Letters

Courtesy of China Aid

The Wonders of Myth

Our culture has a deep hunger for mythology. In the midst of mythical films like Star Wars, mythically inspired card games like Magic: The Gathering, and mythically based video games like Diablo 2, we as Christians have a responsibility to respond to this cultural desire on a mythic level. Lewis knew this. Particularly, he and J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, recognized the deep impact of myth. It was the shared love of Norse mythology that sparked a friendship between Tolkien and Lewis and was perhaps one of the most important steps on Lewis’s path to Christianity.

I hope that Christians no longer shun the myriad mythologies throughout history and current culture, but embrace them as the human search for the ultimate factual historical mythology—Christ’s life, death, resurrection.

But let’s enjoy the stories, the heroic journeys, the “subcreation” (as Tolkien put it), without making them Christian allegories.Jonathan A. WatsonArcadia, California

In “Myth Matters,” Louis Markos claims that the central goal of New Age thought is to restore “a spiritual focus to a society that generally resists any serious consideration of the supernatural.”

Basing an analysis of Lewis’s mythos on this assumption leaves out another very spiritual dimension of his program—that is, what he called “macrobes,” or demons, whose program is to transform the human race into the “un-Man.”

To assume that New Ageism merely reflects a hunger for spirituality in a materially obsessed culture is to overlook that it may really be a demonic attempt to chain us to a bondage begun in the Garden of Eden. In Perelandra, Lewis gives a philologist (a wordsmith, no less!) the job of crushing the head of the serpent in the Garden, showing that Christians are commissioned not merely to engage the culture but also to save it from the most dangerous deceptions.Randy BeelerPastor, Chriesman, Liberty, & Milano United Methodist Churches Caldwell, Texas

As Louis Markos says, C. S. Lewis helps us, children of a modernist world, to imagine a world far different from the one given us by modernity; a different world that is alive with its Father’s presence.

Having imagined such a world, which (even if devoid of fauns and witches and talking horses) is still populated by amazing creatures (puffins, humpback whales, red efts!), we can realize this world is much closer to the God-created one that really exists than the reductionistic model presented to us by modernity.

I applaud Markos for challenging contemporary writers and other artists to follow the example Lewis set, pursuing an authentic expression of Christian faith in terms beyond simple, prepackaged meaning and thinly veiled sermon. The revival of our capacity for wonder (“dangerous wonder,” as Mike Yaconelli calls it), is every bit as essential as Markos claims—not only for effective communication of the gospel, but also for our own engagement with the gospel as mere Christians.Brian D. McLarenPastor, Cedar Ridge Community Church Laurel, Maryland

Saving Christian Fiction

Her novels about redemption in small towns are refreshing but hardly the response Christians need to make against secular culture. If there is ever going to be a Christian writer to head a revival in the literary arts, then they need to speak the language of postmoderns like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon. Christian writers need to start putting their characters into mainstream secular culture, where they are tempted by commercial desires and not small-town life.

If there is hope in the Christian market, then it is in the writer who can perform such a task.Scott La CounteAnaheim, California

Leaving Lawsuits Behind

I wonder how many non-Christians are going to say, “Wow! What a great testimony! I want to be a Christian!”?Margaret E. GoodwinManchester, Missouri

Colson and Culture

Through their study of the errors in missions history and through their theological work on culture, missiologists have adequately demonstrated that it is exceedingly dangerous to privilege some forms of style and dress as more godly than others.

To those who do not share Colson’s tastes in musical and fashion styles or his glorification of the armed services, the comments on hairy legs, sandals, and degraded secular musical styles are nothing but outdated and amusing. The classism present in the phrase “society’s bottom-dwellers,” however, is alarming and offensive.

As someone gifted by God with a healthy coat of leg hair and a propensity toward shorts-wearing, I would ask Colson to restrict his critique of culture to spiritual and moral issues, and leave matters of personal preference alone.Stephen BushKansas City, Missouri

I am a 24-year-old youth pastor, and when I read Charles Colson’s “Slouching into Sloth,” I was on an airplane wearing “shorts exposing hairy legs, and toes sprouting out of sandals,” but I was not giving place to a slothful attitude.

I agree with Colson that our society has fallen into a coarseness, neither right nor proper, that is creeping into many spheres of culture. Instead of marginalizing the rest of culture that does not agree with us about what we wear, watch, and listen to, though, let us clothe ourselves in the virtues of humility and love—apart from superficial appearances—and seek to reach people where they are.Jay McCumberHope Church St. Louis, Missouri

If Charles Colson considers oxfords more Christlike than sandals, perhaps he should take a closer look at what footwear was fashionable in A.D. 30.Laurie EdwardsLebanon, New Hampshire

Closing in on Openness

In addition to the Arminian and Eastern Orthodox traditions mentioned in “Truth at Risk” as affirming human freedom to reject God’s grace, the Roman Catholic tradition—both before and after Augustine—could be added to this list. In fact, even the Lutheran Book of Concord affirms the possibility of rejecting grace after salvation.

