tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345839212024-03-07T00:41:34.097-08:00God Is RelativeGod is relative;
There are no absolutes;
And that is the good news.WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-23705973563535008172011-05-27T16:08:00.000-07:002011-05-27T18:04:12.450-07:00<div class="Section1"> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-left:.5in;text-align:center; text-indent:.8in;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" >Chapter One<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-left:.5in;text-align:center; text-indent:.8in;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" >Be Ye Not Mentally Lazy</span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" > </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >You may have grown up, as I did, convinced that the authority figures in your world were telling the truth, at least to a degree.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I sensed a core of truth in what they so dogmatically said, but I knew in my gut that at some points they were wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I recognized that, while maybe they were right, there was more to it than they let on, and often that "more to it" was what mattered most.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I also knew that some people and the views they so strongly condemned were not as bad as they were made out to be.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I knew that a lot of the wrongs they attacked were not always necessarily, totally wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Although at the time I could not have articulated it, I was developing a core of skepticism.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >But I was well socialized, so never did I consider challenging any of this.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They were bigger, older, smarter, richer, and they held the power to either punish or reward.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was no future in challenging their positions.<o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> <span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><br /> </span> </span><div class="Section2"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >On the other hand I knew better than to trust my own mind.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In school my classmates made better grades, were better athletes, better looking, and more popular.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was not a leader; no one ever followed or looked up to me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was painfully aware of my own inadequacies, but although I was not fully conscious of it, I was also vaguely aware of the limitations of those in authority and even of my more popular and more gifted classmates.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >I was nearly fifty-years-old before I realized the full implications of those childhood perceptions.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Gradually I came to see that my tacit disagreement with society somehow comprised the elements of a more honest and complete approach to truth and life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The seeds of a new way of thinking had been planted; a way I much later came to call The DIALECTIC, the theme of this book.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >After floundering through life for long years, I finally learned that it is easy to become a good thinker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Good thinking, however, is in short supply both because many of us are mentally lazy and because it requires something more than mere critical thinking, keen intellect, and formal education.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span style="font-size: 18pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" > </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-left:.5in;text-align:center; text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; ">On the Other Hand</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >What it takes to become a good thinker is to make,"On the Other Hand," your habitual response to ideas, whether your own or those of others, spoken or written, in formal or in informal settings.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No matter what is presented, always consider what might be "on the other hand," because no human statement is, by itself, ever complete, something is always left out, there is always more to be said, and it is always possible that what has been presented might be wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Develop a deep sense and appreciation of human limitations, determine to make "on the other hand" thinking second nature, and you are on the road to becoming a good thinker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Results will appear almost immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You will become a voice to be reckoned with.<o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> <span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><br /> </span> </span><div class="Section3"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Is that all there is to it?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No, but if "on the other hand" thinking becomes a regular practice, you will quickly become a respected thinker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I remember from my youth that the Sears, Roebuck catalog offered a choice of merchandise at varying levels of quality: <i>good, better, and best</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You already have read enough to reach the genuinely <i>good</i> level of thinker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >When you come to understand the larger dimensions of <i>THE DIALECTIC</i>--the proper name for "on the other hand thinking"--and when you add to that an elementary understanding of how logical thinking works, you will become a <i>better</i> thinker. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >And if you are still here when we come to the last pages of the book, we will consider how you can become the <i>best</i> thinker that can be made out of your unique personality and place in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.8in; line-height: 200%; "><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" > </span></o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; "><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; ">Becoming a Thinker</span></b></span></p></div><span class="Apple-style-span" > </span><div class="Section4"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Daddy was a workaholic and always gone, Mother was an old-fashioned housewife, a good one, busy doing all the work that entails, so I was pretty well left alone and by default became a lonely, lazy dreamer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I roamed the rivers, creeks, and hills, knowing I had been born fifty years too late to be the cowboy or mountain man that I read and dreamed of.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I drifted mindlessly through the years until one day I found myself a high school graduate. I remember three graduation gifts, one of them in particular.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Neither the creamy-yellow sport jacket nor the fancy corduroy shirt of many colors ever looked right on me, but somehow I have remembered them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>More to the point was Mother's gift of a book of inspirational poetry and prose, <i>Quests and Conquests</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For years I enjoyed reading the book but was never inspired to actually do anything. The book didn<span style="mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"WP TypographicSymbols"">=</span>t change me, but Mother's inscription written in the front of the book, "Be ye not mentally lazy," haunted me.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Mother's admonition was based on accurate observation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don't remember having ever thought much about anything for the first twenty years of my life, but when I read her inscription I knew immediately that I needed whatever it was that she was calling for.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>However, I neither knew what to do about it nor how. The problem was that I had no thinking equipment, skills, or coaching, and had no prior encouragement to think (few schools or homes teach us how to think).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It would be long years before I made any progress in that direction, but Mother's words were never far from my consciousness; I felt their challenge continually.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Several years later, I found myself in a theological seminary studying to become a minister.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There I heard professor Gordon Clinard declare that the greatest weakness of Southern Baptist preaching was shallowness.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Immediately I vowed that my sermons would have depth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>During seminary years, I worked, without adequate tools for thinking, at exploring the depths of God's word and of human experience.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was still depending on others, teachers and books, to do my thinking for me, and I still trusted them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yet I knew they were missing it somewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:1.5in;line-height:200%; tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >When I was given my first teaching position and found that I had to teach--and thus learn--logic, I discovered, finally, a method of systematic thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Logic, I came to realize, should be required of all high school graduates--not symbolic logic, but traditional, elementary logic.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> <span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><br /> </span> </span><div class="Section5"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Now, I was a beginning philosophy teacher and confident of my ability as a thinker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I had a lot to learn.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It took a half-dozen years of teaching philosophy before all of the above began to converge in the idea of <i>THE DIALECTIC</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I completely rewrote my philosophy courses, making the DIALECTIC central, and have taught it now for more than thirty years.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mother would be proud of her easy-going son because across the years, among faculty and students alike, I have gained a reputation for making people think.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They tell me they now think about things they never thought about before, and from perspectives they would have never before considered.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Let's talk about how you can improve your thinking ability and practice.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.8in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 40px; "><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; ">But on the Other Hand</span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >The words of a Randy Travis song suggest the way.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Early in his career Travis sang about a fellow who has just met an exciting woman.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She has captivated his complete attention, has him almost spellbound.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As he considers the possibility of spending the night with her, he sings, "On one hand I count the reasons I could stay with you . . . all night long . . . and on that hand I see no reason why it's wrong."<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That is one way for him to look at the situation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the refrain reveals the rest of the picture, as he sings, "But on the other hand there's a golden band, to remind me of someone who would not understand."