Yesterday I posted an Inauguration Eve Daily Show clip about Obama’s speech. Today I wanted to post this Post-Inauguration clip. This really is great, especially the cheese line. Once more, those on Facebook will have to click this link to watch the video.
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This was a great bit on the Daily Show that aired on the eve of the Inauguration. I loved Obama’s speech and thought this clip captured some of the high expectations. For those on Facebook, there’s a clip here that doesn’t import. Click here for the clip
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I just ran across this site. These are some great designs, and apparently they are in a really bad financial situation. They’re trying to sell a huge load of shirts in the next two weeks to stay alive. They have a great blog, support an orphanage ministry, and they seem to treat their business as a ministry. So if you have some extra cash and can support a great ministry while looking good doing please do.
If it wasn’t hard enough dealing with Jonathan Edwards becoming a pastor at 20, David Sessions (the editor of Patrol Magazine, a favorite) being younger than 25, Matt Chandler becoming senior pastor of the Village Church when he was 28 (if I remember correctly) and John Calvin writing the Institutes of the Christian Religion when he was 27, I now have to deal with the fact, that Obama’s Chief Speechwriter, Jon Favreau – the one working on the Inaugural Address as I write – is a whopping 27. I mean, the guy who helps the most eloquent President in generations be more, well, eloquenter, is the same one who used his Blackberry to send a victory Email to a friend on election night with the subject line, “Dude“. I already want to take over the world as a 23-year, and hearing about guys like this does not help.
Oh well, I guess I can always remember N.T. Wright didn’t publish anything until he was in his 50s.
Well, I’m back to working on my three non-fiction books, one novella, one book of poetry, four albums, three articles, two plays, nine unfinished sermons, and eleven blogs – all in progress. Really. But while I do that, here are some really interesting links about this guy. The next four years are going to be so totally awesomely articulate, dude.
Jon Favreau
On my new favorite website, Patrol Magazine, I stumbled upon this amazing interview with poet and professor of Creative Writing at State University of New York, Joe Weil. He talk to Patrol magazine about poetry, his relationship with God, art, and his other variosu thoughts on life. As I’ve read the article, I keep finding more and mroe quotes that I am throwing all over my facebook profile, blogs, and such. Well, it got to be so many, I’m just going to put them all here. This man is amazing, and I intend to buy as many of his books of poetry as I can. I resonate so much with all that he says. Please read the entire interview if you can. Finally, also bookmark Patrol Magazine. It really is incredible. Here are my favorite highlights:
Art is self-indulgence that, if done well, with a good grasp of the craft, and with a sense of constructive dread, ends up serving others. Of course, you can’t predict how it will serve them. . . A poet must be faithful to his or her obsessions. . . The wrong kind of self indulgence is that which puts the artist or his cause ahead of the work. Poets must be both supremely arrogant and humble. Arrogant enough to commit an act of creation. Humble enough to get out of the way of their own work, and let it be whatever it really is.
I once described faith as something I got on my shoe and can’t kick or wash off. I’m stuck with it. My poems are the trespasses and blasphemies of a malpracticing Christian, one who can’t stop ogling an attractive leg, or wanting to be first, who is venial, foolish, seldom at peace, horny and lonely, and so far from the kingdom of God that his whole life becomes the theme of that distance, someone knowing he is in deep shit. It’s the perfect place to be, where you can’t fool yourself into thinking you’re on the right track
I love God, not the idea of God. I hate the idea of God. Ideas are pretty, and neat, and well-formed, and my poems insist that I love God only by my pratfalls and mistakes. The only thing I have to offer God is my sins. I am interested in mercy when it appears in places where you would never expect it. I am interested in love that shovels shit against the tide. I am interested in grace.
I am wrestling with God because I consider God a worthy opponent. . . We have to remember God has the gravitas. God is the dignity. We’re the comic relief. Piety must be challenged. Purity must be tested, or it becomes smugness, and we start to think we have it all figured out. It’s like a marriage where you know exactly how the weekly sex is going to start. It both comforts and kills love in the worst way. My faith informs my confusions. My confusions lead to discoveries in poems my certainties could never find. Faith is not certainty. Certainty is the death of thought.
