lexrob

I like you and your blog lexrob. (ha!)

now isn't that nice to hear?

I was just reading a blog-interview of Dan Wallace. For those of you who do not know who Dan Wallace is, he and his colleague William Mounce are two of the best Greek scholars of our day. Not only are they good scholars they are puportedly very good teachers as well. I guess that's where a quote like this one comes from. "I have come to believe that Christian scholars have a duty to the church that we don’t typically consider as part of our job description, viz., close the gap. How? By explaining in lay terms what all the scholarly fuss is about. By offering a different model, but one that is backed up with the best scholarship." Call me silly, or stupid, or even un-academic, but I love to hear a legitmate scholar talk about bridging the gap between the academy and the church. I know many of us know people who think the theological cookies (or in this case the textual-critical cookies) need to stay on the top shelf, but here is at least one top shelf thinker who is willing to pull the jar down a shelf or two. You can see the full interview at http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2006/03/interview-with-dan-wallace.html

preaching in chapel

Maybe I should save this one for tomorrow, you know, so I can post again, but I don't think I can wait. My friend, Justin, had to preach at undergraduate chapel on Tuesday morning. Now Justin would never be mean about the crowd because Justin is actually a nice guy. I too have had to preach undergraduate chapel, however, and I have no problem being a little mean. It's the worst service I have ever had to preach. From the girl on the third row doing her homework on her lap to the guy in the back with noise-canceling head phones on, to the guys in the corner who are laughing (maybe at me, definitely not with me), to the couple on the far side who are actually making out during a sermon. I love college kids, and for the most part, I still am one, but come on. Chapel is the worst preaching venue ever.
But as a friend and I talked last night about preaching at chapel a thought came to mind. What if Justin had dropped the f-bomb right in the middle of his sermon. I imagine the scene thusly, Justin has just started out with a brilliantly funny introduction, a few people laughed (most just stared) but now he had moved into his first point, "Jesus speaks to us through those around us" and is about to transition to his second point "Why we never listen" when he pauses, looks out at the sea of chapel-angst ridden faces, stoned expressions, and complete indifference and screams at the top of his lungs, "Wake the F- Up!". Wow, now wouldn't that just change the tenor in the room. Homework would fall to the floor, the guys who were laughing in the corner are now staring, mouths gaping in shock and awe, the couple on the far side is still holding hands, but at least they aren't still kissing, and the guy at the back with the headphones is staring at everyone around him wondering what just happened. The preacher just said...
And you know Justin could have played it off. He could have said something Campoloian like: "And the sad truth is that more of you are now paying attention because of the word that I just said rather than the truth I was trying to convey."
Amen Justin, amen. It is a little sad to think though, that most of us (I always had Greek right after chapel) would have fallen for it just like the people in the chapel that day would have. Someone gets up to preach, that's old hat, I hear this crap all the time; someone says F- from the stage, now that's something special, right?

Back in the saddle, at least this once

So I am going to try to start posting very regularly. For Lent, I am giving up something, but I am also trying to add a couple of things. I read somewhere that one of the best ways to look at Lent is as a time to simplify your life, to focus on the things that matter most, to sacrifice some of the junk that we accumulate in our lives over the course of the year. I am going to post my way through parts of the Bible, and if I think of anything else along the way, I will post those things too.
This morning I was reading in Genesis. (Good place to start huh?) and maybe its just that we are having a baby now or something, but I had never noticed that Eve had three kids. Now that might not be an incredible revelation, but just yesterday, we went for our monthly check-up, which will, in a couple of months, become a weekly check-up. All this will lead to a sanitized hospital room, with a Dr. who has been practicing for ten years at delivering babies. All that to say the fact that Eve had three children and even made it through herself sort of amazes me this morning. I have had to pray a lot for Molly and our child, I get worried for no apparent reason, but oh how I would worry if our baby was being delivered by me, in a tent, in the middle of a field. I just don't think I could take it. What really amazes me is not that Adam didn't throw-up anywhere in the story or that Eve didn't freak-out, really what amazes me is that God watches over such things, and that is not to say that they always go well or even o.k., but there is nothing I can do to fix anything in this situation, I am helpless, so I've got to trust someone. God probably has a better handle on things anyway.

In the interest of consistency...

I am going to post something that I actually wrote a few weeks back for our college retreat. It's nothing special, just an idea I thought I would put out there. The theme of the service was Matthew 22: 34-40.

"I was thinking today how God is not like Santa Claus at all. Sure Santa gives gifts, and God is the giver of all good gifts, but God is not like Santa Claus very much. People always say that if we would believe, trust, that there was a Santa Claus, then there really would be one. It occurs to me that God exists whether we believe in God or not. God is not contingent on us in any way. Neither does God have to be loved by us. And God made us so that we are not forced to love God. Love, in the end, is a choice. A poet once said that love, real love, is waking up every day and choosing to love. God created us, God guides us, and even sent his son to die on our behalf, and yet God does not require love in return. We are not guilted into love, though "we have been bought for a price." We are not caused to love, though God is indeed at work in our lives. So why love God at all? Why love God with all of our hearts, all of our minds, and all of our strength?

Because God is at work in the world, because God is holy, because a relationship with God fills the void in our lives that is left when we are apart from God. Because God calls to us, gently, sometimes strongly, to take part in the work that is already taking place. In loving God we find meaning and purpose, hope and joy. Not an opiate that numbs us from all pain, rather a fulfilled hope that grants us peace amidst jubilation and suffering. Though in this world there is much sorrow and pain we can take heart, because our savior has already overcome the world."

