How many of you went to college with the help of a Pell grant? I did. Made my loans so much smaller. Just heard that the senator who made that possible for us just died. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28462858/?GT1=43001
We forget that sometimes legislation has tremendous benefits to us and often only remember the gridlock.
Filed under education
Do you have a must-experience christmas tradition? Is it one of your making or one you are continuing from ages and generations past? Do you wish you had one or wish you could get rid of one of someone else’s making?
Since we got married 18 years ago, we have traveled 17 times to CT and ME for Christmas. Many of these included travel on Christmas day? Sound bad? For us it has been a fun little time that just we share. And kids have enjoyed it as well. Pretty lame compared to other traditions I imagine. Our kids now have the tradition of 3 christmas times: once at home, one with Kim’s family, and one with mine. Works out pretty well for them I guess.
How about other traditions? Foods you must have? Movies you must see? Events you must attend? Sadly, I have few here. A friend brought over some of his Norwegian heritage. Its a bread with fruit in it and a brown cheese (gjetost?) to go on it. Tasty.
Well, enjoy your traditions and see you in the New Year. We’re off to the snowy north.
Filed under Uncategorized
We come to part two of Christopher Wright’s, The God I Don’t Understand(IVP, 2008). In the last section he muses about the problem of the existence of evil but in this section he considers the struggle to understand the violence and wrath of God found in the Old Testament. Wright says that atheists like Richard Dawkins have no trouble understanding (in their way of thinking) the God of the OT. He’s just a “petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak…vindictive, bloodthirsty…malevolent bully.” (as quoted on p. 73). Wright says their struggle is only to understand Christians who say they believe in this kind of God. It is Christians who struggle to understand the character of God and how punishments on whole families fits with the God of love we imagine. For the next two chapters he wants to consider the following question:
How are we to understand the language of God’s anger, jealousy, or vengeance alongside of what we have been taught about God’s love, mercy, and compassion? (p. 74)
And he wants to apply this to the treatment of the Canaanites.
We’ll look here at his chapter 4 which outlines three popular (but in his mind wrong) attempts to get around the interpretation of a capricious genocidal God.
1. OT God vs. NT God. That is, some try to ignore the problems of the OT by claiming that the NT sets to rights the OT. Wright says that behind this assumption is that the OT God is all “fire and brimstone, war and vengeance, blood and punishment. The so-called God of the New Testament is much nicer altogether.” (77).
Wright disagrees with this assumption because the OT has much to say about God’s compassion and love, the NT, “has much to say (and more in fact) about the anger and judgment of God…[and] because Jesus and writers of the New Testament never seem embarrassed by Old Testament stories, nor do they reject or even correct them (though they do move beyond them).” (ibid.)
To bolster his argument, Wright examines a number of OT passages (e.g., Ex. 34:6-7 [which he says is the “most pervasive definitions of the character of God in the Bible…Love is for thousands; punishment is for thre and four.”], Ps. 103:8-14, Jer. 31:3, 20, Eze 33:11, Deut 7, 10). Then he examines Jesus as the most frequent discussant of hell, the day of judgment, and then cites John Wenham’s observation that while the OT focuses on temporal punishment, the NT focuses on eternal punishments.
Finally, he addresses the ways the NT writers refer to the OT. They refer to the punishment of Sodom and of Korah. They refer to other horrors and do not re-interpret (though they do include Samson in the lessons of faith). And so, he concludes that you cannot and should not put the NT against the OT to resolve the problem of violence.
