Related to that, does anyone have any thoughts or opinions about posts such as that one on such a public forum that anyone could see (like employers or even students!)? It is a fine line and it is always hard to know how much to share on the interwebs. I know some think things should be completely private, others think we should be completely free to share our voices. Comments? Thoughts?

“The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.” -C.S. Lewis

One of our church values: Authentic Community – Believe, doubt, seek. All on the journey together.

The importance of community: cf 12.28-29: the consuming fire of God’s presence in community with the Trinity. But we make ourselves the center. But all the things that give us joy will still be lacking, but point to the Ultimate.

To worship God acceptably… vs 13.1-4. Through the messiness of authentic community, no longer through ritual. We want to be a church about magnets. We are all nerdy, all of, but we come together on this journey and welcome anyone to join along. We should be a mission disguised as a church. Jesus built a community that was rich and deep. You don’t become part of a community by just showing up, you become part of community by becoming deeply involved.

The intensity of community: Love each other as family. Unconditional commitment to one another. There is a bond of obligation between family. In this radical understanding of community is a transparency and bond between family. Family is the single most shaping experience of your life. We are the product of the family we were raised in. We come from (who we are) the community we were raised in. In a family we are connecting at multiple points. Sharing teaching or coffee etc AT church doesn’t mean you have become part of a radical community, that takes effort. It is sharing life, more than just being part of a club. It is radical to live in this community, but it is hard: it takes accountability and openness. Wisdom and discernment is also a necessary part of it too.

The openness of community: Need both open and intense. Vs 1-2: commitment not just to family, but to strangers too. Welcome in people you would oterwise be suspicious of. Giving to those who cannot give anything back, to someone that we cannot get anything from. Vs 3-4: social justice and sexual purity – interesting combination. We live in a radically selfish society… willing to have sex with others outside of the community relationship, we are putting our selfishness above community. Same with money, radical transformation to become unselfish but to truly take part in community. Have to be willing to be marked as part of that radical community.

The power to create this community: vs 5: free from the love of money because God will not leave or forsake us. We are engaged in behaviors or desires that are unhealthy and painful for us… all those things will foresake us, but God will not. Even our closest relationships will break, people cannot handle the weight of our expectations or conditions, they will break. So our identity cannot be defined by those things. We need something more stable. How can we really know that we can have radical community? We go to the Cross, Jesus was foresaken so we don’t have to be any more. He is with us always because of His actions on the Cross. Authentic community is messy.

5 Radical Acts of Urban Hospality
1) open your home to people in your apt
2) Invite some to church and take them to lunch
3) Participate or lead a life group
4) volunteer
5) Care for the poor, the stranger

Summarize your life in a six word memoir, with optional photo illustration.

My answer:

Happiness is only real when shared.

-Chris McCandless

It is truly tragedy that Chris didn’t figure that out until it was too late.

'It's easier to be an asshole to words than to people.'

It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging. Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. And as for the practice of saying mean and untrue things while hiding behind a pseudonym – well, if I get a letter like that it goes straight in the bin. But the cyberspace equivalents of road rage doesn’t happen by accident. People who type vicious, angry, slanderous and inaccurate accusations do so because they feel their worldview to be under attack. Yes, I have pastoral concern for such people. (And, for that matter, a pastoral concern for anyone who spends more than a few minutes a day taking part in blogsite discussion, especially when they all use code names: was it for this that the creator God made human beings?) But sometimes worldviews have to be shaken. They may become idolatrous and self-serving. And I fear that the has happened, and continues to happen, even in well-regulated, shiny Christian contexts – including, of course, my own.

I hope you aren’t offended by the mouse hover/caption to the xkcd comic, but I found it particularly appropriate for Wright’s comments. In any discussion we have with people we run the risk of our hubris taking over. Humility is crucial and necessary. We should always presume positive intent of those in discussion and we should always write and speak with positive intent. It’s a good rule of thumb.

This section is about us living the unshakable life, the life we want, the life that we would go to the self-help section for. We are looking for stability.

The Shakable Life: v18-21. Fundamental spiritual approach to life: with our worldview, how do we deal with things? “I tried my best…” That is how we generally face life and how we go through things. Or have we tried our best? “Do unto others…” Have we ever actually spent a day trying to meet the needs of others? Tried to put ourselves in their shoes? We are all failing. Moses introduced a world view for a God way of living: but it shook them! Not the God experience they were looking for. Why is it so earthquake-y to get near God? If we build our lives around specific traits (like being smart or having money or having a significant other), our world can crash when others are better. These things fall apart in the presence of God; our true selves our revealed, it gets uncomforatable. It is untenable to live in this way. Meltdown is inevitable.

