Marketing the Gospel

I think part of the reason the Church isn’t spreading in America like in other places of the world is the lack of good marketing. The Church is in the business of saving people. That’s the product. As disciples, it is our job to sell that. It costs them nothing to buy it, but it costs everything. What I mean is this: It’s free. There is no monetary cost to being a Christian. Some will tell you that you have to tithe and what not, but your time is an offering as well. And that’s what I mean by it costs everything: it’s about giving up your life. No longer living for yourself and what you want to do, but living for God and what He wants for you.

I think we do a terrible job, as Christians, expressing this point. Too often we talk about being saved from Hell. But what about being saved in this world? I look at this recent Adrian Peterson situation with his two year old son being beaten and killed. No matter what his relationship was with the kid, the publicity is good because it highlights an issue with abuse. When I was first reading the story, it made me sick to my stomach. What can a two year old do to make an adult male so mad that he beats his head in? A kid that can’t defend himself at all. There is no answer. But this is just a minor glimpse at the evil present in this world. Christianity offers something no other belief system can offer: a hope that there is justice and reconciliation. Punishing the man that did this won’t bring the kid back. Yes, justice can be served in a sense, but it still doesn’t feel like it fixes the situation. Christianity says that God will fix it. Maybe not right now, but at the end, He will.

We need to do a better job of getting this point across. Being saved from Hell and God’s wrath isn’t what makes Christianity worth living for. Living for God and recognizing His power and Will and Sovereignty is. One of our ministers said something the other day that hit me: When you look at the Grand Canyon, a mountain range, a sunset, and recognize God’s glory and power and majesty and beauty, that’s great. But humans are the pinnacle of His creation. Those things are fantastic, but God values us so, so much more. We need to feel the same way about our fellow humans. And this means expressing to them the hope that Christianity offers here and now, not just in some distant future after death.

The thing is, this should be easy. With all of the evil and sin that are in this world, it shouldn’t be hard to open people’s eyes up to that fact and introduce them to the solution. But we don’t for some reason. I think part of the reason is that the Church doesn’t end up valuing its own expertise within it. You have business people who market stuff for a living. Why not use them? We don’t let people who can’t sing lead worship. So why would we let people who don’t know how to market be in charge of outreach? We utilize the expertise of a minister who went to Bible College, but not the guy with the MBA.

Tattoos vs. Taboos: Old School vs. New school

Tattoos have been a hotly debated topic in recent years within the Church. Some say the Old Testament forbids them, as well as piercings, and argue that since our bodies are the temple of God and where he dwells, we must be pristine and not blemish our bodies. On the other hand, it is argued that the Old Testament laws on tattoos are the same as dietary laws: outdated and no longer binding. They may also say that tattoos and piercings are a way to decorate our bodies as the Temple was decorated by the Jews.

Here’s my thoughts on the issue: A) “tattoo” as translated from the OT is not the same thing we mean by “tattoo” today. A “tattoo” back then was what was left after Pagans cut their bodies in god worship, it was a scar. Not “tattooing” yourself meant making sure you looked different than the Pagans. The same goes for dietary laws and circumcision. It was about differentiation. Even if the “tattooing” definition was the same, the fact that Christ and Paul opened up salvation to the Gentiles meant the need for differentiation in the same way as in the OT was no longer needed. It may be useful for some to abstain, but it was not in and of itself a sin.

Point #2: I have a hard time believing that a tattoo of a cross or a Bible verse or praying hands displeases God. A) it’s a permanent reminder to you of your faith. B) it’s a visible display of your faith that others can see. And who knows, maybe it starts a conversation that leads to meaningful discussion!

Praying with a Purpose: Why We Suck at Praying

I have to be the first to admit that my prayer life is rather sucky to say the least. Not only do I not pray as much as I ought to, but I don’t pray as deeply as I ought to either. There are a lot of reasons why. I’m busy. I’m lazy. I’d rather do something else. But I think part of why I suck at praying is because most of the time, I think of it in an incorrect way. Maybe I’m not as bad as others, but I know I’m not very good either way. And I’d like to change that.

First of all, what is the point of prayer? That’s kind of a deep question, so we will answer it in a few different ways. First, what are some problems with how we, as a Church and as individuals, view and/or portray prayer? Second, what makes good prayer? And third, some helpful tips that have been shared with me that I will pass on.

First, prayer is often seen as our grocery list that we take to God. It often consists of asking for persons x, y, z to be healed from whatever ailment, physical, emotional, spiritual, that they are facing. Or maybe asking for help with things in our own lives. While these aren’t necessarily bad, who said that the purpose of this life was to be healthy all the time and happy? Not Jesus, that’s for sure. Prayer for many of us is a monologue. We speak prayer, as if it was a language, to no one in particular and act like we are talking to God. We don’t actually expect a response. Of course there’s much more that can be said, but these are some of the main issues.

Second, good prayer really is easier than what we see above. Honesty is essential. I mentioned earlier that sometimes I just don’t feel like praying for whatever reason. Guess what!? It’s ok to tell God that in a prayer. He would prefer you to be honest that to fake pray or not pray at all. Maybe we should pray about stuff we really care about, even if it seems mundane to others. Again, honesty is something that God values. As to the grocery list issue, think of things this way: When we pray for someone to be healed, our goal shouldn’t be merely that they feel better because we don’t want them to feel bad. Rather, the purpose of healing is to glorify God. Rather than praying for a healing, pray that in that situation, God’s glory can be manifested to it’s greatest potential. But make sure you honestly mean that. As I mentioned, prayer speak is a major issue in the Church. We lift up these lofty prayers with words we never use except in a prayer. Why? To sound better? Prayer is supposed to be a dialogue, a conversation, not a speech. Pray like you would speak to your dad, because God is your heavenly dad (have you ever called your dad “father”? Speak to him like a friend).

Here’s a little list of some tips I was given on things that can help your prayer life:
-Posture your prayer: Kneeling, prostrate, walking in a place of solitude.
-Give your prayer an address: If write a letter, you write “To (insert name here),” who are you praying to? Master, Lord, Dad, Father, God…
-Check yourself for honesty: Do you mean what you are saying or just trying to prayer speak? He knows.
-Take time to be still: “Be still and know that I am God.”
-Let your passion for God rise to the surface: If you are excited, God likes to know that, especially when it relates to him.
-Confess
-Speak your heart cry to God: Genuine spiritual need where you struggle
-Ask that the conversation continue: This is an eternal dialogue.