2. The Israelites thought they were doing God’s will to wipe out the Canaanites but were wrong. This is the 2nd way some try to get around the violence of the OT. God couldn’t have been behind it. It must have been the Israelites mistaken view that God was telling them to destroy the inhabitants of the land. Wright believes this argument fails because (a) when people speak falsely or act falsely for God, it is corrected [hmm., is that always true?] as in Nathan’s advice to David or in Jehu’s bloodbath murder of Baal priests. Since nowhere does the conquest of Canaan get rebuked…therefore it cannot be a misinterpretation of God’s will, and (b) in fact, the unwillingness to conquer the land (after the spies came back) led to the the wilderness wanderings and is seen as disobedience of God in both testaments. Wright concludes,
you simply can’t surgically remove the conquest alone from the great sweep of Bible history…while leaving all the rest of the story intact within the sovereign will of God. At least, you can’t if you treat the Bible seriously as a whole. (p. 83)
3. The conquest passages are allegory for the purpose of getting a “spiritual lesson” from them. Wright doesn’t deny the value of spiritualizing texts. But, he concludes that the “spiritual use of the Old Testament narratives is secondary and derivative. Their primary form is simply historical narrative.” (p. 84).
No one (and I imagine native Palestinians would be included) believes that the stories of the OT are intended as fictional accounts, even if numbers of people killed are somewhat symbolic or estimates.
So, if these ways of thinking about the conquest are not helpful, what is? That will be the content of chapter five.
I’m not usually writing about food but my wife and I had a wonderful meal on Friday night at the Fayette Street Grille, Conshohocken, PA. The restaurant is a french style prix fix (but not that tiny portion type). You get a appetizer, main course, and dessert for 33 dollars. I had a molten brie/phyllo appetizer and roast duck for the entree. Kim had a crab/salmon cake that was really delicious. If you want a nice romantic meal this is a great place to come. Small, casual, but every morsel was perfect. (BYOB for those that care).
Filed under Uncategorized
you can become quite cynical about Christians, christian organizations, etc. is there any church or pastor who isn’t completely hypocritical? Are there churches or boards that handle abused individuals with care? Do any of our leaders actually admit their wrongs and seek forgiveness? Does anyone in a difficult marriage stay and avoid bitterness?
The answer, of course, is yes (to the last three questions). But we counselors rarely get the opportunity to hear those stories. Why would anyone pay us or bend our ear to tell us how great something worked out. But we humans have a propensity to collect “look how screwed up the world is” stories. Isn’t that what the news is all about. When I go home to my parents in Maine they actually do have some feel good stories and it feels rather strange and unnewsworthy. Where’s the killings, the rapings, the pillagings? This is news?
And yet it is good to recount stories where humans treat each other better than they deserve, where they admit to failings and refuse to excuse wrongs. Frankly, we must admit these stories aren’t exceptions. They happen all the time but we are blind to them. We fail to record these behaviors because we know how easy it is to not show mercy, to not show humility–because this is how we act sometimes!
So, listen for those vignettes where leaders, parents, spouses, etc. either suffer well or are willing to own up to failings (and then do the right thing about them). These stories are all around. And while they don’t dismiss those where leaders fail us they do round out the picture.
Filed under Christianity: Leaders and Leadership, stories, suffering
In his 3rd hour last week, Miroslav Volf spoke on forgiveness. I say hour, but really it was only about 40 minutes with breaks and chatting. Here’s some of his thoughts that you can find in both End of Memory and Free of Charge.
1. We tend towards one of three reactions to wrongs: (a.) Revenge (taking mode). Doesn’t measure the response, just reacts, (b) Retribution (exchange mode). Deserving punishments meted out. The eye for an eye. And this mode considers not just what is taken but compensation for the violation itself. (c) Forgiveness (giving mode). Giving the gift of not counting wrongs against the wrongdoer.
2. Modern culture sees forgiveness as a gift to self to get rid of the poison of bitterness rather than a gift to the offender. While forgiveness may have this consequence, to view it only this way is to minimize the gift of releasing the other.
3. Why do we forgive? Because God is a giving and forgiving God.
4. Be careful not to minimize the hard activity of forgiving the offender. Forgiveness names the other as a criminal. It claims an injustice. It is a call for justice. But then follows up the call with a generous deed–not counting the act against the person.
5. Why does God do this? Because time does not run backward. Our misdeeds stick to us and we need freedom.
6. What about forgiving and forgetting? For 2500 years these two were tied together, that forgiveness should lead to forgetting or not remembering the acts done. The modern world has cut them apart. We want to forgive but remember. And yet the most amazing gift would be the forgetting of our sins. “Properly understood, forgetting is the crown of forgiveness.” Volf (in his books) is not unthoughtful about the difficulty in forgetting, but thinks we may be too quick to untie the two acts.
