My Nephews Are Awesome…
My roommate Steve loses to me in Wii Tennis…here are the results…
Archive for September, 2007
19
Sep
Pictures
18
Sep
Revisiting Psalm 23
If I were to ask you to fill in the blank of this next statement what would you say?
God is ___________________.
I’m guessing you might answer that God is:
love
holy
just
merciful
righteous.
You might even go a little deeper and say that God is:
omnipotent (all powerful)
omniscient (all-knowing),
omnipresent (everywhere).
But here is the question. When you close your eyes what comes to your mind when you hear these words? The scriptures use them so they are fair descriptions of what God is but they can be hard to tangibly grasp. They might even feel to brief or incomplete. It is hard to mention that God is just with out mentioning that he is loving. It is as if one description demands another with it to feel complete.
To a Jew the answer to this fill in the blank is easy…
God is my Shepherd
God is my Rock
God is my Fortress
God is Living Water
God is Eagles Wings
When I say these words the images come to your mind because they are just that, images. And they are relational. You don’t have to say that God is my Shepherd and just or that God is Living Water and holy. The image can stand on its own.
Not to simplify too much but the western mind focuses on formulas, creeds and precise statements while the eastern mind feeds off of images and metaphors. Ray Vanderlaan says, “Hebrew thinkers express truth concretely, using word pictures and stories. They prefer the writing style of poetry and like to use imagery and symbolism. Western thinkers usually express truth abstractly, using words, idea, and logical definitions. They prefer the writing style of prose, and like to see outlines, lists, and bullet points.”
In preparing for a talk I am doing at our 20’s and 30’s night on Thursday at Crosswalk I am revisiting Psalm 23 to see what would happen to this ancient song if I looked at it through the lens of what it meant to be a shepherd in the wilderness.
14
Sep
Part Time Model
I aspire to reach this level of lyrics and moves…
A few years back Ten Shekel Shirt appeared on the the scene with a few songs that became extremely popular in worship services then they disappeared. Well Lamont Hiebert the leader of the group dropped out. He describes the reason why here:
In order to help pioneer and develop JFCI’s (Justice For Children International) programs Lamont set his music career aside. Now, after working as a modern-day abolitionist for 4 years, Lamont has re-launched as a solo artist and is dedicating much of his career to victims of exploitation, abuse and slavery and those who work on their behalf. Lamont remains on the JFCI Board of Directors and is an integral part of the ongoing development of their advocacy, prevention and aftercare efforts. Visit www.lamontsongs.com and www.jfci.org for more info.
Click here to hear Lamont’s song called Over the Room (click media box then music and you will see it) and how it relates to children freed from slavery and then click here to see his description of the event that inspired him write it.
It is the first time that I’ve seen a song writer, who is linked to writing worship songs, intentionally using his music to help those who are the body of Christ to do something about the widow, orphaned and oppressed. I hope to see more.
So I am taking some theology courses online and I find a few students thoroughly frustrating at times. Right now we are talking about atonement and what exactly happened as Christ died on the cross and who Christ died for. The problem I have is that this turns into a who’s in and who’s out conversation. God loves these people and doesn’t love those people. Some have been included while others have been excluded. There are the elect and the non-elect will suffer for not being chosen. Often when I hear people talk like this I think of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings. His actual name was Smiegal and he became so enraptured with the ring that he killed to posses it and as a result he himself becomes excluded and isolated by his obsession. And with this ring he gained old age becoming more and more demented and developed a cough which sounded to the hearer as “gollum.” A cough which would be the way that he would be named.
When I hear some people speak of the cross of Christ they do it in such a selfish way that when I close my eyes I can almost imagine Gollum standing behind the pulpit holding a little wooden cross in his hands whispering “my precious”. The elect however in the scriptures are God’s tool of blessing to the world around them. Don’t think holy sponge, think holy sprinkler. They are not chosen to the exclusion of others but for the embracing of others.
