I have been struggling through the past week with putting together the second part of my bio, and realizing that the reason I has for starting this blog was not to make it something about me, I decided that more could be stated at a later time. Suffice to say that I came to Christ in October of 1961, which does not seem that long ago to me, but may seem like ancient times to some of of the high and pre-high schooler readers who may come upon this blog. Since then I have been on an adventure of faith that has brought me through times that could be described as good and bad, the latter outnumbering the former, if you presume that the principle thing that faith should be about is "getting mine." But as Romans 5 states "tribulation (hard times) work patience, patience works experience, experience creates hope that overcomes our sense of shame at our inadequacies becasue through them the love of God in Christ Jesus spreads throughout our hearts.
Of course the reader may not even believe that there is a God or that my experience has any real validity, but that does not bother me in the least. No event that takes place in time is effected by opinion and if someone insists on giving their interpretation of the events that have happened in my life, that opinion in no way informs what has happened. Opinions are only valid until the truth is manifest. Opinions can be righ or wrong or partly so, but the one who has the least information has the least reason to believe that he is right. To think otherwise is to be vain and arrogant. And while popular books by atheists have increased in the last several years, the proponderance of scientific evidence is going against the naturalistic hypothesis. Backs to the wall, atheists ahve been proposing solutions to their dilemma with untestable hyypotheses such as multiverse theory. In the end they must accept something on what they have disparaginly called "blind faith."
But let's put the science off to another blog, not because it is unimportant, but it is not germaine to today's blog. Rather, I want to point out that opinions can be very limiting. Sometimes they remove from discussion the things that we see as hopelessly wrong, but on other occasions, when we are wrong or partly wrong, they prevent us from getting at what is ultimately true. And it is the things that we believe are ultimately true that rule our lives. Wisdom, more often than not, is learning to place your opinions on the altar and allowing God to burn away that which is well-intentioned but wrong or actually wrong-headed or misinformed.
Much of the debate that has occured in the church over the years has been about defending my group's or my own opinions. That is why our churches ar of so many different opinions. We all say that we are defending God's word, or reason or some other alleged good thing. Yet Jesus prayed that we all might be one even as He and the Father are one. I seriously doubt that knock-down drag-out debates are part of their unity.
Sometimes I think we are much like those blind Indian men who each grabbed a different part of an elephant and then argued about the true nature of the elephant and all were partly wrong and totally wrong about what the other was saying. Other times I think that when we debate we are each like a fly trying to defend an elephant from another fly. People may deny Him or His word. He is not moved.
The problem is that we think that defending the faith once delivered to the saints is the same as defending our opinions. Believe me, I have done a lot of that and now do my best to leave that behind. Separating our opinions from God's truth is very difficult because we believe if we are wrong at any instant we are either heretical or apostate, instead of still being in the learning process. I can tell you with surety that God is too great for us not to be living with some misconceptions, for He exceeds our our conceptions.
Some things are certain, We have a book whose revelation cannot be contradicted by anyone's personal beliefs without that person paying consequences in this life and, if his or her beliefs deny the atonement - that Jesus died to save men and women from the eternal consequences of their sin - their end will be tragic.
The real question that confronts us every day is whether we are willing to be wrong that God may be right. It is easy to give assent to this with our lips, much more difficult in practice, We will need not our strength alone, but the power of the Holy Spirit, for the self-life is a powerful stronghold in each person's life and apart from the Spirit we are asking ourselves to give up the very thing that we tend to hold onto the most desperately. On our own we become a tangle of contradictions and defeat. But "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," so Paul tells us (Phillipians 4:13) and I have found that this is so.
February 16, 2008
February 4, 2008
Who am I? Part I
This is a happy day, today. My youngest daughter celebrates her 22 birthday and it is the day after the Giants have won the Super Bowl, the team that I have rooted for since around 1950. That brings up the whole matter of who I am. I should offer you that.
AS I have stated, I was born in New York. It was the end of World War II. The Battle of the Bulge was heading to a close, the death knell for the Nazi juggernaut. Though they would fight on for several more months, it would be pointless and cause the unnecessary deaths of thousands. My father ahd been sent to defend the Canal Zone from an attack that never came.
All my grandparents and my mother were born in Norway, as was my mother, though her father was already an American citizen, so she would be also, coming here at three months.
By the time I was six, I was living in a city housing project, not one for the poor, but one that was built for the lower middle class to make room for some of the many new families that the war and post-war had created, but private housing had not kept up with. My father was a carpenter, like my mother's father, doing the form carpentry that was necessary for building skyscrapers, roads and bridges.
As they were able, more and more of the Catholic and Protestant familes moved out and bought homes. But carpentry work was too uncertain for my father to get a mortgage from a New York bank and we were there for the long haul. Both of my parents would die while living at that apartment. So, we would live in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Further, seventy-five percent of the students in my high school were Jewish and eighty-five percent of the students that graduated the college I attended in the city.
