stop thinking

Trusting in God or using your Brain? Part 2

2007-07-31T13:38:00.000-07:00

More thoughts on Ezra. I don't think God is against us using our brains even when we have faith God will protect or guard us in potentially dangerous situations. However, the Ezra story is not as simple as a mutually exclusive decision to either trust God or trust Babylon. Historically, Israel found itself in deep water when it relied on foreign nations for its protection. In Isaiah 30, for example, God rails against his people for relying on Egypt. In Isaiah 36, the then king of Assyria, Sennacherib, ridicules King Hezekiah for relying on Egypt. Treaties with foreign nations was strictly forbidden in the Mosaic Law (Exodus 34:12,15; Deut 7:2; 23:6). Thus, not only is God's perceived omnipotence at stake, but reliance on the Babylonians is against the Torah. Thus Ezra is compelled to pray to God for safety.

What are the implications of this law for us now?

The law says:

Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. ¹³Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.¹⁴Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

¹⁵“Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. ¹⁶And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

Calvin, in his Harmony of the Law, includes this commandment under the Second, the commandment against making images. He calls it a "civil supplement" to the second commandment. In other words, this commandment in part expounds upon the second commandment and its applicability in the sphere of society. Calvin says that the point of this law is that God's people ought to avoid getting into relationships with wordly institutions and people such that the intimacy of these relationships might have a corrupting effect on the person of God. Basically, its the slippery slope argument, and Calvin sees this law in effect in the NT by way of Paul's injunction, for example, that believers ought not to be yoked to unbelievers.

The problem is, the spirit of the law seems to be the prevention of corruption of God's people. I'm not sure that's what Ezra had in mind when he declined asking Babylon for protection on the way home.

Kite Runner Renews My Love of Fiction

2007-07-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

My wife had been bugging me to read this book for ages. It wasn't that I didn't want to read it--it was more a matter of finding the time and getting in the right mind set to be able to read something for enjoyment without falling asleep.

Assuming Hosseini's descriptions of Afghanistan and its cultural milieu are accurate, I also found the book incredibly informative. It almost makes me want to take a trip to Afghanistan to find Kabul and look around.

I'm undecided on what Hosseini's final religious convictions are. I sensed that you got a picture of the best and worst Islam has to offer. Amir's father is the most enigmatic. He is a man of strong convictions, yet somehow fuzzy on who or what God is. He's especially cynical towards the religious establishment, particularly the teachers of Islam.

This book has renewed my love of fiction because I see now that a book like this can do only what good fiction can -- to suck you in and make you care so much that it hurts. Perhaps the most gratifying moment was when little Sohrab, full of his father's conviction and loyalty, burst Assif's eye with his slingshot. The book could have ended right there.

When I turned the last page, a strange sensation came over me, like, this is what salvation is all about. I'm still trying to figure out why the book had this effect on me. Anyway, its a great read and I see now why my wife begged me to read it.

Trusting in God or using your Brain?

2007-07-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

I was surprised by this passage in Ezra:

²¹There, by the Ahava Canal, I proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us and our children, with all our possessions. ²²I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us from enemies on the road, because we had told the king, “The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger is against all who forsake him.” ²³So we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and he answered our prayer.

Does trusting in God rule out safety precautions? Only if it is at the cost of compromising your testimony?

"This generation?"

2007-07-26T06:33:00.000-07:00

Jesus said, in Mark 13:31 while talking about the end times,

"I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away."

What did Jesus mean by "this generation"? I think there are basically three possibilities: literal, figuaritive, and combination.

Literal: Jesus literally meant that the generation of his listeners would actually see the events described in Mark 13 and that Jesus would return to collect the collect within about 40 years of his resurrection.

Figurative: "this generation" refers not to the literal generation of Jesus' hearers, but to the generations of Jesus' followers that will experience the gathering of the elect over the course of history until Jesus' progressive return is complete.

Combination: Jesus' words are both literal and figurative in the sense that Jesus' followers do experience the trauma described in Mark 13, but they don't experience the full return of Christ. They experience a portion of the "gathering" as the Holy Spirit begins to build the church in the first century. "This generation" also figuratively applies to Christians of all ages who are experience tribulation and wars and earthquakes, the elect who are being gathered as the Son of Man comes slowly towards earth with "great power and glory."

My conclusions:
* "this generation" is both literal and figurative
* the coming of the Son of Man is progressive
* the gathering of the elect represents the growth of the church (not the rapture)
* the tribulations described in Mark 13 are characteristic of all history leading up to the arrival of the Son of Man
* the climactic moment of return could be at any moment now

David's Son is his Lord?

2007-07-25T12:11:00.001-07:00

I've been confused about Jesus' retort to the Pharisees when he quoted from Psalm 110 saying, "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.'"

Jesus continues, "David calls him Lord, so how can he be his son?" The crowds derives great enjoyment from hearing Jesus stump the scribes. This is in Mark 12.

Maybe it seems obvious to you, but I had to study this a little to make sense of why the retort packed a punch which the crowds found interesting.

Here's the deal. There was a Messianic expectation during this period, and the expected Messiah was thought to come from the line of David. The Jews awaited a hero who would rescue the Jews from political oppression and restore the country to its former glory. This was based on the prophecies of Isaiah and others.

However, and this is what Jesus picks up on, there is also evidence in scripture that the coming Messiah would be greater than the former kings, even king David. Psalm 110 makes this point. It is a Psalm of David, but David is not writing about his own kingship. David writes that "the Lord declares to my Lord..." The first "Lord" is the tetragramaton, referring to the God of Abraham, the Great "I Am." The second "Lord" is "Adonai," which is synonymous to "lord" as a title of headship or authority. Clearly, David intends to convey a dual allegiance to two "Lords," one who is God, Yahweh, and the other, one who sits at Yahweh's right hand and functions both as eternal priest and king of the world. How David could conceive of a second "Lord," and how he envisioned the relationship between these two Lords is impossible to determine. Except that Jesus says that he spoke through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus rightly points out that the position of Messiah, the "Adonai" of Psalm 110, is greater than David. But Jesus uses this point to baffle the scribes by asking them how the Messiah could be David's son if the Messiah is greater than David?" The premise that jeopardizes this assertion is that a son (or descendant) cannot be greater than his father. This reverses the Mosaic law, specifically, the fifth commandment, which places the children in a position of subservience to the parents. For David to call his son (or his descendent) his Lord would be absurd (and unlawful).

The scribes stand speechless because there is no way to respond to this. Either they must deny that the Messiah is the Son of David, or they must deny that the Messiah is greater than David. If they deny that the Messiah is the son of David, but affirm that the Messiah is greater than David, then they must say that the Messiah will have royal blood based outside of David's bloodline. If they deny that the Messiah is greater than David, but maintain that the Messiah is the Son of David, then they contradict Psalm 110 and must settle for a less than David-like king to rescue them from Roman oppression.

To avoid either of these pitfalls, the scribes have only option -- to affirm the divine fatherhood of the Messiah as the source of his royalty, and to affirm the greatness of the Messiah as being the Lord of David in accord with the scriptures. The problem with this option is that it requires David-like submission to the Son of David because this Messiah is also the Son of God.

Best Fishing of my life

2007-06-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

Went blue fishing with John Algera and some others yesterday out of Belmar, NJ on a party boat ($45 a person). We drove out about an hour into the bay and we had an absolutely phenomenal time. After the dog fish stopped bothering us (little sharks that are good for nothing), there was about a two hour stretch in which a nice size blue fish would hit your line practically every cast. However, what I didn't know is that I get really sea sick on big boats if they stop moving. After catching two fish, I had to sit most of the time out in order not to ralph all over the boat. But when I'd feel be better, I'd get right back there on the pole. Our group of five brought about a hundred pounds of blue fish home. We had fun running all over town giving it to various people after we got back. We grilled a couple fillets ourselves when we got home, too. Great day. Apparently, this was some of the greatest blue fishing that John had ever seen.

Max and Me

2007-05-29T10:25:00.001-07:00

I just love my cat

Lord, I just...

2007-05-29T09:56:00.001-07:00

Back in Seminary, the Grey Wizzard had us pray at the beginning of class and he specifically asked that none of us ever use the word "just" when we pray. As in, "Lord, we just come to you today, and, we just want to thank you for all your blessings, etc..." Maybe you've been a victim of having to listen to "just" prayers, or maybe you are a "just pray-er" yourself. I have to admit, it's an easy pattern to slip into, and it sounds awfully evangelical. But after my brother railed against "just prayers" the other day, it reminded me of a conclusion I came to before and I thought I'd just share it with you.

Here's how the thinking goes. The anti-just-prayers say, why would you "just" pray anything, as if prayer was a matter of asking God for the bare minimum. "Just" in this sense could be substituted for "only" or "merely." "I just want one!" you say as you grab that naughty chocolate truffle on the table of your host, as in, "I only want one." Or, when you yell at your kid, "Just get in the car," as in, "Just get in the car! Is that too much to ask?" So, when you come to prayer and and you say, "Lord, we just come to you in prayer and we just ask that..." it could sound as if you were unintentionally saying that you really didn't want to bother God with your measly requests but you only wanted to bring before him some little thing that you had on your mind.

Now, if that's just what "just" meant, I would agree. However, there just happens to be other uses of the word "just." In fact, in its adverbial form (which is what we're talking about), there's at least seven meanings. Here are seven listed in the American Heritage Dictionary:

Precisely; exactly: just enough salt.
Only a moment ago: He just arrived.
By a narrow margin; barely: just missed being hit; just caught the bus before it pulled away.
At a little distance: just down the road.
Merely; only: just a scratch.
Simply; certainly: It's just beautiful!
Perhaps; possibly: I just may go.

The objection to "just-prayers" is certainly in reference to Meaning Number 5. However, there are other ways "just" can be used also. For example, the man frustrated when his computer crashes says, "I just don't understand." In this case, "just" might mean "really" or "truly." Or when I email my parents to thank them for my graduation gift, I might have wrote, "I just want to thank you for the check you sent..." In this case, "just" is similar in usage to meaning number 5, as in, "I'm merely writing to thank you for the check." However, "just" doesn't convey the same sense that "merely" does, does it? I didn't mean to say, "I'm only writing you a thank you note because you sent me a gift." And nobody would have interpreted it that way. It means something more along the lines of, "This is a little note only to let you know you that I appreciate the gift you sent." Therefore, my conclusion is that "just" doesn't neceserilly minimize the significance of the verb it is modifying.

