My friend [redacted], who sometimes goes by Fearsome Pirate, is a very smart guy and a good exegete. I should mention that he is also quite plainspoken. One shouldn’t disagree with the Pirate.

An alternative theory, of course, is that Jesus was in fact not joking when he said the way is “narrow” or when he told people to “bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.” A girl who decides to get pregnant with no plan or thought to have a man to provide for her is “worse than an unbeliever.” A boy who knocks up skanks and skips town is “worse than an unbeliever.” Decide to no-fault when you’re 40 and screw over your spouse and kids? You’ve denied the faith, and you’re worse than an unbeliever.

via CRUISING DOWN THE COAST OF THE HIGH BARBAREE: 1 Timothy 5:8.

What I’ve Learned about Reading the Bible from Reading the Church Fathers: One Pilgrim’s Perspective (guest post)

Main points:

• The Fathers read the scriptures and constructed their theologies through the lens of the Church’s living experience of Christ.
• The Fathers knew that the scriptures are confusing, messy, and even self-contradictory.
• The Fathers knew that the doctrines of the Trinity and Christology they were attempting to articulate finally are mysteries.
• Yet even with all their philosophical rigor, the Fathers themselves knew that their linguistic and philosophical categories were approximations or analogies for truths that finally lay beyond human comprehension.
• Given their approach to theology and scripture, the Fathers were not univocal concerning how to read many of the Biblical narratives, including the creation texts.

I suppose my main complaint about many of the YRRs is that they are so confident in their doctrine. We would all do well to remember that any formulation we articulate about God is an approximation. We aren’t all that smart.

“Behave yourself”, I say as our conversation ends and we go separate ways.

“Don’t spoil my fun”, or “I always do”, or “You know me”, or “Do I have to?” are some of the responses I often get.

I have been on a legalistic pendulum my whole life. Although we were taught – in words – that we couldn’t earn our salvation, we were taught – in actions and expectations – that we had to earn our salvation.

Naturally, I reacted against that. And I probably became too libertarian.

At this stage of my life, I’m seeing the value of good behavior. Not for earning salvation, of course, but for expressing a life given over to the King.

I want to live my life according to the words of Jesus. I want to live properly in the “already but not yet” of the Kingdom.

Notice, for example, how we tend to misread a text such as Philippians 2:12–13. Modern Western individualists have tended to see this as an exhortation to individuals to get on with earnest moral striving. This, however, overlooks that Paul is addressing not an individual but rather the group (as the plurals in the Greek syntax show). Paul is saying, “Together, as a community, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” The community, not the closet, is the context, the workshop, where salvation is worked out, expressed, and manifested in deeds of piety and charity. [emphasis added]

Ben Witherington, III, The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament, Volume 2: The Collective Witness (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 617.

Remember that time you were wrong about something and some condescending jerk caused you to see the errors of your ways? Yeah me neither.

via Top 5 Rules of Confrontation, That One Guy Came Up With | SHANE BLACKSHEAR.

I myself have entirely ceased to “go” to Sunday services. I’ve had enough. If I never step into another “church” foyer as long as I live that will be just fine by me and as far as I can tell just fine with the Lord.

Instead I have decided before the Lord to begin reaching out to others through my natural relationships, through flyers, or whatever other means I can where I live (San Diego) to gather anyone interested in discussing what the Lord meant church to be at a local McDonald’s.

via The Church that Gathers at McDonalds | The Assembling of the Church.

If there’s one thing I don’t want to do with the Bible, it’s to let secular culture tell me how to read a divinely inspired document. I am 100% committed to listening to the guidance of the promised Holy Spirit. While I am aware of the influence of my culture on how I read the Bible, I want to let the Spirit speak through scripture rather than letting my culture determine what I can and cannot believe.

Inerrancy has unintentionally allowed the standards of our culture to determine how we use the Bible, creating a demand on scripture that would only make sense for a modern science or historian.

via Why I Hate the Word “Inerrancy” | :: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

• Miller: The secret behind the Bible’s most highlighted verse
• Just Wondering
• Edelen: Why I Didn’t Go to Church on Sunday
• Hunt: The Scandal Is Over…
• Peace Out
• Swanson: Legalism
• Samantha: living reminders of uncomfortable realities
• Dinner with Barb, or On Discipleship
• Wright: Are we calling this a “win-win”?
• McGrath: Do You Need a PhD to Understand the Bible?
• Practice Together
• Samantha: complementarianism and the genesis fall

Follow the link for some pretty good OT exegesis. And stop lording it over your wife.

complementarianism and the genesis fall | Defeating the Dragons.

The ethic of early Christianity was not an ethic for individual moral athletes or for Cynic philosophers acting in splendid isolation. It was an ethic for a community to practice together.

Ben Witherington, III, The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament, Volume 2: The Collective Witness (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 602.

