Author: Glen

Anne Rice (the vam­pire nov­el­ist) has become a Chris­t­ian.

“For the last six months,” she says, “peo­ple have been send­ing e‑mails say­ing, ‘What are you doing next?’ And I’ve told them, ‘You may not want what I’m doing next’.” We’ll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chron­i­cler of vam­pires, witch­es and—under the pseu­do­nym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encoun­ters, will pub­lish “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” a nov­el
about the 7‑year-old Jesus, nar­rat­ed by Christ him­self. “I promised,” she says, “that from now on I would write only for the Lord.”

Inci­den­tal­ly, her nov­el is get­ting rave reviews.

The advance notices say she’s pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews’ starred rave pro­nounces her Jesus “ful­ly believ­able.”

You might also want to check the Wikipedia arti­cle on her.

I recent­ly had occas­sion to be pum­meled at Halo 2 by Dylan, who is quite pos­si­bly the world’s worst veg­e­tar­i­an.

You see, he hates veg­eta­bles. He thinks they taste nasty.

He does­n’t have any con­vic­tions about the moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of veg­etable con­sump­tion. He does­n’t seem to have any wor­ries about the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of a car­niv­o­rous soci­ety. It’s not a spir­i­tu­al thing for him. He does­n’t real­ly fit into any of the stan­dard veg­e­tar­i­an cat­e­gories.

He just does­n’t eat meat. He appar­ent­ly sur­vives on assort­ed junk food.

Why does he live this way? Because he was raised a veg­e­tar­i­an and now can’t digest meat and does­n’t want to go to the trou­ble of train­ing his body to process meat again–I’m not quite sure what that would entail, but it sounds as though unpleas­ant diges­tive moments are involved.

I just thought that was hilar­i­ous. A veg­e­tar­i­an who hates veg­eta­bles. 🙂

By the way, you can buy that bumper stick­er at http://bumperart.com/ if you’re a bumper stick­er sort of per­son.

I received an email from a stu­dent ask­ing whether it was okay to “put God to the test.”

I just came back from a strange church ser­vice, and I have a ques­tion. Late­ly, I have been learn­ing quite a bit about God up there. The pas­tor’s wife shout­ed out loud that the Lord wants us to “test” him in prayer, mean­ing see if our prayers are answered. I was con­fused about this state­ment, as I recalled the temp­ta­tions of Christ, when Satan tempts Jesus, and Jesus quotes scrip­ture, “thou shalt not test the Lord your God.” Am I get­ting caught up in a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, or is there some mer­it to this claim, which I do not under­stand? I can see how God would want us to pray and ask for proof in life, but I feel such a strong injus­tice to this thought. Any thoughts?

As I fre­quent­ly field this ques­tion or a vari­ant there­of, I thought my response might be of more gen­er­al inter­est.

Are we to test God or not?

In Deut 6:16 we are com­mand­ed not to put God to the test. In Malachi 3:10 God tells us to test him.

Is this a con­tra­dic­tion? No, not at all. The Hebrew word in Deuteron­o­my 6:16 is nac­ah http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/words.pl?word=05254
where­as the word in Malachi 3:10 is bachan
http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/words.pl?word=0974

So what we have is two words in Hebrew that can both be trans­lat­ed “test.” Some tests are for­bid­den and oth­ers are com­mand­ed.

So what are we for­bid­den to do? Jesus tells us not to tempt God in Luke 4:12 (quot­ing Deuteron­o­my 6:16). If we look up Deut 6:16 (“Do not tempt the Lord your God as you did at Mas­sah”) we will notice that it is a ref­er­ence to Exo­dus 17, where­in the Israelites demand that God do a spe­cif­ic thing to prove he is with them. That’s the same temp­ta­tion Satan set before Jesus: make God per­form an action of your own choos­ing.

How­ev­er, we read in Malachi 3:10 that God desires us to test his good­ness and his faith­ful­ness. We are to expect God to per­form actions of his choos­ing.

That makes sense. In the first case we are giv­ing orders to God, in the sec­ond case we are receiv­ing orders from God. In the first case we are try­ing to be God our­selves, in the sec­ond case we are allow­ing God to be God.

