Timothy Willard (PhD, King’s College London) is a writer, podcaster, and independent scholar based in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife, three daughters, and a band of rowdy Great Horned Owls. He is the author of three books and the rider of mountain trails. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.

Does giving up espresso bring me closer to God? This thought burned through my mind as I sat and listened to the boys’ choir sing Psalm 37 during Evensong at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, England, a few years ago. With Ash Wednesday a mere two days prior, it seemed like everyone was giving up lattes and social media and the internet and announcing it to the world. One friend defended fasting from these activities because of how they intrude on our daily lives. I agreed. I, too, could use a break from the digital world.

But what happens after Lent and Easter Sunday, I thought to myself. Business as usual? Fire up the espresso machines? Tweet that I’m back from my social media fast?

Though I respected the beauty and depth represented in the tradition of Lent, tension grew in me. I struggled to align the good and holy intent of Lenten fasts with the very public spectacle it has evolved into for Western Christianity. We announce our screen time fasts or “disfigure our faces” when asked why we won’t have a glass of wine. Jesus exhorts his disciples to keep fasting a secret matter—an unseen act of worship to the God who is unseen (Matt. 6:16–18).

I loved how the season leading up to Resurrection Sunday swelled into what J. R. R. Tolkien called the eucatastrophe or the joyous upturn in the story of the human race. But I also observed how the pageantry fades. I loved the idea of abstaining from vices and stepping into Christ’s suffering. But I thought the spiritual discipline of fasting was meant to be more than a seasonal practice to abstain from first-world luxuries.

It was then I began a personal quest to seek out the heart of Lent.

Historically, some of the first indications of a seasonal fast appear to be even earlier than the Council of Nicea (c. A.D. 325) in practices like fasting before baptism and Easter, which only lasted a few days. But some church scholars now believe that the Lenten 40-day fast dates to a later time in the history of the church. Nicholas Russo, advising dean at the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Notre Dame, suggests the fixed 40-day fast emerged after the Council of Nicaea, and that the early history of Lent is something of a “choose your own adventure,” and an “amalgamation of several early fasting customs and typologies.”

We may not know the direct origins of the present-day Lenten fast, but we do know the significance of the discipline. The Lenten 40-day fast pays homage to the iconic fasts found in Scripture—from Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex. 34:28) to Jesus’ wilderness fast (Luke 4:1–13). The Scriptures brim with other examples of fasting: Elijah, Ezra, Nehemiah, David, Esther, John the Baptist, and Paul, among many others.

We’re not wrong to follow suit. St. Augustine exhorted Christians to overcome “the temptations of this age, the crafty traps of the devil, the toils of the world, the allurements of the flesh, the swirl of turbulent times, and all bodily and spiritual adversity,” with fasting. We should use the nails of abstinence to hammer our lusts to the cross, he says.

But at the same time, he warned Christians not to make fasting a pretense by using Lent as a time to simply revise their pleasures, substituting one vice for a different one. “You must certainly beware of just revising, not reducing, your pleasures,” wrote Augustine in Sermon 207. “You can see some people searching out unusual liquors as a substitute for the usual wine. … The result is that the observance of Lent means, not the repression of old lusts, but the occasion for new enjoyments.”

We fast, according to Augustine, so that inordinate affections do not control us. When we fast, “the delights of the flesh are to be held in check. Esau wasn’t rejected over Weiner schnitzel or pâté de foie gras but an inordinate longing for lentils.”

Rowan Williams, master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, said, “The self-denial involved in the period of Lent isn’t about just giving up chocolates or beer; it’s about trying to give up a certain set of pictures of God which are burned into our own selfish wants.”

Williams reminds us of the Pevensie children in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe when they first heard Mr. Beaver mention that Aslan was a lion. The children could not conceive of a lion that was both wild and good. Aslan represents something wholly other to the children. Our self-made notions of God quite often need to be (re)awakened to the God that is. We want a God who is safe, one made in our image. A self-centered approach to fasting echoes this sentiment.

The Israelites discovered this the hard way. In Isaiah 58, the premier biblical text for fasting, we find the Israelites confused. They fasted in hopes that God would draw near to them. But their empty religious expressions nauseated God. They fasted but treated others poorly. Their actions did not match their hearts.

