A Little Bible Study

Ephesians 2:14

“For He himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (NIV)

The verse says, by beginning with ‘for’ (greek;gar) , that the reason the ones who were far away have been brought near is Jesus, who is pointed out emphatically, by the use of ‘he, himself’, stressing that it is attention to Jesus that we should be paying, because He is our peace.

How is a person our peace? The verb tense for ‘is’ indicates that he is becoming our peace while the main action is occuring, which is the ‘breaking down’ of the dividing wall. The key action that is attributed to Christ in Ephesians is the Cross followed by the Resurrection Enthronement, and we have a new insight into this action as we see it as breaking what divides the Gentile and Jewish world, an action which makes Jesus to be peace for the Jew and for the Gentile.

I resist the idea sometimes put forward that all of Ephesians is about the present oneness of the Jewish and Gentile believers. This oneness is presented however, as a strong evidence of the decisive work that was done in the Cross and in the Resurection Enthronement, (2:6) which we participate in.

The central theme of Ephesians is that those previously dead in transgressions have been raised with Christ. This includes those dead because they could not fulfill the law of moses, and also those who, as gentiles were just as dead in trangressions and sins.

It was interesting to study this passage while I was reading in Acts 10 & 11, about the conversion opf Cornelious. Peter is well aware that both Jew and gentile are equally dead in the sinful nature, but the Gentile might easily be said to be in a more desperate case of morbidity, because they have also been removed far from hope. (Ephesians 2:12). They have not even a testimony to refer to of a God that saves the diusobedient.

So what should Peter say to the Gentile? The Gentiles would be vexed, like our own non-believing neighbors, with many problems, many ethical dilemmas, and many theologiocal conundrums, none of which amounted ton the Jew’s problem of “How to fulfill ther Law of Moses”.

Peter realizes that he is to say to the Gentile, Jesus. Jesus is peace, and in his crucifixtion and resurection and enthronement, He makes us all heirs to life in Him.

In Jesus,

Pastor Harley

United Methodists and Downs Syndrome Abortion

United Methodists and Down’s Syndrome Abortions

The practice of terminating a pregnancy after diagnosis of a genetic abnormality has decisively changed the nature of the abortion debate in the United Methodist Church.

It has become commonplace for parents, who after genetic screening are told that their child will be born with Down’s Syndrome, to terminate the pregnancy by abortion. While these are sometimes the most conflicted of abortions, with parents protesting that they wanted this child, the high rate of abortion for these children raises serious ethical questions.

No one knows how many children are aborted because of a Trisomy 21 (Down’s Syndrome) diagnosis through genetic screening because no records are kept on this data by abortion clinics. An Obstetrics and Gynecology article in 2000 on the “Cost-benefit Analysis of Prenatal Diagnosis for Downs Syndrome” used as an estimate that 90% of parents who receive this diagnosis in the first or second trimester of pregnancy will choose termination. The study also estimated that more prevalent genetic testing would result in annual savings to society of $95 million per year because of the reduced cost burden of caring for citizens born with Down’s Syndrome.

Mass terminations of Down’s Syndrome children raise new questions in the abortion debate because these children are not individuals doomed to a short, pain-filled life. They are subject to disabilities, but a person with Down’s Syndrome can be a functioning member of society and often a very happy person. As United Methodists, we have a long history of ministry with persons with such disabilities.

I am pro-life, and believe that abortions should be legal only in the case of a clear threat to the life of the mother. Now the compassionate pro-choice argument often voiced in the church states that government intrusion (by protecting the life of the unborn) would do vast amounts of harm by interfering with the woman and her doctor’s decision about what constitutes a tragic conflict of Life vs. Life. Most united Methodists would agree that we shouild deplore abortions of mere convenience, and our Discipline rejects abortions for sex selection and birth control, but wish to preserve the privacy of an individual’s choice in tragic circumstances. If preserving that privacy requires allowing complete freedom of decision about the child’s life for the mother, the trade-off, for them, seems appropriate. Underlying this moral calculus is the assumption that a mother can be trusted to act reasonably and morally when weighing her health risks versus the life of the child.