Does Christianity Teach Social Evolution or Something Else?

You may think I have skipped Pt. 2 of the first post of this series, but more must be said before jumping in with both feet to answer the question posed at the end of Pt. 1.

Following along in Wright’s book Surprised by Hope, we encounter the question about the future of the “cosmos: progress or despair?”

The first answer stems from Social Evolution. This has its basis in Western thought that developed during the Renaissance with both Christian and secular roots. As science was progressing incredibly quickly, wealth and industry spreading rapidly, these ideas began leaking into social thinking as well. It progressed even more rapidly with the rise of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, as this seemed to give scientific reinforcement that the evolution of the world was unstoppable and inevitable. Progress was simply how things were.

But in reality, this is a myth. There are massive holes in the theory. First, it can’t deal with evil in a number of ways. It can’t stop it. There is nothing philosophical or scientific that tells us that at some point, evil will be eradicated because of the evolution of the cosmos. Along these lines, despite what may or may not be true about biological evolution, there is certainly no such thing as cosmic evolution. In actuality, the universe is running straight toward demise, with an unavoidable heat death at best. Second, it social evolution doesn’t do anything to solve the problem of evil. Even if utopia came tomorrow, what do we make of all of the suffering and evils of today?

And some Christians have bought into this. Rob Bell, who reached his pinnacle of “fame” with his book Love Wins, is one of them. He believes that it is humanity’s mission to bring about the restoration of this world itself. As Wright will show, this is not at all Biblical. He has bought into this social charade that says we will bring about the change, not God. In fact, this line of thought has been so popularized, that we see it on bumper stickers: “Be the change you want in the world.”

So the answer must be despair? Thanks to Plato, the idea that this whole world is evil and the only redemption is to escape it has a place in this conversation as well. This view says that material things, particularly the body, is bad and to rid ourselves of it is to reach what we were meant to be. This is the spiritualization of culture. The idea that when you die, you go “up there” to be in a “better place.”

Again, many Christians have fallen prey to this myth as well. Another view with a basis outside of the Bible, and another view that leads to confusion. Hymns talk about this world “not being our home” and how we are “just passing through.” It is these people that get labeled as those that are “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good.” The purpose of Christianity becomes to go to heaven when you die.

So the answer is neither death and demise nor progress and redemption at our own hands. Rather, Christianity affirms “that what the creator God has done in Jesus Christ, and supremely in his resurrection, is what he intends to do for his whole world-meaninf, by world, the entire cosmos with all its history.”

 

 

What and Where is the Kingdom of Heaven? Pt. 1

This will be the first post in a series of post that attempts to answer the question in the title.

This is a question that has been on my mind recently, especially as I’m reading through Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright. Many people criticize Christians for being ‘Too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good.” And, unfortunately, there tends to be some truth to it. We often have the tendency to talk about what happens after death, as if it is an escape from this life. And while there may even be some truth to that, as well, that is not the whole story.

Wright has helped me refine my understanding of what exactly the New Testament writers meant by “Kingdom of Heaven” or “Kingdom of God.” Instead of some future place of residence, as it is often depicted, it is something that we create and live out now.

When we analyzes the phrase “Kingdom of Heaven/God,” we must define our terms. A Kingdom is the area reigned over by a King. The “Heaven/God” aspect is more often simply associated with God. So the interpretation would be stated simply as “God’s reign.” When we “parse” this out in this way, the “Kingdom of Heaven/God” can hardly be said to be some future place, because that would be to deny God’s sovereignty over us now.

The answer to the question in the title isn’t that simple, however. A reigning king also has servants that abide in his will, and a people to reign over. He must have real power, not just a feigned power like many see the monarchy of England as having, since it is no longer the singular governing body. We must ask ourselves, then, is this the case, and how is it accomplished?

Can Newtonian Mechanics be Saved? I answer yes.

In a new paper that I just finished writing for my final philosophy undergraduate course, I took a long look at Newtonian conceptions of time and space, particularly what Newton called absolute time and absolute space, as well as the foundations underlying them. After reviewing a vast array of articles, books, reviews, and Newton’s own work, I think that given a few things, namely a Lorentzian interpretation of the Special Theory of Relativity, and God, one can coherently argue that absolute motion (which many believe Einstein to have disproved once and for all) is possible.

Though rather technical, I do believe this can be understood in great part without much knowledge of physics and the patience to look up a few key concepts.

Click to access newtonian-time-final-pdf.pdf

How Long Did God Take to Create?

I have been listening to a lot of debates recently between Christians on old earth vs. young earth creationists, and I wanted to get some thoughts out and hopefully some feedback as well.

Much of the debate seems to stem around the Hebrew word “Yom,” which has multiple meanings, one of them being a 24 hour day, another being an age or extended period of time. Each takes a different meaning of the word in Genesis and other places where creation is spoken of. I find that the argument favors the young earthers here: whenever the word “yom” is used in conjunction with a numeral(first day, second day, etc.) it means literal 24 hour day. Even more so when it is in context of evening and morning. One old earther tried to point out the oddity of the order here: evening to morning? Well, that was a failed argument, given that a Jewish day does indeed follow that order.

But on the other hand, the science is pretty much completely on the side of old earthers. The universe, by all appearance, is about 13.7 billion years old. The earth is much younger, s=but still much older than the 6-10 thousand years young earthers claim. There are so many problems that a young earther has to overcome in order for the view to even be scientifically possible, like the speed of light, carbon dating, etc. The speed of light being the important one. They either have to say that the speed of light has changed since creation began, or that it travels faster to earth than away from it. These are their only options to try to explain why the universe appears to be so vast in size, since we measure astronomical space in light years, which is where the age of the universe is derived from. But neither of the two options have any real weight.

So where do we go from here? Is the Bible wrong? Do we have to give up inerrancy?