So, I would advise you "anti-just-pray-ers" to ease up a little and to let people pray how they want to pray. Just give it a rest, would ya?

Church Membership

2007-05-24T04:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,
I heard the other day that "church membership" is an aging phenomenon. A time is coming, and has now come, when people have church options and participate as much or as little in whichever church they feel like going to on Sunday morning. Their response to the idea of "joining" a church would be, "what for?"

I can see how this is a possibility, but I think that this kind of consumerist approach to church has such obvious implications that no right thinking person would ever approach the body of God in such a way. There's an obvious practical problem -- how are you ever going to get to know anybody or feel "connected" if there's no regularity. Secondly, church is sort of an acquired taste. You don't eat sushi once in a while if you don't like it. If you don't like it, you don't eat it. But if you do like it, you want to eat it all the time.

But I also think church operates much like other social institutions, and it seems that the idea of membership is as operative today as it ever has been. We're constantly "signing up" and becoming members of social networking websites (MySpace, facebooks, etc.), gyms, PTAs, country clubs, Frequent Flier clubs, societies, etc.

Being a "member" is cool. I'm a member at a gym. If you're not a member, you can't work out at my gym. I like that. I wonder if the problem with church membership is that the membership carries with it added responsibility, but not an obvious added privilege. Maybe people don't consider membership to a church because they can get what the church has to offer without signing up. Or can they? And if they can't, are we making that perfectly clear by how we do Sunday morning worship?

Bad news

2007-05-22T13:37:00.001-07:00

Apparently, this look is the cause of untold trouble for me. The "neutral" expression on most people's faces is between blank and mad. Mine borders on "what the heck is your problem?!!!"

Grand Rapids fun times

2007-05-22T13:33:00.001-07:00

Rubbing Off

2007-05-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

I met with a "student" of mine this morning. He asked me to teach him, but as I disciple him, I realize that I learn and change in this relationship also. He's a Puerto Rican from Hoboken in his mid-thirties. But I have him saying "dude." Like, "Dude, you never would believe what just happened to me." His friends are all, "Why you sayin' 'dude' all the time?" He says, "I got this white friend who always says it." I'm the 'white guy.' I think he's rubbing off on me, too. He thinks its funny that God used a burning bush to get Moses' attention. He says, "Any other jokah would'a tripped out, but Moses... He sees a bush burnin' and he's gotta come close and check it out... Like, 'why the he** ain't that bush burnin up?'" He's right. Moses is funny. And so is Paul. Paul is some crazy cracked-out jokah.

I think we do rub off on each other. Another friend told me what his mother said when he was young. In healthy relationships, we bring out the best in each other. She's right. But I think what's more true is that in relationship, we bring out the other in ourselves. We're bound for equilibrium as we become more and more like each the people we live with.

Commencement

2007-05-22T09:04:00.001-07:00

Graduation from Calvin Theological Seminary. What a blast. I leave Calvin with warm feelings. I'm quite sure that I will always enjoy a visit back. I'm confident that the education I received there has laid an adequate foundation for future ministry and learning. It was a good time.

Ben Boasts about his Sufferings as an MK

2007-05-13T14:25:00.000-07:00

¹⁶I repeat: Let no one take me for a fool. But if you do, then receive me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little boasting. ¹⁷In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool. ¹⁸Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast. ¹⁹You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! ²⁰In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. ²¹To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!

What anyone else dares to boast about—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast about. ²²Did they grow up in a foreign country? So did I. Are they MKs? So am I. Are they they descendants of church planters? So am I. ²³Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have been on more deputations trips, lived in more houses, taken more trains and flown on more air planes than any of them²⁴Five hundred times I received from my parents the four spanks minus one with a rice paddle. ²⁵Three times I was dragged out of church screaming, once I was ganged up on by ruffians , once had "inarizushi" spit on me, three times I was delayed in airports. ²⁶I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from crazy drivers, in danger from yakuza, in danger of missing the train, in danger from BB guns, in danger from pagans; in danger in the US, in danger in Japan, in danger on boats in hurricanes; and in danger from my "friends". ²⁷I have labored and toiled and have often had jet-lag, I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without fastfood; I have been cold without central heat and hot without central air. ²⁸Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the church plants. ²⁹Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

³⁰If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. ³¹The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am lying. ³²In Tokyo the governor under Emperor Hirohito had the imperial guard arrest me for shooting BB guns on neighborhood roof tops. ³³I was escorted in shame and handed over to the hands of my father.

Praying for God's Will II

2007-05-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, I said that the trick with prayer was to determine God's will.

Trick is a stupid word to use in this context. The Bible is filled with ideas about what God's will is. We know that in all situations, God works for the good of those who love him. So, we can pray that in the situations of our lives, whether good or bad, that God would work them for our good. We know that God's kingdom is being firmly and irrevocably established on earth. So we can pray for God's kingdom to come, as the Lord's prayer says. We know that in every situation, God's will will be done. So we can pray for God's will to be done. We know that God desires all people to come to a knowledge of him. So we can pray that too. We know that God desires our obedience. So we can pray that God help us to obey him. We know that God's Word does not return to him empty handed. So we can pray that our preaching is powerful and that it changes lives. When you think about it, there are lots of prayers we can pray that have a guaranteed "yes" from God. I think I'd do well to learn all of them, maybe to chart them out, and then to pray them as much as possible.

Praying for God's Will

2007-05-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

"Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven," reads the Lord's prayer.

I've discovered the key to always getting what you pray for. In any and every situation, if you pray for what God is already going to do, you will never be dissapointed. Is it possible to reach a point where I could allign my will so closely with God's that whenever I prayed, I received that for which I asked? I don't know, but I think its a worthy aspiration.

Repeatedly in the NT, the Bible teaches that Christians will receive what they ask for if they pray in Jesus' name and in groups. As a pastor, I find myself advocating for greater trust in the power of prayer. I want people to know that praying is not a waste of time, that it does make a difference. I point to these passages. But at the same time, I wonder why Jesus would say "you can ask for anything in my name" if he didn't mean it literally. I don't know of a single Christian who has always received what they've asked for in prayer. There's a man I know who's dying of sirocis of the liver. We prayed for a healing. He is still dying. In fact, he's worse now despite the interferon medication. Obviously, Jesus could not have meant that we'd receive whatever we asked for in every situation. Imagine the disasters we'd bring upon ourselves if God always gave us whatever we asked for.

So, despite the unconditional sound of the promise, it can't be unconditional. What's the condition? I think the condition is God's will. We will receive whatever we ask for in prayer if we pray for God's will to be done. The trick is knowing God's will.

Idolatry IV

2007-05-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

So here's my tentative conclusion. All sin, no matter what commandment it falls under is also a violation of the first commandment. I divide "not having other gods besides Me" into 1) acknowledging, obeying and worshipping the one true God 2) not acknowledging or obeying or worshipping or listening to other gods (include the god of self). 3) not acting in such a way as to insinuate that God is not God.

Therefore, to answer my original question, we, like the Israelites of old, should pay attention to the prophetic warnings concerning the first commandment. Though we may not burn incense to Baal or have sex with shrine prostitutes, we defy the first commandment every time we go against his will. To go against God's will, as I've said before, is to spit on the feet of the one who deserves all glory and honor. To give God anything less than everything is to deny what's due him. When we sin, we throw God aside in favor of another "god," be it an imagined god or an idea or a desire, etc.

(As a side note, idolatry is probably not the best catchall to describe sins breaking the first commandment. What would you call them?)

Sovereignty Bordering on Pettiness?

2007-05-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

Dear God,
Last night, my wife woke me up at 3:30 am. She stomped on the floor and then turned the fan up from "light" to "medium" in order to drown out the noise from the TV downstairs. She wanted me to go down and wake up their parents to ask them to tell their kids to turn it down. I didn't want to do that because I feel bad bothering people on petty things. So, I told her that if she wanted them to turn the TV down, she should go down there and ask them herself. She's a big girl. She can do it. She was very angry, so she did. She knocked on their door. Nothing happened.

She came back up. We lay down and try to fall asleep despite the noise, still audible despite the fan being on medium. I went down there myself. I rang on the door bell twice. I knocked a few times. No response. I went back to bed. God, that is when I prayed to you, "Please make it stop." You did not listen. The noise did not stop. We could not fall asleep because we could not ignore the noise. It was 4:00 am and still, the TV sounds continued to bother us. Lord, I begged with you, "Please make it stop." You said, No. And you let the noise continue. Why? Why would you wake us up at 3:30. What good does that do anybody? Are you trying to teach us a lesson? Are you trying to make us get by on less sleep? Do you want us to be grumpy and tired all day? Do you want us to confront our neighbors for being inconsiderate with their loud TVs in order that by some chance, we might develop a better relationship with them?

God, please help me to understand.

Idolatry III

2007-05-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

So are we guilty of having other gods or not, that is the question. What is the positive and negative import of this command? What sphere of applicability does this commandment pertain to?

Let's go to the Heidelberg Catechism:

Q. What does the Lord require
in the first commandment?

A. That I, not wanting to endanger my very salvation,
avoid and shun
all idolatry, magic, superstitious rites,
and prayer to saints or to other creatures.

That I sincerely acknowledge the only true God,
trust him alone,
look to him for every good thing
humbly and patiently,
love him, fear him, and honor him
with all my heart.

In short,
that I give up anything
rather than go against his will in any way.

This answer is divided up into 1) the "negative force" of the command, the 2) "positive force," and 3) a summary. Every "though shall not" carries with it a range of things that are included or implied by the command itself. The command functions as a synecdoche of the whole. The negative force seems to prohibit any meddling in religious practices that does not directly pertain to God himself. The implied "positive force" is the range of injunctions that are included in the command. For example, "do not hit your mother" would imply, "be kind to your mother." The positive force is the opposite of the negative force. All our religious allegiances, practices, reverence, worship, etc., ought to be directed to the one true God and ought to be done to the extreme measure (with all my heart).

