Out of the Depths
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Right Brain/Left Brain
I took the test to see if I'm more right or left brained and it turns out I'm pretty balanced. I usually responded to the worst qualities of each. I desire to follow rules but I'm messy.Brain Lateralization Test Results |
| Right Brain (48%) The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive side of the brain. Left Brain (46%) The left hemisphere is the logical, articulate, assertive, and practical side of the brain |
personality tests by similarminds.com
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
A Molecular Thermometer for a Distant Universe
This is the coolest thing.
Step 1 Quasar emits light
Step 2 Intervening galaxy has a cloud of elements that like to absorb certain frequencies of light
Step 3 Quasar light passes through the galaxy
Step 4 Human's observe that the specific frequencies are missing from the quasar light since the galaxy has absorbed them
Step 5 Humans quantify what is is absorbed and from that determine cosmic background temperature that is in harmony with what is expected from the Big Bang.
From A Molecular Thermometer at Physorg.com
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Insight from The New Christians
I never have time to write anymore. I'll just quote something interesting I've found.Max Weber (1864-1920), the founder of modern sociology, famously wrote that the success of capitalism was due in large part to its partnership with Calvinist theology: the strict modesty of Calvinism provided a moral curb to the relentless growth impulse of a free market. Weber, who also wrote extensively about religion, said that religious movements founded initially on the charisma of a leader or leaders will inevitably settle into routine patterns of administration and bureaucracy.
from Tony Jones, The New Christians Chapter 6 Inside the Emergent Church page 186.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
54th International Instrumentation Symposium - Pensacola
The 54th International Instrumentation Symposium of the ISA is being held in Pensacola in the Hilton Hotel. This is the view from our room. Highlights from yesterday:
1. My Vanderbilt student colleague wins a presentation competition and gets an expense paid trip to Houston in Oct to the ISA's EXPO Conference.
2. "Black Holes, Chocolate, and Nano" was the keynote address and I took away several ideas from it. Dick Morley, the speaker, claimed that using several "flaky" sensors is better than using one highly accurate sensor. That is my paraphrase. He makes chocolate and sells it. He claims one of his products is designed for the women's brain and the other or men's. He passed out samples. As luck would have it I got the female variety and it was good. His chocolate hobby ties in with black holes in that it is surface area that is important to both......
3. My wife is with me and having a good time.
4. Have met some interesting people and had beneficial conversations.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Why Everything Must Change
For a detailed review of Brian McLaren's "Everything Must Change", go here.In reading Brian's book, the idea of a framing story struck me as very important and insightful. The Romans had there framing story. The Pharisees theirs. the Sadducees theirs, and so on for the Zealots, Essenes, etc. They were all stuck in dead end stories. Jesus said no to all of those and his was "Listen to the Good News that will heal, feed, and transform the World".
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
This final day of April
Am enjoying Tony Jones book "The New Christians". Also, started on "The Shack".Tuesday, April 29, 2008
I've Never Been a Car Guy
But when a fender bender totalled one of our old cars (no one hurt, thankfully), I felt maybe it was time to try out a hybrid vehicle. We bought a Toyota Prius Hybrid. My first tank got 49.6 mpg! I'm happy about that.Monday, April 28, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Ben Stein chooses the role of Con Man
From the Higgaion blog of April 21, 2008 at the end of his review of Expelled:The one word that expresses how I most felt when coming out of Expelled is: deceived. Expelled tells stories that are simply at odds with reality. The film overblows its “martyr” stories, presents no actual evidence for intelligent design (it just assures us that such evidence exists), plays up a false dichotomy between “Darwinism” and religious belief, and tries to smear “Darwinism” with a false causal link to Nazi atrocities. Stein comes off not as a fearless crusader for the truth, but as a con man. Don’t buy a used car—or a worldview—from this guy.
