Leggo My Eggo

While we're just having fun and sticking to the completely nonsensical take a look at this:

"All things are better in Koine, it's what the scriptures really say"

For those of you who don't know, Koine (Κοινὴ) is the Greek dialect that was spoken as the common language of the western world for approximately 600-700 years (from Alexander to Constantine). Within Christian circles it is often simply referred to as "Biblical Greek" as it is in this dialect that the New Testament was written. The Septuagint (LXX) is the Koine Greek translation of the Old Testament.

I suppose the whole "Leggo my eggo" section (I almost died laughing) might require a bit of an explanation: In Koine, lego is the verb meaning "I say" or "I speak." Legomai (pronounced "leggo my") is the middle/passive indicative "voice" for this verb.

As for "eggo," what they are really saying is ego which is the first person singular pronoun, "I." Thus the Koine phrase legomai ego (or "leggo my eggo") means something like, "I say to myself." For all of you nerds (like me) who think that this is totally hilarious, you can even buy legomai ego T-Shirts.

They also refer to Daniel Wallace and Bill Mounce who are authors of the most common Koine Greek grammars out there. I'm personally a Mounce guy myself.

Anyway, next week I'll be back and ready to think.

PS - for those of you who want to continue mulling over the "soul issue," check out Jared's blog. He's included quotes from Murphy's book.

Peter vs. Paul: Biblical Ultimate Fighting Championship

So, things have been pretty heavy and in-depth for the last few weeks. Let's take a break.

You know how giant nerds always get caught up in their weird little hypothetical battles:
"Captain Kirk could totally kick Captain Picard's butt..."
or
"Who do you think would win in a battle between Gandalf and Yoda?"
... assuming anybody would care.

So, acknowledging that this is both nerdy and completely irrelevant to anything... well, ever:
Who would win in our first round of BIBLICAL ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP: Peter vs. Paul?

We know that they've had their differences (Gal 2:11 ff). This one is a grudge match!
In one corner we have Peter: fisherman, chief disciple, head of the church.
In the other corner we have Paul: former Pharisee, tent-maker, consumate missionary.

Place your bets!

Who will win? and why?

At the very least I hope you laughed... MERRY CHRISTMAS.

The relevance of Soullessness...finally!

Thank-you all for bearing with me and working through this with me. For being so good I'll have a special treat for you in next week's post.

Anyway, the time has come for me to attempt to articulate why I think this whole debate around the soul has any sort of relevance. After all, "why does this even matter?" is the question I've been asked the most since I've started this discussion. While the exploration and application of soullessness can and has taken up whole books I will simply address three areas of application: 1) the theological; 2) the personal; and 3) the inter-personal.

1. the theological:
I am working under the basic assumption that we all want to believe the right things. I am assuming that each one of us wants to do our best to believe the things about the Bible that God intended us to get out of it. I trust that this is a safe assumption.

Thus, I think it is important to wrestle through stuff like this. If there is good solid scholarship that indicates that we may be basing our some of our theology on pagan philosophy (ie. Greek dualism/gnosticism) then I think that's a big deal. If we think the Bible says something but that's not what God wanted us to get out of the scriptures then I think that's reason enough to look into this. More could be said about this but I'll leave it at that.

2. the personal:
If it is true that we are one integrous being, think about how this shapes your view about who you are. Ask yourself the ultimate existential question from these two differing angles (seriously, if you have time to read this blog then you have time to stop and think for a minute or two):

Who am I? (dualism - I have a body and a soul and they are separate)
Who am I? (Biblical monism - God created mankind with physical and spiritual aspects)
How are your answers different?
Why?

Think about how this affects the way in which we view ourselves as human beings. Think about how this affects our "self-esteem." I am not a "soul" stuck in a body. If we buy into this idea (which is basically the heresy of gnosticism) we can allow ourselves to be indifferent/apathetic/unhappy/angry with the way God created us. I can hate/abuse/neglect my body under the premise of "that's not who I REALLY AM." However, if God created us to forever be united to our physical bodies this changes everything. Once again, a lot more could be said (this is a blog not an essay... I always struggle with that) but I will leave it at that.

3. the inter-personal:
I was recently reading an article from a guy who works at World Vision who (at least partly) blamed the dualism that is so prevalent in Western Christianity for the lack of humanitarian work done by Western Churches in the Third World. We argued that just as we have separated the body and the soul we have separated development and evangelism. He argues that true, Biblical, Christian Witness needs to be holistic just as we as human beings are holistic.

Historically, the Church has "fed the soul" but left it to governments and secular agencies to feed the body. As a person working in the Third World he said that he has seen the damage that this has done. Many Christians are content to walk through towns and preach to the people and then walk on to the next town while the people they just preached to die. How is that Biblical (read the book of James; ie 2:15,16)? Again, I could go on and on... but I won't.

All of this is simply to say that this discussion is relevant. I may not have answers to all of the complicated questions that may arise (like Gil's question from last week's comments... that is one of the only questions that I find problematic) but it does (or at the very least can) have bearing on everyday life.

So, what other aspects of life does this discussion touch on?
Have any of your views shifted?
Vent/rant/just let it all out!

Soulless? (Part II)

As we continue this discussion I want to address the last two comments from last week's post. How do the Biblical writer's use NEPHESH? and is there a difference between the OT and NT concepts of "soul?"

My argument centres around the Septuagint (LXX). For those of you who may not know, the LXX is the Koine Greek translation of the OT. It is well known as a generally poor translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, but it has value to us in several ways:

First of all, because Greek was the language of the day, the LXX was the "Bible" used by Jesus, the disciples, and the early church. If you've ever run into a passage in the NT where it is quoting the OT but the wording isn't quite right when compared to the actual OT passage, that's because they were quoting the LXX, not the original Hebrew.

