shocks, pegs, lucky

A Few Thoughts On Worship

2011-08-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

A.W. Tozer said, concerning worship: "Worship is no longer worship when it reflects the culture around us more than the Christ within us."

Now, I am not sure where this quotes comes from, but I believe that Tozer is here referring to our corporate worship services, and specifically the music we use as a venue for worship, rather than worship as a lifestyle or our service to God and others as worship.

What Tozer is calling for is some introspection on the part of those responsible for organizing and facilitating corporate worship through song. This goes just as much for other media venues such as drama and video, but sung worship is much more common, so we'll leave the others out for this discussion.

Worship leaders, team members, what are we striving for? Are we striving to please God, to offer up a sweet-smelling aroma of worship as we stand before the Bride of Christ to lead the way to His feet, or are we striving for something less?

Along this line of thought, Darlene Zschech comments, "It's so easy to become one who exists to please others, rather than serve others - or to simply please ourselves, forgetting that all we have belongs to the Lord anyway."

Oh! How true, how tragic and true this has become in my life... How about you? What do you see when you look in?

It's odd how it almost seems to naturally move from pleasing God to pleasing others to pleasing self, when once we leave our attention and affection unchecked. It is in our human nature to strive to please the ever-important Self. It is also in our nature, as I am sure you will agree, to seek to please others; to work tirelessly to sustain the approval of those around us.

How much of what we do on stage Sunday morning, or in preparation for that time, can be classified as "pleasing others," or preparing to do so?

So, the desire to please self and please others comes quite naturally. Conversely, the desire to simply please God - not to gain His approval or favor, nor to appease for our wrongs, but simply to bring Him joy, for Him, not us - is one that comes only as a response to a revelation of His tremendous, unmerited love for us.

We love Him because He first loved us, commending that love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners - dead in our sins - He died for us. His kindness, not the fear of hell or the desire for heaven, but His kindness in rescuing us from hell and offering us heaven, leads us to turn away from our sins and toward Him in humble gratitude; in worship.

When it comes down to it the packaging matters little as long as what is in it is what truly matters. What matters is Christ, the one from the previous paragraph who said that no man has any greater love than he who lays his life down for his friends, then went and died for those who were at enmity with Him. Is our worship music, the whole package; from set selection to arrangement, to dynamics and style and genre, to the band, the stage, the lyrics presentation, and everything else; is it full of Christ?

I believe that the complete lack of direction as to style of worship in the Bible is purposeful, and that purpose is to allow people from every ethnos, every tribe and tongue, to express their worship to God in all of the wondrous diversity He ordained, without anyone complaining that someone isn't doing it right. Sure, that happens plenty (we have all seen this! more hymns, less hymns, more Hillsong, less Crowder, more piano, less drums, etc.), but that is not the way it is supposed to be.

Worship sung to God can be CCM or country or modern P&W or classical or circa 1980's Maranatha or rap or reggae or whatever genre you can think of, but what it cannot be, what it can never be is devoid of a deep love for Christ, a love which is louder than the style in which it is sung.

Hallelujah! What a Savior we have! Don't lose worshiping Him inside the venue designed specifically for that purpose, worship music.

E.T. and the Bible

2011-08-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

So, the Bible doesn't really overtly touch on the topic of extraterrestrial life (other than spiritual beings), you say? Does that mean that Christians are free choose to believe or not to believe in aliens? I'll do my best to answer that question and more in the following paragraphs.

In order to adequately answer this question I'll need to provide you with a few pieces of information, because the answer really is primarily derived from a good understanding of biblical theology.

A) The current state of deterioration, matter and energy moving steadily and surely from order to disorder, the entire universe speeding headlong into utter chaos; better known as entropy (the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics), is not how God originally created the cosmos. Since we read, in Genesis chapter one, that everything He made was very good, and that death and decay didn't enter onto the scene until the first (of many) big human blunder, we can determine rather quickly that the universe was not experiencing this state of decay, which is directly associated with the Curse, prior to the Fall of man.

B) Because God is righteous and just His very nature would prevent Him from inflicting the punishment for man's original sin on some unsuspecting race of A.L.F.s on some other planet in some other solar system and some other galaxy, across the universe from Earth.

C) If the Bible teaches both A and B, which it does, the only viable (biblically speaking) options as to the existence of sentient life on other planets is either, 1. There isn't any, or 2. There may be, but if they do exist then they must live on a planet or in a solar system, galaxy, or some other spacial distinction within a bubble which shields them from the effects of the Curse (i.e., entropy) which is a universal constant. If there was no bubble then God would not be just because they would be suffering under the same curse as we do here on Earth. I understand that this scenario sounds ridiculous. That's because it is. The Bible, while not mentioning the topic, simply doesn't allow for the existence of sentient life forms outside of the human race.

The whole idea of Jesus Christ as a kinsman redeemer ties into this. In a follow-up blog I will quickly present an overview of the goel, the kinsman redeemer. I'll use the situation found in the Book of Ruth because it is the best and most beautiful description found anywhere.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, lovingly known as Gus

Location:W El Norte Pkwy,Escondido,United States

John the Baptist: A Lesson in Political Correctness

2011-08-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

As I opened my eSword to research for this series I was slightly shocked by what I found. See, my plan is to chronologically catalog the teachings of Jesus in short, bite-sized portions, and so you can imagine my surprise when I opened to what I mistakenly assumed were His first recorded words as an adult and found that they addressed the very class of religious people which started the original discussion in the first place!

Unfortunately, I had mistaken the words of John the Baptist for Jesus' words (I guess I wasn't looking for the red!) What I thought was the very first address from Jesus, as He began His short earthly ministry, was directed at religious hypocrisy; specifically the Sadducees and Pharisees, who were quite good at living pristine, pious lives outwardly while completely missing the point inwardly.

I'm not going to attempt a full commentary here or even quote the passages, but please read them on your own for a better understanding of my write-up. The events of what I though was Jesus' first public address can be found in Matthew 3:7-10 and Luke 3:7-14 (just click them). I just want to briefly boil down the situation in question and present the essence of what John meant to teach through the encounter. That goes for all future entries addressing the teachings of Jesus as well. But first a quick observation.

The first thing I think anyone will notice when reading this passage is the perceived harshness and severity of John's message to the religious masses. In contrast to the lovable, cuddly "Buddy Christ" found in modern pop-culture who just wants to hug everyone and doesn't want anyone to be offended, the guy who seems to be everyone's "homeboy", the real Jesus wasn't afraid to offend, which we will explore in a future installment. But as we see here, neither was John. PC was not in his vocabulary. It's almost as if John meant to alienate some...

So, the emphasis here is that of warning. John brought to the attention of the religious folk that there is a coming judgment, and that unless there was a serious change that they would be facing it in the not-too-distant future. The change wasn't necessarily an outward one, although it would show on the outside. John told them to "produce fruit consistent with repentance". This fruit would later be elaborated on by Paul. It is called LOVE.

These religious people were counting on their Jewish heritage, their blood relation to the patriarch, Abraham. Like a sledgehammer applied to a watermelon (thank you, Ghallagher, for the imagery), John demolished that dependence and brought to light the brutal truth that their relation to Abraham meant absolutely nothing, in terms of securing a right standing before God and escaping His wrath. That and 30 pieces of silver could buy you a slave, a potter's field, or the life of a Messiah...

John went on to say that the ax was already laid at the root. We're going to skip the national and eschatological ramifications of this for the moment and simply tackle the personal application:

Religious people, beware.

The fruit of the Spirit, which is consistent with repentance, is love. Love manifests itself in the form of joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If these are not apparent in your life, though you attend church 7 days a week, hand out Gospel tracts everywhere you go, tithe 80%, support missionaries in the 3rd World, or even organize children's theater productions, you are not in that place of right-standing before God that you think you are.

In closing, it is important to clarify that right-standing with God does not come from having love and patience and joy and peace. According to the Bible love, which shows itself in all of the aforementioned ways, emanates from the Spirit within. That is not to say that someone without the Spirit cannot love, or even have all of its manifestations in spades... I guess the bottom line is best summed up by John, from His 1st epistle:

If you do not love you do not know God, because God is Love.

WDJT? (What Did Jesus Teach?) Introduction

2011-08-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

My buddy, Marc, said something to me recently that has resounded in my soul... Then he said it again. It has caused me to really ponder this topic. To paraphrase, Marc said that, while he doesn't know whether or not Jesus was the Son of God, he believes that Jesus got it right; He understood being human and He lived the way a human should. I agree.

I think that Marc's observation is incredibly poignant. Putting aside the question of His deity (which I fully believe to be true) if Marc is right then each one of us should be paying close attention, not only to what Jesus did, but what He said; what He taught even when He wasn't "teaching".

