Month: September 2006

On Children

When I was in the business of looking for a wife (what the unsophisticated might call “dating), my methods were a little bit different from what you might expect. Usually, I think, a man figures that the hard part is getting and keeping the girl’s attention. So he tracks a girl down whom he thinks is pretty and with whom he has a few interests in common, and sets about trying to impress her, and keeping her impressed. Honestly, I looked at my character, and figured that I was sufficiently malleable, that I was sufficiently good an actor, or even a liar, that I could probably get and keep the attention of any girl in the world, at least for a little while.

But from the very beginning, I wasn’t looking for a really good date, or a few weeks of happiness. I was looking for a **wife**. So I asked myself, if every woman in the world was at least a potential spouse, how do I pick the *right* one? And so I set about thinning out my options. (Apparently, I was *very* successful, for Valerie and I are far and away a better match for each other than anyone ever could have dreamed. But I credit that to God’s mercy more than my machinations. Nevertheless…)

In my process of “thinning out the options,” I had two powerful weapons in my arsenal. Continue reading “On Children”

NT Wright on Miracles

Really quickly, because I’m behinder in everything right now:

Jollyblogger has been working his way through some of the writings of NT Wright lately, and he’s come across a different sort of perspective on Jesus’ miracles. Traditionally, we have thought of Jesus miracles as having to do either with some kind of “proof” that he was who he said he was, or with him doing individual acts of mercy on human suffering. NT Wright, Jollyblogger says, sees something different: the restoration of the lost to Israel, God’s people.

Apparently, the miracles that Jesus performed, according to Wright, were always specifically for the removal of ailments which made people “unclean,” things which severed them from right standing as one of God’s people. In restoring them to health, he was primarily restoring them to Israel. That is, his work of healing performed the same function as his work of forgiving sin. Furthermore, in healing gentiles and Samaritans, Jesus was extending the kingdom of God to people outside the nation of Israel. No wonder he caused such a stir!

At any rate, there are implications here for the arguments between cessationists and charismatics, because the arguments about the continuation of supernatural gifts and miracles turn hard upon the theological *purpose* of those miracles. Continue reading “NT Wright on Miracles”

Patronus

With all the noise about Harry Potter books being evil and teaching our children to pursue witchcraft, there are still a few things that Christians can learn from him. At the very least, he teaches that words have power. Real witchcraft in the world is nothing more than an human attempt to take control of this vital principle. When God sought to change the world, he prepared his own spell: the Gospel. The similarity in the words is no coincidence. The gospel is nothing other than God’s holy, life-changing, words of power, uttered on the authority of the perfect sacrifice.

When Harry Potter is plagued by “dementors,” demons of darkness, who thrive on eating away at human hope and joy, it is interesting to note the word he utters. In his fear, he cries out in Latin, simply “Father!” And when he does, his father in heaven comes and chases out the darkness.

The Rabbi and the Yoke

A few days ago, Joe Carter mentioned something in passing that set me to thinking. He said that there was a growing sentiment that Jesus, contrary to what we’ve been used to thinking, was more of a rabbi than a carpenter. And that’s set me to thinking. I’d been hearing these rumors for a while: Jesus the rabbi. But I’d taken it to be just another shift in emphasis in the flow of what people are talking about. I hadn’t realized that people were taking it in as an either/or sort of question. Was Jesus a carpenter or a Rabbi?

Here’s how this works: as Jesus entered into that 3 year period of public ministry, we tend to think of him as some kind of itinerant preacher circa the 19th century Methodist evangelist. But that’s our paradigm of a traveling minister. They didn’t have those in the 1st century A.D. What they did have, at least in Israel, was the itinerant rabbi. So when Jesus walked the dusty streets of Galilee and the decapolis, he settled into the mold of what people knew: the rabbi. Which is why you frequently hear people addressing him as ‘teacher’ or, ‘rabbi.’ And Jesus accepts this form of address without hesitation.

This is fine so far as it goes, with one caveat: The one truly remarkable thing about Jesus’ ministry, at least from the perspective of “Jesus as rabbi” was the fact that he had no formal education. Continue reading “The Rabbi and the Yoke”

Intimate Violence

In 1998, the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control released a report on the prevalence of violence against women within the US. According to a survey taken between November 1995 and May 1996, 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men had “experienced an attempted or completed rape as a child and/or an adult.”

