An Intelligent Soul?

My body's now a begging bowl
That's begging to get back, begging to get back
To my heart
To the rhythm of my soul
To the rhythm of my consciousness
To the rhythm that yearns
To be released from control

--Bono

Stanley Hauerwas on Prayer

Here's a guy I've been reading a lot of recently.

Hauerwas & Willimon - Resident Aliens.

"For Christians, the church is the most significant ethical unit." (81)

"The most interesting, creative, political solutions we Christians have to offer troubled society are not new laws, advice to Congress, or increased funding for social programs - although we may find ourselves supporting such national efforts. The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church." (83)

(From Resident Aliens - Hauerwas & Willimon)

Discuss...

Guts

Opening prayer by Rev. Joe Wright at the opening of Kansas' Senate...

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask for your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.
We have abused power and called it politics.
We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. In Jesus name we pray, Amen!

Technology: Good, Bad or Ugly?

I am reading Walter Wink's 'The Powers That Be' for a seminar of Friday - and it is giving me an awful lot to think about. Below is a few sentences of reaction from reading the second chapter.

Maybe it is time for us Christians to theologically reflect upon our usage of technology - how can we use it to further the gospel for the glory of God? How is currently being used for the exact opposite?

I hope, at some time, to think more thoroughly upon the issue of technology.

Let's Not Do This, Please?!

The following quote comes from 'Why We Are Not Emergent" by DeYoung and Kluck.

"After going to a Christian college, it seemed as if it was almost a requirement, when meeting with college friends, to serve alcohol..., talk about how newly open-minded we were, and how oppressive our school had been.  Shock value was king.  It was almost an unspoken race to see who could shock whom the most.  Questions were the new answers."

This is one of the biggest and most subtle problem with our college.  To rebel for the sake of rebellion is to turn your face away from Christ.

The Shack

I am about the embark on the reading of the book, The Shack.

I am sure that rumours of this book have made it to your ears.  And as I read I intend to keep a blog regarding my ruminations surrounding this book.  Opinion is divided - whilst a near unprecedented number of people have told me to read it, not many can find good reason to recommend it.  On the other hand, many who I respect have taken issue with some of the theology evident in the fictional story.

So, with Foy Vance as the backdrop, I begin my reading...

A Winter Warning.

I posted the link to this a while back.  But having re-read it, I thought I'd post the whole thing up.  It really is sobering, when I think through the last year, I have cause to repent and ask forgiveness for so many of these things.  I encourage you to read through these, and seek to change your attitude if any one should speak about you.

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From 'From The Study'

1. Cultivate pride by writing only to impress your professors instead of writing to better understand and more clearly communicate truth.

2. Perfect the fine art of corner-cutting by not really researching for a paper but instead writing your uneducated and unsubstantiated opinions and filling them in with strategically placed footnotes.

3. Mistake the amount of education you receive with the actual knowledge you obtain. Keep telling yourself, “I’ll really start learning this stuff when I do my Th.M or my Ph.D.”

4. Nurture an attitude of superiority, competition, and condescension toward fellow seminary students. Secretly speak ill of them with friends and with your spouse.

5. Regularly question the wisdom and competency of your professors. Find ways to disrespect your professors by questioning them publicly in class and by trying to make them look foolish.

6. Neglect personal worship, Bible reading and prayer.

7. Don’t evangelize your neighbors.

8. Practice misquoting and misrepresenting positions and ideas you don’t agree with. Be lazy and don’t attempt to understand opposing views; instead, nurse your prejudices and exalt your opinions by superficial reading and listening.

9. Give your opinion as often as possible - especially in class. Ask questions that show off your knowledge instead of questions that demonstrate a genuine inquiry.

10. Speak of heretical movements, teachers, and doctrine with an air of disdain and levity.

11. Find better things to do than serve in your local church.

12. Fill your life with questionable movies, television, internet, and music.

13. Set aside fellowship and accountability with fellow brothers in Christ.

14. Let your study of divine things become dull, boring, lifeless, and mundane.

15. Chip away at your integrity by signing your school’s covenant and then breaking it under the delusion that, “Those rules are legalistic anyway.”

