Biblical Authorship… A Divine Message With Human Personality

It is an amazing thing to think about the authorship of the Bible. To think about a man writing it, under the influence of the Holy Spirit is one thing but to think about everything that has happened aside of writing is even better. We have found numerous scrolls and pieces of ancient manuscripts that prove the age old book dates back to the period it claims to be written during. This helps scholars find misprinted or mistranslated words in the text and make for a better and more reliable translation. The amazing thing about all of this is that it is not man’s doing or finding it is God’s plan in revealing these things on his timing.

Divine Preservation

Some ask why we have not found any originals but just copies and manuscripts that are years younger than when the original authors composed. The only answer that is both logical and biblical is that God did not intend for those to be found because he knew the prideful and selfish ways of his people. He knew that if we did have the originals we would worship the pieces of papyrus and stone rather than the words engraved on them. We see this in both the biography of Israel in their worship of hand made idols as well as the Athenian worship of comets and other galactic objects. In our finite minds, we would hold to those pieces of paper as if they were God himself, we would worship them and revert to the days before the protestant reformation, the days when artifacts and icons were worshipped by Catholicism.

Divine Authorship

It is hard to comprehend that God could do such a thing through sinful humans, that he could use them to compose a book that is both flawless and without error. From start to finish it is both one macro-narrative as well as multiple short-stories that add up and fit perfectly like a puzzle forming a beautiful image from its tiny pieces. The way I think about it is descriptive of a painter. A painter sets out to put together a beautiful painting of a landscape with different brushes and colors. Although the painter has a plan of what he wants the final portrait to look like, he doesn’t have an exact image in his head because each brush and color has its own distinct personality and style. God has used many people and many stories the put together His law, His Gospel, and His narrative, but the big picture is an image that could only have been conceived by God Himself.

Kingston Avenue…Trying New Things

When I attended my first Sunday as the ‘Intern,’ I noticed a young man who very closely resembled Chris Tomlin in dress and style of hair. Later I learned that his style of music and his voice also resembled this renowned artist. Now although many of us own a Tomlin cd or a Passion record with Chris on it it, these people have really never heard of him. Their favorite Christian artists are people like William Cowper and John Newton. Needless to say, Chris (ironically the guys name) really didn’t ‘fit here with the traditional crowd. Many lessons are to be learned from this situation from both sides. One is that if you are leading in a particular area of ministry, you may want to figure out what the people are used to doing in the first place, aka hymns rather than the latest K-Love update. This is a problem that is destroying many healthy churches today, it’s called a preference. It is preferred that people wear suits and ties on Sunday to church, therefore we are to tell tribal Africans (who wear nothing but a gourd, or other type of veggie, around their private areas) to dress up on Sunday in American attire. Sounds silly right, but it happens. This is the same thing that has happened here although in a different fashion. So they asked the guy to change his tempo a little, slow it down. He couldn’t and just kept playing the same passion songs that the congregation had never heard and they began to miss the sweet poetry of the psalmists. They told Chris he just wasn’t compatible and that they just didn’t feel they could worship in this way. So they went to their last option…me. I brought my djembe and two guitars to play along with the guy who was going to be here (who is no more). As it turns out, they would rather have me play less skillfully and sing less beautifully in the words of the hymnal than to listen to a concerto. Pray for me in this time because I don’t know what I’m doing. Haha no really, I only know a few chords and I am a decent singer at best (ask Chandler…we actually sang in the ‘big choir’ at Porter). Anyways just thought you might find humor in this or see what kind of things God can force you to do beyond your ability and realize, he really can use you for anything as long as you are willing.

Kingston Avenue…The Start of a Youth Group

As many know, (as if anyone reads this blog), I am in Anderson Indiana for the majority of the summer. Though many know I’m gone, they do not know what I’m doing. The church is small (maybe smaller than some of Ignite’s Sunday night attendance) yet almost 80% of Anderson is un-churched…not de-churched (having grown up in church and deciding not to go once on their own) they have never been to church in their lives. This statistic amazed me! The sad thing is that it is going to get worse. Because the church-goers are mostly made up of the same generation, the middle age people, the majority of that statistic is the resistant husbands, the rebellious children, and the simply pagan family. I am here to reach the youth. The teen aged kids in this town have been forgotten an things have been more focused on reaching their parents. This is a flawed tactic because the older the person is the shorter their life is becoming each day and although they may try to get their children and grand-children to come to a place where there is nothing for them to do, it may be an unsuccessful effort.  In Lexington, and every where else in the Bible Belt, everyone goes to church because it is the cool thing to do, everyone goes to church; but here in Anderson it’s not cool because they sing hymns only, have small churches with only a few kids and really have never developed anything for youth to enjoy.  That is my goal here at Kingston Avenue; to create a plan that can be carried on by faithful lay people in this church when I leave.  I will be teaching through Romans and will record my thoughts here on the blog, as well as teaching the kids their own little hermeneutics class .  It’s going to be fun, intense, and gone before I know it.  If you read this you should tell other ignite attenders to read as well so they can be informed on the context they will be stepping into on the mission trip in June.  More to come…

