Fatblueman - Live in Japan

Having fun on Youtube these days...

2008-05-12T22:49:00.001+09:00

A new song for you:

Incomplete.

2008-03-19T00:05:00.002+09:00

From an article about Richard Rorty, whose ideas I sometimes like to try and wade through:

But in his zeal to embrace American pragmatism and democracy, Rorty has adopted—perhaps inadvertently at first, but now more intentionally—a new religious faith that gives him the unified picture of the universe he has always longed for. Rorty has come to accept that all competing worldviews are ultimately competing commitments to some orienting faith, and that no conflict between worldviews can be resolved by an appeal to reason or objective standards of truth. At their core, all worldviews require faith and hope.

The return

2008-02-04T20:26:00.001+09:00

Hey folks. I have been busy working on other blog sites because we just finished an album and I am working on getting the word out. So check it all out if you are so inclined...

homepage

Myspace site

Facebook site

Words to ponder from C.S. Lewis

2008-01-31T14:57:00.000+09:00

From the essay "The World's Last Night":

...But there is worse to come. “Say what you like,” we shall be told, “the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.”

It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side. That they stood thus in the mouth of Jesus himself, and were not merely placed thus by the reporter, we surely need not doubt. Unless the reporter were perfectly honest he would never have recorded the confession of ignorance at all; he could have had no motive for doing so except a desire to tell the whole truth. And unless later copyists were equally honest they would never have preserved the (apparently) mistaken prediction about “this generation” after the passage of time had shown the (apparent) mistake. This passage (Mark 13:30-32) and the cry “Why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) together make up the strongest proof that the New Testament is historically reliable. The evangelists have the first great characteristic of honest witnesses: they mention facts which are, at first sight, damaging to their main contention...

A Call to Christian Anarchy

2008-01-12T21:12:00.000+09:00

Ho boy, those two books were at the center of my focus just about ten years ago. But I haven't talked much about them for a long time, gets one too many frowny looks. Here comes round 2??

Jacques Ellul was a brilliant French thinker who saw profound similarities between Anarchism and the view of government espoused by Jesus (and, he argues, the rest of the Bible as well). Of course, the secular anarchists were too optimistic in thinking humans could ever govern themselves. But they were right about the evils of government. Government is ruled by Satan and the rebellious principalities and powers (which, unfortunately, Ellul thinks are mythic symbols of human evil).

The Kingdom Jesus established is anarchistic in that it recognizes God alone as the arche (supreme power). It thus lives free from all other powers (an-arche [anarchy] means without authority). Governments are part of the fallen, oppressed world system that has been done away with in Christ.

In Ellul's estimation, it's not appropriate for Kingdom people to either support or revolt against governments. This gives them too much credit. Rather, following the example of Jesus, we should ignore them as much as possible, put up with them as much as we need to, and stay focused on living out the radical Kingdom. If we do this, then we, like Jesus, will find ourselves revolting against the government (and culture). We are, most fundamentally, called to be non-conformists. Our service to the world is the way our counter-cultural lives expose the invalidity of all forms of government by manifesting the reign of God.

I would add Christi-anarchy by Dave Andrews to the two titles that Greg Boyd mentions in this post.

2007 Pictures

2007-12-31T09:57:00.001+09:00

We made a (very simple) music video!!

2007-12-18T20:34:00.000+09:00

When Will Christ Return

2007-11-19T14:36:00.000+09:00

Hey Graham, sorry to basically repost your entire post over here, but I wanted to keep it here for later. So in case anyone is wondering, all credit to Graham for his excerpt from David Kroll's When Will Christ Return:

Is the coming of Christ on clouds to be taken literally? How is this expression used in scripture? In Isaiah 19:1, in a prophecy concerning Egypt, it is written, “See, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt.” In Psalm 18:9, David, in a psalm of praise to God for deliverance from his enemies, writes, “He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under His feet.” In another psalm of praise, David speaks of God in this manner: “He makes the clouds His chariot and rides on the wings of the wind” (Psalm 104:3). Coming in the clouds, riding on the wings of the wind, like many other expressions concerning the activity of God in the scriptures, are simply expressions of God’s magnitude of power and presence as He intervenes in the affairs of men. These are not literal expressions of how God appears.

...Christ uses an object lesson to demonstrate to His disciples that when they see come to pass all the things He had just predicted; the wars, famines, earthquakes, the gospel going to the world, etc., His coming would be at hand. Christ said just as they would know that summer is near when they see leaves come out on a fig tree, so they would know that the end was about to occur when they see all these events taking place. Christ then dates the events He is discussing by saying that the generation He was addressing would not pass until all the things He was speaking of would come to pass. All “these things” included His return (verse 30). What generation is Christ addressing? To what time was He dating these events?

It must be remembered that Christ is addressing His disciples in the Olivet discourse. He is answering their questions about when the temple will be destroyed and His return will take place. In addressing His disciples, He says to them, “Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.” Christ then makes the statement about their generation not passing until all these things are fulfilled. The “you” Christ is addressing are his disciples. Christ is not addressing us or anyone else. It must be understood that when we read the Olivet discourse, we are reading a record of Christ addressing His disciples. When Christ tells them “when you see all these things,” He is telling them that it is they who will see all these things, not others living thousands of years into the future.

The scriptural evidence strongly indicates that it was the generation that was living during the time of Christ’s ministry that lived to experience the events Christ prophesied. A spiritual return of Christ in judgment, through the vehicle of human armies, is not out of line with other similar events in Scriptural history. The Old Testament is full of accounts of God’s coming in various ways to bring judgment upon nations. Did God physically appear in these events? No, He didn’t. Instead, He appeared through human armies and other natural phenomena to accomplish His purpose.

Every disciple whose writings make up the New Testament addressed their audiences from the perspective that Christ would return during their lifetime. They believed and taught this because of what Christ taught them. The written record of Christ’s teachings strongly point to a first-century return and establishment of the Kingdom. This return was not a physical return. It was a spiritual return whereby Christ facilitated His purpose through the Roman armies. That purpose was to bring judgment upon those refusing to accept Jesus Christ as Messiah and the New Covenant system that He came to establish.

There is no doubt that the death and resurrection of Christ caused the sacrificial system to become obsolete. Through His death and resurrection, Christ became our High Priest. There no longer was a need for the priestly system of the Old Covenant. For Gentiles converting to Christianity, the Christ event was confirmation enough that a new system was being established. For many Jews converting to Christianity, the Old Covenant was still felt to be of significance. This obsolete system did not pass away at the death of Christ. While it no longer held any spiritual significance before God, it nevertheless continued to function physically for another forty years. Those who continued to adhere to this system believed it still to be a viable system and necessary for a proper relationship with God. This included Christian Jews who still wanted to cling to many aspects of the old system. This misplaced adherence to an obsolete system would end only when the means to facilitate this system would be destroyed. This destruction would confirm that the new had replaced the old in its entirety.

Therefore, the establishment of the New Covenant was a gradual process that took place between the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ and His return in the destruction/judgment of A.D. 66 to 73. The Old and New Covenants co-existed during this period of time. The Old Covenant would not be wiped out until the destruction of the temple, which was the centerpiece of that covenant. There is good scriptural evidence for this position.

...The conclusion to this matter is that the last days are past. The New Testament last days were a specific time frame relating to the transition from the Old to the New Covenant. This transition facilitated the movement from death unto life. This transition facilitated the establishment of the spiritual Kingdom and our ability to be reconciled to God and to be given eternal life. As Paul said, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). Paul said that the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. The death and resurrection of Christ provide for the forgiveness of sin and thus facilitate the removal of death. The victory over death has been accomplished through the death, resurrection and return of Christ. The return of Christ is as critical to this process as His death and resurrection. The scriptures clearly show that the victory over death was not complete until the complete removal of the Old Covenant system. This didn’t happen until the destruction of the temple and the judgment upon Israel.

Graham asks, "Are we living in the last days"

2007-11-14T09:20:00.000+09:00

I have had discussions lately about Matthew 24:34 and the problems it poses for what I was raised to believe about what we called the "end times". That particular verse has become a good example for me of the lengths evangelicals are willing to go to make a verse say things it clearly does not, because it doesn't fit with their view of the end times. With that in mind, Graham's post today was an interesting read:

I don't hold very popular views on the end times. That is, I didn't think I did. Around the turn of the Millenium, I wrote my Spurgeons College thesis on the significance of the fall of Jerusalem in AD70. At the time, any one who got into discussion with me on the subject, soon began to look at my like I had two heads.
The 'star' of my disseration was J.S. Russll, who wrote his classic The Parousia in 1878. Russell concluded that Jesus returned, as he had promised, in the events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem. The thing is, this view is becomming more and more acceptable, thanks to the likes of N.T. Wright, Scot McKnight and Tim King...

He then quotes an article by Tim King that goes into detail on why we are living in the first days of the new creation, rather than the last days of the old one. Makes one think.

I am not sucking up, I actually think there is something to this...

2007-10-25T15:23:00.000+09:00

“Women are the peacemakers. The world will not achieve peace without the energy and the work of women.” So writes Dolores Huerta of the United Farmworkers. Gandhi said the same thing in 1947: “Women are the natural messengers of the gospel of nonviolence, if only they will realize their high estate…. It is for American women to show what power women can be in the world. You can become a power for peace by refusing to be carried away by the flood-tide of the pseudo-science glorifying self-indulgence that is engulfing the West today and apply your minds instead to the science of nonviolence…. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with women.”

From Godspace

Who God is gonna use...

2007-09-16T21:24:00.000+09:00

"I had a prof one time... He said, 'Class, you will forget almost everything I will teach you in here, so please remember this: that God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and He has been speaking through asses ever since. So, if God should choose to speak through you, you need not think too highly of yourself. And, if on meeting someone, right away you recognize what they are, listen to them anyway'."

- Rich Mullins

Mr. Moltmann's merry musings....

2007-09-03T13:20:00.001+09:00

A good clarifying quote from Moltmann...

It is the task of the Christian community to remind the civil community unceasingly, through word, act, and presence, of the righteousness and justice of God and of his coming kingdom. The church is not like a sect, separate, and there only for itself. It is there for all human beings, and for nature in this earthly creation. The future for which Christians hope is not the consummation of the church in the downfall of this world, nor the salvation of the redeemed at the world’s end; it is the kingdom of God, which will redeem everything and put all things to rights, the kingdom which will come “on earth as it is in heaven.”

The church has no “public claim” for itself, but only for the cause of the kingdom of God it propounds. Its task is not to “churchify” the world but to prepare the way for the coming kingdom. There is no such thing as a nonpolitical Christianity.

From Ryan through Mike...

Notable point I wanted to jot down...

2007-08-30T21:51:00.000+09:00

In Luke 4, when Jesus is giving the Jubilee proclamation, he quotes Isaiah 61 saying:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor

Interesting, and significant, thinks me, that he leaves out words from Isaiah, breaks in the middle of the sentence in fact, to eliminate "the day of the Lord's vengeance".

Texts of Terror

2007-08-24T10:54:00.000+09:00

In her post "Texts of terror: Dead concubines and war" Christy re-raises those tough questions about how the Old Testament should be viewed:

"The men of Gibeah surrounded the old man’s house, pounding on the doors and demanding that the Levite come out so they could have sex with him. The host went outside and said, “This man is my guest! You can’t do that, but I’m open to compromise. Why don’t you take my virgin daughter and this concubine instead? Do whatever you want to them, just don’t do anything to this man.”

Save it for later...

2007-08-12T09:23:00.000+09:00

I wanted to save this post from Graham, regarding tragedy and how we view God:

It seems that John Piper is up to his old tricks.
If you've read this blog for a while you will remember me regretting how Piper always seems to respond to major catasrophe's with, "The Lord did it!" He did it after Beslan. He did it after the Tsunami. He did it following New Orleans. And he's done it again, this time regarding the collapse of the bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.
Thankfully, John Piper does not hold to that most spiteful form of Calvinism that would say that people deserve whatever happens to them, as it is a reflection of their own sin. In fact, he would go out of his way to denounce such nonsense. No, this disaster has not come upon you because of anything that you did or didn't do. It's happened because God wanted it to! Or, in the words of Piper to his 11-year old daugher, 'God had a purpose for not holding up that bridge, knowing all that would happen, and he is infinitely wise in all that he wills.'
It is not so much the theology here that bothers me, as much as the pastoral response. (Though, of course, the latter is grounded in the fomer.) The fact that Piper seems to respond to every event of this kind with a stoic, "The Lord willed it", rather than a Biblical, "Why, God?!" is what really concerns me.
The meaning of the collapse of this bridge is that John Piper is a sinner and should repent or forfeit his life forever. That means I should turn from the silly preoccupations of my life and focus my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection on God and embrace Jesus Christ as my only hope for the forgiveness of my sins and for the hope of eternal life. That is God’s message in the collapse of this bridge. That is his most merciful message: there is still time to turn from sin and unbelief and destruction for those of us who live. If we could see the eternal calamity from which he is offering escape we would hear this as the most precious message in the world.
In other words, rather than mourning over the loss and pain involved, we should recognise this as God's great altar call. He is willing to wreck your life in order to save your wicked soul!
How can he so easily discount people's lives - silly or otherwise? Why isn't he teaching his flock to lament? Why is he so challenged by the horror of these disasters that he has to hide behind an arbitrary and unquestionnable divine will?
The answer is that Piper has been well-schooled in the theology of Jonathan Edwards. I can understand the appeal, because I have been there. I preached this same God for over a decade. And, to this day, it was no great theological argument that swayed me. It was, rather, the humanity of Christ. I simply noticed that the impassible God I spoke of looked nothing like Jesus Christ whatsoever. And I wonder if its that thought - and the lack of anything like that humanity - that so troubles me about Piper's (repeated) response.

Again, just something I wanted to save for later...