Secondly, the LXX is very helpful in bridging the cultural gap that I referred to last week. In the NT, especially the Gospels, we have Greek language but Hebrew culture. How do we know which is which? The fact is that a lot of our NT lingo is actually OT lingo, we just don't know it. When we look at the LXX we see words like "church (ecclesia)" and "baptism (baptizo)," which we normally think of as NT concepts. So when Jesus says "church" he wasn't coining a new phrase. He was using the LXX term for OT worship gathering. When the NT writers say "baptism" they are using the OT LXX term for ritual purification (ie. Naaman,2Kg5:10).

The LXX is our linguistic bridge between the OT and the NT.

The reason that this is pertinent to our "soul" discussion is because of the relationship between NEPHESH (Hebrew "soul") and PSYCHE (Greek "soul"). The LXX translates the Hebrew word NEPHESH as PSYCHE. So when a NT writer uses the term PSYCHE he is not identifying "soul" with Greek dualism but with the OT monistic concept of NEPHESH. This is highlighted by Lev. 21:11 (ESV) -"[A Priest] shall not go in to any dead bodies nor make himself unclean..." What is interesting about this verse is that the word "bodies" is actually the word NEPHESH.

But not only is this a "dead NEPHESH" but in the LXX it is a "dead PSYCHE!"

A dead "soul?" That doesn't work from a dualistic perspective, does it?

This link between NEPHESH and PSYCHE is solidified by NT Wright:
“… the word soul is rare in this [dualistic] sense in the early Christian writings. The word PSYCHE was very common in the ancient world and carried a variety of meanings … the New Testament doesn’t use it to describe, so to speak, the bit of you that will ultimately be saved. The word PSYCHE seems here to refer, like the Hebrew NEPHESH, not to a disembodied inner part of the human being but to what we might call the person or even the personality” ("Surprised by Hope" 152).

The fact is that (I would argue) there is no Biblical precedent for dualism. When we see soul (PSYCHE) in the NT it is referring to the OT concept of a holistic being: the spiritual and physical as one integrous being. Yes, we see Paul talking about the battle between the physical and the spiritual aspects of our being but that is part of us as humans living the the tension of how God created us. Remember, Paul was a Pharisee. Odds are he was referring to PSYCHE as NEPHESH and not Plato's kind of PSYCHE.

Sorry for the long scholastic rant.
What do you think?
Are there any other aspects of this that we should be taking a look at?

Soulless?

While this isn't the first time this has been debated, there has been a reemergence of questioning within theological circles surrounding the existence of the human soul.

The first time I heard about this I was pretty confused. Christians questioning the existence of our immortal souls? Is this some sort of heresy? Shouldn't the existence of our souls be a given with Christians?

However, as I've read and understood a bit more about the concepts being debated I've become a lot more sympathetic. There's some interesting stuff here. Today I'll lay out the argument. Next week I'll lay out why it matters... because it does.

The reemergence of soul questioning has been led by Dr. Nancey Murphy (widow of renowned Baptist theologian, James McClendon. Both McClendon and Murphy were profs at Fuller Theological Seminary. She still is). You can read all about it in Murphey's 2006 book, "Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Current Issues in Theology)". I don't know her complete stance but I've read snippets of this book, a few interviews with her, and an article or two by other authors who support her views.

These people who say that we don't have a "soul" are actually trying to correct (what they perceive to be) a corruption that exists within Biblical Theology.

The gist of it is this: modern Christians have unintentionally bought into Greek dualism. The ancient Greek philosophers (especially Plato) advocated the view that the physical and the spiritual are separate. Once the physical life ends our separate, spiritual essence, the PSYCHE (Greek word for "soul") carries on into the shadowy afterlife. A version of this mode of thought was quite common during the time of the early church: the heresy of gnosticism.

Anyway, much, much later the thinkers of the Enlightenment, like Descartes, picked up on these Greek ideas and they became inextricable interwoven into the worldview of Modernism. Thus, the vast majority of the Western world has this vague notion that we are spiritual beings but don't really know what that means. Christians, in their attempts to reach this Modern worldview have latched onto this concept and said that, yes, we do have a spiritual aspect to who we are: we all have "souls." And when we die we get to go to heaven (whatever that is)!

Sounds a bit like Greek dualism, doesn't it?

According to Murphy and her camp, this is not what the Bible teaches. The problem is that when we read the New Testament and we see the Greek word, PSYCHE, translated as "soul" we automatically think about the Greek perspective on PSYCHE: dualism. However, the tricky thing about reading (especially the Gospels) the NT is that, while it is written in Greek, most of the worldview that we're dealing with is actually Hebrew.

Greek language. Hebrew culture.

The Hebrew word for "soul" is NEPHESH. The basic meaning of NEPHESH is "breath." In the Bible both animals (Gen 1:30) and humans (2:7) have NEPHESH. In fact, according to Mounces Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, the Hebrew understanding of NEPHESH "... encompasses the entire person, body and soul. It is not that a person has a soul; rather, a human being is a soul... NEPHESH is so closely identified with the whole person that is can even mean a corpse..."

This is a pretty different concept of "soul" than most of us are used to.

So, the argument is that humans are one integrous being. There is no such thing as a disembodied "soul" that goes somewhere when we die. The physical and the spiritual aspects of God's creation cannot be separated.

I'm still working through this one, so let's do it together:
What do you think?
Is this pretty out there or is there something to it?
What scriptures come to mind?
What issues are tied together with this?

The Music of Tension

I've had the idea for this post or a while now but just last week I was rereading "Sex God" by Rob Bell and ran into this statement: "...we were created to live in the tension. And when you lose the tension, you lose something central to what it means to be human..." (Bell 61).

Of course, in the context of Bell's book he is talking about sexuality. He is talking about "Angels and Animals." Angels don't have a sexuality like God created us with, and an animal's sexuality is purely instinctive. We cannot err to either side. We must live in the tension: not denying our sexuality (pretending to be angels) nor simply acting out all of our sexual instincts (acting like animals). We live in the tension between these two.

The reason I've been thinking about this "tension" idea for a while is because without tension there is no such thing as music. Music requires tension... both literally and often

figuratively as well. Without tension the strings of the instrument (guitar, piano, violin, etc.) would produce no tone, without tension the drum head would make no noise, without tension the vocal chords would produce no sound. Music requires tension.

