On Not Being a Sausage has Bible Software: You get what you pay for, regarding Bible software. Shocking, but true!
Category: Uncategorized
-
Christian Carnival #CXCVII
. . . has been posted at Crossroads. My contribution this time was from my Threads blog. Check out the many excellent posts in this carnival.
-
Christian Carnival CXCVI
Well, the Christian Carnival is back to this little corner of the blogosphere, and I’m going to take a theme from the church property and locate the posts somewhere on a church campus. There will obviously be some choices to make, and you might disagree, but remember that you can discuss theology in the parking lot, from the pulpit, or in a Sunday School room just as easily. I may move a post or so just to keep things even!
There’s some good material. I trust you will be blessed reading it.
Note: Because of some posts that may have been just too late for last week’s carnival, I allowed some posts that were one day outside the window, but no further. If your post was left out, please don’t hesitate to link in the comments section. I get e-mail notifications from there as quickly as I do by any other method.
Sunday School Rooms
Dana presents Western heritage without Christianity? posted at Principled Discovery.
Tom Gilson presents Coming Soon To Your Child’s School: Hate for God and Church, Heavily Advertised posted at Thinking Christian.
John presents Another View on Evangelicals Cracking Up posted at Brain Cramps for God. He looks at an article by Joe Carter that offers a principled way to examine the political currents in Evangelicalism.
Jon Swift presents The Mean Girl Faces of Islamo-Fascism posted at Jon Swift. He says: Even though I am a former (that is, perfected) Jew, I don’t think that I will ever again be able to pass a headscarved Muslim girl in the street again without panicking that she might make a “mean girl face” at me.
Jody Neufeld (my wife!) presents . . . despised and rejected by men . . . on her blog Jody Along the Path. She looks at the suffering of Jesus and its meaning to us.
The Community Life Center
Annette presents This made me laugh! posted at Fish and Cans. She says: Women are different than men….. hmmm…. go figure! 🙂 Sorry, whenever people make discoveries like that it makes me laugh, it seems so ordinary to me.
Richard H. Anderson presents Waitng on tables, Part 4 posted at dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos.
ChrisB presents Another Halloween question posted at Homeward Bound.
livinforhim316 presents Christian Dating Experiences » Practical Ways To Keep God In The Center posted at Christian Dating Experiences.
Martin LaBar presents The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman on Sun and Shield. It is his reaction to the current e-mail campaign against the upcoming movie, _The Golden Compass_, based on a book by Pullman. He states that Pullman does, indeed, seem to be a militant atheist. However, he thinks that there is a much larger danger from the media.
Adam presents The Faughn Family of Four: A Shot at… posted at The Faughn Family of Four. Another reality show that appears to have some questionable features.
David Balderston presents Helping Fire Victims | Life In San Diego posted at David Balderston.
The Parking Lot
Don Bosch of The Evangelical Ecologist gives us Life Lessons from Butterflies. He says: Christians often think of caterpillars and butterflies as nature’s “before” and “after” example of how God transformed our lives at Calvary. But God still has lots to teach people about living life like butterflies. This week the Evangelical Ecologist hosts a post called Life Lessons from Butterflies by Rives Duncan. I hope it’s a blessing to you!
This week at Light Along the Journey, John explores a Biblical definition of love in his post Better Than Warm Squishies.
Matthew Anderson presents Mere Orthodoxy » Principles, Pragmatics and the Vote: The Impotence of the Religious Right posted at Mere Orthodoxy.
Kevin presents Desert Wisdom – On Prayer and Activism posted at Everyday Liturgy. He encourages the new movements in Evangelicalism to dig to the root of the problems in American Christianity—and change by recovering the spiritual traditions that (ancient) Christianity has to offer.
For my own entry, I’m using one from Threads from Henry’s Web, which I rarely do. It is The Joys and Sorrows of being Ex-Seventh-day Adventist. I think it makes interesting parking lot conversation as we meet, greet, chat, and say good bye!
The Sanctuary
Jeremy Pierce presents Hate and Murder in Deuteronomy 19 posted at Parableman. Jesus declares hate to be subject to the same judgment as murder. This isn’t really a revision of the law, though, as some claim. Deuteronomy 19 connects punishment for murder with hatred in the heart.
David presents The Serenity Prayer posted at Frozen Toothpaste.
Doug presents Ostracization within the Church posted at Bounded Irrationality. Are churches becoming more cliquish? Could this be harming the Church’s outreach?
Ken Brown at C.Orthodoxy presents Divine Invisibility.” Though many atheists insist that if God exists, he should make it obvious by providing nearly constant miracles, this objection is called into question by their simultaneous claim that belief in God makes us unable to live and learn for ourselves. Constant miracles, while of only dubious value for proving the existence of God, would remove both our ability and motivation to learn for ourselves.
-
Christian Carnival CXCV
. . . has been posted at Everyday Liturgy.
My submission for this carnival was one I wrote for wife’s devotional blog. Next week, I will be hosting the carnival here.
-
Christian Carnival #193
. . . has been posted at Lingamish. Good job, pretty pictures, interesting stuff, nuff said!
