Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Is Rudeness a Christian Value?

    The Minutemen United web site provides the following purpose:

    Minutemen United is a group of men and women dedicated to creating an environment where Christian thoughts, ideals and leaders can get traction in the marketplace of ideas. We hail from New York to California and are headquartered in Ohio ” the heart of it all”.

    But according to the Columbus Dispatch, their way of getting “traction in the marketplace” for their particular brand of “Christian” ideas is to be rude and to disrupt other folks’ church services.

    On one of the first Sundays, six people came to the church’s 11 a.m. service and addressed the congregation during a time designated for prayer requests and comments.

    Hurt said a man, who introduced himself as a minister from the New Beginnings Church in Warsaw, Ohio, started to give a sermon about how the church was acting against God’s word by accepting homosexuals.

    Members of Minutemen United also visited King Avenue United Methodist Church in Columbus that same morning, said the Rev. John Keeny.

    “They rebuked me as a pastor for preaching that God’s love is for everyone,” Keeny said.

    Interesting approach. I note that their is named “New Beginnings” and is thus neither First Baptist nor King Avenue United Methodist Church, a point they seem to have missed when deciding where to park their sermons.

    The churches would have every right to have the police throw these trespassers out. I congratulate both congregations for displaying a more Christ-like attitude than I likely would have.

    HT: Pandagon.

  • Random Mutations and God

    JuliaL, in a comment to my previous post, Don McLeroy and his Big Creationist Tent . I’m going to copy the comment here and reply, because I think it brings up an important point that deserves a post of its own.

    Here’s the part that mystifies me:


    Consider natural selection of random mutations. If they’re random mutations, they can’t be God-directed, and if they’re naturally selected, you can’t hav, quote, “God-selecteds.”

    Is the claim being made that there is no such thing as a mathematically random process, such as the choosing of the winning number in a lottery? Or, is McLeroy saying that a process can indeed be mathematically random, but in some magical fashion then God is incapable of being any part of it? So God is completely excluded from lotteries? And if we want to cut God out of any issue, we need only introduce randomness (like “Russian roulette” with a gun before pulling the trigger), and God is forced to stand by helpless? I’ve seen people pick a Bible verse to read by closing their eyes, letting the Bible fall open, and then putting their finger to the page to pick a random verse to mediatate on. Does this process mean that God is now excluded from the event and must stand around looking incompetent?

    As for natural selection, is the claim here that anything selected for/against by nature thereby excludes God from any role? Nature pretty much destroys certain kinds of plants I attempt to put in my yard; the heat, humidity, and alternate drought and flood kills them off. Does installing such plants mean that I have managed to ban God from my yard?

    This seems a strange view of God, not as the ground of all being or as the wholeness of which everything else is a part, but as a separate, discrete individual who can be pushed aside through math and nature processes that we all normally acknowledge exist.

    The thing that has mystified me for a long time is that so many people seem to view a natural process as something which separates something from design by God. From my theological point of view, the universe exists because God wills it so, therefore everything is designed. Supposing I create a machine that automatically produces some other device. Would that secondary device not be considered my design? God goes one better, and designs and elegant and simple algorithm that produces huge variety. It’s still God.

    Intelligent design creationists (IDC) are not satisfied to have God ordain laws and processes. They want God to intervene along the way, and see indications of that design. The Holy Grail of this idea is that one process or system that simply cannot have been produced by the simple combination of variation + natural selection. They keep claiming to have found it, but as knowledge of the evolutionary process advances, ways are discovered. IDC requires a severe deficit in imagination.

    The requirement for detectable intervention ties intelligent design to creationism. If that were not the case, they could embrace people like me who believe in God and believe that the universe itself exists by the will of God. That means everything we see is designed at some level or another. I’m not a metaphysical naturalist. But IDCs do not embrace people like me. Why? Because the simple statement that the universe is designed is not their real goal.

    Their goal is to prove elements of the Biblical story of creation, specifically that there are “kinds” that cannot produce one another, boundary lines that can only be crossed by special divine intervention. That’s the point of trying to find detectable footprints. It’s not design/non-design so much as it is the detectability of design, and even more specifically the detectability of limits that require divine intervention at particular points.

