Hey, I’m back!

Yes, I have returned to the blog!

Okay, so here’s the deal:  broken hard drive (Down with Hitachi! Long live Western Digital!). I am happy to say, I replaced it myself via Amazon.com, saving myself a nice chunk of change. Problem is, now I’m re-installing all the software and Vista and Toshiba updates since March 2007. Wow. There are a LOT of them.

So here’s what I’ve learned (it’s what I knew all along, but…oh, well….):

Rule #1:  Buy the extended warranty. Of course. The “Longest Warranty You Can Afford” Rule. This holds true for any electronics, from your PC to your HDTV. Unless the price is negligibly low, as in (for instance) your GPX mp3 player(Confession:  Toshiba actually gave me the chance to do this, one year after I bought this Satellite; I turned it down, though I’d planned on doing this when I’d first bought the laptop).

Rule #2:  Buy a back-up external drive. One dedicated simply to backing up. Then USE it. It doesn’t have to be pricey, or bigger than your system’s hard drive; you could probably find a 250-gb drive on eBay for, what, $50 or $60 now?

Rule #3:  Use a USB thumb drive and PortableApps. You can find them at PortableApps.com. When I bought my USB thumb drive for my birthday, on the spur of the moment I installed Portable OpenOffice, Portable Thunderbird and Portable Firefox. Along with Chrome Portable. And, for good measure, OperaUSB. But the smartest thing I did was to download Portable KeePass, the password manager, which means I still have access to all my account passwords—and that, through the portable browsers, I still had access to any site or account that required a password. Such as cNet and the ever-popular Pandora. Also, just for the fun of it, I copied all my documents and most of my mp3s to the thumb drive—with an 8gigabyte drive, I used only 4gb for all this portable goodness.

Rule #4:  Get the Windows Install disks with your PC, because they will make life so much easier if (when) you have to replace or re-format your hard drive. Pop ‘em in, choose your “Restore to Factory Default” option or your maker’s equivalent, and let the genius of the OEM take it from there (God bless you, Toshiba!). And, if you’ve conscientiously backed up all your stuff (Remember Rule #3? I didn’t….), restoring files and programs is pretty simple.

Here’s Optional Rule #5:  Wubi. Just for the fun of it. Wubi is the Windows Ubuntu Installer. It won’t save your hard drive; won’t prevent crashes; won’t do a thing except painlessly install the Ubuntu OS on your PC, creating a dual-boot system so that you can choose either Windows or Ubuntu at start-up. Wubi is beautiful. Wubi is God’s gift to Open Source. Install it, and mess around with Ubuntu for a few weeks. Give yourself time to learn the basics (yes, there’s a learning curve). If you don’t like it, uninstall the whole thing through the Windows Uninstaller (or better yet, through Revo Uninstaller; there’s both a Free and a  Pro version). The nice thing about any dual-boot system is that, should something go wrong with Windows, you’ve got an option.

So, anyway, I’m back. Looking forward to more blogging. Blessings. I love it!

Technorati Tags: tech,wubi

Heading North

Today, Part Two of my birthday present has arrived. This is something I’ve been waiting for since, oh, last September. It’s a highly-coveted gift from two very good friends who surprised me completely with it. It is:  North! Or Be Eaten.

Ta-Da!

If, by the way, you wish to purchase it, you may find it here, at the author’s site. Or you may go to your local Christian bookstore and request it there. Try option 2 first, because your local Christian bookstore is probably desperately in need of your business. Try option 1 if you have no local Christian bookstore. If all else fails, well, there’s CBD.

North! is, in case you do not know, Book Two of the Wingfeather Saga (Book One is On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness). These are, well, children’s books—preteens on up. From one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Andrew Peterson, Proprietor of the Rabbit Room—one of my favorite blogs. His site, and his store, are worth checking out.

I first heard of Andrew Peterson after the death of Rich Mullins. Mullins was probably the greatest contemporary Christian songwriter of his decade, and anything I could say about him has already been said over and over again:  He wrote beautiful, lyrical songs; his verses were passionate and reasoned; they were grand and intimate at the same time. Mullins was something the world of CCM gets every now and then:  A writer who makes his own trail and compels everyone else to follow him. I remember hearing of his death at work, on the local Christian radio station; he died in a car crash about 40 miles from my town.

So when I heard about this guy who was the most original Christian songwriter since Mullins, I had to check him out. I had to dig, too, to hear him. AP has had a few CCM hits, like “Nothing to Say” and “Rise and Shine” and “The Chasing Song,” but most of his music doesn’t get a lot of airplay (I could go off on the Christian radio industry here—K Love, this means you, too—but I won’t—today).

