godthots

1 Timothy: It's All About Grace, Not Rules!

2011-06-12T07:52:00.005-05:00

We set up rules for our children to protect and teach them, but we want to have a loving relationship with them rather than a legalistic, command-and-control relationship. Sometimes we are happy to have them do as we say no matter the reason, but mostly we want them to do what we ask because they love and respect us as parents and as people. When our kids are in their 30s and 40s, we don't want them to come and visit us twice a year, just to stay in the will.

God's desire for us in much the same. He is not first, and foremost a “rule maker,” although he has given us rules to obey (the Law). He would much rather we love and respect him and as a result, do the things that please him. He doesn't want us to come to church once a week just to keep our place in Heaven.

The letters to Timothy and Titus are known as the pastoral letters because in them Paul is offering advice to two young pastors on how to lead their churches. I think the messages Paul gives are also useful for us to hear as parents and friends as well.

In 1 Timothy 1:3–11, Paul warns Timothy about those in the church at Ephesus who were preaching a false message of the Law. They wanted people to believe that God required everyone to follow a long list of rules. Many of the rules were ones they had made up themselves. Paul wants Timothy to make sure the people know the truth about God. How very true this is for us today as well. We are quick to make up rules for others to follow if they want to be "in the group." In the end, the rules serve only to destroy the very thing we thought we were trying to protect.

Paul then goes on in 1 Timothy 1:12–20 to talk about his own relationship with God and the Law. Paul had nothing to boast about in terms of his “credentials” as a Christian. He was anything but what most people would consider a model of a believer. He sums up the reason for telling Timothy all this in verses 15-16,

"Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life." 1 Timothy 1:15-16 (NIV)

This is good news for all of us! If God can save Paul, then he can save anyone...including me. It is good that God is not a rule maker, because if he were, I wouldn't have a chance.

Profound Contentment

2009-05-17T21:43:00.003-05:00

It's interesting that we are transitioning from a few weeks looking at how to achieve balance in our lives to a study of Paul's letter to the church at Philippi. What's interesting about this is that Philippians is a letter about living vigorously and joyfully.

Joy was described as "profound contentment, serenity, and peace." Surely this is the result of somehow achieving balance! I wonder. The ideas we're going to encounter are things like humility, unity, self-sacrifice, pressing toward the goal. lack of anxiety, and the ability to do all things.

Maybe we've got it backwards. Maybe balance comes from profound contentment. In Paul's words, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation." This is a secret worth knowing!

Read the whole book of Philippians in one sitting like you would read a letter from a friend. It's about 15 minutes long. Do it a couple of times this week and see what seeps in.

Balance

2009-04-26T19:43:00.003-05:00

We talked today about how to achieve "balance" in life. This is clearly a big issue for many of us, so I think it's worth a few sentences on what that means. What is a balanced life, is it something worth striving for, and how do I know if I've got one?

One thing balance might mean is figuring out how to get everything done without getting stressed out over it. Our world puts a lot of demands on us. Phone, email, work, kids, TV, house, spouse, cars, career, the economy, world peace, the environment... the things on our to-do list seems endless. And on top of all this, I go to church and find out I'm supposed to study the Bible and pray without ceasing! So, there's lot competing for our time and lots of stress over not getting it all done.

Maybe balance means a literal balancing of time and activities. Equal time for the various slices of my life. It makes sense that the more important things ought to get more time that the less important, so some kind of a prioritizing scheme seems to be needed. For example, people talk about wanting to spend more time with their families and less time at work. Nobody seems to suggest spending ALL their time at anything.

Balance might simply mean figuring out exactly what to do from this great list of expectations. It might mean picking the "best" of all the things I might do. But isn't this just another thing to do? Now I need to find the best thing to do before I can do anything. No stress there! There's some truth to this in that I clearly don't want to neglect important responsibilities to do meaningless things (well, actually, I do that pretty regularly!).

When we talk about balance in our lives, I think we mean it in this prioritizing-of-activities way. Some things are more important, and we want to be doing the important things in life... but does this lead to a balanced life? I suspect it does not.

How about Paul, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther, Moses, Abraham, Job, or Jesus? Were any of their lives balanced? I've been trying to thing of people worthy of admiration, real role models, who lived balanced lives and I'm not coming up with anybody. Great people seem to be pretty focused, single-minded and unbalanced about life. They throw themselves into one big thing completely.

What is it God wants of us? Balance? That's not a word I would choose to sum up our calling as Christians. God doesn't want part of us, he wants all of us. He doesn't want to be our top priority. He wants to be our ONLY priority. That's about as far from balance as you can get! God doesn't want me to have a balanced life, far from it.

We all know this, so why do I still feel uncomfortable when I spend too much time at work, not enough time with the kids, and minimal time in Bible study? Why do I try to get my life in balance? Maybe it's because I'm still trying to have it all. I want what I want, and I also want a relationship with God. I want everything, so I strive to get it all in balance somehow. I wonder if that's even possible.

In John 17:13-18, Jesus says that we are "in the world" but not "of the world." He says that he doesn't want to take us out of the world even though the world hates us because he has sent us into the world. I'm here on a mission from God... The Blues Bothers had it right all along! I'm not here to live a balanced life where I get a nice family, a good job, an early retirement, and everything I deserve. Maybe I should be trying to figure out what my mission is, not the go-into-all-the-world-and-make-disciples mission, but MY mission. Read the first few paragraphs of The Purpose Driven Life:

"It's not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions."

Maybe my feeling of being out of balance comes from too much "of" and not enough "in." That's what's really out of balance.

Love, Language, and Obsession

2009-02-16T18:36:00.002-06:00

It's February, and love is in the air...actually love is in the language as far as our class in concerned. We've been talking about Gary Chapman's book The Five Love Languages (5LL) for the last couple of weeks so the topic of communication has been on my mind.

Communication is a tricky thing at the best of times. We often fail to communicate what we mean to, and when the target of our message doesn't respond as we think they should, we blame them for being unreasonable. The idea in 5LL is that even when we try hard to communicate our love, we can fail because we're talking the wrong language. We say "I love you" (see, I bought you this expensive vacuum cleaner) and our spouse either doesn't "hear" anything, or misunderstands what we're trying to say (you think the house is dirty?).

The other thing that struck me in all this discussion is that love is not about me, it's about my spouse. That's why it's so hard for us to do well. We spend a lot of our mental energy thinking about how to get what we want out of marriage. That's what a happy marriage is...one that makes me happy, right? Actually, it's not. Marriage works a lot better when we both start to put the other's interests ahead of our own. Sounds sort of Biblical, don't you think?

So that explains the "Love" and "Language" parts of the title. What about the "Obsession" part? Well, that's why there's been such a gap in posting to this blog. I've got another one too! Oh, well.

Last Blog ... at least for this year!

2008-12-31T11:02:00.004-06:00

I'm not sure why, but I just can't let this year close without a parting comment. Maybe it's a numbers thing--I want to hit 20 for the year. I've already exceeded the 2007 total, although posts-per-month is down.

Anyway, here goes the final thought for the year...

We were talking a while back about whether the things that happen to us are caused by God, allowed by God, or just happen without God's involvement in any way. I think your beliefs in this regard have a lot to do with what you think God is like, and how much you've thought about where your beliefs lead you.

If you believe things happen to us without God's involvement, and perhaps without any special interest on God's part, then I think you don't believe in the God of the Bible. God is clearly portrayed in both OT and NT as being actively involved in creation. The stories of Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Paul, Peter, and countless others show that God directly influenced their circumstances and that they were not surprised by this.