7. Finally, we cannot talk about forgiveness without also talking about the need for repentance. If we do not repent we do not receive God’s gift. If we forgive another, the gift cannot be received without repentance. While you can give a gift unilaterally, it will not reach its full goal without the proper response. Gift giving is a social relationship.
THUS, You can say “I have forgiven you.” But unless it has been received with repentance, then forgiveness hasn’t occurred nor can reconciliation.
Filed under Christianity, Forgiveness
Previously, I wrote a quick summary of Miroslav Volf’s first hour of his presentation entitled, Free of charge: Giving and Forgiving in a World Stripped of Grace. This time I’ll summary his second hour on “Giving.”
he started this hour with an aside. He commented that when he does this kind of talk, he finds that attendees are substantially more interested in his work on forgiveness than on his comments about giving and gift giving. What might this say about us in that we are far more interested in thinking about forgiveness than giving gifts (which is what forgiveness really is)
To his points:
1. Giving is the opposite of amassing things.
2. While fulfilling, giving is hard because it usually requires self-sacrifice. Yes, some gifts cost little or even benefit us (e.g., a performer gives the gift of performance but through giving it gets even better as a performer). It is hard to give because: (a) it costs us something, (b) we have to fight the tendency toward laziness or sloth, (c) pride, desire for manipulation, sense of entitlement, airs of superiority, desire to demean, etc hinders us. Further, some of us are tempted to being “smart takers” (i.e., taking under the guise of caring for others)
3. Problem: we craft God into our own image. We imagine him as negotiator and attempt to negotiate with him. We bargain with if/then statements. If you give me x, I will give you back y. The tragedy is that we’re trying to negotiate with God but we have nothing to offer him in exchange. And what we think we are offering or bringing to the table are things that given as gifts to US by God himself. This insults God’s gift and his burning love that is the motivation for that gift. Bargainers have to bargain from a position of strength–but we have none with God because his loving gifts overwhelm us.
4. Why do we give? Why should we give? We give because God is a giver. He gives to us for our enjoyment and for us to pass on to others. We give because it is the nature of our character–made in the image of a giving, loving God.
5. God loves a cheerful giver. He wants us to be givers who give without grumbling. And when we do, we experience true living. (example of following musical score. At first it may be mechanical and even oppressive. But when it is played well, you experience its freedom, its true expression.)
6. But God is neither a negotiator or a Santa Claus. He give gives us gifts with an address on it other than our own–gifts intended to be given or passed on. But what happens when we keep other people’s gifts? Misappropriated gifts brings out God’s response of justice.
7. Must we assess the deserving nature of the gift giver? While we may speak of wise gifts, Christianity is built on gifts to the unjust and just alike. maybe we should talk about wise vs. discriminating? Volf thinks gift giving can be both wise AND indiscriminate. Wise gifts may consider impact and effectiveness. Indiscriminate means one doesn’t evaluate whether the recipient is deserving or not.
Lastly, sometimes the suburbanized, tolerant mindset of love doesn’t feel that God’s love is really love but manipulation. Love is not like Santa but true love has a spine. It can be severe, robust, opinionated, etc.
Next post will cover his final talk on forgiveness.
Filed under Christianity, church and culture
The truth is, search engine searches are how people find us bloggers. But some of the searches used most frequently to find my site give me a chuckle. Especially the 4th most frequently used search:
“Where is my wallet?”
Now, who is looking on the internet for their wallet? Do they think that there is going to be a clue on the web? Do they think I took it? Do they think psychologists have special finding tools (well, we do know what you are thinking).