My answer is simple: We go where we always go, to God. Here’s one of the fascinating things about how God works, He’s truly marvelous. Like when David writes his psalms, or Isaiah prophecies about Israel. They had their original intended purposes. But then Jesus comes, and all of the sudden, what they said in one context now is fulfilled in another. Clearly God changes the interpretation of the Bible through History. If there is no Jesus, these things still have meaning, just not the meaning they have for us. Think of Passover, animal sacrifice for atonement, they all made sense in the day, but make sense in a much different way today. What am I getting at?

If we look at Genesis and how “yom” is used, we would be write to interpret it as it was intended, which is most likely as a literal 24 hour day. But given what we know now, it seems to mean something different. In fact, now, there is a pattern. One debater that I heard, despite arguing that the intended meaning was to be age, made this point: God is still in rest in regards to Creation. We no longer see major works of creation. But herein lies the rub: We will one day again. There is going to be a New Creation, a time when God will stop resting, and create once again. I like this. But the Jews did not have this concept nearly as defined as we do now.

Some will argue that this is reading what we know back into Scripture… Indeed, it is. But guess what, Paul did too. And so did Mark. And Matthew. And Luke. And the early church fathers. And so do we. Again, the psalms that David wrote were not intended by David to be prophetic. But that’s certainly how we take them now. Isaiah, in many of his prophecies, did not intent to prophecy about Jesus, but rather Israel. Many of hos prophecies have dual fulfillments. Yet we do not say that this is unacceptable and deny that this is the correct interpretation of the words. In the same way, we can use this line of logic when we look at the Creation story. The author was ill-informed compared to how we are today when it came to time, days, creation, space, nature, etc. He was describing things as he could in his day(pun intended). But looking back, God had another intention, and God’s intentions always win out.

So here’s my conclusion: Young earthers are right. The word “yom” was probably intended to mean 24 hour day by the earthly author. The old earthers are right. The word “yom” today should be correctly read as age, because that is the way God, the heavenly author of the Bible, intended it. Unfortunately, some of the people on either side will bicker about this angrily, looking down upon the other side. Neither will want to change their stance, neither will want to admit defeat, even if that means coming to an agreement. Neither are completely wrong. Both are right in some sense. If only they could come together to realize that they need to combine what they are both right about, and admit that how they were going about things was wrong.

This debate will probably never end. But in my eyes its pointless. Either way, God created ex nihilo with a purpose. How, why, when is not a big deal. But if we want to make it a deal at all, it seems to me that since God gave us the ability to use science and reason, that we should use them, looking at the evidence openly(since it doesn’t matter either way), and coming to a conclusion. It seems that as Christians, sometimes we hold the Bible as a scientific textbook when it was not intended to be that. We want our science to match our interpretation, rather than the other way around.

Some thoughts on gay marriage

I have a few questions for those who favor legalizing gay marriages.

Question 1: On what grounds to we base our definition of marriage? In fact, what is the definition of marriage that allows for gay marriage? Currently, it is defined as “the formal union of a man and a woman, typically recognized by law, by which they become husband and wife,” or ” the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law.” If this changes, why should it change? The reason I ask this is because if the definition is arbitrary and dependent upon time and culture, then how do we prevent future changes that allow polygamy and animal marriages and such? I know it is an extreme, but so I often I hear that it should change because it should be about two people who love each other. But if that is the sole reason, how can we likewise prohibit polygamy, since they could love each other to, right? And according to the same logic used to allow gay marriages (fairness and equality), how can we deny them this “right?” The problem is that the logic that allows gay marriage is a slippery slope. If we are consistent, then we can’t deny any type of marriage, no matter what it consists of.

Question 2: In what way are gay people not treated equally in regards to the right to marry? Nobody is saying that they can’t marry. They have the same right to marriage that I do, and that is to marry someone of the opposite sex. It’s the fact that they do not like the restrictions that limits who you can marry. That right has not been taken away from anyone, so quit saying that it is. Look at it this way, you are offered a job, and you have the choice to accept it or not. But you prefer another job, but one that is not hiring. Can you really say that the situation is not fair because you want the other job but it’s not being offered to you? I understand that these are two different issues, but we all agree that the job situation is not unfair, and in the same way, you are given a right, you just want a different right because you don’t like the one that is offered.

 

Final question: What is the purpose of marriage? Current research is not conclusive either way in regards to how children brought up in same sex households are affected. If it can be shown that it affects them negatively, and be shown that both sexes involved in their lives as parents is better for them, would this sway you to think differently?

If the purpose of marriage is to allow for the nurturing and furthering of families and bringing in new life to the world, then clearly same sex couples have no part in it. They can’t bring new life themselves, and I believe that a same sex household is not the ideal way for a child to grow up. This is the same reason that I do not like single parent homes and wish it upon no one. It is not the ideal. Yes, it happens sometimes. Dad’s leave, mom’s ask for divorces, people die. It’s unavoidable. But I strongly disagree with people being allowed to adopt and have children through artificial means of any sort when they are not married to someone of the opposite sex. This is not at all to say that one who comes from any of these families is illegitimate or lesser or to put seen differently or even that they won’t turn out better for it. There are always exceptions. But just as we do not encourage people to drive without seat belts because in %1 of accidents or what have you not wearing one saved someone’s life, we should not encourage behavior that tends to be detrimental in any way. It’s sad that people could be so selfish as to potentially harm another human being, especially one such as sacred and unique as a child. For me, that is unacceptable.

 

Would love to hear thoughts on this, for or against, religious or non-religious,

Our Expectations of God: They May Be Off… Way Off

A short time ago I finished a book by Phillip Yancy called Disappointment With God. It was a great book, and one that I recommend to anybody, but particularly those who have/are in difficult times.

One of the main points of the book was to address why we can be disappointed with God, as the title may suggest. He does this by answering three questions: Is God unfair? Is He silent? Is He hidden? Instead of answering these questions and giving an explanation, as we so often do, he takes a different route. he addresses why we are asking these questions in the first place. In asking these things, we clearly have presuppositions in regards to how God should be and how He should act. If we think He is unfair, clearly we think He should be fair. If He is silent, clearly we think that He should speak. And if He is hidden, clearly we think that He should make his appearance known.