Thankfully, AP has twice played in my area. The last concert was in September ‘08, when his beautiful Resurrection Letters Volume 2 album had just come out. He did the tour “on spec,” with no advance take or guaranteed appearance fees.

That was a special concert for me. It came a few days after one of my daughters had been admitted to a behavioral healthcare institute with clinical depression. I hurt. On the way to the concert, I chatted with the friends who were taking me; I made small talk; and I wondered silently why I was going, and what God was going to do, and whether I could get through the next few weeks, and what my daughter would face.... Anyone who’s been there knows what I thought. I had failed her; she needed help; I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t fix what was wrong. The truth is, I only went to the concert because my wife made me. Wise woman!

It wasn’t the music that made that night good. At least, not the music alone. It was Andrew’s story behind each song on the album. Nothing preachy, nothing heavy; AP’s a pretty low-key person. It was just story after story that reminded me:  God is great. God is love. God knows what he’s doing. His hands are gentle even when his voice is thundering. God will keep those I love, because he loves them a thousand times more.

So I’m looking forward to a few days of, well, rather light reading. I’m going to put Adolf Schlatter to the side for a while. I’m heading for adventure with the Igibys and Peet the Sock Man, going north to the Ice Praires just a few steps ahead of the dreaded Fangs of Dang. And if you want to come along, click the link.

(Images of cover of North! Or Be Eaten and of Andrew Peterson are from http://rabbitroom.com)

Technorati Tags: Andrew Peterson,North! Or Be Eaten,Wingfeather

Politic Of Believers, By Believers, For—the People

Here’s what’s wrong with politics in the United States.

Joe Wilson does something outrageous, and it pays off politically. And it isn’t just Joe Wilson. Left and right, politicians know they can make points and score cash off of playing to the extremes.

Why be civil, and have actual give-and-take dialogue, when the real action is on the edges? Rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred streetfighting gets news, gets money, gets votes. It just doesn’t get things done.

Where are Christians in all of this? Why are we not, first of all, holding politicians to account for reckless, disrespectful speech? Why are we not calling them out on lies and half-truths? Why are we not guarding our own words and emotions in the debate? Why are we playing this game?

One of the most powerful ways Christians can affect the culture is one of the least-observed:  Through gentleness and meekness as we confront sin (as in, “real sin,” not just opposing viewpoints). In order to do that, we need to follow a few simple steps:

1. 
   
   Agree on what real sin is. It’s not socialism, or nationalized healthcare (though I think neither is a good idea). Those things are politics.  Sin, as the New Testament defines it, includes hatred and anger and pride along with things like adultery, homosexuality, theft, lying, witchcraft.... We need a full and honest definition of sin.
2. 
   
   Confess and repent of “over-the-top” rhetoric. God will judge what we say as well as what we do. We can’t cop out with the excuse that our angry words were in the heat of the moment, for the cause.
3. 
   
   Make repentance both personal and public. It is personal when it is face-to-face, and New Testament reconciliation is always face-to-face. It isn’t a statement issued to the press, or my people giving a message to your people. It is me coming to you and confessing that I have sinned against you. How would politics change if one politician went to another and said:  “I sinned against you in the way I criticized you”? And it is public when the sin is confessed before the nation as sin. If the whole world knows you did it, then the whole world should know that you see you were wrong.
4. 
   
   Humbly hold all sides to account for this standard. I believe that if Christians did this one thing especially, we’d change the way politics is done in the nation. We could change the debate from what scores points to what is right and reasonable and effective. The world would see that we are willing to forego partisanship for Christlike conduct. And if we show this, those who hear us will take us seriously even when they disagree.
5. 
   
   Pray for all politicians, even when we think their politics is wrong. This is a Biblical must; it’s up there with “Do not lie, do not steal.” Paul ordered churches to put it into practice even for rulers who arrested and beggared the people he told to do it. If Roman Christians could pray for Nero, we can surely pray for our president, whatever his/her political party. And we have to.

Technorati Tags: politics,faith

God of Wrath

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men….” (Romans 1:18, ESV).

I wrote that I was reading Adolf Schlatter’s commentary on Romans, and I was struck by his handling of this verse. I read his comments a few days ago, and then this morning, separately, read Romans 1 again. In the back of my mind were Schlatter’s comments, and as I read this morning, they made sense.

