Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog

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An article in this month’s Commentary, by Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin, speaks of “Crimes, Drugs, and Welfare–and Other Good News.” Apparently not everything in our culture is going to hell (as I suggested in my blog entry of September 24, 2007). Indeed, Wehner and Levin point to decreasing numbers of teenage pregnances, increasing test scores in schools, lower numbers of abortions and divorces, and a drop in violent crime.

The authors suggest that a combination of opinion-shaping and policy-making are responsible for the changes. Well, maybe. But not perhaps the opinions and policies they have in mind.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful for their tidings. It certainly is good news that there is some good news.

Some of us historical types have been warning for quite a while, to be sure, that history does not proceed in single, straight lines–or circles. Just as some “leading cultural indicators” have shown that some aspects of contemporary North American culture are worse–from unthinking boorishness in parks and cinemas to a widespread acceptance of fornication–other indicators have shown for a generation that some aspects of culture are better, such as how our society treats handicapped people, or people of other races, or people without property, or people who aren’t men.

Still, the question is why–why some things are improving. And I’d like to know why Wehner and Levin do not even mention the provocative thesis of economist Steven Levitt et al., popularized in his book Freakonomics (2005).

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A month ago I showed my film-making son Trevor the bizarre and troubling movie by Terry Gilliam, Brazil. Trevor recently wrote about how much he disliked the film, especially its ending, and how, a month later, he’s still thinking about that film and its message. And he’s glad he saw it after all.

Check it out here.

As we pick up on this discussion of repentance and forgiveness, it is important to understand that repentance and forgiveness can be performed unilaterally.

For the victim, forgiveness offers freedom. Again, we must disagree with those who teach that forgiveness must not be granted without repentance. To insist that the victim withhold forgiveness until the offender repents actually serves to victimize the offended person twice: first by the offense itself and second by holding the victim in thrall to the offender by keeping her attached both to him and to the offense until he chooses to repent—which he may never do. Indeed, in some cases, people have been victimized by offenders who have died: Are they never to enjoy the peace that comes from forgiving the other?

No, the victim can cut herself or himself loose from the burden and corrosion of anger, vengeance, fear, and other horrible feelings arising from the offense by sincerely forgiving the offender. She is now free to walk away from this horrible part of the past and heal.

Similarly, an offender can truly repent whether or not the victim will forgive. In fact, a scandalous teaching of the Christian faith is that one can repent of one’s sins before a third party and receive forgiveness. The victim herself doesn’t even need to be there. How can that be right?

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I write today from Wheaton, Illinois, in Chicago’s western suburbs, where we are helping middle son Joshua begin studies at the Conservatory of Music at Wheaton College. We drove down and over from Vancouver via Interstate 90, thus traversing Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois–with stops at Yellowstone Park and the Black Hills. I hope to write about some theological and religious questions raised for me in the comparison of how we are treating “nature” in both of those places (briefly: very differently, and in bad and good ways in both, in my view).

We intend to return via I-80, thus traversing Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, part of Utah, Idaho, and Washington again, with a brief stop to visit the Mormon sites in Salt Lake City.

After Labour Day, then, I expect to be back in the normal groove and to post something substantial shortly thereafter. In the meanwhile, I wish you a pleasant end of summer and beginning of fall. Having narrowly escaped destruction in winds approaching 90 mph here in Wheaton yesterday, please receive that wish as more than a pleasantry!

Yesterday I sent to New York my latest manuscript–about 570 double-spaced pages of a book whose working title is Making the Best of It: Christian Discipleship in the Real World–to be published by Oxford University Press likely early in 2008. I’ve pushed hard to make the June 1 deadline, and I’m going to take some vacation now.

So I’ll leave off blogging for a fortnight. Thanks to the hundreds of you who have been reading and recommending this blog, and to the special few who offer comments!  As I take this time off, I’m going to reflect on this blogging experience (started last December) and seek God’s guidance as to whether to continue. Thanks for praying for me in this regard, if you’re inclined to do so. And I pray for you a fine June, until we connect again here in cyberspace.

I have taken down the two posts I had on this blog about Southwestern Seminary and its president, Paige Patterson. I have done so not because my opinions have changed, but because it has become apparent to me that my way of voicing those opinions has distressed some people I do not want to distress. Furthermore, I have become less and less sure in my own mind that the sarcasm I used in those posts was edifying for anyone involved.

These kinds of issues make me sad and angry, and I often don’t observe the apostolic injunction to “speak the truth in love” when I am sad or angry. I’m not confident that these posts met the apostle’s test, so I have yanked them. And I apologize to those who were offended by their tone, which was intended to amuse and, yes, provoke, but not to seriously offend–not even Brother Patterson himself.

One more thing: I am glad to say no one at Southwestern or at Regent has asked me to do this. I have removed these posts on my own initiative and according to my own conscience. There frankly is far too much wounding speech around these gender discussions and I regret adding in any way to it.

I normally stay away from commenting on the convulsions of the Anglican Communion, whether here in the Diocese of New Westminster, whose bishop is a heretic and schismatic (by the standard definitions of those terms), or in the Anglican Church of Canada, which tolerates such behaviour, or in the Anglican Communion worldwide, which is wracked by controversy over the legitimacy of homosexuality (ostensibly) and a lot of other things, such as heresy, schism, power politics, racism, and more (fundamentally).

I have belonged to Anglican congregations in Winnipeg and Vancouver, and have lots of contacts in Anglican churches in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., but I am not a confirmed Anglican and so I rarely speak up about what are “family problems” in someone else’s “tribe.”

Speaking of “tribe,” however, I am moved to headshaking by the recent appointment of Mark MacDonald, already an Anglican bishop, to the newly-created post of National Indigenous Bishop in Canada. According to the Anglican Journal, Bishop MacDonald will have “pastoral oversight over all of Canada’s indigenous Anglicans no matter where they live.”

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NOTE: The following post contains links to material that Christians, and other people who are respectful of religious belief, will find disturbing.

The latest dark fruit of scientist-cum-proselytizer Richard Dawkins’s not-too-bright crusade to convert people from faith in the God of the Bible to faith in the god of scientism is a gambit by some American atheists to get young people to risk damning themselves to hell.

A group called the Rational Response Squad–inspired, they say, by Dawkins–has offered The Blasphemy Challenge: Film yourself blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, post the video on YouTube, and receive a free DVD of their documentary, “The God Who Wasn’t There.” (This video “proves” that not only was Jesus not divine, but he also didn’t exist at all–which latter point will take some proving, given the overwhelming evidence for Jesus’ existence from the ancient world.)

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GEEZ magazine has recently offered what they call a typology of contemporary evangelicalism. We pedants would prefer the term “taxonomy”–since typologies set out ideal types while taxonomies classify real-world instances–but hey: GEEZ is too hip to use an odd word like “taxonomy.”

Anyhow, GEEZ puts me in a category they call “liberal evangelical.” And some of their readers have contacted me to ask me what I think of that categorization.

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