If the Biblical narrative is to be trusted as pertains to Jesus' life then following are some of His chosen endeavors: He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, fed the hungry, and advocated for the children. These are indeed commendable causes, and activities we should emulate to the best of our ability (I haven't been able to feed thousands out of a Darth Vader lunch box yet...) But what I would like to do in this series of short blogs is to focus on what He said, rather than what He did.

Before I start, in post 1 (this is only the intro), talking about His teachings during His 3.5 years of ministry, I'll just include here His only previously recorded words.

At age 12 Jesus took a trip to Jerusalem with His parents for the Passover and decided to hang back at the temple - you know, blowing the minds of the priests and wot not... totally normal - but His parents hadn't realized and had left without Him. Long story short, when they discovered He was not among their caravan (which was not a 1st century minivan) they went back to Jerusalem and found Him at the temple.

Astonished to find Him mingling with the religious elite, Mary questions Jesus as to why He stayed back. His answer was, in modern terms, "Why are you looking so hard for me? Didn't you realize that I would be in my Father's house?"

Could Jesus have meant that He didn't leave them, but they had left Him, as some commentators suggest? Sure. This would answer the question of whether He was being disobedient or not, and I think it's a great observation. But I believe that the most amazing aspect of this, His first recorded utterance, is found in His description of whose house He was in.

You see, in the Old Testament it wasn't common at all to speak of Yahweh in such intimate terms as "Father". There wasn't this notion, as we see today, of everyone being God's children. God was seen as King of the universe; the transcendent, eternal, omnipotent Creator. Jesus wasn't using a 21st century cozy colloquialism in this scenario. He was identifying Himself as the Son of the One whose house He was in. No Hebrew in the 1st century world would have questioned what He meant when He claimed to be God's Son, and that is confirmed when He is crucified for making the same claim 21 years later.

Thanks for reading the intro, and please wait with great anticipation for part 1! I promise to try and keep the subsequent entries much shorter.

Comprehending the Incomprehensible

2011-01-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

If I said to you, "we cannot truly understand God," would you agree with that statement? How often do you think or say, or hear someone else say something similar? Do we not sing songs that express this very sentiment? Isn't there even Scripture that tells us the same thing? How about Isaiah 55:9?

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Doesn't this all coalesce into an extremely murky and convoluted image of God; one in which God is so far beyond our understanding that we may as well not even try? Isn't that the message we receive from theologians and Bible teachers so often?

What I am building to is this: In Jeremiah 9:23-24 we find a rather familiar section of Scripture. The lesson we usually take away from these verses is basically that we are not supposed to boast about anything about our lowly selves, whether it be our wisdom, our strength, or our riches, but instead to boast in the Lord. But there's a seemingly minor detail which gets left out of our Sunday school lessons and skimmed over in our devotional endeavors. Jeremiah doesn't just say to glory in the Lord, or even to glory in the fact that we know Him...

See, we often talk of how we can know God relationally while being almost completely ignorant about Him intellectually. While this is, at face value, a fair assessment, seeing that God is an infinite Being; the only infinite Being in fact, we must not ignore what God tells us through Jeremiah here. This is what He says: "...let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me..."

God wants us to know Him, sure, but what else does He specify? He wants us to understand Him! Now doesn't that fly in the face of our general understanding of, well, understanding Him? We're not supposed to be able to, right? Wrong! Not only are we able to, but God asks us to.

Before you start getting confident that you'll have Him all boxed up and labeled by this time next year, let's see what else God tells us through His prophet.

"...let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD."

Here's the bottom line: Yes, we can understand Him, but that does not mean that we can fully comprehend Him... comprehensively. It turns out that we are probably right on in one sense when we say that He is too much for us to comprehend. He is! But, He has made it simple for us here to understand His essence. There's infinitely more about Him that we will never know than what we can know, but who He is and what He is like at the core is summed up here in one sentence. Track with me while I break this apart.

He is the Lord. Not a lord; the Lord. He rules. He reigns supreme over time and eternity, over heaven and earth. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess the veracity of this claim. If not here then there...

He has three important practices:
1) Steadfast love. That is unwavering love; love which is not affected in the slightest by us or what we do or don't do. Agape - love which is volitionally unconditional, which means that He chooses to love us despite ourselves.
2) Justice. Basically He sees that righteousness is rewarded and unrighteousness is punished. He upholds the Law, which is synonymous with Himself. The Law is a perfect reflection of who He is and He will make sure that all of creation reflects Him perfectly as a mirror reflects light.
3) Righteousness. This follows, or actually precedes the above. God Himself is righteous. He only ever does what is good because He is only good at His core. He is not just righteous; He is Righteousness, and so He cannot help but practice it.

He specifies here, in case we were wondering if it is only in the heavenly realm, that He practices all of these "in the earth." So, when we, with tear-filled eyes, look around us at the vastness of the reign of evil; as we somberly contemplate the scope and reach of the corruption resulting from Adam's Fall in all it's manifestations, both visible and invisible, we need not wonder if He has forgotten us. He practices righteousness in the earth.

Lastly, He delights in these things. What things? In practicing steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. That's obvious, but He also delights in simply being the Lord. Is that megalomaniacal? Not at all. First of all, He is omnipotent, so there is no delusion at all. But, secondly, He knows exactly how bad things would go if someone else were Lord. God delights in being the Lord, I believe, because if He wasn't... the alternative would be unthinkably horrific.

This has been quite a roller-coaster of a blog, which I had originally planned to be a short, inquisitive write-up on verse 24. Please share any comments or questions you might come up with, that is if you get through the whole thing.

Worship Set: Numero Uno

2010-12-16T13:22:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about it and I would like to start blogging about my worship sets as well as just posting lengthy, opinionated ramblings. So, I'll start with this here blog!

Last Sunday I used a few Christmas songs, combined with a couple of modern worship songs, for the Sunday morning setlist. The set was as follows:

1) Lord, Let Your Glory Fall by Matt Redman - I used the "Calvary Chapel" arrangement with the cool Collective Soul World I Know chords that are so popular nowadays. Eb (D, capo 1)
2) Angels We Have Heard On High - transitioned into this song using the same chords as above, played over "Glo-o-o-o-ria, in excelsis deo," then into the standard D progression. We did 3 verses; "Angels we have...", "Shepherds, why...", and "Come to Bethlehem...". Eb (D capo 1)
3) O Come All Ye Faithful - we used three verses; "O come all...", "Sing choirs...", and "Yea, Lord..." Ab (G, capo 1)
4) O Come O Come Emmanuel - we transitioned into this song by ending on the Em7 chord rather than the G chord. I wrote a really pretty Em7 riff a few years ago for this that is played as the intro and outro and at the end of every chorus, which we used as the transition from the previous song. It worked really well. Fm7 (Em, capo 1)
5) Your Love Never Fails by Jesus Culture - ended previous song on the Em7 riff and then right into a muted downstrum in the tempo for this song, using the verse chords muted and then building into the bridge chords with non-muted strums. At the end of this song we tagged Matt Redman's modified chorus for O Come All Ye Faithful, which is just different words sung to the same tune as the original chorus. Google it :)

The last song was the most energetic song in the set, and was fitting as the previous songs dealt with the Advent, the coming of Christ as a child, and for the most part had a slower, more contemplative feel. The set actually had a pretty cool thematic flow. Starting with a request for God to send His glory, with lots of pre-Christ, Old Testament references, then singing about the manifest, incarnate glory of God coming as a man, then ending with a song about the love of the Son for His redeemed, which is the very reason He came. Overall it was probably the best Christmas set I have ever done, which isn't hard really, since most of the time I have just thrown together carols and hoped for the best.

Restless Rantings on Reanimation

2010-11-19T14:08:00.000-08:00

Zombies… what's with them?

Why is it that an entire generation of male earthlings is untiringly fixated on them?

Sure, there are plenty of zombie movies, comics, novels, TV shows, and even a song or three that we could blame (see Re: Your Brains), but those aren't the source of the fascination; they are the product, the natural outpouring of the perplexing heart of man. Modern zombie pop culture is the overflow of what the male human mind (and to a lesser extent, the female mind) is already thinking about, of what we are already talking to each other about, of what, deep down, we kind of wish were true…

And again, I ask why?

I think I have the answer…

Although zombies were around before the 60's, George Romero's catalytic and genre-defining film, Night of the Living Dead, launched the decomposing, brain-chomping undead into the mainstream. Romero followed his taboo-shattering film with Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, and other movies, some with "dead" in the title, and others without. Continuing in Romero's tradition, other cinematic examples like Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy, Re-animator, the Omega Man, the Serpent and the Rainbow, Pet Cemetery, and 28 Days Later, have provided men (and, to a lesser degree, women) an outlet, albeit an imaginary one, for our… to put it nicely, aggression... and to put it bluntly, our desire to shoot, stab, bludgeon, main, dismember, decapitate, blow up, evicerate, or otherwise kill other humans.

