On Pentecostals and Paint: Destiny Church and Rainbow Crossings

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“Then the men of the town said to Joash, ‘Bring out your son, that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asherah beside it.'”

Judges 6:30

Recently, our Pentecostal friends from Destiny Church have been in the media’s crosshairs. Though I have my theological differences (I lean Reformed), I respect their members for their courage. The NZ Herald reports one incident in Gisborne where protestors and counter-protestors clashed over a drag queen story reading. Part of Destiny’s protest involved painting over a rainbow crossing. A similar incident was recorded involving a rainbow crossing on an Auckland street. Tangentially, even if you wanted to promote LGBTQ values, a flag would be a better idea than a rainbow crossing. The latter is only likely to confuse motorists or injure pedestrians. Of all the bad ideas, a rainbow traffic light is probably the only rival to a rainbow crossing.

Both instances of painting over a rainbow crossing have been labelled as hate crimes. I will spend some time considering this idea and then idolatry. Firstly, the notion of a hate crime is seemingly arbitrary. If someone walks into a church, curses all Christians, blasphemes the Triune God, and then opens fire, then that is likely motivated by hate. But even then, I do not see why categorising it as a hate crime is particularly helpful. It is first-degree murder, and that is much clearer than calling it a hate crime. However, regarding the Destiny members, one cannot discern whether they were motivated by hate. To put it crudely, excluding inferring from outward actions, there is no hate-o-meter.

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The Cross, Conversion Therapy, and the Countries Down Under

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“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…”

Ephesians 2:1-2A

Introduction

Recently, Australian news sources have been abuzz with plans for a bill outlawing conversion therapy to be passed in New South Wales. Though I do not think that we have any direct access to what the Australian bill contains, looking at our (New Zealand’s) conversion therapy act passed in 2022 will surely do some good.1 I will briefly provide an overview of the bill in this section, list two objections against our bill in the second section, and then address a deeper issue, namely the fundamental conflict of the Christian Gospel and conversion therapy bills.2

The explicit aim of the New Zealand conversion therapy bill is twofold: to “recognise and prevent harm caused by conversion practices” and to “promote respectful and open discussions regarding sexuality and gender.” A conversion practice is defined as a “practice, sustained effort, or treatment” that “is directed towards an individual because of the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” and which is performed “with the intention of changing or suppressing the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

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Abortion and Peter Singer: Singing out of Tune

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“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”

Psalm 139:13

It is not a controversial fact that life begins at fertilization.1 For instance, a Princeton University webpage lists fifteen academic sources that support this point. One of the quoted sources clearly states that “fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed”.2 An article from PubMed states that “Biologists from 1,058 academic institutions… assessed survey items on when a human’s life begins and, overall, 96% (5337 out of 5577) affirmed the fertilization view [human life begins at fertilization]”.3 I could go on.

So, the abortion debate is now centred on philosophical considerations. One case study will do. Peter Singer, Emeritus Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, answers whether he would save a mouse or human being from a fire: in “almost all cases [he] would save the human being”. Interestingly, the reason for this saving is “not because the human being is human” but because “it matters whether a being is the kind of being who can see that he or she actually has a life — that is, can see that he or she is the same being who exists now, who existed in the past, and who will exist in the future”. Singer’s criteria for something that is worth saving involves some kind of temporal awareness. To explicitly connect this answer to abortion, “no newborn baby is a person” because newborn babies do not have “a sense of the future”.4

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Of Toolsheds, Marsh-Wiggles, Atheism, and the New Year

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“…in your light do we see light.”

-Psalm 36:9

Of Toolsheds and Marsh-Wiggles

A few minutes before the dawn of the New Year, I found myself on a steep and crowded street that overlooked most of the Auckland skyline. Most people (I included) aimed phones at the skyline in anticipation. A vague countdown began, and then the vast horizon blossomed with fireworks. I was struck by the sheer number of people fixated on recording, swaying their phones to and fro like wands by which memory and atmosphere could be captured.

The aim of this article is an indictment of modernity. As Michael Ward states: “The incessant spiritual orchestration that accompanies [the universe], that actually constitutes it, and that is normally inaudible, is now also considered incredible. The cosmos therefore comes to be regarded as nothing more than a very elaborate machine when in reality it is tingling with life…'”1 Ward claims that the medieval conception of the universe as a “festival not a machine” is now beyond belief.2 Our world has become disenchanted. In the words of Saturn by Sleeping at Last, we have lost the reality of, “How rare and beautiful it is to even exist”.

