All My Thoughts on God…

"The time has come.

The time is now."

I’m getting ready to move this blog from this host to Wordpress.com.

Recently, I went to my host’s forum for some help and I saw that it was flooded with ads for porn leavning me with the impression that no one is moderating it. I took it as a sign of the impending disappearance of the service and I’ve started setting up shop somewhere else.

I’ll let you know when I’ve moved.

One more thing: I just learned yesterday that I’ve been robing other folks of their bandwidth by displaying their images from this blog. Granted, I don’t have such a vast readership that I’m placing a huge burden on their servers, but all the same I’m still taking something away that isn’t mine. Consequently, I’ll have to give up including pictures to which I have no claim whatsoever. My apologies to the owners of the original images.

I’m not sure where I first encountered the subject, but somewhere in Christendom there is a conversation about the need to stop refering to non-Christians as "lost". (Honestly, I suspect that I came across this conversation in my reading up on the Emergent Church, but I’m not sure.) The arguement seems to be that this word is derogatory and offensive to non-Christians. There’s this idea that its use implies arrogance and contempt on behalf of the Christians who use it. I might be interested in taking part in the conversation provided that I could get a few things straight first.

What is the source of opposition to the designation "lost". Does it come from inside or outside the Christian community? If the opposition comes from "insiders", why are they opposed to a term that is used in the Bible in order to refer to those who were without Christ? If the opposition comes from "outsiders", why are they familiar with the term in it’s Christian context? Furthermore, is it appropriate for any outsiders to tell any insiders how to communicate within their own communities?

I would appreciate it if anyone could help me understand why this particular conversation is worth having.

Now that I’m making that 20-25 minute drive to work again, I’ve started listening to the Bible podcast again. I’m listening to the Gospel of Matthew and one of the chapters I listened to this morning was Chapter 20. (The file naming structuring has the chapters playing out of order on my player.)

I had one of those moments when, for whatever reason, the words that I’ve heard and read so often in my life that I’m almost impervious to them actually broke through and said something "new" to me. Here it is:

"So the last will be first, and the first will be last." Most of the time, this well known quotation is used to indicate some kind of just reversal of fortunes. It’s as if to say that the wicked rich and powerful will be thrown down while the virtuous poor and powerless will be raised up. Certainly, there is some truth in that but I realized today as I heard Michael Lee read Matthew 20 aloud that this is not the meaning which is being illustrated by Jesus’ parable.

The parable tells the story of a wealthy landowner who hires several laborers to work in his vineyard. Some laborers were hired at the beginning of the day, some later and finally some were put to work about an hour before sunset. When it comes time to pay the laborers, all of them receive an equal salary referred to as "a day’s wage". Those hired earliest become angry and feel robbed because those hired last are paid equal to them.  The landowner points out that 1) the early laborers agreed to work for a day’s wage 2) they were paid according to their agreement and 3) he has a right to do whatever he likes with his money, including pay a day’s wage to those who worked an hour. Then comes the quote.

Suddenly, I realized that in this case Jesus was talking not only about inclusion but equality. He was teaching the people that within the Kingdom of God, all citizens, regardless of their differences, will share equally in the justice and generosity of their King. The early laborers were not more virtuous that the late laborers. Bearing the heat of the day and working longer hours did not make them of greater worth to the landowner than those who squeezed in only an hour of work in the cool of the afternoon. There is no divine retribution in making the last like the first and the first like the last in this story. Instead, there is justice (for the first got what they were promised) and there is generosity (for the last were given more than they deserved).

Justice and mercy. Isn’t this the kind of government people crave?

I found Logic + Emotion when looking for a graphic to include in a previous post of mine. The blogger David Armano writes in this post about a book that he’s contributed to which is called The Age of Conversation. The book appears to be about the need for Business to shift from focusing on dissemination of information (about products, goods, services) to focussing on engaging with consumers (a no longer accurate term apparently) in conversation which leads to affinity…which ultimately is displayed by consumption, but that’s tacitly understood and not explicitly stated.

As I read the post, there were several little phrases that jumped out at me and begged to be applied to Church (both Emergent and otherwise) but my thoughts kept turning toward something else. Specifically, I found myself thinking that for all of the references to "conversation" and "relationship" and "community" I felt as a result of these things being digitally mediated (under the category of business/marketing) there was no…humanity. I felt that the people involved in all of this new media are existing primarily online as virtual humans in social networks which keep them estranged from the flesh and blood humans around them. Then I read the concluding sentence about the book:

"Either way, I think it will be a good read—for a great cause."

Following that link I saw that the great cause is a children’s charity in New York. There was the humanity that I was missing. Maybe David isn’t going to personally engage with any of those flesh and blood children (maybe he is) but all of his activities in, around and through new media are going to be translated into real help for real children with real needs who undoubtedly will be touched by real human hands. That’s something worth talking about.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

A while back I left a post called "Emerging Parody" in which I linked to some posters that were taking the mickey out of the EC movement in the "motivational poster" idiom. Well, apparently I misunderstood that those posters did not come from insiders to the movement and that they were not intended in an attitude of fun.

So, here’s a link to what the Tall Skinny Kiwi calls a more generous response to those posters.

BTW: This is one that hit me pretty hard.

A Muslim man at the grocery store noticed the cross tatooed on my wife’s ankle today and felt the need to walk up to her and tell her that she was showing disrespect to her religion by having it. Now, there are multiple angles of this event that we could explore but I’ll keep it brief today.

In speaking to her (I was helping the bag boy get the groceries into the van), he told my wife that he is a Muslim who respects all religions, which I guess was his defense for calling her into account. Think about that for a moment: what did this guy mean when he said that he respects all religions? Is that even possible? How can anyone, Christian, Muslim, Secular Humanist, say that he respects all religions while subscribing to a particular one?

Do you respect all religions? Or any religion, for that matter?

A scholar whom I respect wrote about imprecatory prayers in the Bible. (Those are prayers which ask God to curse some one.) In the opening paragraphs, he writes

Christians are generally uncomfortable with these texts and they are rarely preached in the contemporary church. Both our understanding of Christianity and the cultural climate of pluralistic toleration undermine the facile use of these psalms in the church. But these points are misguided, and the church ought to take up again the praying and preaching of the imprecatory psalms.

So, while it may not appear "Christian", imprecatory prayer is certainly Biblical. With that in mind, I offer this one:

Sovereign Lord,

The Earth and everything that is in it is Yours. Your people, whom You have called, trust in You and Your promise to bring everlasting justice upon the Earth upon that day when Your Annoited One will return. Until then, wicked men will continue to pollute Your Earth with their perverted justice as they have done before and as they do today.

Lord, there are those who claim to be Your students, who say that You guide them in a straight path. They are liars and the Truth is not in them for they deny Your Holy One and oppress those who call upon His Name. They have taken Your servants hostage. They have killed some while the rest they hold for ransom to purchase their wicked brothers in order to commit more murder and mayhem. Rise up against them Lord.

Strike their right arm with a withering disease, sapping them of all their strength. Scorch them with Your sun by day and freeze them by night. Let no restful sleep come to their eyes. Do not let them be renewed for another day of murder. Plague them with dreams of defeat and shame. Keep them in constant fear. Terrorize them day and night with what they fear most. Deny them hope and hide from them any hint of destiny.

Dry up the fountains and wells where they drink. When they do find water, make it bitter and incapable of quenching their thirst. Send vermin into their camps to devour their food, to contaminate it. Keep them hungry and thirsty all the days of their rebellion.

Thwart every wicked plan they devise against the innocent. Rob them of every success. My every suicide bomber either fail to detonate his bomb or detonate too soon. Let every raid fail and reveal their secrets to those who would stand in their way. Turn the hearts of the people against them so that no door is open to them and no refuge is to be found anywhere for them. Cloud their reasoning and judgement with confusion.

Vanquish their hope and oppress them with despair until they repent and turn away from their violence and bloodshed. When they confess that Jesus is Lord, pour out Your mercy upon them. However, oppress and afflict them for as long as they persist in their wicked way.

Separate from their own numbers those who repent and submit to King Jesus. Give them a mighty wittness and a glorious testimony to Your power and mercy. Give them victory over their rebellious brothers who would kill them for turning away from their evil deeds.

Preserve Your servants who trust in You. Assure them that You hear and will receive them into the Kingdom that You have prepared for them. Comfort them as they are held in uncertainty and fear. Remind them moment by moment that they have a Savior who reigns and has promised to give them Life which can never be taken from them.

Sovereign Lord, bring justice to the Earth, punish the wicked, be merciful to the penitent. Do this for Your own glory through the Son that You have Annointed as King. For His sake, hear this prayer.

Amen.

A while back, I posted about why I believe that Jesus is Divine, then I came across a link that lead me to one person’s list of reasons that he believes the Bible is Divine (aka "the Word of God"). You can follow the link for the guy’s reasoning or you can simply check his list quoted below.

First, on the ground of the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Second, on the ground of its fulfilled prophecies.

Third, on the ground of the unity of the book.

Fourth, on the ground of the immeasurable superiority of the teachings of the Bible to those of any other and all other books.

Fifth, on the ground of the history of the book, its victory over attack.

Sixth, on the ground of the character of those who accept and of those who reject the book.

Seventh, on the ground of the influence of the book.

Eighth, on the ground of the inexhaustible depth of the book.

Ninth, on the ground of the fact that as we grow in knowledge and holiness we grow toward the Bible.

Tenth, on the ground of the direct testimony of the Holy Spirit.

Of the ten listed, I’m most sympathetic with the second, third and fifth reasons. I’m really uncomfortable with the fourth one because it sounds very much like a Muslim argument for the Divine nature of the Qu’ran. All of the rest appear to me to be very subjective which does not necessarily invalidate them, but does make me want to think them over a bit before giving a knee-jerk response.

What do you think; why do you (or don’t you) believe that the Bible is the Word of God?

Not long ago, we started teaching our sons the Model Prayer (aka The Lord’s Prayer). It’s been a  bit of challenge to re-word it in such a way that it’s understandable for them and yet close to the English version that they will one day read for themselves. There are some bits that I’ve left uninterpreted for the sake of continuity with the English text which means that some explanation is necessary.

Usually we practice it at bed time but today my oldest son recited it at dinner for us. One of the phrases that needed some explanation goes "…give us this day, our daily bread".  Since we were eating, I thought it was a good time to explain that this part means "give us food to eat each day". Apparently that short explanation was an invitation for further inquiries because we were asked to explain the bit about "…lead us not into temptation" and "…forgive us of our sins".

