Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:1

Recently I was talking with a pastor friend from Sacramento area. He told me how in his capacity as a swimming coach, he had gotten involved a conversation with one of the parents, and somehow the conversation gotten around to Bart Ehrman and his bestselling book Misquoting Jesus. This young father was in enamored by Ehrman's books and especially his approach to the study of the Bible and early Christianity apart from the presuppositions of faith. My friend challenged the unspoken assumption that such an approach was somehow more objective and scientific and to be trusted than proceeding from an acknowledgment some kind of precommitment. His challenge brought the young father up short. He pointed out that Ehrman is not proceeding from a neutral perspective of a truth seeker. He is proceeding from a heavy commitment to unbelief (in the sense of disbelief in the truth of historic Christianity). Rather than being open to the possibility that the ancient texts might be historically reliable Ehrman proceeds from a presupposition that they are not. Ehrman is a good scholar, but all scholars operate from a set of presuppositions that guide their research and affect to a greater or lesser extent their conclusions. These presuppositions show forth in his stating conclusions designed to shake the confidence of believers. Ehrman has been criticized loudly and at length by other non-Evangelical and even non-Christian scholars for this tendency, yet he continues to use these tactics with audiences who are vulnerable, while he backs off when talking to scholars.

This brings up the wider question of the nature of truth and knowledge. Since the Enlightenment (roughly A.D. 1650-1800) Western thought has been governed by the presupposition that there is objective knowledge that is available to all reasonable human beings. And that a presupposition of commitment to a faith of one kind or another endangers the objectivity of the individual. (This commitment to radical objectivism is normally accompanied by a materialism that insists that reality is only material—there is no transcendent spiritual reality).

The target of the postmodern revolt against is this Enlightenment/modern commitment to neutral and objective truth. The very concept of objectivity is an illusion. The postmodern critique is, I am convinced, on the mark. (Although the Postmodern answer of radical skepticism of any truth outside “me” is also fatally flawed.) For us as finite human beings there is no God’s-eye view, no cosmic spectator’s gallery, no “view from nowhere.” There is no neutral place where we can all gather and looked at raw objective data. The reason is that all of our knowledge is filtered through a lens, a way of looking at things that we have learned through our language or culture and through our experiences. No one is exempt from these influences. We human beings are, as evangelical theologian Alister McGrath has observed, “condemned to history.”

The idea of “objective facts” in the way that phrase is normally understood is according to Alistair McIntyre an illusion. He states: “Facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth century invention.”

In the same vein, philosopher of science Michael Polanyi has shown that there is an equivalence between faith and doubt. When we hear this, we wonder how in the world this could be true. In our experience we see faith and doubt as the opposites. But Polanyi has demonstrated that t o doubt one thing is at the same time to believe something else!

The idea is that the person who employs the principle of doubt, allowing only the proven facts of public knowledge, will not be deceived by "mere belief." This position when rigorously applied leads to radical skepticism and engenders pride in holding no knowledge as opposed to naively trusting dubitable claims. This whole program is logically fallacious, for as Polanyi has shown, doubt and faith, contradiction and affirmation are, from the perspective of formal logic, logically equivalent.

The skeptical statement 'I doubt THAT' can be restated in a positive form: either ‘I believe not THAT'or ‘I believe THAT is not proven.’ But these statements provoke the question, ‘On what basis do you believe this?’ The answer to this question reveals a framework or support structure of belief that cannot be doubted while at the same time doubting THAT. This structure provides the conditions of doubt but the structure itself is not doubted. Were it doubted the ground for doubting THAT would be removed.

Thus every doubt has a fiduciary structure (i.e. relating to, or involving a confidence or trust ) and is rooted in a set of faith commitments which for so long as they support the doubt, cannot themselves be doubted.

The branch upon which every doubt sits is a belief. To insist on chopping this branch off in the misguided attempt to assume a wholly uncommitted position can only result in self-referential destruction, as the initial doubt itself falls to the floor.

To shift the focus of our doubt means to shift the focus of our faith commitments. The whole enterprise of doubt rests on an uncritical acceptance of and reliance upon a whole framework of meaning. So, doubt is not an objective process. Rather it is highly subjective and rooted in all sorts of commitments beyond the awareness of the doubter. So then, the act of doubting is not avoidance of unproven beliefs. The doubt itself rests upon unproven belief. If one is to commit oneself to the principle of doubt he must ultimately either be reduced to silence, since nothing at all can be proved, or he must be willing to move from one belief structure to another in order to associate himself with any unproven beliefs.

I know this may be a bit technical, but I do think that it is important. In our communities doubt is viewed as the enemy—the opposite of faith, yet faith by its very definition involves putting confidence in the unseen whether God (whom we have not physically seen), or in our friends, family or even spouse (whom we know by how they have acted, but into whose hearts and motivations we cannot directly gaze).

We could go any of several directions at this point. The contrast between absolute certainty and abject unbelief is a false dichotomy. The level of certainty demanded by the skeptics is impossible outside the field of mathematics. We live in a world of contingency, possibilities and probabilities. We cannot prove the existence of God. That is a commitment made on evidence which falls is short of absolute proof. We cannot prove the inspiration of the Scriptures. Again, we trust the evidence as pointing to their divine provenance, (and here there is an intangible—the witness of the Holy Spirit,) but this is not proof in the sense of scientific objectivity (which I believe is an illusion anyway in any case).

To come around to the starting point—the skeptic is not a neutral observer, not a white-coated scientist collecting objective facts and drawing conclusions. He is operating from a set of assumptions which he does not question. He is playing the same game as the believer, only he believes different things.

It is this of which we need to be aware: there is no neutral ground.

Note: In his hilarious and satirical book, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, the late Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) presents us with a scene in which one of the patients of a mental hospital is able to predict the stock prices as for the previous day, having neither seen a newspaper nor TV report, nor having heard any radio news on the stock market nor having had any human contact to give him the information. The hospital administrators recognize this as unusual but are not willing to spend any time researching this phenomenon since the patient is predicting the past instead of the future: old news rather than anything anyone could do anything with. In a sense I feel like this with this post since it involves the film Expelled which came and went a couple of months ago. Yet, I believe the issues touched are still relevant although definitely not cutting edge news. For this reason I am posting this brief article which was featured in the Sacred Saga Spring Newsletter which went out last month.

