I believe that the new blog is now ready for takeoff. It’s been great using wordpress for this however long, but I’m looking forward to running everything on my privately hosted version! Check it out, change your blog feed, etc. The new website is: theycallmepastorbryan.com
Tomorrow I will announce the new blog site. Today I ask you the same question as yesterday: what things have you enjoyed and would like to see transferred over to the new site.
So far I have one vote, which is to transfer the whole thing over. Any other opinions? I know there are more people who read this than just Amanda.
I’m sure the few of you who read this have noted my silence lately. I certainly haven’t been writing much.
Perhaps you thought, “ah, he has had nothing to say,” or possibly “BD must be being lazy and not writing.” While both of these are possibly true, there is yet another reason for my lack of writing as of late.
That is, I have been preparing a new home for my blog, a place where my words might run free from the tyranny of the wordpress.com server not allowing me to customize things the way I like, or add my own design without paying for it.
In other words, this blog, theycallmepastorbryan.wordpress.com is nearing the end of its life.
When something reaches the end of its life, it is always good to go back and think of what has been good, and what have been memorable moments in its life. I would like to encourage you to do so as well, with a few notable things for us to comment on. I am planning on using this input to determine what pieces of blog lore from this site should be commuted to the new site.
So here is the question: do you have favorite posts or moments on this blog? Let’s talk about what they are. As an additional reward, you will get to see your favorite content transferred over to the new blog to live on forever. I will tell you more about the new site shortly, but let us first have this conversation of things you have enjoyed from the past years of me blogging.
It seems that more and more, there is arising a wave of critics about Christianity and especially the Evangelical blend. This wave, sometimes called the New Atheists(what is it with us calling every thing the New ______?) present some reasoned arguments against Christianity, which many find hard to defend.
I see people having two choices in how we deal with this sort of skepticism: we retreat, hide away from any criticism and demonize our critics, or we acknowledge that faith is niether easy nor obvious and that there are many hard things which we believe.
I am a much bigger fan of the latter choice, and it’s why I at times don’t have a problem sounding like I’m trying to draw out arguments. Truth be told if you’re a Christian, I want to force your hand to look at how tough some of the things we believe are, and how challenging they are. I don’t do this just to shake you up and get in your head, but because I believe it is vital for us to realize how tough and how crazy what we believe really is. We need to address those doubts, if for no other reason than to be able to admit we have doubts.
If I read the bible and don’t feel challenged, stretched or convicted, I’m probably reading it incorrectly.
I said this the other day as the thought I have been dwelling on. I still find this true, and found a great example of it in a conversation my friend Amon started with a provocative blog Tuesday.
You would think of God as someone who treats everyone equally, right? Wrong. Matter of fact you shouldn’t be thinking about how God plays his favoritism game. He is God and it is His game. With this in mind, I have never stopped wondering why God plays unfair. At least in my human mind. And there is no better place to find God playing unfair than in Genesis 4. Two good guys Cain and Abel choose different jobs. Call them a lawyer and a doctor or something like that. Cain brings something from his profession and so does Abel. God looks at Cain’s gift and decides, “Well, I don’t think I care for that”. I am curious to know what you think about God’s game of favoritism.
What ensued was a conversation about the heart behind the gifts being offered. What is tough about reading this passage in the Bible, is that there is no justification given for why God favored one gift and not the other. We want there to be a why, a way that we can control this God: the how to for how we earn His favor.
and instead we get the statement that God favored Abel’s gift over Cain’s.
This is a great example of the thought I’ve been processing, for it is a passage that does not work well with my box that I try to put God in. He breaks it by not fitting my systems. Instead He does something I don’t like.
While the discussion of whether or not God shows favoritism is much more nuanced than just Genesis 4, we must deal with this story of God showing favoritism with no reason really given for why.
I’m working on some stuff, including a question Jeff put up through skribit. The question has to do with church and deconstruction. It’s an interesting thing for me, as I am no philosopher beyond the amateur level.
I had a great weekend camping and partying with family and friends in Eastern Washington. Highlights included Coulee City parade, bbq, bad dance off, volleyball, white elephant lottery gift exchange and laughter. All in all a great time!
Here’s one thought I was pondering in the car yesterday on my drive home(and already shared on twitter): If I read the bible and don’t feel challenged, stretched or convicted, I’m prolly reading it incorrectly.
Oh, one last thing, I got chacos. It has changed the way I think of sandals forever.
HT:Peter Rollins (who coincidentally has a new book out that I am currently reading, title “The Orthodox Heretic, and other Impossible Tales”)
I’m tired and don’t want to blog too much tonight, but I do have a couple things to share.
My small group finished our study through Judges and Ruth and I got to lead a discussion on the big narrative behind the individual stories. We focused on the question “why tell these depressing stories?” I am left thinking that there is indeed a place for depressing stories, but that I am happy to have Ruth included as that story lets us know that even while everything is going wrong, God is working things toward His purpose. This is comforting for us as individuals and as the church in my opinion.
Also, Tony Jones is starting an interesting discussion on Lectio Divina, check out one of those blog posts here.
Here’s a question: is there a place for us to tell depressing stories? what would be the point for us to make in those stories?
As an attempt to reward you, oh faithful readers, I am trying out a web service that allows you to give suggestions for things I should write about.
So, if you have any pressing ideas of what you would like to see me write about, head on over to my skribit profile and write a post suggestion. I promise I will look at the things you suggest.
I’ve been reflecting on what I wrote yesterday, with “I am not getting anything out of it.” I keep coming to the same conclusion, for as much as we live in a society that says “it’s all about you,” “have it your way,” “you deserve it” or “is it in you?,” there may be no more prophetic statement than “life is not really about you.”
Martin Luther, a monk from the middle ages, and one of the most well known figures of the Protestant Reformation, spoke about the condition humanity is in, calling it incurvitas in se(turned/curved inward on oneself). This condition allows us to think of no one first other than ourselves, because at our very nature, we believe that it is all about us. Luther said this about our condition as humanity:
“Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake.”
According to Luther, we use the best gifts God has given us for Him and for others, and use them for ourselves. We look to God as a means to our own pleasure, and everything on some level comes back to what we want. I have noted before, that as a church we have a propensity to embrace a consumer approach to church-to give the (church) consumer what (s)he wants. But this is not the message that the church is to proclaim. Giving the message that says “you can have what you want, now and God will give it to you, and you can have worship in the style of music you like” and so on, is not the message that God proclaims to us.
Instead of saying as a church “we have what you want” we would be much better, and more prophetically served to say “this is not about you, and if you think it is, you have missed the point.”
I am the worst example of this. I want to have the things that I like. I want comfort and a style of music I appreciate. Yet at some point, church has to cease being about what I want and instead begin to focus on Who has called me. Church is not about you. It is not about me. It is about God.