It is better to be annihilated and crushed by God, if you are in love with God, then it is to have no relationship at all. Better God smite you then merely be absent. God does not “tolerate” me. God loves me. . . A man may call God out and test all purity because it is better than the ultimate hell of complete disengagement.
God allows us to kick and scream in our tantrums and pains until we fall exhausted at the foot of our cross. And then God picks us up and we realize this was all we wanted to begin with, to be held by, and bound fast to him: “Bind me Lord, lest I resist. We resist because we are bound. Our resistance becomes the first sign of our birth pain. . . The peace of a Christian must be a sort of ongoing ferocity—a refusal to let go until the birthright has been truly won, until the blessing has been given. Brokeness is the first condition for receiving grace. Light can’t penetrate an unbroken surface. God enters through the broken heart, not the smug one.
A poem that can be reduced to its ideas is probably not a very good poem. It must be uttered fully. It must be lived on its own terms, the language must be forgiven for being language, then it must be language with all its might. Meaning, content are not the aim but the reward, the grace of a poem being faithful to its own organic process.
Thank you for reading all this (if you have) and I hope it has benefited you.
I was grabbing an amazing beer at the amazing Lancaster Brewing Company in beautiful Amish-country Lancaster, Pennsylvania with one of my best friends, David Schrott this past was weekend. Randomly, he turns to me and says something along the lines of “do you think we’ve sacrificed worship for the sake of relationship?” Brilliant. This got my wheels turning . . .
Surely we’ve all heard that wonderful phrase “Christianity’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.” A brief survey of various facebook “Religious Views” statements can find many rearticulations of this principle. But, I think we’re just now starting to see where this principle has perhaps been misleading the church a bit. Now, I have to fight two well-known urges in addressing this. First, an urge in church history to ride a giant philosophical pendulum from one extreme to another. I don’t just want to criticize this because the cycle has run its course and now its time to move back to the other extreme. The other urge is in myself. It is the tendency I have always had to rebel against the current cultural trends of the day just to be novel. Ten years ago, we really needed to hear that phrase, and it would be too typical of an up-and-coming twenty-something theologian as myself to try and cast the whole thing off. All that being said, let’s get going.
I’m in the process of writing this up as a sermon so some feedback would be wonderfully helpful. Here’s my current thought process. Posed David’s question, I think most of us would say something that involved the phrase “both/and”; attempting to merge these two principles (worship and relationship) into the same idea. May I suggest that one of the damning effects of post-modernity has been this love affair in the past ten to fifteen years with the “both/and” in all things. The first person to throw that out in conversation feels both wise and perceptive, and is generally treated as such. Thinking about this, I was reminded that God works and reveals not so much through philosophical exposé but through narrative. This means that things work progressively. Elements used or expressed earlier in the narrative don’t exist later in the story in the same way they existed before. Let me use the current conversation as an example.
I’m wondering if preaching relationship, relationship, relationship has been putting the cart before the horse and has contributed to the shallow and impotent culture we see far too often in the American church. We seem to preach relationship first, expecting (or hoping) worship to flow from it. I don’t see the beauty or the truth in this. It looks like relationship should flow from worship. Is this not the Gospel? The message that there is a huge God through whom and from whom all things receive life, and that this God not merely desires or demands worship, but deserves it. We have not given it, and so the full wrath if this huge God is prepared to be poured out upon us. In view of this, we then feel the weight of our inadequacy to change our estate before this God that deserves our honor and worship. We look up to to feel the indiscriminate fog of anger hanging so perilously above our heads . . .
but . . .
from this fog extends a hand. The hand of that King we have offended, offering clemency and pardon in the name of His Son for the treason we have so callously pursued. It is against the backdrop of all that makes Him worthy of that worship we don’t/can’t give him that this offer for relationship becomes real, beautiful, and romantic.