Labels: ID
Monday, April 21, 2008
Opening Music to the General's Daughter
The movie, The General's Daughter opens with this piece of music, a Depression Era recording meshed with a nineties instrumental background. I don't know why I find it so fascinating. The two girls sound so real. I'm not sure what the visual in this you tube video has to do with the movie, if anything. I'm glad to have the music. It was a terrible movie by the way
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. -- Anais Nin
From Legend, Inc.'s Know Thyself Archives.
From Legend, Inc.'s Know Thyself Archives.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Story and Spiritual Formation
Storytelling, doctrine, and spiritual formationAnglican Theological Review, Winter 1999, by Wallace, Catherine M
The Use of Story in Spiritual Formation
I think I'll talk about story when I speak at church next Wednesday night. Came across these items in preparation.
Wikimapia: View of the Acropolis and Aeropagus
You can move, magnify and demagnify!
Labels: wikimapia
Monday, March 31, 2008
Understanding the Bible Alike
Pushing off some thoughts of the book, Hearing God's Voice, Tom notes that preachers, he's talking of the late forties and early fifties, tended to the notion that if we make a common sense reading of the Bible, we will interpret the Bible alike.Let's see, since the death penalty was generally lifted for heretical views in the 1500's, followers of Christ have branched out into an ever greater variety of interpretations. So, empirically at least, unity does not seem possible. Does this mean that it is possible that one day we will achieve that goal? I have had conversations where I say it is not possible to interpret the Bible alike. But it has been countered that Jesus prayed for unity and that his followers all be ONE. So it is countered that Jesus would not want us to pursue something that is impossible.
But late in life I see that disagreement and conflict leads to progress. Not sure how to resolve this.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
The Emergent Conversation and the Churches of Christ
On the Stone-Campbell list, the question was asked about how the emergent phenomenon may be affecting the Churches of Christ. Here was my answer:Fred Peatross, from Huntington, WV. and former missionary, writes a blog for Wineskins called "Abductive Columns". The links in the sidebar to "ezines". These are sites that are oriented toward the emergent conversation. This column began fairly recently but his earlier blogs and web site discuss it positively. In them he has interviewed Leonard Sweet and Brian McLaren, for instance. Wade Hodges, a CofC minister in Tulsa, did a series of articles on "An Emerging Church of Christ?" in 2006. John Mark Hicks, in a May 20, 2005 entry to his blog reviews in a positive manner a book "Beyond Foundationalism" by the late Stanley Grenz and John Franke. The emergent conversation draws on is a reflection of postmodern critiques from books like this as well as other authors mentioned by John Mark in the review such as Merold Westphal and James K. A. Smith.
Over the long term, this may be a flash in the pan, but, overall, I have benefited from these writings and recommend further instruction from them. Ironically, this forum back in 2003 led to my investigation of this because of certain comments here critiquing the enlightenment and mentioning the postmoderns.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Easter Sunday
Dorothy and I drove to Nashville yesterday to see my son and his girlfriend. I had arrived the night before from his spring break medical mission trip to Guatemala. Attended a neat Easter Service at the Otter Creek C of C. Lee Camp, author of Mere Discipleship spoke. It was gut wrenching.The service was quite different from what I'm used to. I guess we haven't as they say been getting out much. They had a Praise Team on a podium, all miked. A man and a woman got up and read the post-Resurrection scene from the Gospel of John. Yes, a woman reading scripture! A woman sang solo for the first few lines of a song during the communion. The words to the songs were projected onto a screen but the notes were not there. A couple of the songs I didn't know and so that was frustrating not to be able to belt it out. Most I knew at least somewhat.
We went to Red Lobster, ate, and looked at my sons trip pictures on his laptop.
More on Our Style of Interpretation
The dominant approach to Scripture in his youth, according to Tom, was that it was:a book of facts
a constitution
a book of rules
There was quite of bit of emphasis on opposing the following things:
large churches
expensive buildings
located/salaried preachers
divorce
dancing
drinking
smoking
card playing
movies
When I came along twenty years later this list had changed some. Buildings, located preachers, card playing and movies were off the list. Well, I remember reference to spot cards. Playing with family card games like Rook, Old Maid, Bible Authors, etc were OK, but not playing with spot cards, the ones most gamblers use. Two additional no-no's were the wearing of shorts and mixed bathing.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Origin of Our Style of Biblical Interpretation
From Chapter 3 of Hearing God's Voice:"All the early leaders of our movement emphasized facts and reasonableness, and negated "enthusiasm" - especially Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott, Raccoon John Smith, and to a lesser extent, Barton W. Stone."