2007-08-04T15:53:00.000+09:00

From a guy named "Rev" in Oz:

Dave Andrews hosted the morning session on Saturday, and it was the best message on the Sermon on the mount that I have ever heard.

He started talking about judging, and showed how we actually are to judge both ourselves and the actions of others, but doing so realizing we will be judged by the same measure. And then began to unpack the sermon on the mount Matthew 5-7 as an ethical framework for how we are to live in the kingdom of God.

The problem with so much of how we have interpreted this sermon, is based on an incorrect reading of the text. This incorrect reading has made Jesus' teaching here, seem impractical, and therefore must be talking about heaven, or some spiritual ideal. However Dave showed us very convincingly that a proper reading of the text will help us to understand how we are to live in a redemptive way.

In the incorrect reading we see Jesus contrast the old way, (the law and tradition), with the new way (Jesus' more complete teaching). But this is where we wind up in trouble as it seems impractical. ie you have heard it said do not murder (old way) but I say if you are angry with your brother, or call him names, you are still in danger of judgement (new way). So this seems completely impractical, how are we to not be angry or have disagreements with our brothers. Those of us who live in close community know exactly how impossible this seems.

But Dave shows us that this is not the way to understand this teaching, it is not the old way versus the new way, but is rather laid out this way: The old way

The repeating cycles that even adherence to the old way doesn't fix

directives for living in a redeemed world.

So we have the old way: Do not murder

But then Jesus points out: But even if you don't murder, you still have anger, and hatred and unredeemed relationships, so the root of the problem doesn't get dealt with.

so

Jesus instructions for how to live: If you are offering your religious duties and realize that you and your brother or sister are in conflict, forget your worship for now, go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then be reconciled with God.

Or

Do not commit adultery

but

burning with lust doesn't allow us to live a life transformed

so

remove yourself from temptation

Now this was a very quick para phrase of what Dave explained, so if I did damage to the integrity of the message, I welcome correction. And please feel free to join in some conversation over this. Dave also talked about how important the beatitudes are and suggested it might be the stimulus for a renewal movement in our own lives. You can learn more at wecan.be

rev

Donald Miller on Discipleship

2007-07-23T12:52:00.000+09:00

Discipleship is waking up every few days and saying "Wow, I was really wrong about that." Isn't it? That's what's happening to everyone who follows Jesus. So if we're are waking up every couple days and saying, "Yep, I am still right!", you are probably not following God very well...

- Donald Miller in a lecture at Seattle Pacific University

One of those quotes I wanted to save for later...

2007-06-19T14:56:00.000+09:00

From an article by Timothy Luke Johnson, via Eliot...

Our situation vis-à-vis the authority of Scripture is not unlike that of abolitionists in nineteenth-century America. During the 1850s, arguments raged over the morality of slave-holding, and the exegesis of Scripture played a key role in those debates. The exegetical battles were one-sided: all abolitionists could point to was Galatians 3:28 and the Letter of Philemon, while slave owners had the rest of the Old and New Testaments, which gave every indication that slaveholding was a legitimate, indeed God-ordained social arrangement, one to which neither Moses nor Jesus nor Paul raised a fundamental objection. So how is it that now, in the early twenty-first century, the authority of the scriptural texts on slavery and the arguments made on their basis appear to all of us, without exception, as completely beside the point and deeply wrong?

The answer is that over time the human experience of slavery and its horror came home to the popular conscience-through personal testimony and direct personal contact, through fiction like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and, of course, through a great Civil War in which ghastly numbers of people gave their lives so that slaves could be seen not as property but as persons. As persons, they could be treated by the same law of love that governed relations among all Christians, and could therefore eventually also realize full civil rights within society. And once that experience of their full humanity and the evil of their bondage reached a stage of critical consciousness, this nation could neither turn back to the practice of slavery nor ever read the Bible in the same way again.

Many of us who stand for the full recognition of gay and lesbian persons within the Christian communion find ourselves in a position similar to that of the early abolitionists-and of the early advocates for women’s full and equal roles in church and society. We are fully aware of the weight of scriptural evidence pointing away from our position, yet place our trust in the power of the living God to reveal as powerfully through personal experience and testimony as through written texts. To justify this trust, we invoke the basic Pauline principle that the Spirit gives life but the letter kills (2 Corinthians 3:6). And if the letter of Scripture cannot find room for the activity of the living God in the transformation of human lives, then trust and obedience must be paid to the living God rather than to the words of Scripture...

Truest thing I ever heard

2007-06-14T22:24:00.000+09:00

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Someday

2007-06-14T17:38:00.000+09:00

You know, someday I will really go after it and makes this a good blog again. Someday...

Are all athletes going to heaven?

2007-05-11T15:36:00.000+09:00

I love how Graham says this:

Imagine gathering together at the Olympic Games with Atheletes from across the Globe. Whilst there, one of the delegates from Tuftenstein strikes up a discussion on the nature of athletics. Some object to the term, considering themselves to be - for example - swimmers, not athletes. Others speak of the particular elements that they would consider essential in running, only to be challenged by Judo competitors, Marksmen, Weight-lifters and Golfers. So, the conversation progresses into the wee hours of the morning as each athlete present seeks to articulate the essence of what it is they share in common.

(Every now and then, an observer will listen-in and express surprise that all of these different people can call themselves athletes yet they can't even agree on what it is that unites them. Some go so far as to argue that this is certain evidence that the Olympic Games do not truly exist, at least not in any meaningful way!)

The trouble is that each competitor is careful to avoid promoting their own perspective (or what it is they love about their sport), out of a desire to find a common answer that all could assent to. Some question whether certain participants should even be there (Rhythmic Gymnastics?!) and others wonder whether it's even appropriate to have this conversation in the absence of the "Special" athletes.

After 3 days of careful deliberations, an answer is finally settled on. Only of finally rejecting the runner-up (which was "we wear lycra"), did everyone manage to agree that the one thing uniting everyone gathered at the Olympic Games was they were Gathered at the Olympic Games!

On the other side of the world, a few kids kicked around a football on a mild Winter afternoon. The didn't have access to a Footbal Pitch, so they used the bit of grass at the edge of the local Superstore's enormous Car Park. No TV Cameras televised their match. No one watching - or playing - the game would have considered any of the children to be Athletes. No one wore lycra. Yet, they managed to do one thing that afternoon that, in three days of discussion, the Olympic Athletes had failed to achieve.

They played the game. And they loved it!

300

2007-03-14T18:57:00.000+09:00

A good post from Eliot on the movie 300 and how a little distance in history changes everyone's perspective:

Judging from what I've read of Frank Miller's admittedly creative work (300, The Dark Knight Returns, Martha Washington, Sin City), his highest ideals are machismo, the Will to Power, and redemptive violence. So the Spartans are a good fit for him. But really, their virtues and practices were pretty close to those of the SS, the slave-owning Confederacy, and the apartheid government in South Africa. What gives me a bad feeling is that a few hundred years from now, when people have forgotten what those regimes were really like, maybe there will be darkly glamorous films glorifying their martial valour? I mean, the SS were fanatical and highly skilled warriors who fought to the death for their country, and they had fashionable uniforms and cool-looking weapons...

Read the whole post...

A quote that I liked and want to think more on later...

2007-03-01T12:09:00.000+09:00

As a tentative starting point for our discussion, I want to suggest that the ancient views of cosmogony were not material to matters of faith as far as the Biblical writers were concerned. This concern is a matter of more recent import particularly as it is presented by the Fundamentalist Christian Right.

For example, a comparison of the Babylonian Enuma Elish which contains an account of the creation of man by the gods with the Biblical account shows that the main concern of the Biblical account is to highlight the creation of mankind and the institution of the Sabbath day as the ultimate goal of the creation. This is intrinsic to Deuteronomic theology which also contrasts sharply with Babylonian theologies on the matter of the high degree of concern that God places upon the members of the community that He brought out of Egypt. The poor, the orphan, the widow and the stranger are the primary focus of the worship. It is how these are treated that determines the blessing that God would bring to Israel. In contrast, the Babylonian systems focused on the care and feeding of the gods as the primary concern. Mankind was created to relieve the lesser gods of the care and feeding requirements placed upon them by the greater gods.

Christian theology since the time of Augustine (4th Century AD) moves in the direction of the Babylonian system rather than in the Deuteronmic. The sacrifice of Christ is the primary means by which an individual is judged to be righteous rather than the concern that he shows for the 'least of these' (Matthew 25:31ff). My greatest objections to the agenda of the Fundamentalist is that the primary error of a substitutionary atonement is only perpetuated as the church is continaully made to focus on matters which are peripheral to the primary intent of the Biblical text. For example, Genesis 1 is treated as a scientific account of the creation in opposition to the accounts of science in general. The message of the text is left on the periphery.

Because God is so I kind, I realize my need of him, rather than because he is so mad at me...

2007-02-12T23:26:00.000+09:00

I am reading Leslie Newbigin lately, best stuff I have read in along time. I just wanted to post one quote from the book "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" that I haven't been able to get out of my head since I read it. It was just one of those things I have personally found to be so true, that when someone states it well, I start to see the theme replayed again and again in daily life. Anyway, the quote:

... Even more repulsive is the idea that in order to communicate the gospel to them one must, as it were, ferret out their hidden sins, show that their goodness is not so good after all, as a precondition for presenting the offer of grace in Christ. It is indeed true that in the presence of the cross we come to know that, whoever we are, we are sinners before the grace of God. But that knowledge is the result, not the precondition of grace. It is in the light of the amazing grace of God in Jesus Christ that I am compelled to say, "God, be merciful to me a sinner".

Chikyuuondanka

2007-02-06T13:18:00.000+09:00

It's 18 degrees outside today. I would feel totally great about that if I hadn't just watched that Al Gore film...

Saturdays with Mark and Tony

2007-02-06T11:49:00.000+09:00

I found this a while ago, and find myself watching it every week. I think Tony Campolo has become for me what Billy Graham was for my Dad. He feels like a bit of an anchor somehow. And Mark Lowry is pretty good for comic relief. Saturdays with Mark and Tony:

Studying Japanese Rambo-style

2007-01-24T21:49:00.000+09:00

I am on holidays from my university job right now, so I have kicked the Japanese learning into full gear because I have all this extra time (and stress from the fact that my five year old is getting better than me at Japanese!).

First I have to tell any of you who are trying to learn anything, well anything involving a lot of memory work, go download Mnemosyne (just google "Mnemosyne project" - apparently if you are a Mac user, Iflash does the same thing). It has caused for me a revolution in Japanese learning. It is basically just electronic flashcards. You make a question and then fill in the answer. But what makes this better than regular flashcards is the learning logarithm that makes the cards you are reviewing reappear according to how well you are learning them. Every card you see you rank from 1 to 5. A 2 means you'll likely see it tomorrow. A few means you might not see it for a few weeks. It just makes memorizing things extremely efficient. I put 2042 of the kanji I am learning in there about and it spits out about 100 every day, which takes me about 10 minutes to do a quick review of. And now I am working on full words, Japanese vocabulary. I set a goal of inputting 100 per day, which may be a little high, but has been ok so far. Mnemosyne makes for very effective use of your learning time. And it's freeware!

But what made me laugh today was a vocabulary coincidence. There are things about learning Japanese that may give some hints into the culture, like the fact that "chigau" can mean "different" or "wrong", or how "kawaru" can mean "change" or "strange", but the one I came across today was just amusing:

The Japanese word for violent? Rambo!

Walter Brueggemann on scarcity and abundance

2006-12-22T19:24:00.000+09:00

I just finished a unit in my class about Environmental sustainability, which has led to me reading a little on the subject from a faith perspective, which has led to feeling more than a little bugged. It is that good kind of bugged, the kind that may lead to positive changes. But I am the kind of guy who won't make any changes until I have listened to both the biggest proponents, and the most vicious critics. So that quest led me today to this article, which seems like a good starting point. It's Walter Brueggemann, and a very worthwhile read. It starts out like this:

The Bible starts out with a liturgy of abundance. Genesis I is a song of praise for God's generosity. It tells how well the world is ordered. It keeps saying, "It is good, it is good, it is good, it is very good." It declares that God blesses -- that is, endows with vitality -- the plants and the animals and the fish and the birds and humankind. And it pictures the creator as saying, "Be fruitful and multiply." In an orgy of fruitfulness, everything in its kind is to multiply the overflowing goodness that pours from God's creator spirit. And as you know, the creation ends in Sabbath. God is so overrun with fruitfulness that God says, "I've got to take a break from all this. I've got to get out of the office.

Christmas Slideshow 2006

2006-12-19T21:21:00.001+09:00

As every year, here is our family review in pictures for 2006.

Canadian magnetic poetry

2006-12-19T09:03:00.000+09:00

This is what happens when you get a Canadian themed magnetic poetry set for Christmas and then your wife abandons you for a night on the town.

Hint: my wife is from Saskatchewan.

Canadian politics

2006-12-04T13:05:00.000+09:00

I was just taking a peek back into politcs at home, something which I used to have great interest in, but, as you might expect, doesn't cross my radar much anymore. It's interesting to me to see that Dion is so hated in Quebec, as he tends toward an "equality of all provinces" type of stance, which is so far from how most Quebeckers see themselves. When I was younger and more idealistic, and really into politics, I always argued for a united Canada; separatists were the enemy. Maybe it is a sign of me getting older and more cynical, but now when I read about that issue, I think, as a native Westerner, the smartest thing for the West to support would be some kind of separation deal with Quebec. Perhaps sovereignty association as it used to be described. Let them keep Canadian passports, currency, share in the military, etc, just no voting in Canadian elections. Because then, boom, all those years of the West feeling powerless and pushed around would be over, because the West would hold the lion's share of the power.

Selfish, eh?