    On this young and old earth creationists can agree, because their understanding of the Genesis story, while not the same, agrees in hearing it as narrative history. They just disagree in the level of symbol involved. They both need divine intervention in a way that should be detectable. (There’s some discussion of this right now because IDCs want to deny part of their roots. This has been discussed recently by Nick Matzke, Ed Brayton, and from the IDC side by Rob Crowther.

    Now to the word “random.” That is largely a scare word, since evolution is not, in fact, a random process. Natural selection is quite directed. There are a number of definitions of the word random, but in this case non-mathematicians are generally thinking something like “lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern” (Merriam-Webster). Though this is not the mathematical definition, it will work for our purposes.

    In A Wonderful Life Gould suggested a thought experiment rolling back the movie of the history of life on earth from the time of the Cambrian explosion onward, and suggested that it might unroll in different ways because random events might occur differently. But there is a view of determinism that would say that everything that occurs is totally caused by previous events, thus if we had sufficient knowledge we could tie every event right back to be big band, down to movements of subatomic particles. With this level of determinism, someone with my view of evolution could claim that God did design not just human beings as such, but me in particular, by the way he “set off the big bang.” Everything would be determined by the arrangement of particles (and whatever) at the moment “cause” came to have any meaning. Thus intelligent design without that identifiable time of intervention.

    (For those who want to think more about this, let me link to two series by Peter Kirk at Speaker of Truth. I’m not specifically endorsing everything Peter says, and I gather that he isn’t either, but that’s not because I disagree with any substantial portion. I simply don’t understand the physics well enough for my agreement to make any difference. The important thing is that he is here working with concepts from physics, and relating them to theology and origins, and deals some with the issue of causation. The posts are Kingdom Dynamics Introduction, Beyond Causality, The Boundaries, and The Crunch, followed by The Beginning part 1 and part 2.)

    IDCs would like that, however, because it wouldn’t give them their “kinds” with boundaries between them. In the view of some of them, front-loading would come with the creation of the first life, which should have DNA capable of producing everything that happened later.

    But there is no necessity that absolute determinism is true. It’s just a possibility. There could be events that are not caused in our sense of the word at all. For example, we have no way to speak sensibly of the “cause” of the big bang. I have had people I regard as reliable tell me that quantum physics shows that the universe is truly deterministic, and others I regard as equally reliable tell me it proves that there is true randomness. I don’t understand their arguments so I cannot comment on who is right. But it’s interesting that it appears to be a debatable issue!

    Some other theists who are scientists, especially physicists, see the subatomic realm as a place where God could intervene, for example, to cause mutations at the appropriate moment, without us being able to detect that intervention at all. Again, this wouldn’t make IDCs happy, because they want to find God, and also, for the most part, to prove that he created the world in a way that can be related to Genesis. Don’t ever be deceived by the rhetoric–Genesis will show up sooner or later.

    I don’t really understand the how of it at all. I would be satisfied if God simply created the process, and the process produces everything else. I think variation + natural selection is a very powerful process. At the moment I don’t see any example of demonstrated intervention. I would simply say that as a theist I hold that even if the process is random in its input (variation) it is random because that is the way God ordains it to be. That is not a scientific conclusion, however. Science must simply observe whether it is random or not and report.

    Finally, I do believe that the IDCs come up with a bizarre idea of God, a God who is more active at some points than others, and one who designed a process to diversify life, but it didn’t work right, so he has to tinker. Somehow they think this is a positive think and work very hard to prove that it happened, at the same time proving, in my view, that God is incompetent. That’s not a conclusion I’d prefer to come to!

  • Looking at a Passage

    I’ve blogged here a few times about different ways of reading (here, for example). Lingamish has a series of posts on the topic as well that are well worth reading. They are:

    I have found many partisans amongst Bible students, especially of serious, detailed reading, outlining, diagramming, phrasing, and so forth. Others are partisans for reading large sections at a time. But all of these approaches have their benefits, and it is only by looking at the text from more than one angle that we get the whole. Someone might diagram an entire passage and provide extended exegetical arguments, but if the connection to the whole is not made, then something may well be missing.

    Lingamish has a “rubber meets the road” practical approach that is refreshing.

