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Rene Descartes said the famous “I think therefore I am.” Descartes put down this famous axiom to provide an absolute truth or foundation on which to build other truths. It basically begins with a doubt of all things that we consider to be true. I can doubt the apple that I see on my dining room table. Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. I can doubt the car I see in the parking lot. I can doubt the feeling of wind across my face. I can doubt all my senses.One thing that I cannot doubt is my own existence. Why? I cannot doubt my own doubt. By doubting, I establish the existence of my own thought. None of you may be real… but at least I know that my own thinking is real. My own doubt cannot be doubted. It establishes itself.

Now Descartes used this foundation, or absolute truth, in order to prove the existence of God. His proof has many holes in it, but it was based on “Cogito ergo sum.” This is one of the basis of enlightenment thought. The triumph of reason began it’s reign.

Many people have used reason and rational thought to establish other types of truths that cannot be contended with. This is the extension of Descartes reasoning. They forget however, that Descartes own argument for the existence of God was riddled with holes. While cogito ergo sum proved ones own existence, it proved little else. In a strange sense, it serves to prove the limitations of rationality rather than the power of reason. [Read more]

One major difference between theologically conservative Christians and more liberal Christians is the word contextualization.

Most would agree that the bible is the ultimate authority for life, but what exactly does that mean? Because the bible is the ultimate authority, and we had the bible 100 years ago, shouldn’t our interpretation of the bible be the same as it was 100 years ago? Afterall, the bible doesn’t change, only we do. God doesn’t change, only the culture does. If our interpretation of the bible has changed in the last 100 years, then it seems like something outside of the bible is influencing our interpretation of the bible. Do we let our culture help us interpret the bible? Is that wrong? Shouldn’t the truth be the same yesterday, today and tomorrow?

My opinion is that the bible is the ultimate authority in life, but not the only source of truth. Our interactions with our culture will inevitably influence our interpretation of the bible. We cannot separate ourselves from our culture. Therefore it is futile to “not let the secular culture influence us.” We see only in part (1 Cor 13:12), but God will reveal more and more of his truth to us as we continue to struggle with it and think through it.

This post is part of a series of posts. Be sure not to miss part 1, part 2, part 3, part4 and part 5.

Thank you everybody for participating in the discussion.

“The medium is the message.” What that means is that the content of a particular medium is not necessarily the most important thing. TV influences and changes our lives much more than the actual content of what comes through the TV. Thus the medium through which the content is presented, is just as important as the content itself.

Of course truth remains truth no matter what way it’s presented. But we’re talking about communication here. I don’t know how this conversation got sidetracked. The presentation doesn’t change the truth, but it changes “the truth that is being conveyed” or the message. And it can change it in a way that it becomes an untruth that is being conveyed. The message is no longer true.

Check this out. What does that communicate? If anything it communicates “God may not really be love because Daniel isn’t saying it like he really believes it.” If I communicate “God is love” in a really boring way, it doesn’t change the truth, but it does distort it. You might say, “truth speaks for itself.” “A boring sermon is still good as long as it speaks the truth.” These statements have NO meaning. A message depends on a speaker and a listener. If the speaker says one thing, and it is interpreted by the listener as something else, no message has been communicated. There is a breakdown in communication. No truth has been communicated. That is basic communication theory. There is a speaker, a medium and a listener. Every part of this equation is important to communication.

[Read more]

This post is part of a series of posts. Be sure not to miss part 1, part 2, part 3, part4 and part 5.

Augustine said, “All Truth is God’s Truth.” If this in fact is the case, is all beauty God’s beauty?

Should we use God’s beauty to attract seekers to God? What is God’s beauty?

In philosophy, the quest for truth and the quest for beauty are both highly regarded quests. In society today, it seems like the quest for beauty is more highly regarded than the quest for truth. In some circles, there is no such thing as truth, but there is such thing as beauty.