You need scholars in order for you to have the Bible in your own language; and even once it is translated, you need them to help you understand the Bible. You also need to understand how scholarship works, so that you can understand why scholars sometimes disagree, and so that you can avoid being duped by charlatans who will both claim not to need scholars, and yet when it suits them, will claim typically falsely that scholars’ conclusions support their claims.

But I am convinced that you don’t need a PhD to tell right from wrong, and to see what a false teacher like Ken Ham is up to. The Bible’s Wisdom tradition teaches that close observation and reasoning should be enough.

via Do You Need a PhD to Understand the Bible?.

I want to fill a rental van marked “Tourist” with unbelievably rich people and then I want to bring them to your middle-class neighborhood to take pictures of you and your kids and your house and your cars.

via Jamie the Very Worst Missionary: Are we calling this a “win-win”?

Turns out I’m not the only one who has a problem with short-term mission trips.

Last evening we had dinner with Barb, a cousin I hadn’t seen in at least 35 years. We also met her husband, Scott, for the first time. It was a wonderful time of exploring our memories and renewing our friendship.

Turns out Barb is into making disciples. She learned it from Scott. They are making disciples every week. Scott and Barb love Jesus and know that means following his words.

Father, multiply the Barbs and Scotts of this world. Use them to build your church and your kingdom.

Barb mentioned that most people she works with don’t understand how important it is to take a daily time out for reading the Bible and praying. She’s right. Most people don’t care that much.

If you don’t want to take any more than those ten minutes, you can at least have the Bible read to you while you close your eyes and listen.

I recommend ESV: Daily Office Lectionary.

God bless you, Scott and Barb. I hope it isn’t another 35 years before I see you again.

And that makes people uncomfortable.

Because I’m the reality that life is largely a very painful experience, and, most of the time, it doesn’t go away. There’s nothing we can do to wish our lives magically better– we have to deal with the daily aches, the common pains, and move through our lives knowing that there are occasionally excruciatingly painful things outside of our control. I’m the reminder that no matter how much we think of ourselves as survivors, as fighters, that sometimes, it’s a battle with no end in sight– ever.

via living reminders of uncomfortable realities | Defeating the Dragons.

So, I couldn’t use legalism to describe a legalistic system or belief. The closest I could come was rigid. That word was inadequate because it allowed the focus to shift from the problematic system, which insisted that “God’s way” included many man-made rules beyond the commands of Christ, and placed the focus on other people within the system who were perhaps a bit “rigid” in their practices. We could be a little less “rigid” than them.

The real problem was the legalism, which insisted that following Christ was really a bunch of rules and cultural preferences. But I couldn’t say that, because legalism had been taken away from me.

via learning the words: legalism | Defeating the Dragons.

I think we misunderstand what peace is. When Jesus said we would have peace in him (John 16:33), we are expecting something else again.

In fact, Jesus also said he didn’t come to bring peace, but division. You could look it up.

Paul said something about the peace of God beyond understanding (Philippians 4:7). I know lots of people who think God has failed them because they don’t have something God, or Jesus, or Paul never promised.

It seems like people are looking for some kind of internal peace. When people are “at peace”, they usually mean that they feel good inside, they aren’t anxious, they aren’t troubled.

But I don’t think that’s what peace is, as understood in the Bible.

Peace is about relationships. Peace is something that one person experiences with another person, not something one person experiences within herself. Peace is a descriptor of the state of a relationship. It is not a descriptor of how we feel inside.

God offers peace.

Peace between myself and himself.

Peace between myself and my brother and my sister.

Peace between myself and my world.

But there is still plenty of trouble, and I don’t always feel good inside. God didn’t fail me when I don’t feel good inside. God didn’t fail me when I am depressed. God didn’t fail me when I worry. God didn’t fail me when I have trouble that causes my gut to churn.

I have trouble because I am human. If any human being tells you that he or she is totally at a state of internal satisfaction and worryfreeness, don’t believe him or her.

If any human being tells you that you can say a prayer and your troubles will go away and you will forever feel good inside, run the other way.

There is plenty of trouble in this world. Don’t beat yourself up because you think you aren’t trusting God enough when you feel like crap. Don’t buy the lie.

Here is a book to look forward to. Zack Hunt has The Scandal of Holiness: Dirty Hands, Unclean Lips, and the Power of Redemptive Embrace coming out this fall.

I grew up in [a] tradition for whom the call to holiness was (and is) of the utmost importance. Unfortunately, the answering of that call often ended up in legalism and a life defined by what we didn’t do and who we didn’t associate with. But, of course, you don’t have to be a part of my tradition to have experienced a version of the Christian faith that is defined by this sort of legalism and negation.