The summary is funny, but it gets back to what I had mentioned earlier, that idolatry seems to be a stepping stone towards all other immoral behavior. The catechism summarizes, "have no other gods besides me," as "do everything you can to stay within God's prescriptive will." How does the catechism jump from "don't have other gods besides me," to "do exactly what I want you to do all the time"? Is breaking even a minor law always simultaneously breaking the first commandment? If you take the catechism literally, then yes.

How and why? I'm not sure, but I'm going to take a stab at it. Say that I steal a car for no purpose other than because I want the car. I've broken the Eighth Commandment. By breaking the commandment, I've intentionally resisted and contradicted God's rule for my life. In this situation, I not only reject God's rule, but I've rejected God himself. To reject God's rule is to deny that God's moral standard has bearing on my life. The only person who has the audacity to do such a thing is the person who, if even for an instant, denies that God is God. I cannot simultaneously believe that God is the creator of the universe who holds my tiny life in his merciful hand and then intentionally spurn that hand. Either I'm crazy, or I have no fear of God. If I have no fear of God, then I do not know God and I've rejected him as God. Therefore, I've broken the first commandment.

Think of it this way. Imagine that the we lived in a dictatorship under a man who had absolute control of the entire country and could give the death sentence at a mere whim. In this culture, remember that spitting upon the feet of a man is considered the greatest offense to his honor. And say that this man, with all his pomp, occassionally bestows upon his small nation the pleasure of his presence as he parades through the capital city on foot amid throngs of his people. Now, say that an angry person who dislikes the dictator pushes his way towards the dictator and spits on his feet as he passes. Either 1) he wishes to die and does so intentionally, 2) or he does so for the sheer fact that he desired to do so, but he does not expect to die. In the first case, the man is clearly mad. In the second case, the man has demonstrated that he does not truly believe that the leader of his country is a dictator. Either he thinks that there's a greater power out there that will rescue him for his intollerable action (another god), or he thinks that this dictator will simply dismiss the insult and move on. In that case, he has mistaken the dictator for someone else. Any way you look at it, the man is either mad, or he has gotten the question wrong as to who has the ultimate authority in that country. When we sin, we spit on the feet of a benevolent dictator.

There is a second way in which stealing the car is a violation of the first command. The fact that I'm rejecting God's moral rule means that I've preferred a law (or moral system) which allows me to steal the car. Only gods can impose moral systems on humans. Therefore, either I've exchanged God for another god, or I've made myself the god of my own life. In either case, I've broken the first commandment.

broken arm update

2007-05-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

Followed up with an orthopedic doctor today. Yes, it is broken, but the least serious kind of break, a non-displaced fracture. It's close to the elbow on my radius which makes twisting my forearm very painful. But good news: no hard cast. I'll have it in a sling for two weeks, and then I can take the sling off and begin using it for very light light movement.

Idolatry II

2007-05-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

Please see Dana's quote in "Idolatry I." It's very helpful. Stephen Charnock believes we make idols out of things that we use to supplement our happiness instead of focusing in and relying on God (for our happiness). Or, perhaps, we supplement God with others things in order to create a hybrid chief good, instead of believing that God alone is the chief good.

The reason I'm leery to go this route, however, is because I distinctly remember hearing something that the Rev. Dr. VanReken (Calvin Sem) said about the first commandment. He cautioned us on accusing the alcoholic of making alcohol his god, or the billionaire of making money his god. A sort of popular notion of an "idol" is anything we "worship." Thus, it's natural to jump to the conclusion that since the alcoholic spends all his time, money and energy on that next binge, he "worships" alcohol--alcohol becomes his idol. However, alcohol is not a god for the alcoholic in the same sense that the golden calf was a God for the Israelites. Nor does the alcoholic worship the alcohol in the same sense that the Israelites worshipped the idol.

When the Israelites took off their necklaces and rings and built a golden calf, this is what they said: "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." They attributed their salvation to the object that the priests had designed for them and Yahweh was joined with the calf, worshipped together as "your gods."

The reason for Dr. VanReken's caution was that the command to not have other gods besides God is in direct reference to other actual gods, be they imagined, created or demons. The alcoholic does not believe that his alcohol is a god, or that the alcohol carries his salvation. In fact, most recovering alcoholics I know felt under bondage to alcohol and despised their addiction to it.

If having other gods is strictly a matter of having other actual gods, are we in the secular west safe from breaking this commandment?

The Instrument of Death

2007-05-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

possible arm break

2007-05-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I prayed that God would begin to prepare me for effective ministry in the city and that he would teach me any lessons I needed to learn despite the cost. Last night, I was feeling fearless and used my "mentoring session" to solicit my mentee's advice on a cool new skateboard. We went to the mall and I bought a sweet one. I took it to my church parking lot only to have some AA members ask me if I was ok. I quickly got up from the ground to show them that I was alive, but I was pretty sure I'd broken something because of the sheer pain, hot flashes, and profuse sweat which poured down my face. Lesson learned: wrecklessness has it's cost and no, I'm not cool.

Idolatry

2007-04-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Hosea closely lately, and its reaffirmed my conviction that Israel's predominant sin in the Biblical times is that of having other gods--the breaking of the 1st commandment. In Hosea, all the other injustices and perversions that are mentioned seem to be fallout from this cardinal vice. Many of the sins themselves are associated with Baal worship. But besides pagan worship practices, it also seems that the worship of other gods leads to other sins. Hosea 4:13 "They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar and terebinth, where the shade is pleasant. Therefore your daughters turn to prostitution and your daughters-in-law to adultery." So, here, the worship of foreign gods leads to prostitution and adultery.

A key hermeneutical step is needed in order to apply these passages to our time. But is the breaking of the first commandment the primary sin of our time? Do we have other gods? Are we like Israel of old, or do we have other problems? What, if any, gods do we have besides God? I'm going to dig up some old seminary notes and get back to this. I think it's important to answer this question. Preaching the latter prophets makes no sense unless we can understand how the law continues to have applicability in our time.

Friendship Evangelism Part 2

2007-04-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

I wonder if my initial comments about friendship evangelism were a bit naive. Maybe professional "befriending" is actually a commonly accepted phenomenon. People talk about developing networks. This happens on different levels, from the exchange of business cards, to schmoozing at corporate events, etc. It happens in sales. It happens in college. If a student is wise, he/she'll not burn any bridges in classes through obnoxious rhetoric, will keep in touch with his/her favorite professors, and will use those connections for a variety of purposes--getting good recommendations, finding jobs, soliciting advice, etc.

Here's what I'm realizing. Being intentional about developing "networks" or "friends" doesn't necessarily make it insincere. The fact of the matter is that we constantly depend on other people in order to function in our lives. What has happened, I believe, is that the relationship aspect of these dependencies has, in the world of groceries, malls, and Internet shopping, etc., been eliminated. I don't need to know my bank teller in order to trust that when I deposit 1,000 into checking that it goes into the right account. All this stuff is controlled by mechanisms. As a result, a dichotomy has emerged between relationships which are "strictly for meeting needs," and relationships which are strictly social/friendly. Having gotten used to that, I think that when the separation begins to blur again, I feel uncomfortable and dishonest.

This is especially true as an evangelist. For example, I want to grow the church and evangelize by adding new members to the congregation. You, a stranger, and definitely in need of conversion (sorry for the crass terms), walk into our ALPHA program. You better believe that I'm going to go out of my way to be friendly and welcoming to you. Question: am I being civil and hospitable because it's my job to grow the church, or because I care about your salvation, or because I genuinely love strangers and want to be friends with people I've met only once?

It's a tricky business. And the evangelist better care about more than simply whether or not the stranger gets into Heaven. Even though the question of a person's eternal salvation is of grave importance to me, I recognize that it is inhuman to develop a relationship with someone strictly on the grounds that you desire for this relationship to result in their conversion. But maybe this the point: that developing a relationship in order to do your job doesn't have to be dishonest and fake, but that the friendship desire cannot be limited to any one gain or motive. The challenge as an evangelist arises soon, however. You can't be best friends with everybody. You can care about the "hungry masses" as Jesus did, but you can't cannot invest a true friendship in every one of them, right? I mean Jesus had 12 disciples. He taught and fed the masses. He befriended 12.

a pound of flesh? try nine

2007-04-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

SHYLOCK: "The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is deerely bought, 'tis mine, and I will have it." Merchant of Venice

Since I started dieting with a professional nutritionist, I've lost 9 pounds. Do you know how much flesh nine pounds is? That's almost the weight of an adult's head. Imagine chopping off my head.

The more I think about it, the nutritionist does exactly what I do.

1. Helps you come to an awareness of how fat you are: like coming to an awareness of your sin.
2. Helps you to assess just how badly you're eating: like helping someone to see how their entire life has revolved around them
3. Gives you hope that you can lose weight through eating right and dieting, but tells you that its going to be really hard at first: like pointing out that Jesus' death and resurrection offers us new hope, but that dying to the self is a painful process
4. Tells me what to eat and not to eat in order to achieve my desired weight: like teaching someone how to read the scripture and how to pray
5. Checks my weight every week to make sure I'm on track: like holding a new believer accountable and making sure he/she is following through on his/her commitment

It's the same. Obviously, the glaring difference--one is entirely based on what I am able to accomplish through my works, while the other is entirely reliant upon God's grace.

Still, a whole head's worth of fat is a good start, eh?

Dave and Me

2007-04-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

Dave and Me.

Dave is so smart, he makes my head spin.
Practically, he's my next of kin

"Friendship Evangelism"

2007-04-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

Who wants a friend with a hidden agenda? The ironic thing is that "friendship evangelism" is a welcome alternative to "flasher evangelism," a term coined to describe the unwanted exposure at a premature moment, as if to say, our courtship is over--let me show you why we're having coffee here--you need to be saved! Yikes.

