Check out the winners gallery of the World Press Photo of the Year 2008 competition. What a crazy world we live in. More goes on outside of our little spheres than we can ever imagine. This is just a glimpse.
I had my ESV opened this morning and sitting to the left of my laptop while finishing up some homework for my summer Old Testament II class. At one point I picked it up to get a better look and then set it back down. Upon setting it down, it began dancing as I happened to capture in the video below. To be honest I was considerably spooked out. I quickly grabbed my cell phone to record the action.
This may be silly but what immediately came to mind were the innumerable accounts of supernatural happenings in the middle ages. I, however, unlike a scribe of yesteryear, had the means and technology to record my preternatural experience. I could go to class this morning and share with a classmate my dancing, pneuma-filled ESV and prove it with a video, whereas a scribe in the 13th century going to class (or wherever a scribe would go to hang out with his buddies) after experiencing something like I did, would have to rely on his integrity as a truth-teller alone to gain an audience. You can imagine a scribe going to Haplography 102 and reporting his morning supernatural experience to his friends, the conversation being overheard by the class historian, and the account of a dancing scroll finding its way into the annals of Christian history as a mighty act of the pneuma of God. You can imagine it, right?
Well, unfortunately, I have to report that my dancing, pneuma-filled ESV has a natural explanation: the side fan from my laptop. Check it out (sorry so small; it’s my phone’s camera):
“With the greatest respect to women, football is the most beautiful thing in the world.”
-Slaven Bilic
What a Firefox, freeware fiasco! Strong accusations of ethnocentricity have been made over on the Firefox 3 Download Day forum. People are upset. But don’t worry. Firefox is free, right? You’ll eventually get a copy of Firefox 3 and I bet you’ll be able to get it within in the 24hr download day period.
After all the confusion about the actual starting time of the Firefox 3 Download Day, it appears that the anxious users have brought down the Mozilla network. Tuesday, June 17, 2008 was advertised as Download Day, but, as many people found out as the clocks rolled around to June 17 in their neck of the woods, Firefox 3 Download Day is California-centric. Officially one should begin downloading at -800GMT (10:00AM USA Pacific Time). One slight problem, however: the web site’s down. Perhaps with the Mozilla server down I’ll get all the traffic directed to KataDrew.com after everyone googles “Firefox 3 Download Day” for alternate download locations. But you wouldn’t really want an alternate download location because that would cancel out downloads counting towards the Guinness Book of World Records record for most downloads in 24 hours. So, if you’re here and you’d rather be downloading and using Firefox 3, leave your angst here. Come on, crash my server, too!
Or, you can just download Firefox 3 from me or browse around on the Mozilla FTP which appears to be working still (use this option to choose a language other than English).
And, oh yeh, there’s only two ways to live.
How does God constantly put up with our wrong-doing and breaking of his commandments? Surely it must be horrific to observe the kinds of behavior that the debase human mind conjures up for torture and malice. Taking the life of an innocent human being foremost in mind, both in the mind of the casual news observer and the good-natured person struggling with the problem of evil. How is this possible? How must this be for God who observes and sees not only the outward actions but the hidden motives and thoughts of the heart?
We see foremost in the ten commandments that we shall have no other god besides God. We also see that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord God with our whole beings. How much more are these commandments, the first and the greatest, broken than those which are perpetrated horizontally, human-to-human such as murder, rape, lying, deceit, and injustice. What of the family who raises their children to not bless the name of the Lord but to curse, blaspheme and disregard not only his name but his person?
The greater question, assuming priority according to the ordering of the Decalogue, is how must it be for God to observe this teaching and disregard for him even from youth?
[Though the above is stream-of-consciousness, I was careful to avoid using "passive" language, not wanting to imply that God is at all overwhelmed by, surprised with, or controlled by "feelings."]
BBC News has the story:
Archaeologists in Rihab, Jordan, say they have discovered a cave that could be the world’s oldest Christian church.
Dating to the period AD33-70, the underground chapel would have served as both a place of worship and a home.
It is claimed that it was originally used by a group of 70 persecuted Christians who fled from Jerusalem.
BoingBoing.net links to a story where a price comparison website ran an experiment on the streets of London and Manchester offering passers by a £5 note if they would only stop and ask for it. The results confirm that people are skeptical of freebies:
“Despite encountering over 1800 people, only 28 passers by bothered to take advantage of the offer…[and] all but 7 of the people who claimed the free cash were men.”
Though considerably different, what does this say of trying to “hand out” the Gospel?