The other two possibilities are a bit more difficult to deal with if we are to be honest. The problem is that some of God's attributes are not easy to reconcile with each other and our experiences. God is all-powerful (omnipotent), meaning that God can to anything that can be done. God is all-knowing (omniscient), so the smallest detail is not overlooked or forgotten. God is also the definition of love, loves us, and wants the very best for us.

The problem this causes is we have difficulty answering the question, "Why do bad, unpleasant, downright nasty things happen to us?" God surely knows they are happening, could take action to prevent them, and loves us. So why do they happen? It actually matters less whether God actively causes them to happen or passively allows them to happen. In either case they happen because God intends them to happen. I actually prefer the active explanation because I think God is in direct control of all of creation, not just some portion.

I think our difficulty with this question comes from our unspoken belief that we're at the center of the universe. From that viewpoint, good things happening to us are good and bad things are bad. But maybe there's another viewpoint. Maybe we're not the center of the universe. Maybe it's good for bad things to happen to us. I don't claim to understand how or why that might be so, in fact I find it appalling that God could want it that way.

I'm left with the belief that God is good and loves me more than I can imagine. I don't see how having bad things happen to people is "good", and I guess I'm OK with that. God is God and I'm not.

A Thought I Can Call My Own?

2008-12-02T21:58:00.003-06:00

Have you ever come up with an idea you thought was truly original? It seems to me that this has happened to me more frequently than normal in the past few months. The problem is, the Internet stands ready to show me how unoriginal and outdated my "original" thought actually is. Even this potentially-original blog topic has been endlessly discussed (for example, here, here, and here). There's even a seven-step process to have your own original thoughts.

Of course, this is not an Internet phenomenon. Have a look at Ecclesiastes 1, especially verses 9 and 10:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

Wow, talk about a lack of originality! My "novel" topic was discussed thousands of years ago. It's almost enough to make a person surrender to the sound-bite mentality of our modern world. Almost.

We don't spend enough time on any one topic to really think deeply. Most of our understanding of things is superficial, even of the important issues of our day. How many people in this country spent more than 15 minutes thinking about how they were going to vote? How many Christians have thought much about abortion, euthanasia, war, salvation, predestination, the nature of God, or any of a dozen other thorny issues? Not enough of us discipline ourselves to make the time required for deep thoughts.

Paul warned Timothy about this tendency in us in 1 Timothy 4,

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

So, I guess I'll continue to search for my original idea even though I know it is unlikely to exist. The purpose is the looking, not the finding.

We Survived Ike!

2008-09-14T08:43:00.002-05:00

Not an especially spiritual title, but an intensely spiritual event nonetheless. God is good, and he has preserved us. Events like this are a wonderful reminder of what is really important. Our family is growing closer as we work together to deal with the remnants of this storm. We have been very fortunate, and we pray for those facing greater challenges than ours.

I expect to hear stories of God's provision and protection in the coming days. It's not prophecy on my part (more about that in another post) merely a belief in God's goodness.

Creating Humans

2008-09-01T16:47:00.006-05:00

My wanderings along the roadways between home and work have taken me into another of the Modern Scholars series of recorded lectures. This time it's "Creating Humans: Ethical Questions Where Reproduction and Science Collide." I picked it up because it covers the ethical aspects of some recent advances in the science, but I pretty much already knew what I thought about all that (not an unusual attitude for me, I'm afraid). I don't know that the lectures changed my mind a whole lot, but they did make me think more about the real complexity of the issues that I so easily paint black or white.

The issues that stand out as most difficult to resolve are these:

At what point, exactly, does a person exist having not existed prior to that point?
What are the acceptable methods (processes, procedures, whatever) we can use to create new people?
How much are we allowed to interfere with the development of another person in order to produce characteristics we desire in them?

The lecturer came at most of these issues from a non-spiritual direction, so there were lots of things I could take exception with in his thinking. Nevertheless, uncertainty remains in my mind.

At what point does a person come into existence?

I thought this was one I was fairly certain about. Life begins at conception. Easy. The problem is, that position works best for the "normal" mechanics of reproduction, and even then there are some questions. For me as a Christian, a person exists when God creates one. I think that's when the person has a soul, but I can't find much in the Bible on the mechanics of soul-body connection. One problem with this occurring at conception is that that at some point after conception and embryo can either divide into twins or remain a single individual. Before this point it's not clear whether there's one soul or two, so perhaps there's none?

So I guess I'm left believing that a person comes into existence some time after conception but well before birth. That's why I don't think that a woman ever has the absolute "right to choose" abortion. This is not just a question about her right to control her own body. The life of another human being is involved, and the woman does not have the absolute right to take that life. It's the same reason parents aren't free to kill their children.

In terms of abortion, the issue of twins doesn't have much practical impact because it happens so early in the pregnancy (it does affect the ethics of day-after pills). It has a bigger impact on some of the other issues though.

What are the allowable methods of creating new people?

I already knew there were issues here, and the lecturer didn't help clear any of them up for me. Here are some of the ways new people might be created:

The old-fashioned natural way. (Ask Griff about it if you must.)
Artificial insemination (AI) - mostly the normal mechanics with a bit of an assist at the beginning. Some issues of parentage (who's the father?).
In vitro fertilization (IVF) - conception occurs in a petri dish, the rest is the normal mechanics. More parentage issues (father and/or mother).
Surrogacy - either AI or IVF followed by growth and delivery by a 3rd-party. Lots of parentage issues. The parents may not be involved at all!
Reproductive cloning - make another one just like me. Luckily, it doesn't work yet except for sheep.

My thinking on this is that it doesn't matter much HOW we make new people. As far as I'm concerned all of the above-listed methods would result in real people, souls and all. I think some of these methods involve a lot more risk of problems resulting from our incomplete understanding of biology, so they should be avoided, but all make people.

There is a thorny little problem with IVF and the notion that life begins at conception. The normal process of IVF involves the creation of many fertilized embryos, one of which is selected for implantation. So what about the rest of them? They are typically discarded. Part of the debate over stem cell research involves the use of these "discarded" embryos as a source of embryonic stem cells. I don't know quite what to think about IVF, but it bothers me some.

How much can people interfere in other people's development?

Parents do this all the time, in face we demand it of them. Mothers try to eat right during pregnancy. We expect parents to provide stimulation so their children develop thinking skills. They teach them to share their toys. They don't let them eat too much junk food and get fat. It goes on and on.

So, should people be able to use IVF to select only male embryos to implant? Should they be able to abort a pregnacy if the embryo's sex is wrong? What if antenatal screening identifies a serious condition like Down's Syndrome? Can that pregnancy be terminated? All of these are unacceptable to me as a life-begins-at-conception guy, but all are commonly practiced and accepted by our society.

The final issue, and we're just approaching this as a feasible technology is genetic enhancement. It will soon be possible to "adjust" the genes in an embryo to change the characteristics of the person who will be born. These changes might be trivial, hair color, eye color, etc. They could also be more significant characteristics like intelligence, musical aptitude, physical strength and size, and so on. If we are able to make these adjustments, should we? In a sense we do this already in that we tend to choose mates with characteristics we find desireable. Is there anything wrong with being more efficient in our methods? I think I'm OK with this, but I suspect it comes with some risks we don't understand just yet. I don't think we can avoid learning how to genetically enhance ourselves, but I hope we do it carefully.

So, where are we going?