“Religion” comes from the Latin words “re” meaning “again” and “ligo” meaning “to unite” (as in “ligament”). Religion, then simply means something that unites once more that which was connected, but now is broken. (I know, I know, we’ve turned “religion” into something more than this, but I’m just trying to say that the word itself is not bad, so let’s not stop using it. Just try to use it rightly.) Jesus really did die to establish religion. The Gospel is religion. It is a means outside of ourselves by which God reunites us to Himself. But it starts with who He is which then overflows into what He’s done to join us to Him once more. We need to see and preach a God worth worshiping before our relationship with Him can mean anything of any sort of significance.
As I write all this, I’m starting to wonder if our stress of relationship over reverence has actually caused the problem to worsen. We started doing it because of how people were abusing the beauty of the religion Christ died for, but I wonder if we remove all the weight of this religion under the banner of relationship does it really change anything? Or will people just have new reasons to take this Christianity thing lightly now that they “have the relationship” that apparently this whole thing centers around? Will this not continue to create people that do not understand the standard of holiness, reverence, and awe we really are called and commanded to strive for? Will this not then force us to create more clever cliches to explain why those people don’t act like the Christians they claim to be?
Maybe. I don’t know. But ultimately, I hope we can see the Gospel for what it is: a God-centered means by which God can proclaim His worthiness and still redeem us for Himself. It begins with His worship, then our inability, then His redemption, then our salvation, and it culminates finally in our worship of Him for now and eternity, proclaiming the Glorious perfections and beauties of God, His Son, His Spirit, and His Gospel.
Happy worshipping.
“Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.”
— Psalm 33:18-22
Our hope is only in your steadfast love O Lord. I can be in nothing else, O God. This is about you and me – you and me. I need your Gospel I need your Gospel. In this Psalm, famine comes after deliverance. Help me through the famine, through the weakness. So I may further trust and hope only in You, Your love, Your faithfulness, and not my own! My spirit is so willing, but my flesh is so weak!! So weak. Strengthen my spirit Lord. Take all of me. It’s yours already, I know. Exert Your rightful reign and authority in me to Your Glory. Oh, Your Glory. It is so sweet to my lips to say. Glory. Glory. Glory. I need You. Help me survive in the famine. You will. You’ve promised it, so it must be so. My faith must be in that which is the only guarantee of it’s occurrence in Your Word. My salvation, redemption, regeneration, and glorification – ALL things I do not wrought upon myself. That’s how my faith must be in You. Help me wait for You, because I am glad in You, because I trust You, because Your love is upon me. David’s last plea is that Your effectual love would make this be. It is mine as well. Come.
In the TimesOnline, a European Online Magazine, prominent Atheist Matthew Parris wrote the following thought provoking article a few days ago. Please read the article and leave your thoughts. Hopefully this will spurn some meaningful conversation. Below are my favorite excerpts. Here’s the article.
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. . . [T]ravelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa . . . But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing. . . .
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
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Enjoy, and let the debates begin!
[By the way, for all those on facebook that are friends with Tim Hoiland, I had a draft of this post done a few days before he posted his, so don’t think I just copy other people’s posts! But still, read his blog]
I knew I’d be proven wrong. I ended up meeting and seeing perhaps my biggest living hero this past weekend. Matt Chandler, of the Village Church in Dallas, TX was the means by which God stirred it in me to go to seminary; he was the means by which God started forming my preaching style; he was the means by which a bulk of my ministry philosophy was formed. In short, much of my life as it is now is because of this man’s faithfulness and how God has formed me to resonate with it. I’m in Dallas for a week to see family, so I went to a service at the Village Church this morning.
Being one of the fastest growing churches in America, I thought it wise to get there as early as possible. The service was at 9am, and I ended up getting there at about 8:15. My brother and I were the first ones there to the church, save for a few people setting up Communion. We actually got to the building the same time Chandler did. We walked up to the doors from the parking lot with Chandler, coffee in hand, and made some small talk. I told him I was from Westminster, had met their Counseling pastor at the CCEF Conference last month, and that I went to Eric Mason’s church. He apparently has a great relationship with my Philadelphia pastor, so he continued some of our brief conversation – now having made our way into the sanctuary – about Philly and Pastor Mason (or E-Mase, as Chandler called him). I thanked him for how the Church has ministered to me (trying not to seem like “that guy” though I’m sure I sort of did). He appreciated it, but then a congregant intercepted him for sound check business. Our “meeting” was over.