This twisted subconscious (and oftentimes conscious) longing of ours has been even more fully realized in the genre of video games. There are several excellent examples of this, but none more archetypal than the Resident Evil series (originally titled Biohazard in Japan), which has spawned an entire movie franchise as well. And that brings me back to film.

In addition to the numerous zombie flicks which are strictly horror genre, there are also the less serious ones. Most notably, Weekend at Bernie's (and the completely unbelievable sequel), Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, and Shaun of the Dead. These films blend our macabre fascination with the undead and our need for laughter. A lurid cocktail of humor, violence, and death; a comedy-zombie movie goes down much easier and leaves less of bitter aftertaste. The morbidity is balanced out by the mirth, and voila, we get to indulge our appetite for unbridled gore without that lingering inner gray cloud of gloom.

But, is this a bunch of hooey, a load of hogwash, a crock of… well, you know? Is the zombie phenomenon just a random, morally-neutral craze with no nefarious causative roots within the depths of the depraved human psyche? Or is it truly an insidious aftermath of the innate and implacable ill-will of our kind? Well… who knows?

So, what is the point? Why are you reading this instead of watching Miranda Sings or satisfying your appetite for autotune with the schmoyoho bro's? That, my friend, is a question you must answer for yourself. It is my job to provide you with near useless trivia, and your job to appropriate it.

That's right, I just ended this blog without actually ending it. Unresolved is how I roll.

Why don't you leave a comment as to how you think this should have ended? What are your thoughts on the modern zombie phenomenon?

Musing on Music

2010-11-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

Hey, can we just talk about music for a while? That's what I feel like doing, so I'm going to just jump in. If you should stick around I guarantee you will learn something, perhaps a bit of trivia you can drop at an opportune moment to impress your friends/family/co-workers. You have full license to reproduce and transmit anything you glean from this work.

Why am I writing about music, you ask? Well, if you know anything at all about me, you know this: I avoid school-work like swine flu (if swine flu were real), and I will do almost anything else if it means I can put off studying ju-ust a little longer. So, without any further ado, here's me procrastinating...

A question for you: Where do we get our modern term music? Don't Google it. I am just wondering if you know, 'cause I do. Let me tell you. This is some fun info, and you have the James Guarantee that you will find this interesting, or at least not completely dull... and there is a surprise ending!

Our modern English word music appeared on the linguistic scene in the mid 13th century. It came from the French word musique, which itself didn't arrive until the 12th century. Both words derive from the Latin musica, and the Latin word, as you might have guessed, came from the Greek phrase mousike techne, "art of the Muses." What in blazes does that mean, you ask? Well, by the beard of Zeus, hold your chariots and I'll tell you!

As we all know the verb muse means to think, or more accurately, to be lost in thought - so I am musing on the subject of music right now - but when in noun form, specifically proper noun form, it refers to the nine daughters of Zeus (the king of the gods) and Mnemosyne (a titaness, and the personification of memory) in Greek mythos. Zeus and Mnemosyne slept together nine straight nights and produced one Muse per night. Not a bad record...

The Muses presided over the arts. They were the protectors of various different categories of art and science, among them were poetry (both epic and love), history, tragedy, comedy, astronomy, dance, hymns, and music (as we know it now). The Muse in charge of music was Euterpe, whose name means "rejoicing well" or "delight." She was called the "Giver of Delight," and her name seems no coincidence. Music has the ability to stir the soul, to arouse our emotions. A song can change the mood quicker and more effectively than... than... well, if you can think of something that does the trick better than music let me know. To back me up on this here are a few selected quotes by folks who know whassup...

Stephen Jenkins, the lead singer for the band Third Eye Blind, encapsulated the tremendous potential for music to grip the emotions and stir the soul, even without words, in a brief 8-word lyric: "...the four right chords can make me cry..." This has proven true for me at times, and maybe it has for you as well...

The Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, once said (quoting Isaiah 54:1) that the best course of action in times of barrenness, lifelessness, frigidity and faithlessness, is to "Sing, O barren, break forth and cry aloud." He continues, "Sing, believer, for it will cheer thine own heart, and the hearts of other desolate ones. Sing on, for now that God makes thee loth to be without fruit he will soon cover thee with clusters."

Some wise dude named Leigh Hunt said, "Music is the medicine of the breaking heart."

Music is an entity grander that us, more majestic than those who compose it. We arrange lyrics and attach melodies... we marry melody with harmony... we think we create... The fact is that, more often than not, music creates us. Andrew Fletcher (inspired by Plato, no doubt) said, "Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws." The thrust of that statement is that our beliefs can be manipulated greatly by music, and I believe it is because of its incredibly immersive nature.

You don't just hear a song, you feel it.

You experience a song on both the intellectual level and the emotional level, which instills it with great power; power to build or break, to manipulate emotions, and even to form beliefs.

A skilled songwriter can inject the essence of his or her world-view into a single song and sway the beliefs of a generation. Religious, social, political, and moral convictions, not merely preferences, but convictions can be, and indeed are, molded and shaped by the philosophies of musicians, wrapped in all of the surreal beauty and unparalleled emotional draw of music.

So, how is it that music is more powerful than those who create it? What has instilled music with this grandeur which transcends even those from whom it proceeds? The truth is that it doesn't. Music does not proceed from humans, nor did we create it. We merely produce it. We "sample," if you will, what has always been. We "cover" songs which have already been playing for longer than we can remember, and not very well oftentimes... I want to end by musing on this thought, but first a quote from the infamous German atheistic philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.

"Without music life would be a mistake."

I have a few questions for Nietzsche... why?

Isn't life, the world, the universe even, already an enormous accident?

And if that is the case, which it most definitely is according to the naturalistic world-view, then is not music also an intrinsically meaningless accident?

The brutal truth is that, for Nietzsche and all those who hold his world-view, music does not make life any less a mistake. Music is, like religion, an opiate for the masses. All it does is soften the blow of the tragic and inescapable fact that we came from nothing, have no real purpose for existence, and are hurtling full-speed towards extinction.

But...

If there is a God, and He did create music along with everything else, or... and try to track with me here, if music is an eternally existent aspect of God, then we have our answer for how music can be bigger than you and I. If God is, at least in one of His aspects, Music, then would it not make perfect sense that music would contain the amazing potency which we happen to find within it when we put it under the microscope?

God is beauty, light, love, infinite knowledge, wisdom, and power, and so many other things... In the words of Dr. S.M. Lockridge, He is the "superlative of everything good you choose to call Him." He is, as we have acknowledged in popular song, "indescribable."

I ask you, gracious reader, to step back, take a long hard look at music, think deeply, MUSE, and tell me what it is. Go ahead, describe it to me. I don't want technical terms. I want you to tell me what music is.

I submit to you that music has proceeded from, possibly is eternally and inextricably linked with, an indescribable Being, and therefore is itself indescribable.

Blut und Boden, Blood and Soil

2010-09-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

The Nazi's had a saying, blut und boden, which means "blood and soil." This idiom represents the theory that the person you are is solely the result of your genetic heredity (blood) and your environment (soil).

Though Nazi Germany has fallen, and violently so, this belief is still on the intellectual scene. For instance, the infamous evolutionary biologist and best-selling author representing the "New Atheism," Richard Dawkins, has said that we are just dancing to our DNA (a reference to the 'blood' in 'blood and soil'). This idea that a man is nothing more than the chance product of his DNA and his environmental, social, and familial influence is a necessary facet of naturalistic Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian evolution.

Think about it...

If there is no God, no purposeful Creator, and the universe is simply a vast collection of intrinsically valueless and purposeless matter and energy hurtling through time and space with no particular direction or goal, then how can we be anything more than the outcome of blut und boden?

But...

If there is a God, and if we were created purposefully, and if there are external and internal forces other than genetics and environment shaping who we are, then we're so much more than the sum of our genes and our experiences; we are dancing to more than the music of our DNA. We are dancing to the music of the Singer who created the universe with a sentence... "let there be."

Now, in an ironic twist, whether or not the principle represented by blut und boden has any merit, the phrase is true in a theological sense. It goes like this:

In forming Adam from the earth, God stooped low and "got His hands dirty," so to speak, and created man in His own image. So man is the product of soil, if nothing else.

Then man, in seeking to serve himself and fulfill his own selfish desires, created god in his own image, thus "stooping low" and "getting his hands dirty" in a different sense...