I don't find many prohibitions in the Bible regarding the acceptability of scientific reproduction methods. I do hear a clear message that God thinks people are extremely important. I think we need to worry more about how this technology affects the the relationship between people, and make sure that we place as high a value on himan life as God does.

Lord of All Creation

2008-08-17T16:28:00.004-05:00

I've been listening to a series of lectures entitled, "Astronomy: Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe" and it's got me thinking about the size of things. It's hard to get a real feeling for how amazingly big the universe is. You've heard people talk about the Earth being 93 million miles from the Sun, the closes star, Proxima Centauri, being about 4 light-years away, and the closest galaxy, Andromeda (pictured here, courtesy of NASA Images), being 2.5 million light-years away. Maybe you don't remember the exact distances, but you've likely heard something like this before. The numbers have no real "feeling" to them. How far is a light-year anyway? It's hard to get a sense of the size from the numbers themselves. (1 light-year = about 6,000,000,000,000 miles)

The lecturer, Professor James Kaler (info here, or here), did something that helped a lot, and I thought it was worth some thought time.

The first steps along this path are some "local" sizes. The Sun is about 100 times the size of the Earth, and the distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 100 times the Sun's diameter. That means you could line up about 10,000 Earths between here and the Sun. Already this is a pretty big number to imagine!

Going further, imagine that the distance from the Earth to the Sun was one inch. On that basis, the Earth would be about a tenth of a micron, far too small to see, about the size of a large bacteria. Our solar system, out to the little rocks beyond Pluto, would be about six feet across. On this scale, the nearest star would be a little over four miles away. Beyond this, the numbers quickly get too big to absorb again. If the distance to the Sun is one inch, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 miles across--half way to the moon. Our galaxy is one of billions that we can see and is unremarkable. Remember, this is a galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars I just called unremarkable!

The universe is unbelievably large, staggeringly large, mind-numbingly large. It's B-I-G. Mankind is proud of the fact that we've gone all the way to the Moon, but that's about the diameter of a strand of a spider's web in our modified scale. Almost too small to see!

One of the things we tend to do as Christians is to underestimate God. We see him as a slightly larger version of ourselves, maybe without the little imperfections we have. But God is the creator of this stupefyingly large universe we've just been looking at! We make a serious error if we see God as just a "big person." We contemplate God, we argue about his existence, about the extent of his power, about his character. What we should be doing is standing in awe, unable to grasp his size, but yet overwhelmed by what we can grasp.

In Isaiah 55:9 God says, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

I should say so!

Children and Perspective

2008-07-28T21:56:00.006-05:00

We had the grandkids over for a couple of days this past weekend, and I'm reminded again of the difference between my normal view of the world and theirs. Somehow the things that worry me are invisible to them. I don't have a lot of profound wisdom to share on the topic, but here are a few random observations:

Right now is really all that matters. Regret about past sins or worries about tomorrow's problems doesn't mean much.
The world is a generally interesting and amazing place with lots of cool things to do.
Some of the really great things to do are completely made up in your head. No "stuff" needed.
Some things are funny every time you do them, over and over again.
Surprises are often fun.
Making people laugh is something worth working at.

I don't know if much of this has anything to do with Jesus' assertion that "...the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:13-15).

Just thinkin'.

Laminin - Gimme a Break!

2008-07-11T18:15:00.003-05:00

I threatened to write this post last week, but resisted fearing it would be just another rant. I can't resist it any longer so please don what ever flame-retardant materials you use while surfing.

As I was preparing for the lesson, I came across the suggestion to use this video by Louie Giglio. The reasoning was that it illustrated the point that we are sustained and supported by Jesus, the Living Water. The video describes a molecule called "laminin" that forms a major part of the supporting structure of our cells. It's sort of a "scaffold" on a molecular level. He then goes on, in dramatic fashion, to reveal the shape of the molecule. It looks like a cross. A quick Internet search will turn up dozens of links to this topic. This basic building block of our bodies is cross-shaped, and this is a sign of the divine in us because Jesus dies on a cross.

What a load of trash!

It's ideas like this that give Christians the reputation of being fanatical wackos. (Just check out the Wikipedia talk page for laminin.) There's nothing spiritually significant about the shape of a cross. It's not a magic shape. Attributing spiritual meaning to the fact that laminin is mildly cross-shaped is the same as concluding that waking up at 7:47 one morning means that God wants me to fly somewhere. We are very good at seeing patterns and reading meaning into them, even when there is no meaning.

I firmly believe that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that we continue to exist from moment to moment because God actively wills us to exist. However, I don't think that a particular oddly-shaped molecule is a "message from God."

Deliverer

2008-06-10T21:07:00.004-05:00

We've launched into a new series called "It's In The Name" that will take us through the names of Jesus. The first name we talked about was "Deliverer" and our discussion got me to thinking (of course). Most of what we talked about revolved around deliverance in a broad people-of-God kind of way. Being basically self-centered, I was thinking more personally about deliverance.

We talk a lot in the church about "getting saved," and I think most Christians have at least some idea what that means. We don't generally communicate it too well to the rest of the world, but after you've bounced around a bit in church you get a pretty good notion of what salvation is about. I wonder if we lose something in the process of getting comfortable with the idea. Of course, we're saved from sin. We say it so often using church-speak terminology that it loses its meaning and impact. (Here is a good example.) We get used to it like we get used to the heat in Texas. After a while it doesn't bother us as much. Sin, I mean. But sin is serious business and I need to be bothered by it a bit more than I am.

That's where Jesus the Deliverer comes in. Jesus delivers us from sin. Our sin. My sin. Me. That's really the bottom line I think. I need to be delivered from myself. When I'm left to do what I want to do I sin. It's in my nature to sin. (A church-speak phrase that means, "I do bad things because I want to.")

I need Jesus to deliver me, to retrieve me, to save me from myself. For me, that's what "Deliverer" means.

Spending Money

2008-05-19T19:12:00.003-05:00

Did you ever notice, that one of the fastest ways to end a conversation with someone you don't know well is to ask them:

How much money did you make last year?
How much money did you give to the church last year?
So, what did you pay for this house anyway?

We're very touch and private about money stuff. We're fine talking about it in general, but not the specifics. Most of the time when we're like that it's because we're hiding something. Most of the time because we're ashamed of our behavior. So what is it about money that we're ashamed of?

I think we all have a standard that we're not living up to...

"I know I should give 10% to the church, but I've got so many bills to pay I just can't manage it right now."

"I know I shouldn't be eating out 12 meals a week, but it's just so much easier than shopping and cooking and washing dishes."

"I know I should be helping those less fortunate than me in _______, but I'm a little short this month."

I think maybe you get the picture. Can you really tell what my priorities are by looking at my bank records?

Would you be comfortable if the church posted the giving records of its members?

Why or why not?

Prayer - Transaction or Relationship?

2008-04-29T09:21:00.001-05:00

I was listening to Philip Yancy's "Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?" in the car today and was struck by his comments on viewing prayer as a transaction with God. You often hear people talk about the problem of unanswered prayers. Why does God seem to ignore us when we ask him for something? Doesn't the Bible say that if we want something we should simply ask God for it? The truth is, God's response to our prayers seems almost random at times. Sometimes he does a miracle, sometimes there's no response at all.

People will answer these concerns with assurances that God does hear our prayer and answer, and sometimes the answer is "No" or "Wait." Others will tell you that God knows better than we do what we need and gives us what's best for us rather than what we ask for in our prayers. Both of these answers seem to have have a nugget of truth in them but I think they miss the mark. I don't actually think either of them is a true picture of what's going on.