Per­haps we could phrase the dis­tinc­tion thus:
“Don’t try to tell God what he ought to do, but expect God to do what he has promised to do.”

So in your spe­cif­ic case, it all depends on what sort of prayers you’re expect­ing God to answer.

Did that help clear it up?

In my most recent ser­mon at Chi Alpha I made a state­ment in the Q & A time that “plea­sure is an intrin­sic good.”

At least one stu­dent has been think­ing about what I said and sent me an email:

I was read­ing Boethius’s The Con­so­la­tion of Phi­los­o­phy and a com­ment remind­ed me of some­thing you said last week at XA. You said some­thing to the effect of plea­sure in and of itself is intrin­si­cal­ly good. Now I total­ly under­stand what you were say­ing and what you weren’t say­ing. But I was won­der­ing if you could shoot me some Bible vers­es to back it up.

So I wrote up a reponse which I thought might be of gen­er­al inter­est:

First, the Bible nev­er explic­it­ly teach­es that plea­sure is an intrin­sic good. The Bible does­n’t real­ly deal in such philo­soph­i­cal cat­e­gories. Rather, the notion of plea­sure as an intrin­sic good is a pre­sup­po­si­tion through­out.

Vers­es that occur to me in this con­text:

Deut 14:22–27, where cel­e­bra­tion is pic­tured as wor­ship (see also Nehemi­ah 8:10 where cel­e­bra­tion is por­trayed as more appro­pri­ate response to God than fast­ing)
Psalm 104:14–15, where God cre­at­ed some things in the world for the sole pur­pose of plea­sure
The book of Eccle­si­astes in gen­er­al. Espe­cial­ly a few pas­sages like Ecc 11:7–10 and Ecc 9:7–10, where the Teacher encour­ages us to enjoy life. As with every­thing in Eccle­si­astes you’ll have to spend some time study­ing to make sure you feel that he’s endors­ing plea­sure in the con­text of the whole book (the Teacher is con­fus­ing, to put it mild­ly).

And I see strong hints that plea­sure is an intrin­sic good in that joy is a Bib­li­cal virtue (Gal 5:22, Neh 8:11), that many pas­sages pre­sup­pose (or com­mand) our delight in God (John 15:11, Psalm 1:2, Philip­pi­ans 4:4), and that plea­sure is a short­hand for the good­ness God offers us (Psalm 16:11).

In fact, there is a whole host of pas­sages that com­mand or pre­sup­pose our joy: Deut. 28:47; 1 Chr. 16:31,33; Ps. 32:11; Ps. 33:1; Ps. 35:9; Ps. 40:8,16; Ps. 42:1–2; Ps. 63:1,11; Ps. 64:10; Ps. 95:1; Ps. 98:4; Ps. 97:1,12; Ps. 104:34; Ps. 105:3; Isa. 41:16; Joel 2:23; Zech. 2:10; Zech. 10:7; 2 Cor. 9:7; cf. Acts 20:35; Philip­pi­ans 3:1. Heb. 10:34; Heb. 13:17; 1 Pet. 5:2.

That lat­ter list, inci­den­tal­ly, was most­ly lift­ed from some essays by a pas­tor and the­olo­gian named John Piper. He has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on “Chris­t­ian Hedo­nism” and these two brief essays are excel­lent intro­duc­tions to the sub­ject: We Want You To Be A Chris­t­ian Hedo­nist, Broth­ers, Con­sid­er Chris­t­ian Hedo­nism!

And to clar­i­fy, the fact that the plea­sure of even a sin­ful action is intrin­sicly good does not make the action itself good. Nor does it even make the fact that you derive plea­sure from it good (con­sid­er, for instance, laugh­ing at a per­verse joke or the less com­mon case of necrophil­ia). All that I assert is that plea­sure is intrin­sicly good and that we need to appre­ci­ate that fact. Some Chris­tians treat plea­sure as some­how bad for you and are instant­ly sus­pi­cious of any­thing fun or enter­tain­ing. That’s just bad the­ol­o­gy. The fact that some­thing pro­duces plea­sure should cause us to give it the ben­e­fit of the doubt rather than assume it guilty until proven inno­cent.

This has been a pub­lic ser­vice announc­ment.