So, in seeking to re-create man in His own image God stooped low again, this time getting His hands bloody, and that at the hands of man whom He sought to save. So, man again stooped low and this time getting his hands bloody as he murdered the very God who gave him life and who was at that very moment dying in order to give him eternal life.

Every man is the product of blut und boden.

We know that we were formed from the soil, but in light of the above, how are we the product of blood?

Either you are guilty of the blood of Christ, or you are declared innocent, not guilty, through the blood of Christ. Either way your state in relation to the blood governs your decisions, thus forming who you are.

Guilty of the blood or innocent through the blood; which are you?

Behold the Lamb

2010-09-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

So, I'm studying Revelation 5 today, and I come to the amazing account of over 100 billion angels, plus the 24 elders and the four "living creatures," singing "worthy is the Lamb..." This is the last of three great "lamb statements" in the Bible.

Check it out:

"Where is the lamb?" Isaac to Abraham (Genesis 22:7)
"Behold the Lamb!" John the baptist (John 1:29, 36)

"Worthy is the Lamb." 10,000x10,000 and thousands of thousands (Revelation 5:12)

Okay, so, I turn back to Genesis 22 to refresh myself on the story. It is utterly amazing... I'll give you some specifics in a paragraph or two. Anyways, as I go to turn back to Revelation from Genesis I completely randomly turned right to Isaiah 53, which is nowhere near Revelation. Here's a sampling: "...He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities..." (v. 5) His soul was made an offering for sin (v. 10), "...it pleased Yahweh to crush Him" (v. 10), "...My righteous Servant [shall] justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities" (v. 11), "...He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (12)...

Is there a more perfect chapter to turn to, from "where is the Lamb?" to "worthy is the Lamb that was slain," than the one chapter which is entirely dedicated to detailing the sacrifice of the Lamb of God for the sins of the world?! The answer is no. The Lamb which John the baptist introduces will "take away the sin of the world," and Isaiah 53 is an in depth prophetic account of how He would accomplish that weighty task...

Now, check out some pretty amazing nuggets from Genesis 22, but first I need to tell you about something called the "law of first mention." This is basically the premise that the first biblical occurrence of something significant will set a standard for that particular topic. You will see what I mean momentarily.

Genesis 22, in reference to the account of Abraham offering Isaac, is the first time in the Bible you find the following words and phrases:

1) love - אהב - 'âhab

2) only son - יחיד בּן - bên yâchı̂yd

3) worship - שׁחה - shâchâh - this is actually the 3rd occurrence of this word, but it's the first time it means worship in the sense that we understand it. The first two times it just means to bow down.

Is anyone else thinking of John 3:16?

In the story Isaac carries the wood he would be sacrificed on up the hill, but not only that, Abraham laid that cursed wood on Isaac; the Father laid the cross upon the Son.

While Isaac carried the wood, Abraham carried the fire.

Moses tells us that Abraham "took the fire in his hand" as well as a knife; the instruments with which to kill and offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Levitically, fire is linked with judgment. We talk of fiery wrath... what we read in Isaiah 53:10 that it "pleased Yahweh to crush Him" and then in Mark 15:34 Jesus asks the Father, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," which means "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" The picture is clear that, while it was the Son's task to make Himself an offering for sin, it was the Father's task to dispense His wrath against sin upon His Son, and that it pleased Him to do so... and that, my friend, should cause you to rejoice... but first, pain.

Peter wept bitterly when at last he was made to realize the gravity of His sin against His Master. It was because of our sin that the Son had to die, and it was our sin which compelled the Father to lay our sin to Christ's account, and then to punish Him, the Just for the unjust, so that we could gain what we could not earn - eternal life.

Here's the conclusion: When Isaac asks Abraham "where is the lamb?" Abraham responds, "My son, God will provide himself a lamb..." What happens next is commonly known. The Angel of the Lord (the pre-incarnate Lamb!) stops Abraham just short of dropping the dagger. Then a ram is found caught in a thicket... a ram, not a lamb. Then, and this is the thrust of the story, Abraham names the mountain "Jehovah-jireh" which means "Jehovah will see to it," for "in the mount of the LORD it shall be provided."

What shall be provided?

The immediate context is that the Lamb is what will be provided. What the LORD will "see to" is that a lamb is provided, and He will do it on that spot.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that on the very same hill (a place now called Calvary) some 2,000 years later God did indeed see to it that a lamb was provided. The Son, the only Son whom the Father loved, carried the wood He would be sacrificed on up that hill. There also the Father took up the fire, He laid it upon His Son, and there, in the very same place, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world laid down His life and was crushed under the wrath of the judgment of God for all sin for all time.

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." 2 Corinthians 5:21

Friday the 13th: Cause for Repulsion or Rejoicing?

2010-09-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

So, just this past month we had a "Friday the 13th." I myself have been a bit superstitious in the past about this particular phenomenon, as well as the number 13 in general, and I am certain there are at least a few of your out there who have shared in my past paranoia. So, I submit for your consideration, and comfort, the origin of the fear of 13 and of the day Friday the 13th, with a super quick lesson on biblical numerology. The last section contains a bit of trivia that you definitely want to know. Seriously, you will kick yourself later if you don't read it right now.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

The fear of Friday the 13th is called Friggatriskaidekaphobia or Paraskevidekatriaphobia, [1], a

word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή) (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς) (meaning thirteen), attached to phobia (φοβία) (meaning fear). The term is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a simple phobia (fear) of the number thirteen appearing in any case.The number 13 – Fear of the number is referred to as Triskaidekaphobia (from Greek tris=three, kai=and, deka=ten) - Paraskeví (Παρασκευή) (meaning Friday). 13 is the 6th prime number.

Some possible reasons for fear of the number 13 apart from

the distinction of Friday:

1) There were 13 at the Last Supper.

2) Friday the 13th is attributed as the day the that the plan, collaborated by Kink Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V, to slaughter the Knights Templar took place

3) When a group of objects or persons is divided into 2, 3, 4, or 6 equal groups there is always one leftover, “unlucky” object or person

4) 13 is the number of full moons in a year

5) In Norse mythology the number is unlucky because at a banquet in Valhalla Loki once intruded, making 13 guests, and Baldur was slain (this is similar to the Last Supper idea)

The number 6 - THE NUMBER OF MAN:

Man was created on the 6th day.

Man labors 6 days only.

The Serpent was created on the 6th day.

The 6th commandment is "Thou shalt not murder."

Six words are used for man: Adam, ish, Enosh, gehver, anthropos, and anar.

*Also, 6 x 6 = 36; 36 + 35 + 34 + 33 + 32 . . . 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 666. This is the number of the antichrist. This means that the name of the antichrist in Greek adds up to 666. This is a mockery of the Trinity.

The True Origins of the Fear of Friday the 13^th

Passover

At midnight on the eve of the night of the Passover, the 14th of Aviv (April), the first day [a Friday] of the first month of the Hebrew calendar, in Egypt ‘there was not a house where there was not one dead (Exodus 12:6; 12:18; 13:4). The Egyptians dated this catastrophe the 13th of the month of Thout (April), which also became the first day of their first month, recording that; ‘The 13th day of the month of Thout is a very bad day… This superstitious tradition has continued all the way to present day and has truly become the most widespread superstition in the world.

…and…

Our Passover

The lambs were to be killed by the head of the household (transferred later to the priests in the Temple (Deut. 16:1-6) "between the evenings" of the 14th, or at twilight.

Passover occurred that night. This was Friday the 13th on the Egyptian calendar. Jesus was killed on the 14th of Nisan, 32 AD at the ninth hour or 9:00 A.M.

By 32 AD there were so many lambs to be inspected the 10th - the 13th was the time of inspection and the 14th from 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. was the timeto kill them.

So, Jesus was crucified on the 14th of Nisan according to the Hebrew calendar, which is Friday the 13thon our calendar.

In addition to Jesus being crucified on a Friday, some theologians hold that Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit on a Friday, and that the Great Flood began on a Friday. I couldn’t find good confirmation for the Adam and Eve theory; nor could I find anything substantial to prove that the Great Flood began on a Friday, but let’s look at an interesting fact about the Flood that can be confirmed, and which is also linked to the Exodus and the Crucifixion.

The Flood

This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. (Exodus 12:1-2 KJV). Below is a chart comparing the old or civil Hebrew months and the new or religious months.

Months	Civil (Old)	Religious (New)
Tishri (Ethanim)	1	7
Cheshvan (Bul)	2	8
Chisleu	3	9
Tevet	4	10
Sh'vat	5	11
Adar	6	12
Nisan (Aviv)	7	1
IIyar (Zif)	8	2
Sivan	9	3
Tammuz	10	4
Av	11	5
Elul	12	6

When was Noah's new beginning?