<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He has been tempted to forsake his marriage, and might have done so if he just looked at things from the most obvious point of view, the way he felt.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He sings about a strong desire to stay, but the logic of marital love and commitment tells him that, "the reason I must go is on the other hand.<span style="mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols"">"</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> <span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><br /> </span> </span><div class="Section6"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >This indicates the importance of DIALECTICal thinking for even the most careless of us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On one hand--every day, throughout the day--we see things we believe to be right and that feel right at the time, but on the other hand there is always more to be considered. On one hand we are ready to act; on the other hand it is always possible that we might be wrong and regret what we did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >In life too much is at stake for our conduct to be decided by one-handed thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>President Harry Truman once told his cabinet members that he wished they would find him a one-hand economist.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He said that every economist that briefed him presented a good analysis of the economic situation, and advised an appropriate course of action.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>However, Truman complained, once they laid all this out, they would say: "But on the other hand . . . ," and proceed to build the case for a different analysis and course of action.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He wanted someone who had <i>the</i> answer.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" > </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >The truth is that no single way of looking at anything ever sees the whole picture.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is always more.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mortimer Adler made the strange claim that the greatest contribution Greek civilization ever made to our culture was the idea of <i>men </i>and<i> de.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></i>These strange words are two little particles in the Greek language, commonly translated into English as <i>on one hand/but on the other hand.</i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When we think of Greek culture, sculpture, philosophy, and drama, we might wonder what Adler was thinking when he made such an audacious claim.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Why would he say <i>on the one hand/but on the other hand</i> is the greatest contribution of the Greeks?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because it is a concise expression of that which this book is about, that which we call <i>the DIALECTIC</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> <span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><br /> </span> </span><div class="Section7"> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-left:.5in;text-align:center; text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" > </span></o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; "><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; ">The DIALECTIC</span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >The DIALECTIC will not make you a better person--that is a whole different issue--but it will make you a better thinker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It will keep you out of a lot of trouble.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You will not be surprised easily or often.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It will make it easier for you to understand and get along with other people.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Others will begin to respect you and your ideas more than they have in the past.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If you are a student, you will become a better learner, performing better in the classroom and making better grades, gaining broader understanding and deeper insight.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If you are married, you will become a better and more appreciated spouse.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If you are part of a team at work, you will become a better and more valuable team member.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.8in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >If all this sounds as though the DIALECTIC is some kind of a magic pill or silver bullet, you are hearing it right.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No matter who you are, what you are interested in, or what you do, it will fit you.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It will apply directly to what you are about.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>All this, and it is easy to learn and put to use.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.7in; line-height: 200%; "><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" > </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; "><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; ">Think like an Octopus</span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.7in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">"On the other hand."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That'</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">s the silver bullet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That'</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">s all it takes to become a good thinker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It'</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">s that simple.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But on the other hand, it helps to notice still another hand.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> </div> <span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><br /> </span> </span><div class="Section8"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.7in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" >I was sitting at the breakfast table, reviewing plans for my first philosophy class of the day.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was thinking specifically about the dialectic.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then I remembered that I had a problem student in that class.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I only had three problem students in thirty-some years of teaching.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This was one of them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was one of those back row, disruptive whisperers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had spoken to him about it a couple of times, to no avail.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He seemed to have a lack of respect for me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So I shifted my mind from preparation for class to preparation for dealing with this aggravation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.7in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">I spent two years in the army as basic training officer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I have experience in sounding tough, and I can make the appropriate face to go along with the speech.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I</span><span style="mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"WP TypographicSymbols"">=</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">ve never used that style in teaching.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>However, that morning, I was considering it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On the other hand, I could quietly inform him that if the whispers did not cease, he would receive an "</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">F"</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"> in the class.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On the other hand, I wasn'</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">t sure that would be a fair course of action.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In fact, he might dare me to try it (he was the kind to do that).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On the other hand, I had to do something because he was disrupting the class.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, on the other hand . . .<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Wait a minute, how many other hands do I have?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.7in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">On the other hand is the dialectical formula.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is <i>the </i>way.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But on which other hand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mentally, we have more than two hands.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our left hand has its own right and left hands, and they have theirs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We need to think on as many hands as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We need to learn to think like an octopus.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>An octopus can think "</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">on the other hand"</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"> several times before he runs out of perspectives to consider.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> <span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><br /> </span> </span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.7in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >The way to become a good thinker is to think like an octopus.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Usually there are many hands to consider.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Each hand has other hands itself.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Don't forget the left hand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Like a construction supervisor, hire other hands if they are needed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Don't settle on an answer, conclusion, or idea until you have to because there are always these other hands to turn to.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We will never have time to check them all out, but don't quit early, especially if there is much at stake.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.7in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Think dialectically, consider others, even your enemies, maybe especially your enemies, and think like an octopus thinking on all eight hands.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>However, if we seek to examine all hands, can we ever make a decision?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.7in;line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan;tab-stops:.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" >At some point we have to cut off thought and act on the best judgment we can make at the time, always realizing that what we do may turn out wrong. We have no choice, however, but to use our best judgment at the time, however incomplete it may be.</span><span style="font-family:"Dyname Light SSi";mso-bidi-font-family:"Dyname Light SSi""><o:p></o:p></span></p>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-9675453953165548462010-11-08T09:31:00.000-08:002010-11-08T09:34:47.308-08:00<span style="font-family: verdana;">An Angry Christian<br /><br />I am an angry Christian. I am angry at Christians for systematically misrepresenting God, just as you and I both would be angry with some who radically misrepresented our dearest loved one. God is not a tyrant exercising power in cruel, oppressive and arbitrary ways, threatening eternal damnation to hell, and demanding that we follow all his rules, rules that take all the fun and excitement out of life. Yet this is the vision of God that vast numbers have somehow picked up in their sermons and Sunday School lessons heard in their childhood as well as individual encounters with “witnesses.” <br /><br />If you were to read the biographies of the most noted entertainers and writers of the 20th Century you would see that, regularly, this view of God and his representatives on earth is the picture of God that has haunted them across the years since they escaped the regular reminders of his wrath. I am angry because of all those who have been run off without ever seeing God as he is revealed in the biblical story. A re-vision of the biblical God is needed, so we are going to take another look at the Bible. This book will furnish a sketch that emerges from a re-view of the story.