A Piece of the Continent

Hebrew Mnemonics

2009-03-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

As I've been learning Hebrew over the past semesters, the discouraging lack of cognates with English has made Hebrew vocabulary much more difficult to learn than Greek vocabulary. Most of the other students in my classes have experienced the same difficulty, and I suspect many others who weren't in my classes have, too. I was amused almost daily by the creativity of the students' methods of remembering these words.

In order to preserve some of the best mnemonics, I typed some of them up, using mostly the ones that worked best (or were the funniest) for me or for my friends. Since I began working on collecting as many as I can, I've found this site by Ghil'ad Zuckermann, an Associate Professor in the field at Cambridge, which contains a short but helpful list of nice, quirky mnemonics, but for apparently modern Hebrew.

My goal is to have a catchy mnemonic for every word that occurs in the Hebrew Bible 50 times or more, so, on to the reason for this post:

if you are taking or have taken Hebrew and have a great mnemonic for a vocabulary item, put it in the comments. I'll collect them and send all of the contributors a copy. I'm working through them in order of frequency, and I've got about 80 solid mnemonics. Send away!

Free Bible

2009-02-26T04:18:00.000-08:00

I'm really hoping I win this drawing from a great blog by David Porter called "A Boomer in the Pew", which I just found through Justin Taylor's blog and enjoyed looking over. Check it out!

Marriage Supper

2008-06-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

Having recently just eaten a wedding supper and shared some great fellowship with believers I just met, I was reminded that the one-flesh union is not the only aspect of marriage that points to Christ and the church:

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
8 it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

Why I'd Rather Watch the Masters Than the World Series, Any Day...

2008-04-08T08:54:00.001-07:00

1. The Masters is actually a world tournament, without the pretentiousness of the title, unlike the World Series, in which only U.S. teams can play.
2. In the Masters, your team (or player) has a chance to win every year. Every Masters includes the entire field of the best players in the world, so every viewer has a player for whom to cheer. What will all those Braves or Yankees fans do when the Royals are playing the Phillies in the Series? They'll watch, but it won't be really interesting except for fans of those teams.
3. I'm still living in a dream world where no golfers use steroids, at least not that we hear about...
4. I'm from Georgia.
5. You're guaranteed Sunday afternoon drama; in the WS, it could be over in 4, 5, 6, or 7 games, you never know.
6. I don't care what they say, it's harder to putt at Augusta on Sunday with $1 million on the line than to hit a Major League fastball.

Biblical Theology at Easter

2008-04-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

I was struck today by the end of Luke 24. The scene begins with two men walking down the street, discussing all of the wild events of the previous few days. It was Easter, but these two men didn't know it yet. Imagine getting a lesson in preaching Christ from the Old Testament from Christ! Jesus was walking with them and explaining himself from the Old Testament! Luke 24 goes on to record that, once they finally realized who they had been talking with, they remembered that “[their] hearts burned within [them]” when he “opened to [them] the Scriptures.” Not to mention the hermeneutical implications of this passage, which are many and powerful, at the very least, we can say that Jesus preached himself from the Old Testament to these men, and it made sens,e and it moved their emotions. When I read a proverb from the wisdom books, I pray that the Lord would make my heart “burn within” me at the majesty of the One Wise Man into whose image I am being conformed, and who exemplified all of the wisdom of Solomon. I pray that I will feel the weight of the law crushing me with its demands and that I will feel the lightness of the yolk of the One who became the curse of the law for me. May I eagerly anticipate the return of Him through whom everything was created, and who will recreate and redeem it. I pray the Lord would make me know and feel the depths of Biblical Theology.