It is often only through tension that beauty is created. JRR Tolkien's creation myth "Ainulindale" (from The Silmarillion) is the perfect example of this, but I won't get into that.

I think this ties in very nicely with last week's post. Is it possible that through the tension of our denominational differences the Kingdom of God is actually enhanced?
Is there something beautiful that is created out of this tension?
What other areas of life require tension or are enhanced through tension?
What do you think?

Judgement Day Report Card

Just imagine if we got a report card on Judgement Day.
What areas do you think we might be graded on?

I've just been thinking about this because it's pretty obvious that different churches and different denominiations within Christendom focus on different areas. One church might get an "A" on showing compassion to their community but only a "C+" on tithing... or visa versa.

But I was also thinking about this from a theological perspective. I grew up in a Mennonite Church. As I began to formulate where I personally stood theologically I found that I could agree with about 85-90% of Mennonite theology. That leaves approximately 10-15% of the Mennonite perspective where I can't completely agree with.

The funny thing is that now that I'm part of a Baptist denomination I find myself in a similar situation. Recently I've been talking with a pastor that's new to the area who is serving in an Evangelical Covenant church... I've had many good friends who grew up in Pentecostal and Alliance churches... I've read through the doctrinal sections in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer... it always seems that we can all agree on 80-90% of what it means to be followers of Jesus Christ so what do we do with this 10-20%?

Obviously, what makes up the content of this 10-20% are the theological distinctives. True Mennonites hold to political separation and non-violence, Pentecostals hold to speaking in tongues, etc.

So why do we get caught up in and define ourselves by the things we will never agree on?
It seems to me that on our report cards we're all going to get an 80% or a 90% when it comes to theology. It would just be arrogant and wrong for me to say, "Well, I'm a Baptist so I'm going to get 100% and the rest of you fools are going to fail."

Some people have had views like this in the past and it ticks me off. It is nothing more than theological arrogance. Those are two words that should never go together.

Now, at the same time we would never believe something if we weren't convinced that it is true. Theology is important and we all need to follow our Spirit led convictions. But maybe God likes diversity. Maybe He uses denominational diversity to accomplish His greater purposes.

What do you think?

And, mostly because I needed a picture for this post, here's the pack Juanita picked up at M.E.C. while she was in Edmonton. Cool, eh?

Happy Holidays

As many of you know, Juanita, Kaleb, and I are on holidays this week. Juanita took off a little early and spent last weekend with her mom in Edmonton. I started off my week of holidays on a perfect note. My brother, Darrell, and I went on an overnight camping/hunting trip in the Nisbet forest (named after a Presbyterian minister, James Nisbet).

We were hiking everything in: food, water, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, tent... everything. So our packs ended up being pretty heavy! I'm guessing my pack was between 40-50 lbs.
We wore matching orange toques so that we wouldn't get shot by deer hunters.

On Sunday afternoon we parked the car, hiked just over 2 kms into the forest, and set up camp. We slept pretty decent. The weather network says that in our area the overnight low was -5.6*C. It was a little chilly but not too bad. On Monday we did several hikes out from our base camp and I bagged a couple Ruffed Grouse. Here's a stock photo of one if you don't know what they look like (I almost wish there was snow when we went out. It would make it easier to spot them!):

It was a great time and a relaxing way to start off my holidays:)

Adventure and Adversity

Bill Mason is a bit of a Canadian Icon. I've been reading his book "Song of the Paddle" and it's been great. While the book itself is all about canoeing and outdoor living there was something that struck me from his first chapter.
He talks about the difference between Adventure and Adversity. All outdoorsmen (and women:) are called to nature by a desire for adventure. However, often we don't find adventure... we find adversity. The major cause of this, he says, is that we are either naive or unprepared. Either they don't know what they're getting into when they go out, or they are underprepared so that the fun adventure that they had been anticipating turns nasty and the adventure becomes adversity.

So, he's talking about not having the proper equipement and knowledge: a map, weather forcast, compass, knife, hatchet, tent, etc... If you don't have the RIGHT equipement and knowledge things can go south pretty fast.

This reminded me of 1 Pet 3:15 where it says that, as Christians, we always need to be prepared. I am a firm believer that God has called us, as his followers, to live lives of adventure. I don't think that God has called any one of us to a mundane life. However, if our Christian life is to be an adventure we need to be prepared... otherwise our faith can quickly move from adventure to adversity.

What do you think?
Can you think of any examples of this?

The Reason for the Season

Ah, good ol' Halloween.
It's got to be one of the most misunderstood and abused celebrations on our calender. 'Cause Halloween isn't about Halloween. October 31st isn't about October 31st... it's all about November 1st. The point of Halloween isn't itself; "All Hallow's Evening" is about November 1st: "All Hallow's Day" or "All Saints Day," as it is more commonly known.

In fact, the Halloween that we know is actually more connected to the Gaelic harvest celebration "Samhain" ... it just so happened that Samhain was on the same day as "All Hallow's Evening" and as Celtic culture mixed with Christianity the two mixed, got all messed up, and spread around the Western World.

However, "All Hallow's Evening" (Oct 31) and "All Hallow's Day" (Nov 1) have their roots in very early Christianity. The years of the Early Church are typically characterized as being the history of the Church prior to the first Council of Nicea in 325 AD. It is in these years of the Early Church that All Hallow's Day has it's roots.

It was the practice of the Early Christians to celebrate the lives of martyrs (those who died for the cause of Christ) on the anniversary of that person's death. In fact, they originally called this anniversary that person's "birth day" as they looked forward to their New Birth in Christ; the resurrection.