    One last link to Lingamish, Grasshopper Greek: Apocalyptic Rock, in which he puts a portion of Revelation to music. The player at the top of the post doesn’t seem to work, but the alternate link he provides does.

    As an occasional Greek teacher, normally of one or two students at a time, I take the opportunity both to read to them, and to have them read to me in Greek, before I ask them to translate. It takes a great deal of practice to smooth out one’s pronunciation and gain any ease in that process, but I find that students who do so can discuss the text and think about it more effectively. I’m guessing most of us who have studied Biblical languages remember a time early in our training when we would look at a word, but couldn’t really pronounce it, and then look it up in the lexicon. On failing to find it, we’d look back and realize that we weren’t looking for precisely the same word as was found in the text. Or was I the only one who ever made that mistake?

    Learning to pronounce the text comprehensibly helps with that process. I’ve been reading Syriac recently, trying to revive my knowledge of that language, which was never all that good in the first place. I made precisely that mistake just yesterday, because my pronunciation has become weak, and I don’t clearly remember the form and the sound together.

    I don’t know how many will take to rockin’ in Greek, but it’s an interesting idea!

  • Chrysostom Quote on Suffering

    Sufferings are a perfecting and a cause of salvation. Do you see that to suffer affliction is not the fate of those who are utterly forsaken, if indeed it was by leading him through sufferings that God first honored his Son? And truly his taking flesh to suffer what he suffered is a far greater thing than creating the world out of things that are not. This is indeed a token of his lovingkindness, but the other far more. — On the Epistle to the Hebrews 4-4, quoted from Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament X, Hebrews.

    This quote in my reading today relates wonderfully to the post I wrote for my wife’s devotional list.

  • Manly Dish-Doing

    As a dish-washing, laundry-doing, floor cleaning grandfather, this ridiculous answer caught my attention. No, not the one about the frozen embryos, the second one. Well, actually I required a hat tip from Pandagon.

    This is the ridiculous lengths to which the view of gender roles can go, and many times Christian complementarians head right off in that direction. I’m not saying everybody winds up with some ridiculous stereotype of male and female roles, but it’s easy to get there. My view is that each person should do what they are gifted to do, and I really doubt that anyone’s masculinity or femininity will be harmed by that.

    How does this work out in my family. Well, right now my wife has an outside job (she’s an RN), but I work at home running our business and writing. She’s also a writer, but she works that around the other job. Now think of this logically. Who in our home is best set to do the dishes, clean the house and do the laundry? I am, no question about it. I can make any of those activities a break in my day, lose remarkably little work time, and keep up with it. Since I am sitting in front of this monitor pounding this keyboard almost all day, or otherwise reading and researching, I’m not physically tired when I grab the vacuum cleaner or whatever else is necessary.

    She, on the other hand, comes home tired because her job involves being on her feet much of the time, running around the work place, and she comes home physically tired. Even if we started with an equal amount of time to put aside for housework, it just doesn’t make sense for her to be the one to do it. She needs that time to sit down, relax, and also do her writing, all of which get her off her feet.

    I note here that I don’t work less. People seem to think that because I work at home and have a small business, I don’t really have a job and should be available at all hours of the day or night for whatever anyone wants to do. In order to keep the business going I have had to put severe boundaries on my time. For example, I no longer answer the business line outside of business hours and generally ignore our personal line during business hours. Caller ID helps me sort that out a bit better.

    But back to the topic. I simply have to wonder if the people who make this type of pronouncements actually have real lives. Maybe they live insulated from the everyday world where you have to make things work together, where the house might not get cleaned if the man doesn’t step up to the plate and do it, not because the wife is shirking, but because she’s killing herself adding to the family budget.

    I don’t say every woman has to work outside the home; I’d leave that to individual couples. What I would suggest is that simply being practical makes a lot more sense than trying to rule your house by ideology.

  • Don McLeroy and his Big Creationist Tent

    I’ve written a great deal recently (here, here, and here) about the use of the term “worldview” to attempt to create a level playing field, particularly for young earth creationism. I don’t have a problem with the term “worldview” in a strictly limited sense. If we exclude particular possibilities a priori, and refuse to reexamine those assumptions, we can be locked into a worldview.

    One of my major problems with common use of the term “worldview” is that it tends to be used in a binary fashion. I don’t mean that there are only two worldviews, seen as mutually exclusive, but rather that each worldview is seen as totally exclusive of all others.