2008-03-23T22:38:00.001-07:00

According to Mr. Lewis,

my grubby, happy hands in
mud, and my insistence
that the pies perpetually be
plopped on the grass,
sloppy and with no straw in them,
and especially my muddy smile there

(beyond the rocks
the tide rushes in
tickles a million multi-colored toes, laughing
just out of earshot)

Exodus 2:23-25

2008-02-29T06:26:00.000-08:00

In these three verses, Israel “groans” under the heavy burden of slavery in Egypt and cries out to God. Having read Exodus before and knowing the story beforehand in some ways has blinded me to some of the force of some passages (like this one) in this very familiar section in a very familiar book. God hears the groans of the enslaved and oppressed Israelites and decides to act. However, his action is not motivated by his impression of their extraordinary piety or intense suffering while enslaved there, though he is compassionate to them. He acts because he “remembers his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” One of the most unbelievable parts of the story of redemption is that God has condescended to bind himself to a people in covenant. On what grounds did Israel approach God with their grievances about their situation? On the grounds of a possibly little-remembered (except by God) covenant that God had made with their distant ancestors about whom they heard wonderful stories. Ultimately, this covenant is the way that we too approach God. God still listens to the groans of his sinful, helpless people because of his covenant-faithfulness to the True Israel, the One who deserves God’s faithfulness, and in whom we gain access to the blessings of the covenant by which Israel (now and then) is redeemed from her slavery.

Just Another Day at the Office

2008-02-27T19:32:00.000-08:00

I work part-time as an English tutor with a supplemental education company, and every week, I see 15-20 grade-school aged children to help them with reading problems, standardized test preparation, or homework and study skills. Often, because of the many Catholic private schools in the area, I am in the position of helping a Middle School student study for his or her required “Religion” class. A few of these children are from Catholic families, but most are from nominally Christian homes and rarely attend church or mass. I often am able to share the gospel in considerable depth in this environment because the students are generally interested to know that, though I am in seminary and have some specialized knowledge in the field of “religion,” I am not Catholic and I even have a wife! Often, differences between the beliefs of the Protestant and Roman Catholic branches of Christianity are the jumping-off points for conversations about the gospel. Following is one of the more interesting conversations of the past few weeks...
"Andy" is one of my regular students, a sixth-grader. Our normal focus is on his writing skills and grammar, but last Friday we had a conversation during which I was able to clearly explain the gospel and clear up some of the misconceptions he had about God and his relationship to people. Andy was required to memorize the Decalogue for his Religion course, and he asked me to help him create a memory aid for the task. I couldn’t teach him the one I learned in Sunday School because the version he was required to learn was modified slightly. When he found out that I knew them already, he remembered that I had told him that I was in Seminary studying to be a minister, and asked, “If you’re going to be a priest, how can you be married?”
“Well,” I said, “I’m not actually going to be a priest. I’m going to be a pastor, and that’s a different thing than a priest.” Andy is usually one of the more rebellious of my students, even for his age, but he seemed attentive at this point, so, since part of his religion test was to know some of the differences between Catholicism and “Fundamentalism,” as the false dichotomy was stated in his textbook, I took the opportunity to advance the conversation.
“What’s the difference? Do you not believe in God or something?” he asked.
“No, no, no. I believe in God,” I said. “I’m just not Catholic. I’m what’s called a Protestant. We’re Christians, too, we just hold a few different beliefs than Catholics do.”
He had heard of Christians who weren’t Catholic, but he said, “My teacher said that Fundamentalists believe every word of the Bible literally. Is that you?” I told him that I did believe that the Bible was literally true and that it was God’s way of speaking to us about how we can come to know Him. Then, he asked the obvious next question.
“What does it say, that we’re all going to Hell?”
“It says that, since people all sin, or do things that are against God’s law, yes, we all deserve to go to Hell. But that’s not all it says. It also says that, since the very first person, Adam, sinned, God has had a plan to fix the world from the mess we made of it. He made a way that, even though we deserve Hell, we don’t have to go there when we die. He made a way for us to be with Him instead, as if we hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“Is that why we go to confession?” he asked, “Because I haven’t been since last year. I always forget all the stuff I’ve done.”
“Well,” I said, “you really don’t need a priest to confess your sins to God for you. You can do it yourself. Because Jesus took the punishment for our sin – that’s why he died – we can speak directly to God about our sin, and he will forgive us if we believe and trust Jesus.”
“Do you have to confess every single thing?”
“Of course, you can never specifically confess every single thing you’ve ever done, and God doesn’t expect you to. Jesus didn’t just die; he also lived a perfect life and, after he died, he was raised from the dead – that’s why we celebrate Easter. If you believe, God will make a trade with you. He will give you credit for all the good that Jesus did and blame Jesus for all the bad you’ve done. Since we can obviously never confess all of our sins, and since we can never become perfect and never earn our way to heaven by being good (because only perfect is good enough), we have to believe and trust that God will make that trade when we ask him to have mercy on us.”
He still seemed interested, and he asked me if that meant that we then had to be perfect for the rest of our lives. I explained to him about repentance and that the “trade” was done once and for all, and that when God does that to us, He also gives us new ways of thinking and acting. We want to please him and become more like Jesus. He nodded his head in approval but said that it all sounded “pretty weird.” When I asked him after our tutoring session if he wanted to know more about what we had talked about, he said that he would “think about it.” He seemed uncomfortable with talking any more, and his mother was waiting in the parking lot.
I see Andy every Wednesday and Friday, so I plan to find ways to raise the subject in subsequent sessions that will be faithful both to my desire for him to know the Lord and to my responsibility to use the time his parents bought to tutor him in Reading and Writing. He is my last student on Wednesdays, so I’m praying for other opportunities to follow up on our conversation in the time after our session.