Typically, the answer to these questions revolve around philosophy and theology. using wordy responses and scripture references to show that He is fair, is not silent, and is not hidden. But to what use? For those experiencing things that raise these questions, they certainly seem to be legitimate questions. It’s more of a “Why is God not being fair now, why is He not speaking to me, and why do I not feel Him?” You can’t use the answers that we most often give to the original questions and expect people to say, “Oh, that makes sense. Ok. I’ll move on because that eases my pain.”

By addressing our presuppositions about God, we can see why His reality is not matching our expectations of how things should be.

If there are a few things that we can learn from the Bible and human history, they are that God has tried multiple methods of trying to reach out to us, and most have failed. This is not to say that God failed, but rather that we failed Him. He even knew they would fail, but tried anyway. For example, He led the Israelites out of Egypt, into a desert where He fed them every day in a miraculous way, “resided” in a tent and could be felt, and then led them into the Promised Land despite heavy opposition. Did the people continuously praise Him and act according to His will? Not by any means. They complained about the food they were provided, they doubted that they could take the Promised Land despite the fact that they had seen Him part a sea and cause the Plagues. He then tried prophets instead of interacting personally, and what happened? They were killed and hated. Then came the kings, who also failed. And finally the success of Christ. But if He knew that Christ was the answer all along, why try these other, pointless options, destined to fail?

I think He did it to show us that they fail. He wanted to be able to say, when people asked why He wasn’t making Himself clear as day, or not speaking directly to them, that it doesn’t work and that He has tried it before. He is able to say that He has spoken to people and they didn’t listen. In fact, He came down Himself as a person, a human, and we killed Him. Fortunately for us, that was the whole plan. But it still showed us that God is there, and that He does care, and that we need to trust Him.

Jesus suffered not only for us, but also with us. God wanted to be able to say, “I know the pain that you feel. I know what emotional and physical pain as a human is like. I have been there, and I made it through, so can you. Follow my example.” What a God we have that He would exhaust all options so that we could have no excuse, and then He suffered in our place and can say that and mean that, and we can know that in the end, God wins.

Definition of Science: What can be an explanation?

In listening to a podcast today, I was getting more and more frustrated. It was two Christians discussing the origin of life. One kept saying that intelligent design was a science stopper and that minds should not be an explanation for anything in science.

I find this to be ludicrous. If it is the case, because it is certainly at least possibly true, then your definition and limits of science are science stoppers themselves. How can you have such things that would potentially give you necessarily false answers. For if it could be true that there are agent causations(which there certainly appears to be and all other fields permit them, just not biology and physics), then you are operating on a concept that necessarily prevents you from finding the true explanation.

I don’t understand why this is so common, and why some of the smartest people in the world think this way. Agents cause things. We know this from experience. How can you then rule that out simply because it is “science” and not something else? If you are limiting yourself from particular explanations because they are “unscientific,” then you have a faulty concept of what science is, because science is suppose to study reality, and the things that take place in it and effect it. If there is a dimension of this that you leave out, you the are no longer doing honest and open science and are bound to have false answers.

Jesus was Human… So are we: Don’t forget that. He didn’t push His God button.

SO I will start off with two links to pages by N.T. Wright on Jesus self-identity and self-awareness that will shed some light on where I will go in this post.

Jesus’ Self-Understanding

JESUS AND THE IDENTITY OF GOD

And then I will post this link as well, which is another source for this post:

God Button: The Mind of Christ

I shall try to combine an analysis for the two together.

The first point is that we need to remember that Jesus was a HUMAN. So often we lose sight of this, and put Him in this “other” category so that a)we feel we can no longer relate to him, or b)so that we can rationalize why we mess up and sin and He didn’t. Both are dangerous, and both should be forbidden. Yes, Jesus was God, but His humanity was equally important. It had to be a human that lived a perfect life in order for our sins to be pardoned. It had to be someone who dealt with the same things we deal with, but win them all. It had to be a human so that we could relate in times of need, and turn to Him as a perfect example rather than an idealized concept of how things could be if we were God too.

The reason why I think that these three messages relate is because it all comes down to one thing: Jesus was human. It does not deny His God aspect of Himself, but it refines it. Jesus temptation, if anything, was probably greater than anything we face today. He was put in situations where pressing His “God-button”would have alleviated a lot of things, whether for Himself, or, perhaps more interestingly, for others. He easily could have taken Himself off the cross, in some ways proving His divine power. But in doing so, the necessary sacrifice would have been spoiled. he could have restored the city of Jerusalem to power, but knew His spiritual mission was far more important. How often do we live like this? I think one of the major problems in today’s world is that people think that preventing and fixing problems is what makes someone a good person. To a degree, it is. But there is so much more. Physical support is good, but nothing compared to spiritual support. How often do we focus on people’s physical needs above their spiritual needs?

This is not to say that we should not meet physical needs, but in doing so, there is supposed to be more to it than just that.

I think Jesus life shows how to handle this. He didn’t succumb to the worldly pressure to meet physical needs, but was more concerned with spiritual things.

Back to Jesus and how He saw Himself. It would make sense, that in being completely human, He would have His doubts and questions. We all do as humans, and it would be crazy to set Him apart and think that He didn’t as well. For me, this is a major comfort. He persevered through His doubts and held steadfast in the faith, even when He felt rejected. He may have been unsure of Himself even at times, as we all are, but trusted in the Father and the Spirit to work through Him and provide and win in the end. This is something we all need to learn. This dependency upon God. It is such a danger in setting Jesus apart too far away from us, and lose out on this hope that we can be like Him.

I think that fact that the name “Christian” means “little Christ” is so perfect. I mean, how often do we call ourselves that but not think about it? It has come to mean a follower of Jesus, a God-fearing person, but has lost it’s original meaning, which was to follow in His footsteps. In the name itself, it is assumed that we can be like Him. We can’t be God, but we can trust God and utilize the Holy Spirit in the way that Christ did, and in that sense be like Him. I think this is what we are called to do.