<br /><br />This portrayal of God’s character is not dependent on any selection of specific biblical texts, although many can be found that paint the same picture we are going to unveil. On the other hand, the fabric of most Christian sermons, Sunday School lessons, doctrinal statements, and defenses of the faith have been woven with the threads of many single, specific and scattered Bible verses, often disconnected from any context or setting. That method will not be used here. Rather, we will view the Bible as a whole and see what God looks like in the big picture. (I am aware that there are specific scattered verses that challenge this book’s thesis.) We are going to back off and look again, re-view the central character in the story, then trace some of the defining features that emerge from the resultant revision of the way we view the divine character.<br /></span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-60320979441395828922010-10-30T12:41:00.000-07:002010-10-30T12:43:41.282-07:00<span style="font-family: verdana;">The Center of God?<br /><br />Louis Mauldin, sitting on a bench at a bus stop in Jackson, Tennessee got to visiting with an old man who also was waiting for a bus. In the course of the conversation, Louis asked the fellow if he had ever traveled much. The old gentleman said he had not, then Louis suggested to him some of the advantages of travel, whereupon his new friend said he didn’t need to travel; he pointed and said, “There is north, there is south, there is west, and there is east. I’ve got them all right here. I don’t need to go anyplace else. For the old man, he lived at the center of the world, Jackson, Tennessee.<br /><br />Some years earlier Louis and I had been in a seminar where Joe Hester was presenting a paper on the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who never traveled more than forty miles from his home in Konigsberg, Prussia because, as Joe told us, Kant believed that Konigsberg was the intellectual and cultural center of the world.<br /><br />At the seminary where Louis, Joe, and I studied, there was a large rotunda with a map of the world on the floor. A star placed the seminary at the center of the world.<br /><br />Wherever you believe to be the center of the world, it provides the perspective from which you see all other places. If a seminary in Fort Worth, Texas is the center, then Jackson, Tennessee is somewhat marginal, and Konigsberg is completely out of sight and mind.<br /><br />For thinking Christians, God is the center of all reality, which is good as far as it goes, but where is the center of God? What in God is central? Is there a place from which to get all else about God in proper perspective? There is no more agreement here than there is among the citizens of the world who would dismiss Jackson, Konigsberg, and Fort Worth and name their own center of the world. <br />It is very common for Christians to find the divine center in the sovereignty of God. God is in control of all things; he is ruler of the universe. He holds all power and knows all things. Others find the center in the divine freedom. Because he is the Lord God Almighty, he is free to do whatever he pleases, free to create and free to destroy, free to save and free to condemn. Free to love and free to hate. His freedom knows no boundaries. Some locate the essence in a holy, transcendent mystery, a God before whom we stand in awe and fear with no way to plumb the center of such majesty. <br /><br />Might we consider love, holy love, as the center from which to view all other thought about God? The great creeds, including the Apostle’s and the Nicene Creeds, in their statements of belief in God, completely ignore direct reference to God’s love. The historical confessions of faith, including the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Baptist Faith and Message, give no emphasis to the divine love. In the Westminister Confession, love ranks eighteenth among the varied characteristics of God. The Baptist Faith and Message, in its statement of belief in God give no mention of love, except as owed to God.<br /><br />When we turn to the great theologians of Christian history (except John Wesley), we find they do not give primacy to God’s love. The faith of ordinary Christians has found one of its most common expressions in the great hymns of the church. When we to turn to the hymnals to find what they say about God, we that they sing most often of the Lord God Almighty, they worship him as the powerful creator, lord and king. They express his holiness and majesty and only then mention his love, if at all. Often love shows up in a third stanza, where it is commonly left unsung. <br /><br />Certainly there are wonderful exceptions that sing, “Love is the theme, love is supreme,” and “Love Divine, all love’s excelling,” but as exceptions, they only make clear that this is a neglected theme.<br /></span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-45470316962183870962010-10-14T09:13:00.000-07:002010-10-14T09:16:49.483-07:00<span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">God Changed His Mind.</span><br /><br />God changed his mind. While Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the Israelites collected all their gold jewelry and asked Aaron to melt it and make them a god. So he molded a golden calf and it was declared their God that had brought them out Egypt, implicitly rejecting the God who indeed had rescued them from Egyptian slavery and intended to make of them the special people whom he would use to bring healing to his broken world. He had called them out of Egypt because he had for them a world-class task to perform.<br />World-class deeds demand world-class discipline. It is not easy to perform tasks of this dimension. If God’s intention were to be accomplished, if ease were to be brought to the dis-eased and hurting inhabitants of the earth, then they must trust God to do right by them and thus must obey all he requires of them. By choosing to spurn the Lord God in favor of a God made of a precious metal, they have blocked the road to hope for the rest of the world.<br /><br />God was angry, angry enough, he said, to destroy them, and start over with Moses and his descendants to build a special people for this special purpose. According to Exodus, chapter 32, He explicitly told Moses, “Don’t try to stop me” from destroying them. However, Moses stood up for God’s purpose and for his people and argued that God should change his mind.<br /><br />God saw that in Moses he had a leader who would stand for God’s people and purpose even in the face of God’s instruction for him to keep his mouth shut, and in the face of God’s offer to make a new start: rather than the descendants of Abraham, it would be the descendants of Moses who would fulfill God’s purpose. Quite an offer for Moses. But Moses was committed to God’s original plan and pleaded for God to reconsider his threat of destruction. “So,” in Exodus 32:14, we are told that “even though the Lord had threatened to destroy the people, he changed his mind and let them live.”<br /><br />Are we to understand that a human being can argue with God and win? Are we to understand that the eternal Lord God Almighty can be persuaded to change his mind? This goes contrary to the entire history of Christian orthodoxy. Historically, Christians have always believed that God was immutable, could not change. It was understood that God was perfect–else he would not be God–and that for him to change in any sense would take away from his eternal perfection. Perhaps there is some other way to understand the biblical statement that the Lord changed his mind. Or, can we at least consider that here the Bible means literally what it says? Is it possible that we also should consider changing our mind about what God can and cannot do?<br /><br /><br />God changed his mind again. Prior to the Israelite occupation of the land of Canaan, God has appointed their leaders, Moses and Joshua, then a series of judges. They had neither the prerogatives nor the authority that goes with royal status. Samuel was the last of these judges, and in his old age the people who had greatly respected him had no respect for his sons. They came to Samuel and asked that he choose “a king to be our leader, just like all the other nations.” In I Samuel 8:7 The Lord told Samuel, “Do everything they want you to do. I am really the one they have rejected as their king.”<br /><br />At the foot of Mount Sinai they rejected the Lord God as their God and chose instead the golden calf, so now they have spurned God as their king. They have done this out of their desire to be like all the other nations, even though God intended for them to become a separate nation with a holy purpose, a special purpose that distinguished them from all other nations. This time, however, rather than threatening their destruction, he had Samuel warn them that with a king they would have taxes, military draft, involuntary servitude to the king and all the things that kings burden their people with.<br /><br />Even with this warning, the tribes of Israel still wanted to be a nation with a king, so, God changed his mind. Even though he wanted them to see him alone as their king, he told Samuel to give them a king. Not long afterward, God told Samuel to anoint Saul, the son of Kish, to be their king. God did not want them to have a human king, but when Israel insisted, God changed his mind and gave them a king, a king of his own choosing. <br /><br /><br /><br />We could go on along this line. Saul was God’s choice, but Saul proved a disappointment and God rejected him and named David king in his place. Later, having chosen and anointed David’s son, Solomon as king, God rejected a failed Solomon and divided his people Israel into two nations, one retaining the name Israel; the other becomes Judah. <br /><br />In the story of Jonah, God’s word to the evil city of Ninevah is, “Forty days from now, Ninevah will be destroyed.” This is God’s word. But the people of Ninevah heard, believed, and changed their attitude and their ways. So God did not destroy them as he had said, unconditionally, he would. In other words, in light of their response to his prophetic word, God changed his mind and preserved them. <br /><br />God continues to struggle with a recalcitrant Israelite people, sometimes they trust and obey, other times they rebel and choose what they believe will be better ways. Finally, in the days of his prophet, Jeremiah, God acknowledges that the agreement he had made with Israel has been broken beyond repair. In Jeremiah 31:31-34 God indicates that in the future, at an appropriate time, he will establish a new agreement, covenant, testament with Israel. Israel effectively and repeatedly has stymied God’s loving action on behalf of the world. So God makes a change in his plans and prepares for a fresh start. Again, God has changed his mind.<br /><br /><br />Why have I insisted on reciting these instances (there are more) where God changed his mind? Am I trying to make it look like God has less control of his world than we have thought? Am I trying to bring God down to human capacity? Am I in some sense attempting to diminish God to make him easier to deal with? No. I want to demonstrate something of what it means to say that God is love.<br /><br />Rather, I am using biblical evidence to show that god is not an uncaring, removed, autocratic ruler who will always get his way, no matter what his subjects think or do. Rather, God cares and is actively involved in his world; he and his human creation have an interactive relationship in which each often influences what the other will do. God’s core relationship with humanity is not one of power and control, but of caring, responsive love. God’s words and actions are intended to affect what we do; our words and actions affect, to some degree, what God does.