Course, then Manitobans will just get pushed around by Alberta and BC. I think I will return home to start a Manitoban separation movement. Or maybe Manitoba could join Japan, kind of like a holiday paradise home-away-from-home, the way Hawaii is for the Americans. No?

Bad Bono

2006-12-03T21:37:00.000+09:00

I am a pretty big Bono fan, but I guess we should be fair and report the good and the bad. This one is kind of a big question mark. Has anyone heard if Bono has responded at all? I wanna believe he is being forced into it by his cheap-bastard bandmates. Yeah, that's it. I mean, that's well-documented.

Slate Article

The Unjust War Theory

2006-11-30T13:15:00.000+09:00

Claw of the Conciliator is my favorite blog of late. Elliot's interests run close to mine in many areas, and he posts a lot, so it has become a daily read.

Today he was talking about the Just War theory. He wonders:

Has anyone ever been open and shameless enough to formulate an Unjust War doctrine? Maybe Attila The Hun or somebody like that?

And then offers his own Unjust War Theory. I can just hear George Bush when he sees it, "Wut? Kin we do thayt?".

1. War should be your default setting. Don't even think about not making war.
2. Strike first. After all, they're going to attack you eventually. Wouldn't you if you were them?
3. Your army works hard, so they have the right to loot, pillage, rampage, and ravish the defeated men, women, children and livestock.
4. Use as much force as you can muster. Obliterate those jerks.
5. Try to get as much collateral damage in there as you can. Lay waste. Cut down the trees, poison the wells, etc.

Music life

2006-11-15T11:57:00.000+09:00

Ok, I am on a roll. Three posts in a day. But you know me, there may be nothing again for months.

I rarely blog about music now because I am getting my fill of that at my Myspace page. In a lot of ways, I prefer Myspace-ing to blogging because the multimedia aspect is front and center. At first when I started over there, I was annoyed by the songs that would play automatically when I arrived at someone's page. Now, I am ready for it, and I miss it if no song starts playing.

So these days I am slowly learning little bits of Protools, and having fun creaitng really rough copies of my songs in the process. If your interested, a new song is up there now. I'll try to put another up today.

Life at work

2006-11-15T10:33:00.000+09:00

So I don't even know if I blogged about my new job way back in April when I got it. I am working at a university as an English teacher. Working as an English teacher here is pretty standard, but the nice part of this particular teaching job is the university holiday. It is very long. So it is going to provide me with an opportunity to get a Masters Degree while working full time. So I have contacted a prof at Fresno Pacific university about doing a Masters there through distance ed. It woulod require me to be in California for some short stints, but that won't be for a while. I want to focus the research for the degree on two Japanese thinkers who I am particularly interested in: Toyohiko Kagawa (sometimes referred to as the Japanese Mother Theresa) and Kanzo Uchimura (the originator of a movement called the Mukyokai, or Non-church). The prof I contacted has done a great deal of research into Hutterites in North America, and he told me that at some point there had been a Japanese guy, Gan Sakakibara, start a Hutterite colony somewhere north of Tokyo, after been greatly influenced by what he had seen in North American Hutterite colonies. But he hadn't heard any more of what had happened with the colony, so he suggested that I could go find out. And I am very interested in that. There are other groups in Japan experimenting with living in communal situations that I would be interested in tracking down. So it's making look forward to next year.

I had thought I would have my Japanese to a place by now where I could do most of the research and work in Japanese, but that is still a way off. Basic reading is coming along pretty well, though I need to put a lot more time into just rote vocabulary learning. And I am finding out that the guys I want to study are difficult to read even for Japanese students, so I am going to have to really focus my next few holiday periods on Japanese study, which is pretty much what I have been doing thus far anyway. Oh how I wish I had done the language study ten years ago before there were jobs and kids to compete for my time. Let this be a warning to you 20-somethings: get motivated now, or be forced to stuff language study into every nook and cranny of your life later!

This year every day I have a very relaxed commute to work, as the university is in the country only 20 minutes from my place. But next year, almost the entire school is moving to the city. Now, I love the city; I go there as often as I can. But I wonder how I will feel next year about my commute changing from 20 minutes by car to an hour and a bit on the train. The only thing that is making me feel ok about the coming daily commute is that I have been learning to redeem my time on the train by listening to audio books. It is amazing how much you can listen to when you spend even a half hour a day at it. Next year, with over two hours a day, I should be tearing through books!

Blogging on blogging

2006-11-15T09:51:00.000+09:00

I was reading Cheryl's blog and Ron's blog, and they were mentioning critics of blogging and how they write it off with a kind of "why would I want to read about your boring life" kind of attitude. I would guess that really misses the point of blogging for most people. Granted there does seem to be two types of blogging personalities. On one side the bloggers who are constantly checking their stats, and updating religously (not too much and not too little... I have seen posts criticizing both!), basically focused on building as big an audience as possible. Good for them. I wish them well in their quest to have a far-reaching internet personality. But I think I am in the other category. I look at my blog reader and notice that in the last years, I have consisently been eliminating the "big" blogs; it's down to just a few for me. For the great majority of blogs that I read are the personal, most would say boring, musings of people I know in some way or another. I am sure my musings are just as boring, but they are there for my friends. To some extent it would seem obvious that blogging for many replaces the personal letters we used to send by snail mail. Wow. When was the last time I sent a personal letter by snail mail! I should do it just for nostalgia sake.

But reading friends blogs convicts me of just how bad I am at the personal information part. I have always been like that. I remember how frustrated my mother always was when I would come home from school with nothing to tell. She would want to know all the stuff that had happened that day. My sisters would go on and on, telling her all she wanted to know, and she would go away satisfied that she was at least somewhat informed about the lives of her teenagers. My response was usually something along the lines of "nothing much really", which drove her nuts. I think it still does. It is a major event for me to sit down and write an email home about what is going on over here. And even then it takes forever because I don't know what to tell. I guess that is why Dad and I talked so much when I was younger, because we rarely talked about the regular events of life; the focus was almost always religion or politics or history. The problem with that, having a father with opinions as strong as my father's (and I my father's son) is that when you start to disagree on some of the big questions, things can get tense fast. It tends to get really loud, and then really quiet... for long periods of time.

Anyway, the point of all that is to say that I should commit to blogging everyday life more. I am sure I have pledged this before, but I am pledging it again. So if you are one of those critics who finds such things boring and pathetic, this won't be the place for you. Sorry.

The Lord's Table

2006-11-01T11:33:00.000+09:00

I liked this post from Leaving Munster, because it reminded me of something we once believed really strongly, though have forgotten somewhat here in Japan. He talks about gathering together to eat as a very deliberate act for the community of faith:

As you can see, Jesus took these kind of meals very seriously. (Just read the entire chapter of Luke 14.) An open table is a sociological, theological and eschatological statement. It's more than a statment - it is a revelation of God's reality. Being those who seek to follow Christ, how could we not mimic his concrete expression of the hospitality of God?

The funny thing is that rather than being an exceptional activity for eccentic churches, these are the kind of practices that Jesus explicitly calls us to. In fact, there was a point in Church history when if you weren't regularly eating together with other Christians then you weren't considered part of the Church. Call it Communion, Eucharist, Breaking Bread, Agape Feasts... it's the reason why the early Christians gathered. (As well as the meals discussed above, we eat together in the context of worship, teaching and discussion once a fortnight.)

Actually, the Japanese church is quite good at this. For most that I have been in, eating together after the Sunday morning service is a given. But I am thinking that there is a wider application for us as a family that we could embrace once again. Hmmm....

Book Tag

2006-10-23T12:40:00.000+09:00

Wow. As you can see I am in another blog funk. Two, three thoughtless posts per month. Derek tagged for this book thing about two weeks ago and I just saw it today. Not paying much attention.

Anyway, here is my version:

A book that changed my life: A few of them were pretty big; The Upside-down Kingdom, Donald Kraybill; Phillip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace, in tandem; and Christi-anarchy by Dave Andrews.

Books I've read more than once: A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (but only parts, the parts that I find amazing; esp. the orgins of the cosmos part and the quantum physics part - Bryson breaks those big things down in everyday words so that not so bright folk such as myself can grasp a little part)

A book I would want on a desert island: 101 Recipes for Coconuts???

A book that made me laugh: I remember laughing my ass off as a kid while reading the book I Want To Go Home, by Gordon Korman. And that scene in Grapes of Wrath where they try to get Grandpa on the truck to California is pretty funny too.

A book that made my cry: The Bluest Eyes - Toni Morrison

Books I wish had been written: Anything by Jesus Christ. Actually, it is fascinating that he chose to write nothing at all, isn't it? I am sure if he had, it would have read much more like an artsy novel that an instructional manual anyway.

A book I wish had never been written: Parts of 1 Corinthians are really bugging me, but I guess I better not say I wish it had never been written....

Books I am currently reading or have just finished:
An Irresistible Revolution - Shane Claiborne (read)
Witches - Roald Dahl (read)
The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman (read)
The Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar - Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui (reading... possibly forever)
1 Corinthians (reading)
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society - Lesslie Newbigin (reading)
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky (reading)

A book I've been meaning to read:
Christ of the Indian Road - E. Stanley Jones

05262006.jpg

2006-10-05T23:23:00.000+09:00

05262006.jpg
Originally uploaded by fatblueman.

I thought this was a nice shot too...

2006-09-17T10:15:00.000+09:00

DSC00798
Originally uploaded by fatblueman.

This was from on the journey down. At about 6 in the morning. It makes a good desktop background.

Sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji

2006-09-17T10:03:00.000+09:00

Sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji
Originally uploaded by fatblueman.

This is essentially what we climbed up there to get, a picture of the sunrise from the top of Mount Fuji, so I guess I better post it. There were so many people that getting to the front for a good picture was impossible, hence the other hands and cameras. Their inclusion seems somehow fitting though...

On top of Old Fuuuugeeeee

2006-09-17T09:44:00.000+09:00

Three weeks ago me and a friend decided to climb Mount Fuji. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, we went up in the evening, started climbing after midnight, in order to arrive at the top in time to see the sunset. We thought we could do it in under 4 hours, but that goal was rendered impossible by the massive human traffic jam that we hit when we got within 500m of the summit. Only in Japan could you run into a jam of thousands of people at the very top of a mountain. I was surprised to find that climbing down was WAY harder, way more painful than climbing up. I guess working out on stair-climbers and stair-steppers meant that my ascending muscles were well-prepared while my descending muscles were apparently non-exsistent. I was hurting for the next week. Anyway, though I used to mock mountain-climbing as the most useless waste of time, I can now see the attraction. We might try another mountain next summer.

This is what it looks like at the top. Reminded me a little of being in Nepal.

And while I am at it...

2006-09-14T08:52:00.000+09:00

This one too, as well as the comment after it, from Len's page:

"By now it is becoming possible to see that the most unfortunate result of revivalism may not have been its excesses and distortions. The deeper problem is that frontier revivalism could not be one or two of the means used by a developed church to express aspects of its faith and life. Revivalism did not serve a church that knew much more. Instead revivalism itself had to create and sustain the Christian community. And this meant that the church thus created tended to remain fixated around the emotions and the doctrines of its beginnings. The most demonic result is that the success of the movement has tended to limit its descendants to that level of human need which it was designed to satisfy. Its victory acted as a brake on Christian maturity. Churches created by revivals have found it almost impossible to break free from the moods and the ideas appropriate to adolescents."

Delbert Wiens, "From the Village to the City"

And the comment from Eric:

My theological roots are in a denomination influenced and shaped by frontier revivalism; though not Pentecostalism.

While emotion is and was a big part it is not the only element that harms results. The desire to be transformed “instantly,” the lack in subsequent to truly seek God rather than the experience, the tendency toward legalism, anti-intellectualism, the list could go on and on.

It has simply gone the way of every earthly organization and denomination: the fervor of the fathers is lost in the organizations of the children. Compound that with the development of a consumeristic, middle-class society and you have more converging streams of problems.

But, if you look beyond frontier revivalism to the roots in the Wesleyan Revival you will see a strong desire for holiness, social reform, and self-sacrificing growth in grace. I have never really like what frontier revivalism did to my forefathers in the faith, but it seems simplistic, if I understand this quote correctly, to lay the blame solely at the feet of emotionalism (which is the search to relive an experience).

2006-09-14T08:37:00.000+09:00

A month since the last post! Wow! Maybe it is time to declare this thing dead.

No, I restarted this blog primarily to act as a holding tank for ideas I came across on the web, and to today I will continue with that purpose. I don't know if it is cool to re-post somebody's post in its entirety, but I really want to do that with this one.

Just to be perfectly clear credit-wise, this is a post that Len Hjalmarson posted the Resonate Canada blog. And wouldn't you know it, it resonated with me... hehe...

The Canadian House Church Network included the following warning in their recent newsletter. I can't help but feel the response is somewhat gnostic, and typical of a charismatic reaction to an alternative religious movement. I'll add more comments following the quote. The title of the post: "Buddhist Invasion Coming to a City Near You."

"If you are following the news, it's apparent that everywhere the Dalai Lama goes, the visited areas are followed by a period of severe calamity, devastation and destruction (weather, economics, etc.). This has been documented by several Christian ministries in the U.S. and elsewhere. This is due to the activities he and his followers commit in those areas.

"Wherever the Maitreya Project goes (the current Buddhist invasion), they bring ashes from Tibetan monks mixed with other artifacts and extremely vile substances (too graphic to mention in a G-rated email message). These are displayed "culturally," and then, some of the remains are buried in a city or area as a seed to release demonic spiritual activity in that vicinity. Here's what Don Paul Ministries said about the Maitreya Project:

"THE GREAT DECEPTION IS ON and the church is falling under the spell! Churches across america are inviting in the Buddhists and the Tibetan Blood Relics in the name of peace, love and unity! These Blood relics are part of the Dalai Lama's move to unify Buddhism around the world and to build a five hundred foot bronze statue to the Lord Maitreya. This is known as the Maitreya Project.More...