Tom is writing of the style of preaching in his youth in the 30's and 40's. It squares with my experience too, in my youth in the 50's and 60's.
British empiricism widely influenced most Americans in the 1800s, especially in the frontier regions . . The emphasis on science, beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century, escalated the importance of the factual, empirical data of the Enlightenment.
He states that the empiricists John Locke and Francis Bacon were read widely and the first college associated with us was named Bacon College. I didn't know that.
Until about five years ago, I would have said "And they were completely right, this way of thinking is the only way. What else is there?" But thanks to a number of things I've read in books, the internet and an E-list, I am emerging from what William Blake called "Newton's Sleep".
Friday, March 21, 2008
The Indirect Approach to God
Back from Myrtle Beach and the business of turbine engine health. The best reading is on planes. Here is a great quote from Kevin Hart from his book "Postmodernism" that I was re-reading. It comes out of Ch4. The Fragmentary.The path along which we walk to God is nothing if not indirect. We draw close to him when we rise from our prayers and help the stranger, the orphan and the widow.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Scripture Through the Eyes of Parents and Grandparents
In chapter one of Hearing God's Voice, Through the Eyes of Parents and Grandparents, Tom gives a short bio of his grandparents and then how his parents met and their bio up to the time when Tom is little. His first memories are in their rural setting and attending a house church at his maternal grandfather's home then at a church built close by from a donation of grandpa's land.All of us as children are immersed in our immediate surroundings and pay close attention. That is what forms us. Tom describes his maternal grandfather when he says "My grandfather's study of the Scripture was akin to puzzle solving. The Bible was a handbook of puzzles as well as the means for resolving them." For example his granddad enjoyed wrestling with how the Apostles became members of the church and whether they had been properly baptized. For him, the Bible was a "guide book for church disputation and practice."
His mom was a voracious reader. She enjoyed the stories in the Bible and instilled that in Tom and his siblings. She loved to tell stories. He says "I tended to favor my mother's somewhat unarticulated agenda that the Bible has more to do with the replication of the ives of those whose stories are told than with argument over words and doctrines." These stories are for her models of proper living.
Tom's dad, was raised in Nebraska, the grandson of a German immigrant. "He interpreted the world according to the current realities, according to facts and reason. He was a hard-working pragmatist." And he also said that his father had a "healthy skepticism of any point of view which strayed from the data of his experience or from an authoritative source, such as the Scriptures."
When I read through this chapter the first time, I was most attracted to Tom's mother's approach. I understand today, more than ever, the importance of the story aspect of scripture and that it forms us deeply in ways we are only dimly aware. In one of my early formative church memories, in about the first grade, we are in Sunday School in the basement of our church building in Lansing, MI, let's say 1957, and I'm looking at pictures of children being brought to Jesus and of Jesus healing and feeding people. For me, that is the "real" Jesus. My readings and experiences in recent years enhance the importance of narrative and story.
Looking back on my life, when I was a teenager and younger man, I had the illusion that I was in concert with Tom's dad. Like Mr. Spock of Star Trek, I believed in reason and logic. One shouldn't stray too far from the basic data in the Bible nor get too emotional or speculate about and adumbrate it with interpretations.