The Unshakable Life: But… there is another way to live. v22: Mt Zion. Earthly vs. Heavenly city. I advance myself by using others. City based on power vs. Peace. Principle understanding is my life to serve you. What if we lived in a way that said me second, everyone else first? What would that look like? We can live part of that city, we can live as citizens of that city right now. We are told that if we live for God’s will we won’t be happy (what if he doesn’t want me to be rich?). We are holding on too tight, we need to let go. There is a reality and an ocean of joy out there for us. For us to do what He tells us, that is joy and happiness.

How to receive the Unshakable Life: Cf Luke 10: Go out, heal, pray, cast out. The disciples come back excited, but Jesus tells they are excited about the wrong things: not the achievements, do not build our reality on things that are shakable, but around Christ. Your identity is not wrapped up in the fact that we are broken. It has to go back to the cross of Christ, that is the final shake-up. The ultimate judge came down to be judged and was shaken so we could be unshaken. ALL relationships can be shaken (so don’t build our identity on them) because they are incomplete and point to the unshaken relationship that was created on the cross.

In an age where people over use “Freedom of speech” to mean they can say whatever they want, it is surprising how quickly Comedy Central folded. I am glad that in the US we do have freedom to say what we want (while I do think many take that freedom too far), and usually media giants love to tout their freedoms. But under a little pressure Comedy Central couldn’t uphold that freedom any more. What is the most sickening is not even that they would censor parts poking fun at Muhammad, but that they censored a speech about standing up to intimidation and fear. What is that crap? That speech is exactly the thing that I would want my students (many of whom I KNOW watch South Park) to hear. The irony is ripe: Comedy Central is intimidated so they censor a speech about fighting against intimidation? Lovely.

The reason Comedy Central caved is because of a glaring double standard. Mock Christians and Jesus all you want, but Muhammad and Islam are off limits. What bunk. Imagine a Christian objecting (even threatening life) to someone mocking Jesus. They wouldn’t be taken seriously at all; no one would care. Could you ever imagine Comedy Central censoring jokes about Jesus of Christians? I wouldn’t think so because they don’t and they mock all the time. Why is this double standard allowed to persist? Christians have to just deal with mockery (which I am fine with, God can handle it), but Muslims can just cry “You’re being mean!” and suggest someone might go the way of Theo Van Gogh and Muhammad becomes untouchable. Ridiculous.

Go read Powerline’s post as well as Newsbuster’s “Jon Stewart Notes Blatant Double Standard on ‘South Park’ Mohammed Censorship” and Mark Steyn’s “Not Too ‘Hip’ and ‘Edgy’ for Censorship”. And if you were so inclined, you could take part in the Everybody Draw Mohammad Day on May 20th.

A critical appraisal of various, influential understandings of the meaning and use of myth demonstrates that in contemporary anthropology myth denotes existential truth but, as was true since Anaxagoras (6th cent. B.C.) not historical truth. Since the biblical writers aim to recount real history, their literature should not be classified as myth. They do, however, borrow mythic imagery, not theology, to deepen in profundity and to heighten in transcendence the significance the symbolic motifs in salvation history, such as “creation” and “exodus.” In that connection they also polemicize against pagan myths, which run counter to Israel’s unique, non-mythic, faith.

Secular man, however, believes that science, especially the theory of evolution, disproves the historicity of Genesis 1-3. The church has unwittingly played into their hands by pitting the biblical narrative of man’s trajectory from a pristine state through sin to death against the scientific narrative of man’s ascent from simplicity to complexity through death. Those who accept both modern critical historiography and the Scripture’s inerrant and infallible testimony, to be credible, must address this tension.

William Dempski, (born 1960), professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Fort Worth, Texas and a prominent member of Intelligent Design, explains the fossil evidence of death before the creation of man by arguing that the eternal, non-temporal God always sees the Fall of man and within time reckoned its consequences, using death in the process of evolution, before the historical Fall. He defends this view by the analogy of the Cross. Before Christ’s historical crucifixion the eternal God sees the vicarious death of Christ and reckoned its consequences within time to his elect before the historical cross. Before reading Dempski this writer thought of the same resolution of Science and Scripture, but had to admit to himself, were it not for modern science, none would have guessed that scenario from the Bible. It strikes one as a rabbinic pilpul (derived from pilpel, ‘pepper’), a sharp exegesis to resolve a contradiction.

A better harmonization is a multi-perspectival view of creation. This view/theory consists of three coherent principles 1.) Genesis 1-3 cannot be interpreted woodenly and should not be over-read; 2.) darkness and sea, symbolic motifs of surd (“senseless”) evil in the physical world, and the Serpent, the symbolic motif of moral evil in the spiritual/moral world, are restrained in the present time between Primordial time and Endtime; and 3.) Genesis 1-3 and biblical theology give a multi-perspectival view of paradoxes, such as good and persistent evil in the world as we know it.