Even though Jesus embodied a form of holiness which defied boundaries in order to seek out the lost, the least, and the dying, we’ve too often spent the 2,000 years since avoiding them at all costs and rebuilding the walls Jesus sought to tore down.

The Scandal of Holiness is an attempt to recapture the sort of holy life Jesus embodied and to which I think we all share a calling as his disciples, and reimagine it for life in the 21st century.

I grew up in the same, or a similar, tradition. I still deal with the ramifications every single day. This book may help.

via The Scandal Is Over…. | The American Jesus.

Can we talk just about Jesus for once? The Bible says that knowing the Father and the Son IS eternal life. Since that is true, knowing our trinitarian God could not be more important. There is no topic that trumps it. No amount of teaching on marriage, money, or mammon can surpass knowing Jesus.

via Why I Didn’t Go to Church on Sunday | Cerulean Sanctum.

If I were to publish Bible study discussion guides in DRM-free PDF format and if I were to charge a modest price for such guides, would there be interest?

If you were to purchase such guides, would they be used for your personal Bible study, or for your group Bible study?

If you were interested in such guides, what do you think would be a decent price for a guide focused on a single book of the Bible?

Have you used any of the Bible study discussion questions I have provided free of charge on my site? If so, what do you like? What would you change?

Thank you.

Our eyes are on the wrong thing if we’re merely praying to have life’s worrisome aspects eliminated so we can carry on stress free. Rather, we have no reason for anxiety because the judge of all the earth is already on his way.

via The secret behind the Bible’s most highlighted verse.

• Nick’s Chili Parlor
• Daily Office
• Today’s News
• Groove
• Enns: 5 Main Challenges to Staying Christian, and moving forward anyway (part 1)
• Enns: 5 Main Challenges to Staying Christian, and moving forward anyway (part 2)
• Chaplain Mike: IM Book Review – Dallas Willard’s Best Book
• Knox: Pervasive Mutuality – Jude 20-23
• Folk Theology and Church Signs
• Ponder: What is Faith?

On the heels of my church sign post comes this nice piece by Doug Ponder.

Everyone has faith in something, for we all have “confidence in” or “assurance of” things, even things that we cannot directly see or prove.

via WHAT IS FAITH? – RE|SOURCE.

Driving home from work the other day I saw a church sign that read:

Faith Overcomes Fear

Theology doesn’t translate well to church signs.

Experience tells me that the 140-character limit of Twitter is a severe problem when discussing important topics. If that is so, how much more severe is the problem when one is limited to a small space and a finite collection of characters.

That sign is incomplete at best, probably misleading, and bad theology in the back pocket.

Of course I know that the purpose of the church sign is not to explain theological truths. The sign is supposed to intrigue the passersby and, perhaps, encourage the discouraged. Or something like that. Sometimes the purpose is display how clever we are. What’s missing? UR.

“Faith” is not a thing itself, like milk or helicopters. Faith is an attitude or stance taken toward someone or something. Faith is absolutely worthless for overcoming fear unless it is properly directed.

“Overcomes” is a weasel word. Do Christians fear? Of course they do. Does the fear always go away? Not always. Sometimes it intensifies. Do Christians with fear lack faith? I don’t think so.

And there are lots of things to be afraid of. Should the Christian be able to walk down the street at night in a bad part of town, while wearing expensive kicks, without fear? Not this Christian.

Church signs are pretty good for writing checks that cannot be cashed. Like folk theology in general.

How important is oneanotherness? Very important.

How were the believers supposed to respond to false teachers? By continuing to keep themselves in the love of God by building up (edifying) each other and praying. In other words, Jude’s response to false teachers is mutuality – the whole church working together to help each other mature in Jesus Christ. In fact, instead of telling his readers to respond or react to the false teachers, he tells them to “[wait] for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

via Pervasive Mutuality – Jude 20-23 | The Assembling of the Church.

Chaplain Mike over at Internet Monk has a nice review of one of Dallas Willard’s books. You can’t go wrong reading Dallas Willard on the spiritual life.

Above all else, Dallas Willard believed that the new life in Jesus was meant to be lived, not just accepted intellectually or believed.

via IM Book Review: Dallas Willard’s Best Book | internetmonk.com.

And part 2 has dropped.

These are my present thoughts on addressing and living with the challenges to staying Christian, and you are free to accept, ignore, modify, be bored, whatever.

via 5 Main Challenges to Staying Christian, and moving forward anyway (part 2).

Peter Enns has collected about 300 responses from Christians who are experiencing various levels of doubt.

My intention for writing the post was not to undermine faith nor to set up issues for which I could give pat answers. I simply wanted to give people the space to express themselves in a spirit of trust and group support for the ultimate purpose of encouraging a continued walk of faith, however that might be configured in each person’s experience, community, or theological tradition.

