Ten Christian Athletes Who Were Tebowing Before Tebow

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?One of the stranger gifts God has given me is the ability to interpret dress patterns. In view of the fact that most pattern instructions are written in an obscure Polynesian dialect of pidgen English, that’s no mean gift.The last time I was called on to display this talent was when my 12-year-old daughter decided she could no longer put off her home ec project, much as she hated the course. The assignment was to make a dress from a pattern of her choice.At her request I had explained some of the intricacies of the diagram to her, and she was at the sewing machine working against the clock with mounting frustration. Suddenly she threw the dress down and exclaimed, “I don’t see why I have to take a dumb course like this anyhow!”“Why did you?” I asked in typical fatherly ignorance.“Daddy,” she replied in the patronizing tone she reserves for very small children and me, “it’s required.”“Oh.” I responded brilliantly.“But it’s dumb,” she continued. “Why do I need to spend all this time learning how to make a dress when I’ll probably never do it again? When I become a psychiatrist all my clothes will be tailor made!”Frankly, I thought she had a point, and a glance at the partly finished dress confirmed it. But since we parents and teachers have to stick together in self-defense, I told her she’d better get back to work and stop complaining.Then in my best counseling manner I went on to point out that even psychiatrists have to do things in their training that are not particularly fun but are necessary to reach their goal.Although she wasn’t completely convinced, my speech helped a little, since this image of herself as a psychiatrist conditions all her activities. A home ec course has no meaning because she can’t relate it to her future as a psychiatrist. When she’s playing dolls she’s simply the psychiatrist-to-be enjoying fantasy.She has already begun to answer that very important question: Who do you think you are?I’m convinced that our answer to that question, our self-image, is crucial in finding meaning for our lives.The Apostle John reminds Christians of the most important part of that answer: “My dear friends, we are now God’s children …”TRIUMPHANT IN DEATHThank you for that timely and comforting article, “Death: No More Taboos,” by Cheryl A. Forbes (May 26). It was a joy to read this illuminating discussion of the “right to die with dignity,” and “a living will.” It is heartwarming indeed to see this all-important subject brought out in the open. As for myself, several years ago, I placed a “living will” among my important papers. At age eighty I felt the time had come to make my desires known legally. In my “living will” are these poignant words: “In the event I should become so critically ill that nothing but blood transfusions and intravenous feeding would prolong my life, please use neither—just let me die in peace, for that will be the triumphant moment for which I’ve lived these many years!” Hutchinson, Kans.A PROPOSALThank you for the excellent article by Frank C. Nelsen on “Evangelical Living and Learning Centers: A Proposal” in the May 26 issue. His recommendation consists of a most exciting concept and one which has practical merit.Hopefully, the suggestion might be incorporated in the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies program and implemented on a campus such as the University of Pennsylvania, by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, or by a joint effort of both organizations.Pittsburgh, Pa.As the pastor of a church close to a major university I have been exploring for some time the possibility of offering Bible-oriented courses to Christian students as a complement to the university’s curriculum. Currently we have the facilities and personnel but are still struggling with the problem of accreditation.We differ markedly with Nelsen’s proposal, however, in two areas. The first of these is his insistence on perpetuating the concept in loco parentis.… The advisability of such a practice has been held in question for a long time, and most campus ministries are now recognizing the need for the college student to establish his independence and identity as an adult instead of depending on an institution to serve as his substitute parent.Our second area is one of money. Is there an alternative to spending huge chunks of money in an enterprise such as this? We think there is. First of all, if we do not need to provide housing for students, classes such as proposed by Dr. Nelsen could be held in a variety of facilities. There are any number of churches, for instance, whose facilities stand vacant most of the week. Most universities have memorial unions where meeting facilities conducive to classroom use are available free of charge to campus groups. Additionally, on a growing number of campuses across the United States the Lord is locating a significant number of evangelical scholars who have academic and spiritual qualifications similar to Dr. Nelsen’s. We … have no reluctance to ask such men to serve on a limited basis, free of charge, using their unique gifts of the Holy Spirit to the spiritual enrichment of the lives of college people. All in all I think Dr. Nelsen is on the right track.Bethany Baptist ChurchIowa City. IowaThe article … describes what in fact has already been established by Regent College since 1970. We are on the campus of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. We are training students for a one-year Diploma in Christian Studies, with plans for advanced degrees also. In 1971 some theological colleges followed our lead with similar offerings of one-year courses. It is precisely our vision to see similar evangelical centers established in other major universities throughout the world.However, we differ from the proposals in two important respects. Firstly the proposal for undergraduate centers may conflict with university syllabi, since universities could reasonably object that students attending the centers may have conflicts of interests, timetables, and subject matter with the courses on the campus. We have felt it was wise to establish our center at the graduate level, so that students coming to us with the accreditation of their first degrees can be trained to view their faith more maturely.…Secondly, we believe that to own property.… is an unnecessary expense.… Rental facilities on the campus are adequate, and much cheaper. Moreover, we believe the “ghetto” mentality of living in a “holy huddle” does not necessarily generate the wholesome, mature outlook that will prepare Christian young people to live in the world, though not of it. It is the faith and commitment of their teachers, not the “atmosphere,” that inspires them.…It is, however, exciting to see the growing evidence of emphasis on evangelical scholarship, seeking to re-establish itself on our university campuses and in public life. This is what we need. Regent CollegePrincipalVancouver, British ColumbiaWEEKLY NECESSITY“If I were the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY I would make it a weekly (Eutychus and His Kin, “If I Were Editor …,” July 7). Of course this would mean an increase in the subscription price, plus increases in personnel, etc. Maybe a poll should be taken of the readers to discover if there are enough readers who would pay the price of a weekly.Minister of Music and EducationBethel Baptist ChurchSalem, Va.‘IN ALL THINGS LOVE’Your editorial “The Lord Is Coming Again!” (June 23) was superb. The realistic recognition of diversities of interpretation of the Christian conviction about the final redemption and judgment of God over our world through Jesus Christ is a good illustration of the apostolic advice “speaking the truth with love” (Eph. 4:15). I believe that some of the passionate insistence that Jesus is coming again according to a specified program and timetable is actually a sign of the inability to deal constructively with threats to a belief. The heat in some of our arguments is not always the product of the conviction fires of the Holy Spirit. It is sometimes a part of the oscillation of fever and chills resulting from the struggle with an insecure faith.In the long struggle of Christians to live with both their convictions and their brothers I think one of the best guidelines we have been given has come from Rupertus Meldenius (A.D. 1627): “In faith unity, in opinions liberty, in all things love” (Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, vol. VII, Eerdmans, 1950, p. 650 f.). Surely on that day when many will gather from East and West and North and South to sit at table with our triumphant Lord Jesus both the passionately convicted and the dispassionately tolerant will find their truth and love made complete and pure.First Christian ChurchCedar Falls, IowaSOUTHERN BAPTIST COMMENTSIn all my years of reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY I have found it to be a magazine which presented a conservative viewpoint concerning the inspiration of God’s word, and I have appreciated its attempts to maintain a conservative and what some would call a fundamental interpretation of the word.However, your editorial entitled “Southern Baptist Watershed?” (June 23) is, it seems to me, redeemed from outright prejudice only by the addition of the question mark to the title. It is obvious that the writer of the editorial was in sympathy with the one who presented the motion to withdraw the commentaries and did not even consider the arguments against the withdrawing.All Southern Baptist churches are independent churches and differ in their interpretations of the Scripture. It is true that some are liberal, some conservative, and some fundamental. But to consign all to the unhappy fate suggested in the last paragraph because of the decision in a convention reveals a very poor understanding of the nature of Southern Baptists.Genesee District Baptist Assoc.Flint, Mich.Let me thank you for the excellent editorial. I wish this might be in tract form and put into the hands of all Southern Baptists. I assure you many have read it and will be greatly encouraged by it. I read several state Baptist periodicals and so far I have not seen one which takes your position.