I. GENESIS 1-3 NOT TO BE INTERPRETED WOODENLY NOR OVEREAD
This first principal is built on three assumptions regarding the Genesis accounts of creation: 1.) as text, they cannot be read in a straightforward way; 2) as theological literature, they present a vision of salvation history for the People of God ; 3) as history, they do not attribute all death to the Fall.

A. As text cannot be read in a straightforward way

The Creation accounts cannot be read as straightforward history for at least two reasons: they are figurative and temporally incoherent. The accounts represent the main actor, God, in unrelentingly anthromorphic/anthropopathic” figures. The statements God ‘said,’ ‘commanded,’ ‘saw,’ and ‘called’ prompt us to envision vocal cords, but God is spirit, not corporeal. The reference to “days” and to “evening and “morning” at the end and beginning of each day according to biblical usage refers to consecutive twenty hour days. The narrative anthropomorphically represents God as a Laborer, who works in daylight and rests at night. Exodus 31:17 represents God, who never grows weary, as refreshing him on the seventh day. Mark Futato, professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary asks, “If his refreshing himself as a workman on the seventh day is an obvious anthropopathism, is it not probable that his working on the other six days is also an anthropopathism?” In the second account God is represented as a Potter, fashioning the man; a Husbandman, planting a garden; and a Temple Builder, fashioning a woman. These metaphors, extended as allegories, represent historical actualities.

The temporal incoherence in the first account was recognized at least as early as Origen (185-254), centuries before the Copernican revolution: “For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden….” In An Old Testament Theology I also call attention to the impossibility of resolving the chronological tension between the two biblical creation accounts. In the first account God causes the earth to bring forth flora on the third day and creates mankind on the sixth day. In the second account God, having “planted a garden” and having “caused the trees to grow,” puts man in the Garden and there gifts him with his bride. The garden could not have been planted on third day and have matured by the sixth day. The anthropomorphisms of planting trees and causing them to grow exclude the notions that the trees were created with apparent age or that they grew miraculously. Turning to other narratives in Genesis 1-11, R.W.L. Moberly, in an excellent chapter, “On Reading Genesis 1-11,” demonstrates the difficulty of reading the Cain and Abel and Flood stories in a straightforward way. The narrator, I assume, left these obvious anomalies in the text to prevent a straightforward reading and to cause his reader to reflect on what he is up to.

B. As theological literature presents a vision for the People of God

Meir Sternberg validated that three interrelated principles are at work in biblical narrative: historiographic, ideological, and aesthetic. The narrator ties the creation into real history by means of structuring the book by ten toledoths (descendants of), beginning with the first toledoth, narrating the creation of the cosmos, and terminating with the tenth toledoth, narrating the descent and settlement of Jacob’s family in Egypt.

To extrapolate the theology of Genesis 1-3 one first has to consider its aesthetics. To paraphrase Adele Berlin: we don’t know what a text means until we know how it means, such as through structure and climax. Consider these two aesthetic features of the two biblical creation accounts. The first reaches toward a climax with God celebrating his creation of mankind in a poem and then climaxes in the last line of chapter 1: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (1:31). The second account likewise reaches for a climax with a poem by Adam about his wife and then climaxes with a poignant statement that they were both naked, but not ashamed—that is to say, untainted by sin. Genesis 3 presents the bouleversement of the good and unmarred creation. That narrative also reaches towards a climax with a poem and reaches its climax with man and woman permanently banished from the Garden. In sum, Genesis 1-3 depicts the creation of the world and humans as beautiful and good and the ruin of both as the tragic consequences of their hubris.

Moreover, the story is written for a later audience, Israel. All the characters, including God, speak Hebrew. Moberly likens it to all story telling, citing Shakespeare: “When Shakespeare depicts all the character in Julius Caesar or Coriolanus s speaking Tudor English in the context of ancient Rome, one would be unwise to assume that Shakespeare was making a historical claim about the language of ancient Rome rather making the scenario accessible to his contemporaries.” The narrator, like Shakespeare, is presenting history to communicate a perspective comprehensible to his audience. Through his visionary representation of the historical creation, he gives Israel archetypes, paradigms, lenses, to interpret her world as God’s good gift.

The vision of the creation accounts stands in marked contrast to that of Richard Dawkins, a blasphemous missionary for atheism. Dawkins devilishly tries to persuade modern man that the selfish gene uses its human host only to survive, uncaring and indifferent to the means for survival.

Nevertheless, one ought not to over read Genesis 1-3 in such a way to make it say that all surd and moral evil is due to sin. Quite the contrary; both creation accounts narrate the presence of evil in creation and before the historic Fall.