<br /><br /><br />Moreover, if God is affected by what we do, this not only means that God sometimes changes his mind, but also that God has affections, that God has an emotional life. This contradicts the ancient idea that one of God’s attributes is impassibility, that he has no feelings, remains untouched by anything outside of himself. Otherwise, it was believed that is anything affects the divine equilibrium, it would mean that God changes. The traditional doctrine of immutability says that God cannot change, and the traditional doctrine of impassive means that God remains unaffected by anything. He is always the same, untouched by the human situation. Not so. The biblical story of God shows repeatedly that he has an active emotional life, that his feelings change from time to time.<br /><br />Certain things please God, other thing anger him. God does some things according to his own good pleasure. He is at times frustrated. There are things he hates and despises.<br /><br />Jesus wept over Jerusalem and at the tomb of Lazarus. He despaired on the cross and was thirsty. On the cross, God in the flesh suffered.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">[These last paragraphs only outline the idea. In the next day or two I intend to fill it out and clarify it.]</span><br /><br /></span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-34146833003629604992010-10-04T09:26:00.000-07:002010-10-04T09:27:35.439-07:00<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A Religion of Rules?<br /><br />Something about hard-edged and inflexible rules invites rebellion. We persistently search for loopholes, and routinely plead mitigating circumstances when we have disobeyed the law. When loopholes are locked shut and nothing is allowed to mitigate the harshness of punishment, we either submit or rebel. Human frailty feels the need for a little flexibility on occasion. Most of us believe that there are times when the law should be bent a little, if not broken. Most societies understand the dangers of rigid rules that demand obedience or else. Rules are essential; they must be followed; a society cannot exist without certain disciplines, but clear-thinking societies know that sometimes the law should be administered with a degree of moderation.<br /><br />A religion of rules without emphasis on relationship breed rebellion against the rules and thus, against the religion that seeks to bind its adherents to the letter of the law, or else, it breeds those who believe in the literal letter of the law, ignoring its spirit and purpose. The apostle Paul tells us that the law was intended as a tutor helping us to understand major features of how love goes about its business. Rules, Paul says, are not an end in themselves. They serve a purpose: to lead us beyond the law to the freedom of following the spirit of the rules, to accomplish that which commandments by themselves cannot ever achieve.<br /><br />But on the other hand, a religion of relationship, a religion of love without rules reduces religion to fickle feelings. We cannot love by a rule book, but love without boundaries risks a disconnect from the very meaning of love. Relationship requires rules, yet we cannot establish and maintain good relationships if we live purely by a set of rules.<br /><br />Rules sometimes are intended to be rigidly adhered to and strictly enforced. On the other hand are rules of thumb, rules that tell us what, in general, what most of the time, we should do. Law guides behavior and educates us in the ways that work most effectively.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-24753046986771367092010-10-01T10:03:00.000-07:002010-10-01T10:04:38.890-07:00<span style="font-family: arial;">The Bible Is Relative<br /><br />The Ten Commandments commonly are understood by Christians and Jews as universal and absolute, binding on everyone. But they are not. They are relative to the people of Israel, as surely as the Sermon on the Mount is relative to the followers of Jesus. The Ten Commandments were given to the Israelites shortly after their escape from Egyptian bondage under the leadership of Moses. They were not given to the world. In them, God did not address all the peoples of the earth: they were not given to the Cherokees, the Finns, the Yoruba, the Saxons, nor the Aztecs. In introducing the Decalogue, “God said to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where were slaves,” and then begins telling them, “You shall, and you shall not . . ..” <br /><br />“You” specifically, not everyone. He has a claim on them because he had rescued them and established a covenant relation with them, therefore he lays out the fundamental demands of that covenant. He has established no such relation to the Mongolians, the Germans, the Hittites, or the Egyptians. The Commandments are to be understood as relative to Israel and their covenant with God. They are to be understood as relative to the formative time in their history. Paul of Tarsus, in chapter 2, verses 12-15 of his letter to Roman Christians, tells that God will deal differently with those who do not have this Law; he will deal with all according to their situation.<br /><br />The case is similar with the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus retired to a mountainside with his disciples and began teaching them the nature of his kingdom. Again, he did not address the Romans, the Poles, the Syrians, nor the Iroquois. The Sermon on the Mount is to be understood as teachings for those who would commit to Jesus. God does not expect the same of unbelievers.<br />The Bible as a whole, and in its parts is relative. It does not deal in absolutes. It does not tell of God in abstractions, but always in relation to the human situation. Our knowledge of God is not complete, we know in only in part, only as he has chosen to reveal himself to us. In the big picture, Genesis 1-11 is relative to the rest of the Bible. It lays out the background against which the need for redemption is seen and provides the setting in which the story of redemption is told. We are to understand Genesis 12 and all that follows as God’s response to the conditions laid out in Genesis 1-11.<br /><br />To touch on just a few of the relativities of the Old Testament, Abraham is important as the father of God’s covenant people. He is not important in and of himself, and yet, all the rest of the Bible is about him and his descendants. (Genesis 1-11, in contrast, deals in universal terms, with universal peoples.) Moses and David are important in their role as leaders of Israel; Elijah and Isaiah, along with the rest of the prophets, deliver messages from God relative to Israel (later, Israel and Judah).<br />In the New Testament, the first three gospels are relative: Matthew to the Jews, Mark to the Romans, Luke to the Gentiles. The epistles of the New Testament are relative to the unique situation and needs of the church to which they are written; the epistles to Timothy and Titus are relative to their pastoral responsibilities.<br /><br />God speaks to people in all subsequent ages through the words of the Bible, but our understanding of what he has to say is relative to the original setting and purpose. You will search in vain for anything generic or absolute in the Bible.<br /></span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-79923272402320762612010-09-29T10:04:00.001-07:002010-09-29T10:05:31.098-07:00<span style="font-family: arial;">God Is Relatively in Control<br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The sailor cannot control the wind, but can control the set of his sails and thus reach his destination. The wind cannot be restrained but the sails can be regulated and the boat directed. The management of the boat requires both the wind and control of the sails. The sailor is dependent on the wind and on his knowledge and skill in making continual and appropriate adjustments of his sails to the wind. Moment by moment the wind determines what must be done; moment by moment it is in control, but the long-term direction is under the control of the competent sailor.<br /><br />When Christians give assurance by saying, “God is in control,” what do they mean? Do they mean total control, or the kind of control the sailor has over his boat, relative control, control relative to the wind in case of the boat and control relative to human activity in case of the course of history? Some seem to think that God is in control of every single event and decision, just as a sailor might set his direction and move in a straight line toward his destination rather than having to tack back and forth before the wind. Control is an ambiguous concept.<br /><br /> “Don’t worry, God is in control,” I heard the morning after the attack on the world Trade Towers in September 2001. For a long time this offended me. I asked, “Was God in control of the terrorists who flew the instruments of death and destruction?” It seems blasphemous to think God was in control of those airplanes or the crew that had taken control of the flight. Who was in control of the event? Clearly evil was in control in this event. <br /><br />To be “in control” is to be able to determine what takes place, relatively. Control is never over every detail unless you choose to believe that God preprogrammed creation and history down to the least particular. On a basketball court, who is in control of the game: the referee, the coaches, the captains of the teams, or the spectators and cheerleaders? The referee and umpires make the game run according to the rules. The coaches control who plays and, to a degree, what plays will be run. Each individual player has immediate control over his own actions. The team that has the ball can be said to be in control of the ball, but a team that continually has the leading score is said to control the game. Control is a relative matter. Not even the most effective tyrant can control all times, places and persons that are under his subjection. The mind and actions of the individual can never be under total control.<br /><br />And God is not a tyrant, although some ideas of absolute divine control make God, in effect a tyrant who bends everything to his will. God is love and his control is that of a loving father who allows considerable freedom to his children. Loving control is a guiding control; it is freeing rather than restrictive. God sets the rules of the game of life. He trains and coaches those who are responsive to his guiding control.<br /><br />In the big picture, everything goes in God’s providential direction, but he does not dictate all the details. Many of these are left to human free choice. The wind can blow hard against God’s desire and purpose, but as the expert helmsman sets his sails to take advantage of whatever wind blows, so God works all things together, including all that is counter to his will, to accomplish his will. In a world where the fierce, unpredictable winds of freedom and chance blow, God maintains overarching control.<br /><br />At the World Trade Towers, as in the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge regime of genocide of the 1970s, the Ruandan genocide of 1994, and all the other unspeakable atrocities of history, the heart of God bled as he saw the evil his imago dei creatures imposed on each other and suffered at the hands of each other. God was not in control of these events as he is not in control of the evils we bring about and suffer in so many of in our individual lives. Nonetheless, God is wounded, but not defeated. The battle is long and hard, but it is not done. In spite of all appearance, God does not lose control. In spite of all that seems to count against him, he remains the only force that can be trusted. Yes, God is in control.<br /></span><br /></span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-84127799229651302062010-09-28T08:58:00.000-07:002010-09-28T08:59:35.622-07:00<span style="font-family: arial;">Relations, not Facts<br /><br /></span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Print</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:hyphenationzone>46</w:HyphenationZone> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:notabhangindent/> <w:subfontbysize/> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.7in; line-height: 200%; font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">Recent polls show that most Americans do not know the names of the four gospels, where in the Bible to find the Ten Commandments, any of the words to the 23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm, nor that the Bible comprises sixty-six books.<span style=""> </span>That indicates a lack of biblical knowledge at one level, but only a most basic level.<span style=""> </span>This is disturbing to some of us, but such knowledge does not get at what the Bible is about.<span style=""> </span>Bible study should focus on what it all means, and what it means to us and our world.