In this post, I focus on a phenomenon in which we as North American Christians find ourselves embroiled every day: the hostility at the powerbase of our culture to not only the Judeo-Christian God, but to any concept of God. Recently I have written a blog about The New Atheism and the intellectual status of the movement. While Atheism as a movement has according to Alister McGrath (in The Twilight of Atheism) by and large spent its intellectual capital it is still a powerful political force in academia and the media. The whole Politically Correct (PC) movement may in fact be a testimony to the fact that there is no intellectual vitality left, so to hang on to dominance, atheism must resort to the power of coercion rather than persuasion.

Recently, Kay and I went to see the new movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary co-written by and featuring Ben Stein as the interviewer and narrator.

Expelled is not a film about ner-do-well high school students who cross the line. It is instead a look at the PC intellectual climate in the American scientific/academic community which insists that there is only one viable side to any controversial issue (Global Warming, Abortion, Homosexuality, etc.) and hypocritically espouses freedom of thought and speech while actively striving to crush any contrary opinion from being heard let alone entertained. Expelled’s particular focus is the adamant rejection of not only the idea of Intelligent Design (ID) but of even allowing the term to be printed in scientific literature or mentioned in the classroom. Stein’s entree into the debate is through the lens of several prominent scientists who declare that they have lost their teaching positions and been blackballed for their discussion about or support of Intelligent Design.

While the lens of discussion in the film is Intelligent Design, the broader subject is intellectual freedom to explore unpopular ideas, specifically ideas that transgress the reigning scientific orthodoxy. Throughout the film the Berlin Wall acts as the recurring metaphor for the wall that has been erected in academia with those on the East (academia) being monitored by the thought police (adherents to the reigning evolutionary paradigm).

The most controversial section of Expelled explores the connection between Darwinsim and the Holocaust implying a causal relationship between the two. Particularly moving in light of Stein’s Jewishness is his visit to Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp where over a quarter million Jews and other enemies of the state were killed in the name of purifying the master race. Stein contends that the justification for the Holocaust is ultimately rooted in the Darwinian mantra the “survival of the fittest.” Hitler and the Nazis were merely helping evolution by removing the unfit to make room for the strong to breed.

As an exploration of Darwinism (evolution) vs. ID, Expelled paints in broad brushstrokes—so broad that nuanced yet vital distinctions are lost. In this way Expelled presents a distorted perspective. Specifically, the way the material is presented seems to imply that the issue is ID vs. evolution. There is little time spent on the distinction between evolution as a mechanism and Evolution as a materialistic philosophical worldview. While this idea is addressed in passing by John Lennox, Oxford University Mathematician and Philosopher of Science, who discusses briefly the concept of worldview, his contribution is lost in the on-going presentation.

Another problem is that there is no definition of intelligent design—particularly ID as a technical term employed by the movement championed by William Dembski, Michael Behe, Philip Johnston and The Discovery Institute (which is featured in the film). While all scientists who are Christians must theologically embrace the reality of the creator and of design, a great many disavow the program of the Intelligent Design movement because they see that program as leading ultimately to a “God of the gaps” mentality.

The phrase “God of the gaps” has been used to describe the invoking of God as a direct causal agent apart from natural processes (i.e. a miracle) to explain a natural phenomenon for which science is unable (yet) to account. The problem with this strategy is that when further scientific research discovers a heretofore unknown natural mechanism to explain that which had previously been ascribed directly to the hand of God, God gets smaller and less involved in creation.

Apologetically this “God of the gaps” strategy has time and again become an embarrassment to Christians when new scientific discoveries have discredited claims that God had directly intervened in the natural processes. Theologically the strategy involves a practical deism on the part of believers. Day to day, Creation operates by divinely established natural laws. God is transcendent above creation but uninvolved day to day (a practical denial of divine immanence). He occasionally breaks in from above to do a miracle.

I find it highly ironic that one of Expelled’ s major interviewees, evangelical Anglican theologian Alister McGrath, Oxford Professor of Historical Theology (who also has an earned D.Phil. in molecular biology) is a theistic evolutionist as is fellow interviewee John Polkinghorne (Anglican theologian particle physicist, and fellow in the Royal Society). In fact, Stein himself does not reject evolution as a mechanism—rather he rejects that is a process driven by blind chance as opposed to being guided by God.

Christianity Today gave Expelled three stars (out of four). This assessment, I believe, is a bit generous. The framework of the film is purposefully provocative and inflammatory. It employs black and white Cold War footage, particularly the Berlin Wall as a metaphor for the intellectual climate produced by the entrench academic establishment. The film does not plow any new ground, or give any new ammunition for apologetic debates; it does soberly document the suppression of those who question the reigning orthodoxy of atheistic evolution in academia. What is more, Stein gives opportunity for the opposition, many nationally recognized figures whose opinions are regularly sought out for sound bites by the national media, to fully vent their opinions. There is no patching together of clips here. Instead there is extended uncut footage that leaves no doubt as to the position of the interviewee. As one reviewer noted: “They become sputtering ranters, openly championing their sheer hatred of religion.”

I have long been an Augustinian when it comes to the nature of sin and evil. This follows quite naturally from my preference for the Reformed understanding of the radical nature of redemption (I know I am sounding like a theologian here—I plead guilty—but my defense is that I am a theologian). To unpack this a little, the fourth-fifth century church father Augustine of Hippo (in North Africa) was the first in the history of the Church to wrestle in depth with the radical nature of sin and evil. He gives us the account of his personal spiritual pilgrimage in his Confessions which is his own spiritual autobiography. Up to this time the church had, of course, recognized the reality of sin but had never reflected deeply on the radical and pervasive nature of its effect on each of us as human beings. And that even deeds that looked good on the surface could be motivated by less than pure motives (witness the account of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5).