“We humbled ourselves,” they complained. But God does not desire a show of humility. I’m reminded of Pascal’s words: “It is better not to fast, and be thereby humbled, than to fast and be self-satisfied therewith.” God desires a fasting in which we turn our hearts toward him and seek to love our neighbor.

In his book Fasting, Scot McKnight warns that evangelical Christianity can often treat fasting as something we do to get a result—like the Israelites in Isaiah 58. Need wisdom for a big decision? Fast. Need to reach your financial goal for that new youth wing? Fast. Need to break the cycle of checking your Instagram feed? Fast.

The Scriptures, however, show fasting used as both a pathway for spiritual breakthroughs (Joel 2:12) and as a response to a grievous sacred moment (2 Sam. 12:16–23). The central focus of fasting remains to draw near to God. It reveals sins from which we must repent. Fasting is an act of worship that changes our spiritual and physical posture toward God.

Source: Christianity Today

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Scot McKnight is an American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, theologian, and author who has written widely on the historical Jesus, early Christianity and Christian living. He is currently Professor of New Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.

Some of our readers are simply unbothered by some Old Testament texts while some of our readers are undone by them, and two particularly notable themes are the war-bride or war-rape texts and the genocide, or total-kill, texts.

In William Webb and Gordon Oeste’s new book, Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric, we encounter a forceful argument that presses against traditional ways of minimizing war bride/rape texts while holding more firmly onto genocide texts.

The argument works like this: since war bride/rape texts are given in a permission framework and genocide texts as imperatives, the latter are permanent and revelatory of God’s normative will while the former are more accommodated and therefore not so revelatory.

It is the presence of command vs. permission that separates the two. Therefore, war-bridge and war-rape texts are minimized.

The authors defeat this contention. They defeat it, in my view, decisively.

They consider that the war-rape instructions in the Bible exemplify God’s accommodated ethic (affected by a fallen world, involving real ethical problems) whereas the total-kill instructions exemplify his unaccommodated ethic (pure and pristine, involving only perceived ethical problems).

Our realigned-traditional position will argue that the war-rape and total-kill texts, while obviously describing different human acts, both reflect God’s accommodated ethic as he communicates within a fallen world.

So here are two fundamental texts for these two themes, war bride/rape here and then after this text the one on genocide or total-kill. Now, Deut 21:10-11

When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God hands them over to you and you take them captive, suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry…

It is the italics (suppose you see, or “if”) that diminishes the connection to God. It is accommodation to the way things were back in those days, so it is claimed.

But the genocide texts are not “suppose” or “if” but “Do this!”

Deut 20:16-17

But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the LORD your God has commanded…

So, a distinction is drawn between permission and command.

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Ed Stetzer is executive director of the Billy Graham Center, serves as a dean at Wheaton College, and publishes church leadership resources through Mission Group. The Exchange team helped with this article.

Don’t panic… Stop buying masks… Wash your hands.

And, stop shaking hands in church.

All of those were part of a conversation this morning with Surgeon General Jerome Adams. A small group of faith-based leaders met with Adams to talk about how the faith-based community might respond to the spread of HIV/AIDS, with the reality that the states with the fastest-growing new incidents of HIV are states that are rural and more religious. Surgeon General Adams talked much about the role faith-based communities have in public health, sharing some of his own story. Furthermore, the administration has been engaging in issues of the opioid epidemic, mental health, and other major concerns.

Our Rural Matters Initiative has been a part of an ongoing conversation with the HHS Partnership for Good around the opioid epidemic and mental health, and (more recently) HIV/AIDS. Near the end of our meeting, the Surgeon General invited us to ask questions. I asked about coronavirus, and with his permission, I am sharing his answers here. You can also read my post from a few days ago on “Coronavirus, Christians, and a Christ-Centered Response.”

Health should always be a priority for us. This may be true now than ever as we watch the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spread its way through the globe—Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, and more.

You can, in fact, find today’s coronavirus facts on the World Health Organization’s update page here. As of today, there are over 90,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, 64 of those being in the United States. (See updates for the U.S. here.) Of course, compare this to over 18,000 people who have died of the flu this year so far.

However, because this virus is so new and many of us feel unprotected, our first response may be one of fear. Many Americans have in fact even been purchasing protective masks at such a rate that the Surgeon General wrote this in a recent CNN op-ed piece:

Masks are not recommended for use by most Americans and hoarding of masks can actually hurt our response by reducing the supply available for medical professionals who need them. It’s critically important our health providers have masks and other medical supplies when caring for people who have been exposed to the virus.