II. DARKNESS AND SEA IN SALVATION HISTORY

1. Genesis: chaos restrained
People commonly think that Genesis 1-3 narrates an unmarred, pristine creation out of nothing before the Fall and that the final stage of world history will be a restoration of the original state, “Endzeit gleicht Urzeit.” But that notion falsifies salvation history. Rather, as Jon D. Levenson, professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard, says: “the point of the creation is not the production of matter out of nothing, but rather the emergence [out of chaos] of a stable community in a benevolent and life-sustaining” The account represents the earth’s primordial state, before its transformation by wind and word, as senseless with regard to human well-being, blanking the reason for existence of the surd (Gen 1:2). God’s commands in connection with his dynamic ruah (wind/spirit) over the abyss transformed the uninhabitable, mysterious chaos into a cosmos, both beautiful and beneficial to mankind. However, the Creator does not banish the primordial “eggshells”: darkness and sea; rather he restrains the symbolic motifs of chaos by the symbolic motifs of cosmos: light and land (see Psalm 104:6-9). In the End time, however, he will eliminate, not merely restrain, the surd, primordial elements (Rev. 21:1-5, 23), implying that even the before the Fall, creation is not pristine, but threatened by evil. Turning to the Garden in the supplementary Genesis creation account, the situation is also less than pristine. The Garden where God walks is also locus of the den of the Serpent, the incarnation of moral evil, who socially destroys humankind, alienating them from God and one another. The creation is good but not perfect; surd and moral evil exists in world before the Fall.
The Flood story assures us that although God through the Flood reversed the creation back to its original state, apart from preserving his creation on Noah’s ark, he will never again undo the creation in history before End of time.

2. Prophets and psalmists: chaos conquered
The Genesis accounts suppress the motif of surd and moral evil (i.e., what is opposed to life). Israel’s poets develop it. They use broken Canaanite myths about Rahab and Leviathan to reveal the transcendent meaning of his restraining the sea: his first salvific act, an assurance of his triumphant victory over evil. Consider Job 26:12-13 and, cited here, Psalm 89:9, 10:

You rule over the surging sea;
when its waves mount up, you still them.
You crushed Rahab like one of the slain;
with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.

Note also that the psalmist refers to I AM’s vanquishing and controlling the Sea. Isaiah also used the imagery of vanquishing the sea to portray I’AM’s final triumph over the ultimate enemy restraining salvation history: “In that day, the LORD will punish with his sword– his fierce, great and powerful sword– Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea” (Isa 27:1). Clearly, the primordial darkness and the sea/abyss stand opposed to the God of life.

3. The maturing sage Job complains that God’s covenantal promises to bless the righteous and to curse the wicked are detached from his reality. God’s response to Job’s complaint (Job 38-41) gives more insight into the presence of evil apart from the consequences of sin. Note the literary context of God’s response. The book of Job aims, among other things, to debunk the notion that all evil is due to sin. Job is introduced as a blameless and upright man (Job 1:1), but he suffers more than any other apart from Jesus Christ. In the dialogues between Job and his three friends, (chapters 3-37) the friends, insisting that all suffering is due to sin, trump up charges against Job, but Job draws the discourse to a conclusion with two extended oaths that he is innocent. In the book’s narrative conclusion God expresses his anger at Job’s friends for not speaking what is right; they falsely accused Job to justify their theodicy. Christian theologians likewise, by their under-reading and over-reading of Genesis 1-3, tend to justify the presence of all evil by appealing to Adam’s fall. The book of Job stoutly rejects that notion.

The scenic depiction of God’s address to Job sets the context for the message: God speaks out of the eye of a tornado (38:1). God rules the deadly tornado without eliminating it, just as he restrains Satan without eliminating, him (1:12; 2:6). God’s initial questions to Job link the address with the Genesis symbolic motifs of evil: sea and darkness. “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud [mine] waves halt’? (Job 38:4-11). God protects the symbolic primordial sea, even though it opposes life, but he restrains it with the arable land that mankind can farm. Paradoxically, God both restrains and protects that which is hostile to human existence.

God now matches the motif of the primal lawless sea with lawless humans who find the darkness of night their light. In God’s dominion both light and darkness have their place. At the middle of his first address, God transitions from what is inexplicable in the cosmos from the human viewpoint to the wild and the strange animal kingdom: “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions: when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? 1 Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food? (Job 38:39-41). That is to say, God arranged the predator-prey syndrome independently from sin. In the second address (chapters 40-41), God torques the reality of evil by challenging Job to bring under his rule the repressive land monster, Behemoth, and the repressive sea monster Leviathan. Job cannot tame them and God does not eliminate them.

In sum, Israel’s poets moderate the symbolic motifs of sea and darkness from a minor key in the prose creation narratives of Genesis 1-2 to a major key in poetry. Apart from the Fall, the creation exhibits God’s restraint and rule of evil. Creation by the process of evolution, I argue, harmonizes with this biblical witness. God creates and sustains life paradoxically and mysteriously through death. If one has ears to hear, creation by the process of evolution best fits this biblical montage. Darwin and Dawkins are unwilling to allow God the freedom to rule; they insist he must rule by their dim lights.