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.7in; line-height: 200%; font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">Before we begin studying the details, individual or small groups of verses, before we let ourselves get bogged down in controversy over any of the passages that are difficult to understand, we should look for the larger meanings, the purpose, intention, and aim of it all.<span style=""> </span>What the Bible or any of its parts are all about is not a body of facts and information.<span style=""> </span>It is about the nature and purposes of God, particularly in relation to his human creation.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.7in; line-height: 200%; font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">Basically and ultimately the Bible is not about principles, ideas, doctrines, or rules for living; it is about relationships: God’s relation to his creation, particularly the human creation, and our relationship to him.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%; font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">The Bible is about faith, forgiveness, trust, peace, patience, compassion, rebellion, hatred, lust, guilt, and the rest of the entire spectrum of personal relationships positive and negative.<span style=""> </span>It is about love, the foundational relationship, the one that produces joy and peace.<span style=""> </span>Bible study at its best explores these relations and their connection with each other.<span style=""> </span>The meaning and significance of the biblical story is relational, relate-ive. The big picture must be understood before the details can find where they fit into the whole.<span style=""> </span>And yes, it remains true that we can’t do much of this until we know the four gospels and the fundamental facts.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-86330677775527591922010-09-28T08:00:00.000-07:002010-09-28T08:02:01.155-07:00<span style="font-family: arial;">God Doesn't Know?<br /><br />It seemed that everything God had done for Israel was in vain, accomplished nothing, and was treated by his people as worthless. Was God disappointed? Can God’s feelings be hurt? Does God have feelings, or is he impassive? According to the prophet, Hosea, God is frustrated and doesn’t know what else he can do to get them to keep their covenant commitments to him. Hosea indicates that God has tried everything he knows how to do, all to no avail. He rescued them from slavery, made them his special people–a people with a special purpose, for the rest of the world–has blessed them with a great land, defeated all their enemies, sent them prophets, warned them of the dangers if they did not do right, has loved them with an everlasting steadfast love. He has even tried punishment–severe punishment. Nothing has gotten through to them. They have ignored God and done it their way. And continue to.<br /><br />According to Hosea, it is God’s own words that tell us he doesn’t know what to do with them. Can this be? God is supposed to know everything, but he doesn’t know how to do with this intransigent nation of rebels. Maybe we have been wrong. Maybe there are things God doesn’t know. We’ll have to explore this. If there is that which God doesn’t know, perhaps even can’t know, we must abandon the ancient idea that God is omniscient, all knowing. Is Hosea wrong, or have we been wrong all these centuries? It may be that God is more complex than we have simplified him to be, than our creeds and doctrinal statements have been able to formulate; it just may be that there is more to God than can be fitted into our formulas.<br /><br /></span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-11087137491791150572010-03-10T09:24:00.000-08:002010-03-10T09:26:45.304-08:00<span style="font-family:arial;">Misunderstanding of God.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">We tend to take on those traits that characterize the god we believe in. This is why I oppose absolutist views of the Christian’s God. Those who understand a god as absolute, tend to emphasize on absolute divine sovereignty, that is, that the god exercises complete control of all things. They also emphasize power and the divine right to use this power in any way the god might choose.<br /><br />The followers of an absolute god tend to exercise full sovereignty over their churches, they seek to control the lifestyle of the group, and power is exercised to maintain this sovereignty and control the behavior of the believers. Everything becomes inflexible, unchallengeable, and permanent in form and content. I’ve been in many Christian churches in the past seventy years and too often this has been the pattern I have observed.<br /><br />It is such a misunderstanding and thus, misrepresentation of the biblical God that I am opposing in this blog. I am motivated by this widespread misunderstanding, this misrepresentation of God.<br /><br />I readily grant there are biblical foundations upon which such a view of God can be built. In the Bible, God regularly exercises his sovereign power. The ultimate issue is whether to give God’s mighty power the preeminence or whether, in the total biblical message, God’s love is given priority over all else. I am convinced that God is love, holy love, and that all other attributes of God are subordinated in the service of that love.<br /><br />Love is a personal relationship, and the Christian community should be relate-ive, relational, that is, a community characterized by the obvious exercise of holy love.<br /><br />This is the basic rational for what I am blogging.</span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-83970010970342087202010-03-03T09:20:00.000-08:002010-03-03T10:01:03.073-08:00No Absolutes<br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">When I say there are no absolutes, I am aware that I don't intend the common usage of the word. In its root meaning, however, the word means, "away from, separated from, apart from anything at all." It means, "non-relate-ive. It means "related to nothing, dependent on nothing, connected to nothing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Nothing exists in such a totally disconnected way except as an abstract idea in a human mind. We can mentally abstract things from the real world (a world of connections and relationships) and think of them as totally separate from all else. When we leave the world of our ideas, however, we can name nothing that is not related to something else.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">What about God? I believe in the biblical God who is known as Father, Son, and Spirit. God is not a solitary absolute. God was never lonely. The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. Both love the Spirit. The Spirit loves them both.</span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-67065714832747712582010-03-02T06:41:00.000-08:002010-03-02T14:21:11.313-08:00<span style="font-family:arial;">The Divine Relativity<br /><br />Again, I want to make it clear that I am using relative and absolute in a special sense, a sense that grows directly out of the root meaning of the terms.<br /><br />For me, relative means related, related to something; it means relate-ive in nature, relational in essence. And since I believe that everything is related to something else, I believe that everything is relate-ive–relative–and cannot be rightly understood apart from relationship.<br /><br />God is relate-ive in essence, because God is essentially trinitarian: Father, Son, Spirit in an eternal relation of love. Love is neither an idea, a principle, a force, nor a law. It is a relationship. God is love; God is relative.<br /><br />I do not use relative in the sense that says the meaning or value of anything is up to each of us to decide for our self. I do not mean that everyone has their own truth or their own definition right and wrong. Although in one sense I believe everything is relative, I completely reject relativism as it is commonly understood.<br /><br />I will deal with the way I use “absolute” in the next blog.</span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-60628721153224774352010-02-24T10:08:00.000-08:002010-02-24T10:10:12.055-08:00<span style="font-family: arial;">Orthodox Christian Relativity<br /><br />To some recent respondents:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I may have, unintentionally, misled some with my use of “relative” and “absolute.” I agree with all criticisms if I meant these words in the ordinary sense. I need to define my terms more specifically. The root meaning of relative is “relate-ive,” and that is what God is all about. God is love. Love is a relationship, not a principle, a thing, or a theory. The incarnation, the atonement, and the resurrection of Jesus are all meant to make possible a restored relationship with God. A Christian is a person who is in right relationship with God.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">God is love. God is all about relationship. Sin is anything that disrupts our relationship with God. God is eternally trinitarian. Christianity is not a mere monotheism, it is a trinitarian monotheism. The God Christians worship, serve, and trust is Father, Son, and Spirit in eternal relation to each other. This is one way I use the term, “relative” in connection (relation) with God.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">There is a second use of the term, however, in my theology. That is that God relates to his creation according to his purpose, human need, or the historical situation. This has many implications I will deal with another time. It means, among other things, that he dealt with Israel differently than he dealt with the New Testament church. He dealt with ancient Egypt differently than he dealt with the Roman Empire. As I wrote before, Jesus dealt with each individual relative to their unique situation, and the New Testament epistles are relative to local situations.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">One specific issue needs to be addressed. The book of Hebrews doe not says that “God” is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It speaks of Jesus as “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” One of the major emphases of Hebrews is that Jesus was in all points tested like we are, that he is our brother (See ch. 2), that he understands by experience what our life is like and therefore can be a faithful high priest on our behalf. That is who he was yesterday (in his days on earth), that is who he still is, and that is who he will be forever: “our “faithful and merciful high priest.” That will not change.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Now to the word, “absolute.” “Ab,” plus “solvere.” </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">ab-prefix, from L. ab-, ab "off, away from," from PIE base *apo-“ </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">L. solvere "to loosen, dissolve, untie," from PIE *se-lu-, from reflexive pronoun *swe- + base *leu- ‘to loosen, divide, cut apart’ (cf. Gk. lyein ‘to loosen, release, untie,’ away; see ab-1 + solvere, to loosen.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The above demonstrates the historical roots of “absolute.” It means “away from,” “loosened from any connection to,” i.e., “all by itself with no connections–relations--to anything.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">This would be true of a mono-theistic God, but the God who is a trinitarian monotheos is not separate from all connections or relations. Rather, as Father, Son, and Spirit, God is eternally relational in his very nature. He is not a “lone.” He is one God, an eternal, divine relationship–a relational mystery.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">To believe God is absolute in the sense I have just described is heresy. I understand why so many use the term, however. Absolute is commonly understood as the ultimate, the highest and supreme attribute that can be given to anything. It is used as a term of worth-ship. I understand that, but consider the word misleading. Here are the words I use for the same: ultimate, universal, supreme, and, of course, holy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">This is a bit long for a single blog, but I must make one additional statement. I am a Christian. I’ve trusted my life into the hands of the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, the one who by his life, death, and resurrection made complete atonement for sin. I believe the historical statements of orthodox Christian theology. I do interpret the meaning of these doctrines differently than they have been commonly interpreted, but I do completely believe in the meaning of traditional Christian thought.