Oddly enough, my wife and I found it easier to explain the concept of temptation than the concept of forgiveness. In fact, we discovered that we sort of disagreed about the meaning of forgiveness…or at least, we disagreed as to what ought to be emphasized to kids five years old and under.

What do you think it means to forgive someone? How would you explain that to a five and a three year old?

Just got back from the mini-vacation and found a great e-mail from my Muslim friend who is seeking asylum in a western country. Maybe I’ll do a couple of posts that share his story without compromising his safety.

Stay tuned…

The family and I are going away for several days and I won’t have access to a computer, so I’ll not be posting anything new for a bit. I should be back sometime late next week.

Cheers!

Thanks to the Tall Skinny Kiwi, one of my windows into the EC, I found these posters. Some of them I actually get. My favorite is this one:

My wife keeps a list of all of her character flaws in her purse. I know because she told me. What she didn’t tell me is why she carries it around in her purse like a shopping list.

If I were to make such a list, what would be on it? (That is a rhetorical question, not a request for comments.) I thought about this after learning of my wife’s list and I think I could get away with using only a single index card to list my fault in large black letters. Yes, I meant that in the singular. The reason is that I say "fault" is because I think I can distill everything that is wrong with me down to a single word-

self

Coupled with a few other words, I think this small four-letter word encompasses the worst of me.

self-centered

self-absorbed

self-satisfied

self-serving

self-righteous

self-important

So much of the damage that I do to myself and others, through either action or inaction, springs out of my own self-interest.

No wonder Jesus says that I must deny myself in order to follow Him.

At last count, iMonk had 61 comments on this post. Apparently he touched a nerve.

Instead of having my piddly little comment lost in the crowd, I thought I would just post it here. But first I’ll let you read his post…

Finished? Ok.

It seems to me that the pendulum swung rather quickly on this one. Is it already time for a return to the traditions of yesterday? Is the monk correct when he says that young evangelicals are longing for what one comment described as "smells and bells"? I guess that just goes to show how out of step I am with things back home.

Of all the comments that I read (which is not to say that I read them all) I found that I related to Monty Card’s the best.

The girl in line at the bank wore a t-shirt that said "Taken but Still Looking".

What’s funny about infidelity in a relationship?

In what the apostle Paul might have referred to as my "former way of life", I once walked in on the morning after my significant other’s night of infidelity. Consequently, one might argue, I am rather sensitive to the issue and unable to appreciate an insincere jest on a meaningless piece of low fashion. However, winning that argument wouldn’t mean that unfaithfulness is not serious. 

So, how serious is it?

Thanks to Pseudo-Polymath, I found an essay in which the blogger makes the point that with regards to reading, quality is better than quantity. "Better to read one substantial book this month than most of the books located in your local “Fiction” section."

As I was thinking about this, I remembered a comment a couple of weeks ago by a college professor that I respect. In a sermon at our home church back in the states (thank God for webcasts) he said that he’s come to a place where he sees that bad preaching is better than no preaching. Again, it’s the question of quality versus quantity.

So, I’ll just throw this one into the web and see what anyone passing this way thinks: Is bad preaching better than no preaching?

NB: Since the blogger of the reading essay doesn’t have comments open, feel free to leave your opinions here about the question of quality vs quantity regarding books.

What do you think of when you hear the word "martyr?"

Living in the Middle East as I do, that word has almost entirely lost any assosciation with Christianity. I don’t know if it’s that way for folks in the West, but it seems to me that Islam has taken almost complete control of that word in the world today. What’s disturbing to me is the dissimilarity between the concepts behind its use in the contexts of Islam and Christianity, or even the Secular World. While both religions will call someone a martyr who is killed for the sake of the religion, Islam uses the same word to speak about those who kill others including themselves for the sake of the religion. This is absolutely alien to Christianity. Furthermore, I suspect that it’s evern moreso for Westerners both relgious and non-religious. The idea of being killed because someone (individual or state) disapproves is very remote. The idea of killing someone because you disapporove of their religion is very remote. Yet this is going on through large swaths of the world, as Voice of the Martyrs testifies on a regular basis.

Why bring it up? In a little over 24 hours, a friend and a brother in Christ will flee my host country because he is afraid for his life. He has left the dominant religion of the region, which is punishable by death. He is in danger from his father, his in-laws and even some stranger who has stalked him both through the internet and in real life. He can not got to the authorities for they will not protect an apostate (even if they won’t actually kill him outright). So he and his wife (whom I’ve never met) must leave and seek asylum somewhere else or run the risk of being murdered because of his (and now her) belief that Jesus is God’s chosen King of the Earth. If this happens, then I will know personally someone who was murdered because he trusted in Jesus.

Perhaps it sounds morbid to you, but it’s humbling to me. I pray for his safety.

Coming up next…

He’s 37, married and has four children under the age of 6. His challenge is to complete a series of advanced degrees, changing his field of expertise from English language teaching to Church History (with an emphasis on events "east of Jerusalem" during the first 1000 years), in order to become a university level professor. This must done almost entirely online and absolutley, 100 percent DEBT FREE! He’ll have to hold down his current job, parent his children and continue to build a meaningful relationship with his loving wife.

If he succeeds, he will have the admiration of his wife and children in adition to a shot at relative job security teaching a subject he enjoys at a university somewhere in the US (or perhaps abroad). If he fails, shame, humiliation and frustration will dog his every step.

Will he take up the challenge?

This is what’s on my mind at the moment. It may not make good television, but it certainly scares me about as much as the prospect of munching an African cave spider.

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about going back to school to get a degree in theology or New Testament studies or some such thing with an eye toward university teaching. To help me make up my mind, I’ve been corresponding with a college professor that I know at a Christian university back in the states. We’ve swapped e-mails filled with Q & A and his first response triggered something inside me. It was simply fear. In light of all of the considerations for making this kind of career change somewhat late in life, the task struck me as insurmountable.

A second exchange later and I’m a little calmer but not because I’ve decided to get a degree in History instead of Theology. (I changed because the professor said that the field of theology was "saturated" and that history was more employable.) One of the main reasons for this is the encouragement of my wife. Without her support, the task would be insurmountable so I’m very glad to have her behind me….with an African cave spider for me to eat if I don’t see it through.

Sorry to come back to this so soon, but on Sunday I heard John York give a sermon from Chapter 3 of Jonah and it got me to thinking…

According to John, the central character of the story is God (not Jonah…or the even the fish) and the primary action is His persistent effort to restore relationship with His people…even those who are very very wicked. God shows great mercy to Jonah, who refuses to deliver God’s message to Ninevah, to the pagan sailors who didn’t want to toss Jonah into the sea but did so anyway and to the wicked people of Ninevah. Ultimately, I agree with John that this is a story full of God’s love and mercy. However as he was speaking, I noticed something about the message that Jonah was sent to deliver.

This merciful God did not send Jonah with good news. Jonah did not stand on the street corners announcing God’s love and compassion and beg the people of Ninevah to turn away from their wickedness. Instead, his message was simply this; you’ve got 40 days to turn your lives around or God will destroy this place. And, for reasons not explained in the story, they did. From the king in his palace to the animals in the stable, there were displays of repentance and mourning and God "had compassion" and did not obliterate them.

These days, the church isn’t delivering these kinds of messages…and I’m not saying that it should…in all cases. But, are there any cases when such a message is appropriate? Is it an act of mercy to warn people who are headed for destruction? If so, how do we deliver this kind of warning faithfully (not that Jonah did) without alienating the very people we’re trying to save?

I don’t have an answer, but thinking about the message of judgement within the wider context of the whole story causes me to marvel at the way God is simultaneously compassionate and just. It also makes me grieve the fact that I am not either one with any real consistency.

For the last several days, I’ve been listening to the Gospel of John on the way to work. Last week, I listened to the story of Lazarus, a friend of Jesus who died after being very ill. As you read the story, you find that Jesus not only knew that Lazarus was sick, but he also knew that he was going to die. Furthermore, Jesus knew that He would bring Lazarus back to life three days after the burial. So, with all of this foreknowledge, why did Jesus cry at Lazarus’ tomb?

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for several days. I expected to pose several questions and leave it at that, but then an idea came to me. I suspect it comes largely from the NT Wright that I’ve been reading lately. In his works, Wright talks about Jesus as being an "authentic human", which is his way of saying that Jesus lived the kind of human life that God had intended from the beginning before the corruption of the creatioin. I think the answer as to why Jesus cried lies in this authentic humanity that Jesus possessed. As the authentic human, He felt genuine sadness, not for His own loss (remember, He knew that He was going to raise Lazarus all along) but rather for the loss and suffering of Lazarus’s sisters Mary and Martha. He didn’t merely sympathize, understanding that death is a sad event. He didn’t even empathize, having experienced the loss of one of His own siblings or other family member. Jesus cried at the grave of Lazarus because, as a perfectly mature and emotionally balanced human, He was able to feel genuine sadness as a result of someone else’s suffering.

Of course, I could be wrong, but for now I think this a reasonable answer.

After hearing a sermon in which the preacher used an abundance of military anectdotes and metaphors, I started thinking about why such speech made me uncomfortable. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’m not uncomfortable with military metaphors. I was simply disturbed by this particular preacher’s use of them.

I was planning on blogging about this topic and pointing out how the final book of the New Testament gives us an image of Jesus as a conquering king leading his army against the forces of evil and making some kind of statement about how Christians (especially me) need to give this imagery some serious consideration in light of our Western culture’s increasing unease with the concept of war. Then I came across these posts at Radical Congruency and Kendall-Ball. Between these two posts and the comments, much of what I was going to say has been covered but I’d like to add a comment about context.

Within the context of our own communities, I think it’s unnecessary to avoid military metaphors, particularly those found in the Bible. In fact, it may even be dangerous, that is, if it leads to avoiding those parts of Scripture that employ them. It’s never a good idea to shun bits of the Bible which disturb us. When outsiders (like the filmmaker mentioned in the RC post) are offended and/or disturbed by the Biblical metaphors which use miltary imagery and rhetoric, it is our opportunity and responsibility to explain them. Of course, we should expect that our apologetic will not always win folks over. There will certainly be those who either don’t get it or simply reject it. Either way, within the context of our communities, there’s no need to avoid those military metaphors which are found in the Bible, even when there are non-Christians among us.

