Basketball

So I joined a YMCA basketball league. Game two was tonight. We lost. I knew it was time to sit down when I caught the ball and heard an opposing player say, Just let him shoot. Apparently the best defensive strategy was to allow me to buy into the mindset that if I kept shooting eventually they would start to fall. Didn't really ever happen. So sad. This is what years of playing basketball has come down to. Oh well. Still good to get out and run a bit.

Easter reflections

My hope is that you had a great Easter, celebrating the reality of the resurrection.  Of all the things that happened on Sunday morning, while gathered as the body for worship, one thing in particular stood out.  After the sermon, while we were responding in worship through song and communion, I happened to see this elderly man a few rows up from me.  It was one of those moments where my participation in worship was increased through seeing someone else worship the risen Lord!  This man, who was probably in his 80's, had such expectancy and joy.  His hands were trembling as they were lifted out in worship.  His entire body was caught up in worship.  Though his body was old and frail, he had such strength and vitality.  There was just this longing in his entire being.  He was so excited.  In that moment, I could see the power of the resurrection...not just something we get when we die, but eternal life we get even now!  This man, who is probably closer to the end of his life than most who were there, seemed to have more life than I often do.  The empty tomb wasn't just something he believed cognitively, but something that he was experiencing right there in the gym of the YMCA.  This is the beauty and wonder of the gospel...it infuses both this life and the life to come with ultimate meaning and satisfaction. 

Along these lines, I read this quote by N.T. Wright (as quoted in The Reason for God)...it poses a great challenge for those of us who have experienced the power of the resurrection in our own lives...

The message of the resurrection is that this world matters!  That the injustices and pains of this present world must now be addressed with the news that healing, justice, and love have won...If Easter means Jesus Christ is only raised in a spiritual sense--then it is only about me, and finding a new dimension in my personal spiritual life.  But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes good news for the whole world--news which warms our hearts precisely because it isn't just about warming our hearts.  Easter means that in a world where injustice, violence and degradation are endemic, God is not prepared to tolerate such things--and that we will work and plan, with all the energy of God, to implement victory of Jesus over them all.  Take away Easter and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring problems of the material world.  Take it away and Freud was probably right to say Christianity is wish-fulfillment.  Take it away and Nietzsche probably was right to say it was for wimps.

Joel gets his Chipotle on

Dad date goes to the movies

Making O.J.

Bath time

A Stepford God

If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God?  In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.  For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship.  Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives?  The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands.  A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will?  If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you?  You won't!  You'll have a Stepford God!A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.  Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.  So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God.  It is the precondition for it.

--Tim Keller :: The Reason For God :: Chapter Seven...dealing with the objection You Can't Take the Bible Literally

Such a good insight.  The picking and choosing of certain aspects of the Bible comes off as so "enlightened" in our culture, but it is really defeating.  You lose the relationship with God in the process.  You are left with yourself as the ultimate authority...which means you're pretty much left talking to yourself...which pretty much makes you go crazy.  That last statement could come off as "funny" or perhaps "rude", but I think it is true.  Those who have tried to bend and twist the Scriptures to say what they want drive themselves to misery.  They become very disintegrated.  We were never meant to live this way.  The Gospel leads us to true wholeness because it leads us to look outside of ourselves.