Random – Page 4 – Traditores

Imprecatory Prayers Make Me Cringe

Posted on May 25, 2014May 25, 2014 by Alan

Okay, I’ll admit it. As much as they are biblical, imprecatory prayers make me cringe. I ran into this one today as I continue to read through all 66 in one year:

Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders (Nehemiah 4:4-5, English Standard Versions.

Just not seeing the “love your neighbors” or “turn the other cheek” stuff going on here.

Your thoughts? Considering the persecution of Christians around the world right now, is it okay if we ask God to give them “what they deserve”?

Did Jesus Waver at the End?

Posted on May 24, 2014May 24, 2014 by Alan

Interesting thought from the introduction to “Theological Essays” (published in 1867) regarding how Jesus showed a couple moments of “distress of mind”:

Panegyrists have described the bravery with which some martyrs have endured their sufferings before the eyes of their admirers. Jesus, who suffered not with a view to human applause, but to human consolation and salvation, was not ashamed or afraid to express all which he felt, and his faithful biographers were not ashamed or afraid to record it.

(Pages xvii-xviii.)

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag

Posted on May 17, 2014May 31, 2014 by Alan

UPDATE: It looks like Meriam will be released?:

Sudanese authorities are to free a woman who was sentenced to death for having abandoned the Islamic faith, a foreign ministry official says.

Meriam Ibrahim, who gave birth to a daughter in custody, will be freed in a few days, the official told the BBC.

Abdullahi Alzareg, an under-secretary at the foreign ministry, said Sudan guaranteed religious freedom and was committed to protecting the woman.

Khartoum has been facing international condemnation over the death sentence.

(From “Meriam Ibrahim: Sudan ‘to free’ death row woman.”)

Until she’s actually free (and safe), don’t stop praying for her and letting the Sudanese government know of your concern (please see my original post below).

I am not a fan of open letters, especially between Christians. However, I don’t see how a government can be encouraged to do what is right outside of public outcry, so below is what I penned to the Sudanese embassy based on Franklin Graham’s suggestion:

If you are as outraged as I am about Meriam's death sentence, contact the Sudanese embassy in Washington at http://t.co/nGymJktNOC

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) May 17, 2014

I encourage everyone to follow the link Franklin gave…

http://www.sudanembassy.org/index.php?option=com_breezingforms&Itemid=13

…and do the same. One does not have to be a Christian to know that, as a world, we have to fight for religious liberty.

Hello,

I know that courts can sometimes hand down rulings that the government does not agree with, and I hope that is the case with the recent one sentencing Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag to lashings and death. No one should be punished for changing his or her faith, regardless of what the change was. It is even more a farce if Amnesty International is correct:

“Amnesty International said the woman, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag, was raised as an Orthodox Christian, her mother’s religion, because her father, a Muslim, was reportedly absent during her childhood” (from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27424064).

Please do the humane and honorable thing and set aside the conviction and sentence, and make legal and/or constitutional changes that mean nobody can be similarly convicted of adultery and apostasy. As a religious man I appreciate the concern for keeping people within a faith, but nobody who converts thanks to fear (direct like this or otherwise) is truly a believer. Even if this approach was effective, it is criminal and abhorant.

Please show the world this court does not reflect Sudan.

My best,

Alan

UPDATE: Alas, originally typing my letter in very small font in a web form on an iPad, I had “humane an honorable” when I meant “humane and honorable.” I changed it in the quote above so it would read the way intended.

“For You, You Only, Know the Hearts…”

Posted on May 13, 2014May 15, 2014 by Alan

Ran into this during today’s reading (wise words from Solomon): “…for you, you only, know the hearts of the children of mankind” (2 Ch 6:30, ESV, in part). The “you,” of course, being God. As I’ve often said, including to employees at work, you can comment on what you observe and how it affects you, but you cannot judge what is behind it (the intent). Solomon appears to agree…he thought of it first. 🙂

Random Thoughts

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Alan

Random thought #1:

It may seem unfair in the Old Testament that the firstborn was afforded extra rights. What better alternative would prevent jockeying for position?

Random thought #2:

Intellectual honesty requires being able to admit that some questions don’t have definitive answers. Intellectual maturity includes being able to identify those questions.

Are Your Ears Itchy?

Posted on May 2, 2014May 2, 2014 by Alan

What is the saying? A lie can travel halfway around the world before truth gets its shoes on (or something like that)?

“How the ‘Jesus’ Wife’ Hoax Fell Apart”

(Subtitled “The media loved the 2012 tale from Harvard Divinity School.”)

What is the likelihood the truth will get the same press as the lie?

The entire article is worth reading, but this was especially interesting to me:

It is perhaps understandable that Ms. King would have been taken in when an anonymous owner presented her with some papyrus fragments for research. What is harder to understand was the rush by the media and others to embrace the idea that Jesus had a wife and that Christian beliefs have been mistaken for centuries. No evidence for Jesus having been married exists in any of the thousands of orthodox biblical writings dating to antiquity.

I think the author, Jerry Pattengale, is missing something obvious to us Christians thanks to “orthodox biblical writings dating to antiquity”:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths (2 Timothy 4:3, English Standard Version).