… I predict that there will be another effort at Portland, Oregon, to reverse this action. I also predict that if such action is not forthcoming, there will be a split in the SBC.Keep up the good work!Area RepresentativeWycliffe Bible TranslatorsWashington, D. C.As a Southern Baptist pastor having attended the Philadelphia meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, I thoroughly disagree with your conclusions regarding the defeat of the motion to withdraw the “Broadman Bible Commentary.”Citing the 1925 and 1963 adoption of “The Baptist Faith and Message” you conclude that this recent action “opens the floodgates to all kinds of serious theological errors.” You could not possibly be more wrong. The action merely confirms the long-standing Baptist conviction of the competency of the individual believer to interpret the Scriptures aided by the Holy Spirit.… What the action does is to avoid an “official orthodoxy” for Southern Baptists. The business of the convention does not include the prerogative of defining belief for the autonomous churches. While Baptists have throughout their history approved statements or confessions of faith they have never had the status of creeds and I pray they never will. Your conclusions smack of “creedal fundamentalism” which in my opinion are not shared by most Southern Baptists.Cradock Baptist ChurchPortsmouth. Va.To those of us not familiar with Southern Baptist Convention procedure the report (“Southern Baptists Veto Book Recall”) was somewhat confusing. Please explain. You state: “Gwin W. Turner offered the motion to recall the entire commentary.… Bates ordered a standing vote, and the motion was adopted by a wide margin … This led to Turner’s unsuccessful move at the convention in Philadelphia.”The North American Baptist General ConferencesWinnipeg, Manitoba• Substitute “defeated” for “adopted” and sense is restored. Sorry for the confusion—ED.SPECIOUS APPEALThe review of Norman Macbeth’s book, Naturalistic Evolution (June 23), refers to the second law of thermodynamics as scientific evidence that “naturalistic evolution cannot be true.”As discussed in a paper by J. A. Cramer, published in the March, 1971 Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, “the idea that the general theory of evolution and the second law of thermodynamics are mutually contradictory is an error based on failure to recognize that the second law allows parts of the universe to decrease entropy (increase order) while requiring that the total amount of disorder in the universe must always increase. Thus the second law cannot be used against evolution.…” I am sure we would agree that benefits to biblical Christian theism are at best temporary, limited, and questionable when such a specious argument is used to refute an antagonistic philosophy.Wauwatosa, Wis.USING WOMANEdwin M. Yamauchi’s use of the woman issue to illustrate the problems of “Christianity and Cultural Differences” was quite apt. Unfortunately, however, he seems to have succumbed to the temptation he was warning against: making our own cultural ideas the norm for the New Testament or uncritically transposing first-century norms into the twentieth.Most scholars will readily admit that First Timothy 2:11–15 is ambiguous, to say the least, in regard to woman’s role. To say as Yamauchi does that it “stresses woman’s pre-eminent role as a mother” is highly selective. If indeed the passage does teach that (the assertion is highly debatable), the rest of the New Testament does not support it.While the Gospel does not downgrade motherhood, it nowhere teaches that this is to be woman’s only role or even the predominate one as Yamauchi suggests. Christ never taught that woman’s salvation was in childbearing (though in the Old Testament her hope, as did that of all Jews, rested in the birth of the coming Messiah). Rather woman’s salvation was accomplished once and for all in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Her calling is to commit her life to him and to serve him—whether in marriage or celibacy, in rearing children or pursuing a career. To follow Yamauchi’s suggestions would be to deny full Christian personhood to all single women or barren wives.Likewise the phrase “to usurp authority over the man” (v. 12) is a unique one, ambiguous in its meaning, and thus should not be used alone to establish any major teaching. Yamauchi would be on more solid ground if he took his stand on Galations 3:28 and stayed there. By labeling that passage “ideal” and declaring woman to be in “subordination to her husband” two paragraphs later, he has vitiated any equality. In a modern democracy where woman (as an outgrowth of New Testament teachings) is seen to be a full person in her own right, are we to impose a role on her which is left over from the days when women, like slaves, were considered the property of the “master”? After 1,800 years Christians managed to decide that the Bible no longer decreed that we must live in a slave-master culture. When are we going to apply the same kind of thinking to the woman issue?And how can Yamauchi cling to woman’s subordination in marriage while blithely labeling as cultural the injunctions that she remain silent in church? Both positions could be argued equally well from New Testament evidence. Is this just another evidence that when it comes to the woman issue (as with many others) we pick and choose which scriptural paths we wish to follow? Just as modern society offers woman “a more equal public role with men,” so we have found (as the Bible tried to teach us, especially in Genesis and the Song of Songs) that a more equal marital role for women builds the strongest marriages. God created men and women to complement one another, not to dominate or submit to one another.It’s about time evangelical scholars and laypeople stopped relying on personal prejudices and biblical proof texts and seriously looked at what the entire Bible teaches in regard to full Christian personhood.Mundelein, Ill.Apparently the key sentence to which Ms. Nancy Hardesty objects is my statement: “I believe that what Paul taught about a woman’s role as a mother and her subordination to her husband is still quite valid.” I did not mean, as Ms. Hardesty seems to have inferred, that “this is to be woman’s only role or even the predominate one,” nor would I deny “full Christian personhood to all single women or barren wives.”I believe that Ms. Hardesty would agree with me that each Christian man or woman needs to seek God’s will individually as to marriage. He may very well call some to remain single (Matt. 19:10–12; 1 Cor. 7:27 ff.). I would deplore rushing into marriage simply because it seems to be the thing to do as I would deplore the tendency for some to avoid marriage because they do not desire the responsibility of raising a family. Nor should Christian mothers be beguiled by the literature of the women’s lib movement into despising the care of children as an oppressive burden instead of the glorious vocation from God that it is.Where Ms. Hardesty may disagree is in the matter of a wife’s subordination to her husband, which, she believes, vitiates any equality. Her basic point is that “God created men and women to complement one another, not to dominate or submit to one another.”There is a question of semantics here. I believe that it is possible for a wife to be subject to her husband without being inferior to him, to be obedient without being obsequious, and to be submissive without being passive. A wife should be able to complement her husband without being dominated by him.The more substantive issue is whether or not the subordination of wives to their husbands in such passages as First Timothy 2:11–15; Ephesians 5:22–33; Colossians 3:18–25, and First Peter 3:1–8 is an intrinsic, transcultural duty or a conventional, cultural pattern.An indication that this is not simply a cultural pattern (although the degree of the dominant patriarchal authority in biblical times was culturally informed) is the appeal in these passages to the pattern of the primeval marriage of the first man and woman in Genesis: Genesis 1 and 2 cited in First Timothy 2:13, 14 and Genesis 2:24 cited in Ephesians 5:31.But as E. O. James, commenting on the subordination of wives to their husbands in Christian marriage, points out:
The obedience demanded of the wife, however, was based on the underlying theological conceptions in which human relationships were interpreted in terms of God’s relationship with man. Thus, for the Christian obedience was the supreme virtue valuable for its own sake when freely given not from weakness but from strength, as exemplified in the perfect self-oblation of Christ wherein was manifested the highest expression of love. It was only when it was deprived of its theological foundations in a secularized society that it lost its spiritual significance and degenerated into a degrading act of submission involving a loss of personal freedom—a derogation from personality rather than a means of attaining the subsistence of the spiritual self by way of love [Marriage and Society, 1952, p. 99].

Oxford, Ohio‘PUN-FUN’Edward E. Plowman should be congratulated, no doubt, for restraining himself from having some pun-fun with his mention in “Explo ’72: ‘Godstock’ in Big D” (July 7) that Campus Crusade director Bill Bright “… got the idea for Explo.…” That would undoubtedly make it a “Bright idea”—or, as some critics might put it, a “bright idea” (or even a “Bright bright idea”).Washington, D. C.UNNATURAL?As a Christian, and as a homosexual preparing for the ministry, I am greatly disturbed by your editorial on the “gains” made by homosexuals (“Gay Ground-Gaining,” June 23). How unfortunate that a magazine which has been, in the past, noted for its high sense of compassion and understanding toward the plight of the homosexual—and especially the Christian homosexual—should resort to such silly and naïve editorializing. However good your intentions might have been, you helped immeasurably to continue some sad misconceptions and myths about homosexuals—namely, that we are a sad lot of child molesters with little or no sense of values, and that, like the forty-nine-year-old father mentioned in your editorial, we are, for the most part, degenerates of the lowest kind. You do us and yourself a grave dishonor. Your statement, “We do not condemn the homosexual, but we do oppose the practice of homosexuality as contrary to God’s commands,” does little to erase the senseless and certainly untrue picture which the rest of your editorial conjures up in the mind.I am a Christian, a homosexual, and a Baptist, and I do not find anything grotesque, unnatural, and sinful about loving a man and having sexual relations with him. What I do find unnatural, grotesque, and sinful is silly, trite, and inconsiderate editorials perpetuating old myths and making life impossible for those who already find life difficult.New Orleans, La.

Fifth in a SeriesA crisis in theological credibility darkens the Western world; multitudes are baffled over what, if anything, they should believe about God.This theological credibility gap differs from the widely denounced political credibility gap. Government officials are often charged with withholding information or manipulating the news; religious academics, however, are not often accused of malevolent secrecy or deliberate dishonesty. Few theologians are given either to anonymity or deceit.The complaint against neo-Protestant theologians, rather, is that they simply don’t “tell it like it is.” Their religious reports are inconsistent and contradictory, if not incoherent. And if theologians and clergy who claim to be divinely updated experts cannot agree among themselves, surely the public cannot much be blamed for having high doubts about the Deity and about those who claim to fraternize with him.If modern theologians kept their supposed revelational insights to themselves, that would be another matter. Then the continual revision and replacement of their views would create little problem for the public. But as it is, theology is increasingly tagged as an enterprise of creative speculation; its queen-for-a-day tenets have less endurance than many frankly tentative scientific hypotheses.Neo-Protestant theologians hesitate to admit that they are simply playing peek-a-boo with divinity. Two generations of modern religious theory nevertheless bear out the blunt verdict that their rumors about God have no more solid basis in objective disclosure than Clifford Irving’s supposed conversations with the inaccessible and invisible Howard Hughes.What makes the confusing theological reports—that the Deity is “in here” or “out there” or “up there” or “in depth” or “dead and gone”—a scandal is the fact that the Living God is truly accessible in his revelation. These neo-Protestant claims are intended to state the truth about God. But they so clearly contradict one another that if their proponents are not promulgating a literary hoax, they are at least profoundly mistaken. No claim is no more obviously fraudulent than that contemporary religionists convey the unadulterated truth about God. Their views cancel one another out.Realizing this, a great many frustrated divinity students have taken a raincheck on theological commitments. For them to pursue a mod-theology for permanently valuable spiritual profit is about as rewarding, they feel, as for a squirrel to dig for nuts in Astroturf.What neo-Protestant theologians as a class are saying about God is not only insufficient but inaccurate. At best, they proffer a mixture of truth, half-truth, and untruth—and no recent modern theologian has presented a solid criterion for distinguishing one from the other. The inevitable result is public distrust, even when these theologians happen to tell the truth about God. Their lack of theological concurrence has given rise to an adage: “When in doubt, speak as a theologian.”This widespread uneasiness over the pontifications of contemporary theologians has been nurtured not only by their ambiguity and abstruseness but also by their promotion of a pluralistic dialogue that often denies historic evangelical Christianity a voice. Champions of a quasi-official ecumenical position screen and manage the news about God. Ecumenical biblicism wears thin the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel (“that they may be one”) but leaves comparatively untouched Jahweh’s message through Jeremiah: “You keep saying, This place is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!’ This catchword of yours is a lie.… Do not run after other gods to your own ruin.… You run after other gods whom you have not known; then you come and stand before me in this house, which hears my name, and say, ‘We are safe’; safe, you think, to indulge in all these abominations” (Jer. 7:4 ff., NEB).Among multitudes of Christians devoted to fulfilling the Great Commission, few complaints run deeper than that, in their unrivaled mass-media opportunities, ecumenists tend to obscure the singular truth of revealed religion and the good news of the Gospel. This dilution of historic Christian beliefs, whether in deference to modern theological alternatives or to socio-political activism, has nurtured widespread skepticism among the laity about the theological outlook of the institutional church. Ecumenical enthusiasm has been almost irreparably damaged among many laymen.It is not that these laymen think the learned clergy are lacking in candor, or are given to fabrication and deception and to winning followers by pretense. Yet the ambivalence of many churchmen toward New Testament commitments has convinced numerous churchgoers that a cadre of contemporary religious leaders have acquired unwarranted influence, whereby they control religious information and, perhaps unintentionally, mislead the masses. Many lay leaders suspect that ecumenical bureaucrats have lost the sense of final truth.The baffled multitudes have a right to know the truth about God. That truth is not nearly so inaccessible to the man in the street as theologians would have us believe. Nor is it dependent upon the ingenuity of modern-minded religious entrepreneurs. Any remarkably modern gospel is sure to be a false gospel. In earlier centuries, a powerful Catholic Church suppressed the Bible and shackled the people to the ecclesiastical hierarchy for their religious concepts. Neo-Protestant theologians suspend the Bible’s special meaning for modern man on their own cryptic “Key to the Scriptures.” In some places today Catholic leaders more energetically dispense the Scriptures (with the Apocrypha for excess measure) than do neo-Protestant radicals who are less sure of JHWH than JEPD.Much of the new religious literature is greeted with such skepticism and suspicion that the religious book market is notably on the decline. The widespread loss of confidence and trust reflects a costly sacrifice of religious credibility. Now that God has been sensationally proclaimed to be dead, church members abreast of this information are not morbidly curious about the religious undertakers’ progress reports on the supposedly disintegrating corpse.Indeed, the theologians of modernity are no longer widely viewed as the best source of information about God. While many radical clergymen have inherited what theology they have, or have had, from these theological mentors, there is a growing feeling among the masses that, if special information about God is available, neo-Protestant theologians are not the dispensers of it.

Americans are spending approximately 5 billion this year on leisure. That’s almost double the 1965 figure. This financial outlay for leisure, noted U. S. News and World Report, is more than our national defense costs for this year, more than the total of our corporate profits, and more than the overall value of the country’s exports. Despite the burdens of taxes and inflation, experts suggest that providing goods and services for spare-time activities is a growth operation with few parallels.We get power equipment to do much of our work. Then we must look for other activities to fill up the time we have saved and burn off the energy we have conserved. Often what we turn to are sports activities, either as spectators or as participants. Sport is nudging its way into an ever more dominant role in our culture. Many newspapers devote between 20 and 30 per cent of their hard news space to coverage of athletic events.As worship on weekends is displaced by worship of weekends, a big loser is the environment. Many of our leisure-time activities require much more of our already scarce power and add to our already abundant pollution.Sports and recreation of all kinds also raise particular questions for the Christian, who has stewardship obligations. Can we find biblical guidelines to justify our vast leisure-time outlay? Why have we so long avoided the scrutiny the new pattern demands in view of the acute physical and spiritual needs in so many parts of the world? Underdeveloped countries must wonder how a supposedly Christian nation can put so much money into play. Surely such a staggering sum demands more open debate.“When we think about sport,” Dr. David Wee says, “we often forget to ask the most important question that we should ask about all of our human activities: What is its effect upon the quality of the human experience? Or what is its effect upon the human spirit?” Dr. Wee, a Lutheran clergyman-scholar and all-American runner, was on the right track in his article in Event and the Christian Athlete. But we submit that even more profound questions are involved. How does sport measure up to God’s requirements? How can it affect our relationship with him? It is easy enough to make a case for sport from a human perspective, but to do so in terms of divine demands is something else.Occasionally sports offer promise on the international scene: most people agree that table tennis was instrumental in bringing a welcome thaw in American-Chinese relations. More often, however, sports arouse tension, hostility, and violence. Hardly an Olympics goes by without some political incident. Hitler used the 1936 games to deceive the world as to what he was up to in Nazi Germany.Sport today also is being misused to numb our concern for truth and justice. Many persons become engrossed in it as an easy means of evading responsibility, of getting their minds off more important things they know they should be doing. This is true even within churches, thousands of which field softball teams but neglect evangelism and the building up of believers. They assume that having a team is fine so long as they avoid Sunday play.Evangelicals who love sports like to appeal to the numerous allusions to athletics in the New Testament. Close examination reveals that none of these bestows any kind of divine blessing upon sport. Paul very likely used references to runners and games because they aided communication with Greeks. In his address on Mars Hill he used the Athenians’ altar to the unknown god in a similar way.Sport was not part of the Hebrew tradition. It was eventually introduced as part of the influence from the Greek lower classes. Roman leaders used sports to pacify people and keep them in line.Yet there is not adequate reason to condemn sport per se. It does serve to relieve aggression and to occupy the attention of some people who might otherwise be doing things that are a lot worse. Moreover, there is certainly an extent to which athletics are good therapy even for the Christian who thinks himself well-adjusted. Everyone needs and should have relaxation and diversion, and Paul does say that “physical exercise has some value in it,” adding, “spiritual exercise is valuable in every way, for it promises life both for now and for the future” (1 Tim. 4:8, TEV).What we need to do is to lift the lid of silence that has covered sport, as if this particular human activity were beyond discussion. An adequate apologetic, if there is one, must be brought forth.To be sure, thorough examination of athletics may pose a threat to our life styles. But the alternative is to rationalize our position simply from experience so that we are little more than puppets of our times.Part of our preoccupation with sport results from a snowball effect—it is so much with us that it tends to build on itself. Another reason is that for most games a minimum of skill is required to watch or even play, and so vast numbers can readily involve themselves.But among the various activities we can relax with, athletics are low on the scale of demonstrable religious significance. We need to apply biblical principles more forcefully to our use of leisure.Sport is sometimes the path of least resistance. As the distinguished Yale scholar Paul Weiss wrote in his recent book Sport: A Philosophical Inquiry, “Young men find it easier to master their bodies than to be truly noble, monumental, pious, or wise.” Older men gazing for long hours at the tube take an even easier way out. The threat is that we will get carried away with sport and other leisure-time activities. We need to justify the extent of our involvement in the light of eternity’s values.India And Pakistan At Twenty-FiveOn August 15, 1947, the British formally relinquished control of the Indian subcontinent, where they had begun to establish themselves early in the 1600s and which they had formally ruled since 1858. British imperialism created one country, India, out of a multitude of principalities and territories with different languages, cultural heritages, and religions. The end of British rule came before the major source of religious tension, the Muslim fear of domination by the more numerous group, the Hindus, could be resolved. Thus two new nations were born, India and Pakistan. But Pakistan was divided into two wings, separated by hundreds of miles of Indian territory and by major ethnic and cultural differences, although one in their Muslim heritage. In 1971 civil war split Pakistan and resulted in the establishment of the new republic of Bangladesh.Transition from imperial subjugation to responsible self-rule has thus been difficult and bloody for Pakistan and by no means easy for India. The second most populous nation in the world, India has now struggled for twenty-five years to solve its immense human problems without resorting to tyranny, mass coercion, and one-party thought control. Those who have spent time in India must testify to the depth of the Indian commitment to intellectual and personal freedom and to parliamentary democracy in a situation that could easily have driven a government to the use of compulsion.As India and Pakistan start their second quarter-century of independence and the new nation of Bangladesh starts its second year, we wish