The fundamental problem is this view of prayer as a transaction... I give something to God (faith, service, belief, etc.) and he is thereby obligated to give me something back (what I ask for). If I don't get what I asked for then either there's a problem with my prayer technique, or God is somehow cheating me out of what I deserve. The first conclusion spawns how-to-pray books and sermons, the second brings my whole belief in a good and perfect God into question.

A better view of prayer is that it's part of the relationship between me and God. I don't want a "networking" relationship with God, the kind where I get his email address and keep in touch because he might be useful to me some day. I want the close, personal friendship kind of relationship. In this kind of relationship, sharing the details of my life, whether struggles or triumphs, gives God pleasure. He really wants to hear all about what's going on with me, not because he's trying to find out what to do for me, but simply because he's interested in me.

It's what good friends do. We talk. About anything and everything. Not to fix each other, but just to talk. Friends read each other's blogs too. I bet God reads our blogs. I wonder what he thinks!

Failure to Communicate

2008-04-26T17:06:00.004-05:00

I've been out of the country for the last week or so. During the meetings I attended I was watching how people interact in a presenter-attender situation. I'm sure you've all been part of a situation like this. One person is presenting information as the rest of the group listens, asks questions, and discusses the topic.

The thing I noticed was how often the communication between two people simply didn't work. These were all highly-educated professionals who were trying hard to both transmit their information and understand what was being transmitted to them. About half the time when one person would ask a question the other person would misunderstand the question completely and answer some other question (at least that's what I inferred from the disconnect between question and answer). Sometimes the questioner would accept the answer and things would move on, and sometimes they would ask another question that was related to the first. Only rarely did the two of them figure out on their own that a communication failure had occurred. Most of the time someone else would point out the disconnect.

I wonder how often this happens when we try to communicate the gospel message to others. It's perfectly clear to us what we're saying, but half the time the other person simply misses the message completely. They shake their heads and figure we're ignorant fanatics, we walk away concluding their hearts are hardened to the gospel. In fact they didn't hear what we said and we didn't notice.

Spiritual Gifts

2008-04-14T21:19:00.001-05:00

So, here's a small break from heavy philosophical ponderings...maybe.

The Bible says we all have at least one spiritual gift. It gives a long list of gifts in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and a few other places. Most people have taken one of more "tests" to tell them what their spiritual gift is.

So here's the puzzle...is my spiritual gift something I'm naturally good at? Should I be able to exercise it easily? I'm guessing no to both questions based on my own experience. Also, God seems to want us to struggle with most things, so it can't come all that easily. On the other hand, if it's too hard I'll never figure it out.

So, dear reader (assuming you're there), what is your spiritual gift? How do you know what it is? What effect does having that particular gift have on your life?

The Nature of Man

2008-03-30T13:43:00.005-05:00

The first thing to get straight is the use of the word "man." For most of the history of western society, I think the term "man" has been used to mean all of humanity. It is only relatively recently that we have become obsessed with gender. In my opinion, we have done a disservice to the language by narrowing the definition of this word to mean "male person." When I use the word "man" in these notes, I mean humanity, or mankind, or people in general. I refuse to be politically correct when it is to no good purpose.

Anthropology is the study of humanity; it means literally, "to talk about human beings. " This is the second area of knowledge that leads me to an understanding of what God wants me to do and why. Deciding about the nature of man is important in ethics because to understand what I need to become as a human being requires that I understand where I begin. To know what is "right living" I must first know what I am. What is my essential nature? Am I by nature good, neutral, or evil?

If I'm basically good, then right living will mean somehow becoming aware of my innate desires and then following them. This is the source of the saying, "If it feels good, do it!" An essentially good person needs only to follow their basic nature. Unethical behavior is anything that is imposed from outside. If I'm good, and I do evil, it's because something outside me caused it. All that is needed for man to behave rightly is the removal of external pressure to do evil.

If my basic nature is neutral, neither good nor evil, then I can't look to my own innermost feelings to identify the good. I think this leads to an intellectual view of right and wrong. In an sense I don't really care one way or the other. I'm not on either side in the war between good and evil. I should listen to the arguments put forward by both sides and choose the most reasonable. Society ought to adopt a non-interference position on right behavior. Since we are neutral, we might make different choices about good and evil and that's OK.

Neither of these two ideas seems to fit with my experience of living. I am absolutely convinced that there are things that seem right to me that are absolutely evil. Certainly there are things that feel good, but that I believe are wrong. The basically good model doesn't line up with reality in this respect. Neither does the neutral view. I don't see good and evil as two equally plausible choices. I have a strong preference for good over evil and I can't make that preference consistent with a basic neutrality in my nature.

So I'm left with the belief that I am basically evil. This position means that I can't be left alone to decide what I should do, because my nature will cause me to choose evil. This leads to the belief that society needs to create laws to curb the evil behavior of individuals. The difficulty is, who can make the laws if we're all evil? A society can't be less evil than it's members, so the laws it makes would be evil as well. The other issue I can see is this preference that I seem to have for good over evil. It seems that I should prefer evil if my nature is evil. Why would I prefer good?

I think where I end up on the nature of man is that I am by nature evil, but there is some remembrance of good in me as well. It's almost like good is a normal but dormant state. I am evil but I want to be good. This leads me to believe that I will need to look outside myself for a standard of good, and that's the tie back to ethics.

Right living requires a definition of right that is outside of me because I'm evil. There has to be a standard for good that is outside all of us because none of us is by nature good. If I am to live rightly I will need to obey the instructions of what ever sets the standard that defined goodness. Of course, for me that's the definition of God.

The Nature of Reality

2008-03-29T22:39:00.004-05:00

According to the dictionary, metaphysics is "a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being." So what does this have to do with living as God wants me to? Well, it's at the very base of the chain of reasoning that leads me to be concerned about God and what he might want of me.

I can't bring myself to believe something unless I'm convinced it's true, even if believing is more convenient or profitable. Blaise Pascal made an interesting argument like this for belief in God called Pascal's Wager. He argues that you should believe in God because it's a better bet. If you believe in God and you're right, you win big, If you don't believe in God and you're wrong you lose big. If God doesn't exist, then it makes no difference whether or not you believe. Since the worst outcome of belief is the same as the best outcome of unbelief, it's a better bet to believe. There are lots of issues with his argument, but in any case I can't make myself believe on this basis.

For me, truth matters. To live as if God existed even if perhaps he doesn't is dishonest. That isn't to say that I can always identify the truth without error or uncertainty as you'll see later. It does mean that attempting to find the truth rather than making a useful choice is important to me. For some people, this isn't an issue. They can simply believe without a lot of soul searching and contemplation. I'm not wired that way.

The specific "world-view" questions that need answers before making any "life-view" progress are:

Does anything exist?
Does God exist?
If God exists, what is his nature?

The answers to these questions will have concrete consequences. They provide the reasons for the decisions I make about how to live my life. I think we all have answers to these questions even if we've never actually asked the questions.

1. Does anything exist?

Yes. Although, as far as I know there is no way to prove this. A little reading on the topic of "existence" leads me quickly into realms of thought I can't even follow. Reading some of the essays on the philosophy of The Matrix makes it pretty clear that nobody has figured out how to prove anything actually exists.

That's not to say I'm going to simply toss a coin, pick a position, and move on. I am a realist. According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independently of how humans take it to be. Unless this is so, none of our beliefs about our world could be objectively true since true beliefs tell us how things are and beliefs are objective when true or false independently of what anyone might think. This seems to me to be an obvious truth, and the alternatives seem contrived.

