First, what does is mean to be conservative?

I don’t ask in a political sense. I’m not asking in any sense, if that’s possible. Just generally. Conservative. What does it denote? Is it something I should want to be or shouldn’t want to be?

In my background, conservative is a good quality, and I should admit on the outset that I tend strongly in this direction. I think it means something like this: I prefer the orthodox to the unorthodox (and certainly the heterodox), the status quo to change, the past to the present, the established to the innovative.

Is this fair? If so (and if it’s not, please comment), it’s of course difficult to classify anyone as conservative about everything or nothing. Absolutes don’t work here. No one keeps old methods in every situation, and no one innovates all the time either.
But people certainly tend in particular directions. C.S. Lewis comes to mind here: In his autobiography, Surprised By Joy, Lewis recalls something a literary colleague once told him: Beware of “chronological snobbery.” This term, of course, has become famous, and it’s probably true for everyone as far as it goes. One shouldn’t assume that people in the past were regressive or underdeveloped, just as one shouldn’t assume that modern people are always rightly progressive and intelligent.

In this sense, and most others, Lewis was unabashedly conservative, and it’s in this sense that I’ll use the term. A conservative is someone who prefers the old to the new, loves the confessional and is wary of the novel. K?

This is of course simplistic. In practice, it’s more nuanced than this and here’s where get to football. In his book of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman writes that football is unique because it gives the appearance of being conservative while actually being very liberal.** In other words, football is attractive partly because it’s ostensibly a tough man’s game played in cold weather with a smash-mouth, coarse veneer. In other words: Brett Favre. Tough, Wrangler jeans, strong, gruff, bearded, etc. etc. etc. Think John Facenda old-school NFL films. This is how football portrays itself.

In practice, however, football is everything but this. The classic descriptor for a Super Bowl-winning team is the one (a) that runs the ball and (b) plays iron defense, reflecting the tough, blue-collar, Midwestern attitude. That is to say, it appeals to conservative ideals. But in reality, the NFL is not conservative at all.

The idea that successful football teams primarily run the football is fallacious. The last two Super Bowl champions (the Green Bay Packers and New Orleans Saints) did so with sophisticated passing games and progressive zone-blitz defensive concepts. At the college level, the best offenses use the modern invention of the “spread offense,” an idea that features either an air raid passing game or a running quarterback utilizing complicated fakes and reads to catch a defense out of position. Football has always been called a tough-man’s game. In reality, it’s more of a thinking-man’s game.

Put another way: football tries to market itself as an enterprise dependent on conservatism, but in reality practitioners are quite liberal and open to change. The winners are the innovators.

Here’s the application followed by the leading question to which you should respond: How does this work out in Christianity? Our faith has a past — namely, 2000 years of theological discourse and definition. In my community, we are taught to honor that history, to cultivate theological distinctives in line with what Christians have been saying about Jesus since he ascended, and to take seriously the commentary of our fathers.

But many don’t feel that way. I can think of one Christian writer in particular—of the exegetical sort—who spurns many theological categories (such as the Trinity and inerrancy) as anachronistic, and encourages free thinking and doctrinal innovation. He even goes so far as to say that he doesn’t really care about church history. If he’s convinced the Bible says something not supported by the whole of Christian history, who cares? Let’s come up with something new to fit our context, rather than relying on doctrinal systems cultivated in some other historical situation — i.e., [place confession of your choice here].

Conservatives stress that there is a singular gospel, once for all delivered to the saints, and our gospel presentations should conform to a formulated model; non-conservatives argue that while there is indeed one gospel, it’s broader than conservatives would admit and the church should routinely come up with creative ways to articulate the story of the Bible in different cultural and temporal contexts.

Conservatives stick with old, “tried-and-true” creeds and confessions; non-conservatives prefer the new, spurn the passe, and resist authoritative creeds in favor of constant re-articulations in faithfulness to the biblical narrative.

So, I’m just wondering, which should we adopt? Should we hold on to the faith of the past, unadjusted in form and fidelity to the old, old story? Should we abandon conservatism in favor of more nuanced approaches to the communication of a multifaceted gospel? Or is Christianity, like football, really a mixture of the two: ostensibly conservative in semantics and reputation, but truly innovative, open to change, and reticent to accept dogmatic expressions of anything?

I don’t know the answer to this question. I know what I think reflexively, but sometimes I have a hard time articulating my reasons for it. What about you?

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*Which I’m kinda hoping to do bi-weekly.

**This is a good point to recognize that these usages of liberal and conservative are far from comprehensive. But this is the sense in which Klosterman uses them, and since this post is a rumination on his football theory and how it might work out in our church contexts, it’s also how I’m using them.

-Doug Wilson

The above block-quote is a side comment within a larger diatribe about Christian artists relying on nice equipment to do their storytelling for them (his conclusion: it’s never good).

This is transparently applicable to aspiring photographers and movie-makers — viz., Don’t think that your camera angles and HD video will make up for a mediocre narrative. This is a helpful point.

But I think there’s a takeaway for Christian writers as well, and I also think this is Wilson’s larger beef. The church indeed needs good storytellers, but not people who want to look like good storytellers. For non-writers, this means nice equipment. For writers, this means talking a lot about how they want to be a writer but never actually, you know, writing. You know people like this. I know people like this. They’re annoying.

There’s a thin line here, however. Writing is hard. It takes a great deal of mental effort and commitment, and most people everybody is bad at first. Really bad. I think one of the best ways to grow as a writer is with both encouragement and accountability. You don’t get either without letting everybody know, without equivocation, that I WANT TO BE A WRITER, because then your friends and family and classmates will constantly ask you if you’ve written anything lately. You’ll want to tell them yes.

This is the exact danger Wilson (rightly) warns us about. And I think the way to avoid it is to say what you’re going to do, then do it. This is not a writing problem, by the way. This is a life problem.

When you talk a lot about some rigorous workout regimen you’re doing but your body never changes, that’s lame. When you don’t tell anyone you’re going to get into shape, you’re going to quit after that first morning when you’re feeling all sore and stuff because hey, no one knew I even started.

So: stop trying to look cool. Admit you’re not cool, then work within a community to become so. Embrace the process.

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[Ed. The post title and picture both come from Stephen Pressfield's excellent book, available here.]

Doug Wilson gives some wise and timely advice to contemporary, Reformed Christian artists. I’ll probably post more extensively about this in the near future.

J.R. Daniel Kirk considers the unique importance of divine revelation.

Tim Keller thinks hard about when and how Christians should use and not use pointed, rough, orthodoxy-defending polemics.

I’m very interested in how the Old Testament relates to the New, but I reflexively get uneasy about ostensible narrative connections like this – ”Jesus is the true Daniel in the Lion’s Den” – when the NT writers don’t link them explicitly (contra the story of Jonah, for example, which Jesus pointedly connects to himself). Still, Dane Ortlund draws some convincing parallels between the narrative in Daniel 6 and what we know about Jesus’ life and ministry. He makes me want to study it deeper.

If you like the Counterpoints “Five Views on ___” series as I do, Koinonia provides a comprehensive list of all the volumes. I’ve found these works extremely helpful in cultivating an awareness of what the believers across the Evangelical spectrum think about important issues. Check em out.

After it was revealed last week that John Smoltz (and possibly other Braves pitchers) doctored baseballs in the 90′s, Amazin’ Avenue’s Matthew Callan wonders why pitchers messing with balls doesn’t garner the same outrage as hitters taking steroids. It is a very fair question, and I think his conclusion is compelling.

Also, these guys rock.

Kevin DeYoung writes a prayer for 9/11, ten years later.

My good friend Chris Pluger and his family just moved to Zambia with Lutheran Bible Translators. Christians are people of the Word, so the Pluger’s mission is critical for the spread of the gospel to the nations, as Jesus commanded: translating the Bible into the common language of an African people group. Chris will be doing the actual work of translating the actual Bible—a lengthy process that is just beginning with learning the Nsenga language. Pray for them.

If you haven’t heard of Grantland, you need to check it out—it’s a site of sports writing for people who are tired of reading (and for me, writing) traditional sports writing. Last week, Michael MacCambridge reflected on David Foster Wallace’s famous essay in a 2006 issue of PLAY magazine on “Roger Federer as a Religious Experience.” If you haven’t read the original DFW essay, do so here.

So, that happened:

It was real. And I was there, actually. The cool thing is that this is a ridiculously likable (if athletically flawed) team. Check out QB Denard Robinson when he was told he produced a combined 446 yards of offense (336 passing, 110 rushing):

At the 1:58 mark:

Cool? Cool.

I’m currently reading Stephen G. Dempster’s fantastic book Dominion and Dynasty: A theology of the Hebrew Bible, which is part of D.A. Carson’s “New Studies in Biblical Theology” series. (InterVarsity Press, 2003).

Dempster is trying to look at the Jewish Old Testament (the Tanakh, which is essentially just a different ordering of the same books) with a “wide-angle lens”—moving past the diverse genres of the OT to find its thematic unity. In other words, D and D observes how each individual text (e.g. Malachi) fits into the literary structure of the Text (the whole Tanakh).

He emphasizes the function of the Creation narrative as (a) the establishment of mankind’s rule over the land as Yahweh’s vicegerents (dominion), and (b) the promise of a line (or ‘seed’) of descendants to inhabit that land (dynasty), and alludes in passing to his view on the historicity of the story:

“If the text is written in realistic narrative, there is also a pervasive symbolism. The river of life, stressing God’s presence, flowing from the ‘temple,’ is echoed later in the Text … The command not to eat of the tree of knowledge—the one ‘thou shalt not’—can be seen in some ways as an encapsulation of the commandments given later at Sinai, which would be kept in the sanctuary. While having many and various interpretations, the tree of knowledge of good and evil probably signifies the violation of commandment, represented in a quest for moral and epistemological autonomy” (p. 63).

And later:

“A serpent … suddenly appears, urging the woman to reject the imposition of any limits and flatly contradicts God. Literalistic commentators who describe this text as belonging to an age when people still believed in talking animals fail to see its theological depth” (p. 68-69).

So it got me thinking: is the Creation story historically true?

Now, I mean this in two senses. The first is comprehensive—are Adam and Eve historical persons, and was there a literal garden? Essentially, is the narrative fundamentally a historical event? As admittedly conservative, I lean very strongly toward the affirmative.

The second sense is more particular—was there literally a talking snake, was the tree of knowledge of good and evil actually a tree, and was Adam and Eve’s sin eating a physical fruit? Or are these simply metaphors for spiritual realities—the presence of evil in the garden, Adam and Eve’s sinful longing to be like God, and their partaking in forbidden desires?

In other words, there seems to be three options: (1) The Historical Approach: Both the narrative and its language are to be read literally; (2) The Ahistorical Approach: The Creation story is an entirely metaphorical event deeply embedded in Jewish literary form and Ancient Near East (specifically Egyptian) historical context, and intended to flesh out spiritual truth(s) about God; (3) The Literal-Metaphorical Approach: The narrative actually occurred in space-time history, but the language describing the event is often metaphorical—the author uses poetic style and and symbolism to point toward a spiritual reality (e.g, the snake symbolizes the presence of evil, the tree represents Adam and Eve’s rebellion, etc).

I don’t have a strong opinion on this one. I’m only beginning to work through these issues.

So I’m just wondering: How should we read Genesis 1-3? Strictly literally, strictly metaphorically, or some mixture of the two? Offer your opinion in the comments. If there are more than three options, by all means suggest them.

I don’t normally insert anecdotal stories about myself into these posts, but I think this one is important for general Christian life-thinking and it just happens to relate to a couple different horizons of my immediate future, so you’ll just have to deal. This weekend I had the joy of attending the wedding of a close friend and former college roommate.

It was a wonderful ceremony, steeped in rich religious symbolism as Christian weddings typically are. One of the things they decided to do (and is becoming increasingly common) was to write their own vows. Normally this is the kind of thing that hits me wrong — an unnecessary departure from extensive tradition for the sake of trite novelty.

I think there were several reasons I thought this way of reciting vows was uniquely profound for this wedding, not least of which was that they were well-written and decidedly not trite. Additionally, it was a good friend this time and not someone I’m likely to critique too obnoxiously, as is my wont.

But deeper than that, there was a measurable and dare-I-say theological significance to the vows this time. These vows were rooted in the character of the God who promises and upholds those promises. These vows sought marital fidelity by means of the reconciling blood of Jesus. These vows said: I’m committing to you alone and I promise to uphold this covenant.