-
Bread and Wine of Luke 17:5-10
I know this is late for those preaching from the lectionary, but through my Technorati watch on the tag [tag]lectionary[/tag], I found this post on Bread and Wine. I think the post helps clarify the passage very well.
With reference to God’s laws, I would add that in general what God has told us to do, God’s commands, provide a good way to live in the world. We have the reward of a life of integrity and of reaping what we sow. What part of that also provides us with a basis on which to demand that God give us eternal life? That is grace.
-
Psalm 137 around the Web
I have a tendency to get caught up in an idea. When I started adding a lectionary tag to posts that I thought were relevant to upcoming lectionary readings my intention was to simply tag things I was going to write anyhow, and also to encourage myself to write a little bit more about my devotional reading. Then I thought I might round up some related posts.
On Psalm 137, which I referenced yesterday on my Threads blog, Lingamish beat me to it by listing a number of excellent posts related to the Psalm in his post Psalm 137: A Dash of Theodicy.
Besides the posts he links to, I’d like to call attention to this post by Chris Heard at Higgaion. It deals with much more than just Psalm 137, but the methods used in dealing with other materials may be helpful in responding to this Psalm. He also correctly points out how often attacks on the Bible due to issues such as violence result from poor hermeneutics. Much of the debate on the inspiration and value of the Bible is carried out at a very simplistic level.
I should have read Chris Heard’s post earlier, but I simply never got to it. I found it via Bob’s Log, in which he is logging his work on the Psalms. He has a brief post on Psalm 137 here, and you can find his translation chart here. Bob goes a good deal deeper into the details of the Psalms than I normally do, and though I rarely comment, I find reading his material quite helpful.
Randy Ridenour, a mobilized Army Reserve chaplain, gives a very special take on this passage from “the rivers of Babylon.” Relevant interpretation can come in many different ways.
Keith McIlwain finds the passage very relevant:
I love Psalm 137, which refers to the Babylonian Exile, because it gives me permission to be angry at times and sad at times. Few things annoy me more than a continually happy Christian. Life can sometimes stink; sometimes, life is painful and makes us angry; sometimes, life is so painful, we want to cry. Psalm 137 gives us permission to go through these moments of agony.
Perhaps those who find this hard to preach from should consider the reality that is reflected by the Psalm. That won’t make it easy, but it may make it necessary.
-
Thoughts on Lists of Spiritual Gifts
In one of the sermons I heard this morning (I attended services at two different churches), the scripture reading was from Ephesians 4:1-12. When Ephesians 4:11 was read, I remembered a discussion I had some time back about whether pastors and teachers here was intended to refer to one group of people. The individual with whom I discussed this found it fairly important. He thought that it would be better that authoritative church teaching be done by the pastor. Others could work under him, but the that would be the authority source.
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers — Ephesians 4:11 (NRSV)
I can see how this might work together with a complementarian view of gender roles, reserving authoritative teaching to the ordained, who would all be male. I have never heard that specific argument made by any actual complentarians, so I don’t know that it is used. There are quite a number of commetators, however, who maintain that either these two groups are the same, or that they are much more closely related than are the other groups in the list.
In looking at it, I would note that Daniel Wallace discusses the matter on page 284 of Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, and maintains that the Greek does not require that these two groups be identical. Nonetheless he also makes the point that they are more closely connected to each other than to the rest of the list. In general I think he makes a good point.
But does Ephesians 4:11 mean that pastor and teacher are the same office in either case? Whether or not we place a great deal of weight on this, it’s an interesting question.
I think the answer lies in the lists of gifts that Paul gives. He speaks of spiritual gifts in three different places, here in Ephesians 4:11, in 1 Corinthians 12 twice, and in Romans 12:6-8. The list is not identical in any two of these places. They are not identical even between 1 Corinthians 12:8-11 and then in verses 28-30. The two lists give a different perspective. I would suggest that there is an important point in these differences.
And this leads me to the reason I wanted to write a blog entry on this. It goes back to something I say repeatedly about Bible study, and most recently about interpreting parables. The key to understanding is finding the right question, and in this case we have to look at the questions Paul is answering in these passages. If you look at the context, not a single one of these passages was written to answer the question “What are the gifts of the Spirit?” Rather, the questions all relate to unity. In 1 Corinthians the primary issue is spiritual pride, and the gifts are used as an example of how all of us, coming from varied backgrounds and with various gifts, are brought together by one Spirit to become the church. In Romans 12 the topic is becoming conformed to Christ rather than to the church, with the issue of unity again key. Similarly in Ephesians 4:1-16, though we tend to stop at verse 12.
What would Paul’s answer be if he was asked just what were the gifts of God’s Spirit? I suspect he would decline to try for an exhaustive list. Rather, we need to look for the simple test. Is this gift useful (and hopefully used) to spread the gospel message and to build the kingdom? If the answer is “yes” it’s a good candidate to be called a spiritual gift. Otherwise, not so much!
-
Christian Carnival #191 Posted
. . . at Pseudo-Polymath. I’m not in it for the very simple reason that I forgot my submission. Oh well, next week is already here!