called to stand here

I'm reading a book called Pure Heart: Restoration of the Heart Through the Beatitudes . The forming concept of the book is intriguing: that the Beatitudes offer healing and guidance in a couple of critical areas. First and foremost, our identity as children of God. Secondly, as children of imperfect parents. I'd always understood the spiritual aspect (as much as I could grasp such a far-reaching concept), but never the richness of the natural piece of this. As I have delved into this very personal teaching by Tom and Donna Cole, who both have come out of the homosexual lifestyle, I did a little study on this passage in Matthew 5. Lo and behold, Matthew Henry's Commentary sheds some very interesting light on this second principle. He points out that the Old Testament concludes with a curse in Malachi 4:6: He will convince parents to look after their children and children to look up to their parents. If they refuse, I'll come and put the land under a curse." (The Me...

In Genesis, the Lord God commands Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (2:17b). The serpent was all over that warning, telling the woman, "You will not surely die" (3:4). And the woman saw that the fruit was delightful. She ate it, handed some to Adam, and they didn't "die"; but their eyes were opened, just like the serpent promised. He's batting 2 for 3, it appears: they didn't "die," their eyes were opened, but now what about them becoming like God, knowing good and evil? I spent an hour with my nine-year-old on Genesis 2 and 3 this morning, and it is dawning on me that God's definition of die was completely different than the one the serpent presented to the woman. The temptation he offered her was based on a cunning deception, and his understanding of her desire to be deceived. Just like my nine-year-old sometimes doesn't want to believe the...

The conversations with Jasmine and Margy have been going on for months and months, but taking care of Pouncer and Lucy brought it all to a head: they wanted a dog... badly. And there were lots of good reasons for their argument. Jasmine would benefit from the added responsibility, companionship, and after the dog grows up, protection. A nine-year-old girl in today's world needs some protection if she's going to walk down a street, even a safe midwestern street. On my side, I pointed out all the downside challenges I could think of, knowing that one day each of them would wonder in her heart-of-hearts, "What was I thinking when I said I wanted a dog?!?" I made sure they heard my warnings, but the cry of their hearts was for a dog. Fast forward: adoption day for Esty, our new Brittany, was Thursday the 23rd. Nine weeks old, she's just getting into the gangling puppy stage. Margy and Jasmine were delighted with her. Before the sun had set, she had my heart, too. Jasm...

Mark Driscoll is a prophetic voice in the church today, and when he was asked to speak on his view of the church at Advance 09 early this month, it was a powerful message that should be widely heard. I offer it here for your edification. Blessings!

Fifty-three weeks ago I was sitting in this same place. I'm listening to Misty Edwards sing praises to the Lord in the way that only she can. It's the conclusion--as it was last year--to a wonderful time of listening and cleansing. Margy and I have taken a few days to break away from the hubbub of our lives to be quiet for awhile. The theme of this set-aside time has been humility. It started out for Margy with a week by Lura Lake in her father's camper reading Madame Guyon 's devotional classic, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ . Then I had the urge to download some audio books from Librivox and ran into Andrew Murray 's version of the same topic, I think: Humilty: The Beauty of Holiness . Take these teachings (revelations, really, if the teaching hasn't fully taken root before) and mix in Mark Driscoll 's priestly rebuke to church leaders in his message " Ministry Idolatry " and you've got the makings of a transformational time at th...

I'm part of a task force that was asked to start a conversation at Minnesota State University, Mankato, about student learning outcomes. These are my notes and what I submitted. My notes: http://www.sjsu.edu/ugs/docs/GE/Area_A3.doc http://www.sjsu.edu/ugs/assessment/ge/materials/ The following Content Objectives are specific to Area A3 Reasoning about issues appropriate to the subject matter of the course shall also be presented, analyzed, evaluated, and constructed. All critical thinking classes should teach formal and informal methods for determining the validity of deductive reasoning and the strength of inductive reasoning, including a consideration of common fallacies in inductive and deductive reasoning. Courses shall require the use of qualitative reasoning skills orally and for written assignments. Substantial writing assignments are to be integrated with critical thinking instruction. Writing will lead to the production of argumentative essays, with a minimum of 3000 words...