If you want to believe, God will find a way. If you don’t want to believe, you will find a way (and God will allow it).

Random Links

Posted on May 2, 2014May 2, 2014 by Alan

I’ve been building up some links-of-interest for a while…and waiting for my flight to Manchester, New Hampshire here in Baltimore, Maryland may give me time to finally post them. 🙂

In newest to oldest order…

Case studies in cognitive dissonance: “Methodists OK same-sex benefits for employees”

How’s this for a “What does it say about God”?:

The United Methodist Church does not recognize gay marriage, but the church’s Judicial Council stated that “certain basic human rights and civil liberties are due all persons.”

Want to wager how long the rest of their “evolution” is going to take?

Worse than being an atheist: “God not-botherers: Religious apathy reigns”

Starts off with (including the italics): Continue reading “Random Links”

Choose Your Train (You Must)

Posted on April 27, 2014April 28, 2014 by Alan

Recently I heard the track “Dark Passenger” by the group Fozzy. It starts off with:

Jesus is my co-pilot
Or that’s just what they say
But it’s not the Savior
Who guides me every day

Although the lyrics are a bit ambiguous, and it almost sounds like the anti-hero of the song wants to repent, you know it is the Devil who is guiding the tune’s subject every day.

Fozzy’s song brought another train one to mind (for some reason, when I hear the word “passenger” I think of trains…I give credit to my train-loving 6 year-old :-)). Curtis Mayfield wrote this classic (“People Get Ready”), which begins with:

People get ready, there’s a train a comin’
You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’
on’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

And…as my mind continued it’s odd way of traveling down the tracks…”Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne was next in line. It’s initial verses are:

Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it’s not too late
To learn how to love, and forget how to hate

Mental wounds not healing
Life’s a bitter shame
I’m goin’ off the rails on a crazy train
I’m goin’ off the rails on a crazy train

So…based on how they all start…which train would you like to ride?

But my brain didn’t stop there. It seemed to me that those three songs, in a slightly different order, also mimicked the choices C.S. Lewis wrote about who Jesus is in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Jesus is either part of the Crazy Train, is a Dark Passenger, or He is Lord. What say you?

And…as Lewis says…”You must make your choice.”

(Not choosing is a choice against “Lord”…)

Now, in case you are interested (and understanding that YouTube links don’t always remain working), here are the three songs that inspired this post in the order they were mentioned: Continue reading “Choose Your Train (You Must)”

Good “Happy Easter” News

Posted on April 20, 2014April 20, 2014 by Alan

Some good "Happy Easter" news:

"China on course to become ‘world’s most Christian nation’ within 15 years"

And, on this day we celebrate the empty tomb, may we all be as wise as those described by…

Officially, the People’s Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied. (Emphasis mine.)

Hat tip to Instapundit.

“A Man After My Heart”

Posted on April 14, 2014April 14, 2014 by Alan

During a Sabbath visit to a synagogue in Antioch, the apostle Paul notes of David:

And when he had removed [Saul], he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will’ (Acts 13:22, English Standard Version, emphasis mine).

Considering some of David’s failures, it really seems like God may have misjudged. For instance, take a look at 2 Samuel 11:1–15 and see how David commits adultery topped off by murder in less than a chapter.

Yet, later in that same book we can see a bit of the heart our Lord noticed. Just imagine having a son who rebelled against you and (albeit with a bit of a cooling down period) you show him mercy…only to have him try to dethrone you again (which includes him alpha-dog sleeping with your concubines). Being king is so important to your boy that… Continue reading ““A Man After My Heart””

Do You Know What Your Sin Is, Balaam?

Posted on February 23, 2014February 23, 2014 by Alan

As seems so often true, if I really like a television series it only lasts one season (or less). Firefly fits that category perfectly (although I don’t know if I actually watched it while it was first airing). The good news is that it was followed up by a tremendously entertaining movie, Serenity. (If you like sci-fi and/or action-adventure.)

In that film, the primary “bad guy” (known as “The Operative”) is played perfectly by Chiwetel Ejiofor. One of his most memorable phrases is “Do you know what your sin is?”…first used with a doctor whose pride meant he exposed Alliance leaders to a mind-reader (who has now escaped and holds their darkest secrets).

The Operative’s “Do you know what sin is?” question came to mind as I read the story of Balaam in Numbers 22-24. Short version is that Balak, king of Moab, was wise enough to see how large Israel was and what had happened to those who opposed them. (It did not bode well for him and his nation, Moab.) Balak figured he could pay/bribe the prophet Balaam to curse Israel, and all would be well. Continue reading “Do You Know What Your Sin Is, Balaam?”

Stylish Fedora Reveals Location of Mobster

Posted on January 25, 2014January 25, 2014 by Alan

This is not theological, religious, spiritual, etcetera…

If you click on the image below you can read the humorous article whose genesis was the reaction I got to my Facebook profile picture with a fedora. Personally I thought I looked like a 50s cop, but…

Credit to the free "Funny Newspaper Generator with Your Own Picture" for producing the PDF. They are also responsible for the moose article. 🙂

Doubling Down

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Alan

As I continue this year’s trek through all 66, I ran into the incident where, when asked by Moses to allow the Israelites to go worship in the desert for three days, the Pharaoh wasn’t so inclined. Not only did he say no, he decided to double down:

6 The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, 7 “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. 8 But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God (Exodus 8:6-8, English Standard Version).

