Mark Byron

Border State Report

It looks like Nightline did a piece on Todd Bentley earlier this week; the article on their website was rather deferential, having a couple of women-on-the-street Lakeland skeptics and a local pastor skeptic but no false-prophet diatribes in the coverage. An AP piece that was out yesterday (USA Today carried it here) is a bit less friendly. Bentley has yet to authenticate any of his healings.

A note on the Nightline article noted that Bentley will be taking a break from the revival; he's been at it since early April and may well deserve a vacation.

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On the subject of Bentley, Charisma's J. Lee Grady was discussing the flamage that has resulted from Lakeland and hearkening back to a Rick Joyner vision

Other charismatic leaders have echoed this theme since Joyner’s book was published in 1996. They have predicted that our movement will be divided between “Blues” (those who constantly live in the supernatural realm of dreams, visions and miracles) and “Grays” (those who rely more on their intellect), and that the Blues will win and usher in true revival as champions of the Holy Spirit’s power.

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I’ll admit I was not paying too much attention to these Civil War predictions 10 years ago. But I was jolted into reality in May after I wrote an online column in which I raised honest questions about some of Bentley’s teachings and techniques. Even though I celebrated his passion and zeal, and praised God for the healings that were reported in Lakeland, I was immediately branded a revival critic and banished to the Gray camp.

 

I became the bad guy because, by asking questions, I was “relying on my intellect.” To those in the Blue camp, my skepticism made me an enemy of the Holy Spirit and all things supernatural—even though I believe that all the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit are for today!

In my current location in Kentucky, I'm sitting in a border state in the Civil War, one that was nominally with the Union but was a slave-holding state. In this spiritual divide, I've got some spiritual brothers and sisters on both sides of the trenches.

Having headed back to a Baptist church after a short stint in one of the local Vineyard churches, I'm in the spiritual equivalent of Canada in this fight. However, they can take a Bapticostal out of the Vineyard, but they can't quite get the Vineyard out of the Bapticostal. Thus, there is a warm spot to see the Spirit move, but not to see Bentley pull out some MMA moves while performing a healing.

Dan Edelin seems ready to be Stonewall Jackson-

If you’re a charismatic who believes that we need to test the marching orders and practices of the Blue army and are grieved by the blatant doctrinal fallacies and outright myths erupting like sores on some sectors of the charismatic movement, understand this: You are the new enemy. You are the Gray.

I doubt that it will come to actual violence, save the occasional fist-fight among hot-heads from the various factions. However, I've seen some damage in some of the churches I've been in. I recall that shortly after Eileen and I left one charismatic church, a Blue five-fold-ministry maven was run off by the pastor who was not that enamored of that viewpoint. Another charismatic church I attended had a Blue-tinged group of prayer warrior ladies who locked horns with a Baptist-trained Gray pastor.

Part of the problem with the Blues is that they take a number of forms. Some people are impressed with Toronto, others with Rick Joyner, others with John Paul Jackson. Many of the churches were somewhat like Tennessee in the Civil War, Grey but with a lot of Blue sympathizers. I'd guess that New Life Vineyard in Midland was about 10% Blue (Pastor Milton liked the Harp and Bowl service style from IHOP), Lakeland Vineyard was about 20% Blue (a few Rick Joyner and John Paul Jackson books were in the library and some Morningstar music was in the bookstore) and Father's Heart Ministries was about 30% Blue. In those cases, there was a blend of interested in seeing God move but also in being well grounded in the Word.

That grounding in the Word is what seems to be lacking in many charismatic circles; there often too willing to leave their intellect on hold and not check to see if the new things they are seeing are of God.

I'm not sure what the Bentley's Imagination-to-Holy-Spirit ratio is in Lakeland; my guess is well above zero approaching one. Some good things are coming out of Lakeland, but some kooky things are as well; sucker-punch healings isn't quite my idea of the Spirit moving. It's too out there for me to feel comfortable signing off on.

There will be heated debates over this. The debates might split a few charismatic churches into Blue and Gray camps. However, this "civil war" has been going on for as long as I've been a Christian, for in many cases, it is often a degree of Blueness that is the issue, or if I can use my Bapticostal rubric, how much Baptist and how much Pentecostal do you put into the Bapticostal.

So, let not quite write off the Yankee scum quite yet and have a civil disagreement rather than a civil war.

Jackson and Bobbit Men's Health Services

Here's one alternative to back-alley abortions: back-alley vasectomies. Jesse Jackson wanted to provide Sen. Obama with one this weekend.

One of the things that might be eating at the Rev-run Jackson is that he's no longer the President of Black America, since Obama has taken over that space in the political ecology.

Salt of the Earth

The boys at the "Pink Palace" on Abbott Road in Midland have been busy; Dow Chemical just bought Rohm and Haas; despite the very Germanic name, it's an Philly-based firm founded by a couple of German immigrants a century ago.

The $78 per-share deal includes money from a Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. The price represents a 74 percent premium to Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas' closing share price of $44.83 on Wednesday. The Haas family, descendants of one of the company's founders, holds about 65 million shares, a 33 percent stake worth nearly $5.1 billion based on the purchase price.

Chief Financial Officer Geoffery Merszei said the quality and reputation of Rohm and Haas' businesses, brands, products and technologies _ as well as its work force _ make the premium worth paying.

One of the interesting footnotes in the deal is that Rohm and Haas own Morton Salt. That rung some bells for this Midland kid, for it was brine wells in Midland that brought Herbert Dow up from Cleveland to set up his first chemical plants a century ago.

I'm not sure if it's good for Dow stockholders; a 74% premium is rather stiff, but when I see Berkshire Hathaway in on the deal, it makes me breathe a bit easier. Buffett may have his head up his keister on macroeconomics, but he knows his finance and is loathe to overpay for a takeover. The $78 takeover price divided by it's current earnings per share of $3.14 give R&H a P/E ratio of 24.8; that's a bit steep compared with other chemical companies, which are averaging 13.2.

At minimum, it will make sure that Dow continues as a major independent player in the chemical market. Part of the unique nature of Midland is that we have a major corporate headquarters in a town of 40,000, which brings a lot of money and a lot of culture that wouldn't flow to towns of similar size. If it just became a factory town and the corporate part was shifted somewhere else, Midland wouldn't be Midland.

This takeover makes it harder for anyone else to take Dow over, and that's good for Midland.

The Dreaded Woman's Ordination Post

The Church of England has been in the news this week with their decision to open up the position of bishop to women; previously, they had been limited to just being priests. Also, the decision didn't provide for an opt-out clause allowing folks uncomfortable with a woman bishop to get an alternative guy to oversee them; Get Religion has a good rundown on the coverage.

I have ducked the issue of woman ministers in my blog to this point, for I'm not fully in the pro or con camp. One of Eileen's good friends is a female PC-USA minister in Missouri; she played the piano at our wedding six years ago.

However, it's a bit hard to justify women pastors from the New Testament. Not impossible, but hard.

Jesus treated women with respect, more so than most men of His era, but he had an all-male inner circle; that lack of female disciples has been used as the basis for an all-male priesthood, but He's silent on the issue.

Paul has a couple of writings that lean towards a male pastorate. Here's 1 Timothy 2-"¹¹A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. ¹²I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. ¹³For Adam was formed first, then Eve. ¹⁴And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner."

Paul didn't like having a woman teach men. However, he phrased it in such a way that opened the door for others to ignore his advice, as he said "I do not permit a woman ...." If he wanted a blanket prohibition, he might have said "It is wrong to permit a woman to teach..." rather than just state his practice.

The other Pauline line that sometimes gets used in this area is 1 Corinthians 14:"³⁴women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. ³⁵If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

Is that just about holding questions for their husbands until they get home rather than have back-chatter going on during a service, or is that a blanket prohibition on speech? Earlier on in 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions that women should give prophesies with a covered head; that would require them to speak if it to be heard.

It's an easier exegesis to say that Paul thinks women ministers would be a bad idea than to try to loophole your way to a co-ed ministry. It also doesn't help that the churches that do allow women pastors tend to be the churches that are the least orthodox on their theology. When Paul's position on women is ignored, a lot of his other positions on salvation and discipleship also get thrown under the bus as inconvenient stuff from another era.

The egalitarian side of me would like to see a co-ed pastorate. However, the Bible-reader seems to come to the conclusion that it isn't quite right. That's not to say that women can't minister effectively, but that they'll often be doing so in a church that typically doesn't respect the Gospel in its entirity.

Far From Half Empty

There are a number of things to be thankful for in our modern world, even as we work through the ramifications of $4/gallon gas; I saw that barrier breeched here in Lexington today, as the station I stop at to buy some two-liters of pop at had gas at $4.15 per.

This laptop I'm blogging on is one of those neat things. It's WiFi enabled in such a way that I'm automatically logged into Sullivan U's wireless system when I'm on campus and on an internal network at home. We're starting to take WiFi for granted, and that's a bit sad. The next step might be city-wide wireless at affordable rates; the cell-phone companies are moving in that direction and may wind up competing with DSL and cable for home-based customers in the not too distant future.

Also, the one-gig flash drive that I carry around in my left pocket (or slide into a USB slot at various computers at work and home) is a little marvel. Back in 1996, when I started my computer store, a 850MB hard drive was a viable bargain hard drive for a PC, with 1.2 Gig being normal and 1.6 gig being a bit souped up.

Speaking of cell-phones, what did we do without them? Miss a lot of calls and use pay phones a lot more. I recall speaking from I-10 in the bayous of Louisianan to one of my grad students who was checking on a grade while on vacation last month, and it didn't feel odd. What brought the cell phone to mind was my fielding an appointment-reminder-call from my doctors office as I was leaving for campus just now; in the old days, I'd have had to of hustled back into the apartment to field the call rather than coolly grabbing the phone out of my left pocket.

People often complain about the US losing ground; in many areas, it's more the world catching up, which isn't bad for the US. Those richer and more competitive countries can afford more stuff, some of which will be American stuff.

So, if the rest of the world is giving the US a game in basketball, it's a credit to the world, not a debit to us. If we have a Swiss guy and a Spanish guy going mano-a-mano for five hours in the Wimbledon final, it means that tennis is no longer a purely Anglospherian thing, or that the Anglosphere has expanded out to cover a lot of the world.

We're also getting older better. We're seeing a 41-year-old mom breaking records in the freestyle sprints in swimming and a 35-year old guy still competitive in the 50 free; normally, you'd see the long-hairs hanging in there in the distance events and leaving the sprints to the young'ens.

We're sending all those folks off to Beijing; a still nominally-Communist Beijing, but one that has far more freedoms that we would have expected three decades ago when Mao passed on. One of the reasons we have such high oil prices is that the Chinese economy has grown rather nicely under Deng and his successors, who still keep politics and religion under a short-to-microscopic leash but allow for a lot of economic and cultural freedom; that freedom has had many folks trade in their Mao suit and bicycle for a car and designer clothes, and they're competing for that worldwide oil supply.

We're still the world's melting pot. Watching the US gymnastics trials a couple of weekends ago was interesting. One gal was the daughter of a Soviet gymnast, another was the daughter of a German gymnast, while a third was the daughter of Chinese-Vietnamese immigrants; to top it off, a Chinese immigrant was coaching a couple of the top gymnasts and a Romanian immigrant was overseeing the whole US team. The guys weren't as diverse, but the son of Indian immigrants just missed making the men's team.,

The glass isn't full, but it's far from empty.

Sunday Musings

I'm probably dating myself severely, but Tropical Storm Bertha has a bad Troglodyte Saga earwig going; "Her name was Bertha... Bertha Butt... she's one of the Butt sisters." Right now, only Bermuda is saying "sock it to me, sock it to me", but depending on the spin, New England or the Maritimes could get a taste of the Bertha Butt Boogie next week.

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I was too busy with church an an anniversary lunch (our sixth) to catch the Wimbledon final; the old Breakfast at Wimbledon became Dinner at Wimbledon, as a pair of rain delays and a five-set war had Rafael Nadal fending off Roger Federer. It wasn't quite the McEnroe-Borg Battle of 18-16, but they did make it to 10-8 in the fourth-set tie-break and went OT in the fifth set before Nadal prevailed 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7.

That score makes you tired just looking at it. They might of needed the rain delays, for one or both of the players would have been exhausted by the end; I caught part of the trophy ceremony on TV, and Nadal looked like he had just run a marathon.

It kept Borg's modern record of five straight Wimbledon wins on the books alongside Federer and may set up a good rivalry with Nadal to revitalize men's tennis.

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The Weather Channel just got bought by a consortium of NBC, Blackstone and Bain Capital; so, we have Mitt Romney and NBC possibly tugging on TWC from opposite directions. There could be some interesting synergies and some rather sloppy ones; they're best to leave the thing alone.