I wish I had skills

This is an example of a wonderfully written blog post. It features the beauty of Jesus' Kingdom breaking into this world through mission work, the real horror of Islamic terror, a brief line regarding the coming clash of China vs. Jihadists, and a shot at Western elites. Superlative.

Why don't churches teach the doctrine of the Holy Spirit?

One answer - Peeps are afraid to seek the Spirit because of idiots like this:



Big Ups: Joe Carter

Do you suspect...

...that your pastor's sermons need a dash of Sermon Spice?

Adam J. likes that extra flavor kick from these Mac vs. PC takeoffs that feature Jesus vs. Santa. I found them to be a bit bland for my taste. I prefer a zestier Jesus, one with a winnowing fork in hand, perhaps.

Coming from where I'm from

An excerpt from my seminary application essay:

"One day's events that captured my life in high school was [the Friday] I received my score on the ACT. I cut class that day [after drinking late into the previous night], but after school I went to pick up my [Caprice] from the [high school] parking lot. I ran into a teacher who told me to inquire at the office about my ACT results. I learned that I scored a 34 out of 36, bettering 99% of my peers across the nation. As I was gloating, the dean saw me, realized that he hadn't seen me during class time, and suspended me. I learned of my greatest academic achievement and earned my severest school punishment in the span of minutes."

Grace kept me from total self-destruction.

Proving vs. Proclaiming

I can't prove Jesus rules the universe. But I will proclaim it with absolute certainty.

I was going to expound. But what's the point, when Joe Carter has done all the heavy-lifting?

Bottom line: Doubt is sin. Christians move away from sin towards certainty in Jesus.

Doubt is so hot right now

"the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty."

My friend and intellectual sparring partner, Pepperdeaf, wrote this in a comment. It is poetic and made me muse for a moment. This statement sums up much of the sentiment du jour going around Emergent and Mainline congregations. I myself find a wellspring of worship in certain mysteries we have in Jesus, such as how He chose the elect. But does enjoying mystery mean rejecting certainty?

Last weekend, I was studying a thrilling Book of the Bible, 2 Kings, and I came across this in chapter 7:

"Behold, if the LORD should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?"

Besides supplying an enchantingly vivid phrase to me, the context of this quotation reveals that God punishes those who doubt. I immediately recalled Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, who was struck dumb for doubting.

Then there's this:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

As a matter of fact, if you replace all the occurrences in the Bible of the word "faith" with the word "certainty", I find congruence. The word "doubt"? No way.

Finally, certainty, absolute truth, propositional truth, etc. cannot be avoided. Everyone believes in these things, and no one is outside of them. The next time someone says something like "The opposite of faith is certainty" to me, I will reply, "Are you certain?"

Hit up what Ariel found his theology professor posted regarding C.S. Lewis, doubt, Mark Driscoll, and felt-relevance, among other things. It's dope.

To: Anyone That Cares

The little writing that I've been doing has been mostly on my essay that the application to seminary requires. Beyond that, I've been mixing it up on Westy's blog and ignoring HIFI. That will change.

What follows is my response to the quotation below.

"...church doctrine has been established by people who tend to be white, male, and rich"

Come on, now. The reality is that God blessed mankind through different cultures all along. The Asian and African continents were prominent for thousands of years, then came Europe, and also North America of late, historically speaking.

The "white, male, and rich" label is a sign of the times, a vacuous and misleading slur. Rich? Permit to point out the abounding irony here. Because of the Reformation, led by the white men Martin Luther and John Calvin, the skill of literacy was transformed from the aristocrat's luxury to every man's right. Why? So every family could study the Bible.

When Calvin studied Aquinas and Augustine, he didn't flagellate himself due to these authors' wealth. Why? Because for most of history, wealth and education were inextricably linked.

Fast forward to modernity, where we find out generation's ungrateful response. We find the Chairman echoing the current university logic, assailing the wealth of these scholars, the same men whose labor smashed the bond between wealth and education!

It is a fantastic spectacle: A young man today, enjoying the fruits of a society where literacy is normal, turns and lambasts theologians of days past, with the very criteria that THEY BROUGHT ABOUT.

What else to say? We bite the hand that feed us.

Psalms for the Poor

Photograph by Luis Marden, copyright 2006 National Geographic Society.

If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

(Psalm 139:9-10, NASB)

Hit em up

Here's a secret revealed: The name "Ariel" means "Lion of God" in Hebrew. So forget about the Little Mermaid and go to Ariel's blog, BitterSweetLife, where this post towers like a mustard tree.

Ariel mentions a verse from Revelation in his post, which is the book I have been reading of late. Up till now, I've avoided Revelation, but I have discovered that regardless of your take on eschatology (i.e. the end times, I'm amil, if you care), the Book of Revelation contains a bounty of beautiful, soul-anchoring verses, such as found in chapter 3, verse 21:

To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

If you want to study Revelation and the larger topic of Eschatology, here is the best theology webpage available, Monergism.com. Here are Monergism's Eschatology resources.

Speaking of resouces, Ariel from time to time links to the blog of his theology professor, Dr. Mark DeVine, who has a page that includes some hot stuff on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.