However, under circumstances (like that of the Persecution of Diocletian [303-311]) when huge numbers of Christians were constantly being martyred it became impossible to celebrate all of the individual days when Christians were killed. The solution was to set aside one day when all of the churches would remind themselves and celebrate the lives of those who had given the ultimate sacrifice for their faith in Christ. In fact, while we don't know the exact day of the year which they celebrated it on, there are records dating back as early as 270 AD when churches commemorated "All Martyrs." Throughout Church history what we sometimes call "All Saints Day" has been celebrated all over the calender and has been called "All Martyrs Day," "Feast of the Martyrs," "Commemoration of all Confessors," etc... Actually, many Christians celebrate this day on the first Sunday after Pentecost.

Of course, throughout history the celebration became, in turn, both homogenized and diversified. After Constantine, the Catholic church took it and went in one direction... but when the church split the Eastern Church took it in another direction, and so on, and so on. Various Christian traditions emphasized it, neglected it, or integrated other local pagan customs into it which is exactly what we see Halloween to be now.

So, let's celebrate the lives of those who sacrificed themselves for the Gospel of Jesus Christ by dressing up like scary things and eating candy!

Yes, that was sarcasm.

That being said, my family participated in Halloween in a moderate way and I have no problem with that.

What are your opinions of Halloween?
Did you celebrate it/do you celebrate it?
Why? How?

Jesus was totally into Camping

Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν.

You may be slightly more familiar with this phrase as "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:14 ESV). A friend of mine who is a linguistic major at the UofS (yeah, most of you know her) sent me this phrase last week.

Her Greek textbook includes little snippets of the New Testament from time to time and one of the unique words it highlighted from this Biblical phrase was "ἐσκήνωσεν."

Wow! Cool! Isn't that amazing!

Oh, just wait, maybe I should translate that first. This word, ἐσκήνωσεν, is the word "dwelt" (ESV) or the phrase "made his dwelling" (NIV). However, this may be one of those cases where the Bible translators add a little "culture" to their translations.

After all, it sounds nicer to say that the Word "made his dwelling among us" rather than saying that the Word "tented with us."

Yes, that's right: tented. Because the root of the word ἐσκήνωσεν means: "to pitch tent, to encamp... to dwell in a tent..."

The Word became flesh and tented with us.

So is there any theological significance to this?

What do you think?

We have to rely on our English translations a lot. Knowing that there are a lot of situations like this where our translators don't translate things quite literally how much do you trust your english Bible?

Or we could keep it simple: what translation do you use? and Why?

God is not a man.

Once when I was in my teen aged years my father (who was the pastor of all the churches I ever grew up in) was doing a summer sermon series called "You asked for it." The people of the congregation submitted topics/scriptures that they would like to learn more about.

In a fit of genius I anonymously suggested the topic of "the femininity of God." I assumed that when my father came home from work after reading the suggested topics of that Sunday he would mention it around the supper table, I'd confess my silliness, and we'd all have a good laugh. However, several weeks into summer, when my father was starting his sermon for that Sunday all of a sudden I realized that he was reading my suggestion... he was actually going to preach on... the femininity of God!

Of course, what followed was a sermon on how God is the creator of gender and is not subject to it Himself. Both genders equally reflect aspects of His nature as both genders were created in his image.

Despite the fact that this is somewhat common knowledge within Christian circles there has been quite the controversy surrounding the various portrayals of God in William P. Young's book, The Shack.

In Young's book God the Father is portrayed as both a man and (primarily) as a woman... a lot of people say they think of Aunt Jemima based on his description of her

... mmmm, pancakes...

Anyway, I've sometimes wondered if God had chosen to reveal Himself (yes, I still use the traditional masculine language) through a matriarchal society rather than a patriarchal society of the Ancient Near East if He would have revealed Himself as primarily feminine.

Acknowledging that this is completely speculative, what do you think?

At this point in my theological life I am fairly confident that God's self revelation to humanity as primarily male has everything to do with the cultures to which He was revealing Himself and little to do with gender itself... like I already said, God created both genders in His image. God is hyper-gender.

There is a theological concept called Accommodation. It is the idea that God uses certain means to make connections with people for specific purposes. The means He uses doesn't box God in to be limited to those means...

For example (and remember that we're talking about "God the Father" here:

God is not a burning bush... He just revealed Himself to Moses as one in order to evoke a certain reaction.

God is not pillar of fire.

God is not a pillar of cloud.

God is not a still small voice.

God is not a man... or a woman.

God is not a lot of things.

What other images of God does the Bible provide us that "God is not ..."?

The fact is that in order to grasp the concept of GOD we need something to hold on to. We can't grasp the Godliness of God and so God accommodates Himself to us by revealing Himself to us in varying ways.

Does that make sense to you?

Christ, our Diamond Willow

Throughout the wild and rough places of the Canadian prairies can be found, from time to time, willow trees and shrubs that can be called "diamond willow." Diamond willows have distinctive and beautiful knots. Every knot has a unique "diamond" shape to it. At least six different varieties of willow display this unusual diamond knotting. You can see two examples of diamond willow below:

According to the ever reliable Wikipedia "...Diamond willow is willow distinctively shaped as the result of attack by fungus (Valsa sordida, and possibly others), which has resulted in a diamonding effect occurring in the wood of the shrub or tree as the tree forms cankers, or diamonds (elongated ovals with pointed ends), in response to the infection..."

This is another profound example for us from nature that "what doesn't kill you only makes you..." well, in this case, better looking. I kind of doubt that these diamond knots make the tree any stronger, but you get the point.

Just like the pearl, the beautiful stone that is born out of pain and adversity (for the clam), the diamond willow takes the fungus that life throws at it and turns it into something rare and beautiful.

Some people say, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

I say, “when life gives you fungus, make diamonds.”

Can you think of other examples of this principle that God has given us?

In the book, “The Shack” author William P. Young makes note of the fact that in Revelation 21:21 we see that the gates for New Jerusalem are made out of single pearls. He then connects that to Jesus through whom is the only way into the Kingdom of God.

Christ, through his suffering, made something rare and beautiful possible, hence the pearls as the way into God's New Creation. I think the gates of the New Jerusalem should be made out of Diamond Willow... not that I'm complaining or anything.

What do you think about this connection?
What did you think about The Shack?