I am tempted to wax eloquent at this point, but I will resist the temptation and instead point you to Philip Yancey’s short article in the current issue of Christianity Today entitled “The Benefits of Brokenness- why I sometimes wish I was an alcoholic.”

Yancey has over the years become a very fine lay-theologian, I would compare him in some respects to C.S. Lewis in his ability to insightfully communicate truth in a way that engages both the mind and heart, and who is not afraid to tackle the sometimes controversial implications of established orthodox truths that we claim to believe.

Again the link is: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/may/32.80.html?start=1  

Be Still and Know That I Am God

Ps 46:10

[Note: I wrote this blog just before my father-in-law had his second stroke the effects of which led to his death a little over a month ago. I have held off on posting this until now because the timing didn’t seem appropriate in light of his death. Now with all those things a bit in the past I believe that there has been sufficient time to return to consider this topic.]

As one who has grown up in the western intellectual and rationalist tradition and one who has been trained as an academician I want to know, to understand, and to be able to explain, measure and quantify life and even faith. I am not alone in this—this is the tradition in which I was trained. My master’s degree is in New Testament Greek exegesis. When I received that degree I was able to sight-read (i.e. without looking up many words in the lexicon) most of the New Testament. I have been taught to look at the background of the text and to analyze the grammar to squeeze every drop of meaning out of the text (and maybe at times even more than was there!). As I turned my attention to Historical Theology in my Ph.D. work I began to look at other theological traditions outside of my personal heritage. I saw in them a similar devotion to the rational understanding of God and his world and work. But along the way I came in contact with one major Christian tradition that had a different emphasis—Eastern Orthodoxy. The Eastern Orthodox tradition is predominantly mystical rather than rational. The Orthodox focus on the experience of God rather knowing about him. We could say “knowing God” rather than “knowing things about him.” In theological language Eastern theology is primarily apophatic, a theology that describes who/what God is not rather than the way of Western theology which is primarily kataphatic describing in positive assertions who/what God is.

Mysticism and an apophatic understanding of God are naturally connected although they are not technically the same thing. The apophatic perspective confesses that God is transcendent and infinite. He cannot be known as he is in himself, while mysticism “ focuses on a spontaneous or cultivated individual experience of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception, an experience often unmediated by the structures of traditional organized religion or learned thought and behavior.” (Wikipedia s.v. “Negative” Theology)

I must admit, I have always been skeptical on some level of the truth of “experience.” Yet over the years I have had to admit that our modern evangelical aversion to experience has at the very least locked the Holy Spirit between the covers of the pages of Scripture. In the early 1990s I delivered a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “The Witness of the Spirit in the Protestant Tradition” which became a chapter in Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit. After delivering the paper there was a time for Q & A. One of the questioners, an old acquaintance was very uncomfortable with the idea of the witness of the Spirit as it had been advocated and practiced within the broader protestant tradition asked, “What are the controls on the witness of the Spirit?” Another asked, “How does this differ from the Mormon’s “burning in the bosom?”

The aversion to “spiritual experience” in our tradition was a key motivating factor for Dan Wallace and me to do Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit? Our rationalistic approach to truth had left us unprepared to face the severe trials of life which we individually were experiencing at the time.

All this is by way of introduction to an amazing video which was forwarded to me by a cousin who had heard of my father-in-law’s stroke. This video is amazing in that the lecturer is a physician who is herself an expert on the brain and who experienced a stroke herself. She describes what she experienced and how her perceptions changed in different phases of the stroke. She also describes the physical make-up of the two halves of the brain and the way each half functions. I have always been skeptical of the validity “right brain” “left brain” talk, wondering if it were not psychobabble or only metaphorical. What brain research has demonstrated is that “right brain” “left brain” talk describes a literal reality. As I watched this video I immediately began to ponder the implications this has for how we related to and experience the presence of God in our lives.

I am still pondering, but I am convinced that there is something here that has implications for our spiritual lives and experience.

I urge you to carve out about 18 minutes to watch this video.

http://www.microclesia.com/?p=320

 

 Herbert Thomas Fuqua

Wycliffe Bible Translators'  First Agricultural Missionary 

This past several weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster for us.  I reflected on the stroke that Herb suffered in my last blog.  He was recovering and ready to go home from rehab a week ago last Thursday when he suffered another stroke and was rushed back to the hospital. This stroke was major and affected his motor functions--he was not even able to swallow.  His DNR (do not resuscitate ) order put in place over 10 years ago specifically prohibited a feeding tube.  We were informed that it could take six weeks for him to starve to death.  We were stunned and numbed.  Kay desperately wanted to go to be with the family but couldn't take the time from work.  She was so thankful that she had gone to see him after the first stroke.

Then one and 1/2 days later we got word that he had suffered another stroke and slipped into a coma, death was imminent.  We immediately booked a flight to Dallas, the earliest flight we could find was on Saturday morning.  He passed away  during the wee hours on Friday morning.  We arrived in a whirlwind of activity and preparations.  The viewing at the funeral home on Sunday afternoon, the grave side service at the National Cemetery in Dallas (Herb was a marine and a WWII vet) and then the Memorial service on Tuesday morning.  Kay claimed her right as first-born to deliver the eulogy.  It follows below.

My Dad

by

Kay Lynn Fuqua Sawyer 

We are here to celebrate! My Dad and my brother David’s daughter Kelsey are having a grand homecoming celebration in heaven. Dad loves to have fun and I’m sure Kelsey can show him a few more things about celebrating.

It’s because of Jesus Christ that we have a reason to celebrate. He took on my Dad’s sin and paid for it…wiping it all away, and bringing him into right relationship with God. The same for all of us. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice and love, my Dad’s life was a grand adventure.

Such a grand adventure it has been. When I was a child life in the Amazon jungle was just everyday normal: going barefoot despite poisonous snakes & large insects, swimming with the piranhas, riding bikes all over, climbing banyan trees and mango trees. As I have been an adult in the US raising my own family, my parents’ chosen life has become amazing to me.