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I believe a Christian is a person for whom Jesus Christ is decisive and definitive in all things present, past, future, and eternally.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">On the other hand, I don’t worry about human judgments of my relation to God. I don’t have to be conservative, liberal, evangelical, Catholic, orthodox or neo-orthodox, post-modern, emergent, or traditional. “On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.” </span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-91989371089791183552010-02-18T09:41:00.000-08:002010-02-18T09:42:16.726-08:00<span style="font-family: arial;">No Biblical Absolutes</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Contrary to popular understanding, the Bible delivers us no absolutes. Everything in the Bible is relative: on one hand, to God, and on the other hand, to some particular person or group, occasion, or need.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The ten commandments are not absolutes, they are addressed only to God’s covenant people, Israel–not to the Egyptians, the Amalekites, the Moabites, nor to the Yoruba or Arapaho. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The Sermon on the Mount contains no absolutes; it is addressed to the larger group of his disciples. These teachings relate specifically relate to those who commit to follow Jesus and allow their life to be disciplined by him.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The need to be born again is not presented as an absolute necessity. Only Nicodemus is told that he must be born again. Jesus says to one that all he needs is to sell out and follow Jesus. Another is told to leave his parents and follow Jesus. Still another, the Gerasene demoniac, is not allowed to follow Jesus, but told to stay in his home territory. There is no single “plan of salvation.” Jesus deals with everyone differently, relative to their personal condition.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The epistles of the New Testament offer no absolute teaching or rules. Each epistle is written relative to the needs in a particular church. The Galatian churches are not taught the same thing about women in the church as the Corinthian church. Different places, different situations. The letter called Philemon was written to Philemon relative to a runaway slave named Onesimus. Paul deals with rules differently with Timothy than he does with the Galatians. The book of Hebrews is written relative to Hebrew Christians and relative to the Hebrew Bible book of Leviticus.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Christians are not to try to impose absolutes on anyone, but to serve as faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, living out all the things he has commanded them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-67518043526421236682010-02-03T13:12:00.000-08:002010-02-03T13:36:50.968-08:00<span style="font-family: arial;">Last week we attended, along with maybe two hundred others, my brother-in-law's 90th birthday party. About half of these were relatives, many, like me, relatives by marriage.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">We use the word "relative" in two or three different ways (at least). In speaking of the divine relativity, I use it in two of these senses.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">We all have relatives, people we are related to. This is one usage. Human's are, by nature, inescapably, relate-ive. We are related to people, we relate to non-family members also. We are relative. In this sense, God is relative.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The common understanding of things that are "relative" is that there is no definite truth or goodness. That these--and other matters--are just "relative to the individual. No universal true, no universal good. It is a matter of personal choice. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Relative, by its nature, means "related to something or someone." In the common usage, it seems to mean, "related strictly to each individual or individual group." This usage, I reject as nonsense.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Another common usage of the term is that things are relative to the situation, relative to a context. Specific instances of right and wrong, truth and falsity may in some real sense be dependent on the particular time and place. God seems to be relate-ive in this sense. When we read the Bible, God appears--and acts--in ways that, by common standards, are not consistent with each other. God changes, relative to the circumstance.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">In the end, everything is relative to God; God is relative to everything. God and thus, all reality is relational. God relates, we relate. God cares and is involved.</span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-34431373056223542532010-02-02T08:55:00.000-08:002010-02-02T08:57:42.362-08:00<span style="font-family: arial;">The Bible is about relations and relationships, not ideas, doctrines, principles or propositions. Everything about it is relate-ive.<br /></span>WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-69076846824901796652010-02-01T14:51:00.000-08:002010-02-01T14:52:08.042-08:00<h3 class="post-title entry-title"> <a href="http://becomeagoodthinker.blogspot.com/2010/02/im-back.html">I am Back</a> </h3> It has been over a year since I have blogged. I took time off to finish writing a book that I began years ago. The first full draft is now finished. I expect to edit and rewrite for a few months, then publish late this summer. The book focuses on how to become a good or better thinker.<br /><br />I intend to serialize it, a chapter per month, on my “Considerate Thinking” blog. Meanwhile, I am posting snippets of it on Twitter daily. Check Twitter–wallaceroark. <span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);"><a href="http://twitter.com/#home" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/#home</a></span><br /><br />I hope to update at least two of my several blogs (see the bottom of My Profile) each weekWRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-88085827219291773512008-02-11T01:57:00.000-08:002008-02-11T02:31:54.544-08:00God is relative, there are no absolutes, and that is the good news. Succinctly stated, that is the theme of this blog. I reason from this duofold major premise: the biblical statement that God is love, and its theological corollary that Christianity is a trinitarian monotheism. <br /><br />The practical purpose is to return Christian thoughts and feelings to our responsibility–our sole responsibility–to love God and to love our neighbor, to turn our thoughts and feelings away from the notion that our responsibility is to obey the rules if we are not to face the terrors of a despotic God. <br /><br />Edmund Morris, in Theodore Rex, quotes President Roosevelt I: “. . . of one thing I am sure . . . the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man.” <br /><br />What Roosevelt says next is a good statement of what I think and how I feel about the “God Is Relative” blog: “. . . it may be that I am wrong, but if I am, then all my thoughts and beliefs are wrong, and my whole way of looking at life is wrong.”WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-25365689329936980352008-02-10T18:44:00.001-08:002008-02-10T18:44:30.893-08:00John Said:<br /><br />God is open. Incandescent. Welcome mat out.<br />Is that what follows<br />or what will or might follow?<br /><br />Logic is the study of what follows.<br />Maybe. Probably. Certainly. Impossible.<br />Could be, who knows? Non sequitur.<br /><br />Maybe it is possible, after all.<br />God created it, but cannot lift it--<br />without our help.<br />Somewhere, in all of this,<br />there is a big, big rock.<br /><br />And it is falling,<br />gathering moss and souls<br />and nations and centuries.<br />Can it be stopped?<br /><br />Not by Sisyphus.<br />Not without the holy dynamis<br /><br />Is He in it with us?<br />Did it hit him?<br />Or is it<br />the other way around? Or . . .<br /><br />What do I know?<br />God knows.<br />But what does he know?<br />And when?<br /><br />Open question. <br />Curtain opened,<br />not completely.WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-43673640894941823652008-02-09T19:40:00.000-08:002008-02-15T17:45:01.639-08:00Unintentional Saboteurs of the Christian Faith<br /><br />They were in the coffee room, upperclassmen, three of them, preparing to become Christian ministers. My office was just around the corner so I heard everything they said. It was midmorning, September 12, 2001. It was not just their words; I could hear their posture, gesture, tone, and attitude. These were Christian Studies majors (Christ-ian Studies).<br /><br />I have read all four accounts of the Jesus story. I have taught Christian Studies for thirty-some years. I taught "The Life and Teachings of Jesus” for more than twenty years. Jesus did not get his words and attitude from his surrounding culture. These fellows did. They sounded just like their surrounding culture.<br /><br />They were venting. I wasn't at all surprised by the response of the typical citizen. It was in complete accord with the character of their culture, their socialization. It was what patriotic emotion deemed appropriate. But these guys called themselves followers of Jesus; they claimed to be believers.<br /><br />There was a disconnect. And they were not the only ones in the Christian community saying things like this.<br /><br />We ought to nuke Afghanistan back into the Stone Age.<br /><br />Yeah!<br /><br />We ought to bomb Afghanistan off the map.<br /><br />This did not come from Jesus. They were not following the one they called their Lord. Claiming to be, studying to be, and training to be God's representatives, they misrepresented the God who came to us in Jesus Christ, "God among Us," "Immanuel."<br /><br />September 12, 2001 is not the only time God's "representatives" have misrepresented God. For a variety of reasons, and to the undermining of Christian faith, this kind of unintended and unconscious sabotage has a long and widespread history.<br /><br />Don't look at or listen to them. Pick up a Bible; read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Look at, look to, and listen to Jesus.WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-11099785990867516252007-10-29T16:26:00.000-07:002007-10-29T16:43:00.907-07:00The heart of the word, "god," is power. In all religions, God is seen as transcendent power. This is the one idea that all concepts of God share.<br /><br />Today I picked up an old collection of theological essays, Frontline Theology, edited by Dean Peerman. I read "Religion, Faith, and Power," by Richard R. Niebuhr. I've like Niebuhr for a long time.<br /><br />In the course of his essay, he says: "If I must choose one word now to indicate the meaning of the word, ‘God,’ it is power. (Of . . . alternatives available . . . This one [power] seems to me the most universally significant.)." That sounds almost like what I wrote above. I would agree with Niebuhr if by, "God," he means "god."<br /><br />The Christian God is distinguished as the God whose power is love,<br />whose power is subordinated (sub-ordered, arranged beneath) to love,<br />whose power is in the service of Holy Love.<br /><br />The power of love, not the love of power.WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-75819057249572107932007-10-11T12:57:00.000-07:002007-10-11T13:00:03.282-07:00Open Theism Again<br /><br />He was talking about me. How do I know? Because he had been kind enough to let me know before mailing the letter for publication in the Texas Baptist Standard. For months this San Antonio pastor, a former student of mine, had been emailing, calling on me to repent of the “heresy” of Open Theism.<br /><br />I am recording here a part of my response to the published letter, a letter that was the opening volley in a war against open theism among Texas Baptists. I record this, hoping to further an awareness of the nature of this controversial doctrine of God’s relationship to the future.<br /><br /> Sad to say, I have been told by people wiser than myself that there is no chance that open theism will ever find favor among Baptist Christians. So far as I know, I am the only Texas Baptist to openly identify with open theism, but I disagree about its future. The views of Copernicus, Columbus, and Semmelweis, although widely believed today, were a long time gaining acceptance. This is a pattern well-known to historians.