How was that for you dad? Do you have any more leading questions?

Teaching Luxury

By now I'm sure you all know that I'm a giant nerd so I suppose I have nothing to hide.

Lately I've been watching Ray Mears' documentary series, "World of Survival." In this series he travels around the world and spends time with people groups that still live off the land and he learns about their survival skills. He covers a lot of ground; from the Inuit in northern Labrador to tribes in the Amazon, head-hunters in Indonesia, and the Aborigines in the Australian Outback. I think it's pretty sweet.

Anyway, I was recently watching an episode on a tribe of nomadic people in Siberia. You can watch the pertinent clip here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yicexqTSKi4 . As a parent I was intrigued by the section from about 0:20-1:30.
Ray's comment about the children only rarely crying really struck me. According to the prominent Western worldview you'd think that if anyone had something to cry about those kids would have it.

Just think about it... these kids live in SIBERIA. And then on top of that they have no toys, no 'home' (just a big canvas tent), nothing but the most basic of foods, and get tossed around on the back of a reindeer for hours/days at a time.

Yet they seem completely content.

That got me thinking. They have no sense of luxury and thus make no demands for it.

How often do I ask Kaleb, "What do you want?" By doing this am I giving him the opportunity for discontent?

To what extent should I, as a parent, say "this is what you can have" rather than "is this what you would like?"

Juanita and I have had a number of discussions around this topic even before we had Kaleb, but I'd like your take on it.

Do we teach/instill the concept of luxury on our children?
...on ourselves?


And here are a few pictures of my progress making Diamond Willow walking sticks. Below is a big staff parially stripped of its bark.
On the left is a completed Walking Stick that my dad gave me a few years back. In the middle is one of mine that has been completely stripped and partially sanded. On the right is the big staff stripped of all its bark except for the 'diamond' knots.

I'd rather be Hunting

Unfortunately I don't have any amazing insights for you this week. I'm out at Bethany taking a modular class, "Science and Faith." After spending all day in the same class I have no more brains left to share with you so instead you get this:

Last Saturday morning a few friends and I went out goose hunting in the Glenbush area about two hours north-west of Saskatoon. It was our first time out and we had a great time!
For newbies we did pretty good; I've got a freezer full of goose breast to prove it! So if you have any good recipes for goose or duck let me know:)

Pizza Sangre

Here's a video by Marc Craste that's more than a little artsy and kinda surreal. In an interview he basically said the idea for these shorts was the question, "what if TVs lived according to what is shown on them?"

**Warning: the following contains gratuitous violence**



What do you think?
Interesting? Ironic?
Pointless?
Purposely Pointless (like TV)?

The Mystery of Faith

In what little spare time I've had recently I've been reading through G.K. Chesterton's oft-overlooked classic, "Orthodoxy." Published in 1908, Orthodoxy is Chesterton's view of apologetics (along with "Heretics" which I haven't read).


What I've been struck by as I've read this book is how countercultural Chesterton's views were. He was writing in the midst of the height of modernity. The "Myth of Progress" was in full swing and yet Chesterton says, "I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it..." (Chesterton 4). What modern Englishman would ever call the enlightenment ambitions "idiotic"?



He almost sounds like a postmodernist!



While he doesn't reject reason and logic outright he says that they need to be balanced by mysticism. “Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity” (Chesterton 23).


Orthodoxy is Chesterton's call for Christians to regain the mystery and adventure of Christianity. Stories say that Chesterton, a big fat jolly man, walked everywhere with a sword-cane (a walking stick with a sword hidden in the handle) just in case he ran into an adventure!



Do we as Christians need to regain our sense of adventure?
... of mystery?
What might that look like?

The Ethics of Camping.

Well, I'm back from holidays and ready for fall... or at least I hope so.

This last weekend Juanita, Kaleb, and I were in Alberta (Red Lodge Provincial Park) for a family camp-out/reunion. We actually had every single person from 3 generations of my mom's (Klassen) side of the family there. Good times.

Anyway, as I mentioned, this was a camping trip. I love camping. I love the simplicity of it: nature, close friends/family, camp fires, waking up with the sun and getting bacon and eggs going on the camp stove; I love the sound of crackling bacon in the morning... and then some good strong tea or coffee... ahhh!

So as we were driving out to Alberta this thought struck me: everything that I need to survive is with me here in my car. In our little Mazda Protege there was me, my wife, and my son and all of the things that we would need to live a simple but completely satisfactory life.

In North America there are millions of people like me who will, for fun, simplify their lifestyle for a week or two each summer. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population of this earth lives like this (or far worse) out of necessity.

Maybe there's something wrong with my brain when I start questioning the ethics behind camping. I think maybe Juanita thinks there's something wrong with me...

What do you think? (about camping, not my sanity)

What do you love (or hate) about camping?

Oh, yeah... in my opinion RVing is completely different than camping. I say that small campers and tent trailers still count as camping but anything beyond that is just cheating (and taking up valuable campsites for me and my tent)!

While we were there we found some nice diamond willow and so as a little project I cut a good length and have been hand carving myself a walking stick that will, hopefully, end up looking something like these.

Being an Atheist must be insufferably dull.

A Fransiscan Benediction

So, last week I spent a couple of days at Leadership Summit. As always, it was a great time of being challenged and refreshed.

One of the speakers ended his session with this old Fransiscan Benediction:

May God bless you with discomfort

at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships

So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger

At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,

so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears

To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,

So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and

To turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness

To believe that you can make a difference in the world,

So that you can do what others claim cannot be done

To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

Amen.

I'm not even sure what I'm getting at with this post. Somehow I've always been fascinated by the faith of "old-school" (I don't know what else to call them) Christians like Frascis of Assisi, Brother Lawrence, Thomas A Kempis, etc.

While they certainly made mistakes just like any of us they had a knack for understanding what it meant to be completely counter-cultural in their faith. I have to admire that.

What would my/your life look like if you daily prayed that God would bless you with discomfort, anger, tears, and foolishness?

