Tuesday, January 5, 2010
In the Oven
It's been a while since I've posted anything. I don't think people read this so I guess I do it for myself mainly. I like to write and collect my thoughts so I can reference it later. Life has been hectic. I've had to adjust to a fiance, then a wife, then a pregnant wife, and all of the wonders and labors those things have brought. I need to write more, so I can remember later how this all felt; fearful and joyful hand-in-hand. That's my New Year's Resolution perhaps. Write more.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Micah 7:8-9
Micah 7:8-9 Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me. (9) I will bear the indignation of the LORD because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Life's razor edge
There are a plethora of quotes to this effect by a great many pessimists that "on the day you are born you begin to die." It's true that you only learn how to live as you learn how to die. That's why so many people find at death's doorstep the renewed insight of what they should have lived for. Then we have this: "whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." And we wonder why our most secure moments are our unhappiest? Sometimes you want life to cut you, and make you bleed a bit, so you'll be reminded of the valuable deaths that should occur day by day to things and tv shows and fashion and other crap that erodes our ability to really digest what a meaningful, God-glorifying life might be like. It is no coincidence that the most meaningful relationship with a family member I had was one where I thought the man was about to die for years. I never left things unsaid. I rarely passed up a moment.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Looking forward to Asia
Sometimes I catch a scent of something on the wind (I'll not lie, it's usually the scent of rotten vegetation or animal products) and it will remind me of walking around in the 3rd world. It really is a lot different than an American town or city, the smells of food, tea, body odor, rotten food, sewage, animals, perfume, incense, and exhaust all blend together to make this wonderful 3rd world aroma. You really grow to miss it when you are away from it. (When I stepped off the plane in Nicaragua last year the first breath made me think, "Oh, yes! I'm alive now, I can smell the evidence." I know that's wierd...I won't deny it)
Anyhow, I caught a smell like that recently and it made me look forward to Asia this summer. Here are the top 7 things I like about Asia in reverse order.
7. Tea - I can drink it all day, I do drink it most of the day. I bring a suitcase full each time I go so I can have it at home. I love the green tea, the wulong, the pu'er, all of it.
6. Food - Get all the gluttony out of the way early, but it's fresh, healthy, and tastes very good. Even the rat.
5. Hundreds of kids running around playing on the street. I get tired of American kids and their indoor lifestyle with excessive video games (I know I did this too, but I am sorry I did) and their solitary, brooding personalities. It's a joy to walk down a street and hear children laughing. American kids are too over-medicated and over-protected to ever play in large groups laughing anymore.
4. Hospitality - you try to buy a painting from the old lady, she will fix you tea (see #6) and make you sit down and drink it with her, though you speak not a word of her dialect. Your students will try to invite you over for dinner. You can't go near their parents without being offered tea, cigarettes, or anything else.
3. Native believers - you want to see a real Christian? Go find one that can go to jail if they run across the wrong official. And then watch them share Christ with all the people they meet. Where do you think their treasure is? Do you know the Almighty like they know the Almighty?
2. Ethnic worship - you get into the songs. They aren't like Gadsby's hymns, but they'll do.
1. My fiance - Chinese women weren't my thing, until I met one. ;-) I miss her. I'm ready to see her again. I'm ready to take her home.
Anyhow, I caught a smell like that recently and it made me look forward to Asia this summer. Here are the top 7 things I like about Asia in reverse order.
7. Tea - I can drink it all day, I do drink it most of the day. I bring a suitcase full each time I go so I can have it at home. I love the green tea, the wulong, the pu'er, all of it.
6. Food - Get all the gluttony out of the way early, but it's fresh, healthy, and tastes very good. Even the rat.
5. Hundreds of kids running around playing on the street. I get tired of American kids and their indoor lifestyle with excessive video games (I know I did this too, but I am sorry I did) and their solitary, brooding personalities. It's a joy to walk down a street and hear children laughing. American kids are too over-medicated and over-protected to ever play in large groups laughing anymore.
4. Hospitality - you try to buy a painting from the old lady, she will fix you tea (see #6) and make you sit down and drink it with her, though you speak not a word of her dialect. Your students will try to invite you over for dinner. You can't go near their parents without being offered tea, cigarettes, or anything else.
3. Native believers - you want to see a real Christian? Go find one that can go to jail if they run across the wrong official. And then watch them share Christ with all the people they meet. Where do you think their treasure is? Do you know the Almighty like they know the Almighty?