This, of course, was hardly unique to this wedding. This is common wedding symbolism. But I suppose the explicitly personal diction of the vows, worded so deftly by both bride and groom, solidified this in my mind for the first time. God makes covenants with his people and remains faithful despite their faithlessness, shown most supremely in the death and resurrection of his Christ. The decision to love in marriage reflects God’s decision to love us through Jesus (cf. Eph. 5:25). This is radical stuff.

C.S. Lewis famously wrote in Mere Christianity that there are two different kinds of marriage love — there’s the spark of attraction that ignites the love flame, followed by the long slow-burn of covenant continuity. The former rises ferociously and unexpectedly but fluctuates over time. There is little choice in the matter. And it is no way to build a marriage.

The latter has everything to do with choice. The fickle flashes of attraction and sensuality don’t withstand the ever-present and ruthless storms of potential divorce.* The covenant, however — that lasts. That’s the basis of very best things that endure.

Marriage vows are in a sense impotent. They don’t matter if you decide you don’t want them to anymore. But they’re made strong by the tight bonds of years together and mutual, determined, sometimes stubborn commitment. The marriage covenant is solidified by a steadfast fidelity to it.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I thought deeply about these things for the first time during this particular wedding. I’m in a season of life where I’m making the sorts of choices that in one way or another will determine who I will become, setting me on a lifelong trajectory which will be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to reverse. And I’m petrified.

The marriage decision is really every life decision writ large. Choosing to love and cherish a person for life is similar to deciding to go to a particular school or becoming part of a particular community or working in a particular state. Sometimes we commit to things rashly; that does not necessarily make them bad choices. Part of God’s will in our lives is to remain faithful to the paths he’s set for us, paths that are quite often illuminated by our decision to take them.

A recent conversation with a wise mentor about my looming decision touched on this concept. I paraphrase:

“My wife might not like to hear this, but there are plenty of quality women I could have married. But I didn’t; I married her. As such it is God’s desire for me to honor that and love her wholeheartedly. Sometimes God’s will is revealed by our sanctified decision to take the first step. And he expects us to be faithful to that choice.”

Amen. May it be said of my two married friends, and may it be said of us.

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*This is a minor point for this post, but I still really want to include it so here’s a footnote. There’s a very short but alarming piece in the most recent Best American Essays anthology that powerfully illustrates the imminent reality of divorce in every marriage. I feel bad posting the last paragraph here because that’s akin to giving away the punchline to a great joke before posing the leading question, but I’ll risk it anyway. Just promise me you’ll pay the eight bucks to buy the anthology (you should anyway) and read the whole thing for yourself:

“Every marriage is pregnant with divorce, every day, every hour, every minute. The second you finish reading this essay, your spouse could close the refrigerator, after miraculously finding a way to wedge the juice carton behind the milk jug, and call it quits, and the odd truth of the matter is that because she might end your marriage in a moment, and you might end hers, you’re still married. The instant there is no chance of death is the moment of death.” (Brian Doyle, “Irreconcilable Dissonance,” The Best American Essays: 2010, ed. Robert Atwan and Christopher Hitchens)

Jared Wilson considers the problems with graceless Calvinism. A hearty “amen” from these parts.

Dane Ortlund, via Sidney Greidanus, observes six ways to see Christ in the OT.

Tim Gombis lays out the communicative backdrop of the book of Romans.

Doug Wilson’s sermon outline on the blind man healed in John 9.

Did you know the SF Giants have a serious seagull problem, and are considering releasing falcons to chase them off? It’s true.

Gabe from Motivated Grammar offers excellent thoughts for journalists, arguing (persuasively) that they must be arbiters of truth and not merely stenographers or opinion-gatherers.

Daniel Kirk gets a life verse. I think I might use Galatians 6:11 in the future.

Tim Gombis considers the connection between Romans and the Coen brothers’ film True Grit. 

The Incredible Joe Posnanski reflects on raising children, the crushingly disappointing women’s World Cup final, and Phil Mickelson’s absurd front nine at the British open, and what they each teach us about sports.

Hyper-Calvinism is both one of the most dangerous heresies and one of the most often misapplied lables. Don’t make either mistake. Kevin DeYoung can help.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey of GetReligion.org offers a fascinating report on Christians working in mainstream gaming. She also identifies the classic Myst as a “highly theological little computer game,” which of course. Someday I might get on my soapbox about that.

