A La Carte (March 2)
Logos users: March Matchups is back, and with it the opportunity to get some great deals. Also, be sure to grab this month’s free book.
If you’re in or near Canada and want to brush up on your preaching, a friend asked me to let you know about the Simeon Trust workshops in Calgary and Toronto.
Today’s Kindle deals include a nice little list.
(Yesterday on the blog: Learning Lessons From Scandals Close to Home)
The Life and Death of an Ordinary Saint
I love ordinary saints.
An Open Statement of the Truth
Kevin DeYoung: “You may have wondered in recent days, ‘When did I become a bigot?’ Not that you are likely a bigot, but that the world now considers you one. Beliefs that used to be obvious—to Christians and to almost everyone else—are now called hate speech, while practices and spectacles that wouldn’t have been whispered in private have become public celebrations.”
Five things you may not know about Adam
CMI has an interesting one here. “Adam is one of the best-known people in the Bible. Despite this, most people only know a few basic facts about him. His connection to every person on the planet, and therefore our need for the Gospel, is outlined below, as are five things about Adam you may not have known before.”
The Scariest Thing Jesus Ever Said
“For some, the Bible is and should be a great comfort. For others, it is and should be deeply disturbing. Throughout the Bible, God heals with reassuring words of forgiveness, kindness, and welcome. Also throughout the Bible, God thunders with warnings meant to stir people toward repentance, restoration, and peace.” Scott Sauls explains.
There are an infinite number of wheels in God’s providence
There are indeed!
Kate Forbes Is Done (or Why an Orthodox Christian Can Never Lead a Western Political Party Again)
“Kate Forbes stands little chance of becoming the First Minister of Scotland. And this is due to her publicly stated religious beliefs.” Stephen McAlpine reflects on alarming (yet somehow not surprising) situation.
Flashback: When God Unfolds His Will in Pieces
When it comes to our lives, God chooses to unfold his will in bits, in steps, in phases. He chooses to unfold his will in real-time and not in advance. He chooses to unfold his will in such a way that we need to exercise faith.
No parent gives mercy better than one who is convinced that he desperately needs it himself. —Paul David Tripp
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Does God Care How You Cook Your Goat?
It is one of those biblical commands that has always perplexed me. If it appeared just one time in Scripture I might be tempted to pass it by. But it appears no less than three times, in Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21. The repetition tells me that God is quite concerned that his people pay attention to his command and obey it. The command is this: “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
So why did God care how his Old Testament people cooked their goat? And is there any possible application to us today?
Not surprisingly, commentators are a bit divided on God’s intent in this injunction. There are broadly two different schools of thought. While some scholars choose one of the two options, a good number suggest both are relevant.
The first suggestion is that the Canaanites followed a religious ritual that involved this very thing—boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk. They would then take that milk and sprinkle it on their fields, hoping that the gods would respond by making the land fertile. This makes sense in the immediate context (of the first use in Exodus, at least) where we find laws about the various feasts and festivals, including ones related to harvest. The weakness of this theory is that there is no substantial proof that this was actually a Canaanite ritual and no substantial proof that the Israelites knew anything of it. It makes good sense and is quite plausible, but remains unproven.
The second suggestion is that there is something too ghastly and too contrary to nature in using a mother goat’s milk to cook her baby. It’s not that it was wrong to cook a baby goat or even that it was wrong to cook a baby goat in milk. It was simply wrong to cook a baby goat in its own mother’s milk. Philip Ryken explains this well: “A young goat is supposed to be nourished by its mother’s milk, not boiled in it.” To use the source of nourishment to be the source of seasoning or tenderness somehow opposes a principle of life. If we understand the command in this light, it might be similar to the prohibition against taking both a bird and its young (Deuteronomy 22:6). In that case, it is essentially a call to kindness in place of cruelty. God permits man to use and eat animals, but we must still treat them with dignity as beings created by his hand.
Which of these positions is correct? We cannot know definitively and thus need to hesitate about taking too bold a position. And while the Israelites probably understood better than we do, the main thing for them was not understanding but obedience. Their call was to obey God and refuse to ever boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk. Simple enough!
Is there anything we can gain from these parallel verses? Are they in any way profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness? I see two possible applications.
The first is to guard ourselves against worldliness. If the first theory is correct, then the Israelites, when they entered their new land, would be tempted to imitate a common practice that would tempt them away from reliance on God and tempt them toward reliance on superstitious ritual. We are certainly not immune from this temptation—to begin imitating behavior that may seem reasonable, yet still reduces our reliance on God. Perhaps we can do this when we follow secular financial practices that prompt us to reduce what we give to the church because we believe a comfortable future depends upon reaching a certain savings goal. Perhaps we also see this in cultures elsewhere in the world where people profess Christ and join a church, but still “hedge their bets” by maintaining traditional rites and rituals.