But is "friendship evangelism" any better? I guess the idea is that evangelism has to happen lovingly and in the context of a relationship. But who in their right mind ever sets out to make friends? What an unnatural thing to do. Isn't friendship something that just happens? Sure, you can nurture relationships, but you can't really choose who your friends are, can you? Would you even want to be friends with someone who intentionally tries to make friends so as to change the other's world and life view or religion or beliefs?

Are evangelists called to be friends? I don't know. One thing is for sure. We're called to care, and we're called to love people. But at least right now, making friends for the express purpose of creating a context in which evangelism can happen seems dishonest and artificial. I know that in many situations, it works. But I have a hard time comprehending who would want to be friends with someone who went through life acting in this way.

Virginia Tech shooting

2007-04-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

Interestingly enough, two days later and my youth group kids hadn't even heard the news. Some thoughts and questions:

1. I suppose its only natural that something like this makes the headlines because it's on home soil, but this is a daily occurence in other parts of the world (like Iraq), and it doesn't raise much interest. Is that ok?

2. Did you see the "convocation?" They had Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews represented among the speakers. It was interesting to hear them back to back--all offering words of hope and encouragement, all lamenting the tragedy. If I were a normal person and could be objective, I would love to rank the speakers to see which was the most encouraging.

3. A South Korean killer? I don't know if I've ever heard of a non-American comitting this type of a personally motivated crime in the US. All the others are disgruntled and angry, maybe psycotic American fringe types. But then again, how foreign was he? He'd lived in the US for 14 years, and he was only 23.

4. How do you think the media coverage has been? It seemed, at least from internet news sources, that the media was determined to doubt the administration's wisdom in the handling of the situation from the getgo. Why?

5. And my final comment. Why do these tragedy's always raise the "how could it have been prevented" question? That question is dangerous precisely because you cannot prevent individuals from harming others in such a fashion. I mean, come on, if someone is determined to kill himself and wants to take 30 others along with him, is there really anything anybody can do about it? The amount of freedoms you'd have to eliminate in order to create a perfectly safe society would be colossal. Not the society I want to live in.

Learning to be more Christian from the nutritionist

2007-04-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Don't know whether I should be blabbing about this, but, ok, I'll admit: I'm on a diet.

In fact, I'm paying good money to meet with someone who's whipping my *ss into shape.

Why? Because although I might not be "fat" in the conventional sense of the word, I'm overweight, and because I've been agonizing about the scale reading for years. It was time to do something.

This is what she figured. To maintain 230 lbs, you have to eat more than 3,000 calories of food per day. In fact, my "maintain calorie intake" was 3160. Actually, I've been gaining weight ever since I came to America 7 years ago, about 10 - 15 pounds per year. That means I was eating over 3160 calories per day. Calorie-wise, that would mean, and I'm horrified to admit this, that I was eating the equivalent to about 56 ounces of chicken per day (or 30 bananas).

So, the diet, at least for the first two weeks is simple: reduce calorie intake by 1/3. My dietitian stressed: this is the hardest part, changing your eating patterns.

So, I've gone about two weeks now eating only 2,000 calories per day. I'm usually hungry. It's especially hard at night when my wife and I are just sitting around. But after a very simple dinner of brown rice, two cups of fresh vegetables, and 6 ounces of lean meat, I am satisfied. The dietitian has taught me that I can survive on much much less food than I previously realized. If I wanted, I could save a fortune eating only what's on my diet. In fact, eating out and staying under my calorie cap is virtually impossible.

And I believe this has helped me to be a better Christian in this sense. By eating only what I need, I feel that I am being a better steward of the world's resources. The body doesn't need 3000 calories. Why hog all that food? And get fat? Especially while people are hungry in other places of my town.

On Preaching

2007-04-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

Preaching is a truly difficult endeavor. Every sermon I write feels like a hike on a brand new trail that I'm navigating alone with an inadequate topographical map. I have a hard time staying focused. The Grey Wizard's ten steps are helpful as a method, but accomplishing a sermon is much more than simply following ten steps. A good sermon ought to: convict, educate, encourage, bring about life change, entertain (like a good lecture can be entertaining if the professor is diggin' his material), jolt, challenge, renew. It out to be enjoyable, it ought to be slightly uncomfortable, it ought to be interesting. Then on top of all that, it ought to be focused on God, not on you. The people should heard the Word of God, not the Word of Ben. Nonchristians should be able to understand what you're saying, but believers ought not to be bored. Worst of all, your sermon has to "connect." Connection is notoriously hard to engineer. That's why some dates end the relationship while others end in marriage.

God help us all.

Easter Reflections

2007-04-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

I had to preach this past Sunday. As usual, getting a sermon together by Sunday usually involves much floundering, theological digging, excruiciating textual study, and then my favorite part, the part where you talk through the passage over and over in your mind until a language emerges to express what you want to say.

But Easter was difficult, and I found myself hung up on the resurrection part. What exactly is the point of the resurrection? Why couldn't Jesus simply have ascended into Heaven. Why did Jesus have to come back in the flesh on earth? Why was this event the pinnacle of the Christian calendar? Hadn't the work of salvation been accomplished on the cross?

Apparently not. I found this strange verse in Romans 4: "he was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." I thought that forgiveness of sins was justification. I did some digging and found out that justification is actually a two part process. To have one's sins forgiven is only half of being justified. Just because one is not found guilty is not the same as being found righteousness. In order for us to be truly justified, we must recieve both the forgiveness of sins and have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us so that we can be fully recieved into God's presence as his beloved children. Thus, death and resurrection are necessary for our salvation. Death pays for sins. Christ's resurrection makes it possible for us to be resurrected with him, to defy death, and to be joined with him in the inheritance of new life.

Solving this problem made preaching a little easier, but I faced another problem. It felt backwards. I was preaching (hypothetically) about the significance of the resurrection by showing why the resurrection was necessary for our justification. Rather than showing why it was necessary for Jesus to rise from the dead, wouldn't I be better off showing how wonderful it was that God had the power to accomplish such a feat and how thankful we should be for having gone through with it? But that seems like a nobrainer. Of course Jesus had to rise from the dead. What choice did he have? Being the Son of God, he couldn't just stay dead, right? He came to save his people, he died on the cross, he's going to finish the job, right? Wasn't the hard part over with?

I preached on the resurrection, but I think I might have failed out on this one. Any ideas? What is the meaning of the resurrection.

why would I want to be like you?

2007-03-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

Two follow up thoughts to my previous article.

I realize, of course, that the question I've been asking is the wrong question. Whether we live up to the ideals of the religion that we profess is ultimately a non-issue. What we "offer" when we evangelize is of little significance. What is much more important is what God is offering to the unbeliever through us. Whether or not our own lives measure up to the gospel matters only in so far as our lives indicate something about the nature of God's saving grace. However, as evangelists, we don't point to our own happiness, joy, health, etc. We point to Christ. If our lives had to be the perfect examples of Christian wholeness before we could feel confident enough to share the good news of Christ, we'd never get anywhere.

On the other hand, I still maintain that there ought to be tangible qualities of the Christian life that make it desirable. If we experience in our lives even a fraction of the obvious benefits of living a life with God through knowledge of Christ, the goodness from this allignment with God ought to be overflowing and evident. One of the spectacular benefits of knowing Christ is being able to come directly to God in prayer, knowing with certainty that God hears our prayers, cares about us, and answers our prayers. If I claim this as truth but then fail to have any sort of significant prayer life, what kind of a message does this send to my unbelieving friends? How can I tout around the fact that you need to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior when I myself have such a hard time living that fact out in my daily life? It would be like someone who swore by Fords, insisted that I buy a Ford, but then kept his Mustang locked up in the garage while he drove a Honda around. It doesn' t make sense. I guess I'm getting at the issue of contagiousness. Anybody can be an evangelist, but what does it take to be the kind of Christian that when unbelievers see you, they want to drop what they believe about the world and about God and take up what you believe instead?

A Better Way

2007-03-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about evangelism. One thing I've always found difficult has been articulating my "testimony." One strategy offered to covenant children who lack a dramatic conversion story is to imagine what your life might have looked like had it lacked the saving grace of Christ at work in it. However, that is far too speculative.

Anyway, I've been thinking that evangelism is an audacious task. To ask somebody to become a follower of Jesus Christ is to ask them to become like you. You want them to change what they believe about the world and to adopt your beliefs about the world. You want them to change their behaviors and to behave like you--to go to church, to give money away, to take God seriously, to read the Bible and pray, etc. You want them to change their values and to value you what you value. Doing evangelism says, "my way of life is better than yours and you'd be better off if you became like me." When you do evangelism, you presume that you have something to offer and that it's in your friend's best interest to take you up on this offer.

Evangelism is at it's root condescending.

However, it is not deceptive. If you take the Bible seriously, you realize a lot is at stake. A Christian is willing to put him/herself in this awkward position because we realize that we do have many things of value to offer and that it is in the eternal interest of our friends to adopt our beliefs about the Gospel, etc, and in so doing, to become like us in these respects.

However, is eternal security (eternal life) a benefit of Christianity that draws unbelievers? I don't think so. If people were worried about their eternal security, they'd come rushing to the church. And so we in the church who wish to convert our unbelieving friends must, if we intend to do evangelism with any dignity, be prepared to show how our Way of life is better here and now. I'm sorry I've taken so long to get to this point. But here's my question, is my life as a Christian particularly "better" than that of my unbelieving friends? You'd think it would be, but I'm not convinced that there is anything particularly appealing about my "better way."

Do Christians have better sex? Do Christians have more fun? Are Christians healthier? Happier? More secure? More purposeful? More joy filled? Less stressed? If not, why not? And if not, then what, beyond a condo in the Father's house, do we have to offer that might be of interest to any unbeliever?

Sermon Preview

2006-12-13T16:44:00.000-08:00

My goodness, it's so hit or miss when it comes to sermon writing. Sometimes, the theme jumps right out and three points line up at the door, waiting to grace your sermon with clarity, insight and passion. Other times, I can barely figure the theme of my message, much less figure out a rhetorical way to communicate it.