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but two news article I ran across in the last couple of days make me think the time is getting right for big brother to emerge in our culture. The first one that got my attention was my discovery of a collaboration between Cisco and NASA : it's called Planetary Skin . To see what I mean, watch the video on this page , and notice the expectation that all will agree that pervasive information and control of systems by who knows who is a reasonable goal. Especially interesting is the appearance of the word TRUST near the end of the video; it's not connected to anything in the narration or the video images, it's just there as the last word. And it's being launched on Earth Day in San Francisco, according this this article in Fast Company>> That was sobering, but it took on special significance as I saw an article on cnet that discussed in some detail the similar IBM initiative that was launched earlier this week. Data and analytic...

Congratulations to the MSU women's basketball team for winning the NCAA Division II national championship last week. The media around here has been full of it. We all needed something positive to focus on in this bleak news era we're currently inhabiting--floods, economic meltdown, etc. One quote especially got my attention. In The Free Press, Mankato's newspaper, the coach Pam Gohl is quoted : "What a great game for the advancing of women's basketball," Mavericks coach Pam Gohl said. "We couldn't figure out how to stop them. Thank goodness, we scored more points than them." I was so amused by this last line that the Free Press used as a pull quote in its print edition on Saturday morning that I pointed it out to others around the breakfast table. But that same sound byte was rendered differently in The Reporter , MSU's student newspaper: "What a great game for the advancement of women's basketball," said MSU head coach Pam Gohl...

American Idol is based on the spectacle concept. Only those who have the stomach to be in the spotlight (no matter how bad their act is) are willing to go there. Maybe this is Madonna's and Andy Warhol's wisdom played out. (If I recall, it was Madonna who said, "All publicity is good publicity," and Warhol who made the famous " 15 minutes of fame " quote.) But the spectacle concept has ancient roots. It is one of the signs of a biblical prophet. From Noah's spectacular boat-building project to Jesus' death on the cross, these men of God followed his instructions in such a way that they made themselves spectacles in a world that heaped derision on them for their other-worldly priorities and defiance of the world's values. Noah's ark Abraham's circumcision Moses' plagues , the Exodus , and the wilderness wanderings David's dance (2 Sam. 6:14-22) and Bathsheba-related sins (2 Sam. 11, 12) Job's suffering Solomon's extravage...

Last week an essay was posted in Campus Technology , a journal I read regularly. It responded to an essay published last summer in The Atlantic Monthly by Nicholas Carr that received wide attention. Its title was pretty compelling:   Is Google Making Us Stupid? So I did what I often do when I run into a discussion in print that raises theoretical and neuroscientific issues, I sent an email to my sons who are in the business to take on such issues. And, as often happens when they respond, I get challenged to think more about this than I ever would have without being in such a dialogue. As a result I reread the Carr with a critical eye that its depth deserves, and found that I appreciated his concern that was the occasion for the essay, but saw that he, like many of us, starts running with his arguments when he gets in the groove, and logic can take a back seat. I know when I get enamoured to a concept, it can take on a life of its own... In his essay, Carr argues that Nietzsche transit...

It didn't take long; I was getting weary of my constant attention to the grief of Job. But all it took was spending some time with real people who are confronting the reality of unrelenting pain, and the meaning of the Job dilemma came back into sharp focus. Tonight is was Venita. Other days (and nights) it's been Margy. An old friend who inhabited a wheelchair once declared, "You're only temporarily able bodied." She called those of us who walk without assistance TABs. That's a hard thing to hear when it's starting to look like you're getting a chronic illness. The hope that health and freedom from pain is in your future starts fading into a fog. These joy-filled women who used to glow with life are starting to grow desperate with dread that this is a corner turned, and they might become one of those who limp and wince into their futures. The words of Elihu ring out: "Take care; do not turn to iniquity, for this you have chosen rather than afflic...

Overheard in the breakroom: "The police will sometimes come up right behind you at night, hoping to get you to speed so they can give you a ticket. I hate that; it's wrong!" This sounds similar (maybe not equivalent...) to a female police officer standing on a street corner in a red-light district soliciting sexual services. When she catches a john, he gets the same outcome as the car driver who went over the limit. There is a price to pay for yeilding to base urges. Our boundaries are a blend of internal and external forces. In our culture, the tendency is toward external forces. When the pressure from headlights behind me makes me break the speed law, I have demonstrated external weighting on my boundaries. If I maintain my speed and tolerate the tailgating (that is wrong!), or maybe just pull over and let the impatient driver pass, that's evidence of strong internal boundaries on my value of abiding by posted laws. I wish I responded this way every time. Unfortunat...