"Richard Geer is endorsing this and they are current trying to raise close to two humdred million dollars out of Beverly Hills and the like for this project in India. This will be for a world wide worship of this Bronze statue built to last 1000 years!

"These Blood Relics that these deceived pastors are inviting into their churches are for the purpose of gaining access to men's hearts worldwide. Then with unity and ONE ACCORD from around the world, these blood relics will be placed in the HEART of this five hundered foot Bronze statue, built to last 1000 years. Re-read Daniel and ask God what He thinks instead of what the popular religious authors tell you!"

** **

I can't dispute the claims about the process that is described. I have no way to know whether those claims are true. So for the moment, let's presume that most of this is accurate. Let's presume the ashes of monks are being carried around the world and deposited .. not unlike what the Roman Catholic church has done for centuries with the bones of martyrs and saints. Let's assume they are going to build a large bronze statue. I won't be bowing to it, but I could care less if they build it.

I question the black and white posture. I think it is based on a gnostic separation of spirit and body. It assumes that prayer is the primary weapon of warfare, and it assumes that we should not be in dialogue with Buddhism, and that Buddhism has nothing to teach Christians. It assumes that idols are real gods (see 1 Cor.8). I think it is primarily a fear based response.

Worse... it may involve some transference. They are bad.. therefore, we are good. Unfortunately, given the rape of the earth in the west, violence against the poor and women (I include some of the divorce stats in this), and our inclination to export terror for our benefit, it could be that the natural disasters we see are God's judgement on "Christian" culture rather than on Buddhists.

Can we learn from other religions? Is there any truth in them? Paul appears to think so, quoting in Acts 17 from a secular poet. In the New Testament book that best reveals the young life of a new and powerful missional movement, do we read any fear between the lines? Do we see Paul and Silas and Timothy interceding all night opposing spiritual forces? Do we read any instruction to do the same?

Instead, we see the Gospel moving forward in power, breaking spiritual lies with the power of the truth. We see Paul battling for the minds and hearts of unbelievers, reasoning with them. And in the rest of the New Testament it is the same... short instruction on spiritual warfare (Eph. 6), and in practice.. love. Love is the great apologetic, and the greatest weapon of warfare. Most of the letters of Paul are instruction on right thinking and right living. "It's better to light a lamp than to curse the darkness."

I can't help but wonder if our hours upon hours of intercession become our excuse not to engage in dialogue with pagans. After all.. it's pretty safe in those prayers meetings with like minded folks. Yet where do we see Jesus -- at meal with unbelievers and sinners. I wonder.. do we have so little confidence in the power of the Gospel? I wonder if our many prayers reflect our doubt more than our faith. I wonder if we are really caught up in fear. We give the devil too much attention.

Am I saying we should not pray? No. I am saying.. pray.. then go, confident in the power of the Holy Spirit who goes before us. Let our love for Jesus be seen in our care for the earth, and our advocacy on behalf of the powerless. Let our love been seen for all these ones.. women and children, the poor, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews.. each follows the light they have, hoping for a clearer Light. And God loves them!

We in the west are quick to protest our righteousness. We are, after all, God's chosen people. Never mind that we have neglected the poor, and stored up great wealth in our barns while so many suffer worldwide. Never mind that we have abused creation for short term profits, leaving an inheritance of destruction to our children. Never mind that we continue our violence against children and our oppression of women with abortion and divorce. Lest we forget, in one New Testament story the religious crowd approach Jesus with a serious complaint against a sinner. She has been caught in the act of adultery. Fully expecting Jesus to do the right thing and condemn her, they are shocked when he points a finger back at them.. the ones who are supposed to inherit the Kingdom! "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

In 1 Cor.8 Paul tells us not to worry about whether food has been sacrificed to idols. Idols are not real.. until they inhabit our hearts.

George Bush a Bono wannabe?

2006-08-09T22:46:00.000+09:00

Anti-stupid Pill??

2006-08-08T18:23:00.000+09:00

Fixes short-term memory loss and improves attentiveness? I think I will be eating these like candy.

Missing home... no football in Japan

2006-07-21T14:43:00.000+09:00

I always get kind of homesick at this time of year, and it is because I keep on listening to Bomber games on CJOB, and this year, I can even purchase the live video on TSN!! In fact, tried it last week, and it was crystal clear with no interruptions. What kind of crazy age do we live in when I can watch Bomber games on my computer in Japan? Weird.

But I didn't buy the video today, I just listened in. And what a mistake that was. I shoulda bought the video. Because that was possibly the weirdest ending I have come across as a football fan. Milt Stegall wins the game on the last play on a 100 yard touchdown reception after everyone thought Kevin Glenn had thrown the game away moments before. Bob Irving explained it as best he could, but I wish I coulda seen it. I'll be checking TSN every 15 minutes for the highlights.

And Tim in Edmonton, if you are reading, hope you're not an Eskimos fan... that'd be rough!

Bono on Grace and Karma and the Old Testament

2006-07-20T23:40:00.000+09:00

I am reading a book called Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas. It is basically just a big long conversation with Bono, and I wanted to record a couple of quotes I found interesting.

Bono: My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love. What does that mean? What it means for me: a study of the life of Christ. Love here describes itself as a child born in straw poverty, the most vulnerable situation of all, without honor. I don't let my religious world get too complicated. I just kind of go: Well, I think I know what God is. God is love, and as much as I respond [sighs] in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that's my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now that's not so easy.

Assayas: What about the God of the Old Testament? He wasn't so "peace and love"?

Bono: There's nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is. I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that's why they're so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you're a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

and a little later...

Bono: I really believe we've moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.

Assayas: Well, that doesn't make it clearer for me.

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.

Assayas: I'd be interested to hear that.

Bono: That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s---. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.

Assayas: The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.

Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there's a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let's face it, you're not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point. It should keep us humbled… . It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.

Assayas: That's a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, even though it's close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has his rank among the world's great thinkers. But Son of God, isn't that farfetched?

Bono: No, it's not farfetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn't allow you that. He doesn't let you off that hook. Christ says: No. I'm not saying I'm a teacher, don't call me teacher. I'm not saying I'm a prophet. I'm saying: "I'm the Messiah." I'm saying: "I am God incarnate." And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet, we can take. You're a bit eccentric. We've had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don't mention the "M" word! Because, you know, we're gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no. I know you're expecting me to come back with an army, and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he's gonna keep saying this. So what you're left with is: either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase. I mean, we're talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. This man was like some of the people we've been talking about earlier. This man was strapping himself to a bomb, and had "King of the Jews" on his head, and, as they were putting him up on the Cross, was going: OK, martyrdom, here we go. Bring on the pain! I can take it. I'm not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me, that's farfetched...

Theology is blasphemy

2006-07-19T22:55:00.000+09:00

That's the thought that keeps bouncing around in my head tonight as I pray. I keep coming back to this quote that I heard in a lecture a while ago:

In a book called Edifying Discourses, one section of which is dedicated to the book of Job, he talks about Job as the personification of faith. And he says that the best thing about Job is that he understands that all theology is blasphemy, which is a very deep thought as well. If it is true that our language will not accommodate the divinity, if it is true that we lack the tools to undertake that job and we occasionally do succumb to the temptation to write and speak and think about theology, perhaps what we are doing is raising our own selves to the status where we can claim to understand God and not only understand him but explain him to other people, Kierkegaard says, nay, if you believe that you have not reached the real pinnacle of religious faith. If you remember the three friends of Job, who try to explain to him some kind of theological account of why evil should enter the world and why he should be punished, And Job insisted to the end that no, none of these accounts are satisfactory, well it turns out that Kirkegaard says if you are a theologian you’re wrong, you are one of those people who was in the stance of Job’s friends. The right stance for the true believer to be in is Job. Don’t curse god and die, take whenever God dishes out because the only stance for the true believer is to be God’s faithful servant. You shall not judge the Lord your God; He doesn’t want your advice...

I think I'm with Kirk. Treating God like a frog to be dissected and mapped out and completely explained - it's arrogant. And it's ignorant; ignorant of an honest perspective on the relationship between God and humanity, i.e. that God is limitless and completely beyond being fully understood by something as small and as finite as a human being.

I am thinking honesty comes in becoming comfortable with the mystery, and including it in healthy doses in any "theolgy" we dare to hold on to. I think about all the discussions about the atonement I have had. Maybe the best thing that can be done when it comes things like that is take all of the views I have heard, know them well, and hold them in tension with each other, understanding that each one holds some aspect of what is actually true, though none of them nails it all down completely. It seems to me that once you start to believe that you have got God's ways and wants all figured out, you won't be listening for him anymore.

And again it makes Jesus only more significant, as he did so little theologizing, beyond declaring that he was the revelation of God. Ironically, he wouldn't even go into details on that, leaving it all fuzzy; not much of a theologian. So then becoming a follower involves not so much getting to know a lot about him, arguments and theories and the like, but rather getting to know him, believing that in delving into the mystery we will find a spirit and a revelation beyond simple theories that is there to guide...

... and then it seems kind of silly to be trying to write about it. Better to just to get back to praying:-)

Do It Yourself

2006-07-15T22:43:00.000+09:00

I bought myself a very basic home-recording setup, and am very slowly learning how to use it. I posted two of my first attempts at self-production over at my Myspace site.

Check them out. They are Hope, and The Big Misunderstanding.

... keep in mind that they are works in progress!

I swear the Japanese are faster and more efficient at everything...

2006-07-14T23:31:00.000+09:00

Mick's Muppets

2006-07-14T07:25:00.000+09:00

Mick is almost two and generally he doesn't watch any tv. Won't sit down and watch for even ten minutes, which is weird because Simon at the same age would watch for hours if you let him. You had to tear him away.

There is one exception for Mickey though. The Muppets. He would watch the Muppets all day every day, but ONLY the Muppets. Anything else and he is mad or disinterested. At any rate, my life is steeped in late 70's pop culture. I currently watch the exact same shows I did when I was my son's age!

And I admit I kind of enjoy it. I have been secretly sneaking back and watching this one all by myself. Cracks me up every time.

Strong Opinion

2006-07-10T16:34:00.000+09:00

Thank God it is over. Soccer is a broken game. What other game could end in that many scoreless ties and still be considered interesting sport. I know I am just a no-attention-span Canadian talkng, but I think they should shrink the field and the number of players. And allow contact. And maybe play it on ice with sticks. And instead of that big ball, a puck would be better.

Yeah, that would be much better.

from Graham's comment space...

2006-07-08T20:55:00.000+09:00

And I've gotta add this, from Graham's comments, where he talks about when people point to all the violence commanded by the God of the Old Testament, as justification for invasion, etc now:

...And, worse, they read things backwards. So, rather than letting Jesus inform our understanding of God (OT or otherwise), they almost smother Jesus by viewing him in the light of the God of the OT. So, if Jesus seems to imply that God is not a God of war, well he can't mean that...

I suspect that part of the trouble has to do with a "flat" Holy book. That is, the Bible is approached like a text-book, with all parts being equal, rather than a film with flashbacks, development, cross-references, irony, self-correction, allusion, fantasy and open endings.

This relates to the second-last point from this post from awhile back.

The absolute center of Christianity

2006-07-08T20:50:00.000+09:00

I had to steal this quote off of Graham's blog in full because that's what I think too...

To me, the absolute center of Christianity is embodied love. In my reading of the Bible and in my experience, that's it...hook, line, and sinker. In Genesis it is God's love embodied in Creation, with every part dependent on every other part for perfect function. When human beings couldn't seem to keep their part of the harmony going, God embodied love more specifically in human form, in the person of Jesus. Jesus thus becomes both the embodiment and the revelation of God's love. Christians consider themselves to be the Body of Christ...those who try to continue to embody God's love in and for the world. If it is not done in love, it is a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. It matters even more than faith, Paul says. When Jesus is asked in Luke 10 what must be done to inherit eternal life, the answer is to love. Love is at the center of Creation, because God is love. Embodied love is at the heart of Christianity because that's who Jesus is. (Anne Robertson)

The Drowning Tax Collector

2006-07-08T20:04:00.000+09:00

Brian, a friend living in the Ukraine, includes this little parable in his description about his summer at a Peacebuilding Summer Institute in Washington:

I heard this as a story about Nasruddin , one of my favourite folk story characters:

A man was drowning amidst a crowd of people. “Give me your hand!”, they shouted but the man ignored them. A wise man asked what the man’s profession was. “A tax collector.” came the response. The wise man ran up to the drowning man and said “Take my hand!”, which the man did and he was saved. The people turned to the wise man in disbelief, who said “Never ask a tax collector to GIVE you anything.”

When The Beatles rock(ed) Japan

2006-07-05T22:19:00.000+09:00

I thought this was an interesting article for us Japan-y types...

The rightwing reactionaries were arriving in their menacing black-and-white trucks, blasting military music. The politicians were shaking their fists and telling people to go to a garbage dump. The police had locked down all entrances to the Imperial Palace grounds. Riot police lined the road leading to Tokyo's Haneda Airport. Girls stood in the streets crying.

The Fab Four arrive at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on June 29, 1966 (top) wearing JAL-issued happi jackets. The day after, amid tight security (bottom top), they played their first concert at Nippon Budokan Hall. Those with good eyes may spot the souvenir near John Lennon's feet on the album cover that he reportedly bought when he dodged his minders and went shopping in Tokyo. KYODO PHOTOS

The fight for political control centered on Nippon Budokan, the two-year-old martial arts hall beside the Imperial Palace grounds. The political stakes were high. There were 35,000 police deployed over the course of the four-day struggle.

Military coup? No. The Beatles in concert.