    Don McLeroy, newly named head of the Texas Board of Education (Hat Tip: NCSE, the Texas Freedom Network, and The Panda’s Thumb) gave a speech in 2005 that illulstrates some of my points very well, even better than I stated them. In a somewhat incoherent and disjointed speech, he managed to lay the boundaries of intelligent design creationism (IDC), to justify the inclusion of “creationism” in that label, to employ the scriptures extensively in support of his position, and to claim that it was all scientific.

    As a theistic evolutionist, I found his discussion interesting, and it affirms the most negative comments I have made about the intelligent design movement. There have been intelligent design advocates who have tried to include me in their camp, saying that theistic evolution is really a form of intelligent design. I disagree; so does McLeroy, thought it seems for different reasons.

    I want to focus just on McLeroy’s definition of the “big tent” of IDC, and just what it is he says they are in opposition to. Look at the following quotes from the speech:

    . . . And one other thing about these lessons, big tent, and this is, uh, in the big tent of evolution we all have disagreements, but we’re united in one thing, and we’re united in what we oppose. And you’ll see this later. This is the power of the deductive argument, but nature is all there is. We’re united against the fact that that’s a true statement.

    . . . and . . .

    . . . Actually, in intelligent design we are focused on a on a bigger target, and in the words of Phillip Johnson “the target is metaphysical naturalism, materialism or just plain old naturalism. The idea that nature is all there is.” Modern science today is totally based on naturalism, and all of intelligent design’s arguments against evolution and chemical origin of life it is the naturalistic base that is the target. . . .

    . . . and . . .

    Now I would like to talk a little bit about the big tent. Why is intelligent design the big tent? It’s because we’re all lined up against the fact that naturalism, that nature is all there is. Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young earth, old earth, it’s all in the tent of intelligent design. And intelligent design here at Grace Bible Church actually is a smaller, uh, tent than you would have in the intelligent design movement as a whole. Because we are all Biblical literalists, we all believe the Bible to be inerrant, and it’s good to remember, though, that the entire intelligent design movement as a whole is a bigger tent. So because it’s a bigger tent, just don’t waste our time arguing with each other about some of the, all of the side issues. And that’s one thing that I really enjoyed about our group is that we’ve put that all in the big tent, we’re all working together.

    So what we have here is a big tend of IDC that includes just about everyone out there. Young earth creationists, old earth creationists, more general ID proponents, and one guesses even those who hold the gap theory. Thus on one side of the debate we are supposed to see people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old and those who believe it is 4.5 billion years old. We are to combine people who believe there was a global flood and those who believe it was just a very large localized event. Within that range we have giant differences between the evidence required for each option.

    This is not the picture of a scientific movement. It is the picture of a political movement, involving a temporary religious alliance. I would warn the old earth creationists to beware. Should this “big tent” ever succeed in its goals, the young earth creationists who now accept IDC (and many of them do not) will be after you guys in a minute.

    But what is the goal of this diverse group? The defeat of naturalism, what else? Now notice that if naturalism is defeated, there will be some form of supernaturalism to take its place. In a philosophical sense, I’m fine with that. I’m a supernaturalist myself, on which more later. But let’s continue:

    So what is naturalism? It’s the idea that nature is all there is. . . .

    So now McLeroy makes it explicit. In his big tent belongs everyone who is opposed to naturalism, and he defines naturalism as the belief that nature is all there is. Now forgive me for being dense, but as a theist, I would think that I qualify as someone who does not believe that nature is all there is. In fact, every so often one of my atheist friends reminds me of that “weakness” in my thinking.

    So perhaps the main thing that keeps me out of McLeroy’s big tent is the fact that I have a hard time seeing how young earth creationists and old earth creationists belong in the same tent. From the scientific point of view, they don’t. At a minimum, one must recognize that different arguments are required against each one.

    But I would be wrong to think that’s the problem. Now let’s look at what is not included in the “big tent.”