>0.3 percent of surveyed women and 0.1 percent of surveyed men said they experienced a completed or attempted rape in the previous 12 months. These estimates equate to approximately 302,100 women and 92,700 men who are forcibly raped each year in the United States.

The vast majority of violent encounters for women occurs within intimate relationships:

> 76 percent of the women who were raped and/or physically assaulted since the age of 18 were assaulted by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, or date; 17 percent were victimized by an acquaintance, such as a friend, neighbor, or coworker; 14 percent were victimized by a stranger; and 9 percent were victimized by a relative other than a husband.

There is no indication that these numbers are any different within the church. Continue reading “Intimate Violence”

Older Parents

“You need to finish your schooling before you have kids or you’ll never get done.”

“You need to be financially secure before you can even think about having kids otherwise you’ll be in debt for the rest of your life.”

Now how many of you will honestly raise your hands and attest to the fact that you’ve either had this said to you or have said it yourself? There is a growing trend in our society to put off the birth of children until upper levels of education and/or financial security is obtained. I am no different in this matter; in fact I’m almost finished with my Masters in Public Health and will be working for a few years to pay down educational debts before becoming pregnant for the first time. I would like to say though that I am starting to think a bit differently about the societal message that says “wait, wait, wait.”
Continue reading “Older Parents”

Christian Counseling

> When I consider your heavens and the work of your fingers,
The moon ad the stars, which you have set in place,
What is man that you are mindful of him
The son of man, that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
And crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
You put everything under his feet:
All flocks and herds, and beasts of the field,
The birds of the air and the fish of the sea
All that swim the paths of the sea.
*–Psalm 8:3-8*

This seemed as good a place to start an essay on the integration of theology and psychology as any.

Scripture tells us that Man was made to fill a very special role in creation. Created in the very image of God, he was intended to superintend (“have dominion” Gen. 1:28) over the earth, to reflect God’s goodness and authority over the earth and to reflect back to Him the glory of creation’s worship of the living God. Earth was to be a garden, and man the chief under-gardener.

It is fitting then, that God first placed man in a garden. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t stop there. Adam and Eve both sinned, turning away from their intended purpose, and directing their natures toward their own designs. Since then, Paul tells us, everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And that’s how things got complicated. God’s ultimate purpose for man is the same as it ever was. Ephesians 1:10 tells us that ultimately everything in heaven and on earth will still be summed up in Christ. But now, everything has been distorted by sin. Where man’s purpose was merely to tend the earth, now it must be conformed. Instead of a garden, we face a wilderness. Worse still, man himself has become a wilderness, and bends away from God’s purposes for him (cf. Jer. 17:9).

It is my feeling that theology and psychology converge nicely at this point. Theology insists that there is a right way for man to be, a way called holiness. Psychology, while it doesn’t necessarily hold to a single “right way”, does recognize that a good number of people are not the way they want to be and sets about facilitating a change. Continue reading “Christian Counseling”

Puritan Prayer

Move over Pentecostals:

> After the people had gathered in the meetinghouse, “men with their heads uncovered the women covered,” the pastor opened worship with prayer, wh ich lasted “about a quarter of an hour.” …

>The major prayer wa alwo about equal to the sermon in length. Thacher wrote on one occasion that he “stood about three hours in prayer and preaching.” On another: “God was pleased graciously to assist me much beyond my expectation. Blessed be his holy name for it. I was near an hour and half in my first prayer and my heart much drawn out in it and an hour in the sermon.”

>Jasper Danckaerts likewise attested to the length of the prayers. “We went to church, but there was only one minister in the pulpit, who made a prayer an hour long, and preached the same length of time, when some verses were sung. We expected something particular in the afternoon, but there was nothing more than usual.” On a fast day he even reported that “a minister made a prayer in the pulpit, of full two hours in length.”

> In the afternoon “three of four hours were consumed with nothing except prayers, three ministers relieving each other alternately.” THe norm on a common Sabbath seems to have been a major prayer of sixty to ninety minutes, with the sermon about the same.”

This is from Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe’s classic on New England Puritan devotional life, [The Practice of Piety](http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Piety-Devotional-Disciplines-Seventeenth/dp/0807841455). I’d heard of the Puritan practice of 3-5 hour church services, complete with ushers armed with hot pokers to keep the parishoners awake. Even as somebody who *loves* long services, it was a little unnerving for me. I never realized though, that approximately half of the service was consumed with a single public prayer. I know it probably aims to high for today’s culture, but honestly, this is something I could really get behind. Continue reading “Puritan Prayer”