One of the overarching refrains of his sermon was: “you are not as smart as you think you are.” This was evident this morning as I realized that the sanctification I observed in my previous post is still in progress. For those that missed it (or just don’t feel like reading it), I talked about how I have historically idealized my heroes so much that it influences way more about me than it should. I wrote how in recent weeks, God has been disillusioning me about these men, so that I am “becoming my own man” as it seems.
Well, it wasn’t until halfway through the second song of the worship service I realized just how frustrated I was that I wasn’t able to get a good picture of both the worship set and Chandler praying! I wasn’t able to pay attention in any sort of capacity, much less actually meditate and see God’s beauty and sufficiency. I was restless at heart determined to find the images that would build myself up in others’ eyes and so put my security once more in people. As the blinders were rudely pulled off my eyes to my own immaturity and wrong worship, I was brought to one of those moments of self reflection where you’re almost ashamed to be in our Father’s presence. Where the sin in the deepest recesses of your heart is exposed to the light and it hurts. At the same time, though, Michael Bleeker started an original song about how our joy and security is in the wrath of God being poured out on Christ. I was then free. At least for the moment, my sin was plunged into the glorious wrath-consuming righteousness-imputing grace of God. Oh, the worship that comes from the heart that sees its own weakness and sin held as the backdrop against the display of the cross!
The rest of the service was amazing. No more pictures, no more video, no more angst about being able to “prove” that I have more “connections” than others. For those few moments at least, the grace of God so allowed me to be divorced from my lust for human esteem, my addiction to have others see me as someone worth being around. And I was able to worship God with all of myself in singing, prayer, and meditation on the clear communication and faithful preaching of His Word. In short, this morning was amazing. I’m really starting to wonder if God’s ultimately calling me to Dallas.
I love this church, I love its ministry, and I love my God.
So, please, I beg of all of you. Everyone that knows me. Everyone that reads this disjointed post. As often as the grace of God inspires you to remember. Always remind me: I am definitely not as smart as I think I am, but the cross of Christ is wholly gracious and sufficient in spite of that. It is in that gospel statement my greatest sin and greatest hope are held before my gaze both for His Glory and my joy.
Ah, what a good day . . .
[Here in the next couple of days I will hopefully write a summary of my first semester in seminary, but first I wanted to drop this note.]
I’ve been experiencing something strange in the past month. Historically I’ve fallen into that temptation to try and mimic my heroes. Anyone that knows me well knows this. I always have some new author, preacher, teacher, or friend that I very much enjoy sitting under the influence of. This has in turn influenced so much about me. Too much. I have often daydreamed about speaking like this guy or writing like that guy, comparing my every thought and action to the way they would do things. This happens more than I let on, and it’s something I deal with a lot. The Chandlers, Driscolls, Pipers, Mahaneys, Edwards’, Kellers, Owens’, Calvins, Greenes, Goodletts, DeRocos, Masons, Carlins, Powlisons, and Sinclairs (haha) of the world have had such an impact on me. They have affected the phrases I use (I say “unpack” way too much now because of Chandler), the material I write (Owens/Powlison in the heart, Edwards in the head), the thoughts I muse (Greene and Goodlett get this award), and sometimes even my motions (I caught myself doing a Josh Soto hand move the other day. I call it the “discus throw”). At times I have to be careful because many people in the circles I run in know of some if not all these people and can (and do) call me out on it when I’m just being a clone. It almost happens unconsciously at this point.
The problem with this is obvious. I’m forced to wonder where my voice is; where my thoughts are; where my style is. I fear so much that I would just copy someone else. But something strange (yet wonderful – in a strange way) has been happening. In the past month, it seems like so many of those people (especially those that hold the highest pedestals in my mind) have been slowly but surely, one by one, unidealized for me. Through different books, interviews, messages, and exposures I have found myself thinking Oh, I don’t want his marriage; I don’t want his ministry; I don’t want to have to say all that; I don’t want that burden, so and so forth. Now, when I say “I don’t want” it’s not that what they have is bad or wrong per se; it’s just not my style. I have begun to see that I can’t just place myself into someone else’s narrative. God has a particular calling for me that will look very different from those guys and I should both rest and rejoice in that.