And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. (Gen. 8:4 KJV)

Remember though that the 7th month in the old calendar is the 1st month in the new. So the ark came to rest on Ararat on the 17th of Nisan or on the same day as Christ was resurrected and the same day as Israel "passed" from death to life though the waters of the Red Sea.

Is that amazing or what?!

Deep Thoughts & Prosaic Phrases

2010-08-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

There are a great many things in my life for which I have shown tremendous neglect over the past several months. A partial list would include: My son, my classes, my devotional time, my Lord in general, my guitar students, my books, mi familia, and my friends... oh, and Azeroth. But I have also neglected this wonderful outlet for the raging torrent of thoughts, emotions, thoughtmotions, emoticons, and general complaining which have been welling up for far too long. So, in hopes of avoiding a spontaneous self-destruction, and for no other reason at all, I am writing this blog update.

So, I don't know what you all have been thinking about recently, but I have been a veritable overcrowded warehouse of troubling thoughts, and deep ponderings... I have assumed the persona of one of those "troubled souls" you hear so much about in literature and film, but without the interesting life and exciting circumstances to make it worthwhile. Do not be troubled yourselves though, as it seems the Lord is pulling me out of that pit. But what are these thoughts, these questions which have oppressed and depressed me? I don't really wanna talk about it, ok, so stop brow-beating me already!

I will say that the majority of my issues have fallen into one or both of the categories of theology and philosophy; questions about God, humanity, life, death, afterlife, eternity, the Bible, evil, suffering, etc., etc... Questions like, "Why doesn't God seem to work in the same ways He did in the past? If He is immutable then why does it appear that He has changed?" and, "If God is eternal then what was He doing (pardon the mixed metaphor) before He created the universe, and if He is unchanging then wouldn't He have never made a universe since that would constitute a universe-sized change in His pre-creation habits?" and... "I understand the existence of love to be in harmony with a good God who is both unchanging and triune, because there has always been love among the members if the Godhead, but where did His 'wrath' originate?"

These are not easy questions to answer, and so you can understand why I have been, again, troubled (to say the least). So, here's an experiment: Take your best shot at answering one or more of the above. I have answered many of the questions I have had over the past several months, or at least come to terms with the fact that I may never have an answer this side of the grave. So, this is an exercise for you. How solid is your foundation? What would you say if a genuine skeptic, a non-Christian asked you one of these questions?

Go ahead, take a stab. If our God is truly the Almighty, the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the universe and of us, then we can trust His words, the words of God the Son, when He said, "Whoever comes to me I will never cast out."

Church: Virtue or Venue?

2009-07-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

While reading this super-duper book on the Emergent Movement called Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), I ran across a profound truth that I have deemed blogworthy.

I'll start by asking you a question: What is the purpose of the church?

You can go on ahead and think of several purposes if you like (jot them down for some other time since we won't be dealing with them here). What I am aksing is, what is THE purpose of the church?

Now that you have some ideas in mind let me ask you a few more questions:

Is the purpose of the church to provide a venue for Christian entertainment (music, films, drama)?

Is the purpose of the church to open its walls and various flat surfaces for the works of Christian artists (painters, sculpters, photographers)?

Is the purpose of the church to host Christian motocross or skateboarding events?

Hopefully your answer to those last three questions is no.

My point here is that all to often we see folks getting disgruntled because they are not being given an outlet for their creativity in the church, which really means that no one is paying attention to them...

So, should the church go out of its way to provide venues for these folks?

The answer to this final question depends entirely upon the answer to the first question (and the 2nd through 4th questions, which I already said should be no, so I guess I've given away what I think the answer is).

That said, I'm not going to answer it. I'll leave it to you. But some research before you answer might be helpful. Read the book of Acts. Then, keep in mind the following insight I gleaned from Ted Kluck, one of the authors of the book I referenced earlier.

Churches don't generally provide venues, outlets, and support for software designers, salesmen, or farmers, but we don't hear those people complaining.

"...it seems that the artists who are making the most noise about 'not being supported' are the ones who may not have the talent to really cut it in the marketplace anyway." (Why We're Not Emergent, p. 143)

Does Religion Poison Everything?

2009-07-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

“Religion poisons everything.”

This is the mantra of modern-day atheism and has been immortalized in the title of Christopher Hitchens’ book, “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” Some common manifestations of this argument against religions go as follows:

“Countless atrocities have been committed in the name of God/religion.”

“More wars have been waged, and lives lost, in the name of God/religion than any other ideal.”

“Religion/the Bible is responsible for such intolerance and hate.”

I’m sure that if you have been anywhere near the conflict between theism and atheism you have heard some form of one or all of these statements. What I would like to do, among other things, in addressing these arguments, is to lay out before you the actual numbers associated with wars, deaths and atrocities, from both sides, plus talk a little bit about tolerance and intolerance. This information will span a few posts. So, without any further ado…

Deaths and Wars in the Name of Christianity – I am giving the least favorable numbers I could find without actually using those which are fudged or speculated

The Crusades 1095-1291 AD
There is much controversy over the actual number of lives lost during the Crusades. The figures coming from reliable sources in the conservative camp land at about 200,000 casualties; but in order to hold the attention of those who trust the liberal numbers let’s be generous and just say that 1.5 million people died in the Crusades, which spanned nearly 200 years. That’s roughly 7,500 per year, or 626 per month. This will be important later.

The Spanish Inquisition 1478-1834 AD
Out of the 125,000 trials only about 1,200 – 2,000 people were actually sentenced to death. That’s about 10 people per year - less than one per month. More children die from bicycle related accidents in the US per year than at the hands of the inquisitors. Bikes must be evil. I am going to start an anti-bike website… no! I am going to be an abikist. Because bikes seem to be responsible for so much death I am going to stop believing in them. That’s logical.

The Witch Trials 1400-1800 AD
Because of the era in which we live where it’s super cool and totally “in” to be a witch, I thought I would include a short description of this strange phenomenon called the Witch Trials or the Witch Hunt. During this 400 year period people were actually really creeped out by witches, and it was definitely neither cool nor “in” to be a witch, in fact even someone calling you a witch could get you killed in any of several unpleasant ways. So how many people were executed for being witches during this period of 400 years? Between 50 and 60 thousand. That would be about 150 per year, or about 12 per month.

Grand Total: 1,562,000 - or, 1 million 562 thousand, over about a 600 year period. That ends up at about 640 per month, which is definitely not good.

Wow, people claiming to be Christians really have been responsible for many, many deaths. Does that mean that Christianity is false?

Nope.

Unlike the founder of the world’s fastest growing religion our Founder never commanded His followers to kill those who would not convert. In fact, He actually taught us to love our enemies. So, any deaths in His Name, were not truly in His Name. Murdering innocent people and saying that you are doing it for Jesus is like killing cows in the name of Gandhi. You can claim to be someone’s follower but your actions will speak louder than your words… unless you are a Christian.

You can claim to be a disciple of Gandhi if you like, but if you are an open carnivore everyone will know you are a faker. No one will point the finger at Gandhi or Hinduism; they will call you a liar.

For Christians however, the actions of people centuries ago who were clearly not following Jesus’ teachings on murder or His command to love your enemies somehow implicate Jesus and Christianity as a whole.

This argument against Christianity, in light of the above, is blatantly fallacious. It is a tactic which God-haters of all stripes, but especially atheists, have been using as a “proof” that Christianity is false for decades now (possibly centuries).

So, other than the obvious fact that pragmatic approaches to discovering truth never hold up on their own merit, there is also the issue we already discussed that the people who were responsible for the aforementioned atrocities were clearly going against the teachings of Jesus Christ. Any murders committed in His Name were done against His commands, and thus were not truly in His Name. They certainly were not pleasing to Him. I mean, come on! When the “bad guys” arrived in the garden to haul Jesus off to a mock trial where He would be sentenced to an excruciating death for claiming to be God, which He is, Peter drew his sword and lopped off some guy named Malchus’ ear.

What did Jesus do? Did He also charge into battle with twelve legions of angels and decimate His would-be captors? If there was ever a time for retaliation this was it.

What was His response? Big surprise, He put back Malchus’ ear, good as new, and then basically tells Peter that those who live by the sword will likewise die by it.

Jesus clearly did not teach nor did He endorse killing for religious purposes.

This argument centering on religious wars is just plain bad; however, I am going to, for the sake of argument, play by these rules for my next entry on the topic of atheism. If you thought so-called “Christians” were bloodthirsty just wait ‘til you see the casualties of the atheistic worldview…

Foul-weather Fans

2009-07-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

Sitting in Starbucks at the moment trying to tune out unwanted sounds. One of these audibly undesriables is a laptop computer playing what sounds like some of the more recent Michael Jackson songs. Apparently the owner of said laptop feels like it is her responsibility, or duty maybe, to assist everyone in the establishment in honoring the memory of the King of Pop by giving us all a sampling of his b-sides...

