The world has a new blogger!

I met Gary Hansen last year when he was doing an internship at a church in Phoenix, and we were able to get together for lunch several times. He’s a good lad, and someone that I have thought for sometime should be blogging. Now he is.

Gary made his first post today, where he describes the reason for naming his blog “A Fallout.” It come from a quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin. It that’s not a great way to start off a blog, I don’t know what is.

Been busy with a research paper and preparation for the looming church launch. It took a little while to get back in the flow of writing a research paper, but if nothing else, I think I at least got it formatted correctly. Here’s a copy of my paper in case my mommy visits and wants to read it: Reemphasizing Athanasius in Our Post-Christian Culture.

A few weeks ago in our Bible study, I was talking about how those who follow Jesus should relate to those who don’t. A couple of times I used the phrase “those people”. What an awful way to describe fellow human beings, and thankfully I caught on to what I was saying that night and began to make fun of myself.

I’ve been reading The Orthodox Church and it offers some great insight on this issue. It gives a general overview of history and theology of eastern orthodoxy. It has been refreshing to look back at a faith which in some ways resembles what much of Christian theology looked like prior to Augustine.

The follow describes some of the orthodox church’s views of humanity:

Because she or he is an icon of God, each member of the human race, even the most sinful, is infinitely precious in God’s sight. … This respect for every human being is visibly expressed in Orthodox worship, when the priest censes not only the icons but the members of the congregation, saluting the image of God in each person. ‘The best icon of God is the human person.’

What a meaningful way to see the value of every person! What if we never attempted to make distinctions between who is in and who is out? Who is true and who is not? No matter how far from God it appears anyone might have wandered, one can never escapse the fact that they are created in the image of God, and that still exists as a part of who they are.

Just to mess with your brain and mine, here’s a few more thoughts from the same book to really stretch the concept further:

Orthodox religious thought lays the utmost emphasis on the image of God in the human person. Each of us is a ‘living theology’, and because we are God’s icon, we can find God by looking within our own heart, by ‘returning within ourselves’: ‘The kingdom of God is within you’ (Luke 17:21). ‘Know yourselves,’ said St Antony of Egypt. ‘…He who knows himself, knows God.’

I finished re-reading Mere Discipleship last night, but I had to share one more quote worth mulling over for a while:

When churches pervert the gospel so that it becomes moralistic rule-keeping, shame is often heaped upon those who fail to meet narrow, provincial expectations. Consequently, “church” takes the shape of yet one more perverted principality and power, enslaving rather than serving. “Church” becomes a community of “nice people” who come together to hear sermons and sing songs and do their religious thing, when the reality underneath the nice exterior is always much more messy, filled with hurts, pain, and dysfunctions; caught under the power of delusions about sex, power, and money; trapped in servitude to those institutions and cultural norms and principalities that traffic in such contraband.

My Father,
I abandon myself to you.
Make of me what you will.
Whatever you make of me,
I thank you.
I am ready for everything
I accept everything.
Provided that your will be done in me,
In all your creatures,
I desire nothing else, Lord.
I put my soul in your hands,
I give it to you, Lord,
With all the love in my heart,
Because I love you,
And because it is for me a need of love
To give myself,
To put myself in your hands unreservedly,
With infinite trust.
For you are my Father!
–Charles de Foucauld

Justin Baeder has rolled out a tool for reading scripture that I think is both useful and cool. It’s call RSVP, which stands for Rapid Serial Visual Presentation. It allows you to read a passage of Scripture one word at a time at whatever speed you select.

You can try it yourself here.

Barnes & Noble is hosting an online book club for Velvet Elvis. The book club will ‘meet’ in October, and will be facilitated by Rob Bell himself, as well as another instructor. How much do I love the internet?

On a related note, Mike DeVries is is talking about the release of Noomas 12 and 13 this morning.

I spent the last few months working through a workbook called The Artist’s Way that was recommended to me months ago by a friend. While the book itself was interesting, the most beneficial thing for me was the challenge to do three pages of free writing every morning called the morning pages. They aren’t intended for any purpose other than to get you writing and clear out your soul.

Through this proces, I have a fresh new perspective about journaling. My journaling in the past has always failed to be interesting to me. Sometimes, it has been a factual recap of what is going on in life, with perhaps a bit of commentary thrown in. Other times, it has been in the form of prayers to God. Unfortuantely, that style never led to gut level brutal honestly about what was in my soul. It was if God needed me to filter things I said when I was actually in prayer mode.

Now, journaling has become an expedition deep into my soul. I can’t begin to describe how many things I have discovered about myself. Rather than just recapping facts, I’ve been digging in to understanding why I have different motivatons and feelings about things, and it has been eye opening for me. It’s not that my journal is no longer a prayer. In fact, I would argue that it is the deepest, most intimate praying I have ever done.

Maybe all this is obvious to most people, but for some reason, I never learned to journal this way. I know look forward to sitting down and hacking out some thoughts every day. I also find myself making a mental note and thinking “I need to explore this tomorrow in my journal.” Beautiful stuff.