I'm preaching on Isaiah 36 and 37. The first problem is obvious: the text is too big. But, the kids are doing a dramatic rendition of it as part of the Christmas program. It's the story of the Assyrians being annihilated at the aqueduct by the gate to Jerusalem after having intimidated the Israelites by terrorizing them in their own Hebraic tongue. King Hezekiah demands with five imperatives that God observe the affront to Israel which is actually an afront to Yahweh's majesty. God intervenes for the sake of his covenant people and for the sake of his own name and destroys 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. Sennacherib goes home and is killed by his own son.

After much pondering, I came to the conclusion that the point of this passage is about seeing the cosmic significance of an affront to God's people. God intervenes only after Hezekiah pleads with God in God's language, so to speak--the language of God's honor. What's at stake? In not so many words, the king of Assyria has made himself out to be a minor diety, a king so strong that no king and no gods can stand up to him. The arrogance and implied self-pronouncements of this king leave God no alternative but to cut him down to size. To not do so would be to allow the world to see God's covenant children annihilated at the hand of an ego maniac.

As I thought about this passage and how to relate it to our day, I came to realize that the point of connection has to do seeing our battles against the enemy from the cosmic perspective of Hezekiah. But the big question: who or what is our enemy? Satan? Evil? Sin? Doubt?

Psalm 127

2006-11-30T04:50:00.000-08:00

Psalm 127

A song of ascents. Of Solomon.

Unless the Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.

In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Sons are a heritage from the Lord,
children a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
(NIV)

An elderly friend of mine went in for surgery. A large tumor had developed on his frontal lobe, right under his forehead. Before the surgery, my friend quoted this psalm to the doctors and told them that unless God healed him, they labored in vain. Then he asked them to give him half an hour so that he could pray. By the time of his surgery, he was calm and collected, entirely trusting in God to use the doctors to heal him. One year later, he is cancer free and healthy. He can't stop praising
God for what GOD did.

My sense after reading this psalm is that God continually holds together the very fabric of our existence in such a way that our actions would be completely futile were it not for God's providential care which makes the actualization of our wills possible. This doesn't do Psalm 127 justice. I'll keep thinking about it.

Knowledge from God

2006-11-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

Part of my concern in naming God's activity in our world is that doing so haphazardly reduces the impact of saying, "God did" or "God showed me" or "God opened the door, etc. It becomes a cliche. For example, I've been thinking recently about when it is appropriate to say, "God taught me..." When we learn a lesson, or when a brilliant idea pops into our head after much prayer, we are inclined to say, "God spoke to me and illuminiated such and such." But in fact, isn't all knowledge and wisdom a gift? If in fact I learn anything, isn't God the teacher? And yet, imagine what you'd think of a person who, whenever they learned anything, said, "God taught me." Part of the problem, I'm realizing, is that as you think about ways to identify how God is active in the world, you start seeing how God is really the cause of virtually everything. He might not be the immediate cause, but he is the first and final cause. Thus, the birds outside my window--they too are there because God "sent" them there. When I read C.S. Lewis and learn about the Devil's schemes against Christians, God is teaching me, even as C.S. Lewis is teaching me. But I dont' think this necessarilly means that i want to say, "God did" or "God told me," or "God sent me..." People who talk like this trivialize God by making him involved in everything. "Good luck" is taboo because God will cause the outcome of every event in your life.

Now, of course, God is probably active to differing degrees depending on the situation so that saying God "causes" something might be a bit of an overstatement when it comes to a bad hard day, even though technically, you might be correct. But the trick is, I'm thinking now, that we need to not miss God's role when it comes to things that matter. So, placing the work of God in our lives is a task which requires sensitivity and maturity, avoiding the extremes of ignoring God vs. making God the producer of ill placed zits.

Open Windows

2006-11-20T15:56:00.000-08:00

But what about "open windows?" Christian jargon meaning that in the midst of some dilemma, an oppourtunity appeared which indicated to the person involved that God intended to give an answer to some prayer question by making one option easier or more viable than the other. God "opened the window" for us to go to China to be missionaries. God opened the window for me to go to college by providing me with financial aid... This gets used a lot, too. This is another variation of a sign. In the midst of a dilema, the opening of a possibility of one option is seen as a sign that God desires the person to go in that direction.

I've put trust in these kinds of signs before, but if my former conclusion on signs is correct, then how consistently can we just go the way of the open window? Say you apply to two colleges and one offers you a healthy financial aid package and one doesn't. You'd think that God wanted you to go to the one because he provided you the resources you needed to go that route. But, isn't it possible that God could also be testing your faith, and that actually, he desires you to go to the college with less financial aid because in the experience of stepping out in faith (without the financial aid), you'd actually be learning to trust and rely on God more than if you had it handed to you? Or maybe, God wants you to go the more difficult route because you'll find greater satisfaction from having gone through a closed window, against the odds, stepping out in faith, and accomplishing the impossible.

Sometimes, people go through windows that God opened, only to realize that the open window was the wrong window. Some ministers have open windows all the way through college and seminary and then end up spilling out and shipwrecking their career in an abuse scandal.

A window opening might be the hand of God, but I don't think its necesserilly a hand pointing you in an obvious direction.

Signs from God

2006-11-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

The proverbial "sign from God" is so oft used that it can't not but be misused. I think there's a temptation to call something a "sign" because identifying the hand of God is gratifying. We usually associate this type of special appearance of God with random natural occurences that connect in an obvious way with the topic of conversation or with the presenting dillema. For example, I noted that in my first blog on the subject of identifying God in our world two albino pigeons appeared on the street below. These connections are irrational but often times very obvious. For me, the temptation was to conclude: there you have it, God is encouraging me to continue thinking and writing about this topic by sending me a little encouragement in the form of a rare (at least for me) phenomenon: two albino pigeons. It's not that I don't think God gives us "signs." It's that the meaning is derived from the subjective experience and is therefore ungrounded. As I look around my desk, I see a college loan bill. Wow. That could be a sign from God that I should take care of my bills. You could make a sign out of everything. Even the rarity of the event doesn't really clinch the deal. In any given situation, there are countless irreplicable events occuring, each of which, if noticed, might give rise to some conclusion that a sign had been given. A spider just happens to be occupying 1/1,000,000,000 of the space of your wallpaper and winds up sitting on your calender, making it a sign from God that November 20th is the day you should... How do you know if it's a sign from God or not?

I don't think you can know. But you can believe that God is in control of all things, leaving chance out of the picture. Maybe God just enjoys drawing rare phenomenon to our attention at strategic moments without any particular reason. So, I guess my conclusion is you can beleive God is giving you a sign. You just can't know what the sign signifies.

God in Retrospect

2006-11-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine is a recovering drug addict. He's older, in his fifties. During the most recent years of his life, my friend has discovered a new relationship with God, and I am amazed at the vitality of his spirituality. He is very open about his history, having spent a year literally on the street, begging for money and getting by on drugs. But now, every moment of his day is spent in prayerful awareness of God's grace and love towards him. God rescued him from himself, and he is very aware of this. He told me today about how important it was for him to hear that despite his wayward lifestyle, God had been along beside him throughout it all. He said God was always there for me, and God was just waiting for me to notice and to give my life to him.

I think this is another valid way of placing God in our lives, by reflecting on the past and making sense of it through a knowledge of God's providential love, presence and patience. Is this "writing God into history?" Yes, it is. But I don't think it's untrue. At least not if you're willing to admit that the story is provisional--the end is not yet complete and you might just find out that God had other intentions. So, I guess a little humility is in order.

Toward a guide of "placing God"

2006-11-15T06:13:00.000-08:00

One thing I've come to learn is that in most situations, you cannot have any sort of meaningful spirituality if you do not pray regularly and seriously. One of the benefits of the life of prayer is that between your prayers, you notice that God responds to prayers through events that happen during the day. It might be the case that I am normally well fed, eating three meals a day. However, if I daily wake up and pray for God to provide me with the food I need, eating takes on a new light. Before, when I ate, I might not have thought that God had anything to do with my eating. However, now, as I eat, I recall my prayers. As I eat, I can see God doing what I have asked him to do: providing me with food. Now, God did not start providing me with food when I prayed. God always provided me with food. The difference? Now, I am thankful. Now, I place God in my life, seeing my meal as a blessing, as a provision from a wonderfully merciful Father. And imagine now that I've been praying for food and then something happens so that prevents me from being able to eat. The fact that I've been praying for daily food adds significance to the event. Because I know that my eating depends on God, I know that these events which are preventing me from eating are also the work of God. God specifically denied my request. This causes me to wonder about God's purpose in preventing me from eating. If I had never asked for the food, then I wouldn't consider the lack of food a denial of my request.

In this way, praying, even for obvious or regular things, helps us to place God in our lives, allowing us to see God more vividly.

Making Sense of How to Place God in Events that Happen

2006-11-14T07:43:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that there is great value in being able to "spot God" in history and events. But this is not an endevour to be taken lightly. God's role in any series of events that happens is never obvious. Far too often, we have made mistakes by too quickly pointing to God. For example, when New Orleans was burried in water, many saw that as the unmistakable hand of God punishing the city for its immoral carousing and licentious culture. Is it that simple? As I write, two Albino pigeons are fluttering about in the street below. I don't know that I've ever seen an Albino pigeon, much less two. Did God bring them here to me to encourage me as I write this blog?

What role does God play in these events? And is there a good system for pointing out the hand of God? Are there rules? On the one hand, you could say everything, from the smallest detail of our lives, like the crumb on the floor, is part of God's ultimate plan. But on the other hand, God refuses to be held responsible for the terrible things that happen as a result of human sinfulness. And regardless of what I believe about providence, I don't think God cares too much about that crumb on the floor. But as Neal Plantinga has said, part of being a good leader is about helping people to realize the presence of God and the cosmic significance of ministry. There is value in pointing to God, because identifying the hand of God makes us more aware of his presence and helps flesh out faith. Faith needs eyes.

But its a tricky business. You don't want to trivialize God. With prayer, for example, say I pray for something to happen and it does. Is this necessarilly an "answer to prayer?" I pray that God will provide me with lunch. At noon, I walk to the refrigerator and heat up some left-overs. Is that God working in my life?