It was much like living in another culture and my parents considered us to be like embassy employees abroad, where we were to always to show the best of what it meant to be Norwegian-Americans, Lutherans, Protestants, gentiles. They were not alone in this. People of other ethnic groups and most of the Jewish people we knew were involved in a similar enterprise. If a member of any ethnic or religious group behaved outrageously so that it was plain to all, the sense of shame was palpable. So, the needed ethnic peace was maintained.
With time, a trust relationship was built between my parents and the Jewish people who surrounded us. My mother was someone who a woman could share good news and also to vent without her words getting around. My father became someone who could be relied on for another opinion. Jewish men liked to have a variety of opinions to consider when making decisions. His strong opinions and advice were valued.
As he became older, and my brother and I were out of the home, he found himself giving fatherly counsel to a number of those Jewish people who had lost their fathers to an early death. I'm sure that it was not something he sought out, and I was unaware of it until after his death. When my father died, My mother could not cry because of a disease that prevented it, but several Jewish women came and wept for him, according to their custom for one another, and not only according to custom but from a sense of personal loss. Similarly, a number of Jewish men came to me in the months after his death, representing different groups of men he knew in ours and neighborhoods that surrounded us, telling me of how profoundly the men in their circles missed him - dozens and dozens of them, all tolled. I don't think he thought of himself as an ambassador, but, in the end, I think that was what he was.
In all this, we learned how complex a people the Jewish people are. Almost any stereotype you can devise excludes more than it includes. We also learned that people that have been persecuted for thousands of years can wear their pain very close beneath their skin. And that is understandable. Anti-semitism is not.
In recent years, we have beem menbers of churches and known many Jewish people who have come to a kowledge of Jesus as Messiah and Lord. They bring with them several different ways of seeing the New Testament, undrstanding things that could easily be missed by those who have no connect to the culture that Jesus was born into.
Next: about my spiritual journey from religion to faith.
AS I have stated, I was born in New York. It was the end of World War II. The Battle of the Bulge was heading to a close, the death knell for the Nazi juggernaut. Though they would fight on for several more months, it would be pointless and cause the unnecessary deaths of thousands. My father ahd been sent to defend the Canal Zone from an attack that never came.
All my grandparents and my mother were born in Norway, as was my mother, though her father was already an American citizen, so she would be also, coming here at three months.
By the time I was six, I was living in a city housing project, not one for the poor, but one that was built for the lower middle class to make room for some of the many new families that the war and post-war had created, but private housing had not kept up with. My father was a carpenter, like my mother's father, doing the form carpentry that was necessary for building skyscrapers, roads and bridges.
As they were able, more and more of the Catholic and Protestant familes moved out and bought homes. But carpentry work was too uncertain for my father to get a mortgage from a New York bank and we were there for the long haul. Both of my parents would die while living at that apartment. So, we would live in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Further, seventy-five percent of the students in my high school were Jewish and eighty-five percent of the students that graduated the college I attended in the city.
It was much like living in another culture and my parents considered us to be like embassy employees abroad, where we were to always to show the best of what it meant to be Norwegian-Americans, Lutherans, Protestants, gentiles. They were not alone in this. People of other ethnic groups and most of the Jewish people we knew were involved in a similar enterprise. If a member of any ethnic or religious group behaved outrageously so that it was plain to all, the sense of shame was palpable. So, the needed ethnic peace was maintained.
With time, a trust relationship was built between my parents and the Jewish people who surrounded us. My mother was someone who a woman could share good news and also to vent without her words getting around. My father became someone who could be relied on for another opinion. Jewish men liked to have a variety of opinions to consider when making decisions. His strong opinions and advice were valued.
As he became older, and my brother and I were out of the home, he found himself giving fatherly counsel to a number of those Jewish people who had lost their fathers to an early death. I'm sure that it was not something he sought out, and I was unaware of it until after his death. When my father died, My mother could not cry because of a disease that prevented it, but several Jewish women came and wept for him, according to their custom for one another, and not only according to custom but from a sense of personal loss. Similarly, a number of Jewish men came to me in the months after his death, representing different groups of men he knew in ours and neighborhoods that surrounded us, telling me of how profoundly the men in their circles missed him - dozens and dozens of them, all tolled. I don't think he thought of himself as an ambassador, but, in the end, I think that was what he was.
In all this, we learned how complex a people the Jewish people are. Almost any stereotype you can devise excludes more than it includes. We also learned that people that have been persecuted for thousands of years can wear their pain very close beneath their skin. And that is understandable. Anti-semitism is not.
In recent years, we have beem menbers of churches and known many Jewish people who have come to a kowledge of Jesus as Messiah and Lord. They bring with them several different ways of seeing the New Testament, undrstanding things that could easily be missed by those who have no connect to the culture that Jesus was born into.
Next: about my spiritual journey from religion to faith.