There is a simple reason why people come to me looking for their wallet. I wrote of my travails since I lose mine regularly. I guess they want some comfort…
Filed under Uncategorized
On Saturday I attended Miroslav Volf’s 3 hour talk on the topic of renewing grace and forgiveness in a “culture stripped of grace.” The first talk, “A Culture stripped of grace” he had these things to say:
1. Our culture is oriented around satisfying desires. If you ask a person what makes us flourish, you may get get a blank stare, or, they perceive that flourishing means living with satisfaction. Can we imagine flourishing without met desires? Maybe we should speak of “living well” instead?
2. We have lost some of those things that religion teaches us how to curtail desire. We live in a “grab ass/kick ass world” We grab what we can and take revenge on those who try to take from us or block us from what we think we deserve.
3. We tend to live in 3 (maybe 4?) modes
a. Taking mode (get what we want) Notice that life becomes dull in taking mode and so you need bigger and bigger takes. “Opiate for the people is commercialized culture, not religion.”
b. Investing mode (try to get just a bit more than we get)
c. Exchange mode(rough equivalency of giving and getting). This is where we live most of the time and it isn’t bad
d. Gift mode (giving more than we hope to get). Here he made allusions to bad gift giving which he says is worse than exchange mode.
4. What happens when gift mode shrinks in culture or goes away? Human life is impossible w/o gifting. We cannot pay enough to cover the costs from being raised, for example. We begin to see, when gift mode shrinks, that giving is being a fool, a loser, a sucker. In this current crisis we are afraid not of going hungry but of not being able to have what we want.
He ended the talk with the question we wants us to ask: What is our life for? This requires us to think and stop just reacting to desires and culture cues. What is our life for? Is it for me or for giving? How might this current crisis move us to ask this question?
Filed under church and culture, cultural apologetics, Doctrine/Theology, Forgiveness, sin
We come to the 3rd chapter of Christopher Wright’s book, The God I don’t Understand(2008, IVP). Poking a little fun at theologians he tells us that while they want to explain evil, God intends and will destroy it. He reminds us that in the 1st chapter he called us to accept the mystery of evil and in the 2nd to protest and lament it. In this chapter he calls us to rejoice over evil’s final destruction.
The whole Bible, indeed, can be read as the epic account of God’s plan and purpose to defeat evil and rid his whole creation of it forever. (56)
Wright wants us to look at 3 ways the cross helps us understand God’s response to evil. “They are: the utter ‘evilness’ of evil; the utter goodness of God; and the utter sovereignty of God” (p. 57). The cross holds these 3 things together and Wright argues through the chapter how each of these things must be part of our understanding of how God defeats evil.
1. If evil isn’t that evil or rather was necessary, then God is somehow stained by it
2. God is utterly good. And his sovereignty over evil people and his use of their acts of evil does not stain him either.
3. God is sovereign and whether or not you try to distinguish between God’s permissive will and his declarative will, he is sovereign over all things.
Wright then recounts the Joseph story to show these three truths. Evil is evil in the life of Joseph. God is good to him and the whole area. God is sovereign, even over the evil behavior of his brothers.
And then he moves to the cross,
First, the cross exposed the utter depths of human and satanic evil–in hatred, injustice, cruelty, violence, and murder…
Second, the cross happened fully in accordance with God’s sovereign will from eternity…
Third, the cross also expressed the utter goodness of God, pouring out his mercy and grace in self-giving love. (62-63)
Finally, he finishes the chapter with an exploration of Revelation as it illustrates the centrality of the Cross in the defeat of evil. “Christ’s power to control these evil forces [the horsemen in Revelation] is the same power as the power he exercised on the cross.” (p. 67). And so, Rev. 21 tells us of the evils that will be banished (sea, death, pain, sin, darkness, shame, strife, curse, etc.).
This is a short but nice chapter on the power of the cross over evil–how God brings evil and righteousness together in one act in order to destroy all evil. Whenever human goodness and evil combine, the result is impurity. But God’s weakness/innocence on the cross results in the destruction of all that is evil.
From here we’ll move to questions about all the killing in the OT, of the destruction of the Canaanites to give Israel a land. How are we to understand that?
Filed under book reviews, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Doctrine/Theology
Musings on Faith and Psychology 