Tag: Thought

  • Evangelical Sabre-rattling won’t lead to peace

    Interesting article from rabble.ca:

    Evangelical Sabre-rattling won’t lead to peace

    This article comments on the allegiance of some Christian leaders, including Billy and Franklin Graham, with American military might. While I do respect Billy Graham, I have often asked myself whether his chummy relationship with the White House was positive or negative. This article raises this same concern. And, it also highlights the troublesome violent messages of Billy’s son Franklin in his recent comments pertaining to Afghanistan and 9/11.

    The article challenges us to look deep within ourselves and ask if war is the correct answer to conflict, or if we should try to rise above it and offer peaceful alternatives to violence instead. The following excerpt is, to me, the most powerful piece from this article:

    Franklin Graham, brandishing a tone not heard from his father, called Islam “a very evil and wicked religion” and, in the wake of 9/11, said the U.S. should drop nuclear weapons on Afghanistan. He has backed down somewhat from the former statement but refuses to retract the latter. Rather than countering increased division in the world with calls for understanding and unity, he is digging the trenches deeper.
    To be clear about what Rev. Graham suggested for Afghanistan, picture in your mind the apocalyptic images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — disfigured people and a lifeless smoldering moonscape.
    Is that what the religious imagination has to offer the world?
    Compare that with the Amish of Nickel Mines, Penn. When faced with senseless violence, they did not respond with righteous vengeance but reached out to the family of the man who killed their children, setting up trust funds for his kids. Confronted by unthinkable violence, they responded with unthinkable forgiveness and compassion. For them, faith meant replacing the human impulse for fear and retaliation with something kinder and gentler.

    I have yet to see the same compassionate, loving and gentle side to Franklin that I see in his father. I hope that this will emerge from Franklin as he fills the void left by Billy. Yet, I can’t help but feel alarmed at the influence that Franklin will have as he inherits the large and far reaching audience that his father developed through his years of dedication to spreading God’s word.

    One can only hope that a voice of peace emerges in Christian circles with the same kind of influence as Billy Graham to help fill this void and to help replace the more hardcore and intolerant messages being preached by his son.

    One can only hope…

    Todd Dow

  • Book Review: Velvet Elvis

    Book Review: Velvet Elvis
    What do I read in my spare time? I sift through a wide variety of stuff. And from time to time, I’d like to use this forum to share some of my reads with you. Some good, some not so good, but all of them thought provoking in one way or another.

    This first “book review” comments on a book called Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. For those of you that don’t know who Rob is (I didn’t know who he was until I read this book), he’s the lead pastor at Mars Hill Church in Michigan. He planted this church and has been instrumental in its growth. This book is his statement on what Christianity should be about.

    The title Velvet Elvis is the visual queue that he uses to help convey the constant and never-ending growth that occurs within the church. As Rob describes it,

    “What if the painter of my Velvet Elvis announced there was no more need to paint, that he had painted the ultimate painting? We would think he had lost his mind because of our instinctive understanding that art is never done – it’s the endless process of learning, exploring, shaping and forming. And it’s no different with faith. The Christian faith will never be complete. We will always be exploring and discovering what it means to live in harmony with God and each other. If we don’t, our faith may end up in the basement. This book is about the endless need to keep painting.”

    The most memorable portion of the book is in “Movement 3” (this is how chapters are denoted) under the heading “Everywhere”. In this section, Bell describes the awakening of an awareness of God within friends of his as they prepared for their wedding. My description couldn’t do it justice. Read it for yourself. Trust me. You won’t be disappointed.

    In any event, I don’t want to hold you up from reading the book. So go get a copy. Read it. Share it with a friend. Enjoy it. Contemplate on it. And drop me a line to let me know if you agree with my recommendation.

    Happy Reading!

    Todd Dow

  • Happy New Year!

    Happy New Year!

    Sorry for my lack of posts over the holidays. I indulged in friends and family to the max this holiday season, which was nice for a change. Previous Christmas breaks have been spent working, but I was fortunate enough to get the whole week off this year between Christmas and New Years. It was great!

    In any event, I trust that you had a safe, happy and restful holiday season and I wish you all the best for 2007.

    And, on a related note, I gave my second public sermon over the holidays. Sunday December 31st marked my second official pulpit appearance. I wasn’t nervous this time (unlike last time), the feedback was good and I felt quite comfortable delivering my message entitled “Lent Time”. I’ll post the sermon in pieces over the next few days. Watch for it!

    May God bless you and comfort you in your walk with him in 2007.

