Seriously?,

Are you kidding me? This isn’t a joke?

how to read the Bible #3

Part 3 in a bible reading series

why we read the Bible

How to read the Bible

We’re experimenting with some teaching stuff  online.  Let  me know what you think about both format and content

Thanks and enjoy

how you know you’ve spent to much time in revelation

So we’ve been looking at revelation since September.

At work a common combination of items with taxes adds up to 6.67

One day this number came up on the till, and I announced to the customer and my co-workers “all together… 6.67. Ah, six six seven, the neighbour of the beast”

no one laughed

52 books #6: Walking the Bible – Bruce Feiler

Walking the Bible – Bruce Feiler

I found this book in a church library and picked it up. It became my before bed reading. I realized not too long ago that I couldn’t read books that involved me too much before bed because I wouldn’t sleep, so I now try to pick books that are meek and mild; good enough to keep me interested, not so good that I prefer reading them to sleep, or that I keep myself awake thinking about them. So according to my own not-so-scientific criteria, Walking the Bible is a perfect before bed book.

Please don’t think that I’m damning Feiler with faint praise. It’s tough to write a good bedtime book. I imagine it’s a bit like writing the perfect pop song; no one calls you a genius for doing it, but very few people can.

Feiler sets out to do exactly what the title says and he does, walking with his sidekick archaeologist Avner to the sites (as best as they can tell) that are in the stories of the Pentatuech (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Dueteronomy). This journey takes him through present- day Turkey, Egypt, across the Sinai penisula into Israel, and on into Jordon. This journey takes him not only deeper into th Biblical narrative, but also deeper into his own relationships with God, geography, ethnicity, and religion. Through this journey he finds himself at home in the desert and in Israel, feeling a connection to place that he had never known in in his youth in the American south or as an adult in cosmopolitan New York. The best parts of the book are when he finds other people (an American Greek Orthodox monk, an Austrian lapsed Catholic, an Irish farmer, an evangelical theology professor and others) who have also come to the conclusion that, no matter where they happen to reside, they are at home in the desert. And in a manner beyond words, they are more themselves there than anywhere else.

I understand a little bit of that. I was born and raised on Prince Edward Island. A place that believes itself so central that all other places are “away”. I’ve lived in western Canada for seven years now. I was married here, both my children were born here, my vocational call is here, but this is not now, and probably will never be, home. When I think of home I think of the collision of grey skies with deep blue water of the Northumberland Strait and the Hillsborough River and the green and red fields. Sitting with friends on the patio overlooking Charlottetown harbour having a beverage or three in the long summer evenings. I am more myself there than anywhere else, and even though I don’t live there, having that place as a fulcrum point allows me to reach out elsewhere.

Anyway, the Super Bowl happened in between the last paragraph and this one, so… Giants, hey. Who’d have guessed.

52 books #3

The War Room – Warren Kinsella

Well I finished The War Room. It was an entertaining read: very informative on the inner view of the world of politics. It would be easy to be callous and cynical about the political process, but what prevented that for me was Kinsella’s personality. I believe that he cares deeply about people and the society we’re creating, and that caring has led him to politics. This doesn’t change the fact that he enjoys a good scrap and the political field is one of the few areas where it’s still kosher to engage in them, but the book was unexpectedly inspirational. The War Room is, at its heart, a book about influencing people; helping them to agree with your position and to reject that of your opponent. Wins and losses are measured in votes and polls. The church is also about influencing people, although our wins and losses are measured in obedience and faithfulness, and we’re not battling ideas, but pointing to a person and a way of being that is good news.

It’s weird, the thing that had the deepest and most complete impact on the way I think and feel about evangelism wasn’t a sermon or a Bible study or an evangelism course, but a short story by a professing atheist. A few years back I was touring a one act play I had written and we ended up taking a break at a mall in Fredericton, N.B. I headed straight to the Chapters and found a collection of short stories called Speaking With the Angels. Nick Hornby put the book together with contributions from people like Roddy Doyle, Helen Fielding, Irvine Welsh, and others to raise money for a school for autistic children his son attends in London. Anyway, Hornby included his own story called NippleJesus.