2. Does God Exist?

Again, my answer is yes, and again, I don't think it's provable. C.S. Lewis makes a great run at the topic in Chapter 4 of Mere Christianity. In the first few chapters, Lewis argues that God exists because we all seem to have a very similar set of things that we consider to be "right." He asserts that this must be because there is an "absolute" or objective right, the source of which is God. This is known as Normative Morality and I believe it to be a strong argument.

3. What is God's nature?

To answer this question we will ultimately need to go to the Bible and encounter God personally, so I'll be back to this topic again. For now, there are some of basic questions that seem to be taken for granted by many Christians. One was asked in one of Plato's dialogs called the Euthyphro. In this dialog, Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is something good because the gods will it, or do they will it because it's good?" Is morality higher than religion or vice versa? I believe the answer is found in the nature of God. God is good. In a sense , God defines goodness. Goodness is God's nature, so both are absolutes.

Here are some of the links on metaphysics I have used:

Ethics, Who Knew It Was So Complicated?

2008-03-27T18:52:00.005-05:00

On my daily commute I have recently started into a recorded book entitled, Ethics: A History of Moral Thought (having finally grown tired of my SciFi addiction). At about the same time, I started into my umpteenth re-reading of C. S. Lewis' book, Mere Christianity, which also opens with a careful look at something Lewis calls the "Rule About Right and Wrong."

These events have created in an interest in ethics (some of you will be rejoicing, no doubt). The Internet being what it is, and this blog (and its readers) being mine to abuse, thus results in you being subjected to a complete patzer's rambling and fumbling into the intricacies of moral thought. Don't say I didn't warn you!

At this point in the journey, I am struck by several thoughts that I hope to explore further in the coming days:

I am familiar with the names Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Descartes, and Kant, but yet I actually know very little about what they said.
I was surprised to learn how much of our society's concept of right and wrong has been shaped by these men, and how completely hidden their influence is from most of us.
The opinions about right and wrong held by many of us, and our justification or explanation of those opinions, are simply inconsistent, illogical, and nonsensical. Why doesn't anyone know this?
I was reminded, once again, of how little I am able to remember from one minute to the next. I have a mind like a sieve. Everything passes right through. It's this thought that has motivated this post and the ones that I hope will follow. These are my cheat notes, or my "external brain" for philosophy.

So, on to the adventure!

Ethics is the study of "good," which is the thing desired, the goal, the ideal. It's about what is "right" as defined by some law. It's about "ought," or personal obligation.

The first thing we'll need to get a grip on is ,"What is good?" In order to know if something is good or evil, we must have a clear picture of exactly what "good" means. This seems like such an easy question, but turns out to be surprisingly complicated to answer well.

We all seem to know good from evil. Lewis says, "...human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in." But, why is this so? How do we know? Is good an absolute thing (an objective truth), or is it different for each of us (a subjective choice)?

The professor claims our ethics will flow from our metaphysics (the study of the nature of reality), our anthropology (the study of the nature of humanity), and our epistemology (the study of knowledge).

More to come on this one...

Got An Attitude?

2008-03-12T22:30:00.002-05:00

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 1 Corinthans 11:17

I wonder how true this is of the meetings of my church.

I wonder how true this is of me.

Paul is talking about divisions in the church and the harm they cause. Now, on the surface we're all pretty civil and polite to one another. I can't recall the last time a fist fight broke out in the worship service. But are there divisions among us? Indeed there are.

Paul also says that divisions are to be expected, and indeed are one of the ways we figure out what God wants. We "discuss" things, perhaps intensely, and then sort out which of us has "God's approval." That's just spirited debate, and not something we should run from. That's not what Paul's talking about.

It's the other kind of divisions that make church do more harm than good. The ones that tear other people down because I don't like what they're doing/being/saying.

I wonder how much of that attitude I bring to church.

I wonder.

Wisdom in 22 words

2008-03-01T11:51:00.002-06:00

I recently came across a blog (http://twentytwowords.com) written by Abraham Piper at Desiring God. The interesting thing about his blog, in addition to the fact that he seems to be related to John Piper, is that every post in the blog consists of exactly 22 words. It's amazing what he can communicate in so few words. I often blather on endlessly and say much less.

I think this is especially relevant as we progress through the seemingly endless process of electing our political leaders. What if we limited every campaign speech to only 22 words?

What if you tried to craft every prayer so it was exactly 22 words long? Would your communication with God be any better?

"Father, forgive me for the ways I've failed you again today. Grant me the desire to serve and the strength to obey."

Hmm, that might actually lengthen some of my prayers!

(I've put a link to 22 Words under "Blogland")

BusyBusyBusyBusy

2008-02-21T19:15:00.002-06:00

I recently received my copy of a newsletter from Patrick Morley at Man in the Mirror entitled, "How Are Men Doing." He hit on something that I have mentioned in the past, and that has been on my mind recently. Here's a short quote from the newsletter:

The average Christian male is up to his gold cross in debts and duties. He has a “picture” in his mind of what it means to be a “good Christian.” He believes in this picture—it’s what he thinks he “needs” to do to be a “good boy”—to be happy.

I need to spend quality time with my wife.
I need to be a super dad to my kids and attend (maybe coach) all their activities. My dad did (or didn’t) do this for me, and I’m going to be there for them.
I need to make lots of money so my family can live in a beautiful home in a “better” neighborhood, my kids can wear the right labels, there is less pressure on my wife to work, and I can become financially independent.
I need to join a men’s small group where I can grow with some brothers.
I need to attend a weekly home growth and fellowship group.
I need to have a daily quiet time for fellowship with God.
I need to keep the Sabbath and have my family in church to worship God.
I need to serve God through a personal ministry—probably through the church.
I need to be a good citizen and neighbor.
I need to be a star at work if all this is going to happen.
I need a successful and satisfying career.
I need some time for myself.
No wonder men wince when you ask them to do something.

The reason I mention it here is that I think Morley has captured one of the primary problems we face today. There are too many good things we MUST do it be happy. Looking over this list, there isn't one of them that I'd say should not be on the list of stuff I really should be doing. I just don't do most of these things.

There is a simmering guilt in the background of most of my days. I have a nagging feeling that I'm not really doing enough...of anything. Morley mentions this in the article as well.

I don't have an answer. There isn't one in the article either. I was encouraged to see that it's not just me that feels this way.

Temptation and the "way of escape"

2008-02-16T14:36:00.008-06:00

There isn't any temptation that you have experienced which is unusual for humans. God, who faithfully keeps his promises, will not allow you to be tempted beyond your power to resist. But when you are tempted, he will also give you the ability to endure the temptation as your way of escape. 1 Cor 10:13 (God's Word^®)

This is a translation of a familiar passage that might not be so familiar. I've often heard the assurance that God will not tempt me beyond my ability, and that he will always offer a way out of temptation if I just look for it. This assurance is based on the way the verse is most often translated. For example, the NIV gives, "But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." The NASB, "...with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it." That little word, "so" isn't actually in the Greek text.

The issue here is whether I should be looking for "the way of escape" when I face some temptation. I like the idea that God is going to provide a way out for me because I like to have somebody else do the work and potentially take the blame if I fall. After all, if I end up succumbing to the temptation, then God clearly failed to identify the exit clearly enough. It's not really my fault after all! The other nice thing about this notion is that I get to escape from the temptation. I don't have to continue to resist once I find the exit God has provided.