<br /><br />The fact is that I strongly affirm most of what my adversary says open theists deny. Using the language of his letter, I believe “God is: holy, good, loving, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-present,” although I define omniscience more precisely than it is understood traditionally. I also believe “salvation is: by grace alone, through faith alone, by the work of Christ alone.”<br /><br />Again using his language, I do not “deny the foreknowledge of God,” although I understand it differently than many do. I certainly do not “describe God as one who makes mistakes,” or who “repents as a man.” [Italics mine] God does not make mistakes nor does he repent in the ways characteristic of humans. <br /><br />I do affirm that God “risks, regrets, and repents,” but not as men repent. Also, in contrast to the charge in the letter, I strongly affirm God’s capability to work all things together for good.<br />__________________<br /><br />To move now beyond the letter and my response, I believe that open theism clarifies what Christians believe about God. The truth is that most of us live by a theology of openness whether our doctrinal understanding agrees with it or not. Open theism is an effort made to bring our doctrine and our practice into harmony. It can help us integrate thought and life and lead us toward greater Christian integrity.<br /><br />The alternative to open theism is a closed theology in which everything in history and eternity is already a “done deal,” and we are without choice. Moreover God is without choice. Open theism denies such a closed world. It affirms the good news that the future is open–that God is open. We live in a world of possibilities; nothing has to remain as it is; no one has to go on living as they have. Change is an open possibility.<br /><br />The Bible (The New Testament as well as the Hebrew Bible, which was Jesus’ Bible, and which is the Christian’s Old Testament) is at it heart and in its purpose a gospel message. It is good news. Open theism is rooted in the gospel story, in the love of God, in what prayer is all about, and what evangelism is all about. Its major challenges come from concerns about divine sovereignty, prophecy, foreknowledge, predestination, and foreordination, and in the immutability–unchangeability–of God, all of which I will address another time.<br /><br />Open theism is the theology Christian actually live by, that unconsciously we believe. We live believing the good news that the future is open, that it depends on how we decide to relate to God. We are free to repent of our sinful ways and turn to the God whose arms are “open wide.” Our future is open. It is not already in and done from all eternity.<br /><br />We pray believing that prayer affects God. Prayer, by itself, does not change things. It does not operate by some kind of independent magic. It is God, who in response to our prayers, changes things. Some things will not happen if we do not pray; some things will happen only if we do pray. <br /><br />What God will do in the future depends in part on our prayer life, our living relation to him. Although many of us would hesitate to say it explicitly, in practice we believe that prayer can change what God will do. The future, under God’s control, is partly dependent on us.<br /><br />We evangelize the non-Christian, believing who although lost at present, their future is open. Although now in their unforgiven sin, they stand under the wrath of God, if they repent and believe the gospel, we know that God’s gracious love stands ready to forgive and accept them. It has long been observed that although many Baptists preach Calvinistic sermons, they extend Arminian invitations.<br /><br />Open theism, contrary to some representations of it, does not necessarily choose sides in the Calvinism/Arminianism debate. If these systems are defined in narrow form, open theism rejects them both. On the other hand, it affirms–as historic Baptist practice and cooperation has done–features of both. It is a mistake to cast open theism as merely another way of describing the old predestination/free will debate.<br /><br />The biblical statement, “God is love,” is the defining foundation for open theism. Love is not God, but God is love. Holy Love is the very heart and character of the God revealed in Jesus the Christ. All other attributes and actions of God flow from his holy love.<br /><br />Love is a relationship–a personal relationship. It is neither a principle nor merely a power. It is a word used to describe personal relationships that are as God intends. <br /><br />Love by its very nature is grounded in freedom. Love cannot be forced; it must be freely chosen, else it is not love. This is why God created the human with freedom of choice. We are created for a relationship of love with God and with each other. God loves us and desires our love, but in the very nature of love cannot force that love. Our rejection of God always disappoints him; our love for, trust in, and worship of God always pleases him.<br /><br />We miss the major thrust of the Bible if we think that our response doesn’t affect God at all, that it makes no difference to him. And if it does make a difference--any difference--to God, then, in some sense, our decisions change something within the very heart of God. We make a difference to God, and we are dealing with a God who is open to reconsider some of his actions. If this is really so, the story of this kind of God is good news.<br />____________<br /><br />We will explore this further.WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-55922991317672934132007-10-10T09:33:00.000-07:002007-10-10T09:38:29.313-07:00"Open Theism"<br /><br /> If God is relative, not absolute, than it would seem that God is subject to change, and of course we all know that God cannot change. Again, we are under the influence of Aristotle and his Unmoved Mover, and are still in agreement that Patripassionism is heresy. Yes, God changes. <br /><br />Note the several references in the Scriptures where it is said that God repented of one thing or another. We all understand that God has not done something wrong for which he must repent, but we also must recognize that God, in some sense, changes course in these passages. God is often frustrated, but never thwarted. If he fails to find those who will trust and obey, he continues to move to accomplish his will and purpose. I<br /><br />t was not God’s will that Israel have a king in the days of Samuel, the judge of Israel. God was their king. But when they were insistent, God made a shift, relative to their stand, and gave them Saul as king. God could accommodate himself to the situation, and did. When Saul became a disappointment, God selected David as a replacement; when David failed at significant points, Solomon was God’s choice, but God again found the need for a course correction after the failure of Solomon.<br /><br />Nowhere is change more evident in God than in the Incarnation. God, by divine knowledge and creative experience knew everything about human being, but he did not know by experience what it meant to be a human being until Mary had her child named Jesus who was in all points human. This is something new for God, to be Emmanuel. <br /><br />And when Jesus prayed in agony in Gethsemane, and later on the cross asked in despair why God had forsaken him, surely no one is prepared to say this made no difference to God. The full story of God’s incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth means there is some kind of difference in God after the incarnation. God, in some sense, is changed. <br /><br />Now Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the second “person” of The Trinity, knows, bu experience, what it is like to live as a human. That is who he was on this earth, and as the writer of the Hebrews notes, that is who is now, and always be: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Rather than proving that God doesn’t change, it refers to the fact that God is changed forever as a result of the incarnation.<br /><br />God’s character doesn’t change, God’s purpose doesn’t change, but because his character and purpose are relational in nature, it is God’s character to be free to change, relative to the living people and their free responses as they are involved in the working out of his purpose.<br /><br />God is love, God can be trusted eternally; Jesus is the truth and the only way. In him alone is life and that life is the light of men. This truth doesn’t change. <br /><br />But God is alive and dynamic, not a mere eternal principle, Force, or Absolute Idea, so there is a continual process of change in God as he still suffers for us, in us, and with us. Since we are free and God is free, the future depends on the way we respond to God: in faith and obedience, or in rebellion and disbelief.<br />___________________<br /><br />Another potential objection immediately arises. If the future is dependent on our response to God’s initiative, then it would seem that God would not know what the future will be, the future would be open. Doesn’t God know everything? Isn’t God omniscient? <br /><br />The answer lies in the distinction between the potential future an the actual future. The eternal, holy God who created the entire world knows everything that has happened--the actual past--knows everything that is on the scene of the present--the actual present--and knows all future potentiality. Nothing could occur that would surprise God or catch him unprepared. But the actual future is another matter.<br /><br />H. L. Cravens, a legendary teacher at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, was a nationally acclaimed, championship checker player. Occasionally on days set aside for fun, he would challenge as many university students as desired to play him in a game of checkers--all at once. Tables were set up and as many as sixteen checkerboards might be lined up as students took him on. <br /><br />Dr. Cravens stepped to the first table, the first checkerboard, and moved a checker, then to the second board, and on, until he had played each student. Then he would walk back to the first table and start again with the first student’s game. He took only a few seconds at each board. In a short while, a few boards began to be folded, then more, until only two or three remained. Dr. Cravens always defeated all challengers, although I do remember one fellow who claimed, “I almost beat him.” <br /><br />For years I assumed that my friend knew all possible moves on a checkerboard, and had strategies for dealing with any of them. I suspected that after the first two or three moves he knew whether his opponent was a serious player or not, and that he could usually predict what each player was likely to play next. <br /><br /><br /><br />A couple of days before his death, visiting in his home, I told him I had often spoken of his checker knowledge as analogous to God’s knowledge. He confirmed most of what I said about his knowledge of checkers, but noted that he did not begin to know all possible moves that might develop during the course of a game between skilled players. He believed those moves to be almost infinite in number. <br /><br />He did agree that after the first few moves he knew what kind of player he was up against, and that at any given moment he knew not only what possibilities there were for the next move, but also what move a player was likely to make. He also knew ahead of time how he would respond, depending on what choice his challenger took.<br /> <br />As indicated earlier, I see H. L.’s knowledge of checkers as a pointer to God’s knowledge of the future. The world and human history are infinitely more complex than a checker game, but God created it all and does know all its possible moves. Humans were created with genuine freedom, but again, God knows all possibilities that exist for humanity as well as for each person. In the sense that he knows all future possibilities and cannot be surprised or caught unprepared, God knows everything. But because God is love--relational--and because he created humans with the freedom that love entails, God does not know the actual future until it happens. <br /><br />At any given moment, he knows not only what moves are possible, but he knows what moves are likely because of the pattern and character of the past. He is prepared to accomplish his purpose not matter what human choices are made, but if the human is genuinely free, God cannot know which option will be taken until it is actually taken. <br /><br />God can be trusted to complete the creation and redemption he has begun; he will not be defeated. There will come the time when “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” the day when the victory will be complete and he will be known as “King of Kings and Lords,” will put all enemies under his feet, “and he shall reign forever and forever.” But until then, both God and his creature struggle with the powers of evil, and the moment by moment development of this conflict is open and unknowable in its actuality until that moment happens.