them well in their struggle for human dignity and freedom and economic viability. We wish for them also an increasing appreciation for Jesus Christ, for in him alone is there a sufficient answer to man’s longings.The Featherbedding FiremanMost people under thirty missed the thrill of seeing a puffing steam locomotive, so the term “fireman” may need a bit of explanation. The steam engine had two men in the cab, the engineer, who was at the controls, and the fireman, whose job was mainly to shovel coal from the tender so as to keep the boiler producing steam. When diesel and electric locomotives came along, railroad executives said firemen were no longer needed on freight trains and tried to get rid of them. The rail unions objected, contending that the “firemen” acted as valuable lookouts.The dispute became the longest labor-management conflict in American history; it dragged out over thirty-five years and was not settled until last month. Interestingly enough, the end came not in the midst of one of the many strikes and negotiation crises brought on by the dispute but quietly, calmly, and unexpectedly. Labor agreed to a long-term plan of attrition of firemen, an admission that there had been featherbedding. Management made its big concession in allowing a number of years for the phaseout.The fact that on both labor and management sides new men got the negotiating responsibility this year suggests that personalities may have played a part in the settlement. This serves to remind us that we never get away from the human element. We congratulate those who found a way out of this impasse, and we echo the hope expressed by Secretary of Labor James D. Hodgson that “this presages a new era of collective bargaining.”Advertising PornographyWe think pornography, like much advertising, creates or inflames desires that often are contrary to God’s explicit revelation. Obedience to God’s will is, of course, ultimately an inward matter. Moreover, sexual sins are not the only ones that matter. We don’t urge that ads for fine clothes or cars or food be forbidden or even voluntarily refused because they encourage coveting and excessive self-indulgence. But without minimizing the seriousness of these materialistic sins in the sight of God, we do suggest that advertisements for pornographic movies and books be treated separately and be voluntarily refused by our nation’s press.While the goods and services offered in other ads can serve legitimate needs and offer wholesome pleasures, we see no comparable redeeming values in pornographic materials. Not only is pornography against the law of God; even from a humanistic perspective, it is degrading and exploitative. If people want to debase themselves, God does not stop them. But journalistic media that claim to represent an honorable profession should be willing to pass up the advertising income from pornography. Most people would expect the press to refuse ads for clothing made from furs or hides taken from endangered species and usually acquired by poaching. Similarly, many are calling for rejection of ads for products made by willful violators of pollution laws. The definition of pollution might well be expanded to include the debasing of God-given sex as well as the fouling of God-given nature.Christians should make their views on advertising known to the editors of their local newspapers. Possibly a paper’s own editorial stands on pornography and related moral issues can be used to urge a reasonable consistency between the editorial and business sides of the same enterprise.Pity The Controversial TheologianPity the unfortunate former Anglican bishop of Woolwich, now dean of Trinity College, Cambridge (England), John A. T. Robinson. Early in his career he wrote a number of essays and monographs, liberal in perspective, on New Testament subjects. Although these were generally agreed to show a respectable level of scholarly competence, they did not gain him that elusive prize of fame.National and then international celebrity came quickly, however, when as a modest suffragan bishop Robinson took up the cause of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and said that, far from being considered pornography, the novel ought to be looked on as a description of a form of “holy communion.” Only a Jesuit general or the Pope himself would have reaped a richer reward in notoriety for such an opinion. Honest to God (1963), a little book that enjoyed first-rate pre-publication exposure on BBC television and in a national newspaper, made the suave bishop a kind of swami for falling-away Christians all over the English-speaking world. His subsequent writings were the toast of the intellectual religious cocktail circuit, but they never quite matched Honest to God in sensational value.Now Robinson’s fertile mind has once again seized upon a subject that will stir up, for the moment at least, some outcry and attention among those not yet cloyed by such antics from ecclesiastics: he now advocates lowering the age of consent for sexual relations to fourteen.As to the merits of his proposal, made to the Methodist Conference at Nottingham, we can only observe that it is consistent with a modern trend: law should forbid nothing that is not a clear and present danger to our civilized society, such as certain forms of murder and all forms of failure to pay taxes. As to its demerits, we can note that it abandons one of the last vestiges of the ancient (and biblical) conviction that the civil law should encourage good behavior and aid in character formation, not merely punish the most obnoxious crimes.We know that Robinson is in a difficult situation. To remain in the limelight he must necessarily increase the outrageousness of his proposals with each passing year. Yet there is always the danger that if he strays much further from his supposedly Christian heritage, he will no longer be able to speak as a churchman but only as a late twentieth-century secular man—and where would the sensation be then?Why Make It Complicated?Occasionally readers write in to complain about theologians (and Christian magazines) who seem determined to replace the simplicity of the Gospel with the complications of theology. We don’t deny that sometimes we—or some of our writers—may take a paragraph to make badly a point that could have been made well in one sentence. This is an occupational disease of theologians—perhaps rather akin to that of the doctor who, you suspect, gives your ailment a Latin name because you would find his bill too high if he diagnosed you in plain English. We recognize this temptation, fight it, and still occasionally succumb to it.But even when we successfully resist the temptation, when we haven’t brought in any unnecessary rhetoric or bombast, there are things in theology—as in medicine and in every other discipline—that just cannot be simplified and made easy to swallow but may nevertheless be vitally important for us.Although the Gospel is simple, attacks on it can be very subtle. They can pose as “refinements,” “clarifications,” “explanations.” Almost every case of heresy, apostasy, or plain loss of faith begins with a plausible clarification or criticism of the Gospel. Since the Gospel is often inadequately presented, plenty of the criticism may in fact be justified. But we know that mere “commitment,” even enthusiastic commitment, is not immune to the constant wearing-down effect of repeated criticisms and questions for which adequate answers are not forthcoming.Individuals and occasionally whole movements that began full of zeal for the Lord have stagnated or have even been ruined when their zeal was unmatched by knowledge of the Bible and of theology. Every heresy begins plausibly, and if you do not know anything about the old heresies, there is a good chance that you will fall into them.As Peter Beyerhaus wrote in our July 7 issue, there was a tremendous burst of Christian enthusiasm in Germany immediately after World War II. People were converted, studied the Scriptures, had the joy of the Lord in their hearts. But no one made a serious attempt to refute the skepticism and anti-supernaturalism that underlies modernist theology. Young students went to Bultmann and his disciples and, while listening to his theology, kept on praying and attending Bible studies. After all, Bultmann himself, like many of the theological radicals, comes from a “pietist” background and is emotionally attached to such devotions. But the rationalism and skepticism won out in many cases. Warmth and zeal, unsupported by sound doctrine taught on the same level as the modernists’ skepticism, were not enough.“We wrestle not,” wrote Paul, “against flesh and blood, but against … spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12). False teaching is one of the effects of the “spiritual wickedness” he had in mind, and wrestling is not an easy sport. When we do our intellectual wrestling clumsily, boringly, or unimaginatively, we owe our readers an apology. But then the best response is not to criticize but to do it better. Learning sound theology is one aspect of spiritual wrestling, and it is not optional. It’s a requirement.Blessing The Weapons—Of The Other SideMost Christians admit that a just war can exist, and thus under appropriate circumstances they defend the right and even the obligation of citizens, including Christians, to go to war. This does not mean they support the “bless the weapons” attitude whereby the clergy and other noncombatants have been expected to encourage their own nation’s armed forces in every action and in any war.In time of armed conflict, outspoken pacifists, even those with the purest of intentions, often have a hard time, for they appear to be aiding the enemy and harming their own country. During the last few decades most Americans—including non-pacifist Christians—have learned to respect the personal integrity of pacifists and war resisters, even when their actions seem to run counter to the “national interest.”Recently, however, some who parade as apostles of peace have been saying and doing strange things. When North Viet Nam launched its massive military invasion of the South in May and the United States reacted by mining and bombing the North, the statements of some anti-war spokesmen seemed to reveal, not merely a desire for peace, but the wish for total victory for the other side. We find it particularly hard to see what good could have come out of Jane Fonda’s visit last month to Hanoi, where she encouraged the Communists and urged American soldiers to defect. When people like Bob Hope visit American forces in the South, they are criticized for “supporting militarism” and “prolonging the war.”We can respect pacifism and those with whom we differ on how peace can be achieved; but it is a strange kind of pacifism that wants to silence the weapons on one side—in the case at hand, our own—while blessing and encouraging the fighters on the other. In fact, there is a word for this, and it is not pacifism.The Forgotten CommandmentWhen is the last time your congregation disciplined one of its members? If you are of the (we suspect) minority who can remember the practice of formal church discipline, then we ask, What was the procedure? And what was the result? Chances are that many New Testament passages on discipline were violated.Over the centuries church discipline has so often been done wrongly—in both intention and method—that for the past century there has been increasing neglect of it. This neglect is not only in congregations where the Gospel is no longer regularly proclaimed. To be sure, in almost every denominational family small groups continue to practice discipline, but they serve more as an example of what it should not be like and contribute to the overreaction that avoids it altogether. We also recognize that modern metropolitan anonymity makes discipline more difficult to enforce than it is in traditional “face-to-face” society where everybody knows everybody.What are we to do, if we would be true to the Scriptures? “The answer to bad church discipline is good church discipline, not no church discipline.” So says Marlin Jeschke, author of perhaps the only book-length treatment to be published in English in the past fifty years. In Discipling the Brother (Herald Press [Scottdale, Pa.], 200 pp., .95 pb), Jeschke basically discusses Matthew 18:15–18: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him.… If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you.… If he refuses to listen to you, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile.…”This is the forgotten commandment in much of modern evangelicalism. We are embarrassed by the whole penitential development of the Roman system, and by the excesses of our Baptist, Mennonite, Puritan, Wesleyan, and other ancestors. In keeping with the individualism of our society, we more or less expect self-discipline to take the place of corporate responsibility for one another. Because some people delight in finding faults, seemingly for the sheer joy of being able to excommunicate as many people as possible, we go to the other extreme and ignore the positive role that genuine concern for one another was intended to have by our Lord and his apostles. At times we base our passivity on our reluctance to presume to be holier than others. Jeschke discusses all these excuses in the light of Scripture and church history.There are books galore on being a disciple oneself, and on getting congregations to enlarge as much as possible. They have their place. But try to make room in your reading for Jeschke’s thorough, well-researched, compassionate treatment of the need and the way “to place the doctrine of church discipline once more in the context of gospel proclamation and to liberate Matthew 18:15–18 from the legalistic interpretation it has suffered since medieval times.”