Q: Theology or Biblical Studies?

2008-01-24T22:15:00.000-08:00

Before I got to seminary (or before I began reading for seminary), I thought that Theology and Biblical Studies were the same thing. I was mistaken. There seems to be a difference between the two that I'm not sure I understand. For example, my Greek professor (a "Biblical Scholar") also teaches New Testament Surveys and Exegesis Courses, both of which discuss the theology of the New Testament in varying degrees of intensity. However, he doesn't teach Theology courses, and the same guys that teach the Exegesis courses don't teach the Hermeneutics courses. Those are taught by the "Theologians," not to be confused with the aforementioned "Biblical Scholars." Of course, Systematic Theology is taught by the Theology guys, not the Biblical Studies guys. So, guess who teaches the course called "New Testament Theology": it's not the "Theologians," but the "Biblical Scholars." (My head is spinning.) So, who would teach a course on Biblical Theology?

In all seriousness, is a distinction between "Biblical Studies" and "Theology" helpful? Where did it come from?

Question #7

2008-01-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

Given our doctrine of scripture, are we saying that Paul's theology when he died (that is, when it was most mature) was perfect? If not, how does this affect NT scholarship that tries to establish a "Pauline Theology" (meaning Paul's personal theology)? Can we assume that his personal theology as a whole was as perfect as that presented in his letters? For example, were all of his sermons without error? (We know Peter erred, at least in application.)

Spring '08

2008-01-17T11:48:00.000-08:00

It's crazy right now, but here are the classes I'm taking this Spring:

Greek Syntax and Exegesis- Dr. Pennington
Contemporary Theology- Dr. Wellum
Intro to Biblical Counseling- Dr. Scott
Personal Spiritual Disciplines- Dr. Whitney

Christmas Books

2007-12-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

My wife raided my Amazon wishlist for Christmas this year!

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

Up much too late (my explanation for watching CSPAN2), I just finished watching Christopher Hitchens mock a poor Catholic apologist for his inability to account for the Christian proposition that people are spiritually "dead" from the beginning and that God commands them, in that state, to "decide to make themselves well." What a ridiculous concept, says Hitchens, that dead men can resolve to raise themselves. I agree.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2)

Nothing New Under the Sun?

2007-10-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

Is there such a thing as creative theology?