The list:

1. The Bible, namely inerrancy
2. The conflict between the biblical view of the world and scientific models
3. Where is God?
4. How Christians behave
5. The exclusivism of Christianity

I’ve resolved, for myself, the first, second, and last items on the list a long time ago.

Number 3 doesn’t give me any problem anymore, either, since I have embraced the openness of God.

Number 4 is a big problem. It doesn’t affect my faith, but it certainly affects my church experience.

Enns is following this up with part 2 very soon. I’m looking forward to that. Meanwhile, go read part 1.

via 5 Main Challenges to Staying Christian, and moving forward anyway (part 1).

I think I may be starting to get my groove back. Don’t hold me to it, but I think I’m feeling better and starting to get a little more with it.

Film at eleven.

cf. Melancholy

I’m discussing theology and baseball with some friends (whom I’ve never met) on Twitter while I fiddle around at lunch time.

Mostly baseball, I guess. Theology in the background.

My team is exceeding expectations this year, so far. One of my friends shares the love I have for this team.

The other friend in the conversation loves a team that is underachieving this year. My friend claims that it is due to injuries. Could be. I don’t follow the team, so I don’t have an opinion.

But this second friend has a son recovering from bone cancer treatments. As far as I know, the cancer is gone. But recovering from the cure has its own set of complications. My friend and his son got to go to a ballgame recently. It made them happy and it made me happy, too.

My conversations often proceed in 140-character bursts. Theology doesn’t translate well to Twitter. Twitter is better at baseball. And the rest of life.

I bet most of the theology arguments on the Internet could be resolved if the arguers sat down face to face and looked at each other. The facelessness of the Internet leads people to say things they wouldn’t say in person. The brevity of Internet communication also leads to great misunderstanding. This is the new Gutenberg, but we haven’t got past all the shortcomings yet. We’ll probably figure it out.

I’m reading “The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius”, by the late David Flusser (and his student, Steven Notley). Flusser was a Jew, not a Christian. I haven’t done enough reading of Jewish authors. Except for the NT writers, of course. Flusser’s scholarly interest in Jesus is fascinating; his insight into the first century Jewish worldview is very valuable. I’ll probably talk more about this book later.

I finished recently Alister McGrath’s biography of CS Lewis. I’d recommend it. I’d venture to guess that most evangelical’s don’t know much about the man sometimes called the patron saint of evangelicalism. Lewis was definitely an interesting character.

The bio inspired me to read Lewis’s “The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason, and Romanticism”; I had never read that one before. Quite a lot of insight there into the early Christian Lewis, after his conversion but before his notoriety. Also, some bits are tedious. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Both my wife and I have been dead tired from our work lately. This has led us to give serious, serious consideration to retiring much earlier than we have been planning to. So serious, indeed, that we are just going to do that within the next couple years. It’s all over but the shouting.

Just imagine a Bible Study Geek that doesn’t work fifty hours a week. What will he produce?

I’m listening Ravel in my headphones. Yesterday one of my jazz-loving friends commented that Ravel ought to be considered the first jazz man. On Twitter, of course. One of his friends fired back that Scott Joplin would be disappointed to hear that. My investigation — consisting of looking it up on Wikipedia — revealed that Joplin predates Ravel. I wouldn’t have guessed that. In fact, Bolero wasn’t even written until after Joplin had died. So I’m listening to some Ravel. But not Bolero. Don’t care much for ragtime, so I will probably not follow up with some Joplin.

My mental and physical malaise has led to a widespread disorganization of my areas of responsibility at home. I must be coming out of it, because I have a plan to get some of that stuff done right quick. That feels good.

Good thing, too. We are having a family get together at our house later this month. It’s supposed to be a quarterly thing, but the business with my father getting sick and passing away in March kind of messed the schedule up. That, and the fact that two of my nieces had new babies in May. Or maybe the first one was actually in April. Anyway, both the new babies will be at our house and I will get to meet them. Cara and Molly. It was awfully special of Leah to name her firstborn after our sweet little dog.

The day of our gathering will be our Molly’s birthday. She will be three. It falls between my Mother’s birthday, which is also Flag Day, and my sister’s birthday, which is also Independence Day, so we will make it a three-birthday celebration. We are a patriotic family, aren’t we?

I’m going to try to smoke something for the party. I’ve been watching a lot of barbecue contests on TV and getting excited about using the smoker. I just need to get my butt in gear. That’s a pulled pork joke, right there.

My stream of consciousness is about to give out so I can go back to work.

David Peet is taking a break after five years of recording the daily morning Bible readings. I understand, but I’m sad to see him stop. He was a daily part of my life for several months.

Now I’m using this one from Crossway. It is slicker, which is not good as far as I’m concerned. I liked the scandal of particularity involved in Peet’s reading. One time he even whistled at himself for making a mistake and forgot to remove the whistle. The whistle woke me up when I had dozed off while listening. I’ll miss David.