I pray for my sick friend to be healed from cancer. The doctors operate and remove the tumor. Is that a "healing?" Is that God? I pray for the church to grow. No new members. Is that a "no" from God?

I'm going to keep thinking more about this because I think its important.

NJ Audubon Society Trails

2006-11-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

Fly on pine needles

2006-11-12T19:37:00.000-08:00

The zoom picture on my camera picked up detail on a bug that I've only ever seen in National Geographic magazines. Try zooming in on the fly. I've a new respect for that slimy piece of green that I typically smash against the window.

HIking in Wanaque

2006-11-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

I've begun a new habbit: hiking on friday afternoons. I'll continue this habbit weather permitting for as long as I can. You wouldn't believe how nice it is just to get away from it all and spend some time alone in the mountains. I'm new to this, but what I like about it is the sense of vulnerability that comes from being away from civilization. If I got hurt, I'd be out there on my own... until a fellow hiker found me. My biggest fear is running into a black bear. A deer jumped out at me the other day and that scared the daylights out of me, mostly because I was thinking about black bears when all of a sudden this huge figure goes prancing right before my eyes. That was exciting. Sorry, no picture of the deer.

Pastor Max Advances in Age and Maturity

2006-11-12T19:27:00.000-08:00

A veterinarian friend of ours recently accused us of hand play when we complained about how much Pastor Max enjoys chewing on fingers and toes. Apparently, we were provoking this unseemly behavior. We have repented of our sin, but he continues to bite. First lesson in childrearing: you get what you deserve...

Sermon Preview

2006-11-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

This Sunday I'm preaching on Assurance. The curse of a worship planning committee is that the theme is often decided before the text. You have a sermon in mind and so you search in vain for a text to say what you want it to say. This is probably one of the most prevelant ways that scripture gets misread. But my worship director knows that once the text is chosen, I'm at liberty to say what the text says even if it means straying from the theme of the service. She's a good worship director.

The text is perfect: Hebrews 10:19-25. It's about coming into the most holy place with boldness because of the priesthood of Christ. The tie between assurance and priesthood baffled me initially, but as I thought about it, I realized that assurance is a matter of purification. Lack of assurance comes from the fear associated with entering the most holy place without the proper ceremonial rituals. The fear is that in the face of God's holiness, our sin will be reason for God to destroy us. You can't have assurance unless you can know, like Aaraon the High Priest, that the atoning blood has been shed and the sacrifice made so that you can enter into God's presence and come out unscathed. Assurance for us is based on the atoning intercession of the High Priest, Christ. As the curtain seperating world and holy is destroyed, we are ushered into God's presence without fear because we are no longer liable for our sin. Therefore, we can enter the most holy place, the presence of God, with boldness and gratitude.

And yet, so many of us go through life aware of grace but somehow not convinced of it. My message is this: God is sure about you. God wants you to be sure about him.

We'll see how it goes.

Haledon, NJ

2006-11-07T13:59:00.000-08:00

I love my new town. This part of the world is wonderful because these towns are hybrids containing both small town and urban elements at the same time. On the one hand, we're half an hour from Downtown Manhattan and can see the skyline from our hill. On the other hand, we're only 8000 people and have one zip code. The mayor comes by your house to talk to you to get reelected for a job he doesn't even get paid for. We have our own police department, and you prefer getting pulled over by one of your own rather than the cops from the next town over (I won't say which one). You are walking distance from the hardware store, Dunkin Donuts, the grocery, the bank, the post office, the school, the church, the gas station, the bakery, the bagel shop, the hotdog stand, and a city park. You know your neighbors by name and you actually give a crap when the lady next door gets robbed. Haledon is great.

Believing in God takes Faith. Oh yeah.

2006-11-07T13:45:00.000-08:00

Hebrews 11:5 says "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (NIV)."

Sometimes I think that I forget that beleiving in God is an act of faith. I draw comfort from God's admission of this fact, as voiced in the letter of Hebrews. My Dad also reminded me. You have to beleive in God to see God. God is there, no doubt. In fact, his presence is undeniable and real, but only to those who beleive. Without belief, without faith in God, its easy to slip into cynicism and to wonder why God is so inconscipuously absent from so much that goes on. It's not that God is absent. It's that our eyes have been clouded by rebelliousness so that we don't see God very well. Maybe instead of praying for God's presence, which is already a reality, I should pray for greater faith. I'm afraid to admit this, but sometimes I feel as though I'm only one mile past the doubt marker with ninety-nine miles of the faith journey to go.

Church discipline and God's "honor"

2006-11-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

In a recent conversation, a friend admitted his frustration over his classmates' nonchalant attitude towards the penultimate step of church discipline - excommunication. Excommunication represents the church's final effort to discipline an unpenitent church member. It is penultimate because the exclusion of a member from fellowship is meant to persuade the member to see the error of his/her ways and to return in repentence..at which point the church should gladly welcome the brother/sister back with open arms.

My friend was disconcerted at the idea of excommunication, and was frustrated at the almost nonchalant way in which the pastors-to-be seemed to discuss this form of church discipline. My friend asks, "who are we to point the finger?" Why do we think we're any better? How can we be so audacious as to say that God's grace doesn't apply to a certain person and then to kick them out?

I replied that excommunication is a last resort--something that rarely happens, a process that takes virtually years to enact...not something we jump to or eagerly anticipate. Excommunication is something that happens only when a member is confronted numerous times and is completely unwilling to repent of sin and shows no willingness to change. Allowing unrepentent sin to continue and NOT taking issue with it dishonors God. Jesus Christ has died on the cross for our sin, allowing us to fellowship with God. Sin must be taken seriously, for God went through extensive efforts to take it away. What do we communicate to God about our appreciation for his work on the cross when we allow a fellow member to go on and on in sin without repenting? Blatant sin seemingly "dishonors" God.

But my friend had an interesting reply. You can't dishonor God. You can't disgrace God. God is infinitely almighty, infinitely honorable. NOthing we do or don't do can possibly take away from God's honor because God's honor is not dependent on human recognition of it.

This was a good reply. But because I was still in the mode of arguing with my friend, I quickly remarked that he was right, but that there was a difference between God's objective honor and subjective honor. Objectively, there's nothing a person can do to really take away from God, neither in his person nor in his glory. God's glory is infinite. His honor is based in himself for the reason that he alone is able to percieve his true honor. Only God knows how awesome God really is. Only God knows how good and wonderful he really is. In theology, this is called God's archtypal knowledge. Therefore, human sinfulness doesn't take away from God's objective value or honor or glory, etc.

However, it is the case that human actions can impact God's subjective or percieved honor, value, importance, etc. In the OT, there are numerous instances in which the actions of God's people infuriate God for the precise reason that the actions of God's people reflect falsely on God and therefore cut short the honor, glory and respect due to God by Israel and the people watching what Israel does. God is not objectively devalued by Israel's behavior, but subjectively. Even God shows concern for what the nations think about him. IN Genesis 32, Moses convinces God to withold his judgment from the idolatrous Israelites in order to prevent the nations from thinking that God brought the Israelites out of Egypt merely to destroy them. So, even the actions of God show that God's subjective honor is at stake.

I was reading in Hebrews today and fell upon a passage which applies directly to this issue. Hebrews 6:6 speaks of "holding God in contempt" by experiencing Grace and then persisting in intentional unrepentant sin. Surely our holding God in contempt does not belittle God in the sense that would imply that God's nature is dependent upon human recognition. However, this passage does show that unrepentant sin is intolerable. Hebrews calls brothers and sisters in Christ to spur one another on to love and good works. I think based on 6:6, you could argue that we should also spur one another on to live in such a way that reflects well on God's objective dignity. It is precisely church discipline which seeks to protect God's subjective honor and to bring about repentance in the sinner.

The Presence of God-Imagination or Reality?

2006-10-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

If God is big and so powerful and so active and so involved and so on top of his game plan of making his kingdom come, then why does it sometimes seem like feeling God's presence is an imaginative maneuver that I haven't quite mastered. If God is there and if God is real, then why is it so hard to see him? You'd think the creator of the universe would be a little bit more obtrusive. But as it stands, God has created a world in which he seems largely absent. Things run their course on their own. The waves continue to crash. The traffic ebbs and flows. The electricity continues to pump into my house (along with the water and gas).

You can't have coffee with God. You can't play tennis with God. You can't hug God. Sometimes I feel like for God to exist, I have to imagine that he's there. If God's presence was so obvious, more people would believe in him. But there are lots of people who don't believe in God. Therefore, it is not obvious to most people that God exists. Then, am I right in thinking that belief takes a bit of imagination? After all, it wouldn't be called "faith" if God were obvious. Faith takes many risks...including the risk of appearing to conjure up God.

I'm 95% sure that the problem with many American Christians is that they don't really believe God is real. Not only do they not believe that God is real, but they don't really believe in eternity either. In fact, I think that many of us are so stuck in our own day to day affairs that we have virtually no conception of the impact that our actions or lack of action could have on the eternal state of our own fellow human beings. Eternity is a long time. It's a much longer time than any of us ever spends here on earth. Are we living life with the proper perspective given how little time we have and how urgent the gospel message is? Has a 2000 year wait and many failed doomsday predictions dulled us into thinking that the end is no where near? Do we pray the Lord's prayer and mean it, especially the part about "your kingdom come?"

This is my prayer: "Dear Heavenly Father, please, please be obnoxiously obtrusive in my life. Forgive me for being so blind to your presence. Give me a story to tell about your saving power in my life. Use me to spill your saving power into the lives of my neighbors. Amen."

The Vanderbilt Summer Home

2006-10-09T06:47:00.000-07:00

This mansion was the sumemr home for a number of Vanderbilt generations. The inside is quite lavish, emulating the French royalty style. Supposedly, this mansion is the last vestige of the Guilded age. No one could afford a palace of this size in the 1930s and the family money soon dissappeared. No flash photos were allowed inside, sorry.