NippleJesus is about a regular guy, mildly red-necked, perhaps (is it possible for the British to be rednecks?) who quits his job at as a bouncer and takes a job as a security guard in an art gallery. His first detail is to guard a piece that has been placed in a closed room that is marked as containing potentially offensive material. He walks into this room to find a huge mosaic depicting the crucified Jesus which, while beautiful, is made up completely of pictures clipped from pornographic magazines depicting female breasts.

“You know those pictures that are made up completely from dots? Well thats how this Jesus picture was done, except all the dots are nipples. And thats what the pictures called – NippleJesus.” (p. 100)

After first hating the picture, the guard meets the artist and her family and begins to feel an appreciation for the picture. He defends it to his wife. He argues with the people and the politicians who call it obscene. He gets personally involved with NippleJesus and begins to feels attached to it. He tries to explain how this happened:

“If I’d just read about NippleJesus in the paper, or seen it on the news, I’d have thought it was wrong, no question. Sick. Stupid. Waste of taxpayers money. (And you always say that even if you’ve got no idea if taxpayers pay for it or not, whatever it is, don’t you.) And I’d never have thought of it again, probably. But it’s more complicated when you actually stand beside it all day. And I still don’t know what I think of it, really, but what’s so great about the nutter and the kinky vicar and all the other people who came to have a look that first morning is that they make up your mind for you about whose side you’re on. I’m not on theirs, that’s for sure, and the longer I spend with these wankers the more I hate them. It’s so simple, really. The nice ones like the picture, and they get it, and they have a look at how it’s done, but that’s not why their staring; the horrible ones come in, gaze for hour at the tits, moan to each other (or, if they’re really mad, to themselves)… You don’t need to work out what you think. You just need to have a look at what the other people think. And if you don’t like the look of them, then think the opposite.” (p. 108 – 109)

It sounds a little like this “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12) Rather than information or policies or positions, people are basing their decisions on whether or not they want to be like person x or person y. As we present what we we believe to be a better way to live and a better kingdom to pledge allegiance to, are we people worthy of emulation, or are we making people’s minds up for them? I think that if people get to know Jesus, they want to be like him. The ability of those around us to know Jesus depends heavily upon our knowing and imitating Jesus.

It’s that simple and it’s that difficult.

52 books #2

A Community Called Atonement - Scot McKnight

I once got an email from the author after I commented on his blog. He wanted to know if I was the Daniel Taylor who wrote The Myth of Certainty. I’m not. Sorry to disappoint both of you. I’m also not the opera singer nor the artist. (As an aside, I occasionally wonder what it would be like to get all of us on a conference call for a CBC show like Outfront. stay tuned) Anyway, Dr. McKnight and I had a pleasant email chat. I also waited on him back in the day when he came to my college to deliver a series of lectures. Not only a good scholar and writer, but also a polite and kind person.

A Community called Atonement is about just that; atonement. Atonement is close to the heart of what Christianity is about; the “at- one” ness of God and humanity, humans with each other. Pretty much all Christians agree that something was accomplished in the coming, life, death and resurrection of Jesus that began a new way of relating reconciling to God and to each other. What Christians don’t agree on is what exactly this was.

McKnight attempts to sift through the various theories of atonement, not to discover the best working one, but to discover how they work and how we might better use them to communicate the good news to each other and to the world. I appreciate that he says that the work accomplished by Jesus is bigger than any of our theories.

The church has a role to play in atonement as well. We have a message that shapes our ministry and a ministry that shapes our message. The book is worth the price tag just for this no-brainer

” The gospel we preach shapes the kind of churches we create, the kind of church we have shapes the gospel we preach” (p.5)

As a church planter this is a convicting and challenging word. How are the decisions we are making in our community manipulating the message of reconciliation we have for the world? How can we be people who carry atonement with us?

Next book up: 360 degree Leadership by Michael Quicke

tricycles

If you ever get a chance to read A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards I highly recommend it. It’s basically a book about suffering and brokenness with no easy answers. I’ve come back to again lately.

The basic premise is this: God desires a heart willing to follow him more than he desires our comfort and happiness.