Social Commentary

Sorry for the lack of posts. This past week I was up at Silver Birch Bible Camp as the speaker for their Teen Camp. I did it last year as well. It's always a great week. I loved it.

When we got back Juanita and I went on a date. This may not seem like a big deal to some of you but this was the first time in approximately 11 months that Juanita and I had more than 4 hours straight just to ourselves. We went to a restaurant we had never been to, had appetizers before our entree, had a liesurely meal (none of it ended up on the floor... Kaleb), and went to a movie. I loved it.

We saw Wall-E.

I loved it.

I've always been a fan of movies with social commentary. To me art has to have a purpose; it has to say something. That's what divides the art of "film-making" and the entertainment of "movies." What I'm trying to say is that Wall-E is a piece of art. It is film that artistically portrays a timely message.

I really should clarify, though. The second half of the movie, while still very enjoyable, degenerates into a typical Pixar family friendly (and slightly preachy) animated movie. But the first half of the movie is astounding.

With essentially no dialogue whatsoever Wall-E visually tells a story which makes you both think profound things and feel profound things. And it's still fun.

Anyway, I've always loved the genre of science-fiction because it has the ability, more-so than other genres, to speak about the "effects" that are being "caused" by today. Anyone who has read H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, or Robert Heinlein, or has seen films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, or even to a lesser extent something like I Am Legend or I Robot will know what I'm talking about.

So while we were at the theatre for Wall-E I saw adds for a new remake that's coming out this December, "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Now, I remember watching the original 1951 movie quite a while ago and it was sweet. So initially I was kind of excited. The original had all the things you'd look for in a well thought out old-school sci-fi film.

But then I saw that this new version is starring none other than Keanu "I couldn't act my way out of a wet paper bag" Reeves. Sigh.

The original was a film; a piece of art. The remake will be a movie; a piece of cr... uh, entertainment.

It happens all of the time. H.G. Wells wrote a number of amazing stories: The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, etc. Both of these have been made into big budget movies in the last decade. All of the intelligence, wit, and poignancy are sacrificed at the altar of entertainment.

OK. I'm done now.

What other movies have you seen this happen to?
What did you think of Wall-E?

Prayerful Condolences

There won't be much of a post this week. Instead I'd like to send out condolences to the family of a man that I only met a couple of times... and yet he has reached into each one of your lives if you are a regular reader of this blog.

Tim Bartel inspired several of my posts (which can be reviewed here and here). Tim died of an unexpected heart attack this last weekend. He was currently serving as the District Coach to the Baptist General Conference churches in British Columbia.

Wright Whistles

Well for those who are done with thinking for the summer CHECK OUT MY WILLOW WHISTLES!

A short piece of willow and my Mora knife.

The bark removed, the mouthpeice cut, and the sound chamber carved out.
The bark replaced.
And I made two just for kicks (yes I know that it's kind of lame that I do this for kicks!).
Unfortunately, only one of them makes any sort of sound because I made the sound chamber too small on the first one. The second one kind of works but the bark split as I was bruising it to remove it.

Anyway, for those of you who are still capable of abstract thought, feel free to check this out. What are your thoughts on imaginative worship and liturgy?

The Person who is Truth

So this last week I was in Winnipeg for our BGC national conference... hence last week's lame post on willow whistles:)

While we were there I attended another workshop by Tim Bartel. You may remember another post I had on one of his workshops from the 20/20 Summit in February. It was all about the clashing of the Modern and PostModern worldview within the church. If you care to, you can get a refresher here.

This workshop was very similar but the audience was totally different. Maybe next week I'll get into that but for this week I want to sort out something that has been driving my thoughts for a while now.

It became clear, once again, that Modern Christians do not understand PostModern Christians' perspective on truth. Modern Christians hold on to the notion of factual, propositional truth while PostModern Christians believe that truth is relational.

I believe that truth is a person.

The problem with the modern notion of truth is that it puts God in a box. The modern worldview focuses so much on logic/reason/empiricism that God becomes subject (hence not supreme) to these; God needs to measure up to our standards of logic/etc. I can't buy that.

Here is why I believe the PostModern perspective of personal truth may be stronger:

John 14:6 (ESV): Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus IS the path to God. Jesus IS truth. Jesus IS life.

Is Jesus literally "the way"? Yes. I don't think anyone who reads this blog is a universalist. We all believe that it is only through Christ that we can be in relationship with God. No arguments there.

Is Jesus literally "life"? Yes. Jesus is the source of all life. All things were made "through him" (Jn 1:3, 4, 10).

Is Jesus literally "truth"? Yes. After all, John 8:32 (ESV) says "...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Who sets us free? The person of Jesus. It is not the adherence to static propositions that brings freedom into our lives. No, it is a personal relationship with the Christ; the Messiah that is the Way to God, the source of all reality (Truth), and the source of existence (Life).

In a way, these three (Way, Truth, Life) are their own mini-Trinity. They are both independent and co-dependant at the same time.

The only way to God is by experiencing the Life and Truth of relationship with Christ.
Truth is reality; the way things really are: true existence.
Existence itself has it's source in the Christ the Creator...

It's True!

Does any of this make sense?
Do you have anything to add to either the Modern or the PostModern perspectives?
Is this too much thinking for Summer?

Maybe I should just stick with Willow Whistles.

Just in Case...

Well, it's summer, and that means a lot of us will be going camping.

So, just in case you are out in the middle of nowhere and you need a whistle:


Hahaha! I love it. Now you know how to make a willow whistle.

Surprised by Colbert

I was quite surprised to see that one of my favourite authors/theologians, NT Wright was on the Colbert Report last week. Check it out:

...uh, it appears that you can no longer get the clip from Colbert's site, Comedy Central's site, or YouTube... but you can watch it here. Please do.

If only Colbert would stop interrupting!

Wright asserts in this book that (as he barely has time to explain in the clip) contrary to popular belief, our true destination after death is not heaven but a recreated earth with the New Jerusalem as a "bridge" between the New Heaven and the New Earth.

