The list is thought provoking and I found myself lingering over several of his nuggets of wisdom. Here is a sample:
The mature Christian is more concerned with being loving all the time than being correct all the time.
Cowboy Christianity
Re: Bush’s Bait and Switch Theology: Religious Liberty and the Monotheistic Fallacy
From the the evangelical outpost we have this insightful post about whether we pray to the same God.
“I believe in an Almighty God,” said President Bush in an interview with Al Arabiya, “and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God. That’s what I believe.” The President’s attempt to promote a monotheistic ecumenism among the world’s religions is noble but misguided. Neither Muslims nor Christians (or as I hope to show, Jews) believe that we “pray to the same God.” At the risk of overcomplicating the issue, let’s examine the claim by putting it into a logical structure. The Muslim’s argument, based on the Qu’ran, can be put in the form of a (modus ponens) syllogism: 1. {If P then Q} If you believe that Jesus is the begotten son of God, then you do not believe in the one true God (See Note 1: Qu’ran (Sura 112)) 2. {P} Christians believe that Jesus is the begotten son of God. (See Note 2: John 3:16) 3. {Q} Christians do not believe in the one true God. Note 1: Qu’ran (Sura 112) — “Say: He is God, The One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, Nor is He begotten; And there is none Like unto Him.” Note 2: John 3:16 (KJV) — “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” While I doubt the President was aware of this argument, I’m sure that he would agree this is a valid argument with true premises. He should also, therefore, agree that from the Muslim perspective, we do not all pray to the same God. But the most that can be inferred by that conclusion is that Muslims do not believe Christians and Muslims worship the same God. A slightly more complex argument is needed to prove that Christians (at least those Christians, like evangelicals, who believe the Bible is authoritative) also should not subscribe to this view:
1. P — The Gospels of Matthews and John make accurate claims about what Jesus said.
2. Q — Everything Jesus said was true.
3. R — Jesus said that he is the begotten son of God. {John 3:16, 1, 2}
4. S — Jesus said that you can know the Father, if and only if you know him first. {John 8:19, Matt. 11:27 1, 2}*
5. T –> U — If you deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God then you do not know Jesus. {Modus Ponens, 1, 2, 3}
6. U –> V — If you do not know Jesus then you do not know the Father. {Modus Ponens, 4}
7. T –> V If you deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God then you do not know the Father. {Hypothetical syllogism, 5, 6}
8. W — Muslims deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God. (Qu’ran (Sura 112) — “Say: He is God, The One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, Nor is He begotten; And there is none Like unto Him.”)
9. T & W — You deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God and Muslims deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God. {Conjunction, 5, 8}
10. W –> V — If Muslims deny that Jesus is the begotten son of God then Muslims do not know the Father. {Simplification, Modus Ponens, 7, 9}If this argument is valid then it proves that Christians and Muslims do not pray and worship the “same” God. The problem is that agreeing with #6 implies that Jewish believers–at least since the time of Christ–also do not worship the “same” God.
This is precisely what I believe.
One of the basic axiomatic truths of Christianity is that God is Triune. While this is a difficult doctrine that no one fully comprehends, all orthodox Christians agree that Jesus is not merely a ‘part’ or ‘attribute’ of God but is one of the three persons and that all are God and all are one. A Christian cannot speak of ‘God’ without including both Christ and the Holy Spirit.
We also should not claim that, though Jews have an incomplete knowledge of God, they worship the “same” God as Christians. For it is not that Jews are unaware of Jesus; it is that they reject him. They believe it is blasphemous to claim that Christ is the same person as God. Christians, if we are consistent with our belief in the triune Godhead, will say that it is blasphemous to claim that that Jesus is not God.
To do otherwise is to either deny the validity of our belief in Christ or dismiss the Jewish belief that he is not divine. In essence we are claiming either that Jews are ignorant concerning the person they claim to worship or that it is possible to worship God and exclude Christ. In my opinion, both of these options are unacceptable.
Most Jews (and Muslims) are aware of the person of Jesus Christ, aware of the claims made about him in the New Testament, and have concluded that the claim concerning his deity are false. While I disagree with their conclusion, I trust that they have justified reasons, at least in their own minds, for why they reject him as Lord. We do all believers a disservice, when like President Bush, we resort to a “bait and switch” theology– claiming that we all worship the same God and yet adding an element on which the other religions find abhorrent.
Religious liberty is a divinely permitted freedom. As Christians it is our duty to speak the truth in love and to deal maturely with genuine disagreements. The ideal of religious tolerance is not to agree to the lowest common beliefs but rather to show respect due to fellow humans made in the image of God. By glossing over our theology with a layer of politically correct ecumenical agreement we are being ‘intolerant’ of both Islam and Judaism.
When You Haven’t Got a Prayer
Here is a great post about prayers from Ben Witherington’s blog.
First a prayer for folks over 50 who are cranky, then a story about prayer which will make you think, hopefully.
— THE SENILITY PRAYER : Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.