III. BIBLICAL THEOLOGY GIVES A MULTI-PERSPECTIVAL VIEW OF REALITY

A biblical theologian notes the diverse theologies in the Bible. Christian lay persons commonly discern that the four gospels present diverse perspectives of Jesus Christ’s career. Human authors, living in diverse situations with sundry spiritual needs, tailor their theologies to meet those needs. The Deuteronomist, writing to bitter exiles, shapes Israel’s history to teach that they, not God, failed to keep covenant. The Chronicler, by contrast, writing to a discouraged post-exilic community, shapes their history to ennoble them; theirs is a noble heritage and they are the legitimate heirs of God’s covenants.

Turning to the multi-perspectives in the psalms, compare Psalms 2 and 3. In the introductory psalm God tells his newly minted king: “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” (Psalm 2:8). In the subsequent psalm the royal son responds: “LORD, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.’” The anointed king’s rule involves triumph through tragedy.

Consider the next twelve psalms, including Psalm 3. After six lament psalms (3-7), the editor of the Psalter inserts a hymn of praise, celebrating the rule of “little children” (i.e., the humble and trusting mortals): “You have made them a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.” After another six essentially lament psalms the collector inserts a psalm deploring humankind’s rejection of God: “The LORD looks down from heaven on the human race to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:2-3). Both visions are necessary to apprehend the truth.

The De Medici family nobly bequeathed to humanity marvelous art, but they did so by ignobly persecuting saints. We admire the art and deplore their sin. Truth is found in paradox, not contradiction. The Author of the Bible, using diverse human voices in diverse circumstances, orchestrates the paradoxes to present the truth. So does creation by the process of evolution present truth through paradox.

God bequeathed mankind with a good earth and at the same time retained, restrained and ruled, without eliminating, surd and moral evil. God’s process of creating through evolution entails both the symbiotic advancement of life and death; The muti-perspectival view of creation by the process of evolution is more theologically accurate than the traditional view that all surd and moral evil are due to the Fall. Creation by the process of evolution agrees with Reformed theology.

You should also check out Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition: Updates from Waltke and from RTS with some of Waltke’s original response to all the commentary on his resignation. Stackhouse’ comments on the matter are also a good read. And, of course, my post: Bruce Waltke and the Reformed Theological Seminary.

Hebrews 12:1-13

Looking out how to flourish in life through all the pain and difficulties. Need the endurance. But it is easy to quit, especially in our culture. We haven’t been taught to deal with or fight through pain and suffering.

Life is a Race: vs 1-4 – Gk agon (agony) struggle. Life isn’t just easy. Life IS an agonizing struggle, from one pain to another. v11 – discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. Just because it isn’t your plan doesn’t mean there isn’t a plan. Life is like training. Bitter pill: suffering is (in some way) necessary. The intent of creation was not to put us through pain. Christ gets upset with death and that we have to suffer (cf. Lazarus). Our most profound moments with God are when we are enduring suffering, during those dark moments. Our faith will never grow unless it’s tested. We have to push through, courage will grow as it is tested. Sometimes the weaker we feel, the stronger we are becoming. We need a reality of life that includes suffering because it is going to happen.

Why Run the Race?: Has to do with our attitude. Don’t grow weary. Metaphor moves to that of parent. Disciplining with consistency, we train with love and respect, even if that is fatiguing. Having a father that loves you so much he doesn’t want to leave us this way. Discipline comes from Gk pedia, the science of bringing children to maturity. vs 10 – God disciplines us for our good so we can share in his holiness. We need to blindness to knowledge. vs 5 don’t regard lightly the discipline of God. Endurance means we deal with it and think about what the discipline is teaching us and helping us become, don’t ignore it. But also don’t be weary.

How to Run the Race: 1) Practical humility. It is for our good. 2,3) Practical obedience, endurance. Hang in there! We want to retreat, pull in. But we need to keep praying, keep letting it out, don’t hide. vs 1 – put things aside that weigh us down. The suffering brings out the worst in me, I can ask God how to deal with that. That is hard, but we need to deal with it. God tells us there is more to us that what we see. 4) Look to Jesus. Jesus had it all in heaven with the Father… except us. He came here for us. He lost the father in his suffering so we could have Him. “It is well with my soul…”

Come to the communion table as the training table. Remember. Look at Christ’s suffering.

Bruce Waltke, professor emeritus from Regent College, has resigned from the Reformed Theological Seminary because of making statements about “why the church must accept evolution” (even if he would rather have said “should” as opposed to “must”). There have been a number of blog posts and comments in response to this news. Many of them, which I will link to below, have said things much better than I so I will keep my comments short. Both parties have been very amicable in the split; you can read Waltke’s statement here and RTS’s statement here. As I said, very cordial in nature. But being mature Christians and wanting to avoid any unnecessary schisms and problems within the church doesn’t give RTS a free pass here.