Bono Bites Back

2006-07-03T21:03:00.000+09:00

I just found and read through this interview with Bono from 1989, in that in-between period when Rattle and Hum was done, and Achtung Baby was in its dream stages. It is a long but interesting interview, and I will say he says somethings that surprised me, he is fairly raw and open. For people, like me, who are at times are fanatically interested in U2, who would damn near have to call Bono the most significant spiritual influence of their college days, it is an interesting read...

link

I really love what the internet does for my ability to find music I like...

2006-06-20T13:59:00.000+09:00

I mean, we used to be stuck listening to whatever was on the radio. Those with the most money and influence, and often, taste in music that I don't share, deciding what we could hear. But this is the age of me listening to music I really like. Recently, it has been the ones I mentioned before, The Weepies and The New Pornographers, that I have been playing to death. Yesterday I found another song that I must have played 20 times already. Go check her out at Myspace. Her name is Regina Spektor, and the song is called Fidelity.

Apparently this is what happens when you bet against Japan in World Cup soccer...

2006-06-19T15:53:00.000+09:00

... you get rewarded handsomely. Every student bought me a coke. If Japan had won, it would have been me buying 20 cokes. However, for the sake of goodwill, I think most of these cokes will be going back to the class is the form of prizes for best times in one of my many ESL games. Last week, one girl did this one in 47.6 seconds. Took me 3 minutes. If you can beat her score, maybe I'll buy you a coke!

Yoder on Love for Enemies

2006-06-09T18:30:00.000+09:00

I liked this quote from John Yoder I found over at Tim's place. In watching world events recently, especially the arrests in Canada, I notice in myself reactions that could not be classed as "love for enemies". Of all the things Christ asked of his followers, nothing is easier to understand than loving enemies. And yet nothing is harder to do. But Yoder reminds me of the "why's" and helps me along a little:

Christians whose loyalty to the Prince of Peace puts them out of step with today's nationalistic world, because of a willingness to love their nation's friend but not to hate the nation's enemies, are not unrealistic dreamers who think that by their objections all wars will end. The unrealistic dreamers are rather the soldiers who think that they can put an end to wars by preparing for just one more.

Nor do Christians think that by refusal to help with the organized destruction of life and property they are uninvolved in the complications and conflicts of modern life. Nor are Christians reacting simply in emotional fear to the fantastic awfulness of the weapons created by the demonic ingenuity of modern humanity.

Christians love their enemies not because they think the enemies are wonderful people, nor because they believe that love is sure to conquer these enemies. They do not love their enemies because they fail to respect their native land or its rulers; nor because they are unconcerned for the safety of their neighbors; nor because another political or economic system may be favored. The Christian loves his or her enemies because God does, and God commands his followers to do so; that is the only reason, and that is enough.

Oh, and then....

2006-06-03T16:18:00.000+09:00

Lowell's article got me looking around on Wikipedia for stuff on the non-church.

Two articles that I want to read later... and maybe you will too:

CHRISTIANITY AND STATE SHINTO IN COLONIAL KOREA: A CLASH OF NATIONALISMS AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

Pacifism Among Japanese Non-Church Christians

Lowell Sheppard on non-church in Japan

2006-06-03T16:08:00.000+09:00

A friend of mine who used to work with a Christian mission organization in London but now lives here got interviewed for an emerging church magazine in the UK. He has a lot of insightful stuff to say. I liked this one:

...I was forced to become largely self funding. The result of which is that I have had to create businesses and enterprises where the bottom line was important while continuing to be involved in the non-profit sector. My life is richer for it I believe, and on reflection, I look back and consider a lot of the things that occupied my time as a ‘full-time Christian worker’ were somewhat dubious as to any value added to the Kingdom of God. The challenge has been to live my life as a Christian in the cut and thrust of society and in particular the business world. I have found conversations with fellow business folks, to be more frank, to the point, and transparent that within the rarified air of the Christian industry.

I do not for moment question the motivation of Christian workers, BUT, the sub culture can all be all consuming, and have found the atmosphere of the outside world, to be more nourishing and invigorating than the limited atmosphere of the Christian sector. I realize that statement sounds judgmental, and as I write it I see the faces of many friends who I admire, cherish and respect for their faithfulness to their call. But despite my regard for my many friends, I am still convinced the sheer volume of Christian workers around the world, impedes the emergence of a church that is truly alternative and transformational.

They voted this guy in twice...

2006-05-29T21:52:00.000+09:00

I liked this one...

2006-05-24T14:59:00.000+09:00

A Canadian bloke is walking down the street with a two-four of Moosehead under his arm.

His friend Randy stops him and asks, "Hey Dave! What did you get that two-four of beer for, eh?"

"Well, I got it for my wife, eh." answers Dave.

"Wow," exclaims Randy, "Great trade, eh."

Well, I'll be damned. Maybe I am a fundamentalist...

2006-05-24T13:29:00.000+09:00

I liked this quote from Marcus Borg:

For me, the heart of Christianity--Christian fundamentals for our time--would be, first, the reality of God. Without a robust affirmation of the reality of God, Christianity makes little important sense.

Secondly, the centrality of the Bible. To be Christian is to be in a continuing, ongoing conversation with our sacred scriptures.

Thirdly is the utter centrality of Jesus. Christians are people who find the decisive revelation of God in Jesus, in a person. That means when Jesus and the Bible [contradict] each other, Jesus trumps the Bible.

The fourth fundamental is that a relationship with God is known in Jesus. Christianity is not primarily about believing; a relationship involves a much deeper part of ourselves than simply the content of our minds.

The fifth fundamental is a concern for the transformation of ourselves and of society. I'm convinced that the Bible from beginning to end is both personal and political, concerned with both spiritual matters and social matters, and the life of Christian faithfulness involves both of those.

via Graham

How do you know Jesus wasn't a Gnostic??

2006-05-17T13:27:00.000+09:00

This post from Paradosis is a good challenge to how evangelicals tend to view scripture. Give it a read if you are interested.

Someday, I want to sit down and write my response, my own view on scripture. But it is so far in the other direction, in an anarchistic, embracing uncertainty kind-of-way, that I hesitate to, because then that whole "heretic" thing is bound to come up again...

Pinch his tits??

2006-05-16T19:17:00.000+09:00

Everyone who has spent time in church has to have some good stories like what happens in this video. They crack me up. I have heard a few that I can't confirm as true, but have become as legendary as they are hilarious. One is about the poor preacher who proclaimed "Brothers and sisters, I have soap in my hole!! I mean hope in my soul!! Oh my..." Or another one about an elderly pastor who walked up to the podium and reached into his pocket while saying, "Please turn with me to first glasses while I pull out my Peter..." Apparently he was so embarrassed that he just got right back down off the podium. At least the guy in the video tries to keep trucking on. What a dangerous time the age of video will be for preachers...

Any other stories?

Responding to Mercy's comment with a whole new post...

2006-05-12T16:24:00.000+09:00

Mercy says in regard to the last post:

Have you ever come across anything that suggests a gradient? Are the ideas usually all hell or all bliss?

Well, I haven't come across anything explicitly stated, but I have wondered it myself. I wonder if the "gradient" of heaven or hell experienced might be related to the degree to which a heart is conformed to the Love of God during life. I would suggest that the parable of the talents points in that direction, as might the verse where Paul talks of people who just barely get in to heaven as those "escaping .through the flames" (1 Cor. 3:15). C.S.Lewis makes it sound like that too, at the end of The Last Battle, where the dwarfs make it into heaven, but it is nothing more than a safe and warm but quite boring place. However, I am still undecided as to whether the Tales of Narnia should be added to the canon of scripture.

Anyone else got anything? Graham perhaps?

What the Hell?

2006-05-10T07:21:00.000+09:00

I am always interested in discussions of hell (what... worried about where you may end up, you ask?) and today Graham posted a little blurb about the translation problems inherent in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 and it's application to what hell is. I have come across it before, but Graham sums it up so well.

link

And again, it is the Eastern Orthodox view that makes the most sense to me, as in it we all go to God. Whether that is a pleasant experience or not depends on the degree to which we have conformed ourselves in our lifetimes to the light of his Love.

The Son of Man will send His angels and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. (Matthew 13:41-43)

According to the saints, the "fire" that will consume sinners at the coming of the Kingdom of God is the same "fire" that will shine with splendor in the saints. It is the "fire" of God's love; the "fire" of God Himself who is Love. "For our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29)... For those who love God and who love all creation in Him, the "consuming fire" of God will be radiant bliss and unspeakable delight. For those who do not love God, and who do not love at all, this same "consuming fire" will be the cause of their "weeping" and their "gnashing of teeth."

Thus it is the Church's spiritual teaching that God does not punish man by some material fire or physical torment. God simply reveals Himself in the risen Lord Jesus in such a glorious way that no man can fail to behold His glory. It is the presence of God's splendid glory and love that is the scourge of those who reject its radiant power and light...

... those who find themselves in hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God ... But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed! (St. Isaac of Syria, Mystic Treatises)

This teaching is found in many spiritual writers and saints: St. Maximus the Confessor, the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. At the end of the ages God's glorious love is revealed for all to behold in the Face of Christ. Man's eternal destiny - heaven or hell, salvation or damnation - depends solely on his response to this love.

I Believe Every Word in the Bible

2006-05-09T10:27:00.000+09:00

Mike points to a great piece of writing by the Real Live Preacher that shows what a meaningless statement "I believe every word in the Bible" really is. It is a slogan for a certain brand of theology. But the living God calls us to things deeper than slogans...

He believes every word in the Bible. Surely this is some sort of marketing slogan meant only to advertise his self-image and his perceived place in the world.
"Stand aside, for I am a man who believes every word in the Bible!"
Once I too dreamed that I might know every word of the Bible. I hoped to pilot my ship across the surface of its troubled waters and know every bend and horseshoe bay...

link

New Music

2006-05-01T23:11:00.000+09:00

To those who, for whatever reason, I keep updated on these things, I found a new album that takes me back to being a melancholic teenager locked in my bedroom listening to Simon and Garfunkel. I mean I like it very much. Listen to World Spins Madly On. It's a winner.

The Weepies - Say I Am You

And also, The New Pornographers new one, Twin Cinema, gets me all excited. They do things with a pop song that you just don't expect, but they make it work very well. Listen to The Bleeding Heart Show, and These Are the Fables.

106

2006-05-01T14:37:00.000+09:00

And while I am at it, I wanna brag about the most significant thing I have accomplished in some time. 106 at minesweeper. It would appear that I have too much time on my hands. Not so much that, as it is what I do while I talk on skype. So now if I seem disinterested next time we are chatting, you know why!

Let's go back to grade nine now for just a moment...

2006-05-01T14:35:00.000+09:00

If you used to watch Robert Tilton in the mornings as a bored gradeschooler, this is especially funny...

link

2006-04-26T08:43:00.000+09:00

This is a game that Japanese school kids play, especially the girls. As you can see, Diana is not very good at it.

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Can I Check your Bigger??

2006-04-24T22:43:00.000+09:00

That is what Simon says when he means, "Can I measure your height?". And it cracks me up.

N.T. Wright on the Gospel of Judas

2006-04-23T22:50:00.000+09:00

First, then, this document is worthless historically. Second, it is opposed to the fundamental Jewish and Christian doctrine of the goodness of creation. And third, it cuts the nerve of working for God’s kingdom in the real world. Who cares about speaking the truth to power if the real task is to escape? Why bother feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, why worry about global debt or global warming or the madness of global warfare, if the main thing to do is to follow your own star and discover your true spiritual identity? Why bother following the real Jesus and standing defenceless before the powers of the world if you can invent a fake Jesus who panders to your inner desires? Let’s be quite clear: despite the sneers of so many who say that the New Testament was written, edited and then chosen out of a much larger collection of books in order to sustain the church’s political power and prestige, the truth is that in the second and third century, long before anyone thought of the Constantinian settlement, it was the people who were reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Acts, Romans and the rest who were being thrown to the lions, burned at the stake, beaten and bullied and beheaded. Why would Caesar worry about ‘Thomas’, ‘Judas’ and the other pseudo-gospels? The rulers of this world are not bothered when yet another little group invents a new form of private spirituality. What makes Caesar shiver in his shoes is if people start to believe that whereas the Gentile rulers do it one way, God does it a different way, that there is a different way of power, a different form of rulership, and that Jesus has inaugurated and modelled it in his servanthood and suffering, and that the community that hails him as the only true Lord is going out into the world to live that way, and to celebrate it, as we do today, in sacrament and vocation and healing.

More everyday life stuff...

2006-04-07T12:34:00.000+09:00

office window at NGU
Originally uploaded by fatblueman.

From Monday, I will begin a new job as an English instructor at Nagoya Gakuin University, which is a pleasant 30 minute drive from my house. It is a welcome change from all the running around I was doing with English lessons here and there. And I joined the boxing club! The campus is about 30 years old, so they have an old boxing gym that looks like it hasn't been updated in about that long. A very hardcore Rocky I look to it. It shall be fun. I am the only heavyweight.

And this is the view from my office window.

Stones concert

2006-04-06T16:46:00.000+09:00

I am so bad at blogging things that are going on in my life, just kind of the day to day, we-did-this-and-this kind of stuff. Since I was a kid it made my mom nuts because she always wanted to hear the day to day goings on of my life, but I just couldn't understand why anyone would want to hear it, so I would talk about ideas (and my hunch is that she was probably thinking, "Does he really think I want to hear this??" I still get that look a lot.

Anyway, this time I was told, "you have to blog that! How can you not blog about that!" So, I am sitting down to tell about my day yesterday.

It was a lot of fun. Through a friend who works in the music industry here, I got a chance to work as a runner, which is essentially a gopher (just that "runner" is so much more prestigious sounding...) backstage at the Rolling Stones concert. Actually for the last two days. Anyway, I did things like "run" to buy DVD-R's, "run" to get Starbucks coffee for everyone, "run" to buy a new suitcase for Keith Richards (yes, I briefly considered slipping a demo CD in there, but decided that is something I would only have done ten years ago). The band members were around, and it was interesting to see them, but somehow anticlimactic. The main thing that stood out from close-up is that these guys are not young anymore...