But what about the idea that the way of escape is the ability that God has already given me to resist temptation. What if that's what Paul meant? If that's the case, then I have a more difficult and less appealing path. God expects me to resist ... continuously ... persistently ... successfully! There is no way for me to wriggle out of the situation. I will be tempted and God expects me to simply tough it out - to endure it. If I fall, it's my own fault. There's no one else to blame.

I think there are several things to learn about temptation from this verse:

I am not facing any unusual temptation, only the plain, ordinary, everybody-has-faced-it kind.
God knows what I'm able to resist, so the temptation is not too hard for me.
The way to escape temptation is simply to bear patiently. The Greek word is hupophero, and it's not one we hear a lot about these days.

The other thing that I find interesting is the role of the translator in determining what I believe about things like temptation. I guess personal study is worth something after all!

Priorities and Compulsion

2008-02-11T20:04:00.000-06:00

An appropriate topic for the first post in 3+ months? I think so!

In the time since the last post here, I have often marveled at the people who seem to be able to keep up a regular schedule of updates to their blogs. In some cases it's almost a stream-of-consciousness thing, so perhaps there's not much effort, but for many of the blogs in this sidebar, there is substantive content every time. How do they do it? In 1 Corinthians 9:16-17 Paul says that he is "compelled to preach" and doesn't really do it voluntarily. Maybe that's the blogger's secret as well?

In any case, the central message from the last half of 1 Corinthians is that we need to get our priorities right and focus on what's important. I think this is probably the biggest challenge facing our generation. We live in a time when there is no quiet. Our world constantly SCREAMS at us for attention. We are constantly assailed by good, important, worthwhile things that really need our attention RIGHT NOW!

This is why churches face such difficulty in finding teachers, choir members, and other volunteers. This is why no one goes to Sunday evening worship anymore. This is why so few Christians spend any time in Bible study. We simply do not need another "activity" to fill our time. There are too many things we're ignoring already for us to add one more.

Why would I ever ignore the important and urgent things in my life in order to spend time in Bible study or prayer? There's only one reason I can think of - because I was compelled to do it. I need to understand that this faith I profess makes demands on my behavior.

God has a call on my life and on yours. We are compelled to obey, or admit that our faith is a sham.

Maintaining the Temple

2007-11-05T18:33:00.000-06:00

Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple. -- 1 Corinthians 3:16–17 (NIV)

We commonly see this as a call to care for our bodies, but it can also refer to caring for the church body. We are the church, the body of Christ, and in this passage Paul calls us to care for the church.

Most people who look into such things seem to think that church attendance is declining. Here are a couple of references to look at (not all aligned with Christian beliefs, so be wary!):

Special Report: The American Church in Crisis
The Barna Group
Did You Really Go To Church This Week?
ReligiousTolerance.org

So, the church in America (that's us) seems to be facing some difficulties. We have a responsibility to care for the health of the body. The question is, "What do we do?"

Here are my questions...

Why does our church exist? Not just in general terms (to spread the gospel, reach the lost, etc.), but specifically our church, in our location, in our time. Why is this church here?
What does our church need to become in order to fulfill its reason for existence? Which areas of ministry need to be sustained, and what new areas of growth need to be addressed?
Why are you and I here as a part of this body of believers? Again, the details are important. What part do I play in this body? Why am I here?
Finally, What must I become in order to maintain this church and keep it healthy? What areas do I need to apply my gifts or grow new talents?

These are difficult questions if you try to answer them thoughtfully. It may require more from us than we had expected!

Rewards in Heaven

2007-11-03T13:18:00.000-05:00

I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. -- Luke 16:9 (NIV)

The parable of the dishonest manager (Luke 16:1-13) has got to be the most puzzling parable in the Bible. Jesus seems to be telling us that we ought to use any worldly riches we get to curry favor with those who can welcome us in heaven. In short, we ought to help others so they will have a good word to say about us later.

Parables are clearly intended to be more than puzzling little stories. Matthew Henry says it well, "...the divine revelation of both these in the gospel is intended to engage and quicken us to the practice of Christian duties..." We are supposed to learn something about how to live our lives properly.

The manager was about to be fired for failing to carry out his duties properly. Jesus commends him for taking the resources he had temporary control over (his master's) and applying them to his own benefit. To make it worse, he says that his followers are not this shrewd and implies they need to be more clever!

I have long been reluctant to even accept the idea of heavenly "rewards" that were contingent on earthly performance. It seems to cheapen the gospel to think that I would do good here on earth in order to get something for myself. Where is the selflessness of the gospel in this idea? However, the notion of heavenly rewards is clearly taught in the Bible.

Maybe the best I can do at this point is to understand that there's more to proper living than salvation. We tend to behave as if the only thing that really matters is accepting Jesus as Savior. It seems there is more to it than that. How we live our lives here on earth will have an impact on how we will live in heaven. More study is in order on this one!

Committed?

2007-09-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

Romans 7:21-23 (NIV)

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

I've had a question rolling around in my mind for the past few weeks, and perhaps it's an appropriate topic for the first post after this long silence. The question is this, "Why do I fail to do the things I know I should, and instead do the things I probably shouldn't?"

Here's a simple list:

Things I Should Do	Things I Shouldn't Do
Update the blog	Watch TV
Pray	Play games
Read the Bible	Random web surfing
Exercise	Read sci-fi novels
Lose weight	Eat junk food

As near as I can tell, I pretty much avoid the left side and concentrate on the right. Why is that?

...more to come on this topic.

Does Prayer Change God?

2007-06-30T11:56:00.000-05:00

This is the title of a chapter in Philip Yancey's book "Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference" and a question I have fretted over for a long time.

Here's the basic problem, as stated by Origen, one of the early fathers of the Christian church.

"First, if God foreknows what will come to be and if it must happen, then prayer is in vain. Second, if everything happens according to God's will and if what He wills is fixed and none of the things He wills can be changed, then prayer is in vain."

Origen is focusing on the changeless nature of God, His complete knowledge of everything, and His complete power over creation. God knows everything, can do anything, and never changes. What possible place is there for prayer?

Yancey spends a whole chapter (and more) on this conundrum, putting forward a number of ideas. My favorite by far is a quote from C.S.Lewis responding to the question, "If God knows what is best and always does good, then won't He do it whether we pray or not?" Lewis responds,

"Why wash your hands? If God intends them to be clean, they'll come clean without you washing them... Why ask for the salt? Why put on your boots? Why do anything?"

Why indeed. I suppose it's an obvious line of thinking, but one I have never really thought about. The question is not so much, "Why does God want me to pray?" as "Why did God arrange creation so that I can manipulate reality at all?"

God doesn't need me to do anything. He is able to do what ever he chooses without my help, and in fact that seems to me to be a more efficient way to get things done. Yet, God consistently chooses to involve me in his world. C.S. Lewis writes, "For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures."

What's Church for Anyway?

2007-06-25T18:37:00.000-05:00

Our church has recently chartered a "5-Year Vision" task force to look at what we need to be doing over the next five years and where the church should be focusing it's efforts. It's got me thinking about the reason for the existence of the church, and what a church needs to be in this rapid-paced, partly-virtual, totally-connected world of ours.

It seems to me that the traditional answers of fellowship, worship, and instruction are lacking something in the time of the Internet. People used to find community by physical association with other people...going to the same place and interacting face-to-face. Even the telephone was considered somewhat impersonal. In my experience, that is becoming less and less common. More people interact by email, chat, or IM. The telephone has become an intimate communication medium. We still write letters, but only for "social formula" reasons like thank you notes and wedding invitations. Everyone is too busy to actually spend the time to travel to a common physical location and interact. It seems so wasteful and inefficient.