I used to take this verse, and the rest of the chapter, to mean that God was showing wrath towards humanity. This probably wouldn’t surprise most unbelievers,  because they think that’s what “fundamentalist” Christians believe; and when they use the label “fundamentalist” they throw in groups of people who are, in fact, not at all fundamentalists. But the churches I grew up in were gracious bodies led by gracious (and somewhat iconoclastic) pastors. They preached about wrath and hell and God’s final judgment; but this was balanced with preaching about the love of God for all humanity (in high school, I couldn’t figure out why we were stereotyped as Christ-haunted, Bible-thumping killjoys—the people I went to church with weren’t like that).

How has God revealed his wrath? I used to think (like most people) that it was in the “acts of God,” the  cataclysms and disasters that rocked the earth with no warning; and in wars and depressions—the man-made catastrophes. I would read these into Romans, as if I were instead reading Revelations—the “Revealing” there was the revealing here. Yet, at the same time, I came up against Jesus’ words to Nicodemus:  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. This puts two things at odds:  Active judgment vs. active salvation. How can you have both?

The New Testament makes clear that, for the most part, God is not now actively judging the earth—that’s a future event. He is now at work saving rather than condemning humanity. Yet his wrath is also being revealed. What can that mean? If “the day of God’s wrath” is an unknown, future day—if Christ is not condemning, if God is not willing men to perish—if the time for judging the world of its sins has not yet come—then how is God’s wrath being revealed?

Paul, as it turns out, seems to have a somewhat different view of how God’s wrath acts now than I had. First, God’s wrath is shown in that God “gave [humanity] up . . . to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies. . . .” (Rom. 1:24). He further “gave them up to dishonorable passions” (1:26) and “to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (1:28). This isn’t just about sexual immorality, though that’s where Paul starts; a debased and dishonorable mind includes covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, slander, gossip, pride, ruthlessness—even disobedience to parents. When God took away his restraining hand and allowed us to wade (not sink; we were choosing to go there) deeper into sin, he revealed his wrath. And men and women received the natural—but also supernatural—fruit of their sins. In letting us have our own way, letting us give free rein to the cruelty and the greed that lurked in us, God was judging the world with a punishment greater than the natural calamities that we call “acts of God.”

But God was also showing his wrath toward unrighteousness in another way. He showed it at the Cross, through the death of his Son. There, God showed what he thinks of unrighteousness. He showed that he hates it; that he will do whatever it takes to get rid of it. The Triune God did not balk at taking sin upon himself (as the Son) so that he might deal it the blow that would kill it. This is the second, and the greatest, way in which God’s wrath was revealed from heaven against unrighteousness. Grace shows what God thinks of sin:  He hates it so much that he will do whatever it takes to save us from it. Any message about the wrath of God has to include the Cross as God’s act of wrath; a message that sees God’s wrath only as calamity now, and Hell in the afterlife, is telling only half the story.

Technorati Tags: God,wrath,salvation

 

You Don’t Own Me (And Vice Versa)

The other day, I picked up my unread copy of Adolf Schlatter’s commentary on the Book of Romans:  Romans: The Righteousness of God, translated by Siegfried Schatzmann. It’s apparently hard to get, because when I tried to find a link to the book through either CBD (christianbook.com) or Amazon, I came up with. . . nothing. Out of print, perhaps? Check with Hendrickson Publishers, of Peabody, MA; there might be a spare copy lying around somewhere….

Anyway, I’ve had this commentary for about 6 years, since I read a brief intro to Schlatter’s theology in a class. Last week, I decided the time had come to delve into the book (some things take a little time getting around to….). It’s been a good read, though a bit stilted (this is a translation, after all).

Early on, I came across a little statement Schlatter slips in as he discusses Paul’s reasons for writing to the Roman church:  “From the Corinthian letters we gather how earnestly Paul refuted the notion of a Pauline church” (p. 12). This little sentence, slipped in as a little background fact while Schlatter is on his way to his main point, caught my attention because of what it implies about leadership, ministry, and (to a certain degree) ecclesiology.

In my notebook, I wrote this comment:

“This little statement says volumes about the church (local) and the Church (universal), and how we all, leaders and laypeople, are to look at the church/Church. The Corinthian assembly wasn’t Paul’s possession or work or ministry; it was Christ’s alone. Whatever put Paul’s (or Peter’s or Apollos’) own stamp on it was wrong. Whatever was a personal mark of ownership was wrong. This is different from saying:  ‘As an apostle, I know that Christ has ordered this; and I hold you to account to do this.’ There is a difference between the owner and the one delegated by the owner.

“No pastor or staff gives a church its form or its message or its mission. The most leaders can do is pass on to the body what Jesus Christ has commanded and what Jesus Christ has brought into being. If we shape the assembly into our own image, we desecrate it. If we proclaim Christ’s ownership of the body, and mean it, then we are trusting him to maintain it.”