    I’d like to make a quick comment about the option of theistic evolution, and it’s a very poor option. There’s not anybody in our group that’s advocating this. Because Darwinism doesn’t allow God to do anything. Consider natural selection of random mutations. If they’re random mutations, they can’t be God-directed, and if they’re naturally selected, you can’t hav, quote, “God-selecteds.” And so no one in our group represents theistic evolution, and the big tent of intelligent design does not include theistic evolutionists. Because intelligent design is opposed to evolution. Theistic evolutionists embrace it. So, you know, there are some in the Christian camp that just say, “Well, I am a theistic evolutionist.” And there are some bright minds that are that way, but they aren’t part really of the intelligent design group. It just doesn’t fit.

    I hope you read that paragraph carefully. The problem is not whether God exists or not, or whether there is something other than nature–no matter how much someone tries to tell you other wise. The issue is about detecting and measuring God’s presence scientifically. If I say that the world exists because God brought the universe into existence, and that life appeared in accordance with God’s natural laws and then further diversified in accordance with those laws, I am not welcome in this big tent.

    The reason cannot be that I’m a naturalist. I just said God (something other than nature) is the cause of all of this. The reason is that I don’t believe that God’s fingerprints can be found where he tinkered with the processes. Unfortunately for my welcome into McLeroy’s big tent, I believe that the process God created to produce life and diversify it actually works, and doesn’t require periodic adjustments.

    This issue is not naturalism or not. The issue is whether the scientific method is to be called upon to measure the supernatural. I don’t think that will ever work. In fact, I would be unsurprised if in the scientific sense we ever found the point at which we say “God did it” because I believe that “God did it” in such a comprehensive and consistent way that we’re never going to find the seams or the fingerprints.

    One can wonder why I’m a theist, in that case, a point which I’ve discussed elsewhere, but in terms of science, “God did it” is never an answer, and should never be used as a stop sign for scientific effort.

    That’s why I totally agree with McLeroy that I belong outside his big tent, but I do so by disagreeing with the common element. It is not that they are supernaturalists. It is that they believe God must have left fingerprints on nature. They can’t agree on just what he left and where, but they’re willing to get together to push the rest of us out of the way.

    To me engaging naturalism does bring religion into the equation, though I think by bringing in scientific method some of the points – I hadn’t thought about that, so I really gotten a lot out of this discussion. That you can do it without bringing religion into it, so I think you can go both ways. . . .

    And this is simply ridiculous. Of course the intention is religious. The intent is to make sure that we get God into the equation. All this stuff about unidentified intelligent designers is a smokescreen, though the smoke is so transparent that everyone other than those generating the smoke are seeing through it. It is only the IDC folks who think that they have covered something up when they refer to an undetermined intelligent designer. The rest of us know who they’re talking about.

    McLeroy invokes the matrix in accusing evolutionary scientists of being hopelessly deceived by their worldview. But there is nothing about a methodological naturalism that prevents one from seeing any sort of evidence. I would suggest that the filter is much in evidence inside the big tent. It’s a filter that removes the abundant evidence of common descent. It also prevents people from seeing new evidence found regularly that advances our knowledge of evolutionary processes.

    I am perfectly willing to be proven wrong, for someone to find God’s fingerprints showing his tinkering. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’m open to such evidence. Thus far, none has been forthcoming.

  • Boys Being Boys Should be Treated as Boys

    . . . or girls as girls.

    One of the things that makes me go “hmmmm” is that so many people are troubled by corporal punishment, but can somehow manage to accept the idea of a 13 year old tried and sentenced for a crime as an adult. To me that’s just weird. I do think occasionally crimes committed by juveniles need to get outside the juvenile justice system. But we also need to have effective, consistent discipline in schools and communities. My intention is not to propose draconian measures, but rather a consistent response to indiscipline.

    A good example of a reaction that is way out of proportion is this case in Oregon. I don’t normally agree with Michelle Malkin, but this, to me, is a clear case of something that should be handled as a juvenile issue, by school and hopefully parental discipline–serious discipline, needless to say, but not criminal.

    We have made it harder and harder to keep order in schools, while at the same time we have gotten more radical in juvenile justice. A measure of personal responsibility and good judgment all around would be useful.

    HT: Pursuing Holiness.

  • More Efficient Bureaucracy?

    I’m shocked! It appears that the expense and displacement caused by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security has not resolved inter-agency turf wars. Well, not so much shocked, actually. According to The Aviation Nation, ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) has been avoiding working with the FBI on terrorism cases.