So, what does the church look like in this society? If we persist in seeing the church as a place we all meet to do spiritual things, then I fear the institution is doomed to decline. How do we take the gospel message and Paul's admonition in Hebrews 10:25 -

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

We clearly must continue to "meet," but how and why and where? Is this the church?

Living a Choreographed Life

2007-06-01T17:21:00.000-05:00

This week we're starting a new series called "Life is a Highway," which seems to call up the tune from the Disney movie Cars. I confess to having not made the connection myself, perhaps because I haven't felt compelled to see the movie.

In any case, we're starting out talking about 2 Peter 1:1-11. Peter uses a fascinating Greek word twice in this passage. Without knowing Greek, I don't know how you would ever find this, but it's an interesting idea. The word is "epichoregeo," which means to supply or to furnish. The word comes from the word for leading and furnishing a band of dancers and singers.

The fascinating bit (I know you're dying to know) is that this is where we get our word "choreograph." Peter uses the word in verse 5:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;

and again in verse 11:

and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

(italics are translated from epichoregeo)

When we apply our usage of the word "choreograph" to the passage it yields an interesting insight. If we arrange our lives so as to follow the pattern of the dance Jesus has shown us, then we will also dance into the eternal kingdom!

A Picture of Jesus

2007-05-26T21:49:00.001-05:00

I'd love to have a talent like this guy does...

Violence and the X-Rated Bible

2007-05-26T08:58:00.000-05:00

The last three chapters of Judges (Judges 19-21) tell one of the most violent stories in the whole Bible. It's the kind of story that would get a movie rated "R" or worse, and that would cause me to avoid it and recommend others do the same.

Matthew Henry captures it well:

Into the book of the wars of the Lord the story of this chapter must be brought, but it looks as sad and uncomfortable as any article in all that history; for there is nothing in it that looks in the least bright or pleasant...

I have to wonder what purpose there is in including such a story in the Bible. What spiritual benefit is there to reading such a story? It seems to be a pointless and offensive description of appalling behavior by a bunch of mostly anonymous Israelites.

In North America we live in a pretty safe and stable society. We are mostly insulated from evil on the scale described in this story. We hear about such things on the news, but they often don't impact us directly. We are shocked when we are confronted with the things that happened at the World Trade Center, Virginia Tech, Waco, and Oklahoma City.

Our personal experience of evil is more abstract, more lightweight. It revolves around things like gossip, greed, lust, lying, overeating, and cussing. Now these things are sin, but they don't seem to rise to the level of the rape, murder, and kidnapping that we find in the Bible. We have a tendency to trivialize the evil in our lives and see our sins as mostly minor and unimportant. That's a dangerous attitude.

So, what's the point of the story of the Levite and his concubine? Perhaps it shows us what happens when we take things into our own hands and make our own decisions. We think we're good people, but then the Israelites were God's chosen people and look how they behaved when "everyone did whatever they wanted." (Judges 21:25) Left to our own desires we seem to make poor choices about moral matters. If unrestrained, there seems to be no limit to the extent to which we will allow evil to spread until we are consumed.

The only solution to the dilemma seems to be that we constantly strive to figure out what God wants us to be doing. Even this is imperfect, because we aren't able to fully understand God, and so we will regularly misunderstand his instructions. Still, this is better than simply doing what ever we want.

Here are what others have to say on the topic...
Why is there evil in the world?
Violence in the Bible
Does biblical violence cause aggressive readers?

If A Little is Good, Is More Better?

2007-05-04T19:11:00.000-05:00

Here's another economics book for you... Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben. Now, I haven't actually read the book, but I did read all the reviews on Amazon so I can speak with authority about its contents. :-)

McKibbin argues that as a society, the West is over-consuming resources and endangering the planet as a result. To me this sounds a bit like The Limits To Growth published in the early 1970s by The Club of Rome. It made somewhat similar arguments about the coming demise of the planet due to unbridled growth. Most of those predictions have not come to pass because they did not consider the advance of technology and our increasing ability to produce. McKibbon makes a more subtle argument, but perhaps falls victim to a similar extrapolation error.

The really interesting thing that he seems to be saying is that "more" is no longer making us happy, and that perhaps there's a better way. On his web page, McKibben makes the assertion, "For the first time in human history, 'more' is no longer synonymous with 'better'—indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites."

This then is the riddle. Most of us would agree that the unrestrained pursuit of material riches is not good and will not ultimately make us happy. Yet as a society we seem to be doing it anyway. According to an article in Slate, "the country now possesses some 1.875 billion square feet of personal storage." This has grown by 75% in the last 10 years, and these facilities boast a 90% occupancy rate. On top of this, in the last 20 years the size of the average American home has increased by about 700 sq ft. We have bigger homes and still feel the need to lease additional storage space for our "stuff."

You you see anything wrong with this picture?

And, by the way... do YOU have a storage locker?

Open Source Truth - The Antithesis of Absolutes?

2007-04-29T13:45:00.000-05:00

We talked for a minute today about a new religion that developed in the 1990s around the open source idea from the software world. It's called Yoism. Here are a couple of excerpts from Wikipedia (of course!) explaining what "open source religion" is:

Open source religions attempt to employ open source methodologies in the creation of religious belief systems. As such, their systems of beliefs are created through a continuous process of refinement and dialogue among the believers themselves.

Among the first examples of this movement, Yoans (followers of a religion called Yoism) claim that their version of open source religion does not have allegiance to any spiritual guide, rather the sense of authority emerges from the group via consensus.

It seems to me that the issue here revolves notion the idea that "truth" is something that "emerges from the group via consensus." This runs contrary even to our observation of the physical world around us (which Yoans would claim as the basis for truth). The laws upon which the physical world operates are independent of our "consensus" concerning them. The whole scientific establishment is founded on the belief that things like gravity are not dependent on individual (or group) opinions.

To remove the independent source of truth is to remove it's meaning. If truth is something I or we can create ourselves, then it is arbitrary and useless as a guide or standard for behavior. Only the truth I must "discover" not "create" has value. If I must discover truth then it must have been created by something outside of me and more than me.

I come back to what I said earlier, God=Truth. If God is not the source of truth, then I feel no inclination to attempt to abide by truth's dictates.

For more on the topic, check out relativism on C.A.R.M.

Right and Wrong, Absolutely!

2007-04-27T19:20:00.000-05:00

This week we're looking at the story in Judges 17 of a man named Micah, and his mother (unnamed, of course). The story is pretty simple:

Micah steals a lot of silver from his mother (about 100 years wages).
Micah gets worried about being cursed, and returns the silver.
Micah's mother praises him and consecrates the silver to God.
Micah's mother makes an idol of part of the silver and keeps the rest.
Micah makes a shrine in the house and names his son as priest.
An itinerant Levite wanders by and Micah hires him as priest.
Micah decides God will now like him because he has his own priest.

In googling (a verb?) this story I find that there is a consensus opinion and a minority view. The consensus (e.g., here and here) is that Micah and Mom are idolaters or worse, and that this is the beginning of the nation's fall. There is however, a minority view (e.g., here) that would suggest Micah was sincerely trying to do what was right.

Perhaps the question to answer here concerns what is right and wrong. Does the fact that there is some argument in this case mean that there's some doubt? Is there always a right thing to do?