Initially I thought that I had little in common with Tom's granddad's approach. But upon reflection it partially describes me as well. I'm not interested in the same puzzles as he, but different ones. I spent quite of bit of time in the 90's to mid 2000's reading up on the Synoptic problem and wondering if Q existed and would ever be found. I've read many a blog and e-group list about the historical Jesus, who wrote the Bible, the Gnostics, and other attendant mysteries and historical conundrums. Why did I do it? Partly for better understanding and that is good. Partly for confirmation of my views. I thought it was my curiosity but it was also because of my personal issues and predisposition.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Hearing God's Voice Chapter 1
How should we read the Bible? That is an important issue for the fellowship of the Churches of Christ, my heritage. A heritage that has produced Pat Boone, Ken Starr, Max Lucado, Lester Holt, Laurie Anderson, and others. We stress the importance of Bible study and the necessity of each person to habitually read and apply what it says. This of course presumes that the Bible is in large part accessible to common sense reading. Tom Olbricht's book, "Hearing God's Voice" grew out of his desire and the requests of others to present a book on Hermeneutics. Tom helped to make hermeneutics a hot topic in the fellowship beginning in the 1980's.Hermeneutics is the study of the rules of proper interpretation. This is not an ivory tower activity. The attention given to this has led many within the fellowship to move away from some more traditional beliefs and practices that define, at least for some, what it is to be a member of the Church of Christ. Rather than write a scholarly tome on the subject, something Tom was qualified to do and could easily have done, he chose to write an autobiography, showing how his personal story intertwined with his life and desire to Hear God's voice.
What does Tom mean by hermeneutics?
"By hermeneutics, I mean the perspectives and commitments from which believers put questions to the Scriptures in order to determine how to hear the voice of the living God and live accordingly."
The way we interpret is not without presuppositions. It is shaped by both culture and theology, he says. As he relates "My upbringing has forced me to perceive the Scriptures from a number of angles."
So, to practice interpretation properly, we must know ourselves, know who we are and what made us into what we are. The best way for Tom to do this was by means of autobiography. I'm sure he learned things in the writing of it as he thought back to the past and examined it in the light of his present.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Theological Worldview
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What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You scored as Emergent/Postmodern You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.
|
Have taken these before. This was too long and complicated to have purposefully concocted a result. I'm surprised by the results actually. As with all such tests, many of the questions need an extra axis or two besides choosing a range between agree or disagree. Its the highest degree of Catholic I've ever scored on one of these.
Have taken these before. This was too long and complicated to have purposefully concocted a result. I'm surprised by the results actually. As with all such tests, many of the questions need an extra axis or two besides choosing a range between agree or disagree. Its the highest degree of Catholic I've ever scored on one of these.It seems to me that my group, the Church of Christ, is moving towards a generic evangelicalism. That is way down my list.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Touching Base
Am so busy and my thoughts are going all directions. I would like to re-read "Hearing God's Voice" and to record my thoughts here but haven't had quality time to do so. I've peeked at Nancy Pearcy's Total Truth and that has caused my mind to storm some. Stop that. Deadlines at work. Presentations to give. Testing and reporting. My son at the U. of Memphis is home now as its his spring break.Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Hearing God's Voice
It has been difficult to blog lately with running back and forth to Memphis. I'm reading Hearing God's Voice by Thomas Olbricht. Tom is my dad's age, born a few days after the 1929 stock market crash. He grew up just a little northwest of me, across the AR/MO state line in the vicinity of Thayer, MO. It is a fascinating story of growing up in small country churches and attending Harding and being a student preacher and working summers up north and finding a girl up there and marrying her (this far just like my Dad) and staying up north (Dad goes back South) and attending other schools and continuing to teach and preach. He gets a PhD from Dubuque and a BD from Harvard. Teaches at Penn State. I am up to the late sixties when he moves to Abilene. A theme in the book is hermeneutics.I knew his brother Owen.
Tom was one of the people originally involved with Mission magazine, a Church of Christ publication that was an important influence on me. More on this later.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
In Memory of Ada Eddins 1915-2008
Thank you for coming to help us celebrate the life of Ada Winters Eddins. Who was Ada and what was she like? She started life as part of a large family, the middle child of 11 surviving children. They lived on a large farm in Arkansas and they had to be self-sufficient. This was especially the case since they lost their mother when Ada was only 11 years old. The children divided the chores. Ada rose early every morning to milk the cows and operate the milk processing machinery. She later left home to attend the University of Arkansas for almost 2 years. It was not as common for women in those days as now. Mother lived in the 4-H club facility and paid for her fees by providing canned goods that she prepared herself. Her pictures as a young woman show an endearing vulnerability and humility. Her virtues attracted Tilman Eddins and they were married in 1942. They shared their early years in different locations in the states as he was in the armed forces. The war ended and following his honorable discharge they made Memphis their home some time in 1946.