I have frequently heard people ask the question that Colbert asks: if God is going to recreate everything then why should we bother taking care of the world?

Wright is interrupted before he can develop his analogy, so I will take the liberty of expanding it:

In a normal family household situation it is the job of the parents to make sure the home is clean and in order. However, parents often give their children the authority and responsibility to take care of their own rooms. The child could refuse to clean up their room saying, "Mom and Dad will clean it all up at the end of the day," which would probably be true, but that misses the point. The point is that the parents have given the child the job and responsibility of taking care of their room.

So it is with us. God has given us the responsibility of taking care of the Earth. This requires an holistic activistm. It includes environmentalism, humanitarianism, and evangelism.

So, the question is, do we just slack off, do nothing and say, "God will clean it up in the end," or do we step up to the challenge of stewardship and begin the process of New Creation here and now?

UPDATE:
A while back ABC did a bit with Wright in which some of his thoughts are more cogently captured. It may be helpful in our discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA0NLb0pXGI (YouTube wouldn't allow me to embed it...)

Rights vs Responsibilities

The comments from the previous post have taken us here:

I believe that our society is WAY out of balance. Everything is weighted toward the "rights" side of things with barely any emphasis on the "responsibilities" side.

Do you agree? In what areas of life do you see this?

Check out this section from the Canadian Bill of Rights (as taken from http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/C-12.3///en?page=1)

Recognition and declaration of rights and freedoms
1. It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,
(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;
(b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law;
(c) freedom of religion;
(d) freedom of speech;
(e) freedom of assembly and association; and
(f) freedom of the press.

[all emphasis mine]

Language is a delightfully (or maybe despicably) subtle thing.

We often speak of the "right of the individual" but where is the responsibility of the individual? I remember reading in Meic Pearce's book, Why the Rest Hates the West, how we usually state our rights in the first person ("I have the right to...") while responsibilities are stated neutrally...

ie) Instead of saying, "I have the responsibility to feed the poor" we might say, "the poor must be fed." Subtle linguistic changes like this create a culture where we can push aside our Biblically mandated responsibilities (like taking care of the poor) to someone else; I have rights, while responsibilities simply must be done... by who? I dunno, but not me.

Do you see this displayed in your life?

What other conflicts between rights and responsibilities can you think of?

How does our discussion around Wants vs Needs tie in?

How does Philippians 2:5-11 play into this?

Want vs. Need: human rights

"It is easy... to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it." (Krakauer 155)


Stop and think about that one for a moment.

How much of society do you think lives with underlying assumptions like this?
How many of us are guilty of thinking this way sometimes?

I think part of the cause of this is the Western world's over-emphasis on "rights." We live in a culture that emphasizes "rights" more than "responsibilities." This has taken us so far that we rarely consider the fact that it is almost impossible for us to exercise our "God-given right[s]" without us infringing on someone else's.

How do you see this truth (assuming that it is true; feel free to argue) displayed in the world around us?



Check out the United Nations "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" . Below I have included Article 25, point 1.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family [my emphasis], including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.


I think, as North Americans as a whole, we have replaced "adequate" with "superfluous" ... and maybe we could add, "and the right to remain blissfully ignorant of the consequences of us exercising our 'rights'; which are really mostly wants." Or maybe that's just me.

But enough of me rambling off on my (possibly ill-founded) opinions.

What would be a Biblical basis for human rights?

Just to start us off, I think the foundation for human rights needs to come from Genesis 1:27:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (ESV)

What other scriptures can you think of that pertain to this whole discussion of human rights and needs vs wants?

Want vs. Need

I was talking with some good friends last night and as we were finalizing our plans to solve all of the problems in the world we were reminded of how brilliant Lesslie Newbigin was. He wrote some unbelievably profound critiques of Post-Modernism, Secularism, and Capitalism. He was, without a doubt, one of the most notable theologians of the recent past.

I don't know (I'd have to read more) that Newbigin was completely against all forms of Capitalism, but he diagnosed the problem of capitalism as coming from a shift from "distribution to production." When stuff is produced to fulfill the wants of one segment of society instead of fulfilling the needs of another segment of society simply because it is more profitable, we know that we have a problem; a serious problem.


Newbigin says that with much of Capitalism: "...growth is for the sake of growth and is not determined by any overarching social purpose. And that, of course, is the exact account of the phenomenon which, when it occurs in the human body, is called cancer. In the long perspective of history it would be difficult to deny that the exuberant capitalism of the past 250 years will be diagnosed in the future as a desperately dangerous case of cancer in the body of human society -- if indeed this cancer has not been terminal and there are actually survivors around to make the diagnosis..."

Is that overstating the problem (or understating it)?
Do you have difficulty discerning what is a NEED and what is a WANT in your life?
Have you ever had the desire to simplify your life?

We may still have Goblins today.

Over my holidays I've been rereading J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece, "The Hobbit." Just last night I reached the point where Bilbo and the dwarves encounter the goblins (in "The Lord of the Rings" they are called 'orcs') in the mountains. Tolkien describes his goblins as being "cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted" which sort of goes without saying. But goblins are also clever and crafty which makes a particularly bad combination.

As Tolkien describes the goblins (and the particular predicament in which Bilbo and his friends find themselves) he throws this in:

"It is not unlikely that they [the goblins] invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days they had not advanced (as it is called) so far" (Tolkien 60).

This theme is further carried out in Tolkien's other works (especially in "The Silmarillion"). In Middle-Earth goblins/orcs were not 'created'... even though it was inaccurately portrayed that way in the movies. In Tolkien's world goblins were people who had been corrupted by Tolkien's satan figure, Morgoth. These corrupted people were then bred with one another and created their own cultures and nations that had the values of their master.

By this definition I think that we may still have goblins today, in our world... and I think that's exactly what Tolkien was getting at.

Any thoughts?
Who are the goblins of today's world?
Are they all communists or Arabs like the media would like us to think?

A Voice from Beyond the Grave...

... well, really I'm just on holidays.