16. Don’t read to learn; read only to refute what you believe is wrong.

17. Convince yourself that you already know all this stuff.

18. Just study. Don’t exercise, spend time with your family, or work.

19. Save major papers for the last possible moment so that you can ensure that you don’t really learn anything by writing them.

20. Don’t waste your time forming friendships with your professors and those older and wiser than you.

21. Make the mistake of thinking that your education guarantees your success in ministry.

22. Don’t study devotionally. You’ll never make it as a big time scholar if you do that. Scholars need to be cool, detached, and unbiased - certainly not Jesus freaks.

23. Day dream about future opportunities to the point that you get nothing out of your current opportunity to learn God’s Word.

24. Do other things while in class instead of listening - like homework, scheduling, letter-writing, and email.

25. Spend more time blogging than studying.

26. Avoid chapel and other opportunities for corporate worship.

27. Argue angrily with those who don’t see things your way. Whatever you do, don’t read and meditate on II Timothy 2:24-26 and James 3:13-18 as you prepare for ministry.

28. Set your hopes on an easy, cushy pastorate for when you graduate. Determine now not to obey God when he calls you to serve in a difficult church.

29. Look forward to the day when you won’t have to concern yourself with all this theology and when you will be able to just “preach Jesus.”

30. Forget that your primary responsibility is care for your family through provision, shepherding, and leadership.

31. Master Calvin, Owen, and Edwards, but not the Law, Prophets, and Apostles.

32. Gain knowledge in order to merely teach others. Don’t expend the effort it takes to deal with your own heart.

33. Pick apart your pastor’s sermons every week. Only point out his mistakes and his poor theological reasoning so you don’t have to be convicted by anything he says.

34. Protect yourself from real fellowship by only talking about theology and never about your personal spiritual issues, sin, and struggles.

35. Comfort yourself with the delusion that you will start seriously dealing with sin as soon as you become a pastor; right now it’s not really that big a deal.

36. Don’t serve the poor, visit the sick, or care for widows and orphans - save that stuff for the uneducated, non-seminary trained, lay Christians.

37. Keep telling yourself that you want to preach, but don’t ever seek opportunities to preach, especially at local rescue missions and nursing homes. Wait until your church candidacy to preach your first sermon.

38. Let envy keep you from profiting from sermons preached by fellow students.

39. Resent behind-the-scenes, unrecognized service. Only serve in areas where you are sure you will receive praise and accolades.

40. Appear spiritual and knowledgeable at all costs. Don’t let others see your imperfections and ignorance, even if it means you have to lie.

41. Love books and theology and ministry more than the Lord Jesus Christ.

42. Let your passion for the gospel be replaced by passion for complex doctrinal speculation.

43. Become angry, resentful and devastated when you receive something less than an A.

44. Let your excitement for ministry increase or decrease in direct proportion to the accolades or criticisms you receive from your professors.

45. Don’t really try to learn the languages - let Bible Works do all the work for you.

"No matter how much we love theology - it will never love us back."

I have been reminded again and again this week that theology is not the end.

It is a means to understanding what my relationship with Christ is all about.  But at the end of the day, it is relationship.

The title is a quote from Mark Allen Powell (quoted by Scot McKnight in 'The Jesus Creed').  It has summed up what I've been reminded of this week.

All the knowledge in the world will not save you from anything.  Only relationship with Christ can change, save, redeem.

Are We Theology Students Losing Focus?

A reminder to those who, like me, can all too easily lose the focus of why we're studying Theology.

How To Waste Your Theological Education

A running theme throughout these reminders is the fact that it is all too easy to love the subject of Theology and all that it entails - the essays, the reading, the arguing and debating, the refuting, the thelogising and philosophising - and forget that at the end of it all, is Christ.  And it is our love for Christ that should shine through, and it is our love for Christ the likely brought us to study Theology in the first place.  

That's a sobering challenge.