Conversely, outside the context of our communities, it is unwise to use such figures of speech. They simply don’t have the same meaning in their context as they have in ours. Ironically, thanks to the rise of militant Islam, Americans (secular and religious) don’t appear to be able to discern military metaphor from militant rhetoric. Therefore, it may be best to avoid using terms like "culture war" and "crusade" in our conversations with them. (Did you notice that neither of those are Biblical terms?) Honestly, I can’t imagine why anyone would feel the need to in the first place.

I recently finished reading NT Wright’s Simply Christian. In a speech he gave about the book, he said that his brief for it was to write a book that would be for the 21st century what CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity was for the 20th century. I don’t know who the other candidates for the job were, but I don’t think one could go wrong giving it to NT Wright.

I came to the book expecting to make a connection like I did with Mere Christianity. Actually, I expected to make an even better connection because the historical context of the book is my own and I have benefitted from NT Wright’s work in general. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the connection and I don’t know why. For some reason, Mere Christianity spoke more clearly to me than Simply Christian (even though I enjoyed reading it very much). As I think about it and try to understand why this is, I think the answer is that I don’t actually belong to the 21st century. I am not a postmodern man…

And I’m okay with that.

I’m not sure but I think that the Old Testament book of Jonah became one of my favorites when I was in graduate school. Once, I was on a long car trip with a one of my profs and we had a fairly heavy conversation about God. He came from the position that even if there is a God, He’s an unjust and violent diety who doesn’t deserve to be worshipped. As evidence of this he cited the standard OT stories of Israel’s wars. My response was that grace was on display even in the OT and I gave him Jonah as an example. Sometime after that, I think I went back to read it again and the great grace of God stood out even more than before. Ever since graduate school, I stopped seeing the story of Jonah as an example of what bad will happen to you if you disobey God and started seeing it as the story of God’s persistent and abundant grace.

If you haven’t read it before or if you haven’t read it in a while, I recommend listening to it over at the Bible Podcast. Or you could download the book and listen to it on the go.

…from the blog of Curt Niccum, Bible prof at OCU in the USA:

10) If God’s people are called to be holly, they must show it. (Apparently name tags will not be needed in heaven. “Welcome to the Pearly Gates, my name is Holly, this is my brother, Holly, and this is my other brother, Holly!”)

9) Humans naturally work hard for good careers, well-playing jobs and pleasures. (Apparently I’m not human.)

8) Chris calls us to be one body, one church, one people. (And then there is the other group that hangs out at airports, the Harry Chrisnas.)

7) This scripture was referring to Israel and the hostel take over by the Assyrians. (Nothing ruins a good, inexpensive vacation more than a youth hostel occupied by Assyrians.)

6) I chose to write a lamination psalm. (If there is a religious song we don’t have, it’s one about lamination.)

See the rest at his blog. He’ll be glad you dropped by.

On the BBC World Service a couple of days ago, an Arab (Iraqi?) woman was being interviewed. I tuned in mid-interview so I don’t know the theme of the interview or even the specific question that was asked. What I heard and what stuck in my mind was her statement about her (and the organization’s which she represented) comittment to Article 18 of the Universal Declation of Human Rights. This article declares the right of freedom of religion, particularly to practice and change one’s religion. Her statement was strident, which provoked me to a (perhaps) sort of cynicism. I thought, "And what exactly are you willing to do to secure that right for people?"

Rights are purchased, not granted. They cost something. A price has to be paid. It’s easy for the UN, a human rights organization and an individual to say that they are fully committed to Article 18 but what price are they willing to pay to make sure that everyone human enjoys the right written there? Sometimes rights are purchased for large sums of patience and dilligent prayer. According to NT Wright, this is what brought about the release of Eastern Europe from Communism and South Africa from aparthied. At other times, rights are purchased in blood. According to the gospel of John, the right to become children of God was purchased by Jesus with his own blood on a cross outside of Jerusalem.

Several things that I’m reading and thinking about at the moment are swirling around in my mind trying to make meaningful connections to each other. Some connections are made more easily and obviously than others. An example of an easy hook-up is the comments of NT Wright about the "mission" of the church in his book Simply Christian and the statements that I’ve read from Emerging Church sources on the web and in one particular book.

The Christian community (widely know as "the church") has always been a missional one; meaning that the members have always understood that they are a people who are sent into the world with a specific objective. Logically, the EC is also a missional community. In fact, it seems like there is a strong emphasis on mission, of going into the world with a specific goal in mind. For me, the question is not whether "the church" (that community from which the EC is emerging) and the EC have the same mission. Instead, I wonder if the mission of the EC is the same one which Jesus gave his followers before returning to the Father.

Of course, I’m in the process of developing an oppinion on this question, but before I state it in this blog, I’d like to invite anyone who identifies with the EC to influence my opinion with their comments.

I think I’ll do a series of post in which I read a bit about the emerging church (movement?) and then share some of my thoughts. Of course, they’ll be critical thoughts but I don’t intend for them to antagonistic or hostile. I think that there are some good things happening among the brothers and sisters who are in the thick of (the emerging) it.

So, in my reflections on the information I gather about the Emergent Church scene, it seems to me like a good idea to start with a site called "emergingchurch.info". Now, don’t be fooled into thinking that this site is in any sense official or definitive. It’s not. These folks just happened to get the domain name first. As I understand it, the EC is by nature decentralized. There is no single voice which speaks for the whole, so whatever is found at this site can only be considered "indicative" as opposed to "definitive".

In a section called "Post Missionaries", Kim Ward states the following:

missionary impulses in today’s culture are great, but such impulses are best answered, NOT by hiring missionaries, but by supporting native evangelists.

There’s something intuitively appealing to me about the sentiment. It just makes sense to get "natives" to evangelize their fellow natives. In fact, when I was doing missionary work with a sort of ad hoc team in the mid 1990’s, our objective was always to "work ourselves out of a job", meaning to train the locals to take over and build their own church communities.

So, before we can support a native evangelist, we need a native who is a disciple of Jesus. Now this native evangelist is going to become a disciple of Jesus in one of two ways: he’s going to have a vision of the risen Lord or he’s going to learn about Jesus from another person. Where will he meet that person? Simply, in one of two settings. They’ll either meet in the native evangelist’s setting or in the other person’s setting. Either way, one of those two people is going to be a "foreigner". Whether the settings in question are a matter of geography or socio-economic status, I think my statement still applies.

I don’t see the "best" way to answer the "missionary impulse" as clearly as Kim does. I think that there is plenty of room for foreign missionaries (whether hired or self-employed) in the world. In fact, I think there are circumstances in which they are necessary if there is ever going to be a native evangelist to support. Speaking of which, who is going to support this native evangelist? Since there is no native community of disciples (hence the need for the evangelist), I suppose that support will have to come from outside the native context, that is from foreigners.

Later, I want to write about Kim’s advice not to "waste missional energy and scarce financial resources trying to ‘create’ something for others" through the agency of outsiders.

My friend Robert got "tagged with a meme" not long ago and now it seems he’s gone and tagged me with one too. After looking it up, I learned that a meme is…in the dictionary.

And now for "8 Random Facts about Me"

1. I am an American expatriate living in an Islamic country. If you’ve been by this blog before, you already know this. If you haven’t, this first fact is why I’m a bit cryptic at times and don’t like to use my name. There is only one internet provider and it’s owned by the Islamic government. Freedom of speech and personal privacy is not to be assumed.

2. My wife (whom I met in "Discovery 101", a class at our church in the states) and I are debt free. In February 2006, we paid off the last of the outstanding school loans and entered fully into a new way of life. The journey took us a little over 5 years. We’ve never had a car payment (both as individuals and as a couple) nor will we. We’ve committed to live debt free for the rest of our lives, with the only possible exception being a loan for a home someday…provided that we ever decide where home is. Otherwise, we’re a cash only operation.

3. I recently won a Motorola KRZR flip-phone with a set of stereo Bluetooth headphones. After carrying it around for a couple of days, I came to the conclusion that flip-phones are for girls and old-school Trekkies, so I gave it to my wife. She’s a girl.

4. I (used to) speak Russian. I learned it during the early to mid 1990’s when I lived in Ukraine. I was there as a sort of "apprentice" to a missionary and as an English language teacher. About a year ago, I took an online test in Russian and came out ranked as "lower intermediate". Yeah, it’s a vague description…and I like it that way.

5. After producing three male offspring, my wife and I recently produced a female. Our families were thrilled. We’re pretty happy about it ourselves.

6. In my nerdy youth, I met two actors who played Dr. Who and got the autograph of one of them. Neither one of them were my favorite Doctor, but it was still great nerdy fun.

7. Speaking of my youth, instead of working in fastfood as an afterschool job, I was a disc jockey at the local country radio station.  At night, we were allowed to play "adult contemporary"….even my mother didn’t listen to me.

8. Stood next to Sissy Spacek at a Killer Bees show at Tippotina’s in Lousianna. The Killer Bees was a reggae group (great show) and Sissy was in town shooting Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. She seemed very very short to me.

That’s it for me. Since this blog isn’t very well connected, I don’t have eight others to pass the baton to. We’ll have to settle for the following five bloggers:

Curt Niccum

Professing Professor

Tall Skinny Kiwi

Radical Congruency

iMonk

And finally, the rules of the game are included here:

1. Let others know who tagged you. 2. Players post 8 random facts about themselves. 3. Those who are tagged should post these rules with their 8 facts. 4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

The conversation with my three (almost four) year old son on our way to school this morning went something like this:

(Father and son on the way to school. Radio is off. Father is lost in his own thoughts. Son speaks from the back seat.)

S: Daddy, what’s God saying?

F: (coming out of his own fog) What?

S: What’s God saying?

(Father pauses to give the question a little thought instead of brushing it off.)

F: He’s saying lots of things. What do you think He’s saying?

S: I think He’s singing.

F: (intrigued) Yeah?

S: Yeah. I think He’s singing a song for us.

F: Is it a nice song?

S: Yeah, He’s singing a nice song. He’s not singing a bad song. It’s a nice song. (Pauses) I wish I could grow up and be like God.

F: (taken aback) What?

S: I wish that I can grow up and be like God and grow up like Jesus.

F: (mentally checks his theology then replies) Well, I guess you can!