Now, I know I am supposed to be continuing the series on atheism and the other on taking up the cross, and I really do want to start posting editions of my blog-mic book about Nephilim and other fun, creepy stuff, but I don't have time for any of that right now with school and all. But what I do have time to do is complain...

Let me preface this by assuring all 2 of my readers that I am genuinely sorry for MJ that his life was cut off so early, and that he most likely is not in a better place. I also have genuine compassion for his family and friends who truly knew him and now truly miss him. Furthermore, I think he was an extremely talented performer and a gifted songwriter.

All that said...

I can't stand, not even a little bit, the myriad of people who all-of-a-sudden are #1 Michael Jackson fans. What the heck is happening? I really don't understand it at all. Watching the memorial service on the news (not on purpose - it was playing on the TVs at Time Warner Cable while I was paying my bill), I wondered if a president had also died and his funeral was on the same day in the same city. It's surreal.

Everywhere I go I hear his music: From the car next to me, on both sides, from homes and businesses, from laptops in Starbucks... I think his music is so thick in the airwaves that you don't even need a radio or computer to hear it.

The annoying thing though isn't that people are listening to the music; it's good music. The problem is the overnight tranformation of the masses from "couldn't care less about that pedophile and his music" (for the record, I don't believe he was a pedophile) and "oh, my gosh! What a bad person he is for holding his baby over a balcony" to "he was almost as amazing as President Obama!" (for the record, I think our president is anything and everything but amazing) and "his music changes lives and transforms souls!"

I am so sick of this. Someone please put a stop to it quickly.

Honor the man, fine, no problem. Play his music in memorial; but must you add to the already plethora of annoying sounds and music at Starbucks?

I can't concentrate for crying out loud!!!

By the hammer of Thor! USE EARPHONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peace out

Come, follow the adventures of... this guy!

2009-05-23T04:15:00.000-07:00

Coming soon: My new blog, which is a comic book, which is a blog...

-------------------------Click for full-size image, please!-----------------------------

Some 2,000 years ago Jesus Christ gave a confidential briefing concerning the end of days to a few of His Apostles, in which He revealed that, "as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be" (Matthew 24:37).

In the antediluvian world, the days of Noah, the sons of God (bene HaElohim in the Hebrew) took notice of the daughters of men, that they were indeed fair, and these mysterious beings, whom we believe to be a small portion of the angels who fell with Satan, chose for themselves wives from these women. The progeny of these unnatural unions were what the Bible calls Nephilim, "the fallen ones."

As the Days of Noah..., my new "blogic book", will follow the reemergence of these Fallen Ones in the years leading up to the return of Jesus Christ, zeroing in on the struggle between the righteous and the wicked and the strategic effort to eliminate these hideous perversions of both the natural and the spiritual realm.

Please check back for issue one, where you will be introduced to the protagonist of the story as he encounters an opponent of gargantuan proportions.

Step Two: Taking Up Your Cross Daily - a.k.a "Embracing Defeat"

2009-04-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

To conclude my previous post on Luke 9:23 I included the following quote by G. K. Chesterton.

“The cross cannot be defeated for it is defeat.”

This is where I will begin today’s entry. Considering I have already tackled one aspect, the most recognized one, of taking up the cross in my previous post on denying self, I am going to explore a possible application that I have not seen addressed as of yet. So, with this quote from Chesterton in mind let’s consider what it could mean to take up our cross daily.

Remember, these are my thoughts on a possible implication of this passage, so be as the noble-minded Bereans and let this stir you to study the Word.

Jesus calls us to first deny ourselves, as we covered here. Next He bids us to take up our cross daily. What He is essentially calling us to do, among other things (for which there are volumes of books already collecting dust on the shelves of our minds), is to bear the full weight of our own defeat - every day. But it’s not a bad defeat; not at all. This defeat is, however, truly an acknowledgement that we are helpless. In truth, the world, namely sin, has defeated us. Paul explains this to us in Ephesians 2:1 when he says that we are all dead in trespasses and sins. Incidentally, what he spends the first three chapters of his letter to the Romans telling us is this: In our own power we utterly lack any ability to overcome the world, to overcome our innate sinful nature, or to overcome our daily propensity to sin against the God who gives us life.

And with this knowledge we embrace our defeat; we hoist it onto our shoulder and carry it to the Cross that is firmly planted precisely in the dividing point of history. We then lay it down there at the feet of Christ. That’s as far as we must carry it, for He has promised us that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. And once we have brought it to Him He promises to carry it the rest of the way.

And indeed He has; for although He rose victorious that first resurrection Sunday, Friday He was defeated.

No, defeated isn’t the proper term.

He surrendered.

He bore the full weight of defeat, my defeat, your defeat, but He did it willingly. And there, on that cross, He was crushed as the Father poured out all of His fiery wrath against all sin, for all time, upon His beloved Son.

I have strayed from the subject at hand, my apologies. Just remember that what Christ did willingly was to accept that defeat, the wages of sin, so that we would not have to. And what took Him roughly six hours to accomplish would take billions of humans an eternity.

See, He is so valuable that a few hours of His time is worth infinitely more than an eternity of mine and yours. This is because He is infinitely valuable.

Isn’t it humbling to the core that an infinitely valuable Being would sacrifice Himself for such insignificant wretches, whose natural inclination is to rebel against the very One who gives them life and breath, not to mention the possibility of eternal life?

So today, take up that cross my friend, and take it straight to Calvary. Leave it there and go serve God out of gratitude, not obligation. See that your joy is not the result of doing this or that, or refraining from that other thing, but that it is derived solely from the finished work of Christ on the cross.

Because there, He defeated your defeat.

Squeaky Shoes

2009-04-24T17:43:00.001-07:00

Toddler squeaky shoes are for HOME USE ONLY!

You know who you are...

These shoes are designed as highly-annoying-toddler-tracking-devices. Accepted locations for use are limited to your own home, and possibly the home of your most hated lifelong rival. For instance, if you were Superman you could either let your super-munchkin wear them in the Fortress of Solitude, or, in Lex Luthor's lair, period. No place else. And even then, most morally upright individuals would see this as cruel and unusual punishment for a man whose only crimes are... well, almost everything, up to and including mass murder and multiple attempts at world domination.

Places not to employ their use would include EVERY PUBLIC PLACE.

An example would be, oh, say, anywhere that I am trying to read a book. See, these are useful if you are someplace that you may not have your eyes on your toddler at all times, such as your home. But in the entirety of the public realm, parents (hopefully) have their gaze fixed on their little one, for multiple obvious reasons which I need not list. And if there are cars within 3 feet of your newly autonomous child it should go without saying that you don't need squeaky shoes on the little one.

By the way, you can hear those blessed torture devices from at least the length of the average elementary school driveway, just in case you were wondering.

My question is this: What kind of volcano-lair-dwelling malevolantly nefarious super genius dreamed up such God-forsaken footwear?

The Fanatical Self-Destruction of Atheism

2009-04-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am nearing the end of a marvelous volume by G. K. Chesterton entitled, Orthodoxy. At the end of chapter 8, The Romance of Orthodoxy, I came across the following observation about atheism which I probably read five or six times before I moved on. It is a wonderfully accurate portrayal of modern atheism, even more so than it was of atheism in Chesterton's day.

[speaking of the militant atheist]
"He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even the primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all."

I will follow up that quote with this excerpt from Where All Roads Lead, by Chesterton as well.

"If there were not God, there would be no atheists."

The utter futility of atheism...

I believe I have recently stumbled upon the truth about why such rabid God-haters as Richard Dawkins and Christipher Hitchins expend such copious amounts of time end energy trying to get you and I to stop believing in God. Note that they don't seem to be so much concerned with simply defending their scientifically unprovable stance that there is no God, as they are with vehemently slandering the God they claim does not exist.

So, here is why I believe these men are found spending and being spent in the pursuit of convincing people that there is no God:

"Misery loves company."

Let me unpack that statement a little.

Track with me. If there is no God, no moral Lawgiver, no Originator of meaning and purpose; if Darwinian evolution, neo-Darwinian evolution, punctuated equilibrium, or whatever they come up with next, is true... then we, this planet, this universe, are little more than a cosmic accident, the product of a miraculous belch in which nothing somehow became gasses and then relieved itself. I move to rename it the Big Fart.