I think our issues have multiple origins. The fact that we put halos around His head in pictures, that we have portraits of Him hung up in some churches. We set Him up high, which is good, but too high to reach. That was the problem of the Old Testament. God was too big and impersonal to be reached and trusted in in the manner that He wanted. Which is why He sent His Son, and the Holy Spirit. They were to be the personal, reachable aspects of Himself. In setting them so far above us, we miss out on some of the greatest aspects of their existence. Our relation to them, both in the typical relationship status, but also in how we compare to Christ. He was human, we are human. If we miss out on this, we miss out on a giant reason for why God did things the way He did. It was more than about just saving us, it was about redeeming us, and helping us live the way we were meant to live. If we don’t think of it like this, we are rejecting our greatest ally and advocate in life, and making it that much harder on ourselves.

Jesus was a human. Jesus was God. We are human, and not God. But in His humanity, we can relate to Him much more closely than we often think. Don’t succumb to this pressure. Yes, He was perfect, but He was perfect to show you how it was to be done, and that it was possible. Don’t reject His example.

On the other side of the road…

I recently listened to a sermon on the Good Samaritan… something we talk about far too often it may seem, something we all think we know about. It’s typically told in order for us to see that everybody we come across is a “neighbor” and what it means to be a good Christian is to help out those in need, no matter who they are or their relation to us. And that’s not a bad message. But this focuses solely on what the Good Samaritan did, and I think, after hearing this particular sermon, that there is more to the story.

No, I’m not saying don’t walk alone on dangerous roads because you might get jumped, though that is true. Rather, it’s much more general. Something I had never thought about were the people who passed the man in need of help. They were good people too, well-respected people with important things to do. Not just that, but if they helped this man, they probably could not do their important things since they would be ritually unclean, and performing rituals was their job. You see, we had a priest and a Levite. Men of the temple. They had Godly business to attend to. It wasn’t as though they merely didn’t want to help, maybe they did but had other obligations. And not just selfish obligations, but stuff that served God…

A friend needs to talk, but we have prior obligations, it would be rude to ditch the other thing for your friend, though, since that came first. And a true friend would understand this and not want to interrupt your prior event. You have a softball game Saturday night, a playoff game, and someone from church asks if you can teach a class because they won’t be able to be there. If you don’t go to the game, your team will have to forfeit because they won’t have enough players. You have to politely, yet regretfully, decline because your team is counting on you.

These scenarios are have quite a bit in common. These aren’t just excuses, these are real reasons, legitimate. We are torn, but in the end stick with the plan. Deviating would be too risky, and it would disappoint too many people.

But yet these are the things that Jesus was criticizing, right? He was showing how Godly people, who were trying to be Godly, had their priorities messed up. We aren’t told what this Samaritan was doing, or where he was heading. I wish we were, because I have a feeling he had somewhere important to be too. And he put that on hold, and attended to this man.

How often have we done this? I wish I could say more. I am guilty of it, and I’m sure you are too at some time or another. We have things that we think are important, and yet Jesus is telling us that we have our priorities messed up.

We are walking on the other side of the road.

Part of this is about avoiding the issue to begin with. When we see something that will be trying or difficult, we often make our way around it, trying to pay it as little attention as possible as not to force us to actually make a decision. That way, we don’t feel bad, and can rationalize that we just didn’t see it or it was out of the way. This seems to me to be what the priest and Levite did. They recognized something that was going to call them to act, to make a decision, yet they avoided it, but for God’s sake.

I think there are 3 points being made here. The first is direct, and that is that everybody is our neighbor, since that was the original question that was to be answered. But I think there was a point to the people and situation that we often miss not being in the culture. Anybody listening would have known that the priest and Levite were on their way to the temple. They had duties to fulfill that the people counted on. So Jesus was flipping this on it’s head. It seems clear that this is a point since Jesus makes it other places as well. People are more important than “godliness.” I’ve heard something similar before, “business is not godliness.” People are more important than doing “things,” even if “important.” People are what God is after anyways, not a clean church, not a great sermon, not an well-said prayer. These things mean nothing if not intended to bring people to God.

The preacher emphasized this. He called us not to “walk on the other side of the road.” Calling us not to avoid stuff if at all possible, and to rationalize our actions.

How often do you walk on the other side of the road? At work? At school? Even at home? Can you say that you have dropped what you were doing, though seemingly important, to help someone in need?

If yes, keep up the good work. If no, work on it. It’s important. People matter more to God than anything else, it should be the same for us as well.

Where does God fit into my life?

This past week has been full of awesome thoughts in regards to faith and action and such. Our church has been going through the book of James, discussing a lot of the basic practical applications for a Christian. This past week reminded me of a great video I saw a few years back. The sermon was about submitting to God, while the video was about where God fit into our lives. But they were extremely related in their practice.

First, the sermon merely reflected what it meant to submit to God, which seems so obvious to us, yet so hard to actually do. The whole “Your will be done” idea, not my will. The video was something that merely popped into my head in the middle of the sermon that had a similar effect on me in remembrance as it did the first time. It’s a short animated clip of a boy who has the most awesome house ever, a mansion, with so many cool things inside. One day, he sees a giant ninja statue, and just has to have it, knowing that his house will always seem incomplete without it. He tries to get it in, but it just won’t fit. He can’t find a way to get it in. Instead of giving up his hopes of having it in his house, he decides that this statue is so important, that he will destroy his house and rebuild it around the statue. This is submission to God.

If it isn’t clear, which it didn’t stand out right away for me the first time, or at least not the huge impact it has had on me since, let me explain. God is the ninja statue, not in an idolic sense, but merely in an metaphorical sense. God doesn’t just fit neatly into our lives, it just doesn’t work that way. It’s a “nice” theory, to adapt a lifestyle that has God in it along with other things, since family and work and friends are important too, and they need attention and space as well. But in practice, it leads to a mere nominal Christianity, one that isn’t very Christian at all when you compare it to the “Christianity” that Jesus was asking of us. I put this in quotes because it’s not about the religion or the things that we do. In fact, this was part of the sermon that I thought fit so well into this. Doing the right things just simply isn’t enough.

This requires some more explanation as well. We were left with a question to ponder when it comes to making decisions, “Is this consistent with my call to be a disciple of Christ?” Everything goes through this filter that we say, do, etc. This is where the video comes back in. The tearing down of the house was the radical change that is required for a Christian in their lives. Everything changes. Rather than having some God in one’s life, their life should be built around God. Everything is for Him.