    This points to a need for voters to beware. Politicians like to choose play multiple choice when dealing with a problem: a) Create an agency or commission with the right name, b) Draft a bill with a title that promises to fix it, c) Allocate some money, irrespective of whether that money will solve the problem or e) deny the problem and hope it goes away.

    If any of us are feeling confident of our ability to respond to a major natural disaster, we should consider Hurricane Katrina, a predictable disaster, at least for a couple of days in advance, to which we were nonetheless not prepared to respond. Imagine a sudden terrorist attack coming now. Would our bureaucracy pull together and work and play well as one team?

    I suspect we’d have plenty of heroic action in the field, and plenty of bureaucrats who had essentially no impact on the situation trying to sort out blame and credit afterwards.

  • Christian Carnival #185

    . . . has been Parableman.

  • Notes on Mark 12:28-34

    Translation and Notes

    Overview

    There are parallel passages in Matthew 22:34-40 and Luke 10:25-28

    On the questioner, the Interpreter’s Bible comments:

    He is a model for the right approach both to Christ and to the scriptures. The psalmist speaks of “inquiring” in the temple (Ps. 27:4). We do so many other things there. We talk, we pray, we sing, we give. But so many never really inquire. That is the attitude which Jesus so eagerly welcomed. It is the reverent, humble search to learn the will of God for us and for our time; vastly different from the frequent attempt to bend the Almighty around until we can use him as a support for policies and points of view which we have already decided upon without reference to him. So often the common question “What would Jesus do?’ does not mark the beginning of a search at all. It marks the beginning of an argument. The conclusion usually runs something like this: “So, you see, Jesus would do just what I am doing.” — IB Exposition on Mark 12:28-34

    I agree with their assessment of the questioner. Many modern commentators try to make him out to be one of those questioners who was trying to trap Jesus, but there is nothing of that in the text here.

    I have adopted these two laws as a key to interpretation. You can see my essay on this at Hanging Biblical Interpretation.

    28And one of the scribes heard them debating, and when he saw that Jesus had answered them well, he came and asked him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”

    29Jesus answered, “First is, ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord,

    Mar 12:29 – The Lord our God is one Lord – This is the foundation of the first commandment, yea, of all the commandments. The Lord our God, the Lord, the God of all men, is one God, essentially, though three persons. From this unity of God it follows, that we owe all our love to him alone. — John Wesley

    The quote is from Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

    30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heard and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31And the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no greater commandment than these.”

    The second quote is from Leviticus 19:18. “First” in this sense is not chronological, but logical. Which commandment best sums up the law, or is most basic logically.

    32And the scribe said to him, “Excellent, teacher, you’re really right when you say that he is one, and there is none other than him, 33 and ‘loving him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength’ and ‘loving your neighbor as yourself’ is better than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

    Darrell Bock notes:

    “. . . Properly relating to God translates into properly relating to others. This is more important than any ritual. The rule of God presses for people to live righteously with one another” (p. 331).

    Mar 12:33 – To love him with all the heart – To love and serve him, with all the united powers of the soul in their utmost vigour; and to love his neighbour as himself – To maintain the same equitable and charitable temper and behaviour toward all men, as we, in like circumstances, would wish for from them toward ourselves, is a more necessary and important duty, than the offering the most noble and costly sacrifices. — John Wesley

    In this rare case the scribe is totally in tune with what Jesus says. This wasn’t a trap, but a genuine question, genuinely answered.

    34And when Jesus saw that he answered thoughtfully, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And nobody dared to ask him questions any more.

    Referring to this questioner and the young man of Mark 10:17, Wuest quotes Swete:

    “. . . In both cases something was wanting to convert admiration in discipleship. If wealth was the bar in the one case, pride of intellect may have been fatal in the other. The mental acumen which detects and approves spiritual truth may, in the tragedy of human life, keep its possessor from entering the kingdom of God.”

    It seems to me that this is reading more into the white spaces than one is getting from the text itself. The questioner was near the kingdom. There is no necessity to assume that he didn’t finish the journey. There is no negative comment about him in Mark at all. Any assumption that he failed to completely apply his insight in his own life and eventually become a disciple is just that—assumption.