneus, which means "edge," and forma, which means "shape." It was a picture writing invented by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago and was the world's first written language. Cuneiform is similar to but more abstract than Egyptian hieroglyphics. The last known cuneiform inscription was written in 75 AD.

Basic History of Cuneiform

The first cuneiform was drawn in vertical columns on wet clay tablets with a pen made from a sharpened reed. It was formed by laying the length of the reed along the wet clay and moving the end nearest the hand from one side to another. Early on, individual words were merely crude pictures of the object being named. But these pictures were difficult to produce on fresh clay. Two developments made the process quicker and easier---people began to write in horizontal rows, and a new type of pen was used which was pushed into the clay. This produced the more abstract series of wedges and hooks that represented entire words. These word symbols are called ideograms, which means "concept writing."

The clay tablets were routinely recycled; however, if permanence was called for, they were dried or baked hard in a kiln. In fact, many of the tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were baked when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept.

Cuneiform and the Bible World

The main cuneiform literature of the Bible World is Akkadian*. It is sometimes called Babylonian or Assyrian after the two main dialects of the language.

Centuries after cuneiform was invented, it was handed down to the Semitic people when they conquered Mesopotamia. It eventually developed into a syllabic alphabet under the Semites (Assyrians and Babylonians). However, they spoke an entirely different language. In fact, it was as different from Sumerian as English is different from Japanese. In order to adapt this foreign writing to a Semitic language, the Akkadians converted it in part to a syllabic writing system---individual signs represented entire syllables. In addition to this, some of their cuneiform symbols were picture words (ideograms) that represented an entire word. So, the Hebrew people then had a very polished medium for giving their distinctive message to the world.

This complicated writing system dominated Mesopotamia until the century before the birth of Christ. The Persians, who by 486 BC controlled all of Mesopotamia, greatly simplified cuneiform until it represented something closer to an alphabet.

Cuneiform Lost and Found

Knowledge of cuneiform was lost until AD 1835. It was then that Henry Rawlinson, an English army officer, found some inscriptions on a cliff at Behistun in Persia. Carved in the reign of King Darius of Persia (522-486 BC), they were of identical texts in three languages: Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite. After translating the Persian, Rawlinson began to decipher the others. And by 1851 he could read 200 Babylonian signs.

If you would like to see what your name looks like in cuneiform, click here.


*The Akkadians were Semites, meaning they spoke a language taken from a family of languages called Semitic languages (the word "Semite" is taken from the Hebrew Scriptures---Shem was a son of Noah and the nations descended from Shem are the Semites). These languages include Hebrew, Arabic, Assyrian, and Babylonian. When Sumerian power and civilization ended around 2000 BC, the area came under the exclusive control of Semitic peoples for centuries.

Context, context, context!

I have just finished reading another "assigned" book called "Exegetical Fallacies" by D.A. Carson, research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In my opinion, this is an excellent book. But with one predominant theme being "look at the context!", how could it not be, right? Carson equally takes to task, Baptists, Paedo-baptists, Calvinists, as well as Arminians. Indeed, nobody seems totally immune from making some of the very common biblical interpretation errors that he describes.

According to Carson, word-study errors are much more common than grammatical errors. Because grammar is far more complex and variable than words, one might expect to find more grammatical than word-study errors, but this is not the case. Carson gives the reason---most seminary-trained pastors have enough equipment to generate them, but not enough equipment to make some kinds of grammatical mistakes.

"Perhaps the principal reason why word studies constitute a particularly rich source for exegetical fallacies is that many preachers and Bible teachers know Greek only well enough to use concordances, or perhaps a little more. There is little feel for Greek as a language; and so there is the temptation to display what has been learned in study, which as often as not is a great deal of lexical information without the restraining influence of context."

Carson brings out a total of 16 word-study errors, one of which is the root fallacy. This is the presumption that every word has a meaning bound up with its shape or its components. He classifies this as the most enduring of errors. In this view, meaning is determined only by etymology; that is, by the root or roots of a word. Carson pronounces this to be nonsense. He says this is the same as deriving the meaning of "butterfly" from "butter" and "fly," or the meaning of "pineapple" from "pine" and "apple." He does add three caveats to this, however; 1) he is not saying that any word can mean anything because among other things we can determine its meaning by the context;

"Normally we observe that any individual word has a certain limited semantic range, and the context may therefore modify or shape the meaning of a word only within certain boundaries. The total semantic range is not permanently fixed, of course; with time and novel usage, it may shift considerably. Even so, I am not suggesting that words are infinitely plastic. I am simply saying that the meaning of a word cannot be reliably determined by etymology, or that a root, once discovered, always projects a certain semantic load onto any word that incorporates that root."

2) the meaning of a word may reflect its etymology, but we cannot always assume this; however, he admits this can be assumed more often in such synthetic languages as Greek or German because of their relatively high percentages of transparent words (words that have some kind of natural relation to their meaning) than in a language like English, where words are opaque (without natural relation to their meaning); and 3) he is far from suggesting that etymological study is useless, but that "specification of the meaning of a word on the sole basis of etymology can never be more than an educated guess."

Another word-study error Carson talks about is an appeal to unknown or unlikely meanings. He says that some of these spring from poor research, dependence on others without checking the primary sources, or from the desire to make a certain interpretation work out, and the interpreter forsakes even-handedness.

