The television commercial for the end-of-the-world extravaganza “2012” – complete with images of the earth being covered in a flood – prompted the following theological discussion between my 7 and 4-year-old daughters.

“Look at all the water,” the younger one observed, her big eyes even larger than usual.

“Don’t worry,” the older one reassured her. “God promised Noah that would never happen again.”

I wonder what she would have said if she actually saw the movie. “2012” embraces the Noah reference and even tries to one-up the Bible story – the climax features a whole fleet of arks. Considering, as my daughter pointed out, this is a direct rebuttal of God’s covenant, could “2012” be considered blasphemous?

Perhaps, but it’s hard to get worked up about yet another cheesy disaster movie from noted landmark basher Roland Emmerich (the Statue of Liberty took a hit in the director’s “The Day After Tomorrow,” while the White House is only one of the iconic victims here.)

The movie did make me wonder, though: Is there any value in surmising the apocalypse?

This isn’t only a secular pastime. Sure, popular fiction often deals in this sort of stuff – this month we’ll also get the big-screen version of Cormac McCarthy’s bleak “The Road” – but many Christians have made it a hobby, as well. God seems to have felt that Revelation provided all the information we need about the end times, but the often mystifying visions in that book only feed our appetites for destruction. We pore over those passages interpreting symbols, finding contemporary parallels and even, in some cases, trying to make God’s Word follow a human calendar.

Can anything fruitful come of all this? Can it simply be written off as an understandable curiosity about the future, or is there a danger in imagining, as “2012” does, the end of the world as we know it?

If identity is the new guilt, then idolatry is the new sin.

Protestants used to claim that Roman Catholics were idolaters because they had statues in their buildings. A couple of years ago an elder from a conservative Protestant denomination explained to me how Vietnamese people more easily came to Roman Catholicism from Buddhism because both religions worshiped idols. A new wave of literature is no longer so facile on this, understanding sin as idolatry is something deeper than carvings of wood and stone. Idolatry is making a publishing comeback. Tim Keller’s latest book “Counterfeit Gods” puts in book form many of the themes his sermons have had for years. G.K. Beale, a New Testament scholar recently authored “We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry” where traces these themes through the Bible. Jewish scholars Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit have their own book from Harvard University Press on the subject.

For most today self-definition and determination is seen as a foundational birthright of our existence. Not only does nobody put baby in a corner, but unless baby is defining herself and keeping herself out of a corner, she is failing to live up to her existential mandate. Most self-help remedies for a variety of identity ills prescribe self-definition through self-assertion. I must take control of my life by constructing a preferred identity, living that out maximizing individuality and authenticity.

If one pursues this long enough they begin to realize that this is a incredible amount of work and a tremendous burden. Not only do we have to construct this from the cultural materials available, but the merchants of cool are perpetually infusing every fresh cultural wave with yet more artifacts and options to add or replace what we’ve already accumulated. We are crushed by the pace of fashion, unable to strip ourselves fast enough of yesterday’s dowdy threads and incapable of assimilating quickly enough tomorrow’s new authenticity. We stand naked in the whirlwind trying to build a life from the debris blowing around us.

Such desperation drives us to turn good things into ultimate things. We begin to look to our jobs, our familial roles, our attributes, our gender identities, the brands in the market place for permanence and meaning. GK Beale’s title is a short cut. We need to become something so locate our selves in the roles we must play or the things we buy or the communities we choose and the daily maintenance of those things becomes our worship even if we don’t call it that. Habit and worship unites and we get what we asked for. We asked these things to fill us and now they have and will finally displace us. In CS Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” the shadows of hell were once people with attributes, but the identification has gone so far they are merely the attribute.

God is the only safe thing to worship because only God is secure enough, wealthy enough, self-sufficient enough to not need to consume us. See CS Lewis’ description of distinction from Screwtape Letters. Idolatries never satisfy and always enslave. Identities are received, not achieved and there is only one ultimate giver of our identity that will not only satisfy us, but fill us without consuming us.

For western Christianity the question for which Jesus is the answer was guilt. A much deserved hell was a clear and present danger for the general population and the church offered forgiveness and release from that threat. Money poured into the church through the sale of indulgences. Luther transformed the church when he discovered that our release had already been purchased. The audience glued to Jonathan Edward’s sermons saw themselves as that spider dangling above the pit of hell suspended only by God’s grace-filled self-restraining effort to not react to its rebellious loathsome appearance. Much has changed.

Harold Bloom quite correctly assesses that contemporary American culture bequeaths an instinctive assumption that God finds us amazing as we are and is dying to get close to us. We’ve all heard about helicopter parents also called “lawnmower parents” who mow down, smooth and remove all obstacles out of our paths. This is the God most people I meet are looking for. With such a God his children can do no wrong. Ron Nydam who teaches at Calvin Seminary says that for most adults today guilt is an achievement.

This change has become a challenge for conservative Christians. The 20th century staples of evangelical evangelism no longer grip. No one imagines God would ask anyone to justify why He should let them into his heaven. “Just as I am” is a birthright, no plea is needed.

Francis Collins is one of the most accomplished scientists in the world. A pioneer in the field of molecular human genetics, Collins developed a genetic mapping technique that enabled his research group to identify the gene that is mutated in cystic fibrosis. His continued success as a geneticist led to his appointment as the director of the Human Genome Project in 1993, and he famously guided that effort to phenomenal success. He is a well-spoken advocate for science, one of the few truly outstanding scientists who can communicate effectively with lay audiences.