It was in Memphis that they remained and where they raised their 3 children. Throughout those 62 years, she faithfully served and ministered at the Berclair Church of Christ. Mother was unpretentious, always upbeat, a positive example to all. Mother may have lived in the mid-South’s largest city for all that time but her farm-girl connection to the earth never ceased. She was a lifelong gardener. Mother loved working out of doors with flowers and vegetables. Mother had a specific genius for certain domestic things. For example, her green beans are unmatched by any one anywhere.
She was always there for her family. Mother lived for loving her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and helped as long as she was able. Only a few weeks ago she rocked her youngest great-grandchild to sleep. And recently, during her last hospital stay, upon hearing that one of her adult grandchildren was under the weather and a little bit sick, she said “He should come over to my house and I’ll take care of him.” That was so typical and characteristic of her. Mother was always taking care of us and providing support and stability. And she will continue to do so as she lives in our hearts and memories.
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I read the above at my mother-in-law's funeral on Saturday.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
For Evolution Day
Check out the whole post from the Christian Century from which this is drawn.
...John Haught, Catholic theologian and professor of theology at Georgetown University, suggests that we think in terms of a God who offers "a wide range of possibilities that the world can realize, a universe of innumerable possibilities." Realization of any one possibility happens amid the play between God and creatures.
While in some ways this is a new and unfamiliar way of thinking about God, it is consistent with one key part of the scriptural tradition: in the Bible, God is the one who makes things new. God is the source of novelty. Evolutionary science, according to Haught's way of thinking, shows us the dance between order and randomness by which novelty is produced.
Humans have their own special part in the creation of novelty, for we are a conscious part of the dance of order and randomness. Philip Clayton, a theologian at Claremont School of Theology, picks up on this dimension of evolutionary process and likens creaturely life to the unfolding of a jazz composition: God provides the motifs, but creatures (of various kinds, from the smallest to the largest) provide the original riffs.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Galileo Takes Away Peoples' Reasons for Living
The most poignant and meaningful part of the play, for me, was the beginning of the Scene 8 (after our intermission) where Little Monk conveys his feelings and how he is torn between the two views of reality, the more traditional and the new. I'm quoting from this site:What would my people say if I told them that they happen to be on a small knob of stone twisting endlessly through the void round a second-rate star, just one among myriads?
What would be the value or necessity then of so much patience, such understanding of their own poverty ?
What would be the use of Holy Scripture, which has explained and justified it all - the sweat, the patience, the hunger, the submissiveness - and now turns out to be full of errors?
No: I can see their eyes wavering, I can see them letting their spoons drop, I can see how betrayed and deceived they will feel.
So nobody's eye is on us, they'll say. Have we got to look after ourselves, old, uneducated and worn-out as we are ?
The only part anybody has devised for us is this wretched, earthly one, to be played out on a tiny star wholly dependent on others, with nothing revolving round it.
Our poverty has no meaning: hunger is no trial of strength, it's merely not having eaten: effort is no virtue, it's just toil.
So given this, it is understandable the resistance that many would feel towards the new view that the earth is not the center of the universe. Yes, Martin Luther, living decades earlier was skeptical of the Copernican view. And in his defense, much of the relevant data was not yet available. And to a lessor extent that was still true in Galileo's time as well. In defense of his critics, some of his reasoning was wrong, according to this at the Evangelical Outpost blog and its references.