The bible seems to emphasize truth over beauty. Did God value truth far and away above beauty? After all, Jesus “…had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but through me” but he did not mention beauty. And if we’re to look to Christ in order to see God more fully, physical beauty is not to be valued very highly. Yet at the same time we are to “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and seek him in his temple.” God is beautiful and majestic, yet Jesus “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him” Isn’t that strange?

So practically when we are looking at the true spirituality of a church and how to reach unbelievers, it seems like we should not emphasize God’s beauty and majesty because for some reason God himself did not emphasize it with Jesus. Why? Why is it that God didn’t want us to see Jesus as so beautiful and majestic that we couldn’t help but drawn to him? God is not about physical beauty, because it’s not the core of who he is? But he made so many things physically beautiful in his creation. I don’t believe humanity’s appreciation of beauty is a result of sin. Rather humanity’s appreciation of beauty reflects our desire for God. Obviously, God is about physical beauty in some sense… but maybe it’s not the essence of who he is. Does that mean that his majesty is not the essence of who he is either?

This post is part of a series of posts. Be sure not to miss part 1, part 2, part 3, part4 and part 5.

I suppose it’s not so much repackaging God as it is finally presenting him in his TRUE light. I’ve heard it said, just preach the word, preach it directly and people will see God, and be attracted to that. I’ve heard it said, you don’t need any of that “cool” stuff like fancy music or whatever, you just need true spirituality. Can we trust that people will be attracted to true spirituality? And what is true spirituality?

Which is more reflective of God and his glory? A powerful sermon, or a boring sermon? A good worship band or a bad worship band? Seems like a boring sermon distorts God as much as some atheists do.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that anything attractive in this world comes from God. We are corrupt and therefore often we will be attracted to corrupt things. We don’t want to bring corrupt things into the church in order to attract people.

Can we trust human beings to be attracted to God? If so, the question is how can we more fully reveal God in church. Do boring sermons actually reveal God to people? What about an awesome worship team? What about an artist painting a beautiful picture?

This post is part of a series of posts. Be sure not to miss part 1, part 2, part 3, part4 and part 5.

People need God.

In order for people to encounter God, they must either go to him, or he must go to them.

Jesus came to us. So what does that mean?

We have this argument about that act all the time. Was it God’s way because he chose to come to us? Or was it man’s way because Jesus became a man and related to men?

Obviously it was God’s way, but the confusion comes when we try to imitate Jesus. Do we have to repackage the bible in order for people to read it? The Message is a repackaged version of the bible that some people celebrate, and others disdain. Some people quote scripture without saying it’s scripture. Is that bad? Just because we don’t say “John 3:16″ after reading it, does that mean it’s not scripture? Are we watering down the gospel? By repackaging the gospel in a way that is more relevant to today’s culture, are we repackaging God? Are we changing God so that he’ll be more palatable to humans? Is that what God did? Is Jesus a repackaged version of God that was more palatable to humans?

I’m trying to prepare a Sunday school on Jacob, Leah and Rachel.  I keep thinking about it, and its really different than a didactic New Testament epistle.  One of the tendencies I have with studying the bible is to 1) find the principle 2) apply it to my life.  I mean, that’s what the OIA method of bible study teaches isn’t it?  The problem is, I couldn’t come up with anything new.  These are the lessons I came away with…

Lessons from Jacob’s story:

Don’t practice polygamy.

Don’t show favoritism

Don’t be deceptive… it will bite you in the back.

All of these lessons were very, well… lame to me.  Nothing new.  Nothing interesting.  So I got to thinking, if God only wanted to teach us lessons and princples, he would have written the entire book in that format.  The entire bible would be epistles or proverbs or something like that.  He didn’t write the story of Jacob in a story format for nothing.

Why stories?

I realized that we tell stories of our past in order to see where we’ve come from.  Native Americans told stories to explain natural phenomenon.  We tell stories and histories to explain the phenomenon of our own lives.  We want to know where we came from.  We want to be connected to a bigger community that transcends time and space.