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?One of the stranger gifts God has given me is the ability to interpret dress patterns. In view of the fact that most pattern instructions are written in an obscure Polynesian dialect of pidgen English, that’s no mean gift.The last time I was called on to display this talent was when my 12-year-old daughter decided she could no longer put off her home ec project, much as she hated the course. The assignment was to make a dress from a pattern of her choice.At her request I had explained some of the intricacies of the diagram to her, and she was at the sewing machine working against the clock with mounting frustration. Suddenly she threw the dress down and exclaimed, “I don’t see why I have to take a dumb course like this anyhow!”“Why did you?” I asked in typical fatherly ignorance.“Daddy,” she replied in the patronizing tone she reserves for very small children and me, “it’s required.”“Oh.” I responded brilliantly.“But it’s dumb,” she continued. “Why do I need to spend all this time learning how to make a dress when I’ll probably never do it again? When I become a psychiatrist all my clothes will be tailor made!”Frankly, I thought she had a point, and a glance at the partly finished dress confirmed it. But since we parents and teachers have to stick together in self-defense, I told her she’d better get back to work and stop complaining.Then in my best counseling manner I went on to point out that even psychiatrists have to do things in their training that are not particularly fun but are necessary to reach their goal.Although she wasn’t completely convinced, my speech helped a little, since this image of herself as a psychiatrist conditions all her activities. A home ec course has no meaning because she can’t relate it to her future as a psychiatrist. When she’s playing dolls she’s simply the psychiatrist-to-be enjoying fantasy.She has already begun to answer that very important question: Who do you think you are?I’m convinced that our answer to that question, our self-image, is crucial in finding meaning for our lives.The Apostle John reminds Christians of the most important part of that answer: “My dear friends, we are now God’s children …”TRIUMPHANT IN DEATHThank you for that timely and comforting article, “Death: No More Taboos,” by Cheryl A. Forbes (May 26). It was a joy to read this illuminating discussion of the “right to die with dignity,” and “a living will.” It is heartwarming indeed to see this all-important subject brought out in the open. As for myself, several years ago, I placed a “living will” among my important papers. At age eighty I felt the time had come to make my desires known legally. In my “living will” are these poignant words: “In the event I should become so critically ill that nothing but blood transfusions and intravenous feeding would prolong my life, please use neither—just let me die in peace, for that will be the triumphant moment for which I’ve lived these many years!” Hutchinson, Kans.A PROPOSALThank you for the excellent article by Frank C. Nelsen on “Evangelical Living and Learning Centers: A Proposal” in the May 26 issue. His recommendation consists of a most exciting concept and one which has practical merit.Hopefully, the suggestion might be incorporated in the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies program and implemented on a campus such as the University of Pennsylvania, by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, or by a joint effort of both organizations.Pittsburgh, Pa.As the pastor of a church close to a major university I have been exploring for some time the possibility of offering Bible-oriented courses to Christian students as a complement to the university’s curriculum. Currently we have the facilities and personnel but are still struggling with the problem of accreditation.We differ markedly with Nelsen’s proposal, however, in two areas. The first of these is his insistence on perpetuating the concept in loco parentis.… The advisability of such a practice has been held in question for a long time, and most campus ministries are now recognizing the need for the college student to establish his independence and identity as an adult instead of depending on an institution to serve as his substitute parent.Our second area is one of money. Is there an alternative to spending huge chunks of money in an enterprise such as this? We think there is. First of all, if we do not need to provide housing for students, classes such as proposed by Dr. Nelsen could be held in a variety of facilities. There are any number of churches, for instance, whose facilities stand vacant most of the week. Most universities have memorial unions where meeting facilities conducive to classroom use are available free of charge to campus groups. Additionally, on a growing number of campuses across the United States the Lord is locating a significant number of evangelical scholars who have academic and spiritual qualifications similar to Dr. Nelsen’s. We … have no reluctance to ask such men to serve on a limited basis, free of charge, using their unique gifts of the Holy Spirit to the spiritual enrichment of the lives of college people. All in all I think Dr. Nelsen is on the right track.Bethany Baptist ChurchIowa City. IowaThe article … describes what in fact has already been established by Regent College since 1970. We are on the campus of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. We are training students for a one-year Diploma in Christian Studies, with plans for advanced degrees also. In 1971 some theological colleges followed our lead with similar offerings of one-year courses. It is precisely our vision to see similar evangelical centers established in other major universities throughout the world.However, we differ from the proposals in two important respects. Firstly the proposal for undergraduate centers may conflict with university syllabi, since universities could reasonably object that students attending the centers may have conflicts of interests, timetables, and subject matter with the courses on the campus. We have felt it was wise to establish our center at the graduate level, so that students coming to us with the accreditation of their first degrees can be trained to view their faith more maturely.…Secondly, we believe that to own property.… is an unnecessary expense.… Rental facilities on the campus are adequate, and much cheaper. Moreover, we believe the “ghetto” mentality of living in a “holy huddle” does not necessarily generate the wholesome, mature outlook that will prepare Christian young people to live in the world, though not of it. It is the faith and commitment of their teachers, not the “atmosphere,” that inspires them.…It is, however, exciting to see the growing evidence of emphasis on evangelical scholarship, seeking to re-establish itself on our university campuses and in public life. This is what we need. Regent CollegePrincipalVancouver, British ColumbiaWEEKLY NECESSITY“If I were the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY I would make it a weekly (Eutychus and His Kin, “If I Were Editor …,” July 7). Of course this would mean an increase in the subscription price, plus increases in personnel, etc. Maybe a poll should be taken of the readers to discover if there are enough readers who would pay the price of a weekly.Minister of Music and EducationBethel Baptist ChurchSalem, Va.‘IN ALL THINGS LOVE’Your editorial “The Lord Is Coming Again!” (June 23) was superb. The realistic recognition of diversities of interpretation of the Christian conviction about the final redemption and judgment of God over our world through Jesus Christ is a good illustration of the apostolic advice “speaking the truth with love” (Eph. 4:15). I believe that some of the passionate insistence that Jesus is coming again according to a specified program and timetable is actually a sign of the inability to deal constructively with threats to a belief. The heat in some of our arguments is not always the product of the conviction fires of the Holy Spirit. It is sometimes a part of the oscillation of fever and chills resulting from the struggle with an insecure faith.In the long struggle of Christians to live with both their convictions and their brothers I think one of the best guidelines we have been given has come from Rupertus Meldenius (A.D. 1627): “In faith unity, in opinions liberty, in all things love” (Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, vol. VII, Eerdmans, 1950, p. 650 f.). Surely on that day when many will gather from East and West and North and South to sit at table with our triumphant Lord Jesus both the passionately convicted and the dispassionately tolerant will find their truth and love made complete and pure.First Christian ChurchCedar Falls, IowaSOUTHERN BAPTIST COMMENTSIn all my years of reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY I have found it to be a magazine which presented a conservative viewpoint concerning the inspiration of God’s word, and I have appreciated its attempts to maintain a conservative and what some would call a fundamental interpretation of the word.However, your editorial entitled “Southern Baptist Watershed?” (June 23) is, it seems to me, redeemed from outright prejudice only by the addition of the question mark to the title. It is obvious that the writer of the editorial was in sympathy with the one who presented the motion to withdraw the commentaries and did not even consider the arguments against the withdrawing.All Southern Baptist churches are independent churches and differ in their interpretations of the Scripture. It is true that some are liberal, some conservative, and some fundamental. But to consign all to the unhappy fate suggested in the last paragraph because of the decision in a convention reveals a very poor understanding of the nature of Southern Baptists.Genesee District Baptist Assoc.Flint, Mich.Let me thank you for the excellent editorial. I wish this might be in tract form and put into the hands of all Southern Baptists. I assure you many have read it and will be greatly encouraged by it. I read several state Baptist periodicals and so far I have not seen one which takes your position.