And then comes Steven Curtis Chapman, one of my favorite music artists. He recently released a song called “Do Everything.” The chorus goes like this:

Do everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you to do
Every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace
With every move that you make
And every little thing you do

It’s this idea that we should go about every aspect of our lives for God. Eating in thanks, working in praise, doing homework for His glory, playing sports to honor Him, everything. You can’t be a Christian and do these things for yourself, and only go to church or pray for God. It’s a life for God, not a moment or part of your day for God.

So tear down your “nice” houses and rebuild around God. If you find this hard, pray for it. You can’t do it on your own. You need God’s help. Don’t be afraid to ask for it.

God doesn’t fit in my life, your life. We fit in Him.

Lack of “Child abuse” is why there is a trend to deny Hell. So spank your kids… for God

This may seem crazy at first, but let me explain. By “child abuse” in the title, I simply mean good, old-fashioned child rearing. You know, that crazy one that actually involved punishing bad behavior? Yeah, that. But how in the world would this play into people becoming unorthodox? Let’s take a look…

Psychologists and the like today tend to say that spanking a child is bad and can lead to them being abusive when they are older and mal-developed. I tend to disagree, but I’m no expert I guess. Apparently looking around at behavior exhibited by Gen Y that wasn’t reared what I call properly compared to that of the behavior of Gen X and prior isn’t enough to show these “experts” that they are wrong and that if anything it leads to children being defiant, stuck up SOBs. Yeah, I said it. 50 years ago, no kid would have ever dreamed of calling his mother an inappropriate name because he knew mom would slap him in the face, make him eat soap, and then wait til dad got home, and that was worse. Now, not only is it not uncommon, but I’m surprised if I go to the mall or grocery and I DON’T see it happen. But for some reason the parent takes it in stride and simply gives them a verbal warning, followed by more name calling and back talking from the child, and yet another verbal warning ensues. Effective, eh? Not really. Now that is just one example, and while I don’t have any hard and fast studies to quote here, I reckon that crime in the teen age group as well as behavior and grades in school have dropped as well, and while there may be more than one factor for these, I would bet quite a bit that how children are raised has affected this.

But where does orthodoxy and belief in Hell come in? How about right here. What the child ends up believing is that punishment is evil, and that a parent should never hit a child, and if they do, that’s abuse, and EVIL. What this leads to is the belief that God surely couldn’t punish people if He loves them, right? That’s evil and unloving, and God is supposed to be benevolent and all loving. So while the problem of evil doesn’t concern us quite as much, because this is within the Christian camp and they affirm God exists, and whereas in the problem of evil, we know evil exists and can’t simply deny that to get around the problem, here, we don’t have “evidence” of Hell. Teaching that punishment, that justice, is evil is ludicrous. Its almost as if we are taught that only the REALLY bad people deserve punishment. So murderers and rapists and terrorists, right? But the idea of justice isn’t just that great people get great things and horrendous people get horrendous things, but that decent people get decent things, not so great people get not so great things, etc. You get what you deserve, you reap what you show, you get out what you put in. And this is across the board, and not just for extremes. Otherwise the petty thief shouldn’t be punished because he’s not THAT bad.

This is the world infiltrating Christianity. Let me explain a bit more. In Christianity, a little sin is a big sin. One sin, and you are no longer perfect. It doesn’t matter whether you raped and murdered a child, or whether you disobeyed your parents when they asked you to help clean the dishes. They both separate you from God. That’s the nature of sin. This is not to say that the degree of sin is unimportant in the end, because I think it is since God is perfectly just. But just as a petty thief gets punished some, and a murderer gets punished more, hopefully in a somewhat proportional manner, I would think something along those lines would occur when it comes to sin as well, though I do not have the knowledge to say how it actually works, but I trust that it does. But either way, there is in fact punishment even for menial sins if they are not repented of. Its one and done in God’s eyes if you are outside of Christ. Christ is the only second chance.

And we can also play up emotions to make people think that Hell surely doesn’t exist. Rob Bell likes to do this, he asks if we really think God won’t win in the end, that He won’t get what He wants. Its easy to think that of course He will, He is God. But what Bell doesn’t tell you is that God doesn’t want sin now, or ever, and by giving us free will, He already has relinquished getting completely what He wants because He wants us to choose. And if I choose and God doesn’t, that argument fails.

Certainly nobody likes the idea of Hell and nobody wishes it upon another. But I don’t like that fire causes pain, or that gas costs $4 a gallon, or tests in school, or etc., but that doesn’t mean that that is not the case and that I am better off acting as if they are not the case, because all that would get me would be burned, in prison, and flunked. And in the case of Hell, its eternal, and not something I can possibly fix. Jesus/God said it was real, and that is enough for me. I don’t have to go there to believe in it. So by teaching kids that they should not be punished for bad behavior in the home, that they should not be punished in school, that things should be changed so that they can succeed, they start to think that that is how the world is. It isn’t. God doesn’t change for me. I change for Him. Hell isn’t designed for me and He doesn’t want me there, but I get to choose. If I don’t change, well…

Proper child rearing, therefore, not only leads to better behavior and more respect of others, it will lead to more orthodox beliefs in things like Hell and justice. So spank your kids… for God. It will do them good.

True(thful) to Myself

One of the popular sayings in today’s world is that one needs to be “true to himself.” What this means, no one truly knows. In fact, I have never heard of a positive definition of it, only negative ones. Sometimes its seems to mean that if we do something that we feel guilty about, we weren’t true to ourselves. Sometimes it simply means that if we are struggling with something, like alcoholism or drug addiction, marital problems,… that we are not being true to ourselves and that that is the cause of our troubles, and if we were true to ourselves, then this would have prevented or will fix the problems.

This seems fine and dandy to some degree. It may mean not lying, not being self-deceptive, accepting our faults and mistakes, etc. But there are a huge problems with it even within secular society, and even more in Christian culture. In a secular worldview, while one may accept their faults, being true to ourselves means merely accepting them at times, and may discourage us from trying to improve upon them. From this, angry people stay angry, selfish people stay selfish, etc. And not only that, but they justify their behavior by saying that it is just the way they are, implying that they have to be that way if they are to be “true to themselves.” So it can give people reasons to not improve themselves and be better people, and may even increase some faults as they become more “true to themselves.”

On a Christian worldview, this becomes an even bigger issue. That is because true human nature is sinful, and we should certainly not be “true to sin.” Paul calls us to crucify ourselves and be alive in Christ, no longer living for ourselves but living for Christ, not only this, but that Christ live in us(Galatians 2). He also says that we should be dead to sin and alive in Christ(Romans 6). So the message here seems to be saying that we should not be true to ourselves at all, but rather, allow Christ to live in us, that is, be true to Christ. This seems very contrary to the message that society is giving us, so when Christians adopt it, they are making very dangerous assertions that can be extremely harmful to themselves and other Christians. We end up with a similar result as the secular world, where people justify sin/bad behavior by saying its who we are, whereas for a Christian, that is the whole point! We are bad people by our nature and need to get out of it!

There is a song out there by MercyMe that says it quite well:

Well if I come across a little bit distant
It’s just because I am
Things just seem to feel a little bit different
You understand
Believe it or not but life is not apparently
About me anyways
But I have met the One who really is worthy
So let me say

So long, self
Well, it’s been fun, but I have found somebody else
So long, self
There’s just no room for two
So you are gonna have to move
So long, self
Don’t take this wrong but you are wrong for me, farewell
Oh well, goodbye, don’t cry
So long, self

Stop right there because I know what you’re thinking
But no we can’t be friends
And even though I know your heart is breaking
This has to end
And come to think of it the blame for all of this
Simply falls on me
For wanting something more in life than all of this
Can’t you see

It is only when we recognize that this self needs to be gotten rid of and that we should not associate with it at all that we become Christlike and Godly, and our relationship with The One, God, grows by leaps and bounds when we do so. But if we cling to any part of ourselves, God cannot do all that He wants with you. And when we are “true to ourselves,” this leaves no room for God at all and we live in sin and separation from God.

So Christians, please discard this idea entirely from your life and beliefs. For everybody else, you too. While you may not believe in God, surely improvement should be preferred to stagnation, and justification of bad behavior should be frowned upon, that is exactly what we get when following this doctrine to its core. Yourself is not a “higher power,” so don’t act like it. You can’t submit to yourself, for submitting to yourself is the same thing as living for yourself and requires nothing different than if you did not think in such a manner but just lived according to your whims.

Rather than being true to ourselves, let us be truthful to ourselves, and recognize that this is a stupid idea and that it is a terrible way to live and that this world would be even worse if we all lived in such a manner.

Clothing and other stuff

I like to look nice, but also like to sport my faith. c28.com is a site that sells Christian clothing, from shirts to jeans to hats to belts, everything. You can also get books and movies here. The link posted here even allows you to get 10% your purchase! Just click on it, and enter 10MINIFLYER in the coupon code section before submitting your purchase.

I have taken advantage of this site quite a bit. Recently bought a DVD on The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, as well as the book. Awesome stuff.

Here is a shirt that I am thinking about getting soon as well. Revelation V-Neck

Check it out, let me know what you think.

If you like to design things, check out http://www.canvasthreads.com/ where you can submit and vote on t-shirt designs. If you are selected, your design will be sold in the c28 store.

A Couple New Papers

Just posted a couple of new papers. One is on Mary the Color Scientist and the whole deal of intentionality. I bring up an objection as well as an objection to the objection. The other one is on the sociology of science and a critique of the Strong Programme put forth by Bloor.

Great discussion: Check it out!

If you want to join in on a great discussion, and in turn make following the posts where we already have multiple topics even more convoluted and difficult to keep track of, check it out over at Current Events in Light of the Kingdom of God-Dialogue with Michael (re: Heaven and Hell). The original post was here:A Nonchurchgoer’s Guide to Jesus and His Kingdom-Everyone Is Going to Heaven. So check it out and join this discussion.

These are both blogs by Mike Gantt, cool guy, has a great name(like me), and always gives a good discussion and thought provoking posts.

Chich-Fil-A has fantastic chicken, and good values. Quit hatin’

So a story came out that Chick-Fil-A(CFA) donated to a pro-family organization that was against gay marriage. Gay rights advocates have unleashed their wrath upon this wonderful restaurants that makes a mean chicken sandwich. They’re telling people to protest the restaurant, and it has even been suspended at certain universities around the country. I find this… I guess not surprising, but certainly frustrating.

But let’s address this issue from the bottom up. CFA is an Evangelical Christian owned company. Its founder is of such background and wanted his business to be the same. They are closed on Sundays, they ask if they can “serve” the next guest as opposed to “help,” they have passed out various Christian toys, similar to the toys in a Happy Meal, such as Veggie Tales, Christian children’s books, etc. This is something they they are adamant about, and many CFA fans know full well.

And this is not the first time that they have been in the news for a political type issue. A former employee, who was a Muslim, sued saying that his religion was the reason for his firing after he refused to partake in an employee prayer. The suit was settled outside of court on undisclosed terms.

And now this. While legal action is not being pursued, it is possible that this will be more harmful than other issues since it is more public. But I just don’t get it. What’s the big deal? I don’t know of any anti-gays that refuse to go to Starbucks because they have donated to pro-gay organizations, and I know a lot of coffee drinkers! First, its food, if you like it, eat it, if not, don’t.

But second, let’s break this down into what it really is. Pro-gays are bigots and act like they aren’t. And here’s why: When someone speaks for Christian family values, they blast them for being evil and bigoted and homophobic. Its not like this someone even had to point they’re finger at gays as people, but that is what they get in return. Rather than a heated debate on the issues, which would be somewhat pleasant to see, what they get in return is the typical political ad hominem arguments that attack the person holding the belief rather than the belief himself. This is not to say that no proponent of Christian family values has never done the same to a gay rights advocate, but merely that it is less public and seems to be more rare. So the tolerance tends to be on the side of the Christian family values, as given in my Starbucks example earlier. Even mere support for any contrary belief is taken to be a jab at gay rights and they declare homophobia and intolerance. It is important here to note that this is quite wrong. To support one idea is indeed to reject its contrary, but that does not mean that to support one idea is to reject the people that hold the contrary. But this is the way the gay advocates portray it, specifically Perez Hilton. But what is really going on is that the side claiming tolerance, the gay right supporter since it is “about equality,” is being intolerant of the actually tolerant, since they don’t want to allow the opposition to support their own beliefs that are actually more idealistic than personal attacks upon homosexuals.