So, following logically, if we are the accidental outcome of evolution then our existence is intrinsically meaningless. There is no purpose. Sure, you can accumulate wealth and power but when you die it either goes with you into the ground (if you are a grumpy accident), or it goes to your children (if you are a sentimental accident), or... it goes to charity (if you are an altruistic accident). But even if you pass it on at some point it also passes on, as do all of those you passed it to.

Or, you could live a life of sacrifice in which you choose the betterment of others over your own pleasure, but all of those for whom you spend your time, energy and resources trying to help will also eventually die and then what have you done? You have worked against natural selection!

This can go on for eons and then what?

Heat Death

The universe attains equilibrium and becomes a really, really big ghost town, where nothing can or will ever live again.

This is depressing stuff. Seems like it would tend to make those who believe it miserable. And, as we know, misery loves company.

See, it doesn't make sense to rail against a being who does not exist. What if I started an anti-Shiva website, where I made it my singular aim to defame, insult, curse and otherwise bully Shiva the Destroyer (a Hindu god who, together with Brahma and Vishnu, make up the Hindu version of the Trinity), a being I know to be fictitious? If I know that said being is not real I will give an apologetic for what I believe and against this other entity, as Christians do, but there would be no animosity (and there isn't). I may even speak out against the founder of Shiva worship, laying out evidence that this person is not credible, but I would have no personal emotional response to the deity.

So my question for the New Atheists is this:

Why all the hatred? Why the obvious personal vendetta against a God you claim does not exist? If you say, "Because religion has caused so much death and destruction! That's why!" then you will probably want to tune in for an upcoming entry where I will display and discuss the numbers of people killed in the name of religion compared and contrasted with the numbers of those killed as a result of secular humanism and the atheistic worldview.

Step One: Denying Self - a.k.a. "Set a Course for the Cross"

2009-04-18T17:19:00.000-07:00

"And he said to them all, If any man will come after (go with) me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." Luke 9:23

I'll talk about denial in this post, and if all goes as planned I'll tackle taking up our cross and following Him in subsequent posts.

Jesus would end up resurrected and seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. That was inevitable for sure, but that was to be the outcome of His obedience; obedience even unto death on the cross.

For His destination, as He stood and wept looking over Jerusalem, knowing that the vast majority of those dwelling in that city would reject Him; as He rode into that same city, presenting Himself as the King of Israel to the joyful shouts of "Hosanna" by many of the same people who would, only five days later, spit at him and blaspheme His Name (as He bore their sins); as He ate His final supper with His disciples, instituting a new covenant and a new meaning for those ancient toasts; as He passed through the Garden of Gethsemane, praying and sweating drops of blood... yes, His destination was most definitely the cross.

He knew, and we know, that Calvary was where it would all end. Though, as ends go, it was most assuredly not the most final of ends. No, not for Him, but for what else died with Him on that cruel tree.

Sin.

Which brings us to Luke 9:23.

Those of us who desire to go with Him to be where He is are to, 1) deny ourselves, 2) take up our cross daily, and 3) follow Him.

See, from the moment of His conception by the Spirit, and really from eternity past, He was only going one place. And that is where He calls us to go.

To deny ourselves is essentially to place His will and His desires for us above our own will and our own desires. Or, to put it another way, to replace our will and desires with His. This denial begins with our initial repentance as we are born into the Faith and continues until we breath or last. Paul describes this denial well in Romans 12:1-2.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

Just as Jesus presented Himself willingly, denying His will to live, His will to bypass the cross if it was at all possible, we must also willingly present ourselves as a sacrifice for Him who sacrificed Himself for us.

But unlike Christ we are generally called to be living sacrifices. See, He doesn't call us to lay down on the altar and slash our throats, nor does He beckon us to nail ourselves to a cross and die there. He calls us to willingly and daily strap ourselves to the horns of His altar and let His holy fire burn away our iniquity, just as it would with the substitutionary lamb within the old covenant. And as we are well aware, it doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel good because fire, by its very nature burns. But, fire has another function.

Fire purifies.

And that is where we end today. I pray that today you and I both will deny ourselves, as we allow Him to purify us, however uncomfortable it is. It is not only our reasonable service of worship because it is His will that we do so. It is also for our good, because He cares for us.

"The Cross cannot be defeated for it is defeat."
-G.K. Chesterton

a little levity

2009-04-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

I know that I promised a talk about how to Biblically and successfully deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus in my next blog, but... I heard some stories today that are too funny not to share with the world (or the 2 people who read this blog).

I am going to organize this as a mental excercise rather than simply a string of humorous happenings.

So here's your instructions:
I am going to recount 4 incidents to you, only 3 of which are true. What I want you to do first is to try and guess which one I concocted here in my cushy chair at Starbucks. Keep in mind that the three stories that are true are relatively recent and are all about the same person, believe it or not. Ripley would be proud.

Secondly, give me your opinion of which story sounds the most outragious and fabricated.

1) Two college aged sisters are spending the night at their father's house. They are awakened at approximately 4:00 am to the sound of their stepmother and aunt, much like raccoons in the dumpster behind Panera, rustling, banging, and clanging about the house, frantically searching for God-knows-what. After some time the aunt approaches her weary-eyed nieces and, with a face like Brittany Spears might have if you were to try to explain pre-algebra to her, asks them, "Have you seen my teeth?" (the elusive dentures were later found in the microwave --- maybe she thought if she nuked her teeth she wouldn't need to fry her eggs...)

2) An older woman pulls into a Taco Bell drive-thru in the late afternoon. After a cursory glance at the menu, out of habit alone, having already decided on her order before entering the parking lot, she proceeds to order the "4 Arby's Roast Beef sandwiches for $5.00" deal, a large order of cheddar curly fries, and a Jamocha shake. Needless to say, she had to do some extra driving to find her desired dinner.

3) A blonde woman smoking a cigarette walks into the kitchen, glances at the digital temperature display on the stove which read "3:65", and asked a man, "Is that the time?" To which he replies, "...it says three sixty-five..."

4) A police officer pulls over a woman in a Toyota Tercel. When the officer approaches the window he asks her, "Ma'am, do you know why I pulled you over?" Her response a puzzled, "No...". He then asks her, "So, you really have nooooo idea why I pulled you over?" As she offers her second baffled "No, I don't", she hears on the officer's police radio, "We finally were able to stop that Toyota Tercel". Amazingly recognizing that that was in fact her car they were radioing about, she resignedly asks, "Ok, what did I do?" - "You blew right through a stop sign and you have been speeding the wrong way on a one-way street" was the officer's frustrated reply.

I'll post the answer to the first question on my next entry. The second question is a matter of opinion; as far as I am concerned all of them are ridiculous, and ridiculously funny!

Evolution of a Fairy Tale

2008-03-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking about that "theory" called evolution... allow me to vent for a few minutes and don't be shy with the comments.

Do you know that on the biochemical level every single step of evolution - be it classic Darwinian or neo-Darwinian, or even Stephen Jay Gould & Niles Eldredge's Punctuated Equilibrium - is a statistical impossibility. Each step, and there would be trillions upon trillions, would be on the level of miraculous, which naturalistic science is doing their best to stay away from when it comes to anything but their precious evolution.

Ok, imagine you wake up tomorrow and decide to play the California State Lottery. The odds of winning are almost as good if you don't play. But you do. You buy one ticket and you win one million dollars. You do the same tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. In a few years science finds out how to extend our lifespan by a million years. So you play and win every day until you die, one million and thirty-one for me.

This is so absurd that no one would ever believe a story like this. The odds of biological evolution happening are far, far worse, and yet people believe it. The reason people believe it is because they are told to, or because they fear the alternative - namely and omnipotent God. Our textbooks are full of outright lies and evidence which has been proven wrong for over forty years in some cases, and yet here we are. Evolution, being taught as fact. It's not a fact. In fact, according to the very discipline scientists follow it can not be a fact.

Here's why:

The study of origins, including evolution, can prove nothing. It is forensic science, which tries to deduce how something may have happened. But there is never a certainty. There is a point where a thing can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but evolution is on the opposite end of the spectrum from that. Evolution, scientifically, can not be a fact. It is a "theory" at best, which is a stretch of the definition. Honestly, it's an idea. It is an idea about origins which was popularized by Mr. Darwin and has since become accepted as fact. We have no more evidence for evolution than Darwin had. We actually have less. With the fields of paleontology, genetics, bio chemistry, biology and cosmology, to name a few, we have seen Darwins ideas smashed to bits. Nevertheless, evolution marches forward.

If you are reading this and going, "what an idiot, evolution is a proven fact" the burden of proof is on you. I am saying you are wrong. I am giving reasons why you are wrong. I can give many, many more but no one would read the blog if it were that long. I'm not trying to be a jerk about it. I just want people to believe things because they have studied them out for themselves. This includes my faith. I would never tell someone "just believe". If someone is going to believe something they should know why they do.