(A lull in the conversation, then the son speaks again.)

S: Dad, what’s the engine doing?

On my way to pick up my middle child from his dayschool, I heard the beginning of this report on the BBC World Service. By the time I got back to the car, the story was finished, but I think I got the gist of it. (I scanned the article to fill the gaps.)

My thoughts on Christian organizations taking money from the federal government are as follows:

I’m against it. It’s a very bad idea for one reason: He who pays the way has the say. When the church takes money from the government, she gives the government every right to say something to the effect of "Do X or we’ll cut off the funding." 

I know that, historically, the Church recieving money from the government is not new, but it’s new to the American experience (with exceptions being largely confined to pre-Revolutionary War colonies I’ll wager) and I’m sure that we’ll see the negative consequences of this kind of relationship from the past repeated in the American Church’s future provided that she continues to take the government’s money.

I’ve just added The Bible Podcast to my blogroll.  Read the About page to learn which version is used and why…I thought the "why" bit was interesting.

I sometimes imagine how I would answer if ever someone asked me point-blank, "Why do you believe that Jesus is Divine?" Actually, I tend to word that question in my imagination by using "the Son of God" instead of "Divine". However, when I think about it, I doubt that anyone today would put it to me that way. Maybe I’m wrong, but I tend to think that the term "Son of God" isn’t as widely familiar in America as it once was and so it wouldn’t be used; or perhaps it’s just such a "churchy" term that non-believers would be inclined to avoid it. Anyway, I try to imagine how I would answer such a question both briefly and meaningfully.

It seems that the most succinct reply that I can offer is this: I trust in the credibility and reliability of the witnesses. But even this answer needs to be unpacked. I would need to explain who the "witnessess" are and explain in some detail why I trust them. One thing you might notice is that my belief is more cognitive (meaning a "head" faith) than emotional (meaning a "heart" faith).

I think the reason for this is partly due to my temperment and partly due to my experience. I was rasied by a believing mother ( and a father who had nothing to offer on the subject one way or the other) which resulted in my having a wordview that I suppose predisposed me to religious sentiment. Consequently, when I became a Christian (i.e. baptized believer in Jesus as my stand-in for divine judgement) I didn’t experience a radical shift in worldview. I wasn’t converted from one set of moral principles to another. (That is something that is happening to me incrementally over a long period of time.) While my baptism was an emotional event, it was also a very rational step in the context of my religious upbringing. It made sense.

And, I would say even today that the testimony of the witnesses that I mentioned earlier also makes sense to me. The interesting thing is that as I’ve grown, I’ve come to see how that testimoney wouldn’t and doesn’t make sense to other people, hence the challenge of trying to say something "meaning full" and "able-to-be-made-sense-of" on the subject of why I believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be.

Have you thought about how to answer that question recently?

Look, it’s Dr. Righteous!

Do you think that the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the New Millenium was chosen intentionally for this "solstice" event or is it just a coincidence?

Maybe I should open a new category on this blog where I can collect my (largely insincere) accusations of religiosity against the Green Warmies.

As a father has compassion on his children,
       so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;

for he knows how we are formed,
       he remembers that we are dust.  Psalm 103:13-14

My Father who is in Heaven; your name is holy.

Today, I pray for all fathers everywhere who are like me; who do not come equipped with a compassionate disposition. Though you know that we are dust, you have placed your Spirit in all of us who call on the Name of your Beloved Son. By the power of your Spirit, change us into compassionate fathers, just like you are our Compassionate Father.

Like so many other parents, I have a beloved child to whom I find it difficult to relate. Help me to remember how he is made, particularly at this stage of his development and teach me to be compassionate towards him, just as you are towards me. Do this for all of your fathers who struggle to relate to that particular child with whom they find it especially difficult. We love our children and do not want to be separated from them, just as you love us and do not want to be separated from us.

Make me compassionate toward All of my children so that they may believe me when I tell them that you are a compassionate father who wants to be with them. And may I see each one of them enter into your Kingdom through Jesus who incarnated your compassion towards those who fear you.

Amen

I’ve had this thought in the cue for a while waiting for a time to write/think my way through it. As I sit down to take a shot at working through it, it occurs to me that I may come across as "defending God". I’m not. He doesn’t need me to defend Him. I’m just processing my own thoughts about the apparent contradiction of having been taught that jealousy is wrong when God describes Himself as "a jealous God". Why is it wrong for humans to be jealous, but not for God? It seems to be a question of rights.

WARNING…Long post ahead…

Stan and Jan Berenstain, of the Berenstain Bears book series, wrote one about "the Green-Eyed Monster". In it, Brother Bear has a birthday and gets several presents. At first, Sister Bear is fine with it. She knows that her special day will come when she will get presents and be the center of attention. Besides, she’s not interested in all of the "boy" toys that Brother gets, until Mother and Father bring out their gift. When they roll out a brand new, big boy bike, Sister is suddenly caught in the claws of the Green-Eyed Monster. The rest of the story is about how she deals with her feelings of jealousy. The problem with the story is that Sister isn’t really jealous. She’s envious. There is a difference. Sister wants to have Brother’s bike. She knows that it is not hers, yet that is the very bike that she desires. She doesn’t ask her parents for a bike like Brother’s, but rather fixes her thoughts on (and even a dreams about) having Brother’s bike. She has no rights to or claims on the bike, which is why her feelings are actually envious and not jealous.

Jealousy is the emotion that arises out of being denied either what is rightfully yours or perceived to be rightfully yours. Married people have made a promise to share life with each other, so it is appropriate for husbands and wives to feel jealous when their spouses take time, attention and affection away from them in order to give it to others. (This does not mean that any and all expressions of that jealousy are appropriate, only the feelings.) On the other hand, feeling jealous of a co-worker who got the promotion that you didn’t get may not be appropriate. Just because you earnestly believe that you deserved the promotion doesn’t mean that in fact you did. The one who makes that decision obviously disagrees with you. Whether that person is right or wrong is inconsequential. You do not have a right to that promotion and therefore feelings of jealousy are inappropriate. Herein lays the difference between the jealousy of God and the jealousy of Man.

Man often fails to see things clearly. God never fails to see anything clearly. Man sometimes thinks that he has a right to something when he does not. God knows what is His by rights. Man experiences misguided emotions which arise from inaccurate knowledge and understanding. God experiences appropriate emotions because He accurately knows and understands everything. When Man is jealous, he may or may not have a right to be, but when God is jealous, it is always because His rights are being violated.

God is jealous of His people, those with whom He has entered into a covenant realtionship. He has a right to their love, affection, attention, loyalty etc because He is in relationship with them. When his people give their love, affection, attention, loyalty etc to other relationships, He appropriately feels jealous. If He did not feel jealous, then wouldn’t that suggest that He genuinely does not love His people? When someone purposefully sets out to provoke feelings of jealousy in another, isn’t it usually because he or she doesn’t feel loved/appreciated? A display of jealousy communicates to the insecure person that he or she does in fact matter. God is provoked to jealousy by His people because they either fail to perceive God’s faithfulness to them or because they have loved someone or something more than God. God’s jealous response is not always the same in every situation, but it is always precisely what is appropriate to the provocation. If it were not, then God would not be a god worth having a relationship with in the first place.

Does this fall under the rubric of "inventing ways to do evil"?

"Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16," said project member Martyn van Nierop.

The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.

I don’t tend to draw attention to the "Listen to This" link at the top of the blog because I like people to just check it out on their own. I do it this way because I think it’s nice to follow a link without knowing excatly where it leads and finding a pleasant experience at the other end.

However, this time I want to suggest that anyone wandering by, particularly North American Christians, follow that link to a sermon. It is part of a series on the book of Ephesians and there are some noteworthy points about the influence of Consumerism on the mindset of Christians that, I think, need to get spread around. It certainly made a connection with me.

As we were lying on the bed last night, my wife asked me this question: "What did the early Christians do each day to stay close to God?"

It wasn’t a question entirely without context or an agenda. She was leading up to questioning the prevalent assumption of American evangelicals regarding the necessity of daily "quiet time", "devotionals", "time in the Word" or whatever you wish to call Bible study. If you are an Evangelical Christian or are familiar with Evangelicals, you probably are familiar with this issue of piety and the accompanying guilt that comes from failing to keep up with a daily reading plan. My wife was questioning the validity of that assumption and making some good points;

The early church didn’t have a Bible. While collections of believers may have had a single copy of a letter from one of the apostles for reading at their meetings, individuals certainly didn’t have their own leatherette bound versions to read at their leisure. There were scrolls of the Torah and the writings of the prophets kept in the synagogue but I don’t think there was a steady stream of believer’s asking some kind of librarian for access to those texts. Then there’s the whole question of literacy; just how literate were the early Christians? Perhaps there were many who could read and write. Perhaps there were only a few. I think especially about the Roman slaves; who among them could read and write? Perhaps those who were high up in the pecking order were more literate than those who were lower down. Either way, literacy was not as widely spread in first century Palestine as it is now in twenty-first century America. Not only that, but published material was also not as readily available and affordable as now. Thinking upon these points, it seems that as good and wise as daily Bible reading is for us today, it is not the chord which keeps our hearts and minds bound to God.

So, the question remains: how did the early Christians grow in their love and knowledge of God, producing ever greater fruit in the Spirit? What nourished their faith? How did they stay the course and live godly lives among the pagans?

Justin over at Radical Congruency has posed several questions about the Relevance of God in daily life, particularly for those of us who claim an affiliation with Him through Jesus.

I don’t have any answers to those questions, only this observation: All of us humans tend to become desensitized through prolonged exposure to…well, nearly everything. The examples are endless. We sing songs out of habit without reflecting in any way on the lyrics, whether the songs are commercial jingles, pop tunes or even contemporary praise songs. We have conversations with the same people so frequently that we almost never listen anymore because we’re so sure of what will be said. Worshipping in church each week becomes routine, especially in traditions which adhere to specific forms. (Back in the old days, I’d use a term like "high church" to describe those places but I don’t know if that term has meaning any more.) Think about the Israelites who had God dwelling among them during their wandering in the wilderness and how they still managed to grumble, complain and rebel as though He wasn’t there.

