I said hello to Josh Willingham in church today. I called him "John"; which is, of course, his brother's name.
I'm probably the only person in the Shoals to call Josh by the wrong name.
I'm an idiot.
*sigh*
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Friday, October 05, 2007
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Halftime Talk
Here's the talk I gave during halftime today at the CrossPoint Upward soccer games, if you're interested.
What kind of God do you believe in?
I know a lot of people who don’t believe in God, or at least don’t want to be a part of a group of people who believe in God, because they turn on the TV and see a God that doesn’t make sense. They see a God of hate; a God who is primarily angry; a God who is mostly concerned with telling people how bad they are; or just maybe a God who wants their money.
If I believed in those kinds of gods, I wouldn’t even be here today.
I believe in a God of love and of mercy – like his students thought of Him when Jesus walked the earth and wrote about Him after He left. I believe in a God of power and of wisdom, like the ancient writers wrote about. As a matter of fact, I find that most people, in an attempt to explain who God is, try to make him very small, whose nature we can prove with science; or someone who we can carry with us in our pocket, to justify our personal views on morality; or someone who agrees with our political beliefs.
If you don’t like that God – the God you’ve seen on TV, that’s probably not even the real God.
I like what the writer Donald Miller said about this whole thing. He said, “it makes me wonder if God created us in His image, or we created Him in ours.”
Miller talks about how so many people during the time of Jesus thought they had God figured out, but that Jesus was always going around saying things like, You thought it was this way, but I tell you this different thing. Miller says that if you thought you knew everything about God, Jesus would have been completely annoying.
I think part of the reason Jesus came was so that we could get a better picture of who God is. When we see Jesus, we don’t see a God of hate, or a God of anger. We see His love and compassion. We see who He spent his time with – and it wasn’t with the religious people. It was the people who truly needed Him. I’m not trying to say that God doesn’t get angry, or that Jesus didn’t angry – as a matter of fact those times are recorded, too. But you know who he got angry with? Not the people that were living lives that some of us would call immoral. No – he saved his anger for the religious folks. It was the people who thought they knew who God was – who thought they could explain Him to everyone else or use Him to justify their lives.
I definitely need to do a better job of showing people who God really is. Jesus said that people will know we follow Him by how much we love. Is that how we're showing we follow Jesus? I think that a lot of what I learned about God, that I learned by being at a church like we have here. A group of ordinary people who follow an extraordinary God. If you're looking for a church home, CrossPoint is a great place to be.
So, if you know somebody that doesn’t believe in God, find out what God they don’t believe in. It may not be who God really is.
What kind of God do you believe in?
I know a lot of people who don’t believe in God, or at least don’t want to be a part of a group of people who believe in God, because they turn on the TV and see a God that doesn’t make sense. They see a God of hate; a God who is primarily angry; a God who is mostly concerned with telling people how bad they are; or just maybe a God who wants their money.
If I believed in those kinds of gods, I wouldn’t even be here today.
I believe in a God of love and of mercy – like his students thought of Him when Jesus walked the earth and wrote about Him after He left. I believe in a God of power and of wisdom, like the ancient writers wrote about. As a matter of fact, I find that most people, in an attempt to explain who God is, try to make him very small, whose nature we can prove with science; or someone who we can carry with us in our pocket, to justify our personal views on morality; or someone who agrees with our political beliefs.
If you don’t like that God – the God you’ve seen on TV, that’s probably not even the real God.
I like what the writer Donald Miller said about this whole thing. He said, “it makes me wonder if God created us in His image, or we created Him in ours.”
Miller talks about how so many people during the time of Jesus thought they had God figured out, but that Jesus was always going around saying things like, You thought it was this way, but I tell you this different thing. Miller says that if you thought you knew everything about God, Jesus would have been completely annoying.
I think part of the reason Jesus came was so that we could get a better picture of who God is. When we see Jesus, we don’t see a God of hate, or a God of anger. We see His love and compassion. We see who He spent his time with – and it wasn’t with the religious people. It was the people who truly needed Him. I’m not trying to say that God doesn’t get angry, or that Jesus didn’t angry – as a matter of fact those times are recorded, too. But you know who he got angry with? Not the people that were living lives that some of us would call immoral. No – he saved his anger for the religious folks. It was the people who thought they knew who God was – who thought they could explain Him to everyone else or use Him to justify their lives.
I definitely need to do a better job of showing people who God really is. Jesus said that people will know we follow Him by how much we love. Is that how we're showing we follow Jesus? I think that a lot of what I learned about God, that I learned by being at a church like we have here. A group of ordinary people who follow an extraordinary God. If you're looking for a church home, CrossPoint is a great place to be.
So, if you know somebody that doesn’t believe in God, find out what God they don’t believe in. It may not be who God really is.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Resentment
At church this morning the speaker was talking about holding on to resentment. Which brings me to the...
Quote of the Day
"When you wish for a dump truck to hit someone - that doesn't come from God."
Quote of the Day
"When you wish for a dump truck to hit someone - that doesn't come from God."
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Mmmmm...Baskin Robbins...Oreo Sundaes
Saw this commercial on television today and thought it was hilarious...
Sunday, August 26, 2007
The Middle Ages
*sigh*
I'm doing a lot of sighing these days.
I'm getting old. Have I said that before?
It's amazing how much more difficult it is to get in shape the older you are. That's not even counting the fact that it takes all this extra time and money that's just floating around in the air, ready to be grabbed.
Or maybe that was a dream I had last night.
Find time to exercise - along with finding time for all the other important things I need to do.