Dane Ortlund links to a video showcasing what may be the actual charge sheet for Jesus’ crucifixion.

Abraham Piper of 22 Words posts what road signs would look like in their proper context.

Also: it’s becoming increasingly likely that the Mets — 12 games back and trying to build a future contender — will soon trade the forever-awesome Carlos Beltran. When this occurs, I will no doubt feel strongly compelled to post a long, rambling retrospective* of the often under-appreciated centerfielder who is also probably one of my all-time favorite Mets. I cannot promise I will be able to resist this urge. There will be tears. That’s cool, as long as they don’t trade him to the Phill—oh please.

At least the Mets aren’t trading the somehow-even-more-awesome Jose Reyes.

*Not unlike what I did here.

My family is not big on pageantry on the Fourth of July. It’s been years since I even watched fireworks on America’s birthday. We don’t fly an American flag in our front yard, we don’t make apple pie, we don’t attend a church picnic.

The closest we get to Independence Day patriotism is golfing (and that’s an English sport, right?) and watching a Mets game maybe.

But every year, one member of the family (admittedly one of the males) suggests we watch the 1993 war movie Gettysburg. And the rest of us (even my mom…at least at first) eagerly agree.

Now, you have to understand something about me: I used to be an insufferable Civil War junkie. “Junkie” probably isn’t quite the right word. I was the guy who wrote every paper in junior high English on the Civil War. I was the guy who scored in the B-range in every subject, but when tested on the Civil War, I usually earned something better than 100-percent (junior high teachers and bonus questions being what they are).

There was a time I was convinced I would be a battlefield tour guide for a living, reenacting in my spare time. I’m serious, I was convinced. So thorough was my desire to be a Civil War nerd for a living that I was slightly devastated when someone knew Civil War trivia I didn’t…or at least came up with the answer more quickly.

I memorized the classifications down to brigade commanders. I knew each Army of the Potomac commander in succession (including the brief appearance of Alexander Pope in the middle of 1862—most people trip up on that one). I could diagram each Eastern Theater battle for you on a napkin.

But Gettysburg was my jam, man. And the movie even more so: I’m sure I can recite each line along with the actors for the entire four-hour (plus, in the director’s cut) duration of the film. Seriously.

So I like Gettysburg. Check that—I liked Gettysburg. I no longer watch the film several times a month. I no longer remember exactly what motivated Col. Chamberlain of the 20th Maine to deploy an entire company to the extreme left of his regiment’s line during the fight on Little Round Top. My beloved Civil War books have gradually been supplanted by novels, theological works, and fiction anthologies.

But there’s something unique about being a part of something you once loved fanatically years after you’ve stopped caring about it quite so passionately. I’ve felt that way about lots of things, and I imagine I will feel similarly more often as I get older.

There’s something compelling about the Civil War, to be sure: it’s the only war to be fought only by Americans. There were no other major players. We still see the residue of the war, 150 years later, in Southern nostalgia and large-scale reenactments. It’s the great American epic, our Iliad.

But for me, there’s something deeper than that. When I hold my tattered, rubber band-bound copy of Jeff Shaara’s novel Gods and Generals,  it’s not merely representative of a compelling work of war fiction. It’s representative of the obsession of my 12-year-old self. And that’s worth something.

The Ideal Game. The New York Mets have started winning some games of late, including a neat little 2-1 affair against the Brewers last week. Jason Fry of Faith and Fear in Flushing thinks it would have been a fan’s ideal first game, calling it a “pocket-sized classic,” replete with excellent starting pitching, spectacular defense, a moonshot home run, a go-ahead triple, and tidy bullpen work.

Athletes and Self-Awareness. Tim Gombis (who until recently was a professor of Bible at Cedarville University* and is now moving to teach New Testament at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary) reflects on Tiger Woods’ faulty self-perception and how it relates to us — though I suspect Tiger has a bit more left than Michael Jordan did with the Wizards.

*my school, er, alma mater I guess. weird.

The Incredible Shrinking Man. Joe Posnanski wonders what many sports fans — despite their ostensible glee about the Heat losing — also wonder: what was with LeBron James last night?

Incredible video of an ibex fight from BBC’s Planet Earth series:

(HT: Todd Bolen)