The best part was that in the morning, the production head that I was running for asked if I could get together 30 to 40 people who would sit on the stage, within the stage construction, on two levels over-looking the stage. Oh yeah!! And one call to Diana put in motion the gathering together of every friend and connection we could think of who would be at all interested.

It was a day of luck. I was lucky to get the opportunity to gather the people. The people we called were lucky if they were by the phone, if they were able to get off work, and I guess that we were friends or acquaintances in the first place. Then our friends called their friends, so that when all were gathered, there were all kinds of people there thanking me for calling them, who I had never seen before in my life. At any rate, we all went up in the rafters of the stage design, and had a great time yelling at the back of Mick Jagger's head. It's funny that even though I am not that much of a Stones fan, how good the songs sound in an energized stadium atmosphere. I think I knew most of them either from TV commericials or other band's cover versions.

And the best part was making some good friendships with the tour staff. Good people living an adventurous, world-rambling life. It would something fun to try, though perhaps just for a certain period. My boss was a fantastic person who I really connected with, and the fun part is that she will be back in August with the Madonna tour, and she says she will be looking for a personal assistant! And I also know that her company is handling the U2 tour in November. Now wouldn't that be nice....

The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty…

2006-03-24T10:30:00.000+09:00

...belief provides answers to people’s questions, while faith never does,” notes “faith is not the business of signing up to intellectual propositions. It is, rather, the business of trying to live and move and have our being in God, source of life and love...

I guess that is me quoting Paul quoting Mark Oakley quoting Jaques Ellul.

Sushi Samurai

2006-03-24T00:31:00.000+09:00

Go see if you are a Sushi Samurai...

World Baseball Classic

2006-03-13T23:58:00.000+09:00

Oh yeah, and the Americans cheat at baseball and everyone in Japan knows it and is hopping mad, lemme tell ya... in a polite and subdued kinda way.

And if you think I am just mad because the Canadians beat the Americans but still couldn't make it to the second round... yer dead on.

Graham talks about Tom Fox

2006-03-13T23:29:00.000+09:00

Graham talks about Tom Fox, heroes and the victory of violence.

Violence continues to win because more people believe its lies. There are more people willing to stand up for the belief that Might is Right, than there are willing to take a risk on opposing violence, by standing in its way, taking a bloody nose and practicing alternative ways of resolving conflict and distributing justice. Thankfully, Tom Fox stands out from the crowd and now challenges us all to live what we believe.

Bittersweet Christ

2006-03-13T21:47:00.000+09:00

I was reading Ron's account of his experience of a church and a church leader who I used to pay a lot of attention to in my college years (a very large, health and wealth theology type place). But since those days of fandom, I find my feeling has grown a lot closer to Ron's. But his post got me thinking about my own change in point of view specifically, and generally about just why it is that two kinds of Christians can see things in such radically different, and I might just say opposing, ways. As I rolled that thought around in my head, I wondered if it wasn't because our views of what happened at the cross are fundamentally different, and the differences flow from there. Basically, some Christians will look at the cross and say, "Thank God He went through that, because now I don't have to!" Whereas others look at the cross saying, "thank God He did that, because now we know just how God loves; we have an example, and we can join in."

And it reminded me of a passage from Dave Andrews' The Crux of the Struggle where he addresses this difference:

Martin Luther argued that, because our relationship was restored by the sacrifice that God made for us in Christ, we do not need to make any sacrifice. This doctrine, known as the doctrine of the 'Sweet Christ', asserts that Christ's final cry on the cross that 'it is finished' implies all the suffering required for salvation has already been accomplished. Christ has done everything for us. There's nothing left for us to do. No more suffering is necessary. Anyone who 'mixes up' the necessity of Christ's suffering with the notion of Christians' suffering is attempting to attain their salvation through 'works' rather than 'grace'. And, in so doing, is in danger of losing the sweet savor of Christ.

Thomas Muntzer argued that, because our relationship was restored by the sacrifice that God made for us in Christ, and we are called to be like Christ, we need to make sacrifices like Christ in order to restore others to a healthy relationship with God. This doctrine, known as the doctrine of the 'Bitter Christ', asserts that Christ 'completed' his suffering on the cross, but, as Paul says, we have to 'complete the sufferings of Christ' ourselves. Christ may have done everything that was needed to do to save us. There may be nothing more that any of us need to do to save ourselves. But we still need to be prepared to suffer, to save others, like Christ did. It is not about anyone attempting to attain their salvation through 'works'; but it is about those of us who have already been saved by 'grace' sharing 'the grace of Christ' with others. No doubt, suffering was a bitter experience for Christ, and suffering will be a bitter experience for us, but we are called to be like Christ, and we cannot be like Christ without suffering like Christ.

Needless to say many Christians through the centuries have opted for faith in a Sweet Christ, rather than face the obligation of following in the footsteps of the Bitter Christ...

...Jakob Kautz wrote to the Christians of his day who, in his view, had subscribed to faith 'without love' and 'without trial', reminding them that, 'Jesus Christ did not suffer for us in any other way than this: that we should walk in his footsteps in the way that he blazed for us.' While in our day, people like Simone Weil remind us that Christianity without suffering is an illusion. After all, she says, 'even the risen Christ still ha(s) his scars.'

But nobody in the twentieth century enjoined the debate, about which way Christians ought to go, more vigorously than the famous German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer insisted that the debate was not an argument about 'works' versus 'grace', but about two mutually exclusive views of 'grace'. Bonhoeffer characterized the option presented by the Sweet Christ as 'cheap grace', and the option presented by the Bitter Christ as 'costly grace'. He said that 'cheap grace' is 'grace without a price'; a 'doctrine about the Love of God without the incarnation of the Word of God'. He said that 'cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate'. And he said that 'cheap grace' was the ruin of Christianity. So Bonhoeffer said he was going to fight for 'costly grace', that not only preached the grace of Christ, but also practiced the grace of Christ, even if it was going to cost him his life.

Reminder...

2006-03-13T21:34:00.000+09:00

Book I found at Paul's that I need to add to my wishlist:

Consuming Passion: Why the Killing of Jesus Really Matters

Cover Blurb

Does the death of Jesus really matter in the modern world? How is it related to the conflict, division, suffering and violence we see around us?

It is the extraordinary contention of Consuming Passion that many Christians have got it wrong about the central meaning of Jesus killing - and that the consequences of this misunderstanding are explosive.

These lively essays challenge the interpretation of cross and atonement in much evangelical and catholic teaching as exemplified by Mel Gibson's film The Passion Of The Christ.

Contributors include: Steve Chalke, Giles Fraser, Jomathan Bartley, James Alison, Michael Northcott, Simon Barrow, Stuart Murray, Ched Myers, Anne Richards, Kevin Scully, Vic Theissen, J. Denny Weaver and David Wood.

Joining in with Tim's prayer for Tom Fox

2006-03-13T13:22:00.000+09:00

Heavenly Father, your Son Jesus Christ left us an example, that we should follow in his steps. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. He did not repay anyone evil for evil; rather, he overcame evil with good.

We thank you that your gentle servant Tom followed faithfully in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ, taking up the cross and following him in the way of peace. We thank you, Lord Jesus, for your word of blessing on peacemakers; they will be called the children of God.

Comfort and support Tom's relatives and friends at this difficult time, Father; give them a special awareness of your loving presence with them. Keep Jim, Harmeet, and Norman safe and well, and bring them a speedy release from their captivity. Receive your son Tom into the blessed rest of the saints, and bring him to the joy of the resurrection. Finally, bless the suffering people of Iraq, and hasten the day when they will enjoy justice, freedom, and peace.

All this we ask in the name of the one who leads us through the valley of the shadow of death into the bright morning of the resurrection: your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Detached thoughts

2006-03-12T17:38:00.001+09:00

Writing blog posts with W. Bloggar is hilarious. I write all these posts while I am offline on a train somewhere, and then when go to post them later I don't because I think they sound too opinionated/obnoxious/heretical/controversial/transparent. So now I am getting this repository of blog posts sitting on my hard drive that can't make it past my self-sensor. Someday I will post them all in a fit of self-revelation and you will see what I really think...

I remember an old guy who used to say, "take care of your pennies, and your dollars will take care of themselves". I can't think of a saying that is more contrary to what I have come to believe about money. The spirit of that saying puts money on its throne, having us keep a close eye on our cash, right down to the last penny. Not terribly compatible with "give and you shall receive".

I wonder if this is the absolute best time of life with my kids. Age 5 and 1.5, I have never had so much fun. At times I feeli like saying, ah, screw mission and just coccoon with my family, playing and having fun with just us. But then again, the mission side of life is likely a big part of why life is so much fun right now. Remembering some of the battle royals I had with my Dad, I suppose it won't always be like this. Then again, I don't think me and my boys will have the same kind of generation gap me and my Dad had. So we will see I guess.

I was reading online the statement of faith of a certain Christian group. Reading through it, I felt like I could sense some of the differences between a modernist and a postmodernist. There were so many things to which I found myself responding, "I don't know if I believe that or not! I mean who knows? Is it necessary to have a really solid and convinced belief just for the sake of having a convinced and solid belief??"

For example, it said they believed in the literal second coming of Jesus, personally and in bodily form. That sounds great to me, and in fact I hope for it, but I also know there was a time when Jesus said something that seemed undeniably literal, but any literal interpretation of what he had said was just plain wrong (standing beside the Temple saying "I will tear down this temple and rebuild it in three days). Jesus was always heavy on the metaphorical speech.

But why is it necessary to say one way or the other. Doesn't change the mission Christ gave us. Better just to stick to the mission and find out what happens. In fact historically, groups that focus exclusively on eschatology have a bit of reputation for forsaking the mission altogether.

Related to the previous point, I guess the differences in perspective highlighted have a lot to do with the fact that the ways of thinking about faith generally are just so different, with different foundations. I remember when I was boy reading a list of what a "real Christian" believes, you know, like someone who is actually going to get into heaven. I think it was five things altogether, but among them were belief in the trinity, the inerrancy of scripture, the divinity of Christ, and the divinity of Martin Luther (just kidding). But from where I stand now, the whole list becomes meaningless when one of your strongest beliefs is that it is not up to us to make the judgement on who is saved or not saved. That's God's job. Our job is to be disciples of Christ. So the focus changes from "What can we do to make sure we get into heaven?" to "What can we do to be sure we are being faithful to what Jesus taught us to do?" And that is actually a massive shift that changes how you view all the sub-issues...

Who are all these Winnipeg people reading my blog? And how did you find it? Do I know you? There were like 20 hits from Winnipeg yesterday, but beyond Jason and Steve, I can't think who is reading. You cheeky lurkers. There are some blogs I visit because I can't stand what they say and they make my blood boil (it's the conflict lover in me!). I wonder how many of those hits I am getting. If you can't stand my blog, let me know! Leave an anonymous comment!! I am not using haloscan so I can't even track you!!(but I might sick Jack Bauer on you...).

I am not as depressed as I was about the language. In fact Japanese is becoming comfortable enough that recently I have been having conversations where I can't remember if I had them in Japanese or English. And then I realize they must have been in Japanese because those people don't speak English. Progress? Ay any rate, there is still a long way to go.

The Message

2006-03-12T17:38:00.000+09:00

I can't think where I saw it, but I was reading an interview with Eugene Peterson, writer of "The Message", and in it they were referring to how much Bono likes reading the Message. It made me react with the thought of, really? I don't much like the Message at all.

My issue is simply that when I read the Bible I want to know what the writer was actually saying, or get as close to it as thousands of years and translations out of the original language will allow. I want the original meaning warts and all, and with the Message I run into too many places where I Mr. Peterson's voice is coming through louder and with more clarity than the original writer's.

Maybe that's too heavy. Because I must appreciate the Message to some degree, as every time I sit down to read the bible, it is one of the versions I have in front of me. The bible I tote around is on my Sony VAIO. I use E-sword software which is downloadable as shareware, along with a number of different versions that you can read in parallel. The really cool thing about Peterson is that he makes his version available for free download with the E-sword software, something that you can't find with the NIV, NLT, or NRSV versions, the ones I was reading in my pre-VAIO days (capitalist bastards!!). That's fine, there is something quite interesting about reading from the original KJV, complete with pop-up explanations of the corresponding word in the original language. And then you have other strange birds like Young's Literal Translation, the old American Standard Version, and the Good News Bible (though it doesn't have any of those stick figure illustrations that used to keep you entertained during boring church services when you were a kid). So reading four of them side-by-side is helpful for the times when you have no idea what point old King James is trying to make. In those moments, I immediately glance over to see what Eugene Peterson's opinion of the passage is.

But that is kind of how you have to read it, basically as what Mr. Peterson, through his own very specific theological and cultural lenses thinks the passage is saying (or sometimes what he thinks it should have said... at least that is what it seems like to me sometimes). Fair enough, every translator translates with a bias, but from what I can gather, I don't think E.P. makes a very concerted effort to stay as close as possible to what the original author is trying to say.

I should probably just point out the example that got me thinking in this direction today, so you can judge for yourself. So, if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to the book of 1 Timothy, verses (see, there is still a bit of evangelical boy left in me - I still remember some of the dialect).

FIrst the ASV:

Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness. For Adam was first formed, then Eve and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression:

Now the Message:

I don't let women take over and tell the men what to do. They should study to be quiet and obedient along with everyone else. Adam was made first, then Eve; woman was deceived first--our pioneer in sin!--with Adam right on her heels.

