James on Teachers

This morn­ing I had James 1:19 come to mind: This you know, my beloved brethren. But every­one must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; The rea­son James 1:19 came to mind was because over the past few days, I have been dig­ging through online debates between Chris­tians and athe­ists (or agnos­tics, but mostly athe­ists), and have been extremely dis­ap­pointed with the char­ac­ter and tone of those debates by the pro­fessed Chris­t­ian side. To be sure, there is a def­i­nite and notice­able zeal for truth, though this zeal — a desire to defend the faith, or win, or defeat an oppo­nent, I’m not sure — is over­shad­owed by the fact that it is…

Snap-shot Beliefs

Sen­sa­tion­al­ism is unde­ni­ably one of the marks of our cul­ture. It would appear that not only do we all want atten­tion, but we want to make it seem as if the things we are get­ting atten­tion for, are extra­or­di­nary. Read­ing Pas­cal last night: Van­ity is so anchored in the human heart that a sol­dier, a cadet, a cook, a kitchen porter boasts, and wants to have admir­ers, and even philoso­phers want them, and those who write against them want the pres­tige of hav­ing writ­ten well, and those who read them want the pres­tige of hav­ing read them, and I, writ­ing this, per­haps have this desire, and those who will read this…1 “And those who will read…

Semi-Coherent thoughts

I find it both curi­ous and amaz­ing that for many, belief — such a fun­da­men­tal and basic thing — is so frag­ile. It only takes one idea: a ques­tion, an objec­tion or an appeal to the emo­tions, and the seed of doubt has been planted, and a con­fused and fren­zied descent has begun. It is as if ques­tion­ing were the antithe­sis to belief, and I sus­pect for uncrit­i­cal peo­ple (which are many in this ‘day and age’)  it is. An appeal to the emo­tions, the “pas­sions” — this seems to me the most likely cause of peo­ples lack or rejec­tion of faith, rather than argu­ments. Many of us hide behind cal­cu­lated thoughts — logic and…

Intellectuals and “the church”

There is a prob­lem with the “mod­ern” church — it’s gen­er­ally anti-intellectual (dis­claimer: in my expe­ri­ence). It has thrown aside his­tory, tra­di­tion, and many of the great thinkers of the early and medieval church, I imag­ine either because they were from the “old world,” or they were “Catholic”. This seems espe­cially true of Charis­matic groups, where there is so much focus on “expe­ri­ence” and “the Spirit” that any men­tion of “logic” or “ratio­nal think­ing” — per­haps even worse, “phi­los­o­phy” — is met with all forms of oppo­si­tion. The most com­mon objec­tion to these words being the knee-jerk reac­tion, “unless you’re sub­mit­ted to the Spirit, then you’re use­less!” Frankly, I don’t know any (Chris­t­ian) intel­lec­tu­als who…

It might be “God”!

One thing that gets under my skin is the idea (silently enforced) that we shouldn’t reject or exam­ine a par­tic­u­lar teach­ing or instance because, after all, it “might be a move of God”. Oh, epis­temic uncer­tainty! The prob­lem, of course, is the word “might”.  I believe this idea is caused by a para­noid fear of “quench­ing the Spirit”. So rather than test the spir­its for truth, for fear of offend­ing God we allow false doc­trine, teach­ing and expe­ri­ence into the church. If we’re unsure of some­thing because it might be from God, our first thought shouldn’t be “don’t test it! It might be from God”, it should be “test it, it might not”.

Sensationalist “Heretics”

I haven’t done this in a while, this is a reply of sorts to Spencer Burke’s arti­cle “The Illu­sion of the ‘Emerg­ing Church’” which can be found at: http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=2407. I find com­ment­ing on these kinds of arti­cles dif­fi­cult, not because I don’t know what to say (often times, I have too many things to say and don’t know where to begin), but because I don’t so much dis­agree (though I do dis­agree) as find a few of the things being said to be unwise. Spencer Burke is an author, and in my mind that makes him a teacher, a leader, and some­one who other peo­ple look up to and fol­low. One of the things Burke…

Christians sing lies?

I have a frank admis­sion: I’m not com­fort­able with a lot of the wor­ship songs being sung in church. I’m not com­fort­able with them because I can­not say that I share in the expe­ri­ence of what’s being sung. Intel­lec­tu­ally I under­stand the value of what’s being expressed, but expe­ri­en­tially I’m not in the same state as the song­writ­ers when they wrote their songs (lets face it, the hymn writ­ers were in a state most of us aren’t in when we sing their songs). For exam­ple, I like the song Amaz­ing Grace, but I have trou­ble see­ing myself as a “wretch” that needs sav­ing (you know, as opposed to a “less than good per­son” who needs…

Moderation, in all things.

Mod­er­a­tion is a good thing, but in many ways it seems to me a strange thing. I often hear peo­ple defend (jus­tify?) par­tic­u­lar behav­iors on the basis that as long as they do them in mod­er­a­tion — what­ever it is — no one should take issue with them. I’ve heard more than a few peo­ple claim that scrip­ture itself says some­thing along the lines of “mod­er­a­tion in all things,” of course, it was prob­a­bly Paul who said it (and in Corinthi­ans, where accord­ing to a lot of peo­ple, Paul says every­thing). It turns out, though, that Scrip­ture doesn’t con­tain this quaint lit­tle proverb, and the equiv­a­lent say­ings con­text doesn’t all that much agree with most…

Nitpicky People

I’ve recently dis­cov­ered just how much it both­ers me when peo­ple nit-pick oth­ers. Actu­ally, let me rephrase that, when Chris­tians nit-pick oth­ers. There was an “episode” a lit­tle while back on Face­book, where an acquain­tance began com­ment­ing on Kelly Osbourne’s recent appear­ances on Dr. Phil (he’s hired her as a con­sul­tant, so good for her!). The “com­ment­ing” — which was appar­ently peo­ple just being “chatty and silly” — con­sisted of more or less, an attack on who she is as a per­son. It doesn’t seem to mat­ter that she’s com­ing out of a rel­a­tively “rough” past (which we all got to see, via The Osbournes–I didn’t watch, by the way) and is try­ing to mature–what…

Chesterton: The Ballad of the White Horse

I was skim­ming through J.I. Pack­ers Redis­cov­er­ing Holi­ness (which I will review in the near future) and a seg­ment of a poem by G.K Chester­ton was quoted. This poem — The Bal­lad of the White Horse — is a lit­er­ary mas­ter­piece. So much so, that I have to share it here (well, and because I haven’t pre­pared any­thing else to write for tonight), at least, a lit­tle bit of it. As I’m aware, this is a poem which addresses both the bat­tle between King Alfred and the Danes, in 878, and Chris­tian­i­ties war against nihilism. So with that said, enjoy. The gates of heaven are lightly locked, We do not guard our gold, Men may uproot…