There’s something deeply wrong with us that keeps us from remaining sensitive and attentive to God’s presence and His purposes. I guess that’s why I’ve always held on to this lyric from Bill Mallonee;

drowning know they’re sinking
dead know they’re not breathing
and i will take this song and be forever grateful
at least as much as i am able

Last week, while I was speaking with a brother (in that Christian kind of way) our conversation turned in several different directions and at some point it came out that he has some Anglicanism in his backstory. Connected to that, he made a statement about wishing the Anglican Church wasn’t so hung up on the issue of ordaining homosexuals implying that there were other issues of greater importance that the church could be addressing. This weekend, listening to BBC radio, I learned that this is a sentiment that he shares with Desmond Tutu. This got me to thinking…

Some would say that there are no small matters when it comes to religion. The idea that “failure at one point of the law” equals “failure at the whole of the law” is often misapplied in this manner. Jesus himself implied that not every issue was of equal weight and import within the Kingdom of God. Take this quotation as an example:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices-mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law-justice, mercy and faithfulness.” (Matt 23:23)

Obviously, there are weightier matters that ought to be attended first, followed by other less weightier matters. However, read on and see that Jesus doesn’t say that these religious leaders ought to abandon their practice of giving a tenth of their garden herbs.

“You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

Don’t misunderstand: neither my brother nor I mean to say that the Anglican Church leadership is a bunch of hypocrites obsessed with the minutia of the faith. What I’m trying to say is that the issue of ordaining homosexuals, (thereby granting homosexuality a legitimacy not granted by the Scriptures), is important and ought not be sideline entirely in order to redress the injustices of the larger society. On the other hand, in the order of business, it’s clear that matters of justice, mercy, faithfulness, and mercy (the repetition is intentional) come before church polity.

PS-Why do we find it so easy to fixate on lesser matters and neglect greater ones?

Warning: The following post contains references to a particular sexual pervsion which (as yet) is not acceptable to mainstream Western society.

I don’t think that anyone with a strong grasp on the Christian concept of The Fall should ever be surprised by the depths of depravity that humans can descend to. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be offended or repulsed, simply not surprised. Additionally, I don’t think that anyone with a strong grasp on the Grace of God ought to let their revulsion and disgust dictate their response.

At the Cannes film festival, a movie called Zoo tells the story of a group of American men who engage in sex with horses. I read about the film here, and I was surprised. Mind you, not by the depravity of the act but by the willingness of the reporter to refer to the practice as a "perversion", but perhaps that simply reveals my cynical view of the media…a topic for another time. Anyway, I was appropriately disgusted by the subject matter but more than that, I was deeply grieved by the following comment:

Bestiality flick
22/05/2007 14:23
I find this totally immoral,unnatural and as a christian totally anti-God.I can not muster any ounce of sympathy for the moron who got killed.Hollywood is helping the world sink further and further into the devil’s lair with all its permissiveness and championing of evil through its so-called "artistry". and we wonder why we have so many rapes of women and children?Morality is always the issue - Nathalie T (italics mine)

Nathalie T and all of us Christians, God grieves the loss of that man’s life. Additionally, He grieves the callousness of our response to people who are so sick in their soul’s that they descend to such an un-human behavior as beastiality. Even if the man was "wicked", it’s important to remember that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11) and neither should we.

There is quite a lot to talk about in this relatively short article about Christian-Athiest dialogue in the US. After I read it, I knew that I wanted to post about it so I filed it away. Today, I’ve just finished reading it again and I think that there’s so much here that could be discussed.

For example, why use the phrase "Christian militancy"? Is there such a thing…really? I mean, c’mon. When was the last time that a person claiming to be a Christian wrote a book calling for the eradication of the plague of athiesm that reached the best-sellers’ list in America?

Then there’s the influcence of free-market capitalsim on  the church. Oh, you didn’t pick up on that? Well, I noticed that the tone of the article began to sound like the Christians are doing market research into their target market; athiests and the unchurched. It’s like the representatives of Christianity in the article are trying to figure out how to sell  God, Jesus, faith and/or religion to this significant, untapped market.

We could discuss Henderson’s concept of Otherliness. I think it’s a new term for an old idea; namely putting the well-being of others above one’s own. Is it possible that, while it’s expressed in several other ways in the Bible, the terms and words used have become so trite and churchy these days that Otherliness had to be coined to keep the idea in front of us?..us Christians that is. 

Or we could talk about this idea of "doing evangelism" and still being "normal". Why are these two things set on opposing sides as if one necessarily precludes the other? Do they? Should they?

Finally, there’s the bit about Mehta and his stating that an "…undeniable miracle that has no natural explanation" would convince him of the existence of God. I think that there’s much to unpack here as well, but instead I’ll make this observation: the Bible is crystal clear that miracles are not enough to convince people of anything that they are already determined to reject. Large numbers of people witnessed miracles and still persisted in disbelief (meaning in this context "distrust") and disobedience. In fact, I’m not sure that there is an account in the Bible of a disbeliever/non-believer becoming a believer after witnessing a miracle. (I should probably double check that.) (Forget that; none of the disciples were really believers that Jesus had risen from the dead until He appeared to them.) Is Mehta’s statement an honest and/or credible statement for a person to make?

So, anyone wandering by is welcome to hold forth on any of these things and more…the lines are open!

I’ve been trying to sort out my feelings and thoughts about the recent death of Jerry Falwell. While I understand why he was so deeply hated by non-Christians and why many Christians found him to be an embarassment (at the least), I can not undestand anyone’s rejoicing at his death.

To those who celebrate his demise; your joy is akin to that expressed on the streets of Palestine and the Middle East when they heard the news that 2,829 Americans died in the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. To think otherwise is simply self-deception.

To those Christians who (like me) find themselves feeling ambivalent; "Who are you (am I) to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls." Falwell claimed to belong to Christ and so let’s leave it to Christ to claim him or not. And before we enter into conversations about the "fruit" of Jerry Falwell, let’s stop to think about our own produce…and realize that much of it rots silently, away from public scrutiny, in the private warehouses of our own souls.

Every now and then I like to look in on the Emergent Chruch movement. Lately, I seem to be coming across news articles and blogs repleat with talk of the phenomena and it’s major personalities. I don’t know much about it but I’m interested.

When I got to work this morning, there was a link in the IM that my wife sent me about a blog associated with the EC movement in which I read a post that talked about the offensiveness of the word "lost" as it’s used in Christian jargon (aka Xianspeak?). If you followed the link and read the article, I’d like you to take note of the final statement;

I’m a believer in Christ, but if Christ had never come to the world, I would still want to be an advocate of loving others and showing that love through kindness and goodness.

Upon reading this, I immediately thought that this is not true of me. If Christ had never come into the world, I would not advocate much of anything. I’m pretty certain that I would be consumed by my self-centeredness. My life would probably revolve entirely around me and my agenda. I can say that with some certainty because this is the struggle that I have now as a believer in Jesus.

What about you? Would you still be an advocate of loving kindness toward others if Jesus hadn’t come into the world? Why?

I confess that I felt (absurdly) a bit of vindication when I read this article about how kids who come from religious backgrounds are better behaved and adjusted than those who do not. Then I remembered that I’m not really interested in raising religious children. Instead, I hope to raise children who will choose to follow Jesus. Sometimes this will put them in the company of religious folks and sometimes it will land them in the midst of non- and/or irreligious folk. Either way, I hope that they will follow Jesus to the best of their ability and understanding.

Speaking of children: a couple of nights ago, I read the part of the story where the angel visits Mary and tells her that she’s going to have a baby. For a couple of nights after that, my oldest son  prayed for a visit from an angel. Since his baby sister is only a little over a month old, I don’t think that it was his way of asking for another baby…but I guess I could be wrong.

The Bible says that Jesus appeared to his followers over a period of 40 days following his resurrection and then was taken into Heaven. And that’s it. Yeah, there’s the bit about the Great Commission but what about the previous forty days? What was he doing? Who did he visit? What did they talk about?

Surely there is believer out there with the finely-honed talent needed to produce a work of speculative fiction which will simulateneously fill in the gaps of the Biblical record while providing believers with entertaining yet dubious doctrine.

Heck, even a paranoid, disbelieving conspiracy-buff ought to be able concoct a large body of teachings allegedly spoken over those 40 days which have been suppressed by the Catholic Church with the help of intergalactic Masons and the Illuminati.

Any takers?

LONDON (Reuters) - Rock star Prince will play 21 concerts in London this autumn and plans to take time off music to study the Bible, he announced on Tuesday. (bold mine)

Good for him!

I wonder if he’ll be using a daily reading plan or simply winging it?

Without looking for it, I discovered GodTube.com . Have you seen this yet? Any comments?

Perhaps I’m beating a dead polar bear here (that’s a reference to Gore’s film for the uninitiated), but here’s another example of a religious quality being attached to the issue of global warming, as I wrote about before.

Playing equal parts visionary, cheerleader and comedian, Al Gore brought his message of how to fight global warming to a capacity crowd of receptive architects Saturday in San Antonio.

The former vice president referred continually to a "new way of thinking" that is emerging in the country and offered hope in the battle to control the effects global warming will have on the planet. (sounds like a religious "awakening" doesn’t it?)

"It’s in part a spiritual crisis," Gore told the crowd in the Convention Center at the American Institute of Architects national convention. "It’s a crisis of our own self-definition — who we are. Are we creatures destined to destroy our own species? Clearly not." MySA.com (italics mine, of course.)

I joke with a colleague about global warming, but essentially I agree with the point that humans need to do a better job of taking care of the planet. One of my major gripes with the "Warmies" is the fear-mongering. I never appreciated it from the hell-and-damnation preachers of American Christianity and I don’t appreciate it from the death-and-destruction preachers of Global Warming.

Mohammed says:

"Thus God leads astray whom He pleases, and guides him He pleases:" Chpt of the Covered v11

Jesus says:

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…" Matthew 6:13 and Luke 11:4

Here we can see two different attitudes toward  God and His role is guiding people. From Mohammed, you get resignation. God guides or misguides and people are utterly powerless.

From Jesus, you get encouragement. In this model prayer, Jesus demonstrates that his followers should ask for God’s guidance (and deliverance) with the expectation of receiving it.

One teacher is resigned. The other is expectant.

Take a look at the links to the right. I’ve added two blogs. They’re both more future minded and outward oriented than mine which is one of the reasons why I’ve linked them here.

Please do not think that I’m being alarmist when I direct your attention to this story. I don’t intend to write a diatribe about the secularization (or even the neo-paganization) of the US. Besides, replacing the Bible with Al Gore’s book is just a gimmick (that worked on me) to get you read the whole story.