That's a pretty generous rendering of what Paul said, or more how Paul said it. I know how most of us would read Paul's words in our current cultural situation - we would call him a male chauvinist pig (though come to think of it, I haven't heard that phrase used for a while, but a more en vogue version doesn't jump to mind at the moment). Peterson softens that tone right up, almost eliminating Paul's "man=authority, woman=submission" sort of hardline. It makes me wonder, does he really think this is what Paul was saying? I have encountered the kind of viewpoint before that tries hard to make Paul say that women are forbidden from leadership only in this specific cultural context, that this is not a universal command. But do we really think that is what Paul thought? When he references the original created order as his proof of how things should be??

Wait it minute. It is starting to sound like I am arguing for women to be silent in church. Far from it. I am basically arguing that, yes, Paul was a chauvinist, well, along with the rest of his culture, so let's extend him a little grace. This is the same guy who says, "isn't it obvious, looking at nature, that it is disgraceful for men to have long hair??" (1 Cor. 11:14) Most of us these days would say no, not so obvious. But that's ok. Let's admit that in all likelihood, Paul thought women shouldn't teach men, not in the 1st century, not ever, and then go from there. Isn't that preferable to turning backflips to make him say things he doesn't? Depending on how you view scripture, maybe not.

So what drives us to nice Paul up, make him a bit more presentable to our culture like this? That's for another long boring post. For now, a few more looks at the Message.

The ASV:

Judge ye in yourselves: is it seemly that a woman pray unto God unveiled? Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a dishonor to him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
(1Co 11:13-15)

The Message:

Don't you agree there is something naturally powerful in the symbolism--a woman, her beautiful hair reminiscent of angels, praying in adoration; a man, his head bared in reverence, praying in submission?
(1Co 11:13)

Not even close. In fact, there is all kinds of culturally significant stuff you miss out on by reading only the Message. So what? In those days, they thought women should have long hair, and men should have short hair. Don't clean it up for me. I can handle it. If we can't read the Bible with its cultural context in mind, making adjustments and allowances for that, doing the hard work of discerning what is cultural and what is eternal, then our only other choice is to accept the culture as part of the "gospel truth". And then we are back to women silent in church, wearing head coverings, slavery being something that is not terribly offensive, etc. How many of us think that is the direction we should be headed?

Maybe Bible readers of today are just longing for an easy way out. Maybe they just want someone to tell them what the Bible means for them right now in their own context. Maybe that is what Peterson is trying to do for them. I would rather do that myself. Like a good Anabaptist boy, that is not a responsibility that I want to hand off to anyone else.

I've been tagged!!

2006-03-02T14:45:00.000+09:00

And thank you very much! I have never been tagged before! I think I am now officially a true member of the internet.

So here we go:

FOUR JOBS I'VE HAD:
1. Construction site in North Vancouver. Worked on it for four months, and the whole thing burned down the weekend before I went home to Winnipeg. I had nothing to do with that.
2. Farm boy. Bringing the cows in from the field on my horse. Japan feels along way from that.
3. The voice of the sponsors at ZIP 77.8 FM. I say things like, "This program was brought to you by Toyota Home".
4. Singing English teacher. Sometimes I would get paid to sing Beatles and Carpenters songs with middle aged Japanese ladies.

FOUR MOVIES/SHOWS I'VE BEEN ADDICTED TO:
1. 24 - Watched it for the first time two weeks ago. Watched all of season 4 in 4 days. Somewhat addictive, that show. I am still waking up some mornings convinced that I am Jack Bauer.
2. American Idol Season 4 - I was in love with Vonzell Solomon.
3. I was pretty big on the Smurfs on Saturday mornings when I was a kid.
4. And when it was on, I would rarely miss an episode of the Beachcombers.

FOUR PLACES I'VE LIVED:
1. Killarney, Manitoba, Canada
2. Klaipeda, Lithuania
3. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
4. Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

FOUR COUNTRIES I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT:
1. Ireland!
2. Thailand (multiple times)
3. Australia
4. Israel

FOUR POPULAR FALSE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ME:
1. That I'm German. Seriously, when I was in Thailand, this German lady comes up to me and she is all "Canst du Deutsch sprechen??" So I was all like "Nein, Ich can nicht freaky-deeky Deutsch sprechen" but she's like, "But your speaking German right now!!" and I'm all like "Lady, that's the extent of my German right there." Except that last bit was communicated in hand signals and very broken German that can't even be written out. But I guess it makes some sense because my Dad's side is essentially German. Thing is the only time I ever heard the language spoken was when Dad and Grandma wanted to talk about Christmas presents or church gossip.
2. That I am messy. It's just that I adhere to a revised definition of "clean".
3. That I am not immediately able to know right from left... Ok, that one is not false. Weird thing though, if you say it in Japanese, there is no delay. What's up with that?
4. That I curse too much. (I don't think it is too much)

FOUR PEOPLE I LOOK LIKE (according to some people):
1. Brad Pitt
2. Chris Farley
3. Roseanne Barr
4. Boy George

FOUR THINGS (I HOPE) TO DO BEFORE I DIE:
1. Do some kind of world music tour (small bars would be just fine, as long as they are in multiple countries).
2. Live with some Hutterites
3. Learn one more language after Japanese. Perhaps something closer to English though. Or Thai.
4. Write a work of fiction. Learn to play the guitar.

PEOPLE I TAG NEXT:
1. Cheryl Janzen
2. Derek Eidse
3. Tim Chesterton
4. Cindy

Detached thoughts... while reading the book of Matthew

2006-02-26T16:57:00.001+09:00

Mt. 11:19 - Jesus came partying while John came fasting and frugal. Jesus seems to consider both to be legimate perspectives within the kindgom of God. But the pharisees wouldn't listen to either. This is a strange feature of the kingdom that needs more thought: extravagance and frugality (or self-denial) need to exist together in the kingdom of God. One without the other leads down a destructive path. The feast and the fast. Both important. Paradox.

Mt. 12:12 - Reinforces that theme that Jesus would always break rules in favor of demonstrating kindness, even if the rules were perceived as the Law given by God. Parallel's Jesus saying, "You have heard it said an eye for an eye... but I say to you..."

Mt 12:32 - That is a key verse for me. There are many who have rejected Christ out of some misundertanding over who he is, often through what the church has falsely made him out to be. But the witness of the spirit of God has been in every person throughout history, giving us that knowledge that selflessness leading to kindness is good, and selfishness leading to the oppression of others is bad. And if you ignore that voice, your toast. Links in well with Rom. 2:15, and the fact that some of the sheep in Matthew 25 don't realize they have been serving Christ all along.

Mt. 12:33 - And follows that verse right up with the "Jesus tree" verse. Those who are in touch with the spirit of Jesus will be like him.

Mt. 13:12 - Exact same language as we find at the end of the Parable of the Talents. This is the key to that parable, methinks. To my friends who whose this parable as biblical support for capitalism, this parable has as much to do with economics as the parable of the Lost Sheep has to do with agriculture. The Talents are the secrets of the Kingdom of God (ie: Blessed are the poor). God gives everybody some of those. It is up to us to act on those secrets, thus gaining deeper understanding and more secrets. If you never act on the original secrets God tells you, look out.

Mt. 13:23 - This also reflects the language in the Parable of the Talents. There will be various levels to which people "of the good ground" produce. And that is all good.

Mt: 15:2 - Jesus the hurting artist rule-breaker-just-to-make-a-point. He could have told the disciples to wash their hands just to be nice... Is that just a personality thing? I probably would have just washed my hands. Some people would have told them to f-off (are you reading this Rik?), which is essentially what Jesus does (haha! see! there I am, trying not to offend too much! I couldn't bring myself to write out the f-word).

Mt: 15:9 - Jesus indicates that the Pharisees make into the teachings of God things that God never intended. Making cultural things more than just that. I wonder how much of the Old Testament Jesus would have seen in that light... Gives interesting perspective to Mt. 5:38. Was "an eye for an eye", which was regarded as coming from God in the OT, one of the "commandments of men" that they had elevated to the place of God's revelation? Sometimes I think that is exactly what Jesus thought, that if you could have asked him he would have said, yes, the OT was seeing "through a glass darkly". He would have told us that he is the clarity of what God wanted to reveal to the world, the "image of the invisible God", as on NT writer calls him (Col. 1:15). That's why it is why he could quote parts of scripture that the people had always thought were from God, and then say, no, the opposite is true. So much of Christendom carried on with the old stuff though.

I mean just go back and look at Exodus 20, 21, where the "eye for an eye" passage orignates from. It starts off by saying, "And God spoke all these words saying...". So Jesus is either saying God changed his mind, or that God has different moral standards for different periods of time, or that those words were not God's in the first place. No wonder he got in so much trouble with the religious conservatives. I tend to hope the third one is right, because the God of the OT says a lot of things that don't sound like something Jesus's dad would say.

Mt. 15:16-20 - Jesus does it again with all the food laws of the OT. Basically says they no big deal, not the really important thing. And again that's a big deal because for someone reading the OT, these food laws were commands given directly by God.

Various detached thoughts

2006-02-26T16:57:00.000+09:00

I think Google is changing my life. I mean, not in a religious experience kind of way, but in a very practical way. As far as technologies that affect how you organize your day go, Google is one that I find having a very positive effect on how I organize my life and work. I use it everyday. I swear it is the disorganized person's best friend. That and having a day planner on your cell phone.

I just hope they figure out a way to jump out of cyberspace and in to my office. I would love some kind of robot that would go through and index any and every paper, letter, adapter, burned cd, etc, lying around my desk, and then just have me call out a couple of key words in order to track down what I want. Get on that Google guys.

Here's the difference between being 20 and being 30, at least as I see it. When I was 20, I tended to see the answers to life's difficult questions in terms of right and wrong. Now I tend to see those same answers more in terms of good ones and bad ones. Life used to be more like a math problem for me. Now it is Language Arts.

Learning Japanese is one of the hardest things I have ever tried to do, in large part because of the station of life that I am trying to do it in. I partly get these hopeless feelings because I know of no one who has become fluent in Japanese while balancing a job and family life. Anyone I know who is brilliant in Japanese either came here when they were twenty and spent a year studying six hours a day at a specialized school, studied Japanese for years in university, or has a Japanese wife/ girlfriend. I checked with Andrea and she said that last one was not an option. I know what you thinking, she just has no committment to my language learning.

So what to do, other than complain. Just keep stuffing Japanese into the cracks of my life I guess. It is either that or go home. Wasn't it minus 40 at home last week? Here's to studying kanji on the train!

Scot McKnight on Holiness

2006-02-26T16:54:00.000+09:00

Sometimes I post a quote that I may or not strongly agree with, I just post it because I found it interesting. This is not one of those times. I love what Scot says here, and the way in which he says it. I wish I had written it myself.

We need to get something right here: holiness is not about separation from the world, or not drinking beer, or not going to beaches, or not hanging out with friends after work or not going out on Saturday night. And neither is cussin’ the point.

The emerging movement, at its best, is seeking a holistic gospel and a radical commitment to God’s redemptive work — and that is what holiness is all about. It wants to let God’s work (and his character) shape everything it is doing. That is what Peter commands in 1:15-16. It is the dedication of everything to the way of Jesus, the transformation of secular space into sacred space, and the creation of an alternative community where God’s will holds sway that creates holiness.

It is altogether common (and wrong) to speak of holiness as difference and leave it at that; difference is not the point. Otherness (as in absolute purity or absolute love or absolute focus) that creates the difference. We don’t try to be different, and think we are thereby holy; we try to be wholly dedicated to God in loving God and others, etc., and it is that sacred pursuit that creates holiness. So, let this be said: being different is not the point; being separate is not the point; being good and loving makes us different and that is what matters. Do you hear me on this one?

I’ve said this before: Holiness is not something fragile in need of protection, but something powerful in need of liberation. Holiness is not negative; it is positive. It is God doing what God does and it is humans living out the God-life in this world. It is loving God with a sacred, uncontaminated love, and therefore loving others as God loves them. That is holiness. Holiness is not the dark side of God, with love the good side. Holiness is love directed in the right direction and contained by the proper boundaries.

The days of playing know-it-all are over...

2006-02-17T21:22:00.000+09:00

Be careful shooting your mouth off in this new Google era we are living in. Here's the scene: a heated sports conversation in a smoky bar in Nagoya (they can still smoke in bars here). The subject: the 1998 Olympic semi-final game between Canada and the Czech Republic (every true Canadian male just felt a twinge of pain), wherein they beat us by a goal in a shootout, sending us to the bronze medal game. One lunkhead at the table proclaims that shootouts are the greatest injustice and shouldn't even count, because Canada had badly outshot the Czech's in that game, and it was basically only one man, Dominic Hasek, who beat Canada.

Here's the thing that should make know-it-alls everywhere shudder. One google searchbar and about five minutes later, I have the stats to that game before my very eyes. Turns out the Czechs outshot the Canadians 29 to 25. Seems the Canadians just plain got beat. There was a day when a loud voice and a cocksure deilvery of the facts was all that was needed to win the argument. Those days are over! Now those facts have to actually be true!

Confession: The lunkhead in the bar may have been me. Though Google cannot prove that.

Tim on Freedom of Speech

2006-02-15T15:36:00.000+09:00

...Thirdly, from the point of view of followers of Jesus, I’m uneasy about this whole concept of ‘freedom of speech’. The New Testament has nothing to say on the issue at all. It does, however, have a great deal to say about the responsibility of Christians to be careful about what they say. Jesus tells us that if we insult our brother or sister we are in danger of the fires of hell. James tells us that the tongue is a world of evil among the parts of the body; it is set on fire by hell itself, and is very hard to tame. Paul tells us that we are not to let any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up and for benefitting those who listen. We are to get rid of all bitterness, he says; all rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. And of course there is the well-known maxim from Proverbs that ‘a soft answer turns away anger'.