Lying with the Elements

2007-09-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

Sinfully, I am often taken off guard by passages in Paul that warn of real, earthly, temporal consequences of sin. For example, what exactly is meant by 1 Cor. 11:30? What exactly is the "sin behind the sin" of wrongly (without judging the body) eating the Lord's Supper? Is it just simply disobedience, which is, of course, sufficient? Those Corinthians who had died and those "weak and ill" folks who had taken the Supper wrongly were obviously being judged by God, but, for the sake of inquiry, what harm are they causing by just eating bread and drinking wine when they're not supposed to? Why did God choose this sin to punish in a special, more direct and temporal way?

I'm going to try to figure this out some, then I'll be back.

New Students (like me)

2007-08-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I heard a great line from a fellow new student that sums up pretty well the feeling of coming to a new school and not knowing many people:

(I walk past a guy I met in a class who's sitting next to another guy contentedly in a lawn chair, not saying anything, listening to the outdoor music.)

Me: Hey, we've got a class together!

Him: Yeah! It's Paul, right?

Me: Yeah- so, is this your roommate? (referring to his buddy)

(they laugh and jab each other in the ribs)

Him: Nah, we're just from the same state!

The Conundrum of the Church Search

2007-08-10T20:49:00.001-07:00

It's not like shopping for a good pair of jeans, it's not like picking out the best onion at the grocery store, and it's not like interviewing for a job or interviewing someone for a job. It's more like a finger looking for the hand it belongs to. Wierd.

Birthday Books (from my wife and in-laws)

2007-07-21T08:01:00.001-07:00

Thanks to my beautiful wife and generous in-laws, I've got some reading to do this weekend!

On Beginning the "Strange Life": Church Search

2007-07-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

One of the things I dislike the most about moving away from one city to another one is finding a church. Someone told me that Louisville is both the northernmost southern city and the southernmost northern city. The fact that there is a church almost on every corner in the city is a testament to the truth of the former description (the scarcity of Cracker Barrel a testament to the latter).

When Ashley and I decided to move to the city to begin at SBTS, we immediately began looking up churches in the area, quickly confirming my suspicion that Louisville would have an abundance of apparently Bible-believing, even openly "Reformed," Baptist churches for us to visit.

I think we're now six weeks into the process and I hate it. It feels cold and wrong, like an audition, but I don't know any other way to do it than the way we are. The importance of active, meaningful membership in a true church demands that we be careful, thoughtful, and prayerful about finding the church that will shepherd us through the formative years of seminary training. I still don't like the process. There are so many churches to visit that it almost requires a double-elimination bracket. Summer Sunday after summer Sunday (when some churches are running a "reduced program schedule"), we Google the address of another church on our list and walk in, and, not knowing anyone, attend the worship service, wondering what the announcements are about and if this particular service is indicative of the regular practice of the church. Are we getting a fair picture of what the church is like on this one visit? Are we getting to know the community, how we can contribute? I doubt it.

Of course, the main priorities (biblical, Christocentric, expository preaching; orthodox doctrine; biblical ecclesiology; missional/evangelistic intentionality; and thoughtful, reverent, and evangelistic worship) are non-negotiable, but what now? We've found some great, biblical churches in our visiting and we've gotten to the point where we'll be making a decision based on secondary criteria like the distance of the church from our home, the size of the church, the diversity of the members, etc. Will we take the advice of some and avoid a church with lots of seminary folks? Will we take advantage of the opportunity to live and worship in a community with believers who are in a similar situation to ours? I'm glad that the Lord has this (and everything else) under His perfect control and will lead us to the local church where we will most glorify Him in worship and service. However, I still don't like the process, and it's definitely been the strangest part of our new "Strange Life."

Beginning the "Strange Life": Look At All the Books!

2007-07-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

Oh, no. It's turning into a "series."

In a phrase that my college roommate swore was coined by Edwin McCain, "There is honor among thieves." Well, having seen the libraries of a few of those with whom I will share a seminary campus, I must say that there is also honor among those covetous of books.