In the meantime check out this picture. I found it rather poignant. There's actually something to it. Or I'm just reading way too much into it:)

Checked Out... so check this out.

So you know how when you're just a day or two away from holidays you start mentally checking out even though you're not there yet? Yeah, well that's starting to happen to me... (just don't tell Harv, OK!).

So, instead of coming up with yet another unbelievably profound tidbit for y'all, please check out the Radiohead music video below. It's well worth the time. Leave your feedback.



"A righteous man knows the rights of the poor;
a wicked man does not understand such knowledge."
Proverbs 29:7 (ESV)

Scriptures that aren't Scriptures?

Our small group has been going through the book of James over the past few weeks. It's been great. James is always good for prompting discussion.

But this last week we ran into this verse:

James 4:5 "Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, 'He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?'(ESV)"

Now, I'm not going to get into the content of what that quote says (although it is a fascinating quote) but what I'm interested in is the phrase "the Scripture says"... because the fact is that the scriptures we have in our Bible don't contain a quote like that.

I'm not really concerned about the content of the quote because there are other verses that are in our Bible that line up with what the quote is saying, but what do we do with Scripture quoting "scripture" that we don't have as scripture?

James does this once but Paul does it frequently:

Paul quotes early church leader, Clement when he says (quoting Jesus) in Acts 20:35 "It is more blessed to give than to receive ."

We have no records of Jesus saying that in our canonical gospels. But Clement says that Jesus said it (1 Clement 46:7). None of Clement's writings were considered authoritative enough to make it into the Biblical cannon but Paul quotes him!?!

And then there's Paul quoting completely non-Christian sources...

I guess Paul liked reading Greek poetry, because he quotes Aratus' poem "Phainomena" (Acts 17:38), Menander's poem "Thais" (1 Cor. 15:33) and twice quotes Cretan poet, Epiminides (Titus 1:12 and Acts 17:28).

It is clear from the way that the Apostle Paul uses these quotations that, like we use them today, the quotes are used to reinforce the point Paul is making... in other words, they are used to reinforce what we now have as Scripture.

So all of this begs a few questions:

- does scripture need reinforcing?

- do these secular quotations become authoritative because they are included in Scripture?

- do the Christian (but extra-Biblical) quotations (the Clement quote and the one from James) indicate that there are authoritative Scriptures outside of the Bible?

Just Looking for Your Input.

If you are a regular here at my blog you will have seen that I'm reading "Surprised by Hope" by N.T. Wright. As the subtitle suggests the book is all about "rethinking heaven, the Resurrection, and the mission of the church."


His main idea is that as Western Christians we have allowed too much of the Medieval Church's tradition to seep into our perspectives on what it means to become a "New Creation" and our views on the "New Heaven" and "New Earth." But I'll let him speak for himself briefly:

"A massive assumption has been made in Western Christianity that the purpose of being a Christian is simply, or at least mainly, to 'go to heaven when you die,' and texts that don't say that but mention heaven are read as if they did say it, and texts that say the opposite, like Romans 8:18-25 and Revelation 21-22, are simply screened out as if they didn't exist" (Wright 90).

As he develops his argument he has shaken some of my views profoundly. And so I'd like to hear from you on a few things. Without overthinking anything too much:

1. What is the first thing that enters your mind when you think of Heaven?

2. In your mind's eye what does Heaven look like?

3. Where do we go when we die?

4. After Christ's return where will we be, the New Heaven or the New Earth?

I just want to know if my old perceptions were just me or if, like he says, we're all a little messed up!

Get Ready for Prince Caspian!

Here's the newest PC trailer for you all.

And then there's always Indy...


Which one are you looking forward to more?

... and let's wrap this up (part II).

Let's hope this is actually the final part.

So, while I'm going to leave the specifics of this whole Oprah/Tolle thing behind, I want to deal with this idea of synkretism. As I said last week, we are now seeing within the Western world a generation rising that does not have a "Christian/Western" worldview as it's default perspective. People that we would normally think of as relatively intelligent, thoughtful people are adopting strange views of the world that, a few generations ago, we all would have scoffed at. Not only that, but they are starting to merge together seemingly incompatible modes of thought without even batting an eye. How does this happen?

Up until the last half century or so the "Modern" worldview (coming out of the Enlightenment) was the default in the Western world. This means that logic and reason are supreme. To believe anything requires definitive proof; either a flawless philosophical argument or undeniable empirical evidence. Thus, religion is ushered off to the sidelines of society while science takes it's "rightful" place at the head.

Contrast this with the Eastern Pantheism that is beginning to emerge: mystery is supreme. Life is not to be understood (that is impossible) but experienced. One cannot know the unknowable... but to experience the unknowable... now that's something!


Of course, these are ridiculously brief generalizations but I hope you get the gist of what I'm talking about. The difficult thing is that both of these perspectives have little bits of Truth in them yet are both incomplete. In his book, The Universe Next Door, James W. Sire argues that the only complete wordview in existence is Christianity (Christian Theism). In Christianity we see reason and mystery working in tandem.

We cannot say reason is supreme (because it denies all of the wonder and mystery that is so evident in our world) nor can we say that mystery is supreme (because the world works in a logical, orderly way... and we can prove it!). It is not a matter of "either/or." But neither is it a matter of "both/and" in the sense of merging the two together synkretistically.

One cannot simply supplement the weaknesses of one's worlview by merging it together with a contradictory one. Yet this is exactly what Oprah and Tolle are doing. Tolle says that we can't use logic to understand God... but he obviously used logic to figure that out! Mystery is a great and beautiful thing and God is full of mystery. But mystery is not nonsense. Nonsense is just plain old nonsense.

But in Christianity reason and mystery come together, not as enemies but (dare I say it?) as lovers. One without the other is incomplete but taking them and forcing them together is not how they were meant to be. In Christianity we can see how "Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness..." (1 Tim 3:16) but at the same time Paul criticises the people of Israel because "...they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:2).

The final word goes to the Apostle Paul:
Colossians 2:1-4 (ESV) "1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments."