Calvin-in-common got me reading reviews of Elaine Pagel’s recent book on Revelation. One of the best and most interesting ones from Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker.
That led me to a very interesting piece on Stephen Batchelor on contemporary discussions with in Buddhism on Buddhism’s new rationalists. I’m fascinated not only at how our culture impacts the church and Christianity, but also how it impacts the Eastern religions that are so popular now.
Terrific article in the NY Times on how relationships shape the brain. A place holder for a lot of thinking about “your first self is a reflected self” and idolatry.
Also, in a fun FB conversation was introduced to Possibilianism. Seems a very reasonable response to strong atheism by acknowledging that our means of knowing is limited to the tools available to us.
Amazing video from conception to birth.
Tim Keller is doing a series on http://Biologos.org . In part three he makes this important point.
A plausibility structure is a ‘given’ supported by enormous social pressure. The writings of the new atheists here are important to observe because their attitudes are more powerful than their arguments. The disdain and refusal to show any respect to opponents is not actually an effort to refute them logically, but to ostracize them socially and turn their own views into a plausibility structure. They are well on their way.
How can we help them? I believe that Christian pastors, theologians, and scientists who want to argue for an EBP account of origins must put a great deal of emphasis at the same time on arguing against GTE. Christian philosophers have paved the way here and there are many good critiques of philosophical naturalism. Many know about Alvin Plantinga’s ‘Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism’ in which, much like C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles, he argues that “Evolution is interested (so to speak) only in adaptive behavior, not in true belief. Natural selection doesn’t care what you believe; it is interested only in how you behave.”5 The argument goes like this. Does natural selection (alone) give us cognitive faculties (sense perception, rational intuition about those perceptions, and our memory of them) that produce true beliefs about the real world? In as far as true belief produces survival behavior—yes. But who can say how far that is? If a theory makes it impossible to trust our minds, then it also makes it impossible to be sure about anything our minds tell us–including macro-evolution itself– and everything else.6 Any theory that makes it impossible to trust our minds is self-defeating.
A piece from the Sacramento News and Review with a nice conversation with a member of one of our church plants.
This is a fine article from LifeHacker on some Windows 7 utilities to enhance what the OS can already do.
A couple of good blog posts by Rachel Held Evans on her difficulties with Christian booksellers over the use of the word vagina, and some thoughts on The Hunger Games.
Listened to some sermons by my friends Kevin Adams at Granite Springs and Tim Blackmon at American Protestant Church in the Hague, The Netherlands. I listen to Tim Keller’s sermons every week but I don’t listen to enough of the fine sermons of my wonderful friends. 🙂
I wrote a piece for the CRC Classis Blog about uniting the body of Christ and beginning at Classis.
Also a terrific piece by Peter Enns on the Adam/Evolution debate.
Also a piece on toxic churches that grind up pastors.
I like to, when I get a chance, to do outlines of some of Tim Keller’s sermons. It helps me track good illustrations, language and points that he makes.
This was preached on March 18, 2012 and can be found on the Redeemer Website. It was on the triumphal entry of Jesus.
Tim’s usual three points:
The Confrontational King
The Counter-intuitive King
The Coming King
This grew out of a Voices discussion on “turn around” churches.
Part of the difficulty in church work is figuring out how to evaluate what is going on? Churches are complex communities and it is easy to be reductive in terms of what we are paying attention to. Here are some of the questions I posted:
I think it’s helpful to ask ourselves (as I did Dawn) what specifically are we looking for? What are the markers that we are using to evaluate? “turning around” has beneath it a judgment involving performance.
Are we looking for? What are our metrics?
1. more people attending presentations (attractional worship services)? Are some of them taking the step towards official membership?
2. more money being donated (that’s easy to count)?
3. more people volunteering for programs?
4. more people who are involved (the first three) inviting friends to attend, donate, volunteer, affiliate?
Are some of our metrics less easily countable?
1. are people more excited?
2. Is there a sense that people are making different decisions in their lives as a result of their presence in the community and activities of the church?
3. how is participation in the church community impacting people’s sense of wellbeing?
4. how is participation in the church community impacting people’s relationships? Are marriages getting more joyful? Is there forgiveness and reconciliation? Are people doing better at loving enemies?
5. how is participation in the church community bringing more joy to people’s lives? Are they able to find joy in suffering, enduring loss while still gaining in generosity, bringing comfort and encouragement to each other?
6. how is participation in the church community helping give people more specific understandings of why they should feel joy in suffering?
7. how is participation in the church community helping give people articulate the gospel in ways that are understandable and valuable not only to themselves but help them communicate what it is about to their neighbors?
There are also external community impact questions
1. Is the church community improving the lives in tangible ways of those who are not involved in the church but live in the geographic vicinity?
2. Is the church helping the poor in the neighborhood?
3. Is the church bringing comfort to people in the neighborhood that are suffering?
4. Is the church providing infrastructure for the neighborhood to serve it’s own people better?
We tend to look at the first group, but the rest of the list is probably more where the action is, and the performance of the first group is probably dependent on the rest of the list.
From the CRC Network a link and presentation from Fuller seminary on Forgiveness and Making Amends.
Good stuff in this video.
Around minute 17 he gets into rebuke. A good rebuke is not an attack, but giving information. ” 1. You did this. 2. This is how it hurt me. 3. It is not OK. ”
(23:00) This is part of the process of learning how to love our enemies.
The way you make amends is like the rebuke: “I did this. I can see that it hurt you and its not OK with me either.”
Also on that page is a link to a very good interview with David Augsburg.
Also from Bill Harris, people are not always selfish, they’re group-ish. NYT: Forget the money, follow the sacred.
Pete VB from Voices posted a lovely article on the Problem Trap from the Alban institute. Nice article. http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9895
I posted this to Voices:
I appreciate the comments and perspectives in this thread. When I was a seminary intern in the Dominican Republic I came to the field and found lots of things wrong with the Haitian churches I discovered. Pastors can’t read. Sermons were moralistic and petty. Church services would be unbearably long and hot. Some pastors were corrupt. Money wasn’t always getting to the people who needed it. People were engaging missionaries out of ambition to get US connections, money or visas, etc. Ray Brinks, my mentor and supervisor who founded the field would often tell me (when I lamented to him) “you don’t know what it was like when we started (10 years before).” In my better moments I would listen.
I pastor a church where many visitors head for the door before I can even get back there to greet them. I know what they are thinking. “The music wasn’t exciting enough. The sermon was too intellectual. There were a lot of empty seats. The church looks like it’s dying. Between the crazy, creepy guy standing in back, the scary big guy who looks like a killer, the crying babies and the autistic kid who kept charging the stage and whose mother wrestled with him for 10 minutes before she finally gave up and saddled the nursery with him, I just couldn’t get that worship buzz I can get at the big box churches.” Yep. It’s all true.
What was also true was that _______ got 45 minutes of respite, and _______ had people speak decently to him in a place where he feels like he belongs, and ________ heard “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” and glowed as she thought about what that means for her life, and ________ took notes, and _________ got to talk about the letters she gets from strangers after her husband’s funeral, and ________ got to share her sorrows and _______ and _______ got the hugs and attention they crave and need and the other 50 or so people got to see their friends, thank God for the simple things, hear something that helped them out, ask God to help in their sorrows, and help each other get through another day.
When I get problem focused I sometimes think about the seven churches in Asia Minor that John wrote to. These churches had serious problems and scary challenges, the likes of which we wouldn’t swap for. John then proceeded to tell them an outlandish story that somehow the God of the universe was on their side and in the end these struggling, persecuted overcomers would inherit the earth. It seemed like crazy talk, but we know it happened. So then I don’t feel so bad. 🙂 pvk
The sermon is entitled “Healing the Sick” an was from March 4, 2012.
Great quote from BB Warfield. http://www.mbrem123.com/bible/miracle1.php
WHEN OUR Lord came down to earth He drew heaven with Him. The signs which accompanied His ministry were but the trailing clouds of glory which He brought from heaven, which is His home. The number of the miracles which He wrought may easily be under rated. It has been said that in effect He banished disease and death from Palestine for the three years of His ministry. If this is exaggeration it is pardonable exaggeration. Wherever He went, He brought a blessing:
One hem but of the garment that He wore Could medicine whole countries of their pain; One touch of that pale hand could life restore. We ordinarily greatly under estimate His beneficent activity as He went about, as Luke says, ‘doing good.’
Amazing movie. Amazing scene where Salieri speaks his heart and declares God to be his enemy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOScT0wfYHI