This past summer, President Obama nominated Collins to be the new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s premier biomedical funding agency. Collins was confirmed in August, and is currently leading NIH effectively. But interestingly, there was significant unease, even controversy, surrounding the nomination. Why?

Well, you may know that Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian and an outspoken defender of the compatibility of science and Christian faith. You may know that he wrote a fine book (The Language of God) on the subject, that he co-founded the Biologos Foundation to advance the ideas in the book, and that he is regularly attacked by various prominent atheists.

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I’ve written here before about why I believe family focused talk in churches is alienating and excluding Christian singles and childless couples. I was thinking more on the topic recently, and thinking about how family focus also devalues other kinds of important relationships.

For example, I’ve lived with the same roommate for the last 2 years. We are not just roommates, but also colleagues. We have a relationship that is based in trust and mutual support. We celebrate each others successes and commiserate when things don’t go the way we’d hoped. We share bills, but also meals, trips, ideas and resources.  Even though we do not plan for our relationship to stay the way it is for our whole lives (so in this sense it is unlike a marriage) we do plan to always have a relationship, and my relationship with her is an important part of my life. This kind of close friendship, though, is not something that is valued in public the way family relationships are, even though my roommate is like family to me.

Is there a way the church can support and encourage the kind of love that exists in non-sexual, non-permanent partnerships and relationships?  What about actively working to build family-like relationships among church members?

A friend of mine is a chaplain for a NFL team. He and his wife spend time with players and their families. He prays with them, mentors them, encourages, challenges, and teaches them.

He’s not mentioned in Time Magazine’s recent write-up on NFL chaplains, but the roles sound similar.

The Time magazine piece seems to emphasize the lighter side, like wearing team colors and wringing hands over the theological questions of competition. Does God want us to win (and them to lose)? Does God make the goal or do I? What if it’s a fumble—it is God’s fault?

But the real work, at which the piece hints, is with the players who have real struggles, even in success. What do you do with sudden fame and fortune? When do you say no when everyone wants you? How does your family survive stress, the public spotlight, and the potential for major injury?

What does “The Wizard of Oz” mean to you?

We have occasion to ask because yet another edition of the 1939 classic has been released on DVD, this time to celebrate the movie’s 70^th anniversary.

“The Wizard of Oz” has maintained classic status for all those years because kids return to it as adults, both to share the movie with their own children and to revisit a seminal childhood viewing experience. And it’s as adults that we notice the picture is not simply a children’s fantasy, but also a wondrously malleable allegory. Its imagined universe is so rich and vast that you can read almost anything into it.

From a certain angle, “The Wizard of Oz” is a celebration of humanism. After all, this is a story full of false gods. Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion are fantastical figures, but in reality they’re only Dorothy’s farmhand friends back in Kansas. And what of the “great and powerful Oz,” who conjures an aura of omniscience with literal smoke and mirrors? He’s nothing but the original man behind the curtain – emphasis on man.

I’m a gadget nerd whose Verizon contract is almost up so I’m shopping for my next phone. Here’s an ad from HTC.

Tim Keller quotes Tom Shippey in Counterfeit Gods as calling Sauron’s ring in The Lord of the Rings “a psychic amplifier”. They take our heart’s good desires and amplify them to idolatrous proportions (pg. xv)

In this one minute piece HTC promises that its newest phone will amplify the passion and the poignancy. It reminds me of an obviously effective Kodak commercial in the 70s that used a Paul Anka’s song encouraging people to take Kodak pictures to remember “the times of your life”.

These pieces don’t just amplify, they shape. Through the artistry of the presentation they invite “you” (through the ever-present assistance of their product of course ) into another level of life. The product invites us all into an aspirational “you” that is younger, cooler, better looking, has more friends, is clearly living an upgraded narrative at a hipper urban address.

We liked him so much when he guest posted, we’ve asked Paul Vander Klay to be a regular Think Christian contributor. Thankfully, he said yes!   He’s no stranger to TC as he’s been hanging out and commenting on posts for some time.

Paul is the pastor of the Living Stones Christian Reformed Church in Sacramento, California.  He grew up in Paterson, NJ in an urban church planted by his father.  He is a graduate of Calvin College and Calvin Seminary and spent 6 years as a missionary in the Dominican Republic.  He likes playing with technology and theology on his blog and Twitter. Paul says he gets excited talking about the end of the age of decay, creation 2.0 and being a gospel word gardener of the age to come.

(Guest blogger: Todd Hertz.  Todd is the E-Marketing Manager for ReFrame Media.  That basically means he works to build online relationships plus develop web and social media strategies.  He formally worked as the editor for multiple projects at Christianity Today.)

2009 has been a big year for celebrity confessions and apologies. The most notable cases:  Alex Rodriquez admitted and apologized for steroid use and David Letterman confessed to taking sexual advantage of his show’s staff.

The latest celebrity to publicly confess transgressions is tennis star Andre Agassi who shockingly reveals in his new book that he took crystal meth in 1997 and lied about it when caught in a drug test. In fact, when caught, Agassi wrote a totally fraudulent letter to tennis authorities claiming that he tested positive because of accidentally drinking a “spiked soda.” Based on his explanation, they dropped the issue.