"Professional historians are not bloodless templates passively registering the facts: we actively and imaginatively project. Our rationality cannot be extricated from our sentiments and feelings, our hopes and fears, our hunches and ambitions."
-Dale Allison, New Testament scholar, quote in reference to inadequate scholarly attempts to uncover the "historical Jesus."
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
He always says it right.
While I believe that actual miracles can and do happen, I am sympathetic with those who believe otherwise, and I applaud their desire to live out the meaning of the miracle stories even when they don't believe the stories really happened as written. (I find it harder to be sympathetic with those who take pride in believing the miracles really happened but don't seek to live out their meaning.) 68 A Generous Orthodoxy --Mclaren
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
God is a fan of union: friendship, family, and marriage
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.
Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Divine Side of Prayer.
I'm sure my frustrated, venting prayers look so ridiculous while I'm praying them--especially walking the streets of New York--knowing any person watching thinks I'm talking to myself. Outloud.
Have you ever prayed a prayer something to the effect of this:
"God please take this distraction away. Really, it's bugging me. And I want to obey you, but how can I obey you when I don't know what you're saying? And I want to worship you first, but (long sigh), I just love concrete things more than abstract things. And right now, Jesus seems abstract. So here's my list for tonight: I need this distraction gone, and I need to know that you are real. Help me be okay with the reality of hell, and please show me if I'm really supposed to do music...(longer more exasperated sigh) see, now I'm praying too many things--there's no way I'm going to remember which answers I'm waiting for. Especially with three papers due tomorrow, which, shoot, I haven't started. Yeah, by the way, please help me with those..."
Something inside of me shrinks when I hear people use the phrase, "the power of prayer." Partly because it sounds cliche. Don't get me wrong--I think prayer has great benefits. It makes me verbalize what it is I really desire. It concentrates my will toward those things. In group prayer, it could even concentrate the group on a unified goal. All good things. But there is still this gnawing feeling that I don't really believe prayer invites anything divine into the human side of things.
Why do I think this way?
Simple: I never pray.
But tonight shockingly reminded me that the "power of prayer" lies in God's ability to facilitate in hours what would have taken me months.
First, a phone call from my mom turned my heart away from the distraction. Then, in the back corner of a dimly lit coffee shop, tears welled and wouldn't stop falling from my eyes. Francis Shaeffar's book The God Who is There renewed my faith in a God who does exist, even though the inconsistencies in modern philosophy makes it really hard to believe in him.
The idea that faith and rationality are mutually-exclusive is one that we still haven’t recovered from today. Today, the former is seen as a product of optimistic, “wishful thinking”, and the latter as more of a pessimistic, accurate perspective. This precept is not even true, and yet it keeps thousands of rational people from committing to a belief in Jesus. As a result, most people have developed an understanding of the world that is fragmented, void of an overarching narrative, and meaningless. Schaeffar says, “When we speak of being under the line of despair, we do not mean that these people necessarily sit down and weep, but that they have given up all hope of achieving a rational unified answer to knowledge and life (23).
So the distraction removed, my faith in God renewed, and all of it happened in a way that replaced my worry about hell with a desire to bring people freedom, in this life and the one to come. And to top it off, a few days later, the music stuff was confirmed.
Ha, all that being said, I think I'm going to pray more.
Have you ever prayed a prayer something to the effect of this:
"God please take this distraction away. Really, it's bugging me. And I want to obey you, but how can I obey you when I don't know what you're saying? And I want to worship you first, but (long sigh), I just love concrete things more than abstract things. And right now, Jesus seems abstract. So here's my list for tonight: I need this distraction gone, and I need to know that you are real. Help me be okay with the reality of hell, and please show me if I'm really supposed to do music...(longer more exasperated sigh) see, now I'm praying too many things--there's no way I'm going to remember which answers I'm waiting for. Especially with three papers due tomorrow, which, shoot, I haven't started. Yeah, by the way, please help me with those..."
Something inside of me shrinks when I hear people use the phrase, "the power of prayer." Partly because it sounds cliche. Don't get me wrong--I think prayer has great benefits. It makes me verbalize what it is I really desire. It concentrates my will toward those things. In group prayer, it could even concentrate the group on a unified goal. All good things. But there is still this gnawing feeling that I don't really believe prayer invites anything divine into the human side of things.
Why do I think this way?
Simple: I never pray.
But tonight shockingly reminded me that the "power of prayer" lies in God's ability to facilitate in hours what would have taken me months.
First, a phone call from my mom turned my heart away from the distraction. Then, in the back corner of a dimly lit coffee shop, tears welled and wouldn't stop falling from my eyes. Francis Shaeffar's book The God Who is There renewed my faith in a God who does exist, even though the inconsistencies in modern philosophy makes it really hard to believe in him.
The idea that faith and rationality are mutually-exclusive is one that we still haven’t recovered from today. Today, the former is seen as a product of optimistic, “wishful thinking”, and the latter as more of a pessimistic, accurate perspective. This precept is not even true, and yet it keeps thousands of rational people from committing to a belief in Jesus. As a result, most people have developed an understanding of the world that is fragmented, void of an overarching narrative, and meaningless. Schaeffar says, “When we speak of being under the line of despair, we do not mean that these people necessarily sit down and weep, but that they have given up all hope of achieving a rational unified answer to knowledge and life (23).
So the distraction removed, my faith in God renewed, and all of it happened in a way that replaced my worry about hell with a desire to bring people freedom, in this life and the one to come. And to top it off, a few days later, the music stuff was confirmed.
Ha, all that being said, I think I'm going to pray more.
Elegy
Elegy
Dylan Thomas
"Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cool kind man brave in his narrow pride."
Dylan Thomas
"Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cool kind man brave in his narrow pride."
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