A voyaging ship was wrecked during a storm at sea and only two of the men on it were able to swim to a small, desert like island.The two survivors, not knowing what else to do,agree that they had no other recourse but to pray to God. However, to find out whose prayer was more powerful, they agreed to divide the territory between them and stay on opposite sides of the island.The first thing the first man prayed for was food. The next morning, the first man
saw a fruit-bearing tree on his side of the land, and he was able to eat its fruit.
The other man’s parcel of land remained barren.
After a week, the first man was lonely and he decided to pray for a wife. The next day, another ship was wrecked, and the only survivor was a woman who swam to his side of the land.
On the other side of the island, there was nothing.
Soon the first man prayed for a house, clothes, more food. The next day, like magic,all of these were given to him.
However,the second man still had nothing.
Finally, the first man prayed for a ship, so that his wife and he could leave the island. In the morning, he found a ship docked at his side of the island.
The first man boarded the ship with his wife and decided to leave the second man on the island. He considered the other man unworthy to receive God’s blessings,since none of his prayers had been answered.
As the ship was about to leave, the first man heard a voice from Heaven booming,
“Why are you leaving your companion on the island?”
“My blessings are mine alone, since I was the one who prayed for them,” the first man answered. “His prayers were all unanswered, and so he does not deserve anything.”
“You are mistaken!” the voice rebuked him. “He had only one prayer, which I answered. If not for that, you would not have received any of my blessings.”
“Tell me,” the first man asked the voice, “what did he pray for that I should owe him anything?”
“He prayed that all your prayers be answered.”
For all we know, our blessings are not the fruits of our prayers alone, but those of another praying for us.When You Haven’t Got a Prayer
The Decline of the Sabbath
The decline of the Sabbath in America: Less praying, more working and playing.
This article in the Opinion Journal struck home with me. Over the last couple of years I have deliberately tried to avoid working on Sunday. I found that I need a day to slow down and unwind. Sunday is a day I like to nap while a golf tournament is playing on TV. It is a day I like to pick a quiet spot and read the Bible or a good book. If I read one page or a thousand pages it does not matter. My goal is to slow down and savor the time. It is a day I like to reflect on the past week and the events of the upcoming week but I leave the goal setting for Monday. It is a day I like to sit back and appreciate the good and bad things that make life so interesting. Sunday is a day I like to enjoy the simple joys of life. I have a teenage son who I have to remind frequently to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life. Maybe God is still a faithful parent who is trying to remind us what is best for us.
If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural – washingtonpost.com
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Source: If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural – washingtonpost.com
A few weeks ago I saw a PBS program on Dogs. In the first episode they discussed the impact of breeding tameness into foxes and its relationship to the diversity of dog breeds. Within ten generations the foxes started showing changes that are somewhat difficult to explain. Here is an excerpt from the transcript.
NARRATOR: Traits like coat color, or the way a dog carries its ears or tail, are determined by its genes. Genes are pieces of DNA, and they often come in subtly different versions. Every dog gets one copy of every gene from mom and one from dad. These genes can be mixed and matched in countless ways, but if the parents don’t have it, the pup can’t get it.
And that’s what makes curly tails and patchy coats in dogs so mysterious. Wolves don’t have them. It took a remarkable experiment in a most unlikely place, to solve this mystery. The place was the middle of nowhere, Siberia. And the experimenter was an out-of-favor Russian geneticist named Dmitri Belyaev.
Local fox farmers had asked Belyaev for help in breeding a less vicious animal. Belyaev began with the tamest foxes he could find. From their offspring, and for many generations thereafter, he chose only the tamest for breeding. He’d expected that each new generation would be a little less vicious, a little more tame. But by the tenth generation, he was seeing things he’d never expected.
RAY COPPINGER: All of a sudden his fox ears started down, his fox tails started up, they started to bark, which is not characteristic of foxes. They started to have different coats, all these little features that you can’t imagine being in the wild type. I mean it’s not a matter of selecting for, because they’re not there to be selected for””that variation isn’t there.
Later on they hypothesize that human kindness created the diversity in dog breeds. Our interaction with dogs has been the stimulus for changes normally explained by genes.
The strong relationship of kindness with evolutionary change is what fascinated me. Biologist may prefer the “natural selection” phrase but “survival of the fittest” is the phrase most often associated with evolutionary theory because it epitomizes the struggle for life. It is not a big stretch for biologists to add kindness to the natural selection process but it is a new and foreign territory. Kindness is one of seven holy virtues and one of the more visible traits of successful religions. Kindness and theology have stood the test of time. Combining evolutionary theory with kindness seems like an unholy alliance and new fodder in the “Does God exist” debate.
- An atheist or agnostic will look at these facts as an explanation for the large number of people who believe in a God. Atheists have always had a tough time explaining why so many people believe in God and the emotional attachment people have with this unseen God. Now they can say that humans are hard-wired to feel good about helping others and that humans have confused feeling good about helping others with the existence of God.