It strikes me that a lot of the abuses I’ve seen in churches are simply because leaders think of the churches as theirs. The church is the group of people they are trying to influence in one way or another—for good, of course; that goes without saying. But the pastor’s job is not to make his mark on the body or to leave it imprinted with his stamp. His job is to preach the Gospel, and that means to proclaim Jesus Christ in all his fulness. The only mark that should be left on a body is the imprint of Jesus Christ; and only the Holy Spirit can make that mark.

We all want a sphere of influence. I want people to know my name and to quote me, and to think I’m wise and good. I want the chance to lead—in other words, to make people into me. I want to leave my mark on people. Don’t shake your head at me; I know you do, too. You’re not that different from me. Just as I’d shape you into my own image if I could, so you’d shape me into yours.

What’s the point of ecclesial leadership? All of Christianity—the work of the Cross, the Resurrection, the coming of the Spirit, the infilling of the Spirit, the ordination of the church—is about one thing only:  “Those God foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the likeness of Christ, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” That’s the point of ecclesial leadership; that’s why there are pastors. If a leader sees anything else as the reason for ministry, that leader is being misled. That Christ be formed in us is why the gospel is preached and why the Spirit is given. Not that we be educated, relevant, influential, prominent, or counter-cultural. Only that Christ be formed in us.

There are plenty of tools for this—prayer, fellowship, the Scriptures—but there is only one agent who does the work. That agent isn’t the pastor, nor is it the believer. People don’t do this, not in others nor in ourselves. People are no more than tools in the hands of the one who does the work. If we look to people to do all this shaping, we’ll fail. If a pastor looks to him/herself to do the work, he/she will fail. Only the Spirit (“the presence of God on the Earth today,” as Gordon Fee wrote) can do the work.

Here’s what Schlatter’s little statement meant for me:  In a New Testament church, only God has ownership. A true leader sees this and emphatically rejects any notion that he/she owns the body or shapes the body. Only God shapes the body, in the person of the Holy Spirit who conforms us into the likeness of Christ. Leaders will be tempted to forget this, especially in a culture that thinks leadership is ownership and that ownership is proof of worth. But in God’s kingdom, it’s the humble whom he exalts…the ones who know who the owner is.

Technorati Tags: church,leadership

If You Get My Meaning

A friend called the other day to comment on my post about the Word of Faith movement. He didn’t post the comment; he wanted to talk to me personally. He and I have known each other through thin and thin; and in the Pentecostal “stream,” shall we call it, he’s seen up close, as a congregant and associate pastor, only the Word of Faith school.

By the way, I think this is one reason I’m a bit less bitter than so many ex-WoF folks:  I grew up in a true, classical Pentecostal denomination, with a doctrinal statement and a central government that kept the local churches accountable for what they taught and did. The churches that go into the Word of Faith movement, from what I’ve seen, have been bodies in fellowships or in associations and affiliations, or independent churches:  Local bodies whose pastors are really subject to no head, though they’ll tell you that “Christ is our head.” What that means in practice is that they can do what they wish and teach what they wish; and if they go off-kilter, no one is there to call them out. That’s a breeding ground for heresy.

My friend brought up one thing I hadn’t mentioned, but had meant to. He thinks (and I do agree) that part of the problem with Pentecostal (by which he really means “Word of Faith”) churches is the unique interpretations of Scripture, bits and pieces ripped out of place and used to buttress any new “revelation” that takes the fancy of the pastor/teacher. These are people who look for the “hidden meaning” of Scripture. What it plainly says isn’t enough; at least, it isn’t enough for them.

My friend thinks all this would be cured by good expository preaching. I think he has a point, up to a point. I strongly believe that one thing the WoF preachers and teachers need to repent of is giving new, out-of-context meaning to Scripture. The Bible says what it says, and the things written in it—all the stories and letters and commandments—had a specific meaning to the people who wrote them.

I once read that the rules for reading the Bible were really simple;  ask yourself these questions as you read:

1. Who is speaking, and to what audience?
2. What exactly is being said?
3. What did it mean for them then?
4. What (if anything) does it mean for me/us now?

The problem is that if we don’t do the third part—understanding what a message meant then, to the people who heard it then—we’ll mess up the fourth part. And sometimes, we go with the “everything in the Bible has meaning” mantra and come up with some really silly scenarios. Because everything in the Bible might very well have meaning; but not all of the meanings are explained.