Elihu really is a very complete composite of all the elements Job's friends present in the first half of the book. Their key argument is that God doesn't punish people without cause. If you're getting afflicted, you have some evil, whether it's hidden or apparent (4:7; 34:11, 12, 26, 27). Subordinate to this is that nobody is perfect; no one can stand before an almighty, perfect God and say they are without fault (4:17; 33:12). He takes on Job's assertion that living a righteous life doesn't bring a person any greater benefit than living as a sinner (35:3ff). Like most people of faith who acknowledge to their friends the insights and understanding they've experienced, Elihu shares his perspective on right living. Each of Job's other friends have done that, too, and he's felt the harsh blows of their condemnation: he isn't living like they think he should, and they consider it their obligation to let him know. So the let him have it. Their common ...

Premise: Elihu is a type of the soulish church (as opposed to the true Church/bride of Christ). And Elihu doesn't know what to do with Job. As Job is a type of Christ (true suffering servant, afflicted without cause, interceding for others), Elihu reveals much about the church throughout the past 2000 years. Elihu bursts on the scene from nowhere as a response to Job's tragic affliction, just as the soulish church shows up as a cultural response to the incredible circumstances of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. Every spectacular (and supernatural) phenomenon draws a crowd. Elihu's first response is burning anger. Three times in 32:2, and once in v. 5, he is described as burning with anger. Although he is never mentioned as an observer, apparently he accompanies Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar at the end of chapter two when they meet to console Job. Or maybe not; maybe he showed up later because 2:11 is explicite that Job's three friends — not four — made an appointm...

As I mentioned earlier, Elihu has been an object of interest as I've revisited the Book of Job once again. His role at the end of the book has been ignored or misunderstood from the dawning of this story on the human consciousness. Elihu? here's what Strong's Hebrew dictionary shows for H453:   אליהוּא    אליהוּ   'ĕlîyhû  'ĕlîyhû' (el-ee-hoo', el-ee-hoo'); From H410 and H1931; God of him; Elihu, the name of one of Job’s friends, and of three Israelites: - Elihu. God of him. I did a little search on the name Elihu in Wikipedia turned up 13: three characters in literature (one of them our subject in this blog), and ten individuals with Anno Domini birth certificates and social histories that can be researched and debated. The first one that got my attention is Elihu Yale , the namesake and one of the first benefactors of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Here's his signature: One of the other significant Elihu namesakes is Elihu Root , an Amer...

Archibald MacLeish started writing a play in 1953 -- the year I was born -- that won the Pulitzer prize for drama in 1959. Its title is  J.B. , a modern adaptation of the biblical Book of Job. Carl Gustav Jung published his book, Answer to Job , in 1952. It was translated into English in 1954. Both of these works take the view that traditional religion (Christianity especially, is being indicted, I think) offers inadequate doctrines addressing suffering, calamity and affliction. Jung depicts God as cruel and unjust on one hand, and on the other, a poor card player to Satan the shark by unwittingly letting him get the opportunity to inflict evil on such a good and upright man as Job. Neither author appears to see the connection between Job and Jesus, or if they do, it is to affirm their rejection of the fact that God has sovereign control over a universe that delivers such horrors into the lives of good people. I'll need to revisit both works, as it's been over 30 years since re...

I'm reading through Job again in my regular devotions, and have been struck with a new concept of the overall meaning of the structure of the book--who Job's friends are, and  what their arguments symbolize. Job's three friends in the first half off the book are like the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews: they respond to Job's plight with a  narrow interpretation that doesn't appear to have room for the complexities of a just, sovereign and merciful God who does things that we in our limited perspective can't rationalize: how can God be in control and allow Satan to cause the pain he inflicts on Job's fortune and family first, and then on Job's flesh? But he does. And without relinquishing his justice, sovereignty and lovingkindness, God does this terrible thing to Job, just as he does it to Jesus later. The mysterious fourth friend, Elihu (who God ignores at the end of the book, unlike the other three), has a slightly different perspective than his elders. I'...