I bought Carla some flowers today. Consider it an improvement on the one cut rose per year we’ve been married.
I’ve written it before: I am going to live my ordinary life in an extraordinary way: Rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances, in humility of mind regarding those around me as more important than myself, loving You with all my heart, mind, soul and strength in my quotidian. I guarantee the non-quotidian will follow from there.
Good news for folks like me who sometimes worry whether Jesus’ instructions to the rich young ruler to sell 100% of what he owned and distribute it to the poor might be required of you to inherit eternal life per Luke 18:18-27: In the very next chapter, Jesus said Zaccheus was saved upon pledging just half.
I understand why trust is a virtue, particularly trust in the almighty creator. I don’t understand by it has to be just so blind, nor do I understand why it is the virtue on which salvation from death depends.
He’s Indonesian, Japanese, American, now Dutch.
Jimmy Hutasoit, we will miss you very much.
May you find a church with other folks who really really care.
Above it all, we pray, may you find Jesus Christ o’er there.
Mike Licona published a short piece on doubt today that I greatly sympathize with and thus found very encouraging.
Since Licona will be using plausibility “as the most important criterion” (p.113), his chapter entitled “The Historian and Miracles,” which comes up next, had better be good.
He also says that since to hypothesize a real resurrection of Jesus is to hypothesize a singular event, you can’t apply Bayes’ theorem because you can’t asses the prior probability of a unique event (p. 120). But what if your hypothesis is that the report of Jesus’ resurrection is false? Couldn’t you assess the prior probability of a resurrection report’s falsehood by looking at other the veracity of other resurrection reports?
To a skeptic materialist, ’tis no bad news to hear that God will annihilate him for his disbelief, because on that we already agree: To a materialist, annihilation is what happens to us at death anyway.
While walking with God through a nearby neighborhood in the wake of a few spats this morning with wife about housekeeping, it finally clicked: The housekeeping and homemaking is her work. It may even be helpful to compare the house to my computer and desktop workspace. Before I do any of the following again, it would be best to consider how it would make me feel if anyone came to my computer or desktop workspace and did the same:
- Leave items in places they shouldn’t be
- Move items that are not mine
- Change settings without asking
- Argue forcefully about the proper place or protocol for something
- Complainingly refuse to help when asked
The Bible does acknowledge the problem of the selectivity of miracles in Luke 4:23-27.
Religious faith is a virtue only in that it constitutes trust and trustworthiness, the former of which is virtuous only if there is Someone worth trusting. So it’s no wonder atheists question its virtue.
Don’t extort, don’t slander: Easy. Be content with your wages: A little harder. Redistribute your wealth: Um, really? Yet John the Baptist appears to assign similar moral value to all of them.
My aversion to academic writing under deadlines is what doomed any thought of me becoming an academic myself, but a love for academic reading could make this book the first in a long run tomes that pass through my house by way of my friends-of-Penn-State library card.
A few critical notes as I dive back in to Matthew McCormick’s book:
- Concision carries rhetorical power. And McCormick is concise.
- I agree that miracles don’t happen nearly as often as I wish they would or think they should. But that doesn’t mean they don’t happen. How do I account for some of the miracles my friend Marshall describes (i.e., the rain stopping, the word of knowledge for the divorcée, and the healed tumor)? How do I explain the healing ministry of Heidi Baker?
Wife and I share a concern that wherever this doubt and I end up, that I don’t end up lacking in the strength and security that I’ve given her and the kids with my faith in Jesus.
Is it not possible that the strength and security I’ve given comes not from being a conduit for Jesus but rather from my having certainty about my purpose and mission, a surety of a unifying guide, a lodestar principle? If I have a lodestar principle and mission I can settle on other than Jesus—what am I writing?!?—perhaps I can still lend strength to my family even if I end up a doubting Thomas.
friend:
I just wanted to let you know that my thoughts have been with you after hearing about your sleepless night. I think I understand the sort of turmoil you are in; I’ve been deep in it for a while!
I would be delighted to talk more…and/or to let ideas and feelings percolate as needed.
self:
Thank you for your sympathy. You and your husband are good people.
That it wasn’t until thirty-three years old for this devout Christian to experience his first pangs of doubt probably accounts for why it was so intense. It was a doubly novel experience for me: my first doubts and my first involuntarily sleepless night. A doozy I don’t hope to relive.
But now that I’ve slept some and my thoughts have settled, one could say in summary that not much has changed: I am simply less sure of all my Christian beliefs. Still, it’s strange to pray to a god you’re less sure exists. His hiddenness used to be a source of knowing laughter in prayer. Now it’s a bit more serious than that.
Anyway, I currently plan to pause on the McCormick volume until Sunday or so. We’ll see what happens as I continue reading. You still plan to finish, yes? In the apparent absence of a volume directly responding to it, I still plan to read this Licona volume from 2010 as its companion. I have requested a copy from Schlow via interlibrary loan.