- An apologist on the other hand will probably look at these diverse facts and see the truth that they always saw as self-evident has been verified in science. It is more natural for an apologist to presume that we are hard-wired for kindness and that kindness is just one of the traits God is trying to develop in us. Apologists believe in evolution. It is just a different theory than the one used by biologists. If we are hard-wired to feel good about helping others and our kindness has an evolutionary impact on dogs, what do you suppose this same kindness will do to the evolution of humans? What if the most important evolutionary change to humans was not when we learned to walk upright or that we have opposing thumbs but when we embraced kindness. We have seen that within a short period of time kindness can cause enormous changes in dogs. If kindness can be such a powerful evolutionary influence can the other virtues be far behind with their impact? The most amazing fact about kindness is that all animals can exhibit this trait but it is only humans who have been successful with it. Maybe we have just begun to see the breadcrumbs of God’s plan for us.
Ben Witherington: Was Lazarus the Beloved Disciple?
If you want to cause Biblical scholars to get their knickers in a knot there are two sure fire ways to accomplish that end: 1) you can skewer a sacred cow whether a liberal or conservative one; 2) you can propose a theory that requires one to believe in the possibility of the miraculous to even entertain the thesis. If you can accomplish both with one theory, well, you’ve created a Mallox moment! I seem to accomplished this at the last SBL meeting in November when I gave the following lecture. I’ll let you decide whether you find it illuminating or inflammatory. Flame On!
Source: Ben Witherington: Was Lazarus the Beloved Disciple?
I was browsing Ben’s blog when I ran accross this interesting theory that Lazarus was the Beloved Disciple. This theory still believes that John wrote the Gospel but that Lazarus was probably a major source to John’s Gospel. John’s Gospel has always been a bit of a puzzle and this theory explains how Lazarus could be the missing piece. A commentor mentioned another online source, The Name of the Beloved Disciple, who also makes the same arguement. Both of these links are worth reading!
Intelligence Analyst Challenges Good Friday ‘Spin’
(2007-04-06) ”” While Christians around the world gather for so-called “Good Friday” observances, an intelligence analyst studying primary source documents challenged the “irrational exuberance of the true believers,” and said his research to date indicates things did not go according to plan.
“At this point, you have a leader in whom a lot of people had placed their hopes, who failed miserably,” said the unnamed source who is in the process of translating and exploiting the documents. “There’s no progress ”” no movement at all. It’s a classic case of a bad plan, poorly executed. A rational person would ask, ”˜What’s so good about it?’”
The source said that “while fanatics encourage taking a longer term hopeful view of the situation, and try to position the conflict as an epic struggle between good and evil in which good ultimately triumphs, the immediate reality on the ground shows the enemy has won, the plan lies in ruin and the way forward is blocked by an immovable obstacle. Any way you look at it, it’s a dark day.”
“You can call it Good Friday if you wish,” he said, “but that’s just spin. I can’t say it any clearer, ”˜It is finished.’”
Family Facts #4
On average, teens from intact families with frequent religious attendance earned the highest GPA (2.94) when compared to (a) their peers from intact families with low to no religious attendance (2.75), (b) peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (2.72), and (c) peers from non-intact families with low to no religious attendance (2.48). Source: Fagan, Patrick, A Portrait of Family and Religion in America: Key Outcomes for the Common Good, (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation 2006) (HT: FamilyFacts.org)
Are Christian men too wimpy?
Dr. Helen had a post a couple of days ago called, “Are Christian men too wimpy?” In that post she commented on how 300 Tennessee men had a meeting to discuss the difference between being “nice” (which is not good) and being “good” (which is). Later on she commented that the men had issues with pornography.
As a Christian man I am not surprised to hear that men have gathered to discuss these issues. Although these issues are new to Dr. Helen they are not new issues for Christian men. It is a known fact that attendance at churches is much lower for males than for females and several authors have speculated on the reasons. One of my favorite authors, John Eldredge, has written several books exploring the heart of a man and how each man gets his personal identity. Too often men subconsciously submit to the cookie cutter approach to male identity. They go through life acting like “Christian men”. In hindsight it is pretty funny what men have done to conform. There is a diffused smell of wimpiness around the cookie cutter approach to living. It is no surprise that men find little satisfaction when they impress their friends at parties with all of their stuff. Yet for all of their accomplishments they still feel empty inside. For a few men this emptiness manifests in an addiction to pornography. Instead of living out their dreams or finding a true purpose for their lives, they realize that they have been working on “other” things. Their priorities have led them astray.
The grand challenge has always been to feel alive and whole. The Dilbert cartoon pokes fun at the identity we get from others. Understanding and embracing your personal identity is not a simple task but it is key to unlocking a passion for living. When you finally succeed at unlocking the desires in your heart, your life is filled with a passion for your friends, your family, and your dreams that exceeds your imagination. It is a different life. It is a complete life. It is a life worth living.
“God Hates Visionary Dreaming”
“God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren.”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Link to “God Hates Visionary Dreaming”
Recently our church announced an ambitious plan to acquire a nearby warehouse and turn it into a multi-use Healing Center. The center of their efforts is increased outreach to the people needing food and furnishings. Part of me lauds their effort and their ambition to expand their outreach to the local community. Part of me worries about the path and the consequences of visionary dreaming. When does visionary dreaming become another word to describe just another bureaucratic institution?