However, I feel the need to point out that this event falls right in line with an observation I made while watching the movie "An Inconvenient Truth". There is something religious about the devotion that Al Gore (and his supporters) have for the doctrine (?) of global warming. I didn’t see it immediately but as I watched, I saw important connections being made by the filmmakers. When Al Gore lost his bid for the US presidency, he suffered a sort of existential crisis. His answer was to return to his cause, the one that motivated him to enter politics and serve as Vice-President; the preservation of the earth/environment. Later in the film, Gore tells the story of nearly losing his son (in a car accident?). Like many people facing death, he did some deep introspection and re-evaluation of his priorities. The result was a rededication to his battle for the planet. Gore also recounts the story of his sister’s death due to cancer in the film and somewhat convolutedly connected it to his life’s mission; spreading the word about global warming. Basically, in each of these instances, when many people turn to their faith for direction or return to their faith after having lost direction, Al Gore returns to his belief in the cataclysmic climate change that we are perpetrating against our world. It’s as though he hears the call to be the voice crying in an increasingly parched wilderness and he answers at each of these moments of personal crisis.

Now this prophet has a book that’s being placed in hotel rooms…too.

For the sake of the arguement in yesterday’s post, I proposed a principle behind a specific OT prohibition against tattooing. I’ve been thinking about that principle, wondering if it is a valid principle.

As it was worded, "don’t be like the pagans", I think that it may not have been a valid principle, however I believe that a better rendering both in word and concept is found in the book of James. "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

Today, I think that not being like the pagans is too finely pointed and potentially denigrating to the image of God that all humans, even pagans, bear. Instead, I prefer James’ wording when he states the principle of keeping oneself unpolluted by the world. Essentially, James is saying "be holy" which has always been a requirement of the people of God.

Along with the requirement, there has always been failure to comply … and a way of restoring one to a state of holiness. When the children of Israel defiled themselves, there were rituals for cleansing  and restoring them to the community of God’s people. When the children of God defile themselves today, there is the continual cleansing of the blood of Christ to maintain their community with God and his family.

But what about remaining unpolluted by the world? For the Jews during the time of the Leviticus reference, a sign of remaining unpolluted was by not immitating specific practices associated with the false gods of the people around them. What about the Christians of today? What practices can we avoid to demonstrate our commitment to this principle?  

While I think these questions are important, I also see an ancient danger lurking nearby. The tendency is for us to become confused and think that our words and deeds make us holy and that God becomes indebted to us for this holiness. This is simply wrong. God makes us holy which is evidenced by our words and deeds. And when we violate that holiness, God is willingly restoring us.

PS-It is not my opinion that every incident of a Christian getting, giving or having a tattoo is indicative of being polluted by the world. Besides, it’s really not my opinion that matters.

Christians really need to be careful about making statements about what God is up to in the world. Many of us tend to state authoritatively that God is doing or telling us something without entertaining the possibility that we’re wrong. An example of this when American evangelicals began declaring AIDS as God’s divine punishment of homosexuals back in the 1980’s. Another example, but much less horrifying is found in this article about a Christian tattoo parlor.

At first, I wanted to gloss over this story as just another example of American, evangelical Christian absurdity eccentricity, but then I read the comments. Predictably, someone left a comment quoting the OT’s prohbition against tattooing. Almost as predictably was the reply from someone who provided a little exegesis to demonstrate that tattooing only in particular contexts was prohibited. I decided to go ahead and do my own research and came up with this personal position statement: it’s possible that tattooing is a bad idea for Christians to practice. Yes, I know it’s squishy around the edges but it’s not really my point.

My point is this: this woman is going way out on a limb declaring that God was leading her to advise her  husband to return to tattooing by opening his own shop when it’s possible that tattooing is still not good for His people to practice. I mean, what if there is a principle behind that Leviticus verse that is still applicable to God’s children in Christ? What if that principle is simply: don’t be like the pagans. Don’t do what they do. Don’t think what they think? Don’t identify/align yourselves with them? If this is a priniciple for Christians to follow, then is it likely that God is going to call one of His own to violate this principle? If this line of reasoning is true, then who is putting the idea in that woman’s heart? Is it her own imagination or something more sinister?

I don’t have an answer. I’m not even willing to try to come up with one. All I wanted to do is make the point that Christians need to be very careful about proclaiming that this feeling or that phenomena is God’s way of revealing something to them individually or to the world collectively. Part of walking humbly with our God is remembering that we do not always know what He’s doing or not doing in any given event either personal or global.

PS-For those who might like to read a defense of Christian body art, take a look at this.

PPS-The pic I’m using for this post is hosted at their site.

This post originally appeared on a blog I had before. I found it while searching my computer for something else and thought it would be a good addition to the Children’s Theology category of this blog. If you’ve already read it, I apologize.

I miss a lot of meaningful moments with my sons by being the one who is away 8 hours a day. J does a good job of filling me in either over the phone or when I get home, but it’s not the same as being there. Recently, she called me with a story that I’ve asked her to write and share because she told it so well over the phone. So, for the first time Alien Owned welcomes its first guest writer, my wife and the mother of my children.

It was a bit quiet in the living room. When you have three boys and the oldest is only 4 you know that usually means trouble.  I left the kitchen to see what was going on and as I approached the room I could hear the water in the bathroom off of the living room running full force.  As I got closer all I could see was my 4 year old, still clad at 3.15 pm in his Bob the Builder pajamas, standing on his tippy toes, on our 2-year-old’s potty chair, with his head stuck fully in the sink letting the water rush over it. Before actually asking the dreaded question, I just stopped and tried to figure out what, exactly, he thought he was doing. Washing his hair because it was dirty…I assumed…after all he had just eaten a snack. 

“Uh, Samuel? What are you doing?”

“I’m baptizing myself cause Jesus will be in my heart and love me every day.”

“What?” I said

“Mom, I’m just baptizing myself like Jesus the son of God and He will be happy. Just a minute I’m almost finished.”

The water is still pouring out of the faucet…his head of course is saturated and he is talking muffled into the sink and I am hearing words like Jesus, John, water, baptizing and God.  As I grabbed the towel I asked,

“Samuel, who is Jesus?”

“He’s God.”

“That’s right.” I was about to say something about him dying for us when he said,

“Yep, he’s God and Jesus of the son of God who died on the cross.”

Pretty good for four, I thought.

“Ok. I think you’re finished.”

I dried his head and took him in the other room trying to put it all together.  As he began drying off himself I could see the scene from the claymation  movie The Miracle Maker that he had watched this morning.  I could see John baptizing Jesus and the dove and hear the voice from above.  I was amused, touched and happy that he was even thinking this way. As I was lost in thought I realized that I had, in fact lost track of Samuel and the water was running yet again and his head was back in the sink.

“Samuel, now what are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m baptizing myself one more time cause I want God and Jesus in my heart.”

As the water continued to rush over his head it got his sleeve completely wet.  Here goes, I thought.  Now the shirt will come off  (one drop of water usually demands a change of clothes or at least nakedness). He put his head up finally, took the towel back, put it on his saturated hair and said something to the effect of, “See, that was just great!” and he ran off to play with his Duplos and his brothers…shirt on and sleeve drenched.

I’m not sure really, what, if anything to surmise from this.  Was it innocent role play? Does he really understand…in so much that a four year old can? D facetiously asked if there had been any change in his behavior after the “baptism”.  I did happen to notice that at a crucial point of head-butting with me later I told him to go his room and he was about to loose it.  Instead  he just went.  So going to his room without arguing and playing with a wet shirt….not sure how noteworthy those are.

I guess for me it just really reiterates how important it is to saturate our home with the love of Jesus and things that matter in the kingdom.

I love my family!

It probably won’t take long for a reader of this blog to realize that my religion is in my head. I don’t mean to say that its imaginary or psychosomatic. What I mean is, I tend to be more cerebreal than emotional about my religion. I’m interested in sound doctrine and theology. Hermeneutics is a big deal to me. Right understanding is a high priority; at times even higher than right acting. In short, I’m broken.

One of the results of this type of brokenness is a disrespect for the faith of others, particularly other Christians. An example of this is my often scornful attitude toward that group of brothers called Pentecostal or Charismatics. To put it crassly;they tend to irritate the crap out of me. Generally, this group of believers tend to be higly emotional and often anti-intellectual in their religion. In short, they are broken.

When Jesus was asked which of the Commandments was the most important, He answered: "Hear oh Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord! And you shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." (Mark 12:29-30) Obviously, loving God can not be a mental exercise only. God wants me to engage my total being in loving him. As I think about this I see that having a religion that is more head than heart is qualitatively the same as having one that is more heart than head. My charismatic brother and I are in the same condition. We both need grace.

My attitude is a sin. It seperates me from God and from my brother. It is also forgiven and I must leave it behind. My scorn must be replaced with mercy. Also, balance must replace imbalance. This doesn’t mean becoming less intellectual, but rather becoming more emotional, not necessarily emotive. It also means becoming more physically active in expressing my love for God. In short, it means becoming whole.

Did you notice the new picture at the top of the blog? Have you ever seen it before?

This is the graphic that goes with a template of a Wordpress.com blog that I started. I never used it because their service doesn’t allow me to mess with the CSS code unless I pay for an upgrade in service. Blogsome lets you mess with their templates without such restrictions. Have you figured out where this is heading yet?

I’ve monkied (pronounced "mon keyed") around with the code here and got it to display the graphic that is currently housed over at Wordpress.com. It’s "mine" in so much that I chose that template for my free Wordpress.com blog which I don’t use. However, it is not a template that has been given to Blogsome for their free accounts.

Is it wrong for me to use one element of a template from a free blog service as part of a different template hosted by a seperate free blog service?

We can discuss the copyright infringement of my use of Swiper the Fox later.

A good friend of mine has started a new blog by this name. From his About page:

Prone to Wander is my blog about the things that matter the most to me:

• Parenting, specifically fatherhood and adoptive parenting.
• Marriage and the nature of being a husband.
• Faith, specifically Christianity and the struggle to believe and live out what it calls me to do.
• Other aspects of life that seem cool to write about.

There’s a link on the right of this blog and you can also get there from here.