I think so. There is a right and a wrong in every situation. No exceptions. If God is all-knowing, then he certainly knows about the details of every situation I face. He has a preference in every decision I make, and by definition, that preference is what we call "right."

That leaves us trying to decide what's right, but that's a topic for another post!

Do You Cheat?

2007-04-24T21:02:00.000-05:00

Do you ever cheat on things? Ever put down deductions on your taxes that were a bit of an exaggeration? Freakonomics is a fascinating book by economist Steven Levitt that I read a few months ago. It appeals to the number-cruncher in me because Levitt draws amazing conclusions from a detailed analysis of ordinary data. On the subject of cheating, Levitt calls it "a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor." He does a remarkable analysis of student test scores in the Chicago Public School system and concludes that roughly 5% of the teachers were cheating to make their student's performance (and thus their own) seem better. Teachers!

So what about you...do you ever cheat? Can you justify cheating?

Or perhaps, do you simply try not to get caught!

Prayer

2007-04-22T08:20:00.000-05:00

This has nothing to do with the lesson this week, but it struck me as one of those "profound" things that appear seemingly from out of nowhere.

I was browsing (not really reading) through Philip Yancey's book Prayer - Does It Make Any Difference and came across this sentence:

"Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to."

I don't know about you, but for me this is akin to mind reading! How did he capture my confusion so clearly?

Amazing!

Getting Even

2007-04-16T20:21:00.000-05:00

One of the most famous and least understood figures in the Bible has got to be Samson. Everybody learns as a child in Sunday school about the strongman whose strength was lost when his hair was cut, but who knocked down the temple when he recuperated.

But how many people actually ever go read Judges 14 & 15 to find out what Samson was really like. He was a nasty, dangerous man with an ego the size of Texas. He was the kind of guy who always got even. You didn't mess with Samson and live to tell about it.

There's something attractive in revenge. We really like to see the bad guys get nailed...so much so that we're happy to set things right ourselves if it looks like nobody else is going to do it. To prove this all you have to do is cut somebody off, or drive too slowly in the left lane on one of Houston's freeways!

One observation from the story of Samson (especially Judges 15) is that revenge is never done. It always escalates. I take revenge on someone who then feels justified in getting even with me, then I need to get them back, and so on.

So my questions... What is it in us that wants to get even? The Bible says we are created in the image of God. Is this a part of God's character? ..."It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. - Rom 12:19 (NIV) (Of course, you need to read the first part of that verse as well where it says, "Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath,...)

So which is it to be...revenge or not...and more important why? The Sunday school answers "blessed are the meek," "love everybody," and "turn the other cheek" aren't really good enough to explain why we seem to be driven to make people pay for their wrongs. Does God turn the other cheek? Samson didn't, and he was a hero, right?

Along the road to Emmaus

2007-04-08T15:06:00.000-05:00

In Luke 24:13-35, the Bible describes a fascinating encounter between Jesus and two of his disciples (Cleopas and another disciple). The fascinating bit is that they walked and talked for quite a while without the disciples recognizing Jesus. As disciples they must have known Jesus by sight, but something was in the way (v16).

The encounter occurred after what must have been a "big deal" event for these disciples...their leader/teacher had been arrested and executed. It's unimaginable that they would have been ignorant of the events. They would have heard everything that was to be heard about what had happened and discussed it with others (v14). Somehow they missed, or more likely, refused to believe (v23-24) the news of the resurrection! (Perhaps that's what they were arguing about in v15?) They acted as if Jesus were dead, even in the way they retold the story. There is a sense of discouragement and disappointment in the words, "We were hoping he was the One..."

"Then their eyes were opened..." Notice that they did not open their eyes. They recognized Jesus because he opened their eyes. What a great picture of how we come to belief. Jesus is right there in front of us but we don't recognize him until he opens our eyes. Nothing has really changed except us, but everything is different.

I think what happens next in the story is what's at the very core of what it is to live the Christian life. The two disciples "that very hour" got up and went back to be with other believers and to tell people of their experience. It was late in the day and travel after dark was dangerous, but they didn't care. Their lives were changed and they had to act.

That's what the resurrection means. It's the most important event in history and the most important thing for us to really understand as Christians. It changes everything for us, and it changes us. Once we grasp the truth of this one event we can't remain the same people. It compels us to personal evangelism, joyful worship, fellowship with other believers, Bible study, and prayer.

Living Forever

2007-04-07T10:32:00.000-05:00

Do you want to live forever with a healthy mind and body? Most people would say that they would on the condition that their "quality of life" was OK. We almost universally want to live rather than die.

I went to hear a talk this week given by Ray Kurzweil. One of the topics he covered was Living Forever. His assertion is that withing a fairly short period of time (under 50 years) pervasive nanotechnology will enable us to completely eliminate disease and effectively live forever. Of course, eliminating disease doesn't really mean we'll live forever. Accidents and suicide are still threats. I did more investigating and spreadsheeting than I should have, and estimate that eliminating all disease would increase the expected lifespan for a someone living in the US from 78 years to about 1300 years (Based on data from NSC and NCHS).

The question is this, "Is it a sin to prolong our lives by artificial means?" Should we try to live here forever? When Christians say we're going to live forever we don't mean here on earth we mean in heaven after our resurrection. We agree intellectually with Paul in Philippians 1:23-24 when he says it's better to die and be with Christ, but we don't actually live that way! That would mean not going to the doctor when we got sick, not bothering to go to the hospital after an accident, etc. Nonsensical for most of us.

The resurrection means that we will live forever, but not here. Our desire to live forever is one of those "God fingerprint" things. God made us to live forever and so we desire to live forever. In that sense, prolonging life is in God's will. Whether we prolong our life here or not is mostly irrelevant, but life is clearly a "good thing."

Easter -- "The Passion"

2007-04-02T20:40:00.000-05:00

This week's lesson is, of course, the Easter lesson and the first comment I encounter is that by now most people will have seen Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ. Except me. I'm not sure why, but the movie has never really appealed to me enough to make me either go to the theater or even rent the DVD. Maybe it's just because I tend to not be a fan of the brutally honest historical documentary style that I think Gibson has used.

I don't go to the movies to be scared, grossed out, or lectured. There's lots of that available for free in the real world. I go to the movies to see happy stories. Maybe that's why Seth and I disagree on The Ultimate Gift.

Anyway, on to the lesson... What if there had never been a resurrection?

Wow! What a question. It's at the core of who we should be as believers. The resurrection is the very thing that motivates and demands we BE different people.

I'll be back after some surfing...

The Process of Preparing

2007-04-02T05:21:00.000-05:00

This blog is a bit of an experiment. I imagine this should be the first line in may blogs because most of us are not graced with the certain assurance that others will ever read the things we write. That’s certainly true in my case.

I teach a Sunday school class in a Baptist church in South Texas. That probably tells you something about the likely content of my writings, but perhaps not as much as you may think it does! The process of preparing to teach a lesson for me is a sometimes frustrating, always enjoyable, unstructured romp through the amazing world of the Internet. Starting from the topic-of-the-week I attempt to put together something that will change a person’s life. If this is not the purpose of Sunday school, then I don’t know what is. It’s a sure thing for me because I find I am invariably changed by the process of preparing the lesson. If I listen carefully I can sometimes hear enough of what God wants said that He can touch others as well.

So, these pages may one day contain a chronicle of these journeys I take as I prepare. You’re invited to join in and add your own thoughts and experiences as you desire. Perhaps we will see God along the way. You never know. As I said, this is a bit of an experiment!