Carson goes on to talk about logical fallacies. I found this section particularly fascinating. He presents a total of 18 errors here. In number 11 he talks about taking unwarranted associative jumps---"when a word or phrase triggers off an associated idea, concept, or experience that bears no close relation to the text at hand, yet is used to interpret the text." Carson states that this error is very easy to commit in textual preaching, overlooking the old saying that "a text without a context becomes a pretext for a prooftext." For example, one verse often mishandled is Philippians 4:13: "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

"The "everything" cannot be completely unqualified (e.g., jump over the moon, integrate complex mathematical equations in my head, turn sand into gold), so it is commonly expounded as a text that promises Christ's strength to believers in all that they have to do or in all that God sets before them to do. That of course is a biblical thought; but as far as this verse is concerned it pays insufficient attention to the context. The "everything" in this context is contented living in the midst of food or hunger, plenty or want (Phil 4:10-12). Whatever his circumstances, Paul can cope, with contentment, through Christ who gives him strength."

It is in this section of logical fallacies that I started noticing some of Carson's own personal theological prejudices, which became even more pronounced in his section on presuppositional and historical fallacies. But we all do it---it's hard not to. And Carson readily admits it as well.

"But if we sometimes read our own theology into the text, the solution is not to retreat to an attempted neutrality, to try to make one's mind a tabula rasa so we may listen to the text without bias. It cannot be done, and it is a fallacy to think it can be. We must rather discern what our prejudices are and make allowances for them..."

However, by and large I felt he tried very hard not to use this book as a sounding board to vent his own theology.

There is a lot more I could say about this book, it is packed so full and gave me much to think about, but this post is already too long, so I will quit. I do highly recommend this book. And because I have to return this copy to its rightful owner, I plan to run out and buy a copy for myself.

Book assignments

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to make my way through the large pile of books that friends have "assigned" to me. Right now I'm in the middle of reading "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" by Mark A. Noll, Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College. The reason he gives for writing this book in the first place is his belief that it is simply impossible to be, with integrity, both evangelical and intellectual...at least in the United States.

Noll traces the history of evangelicalism in the US from the Puritans until now and concludes that "evangelical thinking in America has just as often resulted from a way of pursuing knowledge that does not accord with Christianity as it has been an 'anti-intellectual' desire to play the fool for Christ." He quotes J. Gresham Machen, a Presbyterian Bible scholar in 1912, to point out the problem with this way of thinking:

"We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer, and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion... What is to-day a matter of academic speculation, begins to-morrow to move armies and pull down empires."

Noll maintains that the American evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian. For example, he says that any "...spokesperson who could step forth confidently on the basis of the Scriptures was welcomed as a convincing authority." This is so often true---a speaker need only be persuasive and claim Scripture as his source, and we herald him as brilliant. Never mind that the guy we heard speak the night before preached the exact opposite from the same portion of Scripture---we don't notice, instead we believe it all.

He also discusses the influence that fundamentalism and pentecostalism has had on the way American evangelicals think. He does bring up some good points here as well, particularly how the mingled influence of fundamentalism and pentecostalism has manifested a kind of ardent supernaturalism today---that, in order to be spiritual, one must no longer pay attention to or think long and hard about the world around them. One example he gives of this is the propensity to attach biblical prophesy to world events, and the rash of best-selling books that inevitably follows any war or cataclysmic event. But of course, this has been happening to one extent or other in all parts of the world since Christ's ascension.

I do agree with Noll---in many areas we have taken the wrong road. However, by and large he builds a straw dog in order to present his own conclusion---that because the Bible isn't always as easy to interpret as it might seem, where science diverges from what the Bible literally says, we must read that particular verse or passage symbolically rather than literally so that science and the Bible are in agreement. For example, Noll proposes that the six days of creation weren't necessarily six 24-hour days but merely periods of time, therefore allowing for Evolution. So, in order to close the gap between what philosophy and the sciences say (at this particular time) and what the Bible says, Noll has decided not to interpret the Bible in a literal, natural, or common-sensical way:

"A biblical literalism, gaining strength since the 1870's, has fueled both the intense concern for human origins and the end times."

"The problem is compounded by the powerful (though usually unobserved) force that an appeal to "normal" or "plain" or "literal" interpretation gained in a Baconian, democratic America over the course of the nineteenth century. Was it not simply self-evident that, if the Bible was God's supreme revelation, the best way to understand the Bible was by using the methods of ordinary common sense open to men, women, and children in all ages? The answer to that nineteenth-century way of framing the question is that, while such common-sense interpretations of Scripture may have seemed self-evident, they were in fact the product of particular circumstances in North American evangelical history."

Granted, interpreting the the Bible isn't always easy, but once you abandon common-sensical interpretation, you throw out all chances of understanding it because who's to say what it really means, then? Who's the final authority? I believe the problem isn't that we're not paying enough attention to the world around us, but rather we're not thoughtful students of the Word. Consequently, we're being "tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine."

As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ (Eph 4:14-15).

"See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (Col 2:8)."

Another "assigned" book I've finished reading is Joel Rosenberg's, "Epicenter" (New York Times best-selling that takes readers through prophecy and current events into the future of Iraq after Saddam, Russia after Communism, Israel after Arafat, and Christianity after radical Islam.) Talk about a complete opposite from Mark Noll's book. But I was wondering, since I read the one book right after the other, does that mean they cancel each other out? I vote, yes.