World Yacht - Dinner on the Hudson overlooking Manhattan

2006-10-07T20:53:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful date! We went out for my birthday. I totally recommend this for anyone coming to NY. $90 per person gets you dinner and a four hour yacht cruse down the Hudson to the financial district, a solid view of Lady Liberty and back again with Filet for dinner. (Wine costs extra). Service is very good, but the music was a little loud. People really dress up for this and I heard more Spanish and french? than English.

Pastor Max thinks about his Pastoral Identity

2006-09-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

The Reverend Maxwell (Pastor Max) has been growing into his pastoral identity quite nicely. He enjoys jumping around friskly (much to the dismay of his congregation) and he bites everything he can get his little teeth around. Tomorrow, Pastor MAx will preach his first sermon. He is a little nervous but beleives he is up to the task. He has been praying very devoutly out on teh front porch where he spends most of his nights in loud spiritual exercises (where his congregation can't hear him).

Pastor Max converted from Catholicism recently to become a reformed protestant. He is thinking about joining the CRC but thinks that teh CRC is too Dutch. Pastor Max has some Dutch blood, but is mostly Scotch/Irish.

Trip to Times Square

2006-09-30T18:37:00.000-07:00

It took us one month to get up the courage to go to NY City. It wasn't that bad, but its quite the haul. It takes about 1:30 to get there. We walked all the way from the World Trade Center sight to Times Square, about 40+ blocks. We're exhausted. But it was a good time. So many people.

New Member of the Family

2006-09-15T05:37:00.000-07:00

The Reverend Maxwell

Will the US pull an IRAQ if Iran refuses to cooperate with UN demands?

2006-08-24T07:37:00.000-07:00

Another question I have, which maybe reflects my naivete: Is Iran having nuclear weapons capability something that is threatening enough to world stability that the United States should forcibly prevent it from happening? What is the liklihood that if Iran had nuclear weapons that they'd actually use them? And why are they so determined to have them? And why does their having them make everyone so uneasy?

From the BBC:

The House Intelligence Committee report says: "Iran is a serious security threat on which the United States needs better intelligence."

If I could choose between walking down a street where people carried guns and walking down a street where people carried no weapons, I'd choose the street without weapons. A world with fewer weapons that could kill me is better than a world with lots of weapons that could kill me. The obvious problem is that we have guns but we don't want other people to have them. Why is Iran a serious security threat? What might they do to us that has us so on edge?

Japan will allow nude photo of Spears after all?

2006-08-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

From the BBC News:

Tokyo 'will allow' nude Spears ad

The Spears photo was deemed "too stimulating" for Japan

A poster showing singer Britney Spears nude and pregnant will be displayed on Tokyo's subway system, despite an earlier decision to ban the advert.

Officials initially claimed the photo, which appears on the cover of Harper's Bazaar magazine, was "overly stimulating" for public display.
See More

I have a strange reaction to this article having grown up in Japan. Pornography is everywhere. We found it in parks, we saw people looking at it on the trains, we saw it in 7 elevens, on TV, in newspapers, sports magazines, etc. It's inescapable. But stigma surrounding the viewing of pornography is minimal in Japan. For example, its not unusual to see men scrolling through porn magazines in the magazine isle at a convinient store. In America, the hard core magazines are wrapped in plastic, like, you have to buy it if you want to look at it, and you take it home. You don't look at it in the store in broad daylight.

The funny thing about the Spears photo is that the Japanese subway officials originally said it was "too stimulating" for the train. Spears is nude, but the picture hides her pretty well. Compared to what I've seen on advertisements on trains in Japan that are posted everywhere you look, on the walls, hanging from the ceilings, I fail to understand how this one photography of Britney could possibly have aroused any controversy.

Superstition; Breaking the First Commandment?

2006-08-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

In Christian Social Ethics, much lingo gets thrown around to show and explain why the 10 commandments actually cover a whole range of ethical behavior that is actually much broader than what the specific commands refer to. Its actually a lot of fun to preach on, and this way of reading the commandments is old and rooted in tradition. Calvin, for example, took the whole Torah and divided into ten sections, each and every single law somehow coming under the "jurisdiction" or cover of one of the ten commandments.

In our study of the first commandment, we learned that "thou shalt have no other gods before me," covers the entire realm of spiritual allegiances. The positive "force" or impact of this command, from what I can remember, is that we should have allegiance, reliance, and beleif in the all powerful nature of God alone. The negative "force" or impact of this command is that we can not act or think in a way which suggests that we have any allegiances or concerns about other spiritual powers/forces or beings.

Now, I've had this ongoing debate with this nurse that I know about whether or not superstition counts as breaking the first commandment, because, it turns out, nurses tend to be quite superstitious. Ask any nurse about what happens in the hospital on a full moon. Ask any nurse about what's going to happen if you say something to the effect of, "I hope we don't have any more emergencies today," or, "I hope I don't get called in tonight..." It's like, if you say it, then you're jinxed and its gonna happen. So they do the whole knock on wood thing.

Now, in all fairness, this is usually done in a joking manner. Like, if you really pressured one of these nurses to come out and say that they really beleive that if you say such and such won't happen, then it will, they might deny it. But say that its a little bit more than a joke. Does this constitute breaking the first commandment?

I think it does. The implication is that there is some supernatural force that hears what you say and brings about certain events in response. To the extent that you avoid saying things in order to (you think) prevent the unfortunate from occuring, I think a person is showing allegiance to a supernatural power. Whether or not this supernatural power is real or unreal is of no consequence. Presumably, when the law said, "no other gods," the implication was that there Are other "gods," whatever they may be (thats another conversation). But you're not supposed to have them period.

If a person dodges the 1st commandment question by saying that the "one" who brings about the unfortunate experience as a result of having voiced it is God, then I would respond that this beleif would constitute a breaking of the third commandment which governs the sphere of "language about God," because such a presumption is actually false (that God jinxes us when we verbalize something).

Running Scared. Just not finding a movie I like..

2006-08-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

*spoiler*

A good friend of mine is in film school, studying not so much how to make films, but more about film theory, history, and such. To me, he's doing for movies what an English Lit major does for Romantic poetry. Anyway, he seemes to think that all movies (even ones which appear to be promoting some agenda, even a religious one) are made with the primary purpose of making money. According to him, movie making is just too expensive. No one puts that much money into making movies for the sake of the movie alone, no matter what intrinsic artistic value the movie might boast. The extreme version of movies made to cash in on a particular niche of the market are called "exploitation films." From what I understand, they "exploit" certain natural human desires that various people have for a certain element in a movie. In other words, if you like movies that make your skin crawl, an exploitation film would attempt to make your skin crawl, and that might be all it did.

Anyway, my fear is that, in order to make money, movies are becoming increasingly "exploitative" in that they cater more and more to some of the these base instinctual desires that viewers have to want to see, for example, violence, nudity, suspense, thrill, grimy lovable bad guys, and the like. The result to me seems to be that most mass advertized blockbusters are becoming less and less interesting because they are all trying to accomplish the same thing. My problem is that I no longer know how to find movies that I will like. I rarely see a New Release film that doesn't cause me to look at the clock at about 50 minutes in and wonder how much longer this is going to go on. I'm bored. I feel like movies are getting worse and worse, and less and less interesting. Does anybody have this same feeling? Any suggestions?

Running Scared is just another example of what I'm talking about. It's got the perfect blend of my need to see violence that makes me recoil, suspense that makes me sit at the edge of my seet, a hot wife with a thong, an admirable bad guy, a brief meeting in a strip club, and as if they might lose dollars if the hero gets it in the end (because happy endings lose money), the bad protagonist lying but likable father reappears at the final shot with no exlanation as to how he was revived after his wife saw him die in her lap. It was this disappointing resurrection which made me realize that producers and movie directors have, I don't know, resorted to the worst kind of manipulation, the kind that leaves you completely satisfied, disgusted AND not interested in more.

Not free to do nothing

2006-08-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

I've been reflecting on Christian freedom lately, and I'm discouraged. Here's the party line as far as the Reformed are concerned. There is nothing that anybody can do to earn salvation. Salvation is a gift from God, imparted to those who have faith. You don't do anything to earn it, you merely receive it the way you might receive a present that someone was giving you. Faith is the instrument by which you receive this gift. Faith itself is a gift. You can not beleive of your own accord. The Holy Spirit must move in your heart to open your eyes to see the gift. The Holy Spirit gives you faith. By faith, you receive salvation.

Fine.

But, people want to know for sure whether or not they have salvation. Funny thing is, part of having faith means having assurance. In other words, faith that isn't assured isn't real faith. Now, is there no room for doubt. Yes. In fact, doubt can be healthy and keeps humble. But what is the difference between real faith that suffers from doubt, and unsaving false doubting faith? It's sort of like being in a castle that's under attack. True faith recognizes the attack, but is firmly lodged inside the castle, firmly aware that God is fighting the battle and that the castle will stand firm despite the attack. Doubting faith rests on no firm foundation and is ultimately unsure of its disposition.

I'm not sure how well the analogy works. But anyway, there's another way to have assurance. A good tree produces good fruit. A Christian's life will reflect the gratitude that comes from having received the gift of salvation. The Reformed creeds suggest that the fruit evident in my life is evidence of salvation working through me. OK, good.

Now, my problem is this. If salvation is a gift that is not dependent upon my works, am I free to do nothing once I've received the gift of salvation? If I'm counted righteous before God because of Christ's atoning sacrifice must I do works in order to maintain that status? Or, isn't it the case that a Christian will necessarilly produce good works because the outpouring of good works is a natural product of being a new creation filled with the Spirit? In other words, I'm afraid that even though my works do not earn my salvation, my works are necessary for my salvation, because if I don't do them, then I've no way of knowing the efficaciousness of my salvation.
Now, the party line is this: you don't do good works in order to be convinced of your salvation. Rather, once you have received salvation through faith, the Spirit works in your life to help you grow in your sanctification, and you live a life of gratitude to God for what he has done for you. It's like James says, without works faith is dead. Faith can't exist without works because real faith can't not bear fruit in sanctification. Loving God and neighbor is essential to faith.