Thanks for reading. Questions, comments, click the button that allows you to comment and shoot. Just know that I am not interested in debating for the sake of debating. I am simply presenting what I believe to be truth. If you honestly want to dialogue in a mature, adult manner, cool. But, if you are one of those God-hating atheists who can't find anything better to do than flame message boards with childish, filthy language, you are wasting your time posting here. Just keep it mature and all is well.

Profoundly Simple Conviction From Hebrews 2

2008-01-23T20:35:00.000-08:00

For the past few days I have been studying about the divinity of Christ in the book of Hebrews. Today, as I was getting into chapter two I came across a verse that for some reason has never struck me before. Hebrews 2:11 was a convicting reminder of my duty, no, my privilege of sharing the Gospel. Telling people about Jesus and what He has done for us is the duty and privilege of every Christian.

I saw a church sign recently that said "every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor". This may seem harsh, but is it not true that Jesus commenced and concluded His earthly ministry with admonitions to become fishers of men and to go into the world and preach the Gospel, making disciples in His Name? Ok, enough preaching. I know that Christians know that they should share their faith. I also know that it's not easy. My point from Heb 2:11, which I will get to soon, is that we should face our fears of rejection and humiliation and just do what He commands us to do.

So the verse at hand tells us that Jesus Christ is not ashamed of us. Ok... now think back over the past week. How many times have you given Him good reasons to be ashamed of you? You know, sins. This would include lying, stealing (giving free food or drinks where you work counts), lusting, gossiping, cursing, unjust anger, etc.

Now, during that same week how many times have you been ashamed of Jesus? I guarantee that it's more than you remember. To be ashamed isn't just embarrassment because your mom is the bearded lady in the circus side-show or your little brother is that wolf boy from tabloids (who is really a real boy, really! actually four that I know of). It also means timidity, bashfulness, foolishness, fear of rejection or disapproval and inadequacy, and it finds its roots in good old-fashioned pride (Dictionary).

Ok, I'm quite confident that my point is clear now. If Jesus is not ashamed of us, with all of our sins, then how in the world could we ever be ashamed of Him and not be eternally ashamed of ourselves?

While the conviction is fresh do something. Go out and tell someone about Jesus and how He has saved you from hell and promised you eternal life in Him. Help them to understand that they have broken God's laws and are in danger of hell, and that if they repent of their sins and place their faith in Jesus they can be assured of their salvation. It's simple. If you are saved you have the Holy Spirit and with Him all of the knowledge you need to tell someone else how to be saved.

For help in sharing your faith visit one of these ministries online:
Living Waters
Mark Cahill
Evangelism Team
WOTM Radio

A Well Thought Out Response...

2008-01-23T19:40:00.000-08:00

A Well-Thought-Out-Response To Some Not-So-Well-Thought-Out-Responses To The Problem Of Evil, With Regards To Who Is Responsible And How We Should Respond To It

Evil. What is it? Why is it?... Is it? Let's explore this topic in the format of a response to some of peoples responses to it. Thus the title.

For those of you who observe the staggering amount of evil in the world and proclaim, "there cannot be a God", I say that without a God there is no basis for good and evil. There is nothing by which to measure right and wrong. You see, you must acknowledge the Almighty just to make an argument against Him based on the existence of evil. It's circular and relies completely upon your opinion of what a good God would and would not allow.

For those of you who watch the news or read the paper and ask, "how can a good God exist?" My answer again is "how can He not?" To even understand the difference between good and evil there must be an absolute Good. For instance, let's compare Mother Theresa and Adolf Hitler. Well, we know that Momma T. is better than Hitler in terms of goodness or morality, but is she absolutely good, the moral apex? No. We are not comparing everyone to Mother Theresa whenever we ask if they are good. Let's now assume that there is someone who is morally superior to her, but is that person the standard? No. There must be a fixed goal by which to measure everything else. Without a moral Lawgiver there is no moral standard. It's all a matter of opinion. There is no intrinsic value in any idea or belief.

For those of you who sit idly by as humanity wastes away and blame God for the evil of men, use the brain God gave you and think over the situation. Who is responsible? Who is truly to blame for the ills of humanity?

As infants and young children are sold and traded like mere possessions, beaten, raped, mutilated and murdered by humans, not God - you sit. As the LRA and similar groups of people, not God, kidnap children and, through brainwashing and forced drug abuse, turn them into emotionless murderers, rapists and sex slaves - you sit. As human trafficing and slavery continues undaunted in every country on earth and easily curable diseases kill millions of innocent people - there you sit. You sit and you do nothing. And your one selfless, heroic act on the part of humanity is to point your well-manicured finger at the Creator and ask, "how can You let this happen?" His answer, with as much eloquence as I can muster on His behalf, is "how can you let this happen?"

Humanity is it's own worst problem. Despite what Billy Joel believes or sings, we did start the fire. We are the disease that plagues us. Our wounds are self-inflicted. We did this to ourselves. We are sleeping in the bed we made and complaining about its condition. If the Bible is true, if the God of Christianity is real, then the answer to the big "why?" is readily available. Genesis chapter three - The Fall.

God is not to blame, man is. By one man sin entered this world, and death came by that sin (Romans 5:12). All the woes of humankind are entirely due to the original sin of our ancestors. At that moment man chose to reject God's way. Men have been doing that by nature ever since, and all the while God has been telling man, "have it your way". God's way is to not lie to, steal from, or murder our fellow humans. God's way is to love your enemies and bless those who curse you. God's way is to give sacrificially to the poor and needy, to comfort the lonely and befriend the despised.

His way just isn't selfish enough for us.

And so God continues to let us have it our way. But be warned, that will not go on forever.

Now, I am not implying that God does not act. In no way am I inferring that God does not take part in the rescuing of humanity. Obviously He cares tremendously for us and desires for us to be healed. Jesus is living proof of that. Jesus Christ, in one act of selfless love, has forever solved the sin problem. Meaning that the eternal effects of sin have been removed and are no longer a problem for the redeemed. But here on earth, right now, it is our task, not only to preach the Gospel so that men and women can be saved and have the eternal effect of sin removed, but to -in the power of God- turn back the physical, tangible effects of the curse.

Christians, myself included, are faling miserably. I'm not just talking about the 40% or so of Americans who claim to have been born again and yet bear no signs of actually being a Christ-follower. I am speaking to the pastors, the worship leaders, the evangelists; I'm referring to the prayer warriors, the Bible students, the street preachers. Christianity is doing almost as bad a job as possible representing Christ here on earth.

What to do?

First, pray and ask God to reveal to you what you should be doing. Then, READ YOUR BIBLE!!! Study the words of the Man you claim to follow. What did He do? What does He call us to do? Then, once you have some answers... do something!

I would like to direct my final thoughts back to the ones who blame God for the current state of things. Just humor me on one or two analogies and then I'll be done with you.

Blaming God for the current moral condition of humanity is like driving the wrong way down the interstate and blaming Volkswagon for crashing my car. Ridiculous! It's like putting a big, metal bowl full of spoons into the microwave and then blaming GE when it blows up and sets your apartment on fire. God made this place perfect, as in Genesis one and two, then because of mans sin, Creation fell. God put as big a warning label as anyone could ever need on that tree. "If you eat this fruit you will die. ~thanks, God". God made it, we wrecked it. But He will fix it. It's only because of His extreme patience and longsuffering that He has not returned to set things straight. As in the days of Noah God is giving individuals the chance to be saved. He has prepared a way of escape that is beyond trustworthy.

Back to the subject.

Evil. It is real. It is up to each individual person to decide that there are things worth standing up for. There are issues that demand response. How can we look at pictures like the ones below and not be moved to action?! Come on people! If this were your child would you not covet the help of someone in a place to change things. Wouldn't you be disgusted to learn that there are millions of people with the resources to help you who simply do not care? We are fat and lazy and the world is pleading for our help. We can do something.

So there you sit. The question I have for you now is: When are you going to stand?

--For more information on that "way of escape" and the reason why we need it, or for information on what you can do to help end hunger, slavery, child prostitution, preventable and treatable diseases, etc. you can call, e-mail, myspace, facebook or text me and I will be more than happy to chat with you about it, or to answer any questions or objections you may have. I don't know everything but I know God, and He just happens to know everything--

A starving Sudanese child is stalked by a vulture.

A Nigerian child starves because his mother cannot afford to buy food or milk.

This child is an example of what Chinese slave traders do to children in order to solicit money from tourists. They actually mutilate young children and sell them off to slave masters, who then will trade them to other masters and the child is doomed to do this for the rest of his life... unless someone cares enough to stand up and take action.