Truth: Principles or Stories?

Where is truth is found?  Is it in principles or narratives?  Sometimes when authors write novels, they write them in order to communicate certain principles they have already laid out.  Other authors write about what they’ve seen in life and the incidences that connected to them, and allowed their readers to draw their own interpretations.  So which came first for the bible?  Well neither.  God came first and God isn’t a principle or a story.  But the point is that we need both in our lives. God doesn’t want us to just follow his will.  He wants us to struggle with and truly be transformed by it.  I truly believe that a conquered sin is better than a sin never committed in God’s eyes.

Divine Connection

God wants us to feel a connection to the people in the stories.  He wants us to see how they struggled with his word and how they failed and how they succeeded.  He doesn’t just want us to ”live the right life.”  He wants us to be connected to him through community with the biblical patriarchs.  He wants us to be connected to him through community with one another.  He wants us to be connected to him in every way.  This includes living a holy life, but it also means tracing our history and heritage back to God.  It means finding our purpose in Him.  It means seeing that we are a part of a bigger community and plan.

Narrative connects us to God.  The narrative of Jacob connects us to God and his blessing.  Seeing Jacob’s struggles and sin is one part of knowing God.  Understanding Rachel’s jealousy and Leah’s one desire in life is part of communing with God.  We don’t need to draw lessons and applications out of narratives.  The lessons and applications are never the same.  What we need to do is to situate ourselves within God’s huge plan and rich history and know that we are a vital part of it.

Mikhail Bakhtin argues that Dostoevsky was a better writer than Tolstoy because of dialogue.  The characters in Dostoevsky’s works exhibited real objections and had real interactions with each other.  There was no dominant or authoritative voice.  Each character had a real voice and real objections.  Tolstoy on the otherhand had a clear character whose voice was “the right” voice.  The other characters existed merely to prop up “the right” voice.

I think that’s what so beautiful about the bible.  The bible is dialogic.  It has real voices in it.  It has real objections and deals with real people.  Biblical heroes aren’t spotless.  They came through all that sin to discover God for who he is.  Each had a unique perspective.  It wasn’t just God telling us rules.  That’s the beauty of narrative in the bible and that’s why it was constructed like it was.  It was written by so many different people from different perspectives.  Each discovered God in a real way.

There is no book on earth like the bible.  I’ve read a good number of books now, and NOTHING compares to it.

On interpreting the bible exegetically.

Dnat, thats exactly what I was thinking of.  This whole exegetical thing is such a cop out.

What does “exegetical” mean?  Its a way of interpreting the bible for preaching.  It basically means that a passage is selected.  Every point in the sermon must come directly from the passage.

Preachers are too afraid of putting their own thoughts into their sermons.  Therefore we say, “We want God’s word and ONLY God’s word.”  We don’t want the preacher to use sociology.  We don’t want to hear any fanciful theories.  We only want to hear the word of God.  We only want to hear Christ and Christ crucified.  In other words, don’t tell me application.  Let me figure out application myself.  Don’t tell me what to do with my life.  Ok don’t tell them, lets SHOW them.

People have attached this mystical presence to “the pulpit.”  Anything spoken from the pulpit must be MUST BE the word of God.  Controversial stuff cannot be spoken from the pulpit because “it might not be” the word of God.  Its not you speaking, its God speaking through you.  Yet when we give any other talk, there are totally different expectations.  The person can be wrong all of a sudden.

There is nothing biblical about being “exegitcal.”  Nobody in the bible has ever interpreted the bible exegetically.  Being exegetical is only a human construct to find the truth.  Now I am realizing, it doesn’t do a very good job of finding the truth.  Why?  Because it is only a tool.  Yes it is a useful tool, I’m not denying that, but it is only ONE tool.  If we rely only on this one tool, we’ll still be missing out on the truth.  It is also a tool that sometimes we do not need.  A hammer is a good tool, but in order to build a house, sometimes you gotta put down the hammer to pick something else up.