I thought this was sort of interesting.

It does sort of make one wonder exactly what role there is between the theology of Jesus and the politics of sovereign nations.

What do you think?

Tags: Jesus, love, Theology, war

I work at a Mental Health Facility. Quite honestly, we take away people’s liberty. They do something (to be fair, usually a multitude of somethings) and we remove them from society. At any given time there is at least 3 locked doors between them and freedom. Their entire schedule becomes controlled by someone else.
What time they get up.

What time they eat. What they eat. Where they play. What they play.

What time they go to bed.

Now, they rant and they rave. They argue. Sometimes they punch and assault. They always talk about what is wrong with everyone else and the ever illusive system. What’s interesting to me is how often they come back after they have worked to obtain their freedom.  They leave and with in a few days they’re trying to get back inside. It’s comforting there. It’s warm or cool depending on the season. They are familiar with what happens there every day. No matter how much they are willing to criticize and complain, they need the system to function.  It’s easier to let someone else dictate to you what you believe, and to be critical of what someone else has set up then it is to create your own.

Take those thoughts to the blog world. What happens when the thing that you have built your entire “ministry” around no longer seems relevant? What happens when people just don’t care about what you are writing about because your writings are akin to writing about the dangers of 8 track players in cars?

You kick and scream, that’s what happens. It started out with a silly little tirade about the Tall Skinny KiWi blogger, Andrew Jones. He put up a post about how to deal with critics. Never mentioned any angry bloggers by name, but oh boy did one angry blogger in particular go a little sideways. We learned that TSK was condescending. That he was think[sic] skinned, and that he was ill advised.

Then a few days later, there was anger directed at Frank Turk, for asking what “discernment bloggers” actually believe. Apparently it is wrong to want to know what someone actually stands for, not just what he is against.

Then today, someone sent me a link to this blog post where once again a discernment blogger is not only called to task but his arguments are dismantled in the comment thread.  There are too many good quotes to have a favorite but this one was particularly interesting,

I think I’ll just let Jesus lead me as to what areas I’ll be addressing.

Why is that interesting? Well because that is something that Mr. Silva and his friends have taken many a person to task for. When Rick Warren said it, there was great gnashing of teeth. When Rob Bell refused to answer their questions because he answered to God and his local church only there was a war cry.

You can read the whole post on your own, but it does bring up an interesting point. The self labeled discernment bloggers now have an opportunity. One that some of them have taken. I have my issues with Chris Rosebrough and I’m sure he has his issues with me but to his credit he has many posts up regarding what he believes.  The opportunity to do the same now lies before Mr. Ken Silva and his friends.

Of course, by putting up what they believe they will be open to criticism to it. This all begs an interesting question. What happens when the **Truth War** you are fighting either ends or changes battlefields? The emergent church was and will remain to be something of an easy target because there are so many different sides inside of it, but I have said before that it is more and more becoming irrelevant to the conversation of how we are to share our faith in the years to come.

Perhaps, that will mean the end of some *ministries* that don’t seem to actually be ministering. What happens when a ministry needs there to be a boogey man?

Indeed, what happens when…

It has been said that we live what we believe. John Piper recently wrote an article on evangelicalism and doctrine. (Doctrine means belief or teaching. In our context, that means the teachings of the Bible.) He quotes from Ronald Sider’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience to support his view that doctrine, right doctrine, matters to how Christians live. Not, I think, what we acknowledge as true, but what we believe is important. What we think about, and how we think shapes how we act. Romans 12:2 tells us to, “be transformed by the renewing of our minds.” Right beliefs develop right actions. Let me acknowledge up front that I don’t see this as a cut and dry issue. Nor do I think that every person who claims to believe the teachings of Christ has been transformed by them. Many examples can be given of people who hold to all the right doctrines, but are unloving. Of course, there’s a simple response to this – that they don’t hold to all the right doctrines.

Foundational to Christianity is love. It has to be when the very essence of God is love. He is relationship, three-in-one.* The very thing that defines us, that we proclaim and profess, that cannot be denied despite all of our denominational differences is that God loved us to His death. The virgin birth, the life of demand and stress, the teaching and the touches of hope and grace and peace, the quiet submission to torture, the obedience to the Father and the giving of life on the cross… were an act of love for us.

Our religion, our movement, our faith, our hope was born out of the cross… out of love. We love because He first loved us. 1 John says that anybody who does not love his brother, isn’t living in Jesus, isn’t living by truth. I’m guessing that the majority of examples that we could all provide of people who “have all the right doctrines” also have problems forgiving others, being generous to those in need, serving the marginalized of this world, and generally just don’t have much love. I agree with Piper that “God gives good press to good doctrine” (probably more than I agree with him on most things). But I can’t get over that God has given the best press to the following teaching:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV)

*Can love even exist outside of relationship? Some theologians think that the three persons of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, were not three before Creation and that They will return to the same state after the Second coming. I don’t see how this is possible if God IS love. The description of the three-in-one is most congruent with the teaching that He is, was, and will always be and that He is love.

Tags: doctrine, God's love, love, love one another

You may remember last fall when I wrote a post about forgiveness. I had encountered a guy who believed it was inappropriate to forgive someone until they asked for it. In fact, he went so far as to say it was unbiblical.

Well, I ran into him again. This time we talked about asking for forgiveness when you don’t believe you did wrong.  Two specific situations came up in the discussion (there was a group of about 15 of us, which is also known as a class).

Situation 1:

A person says you did something that you did not do. They are offended. The question became is it appropriate to ask for forgiveness. Some said that we should and others said that we simply because someone is offended, that doesn’t mean that anything that was done was wrong.  The argument back was that it didn’t matter if it was wrong or not, the relationship was fractured and that was wrong. The basic gist was that asking for forgiveness doesn’t require much from the person except humility.

Situation 2:

Someone then brought up scenario #2.  What do you do if someone says you did something wrong and either it is a lie, or you believe it’s a lie. Do you ask for forgiveness in order to repair the “fractured relationship” or do you refuse to ask forgiveness, instead forcing the person to deal with the truth. At this point, the class broke into a verbal free for all with opinions raining in from all sides like confetti during a championship parade.

So what are your thoughts?

A little over a year ago, I told a friend and frequent critic of the Emergent Church that I believed the EC had died as we knew it. There were things happening there that simply were going to cause people to figure out where they stood on some things. I have maintained that the EC, like all movements had a center, a left and a right. What was interesting to me was the fact that I thought those who were more left were going to be the one’s to cause this shift.

The other day, I read an article by a friend and fellow student Jeremy Bouma. He called his post, “Goodbye Emergent, Why I’m taking the theology of the Emerging Church to Task.” Jeremy lays out how he got to the point he is at and explains where he intends to go with his series.  The comments range from thoughtful to what was that person thinking?

I doubt that Jeremy’s departure from Emergent will really signal a great shift in anything other than the fact that I think he is one more guy who is asking what does it mean to be emergent, and how does that effect my beliefs? Of course, the watchdogs watchblogs have made mention of his post and even some emergents writers have loaded up for bear.

This is an interesting time. I think we’re going to see some more clear definitions laid out for us over the upcoming months. I think that will be good, not so we can decide who’s in and who’s out but so that we can honestly know where we all stand. It will make it harder for some who like to use a broad brush to do so and that is always a good thing.

I want to ask this question here because I think we have probably the most diverse set of voices in the blogosphere. Except maybe for CNET.

Recently I had a conversation with someone who was adamant that because our church used the New Living Translation of the bible in our pews we were somehow less “biblical”. Of course this person was arguing vehemently that the King James Version bible is the truest form of scripture. By no means is this person dumb or a KJV 1611′er by any stretch.

So I have to ask…Really? In my experience and my study the KJV version is probably the worst for translation accuracy. So I’m miffed why people fight so hard for this.*

Thoughts?

*THIS IS NOT AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE MESSAGE!

Tags: kjv 1611, people, thoughts?

I’m reading a wonderful little book by Mitch Albom. The book is called Have a Little Faith. Every now and again a book sort of creeps up on me and disturbs me…in a beautiful and wonderful sort of way. So far this book is doing just that.

I read this today and thought I would offer it up to you for your thought and consideration.

Albom is telling the story of being in class one day in 1974 when the teacher began discussing the Red Sea crossing by the just emancipated Hebrews.

“There is a Talmudic commentary here,” the teacher says. … “After the Israelites safely crossed the Red Sea, the Eyptians chased after them and were drowned. God’s angels wanted to celebrate the enemy’s demise.”

“According to the commentary, God saw this and grew angry. He said, in essence, ‘Stop celebrating. For those were my children, too’” (76).

Be blessed, my friends.

I’m sort of bothered that Christmas is gone already. It’s even worse as an adult waiting all year for Christmas and then having it pass by so quickly. That bugs me. But this year has been a lot of fun for a lot of different reasons and I am unhappy it is over so soon.

I learned a lot about Christmas this year. It’s been a long time since I was able to merely participate in a Christmas Eve worship. I did a little singing this year, but that’s about all. It’s a different thing to sit in the pews on Christmas Eve.

Anyhow, blah, blah, blah. I thought I would share this one last post with you since I’m certain there are other things planned for the not too distant future. There’s a really nice article posted at Credenda agenda that I thought you might be interested in reading. Find it here: How NT Wright Stole Christmas.

I am especially fond of this:

Several years ago, when The Passion of the Christ was making headlines, I realized that N. T. Wright has spoiled every Jesus film.  Once you’ve read Wright, you realize that none of the movies get Jesus right.  Pharisees and scribes are reduced stock villains with caricatured Jewish features.  Pilate has to make an appearance, and Herod, but we are given no sense that first-century Israel was the powder keg that it actually was.

No film ever gives us what Wright says we should be looking for: a “crucifiable” Jesus, a Jesus who does something so provocative to make the Jews murderously hostile.  In the movies, Jesus is a hippy peace-child, a delicate flower of a man, a dew-eyed first-century Jewish Gandhi.  Why would anyone want to hurt Him?  Maybe because He’s so annoyingly precious; but that’s not the story of the gospels.

Just this year, I had another realization.  N. T. Wright has spoiled Christmas too.

NT Wright excites a lot of different emotions in people when he writes, but one thing is for certain: He is going to be honest with his readers. Disagree with Wright we may, but we will never come away from reading his work without being challenged to honestly think about Jesus, Scripture, and how the two shape the faith we call ‘christianity.’

Be a blessing.

HT: Internet Monk

Every year my mom writes a Christmas poem that she and my dad use as their Christmas wishes.  Below is this year’s poem.

She has also written a book of 25 Christmas poems and family devotionals available here.

May you all be blessed by the words and wisdom of the most amazing mother a girl could have!

I saw this over at Boar’s Head Tavern and thought it might be fun here too.

Richard Dawkins recently wrote (I suppose he probably should have just quoted himself) that “Darwinian theory was the best idea of all time.” That may or may not be true.

The fellas at Boar’s Head are having some fun with it–someone even suggested Beer was the best idea ever and another the bacon cheeseburger.

What’s your take? What’s the best idea ever?

I’ll start by saying the dark chocolate M & M.