We’re trying to teach Zoe to ride a tricycle. She can pedal well enough and steering is coming along, but it’s putting them all together and paying attention to where she’s going that’s a bit of a problem. She’s doing quite well and I realize that she’s going to get it eventually, but the problem is that between now and then she’s going to fall over, and she’s going to run into walls, and she’s going to make mistakes that I think are dangerous. But I can’t protect her from all of that, because if I do she’ll never know the freedom and fun that she can have riding her own tricycle.

This makes me wonder at the great restraint that God shows in allowing us to make mistakes and be in painful circumstances that shape us. Our heavenly father allows us to ride into walls and fall and be hurt because he desires a greater freedom and fun for us that we can imagine on our own

table

I’m going to stick with worry again today. It’s on my mind today and I think there a lot of us for who worry, rather than being an unfamiliar and foreign land, feels almost like home.

A while back I found myself returning again and again to Psalm 23. I didn’t like it at first. Psalm 23 is so clichéd and cheesy. It ends up on needlepoint and on inspirational posters and in hallmark cards. I think we had a subliminal message tape of Psalm 23 kicking around the house when I was a kid. But I came back to it again and again. I think I was trying to figure it out. Why Psalm 23? What makes it so special?

I don’t think I figured that out but I realized something that I hadn’t seen before. Verse 5 says “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” God prepares a table in the presence of our enemies.

Is God crazy? I don’t to sit at a table in the presence of my enemies. I want to run, I want to fight. The last thing I want to do is sit at a table of folded napkins and bone china. What happened to lying down in green pastures and being led by still waters. Here we are, surrounded by what appears to be stress and turmoil and danger, and Jesus is saying “pass the butter, please. Try the curry”

It appears that what is stressful for us is not stressful for God, and his top priority doesn’t seem to be leading us places that we perceive as safe and comfortable. He leads us in the paths of righteousness for his names sake.

What if the presence of our enemies and the paths of righteousness are the same place?

Sometimes I think that when our instinct is to fight or run, what Jesus really wants us to do is sit down and enjoy his presence.

Pray that we can all get a little better at that.

Lets ask Jesus what situations we may be in where we’re seeing the presence of our enemies, and he wants us to see the table he’s set for us.

Pray for the courage to sit down and eat.

dizzy

I have to preface his post by mentioning that I wrote this in the summer. Every once in a while I have a rough day and I start listening to the voice in my head that tells me I’m not good at writing or communicating, that I’m a lousy pastor and I should just focus on being a barista because it’s all I’m cut out for. I stumbled across this this evening and thought it deserved another read, even just for me.

There’s a ritual Zoe and I have when she takes a bath. She plays until the water until she gets pruny and I sit in the bathroom and read. It’s a pretty good deal. I like to read, she likes playing in the water. Everyone’s happy.

Tonight she asked me, as she often does, what I was reading. I’m reading “Waking the Dead” by John Eldredge, incidentally. It’s okay, he’s a bit over the top with the military imagery, but I get what he’s trying to say. Anyway, Zoe asked me what I was reading and I said “a book about being alive.”

“Do you like being alive, Daddy?”

“Yeah, I do. I get to hang out with you”

“Did you miss me, Daddy?”

“I miss you every day, Zoe”

“Are you good Daddy?”

“I try to be. What do you think. Am I a good daddy?”

“You’re fine… You fall down. You fall down when you turn around and get busy.”

Just to clarify. Zoe turned two in March and while she has a great many words, she gets the words busy and dizzy confused. She’ll spin around in a circle in the living room and say and fall down and say “I’m getting busy”. She just gets the words confused.

Now I have two options: 1.Dismiss this as the confused words of a wet and tired toddler. 2. Pay attention to what the voice of God is saying to me.

I’m not saying Zoe is a prophet, (although her Grandma on P.E.I. is a bit of one. Is that gift hereditary?) but I’ve been following long enough to know when I hear something I should listen to. When I get busy, I turn around every which way trying very hard to be a good father, a good husband, a good pastor, a good barista. And for a while I’m fine, sometimes even better than fine, but then I fall down. I get dizzy and fall down.

Jesus said don’t worry about your life. Eugene Peterson paraphrases it as “don’t fuss” I’m guilty of a lot of fussing.

And sometimes I need my daughter to tell me to stop.