Piper Guilty of Christian Vulcanism?

This video has already made the rounds. It has already started heated arguments between hardcore Piper defenders and people with more common sense than that. I'm not bringing it up to stir up a bunch of heated argument but rather to analyse it with this new information I have on how New Calvinists approach the gospel, the world, other people, and themselves.

John Piper: Does a woman submit to abuse?

I have had sort of a theory in dealing with decent men who don't understand abusive men. They don't 'get' the abusive mindset but they understand that women can really drive men crazy and that there are even scriptures talking about contentious women and constant drips. So these decent men make the mistake of thinking that, yes, it's never right to hit a woman, but that some women ask for it and if they would just obey the Bible and submit, then they wouldn't be abused. I put Dobson in this category. I also used to put Piper in this category.

I remember someone saying, concerning the clip that I link above, that Piper was being rather cold hearted and uncaring and used the little nervous laugh that Piper gave upon reading the question as evidence.

At that time I wasn't willing to go that far. And even now, I'm not willing to say that Piper, himself, is coldhearted. Rather, I'm coming to the conclusion that New Calvinism creates coldheartedness in people. It is New Calvinism that is clinical and coldhearted. Trying to be pure, New Calvinists have made themselves sterile and reclusive from the human condition.

One of the reasons I'm coming to this conclusion is that I could see that Piper might actually be a very sensitive man. So sensitive, in fact, that he needs a doctrine that helps to shield himself from the pain of walking this earth.

Now I'm guessing here, of course. But the reason I'm turning this direction in my reasoning and theorizing is that this is possibly happening to the young man in my church. He had a very hard blow. Very emotional. Something that made him cry. But men aren't supposed to cry... Right?

So how do we deal with this, since manhood in men doesn't look so manly when it is dealing with honest pain in the thick of turmoil? Well, Vulcanizing their Christianity by way of New Calvinism could be an option. Think of it. Rather than rolling around and getting messy in the pit of emotions we can take ourselves out of the pit, sterilize everything and become the distant scientist observer, a Vulcan type dude. It certainly could cut down on the immediate pain and make life a bit more bearable in the now. But the down side is that, as it causes us to withdraw from the pain, it also causes us to withdraw from that which is human, created in God's image. And ultimately it makes even God more distant. We become something less than human, cold blooded, perhaps even reptilian.

But we are not to be reptiles. We are to be human. We wrestle with emotions and many other things. We have highs and lows and, if we will let Him, God will stay near to use through all of it.

I'm going to leave you with a song here that expresses well our need for a God who is near.

Hold Me Jesus

Off Topic and Completely Spontaneous

Retha made a comment under one of the strong men posts about one of the guys bringing again to my remembrance what he's made of.

As I was composing a response I remembered an old CD by Rich Mullins called "Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth" and I thought of these guys and what motivated them. And part of this title came to me. Actually the words, "Stuff of Heaven" popped into my mind and the thought, "These guys are motivated by the stuff of Heaven." Then I thought of Rich's CD. It's the one that had the song, "Awesome God" on it.

And on a whim I wanted to share the lesser known music (than Awesome God) on "Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth" with people who may never have heard it. This is that Quaker boy from the Heartland who wrote the song about the plains that blessed me so much that I wrote about it back on April 9th.
So if you have time, especially if you haven't heard it before, it's old, but good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm2A5IJlOWk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_FznQW1xrI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibi7W42N64c

Links to Plains Song and Denmark Song

I use the word desolate to describe the plains and Old Denmark, but perhaps it is too strong a word. Wild and Windswept would be better. I love the wind. My husband, spoiled Heartland dweller that he is (spoken with great affection) hates the wind. I find it exhilarating. Anyway, enough of that for this post. I'll get back to the wind later. Here are the links I promised. Rich Mullins first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaNwTYJrYtA Njordfoto-A Northern Journey (for me, thoughts of the ancient places) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YypKod0wBdc

A Window Into My Soul

I have an Internet persona and keep my personal life very private. But for the sake of explaining the appeal of Wild At Heart to me personally, let me tell you about myself.

Even though I now live in the fertile prairies of the Heartland, I was not born here. I was born in one of the Plains states. It is rugged and wild country that I love. And most people not from that country have a hard time appreciating the beautiful, untamed, desolation of that area. John Eldredge is also from the wild country in Colorado. So when he described chasing a deer over that country, it set my heart on fire and made me remember my roots. They are roots that my friends from the Heartland, or the South, or the East Coast don't understand. My ancestors cut out an existence in those unforgiving plains. They went through the Dust Bowl for Pete's sake. They were strong and stoic and sometimes I get impatient with the spoiled heartland dwellers who have only known green and tamed terrain.

In my next post I'm going to link a Rich Mullin's song about the beauty of the plains. One of the lines goes like this, "How the Lord takes by its corners this old world and shakes us forward and shakes us free to run wild with the hope that this thirst will not last long that it will soon drown in a song not sung in vain." The state I was born in is listed in this song.

Rich was an anomaly. A Quaker boy born in the green, moist and tame Heartland wouldn't normally have an attraction to the desolate plains. But Rich did. He appreciated it and he wrote a song about it and about praising God that makes my heart sing. Funny. Other people are not nearly as stirred by that song as I still am.

Further back in my past, my family is from Denmark. Another rugged and desolate place of warriors and Vikings. Their men weren't just fierce, so were their women. They had to be to survive. I read a book that was made into a movie call "The Thirteenth Warrior" and was amazed at the feeling of affinity I had with some of the Viking thought processes. In the next post, along with the Rich Mullins link, I'll link an ancient sounding song with images from the old country which also touches a terrible deep place in me.

Why am I telling you this? I'm explaining the structures in my life, set up by my culture and my heritage that are not dissimilar to the structures in John Eldredge's life. But where he tries to make these structures into Biblical foundations, I know better. They are extra-biblical. This doesn't make them bad. I'm proud of my heritage. But these foundations are not Biblical. And they are not sturdy foundations to build a house of wild, spiritual, freedom on. The word of God is quick and active and sharper than any two edged sword and is able to cut between the soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12).

Hopefully, after the post with the song links, I can present Bible verses that promise us freedom. These verses ARE a firm foundation and are not someone else's culture and perspective. They are a spiritual foundation and aren't given to us to cancel out other people's cultural influences.