If you have read my blog before, you know that I have a background in the sciences and definitely don’t buy into the Young Earth Creationist stories. I believe they have incorrectly interpreted Genesis and its creation narrative. Waltke is an expert in Old Testament Theology and Genesis is something that he has spent lots of time around. He is definitely one to understand the cultural and literary context of the creation narrative. If he can find a place for evolution in that narrative, I think we should be fine with it as well.

A few of the blog posts worth checking out:
John Stackhouse: RTS, Bruce Waltke, and Statements (and Non-Statements) of Faith:

Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) has dismissed Dr. Bruce Waltke because he recently stated publicly two radical convictions: (1) that a Bible-believing Christian could believe in evolution; and (2) that the church needs to beware of becoming a cultural laughingstock for retaining anti-evolutionary views that cannot be supported scientifically.

What’s pathetic about this action is that those points weren’t even radical in the nineteenth century, when Darwin himself had a number of orthodox defenders. So RTS apparently is not quite ready to catch up with almost two centuries of theology/science dialogue.

Read the full post. There are also some good discussion happening in the comments (along with a number of asinine comments as well).

Regent College’s Cosmos by Ross Hastings: Resignation of Bruce Waltke over issues of science and faith:

Our own majority view on this Cosmos project is that Genesis 1 and 2, as interpreted in light of its literary genre and in light of its ancient near eastern context, is about theology and not chronology. As such it permits a harmonization with the best theory true science can offer for the way in which our cosmos and humans came into being. Do we insist as a faculty at Regent that all must hold to this to teach here? This would be to exalt a non-confessional issue as a ground for unity in a manner that mitigates against the apostolic appeal for unity which is based on foundational, Trinitarian essentials (Ephesians 4:4-6)

Wonderfully said! I think this is a key distinction that Creationists miss: interpretation in light of literary genre and cultural context. Creationists seem to think they don’t interpret, they just have a “plain reading” of the text. They say this without realized that they ARE making an interpretation when they make those statements.

Conrade Yap: Another Video Bites the Dust (On Dr Bruce Waltke’s Resignation from RTS):

From day one, the Internet has the potential to provide both information as well as misinformation. Given the spread and ease of information distribution electronically, it is important for us to be wise and discerning on the use of information. Right use leads to enlightened minds and grateful hearts. Abuse leads to unhealthy controversies and bitter arguments.

Thanks for providing some perspective Conrade!

Anyone want to add their $.02? Any Young Earthers want to chime in?

Some of my previous and related posts:
The God of the Bible is also the God of Science
Creation Science
Science vs. Religion

Also, some notes from Waltke and Peterson’s Regent Tradition Conference back in 2005.
Feel free to check them out!

“Faith is to believe what we so not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.” -Augustine

Biggest thing we can do is to believe what Jesus said and actually live it out. Need faith in order to deal with the difficulties of life. Faith is rational, personal, foundational, and grace-full.

Faith does take thinking. Cf v.6: conviction – validate through evidence. Cf v.3: to understand. IS a thinking faith. If the seeing world is all there is, there is no way to judge what is right and wrong. We will be unsure of moral knowledge. But the world cannot be all there is, something is giving us a new sense of reality and it takes thinking to get there. Faith is more than reasoning, but it is definitely not less.

Most think of faith as a lack of questioning. But the look at the heroes of faith shows something different. Moves past the rational pursuit to become real and personal. Being called personally. This is where tension arises: we can give intellectual, but where the important interaction is is when we make it our own, when we seek.

The move from a rational beleif to a personal encounter with God. You are now seeing things as you have never seen them before. Why? Because there is much more to this world than we can see.

Has your faith moved from the rational to the personal?

Abraham: Why? God: I’ll tell you later. This world has no foundation, nothing we can stand on. Things break down. We need another foundation that will not fail us because everything here will. We will lose the things of this world we build as foundations (we often even value safety over Jesus). That is building our lives on sand. The foundation is who is Jesus and what does it mean to follow him?

The Gospel should be keeping us from being superior (we are broken and cannot fix ourselvs) nor inferior. Fortunately, the Gospel is also Grece-full. Cf John 8: Abraham would have rejoiced to see my (Christ’s) day. Christ says if I don’t live up to my word, I will pay the price; also, if you don’t live up to your word, I will still pay the price. He is not calling us to do anything he hasn’t already done. When we obey, our lives will be turned around.

April 4th, 2010: Easter Gathering: “What Could Be Better” Hebrews 11:32-40 – Bill Berger

How do we get relief from life’s brutalities?
If you have “this”, you can handle anything life throws at you.

Faith to hold on to: What is it? What is it about? “Heroes” of the faith? Two divisions: v32-35: weakness turned to strength. Climax in v35 – raised back to life. If we end here, we will be lacking because it doesn’t always end happy. If our faith is based on the happy ending, we are doomed. Life has its brutality, even if we “pray hard enough” it cannot be overcome. It is unstable faith. But it doesn’t end in v35. v36: others suffer. Even with their faith and obedience, they suffered, they lost. We want “divine room service” – the happy ending.