Sorry for the blogvotional, but there you have it.

My theory.

I am pretty stupid sometimes. Once I was walking outside on a windy day and wanted to figure out from whence the breeze came. As any scientific mind might, I licked my fore finger and stuck it into the air. No good. I then looked up and in the distance the American flag waved in the middle of the Anderson lawn, perfectly revealing the direction of the wind. And for a split second I thought how everyone should use flags to tell which direction the wind blows. Yea, I mean like the flags on goal posts, and the flags on runways, and even the little windsock things on people's porches. I know, genius. Another time I was in a restaurant with my wife and I had a moment of profound clarity. I knew what "orderves" were, but at the age of 25 I realized what "hors d’ oeuvres" were. Again, genius.
So I have this theory that when we do these things in the context of the classroom, or even more so, after having taken a class, we take just a little piece of our professor's souls. For instance, if you took a two-thirds world theology class dealing with what most of the world believes, and what the rest of the world is like, and then argued that Jesus was a white guy with blond hair, you might steal a little piece of a professor's soul.
At any rate I was reading Matthew chapter sixteen today and I came across this: v5 "When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread. v6 'Be careful,' Jesus said, to them. 'Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Saducees.' v 7 They discussed this among themselves and said, 'It is because we didn't bring any bread.'" I don't know how it works out theologically to steal a piece of Jesus' soul, but I am pretty sure that the disciples figured out how to do it. I would like to formally apologize to everyone who has ever tried to teach me anything.

My search for a paradigm.

As many of you know I am now working on my thesis. My subject is the account of the conversion of Cornelius and the associated visions in Acts chapter ten. As I have researched this topic I have read numerous arguments that say that visions must be interpreted, and even beyond that they must be interpreted within a certain ideology, system of belief, or cultural context (Pilch). This fits well with Peter's vision as it specifically deals with the food laws of the Old Testament and yet Peter's interpretation of it relates to the Gentiles. The word play in verses 14-15, "Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied [to arising to kill and eat] "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean" allows for Peter's extension of the interpretation beyond the realm of dietary laws.
So if Peter interprets this vision in light of his context (which I think needs a few qualifiers, but is generally sound) I began to wonder more about the role of discipleship in the context of practicing the Kingdom of God. What if reading our Bibles and practicing spiritual disciplines, praying, fasting etc. instead of simply "being good for us" were the methods by which we create a context for the interpretation of the work of God in our lives. Now that may not seem all that revolutionary, however, whether we have ever had such a thought, most of us continue to "do spiritual things" because we think they are good for us. Admittedly, they are, but what if the greater purpose was that it allowed us to see the world in ways different from those that we would normally acknowledge.
The problem of developing a paradigm comes in trying to communicate what I believe is at work in discipleship. Most of us run around "hoping to get struck by lightning" in the form of revelation or theophany. The implication being that such revelation is random. To some extent I would argue that it is random, in that it is God who chooses when, where, and to whom, such revelation is given, however, is it possible that spiritual disciplines create a sort of lightning rod in the soul of those who practice them? And more importantly how does this understanding of discipleship differ from the "because it does me good" or "because I am supposed to" argument?

So I know it has been a while...

and I am sorry. Lexrob is right, I have in fact had a computer in my possesion for some time now. I acctually even have a new computer from which I should have been blogging, but until today, I have failed miserably.
At any rate, I don't want to go cheesy Christian on you all, but I do have a somewhat thusly related post for today. I was just reading over an old research paper today, trying to decide on a writing sample (I don't have much good stuff to choose from). The paper was about Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood (one of these days I will learn how to underline in a post). Flannery (as I like to call her) sets up a very interesting view of sin. In her novel a major amount of thought is given to the idea of collective or systemic sin. The world is a sort of false stage that blinds us from a greater truth. Now the greater truth is always around us and if you look you can find it, but most of us never notice. In the novel she employs a very intersting main character who she sets against the rest of the people in the book. Hazel Motes is no Ghandi figure, but he does create a sense of awareness of the truth. I am curious about this view of sin. It seems pretty wide spread (get it?). Anyway I read something in John Eldredge that was very similar and if John Eldredge and Flannery O' Connor ended up on the same page, it sort of makes you want to sit up and take notice. That is sort of like Victor Frankl and Dr. Phil agreeing about something. The idea is that our own sin so blinds us, and so distorts us that the human community has created an entire worldview that is completely false and acctually rewards things that should be punished and punishes things that should be rewarded. Now obviously, this is not a completely blind system i.e. murderers should be punished not rewarded, but I sat here in Java City, about a week ago near a lady, who obviously didn't have any money, and obviously wanted a cup of coffee (she sampled at least three varieties), and yet even with a ridiculous amount of cowboy cash, I never offered to buy her coffee. I wasn't trying to be mean, I am not a person who thinks everyone who wants coffee should figure out a way to buy their own. The truth is, I was scared, I didn't want to embarass her, or myself, if she was embarassed. I straight chickened out. Now she probably lived without that cup of coffee, and I doubt I will go to hell for not buying her one, but it does seem that the system (and myself as a participant) is a little messed up if I am too scared to buy a cup of coffee for an old lady. What do you think?