As I’ve become disillusioned to these men to a certain extent, I have found their walls of distinction dissolving in my mind as a synthesis begins to take place. I feel a voice of my own emerging from this. I have more ideas for writing and more motivation to do so. I’m finding my own articulations and approaches to things. I feel like I’m coming into my own and it’s exciting. Exciting enough to post this wholly inconsequential post on the blog just to get it out there. These are wondrous times indeed and I look forward to enjoying them to the full.
Onward, life!
This is the last video I’ll post for a while. I’ve written an actual post I’ll put up tonight or tomorrow, but I couldn’t resist putting this up. This is the Bishop of Durham of the Church of England speaking on the relationship of faith and politics in an ever increasing secular global community. I really like what he says. One of the more cogent, balanced, and nuanced articulations of this issue that has way too many Americans baffled. Keep watching towards the end where he talks about America as an empire like Britain was. This is so good!
By the way, for all you Christians up on the whole N.T. Wright theological controversies, I do hope this helps reiterate that which we keep forgetting: he is defintiely still on our team. We need to stop attacking him wholesale and pushing him to the fringes as some “liberal” theologian. I do think he is wrong on some things, but he’s so solid on most everything else. He is perhaps one of our most respected scholars and theologians and one of our few spokesmen that carries any sort of respect and credibility on the world stage. As Paul says: “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” Enjoy.
I thought this was poignant. Thoughts, anyone? For all those on reading this on facebook, there’s a video here that doesn’t import to facebook. Click here to watch it on the blog.
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Here is the summary of my final paper for the Textual Criticism portion of my New Testament Intro class. Enjoy:
My ultimate goal in all these classes is doxological. That’s how I’m judging my success; not by grades, but whether not I have a greater affection for Christ at the end of each course. I can say I have that at the end of this course, but it’s not without a price, I feel.
What do I do with, say, the ending of Mark? How do I preach that text? Though I absolutely disagree with the Textus Receptus-only arguments, I must say there’s something romantic and (dare I say) “Reformed-sounding” in their arguments. The idea that God is Sovereign and Providential enough to bring about a final text, even with all its textual errors is enticing (probably because it removes all further critical thought from the process).
It’s ultimately more difficult to reject these notions, though, because you’re forced to face a few realities.
Mainly, what do we do with these texts, then? If we keep them, then we’re Catholic because we’re placing tradition over the Word as it originally was. If we get rid of them we seem liberal because we’re subjecting and changing the Bible based on an authority outside of itself.
What about the hypothetical stay-at-home mom that comes to me with the ending of Mark, wanting to know what it means? Do I unpack textual criticism on her and tell her it wasn’t original so don’t worry about it?
In that case, what if Jesus’ words in John 8:1-11 have been such a comfort to her through the darkest of times? Is that the Word of God, while the ending of Mark (snakes and all) is not? How much doubt will it give her to know that there are words in her Bible that John Mark didn’t actually write? In short, what are the pastoral implications of textual criticism? I don’t know.
Personally, I’m fine with things as they are—keeping very unlikely readings out of the text and just footnoting much. I’m facing no faith-crises because of this. I see how far God would go to condescend Himself and thereby draw me to Him, even amidst the messiness of scribal error and change.
I’m just in that very good spot of wrestling through things to see how they fit in a context of proclamation and ministry. I’m sure they do—they must.
I’m finding that seminary accomplishes its very interesting call of answering many of your questions all while giving you many more, bigger, and deeper questions to grapple with along the way. This is good. This will certainly give me more nuance in my ministry of God’s word and His people—a greater understanding of the depth and complexity of God’s Word.
I see now things aren’t so black and white, and that’s by design. If it weren’t, then we would trust God and His Word on a basis other than Himself. He will force us to live this life by faith and by no other thing will we be able to fully rest upon—not even the individual black and white text on the page of the Bible, but rather on the Sovereign, Supreme, all-Beautiful, all-Righteous, all-Knowing, all-Just, and all-Gracious God of the Bible.
the long way home 