I'm a tools person. Ask my wife. I want the tools, man. Based on my present self-diagnosis that my personal library is severely anemic, I'm afraid that seminary life won't be any different. In Athens, GA, from whence I came to this land flowing with Owen and Goldsworthy, I could confidently count on that copy of the IVP Dictionary of Biblical Theology to be right where I left it in the local Borders, usually with my bookmark still in it. Not much demand. The (sing.) Athens, GA Christian bookstore was a place where the grips of Left Behind and Mr. Osteen were strong, stubborn, and choking.

In contrast, once I arrived in Louisville to reconnoiter the seminary this spring, I felt what it must feel like to see a real Picasso after studying a print (or a Monergism.com thumbnail) for a while. "Whoa," I would say to myself sometime during the third browsing hour at the SBTS LifeWay store, "Ladd's NT theology is a lot thicker than I imagined!" My wife, fellow book-lover, realist, lovingly convinced me that the tour of campus would be much more helpful with the guide and that Warfield was not a necessity that particular afternoon, so we left with very little damage (just a copy of The Bruised Reed, not bad).

Not that this is anywhere close to the most important unanswered question I have about starting seminary, but: how is one supposed to read all these great (and, to me, newly available) books with so little time and without neglect of that Primary One?

Seriously, I'm sure that handling the budgetary gymnastics of affording required books for class (not to mention those little extra ones) is difficult, as is managing one's reading time, family time, prayer time, play time, and work time. So, what am I going to do with all these books baiting me here in Louisville? I should probably read more of the ones that I already have, to be honest, but where's the "honor" in that?

On Beginning the "Strange Life"

2007-06-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, Owen Strachan of consumed wrote an interesting and helpful series of posts called "The Strange Lives of Seminarians." I read these with special interest and, at times, a feeling of growing trepidation, because I 'm about two months away from officially being "oriented" to this "Strange Life." The internet is surprising pregnant with advice for incoming seminarians, ranging from which churches to visit, and which professors to take and which to avoid, to what to wear to class and how many questions to ask per semester without getting annoying. (Most of) these are things I need to know. Keep it coming, please, thank you!

Some questions, pt.4

2007-06-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Since the craziness of Ashley's and my moving to Louisville, KY, getting jobs, registering for class, and finding the nearest grocery store is over, it's time to post another question I've been thinking about. That is, if I haven't already lost my modest readership...

6. In what way has, per Mark 9:1 (and Matthew 16:28, Luke 9:27) the Kingdom already come in power? I highlight the Mark verse because it adds "in power," making it more difficult to offer an interpretation that there will be a future, more powerful or more glorious state of the Kingdom. Fire away.

Some questions, pt. 3

2007-05-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

5. If we hold to Sola Fide, that people are saved only through faith in Jesus, apart from but evidenced by good works, can we also hold, as credo-baptists, that those who die in infancy are saved in every case? This is, of course, rightly an emotional issue, but it addresses important implications of our doctrines of salvation and original sin.

It's my understanding that credo-baptists (of which I am one) don't recognize the ability of infants to exercise saving faith. Yet, the most common evangelical response (that I've heard) to the question of infant salvation is that all babies are saved who die in infancy, sometimes with reference to an "age of accountability," sometimes without such a reference. The problem I see with both of those answers, (which are really the same answer, as far as I've heard), is that they both neglect to explain how such an infant, who is clearly affected by and is guilty of sin in Adam (Gen. 6:5, Rom. 5:12), is made right with God in the absence of the exercise of saving faith.

I've made a point of emphasizing the exercise of saving faith as that which we understand not to be present in infants. I did this because we are told to use the fruits of a professed or assumed believer to judge the validity of their profession (or, in this case, our assumption) of faith.

So, will we assume that all (or some, elect) infants have faith (albeit apart from the hearing and understanding of the Word?) and are just unable to give evidence, all being elect and therefore recipients of the gift of saving faith? Or, will we hold a doctrine of an "age of accountability" that effectively negates the effects of the fall on infants, or provides a way to redemption apart from saving faith?