How did they keep going? Looking toward a better life. Actually looking toward a better resurrection. Belief that death will be reversed some day, a completeness, Shalom. Having a hope filled with assurances. We can face anything with the faith and hope of the coming resurrection. Not just faith that this life will have happy endings or faith the still produces loss, but a faith that look forward to the resurrection.

We are to rest in God whether living or dying, comforatable or in pain. We have the hope and can handle anything.

v39-40: what gave them the faith? Even if not given what was promised in faith: God provided something better! We are made perfect in Christ’s resurrection! They were great because they were not afraid of death, they had assurance through hope in God.

How can we be so sure? How can we be sure? Certain? We find it impossible to be happy because we don’t know what death will bring. How can we be so sure? The answer: Christianity gives something besides stories; the person, the man, God in the flesh who died and rose again for us.

There is no possible explanition for the Early Church inless the resurrection was true. The evidence supports the claims. The people that witnessed the risen Jesus knew it was reality, would die for their beliefs. They had the assurances.

If we are sure Christ rose, we can say “Jesus lives and so can I.”

Jesus showed up with his wounds still intact. God knows us and knows what our rational minds need. The reality of the nails through Jesus wrecked his followers’ agenda for him. To believe in Jesus will lead to eternity.

What ultimately will defeat evil is that faith that has assurances in Jesus and his resurrection. We can hope for a future that is sure.

Shalom and happy Easter!
He is risen!

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

I love theology; discussing Theos and any and all ideas relating to Him. But it annoys me when many Christians feel we need to go “deeper”. Yes, I am a proponent of deep theological studies. But I think most of the time we need to focus on what is quintessential to our lives: The Gospel. Really, why would we ever need to go deeper than that? We are broken, we cannot make up for our shortcomings, God in his infinite mercy and grace sends his only Son to atone for us, to be the innocent slain lamb. We are truly justified by grace. His resurrection was the final blow; God reigns. That is deep. The Gospel. Simple yet crucial and beautiful.

On Friday, we saw the beautiful tragedy. There, Jesus’ work was finished and the effects of that work are still being felt. We live in the post-Easter world. Jesus returned and holds the priesthood forever. He is calling us to be a part of his Kingdom, his family. That is an offer that no other religion can offer; I think it is worth checking out.

Previous posts:
The Resurrection including Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter:

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

The Passion of Jesus Christ
The Seven Words of Jesus on the Cross – from the Good Friday gathering at All Saints.
The Reality of Easter
Τετέλεσται: Some thoughts on John 19:30

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Easter at All Saints

John 19.26-27: When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

Luke 23.34: And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.

Luke 23.43: And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Matthew 27.46: >And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

John 19.28: After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.”

Luke 23.46: Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.

John 19.30: When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Thank God for the beautiful tragedy of Good Friday. I look forward to the resurrection and Easter Sunday.

'Science joke. You should probably just move along.'

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

-from “The Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

This quote from Dune by Frank Herbert has always stuck with me. I think it resonates with truth; both the science lover and person of faith can connect to this statement, or at least should be able to. I am a very rational person, always looking for the logical argument, the reasoning behind everything. While things can often be explained away, it is undeniable that we can only explain away so much. Why do we love? Why am I so amazed by what is to be found in the universe? Why are relationships so important? Why is humor so great? Explain those things away until they have no meaning; why bother?

The reality is that God has made the universe rational so we can figure things out and learn more about this world, but what lies behind that construct is the illogic of our loving God. Evidence of that irrationality is all around us: Jesus came and died for us, God loves us even though we consistently turn our backs on him, a painting evokes an emotional response, music brightens your day, laughing for hours on end with close friends. Why would I want to explain those things away when they are beautiful in their own right.

Yes, the world is logical and I do have the need to study that logic and discover how things work and fit together. But I also embrace the reality that God is not constrained by logical frameworks. I should be happy about that. If the universe were purely logical, my failures as a person would have me doomed. Thank God for the illogic of grace: broken and redeemed.

Maybe this doesn’t make any sense: it is late… and I don’t have to be logical.

Back when I was going to Regent, one of the hymns that we would often sing during chapel services was a portion of St. Patrick’s breastplate. I have always found it very moving. Here is the portion that always struck a chord with me:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Now, there are a number of versions of this Old Irish hymn in English (check here, here, here, here, and here), but they all get the same message across: Christ is the primary. In all we do. Everything.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This is a daunting task: how to narrow influential books down to a short list? These are a few that I have found profound and insightful. There are plenty more where this came from, but these jumped out at me.

1. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson – I think this is a MUST read for every Christian. Peterson uses the Psalms of Ascents as a framework for talking about the Christian Life. Peterson is the one who wrote the Bible paraphrase “The Message” and is considered a spiritual theologian.
2. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee – a wonderful discussion about the reality of Bible reading and how it should be approached. In my opinion, this is another MUST read for every Christian. Gordon Fee was part of both the NIV and TNIV translation committee, is the general editor for a pretty major commentary series, and has done a lot for textual criticism and exegeses.
3. Silence by Shusaku Endo – A difficult book about apostasy. Helped me continue thinking and realizing that there truly are difficult questions that we could wrestle with, black and white isn’t always the order of the day. Shusaku Endo I know the least about, but his novel was quite thought provoking.
4. The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter – somewhat heavy, but provides wonderful context for the OT: how it all fits together. Robert Alter is a Hebrew scholar and has done a lot with the OT.
5. Pretty much anything and everything by NT Wright, especially The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is. Pure brilliance. Wright is the Bishop of Durham and is an extremely prolific New Testament theologian (often with a focus on Pauline theology).
6. Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen – A beautiful look at the Christian spiritual life through the lens of Rembrandt’s painting of the same name (my favorite painting!). Nouwen was a Catholic priest who wrote numerous books on spirituality.
7. Beyond the Cosmos by Hugh Ross – one of my first explicitly Christian/Scientist perspective and the marriage of those worlds. Hugh Ross run as organization called Reasons to Believe that aims to “bridge the gap between science and faith.”

Wow, hard to narrow it to seven! Did I really leave out Lewis??

What about you? What writers have influenced your walk? Most of mine our non-fiction writers. That isn’t to say fiction can’t influence, it just wasn’t for me—although there is still Lewis. I still don’t know how I left out works like Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce…

The Lonely Forest with Chris Walla

Walla initially approached the band members about producing them, but soon decided to create the Trans imprint with Atlantic to release their records as well.

“I’ve been lucky enough to make records with tons of phenomenal bands, and I’ve considered [starting a label] a number of different times,” he says. “I don’t know—is it oversimplified to say it’s them and it just makes sense? This wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for the Lonely Forest. They’re a phenomenal band. I’ve been following my nose for so many years, doing the things that felt like the right thing to do. And this time the answer was yes.”

I am definitely looking forward to this union of talents! Great job guys and great pick up by Walla!

The Lonely Forest is currently on a good sized tour (check out their MySpace page for show info) and will be doing an all-ages show at Neumos on Tuesday, March 2nd (they will be going on around 10:30), $15. Hope to see you there!

And a little extra: check out a great version of Woe is Me from Catapult Records and KEXP.

I am not catholic so do not always follow the practice of giving something up for Lent, this year I will be doing something a little different. Lent is a time where prepare our hearts for Holy Week, often by abstaining from something that could be replaced by contemplation of Christ and His Gospel. I have decided that I will be fasting (everything except for water) on Mondays as a way to focus on my spiritual life. This ascetic undertaking should be a reminder to me of what Christ gave up for us.

Related Posts:
Lent Begins – Isaiah 55:1-7
Ash on the forehead, beads around the neck – a look at the cultural dichotomy that seems to happen at Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday (and throughout Lent… and the rest of the year I suppose…).

Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

I live in Seattle; a little over two hours away from Vancouver, BC. I live in the United States; high definition cable with incredible variety in programming is accessible around the clock. I live in a world where global communication has never been easier and faster. And yet I cannot watch the Winter Olympics live. I have to wait until prime time to catch all the major events. Sure, I could watch curling and ice hockey on USA or MSNBC (both of which I do enjoy), but most events don’t come on until after 8pm. This, to me, is absurd. This clearly shows that NBC doesn’t have any regard for their viewers; you care about advertising spots that you can charge a premium for during prime time. But even that is inconsistent because you are willing to let the Olympics play from midnight to 5am; who is watching then? Wouldn’t more people watch during the day, white the events are actually happening?

What makes this even worse, is that during the selected events you choose to show during prime time, a very large portion of that precious time is filled with commercials or with commentators talking about the sports. If you are going to pack a day’s worth of events into the three or four hours of prime time, I, and I am sure many other countless viewers, would rather be watching the events themselves! (Sports anchors should be briefly talking about sporting events, not being the events; I am not watching to see them!)

Your coverage is completely intolerable and you should be embarrassed for having the worst production in the world (countless other countries not only have live programming of the events, but also live streaming on the web!). You should be ashamed and change they way things are doing. Caring for the viewers of your programs might actually be a worthy policy.

Please reconsider the choices you have made for your Winter (and Summer!) Olympics TV coverage.

Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις Θεῷ
-Matt Jones, Seattle, WA
_____________________________
Matthew James Jones
matt@mattjonesblog.com
mattjonesblog.com

UPDATE: Here is a great article from CIO: NBC Olympic Coverage: is the Internet the Enemy?

Oh, and you should check out some of my photo’s from this year’s adventure to the Caboose at Snoqualmie Pass!