Read the scripture, not only as a history, but as a love-letter sent to you from God.

Some read the word solely as a means to understand and develop theology. Others, as a means to know what they should and shouldn’t do. Others, only to know what has happened in the past, according to Christian and Jewish tradition.

The intention of the Word isn’t less than these, but it is also a great deal more.

We should approach it, as Watson says, like a ‘love letter’. Not necessarily in the literal sense, but in spirit. What we read, was not only an intellectual work to be studied—a textbook. But it was intended for us so that we would be deeply affected and moved in the most sensitive regions of our soul. If we accept it as anything less than it really is, we miss more than we are gaining.

Related posts:

1. The Symptom of that Love
2. The Holy Spirit is All About Jesus
3. Winter Sun—bright, not warm.

Ben Folds is highlighting what is socially logical, but otherwise ass-backwards about our society. That is, that our social royalty need nothing, but everything is given to them. Meanwhile, everyone else has many needs, but have to labor for it.

called in sick one day
stepped out my front door
squinted up at the sky
and stomped on my backpack
got into a van
and when i returned i had
ex-wives and children
boxes of photographs
and they gave me some food
and they didn’t charge me
and they gave me some coffee
but they didn’t charge me
and when i was broke i needed more
but now that i’m rich they give me coffee
eating an ice cream cone
texting with my phones
flipping off the asshole who pulled into my lane
life could be longer than something cracked up to be
we all get new selves every seven years
i feel the seventh day, its a good day to die again
now they saved me my place
over there in the cornor
and i never get tickets, yeah i only get warnings
but when i was broke i needed more
and now that i’m rich, i get free coffee

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1. Solomon Asks For Wisdom

But in some circumstances, even tiny little imperfections in a persons chemistry and genetic makeup can reduce a lifespan by decades.

It reminds me of the opening verse of the Andrew Bird song The Giant of Illinois.

The giant of Illinois
died from a blister on his toe
after walking all day through the first winter snow

throwing bits of stale bread
to the last speckled doves
he never even felt his shoes filled with blood

A giant dies from a small wound on his foot that he didn’t notice.

It also got me thinking how, in a spiritual way, even small sins when gone unnoticed and unchecked can have a resounding effect in a persons life; no sin stands alone.

Related posts:

1. Like a Winter Sun
2. Knowing Isn’t Enough

The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

It is parliamentary that we saturate our lives with God’s word. Moses here commands the people of Israel to keep God’s word on their heart, teaching them to our children, talking about them constantly, written on our hands and mounted in our homes.

Now, whether that means we ought to literally saturate our environment with spiritual reminders or not is a different question.

But the point, perhaps at its most basic, is that we must be immersed in the Truth of the Gospel. All of our facets of thought must run through the conduit of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

Easier said than done.

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1. Always Remembering the Lord
2. Brother Saul
3. You Are What You Worship

In the context of the argument (and that particular Christian denomination), the original ‘sin’ at birth would appear purely ceremonial, and nothing more. Once removed by baptism, a person returns to a pre-fall state. There is no ‘sinful nature’ which tends us all toward sin. And thus, human choice and absolute freedom is prized more highly than God’s grace.

This, however, I find both irrational and unbiblical.

1. Human beings are born bad. We don’t like to think that, but it’s hard to deny. And no, it’s not purely a kind of ceremonial mark of uncleanness. It’s real, and aggressive. Even a basic look at a small child reveals the tendency toward sin which exists. Among the first things we do once we learn to speak is to lie. We are not taught to do it. We just do. A mother sees that a child has broken a plate in the kitchen. She asks, “did you break this plate?” the child quickly replies, “No, it was…”. Fill in the blank.

In adult life, even among Christians, any rational, honest, self-assessment will reveal that we tend toward things that are bad for us. Even those who have been baptized. We are not always caring, loving, patient, kind or humble. In fact, we are not more often than we are. It requires a kind of delusion to miss this.

Even Paul experienced this and writes about it in an eerily relatable way in Romans 7:13-20.

2. Freedom to choose is not in question, it is the will to choose. There is only one human in all history who did not sin. If there were not some kind of block in a human’s heart or mind, this would be extremely unlikely. At some point, someone would’ve gotten it right.

It’s not that human beings don’t have the freedom not to sin, it’s that they do not have the will not to sin.

This, as I’ve already shown, is not removed by any kind of ceremonial practice at birth, or otherwise. Christians from every sect all over the world echo the inclination to sin. Rather, It is removed at God’s discretion by his Spirit, and it always accompanies a personal learning faith in Christ. Only at this point is a Christian freed from their own will which then allows them to choose not to sin.

In conclusion.

The topic of ancestral sin is very large and complicated. I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the discussion here. However, I am hard pressed to believe that there is any kind of spiritual ‘mark of Cain’, which believers must have removed. And, the scripture used in its defense is highly suspect (1 Corinthians 15:22, Romans 5:12-21).

Instead, I find that it sits well with scripture and my rational mind to say that humans are born wicked and in need of actual redemption from Christ.