In several places in the New Testament Christians are counseled not to insist on their rights, if these rights will hurt others. For instance, Christians who think it is right to eat meat offered in sacrifice to idols are told not to do so around those whose conscience is not easy on this question. ‘ "I have the right to do anything”, you say – but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything” – but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others’ (1 Corinthians 10:23-24 TNIV).

From a Christian point of view, then, the appeal to ‘the right to free speech’ is an appeal to a lower standard than the standard of Christ. The standard of Christ is the standard of saying and doing what is good for others – the standard of turning the other cheek, and of being willing to go two miles when the authority commands you to go one.

Justice and Mercy in Measure for Measure

2006-02-08T13:52:00.000+09:00

That same lecturer, Michael Sugrue, ends his lecture on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure with this line, that has been going through my head all day:

"and at the end of the play when God's justice and God's mercy turn out to be the same thing, that's the return of the Spirit, because the spirit of the Law is that mercy and justice are not distinguishable."

Kierkegaard on risk and theologians

2006-02-08T11:25:00.000+09:00

I have been listening to some lectures by a guy named Michael Sugrue that are as good as any church sermons I have heard in some time . Perhaps ever(oh wait, I listened to one by a guy named Robb Massey that really encouraged me here). Anyway, the one on Kierkegaard had me in tears on the train. Here is a little excerpt:

Without risk there is no faith, there is no rational royal road to divinity. If you want to be a religious believer you must take upon yourself the fact that a) it is never going to make sense, not now, not ever, it’s not like some great philosopher is going to figure out some fine proof to justify your religious faith. Faith has no justification if you have a faith that you believe you have derived from some axioms or have extrapolated from some philosophical stance, in fact that is not the real religious faith. The real religious faith is always going to entail risk . This longing for certainty that we get from the tradition that comes out of Athens is not part of Christianity . Man proposes but God disposes, and it turns out that we will never have certainty in a rational sense . If we have any direct and fixed connection to the deity we will do so on the basis of God’s grace and we will intue with this, We will have a feeling about this. He says that one of the things that is wrong with this age is that it lacks faith; it not only lacks faith it lacks passion which is a necessary precondition for faith. You rational people. You people with the souls of accountants, I’m afraid, are trying to add up and subtract your way to God and that is not how you will do it. You will do it only by to making a leap of faith, by taking a chance.

as well as...

In a book called Edifying Discourses, one section of which is dedicated to the book of Job, he talks about Job as the personification of faith. And he says that the best thing about Job is that he understands that all theology is blasphemy, which is a very deep thought as well. If it is true that our language will not accommodate the divinity, if it is true that we lack the tools to undertake that job and we occasionally do succumb to the temptation to write and speak and think about theology, perhaps what we are doing is raising our own selves to the status where we can claim to understand God and not only understand him but explain him to other people, Kierkegaard says, nay, if you believe that you have not reached the real pinnacle of religious faith. If you remember the three friends of Job, who try to explain to him some kind of theological account of why evil should enter the world and why he should be punished, And Job insisted to the end that no, none of these accounts are satisfactory, well it turns out that Kirkegaard says if you are a theologian you’re wrong, you are one of those people who was in the stance of Job’s friends. The right stance for the true believer to be in is Job. Don’t curse god and die, take whenever God dishes out because the only stance for the true believer is to be God’s faithful servant. You shall not judge the Lord your God; He doesn’t want your advice...

...He insisted that philosophy and Christianity can never be united. And because philosophy and Christianity can never be united, all the tradition of western theology is essentially a wrong turn; He is in fact as much of an individual as he suggests on his tombstone because if he is right, Virtually all of the great theologians, virtually all of the great philosophers of western tradition have been wrong. And he says either/or! I am not afraid of being in the minority.

Another quote from Ellul that I greatly appreciate...

2006-02-07T14:07:00.000+09:00

The second saying of Jesus about political authorities comes in an astonishing discussion. The disciples were accompanying him to Jerusalem, where some of them seem to have thought that he would seize power. They were arguing who would be closest to him when he entered upon his kingly rule (Matthew 20:20‑25). The wife of Zebedee presented her two sons, James and John, and made the express request that Jesus would command that the two to whom she pointed (though Jesus knew them well enough!) should sit one at his right hand and the other at his left in his kingdom. We see here once again the general climate of incomprehension in which Jesus lived, for he had just told the disciples that he knew that he would be violently put to death at Jerusalem. He thus said to them first that they had no understanding. He concluded with the statement that is relevant for us: "You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and those in high position enslave them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be the servant." Note that he makes no distinction or reservation. All national rulers, no matter what the nation or the political regime, lord it over. their subjects. There can be no political power without tyranny. This is plain and certain for Jesus. When there are rulers and great leaders, there can be no such thing as good political power. Here again power is called into question. Power corrupts. We catch an echo of the verse that we quoted above from Ecclesiastes. But we note also that Jesus does not advocate revolt or material conflict with these kings and great ones. He reverses the question, and as so often challenges his interlocutors: "But you ...it must not be same among you.” In other words, do not be so concerned about fighting kings. Let them be. Set up a marginal society which will not be interested in such things, in which there will be no power, authority, or hierarchy. Do not do things as they are usually done in society, which you cannot change. Create another society on another foundation.

We might condemn this attitude, talking of depoliticization. As we shall see, this was in fact the global attitude of Jesus. But we must take note that it is not desocialization. Jesus is not advising us to leave society and go into the desert. His counsel is that we should stay in society and set up in it communities which obey other rules and other laws. This advice rests on the conviction that we cannot change the phenomenon of power. And this is prophetic in a sense when we consider what became of the church when it entered the political field and began to play politics. It was immediately corrupted by the relation to power and by the creation of its own authorities. Finally, of course, one might rightly object that setting up independent communities outside the political power was relatively easy in the days of Jesus but is no longer possible today. This is a real objection but it is hardly enough to convince us that we may engage in politics, which is always a means of conquering others and exercising power over them.

Stanley Hauerwas from Resident Aliens... and Jaques Ellul too

2006-02-07T10:43:00.000+09:00

When politics is brought to the attention of Jesus (Luke 20:20-26), the whole discussion is portrayed with such jocularity as to suggest that we are to take none of this with seriousness. When wanting to trap Jesus and hand him over to the police (Luke 20:20), they ask Jesus, "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?" (Not that was our question, not Jesus'.)

Jesus answers (Luke 20:24), "Who's got a quarter?"

(Note that Jesus' pockets are empty.)

When a coin is produced, Jesus asks, "Whose picture is on it?"

We answer, "George Washington."

"Well, if he needs the stuff so badly as to put his picture on it, then give it to him, " says Jesus. "But you be careful and don't give to Caesar what belongs to God."

Okay. We give up. Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?

From this we learn that a primary biblical way or treating politics is as a joke. Certainly, politicians can make much mischief, but it would be a liturgical and ethical mistake to take them too seriously. Idolatry is as big a problem for democracies as for non-democracies.

Continuing the political fun into the book of Acts, we find an assortment of pagan bureaucrats and functionaries parading through, none of whom is pictured with much sympathy by Luke. Felix, Agrippa, Bernice and all the rest of the beneficiaries of some of the most eloquent apostolic testimony, and absolutely none of them ever gets the point. Acts depicts a church busily interfacing with the world, always probing, always on the move, always willing talk to anyone--even a pagan Roman bureaucrat--who will listen. However, the results of such political witness and public hearings are slim. About the best one can expect from such political action, according to the Acts of the Apostles, is the liberal, open-minded liberal sigh: "Well, this dialogue is awfully interesting. We'll just have to hear more about this sometime." But never conversion. And in the end, the politicians react to the church in the typical Gentile way--Paul is executed in Rome.

From these stories in Acts we derive a number of principles for Christian engagement with politics.

1. We must never give Caesar more than his due. Never take Caesar or his solutions with too much seriousness.

2. Christians are in the world; therefore, we run various skirmishes into the political world. We are every bit as "public" and "political" as anyone, even more so.

3. However, do not expect much from politics. Invariably, politicians tend to be totalitarian--be they the democrastically elected type or the socialist collectiveist type--because bureaucrats are bureaucrats. That is, most bureaucrats, down deep, act as if there were no God. They have an infinite means to co-opting and corrupting the gospel. Be careful around managers. A bureaucrats self-interest is larger than yours.

4. In the end, no matter how congenial the conversation, no matter how many concessions we win from politics, the bottom line for the way the world congregates and unifies people is violence. Politics and violence go together. Violence tends to be the predominant means for establishing community in a world that knows not a God who calls a family named church.

Perhaps this is what Fuller Seminary's Miroslav Volf means when he speaks of the Christian difference with the world being a "soft difference". Volf says that "soft" difference does not mean "weak" We really do have fundamental differences with the way the world orders itself. However, our difference is not a difference that is open to threats or coercion. Our difference does not mean that we think that the world is more evil than we, that we think that we are redeemed and the world is fallen. We believe that the world and the church are both fallen and redeemed by the cross of Christ. It is just that church knows this and is attempting to live in the light of that knowledge, whereas the world does not know this. Perhaps the world's lack of knowledge is the fault of the church, rather than the error of the world. How vibrant, engaging, and enticing has been the witness of the church to the world? Jesus has clearly entrusted he salvation of the world to the church rather than to the world.

"The soft difference is the missionary side of the following in the footsteps of the crucified Messiah. It is not an optional extra but part of Christian identity itself," says Volf. In being missionaries in the world of politics, we realize that we are in a particularly dangerous location, considering the political history of this century, a place that, time and again, has perverted and co-opted the Christian faith for its unglodly purposes. Yet "politics" is not a monolithic place, and "politics" is also meant to come under the Lordship of Christ. And he will rule until he has brought all things under feet (Hebrews 2:8), the same feet that all kings are commanded to kiss (Psalms 2:4).

via Jordon Cooper's comment section

And speaking of Jesus response to the question of paying taxes to Caesar, Ellul has this to add in Anarchy and Christianity:

The mark was the only way in which ownership could be recognized. In the composite structure of the Roman empire it applied to all goods. People all had their own marks, whether a seal, stamp, or painted sign. The head of Caesar on this coin was more than a decoration or a mark of honor. It signified that all the money in circulation in the empire belonged to Caesar. This was very important. Those who held the coins were very precarious owners. They never really owned the bronze or silver pieces. Whenever an emperor died, the likeness was changed. Caesar was the sole proprietor. Jesus, then, had a very simple answer: "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar's." You find his likeness on the coin. The coin, then, belongs to him. Give it back to him when he demands it.

With this answer Jesus does not say that taxes are lawful. He does not counsel obedience to the Romans. He simply faces up to the evidence. But what really belongs to Caesar? The excellent example used by Jesus makes this plain: Whatever bears his mark! Here is the basis and limit of his power. But where is this mark? On coins, on public monuments, and on certain altars. That is all. Render to Caesar. You can pay the tax. Doing so is without importance or significance, for all money belongs to Caesar, and if he wanted he could simply confiscate it. Paying or not paying taxes is not a basic question; it is not even a true political question.

On the other hand, whatever does not bear Caesar's mark does not belong to him. It all belongs to God.6 This is where the real conscientious objection arises. Caesar has no right whatever to the rest. First we have life. Caesar has no right of life and death. Caesar has no right to plunge people into war. Caesar has no right to devastate and ruin a country. Caesar's domain is very limited. We may oppose most of his pretensions in the name of God.

Actually, if you are interested in such things, the whole section by Ellul is worth the read.

Texas Muslims

2006-02-02T12:32:00.000+09:00

This is the weirdest thing I have seen in a while.

McKnight on sex and marriage

2006-02-02T12:05:00.000+09:00

A couple of weeks later this Scot McKnight post is still bothering me. I should say why, but I will do that later, because it could be long and brutally honest. For now I just wanted to bookmark it, but it has to do with thinking that I currently live in a middle, rather inconsistent place regarding, hmmm how do I put it, regarding the relationship between technology and morals, and the degree to which the former influences the latter. Consistency would mean a choice between going in one of two very opposite directions, both of which are unattractive to me... so better just to not think about it, right? :-) Anyway, I know that is even more confusing and vague, but it is just intended to remind me in the future of what I was thinking. You probably think I am nuts.

Here is a huge issue for contemporary Westerners. Sex is primarily seen as an act for pleasure. But in the Bible there is an inextricable connection between (1) marriage, (2) sex, (3) childbearing, (4) childrearing, and (5) the community of faith. The instant sex is separated from marriage and childbearing/rearing in the context of a community of faith, sex becomes not a covenantal responsibility but exclusively a sensual pleasure. To the degree Christians permit such a separation of sex from marriage and children in the community of faith, they have lost all right to speak about any kind of sexual immorality.

In other words there are levels of responsibility inherent to sex: personal, spousal, familial, and communal. It is all tied together. To invade the Bible for laws and to rip covenant behaviors, covenant sexual behaviors, from these connected dimensions of responsibilities is to miss what is saying.

This context raises the bar: if sex is about marriage and childbearing and childrearing (no one wants to say exclusively for childbearing), then adultery and divorce also find their proper context. Adultery and divorce are problematic because they separate sex from marriage and they separate childrearing from marriage.

The context for what the Bible says about homosexuality is right here: until we embrace sex as something for marriage designed by God for childbearing and childrearing, which is accompanied by pleasure but not designed solely for pleasure, there is simply no rationale for a traditional Christian belief.

Just one problematic example of being in that "middle place" that I can think of: in light of this view of sex, abortion is obviously wrong. But isn't birth control awfully hard to defend as well? And if birthcontrol were immoral, what does that do to the role of women, and the changes in women's lifestyles that resulted from the introduction of that technology? But then in the other direction, if sex can now be purely for pleasure because of the technologies we have created, then current Christian morals and practice need to be updated. See what I mean about both options making me queasy? To become Amish or a swinger, that is the question.