What Do You Call Inspiration?

I went and did it.

I bought and am reading Inspiration and Incarnation. The science-worshipping heretic's book.

Granted, I'm only 20% through the book (thank you, Kindle, for making my progress so easily-tracked mathematically,) but I'm having a difficult time finding where his words engender such a horrified reaction. After all, if he is "bad" enough that whole homeschool conventions hosting teems of presenters and mobs of attenders turn into war zones should both Peter Enns (the author) and the supporters of the Hamite School of Racial Origins, etc. be in the same breathing space to present their ideas. (Ken Ham is the founder of the Creation Museum.) With such a war zone swirling him, surely his book will spontaneously combust in my hands as I take it up to read.

But it doesn't.

In fact, despite my efforts to light a lamp and sweep my floor for that lost gold coin he thieves from Christianity, I fail to find this presumably lost treasure. Instead, I find what for many disillusioned Christians is an escape hatch in the steerage of a sinking ship.

In my reading, I find Enns doing for the word "myth" what C.S. Lewis did for the word "Christianity" in his groundbreaking book Mere Christianity. He (hopefully) awakens appropriate shame when he reminds that "It is wholly incomprehensible to think that thousands of years ago God would have felt constrained to speak in a way that would be meaningful only to Westerners several thousand years later. To do so borders on modern, Western arrogance." Well, maybe, we'll feel shame...only if we restrain ourselves from sticking our fingers in our ears and tunelessly singing "lalalalalalala..." with our eyes shut. And many of us do just that and call it God-pleasing faith. We fail to see that this response only proves our ultimate belief that our god can't handle the most intellectual of our questions, therefore we don't raise them. In this, are we not more favoring the likes of the gods of Olympus? Lalalalalala......

But, some of us will read on.

"To argue, as I am doing here, that such biblical stories as creation and the flood must be understood first and foremost in the ancient contexts, is nothing new. The point I would like to emphasize, however, is that such a firm grounding in ancient myth does not make Genesis less inspired; it is not a concession that we must put up with or an embarrassment to a sound doctrine of Scripture. Quite to the contrary, such rootedness in the culture of the time is precisely what it means for God to speak to his people. This is what it means for God to speak at a certain time and in a certain place--he enters their world...If God was willing and ready to adopt an ancient way of thinking, we truly hold a very low view of Scripture indeed if we make that into a point of embarrassment. We will not understand the Bible if we push aside or explain away its cultural setting, even if that setting disturbs us...We must resist the notion that for God to enculturate himself is somehow beneath him. This is precisely how he shows his love to the world he made."

Aaah, but isn't that the crux of the controversy? Most have fallen out of love, or as scripture puts it, their love "waxes cold." Without a love affair with the Creator, the words themselves become the god. The greatest coup an enemy could hope to flaunt: using the very love letter itself to distract attention from the current attentions of the lover. Enns calls us back to the lover. Reminds us that the lover touches each of us within the environment he uniquely created for us--as part of the love display.

The love letter is not a tool for manipulation to use in ignoring all other forms of revelation. Is this the message? Certainly the love letter is not meant as a tool for discouraging reason--quite a devilish feat in itself, incidentally. God makes the invitation in that very love letter "come, let us reason together..." So far, Peter Enns seems to be the only one stepping up to answer that particular call.

In the words of Charles Spurgeon, "Proxy religion involves too great a risk: you had better see to your soul's matters yourself, and leave them in no man's hands." That said, today my prayers thrust their arms deep into the past. If there be those who sit in purgatory--if such a place exist--all because they lost their faith on the day came they were required to choose: believe the sun circles the earth or be condemned. For these, I pray. Many years, I balked at a world where the doctrine of the atonement could be so easily usurped--figured the people surely backward or the historic records of such a time surely exaggerated. But now, as I look at people being given "the left hand of fellowship" as my grandparents called it, being invited to leave their congregations if they won't be silent--and all about whether the earth is 6000 years old or more, I go very still inside.

Why? I pray. Why is this bubbling up now? I pray. Should the humble, empirically-minded man be lost right alongside the devout homosexual? What's going on here?

And, God simply said: birth pangs.
Acts 2: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:"

He did not stop speaking when that last blessed scroll was rolled up and stuck in a jar. He did not remove his hand from the work alongside the council of Nicaea long ago. If anything, it is going to ramp up...profoundly. I say this, ironically, because it is written. (smile) But first, we must prepare ourselves to hear the spirit and to prophesy.

We must not only allow the earth herself to remember in our presence. We have a lot of our own larger remembering to do...

A Poem-prayer for Easter

May the sparrow sprinkle cloud flowers
across your saintly pillow, silver stars
to keep you slumber sweet
till morning breaks eternal.