I also think of Ferris Beuler’s Day Off (If you haven’t seen it for a while rent it). There is this scene in which Ferris’ friend Cameron, who is thoroughly depressed, ditches school with Parker and his girlfriend. They go to a baseball game at Wrigley Field and a parade in which Ferris winds up on a float singing and several other stops during the day. Ferris talks Cameron into driving his fathers carefully restored 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California with the promise that they can reset the odometer. After the day is over, kind of a rebirth experience for Cameron, they take the car and put it on a machine to turn back the mileage. It becomes evident that this will not happen. Ferris begins to apologize profusely and Cameron just flips. Not at Ferris but his father. He begins to kick and beat the hood of this car. All the while he is saying, “He loved this car…he loved this car…he loved this car, more than he loved me.”
I can’t help but think that there are a lot of people that hate Christianity and it has nothing to do with God. It has everything to do with us. Because we in the name of God have worshiped our buildings and ignored those in need and lonely. We’ve moved out of the dangerous city where there those who are different to move to the suburbs where our neighbors are just like us. We traded passion for comfort. We traded a journey for a destination. We traded a power that comes from serving to a pyramid scheme spirituality of power. And maybe worst of all we have taken the the cross that should have brought us to our knees and instead we hold it over others. And in the end I can’t help but feel that those on the outside looking in hear our sermon’s and convincing proofs and the only thing they hear is “gollum”.
I just stumbled upon this picture in a cd of mine from about three years ago. It was the day that I first heard of the hangman wedgie. Your probably wandering how someone reaches the state of this final picture. There are a few key ingredients to make this happen:
1) You need to have kids, particularly junior highers, who have no shame or comfort zone.
2) You need to have an adult volunteer, who doesn’t mind grabbing someone’s underwear.
3) You need a community of people who will donate any cash they have in their pockets to a brave volunteer ($6)
4) Both junior high student and adult volunteer step onto a pick nick bench.
5) The crowd roars in anticipation and encouragement.
6) Adult volunteer grabs students underwear, yells Geronimo, and pushes student off bench.
7) Tearing sound occurs and Kenny becomes a Junior high winter retreat legend.
P.S. Kenny would later vomit in my car on the way home leaving a stain that lasted for about four years and become a very good friend.
P.P.S. I’ll write something more serious later.
06
Sep
Kiva
I give to Kiva, do you? Check out this video PBS Frontline did on Kiva which does microfinancing to help those in poor countries to start small businesses. After the video check out Kiva’s webpage and they detail how microfinancing works. Then check out my lender page after that. And if you have 10, 15 or 25 dollars lying around…make a loan to help someone have a future.
Shorter version:
Longer version:
03
Sep
Rock’n Bowl
On Friday night 15 people walked into Pacific Bowl, put on some funny shoes and searched for a ball that could give them the glory of victory. But only one person walked away a winner that night in the first round. You guessed it, me! I bowled a 123 just barely edging out Tony Scirini. Not to bad for my first time bowling in two years. The bad news, I lost the second round with a total score of just 103. Tony, again came in second behind James. I don’t care what Jodie said, I didn’t have a bad attitude about losing. Here’s some action shots…
On Friday, after seven years of owning my Honda Civic I have moved on to better things. I would have to say that my Honda treated me very well for those seven years. So if anyone is looking for a Civic with 140,000 miles let me know.
Not a fancy book but great insight. If you’ve wrestled with what it meant for your life and your community as a whole that a peasent Galilean Jew, who claimed to be messiah/christ/king, hung on a cross then this is a great book. Just to introduce you to the word. Atonement was actually an english word created to capture the biblical description of at-one-moment.
Where we start in discussing atonement often becomes the primary picture for why we believed Jesus died. For instance, it is common to say that the cross starts with human sin being erased and us presented clean before God. So atonement in this case will often take on a form of a God who is quite upset over what we have done. Someone has to be punished and God in his infinate goodness and love takes on our punishment that we could not handle upon himself in the form of Jesus.
Still another example, that of the Eastern Orthodox, is that atonement is the remedy of death. So the reason that Jesus died upon the cross was so that because his body was risen from the grave so will our body be raised from the grave.
The author while seeing validity in these presentations takes another route. Atonement, at-one-moment, is more about taking what was separated and bringing it at-one-with its original destiny. McKnight, from what I get, is saying that atonement is about restoring us to the image of God that we were created in. Sure it deals with sin and it deals with death only because those are not what were meant for humans to be created in the image of God.
Anyways, great book and I would say very readable for a theology book. Buy it and let’s get some coffee to talk it over.
Peace.
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