Wed, Nov 29th - 8:28AM
Ovid Need Needs To Mind His Own Business
Though the sermon “Long Range New Covenant Thinking: Early Marriage” by Ovid Need available at SermonAudio.com does a commendable job of explicating the passages regarding dominion over creation and of expounding the need to train children for family life, it uses these passages as cover to impose personal opinion as revealed doctrine.
According to Need, the sincere Christian desiring to fulfill God’s will weds at an early age. As proof, Need cites the passage in Proverbs 5:18 saying, “Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth” and notes that in Bible times often people were married by the age of eighteen for boys and sometimes as young as thirteen for girls (he conveniently fails to point out the abysmally low life expectancy prevalent in ancient times).
Part of the reason for this decree in favor of adolescent matrimony (perhaps not that young but one must wonder if Need is going to suggest we slavishly adhere to ancient Judaic practices and in his own comments insinuates 30 is too old to have not yet wed) is to curb the evil tendency in the male towards (ominous drum roll, please) --- INDEPENDENCE. Heaven forbid one enjoy a period in life without nagging.
In the sermon, Need criticizes those with a more “dispensationalist” perspective for overlooking those passages of Scripture that do not mesh with their own diminished theologies. One might argue he himself is guilty of the same shortcoming he warns against.
For while there are passages mentioning marriage in youth, there are just as many examples of those in the Bible marrying in “old age” (as Need might categorize the period in the figure’s existential chronology in which the figure entered matrimony) or outright warnings against marriage. For example, Isaac was forty when he married and Boaz insinuates that he is no spring chicken when Ruth comes onto him.
Other passages indicate one is better off remaining single than to marry the wrong person and end up with a shrew of a mate. Both Proverbs 21:9 and Proverbs 25:24 (thus indicating the importance of the warning if God is going to take His time and mention it twice in the pages of holy writ) intone it is better to live on the corner of a roof than in a house with a brawling wife (and it is just as true with such a husband).
Yet another interesting passage can be found in Matthew 24 which extols, “And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!” While no man knows the day or the hour of the Lord’s return, only a fool would deny that things are not waxing worse and worse in accord with II Timothy 3:13, thus making it so difficult to raise a family in such a setting that it might be best if people not marry all together if they believe that to be the prudent course of action.
However, as a Postmillenialist, Rev Need cannot afford to admit that things are getting worse as his eschatological hermeneutic compels him to believe that things will be getting better and better as Christ cannot return until after the Church ushers in the Kingdom of God here on earth. Frankly, such a development would itself be a nightmare as mankind is not able of implementing a perfect anything; the best we can hope for is a setting that attempts to create an equilibrium between individual privacy and the common good with the realization that the institutions used to uphold the common good are capable of undermining the very liberties they were intended to uphold.
by Frederick Meekins
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Mon, Nov 13th - 11:21AM
A Review Of Puritan Adventure By Lois Lenski
In many Evangelical Christian circles, the time of the Puritans is looked back upon almost as a golden age in American History. However, upon reading Puritan Adventure by Lois Lenski, most will conclude that, while the period might be a nice place to visit, they wouldn’t want to live there.
Puritan Adventure centers around the widowed Charity Cummings coming to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to live with her sister’s family. Unaccustomed to the more austere New England life, she serves as a colorful foil through which to view the nuances and complexities of colonial Puritan existence.
Noted for speaking her mind and for what to the Puritans seems her flamboyant mode of dress, Charity becomes a bit of a thorn in the side of community authorities. Charity’s more easy-going nature is contrasted throughout the story with the sterner outlook of a number of the Puritan settlers, particularly the so-called “Tithing Men” charged with the business of getting into other people’s business in the name of proper behavior and decorum.
While many Evangelicals today pine away claiming they long for the kind of close-knit sense of community characterizing Puritan life, from the incidents depicted in this researched narrative, it is doubtful few of us would find their way of life all that enjoyable. For example, town officials enforce the ban on Christmas and the Tithing Men chastise children along the street daring to whistle because, “Knowest thou not that running will scandalize good folk (104)?”
Some will probably think Lenski fabricated her depiction of the Puritans from her own imagination. However, in the forward she carefully documents that much of her story is based upon assorted original sources and she includes an ample bibliography at the end.
Of her sources, Lenski writes, “I have incorporated in my story many quotations taken from early New England writers. It is these phrases, so rich and suggestive, in the original sources, which give this long-past age a glow of reality and truth. In them we hear our founders speak, think, and act. They are the rightful heritage of American children (page XI).” Lenski also does a service to history by pointing out that, while the Puritans seem unduly harsh to us, in their time Christmas was marked by drunken bawdiness and in terms of severity Puritans were “soft” on crime as they had only ten crimes punishable by death whereas England had nearly thirty.
In her trial before town authorities for introducing the children to Christmas, Shrovetide, and May Day, in her defense Charity Cummings says, “We came to this fair land to build a new world, a New England. If I then look back to the Old, if I remind you of the life we lived there, ‘tis because I wish to preserve the best in the old ways for a goodly heritage. So away with Old England’s wrongs, I beg you, but hold fast to its good, and make your new world the richer (215-216).” Likewise, we as their descendants should not dismiss the Puritans in their entirety but rather retain from them those dispositions that have withstood the test of time while guarding against those darker tendencies that in various forms have plagued mankind throughout all of recorded history and not just among the Puritans.
Taken by itself, Puritan Adventure does not paint a complete picture of the pivotal contributions to the American way of life made by this sect. However, when studied alongside other introductory sources such as Pilgrims & Puritans by James and Lincoln Collier, the reader will have a good understanding of these complicated Forefathers.
by Frederick Meekins
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Name: Frederick Meekins