But my point is that new ways of thinking, new scientific views, often are perceived as being inimical to religious belief. In our time evolution, in my opinion is a prime example of the same. Perhaps some are skeptical of other doctrines for similar reasons. If this evolution is true or if inerrancy is not true, then life does not make sense, they think. But consider, the Copernican view was eventually accepted by all and is no longer seen as harmful to Christianity. Perhaps, eventually the same will be true for some of these other things as well.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Brecht Play - The Life of Galileo
Had free tickets last night to see a play at the U. of Tennessee' Clarence Brown Theater and we saw Berthold Brecht's The Life of Galileo. First play I've seen in many years. Quite enjoyable. Of course we get the cartoon version of the science and the events surrounding G's house arrest, due to the limitations imposed by time, venue and audience. They call G a physicist in the play but I was thinking the term wasn't applied quite that early. Will have to check on it. I play a physicist in real life. Now off to work to horse around with some optical fiber. Wonder what he would have thought about that?Sunday, February 03, 2008
A Vote for Obama
I've not said much politically on this blog since its inception. For some reason I'm moved to now. I took advantage of early voting last Thursday and made the plunge for Obama. Even sent his campaign fifty bucks today. Here's something interesting by the son of Francis Schaeffer, Frank, who considers himself as one who helped start the Religious Right,Why This Former Right Winger Likes Obama.
Friday, February 01, 2008
New Tag Meme about the closest Book
I was tagged by Matt in the comment to the previous post. Here's what to do:--Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
--Find Page 123.
--Find the first 5 sentences.
--Post the next 3 sentences.
--Tag 5 people.
Well, I had to get the tape measure out. There is a lamp stand behind me to my left and five feet back and Emerson: The Mind on Fire is laying there. But, there are several books on the coffee table behind me and to the right. Three books flanked by bookends set on top of 5 books stacked laying down. I'll take the bottom one and the first in the series as the closest. At 86 inches it is slightly closer than the Emerson book.
"We cannot, therefore, assume (as did Radcliffe-Brown) that these Andamanese stories of the pig hunt and of pigs are truly native to the islanders and as primitive as their culture. They are the fragments, rather, of a mainland mythology which has regressed - that is, run wild like the pigs themselves, and, like the associated pottery, has deteriorated, breaking up, as it were, into shards. But there is a creative work here evident, also, in that the imported material has been imaginatively adapted to the life and features of the islands."
An amazingly coherent, self-contained thought from Joseph Campbell's The Way of the Animal Powers Vol 1 Part 1: Mythologies of the Primitive Hunters and Gatherers
Ok, it is now time to tag Jason, Matthew, Mark, Scott, and James.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Memory is Overated
Chapter 91 of Emerson: the Mind on Fire is titled Memory. Here's some advice I could've used for much of the past 50 years. Ralph Waldo told his daughter"You must finish a term and finish every day, and be done with it. For manners, and for wise living, it is a vice to remember."
and this
"This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear with its hopes and invitations to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays."
And the biographer, Richardson explains:
"He meant that one should not pick at the scabs of one's little mistakes, rudenesses, oversights, and failures."
I'm guilty of dwelling too much in the past and ruminating at length over past failures. My thanks to Emerson and Richardson for such a fine sermon aimed most appropriately at me.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
"a legitimate way of expressing authentic Christian faith"
A January 28 post at the Church and Postmodern Culture blog is titledPubs, Clubs, and Alternative Worship II: Follow-up Reflections
and it discusses the alternate worship/emergent church movement in the UK. I find it interesting and even exciting.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Chapter 3 of What Would Jesus Deconstruct
I am enjoying the discussion of Caputo's book taking place at the Church and Postmodern Culture blog. The latest post is beautifully put , instructive and something I can to some extent understand.Monday, January 21, 2008
Sermonette over the Lord's Supper - Mealtime Habits of the Messiah
Yesterday I presided over the Lord's Supper at church. It is our custom that a church member gives a short talk before the emblems are passed out. Then he expresses the blessings. My thoughts were spurred by Conrad Gempf's book of this title, Amazon Link Here. My thoughts were also inspired by a series of posts that Wade Hodges did on his blog on the Theology of Food. Here is approximately what I said, as I remember it. It is in the conversational mode. Outline headings are added.___________________________________________
I. Introduction
I came across a book not long ago. The title of it had a concise way of expressing a crucial aspect of Jesus' ministry. The title teaches as well as it describes. The title is "Mealtime Habits of the Messiah". Nice Review Here
II. Eating with People Was His Agenda
Consider how so much action in the gospels revolves around eating and meals, (planned and unplanned), feasts, weddings, and parables about all of them. Jesus was always eating with people. It must have been a considered part of his agenda all along. It was his custom to be with people when eating to teach them and to show them who he was. That is definitely a mealtime habit of his.
III. He Prepared Some Meals
Sometimes he was content to be served and sometimes he even asked himself over for dinner as when he invited himself to Zacchaeus' house. But there were some occasions when he was involved in the preparations. Early in the book of John he was at a wedding in Cana, a few miles north of his home town. We all know he assisted with the beverage service, and made a big splash. Then there was the feeding of the multitudes. And, at the very end of John he fries some fish for his friends. A most enchanting scene for me. He is saying that as I give you physical food which you cannot live without, I am spiritual food that you cannot live without.
IV. He Got into Trouble for How He Ate
Another habit is that he was always getting into trouble for how he ate. Some have said that he was killed for how he ate. I don't know if that is true but it might be beneficial to study the question.
His enemies accused him of eating too much and drinking too much. I do recall that he, on some occasions, did turn down something to eat. Satan had a serving suggestion once for him and he passed up that chance to eat.
He ate with people who were sinners. They were people who were sinning. Jesus, don't you know who those people are?
V. Why Are Meals So Important
When we get together to eat, we are happy, we are alert.
We are vulnerable to learning.
We expect to begin talking about trivial things like the weather and sporting events. Then we move on to practical things like where do get a good deal on this or that; or how we can solve some of the everyday problems that occur in our complicated world. Then we talk about the important things and relationships.
When we eat together we form an identity. We formulate common goals and aspirations. We act on them. The surrounding community is affected. And others are drawn in.
VI. Conclusion
And so it was entirely fitting that in his final meal with his friends, one of many memorable meals, Jesus would ask his friends to remember him when they ate. As later events showed, the good news, the Kingdom of Heaven, was not to be spread by the sword. "Peter put up you Sword!"
No, it is as if Jesus was saying "The Kingdom - Eternal Life - The Good News will not be advanced by the sword but by the way my people eat".
And that is what we are about to do now.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Sufis
Came across this last night in the biography about Emerson (by R. D. Richardson, Jr). The author is describing on page 406 Emerson's reading of W. F. Thompson's account of Sufism where Thompson calls Sufism "practical pantheism of Asia... holding all visible and conceivable objects to be portions of the divine nature, it was impossible that they should admit the imperfection observable in them to have any real existence."I suppose they would hold that Satan is not real and is merely the personification of lack of knowledge, mistakes, ignorance, accidents, and good intentions gone wrong, etc. That's another alternative.
They may have a different take on the problem of evil that expresses itself by dualistic and monotheistic conceptions of God. See Richard Beck's discussion and post titled "
The Emotional Burden of Monotheism: Does Satan help us feel better about God?".
I've been fascinated with the Sufis for some time. Perhaps I should actually study them. But, I want to finish up some stuff on John Caputo and the Postmoderns first.Friday, January 11, 2008
Transfigured Night - Sublime music from Schoenberg
I was listless the other night. Tired of watching ball games. Tired of politics.There was nothing on as I surfed my usual TV haunts. Have all kinds of great reading material here at home but my eyes were strained from reading and editing reports all day long. Then, I clicked over to PBS to see what was on. Perfect timing. I came upon a special presentation "I Can't Believe that's Shoenberg". The orchestral version is in my collection of CD's but I never had heard the string version.
Sublime. Perfect. Tranquility. Wonderful story.
"His generosity was as sublime as his love"
I was tranfixed for the entire 15 minutes. A rare time when I am not multitasking on the computer, reading, watching TV. This was watching TV but different. No words. Just sit, listen, watch bows move across strings and faces express.
I am tranformed.
The Live at Lincoln sextet that played that night is not on the internet as far as I can tell. But, here's a you tube link to part one of Shoenberg's Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night) by a youth group. It is slow and sad. Here's a link to part 4 which is slow and calm but much sweeter.
Wikipedia has the story that the music portrays of a man and woman walking along. She is in sorrow...
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
What Would Jesus Do Now?
Click here for a review of the first chapter of What Would Jesus Deconstruct by John Caputo. The closing remarks below:This is the sharp, leading edge of Caputo’s position: Jesus as compassionate arch-heretic.
What would Jesus do?
He would do the immeasurable, speak the unmentionable, love the unpardonable, and demand the impossible.
What would Jesus do?
He would believe (and enact!) the salvifically ridiculous.
Rings true to me.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Rachel Allison Part 2 (my niece)
Phillips 66 Big 12 Player of the Week (Jan 7 news)
Rachel Allison, Baylor, P, 6-1, Jr,
Sunday, January 06, 2008
My Niece - Rachel Allison
My niece, Rachel Allison, is a Junior and plays for Baylor. She scored 23 and pulled down 13 rebounds against Texas State on Friday night. Scored 28 on Wednesday.Articles here and here and bio here.
She tipped this one in for two points .
Monday, December 31, 2007
Books read in 2007
1. James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Paperback)by Robert H. Eisenman (Author)
Key Phrases: killing backsliders, close family cousins, extreme purity regulations, Damascus Document, High Priest, New Testament (more...)
In the course of describing his unorthodox take on the history of activities in 1st century Judea in regard to James, Paul, etc, he presents a lot of interesting information. Learned a lot. He takes off in all kinds of off the wall directions and probably is right about some things and grossly wrong on others but it was great fun nonetheless.
2. Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (The Church and Postmodern Culture) (Paperback)
by James K. A. Smith (Author)
Key Phrases: persistent postmodernism, pragmatic evangelicalism, incarnational affirmation, Grand Rapids, New York, Nurse Ratched (more...)
Can you be an evangelical professor/practicing Christian and still be a postmodernist? He says yes and presents good reasons for it.
3. The World Without Us (Hardcover)
by Alan Weisman (Author)
Key Phrases: world without people, world without humans, plastic particles, New York, United States, North America (more...)
When I saw this described on TV I thought it interesting but depressing. But my wife gave to me for my birthday and found out it was informative in a number of ways. Blogged about it earlier.
4. Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise (Paperback)
by Robert Inchausti (Author)
Key Phrases: antipolitical politics, New York, Dorothy Day, Jacques Ellul (more...)
This guy packs a lot of info and power into few words. Covers too much too fast but you know, I liked it. I'll be going back to it. He covers people like William Blake, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Chesterton and Berdyaev in his first chapter on The Soul under Siege. We get Dostoyevsky, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Kerouac and Percy in the next one titled The Novel as Countermythology. I'll stop there and hope you get the picture. A compliment on the back from a U. Notre Dame prof says "Robert Inchausti writes with a sharp eye and considerable wit to argue that Christians, often from the margins, are among the most acute critics of modernity. His book is trenchant and informative enough to claim a wide audience...
5. On Talking Terms With Dogs: Calming Signals (Paperback)
by Turid Rugaas (Author)
We have a dog with a mental health problem. She thinks I am the God-Almighty Alpha Dog and cringes in my presence. She is afraid to come into the room with me. We hired a dog psychologist who prescribed Prozac for the dog and this book and lots of homework. We've spent $800 so far, the Prozac didn't work and I've given up.
6. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
by Robert D. Richardson (Author)
Great work about a great man who overcame depression of his younger years and whose happiness and productivity increased as he got older. Just the kind of thing a baby boomer likes to learn about. Seriously, this books taught me a lot about what it means to be an American of the 20th century and even provides a framework for understanding the early postmodern periond we are in now.
7. Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Centennial Books)