Wrecking My Car… Driving a Junker

So last Friday I wrecked my car in an odd series of events.  While watching it all take place I simply could not do anything to avoid this incident.  I was driving about 35 mph down Versailles Rd when someone two cars in front of me starts to turn into a gas station.  The back half of his/her car was still out in the middle of the road and the girl in front of me stopped accordingly…or maybe just a bit too fast.  She was driving a small sports car weighing around half of my car (if you know anything about momentum, you know what happened).  She stopped about 3 times faster than my breaks could withstand and as I applied Herculean pressure to my tiny black pedal, the car simply acted as if on ice.  I slid right into and under her car leaving my hood, grill (I sound gangsta), and radiator looking like that of an accordion.  Luckily the cops and the tow company were right around the corner.  The cop’s first question was “where is the other car”  this seemed like a stupid question to me at first until I realized that they had pulled off unharmed into the turn lane.  As the tow truck arrived he looked at my car and said “Prolly total itout” in which I looked at him and started it back up, he chuckled and started sweeping up the massive amounts of glass.  I left discouraged and worried about making a car payment when I realized that there was probably a reason this guy was towing cars and couldn’t speak his native language, this guy didn’t know anything about cars and how they worked, every car he had ever seen was broken.  So I took it to a mechanic (my future brother-in-law) and he says it’s fixable.  Sadly enough it won’t have a latching hood, unless by a bungee chord, therefore I am officially driving a junker…hoorah

Engagement…Preparation, Nervousness, Excitement, Planning, Reserva………..

So I’m engaged now… kind of weird to say that about myself.  I am taking one of the biggest steps in my life with the most beautiful and wonderful girl in the world.  There is a lot more planning that is involved in a wedding than what I suspected.  At the beginning the only things I could think of were tuxes, dresses, flowers, food, music, a pastor, and a church.  As it turns out, there is something new everyday to plan for, reserve, and buy.  Here are my reflections thus far.

Tuxes… the only time I have worn a tux (which is apparently not the same thing as a suit) was at prom, it was black, white, and blue.  This was a suitable color for me and I didn’t mind wearing it one bit although it did get a little hot, itchy, and tight as the night went on.  If any of you know my wonderful fiance, you will understand when I say (as a guy) I was scared to know what I would be wearing on her day.  I thought I would be in a black tux decorated only with her favorite color…pink.  Now this pink thing usually isn’t a problem, I actually think I own a pink shirt with the old Ignite logo on it but I don’t want to have pictures surrounding my house with me in a pink tux.  Luckily I talked her out of it.

Reception… this has been my area of least expertise.  I thought we could just go to a restaurant and get some food with everybody but it turns out you need as much room as the church did for everybody who MIGHT come to the wedding.  Now if you know my family, it quite large.  My mom has a sister and two brothers all of which have at least two kids who are either married, engaged, or have kids so this wasn’t going to be an easy task.  On top of that Jennifer’s mom has six siblings who all have grand-kids by now and that’s just family.  There are people who I won’t even remember that will probably show up so when I heard the lady at the Hyatt ask “how many are you expecting” I wasn’t sure what to say.  So we ended up reserving Keenland.  I figure if it can hold all those crazy horses and their drunk owners it should be able to handle it.

That’s all for now but there is much more to come.  There is still pictures, videos, the church, dresses, flowers, a car, gifts, and all kinds of craziness.

“For all have sinned,”… You Too

All of us sin, and all of us judge. There are some sins that we commit everyday, and others on occasion. Some, people know about, some, are secrets. but there are certain sins that no person can seem to hide, and therefore are judged at-a-glance by every person they come in contact with.