I’m not asking you to change your own position on grace and the human will, but you might learn at least this from John Wesley: “In the essentials, unity. In nonessentials, liberty. In all things, charity.”Carey VinzantClinton, Mississippi

The six leading openness theologians have attempted to take cover under the umbrella of “the Eastern Orthodox Church, Wesleyans, and Arminians.”

This cover is demonstrably not available for their claim that God’s omniscience does not include advance knowledge of the future decisions of free agents. In this respect they differ widely from sound Eastern Orthodoxy, Arminius and his close successors, and all true Wesleyans.Roger NicoleOviedo, Florida

Life’s Okay, God’s Okay

The author’s perspective, however, describes reality more from the vantage point of observation than of revelation. In facing life’s seeming inequalities, Mark emphasizes faith as doing the right thing. But what is the right focus of faith? It is surely that God is not only sovereign but also good.

The Scriptures appeal to the faith that God “rewards those who seek him.” What kind of God do we seek? One who asks me to accept his seeming fickleness and arbitrariness, otherwise referred to as “sovereignty”? One who appears “to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow”? Or one who wants me to believe that he is good and wants to bless me? For those who doubt, “that person must not suppose. … (he) will receive anything from the Lord.”

Is it not more helpful to know and love God because of his love and goodness? Does it not encourage faith to believe, with the Psalmist, “that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living”?Roy MayfieldCarnation, Washington

When reading Mark Buchanan’s “Life Is Unfair (and That’s Okay”), I was struck, oddly enough, by the words of philosopher John Dewey in The Quest for Certainty: “The thought that the values which are unstable and unwavering in the world in which we live are eternally secure in a higher realm. … and that all the goods which are defeated here are triumphant there, may give consolation to the depressed. But it does not change the situation in the least.”

I, like Buchanan and unlike Dewey, affirm that complete fairness will ultimately be found in heaven. But what of our call to do justice and love mercy (Micah 6:8)? Does not God’s Spirit empower us to fight evil in this lifetime? Should we not be seeking cures for diseases that kill 4-year-old children?

I’m sure that Buchanan agrees. As Christians, however, we need to be wary of any theology that could encourage us, even inadvertently, to be complacent about the evils of this world in the name of our very real hope in God’s future deliverance.Lora WiensJersey City, New Jersey

Missions and Good News

I came away from the review with a new awareness and respect for Stan Guthrie’s biblical perspective and practical understanding of the mission task that faces the church today. I look forward to reading more Guthrie and less “dangerously wide” commentary from those who start on the wrong foot.David StraversExecutive Vice President The Bible League South Holland, Illinois

Referring to John chapter 6, Stan Guthrie states in his book review that “Jesus certainly would put evangelism ahead of social ministry, if a choice must be made—and he did.” This is a very strange thing to say when Scripture clearly says something quite different.

Any attempt to separate evangelism from social ministry is like trying to separate body from soul. The two always go together: evangelism without social ministry is not evangelism and vice versa. Both Matthew 25 and John 4 indicate that to separate these two things is to miss the whole point of good news.

What is good news to the poor? To quote John Stott in the April 2 issue [“The Quotable Stott“], “The gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving” and “social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.”

Good news to the poor is more than words about the good news; it is the reality of good news expressed in word and deed.M. Laurel GrayEl Cajon, California

Commendable Condiments

But the extended puff for DE translation with which I am set back-to-back implies that this type of paraphrase yields accuracy beyond what the puff calls formal equivalence (FE) and I call essentially literal (EL) renderings, which go word-for-word as far as possible. This is not so. The DE procedure, however skillfully practiced, is limited in what it can do and loses in precision, nuance, and cultural focus as much as it gains in vivid and speedy readability.

As a preacher and teacher of the Bible for half a century, and now as general editor of the soon-to-appear English Standard Version—an FE/EL team job that seems to me as distinguished of its own kind as the NLT is of its—I am very much aware that this is so. I see DE versions as introductory, preparing serious minds for renderings and disciplines of study closer to the very words of God in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and to the cultural frames within which revelation was given. This is not to denigrate them, but to locate them.

I expect to go on reading the NTL as salt, mustard, vinegar, and pepper for my soul, but for full-scale encounter with what goes under the condiments to continue looking elsewhere. So, I think, should others.J. I. PackerVancouver, British Columbia

Courtesy of China Aid

God’s Truth

It would be much more appropriate for the church to approach with trepidation the possibility of a Christian history. One of the standards frequently applied to establishing bridges between scientific truth and the Bible has been the standard of truth—all truth is God’s truth. Having been humbled by my share of failed attempts to integrate psychological constructs as truth, I would caution the church that truth in history may provide a mirror that many of us are loathe to examine too closely, as it may require us to recognize numerous shortcomings in our efforts to embody our Lord’s message to the surrounding culture.

With this caution in mind, however, I pray that we can try in humility to read such a history, examine ourselves in that light, and grow in the recognition of our need for his grace—just as I continue in the struggle to apply psychological truth to participate in the healing of broken lives.Philip SmithCortlandt Manor, New York

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