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1. The Greatest Sin
2. Responsibility for Success
3. Instead It’s Disfigured & Grotesque

Community

The most recent episode, the Christmas episode, made a point to poke fun at religion in general, which each member of the ‘community’ having a different, stereotypical religious belief. There’s the Jewish girl, the middle eastern Muslim boy, the African American Jehovah’s Witness, the feminist atheist, the born again Christian woman, the older liberal man who’s in a cult but doesn’t know it, and the main character who’s an agnostic.

When they introduce everyone’s belief, the main Character reveals that he is agnostic. The others scoff at him insisting that he’s too ‘lazy’ to decide what he believes. It was a comical discussion, but it got me thinking about the Church’s various theological makeup.

An extremely large portion of the church finds itself as a sort of “agnostic Christian”. Of course, not in the literal sense of the word.

Religiously speaking, an agnostic is “a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God (but does not deny that God might exist)”. In Christianity, many people take the complexity of theology and conclude that we simply cannot know the right answer and sit non-committedly in ambiguous belief. They’re mostly unwilling to place definitions on God, or on the way God works.

But, this is simply wrong. We are able to look at scripture and draw confident conclusions about God and how he works. While we shouldn’t scoff at anyone’s belief, we should encourage our brothers and sisters not to rest in ‘agnostic Christianity’, but to seek the scriptures and draw conclusions.

I strongly believe that it is important to know what we believe and why. Even if that belief isn’t necessarily ‘right’, knowing our beliefs about God is important and much healthier than giving up because we think it’s too complicated.

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2. Instead It’s Disfigured & Grotesque
3. If Joy is Hidden in God

“…they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness. Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.”

Settle it in our minds not to meditate on how to answer. I find it compelling that Jesus felt that it was important to include this. After all, he could have easily left it out without necessarily altering the meaning. But he didn’t. Which to me, means that it could really use some reflection.

I think that there’s a number of possibilities in there. Probably something about pride. Something about reliance on God. But the idea that keeps sticking in my mind right now is not convoluting the Spirit of God in us.

You get the impression from the full passage that the Spirit, in some sense, is going to kind of take over. It’s going to replace some natural capacity of ours with a supernatural one. The term knee-jerk reaction comes to mind. Perhaps it is that Jesus doesn’t want us convoluting the Spirit’s knee-jerk reaction in us with something contrived of our own minds.

Really any way you look at it, it seems bizarre to me. And in terms of language, there aren’t many times when we’re told not to think about something. But it sure says it here and that is worth thinking about.

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2. The Years of the Right Hand
3. Reinforcing God’s Unity

You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

It is interesting how much time people will spend arguing with God’s justice over people lives, rather than attempting to come to terms with what it actually says.

Just reminded me of the Shai Linne song I posted about some months ago, In Adam All Die. There’s a verse that goes like this:

Adam’s guilt was imputed to his descendents
Global calamity
Major debt, pain, regret, the reign of death- total depravity
And yes, I’m aware that cats were not there
Which opens the door to charges of “that’s not fair”
But God is not subject to fallen notions of fairness
Besides, when it comes to God’s glory, most could care less
We can’t measure how we chase sand treasures
And banned pleasures- similar to our ancestors
So instead of saying if you were there what you would do
Seek your refuge in Adam number two

You can listen to the song here.

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1. For Faith or Perks?
2. Adam & Eve’s Second Outfit
3. Resilient & Fragile

I read a book recently that discussed some of the philosophies concerning decision making. The author was discussing the idea that people always make decisions based on their greatest desire—always, without any exceptions. That seems to make sense to me. You figure, when we do things we don’t want to do it’s almost always to the end of either avoiding a less desirable circumstance, or a more desirable reward. When it comes to Christians, it’s a mix of that but also of shifting our desires to match God’s. So theoretically, in any given situation, our greatest desire would be for God, or more specifically, God’s will and so even temporal pleasures or displeasures would fall by the wayside.

Although I reckon there’s more to that discussion than what I’ve just summed up right there, I think the principle is true. And I can clearly see that I exhibit that in my day to day life. Here is the trouble, sometimes when I make decisions it’s obvious that my greatest desire isn’t for God, or his will. It usually isn’t long before I figure out that I’ve acted foolishly and gone off wishing for things of the world instead of God.

And so the question stands. Upon discovering my own foolish desire and subsequent sin, what is the correct response? I know that in an ideal sense, I am to run headlong to the cross. Take my sin and my foolishness to Christ and let him mend the wrongs I’ve committed. His work is already done; I couldn’t add to it, even if I wanted to. It’s for that reason that there can be no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But that still begs the question what am I to do? If you act as stupid and as often as I do, you’ll know the predicament. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning and act very stupidly again, but historically speaking, I likely will. This perplexity stands to stunt my growth in Christ.

Because of this indecision, every moronic step I take sets me back. Despite plenty of fodder directing otherwise, it often takes hours, sometimes even days, to re-approach God in his word or in prayer. In this way, the Catholic practice of penance seems appealing. As if I could somehow work my way back onto God’s good side. Once penance is done, I once again have a right to commune with God. Of course, I know that I never, in and of myself, have a right to commune with God and to think I could work for it is preposterous.

So I’m left without an answer to this question. What is the right thing to do when you’ve acted very stupidly and you know it? I haven’t a clue. But I’m glad that my hope doesn’t hinge on my getting it right.

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3. The Greatest Sin