<br /><br />To repeat, God knows all the past, the entire present scene, and all potential futures, but he does not and cannot know the actual future until it occurs. Our understanding of God’s knowledge hinges on the distinction between potential and actual future events. More fundamentally, it hinges on our understanding of the relation between love and freedom.WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-55635698892408555972007-09-11T16:32:00.000-07:002007-09-11T16:33:56.080-07:00Is Faith What God Is About?<br /><br />This post is an expansion of a blog I wrote March 6, 2007. It is for the most part an expanded look into “faith.” This is not a complete overlap of the other. They complement each other.<br /><br />_____________________<br /><br /><br />The preacher asked “What is God about? It was the kind of question that I pay attention to. If I can know what God is about in this world, then in the limited time I have remaining in life, I want to be about the same thing.<br /><br />The question was rhetorical, so I was not surprised when the minister gave us the answer: “He is about bringing us to the point where we have at least a crumb, a beginning point of faith . . .” A little later he spoke again of faith, this time in relation to the book that stirs all kinds of imagination, the biblical book of Revelation. “Revelation,” he said, “is not about who is left behind, but about those who have faith.” He referenced Revelation 7:14-17.<br /><br />So God is about getting us to the point of faith; the book of Revelation is about those who have faith. Is faith what it is all about? I remember a Bible professor who in all kinds of contexts, not just religious, was frequently heard to say, “You just have to have faith.” What was that supposed to mean?<br /><br />If faith is the final word, it is meaningless. Faith without an object is dead, being alone. Faith is always “faith in.” Depending on the object of faith, we can speak of species of faith: religious faith (whether Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or some other), political, economic, national, scientific, or secular.<br /><br />Strangely, the president of the United States has spoken much about “faith-based initiatives.” Others, following a similar line of thinking speak of “faith communities.” The fact is that all initiatives are faith-based. All true common-unities share, among other things, a common faith. In my hometown, we had a highschool football coach whose teams had won more state championships than any other team in the United States. The town, the bankers, and the young football players had great faith in this phenomenal coach.<br /><br />We live by faith–all of us. We live by what we believe in, what we believe about. We make our decisions and take action based on those things we are convinced of, those things–persons included–that we trust. The atheist is a believer. The atheist believes there is no god.<br /><br />Faith is not a stand-alone word. Faith is not an end in itself. The Christian Bible says: “Faith without works is dead.” A favorite Christian hymn says:“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way . . ..” <br /><br />Faith, and I’m not speaking just of religious faith, is mediate a medium, an intermediary, a go-between. Faith is an attitude, a stance. It is a bridge, a door, a relation, a motivator, a means, a way, an enabler.<br /><br />Faith always points beyond itself, as do its synonyms: trust, confidence, commit, rely, accept, conviction, convinced, depend on.<br /><br />A faith refers to an organized structure derived from the above, it has content and related constituents. In this sense it is a complex.<br /><br />Faith may be merely intellectual, personal, or pragmatic, the coalescence of all three.<br />_____________<br /><br />Now, having given something of a wordy disquisition on the word, faith, I return to the question of what God is about, the question that got all this stirred up within me. What is God about?<br /><br />The Bible says “God is love,” and Jesus, when asked what the greatest of all God’s commands was, answered, saying that everything God is about can be stated concisely. All God wants of his human creation is for them to love God and to love each other. If God is love, and if love is all he desires, it seems clear to me what God is about: God is about love.<br /><br />Faith is an attitude, a chosen stance that puts its confidence, its trust in God. When a person adopts this relation to God, the way to love is opened, the person accepts God at face value, and commits their life to the practice of the divine love that faith enables them to accomplish.<br /><br />Faith is the necessary intermediary between their old life and their new life of reliance on God. Faith does the work; love is the accomplishment.<br />_____________<br /><br />But even love is not what God is about, not ultimately. Why love, except that God commands it? Love leads to what it is all about, what in the end God is, has, and always will be about. <br /><br />Love changes things, changes everything. If you’ve ever been “in love,” you know this. Love is enjoyable, when under its spell, all else is forgotten and we are at peace. We feel that our life has been enriched beyond measure.<br /><br />I summed it up best in the March blog:<br />“What is God about? The incredible, incomprehensible, inexhaustible riches of the love, joy, and peace that faith in the triune God leads us to and graciously bestows upon us. That is what God is about.”WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34583921.post-6400200861704834032007-09-04T15:40:00.000-07:002007-09-04T15:41:11.248-07:00Music, in it simplest form, is much like a trip from the house to the mailbox, perhaps along the way making a brief stop to pick up the newspaper, then back to the house (and, as we will see, the Christian Bible is much like a musical composition). Almost any piece of music in the Western world begins with a note or chord called the “tonic.” This sets the “tone” for the piece of music; it tells us what “key” the music is being played in. The tonic is “home.”<br /><br />The major movement of music is from the tonic to a note or chord called the “dominant,” then back home to the tonic: tonic to dominant and back to tonic. But just as the trip to the mailbox and back may involve a brief stop for the newspaper or to smell the rosebush, so the trip back from the tonic to the dominant usually involves a visit to the sub-dominant. <br /><br />Thus, the basic pattern of music is the movement from tonic to sub-dominant, to dominant, and back to tonic. You leave home, take a trip, and come back home. This movement away from home adds interest to life, but the arrival back home brings us back to our comfortable world.<br /><br />The Christian Bible, and the Christian religion are commonly understood as a simple movement of similar sort: from Creation to Sin to New Creation, or, Generation to De-generation to Re-generation. There is nothing wrong with this simple pattern. It is the movement of the biblical story just as surely as tonic, subdominant, dominant is the movement of a piece of music.<br /><br />Sometimes we take longer trips, like downtown shopping. Several stores, a few visits, fill up with gasoline, but eventually “home, sweet home.”<br /><br />“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” follows the basic pattern. So does “The Star-<br />Spangled Banner.” But along the way, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” while maintaining the basic pattern, adds some new and interesting elements. These move us from the sweet and somnolent tones of “Twinkle, Twinkle,” to an arousing, energizing, and heart-stirring call to pride and/or action.<br /><br />Anyone can sing “Twinkle, Twinkle.” It is easy. The national anthem of the United States is a much more challenging and difficult piece to sing, but it stirs us more deeply than the little lullaby.<br /><br />The New Testament book of Romans follows the pattern of generation, degeneration, and regeneration, but adds enough challenging, enriching, and thought-provoking elements that few of us find it easy reading. There is somehow more involved in the basic pattern than we had realized. The basic pattern is still there, but it no longer is simple.<br /><br />Music becomes much richer, more complex, challenging, provocative, disturbing, and difficult (both to play and for the ear and mind to follow) when we move from “The Star-Spangled Banner” to Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 in E Flat. This symphony is, in one sense, a movement from the tonic (E Flat), to the sub-dominant (A Flat), to the dominant (B Flat), and eventually back to the tonic (E Flat).<br /><br />In Symphony No.3 in E Flat once the tonic chord sets the tone, the music quickly moves to chords that sound a different, improper sounding tone. To simplify the rest of the symphony, it changes its tonal center several times, always eventually coming back to the original tonic with its E Flat tonic and its subdominant and dominant. Much of the time, however, it sounds like it has departed completely from the original theme, perhaps having lost it, or changed its mind.<br /><br />Complex music ordinarily requires several hearings before it begins to make sense, and can be seen as a unified whole. Those who take the trouble to hear it again and again find it a source of great wonder, joy, and satisfaction.<br /><br />The Christian Bible is not a simple piece of literature; it is quite complex and diverse, often sounding seemingly contradictory notes and themes. Leviticus, Judges, the books of he Kings and Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and several of the Psalms, all exemplify these problematics. Of course, this only covers some of the problems.<br />_____________<br /><br />I propose that God’s love is the tonic note of the Bible. We might say that the sub-dominant is God’s kind of love that humans can share with each other, and the dominant is the human love of God. The final movement is back to the tonic: the love of God. The entire Bible and the entirety of a faithful Christian religion are written in the key of Love, not love as is ordinarily understood, but the Holy Love demonstrated and taught by Jesus.<br /><br />I base this analysis on the following biblical statements: “God is love,” “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments," “Love never fails,” “. . . faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love,” “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”<br /><br />Much of the Bible sounds as if it had little if nothing to do with love. Much seems clearly contradictory to love. Much sounds as if power, control, or harsh demands is the central theme. <br /><br />The Bible is a difficult, complex book that, based on a single reading, can be as disturbing as it can be life-affirming. But those who read it repeatedly and thoughtfully, especially if once they have clearly heard the tonic, Holy Love, begin to see that it all makes sense, all fits together, and all reflects the sometimes joyous, sometimes quite demanding development of the highest, the infinite love. Everything ultimately stems from love and leads back to that home.<br /><br />Read it enough and its love will become something to enjoy and will bring a satisfying peace. <br /><br />The tonic is love; the subdominant is love; the dominant is love; the way back home is the way of from love to love.<br />_________________<br /><br />I don’t pretend to have God figured out. God is disturbing and awesome mystery; God is life and hope. If you were to go to asking me questions, there would be many I could ot answer. I know most of the answers that have been given to most of the questions, but I still am unable to answer some of them. <br /><br />I am confident that all flows from the divine love, that love is all that is required, and that God’s holy love, revealed in Jesus, is the standard by which we will be judged.WRoarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08339539145393176843noreply@blogger.com0