And it's amazing how much more expensive it is - not to mention inconvient - to eat healthy. You can grab a box of Swiss Cake Rolls for a buck, and it makes a pretty filling meal. But, you want to eat healthy, it's going to cost you, and it's not going to be quite as quick. It takes more time and preparation to make a turkey-sausage-egg-cheese-hot-pepper-in-a-whole-wheat-tortilla burrito than to grab a sugar-laden breakfast bar.
And speaking of time, why does it go so fast now? Labor Day is next weekend?!? Didn't we just have Memorial Day?
Sheesh.
[pic from Friday night's commute home]
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Late Again
It's a Beautiful Mornin'!
*sigh*
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Which god do you worship?
I believe that God created the earth, but claim to be pretty agnostic about how it all came about. I'm familiar with the evidence that leads people to believe that we came about through evolution, but I'm also familiar with the evidence that makes me believe in a God who created us. I don't believe that we need to intepret a literal "6-day creation" to have faith in God and the Bible; however, I also personally feel that based on how the Bible talks about God, and based on what Jesus taught, there must have been a literal Adam - not a metaphor representing the evolution from lower life forms to homo sapien. But again, I don't know what happened, though I believe I will one day.
The Creation Museum recently opened in Petersburg, KY. I've never been comfortable with the idea of a "creation science". Science is something that helps us learn about the natural world. I don't deny its usefulness in helping us come to a knowledge about the physical world around us. However, when we start talking about God and creation - that's all in the realm of the supernatural. By definition, outside the purview of science. In that sense, I would go along with the detractors in saying that "creation science" is an oxymoron. Not in the sense that science is "Good and Right" and creation is "False and Wrong", but in the sense that they lie in different worlds and are concerned with different ideas. I've been rather disappointed with what time I've spent reading creation science research. You can't call something science if explain away the holes in you theory by citing the supernatural power of God.
I don't think you can call that "science". As soon as you start to step into the world of the supernatural, or the realm of miracles, you leave the realm of science. Science cannot speak to those things. That doesn't make them any less true. But we've somehow bought into the notion that science is all powerful and if it cannot explain something, then that something cannot exist. Science did not always exist; it did not pre-date man. It is a useful tool we have to help us explain the world around us - it's not a magic box through which we can divine all the answers of the universe. Maybe there are some that believe that but it doesn't begin to make sense for someone who believes in God to believe it, too.
Creation Science seems to me to be predicated on the fact that science should hold this divine place in our lives. Once the world came under the view that science was the fount of all knowledge, suddenly, people who believe in God needed it to explain God. I don't know if it's an attempt to prove it to other people, or to ourselves. Suddenly, Science is more powerful than God. If Science cannot explain God, then *poof* - we have no faith, no premise for our beliefs. When did we start to worship this god, Science?
Now, I'm not saying that those who argue on the other side are any better. I've spent my time in the world of science and have seen enough folks using research to prove what they already believe to know that we all have this problem of wanting to be right.
But trying to marry these two different entities deifies science while reducing to God to something that needs to be explained by us. Philosophers and psychologists have libraries devoted to how and why man created God - why are we on the same road? It's a step backward; not a step forward. It's just another attempt by us to force God into a box.
The Creation Museum recently opened in Petersburg, KY. I've never been comfortable with the idea of a "creation science". Science is something that helps us learn about the natural world. I don't deny its usefulness in helping us come to a knowledge about the physical world around us. However, when we start talking about God and creation - that's all in the realm of the supernatural. By definition, outside the purview of science. In that sense, I would go along with the detractors in saying that "creation science" is an oxymoron. Not in the sense that science is "Good and Right" and creation is "False and Wrong", but in the sense that they lie in different worlds and are concerned with different ideas. I've been rather disappointed with what time I've spent reading creation science research. You can't call something science if explain away the holes in you theory by citing the supernatural power of God.
I don't think you can call that "science". As soon as you start to step into the world of the supernatural, or the realm of miracles, you leave the realm of science. Science cannot speak to those things. That doesn't make them any less true. But we've somehow bought into the notion that science is all powerful and if it cannot explain something, then that something cannot exist. Science did not always exist; it did not pre-date man. It is a useful tool we have to help us explain the world around us - it's not a magic box through which we can divine all the answers of the universe. Maybe there are some that believe that but it doesn't begin to make sense for someone who believes in God to believe it, too.
Creation Science seems to me to be predicated on the fact that science should hold this divine place in our lives. Once the world came under the view that science was the fount of all knowledge, suddenly, people who believe in God needed it to explain God. I don't know if it's an attempt to prove it to other people, or to ourselves. Suddenly, Science is more powerful than God. If Science cannot explain God, then *poof* - we have no faith, no premise for our beliefs. When did we start to worship this god, Science?
Now, I'm not saying that those who argue on the other side are any better. I've spent my time in the world of science and have seen enough folks using research to prove what they already believe to know that we all have this problem of wanting to be right.
But trying to marry these two different entities deifies science while reducing to God to something that needs to be explained by us. Philosophers and psychologists have libraries devoted to how and why man created God - why are we on the same road? It's a step backward; not a step forward. It's just another attempt by us to force God into a box.
This last quote from an article about the museum in the Florida Baptist Witness sums up my problem with this whole thing.
"Several museum displays assert that the debate over the origins of man comes down to a choice between human reason and God's Word."
Have we forgotten that human reason is pretty much synonymous with science? So if we are going to reject science, how can we call it science? I think it just makes God into a demigod subservient to Science, the true Supreme Being. This doesn't mean that I don't believe in a God that created the world; I just don't think that science can define God and prove creation. It's just too limited.
Join us next time as Jim argues that it doesn't make sense for Intelligent Design to be taught in science classes.
Flame on.
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