When my Dad was 12 a group of people came to his church and held special evangelistic services. It was at one of those services that he gave his life to Jesus. My dad always had a dream to be a cattle rancher. But then God called him to be a missionary. We will pick up the story when Dad was in the Marine Corps. He was stationed in So. California. One weekend when he had leave he was walking around the town of Santa Ana when two men invited him to come to church. He accepted their invitation and went back several times. It was there he met a certain young lady named Grace. She greatly impressed him with her gifts of hospitality and organization. We will continue the story in Dad’s own words…

“After my discharge from the Marine Corps I went home to Colorado. My folks were away for 6 weeks leaving me to attend to the irrigation of a ten acre peach orchard. It was spring time and the water had just been turned into the main irrigation canals. I found myself spending the days leaning on a hoe handle making sure the water followed the creases through to the end of each row.

“In the house I found a little book which contained the words of Jesus lifted out of the four gospels. So I picked it up and put it in my shirt pocket to have something to read during the day. Well, as I read that little book in the succeeding days, the Lord began to work on me, and I didn’t want to get involved in missionary work. However, I remembered two of the men at Calvary Church in California who had given devotionals at the service men’s breakfasts had said that the Lord had tapped them on the shoulder when they were young and they turned the other way, and later regretted that they had not responded.

“There were 2 big things I did not want to do. I didn’t want to give up my dream of having a cattle ranch some day, and I had tried college after finishing high school and I had not done well, so I didn’t want to face that again after having been out of school for 5 yrs. by then. It got to the point that as I read that little book, the Lord would have a direct answer to every objection I brought up, just as clearly as if He were standing there talking with me.

“Finally I bargained with the Lord that since there was a junior college in town, just a mile and a half away I could go give it a try, and since I had not done well before perhaps I would flunk out and be off the hook. The first thing the next day I rode by bicycle down to the college which I knew nothing about, walked in and found myself there on the last day of registration for the summer session. There was no turning back now. I had to register to keep my end of the bargain. The Registrar asked if I had my discharge papers. I pulled the sealed envelope out of my pocket not knowing what was in it. He took it back to his office for a few minutes and came back saying that he could give me 69 hours credit for a general education test that I had taken on a whim one time when I was bored in the Marine Corp. So I spent the summer trying to get back into the books. . . the Lord won since I was not flunking at the end of the quarter.

“I transferred to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and finished college in Agriculture with good grades, since that was the only subject I knew very well or was interested in. Grace at the same time was finishing Biola, we had continued to write. We were married in June 1950 when we both completed our schooling. The following fall we enrolled at Multnomah School of the Bible grad course so that I could get some Bible courses. I had decided to try for agricultural missions so during the school year we wrote to all the missions that we knew about. Only one answered and they said they didn’t need any agricultural man.”

So my Dad decided to obey God’s call, even though he had to give up his dream. Dad continues…

“Knowing about Wycliffe we decided the next logical step would be to take their linguistics courses. So we went to the Norman Oklahoma summer course. Toward the end of the program, Uncle Cam Townsend, Wycliffe’s founder was there for a few days and announced that he would like to speak about the need for support personnel. I went to the meeting where he mentioned the need in Peru for an agricultural man soon. It wound up with him inviting us to sign up with Wycliffe at the end of the summer 1951.”

And so the adventure began. Dad thought he had given up his dream, but God gave it back to him a hundred fold!

In Dad’s words,

“I started from 1300 acres of virgin jungle, a few borrowed cows, and many samples of pasture grasses. I enjoyed 34 years of lots of fun and challenge there in Peru, and was able to send over 400 head of calves to Indian communities and sell 1500 head of breeding stock to ranchers in the area.”

“…it took 20 years to clear, fence and seed 500 hectares…one year we had 98 men, women and children picking five tons of grass seed…we also had a fence building crew that built one kilometer of 4-strand barbed wire fence per day. We built a total of 40 km of fence dividing the 500 hectares into 29 pastures and lanes.”

Dad had to develop cattle that would withstand the jungle heat. The good beef cattle stock from the US would grow old and die in the jungle within just a few years because of the heat. The local scrub stock could stand the heat, but did not produce good beef. So over the years and with great care and skill Dad began to cross some of the more heat resistant stock with the good beef stock and came up with a winning mixture of Brahma, Zebu and Santa Gertrudis. He set up and ran a training program to teach the Indians how to plant, care for and graft citrus trees, rubber and cacao trees; how to care for and raise chickens; and how to care for cattle and manage pasture. They worked on the ranch crew along side regular crew members and had a daily class that taught them how to throw a lasso, throw a calf and tie its feet, to throw an adult animal, to build a corral, what to do in case of abnormal birth, how to build fence, how to treat animals for disease and worms, how to plant and manage pasture.

But why do missionaries need an agricultural and cattle program? Many of Dad’s fellow missionaries wondered the same thing. Civilization encroaching into the jungle was changing the living patterns of the semi-nomadic Indians in Peru, forcing them into a more settled existence, for which they were not prepared. They were looked down upon by the Spanish-speaking Peruvians around them as ignorant. They were getting the Scripture in their own languages to meet their spiritual needs, but they also needed material help in the complicated processes of socio-economic adjustment to the new ways of life. The tribespeople needed to become self-sustaining, and become productive communities and gain the respect of their Spanish-speaking neighbors. As one fellow missionary put it: “We have found that the Indians are not interested in listening to the man who has no help for them besides his words.”

Cattle were a status symbol because down through the years the only cattle around were owned by Spanish-speaking community leaders called patrons. The agricultural program that Dad set up was created to help the Indians sustain their dignity as civilization moved in around them, by enabling them to compete in the production of crops and livestock. Dad was able to start the tribal communities with good quality stock that had these leaders wanting to buy the first bull calf from them! All of a sudden the tribesman had gained a position of influence where he had traditionally been looked down upon. A Wycliffe missionary had these observations after visiting one of the cattle project sites: “One of the Indian men was trained in Herb’s course in cattle and pasture management. He returned to his village, planted acres of pasture, put in a beautiful three wire fence that would have received the admiration of a west Texas cattleman, and then the first Brahma Santa Gertrudis bull was flown out in a small plane. Beginning their cattle project not only adds prestige with their neighbors, but also an economic base for the new society. It is the only cattle project on the whole river.”