Two of these ‘public sins’ that came to mind were homosexuality and premarital sex resulting in pregnancy. I am friends with two homosexuals and they are judged by their voices and things of interest such as clothing, interior design, and cooking. My cousin had a kid when she was sixteen and was judged by the shape of her stomach at her age. It sickens me that we do this because we ourselves do the same things and get away while looking like a holy Christian. It seems we have lost sight of Christ’s call to love, to the point that we condemn before we even know a person.

A book comes to mind when I think about this called The Scarlet Letter. It is about a girl who has a baby before she is married in puritan society and is forced to wear a scarlet A, standing for adultery. As she walks through the town that used to welcome her, they see this sin, displayed on her dress and condemn her for it. Others of them have done it, they may not have gotten pregnant but they had not abstained until marriage, and yet they kept it a secret and condemned her for the same act.

As Christians we must be careful not to do this but to accept them as people, just as we are, sinners. We cannot call out a persons sin until we build a relationship because there will be no chance of reaching them with the gospel. When we point out the sin, the unworthiness, and the nature of ourselves resulting in the grace of God, it shows them that there is still hope. When we display ourselves as humble servants of a God who had mercy on his crappy creation, we can reveal what grace truly is. So many Christians try to act like they are so good when in fact, they just ‘know’ the Bible. We cannot do anything good in the eyes of the Lord because of our selfish motives. I wish we could all be more like the old cults of Christianity that used to beat and lacerate themselves for how sinful they were rather than this generation of ‘good’ people. At least they recognized their sin instead of hiding it. I pray that we all will be so entranced with reading scripture that we all realize how much we sin, how adulterous we are to Christ, and how much grace it took to save a wretch like you and me.

Earth of Now… Earth of Noah

I have come to be disgusted with what the world is today. The band Linkin Park has come out with a new single called ‘What I’ve Done’, it refers to all the evil that has come from the selfish, pleasure seeking, totally deprived beings with no consideration for others. The video sent chills down my spine as i watched it, showing a starving man in Africa before the American man eating a sandwich big enough to feed Africa itself; showing the testing of the a-bomb and it’s use on other countries; the battle of race from the KKK to Hitler to abortion; all this evil that surrounds us every day that we live with. We are unmoved and should be outraged by these things. I think back to when God flooded the earth because he was angered by what His creation had become, a selfish, pleasure seeking, totally deprived group of beings that had no consideration for others. How will God intervene this time?

Well…Well…Well…

I haven’t posted in a very long time and after I stopped I was wondering if it would be worth getting back into or if I should just leave and start reading and commenting more. If you still read or check every once and a while leave a comment and maybe I’ll try to start posting more.

Refocus…Being Bi-polar

I’m sitting in Chemistry right now realizing how much I hate engineering (sorry Jon). I’m wondering why I ever wanted to be an engineer and I think of the money. I am doing my budget to see what I need if I were to live on my own and I found that I can live off of what I make now and still have money to spend on the things I want. So why then do I want the money that is so associated with engineers. Because it’s not enough. The flesh side of me wants to never have to worry about money, to always have everything I want, and that by achieving these things I’ll aways be happy. The spiritual side of me wants to trust God in his plan (but first discovering what that plan is), never rely on my own means to survive, and serve him with out a lust for ‘things’. Every Christian must have this bi-polar reaction to wanting what they don’t have. I wish I had the guts and the knowledge to move into the woods with a tent and some tools and live for the rest of my life only going to town to buy clothes and more tools. This life is so full of unnecessary things that we don’t need. Why do we need (not want) plasma screen TV’s, 3 story houses for 4 people, one car for the summer and one for the winter, cell phones that play music and show pictures, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, shampoo that makes your hair curly or straight, cloning research, abortion, wars against people we don’t even know, and cars that park themselves (I’m sorry but that has to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard of). I will never be able to understand this world or God’s purpose for granting us free will until I am able to look at it from his view.

Why…Cooper’s Psalms

Why is everything so blurry
Almost invisible
Why am I in such a hurry
To achieve things so slow.

Why have you planned
What is not yet revealed
Why do I long to be informed
On things that are concealed

Why are these spiritual things
So difficult to grasp
Why can’t we find the wings
To put things in the past

Why are they who I knew so well
Now so far away
Kept inside their perishing shell
Oh, the things I want to say

Why do I strive to love them more
Yet never see the time
I pray you’ll never close the door
Make a forgiving heart of mine

To be loved, love
To be forgiven, forgive
To be a friend, befriend