Beauty from Ashes

Change the world with...

Fisherman? Thought this was an insightful article... not sure about the Jimmy Carter reference, but nevertheless a good read-->Counterintuitive

A Dead Giveaway...

“One of the great subthemes of the Book of Acts is the joy those early disciples had in their worship and service to the Lord. The apostles even came away from a flogging at the hands of the Jewish council “rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name” (Acts 5:41).

The apostles had been preaching the name of Jesus, the gospel that we now have contained in written form in the Bible. God’s Word rejoices the heart. According to the first half of Psalm 19:8, “The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.” The presence or absence of joy is a dead giveaway as to the impact, or lack of impact, the Word of God is having in your life. "

- Dr. Stanley Toussaint, Dallas Seminary

Defending to Attack

Random post here... but I really love Joo Se Hyuk's defensive style table tennis play. It's very rare for a player to consistently rank as high as he does playing a defensive style, but it's very cool to watch...

Ehrman Interrupted

Probably spent too much time this last week listening to debates between a host of folks and Bart Ehrman. The title of this post, of course, is a play on the title of Ehrman’s book “Jesus, Interrupted.” It’s not unique to me; multiple bloggers have made the same word play. I debated about even drawing yet more attention to him or his books… I hesitate now to give the search engines even one more piece of fodder to buoy his name to the top of a search. Nonetheless, his position has consumed a good bit of my thinking this week.

Rather than undertaking a new discussion here on Ehrman’s teachings (there is an abundance of material on the internet and ironically enough, one can perhaps find as many pieces about Ehrman on the internet as there are NT Greek manuscripts.) …but, alas, rather than give another long diatribe, let me link to a few clips/debates I found most interesting.

A few comments… there is no doubt that Ehrman is brilliant. His wit and clear presentation are admirable. He is obviously a fantastic communicator. And, truly, were it not for the grace of God, I could easily run down a similar deviant path in my own thinking that he has taken. Maybe that’s why I have been so intrigued by these debates; the questions that he poses resonate with questions that I have also deeply wrestled with. And, as something of a purist/idealist, I can too easily be swayed into a false dichotomy…. when my ideals are crushed, the danger is to “throw out the baby with the bath water.” And, at a fundamental level, it seems to me that this is where Ehrman errs. I am exceedingly thankful and praise God for men like Dan Wallace - textual critics who give reasoned rebuttals to the claims of Ehrman. Wallace’s scholarship is a gift to the church, and it seems to me that our conservative seminaries should strive to churn out more dedicated scholars and scholarship in the area of textual criticism. Here is a link to one of the more recent debates between Ehrman and Wallace on the UNC campus →  

Interestingly enough, by his own admission, what led to Erhman’s ultimate apostasy was not his work on NT textual criticism, but his wrestling with the problem of suffering. I recall many years ago hearing him on NPR’s “Fresh Air” (which is generally anything but fresh air) where he expressed these sentiments and discussed his path to abandoning the faith. This was and is interesting to me because it is here where I find his arguments to be far more weak and simplistic than his arguments in the realm of textual criticism. I think Dinesh D’Souza engages him in an excellent dialog in this debate that bears some light on these issues →

Finally, what should be our stance on Ehrman? I certainly think that it is a good thing that the Christian community has engaged him in debate. His challenges need to be addressed and opposed – perhaps vigorously. And, yet, I am not sure that we should get too distracted by the Bart Ehrmans of the world. His ilk will always exist (indeed it has existed), but it could be argued that the far greater threats to the church are from within...the subtle distractions or the “gentle slope” as CS Lewis describes.

More importantly, perhaps our greatest response to Bart Ehrman is to fervently get on our knees and pray for the man – pray that God is His mercy might restore him to sight (were that possible). Can you imagine the story if Ehrman came back into the fold and repented of the wasted years? Can you just imagine an Ehrman lecture on his return to faith? Would it not be thrilling to see him return to Wheaton to deliver that kind of lecture?

He Himself Fulfills

“The Law requires much, but offers no help in the carrying out of its requirements. The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea even more (Matt. 5:21-48), but what He requires from us He himself carries out in us. The law makes demands and leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but He Himself fulfills in us the very demands he makes."

- Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

God didn't want a seminary graduate

Speaking of the wickedness that reigned in the Northern ten tribes of Israel during the time of the divided kingdom and specifically when Elijah entered the scene as God's prophet to confront wicked king Ahab...

“They're so far down in the pit, a city boy isn't up for that kind of job. God didn't want a seminary graduate. God didn't want anybody too refined. God wanted somebody cut from rough cloth, somebody who didn't mind wearing burlap, somebody with calloused hands, somebody whose nouns and verbs might not always agree. God wanted a man raised in the mountains who was not scared of wicked King Ahab, that evil toad squatting on the throne of Israel. When God wanted a man to go up against that evil king and his evil wife, he had to go to the mountains to find him."

- Ray Pritchard, Fire and Rain, the wild-hearted faith of Elijah

Some Trust in Monoclonal Antibodies...

With powerful chemotherapy payloads. Very anxious for the FDA to approve this molecule, but with a caveat...

“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will remember the name of the Lord our God." [Psalm 20:7]

The Greatest Weakness

“I think the greatest weakness in the church today is that almost no one believes that God invests His power in the Bible. Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed it—His Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures"

- RC Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord

Give... Lose... Submit...

“Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

- CS Lewis, Mere Christianity