… I predict that there will be another effort at Portland, Oregon, to reverse this action. I also predict that if such action is not forthcoming, there will be a split in the SBC.Keep up the good work!Area RepresentativeWycliffe Bible TranslatorsWashington, D. C.As a Southern Baptist pastor having attended the Philadelphia meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, I thoroughly disagree with your conclusions regarding the defeat of the motion to withdraw the “Broadman Bible Commentary.”Citing the 1925 and 1963 adoption of “The Baptist Faith and Message” you conclude that this recent action “opens the floodgates to all kinds of serious theological errors.” You could not possibly be more wrong. The action merely confirms the long-standing Baptist conviction of the competency of the individual believer to interpret the Scriptures aided by the Holy Spirit.… What the action does is to avoid an “official orthodoxy” for Southern Baptists. The business of the convention does not include the prerogative of defining belief for the autonomous churches. While Baptists have throughout their history approved statements or confessions of faith they have never had the status of creeds and I pray they never will. Your conclusions smack of “creedal fundamentalism” which in my opinion are not shared by most Southern Baptists.Cradock Baptist ChurchPortsmouth. Va.To those of us not familiar with Southern Baptist Convention procedure the report (“Southern Baptists Veto Book Recall”) was somewhat confusing. Please explain. You state: “Gwin W. Turner offered the motion to recall the entire commentary.… Bates ordered a standing vote, and the motion was adopted by a wide margin … This led to Turner’s unsuccessful move at the convention in Philadelphia.”The North American Baptist General ConferencesWinnipeg, Manitoba• Substitute “defeated” for “adopted” and sense is restored. Sorry for the confusion—ED.SPECIOUS APPEALThe review of Norman Macbeth’s book, Naturalistic Evolution (June 23), refers to the second law of thermodynamics as scientific evidence that “naturalistic evolution cannot be true.”As discussed in a paper by J. A. Cramer, published in the March, 1971 Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, “the idea that the general theory of evolution and the second law of thermodynamics are mutually contradictory is an error based on failure to recognize that the second law allows parts of the universe to decrease entropy (increase order) while requiring that the total amount of disorder in the universe must always increase. Thus the second law cannot be used against evolution.…” I am sure we would agree that benefits to biblical Christian theism are at best temporary, limited, and questionable when such a specious argument is used to refute an antagonistic philosophy.Wauwatosa, Wis.USING WOMANEdwin M. Yamauchi’s use of the woman issue to illustrate the problems of “Christianity and Cultural Differences” was quite apt. Unfortunately, however, he seems to have succumbed to the temptation he was warning against: making our own cultural ideas the norm for the New Testament or uncritically transposing first-century norms into the twentieth.Most scholars will readily admit that First Timothy 2:11–15 is ambiguous, to say the least, in regard to woman’s role. To say as Yamauchi does that it “stresses woman’s pre-eminent role as a mother” is highly selective. If indeed the passage does teach that (the assertion is highly debatable), the rest of the New Testament does not support it.While the Gospel does not downgrade motherhood, it nowhere teaches that this is to be woman’s only role or even the predominate one as Yamauchi suggests. Christ never taught that woman’s salvation was in childbearing (though in the Old Testament her hope, as did that of all Jews, rested in the birth of the coming Messiah). Rather woman’s salvation was accomplished once and for all in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Her calling is to commit her life to him and to serve him—whether in marriage or celibacy, in rearing children or pursuing a career. To follow Yamauchi’s suggestions would be to deny full Christian personhood to all single women or barren wives.Likewise the phrase “to usurp authority over the man” (v. 12) is a unique one, ambiguous in its meaning, and thus should not be used alone to establish any major teaching. Yamauchi would be on more solid ground if he took his stand on Galations 3:28 and stayed there. By labeling that passage “ideal” and declaring woman to be in “subordination to her husband” two paragraphs later, he has vitiated any equality. In a modern democracy where woman (as an outgrowth of New Testament teachings) is seen to be a full person in her own right, are we to impose a role on her which is left over from the days when women, like slaves, were considered the property of the “master”? After 1,800 years Christians managed to decide that the Bible no longer decreed that we must live in a slave-master culture. When are we going to apply the same kind of thinking to the woman issue?And how can Yamauchi cling to woman’s subordination in marriage while blithely labeling as cultural the injunctions that she remain silent in church? Both positions could be argued equally well from New Testament evidence. Is this just another evidence that when it comes to the woman issue (as with many others) we pick and choose which scriptural paths we wish to follow? Just as modern society offers woman “a more equal public role with men,” so we have found (as the Bible tried to teach us, especially in Genesis and the Song of Songs) that a more equal marital role for women builds the strongest marriages. God created men and women to complement one another, not to dominate or submit to one another.It’s about time evangelical scholars and laypeople stopped relying on personal prejudices and biblical proof texts and seriously looked at what the entire Bible teaches in regard to full Christian personhood.Mundelein, Ill.Apparently the key sentence to which Ms. Nancy Hardesty objects is my statement: “I believe that what Paul taught about a woman’s role as a mother and her subordination to her husband is still quite valid.” I did not mean, as Ms. Hardesty seems to have inferred, that “this is to be woman’s only role or even the predominate one,” nor would I deny “full Christian personhood to all single women or barren wives.”I believe that Ms. Hardesty would agree with me that each Christian man or woman needs to seek God’s will individually as to marriage. He may very well call some to remain single (Matt. 19:10–12; 1 Cor. 7:27 ff.). I would deplore rushing into marriage simply because it seems to be the thing to do as I would deplore the tendency for some to avoid marriage because they do not desire the responsibility of raising a family. Nor should Christian mothers be beguiled by the literature of the women’s lib movement into despising the care of children as an oppressive burden instead of the glorious vocation from God that it is.Where Ms. Hardesty may disagree is in the matter of a wife’s subordination to her husband, which, she believes, vitiates any equality. Her basic point is that “God created men and women to complement one another, not to dominate or submit to one another.”There is a question of semantics here. I believe that it is possible for a wife to be subject to her husband without being inferior to him, to be obedient without being obsequious, and to be submissive without being passive. A wife should be able to complement her husband without being dominated by him.The more substantive issue is whether or not the subordination of wives to their husbands in such passages as First Timothy 2:11–15; Ephesians 5:22–33; Colossians 3:18–25, and First Peter 3:1–8 is an intrinsic, transcultural duty or a conventional, cultural pattern.An indication that this is not simply a cultural pattern (although the degree of the dominant patriarchal authority in biblical times was culturally informed) is the appeal in these passages to the pattern of the primeval marriage of the first man and woman in Genesis: Genesis 1 and 2 cited in First Timothy 2:13, 14 and Genesis 2:24 cited in Ephesians 5:31.But as E. O. James, commenting on the subordination of wives to their husbands in Christian marriage, points out:
The obedience demanded of the wife, however, was based on the underlying theological conceptions in which human relationships were interpreted in terms of God’s relationship with man. Thus, for the Christian obedience was the supreme virtue valuable for its own sake when freely given not from weakness but from strength, as exemplified in the perfect self-oblation of Christ wherein was manifested the highest expression of love. It was only when it was deprived of its theological foundations in a secularized society that it lost its spiritual significance and degenerated into a degrading act of submission involving a loss of personal freedom—a derogation from personality rather than a means of attaining the subsistence of the spiritual self by way of love [Marriage and Society, 1952, p. 99].