Perhaps God’s prohibition prompts us all the more to be consistently pro-life knowing that cruelty toward animals may become cruelty toward human beings.Share
The second is to value life—human life primarily, of course, but also animal life. God permits his people to eat animals and demands they sacrifice animals, so we have the right to kill and eat them. But we must still treat them with dignity, knowing that God created them and cares for them. To use the milk of the mother to cook her baby appears to be contemptuous of life and the special relationship between parents and children. This being the case, animals serve as a smaller picture of the greater reality of human beings. And in this way perhaps God’s prohibition prompts us all the more to be consistently pro-life knowing that cruelty toward animals may become cruelty toward human beings.
Whatever else is true of the Canaanites and the other foreign nations within and around the Promised Land, they were most certainly pagan and most certainly cruel. And boiling a baby in its mother’s milk was pagan or cruel, or perhaps pagan and cruel. God’s people, however, were to be holy and compassionate. Such set-apartness was to be displayed not only in the temple and in formal religious rituals, but even in the kitchen and in the way they prepared their food. Because to live for God demands living for him in every possible sphere and every possible activity. -
Free Stuff Friday – The Timeless Truths Bible (Thomas Nelson Bibles)
This week Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Thomas Nelson Bibles. They are giving away five copies of the Timeless Truths Bible.
About the Timeless Truths Bible:
The Christian faith is founded upon unchanging, timeless truth. From the days of the early church until the day of Christ’s return, all of Christianity proclaims that “Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11). This is our unchanging and unceasing confession upon which all our hope and all our joy rests.
The Timeless Truths Bible encourages you through the always timely wisdom of those who came before us. Devotional notes and commentary from trusted theologians and pastors from the second century up to the twentieth will stir your affections. The ancient creeds and confessions of the faith will grow your understanding of what we believe—and have always believed. And artwork created throughout the history of Christianity will deepen your worship of the one we call Lord.
Features include:Devotional and theological commentary for every chapter of the Bible from notable figures throughout church history including Irenaeus, Augustine, Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, and John Calvin
46 full-page biographies of church leaders
Text from some of the creeds and confessions of the Christian faith that have shaped our beliefs for generations, including the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Westminster Catechism
Full-color tip-in pages of artwork from the history of ChristianityExperience timeless wisdom for life today that is entrusted to you for tomorrow.
Enter for your chance to win one of five copies here.
Entries accepted from February 2, 2024, at 9 AM Eastern until February 9, 2024, at 11:59 PM Eastern. Open to US residents only. Visit thomasnelsonbibles.com/challies-sweepstakes to enter and read all sweepstakes rules. -
On What Basis Could The Rings of Power Completely Fail?
I first encountered The Lord of the Rings during the loneliest year of my childhood. My family had moved, my friends had been left behind, and I was lonely. The one friend I did make that year was an avid fan of the books and pleaded with me to read them. I did so and quickly got swept up into a world that transported me far beyond my problems. That was the first, though certainly not the last, time I read my way through the series.
And though I’m not one of those super-fans who knows every fact of this fictional world (or, like an uncle of mine, who has gone to the trouble of learning Elvish), I do appreciate the books and the films that were generally faithful to them. And it’s probably for that reason that I have been dreading the long-awaited series. I have been dreading it because, as much as I love what Tolkien created, I have long feared that this series would make a mockery of it. This is, after all, 2022. And the series is made, after all, by Amazon. That’s not an encouraging combination.
Before I settled in to watch episode one of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, I tried to corral my skeptical thoughts and consider this: What could make the series utterly fail in my mind? I already know it’s not truly Tolkien’s story, but rather bits and pieces of material that exists peripherally to The Lord of the Rings (i.e. the “legendarium”). I already know that while it’s generally set in the world he created, only some of what it describes ever entered his mind and flowed through his pen. I already know it means to emphasize themes that are important in 2022 but that were of little importance to Tolkien the better part of a century earlier. So what could make it completely fail? I decided this: it would fail if it was set in a different moral universe than Tolkien’s books. I could tolerate some made-up creatures and some re-imagined characters, but I couldn’t tolerate a wholly different morality.
Part of the beauty and attraction of The Lord of the Rings is that it is set in a universe in which the mythology, lands, and races are fantasy, but in which the morality rings with familiarity. It is a universe that delights us with its imaginative differences and yet challenges us with its moral similarities. Any Christian, and indeed, anyone familiar with the modern Western world, will recognize that Tolkien’s understanding of morality was shaped by Scripture. We see this in many ways, but perhaps none so clearly as in the One Ring—in its ability to control those who own it and then to drive them to destruction. You can’t see the obsessiveness of Gollum and the weakening of Frodo without thinking about a Christian conception of sin. Beyond that, what is abhorrent in our world tends to be abhorrent in his and what is beautiful here is beautiful there. Tolkien’s world is not straightforwardly Christian anymore than Lewis’s Narnia—but it is generally framed around a similar and easily-recognizable morality.