Another fellow missionary said “… the cattle project has contributed to the reception of the translated Scriptures as an evidence that we are really interested in the people.” Dad’s contribution to bringing God’s Word to the Indians of the Amazon jungle was to give them the means they needed to survive and even thrive in the encroaching civilization. This opened their hearts so they could receive God’s words in their own language.

Several years ago my Dad gave me a list of some of his favorite verses. On that list is Psalm 37:3-9 & 23. These verses are a good description of my Dad.

“Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;…For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land…If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”

Being the first agricultural missionary with Wycliffe was not easy. Many people did not understand why Dad was there. Then later, there were many of our Peruvian neighbors that tried to make things difficult. But Dad never got upset about it. He was confident that this was God’s work and God would somehow take care of it. “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this.”

Dad was also the picture of contentment. He loved the work God gave him to do and did it with all his might. Prov 19:23 “The fear of the Lord leads to life: Then one rests content, untouched by trouble.” Phil 4:12 “…I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” He was content in Peru developing a cattle and agricultural program from scratch. And he did it with excellence. He was content in Columbia to bring back to life the neglected cattle program, in the midst of terror threats from the guerillas. The stock he developed there were sought after by the famed Colombian vaqueros because of their quality. He was content to work on the maintenance crew at the International Linguistic Center. Even there he found ways to minister to those around him by picking up food for those who could not get out, helping with repair jobs in people’s homes. He was always eager to learn and his desk was piled high with things to read. Contentment.

I used to love going up to the farm to sit on the coral fence and watch and help with whatever was going on. Many times when I arrived on my bike I would find Dad in the farm office at his desk reading his Bible. God’s Word meant so much to him that he committed his life to helping get it into the hands of people who had never heard God speak their language before. He kept several small Spanish Bibles in the farm office to give to cattlemen from the surrounding area that came to talk with “don Heriberto” about how to manage pasture, or what was the best grass seed, or what blood lines he used to get such good quality stock.

During the dry season, wild fires in the pasture land were a big concern for Dad. He would constantly scan the horizon hoping not to see the telltale billow of smoke. 500 hectares (1300 acres) was a lot of land to protect. Fires started from the sun beating down on a glass bottle in a field, by accident, or by arson. He would try to find help to fight the fire, but if none was available he would fight it by himself. (This greatly improved mom’s prayer life!) One time he got so dehydrated fighting a fire that he looked around desperately trying to find something that could quench his thirst. The only thing he could find was a green pineapple. You don’t eat green pineapple unless you are really desperate. Well he was, and he ate it. It took all the skin off the inside of his mouth.

Another time he was way out in the pasture looking for a new calf. He had not seen the cow, who was great with calf, in a few days, so he knew he had to find that new little calf. It had to be treated with medicine so the flies and bugs would not infect it. Sure enough, after awhile he found the cow who was noticeably thinner than she was a few days ago. Now finding the calf could take a little time in the tall grass and bushes. One thing any cattle man knows is NEVER get between a cow and her new calf! So Dad kept a weary eye on the cow as he searched for the calf. Well, evidently he inadvertently got between the cow and calf. The cow came charging and Dad when running desperately searching for a tree to climb. He found one and scooted up it as fast as he could. The only problem was it was a thorn tree with thorns an inch across at the base rising about an inch into a sharp point. But he had to stay there until the cow got bored and wandered away.

Dad had to deal with tropical disease in the cattle, cattle rustlers, and snake bites on the cattle, and even a few times big cat claw marks across the back flank of some lucky cow. Some of his cattle, especially the Brahma, were ornery. So he always carried a sturdy stick that was a little shorter than he was, to let them know who was boss. Many times he was challenged by an “ornery critter” and twice ended up being flown into Bogotá or Lima to the hospital, having gotten the short end of the stick, so to speak.

When the tractor, mowing machine or other equipment broke down, Dad could not call the nearest John Deere dealership for a new part. He had to make his own parts. He was very ingenious and could always figure out a way to make it work.

Growing up in the Amazon jungle was just normal to me. I loved the tickle fights after dinner with Dad, doing our gymnastics tricks on the living room floor, stroking the ocelot after Dad shot in our chicken coop, riding on the front of his BMW motorcycle between his strong arms, teasing Dad about his white legs and brown arms the two times he took me swimming, talking Dad into playing Monopoly or Wahoo and being soundly beaten, hearing Dad chuckle at the story Mom was reading to us, the bucking bronco barrel he made for us. I did NOT love so much having Dad take a bite of my dessert every time I dilly-dallied while eating my vegetables at dinner!

I am so thankful and blessed to be the daughter of Herbert Thomas Fuqua. He is my Dad… always will be.

Prov 20:7 The godly walk with integrity; blessed are their children after them.

Kay Fuqua Sawyer (oldest child of Herb & Grace)

In April of 1966, Time magazine set a stunning precedent. From its inception Time had every week in its cover story featured an individual. That week, rather than seeing a familiar picture or drawing of an individual in the news, the cover was black and in large red letters was the question “Is God Dead?" This was of course during the mid-60s, and the early salvos of the "God Is Dead" theologians had just hit the market. I was a freshman in high school at the time and did not understand what the controversy was all about. After all how could God as an eternal being die? The whole issue did not make any sense to me. What I have since learned, of course, is that these theologians were being purposely provocative. Their statements were much more existential statements about the way we live our lives on a day-to-day basis, than whether an eternal being whom we refer to as God had literally ceased to exist. They had in view specifically, the idea that God as we had historically understood him was irrelevant to the modern world. This proposal was in fact a radicalization of an observation that the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer had made during World War II. In his writings, he spoke of, “a world come of age;” in other words, a world which in its own perceptions did not need God.

Western society has come a long way since the mid-1960s. The recently ratified constitution of the EU specifically avoids any mention of Europe's Christian heritage and the fact that European Society, with all its liberal values, arose out of a Christian worldview. As a civilization, or as a political confederation contemporary European society has been called the first society in history founded upon the principle of atheism. (This comment is not to deny the state-sponsored atheism of communism which was imposed by a radical political minority.) One of my former students, who is employed, at one of the leading high-tech firms in the Bay Area is looking at the possibility of doing Ph.D. work at Oxford. He recently spent a couple of weeks in England talking with college representatives there. Upon his return he commented to me about the total secularization he experienced in contemporary English culture. In England for a politician to invoke the name of God is unthinkable, whereas here in America, we still demand of our politicians some kind of statement of belief in a deity. As secular as our society has become and as anti-Christian as many of us feel it is, we are a bright and shining light when compared to the level of secularism in Europe.

There is a new frontal attack on the very idea of God by the current crop of “scientific atheists.” These include Richard Dawkins and his book The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchins, God is not Great, (Dawkins and Hitchins are both Brits) and Sam Harris, Letter to Christian America. We as theists and Christians are increasingly feeling like we are under siege by the forces of secularism. Indeed, a decade ago Mike Regele and Mark Schultz published The Death of the Church (Zondervan) noting trends in society and predicting that if there is no change within the next several decades the church in America will look like the church in Europe.

With all this in the background it is perhaps jarring to pick up books like Dinesh D’Sousa’s, What’s So Great about Christianity?, and Alister McGrath’s The Twilight of Atheism to find out that rather than shriveling up and dying theism generally and Christianity in particular is exploding worldwide. It is atheism that is in retreat on the larger canvas. The intellectual capital of Atheism has been squandered and it is increasingly being viewed as passé.

McGrath traces the intellectual history of atheism, its inception, rise and unexpected fall in the wake of the slow death of the modern age. D’Sousa addresses issue by issue the arguments of the contemporary militant atheists giving intellectual ammunition to theists for the legitimacy of their position.

These works together provide the reader with a context and analysis for the situation in which we find ourselves as well as resources to allow believers to defend their faith against a foe bent on the destruction of not only Christianity but and vestige of theism.

Driving home from church my cell rang. “Hi Jim, this is Mom (Kay’s mother, Grace). I wanted to let you know that Dad has had a couple of TIAs (a "warning stroke" or "mini-stroke" that produces stroke-like symptoms but no lasting damage). At the time Herb (Kay’s Dad) and Grace were at Kay’s sister’s house about an hour away from their home. They called Kay’s brother’s wife, Carol, who is an RN. She told them to get him to the hospital quickly. Herb did not want to go to the hospital so they called a friend who is an emergency room surgeon. He came over and examined Herb, and advised them to go to the hospital. But, he wanted to go home and wait until Monday morning and see his own physician first. Monday morning he was taken to the hospital and diagnosed as having suffered a stroke. Kay kept up on his condition from half a continent away. By Monday afternoon her gentle mild-mannered Dad was aggressive and combative. He was not lucid and had to be restrained. By Monday afternoon he was fairly unresponsive and a CT scan showed that this was far more than a TIA. He had four blood clots in the brain one of which caused a cerebral hemorrhage, which was approaching the area of the brain that controlled respiratory function.

At that time the family talked with the physician about a DNR (do not resuscitate) order. Herb had made a living will eleven years ago and instructed that he not be put on life support. Despite this, his physician was reluctant to go in that direction. Herb’s condition was not yet critical.

As Kay got the word that Herb had slipped out of his right mind and that the stroke involved a massive hemorrhage that was still spreading, she called me from work. “I have got to go. Please call and get me a ticket to Dallas.” I found a flight for 12:30 A.M. Tuesday and she arrived in Dallas early Tuesday morning. She went directly to the hospital. Herb’s condition had worsened. Now the physician agreed that the DNR was appropriate. Shortly after she arrived at the hospital Herb was taken for another CT scan. Kay’s description was that it was as if they took his body for the scan. He was totally unresponsive. While he was having the scan the family: Grace, Kay, David (brother) & wife Carol, Verna (sister) & husband Steve held a family meeting and all agreed on the DNR. They prayed together and once again placed Herb in God’s hands.

Shortly after he was rolled back into the room and was situated in his bed Herb opened his eyes, sat up straight in bed and “with a twinkle in his eye said ‘Hi!’” (those are Kay’s words). He didn’t know what had happened but was lucid and recognized everyone, although he could not say their names, and then said “Where’s Jim?”

On Wednesday he was up and walking with a walker as well as feeding himself. He could not remember what had happened earlier in the day, and had trouble speaking. Over the past couple of days he has continued to slowly improve, but still has a long way to go. He has an underlying atrial fibrillation that could create new blood clots that could dislodge and cause another stroke. So far the doctors have been unable to bring this under control.

Needless to say this week has been an emotional rollercoaster: the unexpected emotional shock from the stroke which then turned into sadness and hopelessness in that there was nothing we could do, and grief expecting that Kay’s father would live for only a few more hours or days. This was followed by joy in Herb’s unexpected awakening from what we expected to be terminal unresponsiveness. Now we rejoice that he is still with us, but life for him and Grace has changed forever. Will they be able to continue to live in their home? How will Grace be able to handle the added burden of caring for Herb? How much of what was lost in the stroke will he regain? etc.

On Sunday morning during our discussion of the topic of healing I observed that we who live in the post-Enlightenment western culture do not vitally believe that God heals or intervenes. We believe, because we believe the scriptures; but we look at the world technically and scientifically and see only the material. In non-western cultures we hear stories of unbelievable miracles. We (kind of) believe because we trust the veracity of those who have seen. Yet on a deep level we often do not totally embrace with our whole being the truth that God is here with us (despite the promise that He will never leave us or forsake us) and that He is ultimately in control (after all we can discern weather patterns of high and low pressures and understand the mechanism from a scientific perspective).

We as western Christians live like (by this I do not mean consciously adopt this perspective) we do not need God on a day to day basis. Our lives are predictable, in large part because of the technology we possess and the stable political situation in which we live. But the scientific and political blessings—and I am absolutely convinced that they are blessings—are a two-edged sword; they also dull our conscious dependence upon the Lord in day-to-day living. The danger we face and to which virtually all of us succumb is becoming self-satisfied like the church of Laodicea (Revelation 3), and viewing our situation through the eyes of circumstances rather than through the eyes of faith much as did Elisha’s servant (2 Kings 6).

I hate uncertainty in life. Not that I want total predictability—that would be boring. But I prefer living life with an underlying security and predictability, a Disneyland existence where I can experience the thrill but not the danger. In short, I am a typical western Christian. It is in times like Kay & I are living through now that push me (us) out of our area of safety and predictability and into a place of being forced to trust—trust day by day in the Lord’s work in the lives of our loved ones and our own.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

-Matthew 28:19

One of my former students from years ago called me last week wanting to sit down and catch up. He graduated seventeen years ago and I haven’t seen him since, although we have had phone conversations a few times, the last about a dozen years ago. His journey has been unexpected. He came to seminary after about twenty years of church ministry in a large church in the San Francisco Bay Area. There he had been part of a large staff. He wanted to become a senior pastor, hence the seminary route. When finished he expected, like so many that the doors would open and he would settle into a church preaching the Word and ministering to people’s needs—but it didn’t work out as planned. Instead of being called to a church he got rejection after rejection. This caused him to look at what God had called him to do. He shared with me his exploration of spiritual direction (he walked away from that because it was to Jungian and too eastern mystical).

He traveled abroad and taught in Argentina where he saw a country that was economically devastated and without hope. There he saw the Evangelical community which had been marginalized socially and politically living out their faith and sharing hope with a country in despair and without hope. He met leaders there that transformed his vision of the power of God to work in the hearts and bodies of individuals and also to transform a culture.

He has traveled to Africa several times and has seen the power of God at work there in ways that we as Westerners can’t begin to imagine. In Mozambique, a country that is incredibly poor and without any significant infrastructure God is working in ways that it is hard for us as technologically savvy westerners to comprehend. This is a country so technologically backward that the people cook with charcoal (which has been a contributor to the country’s deforestation). Here he has witnessed a work of God in which over seven thousand churches have been founded in the past few years. He has seen people journeying for miles pushing themselves to the point of collapse from lack of food and water to come and hear the Word of God proclaimed.

He has seen some cases of a spiritual hunger and desire so great that people would bypass food and water and risk physical collapse in order to get to meetings on time and to be nourished spiritually. The church is exploding so rapidly the leaders are unable to keep up with the pace.

A couple of weeks ago I was having coffee with another former student who is a pastor at a church in the area. During the wide ranging conversation the topic of the growth of the church in the developing world came up. In this conversation the lack of leadership in the church in Africa came up. He told me of practices among African Christians that shock our western Christian sensibilities. (It is easy to overlook the fact that our culture is one that has been born out of a Christian worldview and that other cultures do not share some of our most basic assumptions of right and wrong.) Again the context is rapid church growth and the lack of leadership. But in this case the problem was one of abject poverty among women, particularly widows in the church. They have no means to support themselves. Christian women have no means to get food to survive, let alone thrive. They go to the pastors of their churches (who are generally the tribal leaders/chiefs) and they are given food, in exchange for sex. (I have confirmed this account through a couple of different sources.) Shocking—yes. Strange, before we say yes we need to understand that this is a practice deeply engrained in the tribal culture. As the gospel has penetrated the culture people have heard and responded, but have remained untaught. Particularly the leadership has not been challenged with this inconsistency of cultural practices with the implications of the gospel.

Transformation of culture by the gospel has been seen throughout history, but transformation must come from within as opposed to being imposed from without. On the one hand transformation comes from minds and hearts that are open and receptive to the redemptive message of the gospel. But that transformation does not occur in a vacuum, there must be teaching (with modeling-discipleship) of all that our Lord commanded.

Two incidents have placed themselves as point and counter-point this past week. First, to my great delight I was asked to teach Hermeneutics (biblical interpretation) at A W. Tozer Theological Seminary next year. For the first several years I taught in seminary I taught this subject—this was back when I was one of only two full-time faculty members at Western Seminary’s San Jose Campus. I had to give the class up when our faculty expanded to a third member whose major field of study was Bible. It was with a sense of loss that I no longer taught Hermeneutics because (1) I enjoyed the topic immensely and (2) it is a great introduction to the field of theological studies, both systematic and historical—my areas of expertise. The second incident was a call from my youngest son who is a music major at UC Davis. Although a music major, he is taking a class in Irish Literature. In that class he had to write a critique of a play written by an early 20^th century Irish author that challenged the conservative societal mores, and whose views, as communicated through the play caused a riot at its first public performance.

I was delighted and my hermeneutics training kicked in. We looked at the historical background of the author and the play, made the language flow and carefully constructed an argument. The piece looked good. Several days later I got a call from my son. His professor wanted him to redo the paper focusing, not on setting the play in its own day and understanding what the author wanted to say to his audience, but by focusing on what the play meant today, to my son. How did he interpret it? Literally he wanted my son to “read into the play” his own meaning. In classical Biblical interpretation this is called eisegesis (a “reading into the text” what the reader wants to see there, apart from what the original author intended to communicate) as opposed to proper interpretative procedure—exegesis, a “leading out” or making explicit the meaning that the author of the text was communicating.

My old friend Walt Russell, Professor of Bible at Talbot School of Theology tells of a similar experience he had while teaching seminar in How to Interpret the Bible at a local church.

As she worked her way toward the front of the room, I could tell the young woman was really angry at me. Her eyes were blazing and her jaw was set. This was surprising because the setting was fairly benign: speaking to a large evangelical church’s singles group on “How to Interpret the Bible.” At the beginning of my two times with them, however, I was already offending the troops! I braced myself.