Oxford, Ohio‘PUN-FUN’Edward E. Plowman should be congratulated, no doubt, for restraining himself from having some pun-fun with his mention in “Explo ’72: ‘Godstock’ in Big D” (July 7) that Campus Crusade director Bill Bright “… got the idea for Explo.…” That would undoubtedly make it a “Bright idea”—or, as some critics might put it, a “bright idea” (or even a “Bright bright idea”).Washington, D. C.UNNATURAL?As a Christian, and as a homosexual preparing for the ministry, I am greatly disturbed by your editorial on the “gains” made by homosexuals (“Gay Ground-Gaining,” June 23). How unfortunate that a magazine which has been, in the past, noted for its high sense of compassion and understanding toward the plight of the homosexual—and especially the Christian homosexual—should resort to such silly and naïve editorializing. However good your intentions might have been, you helped immeasurably to continue some sad misconceptions and myths about homosexuals—namely, that we are a sad lot of child molesters with little or no sense of values, and that, like the forty-nine-year-old father mentioned in your editorial, we are, for the most part, degenerates of the lowest kind. You do us and yourself a grave dishonor. Your statement, “We do not condemn the homosexual, but we do oppose the practice of homosexuality as contrary to God’s commands,” does little to erase the senseless and certainly untrue picture which the rest of your editorial conjures up in the mind.I am a Christian, a homosexual, and a Baptist, and I do not find anything grotesque, unnatural, and sinful about loving a man and having sexual relations with him. What I do find unnatural, grotesque, and sinful is silly, trite, and inconsiderate editorials perpetuating old myths and making life impossible for those who already find life difficult.New Orleans, La.

Americans are spending approximately 5 billion this year on leisure. That’s almost double the 1965 figure. This financial outlay for leisure, noted U. S. News and World Report, is more than our national defense costs for this year, more than the total of our corporate profits, and more than the overall value of the country’s exports. Despite the burdens of taxes and inflation, experts suggest that providing goods and services for spare-time activities is a growth operation with few parallels.We get power equipment to do much of our work. Then we must look for other activities to fill up the time we have saved and burn off the energy we have conserved. Often what we turn to are sports activities, either as spectators or as participants. Sport is nudging its way into an ever more dominant role in our culture. Many newspapers devote between 20 and 30 per cent of their hard news space to coverage of athletic events.As worship on weekends is displaced by worship of weekends, a big loser is the environment. Many of our leisure-time activities require much more of our already scarce power and add to our already abundant pollution.Sports and recreation of all kinds also raise particular questions for the Christian, who has stewardship obligations. Can we find biblical guidelines to justify our vast leisure-time outlay? Why have we so long avoided the scrutiny the new pattern demands in view of the acute physical and spiritual needs in so many parts of the world? Underdeveloped countries must wonder how a supposedly Christian nation can put so much money into play. Surely such a staggering sum demands more open debate.“When we think about sport,” Dr. David Wee says, “we often forget to ask the most important question that we should ask about all of our human activities: What is its effect upon the quality of the human experience? Or what is its effect upon the human spirit?” Dr. Wee, a Lutheran clergyman-scholar and all-American runner, was on the right track in his article in Event and the Christian Athlete. But we submit that even more profound questions are involved. How does sport measure up to God’s requirements? How can it affect our relationship with him? It is easy enough to make a case for sport from a human perspective, but to do so in terms of divine demands is something else.Occasionally sports offer promise on the international scene: most people agree that table tennis was instrumental in bringing a welcome thaw in American-Chinese relations. More often, however, sports arouse tension, hostility, and violence. Hardly an Olympics goes by without some political incident. Hitler used the 1936 games to deceive the world as to what he was up to in Nazi Germany.Sport today also is being misused to numb our concern for truth and justice. Many persons become engrossed in it as an easy means of evading responsibility, of getting their minds off more important things they know they should be doing. This is true even within churches, thousands of which field softball teams but neglect evangelism and the building up of believers. They assume that having a team is fine so long as they avoid Sunday play.Evangelicals who love sports like to appeal to the numerous allusions to athletics in the New Testament. Close examination reveals that none of these bestows any kind of divine blessing upon sport. Paul very likely used references to runners and games because they aided communication with Greeks. In his address on Mars Hill he used the Athenians’ altar to the unknown god in a similar way.Sport was not part of the Hebrew tradition. It was eventually introduced as part of the influence from the Greek lower classes. Roman leaders used sports to pacify people and keep them in line.Yet there is not adequate reason to condemn sport per se. It does serve to relieve aggression and to occupy the attention of some people who might otherwise be doing things that are a lot worse. Moreover, there is certainly an extent to which athletics are good therapy even for the Christian who thinks himself well-adjusted. Everyone needs and should have relaxation and diversion, and Paul does say that “physical exercise has some value in it,” adding, “spiritual exercise is valuable in every way, for it promises life both for now and for the future” (1 Tim. 4:8, TEV).What we need to do is to lift the lid of silence that has covered sport, as if this particular human activity were beyond discussion. An adequate apologetic, if there is one, must be brought forth.To be sure, thorough examination of athletics may pose a threat to our life styles. But the alternative is to rationalize our position simply from experience so that we are little more than puppets of our times.Part of our preoccupation with sport results from a snowball effect—it is so much with us that it tends to build on itself. Another reason is that for most games a minimum of skill is required to watch or even play, and so vast numbers can readily involve themselves.But among the various activities we can relax with, athletics are low on the scale of demonstrable religious significance. We need to apply biblical principles more forcefully to our use of leisure.Sport is sometimes the path of least resistance. As the distinguished Yale scholar Paul Weiss wrote in his recent book Sport: A Philosophical Inquiry, “Young men find it easier to master their bodies than to be truly noble, monumental, pious, or wise.” Older men gazing for long hours at the tube take an even easier way out. The threat is that we will get carried away with sport and other leisure-time activities. We need to justify the extent of our involvement in the light of eternity’s values.India And Pakistan At Twenty-FiveOn August 15, 1947, the British formally relinquished control of the Indian subcontinent, where they had begun to establish themselves early in the 1600s and which they had formally ruled since 1858. British imperialism created one country, India, out of a multitude of principalities and territories with different languages, cultural heritages, and religions. The end of British rule came before the major source of religious tension, the Muslim fear of domination by the more numerous group, the Hindus, could be resolved. Thus two new nations were born, India and Pakistan. But Pakistan was divided into two wings, separated by hundreds of miles of Indian territory and by major ethnic and cultural differences, although one in their Muslim heritage. In 1971 civil war split Pakistan and resulted in the establishment of the new republic of Bangladesh.Transition from imperial subjugation to responsible self-rule has thus been difficult and bloody for Pakistan and by no means easy for India. The second most populous nation in the world, India has now struggled for twenty-five years to solve its immense human problems without resorting to tyranny, mass coercion, and one-party thought control. Those who have spent time in India must testify to the depth of the Indian commitment to intellectual and personal freedom and to parliamentary democracy in a situation that could easily have driven a government to the use of compulsion.As India and Pakistan start their second quarter-century of independence and the new nation of Bangladesh starts its second year, we wish them well in their struggle for human dignity and freedom and economic viability. We wish for them also an increasing appreciation for Jesus Christ, for in him alone is there a sufficient answer to man’s longings.The Featherbedding FiremanMost people under thirty missed the thrill of seeing a puffing steam locomotive, so the term “fireman” may need a bit of explanation. The steam engine had two men in the cab, the engineer, who was at the controls, and the fireman, whose job was mainly to shovel coal from the tender so as to keep the boiler producing steam. When diesel and electric locomotives came along, railroad executives said firemen were no longer needed on freight trains and tried to get rid of them. The rail unions objected, contending that the “firemen” acted as valuable lookouts.The dispute became the longest labor-management conflict in American history; it dragged out over thirty-five years and was not settled until last month. Interestingly enough, the end came not in the midst of one of the many strikes and negotiation crises brought on by the dispute but quietly, calmly, and unexpectedly. Labor agreed to a long-term plan of attrition of firemen, an admission that there had been featherbedding. Management made its big concession in allowing a number of years for the phaseout.The fact that on both labor and management sides new men got the negotiating responsibility this year suggests that personalities may have played a part in the settlement. This serves to remind us that we never get away from the human element. We congratulate those who found a way out of this impasse, and we echo the hope expressed by Secretary of Labor James D. Hodgson that “this presages a new era of collective bargaining.”Advertising PornographyWe think pornography, like much advertising, creates or inflames desires that often are contrary to God’s explicit revelation. Obedience to God’s will is, of course, ultimately an inward matter. Moreover, sexual sins are not the only ones that matter. We don’t urge that ads for fine clothes or cars or food be forbidden or even voluntarily refused because they encourage coveting and excessive self-indulgence. But without minimizing the seriousness of these materialistic sins in the sight of God, we do suggest that advertisements for pornographic movies and books be treated separately and be voluntarily refused by our nation’s