February 1, 2008
Hello
I believe in the power of thought, but thought requires time and patience. In my sixty plus years, I have found that a measured high intelligence is often the best excuse for not using ones mind. We sloppily adopt the opinions of others whose prejudices are similar to our own and congratulate ourselves. Even when we give an ear to what others are saying, it may merely be a courtesy, because emotionally we are unable to detach from those ideas that we have not given satisfactory thought to, because we don't want the level of involvement that requires much precious time. Even those who are in the ninety-ninth percentile for intelligence can be lazy thinkers when the subject does not suit them or when the position before them challenges their long held views.
I also believe that we are not only thinkers but be-ers and be-ers must be emotional and spiritual as well as thinking. You will find that I am what is called an evangelical Christian and a charismatic. But, having said that, you must be careful, in that those names are what Lewis Carroll called "portmanteau words" - words that carry a wide variety of meanings both denotatively and connotatively.
You should also consider that unlike Coca-Cola and Ebay, no one has a marca registrada on the name Christian and it can be used by anyone, even people who repudiate the plain teachings of Jesus Christ. No one can get a cease and desist order from the court to stop imposters from using it. If you have been mistreated by someone in the name of Jesus Christ, there is little that anyone can do about it, but you cannot extrapolate from that that their's is true Christianity, anymore than you could conclude that there is no true physics, chemistry, biology or earth science based on the test papers that I have graded.
You will also find that I make a necessary distinction between religion and faith which are often confounded. A simple way to look at it is a religion depends on the adherent, a faith on the the One who one has faith in. As a general rule, it is much like one of those slides you see in so many photo processing and computer art programs: slide to the left and the picture gets redder, slide to the right and the picture gets greener. Much the same, generally, the greater the faith, the less the accoutrements of religion and vice versa. I know. I have been both.
In this blog, I may speak to matters that are strictly Christ centered or to matters of science and mathematics especially if they interface with the place of God in the life of humans or the nature of the universe.
I hope to be able to engage you with meaningful conversation and since I have never known a case where profanity has not detracted or subtracted from serious thought, so I ask you to omit it ( beside, I was raised in New York City and you would need to be inordinately creative to say something I haven't heard many times over - in English, in Spanish, in Yiddish, etc.) A good argument is in no way made more persuasive by invective.
I also ask, that if you disagee with me, you will have the courtesy to return to hear my response. It is intellectually dishonest and irresponsible to make no opportunity for a reply to your argument or emotional response.
Finally, you may well be more intelligent than I. I must trundle along with all the well known deficiencies of an IQ of 160 (be patient with me) and I tend to be somewhat mercurial in my selection of topics being one of those unusual people who are called ambi-brained, in that I favor neither hemisphere of the brain, as most do.
Before we go on, it seems to me, it will do well to tell you something about who I am, but I'll save that for the next blog. - Your friend, in Him.
I also believe that we are not only thinkers but be-ers and be-ers must be emotional and spiritual as well as thinking. You will find that I am what is called an evangelical Christian and a charismatic. But, having said that, you must be careful, in that those names are what Lewis Carroll called "portmanteau words" - words that carry a wide variety of meanings both denotatively and connotatively.
You should also consider that unlike Coca-Cola and Ebay, no one has a marca registrada on the name Christian and it can be used by anyone, even people who repudiate the plain teachings of Jesus Christ. No one can get a cease and desist order from the court to stop imposters from using it. If you have been mistreated by someone in the name of Jesus Christ, there is little that anyone can do about it, but you cannot extrapolate from that that their's is true Christianity, anymore than you could conclude that there is no true physics, chemistry, biology or earth science based on the test papers that I have graded.
You will also find that I make a necessary distinction between religion and faith which are often confounded. A simple way to look at it is a religion depends on the adherent, a faith on the the One who one has faith in. As a general rule, it is much like one of those slides you see in so many photo processing and computer art programs: slide to the left and the picture gets redder, slide to the right and the picture gets greener. Much the same, generally, the greater the faith, the less the accoutrements of religion and vice versa. I know. I have been both.
In this blog, I may speak to matters that are strictly Christ centered or to matters of science and mathematics especially if they interface with the place of God in the life of humans or the nature of the universe.
I hope to be able to engage you with meaningful conversation and since I have never known a case where profanity has not detracted or subtracted from serious thought, so I ask you to omit it ( beside, I was raised in New York City and you would need to be inordinately creative to say something I haven't heard many times over - in English, in Spanish, in Yiddish, etc.) A good argument is in no way made more persuasive by invective.
I also ask, that if you disagee with me, you will have the courtesy to return to hear my response. It is intellectually dishonest and irresponsible to make no opportunity for a reply to your argument or emotional response.
Finally, you may well be more intelligent than I. I must trundle along with all the well known deficiencies of an IQ of 160 (be patient with me) and I tend to be somewhat mercurial in my selection of topics being one of those unusual people who are called ambi-brained, in that I favor neither hemisphere of the brain, as most do.
Before we go on, it seems to me, it will do well to tell you something about who I am, but I'll save that for the next blog. - Your friend, in Him.
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