Protecting ourselves against disease is not a bad thing, and my stock of hand sanitizer is evidence that I’m a believer, but there are more basic precautions we can take as first measures.

So let’s back up.

In fact, during our meeting this morning, the Surgeon General expressed that “the risk to any individual [American] is incredibly low.” However, he cautioned that, “We can’t hermetically seal the United States” and that the coronavirus task force is moving to a phase of seeking to “limit the spread of cases in the community.”

He pointed out that other rapidly spreading diseases like SARS, MERS, and others were successfully addressed with “basic public health precautions” and emphasized that the most important thing a person can do is to “wash hands frequently.”

Perhaps you’ve seen the meme going around lately that reminds us all that even when we don’t have a global pandemic, we should wash our hands.

That’s sage advice.

Time for social distancing?

There are three ways governments are dealing with coronavirus right now and I believe all are important as researchers and health practitioners seek to better understand COVID-19: isolation, quarantine, and social distancing. For most of us, the first two are not very applicable and are aimed at specific individuals (though Craig Groeschel and Bobby Gruenewald are currently quarantined). But the latter is something that all of us would benefit from during the spread of this virus.

Social distancing, according to an article on Vox, refers to “a slew of tactics meant to keep people from congregating in large crowds, to slow the spread of a virus.” According to the article:

Unlike quarantine and isolation, social distancing orders typically apply to whole communities, not specific individuals,” Lindsay Wiley, a health law professor at the Washington College of Law, explains in an email. These measures include postponing or canceling mass gatherings like sporting events, concerts, or religious gatherings. It could mean closing schools or encouraging telework.

Yes, postponing or cancelling church gatherings may or may not be on the horizon (and are already happening in some countries, but also here in Washington state).

However, for now, my takeaway from the meeting this morning was this: (1) hand sanitizer is not a bad thing and (2) our churches can be taking a few early preventative steps.

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New Birth Missionary Baptist Church pastor Jamal Bryant warned his congregation in Stonecrest, Georgia, that the popular brand of disinfectant and antiseptic known as Lysol will not protect them from Covid-19 caused by the new coronavirus, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it can.

“They are calling it in clinical terms the novel coronavirus. It’s clinical name is SARS-CoV-2. … The World Health Organization said two weeks ago in their press release, ‘we could not heal it until we named it. … As long as it didn’t have a name we couldn’t identify it. We had to identify it that this is different than any other strand of virus that has been dispatched because coronavirus is not new,” Bryant told his congregants in a teaching session centered around the coronavirus on Tuesday.

“You’ll see it is on the label for Lysol, it’s on the label for Pine-Sol, but this is not that strand. And those who are trying to cleanse and purify themselves with Lysol and Pine-Sol thinking it’s gon’ heal it, don’t realize it’s not that.”

That same day, the EPA released a list of registered products for use against the new coronavirus from brands such as Clorox and Lysol. Specific products listed include: Clorox toilet cleaner with bleach, Clorox disinfecting spray, Lysol disinfectant max cover mist, Lysol toilet bowl cleaners, and Lysol multi-surface cleaner and disinfectant spray.

An EPA spokesperson told ABC News that companies with registered brands had to demonstrate their products are effective against viruses that are even “harder-to-kill” than the novel coronavirus.

The CDC recommends washing hands with soap and water whenever possible to protect against the virus because hand-washing reduces the amounts of all types of germs and chemicals on hands.

If soap and water are not available, however, using a hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol can help people avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others.

So far, 11 deaths have been linked to the virus — one in California and the rest in the Seattle area — with more than 162 confirmed cases across the country, The New York Times reported. With new infections reported in New Jersey and Tennessee, the number of states with infected patients has risen to 18.

Globally, more than 90,000 people have been infected with the new coronavirus with more than 3,100 dying from the virus which currently has no vaccine and is described as deadlier than the flu. Israel and the U.S. are both working on vaccines for the virus that has two strains.

In Bryant’s discussion with his church about the virus on Tuesday, he explained that just a month before the coronavirus became an issue in the U.S., the church opened a food ministry with donations from local supermarket chains and businesses to serve approximately 300 families weekly called “The King’s Table,” and asked his church to be prepared and ready to help if the coronavirus outbreak worsens in the coming weeks.