Some things are simply beyond what God has chosen to reveal to us. This question may fall into that category. I'm just asking in case it doesn't, and in order to get us thinking about the consequences of our ideas. Please, fire away!

Living Theologically

2007-04-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

My pastor, David King, who gives generously of his time to meet with me for breakfast on the occasional Thursday morning, once remarked that, when attempting to prepare a sermon, the hardest part is often not the interpretation of the text or discerning its main point. Often, he said, the hardest part is the presentation of clear application of the text to the lives of the hearers, to help them know how to also be doers. In my limited experience with preparing and preaching sermons, I've especially experienced this when dealing with texts that present complicated theological arguments without offering any immediate practical application.
Reading a sermon by John Piper on one of these passages, Galatians 3:15-18, I was struck by his response to the lack of immediate practical or moral application in the text. Before even jumping into the exposition, he warns his congregation not to expect a spiritual or moral "pep pill" from the text, but to expect an opportunity to correct and hone the "theological foundation" of their lives. "That is, if we even have such a foundation in the first place," I thought.

Is our system of practice and morality based only on the portions of the Bible to which we feel an immediate emotional response or on those that give specific, step-by-step instructions about how to handle a given situation, neglecting all others? Or do we live our lives based on what the whole of scripture leads us to believe about God and all that he says about his relationship to us? Is this the basis for our behavior and decision making? If we don't have such a "theological foundation" for living our lives, much of the Bible will seem unapplicable to us. If pastors don't work to encourage their people to live theologically, they'll have a hard time bringing out the true application of rich texts like the above one.

As Christians who have recieved a great inheritance in Christ, we should make an attempt at understanding the biblical texts that explain how God saved us. Of course, this isn't to say that everyone must be a theology expert or fluent in Biblical languages, but we shouldn't be afraid to expect our hearers to dig into the technical passages of scripture, to really think about what it means to be an heir of the Abrahamic promise, to be justified by faith alone on the basis of Christ's merit. If we only look to the Bible for a just quick spiritual pick-me-up, or to our pulpits for a practical self-help lecture, we will be dissappointed with much of what the Bible actually offers us for life application, which is a rich understanding of the relationship we have been granted with God through Jesus, in whom we do live and move and exist.

Some questions, pt. 2

2007-03-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

3. Romans 11 confuses me. Specifically, the words "all Israel" and "fullness."

4. The nature of the covenant made at Sinai is also something I wonder about. It certainly seems like a conditional covenant to me, with, in part, Canaan as the covenant blessing, exile as the curse. Of course, it's not that simple, and, in places, the covenant seems to be cut in terms of life and death, not just land or no land. Is this law covenant, which, though Piper doesn't seem to agree, seems to me to be very much conditional, an administration of the overarching construct of God's relationship to his chosen people known as the covenant of grace? If so, how can it be conditional if it deals with more than just Israel's inheritance of the Promised Land?

Some questions pt. 1

2007-03-21T05:56:00.000-07:00

As I've been reading others' blogs lately, I've realized a few things, mainly my gross underqualification to have anyone seriously reading my reflections, theological or otherwise. There's nothing right now that I can say about theology that would contribute anything original to the conversation, so I've resigned myself mostly to shut up and read for a while. That said, I'll just be posting lots of questions for the next bit of time. I've got my opinions about the answers to these questions, but they are comparitively uneducated ones. Please feel free to answer if you are so inclined.
1. Into what covenant (or covenant administration, if you prefer) are we baptizing people? Is baptism an initiation into the covenant of grace in general or into a specific administration of that covenant? Both?
2. Who holds the majority view as it concerns the landscape and nature of bibical covenants, M.G. Kline or O.P. Robertson? They seem to diverge at important points, though they are both quoted approvingly in some of the same books.
More on the way... get excited!

FYI

2007-02-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

"The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness...