One thought I don’t want to forget jotting down: McCormick speaks of an amazingly powerful, biologically seated Urge in people that’s at the genesis of all religions. I say if the we have the Urge, whether it’s God-given, biologically endowed, or both, why not find its best outlet instead of trying to stuff it?
Another thought: Historically, I have a very low tolerance for being unsettled: I’m the guy who unpacks all his belongings into the hotel dresser drawers for a two-night stay just for a sense of settledness. So I don’t plan to stay here long. Hopefully our exploring this together will help you, too, to leave this turmoil and reach solid ground—whether that’s at the mouth of an miraculously vacant tomb or not.
Finally, let me reciprocate: Send me thoughts, ideas, feelings whenever you wish at whatever pace you wish. I have a deep love for deliberation and collaboration as a means of truth-getting.
When I restart my reading of Atheism and the Case Against Christ, I plan to actively take critical notes along the way. To fight back, as it were.
Carla: He looks like the beggar at the Beautiful Gate.
Éa: Who?
Scott: One of the people Jesus healed. One of many.
Éa: Killed?
Scott: HEALED.
Carla: And THAT. is why I don’t want our children to read Bible stories yet.
“You don’t know in advance whether God is going to set you to do something difficult or painful, or something that you will quite like; and some people of heroic mould are disappointed when the job doled out to them turns out to be something quite nice.”
— C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (p. 53–54), in response to “Is it true that Christians must be prepared to live a life of personal discomfort and sacrifice in order to qualify for ‘Pie in the Sky’?”
The recent thing You’ve been emphasizing to me is the part he says about folks with the ‘heroic mould.’
At Barb’s prompting at church today with some help from having talked with Ethan last night, I recapped what I meant by church last week having changed my life: In the same way that I’ve ceased wanting to be a great singer and begun just singing, blowing away my received application of Matthew 24:14 has finally allowed me to cease wanting to be a great Christian and begin just Christ-ing.
“Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).
This is for you, friend: This verse is a greeting and general prayer for well-being for Gaius, not unlike what we would write in a letter today (if we really meant it), not evidence that all Christians should be wealthy.
“I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth” (3 John 4).
This is my prayer for my children. Please hear it.
“For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support such men, so that we may be fellow workers with the truth” (3 John 7-8)
God, I want to be a fellow worker with the truth. That’s why I want to join in Your work in the Maldives somehow. (And this is a good, healthier replacement for great, self-sacrificial interpretation of Matthew 24:14 that the church obliterated for me last week.)
To put it roughly, church today obliterated the misapplication of Matthew 24:14, so continually argued by John Piper, the Perspectives course I took at the Teen Mania Honor Academy, and really, every missiologist I’ve ever encountered, that we all must be involved in world evangelization in some way or else we are less-than Christians. That if the idea that if Matthew 24:14 doesn’t move me to proactively involved myself missions, then I don’t actually love Jesus’ coming or love God with all my heart, mind, soul & strength.
The removal of this thorn in my devotional side is a big deal: As Matt and I discussed during our walk on Friday, neither of us has ever been able to completely shake the idea that we are falling short because we haven’t yet made an extraordinary, life-altering, self-sacrificial decision for the sake of others’ God-borne happiness. I think I have finally shrugged if off.
In its place, the idea is that I can be the “sort of people [I] ought…to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:11) at all times, doing it-doesn’t-matter-what so long as it can be done in love (1 Corinthians 16:14). And I take face-value definitions for “holy” and “godly”: setting side one’s life for God and being very God-minded.
Now, despite my new sense of liberty in Christ, I will nevertheless remain wary of my good fortune. As it occurred to me at Your table today:
Yes, Lord, I will enjoy these riches, But of them be very suspicious.
May we never be deceived by wealth, entangled by the concerns of the world, or lured by desires for other things. May we always stand ready for the call to “go forth from [our] country, and from [our] relatives, and from [our] father’s house, to the land which [You] will show [us]” (Genesis 12:1).
But wow, Father, You’re better than I imagined.
Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence (Psalm 42:5).
Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life (Proverbs 4:23).
The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives (Ecclesiastes 9:3).
Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things (Ecclesiastes 11:9).
The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9).
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (Matthew 22:37).
For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries… (Mark 7:21).
Do not let your heart be troubled… (John 14:1).
From these Scriptures and more, I refine my understanding of the human (i.e., my) heart: It’s like a little kid. Irrational. Impressionable. Often rash. Full of vim and desire, you give it what it wants because your vitality and happiness depend on it. But you don’t give it what it wants when what it wants dishonors God, hurts other people, or lends itself to longer-term unhappiness. And you do what you can to shape its desires to conform to your own values, having patience but firmness about good priorities.
Thank You, God, for this lesson. I’m impressed.