I submit that once a diagnosis of an abnormality such as Down’s Syndrome is made, that it is no longer reasonable to assume that the decision to terminate the pregnancy is based on concerns for the mother’s health. Moreover, it is reasonable to believe that the decision is being made to be dispose of the child because of the future burden that it presents to the parents and society. Once the evidence exists that the child is to be born with a disability of this nature, the burden of proof that the abortion is anything but an abortion of convenience shifts to the parent.

We have not had a debate in the United Methodist Church about whether persons with disabilities are too much trouble to bear and raise, but we should. The legal, mass destruction of human life for eugenic purposes has already begun. My pro-life convictions already disposed me to believe that anything less than robust legal protections for unborn life provides people a license to kill without fear of punishment. Societies pass laws against murder because we don’t believe that human beings will always count another’s life as having a value equal to their own convenience, prospects for the future, or emotional equilibrium. I challenge those who hold pro-choice positions to enter the debate and justify publicly the continued selective killing of Down’s Syndrome children. Not only might we finally find our common voice regarding abortion, but the arguments put forth on either side would be revealing indeed.

Pastor Harley Wheeler

The possibilities of Dead

Ephesians 2:1

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins”

The phrase, “You were dead” is one that is unique to the Gospel. I am not saying no one else has ever used it, but under what circumstances or to whom would YOU say it? To the boss? To your friend? If their death is an accomplished fact, how it is that you speak with an expectation of being heard?

Apparently, death is something that is alive with possibility to God. We do not see with Kingdom eyes. We call things and people dead, and never hope to see them respond to us. But with God….”The time is coming, and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live”, John 5:25

We call others alive, but do not recognize death in sin. We do not suppose that ‘missing the mark’ and “crossing a boundary” could put us in a situation where we are moving, “walking according to the power of the world”, but are actually cut off from the sourcing of God.

This verse comes up when you teach the Revelation text, 20:14 ,”…this is the second death”, you have to make a decision in your understanding of the revealed Christ in revelation about whether this death in trespasses is the First, and how the scene in revelation works out to be the Second. I am not weighing in on THAT one today, because those are deep waters indeed.
Love in Jesus,

Pastor Harley Wheeler

Allegory

How do you like my Allegory?

Allegory was often used by the Early church, but it has since fallen on hard times. My impression in seminary was that the teachers regarded it as sort of the “Professional Wrestling” of homeletic devices. But consider that even Jesus used allegory in his interpretation of Jonah, (Matthew 12:40-41), and St Paul said that the well-known institution of marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church, (Ephesians 5:30-32).

Consider Proverbs 27:23-27; “Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations. When the hay is removed and the new growth appears and the grass from the hills is gathered in, the lambs will provide you with clothing, and the goats with the price of a field. You will have plenty of goats milk to feed you and your family and to nourish your servant girls” (NIV)

Now as a pastor, I am particularly involved in the task of spiritual shepherding. I have been strongly impressed that I can best employ my time in the actual task of caring for the flock, and knowing their condition. It seems to be the most direct route to making the church a place of life for the people to follow-up on those who visit and express ciouriousity about the faith, to find out what happened to someone who hasn’t been coming, to call, to befriend my regulars, to stop by, and to really know the people to whom I am Pastor.

There are many things that intrude upon this task. One can stew about politics, one can try to plot the reformation of the denomination, one can worry over the building, the typeface on the bulletin, the endowment fund, or the mood the District Superintendent is in. One is tantalized by new schemes to grow the church. “It worked for us, it will work for you!” (If you follow their plan exactly in your ministry context, an impossibility), we ponder new ways of doing our personal devotions, weekly corporate worship and growth strategies. We seek for new blood, old money, and personal and corporate name recognition.

These are the riches and the world’s strength that will always pass away. The work of the Pastor is to know the flock, and if the Pastor does that, the furture will certainly hold promise. We may be fated for smaller contexts, for modest church situations, if we don’t seek to wow the crowds, and attract the (preferably well-to-do) seeker, but I feel in my heart that this sort of ministry is more wholesome and to the point.

This is not a Ministry Strategy that sounds impressive if you explain it to the Bishop, nor can it comfortably be forced into a Mission Statement, but so what? It feels right.

Lastly, notice that this allegory has a way of rescuing a text that seems sooo hopelessly 500 B.C. I have no use for goats milk, only a few of my families take in hay, wool is worth almost nothing, and the Superintendent would probably frown on my having servant girls. But the allegory lets me reside in the text, and respond to it on a deeper level. In fact there mayhave always been more to this pasassage than just sage farming advice, because, didn’t you wonder? Why would any farmer need to be warned that crowns are not secure?

Did the Iron Axe - Head Float?

Did The Iron Axe Head Float?

By Harley Wheeler

Sixteen years ago, a story was going around about a test for professors in Christian (Southern Baptist)colleges. Professors were suddenly taken into an office and asked one and only one question: “Did the Iron Axe head float?” If they answered “No”, they were fired, and if they answered “Yes”, they kept their jobs. These stories were passed in whispered tones, as describing a great scandal.

The wonderfully bizarre question refers to events described in 2 Kings 6:1-7, when the prophet Elisha was camped by a river with a company of disciples. One of them had an axe-head fly off the handle and land in the river. He cried out to Elisha that it was a borrowed axe-head. Elisha threw a stick into the water and the axe-head floated to the top.

This bail-out of the disciple certainly shows that Elisha was a kindly, helpful miracle-worker. However, the suspicion that we have here a miracle done over a trifle, or worse, a story concocted to enhance Elisha’s reputation, apparently makes professors of religion really squirm.

But should it?

I don’t really believe for a minute this bit of folklore about the professors, but as a practical, not an academic theologian, I sincerely believe that when scripture describes certain people, at certain times, doing and saying certain things, then those things were done and said by the people so described. Interestingly, if you ask the lay people in my church about the “axe-head” test for seminary professors, they fail to see anything wrong about it. Most of my Christian lay friends consider requiring direct answers to questions of this kind an obvious step.

So should professors blanch at the story of Elisha, his clumsy disciple and floating Home Depot products? I would say no. But, as G.K. Chesterton said, “The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them..” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy p.228 Waterbrook Press, 1994) This being true, we must lift the fog of that doctrine and uncover the truth.

The first usual objection to the story is that it describes an improbable event that cannot be proven scientifically. One can answer this by remembering that the text does not say;”in the event you lose your axe-head in the river, this is an unfailing remedy.” The ancients knew they were describing a unique event, like your choice of donuts at the staff meeting. No contention is made that stick tossing is experimentally repeatable. Does this mean that it is a false story? No, because many events, the Crimean War, the writing of Das Kapital and Woodstock are not experimentally repeatable, but remain true nonetheless.

Scientistic minds usually object that we have no natural cause for the miracle, but in this they are wrong. The cause of the miracle is the will of a rational being.

Allow a brief apologetic for the admission of rational choice as one of the known causes of events in the material universe. Imagine a speaker asking a lecture hall full of people to decide on the count of three, to raise or not to raise their arm. The speaker makes clear that he or she does not care which they do, it is their choice. On the count of three, some number of arms will be raised. What caused this event? The proper answer is rational choice. Rational choice may be described in terms of probabilities, but cannot be explained in naturalistic terms except by appealing to random causes, and this is patently false, because the audience experienced making a rational choice, not a random impulse. Rational choice is a very real factor in the events of the portion of universe in which we live, seeing as it is somewhat cluttered with choice-making, rational beings.

So our answer to the first objection is that the scripture consciously describes not a recipe or incantation, but a discrete, one-time event, caused by the choice of One Who Has Miracle Power. God does something in response to Elisha. So we have a cause that is known to the universe of conscious minds, and an agent, God, whom even modern educated Baptist and Methodist minds agree is real.

The other usual objection is that this miracle describes a trifle. It seems to be beneath God’s standards and therefore smacks of paganism or reputation-building hype on Elisha’s behalf. It carries for some the scent of superstition and credulity that I am told the west has struggled against for many years.

Before we answer this, we may reflect that I have so far asked no one to be more credulous than one must be to admit that there is a God, who does, on occasion, do things.