    Todd Dow

  • The Celestial Teapot

    Article discussed in this entry: The Celestial Teapot

    James Wood provides an excellent critique of the current crop of atheistic writers currently clogging the best seller lists. Wood hits the target with his philosophical dismissals of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris (referred to collectively as DDH). Far from being a solid defense of Christianity, but helpful nonetheless, Wood adequately brushes aside the feeble attempts made by these three atheistic opportunists to condemn religious practice. And, Wood also, to a lesser extent, makes ineffectual some of the stronger anti-religion claims of such famed philosophers as Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

    Some statements that I found particularly interesting:

    “Wittgenstein’s little phrase, from a different context, comes to mind: ‘a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing can be said.’”
    Clever little quote showing the language games that some philosophers use. While not meaningful in itself, it is clever nonetheless.
    “The genre tends to proceed thus: the atheist must first remove all possible respect from religious belief.”
    Excellent quote. Wood highlights a key strategy used by DDH to dehumanize and desensitize the reader to the truth claims of religious belief.
    Wood responding to Harris’ and Dawkins’ arguments pertaining to “insufficient evidence”: “Yet he surely knows that we believe all kinds of things on insufficient evidence. Or rather, what might be sufficient evidence to him could well be insufficient to someone else and vice versa. Hume was right, says the French philosopher Alain, ‘to mock the King of Siam who believed that ice was impossible because he had never seen it.’”
    Sufficient evidence is difficult to define. Religious experience can be argued to be both objective and subjective depending on who you talk to. And, More importantly, as science will well agree, evidence does not in itself reality prove. Even though religion can explain things does not mean that science is necessarily correct. And, there is plenty that science is unable to explain. Does that mean that science is useless? No. Similarly, belief in God can be valuable as well.

    A couple of items that I found troubling in this article though:

    Wood argues that the Free Will defense (evil exists because we have free will to do good or evil at our discretion) explains evil, yet runs contrary to the concept of heaven, which, if evil does not exist in heaven, would have been a more perfect world than we live in now, thus saying that our current existence is neither a) the best of all possible worlds (Leibniz) or b) a fair world to live in when it requires tolerance for suffering.
    Wood is generally quite solid with his philosophy, but this is a major point on which I disagree. Wood argues that we could not exist in heaven without evil through our own free will. I beg to differ. Isn’t heaven when we’ve been absolved of our sins and been deemed worthy to enter heaven? I would think that one of the pre-requisites to entering the kingdom of God would be the proper motivation and moral attitude towards good and evil. Entry to heaven would be based on heavenly judgment which would adequately isolate evil thoughts from entering through the pearly gates. Thus, all who enter would be free to commit evil acts, but entry would require good intentions, which this world would be the training ground for. Note: I haven’t been there yet, so this is speculation, but… it certainly does offer another, equally sound option, which is a counterpoint to Wood’s Free Will argument.
    “A silence beckons to a silence.”
    The critique here is that God’s silence demands no response. Thus, this statement argues that worship is misguided. Wood does little to defend Christianity from this statement. In response, I ask: Didn’t Christ speak loud and clear?

    While I feel that Wood ultimately fails by not taking a final step in justifying religious belief, he does a great job of dismissing the shallow and weak claims being made by these “pop-culture atheists”. And, I especially enjoyed the way that Wood showed Harris to be a hypocrite through his practice of Eastern meditative techniques. All in all, a great read. Take a half hour and give it a shot. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

    Todd Dow

  • CBC’s “Seven” on evangelical Christianity

    The National has a series called “Seven”, which documents Mark Kelley’s experiences in a “week in the life of” sort of format. Yesterday’s Seven broadcast highlighted Mark’s time spent with evangelical Christians. You can view yesterday’s broadcast at CBC.ca:
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/media/seven.html

    I wasn’t pleased with the way the show portrayed evangelical Christianity. So… I wrote to the editor. Below is a copy of my comments. I wonder if I’ll hear back from them. Time will tell…

    BEGIN LETTER
    Folks,

    I was disappointed by last night’s “Seven” report on evangelical Christianity. I don’t feel that it offered fair treatment towards evangelical Christianity. Specifically:
    1. As a Canadian show, I was surprised that the visits were mainly based in the US. There are plenty of relevant, articulate and meaningful Christian examples in Canada;
    2. The portions of the interviews that were aired were disappointing as they portrayed the interviewees as inarticulate or unable to explain their position in a positive manner. Fairness would suggest that you provide room for articulate and secular-friendly speakers, which last night’s episode seemed to lack; and
    3. Mark appeared to be condescending and mocking at times, which is disrespectful, especially considering the fact that his interview subjects didn’t necessarily offer the most positive impressions towards an unchurched audience;

    Three possibilities that I have considered are:
    1. Maybe this is the way that most of secular society views Christians. If this is the case, then I think that this episode played to those stereotypes and didn’t adequately represent positive role models within the evangelical community;
    2. Perhaps the interviews were edited in such a way that it left the impression that the interviewees were unable to articulate their positions adequately; or
    3. Maybe the CBC team wasn’t able to secure sufficient positive Christian role models and was left with these examples;

    Whatever the case, I don’t think that this episode was indicative of the Christian community as a whole, nor was it tasteful in the way that Mark appeared to condescendingly dismiss the evangelical Christian community as a group of “scared” social outcasts.

    I would like to think that I provide a positive evangelical Christian role model to other Christians. And, I also feel that I have been able to portray my lifestyle to people of other faiths without leaving them thinking that I am afraid or isolated from the rest of society.

    Feel free to contact me should you wish to do further reporting on the Christian community, especially within the GTA. I am a current Master of Divinity student at McMaster University, I am currently working as a student pastor at my local church in the Niagara region and I work full time in a secular career as an IT project manager. As well, I am a graduate of a philosophy and religious studies undergrad program at U of T. I think I am well positioned to speak on this subject matter.

    Thank you for your time,

    Todd Dow

    END LETTER