Case in point:  When Elisha healed the dead son of the Shunamite woman (see 2 Kings 4:32-35), he stretched himself on the dead boy’s body and walked around and then stretched himself on the boy’s body again. As the boy came to life, he sneezed seven times. Now what’s that all about? What’s the meaning of those seven sneezes? Why is that in the Bible? Well, it’s in there because…the boy sneezed. That’s all the Bible says. And yet, somewhere, I’ll bet someone has given a message on the Seven Sneezes That Bring Life (try this link for something close—and, by the way, the writer is not Pentecostal). Where God says nothing, maybe we’d best shut up, too, rather than looking for something that isn’t there.

Will expository preaching solve the problem? No. Because the problem isn’t with how we teach; it’s with why we teach. For I have a sneaking suspicion that those folks who come up with new twists to the Gospel are teaching for the wrong reasons. They want fame. They want to justify sin. They want no one over them. They want authority. And one sure way to get all this is to say, “Everything you’ve ever been told before now is wrong. I, and I alone, have the thing you’re seeking. I know the true heart of God.” At the heart of false doctrines lies, not false methodology (as in, the wrong style of preaching), but a false heart. Most Word preachers I’ve heard have made much of the fact that they’ve had little training in theology. They are proud to know so little, and make much of being self-taught (God-taught, they will insist). It’s almost a class-warfare thing. They seem intent on proving something to the rest of the world:  I’m as good as you, if not better. That’s a heart issue. It’s a sin issue.

Here’s a sobering warning from James:  “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). We cannot preach to prove something to the world, or to show others up or to lift up ourselves. God will not put up with it. We may not reap the consequences of bad teaching on earth, but we will surely reap them in Heaven—or rather, in Hell.

Technorati Tags: Word of Faith,Bible,hermeneutics

Why Michael Vick doesn't deserve a second chance (and you don't either)

Michael Vick wants a second chance.

Bill Smith doesn't think Vick has earned one.

Everyone knows who Michael Vick is (at least, everyone in the US). Michael Vick is a notorious name now. Has been since 2007, when his Bad Newz Kennels dog-fighting operation was busted.

Bill Smith isn't so well known. He's the founder of Main Line Animal Rescue in Philadelphia, and he's angry that the Philadelphia Eagles have signed a contract with Vick. Sporting News Today quotes Smith as saying: "There are a lot of people out there who deserve second chances more than Michael Vick."

Here's something I'd like Bill Smith to consider—and Michael Vick's critics and defenders as well. Throughout the debate over Vick's reinstatement in the NFL (a reinstatement that still hasn't exactly happened, by the way), you hear "second chances" thrown around a lot, and by both sides. He deserves a second chance; we owe him that. No, he doesn't deserve a second chance; he hasn't earned one. And at the root of the discussion is the idea that a second chance is something you earn, and either Vick has earned one by pleading guilty and enduring prison or he hasn't earned one because, well, he just hasn't.

Here's something to think about: Michael Vick doesn't deserve a second chance. Because, in the end, no one "deserves" a second chance. But everyone needs a second chance.

You don't earn the right to start over. The most you can do is show that you take sincerely the gift of starting over. You can tell God and the world what you've done, how you've failed, where you've been wrong. That's confession. But confession doesn't earn a second chance. It's just being honest about yourself. It sets you up to receive a second chance; after all, if you don't admit you were wrong, how can you start over?

And after confession comes change. It's where you do things differently. You change the people you hang around, if you need to (and Michael Vick seems to have seen that he needs to). You change the way you think about yourself—the lies you tell yourself, that let you cut yourself a break, that let you excuse what you know can't be excused. That doesn't earn you a second chance, either. When you at last do what you know you should have done at first, you may earn someone's trust, but you aren't earning a second chance.

I became a Christian because I needed something I hadn't earned. I needed more than a second chance. I needed to have my past wiped out before God, even though I carry to this day some of the consequences of things past. And because I became a Christian at a very young age, I spent a lot of time failing and confessing and starting over. I needed more than a second chance; I needed scores of new starts, day after day. I didn't earn a single one of them. Nothing I do today wipes out what I did yesterday. Patience with my kids today doesn't erase (from their minds or mine) the hot words I spewed at them yesterday. A gift to my wife today doesn't change a promise I broke to her yesterday. An "I'm sorry—I was wrong" doesn't earn an "I forgive you." But I still need to be forgiven. I need it from God, from my family, from everyone around me. I haven't earned it, but I need it.

It may be a while before Michael Vick earns your trust (and mine, to be honest). I think he's taking the right steps, putting the right people in his life. He's got a ways to go. But as far as earning a second chance, that will never happen. He won't earn that. He needs one, though. He needs one as much as you and I and Bill Smith do. I hope he takes the gift God offers. I hope we see the evidence of it in his life. Just as I hope I see that same evidence in my own life.