We might also reflect that the professors are in a polite way calling the story a fabulous lie, and the miracle-working Elisha of 2 Kings an old fraud. Is it any wonder that the pew-sitters are in sympathy with me?

Does the story really provoke the darkness of superstition or paganism? It does not if you know anything about superstition or pagan myth. A fine old superstition might caution us that axe-heads will always fly off after you see a barn owl. Pagan mythology would alter the story by having the woodcutter lured to his doom by a river nymph who offered to show him where to find the axe-head. He might, as an alternative, be punished for his clumsiness by the having the axe attached permanently to his arm. The Bible event, like most personal miracles in the Bible, is remarkably low-key. Furthermore, it is not a capricious act, since Elisha merely responds to help a friend in need.

So I believe that the story of the axe-head that floated is, after a fashion, a beachhead in the battle between faith and modernist thought. What is our confession of faith before the modern world? Does the God we worship answer prayers and act to help individual humans? Do we believe that God gave Elisha a ministry of miracles for the encouragement of his people? Affirmative answers to these questions bring the pastor and the professor in line with the centuries-old, sensible orthodoxy of the ordinary Christian.

I further believe that this involvement in the affairs of humanity that we recognize as answered prayer was always a sign that God would involve Himself decisively in the person of Christ. St. Romanos, an orthodox liturgical poet of the fourth century, set forth this truth when he wrote these lines:

“Elisha of old painted its image in prophecy

when he drew the axe–head from the river.

With a light object the prophet dragged a heavy,

Warning you (Satan) and teaching you

That, by a tree, Adam is to be brought up

From wretchedness again to paradise.”

(St.Romanos the Melodist, On The Life of Christ translated by Ephrem Lash Harper Collins, 1998 p.156)

So in your prayers today, will you be praying to the One who made the iron axe-head float?

Pastor Harley Wheeler

The Bottom Billion

I read The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier, Oxford University Press, 2007, and I highly recommend it. Paul makes the case that there is an emerging crisis with the few countries, comprising about 1 billion people, who still live in abject poverty and are essentially trapped there. He points out that while many countries that have been the targets of our aid have advanced to where their economies are growing and there is a reasonable standard of living, some are trapped by combinations of bad governance, landlocked geography, persistent armed conflict, or a limiting staus as a source of natural resources for the rest of the world. These traps act to limit the ability of reformers in these nations to act in the best interests of their people.

It is a good read for a critique of what has been done so far that illuminates the limits of aid and trade initiatives, and the cynical evil of some of the rulers in the Bottom Billion. The Chinese also, are revealed as toxic participants in the affairs of some resource rich nations. Like many caring actors in the arena of world affairs, Collier hopes for a less political evaluation of the steps that need to be taken by the United States and Europe, and a selfless determination to help the trapped countries. He realistically points out that even humanitarien NGO’s can have agendas, a limiting corporate culture, and vested interests. His conclusion is that any steps taken must take into account the traps that these countries are in, and creatively push for change.

Of interest to the church is that we do not lack allies in the international arena who want to relieve the world’s really poor. We should listen to many sides of the discussion and not cling to one approach of, for instance, international aid, or economic growth advocates. Each approach has its limits, and can be implemented to help or to derail the other. Also, our typical rhetoric about the Iraq war, which has been a mostly pacifistic, negative evaluation, is not a squeaky-clean moral position, because there will be cases in the future where military intervention is the best relief for desperate populations. But how will we summon the political will when our leaders know they will immediately be savaged with, “Quagmire!”, “No exit strategy!”, “Imperialism!”, and “You-didn’t-plan–to-win-the-peace!”

On another front, I am aware that mainline protestant leaders are sometimes uneasy about evangelical efforts among the desperately poor. How can we build a church or distribute Bibles when those dollars might build a clinic or purchase rice? But in response to that, you might say that in some situations you have met a situation of diminishing returns with humanitatarian aid, and may as well build the church and distribute the bibles. Not only that, there is no reason to deny vigorous theology, prayer and preaching to a population simply because it has a 16^th century standard of living. They live in desperate conditions, and need the answers that Christ can give to the desperate.

A debate on how we will reach the Bottom Billion in the next presidential administration would be a Godsend, but how to get presidential candidates and congressmen to really care about, say Chad?

Pastor Harley Wheeler

Gandalf and the Rebel

Gandalf and the Rebel

I used part of a recent vacation to read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings again. It is the perfect novel, whether you like adventure, landscapes, towering characters, an exaltation of common virtues, or ‘a pleasant mixture of them all’, they are to be found there. I have lost count of how many times I have read the book.

In between reading LOTR, and as an exercise in contrary thought, I finished reading Albert Camus’, The Rebel, a book length essay that I began some time ago. I am a Christian , and Camus, the dead french philosopher, critic, novelist and playwright, was an atheist, but he can, shed a clear, uncompromising light on the human condition. (His book, The Fall, is the best description of the complete sinfulness, of even good men, that I have ever read.)

Anyway, The Rebel, is his attempt to lay out how a society which has rejected Christian hope and God’s Grace can grapple with the demands of justice, the reality of death, the whole human problem, and not descend into mass murder and repression. He freely admits, writing in 1950, that nihilistic, God-rejecting societies such as Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany had done just that. (His answers are not encouraging.)

Camus rejects Grace, Christianity, and God because for him, any aknowledgement of God’s role in human life makes God guilty of injustice. But, to be consistent, he also recogniuzes no chance of salvation from death. His vision of the Rebel is one who insists on justice and rejects death, all the time knowing he will lose in the end:

“In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a substitute universe.”

“The novel is born at the same time as the spirit of rebellion and expresses on the aesthetic plane the same ambition.”

“The art of the novel can reconstruct creation itself….choosing the creature in prefernce to his creator…it is allied to the beauty of the world or of its inhabitanrts against the powers of death and oblivion.”

In essence, Camus could never write a work like The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien described his fantasy tales as being stories where characters receive help by Grace through mythological means. His characters encounter implacable, inescapable evil that does real harm, but the they can, if they chose to, rely on the presence of such help. In fact, they are judged in the story according to their reliance on or conversely, mistrust of the overarching plan behind their created world. Tolkien’s story also climaxes with a eucatastrophe, a change in plot direction which moves from disaster to rescue, death to life, defeat to victory. Tolkien elsewhere took pains to point out that the Christion story climaxes in the eucatastrophe of the resurrection. Tolkien would readily agree with Camus that the writer of tales acts as a subcreator, but he saw this as a proper and orthodox expression of what God made us to be.

Camus would say that we best write by telling stories that highlight a hopeless yet brave struggle against injustice and our own death, emphasizing the creative power in rejecting these facts in our hearts. We remain subject to both tradgedies, but emphatically refuse to agree with them. In fact, his ideal hero would make certain that he dies himself if it became necessary to kill another in the name of Justice.

This is so close, but at the brink, so divergent friom the Christian story. Injustice and death are real for the Christian, and both must certainly be rejected. But the Christian rejects them because Truth has come, and died in our place, satisfying the claims of and defeating the power of death and Justice. Grace has appeared and can be trusted to prevail, and God can be glorified in all His ways, as the eucatastrophe of the Resurrection and the Final Judgement will confirm. Gandalf, Frodo and all the rest in Tolkien’s story will heroically lay down life and continually risk all to resist both death and evil, but do so with confidence in Grace, and become an agents of that Grace.

Camus scoffed at such literature, which was for him, the literature of aquiesence, submitting to the grace and power of an unjust God.

But which is true to the universe we know? Camus’ universe is finally an unlivable one, with a bare chance that the heroic acts of the Rebel could mitigate for a brief time the ravages of death and injustice. The universe of Tolkien, and the Christian revelation, sees hope that abounds, and beyond all earthly darkness, the stars God made.

Pastor Harley Wheeler

What Paul Prayed For

I have been studying in Ephesians 1:18-23. This is part of what Paul says he prays for the Ephesian church to receive from God.

When I first was presented as a candidate for the ministry the District Superintendent, (whose name I do NOT remember), told me I would find so much Joy in the ministry that I would count it as one of the best things that ever happened in my life. He was correct. He also preached to the congregation, that was gathered for its annual charge conference that the most important thing the pastor (then Rev. Mike Baldwin) could do was to pray daily for his people. I believe he was correct in that statement too.

But what do we pray for?

The pastor who reads this is going to be challenged because if we ask the question: what does Paul pray for when he prays for his church? And how does that compare with the prayers that we send up on behalf of our people? (that is, assuming that we remember daily to DO this important task.) We come off feeling that we have missed key things that Paul was inspired to call upon God to do in and for His church.

Truly, we need the Spirit to assist us when we pray, because our flesh would focus on many less needful things before coming to the notion of asking God to fill our people with the inward knowledge of all the power and wonders of Jesus!

In the text:

Vs. 18 The formulation, “eyes of your heart” (or eyes of your understanding) is unique in the New Testament. The eyes of men have been places of darkness, avenues for lust and wrong desire, and blindness before God. Paul is truly asking for a revolution in the inner lives of the people. The eyes are to be enlightened , (it sounds more dramatic in greek, (photizo’), so that we may “eido” or see, which is often used in the sense that we say in English, “I see” to mean understanding. My word study resource says that this is a more intuitive sense of understanding, thus Paul is announcing a dramatic inward knowing.

Vs. 19 The language used for God’s power “for us who believe” is heavy on the suprlatives, so that even a english speaker recognizes “huperballo (lit. beyond-throw), megathos, dunamis”. This power is ‘like’ (grk. ‘kata’) which is often translated ‘according’ and has a sense of directedness; (down-from). These power words express potential or available power, and after this ‘kata’, this strength is directed and active, mighty (energia) and mighty strength, (kratos-(hold-fast) and ischus (active strength)).

And all this power is evidenced in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. Note that His power’s expression is not centered in us, but in Christ, and that is the basis of our hope and the foundation of the faith.

The lines from vs.20-23 read like a congregational confession of the resurrection and enthronement of Jesus. If you say them aloud it sounds like what we as a church together would say to remind us of the decisive change in all things that has been brought about by God in Jesus. There is an orderedness, the powers that were in disarray and opposition to God are not ‘out there’, (perhaps noted by the eye of the Lord and reacted in in a haphazard way), they are ‘under his feet.’ And what is the effect in us? We are not so much a part of the ‘all things’ under his feet, but we are his Body, the fullness of him that “filleth all in all”. Wrap your mind around that!

Pastor Harley Wheeler

Pastor Harley's 2007 Reading List

Reading List

Pastor Harley Wheeler

February 2007-January 2008

This is a list of what I have read in the past year. To me, study is a Spiritual Discipline.

Your comments are welcome!

Periodicals:

Good News Magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review, Scientific American, The Interpreter, East Ohio Joining Hands, Lifewatch Newsletter, Home School Legal Defense Newsletter, Plain Truth magazine, Voice of the Martyrs Newsletter, First Things, sermons sent out by Stephen Manley, 2007, and (individual) Astronomy 11/07. Fantasy and Science Fiction(12/07)

Bible Study:

Comprehensive Word Study, Ephesians 1:1-9

Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties – Gleason Archer

I Chronicles (Commentary) - Martin J. Selman

Studies in The Gospel of Mark – Martin Hengel

Misqouting Truth – Timothy Paul Jones

Beyond Acts (Study in Acts and New Testament)

Job 1-20(commentary) – David Cline

Ezra – Nehemiah - Anchor Bible Commentary

II Chronicles – commentary

Christian Thought/Ministry/ Sermons:

Let Us Pray – Watchman Nee

Daughter Zion - Pope Benedict

Returning to Your First Love – Tony Evans

Ten FAQS of New Christians – George Malkunas

Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead – Oscar Cullman

On Conscience – Pope Benedict

Trouble at the Table – Carol Dean & Thomas Troneger

The Gift of Forgiveness – Charles Stanley

In The Grip of Grace – Max Lucado

And The Angels Were Silent – Max Lucado

The New Consecration Sunday – Herb Miller

Notable Confessions – Theodore Walz

Contemporary Christian Authors:

Christ The Lord, Out of Egypt – Anne Rice

The Habit of Being – Flannery O’ Connor

The Return of Don Quixote – G.K. Chesterton

Tales of the Long Bow – G.K. Chesterton

A New Beginning – Philip….

The Millionaire and the Scrublady – William Barton

God and the Philosophers – ed. Thomas Morris

Providence and Evil – P.T. Geach

The Problem of Evil – Peter Van Inwagen

God, Knowledge and Mystery – Peter Van Inwagen

Suspicion and Faith – Merold Westphal

The Lamb and the Furher – Ravi Zacharias

C.S. Lewis on Stories – C.S. Lewis

From Narnia to Space Odyssey –ed. Ryden Miller

Classics:

The Book of Songs – (ancient Chinese Odes)

The Trial and Death of Socrates – Plato

Early Irish Myths and Sagas

The Aenied – Virgil

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyan

Lives of Illustious Men – Plutarch

Bacchae – Euripedes

Canterbury Tales – Chaucer

The Song of Igor’s Campaign (old Russin epic)

Notes from Underground – Dostoyevsky

The Idiot – Dostoyevsky

White Nights – Dostoyevsky

Medea, Heracles, Electra – Euripedes

Homeric Stitchings – Euodecea (ed. Mark David Usher)

Pinnocchio – Collodi

Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

The Clouds – Aristophanes

Shorter Poems – Robert Browning

Modern Authors/fiction/ humor/drama/commentary:

Cowboy Poetry - ed. Hal Conner

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

Good Poems – ed. Garrison Keillor

Leke Woebegone Stories – Garrison Kiellor

A Tolkien Compass, (essays)

Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor

The End – Lemony Snickett

The Lime Twig – John Hawkes

A Man for All Seasons – Robert Bolt

The Vile Village – Lemony Snickett

The Beatrice Letters – Lemony Snickett

A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor

Mrs. Warren’s Profession – Geoarge Bernard Shaw

Man and Superman – George Bernard Shaw

Arms and the Man – George Bernard Shaw

Candide – George Bernard Shaw

The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams

Godless – Ann Coulter

Scandal – Ann Coulter

If Democrats Had any Brains, They’d be Republicans – Ann Coulter

The Pleasures of a Futuroscope – Lord Dunsany

The Man in the Black Suit – Stephen King

How Right You ae Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

The 1993 Annual World’s Best Science Fiction

1987 Annual World’s Best Science Fiction

The Code of the Woosters – P.G. Wodehouse

Dave Barry’s Gift Guide – Dave Barry

Harry Potter Series – J. K. Rowling

Grandmas Attic Series – Arleta Richardson

Biography, History & Science& Philosophy:

The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus

Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher & William Ury

The Edge of the Unknown – James Trefil

Mussolini and the Second Coming – Gerald Winrod

A Stranger to Myself – Willy Reese

What Christmas Means to Me – Mary Baker Eddy

A Briefer History of Time – Stephen Hawking

The Gettysburg Gospel – Gabor Berritt

The Colony – John Tayman

Hitler’s Scientists – John Cornell

Horseradish – Lemony Snickett

The Peopling of British North America – Bernard Bailyn

What they Fought For – James Macpherson

Surrender is Not an Option – John Bolton

It's Still a Just War

It’s Still a Just War 2/07/08

The recent (2/7/08) news reports that Al-Qaida in Iraq used two teenage girls with Down’s Syndrome as suicide bombers to attack a pet market should give Christians a new take on our ongoing debate about the War on Terror.

We will always have a debate over whether our involvement in Iraq can be justified under Christian principles, but this debate rarely includes firm recognition of the sort of evil that is being opposed in the War on Terror.

Here are two people (and their families) being made the tools and victims of a plot to take many innocent lives. There was no reasonable military target. There could have been no consent on the part of the girls. There has been no credible refutation of the evidence, and there is no soul-searching about how these actions violate the essential ideals of Jihad(because they don’t).

To give a rough quotation of G.k. Chesterton, ‘when evil walks naked and stinking in broad daylight, a man is judged by whether he will condemn it or not’

A recognition in our debate of the terrible nature of these crimes would not constitute piling on or demonizing the enemy, it would actually promote a healthy debate within the church and on the national level.