Despite the rosy assurances of a member of management, I believe that there is a real chance that I’ll be unemployed next year. I wouldn’t want to assign a percentage to the risk, but I can see that the conditions are suitable for layoffs. Currently, we’re overstaffed and have been most of this semester. This year’s student intake was below expectations and expectations for next year’s intake are not optimistic. (Perhaps they’re not pessimistic either, but numerically they are certainly lower than they have been.) Other institutions are offering greater incentives to an already small pool of potential students. Again, it just seems like it’s reasonable to expect some lay-offs in the coming academic year.

As I’ve been obsessing thinking about this, these words have passed through my mind; "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these things will be added as well". For greater clarity, I went looking in Matthew for this quotation in total and in context, which you can see here.

Here I am, dwelling on what I will do if I lose my job (and by logical extension, my means of "eating", "drinking" and "wearing") and Jesus says don’t worry about that stuff, God knows you need it. Instead, seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Okay Lord…

It’s so clear…and yet it isn’t. What is that supposed to look like (for me)? What can I do (and have my family do with me) that is an expression of seeking the KOG? Because of my background and experience, I can’t help but immediately think that this means bundling up the wife and kids and high-tailing it to a particularly impoverished part of the world where I can meet both the physical and spiritual needs of local people. But then I remind myself that seeeking the KOG is not so narrow in expression. It can’t be. It has to be something that can be done everywhere at anytime in a multitude of ways…and I don’t know which way to choose. Any good way is a good choice, I know but some ways have to be more suitable for me than others…right?

As I’ve thought about this text in Matthew, I’ve taken note that Jesus addresses two of the three basic human needs. Traditionally, the basic human needs are food, clothing and shelter. Jesus narrows it down to food and clothing. He doesn’t mention any of the things that are weighing on my mind: healthcare for my wife and children, retirement, education and ultimately personal safety and comfort. It’s not there…not even in any of the paraphrases of the Bible! Jesus and I don’t have the same priorities and until we do, I’m not going to be able to have any peace about what I’ll do should that pink slip shows up in my mailbox at work sometime in the future.

…sometimes, it’s better to keep a sympathetic, reverent and respectful silence.

 11 When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. 13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. (Job 2:11-13, bold mine)

If you’re not familiar with the story of Job, he is a man who had lost all of his children, his wealth, his status and his health. In short, everything. He was a man who suffered greatly…like those who lost a loved one at Virginia Tech on April 17, 2007.

In response to the horror of what happened that day, this seems like a proper response.

It’s been a little while since I posted my reflections on the differences between specific sayings/teachings of Mohammed and Jesus. Here’s one that I’ve had in the queue a while.

Mohammed says:

"Verily, the pious (shall be) in gardens and pleasure, enjoying what their Lord has given them; for their Lord will save them from the torment of hell. ‘Eat and drink with good digestion, for that which ye have done!’ Reclining on couches in rows, and we shall wed them to large-eyed maidens. And those who believe and whose seed follows them in the faith, we will unite their seed with them;" Chapter of the Mount vs 5-7 (italics mine)

Jesus says:

"Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!" Mark 12:24-26 (italics mine)

Both teachers speak about resurrection and the day of judgement, however Mohammed says far more about the nature of the hereafter than Jesus does. In fact, Mohammed gives much more detail about both heaven and hell; who is there, why they are there and what happens to and with them there. Conversely, Jesus never teaches that people go to heaven when they die, so there’s not much reason for him to talk about what it’s like there for them. (We can unpack Jesus’ statements about "Paradise" and "being where I am" another time.)

Mohammed clearly says that in heaven (aka Paradise) the believers marry virgins and they are even reunited with their children who believe. However you may choose to look at it, there’s an indication that the relationships of wife, father and child are preserved in Paradise. This is not the case according to Jesus. He clearly contradicts Mohammed when he says that marriage relations are not part of the resurrection life. It’s logical to assume that if the categories of husband and wife become irrelevant, so do the categories father, mother, son, and daughter for these all depend on the first relationship between husband and wife.

NB:Jesus only addresses this issue because it was put to him as a test. If you’re not familiar with the incident, read the whole chapter of Mark 12.

After reading this article by Harold Meyerson who takes issue with the God of  Dr. Albert Mohler regarding "God and His Gays", I really wanted to write a response. I wanted to point out how HM ignores certain statements by Dr.M in order to pounce upon others and cast aspersions at Dr. M’s "capricious" God. Then I just got tired. I realized that the more I wrote, the more muddled I was being and consequently the less successful at constructing an apologetic.

The point that HM is trying to make appears to be this: Any God that creates people who are homosexual and then condemns them to hell for their homosexuality is a bad God and ought to be rejected. And I have to agree with him. Certainly, HM is accusing Dr. M’s God of being that way and he’s attempting to use particular statements by Dr. M as evidence, but he does so by ignoring other statements from Dr. M. which I confess bothers me. So here is my feeble but less wordy apologetic to HM’s accusations.

Simply put, God does not create homosexuals. All creation is broken and homosexuality is as much product of that brokenness as is my self-righteous scorn of …anyone. God does not accept the brokenness of His creation. He does not condone homosexuality or self-righteousness. He is not pleased by the existence of death and disease as part of the human experience. These phenomena are evidence of the brokenness of His formerly "good" creation and God has a plan to mend it. That plan is currently in process. When it’s brought to completion, both homosexuality and self-righteous scorn for fellow humans will be done away with, along with death, disease and every other evil under the sun. The Bible says it this way: "No longer will there be any curse." A God who rescues His creation is a wonderful God and arguably superior to a capricious one who sets his creatures up for failure. This is a God that ought to be accepted, particularly by his broken creatures. Otherwise, how else can we hope to be mended and whole?

Read this short news story.

The tag line which lead me to that story came from the DrudgeReport and read as follows: "Jail Guard in Hot Water for Bible Belting…

I followed that link to the story expecting to read about a crazed evangelical prison guard abusing some pitiable socio-economic, ethnic, sexual minority inmate. As I read the first paragraph, my expectation was not met. The second paragraph also failed to confirm my suspicion. Finally in the third paragraph, I learned that the inmate was thumped with his own Bible….and immediately, I suspected the evil "liberal media" of purposefully burying that bit of information in the third paragraph in order to prolong the reader’s (mine) mistrust of Christians.

Sigh.

Does this mean that I’ve joined the "Cult of the Victim" to which so many Americans (Christians and non-Christians) belong these days?

I wonder when my membership card will arrive.

My mother-inlaw is here helping us with the new baby. One night last week, she showed us a slideshow (on DVD) of her trip to Israel/Palestine last year when she went on a sight-seeing tour cum ministry trip with her mother (86 years young!) and her older sister. She especially wanted our sons to see the pictures of the children in the hospital that they visited and to hear "Jingle Bells" sung in Arabic-a language that my sons are learning in school.

Through out the presentation, my mother-inlaw would repeat the phrase, "That’s where Jesus…". My oldest son, who is five, caught on quickly and began to ask "Where’s Jesus dying on the cross?" After repeating the question multiple times during the slideshow, my mother-inlaw finally told him that there wasn’t a picture of Jesus dying on the cross and that Jesus was already in Heaven with God. This news seemed to disappoint my little boy. He was anticipating seeing Jesus dying on the cross.

My son knows that Jesus rose from the grave, so why didn’t he ask to see Jesus coming out of the tomb? What is it about us that we are drawn to the horror of death before we are drawn to the beauty of life?

PS-I was considering putting a picture of the Crucifixion with this post. I did an image search and as I looked at the various portrayals of the event I felt…unsettled. Several of the images were "artistic" in nature (as opposed to stills from films) and for the first time in memory I felt uneasy looking at them, almost as though I was looking at something forbidden. Why this reaction? Is it because I haven’t seen such images in such a long time (living in a Muslim country as I do)?

This may sound corny, but I honestly think that after seeing Gibson’s The Passion, I have a raw set of emotions attached to that image which I’ve never had before. That movie, for all of its historical problems, did impress upon me the horror of Jesus’ death much like Saving Private Ryan impressed upon me the horror of that day on the beach in Normandy during World War II. I suspect that I’ll never be able to view an image of the Crucifixion dispassionately as a result of that film.

I probably won’t be writing for about a week so I thought I’d leave anyone who wanders by a link to this very funny excerpt from a book that I should probably buy…even thought I’m only "somewhat evangelical".

"I think Christians are wrong. They’re wrong because you’re not judged by your actions, you’re judged by your beliefs, which is to say that if you’re Hitler and right before you die, you say, "Jesus, I’m sorry," you get a better chance of going to heaven than the millions of people you killed." Gene Simmons

It’s funny but in a way, Gene isn’t entirely misguided in his understanding of the Christian message. Mercy is Jesus’ to be dispensed according to His will. In Gene’s scenario, he is spot on by having Hitler appeal to Jesus. As the Bible puts it, "salvation is in no other name". What Gene doesn’t grasp is that Jesus is merciful to all who approach him whether it’s Hitler or any one of the millions who died at his hands.

I’m not really surprised that this offends Gene Simmons. After all, his ancestors were also offended by Jesus’ liberal application of grace and mercy. If I’m being honest, there are times when I’m offended by it…but this isn’t a post about me.

What statement is EJ making when he wears a conspicuously large, sparkly cross on stage at his 60th birthday celebration?

Here’s a man who is unabashedly homosexual and unashamedly hostile towards religion sporting a piece of jewelry which has been the adopted symbol of Christianity for several centuries.

Is he saying, "Religion is evil, but it does have a great sense of fashion."? (Admit it, evil has always been a bit better dressed than good hasn’t it? After all, which would you rather have; a cool leather biker’s jacket or papal robes?)

Is he saying, "I support the death penalty. Bring back crucifixion."? Especially for those "hateful lemmings".

I suspect he’s not making any statements. He probably approached his choice of accessories that evening the same way he approached his decision to advocate "banning religion": without thinking.

It’s really quite sad.

Earlier I posted about a particular lesson in a series that Erwin McManus did recently that’s available as a podcast from Mosaic.org. The series is based on his new book called Soul Cravings and this morning I found myself thinking not about the series about about that phrase "soul craving". I’m not sure how I got there but I think I began by reflecting a recent display of selfishness on my part; how I was really pissed off that my feelings, issues, problems and concerns had been overlooked by my wife and in-laws over the past weekend. I found myself thinking that I wanted people to indicate that my POV mattered, that my issues were significant…and then it clicked.