That incident reminded me of when, after his father Solomon died, Rehoboam was approached by “all Israel,” asking him to reduce the burdens Solomon had put on them. King Rehoboam told them to come back in three days for an answer. Although the new monarch was wise enough to ask for counsel, that’s about as far as his wisdom went as three days later…

13 And the king answered them harshly; and forsaking the counsel of the old men,
14 King Rehoboam spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men, saying, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to it. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions” (2 Chronicles 10:13-14).

In both cases we have people implicitly questioning a ruler’s power, and in both cases the ruler doubled downed on proving who was in charge.

The first lost his army at the bottom of a sea (Exodus 14:28) and the second saw his kingdom shrink from twelve tribes to two (2 Chronicles 10:16-11:4). Maybe doubling down wasn’t such a great approach? Something we ought to consider when someone dare question our authority, eh? 🙂

Oh, and we all know Who really was in charge…

“Evolution Is Most Certainly a Matter of Belief—and so Is Christianity”

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Alan

Albert Mohler once again puts my thoughts into words a lot better than I do, this time with regards to how a belief in macro evolution requires just as much faith as Christianity:

"Evolution Is Most Certainly a Matter of Belief—and so Is Christianity"

Hopefully to encourage you to read the whole thing, here is a quote:

So belief in evolution is not something one simply chooses to believe or to disbelieve, "like a religious proposition." Instead, it is "settled science" that simply compels intellectual assent.

The problems with this argument are legion. In the first place, there is no such thing as "settled science." There is a state of scientific consensus at any given time, and science surely has its reigning orthodoxies. But to understand the enterprise of science is to know that science is never settled. The very nature of science is to test and retest hypotheses and to push toward new discoveries. No Nobel prizes are awarded for settled science. Instead, those prizes are awarded for discoveries and innovations. Many of those prizes, we should note, were awarded in past years for scientific innovations that were later rejected. Nothing in science is truly settled.

Later, Mohler continues:

But the most significant problem with this argument is the outright assertion that science and religion represent two completely separate modes and bodies of knowledge. The Christian understanding of truth denies this explicitly. Truth is truth. There are not different kinds of truth that operate by different intellectual rules.

Every mode of thinking requires belief in basic presuppositions. Science, in this respect, is no different than theology…

Please do take the time to read his entire article…and, if you don’t mind a much less graceful related discussion, listen to my "Out of Nothing" sermon (or read it’s sermon notes).

Ultimately, no…Christian…you aren’t a dummy for believing in creation, and scientists are not using a "higher" approach to reason than you…well…unless you truly have "blind faith."

But, I would argue, so do many people, including scientists, who believe in macro evolution.

Normative Versus Descriptive

Posted on January 11, 2014January 11, 2014 by Alan

As I continue my blessed journey through all 66 books in the Bible, I ran into what I thought could be a humorous example of why you want to make sure whether what you are reading is normative or descriptive.

What is normative? Per my Mac’s dictionary:

normative |ˈnôrmətiv|
adjective formal
establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard or norm, esp. of behavior: negative sanctions to enforce normative behavior.

How about descriptive? Same dictionary:

descriptive |diˈskriptiv|
adjective
…
2 describing or classifying without expressing feelings or judging.

The Bible is literature in many forms (e.g. poetry, narrative); sometimes its message is telling us what to do (normative)…and sometimes it’s just describing what someone did (descriptive). (Normative versus descriptive or prescriptive versus descriptive.)

Keeping that in mind, can you imagine how putting this in the wrong category would lead to a heap ‘o trouble?: 🙂

When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!” Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” Then she said, “Here is my servant Bilhah; go in to her, so that she may give birth on my behalf, that even I may have children through her.” So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob went in to her. And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then Rachel said, “God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son.” Therefore she called his name Dan. Rachel’s servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed.” So she called his name Naphtali.

When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Then Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. And Leah said, “Good fortune has come!” so she called his name Gad. Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. And Leah said, “Happy am I! For women have called me happy.” So she called his name Asher (Genesis 30:1-13, English Standard Version).

If those verses are normative, then “barren” women should furnish someone (preferably cute) to provide children in their place, right? (Somehow I can’t imagine my wife Michelle buying that.) The Bible is just describing Rachel, Jacob, Bilhah, Leah, and Zilpah’s behavior…it is not telling us to emulate it. For that matter, we aren’t even supposed to follow their example by recreating the original polygamous state (Jacob having both Leah and Rachel as wives).

But, I will admit, I did think of having a little fun with Michelle and suggesting that if she was a Bible-believing woman she should…err…

It would have been worth the well-deserved slap. 🙂

P.S. Bonus video…Tim Hawkin’s “Things You Don’t Say to Your Wife”:

Continue reading “Normative Versus Descriptive”