2. Ethnic worship - you get into the songs. They aren't like Gadsby's hymns, but they'll do.
1. My fiance - Chinese women weren't my thing, until I met one. ;-) I miss her. I'm ready to see her again. I'm ready to take her home.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Genesis in history
I am in a Hebrew exegesis class on Genesis 12-36. The class centers around the life of Abraham and deals with issues of faith and culture in the pre-Israelite land of Canaan. I will write a post perhaps on the faith of Abraham at another point, this rant will deal mainly with issues of scholarship on the book of Genesis and the life of Abraham.
For my faith in Christ to be valid, two conditions (involving Abraham) have to be met.
1. He has to have been a historical person. If Abraham was merely a composite figure*1 (like most German Old Testament scholars believe), or a theological character*2, then nothing Jesus Christ offers me can be true. 1*A composite figure is a character in a story that is made up of pieces of real historical figures. For example, in the sitcom Seinfeld, George Kastanza is a composite character involving real pieces of the writer for the series. 2*A theological character is kind of like an allegorical picture of the theological points a society most values. For example, many German liberal scholars believe the Hebrews prized faith in God's promises even in adverse circumstances, so they invented or embellished a character who was faithful to God's promise even when childless and in old age. The events weren't "real", but they were portrayed to teach virtue, not history.
If Abraham is not a historical person, then there is a problem for the idea of redemption. Abraham enters the story of Genesis at humanity's bleakest point. The flood has killed off almost the entire population, and now the remaining humans detest God's plan for them to be fruitful and fill the earth. They set up an alternative society at Babel in order to rebel against God, and he confuses their languages and sends them scattered. In the midst of the "barrenness" of humanity, a barren couple (Abram and Sarai) are chosen by God to leave their own society. When Genesis 12:1 starts, it is the changing of Genesis from God's scattering of an alienated humanity to his gathering of a redeemed humanity. Abram is the fount of redemption in a historical sense. With him starts the election of a seed that will bless all the nations. Now in Romans, Paul talks about this seed and the promise. God's promise to Abram was not based on keeping a law (that came afterwards), but was based on faith. Therefore, all who believe God relate to his promise the same way Abram did.
If Abram did not exist historically, neither did elective redemption, or God's promise to bless all nations through him. If that promise did not exist, the blessing does not exist, and all nations are still scattered from God.
2. He has to have been truly justified by faith. If he was not historical, or indeed justified by faith (see Genesis 15:6), then my faith in Christ is not valid. If there is no historical precedent for justification by faith apart from works of the law, then there is no validity for present justification by faith apart from works of the law. If Paul's example in Abraham is not historical, then our faith is floating in a sea of subjectivity. Subjective faiths are just wishful thinking. I can believe the pink elephants will bring me eternal happiness, and it will help me feel better if I'm drunk and hallucinating; but let my liver digest the intoxicants and I'm back in a reality that is not benefited by pink elephants. Faith in an ahistorical redemption is just like faith in pink elephants.
Historicity seems to be the most embarrasing aspect of Christianity to most scholars today, yet they don't realize (or either they don't care) that it is essential to its value. An ahistorical Christianity is perhaps the biggest waste of time imaginable. I would not waste one second on a religion that says "lose your life to find it" if in fact there was no true life in the waiting for me once I lost it. If that was the case, we are pitiful among all people (see 1 Cor 15, Paul makes the same point about the resurrection). Abraham is one of the fulcrum points in the Bible in which historicity is non-negotiable.
"so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. " Gal 3:14
For my faith in Christ to be valid, two conditions (involving Abraham) have to be met.
1. He has to have been a historical person. If Abraham was merely a composite figure*1 (like most German Old Testament scholars believe), or a theological character*2, then nothing Jesus Christ offers me can be true. 1*A composite figure is a character in a story that is made up of pieces of real historical figures. For example, in the sitcom Seinfeld, George Kastanza is a composite character involving real pieces of the writer for the series. 2*A theological character is kind of like an allegorical picture of the theological points a society most values. For example, many German liberal scholars believe the Hebrews prized faith in God's promises even in adverse circumstances, so they invented or embellished a character who was faithful to God's promise even when childless and in old age. The events weren't "real", but they were portrayed to teach virtue, not history.
If Abraham is not a historical person, then there is a problem for the idea of redemption. Abraham enters the story of Genesis at humanity's bleakest point. The flood has killed off almost the entire population, and now the remaining humans detest God's plan for them to be fruitful and fill the earth. They set up an alternative society at Babel in order to rebel against God, and he confuses their languages and sends them scattered. In the midst of the "barrenness" of humanity, a barren couple (Abram and Sarai) are chosen by God to leave their own society. When Genesis 12:1 starts, it is the changing of Genesis from God's scattering of an alienated humanity to his gathering of a redeemed humanity. Abram is the fount of redemption in a historical sense. With him starts the election of a seed that will bless all the nations. Now in Romans, Paul talks about this seed and the promise. God's promise to Abram was not based on keeping a law (that came afterwards), but was based on faith. Therefore, all who believe God relate to his promise the same way Abram did.
If Abram did not exist historically, neither did elective redemption, or God's promise to bless all nations through him. If that promise did not exist, the blessing does not exist, and all nations are still scattered from God.
2. He has to have been truly justified by faith. If he was not historical, or indeed justified by faith (see Genesis 15:6), then my faith in Christ is not valid. If there is no historical precedent for justification by faith apart from works of the law, then there is no validity for present justification by faith apart from works of the law. If Paul's example in Abraham is not historical, then our faith is floating in a sea of subjectivity. Subjective faiths are just wishful thinking. I can believe the pink elephants will bring me eternal happiness, and it will help me feel better if I'm drunk and hallucinating; but let my liver digest the intoxicants and I'm back in a reality that is not benefited by pink elephants. Faith in an ahistorical redemption is just like faith in pink elephants.
Historicity seems to be the most embarrasing aspect of Christianity to most scholars today, yet they don't realize (or either they don't care) that it is essential to its value. An ahistorical Christianity is perhaps the biggest waste of time imaginable. I would not waste one second on a religion that says "lose your life to find it" if in fact there was no true life in the waiting for me once I lost it. If that was the case, we are pitiful among all people (see 1 Cor 15, Paul makes the same point about the resurrection). Abraham is one of the fulcrum points in the Bible in which historicity is non-negotiable.
"so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. " Gal 3:14
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Mystics
I'm sitting in front of my computer with my usual pre-sermon anxiety. I do not get nervous in the usual sense. It is never "fun" to stand before a crowd of people and talk, though it is euphoria-causing at times. But that's not the anxiety. It's the anxiety of being full of information and wanting it to come out soon, in a coherent way. The anxiety a coke can feels after you shake it. I wait for an opening hopefully before the fizz dies down. So to occupy my mind I have some thoughts on what it means to be a "mystic".
A mystic is a person whose experiences with God come at a level not entirely in line with reason. It isn't an unreasonable experience (it usually is), but it isn't communicated to the reason. For example: one doesn't survey the nutritional facts of an apple pie only to satisfactorily take a fork and mathmatically count the calories until the pie is gone. That would be using the reason primarily, but it is not reasonable. No, one takes a pie and eats it to achieve an emotional response because it tastes "dang good". To eat apple pie and like it is reasonable. But the enjoyment is in our tongue and stomach, not our brain's "reason" center. A mystic's taste of God may come from some pretty reasonable things. We may reason that God's glory is in nature, but the reason itself is not the pleasure of it. The pleasure is in beholding and being warmed by the latent "glory" in creation. Reason and mysticism go hand in hand. I see beauty, I feel glory.
It is reasonable to believe God is in my storm, even as the waves lap over the edge of the boat. But it's his embrace in the storm that I feel, not the cold logic that calculates "I will never leave or forsake you" even applies here. My heart feels his love in the cold waves that may take me under any minute. As the boat capsizes and I'm in the surf, his gentleness to my soul now is apparent, though my senses and my reason rebel. His eyes pierce through the written words, and my reason carries it, but my reason does not relish it, something else entirely draws breath from those words. That is where a mystic lives. Not entirely in a text, but not far apart from it. Good grammar carries it, but my heart burns from it, not my mind. I see myself sinking in the water, and with a lungful of water I breathe life. That is mysticism's strength: God in everything; God in nothing. His promises look worlds apart from my circumstances, but they are a perfect meeting place.
A mystic is a person whose experiences with God come at a level not entirely in line with reason. It isn't an unreasonable experience (it usually is), but it isn't communicated to the reason. For example: one doesn't survey the nutritional facts of an apple pie only to satisfactorily take a fork and mathmatically count the calories until the pie is gone. That would be using the reason primarily, but it is not reasonable. No, one takes a pie and eats it to achieve an emotional response because it tastes "dang good". To eat apple pie and like it is reasonable. But the enjoyment is in our tongue and stomach, not our brain's "reason" center. A mystic's taste of God may come from some pretty reasonable things. We may reason that God's glory is in nature, but the reason itself is not the pleasure of it. The pleasure is in beholding and being warmed by the latent "glory" in creation. Reason and mysticism go hand in hand. I see beauty, I feel glory.
It is reasonable to believe God is in my storm, even as the waves lap over the edge of the boat. But it's his embrace in the storm that I feel, not the cold logic that calculates "I will never leave or forsake you" even applies here. My heart feels his love in the cold waves that may take me under any minute. As the boat capsizes and I'm in the surf, his gentleness to my soul now is apparent, though my senses and my reason rebel. His eyes pierce through the written words, and my reason carries it, but my reason does not relish it, something else entirely draws breath from those words. That is where a mystic lives. Not entirely in a text, but not far apart from it. Good grammar carries it, but my heart burns from it, not my mind. I see myself sinking in the water, and with a lungful of water I breathe life. That is mysticism's strength: God in everything; God in nothing. His promises look worlds apart from my circumstances, but they are a perfect meeting place.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
God in everything; God in nothing
Every bit of coherent revelation we receive from God, or glean from nature, dwells primarily in the Biblical revelation of God infallibly preserved in the written texts. In other words, the information may be gleaned from nature, or impressed/communicated by God to a soul, or read from a passage and applied; but it will always be "filtered" through the Bible. Meaning if God "tells" a person something, it will be biblically-based, not new revelation. If a person sees something of God in nature, it will have been "interpreted" from nature through the Bible as a kind of prism, splitting and refracting the raw information from the world into a biblical model. The Bible is the conduit for which all information either directly comes, or is interspersed through to our soul. Most of it seems to flood our soul with a kind of divine relish in the things of God as they relate to our life on this world. For example, the grace of God as it relates to our relationships, or moral behavior, or the direction of our life. I may see the beauty of a mountain range, and have renewed in my mind the majesty of God, and because of that natural beauty filtered through the biblical concepts of God's glory I will renew a commitment to moral purity or relational fidelity. I may read a text such as "the mountains melt like wax before the Lord" and it has the same effect. Whether the source is natural or scriptural, it is refracted through Scriptural ideas and carries me into the world with its applications. We find God in things here, and we live better the here and now in light of it.
I have come to the conclusion that this is most of what Christians experience in America because it is what we are most deficient at. But I believe there comes a very real point at times throughout a Christian's walk with God where God is found in the usual means expressed above, but there is no "earthly use" for the revelation. The communion one's soul enjoys with God in that moment is a trickle of what will be a torrent in eternity, and only serves to emaciate our soul with its earthly attachments. It's as if God severs our earthly interests to give us a reminder that despite the fact that the heavens "declare the glory of God" the heavens are not "the glory of God." Though we live our life for Him here, He must at times make this even seem amiss of our true aim to remind us that "if we save our lives, we will lose them". I do not think Americans will have many of these experiences because of our tendency to be no earthly good. But I do think they are a real experience where God, though found in this present age, lifts the veil and reminds us we have no lasting home here. Though we are to invest our talents, we are to use our mammon to gain eternal friends, we are to live for the glory of God in this age, we are not of this epoch. Ours is another one that must first burn this sad one away before it is consummated.
I have come to the conclusion that this is most of what Christians experience in America because it is what we are most deficient at. But I believe there comes a very real point at times throughout a Christian's walk with God where God is found in the usual means expressed above, but there is no "earthly use" for the revelation. The communion one's soul enjoys with God in that moment is a trickle of what will be a torrent in eternity, and only serves to emaciate our soul with its earthly attachments. It's as if God severs our earthly interests to give us a reminder that despite the fact that the heavens "declare the glory of God" the heavens are not "the glory of God." Though we live our life for Him here, He must at times make this even seem amiss of our true aim to remind us that "if we save our lives, we will lose them". I do not think Americans will have many of these experiences because of our tendency to be no earthly good. But I do think they are a real experience where God, though found in this present age, lifts the veil and reminds us we have no lasting home here. Though we are to invest our talents, we are to use our mammon to gain eternal friends, we are to live for the glory of God in this age, we are not of this epoch. Ours is another one that must first burn this sad one away before it is consummated.
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