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promentory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

-John Donne (Meditation XVII)

When in Rome

2007-02-02T13:31:00.000-08:00

Last weekend my wife and I went on a retreat to Pigeon Forge with our church's college/singles group, even though we're not in college; we like the people. The theme of the weekend was Christ and Culture, which led us to discuss the definition of culture, the moral neutrality or non-neutrality of culture, and our role as the body of Christ living and being influenced by our culture.
Since then, I've been thinking about trying to apply some of the great discussion we had on the retreat to my everday life, and I've run up against a problem that I can't figure out: How do we live the "radical" Christian lifestyle that's demanded of us in a culture (Southern, bible-belt, nominally Christian) that already intellectually knows the gospel and, to an extent, even the radically other-worldly (holy) lifestyle that Jesus demands from us and, yet, doesn't care? It seems to me that, in many important ways, our southern culture is still very much a "churched" culture. For that reason, it's hard for our culture to distinguish between a life that preaches the authentic gospel and a life that preaches the almost-authentic gospel that has so saturated Southern culture.
For example: the normal response of the average southerner to a confrontation with a "radical" Christian life as described on our retreat would not, I'm afraid, be "Wow- s/he really loves Jesus!" Rather, I'm afraid it would be more like "Wow- look who just got back from a church retreat!" or " Wow- look who thinks s/he's a super-Christian." I know that's cynical, but the fact is that, in the South, being "Christian" is, first, almost automatically assumed, and second, is a social virtue. So, because being "Christian" is looked upon so positively by most of society, someone who's genuinely changed by the gospel and is excited about meeting Jesus will often be seen as simply making a social move or just "cleaning up their act." The persecution and resistance doesn't come from those who are overtly hostile to the gospel, but from a culture that sees Christianity as mainly a social thing, a culture that's been on the retreats, a culture that knows when we're being "witnessed to", therefore supiciously condemning as "self-righteous" any disturbingly radical expressions of Christ we see. After all, we live in the Christendom of the South, right? We're all okay.

Married!?

2006-08-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I'll ease into writing fairly often, but don't bet too much on that. I wanted to attempt a short series of posts on my married life, sans gooey-ness. I am sleeping in the same bed with someone whose pajamas match relentlessly. Every single night. I can't relate to that. I don't really have pajamas. I'm in the (hopefully permanent) stage where I look for any possible opportunity to introduce Ashley as my "wife," which makes my chest feel like a tire being pumped full of air. This is the person who has convinced me to maintain clean dishes, clean clothes, and generally acceptable personal hygiene! For anyone who has ever been to 165 Oxford Court in Athens, GA, you know what a feat that is. She didn't do it by convincing, though, I misstyped. She never said, "Hey, slob, clean up your act!" She's just very, very easy to live with and I realized that things would run a lot more smoothly if I was too. Great people are like that, and so is God; they make you a better person by making you want to be a better person.

On the Declaration of Independence and Jonathan Edwards

2006-01-23T20:07:00.000-08:00

After having read the Declaration of Independence out of boredom and procrastinative curiosity at CUPS tonight, I'm inspired toward using more precise language to express my ideas. Keeping this resolution would solve some problems, I think, as well as simply improving my accuracy in conversation. The English of the Eighteenth century, at least in my head right now, is the English language at its height. Reading the Declaration of Independence felt like reading Jonathan Edwards. The subject addressed by each sentence is incredibly exact and explicit and the writing achieves a kind of scientific quality as well as a kind of poetic beauty, much like good theology and good philosophy, that is, both are painstakingly accurate and breathtakingly beautiful. Long, undulating sentences that are admittedly difficult to take in upon first reading emerge, once carefully studied, as perfectly cut gems focusing a precise beam of light on their subjects. See, I'm even being influenced, as I always am, by the beauty of this vintage of English, and I'm butchering the style. How can I help it? I live in a language full of "stuff" and "and stuff" and "whatever" and "like" and, as a high school friend of mine put it, our conversations rumble with the "distant thunder of approximate words." Read Edwards or Jefferson and hear lightning.

Ashley and Me

2004-01-03T22:30:00.000-08:00