“While you’re at home I need you to do inventory on the expiration dates of the canned food, non-perishable items you already have. I need you to do inventory on that. I need you to be mindful over the next four to six weeks. I need you while you are in the supermarket, while you’re shopping for yourself online, I need you to start buying extra groceries for twofold,” Bryant said.

He then explained why.

Source: Christian Post

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A youth pastor from North Carolina who proposed to his high school sweetheart in a now viral “Family Feud” style event last December topped off his love for her last Friday with a wedding on ABC’s “Strahan, Sara & Keke” show.

“Eight long years ago, I found my best friend and you taught me what true love is. A life of listening, learning and laughing, and I vow to love you through every life lesson. I vow to overcome personal obstacles and open doors to limitless opportunities for us. I vow to pray for you before myself with a vision of virtuous prosperity,” Joshua Powell, youth pastor at Pleasant Union Missionary Baptist Church in Riegelwood, told his bride, Kiana, on the “Our big fast TV wedding” segment of the show.

“You smile soothes my worries, your heart loves me through my mistakes. And I know I can trust you with my whole heart. You are my dream come true and my prayers answered. These eight years have shown me that our love can withstand all things,” Kiana said in her vows to Joshua.

Kiana is set to graduate in December from Duke University while Joshua will graduate from North Carolina A&T, according to the Bladen Journal.

The couple met at Seventy-First High School in Fayetteville, where they have been together since the end of their freshman year, the Journal said. After Joshua’s proposal, which went viral on Facebook and has been viewed more than 3 million times, the couple appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to discuss the event.

The producers later asked if they wanted to get married on the show and the couple agreed.

Source: Christian Post

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J’Den Cox has won wrestling matches at the highest levels, including a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympic Games — but he believes the battles he wrestles with himself often usher in the greatest victories.

Cox, 24, is a three time NCAA Division 1 wrestling champion, and an Olympic bronze medalist who also won 4 state titles while in high school, amassing only three losses in that time-frame.

J’Den Cox has won wrestling matches at the highest levels, including a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympic Games — but he believes the battles he wrestles with himself often usher in the greatest victories.

Cox, 24, is a three time NCAA Division 1 wrestling champion, and an Olympic bronze medalist who also won 4 state titles while in high school, amassing only three losses in that time-frame.

Listen to Cox reveal his incredible faith journey:

The climax came one day when Cox was in the midst of battling the demons from his past; he found himself on the edge of a highway, considering ending it all. A chance phone call from his coaches at that very moment helped save his life.

Years later, he’s better and has no problem opening up about his past struggles.

“For a long time, I was ashamed to talk about it because people struggle to show empathy for things they can’t see and understand,” Cox said of his past emotional struggles. “I was afraid to ask for help, and I think that’s something I try to preach now.”

Cox began to go to therapy and changed his mindset, as he worked on bettering his mental health — all while not missing a step on the wrestling mat.

Source: Christian Post

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A youth pastor from North Carolina who proposed to his high school sweetheart in a now viral “Family Feud” style event last December topped off his love for her last Friday with a wedding on ABC’s “Strahan, Sara & Keke” show.

“Eight long years ago, I found my best friend and you taught me what true love is. A life of listening, learning and laughing, and I vow to love you through every life lesson. I vow to overcome personal obstacles and open doors to limitless opportunities for us. I vow to pray for you before myself with a vision of virtuous prosperity,” Joshua Powell, youth pastor at Pleasant Union Missionary Baptist Church in Riegelwood, told his bride, Kiana, on the “Our Big Fast TV Wedding” segment of the show.

“You smile soothes my worries, your heart loves me through my mistakes. And I know I can trust you with my whole heart. You are my dream come true and my prayers answered. These eight years have shown me that our love can withstand all things,” Kiana said in her vows to Joshua.

Kiana is set to graduate in December from Duke University while Joshua will graduate from North Carolina A&T, according to the Bladen Journal.

The couple met at Seventy-First High School in Fayetteville, where they have been together since the end of their freshman year, the Journal said. After Joshua’s proposal, which went viral on Facebook and has been viewed more than 3 million times, the couple appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to discuss the event.

The producers later asked if they wanted to get married on the show and the couple agreed.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair

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