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On Christmas: Reflections on Homelessness

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Audio reading of the following article

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seem them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

Hebrews 11:13

“In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you…”

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Homelessness

Home is a valued thing. Think about it. We all know John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads, where he sings: “Country roads, take me home / To the place I belong”. In nostalgic homesickness, the narrator1 describes West Virginia, where “Life is old there, older than the trees / Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze”. He is constantly reminded of this home: “The radio reminds of a home far away / Driving down the road, I get a feeling / That I should have been home yesterday…”. Even the Bible speaks of home, for in Psalm 137, the Psalmist says: “By the waters of Babylon, / there we sat down and wept / when we remembered Zion.” When the Israelite’s captors demanded that they sing, their reply was: “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” They were not home. They could not sing.

Or, ignoring the blasphemy and the terrible lyrics, observe how Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes casts home in a romantic light: “Home is wherever I’m with you”. Loving You’s Like Coming Home by Don Williams echoes this sentiment: “It’s a lonesome and endless highway I’ve been searching for so long / After all the miles I’ve travelled loving you’s like coming home”. Moving to Augustine’s Confessions, the African bishop describes his friendship with a childhood friend, “sweet to me above all the sweetness of that my life”. The friend was close to death and was baptised when unconscious. When he regained consciousness, Augustine attempted to joke with his friend about the baptism, but “he shuddered at me, as if I were his enemy”. The melancholic punchline hits: “A few days after, during my absence, he had a return of the fever, and died”. The friend died without reconciliation. Augustine’s world was rocked: “My native country was a torture to me, and my father’s house a wondrous unhappiness; and whatsoever I had participated in with him, wanting him, turned into a frightful torture.”2

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Seven: After Darkness, Light

Hubble snap a beautiful supernova explosion some 160,000 light-years from Earth
Hubble snap a beautiful supernova explosion some 160,000 light-years from Earth by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Ephesians 2:8-9

“The White Witch? Who is she?”
“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

After Darkness, Light

I must immediately confess that I have gone back to a previous passage. I originally intended to proceed through the text without skipping to and fro. I must also confess that the topic discussed in this article has very little to do with the Narnia quote. In other words, because it is Reformation Day, I have essentially highjacked this Narnia series to discuss Reformation doctrine, which hopefully will not cause too much distress. The only semblance I can draw between the Reformation and the quote above is that just as Christmas followed winter in Narnia, light followed darkness in the Reformation. Post tenebras lux is the Latin phrase for this; after darkness came light. The obvious dissimilarity is that Lewis intended for Christmas in Narnia to symbolise the consequences of Christ’s earthly ministry. So, the connection of this article to the Narnia quote may be extremely tenuous, but as the New Zealand saying goes, “she’ll be right”.1 My goal in this article is twofold: to briefly discuss Reformation doctrine and secondly, what the Reformation can teach about our times.

Justification by faith alone (sola fide) is called the material cause of the Reformation. This language, which borrows Aristotelian categories, refers to how sola fide was the stuff at the heart of the Reformation. Just as marble is the material cause of a Renaissance statue because it is the stuff out of which that statue is made, sola fide was the stuff that constituted the Reformation. Without it, you had no Reformation. Martin Luther called sola fide the “chief article”.3 John Calvin declared that it was the “principal ground on which religion must be supported”.4 Moving to contemporary times, R. C. Sproul proclaimed that “[w]ithout the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the gospel is not merely compromised, it is lost altogether”.5 J. I. Packer wonderfully articulates that “to declare and defend God’s justification publicly as the only way of life for any man was at once an act of confessing their [the Reformers’] faith, of glorifying their God by proclaiming his wonderful work, and of urging others to approach him in penitent and hopeful trust just as they did themselves”.6 Scripture alone (sola scriptura) was the formal principle of the Reformation, giving shape and form to the Reformers’ arguments.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Five: Always Winter and Never Christmas

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“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

Ecclesiastes 1:2

“The White Witch? Who is she?”
“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, THe Witch, and the Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

Always Winter and Never Christmas

When Lucy asked Mr. Tumnus who the White Witch was, he answered with two intriguing statements. The first was that the White Witch had dominion over all of Narnia, and the second was that this dominion resulted in Narnia’s perpetual winter. Before we examine the Biblical undertones of these statements, we should consider the Narnian winter. Of course, this will be mainly conjecture, but we can imagine that it was not the benign winter that belongs to modern Christmastime, where children build snowmen, make snow angels, and go sledding.1 That is Aslan’s winter, not the White Witch’s winter. Aslan’s winter is a joyous occasion during which we celebrate that we have been counted white as snow (Is. 1:18).

Presumably, the Narnian winter was a frigid assailant, with chillingly sharp winds that pierced the Narnians’ core. Maybe it obscured visibility in a whirlwind of heavy snow, sometimes hailing so heavily that the younger, more restless Narnian creatures looked outside their houses in a mournful yearning and deep indignancy, accepting no comfort from their parents. Perhaps the winter attacked so bitterly and fiercely at times that Narnians often contracted lethal diseases. The eternally white landscape potentially became tiresome, something awfully dull and plain, causing the older Narnians to reminisce on the emerald verdancy and widespread cornucopia that once marked their lands. The idea of winter would not have been fun for the Narnians, unlike how it appears to those in countries who do not see much snow. Winter would have become a malevolent, oppressive, and tedious thing.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Four: Service under the White Witch

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“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Ephesians 2:1-3

“Like what I’ve done,” said the Faun. “Taken service under the White Witch. That’s what I am. I’m in the pay of the White Witch.”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, THe Witch, and the Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

Service under the White Witch

In our current cultural climate, freedom is valued as a kind of highest good. This valuing can be found in the feminist or LGBTQ cry for “reproductive freedoms” or “sexual liberation”, which includes abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, abhorrence of traditional Christian views on gender and marriage, and so on. Another example is the Marxist cry for the proletariat to throw off their chains inflicted by capitalism and the unjust bourgeoise. Eastern religions teach freedom from the flow of life and ceaseless suffering as we are subsumed into Hinduism’s Brahma or Buddhism’s Nirvana. Secularists call for freedom from the restrictive bonds of religion and its allegedly toxic impact on families and society. Humans desire freedom. Contrarily, the Christian view is considered harsh, restrictive, Victorian, Puritanical, and a list of other pejoratives. Our culture claims that being a Christian is a stultifying, soul-crushing affair.

But the question, Biblically speaking, should not be whether we are enslaved to anyone or anything, but who or what we are enslaved to. The Apostle Paul presents only two alternatives: we are slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness (Rom. 6:15-23).1 Logically, this dichotomy means that there is no middle ground. There is no neutral space of agnosticism when approaching God. To be a slave to God means that we give our all to Him and that we pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10) not with an empty formality but with a deep desire to align our will more with His, and from then on to do His will. This notion of slavery is one that seems deeply repulsive, but really it is not one in which the slave’s identity is crushed under the domineering spirit of the master. Biblically, submission, servitude, or slavery to God is the opposite: it is one wherein our identity is found in Him and our service for Him. More on this later.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Three: The Bad Faun

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“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Jeremiah 17:9

“I don’t think you’re a bad Faun at all,” said Lucy. “I think you are a very good Faun. You are the nicest Faun I’ve ever met.”
“Oh—oh—you wouldn’t say that if you knew,” replied Mr. Tumnus between his sobs. “No, I’m a bad Faun. I don’t suppose there ever was a worse Faun since the beginning of the world.”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

The Bad Faun

To many, the Christian view of sin is repulsive. It is not fair, they reason, that we are born sinful. In fact, it is ludicrous that we are born sinful: we are all born in either a state of amorality, untouched by sin, like with Rosseau’s notion of the “noble savage”, or we are born with a potential to create our own meaning and engage in authentic existence, which is the existentialist notion, or we are to exercise our autonomous reason to act for the common good, which is the humanist notion. Or we are to engage in self-actualisation, connecting with the universe, acting in manifestation, as the New Age spirituality would claim. Or whatever they would claim. Whatever that means.

This optimistic view of humanity is found in Christianity. Pelagianism states that man without God’s grace can be saved. Semi-Pelagianism takes a step towards orthodoxy by saying that man is intrinsically sinful, but it still places some emphasis on the cooperation and initiative of man in salvation. Total depravity is the Biblical view that both Arminians (at least one-point Calvinists in this regard) and Calvinists affirm. The sole initiator in salvation is God. Of course, Arminians invoke prevenient grace and reject other flowery points, but it is neither the time nor the place to discuss this.

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Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part Two

Barbie doll, blond beauty toy

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

John 1:4

Articles in this Series

Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part One

Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part Two

Feminism

In this section, I aim at a twofold goal: to provide commentary on the opening scene of the Barbie Movie, thereby leading to a discussion of demeaning children and abortion, and to present a Biblical case for the role of men and women.

The trailer or first scene of the movie begins with a landscape shot, shifting to depicting little girls playing with dolls and prams. The girls sit on a barren, rocky landscape. “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls.” says the narrator dramatically. Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, a symphonic poem named after Nietzsche’s nihilistic philosophical work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, begins to play and continues in the background. The narrator continues: “But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls until…”. The music crescendos. A giant Barbie dressed in a black-and-white swimsuit appears. She lowers her sunglasses, smiles at the girls, and winks. The next shot immediately depicts a girl shattering a doll with a different doll. Another doll is thrown into the air.1

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