Twenty-four year-old “Janet” (not her real name) was angry at my emphasis on seeking to discover authors’ intentions when we read their texts. She was an evangelical Christian and a second grade teacher in a public school. She prided herself in helping her 20 students learn to love literature. She would read them a story as they gathered around her, and then ask each child, “What does the story mean to you?” She prodded them to come up with their own unique meanings. With such strong encouragement, the class of 20 would eventually have 20 different meanings for the one story. Janet sensed that I was a naysayer about such “love of literature.” Pouring a little emotional gasoline on the fire, I said, “Janet, you’re certainly doing your part to insure that these 7 year-olds will never recover from a radically relativistic view of meaning!” Now I had her full attention.

Actually, Janet’s and my little story about where a text’s meaning resides is really part of a larger, more tangled story that’s over a hundred years old. It started with some American literary critics early in the 20th century who shifted the focus from the author to the text. This literary perspective, later called “New Criticism,” banished the author and focused instead on a “close reading” or “explication” of the text. When created, a text supposedly becomes an artifact with autonomy and a life of its own. The autonomous text’s meaning is discovered by studying its organic unity. New Criticism triumphed in the United States from about 1930 to 1960. As the text moved into the spotlight, authors were shuffled to the periphery.

But to understand Janet’s and my little discussion we need to know the story from 1960 to the present. This is because the movement away from authors did not stop at the text. Rather, it continued its movement all the way to us as readers. In the last 40 years, reading and interpreting has been redefined from seeking the intentions of authors through reading their texts to continually recreating the text through the presuppositions of readers. Since the 1960s the emphasis has shifted to the astonishing assumption that readers not only create the meaning, but also in some sense create the text itself through the contouring of their presuppositions! With this view none of us can really share the same text!

The classical view of meaning is that a text is a window into an author’s intentions. For example, we peer through the window of the biblical text to interpret what the Divine and human authors intend to say. By contrast, the Postmodern sense is that a text is a mirror by which readers generate meaning. Janet was holding up a mirror to her second graders and encouraging them to generate their own meanings in light of their own images. The irony is that this does not teach a “love of literature,” but rather fosters a narcissistic fascination with one’s own thoughts! If this is how Christians interpret the meaning of the Bible, then we are trapped within our own mirrors — our own set of presuppositions. We are not hearing God’s voice, only our own. We are trapped inside our own heads.

http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000825.html

I would heartily recommend Walt’s article and the three follow-up articles.

Within the Christian community we might look at how we view and understand the text. Do we look first at “what it means” (i.e. what was the author trying to say) before looking at “what it means to me” (i.e. application), or do we open the text and look for a message that is unrelated to the historical and contextual meaning.

I have studied interpretation for decades, and have kept abreast of the postmodern turn in culture. Now my son’s experience in his literature class is a living example of the problem. A University English Professor self-consciously separating a text from its author and its historical situatedness. The text was totally independent of the author and meant whatever the reader wanted it to mean. The current technical term for this is “reader-response;” but by whatever term, the text as a medium of the communication of cognitive content, using this method of interpretation, is dead. Employing a “reader response” hermeneutical philosophy there can never be any self-transcendent understanding. We as readers construct meaning out of whole cloth rather than learning from or even understanding that an author had something s/he wanted to tell us. We are, to use Walt’s words, “trapped in our own heads” unable to hear the message of an author, and if we are reading the Bible, unable to hear the voice of God in His Word.

God, Genes and the Gospel

Last week I had the opportunity to go to UC Berkeley to hear a lecture by Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project and author of the bestselling The Language of God. Kay and my two nephews who live with us and I left the house about an hour before the lecture was scheduled and made the 16 mile drive to the campus. Since it was evening parking was not a big problem. We finally arrived at Wheeler Hall with about ½ hour to spare. I had figured that that would be plenty of time, but lo and behold Wheeler Hall was packed out. Two overflow auditoriums were opened to accommodate the crowd. Technical difficulties struck. When the lecture began we had video but no audio! The crowd waited, some more patiently than others. The promise was that it would take about 10 minutes to get everything squared away. Ten minutes became twenty. Attendees with a mixture of frustration, anger and disappointment started leaving. I was not willing to give up. After about 30 minutes we got sound, faint but we could hear. The packed auditorium was about half full by now, but the perseverance was worth the wait.
 

Collins’ lecture lasted about an hour and one-half and was divided between a discussion of some of the exciting discoveries made through the research which he directs and a significant amount of time discussing how it was that in his 20s he made the journey from atheism to faith. A first rate scientist, a committed believer in Jesus Christ, and one who believes that the genome demonstrates the viability of the reality of the evolution of life.

From a classic perspective Collins would be called a theistic evolutionist. This is a position that is not commonly seen among American Evangelicals today, but was held by leading American Evangelical scientists and biblical scholars and theologians in the late nineteenth century, including B .B. Warfield, the architect of the contemporary Evangelical understanding of inerrancy. Warfield’s writing on the subject has been printed in a volume entitled, Evolution, Science and Scripture: Selected Writings (Baker, 2000). If you are interested in exploring this issue further I would suggest that you peruse David Livingston’s, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought.

The position held by most in our theological camp (i.e. Six-Day recent Creationism) was, as recently as the 1950’s dismissed as naïve, by Merrill Unger, a leading Evangelical Old Testament scholar and professor at Dallas Seminary, and biblical inerrantist. Nonetheless recent Creationism has come to dominate the understanding of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism over the past half –century, and has been promoted as a foundational Christian doctrine, the denial of which is seen by many as a denial of salvation itself. A recent Gallup poll reported that 45% of the American public (not just Fundamentalists and Evangelicals) hold that man was created by God in his present form about 10,000 years ago.

Nonttheless, it was fascinating to hear Collins present his view as well as defend the truth of Christianity in a manner reminiscent of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. I would highly recommend setting aside a bit of time to watch the webcast or to download the podcast.

The Veritas Forum has posted the lecture online as a webcast. It is available at http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=22970

It requires RealPlayer to view; the audio can be downloaded as a podcast.