I think that we all crave significance. Erwin lists "meaning" and "destiny" as two cravings in his lesson series, but I think those two can be distilled down further into a craving for significance. I believe that we long to know that our presence or absence in the world matters, makes a difference, is important-significant. Meaning is important whereas meaninglessness isn’t. Destiny requires that we are present in the world. If we aren’t, then destiny is denied.

Erwin also lists intimacy as one of the soul’s cravings. I don’t really disagree but I think "relationship" fits better with the craving for significance. In fact, relationships are what validate or invalidate our significance. Try as we might to declare and bolster are own significance, we don’t truly believe in it until someone outside of ourselves declares and bolsters our significance for us. I can think my feelings are important but when someone other than myself takes my feelings into account and allows them to affect them in some way, then I have external validation of their importance.

Of course, all manner of hell breaks loose in the world when we fail to percieve our significance accurately, whether we over-estimate it or underestimate it.

Sophia.

Fourth child.

First girl.

My only daughter.

"Then sings my soul,

my Savior God to Thee!

How great Thou Art!"

"Blessed are the merciful for they will recieve mercy."

At the risk of sounding redundant; mercy is another word that only seems to come up in religious speech. When was the last time you heard the word used?

Mercy is a hard word for me to use. It appears to carry with it an implied hierarchy. Perhaps this is my own religious baggage speaking. I tend to think of someone being in a position of power/authority over another however refusing to exercise that power/authority in order to punish. Consequently, with my American sense of "equality", I rarely see myself in a position to dispense mercy. I understand that this is rather myopic on my part.

The fact of the matter is that I have the opportunity to extend mercy to nearly everyone in my acquaintance. Every day, I am given the chance to be merciful to my wife; to bear with her snippy comments understanding that she’s under great stress in these final days of her fourth pregnancy. Every day, I have the opportunity to be merciful to my children; to respond to their angry cries of "I hate you!" or "Your idea stinks!" with kind words like "I still love you." and "I’m sorry you feel that way." I can show mercy to students who repeatedly demonstrate that they lack the maturity they need to be successful in my school. The list is practically endless.

Yet, I’m not often merciful. I tend to respond to snippiness with snippiness. Usually, I respond to displays of disrespect or disobedience with visibly angry threats of punishment. Rarely do I show any forebearance with immaturity. Sadly, this is another list that is practically without end.

I could ask why I behave this way, but I know why. I am not yet that which I will be. As a Christian, I’m stuck in a state somewhere between the "first Adam" and the "second Adam". The "old man" is crucified, but the "new man" is not yet risen….not yet…but someday. Until then, I need to stand on the moutainside drinking in these words and remember: God is merciful and I can expect mercy from Him: as His child, I ought to resemble Him by being so consistently merciful that others can expect mercy from me.

Lord, let it be…

We were driving one day when I became really irritated with another driver. I’ve forgotten the exact nature of that driver’s offense, but I said something (not obscene) in front of the kids that I felt like needed some explaining. I said that I was really angry because what the person did could have resulted in an accident that might have injured or killed one of them.

This comment about being killed set my five-year old off on a description of what would happen then. He said that then Jesus would come and make us alive again. I agreed and he went on to list the various new body parts that our resurrected bodies would have. According to my son, we’ll get new arms, new legs, new feet and new shoes!

…new shoes? Hmm…

Mohammed says:

"And shouldst thou ever fear from any people treachery, then throw it back to them in like manner: verily God loves not the treacherous."  Chapter of the Spoils v40. (italics mine)

Jesus says:

"You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth’. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go with them one mile, gow with him two miles. " Matthew 5:38-41 (italics mine)

and

"You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemies.’ But I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven." Matthew 5:43-45 (italics mine) See also Luke 6:27-36

Not much commentary necessary for this one. Mohammed clearly advocates tit for tat. Jesus doesn’t. In fact, Jesus says that acting with love and praying for (not against) one’s enemies makes a person  like God, who also loves those who hate him.

Two teachers. Two messages. Same source? I don’t think so.

A while back I read a book which does an excellent job of articulating what I believe the Bible teaches about decision making and the will of God. One result was a change in the way that I pray. Instead of asking for God to reveal His will in the specific details of my life, I ask for wisdom to make good choices based on what I already know to be God’s will at the macro-level. I also no longer pray for God to reveal His specific will for what I ought to do with my life-as in, what kind of job/career I should persue. Instead, I’ve been praying for opportunities, for options so that I can move out of teaching English as a foriegn language and into something else.

For several years, whenever I’ve considered leaving EFL I’ve looked at getting a degree in religion or Bible with an eye toward becoming a university professor. I like teaching and I’d like to teach Bible, or New Testament Studies or some thing like that. Recently, my wife and I began to enter into a more serious phase of that off-and-on conversation. We began looking into schools which offered online course work that I could do while living abroad as I do. We started thinking about who I could contact back in the states for some guidance in this decision. Then we learned that my current job is not all that secure.

Yesterday, I got an instant message from a friend in the States. He sent me a link to a Christian university in Oklahoma that wants to hire an ESL Coordinator. I immediately rejected the idea simply because I’ve never desired to be in admin. Then I began to think…my current job may not last much longer, we’ve talked about returning to the states for a bit, there aren’t many jobs in the states for ESL teachers, perhaps this university would give me a tuition waiver as an employee which would allow me to get that new MA in Bible or MDiv in Religion or whatever degree would best serve my ambition of becoming a university professor….

So, here I am faced with the bud of a blossoming opportunity. Based on a)the criteria posted for the job and b) the very small pool of potential applicants who would meet both the professional and religious criteria, I’m pretty certain that I would get an interview. And if the interview went well, then I’d get the offer and I’d be looking at a fully bloomed opportunity ready to be plucked. Isn’t this what I prayed for? Didn’t I pray for opportunity?

If I ever get as far as an offer, I’ll have to grapple with the wisdom of taking a job as a coordinator in a field that I’d like to get out of in order to take advantage of free tuition toward a degree that would take me into a new field that I want to get into.

Excuse me, I think I need to do some more praying.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."

I have rarely (if ever) known true, gut-wrenching hunger or genuine, throat-blistering thirst. This is probably why it’s hard for me to comprehend this statement with its fullest force. On the other hand, Jesus knew both and I suspect many of his listeners on the side of that mountain knew them also. They could sense the intensity of this statement far better than I can.

Now that I think about it, the word "righteousness" sort of rolls right off me. It’s a church word, isn’t it? I never hear anyone using it in the media. No political candidate ever lists "rigtheousness" as one of his/her qualifications. When was the last time it ended up on a performance appraisal at work? It’s not even a word that gets used to describe the really good people we know. It seems to only come up when church-speak is needed.

This may be why there’s something in my brain that wants to replace that word with the word "justice". As I’ve read this verse lately, there’s been an internal editor who keeps rewriting it this way: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness justice, for they will be filled." Perhaps it’s because I really want to see some justice…just not in my own particular case. I want to see the incredibly self-centered drivers who endanger the lives of my family nearly every day get what’s coming to them. I crave the punishement of the evil men who murder in the name of God those who do not subscribe to their views of orthodoxy. I long for children to never feel the prying fingers of those who use them. However, I have no stomach for recieving any just penalties of my own. So, I think my editor is wrong.

Honestly, I have more questions than answers. Whose righteousness is Jesus talking about? God’s? (possibly) Our own? (doubtfully) No one’s? Is he talking about desiring right actions and/or thoughts? (I confess, I tend to think and act like He favors right doctrine, which I often believe I possess and other’s do not. Lame, I know.) What did this all mean to his audience? What could one of them say to me to help me understand this statement?

Mohammed says:

"Make not thy hand fettered to thy neck, nor yet spread it out quite open, lest thou shouldst have to sit down blamed and straitened in means. Verily, thy Lord spreads out provision to whomsoever He will or He doles it out. Verily, He is ever well aware of and sees His servants." The Chapter of the Night Journey beginning vs 27.

Jesus says:

"Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back." Luke 6:30.

Even without the fullest context for either quotation, I think it’s fairly clear that the attitudes of both speakers are not the same. Mohammed essentially says, "Give, but not too much," while Jesus simply says "Give, and don’t demand." One is self-serving:one is other-serving. There can be no doubt that these two are reading from different scripts.

"All parents like to believe that their child is special, perhaps even destined for greatness. You’re that way aren’t you? But be honest; deep down you know that chances are your child is just like every other child-ordinary. After all, the birth of your little one wasn’t accompanied by a "heavenly host" singing "Hallelujah!", was it? Or, during those early months of his life, did your baby recieve a visit from a group of foriegn dignitaries bearing expensive and exotic gifts? Apart from you and the grandparents, does anyone worship your child, calling him "Lord"? No.

Yet all this and much more can be said about Joseph of Nazareth, the author of this divinely inspired guide to parenting. As the Providentially appointed adoptive father to God’s "only begotten son", Joseph is uniquely qualified (and elected) to advise you in matters of rearing your precious, yet admittedly ordinary, child.

In this new edition of Joseph’s Guide to Parenting, you’ll find not only relevant insights to growing your child God’s way but you’ll also find easy-to-follow instructions for basic home improvement projects from this Master Carpenter."

(See back flap)

The "Little Buddha" is missing.

Not being well-versed in Buddhism, it is no surprise that I’m confused by this article. As I understand it, Buddha achieved Enlightenment, hence the name "The Enlightened One". I thought that, in Buddhism, this means breaking free of the cycle of reincarnation and obtaining nirvana.

How then can this boy be a reincarnation of "The Enlightened One"?

He can’t.

That being said, I hope there’s nothing sinister about his disappearance.

After listening to a short summary of a book about Ghandi recorded by one of my (language) students, I did an internet search, found a website devoted to Ghandi and read this quotation:

It is not given to man to know the whole Truth. His duty lies in living up to the truth as he sees it, and in doing so, to resort to the purest means, i.e., to non-violence.

God alone knows absolute truth. Therefore, I have often said, Truth is God. It follows that man, a finite being, cannot know absolute truth.

Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God’s attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray.

It seems that Ghandi means "totality of" truth when he says that men can not know Absolute Truth. I agree: the sum total of all truth is not knowable by men in their finite minds. Yet, Absolute Truth is knowable and ultimately will be known. I don’t agree that Relative Truth is all we can know, and I certainly don’t agree that the pursuit of Relative Truth will not mislead anyone.