But I just can't escape this sinking feeling that somehow my salvation depends on me. This is why: every day we are faced with decisions that we need to make. We have sins that we can avoid. We have oppourtunities to do good works. We could be lazy and sit around. Or we could put our faith into action and do whatever it is God places before us to do. Why does it seem like my decision to do or not do a particular work depends on my me? Why is there even a decision to be made? It seems as if the motivation to do good works between Calvinists and semi-Pelagians is really not that different. Whether you do good works to "earn" your salvation or not, you better be out there doing them because if you're not, then you are not saved or elect.

For the Belgic Confession's Answer to this question, see Belgic Confession Articles 17-24

2006-08-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

This is my brother and me at our finest. Please notice use of pronoun.

Pupil Dilation

2006-08-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

Time to get new glasses. Old ones are pinching my forehead and causing me to develop a rash in front of my ears which is itchy all the time. Costco is cheap. I make an appointment for my eyes even though my eyes aren't bad. Haven't had an eye exam in over two years-protocol. Now, the doctor detects some "tags" on the back of my eye ball that could potentially be tugging at my retina. However, she is not able to tell definitively whether or not this it is a real situation becuase the instrument she is using allows her to use only one eye to see into my eye. Now, to pay an extra 10 dollars, they'll dilate your pupils so that they can use a special instrument which allows then to look at the back of your eyeball with both of their eyes. Now, she wants me to let her do this so that I can help her to do her job better. It didn't make any sense to me. If she wants to do her job better, than why don't they just include the dilation in the regular eye exam instead of presurring me to pay extra so that I can find out for sure whether or not my "tag" is pulling on my retina or I have a whole or something. strange. Anyway, after 20 minutes, my pupil on my right eye dilated completely, and it was quite frightening. In day time sun light, everythign was bleached out in the one eye. I appreciate my pupils more than ever now.

Justifiable Christian Violence?

2006-08-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

As I drained calories on the eliptical machine I got to see live coverage of the breaking news about how 21 Pakistanis (sp?) were arrested in England for attempting to carry liquid explosive material onto 6 to 11 airplanes all headed for the US. Bush comes on an explains about how we definitely are at war with Islamic Facists who want to "destroy freedom."

It got me to thinking. Obviously, there are Muslims out there who think that personal involvement in offensive action which involves hurting/killing people is legitimate. Is there ever a situation in which its ok for a Christian to fight and to kill? And I'm not talking about Just War, nor am I talking about joining the military. I'm talking about individual Christians, banding together for some cause, and illegally harming or killing other people?

I tend to think that a Christian can ethically justify killing in the case of self-defense. But I don't think this is illegal. Can a Christian kill for the sake of justice? Does being Christian entail being non-violent? Are Christians in every circumstance ethically obligated to remain within the limits of the law? Can Christians revolt?

Just food for thought.

My own answer: Except in cases where a Christian is persecuted for religious beleifs and prevented from performing the tasks that he/she beleives are essential to the practice of faith, there are few instances I can think of in which Christians are ethically permitted to break the law. It seems opposed to the Spirit of Christ to suggeset that there are situations in which individual Christians could ethically take up arms and harm anyone for any reason. The Bible commands individual Christians to love their enemies and to pray for persecutors. Jesus talked about turning the other cheek. the NT talks about submitting to "the authorities" in matters that do not violate conscience. All this would seem to suggeset that no matter how bad things get, it is not ever the responsibility of Christians to use violent means to accomplish their purposes.

For a bizarre article on this very topic, see:

Is There Such a Thing as Christian Justifiable Homicide?

misconstrued as perverted

2006-08-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

In North Haledon, NJ, you can get pulled over for making faces at kids in minivans. Under what conditions? 1) Out of state license plate. 2) smoking a cigarett 3) pointing or laughing at or mouthing words to funny 10 year olds 4) with cop sitting behind you and watching the whole thing...

He pulls us over minutes later and says, I was at the intersection. Give me your license and registration. He said "I was at the interesection," in such a way as to suggest that I would immediately knew what he was referring to. Blank stare. I'm expecting to hear something to the effect of, "You blew through that intersection before the light turned green," or "You broke the speed limit, " or "you were in the wrong lane to go straight." Well, he was at the interesection, and he "saw what we were doing." What? You got to be kidding me. Nope. Did you know the kid in the van next to you? No. Then what were we doing making faces at the kid? Well, the kid was funny, and he was cute, and he was looking at us, so we made a face at him. What was wrong with that. According to North Haledon police, this can be misconstrued as perverted. What were we doing in North Haledon? Looking for an apartment to rent since we were moving into town in three weeks. We had better use a realtor, he told us. Warning: please use realtors to avoid being misconstrued as perverted. I guess its highly suspicious to drive around in neighborhoods with an out of state license plate. Don't make faces or point at kids in vans you don't know. After all, according to the cop, if you had kids would you want some strangers doing that to your kid?

2006-08-03T08:17:00.000-07:00

I let my bike get stolen

2006-08-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

Actually, it was my wife's bike--a purple/blue mountain bike with an inch or two of front suspension. REally , it was too small for me. But I could ride it anyway, and it was better than not having one. Funny thing we just got it back. My wife had left it at a house that she moved out of for 2 two years. Her friends were "borrowing" it. I went to pick it up a couple weeks ago. Problem was, it wouldn't fit in my car. So, I called my brother and had him meet me at my house. I actually drove it home, about five miles, which for me was quite a strenuous trip because I'd not ridden a bike in years. But it felt good, and I felt like I used to feel when I went on bike trips as a child. So, I was glad to have this bike back. There was no room for the bike in the apartment. So I leaned it against our front step and left it there. Now, I'm sure I was asking for it. But I didn't lock it. Why not? 1. Because I've never had anything stolen in my neighborhood, or broken into for that matter. No CDs, no CD player, no laptops left in unlocked cars, no nothing. We live on a "no outlet" block and I just figured that the kind of rifraff who steal things just didn't ever bother coming through our neighborhood. Plus, I kind of had this sense that if it happens, theft happens locally, i.e., you steal from your neighbors. And because our neighborhood seemed rather innocuous and safe with little kids all over the place and nothing ever getting stolen or broken into, I had a false sense of security. 2. there was a chain on the bike, but my wife didn't remember the combination because she hadn't used the bike in so long. 3. I was too lazy to go and get a new chain for the bike. 4. I'm convinced that chains barely even constitute a deterent because a simple wrench or wire cutter can cut through most security chains. therefore, I wasn't convinced of the usefulness of a chain.

When I walked out my apartment door this morning, I noticed it immediately, and my heart sunk with sadness and anger as I realized instantly what had happened.

I want to call the police and report it, but I can't endure the idea of a cop telling me there's nothing they can do and why in the heck didn't I put a lock on the stupid thing to begin with.

You know what. I've realized that you can do yourself a lot of good by failing to be noticed. People won't steal something they can't see. Cops won't pull you over if you don't catch their attention. Break the speed limit, if you must, but break it with a group of cars.

a calvinist dilemma

2006-08-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

This past summer, I've felt what some might call a spiritual slump in my journey with God. I've become dissolutioned with the amount of effort that it takes build and maintain a "relationship with God." I noticed that when I prayed regularly, meditated on scripture, attended various worship services and prayer meetings, I really felt more filled with the Spirit, more pious, more ON. With the busyness of summer and lack of motivation, I've lost that feeling. Now, this might seem naturally but it bothers me. If God is sovereign and holds all things in his providential hand, shouldn't it be the case that I feel close to God when God wants me to be close to him? And shouldn't it be the case that I feel filled with the Holy Spirit when God decides to fill me with the holy spirit? Why then does it seem for all practical purposes that the degree to which I feel ON or "with God" depends, it seems, entirely on how much effort I put into it? I feel as if I am in control of how "close to God" I am and this bothers me. It would lead a person to beleive that the subjective experience of religion is up to the individual. I beleive God is objectively real and in control of the universe. If God has given me the Spirit that I might beleive and be saved, why doesn't God give me the Spirit and make me "spiritual?" If salvation comes free, why is sanctification so much work?

traveling to georgia

2006-07-19T13:56:00.001-07:00

So, this week, my sister and I drove from Grand Rapids, MI to Lookout Mt. Georgia to visit Covenant College. It was a fun trip, and it was good to spend time with my sister. I got a ticket in Indiana on Rt 31. I was going 17 over. The cop was very matter of fact-not mean, not nice. It sucked.

Mt. Fuji, taken in the winter of 2003 by my brother

2006-07-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

undefined

Tipping? What to tip for bad service...

2006-07-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

I've had a little bit of a disagreement with people over tipping. My opinion is that you tip at least 15% no matter what, no matter how bad the service is. Here's why. If you're determined to tip cheaply, you will find ways in which your server screwed up. The problem is that servers take the heat for anythign that might go wrong from teh time you order your food. Teh food is late: cook's fault but server take the blame. the drinks don't come fast enough: management's fault, but server takes teh blame... Basically, I think that if you're not determined to tip at least 15%, then you probably shoudl avoid going to restaraunts. If you can't afford a 15% tip, then you can't afford to eat out. Bottom line: crappy service get 15%. good service gets 20%.

Here's a question I'm less sure about: do you tip at all-you-can-eat buffets if a server gets your drinks? I don't know. you tell me and let me know.

Fishing is Great

2006-07-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine took us to a river in Lowell called the Flat River. We had the best time of our lives fly-fishing for small mouth bass. I couldn't tell you how to get there, but its in Lowell. You find thsi covered bridge thats over a hundre thirty years old. Get in teh water and hike up 2 miles. Bring a small popper on a fly rod. stand in th emiddle of the river and cast to teh side and let the current pull the popper in as you jerk it occassionally to pop it. then real it in real slowly. by the way, there's a real famous fly-fishing guide named Glen Blackwell (sp?) who owns a shop in Rockford (12 mile and rt-131?). You can ask him for advice on flies and locations but you'll have to buy 15 bucks of flies to make up for it. Anyway, the flat river rocks, is filled with fish, and you should go between 5 and 10. PM.

Fishing on Au Sable in/near Grayling, MI

2006-07-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

undefined

Daniel Spalink, Jim Stacer, Jon Spalink, Jim Stacer, Ben Spalink