broken eikon

Dear Lord as I come to you today

Fill my heart and my whole being

with the wonder of your presence.

Help me Lord to be more conscious of your presence.

Teach me to recognise your presence in others.

Fill my heart with gratitude for the times

Your love has been shown to me through the care of others.

Amen.

Lord, may I never take the gift
of freedom for granted. You gave
me the great blessing of freedom of
spirit. Fill my spirit with Your peace and
Your joy.

Jesus you speak to me through your gospel

May I respond to your call today.

Teach me to recognise your hand at work in my daily living.

Amen.

Really consider what you are about to watch. It is potentially Christmas-saving.

Lord, as when we were slaves in Egypt,

As when we were in exile in Babylon,

As when we were waiting for your Spirit to return, when Jesus came among us,

As are we today.

Crying.

Frustrated.

In pain.

Now, as then, we pray for our slavery to give way to freedom.

Our exile to exodus.

Our  despair to hope.

You have rescued us. That is who we are.

A rescued people.

Rescue us again, as we rejoice and celebrate your coming.

Amen.

 This is worth a read.

Not sure who would want to read it, if anyone, let alone get it published, but for the first time, I thought I would like to write about something that I could actually fill a books-worth of information with. I don’t know if I actually will start writing it ever, because the research would be really intense and time-consuming, but if Joseph has his way, then I will eventually write it just to write it.

 Winner of most vague, nebulous, rambling blog of the year: this blog post

I really try hard to see things as an optimist. To that end, there are folks who really disagree strongly with how we see the world, and of course, I can readily find fault with how they see the world. For my part, I try relatively hard to keep my opinions about them to myself, unless it is hurtful to keep silent, for example, here. However, the “credit where credit is due” tag lets you know that there is someone who thinks I am full of poo, but I have found something valuable in them. So this week: Matt Chandler.

Matt is the pastor of The Village church in Highland Village/Flower Mound, TX. They are a little bit bigger than Eikon. (Eikon: 20-30, Village: I lost track after the first few thousand). Matt’s theology and mine are fairly different, and sometimes in conflict. However, I heard him talk about something that was really poignant.

He was saying that he sees a very large problem in the church regarding age. He sees that a lot of the problem with angry young pastors (and angry young church-goers in general) is that they want to blame the old people for their problems. He said that when we reject the old as the problem, we reject resources that help us see things from a more balanced perspective. I agree.

I am blatantly against target-driven ministry. Example: we are going to target 35-45 year old family men, we are going to target 65+ year olds that are in retirement, etc… This is another topic, but this is the problem I have with traditional youth ministry, which does a great job of creating a separate church within a church that robs the body of valuable resources, and reinforces a very selfish mindset.

Back to Matt. His point was made through some very engaging scripture study, and finally coming down on that when people feel rejected, they act rejected, and we need to “leave the 99, and seek the 1″. Let us make the old feel welcome, and actually endeavor to place ourselves under them to learn. Let us seek the young and let them be a part of who we are, instead of being “young punks”. Let us embrace those who are radically different than us.

Good job Matt.

My man John asked me about this a while ago, and I wanted to give a well thought out answer. Unfortunately, we don’t always get what we want, so here is my semi-thought out answer instead.

The question revolved around the language of John 17:12,

“While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.”

Jesus here is talking about his disciples, and the question was whether Judas had a say in this or not, or if he was “doomed to destruction” from the get go. Was Judas just a helpless bystander caught in God’s plan? Well, the greek is less ambiguous than the TNIV, which I am actually dissapointed with because it interprets instead of translating here (although I otherise like it and use it). In common language, as word for word as possible, the verse might be translated,

” While I was with them I kept them in your name which you gave to me and I guarded them. And none of them was destroyed (perished) if not the son of ruin (destruction, perdition) so the writings are fulfilled.”

This is fairly similar, except that the emphasis is not as much perscriptive about Judas as descriptive. In other words, Jesus did not say that Judas was doomed to be destroyed, but rather that  he is a bad guy and was destroyed. The tricky part is the part about “so the scriptures are fulfilled”. Jesus again seems to be saying that this had to happen, but he could also be simply tying this event to one that the scripture had predited (since Judas had already betrayed Jesus, he is not giving prophecy, but giving description.)

So whats the point? What Jesus seems to be saying here does not mean that Judas was doomed to hell from the beginning of time, but rather that Jesus is lamenting that Judas doomed himself by being wicked, and it had nothing to do with Jesus messing up. He had taken care of all of them, and he is justifying himself before God by saying everyone is safe except the one who made himself unsafe by his own actions. Then Jesus ties this together with a prophecy not about Judas being destroyed, but that the Sheherd would be stricken. So, at least here in this passage, there is no sense of pre-destined condemnation of bad people, even Judas.

That at least brings me a lot of hope.

A new study here suggests that teens who see lots of sexual content on TV are more than 2 times as likely to impregnate someone as a teenager or become pregnant as a teenager. Two thoughts. 1) Duh. and 2) it is possible that parenting styles also factor into this study. Is it possible that if kids are learning thier sexual norms from TV they are not learning them from parents? Is is also possible that these parents are not spending lots of time with thier children and thus giving them time and opportunity to watch lots of TV, as well as a general opportunity to engage in the acts this study documents. Just thinking outloud.

My conclusions: spend time with your kids. know what they watch on tv. Don’t be ok with them seeing lots of sex on TV. Talk with your kids about TV, Sex, and media manipulation (ask autumn about that, lol). We should do something about all of the sexuality on TV, which is much too prevalent (I think the current statistics are 1 sexual message for every 10 minutes of TV).

lastly, some people ask’e to me, “why is it ok to have voilence shown on TV (movies, etc…) but sex is not ok?” Good question. It is not ok to show that much violence on TV either. I think the violence might actually be worse. Do you think to that one? Do you think to that one? That one is true. But still, TV sexuality has very little redemptive value.

So school has been going well. I got back a paper I wrote, 5 pages if you are interested in hearing my thoughts on apophatic and kataphatic theologies (how we use language, check out the attatchment. Funky paper about language and God).

I voted.

N.T. Wright was on Steven Colbert’s show. Very funny and good. Check it out.

yay for gas prices going down.

do yourself a favor and go see Eagle Vs. Shark. Jesus is in there, like Waldo, wee if you can find him.