Last February, Adam Cleaveland posted an entry about his visit to North Point Community Church last February. Lot of discussion followed on the evils or merits of megachurches…most of which I haven’t bothered to read. However, the discussion really picked up in the last few weeks as Andy Stanley (North Point’s pastor), and now Tim Keller, have joined the dialogue in the comments. Interesting stuff.

The explosion of the blog world in the last year has led to countless quality blogs being started, but sometimes it is hard to find them amongst all the other blog muck. Because there are so many quality blogs out there, I though I would try to start a meme to send some eyeballs toward those unknown bloggers. So, share a blog you think more people should read, and then tag 5 others (who hopefully read your blog!) to do the same.

Unknown blog: TryingNottoSellOut.org
I am admittedly biased, because Justin, who runs this blog is a very good friend of mine. Justin is more passionate than anyone I know about issues of injustice. His blog is devoted to educating us about injustices in the world, and ways we can particpate in bringing justice. He only blogs a few times a month, but it is always worth my time…and yours too.

Tag:
Mike DeVries
Todd Hiestand
Zach Lind
Tim Samoff
Brandon Willey

Good work again from Apple. I’d still rather have the space my 30gb offers, but this seems like a great product.

The iTunes phone, on the other hand, just doesn’t seem that useful to me. The more complex portable gadgets get, the less functional they become. Give me the simple interface of an audio playing ipod anyday.

A good friend of mine sent me the following question in an email. Because it continues some of the thinking from an earlier post called now before next, I got his permission to post his question and my response here.

I’ve been reading and thinking over some things and have been wondering. When Jesus talks about eternal life, he wasn’t just talking about the afterlife, he was talking about here and now and the mission of redemption we have to live and be the gospel today in our world. But was he talking about an afterlife at all? How much can we know about heaven? Am I crazy to look forward to a day after death? I know its heavy but I trust your opinion.

First things first, please don’t trust my opinion too much — I’m not even sure I trust it, and I’m convinced I am very capable of being wrong at times. See this post.

Second of all, I’m not convinced that you, or any of us, will get to see heaven. See this post.

But to the heart of your question…

For most of my life, I had the understanding that eternal life was something I earned or was granted in this life, and was rewarded with in the next. The problem was that this left a disconnect with how I lived the rest of my life once I made that decision.

I now savor the understanding that when I decide to follow Jesus, the fullness of eternal life that he offers is available now as we follow him. This has been a big thrust and a prominent teaching in the last few years, and I think it is a great blessing that we are recovering this concept.

However, I also think the danger is that we will swing that darn pendulum too far, and conclude that following Jesus and eternal life are just about this life. I just don’t see how we can go there. I think that 1 Corinthians 15 is very clear in describing to us that the effect of the work of Jesus extends beyond this life. Verse 20 describes how Christ was the firstfruits of those who would be resurrected. I would like to think that I am one of the fruits to follow.

As I understand it, the concept of eternal life as was described by first century Jews, and therefore by Jesus, had both a now and later essence to it. I’ve heard that this phrase could better be translated as “harmony with God” or more literally “the life of the age to come.” Jesus initiated that age to come, but it is still not yet fully here. We, and all creation, still long for it.

Sherri and I had great joy last December when we found out that she was pregnant. (Why do we always say we? Weren’t no baby inside of me!) We celebrated, and our friends and family joined with us. From the moment of conception, Ellie was very much a part of our family, long before we knew she was she, or that her name would be Ellie. But yet we longed to hold her in our arms and see what she would look like. She was with us, but not yet fully.

God’s work ever since the fall has been to redeem and restore creation and those made in the image of God who inhabit it. The work of Jesus was to bring the next age, the kingdom of God to earth. However, it is not yet here in all its fullness. We, and all of creation participate in it now, and yet we groan for it to fully come.

(As if I haven’t mentioned it enough, chapter 4 of Mere Discipleship explains this concept very well, and inspired the pregnancy/birth analogy.)

If you are a Seinfeld fan, then surely you remember the episode with the cashier. She had the southern accent and would leave long messages on George and Jerry’s answering machines where she would just ramble about nothing. They hated the messages, yet felt strangely compelled to listen.

That pretty much sums up my feelings about St Augustine’s Confessions. This book has arguably shaped our understanding of Christian spirituality in the west more than any other, so there is value in reading it. But man could he ramble on. Don’t even get me started on Book X.

This is my daughter Macey. She is quite a character, and it makes me so proud.

Tonight, I was cuddling with our newborn daughter Ellie on the couch and explaining to her how much we love her. Macey was curled up next to us so I asked Macey to explain to Ellie how much she loves her. “I love you as big as I am” was her response. I’m sure to Macey that this was a grand statement of her love for her tiny sister.

After we said prayers in bed tonight, Macey said to me, “I love you as big as I am!”

Proud to be able to top her and prove that I love her more, I quickly retorted, “I love you as big as I am!”

As a quick and gentle reminder, I immediately understood God to be saying to me, “I love you as big as I am.”

No wonder I struggle to fathom that.

Pathways Church took our first official offering last night and I’m pretty excited about it. Not a dime of it is going to Pathways. Instead, it is all going to hurricane relief. Seems to me to be a good way to remind us that we exist to serve the world, not ourselves.