press.While the goods and services offered in other ads can serve legitimate needs and offer wholesome pleasures, we see no comparable redeeming values in pornographic materials. Not only is pornography against the law of God; even from a humanistic perspective, it is degrading and exploitative. If people want to debase themselves, God does not stop them. But journalistic media that claim to represent an honorable profession should be willing to pass up the advertising income from pornography. Most people would expect the press to refuse ads for clothing made from furs or hides taken from endangered species and usually acquired by poaching. Similarly, many are calling for rejection of ads for products made by willful violators of pollution laws. The definition of pollution might well be expanded to include the debasing of God-given sex as well as the fouling of God-given nature.Christians should make their views on advertising known to the editors of their local newspapers. Possibly a paper’s own editorial stands on pornography and related moral issues can be used to urge a reasonable consistency between the editorial and business sides of the same enterprise.Pity The Controversial TheologianPity the unfortunate former Anglican bishop of Woolwich, now dean of Trinity College, Cambridge (England), John A. T. Robinson. Early in his career he wrote a number of essays and monographs, liberal in perspective, on New Testament subjects. Although these were generally agreed to show a respectable level of scholarly competence, they did not gain him that elusive prize of fame.National and then international celebrity came quickly, however, when as a modest suffragan bishop Robinson took up the cause of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and said that, far from being considered pornography, the novel ought to be looked on as a description of a form of “holy communion.” Only a Jesuit general or the Pope himself would have reaped a richer reward in notoriety for such an opinion. Honest to God (1963), a little book that enjoyed first-rate pre-publication exposure on BBC television and in a national newspaper, made the suave bishop a kind of swami for falling-away Christians all over the English-speaking world. His subsequent writings were the toast of the intellectual religious cocktail circuit, but they never quite matched Honest to God in sensational value.Now Robinson’s fertile mind has once again seized upon a subject that will stir up, for the moment at least, some outcry and attention among those not yet cloyed by such antics from ecclesiastics: he now advocates lowering the age of consent for sexual relations to fourteen.As to the merits of his proposal, made to the Methodist Conference at Nottingham, we can only observe that it is consistent with a modern trend: law should forbid nothing that is not a clear and present danger to our civilized society, such as certain forms of murder and all forms of failure to pay taxes. As to its demerits, we can note that it abandons one of the last vestiges of the ancient (and biblical) conviction that the civil law should encourage good behavior and aid in character formation, not merely punish the most obnoxious crimes.We know that Robinson is in a difficult situation. To remain in the limelight he must necessarily increase the outrageousness of his proposals with each passing year. Yet there is always the danger that if he strays much further from his supposedly Christian heritage, he will no longer be able to speak as a churchman but only as a late twentieth-century secular man—and where would the sensation be then?Why Make It Complicated?Occasionally readers write in to complain about theologians (and Christian magazines) who seem determined to replace the simplicity of the Gospel with the complications of theology. We don’t deny that sometimes we—or some of our writers—may take a paragraph to make badly a point that could have been made well in one sentence. This is an occupational disease of theologians—perhaps rather akin to that of the doctor who, you suspect, gives your ailment a Latin name because you would find his bill too high if he diagnosed you in plain English. We recognize this temptation, fight it, and still occasionally succumb to it.But even when we successfully resist the temptation, when we haven’t brought in any unnecessary rhetoric or bombast, there are things in theology—as in medicine and in every other discipline—that just cannot be simplified and made easy to swallow but may nevertheless be vitally important for us.Although the Gospel is simple, attacks on it can be very subtle. They can pose as “refinements,” “clarifications,” “explanations.” Almost every case of heresy, apostasy, or plain loss of faith begins with a plausible clarification or criticism of the Gospel. Since the Gospel is often inadequately presented, plenty of the criticism may in fact be justified. But we know that mere “commitment,” even enthusiastic commitment, is not immune to the constant wearing-down effect of repeated criticisms and questions for which adequate answers are not forthcoming.Individuals and occasionally whole movements that began full of zeal for the Lord have stagnated or have even been ruined when their zeal was unmatched by knowledge of the Bible and of theology. Every heresy begins plausibly, and if you do not know anything about the old heresies, there is a good chance that you will fall into them.As Peter Beyerhaus wrote in our July 7 issue, there was a tremendous burst of Christian enthusiasm in Germany immediately after World War II. People were converted, studied the Scriptures, had the joy of the Lord in their hearts. But no one made a serious attempt to refute the skepticism and anti-supernaturalism that underlies modernist theology. Young students went to Bultmann and his disciples and, while listening to his theology, kept on praying and attending Bible studies. After all, Bultmann himself, like many of the theological radicals, comes from a “pietist” background and is emotionally attached to such devotions. But the rationalism and skepticism won out in many cases. Warmth and zeal, unsupported by sound doctrine taught on the same level as the modernists’ skepticism, were not enough.“We wrestle not,” wrote Paul, “against flesh and blood, but against … spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12). False teaching is one of the effects of the “spiritual wickedness” he had in mind, and wrestling is not an easy sport. When we do our intellectual wrestling clumsily, boringly, or unimaginatively, we owe our readers an apology. But then the best response is not to criticize but to do it better. Learning sound theology is one aspect of spiritual wrestling, and it is not optional. It’s a requirement.Blessing The Weapons—Of The Other SideMost Christians admit that a just war can exist, and thus under appropriate circumstances they defend the right and even the obligation of citizens, including Christians, to go to war. This does not mean they support the “bless the weapons” attitude whereby the clergy and other noncombatants have been expected to encourage their own nation’s armed forces in every action and in any war.In time of armed conflict, outspoken pacifists, even those with the purest of intentions, often have a hard time, for they appear to be aiding the enemy and harming their own country. During the last few decades most Americans—including non-pacifist Christians—have learned to respect the personal integrity of pacifists and war resisters, even when their actions seem to run counter to the “national interest.”Recently, however, some who parade as apostles of peace have been saying and doing strange things. When North Viet Nam launched its massive military invasion of the South in May and the United States reacted by mining and bombing the North, the statements of some anti-war spokesmen seemed to reveal, not merely a desire for peace, but the wish for total victory for the other side. We find it particularly hard to see what good could have come out of Jane Fonda’s visit last month to Hanoi, where she encouraged the Communists and urged American soldiers to defect. When people like Bob Hope visit American forces in the South, they are criticized for “supporting militarism” and “prolonging the war.”We can respect pacifism and those with whom we differ on how peace can be achieved; but it is a strange kind of pacifism that wants to silence the weapons on one side—in the case at hand, our own—while blessing and encouraging the fighters on the other. In fact, there is a word for this, and it is not pacifism.The Forgotten CommandmentWhen is the last time your congregation disciplined one of its members? If you are of the (we suspect) minority who can remember the practice of formal church discipline, then we ask, What was the procedure? And what was the result? Chances are that many New Testament passages on discipline were violated.Over the centuries church discipline has so often been done wrongly—in both intention and method—that for the past century there has been increasing neglect of it. This neglect is not only in congregations where the Gospel is no longer regularly proclaimed. To be sure, in almost every denominational family small groups continue to practice discipline, but they serve more as an example of what it should not be like and contribute to the overreaction that avoids it altogether. We also recognize that modern metropolitan anonymity makes discipline more difficult to enforce than it is in traditional “face-to-face” society where everybody knows everybody.What are we to do, if we would be true to the Scriptures? “The answer to bad church discipline is good church discipline, not no church discipline.” So says Marlin Jeschke, author of perhaps the only book-length treatment to be published in English in the past fifty years. In Discipling the Brother (Herald Press [Scottdale, Pa.], 200 pp., .95 pb), Jeschke basically discusses Matthew 18:15–18: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him.… If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you.… If he refuses to listen to you, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile.…”This is the forgotten commandment in much of modern evangelicalism. We are embarrassed by the whole penitential development of the Roman system, and by the excesses of our Baptist, Mennonite, Puritan, Wesleyan, and other ancestors. In keeping with the individualism of our society, we more or less expect self-discipline to take the place of corporate responsibility for one another. Because some people delight in finding faults, seemingly for the sheer joy of being able to excommunicate as many people as possible, we go to the other extreme and ignore the positive role that genuine concern for one another was intended to have by our Lord and his apostles. At times we base our passivity on our reluctance to presume to be holier than others. Jeschke discusses all these excuses in the light of Scripture and church history.There are books galore on being a disciple oneself, and on getting congregations to enlarge as much as possible. They have their place. But try to make room in your reading for Jeschke’s thorough, well-researched, compassionate treatment of the need and the way “to place the doctrine of church discipline once more in the context of gospel proclamation and to liberate Matthew 18:15–18 from the legalistic interpretation it has suffered since medieval times.”