My fear with The Rings of Power is that it will borrow characters, settings, and situations that Tolkien described, but set them within a very different moral order. Particularly, my fear is that it will set them in a world that borrows the (im)morality of the post-modern post-Christian morass we’ve entered into in the Western world. This is a world in which the mighty and influential are deliberately seeking out any traces of the Christian faith and its morality and then deliberately disrupting or destroying them. If this is broadly true across society, it’s especially true in Hollywood. In this way it’s hard for me to imagine that what Tolkien considered a virtue will still be considered a virtue and that what he considered a vice will still be considered a vice. In fact, I rather suspect the opposite—that the creators will replace his morality with their own. And, to me, that would be the undoing of the whole thing—it would be treasonous. Near-blasphemous.
After two episodes, I think the jury is still out. I expect there are lots of Tolkien purists and conservative commentators expressing disgust at just about every character and every interaction, but I think it’s fair to say we still haven’t received definitive proof about the show’s morality. Hints, certainly, not not proof. That said, I expect the next couple of episodes will bring greater clarity.
Before I go further, let me offer a few bullet-point observations (that probably contain a few minor spoilers).The greater racial diversity of the characters obviously isn’t consistent with Tolkien’s imagination, but could be the kind of adaptation to the modern world that he would sanction. After all, I don’t think it contradicts his vision for his world (even though it was set in the context of Northern European mythology). That said, we have yet to see whether the show’s creators have merely increased diversity or whether they have also imported some form of power dynamics between the races. That will make a big difference. And then, of course, we will have to see whether they import “sexual diversity” or “gender diversity” as well. I find it almost impossible to imagine that they won’t.
There was a kind of “wow factor,” a kind of delight, in the opening scenes of The Fellowship of the Ring that seems lacking in The Rings of Power. But perhaps that’s inevitable since Peter Jackson already gave us a faithful and beautiful portrayal of Middle Earth that this new series can do little more than hope to match. Who could forget their first glimpse at Jackson’s Hobbiton and Jackson’s Frodo and Jackson’s Gandalf all converging at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring? That was a magical moment for which The Rings of Power has no answer.
People have been lauding the show’s visual effects, but I found them lacking in vitality and believability. It seems obvious to me how much of each episode was filmed under artificial lights and in front of green screens. I don’t find the lighting compelling and I find many of the sound effects distracting. But maybe that’s just me.
Here’s something new for authors to aspire to: to have people willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to gain the rights to the mere footnotes and appendices of their work. Well done J.R.R.!
I think the reimagining of Galadriel achieves the opposite effect the writers presumably desired—it makes her a weaker character rather than a stronger one. Why? Because instead of succeeding as a woman (as she does so well in the books and films) she now seems to need to succeed on the terms of a man. In order to be “strong,” she has to be physically strong—stronger and bolder and fiercer even than the men around her. It is my understanding that Tolkien’s vision for female elves may have included them being warriors, but I expect he would still have wanted them to ultimately succeed on female terms rather than male ones. So far it seems like in this show the women will act like men and the men will act like children.
Also, if New Galadriel really is going to be the central character, it’s hard to imagine her having enough charisma to carry the role. I find her character quite uninteresting and her acting quite uninspired—perhaps because she is given so little of substance to work with. But just compare her to the brilliant, haunting, dignified (not to mention feminine) portrayal by Cate Blanchett, and there’s just no comparison at all!As I wait to learn whether the moral universe will be Tolkien’s or something new, my foremost concern so far is that the show is just not very interesting or engaging. Not yet, anyway. Go back and watch the first hour or two of The Fellowship of the Ring and see how much more it draws you into the story than the first two episodes of The Ring of Power. It’s difficult to not care after seeing the danger sweeping down upon this idyllic little world of the hobbits. It’s masterfully done and substantially superior to the series. I understand that the writers have to introduce lots of characters, settings, and plot lines that will eventually prove epic in scope, but based on the first two episodes, The Rings of Power seems to be trying to do too much too quickly.
I will give it another couple of episodes, but unfortunately to this point, The Rings of Power is just a bunch of characters I don’t care about doing things I don’t care about in places I don’t care about for reasons I don’t care about. To be honest, I am only watching it because I very much want it to succeed—I want it to entertain and delight me. But I am not holding out a lot of hope.