“If you stop and ask me how to know Jesus, I’ll tell you.”
“You can go to heaven for free. Ask me how.”
Using these lines on the street would likely yield similar results if not attracting even less people. Why?
First, it’s interesting that many people could have actually used the five pounds for their day’s commute, but stopping and asking for money makes one lose face and appear needy. Stopping to have a chat about the Gospel may similarly appear as being needy or spiritually bankrupt, feelings most people will likely want to avoid though prerequisite for coming to Christ.
What’s the solution? Well, it doesn’t seem like the marketing folks have yet designed a strategy for passing out money for free, so it’s not surprising that passing out the Gospel would be equally as perplexing. But this has to depend largely on the audience. Go to a slum where people have obvious need that’s clear to everyone: you better believe there would be more takers for the free money than on the streets of major cities where the average passer by is more concerned with saving face (or time) than taking someone up on a good offer. Go then to a slum and share the good news of Jesus Christ to people who are more tuned in to their deficiencies: I would think more would respond than in the cities because of their pressing needs which would take precedence of reputation or time.
This doesn’t mean we don’t share the Gospel wherever we go, but this helps us to understand the people with whom we hope to share the Gospel.
There’s election and there’s election.
Hill and Walton in their A Survey of the Old Testament describe God’s election of Israel as making “the Israelites the people of God only in a revelatory way.” They further clarify by saying, “By this we mean that God chose them as his instrument of revelation.”
The difference between this use of election and the (modern) Christian usage is that “when we speak of the church as God’s people, we refer to those who have accepted salvation through faith, specifically faith in Jesus Christ.” The Christian concept of election is strictly soteriological while that of Israel as a people is understood as revelatory. This is not to deny that “many Israelites of the Old Testament could be identified as God’s people by virtue of their faith in Yahweh”; but that “God revealed himself to the world through Israel” through the law, their history, writings of the Bible and Jesus the Christ.
How does this square with Romans 11 where Paul seems to be speaking of the election of Israel in soteriological terms? In line with the understanding and differentiation of election given above, “a remnant chosen by grace” (Rom. 11:5) appears to differentiate those Israelites who are “identified as God’s people by their virtue of their faith in Yahweh” from ”the rest [who] were hardened” (Rom. 11:7) who were only God’s people in the sense of belonging to the people group God elected revelatorily. For if Israelite election were the same as Christian soteriological election, how could the Scripture speak of “Israel not find[ing] what it was looking for, but the elect did find it” (Rom. 11:7)? It could not. Therefore the distinction made by Hill and Walton appears to fit with the Pauline distinction made in Romans 11.
Ultimately, this distinction leaves soteriological room for Gentiles which is the vein in which Paul continues through to the end of the chapter leading to an eruption of praise to God:
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and untraceable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has ever first given to Him, and has to be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. (Rom. 11:33-36)
[All quotations from Hill and Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament, Zondervan: 2000, 74. Scripture quotations from the HCSB.]
A family friend was asking my mom what her about-to-graduate-from-high-school boyfriend should study in college to prepare for seminary. Through a series of text messages, this is the advice I had my mom relay to the couple:
We need Christians/seminarians/ministers/pastors/missionaries of all backgrounds. If you’re interested in chemistry, by all means go hard after it. If you’re interested in psychology, get it. If you really click with languages, study linguistics. If you’re thinking of being super-practical, become a nurse or maybe an accountant. But what we don’t need is homogeneous Bible degree seminarians.
Will a Bible degree put you ahead in seminary? Sure. Will not having a Bible degree automatically put you behind? No. If you love philosophy and theology, you’ll study philosophy and theology, or philosophy with a special view to theology. College is equipping you to learn on your own. So what better way to put that into practice than by studying theology, the Bible, biblical languages, etc in addition to your studies on your own. We need theocentric and biblical microbiologists and P.E. teachers and businessmen.
At the same time, however, be focused: don’t study architecture just to get a degree so you can go to seminary. Study architecture because you’re interested in the Sagrada Familia and you love Jesus and want to help people build efficient and appropriate church buildings.
Even with that said, I would study classics, history, linguistics, English, philosophy, and/or nursing. Yep, nursing.
Lastly, keep an Amazon wishlist and every book you hear recommended, add it. Tell people that for your birthday, Christmas, Easter, Kwanzaa and Flag Day, you want something off that list. Go ahead and get all you can: you may not have time to read them now, but they may serve as references or your curiosity. You might just eventually have time to read them, but for the time being, your book shelf will look impressive.
You can’t read enough. But remember:
