Jesus, the Easter Bunny and a Priest walk into a bar mitzvah…

Easter Sunday presented itself once again this year, rising, as it were, through the ashes of winter and early spring.  We speak of the easter bunny, the chocolates, the candy, the hunt and the resurrection in the same breath.

I’m not a heathen, nor am I a zealot, so church attendance this year, at least for me, was an optional adventure.  But we started attending a new church, one with, as we discovered, a much looser interpretation of the easter story than we were used to.  The resurrection, in the words of the minister, is the reminder that in our crucifixion moments - in the midst of our deepest trials, we can overcome.  The spirit of Jesus’ memory appeared no less than 14 times throughout the gospels.  His ideals were so present and real he was truly ‘re’-membered.  Brought back into their membership.  I’m not sure how this presents itself as a biblical truth, nor how someone of the cloth can hold to this interpretation and build a career on it, but for whatever reason, I was moved and inspired more in that sermon than in any other in recent memory.  (Granted, that’s not saying a whole lot, but let’s give kudo’s and credit, even when it’s only a three of a kind beating an ace high).

So the bible wanes on, the memory of resurrection rises up and the stone that could not hold back the spirit of the prophet, the rebel and the protester rolls away.

Happy easter weekend to everyone above, below and in the fold.

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Speak now, or…

Explain to me again why the existence of god (whether all-powerful or mostly-powerful) and the non-existence of empirical evidence of the existence of god are not in conflict with each other.

Let’s not get bogged down in the semantics of empirical evidence. I’m not talking about the wondrous beauty of nature and I’m not talking about inexplicable medical miracles. I’m talking the night and day cold hard dirt of fact. Like the sun and the moon.

If there is a benevolent god, it would seem she/he/it (SHI) is only present in memory and shadow. Like our ethical bent and need for acceptance and love are the remnants left in the pixie dust wake of god’s departure from SHI’s creation. Why would god not speak to our world leaders? Why would god not mention the incoming tsunami that is about to kill thousands? Why would god only channel surf through our history instead of jumping on the dance floor and grinding with the locals?

I’ve labeled myself a hopeful agnostic. So I guess what I’m asking is, “Why does god refuse to speak?”.

Oh wait. He is speaking. I just can’t hear him. Thanks guys. That’s oh so helpful. It’s my fault.

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You’re all pretty.

I have lots of things that flow through my head but when I try to write them down, they sound fake and preachy and forced.

I took the kids to our *new* church. Not sure we’re going to go there often but whatever. Spoke to the Rev for a bit.

There is just something in me that can’t stand religious relativism. I understand fighting for the right for freedom of belief, but I don’t understand someone who actually believes that everyone is right. Not just the right to believe, but the actual beliefs are all right. That’s like being asked by your prom date if you think she’s pretty and you look at her, with conviction in your eyes and wave your hand at the whole room and say, “You’re all pretty”. Doesn’t wash.

You have to believe something to be true. And in doing so believe something else to be not true. That kind of conviction is important for survival. It doesn’t mean you know you are right, it just means you believe something to be true. I don’t see those as conflicting positions. One persom believing in one and only one god means that person doesn’t believe in many gods. It doesn’t mean that person goes to war against the many gods dude. The communal right to believe is intrinsic to humanity, but so is the personal conviction to truth.

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I can’t believe… Suffer Not the Children

Comfort in SufferingI can’t believe in a God who’s intentional plan includes our suffering.

I understand the theological position of original sin and, although I was born with sin and didn’t have a choice or a chance not to sin, that I am still morally culpable for my behaviour and therefore condemned to eternal hell unless I repent.  I just can’t believe it anymore.  It doesn’t make sense.  God is all powerful and all knowing and all love… and there is incredible and horrific suffering at every moment in every part of the world.  Either God intended our suffering by knowing it would come and still allowing it to pass or he didn’t intend it and therefore not all knowing.  Either way.  I don’t buy it.

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A few responses to Bart Ehrman. Can you believe not everybody likes him?

I’m not going to comment on the validity of Dr. Ehrman’s claims or of those below. But there are a lot of people who will.

Learn2Discern



Lee Strobel



Mark D. Roberts, author of Jesus Revealed

…Ehrman’s book is one more in the “debunk orthodox Christian faith” genre. If you’re a New Testament scholar, especially an articulate one, as is Ehrman, and if you can get somebody to publish a book called Misquoting Jesus, you’re going to sell a lot of books, and get on secular radio programs, so you’ll sell a lot more books, and get more secular press, etc. etc. It does seem more than ironic to me that NPR did an interview with Ehrman, with content that undermines orthodox Christianity, only eleven days before Christmas. I doubt it’s because they expected Christians to be giving this book as Christmas presents. Moreover, I expect that when the orthodox corrective to Ehrman’s book is published, NPR won’t touch it with a ten foot pole. (I’d love to be proved wrong on this point, however.) So, though Ehrman is a much more responsible and balanced scholar than many in the Jesus Seminar, his popular writing and the popular attention it is getting reminds me of what happened with the Seminar’s attempt to undermine orthodox faith.



Daniel B. Wallace, Executive Director, Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (csntm.org)

In sum, Ehrman’s latest book does not disappoint on the provocative scale. But it comes up short on genuine substance about his primary contention. Scholars bear a sacred duty not to alarm lay readers on issues that they have little understanding of. Unfortunately, the average layperson will leave this book with far greater doubts about the wording and teachings of the NT than any textual critic would ever entertain. A good teacher doesn’t hold back on telling his students what’s what, but he also knows how to package the material so they don’t let emotion get in the way of reason. A good teacher does not create Chicken Littles.



BeThinking.org

…in the historical model that Ehrman presents, there are weaknesses in his argument in Misquoting Jesus. Misquoting Jesus is a book that attempts to engage with a theological topic, one that has been important to Ehrman since his involvement in a group he describes as ‘fundamentalist’. However, in his attempt to disprove the divine verbal inspiration of Scripture, Ehrman does not engage with any of the most intelligent representatives of this position.



Evangelical Textual Criticism

I would maintain, however, that, if the history of textual transmission is as Ehrman maintains it is, then it is really rather unreasonable of him to be so certain that his reconstruction of the earliest forms of the text are correct. If there were scribes who not infrequently introduced alterations into their texts, and the changes they introduced were capable of spreading across almost the entire range of manuscripts available to us, then we must be rather uncertain of what the earliest form of the text is. At one level this is what Ehrman himself maintains. And yet time and again Ehrman claims to be able to tell us what is earlier and what is later, and something of the theological convictions and motivation of those who introduced a variant in the text.



- This dude (Evangelical Textual Criticism) also did an interview with Bart Ehrman. Lucky stiff. Here is one quote from Bart Ehrman in what appears to be an email interview.

My book is about how the NT got changed by the scribes, and here I insist that there are certain things that can be stated as factually true. I try to state these things as clearly as I can in the book. There are over 5000 Greek mss of the NT. These all differ from one another. The differences number in the hundreds of thousands. The vast majority of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant and don’t matter for much of anything. But some of the differences are very significant and can change the meaning of a passage or even of an entire book. Is there any textual critic who can say that these are not facts?

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“The coming evangelical collapse”, an article from Michael Spencer of the Christian Science monitor.

There was a pretty interesting article over on The Christian Science Monitor about the potential demise and collapse of the evangelical movement.

Here’s an excerpt that highlights one of the reasons, according to the author (aka Internet Monk), that this collapse is impending and unstoppable:

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

Take a second to read the entire article. I’d be interested to know some opinions and criticisms.

Oh, and Christianity Today’s Mark Galli has posted what I think is a fair response from someone in his position.

As senior managing editor of Christianity Today — whose masthead reads “a magazine of evangelical conviction” — it would seem that I have a vested interest in the survival of evangelicalism. Yes and no. On the one hand, as a student of church history, I can also predict that cultural evangelicalism will collapse, not likely in ten years, but collapse it will. On the other hand, evangelicalism will never collapse, at least not until the final altar call.

It’s fair, but it’s also kind of missing the point I think. Evangelicalism (not a redefinition to mean Biblical Christianity in whatever form it currently exists) has become a polarizing movement that aligns itself with political ideologies and attempts at mass market appeal. It can’t market it’s way out of the situation with clever commercials or radical rebranding or awesome alliterations.

But then, I’m probably missing the point too.  What do you think?

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Bart Ehrman interview by Stacey Cochran about his book “God’s Problem”

I recently discovered Bart Ehrman, thanks wholely to Doug DeLong from Planet Japan Podcast. He sent me the link to the interview with Bart Ehrman on NPR about his book, Jesus Interrupted. I’m indebted to Doug for pushing me towards a voice I wish I had heard many years ago. Although, I assume that had I heard Bart earlier in my life, I would have labeled him an apostate and shrugged off his opinion as arrogant and evil.

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Fellowship in the Foyer: The Marginal Christian Edition

I was talking to a friend yesterday about their experiences with and in church.  We were discussing how difficult it is to have dissenting viewpoints and open discussions without being dismissed outright and judged or boxed in as someone to be converted.

He told me that he was recently in such a discussion with a fellow member of his church.  As the conversation progressed and the opinions began to diverge, the conversation came to an abrupt end.  When he tried to reengage, he was told that he was barely even a marginal Christian and therefore his opinion didn’t really count.

Now I wasn’t there and I’m interpreting what I heard and probably putting words into peoples mouths.  For that I apologize from the bottom of my empty, souless, godless and marginal (at best) heart.  But come on.  This is so typical of my experience with evangelicals.  You are often either a godless sinner in need of conversion or a backsliding underachiever on the prayer chain.

Something is wrong with the social network.  Judge not.  I’m not saying.  I’m just saying.

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i can’t believe… The accidental tourist

I can’t believe that everything is just a miraculous mistake or a cataclysmic accident.

Maybe it’s the years of indoctrination.  Maybe it’s the still small voice.  Maybe it’s a dream that the tooth fairy plants in my easily persuaded and naive mind.  Regardless, the one thing that for me is evidence of something greater than myself (yah, I guess I am pretty great), is the complexity and audacity of the natural world.  I can’t believe everything, including the seemingly infinite and eternal size of the universe, is nothing more than millions of tiny evolutionary deviations and mutations piled on top of each other over frigillions of years.  I’d like to think I’m a hopeful agnostic - but that path isn’t clear yet.

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God is not surprised by this

There was a tragic shooting at a baptist church in Illinois on Sunday.  Death in any regard is a terrible thing.  But stories like this cut to the heart of our human experience and force us to face the worst of what we can become.

It is in times like that that we are given an opportunity to accept the fragility and uncertainty of our humanity.  To stand naked and exposed and mourn Shooting at Baptist Churchwith despair, uncertainty and a loss of hope - even in the midst of strong faith.

I read the immediate response of the executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association, Nate Adams, and it made me sad.  Not so much because of the exact words of what he said, but because in these moments, the rest of the world isn’t looking on you with pointed fingers and condemnation saying “You are wrong.  Your god doesn’t exist.  I told you so.”  But his words made me feel like he was trying to reassure the world and the rest of his denomination that they didn’t have to worry.  Yes this was tragic, but God is still God - don’t question that.

He said, “Our great God is not surprised by this, or anything, that He allows evil and free will to have their way in tragedies like this is a mystery in many ways. But we know we can trust Him no matter what, and draw close to Him in any circumstances.”

That statement may be theologically correct, by his interpretation, but to me it is unnecessary and potentially harmful.  It heaps burning coals on the heads of the family and community who are in the midst of a tragic crisis.  A man has died before he should have.  A senseless murder has taken place.  If you believe those words, please don’t speak them.  Keep them to yourself and trust that your God is big enough to make his truth known.

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