I think it is a fair comparison to communism of sorts here, where a certain side wants to repress any expression of a contrary view, but this is much more…. refined. That is because in this case, it is the minority that is suppressing the majority, since this country has given so much power to the minorities as to not upset them, often with the result of ignoring the cares of the majority. That is why this story is not surprising. But that is also why this story is sad. In the country that claims to be the land of the free and home of the brave, the country who boasts free speech, yet we have this. Where a private company can’t donate to who they please without negative repercussions in the media.

So in the end, I will continue to go to Chick-Fil-A, and continue to love and respect what they do and their firm stance as a Christian company.

Hell, what is this place? Heaven, does everyone go?

There are multiple words that get translated as “hell” in the Bible. Sheol in the Old Testament, and Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna in the New. Sheol does not have any clear meaning as the Hell as we know it today, but more like the Greek Hades, which was where all went where they died. Hades and Tartarus seem to be used in similar ways, but we get the idea that there is a divide somewhere in it, such as the story of Lazarus and the rich man, where the rich man is in torment and asks for a Lazarus to dip his finger in some water and touch his tongue, but Lazarus cannot due to the great chasm between them. This is commonly seen not as Hell proper, however. Rather, there is usually a distinction made between where the dead go when they die and the Heaven and Hell that come about after the Final Judgment and mass resurrection of all people. Gehenna seems the most strict of the terms. It seems to get its roots from the valley of Hinnon, which was outside the city of Jerusalem and was often on fire due to the garbage and waste that was there. Moloch and child sacrifice, and evil in general was associated both directly and indirectly with it. But the use of the word in the NT seems to have a more symbolic and figurative meaning than referencing the actual place, so a simple translation does not seem to fit.

So Hell proper seems mostly to come from a select few passages in the Bible where Gehenna is used, or where eternal damnation is mentioned, and then a few instances in Revelation, though I will not mention those here due to the nature of the book that is so hard to interpret. The main “proof texts” for Hell as eternal punishment are Matt. 25:41, Matt. 25:46, Jude 7, which actually don’t even have the word Hell in them, but merely speak of eternal torment or punishment. In Matt. 3:12, Matt. 5:22, Matt. 18:8-9, Gehenna is used in conjunction with sin and the punishment for that sin, so in conjunction with the other passages mentioned, the doctrine of Hell is established.

So what does that mean about Heaven? Well, we clearly see that in Hades in the Lazarus and the rich man story, that there is a divide between the righteous and the unrighteous. [On a side note here, the doctrine of imputed righteousness(often associated with Reformed Theology and Protestantism) or infused righteousness(often associated with Catholic Theology) has to be mentioned, since Christians do not claim to be righteous of their own accord, but that as forgiven people, are given the righteousness of Christ.] And if there is a divide in Hades between the righteous and unrighteous, and we combine this with the idea that some will receive eternal torment, it would make sense to say that these people will be the unrighteous. The other option would be to say that there is some sort of purgatory, or that Hell is like purgatory, insofar as Hell would be finite according to the punishment fit for one’s sins. While this may be the more likable idea, since then all would be saved and this seems more just than eternal punishment, it seems impossible to me to get this out of the Bible, especially given that we know that some will in fact be punished in an eternal manner with “the devil and his angels.” To me, this seems impossible to get around. I will concede that some passages are ambiguous about Heaven and who gets there, but these passages hat talk of eternal punishment are impossible to coincide with the idea that everyone could get into heaven, because if that were the case, then surely this would not have been said in the first place.

Laying out some of the alternatives for Hell:

Annihilationism: God destroys the souls of the wicked so they do not have to suffer eternal torment in Hell. To me, this sounds a lot like euthanasia. The purpose of this idea is that God prevents eternal suffering by taking one out of existence entirely. But is that really a better option? It seems that if one is abhorrent, the other would be as well.

Universalism: There are basically two types of universalism. Contingent and necessary. Necessary is more problematic in that it says that it is impossible for anybody to go to Hell, which would seem to fly in the face of a just God, and it also implies that no matter what one does in their life on earth, it has no affect on their afterlife.

Contingent universalism seems to be the nicest view. That while it is possible for some to go to Hell, none in fact do. The problem here seems minor, but ends up with the same problem that it was trying to solve, mainly, that God would not send anyone to Hell due to His goodness. What the universalist wants to say is that God can’t send people to Hell, that He won’t has no affect on His ability to, and it is His ability to that they have to object to.

Second chance: Many views here, but the main point is that while some go to Hell it is finite. Problem here: the passages listed earlier mention eternal Hell, and this is not compatible with that.

For some interesting comments regarding Hell and Heaven and the problems with annihilationism and universalism check out http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heaven-hell/#1.1

The objective or goal here is to have an internally consistent doctrine of Heaven, Hell, and God. In my opinion, the traditional view that Hell is eternal, some people will go there, Heaven is eternal and Good, but both only come about after the Final Judgment and mass resurrection of both good and bad, and that before then, we all go to Hades but that the righteous are with God in a good realm, while the wicked are separated in some manner from the righteous. I would go as far as saying that for an infinitely good God, that in order to maintain that attribute, He cannot be in the presence of any sin or unrighteousness, which is why forgiveness and imputed/infused righteousness is necessary for salvation and entrance into heaven. And those only come about after repentance and wanting to be forgiven. It is not that forgiveness apart from wanting to be forgiven is like rape by any means, but rather that it is a two way street, the main aspect being repentance and recognition that we are sinful and need to be better, and the sincere effort to improve and try to be good. This would allow for some non-Christians who recognize that they fall short of being perfect, yet strive anyways, and honestly seek truth to get a pass. Now, not being God, I do not say who fits in this category and who doesn’t. If someone is agnostic or atheistic and is 100% honest and pure in his seeking, then they may get in since God can see into out hearts and our thoughts. I do believe more certainly that this allows minimally for those who have never encountered the Gospel to begin with to get in if they fit into this category.